Nuclear science and the story of a preserved leaf from a copy of the Great Bible

Three pressed leaves of Ulmus glabra (Wych Elm) were found within the pages of a copy of the Great Bible in the Library of the University of Western Australia. The Bible dates from AD 1540 and was originally housed at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire. A radiocarbon age on one of the leaves found it was about as old as the Great Bible itself, and stable C and N isotope and neutron activation analyses were carried out on the same leaf. The δ¹⁵N values were elevated and the content of iron, arsenic, bromine, silver, gold and mercury were relatively high. These analyses are consistent with an environment where water logging is present, as at Ely at the time, and the silver and gold content are probably consistent with the cathedral setting. The mercury was found to be associated with the red ink in the Bible. It is intriguing to ponder why Wych elm leaves were placed in the Bible, especially in the light that a copy of an original edition of the King James version of the Bible from Ely, also in the library in Perth has many dozens of U. glabra leaves also preserved within in its pages.     

Geographical Metanarratives in Russia and the European East: Contemporary Pan-Slavism

A specialist on Russian geopolitical metanarratives investigates the re-emergence of Pan-Slavism in the ideological landscape of contemporary Russia. Arguing that it is a heterogeneous assemblage of both mutually antagonistic and complementary narratives about the unity of Slavic peoples, the author posits that Pan-Slavism's durability lies not in its conceptual coherence but rather its emotional appeal to disparate Slavic peoples in the former Soviet Union as well as Eastern and Southeastern Europe. After briefly tracing the history of Pan-Slavism from its 17th-century roots through World War I into the Soviet period, he explores the metanarrative's capacity to take modern Russia's geopolitical thinking in new directions, including the potential to replace Russians' center-periphery worldview with a that of a cosmopolitan network of kindred nations affording Russia greater access to the European community.     

Public Problem Characterization,Policy Solution Generation,and Intra‐Agenda Connectivity

While policy agenda studies have extensively examined the interplays of various venues, one under‐explored area is the internal dynamics within an agenda venue. In this study, we focus on one of the important venues—news media—and investigate the inherent connections between how a public problem is characterized and how problem solutions are generated in media agenda setting. Drawing on agenda‐setting theories, we develop a typology to theorize the relationships between problem characterization and solution advocacy, and use a news dataset on climate change to empirically assess how issue characterization affects issue solution generation. Our logistic regressions demonstrate that the likelihoods of climate change policy solutions being proposed in the news are significantly influenced by how the media stories characterize the issue along four key attribute dimensions: issue image, scope, linkage, and narrative style. Key implications are discussed in the conclusion.     

评西方学者的"萨摩亚问题"研究

19世纪末以来,西方学学术界在萨摩亚问题研究方面取得了很大进展,新的理论和方法的逐步采用使得对问题的研究到20世纪60、70年代时达到高峰。丰富的研究成果不仅提供了对萨摩亚国际争端基本状况、与此相关的大国政策和大国关系的基本描述,而且还能让我们从中清晰地寻见20世纪以来国际史学研究领域包括国际关系研究领域理论的发展脉络。     

Making a Policy Problem of Water Export in Canada: 1960–2002

The article explores how political tensions developed around the issue of Canadian water export, how policy solutions and alternatives to the problem were offered, and how finally it came to be recognized by the national government. The water export issue reached the formal agenda after a lengthy period of being denied serious consideration. However, it is arguable that agendas are set if an issue receives attention from policy decision makers. This is because an issue's ascension to agenda status is not an indication of how it is actually going to be decided upon. The case of water export demonstrates that the government adopted a policy solution consistent with assumptions prevalent at the time and acceptable among elected decision makers. Yet, the solution was contrary to the expectations of those who demanded a complete water export ban in Canada.     

灾害因素与唐代出宫人考

灾害时期的出宫人行为是唐代政府的一项禳灾行为,是对西汉以来形成的出宫人行为的继承和发展;它是天人感应的产物;在唐代更现实的原因则是灾害带来的沉重的经济压力;对其研究有助于我们了解自然对唐代社会的影响;对认识唐代宫女的地位也有所裨益。     

Student Employability and its Implications for Geography Curricula and Learning Practices

The nature and mission of universities have changed over the past two decades. The move towards mass education with decreased levels of state support has come with greater levels of accountability to stakeholders, including students, employers and the state itself. Graduates are expected to exhibit greater degrees of employability: that is they are more likely to gain and maintain employment, and to progress in workplaces and build careers. In this paper, we discuss the varying mixes of geographical knowledge, technical competencies and personal attributes that graduates require, before examining the implications on the design of geography curricula and learning practices.     

Children's projected political preference: transcending local politics

Traditionally, research on political preference has primarily focused on adults within their local political context. This research attempts to show that the perceived political preference of children is part of their national identity, and encompasses not only local politics but also the global and regional discourse. The present study surveyed 1187 Palestinian adolescents attending school, grades 5–7, in the West Bank to examine whether children's future political party preference is grounded in local/global discourse. The findings revealed a discrepancy between participants' perceptions of the local dominant political party and their projected political party preferences. This research argues that political party preference is facilitated through the transcendence of national identity embedded in children's geopolitical agency. The significance of the findings emphasizes that territorial boundaries are artificial; therefore, children's geopolitical agency is impacted by extraterritorial discourse and is able to transcend the local and regional context into a global politics.     

Up in Smoke: Mapping Subsystem Dynamics in Tobacco Policy

This study develops and employs congressionally based indicators to track the evolution of the tobacco policy subsystem between 1945 and 2005. It concludes that far from disintegrating, the tobacco subsystem has proven resilient, weathering several punctuations over the course of the study. The subsystem has, however, undergone a significant transformation resulting in both the introduction of new ideas as well as changes in the policies affecting tobacco.