Abstract: Major problems are experienced in South Africa due to the invasion of non-indigenous or alien species of terrestrial plants in several catchments. Alien invaders are estimated to use approximately 6,7% of the estimated mean annual runoff of water over the entire area of South Africa and as high as 15,8% in the Western Cape Province. The impacts are significantly higher, on a percentage basis, during drought periods as the riparian invaders still have free access to water. Rural and urban communities with limited storage capacities for water supply that depend on the flow of water in the river are particularly affected by the reduced flow of water. The invasion of alien plants in catchments is influencing the total water resources system and affecting all sectors. The nature and extent of invasive alien plants, the effects thereof on available water resources, the threat to ecological environment and impacts on society, need to be understood to ensure the success of the integrated approach to control the spread of invasive alien plants. If properly managed, the programmes to control invasive alien plants can provide the stimulus needed for an active participatory approach in integrated management of catchments in South Africa to deal with water scarcity and to ensure sustainability of the environment, land use and water.

Abstract: Some 48 alien bird species have been introduced into or have invaded southern Africa, but only seven of these species have established viable populations, and the populations of a further 13 species are geographically restricted and stable or decreasing. The question arises whether gross environmental changes, such as the expansion of agriculture and changes in land use, increased urbanization and global warming could enable some of the species that have failed as invaders previously (or new introductions) to become invasive. Here, I propose a framework to profile successful alien avian invaders. This allows us to consider for example, whether gross environmental changes could favour established alien bird species, and increase the success of species that have failed as invaders previously, enabling them to become invasive.

Abstract: 183 Alien hand phenomena (AHP) has had several meanings in neurology, but lately it has been most frequently used to describe the involuntary complex movements in corticobasal degeneration (CBD). C.M. Fisher,1 one of the masters of descriptive neurology, traces the history, definitions and interpretations of these phenomena in this issue. He also adds six of his own cases of corticobasal degeneration syndrome, which is a new term for the extrapyramidal presentation of Pick’s disease. He goes further, however, by introducing philosophical and physiological issues about free will and movements. The initial term used in callosal disconnection patients, whose nondominant hand interfered with the voluntary movements of the dominant hand was “diagonistic dyspraxia”.2 Brion and Jedynak3 subsequently coined the term of the sign of the “alien hand” for their cases. Many subsequent descriptions adopted the term, including the case reports of CBD. Fisher summarizes this literature, grouping the varieties according to etiology, such as callosal sections, tumors, anterior cerebral artery infarct and aneurysm, etc. Some of these lesions appear to involve the frontal lobe, and some of the symptomatology such as groping, compulsive manipulation of objects, and grasp reflex suggest frontal lobe mechanisms, especially the damage to the supplementary motor area as the cause. Although Brion and Jedynak’s cases misidentified their hand when it was palpated behind their back, the denial of ownership of the hand is much more common in severe cases of neglect and anosognosia of the nondominant hand. This sensorimotor neglect form of AHP could be added as yet another variety. In fact, there is some evidence that CBD has a major parietal component to it and in some cases sensory deficits conceivably contribute to this phenomena. Although the first two cases described under corticodentatonigral degeneration4 had AHP, this is by no means consistently described in CBD. Some patients only show levitation, odd posturing and grasp reflex. Uncontrollable wandering of the hand, crossing the midline and interfering with movements of the contralateral limb and grasping objects is not always present. Nevertheless, AHP seems to be common in CBD, even though precise descriptions or criteria for identification of the phenomena are not always provided. Fisher’s 5/6 cases were remarkable because they had bilateral AHP phenomena. These patients had complex, unwilled motor acts including intermanual conflict, mirror movements, interference, enabling synkinesis, reversal of complex acts and pushing aside one limb by the other, instead of cooperating. Relatively simple unwilled, unskilled quasi reflex actions including reaching out, groping, grasping, inability to release, withdrawal of the limb, compulsive utilization of tools, and other utilization behaviour were also a feature. Bimanual movements are often integrating and cooperative in nature and failure to coordinate these movements is interpreted as disconnection. In intermanual conflict each hand seems to carry out on its own. Often it is the nondominant limb that shows unintended, unwilled performance. The evidence, as so clearly summarized by Fisher points to the lesions of the supplementary area and interruption of the corpus callosum. The philosophical issue of the role of “the will” in movements is an important issue in describing the AHP. Patients often provide verbal evidence that the interfering hand is acting in an unwilled fashion “on its own.” Hence the term, alien hand. Various physiological evidence indicates that normal movements are preceded by electrical activity even before the conscious decision is made to act. According to the reflex theory of movement, all movements are reflexes of one sort or another to some sensory stimulus and as the act unfolds it is recorded as an ideation or a thought which provides the impression that the act was willed. It seems, however, that there are motor phenomena that are not part of the “will”. These unwilled movements can be complex and well-executed and they occur while the patient is aware of the movement but still considers it unwilled. The readiness potentials recorded, preceding movements, may reflect a physiological contribution to will. Fisher postulates that the lesion of the supplementary motor area (SMA) prevents this basic component and he supports this by evidence from the literature.5 Interestingly and somewhat arguably, he comes out at the end against the concept of “free will.” Although the pathological description is not a major part of Fisher’s article, 4/6 of his cases were pathologically confirmed. He briefly touches upon the increasing evidence that CBD is part of the Pick complex and that Pick’s disease is often the underlying pathology with the clinical syndrome of CBD.6

Abstract: A 24-year-old Hispanic male came into the emergency room of a large public teaching hospital with acute cardiac failure and chest pain. He was admitted and diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease and regurgitation and stenosis of both mitral and aortic valves. Medical judgment concluded that the patient needed to be medically stabilized and then undergo cardiac surgery to repair heart valves. The patient spoke only Spanish. Investigation through an interpreter revealed that he was an illegal alien from a Central American country who has lived in this country for five to seven years. He came to the United States so that he could receive treatment for his heart condition, evidently fearing that he would not receive treatment in his home country. The patient entered this country through the assistance of some distant relatives. He did not have a strong support system.

Abstract: Abstract Twain is famous for his jeremiads against European Imperialism and the United States’ fledgling efforts at colonial expansion in the Philippines; Twain’s name is frequently mentioned in discussions of anti-Imperialism as both a political movement and cultural ethos in the 122 literary culture and U.S. Imperialism turn-of-the-century United States. As scholars have pointed out, most of Twain’s anti-colonial zeal dates from the late 1890s and early 1900s, provoked by such international crises as the Spanish-American War (1898), the Boxer Rebellion in China (1900), and the Boer War in South Africa (1899”“1902). Twain’s rage over U.S. annexation of the Philippines in “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901) and “A Defense of General Funston” (1902), the cruel despotism of Belgium’s Leopold II in the Congo Free State in “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” (1905), and Czar Nicholas II’s exploitation of Russians, Poles, and Finns in “The Czar’s Soliloquy” (1905) belongs to the historical period in which “Imperialism” had entered the popular vocabulary as a term of opprobrium.

Abstract: (Uploaded by Plazi for the IPBES Invasive Alien Species Assessment) No abstract provided.

Abstract: (Uploaded by Plazi for the IPBES Invasive Alien Species Assessment) No abstract provided.

Abstract: (Uploaded by Plazi for the IPBES Invasive Alien Species Assessment) No abstract provided.

Abstract: Abstract In the opening section of Hiroshima mon amour, the French actress and her Japanese lover debate the status of the traumatic event for which the name ‘Hiroshima’ forms a kind of desperate shorthand. Is it possible to know such an event? Or to remember it? Can it be reconstructed, for those to whom it has always represented an alien experience? Or does it represent a radically alien experience, even to those to whom it has happened? Is it, by virtue of its status as trauma, beyond such categories as knowledge, memory, and recon-struction? In this debate, the museum in Hiroshima becomes the very figure of reconstruction, embodying the simultaneous impossibility and necessity with the traumatic event.

Abstract: Abstract Foreign implies unknown; and we often make the mistake of assuming that unknown means different, even bad and dangerous. One should not be afraid of differences. For real differences, be they in language, aesthetic values, or the law, provide the kind of contrasts and yardsticks which allow one to understand and rethink one’s own ideas, rules, and institutions and, on occasion, be converted to the alien ones. Take ancient Rome, medieval Granada, the Renaissance, nineteenth-century Britain. They all show that the quality of any civilization can be seen not only by its indigenous products but also by its ability to graft new shoots on its own trunk to stimulate new growth and achieve richer and more differentiated products.

Abstract: Abstract AT the end of 1998 the Italian Soka Gakkai (ISG) was assuredly the most significant presence of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) in Europe. About 20,000 members out of a total of about 38,000 in Europe attended meetings and took part in the activities of the Istituto Italiano Soka Gakkai. This prompts many questions: given that Italy is traditionally a Catholic country, it might have been expected that here, more than any where, it would have been difficult for a Buddhist school—whose very name sounds alien to Italian culture—to penetrate.

Abstract: On May 25, 1931, the Supreme Court of the United States decided the case of United States v. Macintosh.1 It was one of the most famous cases of its era. The Christian Century compared it to the infamous Dred Scott case.2 In the same editorial, it said the decision “outrages the nation’s conscience,” and called it “incredible,” “monstrous,” “the inevitable death of spiritual religion.”3 Who was Douglas Clyde Macintosh, why did he have a case before the Supreme Court, and why did a liberal Protestant magazine become so exercised about it? Douglas Clyde Macintosh was born in Canada in 1877 and received his undergraduate degree from McMaster University in Toronto. In 1904 he became a graduate student at the University of Chicago. He was ordained to the ministry of the American Baptist Church in 1907. That same year he returned to Canada to teach in a small college. In 1909, the same year he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, he was invited to join the faculty of Yale Divinity School.4 At the time of his case, he was Chaplain of the Yale Graduate School and Dwight Professor of Theology in the Divinity School, one of the luminaries of the faculty.

Abstract: Abstract Millions of people are searching desperately for a true Father-Magician, especially at a time when the clergy and the psychiatrists are raking rather a poor show, and do not seem to have the courage of their convictions, or of the1r fantasies. Alan Watts, “The Trickster Guru,” in The Essential Alan Watts though acknowledged as a menace during the 1940s, popular concern about cults faded dung the next decade, to the point of near invisibility in the media. The hiatus of public interest during the 1950s had important implications for later perceptions of cults, as many once-thriving occult and sectarian traditions were consigned to historical oblivion. With few acknowledged precedents, scholars and journalists assumed, wrongly, that the new spirituality of the 1960s and 1970s was an entirely new phenomenon. Observers scarcely knew how to explain this apparently unprecedented situation in which young people were drawn into odd or alien movements, seduced by fashion able gurus, and proclaiming a new miscall Age of Aquarius.

Abstract: We analysed the distribution of native and alien plant species across 20 ecogeographic zones of northwestern Kenya. The source pool for the majority of aliens was Europe and America. Thus, the source pool has a biogeographic bias which explains the low proportion of aliens in the tropics: most species in the European or American source pool are not well adapted to tropical conditions. As expected, native and alien plant species showed an area effect. Correcting for this area effect, species rich zones showed a higher proportion of alien plant species in their flora. At the analysed scale, species richness of native plant communities does not increase the resistance to invasions and alien plant species invade diversity hotspots. Compared to the other ecogeographic zone, the urban area around Nairobi showed an increased richness in alien and native plant species. This is very similar to findings in Europe, although the history of urbanisation is much shorter in Kenya. The species turnover between zones (β-diversity) shows a similar pattern in native and alien plant species. Within a very short time scale the alien plant species mapped the biogeographic patterns of natives, although the geography of human activities influences the propagule pressure.

Abstract: Abstract On December 8, 1938, Himmler issued a decree entitled Combating the Gypsy Plague that spoke of a need to tackle the Gypsy problem in terms of the “inner characteristics of that race.” This was the first decree directed against Gypsies that made explicit reference to race, but, of course, Himmler’s introducing racial terms into the debate over what to do about the “Gypsy nuisance” was hardly surprising. Many Gypsies had a dark complexion, which had long given rise to charges that they represented a foreign element. Hence, it was only a question of time before the Nazis’ policy of cleansing Germany of non-Aryan elements would come to include the Gypsies. Although they were originally from India and therefore presumably of Aryan origin, Gypsies certainly did not resemble the typical “Germanic” (Nordic) type. As I have noted, for the first few years of the Nazi regime, anti-Gypsy measures had been justified primarily on social grounds. Gypsies and Gypsy like itinerants, it had been asserted, were given to crime and generally represented an asocial element. Now the notion that Gypsies constituted an alien and inferior race was added, introducing a powerful new catalyst for anti-Gypsy agitation.

Abstract: Abstract Synkritic modes of thought seem to have run deep in the Greek mentality. The tendency to conceive the world in polarized terms is strong in pre-Sokratic and Hippokratic writings; Hippokratic medical treatises, for example, conceive the body in terms of a series of opposites, such as hot and cold, wet and dry, which should be in balance for good health. The Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries bc constructed their own identity by means of a set of mutually exclusive polarities: Greek-barbarian, male-female, citizen-alien, free-slave. Synkrisis became an important means of moral characterization.