The identification and significance of Apalachicola for the origins of the Creek Indians in the Southeastern United States

Apalachicola was a Hitchitee community that was considered the capital of the Creek Nation during the seventeenth and eighteenth century in the Southeastern United States. The role of this community in the formation of the southeastern political and cultural geography is paramount because of their coalescence with emigrant Muscogee people. In this article, I synthesize 10 years of research at the site and clarify the population history of this community. The research demonstrates the formation of the Creek culture area in the material record. Pottery surface decoration becomes measurably homogenous and I interpret this pattern as a result of that cultural development.     

Visitors’ place-based evaluations of unacceptable tourism impacts in Oulanka National Park,Finland

Visitors’ assessments of the negative impact of tourism, on physical and social environment, vary based on the location where the evaluation occurs. Research that focuses on identifying visitors’ norms within outdoor recreation settings has not been able to link the geographical location with the corresponding evaluation of unacceptable levels of impact. This study combines a traditional on-site visitor survey with a Public Participation Geographic Information Systems survey to produce spatially explicit information on visitors’ acceptance of tourism impacts. Using a web-based participatory survey, visitors were asked to indicate specific locations where they felt the effects of tourism disturbed the quality of their experience in Oulanka National Park. These evaluations were analyzed at multiple scales – destination, specific zones, and sites – to promote more efficient park management. Based on visitor evaluations, we found a collection of hotspots in the park where tourism has already caused unacceptable impacts. Visitors noted that crowding and erosion disturbed their experiences, especially along highly visited trail sections, while littering was considered problematic near wilderness huts. However, participant satisfaction at these sites was not lower than elsewhere in the park. This indicates that the association between negative impacts of tourism and visitor satisfaction is not straightforward, but complex. This study encourages the collection of spatially accurate data on visitors’ assessments of the effects of tourism because it has the potential to more efficiently direct park management policies. In addition, spatial techniques provide a new means to monitor the impacts of tourism, acknowledging that visitors’ perceptions of acceptability of tourism impacts also vary within tourism destinations, such as parks.     

Offspring sex preference in frontier America

Analysis of the fertility histories of women born between 1850 and 1900, as given in the Utah Population Database (UPDB), reveals the effect of the number, as well as the sex composition, of previous children on birth-stopping and birth-spacing decisions. Specifically, agricultural and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) households—two sub-populations that might have placed different values on male and female children for economic, social, and/or cultural reasons—showed a distinct preference for male children, as expressed by birth stopping after the birth of a male child and shorter birth intervals in higher-parity births when most previous children were female. Remarkably, women in both the early "natural fertility" and the later contraceptive eras used spacing behavior to achieve a desired sex mix. Although the LDS population had relatively high fertility rates, it had the same preferences for male children as the non-LDS population did. Farmers, who presumably had a need for family labor, were more interested in the quantity than in the sex mix of their children.     

Organic-walled microfossils from the Early Cambrian of South Australia

Microfossils which are hollow, possess a two-layered vesicle wall, and occur as single elements or, more rarely, as compound forms, have been recovered from the Early Cambrian Heatherdale Shale, on the Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia. The microfossils, which range in size from 4 to 14.5 μm, are informally and tentatively assigned to the genus Sphaerocongregus Moorman 1974. Superficially they resemble forms assigned to Pyritosphaera Love 1958 and its probable junior synonym, Bavlinella Shepeleva 1962. Topotypes of these genera, however, have yet to be studied using SEM techniques, and their morphologic details remain uncertain. The organic composition of the present microfossils is supported by energy-dispersive X-ray analyses. Samples of the Heatherdale Shale were also analysed using pyrolysis techniques; the organic matter is, however, over-mature with respect to petroleum generation, and no geochemical assessment of original kerogen type is possible.     

A Physiologist’s War: Captain T. Graham Brown RAMC (1915–1919)

During the five years before the outbreak of the First World War, Thomas Graham Brown (1882–1965) conducted research into the control of locomotion that gained him a deserved and long-lasting reputation as a neuroscientist and, in 1927, was recognized by election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. In 1915, with the First World War raging, he agonized about continuing his research or joining the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). Told by his father to seek a commission, he served two and half years in Macedonia with the British Salonika Force. Whilst in Greece, he kept a daily diary. The entries from June 1916 to May 1917 are extant. They are unpublished and provide the background to the narrative to follow. Casualties with traumatic injury to the brain and spinal cord afforded him the opportunity to carry out careful observations, particularly concerning sensory localization, which resulted in novel findings and his observations on shell shock led to him being called as an expert witness to the national inquiry into the nature and treatment of the condition. In 1920, Graham Brown was appointed to the Chair of Physiology in Cardiff, which he held until 1947.