The flora of South Australia

Scanned from the original held Special Collections, Barr Smith LibraryAutomatic Optical Character Recognition has been performed to make the text searchabl

Spielarten des Kapitalismus, Spielarten der Nachhaltigkeit und die ökosoziale Dimension der Energiewende: Soziale Nebenwirkungen von Energiesteuern im Bereich privater Haushalte

Die These von den „Spielarten der Nachhaltigkeit“ baut auf der Theorie von den Spielarten des Kapitalismus auf: Dieselben Ideen, Institutionen und Akteurskoalitionen, die zu unterschiedlichen Formen von Kapitalismus und Wohlfahrtsstaat führen, sind auch für die Bearbeitung zentraler ökologischer Probleme maßgeblich. Diese These wird am Beispiel der Behandlung der deutschen Energiewende in den Debatten des Bundestages empirisch überprüft. Es wird sichtbar, dass bei der deutschen Energiewende zentrale Diskurse vor allem auf Marktnähe der Instrumente, auf Wirtschaftswachstum und auf Arbeitsplätze fokussieren. Hingegen wird die ökosoziale Frage nach der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit bei den Investitionskosten in den Hintergrund gedrängt. Es zeigt sich zudem, dass die jeweiligen Regierungsparteien weitgehend unabhängig von ihrer programmatischen Ausrichtung zu sehr ähnlichen Rechtfertigungsmustern greifen und damit die Kontinuität des Reformvorhabens in der einmal gewählten Ausrichtung sichern. The thesis of the "varieties of sustainability" is based on the theory of the varieties of capitalism: The same ideas, institutions and actor-coalitions, which lead to different forms of capitalism and welfare state, are also crucial for the treatment of key ecological problems. This thesis is empirically examined in the debates of the Bundestag on the example of the treatment of the German energy transition ("Energiewende"). It becomes apparent that in the German energy transition, central discourses primarily focus on the market proximity of the instruments, on economic growth and on employment opportunities. On the other hand, the eco-social question of distributive justice in respect of the investment costs is being pushed into the background. It is also shown that the parties, while in government, resort to very similar models of justification largely independent of their own programmatic orientation, and thus en¬sure the continuity of the reform project within the once selected direction. (peer reviewed

Diário de uma expedição de Pirara ao Upper Corentyne, e dali a Demerara

Tradução de Journal of an Expedition from Pirara to the Upper Corentyne, and from thence to Demerara, de Robert H. Schomburgk

Male pygmy hippopotamus influence offspring sex ratio

Pre-determining fetal sex is against the random and equal opportunity that both conceptus sexes have by nature. Yet, under a wide variety of circumstances, populations shift their birth sex ratio from the expected unity. Here we show, using fluorescence in situ hybridization, that in a population of pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis) with 42.5% male offspring, males bias the ratio of X- and Y-chromosome-bearing spermatozoa in their ejaculates, resulting in a 0.4337±0.0094 (mean±s.d.) proportion of Y-chromosome-bearing spermatozoa. Three alternative hypotheses for the shifted population sex ratio were compared: female counteract male, female indifferent, or male and female in agreement. We conclude that there appears little or no antagonistic sexual conflict, unexpected by prevailing theories. Our results indicate that males possess a mechanism to adjust the ratio of X- and Y-chromosome-bearing spermatozoa in the ejaculate, thereby substantially expanding currently known male options in sexual conflict

Geomorphic and stratigraphic evidence for an unusual tsunami or storm a few centuries ago at Anegada, British Virgin Islands

© The Author(s), 2010. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Natural Hazards 63 (2012): 51-84, doi:10.1007/s11069-010-9622-6.Waters from the Atlantic Ocean washed southward across parts of Anegada, east-northeast of Puerto Rico, during a singular event a few centuries ago. The overwash, after crossing a fringing coral reef and 1.5 km of shallow subtidal flats, cut dozens of breaches through sandy beach ridges, deposited a sheet of sand and shell capped with lime mud, and created inland fields of cobbles and boulders. Most of the breaches extend tens to hundreds of meters perpendicular to a 2-km stretch of Anegada’s windward shore. Remnants of the breached ridges stand 3 m above modern sea level, and ridges seaward of the breaches rise 2.2–3.0 m high. The overwash probably exceeded those heights when cutting the breaches by overtopping and incision of the beach ridges. Much of the sand-and-shell sheet contains pink bioclastic sand that resembles, in grain size and composition, the sand of the breached ridges. This sand extends as much as 1.5 km to the south of the breached ridges. It tapers southward from a maximum thickness of 40 cm, decreases in estimated mean grain size from medium sand to very fine sand, and contains mud laminae in the south. The sand-and-shell sheet also contains mollusks—cerithid gastropods and the bivalve Anomalocardia—and angular limestone granules and pebbles. The mollusk shells and the lime-mud cap were probably derived from a marine pond that occupied much of Anegada’s interior at the time of overwash. The boulders and cobbles, nearly all composed of limestone, form fields that extend many tens of meters generally southward from limestone outcrops as much as 0.8 km from the nearest shore. Soon after the inferred overwash, the marine pond was replaced by hypersaline ponds that produce microbial mats and evaporite crusts. This environmental change, which has yet to be reversed, required restriction of a former inlet or inlets, the location of which was probably on the island’s south (lee) side. The inferred overwash may have caused restriction directly by washing sand into former inlets, or indirectly by reducing the tidal prism or supplying sand to post-overwash currents and waves. The overwash happened after A.D. 1650 if coeval with radiocarbon-dated leaves in the mud cap, and it probably happened before human settlement in the last decades of the 1700s. A prior overwash event is implied by an inland set of breaches. Hypothetically, the overwash in 1650–1800 resulted from the Antilles tsunami of 1690, the transatlantic Lisbon tsunami of 1755, a local tsunami not previously documented, or a storm whose effects exceeded those of Hurricane Donna, which was probably at category 3 as its eye passed 15 km to Anegada’s south in 1960.The work was supported in part by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under its project N6480, a tsunami-hazard assessment for the eastern United States