Carruthers and the theory of glacial undermelt: lessons from a pamphleteer?

In 1953, R. G. Carruthers, a respected geologist, published a private scientific pamphlet which challenged the established view of British Quaternary stratigraphy. Carruthers had no other route but private publication. Why was this, and what was the foundation for his ideas? We explore Carruthers' theory in the light of current knowledge and consider the lessons for scientific publication provided by it.     

Craters

Abstract Recent observational evidence emphasizes the importance of craters as a prominent surface characteristic of the smaller planetary bodies in the solar system. Craters of similar appearance may have very diverse origins. An initial assumption as to the type of origin should not influence an impartial and detailed physical study of any given crater.     

Space and sustainability: an exploratory essay on the production of social spaces through city-work

The purpose of this essay is to locate the making of social spaces as a particularly salient approach for understanding sustainability. Castells' spaces of places and spaces of flows are interpreted generically and a new social theory, Jacobs' moral syndromes, is introduced to underpin the production of these two spatial forms: commercial agents through their network practices make spaces of flows; guardian agents through their territorial practices make spaces of places. Both spaces are considered to be the outcome of city-work. A new division of labour is devised: four primary types of city-work are identified: hinter-work, net-work, territorial-work and hierarch-work. These ideas are considered as tools for thinking about developing spatial policies for sustainability. In conclusion, Jacobs' theory is used to discuss what the general strategy has to be for tackling sustainability.     

THE PANOPTICON'S CHANGING GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT. Over the past two centuries, surveillance technology has advanced in three major spurts. In the first instance the surveillance instrument was a specially designed building, Bentham's Panopticon; in the second, a tightly controlled television network, Orwell's Big Brother; today, an electronic human‐tracking service. Functionally, each technology provided total surveillance within the confines of its designated geographical coverage, but costs, geographical coverage, and benefits have changed dramatically through time. In less than a decade, costs have plummeted from hundreds of thousands of dollars per watched person per year for analog surveillance or tens of thousands of dollars for incarceration to mere hundreds of dollars for electronic human‐tracking systems. Simultaneously, benefits to those being watched have increased enormously, so that individual and public resistence are minimized. The end result is a fertile new field of investigation for surveillance studies involving an endless variety of power relationships. Our literal, empirical approach to panopticism has yielded insights that might have been less obvious under the metaphorical approach that has dominated recent scholarly discourse. We conclude that both approaches—literal and metaphorical—are essential to understand what promises to be the greatest instrument of social change arising from the Information Revolution. We urge public and scholarly debate—local, national, and global—on this grand social experiment that has already begun without forethought.     

GLACIER FLUCTUATIONS, SUSPENDED SEDIMENT FLUX AND GLACIO-LACUSTRINE SEDIMENTS

ABSTRACT. In order to perform inverse modelling of climate variability based on palaeoclimate proxy records, the complexity of intermediate steps in the chain of processes from the climate forcing to the responding proxy has to be considered. In reconstructing climate-forced glacier fluctuations from proglacial lacustrine sediments it is important to understand how climate affects glacier dynamics. A glacier system is complex with many factors influencing sediment production, transport and deposition. Fluvial and mass movement processes in the proglacial environment may affect lake sedimentation substantially. We argue that it is easy to over-interpret glaciolacustrine sediment variability by ignoring these complications. The sediment records may contain individual layers resulting from single precipitation or melt events, as well as persistent changes in climate-forced glacier dynamics. We conclude that it is necessary to consider all possible influencing factors in order to derive reliable palaeoclimate data from lacustrine sediment sequences.