Trilobite biofacies of the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary interval in northern North America

Regional biofacies analysis has been neglected in biostratigraphic studies of the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary interval. Cluster analysis of relative abundance data of trilobites in thirty-seven large collections from ten localities in North America outlines eleven biofacies in the mid-Trempealeauan to early Tremadocian interval. The biofacies are largely lithofacies-specific and are differentiated at generic and familial levels. The composition of trilobite zonal associations in the boundary interval is controlled principally by the sequence of biofacies. Available trilobite zonal schemes can be used only within single lithofacies. The biofacies patterns and faunal dynamics across the upper boundary of the Ptychaspid Biomere do not support hypotheses requiring catastrophic events. In coherence and geographic distribution, Late Cambrian trilobite biofacies are similar to post-Cambrian benthic biofacies.     

The Short History of the Ifugao Rice Terraces: A Local Response to the Spanish Conquest

Establishing the construction sequence of agricultural terraces is extremely complicated due to the nature of their technological foundation and use. A number of methodological approaches have been developed to address this difficulty, such as bulk soil ¹⁴C dating, Optically-Stimulated Luminescence (OSL), sediment grain size, or a combination of these, but a fundamental problem of stratigraphic disturbance still exists. In this article, we utilize multiple datasets, including radiocarbon determinations, faunal isotopic signatures, human osteological remains, archaeobotanical data sets, energetics assessments, and spatial data to establish the origins of Philippine Cordillera rice terraces. Dominant historical narratives in the region suggest a 2000–3000 b.p. inception of the terrace systems, but previous Bayesian modeling and current archaeobotanical, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic data indicate that the shift to wet-rice cultivation is a recent phenomenon and a response to the intrusion of the Spanish Empire in the northern highland Philippines.     

Touching from a Distance: The Younger Generation of One Nation Conservatives and Thatcherism

It is argued here that the younger generation of One Nation Conservatives made a concerted effort to conform to the requirements of the free market agenda of the Thatcher governments during the 1980s. This served to distinguish them from the older generation of wets who had preceded them in the cabinet and who had been more inclined to engage in coded criticism of that agenda. The younger One Nation Conservatives knew that they had to conform if they wanted to hold office and the problems which Britain faced gave them a structural, as well as a personal, motive for conformity. Their willingness to conform made them important members of the second and third Thatcher governments. They provided a renewed radical impetus to government policy in the mid and late 1980s, which culminated in the introduction of the community charge or poll tax, and they possessed the communication skills needed to promote those policies in public. The efforts which the younger generation of One Nation Conservatives made to conform in the sphere of domestic economic policy were undone, after Thatcher had been replaced by Major in November 1990, by the issue on which they retained their distinctiveness: Europe. Their continued expression of pro‐European views became a problem for them after Thatcher had recoiled from the prospect of economic and monetary union in the late 1980s, because it proved to those on the right of the Conservative Party that they were not really ‘one of us’ at all.     

ROAD INVESTMENTS,SPATIAL SPILLOVERS,AND DEFORESTATION IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON*

ABSTRACT Understanding the impact of road investments on deforestation is part of a complete evaluation of the expansion of infrastructure for development. We find evidence of spatial spillovers from roads in the Brazilian Amazon: deforestation rises in the census tracts that lack roads but are in the same county as and within 100 km of a tract with a new paved or unpaved road. At greater distances from the new roads the evidence is mixed, including negative coefficients of inconsistent significance between 100 and 300 km, and if anything, higher neighbor deforestation at distances over 300 km.