Explaining through causal mechanisms : resilience and governance of social–ecological systems

This paper synthesizes and builds on recent critiques of the resilience literature; namely that the field has largely been unsuccessful in capturing the complexity of governance processes, in particular cause–effects relationships. We demonstrate that absence of a causal model is reflected in the black-boxing of governance processes which is problematic for resilience studies with explanatory ambitions. We introduce mechanism-based thinking as alternative research perspective that offers more analytical rigour and elaborate the key principles of this approach. Mechanism-based approaches are aligned to the ways of thinking in systems theory and complexity sciences and can be used to advance scientific inquiry and policy practice to govern complex sustainability issues

A non-mammaliaform cynodont from the Upper Triassic of South Africa: a therapsid Lazarus taxon?

The tetrapod record of the ‘Stormberg Group’, including the Lower Elliot Formation, in the South African Karoo is widely dominated by archosaurian reptiles, contrasting with the therapsid dominion of the subjacent Beaufort Group. The only therapsids represented by skeletal remains in the Upper Triassic Lower Elliot Formation are the large traversodontid cynodont Scalenodontoides macrodontes and the recently described tritheledontid cynodont Elliotherium kersteni. Here we present a fragmentary lower jaw that provides evidence of a third type of cynodont for the Upper Triassic of South Africa. The fossil is tentatively assigned to the Diademodontidae. The latter representative of this family is known from the Late Anisian, and its tentative record in the Norian Lower Elliot Formation, if confirmed, will represent a case of Lazarus taxon. Thus, Diademodontidae apparently disappeared from the fossil record by the end of the Anisian and then reappeared in the Norian of South Africa, a stratigraphic interval of some 21 million years. This new cynodont record, together with the recently described Tritheledontidae, show that cynodonts are now the second most diverse tetrapod group in the Lower Elliot fauna.The University of the Witwatersrand, the National Research Foundation of South Africa, the Royal Society of London and PAST

Barendskraal, a diverse amniote locality from the Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone, Early Triassic of South Africa

Main articleA diverse amniote fauna has been recovered from Lower Triassic Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone exposures on the farm Barendskraal, near Middelburg in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The fauna includes the dicynodont therapsid Lystrosaurus sp., the therocephalian therapsids Tetracynodon darti, Moschorhinus kitchingi and Ericiolacerta parva, the archosauromorph reptiles Proterosuchus fergusi and Prolacerta broomi, and the procolophonoid reptiles Owenetta kitchingorum, Sauropareion anoplus and Saurodectes rogersorum. The locality is remarkable in that although it is fossil-rich, Lystrosaurus fossils do not appear to be as abundant as elsewhere in this assemblage zone, and the diversity of taxa at Barendskraal (at least nine species) is surpassed only by that of the famous HarrismithCommonage locality in the northeastern Free State province (at least 13 species). However, the fauna at Harrismith Commonage is typical of most other Lystrosaurus biozone localities in being dominated numerically by Lystrosaurus. Study of the tetrapod taxa from Barendskraal is providing new insights into procolophonoid phylogeny and survivorship across the Permo-Triassic boundary, as well as the stratigraphic ranges of various taxa in the Lower Triassic deposits of the Karoo Basin.National Geographic Society grant number 6929-00

A Darker Face: The ANZACs, Empire, and Race in First World War Egypt

During the First World War, over 100,000 soldiers from Australia and New Zealand were deployed to Egypt, with many staying for months or years. This thesis explores the interactions between Australasian soldiers and Egyptian civilians over the course of the war, investigating how the actions and attitudes of Australasians differed from the traditional agents of British imperialism in Egypt, with a specific emphasis on the ANZACs’ peculiar racial thought. The chapters examine (a) how Australasian imperial ideology was significantly less paternalistic than Britons’ in Egypt (b) how the Australasians’ penchant for ascribing Egyptians with blackening monikers affected imperial relationships and (c) how Australasians racialized different types of non-whites in Egypt

Kiri tundmatule, Halle

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b1877349~S1*es