Issues Touch Research Articles

Construction Materials: From Innovation to Conservation

AbstractThis article serves to introduce the May 2004 issue of MRS Bulletin on Construction Materials: From Innovation to Conservation. By volume, building materials are by far the most widely used type of materials. The most common construction materials—concrete and wood—are paradigms of complex and hierarchical materials, with a microstructure extending quasi-continuously down to the nanoscale. In the past, most improvements have been obtained by modifying the microstructure at the largest scales, for instance, by reducing the macroporosity. Recent advances in our understanding of the interactions and microstructure development show that the major levers for improvement from now on will rely on surface and colloid science and the science of complex materials, often at the nanoscale. This can lead to remarkable properties, such as self-compaction and ultrahigh strength, and even new functionality, such as self-cleaning through photocatalysis. Construction materials face a wide range of challenges today, many of which are linked to the need for more sustainable development: reducing the consumption of raw materials, reducing the energy used in processing, and increasing service life. In many parts of the world, there is also an increasing need to repair, rehabilitate, and conserve old buildings. The articles in this issue touch on these challenges as well as the advances being made in construction materials through materials research.

Preface

Preface B ELLE ÉPOQUE": if every cultural period is ambiguous, no appellation in modern history better illustrates this ambiguity. 'Belle" for whom? Granted, the period witnessed unprecedented economic development and scientific progress, as well as remarkable literary and artistic achievements. However, it may be the very nature of literary history (as well as art history and cinema) that has conferred on the years ranging from the 188Os to World War I a glitz that is in large part a post-mortem fabrication. Actually, the era persistently challenges the common belief (possibly reinforced by a misreading of Foucault) in the cultural consistency of a given period, sharply differentiated from the next. As a matter of fact, we may not have yet left the mental and political framework inherited from those years—still caught in what Philippe Muray has called Le dix-neuvième siècle à travers les âges. ' Without reverting to notions of cultural unity or resorting to conceptual grids such as Dumezil's, it is still possible to note a number of concerns or obsessions that the last twenty years of the 20th century share with the Belle Époque. As Régis Debray has suggested, we seem in some respects to be repeating the end of the 19th century.2 Here are a few examples among others: Late 19th century the Balkans colonial empire race socialism women's education and employment decadence sexual inversion virus, syphilis pornography (photography) cocaine, morphine melodrama (opera) the Princess of Wales Late 20th century former Yugoslavia post-colonial studies ethnicity welfare women's education and employment family values gender definition virus, AIDS pornography (video) cocaine, heroin melodrama (soap-operas) the Princess of Wales Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 L'Esprit Créateur Most of these themes and issues touch in some way upon women and their ambiguous centrality to the culture, as the striking visual contrasts offered by two recent books illustrate: The first one, called Paradis perdus: l'Europe symboliste, is the splendid catalogue of a gigantic exhibition organized in Quebec after the end of communism released hundreds of symbolist paintings that had been held in Eastern Europe.3 Displayed next to British, French, and American masterpieces, these works offer a magnificent but surreal gallery of female divinities, nymphs, Salomes, and vamps in mythological garb. Through female iconography, the symbolist imagination elevated itself above its own social and material conditions of possibilities. As the catalogue editors say: Pris entre la fin du naturalisme et les débuts de notre modernité, le symbolisme est un Janus qui regarde vers le passé avec nostalgie... et qui appréhende avec anxiété le monde à venir, voulant ne rien savoir des conquêtes du progrès scientifique ni des prouesses d'une technique devenue planétaire. (17) The second book concerns itself with a far less glamorous topic: the representation of women through postcards during the 1900s.4 You will not meet la duchesse de Guermantes here. The book is organized thematically, with such chapter headings as: Professions féminines Au fil des jours Les métiers du chiffon Les femmes dans l'industrie Les femmes de la côte Les femmes des campagnes Etoiles et courtisanes Accusées, levez-vous! Most of the 240 pages constitute a collection of worn out and wrinkled faces of women, some in traditional regional dress, working on assembly lines or deploying fishnets. La Belle Époque may not have been that "belle" for them. Finally, we should remember that this was the France of the Third Republic, the only republic in Europe at the time. Yes, it repressed workers , ruthlessly built a vast colonial empire, and obsessively prepared for 6 Winter 1997 Preface the next war with Germany. Nevertheless, it did away with the privilege of birth, encouraged arts, letters, and scientific research, and, through the priority it granted to education and individual merit, literally uplifted entire segments of the working class and the peasant population. One has to start somewhere: "l'institutrice" of the Third Republic may very well be the ancestor of today's professional woman. The essays we have gathered for this special issue address, each in its own way and sometimes one against the other, the contradictions presented by...

The Importance of Being Doctor: The Quarrel over Competency between Humanists and Theologians in the Renaissance

In modern usage the Renaissance Man is associated with wide-ranging interests and encyclopedic learning, but in the age that brought forth men like Pico della Mirandola and Michelangelo Buonarotti, the ideal of the uomo universale often conflicted with the institutional reality of compartmentalized, hierarchic universities. Records and published polemics from the fifteenth and early sixteenth century document the desire of faculties a rigid delineation of disciplines and a tendency of university teachers to jealously guard their professional turf against outsiders. The resulting maneuvers and jockeying rank and position led to dissension and issued in pamphlet wars, in which theologians and humanists often found themselves in opposite camps.(1) In many cases their disputes were pugnacious versions of the conventional laudato disciplinae; in others the polemics had wider implications. One of the most serious issues involved the question whether the philological method championed by the humanists could be applied to scriptural texts. It was a complex issue touching not only on competency and academic qualifications, but on theological principles as well. Humanists were clamoring a revision of the biblical text based on a collation of manuscripts and a clear and correct translation following classical usage. Traditionalists protested that the Bible was divinely inspired and therefore flawless.(2) Their notions of textual tradition were hazy, however. Jerome was generally regarded as the author of the Vulgate, and any criticism of that text was condemned as blasphemy and an insult to the honor of the great Church Father.(3) Lorenzo Valla pointedly asked the actionaries: is Holy Not every translation of the Old or New Testament qualified that title, he noted. There were numerous versions in circulation. Where among them was Holy Writ? Strictly speaking, only what the saints themselves wrote in Hebrew or Greek is Holy Writ: he observed, for there is nothing in Latin(4) As always, the majority occupied a middle ground between reactionaries and pioneers of textual criticism. They acknowledged that the revealed text had been corrupted by human error and accepted the need some revision, but rejected radical changes, especially if they affected doctrine. Another question remained undecided: Even assuming that textual criticism of the Bible was a legitimate undertaking, was it within the competency of humanists? Many theologians denied that it was and accused humanists of encroaching on their professional territory. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the wariness and misgivings of the theologians had become the stock-in-trade of satirists. The essence of the complaints against meddling humanists is captured in an anonymous skit, pitting three theologians against Erasmus and Reuchlin. In this dialogue Magister Lupoldus dissuades the humanists from revising the Bible. business of yours is it to correct the Magnificat? he fumes. The exchange continues: Erasmus: What is our business, then? Will you explain this to us, so that we may be made wiser by your counsel and mend our ways. Lupoldus: Take care of your Latin, compose verses, make grand orations, print books about Latin composition. Reuchlin: And nothing concerning God? Gingolphus: Nothing, by the devil] Nothing, it's none of your business] Erasmus: Whose business is it then? Ortvinus: That of the most illustrious and most zealous magistri nostri, who know the art of arguing and against propositions.(5) The satirist indicates that the theologians were willing to acknowledge the expertise of the humanists in philology and language studies, but wanted to limit the application of these skills to the secular sphere. Two positions, generally accepted throughout the Middle Ages, sup ported such a limitation: Theology occupied a unique place among academic disciplines; indeed, it was the queen of all sciences; and only those were entitled to discuss, interpret, translate, or paraphrase Scripture, who were divinely inspired, authorized by the Church, and/or academically qualified by a degree in theology. …

95/04119 Coal issues touch GOP disputes in Congress

95/04119 Coal issues touch GOP disputes in Congress

Trust in the New Information Age

In promoting new ways of communicating and doing business, AT&T and other creators of new communications systems need to address some issues of fundamental importance to our customers. People need to have a sense of security about the information that they store, transmit, and receive. They must have confidence in its integrity, source, and destination. Commitments implied by an electronic transaction must be backed by authority that is clearly defined and dependable. People and organizations must also be confident that their correspondence and transactions will not be electronically collected and pieced together to form an image that may someday be used to haunt them. These issues touch the very essence of AT&T's business, and they will affect AT&T's success in carrying out its mission. This paper highlights some ways in which security technology can be used to address fundamental problems that arise with the introduction of new information and communications systems.

The adolescence of AI in Medicine: Will the field come of age in the '90s?

Artificial intelligence in medicine (AIM) has reached a period of adolescence in which interactions with the outside world are not only natural but mandatory. Although the basic research topics in AIM may be those of artificial intelligence, the applied issues touch more generally on the broad field of medical informatics. To the extent that AIM research is driven by performance goals for biomedicine, AIM is simply one component within a wide range of research and development activities. Furthermore, an adequate appraisal of AIM research requires an understanding of the research motivations, the complexity of the problems, and a suitable definition of the criteria for judging the field's success. Effective fielding of AIM systems will be dependent on the development of integrated environments for communication and computing that allow merging of knowledge-based tools with other patient data-management and information-retrieval applications. The creation of this kind of infrastructure will require vision and resources from leaders who realize that the practice of medicine is inherently an information-management task and that biomedicine must make the same kind of coordinated commitment to computing technologies as have other segments of our society in which the importance of information management is well understood.

Figures of Female Militancy in Medieval France

This plaintive voice, lamenting men's loss of military prestige, sounds the alarm over the figure of women fighting during the high Middle Ages. On one level, it heralds the classic world-upsidedown syndrome, teasing its thirteenth-century French public with an image of social disorder.2 On another, it fields the idea of women in a martial setting, bespeaking a thorny issue touching families and communities across medieval Europe. Not only are such formulations rare, but they are made doubly difficult to interpret because of their ambiguous tone. Is this vision of the topsy-turvy conceived in jest? Or does it signal a controversy

Issues in Performance

The eclecticism of this issue is a departure from CTR’s tradition of theme issues. Our usual focus on theme issues allows us to explore topics in depth but there are times when a more general round-up affords the opportunity to take a look at new trends in the theatre as a whole. The articles in this issue touch on topics as diverse as the marketing of commercial megahits like The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, the work of a Soviet designer at the Shaw Festival, and a look at the offerings of some of the festivals that have become instrumental in showcasing new performance trends.

“Although We Cannot Fully Meet” the Roman Catholic Response to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry

The publication of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry by the World Council of Churches in 1982 was the culmination of more than fifty years of ecumenical discussion. The document was designed to elicit official comment from the churches involved in its production and also to involve a wide membership of the churches in the process of reception of the text by taking its insights into their spiritual, pastoral and theological life. This present article analyses the response of the Roman Catholic Church. The response is largely positive, but the methodology of the document reveals unresolved tensions concerning theological reformulation while the wider issue touching reception in the life of the Church is avoided.

"Da Kine": Writing for Children in Hawaii—and Elsewhere

"Da Kine":Writing for Children in Hawaii—and Elsewhere Stephen Canham (bio) Hawaii has about 800,000 people scattered over its various islands, of whom a goodly proportion are children. Yet it has no major writer for children, no author whose name we would instantly recognize and say "Oh yes, I've heard of . . ." Nor does it have a major illustrator. Why not? Do artists need cold winters? Interstate freeways? Squirrels, snakes, or other fauna that Hawaii lacks? I doubt it; the problem is more complex than that, and its various issues touch not only Hawaii, but any community with a distinct regional identity. Let's take the most obvious things first. Where is Hawaii, anyway? All most people know is that it's a long way away. When mainlanders visit Hawaii they don't even consider it part of the United States—"Back in the States," they say, and their mistake tacitly acknowledges the isolation and sense of difference which inform life in the Islands. But while Hawaii is the most geographically isolated inhabited land area in the world, the artist cannot really "get away" in Hawaii—after all, we have our traffic jams, our pollution, our crime, just like every other place in the U.S. And it's only a five hour flight back to the mainland, and a microsecond by satellite. Wall Street Journal? New York Times? You can get them the same day in Honolulu. So, if one is going to claim remoteness as a reason for the lack of a major writer for children resident in Hawaii, one cannot do so strictly on the basis of geography. Besides geographic isolation, there are more complex and delicate aspects of the issue. Take language. I have lived in Hawaii for six years, and throughout that time, I have observed and participated in what I call the Great On-Going Pidgin Debate. The lingua franca in Hawaii is not standard English, but a creole inaccurately called "pidgin." Actually, there are many different pidgins, spoken by different ethnic groups in different parts of the Islands. But together they form a powerful, colorful, and useful blend of English, Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and other Pacific languages, with its origins in the speech of immigrant laborers of the sugar and pineapple plantations. Pidgin is the oral language of the "local," the person who is decidedly from Hawaii without necessarily being of full Hawaiian ancestry; the precise meaning of "local" depends entirely on the speaker. To call someone "local" can carry everything from commendatory to pejorative implications, a typical example of pidgin's flexibility. A "local boy"—or girl—takes "da kine" (pidgin), would like to drive "da kine" (a lowered Volkswagen or Toyota with dark-tinted windows and a three-hundred dollar sound system), "grinds da kine" (eats plate lunches "wit two scoop rice"), likes to "go beach" or cruise, and outwardly seems perfectly content doing so. Novice locals, those in the pre-driving years, imitate their elders scrupulously, studying the moves and intonations, the patterns of culture and language, that their local heroes display in shopping malls, parking lots, and on the beach. Here's the rub: the local doesn't read. Not that he can't—he just doesn't. The written word, the word as art, doesn't matter much to the local. He has not been trained, has not been initiated into the mystery of the word, into its beauty, its probing, expressive and evocative capabilities, and so its aesthetic dimension remains unknown. For the local, words are often only mechanical instruments, minimal tools to be used to obtain something at a rudimentary level of exchange-a driver's license, position in the peck order, a fight. There are, of course, crude generalizations, but they hold—not only in Hawaii. The predominant use of pidgin by the local youth reveals their intense ethnocentricity, their profound need for a group identity in the midst of the numerous ethnic and economic enclaves of the Islands. This ethnocentricity seems to stem first and foremost from a desire to clearly establish a sense of boundary, a sense of familiarity and shared interest—a safe harbor in the midst of cultural and...

Latin American trade negotiations with the United States

The traditional relation between richer and poorer countries, whereby the former exported manufactures and the latter exported primary products, has been undergoing an accelerating transformation in recent years. Developing countries are emerging as serious competitors in the world economy in a widening range of manufactured products, and increasing industrial exports is one of the highest foreign-policy priorities of their governments. At the same time, demands for import restrictions have been increasingly heard in the older industrial countries. The result is that bilateral bargaining to regulate trade and market shares has become a common but understudied element of the North-South diplomatic agenda. Despite all our recent discussion of the international economic order, our knowledge of this type of bilateral conflict is quite sketchy. Industrial trade issues touch several often-conflicting policy objectives of the country involved, including employment and growth, price stability, debt servicing, domestic political power and stability, and the strength of bilateral political ties. Latin American countries and the United States have historically been mutually important as trade partners, and some

Statistical Profile of Women in Post-War Lebanon

Reliable, up-to-date and comprehensive statistical data on any facet of post-war Lebanese society are very difficult to find. For many Lebanese, a statistical survey is not simply a fast and efficient way of obtaining objective data, it is also a highly charged political issue touching upon the very roots of the Lebanese civil war, most notably the questions of confessional powersharing and Lebanon's cultural identity.

An Analysis of Kenyan Foreign Policy

In foreign affairs, Kenya presents various faces to the international community. In global terms external policy has been markedly radical in nature and characterised by a strong sense of morality and idealism. Rarely does a major Kenyan foreign policy statement fail to contain some allusion to the inequalities of the present international order or some reassertion of both the desirability and the attainability of a peaceful and just international community of nations. In East African affairs, however, Kenya's policy has often been governed by rather more conservative and legitimist thinking, notably where any radical departure from the status quo is contemplated. It would appear that where foreign policy issues touch directly on primary Kenyan interests—say, national security, national development—the overt radicalism of Kenya's broad international policy is subject to considerable restraint. This ambivalence in Kenya's foreign relations can probably be best explained by examining separately the basically domestic pressures towards a broadly radical policy internationally and towards a more cautious conservatism within East Africa. One further aspect of Kenya's foreign relations is in the field of inter-African affairs, where tentatively one may suggest that Kenya has come to play the role of a prestigious neutral between two amorphous, but often distinct, groupings of what have been termed ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ states.1 Here, foreign policy is far less a product of domestic pressures, and contingencies of history and factors of personality reassert their importance in foreign policy analysis.