Life in the Atacama — Year 2: Geologic reconnaissance through long-range roving and implications on the search for life

The Life in the Atacama-2004 project, which included geological, morphological, and mineralogical mapping through combined satellite, field-based, and microscopic perspectives and long-range roving, led to the localization of potential habitats

Spectroscopic results from the Life in the Atacama (LITA) project 2004 field season

Analysis of spectroscopy datasets from rover field tests in the Atacama Desert (Chile), focusing on the composition of the surface and identification of potential habitats for life

Searching for life with rovers: exploration methods and science results from the 2004 field campaign of the “Life in the Atacama” project and applications to future Mars Missions

LITA develops and field tests a long-range automated rover and a science payload to search for microbial life in the Atacama. The Atacama's evolution provides a unique training ground for designing and testing exploration strategies and life detection methods for the search for life on Mars

Implementation of a daylight fluorescence imaging system to autonomously detect biomarkers of extant life in the Atacama Desert

We have integrated a biomarker detection system with a rover for the search for sparse life in extreme environments. The system incorporated a pulsed fluorescence imager, a reagent sprayer, and a surface scraping device for remote detection of fluorescence signals

Use of a novel rover-mounted fluorescence imager and fluorescent probes to detect biological material in the Atacama Desert in daylight

We deployed our fluorescence imaging system which detects fluorescence signals from sparse microorganisms and biofilms on Carnegie Mellon University’s autonomous rover Zoë. The results of the 2004 Atacama Desert field season, in Chile, are discussed

Re-locating memories: transnational and local narratives of Indian South Africans in Cape Town

This article plays on the word re-location to examine the memories of Indians in South Africa through oral histories about relocation as a result of the Group Areas Act, to memories of parents and grandparents relocating to South Africa from India as told to interviewees and to their own memories of journeys to India and back. The narratives of mobilities traverse time and national boundaries and are counter-posed by narratives of local mobilities as well as stasis. The article identifies ways of narrating, themes of narration and the meaning of memories while noting the re-location of memory construction against the backdrop of South Africa’s democratic transition and the 150th commemoration of the arrival of indentured Indians to South Africa. It argues that the local and the national are important in narrations of transnational journeys, thus advancing a particular approach to transnational memory studies

Social acts and projections of change

This lecture considers the question of the social from within the workings of the SARChI Chair in Social Change. Rather than accepting ‘the social’ as something that is given, it proposes that we problematize and ‘re: work’ the social as being a hybrid domain, as being spatially diverse and as being enacted. An argument for ‘social acts’, which are related to, but not the same as actors and actions is proposed as a means to read and understand the social and projections of social change in new ways. While social acts produce actors and need actors to be actualised, social acts themselves produce ruptures in the given, entail a remaining in the scene and they always involve others and the Other in altering projections of the social, of ‘other socials’, and of projections of change. In practice too, the enactment of the social and the material as integrally associative decentre the object, bringing it into view as one that is also socially enacted, requiring continuing effort, choreography, staging, repetition, but also rupture. To enact, then, is to realize a rupture in the given-ness of the social and to necessarily attend to the unexpected, unpredictable and unknown of the social and its equally enacted and re-worked projections of change

Social acts and projections of change

This lecture considers the question of the social from within the workings of the SARChI Chair in Social Change. Rather than accepting ‘the social’ as something that is given, it proposes that we problematize and ‘re: work’ the social as being a hybrid domain, as being spatially diverse and as being enacted. An argument for ‘social acts’, which are related to, but not the same as actors and actions is proposed as a means to read and understand the social and projections of social change in new ways. While social acts produce actors and need actors to be actualised, social acts themselves produce ruptures in the given, entail a remaining in the scene and they always involve others and the Other in altering projections of the social, of ‘other socials’, and of projections of change. In practice too, the enactment of the social and the material as integrally associative decentre the object, bringing it into view as one that is also socially enacted, requiring continuing effort, choreography, staging, repetition, but also rupture. To enact, then, is to realize a rupture in the given-ness of the social and to necessarily attend to the unexpected, unpredictable and unknown of the social and its equally enacted and re-worked projections of change

A special theme from African history: HIS 504E

A special theme from African history: HIS 504E, aegrotat examinations January 2012