Application of Landsat satellite imagery to monitor land‐cover changes at the Athabasca Oil Sands,Alberta, Canada

A major advantage of satellite remote sensing is that the imagery acquired provides a synoptic view of the landscape. Thus, repeat coverage by the satellite on a regular basis permits the detection of changes in land‐cover over time. This study demonstrates the application of remote sensing technology to the monitoring of mining activities at the Athabasca Oil Sands region of Alberta, Canada. First, we describe the techniques used to match a time sequence of Landsat imagery, both spatially and spectrally, to ensure that the spectral changes through time are due to land‐cover variations. A series of spectral trajectories were then extracted to assess changes in land‐cover through time. Secondly, a land‐cover classification was produced from the baseline 1984 imagery and, using historic and future mine extents, the classification was analyzed to determine the proportion of each land‐cover type affected through development. Results of the analysis indicate that since 1984 there has been a larger reduction in mixedwood dense and broadleaf vegetation classes than mixedwood sparse or dense conifer stands in the area. Based on the delineations of mine‐site activity, the area of woodland and wetland habitat subject to development has increased from approximately 2,520 hectare (ha) in 1984 to 32,930 ha in 2005.     

匈奴饰牌类型辨析

饰牌是匈奴物质文化遗存的典型代表之一,主要作带扣、腰带饰、马具饰、首饰配件和"古玩"等五种用途.以装饰母题作为分类依据将匈奴饰牌划分为动物纹、人物活动纹、几何纹三型.战国到西汉时期是匈奴饰牌发展最鼎盛的时期.饰牌同时并存多种形制,并因题材选取的不同形成各自的系列.饰牌由原来的单一品种向系列化发展,创作母题从自然领域转向社会生活领域.     

The Darkest Corner: documenting institutional abuse and its consequences at the Abbey Theatre

Documentary theatre, as a theatrical genre, has not maintained a continuous presence in Irish theatre. The Darkest Corner series, produced in 2010 by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Ireland's National Theatre is, therefore, one of the first examples of Irish theatre using the genre to address political and social issues. Presenting three plays, Gerard Mannix Flynn's James X, Richard Johnson's The Evidence I Shall Give and Mary Raftery's No Escape, the series examines the widespread abuse of children in state institutions. Before analysing the documentary play commissioned by the Abbey, Raftery's No Escape, this article will begin with an exploration of documentary theatre in Ireland. It will then examine the material used for the play, the Ryan Report, published following the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, something of great political and social interest to contemporary Ireland and, finally, the play itself.     

试论登封窑

登封窑包括颍阳、君召、石道、大金店、白坪、徐庄、宣化、大冶等8个乡镇,面积约500平方公里.河南登封地区古代瓷窑址的分布范围、文化面貌、年代、性质等较为清楚和一致,以“登封窑”的名称对登封地区的瓷窑址统一命名,比较合适.     

Science and Sense

At the end of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Edinger completed the first comparative survey of the microscopic anatomy of vertebrate brains. He is regarded as the founder of the field of comparative neuroanatomy. Modern commentators have misunderstood him to have espoused an anti-Darwinian linear view of brain evolution, harkening to the metaphysics of the scala naturae. This understanding arises, in part, from an increasingly contested view of nineteenth-century morphology in Germany. Edinger did espouse a progressionist, though not strictly linear, view of forebrain evolution, but his work also provided carefully documented evidence that brain stem structures vary in complexity independently from one another and across species in a manner that is not compatible with linear progress. This led Edinger to reject progressionism for all brain structures other than the forebrain roof, based on reasoning not too dissimilar from those his successors used to dismiss it for the forebrain roof.     

Uranium series dating reveals a long sequence of rock art at Altamira Cave (Santillana del Mar,Cantabria)

The rock art in Altamira Cave was the first ensemble of Palaeolithic parietal art to be identified scientifically (Sautuola, 1880). Due to the great thematic, technical and stylistic variety of the art in the cave, which constitutes one of the most complete Palaeolithic art ensembles, Altamira was listed as World Heritage by UNESCO in 1985. Uranium-series dating has recently been applied to figures on the decorated ceiling in the cave. Several motifs are partly covered by thin layers of calcite precipitates, whose formation process is datable by this method. The results provide the date when the calcite formed, which gives a minimum age for the underlying depictions. These results confirm that the parietal art at Altamira was produced during a prolonged period of time, at least 20,000 years (between 35,000 and 15,200 years ago), and that part of the ensemble corresponds to the Aurignacian period.     

Are the Economies of Canada and the United States Integrated? Evidence from Cointegration Analysis

In recognition of his contributions to the development of the method of cointegration analysis for analyzing nonstationary time series, late Sir Clive William John Granger (September 4, 1934–May 27, 2009) was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2003. Since then, this method has become a dominant paradigm in empirical economic research. However, this method is not without critics. This article is one in a series to point out some inconsistent arguments used in the development of the method of cointegration analysis. To illustrate by example, we apply the method of time series cointegration analysis and present statistical evidence that supports the proposition that the economies of Canada and the United States are integrated. We conclude this article by laying out a foundation to formally criticize the method of cointegration analysis in subsequent research.     

Leibniz’s Kehre: From Ultradeterminism to the Philosophy of Freedom

Abstract

This article examines the rift in Leibniz’s conception of determinism after being rebuffed by the Parisian theologian Antoine Arnauld in their correspondence of 1686. As, in addition, his study of surds infracted his confidence in the “complete concept,” Leibniz embarked on a new, dynamic doctrine of substance or “law of the series.” In the literature, this strategy has been widely (mis)understood as “tweaking” the system to allow some self-assertion of free will. But as this article will show, it amounts to a revolutionary conception that culminates in the unmasking of determinism as an insupportable, indeed incoherent doctrine. As all forms of determinism are profoundly entangled with human self-perception, the Leibnizian Kehre invites us to a new engagement with human freedom and autonomy and the disentanglement from a philosophical position for which neither a metaphysical nor an empirical proof can be given.     

The volcanic millstones from the archaeological site of Morgantina (Sicily): provenance and evolution of the milling techniques in the Mediterranean area*

The Morgantina archaeological area, inhabited from the Early Bronze Age, had its widest expansion from the fifth to the first century bc . The volcanic millstones found at Morgantina fall into three different groups on the basis of the milling technique: (i) saddle querns (known from the Middle–Late Bronze Age and Iron Age); (ii) rectangular hopper‐rubbers (Olynthian) millstones, the invention of which dates to the fifth century bc ; and finally (iii) Morgantina‐type rotary millstones (starting to be used from the fourth to the third century bc ). In order to determine the provenance of the raw materials (lavas) used for all these millstone types, we collected 38 very small rock samples for thin‐section modal mineralogy, petrography and major trace element composition. The results have contributed to classifying different lithotypes and distinguishing between provenance from Etna and the Hyblean Mountains, the two volcanic areas respectively north‐east and south‐east of Morgantina. Saddle querns are made of tholeiitic basaltic andesites from the Hyblean Mountains and transitional basalts, mugearites and hawaiites from Etna. The variety of sources of portable saddle querns, mostly used in households, indicate that there was no general preference for specific quarrying sites. By contrast, the rectangular hopper‐rubber and the Morgantina‐type millstones, which document the period of Morgantina's greatest prosperity, are almost completely made of hawaiites from Etna. The use of a specific lithotype (i.e., Etna hawaiite) for the more efficient rectangular hopper‐rubber and rotary millstones could be linked to the fact that these mills may have been operated in business establishments. It is worth noting that the Gornalunga river was, in antiquity, a waterway joining Morgantina to the final stretch of the Simeto river and then the Ionian coast. The best candidate areas for the millstone hawaiite quarrying sites from Etna are the far south‐western sectors of the volcano, along the Simeto Valley (i.e., the ‘Piano Provenzana’ Formation) or the inner suburb of present‐day Catania (i.e., the ‘Pietracannone’ Formation). The very efficient Morgantina‐type rotary millstones spread during the reign of Hieron II of Syracuse (275–215 bc ) in eastern Sicily and met the need for grinding large quantities of cereals during a relatively peaceful time and a period of agricultural development.     

Quantitative Studies of National Socialism: A Quantum: Conference Report

The authors present and compare new time series for calculating the real value of Swiss prices over the past five centuries. They analyze three different modes of price deflation using wages, consumer price indices (CPIs), and the gross domestic product (GDP), and assess the merits and limitations of each approach. The authors then examine how time series that cover long periods of time are made using Switzerland as a case study and introduce an original CPI for the years 1501-2006. The authors conclude by contrasting the different time series and proposing rough guidelines about their use.