Methods and application of deep-time thermochronology: Insights from slowly-cooled terranes of Mongolia and the North American craton

Continental interiors are an underappreciated facet of plate tectonics due to the perception that they are often static over long timescales. Salient tectonic margins receive more attention, owing to their comparatively dynamic state during the creation and destruction of continents and ocean basins. I utilize low-temperature (U-Th)/He and 40Ar/39Ar thermochronology to address questions regarding the spatial and temporal thermal evolution, and by proxy, the exhumation and burial histories of these slowly-cooled terranes through deep time. Chapter One is focused on the topographic evolution of the Hangay Mountains of central Mongolia, where apatite (U- Th)/He data and thermal models suggest that the post-orogenic landscape experienced rapid relief loss of a few hundred meters in the mid-Mesozoic. The Hangay are now characterized by a relict landscape that has undergone slow exhumation on the order of ~10 m/Ma since the Cretaceous (~100 Ma), analogous to other old landscapes such as the Appalachians. The central Mongolian landscape remains in a state of topographic disequilibrium, while modest surface uplift since the Oligocene and recent glaciation have had little effect on erosion rates due to the fact that there has been minor tectonism and a very dry climate during the Cenozoic.Chapter Two confronts the problem of dispersed apatite (U-Th)/He cooling ages that often afflict slowly-cooled terranes, such as the Hangay Mountains. Conventional total-gas analysis offers little explanation or remedy for He age scatter that has been typically attributed to many factors, such as isotopic zonation, crystal lattice defects, and radiation damage. Unlike conventional analysis, the continuous ramped heating (CRH) technique exploits incremental 4He release during a continuous, controlled heating rate under static extraction line conditions. This approach allows the measurement of the cumulative gas released from apatite grains and assessment of the characteristic sigmoidal release curve shape as a means to distinguish between expected (radiogenic) and anomalous volume-diffusion behavior. Screening results for multiple apatite suites show that the CRH method can discriminate between the simple, smooth release of apatites exhibiting expected behavior and well-replicated ages, and grains that do not replicate well with more complicated 4He release patterns – and offers a means to correct these ages.Chapter Three is focused on understanding the assumed long-term stability of the southern Canadian Shield. Craton stability over billion-year timescales is often inferred due to the lack of geologic records to suggest otherwise. For the Proterozoic (2.5-0.54 Ga) there is little or no intermediate temperature thermal-history information for many locations, however K-feldspar 40Ar/39Ar MDD data and modeled thermal histories linked to published high- and low- temperature data from the Canadian Shield suggest the southern craton experienced unroofing delayed until ~1 Ga, coeval with the formation of the supercontinent Rodinia. K-feldspar data suggest a prolonged period of near-isothermal cooling of \u3c0.5°C/Ma in the late Proterozoic where rocks were positioned at cratonic depths in the middle crust for up to ~500 million years at temperatures of ~150-200°C and subsequently exhumed to the surface in the Neoproterozoic. Thermal history solutions and geophysical evidence of underplating and crustal thickening at the Mid-Continental Rift and adjacent regions suggest uplift and a previously unrecognized phase of cratonic unroofing that began in the Neoproterozoic, which ultimately contributed to the development of the Great Unconformity of North America

The Relationship Between Exam Completion Time and Exam Score in an Introductory Animal Science Course

To better assist educators in giving advice to students on examination completion methods, this study aimed to explore the relationship between the time a student utilizes uses to complete an exam and the score the student receives on that exam. This study analyzed exams from an introductory animal science course, taught by the same professor, offered within the Department of Animal Sciences within the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) during three different terms. The objective of this study was to determine the correlation between the amount of time students spend on an exam and the score received. This study also considered the effects of gender, rank, and educational plan on the scores received on these exams. It was hypothesized that students completing the exam with an intermediate submission time would score higher than students completing the exam with an early or late submission time. The purpose of this study was to allow educators in a natural sciences course to better advise students on exam taking techniques. Analysis showed no significant difference in any of the above categories except for on one exam. Students with a major within CFAES that was not Animal Sciences took longer to complete the final exam that did students of an Animal Sciences major or a major outside of the college.No embarg

Yoga jam: remixing Kirtan in the Art of Living

Yoga Jam are a group of musicians in the United Kingdom who are active members of the Art of Living, a transnational Hindu-derived meditation group. Yoga Jam organize events—also referred to as yoga raves and yoga remixes—that combine Hindu devotional songs (bhajans) and chants (mantras) with modern Western popular musical genres, such as soul, rock, and particularly electronic dance music. This hybrid music is often played in a clublike setting, and dancing is interspersed with yoga and meditation. Yoga jams are creative fusions of what at first sight seem to be two incompatible phenomena—modern electronic dance music culture and ancient yogic traditions. However, yoga jams make sense if the Durkheimian distinction between the sacred and the profane is challenged, and if tradition and modernity are not understood as existing in a sort of inverse relationship. This paper argues that yoga raves are authenticated through the somatic experience of the modern popular cultural phenomenon of clubbing combined with therapeutic yoga practices and validated by identifying this experience with a reimagined Vedic tradition

Religiosity, materialism, consumer environmental predisposition. Some insights on vegan purchasing intentions in Italy

This paper explores the effects of environmental predisposition on purchasing intentions. The proposed model considers religiosity as a determinant of consumer environmental predisposition, adopting a multidimensional view entailing both intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. Further, the effects of materialism are investigated, as it has been recognized as one of the most relevant hampering factors in determining consumer environmental predispositions and behaviors. Such factors appear intimately related, as materialism has been indicated as largely antithetical with respect to religion. Literature has suggested religiosity to be a key determinant of consumer environmental predispositions and behaviors. This might be even more important for specific, environmentally relevant consumer lifestyles. This work is hence set within vegan consumption. Veganism has been mostly related to specific religious beliefs (like Buddhism), according to which it represents a core component of larger worldviews. A structural equation model is proposed, based on a sample of 842 Italian consumers. Results show that religiosity exerts some effect on consumer environmental predisposition, and that, in turn, such predisposition determines vegan purchasing intentions. A split model is then proposed considering Christian and Buddhist consumers. Results of multigroup analysis show that religious influxes on consumer environmental predispositions might vary according to different religious faiths. Given the lack of previous empirical research, results of this study require further validation; still, they might provide some insights for managers, as markets related to environmentally relevant products and services are exhibiting a sustained growth

Un/making difference through performance and mediation in contemporary Africa

This special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies grew out of a panel we organized at the European Conference on African Studies in Lisbon in June 2013. Our starting point was the observation of a massive revival of cultural and religious identities across the African continent, stretching from post-apartheid South Africa to Islamist groups in parts of West Africa. In the early twenty-first century, Africa appears to be witnessing a historical moment characterized by a resurgence of a politics of difference that, regardless of the heterogeneous forms in which it materializes, shares an uncanny ability to produce and sustain identities based on a politics of difference

Un/making difference through performance and mediation in contemporary Africa

This special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies grew out of a panel we organized at the European Conference on African Studies in Lisbon in June 2013. Our starting point was the observation of a massive revival of cultural and religious identities across the African continent, stretching from post-apartheid South Africa to Islamist groups in parts of West Africa. In the early twenty-first century, Africa appears to be witnessing a historical moment characterized by a resurgence of a politics of difference that, regardless of the heterogeneous forms in which it materializes, shares an uncanny ability to produce and sustain identities based on a politics of difference

Family Values, Social Capital and Contradictions of American Modernity

Contemporary American social and political discourses have integrated concerns about family values into the realm of debates about the associational life of social capital. In these discussions, theoretical and historical confusions about the relations between family and civil society run rampant. In this article, I first bring theoretical clarity to these social structures and the type of relations upon which they are predicated and, second, briefly historicize the relationships between an American idea of family and civil society. By tracing changes in popular understandings of family and civil society, I demonstrate that the modern family values movement spurns its Victorian roots by maintaining the nostalgic language for a life and family of old built around a Christian home, while embracing means and institutions, and even more importantly, a form of family, which belies the nostalgia. The family has now become an institution or association which can be sustained through instrumental interventions; it is no longer to do with the organic relations of sentiment remaining from some long-faded Gemeinschaft. The family and the Christian home ideal, which were at the center of American critiques of modernization, have ceased to be.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Pilgrimage and Visual Genre: The Architecture of Twentieth-Century Roman Catholic Pilgrimage in Scotland

As Roman Catholics gained confidence in twentieth-century Scotland, they revived pre-Reformation shrines and pilgrimages and created new shrines with transnational connections to the modern Catholic world. Three sites in this campaign were Carfin, a new pilgrimage center based on Lourdes; Whithorn, site of medieval pilgrimages to Saint Ninian; and Dunfermline, associated with the canonized Queen Margaret of Scotland. Each had different meanings for Scottish Catholicism. The landscapes of these shrines included proposed new buildings, completed buildings, including shrines and churches, and existing features, notably caves or grottoes and medieval ruins. Whether found, professionally designed, or made by the clergy and their congregations, these sites framed and ordered pilgrimage rituals and lent them meaning. Seeing common architectural, visual features across these pilgrimages, and drawing on new archival research, we suggest that the employment of recognizable visual genres was a key way of creating a consensus amongst the faithful. International symbols of saintly presence were remade for the local context, with intertwined religious and political intentions, giving tangible expression to a revived Catholicism in Scotland, and promoting a new vision of Scotland as a Catholic nation