Monitoring the 1997 flood in the Red River Valley using hydrologic regimes and RADARSAT imagery

In this study, we attempt to relate hydrologic regimes of the 1997 flood in the Red River Valley to the areal extent of flooding, determined from RADARSAT imagery. We obtained ten scenes of RADARSAT imagery, from 27 April to 1 July, including bitmaps delineating flooded areas for each date, from the Manitoba Centre of Remote Sensing. These images were co-registered using an image-to-image registration process. By overlaying these flood maps in chronological order, we compared the areal extent of flooding with the hydrologic regimes of the Red River, expressed as relative depths of flooding above the bankful stage at selected gauging stations. The results of the study indicated that the area of flooding on 4 May (1,984 km ² ) corresponded well with the highest flood levels at several gauging stations. A previous scene on 27 April showed a larger area under water, but visual inspection of the processed imagery indicated a lack of conformity between flood level regimes and the areal extent of flooding on this date due to surface detention of pre-flood storm runoff. Thus, the RADARSAT imagery represented the flood regimes adequately only when its interpretations were combined with hydrologic analysis and visual inspection of surface characteristics of the floodplain.     

Geographic and Network Neighbors: Spillover Effects of Telecommunications Infrastructure

This paper tests for spatial spillover effects of state-level telecommunications infrastructure investment on state output, using panel data for 48 U.S. states from 1970 through 1997. As information and communication technologies support more industrial locational freedom, states may use telecommunications infrastructure investment as a competitive tool for attracting factors of production. In a production-function framework, this effect would manifest itself as a negative output spillover effect from telecommunications infrastructure investment. Findings indicate that a state benefits from its own telecommunications infrastructure, but telecommunications investment by other states has a negative impact on its output growth path, and proximity amplifies this negative spillover effect.     

The Soviet Union and the Construction of Azerbaijani National Identity in the 1930s

Although the titular nation of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was Turkic speaking and had strong cultural and historical ties with Iran, the Soviet regime constructed a national identity that was divorced from its Turkic and Iranian past. The current literature cannot provide the exact period when this construction was put forward and generally argues that the Azerbaijani identity was artificially created as part of a broader “divide-and-rule” policy that was applied to all the Turkic nations in the Soviet Union. However, this thesis by itself does not explain why this change from a Turkic identity to an Azerbaijani one happened seventeen years after the Bolsheviks assumed power in Baku, and its simple causation makes it sound more like a conspiracy theory, which had a certain popularity in the Cold War era, than a scholarly argument. By presenting a broader view, the paper explains why and when the national identity in Soviet Azerbaijan was altered from Turkic to Azerbaijani. It argues that there were many factors that induced the Bolsheviks to take this extraordinary step in 1937. In fact, the change in defining national identity in Azerbaijan was a result of a combination of developments in the 1930s in Turkey, Iran, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The article concludes that these developments left Soviet rulers no choice but to construct an independent Azerbaijani identity.     

Two Early Archaic Shipwrecks at Kekova Adası and Kepçe Burnu,Turkey

During its annual surveys of the Turkish coast in the 1970s and 1980s, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology discovered two early Archaic (7th‐ to early‐6th‐century BC) shipwrecks at Kekova Adas? (Antalya region) and Kepçe Burnu (Mu?la region); Dokuz Eylül University's Institute of Marine Science and Technology is currently involved in survey of the region. The wrecks, marked by a primary cargo of basket‐handle amphoras, indicate exchange between Cyprus and the cities of coastal Asia Minor and Corinth. Such Iron Age internationalism may have been driven by an interest in processed agricultural goods such as olive oil. © 2010 The Authors     

Paleopathological and Molecular Study on Two Cases of Ancient Childhood Leprosy from the Roman and Byzantine Empires

This study is based on the paleaopathology of leprosy on human skeletal remains and the detection of ancient Mycobacterium leprae DNA. Two cases of childhood leprosy were recognized. The first case was in a Roman necropolis at Martellona (Rome, Central Italy), dated to the 2nd to 3rd centuries ce . The skeleton of a child aged 4–5 years, from tomb 162, is the youngest individual in Italy from this time period, with the clear rhino‐maxillary syndrome and other bony changes indicative of leprosy. The second case from a burial at Kovuklukaya, in the Sinop region of Northern Turkey, was from the 8th to the 10th centuries, during the Byzantine era. The endocranium of a 4–5‐month‐old infant with new bone formation—an indication of chronic inflammation—was positive for M. leprae DNA. Infant and childhood leprosy is uncommon today, and there is a scarcity of information in the osteoarchaeological literature of leprosy in the past, especially in children. The significance of these cases is that it adds to an understanding of the history of the disease in the former Roman Empire. It is hoped that over time sufficient data can be obtained to understand the epidemiological dynamics and clinical evolution of leprosy from the ancient period until today. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Historical mosque orientation in Turkey: Central-Western Anatolia Region, 1150–1590

The orientation of buildings in the ancient civilisations has been referred to the movements of several celestial bodies above the horizon on characteristics dates (two solstices and equinoxes). However, Muslims have used a sacred direction (qibla) towards Kaaba located in the courtyard in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca to pray and to perform various ritual acts in their daily lives since the early days of Islam. Thus, the mosques had then to orientate towards the qibla direction, being indicated by a niche in the focal point of the qibla-wall wherever they were building on the Earth. This article focuses on the mosque orientation in Turkey before the seventeenth century with regard to the astronomical knowledge derived from Arabic sources before Islam, mathematical theory and spherical computation derived from Greek sources and traditions based on the early Islamic period. The mosque orientations are compared to the qibla directions that are used in sacred geography which was determined by the producers of folk astronomy and in the application of the geometric or trigonometric formulae in mathematical astronomy.