The mosquito’s umwelt,or one monster’s standpoint ontology

Mosquitoes are able to vector malaria and other diseases across the planet, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Not only is this a challenging management problem, we also find it to be underlined by an important philosophical problem, namely: the impossibility of controlling “life”. Influential Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexküll wrote that every creature on Earth, from sea urchins to spiders, lives within a unique sphere of existence called an “umwelt”, or “surrounding world”. The umwelt defines the specificity of relations shared between an organism and its environment. Using this concept we complement existing work on monstrous natures in geography by arguing that “monstrosity” arises in the excesses and discontinuities between the mosquito’s umwelt and the human efforts that seek to eliminate it. This finding arises from fieldwork undertaken with public health and vector control officials in the US state of Arizona over several years. Their focus on reducing mosquito breeding sites suggests the complex and emergent spatialities of the monstrous.     

A geologist’s shining path

Chronicle

A geologist’s shining path     

‘There’s no future here’: The time and place of children’s migration aspirations in Peru

This article examines young Peruvians’ aspirations and the role of migration in their imagined futures, from a generational perspective. The data come from Young Lives, a long-term study of childhood poverty combining survey and qualitative approaches with children and their parents. The paper uses a biographical approach that sees migration as part of individual biographies as well as social structures and life course processes. The aim is to deepen understanding of the social contexts in which aspirations for and by children are generated, paying close attention to family migration histories, dynamic household contexts, and children’s migration networks. The analysis focuses on the time-spaces of migration aspirations, showing the way past, present and future are interconnected. It also emplaces aspirations by focusing on the way aspirations by and for children are constituted in and through particular places. The conclusion reflects on the role of poverty and argues that ‘aspirations’ are about much more than abstract ‘futures’; they orient actions in the present and say a great deal about young people’s current realities and relationships.     

Genesis of volatile components at Saturn’s regular satellites. Origin of Titan’s atmosphere

Jupiter’s and Saturn’s regular satellites, which posses much ice, are currently thought to have been formed during the early evolution of the Solar System in circumplanetary protosatellite disks. Two of Saturn’s regular satellites—Titan and Enceladus—were experimentally proved to contain, along with water, other volatile components: molecular nitrogen, and methane (which are the major components of Titan’s atmosphere) and various nitrogen and carbon compounds in water plumes of Enceladus. The protomaterial of these rocky–icy satellites was formed in the outer regions of the gas–dust circumsolar nebula, and its closest analogue currently accessible to study is cometary material. The paper presents a review of experimental data on the chemical and isotopic composition of cometary material as possible sources of volatile components on Titan and Enceladus and model evaluations of temperatures in the circumsolar gas–dust protoplanetary disk and Jupiter’s and Saturn’s protosatellite disks during various evolutionary episodes of the solar system. The P–T parameters of the origin of the protomaterial of Jupiter’s and Saturn’s regular satellites were proved to have been remarkably different, and hence, the material of Europa, a Jupiter’s regular satellite, cannot contain any volatile components other than water, in contrast to Titan and Enceladus. This conclusion is supported by experimental data. Cometary material is likely genetically related to the material of Saturn’s regular satellites Titan and Enceladus. The paper presents results of thermodynamic simulation of the evolution of the chemical and phase composition of Saturn’s satellites and suggests a model for the origin of Titan’s nitrogen–methane atmosphere.     

Time-lag effects in Parker’s dynamo

The effects of a time lag in the magnetic quenching of the α effect is considered for an oscillating magnetic field in a Parker dynamo. The hypothesis of a parametric resonance in the system is justified, a modification of the solution is found, and the appearance of processes with periods much longer than the fundamental oscillation period is demonstrated.     

New Zealand’s National Landslide Database

A New Zealand Landslide Database has been developed to hold all of New Zealand’s landslide data and provide factual data for use in landslide hazard and risk assessment, including a probabilistic landslide hazard model for New Zealand, which is currently being developed by GNS Science. Design of a national Landslide Database for New Zealand required consideration of existing landslide data stored in a variety of digital formats and future data yet to be collected. Pre-existing landslide datasets were developed and populated with data reflecting the needs of the landslide or hazard project, and the database structures of the time. Bringing these data into a single database required a new structure capable of containing landslide information at a variety of scales and accuracy, with many different attributes. A unified data model was developed to enable the landslide database to be a repository for New Zealand landslides, irrespective of scale and method of capture. Along with landslide locations, the database may contain information on the timing of landslide events, the type of landslide, the triggering event, volume and area data, and impacts (consequences) for each landslide when this information is available. Information from contributing datasets include a variety of sources including aerial photograph interpretation, field reconnaissance and media accounts. There are currently 22,575 landslide records in the database that include point locations, polygons of landslide source and deposit areas, and linear landslide features. Access to all landslide data is provided with a web application accessible via the Internet. This web application has been developed in-house and is based on open-source software such as the underlying relational database (PostGIS) and the map generating Web Map Server (GeoServer). Future work is to develop automated data-upload routines and mobile applications to allow people to report landslides, adopting a consistent framework.