The Coal Crisis in Appalachia: Agrarian Transformation,Commodity Frontiers and the Geographies of Capital

Capital's commodity frontiers strategy has at once woven together regional differences within an expanding world‐system and remade the productive and reproductive activities of humans and the rest of nature. The development of successive commodity frontiers gave way to long waves of economic expansion that have been pivotal to accelerating accumulation and transcending capital's recurrent crises. In short, commodity frontiers are constitutive of world‐ecological moments premised on booms and crises of accumulation. In this paper, I examine the coal commodity frontier in Appalachia, to illustrate the region's history as one of succeeding frontiers in and out of the region over the long twentieth century of American capitalism. I argue that the origin of Appalachia's coal frontier was decisively made through the nineteenth‐century agricultural revolution expressed outside of the region. Appalachia's full‐fledged development was an outcome of capital's under‐reproduction strategies. The crisis of the region's frontier turned on a lack of surplus from under‐reproduction strategies, competing coal basins, economic diversification and competing energy sources. I find that the commodity frontier concept not only illuminates regional political economies and ecologies of difference, but also explains the production of nature of historical capitalism.     

Tourism-based heritage conservation in Murshidabad: an appraisal

The article appraises the outcome of promoting tourism as a strategy for heritage conservation in the case of Murshidabad, an archetypal historic town in decline in India. A relational maturity-based framework has been used to examine the complementarities and conflicts between tourism and heritage conservation in the town. The prevailing nature of tourism conservation relationship in Murshidabad upholds the criticality characteristically observed in developing countries, where governments focus primarily on the revenue generating potential of built-heritage centric tourism ignoring the conservation attention necessary to retain authenticity and meaningful existence of historic structures. The overarching issues emerging from the current level of relational maturity in Murshidabad are identified with suggestions for possible policy implications of the study.     

Wheat variety yield data: Do commercial and public performance tests provide the same information?

Wheat yields from reported performance test results are of economic importance to wheat producers, since their profits depend on selecting the optimal variety for their location. However, our data shows differences in absolute and relative wheat yields between commercial and public wheat breeding program's performance test data in Kansas. Newly available data are used to test if the difference in yields arose from potential selectivity bias, and to determine the contribution of private and public wheat breeding programs to varietal yield improvement during 2007–2012. Both Heckman selection models and multiple regression showed no statistical evidence of the potential presence of selectivity bias rather, managerial practices, agronomic conditions, field location, and inherent genetic traits of the seed variety were identify as the source of yield differences.     

Archaeological heritage tourism in China: the case of the Daming Palace from the tourists' perspective

Archaeological heritage tourism has been critical in historic cultural revival, archaeological knowledge dissemination, environment upgrading, and local community improvement. Little has been undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness and consequences of archaeological heritage projects in China from the tourist perspective. This study of the Daming Palace Heritage Site in Xi’an illustrates how archaeological and cultural resources have contributed to tourists' experiences. Through investigating an array of approaches that have been applied to advance tourists' understanding of archaeological and cultural resources, the paper proposes that more versatile methods and creative works are to be integrated to develop effective interpretative methods for both education and entertainment purposes. Local government needs to change its top-down approach to a more inclusive one, to establish strong networks among state and non-state stakeholders, and to promote their collective involvement in archaeological heritage tourism. Heritage site packaging strategies and partnerships among heritage resources citywide are advocated. More attention should be given to how to integrate various resources of local communities into heritage tourism. The current organization of government-run archaeological heritage in China calls for more opportunities for archaeologists to contribute actively with their expertise to enhance interpretive programmes and general tourist experience.     

我国农业野生植物资源原生境保护区建设现状、问题及未来的思考

我国农业野生植物原生境面临着环境污染、人类农业生产、经济社会发展以及各类违法活动的侵蚀和破坏,建立原生境保护区是保护农业野生植物资源的重要途径之一。基于对当前威胁我国农业野生植物原生境面临的四大因素(自然灾害、农业活动、经济发展、违法活动)的系统梳理的基础上,探讨了现有农业野生植物原生境保护区建设的法规政策体系以及保护区建设现状和存在的主要问题,在此基础上提出了加强保护区建设的几点建议。分析结果表明,当前我国农业野生植物保护区建设存在的主要问题包括:保护区土地权属界定、保护区建设内容限定过窄、忽视保护区管理机构能力建设、对保护区周边农民权益保护不够。为了提高保护区建设工作,文章建议相关部门应该重视以下几个问题:统筹协调行业部门之间的权属差异,重视农业野生植物异位保存工作,修订完善保护区建设技术规范,兼顾保护区民众利益。     

Rivaroxaban for non-valvular atrial fibrillation and venous thromboembolism in the Netherlands: a real-world data based cost-effectiveness analysis

Background: Non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) have been included in international guidelines as important alternatives to vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) for the treatment of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and stroke prevention in non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, NOACs are widely used next to VKAs. The objective of this study is to estimate the cost-effectiveness of treatment with rivaroxaban compared to VKAs in NVAF and VTE patients in the Netherlands, using data from international prospective observational phase IV studies.

Methods: Two models were developed to represent NVAF and VTE patients, populated with patients from the XANTUS (NCT01606995) and XALIA (NCT01619007) international prospective observational studies. The 1-year cost-effectiveness of rivaroxaban use, compared to VKAs, was explored in a population consisting of NVAF and VTE patients (base case) as well as for four scenarios with sub-populations: NVAF patients only, VTE patients only, NVAF patients with unstable international normalized ratio (INR), and NVAF patients using an INR self-measuring device.

Results: In the base case, rivaroxaban saved €72,350 and gained 21 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) in a simulation of 2,000 patients over the use of VKAs. Ergo, rivaroxaban was dominant over VKAs. The probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed a probability of 85% for rivaroxaban being dominant and 100% at a willingness-to-pay threshold of €20,000/QALY. Rivaroxaban appeared to be dominant in all scenarios as well, except for the NVAF-patients-only scenario where the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was €157/QALY.

Conclusions: In patients with NVAF or VTE, rivaroxaban treatment is likely to be cost-effective and a potentially cost-saving alternative to VKA in the Netherlands.     

Ramshackle farmhouses,useless old stables,or irreplaceable cultural heritage? Local inhabitants’ perspectives on future uses of the Walser built heritage

Social and economic developments in rural regions call for a discussion of strategies of dealing with redundant traditional buildings. Using a social science approach, our study examines how the local population in two rural regions perceives the built heritage and which factors are underlying these perceptions. People’s attitudes towards maintaining the cultural heritage vary considerably and are partly influenced by the socio-cultural and economic context of the region. The present article discusses some of the core regional socio-cultural influences on attitudes towards the rural built heritage. Following from qualitative interviews, the article concludes that the scale of perception of the built heritage is related to the “liveliness” of the local culture: The more original and distinctive the local culture is, and the more the local economy is still based on agriculture, the wider the scale of perception of the traditional cultural landscape and built heritage. In a region with local traditions that are alive and followed in everyday life, and a local economy that is mainly based on agriculture, the entire settlement structure is perceived as cultural heritage. In such areas, alternative uses should be found for redundant buildings. In contrast, in regions where the culture is less visible and alive nowadays and where the local economy has changed, people tend to perceive single buildings as representing their cultural heritage, and they often wish to preserve and conserve such remaining houses, barns and stables. In the study, we show that from a social science point of view, there is no universal perception of the maintenance of built cultural heritage. Rather, we see different views and opinions that are important to consider when it comes to developing heritage protection strategies together with public authorities.     

Confronting sustainable development in two rural heritage valorization models

Many rural areas have reinvented their territorial development through tourism, turning to vernacular heritage to ensure their future. Various models of heritage preservation and valorization are adopted where small-scale agriculture is no longer viable. Among them, ecomuseums and place-based labelization schemes transform rural heritage into an economic resource while remaining grounded in cultural and architectural preservation and identity transmission to future generations. Both face criticisms, including being decried as fostering the museumification and mythification of the rural, effectively holding back rural areas in an imagined and romanticized past rather than providing a vision for a sustainable future. The Association of the Most Beautiful Villages of France and the Ecomusée d'Alsace illustrate the debate. This investigation analyzes how these two initiatives challenge critics. It unveils their respective understandings of the future of rurality and their approach to promoting sustainable communities through tourism. By highlighting responses to tensions between valorizing the past and forward development in the countryside, findings reveal paradigm shifts from traditional habitat preservation to future-oriented architectural pedagogy in one case, while operational exigencies and normative quality principles mitigate opportunities in the other.