Partial Exceptions Research Articles

Exploring the Legacy of Tibetan Mapmaking

At the 2019 International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) in Amsterdam, the map historian Peter Barber stated in his ground-breaking keynote speech that ‘with a few exceptions, the emphasis in the traditional history of cartography [before 1980s] was on European mapping. In the age of European empires, it was assumed that, on grounds of technological skill as well as cultural superiority, European map making set the standard and that indigenous mapping in other parts of the world, with the partial exceptions of the medieval Arab world and China, was ipso facto inferior and hardly worth consideration.’ In recent decades the approach to the study of maps has changed and the field has been transformed. Researchers from different academic backgrounds have discovered the relevance of maps to their disciplines, and the primacy of the essentially European concepts of scale and accuracy as the sole criteria for assessing the quality of maps has been questioned. Finally, non-European indigenous mapping has been brought into the field. This paper makes a significant contribution to this development by presenting an important collection of Tibetan maps, namely those of the Harrer Collection held at the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, probably the largest corpus of Tibetan geographic regional maps outside of Tibet. For the first time, we show the entire set of maps and describe their cartographic characteristics. We also provide the Tibetan spelling, transliteration and translations for the numerous Tibetan inscriptions and explanations. We have endeavoured to study the maps using a comprehensive approach, and we discuss what we can learn from them in various respects: the human and geographic landscapes they show; their makers; the role they might have played within the historical context and the society in which they were produced; their circulation; and their role as historical sources.

A facile lyophilisation-based sample preparation approach for the determination of selected wastewater-borne antiretroviral drugs and metabolites by SFC-MS/MS

The presence of pharmaceuticals in aquatic ecosystems is at the centre-stage of research after the realization that wastewater treatment processes are generally ineffective in the removal of these entities in wastewater given the high likelihood of effluent reuse after disposal. In addition, the continued efforts to scout for new and emerging aquatic contaminants has until recently elicited proliferation of numerous analytical methods for the determination of various (un)known contaminants, since emphasis is now placed in the development of environmentally benign approaches. Herein, we propose and discuss a novel and relatively eco-friendly analytical method based on lyophilization for sample preparation and SFC-MS/MS for the determination of eight (8) antiretroviral drugs (ARVDs) and three (3) metabolites in wastewater samples. This method proved useful in the improvement for the recoveries of lamivudine (3TC) and emtricitabine (FTC) by up to 99% compared to as low as 23% with solid phase extraction (SPE) method. Indeed, previous literature reports has reported poor recoveries for the polar ARVDs, especially on reversed phase (RP) SPE. In contrast, lyophilization promoted matrix effects as evidenced by ion suppression of up to 50% experienced on late eluting compounds. Despite this, lyophilization-SFC-MS/MS method was successfully validated for the quantification of all target analytes, partial exceptions were for ritonavir metabolite (RTVM) which could not be quantified using lyophilization possibly due to lyophilization-induced losses. Generally, the obtained data has proved that lyophilization is an alternative to SPE and SFC is a suitable alternative to LC.

Jonathan William Wade. Being Portuguese in Spanish: Reimagining Early Modern Iberian Literature, 1580–1640

Jonathan William Wade. <i>Being Portuguese in Spanish: Reimagining Early Modern Iberian Literature, 1580–1640</i>

Theodore Dreiser and the Concept of the Social

Theodore Dreiser and the Concept of the Social Jude Davies (bio) As far as the eye could see were carriages, the one great social diversion of Chicago, because there was otherwise so little opportunity for many to show that they had means. The social forces were not as yet clear or harmonious. Jingling harnesses of nickel, silver, and even plated gold were the sign manual of social hope, if not achievement. —Dreiser, The Titan 18. [“]Our family wasn’t ever in society . . . and I haven’t been much of anything except a slave . . . [”] —Dreiser, “Will You Walk into My Parlor?” 289. Dreiser’s fiction accords immense explicatory force to something, or some things, called “society” and the “social.”1 But what exactly do these terms mean to Dreiser? While his texts are now often read as perceptive cultural histories of American society, what often remains unconsidered is their interrogation of the “social” as a concept. In this essay I make a case for the interest and originality of Dreiser’s interrogation of notions of the social, first by reference to some key texts, and then by showing how during the twentieth century this feature of his writing became a battleground for rival conceptualizations of American society. The titles of Dreiser’s eight novels—Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, The Financier, The Titan, The “Genius”, An American Tragedy, The Bulwark, and The Stoic—suggest that they take as their quantum the individual. (Partial exceptions are The Titan, whose title refers initially to the city of Chicago and is only conferred on protagonist Frank Cowperwood late in the novel, [End Page 45] and An American Tragedy, which is nevertheless animated by Dreiser’s emotional sympathy with its protagonist Clyde Griffiths.) Still, it is the most socially oriented title that is regarded as his most successful novel, and epithets such as “sister,” “financier,” “bulwark,” and “stoic” signal the imbrication of individuals in society. Thus cued, we could read the above passages as making a typically Dreiserian gesture towards the notion that society acts as some kind of conditioning environment through which human narratives can be explained, as perhaps biology would in some notional form of literary naturalism. Thus The Titan presents Chicago in the 1870s and 1880s as a relatively undeveloped society and therefore a site hospitable to the ambitions of financier Frank Cowperwood, newly released from a prison sentence for embezzlement served in the more socially stable and therefore exclusive Philadelphia. By contrast Imogene Carle, a character in the 1918 short story “Will You Walk into My Parlor?”2 gives voice to a sense of society as inescapably deterministic, exclusion from the elite equating to an almost complete negation of agency. Putting these two passages together invites readings that distinguish between forms of American society on the basis of their relative openness to individuals’ accrual of agency. With gender in mind, contemporary readers might be struck by the importance of patriarchy in restricting the scope of Carle’s autonomy. Foregrounding class, Dreiser himself thought that the building up of large fortunes had led to a closing up of American society between 1870s-80s Chicago and the New York of the 1910s where we encounter Carle. Indeed, as James Truslow Adams would go on to do, Dreiser employed an ideologically loaded sense of historical change, looking backwards past what Alan Trachtenberg calls “the incorporation of America” towards a more dynamic and unruly period (Adams 232–34). In conceptualizing the workings of society, Dreiser also had recourse to ideas of “equation” and “balance” drawn from Herbert Spencer, and critics have done valuable work in demonstrating how his use of these concepts precluded the dead hand of naturalist determinism (see Moers, Culbertson). Building on this work, I want to suggest here that Dreiser’s engagement with ideas of the social is both more complex than a mere historical backdrop to narratives of individual success or failure and more interesting than just another nineteenth-century abstract social philosophy. From this perspective, the language of “equation,” for which Dreiser himself reached, is a post-hoc rationalization that smooths over some of what makes his texts most interesting and most significant in their address to the complexity of the...

Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives

Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives

High Frequency Edge Information-based Sampling Algorithm for Multi-scale Block Compressive Sensing

The same sampling rate is applied to all subblocks of the same layer, which results in the deviation of the information contained in the sampling observation in the multi-scale block compressive sensing algorithm from the real information of the original image, thus affecting the accuracy of image reconstruction. For this reason, the multi-scale block compressive sensing adaptive sampling method (HEM) using HF edge information is proposed. In this method, the edge information is extracted by using the high frequency coefficients of wavelet transform, and then the edge information of the subblock of wavelet decomposition graph is calculated, and then converted into the adaptive sampling rate of each subblock. The influence of different decomposition layers and block sizes on HEM method is discussed through testing in 6 standard images. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can improve the PSNR of the reconstructed image at the same sampling rate on standard test images and cable trench inspection images. Among them, Stanwick image(S=0.1 and S=0.2), Russland image(S=0.3) and Stomach CT image(S=0.4) are partial exceptions.

Being realistic and demanding the impossible

Characterising realism by contrasting it with moralism leaves open several questions to do with realism’s practical import. If political judgment is not to be derived — exclusively or at all — from pre-political moral commitments, what scope is there for genuinely normative political thinking? And even if there is some scope for political normativity, does realism’s reliance on interpretations of political practices condemn it to some form of status quo bias? In this paper I address those questions. My main aim is to assuage some worries about realism’s alleged conservative tendencies. I argue that there is an important sense in which realists can support radical and even unachievable political change — one can be realistic and demand the impossible, as the soixante- huitard slogan goes. To see how that may be the case one needs to characterise realism by contrasting it with both non-ideal theory and utopianism. In a nutshell, realism differs from non- ideal theory because it need not be concerned with feasibility constraints, and it differs from utopianism because it eschews detailed blueprints of the perfect polity.

The forest transformation: Planted tree cover and regional dynamics of tree gains and losses

Extensions of forest-transition theory to the tropics often depict sustained expansions of planted tree cover and corresponding long-term net gains in total tree cover. To explore the patterns and implications of continued tropical planted tree-cover expansion, we profiled sequences of tree-cover change over 1990–2010 according to Landsat imagery for recently observed (ca. 2014) planted tree-cover areas in 11 tropical countries. Alternative patterns of change emerged from these analyses. Termed the ‘reforestation treadmill’ and ‘forest transformation’ narratives, planted tree-cover change featured relatively ephemeral planted covers, modest net gains, and similar tree-cover change dynamics compared to nearby agricultural-forest mosaics. Planted areas were characterised not by unambiguous reforestation but rather combinations of tree-cover losses and gains, with losses typically being more prominent. Contemporary gains and losses during 5–10-year periods regularly distinguished planted areas from non-planted areas, with losses being 1.5–2.3 times more common than gains. Planted areas were only moderately distinguishable from non-planted areas overall with respect to tree-cover change dynamics. Relationships between tree-cover change and the export orientations of planted tree/tree-crop commodities were also examined. Greater export orientations did not significantly associate with tree-cover loss or larger planted patches, with partial exceptions for Southeast Asia. Regional disparities in planted tree-cover dynamics were apparent. In Southeast Asia, dominated by Indonesia, tree-cover declines in planted areas since 1990 were relatively pronounced (20% of planted areas), particularly with respect to progressive transitions from tree cover to cleared lands. Planted areas there were generally indistinguishable from nearby non-planted areas with respect to historical tree-cover change dynamics. In contrast, in South America, dominated by Brazil, tree-cover increases in planted areas since 1990 were more appreciable (at least 14% of planted areas), with most being progressive, stable, ‘net’ increases (10% of planted areas) and the remainder being dynamic increases entailing short-term losses since 1990 (4% of planted areas). Total tree-cover increases within South American planted areas were equal to or greater than total decreases since 1990. These patterns suggest a forest-transformation narrative in which major planted-area expansion occurs alongside minor net tree-cover change. This narrative appears particularly well suited to Southeast Asia, where planted areas are extensive and expansive but where net tree cover gains are tenuous, reflecting political-economic shifts in forest management and the devaluation of extensive, degraded natural forests.

Big Data for Social Science Research

Academic studies exploiting novel data sources are scarce. Typically, data is generated by commercial businesses or government organizations with no mandate and little motivation to share their assets with academic partners---partial exceptions include social messaging data and some sources of open data. The mobilization of citizen sensors at a massive scale has allowed for the development of impressive infrastructures. However, data availability is driving applications---problems are prioritized because data is available rather than because they are inherently important or interesting. The U.K. is addressing this through investments by the Economic and Social Research Council in its Big Data Network. A group of Administrative Data Research Centres are tasked with improving access to data sets in central government, while a group of Business and Local Government Centres are tasked with improving access to commercial and regional sources. This initiative is described. It is illustrated by examples from health care, transport, and infrastructure. In all of these cases, the integration of data is a key consideration. For social science problems relevant to policy or academic studies, it is unlikely all the answers will be found in a single novel data source, but rather a combination of sources is required. Through such synthesis great leaps are possible by exploiting models that have been constructed and refined over extended periods of time e.g., microsimulation, spatial interaction models, agents, discrete choice, and input-output models. Although interesting and valuable new methods are appearing, any suggestion that a new box of magic tricks labeled "Big Data Analytics" that sits easily on top of massive new datasets can radically and instantly transform our long-term understanding of society is naïve and dangerous. Furthermore, the privacy and confidentiality of personal data is a great concern to both the individuals concerned and the data owners.

“He Fathers-Forth Whose Beauty Is Past Change,” but “Who Knows How?”: Evolution and Divine Exemplarity

“He Fathers-Forth Whose Beauty Is Past Change,” but “Who Knows How?”:Evolution and Divine Exemplarity Andrew Davison Writing rapidly in pencil in 1842, Charles Darwin produced a sketch of ideas that would grow to become his The Origin of Species.1 Much that would revolutionize our understanding of biology was already present, not least his conclusion that “specific forms are not immutable.”2 In this article, I consider how that mutability bears upon the theological conviction that every creature is related to God as a likeness to its exemplar, drawing particularly on the work of Thomas Aquinas. It is clear from a letter dated January 11 of 1844 that Darwin saw his insight as a disruptive one, writing to his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker that “I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.”3 Theologians before Darwin had little reason to doubt that species, or kinds, were fixed and stable, created by God alongside one another at the beginning. Aquinas expresses such assumptions, writing that, in nature, “like is produced from like,” proceeding right back to “the first production of corporeal creatures,” when “the corporeal forms [End Page 1067] that bodies had … came immediately from God.”4 In the same section of the Summa theologiae, however, we find the suggestion of a dynamism in relation to specific kinds that we should also consider.5 At the very least, Aquinas was willing to entertain that the earth was only gradually populated with living things, with God having first created the fixed forms of organisms as “seeds” that were later realized, not all at once.6 In his discussion of the work of the third day, Aquinas notes two contrasting Patristic perspectives without choosing one over the other. One looks more like what we might imagine as the classic pre-Darwinian view: “The first constitution of species belongs to the work of the six days, but the reproduction among them of like from like, [belongs] to the [subsequent] government of the universe.” The alternative perspective is of creatures having been produced only latently to start with, in their underlying causes: “The earth is said to have then produced plants and trees in their causes, that is, it received then the power to produce them…. They were not produced in act on the third day, but in their causes only.”7 Even according to that second perspective God ceased from making new sorts of things after the six days of creation,8 although even that rule admits partial exceptions, such as putrefaction and [End Page 1068] hybridization, of which Aquinas writes about “species, also, that are new, if any such appear.” He goes on to provide examples: “Animals, and perhaps even new species of animals, are produced by putrefaction,” and “animals of new kinds arise occasionally from the connection of individuals belonging to different species, as the mule is the offspring of an ass and a mare.”9 Here, effects (such as the mule) are manifested that nonetheless “existed previously” in causes produced “in the works of the six days.” Overall, then, we encounter a balance between some admission of novelty in later history and the sense of an unfolding of what was conferred “causally” beforehand. Both novelty and unfolding are found in a discussion in De potentia: “The universe in its beginning was perfect as regards the species of things, but not as regards all individuals: or [it was perfect] as regards nature’s causes from which afterwards other things could be propagated, but not as regards all their effects.”10 Approached in terms of species and individuals, the emphasis is on a fixed number of unchanging species, but analysis in terms of causes that unfold in their effects is considerably more open to an evolutionary interpretation and to developing species. In summary, the least evolutionary perspective in Aquinas aligns with his statement that “the first members of the species were immediately created by God, such as the first man, the first lion, and so forth.”11 Divine exemplarity would then come through the initial creation of the first examples: “[At] the first production of corporeal...

A study on coarticulatory resistance and aggressiveness for front lingual consonants and vowels using ultrasound

A new method for quantifying contextual variability at different regions of the tongue using ultrasound spline data reveals that tongue body coarticulatory resistance for Catalan consonants and vowels in VCV sequences decreases in the progression [ʎ, ɲ, ʃ] > [s, r] > [l, ɾ, t, n] > [ð] and [i, e] > [a] > [o] > [u]. These consonant and vowel hierarchies support the degree of articulatory constraint model of coarticulation according to which coarticulatory resistance depends on whether a given lingual region is involved in the formation of a closure or constriction and on the severity of the manner of articulation requirements. Data show that this coarticulatory scenario holds not only at the palatal zone, as revealed by previous coarticulation studies, but at the velar and pharyngeal zones as well. Partial exceptions are [s] and [i], which may allow for some more contextual variability than expected at the back of the vocal tract. Another major finding is that tongue body coarticulatory resistance and aggressiveness are highly positively correlated. The implications of these experimental results for speech production organization and sound change are discussed.

Spiking network modeling of neuronal dynamics in individual rats

Many researchers base their neuronal models on experimental data, but few systematically calibrate to it, and even fewer use unpooled data from multiple subjects. Some (partial) exceptions are [1], where one model parameter was calibrated to data pooled across four macaques; and [2], where five model parameters were calibrated to unpooled data from 292 humans. To our knowledge, no one has previously calibrated spiking network models to individual subjects - likely because a single model iteration typically takes considerable computational time, compounded by the formidable number of iterations required to perform optimizations on a statistically meaningful number of subjects. In this study, we calibrate and validate a mesoscopic spiking network model against data from individual rats, then use these fits to infer differences in the rats' physiologies. We recorded data from microelectrode arrays implanted in the somatosensory cortices of nine male rats, each of whom received touch stimuli to his left forepaw. The spiking network models consisted of 20,000 Izhikevich neurons, representing a 2x2 mm patch of cortex sampled at approximately 10% true cell density, with cell types (15 across six layers) and connectivities based on empirical data. We calibrated key model parameters (including connection probability and weight, tonic background activity, and the ratio of thalamic to cortical input) to experimental data (including average firing rates and coefficients of variation) using a nonlinear optimization algorithm [3]. The calibrations were validated using the exponents of the local field potential (LFP) power spectra from 5-50 Hz, which were not used for calibration. Changes in the information processing properties of the (simulated) networks were then quantified via interlaminar Granger causality. Experimentally, we found large differences between subjects. Cortical firing rates varied from 3.8 Hz to 19.6 Hz (median 11.9 Hz); coefficients of variation, 0.4 to 1.2 (median 0.9); and peristimulus time histogram peak amplitudes, 48 Hz to 73 Hz (median 62 Hz). Inter-subject differences were significantly greater than intra-subject differences across both sessions and electrodes. The calibrated models reproduced experimental data with an average mismatch of 16%, compared to 30% when uncalibrated. Experimentally, the LFP power spectra exponents varied from -1.4 to -2.7 (median -2.2). While the models had uniformly steeper exponents (range -2.8 to -3.6), calibration reduced mismatch in eight of the nine subjects. Inter-subject differences could be largely accounted for by differences in average synaptic connection probability (which varied by a mean of 24% between subjects, compared to <8% for other fitted parameters). Parameter differences produced changes in how these networks process information - for example, there were significant and complex differences in the patterns of interlaminar information flow between subjects, including reversals in the dominant direction of information flow for some layer pairs. In summary, we found that (1) significant differences exist between individual subjects, (2) these differences can be captured by calibrating spiking network models to data from each individual, and (3) modeling suggests that these differences affect how individuals process information across cortical layers.

Meiotic genes and sexual reproduction in the green algal class Trebouxiophyceae (Chlorophyta)

Sexual reproduction is widespread in eukaryotes and is well documented in chlorophytan green algae. In this lineage, however, the Trebouxiophyceae represent a striking exception: in contrast to its relatives Chlorophyceae and Ulvophyceae this group appears to be mostly asexual, as fertilization has been rarely observed. Assessments of sexual reproduction in the Trebouxiophyceae have been based on microscopic observation of gametes fusing. New genomic data offer now the opportunity to check for the presence of meiotic genes, which represent an indirect evidence of a sexual life cycle. Using genomic and transcriptomic data for 12 taxa spanning the phylogenetic breadth of the class, we tried to clarify whether genuine asexuality or cryptic sexuality is the most likely case for the numerous putatively asexual trebouxiophytes. On the basis of these data and a bibliographic review, we conclude that the view of trebouxiophytes as primarily asexual is incorrect. In contrast to the limited number of reports of fertilization, meiotic genes were found in all genomes and transcriptomes examined, even in species presumed asexual. In the taxa examined the totality or majority of the genes were present, Helicosporidium and Auxenochlorella being the only partial exceptions (only four genes present). The evidence of sex provided by the meiotic genes is phylogenetically widespread in the class and indicates that sexual reproduction is not associated with any particular morphological or ecological trait. On the basis of the results, we expect that the existence of the meiotic genes will be documented in all trebouxiophycean genomes that will become available in the future.

Charm Offensive Or 'Axis Of Evil'? An Analysis Of The Iranian Nuclear Program And American Responses

This paper assesses the likelihood that Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to American foreign-policy interests and the extent to which the American response has succeeded in reducing this threat. The researcher conducted this assessment using publicly available data from governmental or intergovernmental agencies such as the IAEA and the CIA, think tanks such as the Brookings Institute, and contemporary press reports. The findings indicate that Iran’s nuclear program has some military aspects, which might pose a threat to American security interests either by emboldening the Iranian leadership to engage in brinksmanship or by increasing the Israeli perception of Iran as a threat. This threat appears to be exacerbated by the failure of most American responses to reduce the threat from the nuclear program, with the partial exceptions of the sanctions regimes and cyberwarfare tactics applied to Iran. In 2009, an Iranian nuclear scientist named Shahram Amiri vanished while on a pilgrimage to Mecca, raising suspicions in the Iranian media that he had been kidnapped. They were proved partially right after Amiri turned up in Tucson claiming to be a defector. The resulting cascade of media claims and counterclaims—Amiri later claimed to have been kidnapped, while Iranian media suggested that he was a double agent-was one of many moves in a key part of American foreign policy: the shadow war over Iran’s nuclear program. The Iranian nuclear program dates back to the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi, during the alliance between the United States and Iran. However, this program was continued well after Pahlavi’s reign and into the strongly anti-American government of the Ayatollah Khomeini. 2 In spite of Iranian claims to the contrary, international intelligence agencies therefore have long suspected that Iran’s post-Pahlavi nuclear program may have a military purpose. Consequently, the questions of greatest concern regarding Iran’s nuclear program are: 1) “Does Iran’s nuclear program pose a threat to American interests?” and 2) “What responses are most likely to have a 1 Crist, David. The Twilight War: The Secret History Of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict With Iran. 2012. Penguin. Pg.554. 2 Berman, Illan. Tehran Rising: Iran’s Challenge To The United States. 2005. Rowan & Littlefield, Oxford. Pg. 32. 3 Amano, Yuki. “IAEA Board Report.” 5 June 2013. IAEA. http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2013/gov2013-27.pdf Pg. 13. 1 Menon: The Iranian Nuclear Program And American Responses, 2000-2012

An 80‐year record of sediment quality in the lower Mississippi River

AbstractIn 1937, the US Army Corps of Engineers cut through the “neck” of a large meander on the lower Mississippi River (below the confluence with the Ohio River) forming the Caulk Neck cutoff and creating Lake Whittington, a 26‐km long oxbow lake, in northern Mississippi. Since 1938, seasonal flooding and a boat channel connecting the lake with the Mississippi River have led to sediment accumulation in the lake, resulting in an 80‐year record of sediment quality in the river. On the basis of an age‐dated sediment core from the lake, trends in trace metals and hydrophobic organic compounds (except polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) follow well‐known patterns with upward trends from the 1930s to the ca 1970s, followed by downward trends to the present. Two factors contribute to these patterns: reservoir construction and changes in emissions. The construction of seven large reservoirs on the Missouri River, in particular the closure of the Fort Randall (1953) and Gavins Point (1955) Dams, greatly reduced the load of relatively clean sediment to the Mississippi River, likely contributing to downstream increases in contaminant concentrations in the Mississippi River. Increasing anthropogenic emissions also contributed to upward trends until ca 1970 when major environmental policy actions began resulting in broad decreases in emissions and downward trends in the concentrations of most of the contaminants monitored. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and phosphorus are partial exceptions to this pattern, with increases to the 1960s and variable concentrations showing no clear trend since. Published 2012. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Hong Kong as an Emerging IPO Center and the International Dimension of its Stock Market

The Hong Kong stock market is the third-largest exchange by market capitalization and the second-largest by number of total listings in Asia-Pacific. It attracts investors locally, from within, and from outside Asia. Overseas investors account for approximately 40% of overall participation in the Hong Kong securities market since 2000. This thriving market lures numerous Chinese companies to launch their IPOs in it, and thereby became the top IPO fundraising center in 2009. Despite the negative impact from the debt crisis, the future development of the market seems promising, as the amount of IPOs fundraised thus far this year is about $3.7 billion and several firms are ready to float in Hong Kong later in the year.But this is only what a bird’s eyes view reveals. Drilling deeper, a different picture emerges, one where the Hong Kong stock market, rather global as it is in its investor base, is revealed as not being very international in its listings, its longer-term position being therefore less than very firm as other exchanges in the region continue to outpace it in key respects and as the mainland’s economy and policies continue to develop and open up. Three central issue areas are particularly worth focusing on:Composition of stock market participants. Foreign participation is high in Hong Kong, as is true also in most East Asian stock markets. This both leads to and results from the region having efficient platform and information systems, well trained and experienced professionals, and good regulatory frameworks. The Tokyo Stock Exchange, largest in the region and one of the largest in the world, also has the most international investor base among the region’s major exchanges—dominated by foreign investors to the tune of a 56% share. Hong Kong, while somewhat behind on this indicator, is also rather international in its investor base, with overseas investors’ participation in Hong Kong standing at a high 40% which has been stable over time. The Korean stock market has 32.6% investors from overseas. Foreign listings. Despite partial exceptions provided by the Australian and Singapore stock exchanges, Asian stock exchanges tend to have very few foreign listings compared to their counterparts in Europe and North America. Out of the 1321 companies listed on the Hong Kong Exchange by April 2010, 253 companies are from China and only 11 companies are from overseas. This demonstrates the limited external dimension of the Hong Kong stock exchange. For Hong Kong to transit to become a truly international financial center in the medium- or long-term, its stock market needs to have more foreign listings, which in turn requires modifications on primary listing, secondary listing, post listing and international listing rules.Resources companies. A recent trend in the resources sector has been the migration of new listings from producer countries’ to consumer countries’ exchanges—or more specifically to Hong Kong as the gateway to China. Being part of China, the world’s second largest resources consumption country, Hong Kong has thus far been successful in positioning itself as an emerging resources center in East Asia. Initially serving as a venue for Chinese resources companies to raise funds and for foreign investors to tap into the Chinese resources sector, two newcomer resource companies began to float in Hong Kong this January: UC Rusal from Russia and Canadian-based SouthGobi. The resources sector is a niche Hong Kong should seek t establish and develop, as Hong Kong has great potential to be a global mining financing center. But a complex sector it is as resource companies often have a high risk profile: indeed, out of concerns over investor protection and the lack of policies governing the junior resources sector, early-stage exploration companies are not allowed to list in Hong Kong unless they prove the existence of exploitable natural resource reserves and provide a clear production plan. But the potential the sector offers is huge, and with the Hong Kong stock market dominated by financial and property companies, participation from resources companies would help diversify it. Current listing rules for resources companies have to be updated and modernized and the sector also needs assistance from the local authority to conduct more marketing activities.

Ruling the Arab Internet: An Analysis of Internet Ownership Trends of Six Arab Countries

This body of research focused on answering the questions, “who owns Arab Internet media?” and “what are the implications of this ownership?” Grounding our theoretical framework within the Agenda–Setting Theory of McComb &amp; Shaw (1972), we conducted a critical empirical analysis scrutinizing major Internet service provider websites from six Arab countries: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, and looked specifically for trends such as monopolies, oligarchies, and investment in telecommunications companies by foreign and regional entities. Our results indicated that the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia are highly invested in Arab telecommunications. Furthermore, there is a strong economic and political link between Egypt, the U.A.E., Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and an interconnection exists between companies from these countries. Other Arab countries such as Kuwait and Bahrain are also investing in regional ISPs. There is limited investment from outside the region, but Orange Telecom (the commercial brand of France Telecom) dominates this foreign investment. The results also indicate that although there are no monopolies (with the partial exceptions of Bahrain and Syria), there are emerging oligopolies of Arab Internet media, specifically growing individually out of each of the countries we examined. Implications for these results indicate that inter–country oligopolies may potentially develop as more regional investors take control of Internet companies, and as more connections are made (such as with the Hariri family or other political and economic leaders, Saudi Oger, the Saudi Telecom Company, and the connection between Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia), more influence on control and regulation—as well as what is regulated and controlled—will be exerted.

The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792-1850: The 'Heathen' at Home and Overseas

The concept of a civilising mission, which was so central to the religious discourse of the English middle class in the early nineteenth century, had a dual reference. It was applied interchangeably to two tasks: that of bringing the Christian gospel to the ‘heathen’ overseas; and the parallel enterprise of reaching those sections of the working classes closer to home whose irreligion and lack of civilisation appeared no less marked than those which characterised the Hottentot or South Sea Islander. Surprisingly few historians have taken this duality seriously by attempting to produce integrated studies of the interrelationship of overseas and domestic Christian philanthropy, although Frank Prochaska, Susan Thorne, and Catherine Hall are at least partial exceptions. Alison Twells's book stands out by the consistency with which it pursues the evidence (ignored by most imperial historians) that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the language of savagery and civilisation was, at least in principle, racially neutral. Hannah and Patty More in the 1790s were shocked to find the poor of the Mendips no less savage than they imagined the aboriginal inhabitants of Botany Bay or Sierra Leone to be, and in 1804 the Methodist missionary advocate, Thomas Coke, described the Scottish highlanders and islanders as ‘little better than the rudest barbarians’.

Offshoring and Wage Inequality: Using Occupational Licensing as a Shifter of Offshoring Costs

Changes in information and communication technologies have increased the offshorability of tasks. As routine tasks (Pol Antras, Luis Garicano and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2006) and lower offshoring-cost tasks (Gene Grossman and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2008) move abroad, production processes become increasingly fragmented. Recent empirical papers (e.g., Mary Amiti and Shang-Jin Wei, 2005; Runjuan Liu and Daniel Trefler, 2008; Rosario Crino, forthcoming) have aimed to illuminate the extent to which this is the case, and the consequences of such changes. A finding of this literature is that offshoring hurts disproportionately lower skill occupations, and those occupations that are more tradable. However, this literature has been hampered by the difficulty of finding a good proxy for offshoring costs. To measure the effect of offshoring on workers, one would ideally want to increase offshorability of some tasks and not others, and then compare the resulting changes in wages and employment in the occupations performing the tasks that are offshored with the ones that are not. Instead, the literature has relied on proxies that are more or less directly linked to the skill content of the occupation and that, as a result, confound the effect of production technology and of offshoring cost. There exist some partial exceptions, such as J. Bradford Jensen and Lori G. Kletzer (2005), who argue that if a service is Offshoring and Wage Inequality: Using Occupational Licensing as a Shifter of Offshoring Costs

Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Mashriq

AS IS WELL KNOWN, the long arm of the Arab-Israeli conflict reached far beyond the geographical borders of Palestine. Prior to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, somewhere between 700,000 and 850,000 Jews lived in inveterate communities spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa. By the end of the century, all the historic communities of the region (with the partial exceptions of Morocco and Iran) were to meet a single fate - dislocation and dispersal - effectively vanishing with nary a trace left in their countries of origin. These were indigenous communities (in some cases, present in area for millennia) whose unique, syncretic cultures have since been completely expunged as a result of emigration - whether to Israel, where they were subjected to a systematic program of deracmation and resocialization, or to the West, where in most places Jewish more or less synonymous with Ashkenazi and the concept of Jews from the world (and remains) little known or understood. The disappearance of the dialects of spoken Arabic, of written Judeo-Arabic, and, more recently, of the last generation of writers of literary Arabic, all silently sound the death knell of a certain world - that which S. D. Goitein dubbed the Jewish-Arab symbiosis, and that which Ammiel Alcalay sought to recapture in his groundbreaking book After Jews and Arabs.1This essay is concerned not only with this displaced population and its lost history but principally with the evocation of both subjects through a concept gaining increasing acceptance and purchase in academic discourse, namely, the Arab Jew. Numerically, the total population of Middle Eastern and North African Jews prior to 1948 hovers under the million mark, and this is perhaps one of the reasons its historic experience has been so eclipsed by the cataclysmic events that befell European Jewry in the twentieth century. Yet due to its historic location betwixt and between things Jewish and things Arab, this population's symbolic importance belies its small numbers. Whichever way you look at it, the not-so-simple fact of Jews who are or Arabs who are raises all sorts of problems and possibilities ripe for exploration, interpretation, and manipulation - and people are beginning to notice. Paradoxically, even as so much of language, culture, and historic memory slips away like gossamer threads carried off on the wind of a quickly receding past, the reappropriation - some might even say the commodification - of the Arab (now as a largely symbolic figure) accelerates in kind. The renewed interest in the figure of the Jew and in the lost past is perhaps best evidenced by the multilingual swell of documentary films, memoirs, novels, and even cookbooks-cum-community histories (which I call culinary nostalgia) produced by Jews and their descendants (primarily from Iraq and Egypt) in recent years.2 At the same time, as Emily Gottreich points out in her essay, the political capital of the Jew has not gone unrecognized by activists from either right or left.5The term Arab was in fact reclaimed by scholars such Ella Shohat, Sami Shalom Chetrit, and Yehouda Shenhav as part of a political project of intervention into the normative terms of Zionist discourse.4 This project evolved from a history of Mizrahi activism, which began as a protest movement responding to the discriminatory economic, social, and cultural treatment of Mizrahim (non-European Jews) in Israel.5 Shohat's pivotal 1988 article Sephardim in Israel6 emerged at a moment of symbiotic activity between activism and scholarship, but the past decade or so has witnessed what Moshe Behar calls the academization of the Mizrahi cause.7 Although scholarly research on the history of Jews in the Middle East and North Africa has of course been carried out by scholars in Israel, Europe, and North America for several decades, it has been conducted largely in isolation from the Mizrahi issue and its scholarly outgrowth. …