Re-creating Wilderness 2.0: Or getting back to work in a virtual nature

Camping on Twitter, trekking in Google Street View, mountaineering on Snapchat. Wilderness is dead. Long live Wilderness 2.0. In this paper, the term “Wilderness 2.0” refers to the articulation of new media technologies, including mobile digital devices, web 2.0 and locative media, with the practice of wilderness recreation. In this new era of virtual nature, outdoor recreation occurs as much in the statusphere and blogosphere as it does in the biosphere. While much public and academic debate about Wilderness 2.0 has focused on the extent to which new media technologies connect people to, or disconnect them from, nature, this paper argues that wilderness is not a static and essential reality that can simply be connected to or disconnected from, but a social construct that is continually re-created in different cultural contexts. In this sense, Wilderness 2.0 reflects the re-creation of a new ontology of wilderness as DigiPlace: an augmented reality that blurs the lines between the “actual” and the “virtual.” Moreover, Wilderness 2.0 does not simply refer to the creation of a new ontology of wilderness, but the incorporation of outdoor recreation into the political economy of the web 2.0. In the context of Wilderness 2.0, outdoor recreation is increasingly exploited as a form of virtual labour. Thus, despite being associated with a discourse of “sharing” and “connecting to nature,” Wilderness 2.0 is, above all else, a nature that capital can see.     

Inhabiting the impasse: Social exclusion through visible assemblage in neighborhood gentrification

Now that gentrification has taken hold in central Cincinnati and begun to spill outward, nearby neighborhoods in the early stages of gentrification have begun to call for “inclusive redevelopment” to bring vibrancy to depressed neighborhoods without displacing long-term residents. Neighborhood leaders and city officials understand that displacement happens along racial and class lines, yet efforts to directly address this issue have not changed displacement patterns. Research shows social exclusion contributes to displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods, and tends to focus on uneven impact across social categories like race and class, but there is much less attention to how exclusion is enacted and these categories reproduced. I argue that this takes place simultaneously in the intimate space and time of everyday encounters, where proximity and relation unfold affectively through things and people to code them anew, pulling some into the momentum of redevelopment, while pushing others aside. This cognitive reversal of how categories work is important because it relocates their origin in small, interstitial, and nonhuman sites. Pairing assemblage theory and posthumanism with interviews and field notes, I demonstrate the role of nonhuman forces in shaping these encounters; how materials like cheese, pint glasses, trash, beards, and liver & onions play marked roles in producing marginalization. My findings show that things and people compose visible assemblages together, like a group of people sitting at a sidewalk table eating pizza and drinking beer. These assemblages are operative in producing and reinforcing social exclusion: they usher practiced bias through the surface aesthetics of the assorted components, enabling affective atmospheres to prescribe outcomes. These emergent, visible assemblages are thus important sites for intervention into processes of social exclusion leading to displacement.     

“Sinking islands” and the UNSC: Five modalities of mobilising science

Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, the Maldives and other small island developing states in the Pacific are often incorrectly called “sinking islands.” With their highest points just a few meters above sea level, they face adverse impacts from climate change and especially sea level rise, which can cause them to disappear entirely or make their territory uninhabitable. After rather frustrating negotiations on other fora, the representatives of those states asked the UN Security Council to deal with their perilous situation in 2007. On the one hand, some countries used scientific argumentation to justify the introduction of this new security agenda. On the other hand, prominent UNSC members such as China and Russia, supported mainly by rapidly developing large countries, rejected it, arguing that the Security Council did not have the expertise to solve environmental problems. Since then the islands have echoed their plight to the UNSC in 2011 and 2015. This paper determines what roles individual countries ascribe to “experts” and “science” during UNSC negotiations. It examines how the authority of “experts” was exploited, which allowed certain countries to strike the issue of those islands from the UNSC agenda by calling for a more “scientific approach,” while others used “science” to widen the concept of security. The analysis of empirical data confirms the theory of Berling's three modalities when referring to science. Those modalities can be further extended by Foucault's conception of “will to truth” as a method of exclusion, and Chandler's theory of “empire in denial” as a way of evading responsibility, while maintaining power.     

A useful technique for metallurgical mass balances — Applications in grinding

The simple yet powerful steady state data analysis algorithm and software described herein have proven most useful in industrial grinding circuit studies at ANAMAX. Examples are drawn from that work. A process configuration can include up to 50 process streams connecting up to 30 pieces of equipment. “Steady state” plant data (e.g., solids, water, slurry flow rates, percent solids; sieve analyses) are collected where feasible, input, analyzed for consistency and, if the process is “overdefined”, adjusted in a least squares sense to achieve overall mass balance as well as mass balance within each size fraction. The combined sampling and analysis errors are assumed random with a weighting factor based upon whether the specific data point is believed to be “fair”, “good” or “excellent”. Extension of the technique to overall plant material balances is straightforward.     

Experimenting with spaces of encounter: Creative interventions to develop meaningful contact

To-date geographical research on encounters has primarily comprised observation of naturalistic settings (both micro publics and everyday public spaces) or narrative accounts of encounters generated by conventional methods, this paper focuses on a contrived spatial experiment to create meaningful contact across difference. Inspired by, and drawing on insights from, Architecture – a discipline relatively neglected by geographers in recent times – we use a creative form of spatial play to stimulate groups of people to explore their differences and to develop shared understandings. Whereas previous studies have identified the importance of material objects in art projects and home spaces in mediating relations between people, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the physical configuration of space in work on encounters, despite the fact that geography is a spatial discipline. Here, we engage directly with the role of the form and function of space. Our spatial experiments demonstrate how paying attention to the materiality of micro-spaces rather than social relations alone, can provide insights into the generation of positive interactions by contributing to a greater understanding of how meaningful encounters happen, and what can be done to facilitate them. Specifically, by exploring the size and configuration of space, issues of ownership and surveillance, the relationship between primary and secondary space, and aural architecture this research identifies how working together to create a shared private or intimate space – might facilitate a sense of empowerment and the production of social relations characterised by democracy and inclusion.     

鄂尔多斯南缘构造带现今地块运动模式

依据研究区内断裂体系及GPS地体运动矢量数据,将鄂尔多斯南缘构造带分割成AK共11个断块群,将差异性GPS数据转化为断块之间的细部相对运动,给研究地块细部运动差异提供一种全新的研究思路与研究模式。鄂尔多斯南缘中东部现今构造应力场整体为挤压应力环境。在渭河盆地西部,从西南方向中秦岭动力楔传递而来的挤压应力峰点在武功咸阳口镇一带形成应力主轴,应力主轴两侧楔形地块普遍存在侧向挤出逃逸,逃逸使GPS运动矢量偏离区域主应力方向。渭河盆地东部则存在左行走滑,显示出豫西断隆的阻隔碰撞作用。鄂尔多斯南缘现今地块相对运动规律符合"三头碰撞"模式,四川地块、鄂尔多斯地块、豫西断隆三个地块的"三头碰撞"形成高应力区,"头间逃逸带"形成走滑带和相对低应力区。本次提出地体之间的"多头碰撞"和"头间逃逸"构造模式有一定的普遍性,研究清楚地块之间哪里是"头"接触点、哪里是"头间逃逸带",可以成为研究大中地块周围震源机制分布规律的有效途径。     

初论地质信息有序系列

信息有序系列（ＩＯＳ）是笔者提出的一个新概念，是指具有非随机性定义的信息、非周期性、存在于大量无序中的有序部分特征的有序性。ＩＯＳ的理论是应用基于较少假设的、较为简单的数字或几何模式去研究地质体客观存在的复杂性，减少类似概率分布、周期性、平稳性、遍历理论等假设要求。ＩＯＳ中的一组现象，表面上看类似于周期，但被广义地定义，它们不能被谱分析和统计分析发现。“系列”一词用以与“模型”相区别，其特点是仅在有限范围和短时间内存在，是不平稳和遍历的。“有序”一词是强调在混沌中存在的有序部分，可应用于预测目的。所以，ＩＯＳ是有序性中一部分。大地震、热点、超大型矿床、节理等时空分布表明了ＩＯＳ的客观存在。     

Types and internal hydro-geomorphologic variability of mallines (wet-meadows) of Patagonia: Emphasis on volcanic plateaus

“Mallines” (wet-meadows) are Patagonian ecosystems that provide hydrological, biological and scenic resources. They develop in landscape locations that are favourable for water concentration. The area of each “mallín” is usually limited to a few, tens, or hundreds of hectares at most, but independently of their size, they present high variability in their internal physiographic characteristics. These are reflected on the vegetation distribution that basically responds to the space and time water distribution in the “mallín”, both at the surface as well as across the soil profile.We analyze the internal variability of a “mallín type” and present a conceptual map that illustrates the functional relationships established between four basic elements: geomorphology, hydrology, soils and vegetation, whose interrelationships allowed the differentiation of various situations, which may correspond both to different “mallines” and to subunits within the same “mallín”.     

“Becoming” an environmentalist in Indonesia

This article looks at how five environmental leaders in Jogjakarta became environmentally active, and at the groups and interventions they formed. Interview data are drawn from a broader project that aimed to find out what might turn an Indonesian person into someone who cares for the environment. It examines the journey in leadership as “becoming” in the terms of Deleuze and Guattari (1987); a journey constituted in the desire to make something different. Against a backdrop of day-today practices in Central Java that do not favour environmental conservation and sustainability, the five informants seized upon an idea, a praxis, and explored it in the company of like-minded others, to join or make an organisation or action dedicated to redressing environmental crisis or neglect.     

Primary textural-structural features of carbonatites and their metamorphic evolution

The original structures-textures of endogenic carbonatites (figs. 1–4) are subject to autometamorphism which is followed by imposed metamorphism (including regional), often to the point where there is no recognizable difference between them and metamorphosed sedimentary carbonates or others. “Cool” host rocks, the receptors of carbonatites from carbonatitic complexes, are particularly favorable for preservation of their original textures which are even less resistant to metamorphism than structures. — V.P. Sokoloff     

Pragmatism and power, or the power to make a difference in a radically contingent world

Power seems to occupy an understated role in much pragmatist thought, both classical and contemporary. It is clearly a blind spot in Richard Rorty’s work, although it is ever present in the background, and for John Dewey and William James it often appears as indistinguishable from the power to act or intervene in events so as to make a difference. In this paper, I want to push a practical account of power a step further by drawing out its expedient, anti-foundational character and its Dewey-style grounding in experience. I also try to show how the power to make a difference may just as easily be transformed into the powers of imposition and constraint, where one side gains at the expense of another. Following that, I draw out a more provisional sense of power based upon the difference that space and spatiality make to what pragmatists have traditionally referred to as the contextuality and contingency of events. This is tentatively explored by a consideration of what spatial experiments with power might look like when employed to bring about change and make a difference in the world.     

Micromine软件在谦比希东南矿体三维建模及资源量估算中的应用

矿床三维数字立体模型是"数字化矿山"的基础,在充分研究澳大利亚Micromine软件技术基础上,本文介绍了如何借助Micromine软件平台,结合东南矿区N1(0~59线)矿体成矿地质规律及矿体地质特征,开展三维建模及资源量估算,确保建模和资源量估算结果的准确、可靠。     

抓住机遇敢于挑战加快发展

《国务院关于加强地质工作的决定》为地质工作的发展提供了良好的社会氛围,对其多元化投入步伐将加快,工作领域将进一步拓宽,人才培养、装备更新力度可望加大,长期困扰地勘工作发展的政策问题有望逐步得到解决。这为地质工作发展提供了新的发展机遇与空间,同时地质工作尤其是化工地质行业也面临着市场化管理,地勘单位企业化挑战,体制上的挑战及矿种比较优势不强的挑战。贯彻、落实好决定需要有相应的配套政策;对地勘单位而言,应找准定位,利用好政策寻求发展。对化工地质队伍,更应增强了犹患意识,扎实做好主业,正确评估自身实力,搞好队伍建设及做好跟踪新理论、新技术,拓宽领域等一系列工作。     

Intergenerational relations and the power of the cell phone: Perspectives on young people’s phone usage in sub-Saharan Africa

Cell phones present new forms of sociality and new possibilities of encounter for young people across the globe. Nowhere is this more evident than in sub-Saharan Africa where the scale of usage, even among the very poor, is remarkable. In this paper we reflect on the inter-generational encounters which are embedded in young people’s cell phone interactions, and consider the wider societal implications, not least the potential for associated shifts in the generational balance of power. An intriguing feature of this changing generational nexus is that while many young people’s phone-based interactions, from their mid-teens onwards, are shifting away from the older generation towards friendship networks in their own age cohort, at the same time they are repositioning themselves – or becoming repositioned – as family information hubs, as a consequence of their phone expertise. The paper draws on mixed-methods research with young people aged c. 9–25 years and in-depth interviews with older age-groups in 24 sites (ranging from high density poor urban to remote rural) across Ghana, Malawi and South Africa.     

From financialization to operations of capital: Historicizing and disentangling the finance–farmland-nexus

This largely programmatic paper offers a new way of thinking through the incorporation of farmland into financial markets. Building on the notion of “operations of capital”, it sketches analytical entry points for scrutinizing the inner workings of agri-finance capital formation. The concept of operations can make two useful contributions to the existing discussion. First, it helps provide a more nuanced historicization of the entanglement between finance and farmland. Finance has a long history of penetrating agriculture and the new quality of the contemporary coupling of finance and farmland only becomes fully visible when adopting a more nuanced historical perspective. Rather than imagining the history of capitalism as one where industrial capitalism gives way to financialized capitalism, the concept of operations sensitizes us for the situated modes, processes and practices of financial economization that have reworked economy, society and nature at specific historical conjunctures.Second, it allows us to move beyond simply treating “financialization” as explanans. Shifting attention to the situated practical activities of global finance, it eventually helps us explore central categories of financial economization (“capital”, “resources”, “property” and “value”) as practical accomplishments rather than taking them for granted. Only then can we come to terms with how finance works through farmland in different geographical settings. Empirical material from an ongoing research project will support my arguments.     

数字滑坡技术及其典型应用

为了改变传统滑坡遥感技术方法效率低、调查精度难以提高的状况,经多年实践与探索,笔者于 1999 年提出了“数字滑坡”概念。该概念使传统的“地学滑坡”拓展为能以数字形式表达的,具有三维空间、“多维”时间信息的,由“多元”要素组成的“数字滑坡”。数字滑坡技术系统由滑坡解译基础技术、遥感识辨滑坡技术、滑坡数据库及滑坡模型4部分构成。多年来,数字滑坡技术已成功应用于我国大型水电站建设、山区交通线建设、区域开发环境治理以及抗震减灾等领域,也用于大规模个体滑坡调查研究,并取得了显著的经济和社会效益,有效服务于国家防灾减灾战略。该文主要以西藏帕里河及川东天台乡2个典型滑坡调查为例,阐述数字滑坡技术的创新应用。     

A theory of concentric,kink, and sinusoidal folding and of monoclinal flexuring of compressible,elastic multilayers: III. Transition from sinusoidal to concentric-like to chevron folds

A basic, sinusoidal solution to the linearized equations of equilibrium for compressible, elastic materials provides solutions to several problems of folding of multilayers. Theoretical wavelengths are comparable to those predicted by Ramberg, using viscosity theory, and to those predicted by elementary folding theory. The linearized analysis of buckling of a single, stiff, elastic layer, either isolated or within a soft medium, suggests that wavelengths computed with elementary beam theory are remarkably similar to those computed with the linearized theory for wavelength-to-thickness ratios greater than about five. This is half the limit of ten normally assumed for use of the elementary theory.The theory and experiments with deep beams of rubber or gelatin indicate that thick, homogeneous layers folded with short wavelengths assume internal forms strikingly similar to those of the ideal concentric fold. Thus, mechanical layering clearly is not required to produce concentric-like forms.Further, the theory suggests that “arc and cusp” structure, or “pinches”, at edges of deep beams as well as chevron-like forms in single or multiple stiff layers are a result of a peculiar, plastic-like behavior of elastic materials subjected to high normal stresses parallel to layering. In a sense, the elastic material “yields” to form the hinge of the chevron fold, although the strain vanishes if the stresses are released. Accordingly, it may be impossible to distinguish chevron forms produced in elastic-plastic materials, such as cardboard or aluminum and perhaps some rock, from chevron forms produced in purely elastic materials, such as rubber.Analysis of the theory shows that, just as high axial stresses make straight, shortened multilayers the unstable form and sinusoidal waves the stable form, stresses induced by sinusoidal displacements of the multilayer make the sinusoidal waveform unstable and concentric-like waves the stable form. Thus, concentric-like folds appear to be typical of folded multilayers according to our analysis. Further, where the layers have short wavelengths in the cores of the concentric-like folds, the stiff layers “yield” elastically at hinges and straighten in limbs. Thus the concentric-like pattern is replaced by chevron folds as the multilayer is shortened. In this way we can understand the sequence of events from uniform shortening, to sinusoidal folding, to concentric-like folding, to chevron folding in multilayers composed of elastic materials.     

Doing community supported agriculture: Tactile space,affect and effects of membership

Community supported agriculture (CSA) is a direct-marketing food network that has the potential to decommmodify food and support farmers while providing consumers with sustainably raised, seasonal, local food. Through an ethnographic exploration of one CSA, we describe the processes, practices, affect and effects of consumer membership within the context of non-representational theory. Carolan (2007) suggests that when non-representational ways of knowing are fostered through long-term embodied involvement in “tactile space,” “deep commitments” to the environment and others are encouraged. This study augments understandings of tactile space. Findings show that members engage in the tactile spaces of CSA (e.g. attending distribution, cooking more), but with varied effects: leading one member to voice compassion for the farmer which “is something you don’t feel in a supermarket” while another admits feeling “like I’ve been conned.” In spite of mixed experiences and affects, on balance we conclude that CSA membership does affect environmental ethics.     

《基础地质学》课程教学改革及实践成效：以桂林理工大学为例

桂林理工大学《基础地质学》课程经过多年的建设和发展,形成了深厚的成果积淀。近年,“大地质”观和“大工程”观的专业导向以及新工科建设背景又对地学人才培养提出了新要求,该课程也逐渐显现出一些短板：课程知识在横向交叉、与工程实践及行业产业的结合,以及对思政内容的传递方面有待加强;当前教学模式对学生创新思维的培养不足;学生的认知负荷偏大、学习兴趣不足。针对上述问题,课程团队秉承内容更新—模式变革—兴趣引领的理念,进行了一系列课程改革实践：以教材编写、实体课堂和线上资源为载体进行教学内容更新;基于多种教学方法开展翻转课堂教学改革;进行多种教学资源的同步建设。教学实践表明,课程改革在提升学生专业兴趣、助力学生学科竞赛、创新思维培养等方面均表现出良好的效果;在教学资源共享、课程知识与产业实际结合、提高课堂氛围、知识结构拓展以及综合能力提升等方面获得学生的积极评价,满意度高。