古铜矿遗址围岩表层有害生物的防治

铜绿山古铜矿遗址地处长江中游地区、空气湿度大、围岩表层有害生物成片生长蔓延,对遗址的长期保护造成极大威胁。对此采取了改变遗址的环境条件、喷涂消杀药品的方法,消除了围岩表层有害生物的危害。经过一年半的观察表明该方法是可行的。     

Bone frequencies: differential transport, in situ destruction,and the MGUI

Human transport of bones with high food values, and destruction of bones with low density values are the traditionally invoked explanations of the frequencies of bones in archeological contexts. The manner in which these two explanations have been used suggests archaeologists assume the explanations to be independent of one another. The transport explanation is operationalized as the modified general utility index (MGUI) of Binford, and the destruction explanation is operationalized with measures of bone density. Statistical correlation of the MGUI with bone density, while weak, indicates that many high utility bones have low density values while many low utility bones have high density values. Because low density bones tend to be destroyed more readily than high density bones, inferences of human utility strategies derived from bone frequencies and based on the MGUI may be inaccurate. The utility strategies suggested by three archaeofaunas are compared to bone density, and two of these faunas are shown to potentially be the result of differential destruction and not human transport as measured by the MGUI.     

Seeds: Contracting the Audience in a Play about Science

Abstract

In pursuing the question ‘what can scientists learn from theatre?’ Particularly, ‘what can scientists, as scientists, learn from theatre?’ this paper argues that science lacks a normative framework that theatre is capable of providing. Despite science’s well-earned epistemic reputation, there is adequate reason to question its ethical reputation, particularly at the point where cutting edge scientific technology impacts society. I consider science as operating in four categories: the scientific method; the scientific hypothesis; the scientific experiment; and the scientist’s personal character. The realms of the scientist’s hypothesis and personal character are those where social pressures are reciprocally exerted, where imaginative play mentality and epistemic values are most in evidence. Theatre can examine these realms effectively because it is able to use narratives that appeal not only to logical and social moral judgements but to emotional and visceral responses, so as to situate science in the social context in which the pressures of law, funding, experimentation, society, and personal ambition converge in ‘the game of life’.

This can be seen in the theatrical process known as ‘contracting with the audience’. I point out a spectrum of traditional narrative tropes by which science makes “contracts with” audiences. The paper draws on theories of entrainment and theatrical game-play from Peter Stromberg and Philippe Gaulier, as well as my own practice and research into the process of contracting with the audience, to propose how to reach beyond tradition and to shift normalising contracts “outside the box”. To illustrate my proposition, I examine the play Seeds by Annabel Soutar as directed by Chris Abraham for Crow’s Theatre and Theatre Porte Parole. Seeds follows the controversial court battles of Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser against agricultural-biotech corporation Monsanto, which sued him for patent infringement of its Genetically Modified Organism Roundup Ready Canola. Seeds helps its audience define a public arena for discourse even as it brings to our attention the factors that make this difficult to do, while making an excellent contribution to the genre of ‘Documentary Theatre’. It is a successful contract with the audience that creates a public forum for discussion about contemporary ethical debates in science, thereby merging artistic ambiguity and scientific theory.     

The rise and fall of “individualism” before and after the May Fourth Movement

Abstract

“Individualism” was one of the most important philosophical trends in the May Fourth era, heavily influencing youths seeking personal liberation and independence. However, not long after the May Fourth Movement, positive associations with individualism gradually receded. Compared with devotion to “nation” or “society,” the quest for individual independence was repeatedly criticized as almost synonymous with “selfish.” There were two reasons for this: first was opposition stemming from a traditional Chinese respect for collectivism; second was that individualism had become the theoretical basis for private capitalist production following the First World War and its founding values were coming under increased scrutiny. As the Second World War unfolded, the fight for survival benefitted the promotion of collectivist values and the idea of social organisms. Individualism declined and eventually became supplanted by a heavily politicized form of collectivism.     

有机硅改性丙烯酸树脂非水分散体的制备及在土遗址保护中的试用

为找到耐候性良好并对土遗址有良好保护效果的材料,以工业品的有机硅改性丙烯酸树脂乳液为原料,采用转化法制备了有机硅改性丙烯酸树脂非水分散体材料。对形成的非水分散体进行了外观检验和老化性能检验。通过对土样的加固试验和实地应用发现,浓度为0.8％的加固剂251M具有良好的固结效果,表面颜色基本不变,证明这种材料是一种有应用前景的土遗址防风化加固保护材料。     

AN ANALYTICAL RESPONSE OF CHURCH BELLS TO EARTHQUAKE EXCITATION

Occasionally there is an earthquake in the UK during which church bells are reported to have been set ringing. The motion of a medium sized church bell has been simulated and the response to earthquake records from the Parkfield earthquake of 1966 has been calculated. The response of the bells is found to depend on the mechanical properties of the bell and the tower in which it is hung. The analyses do show that for a bell to ring in an earthquake the peak ground acceleration is in the range 0.97 to 29.4 m s^?2 considerably in excess of the range indicated by the MMI VI “church and school bells ring” of 0.4 to 1.5 m s^?2. The best correlation between recognised earthquake parameters and the ringing of the bell was obtained by combining the spectral values for clapper-bell angle, obtained from the linearised set of equations, at the bells natural frequencies using the SRSS method. The values of this parameter to set the bell ringing was in the range 0.25 and 0.38 rad, compared with the actual striking angle 0.54 rad.     

Editorial Introduction

Abstract

Developing holistic accounts of indigenous peoples’ lifeways in colonial intercultural settings requires data that provide insights into patterns of landscape use and variations in social, economic, and cultural practices away from nodes of colonial activity. However, the mobile settlement patterns of some indigenous peoples mean that the data necessary for such investigations can be rare. In western Cape York Peninsula of northeastern Australia, culturally modified trees (CMTs) associated with the collection of wild honey or “sugarbag” provide opportunities to investigate indigenous patterns of landscape use and processes of economic change within colonial settings. Here we use CMT data to suggest that increased engagement with invader-settlers resulted in intensification of indigenous wild food production. This study exemplifies the complexity of socioeconomic shifts that accompanied European colonization worldwide, and illustrates how landscape-level data can provide information on the broader histories of indigenous peoples within colonial settings.     

Digital imaging technology and experimental archeology: a methodological framework for the identification and interpretation of fire modified rock (FMR)

This paper presents the results of a series of experiments for the identification and analysis of fire modified rock (FMR). FMR is a common but frequently overlooked artifact type. Experiments were conducted simulating the effects of different hypothetical burning scenarios on rocks similar to those found in a South African Middle Stone Age site. A digital imaging method was then used to quantify FMR color values, designed to limit intra-analyst bias. Statistical tests and a blind test suggest that unburned rocks and experimental FMR can be separated statistically based on physical appearance. Two burning scenario models, based on measured experimental data were applied to archaeological FMR from a South African Middle Stone Age site named Pinnacle Point 5-6 (PP5-6) and show that the archaeological samples are not statistically different from a simulated campfire and possibly a lithic raw material heat-treatment fire.     

Polarized light microscopy casts new light on plants used to make tapa

Information about plant materials of construction in artefacts advances knowledge about human history, agriculture, trade, migration and adaptation to new environments. Typically, materials identification in artefacts made from plants is problematic, since processing, age, dirt and surface treatments can mask identifying features, while ethical considerations relating to sampling limit the use of some analytical techniques. The study tests the usefulness of polarized light microscopy for identifying the New Zealand and Pacific plant species used to make tapa, indicating birefringent and morphological characteristics that can be used to differentiate fibres at the level Moraceae (Pacific; from genera Artocarpus, Broussonetia and Ficus) and Malvaceae (New Zealand; from genera Hoheria and Plangianthus).     

The Fictions of Autonomous Invention: Accumulation by Dispossession,Commodification and Life Patents in Canada

Abstract: In 2002 the Canadian Supreme Court ruled to deny Harvard College a whole organism patent over the oncomouse. In 2004, the same court ruled that Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser had violated Monsanto patents covering GM canola. Both decisions rejected whole organism patents, running counter to US precedents. Yet both, nevertheless, consolidate private claims to life as patentable inventions, and critics claim, with some support from Justices in the Schmeiser case, that patents over genes amount to de facto patents over whole organisms. In this paper I argue these cases are broadly consistent with the notion of accumulation by dispossession as a means to expand the scale and scope of capital accumulation via so‐called ‘extra‐economic’ means. As such, I examine the cases as privatizations, but also as relational moments in the commodification of nature. However, in hoping to unpack and fill out this notion of the extra‐economic, as well as to critically examine the necessarily incomplete character of commodification as a tendency, I look to the ways in which judges and interested activists deliberate over the economic, legal, ecological, ethical, and even metaphysical arguments and representations required to uphold discrete genes, processes, and whole organisms as inventions.