White Blood, Black Gold: The Commodification of Wild Rubber in the Bolivian Amazon, 1870-1920

The Bolivian rubber boom thrived during the 1880 and 1920 decades throughout the Amazonian fluvial network (Madre de Dios, Beni, Purús, Madeira and Beni rivers). The economic potential of rubber quickly became a decisive phenomenon in the social history of Eastern Bolivia, linked with the definitive ocupation of marginal territories, new interethnic relations, national and international migration, taxation, property entitlement, the foundation of cities, the rise of nationalism, the struggle to settle republican frontiers and a novel regional opening to global economy. The boom also encouraged substantial developments in cartography, hidrography, botanics and ethnology. Our goal is to describe the singularities of the rubber-tapping industry in Bolivia and to analyse the representations of “nature” held by rubber tappers of the period: there was indeed a modernist discourse based on the usual ideas of "progress" and "civilization" of the industry opposed to the "wildness", "savagery" and "barbarism" massively attributed to Amazonia, and also a generalized notion of the jungle as a "desert land" open to opportunities for the self-made man. In retrospect, these discourses can certainly reveal a lack of “ecological awareness”. However, a closer analysis of historical sources also shows the existence of voices that were more nuanced and reflexive, and in some cases even dared to point out the limits of extractivism –not only in "ecological" terms but also in reference to the life of the indigenous and creole populations involved in the rubber boom

The AOLI low-order non-linear curvature wavefront sensor: a method for high sensitivity wavefront reconstruction

The Adaptive Optics Lucky Imager (AOLI) is a new instrument under development to demonstrate near diffraction limited imaging in the visible on large ground-based telescopes. We present the adaptive optics system being designed for the instrument comprising a large stroke deformable mirror, fixed component non-linear curvature wavefront sensor and photon-counting EMCCD detectors. We describe the optical design of the wavefront sensor where two photoncounting CCDs provide a total of four reference images. Simulations of the optical characteristics of the system are discussed, with their relevance to low and high order AO systems. The development and optimisation of high-speed wavefront reconstruction algorithms are presented. Finally we discuss the results of simulations to demonstrate the sensitivity of the system.Comment: 10 pages. To be published in Proc SPIE 8447: Adaptive Optics Systems II

AOLI-- Adaptive Optics Lucky Imager: Diffraction Limited Imaging in the Visible on Large Ground-Based Telescopes

The highest resolution images ever taken in the visible were obtained by combining Lucky Imaging and low order adaptive optics. This paper describes a new instrument to be deployed on the WHT 4.2m and GTC 10.4 m telescopes on La Palma, with particular emphasis on the optical design and the expected system performance. A new design of low order wavefront sensor using photon counting CCD detectors and multi-plane curvature wavefront sensor will allow dramatically fainter reference stars to be used, allowing virtually full sky coverage with a natural guide star. This paper also describes a significant improvements in the efficiency of Lucky Imaging, important advances in wavefront reconstruction with curvature sensors and the results of simulations and sensitivity limits. With a 2 x 2 array of 1024 x 1024 photon counting EMCCDs, AOLI is likely to be the first of the new class of high sensitivity, near diffraction limited imaging systems giving higher resolution in the visible from the ground than hitherto been possible from space.Comment: SPIE vol 8446, 201