Half-Dead Colonies of Montastraea Annularis Release Viable Gametes On A Degraded Reef In The Us Virgin Islands

This article contributes to scholarship on Afroeurope by investigating the intersection of blackness, Africanness, and Europeanness in everyday discourses and social practices in the Netherlands and Italy. We examine how young African-descended Europeans are forging new ways of being both African and European through practices of self-making, which should be understood against both the historical background of colonialism and the contemporary politics of othering. Such practices take on an urgency for these youth, often encompassing a reinvention of Africanness and/or blackness as well as a challenge to dominant, exclusionary understandings of Europeanness. Comparing Afro-Dutch and Afro-Italian modes of self-making, centred on African heritage and roots, we discuss: 1) the emergence of a transnational, Afroeuropean imaginary, distinguished from both white Europe and African-American formations; and 2) the diversity of Afroeuropean modes of self-making, all rooted in distinct histories of colonialism, slavery, and immigration, and influenced by global formations of Africanness and blackness. These new Afro and African identities advanced by young Europeans do not turn away from Europeanness (as dominant identity models would assume: the more African, the less European), nor simply add to Europeanness (“multicultural” identities), nor even mix with Europeanness (“hybrid” identities), but are in and of themselves European

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Degradation of haloaromatic compounds

An ever increasing number of halogenated organic compounds has been produced by industry in the last few decades. These compounds are employed as biocides, for synthetic polymers, as solvents, and as synthetic intermediates. Production figures are often incomplete, and total production has frequently to be extrapolated from estimates for individual countries. Compounds of this type as a rule are highly persistent against biodegradation and belong, as "recalcitrant" chemicals, to the class of so-called xenobiotics. This term is used to characterise chemical substances which have no or limited structural analogy to natural compounds for which degradation pathways have evolved over billions of years. Xenobiotics frequently have some common features. e.g. high octanol/water partitioning coefficients and low water solubility which makes for a high accumulation ratio in the biosphere (bioaccumulation potential). Recalcitrant compounds therefore are found accumulated in mammals, especially in fat tissue, animal milk supplies and also in human milk. Highly sophisticated analytical techniques have been developed for the detection of organochlorines at the trace and ultratrace level

Assessment and critical feedback in the master-apprentice relationship: rethinking approaches to the learning of a music instrument

In higher music education institutions around the world, one-to-one teaching dominates the way in which students learn a music instrument. With the expert performer-teacher as centre of the learning process or master, students as apprentices are typically subjected to intensive weekly direction and feedback, frequently culminating in performance exams assessed by expert musicians. This form of learning features a mode of assessment which is predominantly one way, that is, the transmission of expectations and value judgments from master to apprentice, even if criteria are applied and aligned to learning outcomes during performance exams. This chapter examines the one-to-one lesson as a vehicle for enabling students to develop critical assessment and feedback skills, after which it seeks to theorise the need to reconsider the knowledge transfer, assessment and critical feedback systems of the one-to-one lesson. It also proposes a new conceptual model for the learning of a music instrument at the higher education level

Biological community structure on patch reefs in Biscayne National Park, FL, USA

Coral reef ecosystem management benefits from continual quantitative assessment of the resources being managed, plus assessment of factors that affect distribution patterns of organisms in the ecosystem. In this study, we investigate the relationships among physical, benthic, and fish variables in an effort to help explain the distribution patterns of organisms on patch reefs within Biscayne National Park, FL, USA. We visited a total of 196 randomly selected sampling stations on 12 shallow (<10 m) patch reefs and measured physical variables (e.g., substratum rugosity, substratum type) and benthic and fish community variables. We also incorporated data on substratum rugosity collected remotely via airborne laser surveying (Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar—EAARL). Across all stations, only weak relationships were found between physical, benthic cover, and fish assemblage variables. Much of the variance was attributable to a “reef effect,” meaning that community structure and organism abundances were more variable at stations among reefs than within reefs. However, when the reef effect was accounted for and removed statistically, patterns were detected. Within reefs, juvenile scarids were most abundant at stations with high coverage of the fleshy macroalgae Dictyota spp., and the calcified alga Halimeda tuna was most abundant at stations with low EAARL rugosity. Explanations for the overwhelming importance of “reef” in explaining variance in our dataset could include the stochastic arrangement of organisms on patch reefs related to variable larval recruitment in space and time and/or strong historical effects due to patchy disturbances (e.g., hurricanes, fishing), as well as legacy effects of prior residents (“priority” effects)