Previous Century (previous + century)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The City as Social Display: Landed Elites and Urban Images in Charleston and Palermo

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2001
Enrico Del Lago
The landed elites of Charleston and Palermo successfully modified the layout of the two cities by choosing particular areas of residence in which they could express their economic and social exclusivity through ,representational' architecture. In doing this, the two landed elites constructed images of the cities which built upon already established ones acquired in previous centuries. While the old images were the symbolic expressions of the political domination of two distant states over their colonies, the new images symbolized the power of the landed aristocrats, their domination of the social and economic life of the cities, and their commitment to nationalist struggles against new and hostile political institutions. [source]


Pierre Janet and Félida Artificielle: Multiple personality in a nineteenth-century guise

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 3 2003
Edward M. Brown M.D. clinical associate professor of psychiatry
In the wake of the recent epidemic of multiple personality phenomena, it is important to get a clear idea of what similar phenomena looked like in previous centuries. Pierre Janet's detailed description of his discovery, made during the 1880s, that he could cure hysteria by creating a healthy second personality offers a close look at a form of multiple personalities very different from what has recently been described. His description of the factors that influenced his discovery allow one to see his work in a historical context and to appreciate his confrontation with the paradoxes that this discovery revealed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


Western utopianism/dystopianism and the political mediocrity of critical urban research

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3-4 2002
Guy Baeten
This paper seeks to summarise the interplay between utopian and dystopian thinking throughout the twentieth century with a particular focus on the city. The gradually shrinking appeal of the socialist utopia and its replacement with the globalised free,market as a ,revanchist utopia' left socialist utopian thinking in a state of disarray towards the end of the previous century. Utopian thinking, both as a literary and political genre has been rendered marginal in contemporary political practices. Urban dystopia, or ,Stadtschmerz', is now prevalent in critical Western thinking about city and society. It is concluded that the declining political impact of critical urban research is caused partly by its lack of engagement with crafting imaginative alternative futures for the city. The works by Sennett, Sandercock and the Situationists, among others, may contain elements to reverse the current utopian malaise in urban research. [source]


Global potential soil erosion with reference to land use and climate changes

HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 14 2003
Dawen Yang
Abstract A GIS-based RUSLE model is employed to study the global soil erosion potential for viewing the present situation, analysing changes over the past century, and projecting future trends with reference to global changes in land use and climate. Scenarios considered in the study include historical, present and future conditions of cropland and climate. This research gives the first overview of the global situation of soil erosion potential considering the previous century as well as the present and future. Present soil erosion potential is estimated to be about 0·38 mm year,1 for the globe, with Southeast Asia found to be the most seriously affected region in the world. It is estimated that nearly 60% of present soil erosions are induced by human activity. With development of cropland in the last century, soil erosion potential is estimated to have increased by about 17%. Global warming might significantly increase the potential for soil erosion, and the regions with the same increasing trend of precipitation and population might face much more serious problems related to soil erosion in the future. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Le coup d',il du spectateur: Spectatorial Function and Stage Space in French Theatre Design, 1760-1784

JOURNAL FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES, Issue 4 2009
PANNILL CAMP
Abstract The sightlines which architects such as Oppenord and Roubo the Younger drew on their theatre plans demonstrate an attempt to align stage spaces and optical fields. Indeed, the reform-minded architects of the period 1748 to 1784 applied geometrical forms to their plans, and adopted a terminology borrowed from optics, the science of light and vision. In focusing specifically on the theoretical texts and architectural drawings published between 1765 and 1784, we argue that this use of optical space indicates a dislocation between, on the one hand, the spatial representation which the French reformers promoted in their drawings and, on the other, stage perspective, which had, since the previous century, been associated with the influence of the Italian Baroque. In the 1780s, architects gradually abandoned the use of stage perspective, preferring instead a theatrical space modelled after an ostensibly natural optical encounter. [source]


Generic separations and leaf languages

MLQ- MATHEMATICAL LOGIC QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2003
Matthias Galota
Abstract In the early nineties of the previous century, leaf languages were introduced as a means for the uniform characterization of many complexity classes, mainly in the range between P (polynomial time) and PSPACE (polynomial space). It was shown that the separability of two complexity classes can be reduced to a combinatorial property of the corresponding defining leaf languages. In the present paper, it is shown that every separation obtained in this way holds for every generic oracle in the sense of Blum and Impagliazzo. We obtain several consequences of this result, regarding, e. g., universal oracles, simultaneous separations and type-2 complexity. [source]


Determination of aphid transmission efficiencies for N, NTN and Wilga strains of Potato virus Y

ANNALS OF APPLIED BIOLOGY, Issue 1 2010
M. Verbeek
Potato virus Y (PVY, genus Potyvirus, family Potyviridae) causes high economic losses worldwide, especially in the production of seed potatoes (Solanum tuberosum). PVY control systems rely on measuring virus pressure and vector pressure in the field. Calculation of the vector pressure is based on the relative efficiency factors (REFs) of aphid species. These REFs express the transmission efficiency of aphid species in relation to the transmission efficiency of Myzus persicae, the most efficient vector of PVY. In this paper, we report on the determination of aphids' relative transmission efficiency factors (REFs) for isolates of the PVY strains PVYN, PVYNTN and PVYN-Wi. Biotype Mp2 of M. persicae was tested for its transmission efficiency for six PVY isolates (one PVYN, three PVYNTN and two PVYN-Wi isolates) and showed comparable average transmission efficiencies for all isolates. The transmission rate of this biotype for the six PVY isolates was set to 1 and Mp2 was used as an internal control in transmission experiments to determine the REFs of three other biotypes of M. persicae and 16 other aphid species (three biotypes per species when available) for the six PVY isolates. Comparing the calculated REFs for PVYN with the REFs reported in the previous century for PVYN, we observe overall comparable REFs, except for Aphis fabae, Aphis spp., Hyperomyzus lactucae, Macrosiphum euphorbiae and Rhopalosiphum padi, which have a lower REF in our experiments, and Aphis frangulae and Phorodon humuli, which have now a higher REF. Comparing the new REFs found for the PVYNTN strains with the new REFs for PVYN, we observe that they are overall comparable, except for A. frangulae (0.17 compared with 0.53) and Schizaphis graminum (0.05 compared with 0.00). Comparing the REFs calculated for PVYN-Wi with those calculated for PVYN, we can observe six aphid species with higher REFs (Acyrthosiphon pisum, A. fabae, Aphis nasturtii, Aphis spp., P. humuli and R. padi). Only the species A. frangulae shows a lower REF for PVYN-Wi compared with the transmission efficiency of PVYN. Three aphid species (Aulacorthum solani, Myzus ascalonicus and S. graminum) for which no REF was determined earlier were found to be capable to transmit PVY and their REFs were determined. [source]


Practising Applied Ethics with philosophical integrity: the case of Business Ethics

BUSINESS ETHICS: A EUROPEAN REVIEW, Issue 2 2008
Deon Rossouw
The unprecedented growth and demand for Applied Ethics (Business Ethics, Medical Ethics, Information Ethics, Engineering Ethics, etc.) since the last quarter of the previous century, has opened up a range of new opportunities for the discipline of Philosophy. While these new opportunities have been enthusiastically seized upon by some philosophers, others have frowned upon them or rejected them outright. In order to make sense of this demand for Applied Ethics training, I will first explore in general why this demand for Applied Ethics developed. I will then use the example of Business Ethics to demonstrate and discuss some of the suspicions contemplated by philosophers who regard Applied Ethics as a dangerous and deceitful temptation that potentially can corrupt Philosophy, and that philosophers should at best avoid or at least be very careful of. I will assess the legitimacy and seriousness of these concerns and objections with regard to Business Ethics and then outline an Aristotelian approach to Business Ethics that I believe can be practised with philosophical integrity. [source]