Abortion and eugenics

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a revolution within foetal diagnostics. In roughly the same period, legal measures in many countries permitted the termination of pregnancies in cases of suspected foetal abnormalities. Critics have claimed that the resulting abortion policies resemble the old, state‐imposed eugenics of the early 20th century. This article presents some evidence to the contrary. In Norway, which is the article's main topic of concern, so‐called eugenic clauses in the abortion legislation were passed well before the revolution in foetal diagnostics. More importantly, other motives were historically more significant than eugenics for the development of modern Norwegian abortion policies. Consequently, any eugenic effect of these policies should be considered a result of coincidence rather than design – or so the article argues. Brief comparisons with the other Nordic countries are included.     

Microscopic age determination of human skeletons including an unknown but calculable variable

Histomorphometric semi-automatic image analysis of cross-sections of 101 femoral diaphyseal bone sections were performed to reconsider to what degree osteon remodelling in the outer cortex is affected by age. The data were analysed statistically using the generalized least squares method. The model estimation, which includes the covariance matrix of four single equation residuals, improves the accuracy of age determination. The standard deviation, however, of age prediction remains 12.58 years. An experimental split of the data was made in order to demonstrate that the use of subgroups gives a false impression of higher precision of age determination. The present study demonstrates that determination of age at death through microscopic bone morphometry is considerably less precise than generally stated in the literature.     

基于空间相互作用模型的近代中国经济区域划分研究

通商口岸制度,是中国近代史上最重要的经济现象。近代中国经济地理学的格局和区域经济差异等内容,可以利用当代经济地理学、GIS技术、经济学等研究方法结合历史数据进行考察。近代中国一百多个通商口岸的发展,逐步形成了沿海、沿江、边疆对外开放的地理格局,为现代化提供了条件,促进了近代资本主义生产方式的空间扩张,也重构了中国的经济区域。为探究近代中国通商口岸影响下的经济区域变化,首先对通商口岸体系子口税贸易在地理空间分布进行探讨,初步界定一些较大通商口岸的影响区域,进而通过数量化和GIS方法,特别是使用空间交互模型得出结论。通商口岸体系是区域经济现代化的代表和系统性的研究对象,直接影响到当代中国的经济地理格局,可对当前中国经济地理区划提供有历史与现实意义的参考。     

Beyond the carrot and stick: the political economy of US military aid to China, 1945–1951

By applying the rent-seeking assumption and sifting through both the archival materials and published historical documents, this article revisits the US–China relationship during the Chinese Civil War (1946–1949) and the early Cold War period, when the United States was caught in the conundrum of aiding the Chinese Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek. As military aid is usually regarded as an important representation of broader economic aid, this research mainly concentrates on the US military assistance to postwar Nationalist China. This topic is important, as it signifies a direct American involvement in the Chinese Civil War, when the influence of the United States in postwar world politics was overwhelmingly predominant. As a result, postwar Chinese history might be reevaluated in a broader global postwar context. In addition, this article also tells the story about rent-seeking behaviors in the complicated US–China military relations during the early Cold War period at both micro and macro levels. When it came to US military assistance to China, the formulation of policy was perennially in the name of one's best interest.     

NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL MIX AND ADULTS' INCOME TRAJECTORIES: LONGITUDINAL EVIDENCE FROM STOCKHOLM

We investigate the relationship between neighborhood income composition and income trajectories of adults, employing annual panel data from Stockholm over the 1991–2008 period and multiple measures of neighborhood income mix. We advance the human geography literature in three ways by quantifying neighborhood effects that: (1) are unusually precise due to our large sample size; (2) are arguably causal and unbiased due to the econometric techniques employed; (3) are potentially heterogeneous, varying according to gender, income group, and ethnicity. Our innovative, fixed‐effect change modeling indicates that neighborhood income mix affects subsequent one‐ and five‐year income trajectories of residents in highly heterogeneous ways according to gender, income and ethnicity, and for some groups this effect is substantial. The evidence supports on Pareto improvement grounds a social mix policy that attempts to reduce the incidence of lower‐income dominant neighborhood environments and replace them with more mixed or middle‐income dominant ones.     

Interpreting cultural remains in airborne laser scanning generated digital terrain models: effects of size and shape on detection success rates

In this study, detection success rates were evaluated for cultural remains that were detected manually based on interpretation of digital terrain models (DTM) derived from airborne laser scanning data and with a resolution of 1, 5 and 10 points m⁻². The group of cultural remains included charcoal kilns, charcoal pits, hollow-roads, various pits, house foundations, tar kilns, grave mounds and pit-falls. The effects on the interpretation success of different types of cultural remains and their physical properties were studied: size, shape and elevation difference showing that the detection success rates varied considerably. The main tendency was that large cultural remains with clear geometrical shape (ovals and circles) and large elevation difference were much more successfully detected and classified compared to the smaller ones, especially those without a clear geometrical shape. The study also showed that it was the identification of the larger structures which profited most from an increased resolution of the DTM, and it was of no help to increase resolution in order to improve the identification of the irregularly shaped cultural remains.     

Baseline Models for Two‐Mode Social Network Data

Baseline models have been used in the analysis of social networks as a way to understand how empirical networks differ from “random” ones. For the purposes of social network analysis, a “random” network is one chosen—at random—from a population of possible graphs derived from a given generating function. Although these principled hypothesis tests have a long history, many of their properties and extensions to multiple data structures—here, specifically two‐mode data—have been overlooked. This article focused on applications of different baseline models to two data sets: donations and voting of the 111th U.S. Congress, and organizations involved in forums on watershed policy in San Francisco, USA. Tests using each data set, but with different baseline reference distributions, will illustrate the range of possible questions baseline models can address and the differences between them. The ability to apply different models and generate a constellation of results provides a deeper understanding of the structure of the system.     

当代加拿大华人精英参政模型分析

论文将当代加拿大华人精英的参政情况概括为五种模型：选举型和委任型、全国型和地方型、象征型和实在型、主流政党型和华人政党型及华人选票型和非华人选票型,并运用这五种参政模型对当代加拿大华人精英的参政情况进行归纳与分析。认为华人精英无论采取何种模型参与加拿大政治,只要能成功进入主流社会,对改善华人在加拿大社会的公共政治形象,提高他们的社会政治地位和维护他们的合法权利都十分有益,对华裔新生代未来参与政治的热情也是一个激励。     

Modelling the Neolithic transition in a heterogeneous environment

The Neolithic transition, involving the change of subsistence from foraging to agriculture, can fruitfully be modelled mathematically, as, e.g., in the three-population model of Aoki et al. (1996). Here that model is modified to include some features of population dynamics in a realistic, two-dimensional environment, and including population pressure, competition for resources between farmers and foragers, and the dependence of the population carrying capacities and diffusivities on the environmental conditions. This modified model allows for the survival of foragers in regions where environmental conditions do not favour farming. The model is tentatively applied to the Indian subcontinent, which is a complicated example of this transition involving multiple domestication centres. The results are briefly compared with published archaeological data.