bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reconsidering Kinship: Beyond the Nuclear Family with Deleuze and Guattari
Authors: Laurie Timothy , Stark Hannah
Published: November 2014

Deleuze and Guattari have often received attention for their criticisms of bourgeois families in Anti-Oedipus, but their speculations about non-heteronormative kinship practices have rarely been addressed in Deleuze studies and are yet to be taken up in the study of kinship and the family more generally. This paper is then the first to offer their work on the family to a general academic audience as a useful tool in polarised debates about contemporary family practices. It begins with a close reading of the relationship between desire, capitalism and the private nuclear family in Anti-Oedipus before extending the political use-value of this with the concept of the ‘majoritarian’ taken from A Thousand Plateaus. The second half of the paper brings Deleuze and Guattari into engagement with the larger critical field of kinship studies as an entry point into topical debates about the ‘normative’ family and its alternatives.
Around the Bend: The Curious Power of the Hills around Queenstown, Tasmania
Authors: Bullock Emily
Published: November 2014

This article traces a concern with excess and waste, landscape and identity in a town on the western periphery of Tasmania.  Queenstown’s bald hills have been a popular tourist drawcard since the turn of the century, sold in travel guides and brochures as a spectacular ‘moonscape’. A combination of a severe bushfire in 1896 and the emission of sulphurous gases from the pyritic smelting process at the Mt Lyell Copper Mine have resulted in Queenstown’s weird denuded landscape. But the locals have grown attached to the hills and want to preserve their baldness.  Here, the impulse to preserve a grotesque landscape registers a culture surviving on desecration to stave off its own disappearance.
‘Here At The End of All Things’: Mediating Crisis in the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Brown Adam
Published: November 2014

Review of Jeff Lewis, Crisis in the Global Mediasphere: Desire, Displeasure and Cultural Transformation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Film For and About Adolescents: Unfolding the Complexity of the Issue
Authors: Kam Iris Chui Ping
Published: November 2014

A review of Catherine Driscoll, Teen Film: A Critical Introduction (Berg, 2011).
Buddhism, Poststructuralist Thought, Cultural Studies: A Profession of Faith
Authors: Ng Edwin
Published: November 2014

This essay is a result of the author's research into Buddhism and poststructuralist theories on knowledge, self and ethics and attempts to articulate the ethico-political implications of his own practice of Vipassana (a form of Buddhist meditation) and interrogate what is called the politics of spirituality. He explores the role of faith within cultural studies by first contextualising the relevant discursive fields, then  analysing Vipassana with a ‘religious’ Foucauldian approach oriented around the critico-political aims of Foucault's late work. This elucidates how Buddhist and poststructuralist thought share certain concerns, and identifies trajectories for further inquiry.
Seeing the World Second Hand: Mad Men and the Vintage Consumer
Authors: Hamilton Caroline
Published: November 2014

This essay explores the way Mad Men’s narrative engages with changing patterns of consumption and the implicit amorality and self-interest of consumer culture. The new consumer of the 1960s searched for ways to express individual identity through consumer goods that advertised themselves as rare, exclusive and with the aura of legitimacy. At the start of the twenty-first century this same consumer now concerns themselves with provenance, craftsmanship and ethical production. These concerns find their greatest expression in the act of vintage shopping. This essay examines these consumer habits in terms of the celebration and criticism of Mad Men. While some welcome the program’s obsessive period accuracy and curatorship, others consider these features to be nothing more than ‘window dressing’ obscuring the significant moral and political issues at stake in the era.
Sacred Landscapes
Authors: Boer Roland
Published: November 2014

A review of Lyn McCredden's Luminous Moments: The Contemporary Sacred (ATF Press, Adelaide, 2010).
Critique on Critique
Authors: Holm Nicholas
Published: November 2014

A review of Luc Boltanski, On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2011).
Trauma: With or Without Theory
Authors: Meek Allen
Published: November 2014

A review of Mick Broderick and Antonio Traverso (eds), Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2010).
Beyond the Brink: Indigenous Women’s Agency and the Colonisation of Knowledge in the Maid of the Mist Myth
Authors: Sehdev Robinder Kaur
Published: November 2014

The myth of the Maid of the Mist of Niagara Falls is a settler story of an Indigenous woman who kills herself by piloting her canoe over the cataract. This is presented not as a tragedy, but as a cultural necessity. So compelling was this settler myth that until recently it was the focus of settler cultural production at Niagara. I argue that the creation and subsequent fixation upon the myth attempted to displace Indigenous stories, and the centrality of Indigenous women to Indigenous epistemologies and in decolonial action. The recent move to banish the myth from tourist audiences does further violence by moving colonial cultural production to the fringes of visibility and away from critical interrogation. The myth and the ways it is called upon and subsequently banished indicates the normalizing practices of settler colonialism and must be pulled from the brink of unnameability and unknowability into critical discourse.
Listening for Noise in Political Thought
Authors: Buchan Bruce
Published: November 2014

The acoustic dimension of political philosophy has rarely attracted serious attention, in part because scholars have tended to assume that political theories, ideas, and concepts, exist as abstract entities that are often noiselessly communicated in written texts. And yet, the noisy communication of political ideas whether in the form of Socratic dialogues, Churchillian orations, or in the hushed tones of focus group conversations treasured by deliberative democrats today, has a rich political history and a continuing relevance. This paper will focus on five performative modes for the communication of political ideas: the monologue, the dialogue, the oration, the interjection, and the noisy crowd. While this list may not be exhaustive, it will be used here as a starting point for further exploration. I will contend that in each of these performative modes, the communication of political ideas is framed by the noise of actual, or textually imagined kinds of political speech designed to underscore the validity of the ideas conveyed. One of the most important reasons for traversing this variable performative and acoustic terrain today is to enable us to hear and to listen to political speech amid the potentially polluting hum of political white noise.
The Soundscapes of Henry Mayhew Urban Ethnography and Technologies of Transcription
Authors: Groth Helen
Published: November 2014

Contemporary reviewers of London Labour and the London Poor were quick to label as inauthentic both the engraved re-mediations of John Beard’s daguerreotype portraits and Henry Mayhew’s transcription of the voices of London’s street habitués. Mayhew’s literal mediations of patter, slang and speech rhythms were the subject of particular scrutiny.  As one critic acerbically observed: ‘The photographs no doubt are accurate enough, but those dialogues smell of the footlights.’  Such criticisms strike at the core of Mayhew’s commitment to the technologies of faithful mimesis and the mediation of an authentic experience of the everyday lives of London’s wandering tribes.  Sound bites of characteristic speech serve as titles for many of the engraved reproductions of John Beard’s daguerreotypes reinforcing the analogy between visual and textual modes of transcription.  Likewise Mayhew insists that his various re-enactments of the multi-sensorial experience of elbowing through London’s crowded marketplaces and streets are ‘unvarnished’ transparent mediations of its various sounds and voices.  Central to Mayhew’s enterprise is the commitment to recording and capturing a dying way of life.  Now silenced voices are captured and remediated to ‘shock’ and teach through the ‘heart’ to use Mayhew’s terminology.  This paper will reconsider Mayhew’s investment in the power of sympathetic communication in the context of broader transformations in mid-nineteenth century conceptions of the media as a conduit for information rather than as a mechanism of persuasion.
You’ll Love the Way it Makes You Feel: The Passion and Privation of Modern Work Culture
Authors: Hamilton Caroline
Published: November 2014

A review of Melissa Gregg, Work’s Intimacy (Polity, Cambridge, 2011) and David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker, Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (Routledge, London, 2010).
Parody: Affective Registers, Amateur Aesthetics and Intellectual Property
Authors: Milne Esther
Published: November 2014

If contemporary media platforms transform and conflate the relations between professional and amateur creative workers, what might we say about the specificity of their vernacular? This article argues that parody is a key site for the articulation of amateur labour enabled by new patterns of networked production and consumption. Despite its utopian promise of free speech, however, the parodic form is tempered by economic and legal exigencies. Therefore, the essay particularly investigates legislative and policy frameworks that constrain parody discourse. Amendments in 2006 to the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), for example, introduced parody and satire defences allowing greater scope for social critique. Yet recent US legislation preventing online impersonation (such as mock twitter accounts) raises crucial questions about the public domain.
The Aura of the Analogue in a Digital Age: Women’s Crafts, Creative Markets and Home-Based Labour After Etsy
Authors: Luckman Susan
Published: November 2014

This article examines the renewed popularity of the handmade by examining the current renaissance in the street credibility of previously disparaged women's craft practices, particularly those employing yarn (for example knitting, crochet, needlepoint and weaving) and fabric (sewing, felting). The author historically locates current debates around craft production and creative work by drawing upon the British Arts and Crafts movement, with its own longstanding association with women's' labour in the home and desire to realise sustainable ethical labour practices. Notably, both the periods under discussion mark profound shifts in the economic organisation of society – then, the Industrial Revolution; now the de-industrialisation of much of the 'industrialised' world and the rise of the (digitised) knowledge economy – and see a concurrent increase in the popularity of the handmade original as a desirable aesthetic object.
A More Lovingly Made World
Authors: Wark McKenzie
Published: November 2014

From a visit with his children to Makers' Fayre, in New York, the author considers the rise of maker culture and amateur labour in relation to consumption, capitalism and modernity, to provide an afterword to the collection on amateur economies.
Complex and Troublesome Relations
Authors: Esteves Victoria
Published: November 2014

A review of Dan Hunter, Ramon Lobato, Megan Richardson and Julian Thomas (eds), Amateur Media: Social, Cultural and Legal Perspectives (Routledge, 2012).
Representing Affects and Non-Representational Media Theory
Authors: Fuller Glen
Published: November 2014

A review of Dan Fleming and Damion Sturm's Media, Masculinities, and the Machine: F1, Transformers, and Fantasizing Technology at its Limits (Continuum, 2011).
Oggetti Spaesati, Unhomely Belongings: Objects, Migrations and Cultural Apocalypses
Authors: Vanni Ilaria
Published: November 2014

This article analyses first person memories in relation to objects as documented in Belongings, an online exhibition curated through the NSW Migration Heritage Centre. It explores the role of objects in recreating domestic geographies in the process of migration, using the Italian anthropologist Ernesto De Martino’s notion of  ‘crisis of presence’ as the moment when familiar objects become unfamiliar or uncanny by losing their relation with the web of domestic uses, habits, sense of belonging, and cultural memories. In this crisis, objects acquire new layers of meaning entangled in the loss and re-creation of entire life-worlds, relational universes, senses of place, ‘homes’. Taking Belongings as its case study, this article argues that objects enable the telling and performance of displacement from one place and regrounding in another one as a continuum of affective, embodied and political experiences that question the separation between being at home and being a migrant.
Italian Transnational Spaces in Japan: Doing Racialised, Gendered and Sexualised Occidentalism
Authors: Miyake Toshio
Published: November 2014

Since the global success of the Made in Italy brand in the 1980s, Japan has witnessed an Italian boom which has turned Italy in the last decade into the most loved foreign country in Japan, especially among women and youth. This popularity is unparalleled in intensity and duration, but had seen little academic investigation. This essay explores how the transnational space of Italianness takes form through cumulative encounters between emotional geographies of 'the West' articulated in Japan (Occidentalism), as well as of 'the East' in Italy (Orientalism). There is a focus on the fluid intersections with the lived experience and projections of both Japanese and Italians in contemporary Japan to issues of nation, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.
Dancing through Post-Youth Cultures
Authors: Brabazon Tara
Published: November 2014

A review of Ros Jennings and Abigail Gardner (eds), ‘Rock on’: Women, Ageing and Popular Music (Ashgate, 2012) and Andy Bennett and Paul Hodkinson (eds), Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity (Berg, 2012).
In Pursuit of the Working Class
Authors: Clarke Ben
Published: November 2014

A review of Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (Verso, 2012), Zygmunt Bauman, Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age (Polity, 2011) and David Nichols, The Bogan Delusion: Myths, Mischief and Misconceptions (Affirm, 2011).
Putting a Face to a Name: Visualising Human Rights
Authors: Mackie Vera
Published: November 2014

In this essay, I focus on a text which attempts to deal with human rights issues in an accessible media format, Kälin, Müller and Wyttenbach’s book, The Face of Human Rights. I am interested in this text as an attempt to translate between different modes of communicating about human rights, which we might call the academic mode, the bureaucratic mode, the activist mode and the popular media mode. There are significant gaps between the academic debates on human rights, the actual language and protocols of the bodies devoted to ensuring the achievement of basic human rights, the language of activists, and the ways in which these issues are discussed in the media. These issues are compounded in a transnational frame where people must find ways of communicating across differences of language and culture. These problems of communicating across difference are inherent to the contemporary machinery of the international human rights system, where global institutions of governance are implicated in the claims of individuals who are located in diverse national contexts. Several commentators have noted the importance of narrative in human rights advocacy, while others have explored the role of art. I am interested in analysing narrative and representational strategies, from a consciousness that texts work not only through vocabulary and propositional content, but also through discursive positioning. It is necessary to look at the structure of texts, the contents of texts, and the narrative strategies and discursive frameworks which inform them. Similar points can be made about photography, which must be analysed in terms of the specific representational possibilities of visual culture.
Queer(y)ing Illiberal Pragmatism in Singapore
Authors: Offord Baden
Published: November 2014

Review of Audrey Yue and Jun Zubillaga-Pow (eds), Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2012).
Coding Labour
Authors: McCosker Anthony , Milne Esther
Published: November 2014

As well as introducing the Coding Labour section, the authors explore the diffusion of code across the material contexts of everyday life, through the objects and tools of mediation, the systems and practices of cultural production and organisational management, and in the material conditions of labour. Taking code beyond computation and software, their specific focus is on the increasingly familiar connections between code and labour with a focus on the codification and modulation of affect through technologies and practices of management within the contemporary work organisation. In the grey literature of spreadsheets, minutes, workload models, email and the like they identify a violence of forms through which workplace affect, in its constant flux of crisis and ‘prodromal’ modes, is regulated and governed.
Decentred
Authors: Wedde Ian
Published: November 2014

A review of Saskia Beudel, A Country in Mind: Memoir with Landscape (UWA Publishing, 2013).
‘Welcome to London’: Spectral Spaces in Sherlock Holmes’s Metropolis
Authors: Lee Christina
Published: November 2014

This article examines the burgeoning tourist trade for locations featured in fictional narratives in popular culture. Symptomatic of a postmodern, hyperlinked culture referencing a vast reservoir of texts, such tourism produces a convergence of effects which render places ambivalent. Through a case study of Sherlock Holmes tourism in London, I argue that the city is constructed as seething with the spectral in which there is tension and slippage between paratexts, past and present, history and fiction, the observable and imperceptible. The tourist seeks out embodied experiences of their own secret London(s) which reside somewhere in-between the multiplicitous topographies.
Performing Surfaces: Designing Research-creation for Agentive Embodiment
Authors: De Brabandere Nicole
Published: November 2014

In this discussion I first outline material intersections of bodies and everyday objects that script habitual choreographies as affective extensions of the body. I then consider the dynamism of the shifts between habitual consciousness and non-consciousness as a site of agentive, embodied transformation within contexts of movement, multiples and sensory experience. I engage willfulness, stickiness, clumsiness and apparatuses of sensory notation as potential techniques for transforming consciousness and non-consciousness in habitual action. Finally, I invite readers to recreate the sensory dimensions of their own habitual experience by experimenting with some 'do it yourself ' exercises.
Editorial
Authors: Healy Chris , Schlunke Katrina
Published: November 2014

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Global Noise and Global Englishes
Authors: Pennycook Alastair
Published: November 2014

Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, alluding to Tricia Rose’s US rap-music book, Black Noise, aims to do much more than merely extend the reach of the study of rap and hip-hop beyond the USA, as its subtitle might suggest. While acknowledging the importance of the work of both Rose and Potter, this collection’s editor, Tony Mitchell, contests their respective views that rap and hip-hop are essentially expressions of African-American culture, and that all forms of rap and hip-hop derive from these origins. He argues that these forms have become ‘a vehicle for global youth affiliations and a tool for reworking local iden- tity all over the world’.
The Adventures of Hope
Authors: Bowles Kate
Published: November 2014

A review of Mary Zournazi's Hope: New Philosophies for Change (Pluto Press Australia, Sydney, 2002).
Figuration and the Child
Authors: Walkerdine Valerie
Published: November 2014

A review of Claudi Castanñeda's Figurations: Child, Bodies, Worlds (Duke University Press, Durham, 2002).
Fundamental Solution via Invariant Approach for a Brain Tumor Model and its Extensions
Authors: Johnpillai Andrew G. , Mahomed Fazal M. , Abbasbandy Saeid
Published: November 2014

We firstly show how one can use the invariant criteria for a scalar linear (1+1) parabolic partial differential equations to perform reduction under equivalence transformations to the first Lie canonical form for a class of brain tumor models. Fundamental solution for the underlying class of models via these transformations is thereby found by making use of the well-known fundamental solution of the classical heat equation. The closed-form solution of the Cauchy initial value problem of the model equations is then obtained as well. We also demonstrate the utility of the invariant method for the extended form of the class of brain tumor models and find in a simple and elegant way the possible forms of the arbitrary functions appearing in the extended class of partial differential equations. We also derive the equivalence transformations which completely classify the underlying extended class of partial differential equations into the Lie canonical forms. Examples are provided as illustration of the results.
Mixed Convection Boundary Layer Stagnation-Point Flow of a Jeffery Fluid Past a Permeable Vertical Flat Plate
Authors: Rahman Mohammad M. , Ioan Pop
Published: November 2014

This paper analyzes the combined effects of buoyancy force, mass flux, and variable surface temperature on the stagnation point flow and heat transfer due to a Jeffery fluid over a vertical surface. The governing nonlinear partial differential equations are transformed into a system of coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations using similarity transformations and then solved numerically using the function bvp4c from computer algebra software Matlab. Numerical results are obtained for skin friction coefficient, Nusselt number as well as dimensionless velocity and temperature profiles for various values of the controlling parameters namely mixed convection parameter λ, mass flux parameter s, elastic parameter (Deborah number) γ, and the ratio of relaxation and retardation time parameter λ1. The results indicate that dual solutions exist in a certain range of the mixed convection and mass flux parameters. In order to establish the physically realizable of these solutions, a stability analysis has also been performed. The results indicate that mixed convection and mass flux significantly affects the nature of the solutions, skin friction, and Nusselt number of a Jeffery fluid.
Student Scholarship in Institutional Repositories
Authors: Hertenstein Elizabeth
Published: November 2014

INTRODUCTION Research on institutional repositories (IR) has primarily focused on issues related to faculty scholarship. Thus far, little has been written on issues related to student scholarship. This lack is problematic for planners developing or extending their IR content who may be considering adding student scholarship. METHODS A 23-question survey of library professionals was conducted to explore size of institution, existence of an IR, IR software packages utilized, individuals involved in system management, levels of support for inclusion of student work in IRs, types of student work included, and workflow submission policies. RESULTS The findings present an environmental scan of the current state of student scholarship within IRs. Findings suggest that most libraries, regardless of size, are archiving a variety of student-generated content including honors projects, capstone papers, conference papers, multi-media projects, and student research papers. The survey results also indicate that libraries are spearheading the administration of IRs, but other campus departments may also be involved. Both undergraduate and graduate students were equally represented in IRs. Practical procedures for uploading student scholarship were also addressed in the survey and include submission processes, faculty involvement, and workflow logistics. DISCUSSION The inclusion of student scholarship in IRs is becoming the norm. Student-created content is expanding from the traditional, ETDs, to more varied materials including capstone projects, peer-reviewed articles, and multi-media projects. This situation underscores that IR administrators need to be prepared to create policies and procedures for diverse materials and students, especially related to embargoes and the actual submission process. To continue to ensure the quality of their IR, administrators should look to faculty to endorse student content. CONCLUSION IR administrators should consider including student scholarship along with faculty scholarship in their repositories.
A rapid decrease of the hydrogen corona of Mars
Authors: Clarke J. T. , Bertaux J.‐L. , Chaufray J.‐Y. , Gladstone G. R. , Quemerais E. , Wilson J. K. , Bhattacharyya D.
Published: November 2014

Mars is believed to have lost much of its surface water 3.5 billion years ago, but the amounts that escaped into space and remain frozen in the crust today are not well known. Hydrogen atoms in the extended martian atmosphere, some of which escape the planet's gravity, can be imaged through scattered solar UV radiation. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of the ultraviolet H Ly α emission now indicate that the coronal H density steadily decreased by a factor of roughly 40% over 4 weeks, a far greater variation than had been expected. The leading candidate cause is a decrease in the source rate of water molecules from the lower atmosphere, consistent with seasonal changes and a recent global dust storm. This implies that the rate of escape of martian hydrogen (and thereby water) into space is strongly dependent on the lower atmospheric water content and distribution.
EGM_TIM_RL05: An independent geoid with centimeter accuracy purely based on the GOCE mission
Authors: Brockmann Jan Martin , Zehentner Norbert , Höck Eduard , Pail Roland , Loth Ina , Mayer‐Gürr Torsten , Schuh Wolf‐Dieter
Published: November 2014

After more than 4.5 years in orbit, the Gravity field and steady‐state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission ended with the reentry of the satellite on 11 November 2013. This publication serves as a reference for the fifth gravity field model based on the time‐wise approach (EGM_TIM_RL05), a global model only determined from GOCE observations. Due to its independence of any other gravity data, a consistent and homogeneous set of spherical harmonic coefficients up to degree and order 280 (corresponding to spatial resolution of 71.5 km on ground) is provided including a full covariance matrix characterizing the uncertainties of the model. The associated covariance matrix realistically describes the model quality. It is the first model which is purely based on GOCE including all observations collected during the entire mission. The achieved mean global accuracy is 2.4 cm in terms of geoid heights and 0.7 mGal for gravity anomalies at a spatial resolution of 100 km.
Large earthquake processes in the northern Vanuatu subduction zone
Authors: Cleveland K. Michael , Ammon Charles J. , Lay Thorne
Published: November 2014

The northern Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides) subduction zone (11°S to 14°S) has experienced large shallow thrust earthquakes with Mw > 7 in 1966 (MS 7.9, 7.3), 1980 (Mw 7.5, 7.7), 1997 (Mw 7.7), 2009 (Mw 7.7, 7.8, 7.4), and 2013 (Mw 8.0). We analyze seismic data from the latter four earthquake sequences to quantify the rupture processes of these large earthquakes. The 7 October 2009 earthquakes occurred in close spatial proximity over about 1 h in the same region as the July 1980 doublet. Both sequences activated widespread seismicity along the northern Vanuatu subduction zone. The focal mechanisms indicate interplate thrusting, but there are differences in waveforms that establish that the events are not exact repeats. With an epicenter near the 1980 and 2009 events, the 1997 earthquake appears to have been a shallow intraslab rupture below the megathrust, with strong southward directivity favoring a steeply dipping plane. Some triggered interplate thrusting events occurred as part of this sequence. The 1966 doublet ruptured north of the 1980 and 2009 events and also produced widespread aftershock activity. The 2013 earthquake rupture propagated southward from the northern corner of the trench with shallow slip that generated a substantial tsunami. The repeated occurrence of large earthquake doublets along the northern Vanuatu subduction zone is remarkable considering the doublets likely involved overlapping, yet different combinations of asperities. The frequent occurrence of large doublet events and rapid aftershock expansion in this region indicate the presence of small, irregularly spaced asperities along the plate interface.
The middle Eocene climatic optimum (MECO): A multiproxy record of paleoceanographic changes in the southeast Atlantic (ODP Site 1263, Walvis Ridge)
Authors: Boscolo Galazzo F. , Thomas E. , Pagani M. , Warren C. , Luciani V. , Giusberti L.
Published: November 2014

The middle Eocene climatic optimum (MECO, ~40 Ma) was a transient period of global warming that interrupted the secular Cenozoic cooling trend. We investigated the paleoceanographic, paleoenvironmental, and paleoecological repercussions of the MECO in the southeast Atlantic subtropical gyre (Ocean Drilling Program Site 1263). TEX86and δ18O records support an ~4°C increase in surface and deepwater temperatures during the MECO. There is no long‐term negative carbon isotope excursion (CIE) associated with the early warming, consistent with other sites, and there is no short‐term negative CIE (~50 kyr) during the peak of the MECO, in contrast to what has been observed at some sites. This lack of a CIE during the peak of the MECO at Site 1263 could be due to poor sediment recovery or geographic heterogeneity of the δ13C signal. Benthic and planktic foraminiferal mass accumulation rates markedly declined during MECO, indicating a reduction of planktic foraminiferal production and export productivity. Vertical δ13C gradients do not indicate major changes in water column stratification, and there is no biomarker or micropaleontological evidence that hypoxia developed. We suggest that temperature dependency of metabolic rates could explain the observed decrease in foraminiferal productivity during warming. The kinetics of biochemical reactions increase with temperature, more so for heterotrophs than for autotrophs. Steady warming during MECO may have enhanced heterotroph (i.e., foraminiferal) metabolic rates, so that they required more nutrients. These additional nutrients were not available because of the oligotrophic conditions in the region and the lesser response of primary producers to warming. The combination of warming and heterotroph starvation altered pelagic food webs, increased water column recycling of organic carbon, and decreased the amount of organic carbon available to the benthos.
Soil water storage, rainfall and runoff relationships in a tropical dry forest catchment
Authors: Farrick Kegan K. , Branfireun Brian A.
Published: November 2014

In forested catchments, the exceedance of rainfall and antecedent water storage thresholds is often required for runoff generation, yet to our knowledge these threshold relationships remain undescribed in tropical dry forest catchments. We, therefore, identified the controls of streamflow activation and the timing and magnitude of runoff in a tropical dry forest catchment near the Pacific coast of central Mexico. During a 52 day transition phase from the dry to wet season, soil water movement was dominated by vertical flow which continued until a threshold soil moisture content of 26% was reached at 100 cm below the surface. This satisfied a 162 mm storage deficit and activated streamflow, likely through lateral subsurface flow pathways. High antecedent soil water conditions were maintained during the wet phase but had a weak influence on stormflow. We identified a threshold value of 289 mm of summed rainfall and antecedent soil water needed to generate >4 mm of stormflow per event. Above this threshold, stormflow response and magnitude was almost entirely governed by rainfall event characteristics and not antecedent soil moisture conditions. Our results show that over the course of the wet season in tropical dry forests the dominant controls on runoff generation changed from antecedent soil water and storage to the depth of rainfall.
Humboldt, Alexander von
Authors: Rupke Nicolaas A
Published: November 2014

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), German natural scientist who explored the equatorial Americas and laid the foundations of geobotany and meteorology. Humboldt's style of scientific exploration, which was based on precision instrumentation and the measurement of environmental parameters for the discovery of law‐like relationships on a worldwide scale, inspired a generation of explorers and scientific travellers. Humboldt scholars from the post‐WW II period have referred to this as ‘Humboldtian science’. Ever since the first Humboldt biographies appeared, already during his lifetime, many attempts have been made to make him part of different and at times conflicting causes. Today he is widely recognised for his universalist approach to natural knowledge, his cosmopolitan humanitarianism towards cultures and peoples, and his foundational contributions to ecology and environmentalism.
Alternative Splicing: Role of Pseudoexons in Human Genetic Disease
Authors: Emanuele Buratti
Published: November 2014

In the pre‐mRNA splicing field the term ‘pseudoexons’ has been introduced to describe all those sequences usually localised deep in intronic regions that resemble real exons in appearance but are ignored by the spliceosomal machinery. Although we now know that some of these sequences are important for regulatory purposes it is also true that aberrant pseudoexon activation is increasingly described as one of the major causes of human disease. Several recent studies on pseudoexon inclusion–exclusion mechanisms have allowed researchers to gain further insight with regards to the mechanism that the spliceosome uses to discriminate between true and false exons during the normal splicing process. Most importantly, the newly gained knowledge regarding pseudoexon biology has been extensively exploited to devise novel therapeutic strategies aimed at inhibiting their inclusion in human patients.

Key Concepts:

Pseudoexons (also known as ‘false exons’) are very abundant in all eukaryotic genes, especially those harbouring long intronic sequences.

In normal conditions, pseudoexon inclusion in mature mRNAs is efficiently inhibited.

Mutational events that activate aberrant pseudoexon inclusion are a common source of disease‐causing mutations in humans.

A variety of novel therapeutic approaches principally based on antisense oligonucleotide (AON) technology is currently being developed to inhibit their inclusion in human patients.
Morphology Evolution of ZnO Submicroparticles Induced by Laser Irradiation and Their Enhanced Tribology Properties by Compositing with Al2O3 Nanoparticles
Authors: Duan Guangbin , Hu Xilun , Song Xiaoyun , Qiu Zhiwen , Gong Haibo , Cao Bingqiang
Published: November 2014

In this paper, ZnO submicrospheres are prepared by a simple laser‐stimulated surface tension energy release strategy, which is a very convenient method for growing inorganic oxide spheres with high melting points. The detailed morphology evolution of ZnO particles is investigated by changing the laser fluence. The formation of spherical morphology is due to the particle spherizing and/or coalescence as a result of surface area minimum and release of surface tension energy when particles are heated by laser irradiation. ZnO submicrospheres can effectively reduce the friction coefficients when used as lubricating oil additives, which exhibit a clear morphology‐dependent property. But the wear becomes worse due to its small hardness. However, the compositing ZnO submicrospheres with Al2O3 nanoparticles as the lubricating oil additives can notably improve both the friction‐reduction and anti‐wear properties. The surface analysis of the thrust rings suggests that rolling friction becomes dominant instead of sliding friction and these composite particles squeezed into the grooves on the rubbing surfaces can reduce wear.
Controlling the Self‐Assembly of Periodic Defect Patterns in Smectic Liquid Crystal Films with Electric Fields
Authors: Gryn Iryna , Lacaze Emmanuelle , Bartolino Roberto , Zappone Bruno
Published: November 2014

Large‐area periodic defect patterns are produced in smectic A liquid crystals confined between rigid plate electrodes that impose conflicting parallel and normal anchoring conditions, inducing the formation of topological defects. Highly oriented stripe patterns are created in samples thinner than 2 μm due to self‐assembly of linear defect domains with period smaller than 4 μm, whereas hexagonal lattices of focal conic domains appear for thicker samples. The pattern type (1d/2d) and period can be controlled at the nematic–smectic phase transition by applying an electric field, which confines the defect domains to a thin surface layer with thickness comparable to the nematic coherence length. The pattern morphology persists in the smectic phase even after varying the field or switching it off. Bistable, non‐equilibrium patterns are stabilized by topological constraints of the smectic phase that hinder the rearrangement of defects in response to field variations.
Clusterization and mapping of waste recycling science. Evolution of research from 2002 to 2012
Authors: Garechana Gaizka , Rio‐Belver Rosa , Cilleruelo Ernesto , Larruscain Sarasola Jaso
Published: November 2014

Characterization of waste recycling (WR) research has to start by defining the scope of this scientific area. Previous works and expert assessment recommend the adoption of an inclusive definition, with the aim of including all relevant uses of waste within this study. An ad‐hoc designed “capture” strategy has been used to retrieve WR‐related peer‐reviewed journal papers from selected databases, and the information contained in their author keyword field has been thoroughly cleaned. Author keyword co‐occurrence data have been used for building a similarity measure between keywords, plus cluster analysis for revealing the main WR research being addressed by the scientific community. Results have been further analyzed using advanced visualization tools to determine which clusters formed strongly‐linked research areas that could set the main cognitive divisions of WR science. This process has been repeated with 2002 and 2012 data, and science maps reflecting the main research areas and clusters have been generated. Results show that WR mainly deals with the recovery of basic, widely used raw materials like water and fertile soil. Energy generation and waste management are other relevant fields that show an interesting evolution, revealing signs of growth in research, together with the emergence of sub‐areas reflecting consolidating research specialties.
Thesaurus and ontology structure: Formal and pragmatic differences and similarities
Authors: Kless Daniel , Milton Simon , Kazmierczak Edmund , Lindenthal Jutta
Published: November 2014

Thesauri and other types of controlled vocabularies are increasingly re‐engineered into ontologies described using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), particularly in the life sciences. This has led to the perception by some that thesauri are ontologies once they are described by using the syntax of OWL while others have emphasized the need to re‐engineer a vocabulary to use it as ontology. This confusion is rooted in different perceptions of what ontologies are and how they differ from other types of vocabularies. In this article, we rigorously examine the structural differences and similarities between thesauri and meaning‐defining ontologies described in OWL. Specifically, we conduct (a) a conceptual comparison of thesauri and ontologies, and (b) a comparison of a specific thesaurus and a specific ontology in the same subject field. Our results show that thesauri and ontologies need to be treated as 2 orthogonal kinds of models with superficially similar structures. An ontology is not a good thesaurus, nor is a thesaurus a good ontology. A thesaurus requires significant structural and other content changes to become an ontology, and vice versa.
How everyday language can and will boost effective information retrieval
Authors: Hoenkamp Eduard , Bruza Peter
Published: November 2014

Typing 2 or 3 keywords into a browser has become an easy and efficient way to find information. Yet, typing even short queries becomes tedious on ever shrinking (virtual) keyboards. Meanwhile, speech processing is maturing rapidly, facilitating everyday language input. Also, wearable technology can inform users proactively by listening in on their conversations or processing their social media interactions. Given these developments, everyday language may soon become the new input of choice.

We present an information retrieval (IR) algorithm specifically designed to accept everyday language. It integrates two paradigms of information retrieval, previously studied in isolation; one directed mainly at the surface structure of language, the other primarily at the underlying meaning.

The integration was achieved by a Markov machine that encodes meaning by its transition graph, and surface structure by the language it generates. A rigorous evaluation of the approach showed, first, that it can compete with the quality of existing language models, second, that it is more effective the more verbose the input, and third, as a consequence, that it is promising for an imminent transition from keyword input, where the onus is on the user to formulate concise queries, to a modality where users can express more freely, more informal, and more natural their need for information in everyday language.
Do researchers provide public or institutional E‐mail accounts as correspondence E‐mails in scientific articles?
Authors: Kozak Marcin , Iefremova Olesia , Szkoła Jarosław , Sas Daniel
Published: November 2014

Whether one should use a public e‐mail account (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo!) or an institutional one (e.g., @wsiz.rzeszow.pl, @medicine.ox.ac.uk) as an address for correspondence is an important aspect of scientific communication. Some authors consider that public e‐mail services are unprofessional and insecure, whereas others say that, in a dynamically changing working environment, public e‐mail addresses allow readers to contact authors long after they have changed their workplace. To shed light on this issue, we analyzed how often authors of scientific papers provided e‐mail addresses that were either public or institution based. We selected from the Web of Science database 1,000 frequently cited and 1,000 infrequently cited articles (all of the latter were noncited articles) published in 2000, 2005, and 2010, and from these we analyzed 26,937 e‐mail addresses. The results showed that approximately three fourths of these addresses were institutional, but there was an increasing trend toward using public e‐mail addresses over the period studied. No significant differences were found between frequently and infrequently cited papers in this respect. Further research is now needed to access the motivations and perceptions of scholars when it comes to their use of either public or institutional e‐mail accounts.
The Chinese comet observation in AD 773 January
Authors: Chapman J. , Csikszentmihalyi M. , Neuhäuser R.
Published: November 2014

The strong 14C increase in the year AD 774/5 detected in one German and two Japanese trees was recently suggested to have been caused by an impact of a comet onto Earth and a deposition of large amounts of 14C into the atmosphere (Liu et al. 2014). The authors supported their claim using a report of a historic Chinese observation of a comet ostensibly colliding with Earth's atmosphere in AD 773 January. We show here that the Chinese text presented by those authors is not an original historic text, but that it is comprised of several different sources. Moreover, the translation presented in Liu et al. is misleading and inaccurate. We give the exact Chinese wordings and our English translations. According to the original sources, the Chinese observed a comet in mid January 773, but they report neither a collision nor a large coma, just a long tail. Also, there is no report in any of the source texts about “dust rain in the daytime” as claimed by Liu et al. (2014), but simply a normal dust storm. Ho (1962) reports sightings of this comet in China on AD 773 Jan 15 and/or 17 and in Japan on AD 773 Jan 20 (Ho 1962). At the relevant historic time, the Chinese held that comets were produced within the Earth's atmosphere, so that it would have been impossible for them to report a “collision” of a comet with Earth's atmosphere. The translation and conclusions made by Liu et al. (2014) are not supported by the historical record. Therefore, postulating a sudden increase in 14C in corals off the Chinese coast precisely in mid January 773 (Liu et al. 2014) is not justified given just the 230Th dating for AD 783 ± 14. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
A solar super‐flare as cause for the 14C variation in AD 774/5?
Authors: Neuhäuser R. , Hambaryan V. V.
Published: November 2014

We present further considerations regarding the strong 14C variation in AD 774/5. For its cause, either a solar super‐flare or a short gamma‐ray burst were suggested. We show that all kinds of stellar or neutron star flares would be too weak for the observed energy input at Earth in AD 774/5. Even though Maehara et al. (2012) present two super‐flares with ∼1035 erg of presumably solar‐type stars, we would like to caution: These two stars are poorly studied and may well be close binaries, and/or having a M‐type dwarf companion, and/or may be much younger and/or much more magnetic than the Sun – in any such case, they might not be true solar analog stars. From the frequency of large stellar flares averaged over all stellar activity phases (maybe obtained only during grand activity maxima), one can derive (a limit of) the probability for a large solar flare at a random time of normal activity: We find the probability for one flare within 3000 years to be possibly as low as 0.3 to 0.008 considering the full 1σ error range. Given the energy estimate in Miyake et al. (2012) for the AD 774/5 event, it would need to be ∼2000 stronger than the Carrington event as solar super‐flare. If the AD 774/5 event as solar flare would be beamed (to an angle of only ∼24°), 100 times lower energy would be needed. A new AD 774/5 energy estimate by Usoskin et al. (2013) with a different carbon cycle model, yielding 4 ot 6 time lower 14C production, predicts 4–6 times less energy. If both reductions are applied, the AD 774/5 event would need to be only ∼4 times stronger than the Carrington event in 1859 (if both had similar spectra). However, neither 14C nor 10Be peaks were found around AD 1859. Hence, the AD 774/5 event (as solar flare) either was not beamed that strongly, and/or it would have been much more than 4‐6 times stronger than Carrington, and/or the lower energy estimate (Usoskin et al. 2013) is not correct, and/or such solar flares cannot form (enough) 14C and 10Be. The 1956 solar energetic particle event was followed by a small decrease in directly observed cosmic rays. We conclude that large solar super‐flares remain very unlikely as the cause for the 14C increase in AD 774/5. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)