The Past as Future

As soon as man began to record information, he faced two questions: how to find material that was durable enough to preserve his message, and how to find material that was easy to handle, could be drawn on quickly and could be carried with ease. Stone seemed to be the least perishable substance, but while it was ideal for monuments in honor of gods or rulers, it certainly was not practical for business transactions or scholarly pursuits. Thus, from the beginning of writing to our day, those who have been concerned with communication - publishers, librarians and all who write or use books - have been concerned with these two issues: durability and mobility

Assessing potential soil microbial “priming effects” on N2O emissions as a result of a fertilizer change-over from long-term manure applications to urea

Non-Peer Reviewe

Priming of soil microbial communities for N2O emissions in a long-term manure agricultural system with a change in nitrogen source

Non-Peer Reviewe

Theology for Freedom and Responsibility: Rudolf Bultmann\u27s Views on Church and State

This article is adapted from an address that Antje Lemke gave on the life and contributions of her father, Rudolph Bultmann. He was a prominent Protestant theologian, having grown up before Hitler\u27s rise to power, and Bultmann witnessed how the Nazis manipulated the Church to try to gain support for their devious political goals. He joined the voices that spoke out against this fusion of national corruption with the Church. After World War II, he became involved in debates concerning political and liberation theology

An atomic clock with 10−1810^{-18} instability

Atomic clocks have been transformational in science and technology, leading to innovations such as global positioning, advanced communications, and tests of fundamental constant variation. Next-generation optical atomic clocks can extend the capability of these timekeepers, where researchers have long aspired toward measurement precision at 1 part in $\bm{10^{18}}$. This milestone will enable a second revolution of new timing applications such as relativistic geodesy, enhanced Earth- and space-based navigation and telescopy, and new tests on physics beyond the Standard Model. Here, we describe the development and operation of two optical lattice clocks, both utilizing spin-polarized, ultracold atomic ytterbium. A measurement comparing these systems demonstrates an unprecedented atomic clock instability of $\bm{1.6\times 10^{-18}}$ after only $\bm{7}$ hours of averaging

William Caxton—The Beginning of Printing in England

The year 1977 marked the five-hundredth anniversary of the first book printed in England, William Caxton\u27s edition of Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers, in his own English translation, an event which was celebrated in many parts of the English-speaking world. Two of the rarest fifteenth-century items in Special Collections at Syracuse University are from Caxton\u27s press: Caxton\u27s own translation of Virgil\u27s The Boke of Eneydos (Aeneid), printed about 1490, and an English translation of Cicero\u27s essays, De Senectude and De Amicitia in one volume (1481). Caxton had a sense of the importance of print which deserves attention today, as our mass communications media multiply. Printing is as essential to our civilization as it is pervasive. Compared to the ephemeral qualities of audio and visual communications, the permanence of print gives the printer/publisher a responsibility which Caxton recognized five hundered years ago

Empirical Evidences for Urban Influences on Public Health in Hamburg

Abstract: From the current perspectives of urban health and environmental justice research, health is the result of a combination of individual, social and environmental factors. Yet, there are only few attempts to determine their joint influence on health and well-being. Grounded in debates surrounding conceptual models and based on a data set compiled for the city of Hamburg, this paper aims to provide insights into the most important variables influencing urban health. Theoretically, we are primarily referring to the conceptual model of health-related urban well-being (UrbWellth), which systemizes urban influences in four sectors. The systematization of the conceptual model is empirically confirmed by a principal component analysis: the factors derived from the data correspond well with the deductively derived model. Additionally, a multiple linear regression analysis was used to identify the most important variables influencing the participant’s self-rated health (SRH): rating of one’s social network, rating of neighborhood air quality, rating of neighborhood health infrastructure, heat stress (day/outdoors), cold stress (night/indoors). When controlling for age, income and smoking behavior, these variables explain 12% of the variance of SRH. Thus, these results support the concept of UrbWellth empirically. Finally, the study design helped to identify hotspots with negative impact on SRH within the research areas

Do Estate and Gift Taxes Affect the Timing of Private Transfers?

Proposals to alter the estate tax are contentious and have been debated largely in an empirical vacuum. This paper examines time series and cross-sectional variation to identify the effects of gift and estate taxation on the timing of private transfers. The analysis is based on data from the 1989, 1992, 1995, and 1998 waves of the Surveys of Consumer Finances. Legislative activity during this period reduced the tax disadvantage of bequests relative to gifts. Moreover, the magnitude of this reduction differed systematically across identifiable household categories. We find that households experiencing larger declines in the expected tax disadvantages of bequests substantially reduced inter vivos transfers relative to households experiencing small declines in the tax disadvantages of bequests. This implies that the timing of transfers is highly responsive to applicable gift and estate tax rates. These conclusions are based both on simple comparisons of the probability of giving across different time periods and groups, and on empirical specifications that control for a variety of potentially confounding factors, such as systematic changes in the fraction of wealth attributable to unrealized capital gains. The results also provide evidence of a systematic bequest motive for some high-wealth households.

Could the Ultra Metal-poor Stars be Chemically Peculiar and Not Related to the First Stars?

Chemically peculiar stars define a class of stars that show unusual elemental abundances due to stellar photospheric effects and not due to natal variations. In this paper, we compare the elemental abundance patterns of the ultra metal-poor stars with metallicities [Fe/H] $\sim -5$ to those of a subclass of chemically peculiar stars. These include post-AGB stars, RV Tauri variable stars, and the Lambda Bootis stars, which range in mass, age, binarity, and evolutionary status, yet can have iron abundance determinations as low as [Fe/H] $\sim -5$. These chemical peculiarities are interpreted as due to the separation of gas and dust beyond the stellar surface, followed by the accretion of dust depleted-gas. Contrary to this, the elemental abundances in the ultra metal-poor stars are thought to represent yields of the most metal-poor supernova and, therefore, observationally constrain the earliest stages of chemical evolution in the Universe. The abundance of the elements in the photospheres of the ultra metal-poor stars appear to be related to the condensation temperature of that element; if so, then their CNO abundances suggest true metallicities of [X/H]~ -2 to -4, rather than their present metallicities of [Fe/H] < -5.Comment: Accepted for ApJ. 17 pages, 10 figure

The paradox of tenant empowerment: regulatory and liberatory possibilities

Tenant empowerment has traditionally been regarded as a means of realising democratic ideals: a quantitative increase in influence and control, which thereby enables "subjects" to acquire the fundamental properties of "citizens". By contrast governmentality, as derived from the work of Michel Foucault, offers a more critical appraisal of the concept of empowerment by highlighting how it is itself a mode of subjection and a means of regulating human conduct towards particular ends. Drawing on particular data about how housing governance has changed in Glasgow following its 2003 stock transfer, this paper adopts the insights of governmentality to illustrate how the political ambition of "community ownership" has been realized through the mobilization and shaping of active tenant involvement in the local decision making process. In addition, it also traces the tensions and conflict inherent in the reconfiguration of power relations post-transfer for "subjects" do not necessarily conform to the plans of those that seek to govern them