An evaluation of the utilization of remote sensing in resource and environmental management of the Chesapeake Bay region

A nine-month study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the NASA Wallops Chesapeake Bay Ecological Program in remote sensing. The study consisted of a follow-up investigation and information analysis of actual cases in which remote sensing was utilized by management and research personnel in the Chesapeake Bay region. The study concludes that the NASA Wallops Chesapeake Bay Ecological Program is effective, both in terms of costs and performance

The art of being human : a project for general philosophy of science

Throughout the medieval and modern periods, in various sacred and secular guises, the unification of all forms of knowledge under the rubric of ‘science’ has been taken as the prerogative of humanity as a species. However, as our sense of species privilege has been called increasingly into question, so too has the very salience of ‘humanity’ and ‘science’ as general categories, let alone ones that might bear some essential relationship to each other. After showing how the ascendant Stanford School in the philosophy of science has contributed to this joint demystification of ‘humanity’ and ‘science’, I proceed on a more positive note to a conceptual framework for making sense of science as the art of being human. My understanding of ‘science’ is indebted to the red thread that runs from Christian theology through the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment to the Humboldtian revival of the university as the site for the synthesis of knowledge as the culmination of self-development. Especially salient to this idea is science‘s epistemic capacity to manage modality (i.e. to determine the conditions under which possibilities can be actualised) and its political capacity to organize humanity into projects of universal concern. However, the challenge facing such an ideal in the twentyfirst century is that the predicate ‘human’ may be projected in three quite distinct ways, governed by what I call ‘ecological’, ‘biomedical’ and ‘cybernetic’ interests. Which one of these future humanities would claim today’s humans as proper ancestors and could these futures co-habit the same world thus become two important questions that general philosophy of science will need to address in the coming years

Outside the (memory) box: how unpredictable objects disrupt the discourse of bereavement in narratives of pregnancy loss

The memory boxes produced by UK charity and support agencies such as Sands are given to families who experience stillbirth and pregnancy loss. These memory boxes form part of a twenty-year-old practice of bereavement care. In this article, we focus on the aspects of memorialisation present in narratives of pregnancy loss that involve a variety of material objects that women selected and chose to keep either within or outside of a memory box. Drawing on a selection of interviews conducted as part of a larger-scale investigation, we explore how women who have experienced a stillbirth or termination for foetal anomaly ascribe meaning to the objects they select. While some ‘melancholy objects’ bring consolation, others operate as unpredictable objects whose meanings and stories cannot be contained in the memory box nor narrated within the conventional discourses of bereavement that accompany the boxes. Such objects cause productive forms of disruption that, on the one hand, unsettle the discourse of bereavement and, on the other hand, offer a form of expression for women’s agency. Conceptualising objects of mourning as unpredictable helps to puncture the mainstream idea (in western society) that bereavement is a journey towards healing

Spatial and Temporal Habitat Use of an Asian Elephant in Sumatra

Increasingly, habitat fragmentation caused by agricultural and human development has forced Sumatran elephants into relatively small areas, but there is little information on how elephants use these areas and thus, how habitats can be managed to sustain elephants in the future. Using a Global Positioning System (GPS) collar and a land cover map developed from TM imagery, we identified the habitats used by a wild adult female elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) in the Seblat Elephant Conservation Center, Bengkulu Province, Sumatra during 2007–2008. The marked elephant (and presumably her 40–60 herd mates) used a home range that contained more than expected medium canopy and open canopy land cover. Further, within the home range, closed canopy forests were used more during the day than at night. When elephants were in closed canopy forests they were most often near the forest edge vs. in the forest interior. Effective elephant conservation strategies in Sumatra need to focus on forest restoration of cleared areas and providing a forest matrix that includes various canopy types

The discomforting rise of ' public geographies': a 'public' conversation.

In this innovative and provocative intervention, the authors explore the burgeoning ‘public turn’ visible across the social sciences to espouse the need to radically challenge and reshape dominant and orthodox visions of ‘the academy’, academic life, and the role and purpose of the academic

‘Walking ... just walking’: how children and young people’s everyday pedestrian practices matter

In this paper we consider the importance of ‘walking… just walking’ for many children and young people’s everyday lives. We will show how, in our research with 175 9-16-year-olds living in new urban developments in south-east England, some particular (daily, taken-for-granted, ostensibly aimless) forms of walking were central to the lives, experiences and friendships of most children and young people. The main body of the paper highlights key characteristics of these walking practices, and their constitutive role in these children and young people’s social and cultural geography. Over the course of the paper we will argue that ‘everyday pedestrian practices’ (after Middleton 2010, 2011) like these require us to think critically about two bodies of geographical and social scientific research. On one hand, we will argue that the large body of research on children’s spatial range and independent mobility could be conceptually enlivened and extended to acknowledge bodily, social, sociotechnical and habitual practices. On the other hand, we will suggest that the empirical details of such practices should prompt critical reflection upon the wonderfully rich, multidisciplinary vein of conceptualisation latterly termed ‘new walking studies’ (Lorimer 2011). Indeed, in conclusion we shall argue that the theoretical vivacity of walking studies, and the concerns of more applied empirical approaches such as work on children’s independent mobility, could productively be interrelated. In so doing we open out a wider challenge to social and cultural geographers, to expedite this kind of interrelation in other research contexts

Long-term trends in particulate matter from wood burning in the United Kingdom: Dependence on weather and social factors

Particulate matter from wood burning emissions (Cwood) was quantified at five locations in the United Kingdom (UK), comprising three rural and two urban sites between 2009 and 2021. The aethalometer method was used. Mean winter Cwood concentrations ranged from 0.26 μg m-3 (in rural Scotland) to 1.30 μg m-3 (London), which represented on average 4% (in rural environments) and 5% (urban) of PM10 concentrations; and 8% of PM2.5. Concentrations were greatest in the evenings in winter months, with larger evening concentrations in the weekends at the urban sites. Random-forest (RF) machine learning regression models were used to reconstruct Cwood concentrations using both meteorological and temporal explanatory variables at each site. The partial dependency plots indicated that temperature and wind speed were the meteorological variables explaining the greatest variability in Cwood, with larger concentrations during cold and calm conditions. Peaks of Cwood concentrations took place during and after events that are celebrated with bonfires. These were Guy Fawkes events in the urban areas and on New Year's Day at the rural sites; the later probably related to long-range transport. Time series were built using the RF. Having removed weather influences, long-term trends of Cwood were estimated using the Theil Sen method. Trends for 2015-2021 were downward at three of the locations (London, Glasgow and rural Scotland), with rates ranging from -5.5% year-1 to -2.5% year-1. The replacement of old fireplaces with lower emission wood stoves might explain the decrease in Cwood especially at the urban sites The two rural sites in England observed positive trends for the same period but this was not statistically significant

Domestication as innovation : the entanglement of techniques, technology and chance in the domestication of cereal crops

The origins of agriculture involved pathways of domestication in which human behaviours and plant genetic adaptations were entangled. These changes resulted in consequences that were unintended at the start of the process. This paper highlights some of the key innovations in human behaviours, such as soil preparation, harvesting and threshing, and how these were coupled with genetic ‘innovations’ within plant populations. We identify a number of ‘traps’ for early cultivators, including the needs for extra labour expenditure on crop-processing and soil fertility maintenance, but also linked gains in terms of potential crop yields. Compilations of quantitative data across a few different crops for the traits of nonshattering and seed size are discussed in terms of the apparently slow process of domestication, and parallels and differences between different regional pathways are identified. We highlight the need to bridge the gap between a Neolithic archaeobotanical focus on domestication and a focus of later periods on crop-processing activities and labour organization. In addition, archaeobotanical data provide a basis for rethinking previous assumptions about how plant genetic data should be related to the origins of agriculture and we contrast two alternative hypotheses: gradual evolution with low selection pressure versus metastable equilibrium that prolonged the persistence of ‘semi-domesticated’ populations. Our revised understanding of the innovations involved in plant domestication highlight the need for new approaches to collecting, modelling and integrating genetic data and archaeobotanical evidence

Weak Charge-Changing Flow in Expanding r-Process Environments

We assess the prospects for attaining steady nuclear flow equilibrium in expanding r-process environments where beta decay and/or neutrino capture determine the nuclear charge-changing rates. For very rapid expansions, we find that weak steady flow equilibrium normally cannot be attained. However, even when neutron capture processes freeze out in such nonequilibrium conditions, abundance ratios of nuclear species in the r-process peaks might still mimic those attained in weak steady flow. This result suggests that the r-process yield in a regime of rapid expansion can be calculated reliably only when all neutron capture, photodisintegration, and weak interaction processes are fully coupled in a dynamical calculation. We discuss the implications of these results for models of the r-process sited in rapidly expanding neutrino-heated ejecta.Comment: 21 pages, AAS LaTex, 2 postscript figure

Public geographies II: being organic

This second report on ‘public geographies' considers the diverse, emergent and shifting spaces of engaging with and in public/s. Taking as its focus the more ‘organic’ rather than ‘traditional’ approach to doing public geography, as discussed in the first report, it explores the multiple and unorthodox ways in which engagements across academic-public spheres play out, and what such engagements may mean for geography/ers. The report first explores the role of the internet in ‘enabling conversations', generating a range of opportunities for public geography through websites, wikis, blogs, file-sharing sites, discussion forums and more, thinking critically about how technologies may enable/disable certain kinds of publically engaged activities. It then considers issues of process and praxis: how collaborations with groups/communities/organizations beyond academia are often unplanned, serendipitous encounters that evolve organically into research/learning/teaching endeavours; but also that personal politics/positionality bring an agency to bear upon whether we, as academics, follow the leads we may stumble upon. The report concludes with a provocative question – given that many non-academics appear to be doing some amazing and inspiring projects and activities, thoughtful, critical and (arguably) examples of organic public geographies, what then is academia’s role