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。     

Archaeometric evidences of the 4th–2nd century BC amphorae productions in north eastern Sicily

This work focuses on the petro-archaeometric analysis of several transport amphorae dated back from 4th to 2nd century BC which were found in various archaeological excavations recently carried out in Messina and Milazzo (north eastern Sicily). These amphorae, generally known as Graeco-Italic, raise the problem of the identification of their production areas. Petrographic analyses proved the presence of two groups characterised by the presence of coarse metamorphic or volcanic inclusions and one group with finer metamorphic inclusions. Multivariate statistical analyses made it possible to detect the production area of the amphorae with metamorphic inclusion in north eastern Sicily, comparing them with locally produced bricks and clay sediments cropping out near the ancient cities. On the contrary, the studied amphorae rich in volcanic inclusions have petrographic and chemical features which can be attributed to production areas in the Campanian region.     

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.     

Hate-crimes as racial violence: a critique of the exceptional

Violence on the one hand is taken as something natural and normal. On the other hand, certain violent actions, such as hate-crimes, are portrayed as forms of exceptional violence, while systemic inequalities are rendered ordinary. In this paper, I de-naturalize the concept of violence through a critical evaluation of hate-crimes. I argue that the concept of hate-crimes has been, or is at risk, of being co-opted by a more sustained effort to ignore and downplay racial inequalities in society. Drawing on the philosophical distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘letting die’, I contend that an exclusive focus on individual-based hate-crimes deflects attention from the systemic, structural inequalities of society; and that a narrow conceptualization of violence (as direct, intentional action) conforms to a more expansive neoliberal promotion of a ‘race-blind’ or ‘colour-blind’ criminal justice system.     

Political and institutional constraints on structural reforms: interpreting the Italian experience

During 2011 Italy reached the verge of a financial default because of its huge public debt. Neither the centre-right nor the centre-left governments that alternated in power in the 2000s were able to introduce the reforms necessary for reducing the debt and promoting growth. The impotence of the government became incompatible with the requirements of the country's continued presence in the eurozone. In November 2011, under the pressure of financial markets and eurozone institutions and leaders, the incumbent centre-right government was obliged to resign, and was substituted by a government composed of technocrats and experts, the Monti government. This lasted until December 2012 and was supported in parliament by a cross-partisan coalition; it was able to introduce some of the structural reforms required, because of the threat of default but also because it did not need to seek the electoral support of powerful constituencies. This article advances an interpretation of the Italian crisis of November 2011, identifying the political and institutional structures and the specific political conditions that fostered a policy stalemate in the country in the 2000s and whose persistence makes the continuation of reforms after the February 2013 elections uncertain.     

WHEN SHOULD SEISMIC RETROFITTING OF EXISTING STRUCTURES BE IMPLEMENTED IN ORDER TO MINIMIZE EXPECTED LOSSES

The usual outcomes of the seismic safety analysis for an existing civil engineering structure axe the probability of exceedance of specified limit states and the increase in safety due to retrofitting interventions. This information can be used in several ways. For a single structure, one can compare it with desired target reliability values; for structures belonging to a network, e.g. highway bridges [Donferri et al., 1998], electric networks [Vanzi 1996, 2000) or strategic buildings [Nuti and Vanzi, 1998] they can also be used to assess the priority of interventions.

In this study, an alternative use of the reliability values for existing structures is proposed, which answers the following question: when, i.e. in which year from the date of construction, should seismic retrofitting be implemented so as to minimize the expected total cost? In the expected total cost, here, both the costs of retrofitting and possible disruption, due to delayed retrofitting, are accounted for.

The method proposed computes the expected costs by analysing the branches of the event tree for the problem built after strong but reasonable and highly simplifying assumptions on the problem. Although these assumptions limit the general applicability of the solutions obtained, they allow the building up of an extremely agile and effective solution scheme.

The results obtained from the study, i.e. the year in which it is economically best to implement retrofitting and what the expected annual equivalent cost is, are presented in diagrams and in analytical form, as a function of the most important variables. Finally, an example application on a real structure is presented, which shows all the steps to undertake with the proposed method.     

AUTOMATIC MINIMIZATION OF THE RIGIDITY ECCENTRICITY OF 3D REINFORCED CONCRETE BUILDINGS

The objective of this paper is to obtain the optimum design of 3D reinforced concrete buildings in terms of their performance under earthquake loading. This goal is achieved by considering the minimisation of the eccentricity between the mass centre and the rigidity centre of each storey layout as the optimisation objective in order to produce torsionally balanced structures. This problem is considered as a combined topology and sizing optimisation problem. The location and the size of the columns and the shear walls of the structure of each storey layout constitute the design variables. Apart from the constraints imposed by the seismic and reinforced concrete structure design codes, architectural restrictions are also taken into account. The test examples showed that a reduction in the structural cost of the building is achieved by minimising the eccentricity between the mass centre and the rigidity centre of each storey layout. Evolutionary optimisation algorithms and in particular a specially tailored algorithm based on Evolution Strategies is implemented for the solution of this type of structural optimisation problems.