Eating Christmas Cookies, Whole-wheat Bread and Frozen Chicken in the Kindergarten: Doing Pedagogy by Other Means

The study presented here explores eating as a pedagogical practice by paying attention to arrangements of things such as Christmas cookies, whole-wheat and white bread, frozen chicken, plates, chairs, tables, and freezers. Through a series of ethnographic research examples from German and Brazilian preschools, it investigates how eating in the kindergarten can be a sensual pleasure, a health risk, an ethnic custom, or a civil right within different local histories. Through specific arrangements of foods and other things, young children are educated to eat with moderation, to change their ethnic dietary habits, or to be "modern citizens". Pedagogy can thus consist of doing public health, doing ethnic identity, or doing citizenship. Eating is an important way of doing pedagogy in early childhood education and care settings. © 2013 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

Modeling sulfate reduction in methane hydrate-bearing continental margin sediments : does a sulfate-methane transition require anaerobic oxidation of methane?

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 12 (2011): Q07006, doi:10.1029/2011GC003501.The sulfate-methane transition (SMT), a biogeochemical zone where sulfate and methane are metabolized, is commonly observed at shallow depths (1–30 mbsf) in methane-bearing marine sediments. Two processes consume sulfate at and above the SMT, anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) and organoclastic sulfate reduction (OSR). Differentiating the relative contribution of each process is critical to estimate methane flux into the SMT, which, in turn, is necessary to predict deeper occurrences of gas hydrates in continental margin sediments. To evaluate the relative importance of these two sulfate reduction pathways, we developed a diagenetic model to compute the pore water concentrations of sulfate, methane, and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). By separately tracking DIC containing 12C and 13C, the model also computes δ13C-DIC values. The model reproduces common observations from methane-rich sediments: a well-defined SMT with no methane above and no sulfate below and a δ13C-DIC minimum at the SMT. The model also highlights the role of upward diffusing 13C-enriched DIC in contributing to the carbon isotope mass balance of DIC. A combination of OSR and AOM, each consuming similar amounts of sulfate, matches observations from Site U1325 (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 311, northern Cascadia margin). Without AOM, methane diffuses above the SMT, which contradicts existing field data. The modeling results are generalized with a dimensional analysis to the range of SMT depths and sedimentation rates typical of continental margins. The modeling shows that AOM must be active to establish an SMT wherein methane is quantitatively consumed and the δ13C-DIC minimum occurs. The presence of an SMT generally requires active AOM

How Biology Became Social and What It Means for Social Theory

In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life-sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of biology. I focus in particular on three areas of investigation: (1) technical changes in evolutionary literature that have provoked a rethinking of the possibility of altruism, morality and prosocial behaviours in evolution; (2) changes in neuroscience, from an understanding of the brain as an isolated data processor to the ultrasocial and multiply connected social brain of contemporary neuroscience; and (3) changes in molecular biology, from the view of the gene as an autonomous master of development to the ‘reactive genome’ of the new emerging field of molecular epigenetics. In the second section I reflect on the possible implications for the social sciences of this novel biosocial terrain and argue that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo-Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as we have known them. Signs of a new biosocial language are emerging in several social-science disciplines and this may represent an exciting theoretical novelty for twenty-first social theory

Geophysical and geochemical survey of a large marine pockmark on the Malin Shelf, Ireland

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 13 (2012): Q01011, doi:10.1029/2011GC003787.Marine pockmarks are a specific type of seabed geological setting resembling craters or pits and are considered seabed surface expressions of fluid flow in the subsurface. A large composite pockmark on the Malin Shelf, off the northern coast of Ireland was surveyed and ground truthed to assess its activity and investigate fluid related processes in the subsurface. Geophysical (including acoustic and electromagnetic) data confirmed the subsurface presence of signatures typical of fluids within the sediment. Shallow seismic profiling revealed a large shallow gas pocket and typical gas related indicators such as acoustic blanking and enhanced reflectors present underneath and around the large pockmark. Sulphate profiles indicate that gas from the shallow reservoir has been migrating upwards, at least recently. However, there are no chimney structures observed in the sub-bottom data and the migration pathways are not apparent. Electromagnetic data show slightly elevated electrical conductivity on the edges of the pockmarks and a drop below regional levels within the confines of the pockmark, suggesting changes in physical properties of the sediment. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiments were employed to characterize the organic component of sediments from selected depths. Very strong microbial signatures were evident in all NMR spectra but microbes outside the pockmark appear to be much more active than inside. These observations coincide with spikes in conductivity and the lateral gas bearing body suggesting that there is an increase in microbial activity and biomass when gas is present.We wish to thank the Geological Survey of Ireland, the INtegrated Mapping FOr the Sustainable Development of Ireland’s MArine Resource (INFOMAR) program, the Irish Environmental Protection Agency, Science Foundation of Ireland, QUESTOR (Queens University Belfast) and the Irish Council for Science, engineering and technology for funding this research. AJS thanks NSERC, (Strategic and Discovery Programs), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and the Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI) for providing Canadian funding. The survey data utilized in the research has been co‐funded by the Geological Survey of Ireland and the Offshore Irish Petroleum Infrastructure Programme (PIP; Ref. No: IS05/16 Malin Basin EM).2012-07-1

Liminality in Practice: A Case study in Life Sciences Research

Contemporary health challenges (e.g. diabetes, climate change, antimicrobial resistance) are underpinned by complex interrelationships between behavioral, cultural, social, environmental and biological processes. Current experimental systems are only partially relevant to the problems they investigate, but aspirations to embed interdisciplinary working and community engagement into life scientists’ work inresponse to this partiality have proven difficult in practice. This paper explores one UK university-based life sciences initiative as it seeks to develop modes of working which respond to this complexity. Drawing on ‘liminal hotspots’ as a sensitizing concept, we explore how participating academics articulate complex problems, knowledge-making, interdisciplinary working and community engagement. Our analysis shows they become recurrently ‘trapped’ (institutionally and epistemologically) between fixed/universalized cosmologies of biology/disease, and more contemporary cosmologies in which biology and disease are conceptualized as situated and evolving. Adopting approaches to community organizing based on ‘process pragmatism’ we propose ways in which life scientists might radically reorganise their practice and move beyond current limiting enactments of interdisciplinary and community engaged working. In doing so we claim that the relevance and ‘humanness’ of life scienceresearch will be increased

Kardiovaskuläre Prävention als Technik zur Bildung von Leben selbst: eine ethnographische Untersuchung

Cardiovascular Prevention as Technique of Life-Itself