bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Urbanization in Zurich; Headquarter Economy and City-Belt
Authors: Hitz Hansruedi , Schmid Christian , Wolff Richard
Published: October 2006

The fundamental restructuring of the capitalist world system in the shift from Fordism towards flexible accumulation has produced remarkable changes in the process of urbanization. In this paper the spatial implications for Switzerland are examined. First, the way in which the Swiss economy, based on export-oriented industrial production, developed into a ‘headquarter economy’ specialized in controlling and organizing multinational production as well as in commanding international circuits of capital is investigated. Second, changes in the urbanization process in Switzerland are examined through a study of the rise of five urban regions and the transformation of Zurich into an international control center. Third, the regional and local effects of Zurich's headquarter economy and the political implications of the urbanization process are examined. Finally, the transformation of the urban periphery and the emergence of a city-belt in the north of Zurich are focused upon.
Escaping Flatland: A Book Review Essay Inspired by Gunnar Olsson's Lines of Power/Limits of Language
Authors: Philo Chris
Published: October 2006

In this paper I offer reflections on Gunnar Olsson's 1991 text, Lines of Power/Limits of Language, concentrating particularly on its attempt to ‘write’ a new geometry of social thought which will enable the expression of a critique—itself almost impossible to formulate in human language—directed at the interweaving of taboos (boundaries to the unspoken) in Enlightenment Reason with operations of power in sociocultural life. The suggestion is that Olsson is striving to escape from what he regards as the ‘flatland’ in which much current social thought is entrenched, and is thereby seeking an altogether less-constraining ‘spaccland’ which will allow him to understand quite ‘other’ truths about the connections between the abstract (the immaterial) and the concrete (the material), I outline something of what Olsson's new conceptual geometry entails, but at the same time question the extent to which this geometry carries with it problems not so different from those that bedevilled ‘spatial science’. Furthermore, I argue that Olsson's will to think ever more abstractly—and in so doing to take his geometry into abstracted realms strangely removed from the contexts of everyday human life—separates him from precisely those everyday contexts in which people cannot help but be ‘philosophers’ dealing with the imponderables of taboos, power, truth, and morality in order simply to ‘get by’.
Space and the Nation: Three Texts on Aldo Rossi
Authors: Bremner Lindsay
Published: October 2006

In this paper the spatial dimensions of political practice and the historical dimensions of architectural practice are examined. The author argues that these two practices intersect when, in the life of a city and a nation, time is transformed into space. The productivity of death in this regard is explored. In developing this argument, reference is made to the works and writings of Regis Debray and Aldo Rossi, as well as events in the recent political history of South Africa.
Scripting the Compound: Power and Space in the South African Mining Industry
Authors: Crush Jonathan
Published: October 2006

In this paper the discursive construction of South Africa's quintessential institution of labour coercion and control—the mine compound—is explored. Popular and academic narratives of the origins, spread, and role of the compound are traced, with particular attention to the scripts of marxists, social historians, and poststructuralists. I argue that underlying each is a set of spatial images which powerfully constrains what is admissible to the narrative. Recent attempts to resituate the compound as a fluid ensemble of power geometries are highlighted through a review of the interior spatiality and cultural life of the compound and its connections to its immediate surrounds and the distant countryside. The aim is an empowering narrative which centres migrant cultural resistance and helps to explain the dramatic reordering of the mine landscape since the mid-1980s.
Geopolitics, Geography, and ‘Terrorism’ in the Middle East
Authors: Sidaway James Derrick
Published: October 2006

This paper is about a number of problems in the representation of the region of Southwest Asia that is known as the ‘Middle East’. Through an examination of the Gulf War and so-called ‘Islamic terrorism’, the author considers the place of academic and popular geographical discourses. Me looks at how, and for what reasons spatial metaphors are utilized in Western representations of the Middle East, and considers ‘Islamic’ perspectives on the West. The author draws a critical approach to Middle East studies and geopolitics; fashioned by the concepts and vocabularies of ‘postcolonial’ and sometimes ‘postmodern’ frameworks.
Private Lives, Secluded Places: Privacy as Political Possibility
Authors: Squires Judith
Published: October 2006

The theoretical writings that underpin contemporary liberal democracies have all, in varying form, stressed the value of privacy as fundamental to the realisation of a civilised society, Yet it is ever more evident that privacy is now so threatened as to be practically lost to us already. Unless we turn our attention to the task of rethinking the nature of our concern for privacy, and to the possibilities of its realisation and preservation, we may indeed find ourselves bereft of one of our most fundamental values. I make this claim in recognition of the fact that the condition of postmodernity is characterised by forces that would erode many of the spaces and places in which privacy was previously grounded.
Gentrification, Class, and Gender: Some Comments on Wardens ‘Gentrification as Consumption’
Authors: Butler Tim , Hamnett Chris
Published: October 2006

In this paper Warde's argument that gentrification is primarily an issue of gender is questioned. It is argued that class and gender are both important in understanding gentrification. Contra Warde, it is argued that gentrification is likely to be found in the distinctive locational patterns of particular fractions of the middle class, Evidence from a recent study of gentrification in northeast London suggests that gentrifiers are drawn disproportionately from the second-generation middle-class and that it is within this context that the role played by women in the gentrification process needs to be understood.
Placing Power/Siting Space: The Politics of Global and Local in the New World Order
Authors: Luke Timothy W
Published: October 2006

The logic of drawing political borders and defining national territory in space as it has been articulated by the theory of political realism is questioned in this paper. At the same time, the dynamics of globalization operating in high-technology informational production systems as well as media-intensive mass consumption systems are reexamined in order to reconsider their impact on local cultural and social environments. It is concluded that new understandings of territoriality are developing in such informationalized spaces, posing new challenges to those providing security, identity, and stability to contemporary communities experiencing the impact of globalization.
West Hollywood as Symbol: The Significance of Place in the Construction of a Gay Identity
Authors: Forest Benjamin
Published: October 2006

The 1984 municipal incorporation of West Hollywood, California offers an opportunity to explore two related themes: (1) the role of place in the creation of identity generally, and (2) the role of place in the creation of sexual identity in particular. Work on the second subject has largely concentrated on the political economy of gay territories, although there has been an ongoing concern with the symbolic importance of these places. Although these studies have provided valuable insights on these themes, they do not reflect the renewed concern in humanistic geography with the normative importance of place, and the study of morally valued ways of life. These latter topics provide alternative avenues into questions of identity. In the coverage of the incorporation campaign, the gay press presented an idealized image of the city. In defining a new gay identity, the gay press utilized the holistic quality of place to weave together the ‘natural’ and cultural elements of West Hollywood. This idealized ‘gay city’ united the place's real and imagined physical attributes with social and personal characteristics of gay men. More simply, the qualities of the city itself expressed intellectual and moral virtues, such that characterizations of the city became part of a narrative defining the meaning of ‘gay’. This new gay male identity included seven elements: creativity, aesthetic sensibility, an orientation toward entertainment or consumption, progressiveness, responsibility, maturity, and centrality. The effort to create an identity centered on West Hollywood was relatively conservative in the sense that it was not a fundamental challenge to existing social and political systems. Rather, it reflected a strategy based on an ethnicity model, seeking to ‘demarginalize’ gays and to bring them closer to the symbolic ‘center’ of US society.
Walter Benjamin's Urban Thought: A Critical Analysis
Authors: Savage Mike
Published: October 2006

In this paper I offer an introductory survey of Walter Benjamin's writings on cities and urbanism in order to explore the potential value of his insights for urban studies, I address the following issues: the complexity and variety of Benjamin's urban writings; the status of Benjamin's theory of modern urban experience in his thought; the distinct textual strategics developed in his urban writings; and the relationship between memory, the built environment, and historical processes. I argue that Benjamin's concept of ‘aura’ can be used to place his interest in cities and urbanisim in context, I conclude with the suggestion that these notions can usefully inform current writings in urban studies.
Living on the Street: Social Organisation and Gender Relations of Australian Street Kids
Authors: Winchester Hilary P M , Costello Lauren N
Published: October 2006

The resurgence and visibility of homelessness since the 1980s have become significant social and political issues, widely debated in academic circles and in the popular press. The composition of the homeless population has changed markedly in this period, and now includes more women and children, and more of the deinstitutionalised mentally ill. The lives of street kids in the city of Newcastle, Australia show patterns of structured behaviour and territorial and social organisation. They have a distinctive group identity and moral order. Their subculture is complex with strains of nonpatriarchal and patriarchal relations combined with little tolerance of forms of difference. The moral code of the youth subculture may be a form of resistance to their histories of abuse but is also conservative in reproducing aspects of the culture that they resist. The social networks generated on the street provide a self-maintaining force which contributes to a culture of chronic homelessness.
Embodying Spirits of Resistance
Authors: Routledge Paul , Simons Jon
Published: October 2006

There are revolutionary moments of politics that can be most appropriately described as spiritual moments. These are the moments when people are willing to risk their lives while resisting oppressive power. In this paper we address spirits of resistance in a general way, but also as manifested at particular moments in three contemporary resistance movements in England, India, and Palestine. Our intention is not to explain such moments, not to analyze the motivations of those involved, but to follow them in the fashion of nomadic science, critically drawing upon the work of Deleuze and Guattari. In our conclusion we argue that the value of spirits of resistance should be upheld in the face of intellectual strategies to tame them, as it is these moments that best guarantee freedom, whether or not resistance is ‘successful’ .
Animals, Geography, and the City: Notes on Inclusions and Exclusions
Authors: Philol Chris
Published: October 2006

This paper offers notes on the ways in which nonhuman animals have been treated within the texts of academic geography, principally human geography, The argument is that their inclusion here has always been a very partial one, conditioned by what has sometimes been termed a ‘human chauvinism’ leading them to be ignored altogether or only researched in the context of their utility to human beings. An alternative perspective is proposed in which animals are regarded as a marginal ‘social’ group discursively constituted and practically affected by human communities, and as a group which is thereby subjected to all manner of sociospatial inclusions and exclusions, The argument is that animals should be seen as enmeshed in complex power relations with human communities, and in the process enduring geographies which are imposed upon them ‘from without’ but which they may also inadvertently influence ‘from within’. The implications of adopting such a perspective require careful examination, but in the second part of this paper some possibilities are raised though substantive vignettes of animals as a social group included in or excluded from the city. Particular attention is paid to 19th-century debates about meat markets and slaughterhouses, wherein can be detected a will to exclude livestock animals from cities such as London and Chicago on a variety of grounds (medical and hygienic, organisational and moral).
The Modernisation of Britain and Local Economic Policy: Promise and Contradictions
Authors: Gough Jamie , Eiscnschitz Aram
Published: October 2006

Britain's poor economic performance is often thought to be the product of exceptional, archaic characteristics of British society which weaken domestic industry; ‘modernisation’ is seen as the creation of a ‘normal’ capitalism. The modernisation project in recent years has shifted from the national to the local level, partly as a reaction to national neoliberalism which prioritises capital mobility over socialisation to promote manufacturing, Local modernisation strategies can avoid the dangers of overpoliticisation which beset national modernisation, but they are undermined not only by deeply rooted traditions but also by themselves promoting capital mobility and regressive effects. Local strategies for socialisation and movements for British modernisation are both disrupted by the opposition between, but mutual dependence of, capital mobility and the territorial socialisation of production. The difficulty of modernising Britain is thus due to the typicality rather than to the cxceptionalism of British capital.
National Identity and the Politics of Memory: Remembering Bruce and Wallace in Symbolic Space
Authors: Edensor Tim
Published: October 2006

In this paper, I examine the different and competing practices through which symbolic places, and the events and figures they commemorate, are woven into national memories. By exploring the semiotic, commercial, expert, narrative, and bodily practices of remembrance that centre upon Bannockburn and the Wallace Monument, in Stirling, Scotland, I highlight the complex ways in which forms of remembrance are currently proliferating and fragmenting. I then move on to discuss how the common themes in these shifting politics of social remembering have been echoed in popular responses to the Hollywood film Braveheart, which celebrates Wallace. I conclude by looking at how these practices of remembrance indicate the contemporary unstable and contested condition of national identity.
The End of Geography and Radical Politics in Baudrillard's Philosophy
Authors: Smith Richard G
Published: October 2006

In a climate of ‘inverted millenarianism’ or ‘rampant Endism’ it is no surprise that Baudrillard's oeuvre consists of a multiplicity of ends or liquidations. In this context the author begins to work out the implications of Baudrillard's philosophy for geography and politics. He argues that because the representational imaginary is obliterated in simulation it is the ‘end of geography and radical politics' which Baudrillard's work presents.
Ageographia, Heterotopia, and Vancouver's New Public Library
Authors: Lees Loretta
Published: October 2006

Different critical positions have emerged around the restructuring of space in postmodernity. I consider two sets of literature: the sceptical thesis (theses) of the ‘ageographia’ in Sorkin's edited collection Variations on a Theme Park and Foucault's affirmative thesis (theses) of the ‘heterotopia‘. These authors' works relate to a number of themes relevant to this paper: democratic public space, public space (comparing Canada and the USA) and its demise, spatial utopias, and the public library as public space and as ‘other’ space. Vancouver's newest civic landmark, the Vancouver Public Library, provides an illustrative case study with both ageographic and heterotopic qualities.
Aesthetics, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Patrimony: The Case of the Greek Central Archaeological Council
Authors: Loukaki Argyro
Published: October 2006

The author reviews the operation of the most important decisionmaking body in Greece for archaeological and cultural work, as well as for the urban and environmental ethic of heritage protection, the Central Archaeological Council (CAC), functioning in the context of the Ministry of Culture. The CAC is a site of mediation between the state (seen as an entity with many internal contradictions) and various private interests. The author reveals the deeply developmental character of the aesthetic and symbolic presence of monumental landscapes in modern Greece on the basis of research into an extremely rich source of primary materials, the archives of proceedings of the CAC for the period 1974–90, research which included the examination of approximately 16 000 cases. The usual pessimistic view is that state bureaucracy merely promotes the interests of specific socioeconomic powers. But bureaucratic routines can mask deeper and wider processes, such as issues of national development, identity, and self-respect, questions of disciplinary prevalence and aesthetics (as in the case of archaeologists and architects), and problems of coordination of coresponsible state agencies. In Greece such processes take place in the context of an historically established, fierce, Western critique of Greek cultural policies.

More specifically, the author tries to answer the questions of how outcomes arc mediated by the bureaucratic apparatus, how power relations are internalised in the CAC, and what aspect masks what. It is suggested that the opening up of such bureaucratic processes to wider social strata could free new possibilities of social evolution. This started happening in the subperiod 1981–90 alongside the introduction of new institutions and policies in the context of the Ministry of Culture.
The Making of Hindu Communal Organizations, Places, and Identities in Postcolonial Dar es Salaam
Authors: Nagar Richa
Published: October 2006

The author focuses on the religious and caste-based (or ‘communal’) organizations and places of the Hindu immigrant community in postcolonial Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). The paper illustrates how communal organizations, and the contending public narratives that they generated, played a crucial role in defining Hindu communal places and the caste, class, and gender politics around these places. In highlighting these complex politics of multiple identities and communal places, the author underscores the importance of a rapidly shifting political context and a constant reconfiguration of the Tanzanian Asian diaspora at the local, national, and international levels.
“We Sing Our Home, We Dance Our Land”: Indigenous Self-Determination and Contemporary Geopolitics in Australian Popular Music
Authors: Gibson Chris
Published: October 2006

Strategies for indigenous self-determination have emerged at unique junctures in national and global geopolitical arenas, challenging the formal hegemony of the nation-state with claims to land rights, sovereignty and self-governance. These movements are reflected qualitatively, in a variety of social, political, and cultural forms, including popular music in Australia. An analysis of the ‘cultural apparatus’, recordings, and popular performance events of indigenous musicians reveals the construction of ‘arenas of empowerment’ at a variety of geographical scales, within which genuine spaces of Aboriginal self-determination and self-expression can exist. Although these spaces often remain contested, new indigenous musical networks continue to emerge, simultaneously inscribing Aboriginal music into the Australian soundscape, and beginning to challenge normative geopolitical doctrines. The emergence of a vibrant Aboriginal popular music scene therefore requires a rethinking of Australian music, and appeals for greater recognition of Aboriginal artists' sophisticated geopolitical strategies.
The Body as an Accumulation Strategy
Authors: Harvey David
Published: October 2006

The body has become a major focus of attention—both theoretically and politically—over the past twenty years. In much of this literature it is presumed that the body is some kind of social construct at the same time as it is a locus and a measure of both the material and the social world we inhabit. The author situates this idea against the background of Marx's representations—too often by-passed in recent literature—in order to show how Marx's concept of variable capital contains a theory of body formation under capitalism at the same time as it lays the groundwork for understanding how political persons act as moral agents to try to change the conditions under which laboring occurs. The struggle for a living wage in Baltimore is then used as a concrete example of how this form of body politics operates under contemporary conditions, illustrating how the body that is to be the measure of all things is itself a site of political-economic contestation over the very forces that create it.
The (Geo)Politics of Regional Integration: The Example of the Southern African Development Community
Authors: Sidaway James D
Published: October 2006

Although mindful of the context of debates about a global tendency towards the formation of regional communities [of which the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), and the European Union (EU) are examples] the author focuses on the nature of regional integration in Southern Africa. In turn, however, the example of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is used to reflect on a number of broader theoretical issues concerning discourses and processes of regional integration. The author notes how, in the early 1980s, the forerunner to the SADC was born (in part) out of a struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Today, the organisation includes the ‘new’ (postapartheid) South Africa and has accordingly shifted its avowed rationale away from an alliance against apartheid towards a scheme for regional integration, ‘development’, and reconstruction. Moving beyond these claims and drawing on interviews, journalistic sources, and official documentation the author seeks to understand the SADC's role as a diplomatic entity—and as operating within the same logics of power as the postcolonial African state.
Postcolonialism, Identity, and Location: Being White Australian in Asia
Authors: Schech Susanne , Haggis Jane
Published: October 2006

In this paper we explore the nature and degree to which Australian imaginings of self in Asia have altered since the 1960s. We do this in two ways. First, an analysis of Christopher Koch's two novels, The Year of Living Dangerously and Highways to a War, is used to establish the parameters of change in Australian imaginings of themselves in Asia. This analysis of literary texts, we argue, can be used to develop an analytical framework for considering Australian aid policies to Asia as cultural texts, and the extent to which such policies can be seen to be part of a redefinition of Australian settler society towards a postcolonial understanding of the ‘white self’. In the second part of the paper we offer a preliminary analysis of how Australian overseas-aid policies have begun to acknowledge the fact of Australia's geopolitical location. We argue that these cultural texts reveal a repositioning of Australian identity which remains caught within a terrain of whiteness.
Going Out of Town: Youth, ‘Race’, and Place in the South East of England
Authors: Watt Paul
Published: October 2006

In this paper I present findings from research on ‘out-of-town’ leisure destinations and activities by young people from different ethnic backgrounds living in a medium-sized town located in the Home Counties of the South East of England. The predominant way in which the spatialisation of ‘race’ is discussed in Britain is via the discourse of the ‘inner city’. In contrast, the Home Counties' area of the South East has received little recognition of the presence of minority ethnic groups. Instead, it is frequently characterised as being a ‘white place’, or alternatively by some geographers as constituting a ‘nonplace space’ of social and spatial anonymity. However, relatively little research has been carried out on how young people themselves use and perceive different places in the region. I aim to explore issues of race, place, and identity with reference to data from interviews with a multiethnic group of seventy Asian, black, and white young people. I consider the significance of the out-of-town visits for debates over localism, postmodernism, and identity in relation to youth. It is argued that the supposedly anonymous space of the South East is far from being placeless, and instead the out-of-town visits by the young people have identifiable ethnic or racialised meanings. In conclusion, I suggest what implications the findings have for our understanding of the spatialisation of race in this underresearched area of the country.
Wittgenstein and Social Practices
Authors: Stirk Nigel
Published: October 2006

In this paper I examine the value of theories of social practice for cultural geography. I consider the relationship between culture and language use by drawing on the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, whose work explores the concepts of shared understanding and rule-following. Wittgenstein's approach assists in avoiding the type of misconceptions apparent in representationalist criticisms of influential theories of practice like those of Giddens and Bourdieu. A more fruitful way of dealing with practices is also suggested, which connects rules to the use of language and thereby to geographically specific cultures. Although several problems are identified in employing a Wittgensteinian analysis of practice, its applicability to human geography is considered in relation to the subjects of embodiment and place, as well as to the delineation of cultures and to issues of epistemology.
Selling Nature to save It? Biodiversity and Green Developmentalism
Authors: McAfee Kathleen
Published: October 2006

New supranational environmental institutions, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the ‘green’ World Bank, reflect attempts to regulate international flows of ‘natural capital’ by means of an approach I call ‘green developmentalism’. These institutions are sources of eco-development dollars and of a new ‘global’ discourse, a postneoliberal environmental-economic paradigm. By the logic of this paradigm, nature is constructed as a world currency and ecosystems arc recoded as warehouses of genetic resources for biotechnology industries. Nature would earn its own right to survive through international trade in ecosystem services and permits to pollute, access to tourism and research sites, and exports of timber, minerals, and intellectual property rights to traditional crop varieties and shamans' recipes. I contend that green developmentalism, with its promise of market solutions to environmental problems, is blunting the North-South disputes that have embroiled international environmental institutions. But by valuing local nature in relation to international markets—denominating diversity in dollars, euros, or yen—green developmentalism abstracts nature from its spatial and social contexts and reinforces the claims of global elites to the greatest share of the earth's biomass and all it contains. Meanwhile, the CBD has become a gathering ground for transnational coalitions of indigenous, peasant, and NGO opponents of ‘biopiracy’ and the patenting of living things, and advocates of international environmental justice. They have begun to put forward counterdiscourses and alternative practices to those of green developmentalism.
A Corporeal Geography of Consumption
Authors: Valentine Gill
Published: October 2006

In this paper I outline a corporeal geography of consumption. By using the example of food I explore how our bodies are linked to wider consumption spaces and the ways that they are inflected by these sociospatial relations, Although discourses around eating in western cultures tend to privilege self-discipline, there are other meanings around food that emphasise its pleasurable qualities. Because our bodies are a product of the complex interaction of different discourses, social relations, and practices constituted in relation to wider locations, including other bodies, the home, and the workplace, these constellations of relationships do not always serve to produce our bodies in a coherent way. I therefore explore some of the tensions and conflicts individuals experience between different” discourses around food, bodily ideals, and sets of regulatory practices in different locations. In doing so I consider the extent to which individuals produce the space of their bodies in accordance with the disciplinary gaze of others rather than their own desires. I suggest that close spatial proximity to others can result in the erosion of individuals' body boundaries, and argue that the lack of corporeal freedom experienced by those interviewed highlights the limitations of public information and discourses about healthy eating, which are usually targeted at individuals and assume individualised patterns of consumption, rather than recognising the way that food consumption is often a shared activity and that bodily practices arc therefore inflected by wider sociospatial relations.
Postcolonialism and the Deconstructive Scenario: Representing Gayatri Spivak
Authors: Best Beverley
Published: October 2006

The reputed ‘difficulty’ of the texts of Gayatri Spivak poses an obstacle to potentially productive reflection on, and debate surrounding, her critical positions and analyses. Motivated by the attempt to address this situation, I offer this discussion as an exegetical account of some of Spivak's principle categories and arguments. I demonstrate how certain themes, such as the aporia, catachresis, subalternity, and the relationship between the narrow and the general, function in Spivak's work as signposts en route to her formulation of postcolonialism as a deconstructive scenario. Crucial to this formulation is a type of political economy of intellectual production and academic work and the situating of the latter with respect to the international division of labour, informed by a Marxian critique of capital and, in particular, Marx's concept of value. Spivak demonstrates, via Marx, that an economic logic underwrites the practice of representation, in general, and, hence, all intellectual and academic work, in particular. Ironically, Spivak's idiosyncrasy with respect to the mobilisation of Marx in her work, and one of the reasons for her perceived difficulty, lies in the unexpectedness of her orthodoxy.
Molecular analyses of the Apocrita (Insecta:Hymenoptera) suggest that the Chalcidoidea are sister to the diaprioid complex
Authors: Castro Lyda R. , Dowton Mark
Published: October 2006

Despite recent efforts, hypothesised phylogenetic relationships among apocritan wasps remain unresolved. In this study, molecular analyses were employed to analyse a dataset that included the 16S, the 28S and the COI genes of 87 apocritan representatives. Partial sequences of the 18S gene were also generated and added to this dataset. The topological effects of outgroup choice, method of phylogenetic analysis, and inclusion of the 18S data were systematically investigated, with particular focus on the relationship of the Chalcidoidea with other members of the Proctotrupomorpha (Platygastroidea, Proctotrupoidea, Cynipoidea). We report that ingroup topology was sensitive to the choice of outgroup, the method of phylogenetic analysis, and inclusion of 18S data. However, the Proctotrupomorpha were always monophyletic, and the Chalcidoidea were recovered, in every analysis except one, as the sister to the diaprioid complex (Diapriidae + Monomachidae + Maamingidae). The single exception, where the Chalcidoidea + Platygastroidea were recovered, utilised a more distant outgroup (Symphyta : Cephidae : Hartigia), maximum parsimony, and excluded the 18S data. Our results suggest the Chalcidoidea + (Diapriidae + Monomachidae + Maamingidae) relationship is more likely.
The world's thinnest caterpillar? A new genus and species of Batrachedridae (Lepidoptera) from Sporadanthus ferrugineus (Restionacea), a threatened New Zealand plant
Authors: Hoare Robert , Dugdale John , Watts Corinne
Published: October 2006

Houdinia flexilissima, gen. nov., sp. nov. is described from peatlands in the North Island of New Zealand. The extremely narrow larvae mine and pupate in the living stems of Sporadanthus ferrugineus de Lange, Heenan & Clarkson, (Restionaceae), a large endemic rush. Eggs, larvae, pupae and adults are fully described and illustrated. The systematic placement of this autapomorphic taxon is discussed in detail, and it is assigned within Gelechioidea to Batrachedridae on the basis of characters shared with a taxon currently placed in Batrachedra. Because of its morphological distinctiveness, as well as threats to the habitat of its very local host plant, H. flexilissima, gen. nov., sp. nov. is considered a species of high conservation status.
IL-1 resets glucose homeostasis at central levels
Authors: del Rey Adriana , Roggero Eduardo , Randolf Anke , Mahuad Carolina , McCann Samuel , Rettori Valeria , Besedovsky Hugo O.
Published: October 2006

Administration of IL-1β results in a profound and long-lasting hypoglycemia. Here, we show that this effect can be elicited by endogenous IL-1 and is related to not only the capacity of the cytokine to increase glucose uptake in peripheral tissues but also to mechanisms integrated in the brain. We show that (
i
) blockade of IL-1 receptors in the brain partially counteracted IL-1-induced hypoglycemia; (
ii
) peripheral administration or induction of IL-1 production resulted in
IL-1
β gene expression in the hypothalamus of normal and insulin-resistant, leptin receptor-deficient, diabetic
db
/
db
mice; (
iii
) IL-1-treated normal and
db
/
db
mice challenged with glucose did not return to their initial glucose levels but remained hypoglycemic for several hours. This effect was largely antagonized by blockade of IL-1 receptors in the brain; and (
iv
) when animals with an advanced Type II diabetes were treated with IL-1 and challenged with glucose, they died in hypoglycemia. However, when IL-1 receptors in the brains of these diabetic mice were blocked, they survived, and glucose blood levels approached those that these mice had before IL-1 administration. The prolonged hypoglycemic effect of IL-1 is insulin-independent and develops against increased levels of glucocorticoids, catecholamines, and glucagon. These findings, together with the present demonstration that this effect is integrated in the brain and is paralleled by
IL-1β
expression in the hypothalamus, indicate that this cytokine can reset glucose homeostasis at central levels. Such reset, along with the peripheral actions of the cytokine, would favor glucose uptake by immune cells during inflammatory/immune processes.
A Disaggregated Analysis of Asymmetrical Behaviour in the UK Housing Market
Authors: Cook Steven
Published: October 2006

Potential asymmetrical adjustment in UK house prices is considered. The present analysis extends previous research in a number of crucial ways. First, a seminal examination of asymmetry in regionally disaggregated UK house prices is undertaken. Secondly, data are examined which are further disaggregated according to the age, or vintage, of the housing stock. However, the major development concerns the application of a non-parametric testing approach to detect cyclical asymmetry. In contrast to previously employed tests in the economics literature, the Triples test employed possesses high power and is not sensitive to outliers. It is found that extensive asymmetry is present in UK house prices, with cyclical peaks typically being greater in magnitude than corresponding troughs. The implications of these findings for the comparison and construction of economic theories of the housing market, the specification of econometric models and the construction and implementation of economic policy are noted.
Urban Democracy and the Local Trap
Authors: Purcell Mark
Published: October 2006

This paper argues against the local trap-the tendency to assume that the local scale is preferable to other scales. The local trap is an important problem in the recent explosion of research on urban democracy and citizenship. The paper highlights one strain of that literature, the work on 'the right to the city'. It is argued that the right to the city is highly susceptible to the local trap, although it is not inherently so. As we continue to search for innovative new ideas like the right to the city that can help to democratise cities, it is critical to think carefully and strategically about scale.
On Conceptual Confusion in Empirical Analyses of a Transnational Urban Network
Authors: Derudder Ben
Published: October 2006

A number of researchers have recently tried to map the contours of a transnational urban network. Although these empirical studies have great merits in making a closer connection to theoretical ideas on a genuine urban network, they sometimes fail to recognise that the whole idea of cities as 'nodes' in a transnational urban network is a heuristic at best. To assess this underdeveloped analytical connection, a taxonomy of dominant empirical and theoretical approaches is constructed. Contrasting both taxonomies reveals a mismatch between theory and measurement. This mismatch is addressed in more detail through four separate but entwined examples of conceptual conflation: a lack of rigour in the employed terminologies; inappropriate discussions of results against the background of other concepts; the inadequate delineation of the urban area; and, the limited analytical value of infrastructure-based analyses.
Perceptions of potential donors in the Swedish public towards information and consent procedures in relation to use of human tissue samples in biobanks: A population-based study
Authors: Kettis-Lindblad Åsa , Ring Lena , Viberth Eva , Hansson Mats G.
Published: October 2006

Aims: To assess the Swedish public's preferences for information and consent procedures when being asked for permission to use previously collected tissue samples for new research studies. Methods: Cross-sectional study employing postal questionnaires to a random sample of the Swedish general public (n=6,000) in October 2002—February 2003. The response rate was 49% (n=2,928). This paper includes only respondents who reportedly would approve of samples being taken and stored (n=2,122). Results: When potential tissue sample donors in the general public have to strike a balance between the values at stake, i.e. the autonomy of the donor versus the research value, most (72%) prefer general consent, i.e. where consent is asked for at the outset only. They want the research ethics committee (REC) alone to decide on the use of stored samples, and they would allow storage as long as the sample is useful for research. The minority of respondents who were in favour of specific consent were more likely to be young, well educated, have negative experiences of healthcare and low trust in healthcare authorities. Conclusions: The majority of the Swedish general public prefer general consent, and are thus willing to delegate some decisions to the RECs. However, preferences for information and consent procedures depend on the context, e.g. the risks for the donor and the purpose of the research. If feasible, procedures should be differentiated according to the preferences of individual donors, thus protecting the interests of both the minority and the majority.
On the absence of rapidly decaying solutions for parabolic operators whose coefficients are non-Lipschitz continuous in time
Authors: Del Santo Daniele , Prizzi Martino
Published: October 2006

We find minimal regularity conditions on the coefficients of a parabolic operator, ensuring that no nontrivial solution tends to zero faster than any exponential.
Regularity of solutions to stochastic Volterra equations with infinite delay
Authors: Karczewska Anna , Lizama Carlos
Published: October 2006

In this article we give necessary and sufficient conditions providing regularity of solutions to stochastic Volterra equations with infinite delay on a

d
d

-dimensional torus. The harmonic analysis techniques and stochastic integration in function spaces are used. The work applies to both the stochastic heat and wave equations.
An obstruction for the mean curvature of a conformal immersion 𝑆ⁿ→ℝⁿ⁺¹
Authors: Ammann Bernd , Humbert Emmanuel , Ahmedou Mohameden
Published: October 2006

We prove a Pohozaev type identity for non-linear eigenvalue equations of the Dirac operator on Riemannian spin manifolds with boundary. As an application, we obtain that the mean curvature

H
H

of a conformal immersion

S
n

→

R

n
+
1

S^n\to \mathbb {R}^{n+1}

satisfies

∫

∂
X

H
=
0

\int \partial _X H=0

where

X
X

is a conformal vector field on

S
n

S^n

and where the integration is carried out with respect to the Euclidean volume measure of the image. This identity is analogous to the Kazdan-Warner obstruction that appears in the problem of prescribing the scalar curvature on

S
n

S^n

inside the standard conformal class.
On frames for countably generated Hilbert 𝐶*-modules
Authors: Arambašić Ljiljana
Published: October 2006

Let

V
V

be a countably generated Hilbert

C
∗

C^*

-module over a

C
∗

C^*

-algebra

A
.

A.

We prove that a sequence

{

f
i

:
i
∈
I
}
⊆
V

\{f_i:i\in I\}\subseteq V

is a standard frame for

V
V

if and only if the sum

∑

i
∈
I

⟨
x
,

f
i

⟩
⟨

f
i

,
x
⟩

\sum _{i\in I}\langle x,f_i\rangle \langle f_i,x\rangle

converges in norm for every

x
∈
V

x\in V

and if there are constants

C
,
D
>
0

C,D>0

such that
<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper C double-vertical-bar x double-vertical-bar squared less-than-or-equal-to double-vertical-bar sigma-summation Underscript i element-of upper I Endscripts mathematical left-angle x comma f Subscript i Baseline mathematical right-angle mathematical left-angle f Subscript i Baseline comma x mathematical right-angle double-vertical-bar less-than-or-equal-to upper D double-vertical-bar x double-vertical-bar squared">

C
‖
x

‖
2

≤
‖

∑

i
∈
I

⟨
x
,

f
i

⟩
⟨

f
i

,
x
⟩
‖
≤
D
‖
x

‖
2

C\Vert x\Vert ^2\le \Vert \sum _{i\in I}\langle x,f_i\rangle \langle f_i,x\rangle \Vert \le D\Vert x\Vert ^2

for every

x
∈
V
.

x\in V.

We also prove that surjective adjointable operators preserve standard frames. A class of frames for countably generated Hilbert

C
∗

C^*

-modules over the

C
∗

C^*

-algebra of all compact operators on some Hilbert space is discussed.
Rigidity of surfaces whose geodesic flows preserve smooth foliations of codimension 1
Authors: Gomes José , Ruggiero Rafael
Published: October 2006

Let

S
S

be a closed orientable surface. Assume that there exists a codimension one foliation

F

\mathcal F

of class

C
3

C^3

in the unit tangent bundle of

S
S

, whose leaves are invariant under the geodesic flow of

S
S

. Then, the curvature of

S
S

is a nonpositive constant.
A Nuclear Function of Hu Proteins as Neuron-specific Alternative RNA Processing Regulators
Authors: Zhu Hui , Hasman Robert A. , Barron Victoria A. , Luo Guangbin , Lou Hua
Published: October 2006

Recent advances in genome-wide analysis of alternative splicing indicate that extensive alternative RNA processing is associated with many proteins that play important roles in the nervous system. Although differential splicing and polyadenylation make significant contributions to the complexity of the nervous system, our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms underlying the neuron-specific pathways is very limited. Mammalian neuron-specific embryonic lethal abnormal visual-like Hu proteins (HuB, HuC, and HuD) are a family of RNA-binding proteins implicated in neuronal differentiation and maintenance. It has been established that Hu proteins increase expression of proteins associated with neuronal function by up-regulating mRNA stability and/or translation in the cytoplasm. We report here a novel function of these proteins as RNA processing regulators in the nucleus. We further elucidate the underlying mechanism of this regulation. We show that in neuron-like cells, Hu proteins block the activity of TIA-1/TIAR, two previously identified, ubiquitously expressed proteins that promote the nonneuronal pathway of calcitonin/calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) pre-mRNA processing. These studies define not only the first neuron-specific regulator of the calcitonin/CGRP system but also the first nuclear function of Hu proteins.
Reconstruction of the Kinetochore during Meiosis in Fission Yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe
Authors: Hayashi Aki , Asakawa Haruhiko , Haraguchi Tokuko , Hiraoka Yasushi
Published: October 2006

During the transition from mitosis to meiosis, the kinetochore undergoes significant reorganization, switching from a bipolar to a monopolar orientation. To examine the centromere proteins that are involved in fundamental reorganization in meiosis, we observed the localization of 22 mitotic and 2 meiotic protein components of the kinetochore during meiosis in living cells of the fission yeast. We found that the 22 mitotic proteins can be classified into three groups: the Mis6-like group, the NMS (Ndc80-Mis12-Spc7) group, and the DASH group, based on their meiotic behavior. Mis6-like group proteins remain at the centromere throughout meiosis. NMS group proteins disappear from the centromere at the onset of meiosis and reappear at the centromere in two steps in late prophase. DASH group proteins appear shortly before metaphase of meiosis I. These observations suggest that Mis6-like group proteins constitute the structural basis of the centromere and that the NMS and DASH group proteins reassemble to establish the functional metaphase kinetochore. On the other hand, the meiosis-specific protein Moa1, which plays an important role in forming the meiotic monopolar kinetochore, is loaded onto the centromere significantly earlier than the NMS group, whereas another meiosis-specific protein, Sgo1, is loaded at times similar to the NMS group.