bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Feminism and Bureaucracy: The Minimum Wage Experiment in the District of Columbia
Authors: Hart Vivien
Published: January 2009

Bureaucrats, female or male, have never been popular, a fact which may, in part, explain neglect of their role by the growing band of students of women and politics. Theories of bureaucracy predict that this will be the least promising of settings for the empowerment of women. Max Weber's classic account depicts bureaucratic activity as a routinized and sterile process of technical determinations and rules of procedure. Some feminists argue that such modes of action epitomize the masculine. Each model portrays a rational, depersonalized, technocratic sphere of activity, hierarchical in structure, rule-bound both in what is done and how. In addition, the state itself has sometimes been presented as wholly oppressive to women, adding public power to private power to create a comprehensive system of male domination.
The Eighteenth Century Empire: The London Dissenters' Lobbies and the American Colonies
Authors: Olson Alison G.
Published: January 2009

In the eighteenth century England had virtually no army and only a handful of administrators in its American colonies: the empire was held together by voluntary compliance, not coercion. One of the reasons the American colonists acquiesced in imperial decisions was that they had an effective way to influence them through London lobbies working on the Americans' behalf. London interest groups spoke and acted on behalf of their colonial correspondents before the ministry, the Privy Council, the Board of Trade and, less often, Parliament; in so doing they gave the colonists an input into imperial decision-making and provided vital information to the government.
War on Dependency: Liberal Individualism and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
Authors: Davies Gareth
Published: January 2009

In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson, professing himself alarmed by the seemingly “endless growth of relief rolls,” declared “war” on poverty. Walter Heller, his chief economic adviser, had recently remarked that it would be quite possible to eliminate the symptoms of poverty by simply redistributing two percent of the national income. Johnson, however, preferred to attack thesourcesof deprivation, claiming that the range of rehabilitative services provided by his Economic Opportunity Act would allow the poor to engineer their own paths to affluence.
Anne Bradstreet and Elizabeth Bishop: Nature, Culture and Gender in “Contemplations” and “At the Fishhouses”
Authors: Boschman Robert
Published: January 2009

Written in and for a patriarchal community that valued its solidarity, Anne Bradstreet's “Contemplations” does not try to render an accurate, realistic portrait of nature in the New World. Rather, it employs what Leo Marx calls “ecological images…displaying the essence of a system of value” and subordinates these images to the reformed Judeo-Christian myth. “Contemplations” argues that God is the source of order, meaning, and history, and that the natural world, whether beneficent or hostile, reflects His omnipotence. But in delineating a predominantly masculine world view, Bradstreet also sets aside her own aspirations as a woman poet. Although the song of the female bird Philomel represents a kind of art that is free of Puritanism's monolithic expectations, Bradstreet's speaker cannot liberate herself to sing with Philomel. Instead, she stifles her own song for a practical poetic craft that serves her struggling community.
Bringing It All Back HomeorAnother Side of Bob Dylan: Midwestern Isolationist
Authors: Førland Tor Egil
Published: January 2009

The subject of this article is the foreign policy views of singer and songwriter Bob Dylan: a personality whose footprints during the 1960s were so impressive that a whole generation followed his lead. Today, after thirty years of recording, the number of devoted Dylan disciples is reduced but he is still very much present on the rock scene. His political influence having been considerable, his policy views deserve scrutiny. My thesis is that Dylan'sforeign policyviews are best characterized as “isolationist.’ More specifically: Dylan's foreign policy message is what so-called progressive isolationists from the Midwest would have advocated, had they been transferred into the United States of the 1960s or later. I shall argue that Bob Dylan is just that kind of personified anachronism, seeing the contemporary world through a set of cognitive lenses made in the Midwest before the Second World War – to a large extent even before the First (or, indeed, before the American Civil War).
Imaging Nationalism in the Cold War: The Foundation of the American National Portrait Gallery
Authors: Pointon Marcia
Published: January 2009

In October 1968 the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London was under siege from students protesing against the continued American presence in Vietnam. In France the universities were in turmoil. The Washington Post for 6 October covered the Apollo Flight – the first step to the moon–, uprisings in Columbia university, Twiggy in person and a debate about when the Bikinians might return to their island. Nixon was edging his way towards the presidency in a year that had seen the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, a year in which Johnson decided not to stand for another term in order (allegedly) to devote himself to ending the Vietnam war, in which the Democratic convention took place in Chicago in the midst of violent clashes between police and demonstrators.
Another Look at the Downfall of “Fortress America”
Authors: Thompson John A.
Published: January 2009

In the reams of commentary that marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, no theme was more common than that it ended American isolationism. According toTimemagazine, “this was the moment that changed Americans from a nation of provincial innocents, not only ignorant of the great world but proud of their ignorance, into a nation that would often have to bear the burdens of rescuing the world.” “The United States was shaken to the bottom of its soul, its geopolitical innocence in ruins,”Newsweekrecalled. “No longer could it cultivate the old American illusion of withdrawing safely behind the Atlantic and Pacific while the rest of a corrupt world went about its dirty business.”
Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis and the Self-Consciousness of America
Authors: Bonazzi Tiziano
Published: January 2009

In their work on Turner's formative period, Ray A. Billington and Fulmer Mood have shown that the Frontier Thesis, formulated in 1893 in “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” is not so much a brilliant early effort by a young scholar as a mature study in which Turner gave his ideas an organization that proved to be final. During the rest of his life he developed but never disclaimed or modified them. Billington and Mood also add that the Frontier Thesis is meant to test a new approach to history that Turner had been developing since the beginning of his academic career. We can fully understand it, then, only by setting it within the framework of the assumptions and goals of his 1891 essay, “The Significance of History,” Turner's only attempt to sketch a philosophy of history.
Remembering Vietnam: Subjectivity and Mourning in American New Realist Writing
Authors: Price Joanna
Published: January 2009

During the past decade a new school of writing has become prominent in the United States: a new realism. In the new realist novels, poems and short stories the condition of mourning recurs as providing both a symbol of and a structure for identity in consumer culture. The theme of mourning is frequently, although not always, explored in the context of invoking and reconstructing in memory the fathers, brothers and sons who were lost in the war in Vietnam. Reciprocally, the operation of images and narratives of the War in these texts casts some light upon the emergence, concerns and form of the new realist writing. In particular, images of the War provide a lens through which some of the meanings attached to sexual differences in contemporary American culture come into focus — a culture of which one may ask, after Julia Kristeva: “What can ‘identity’, even ‘sexual identity’, mean in a new…space where the very notion of identity is challenged?” The formation of identity through the structure of mourning is explored extensively in two new realist novels about remembering Vietnam: Jayne Anne Phillips'sMachine Dreamsand Bobbie Ann Mason'sIn Country.
More English than the English: Cavalier and Democrat in Virginia Historical Writing, 1870–1930
Authors: Clark Michael D.
Published: January 2009

Nothing in the literature and historiography of Virginia is more familiar than the “myth of the cavalier.” The term applies most strictly to the notion that royalist refugees of the English Civil War “were the immediate ancestors of the aristocracy which prevails in Virginia to this day,” as William Alexander Caruthers wrote inThe Cavaliers of Virginiain 1834. It quickly became conventional to extend the usage to the descendants as well as the ancestors, and twenty years later another novelist, John Esten Cooke, found it natural to invoke the “beautiful dames and gallant cavaliers” of Virginia society in the period of the American Revolution.
The Art of Disengagement: Edward Weston and Ansel Adams
Authors: Peeler David P.
Published: January 2009

Edward Weston (1886–1958) and Ansel Adams (1902–1984) were two of the foremost American photographers of the twentieth century. In their own day Weston and Adams attracted the attention of both critics and collectors, and more recently they have been given prominent places in the scholarship and exhibitions accompanying photography's 150th anniversary. These two Californians were good friends, achieved an influential modernist aesthetic, and created images with an enduring power and grace. They concentrated upon natural subjects, Adams tending towards monumental depictions of hulking mountains or clouds, and Weston tending more toward intense close ups of smaller objects such as fruits and vegetables. Such subjects were consistent with their deepest principles, for Weston and Adams believed that the artist should remain beyond the turmoil and confusion of current events, and instead focus upon the more enduring and transcendent qualities of nature. Thus stability and solidity became the leitmotifs of Adams's art, and even in those photographs where he included some turbulence to counterbalance the granite of his compositions – images such asNevada Fall, Yosemite National Park(c. 1946) (figure 1) – Adams usually chose to focus upon the rush of a mountain stream or some other natural movement, rather than the social or political currents of his day. Likewise Weston brought a deep timelessness to his photographs. Images likeShell(1927) (figure 2) seem to hover in a decontextualized void of shimmering geometrical shapes, and have little connection to the predatory forces or environmental disasters that may have threatened a particular mollusk.
Woman and Arcadia: The Impact of Ancient Utopian Thought on the Early Image of America
Authors: Klarer Mario
Published: January 2009

With the discovery of the new continent in the fifteenth century, a number of existing literary traditions contributed to the creation of the early image of America. In particular, Utopian features were projected onto the terra incognita. The equation of the New World with the earthly paradise and the Promised Land placed America in the tradition of ancient and medieval Utopian texts. The early picture of America is an indirect continuation of an ambivalent gendered view of the world predominant in most Utopias and pastorals. On the one hand, America becomes the positive projection of a benevolent female Mother-Earth who provides for all basic human needs; on the other, a number of intimidating gendered topoi are intricately interwoven with these new territories. The “feminine” appears to be a central issue of literary as well as pictorial imagery in the first narratives on America. As early as Columbus and Vespucci, America was stylized or allegorized through female symbols and metaphors. This paper will try to show how ancient Utopian concepts such as visions of a gendered paradise, myths of Amazons and role reversals, as well as notions of “women communism” were integral components in the creation of America as a myth. They can be traced in the writings of Columbus and Vespucci as well as in the early illustrations of their books. A selection of textual samples and pictures will serve as a basis for the discussion of these inherent gender issues.
Life Without Father: The Role of the Paternal in the Opening Chapters of Huckleberry Finn
Authors: Segal Harry G.
Published: January 2009

Critics have argued for generations about the failure of the ending of Huckleberry Finn. Ernest Hemingway began the debate by characterizing the escapades at Silas Phelps' farm as “cheating” his statement was soon followed by rhetorical volleys between Eliot, Trilling, Marx, and others whose writings, taken together, form a miniature canon all their own. While the ending has been variously defended on formal, political, aesthetic, and moral grounds, the very presence of a debate sustained for more than sixty years bears witness to the “problem” of those closing chapters. Perhaps the most simple, and ultimately unanswerable, criticism of the ending is that the characters have grown inexplicably younger – that is, they appear to behave in ways which disregard or “undo” their earlier, more maturing experiences. It seems inconceivable that Huck would go along so easily with Tom's Count of Monte Cristo escapades after witnessing the Grangerfords' feud, just as Jim's childlike acquiescence to the escape plan cannot be reconciled with the wisdom and dignity he had earlier shown as Huck's surrogate parent. Despite the ingenuity of even the most brilliant supporters, no reading can provide the characters in the closing chapters with those psychological qualities they so palpably lack; instead, supporters are left in the more awkward position of arguing that the failure of the ending constitutes an ironic success.
“A Man's Story is His Gris-Gris”: Cultural Slavery, Literary Emancipation and Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada
Authors: Walsh Richard
Published: January 2009

With the emergence of black nationalism in the late sixties, the delineation of a new black aesthetic became an urgent issue: it was first and most persistently raised by Hoyt Fuller in Negro Digest, and soon became the staple of radical black little magazines across America. In 1971, the appearance of a collection of essays entitled The Black Aesthetic and edited by Addison Gayle brought some coherence to the debate, and sanctified its assumptions. In his own contributions to that book, Gayle recorded the passing of the myth of the American melting pot and the consequent need to repudiate assimilationism. He argued that black nationalism implied the development of a black aesthetic in direct opposition to prevailing aesthetic criteria, in which white cultural concerns were privileged under a guise of “universalism”: this bogus universalism actually depended upon the marginalization of black perspectives and black writers by a white literary establishment. Such observations established the need for a new black aesthetic, and prescriptions for its form proliferated. These blueprints were handed down at a series of conferences at which black writers past and present stood trial against the new criteria. The emergent consensus was for writing that directly recreated the black experience out of which it arose; that found its style in the forms of “black folk expression”; that was socially progressive in effect – according to a very literal concept of functional literature; that addressed itself to the common readership of black people; and that assiduously cultivated positive black characters.
Disease and Infertility: a New Look at the Demographic Collapse of Native Populations in the Wake of Western Contact
Authors: Stannard David E.
Published: January 2009

During the past fifty years few subjects of historical consequence have been more controversial than that of the population history of the American Indian. At one extreme, in 1939 Alfred L. Kroeber estimated the population of pre-Columbian North America at about 900,000. At the other extreme, in 1983 Henry F. Dobyns estimated it at about 18,000,000. Since the total North American Indian population by the early twentieth century was no more than 350,000 to 450,000, the human question concealed in the statistical controversy is staggering: did the North American Indian population decline by a ratio of about 2 to 1 between the end of the fifteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century – or did it decline by 50 to 1 ? Or more?
When the Fences are Down; Language and Order in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Authors: Fields Wayne
Published: January 2009

The world of Tom Sawyer, both that of the character and of the novel which bears his name, is a world dominated by fences; the neat, straight palings that surround the Widow Dougla's property, the fence around the Teacher house over which the lovestick Tom gazes longingly after Becky, and all the other upright boundaries delineating St. Petersburg respectability. As the central icon of the novel, Aunt Polly's white-washed fence appropriately represents the care and maintenance of order to which the town is committed, an order upon which both Tom and his story depend. Although Twain first identifies St. Petersburg as a poor, shabby, frontier village, it is far from defenseless in its confrontations either with shabbiness or wilderness. Well ordered by its fences and undergirded, like Tom's story, by the central institutions of civil and cultural order — the court, the school, the church — it is a society where things have been assigned their proper places and where the primary function of the St. Petersburg elect is to tend those places. This is a world overseen by guardians and Sunday superintendents, schoolmastes, and judges, authorities who, if sometimes mistaken, or even slightly absurd, are essentially benign and nearly always reliable. Thus it is that the minister, praying for the community's children, does so in the context of a hierarchy of responsibility that from country officials to the President of the United States, an ordering presence that, among other reassuring work, is to guarantee the well-being of the young. As though to provide the fullest representation of this benevolent system, Missouri's most important senator, Thomas Hart Benton, makes a cameo appearance in the novel, albeit one in which he is judged of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a book about boyish freedom, it affirms at every turn an order of the most conventional sort and depends upon that order for the version of boyhood it depicts.
Saving Saukenuk: How Black Hawk Won the War and Opened the Way to Ethnic Semiotics
Authors: Boelhower William
Published: January 2009

If you went looking for traces of the Sauk village where Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (or Black Sparrow Hawk) was born and which, in his refusal to give it up, became the ultimate cause of the Black Hawk War in 1832 – the last Indian war east of the Mississippi – you would not find much: a few smart allusions to the great Sauk warrior on storefront signs and other such promotion gestures over on Rock Island, Iowa, but no archeological evidence at the juncture of the Rock and Mississippi rivers to suggest that the village ever existed. And yet, according to Cecil Eby, by 1790 Saukenuk was “the most imposing town in the Northwest, Indian or white, with more than 100 wickeups (many extending 60 feet in length) and from April to October inhabited by some 3,000 Sauk.” There are, however, scattered verbal signs that might draw the archeologist or historian back and forth over other tableaux of potential Sauk geography, like Sac City in Sac County, Iowa, and Black Hawk County due West of Dubuque. Then there is Prairie du Sac and Sauk City on the Wisconsin River, Wisconsin, two historically vibrant sites which novelist August Derleth turned to good use in his saga of Wisconsin. But when it comes to dealing with a defeated people who also happen to belong to the red race, the names themselves often become signs of cultural obscurantism, if not commemorative oblivion. In list form the available nomenclature amuses: Sacs, Saukies (which the Indians themselves used), Sockeys, Socks, Sacques, Saucs, Sakis. This embarrassing take-your-pick liberality clearly enough sets forth a problem of transliteration; it also evokes the more complex issue of cultural translationtout court:us/them, inside/outside, center/periphery, hegemonic culture/minority culture, structure/chaos.
Recounting the Fables of Savagery: Native Infanticide and the Functions of Political Myth
Authors: Stannard David E.
Published: January 2009

American history has come a long way in the past quarter century. It was, after all, 1965 when Samuel Eliot Morison published his enormously successful and widely praisedOxford History of the American People– an 1,100-page work that relegated the women's suffrage amendment of the Constitution to half a sentence in a chapter entitled “Bootlegging and Other Sports,” and intimated that most blacks were pleased and contented as slaves. And this was an avant-garde position for Morison, commonly regarded as the preeminent American historian of his time: in earlier versions of the same text he had referred to blacks collectively as “Sambo,” as “childlike, improvident, humorous, prevaricating, and superstitious” creatures; when confined to slavery, he had stated flatly, blacks were “adequately fed, well cared for, and apparently happy.”
Forage to concentrate ratio in Jonica breed goats: influence on lactation curve and milk composition
Authors: Tufarelli Vincenzo , Dario Marco , Laudadio Vito
Published: January 2009

The aim of the work is to evaluate the effects of different forage to concentrate rations on milk yield, composition and renneting properties of milk of Jonica breed goats. Twenty-four Jonica goats received diets with forage to concentrate ratio of 35/65, 50/50 or 65/35, providing respectively a low, medium and high energy level. Goats were divided into three homogenous groups and confined in individual pens for 152 days to assess the daily feed intake and milk yield and composition. The main conclusions show that animal body weight did not change significantly with the increasing levels of forage, whereas significant differences (P<0·05) for daily dry matter intake were observed in relation to the evolution of lactation. Milk production was influenced (P<0·05) by dietary treatments and was higher in the diet with the greatest energy level. Forage to concentrate ratios did not significantly affect milk characteristics, milk renneting properties, initial production, rate of increase until reaching the peak and rate of decline after peak production. However, the day of peak production and peak production of goats were linearly reduced when the level of forage increased within the diet. In conclusion, the results indicate that both forage to concentrate ratio and energy level improve goat's production without influencing the milk composition.
Campylobacter in housed broiler chickens: a longitudinal study of risk factors
Authors: RUSHTON S. P. , HUMPHREY T. J. , SHIRLEY M. D. F. , BULL S. , JØRGENSEN F.
Published: January 2009

Infections by Campylobacter spp. are a major cause of gastrointestinal disease in the United Kingdom. Most cases are associated with the consumption of chicken that has become contaminated during production. We investigated the epidemiology of Campylobacter spp. in chickens in a 3-year longitudinal study of flocks reared on 30 farms in the United Kingdom. We used Generalized Linear Mixed Effect Models (GLMM) to investigate putative risk factors associated with incidence and prevalence of flock infection arising from farm and flock management and local environmental conditions during rearing. We used survival analysis to investigate infection events and associated risk factors over the course of the study using two marginal models – the independent increment approach, which assumed that individual infection events were independent; and a conditional approach, which assumed that events were conditional on those preceding. Models of flock prevalence were highly overdispersed suggesting that infection within flocks was aggregated. The key predictors of flock infection identified from the GLMM analyses were mean temperature and mean rainfall in the month of slaughter and also the presence of natural ventilation. Mean temperature in the month of slaughter was also a significant predictor of flock infection, although the analyses suggested that the risk in flocks increased in a unimodal way in relation to temperature, peaking at 12°C. The extent of pad burn was also identified as a predictor in these analyses. We conclude that predicting prevalence within flocks with linear modelling approaches is likely to be difficult, but that it may be possible to predict when flocks are at risk of Campylobacter infection. This is a key first step in managing disease and reducing the risks posed to the human food chain.
Afterslip and aftershocks in the rate‐and‐state friction law
Authors: Helmstetter Agnès , Shaw Bruce E.
Published: January 2009

We study how a stress perturbation generated by a main shock affects a fault obeying the rate‐state friction law using a simple slider block system. Depending on the model parameters and on the initial stress, the fault exhibits aftershocks, slow earthquakes, or decaying afterslip. We found several regimes with slip rate decaying as a power law of time, with different characteristic times and exponents. The behavior of the rate‐state friction law is thus far more complex than described by the “steady state” approximation frequently used to fit afterslip data. The fault reaches steady state only at very large times, when slip rate has decreased to the tectonic loading rate. The complexity of the model makes it unrealistic to invert for the friction law parameters from afterslip data. We modeled afterslip measurements for three earthquakes using the complete rate‐and‐state law and found a huge variety of model parameters that can fit the data. In particular, it is impossible to distinguish the stable velocity‐strengthening regime (A > B) from the (potentially) unstable velocity‐weakening regime (A < B). Therefore, it is not necessary to involve small‐scale spatial or temporal fluctuations of friction parameters A or B in order to explain the transition between stable sliding and seismic slip. In addition to B/A and stiffness, the fault behavior is strongly controlled by stress levels following an event. Stress heterogeneity can thus explain part of the variety of postseismic behaviors observed in nature. Afterslip induces a progressive reloading of faults that are not slipping, which can trigger aftershocks. Using the relation between stress and seismicity derived from the rate‐and‐state friction law, we estimate the aftershock rate triggered by coseismic and postseismic slip. Aftershock rate does not simply scale with stress rate but exhibits different characteristic times and sometimes a different power law exponent. Afterslip is thus a possible candidate to explain observations of aftershock rate decaying as a power law of time with an Omori exponent that can be either smaller or larger than 1. Progressive unloading due to afterslip can also produce delayed seismic quiescence.
Lithospheric geometry of the Wopmay orogen from a Slave craton to Bear Province magnetotelluric transect
Authors: Spratt Jessica E. , Jones Alan G. , Jackson Valerie A. , Collins Louise , Avdeeva Anna
Published: January 2009

Two‐dimensional inversions of lithospheric‐probing magnetotelluric (MT) data at a total of 20 sites acquired along an approximately east–west 300‐km‐long profile across the Wopmay orogen in the Northwest Territories, Canada, provide electrical resistivity models of the boundary between the Archean Slave craton and the adjacent Proterozoic Bear Province. An analysis of distortion effects and structural dimensionality indicates that the MT responses are primarily one‐dimensional or only weakly two‐dimensional with a depth‐independent geoelectric strike angle of N32°E, consistent with regional structural geology. The regional‐scale model, generated from the longer period responses from all of the sites along the profile, reveals significant lateral variations in the lithospheric mantle. Resistive cratonic roots are imaged to depths of ∼200 km beneath both the Slave craton and the Hottah terrane of the Bear Province. These are separated by a less resistive region beneath the Great Bear magmatic zone, which is speculatively interpreted as a consequence of a decrease in the grain size of olivine in the Wopmay mantle, caused by localized shearing, compared to its neighboring cratonic roots. Focused two‐dimensional models, from higher frequency responses at sites on specific sections of the profile, reveal the resistivity structure at crustal depths beneath the region. These suggest that the root of the Slave craton crosses beneath the Wopmay orogen, and that the Wopmay fault zone does not penetrate into the lower crust. A comparison of these results with those obtained during the Lithoprobe project farther south shows striking along strike variations in the conductivity structure associated with the Wopmay orogen.
Relative velocity of seagrass blades: Implications for wave attenuation in low‐energy environments
Authors: Bradley Kevin , Houser Chris
Published: January 2009

While the ability of subaquatic vegetation to attenuate wave energy is well recognized in general, there is a paucity of data from the field to describe the rate and mechanisms of wave decay, particularly with respect to the relative motion of the vegetation. The purpose of this study was to quantify the attenuation of incident wave height through a seagrass meadow and characterize the blade movement under oscillatory flow under the low‐energy conditions characteristic of fetch‐limited and sheltered environments. The horizontal motion of the seagrass blades and the velocity just above the seagrass canopy were measured using a digital video camera and an acoustic Doppler velicometer (ADV) respectively in order to refine the estimates of the drag coefficient based on the relative velocity. Significant wave heights (Hs) were observed to increase by ∼0.02 m (∼20%) through the first 5 m of the seagrass bed but subsequently decrease exponentially over the remainder of the bed. The exponential decay coefficient varied in response to the Reynolds number calculated using blade width (as the length scale) and the oscillatory velocity measured immediately above the canopy. The ability of the seagrass to attenuate wave energy decreases as incident wave heights increase and conditions become more turbulent. Estimates of the time‐averaged canopy height and the calculated hydraulic roughness suggest that, as the oscillatory velocity increases, the seagrass becomes fully extended and leans in the direction of flow for a longer part of the wave cycle. The relationship between the drag coefficient and the Reynolds number further suggests that the vegetation is swaying (going with the flow) at low‐energy conditions but becomes increasingly rigid as oscillatory velocities increase over the limited range of the conditions observed (200 < Re < 800). In addition to the changing behavior of the seagrass motion, the attenuation was not uniform with wave frequency, and waves at a secondary frequency of 0.38 Hz (2.6 s) appeared to be unaffected by the seagrass. Cospectral analysis between the oscillatory and blade velocity suggests that the seagrass was moving in phase with the current at the (lower) secondary frequency and out of phase at the (higher) peak frequency. In this respect, seagrass is not only an attenuator of wave energy but also serves as a low‐pass filter; higher frequencies in the spectra tend to be more attenuated.
Atmosphere and hydrological controls of the evapotranspiration over a floodplain forest in the Bananal Island region, Amazonia
Authors: Borma L. S. , da Rocha H. R. , Cabral O. M. , von Randow C. , Collicchio E. , Kurzatkowski D. , Brugger P. J. , Freitas H. , Tannus R. , Oliveira L. , Rennó C. D. , Artaxo P.
Published: January 2009

This article discusses seasonal and interannual variations of the evapotranspiration (ET) rates in Bananal Island floodplain, Brazil. Measurements included ET and sensible heat flux using the eddy covariance method, atmospheric forcings (net radiation, Rn, vapor pressure deficit, VPD, wind speed and air temperature), soil moisture profiles, groundwater level and flood height, taken from November 2003 to December 2006. For the hydrological years (October‐September) of 2003/2004, 2004/2005 and 2005/2006, the accumulated precipitation was 1692, 1471, 1914 mm and the accumulated ET was 1361, 1318 and 1317 mm, respectively. Seasonal analyses indicated that ET decreased in the dry season (average 3.7 mm day−1), despite the simultaneous increase in Rn, air temperature and VPD. The increase of ET in the wet season and particularly in the flood period (average 4.1 mm day−1) showed that the free water surface evaporation strongly influenced the energy exchange. Soil moisture, which was substantially depleted during the dry season, and adaptative vegetation mechanisms such as leaf senescence contributed to limit the dry season ET. Strong drainage within permeable sandy soils helped to explain the soil moisture depletion. These results suggest that the Bananal flooding area shows a different pattern in relation to the upland Amazon forests, being more similar to the savanna strictu senso areas in central Brazil. For example, seasonal ET variation was not in phase with Rn; the wet season ET was higher than the dry season ET; and the system stored only a tiny memory of the flooding period, being sensitive to extended drought periods.
On the interpretation of Caribbean paleo‐temperature reconstructions during the Younger Dryas
Authors: Wan Xiuquan , Chang Ping , Saravanan R. , Zhang Rong , Schmidt Matthew W.
Published: January 2009

A conundrum exists regarding whether the sea‐surface temperatures decreased or increased over the southern Caribbean and the western Tropical Atlantic region during the Younger Dryas when the North Atlantic cooled substantially and the Atlantic thermohaline circulation was weakened significantly. Despite the proximity of core locations, some proxy reconstructions record a surface cooling, while others indicate a warming. We suggest that this seemingly paradoxical finding may, at least partially, be attributed to the competing physical processes that result in opposing signs of temperature change in the region in response to weakened North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Our coupled ocean‐atmosphere model experiments indicate that the temperature response over the southern Caribbean and Western Tropical Atlantic regions is complex and can vary considerably in small spatial scales, depending on the nature of physical processes that dominate.
Landsliding in partially saturated materials
Authors: Godt Jonathan W. , Baum Rex L. , Lu Ning
Published: January 2009

Rainfall‐induced landslides are pervasive in hillslope environments around the world and among the most costly and deadly natural hazards. However, capturing their occurrence with scientific instrumentation in a natural setting is extremely rare. The prevailing thinking on landslide initiation, particularly for those landslides that occur under intense precipitation, is that the failure surface is saturated and has positive pore‐water pressures acting on it. Most analytic methods used for landslide hazard assessment are based on the above perception and assume that the failure surface is located beneath a water table. By monitoring the pore water and soil suction response to rainfall, we observed shallow landslide occurrence under partially saturated conditions for the first time in a natural setting. We show that the partially saturated shallow landslide at this site is predictable using measured soil suction and water content and a novel unified effective stress concept for partially saturated earth materials.
Gravity and GPS measurements reveal mass loss beneath the Tibetan Plateau: Geodetic evidence of increasing crustal thickness
Authors: Sun Wenke , Wang Qi , Li Hui , Wang Yong , Okubo Shuhei , Shao Desheng , Liu Dongzhi , Fu Guangyu
Published: January 2009

Today, some tens of million years after its creation by the collision between India and Asia, the Tibetan Plateau is the highest and largest plateau on Earth. Results of geological and tectonic studies indicate that the plateau is extending. However, almost no quantitative evidence shows whether the plateau is still uplifting or thickening nowadays. Herein, we present geodetic evidence of mass loss beneath the Tibetan Plateau and increasing crust thickness. Combined absolute gravity and Global Positional System (GPS) measurements at three stations in southern and southeastern Tibet during two decades reveal uplifting of the Tibetan Plateau at a millimeter‐per‐year level, but its underlying mass is diminishing, indicating that the crustal thickness is increasing at an annual millimeter to decimeter level.
Local stress concentration in the seismic belt along the Japan Sea coast inferred from precise focal mechanisms: Implications for the stress accumulation process on intraplate earthquake faults
Authors: Kawanishi Rie , Iio Yoshihisa , Yukutake Yohei , Shibutani Takuo , Katao Hiroshi
Published: January 2009

Spatial changes in the azimuth of the maximum principal stress (σ1) axis are found in the intraplate region of southwest Japan. It is inferred from stress inversions of numerous precise focal mechanisms that the azimuths of the σ1 axis in the seismic belt along the Japan Sea coast are oriented in N110°E–N130°E directions, while in the surrounding region they are aligned in almost the EW direction, N90°E–N100°E. Maximum horizontal compressional stresses in an EW direction are widely observed in the shallow crust in the inland plate along the Nankai Trough. However, the maximum horizontal stress in a WNW–ESE direction is seen only in the seismic belt. This spatial change in the stress field in and around the seismic belt is explained by the deformation of an aseismic fault or a ductile fault zone in the lower crust beneath the seismic belt.
Changes in water properties and transports along 24°N in the North Pacific between 1985 and 2005
Authors: Kouketsu Shinya , Fukasawa Masao , Kaneko Ikuo , Kawano Takeshi , Uchida Hiroshi , Doi Toshimasa , Aoyama Michio , Murakami Kiyoshi
Published: January 2009

We conducted a trans‐Pacific hydrographic section along 24°N in 2005 to investigate the ocean structure and its changes from previous observations in 1985. We detected significant basin‐average water property changes from 1985 to 2005. Apparent oxygen utilization increased below the thermocline by up to 6 μmol kg−1 around the density of the central mode water (around 600 m). It appeared that the North Pacific intermediate water (around 800 m) was less dense in 2005 than in 1985 because of warming. From the decrease of the zonal gradient of the temperature and salinity around the North Pacific deep water (2500–4000 m) and lower circumpolar deep water (<4000 m), we suggest that northward bottom water and southward deep water transports became weaker from 1985 to 2005, consistent with the speculation from the observed temperature increase of the bottom water along its main path in previous studies. Although these water property changes suggest a slowdown of the meridional overturn in the North Pacific and large transport changes in the deep layers (below 4000 m) are estimated from an inverse method, significant heat transport changes were not detected. The estimated temperature transport change of 0.1 PW between the two sections was mainly due to shallow overturn changes, especially changes in the Kuroshio. To describe variability due to the Kuroshio changes, we estimated mass and heat transport changes from long‐term observations of the Kuroshio in the Okinawa Trough, and we determined decadal variability of temperature transports, which was consistent with the variability estimated from sea‐surface flux data sets.
Landslide‐generated tsunamis runup at the coast of a conical island: New physical model experiments
Authors: Di Risio M. , De Girolamo P. , Bellotti G. , Panizzo A. , Aristodemo F. , Molfetta M. G. , Petrillo A. F.
Published: January 2009

This paper presents new physical model experiments on tsunamis generated by landslides at the coast of a conical island. The experiments have been carried out in a large wave tank; the radius of the island coastline and the falling height of the landslide have been varied during the experimental campaign. The landslide is reproduced by a solid body shaped as a half of an ellipsoid. Tsunami runup is measured using special wave gauges; a detailed analysis of the runup along the coastline is presented, with special attention to the role of each wave in the packet and to the evolution of the envelope of the first group of waves.
Seasonal evolution of the tropospheric aerosol vertical profile in the central Mediterranean and role of desert dust
Authors: Di Iorio T. , di Sarra A. , Sferlazzo D. M. , Cacciani M. , Meloni D. , Monteleone F. , Fuà D. , Fiocco G.
Published: January 2009

The seasonal evolution of the aerosol vertical distribution in the Central Mediterranean is studied using measurements made in the period 1999–2008 at Lampedusa with an aerosol Lidar and a multi filter rotating shadowband radiometer (MFRSR). Measurements show that the aerosol vertical distribution is largely influenced by Saharan dust, which produces a strong annual cycle both in aerosol vertical extension and optical depth. Dust layers are present in the profile in 38% of the cases throughout the year, and in 57% in summer. The dust top altitude peaks in late spring, up to 9 km. The monthly average optical depth at 500 nm for dust cases shows a main peak in July (0.38), and values exceeding 0.2 throughout March–September. Conversely, non‐dust cases show a very limited seasonality, both in vertical distribution and aerosol optical depth. The monthly average optical depth for non‐dust cases is smaller than 0.17 throughout the year. During winter, the vertical distribution and optical depth are very similar for both dust and non‐dust cases. The seasonal average extinction coefficient profiles for dust and non‐dust cases show remarkable differences in spring and summer, when values of the extinction coefficient exceed 0.5 × 10−4 m−1 throughout the altitude range 0–4.5 km for dust cases, and 0–1 km altitude for non‐dust cases, respectively. Estimates of the Lidar Ratio are derived by combining Lidar and MFRSR measurements. The average Lidar Ratio at 532 nm is about 30 sr.
Comparison of river basin hydrometeorology in ERA‐Interim and ERA‐40 reanalyses with observations
Authors: Betts Alan K. , Köhler Martin , Zhang Yuanchong
Published: January 2009

The changes between the ERA‐40 and ERA‐Interim in the seasonal cycle of primarily temperature, precipitation and evaporation, the surface radiation budget, and the cloud fields are evaluated over three river basins, the Amazon, Mississippi, and Mackenzie, for the period 1990–2001, using a variety of surface observational data sets and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project data. In ERA‐Interim over the Amazon, the unrealistic interannual drift of precipitation has been reduced, and annual precipitation is largely unbiased, although the seasonal amplitude of precipitation remains too small. However, ERA‐Interim has a large cold 2‐m temperature bias. The clear‐sky surface shortwave flux in ERA‐Interim is lower than that in ERA‐40 and closer to observations. Low cloud cover has increased dramatically in ERA‐Interim, and total reflective cloud cover has a larger positive bias in comparison with observations. The ratio of the precipitation heating of the atmosphere to the surface shortwave cloud forcing is much higher in the observations than that in both reanalyses. The diurnal cycle of precipitation has improved somewhat with the removal of a spurious early morning peak. For the Mississippi and Mackenzie river basins, the spin‐up of precipitation in 24‐h forecasts has been greatly reduced. Temperature biases are small in both reanalyses, but summer precipitation and evaporation exceed observational estimates. For the Mississippi river basin, reflective cloud cover in ERA‐Interim has increased in winter and decreased in summer compared with that in ERA‐40, giving a closer fit to the observations in both seasons. For the Mackenzie river basin, similar reflective cloud changes in ERA‐Interim improve the fit to the observations in summer but not in winter.
BMI and Risk Factors for Suicide: Why Is BMI Inversely Related to Suicide?
Authors: Mukamal Kenneth J. , Miller Matthew
Published: January 2009

Higher BMI has been associated with a lower risk of suicide in large prospective studies, but the mechanisms for this link require elucidation. In the 2002 and 2004 iterations of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a large, population‐based telephone survey of US adults conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, participants reported their height, weight, and several potential risk factors for suicide, including alcohol use, mental health, marital status, firearm ownership, and risk‐taking behaviors. We assessed whether BMI was associated with these risk factors among 224,247 eligible respondents in 2002 and 275,194 in 2004 after sample‐weighted adjustment for age, race, region, smoking, and education. Alcohol‐related risk factors tended to be lower with heavier BMI among women, while firearm‐related risk factors tended to be higher with heavier BMI among men. Heavier BMI also tended to be associated with unmarried status and poor mental health, especially among women, and with infrequent seat belt use in men and women. No potential risk factors were consistently inversely associated with BMI in both sexes and years. In summary, in these samples of the US population, conventional risk factors for suicide were inconsistently associated with BMI, making them unlikely mediators for the observed relationship of BMI with lower risk of suicide. In some cases, risk factors were actually greater with heavier BMI. Further study of the relationship of BMI and suicide may yield novel modifiable risk factors that could cause or prevent this important cause of death.