Mountain glacier chronology from Boulder Lake, New Zealand, indicates MIS 4 and MIS 2 ice advances of similar extent.

Dating of past glaciation in New Zealand allows Quaternary climatic events to be identified in areas at a great distance from northern hemisphere ice sheets and associated climatic feedbacks. Moreover, climate reconstruction in New Zealand provides insight into the amount of climate change that occurred in the Southwest Pacific where zonal circulation is an important integrator of the climate signal. Boulder Lake is a relatively low-elevation cirque in a range of moderate-relief (similar to 1600 m) mountains in South Island of New Zealand, and it experienced cirque and valley glaciation during the Late Quaternary. Geomorphic mapping. Be-10 and Al-26 exposure. and luminescence dating provide evidence for glacial advances during the Last Glacial Cycle, specifically during Marine Isotope Stage 4 (MIS 4) and Marine Isotope Stage 2 (MIS 2). The MIS 4 advance was fractionally larger and is dated by a former ice-marginal lacustrine deposit (minimum age) with a basal Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) sediment deposition age of 64.9 +/- 10 ka. Paired Be-10 and Al-26 constrain a slightly less extensive MIS 2 glacial advance to 18.2 +/- 1.0 and 17.8 +/- 0.9 ka, coincident with the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Glacial equilibrium-line altitudes during both MIS 4 and MIS 2 phases were similar to 960 in lower than the present. This corresponds to a cooling of 5-7 degrees C, taking possible precipitation variability into account. Our findings and a growing number of publications indicate that many temperate valley glaciers reacted differently to the major ice sheets during the Last Glacial Cycle, reaching their Maximum extent during MIS 4 rather than during peak global ice volume during MIS 2. © 2008, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Researc

Developing a corpus of strategic conversation in The Settlers of Catan

International audienceWe describe a dialogue model and an implemented annotation scheme for a pilot corpus of annotated online chats concerning bargaining negotiations in the game The Settlers of Catan. We will use this model and data to analyze how conversations proceed in the absence of strong forms of cooperativity, where agents have diverging motives. Here we concentrate on the description of our annotation scheme for negotiation dialogues, illustrated with our pilot data, and some perspectives for future research on the issue

Distributed Leadership: An Effective Practice when Practiced Effectively

Building transparent models for the distribution of college-level resources, getting buy-in from department chairs, and implementing models across very different departments

Efficiency of choice set generation methods for bicycle routes

The current study analyses the efficiency of choice set generation methods for bicycle routes and proposes the extension of cost functions to bicycle-oriented factors not limited to distance and time. Three choice set generation methods for route choice were examined in their ability to generate relevant and heterogeneous routes: doubly stochastic generation function, breadth first search on link elimination, and branch & bound algorithm. Efficiency of the methods was evaluated for a high-resolution network by comparing the performances with four multiattribute cost functions accounting for scenic routes, dedicated cycle lanes, and road type. Data consisted of 778 bicycle trips traced by GPS and carried out by 139 persons living in the Greater Copenhagen Area, in Denmark. Results suggest that both the breadth first search on link elimination and the doubly stochastic generation function generated realistic routes, while the former outperformed in computation cost and the latter produced more heterogeneous routes

SafetyKit: first aid for measuring safety in open-domain conversational systems

The social impact of natural language processing and its applications has received increasing attention. In this position paper, we focus on the problem of safety for end-to-end conversational AI. We survey the problem landscape therein, introducing a taxonomy of three observed phenomena: the Instigator, Yea-Sayer, and Impostor effects. We then empirically assess the extent to which current tools can measure these effects and current systems display them. We release these tools as part of a “first aid kit” (SafetyKit) to quickly assess apparent safety concerns. Our results show that, while current tools are able to provide an estimate of the relative safety of systems in various settings, they still have several shortcomings. We suggest several future directions and discuss ethical considerations

Quaternary Deformation Along the Wharekauhau Fault System, North Island, New Zealand: Implications for an Unstable Linkage Between Active Strike-Slip and Thrust Faults

The southern Wairarapa region of the North Island of New Zealand preserves a variably deformed late Quaternary stratigraphic sequence that provides insight into the temporal variability in the partitioning of contraction onto faults in the upper plate of an obliquely convergent margin. Detailed mapping, stratigraphic data, and new radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence ages from Quaternary units reveal the interaction between tectonics and sedimentation from ∼125 ka to(i.e., Wharekauhau fault system) at the southern end of the Wairarapa fault zone, a major oblique-slip fault in the upper plate of the Hikurangi Margin. The Wharekauhau thrust accommodated a minimum of 280 ± 60 m of horizontal shortening from ∼70 to 20 ka. The inferred shortening rate, 3.5–8.4 mm/yr, may have accounted for 11–30% of margin-normal plate motion. By ∼20 ka, the thrust was abandoned. Subsequent deformation at shallow levels occurred on a segmented fault system that accommodated/yr shortening. Active deformation in the region is partitioned between slip on (1) the more western Wairarapa-Mukamuka fault system (dominantly dextral slip but also causing local uplift of the coast); (2) a series of discontinuously expressed strike-slip faults and linking blind oblique-reverse thrusts near the trace of the inactive Wharekauhau thrust; and (3) a blind thrust fault farther to the east. The spatial and temporal complexity of the Wharekauhau fault system and the importance it has had in accommodating upper plate deformation argue for an unsteady linkage between upper plate faults and between these faults and the plate interface

How Can Scientific Literature Support Decision-Making in the Renovation of Historic Buildings? An Evidence-Based Approach for Improving the Performance of Walls

Buildings of heritage significance due to their historical, architectural, or cultural value, here called historic buildings, constitute a large proportion of the building stock in many countries around the world. Improving the performance of such buildings is necessary to lower the carbon emissions of the stock, which generates around 40% of the overall emissions worldwide. In historic buildings, it is estimated that heat loss through external walls contributes significantly to the overall energy consumption, and is associated with poor thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Measures to improve the performance of walls of historic buildings require a balance between energy performance, indoor environmental quality, heritage significance, and technical compatibility. Appropriate wall measures are available, but the correct selection and implementation require an integrated process throughout assessment (planning), design, construction, and use. Despite the available knowledge, decision-makers often have limited access to robust information on tested retrofit measures, hindering the implementation of deep renovation. This paper provides an evidence-based approach on the steps required during assessment, design, and construction, and after retrofitting through a literature review. Moreover, it provides a review of possible measures for wall retrofit within the deep renovation of historic buildings, including their advantages and disadvantages and the required considerations based on context

The development of path integration: combining estimations of distance and heading

Efficient daily navigation is underpinned by path integration, the mechanism by which we use self-movement information to update our position in space. This process is well-understood in adulthood, but there has been relatively little study of path integration in childhood, leading to an underrepresentation in accounts of navigational development. Previous research has shown that calculation of distance and heading both tend to be less accurate in children as they are in adults, although there have been no studies of the combined calculation of distance and heading that typifies naturalistic path integration. In the present study 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds took part in a triangle-completion task, where they were required to return to the startpoint of a multi-element path using only idiothetic information. Performance was compared to a sample of adult participants, who were found to be more accurate than children on measures of landing error, heading error, and distance error. 7-year-olds were significantly more accurate than 5-year-olds on measures of landing error and heading error, although the difference between groups was much smaller for distance error. All measures were reliably correlated with age, demonstrating a clear development of path integration abilities within the age range tested. Taken together, these data make a strong case for the inclusion of path integration within developmental models of spatial navigational processing