Assembling dams in Ghana: A genealogical inquiry into the fluidity of hydropolitics

The paper offers a geographical interpretation of the evolving technical, political, and economic intricacy of large dams. It incorporates existing hydropolitical scholarship and the notion of the Chinese Water Machine to reframe dams as assemblages built by specific political, financial and technical processes in particular socioenvironmental regions. The paper examines the continuity of hydropolitical relationships through a genealogical inquiry into the formulation and materialisation of Ghana's three dams: the Akosombo and Kpong dams built during the Cold War, backed by Western lenders and engineering companies; and the Bui dam commissioned in the 2010s, with support from China. Based on fieldwork in Ghana and China, as well as documentary evidence, the paper argues that the thinking, planning and building of dams interconnect the host regime and external techno-financial actors with their floating political-economic interests, but in a durable way. Sometimes, even if little concrete is actually poured, the symbolic power of dams endures, transforms, and at certain times and places expands, through events and discourses of national and international interest groups pursuing their own purposes, albeit with the replacement of influential individuals and powerful institutions, and regardless of the involvement of Western, Chinese and/or other actors. Ruptures exist but do not necessarily break the continuity of dam assemblages. The emergence of an opposition assemblage that battles against dams is a more recent complexity.     

Rediscovering regional science: Positioning the field's evolving location in science and society

This study aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the evolution of regional science, a scholarly domain in the social sciences that applies analytical and quantitative approaches and methods to understand and address urban, rural, or regional problems. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of 8509 articles published in six regional science flagship journals (including the Journal of Regional Science, Annals of Regional Science, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Papers in Regional Science, Regional Science Policy and Practice, and International Regional Science Review) from 1958 to 2021. The analysis presents an objective data-driven and unprecedented visualization of the field's intellectual, social, and conceptual structure and trends from the beginning to the present. It also provides a rich portrayal of the epistemology of regional science and illuminates matters related to regional science education and training. We find that regional science has moved well beyond its origins, shifting away from a heavy focus on theory and abstraction to modeling/simulation, empirical analysis, and policy research. We also find that there has been increasing attention to “people” in regions and the spatial characteristics of social problems, and some important shifts in the regional science community itself, particularly in terms of patterns of collaboration and the geography of scholarship. The findings of this paper provide implications for future directions of research and education for regional science.     

Anatomy,behavior, and modern human origins

The fossil record suggests that modern human morphology evolved in Africa between 150,000 and 50,000 years ago, when the sole inhabitants of Eurasia were the Neanderthals and other equally nonmodern people. However, the earliest modern or near-modern Africans were behaviorally (archaeologically) indistinguishable from their nonmodern, Eurasian contemporaries, and it was only around 50,000-40,000 years ago that a major behavioral difference developed. Archaeological indications of this difference include the oldest indisputable ornaments (or art broadly understood); the oldest evidence for routine use of bone, ivory, and shell to produce formal (standardized) artifacts; greatly accelerated variation in stone artifact assemblages through time and space; and hunting-gathering innovations that promoted significantly larger populations. As a complex, the novel traits imply fully modern cognitive and communicative abilities, or more succinctly, the fully modern capacity for Culture. The competitive advantage of this capacity is obvious, and preliminary dates suggest that it appeared in Africa about 50,000 years ago and then successively in western Asia, eastern Europe, and western Europe, in keeping with an African origin. Arguably, the development of modern behavior depended on a neural change broadly like those that accompanied yet earlier archaeologically detectable behavioral advances. This explanation is problematic, however, because the putative change was in brain organization, not size, and fossil skulls provide little or no secure evidence for brain structure. Other potential objections to a neural advance in Africa 50,000-40,000 years ago or to the wider Out-of-Africa hypothesis, include archaeological evidence (1) that some Neanderthals were actually capable of fully modern behavior and (2) that some Africans were behaviorally modern more than 90,000 years ago.     

The mental maps of Italian entrepreneurs: a quali-quantitative approach

ABSTRACT

Geographers interested in how entrepreneurs perceive locational environments have studied their mental maps in several European countries, within the theoretical framework provided by behavioral approach. Such studies have typically employed quantitative techniques, but qualitative studies are relatively new to this line of research. In this article, I examine the mental maps of entrepreneurs in Italy by using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. I present and discuss the qualitative outcomes of this research, focusing in particular on the explanatory location factors and the key influences on the mental maps of entrepreneurs. What emerges is the realization that entrepreneurs are far from being fully rational economic actors, who exploit optimally all information and who are driven only by objective considerations. Rather, their views are also affected by subjective factors, individual’s own insights, commonplaces, stereotypes, and prejudices, particularly with reference to the southern regions of Italy (Mezzogiorno), and of other peripheral areas.     

饱水木质文物的风冷干燥脱水研究

许多出土饱水木质文物因其降解严重、含水率较高,容易在脱水过程中出现不可逆的收缩变形以及开裂现象,从而遭到严重破坏。因此,饱水木质文物脱水方法的研究是文物保护工作中的重要课题。为探究风冷冷冻法对饱水木质文物脱水的效果,以一批无法复原的出土饱水木质文物为研究对象,在对其材种、含水率、基本密度及化学成分进行了测定和分析后,使用一台风冷电冰箱在-18℃条件下对样品进行了风冷干燥脱水处理,记录脱水时间和脱水效果,并分析了该方法的传质传热特点,证明了风冷干燥法用于饱水木质文物的脱水干燥能够取得良好效果,并且具有对文物干预小、适用性广、操作简便、成本低廉等优点,为饱水木质文物的脱水处理提供了一种新的思路。     

Climate change,conflict, and cooperation: Global analysis of the effectiveness of international river treaties in addressing water variability

Climate-driven water variability is a natural phenomenon that is observed across river basins, but one that is predicted to increase due to climate change. Environmental change of this kind may aggravate political tensions, especially in regions which are not equipped with an appropriate institutional apparatus. Increased variability is also likely to challenge regions with existing institutional capacity. We argue that our best attempts to assess the ability of states to deal with variability in the future rest with considering how agreements have fared in the past. In this paper, we explore treaty effectiveness, or treaty resilience, by investigating whether particular water allocation and institutional mechanisms help mitigate inter-country tensions over shared water. We use water-related events from the Basins at Risk events database as a dependent variable to test particular hypotheses regarding the impact of treaty design on conflict and cooperation over time. A broad set of climatic, geographic, political, and economic variables are used as controls. The analysis is conducted for the years 1948–2001 using the country dyad as the level of observation. Findings pertaining to our primary explanatory variables suggest that country dyads governed by treaties with water allocation mechanisms exhibiting both flexibility and specificity evince more cooperative behavior. Country dyads governed by treaties with a larger sum of institutional mechanisms likewise evince a higher level of cooperation, although certain institutional mechanisms appear to be more important than others.     

Learning to teach geography for primary education: results of an experimental programme

Students training to become primary school teachers appear to have little awareness of the core concepts of geography (teaching). To ensure that future primary school teachers are able to develop their pupils’ geographical awareness, a six weeks programme was developed. The characteristics of this programme – named Consciously Teaching Geography (CTG) – are: principles of good geography teaching, conjunction and a recurrent structure during training, modelling and reflection. In a quasi-experimental research design the question is answered what the effects are of CTG on the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for the subject of geography of first year primary student teachers. The results indicated that the programme has a positive effect on the domain-specific PCK development in the short term.     

纸质藏品修复用水考量

本工作借鉴已有的研究成果,并辅以相关调研,试图探究修复用水选择的重要性以及如何选择修复用水的问题。为此,通过对国内外文献的分析以及相关问题的调研,综述了生活饮用水中对纸张长期保存有害的污染物及其对纸张纤维的危害。通过对修复用水实例的讨论,指出:纸质藏品的修复须采用净化水,即通过逆渗透、去离子处理等方法净化后并达到一定电阻率的纯水,在条件许可的情况下,采用电阻率更高的超纯水更好;须现制现用以保证使用过程中净化水不被再次污染;在设备方面,选择小型纯水系统更能保证用水质量。     

河南安阳县固岸墓地2号墓发掘简报

为配合南水北调工程建设,河南省文物考古研究所对安阳固岸墓地进行了考古发掘,清理出大批战国至隋代的墓葬,其中M2是一座保存较为完整的北齐时期的墓葬,出土器物60余件,尤其是出土的陶俑和镇墓兽十分精美,为研究北齐时期葬俗、葬制提供了珍贵的实物资料。     

Metapodial asymmetry in draft cattle

Traction work by oxen has been well documented in various pictorial and written sources throughout human history. Analysis of metapodial dimensions has been carried out with the aim of quantifying asymmetry related to sexual dimorphism, body size and possibly heavy duty traction work. A modern reference sample of 103 animals from Hungary and Rumania has been used for this purpose. Bone measurements were correlated with bone density and morphological characteristics in order to make the results applicable for the identification of remains from draft cattle in archaeozoological assemblages. Asymmetry is more pronounced in the thoracic extremity and metacarpals of older or heavier animals, sometimes showing excessive widening of the third, medial ray within the fused bone. Relative broadening is also intensive in the distal end of medial metatarsals of cows and oxen. The bone mineral content of the medial carpal region attains mature density first. The weight of phalanges increases for a longer time in the laterally located toes.