Darwin's Geological Research in Argentina

On the occasion of the 200th. anniversary of Charles Darwin´s birth, the Asociación Geológica Argentina decided to prepare a special issue devoted to the geological research undertaken by Darwin in Argentina. As it is well known, during his journeys on board HMS Beagle under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy, he had the opportunity to survey overland different areas of South America. Darwin spent nearly three years - between August 1832 and April 1835 - visiting and studying different regions of our country. The aim of this special issue is to analyze his important geological observations and to emphasize the validity of many of his ideas under a 21st Century perspective. In order to accomplish this aim, several key localities that Darwin examined from a geological point of view during his voyage were selected. Such an analysis was carried out by several geologists and paleontologists well acquainted with the diverse problems that Darwin faced along his journeys in Argentina.Fil: Ramos, Victor Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Estudios Andinos "Don Pablo Groeber". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Estudios Andinos "Don Pablo Groeber"; Argentin

The Wild Irish Girl and the "dalai lama of little Thibet": the long encounter between Ireland and Asian Buddhism

Ireland lies on the margins of the Buddhist world, far from its homeland in northern India and Nepal and the traditionally Buddhist parts of Asia. It is also in various ways "peripheral" to core capitalist societies, and Irish encounters with Buddhism are structured by both facts. Buddhism, for its part, has been a central feature of major Eurasian societies for over two millennia. During this period, Irish people and Asian Buddhists have repeatedly encountered or heard about each other, in ways structured by many different kinds of global relations – from the Roman Empire and the medieval church via capitalist exploration, imperial expansion and finally contemporary capitalism. These different relationships have conditioned different kinds of encounters and outcomes. At the same time, as succeeding tides of empire, trade and knowledge have crossed Eurasia, each tide has left its traces. In 1859, Fermanagh-born James Tennent's best-selling History of Ceylon could devote four chapters to what was already known about the island in ancient and medieval times – by Greeks and Romans, by "Moors, Genoese and Venetians", by Indian, Arabic and Persian authors and in China. Similarly, the Catholic missionary D Nugent, speaking in Dublin's Mansion House in 1924, could discuss encounters with China from 1291 via the Jesuits to the present. The Ireland that was connected with the Buddhist world was not, of course, a separate and coherent entity. Like many or most contemporary states, the majority of what was nineteenth-century "Ireland" has only become a separate state within living memory, and one whose cultural and political boundaries remain contested. If authors discussing the arrival of Buddhism in Britain or America (Almond 1988, Tweed 2000) have written as though Victorian Buddhism there was largely an outgrowth of American or British culture, peripheral societies like Ireland have been in no position to remake Buddhism in their "own" (intensely debated) image. For most of the last five hundred years, Irish encounters with Buddhism have been mediated through competing international affiliations – most powerfully, the British empire and the Catholic church – through shared Anglophone or European publishing spaces, and (going further back) through languages spoken both here and elsewhere. More recently, they have been structured by Ireland's constant cycle of emigration and immigration: until recently it has been rare for Buddhists to be both Irish and in Ireland. Thus the history of "Buddhism and Ireland" is not a separate national analysis but a window into global histories (comparable to Rocha's 2006 account of Brazilian Zen), where the effective unit of analysis is whatever "world system" (Wallerstein 1988) connects economic, political and cultural activities, from the Roman empire to global capitalism

Border country dharma: Buddhism, Ireland and peripherality

Buddhist tradition distinguishes a "central region" where suitable conditions for practice – notably a well-developed sangha – are to be found, from "border regions" where there are fewer or no monks, nuns, laymen or laywomen (1). If, in the last 150 years, Buddhist Asia has acted as the "central region" to the "border regions" of western Buddhism, Ireland is arguably a border region to the border regions, a second-hand recipient of developments in more powerful societies. These categories (relational as so many Buddhist concepts) are similar to sociological discussions of core and periphery within the global order. However, some of the most influential accounts of the arrival of Buddhism in the west (such as Almond 1988 and Tweed 2000) stress rather the indigenous, and essentially bounded, development of Victorian Buddhism

Border country dharma: Buddhism, Ireland and peripherality

Buddhist tradition distinguishes a "central region" where suitable conditions for practice – notably a well-developed sangha – are to be found, from "border regions" where there are fewer or no monks, nuns, laymen or laywomen (1). If, in the last 150 years, Buddhist Asia has acted as the "central region" to the "border regions" of western Buddhism, Ireland is arguably a border region to the border regions, a second-hand recipient of developments in more powerful societies. These categories (relational as so many Buddhist concepts) are similar to sociological discussions of core and periphery within the global order. However, some of the most influential accounts of the arrival of Buddhism in the west (such as Almond 1988 and Tweed 2000) stress rather the indigenous, and essentially bounded, development of Victorian Buddhism

International Student’s Mobility and Tourism: Relations, Opportunities, and Insights for Canadian University Cities

The increase in student enrollment and mobility in Canadian universities every year generates a continuous flow of people that move, study, work, and live in university cities across the country. The presence of international students contributes to the prosperity of Canada, positively impacting its socio-cultural and economic development. The multiplicity of needs and services related to this segment of the urban population also makes their way through to the travel and hospitality sectors. Indeed, students visit and travel in the country, contributing to urban tourism and the local economy. In addition, the uncertainty related to the post-pandemic period and the hybridization of academic activities provided by several Canadian universities in response to the conditions created by the pandemic, will continue to impact the use of space, places, and services and increase the level of the temporary and flexible hospitality demands. This study investigates the relations and the opportunities between the mobility of university students and urban tourism, with implications for partnerships between destinations and their higher education institutions, a topic rarely explored in the tourism field and its literature

Cocharge and skewing formulas for Δ\Delta-Springer modules and the Delta Conjecture

We prove that $\omega \Delta'_{e_{k}}e_n|_{t=0}$, the symmetric function in the Delta Conjecture at $t=0$, is a skewing operator applied to a Hall-Littlewood polynomial, and generalize this formula to the Frobenius series of all $\Delta$-Springer modules. We use this to give an explicit Schur expansion in terms of the Lascoux-Sch\"utzenberger cocharge statistic on a new combinatorial object that we call a \textit{battery-powered tableau}. Our proof is geometric, and shows that the $\Delta$-Springer varieties of Levinson, Woo, and the second author are generalized Springer fibers coming from the partial resolutions of the nilpotent cone due to Borho and MacPherson. We also give alternative combinatorial proofs of our Schur expansion for several special cases, and give conjectural skewing formulas for the $t$ and $t^2$ coefficients of $\omega \Delta'_{e_{k}}e_n$.Comment: Section 7 has been added, title update

What Do We Mean by 'Forgiveness?': Some Answers from the Ancient Greeks

There seems to be confusion and disagreement among scholars about the meaning of interpersonal forgiveness. In this essay we shall venture to clarify the meaning of forgiveness by examining various literary works. In particular, we shall discuss instances of forgiveness from Homer’s The Iliad, Euripides’ Hippolytus, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and we shall focus on the changes that the concept of forgiveness has gone through throughout the centuries, in the hope of being able to understand, and therefore, of being able to use more accurately, contemporary notions of forgiveness. We shall also explore the relationship between forgiveness and concepts that are closely associated with it, such as anger/resentment, hurt, clemency, desert/merit, excuse, etc

Exploring lay uncertainty about an environmental health risk

How do laypeople perceive uncertainties about environmental health risks? How do risk-related cognitions and emotions influence these uncertainties, and what roles do sociodemographic and contextual factors, risk judgments, and information exposures play? This study explores these questions using secondary analyses of survey data. Results suggest that uncertainty reflects individual-level emotions and cognitions, but may also be shaped by a variety of social and contextual factors. Emotions (worry and anger) are strongly associated with perceived uncertainty, and perceived lack of knowledge and perceived likelihood of becoming ill are weakly associated with it. Several demographic variables, information exposures, and risk judgment variables affect perceived uncertainty indirectly, primarily through perceived knowledge and emotions. These findings raise a variety of questions about the complex and dynamic interactions among risk contexts, socioeconomic factors, communication processes, perceived knowledge, emotions, and perceived uncertainties about risks

GABAB receptor allosteric modulators exhibit pathway-dependent and species-selective activity.

Positive modulation of the GABAB receptor (GABABR) represents a potentially useful therapeutic approach for the treatment of nicotine addiction. The positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) of GABABR GS39783 and BHF177 enhance GABA-stimulated [35S]GTP γS-binding, and have shown efficacy in a rodent nicotine self-administration procedure reflecting aspects of nicotine dependence. Interestingly, the structural related analog, NVP998, had no effect on nicotine self-administration in rats despite demonstrating similar pharmacokinetic properties. Extensive in vitro characterization of GS39783, BHF177, and NVP998 activity on GABABR-regulated signaling events, including modulation of cAMP, intracellular calcium levels, and ERK activation, revealed that these structurally related molecules display distinct pathway-specific signaling activities that correlate with the dissimilarities observed in rodent models and may be predictive of in vivo efficacy. Furthermore, these GABABR allosteric modulators exhibit species-dependent activity. Collectively, these data will be useful in guiding the development of GABABR allosteric modulators that display optimal in vivo efficacy in a preclinical model of nicotine dependence, and will identify those that have the potential to lead to novel antismoking therapies

Human Powered Vehicle Team Challenge

Design and build a Human Powered Vehicle in a team of five. Compete at the ASME HPVC competition in March of 2022. Re-establish the Human Powered Vehicle Team at the University of Akron