The politics and ethics of relocated art

At the end of Word War II, Soviet occupation forces removed countless art objects from German soil. Some of them were returned during the 1950s, but most either disappeared for good or were stored away secretly in cellars of Soviet museums. The Cold War then covered the issue with silence. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, museums in St Petersburg and Moscow started to exhibit some of the relocated art for the first time in half a century. The unusual quality of the paintings-mostly impressionist masterpieces-not only attracted the attention of the international art community, but also triggered a diplomatic row between Russia and Germany. Both governments advanced moral and legal claims to ownership. To make things even more complicated, many of the paintings once belonged to private collectors, some of whom were Jews. Their descendants also entered the dispute. The basic premise of this article is that the political and ethical dimensions of relocated art can be understood most adequately by eschewing a single authorial standpoint. Various positions, sometimes incommensurable ones, are thus explored in an attempt to outline possibilities for an ethics of representation and a dialogical solution to the international problem that relocated art has become.

Galaxy threshing and the origin of intracluster stellar objects

We numerically investigate the dynamical evolution of non-nucleated dwarf elliptical/spiral galaxies (dE) and nucleated ones (dE,Ns) in clusters of galaxies in order to understand the origin of intracluster stellar objects, such as intracluster stars (ICSs), GCs (ICGCs), and ultracompact dwarfs (UCDs) recently discovered by all-object spectroscopic survey centred on the Fornax cluster of galaxies. We find that the outer stellar components of a nucleated dwarf are removed by the strong tidal field of the cluster, whereas the nucleus manages to survive as a result of its initially compact nature. The developed naked nucleus is found to have physical properties (e.g., size and mass) similar to those observed for UCDs. We also find that the UCD formation process, does depend on the radial density profile of the dark halo in the sense that UCDs are less likely to be formed from dwarfs embedded in dark matter halos with central 'cuspy' density profiles. Our simulations also suggest that very massive and compact stellar systems can be rapidly and efficiently formed in the central regions of dwarfs through the merging of smaller GCs. GCs initially in the outer part of dE and dE,Ns are found to be stripped to form ICGCs.

Aboriginal Art Collection: Highlights from Australia's Public Museums and Galleries

Contents: Introduction SUSAN COCHRANE National Gallery of Australia, Canberra WALLY CARUANA National Museum of Australia, Canberra DAVID KAUS Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin MARGIE WEST Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney HETTI PERKINS AND KEN WATSON Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney BERNICE MURPHY Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane MARCO NEALE Queensland Museum, Brisbane RICHARD ROBINS National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne JUDITH RYAN Museum Victoria, Melbourne GAYE SCULTHORPE Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart KIM AKERMAN AND DAVID HANSEN Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth MICHAEL O'FERRALL AND BRENDA L. CROFT Western Australian Museum, Perth ROSS CHADWICK AND MANCE LOFGREN Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide JANE HYLTON South Australian Museum, Adelaide PHILIP A. CLARKE List of Plates Bibliography Editor's Acknowledgments Contributors Index

Linking Agentive Objects in Mandarin Chinese

This paper is concerned with the problem of argument-function mismatch observed in the apparent subject-object inversion in Chinese consumption verbs, e.g., chi 'eat' and he 'drink', and accommodation verbs, e.g., zhu 'live' and shui 'sleep'. These verbs seem to allow the linking of [agent-SUBJ theme-OBJ] as well as [agent-OBJ theme-SUBJ], but only when the agent is also the semantic role denoting the measure or extent of the action. The account offered is formulated within LFG's lexical mapping theory. Under the simplest and also the strictest interpretation of the one-to-one argument-function mapping principle (or the theta-criterion), a composite role such as ag-ext receives syntactic assignment via one composing role only. One-to-one linking thus entails the suppression of the other composing role. Apparent subject-object inversion occurs when the more prominent agent role is suppressed and thus allows the less prominent extent role to dictate the linking of the entire ag-ext composite role. This LMT account also potentially facilitates a natural explanation of markedness among the competing syntactic structures.

Two times three little pigs: Dysfluency, cognitive complexity and autism

This paper presents an analysis of dysfluencies in two oral tellings of a familiar children's story by a young boy with autism. Thurber & Tager-Flusberg (1993) postulate a lower degree of cognitive and communicative investment to explain a lower frequency of non-grammatical pauses observed in elicited narratives of children with autism in comparison to typically developing and intellectually disabled controls. we also found a very low frequency of non-grammatical pauses in our data, but indications of high engagement and cognitive and communicative investment. We point to a wider range of disfluencies as indicators of cognitive load, and show that the kind and location of dysfluencies produced may reveal which aspects of the narrative task are creating the greatest cognitive demand: here, mental state ascription, perspectivization, and adherence to story schema. This paper thus generates analytical options and hypotheses that can be explored further in a larger population of children with autism and typically developing controls.

Cryptic vicariance in Gulf of California fishes parallels vicariant patterns found in Baja, California mammals and reptiles

Comparisons across multiple taxa can often clarify the histories of biogeographic regions. In particular, historic barriers to movement should affect multiple species and, thus, result in a pattern of concordant intraspecific genetic divisions among species. A striking example of such comparative phylogeography is the recent observation that populations of many small mammals and reptiles living on the Baja, California peninsula have a large genetic break between northern and southern peninsular populations. In the present study, I demonstrate that five species of near-shore fishes living on the Baja coastline of the Gulf of California share this genetic pattern. The simplest explanation for this concordant genetic division within both terrestrial and marine vertebrates is that the Baja peninsula was fragmented by a Plio-Pleistocene marine seaway and that this seaway posed a substantial barrier to movement for near-shore fishes. The genetic divisions within Gulf of California fishes also coincide with recognized biogeographic regions based on fish community composition and several environmental factors. It is likely that adaptation to regional environments and present-day oceanographic circulation limits gene exchange between biogeographic regions and helps maintain evidence of past vicariance.

Sequence and tissue distribution of chicken cellular nucleic acid binding protein cDNA

We sequenced cDNAs coding for chicken cellular nucleic acid binding protein (CNBP). Two slightly different variations of the open reading frame were found, each of which translates into a protein with seven zinc finger domains. The longest transcript contains an in-frame insert of 3 bp. The sequence conservation between chick CNBP cDNAs with human, rat and mouse CNBP cDNAs is extreme, especially in the coding region, where the deduced amino acid sequence identity with human, rat and mouse CNBP is 99%. CNBP-like transcripts were also found in various tissues from insect, shrimp, fish and lizard. Regions with remarkable nucleotide conservation were also found in the 3' untranslated region, indicating important functions for these regions. Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) indicated that in the chick, CNBP is present in all tissues examined in approximately equal ratios to total RNA. RT-PCR of total RNA isolated from different phyla indicate CNBP-like proteins art widespread throughout the animal kingdom. The extraordinary level of conservation suggests an important physiological role for CNBP. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.

The critical power function is dependent on the duration of the predictive exercise tests chosen

The linear relationship between work accomplished (W-lim) and time to exhaustion (t(lim)) can be described by the equation: W-lim = a + CP.t(lim). Critical power (CP) is the slope of this line and is thought to represent a maximum rate of ATP synthesis without exhaustion, presumably an inherent characteristic of the aerobic energy system. The present investigation determined whether the choice of predictive tests would elicit significant differences in the estimated CP. Ten female physical education students completed, in random order and on consecutive days, five art-out predictive tests at preselected constant-power outputs. Predictive tests were performed on an electrically-braked cycle ergometer and power loadings were individually chosen so as to induce fatigue within approximately 1-10 mins. CP was derived by fitting the linear W-lim-t(lim) regression and calculated three ways: 1) using the first, third and fifth W-lim-t(lim) coordinates (I-135), 2) using coordinates from the three highest power outputs (I-123; mean t(lim) = 68-193 s) and 3) using coordinates from the lowest power outputs (I-345; mean t(lim) = 193-485 s). Repeated measures ANOVA revealed that CPI123 (201.0 +/- 37.9W) > CPI135 (176.1 +/- 27.6W) > CPI345 (164.0 +/- 22.8W) (P < 0.05). When the three sets of data were used to fit the hyperbolic Power-t(lim) regression, statistically significant differences between each CP were also found (P < 0.05). The shorter the predictive trials, the greater the slope of the W-lim-t(lim) regression; possibly because of the greater influence of 'aerobic inertia' on these trials. This may explain why CP has failed to represent a maximal, sustainable work rate. The present findings suggest that if CP is to represent the highest power output that an individual can maintain for a very long time without fatigue then CP should be calculated over a range of predictive tests in which the influence of aerobic inertia is minimised.