The Origin and Early Evolution of Life

What is life? How, where, and when did life arise? These questions have remained most fascinating over the last hundred years. Systems chemistry is the way to go to better understand this problem and to try and answer the unsolved question regarding the origin of Life. Self-organization, thanks to the role of lipid boundaries, made possible the rise of protocells. The role of these boundaries is to separate and co-locate micro-environments, and make them spatially distinct; to protect and keep them at defined concentrations; and to enable a multitude of often competing and interfering biochemical reactions to occur simultaneously. The aim of this Special Issue is to summarize the latest discoveries in the field of the prebiotic chemistry of biomolecules, self-organization, protocells and the origin of life. In recent years, thousands of excellent reviews and articles have appeared in the literature and some breakthroughs have already been achieved. However, a great deal of work remains to be carried out. Beyond the borders of the traditional domains of scientific activity, the multidisciplinary character of the present Special Issue leaves space for anyone to creatively contribute to any aspect of these and related relevant topics. We hope that the presented works will be stimulating for a new generation of scientists that are taking their first steps in this fascinating field

Geological Filmmaking

Every film image is geological. As a technical medium derived from the metals and minerals extracted from the earth, every moving image is materially embedded in the world it records. It is also temporally linked to the almost inconceivably vast deep time of the planet’s formation. What would it mean to make films in response to this situation? Geological Filmmaking argues that the challenge lies in situating oneself in the space between the concrete object of a film and the broader planetary conditions of its existence. The nuances of this position are at once formal, ethical and political. Sasha Litvintseva discusses her process of developing such a film practice as a way of tackling the perceptual and aesthetic difficulties presented by ongoing ecological crises. These concerns are explored through the prism of the author’s own films about asbestos and sinkholes in their respective economic and colonial contexts. Geological Filmmaking develops a new genre of writing rooted in a reciprocity between the practice of making films and the theoretical study of the relations they participate in. Litvintseva expands current conversations in the environmental humanities through building on the rich legacy of experimental film as a tool for producing alternative modes of experiencing the world. The book is intended for readers from a broad range of backgrounds, looking for new ways of dealing with questions about the life and death of our planet

Geodiversity and the interactions of socio-natural systems in an Anthropocene perspective

Earth Sciences' investigations allow us to know that the planet Earth has an age of 4, 6 billion years. During this elapsed time many processes changed radically some aspects of the planet. In the first four billions of Earth's history, life was in its initial stages and was restricted to the ocean bodies. In the other remaining 500 millions of years, living organisms became more diversified, occupied the continental lands and the human society started to participate in the Earth System at about 12.000 years ago, although our species were already present at the planet for at about 200 million years. This means that human's presence in the planet is just a small fraction of the Earth's history. But, on the other hand, human's modern lifestyle caused critical changes in this system, what led some scientific currents to say that we are responsible for the global warming. Beside this, the International Commission on Stratigraphy - ICS, which is the scientific body that sets the global standard for the time scale that expresses the history of the Earth, has a working group that is nowadays discussing the establishment of a new geological epoch known as Anthropocene. This new geological epoch is marked by substantial changes, in part irreversible, to the Earth System that are comparable to or greater in magnitude to other natural phenomena or processes that occurred previously in the planet, such as glaciers and volcanic activity. Will be discussed here the interactions between human societies and the geodiversity elements, which includes minerals, rocks, soils and reliefs, throughout the human history, focusing on the needs of resources to sustain the modern urban life and the myriad of limits, values and services of natural systems and their abiotic elements. Some examples will be presented, including the reality and conflicts of the geodiversity use in Chapada Diamantina, an ancient diamond mining region in the Northeast of Brazil

Dissecting Changes in Consumer Characteristics through Psychographics

The importance of a psychographic approach is to find out what underlies the lifestyle of people in Indonesia as consumers of various product brands and services circulating in traditional and modern markets. Pattern forming the consumers’ insight needs to be known and seen from the activities, desires, and opinions expressed through their shopping styles. Basically, this perception is a way to show others around them that they have different ways of getting what they want. This insight continues to develop along with technological developments that provide convenience in facilitating products and services. This chapter will discuss the consumers’ typologies based on their psychographic segment in Indonesia and the influence of technology trends in higher aspiration purchases within online and offline markets

Geological Filmmaking

Every film image is geological. As a technical medium derived from the metals and minerals extracted from the earth, every moving image is materially embedded in the world it records. It is also temporally linked to the almost inconceivably vast deep time of the planet’s formation. What would it mean to make films in response to this situation? Geological Filmmaking argues that the challenge lies in situating oneself in the space between the concrete object of a film and the broader planetary conditions of its existence. The nuances of this position are at once formal, ethical and political. Sasha Litvintseva discusses her process of developing such a film practice as a way of tackling the perceptual and aesthetic difficulties presented by ongoing ecological crises. These concerns are explored through the prism of the author’s own films about asbestos and sinkholes in their respective economic and colonial contexts. Geological Filmmaking develops a new genre of writing rooted in a reciprocity between the practice of making films and the theoretical study of the relations they participate in. Litvintseva expands current conversations in the environmental humanities through building on the rich legacy of experimental film as a tool for producing alternative modes of experiencing the world. The book is intended for readers from a broad range of backgrounds, looking for new ways of dealing with questions about the life and death of our planet

An Introduction to Zooarchaeology

zooarchaeology is a self-reproducing field taught in many university departments of anthropology or archaeology. As archaeologists have literally taken faunal analysis into their own hands, they have debated how best to use animal remains to study everything from early hominin hunting or scavenging to animal production in ancient market economies. Animal remains from archaeological sites have been used to infer three kinds of information: the age of deposits (chronology); paleoenvironment and paleoecological relations among humans and other species; human choices and actions related to use of animals as food and raw materials. Methods for reconstructing human diet and behavior have undergone the greatest growth over the last four decades, and most of this book addresses the second and third areas. This book deals with what I know best: vertebrate zooarchaeology, and within that, analysis of mammalian bones and teeth

Value, Authority and the Open Society. Some Implications for Digital and Online Archaeology

This paper argues that two major related trends -- the now substantial circulation of digital archaeological datasets and the increasing number of ways in which people engage with archaeology via online media -- should encourage us to reassess what value we and others wish to place on the past, how we share archaeological information and what kinds of archaeological communities we wish to promote. One useful approach to these questions is via social anthropological theory that addresses valuation, authority and the structuring of inter-personal relationships. Understanding the degree to which these features of social life are, or are not, transformed by new digital communication technologies also helps us to re-conceptualise archaeological communication with new priorities and opportunities in mind. This paper explores these ideas further via two case studies involving the sharing of spatial or spatio-temporal knowledge: (a) open data and open source software for spatial analysis, and (b) neogeography and geocaching