The limits to good governance and the state of exception: A case study of North Sea fisheries

This paper explores a series of maxims, widely known in policy and academic circles as the ‘principles of good governance’, which state that policymaking in the European Union (EU) should be participatory, conducted as close to citizens as practicable, transparent, accountable, effective and coherent. These maxims were introduced into EU fisheries management as part of a radical reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in 2002. This reform was instituted in response to criticisms of a prevailing management regime alleged to be inefficient, undemocratic, and potentially responsible for an environmental crisis: the exhaustion of key fish stocks. The research for this work has found that there are limits to the actual achievement of good governance in EU fisheries. In practice governance innovations are very often contradictory and rife with tensions. I reason that such problems result not merely from policy implementation failures; they constitute a more endemic feature of the CFP reforms. We can begin to understand these limits to good governance principles by looking to Agamben’s permanent state of exception thesis. Agamben’s theory helps to show how these contradictions and tensions occur under new governance regimes, because the relationship between democratic norms (like good governance) and political power is no longer clear. I argue that this blurring has been exploited by groups seeking influence in these new regimes. They do this through citing a supposed need for emergency measures to mitigate crisis. Although this research broadly supports the state of exception thesis, my analysis leads me to question some aspects of its application in contemporary governance spaces.     

A modular injection system, multilevel sampler, and manifold for tracer tests

Ground water injection and sampling systems were developed for bacterial transport experiments in both homogenous and heterogeneous unconsolidated, surficial aquifers. Two types of injection systems, a large single tank and a dynamic mixing tank, were designed to deliver more than 800 L of amended ground water to the aquifer over 12 hours, without altering the ground water temperature, pH, Eh, or dissolved gas composition. Two types of multilevel samplers (MLSs) were designed and installed. Permanent MLSs performed well for the homogenous surficial aquifer, but their installation procedure promoted vertical mixing, which could obfuscate experimental data obtained from vertically stratified, heterogeneous aquifers. A novel, removable MLS was designed to fit in 2- and 4-inch wells. Expandable O-rings between each sampling port hydraulically isolated each port for sample collection when a nut was tightened at the land surface. A low-cost vacuum manifold system designed to work with both MLS designs used 50 mL centrifuge tubes to efficiently sample 12 MLS ports with one peristaltic pump head. The integrated system was developed and used during four field campaigns over a period of three years. During each campaign, more than 3000 ground water samples were collected in less than one week. This system should prove particularly useful for ground water tracer, injection, and push-pull experiments that require high-frequency and/or high-density sampling.     

Twentieth Century Climate in the New York Hudson Highlands and the Potential Impacts on Eco-Hydrological Processes

During the 20th century the northeastern U.S.A. has undergone an annual temperature increase of 1 °C, the combined effect of winter warming and an increase in daily summer minimum temperatures. A significant cooling of spring through autumn in maximum air temperatures is also evident since 1950. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to document these climate trends and variability over the last century. A secondary objective is to provide a preliminary analysis of how these changes may have impacted hydrologic and ecosystem processes. Specifically, with respect to ecosystem processes, we examine how the cooling of daytime maximum temperatures may have impacted plant respiration and biomass accumulation. The study site is the Black Rock Forest, an experimental forest located in Hudson Highlands of New York that has been maintained as a conservation area over the last 100 years. For the region centered about the forest, there exists a climate/weather record and an extensively maintained biomass record that extends continuously from the early part of the 20th century through present. With such an extensive physical and biological record to draw from, this forest provides a microcosm for studying how changes in 20th century local and regional climate may have impacted ecosystem processes such as species adaptation, biomass growth, and 20th century carbon sequestration. In a subsequent paper we will more extensively explore the relationship between this record of changing climate and eco-hydrological processes.     

大别造山带碧溪岭橄榄岩中锆石U-Pb年龄和Hf同位素研究

在详细形态和内部结构研究基础上,对碧溪岭橄榄岩锆石进行了配套的U-Pb年龄和Hf同位素分析。碧溪岭橄榄岩锆石主体是变质成因的,但有少量岩浆锆石残留。这些锆石主体给出了220～210Ma的变质生长/重结晶作用年龄;一颗具较高Th/U比值的锆石给出646Ma的近协和年龄,限定了早期岩浆结晶作用的最小年龄。真正的侵位年龄可以由745Ma的上交点年龄来限定;210～222Ma则记录着深俯冲陆壳折返过程中的锆石生长。除少数颗粒的ε_(Hf)为负值外(-2.9),大部分锆石的ε_(Hf)是正的(高达 8.1)并具新元古代的亏损地幔模式年龄(0.6～1.0Ga,平均0.8Ga)。这些结果说明碧溪岭橄榄岩的初始物质是扬子大陆岩石圈内新元古代岩浆堆积作用产物。这样的岩浆堆积物来源于亏损的软流圈地幔,侵入于扬子的深部地壳之中(如底侵)并部分混染了古老地壳组分。它们随扬子向华北之下深俯冲碰撞和造山带折返过程中经历着复杂的变质改造作用。     

Tree-ring reconstructed megadroughts over North America since a.d. 1300

Tree-ring reconstructed summer Palmer Drought Severity Indices (PDSI) are used to identify decadal droughts more severe and prolonged than any witnessed during the instrumental period. These “megadroughts” are identified at two spatial scales, the North American continental scale (exclusive of Alaska and boreal Canada) and at the sub-continental scale over western North America. Intense decadal droughts have had significant environmental and socioeconomic impacts, as is illustrated with historical information. Only one prolonged continent-wide megadrought during the past 500 years exceeded the decadal droughts witnessed during the instrumental period, but three megadroughts occurred over the western sector of North America from a.d. 1300 to 1900. The early 20th century pluvial appears to have been unmatched at either the continental or sub-continental scale during the past 500 to 700 years. The decadal droughts of the 20th century, and the reconstructed megadroughts during the six previous centuries, all covered large sectors of western North America and in some cases extended into the eastern United States. All of these persistent decadal droughts included shorter duration cells of regional drought (sub-decadal  ≈  6 years), most of which resemble the regional patterns of drought identified with monthly and annual data during the 20th century. These well-known regional drought patterns are also characterized by unique monthly precipitation climatologies. Intense sub-decadal drought shifted among these drought regions during the modern and reconstructed multi-year droughts, which prolonged large-scale drought and resulted in the regimes of megadrought.     

Which size distribution is best for IRC +10°216?

A generalized two-streamed Eddington aproximation is applied to the problem of radiative transfer in a spherically symmetric dust shell. We investigate whether our technique allows us to draw conclusions about the size distribution of the grains.     

Evidence for the existence of groups of meteorite-producing asteroidal fragments

Abstract— The MORP camera network in western Canada observed 56 events which we associate with meteorites larger than 0.1 kg. An additional 33 Prairie Network (central USA) fireballs with published orbits were previously identified as the sources of meteorites of at least 0.25 kg. A comparison of the MORP orbits with each other and with the PN orbits, using the D′ criterion of orbital similarity, exhibits a surprising number of small values. This suggests there are groups of related objects among the 89 events. We evaluate the probability of small values of D′ arising by chance from a group of random orbits that has the distribution of orbital elements expected for meteorites. There is an excess of small values of D′ among the 89 meteoritic objects over the expectation for random orbits and a marked excess of very small values. Four groups comprising a total of 16 objects account for this excess. These groups exhibit a preference for the larger masses of the population and a very strong concentration of perihelia just slightly inside the Earth's orbit. Although it has been shown by others that gravitational perturbations will disperse Earth-crossing streams in times that are much less than cosmic-ray exposure ages, the properties of the four groups suggest they may be streams of fragments that crossed the Earth's orbit only recently. Such streams may include a considerable fraction of meteorites falling at a given time. Orbital evolution of these streams could alter the sample of meteorites arriving on Earth over time intervals that are less than the accumulation time of the Antarctic collections.     

Spectroscopic binaries near the north Galactic pole paper 7: HD 107742

Photoelectric radial-velocity measurements show that HD 107742 is a spectroscopic binary with a period of 875 days and a small (but definitely non-zero) eccentricity. The star is not a member of the Coma Cluster, against which it is seen projected.     

The typical meteorite event,based on photographic records of 44 fireballs

Abstract— We study the observational data relating to 44 events recorded by the Canadian fireball camera network between 1971 and 1984. Each event is believed to have dropped meteorites, with main masses in the range from 0.1 to 11 kg. Median values are given for 20 parameters describing the atmospheric behavior and orbital elements. A typical duration for a meteoritic fireball is 4 seconds, reaching an end height of 31 km and a velocity of 8 km s^?1 at the end of the luminous path. The peak brightness is typically ?9 magnitude but varies from ?7 to ?15. Meteorites may survive from relatively unspectacular fireballs. Numerous correlations among parameters are investigated. The strong correlations of brightness with initial mass and of duration with slope of the trajectory could be anticipated. Moderate correlations also exist between: (1) initial mass and end height; (2) initial mass and duration of luminosity; (3) initial velocity and beginning height; (4) initial velocity and the fraction of the mass that survives as the largest fragment; (5) initial velocity and the perihelion distance of the orbit. Ablation limits the survival of small masses while fragmentation is usually severe for masses larger than 10 kg. The fractional survival may peak for entry masses between 1 and 10 kg.