Children's daily travel to school in Johannesburg-Soweto,South Africa: geography and school choice in the Birth to Twenty cohort study

This paper has two aims: to explore approaches to the measurement of children's daily travel to school in a context of limited geospatial data availability and to provide data regarding school choice and distance travelled to school in Soweto-Johannesburg, South Africa. The paper makes use of data from the Birth to Twenty cohort study (n?=?1428) to explore three different approaches to estimating school choice and travel to school. First, straight-line distance between home and school is calculated. Second, census geography is used to determine whether a child's home and school fall in the same area. Third, distance data are used to determine whether a child attends the nearest school. Each of these approaches highlights a different aspect of mobility, and all provide valuable data. Overall, primary-school-aged children in Soweto-Johannesburg are shown to be travelling substantial distances to school on a daily basis. Over a third travel more than 3 km one way to school, 60% attend schools outside of the suburb in which they live, and only 18% attend their nearest school. These data provide evidence for high levels of school choice in Johannesburg-Soweto, and that families and children are making substantial investments in pursuit of high-quality educational opportunities. Additionally, these data suggest that two patterns of school choice are evident: one pattern involving travel of substantial distances and requiring a higher level of financial investment and a second pattern involving choice between more local schools, requiring less travel and a more limited financial investment.     

Australia's Antarctic agenda

Australia has had a long connection with, and significant national interests in, the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. The Australian Antarctic Territory comprises 42 per cent of Antarctica's landmass. Australia is not only a claimant state and original signatory to the Antarctic Treaty but has played a significant role in the development of what is termed the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). This article aims to provide an overview of Australia's key policy interests and government policy goals towards Antarctica, including its commitment to the ATS. In examining key policy objectives we note that despite continuity and development of these objectives, significant changes and challenges have arisen in the period 1984–2006. It is these challenges that will help frame Australia's Antarctic agenda over the next 20 years and beyond.     

Memory,ghosts and the good life: Sati in Theravada cultural contexts

Mindfulness in its English rendering brings together a mix of historical influences, from Zen to Romanticism to yoga. Still, the most central concept from which it draws is sati, a Theravada Buddhist Pali term first translated as mindfulness over 100 years ago. This article reports on the findings of an ethnographic investigation of sati in the Theravada-majority countries of Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, where the concept is widely used for a range of religious, therapeutic and colloquial ends. Based on interviews and questionnaires involving over 600 monks, psychiatrists and lay Buddhist practitioners, the article explores aspects of sati that are not often recognized (or recognized as much) in Western, secular mindfulness contexts. These qualities include attention to memory in present-moment awareness, the potency of supernatural engagements and a social-ethical orientation towards living well. Highlighting these qualities allows for a greater appreciation of cultural diversity within contemporary global mindfulness practices and suggests possibilities for further developing the global therapeutic potential of mindfulness.     

Finding Vikings in the Danelaw

Historical, artefactual and place‐name evidence indicates that Scandinavian migrants moved to eastern England in the ninth century AD, settling in the Danelaw. However, only a handful of characteristically Scandinavian burials have been found in the region. One, widely held, explanation is that most of these Scandinavian settlers quickly adopted local Christian burial customs, thus leaving Scandinavians indistinguishable from the Anglo‐Saxon population. We undertook osteological and isotopic analysis to investigate the presence of first‐generation Scandinavian migrants. Burials from Masham were typical of the later Anglo‐Saxon period and included men, women and children. The location and positioning of the four adult burials from Coppergate, however, are unusual for Anglo‐Scandinavian York. None of the skeletons revealed interpersonal violence. Isotopic evidence did not suggest a marine component in the diet of either group, but revealed migration on a regional, and possibly an international, scale. Combined strontium and oxygen isotope analysis should be used to investigate further both regional and Scandinavian migration in the later Anglo‐Saxon period.     

THE HALLATON INGOT: SILVER IN IRON AGE BRITAIN

This article is a case study of the detailed contextual and scientific analysis of a single object, moving beyond a conventional object biography to consider flows of materials and shifts in meaning and value. The object is a simple triangular silver ingot from the Late Iron Age shrine site at Hallaton, Leicestershire, UK. Scientific analysis is used to uncover the biography of the ingot, and the raw materials from which it was created. The results suggest that the metal which eventually formed the ingot circulated through both Iron Age and Roman social networks, being reworked and transformed several times before it was deposited. Silver emerges as a material which mediated between the Mediterranean world and Iron Age communities in Britain, allowing translation and transmutation between different systems of value in conquest‐period Britain.     

Taxonomic, anatomical, and spatio-temporal variations in the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions of plants from an African savanna

Stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope ratios are commonly used to reconstruct palaeodiets and palaeoenvironments. The method is based on our knowledge of isotopic patterns in plants, which are subject to taxonomic and environmental variability. While previous researchers have addressed isotopic variability amongst plants, no studies have looked extensively at a broad suite of taxa over multiple temporal scales from within the savanna biome so as to provide baseline data for palaeodietary and palaeoenvironmental studies. Here we document variations in the isotopic compositions of plants collected over two years from the Kruger National Park, South Africa, with respect to species and anatomical differences, and the influences of geological substrate and spatio-temporal shifts in climate. Results show that environmentally-induced carbon isotopic variations in plants within this region are generally smaller than 2‰, which is lower than what has been previously reported for plants compared across multiple habitat-types. These data suggest that δ¹³C differences of 2‰ or more (or 1‰ if the diet is predominantly C₄) between animals from a given area reliably indicate real dietary differences. Plant δ¹⁵N values vary greatly between different microhabitats (by up to 4‰), responding to a range of environmental influences that may, in turn, significantly influence variation in animal δ¹⁵N values.