“Seeking Information from the Lips of People”: oral history in the archives of Qatar and the Gulf region

The turn to oral history in Qatar and the Arabian (also known as Persian) Gulf is not a rejection of traditional archival authority as has been the case in other parts of the world. In the Gulf, oral history has been embraced out of a desire to fill the silences of the largely unwritten record attributable to previous low levels of literacy and strong oral traditions in the region. Today, oral history is seen as the best method to capture details about traditional ways of life during the pre-oil era. After discussing archival concerns about the evidentiary nature of oral histories, this paper explores how it has come to be a crucial documentation tool in the Gulf, adapted to the specific nation building and cultural heritage priorities of the region.     

Adjacency matrix concepts for the analysis of the interconnection of networks

A mathematical theory is developed for an imagined device termed a “junctor”. A junctor could be used to interconnect two n-terminal networks giving rise to another n-terminal network. Actually a junctor is itself a simple network with three banks of n-terminals internally connected in some fashion by perfectly conducting wires. Adjacency matrices are formulated to analyze various junctors and their current flows. The main problem treated concerns conditions which would ensure that the junctor operation is associative.     

PPBS in higher education planning and management: Part II,the university of California experience

Part I provided an overview of PPBS, some discussion of PPBS implementation in the U.S. government, and a review of the arguments for adopting PPBS in postsecondary education and the various kinds of work that have been done toward this end. In part II, we discuss the experience of the University of California with PPBS from 1966 to 1971. Part III, to be published subsequently, will suggest some new departures in model construction and policy analysis which we believe represent a useful spirit in which further development can and should occur, and will also contain some general concluding observations.

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Résumé Dans la première partie, publiée antérieurement, on trouvait les principes généraux du PPBS (Program Planning Budgeting Systems) une discussion rapide de la mise en oeuvre du PPBS par les autorités gouvernementals aux Etats-Unis, quelques uns des arguments qui militent en faveur de l'adoption du PPBS dans l'enseignement post-secondaire ainsi que ce qui a été entrepris à cette fin. Dans la deuxième partie, nous soumettons à la discussion ce qu'a été l'expérience de l'Université de Californie en matière de PPBS de 1966 à 1971. La troisième partie, qui sera publiée ensuite, proposera quelques points de départ nouveaux pour la construction du modèle directeur et l'analyse des politiques; nous pensons qui'il s'agit là d'un point de vue utilisable qui peut et devrait donner lieu à de nouveaux développements; cette troisième partie présentera aussi quelques observations générales en forme de conclusion.

     

A Geohistorical Study of ‘The Rise of Modern Science’: Mapping Scientific Practice Through Urban Networks, 1500–1900

Using data on the ‘career’ paths of one thousand ‘leading scientists’ from 1450 to 1900, what is conventionally called the ‘rise of modern science’ is mapped as a changing geography of scientific practice in urban networks. Four distinctive networks of scientific practice are identified. A primate network centred on Padua and central and northern Italy in the sixteenth century expands across the Alps to become a polycentric network in the seventeenth century, which in turn dissipates into a weak polycentric network in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century marks a huge change of scale as a primate network centred on Berlin and dominated by German-speaking universities. These geographies are interpreted as core-producing processes in Wallerstein’s modern world-system; the rise of modern scientific practice is central to the development of structures of knowledge that relate to, but do not mirror, material changes in the system.

Light-inadequacy of the ultraviolet theory of ionization in the E-layer

From the reports of the CRPL, average yearly values of h′_E, h′_F1,f °_E and N_F1, for the months of January, March, June, July, September, and December of the years 1944 to 1949 were computed and plotted against the magnetic latitude. Altogether some 25,000 individual records were averaged. Seven curves were plotted. They showed that: (1) all curves are symmetrical with respect to the magnetic equator; (2) the h′_E, h′_F1, f⁰_E and the N_F, curves all swing up and down as the magnetic latitude, north and south, increases; (3) the h′_E is definitely periodic with constant period and constant amplitude; (4) the h′_E curve rises only slightly (on the average) with latitude. These results appear to be inconsistent with the ultraviolet light theory of ionization.