Erik Satie: A Conversation

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The evolution of a coastal carbon store over the last millennium

This work was financially supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (grant number: NE/L501852/1), the EU FPV HOLSMEER project (EVK2-CT-2000-00060) and the EU FPVI Millennium project (contract number 017008), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (grant number: BB/M026620/1) with additional support from the NERC Radiocarbon Facility (Allocation 1154.1005 and 2195.1019).Fjord sediments are recognized as hotspots for the burial and storage of organic carbon, yet little is known about the long-term drivers of significant terrestrial organic carbon (OC) transfers into these coastal carbon stores. The mid-latitude fjord catchments of Scotland have a long history of human occupation and environmental disturbance. We provide new evidence to show that increased anthropogenic disturbances over the last 500 years appear to have driven a step change in the magnitude of terrestrial OC transported to the coastal ocean. Increased pressures from mining, agriculture and forestry over the latter half of the last millennium have destabilized catchment soils and remobilized deep stores of aged OC from the catchment to the coastal ocean. Here we show that fjord sediments are capable of acting as highly responsive and effective terrestrial OC sinks, with OC accumulation rates increasing up to 20 % during the peak period of anthropogenic disturbance. The responsiveness and magnitude of the fjord OC sink represents a potentially significant time-evolving component of the global carbon cycle that is currently not recognized but has the potential to become increasingly important in the understanding of the role of these coastal carbon stores in our climate system.PostprintPeer reviewe

Overcrowding and Infant Mortality: A Tale of Two Cities

Using detailed historical data for the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, evidence is found in support of the hypothesis that overcrowding is a significant cause of infant mortality. We distinguish between voluntary overcrowding (due to budgetary choices of poorer families) and involuntary overcrowding (due to market failure in the provision of an adequate supply of appropriate housing. We found that Glasgow's infant mortality rate was significantly higher than Edinburgh, despite their close geographical proximity, and that a large part of the difference can be attributed to involuntary overcrowding prior to World War II. We argue that this was due to the distinctly different housing policies adopted by the two cities, with lessons for present day public authorities

AFTER THE PARADIGM OF CONTEMPORARY PHYSICS IN ARCHITECTURE: SPATIAL POSSIBILITIES AND VARIATIONS

Living in the age of scientific, technological and digital revolution changes our attitude towards information. It is inevitable to start approaching information not only as a product of fashionable digital media behavior, but also as a particular accumulation of facts and activities, transferable bits of matter, which influence our environment. Architecture not only exerts spatial influence on our environment, but also it structures its processes. Acting as such, architecture is involved into direct representation of informational flows via organizing spatial systems. Therefore, in the digital era, design gets more related to transforming different informational modes into spatial structures. Transformations of information provide rich possibilities for conceptualizing space; such transformations could be achieved by different methodologies. This paper uses the concept of space in contemporary physics, namely the self-organizational behavior of the spacetime framework, in order to explore various ways of coding information in design. Analyzing String theory and its follower M – theory, the research derives a method for spatial organization of cause-and-effect activities resulting in a unified approach towards design methodology. This paper explores the concept of movement in the space-time framework, namely the movement in various dimensions and in non-Euclidean geometry, in order to develop a system for achieving a particular design control over informational activities. Using the topology of spacetime in String heory and M-theory, a topology produced as an outcome from that particular movement behavior, the research proposes a way to handle an informational status in the environment spatially. Such a design approach, becoming more and more necessary in the age of the digital, opens room not only for mere spatial variations, but also for a direction towards new design morphology; a morphology in which architecture obtains new spatial value, reaching beyond the label of visionary desig

Palynology and micropalaeontology of the Pliocene - Pleistocene transition in outcrop from the western Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan : potential links with the Mediterranean, Black Sea and the Arctic Ocean?

New palynological, ostracod and foraminiferal data are presented from a long outcrop section in the Jeirankechmez river valley, Azerbaijan, near the western coast of the Caspian Sea. The interval studied includes the upper part of the Psliocene Productive Series and overlying Plio-Pleistocene Akchagylian (Akchagyl) and Apsheronian (Apsheron) regional stages. Productive Series sediments were deposited in a closed fluvio-lacustrine basin, isolated from any marine influence. The onset of Akchagyl deposition is marked by a lithological change associated with a significant flooding event that, at its maximum extent, reached the Sea of Azov and into present-day Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Russia. At the Jeirankechmez locality, the lowermost beds of the Akchagyl contain predominantly freshwater assemblages with very minimal marine or brackish content showing that the onset of Akchagyl deposition was not a marine induced event. Reworked Mesozoic palynomorphs occur frequently in this lowermost interval, including the reworked pollen taxa Aquilapollenites-Triprojectus that were eroded from the north or north-east. Significant marine influence is evident ca. 30 m above the base of the Akchagyl in the studied outcrop, marked by the ‘Cassidulina Beds’ which contain a distinct but low diversity assemblage of foraminifera that occurs widely and can be correlated in many parts of the greater Caspian region. Dinoflagellate cysts (dinocysts) in the marine interval include frequent specimens very similar to Algidasphaeridium capillatum (Matsuoka and Bujak), a species only previously recorded from the northern Bering Sea. The combined evidence from these dinocysts and foraminifera suggests that a marine (i.e. seaway) connection existed briefly between the Arctic Ocean and the Caspian Sea at the very end of the Pliocene. Re-examination of core material from the Adriatic Sea shows that Cassidulina reniforme (Nørvang) was present in the Mediterranean during and shortly after the Last Glacial Maximum. The possibility that the end Pliocene marine incursion came from the Mediterranean via the Black Sea region to the Caspian Sea cannot be entirely ruled out but is considered unlikely. Biometric analyses are applied to obtain a better understanding of the palaeoenvironmental significance of the assemblages dominated by cassidulinids. An interval > 300 m thick is assigned to the Apsheron regional stage on the basis of predominantly brackish ostracod and dinocyst associations. The dinocysts are of ‘Peri-Paratethyan’ affinity and closely resemble species first described from Miocene and Pliocene sediments in the Pannonian and Dacic basins of Eastern Europe. Many similarities exist in the microplankton records (dinocysts and acritarchs) between the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and Central Paratethys.PostprintPeer reviewe

Stories of a ruined space: filmic and sonic approaches to practice-as-research

This article reflects on the authors’ work in investigating how audiovisual practices might represent the experience of disused or ruined structures. With backgrounds in visual and sound practice respectively, the authors have, in their most recent experimental film project Coccolith [UK: Coccolith Productions], conceived the Ramsgate wartime tunnels in Kent as a point of collision for divergent artistic approaches to the representation of space. Challenging the site’s association with wartime mythology, the project sought to reconfigure the relationship between film and sound practice in order to articulate an alternative representation of the tunnels’ history, heritage and temporality. The article reflects on the role of the sound designer in developing soundscapes that embodied the ruined space, and on the role of the director in visually conceiving a spatial experience of the tunnels characterized by the absence of sound – silence. We argue that in conceiving an audiovisual project in terms of texture and gesture, it is possible to reconceptualize both the role of the soundtrack in relation to a film’s diegesis, and the role of the director in relation to sound design

Conceptual Art

Providing a re-examination of what Osborne identifies as a major turning point in contemporary art, this monograph takes a chronological and stylistic look at conceptual art from its “pre-history” (1950-1960) to contemporary practices that use conceptual strategies. Osborne surveys the development of the movement in relation to the social, cultural and political contexts within which it evolved. With extended captions, key works are compiled according to ten themes that also serve to present a collection of critical texts, artists’ statements, interviews and commentaries. Includes biographical notes on artists (6 p.) and authors (2 p.), a bibliography (2 p.) and an onomastic index (4 p.) Circa 150 bibl. ref