Tracing sickle blade levels of wear and discard patterns: a new sickle gloss quantification method

Although sickle blades gloss is known to form during the harvest, which is a dynamic process and although it is known to be a type of wear which is the outcome of the repetitive encounters between the sickle blades working edges and plant stems; there is no common way to quantify its intensity. Since there is no consensus over a specific scale that will enable the estimation of the amount of wear, based on the quantification of gloss brightness intensity. In this paper we propose a new measurement system which is based on the projection of laser (He–Ne) beam on glossed sickle blades and an analysis of the reflected images. The results form a relative scale from which it is possible to infer on the sickle blades level of wear, and to create discard models.     

Reaping bare fields: a response to Stemp et al

In 2010 we have described in JAS a novel method for quantifying sickle gloss. Independently, Goodale et al. (2010) published another method for quantifying gloss based on a different method. Recently, the methods of both teams have been criticized by Stemp et al. We argue below that the critique is lacking and that the method we devised, laser He–Ne measurement, is a way to quantify sickle blade gloss that enables an objective estimate of the intensity of sickles use. The system is not expensive and is time efficient.     

Israeli historical geography and the Holocaust: reconsidering the research agenda

The case of the Israeli historical geography demonstrates how nationalism affects academic research agenda. As in many other cases of nation-building, Israeli geographers have played an important role in the manipulation of landscapes and places to form a modern Jewish Israeli national identity. Their role in the construction of national consciousness expanded following the development of a territorial national conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. Despite the eighteen centuries of the pre-Zionist Diaspora, and the fact that more than a half of the Jews in the world live outside Israel, Israeli historical geographers almost totally neglect Diaspora lifestyles and spatialities and ignore the impact of the geographical imagination of Diaspora Jews on the (re)construction of Zionist territorial concepts and space. Following five decades of a Palestine/Israel-centered agenda, it is time for Israeli historical geographers to turn to the research of different spatial aspects of the Jewish Diaspora. This move should begin with the research of the spatial aspects of the concentration and annihilation of Jewish European communities during the Holocaust, and to more general spatial aspects of Nazism, as well as to the political and cultural geography of the Holocaust remembrance.