Mrs Gardner's world: scale in Mormon women's autobiographical writing

This study of daily experiences of scale focuses on activity patterns recorded in the journal of a Mormon woman living in Pine Valley, Utah c.1890–1920. The household as 'private' domestic space was weakly developed, and both the home and village were sites of community activity. Lofland's concept of 'parochial space' distinguishes the spaces used by one's social and kinship networks vs areas occupied by strangers. In Pine Valley's isolated situation, large-scale economic and political involvement appeared limited. More significant for Mormon women was a transcendent religious ideology that furnished simultaneity and integration of scales.     

Spatial Transgression and the BYU Jerusalem Center Controversy*

Dominant groups tend to construct the meaning of places to justify and sustain their ideology and orthodoxy in order to solidify power and to maintain their control over others. New outsider groups whose ideology disrupts the established order and sovereignty of the dominant group can be labeled transgressive ( Sibley 1995; Cresswell 1996 ). Transgressions of hegemonic spaces force dominant groups to reexamine themselves and to reaffirm or to modify their position. This concept of transgression is used to examine the controversy surrounding the building of the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center in the mid‐1980s in Jerusalem. The public outcry among some Israelis over the building of this educational edifice concerned the potential use of the Jerusalem Center as a focal point for Mormon (Latter‐day Saints) proselytizing efforts. We examine the way the Jerusalem Center was viewed and depicted by its opponents, suggesting how basic geographic concepts such as scale and site further refine the concept of spatial transgression for buildings and urban redevelopment.     

Monitoring Soil Water Content by Vertical Temperature Variations

The availability of high sensitivity temperature sensors (0.001 K sensitivity platinum resistors), which can be positioned at intervals of a few centimeters along a vertical profile in the unsaturated zone, allows short‐term in situ determinations—one day or even less—of the thermal diffusivity. The development of high data storage capabilities also makes this possible over long periods and the relative variations in thermal diffusivity allow the monitoring of the variations in water content. The processing of temperature measurements recorded at different depths is achieved by solving the heat equation, using the finite elements method, with both conductive and convective heat transfers. A first set of measurements has allowed this approach to be validated. Water content variations derived from thermal diffusivity values are in excellent agreement with TDR measurements carried out on the experimental site at Boissy‐le‐Châtel (Seine et Marne, France).     

Automatic correction and simplification of geological maps and cross-sections for numerical simulations

Incorporating prior geological knowledge in geophysical process models often meets practical meshing challenges and raises the question of how much detail is to be included in the geometric model. We introduce a strategy to automatically repair and simplify geological maps, geological cross-sections and the associated meshes while preserving elementary consistency rules. To identify features breaking validity and/or the thin features potentially problematic when generating a mesh, we associate an exclusion zone with each model feature (horizon, fault). When these zones overlap, both the connectivity and the geometry of the geological layers are automatically modified. The output model enforces specific practical quality criteria on the model topology and geometry that facilitates the generation of a mesh with lower bounds on minimum angles and minimum local entity sizes. Our strategy is demonstrated on an invalid geological cross-section from a real-case study in the Lorraine coal basin. We further explore the impacts of the model modifications on wave propagation simulation. We show that the differences on the seismograms due to model simplifications are relatively small if the magnitude of simplifications is adapted to the physical problem parameters.     

The COVID-19 pandemic and global environmental change: Emerging research needs

The outbreak of COVID-19 raised numerous questions on the interactions between the occurrence of new infections, the environment, climate and health. The European Union requested the H2020 HERA project which aims at setting priorities in research on environment, climate and health, to identify relevant research needs regarding Covid-19. The emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be related to urbanization, habitat destruction, live animal trade, intensive livestock farming and global travel. The contribution of climate and air pollution requires additional studies. Importantly, the severity of COVID-19 depends on the interactions between the viral infection, ageing and chronic diseases such as metabolic, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and obesity which are themselves influenced by environmental stressors. The mechanisms of these interactions deserve additional scrutiny. Both the pandemic and the social response to the disease have elicited an array of behavioural and societal changes that may remain long after the pandemic and that may have long term health effects including on mental health. Recovery plans are currently being discussed or implemented and the environmental and health impacts of those plans are not clearly foreseen. Clearly, COVID-19 will have a long-lasting impact on the environmental health field and will open new research perspectives and policy needs.