Sacred Trash and Personhood: Living in Daily Waste-Management Infrastructures in the Eastern Himalayas

Different interpretations of what constitutes “trash” can reveal complex interactions between Tibetans and Han Chinese in the Eastern Himalayas. This article adopts the term “trash talk” to illuminate how the Tibetan practice of depositing garments as offerings to sacred mountains has become a center of Tibetan-Han debates about ethnic identity, morality, and personhood. Establishing the contours of waste-management infrastructure in a Tibetan area of Yunnan, China, that has been developed for tourism, this article examines the Tibetan term dreg pa དྲེག་པ (pollution), a morally laden notion of impurity. The author highlights how Tibetans seek to avoid dreg pa and achieve a reciprocal balance with “mountain-persons” (mountains as sacred beings) by making offerings of personal garments. The Han Chinese waste-management sector’s perception of these garment offerings as litter creates a dispute between Tibetans and Han as to what is sacred and what is trash. Drawing on field research, the author argues that the offered garments should be seen not as trash but as people—active entities that mediate the reciprocal relationship between humans and the environment. Further analysis of the experience of two Tibetan informants reveals how the issue of used garments and dreg pa can even form a basis for personal transformation and the reinvention of personhood. These linkages among the local notion of dreg pa, uncertainties surrounding used garments, and personhood suggest that waste-management policies must take local notions of waste into consideration in order to be both efficient and culturally sensitive, especially in the current troubled trash politics of mass tourism and global environmentalism. Keywords: waste management, personhood, sacred trash, trash talk, Tibet, China, Yunnan, ritual offerings, touris

A review of migration and fertility theory through the lens of African immigrant fertility in France

This paper evaluates fertility and migration theory in order to further understand the impact of migration on fertility. I first analyze the fertility and migration literature separately and then look at the burgeoning literature on the impact of migration on fertility. As a result, I propose an integrated framework for analyzing the migration-fertility nexus. Within the fertility context, I use Bongaarts and Watkins concept of social interaction, whereas within the migration context, I draw on Massey’s capitalist transition theory, and Pessar and Mahler’s ‘gendered geometries of power’. This integrated framework considers three major factors: the sending country, the global context of migration systems, and the receiving country. Gender is the key to understanding fertility decisions within all three levels. Migration from Africa to France is considered in order to exemplify these processes. Bozon’s typology of African demographic patterns shows how and why the sending country matters for future childbearing decisions post-migration. To further explore this facet, four countries are used to evaluate the impact of migrating from specific types of countries on fertility post-migration: Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, and Rwanda. The global context of migration is constantly changing, both encouraging and restraining men and women in particular ways, which also affects fertility choices. Finally, the receiving country interacts with migrants in various ways—immigration policies, the economy, and social institutions—playing important roles in fertility outcomes.Africa, France, fertility, migration

Common Mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus) distribution, diet and seasonality in western New York and morphological condition in lake and stream habitats.

Environmental context changes the behavior and morphology of organisms. The impacts of flow on sampling techniques and morphology of the Common Mudpuppy were investigated during this study. I also explored mudpuppy distribution in western New York, diet, sexual dimorphism, seasonality, and capture biases. I found rock turning to be more efficient in streams year-round and modified minnow traps to be better more efficient in cold weather months and in deeper habitats than in other seasons or habitats. During the hot weather months, mudpuppy diet consisted of invertebrates exclusively, whereas diets in cold weather months consisted of invertebrates plus vertebrate prey. Body condition reflected the change in diet, with larger body condition when large prey items were found in gut contents. Stream-captured mudpuppies were more streamlined and possessed larger digits than lake-captured mudpuppies. Mudpuppy morphological differences between habitat types indicate phenotypic plasticity as the likely mechanism of morphological change when viewed in light of other published phylogenetic work on regional haplotypes. The findings of morphological response to flow warrant more investigation with common garden experiments. Expanding the common garden experiment to encompass future changes in temperature will help inform managers on how climate change may affect mudpuppy populations

Video interaction using pen-based technology

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em InformáticaVideo can be considered one of the most complete and complex media and its manipulating is still a difficult and tedious task. This research applies pen-based technology to video manipulation, with the goal to improve this interaction. Even though the human familiarity with pen-based devices, how they can be used on video interaction, in order to improve it, making it more natural and at the same time fostering the user’s creativity is an open question. Two types of interaction with video were considered in this work: video annotation and video editing. Each interaction type allows the study of one of the interaction modes of using pen-based technology: indirectly, through digital ink, or directly, trough pen gestures or pressure. This research contributes with two approaches for pen-based video interaction: pen-based video annotations and video as ink. The first uses pen-based annotations combined with motion tracking algorithms, in order to augment video content with sketches or handwritten notes. It aims to study how pen-based technology can be used to annotate a moving objects and how to maintain the association between a pen-based annotations and the annotated moving object The second concept replaces digital ink by video content, studding how pen gestures and pressure can be used on video editing and what kind of changes are needed in the interface, in order to provide a more familiar and creative interaction in this usage context.This work was partially funded by the UTAustin-Portugal, Digital Media, Program (Ph.D. grant: SFRH/BD/42662/2007 - FCT/MCTES); by the HP Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative 2006; by the project "TKB - A Transmedia Knowledge Base for contemporary dance" (PTDC/EAT/AVP/098220/2008 funded by FCT/MCTES); and by CITI/DI/FCT/UNL (PEst-OE/EEI/UI0527/2011

Teacher's guide book for primary and secondary school

There is an urgent need for collective action to mitigate the consequences of climate change and adapt to unavoidable changes. The complexity of climate change issues can pose educational challenges. Nonetheless, education has a key role to play in ensuring that younger generations have the required knowledge and skills to understand issues surrounding climate change, to avoid despair, to take action, and to be prepared to live in a changing world. The Office for Climate Education (OCE) was founded in 2018 to promote strong international cooperation between scientific organisations, educational institutions and NGOs. The overall aim of the OCE is to ensure that the younger generations of today and tomorrow are educated about climate change. Teachers have a key role to play in their climate education and it is essential that they receive sufficient support to enable them to implement effective lessons on climate change. The OCE has developed a range of educational resources and professional development modules to support them in teaching about climate change with active pedagogy

The Crayfish of Nebraska

This print-ready pdf includes information on the anatomy, biology, and ecology of crayfishes of Nebraska, individual species accounts with maps, and a key to the species