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This article analyses the political and scientific controversy surrounding a race science project undertaken by the anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt under National Socialism. Beginning in 1934, Eickstedt and his team of assistants conducted a series of racial studies on the population of Upper Silesia, a contested borderland in East Prussia. Motivated by a nationalist desire to counter the work of Polish anthropologists in the region, Eickstedt argued that the population of Upper Silesia belonged predominantly to the so-called 'Nordic race' and that the territory was thus fundamentally German. Nazi officials, however, viewed the Silesian studies with alarm, since the results also appeared to show that people in the area were a racial mixture and that the 'Nordic race' made up less than 40 per cent of the population in some locales. They worried that Eickstedt's studies could undermine Germany's territorial claims in the region and threaten national unity. The ensuing controversy presents a case in which the anthropological concept of 'race', rather than serving its usual role in Nazi thinking as the biological underpinning of the Volk (or people), threatened to undermine its coherence. The reaction to Eickstedt's Silesian studies demonstrates a lack of consensus on race within the Nazi system, suggesting that understandings of race in Nazi Germany were neither as coherent nor as uniform as the paradigm of the 'racial state' has assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquiring material properties for finite element analysis is a necessity for producing accurate response outputs. In the sheet metal forming industry, there are many challenges in gaining material property definition from post-processed and/or extremely thin sheet metal. The difficulty in obtaining this information is the founding reason for applying digital image correlation in the characterisation process of post-processed beverage cans. These beverage cans have been cupped, drawn, re-drawn, ironed and stoved, so these can be described as “pre-necked” beverage cans. Due to the residual stress/strain worked into the material, it means that the specimens curl, hence, there are difficulties in attaching contact extensometers. This experiment has shown that the preparation and testing of test specimens is critical in obtaining accurate and robust results. The robustness has been fulfilled by ensuring the data matches contact extensometers, and the number of test specimens used is sufficient. This experiment has proven that the application of digital image correlation has produced reliable and useful tensile properties for the finite element model, whilst demonstrating the the thermal effects imposed during the stoving process, which in-turn has raised questions over the impact of thermal effects in the processing of cans.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, professional anthropologists and prominent race scientists in Germany served as judges in a series of mail-in photographic competitions designed to identify the most representative examples of the so-called Nordic race. This essay examines the interactions between judges and audience in three of these contests. Race scientists and entrants collaborated to construct a vision of the Nordic race as primarily male and middle and upper class. More important, the contests served to configure the very categories of "science" and "lay public" for the new discipline of race science (Rassenkunde), setting them in an unequal relationship to each other. Race scientists portrayed their audience as the entire German people, or Volk , which they represented as desperately in need of racial knowledge that only experts in Rassenkunde could provide. Rather than breaking down divisions between race scientists and the public, the collaborative process of the contests served to construct those very categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses the global growth in policy supporting the planting of bioenergy crops to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. The authors argue that the effort is important for bird conservation and agriculture in the continent. The authors view that if using the knowledge regarding causes of loss of biodiversity from agricultural systems to ensure bird conservation is a success, it could be a turning point in 2010.

After World War II, the history of anthropology in Germany was often ignored, as the discipline practiced in Germany was tainted by association with Nazism. By the 1980's, however, interest in the history of German 'Anthropologie,' which generally meant physical anthropology, revived. The discipline was associated with political liberalism until the beginning of the 20th century, when an imperialist association justifying the subjugation of non-Europeans became increasingly dominant, paving the way for Nazi anthropology.

Factors affecting the diet, body condition and growth rates of Skylark chicks were assessed to examine their relationship to their agricultural environment during a critical period in the life cycle of this rapidly declining species. Rainfall explained the greatest amount of variation in body condition and growth rates and had a negative effect on both. Body condition indices were a good predictor of the likelihood of future partial brood loss to starvation. Low body condition in grass fields was related to a low diversity in the diet. Chicks fed insect larvae had higher body condition indices than those not fed larvae. Larger broods tended to have higher growth rates than smaller ones, whereas smaller broods tended to have higher body condition indices. Natural brood size reduction through the non-hatching of eggs resulted in higher body condition indices than were found in nests with the same number of chicks where all eggs hatched, this effect being independent of absolute brood size. There was no significant difference between crop types in the distance adult birds flew to forage for food for nestlings and foraging crop destination had no effect on chick development. Differences between crop types in chick diet could be related to the documented effects of pesticides on different prey species. We suggest that recent agricultural changes have affected diet and possibly body condition, but that these effects are unlikely to have been an important factor in recent population declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]