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Fluvio-lacustrine sediments of the Hadar and Busidima Formations along the northern Awash River (Ethiopia) archive almost three million years (3.4 to <0.6 Ma) of human evolution, including the earliest documented record of stone toolmaking at 2.5-2.6 Ma. This paper brings together sedimentologic and isotopic evidence for the paleoenvironmental context of early hominids from both formations, but with particular emphasis on the setting for the early toolmakers. The pre-2.92 Ma record (Hadar Formation) is characterized by low-gradient fluvial, paludal, and lacustrine deposition in an undissected topography most analogous to reaches of the modern middle Awash River near Gewane. The Gona area experienced repeated deep dissection and aggradation by the Awash River, starting between 2.92 and ca. 2.7 Ma and continuing through the top of the record at <0.6 Ma (Busidima Formation). Each aggradational succession is 10-20 m in thickness and fines upward from well-rounded conglomerates at the base to capping paleosols at the top. During this period the ancestral Awash represented by these fining upward sequences was dominantly meandering and flowed northeast, as it does today. Smaller channels tributary to the axial Awash system are also extensively exposed in the Busidima Formation. Compared to the axial-system conglomerates, the tributary channels transported finer, less mature volcanic clasts mixed with abundant carbonate nodules reworked from adjacent badlands. Stone artifacts (Oldowan; 2.6-2.0 Ma) at the oldest archaeological sites are only associated with the axial Awash system, in the bedded silts or capping paleosols of the fining upward sequences. The implements were made from rounded cobbles from the channels, but manufacture and use of the tools was always away from the channel bars, on the nearby sandy banks and silt-dominated floodplains. Archaeological sites higher in the record (Acheulian; <1.7 Ma) occur in similar axial river contexts, as well as along tributary channels further removed from artifact raw material sources. Mature paleosols in the Hadar and Busidima Formations are mostly pale to darkbrown Vertisols typified by abundant clay slickensides, pseudo-anticlinal and vertical fracturing, and carbonate nodules. Such calcic Vertisols are common in the region today, demonstrating that the paleoclimate over the past 3.4 m.y. has been semi-arid and strongly seasonal. Carbon isotopic results from pedogenic carbonates in the Vertisols allow reconstruction of the proportion of C3 plants (trees and shrubs) to C4 plants (grasses) through time. The δ 13C results from the Hadar Formation prior to 2.9 Ma range from -9.3‰ to -4.1‰, indicating a dominantly forested environment but with locally substantial (average 34%) grasses on the Awash floodplain. The δ13C values from soil carbonate in the lower Busidima Formation (2.7-1.6 Ma) increase (-6.5‰ to -2.7‰) in floodplain paleosols, indicating ∼ 50% average grass cover. Vertisols of the upper Busidima Formation (< 1.6 Ma) formed on gently sloping alluvial fans adjacent to the Awash floodplain and display even more positive δ13C values, up to -1.8‰, showing that grassland dominated the margins of the active Awash floodplain. © 2004 Geological Society of America.

Before 1998, journalists in Indonesia walked a tightrope stretched between a western ideological system that valued a free press and a system of rigid government controls. To maintain their balance, reporters and editors used strategies that were uniquely Indonesian to maintain a journalistic frame that was essentially western. This article examines those strategies in the context of the values and beliefs of print newspeople in the capital of Jakarta, focusing on news coverage of the political crises of 1997 and 1998 that culminated in the resignation of President Suharto and that unleashed a relatively free press. It contends that the contradictions and resultant conflicts between the government and newspeople in Jakarta represented a contest between western and Indonesian notions of the purposes and duties of the press. Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications.

Like other expressions of Christian conservatism, the Promise Keepers (PK) often enact complex and strained relationships between social change and social persistence. These strains are evident in the official PK literature, which employs techniques not unlike those used by mainstream pop psychology. These include the use of “scientific”-like classifications of information, authors presented as “experts” on the topic at hand, and the use of exercises to be enacted individually or in small PK discussion groups. Collectively, these strategies suggest that conservative Christians deal with many of the same complex role demands as non-conservatives. In Particular, the PK stance on gender roles, though Promoted as unambiguously “traditional” in favoring male leadership and female submission, in actuality often reflects acknowledgment and perhaps acceptance of some of the more egalitarian changes in gender role norms. Sociological implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Information on the number of carnivore taxa that were involved with archaeological bone assemblages is pertinent to questions of site formation, hominid and carnivore competition for carcasses and the sequence of hominid and carnivore activity at sites. A majority of early archaeological bone assemblages bear evidence that both hominids and carnivores removed flesh and/or marrow from the bones. Whether flesh specialists (felids) or bone-crunchers (hyaenas), or both, fed upon the carcasses is crucial for deciphering the timing of hominid involvement with the assemblages. Here we present an initial attempt to differentiate the tooth mark signature inflicted on bones by a single carnivore species versus multiple carnivore taxa. Quantitative data on carnivore tooth pits, those resembling a tooth crown or a cusp, are presented for two characteristics: the area of the marks in millimetres, and the shape as determined by the ratio of the major axis to the minor axis of the mark. Tooth pits from bones modified by extant East African carnivores and latex impressions of tooth pits from extinct carnivore species are compared to those in the FLK Zinjanthropus bone assemblage. Data on tooth mark shape indicate greater variability in the Zinj sample than is exhibited by any individual extant or extinct carnivore species in the comparative sample. Data on tooth mark area demonstrate that bone density is related to the size of marks. Taken together, these data support the inference that felids defleshed bones in the Zinj assemblage and that hyaenas had final access to any grease or tissues that remained. © 2001 Academic Press.

The paper empirically investigates the extent to which environmental factors affect the intermediation performance of the financial superstructure in Nigeria. A number of intermediation-environmental models were constructed and estimated against annual Nigerian data from 1970 to 2000. Among the various environments of financial intermediation, the socio-political environment, the regulatory environment, and the eco-financial environment exert very great influences on the operations of the financial superstructure. This is based on the evidence from the results, which revealed the socio-political index, regulatory index, and foreign exchange market variables as the most critical predictors of the financial intermediation-output-related index. Other factors such as inflation, taxation, financial market imperfection, and the growth rate of the economy appear not to exert statistically significant effects on the intermediation operations of the financial superstructure. Generally, the utility of the specified models was satisfied as indicated by the results of the global statistics. © 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rigths reserved.

This article examines the entry of professional service firms, specifically the Big Six international accounting firms, into emerging foreign markets and explores how they develop and expand their business once established in those markets. The study is based on survey data (supplied by the Big Six) regarding their penetration of the People's Republic of China, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Central Europe. A conceptual model is employed to illustrate the interrelationship between a firm's specific characteristics, the foreign environment, and foreign subsidiary intrafirm structure. Growth potential, client needs, favorable political/legal climate, and cultural considerations emerged as important factors in determining market entry and growth strategies for professional services firms. The research findings broaden our understanding of factors that influence professional services firms' development of pricing and marketing mix strategies. While all firms surveyed offered a full range of services, their marketing mix strategy differed from domestic approaches because of various local constraints on pricing and promotion. Copyright © 2000 University of Illinois.

This paper examines the entry of the Big Six international accounting firms, into emerging foreign markets and explores marketing resource considerations once established in those markets. The study is based on survey data (supplied by the Big Six) regarding their penetration of the People's Republic of China, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Central Europe. The paper presents a marketing resource-based model based upon relevant research. The model focuses on firm specific resource capabilities interacting with the foreign business environment and the foreign intrafirm structure as a determinant of foreign market entry choice and eventual market expansion. The research findings broaden our understanding of factors that influence professional services firms' development of marketing resource strategies when expanding globally. While all firms surveyed offered a full range of services, their marketing resource strategy differed from domestic approaches because of various local constraints on marketing mix elements. © 2003 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

We report four experiments designed to determine whether visual information affects judgments of acoustically-specified nonspeech events as well as speech events (the "McGurk effect"). Previous findings have shown only weak McGurk effects for nonspeech stimuli, whereas strong effects are found for consonants. We used click sounds that serve as consonants in some African languages, but that are perceived as nonspeech by American English listeners. We found a significant McGurk effect for clicks presented in isolation that was much smaller than that found for stop-consonant-vowel syllables. In subsequent experiments, we found strong McGurk effects, comparable to those found for English syllables, for click-vowel syllables, and weak effects, comparable to those found for isolated clicks, for excised release bursts of stop consonants presented in isolation. We interpret these findings as evidence that the potential contributions of speech-specific processes on the McGurk effect are limited, and discuss the results in relation to current explanations for the McGurk effect.

Michangelo’s Captive  ​ I wished to photograph a beautiful man sculpted by Michelangelo, afraid I would forget him if I did not, for he had no story, no name.  But I turned away.  I had the...

By using new sources and a complementary historical and geo-analytical approach, this article Illustrates that the Natives Land Act (no. 27 of 1913) failed to stop Africans from buying land. New evidence demonstrates that African land ownership outside the reserves in the Transvaal actually increased after 1913. This evidence leads to a deeper questioning of the extent to which the South African government was able to impose rural territorial segregation by 1936 and reveals the limits of white power in the early Union period.

Maps always present an interpretation of reality and always carry distortions, some of which are consciously or unconsciously ideological. The geographicity of mapping, which involves an intertwining of both science and art, is a vehicle for spatialized/spatializing interpretations of an actual spatiality, and as such is a catalyst for enacting further spatial productions on the basis of the capacity of maps to project themselves “into the landscape.” The scientific pretensions of mapping serve to veil the character of their projective enactment. Maps always entail virtual embodiment, that is, maps realize one possibility out of many, even in the most mathematically “accurate” of spatial relations. Thus, if the imaginative involves both embodied schema and virtual embodiments, we cannot dismiss the role of the geography of imagination in a dialectical relation with the geography of perception, of the actual. The symbolic function of cartouches and frontispieces provides an imagineering context of constructing reality on the basis of the symbolization.