A failed invasion? Commercially introduced pollinators in Southern France

The natural diversity of Bombus terrestris subspecies could be under threat from the commercialisation of bumblebees. Therefore, to determine whether commercially imported bumblebees are able to establish and spread, we carried out long-term observations of bumblebees in southern France. Our surveys occurred before, during, and after the importation (between 1989 and 1996) of thousands of colonies of the Sardinian subspecies B. t. sassaricus. Queens and males of B. t. sassaricus were observed foraging outside commercial greenhouses in 1991, 1993, and 1994 and feral workers were observed foraging on native vegetation nearly two years after the importation of B. t. sassaricus ceased. However, no B. t. sassaricus, or F1 hybrids were observed after 1998. We conclude that B. t. sassaricus remains inconspicuous in France and competition from the three native subspecies may have prevented it from becoming invasive. However, genetic interference through introgression cannot be ruled out

The compromised voice: a consideration of typography as a linguistic expression of gay identity in the silent film boy

This paper begins with a brief discussion of interdisciplinary connections between linguistics and typography. It then offers a consideration of how typography used in queer film has been employed to marginalise gay men. In doing so, the article examines recurring typographical profiles in promotional material that reinforce notions of gay men as the other. Within this consideration it locates typographical depictions of the internally discordant, the damaged threat, and the passive-aggressive. In discussing these specific approaches to the typographical depiction of gay men in cinema, the paper traces a development from marginalisation to self-assertion. Set against this discussion, the paper examines how typography designed for the short film boy (Note 1) looked beyond these precedents for inspiration. In doing this, the designer considered themes embedded in the argot of the New Zealand male prostitute. (Note 2) This language form is permeated by themes of detachment and ecclesiasticism. By applying these metaphors to the short film’s visual and typographical design, the director discusses how an alternative, distinctive, and arguably more authentic gay voice was created. The short film boy can be viewed at http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/boy-200

A Convenient Exchange (2007) Vol 1 Art 3

These monologues tell the same story, in the same language form across a hundred years of development. This paper considers the phenomenon of men’s public toilets in New Zealand, with specific reference to the culture of cruising for sex that operates within them. Based on interviews and oral history recordings of over 150 men whose use of New Zealand bogs for same sex encounters has spanned 85 years, the paper discusses a network of relationships that have developed between changes in legislation, architecture and language. Central to this research is a desire to offer an effective way of telling the stories of a marginalised population; stories that emanate not so much from ‘empowered’ sources like police records, heath studies, news media and town planners, but from the community itself; a community that has until now often been [under] studied and [mis]represented by these authorities. A Convenient Exchange suggests that men who use public toilets for same sex encounters exist as a dissipated, yet communicating body. The paper demonstrates, by tracing changes in language, how the experiences of these men have intersected with a range of cultures, including those of prostitutes, prisoners, and the online cruising community. Through this intersection, bog cruisers have developed an extraordinarily process of criminalised ritual that has continued to operate and adapt just under the surface of the New Zealand urban landscape

OUT OF THE PICTURE: DRAWING THE NARRATION OF FILM

Imagine for a moment a story that does not have solid form. It is nebulous but resonant. It is an idea. Between this state and a completed cinematic work, there is normally a process of artistic inquiry. Conventionally, creating a narrative for film involves constructing written treatments, drafting scripts and compiling shot lists. However, a small number of filmmakers use drawing as a visual method to create and shape knowledge into communicative form. Although film is understood as a visual medium, we rarely talk about visual methods used in its early stages of development. Increasingly, visual methods are used in a range of disciplines including sociology, psychology, geography and health care (Barbour, 2014; Pain 2012). However, they are normally applied to data gathering or analysis. Such methods embrace a variety of approaches including photo elicitation (Glaw, Kable, Hazelton & Inder, 2017; Meo, 2010), analysing found data (Prosser & Loxley, 2008), collaborative filmmaking (Parr, 2007) and the use of video diaries (Holliday, 2004). In cinema we generally associate visual methods with principal photography (filming) and postproduction processing. However, in this article I will discuss an approach to the narrative development of the short film Sparrow, where visual methods were employed from the earliest stages of narrative gestation through to the moments just before the camera began recording

An investigation of gardening in the sedentary caddisfly Tinodes waeneri across a nutrient gradient

PhDSedentary species face a trade-off between the advantages of exploiting food close to their homes and the cost of defending it. Consequently, the net benefit of this lifestyle may be greatest at intermediate productivity. In aquatic systems, it has been suggested that some sedentary grazers can increase the range of circumstances under which they are able to compete with mobile grazers by enhancing food resources within their feeding territories through ‘gardening’. This was examined for the retreat-building sedentary larvae of the caddis Tinodes waeneri, which are often dominant in the littoral of lakes. The hypotheses tested were 1) T. waeneri gardens by fertilising its retreat (a fixed ‘gallery’ on which periphyton grows), and 2) gardening will be more important in lower productivity lakes. Detailed field sampling across a lake productivity gradient was coupled with a laboratory mesocosm study. A natural abundance stable isotope technique was developed to identify gardening. A survey of six populations in the English Lake District indicated that larvae garden as they fertilise gallery biofilm with excreted nitrogen and feed on their galleries. Galleries also contained more food than the epilithon and larval assimilation of galleries was related to food availability. Galleries contained a higher proportion of diatoms than the epilithon, and gallery diatom communities were associated with higher nutrient levels, especially in the lower productivity lakes. Gardening also occurred in the experimental mesocosms. Furthermore, the amount of gardening was related to nutrient levels; more gardening occurred at low nutrients than at high nutrients. Thus, ‘gardening’ is widespread in T. waeneri populations and may allow this species to be successful in low resource environments. It may also substantially affect ecosystem processes within the littoral of lakes by influencing patterns of nitrogen retention and enhancing overall productivity.NERC Studentship Natural environment Research Council. NER/S/A/2005/13932 Central Research Fund (AC/CRF/ B

The internal pathway of the self: supervisory implications of autobiographical, practice-led Ph.D. design theses

This paper draws on case studies undertaken in doctoral research at AUT University. It seeks to address a number of issues related to inquiries employed by graphic design students who use autobiographic approaches when developing research-based theses. When employed as a framework, autobiographic inquiries offer a rewarding yet challenging system for connecting investigation with the researcher’s personal experience. This paper provides a discussion of the nature, advantages and challenges of autobiographic research in relation to three recent PhD theses in graphic design. Through this, it seeks to provide a useful reflection on cautions and opportunities inherent in the methodology

Winter Active Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) Achieve High Foraging Rates in Urban Britain

Background: Foraging bumblebees are normally associated with spring and summer in northern Europe. However, there have been sightings of the bumblebee Bombus terrestris during the warmer winters in recent years in southern England. But what floral resources are they relying upon during winter and how much winter forage can they collect? Methodology/Principal Findings: To test if urban areas in the UK provide a rich foraging niche for bees we set up colonies of B. terrestris in the field during two late winter periods (2005/6 & 2006/7) in London, UK, and measured their foraging performance. Fully automatic radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology was used in 2006/7 to enable us to record the complete foraging activity of individually tagged bees. The number of bumblebees present during winter (October 2007 to March 2008) and the main plants they visited were also recorded during transect walks. Queens and workers were observed throughout the winter, suggesting a second generation of bee colonies active during the winter months. Mass flowering shrubs such as Mahonia spp. were identified as important food resources. The foraging experiments showed that bees active during the winter can attain nectar and pollen foraging rates that match, and even surpass, those recorded during summer. Conclusions/Significance: B. terrestris in the UK are now able to utilise a rich winter foraging resource in urban parks and gardens that might at present still be under-exploited, opening up the possibility of further changes in pollinato

Impaired bone marrow homing of cytokine-activated CD34⁺ cells in the NOD/SCID model

The reduced engraftment potential of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) after exposure to cytokines may be related to the impaired homing ability of actively cycling cells. We tested this hypothesis by quantifying the short-term horning of human adult CD34+ cells in nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) animals. We show that the loss of engraftment ability of cytokine-activated CD34+ cells is associated with a reduction in homing of colony-forming cells (CFCs) to bone marrow (BM) at 24 hours after transplantation (from median 2.8% [range, 1.9%-6.1%] to 0.3% [0.0%-0.7%]; n = 3; P < .01), coincident with an increase in CFC accumulation in the lungs (P < .01). Impaired BM homing of cytokine-activated cells was not restored by using sorted cells in G 0G1 or by inducing cell cycle arrest at the G 1/S border. Blocking Fas ligation in vivo did not increase the BM homing of cultured cells. Finally, we tested cytokine combinations or culture conditions previously reported to restore the engraftment of cultured cells but did not find that any of these was able to reverse the changes in homing behavior of cytokine-exposed cells. We suggest that these changes in homing and, as a consequence, engraftment result from the increased migratory capacity of infused activated cells, leading to the loss of selectivity of the homing process. © 2004 by The American Society of Hematology

Making Harlem visible: race, photography and the American city, 1915-1955

In his philosophical treatise on photography, The Engine of Visualization: Thinking Through Photography, Patrick Maynard makes a detailed and convincing case that photography, like other technologies, has been developed to 'amplify our powers to do things' - in this case to imagine. Photography is, fundamentally, an 'imagining technology' and photographs - 'depictive pictures' - gain their extraordinary vividness from the efficiency of this technology: Given that we have, in the first place, to look at their marked surfaces in order to be incited and guided to some imagining seeing, pictures of things convert that very looking into an object of imagining. We imagine the represented situation, and also imagine of that looking that gives us access to it that it - our own perceptual activity - is seeing what is depicted. (1997: 107) Photographs are to be used in this thesis as part of an investigation, already proceeding in literary analysis, into representations of racialised space and spatial contest within black life, specifically in Harlem in the first half of the twentieth century. John Roberts, another writer on photography, provides a critical starting point for this enterprise in his book on 'realism, photography and the everyday', The Art of Interruption, in which he applies Henri Lefebvre's theory of a 'critical practice of space' to photography. Roberts examines the part that this technology plays in revealing 'the violence inherent in the production of the abstract space of the market' through its representations of places and spaces. Roberts' belief is that to 'open up the social landscape of the city to representation ... is to see the permanent or transitory result of the complex and ongoing struggle over the legal and symbolic ownership of place' (1998: 194). 'Space,' writes Michel Foucault, 'is fundamental in any form of communal life; space is fundamental in any exercise of power' (1994: 361). The practice of everyday life and the expression of dominance and resistance are expressed spatially at all levels, from the cityscape to the space created by the body. Such 'lived' spaces can be read. They can, as African American polemicist bell hooks remarks, 'tell stories and unfold histories' (1990: 152). Hailed once as the capital of the Negro world and just as swiftly transformed into the 'dark ghetto', Harlem is the paradigm of the black city within a city, placed inside the grid of the American metropolis but set at a distance by de facto, if not de jure segregation. Harlem's invisibility to the wider, whiter world is both symbolic and actual. When, in November 2000, I attended a celebratory reading of the work of the Harlem Renaissance writers, held at the Apollo Theater, perhaps the world's most famous black venue, the Parks Commissioner was due to open proceedings. Arriving late, he made his speech, in which he admitted that this was, after many years in post, his first visit to the Apollo. Venturing north of his main patch - Central Park - was clearly still an adventure, as it had been for the white bohemians and slummers of the 19205, heading off for jazz parties and wild times. In introducing an exhibition of Austin Hansen's photographs of Harlem in 1989 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the photo historian Rodger C. Birt acknowledged this invisibility: Harlem is as much a symbol as it is a real place. Harlem is uptown and its opposite, downtown, begins at 110th Street, where the park ends. Uptown is black. Downtown is white. Uptown is hip. Downtown is white. Uptown is poor. Downtown is white. Uptown is emotion. Downtown is white. These, and a myriad of other "definitions," ... have served to mark off Harlem from the rest of New York and, in effect, have created out of the reality a kind of terra incognita. (in Hansen, 1989: unpaginated) The binary of black and white, split here by the colour line of 110th Street, runs through much of the writing and thinking about Harlem. What makes Birt's statement particularly interesting is not its reiteration of cultural stereotypes, powerful though they might be, but its unexpressed assumption that the 'white' section of New York is entirely knowable, a territory that - unlike Harlem - can easily be mapped. Birt's suggestion is that photography can provide a map – a cultural guide to Harlem as it is, and was. While I do not accept that photographs are transparencies, or windows on the world, I will be pursuing and exploring the thought in this thesis that, in depicting 'black space' - that is, public and private space as it is and has been lived (and thus inscribed) by African Americans - photographers, both white and black, make Harlem visible. I suggest that photographs themselves can, indeed have to be used as tools for imagining and telling stories. These stories are enacted in space, both the actual space that is recorded chemically or digitally on photographic paper and the virtual space that the photograph, as a (re)presentation of that space, frames and yet opens up to the mind and the senses of the reader. In the play between perception and imagination, between the fixed, indexical imprint and the world that the photograph hints at in its fragmentary condition, we can find a way into Harlem's complexities and ambiguities. Before exploring these ideas through a critical analysis of selected photographs, the Introduction will provide an outline of the historical and theoretic context. Following an account of the development of photographic culture in Harlem from 1915 to 1955, I examine how the black photographic archive is currently shaped and presented, partly in relationship to the production of photographs by white photographers in Harlem during the same period. Finally, I explain my approach to reading photographs and the space they (re)present, and the way in which I have selected and organised the photographs to make my case. The main body of this study then follows. This is divided into six chapters, each using photographic comparisons and analysis to map the struggle for legal and symbolic ownership of space. Chapter One looks at Harlem as a distinctive landscape, the paradigmatic black city produced by white power and black resistance. Having established how the colour line fractures urban space at this level, I then trace its course through other spaces and places. Chapter Two looks at political events taking place on the streets of Harlem, from marches to riots, noting that, by deliberately occupying and writing on the urban fabric, these events create a kind of place in time. Chapter Three looks closely at street activity in more general terms, uncovering how city space is negotiated, claimed and defended as African Americans become urban and learn to 'know their place'. Chapter Four enters the Harlem apartment, a private space compromised by social and economic forces but where African Americans have created a 'home place'. Chapter Five examines what Adrienne Rich calls 'the geography closest in': the body as it appears in the space of the photographic studio and in the context of other places in the city. Chapter Six draws these themes together by looking at The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a photo text about Harlem, as a story of spaces and spatial practices. Finally, my broad arguments and findings are briefly summed up in Conclusions

Developing sustainability pathways for social simulation tools and services

The use of cloud technologies to teach agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) is an interesting application of a nascent technological paradigm that has received very little attention in the literature. This report fills that gap and aims to help instructors, teachers and demonstrators to understand why and how cloud services are appropriate solutions to common problems they face delivering their study programmes, as well as outlining the many cloud options available. The report first introduces social simulation and considers how social simulation is taught. Following this factors affecting the implementation of agent-based models are explored, with attention focused primarily on the modelling and execution platforms currently available, the challenges associated with implementing agent-based models, and the technical architectures that can be used to support the modelling, simulation and teaching process. This sets the context for an extended discussion on cloud computing including service and deployment models, accessing cloud resources, the financial implications of adopting the cloud, and an introduction to the evaluation of cloud services within the context of developing, executing and teaching agent-based models