Social change, ecology and climate in 20th-century Greenland

Two great transitions, from seal hunting to cod fishing, then from cod fishing to shrimp, affected population centers of southwest Greenland during the20th century. These economic transitions reflected large-scale shifts in the underlying marine ecosystems, driven by interactions between climate and human resource use. The combination of climatic variation and fishing pressure, for example, proved fatal to west Greenland\u27s cod fishery. We examine the history of these transitions, using data down to the level of individual municipalities. At this level,the uneven social consequences of environmental change show clearly: some places gained, while others lost. Developments in 20th-century Greenland resemble patterns of human-environment interactions in the medieval Norse settlements, suggesting some general propositions relevant to the human dimensions of climatic change

“I Understood You, But There was This Pronunciation Thing…”: L2 Pronunciation Feedback in English/French Tandem Interactions

We hope that our data brings a valuable and fairly unique contribution to SLA research, helping to establish which errors get corrected and how it may have implications for setting priorities in L2 pronunciation teaching

The classroom and immersion pedagogy

Esta ponencia aporta datos obtenidos de un estudio de observación en un aula que ha examinado cómo los profesores facilitan a los alumnos realimentación correctiva y no-correctiva mediante interacción significativa relacionada con el contenido. El estudio revela ambigüedad potencial desde el punto de vista del alumno que aprende una segunda lengua y sugiere que los profesores que se encuentran en tales contextos comunicativos necesitan integrar un enfoque más sistemático de la lengua iniciando "la negociación de la forma" con sus alumnos mediante la interacción sustancial (ej: facilitando técnicas de realimentación que fomenten la asimilación del alumno)Txosten honek, ikasgelan egindako behaketa-ikerketa batean lortutako datuak dakartza, eta bertan, edkiarekin elkarregin esanguratsuaren bitartez irakasleek ikasleei nola ematen dieten berrelikadura zuzentzailea nahiz ez-zuzentzailea aztertu da. Ikerlanak ahalezko anbiguotasuna erakusten du, bigarren hizkuntza ikasten ari den ikaslearen ikuspuntutik, eta iradokitzen du, halako testuinguru komunikatiboetan dauden irakasleek hizkuntzare ikusmolde sistematikoagoa integratu behar dutela, euren ikasleekin "eraren negoziazioa" hasiz funtsezko elkarreraginaren bitartez (adib: ikaslearen asimilazioa sustatzen duten berrelikadurako teknikak emanda)Cet exposé fournit des données obtenues à partir d'une étude d'observation dans une classe qui a examiné comment les professeurs procurent: aux élèves une realimentation corrective ou non-corrective au moyen d'une intéraction significative en rapport avec le contenu. L'étude révèle qui l'ambiguité potentielle du point de vue de l'élève qui apprend une deuxième langue et suggère que les profeseurs qui se trouvent dans de tels contextes communicatifs ont besoin d'intégrer una optique plus systématique de la langue "la négociation de la forme" avec leurs élèves moyennant l'intéraction subbstancielle (exemple: facilitant des techniques de realimentation qui encouragent l'assimilation

Form in immersion classroom discourse: In or out of focus?

Qualitative analyses of teacher-student interaction recorded during subject-matter lessons in grade 4 French immersion classrooms indicate that language form is often out of focus in immersion classroom discourse. Immersion teachers draw regularly on negotiation of meaning strategies to present content, by frequently repeating or recasting learner utterances and using numerous expansions, confirmations, and confirmation checks to do so. Because these interactional moves follow both ill- and well-formed learner utterances, they appear to respond to the meaning of learner utterances and, consequently, may not enable learners to notice the gap between their interlanguage and the target language. However, immersion teachers are still able to bring language form back into focus, without breaking the flow of interaction, by briefly engaging in the negotiation of form with students and then continuing to interact with them about content. With some reference to his past experience as an immersion teacher, the author discusses the pedagogical implications of these and other research findings related to corrective feedback.Les analyses qualitatives des interactions entre enseignants et élèves enregistrées dans des classes d’immersion au niveau de la 4e année du primaire démontrent que le discours immersif met peu en relief la forme langagière. Les enseignants se servent systématiquement de la négociation du sens pour présenter les contenus et cela par le biais de nombreuses répétitions et reformulations enchâsées dans des expansions, des confirmations et des demandes de confirmation. Puisque ces modifications conversationnelles semblent répondre au sens des énoncés des élèves, que la forme soit correcte ou non, elles ne semblent guère en mesure d’attirer l’attention des élèves sur le décalage entre leur interlangue et la langue cible. Les enseignants ont toutefois l’occasion de mettre en relief la forme langagière en employant brièvement la négociation de la forme au cours de l’interaction, sans en ralentir le flot. L’auteur, en tenant compte de ces résultats ainsi que de ceux d’autres recherches sur la rétroaction corrective et en se référant également à son expérience antérieure en tant qu’enseignant en immersion, identifie certaines répercussions de cette recherche sur l’enseignement immersif

Mammalian Peripheral Nerve Function As Related To Temperature

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 196

Territories of Equivalence

The production regimes of every era do not remain in the factory but permeate every aspect of a society including its architecture and design culture. Mechanisation transformed space, in particular the household into an efficient machine, with industrial components and standardised dimensions (from the bathtub to the streamlined kitchen), while military manufacturing efficiencies and emerging technologies allowed consumer goods (from TV sets to Tupperware) to fill the middle class suburban home in the post-war era. This essay contemplates how logisticalisation, the latest incarnation of capitalist production, is permeating the design and conception of contemporary space through an exploration of the gadgets and objects that are increasingly used by the public as portals to the larger world of logistical flow. I refer to previous object-based theories of space in architecture as well as to Object-Orientated Ontology, a philosophical movement that elevates the meaning of objects as independent conscious entities beyond human agency. These serve to contextualise my own reading of logistical objects as manifestations that not only allow us intimacy with the larger and complex world of logistics, but more significantly, as dynamic shapers of new types of architectural and urban space, here characterised as territories of equivalence

Space and censorship in Nadine Gordimer : a literary geography

In South Africa, questions of space and censorship are inseparable. It is impossible to discuss one without discussing the other. The apartheid censors set themselves up as "guardians of the literary", purporting to create a protected space where a particularly South African literature could flourish. In this thesis, my argument is that to be a "guardian of the literary" meant to be a guardian of space in literature, the way it was represented and the way characters moved through it. In order explore this argument I have focused on the censors' response to one writer in particular, Nadine Gordimer. My argument will show that in Gordimer, some spaces seem to be more acceptable than others, as evidenced by the censors' response to her work. Six of her novels were submitted for scrutiny by the Censorship Board. Three were banned, and three were passed. In The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences, Peter McDonald asks "If all her novels ... engaged with the historical circumstances of apartheid South Africa in especially powerful and critical ways, then why were they not all deemed equally threatening to the established order?" My argument is that while it is difficult to provide a definitive answer, it is possible to make sense of the censors' decisions regarding her work by undertaking an analysis of the novels' literary geography. Focusing on the prevalence of certain spaces and the absence of others, and the way that characters move through these spaces, it is clear that they represent differing degrees of threat to the established order. In the censors' reports on Gordimer's work, crossing a physical boundary was the equivalent of crossing a moral boundary. Both the apartheid planners and the censors were fixated on boundaries and borders, on the importance of keeping some people in and more people out. My argument is that what the architects of apartheid tried to do in reality, the censors tried to do in fiction. Their attempt to police the borders of the imaginary meant that some spaces were more acceptable than others, that some stories were told while others were ignored. In my final chapter, I argue that the effects of this can still be seen in contemporary novels written about South Africa. The censors had such a powerful hand in "deforming" literature that their fingerprints can still be detected today. A close analysis of certain elements of Patrick Flanery's Absolution (2012) will show that the structure and form of the novel corresponds in interesting ways with the apartheid censors' ideas of what literature should do and be

A history of apartheid censorship through the archive

Over the course of 26 years, and using 97 different definitions of what the system considered to be “undesirable,” South Africa's apartheid-era censors prevented a vast array of literature from being freely circulated in South Africa. The official and symbolic power that they wielded as the gatekeepers of literature seemed almost unmatched, and the system is still discussed today as one of the most comprehensive the world has seen. The history of apartheid censorship has been told using a variety of approaches, focusing on prominent, legislature-defining cases, on experiences of writers or readers affected, or by discussing it as part of a wider system of suppression. This thesis offers another way to understand the system and its corrosive, ongoing effects: a history which foregrounds the censorship archive itself. The archive is inconvenient, banal, strange, and challenging, containing an extraordinary profusion of documents which seem to serve no clear administrative purpose. The censors left behind a vast body of material relating to their activities, amounting to over a hundred linear metres'' worth of documents: dense reports on “subversive” novels; equally detailed reports on throwaway pulp detective thrillers, erotic mysteries, apparently forgettable works of mass-market fiction; letters from members of the public; letters between censors arguing fiercely over the literary merits of a novel; letters from state officials; newspaper reports, book jackets, and other archival ephemera. Histories of the system tend to centre on spectacular cases or moments, which means overlooking the vast majority of what the archive contains, and thus perhaps misrepresenting the nature of the censors' daily activities. For every report justifying the banning (or passing) of a significant protest novel, there are a hundred reports on works of no literary or political significance whatsoever. An analysis of the paperwork produced by the system reveals fascinating contradictions, conflicts, clashes between high-minded notions of the literary and base ideas of the function of art in apartheid South Africa. We can understand the excess and profound waste of intellectual energy that the archive represents if we view it as the product of a system's struggle to politicise literature while stripping it of all references to contemporary politics, to conflate taste with morality, to define without consensus what literature meant. This thesis will show how these codes and reading strategies developed, examining the complicated connections between censorship, canonisation, validation, and criticism that the censors created. It is reassuring to think that censorship in South Africa ended with the banning of The Satanic Verses in 1989, but immersion in the archive shows how far-reaching and long lasting its effects are. The literary infrastructure the censors helped to create has not been erased out of existence; their definitions of the literary and the laws of what can be said are repeated in official and unofficial ways. Questions over who “owns” the space of the literary, over who should own it, over who has the ability (or even the right) to critique it, continue to reverberate today Finally, by exploring the ways in which the system was embedded within wider public and bureaucratic culture, this thesis offers a means of viewing contemporary debates around freedom of speech in South Africa. The recent furore provoked by the state's attempts to suppress Jacques Pauw's The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison reveals how fraught these debates continue to be, and this thesis shows how we may understand them in the context of what has come before. Immersion in the archive – a commitment to analysis of that which is unwieldy and apparently irrelevant – yields insight of great contemporary value, enriching our understanding of apartheid censorship and its poisonous legacy

Quantifying the dynamics and behaviour of ancient fluvial systems in space and time

The sedimentary record is a crucial archive of past surface processes, including ancient river dynamics, on Earth. Rivers are sensitive to allogenic (external) forcings, such as changes to tectonic and climatic boundary conditions, and can respond to these forcings by propagating environmental signals, such as changes to sediment supply and grain-size, throughout fluvial networks. In theory, environmental signals associated with these allogenic forcings are preserved in depositional stratigraphy. However, rivers are also sensitive to autogenic (internal) forcings, such as channel migration and avulsion, which generates “noise” in depositional stratigraphy. Stratigraphy therefore represents the time-integrated product of the movement of water and sediment, in response to both allogenic and autogenic forcing, across Earth’s surface in the geological past. The ability to reconstruct mass fluxes in time and space from the continents, and to extract these signals from fluvial strata, provides unique insights into the dynamics and behaviour of the Earth system in the geological past. In this thesis, I explore methods to investigate the dynamics and behaviour of ancient fluvial systems from fluvial strata. While qualitative methods (e.g., facies mapping, logging) provide useful insights, these insights are limited in the extent to which they can be used to investigate ancient river dynamics. Here I explore and develop quantitative methods to investigate ancient fluvial systems. Quantitative insights are crucial to constrain total water and sediment discharges, spatial and temporal trends in river dynamics, and the magnitudes and frequencies of river response to forcing. At large spatial and temporal scales, I present a new method to reconstruct water and sediment discharges in palaeo-catchments — this method exploits access to palaeo-digital elevation models and general circulation climate model results, both of which are now becoming increasingly sophisticated. At smaller spatial and temporal scales, I present a framework to reconstruct morphologic (e.g., flow depths, slopes) and hydrodynamic (e.g., flow velocities, water discharges) parameters from fluvial strata, and I present a new method to reconstruct river planform from field-derived observations. These methods and frameworks can provide a range of insights into ancient fluvial systems in general and, in this thesis, I successfully apply them to ancient fluvial systems in the Late Cretaceous North American continent. Beyond the development of new methods and frameworks to investigate the behaviour of ancient fluvial systems, this thesis also presents unambiguous stratigraphic evidence for bedform preservation in non-steady, or disequilibrium, conditions for Upper Cretaceous fluvial deposits in North America. These observations challenge the use of steady-state bedform preservation models in palaeohydraulic reconstructions. My results highlight the importance of making systematic field measurements of cross-set geometries in fluvial strata to determine the nature of bedform preservation, and the importance of considering disequilibrium dynamics for palaeohydraulic reconstructions. Further, these results provide a potentially powerful avenue to quantify flood variability from fluvial strata, and I explore the necessary future work to achieve this research goal. Together, the methods and frameworks that I present in this thesis advance our ability to extract quantitative information from fluvial strata. Further, in exemplifying these methods and frameworks for ancient fluvial systems of the Late Cretaceous North American continent, I highlight the advantages, limitations, and best practices associated with these approaches. These methods and frameworks can be implemented at a variety of spatial and temporal scales and can provide sophisticated insights into the dynamics and behaviour of ancient fluvial systems, both on Earth and other planets.Open Acces