bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A new native EcHsp31 structure suggests a key role of structural flexibility for chaperone function
Authors: Quigley Paulene M. , Korotkov Konstantin , Baneyx François , Hol Wim G.J.
Published: December 2003

Heat shock proteins and proteases play a crucial role in cell survival under conditions of environmental stress. The heat shock protein Hsp31, produced by gene hchA at elevated temperatures in Escherichia coli, is a homodimeric protein consisting of a large A domain and a smaller P domain connected by a linker. Two catalytic triads are present per dimer, with the Cys and His contributed by the A domain and an Asp by the P domain. A new crystal Form II confirms the dimer and catalytic triad arrangement seen in the earlier crystal Form I. In addition, several loops exhibit increased flexibility compared to the previous Hsp31 dimer structure. In particular, loops D2 and D3 are intriguing because their mobility leads to the exposure of a sizable hydrophobic patch made up by surface areas of both subunits near the dimer interface. The residues creating this hydrophobic surface are completely conserved in the Hsp31 family. At the same time, access to the catalytic triad is increased. These observations lead to the hypothesis for the functioning of Hsp31 wherein loops D2 and D3 play a key role: first, at elevated temperatures, by becoming mobile and uncovering a large hydrophobic area that helps in binding to client proteins, and second, by removing the client protein from the hydrophobic patch when the temperature decreases and the loops adopt their low‐temperature positions at the Hsp31 surface. The proposed mode of action of flexible loops in the functioning of Hsp31 may be a general principle employed by other chaperones.
Fragonard and the Blindman’s Game: Interpreting representations of blindman’s buff
Authors: Milam Jennifer
Published: December 2003

This article focuses on Fragonard’s five depictions of blindman’s buff painted between 1750 and 1780. The aims are twofold. Firstly, to reconsider the traditional emblematics of the subject matter in light of changing estimations of the roles of passion and love in courtship and marriage, and a revitalized interest in pastoral games as an elite alternative to gambling. Careful readings of texts by Rousseau, Diderot, Caraccioli and Dusaulx, among others, afford these new perspectives. Secondly, to explore the formal variations of Fragonard’s scenes as attempts to resist the constraints placed upon interpretation by the fixed message of an emblematic cliché inherited from Le Bas, Watteau, Pater and Lancret. Visual analyses of Fragonard’s paintings yield intriguing implications for art‐making and viewing contained within the blindman’s game. Positing a vital relationship between context, content and form, his images urge us to pay attention to multiple meanings and to contemplate the necessity of feigning blindness as part of the aesthetic experience in order to reach the imagination, to stimulate sensation and to struggle with interpretation.
Neoplatonism and Geometry in Islamic Art
Authors: Powell Ann
Published: December 2003

Gu¨lru Necipo˘lu The Topkapı Scroll — Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture
Art and Illusion
Authors: Taylor Paul
Published: December 2003

Celeste Brusati, Artifice and Illusion: The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten
Painting in Theory
Authors: Harris Jonathan
Published: December 2003

Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. & Franklin Kelly, Winslow Homer

Patricia M. Burnham & Lucretia Hoover Giese (eds), Redefining American Histroy Painting

Alexander Nemerov, Frederic Remington and Turn‐of‐the‐Century America

Patricia Trenton (ed), Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945

Rebecca Zurier, Robert W. Snyder and Virginia Mecklenburg, Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York
Aspects of the Critical Reception and Intellectual History of Baxandall’s Concept of the Period Eye
Authors: Langdale Allan
Published: December 2003

This article firstly traces a range of critical reception to Michael Baxandall’s concept of the Period Eye, which he articulated in his 1972 book Painting and Experience in Fifteenth‐Century Italy; secondly, the piece examines various aspects of the intellectual history of the concept through consideration of some of Baxandall’s sources and comparisons with other art‐historical works which test similar methodological terrain, such as Panofsky’s Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism and the ‘Beholder's Share’ section of Gombrich’s Art and Illusion.

The article takes the Period Eye as a case through which to explore how different art‐historical camps evaluated the concept in the 1970s, crucial as it was as a novel approach to the idea of a social history of art. While Gombrich and Marxist art historians were suspicious of the Period Eye, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz thought Baxandall’s elaboration exemplary, as did the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The immediate and enduring popularity of the book, progenitor of the notion of visual culture, makes it a significant marker in the anthropological turn art history took in the 1970s and 1980s.
Last Words (Rilke, Wittgenstein) (Duchamp)
Authors: Nesbit Molly
Published: December 2003

Starting out from a casual remark attributed to Michael Baxandall, his wishing ‘to redo Roger Fry from nature’, the article sets up a dialogue between Marcel Duchamp and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This takes place on the grounds of their understanding of the relation between language and nature on the one hand and a possible interweaving of each others epistemology on the other. Without further referring to Michael Baxandall himself, this interplay sets out a means of thinking through his art‐historical problematics in what amounts to a parable of the coming to visual knowledge. Duchamp and Wittgenstein slide between positions and possibilities in a play of uncertainty in which neither that which can be positively known nor the object of speculation can be endowed with any privilege in art's discourses.
Women under the gaze: a Renaissance genealogy
Authors: Berdini Paolo
Published: December 2003

In a preliminary excursus, Michael Baxandall’s concept of the ‘period eye’ is subject to both a positive and a critical assessment as a means of moving beyond the problematics of traditional iconography. Suggesting that the oversight of gender and sexual difference in the ways in which the concept has been put to work is structural rather than incidental, the article considers a series of stages in the representation of the female in Renaissance and post‐Renaissance European art as overdetermined by fundamental processes of the theological exegesis of the scriptural figure of woman. The ‘period eye’ is thus subjected to a critical assessment over a relatively long term of art historical methodologies.
Ingres's Reading – The Undoing of Narrative
Authors: Siegfried Susan L.
Published: December 2003

Ingres's reading of key classical texts, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516), Dante's Inferno (1314), and Virgil's Aeneid (19 BC), is regarded as fundamental to understanding his material attempts to visualize his narrative subjects. The essay focuses on three paintings, which represent quite different forms of narrative disunity in his work: Roger Freeing Angelica (disjunction), Paolo and Francesca (excessive unity), and Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia and Livia, or Tu Marcellus Eris (a coming apart of classical composition). His paintings' affective relation to the viewer is considered with regard to the sadism of their themes and their fetishized treatment of surfaces.
Desiring Things
Authors: Zorach Rebecca
Published: December 2003

This article traces various circuits – of allegory, history, viewership and desire –around the infamous sixteenth‐century French painting known as the Portrait of Gabrielle d’Estrées and one of her Sisters. It addresses not specific collecting practices, but the desires that might underlie them, attempting to theorize the intersection of desires for material objects and for bodies. What might a culturally specific understanding of this intersection mean for our understanding of Renaissance collecting? The resulting notion is not one of ‘homosexual’ desire based on a modern identity category, but rather a notion of imitative or mimetic desire, and imitative viewing, that presuppose the resemblance and analogy of the viewer and the object of the gaze, rather than the ‘difference’ implied in heterosexual models of desire. In this view, images cause their viewers to resemble them (that is, the images). The argument places emphasis on prints, particularly erotic prints, as objects of intimate attachments that might provide clues to the uses of collected objects, that visually intertwine bodies and things, and which materialize the pervasive and powerful metaphor of the ‘imprint’ of the image on the body.
The Virtue of a King and the Desire of a Woman? Mythological representations in the collection of Queen Christina
Authors: Biermann Veronica
Published: December 2003

The centre of Queen Christina’s Roman collection of paintings was the so‐called ‘Great Room’ or ‘Sala dei quadri’, as described by the Swedish architect Tessin the Younger. Here the abdicated queen chose to concentrate not only the artistic highlights of her collection – such as the Madonna del Passeggio attributed to Raphael – but also the allegorical and mythological paintings by Titian, Veronese and Correggio, stemming largely from her earlier conquest of Prague. Several questions become pressing in the light of the marked dominance of female nudes among these works, questions which form the focus of this paper. Firstly, how did Christina relate to the pictorial subjects on display here? Secondly, can the paintings of a collection that served a representational function and reflected a pronouncedly personal taste also be interpreted as an expression of personal desire?

The broad thematic spectrum present in the paintings in this room – encompassing female lust and chastity as well as male desire and renunciation – and one evidently brought together by Christina for programmatic effect, left little space for anything but a ‘male’ gaze, a sexually ambivalent notion in the light of Christina’s personality.

The present analysis of the Great Room and of the objects in it, including Bernini’s famous allegorical mirror and an antique bronze head thought by Christina to depict Alexander, shows the room to be the bearer of a programma virtutis, one that is modelled on Christina’s image in spite of its ‘male’ impulse. The virtus described is not that of the woman Christina, however, but of the formerly reigning Queen Christina Alexandra, whose regal self‐image combined a female body private with a male body politic.
Homoerotic Art Collection from 1750 to 1920
Authors: Davis Whitney
Published: December 2003

This paper considers the general structural logic of homoerotic art collections from the later eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, focusing on their collation of contemporary with non‐modern (usually classical Greek and Roman or Italian Renaissance) arts. The mere appreciation of a homoerotically attractive work of art, such as a sculptural depiction of a beautiful and desirable male body, whether contemporary or not, did not necessarily create a homoerotic display or collection. Patrons and viewers could aesthetically admire such canonical objects without thereby expressing any awareness of, let alone attachment to, their original and to possible contemporary pederastic or homosexual connotations. But canonically homoerotic aesthetic appreciation could be inflected pederastically or homosexually by acquiring, admiring and displaying objects in configurations that suggested their phallic significance or potential; the non‐canonical, sometimes subversive, appeal of phallica and homoerotica – again, usually ancient or early modern, though modern replications were frequently produced – was a crucial element in the constitution of the ‘homosexual’ (or, better, homosexualized) collections of the nineteenth century. Recognized in ironic and quasi‐pornographic representations by d’Hancarville, Noel, Goethe, Forberg, Famin and other writers and collectors, the phallic inflection of homoerotic beauty offered an alternative to Winckelmannian and Kantian aesthetics. In particular, the paper considers the phenomenon of ‘phallic doubling’– the representation or display of homoerotically beautiful works such that they appeared to respond to one another, to address one another’s implied narratives, and to supplement and sometimes to undermine one another’s stable erotic connotations – as the key principle of ‘homosexual’ art collections, necessarily clandestine in their formation and circulation, even as they worked with canonical ideals.
Dalí’s Fascism; Lacan’s Paranoia
Authors: Greeley Robin Adèle
Published: December 2003

In February 1934 Breton summoned Salvador Dalí before a Surrealist ‘court’ on charges of Nazi sympathizing. In Breton’s mind, Dalí’s fascination with Hitler threatened to bring about the ‘ruin of Surrealism’ by exposing the ideological flaws in existing Surrealist attempts to distinguish between right-wing and left-wing politics in relation to aesthetic production. To Breton’s dismay, Dalí seemed to take literally Breton’s call in the First Surrealist Manifesto to produce works ‘outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations‘. Yet in directing Surrealist attention to Hitler, I argue, Dalí analysed the ‘hitlerian phenomenon‘ as an apocalyptic symptom of the alienation and auto-aggression afflicting bourgeois society. In so doing, he relied heavily upon a dialogue he had struck up with Jacques Lacan concerning paranoia – what Lacan termed ‘autopunition‘, and their relationship to the fascist persona.
Embarras and Disconvenance in Poussin’s Rebecca and Eliezar at the Well
Authors: Hughes Christopher G.
Published: December 2003

This essay closely examines the 17th‐century commentary on Poussin’s 1648 picture Rebecca and Eliezar at the Well in an effort to understand how contemporary viewers might have engaged with the picture – and, by extension, with other cabinet pictures like it. Period terminology helps us to see’s the picture’s tone as more light and even irreverent than 20th‐century criticism has suggested. A careful investigation of Poussin’s visual engagement with biblical typology and the comic burlesque reveals not only how the artist conceived of his project, but how he encouraged his patron Jean Pointel, as well as other cultured viewers, to react to it.
Occluded Front
Authors: Harris Steven
Published: December 2003

Book Reviewed in this article:

David Lomas, The Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity
‘South Opposed to East and North’: Adrian Stokes and Josef Strzygowski. A study in the aesthetics and historiography of Orientalism
Authors: Kite Stephen
Published: December 2003

The ‘South Opposed to East and North’ of this paper's title comes from the third section of Adrian Stokes's book The Quattro Cento of 1932 – subtitled A Different Conception of the Italian Renaissance, and the founding work of his aesthetic. The Quattro Cento can be viewed as a response to the need expressed by Strzygowski in his Origin of Christian Church Art of 1923 ‘for a work dealing with the penetration of the South by the North of Europe and the subsequent rise of the so‐called Renaissance’; a North, in Strzygowski's view, already permeated by influences from the East. Within the contested terrain inscribed in the term, this paper isolates three key ‘Orients’ crucial to Stokes's Quattro Cento aesthetic: the experiential Orient of his Conrad‐inspired voyage to the East; the Orient of the British Museum; and that of the Orientalist texts – primarily the now‐marginalized Josef Strzygowski. As a study in the historiography of Orientalism, the essay examines how Adrian Stokes inflected his experience and readings of these Orients to re‐evaluate European – specifically Italian Renaissance – culture.
Genetic Algorithms for Optimal Urban Transit Network Design
Authors: Chakroborty Partha
Published: December 2003

This article attempts to highlight the effectiveness of genetic algorithm (GA)–based procedures in solving the urban transit network design problem (UTNDP). The article analyzes why traditional methods have problems in solving the UTNDP. The article also suggests procedures to alleviate these problems using GA–based optimization technique. The thrust of the article is three–fold: (1) to show the effectiveness of GAs in solving the UTNDP, (2) to identify features of the UTNDP that make it a difficult problem for traditional techniques, and (3) to suggest directions, through the presentation of GA–based methodologies for the UTNDP, for the development of GA–based procedures for solving other optimization problems having features similar to the UTNDP.
Rapid Geometric Modeling for Unstructured Construction Workspaces
Authors: Cho Yong‐Kwon , Haas Carl T.
Published: December 2003

Abstract: Unstructured workspaces which are typical in construction contain unpredictable activities as well as changing environments. Most automated and semi‐automated construction tasks require real‐time information about the local workspace in the form of 3D geometric models. This article describes and demonstrates a new rapid, local area, geometric data extraction and 3D visualization method for unstructured construction workspaces that combines human perception, simple sensors, and descriptive CAD models. The rapid approach will be useful in construction to optimize automated equipment tasks and to significantly improve safety and a remote operator's spatial perception of the workspace.
CAD‐Based Photogrammetry for Reverse Engineering of Industrial Installations
Authors: Tangelder Johan W. H. , Ermes Pierre , Vosselman George , Van Den Heuvel Frank A.
Published: December 2003

Abstract: When designing an industrial installation, construction engineers often make use of a library of standardized CAD components. For instance, in the case of a servicing plant, such a library contains descriptions of simple components such as straight pipes, elbows, and T‐junctions. A new installation is constructed by selecting and connecting the appropriate components from the library. This article demonstrates that one can use the same approach for reverse engineering by photogrammetry. In our technique, the operator interprets images and selects the appropriate CAD component from a library. By aligning the edges of the component's wire frame to the visible edges in the images, we implicitly determine the position, orientation, and shape of the real component. For a fast object reconstruction the alignment process has been split in two parts. Initially, the operator approximately aligns a component to the images. In a second step a fitting algorithm is invoked for an automatic and precise alignment. Further improvement in the efficiency of the reconstruction is obtained by imposing geometric constraints on the CAD components of adjacent object parts.
SHERPA: Mobile Wireless Data Capture for Piling Works
Authors: Ward M. J. , Thorpe A. , Price A. D. F. , Wren C.
Published: December 2003

Abstract: The construction of rotary bored piles uses two interdependent site processes, requiring real‐time information sharing between the workforce. This is currently achieved through manual recording of data and calculations on site, which can result in errors in pile construction, delays in the construction program, and additional costs from remedial works. This article describes the Stent Handheld ElectRonic Piling Assistant (SHERPA) which utilizes workforce driven mobile computers accessing a centrally site‐located database through a mobile Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). The WLAN utilizes the IEEE 802.11b protocol for wireless communications, which is becoming increasingly popular in the replacement of traditional wired networks within buildings. However, the application of such technology to construction has been restricted by its use of a wired Ethernet “backbone,” which is impractical for the construction site. This problem has been addressed through the development of Wireless Network Cells (WNCs), which provide a portable and scalable solution to the challenges of implementing mobile networks for real‐time data capture in the site environment.
Nonparametric Identification of a Building Structure from Experimental Data Using Wavelet Neural Network
Authors: Hung Shih‐Lin , Huang C. S. , Wen C. M. , Hsu Y. C.
Published: December 2003

Abstract:  This study presents a wavelet neural network‐based approach to dynamically identifying and modeling a building structure. By combining wavelet decomposition and artificial neural networks (ANN), wavelet neural networks (WNN) are used for solving chaotic signal processing. The basic operations and training method of wavelet neural networks are briefly introduced, since these networks can approximate universal functions. The feasibility of structural behavior modeling and the possibility of structural health monitoring using wavelet neural networks are investigated. The practical application of a wavelet neural network to the structural dynamic modeling of a building frame in shaking tests is considered in an example. Structural acceleration responses under various levels of the strength of the Kobe earthquake were used to train and then test the WNNs. The results reveal that the WNNs not only identify the structural dynamic model, but also can be applied to monitor the health condition of a building structure under strong external excitation.
Plate 319. Viburnum grandiflorum forma foetens ‘Desmond Clarke’
Authors: Taylor Nigel , Zappi Daniela
Published: December 2003

The taxonomic status of the western Himalayan Viburnum foetens (Caprifoliaceae) is discussed and it is concluded that this is best regarded as a glabrous form of the more widespread V. grandiflorum. The appropriate new combination is made and a full description of the taxon is provided. The colour plate depicts a distinctive variant which is growing at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; this is distinguished by the clonal name ‘Desmond Clarke’.
Plate 322. Dodecatheon hendersonii
Authors: Hall Tony , Mathew Brian
Published: December 2003

Dodecatheon hendersonii (Primulaceae), a native of the western states of North America, is illustrated; its history, relationships, distribution, ecology and cultural requirements are discussed and a full description of the species is provided.
Plate 356. Eryngium leavenworthii
Authors: Mathew Brian , Hall Tony
Published: December 2003

The history, taxonomy, distribution, habitat and cultivation requirements of the North American Eryngium leavenworthii Torr. & Gray (Umbelliferae) are discussed. It is illustrated and a full description is provided.
Plate 357. Iris lazica
Authors: Nelson E. Charles
Published: December 2003

The horticultural value, taxonomy, distribution, habitat and cultivation requirements of Iris lazica Albov (Iridaceae), which occurs in the eastern Black Sea region, are discussed; illustrations and a full description are provided.
Plate 358. Polygonatum cyrtonema
Authors: Brickell Christopher , Mathew Brian
Published: December 2003

The taxonomy, distribution, horticultural value and cultivation requirements of the Chinese Polygonatum cyrtonema Hua (Convallariaceae) are discussed; illustrations and a full description are provided.
Plate 475. Ammocharis Nerinoides Amaryllidaceae
Authors: Duncan Graham
Published: December 2003

Summary. The history, taxonomy, distribution and cultivation requirements of the Namibian Ammocharis nerinoides (Bak.) Lehmiller (Amaryllidaceae) are discussed; a full botanical description and an illustration are provided.
Plate 476. Lachenalia Peersii Hyacinthaceae
Authors: Duncan Graham
Published: December 2003

Summary. The history, taxonomy, distribution and cultivation requirements of the South African Lachenalia peersii Marloth ex W.F. Barker (Hyacinthaceae) are discussed; a full botanical description and illustration are provided.
Knocking on Academia's Doors: An Inquiry into the Early Careers of Doctors in Life Sciences
Authors: Robin S. , Cahuzac E.
Published: December 2003

The early careers of French doctors in life sciences are characterized by the importance of temporary jobs. While most young Ph.D. researchers wish to obtain a job in the French academic sector (which grants them, among other things, lifetime employment), few of them manage to achieve this objective immediately after completing their Ph.D. A majority of young doctors have to wait for a period of time before they find stable employment in the academic sector. In the meantime, they usually find temporary research jobs. Two main types of short–term jobs can be distinguished: fixed–term research contracts (in most cases in a French public laboratory) and post–doctoral positions (temporary research jobs in a foreign country). The aim of this paper is to determine whether these different types of temporary jobs have different consequences on the careers of Ph.D. researchers.

We first discuss from a theoretical perspective the impact of choosing ‘post–doc’ research rather than a job on a fixed–term contract. Then, after dealing with selection biases that affect the access to these temporary jobs, we will use survival data analysis to estimate the impact of both types of temporary positions on the probability of entering the academic sector. The analysis is based on a database on the early careers of 800 young French doctors in life sciences. The main results include the following findings: the probability of a Ph.D. researcher finding stable employment is higher if he has held a post–doc position than if he has held a fixed–term contract. This result holds for both the private and public sectors. However, careers in the private sector are also affected by long–term choices, such as the decision to undertake Ph.D. research in partnership with a firm.
Labor Mobility, Job Preferences, and Income Distribution
Authors: Montenegro Alvaro
Published: December 2003

A model is presented to illustrate the role of labor mobility in income distribution. Worker preference for different occupations and wage comparisons are combined to determine the allocation of labor between sectors and to trace the behavior of the Gini coefficient as mobility increases. The Gini coefficient fails to fall monotonically with increasing labor mobility, making its interpretation ambiguous. It is also shown that the Gini coefficient has a lower nonzero limit, a fact compatible with empirical findings.
A Diachronic Coherence Model for Language Program Evaluation
Authors: Ross Steven J.
Published: December 2003

Language programs often generate complex date providing a rich source of comparative information about changes in curriculum policies and learning. Historical program archives often reveal how curricula and assessment methods evolve to include increasingly varied components of achievment. This article presents a novel quantitative methodology for assessing the construct of “program coherence” in an English as a Foreign Language context. Revolving panel studies demonstrate criteria for evaluating program coherence and its influence on proficiency gains. Thirty–three panel cohorts are included in a series of six 1–year longitudinal studies relating program–internal assement of achievement to program–external measures of language proficiency. Differences in panel coherence are analyzed in a hierarchical model that gauges the influence of coherence independently individual differences at the learner level.
Stochastic Dominance of Pension Plans
Authors: Machnes Yaffa
Published: December 2003

We compare different possibilities to reform a funded pension plan, whose balance is threatened by a decrease in mortality rates. Since the plan is mandatory, the welfare of employees might be reduced if contributions increase or if the retirement age is raised. An empirical study of Israeli data shows that a reform which decreases the pension benefits is the optimal strategy, compared with the options of increasing the retirement age or increasing pension fund contributions. We also show that giving employees freedom to choose their retirement age and induced pension benefits is the optimal policy and increases the welfare of employees.
The Role of Turnover Costs in the Enforcement of Performance–Related Pay Contracts
Authors: Scoppa Vincenzo
Published: December 2003

Labour contracts which establish performance–related pay are afflicted with the firm's moral hazard problem because of the difficulty in the verifiability of performance by an external authority. Some models have explored the possibility that such contracts could be enforced through a mechanism of the firm's reputation or thanks to an excess of demand in the labour markets (unfilled job vacancies). In this paper a simple model is proposed to show the working of an alternative mechanism for performance–related pay contracts based on turnover costs, borne by firms arising from the process of hiring, training and firing. By sinking a certain amount of resources as turnover costs, employers may credibly promise to pay a bonus, if faced with the worker's threat to quit in the case of cheating, to avoid the loss of specific capital. This provides a formalization of the insight that turnover costs and specific investments might support the enforcement of implicit contracts. The welfare implications of this mechanism are worked out, showing how turnover costs on the one hand reduce the available social surplus but on the other hand increase this surplus by providing incentives for optimal effort.
Attitudes Towards Risk: An Experiment
Authors: Eichberger Jürgen , Güth Werner , Müller Wieland
Published: December 2003

The evaluations of a repeated lottery with and without the option to sell the second–stage lottery are compared theoretically and experimentally. Comparing individuals’ risk attitudes, we find that risk attitudes differ depending on the measure of risk attitude applied. We also find that subjects show low or no risk aversion, but put very high value on the opportunity to sell the lottery in the second stage of the decision problem. These findings cast doubts on the suitability of the random price mechanism for truthful revelation of willingness to pay in sequential decision problems.
Truth's Fabric
Authors: Hinzen Wolfram
Published: December 2003

To understand language, philosophers have related sentences and/or their uses to the concept of truth. I study an aspect of this relation by studying the actual structures that sentences expressing truth judgements have, an issue that I consider empirical. So I propose to switch from studying ‘truth conditions’ for sentences (determined metaphysically, or normatively) to studying the structures of expressions of the form This sentence is true/has (some) truth to it. I argue that the status of the ‘truth predicate’ must be understood in terms of the syntax (in Chomsky's naturalistic sense of syntax) of possessive constructions, rather than in terms of metaphysical, epistemic, or action–theoretic factors.
Maintaining change: the maintenance function and the change process
Authors: Lee Cooke Fang
Published: December 2003

This paper explores the organisation of the maintenance function of five manufacturing and utility companies and the involvement of maintenance workers in plant improvement. It highlights the important role of the tacit skills of maintenance workers and the broader role of the maintenance function in technological change and organisational performance.
Price elasticity of demand for crude oil: estimates for 23 countries
Authors: Cooper John C.B.
Published: December 2003

This paper uses a multiple regression model derived from an adaptation of Nerlove's partial adjustment model to estimate both the short–run and long–run elasticities of demand for crude oil in 23 countries. The estimates so obtained confirm that the demand for crude oil internationally is highly insensitive to changes in price.
An introduction to the economics of natural gas
Authors: Banks Ferdinand E.
Published: December 2003

This paper is an up–to–date, but only moderately technical survey of the natural gas market. Supply, demand and pricing are discussed, and, in the light of the electricity deregulation experiment in California, where the expression “dangerous failure” has been repeatedly used to describe the extensive losses suffered by final consumers and utilities (or retailers), a modicum of attention is paid to the prospects for deregulating natural gas. Some microeconomics of the natural gas market is presented at a more elementary level than in my energy economics textbook (2000) or my book “The Political Economy of Natural Gas” (1987), and I make a studied attempt to avoid bringing the misleading Hotelling model (of exhaustible resource depletion) into the exposition. Finally, some comments on risk management with futures contracts are provided, and there is a brief mathematical appendix on futures, options and two–part pricing.
Unravelling the Capital Charging Riddle – Some Empirical Evidence from Victoria
Authors: Carlin Tyrone M.
Published: December 2003

Since 1995, the State of Victoria has been experimenting with capital charging regimes for budget sector agencies. The intent of these schemes is to allow the opportunity cost of capital to be reflected in the assessed total costs of outputs produced by agencies the subject of the charge. While literature produced by government central financial agencies has forcefully advocated this experiment, and asserted a range of resulting improvements to budget sector asset management and general financial management practices, academic examinations of the subject have been mixed in their conclusions. Empirical evidence relating to the effect and effectiveness of these schemes has been scarce. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by providing some empirical evidence on the impact of capital charging in one jurisdiction, Victoria, Australia.
Rated to exhaustion? Reactions to performance appraisal processes
Authors: Brown Michelle , Benson John
Published: December 2003

Performance appraisal systems are a popular tool within organisations to enhance employee commitment and productivity. This paper examines the consequences of three aspects of a performance appraisal system (distributive justice, procedural justice and the performance rating) on the level of emotional exhaustion reported by employees in a large public sector research organisation.
Engaged in battle: exploring the sources of workplace union militancy at Royal Mail
Authors: Beale David
Published: December 2003

Sources of workplace union militancy at Royal Mail (UK) are examined in relation to four particular management initiatives in the late 1980s and 1990s. The wider industrial relations context and balance of power are emphasised and an assessment is made of the relative contribution of union leadership to workplace militancy.
Blindness, Art and Exclusion in Museums and Galleries
Authors: Candlin Fiona
Published: December 2003

Drawing on interviews with blind people, this paper examines both their exclusion from museums and galleries and their responses to the art educational provision that is specifically designed to remedy that marginalisation. Blind visitors’ responses to these educational projects were polarised; respondents were either highly critical or very enthusiastic. This paper begins by outlining the interviewees’ criticisms which included; education officers’ misconception of how touch facilitates learning and aesthetic response, a lack of educational progression and blind people's exclusion from mainstream events. I then ask why, given these problems, did other respondents reply so favourably, suggest that these high levels of satisfaction had little to do with museum provision but were in fact the result of social interaction and of rare inclusion within the sighted community. I argue that, ironically, this sense of inclusion is premised on blind visitors’ structural exclusion from art institutions. Finally, the article examines those visitors who, illicitly or otherwise, already experience some aspects of the museum in multisensory terms, but maintain that until museums’ and galleries’ ocularcentric orientation is reconfigured, there will be little possibility for these rogue visitors to develop their knowledge of art. Likewise, without institutional change, educational events for the blind will continue to be an inadequate supplement to a structure that is and remains inequitable.
Using environmental accounts to promote sustainable development: Experience in southern Africa
Authors: Lange Glenn‐Marie , Hassan Rashid , Alfieri Alessandra
Published: December 2003

Environmental accounts bring together economic and environmental information in a common framework to measure the contribution of the environment to the economy and the impact of the economy on the environment. They enable governments to set priorities, monitor economic policies more precisely, enact more effective environmental regulations and resource management strategies, and design more efficient market instruments for environmental policies. This article uses examples from the regional environmental accounting programme in southern Africa to demonstrate the usefulness of environmental accounts to policy‐making and natural resource management. The examples address the contribution of natural capital endowments (minerals and fisheries) to sustainable development in Botswana and Namibia; the economic importance of non‐market forest goods and services in South Africa; and the socio‐economic impact of current water allocation and pricing policies in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. While there are many additional policy applications, these few provide a powerful argument for the use of environmental accounts in all countries.
Water scarcity: An alternative view and its implications for policy and capacity building
Authors: Wolfe Sarah , Brooks David B
Published: December 2003

This article focuses on the somewhat ambiguous concept of scarce water, or, more accurately stated, on the rather more ambiguous concept of scarcity. Still today, water scarcity in a region is defined largely in physical terms, typically gallons or cubic metres per capita if a stock or per capita‐year if a flow. However useful purely physical measures may be for broad comparisons, they cannot adequately reflect the variety of ways in which human beings use water — neither to their wastefulness when water is perceived as abundant nor to their ingenuity when it is not. This article argues that water scarcity should be defined according to three orders of scarcity that require, respectively, physical, economic and social adaptations. It goes on to demonstrate that perceiving scarcity mainly in physical terms limits opportunities for policy‐making and approaches for capacity building.
Wetland cultivation and hydrological management in eastern Africa: Matching community and hydrological needs through sustainable wetland use
Authors: Dixon Alan B , Wood Adrian P
Published: December 2003

Wetlands are critical natural resources in developing countries where they perform a range of environmental functions and provide numerous socio‐economic benefits to local communities and a wider population. In recent years, however, many wetlands throughout eastern Africa have come under extreme pressure as government policies, socio‐economic change and population pressure have stimulated a need for more agriculturally productive land. Although wetland drainage and cultivation can make a key contribution to food and livelihood security in the short term, in the long term there are concerns over the sustainability of this utilization and the maintenance of wetland benefits. This article draws upon recent research carried out in western Ethiopia, which addressed the sustainability of wetland agriculture in an area of increasing food insecurity and population pressure. It discusses the impacts of drainage and cultivation on wetland hydrology and draws attention to local wetland management strategies, particularly those characterized by multiple use of wetlands, where agriculture exists alongside other wetland uses. The article suggests that where multiple wetland uses exist, a range of benefits can be sustained with little evidence of environmental degradation. Ways of promoting and empowering such sustainable wetland management systems are discussed in the context of the wider need for water security throughout the region.
Sustaining Asia’s groundwater boom: An overview of issues and evidence
Authors: Shah Tushaar , Roy Aditi Deb , Qureshi Asad S , Wang Jinxia
Published: December 2003

This article suggests that Asia’s groundwater socio‐ecology is at an impasse. Rapid growth in groundwater irrigation in South Asia and the North China plains during the period 1970–95 has been the main driver of the agrarian boom in these regions. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China account for the bulk of the world’s use of groundwater in agriculture. On the plus side, groundwater development has provided sustenance to agrarian economies and millions of rural livelihoods. On the downside, it has created chronic problems of resource depletion and quality deterioration. While problems of groundwater depletion, pollution and quality deterioration are indeed serious, so are the consequences of the degradation of the resource for those that have come to precariously depend upon groundwater irrigation.

Three problems currently afflict groundwater use: depletion due to overdraft; water logging and salinization; and pollution due to agricultural, industrial and other human activity. The pathology of the decline in groundwater socio‐ecology reflects a remarkably similar pattern across regions. The critical issue for Asia now is: what might be done to sustain and revive these groundwater socio‐ecologies vital to the region’s economy? This article reviews a variety of techno‐institutional approaches. However, transposing lessons from the industrialized world uncritically in the Asian context may not work. A more nuanced understanding of the peculiarities of Asia’s groundwater socio‐ecology is needed.
Children with Learning Disabilities Within the Family Context: A Comparison with Siblings in Global Self–Concept, Academic Self–Perception, and Social Competence
Authors: Dyson Lily L.
Published: December 2003

This study examined the global self–concept, academic self–perception, social competence, and behavioral problems of 19 children with learning disabilities within the family context. Comparisons were made between the target children and their close–age siblings and family psychological correlates were identified. The participants were administered child assessment scales and rated by their parents, who also completed family psychosocial measures. The results show that although children with learning disabilities do not differ from their siblings in global self–concept and academic self–perception, their parents rated them to have less social competence and more behavior problems than their siblings. Moreover, the social competence and behavioral problems of children with learning disabilities are related to their parents’ stress. Educational and research implications are drawn.
Fraction Instruction for Students with Mathematics Disabilities: Comparing Two Teaching Sequences
Authors: Butler Frances M. , Miller Susan P. , Crehan Kevin , Babbitt Beatrice , Pierce Thomas
Published: December 2003

This study investigated the effects of teaching middle school students with mathematics disabilities equivalent fraction concepts and procedures using the concrete–representational–abstract (CRA) instructional sequence or the representational–abstract (RA) instructional sequence. Twenty–six students formed the CRA group, and 24 students formed the RA group. The two treatment groups received carefully sequenced instruction over 10 lessons. The only difference between the two treatment groups was that the CRA group used concrete manipulative devices for the first three lessons while the RA group used representational drawings. Analyses of the data indicated that students in both treatment groups improved overall in their understanding of fraction equivalency from pretest to posttest. On all achievement measures, students in the CRA group had overall higher mean scores than did students in the RA group. Implications for classroom instruction and suggestions for further research are discussed.
The Effect of Managerial Ownership on the Short‐ and Long‐run Response to Cash Distributions
Authors: Howe Keith M. , Vogt Steve , He Jia
Published: December 2003

We examine both the short‐run and long‐run responses to the following corporate cash flow transactions: dividend increases and decreases, dividend initiations, and tender offer repurchases. Our focus is the short‐run and long‐run effects of managerial ownership. We hypothesize that ownership plays an important role in explaining the announcement effects for these events, owing to signaling effects and the reduction of agency problems. Our short‐run results accord well with the earlier work on announcement effects for these events and show that firms with high insider ownership exhibit higher excess returns. Our long‐term results indicate a drift over a three‐year period following the announcement, with the excess returns for the high insider‐ownership group becoming more pronounced.
Adverse‐Selection Costs and the Probability of Information‐Based Trading
Authors: Chung Kee H. , Li Mingsheng
Published: December 2003

Prior studies offer various empirical models to decompose the observed bid‐ask spread into the adverse‐selection and transitory (order‐processing and inventory‐holding) components. There is limited evidence, however, on whether the spread components estimated from these models indeed measure what they purport to measure. In this study, we show that the estimates of the adverse‐selection component given by these models are positively and significantly related to the probability of information‐based trading (PIN), after controlling for the endogeneity of the PIN and other stock attributes. These results provide direct empirical support for the spread component models examined in the present study.
Phallic Victories? Niki de Saint‐Phalle's Tirs
Authors: Carrick Jill
Published: December 2003

Between approximately 1961 and 1964, Nouveau Réaliste artist Niki de Saint‐Phalle gained notoriety through the performance of her Tirs or ‘Shooting Pieces’. While the Tirs have been interpreted as a playful parody of abstract painting, to date, broader gender issues associated with their performance have largely escaped critical notice. In this paper, I argue that Saint‐Phalle employed innovative critical strategies associated with feminism, fetishism and masquerade to critique gender inequalities and social violence. Using the cultural representations of masculinity and femininity available to her, she simultaneously staged herself as ‘virile’ artist, phallic woman, and ‘feminine’ object of the male gaze. At the same time, I suggest, the Tirs prefigured a thematics of fetishistic substitution and loss that would be spectacularly repeated in Jean Tinguely's exploding phallic sculpture La Vittoria ten years later.
Misadventures of a Style: Romanesque art and the Druids in eighteenth‐century France
Authors: Maxwell Robert A.
Published: December 2003

At a time when Romanesque art scarcely interested French academicians, a certain group of twelfth‐century buildings and sculptures attracted a great deal of attention from a handful of antiquarians. Uncertain of what to make of an octagonal chapel at Montmorillon, the antiquarian Bernard de Montfaucon assigned it to Gaul's pagan priests, the Druids. He developed a complex iconographic history around this chapel, and other scholars after him followed his lead by identifying as pagan a score of other twelfth‐century structures. This essay explores how the case of mistaken identity intersected with the gradual acceptance in academic study of Romanesque architecture. Consideration of antiquarian methodology, with its categories of knowledge inflected by notions of race and nationalism, sheds light on the pre‐history of Romanesque research and on the interpretive tools employed for medieval art's early study.