Playing with the Cries

Clues provided by the text suggest that we should read Beckett's "First Love" in an associative way, and attending to its repetitive structure. The narrative has been organized as a working out of variations on the themes of death, marriage, and birth. What drives the reader forward is the desire to know what the death of the writer-narrator's father, his marriage and the birth of his child have to do with each other. This narrator speaks about himself as about a corpse, but one "not quite yet up to scratch". Unable to remain in the realm of pure thought, he Iives on, procreating and writing, against his own will. His writings revolt him, while he is pursued by the cries of the newborn. What remains, then, is his play with these cries of human existence, which seems to be an apt description of Beckett's writing.</jats:p

Response of three semi-arid savannas on contrasting soils to the removal of the woody component

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg for the Degree or Doctor or Philosophy October 1987A t h r e e - y e a r study was un dertaken in the semi-arid (500mm p a . ) n o rth -eastern lowland area of South Afric a. All the woody plants were removed from one -hectare savanna plots on three d i f f e r e n t soil types , and key hydrological and biological changes were monitored relative to adjacent controls. Runoff increased initially, but decreased once the grass cover increased. Deep drainage and lateral subsurface flow increased on the sandiest site. Evaporation from the soil surface increased on the heavier t e x t u r e d soils. The duration of plant - available water in the soil increased on all cleared p l o t s . & The p re - c l e a r in g woody plant abo veground biomass was in the range of of which 0 . 6 6 to 0 . 8 0 t ha was 5.6 to 11.2 t ha -1 leaf biomass. The annual herbaceous production was stron gly rainfal' dep endent, averaging 1 to 1.5 t ha -1 , and increased by 0 . 4 - 0 6 t .ha -1 except on the most f erti le site ( 0 . 6 - 2 0 t ha ) . Total available forage increased with c l e a ring, but so did its variability The observed changes in herbaceous layer palatability could not be a t trib u t e d to clearing. Woody plants and grasses wore shown to have w a te r- u s e niche separation in both rooting depth and time of water use. Simulation over forty years of wetting patterns indicated 75 to 85 % niche overlap, w t h separation on the depth axis more important in sandy sites, and on the time axis in clayey sites. Competition between woody plants and grasses was strongly asymmetrical in favour of woody plants. w

Agriculture and climate change mitigation in the developing world

Agricultural activities in the developing world directly contribute about 4.23 GtCO2eq/y to the current anthropogenic forcing of the global climate, and indirectly a further approximately 3.93GtCO2eq/y through forest clearing and degradation. Together they constitute a quarter of the total global climate forcing from all sources. Many proven agricultural practices and policies can reduce this impact on the global climate without compromising food production, or reduce the climate impact per unit of agricultural production. A reasonable target by 2030 for climate mitigation in developing world agriculture, taking into account the large difference between technical potentials and economically viable adoption rates and noting the equity issues relating to the mitigation activities in the developing world, is around 1.2 GtCO2eq/y for agriculture (~ 22% of projected unmitigated agricultural emissions by 2030) and 1.2 GtCO2eq/y for avoided and more climate-appropriate land use changes (~ 30% of current land use change related emissions)

Spatial and temporal disaggregation of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the City of Cape Town

Abstract This paper describes the methodology used to spatially and temporally disaggregate carbon dioxide emission estimates for the City of Cape Town, to be used for a city-scale atmospheric inversion estimating carbon dioxide fluxes. Fossil fuel emissions were broken down into emissions from road transport, domestic emissions, industrial emissions, and airport and harbour emissions. Using spatially explicit information on vehicle counts, and an hourly scaling factor, vehicle emissions estimates were obtained for the city. Domestic emissions from fossil fuel burning were estimated from household fuel usage information and spatially disaggregated population data from the 2011 national census. Fuel usage data were used to derive industrial emissions from listed activities, which included emissions from power generation, and these were distributed spatially according to the source point locations. The emissions from the Cape Town harbour and the international airport were determined from vessel and aircraft count data, respectively. For each emission type, error estimates were determined through error propagation techniques. The total fossil fuel emission field for the city was obtained by summing the spatial layers for each emission type, accumulated for the period of interest. These results will be used in a city-scale inversion study, and this method implemented in the future for a national atmospheric inversion study

What Limits Fire? An Examination of Driver\u27s of Burnt Area in Southern Africa

The factors controlling the extent of fire in Africa south of the equator were investigated using moderate resolution (500 m) satellite-derived burned area maps and spatial data on the environmental factors thought to affect burnt area. A random forest regression tree procedure was used to determine the relative importance of each factor in explaining the burned area fraction and to address hypotheses concerned with human and climatic influences on the drivers of burnt area. The model explained 68% of the variance in burnt area. Tree cover, rainfall in the previous 2 years, and rainfall seasonality were the most important predictors. Human activities – represented by grazing, roads per unit area, population density, and cultivation fraction – were also shown to affect burnt area, but only in parts of the continent with specific climatic conditions, and often in ways counter to the prevailing wisdom that more human activity leads to more fire. The analysis found no indication that ignitions were limiting total burnt area on the continent, and most of the spatial variation was due to variation in fuel load and moisture. Split conditions from the regression tree identified (i) low rainfall regions, where fire is rare; (ii) regions where fire is under human control; and (iii) higher rainfall regions where burnt area is determined by rainfall seasonality. This study provides insights into the physical, climatic, and human drivers of fire and their relative importance across southern Africa, and represents the beginnings of a predictive framework for burnt area