Distribution of the Economic Gains of the 1990s

„h Australia¡¦s surge in productivity growth in the 1990s fuelled an acceleration in growth in total income and average income (income per person in Australia). ¡V Annual average income growth accelerated from 1.4 per cent in the 1970s and 1980s to 2.5 per cent in the 1990s. ¡V Faster productivity growth accounted for over 90 per cent of the acceleration. „h The income growth of the 1990s was distributed evenly between labour (wages and salaries) and capital (profits). The labour and capital shares in economywide income were stable throughout the 1990s. Concerns that productivity-enhancing factors have adversely affected the income-earning potential of labour appear to be unfounded at the aggregate level.economic gains - distribution - living standards - income - productivity - employment - wealth - consumption - education - health - housing - environment - working hours

Discovery of a nanodiamond-rich layer in the Greenland ice sheet

We report the discovery in the Greenland ice sheet of a discrete layer of free nanodiamonds (NDs) in very high abundances, implying most likely either an unprecedented influx of extraterrestrial (ET) material or a cosmic impact event that occurred after the last glacial episode. From that layer, we extracted n-diamonds and hexagonal diamonds (lonsdaleite), an accepted ET impact indicator, at abundances of up to about 5!106 times background levels in adjacent younger and older ice. The NDs in the concentrated layer are rounded, suggesting they most likely formed during a cosmic impact through some process similar to carbon-vapor deposition or high-explosive detonation. This morphology has not been reported previously in cosmic material, but has been observed in terrestrial impact material. This is the first highly enriched, discrete layer of NDs observed in glacial ice anywhere, and its presence indicates that ice caps are important archives of ET events of varying magnitudes. Using a preliminary ice chronology based on oxygen isotopes and dust stratigraphy, the ND-rich layer appears to be coeval with ND abundance peaks reported at numerous North American sites in a sedimentary layer, the Younger Dryas boundary layer (YDB), dating to 12.9 0.1 ka. However, more investigation is needed to confirm this association

Realising consilience: How better communication between archaeologists, historians and natural scientists can transform the study of past climate change in the Mediterranean

This paper reviews the methodological and practical issues relevant to the ways in which natural scientists, historians and archaeologists may collaborate in the study of past climatic changes in the Mediterranean basin. We begin by discussing the methodologies of these three disciplines in the context of the consilience debate, that is, attempts to unify different research methodologies that address similar problems. We demonstrate that there are a number of similarities in the fundamental methodology between history, archaeology, and the natural sciences that deal with the past (“palaeoenvironmental sciences”), due to their common interest in studying societal and environmental phenomena that no longer exist. The three research traditions, for instance, employ specific narrative structures as a means of communicating research results. We thus present and compare the narratives characteristic of each discipline; in order to engage in fruitful interdisciplinary exchange, we must first understand how each deals with the societal impacts of climatic change. In the second part of the paper, we focus our discussion on the four major practical issues that hinder communication between the three disciplines. These include terminological misunderstandings, problems relevant to project design, divergences in publication cultures, and differing views on the impact of research. Among other recommendations, we suggest that scholars from the three disciplines should aim to create a joint publication culture, which should also appeal to a wider public, both inside and outside of academia.This paper emerged as a result of a workshop at Costa Navarino and the Navarino Environmental Observatory (NEO), Greece in April 2014, which addressed Mediterranean Holocene climate and human societies. The workshop was co-sponsored by IGBP/PAGES, NEO, the MISTRALS/PaleoMex program, the Labex OT-Med, the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University, and the Institute of Oceanography at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research. We also acknowledge funding from the National Science Centre, Poland, within the scheme of the Centre's postdoctoral fellowships (DEC-2012/04/S/HS3/00226 (A.I)); the Swedish Research Council (grant numbers 421-2014-1181 (E.W.) and 621-2012-4344 (K.H.)); CSIC-Ramón y Cajal post-doctoral program RYC-2013-14073 and Clare Hall College, Cambridge, Shackleton Fellowship (B.M.); the EU/FP7 Project ‘Sea for Society’ (Science and Society - 2011-1, 289066)

The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra–West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe

Enhanced Fear Memories and Altered Brain Glucose Metabolism (¹⁸F-FDG-PET) following Subanesthetic Intravenous Ketamine Infusion in Female Sprague–Dawley Rats

Although women and men are equally likely to receive ketamine following traumatic injury, little is known regarding sex-related differences in the impact of ketamine on traumatic memory. We previously reported that subanesthetic doses of an intravenous (IV) ketamine infusion following fear conditioning impaired fear extinction and altered regional brain glucose metabolism (BGluM) in male rats. Here, we investigated the effects of IV ketamine infusion on fear memory, stress hormone levels, and BGluM in female rats. Adult female Sprague–Dawley rats received a single IV ketamine infusion (0, 2, 10, or 20 mg/kg, over a 2-h period) following auditory fear conditioning (three pairings of tone and footshock). Levels of plasma stress hormones, corticosterone (CORT) and progesterone, were measured after the ketamine infusion. Two days after ketamine infusion, fear memory retrieval, extinction, and renewal were tested over a three-day period. The effects of IV ketamine infusion on BGluM were determined using 18F-fluoro-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG-PET) and computed tomography (CT). The 2 and 10 mg/kg ketamine infusions reduced locomotor activity, while 20 mg/kg infusion produced reduction (first hour) followed by stimulation (second hour) of activity. The 10 and 20 mg/kg ketamine infusions significantly elevated plasma CORT and progesterone levels. All three doses enhanced fear memory retrieval, impaired fear extinction, and enhanced cued fear renewal in female rats. Ketamine infusion produced dose-dependent effects on BGluM in fear- and stress-sensitive brain regions of female rats. The current findings indicate that subanesthetic doses of IV ketamine produce robust effects on the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and brain energy utilization that may contribute to enhanced fear memory observed in female rats