Detecting ancient life : Investigating the nature and origin of possible stromatolites and associated calcite from a one billion year old lake

ATB acknowledges the hospitality of the North West Highlands Geopark in July 2017. DW acknowledges funding from the Australian Research Council via the Future Fellowship scheme (FT 140100321).Peer reviewedPostprin

Boundaries and Bridges: the influence of James Cooksey Culwick on the development of the teaching and learning of music in nineteenth century Ireland

James Cooksey Culwick (1845-1907) was born in England. Trained as chorister and organist in Lichfield Cathedral, he moved to Ireland at twenty- one and remained until his death in 1907. Although his reputation as scholar, musician and teacher was acknowledged widely during his lifetime - he received an honorary doctorate from University of Dublin (1893) - little is known about the contribution he made to music education. This paper addresses this gap in the literature and argues that it was Culwick's singular achievement to pay attention to music pedagogy at secondary level, by recognizing that music could be seen as a serious career option for girls, and by providing resources for teachers which emphasised the development of an 'art-feeling' in pupils of all abilities. In addition, he considered Irish music as an art which had significance as music first, and Irish music second, and advocated a 'laudable tolerance' for opposing views on matters of cultural identity to Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century

Investigation of the Dietary Intake and Health Status in East Africa in the 1960s: A Systematic Review of the Historic Oltersdorf Collection

We have recently reported on the myriad health benefits of traditional East African foods and food habits. However, this region continues to experience a nutrition transition whereby traditional, well-tried foods have been systematically replaced with the products of multinational corporations. The health-related impact has been devastating, as evidenced by current non-communicable disease (NCD) trends. The purpose of the present investigation was to review the historic Oltersdorf Collection (data collated by the Max-Planck Nutrition Research Unit, Bumbuli Tanzania from the 1930s to 1960s) to determine if adherence to traditional East African food habits was positively associated with health status indices in populations residing in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda during this period. The systematic review process resulted in six investigations being identified. Published between 1963 and 1969, these are likely the first investigations to provide original data pertaining to dietary intake/adequacy and health status indices within specific East African cohorts. Overall, the review revealed that many ethnic groups did not exhibit adequate dietary intake and did not consume a diversity of traditional whole foods representative of the wide spectrum of food choices available within the region at this time. NCDs such as obesity, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes were not reported in any investigation. However, there was substantial reporting of malnutrition-related and infectious diseases, particularly among children. The present review supports the contention that the shift from a traditional, diversified diet to a simplified, monotonous diet may have occurred with the onset of cash-crop farming. For resolution of nutrition-related epidemics currently plaguing Africa, including NCDs and malnutrition-related diseases (i.e., the double burden) it is critically important to investigate and disseminate evidence related to the fundamental contributors to the nutrition transition