Since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason the phrase ‘Copernican revolution’ has been used in many fields to illustrate an event equivalent to the one Kant brought to philosophy, a revolutionary change in perspective. And Thierry Marchaisse, who questions the philosopher and Sinologist François Jullien in the book Penser d'un dehors (la Chine), entretiens d'Extrême-Orient, writes that the book proposes ‘nothing less than a relaunch of the great work of decentring that defines our modernity - in effect a new “Copernican reversal”‘. Jullien explains that ‘the confrontation between China and the West is one of the great contemporary issues’, that ‘Chinese thought reveals to us different coherences’, that it ‘also makes us go back to the preconceived ideas behind our Reason’, that it is thus ‘in the best position to intrigue today's thinking and shake philosophy up’ … China as philosophical tool.

The dissolution in 1 M HC1 of Al-, Mn-, and Ni-substituted hematites and the influence of metal substitution on dissolution rate and kinetics of dissolution were investigated. The inhomogeneous dissolution of most of the hematites investigated was well described by the Avrami-Erofe'ev rate equation, kt = √[-ln(l − α)], where k is the dissolution rate in time, t, and α is the Fe dissolved. Dissolution of Al-substituted hematite occurred mostly by edge attack and hole formation normal to (001), with the rate of dissolution, k, directly related to surface area (SA). Dissolution of rhombohedral Mn- and Ni-bearing hematites occurred at domain boundaries, crystal edges, and corners with k unrelated to SA. The morphology of Mn- and Ni-substituted hematites changed during dissolution with clover-leaf-like forms developing as dissolution proceeded, whereas the original plate-like morphology of Al-bearing hematite was generally retained. Acid attack of platy and rhomboidal hematite is influenced by the direct (e.g., metaloxygen bond energy, hematite crystallinity) and indirect (e.g., crystal size and shape) affects associated with incorporation of foreign ions within hematite.

OH-Cr smectites were prepared with different mmol Cr/g smectite: 0.5, 1.5, 3.5, 5, 10 and 20 by treatment with hydroxy-chromium solution prepared at 60°C and one day of hydrolysis with OH/Cr = 2. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential thermal analyses (DTA) and N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms.

The d(001) spacings of OH-Cr-smectite were different according to Cr added/g smectite. Larger d(001) spacings: 1.95, 2.05 and 2.07 nm were obtained with 5, 10 and 20 mmol Cr per gram of sample. DTA diagrams of smectite treated with OH-Cr solution showed exothermic peak at 420°C corresponding to Cr203 (confirmed by XRD). N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms of smectite treated with different amounts of Cr preserved the same slit-shaped pores than original sample, but with different micropore volume. This behavior was maintained until treatment temperature of 380°C. The specific area of smectite was increased from 36 to 175 m2/g after treatment with OH-Cr solution. The textural characteristics of OH- Cr smectite heated up to 420°C were changed. The specific area decreased and mesopore volume was produced. The different Cr added modified the structural and textural behavior.

Thomas More's Utopia is made up of two books. Book One, quickly skimmed over by those who dream of the future and are bored by history, tells us about Europe in 1515 at the dawn of a revolution in every field of knowledge dominated by a political power that uses religion, fear and ignorance to satisfy an insatiable appetite for hegemony, infinitely corrupt but in public promoting moral, family values. Book Two gives us a glimpse of a future on a human scale using new techniques, reason and good management of its resources to reconcile the common good with the pleasure of the individual. That book is the founding text for our modernity. It is the pagan bible adopted by the Enlightenment, which we have inscribed in the charter of our epoch's institutions. Five hundred years later the books are being rewritten in reverse: the great human dream set in train by Book Two in 1516 is bogged down in the reality of 2005. The new promises of free-choice economism in 2005 are just a nightmare journey back in time to the postulates of Book One.

Before 1972 Somalia had no official writing system for its language. In spite of this, those who bred animals (camels, cattle, sheep, and goats) and who, owing to a lack of water in the country were forced to become nomads, had an authentic oral tradition that found its voice in a rich oral literature. This was well and truly oral in that it was composed, memorized, and passed on without having to resort to any type of writing or other means of communication or recording. Many of these genres are typical of any oral tradition: various dance or work songs, fairy stories and other tales, riddles, sayings, proverbs, and so on.

Phase and morphological changes during thermolysis of Mg4Al2(OH)12CO3·nH2O and Zn6Al2(OH)16CO3·nH2O layered double hydroxides (LDH) and their nanocomposites with poly(styrene sulfonate) (PSS) are studied by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning and transmission electron micrography (SEM and TEM) and thermal analyses. Mg4Al2(OH)12CO3·nH2O and Mg2Al(OH)6[CH2CH(C6H4SO3)]·3H2O show comparable thermal stabilities: the layered structure is lost above 300 °C with the nucleation of the MgO phase at approximately 400 °C and the MgAl2O4 phase at approximately 800 °C Zn3Al(OH)8[CH2CH(C6H4SO3)]·nH2O undergoes complete oxidative pyrolysis of the polyanion by 500 °C. Crystalline oxide products are obtained at a temperature approximately 300 °C lower than that of thermolysis of Zn6Al2(OH)16CO3·nH2O. The SEM and TEM images show that the thermolysis of LDH carbonates produces dense aggregates containing microcrystalline particles, whereas Mg2Al(OH)6[CH2CH(C6H4SO3)]·3H2O forms a macroporous solid.

The formation of layer silicates on capsuled bacterial cell walls was studied in freshwater microbial mats. The trends associated with Al, Si, Mn and Fe deposits with capsules are consistent with occurrence of layer silicates with 14, 10 and 7 Å X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns. Scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope (SEM and TEM) observations of the microbial mats revealed the presence of microcolonies of rod- and coccus-shaped bacteria with layer-silicate thin films. Field measurements of pH, temperature and Eh indicated that these conditions for bacterial crystallization of layer silicates and hydrated Fe/Mn oxides in freshwaters are as follows: pH 6.3 to 7.8, 12 to 20 °C and Eh −24 to +200 mV. Glass slides kept for 3 weeks in the beakers with natural freshwater and river sediments were coated with brown materials. These materials were identified as layer silicates and colonized bacteria formed under photosynthetic conditions. The well-developed holdfasts on Leptothrix discophora bacterial cells are mainly associated with poorly crystalline layer silicates and hydrated Fe-Mn oxides. Semiquantitative elemental analyses of holdfasts using energy-dispersive X-rays (EDX) indicated that layer-silicate crystallization covers the cell at an early stage. Iron and manganese crystallization develops at a later stage, where aluminum substitution occurs in crystal structures. Laboratory experimental results indicated that layer silicates grew from a biochemical origin, rather than from inorganic origins in freshwater. Layer-silicate formation is linked with bacteria in microbial mats.

The most valuable finding of my first sightseeing trip was that medieval Europe was the seat of Christendom and that Christianity defines the West. I was amazed to see that Europe reveals so much of its past. I had not had such an experience in the United States, where I had lived as a student and then as a professor of economics.

As I glimpsed the West, I found myself rediscovering Confucian civilization and how much I am still Confucian, although I was born into a Presbyterian family in Korea. But then, Korea is the most Confucian country. Curious about the West since my first trip, whenever I can I have toured Europe in search of the meaning of the West.

While travelling in Europe, my mind often jumps back to my early life in Korea and Japan. I am struck by the vivid contrast in appearance between medieval European towns and Asian towns, which were grey and as flat as pancakes. Medieval towns are stony and solid. Nothing is flimsy. Shaped by spires, domes, and towers, a European town's silhouette rises and falls like a stock market graph. Europeans obviously loved the vertical emphasis. A traveller can see either a soaring church tower or a castle keep miles away on the horizon. Churches predominate, as if to emphasize that the main business of the town is the worship and glorification of God.

This brief essay examines emergent spaces for politics and emergent political actors. The particular concern here is with types of politics that do not run through the formal political system, one with shrinking options for a growing number of US citizens and immigrants. Informal political actors and street-level politics in cities are major instances of this. US cities have a long history of street-level politics. The contents, the purposes, the mobilizers and the enactors of these politics have changed over time. Today's global cities are a very specific type of place because they bring together both the most globalized sectors of capital and the new transnational professionals, on the one hand, and a growing number of immigrants and native minoritized groups in a single, complex space.

Smectite single crystals of superior quality were synthesized at high pressures and temperatures using a modified belt type high pressure apparatus. Pressure-temperature conditions were established for smectite formation by quenching experiments in the pressure range from 2–5.5 GPa and temperatures of 700°–1000°C. Smectite crystals with extraordinary quality were formed beyond 3 GPa and 1000°C with coexisting phases of coesite, kyanite, jadeite, and in some cases with mica and glass. Smectite was confirmed from the XRD taken after intercalation of ethylene glycol. The smectite crystals were considered to be quenched crystals metastably from the hydrous silicate melts formed at high pressures and temperatures.

Burial diagenesis of shales of the Frio Formation resulted in an increase in the abundance of mixed-layer illite-smectite (I-S), albite and chlorite, and a decrease in the abundance of K-feldspar, illite and kaolinite. Some of the mineralogic trends determined in this study contrast with the results of Hower et al. (1976) and other studies of Frio shales. The differences are due to improvements in laboratory and clay quantification techniques since the time of the earlier research. I-S composition changed from ~20% to ≥80% illite, and mineralogic and chemical reaction of I-S continued throughout burial. Shale diagenesis was an open-system process that required addition of K2O and A12O3, and resulted in loss of SiO2. The amount of SiO2 made available by shale diagenesis is sufficient to be the source of the quartz-overgrowth cements in the associated Frio sandstones. The relationships between I-S diagenesis and fluid flow from shales into sandstones, generation of abnormal formation-water fluid pressure, onset of sandstone diagenesis and distribution of authigenic phases in sandstones indicate that reaction of the I-S in shales is one of the most important components of the sandstone/shale/formation water diagenetic system.

Imperialism and its aftermath set off an extraordinary wave of travel, exploration, and migrations around the globe, in which writers, or potential writers, were inevitably caught up. One consequence was that many novels of the last one hundred and fifty years, especially British novels, have had exotic settings.

David Lodge, “The Exotic”, The Art of Fiction, pp. 158-9.

There are many of us saying and even demanding that research on Africa should be intensified and further increased. Its destiny is linked to the future of Africans’ self-awareness and their radical de-alienation. However, the current direction of some projects gives us cause for constant concern in that the fundamental question they raise is whether what drives them is science or a certain unstated but active ideology.

A white calcium bentonite (CaB) from the Kütahya region, Turkey, contains 35 wt. % opal-CT and 65 wt. 9c Ca-rich montmorillonite (CaM). Samples were heated at various temperatures between 100–1300°C for 2 h. Thermal gravimetric (TG), derivative thermal gravimetric (DTG), and differential thermal analysis (DTA) curves were determined. Adsorption and desorption of N2 at liquid N2 temperature for each heat-treated sample was determined. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and cation-exchange capacity (CEC) data were obtained. The change in the <d(001) value and the deformation of the crystal structure of CaM depend on temperature. Deformation is defined here as changes of the clay by dehydration, dehydroxylation, recrystallization, shrinkage, fracture, etc. The activation energies related to the dehydration and dehydroxylation of CaB calculated from the thermogravimetric data are 33 and 59 kJ mol−1, respectively. The average deformation enthalpies, in the respective temperature intervals between 200–700°C and 700–900°C, were estimated to be 25 and 205 kJ mol−1 using CEC data and an approach developed in this study. The specific surface area (S) and the specific micropore-mesopore volume (V) calculated from the adsorption and desorption data, respectively, show a “zig zag” variation with increasing temperature to 700°C, but decrease rapidly above this temperature. The S and V values were 43 m2 g−1 and 0.107 cm3 g−1, respectively, for untreated bentonite. They reach a maximum at 500°C and are 89 m2 g−1 and 0.149 cm3 g−1 respectively. The XRD data clearly show that, at 500°C, where the irreversible dehydration is completed without any change in the crystal structure, the porosity of CaM reaches its maximum.

The inability to differentiate skeletal remains belonging to the ferret from those of its wild ancestor, the European polecat, presents a particular challenge for zooarchaeologists which currently hinders a better understanding of ferret domestication history. Using a geometric morphometric approach on the mandible, this study provides a new method to distinguish the two forms. Despite a small sample size and some overlap in the dataset, this method allowed the identification of a (post)medieval specimen from Mechelen (Belgium) as a wild polecat. Results demonstrate that ferrets can largely be distinguished from polecats based on mandibular morphology.

TEM characterization of stacking relations in I/S of expanded shale samples from the Gulf Coast and Michigan Basin was carried out to address the issues of the degree of coherency and the nature of layer stacking sequences in smectite, I/S and illite. The two-dimensional lattice fringe images obtained from this study show that cross fringes are commonly observed to be continuous over at least 3–4 layers for smectite, 6–7 layers for ordered I/S and 9–10 layers for illite-rich I/S. This demonstrates that such sequences are coherent, or at least semi-coherent (in smectite) units (MacEwan crystallites). The observations demonstrate that so-called fundamental particles are fragments of MacEwan crystallites formed primarily as a result of disaggregation along weakly-bonded smectite interlayers. However, both 0k1 and h01 reflections may coexist in selected area electron diffraction (SAED) patterns. The frequency of occurrence of the coexistence in SAED patterns decreases in the order smectite, I/S and illite for Gulf Coast samples. This is consistent with the presence of turbostratically-related interfaces in packets of all of these materials. Therefore, any given layer sequence in smectite, ordered I/S and illite may have both turbostratic and coherent interfaces. The proportion of coherently-related layers increases with increasing proportion of illite-like layers. The concept of fundamental or elementary particles is not related to layer sequences in non-disaggregated, original rocks. Indeed, it implies relations that are not valid.

The lattice fringe images, SAED and optical diffraction patterns demonstrate that where layers are coherently-related, 2M1 is the dominant polytypic sequence in all samples. However, this periodic 2M1 stacking is so frequently interrupted by stacking faults in smectite that it gives rise to apparent lMd polytypism. The degree to which the periodic 2M1 sequences are interrupted by stacking faults decreases with increasing proportion of illite-like layers. The SAED patterns of I/S and illite unmodified since its formation are diffuse parallel to c* and have poorly-defined, non-periodic reflections for indices k ≠ 3N as a measure of local ordering superimposed on poorly-ordered coherent sequences with a turbostratic component. X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, as integrated over domains with a range of heterogeneous stacking relations, do not represent simple mixtures of discrete IM and 2M1 polytypes.

The observations of this study imply that dissolution-crystallization is a dominant mechanism for the smectite-to-illite transition. The semi-coherent stacking of smectite-like layers in smectite-rich samples implies that either a dissolution-crystallization process took place subsequent to deposition of detrital smectite or that Gulf Coast smectite is an in-situ alteration product of volcanic ash.

From the jumping bean controversy, through his jousts with Malraux, to his charge against Picasso, Roger Caillois's attitude remained the same: a fear of the seductions of misunderstood originality, a condemnation of the fear of influence that characterized the moderns, and praise for imitation, conceived as the only true school of art. Originality, according to the formula he was fond of repeating time and again in the most varied contexts, consists not in refraining from imitating anyone else, but rather in beine inimitable.

The thicknesses of fundamental illite particles that compose mixed-layer illite-smectite (I-S) crystals can be measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD) peak broadening techniques (Bertaut-Warren-Averbach [BWA] method and integral peak-width method) if the effects of swelling and XRD background noise are eliminated from XRD patterns of the clays. Swelling is eliminated by intercalating Na-saturated I-S with polyvinylpyrrolidone having a molecular weight of 10,000 (PVP-10). Background is minimized by using polished metallic silicon wafers cut perpendicular to (100) as a substrate for XRD specimens, and by using a single-crystal monochromator. XRD measurements of PVP-intercalated diagenetic, hydrothermal and low-grade metamorphic I-S indicate that there are at least 2 types of crystallite thickness distribution shapes for illite fundamental particles, lognormal and asymptotic; that measurements of mean fundamental illite particle thicknesses made by various techniques (Bertant-Warren-Averbach, integral peak width, fixed cation content, and transmission electron microscopy [TEM]) give comparable results; and that strain (small differences in layer thicknesses) generally has a Gaussian distribution in the log-normal-type illites, but is often absent in the asymptotic-type illites.

This report consists of a study of l-ornithine hydrochloride-vermiculite and of benzylammonium hydrochloride-vermiculite complex. The evolution of these organo-vermiculite structures upon heating is studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) as well as infrared spectroscopy.

After heating vermiculite saturated with 1-ornithine cations, it shows condensation of interlayer ornithine molecules (peptide complexes). The stacking mode, opposing ditrigonal cavities, is not modified between aminoacid complex and peptide complex.

For vermiculite saturated with benzylammonium cations, the stacking sequence changes through heating by changing benzylammonium to NH4+. This transformation implies a sliding of the layers over each other. The ditrigonal surface cavities become face to face, as in the original mica. There are no random translations as in the starting complex.

Dear readers, perhaps you have not realized it, but your lives so far have been spent in a period called ‘postmodern’.

The word is well-known to you. It has been around for many years. It almost always occurs unexpectedly, half way through an article, in the middle of a conversation, in the course of an argument on radio or television. Something, when all is said and done, is postmodern, someone is what he or she is because he or she is postmodern; a strange and inexplicable phenomenon can be explained as postmodern. This changeable, suggestive, authoritative term, which seems to allude to something precise and technical and which, at the same time, suggests the epoch-making, says all that is good and all that is bad of something. Postmodern is an accusation. Postmodern is praise. What is postmodern is degenerate, has got worse, is hardly serious, of low quality, a poor imitation, irresponsible, frivolous. Nevertheless, what is postmodern is also still more topical, even more modern, forward-looking, amusing and light, cultured without being boring, sophisticated without being elitist, complex without being obscure.