Exotic Field Research Articles

American geography and the rise of political geography in Russia

Until the late1980s, political geography was a rather peripheral and exotic field in Soviet geography. The Soviet Union existed in a relative isolation from the outside world, and fluctuations of interest in this field among Western geographers did not significantly affect the Soviet geographical community. In 1984, at the 25th International Geographical Congress in Paris, academician Innokenty Gerasimov (director of the Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow for 35 years and for a long time the most internationally visible Soviet geographer) objected against the use of the very term 'political geography' in the name of a newly-born IGU study group created on the initiative of a group of British and American geographers led by Ron Johnston. As a result, it was baptized 'study group on the world political map', and in 1988, it became an IGU Commission keeping the same name for years. The reason was a fear of being accused of attempting to revive a discipline which could be associated with German and conservative American geopoltics, stigmatized as 'burgeous pseudo-science'. At the same time, political geography always attracted the attention of leading Soviet geographers, including Gerasimov himself. Characteristically, on his return to his Institute from Paris he made a long report on the results of the congress, stressing the development of political geography and the need to cultivate this field in the USSR. Political geography was promoted by the father-founder of Soviet human geography Nikolai Baransky1 and later by such remarkable figures as Professors Yulian Saushkin, Isaak Maergoiz and Viktor Volsky at Moscow University and Sergei Lavrov at Leningrad University, who tutored students specialized in this field, and published some papers themselves. They tried to find an ideological and institutional justification for the existence of political geography as an autonomous geographical discipline in inventoring politicalgeographical descriptions found in the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin and they noticed that the basic elements of political geography could be traced from the works of outstanding Russian geographers of the past. In the Universities of Moscow and Leningrad, a number of poltical-geographical dissertations have been undertaken since 1979. All of them were devoted to electoral geography in Western countries, for example Italy, France, USA and Canada. Some general articles giving an idea about the essence and objectives of political geography appeared in geographical journals. Their authors speculated, in particular, about political patterns in developing countries and the political geography of the World ocean, with its strategically important seas and straits. They also tried to summarize and criticize the ideas of Western political geographers. However, until the late1980s political geography did ot take shape as a relevant discipline. Because of ideological constraints, political-geographical studies of the Soviet Union were in fact prohibited, with the partial exception of administrative boundaries. Electoral geography was not related to concrete practical needs. Any extensive reference to works of Western geographers had to include at least formal critical remarks 'from Marxist positions'. In this respect, I remember my first publication in a Wes ern journal. My co-author and I tried to analyze papers submitted to the meeting of the Research Committee on Political Geography at the International Political Science Association's World Congress in Moscow. Publication of our paper became possible only after months of editing. Helpfully, the special committee finally came to conclusion that there was nothing wrong in the article. In one of its section, a well-known American political scientist and geographer was strongly accused of reviving 'the worst traditions of geopolitics', because he considered the mental space of American politicians. We have never discussed it wit him, and he has always been very kind to me. Although it wa my elder co-author who wrote this section, I still feel some fault. I suppose the editors of the journal thought that our contribution was an amazing example of orthodox thinking. Nevertheless, the most interesting theories proposed by American and other Western geographers were known well enough, at least in the most important departments and instites, thanks to the good journal of abstracts published by the All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information and, paradoxically, to the best 'critical' articles as well. A ew era came suddenly and rapidly. Knowledge on ethnic and national identities, borders, and conflicts became really important for politicians and mass media. In lat 1986, the first nationalist manifestation took place in Alma-Ata; it was followed by bloody clashes in NagornoKarabakh and Azerbaijan. Relations between ethnic groups in many other areas were deteriorating quickly. Soon, in late1988, the first quasi-democratic elections were scheduled in March 1989.

From Ancient to Victorian Cultural Studies: Assessing Foucault

In 1999 the journal Literature and Culture devoted special issue to the subject of Studies and Cultural Studies. What is notable about the essays included in this volume is the collective level of skepticism they express about the way cultural studies concepts and practices have recently been applied. (1) Isobel Armstrong, for example, faults Foucaultian history for its over-reliance upon limiting notions of regulation and surveillance.... [so that] [e]very text becomes evidence of form of regulation, demonstrating panoptical motivation. Foucauldian readings, Armstrong claims, depend as result on a homogenized account of the nineteenth century and of Victorianism in particular. (2) Armstrong is concerned about the way tendentious concepts such as disciplinary power are assumed by Foucault's followers prior to any analysis, which crowds out the opportunity for more open, less predetermined form of historical-critical practice. Armstrong's claims may be said to be symptomatic, for we have reached point in studies in which even critics otherwise friendly to cultural studies nevertheless tend to frame their approaches by describing how they differ from Foucauldian methods, not merely how they intersect with them. (3) Armstrong's critique, like those of other recent scholars, (4) announces concern with the limitations and in particular the excesses of the discourse-based analyses of sexuality, derived primarily from the first volume of Foucault's The History of Sexuality (1978), that prevailed in the late 1980s and 1990s. I want to propose, though, that both the self-conscious applications of Foucault in studies since the late 1980s and the recent critiques of Foucault and Foucauldian methods from cultural-studies-friendly scholars have been limited by an over-reliance on single text, that first volume of The History of Sexuality. My aim here is not to dismiss the valuable work on poetry derived from an engagement with volume one by such scholars as Richard Dellamora, Jeff Nunokawa, and Christopher Craft, nor do I dispute the obvious value of Foucault's liberating critique of the repression hypothesis of sexuality. (5) These scholars have located in Foucault set of conceptual tools for addressing poetic language--specifically, language that produces, reflects, and debates gender and especially male sexual norms. Instead, for the remainder of this essay, I want to do thought experiment, one which involves placing the still-potent debate about the legacy of Foucault for studies in general and poetry studies in particular in different context, that of separate field--classical cultural studies--and separate set of texts, the second (1985) and third (1986) volumes of The History of Sexuality. (6) I am suggesting that the classicists' responses to Foucault will enrich our own, Victorianist engagements with his legacy: they are instructive for their more energetic, bolder critiques of Foucauldian ideas, and as in the case of David Halperin, even stronger defenses of Foucault's usefulness for conceptualizing history. (7) In closing section, I will discuss how volumes two and three of the History of Sexuality, and the classicists' recent engagements with it, provide rich opportunity for reframing our understanding of male lyric subjectivities in poetry. What follows below, then, is not just set of suggestions for further reading in distant, exotic field but survey of vivid debates that have implications for our own critical practice and have been source of personal inspiration to me. In the mid-to-late 1970s, the study of sex and gender began to emerge in classical studies after long period of what has been described as self-imposed, Victorian repressive silence, the kind that Foucault seeks to refute in the first volume of The History of Sexuality. …

SOLITONIC ASPECTS OF q-FIELD THEORIES

We have examined the deformation of a generic non-Abelian gauge theory obtained by replacing its Lie group by the corresponding quantum group. This deformed gauge theory has more degrees of freedom than the theory from which it is derived. By going over from point particles in the standard theory to solitonic particles in the deformed theory, it is proposed that we interpret the new degrees of freedom as being descriptive of the non-locality of the deformed theory. It also turns out that the original Lie algebra gets replaced by two dual algebras, one of which lies close to and approaches the original Lie algebra in a correspondence limit, while the second algebra is new and disappears in this same correspondence limit. The exotic field particles associated with the second algebra can be interpreted as quark-like constituents of the solitons, which are themselves described as point particles in the first algebra. These ideas are explored for q-deformed SU(2) and GL q(3).

Persistence in the seed bank: The effects of fungi and invertebrates on seeds of native and exotic plants

Fungal pathogens and invertebrate seed predators both may limit the establishment of persistent seed banks. Exotic plants may be less subject to attack by these natural enemies than are native species; if so, this may provide exotics with an important advantage by reducing seed mortality and enhancing the persistence of colonizing populations. We investigated this idea with a field experiment in which we used fungicides and screening to protect seeds of 39 native and exotic old field plants. The recovery of germinable seeds was improved by fungicide additions, but not by the exclusion of macroinvertebrates. The effects of fungicide varied among species and sampling dates, but the recovery of natives was not consistently improved more than the recovery of exotics. These results suggest that soil fungi have important impacts on the seed banks of many species, but that exotics are not consistently more resistant than natives to attacks by either fungal pathogens or invertebrates. Consequently, it is unlikely that the majority of invaders benefit from reduced pest loads at the seed bank stage.

Post-dispersal losses to seed predators: an experimental comparison of native and exotic old field plants

Invasions by exotic plants may be more likely if exotics have low rates of attack by natural enemies, including post-dispersal seed predators (granivores). We investigated this idea with a field experiment conducted near Newmarket, Ontario, in which we experimentally excluded vertebrate and terrestrial insect seed predators from seeds of 43 native and exotic old-field plants. Protection from vertebrates significantly increased recovery of seeds; vertebrate exclusion produced higher recovery than controls for 30 of the experimental species, increasing overall seed recovery from 38.2 to 45.6%. Losses to vertebrates varied among species, significantly increasing with seed mass. In contrast, insect exclusion did not significantly improve seed recovery. There was no evidence that aliens benefitted from a reduced rate of post-dispersal seed predation. The impacts of seed predators did not differ significantly between natives and exotics, which instead showed very similar responses to predator exclusion treatments. These results indicate that while vertebrate granivores had important impacts, especially on large-seeded species, exotics did not generally benefit from reduced rates of seed predation. Instead, differences between natives and exotics were small compared with interspecific variation within these groups.Key words: aliens, exotics, granivores, invaders, old fields, seed predators.

Magnetism in Isolated and Binary White Dwarfs

ABSTRACTSince the discovery of the first isolated magnetic white dwarf (MWD) Grw +70°8047 nearly 60 years ago, the number of stars belonging to this class has grown steadily. There are now some 65 isolated white dwarfs classified as magnetic, and a roughly equal number of MWDs are found in the close interacting binaries known as the magnetic cataclysmic variables (MCVs). The isolated MWDs comprise ∼5% of all WDs, while the MCVs comprise ∼25% of all CVs. The magnetic fields range from ∼ 3 × 104–109 G in the former group with a distribution peaking at 1.6 × 107 G, and ∼ 107–3 × 108 G in the latter group. The space density of isolated magnetic white dwarfs with fields in the range ∼ 3 × 104–109 G is estimated to be ∼ 1.5 × 10-4 pc−3. The MCVs have a space density that is about a hundred times smaller.About 80% of the isolated MWDs have almost pure H atmospheres and show only hydrogen lines in their spectra (the magnetic DAs), while the remainder show He i lines (the magnetic DBs) or molecular bands of C2 and CH (magnetic DQs) and have helium as the dominant atmospheric constituent, mirroring the situation in the nonmagnetic white dwarfs. The incidence of stars of mixed composition (H and He) appears to be higher among the MWDs.There is growing evidence based on trigonometric parallaxes, space motions, and spectroscopic analyses that the isolated MWDs tend as a class to have a higher mass than the nonmagnetic white dwarfs. The mean mass for 16 MWDs with well‐constrained masses is ≳ 0.95 M⊙. Magnetic fields may therefore play a significant role in angular momentum and mass loss in the post–main‐sequence phases of single star evolution affecting the initial‐final mass relationship, a view supported by recent work on cluster MWDs. The progenitors of the vast majority of the isolated MWDs are likely to be the magnetic Ap and Bp stars. However, the discovery of two MWDs with masses within a few percent of the Chandrasekhar limit, one of which is also rapidly rotating (Pspin = 12 minutes), has led to the proposal that these may be the result of double‐degenerate (DD) mergers. An intriguing possibility is that magnetism, through its effect on the initial‐final mass relationship, may also favor the formation of more massive double degenerates in close binary evolution. The magnetic DDs may therefore be more likely progenitors of Type Ia supernovae.A subclass of the isolated MWDs appear to rotate slowly with no evidence of spectral or polarimetric variability over periods of tens of years, while others exhibit rapid rotation with coherent periods in the range of tens of minutes to hours or days. There is a strong suggestion of a bimodal period distribution. The “rapidly” rotating isolated MWDs may include as a subclass stars which have been spun up during a DD merger or a previous phase of mass transfer from a companion star.Zeeman spectroscopy and polarimetry, and cyclotron spectroscopy, have variously been used to estimate magnetic fields of the isolated MWDs and the MWDs in MCVs and to place strong constraints on the field structure. The surface field distributions tend in general to be strongly nondipolar and to a first approximation can be modeled by dipoles that are offset from the center by ∼10%–30% of the stellar radius along the dipole axis. Other stars show extreme spectral variations with rotational phase which cannot be modeled by off‐centered dipoles. More exotic field structures with spot‐type field enhancements appear to be necessary. These field structures are even more intriguing and suggest that some of the basic assumptions inherent in most calculations of field evolution, such as force‐free fields and free ohmic decay, may be oversimplistic.

Space law as a branch of international law

‘Need I apologize for my choice of subject? Some may say it belongs to the realm of exotics of law. Some may ask: Why deal with issues so remote when there are so many much closer to us still awaiting a solution? Why reach so far?’ With these words the late Judge Manfred Lachs introduced his 1964 lecture at the Hague Academy of International Law on the topic ‘The International Law of Outer Space’. The subject is no longer exotic today. Within the three decades following the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, the use of space technology is now widespread, not only for military but also for civilian purposes, including satellites for communications, meteorology, television and radio broadcasting and other applications. Remote sensing data is employed in agriculture and resource management as well as in environmental monitoring. Writing a quarter of a century later than Lachs, in a prologue to a collection of articles by “a new generation of space law scholars’, K.-H. Böckstiegel notes:‘Space law is coming of age. What started out as an exotic field of law and then continued with the discussion and codification of legal rules, following the development of exploratory space activities, is now confronted with the challenge of arriving at just and effective rules for the use of space serving many practical and conflicting economic, political and military interests.’

Conformal field theories with nonabelian symmetry group

We discuss here exotic conformal field theories associated with the b− c systems on a class of algebraic curves with nonabelian symmetry group. In particular we derive explicitly the primary fields of these conformal field theories and their operator product expansions. The braiding relations between the primary fields show that they satisfy a nontrivial exotic statistics.

Extended Spinor Structure and Exotic Spinor Field in \overlinePoincare Gauge Theory of Gravity

Extended Spinor Structure and Exotic Spinor Field in \overlinePoincare Gauge Theory of Gravity

The Functions of the Law of Torts in Africa

Professor Allott observed nearly a quarter of century ago:“There can be no justification (other than inertia) for the continued application of the unreformed English law of torts in modern African countries”.There is no doubt that he was right; there is equally no doubt that it is still substantially the unreformed law which is applied. Certainly there has been very little in the way of legislative change. This paper is not concerned mainly with this question, but with what uses African litigants and their lawyers have found for this exotic field of law, and also, to some extent, with the further question of how far the law has proved fitted for the tasks.A glance at legal periodicals in the United Kingdom and even more so in the USA indicates that there is something of a ferment in tort scholarship. We find writers asking questions like “Does tort have a future?” While at the same time others demand that tort take on new roles. By way of complete contrast, it might appear from African legal literature that the law of tort is of virtually no significance. There are very few books and journal articles are relatively rare. It attracts even less attention from those who write on law and development.It has been said of the Antipodean law of tort that it “does not, in general, reflect the Australian outback and its pastoral economy, nor New Zealand's earthquakes, volcanoes and glaciers, nor exemplify an Australian or New Zealand ethos”.

Mind and Immunity: Behavioral Immunology—An Annotated Bibliography 1976-1982

As psychoanalysis gained its ascendency and moved the study of the mind away from biologic principles, a parallel movement was taking place: the application of new and exciting discoveries in a completely different field, immunology, to behavioral phenomena. Few of us who completed medical training 20 or more years ago understood that lymphocytes, antigens, antibodies, immune complexes, and other such components of immunologic equations would have an illuminating influence on our understanding of how the mind and brain respond to both internal and external factors. The very fact that Locke and Hornig-Rohan were able to gather close to 1,500 references from the world literature in this new and no longer exotic field of neuropsychoimmunology is a tribute to its growing importance and timeliness. This compendium is conveniently divided into several sections dealing with the neuroanatomy of the immune system and the immunology of the nervous system, including neurochemical influences on

Differenzierung pathogener Clostridia aus feldmaterial und von referenzstämmen mit hilfe der biometrischen analyse der quantitativ erfaßten metabolischen fettsäuremuster der erreger

34 reference and 9 exotic field strains of clostridia were analyzed by means of gas liquid chromatography (GLC) on their patterns of metabolic short chain fatty acids. To increase the number of criteria for the differentiation specimens were grown on pepton yeast medium with addition of 13 different carbohydrates and alcohols. Data of sequence and mean square space of GLC-peaks were stored in a data bank. With the SPSS discriminance analytical system the field strains were compared with the reference strains in order to classify field to reference strains. At the same time differences between reference strains of different origin were determined. C. novyi, C. histolyticum., C. sordellii, C. difficile, C. subterminale and C. sporogenes could be separated clearly from the C. chauvoei-, C. septicum- and the perfringens-group. Between different strains of C. chauvoei provided by several laboratories significant differences could be shown which make original classification doubtful. Similarities between the C. chauvoei- and the C. septicum-group do exist. Formerly C. perfringens type F is the sole type of C. perfringens which can be separated from the C. perfringens-group. There are similarities in fatty acid patterns between the C. chauvoei-, C. septicum-, and C. perfringens-group. Strains isolated from field cases of gas gangrene in Perú, Madagascar and Germany (Bavaria) were classified as completely different from the reference strains for Perú, partly similar to C. chauvoei for Madagascar, similar to C. chauvoei and C. septicum for Bavaria.