• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-28
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• 2022

The province of the People's Republic of China, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has historically been known under various names - Eastern Turkestan, Chinese Turkestan, Kashgaria, etc. In the early 19^th century this region was one of the least explored in Western scholarship and for the influence over which the so-called 'Great Game', geopolitical rivalry between Great Britain and the Russian Empire, gradually unfolded. This rivalry was one of the significant factors stimulating increased interest in an in-depth and comprehensive study of the geography, nature, and population of Kashgaria. Accordingly, in the second half of the 19^th to early 20^th centuries, several expeditions were organized that pursued serious academic goals alongside military, diplomatic, and commercial purposes. One of these expeditions, organized by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, was the so-called 'Tibetan expedition' led by a talented scientist and military figure M.V. Pevtsov in 1889-90. The expedition followed the routes of Eastern Turkestan, the northern outskirts of the Tibetan Plateau, and Dzungaria studying this vast region's geography, topography, nature, climate, and population. The results of this investigation were presented by M.V. Pevtsov in a detailed and comprehensive report published in St. Petersburg in 1895. An important part of this narrative is the so-called "Ethnographic Essay of Kashgaria," which reflects the author's observations and thoughts on this region's ethnic composition, religious beliefs, language, customs, and rituals. This article offers insights and analysis of the content of Pevtsov's report, which provides valuable information about the daily life of the population of Kashgaria at the end of the 19^th century to an English-speaking audience.

• ALGAE
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-29
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• 2009

A synthesis of early exploration and the discovery of marine algae in the upper North Pacific and Bering Sea is presented covering the period from the late 1730s to around 1900. Information is provided about these early efforts to gather natural objects, including seaweeds, and names of these algae are enumerated. The first collections of marine algae in this broad region were those made by steller and Kracheninnkov from the Kamchatka Peninsula,Russia,during the Second Kamchatkan Expedition (1735-1742) and were described by Gmelin (1768). The first known algal collections in Alaska were those made byMerck in his 1790-1791 visits to Unalaska Island during the Billings expedition (1785-1794). British-sponsored expeditions for commercial purposes and for exploration and dis-covery allowed surgeon-naturallist Archibald Menzies to garher seaweeds that Dawson Turner and others worked up back in Europe. Several of the Russian Expeditions during the first half of the 18'!' century had naturalists aboard. the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe (1803-1806), with the ships 'Nadeshda' and 'Neva,' under the com-mand of Capt. Adam von Krusenstern had naturalists Langsdorff, Tilesius, and Horner, all of whom collected sea-weeds. The naturalist Adelbert Chanmisso accompanied the Romanzof Expedition (1815-1818) on the Russian vessel 'Rurik' under the command of Otto von Kotzebue and made collections of algae in the Aleutians as well as in the Kurils and Kamchatka. The Lutke expedition of 1826-1829 consisted of thw ships. Feodor Lutke was in command of the 'Seniavin' with K.H. Mertens aboard as physician-naturalist, and the 'Moller' was under the command of staniukovich accompanied by the naturalist G. Kastalsky. The first American-sponsored scientific expedition (1838-1842) was that commanded by Charles Wilkes, and the algae that were collected were worked up by J.W. Bailey and W.H. Harvey. The Russian naturalist Ilya Voznesenskii spent the period 1839-1849 in Russian Americ (Alaska and northern California) energetically traveling and making numerous collections of natural objects as well as ethno-graphic artefact. His algae were described by F.j. Ruprecht back in St. petersbung. The Swedish scientific vessel, the'Vega' (1878-1880), was under the command of Nordenskiold. The naturalist F.R. Kjellman made algal collections from Port Clarence, Alaska, as well as from bering Island and St. Lawrence Island in the Bering sea. The Harriman Alaskan Expedition in the summer of 1899, with the ship 'George W. Elder,' was sponsored by railroad magnate E.H. Harriman of New York City and had several scientific personnel aborad, including the phycologist De Alton Saunders. Algae were collected in Alaska and Washington. During the same summer of 1899 a scientific expedition organized by the University of California and including W.L. Jepson, L.E. Hunt, A.A Lawson, and W.A. Setchell as participants also visited Alaska and made collections of alage from various locations.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.323-335
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• 2001

Distribution features of foulers attached on 28 ships of 6 main shipping routes (SR) of the Far East Sea Basin were analyzed using various statistical methods. Collections obtained during 1976-1990 in the expeditions by the Institute of Marine Biology were used for the analyses. Samples were taken from the ships during anchorage by SCUBA diving and from dry-docks of Vladivostok ship-repairing yard. In all cases, the distribution patterns of most animals and algal species showed clear contagious patterns. Total biomass of fouling organisms and biomass of attached animals frequently increased along the horizontal direction of ship hulls, from the stem to the sternpost. Animal and algal species were usually located at different sites of the hulls. According to the increasing floating speed, there was, a clear tendency of the displacement in main fouling biomass from the stem to the stem. Any generalizations and deductions concerning the distribution patterns of the foulers from the same SR ships are not always substantiated, but one may see some similarities of the fouler distributions in many cases. Micro-scale turbulence generated by water flow around a ship hull for the distribution of fouling organisms is discussed.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.63-75
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• 2001

Species composition and community structure of the fouling found on the hulls of 28 ships traveling through 6 main shipping routes (SR)in the Far East Sea Basin were analyzed using statistical methods. Samples obtained during 1976-1990 expeditions of the Institute of Marine Biology were used for the analyses. These samples were taken from the ships anchored in the harbor by SCUBA diving and in dry-docks of the Vladivostok ship-repairing yard. Similar composition of the fouling communities occurred on the ships travelling the same SR. In five cases, fouling was dominated by different Cirripedia communities. And, in one case, a community of the mussel Mytilus trossulus was found. In most cases the results of the factor analyses showed extremely low level of the relationships among different animals and algal species in fouling communities. Each ocean-going ship had an original structure of the fouling. Spatially disconnected animal associations of tropical and boreal origin may simultaneously coexist at the same ship. This paper testified to the originality of the zone of anthropogenic substrata as a benthos concentrator in the pelagic regions of the world ocean. The fouling from different zones showed that each zone possesses peculiar features and regularities of the composition and relationships between organisms dwelling here.

• MISULJARYO - National Museum of Korea Art Journal
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• v.98
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• pp.226-241
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• 2020

Located on the right side of the third floor of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the "Art of Central Asia" exhibition boasts the world's finest collection of artworks and artifacts from the Silk Road. Every item in the collection has been classified by region, and many of them were collected in the early twentieth century through archaeological surveys led by Russia's Pyotr Kozlov, Mikhail Berezovsky, and Sergey Oldenburg. Some of these artifacts have been presented around the world through special exhibitions held in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere. The fruits of Russia's Silk Road expeditions were also on full display in the 2008 exhibition The Caves of One Thousand Buddhas - Russian Expeditions on the Silk Route on the Occasion of 190 Years of the Asiatic Museum, held at the Hermitage Museum. Published in 2018 by the Shanghai Chinese Classics Publishing House in collaboration with the Hermitage Museum, Kuche Art Relics Collected in Russia introduces the Hermitage's collection of artifacts from the Kuche (or Kucha) region. While the book focuses exclusively on artifacts excavated from the Kuche area, it also includes valuable on-site photos and sketches from the Russian expeditions, thus helping to enhance readers' overall understanding of the characteristics of Kuche art within the Buddhist art of Central Asia. The book was compiled by Dr. Kira Samosyuk, senior curator of the Oriental Department of the Hermitage Museum, who also wrote the main article and the artifact descriptions. Dr. Samosyuk is an internationally renowned scholar of Central Asian Buddhist art, with a particular expertise in the art of Khara-Khoto and Xi-yu. In her article "The Art of the Kuche Buddhist Temples," Dr. Samosyuk provides an overview of Russia's Silk Road expeditions, before introducing the historical development of Kuche in the Buddhist era and the aspects of Buddhism transmitted to Kuche. She describes the murals and clay sculptures in the Buddhist grottoes, giving important details on their themes and issues with estimating their dates, and also explains how the temples operated as places of worship. In conclusion, Dr. Samosyuk argues that the Kuche region, while continuously engaging with various peoples in China and the nomadic world, developed its own independent Buddhist culture incorporating elements of Gandara, Hellenistic, Persian, and Chinese art and culture. Finally, she states that the culture of the Kuche region had a profound influence not only on the Tarim Basin, but also on the Buddhist grottoes of Dunhuang and the central region of China. A considerable portion of Dr. Samosyuk's article addresses efforts to estimate the date of the grottoes in the Kuche region. After citing various scholars' views on the dates of the murals, she argues that the Kizil grottoes likely began prior to the fifth century, which is at least 100 years earlier than most current estimates. This conclusion is reached by comparing the iconography of the armor depicted in the murals with related materials excavated from the surrounding area (such as items of Sogdian art). However, efforts to date the Buddhist grottoes of Kuche must take many factors into consideration, such as the geological characteristics of the caves, the themes and styles of the Buddhist paintings, the types of pigments used, and the clothing, hairstyles, and ornamentation of the depicted figures. Moreover, such interdisciplinary data must be studied within the context of Kuche's relations with nearby cultures. Scientific methods such as radiocarbon dating could also be applied for supplementary materials. The preface of Kuche Art Relics Collected in Russia reveals that the catalog is the first volume covering the Hermitage Museum's collection of Kuche art, and that the next volume in the series will cover a large collection of mural fragments that were taken from Berlin during World War II. For many years, the whereabouts of these mural fragments were unknown to both the public and academia, but after restoration, the fragments were recently re-introduced to the public as part of the museum's permanent exhibition. We look forward to the next publication that focuses on these mural fragments, and also to future catalogs introducing the artifacts of Turpan and Khotan. Currently, fragments of the murals from the Kuche grottoes are scattered among various countries, including Russia, Germany, and Korea. With the publication of this catalog, it seems like an opportune time to publish a comprehensive catalog on the murals of the Kuche region, which represent a compelling mixture of East-West culture that reflects the overall characteristics of the region. A catalog that includes both the remaining murals of the Kizil grottoes and the fragments from different parts of the world could greatly enhance our understanding of the murals' original state. Such a book would hopefully include a more detailed and interdisciplinary discussion of the artifacts and murals, including scientific analyses of the pigments and other materials from the perspective of conservation science. With the ongoing rapid development in western China, the grotto murals are facing a serious crisis related to climate change and overcrowding in the oasis city of Xinjiang. To overcome this challenge, the cultural communities of China and other countries that possess advanced technology for conservation and restoration must begin working together to protect and restore the murals of the Silk Road grottoes. Moreover, centers for conservation science should be established to foster human resources and collect information. Compiling the data of Russian expeditions related to the grottoes of Kuche (among the results of Western archaeological surveys of the Silk Road in the early twentieth century), Kuche Art Relics Collected in Russia represents an important contribution to research on Kuche's Buddhist art and the Silk Road, which will only be enhanced by a future volume introducing the mural fragments from Germany. As the new authoritative source for academic research on the artworks and artifacts of the Kuche region, the book also lays the groundwork for new directions for future studies on the Silk Road. Finally, the book is also quite significant for employing a new editing system that improves its academic clarity and convenience. In conclusion, Dr. Kira Samosyuk, who planned the publication, deserves tremendous praise for taking the research of Silk Road art to new heights.