Domesticating home anchored work: Negotiating flexibility when bringing ICT based work home in rural communities

Based on a study of people conducting ICT based work from home in Scotland and Norway, the article analyses how work is negotiated and integrated with non-paid activities in the household and local community. The article fills a gap in that it focuses on rural contexts rather than the urban work life often depicted in literature on flexibility and work. When work is brought home, a domestication process takes place whereby practices of work are negotiated and integrated into everyday life, sometimes changing common perceptions of where and when work is “in” or “out of place”. While working from home is common in rural areas, the study shows that ICT based knowledge related work is still seen as relatively “out of place”. Drawing on the domestication concept, the study shows how community norms about accessibility, interaction and where to be at certain times, had to be renegotiated when this type of work was conducted from home. Imbued in these negotiations were subtly often tacitly communicated moral conceptions on what constitutes good parenthood (in particular motherhood) as well as “real” work. Both men and women reported benefits in terms of combining family and work obligations when working from home, but the tendency was still for traditional gender patterns to be reproduced. Women tended to fit work around the needs of the children, whereas men saw themselves first and foremost workers. Following the concept “doing gender” some challenged these patterns, but did so carefully in relation to the work organisation as well as the community. The impact of communities in regulating home anchored work suggests there may be a need for communities to take on a more active domestication process as more people conduct ICT based work with the home as the base, opening up the moral and normative geographies for when work is “in” or “out of place”.     

Sealing of fluid pathways in overpressure cells: a case study from the Buntsandstein in the Lower Saxony Basin (NW Germany)

We studied veins in the Triassic Buntsandstein of the Lower Saxony Basin (NW Germany) with the aim of quantifying the evolution of in-situ stress, fluids and material transport. Different generations of veins are observed. The first generation formed in weakly consolidated rocks without a significant increase in fracture permeability and was filled syntectonically with fibrous calcite and blocky to elongate-blocky quartz. The stable isotopic signature (δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C) indicates that the calcite veins precipitated from connate water at temperatures of 55–122°C. The second vein generation was syntectonically filled with blocky anhydrite, which grew in open fractures. Fluid inclusions indicate that the anhydrite veins precipitated at a minimum temperature of 150°C from hypersaline brines. Based on δ³⁴S measurements, the source of the sulphate was found in the underlying Zechstein evaporites. The macro- and microstructures indicate that all veins were formed during subsidence and that the anhydrite veins were formed under conditions of overpressure, generated by inflation rather than non-equilibrium compaction. The large amount of fluids which are formed by the dehydrating gypsum in the underlying Zechstein and are released into the Buntsandstein during progressive burial form a likely source of overpressures and the anhydrite forming fluids.     

Assembly processes in upper subtidal macroalgae: The effect of wave exposure

The structure and diversity of sixteen macroalgal assemblages originating from two coastal locations in the Northern (Kavala gulf) and Central (Maliakos gulf) Aegean in Greece were explored by examining their relative abundance distributions (RADs) and fitting five stochastic niche-based models. A mechanistic interpretation of the underpinning assembly processes was attempted by relating the assumptions of the fitted models with available abiotic data corresponding to each assemblage. The random fraction niche-based model, assuming a random niche apportionment to species, was fitted to the majority of Maliakos assemblages characterized by more evenly distributed and speciose RADs, whereas the random assortment model, assuming no relationship among species abundance and niche size, was fitted to most of the Kavala assemblages characterized by steeper RADs with fewer species. Among the possible underlying mechanisms, wave exposure seems to play a key role in macroalgal assembly processes; however factors such as biogeography and hard substrate availability must be also taken into consideration. Short-term processes as changes in resource availability (nutrients and light), known as drivers of assembly rules in other primary producers (e.g. phytoplankton), do not considerably affect macroalgae in the oligotrophic Eastern Mediterranean, possibly due to their longer life spans.     

Numerical modelling study of mechanisms of mid‐basin salt canopy evolution and their potential applications to the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico

Salt canopies are present in many of the worldwide large salt basins and are key players in the basins' structural evolution as well as in the development of associated hydrocarbon systems. This study employs 2D finite‐element models which incorporate the dynamical interaction of viscous salt and frictional‐plastic sediments in a gravity‐spreading system. We investigate the general emplacement of salt canopies that form in the centre of a large, autochthonous salt basin. This is motivated by the potential application to a mid‐basin canopy in the NW Gulf of Mexico (GoM) that developed in the late Eocene. Three different salt expulsion and canopy formation concepts that have been proposed in the salt‐tectonic literature for the GoM are tested. Two of these mechanisms require pre‐existing diapirs as precursory structures. We include their evolution in the models to assure a continuous, smooth evolution of the salt‐sediment system. The most efficient canopy formation takes place under the squeezed diapir mechanism. Here, shortening of a region containing pre‐existing diapirs is absorbed by the salt (the weakest part of the system), which is then expelled onto the seafloor. The expulsion rollover mechanism, which evacuates salt from beneath evolving rollover structures and expels it both laterally and to the surface, was not successfully captured by the numerical models. No rollover structures developed and only minor amounts of allochthonous salt emerged to the seafloor. The breached anticline mechanism requires substantial shortening of salt‐cored, pre‐weakened folds such that the salt breaches the anticlines and is expelled to the seafloor. The amount of shortening may be too large to occur in the central part of a salt basin, but may explain canopy evolution closer to the distal end of the allochthonous salt. When applying the different concepts to the northwestern GoM, none of the models adequately describes the entire system, yet the squeezed diapir mechanism captures most structural features of the Eocene paleocanopy. It is nevertheless possible that different mechanisms have acted in combination or sequentially in the northwestern GoM.     

An extinct,Late Mesoproterozoic,Sveconorwegian mantle wedge beneath SW Fennoscandia,reflected in seismic tomography and assessed by thermal modelling

A channel‐like, low‐velocity zone in the lithospheric mantle beneath W Norway coincides spatially with the extension of a recently discovered 200 × 50 km granite batholith, which formed as a result of oceanic subduction beneath the SW Fennoscandian margin between 1.07 and 1.01 Ga. Based on results from numerical modelling, we argue that the low‐velocity zone, at least in part, reflects the thermal (radioactive) effects of the refertilized mantle wedge of this magmatic arc. The geological record in SW Fennoscandia suggests that active‐margin magmatism terminated as a result of rapid slab rollback and trench retreat starting at ca. 1 Ga. The rapid shift from active‐ to passive‐margin processes was probably critical in preserving the mantle wedge, and its identification can therefore shed light on how active‐margin processes terminated in ancient orogens.     

Seasonal succession of cyanobacterial protease inhibitors and Daphnia magna genotypes in a eutrophic Swedish lake

Lakes are well known for having a pattern of seasonal succession of phytoplankton and zooplankton. The succession of different taxa of phytoplankton results in a succession of zooplankton taxa, and within the genus Daphnia, into a succession of different genotypes (clones). One cause for this succession of Daphnia clones might be the production of digestive protease inhibitors by cyanobacteria, which usually bloom in summer. Here we report seasonal changes in the frequency and the abundance of Daphnia magna haplotypes in a eutrophic lake, which developed a chymotrypsin-inhibitor-producing cyanobacterial bloom in May. These seasonal changes were not related to changes of biotic and abiotic lake parameters. However, a very high content of chymotrypsin inhibitors was observed in May (but not in other months). This was assumed to have exerted a strong punctual selection pressure on the Daphnia population and on the direct targets of the protease inhibitors, i.e. the digestive chymotrypsins of Daphnia. Actually, D. magna from before and during the cyanobacterial bloom showed a different protease pattern on activity stained SDS-PAGE in comparison to clones from the month after the bloom. However, no difference in tolerance, measured as IC₅₀ values, to inhibition by natural lake seston from May was found between the clones from before and after the bloom. Thus, the hypothesis that a seasonal adaptation of D. magna subpopulations from either April/May or June might have occurred could not be proven. This suggests that the Daphnia population investigated here is locally adapted to cyanobacterial protease inhibitors.     

Ecology and fluvial dynamics of an Early Holocene medium‐sized European lowland river valley (Upper Scheldt,northern Belgium)

The fluvial environment of Early Holocene small‐ to middle‐sized lowland rivers in northwest Europe is mostly unstudied due to a lack of preserved and accessible deposits. A rescue excavation in the Scheldt valley in northern Belgium offered the opportunity to study a Boreal alluvial succession in detail. The results of palaeoecological and sedimentological analyses (diatoms, pollen, botanical macro‐remains, molluscs, grain size) characterize the biotic and physical environment in the middle reach of this medium‐sized river system. Although the Early Holocene in the Scheldt Basin has often been portrayed as a period of fluvial stability with marshy conditions and diffuse discharge, this study showed evidence of point bar formation by a small, low‐energy meandering river between ~9.5 and ~8.8 cal. ka BP. The point bar was at least temporarily vegetated and shows a shift from herbaceous riparian vegetation to an open willow‐dominated alluvial forest. This evidence points to a more open vegetation and a more energetic environment than traditionally described for rivers of this size and age. A link to the 9.3 ka BP cooling event is suggested and possible reasons for the scarcity of records of this type of deposits are discussed.     

Comparison of Different Gold Recovery Methods with Regard to Pollution Control and Efficiency

This case study performed at the largest gold mining village in the Philippines compares four methods for gold recovery: amalgamation, cyanide leaching, a shaking sluice, and Cleangold® sluices. The results show that a combination of manual panning or Cleangold® sluices followed by cyanidation is the best solution under present conditions, followed by cyanidation alone. Based on the knowledge obtained, remarks on suitable policy actions, which may be applied also in other gold fields, are made.