Legacies of childhood learning for climate change adaptation

Using archaeological, historical, and ethnographic analysis of Norse and Inuit toys and miniatures, this paper argues that legacies of childhood learning can create limits to climatic change adaptation and provide lessons from the past relevant today. In Medieval Greenland, Norse children played with objects that would have familiarised them with the expected norms and behaviours of farming, household activities, sailing and conflict, but not with hunting, which was a key omission given the fundamental importance of wild resources to successful climatic adaptation in Greenland after the climate shocks of the mid-13th century. The restricted range of toys combined with an instructional form of learning suggests a high degree of path dependence that limited adaptation to climatic change, and we know the Norse settlement ended with the conjunctures of the 15th century that included climatic change. Inuit children, by contrast, learnt highly adapted behaviours and technologies through objects that taught locally tuned hunting skills. Inuit approaches that prioritised unstructured learning time aided the development of creative skills and problem-solving capabilities, and the Inuit successfully navigated the climatic changes of the Little Ice Age in Greenland. This insight from the past has implications for our approaches to childhood learning in the 21st century and the unfolding climate crisis. Innovative approaches to childhood teaching and learning in the context of climate change adaptation could provide effective solutions, on a timescale commensurate with that of projected climate impacts

The silent community?:From practicing (a)-political volition to re-politicising difference

The search for new approaches to low-carbon transition have led to an array of different movements over the past 10-15 years, most notable has been the Transition movement which has grown from humble beginnings in Totnes (Devon) to become a global movement. But while Transition is now a global movement in reach, many initiatives are not only falling short of their goal to bring about radical community-wide change, but in many cases are not a visible presence to the community. Part of this, as I will suggest, is down to the Transition Movement’s apolitical approach, which seeks to recast grassroots action as a practical, innovative approach to building urgent community resilience. Acting beyond the frontier of confrontation with government institutions and political differences between Transition Town participants is said to offer a convivial approach to action where similarities are privileged over differences that might delay or outright block the resilient, sustainable future they seek to build. Applying the theoretical contribution of Ernest Laclau to post- structuralist discourse theory this project analysed interview data across 3 Transition initiatives in Northern England to determine what is new and different about the Transition Movement and its apolitical approach that has captured the attention of so many different people across the UK and beyond. Attention is then drawn to the possible limitations of apolitical, non- confrontational action at the local scale through an analysis of the disjunction between the spatial characteristics of garden and community energy projects operating within ‘community’ space(s). Project failure thereafter can have the effect of re-politicising action when participants reflected on unwillingness to confront local actors for change. A noteworthy success of the Transition Town model has been its flexibility and adaptability allowing it to contextualise initiatives across different towns, villages and cities. But while the model needs to be adaptable, empirical evidence showed a marked difference in the approach to political confrontation and interpretation of what apolitical entails between each initiative. One such issue, presented as the apolitical paradox, refers to well documented concerns that if a group hopes to be inclusive of everyone in the local community it must subsequently remain indecisive over contentious local issues that divide the community questioning the ability of initiatives to bring about transition. One such reason for remaining apolitical is to ‘build bridges with local government’ as a means of ascertaining resources, support and knowledge. The issue with this is that remaining on good terms with government can curtail countercultural change, and put an increased dependence on voluntary groups to deliver environmental services as a way of masking central government cuts and normalise contemporary community consumption as it is. This in turn manifests a post-political normalisation of climate change in everyday life, something that Transition explicitly aims to avert. This project therefore argued that the de-politicisation of Transition initiatives, while a reason to adopt the Transition ethos, can also limit the movement to inaction at the community scale; fashioning its own post-political trap by limiting action to non-confrontational spaces that are largely unengaged with and invisible to the local community

The evolutionary origins of the Southern Ocean philobryid bivalves: hidden biodiversity, ancient persistence

Philobryids (Bivalvia: Arcoida) are one of the most speciose marine bivalve families in the Southern Ocean and are common throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Considering this diversity and their brooding reproductive mode (limiting long-distance dispersal), this family may have been present in the Southern Ocean since its inception. However Philobrya and Adacnarca appear only in the Quaternary fossil record of the Antarctic, suggesting a much more recent incursion. Molecular dating provides an independent means of measuring the time of origin and radiation of this poorly known group. Here we present the first combined molecular and morphological investigation of the Philobryidae in the Southern Ocean. Two nuclear loci (18S and 28S) were amplified from 35 Southern Ocean Adacnarca and Philobrya specimens, with a combined sequence length of 2,282 base pairs (bp). Adacnarca specimens (A. nitens and A. limopsoides) were resolved as a strongly supported monophyletic group. Genus Philobrya fell into two strongly supported groups (‘sublaevis’ and ‘magellanica/wandelensis’), paraphyletic with Adacnarca. The A. nitens species complex is identified as at least seven morpho-species through morphological and genetic analysis of taxon clustering. Phylogenetic analyses resolve Philobryidae as a strongly supported monophyletic clade and sister taxon to the Limopsidae, as anticipated by their classification into the superfamily Limopsoidea. Bayesian relaxed clock analyses of divergence times suggest that genus Adacnarca radiated in the Southern Ocean from the Early Paleogene, while P. sublaevis and P. wandelensis clades radiated in the late Miocene, following the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current

Project Thetis

The most prevalent pollutant in beachfront ecosystems is microplastic. Microplastics are the broken-down remains of discarded plastic products that are less than 5mm in diameter, and they can be found in large numbers in the top three inches of sand. Animals that inhabit burrows in the sand, as well as sea life, are affected by this plastic due to accidental ingestion. Project Thetis is constructing an autonomous robot that is capable of driving over the dry sand on the beach to collect these microplastics. We will prioritize the preservation of the ecosystems we involve ourselves in, so the robot will have as little impact on the topography of the sand as possible. The methodology for achieving our goals is to separate sand and plastics based on their unique terminal velocities. Sand has a lower terminal velocity than the average microplastic, so the air will be moving at a higher velocity than the sand carrying it upward. The velocity of the air will in turn also be less than the terminal velocity of microplastics, allowing the microplastics to fall into a collection bin. Future goals for the project involve utilizing the microplastics collected to make 3D printing filament to reuse material and prevent it from reverting back to what it is currently: microplastic

Towards a new social contract for archaeology and climate change adaptation

Anthropogenic climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing society in the twenty-first century. Climate impacts present wicked and messy challenges that require a cross-disciplinary understanding of social and biophysical change (Tengö et al. 2010). There is a growing body of evidence that climate change will have impacts on food production (Barrett 2010), global health (Watts et al. 2015, 2017), the frequency of hazardous events (IPCC 2014), resource conflict (Barnett and Adger 2007) and the displacement of people (Adger et al. 2013a; Bettini 2013, 2017). Curiously, archaeology, a subject with a long history of studying human-environment interactions, plays a very limited role in contemporary debates about appropriate responses to climate challenges (Costanzo et al. 2007; Dearing et al. 2006; Van de Noort 2013). This paper develops recent calls for archaeology to more actively participate in contemporary climate-adaptation research, public education and community empowerment (Riede 2014a; Riede et al. 2016a; Van de Noort 2013). Firstly, we outline the ways in which long-term perspectives of human interactions with changing climates (and thus archaeology) can contribute to global change research (GCR). Secondly, we outline the idea of a ‘social contract’ in archaeology as a way to enhance GCR. This ‘social contract’ would: (i) encourage interdisciplinary publications that synthesize archaeological research focusing on evidence of the long-term impacts of climate change on human societies; (ii) encourage museums to engage the public with thematic exhibitions that outline impacts of climate change on cultures in the past in ways that make explicit connections to contemporary debates; and, (iii) encourage transdisciplinary projects that better engage the physical sciences with the social sciences and the humanities, as well as with the academy and civil society

Velocity-selective direct frequency-comb spectroscopy of atomic vapors

We present an experimental and theoretical investigation of two-photon direct frequency-comb spectroscopy performed through velocity-selective excitation. In particular, we explore the effect of repetition rate on the $\textrm{5S}_{1/2}\rightarrow \textrm{5D}_{3/2, 5/2}$ two-photon transitions excited in a rubidium atomic vapor cell. The transitions occur via step-wise excitation through the $\textrm{5P}_{1/2, 3/2}$ states by use of the direct output of an optical frequency comb. Experiments were performed with two different frequency combs, one with a repetition rate of $\approx 925$ MHz and one with a repetition rate of $\approx 250$ MHz. The experimental spectra are compared to each other and to a theoretical model.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

A 43-GHz Survey in the ELAIS N2 Area

We describe a survey in the ELAIS N2 region with the VLA at 43.4 GHz, carried out with 1627 independent snapshot observations in D-configuration and covering about 0.5 square degrees. One certain source is detected, a previously-catalogued flat-spectrum QSO at z=2.2. A few (<5) other sources may be present at about the 3sigma level, as determined from positions of source-like deflections coinciding with blue stellar objects, or with sources from lower-frequency surveys. Independently we show how all the source-like detections identified in the data can be used with a maximum-likelihood technique to constrain the 43-GHz source counts at a level of ~7 mJy. Previous estimates of the counts at 43 GHz, based on lower-frequency counts and spectral measurements, are consistent with these constraints, although the present results are suggestive of somewhat higher surface densities at the 7 mJy level. They do not provide direct evidence of intrusion of a previously unknown source population, although the several candidate sources need examination before such a population can be ruled out.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in Mon. Not R. Astr. So

Jazz Ensembles

Kennesaw State University School of Music presents Jazz Ensembles.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1362/thumbnail.jp

Radio Observations of the Hubble Deep Field South Region III: The 2.5, 5.2 and 8.7 GHz Catalogues and Radio Source Properties

Deep radio observations of a wide region centred on the Hubble Deep Field South have been performed, providing one of the most sensitive set of radio observations acquired on the Australia Telescope Compact Array to date. A central rms of ~10 microJy is reached at four frequencies (1.4, 2.5, 5.2 and 8.7 GHz). In this paper the full source catalogues from the 2.5, 5.2 and 8.7 GHz observations are presented to complement Paper II, along with a detailed analysis of image quality and noise. We produce a consolidated catalogue by matching sources across all four frequencies of our survey. Radio spectral indices are used to investigate the nature of the radio sources and identify a number of sources with flat or inverted radio spectra, which indicates AGN activity. We also find several other interesting sources, including a broadline emitting radio galaxy, a giant radio galaxy and three Gigahertz Peaked Spectrum sources.Comment: Accepted by AJ. 13 figures and 13 table