A climatology of quiet/disturbed ionospheric conditions derived from 22 years of Westerbork interferometer observations

Knowledge of the quiet and disturbed conditions in the propagation medium is essential for quality control of transatmospheric radio signals. This holds equally for the troposphere and the ionosphere. This paper describes a climatology of ionospheric irregularities obtained from observations of celestial radio sources by radio interferometry, i.e. by the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) in The Netherlands. This instrument is located at geomagnetic mid-latitude. All WSRT calibrator observations in the 22-year period 26 June 1970–31 December 1991 have been checked for manifestations of ionosopheric effects. Although seasonal effects are clear, the occurrence and ‘strength’ of ionospheric irregularities show no dependence on solar activity. Assuming that the frequency of occurrence of ionospheric disturbances in spring and autumn are similar, it is found that ‘ionospheric’ winter starts on day 348 ± 3 and all seasons last for 3 months. Medium-scale travelling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) occur most frequently during the daytime in winter periods. The occurrence of non-periodic irregularities is, however, not a function of time in the day. The daily variation in the amplitude and frequency of the occurrence of the TIDs suggests that the solar terminator and Joule heating near the electrojets do not contribute substantially to their generation. Generation of gravity waves may be caused by winds and tides in the lower thermosphere-mesosphere. This has to be investigated further.On the basis of the available data, a ‘disturbance measure’, indicating to what extent the ionosphere is ‘quiet’, is proposed. The output of this project may be of immediate use for different ionospheric investigations, such as ionospheric modelling and the study of excitation mechanisms for ionospheric irregularities.     

Legalized trauma

In the past, criminals were executed by a variety of means, including beheading or hanging, and both these methods may leave signs on the skeleton. It is not difficult to recognize individuals who have been beheaded because one or other of the cervical vertebrae will show evidence of the fatal blow, and there may also be cut marks on the base of the skull or the back of the mandible. Death from hanging, however, often leaves no marks on the skeleton, especially when carried out with a running noose and no drop. With a drop, dislocation of the sutures at the base of the skull may be noted and the classic ‘hangman's fracture’, which is a fracture dislocation of the second cervical vertebra, may be present. When there is no evidence of trauma, death from hanging may have to be inferred in skeletons which are found with the hands tied or with other signs that are discussed here.     

‘TWIN SUN’: A SIMPLE LUNAR ECLIPSE PREDICTOR

A simple method to predict lunar eclipses proposed in this article uses the position of the full moon relative to the sun. Calculations show that the method works better during the summer period in Scandinavia simply because the night is shorter and therefore the moon is closer to the exact time of the lunar eclipse when the moon rises as the sun is setting. When the conditions are right, the moon reflects the red colour of the setting sun. The two celestial bodies look within a short time as similar objects, like twins or ‘Twin Sun’ (TS). This article aims to demonstrate that TS is a useful method to predict lunar eclipses during the summer period at Northern latitudes. It will be discussed that TS as a lunar eclipse predictor could partly explain the alignment of some megalithic monuments in Denmark constructed from c. 3300-3100 BC. Finally, it is suggested that TS could be an explanation behind the doubleness reflected in the construction of the Danish passage graves. Some archaeological finds seemingly also render the TS phenomenon.     

Capacity for Freedom – Using a New Poverty Measure to Look at Regional Differences in Living Standards within Australia

Using a recently developed measure of multidimensional poverty, the Freedom Poverty Measure, the difference in poverty rates of major cities, inner regional, and other areas have been compared. The population living in ‘other areas’ had the highest proportion of individuals living in freedom poverty. Those in inner regional areas (P = 0.0303) and those in major cities (P < 0.0001) were significantly less likely to be in freedom poverty than those in ‘other areas’. However, when breaking the analysis down to look at the different poverty rates for different age groups across the three regional classifications, it was found that there was no difference in the likelihood of being in freedom poverty between children in inner regional and other areas, adults in inner regional and other areas, and older people in inner regional and other areas. This may indicate that the disadvantage experienced by those living in regional centres has been overlooked in the past and is an emerging contemporary issue for health and education equity as well as economic equality.     

What's nature got to do with it? A situated historical perspective on socio-natural commodities

Nature(s) have been commodified since the early days of capitalism, but through processes and socio-natural relationships mediated by their times, histories and localities. While the conditions under which nature's commodities are being trademarked today may be new, their potential for commodification is not. Commodifications of nature should not come as a surprise to environmental social scientists and activists. In this article, I argue that commodification of ‘nature's products, places and processes’ produces new sorts of socio-natures. Situated histories of rubber are particularly relevant because, like carbon, ecosystem services and other recently commodified natures, rubber sits comfortably on the line between a fictitious commodity and a commodity produced explicitly for market: the latex alone has almost no use value, and to give it any exchange value, it requires processing. Yet analytically, it is still considered a ‘natural commodity’, different from ‘synthetic rubber’ and other tradable tree latexes in qualities and socio-natural characteristics. However, it is the social relations constituting rubber's production and trade in various rainforest and agro-forestry environments that have given it a positive or negative connotation, rather than its natural properties or the ecological contexts within which it has been produced. By situating rubber in three of its globally important temporal and spatial contexts, I show how it has been subjected to fairy-tale-like stories that masked and naturalized its commodity lives of the moment. Understanding how history is told or remains untold is thus an essential part of the politics of knowledge production, but also of human experience and mobilization for change. It should be part of any political ecology analysis.     

Communication of Discoveries of Medieval Paintings,Etc

Abstract

Until 1965 Holy Trinity parish church, Much Wenlock (Shropshire), was believed to be wholly Norman and later. In that year it was proposed that the south chancel chapel and south nave aisle were Anglo-Saxon. Two vertical strips of squared stones, built into the upper part (a later heightening) of the aisle's south wall, were interpreted as Anglo-Saxon pilaster strips of the type later classified by Dr H. M. Taylor as ‘long-and-short’. If the upper part of that wall was Anglo-Saxon, the lower part must have been earlier Anglo-Saxon, and so must the chapel south wall, which is integral with the lower part of the aisle wall. The Norman nave and chancel must have been added to an-existing Anglo-Saxon structure.

We believe, however, that the aisle and chapel must have been added to an existing Norman structure, for the Norman nave had originally a south-east external clasping buttress. Structural and documentary evidence shows that the strips are probably of the later thirteenth or earlier fourteenth century. Moreover similar strips occur in another part of the church that is probably of that date or later. ‘Pilaster strips’ of ‘long-and-short’ appearance may evidently be looked for elsewhere in twelfth-century or later contexts, especially in the heightened parts of unsupported rubble walls.     

Deep Regolith Weathering on the Summit Surface of the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges,South Australia: a Contribution to the ‘Laterite’ Debate

Chemical and mineralogical analyses of samples from a 102 m deep borehole and from road cuts on the summit surface of the Mount Lofty Ranges near Willunga Hill, are used to assess critically the view that the regolith here developed as a result of tropical, so‐called ‘lateritic’ weathering processes that developed a standard ‘laterite’ profile of great antiquity. There is no evidence of a former surface crust that comprises the upper part of a ‘standard laterite profile’. Moreover, there is no dramatic variation in chemical composition down the profile, with largely in situ localised weathering transformations explaining mineralogical variability. The presence of 2:1 layer silicates and the absence of gibbsite do not favour the operation of former intense tropical weathering, but the possible presence of chloritised smectite may have inhibited gibbsite formation. An iron‐depleted pallid zone does not occur at depth in the profile, but is present on the plateau margin. Many of the weathering features exposed in the road cuts can be explained in terms of modifications and developments under environmental conditions similar to those of the present, arguing against the view that the summit surface and its associated weathering mantle have been preserved in pristine form since the Mesozoic.     

From the interpersonal to the internet: social service digitisation and the implications for vulnerable individuals and communities

In Australia, e-government is continuously re-defining service boundaries. While this may be good in the case of transactional interactions, for example the online submission of tax returns, it is less clear that interpersonal services, such as working closely with the long-term unemployed, are best delivered digitally. We consider the impact of social services digitisation on vulnerable communities drawing on an analysis of remote Aboriginal communities. Digital uptake affords great opportunities, but it also carries risks. Some communities have no digital infrastructure and in certain cases traditional face-to-face services have been curtailed, leaving those not online with reduced assistance. We find that concerns about the ‘digital divide’ are well founded. Problems generated by e-government flow across boundaries and appear left to the third sector to resolve with the state playing an even more diminished role in the lives of disadvantaged citizens.     

Transnational Corporations and Third World Agriculture

I prefer to use the term ‘transnational’ because it indicates the tendency of the corporations to cross national frontiers with a minimum of difficulty, whereas the connotation ‘multinational’ may suggest a kind of common ownership which actually does not exist. This article has been published in Rapport, the periodical of the Swedish International Development Authority (no. 2, 1975).     

On the difficulties of speaking out against security

Abstract: This article outlines an approach to security that explains its phenomenal growth by examining a peculiarity of its semantic field. In contrast to notions like ‘war’ and ‘violence’, whose antonyms, ‘peace’ and ‘non‐violence’, have positive connotations and are therefore well suited to discursively opposing ‘war’ and ‘violence’, the antonym of ‘security’ ‘ namely ‘insecurity’ ‘ does not achieve the same effect. I suggest that this peculiarity leads to situations in which those in the political field who oppose ‘security’ find themselves in the predicament of having to come up with alternative antonymic constructions such as ‘security vs freedom’ or ‘security vs human rights’ to argue their case. Yet, this produces an asymmetric constellation: while ‘security’ tends to be presented as a self‐evident category, most of its opposites require more explication and substantiation when they are used to denaturalize security. Thus, my argument is that it is difficult to speak out against security without becoming enmeshed in complex questions of what a desirable social life should look like.     

Ultramodern contraception

The measured success of family planning policy in the developing world rests on increases in the ‘modern’ methods of contraception. By extension, ‘traditional’ methods of contraception are equated with traditional mentalities and insufficient motivation to control fertility. But contraceptive use differentials in India suggest that in fact it is the most ‘modern’ women (those with a college education and living in urban areas) who are the most likely to use these traditional methods of birth control and to use them very efficiently as well. The paper locates this counter-intuitive preference among urban, educated women in what may be called ‘ultramodern’ attitudes to the body and to modern medicine and tries to situate such modernization in the contemporary developmental paradigm. Finally, the paper implies that population policy and contraceptive research may be unduly attributing contraceptive ineffectiveness to the users of traditional birth control today.     

Oscillations of intensity and temperature of nightglow emissions: [01] 557.7 nm and 630.0 nm lines,and OH(6-2) band

Clear oscillations of intensity of the oxygen green and red lines and those of intensity and temperature of the OH(6-2) band, which were obtained during two total lunar eclipse nights, are presented. The wave periods found range mainly from 25 to 40 min. In connection with these clear oscillations of intensity and temperature, we have examined intensity variations of these airglow emissions on other nights and found two nights during which only the green line indicates clear oscillations in the post-midnight hour. Our results favor the suggestion of Peterson (1979).     

Indonesian domestic workers and the (un)making of transnational livelihoods and provisional futures

Doreen Massey (2005. For Space. London: Sage.) argued that space and time should not be reduced to a bounded locality of the ‘here and now’ and instead proposed re-imagining ‘space as simultaneity of stories-so-far’. We build on her argument to suggest that an appreciation of migrant aspirations and future trajectories require us to go beyond simultaneous ‘stories-so-far’ but also consider ‘stories-to-come’ which may build upon, divert from, or even unmake the ‘stories-so-far’. We apply these ideas to our study (based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews) of the transnational journeys traced by Indonesian domestic workers employed in Singaporean middle-class homes. We argue that socially and culturally specific notions of risk can work to propel and sustain migration into retrogressive occupations like domestic work, as well as disrupt dominant narratives around migrants as strategic actors, necessarily in control of their trajectories and driven by their migration plans. The calculus of risk-taking and aspiration on which transnational livelihoods are predicated is one that takes into account both situatedness in and connectedness across different places (in short simultaneous ‘stories-so-far’). At the same time, future ‘stories-to-come’ may entail both subtle shifts and constant (re)negotiations that propel individual life stories unto different pathways.     

Monthly simulations of the lunar semi-diurnal tide

Although having a much smaller amplitude than solar tides, lunar tides are also present in the atmosphere. Lunar tides are attractive for theoretical and observational studies because their frequencies and forcing are better determined than for any other atmospheric waves. Lunar tides are generated by the lunar tidal potential which itself is very well determined. However, this potential also affects the Earth and oceans, modifying their mass distributions and elevations, and creating secondary tidal potentials as well as periodic movements of their interfaces with the atmosphere. The periodic load of ocean over the Earth crust due to the tides also induces a secondary modification of tidal potential as well as movement of the atmosphere interface. In our present work we seek to provide a comprehensive model of atmospheric M2 lunar tidal oscillations from the surface to the lower thermosphere (c. 105 km), taking account of the above-mentioned effects i.e. Earth, ocean and load tides. This study is motivated by two facts. First, we now have good determinations of ocean tides using satellite altimetry whereas previous studies of lunar tides were based only on numerical simulations of these ocean tides. Second, some reliable analyses of lunar tides in the lower thermosphere are now available as radars are now operating over a sufficiently long period. Their number should increase in the near future leading to a need for a theoretical study of lunar tides. In this paper, we develop a numerical model and analyse the effects of the different primary and secondary forcings on the lunar tide. Monthly simulations are discussed, and some comparisons with available data (at ground level as well as in the lower thermosphere) are presented.     

Putting the crisis to work: The real estate sector and London's housing crisis

The idea of ‘crisis’ plays an important role in academic and policy imaginations (Heslop and Ormerod, 2020), particularly since the global financial crisis. Across major western cities, at the same time as policy-makers have had to respond to ‘the (economic) crisis’, many have also experienced intense ‘housing crises’ and the acute divergence of average incomes and house prices. In response, cities such as London have become central sites in debates around housing acquisition by the ultra-wealthy, land value extraction and growing levels of unaffordability. However, much critical geography research on housing crises is state-centred or focused on civil society impacts, with relatively little reflection on the real estate sector and the work that crisis does as a narrative in shaping institutionalised and actor-centred practices. In this paper, we draw on in-depth research with developers, investors, and advisors in London to argue that crisis-driven policy responses have created political risk which is differentially experienced by actors across the sector, with large housebuilders and advisors benefitting whilst smaller niche developers move out. Moreover, we show how consultants, investors and developers have used the crisis situation to create new geographies, products and investor types in the housing market. These, in turn, require regulatory support and demonstrate the inherently political nature of crisis narratives' use. We use the London case to broaden understandings of the impact that conceptualisations of ‘crisis’ have on urban and regional planning practices, and how these influence and shape processes of contemporary urban development.     

Culture on the Moon: Bodies in Time and Space

This paper investigates whether the term ‘culture’ can be applied to the six Apollo lunar landing sites, and how the remains at these sites can be understood as the actions of bodies at a particular moment in space and time.     

ASEAN's ‘people-oriented’ aspirations: civil society influences on non-traditional security governance

Since the Asian financial crisis, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sought to reorient itself towards becoming a ‘people-oriented’ association. Democratic transitions in the region and increased demands from civil society to be actively involved in regional governance have prompted ASEAN to develop forms of participatory regionalism. In practice, however, the rhetorical aspirations of ASEAN have not often matched the level of participation or support expected by civil society organisations. It has often been the case that ASEAN's decisions, especially those related to sensitive issues, have been influenced by external pressure as opposed to participatory mechanisms. The aim of this article is to determine to what extent participatory mechanisms impact ASEAN's approach to non-traditional security. By doing so, the authors combine two key elements central to a ‘people-oriented’ approach to regionalism: the incorporation of deliberative and participatory processes and the acknowledgement of transboundary security issues which require cooperation to move beyond state-centric approaches. This article explains that despite the rhetorical emphasis on participatory regionalism, it continues to be the case that regional civil society organisations and non-state actors have limited capacity to influence ASEAN. By providing a critical analysis of influences on ASEAN's non-traditional security policies, the authors offer a modest yet valuable contribution to the emerging literature on ASEAN's ‘people-oriented’ regionalism and advance a nuanced understanding of ASEAN's participatory mechanisms.     

The Rural Labour Market in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT Wage labour in Zimbabwe is most often associated with large commercial farms. The use of wage labour within ‘peasant’ agriculture has been rarely investigated and remains largely undocumented. In 1986/7, the author conducted research in Zimbabwe which was explicitly concerned with issues of rural economic differentiation and the wage labour supplied and hired by ‘peasant’ households. The data suggest that a dynamic labour market exists in rural Zimbabwe. Further, it was found that in addition to the many part-time rural wage workers, there is a group of people who depend upon wages for all or the bulk of their income. These people, who have been largely ignored by policymakers, cannot be defined as farmers at all.     

On the role of dust in the summer mesopause

We propose that dust formed at the cool summer mesopause may have optical properties very different from that measured for bulk material of ice. The smallness of the dust and possible surface impurities may lead to high photoelectric yields and low workfunctions. For such reasons the dust in the summer mesopause may, at least occasionally, be charged to substantial positive surface potentials while pure ice, with its high photoelectric workfunction, would be charged to low and negative potentials by collisions with plasma particles. The presence of ‘dressed’ dust particles, with surface potentials of some volts, can lead to enhanced radar backscatter. We also suggest that the apparent reductions in electron density (‘bite-out’), which have been observed in the radar backscatter region, can be caused by the inability of an electrostatic probe to deflect the massive dust particles.The dust density which is required by our model to explain radar backscatter and electron bite-outs is of the order of 10 cm⁻³ for dust of radius above 5 × 10⁻⁶ cm.     

Magdalenian Children: Projectile Points,Portable Art and Playthings

Children, no doubt, were a significant component of Upper Palaeolithic societies. Despite this fact, however, serious identification and consideration of material culture which may have belonged to children – at least at one time during their use‐life – have not been undertaken. This situation extends to the best represented and most intensively studied of the European Palaeolithic techno‐complexes, the Magdalenian (c.21,000–14,000 cal BP), and consequently, we know very little about the children of this enigmatic people. As play, including object play, is a ‘true cultural universal’, we can be certain that Magdalenian children integrated objects into their games, with these playthings later incorporated into the archaeological record. Through examining ethnographic accounts of recent hunter‐gatherer children and reconsidering archaeological assemblages in light of these data, this paper suggests that Magdalenian playthings probably included full‐sized adult weapon tips and – more significantly – pieces of what archaeologists term ‘art mobilier’.