Earlier Symposium Research Articles

Introduction

In this introduction to Part 1 of “Contextualism—the Next Generation: Symposium on the Future of a Methodology,” the editor of Common Knowledge, a “journal of left-wing Kuhnian opinion,” reports that the new symposium responds to contextualist criticism of the previous CK symposium, which was on xenophilia. The content of the earlier symposium met with objections, from contextualists, on the grounds of methodology, and the new symposium questions the methodology of contextualism for the limits that it places on content as well as on normative aims and degree of focus. Tracing the origins of contextualism to Kuhn and his theory that paradigms of scientific knowledge are incommensurable, this essay then argues that Kuhnian method is formal, with scant concern for content, and that Kuhn’s work was vatic, more than philosophical or historical. Kuhn’s depiction of his sudden, blinding realization that Aristotelian physics is correct in its own context is assessed as an ironic application of biblical scenes of revelation to what is, essentially, a process of scrupulous, piecemeal scholarship. What Kuhn unknowingly wanted, the essay concludes, was a combination of contextualism and phenomenology, as a means of knowing what it was like to believe in Aristotelian, as opposed to modern, concepts of matter, quality, space, void, position, change, and motion. The essay then introduces the first contribution to the new symposium: a monograph retrieving geometrical and taxonomic—Euclidean and Theophrastan—idioms of discourse about fictional characters and inquiring into their changing affective content.

Editorial RSD6

The sixth Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium (RSD6 2017) was held at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in Norway in October 2017. The central theme of the symposium was “Environment, Economy, Democracy: Flourishing Together”, and called for contributions on democratic participation and policy innovation, sustainable business innovation, flourishing communities, and related systems-thinking-oriented approaches to architecture, settlements and the built environment. A wide range of contributions addressed themes, such as social impact in flourishing and change programs, health and population wellness, ecological design and bioregion development, human-scaled and regional economies, related sociotechnical and technological systems, etc. Yet, while the five earlier symposia did receive a number of papers that were focused on architecture and urban design, RSD6 was the first RSD symposium with a dedicated paper session on architecture and urban design. This special issue of Formakademisk collects together five of the papers that focus on architecture and urban design from a linked systems-thinking and design-thinking perspective. Each article pursues a distinct theme concerning the development of the profession, performance-oriented architecture and urban design, the role of exterior space in rethinking the architectural envelope, and questions of participation and community building. This breadth of themes in the selected articles indicates the increasingly deep impact of systems-thinking in the fields of architecture and urban design.

A multi-methods approach supports the effective management and conservation of coastal marine recreational flats fisheries

The recreational, catch and release fishery for fishes that inhabit shallow-water, coastal marine habitats in tropical and sub-tropical regions (called the flats fishery) is economically valuable and increasingly perceived as a sustainable ecotourism pursuit. However, knowledge of many aspects of target species (such as bonefish, tarpon and permit) ecology is incomplete, and fishery- and non-fishery-related threats to the fish and habitats are numerous and often poorly understood. The International Bonefish and Tarpon Symposium is convened every three years to share new knowledge and to chart directions for future research, with a focus on research that informs conservation and management. Most of the articles in this Special Issue focus on the flats fishery in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and western North Atlantic ocean, but the findings presented here provide guidance for similar work in other regions. Conservation and management of flats fisheries present a challenge because the fisheries are typically data poor; they occur in locations that lack resources and there are scant data on the target species and their habitats. Since earlier symposia, much has been accomplished to fill knowledge gaps and contribute actionable knowledge to conservation. Studies are being replicated across a wider geographic range, and connectivity is being studied at local and regional scales. Citizen science and local ecological knowledge have contributed to a better understanding of historical trends and ongoing processes. In some instances, data have been applied to proactive habitat protections, as in the Bahamas, and to habitat restoration, as in Florida. In other instances, though much data have been gathered, additional information is needed before a comprehensive conservation strategy is possible, as in the Florida Keys. As the articles contained in this Special Issue demonstrate, a mixed-methods approach that uses complementary sources of information to construct a broad understanding of the flats fishery is necessary to guide research and inform conservation and management.

Writers' Exchange

In this epistolary exchange between eminent Chinese literary critics Zhang Ning and Sun Yu, they follow up on a disagreement voiced in an earlier symposium regarding writer and painter Mu Xin, a member of the Chinese diaspora. Sun Yu argues that Mu Xin's work deserves to be read more widely in mainland China, citing his important contributions to Chinese literary form and rhetoric. Zhang Ning, however, does not back down from his earlier resistance to what he argues amounts to overpraise for Mu Xin's work, citing it as an interesting and worthy example of literary memoir but not as the best representation of literary history.

Between Indigenous and Settler Governance ed. by Lisa Ford, Tim Rowse (review)

Reviewed by: Between Indigenous and Settler Governance ed. by Lisa Ford, Tim Rowse Julie Evans Between Indigenous and Settler Governance Edited by Lisa Ford and Tim Rowse. Oxford: Routledge, 2013. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of scholarly publications on the intersections between history, law and colonialism. In 2012 alone, three major review essays in mainstream journals canvassed the breadth and depth of the literature: “Breaking Britannia’s Bonds: Law, settlers, and space in Britain’s imperial historiography” by Zoe Laidlaw in The Historical Journal;1 “Law and Empire in Global Perspective: Introduction” by Lauren Benton in American Historical Review;2 and “British Worlds, Settler Worlds, World Systems, and Killing Fields” by Stephen Howe in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.3 These followed on from Russell Smandych’s comprehensive preliminary overview in 2010 (“Mapping Imperial Legal Connections: Towards a Comparative Historical Sociology of Law”).4 While Lauren Benton’s global history approach has helped shape the field (Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal regimes in world history, 1400–1900 [Cambridge, 2002]),5 the British Empire has nevertheless remained a popular context of inquiry, with the distinctiveness of the settler colonial formation emerging as a widely influential conceptual intervention. The titles cited above, and of the volume under discussion here, attest to the import of academic work on the theory and practice of settler colonialism: in 2013, the analytical significance of the terms “Indigenous” and “settler” is appreciated, though of course not uncontested, across the humanities and social sciences. Between Indigenous and Settler Governance, edited by Lisa Ford and Tim Rowse (who are themselves well published in the area, and also appear in this volume), makes a very important contribution to this rich and varied literature, particularly to that which is accruing in polities continuing to live with settler colonialism. Ford and Rowse bring together a characteristically diverse range of scholars— from history, law, criminology, economics and political science—to consider the extent to which Anglophone settler polities are, and always have been, confounded in their pretensions to domination by producing spaces where Indigenous people are able to assert various modes or degrees of autonomy (Ford conceives this more fulsomely in her introduction as “self-determination”). The volume comprises fifteen essays, developed from presentations at an earlier symposium, that examine the nature and extent of possibilities for Indigenous autonomy in settler polities in the past, present and future. There is one chapter on Natal, but Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States are the main contexts of inquiry. The introduction provides a tight focus for the essays, which fall into five sections: “intellectual history” (Ian Hunter; Paul McHugh and Lisa Ford); “histories of legal pluralism” (Janna Promislow; Tim Garrison; Heather Douglas and Mark Finnane); “the survival of indigenous normative domains” (Richard Boast; Norman Etherington; Tim Rowse); “Australian indigenous economy” (Diane Austin-Broos; Jon Altman); “the impact of legal doctrine on the encounter between indigenous peoples and settlers states since the 1960s” (Kent McNeil; Jacob Levy; Shaunnagh Dorsett and Shaun McVeigh); and “the normative dimensions of individual and corporate agency in Australasia and North America” (Carwyn Jones; Kirsty Gover). While it is of course impossible adequately to represent the entire collection in the space available here, some brief observations on two of the sections will suffice to indicate its quality and scope. The chapters by Promislow, Garrison, and Douglas and Finnane in turn consider evidence of legal pluralism in Canada’s remote northwest trading frontier as European fur traders were obliged to work primarily within Dene legal frameworks in the early nineteenth century; the achievements of Cherokee Chief John Ross in securing political autonomy for his people post-Removal and in also seeking to establish an international pan-Indian confederation in mid-nineteenth-century Indian Territory; and the continuing jurisdictional uncertainties and practical difficulties concerning the attempted assertion of any one law (whether settler or Indigenous) in the case of inter se “crimes” in colonial and present-day Australia. Taken together the chapters in this section seek to complicate simplistic assumptions of settler hegemony, and their empirical evidence of legal pluralism thoughtfully informs the research field within which the collection is placed. They can also be read productively...

Introduction: Aging and the Multifaceted Influences on Adaptation to Working Time

This special issue of Chronobiology International presents a selection of papers originally delivered at the 18th International Symposium on Shift Work and Working Time, held at Yeppoon, Australia, in August 2007. The key theme of the symposium was “Aging and Working Time: Creating Safe Environments.” Older workers are widely believed to experience greater difficulty than younger workers adapting to shift work and irregular work schedules. However, while the three reviews of age effects published here (Costa & Di Milia, ; Folkard, ; Gander & Signal, ) identify evidence that older workers do indeed adapt less well, they also demonstrate that much more research is urgently required. The remaining papers address various aspects of the impact of work schedules on health, safety, sleep, and performance. They can be divided into three broad categories: circadian and other periodic factors; sleep, sleepiness, and fatigue; and other aspects of health and adjustment. This collection of papers showcases the best of contemporary research on the safety and health effects of working hours, continuing the tradition established by the two previous issues of the journal devoted to earlier symposia on shift work and working time.

Molecular pharmacology of insect ion channels and implications for insect toxicology

Safe insecticides are essential if agriculture is to generate adequate supplies of high quality food, maintain the health of farm animals and ensure that human populations secure effective control of major disease vectors. Insect central and peripheral nervous systems contain important molecular targets of chemicals used to control insects. Insecticides with new modes of actions are under development, and several major new target molecules are emerging. Meanwhile, resistance to the current generation of insecticides continues to develop, restricting the long-term utility of these valuable chemicals. Also, methods for investigating the mechanisms of action, safety, and resistance are advancing at an accelerated pace. Modern insecticides offer improved selectivity for the target organism and understanding the mechanisms responsible may yield a future generation of effective control chemicals with reduced environmental impact. The 11th International Congress of Pesticide Chemistry (ICPC), which took place in Kobe, Japan from 6 to 11 August in 2006, chose this year as an opportune time to revisit current developments at the leading edge of research on the molecular pharmacology of ion channels targeted by insect control chemicals. This was the 2nd ICPC meeting to be held in Japan. An earlier symposium was held in Kyoto in 1982. Thus, two of us (Kazuhiko Matsuda of Kinki University, Nara and Yoshihisa Ozoe of Shimane University, Matsue) planned to invite world-leading scientists to Kinki University School of Agriculture (Fig. 1) for a satellite symposium entitled ‘‘Frontiers in Molecular Neurotoxicology’’ on August 4 prior to the start of ICPC 2006. The venue for the meeting, Kinki University School of Agriculture, is located about 6 miles west of the historical city of Nara. The city was built as the capital of Japan in 710 and still today contains many World Heritage sites, notably Todai-ji Temple, Kofukuji Temple, Kasuga-Taisha-Shrine, Gango-ji Temple, Yakushi-ji Temple, Toshodai-ji Temple, Nara Palace Site and Kasugayama Primeval Forest. Kinki University consists of 11 schools and 44 departments and was founded as the Osaka Technical College in 1925. The University started with the School of Engineering and the School of Commerce, both of which have grown to become the modern School of Business and Economics. Its strong links with Agriculture were developed in the second half of the twentieth century and the School of Agriculture was introduced in 1958. In 1989, the location of the School of Agriculture moved from Higashi Osaka to Nara. The aim of the 2006 symposium was to enhance our understanding of the current status and future perspectives in the field of molecular pharmacology of primarily insect ion channels. Authors have adopted various approaches, often in combination, and these K. Matsuda (&) Department of Applied Biological Chemistry, School of Agriculture, Kinki University, 3327-204, Nakamachi, Nara 631-8505, Japan e-mail: kmatsuda@nara.kindai.ac.jp

The timing of Class II treatment

In our presentation at the Early Treatment Symposium, we attempted to summarize results from prospective randomized clinical trials at the Universities of North Carolina and Florida that examined the timing of treatment for Class II malocclusions. However, the actual presentation became a live example of randomization: an untimely Trojan horse virus randomly distributed figures generated from data tables during the PowerPoint presentation. I hope this summary will clarify the results that were supposed to be clarified at

Marxism and science fiction: A celebration of the work of Ursula K. Le Guin

In 1973, the newly-established journal Science Fiction Studies published a symposium on 'Marxism and science fiction' in its very first issue. (1) Thirty years later, the newly-established journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory published a similar symposium on 'Marxism and fantasy'. (2) One of the contributors to the earlier symposium, but conspicuous by her absence in the recent one, was Ursula K. Le Guin, who will be seventy-five years old this year. This is a reason for celebration, since it is also thirty years since Le Guin first published one of her best-known works of science fiction, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. (3) This is a remarkable work, contributing not just to the genre of science fiction, but also to the utopian political tradition, as well as to our understanding of the political philosophy of anarchism. While The Dispossessed certainly has a political 'message', it is not just a political pamphlet or tract that presents that message in a straightforward or simplistic way. Le Guin is a creative writer, in the strict sense of the term, and although her politics are certainly important to her, she never allows them to get in the way of her work as an author whose intention is to produce a work of literature: a work of art. As a result, and as the subtitle of the novel suggests, she possesses sensitivity towards the ambiguities and the complexities of human existence to a remarkable degree, especially insofar as questions of ethics are concerned. Ethics are a central concern for Le Guin. This is true in all her writings, including in her so-called 'children's' literature, The Earthsea Quartet novels, (4) which in fact deal with what might legitimately be considered to be 'adult' issues. While avoiding 'moralizing' and preaching simple solutions to serious moral problems, at the same time, in all of her work, Le Guin writes as a 'moralist': as someone who--in the manner of the ancient Greeks, the young Marx and anarchists such as Kropotkin--considers humans as being by nature ethical animals, and who, as a result, has an overriding interest in the ethical dimension of human existence. Le Guin wishes to stimulate and encourage her readers to think in ethical terms even if, in the end, it should transpire that they make substantive ethical judgements that are different from her own. Despite Le Guin's overt commitment to anarchism, the ethical vision that underpins The Dispossessed has a striking affinity with what, in recent times, has come to be known as 'ethical Marxism'. (5) Contrary to contemporary postmodernists, who follow Nietzsche and maintain that--whether we are talking about the natural world or the social world, science or ethics--the only order that there is in the universe is that which human beings themselves impose upon it, Le Guin maintains that in both science and ethics the world is intrinsically an orderly and not a chaotic place. She insists that the order that is to be discerned in the world is not 'one imposed by man or by a personal or humane deity.' On the contrary, there are 'true laws--ethical and aesthetic, as surely as scientific' which 'are not imposed from above by any authority, but exist in things and are to be found--discovered.'(6) This is the attitude of someone who has been strongly influenced by the philosophy of Taoism. (7) But it is also the attitude of someone who is a moral realist and a humanist, who holds views currently unfashionable amongst those who have been influenced by the philosophies of postmodernism and post-structuralism. These remarks indicate Le Guin's commitment to the idea that there is a universally-valid ethical order; a moral law that applies to all human beings; a law that is in some sense 'natural' rather than a purely social 'construction', and which is therefore discovered by human beings rather than made by them. In another of her essays, Le Guin tells us that what underpins her commitment to this ethical vision is the assumption, which she considers to be 'essential,' that 'we' human beings 'are not objects' but 'subjects'. …

Indigenous health and the contribution of sociology: a review

After briefly reviewing the individual contributions to an earlier symposium on Indigenous health, the authors draw on Bent Flyvbjerg's concept of 'phronetic social science' to reflect on the types of approaches to social science that are most likely to be relevant to the needs and challenges of Indigenous health, and how researchers interested in the field might proceed. In so doing they raise questions regarding the sufficiency of the underlying premises and values guiding this area of research. (non-author abstract)

The New Public Management and its Consequences in the Public Personnel System

Editor's Note: The Summer 1997 issue of ROPPA was devoted to a comparative analysis of personnel reforms in several European countries The symposium editor, David Farnham of the University of Portsmouth (UK), included selections dealing with "employment flexibilities" in the UK, Germany, Norway, and Spain For the most part, the authors of the various articles presented a relatively upbeat and positive outlook on personnel system reforms in their respective countries The following Professional Note, in contrast, provides a gloomier view of how reinvention-like reforms are altering public management practices in at least one European nation Jose Rocha, professor of public administration at the University of Minho, describes how moves to debureaucratize and decentralize Portuguese public administration have led to some unanticipated consequences. Increased levels of corruption, inefficiency, and politicization of the civil service are attributed to the "reforms" that emerged from the New Public Management movement sweeping Europe As such, Rocha's Professional Note is essentially intended as an indirect rebuttal to the earlier symposium. By pointing out some of the inconsistencies in the reform agenda, he identifies dilemmas that have also become apparent in the American experience with personnel system transformations.

Editor's Introduction: Contingencies in the link between drinking and consequences

Measures of alcohol-related harm generally focus on health outcomes, particularly mortality. However, as Robin Room points out in his paper in this issue, we tend to forget that society has traditionally been more concerned with acute effects, such as problems of social order, role performance and individual safety, than with the development of chronic alcohol-related disease. This has been very apparent in recent developments in Canada regarding tobacco, where concerns about smuggling, which resulted in few deaths, led to a major cut in taxes, despite evidence of the likelihood of future increases in chronic-disease deaths in the tens of thousands. Another example arises from the discussion preceding the recent provincial ban on smoking on school property. Issues of litter, social control, and traffic safety outweighed health concerns among many legislators and school principals in the province. In the alcohol field, research that suggests reduced risks of moderate drinking compared with life-long abstinence in some populations has provided a renewed impetus to reexamine social harm as an important outcome of alcohol consumption. This issue of Contemporary Drug Problems includes revisions of selected papers on contingencies in the link between drinking and consequences that were originally presented at a conference on Social and Health Effects of Different Drinking Patterns, held in Toronto, Canada, in November 1995. Sponsored by the Addiction Research Foundation, the conference was a thematic meeting of the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol. An earlier International Symposium on Moderate Drinking and Health, held in Toronto in April 1993, reviewed the positive and negative health effects of drinking and considered their implications for policy (see Contemporary Drug Problems 21:1 and 21:2, Spring and Summer 1994, for papers from this conference). The earlier symposium had identified as important research issues improvements in the measurement of patterns of drinking, consideration of a wider variety of consequences (social as well as health), and attention to the contingencies of the relationship between drinking and harm in different circumstances and populations.* A major purpose of the 1995 meeting was to address these topics. In this issue, a range of social and health consequences are identified and examined in relation to variations in drinking patterns. David Pittman's paper follows most closely on the 1993 meeting by focusing specifically on the positive effects of moderate drinking on social and physical well-being. He raises the critical issue as to whether moderate consumption-and, we could add, low levels of daily drinking-is a proxy for a generally healthy lifestyle, which includes a variety of other healthful practices. There is good evidence to show that life-long abstainers are atypical, experiencing lower socioeconomic status and less social support. He calls for appropriate differentiations among abstainers and for major improvements in the measurement of alcohol consumption. Paul Gruenewald and his co-authors develop a theoretical framework integrating the role of drinking patterns and drinking behaviors with factors in the risk of alcohol-related injury. …

General Introduction: The Elusive Boundary Between Fact And Value

The question of how far, if at all, values invade, or should invade, the realm of empirical research is the focus of this issue of Business Ethics Quarterly. Readers will find a variety of answers and perspectives, along with some illustrative examples that support one or another of the possible views. Feelings run high on this topic, and they occasionally break through the normally staid atmosphere that one finds in most academic journals. That in itself may tell something about whether inquiry may be safely cordoned from a contaminating normative orientation. In form of presentation also, some of the articles selected by the editors vary from the conventional design. Essays and opinion pieces take their place alongside more formal presentations. Also included are two discussant papers.The original inspiration for this collection was a symposium presented during the 1992 annual meeting of the Social Issues in Management division of The Academy of Management. Held in Las Vegas, more than one attendee enjoyed the irony of business ethicists rubbing shoulders with gamblers and other related exotica found in Sin City. The symposium papers are grouped together and, with one exception, appear in the original order of presentation. They are followed by the two discussants’ comments. It is fair to say that in the intervening period, all of these authors have had second, or even third, thoughts and have revised their initial declarations somewhat. This echoes a time-honored practice in the U. S. Congress of allowing members to “extend their remarks” for the (official) Congressional Record, which is another way of giving politicians a chance to tell it the way they wished they had said it in the first place. That’s not bad in the case of academics also, if someone is careful to see that the “extensions” do not extend too far, and in that sense the editors have done what they could. The lead paper, though not part of the earlier symposium, is closely related to the general theme and is included for that reason.

Environmental Stability of Materials—Issues and Opportunities

Professor David Kingery, author of the classic text, Introduction to Ceramics, said it well: “Corrosion, like death and taxes in our existence, is inevitable for all materials.” Metals, ceramics, and polymers all undergo change when exposed to the environment. Metals can exhibit electrochemical corrosion, while ceramics and plastics experience primarily chemical corrosion. Although “corrosion” often is used to describe the environmental stability (or instability) of metals, a host of other definitions have been used to characterize the changes that occur in ceramics and polymers.Definitions can become an issue when scientists from various disciplines work together to solve a problem of national/international importance. One such example involves the description of the surface changes that occur when nuclear waste forms are exposed to an aqueous environment (as might occur in a geological repository). The observed surface changes have been referred to as corrosion, leaching, weathering, degradation, and alteration, to name a few. In early symposia on nuclear waste management, sponsored by the Materials Research Society and the American Ceramic Society, definitions and technical issues were discussed extensively by materials scientists, chemists, physicists, geologists, nuclear engineers, and other professionals. Because of this interdisciplinary interaction, significant advances were made (in spite of disagreements over terminology) in understanding the aqueous alteration of these materials. Much of this knowledge will be useful in other applications where environmental stability is important.Although aqueous alteration is an important concept in materials corrosion, the topic of environmental stability is much broader. Other important subtopics are erosion, thermal stability, oxidation and radiation damage, and molten metal, glass, and salt corrosion. Finally, environmental instability need not always be bad. Indeed, there are numerous processes and products that work only because of the material's instability in specific environments.

Improving Access to Services and Facilities in Developing Countries

In an earlier symposium on location analysis and rural economic development, the debate focused on two commonly advocated methodologies of planning the locations of services and infrastructural facilities in rural areas in developing countries: the urban functions in rural development approach and the location-allocation model. This article discusses the utility and appropriateness of the two methodologies in the context of actual planning processes and some of the major research efforts in India.

1989年度秋季学術大会シンポジウム 地理教育の改善を考える

This symposium was organized to discuss with Association members the findings of the Geographical Education Committee of the Association of Japanese Geographers. Since the first meeting in September 1986, the committee has held thirty meetings. In addition, an earlier symposium, an international meeting, and a local joint meeting with the Toyama Earth Science Society were organized. Through these meetings, the committee examined, analyzed, and discussed the following themes: (1) Geographical education at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. (2) Geographical education in terms of physical environments. (3) Geographical education in terms of area study and excursion. (4) Geographical education and placenames. To expand these themes, the following reports were presented (the names with asterisk are those of members who served as reporters): (1) T. Kubota*: A review of the background of the “Geographical Education Committee” and its activities. (2) H. Iwamoto* and K. Yoshida: A proposal for improving geographical education in primary schools and a report on a pilot survey of place-name recognition among the public-non-geographers. (3) K. Asakura and K. Hirasawa*: A proposal for improving geographical education at the lower secondary level. (4) T. Inui, T. Kusakabe, T. Kubota, Y. Nishiwaki, and H. Mori*: A Proposal for improving geographical education at the upper secondary level. (5) R. Asakura*, T, Kimoto, I. Komine, Y. Sato, T. Shirai, A. Shinohara, and M. Nakayama: A proposal for training undergraduates to be better qualified geography teachers. (6) T. Nishizawa, T. Bekki*, and Y. Yamada: A proposal for improving geographical education in the liberal arts course in tertiary institutions. (7) T. Shirai*, M. Nakayama, T. Nishizawa, and other members: A proposal for improving geographical education in terms of physical environments, especially at the upper secondary level. (8) T. Inui*, T. Kimoto, I. Komine, A. Shinohara, Y. Yamada*, and other members: Some proposals for improving area study and excursions at various school levels. After a comprehensive comment was given by T. Nishizawa, a final free discussion was held among participants. An hour was not necessarily enough an in depth discussion, but the following points were stressed: (1) Many questions focused on the relationship between the proposals of the committee and the “Revised Course of Study” which presented the Ministry of Education's national guidelines for the curriculum although the Association took a neutral position with regard to the Revised Course of Study. (2) The activities of the committee should be continued after March 1990, when the current members' terms will expire.

The Homosexual and the Vatican: an American attempt at dialogue

Four years ago the contributors to Robert Nugent’s A Challenge to Love discussed the position of gay and lesbian Catholics in the Church in the aftermath of the 1975 Vatican declaration on sexual ethics. Now Sister Jeannine Gramick, co-founder with Father Nugent of New Ways Ministry, has co-edited with Pat Furey (a pseudonym used ‘for professional reasons’) The Vatican and Homosexuality. This is a collection of reactions to the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in October 19863. Of the nineteen participants in the earlier symposium, only Gramick and Nugent re-appear among the twenty-five leading Catholic educators, journalists, activists and officials who write in it.Gramick cites The Tablet as having called the document ‘violently hostile’, and The Month as having noted a failure to address ‘the reality of homosexuals in their living of Christian discipleship’ (p. 93). In the United States, the editors say, reactions were ‘as might have been expected, swift and strong’. One prominent Catholic and former Trappist monk writing in the Washington Post dismissed the letter as ‘homophobic rantings’. A more dispassionate and scholarly response came from the Archbishop of San Francisco, John R. Quinn: his article ‘Toward an understanding of the letter’, first published in America, is reprinted here.

Revised Radiometric Calibration Technique for LANDSAT-4 Thematic Mapper Data

A technique for the radiometric correction of Landsat-4 Thematic Mapper (TM) data was proposed by the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS) in 1982, and two reports defining the method and discussing preliminary results were presented by CCRS at the Landsat-4 Scientific Characterization Early Results Symposium [1] and [2]. Subsequent detailed observations of raw image data, raw radiometric calibration data, and background measurements extracted from the raw data stream on High Density Tape have highlighted in the proposed method, major shortcomings, which if left uncorrected, can cause severe radiometric striping in the output product. Observations presented here show that there are random fluctuations in the background level for spectral band 1 of magnitudes ranging from 2 to 3.5 digital numbers (DN), depending on detector number. Similar variability is observed in all the other reflective bands, but with smaller magnitude in the range 0.5 to 2.5 DN. More significantly, it is shown how measurements of the dc background level can be correlated with variations in both image data background and calibration samples. The effect on both raw data and on data corrected using the earlier proposed technique is explained, and the correction required for these factors as a function of individual scan line number for each detector is described. It is shown how the revised technique, which includes corrections for a line-dependent offset in addition to the scene-dependent gain and offset, can be incorporated into an operational environment.

Weichselian before 15,000 years B.P. in the Nordic countries: a symposium

The symposium, arranged in 1980 in Bergen, was the last in a series of three symposia on Weichselian events in the Scandinavian realm. Papers from the two earlier symposia were published in Boreas 8:2 (1979) and 9:4 (1980). Recent research has proved the history of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet to be more complicated than formerly thought. One problem relating to this research is dating beyond the limit of the radiocarbon method

The Silver Spoons of Sutton Hoo

AMONG the treasures discovered in the ship-burial at Sutton Hoo are a pair of silver spoons of late-classical design, presumably Byzantine in origin, inscribed with what appear to be the Greek words and respectively. In an important early symposium on Sutton Hoo, Ernst Kitzinger refers to the existence of other spoons similarly inscribed with the names of saints, and adds, They are often thought to have been used for liturgical purposes, and the fact that they are sometimes inscribed with sacred names seems to support this view. The new find, however, presents difficulties in this respect, for the Saint's [i.e., St Paul's] pre-apostolic name Saul would hardly have been inscribed on a liturgical object.' Scholarship of the past twenty-five years, while tending to accept a symbolic meaning of some sort in the inscriptions, has to the best of my knowledge left this fundamental objection unanswered. One might, I suppose, conjecture that the inscription SAULOS is to be associated with unregenerate man (typified by Paul before his conversion), and the inscription PAULOS with regenerate man; but even so, it is difficult to imagine by whom, or for what liturgical purpose, the spoon marked SAULOS might then have been used. Though I cannot speak with much authority as an epigrapher, I believe a comparison of the two inscriptions in the accompanying photograph (top, SAULOS; bottom, PAULOS)2 will show clearly that, far from being of identical workmanship, they are about as different from one another as such things well could be. With regard to their general features, it is obvious that while PAULOS as a whole is well formed, consistent in style and size, and symmetrically laid out, SAULOS is crude, inconsistent, and executed with no regard for symmetry. For example, in PAULOS the knobs at the ends of the individual lines composing the letters are themselves well proportioned, and are consistent in size and shape; in SAULOS they are overly prominent, and are inconsistent in size and shape. In PAULOS the letters are upright and of regular size; in SAULOS they lean slightly to the left and become progressively a little smaller from left to right. In PAULOS there is a fairly regular margin between the tops and bottoms of the letters and the top and bottom edges of the surface on which they are engraved; in SAULOS the first four letters touch these edges, and the final letter is so placed that it touches the top edge but has an unusually wide margin beneath it. In PAULOS the letters are rather evenly spaced, with respect both to one another and to the right and left edges of the surface on which they are engraved; in SAULOS they are crowded toward the left edge, leaving an unsymmetrical blank space at the right. Still more striking are the differences presented by the individual letters. In PAULOS the cross-