bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Role of dispersal in the invasion of an exotic tree in an East African submontane forest
Authors: Cordeiro Norbert J. , Patrick David A. G. , Munisi Billy , Gupta Vipul
Published: July 2004

Early successional tree species typically attract numerous generalist frugivores, many of which serve as seed dispersers. This study evaluated whether several such dispersers facilitated the invasion of an exotic, early successional tree species, Maesopsis eminii (Rhamnaceae), in submontane forests of the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania. The primary seed dispersers and their dispersal effectiveness were determined through focal watches at eight trees. Only 3 of 13 frugivores that consumed Maesopsis fruits functioned as seed dispersers (silvery-cheeked hornbill Ceratogymna brevis, Fischer's turaco Tauraco fischeri and blue monkey Cercopithecus mitis). On average, hornbills dispersed >26 times more seeds than monkeys, and >3 times as many seeds as turacos per visit and were thus considered the most important disperser. Seed germination was not affected by gut passage through hornbills. Germination in four microhabitats was experimentally evaluated to determine whether microhabitat influences germination success. Large gaps and forest edges had significantly higher germination rates compared with understorey locations; the germination rate in small gaps was not significantly different from that in the understorey. Expansive Maesopsis invasion in the East Usambaras was likely enhanced in both rapidity and scale by the presence of an extremely effective dispersal agent, the silvery-cheeked hornbill.
Dispersal of Aglaia spectabilis, a large-seeded tree species in a moist evergreen forest in Thailand
Authors: Kitamura Shumpei , Suzuki Shunsuke , Yumoto Takakazu , Poonswad Pilai , Chuailua Phitaya , Plongmai Kamol , Noma Naohiko , Maruhashi Tamaki , Suckasam Chumphon
Published: July 2004

We investigated the seed dispersal of Aglaia spectabilis, a large-seeded tree species in a moist evergreen forest of Khao Yai National Park in Thailand. Although one-to-one relationships between frugivores and plants are very unlikely, large-seeded plants having to rely on few large frugivores and therefore on limited disperser assemblages, might be vulnerable to extinction. We assessed both the frugivore assemblages foraging on arillate seeds of Aglaia spectabilis and dispersing them and the seed predator assemblages, thereby covering dispersal as well as the post-dispersal aspects such as seed predation. Our results showed that frugivores dispersing seeds were a rather limited set of four hornbill and one pigeon species, whereas two squirrel species were not dispersers, but dropped the seeds on the ground. Three mammal species were identified as seed predators on the forest floor. Heavy seed predation by mammals together with high seed removal rates, short visiting times and regurgitation of intact seeds by mainly hornbills lead us to the conclusion that hornbills show high effectiveness in dispersal of this tree species.
Beetle pollination and fruit predation of Xanthosoma daguense (Araceae) in an Andean cloud forest in Colombia
Authors: García-Robledo Carlos , Kattan Gustavo , Murcia Carolina , Quintero-Marín Paulina
Published: July 2004

This study describes a pollination system in a species of Araceae that involves three species of beetle, one of which is also a fruit predator. In a tropical cloud forest in Colombia, inflorescences of Xanthosoma daguense opened at dusk, releasing a sweet scent and raising their temperature 1–3 °C. Soon after, two species of Scarabaeidae (Dynastinae; Cyclocephala gregaria and C. amblyopsis) and one species of Nitidulidae (Macrostola costulata) arrived with pollen. Cyclocephala beetles remained inside the inflorescence for 24 h. The next night, Cyclocephala beetles left the inflorescence after picking up the freshly shed pollen, almost always moving to the nearest inflorescence available. The probability of inflorescence abortion and number of fruits set after the visit of one individual was equivalent for both Cyclocephala species. However, C. gregaria was much more abundant than C. amblyopsis, so it was the most important pollinator. There was a positive relationship between the number of dynastine visits and the number of fruits produced. Besides carrying pollen to the inflorescences, nitidulid beetles had a negative effect on female reproductive success through fruit predation. Nitidulid larvae developed inside the infructescence and preyed on up to 64% of the fruits. However, 8% of inflorescences not visited by dynastines were probably pollinated by nitidulids, because hand-pollination experiments showed that self-pollination was unlikely. Inflorescences potentially pollinated by nitidulids comprised 25% of the fruit crop in the year of our study. This interaction with a fruit predator that is also a potential pollinator resembles brood-site pollination systems in which pollinators prey on part of the fruit set (e.g. Ficus, senita cacti, Yucca), making this system substantially more complex than previously described dynastine-pollinated systems in aroids.
Natural regeneration of subtropical montane forest after clearing fern thickets in the Dominican Republic
Authors: Slocum Matthew G. , Aide T. Mitchell , Zimmerman Jess K. , Navarro Luis
Published: July 2004

Tropical forests can recover after anthropogenic disturbances of light to moderate intensity (Aide et al. 1995, 1996, 2000; Uhl 1987, Uhl et al. 1988); however, severe disturbances (e.g. compaction or loss of soil) often result in conditions that prevent forest recovery. These degraded sites are often dominated by grasses (Aide & Cavelier 1994, Cabin et al. 2002, Cavelier et al. 1998, Uhl et al. 1988) and ferns (Cohen et al. 1995, García et al. 1994, Slocum et al. 2000, Walker & Boneta 1995) that can impose barriers for tree regeneration and arrest the succession process. Important barriers for tree regeneration include: (1) competition with grasses and ferns for soil moisture, nutrients and light (Aide & Cavelier 1994, Guimarães-Vieira et al. 1994, Holl et al. 2000, Nepstad et al. 1996, Russell et al. 1998, Walker 1994, Zimmerman et al. 2000), and (2) dispersal limitation given that grasses and fernlands offer few resources that attract seed dispersers (Guevara & Laborde 1993, Holl et al. 2000, McDonnell & Stiles 1983, Slocum & Horvitz 2000, Zimmerman et al. 2000).
A longitudinal study of language development in two children with Williams syndrome
Authors: LEVY YONATA
Published: July 2004

Williams syndrome (WS) is often cited as the prime example within developmental disorders of the dissociation of language from other cognitive skills, particularly from visuo-motor skills. This claim has been responsible for the challenges posed by this population to cognitive theories and to models of language acquisition. Two Hebrew-speaking children with WS were followed longitudinally for 18 months, from the first occurrences of two word combinations. Y was 3;9–5;3 and BT was 4;2–5;8 during data collection. Both children had an MLU of 1·8–2·8. The children's linguistic profiles were compared to the profiles of typically-developing (TD) children of similar MLU as well as to the profiles of 11 children with a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders (ND), matched on MLU. The profiles exhibited by the children with WS throughout the period of the study differed from the profiles seen in both control groups.
Commentary on Learnability and linguistic performance by Kenneth F. Drozd
Authors: GOODLUCK HELEN
Published: July 2004

In this commentary I will take up the topic of the Crain & Thornton's (C&T) Modularity Matching Model vs. the approach C&T dub the Competing Factors Model, arguing that there is reason to adopt a model that includes elements of both those approaches, as I understand them.
What accounts for children non-adultlike linguistic behaviour?
Authors: TERESA GUASTI MARIA
Published: July 2004

Drodz in his review of Crain & Thornton's Investigations in Universal Grammar (IUG) raises a number of important issues which, I think, deserve further discussion. In what follows I will concentrate on two aspects that might be the source of children's non-adultlike linguistic behaviour, namely memory and methodological weaknesses in experimental work. I will briefly comment on the use of statistics.
Grammars, parsers, and language acquisition
Authors: KIDD EVAN
Published: July 2004

Drozd's critique of Crain & Thornton's (C&T) (1998) book Investigations in Universal Grammar (IUG) raises many issues concerning theory and experimental design within generative approaches to language acquisition. I focus here on one of the strongest theoretical claims of the Modularity Matching Model (MMM): continuity of processing. For reasons different to Drozd, I argue that the assumption is tenuous. Furthermore, I argue that the focus of the MMM and the methodological prescriptions contained in IUG are too narrow to capture language acquisition.
Clarity of purpose in L1 acquisition research: a response to Ken Drozd's Learnability and linguistic performance
Authors: PHILIP WILLIAM
Published: July 2004

Complementing Bart Geurts' (2000) review of the same book, Ken Drozd's Learnability and linguistic performance points out several serious problems with the L1 acquisition research programme of Crain & Thornton (1998). Drozd's objections are so clearly stated that there is little I can add. Nonetheless, I will attempt to flesh out some of his more general points by examining more closely a specific case, namely the experiments in Crain, Thornton, Boster, Conway, Lillo-Martin & Woodams (1996) which focused on normal preschool children's understanding of simple universally quantified sentences.
Young children's difficulty with adjectives modifying nouns
Authors: NINIO ANAT
Published: July 2004

In two experiments we tested the hypothesis that children have a basic problem in mastering the attributive relation because it involves a two-step logical–semantic integration process of the head-noun and the attributive adjective. Hebrew-speaking children were asked to interpret highly familiar adjective–noun combinations by selecting a photo that depicted the correct referent. In Experiment 1 there were four choices for each adjective–noun pair: correct object/correct property, correct object/wrong property, wrong object/correct property, wrong object/wrong property. 170 children (1;6–4;4) participated. Analyses of errors and spontaneous self-corrections indicated that children initially ignored the adjective and based their responses only on the noun. In Experiment 2, in addition to the 4-choice condition, there were two simpler conditions with only two choices: the correct object/correct property, and either the correct object/wrong property, or the wrong object/correct property. 30 children (1;9–4;11) were tested. The children, and in particular the lowest-scoring third of the sample, did significantly better in the 2-pictures conditions. The results suggest that young children do possess a basic adjective vocabulary and can use it in simple discriminations, but have a considerable difficulty in integrating the information furnished by the adjective with information furnished by the noun.
The Emergence of the Campaign to Open Up the West: Ideological Formation, Central Decision-making and the Role of the Provinces
Authors: Holbig Heike
Published: July 2004

This article examines the formation of the Open Up the West policy from the 1980s to the present. Focusing on the dynamic interaction between central party-state and provincial-level players, it analyses the various ideological and pragmatic factors that have shaped the policy over time. The campaign to Open Up the West is decribed as a “soft policy” to highlight a very diffuse decision-making process which has produced a highly diverse set of agendas and instruments. Due to the amorphous nature of the policy, the article finds, its realization depends to a great extent on the specific interpretations and arrangements of the provincial jurisdictions involved.

In June 1999 in the ancient city of Xi'an, Comrade Jiang Zemin made the appeal to the whole party and the people of the whole country on the great development of the western region. Three years have gone by, and the roads have become passable, the lights have become lit, the mountains have become green, the rivers have become clear and the travelling traders have become abundant. One after another, wonderful stories about the homeland of the western region have been circulated and sung.
Shaanxi: Building a Future on State Support
Authors: Vermeer Eduard B.
Published: July 2004

Shaanxi province has obtained substantial benefits from the Open Up the West programme. It has developed communications, sped up exploitation of energy resources, and subsidized industrial and agricultural restructuring. Conversion of farmland to forest or grass has been subsidized on a massive scale, even if its lasting effects are quite uncertain. Moreover, local governments were able to receive increasing amounts of subsidies for government services such as education and welfare, which meant the burden of human and social cost of marketization of the local economy could be alleviated. Of the three different regions of Shaanxi, the north has benefited most from energy development and agricultural restructuring. Central Shaanxi with Xi'an as the capital has profited from its advantageous location, existing industrial basis, administrative functions, and strong education and research facilities to improve its industrial structure and upgrade its services. However, the substantial industrial expansion over the past few years was fuelled by heavy policy-driven investment from outside and growing urban income, and most enterprises still have to prove their ultimate competitiveness in the national market.
Sichuan: Driving Capitalist Development Westward
Authors: McNally Christopher A.
Published: July 2004

The central government's Open Up the West campaign has failed to reach one of its primary objectives in Sichuan: to diminish the large developmental gap between poor and affluent regions. In fact, most investment flows, policy initiatives and infrastructure projects initiated under the campaign concentrate on localities in or adjacent to the Sichuan basin, therefore widening the gap between Sichuan's poor western mountain regions and affluent basin cities. Notwithstanding this deficiency, significant effects have resulted from the campaign's initiation. First, the campaign is facilitating central government approval for large-scale environmental protection and infrastructure projects, thereby quickening the national integration of Sichuan's economy and society. Secondly, it is prodding government and business leaders to ameliorate the investment climate and regulatory structure. As a result of these two effects, the campaign is accelerating processes of economic reform, urbanization and globalization already under way. It is putting in place the infrastructure for accelerated capital accumulation, thus extending capitalist development from China's seaboard towards the interior.
Chongqing: Opportunities and Risks
Authors: Hong Lijian
Published: July 2004

The separation of Chongqing from Sichuan and its promotion to a municipality directly subordinated to central government, as well as its inclusion in the area for the campaign to Open Up the West, have helped Chongqing position itself well ahead of many other inland Chinese industrial cities. Increased central funding has helped Chongqing to survive the social, political and economic consequences of the large-scale relocation programme attached to the Three Gorges Reservoir area and the dramatic restructure of state-owned industries. The future of Chongqing, however, depends on how long the current proactive fiscal policy of the central government will last and how quickly Chongqing can establish sustained economic development under socialist market conditions.
The Mobilization of “Nature”: Perspectives from North-west Yunnan
Authors: Litzinger Ralph
Published: July 2004

The Yunnan Great Rivers Project is a collaborative conservation and development project between the Yunnan provincial government and The Nature Conservancy. Transnational environmental projects of this kind must be brought more critically into view in order to understand the competing discourses and struggles over nature as the west is opened for investment. In this case the subject of ethnographic enquiry is a county-level workshop sponsored by The Nature Conservancy which drafted a petition eventually presented to the State Council requesting an end to mountaineering on a “sacred” Tibetan mountain. This case study raises a series of questions about the politics of ethnic minority empowerment and disempowerment and the transforming role of transnational environmental activity, including the production of biological and cultural knowledge.
James R. Townsend (1932–2004)
Authors: Kallgren Joyce K.
Published: July 2004

James R. Townsend, emeritus professor of political science and East Asian studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, passed away peacefully on January 17, 2004 after a decade-long battle with cancer. He was 71.

Professor Townsend was a member of the first post-Second World War generation of China scholars. He studied in the late 1950s and early 1960s at one of the Centers for Chinese Studies that had been established by the Ford Foundation to supplement traditional discipline training. Townsend completed his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley, as did other prominent scholars such as Fred Wakeman (history), Chalmers Johnson (political science), Paul Ivory (economics), and Woody Watson (anthropology). He commenced his teaching career in the Berkeley department of political science, only to be recruited away by the University of Washington in 1968. Washington remained his home base thereafter.

Jim Townsend's place in the development of contemporary Chinese studies was multifaceted, due to his intellectual ability, his deep personal commitment to expanded knowledge and interest in China and, equally important, his unique personality. He was a teacher, a researcher and an advocate of knowledge for knowledge's sake.
The Development of China's Stock Market, 1984–2002. By Stephen Green. [London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xv+287 pp. £65.00. ISBN 0-415-32466-1.]
Authors: Sun Laixiang
Published: July 2004

Does the spectacular development of China's stock market present a theoretical puzzle? On one hand, within a short period of a little more than a decade (1990–2002), the total capitalization of the market grew from a negligible size to a level equivalent to more than 50 per cent of the country's GDP, and even if excluding non-floating shares held by the state and legal persons, the capitalization level was still equivalent to some 16 per cent of GDP. On the other hand, until very recently few of the institutions that underpin successful stock markets elsewhere were present. This seems to be in contradiction to the teaching of neo-institutional economics, which holds that only when the state is credibly committed to clarifying and defending functional institutions will people feel confidence enough to engage in complex transactions like stock trading. Does this imply a paradox? The author argues in this book that it is not so straightforward.

The book provides detailed and convincing evidence to show that the impressive growth of China's stock market since 1990 has been to a great extent a result of policy-driven development favoured by a lack of alternative investment opportunities for increasingly wealthy private investors. Chinese companies in general viewed stock listing as a privilege and a fund-raising mechanism. Market participants perceived that the quality of listed companies was generally poor but that investors were protected because of the constant financial and policy supports provided by both local and the central governments. As a consequence, market participants had little incentive to pay much attention to corporate governance and other fundamentals. Would such features lead to a pessimistic scenario, meaning that the development would not be sustainable? Not so simple, the author suggests.
Chinese Science and Technology Industrial Parks. By Susan M. Walcott. [Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2003. x+220pp. £55.00. ISBN 0-7546-0952-9.]
Authors: Cao Cong
Published: July 2004

One of the institutional innovations in China's reform and open-door era is the establishment of economic and technological development zones, export processing zones, science and technology parks, and other “zones” or “parks” at geographically diverse regions. This book represents an effort to investigate some of the science and technology industrial parks (STIPs). For the geographer Walcott, such parks are oriented to multinational development, multinational learning, and local innovation learning, based on “the type of activity contained and the type of company profiled” (p. 13). In particular, she shows that multinational corporations (MNCs) have become the growth engines for China's leapfrog into the 21st century with their contributions to China's exports, high tech as well as low tech, and the creation of new jobs. Therefore, in cities like Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Suzhou, MNCs have mainly processed and assembled products using foreign-imported critical parts plus locally-made components with the help of cheap labor and easy access to major ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai. On the other hand, in Shanghai, the best example of a multinational learning zone capable of providing a wide range of skills, goods and services, MNCs are engaged in manufacturing activities in proximity to Chinese firms, research and development entities, both within and outside designated STIPs. Finally, Beijing, Shenzhen (again), and Xi'an, according to Walcott, have represented another model where the proximity of domestic firms to institutions of learning has facilitated knowledge transfer.
The Employment Impact of China's WTO Accession. By A.S. Bhalla and Shufang Qiu. [London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xix+204 pp. £65.00. ISBN 0-415-30839-9.]
Authors: Vermeer Eduard B.
Published: July 2004

This is a well-informed and readable study by two economic consultants. They argue that liberalization of trade in anticipation of and following China's accession to the WTO will result in short-term losses for a number of China's economic sectors, but in long-term net overall benefits. They expect “enormous problems related to the restructuring of SOEs and banking and other financial services, and also to the social effects such as unemployment and greater income inequalities.” Successive chapters treat agriculture, selected industries (textiles, garments, automobiles and household appliances) and the services of distribution, banking and insurance, and telecommunications. The authors summarize the main English-language and some Chinese studies on employment prospects in these sectors, and point out the weaknesses in their assumptions and models. Nevertheless, they are not afraid to add some forecasts of their own. Confronted with conflicting data (their statistical tables do not go beyond 1999) and opinions, often they refrain from drawing firm conclusions. The book ends, in a rather summary manner, with three scenarios of China's possible response to social destabilization owing to massive unemployment: non-compliance, devaluation and a shift to non-tradeables and the domestic market.
Xinjiang: China's Muslim Far Northwest. By Michael Dillon. [London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. ix+201 pp. £65.00. ISBN 0-415-32051-8.]
Authors: Smith Joanne N.
Published: July 2004

Xinjiang: China's Muslim Far Northwest is, as the preface notes, primarily a work of synthesis. The author gathers together an impressive amount of documentary data from a range of sources, including domestic Chinese and world news media, Han Chinese scholarship, and, to a lesser extent, reports by Uighur émigré organizations. These data are employed to illustrate patterns of separatist opposition and state reaction in Xinjiang, particularly since the 1990 Baren riots, identified as the ‘turning point’ in regional state-minority relations. In this, the book might be characterized as the extension of Dillon's earlier paper “Xinjiang: ethnicity, separatism and control in Chinese Central Asia’ (1995).

Part one, an introduction to Xinjiang, is the section that most closely approaches the stated goal of providing an updated ‘survey of breadth and depth’ in the style of Owen Lattimore's celebrated Pivot of Asia (1950). In it, the author sketches a broad outline of Xinjiang's geography, history, ethnic make-up, and economy. As he forewarns, the result of his attempt to cover such a wealth of topics may disappoint the specialist. It nonetheless provides a timely snapshot of a rapidly developing society and political economy in a region of growing strategic importance; this is likely to be of interest to non-specialists from a wide range of disciplines.
China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past. By Paul A. Cohen. [London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, pp. xii+226. £18.99. ISBN 0-415-29823-7.]
Authors: Dikötter Frank
Published: July 2004

Paul Cohen's Discovering History on China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past, which critically analysed a number of common approaches to the history of modern China, was a very welcome contribution to critical methodology when it appeared in 1984, although the book has aged rather rapidly with the rise of cultural studies over the last 20 years. Readers who benefited from Cohen's arguments in favour of a more ‘China-centered approach’ will be forgiven for thinking that this might be a much needed revision of Discovering History in China. Despite a promising title, however, we are offered instead a sampling of the author's writings to date. The volume reprints excerpts from several of his previous books, starting as far back as his study of Wang Tao published in 1974 and also including a chapter from his 1984 study on American writings on modern China, and presents several talks based on his important study of the Boxer rebellion which were originally delivered in China. The collection also contains a discussion of 1949 as a watershed date, originally given at a workshop held at Harvard University in 1994, and an article on ‘national humiliation’ published as recently as 2002.

While collections of articles previously published in hard-to-find journals can be a welcome addition to the field, this compendium no doubt targets the student who wishes to have a handy introduction to the career of Paul Cohen, and a helpful introductory essay in which the author reflects on how his thinking has changed over half a century of active scholarship, as well as a brief chapter in which his earlier work is revisited, no doubt facilitate this goal. Whether or not a compendium which includes work published several decades ago can still offer “fresh ways of approaching the Chinese past,” as the book description promises, is no doubt a matter of perspective, although readers in Europe may find the constant use of terms like ‘the West,’ on occasion 12 times a page, a tad tiring, all the more as this often appears to mean ‘America’–a world on its own. America-bound as China Unbound may be, the volume will nonetheless be read with profit by students from a variety of backgrounds, in particular if they are interested in the craft of historical inquiry as practiced by an important historian of modern China.
China's Maritime Customs and China's Trade Statistics, 1859–1948. By Thomas P. Lyons. [Trumansburg, NY: Willow Creek Press, 2003. 171 pp. $34.95. ISBN 0-97291475-7.]
Authors: van de Ven Hans
Published: July 2004

Any historian with a serious interest in China's modern economic history will be grateful for Thomas Lyons's study of the trade statistics produced by the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Those wishing to use the Customs' statistics will find it indispensable. By means of a detailed demonstration of how to reconstruct statistics for the Fujian tea trade between 1862 and 1948, Lyons shows all the pitfalls and dangers of using Customs data, and how to deal with them.

Lyons, who has published on Fujian's and China's economic history in the past, constructs his study as a test of the tea trade statistics used by Robert Gardella and Chen Ciyu. He convincingly demonstrates that both made errors, which in the case of Gardella were of relatively minor consequence but in that of Chen of a much more serious nature. But his study is not a pedantic exercise in cliometric propriety. Rather, Lyons provides us with a sourcebook to the statistical publications of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. He sets out in brief form the Service's organizational history and its bureaucratic structures. He then explains the Maritime Customs Service's accounts, the statistics it produced, and their dangers. He finally applies the lessons learned to a reconstruction of the Fujian tea trade.
Assignment Shanghai: Photographs on the Eve of Revolution. By Jack Birns, edited by Carolyn Wakeman and Ken Light. [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 144 pp. $34.95; £22.95. ISBN 0-520-23990-3.]
Authors: Gittings John
Published: July 2004

The image of a desperate Shanghai on the eve of Liberation – memorably conveyed in Henri Cartier-Bresson's picture of a crowd queuing for gold outside a bank – is amplified by this fine volume of photos from Jack Birns, then on assignment for Life magazine. Many of his China negatives, which include some taken on side trips to cover the defence of Mukden and the battle of Xuzhou, were unused and lay in the TimeLife archives for half a century before being disinterred.

Life, as Orville Schell notes in his foreword, was the vehicle for some of the best photo-journalism of the mid-2000s, merging “a gritty current-affairs realism with a keen eye and fine sense of composition.” Yet the picture of Kuomintang brutality, muddle and corruption was often too gritty for Life's publisher Henry R. Luce who over the years had placed Chiang Kai-shek seven times on the cover.
The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation. By Philip Snow. [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003. xxvii+477 pp. £25.00. ISBN 0-300-09352-7.]
Authors: Baker Hugh D. R.
Published: July 2004

This title has been used before, but usually with reference just to the conquest of Hong Kong by Japan in 1941, and here the battle for the territory is covered in a mere 20 pages. The main subject matter is indeed the Japanese occupation, but the title may be taken to have double reference because it is Snow's thesis that it was this brief period of less than four years that led inexorably to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. He argues that the loss of Britain's imperial prestige was exacerbated and set in concrete by the clear message of post-1945 history that it was the Chinese who were the driving power behind Hong Kong and her development. Too weak (sometimes too insensitive) to take full economic advantage from events, the British presided over “an astonishing explosion of wealth. But in the process their own role had become so exiguous that it no longer really mattered, was indeed barely noticeable . . .“ This may be rather too harsh a judgement on the British (who in their ‘second innings’ hung on for more than half a century after all) but Snow is surely right in tracing the beginning of the distant end to the Japanese conquest which drew a line under received truths and cleared the way for the emergence of new attitudes on all sides.

The political history of the pre-invasion period from the late 1930s, of the occupation itself, and of the immediate years after British resumption of control in August 1945 is nicely pieced together from a wide variety of sources, and Snow has tried hard to draw on Chinese, Japanese and Eurasian writings as well as on the much greater wealth of British accounts, both official and private. In this striving after balance he has had only limited success, the result still being an Anglocentric history, though certainly not entirely an Anglophile one. The problem is not of his making, but reflects the relatively sparse and unsystematic nature of sources available at present in Chinese especially.
Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927 – 1937. By David A. Pietz. [New York and London: Routledge, 2002. ix+142 pp. £45.00. ISBN 0-415-93388-9.]
Authors: Coble Parks M.
Published: July 2004

Imperial China was known for its massive water control projects, most famously the Huang (Yellow) River dykes and the Grand Canal. Today's China is now constructing the largest hydroelectric project in human history, the Three Gorges dam. Sandwiched between these two eras was Republican China, when the traditional methods of construction and engineering gave way to new processes grounded in the principles of scientific hydrology and engineering largely developed in the West. In this brief but fascinating study, David A. Pietz examines the efforts of the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek during the Nanjing decade of 1927–1937 to re-shape the Huai River basin. A student of William Kirby, Pietz adopts the Kirby view that one should see 1949 not as an unbridgeable divide between two eras, but find much continuity in the growth of the modern developmental state in China.

Pietz has chosen the Huai River basin for his case study primarily because it witnessed the Kuomintang government's largest such project. In addition, the ecology of no other area of China has been more impacted by human action. Although draining over a relatively flat alluvial plain, the Huai was far more stable in ancient times than its northern neighbor, the Huang River, because of a much lower silt content. Yet all changed in 1194 when the Huang broke through its banks and began to flow south into the Huai, radically altering the ecology of north central China. From 1194 until 1855 the Huang River entered the ocean through the old Huai River channel, rendering the Huai a mere tributary. Subsequent imperial governments attempted to contain the Huang River while at the same time stabilizing the Grand Canal, so essential for grain transport from the south.
Leaving China: Media, Migration and Transnational Imagination. By Wanning Sun. [Lanham, Boulder, London, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. 243 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0-7425-1797-7.]
Authors: Lee Gregory B.
Published: July 2004

Leaving China is, in part, a study of the televisual and filmic representation of Chinese emigration. The book is partly autobiographical, since it draws on the author's own lived experience as a China-born scholar established abroad. The author, born in the PRC, is now based in Australia, but as the list of acknowledgements indicates, she is imbricated in a global network of China-related academics. The other strand of Wanning Sun's research is imaginary travel and virtual migration: the Chinese spectator's consumption of a filmed elsewhere – especially the elsewhere inhabited by émigré Chinese.

This is a book about recent migration from the PRC and Chinese perceptions of emigration. Leaving China does not attempt to address the history of the older diaspora of the 19th and 20th centuries, for instance, the now forgotten communities whose story is told in the Chinese-Australian writer Brian Castro's book Birds of Passage (Allen & Unwin, 1983). In the parts of the book that focus on lived migratory experience, Sun is concerned more with people like herself, her generation, and her class.
Aetiology and prognosis of bacteraemia in Italy
Authors: PANCERI M. L. , VEGNI F. E. , GOGLIO A. , MANISCO A. , TAMBINI R. , LIZIOLI A. , PORRETTA A. D. , PRIVITERA G.
Published: July 2004

A prospective multi-centre study was conducted to assess the microbiological pattern and prognostic factors of bacteraemia and their impact on clinical outcome. All patients admitted to 41 Italian hospitals over 2 months, from whom one or more clinically significant organisms were isolated from blood culture, were studied according to a standardized protocol and case definition. A total of 156 episodes of bacteraemia were identified in 20601 patients. There were 3·9 episodes of nosocomially acquired bacteraemia and 3·7 episodes of community-acquired bacteraemia per 1000 admissions. The most frequent pathogens isolated were Gram-negative bacteria (44·9%) but Gram-positive species accounted for 40·4% of episodes. Fungal infections due to Candida spp. were found in 3·8% of episodes, and multiple pathogens were recovered from 9·6% of episodes. The clinical response to bacteraemia was classified as sepsis in 90 episodes (57·7%), severe sepsis in 21 (13·5%) and septic shock in 26 (16·7%); 19 episodes (12·2%) showed no clinical response. The total in-hospital mortality was 25·0%. By multivariate logistic regression, the variables which independently predicted mortality were increasing age, the presence of septic shock, infection with Gram-positive bacteria or fungi and nosocomial acquisition.
Nationwide survey of human Listeria monocytogenes infection in Japan
Authors: OKUTANI A. , OKADA Y. , YAMAMOTO S. , IGIMI S.
Published: July 2004

Listeriosis, caused by Listeria monocytogenes, is a significant public-health concern as a result of its clinical severity and high mortality. Large foodborne outbreaks of listeriosis have occurred during the last two decades in Europe and the United States, but to date there have been no food-mediated epidemics of the disease and very little information is available on the number of cases of listeriosis in Japan. We performed a nationwide surveillance study of listeriosis. The data were collected between 1980 and 2002, and 95 case reports were identified from 1996 to 2002. We divided 13·6 (cases per year between 1996 and 2002) by the ratio of the number of beds in hospitals that replied to the questionnaire, to that of all the hospitals in Japan and estimated that there is an average of 83 cases of listeriosis per year and an incidence of 0·65 cases per million of the population in Japan.
The effect of heterogeneity in measles vaccination on population immunity
Authors: GLASS K. , KAPPEY J. , GRENFELL B. T.
Published: July 2004

High overall vaccination levels sometimes hide pockets of poor coverage. We adopted a meta-population framework to model local aggregation of populations, and used this to investigate the effects of vaccination heterogeneity. A recent survey of antibody levels in a community with low vaccination levels in The Netherlands enabled us to assess the relative importance of local and long-range infective contacts, and thus identify feasible levels of aggregation in the meta-population model. In the aggregated model, we found that heterogeneity in vaccination coverage can lead to a much increased rate of infection among unvaccinated individuals, with a simultaneous drop in the average age at infection.
A scrapie epidemic in Cyprus
Authors: GRAVENOR M. B. , PAPASOZOMENOS P. , McLEAN A. R. , NEOPHYTOU G.
Published: July 2004

Scrapie is endemic in the sheep flocks of many countries, but good epidemiological information on this disease is scarce. Data on the initial stages of an epidemic are even more rare. We describe the ongoing epidemic of scrapie in Cyprus that has been tracked since it began in the mid-1980s. The early stages of the spread of scrapie from farm to farm, between 1985 and 2000, is analysed with a simple mathematical model. The flock-to-flock basic reproductive number (R0) for the spread of scrapie was estimated at between 1·4 and 1·8. The impact of interventions on the control of the epidemic are discussed from an epidemiological and economic point of view. Early identification of scrapie cases on farms can have a large impact on the number of farms affected. The long period before detection of disease in a flock means that policies based on whole-flock slaughter can be inefficient in preventing spread. Under a range of scenarios, a concentration of resources on early detection and quarantine may be more effective in terms of both the costs and control of the epidemic.
Long-term impact of vaccination on Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) carriage in the United Kingdom
Authors: McVERNON J. , HOWARD A. J. , SLACK M. P. E. , RAMSAY M. E.
Published: July 2004

A recent resurgence in serious infections due to Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) has been observed in the United Kingdom. More information on Hib transmission in the population is required in order to better understand the mechanism of this increase. The Public Health Laboratory Service (subsumed into the Health Protection Agency since April 2004) conducted four cross-sectional studies of asymptomatic oropharyngeal Hib carriage in children attending day-care nurseries in England and Wales in 1992, 1994, 1997 and 2002. These demonstrated a marked reduction in the prevalence of Hib colonization over time since vaccine introduction (3·98% in 1992; 0·70% in 1994; 0% in 1997; 0% in 2002), which did not explain the increase in invasive disease reports from 1999 onwards. We believe that a reduction in antibody levels over the first 5 years of life in immunized children in recent years has fuelled the rise in reported cases in the absence of an obvious increase in transmission.
Characterization of antigenically and genetically similar influenza C viruses isolated in Japan during the 1999–2000 season
Authors: MATSUZAKI Y. , TAKAO S. , SHIMADA S. , MIZUTA K. , SUGAWARA K. , TAKASHITA E. , MURAKI Y. , HONGO S. , NISHIMURA H.
Published: July 2004

Between October 1999 and May 2000, a total of 28 strains of influenza C virus were isolated in four Japanese prefectures: Yamagata, Miyagi, Saitama and Hiroshima. Antigenic analysis showed that the 28 isolates were divided into three distinct antigenic groups, and viruses belonging to different antigenic groups were co-circulating in each of the four prefectures. Phylogenetic analysis of the seven protein genes demonstrated that the viruses having a similar genome composition spread in various areas of Japan during the same period. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis showed that most of the influenza C viruses isolated in various areas of the world between the 1970s and 1980s were closely related to the contemporary Japanese viruses in all gene segments. These observations suggest that the influenza C viruses cause epidemics in some communities during the same season and that antigenically and genetically similar influenza C viruses spread throughout Japan and may be circulating worldwide.
Increase of immunity to rubella and interruption of rubella transmission in Gipuzkoa (Basque Country, Spain) after an enhanced vaccination programme
Authors: CILLA G. , DORRONSORO M. , SÁENZ-DOMÍNGUEZ J. R. , SERRANO E. , PÉREZ-TRALLERO E.
Published: July 2004

In Spain, vaccination against rubella was initiated in schoolgirls in the mid-1970s. In Gipuzkoa, subsequent extensions to the vaccination schedule culminated in 1992 with the introduction of the two-dose measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in children and adolescents of both sexes. Moreover, in 1985 a programme for the identification and vaccination of non-immune parturient women was implemented in the region's main hospital. The prevalence of rubella-susceptible parturient women decreased from 3·7% at the beginning of the study to <1·5% by 1992. Despite this overall decrease, 4·8% of adolescent parturients were susceptible to rubella during 2001–2002. From 1984, the number of reported cases of rubella (children and adults) progressively decreased until 1997, after which there have been no cases of indigenous rubella. There have been no cases of reported congenital rubella since 1984. These results indicate that the vaccine policy carried out in this geographical area has been effective in achieving considerable progress towards rubella elimination.
An outbreak due to peanuts in their shell caused by Salmonella enterica serotypes Stanley and Newport – sharing molecular information to solve international outbreaks
Authors: KIRK M. D. , LITTLE C. L. , LEM M. , FYFE M. , GENOBILE D. , TAN A. , THRELFALL J. , PACCAGNELLA A. , LIGHTFOOT D. , LYI H. , McINTYRE L. , WARD L. , BROWN D. J. , SURNAM S. , FISHER I. S. T.
Published: July 2004

Salmonellosis is a global problem caused by the international movement of foods and high incidence in exporting countries. In September 2001, in an outbreak investigation Australia isolated Salmonella Stanley from imported peanuts, which resulted in a wider investigation in Canada, England & Wales and Scotland. Patients infected with Salmonella serotypes known to be isolated from peanuts and reported to surveillance systems were interviewed to determine exposure histories. Tagged image file format (TIFF) images of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns of Salmonella isolates were shared electronically amongst laboratories. Laboratories tested packets of ‘Brand X’ peanuts from various lots and product lines. In total, 97 cases of S. Stanley and 12 cases of S. Newport infection were found. Seventy-three per cent (71/97) of S. Stanley cases were in persons of Asian ethnicity. Twenty-eight per cent of cases recalled eating Brand X peanuts and a further 13% had peanuts in their house in the previous month or had eaten Asian-style peanuts. Laboratories isolated S. Stanley, S. Newport, S. Kottbus, S. Lexington and S. Unnamed from Brand X peanuts. Isolates of S. Stanley from peanuts and human patients were indistinguishable by PFGE. This international outbreak resulted from a product originating from one country affecting several others. Rapid sharing of electronic DNA images was a crucial factor in delineating the outbreak; multinational investigations would benefit from a harmonized approach.
E-mail surveys assist investigation and response: a university conjunctivitis outbreak
Authors: PASSARO D. J. , SCOTT M. , DWORKIN M. S.
Published: July 2004

A conjunctivitis outbreak affecting more than 200 individuals occurred on a university campus in Evanston, Illinois, USA, in spring 2002. An investigation was conducted jointly by the Evanston Department of Health and the Illinois Department of Public Health. A combination of e-mail and traditional telephone-based surveys demonstrated that wearing contact lenses was a risk factor for any conjunctivitis and bilateral conjunctivitis, whereas using glasses was protective. Laboratory and epidemiological evidence suggested that the outbreak was caused by a viral pathogen that eluded characterization despite extensive culture and PCR-based laboratory testing. Enhanced laboratory surveillance could help clinicians and public-health officials to identify relevant secular changes in the spectrum of causes of conjunctivitis. During institutional outbreaks, e-mail surveys can help public-health officials to efficiently access information not easily collected by traditional case-control studies, and can provide an effective conduit for providing prevention recommendation, such as the need for improved hand and contact-lens hygiene during outbreaks.
Epidemics of two Victoria and Yamagata influenza B lineages in Yamagata, Japan
Authors: MIZUTA K. , ITAGAKI T. , ABIKO C. , MURATA T. , TAKAHASHI T. , MURAYAMA S.
Published: July 2004

We attempted to predict epidemics of influenza B, focusing on B/Victoria/2/87-like (V) and B/Yamagata/16/88-like (Y) lineages, in Yamagata, Japan. We collected 9624 nasopharyngeal swabs for virus isolation from patients with respiratory infections between 1996 and 2003 and 237 sera for seroepidemiological analysis by haemagglutination–inhibition test in 2001. We isolated 424 V-lineage and 246 Y-lineage viruses during the study period. Three herald viruses in the 2000–2001 season enabled us to predict a V-lineage epidemic in the following season. However, another V-lineage epidemic occurred in the 2002–2003 season, although we caught four herald Y-lineage viruses, whose antigenic drift was suggested by seroepidemiological study, at the end of the previous season. Since the epidemiology of the two influenza B lineages remains unclear, a careful watch should be kept on these lineages in order to provide effective public-health strategies against future epidemics.