Seismic faults and sacred sanctuaries in Aegean antiquity

The ancient destructive capability of earthquake faults is well chronicled by historians and their cultural impact widely uncovered by archaeologists. Archaeological and geological investigations at some of the most renowned sites in the ancient Greece world, however, suggest a more nuanced and intimate relationship between seismic faults and past human settlements. In the Aegean's karstic landscape earthquake fault scarps act as limestone ramparts on which fortifications, citadels and acropoli were constructed, and underlying fault lines were preferred pathways for groundwater movement and egress. The vital purifactory or therapeutic role of natural springs in the ritual practices of early settlements implies that the fault lines from which they leaked may have helped position the nascent hubs of Greek cities. Equally, the tendency for earthquakes to disrupt groundwater patterns and occasionally shut down persistent springs provides a hitherto unrecognized mechanism for the abrupt demise of those same settlements. Votive niches, carvings, reliefs and inscriptions on fault surfaces suggest important sacred sanctuaries, particularly those with oracular functions, may have been deliberately built astride active fault traces and venerated as direct connections to the chthonic realm (‘the underworld’). Regionally, the Aegean's distributed network of tensional faulting, circulating geothermal waters and deep-seated de-gassing sets the tectonic framework for the springs and gases that infuse the ancient Greek netherworld of caves, chasms, chambers, and sacred grottos. The possibility that seismic faults may have constituted the fulcrum of prominent sacred places means that, for all their obvious destructiveness, earthquakes may have had an unacknowledged cultural significance in Greek antiquity

Earthquake risk communication as dialogue-insights from a workshop in Istanbul's urban renewal neighbourhoods

An important paradox of hazard communication is that the more effectively a potential physical threat is made public by the scientist, the more readily the scientific message becomes normalized into the daily discourses of ordinary life. As a result, a heightened risk awareness does not necessarily motivate personal or collective preparedness. If geoscientists are to help at-risk communities adopt meaningful measures to protect themselves, new strategies are needed for public communication and community engagement. This paper outlines an attempt to develop a novel approach to train geoscientists, using doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in an EU integrated training network studying tectonic processes and geohazards in Turkey. An urban field visit to seismically vulnerable neighbourhoods in Istanbul allowed the researchers to meet with local residents facing the seismic threat. Those meetings exposed the complex social, political and cultural concerns among Istanbul's at-risk urban communities. These concerns were used to provoke subsequent focus group discussions among the group of geoscientists about roles, responsibilities and methods of communicating hazard information to the public. Through the direct testimony of local residents and geoscientists, we explore the form that new strategies for public communication and community engagement might take

Communicating contested geoscience to the public: Moving from ‘matters of fact’ to ‘matters of concern’

Geological issues are increasingly intruding on the everyday lives of ordinary people. Whether it is the onshore extraction of oil and gas, the subsurface injection of waters for geothermal power or the deep storage of waste products, communities across the world are being confronted with controversial geological interventions beneath their backyards. Communicating these complex scientific and technical issues is made more challenging by the general public's unfamiliarity with the geological realm. Cognitive studies confirm a cultural dissonance with the subsurface and highlight lay anxieties about tampering with nature. In addressing those concerns, factual information is argued to be subordinate to values and beliefs in shaping public perspectives on contested geoscientific issues. In this context, scientists' attention to technical accuracy and their emphasis on professional consensus may do little to influence multiple publics whose worries instead root into their sense of place, trust and governance, as well as equity and ethics. With a growing recognition that it is social rather than technical factors that stir public unease and fuel community outrage, geoscientists need to develop new strategies to engage dissonant publics, underpinned by a culture change in geocommunication from conveying ‘matters of fact’ to brokering ‘matters of concern’

Social geology — integrating sustainability concepts into Earth sciences

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Social geology — integrating sustainability concepts into Earth sciences journaltitle: Proceedings of the Geologists' Association articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pgeola.2017.01.002 content_type: article copyright: Crown Copyright © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Geologists' Association. All rights reserved.Most geologists would argue that geoscientific knowledge, experience, and guidance is critical for addressing many of society's most acute environmental challenges, yet few geologists are directly engaged in current discourses around sustainable development. That is surprising given that several attributes make modern geoscience well placed to make critical contributions to contemporary sustainability thinking. Here, we argue that if geoscientists are to make our know-how relevant to sustainability science, two aspects seem clear. Firstly, the geoscience community needs to substantially broaden its constituency, not only forging interdisciplinary links with other environmental disciplines but also drawing from the human and behavioral sciences. Secondly, the principles and practices of ‘sustainability’ need to be explicitly integrated into geoscience education, training and continued professional development

Communicating Seismic Risk: the Geoethical Challenges of a People-Centred, Participatory Approach

International audienceThe Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) encourages scientists to participate in bottom-up risk communication approaches that directly engage hazard-prone populations. Effective communication of seismic risks not only has economic impacts in terms of hazard mitigation but also provides social value in potentially empowering the marginalized populations that disproportionately live in high-risk areas. This emphasis on community-focused disaster preparedness, however, presents a novel set of communication challenges for geoscientists. Few scientists have training in or experience of translating their science for lay publics, and conveying complex risk information is especially difficult in circumstances where scientific issues are socially contested and politically charged. Recognising that disaster threats can create troublesome information battlegrounds, this paper explores the ethical and practical aspects of seismic risk communication, motivated by an early-career earth scientists' workshop in Istanbul that voiced the concerns of young geoscientists confronted firsthand by at-risk publics. Those concerns form the basis of a wider review of the risk communication issues that are likely to be encountered if community-centred participatory DRR approaches are to be adopted by earthquake science researchers

A "mental models" approach to the communication of subsurface hydrology and hazards

Communicating information about geological and hydrological hazards relies on appropriately worded communications targeted at the needs of the audience. But what are these needs, and how does the geoscientist discern them? This paper adopts a psychological "mental models" approach to assess the public perception of the geological subsurface, presenting the results of attitudinal studies and surveys in three communities in the south-west of England. The findings reveal important preconceptions and misconceptions regarding the impact of hydrological systems and hazards on the geological subsurface, notably in terms of the persistent conceptualisation of underground rivers and the inferred relations between flooding and human activity. The study demonstrates how such mental models can provide geoscientists with empirical, detailed and generalised data of perceptions surrounding an issue, as well reveal unexpected outliers in perception that they may not have considered relevant, but which nevertheless may locally influence communication. Using this approach, geoscientists can develop information messages that more directly engage local concerns and create open engagement pathways based on dialogue, which in turn allow both geoscience "experts" and local "non-experts" to come together and understand each other more effectively

Re-purposing Universities: The Path to Purpose

As the extent of damage to environmental systems from our business-as-usual activity becomes ever more alarming, Universities as core social institutions are under pressure to help society lead the transition to a sustainable future. Their response to the issues, that they themselves have helped reveal, has, however, been widely criticised for being wholly inadequate. Universities can be observed to engage with sustainability issues in ad-hoc ways, with the scale of attention and commitment dependant mainly on the level of pressure exerted by stakeholders that works to overcome aspects of inherent inertia. Sustainability initiatives can therefore be regarded mainly as bolt-ons. This mirrors how other sectors, including businesses, have tended to respond. As the environmental and social crisis mounts and the window for adaptive change to ensure long-term wellbeing for all narrows, the pressure for deeper systemic change builds. It is in this context that transformation to a “purpose-driven organisation” has emerged as a systemic approach to change, enabling an organisation to align deeply and rapidly with society's long-term best interest and hence a sustainable future. Nowhere has this concept been taken forward more obviously than in the business sector. As business leadership towards purpose becomes more apparent, so the lack of action in this area by universities appears starker. In this paper we clarify what it means to be a purpose-driven organisation, why and how it represents a deep holistic response to unsustainability, and what core questions emerging from the business world university leaders can ask themselves to begin the practical journey to transform their institutions into purpose-driven universities.</jats:p

Physical and mental health comorbidity is common in people with multiple sclerosis: nationally representative cross-sectional population database analysis

&lt;b&gt;Background&lt;/b&gt; Comorbidity in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is associated with worse health and higher mortality. This study aims to describe clinician recorded comorbidities in people with MS. &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Methods&lt;/b&gt; 39 comorbidities in 3826 people with MS aged ≥25 years were compared against 1,268,859 controls. Results were analysed by age, gender, and socioeconomic status, with unadjusted and adjusted Odds Ratios (ORs) calculated using logistic regression. &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Results&lt;/b&gt; People with MS were more likely to have one (OR 2.44; 95% CI 2.26-2.64), two (OR 1.49; 95% CI 1.38-1.62), three (OR 1.86; 95% CI 1.69-2.04), four or more (OR 1.61; 95% CI 1.47-1.77) non-MS chronic conditions than controls, and greater mental health comorbidity (OR 2.94; 95% CI 2.75-3.14), which increased as the number of physical comorbidities rose. Cardiovascular conditions, including atrial fibrillation (OR 0.49; 95% CI 0.36-0.67), chronic kidney disease (OR 0.51; 95% CI 0.40-0.65), heart failure (OR 0.62; 95% CI 0.45-0.85), coronary heart disease (OR 0.64; 95% CI 0.52-0.71), and hypertension (OR 0.65; 95% CI 0.59-0.72) were significantly less common in people with MS. &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Conclusion&lt;/b&gt; People with MS have excess multiple chronic conditions, with associated increased mental health comorbidity. The low recorded cardiovascular comorbidity warrants further investigation

Non-homologous end-joining pathway associated with occurrence of myocardial infarction: gene set analysis of genome-wide association study data

&lt;p&gt;Purpose: DNA repair deficiencies have been postulated to play a role in the development and progression of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The hypothesis is that DNA damage accumulating with age may induce cell death, which promotes formation of unstable plaques. Defects in DNA repair mechanisms may therefore increase the risk of CVD events. We examined whether the joints effect of common genetic variants in 5 DNA repair pathways may influence the risk of CVD events.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Methods: The PLINK set-based test was used to examine the association to myocardial infarction (MI) of the DNA repair pathway in GWAS data of 866 subjects of the GENetic DEterminants of Restenosis (GENDER) study and 5,244 subjects of the PROspective Study of Pravastatin in the Elderly at Risk (PROSPER) study. We included the main DNA repair pathways (base excision repair, nucleotide excision repair, mismatch repair, homologous recombination and non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ)) in the analysis.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Results: The NHEJ pathway was associated with the occurrence of MI in both GENDER (P = 0.0083) and PROSPER (P = 0.014). This association was mainly driven by genetic variation in the MRE11A gene (PGENDER = 0.0001 and PPROSPER = 0.002). The homologous recombination pathway was associated with MI in GENDER only (P = 0.011), for the other pathways no associations were observed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Conclusion: This is the first study analyzing the joint effect of common genetic variation in DNA repair pathways and the risk of CVD events, demonstrating an association between the NHEJ pathway and MI in 2 different cohorts.&lt;/p&gt