Framing Science for Public Action

Framing is widely acknowledged to be central to understanding how language constructs public controversies. This paper draws on framing-for-deliberation and framing-for-difference to develop principles for framing science communication

Cultural Discourses of Public Engagement: Insights for Energy System Transformation

Our case study explores the public’s roles in energy transition by examining public participation processes and their meanings in Boulder’s Energy Future. Drawing on Cultural Discourse Analysis (Carbaugh, 2007b) as an analytical framework, we investigate discourses of public participation active in city council meetings as resources for generating insights about how to design more meaningful engagement practices. Our analysis traces meanings attached to attending and speaking at city council meetings, emailing council, outreach and education efforts, task force service, and voting. These practices and meanings provide insights for designing future public participation as well as theorizing public participation in energy governance

Do Experts Help or Hinder? An Empirical Examination of Experts and Expertise during Public Deliberation

We consider expertise in interaction during small group public deliberations. Taking communication as design, we analyze the intentional design of deliberative format using invited experts to support public discussions. Through discourse analysis of one expert’s interventions into the group discussion, we suggest how expertise might best contribute to public deliberation

The effects of anxiety on oral reading miscues

Anxiety is a condition which is hard to define even though everyone has experienced it to some degree and at one time or another. One problem involved in defining it is to determine whether it is a long- or short-term characteristic. This is an important point because if anxiety is a long-term personality trait we need to find out which persons are anxious, how they got that way, and how they are coping with the condition. If, on the other hand, anxiety is merely a temporary state, we need to determine during which situations the anxiety is aroused and how the persons cope with the anxiety whenever it arises.

The Skunkwork of Ecological Engagement

Ecological engagement is about attending to the possibilities of dwelling in a place; skunkwork is a way of orienting this dwelling. Skunkwork refers to creative, self-coordinated, collective work in informal spaces of learning and reminds us that ecologically attuned work in the world can promote unexpected, yet collectively desired, change. In this essay, we describe how we used skunkwork to orient our ecological engagement in two workshops on ‘community resilience.’ In both workshops, Boulder Creek became our commonplace, with its history of flooding and abatements as well as one city’s planning and management of crisis and sustainability. We draw from our respective home ecologies and our collective experiences in these workshops to highlight how four attributes of skunkwork and ecological engagement, namely proximity, movement, ecological narration, and weak theory, contribute to community engagement scholarship and advocacy

Comparison of Thermal and Microwave Paleointensity Estimates in Specimens Displaying Non‐Ideal Behavior in Thellier‐Style Paleointensity Experiments

Determining the strength of the ancient geomagnetic field is vital to our understanding of the core and geodynamo but obtaining reliable measurements of the paleointensity is fraught with difficulties. Over a quarter of magnetic field strength estimates within the global paleointensity database from 0‐5 Ma come from Hawaiʻi. Two previous studies on the SOH1 drill core gave inconsistent, apparently method‐dependent paleointensity estimates, with an average difference of 30%. The paleointensity methods employed in the two studies differed both in demagnetization mechanism (thermal or microwave radiation) and Thellier‐style protocol (perpendicular and Original Thellier protocols) – both variables that could cause the strong differences in the estimates obtained. Paleointensity experiments have therefore been conducted on 79 specimens using the previously untested combinations of Thermal‐Perpendicular and Microwave‐Original Thellier methods to analyze the effects of demagnetization mechanism and protocol in isolation. We find that, individually, neither demagnetization mechanism nor protocol entirely explains the differences in paleointensity estimates. Specifically, we found that non‐ideal multi‐domain‐like effects are enhanced using the Original Thellier protocol (independent of demagnetization mechanism), often resulting in paleointensity overestimation. However, we also find evidence, supporting recent findings from the 1960 Kilauea lava flow, that Microwave‐Perpendicular experiments performed without pTRM checks can produce underestimates of the paleointensity due to unaccounted‐for sample alteration at higher microwave powers. Together, these findings support that the true paleointensities fall between the estimates previously published and emphasize the need for future studies (thermal or microwave) to use protocols with both pTRM checks and a means of detecting non‐ideal grain effects

Environmental Communication Pedagogy for Sustainability: Developing Core Capacities to Engage with Complex Problems

Pedagogy informed by environmental communication can enhance collaboration within and outside the classroom. Through our collaborative, sustainability-focused work within the United States and internationally, we identified core capacities that prepare people to work together to form inclusive organizations and identify and respond to pressing socioecological problems.We describe six activities we have used in adult learner classrooms, on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research teams, and with organizational, governmental, and business partners to improve collaborations for sustainability-related problem solving. We conclude with a reflection on opportunities for situated assessment practices

An assessment of long duration geodynamo simulations using new paleomagnetic modeling criteria (Q PM)

Long-term temporal variations of the magnetic field (timescales >10 Myr), characterized from paleomagnetic data, have been hypothesized to reflect the evolution of Earth's deep interior and couplings between the core and mantle. By tying observed changes in the paleomagnetic record to mechanisms predicted from numerical geodynamo simulations, we have a unique tool for assessing changes in the deep interior back in time. However, numerical simulations are not run in an Earth-like parameter regime and assessing how well they reproduce the geomagnetic field is difficult. Criteria have been proposed to determine the level of spatial and temporal agreement between simulations and observations spanning historical and Holocene timescales, but no such criteria exist for longer timescales. Here we present a new set of five criteria (Quality of Paleomagnetic Modeling criteria, QPM) that assess the degree of semblance between a simulated dynamo and the temporal and spatial variations of the long-term (∼10 Myr) paleomagnetic field. These criteria measure inclination anomaly, virtual geomagnetic pole dispersion at the equator, latitudinal variation in virtual geomagnetic pole dispersion, normalized width of virtual dipole moment distribution, and dipole field reversals. We have assessed 46 geodynamo simulations using the QPM criteria. The simulations have each been run for the equivalent of at least ∼300 kyr, span reversing and non-reversing regimes, and include either homogeneous or heterogeneous heat flux boundary conditions. We find that none of our simulations reproduce all salient aspects of the long-term paleomagnetic field behavior for the past 10 Myr. Nevertheless, our simulations bracket Earth values, suggesting that an Earth-like simulation is feasible within the available computationally accessible parameter space. This new set of criteria can inform future simulations that aim to reproduce all aspects of Earth's long-term magnetic field behavior

Age of emplacement and paleolatitude of the Agulhas Plateau – IODP Expedition 392, Site U1582

The Agulhas Plateau (AP), along with Maud Rise (MR) and Northeast Georgia Rise (NEGR), is part of the greater Southeast African Large Igneous Province (LIP) that is hypothesized to have been emplaced above the Bouvet hotspot during breakup of Africa and East Antarctica. Since their emplacement in the Late Cretaceous, these prominent submarine plateaus have been rifted along a triple junction and have controlled connectivity between the South Atlantic, Southern Ocean, and southern Indian Ocean basins. Igneous rocks recovered on a basement high at Site U1582 (located at ~37°S) on the northern Agulhas Plateau hold clues to the age, paleolatitude, nature of LIP basement, and its relation to the mid-ocean ridges that separated the AP from MR and NEGR. At Site U1582, a pillow basalt sequence with intercalated sediments was recovered. Based on initial shipboard biostratigraphy, a Santonian age (~85 Ma) was assigned to this unit. The moderately altered, mildly porphyritic mafic igneous basement rocks recovered at Site U1582 contain abundant veins and carbonate-filled voids. We report in situ U-Pb ages of carbonate vein and void fills (n=20) along with paleomagnetic directions (n=25) from the basaltic basement. The oldest carbonate formed at ~95 Ma (Cenomanian), which we interpret as early diagenetic ages that immediately postdate LIP emplacement during cooling and associated fracturing. Younger vein generations reflect basement carbonation due to seawater circulation, which prevailed until long after LIP emplacement. Basaltic basement rocks at Site U1582 record magnetic field directions reliably. Paleomagnetic analysis yields a negative inclination (normal polarity), which we correlate with Chron C34n (Cretaceous Normal Superchron). We calculate a ~45-50°S preliminary mean paleolatitude that allows us to refine plate kinematic reconstructions and to test the genetic relationship between the AP, MR and NEGR. Our combined age-paleolatitude dataset has implications for Cretaceous paleogeography, ocean circulation, and oceanic crust carbonation timescales