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Until recently, scientists did not know of a close vertebrate analogue to the extreme form of altruism observed in eusocial insects like ants and bees, whereby individuals cooperate, sometimes even sacrificing their own opportunities to survive and reproduce, for the good of others. However, such a vertebrate society may exist among underground colonies of the highly social rodent Heterocephalus glaber, the naked mole rat.A naked mole rat colony, like a beehive, wasp's nest, or termite mound, is ruled by its queen, or reproducing female. Other adult female mole rats neither ovulate nor breed. The queen is the largest member of the colony, and she maintains her breeding status through a mixture of behavioral and, presumably, chemical control. Queens have been long-lived in captivity, and when they die or are removed from a colony one sees violent fighting for breeding status among the larger remaining females, leading to a takeover by a new queen.Eusocial insect societies have rigid caste systems, each insect's role being defined by its behavior, body shape, and physiology. In naked mole rat societies, on the other hand, differences in behavior are related primarily to reproductive status (reproduction being limited to the queen and a few males), body size, and perhaps age. Smaller nonbreeding members, both male and female, seem to participate primarily in gathering food, transporting nest material, and tunneling. Larger nonbreeders are active in defending the colony and perhaps in removing dirt from the tunnels. Jarvis's work has suggested that differences in growth rates may influence the length of time that an individual performs a task, regardless of its age.Cooperative breeding has evolved many times in vertebrates, but unlike naked mole rats, most cooperatively breeding vertebrates (except the wild dog, Lycaon pictus) are dominated by a pair of breeders rather than by a single breeding female. The division of labor within social groups is less pronounced among other vertebrates than among naked mole rats, colony size is much smaller, and mating by subordinate females may not be totally suppressed, whereas in naked mole rat colonies subordinate females are not sexually active, and many never breed.
When the history of women began to receive focused attention in the 1970', Eleanor Roosevelt was one of a handful of female Americans who were well known to both historians and the general public. Despite the evidence that she had been important in social-reform circles before her husband was elected President and that she continued to advocate different causes than he did, she held a place in the public imagination largely because she was the wife of a particularly influential President. Her own activities were seen as preparing the way for her husband's election or as a complement to his programs. Even Joseph Lash's two volumes of sympathetic biography, Eleanor and Franklin (1971) and Eleanor: The Years Alone (1972), reflected this assumption.Lash's biography revealed a complicated woman who sought through political activity both to flee inner misery and to promote causes in which she passionately believed. However, she still appeared to be an idiosyncratic figure, somehow self-generated not amenable to any generalized explanation. She emerged from the biography as a mother to the entire nation, or as a busybody, but hardly as a social type, a figure comprehensible in terms of broader social developments.But more recent work on the feminism of the post-suffrage years (following 1920) allows us to see Roosevelt in a different light and to bring her life into a more richly detailed context. Lois Scharf's Eleanor Roosevelt, written in 1987, depicts a generation of privileged women, born in the late nineteenth century and maturing in the twentieth, who made the transition from old patterns of female association to new ones. Their views and their lives were full of contradictions. They maintained female social networks but began to integrate women into mainstream politics; they demanded equal treatment but also argued that women's maternal responsibilities made them both wards and representatives of the public interest. Thanks to Scharf and others, Roosevelt's activities——for example, her support both for labor laws protecting women and for appointments of women to high public office——have become intelligible in terms of this social context rather than as the idiosyncratic career of a famous man's wife.
The fall of the Berlin Wall represented a political victory of the free market against a centrally planned economy. Though highly interventionist and dependent on international defense and industrial subsidy, West Germany was a model of economic expansion in the post-war era. East Germany, while relatively successful in comparison with other Eastern Bloc nations, was far behind West Germany with regard to the buying power of its people. It was hard to avoid obvious comparisons such as the fact that 1 in 4 East Germans did not even have an indoor toilet. Western German authorities were therefore committed to rapid integration of the two Germanys without resorting to massive controls on internal migration, external capital controls, or continuation of a large state-owned industrial sector. Other nations were already wary of a united Germany. France, a perpetual competitor, saw Germany's size advantage increase overnight. In Gross Domestic Product ("GDP") alone, an historical size advantage of 23% jumped to nearly 30%, with stronger growth promised when East Germany was fully integrated. Within Germany, there should have been no doubt that integration would be costly. The question was whether the government was up to the task. In Italy, for example, the central government has invested tremendous resources in promoting the economy of its under-performing Southern region. In contrast, in the United States, the local population bears the burden of varying economic performance. For example, the American South is allowed to exist with much higher rates of poverty and lower education than the rest of the nation. Rather than allow East Germany to fall into total disrepair, with millions fleeing to the West and a long-term negative impact on national GDP growth, West German authorities decided to try to spend their way out of the crisis, creating almost overnight an infrastructure in East Germany to provide a standard of living comparable to that in West Germany. The goal was to take an under-performing country and raise it to “first world” standards in only a few years. This goal would have been preposterous had not West Germany possessed the resources to accomplish the task.
Most large corporations in the United States were once run by individual capitalists who owned enough stock to dominate the board of directors and dictate company policy. Because putting such large amounts of stock 0n the market would only depress its value. they could not sell out for a quick profit and instead had to concentrate on improving the long-term productivity of their companies. Today, with few exceptions, the stock of large United States corporations is held by large institutions-pension funds, for example-and because these institutions are prohibited by antitrust laws from owning a majority of a company's stock and from actively influencing a company's decision-making, they can enhance their wealth only by buying and selling stock in anticipation of fluctuations In its value. A minority shareholder is necessarily a short-term trader. As a result, United States productivity is unlikely to improve unless shareholders and the managers of the companies in which they invest are encouraged to enhance long-term productivity (and hence long-term profitability), rather than simply to maximize short-term profits.Since the return of the [hl:4]old-style capitalist[/hl:4] is unlikely, today's short-term traders must be remade into tomorrow's long-term capitalistic investors. The legal limits that now prevent financial institutions from acquiring a dominant shareholding position in a corporation should be removed, and such institutions encouraged to take a more active role in the operations of the companies in which they invest. [hl:3]In addition, any institution that holds 20 percent or more of a company's stock should be forced to give the public one day's notice of the intent to sell those shares.[/hl:3] Unless the announced sale could be explained to the public on grounds other than anticipated future losses, the value of the stock would plummet and, like the old-time capitalists, major investors could cut their losses only by helping to restore their companies' productivity. Such measures would force financial institutions to become capitalists whose success depends not on trading shares at the propitious moment, but on increasing the productivity of the companies in which they invest.
Modern manufacturers, who need reliable sources of materials and technologically advancedcomponents to operate profitably, face an increasingly difficult choice between owning theproducers of these items (a practice known as backward integration) and buying from independentproducers. Manufacturers who integrate may reap short-term rewards, but they often restrict theirfuture capacity for innovative product development.Backward integration removes the need for some purchasing and marketing functions, centralizersoverhead, and permits manufacturers to eliminate duplicated efforts in research and development.Where components are commodities (ferrous metals or petroleum, for example), backwardintegration almost certainly boosts profits. Nevertheless, because product innovation meansadopting the most technologically advanced and cost-effective ways of making components,backward integration may entail a serious risk for a technologically active company-for example,a producer of sophisticated consumer electronics.A company that decides to make rather than buy important parts can lock itself into an outdatedtechnology. Independent suppliers may be unwilling to share innovations with assemblers withwhom they are competing. Moreover, when an assembler sets out to master the technology ofproducing advanced components, the resulting demands on its resources may compromise itsability to assemble these components successfully into end products. Long-term contracts withsuppliers can achieve many of the same cost benefits as backward integration withoutcompromising a company's ability to innovate.However, moving away from backward integration is not a complete solution either. Developinginnovative technologies requires independent suppliers of components to invest huge sums inresearch and development. The resulting low profit margins on the sale of components threaten thelong-term financial stability of these firms. Because the ability of end-product assemblers torespond to market opportunities depends heavily on suppliers of components, assemblers are oftenforced to integrate by purchasing the suppliers of components just to keep their suppliers inbusiness.
Compared to regulations in other countries, those of the United States tends to be narrower in scope, with an emphasis on manufacturing processes and specific categories of pollution, and little or no attention to the many other factors that affect environmental quality. An example is the focus on controlling pollution rather than influencing decisions about processes, raw materials, or products that determine environmental impacts. Regulation in the United States tends to isolate specific aspects of production processes and attempts to control them stringently, which means that some aspects of business are regulated tightly, although sometimes not cost-effectively, while others are ignored. Other countries and several American states have recently made more progress in preventing pollution at its source and considering such issues as product life cycles, packaging waste, and industrial energy efficiency. Environmental regulation in the United States is also more prescriptive than elsewhere, in the sense of requiring specific actions, with little discretion left to the regulated firm. There also is a great reliance on action-forcing laws and technology standards. These contrasts are illustrated nicely in a 1974 book that used a hare and tortoise analogy to compare air quality regulation in the United States and Sweden. While the United States (the hare) codified ambitious goals in statutes that drove industry to adopt new technologies under the threat of sanctions, Sweden (the tortoise) used a more collaborative process that stressed results but worked with industry in deciding how to achieve them. In the end air quality results were about the same. Similar results have been found in other comparative analyses of environmental regulation. For example, one study of a multinational firm with operations in the United States and Japan found that pollution levels in both countries were similar, despite generally higher pollution abatement expenditures in the United States. The higher costs observed in the United States thus were due in large part, not to more stringent standards, but to the higher regulatory transaction costs. Because agencies in different countries share information about technologies, best practices, and other issues, the pollution levels found acceptable in different countries tend to be quite similar.
Compared to regulations in other countries, those of the United States tends to be narrower in scope, with an emphasis on manufacturing processes and specific categories of pollution, and little or no attention to the many other factors that affect environmental quality. An example is the focus on controlling pollution rather than influencing decisions about processes, raw materials, or products that determine environmental impacts. Regulation in the United States tends to isolate specific aspects of production processes and attempts to control them stringently, which means that some aspects of business are regulated tightly, although sometimes not cost-effectively, while others are ignored. Other countries and several American states have recently made more progress in preventing pollution at its source and considering such issues as product life cycles, packaging waste, and industrial energy efficiency. Environmental regulation in the United States is also more prescriptive than elsewhere, in the sense of requiring specific actions, with little discretion left to the regulated firm. There also is a great reliance on action-forcing laws and technology standards. These contrasts are illustrated nicely in a 1974 book that used a hare and tortoise analogy to compare air quality regulation in the United States and Sweden. While the United States (the hare) codified ambitious goals in statutes that drove industry to adopt new technologies under the threat of sanctions, Sweden (the tortoise) used a more collaborative process that stressed results but worked with industry in deciding how to achieve them. In the end air quality results were about the same. Similar results have been found in other comparative analyses of environmental regulation. For example, one study of a multinational firm with operations in the United States and Japan found that pollution levels in both countries were similar, despite generally higher pollution abatement expenditures in the United States. The higher costs observed in the United States thus were due in large part, not to more stringent standards, but to the higher regulatory transaction costs. Because agencies in different countries share information about technologies, best practices, and other issues, the pollution levels found acceptable in different countries tend to be quite similar.
C13

      Despite views that globalization has reached its peak, a period beginning in the nineteenth century and extending into the early-twentieth century, in fact, is the interval during which international barriers to trade fell most steeply, as can be seen in the case of price convergence in commodities. The prices of cloves, pepper, and coffee failed to converge between Amsterdam and East Asia or between England and India from as far back as 1580 but began in 1820 to draw closer. Similarly, the difference in wheat prices in the United States and England fell from one hundred percent in the early-nineteenth century to negligible levels late in the century and to no difference at all in the early-twentieth century. A similar story unfolded during this period for bacon, cotton, and rice.

     Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson have summarized the price gaps in commodity markets between continents as evolving in three phases. From 1820 to 1914, these gaps fell by 81 percent; they attribute 72 percent of this decline to cheaper transport and 28 percent to trade policies. Second, during the wartime period of 1914 to 1950, the gaps doubled, due to a reversal in trade policies. Finally, from 1950 to 2000, they fell again by 76 percent, ending up 92 percent lower than in 1820, with about four-fifths of the total change attributable to cheaper transport and one-fifth to more favorable trade policies.

     Trade data for this period are typically articulated in terms of ratio of total trade volume to gross domestic product, since commodity price information is not universally available. These ratios in many advanced economies were higher in the mid-1990s than in the early 1900s, but not by much. In Japan, notably, the percentage of GDP for which trade accounted in 1995 was 17 percent, far under its 1910 level of 30 percent, as measured in current prices. Sure enough, the ratios have risen somewhat in other economies over that same time period—by 13 percentage points in the United Kingdom, 8 points in France, and from 11 percent to 24 percent in the United States; this latter spike may explain why the attention to globalization has been especially acute in America. These increases, nevertheless, are modest given the fact that the world economy grew roughly twice as quickly in the twentieth century as in the nineteenth.

     The ratios above, and hence the substantiation for the argument that globalization peaked a century ago, grow much more dramatically if they are computed in constant prices rather than in current prices, because the prices of goods relative to services fell due to sustained increases in productivity in the sectors producing these goods. Trade has grown most in those sectors in which prices have most strikingly fallen, so the proportions of GDP in constant prices have risen more than those in current prices.
The traditional model of employer-employee relations in the United States was a "psychological contract" in which employees made long-term commitments to organizations in exchange for long-term job security, training and development, and internal opportunities for promotion. Beginning mainly with the recession in the early 1970's, this paradigm began to unravel. Organizations began using extensive downsizing and outsourcing to decrease the number of permanent employees in the workforce. Among employees this situation has resulted in a decided shift in desire: instead of working their way up in an organization, many now prefer to work their way out. Entrepreneurship at the small business administration are now the fastest-growing majors in business schools.Several factors have generated movement from the old paradigm to the new one. Organizations have had legitimate and pressing reasons to shift to a [hl:4]new paradigm[/hl:4] of employer-employee relations. Large numbers of permanent employees make it difficult for organizations to respond quickly to downturns in demand by decreasing payroll costs. The enormous rights in wrongful discharge suites has created incentives for organizations to use temporary, contract, and leased employees in order to distance themselves from potential litigation problems. Moreover, top management is under increased pressure from shareholders to generate higher and higher levels of return on investment in the short run, resulting in declines in hiring, increases in layoffs, and shortage of funds for employee development.At the same time, a lack of forthrightness on the part of organizations has led to increased cynicism among employees about management's motivation and competence. Employees are now working 15 percent more hours per week than they were 20 years ago, but organizations acknowledge this fact only by running stress-management workshops to help employees to cope. Sales people are being asked to increase sales at the same time organizations have cut travel, phone, and advertising budgets. Employees could probably cope effectively with changes in the psychological contract if organizations were more forthright about how they were changing it. But the euphemistic jargon used by executives to justify the changes they were implementing frequently backfires; rather than engendering sympathy for management's position, it sparks employees' desire to be free of the organization all together. In a recent study of employees' attitudes about management, 49 percent of the sample strongly agreed that "management will take advantage of you if given the chance."
A small number of the forest species of lepidoptera (moths and butterflies, which exist as caterpillars during most of their life cycle) exhibit regularly recurring patterns of population growth and decline –- such fluctuations in population are known as population cycles. Although many different variables influence population levels, a regular pattern such as a population cycle seems to imply a dominant, driving force. Identification of that driving force, however, has proved surprisingly elusive despite considerable research. The common approach of studying causes of population cycle by measuring the mortality caused by different agents, such as predatory birds or parasites, has been unproductive in the case of lepidoptera. Moreover, population ecologists' attempts to alter cycles by changing the caterpillars' habitat and by reducing caterpillar populations have not succeeded. [line:18][hl:3]In short, the evidence implies that these insect populations, if not self-regulating, may at least be regulated by an agent more intimately connected with the insect than are predatory birds or parasites.[/hl:3][/line:18]Recent work suggests that this agent may be a virus. For many years, viral disease had been reported in declining populations of caterpillars, but population ecologists had usually considered viral disease to have contributed to the decline once it was underway rather than to have initiated it. The recent work has been made possible by new techniques of molecular biology that allow viral DNA to be detected at low concentrations in the environment. Nuclear polyhedrosis viruses are hypothesized to be the driving force behind population cycles in Lepidoptera in part because the viruses themselves follow an infectious cycle in which, if protected from direct sunlight, they may remain virulent for many years in the environment, embedded in durable crystals of polyhedron protein. Once ingested by a caterpillar, the crystals dissolve, releasing the virus to infect the insect's cells. Late in the course of the infection, millions of new virus particles are formed and enclosed in polyhedron crystals. These crystals reenter the environment after the insect dies and decomposes, thus becoming available to infect other caterpillars.One of the attractions of this hypothesis is its broad applicability. Remarkably, despite significant differences in habitat and behavior, many species of lepidoptera have population cycles of similar length, between eight and eleven years. Nuclear polyhedrosis viral infection is one factor these disparate species share.
A small number of the forest species of lepidoptera (moths and butterflies, which exist as caterpillars during most of their life cycle) exhibit regularly recurring patterns of population growth and decline—such fluctuations in population are known as population cycles. Although many different variables influence population levels, a regular pattern such as a population cycle seems to imply a dominant, driving force. Identification of that driving force, however, has proved surprisingly elusive despite considerable research. The common approach of studying causes of population cycles by measuring the mortality caused by different agents, such as predatory birds or parasites, has been unproductive in the case of lepidoptera. Moreover, population ecologists' attempts to alter cycles by changing the caterpillars' habitat and by reducing caterpillar populations have not succeeded. [hl:1]In short, the evidence implies that these insect populations, if not self-regulating, may at least be regulated by an agent more intimately connected with the insect than are predatory birds or parasites.[/hl:1]Recent work suggests that this agent may be a virus.For many years, viral disease had been reported in declining populations of caterpillars, but population ecologists had usually considered viral disease to have contributed to the decline once it was underway rather than to have initiated it. The recent work has been made possible by new techniques of molecular biology that allow viral DNA to be detected at low concentrations in the environment. Nuclear polyhedrosis viruses are hypothesized to be the driving force behind population cycles in lepidoptera in part because the viruses themselves follow an infectious cycle in which, if protected from direct sun light, they may remain virulent for many years in the environment, embedded in durable crystals of polyhedrin protein. Once ingested by a caterpillar, the crystals dissolve, releasing the virus to infect the insect's cells. Late in the course of the infection, millions of new virus particles are formed and enclosed in polyhedron crystals. These crystals reenter the environment after the insect dies and decomposes, thus becoming available to infect other caterpillars.One of the attractions of this hypothesis is its broad applicability. Remarkably, despite significant differences in habitat and behavior, many species of lepidoptera have population cycles of similar length, between eight and eleven years. Nuclear polyhedrosis viral infection is one factor these disparate species share."
Ready4

      Despite views that globalization has reached its peak, a period beginning in the nineteenth century and extending into the early-twentieth century, in fact, is the interval during which international barriers to trade fell most steeply, as can be seen in the case of price convergence in commodities. The prices of cloves, pepper, and coffee failed to converge between Amsterdam and East Asia or between England and India from as far back as 1580 but began in 1820 to draw closer. Similarly, the difference in wheat prices in the United States and England fell from one hundred percent in the early-nineteenth century to negligible levels late in the century and to no difference at all in the early-twentieth century. A similar story unfolded during this period for bacon, cotton, and rice.

     Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson have summarized the price gaps in commodity markets between continents as evolving in three phases. From 1820 to 1914, these gaps fell by 81 percent; they attribute 72 percent of this decline to cheaper transport and 28 percent to trade policies. Second, during the wartime period of 1914 to 1950, the gaps doubled, due to a reversal in trade policies. Finally, from 1950 to 2000, they fell again by 76 percent, ending up 92 percent lower than in 1820, with about four-fifths of the total change attributable to cheaper transport and one-fifth to more favorable trade policies.

     Trade data for this period are typically articulated in terms of ratio of total trade volume to gross domestic product, since commodity price information is not universally available. These ratios in many advanced economies were higher in the mid-1990s than in the early 1900s, but not by much. In Japan, notably, the percentage of GDP for which trade accounted in 1995 was 17 percent, far under its 1910 level of 30 percent, as measured in current prices. Sure enough, the ratios have risen somewhat in other economies over that same time period—by 13 percentage points in the United Kingdom, 8 points in France, and from 11 percent to 24 percent in the United States; this latter spike may explain why the attention to globalization has been especially acute in America. These increases, nevertheless, are modest given the fact that the world economy grew roughly twice as quickly in the twentieth century as in the nineteenth.

     The ratios above, and hence the substantiation for the argument that globalization peaked a century ago, grow much more dramatically if they are computed in constant prices rather than in current prices, because the prices of goods relative to services fell due to sustained increases in productivity in the sectors producing these goods. Trade has grown most in those sectors in which prices have most strikingly fallen, so the proportions of GDP in constant prices have risen more than those in current prices.
Neotropical coastal mangrove forests are usually"zonal,"with certain mangrove species found predominantly in the seaward portion of the habitat and other mangrove species on the more landward portions of the coast. The earliest research on mangrove forests produced descriptions of species distribution from shore to land, without exploring the causes of the distributions.The idea that zonation is ca used by plant succession. was first expressed by J. H. Davis in a study of Florida mangrove forests. According to Davis' scheme, the shoreline is being extended in a seaward direction because of the"land-building"role of mangroves t which l by trapping sediments over time, extend the shore. As a habitat gradually becomes more in land as the shore extends, the"land-building"species are replaced. This continuous process of accretion and succession would be interrupted only by hurricanes or storm flushings.Recently the universal application of Davis' succession paradigm has been challenged. It appears that in areas where weak currents and weak tidal energies allow the accumulation of sediments, mangroves will follow land formation and accelerate the rate of soil accretion；succession will proceed according to Davis' scheme. But on stable coastlines, the distribution of mangrove species results in other patterns of zonation；"land building"does not occur.To find a principle that explains the various distribution patterns, several researchers have looked to salinity and its effects on mangroves. While mangroves can develop in fresh water,they can also thrive in salinities as high as 2. 5 times that of seawater. However, those mangrove species found in freshwater habitats do well only in the absence of competition, thus suggesting that salinity tolerance is a critical factor in competitive success among mangrove species. Research suggests that mangroves will normally dominate highly saline regions, although not because they require salt. Rather, they are metabolically efficient(and hence grow well)in portions of an environment whose high salinity excludes plants adapted to lower salinities. Tides create different degrees of salinity along a coastline. The characteristic mangrove species of each zone should exhibit a higher metabolic efficiency at that salinity than will any potential invader, including other species of mangrove.
The idea of the brain as an information processor—a machine manipulating blips of energy according to fathomable rules—has come to dominate neuroscience. However, one enemy of the brain-as-computer metaphor is John R. Searle, a philosopher who argues that since computers Simply follow algorithms, they cannot deal with important aspects of human thought such as meaning and content. Computers are syntactic, rather than semantic, creatures. People, on the other hand, understand meaning because they have something Searle obscurely calls the causal powers of the brain.Yet how would a brain work if not by reducing what it learns about the world to information—some kind of code that can be transmitted from neuron to neuron? What else could meaning and content be? If the code can be cracked, a computer should be able to simulate it, at least in principle. But even if a computer could simulate the workings of the mind, Searle would claim that the machine would not really be thinking; it would just be acting as if it were. His argument proceeds thus: if a computer were used to simulate a stomach, with the stomach's churnings faithfully reproduced on a video screen, the machine would not be digesting real food. It would just be blindly manipulating the symbols that generate the visual display.Suppose, though, that a stomach were simulated using plastic tubes, a motor to do the churning, a supply of digestive juices, and a timing mechanism. If food went in one end of the device, what came out the other end would surely be digested food. Brains, unlike stomachs, are information processors, and if one information processor were made to simulate another information processor, it is hard to see how one and not the other could be said to think. Simulated thoughts and real thoughts are made of the same element: information. The representations of the world that humans carry around in their heads are already simulations. To accept Searle's argument, one would have to deny the most fundamental notion in psychology and neuroscience: that brains work by processing information.
Colonial historian David Allen's intensive study of five communities in seventeenth-century Massachusetts is a model of meticulous scholarship on the detailed microcosmic level, and is convincing up to a point. Allen suggests that much more coherence and direct continuity existed between English and colonial agricultural practices and administrative organization than other historians have suggested. However, he overstates his case with the declaration that he has proved "the remarkable extent to which diversity in New England local institutions was directly imitative of regional differences in the mother country.Such an assertion ignores critical differences between seventeenth—century England and New England. First, England was overcrowded and land-hungry; New England was sparsely populated and labor-hungry. Second, England suffered the normal European rate of mortality; New England, especially in the first generation of English colonists, was virtually free from infectious diseases. Third, England had an all-embracing state church; in New England membership in a church was restricted to the elect. Fourth, a high proportion of English villagers lived under paternalistic resident squires; no such class existed in New England. By narrowing his focus to village institutions and ignoring these critical differences, which studies by Greven, Demos, and Lockridge have shown to be so important, Allen has created a somewhat distorted picture of reality.Allen's work is a rather extreme example of the "country community" school of seventeenth-century English history whose intemperate excesses in removing all national issues from the history of that period have been exposed by Professor Clive Holmes. What conclusion can be drawn, for example, from Allen's discovery that Puritan clergy who had come to the colonies from East Anglia were one-third to one-half as likely to return to England by 1660 as were Puritan ministers from western and northern England? We are not told in what way, if at all, [hl:3]this discovery[/hl:3] illuminates historical understanding. Studies of local history have enormously expanded our horizons, but it is a mistake for their authors to conclude that village institutions are all that mattered, simply because their functions are all that the records of village institutions reveal.
In the mid-1970's, Walter Alvarez, a geologist, was studying Earth's polarity. It had recently been learned that the orientation of the planet's magnetic field reverses, so that every so often, in effect, south becomes north and vice versa. Alvarez and some colleagues had found that a certain formation of pinkish limestone in Italy, known as the scaglia rossa, recorded these occasional reversals. The limestone also contained the fossilized remains of millions of tiny sea creatures called foraminifera. Alvarez became interested in a thin layer of clay in the limestone that seemed to have been laid down around the end of the Cretaceous Period. Below the layer, certain species of foraminifera—or forams, for short—were preserved. In the clay layer, there were no forams. Above the layer, the earlier species disappeared and new forams appeared. Having been taught the uniformitarian view, which held that any apparent extinctions throughout geological time resulted from 'the incompleteness of the fossil record' rather than an actual extinction, Alvarez was not sure what to make of the lacuna in geological time corresponding to the missing foraminifera, because the change looked very abrupt. Had Walter Alvarez not asked his father, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, how long the clay had taken to deposit, the younger Alvarez may not have thought to use iridium, an element rarely found on earth but more plentiful in meteorites, to answer this question. Iridium, in the form of microscopic grains of cosmic dust, is constantly raining down on the planet. The Alvarezes reasoned that if the clay layer had taken a significant amount of time to deposit, it would contain detectable levels of iridium. The results were startling: far too much iridium had shown up. The Alvarez hypothesis, as it became known, was that everything—not just the clay layer—could be explained by a single event: a six-mile-wide asteroid had slammed into Earth, killing off not only the forams but also the dinosaurs and all the other organisms that went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period.
In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two-year-old was told that since the child had made no real economic contribution to the family, there was no liability for damages. In contrast, less than a century later, in 1979, the parents of a three-year-old sued in New York for accidental-death damages and won an award of $750,000.The transformation in social values implicit in juxtaposing these two incidents is the subject of Viviana Zelizer's excellent book, Pricing the Priceless Child. During the nineteenth century, she argues, the concept of the "useful" child who contributed to the family economy gave way gradually to the present-day notion of the "useless" child who, though producing no income for, and indeed extremely costly to, its parents, is yet considered emotionally "priceless." Well established among segments of the middle and upper classes by the mid-1800's, this new view of childhood spread throughout society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as reformers introduced child labor regulations and compulsory education laws predicated in part on the assumption that a child's emotional value made child labor taboo.For Zelizer the origins of this transformation were many and complex. The gradual erosion of children's productive value in a maturing industrial economy, the decline in birth and death rates, especially in child mortality, and the development of the companionate family (a family in which members were united by explicit bonds of love rather than duty) were all factors critical in changing the assessment of children's worth. Yet "expulsion of children from the 'cash nexus; ... although clearly shaped by profound changes in the economic, occupational, and family structures," Zelizer maintains, "was also part of a cultural process of 'sacralization' of children's lives." Protecting children from the crass business world became enormously important for late nineteenth-century middle-class Americans, she suggests; this sacralization was a way of resisting what they perceived as the relentless corruption of human values by the marketplace.In stressing the cultural determinants of a child's worth, Zelizer takes issue with practitioners of the new "sociological economics," who have analyzed such traditionally sociological topics as crime, marriage, education, and health solely in terms of their economic determinants. Allowing only a small role for cultural forces in the form of individual "preferences;' these sociologists tend to view all human behavior as directed primarily by the principle of maximizing economic gain. Zelizer is highly critical of this approach, and emphasizes instead the opposite phenomenon: the power of social values to transform price. As children became more valuable in emotional terms, she argues, their "exchange" or "surrender" value on the market, that is, the conversion of their intangible worth into cash terms, became much greater.
Ready4

In 1848, Marx, supported by Engels, completed the “Communist Manifesto.” The "Communist Manifesto" attempts to explain the goals of Communism as well as the theory underlying the movement. It argues that class struggles, or the exploitation of one class by another, are the motivating force behind all historical developments. Class relationships are defined by an era`s means of production. However, these relationships eventually cease to be compatible with the developing forces of production. At this point, a revolution occurs and a new class emerges as the ruling one. This process represents the "march of history" as driven by larger economic forces. The “Communist Manifesto” stated that all men were born free but that society put the majority of men in chains. Engels referred to the book as being the “very way of life.” In a higher phase of ideal communist society, the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor and also the antithesis between mental and physical labor vanish. Labor becomes not only a means of life but life`s prime want and the productive forces increase with the all round development of the individual. All the springs of the cooperative wealth flow more abundantly."From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" echoes Marxism. The nonstarters were considered the ones who wanted a free enterprise system advocating maximum productivity. Economic progress in Marxist regions has been sterile because it can imagine no change except through the extension of Marx`s ideology — the argument that the elimination of social classes cannot come about through reforms or changes in government, but rather, a revolution is required. Indeed, some forms of neo-Marxism resemble little more than a giant "conspiracy theory," whereby a capitalist ruling class is able to manipulate other classes in society for their own ends and benefits.

Marxist society greatly undervalues non-economic forces and wraps a great deal of belief in an economic shell at the expense of non-economic issues. In fact, modern industrial society in specific is characterized by class conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. However, the theory that productive forces of capitalism are quickly ceasing to be compatible with this exploitative relationship is greatly over emphasized. More importantly, much Marxism — both old and modern — has tended to ignore the role and position of women in society. Women tend to be marginalized in much Marxist theorizing, possibly because of the focus upon work relationships. This criticism is irrelevant and obsolete in current context. In comparison, capitalism, however, as an economic and political system, has proven to be more durable and flexible than Marx imagined.
Recently biologists have been interested in a tide-associated periodic behavior displayed by the diatom Hantzschia virgata, a microscopic golden-brown alga that inhabits that portion of a shoreline washed by tides (the intertidal zone). Diatoms of this species, sometimes called "commuter" diatoms, remain burrowed in the sand during high tide, and emerge on the sand surface during the daytime low tide. Just before the sand is inundated by the rising tide, the diatoms burrow again. Some scientists hypothesize that commuter diatoms know that it is low tide because they sense an environmental change, such as an alteration in temperature or a change in pressure caused by tidal movement. However, when diatoms are observed under constant conditions in a laboratory, they still display periodic behavior, continuing to burrow on schedule for several weeks. This indicates that commuter diatoms, rather than relying on environmental cues to keep time, possess an internal pacemaker or biological clock that enables them to anticipate periodic changes in the environment. A commuter diatom has an unusually accurate biological clock, a consequence of the unrelenting environmental pressures to which it is subjected; any diatoms that do not burrow before the tide arrives are washed away.This is not to suggest that the period of this biological clock is immutably fixed. Biologists have concluded that even though a diatom does not rely on the environment to keep time, environmental factors—including changes in the tide's hydrostatic pressure, salinity, mechanical agitation, and temperature—can alter the period of its biological clock according to changes in the tidal cycle. In short, the relation between an organism's biological clock and its environment is similar to that between a wristwatch and its owner: the owner cannot make the watch run faster or slower, but can reset the hands. However, this relation is complicated in intertidal dwellers such as commuter diatoms by the fact that these organisms are exposed to the solar-day cycle as well as to the tidal cycle, and sometimes display both solar-day and tidal periods in a single behavior. Commuter diatoms, for example, emerge only during those low tides that occur during the day.
Manufacturers have to do more than build large manufacturing plants to realize economies of scale.It is true that as the capacity of a manufacturing operation rises, costs per unit of output fall as plant size approaches "minimum efficient scale," where the cost per unit of output reaches a minimum, determined roughly by the state of existing technology and size of the potential market. However, minimum efficient scale cannot be fully realized unless a steady "throughput" (the flow of materials through a plant) is attained. The throughput needed to maintain the optimal scale of production requires careful coordination not only of the flow of goods through the production process, but also of the flow of input from suppliers and the flow of output to wholesalers and final consumers. If throughput falls below a critical point, unit costs rise sharply and profits disappear. A manufacturer's fixed costs and "sunk costs" (original capital investment in the physical plant) do not decrease when production declines due to inadequate supplies of raw materials, problems on the factory floor, or inefficient sales networks. Consequently, potential economies of scale are based on the physical and engineering characteristics of the production facilities—that is, on tangible capital—but realized economies of scale are operational and organizational, and depend on knowledge, skills, experience, and teamwork—that is, on organized human capabilities, or intangible capital.The importance of investing in intangible capital becomes obvious when one looks at what happens in new capital-intensive manufacturing industries. Such industries are quickly dominated, not by the first firms to acquire technologically sophisticated plants of theoretically optimal size, but rather by the first to exploit the full potential of such plants. Once some firms achieve this, a market becomes extremely hard to enter. Challengers must construct comparable plants and do so after the first movers have already worked out problems with suppliers or with new production processes. Challengers must create distribution networks and marketing systems in markets where first movers have all the contacts and know-how. And challengers must recruit management teams to compete with those that have already mastered these functional and strategic activities.