Assignment of the South Chinese Ordovician trilobite Calymene paronai to Neseuretus

Turvey, S.T. & Siveter, D.J., June 2007. Assignment of the South Chinese Ordovician trilobite Calymene paronai to Neseuretus. Alcheringa 31, 173‐183. ISSN 0311-5518.

Calymene paronai Pellizzari, 1913 Pellizzari, G. 1913. Fossili Palaeozoici antichi dello Scensi (Cina). Rivista Italiana di Palaeontologia, 19: 33–47.  [Google Scholar] was described on the basis of an almost complete enrolled specimen from the Ordovician (probably the early Llanvirn Yangtzeella poloi Biozone) of southern Shaanxi, China. It represents one of the first Chinese trilobite species to have been established, but has been almost completely ignored by subsequent workers. This species is redescribed and reassigned to the Gondwanan inner shelf indicator calymenid Neseuretus, compared with other South Chinese taxa previously assigned to this genus, and interpreted as a senior synonym of N. concavus Lu, 1975 Lu, Yanhao. 1975. Ordovician trilobite faunas of central and southwestern China. Palaeontologica Sinica, New Series B, 11: 1–463. (in Chinese and English) [Google Scholar].     

The Spaces of Graduate Student Labor: The Times for a New Union

This paper offers a critical analysis of how pressures to "corporatize" universities are affecting graduate student employees and public higher education in the United States. The argument is that the corporatization of universities is a not a new phenomenon, but is occurring in a very different political, economic, and technological context than in previousdecades. After addressing the definition of corporatization with regard to universities in general and those in the state of Washington in particular, the paper discusses the author's perceptions of the activities and spaces of universities and how the university and the people who work there are connected to larger economic processes and power relations. The paper provides the author's perspective on the current situation of graduate student employees in relation to processes of corporatization, and focuses on the ambiguities of the double identity of graduate student employees and how this relates to current struggles to form graduate student employee unions. The paper considers ways that graduate student employee unions reflect a desire to change the ways that "business" is conducted on university campuses, and could work to build coalitions across employee divides. The paper concludes by outlining some thoughts on the role of academics in addressing pressures to corporatize higher education and suggesting possible ideas for action in the struggle to keep public universities open and democratic.     

The coastal landslides of Shetland

Little is known of hard-rock coastal landsliding in Scotland. We identify 128 individual coastal landslides or landslide complexes >50 m wide along the coasts of Shetland. Most are apparently translational slides characterized by headscarps, displaced blocks and/or debris runout, but 13 deep-seated failures with tension cracks up to 200 m inland from cliff crests were also identified. Thirty-one sites exhibit evidence of at least localized recent activity. Landslide distribution is primarily determined by the distribution of coastal cliffs >30 m high, and they are preferentially developed on metasedimentary rocks. Analysis of 16 landslides on Fetlar (NE Shetland) indicates that most are translational dip-slip failures; 3 represent deep-seated failures and several exhibit active frontal erosion attributable to basal sapping by storm waves. As these landslides terminate in shallow water, failure was probably initiated when rising sea level resulted in footslope erosion and upslope propagation of instability, causing downslope displacement of landslide blocks on upper slopes. ¹⁰Be exposure dating of two headscarps yielded ages of 4.8?±?0.2 ka and 4.4?±?0.2 ka, consistent with the onset of footslope erosion as sea level rose. Our results suggest that landslides have played a hitherto undocumented but important role in retreat of cliffed coastlines in Scotland.