When regional innovation policies meet policy rationales and evidence: a plea for policy analysis

In spite of recent advancements regarding regional innovation policy rationales and evidence, there are few analyses about the actual features of existing regional innovation policies. Nevertheless, a policy analysis perspective is important in order to recognize their distinctive patterns across regions, and to understand how rationales and evidence can be translated into policy-making. To this purpose, this paper develops a framework to study the extent to which regional innovation policies have changed during the past few years. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an important development of innovation policy rationales, advocating for more specialization; likewise, greater data availability at the regional level has allowed more sophisticated assessment of innovation performance. Finally, the crisis since 2008 has had ravaging effects in some regions, with job losses and severe economic sluggishness. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect transforming dynamics in regional innovation policies. Against this backdrop, the paper compares the institutional frameworks and budgetary priorities of four Spanish regions during the period 2001–2014: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia. In so doing, it aims at studying the extent to which regional governments have readily addressed past and new challenges related to their regional innovation system, and if so, how.     

Assessing the Scale and Pace of Large Shell-Bearing Site Occupation in the Prince Rupert Harbour Area,British Columbia

Methodological advancements in geoarchaeology and spatial and chronological modeling are opening new avenues to interpreting large coastal shell-bearing sites. We document the developmental histories of two such sites around Prince Rupert Harbour, Canada, using systematic percussion coring, intensive radiocarbon dating, and 3D surface mapping with Total Station and LiDAR. We also re-analyze a third site (Boardwalk/GbTo-31) excavated and radiocarbon dated in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 2000s using archival field notes, site maps, and stratigraphic profiles georectified using LiDAR. We map the natural landform beneath the sites and document the degree to which people physically modified landforms through the deposition of massive shell accumulations. We model site development through time and space and use accumulation rates and OxCal modeling to test for intentional deposition events. All three sites demonstrate complex and heterogeneous occupation histories. At each we identify instances of very rapid deposition that effectively terraced and extended parts of the natural landform to create places for constructing houses, though these episodes take place within longer histories of slower quotidian deposition. The anthropogenic modifications to the coastline in this area are the result of these mixed processes associated with long histories of occupation.     

Policy Bubbles

We develop the concept of a policy bubble to capture the notion of long‐term overinvestment in a policy. In sketching the relation of policy bubbles to economic bubbles, we describe how these two concepts have similar origins but different trajectories because they are filtered by different institutions. We examine in some detail three likely instances of ongoing policy bubbles: crime policy, school reform (charter schools and private education vouchers), and the contracting and privatization of public services. We show how these cases differ from the housing bubble of 1997–2007, how they differ from each other, and the extent to which they can be considered policy bubbles. Last, we suggest this concept can help unify the policy process literature with the practice of policy evaluation and outline testable hypotheses for future research.     

扩大中国乡土社会的认知解读范围——《天柱文书》序简

《天柱文书》首辑凡22册68卷,近已由江苏人民出版社出版。透过大量新公布的文书史料,不仅可以更好地了解清水江文明,推劲区域学研究的健康发展,同时也能丰富文书学的成果宝藏,扩大中国乡土社会的资料取用与认知解读范围,从而大有裨于吾国学术文化事业的兴盛与繁荣。     

Not Just a Jesuit Atlas of China: Qing Imperial Cartography and Its European Connections

In the literature, the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ or Huangyu quanlan tu 皇輿全覽圖, is mostly referred to as ‘the Jesuit atlas of China’. The reason is that this early eighteenth-century atlas of all Qing China’s territories plus Korea and Tibet is assumed to have resulted from European missionaries importing European cartographic practices. In this essay, I argue that this view is outdated and can no longer be sustained. By revisiting the background of the missionaries’ involvement in cartographic exchanges between Asia and Europe, the techniques used for surveying Qing territories and the production of the resulting atlases, I show that the mapping project behind the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ is best understood as a creative answer to the unique needs of Qing frontier management and imperial control, made possible by the integration, in mensurational and in representational terms, of European and East Asian cartographic practices.     

A dendrochronological investigation of stringed instruments from the collection of the Cherubini Conservatory in Florence,Italy

A total of forty-nine stringed instruments of the Conservatory Cherubini collection, at the Musical Instruments Department of the Accademia Gallery in Florence, were submitted to a dendrochronological investigation in order to date them, check the validity of their attribution and to find out more about their construction characteristics. Thirty-seven instruments were successfully dated, thereby determining the terminus post quem date of manufacture. The correlation values of the statistical cross-dating tests were generally very high. The dendrochronological analyses determined which instruments had been made from wood of the same provenance and, in some cases, from the same tree trunk. The mean chronology built from the musical instrument series, named “Accademia Master Chronology”, is 558 years long and dates from 1396 to 1953AD. The interval between the youngest ring dated dendrochronologically and the given date of manufacture increased constantly in the course of the centuries, from a mean value of just over eleven years for instruments built in the eighteenth century, to nearly 74 years in the twentieth century, when the use of old wood from other artefacts became more frequent. Furthermore, in the Cherubini Collection, the average tree rings on violins are smaller than those of other stringed instruments; in fact, they increase in proportion to instrument size and are widest in cello and double bass.     

The Right Tool for the Job: The Canalization of Presidential Policy Attention by Policy Instrument

This article investigates how presidential policy attention is allocated across policy tools and whether there is a channeling of tool use by policy area. I also examine whether there is evidence of disproportionate information processing within presidential policy attention allocation and whether it is common across presidential policy tools. Presidential messages, hearings on administrations' legislative proposals, amicus briefs, and executive orders are employed to capture presidential policy tools. The allocation of attention via these four instruments is examined from 1957–2007 in the policy areas of defense and foreign affairs, macroeconomics, banking and commerce, civil rights, law and crime, and labor and immigration. I find that there is a canalization of presidential policy attention by instrument, and that the opportunity structure of policy tools shapes attention allocation. Additionally, I find evidence for punctuated equilibrium theory in the allocation of presidential policy attention via these four tools. When presidents do shift their attention to an issue area, they often attack the issue with some coordination of their policy instruments.     

城坝遗址M45出土一组乐器的分析研究

本文对四川渠县城坝遗址出土的錞于、钲、钟一组青铜乐器做了相关分析,研究发现:这组乐器属铜锡铅三元合金,錞于、钟含有微量砷;均采用范铸法分批、分部件浇铸而成,各部位合金比例不尽相同,錞于的合金比例差别较大。通过微痕信息观察,器身上的部分巴蜀符号为刻划成型而非铸造;器物用途可能仅为陪葬品而非实用器。     

The disparate histories of binocular vision and binaural hearing

Vision and hearing are dependent on disparities of spatial patterns received by two eyes and on time and intensity differences to two ears. However, the experiences of a single world have masked attention to these disparities. While eyes and ears are paired, there has not been parity in the attention directed to their functioning. Phenomena involving binocular vision were commented upon since antiquity whereas those about binaural hearing are much more recent. This history is compared with respect to the experimental manipulations of dichoptic and dichotic stimuli and the instruments used to stimulate the paired organs. Binocular color mixing led to studies of binaural hearing and direction and distance in visual localization were analyzed before those for auditory localization. Experimental investigations began in the nineteenth century with the invention of instruments like the stereoscope and pseudoscope, soon to be followed by their binaural equivalents, the stethophone and pseudophone.     

汉代武陵蛮的敲击乐器

近年来,湘西、鄂西、川东等地出土了一批汉代的青铜敲击乐器,品种主要有留职■于、扁体钟和钲。其中湘西地区出土这类器物的数量较多,本文拟对这一地区的青铜敲击乐器作一介绍,并就有关问题谈点初步看法。 一、出土概况 湘西地区出土青铜敲击乐器最早可以追溯到宋代。宋代洪迈在《容斋续笔》上讲到慈利县在宋代出土过虎纽■于,直至２０世纪８０年代,以上三种敲击乐器才较多地见于报道。２０世纪８０年代初期,湖南各地出土的锌于有 ３６件,多为窖藏。①稍后报道了吉首县万溶江乡双合村黄土园出土的窖藏锌于,并统计湘西自治州范围内…