Free and mobile brachiopods from New Zealand Oligocene deposits and Australian waters

The musculature of the Recent Australian species, Magadina cumingi (Davidson 1852), is revised and previously unknown dorsal median pedicle muscles are described. The behaviour of M. cumingi is analysed in relation to the physical properties of the bryozoan sands it occupies on the Australian shelf. Functional morphology of a New Zealand Oligocene species, Rhizothyris amygdala Thomson 1920, indicates that this species would also have lived as a free and mobile form in the originally unconsolidated sediments (greensands) in which it is preserved. Shell characters of members of both Magadina and Rhizothyris are incompatible with an attached sedentary existence.     

Francisco Faleiro and Scientific Methodology at the Casa de la Contratación in the Sixteenth Century

Henricus Martellus's four world maps of c.1489 show a non‐existent Asian peninsula east of the Aurea Chersonesus (the Malay peninsula). For some decades a group of scholars in Latin America has been claiming that this so‐called ‘Dragon's Tail’ peninsula is really a pre‐Columbian map of South America. In this paper, the cartographical and place‐name evidence is examined, showing that the identification has not been proved, and that perceived similarities between the river and coastal outlines on this ‘Dragon's Tail’ peninsula and those of South America are fortuitous. Ptolemy's depiction of an enclosed Indian Ocean was invalidated when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Consequently, a year or two later, Martellus adapted the east Asian section of Ptolemy's world map, providing China with an east coast and turning the southward extension of Asia into a peninsula. The non‐Ptolemaic place‐names on these maps were derived from Marco Polo's writings.     

The Behavioral Impact of Drinking and Driving Laws

All U.S. states have laws designed to discourage people from drinking and driving, but enforcement varies across the states. Existing studies offer conflicting evidence on the effectiveness of these strategies in deterring drinking‐and‐driving behavior. Deterrence theories imply that the mere existence of such laws has little impact on criminal behavior, but the perception of enforcement and the probability of being detected have a deterrent effect. To test these hypotheses, we develop a measure of the propensity to drink and drive using item response theory and national survey data. Inferential models test the impact of perceptions of enforcement, actual enforcement levels, and deterrence laws on criminal propensity. Results indicate that the existence of statutes impacts only those least likely to drink and drive, while perceptions of the likelihood of arrest and individual agreement with the goals of drinking and driving laws significantly reduce the propensity for almost everyone. Actual enforcement rates display no behavioral effect.     

Public open space exposure measures in Australian health research: a critical review of the literature

Numerous studies have shown associations between public open space and a variety of health outcomes. Yet the extent to which firm conclusions and planning policy recommendations can be drawn from this body of work depends on how public open space availability has been measured and reported. Other researchers have highlighted potential issues with the way that public open space has been measured but have not systematically assessed the extent of this problem. This paper provides a comprehensive critical review of studies of public open space and health conducted in Australia to identify and compare public open space measurement and data treatment. Our analysis showed wide variation in how public open space was measured, as well as a lack of consistency in reporting public open space exposure measures and under‐reporting of measurement methods. We find that such tendencies limit how much these studies can be compared and contrasted with each other. The corollary of that finding is that without more detailed reporting of exposure measures, it will be difficult to establish an evidence base that informs planning for healthy, liveable environments. In response, we develop and present a checklist for reporting public open space exposure to address this challenge.     

Queering code/space: the co-production of socio-sexual codes and digital technologies

The mutual production of space by sexuality and technology has been differently addressed in the often-disparate disciplinary pursuits of queer geographies and critical studies of technology in geography. Building on Dodge and Kitchin’s ‘code/space,’ we highlight how studies of technology in geography are already concerned with questions of sexuality through the examination of biopolitics and the regulation of bodies, together with the (re-)establishment of new and old lines between the public and the private. The immanence of sexuality in code/space foregrounds the importance of spatial processes characterised by their difference and normativity in the geographies of technology. Queer geographies critically examine such different experiences and processes of differentiation through space in their nuanced conceptualisations of spatial regulation and transgression. We illustrate how these two bodies of geographical scholarship might be synthesised by outlining three approaches for studies of ‘queer code/space.’ To show how there are a variety of relationships between sexuality, code, and space, we play on the double entendre of ‘code’ as a set of social rules and norms, and ‘code’ as the set of algorithmic instructions underlying software systems. In both senses, codes constrain forms of intimate life, but can also transgress, disrupt, and distribute the norm. To queer code/space is to emphasise the complexities of difference and normativity in living with technologies, where technologies might both proliferate and regulate socio-spatial experience.     

A queer theory of software studies: software theories,queer studies

This introduction to the themed section ‘Queering Code/Space’ poses the question: what is the spatial relationship between technology and sexuality? We outline two overarching issues concerning technology and sexuality that lie outside of yet intersect with discussions in geographical scholarship. We then detail the characteristics of two largely distinct schools of thought – software studies and queer theory – to examine the tensions of and correspondence between these separate intellectual systems. We assess what might be productively found at the intersections of software studies and queer theory in terms of their respective epistemological approaches toward the topics of technology and sexuality. We briefly outline the effects the combination of software studies and queer theory have had on geography and what more they might have to offer. We conclude by providing an overview of the articles in the themed section.