Torres Strait Islanders Stories from an Exhibition

Preparations for a centenary exhibition to mark the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait incorporated cross-cultural collaborative work, reflecting the changing roles of museums as sites for contact and research combining curatorial expertise and indigenous knowledge. Specific objects in the collections of the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology continue to be active intermediaries in the relationship between museum staff and Torres Strait Islanders and the museum itself has become an important field site. This paper provides an ethnography of the process of creating the exhibition and explores different ways that many of the objects displayed have resonance for Islanders today.     

广义时频分析方法在耳声发射研究中的应用 Ⅰ.仿真瞬态诱发耳声发射信号的时频分布

为了研究瞬态诱发耳声发射的时频分布,寻找其时频分布的最佳计算方法,首先筚计介绍了广时频分析方法,并描述了其中二次时频表示方法的特特点,然后用Ｗｉｇｎｅｒ分布及其改进型分布计算了仿真的瞬态诱发耳声发射信号的时频分布,通过对不同分布计算结果的比较,得出了锥形核分布最适合用于描述瞬态诱发耳声发射的时频分布。     

On the synthesis of DNA error correcting codes

DNA error correcting codes over the edit metric consist of embeddable markers for sequencing projects that are tolerant of sequencing errors. When a genetic library has multiple sources for its sequences, use of embedded markers permit tracking of sequence origin. This study compares different methods for synthesizing DNA error correcting codes. A new code-finding technique called the salmon algorithm is introduced and used to improve the size of best known codes in five difficult cases of the problem, including the most studied case: length six, distance three codes. An updated table of the best known code sizes with 36 improved values, resulting from three different algorithms, is presented. Mathematical background results for the problem from multiple sources are summarized. A discussion of practical details that arise in application, including biological design and decoding, is also given in this study.     

A comparative measure of biodiversity based on species composition

In conservation planning, species richness and species endemism are the most often used metrics for describing the biodiversity importance of areas. However, when it comes to prioritizing regions for conservation actions these measures alone are insufficient because they do not reveal how similar or different the actual composition of species may be from one area to another. For comparative analysis an additional useful metric would be one that indicates the degree to which the species assemblage in one area is also represented in—or is distinct from—species assemblages of other areas. Here we describe a method for quantifying the compositional representativeness of species assemblages among geographic regions. The method generates asymmetric pairwise similarity coefficients that are then used to calculate separate measures for the representativeness and the distinctiveness of species assemblages in the regions being compared. We demonstrate the method by comparing fish communities among freshwater ecoregions of the Mississippi Basin, and then among smaller hydrological units within two individual freshwater ecoregions. At both scales of analysis, our measures of representativeness and distinctiveness reveal patterns of fish species composition that differ from patterns of species richness. This information can enhance conservation planning processes by ensuring that priority-setting explicitly consider the most representative and distinctive species assemblages.     

Biomass duration in growth models

To gain a better understanding of growth curve, biomass duration in several growth models, such as the exponential, linear, Gompertz, Mitscherlich, logistic, Richards and Bertalanffy, is formulated. Generally, biomass duration in these models can be given in two ways; thet- andw-representations. The latter representation, which can be defined as the summed value of reciprocal of relative growth rate with respect to biomass, gives a new significance to biomass duration. The utility of both representations is exemplified by the observed data of a fir. The idea of biomass duration is extended to get total amounts of anabolism and catabolism in the Bertalanffy model.     

小麦品种联合试验效应及理论依据──Ⅰ.试验的地点环境效应

本文利用小麦品种区域试验材料,研究了联合试验地点对品种适应性鉴定的致变能力以及对试验区域的代表性,讨论了试验的效果．     

Some prerequisites for a study of the evolution of cognition in the animal kingdom

A distinction is made between two definitions of animal cognition: the one most frequently employed in cognitive sciences considers cognition as extracting and processing information; a more phenomenologically inspired model considers it as attributing to a form of the outside world a significance, linked to the state of the animal. The respective fields of validity of these two models are discussed along with the limitations they entail, and the questions they pose to evolutionary biologists are emphasized. This is followed by a presentation of a general overview of what might be the study of the evolution of knowledge in animals.     

Arguing with the KGB Archives. Archival and Narrative Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia

This paper is a sequel to my earlier work on life histories in post-Soviet Latvia. The opening of the KGB archives in Riga created the possibility of comparing archival information with recorded personal narratives. The files and the highly charged emotional responses that they evoked raise questions about the uses of language as it moves along a continuum from rigid formalisation to free poetic constructions. Excessive formalisation and institutionalisation of language preclude dialogue and rather than pin down meaning end up by destroying it. Nevertheless, informants were keen to engage in retrospective dialogue with the files, contesting facts and meanings and in the process subverting the original enterprise and reasserting themselves as moral agents.     

Representing Culture in Malaysian Cultural Theme Parks: Tensions and Contradictions

Cultural representation is nowhere more significant than in multi-cultural countries, where the mode of representation is instrumental in determining the progress of integration. Ultimately, in the Malaysian context this reflects on the success of, and is intrinsically linked to, the affirmative action policies that benefit the majority Malays. This paper highlights the representation of culture through the medium of three cultural theme parks in Peninsular Malaysia, built to promote ‘unity through diversity’ and a re-imaging of the past traditions and mythical landscape of this Southeast Asian economic powerhouse. A central aim is to bring together and make sense of how the notions of nostalgia, nationalism and economic success in cultural tourism all come to bear on representations in cultural theme parks.