Revisiting the red light district: Still neglected, immoral and marginal?

Twenty years ago, Ashworth et al. (1988) offered a distinctive and innovative interpretation of a neglected aspect of the urban scene: the red light district. Focusing on the location of female prostitution in a series of Western European cities, their paper suggested that the geographies of sex work are revealing of some of the ‘less obvious’ social and political processes that shape urban space. Here, we revisit Ashworth et al’s paper in the light of subsequent developments in the organisation of commercial sex as well as the study of sexuality and space. Noting important continuities as well as major shifts in the location of sex work, with a significant shift to off-street forms of sex working having occurred, this paper argues that some of the ideas in Ashworth et al’s paper remain highly pertinent, but others appear in need of updating. In particular, we stress the importance of focusing on men as both clients and workers within the sex industry, and flag up a number of connections that might be made with the emerging literatures on the geographies of sex itself. We hence conclude by considering Ashworth et al’s paper as an important early intervention in debates surrounding the relations of sexuality and space, albeit one in which questions of gender, embodiment, and sexual desire remained largely unexplored.     

Their grass is greener but ours is sweeter – Thoroughbred breeding and water management in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia

The Upper Hunter region of New South Wales (NSW) around Scone is reputed to be the second most significant thoroughbred breeding region in the world after the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. This article identifies the importance and cultural constructions of grass, and hence water, in the thoroughbred breeding industry in this region. Thoroughbred stud managers attempt to produce environments attractive to potential horse purchasers and owners with mares to be mated. These environments are constructed from perceptions of how a thoroughbred stud should appear, and from the physical conditions of specific locations. One perception is that the grass should be green. There are differing opinions in the thoroughbred breeding industry about the nutritional value of irrigated grasses, the role of these grasses in horse development and the associated access to, cost of and efficacy of water used for this purpose. The paper concludes that effective water management in this industry is only possible if various cultures of nature are understood, where necessary challenged, and subsequently included in policy and planning.     

The role of the Kazakhstan orocline in the late Paleozoic amalgamation of Eurasia

After the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, we mapped surface ground fractures in Tangdhar, Uri, Rajouri and Punch sectors and liquefaction features in Jammu area lying close to the eastern side of the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir, India. The NW trending ground fractures occurred largely in the hanging wall zone of the southeastern extension of the causative fault in Tangdhar and Uri sectors. The principal compressive stress deduced from the earthquake induced ground fractures is oriented at N10°, whereas the causative Balakot–Bagh fault strikes 330°. The fault-plane solution indicates primarily SW thrusting of the causative fault with a component of strike–slip motion. The ground fractures reflect pronounced strike–slip together with some tensile component. The Tangdhar area showing left-lateral strike–slip motion lies on the hanging wall, and the Uri region showing right-lateral strike–slip movement is located towards the southeastern extension of the causative fault zone. The shear fractures are related to static stress that was responsible for the failure of causative fault. The tensile fractures with offsets are attributed to combination of both static and dynamic stresses, and the fractures and openings without offsets owe their origin due to dynamic stress. In Punch–Rajouri and Jammu area, which lies on the footwall, the fractures and liquefactions were generated by dynamic stress. The occurrence of liquefaction features in the out board part of the Himalayan range front near Jammu is suggestive of stress transfer  230 km southeast of the epicenter. The Balakot–Bagh Fault (BBF), the Muzaffarabad anticline, the rupture zone of causative fault and the zone of aftershocks — all are aligned in a  25 km wide belt along the NW–SE trending regional Himalayan strike of Kashmir region and lying between the MBT and the Riasi Thrust (Murree Thrust), suggesting a seismogenic zone that may propagate towards the southeast to trigger an earthquake in the eastern part of the Kashmir region.     

Chronology of Pliocene and Quaternary bioevents and climatic events from fission-track ages on tephra beds, Wairarapa, New Zealand

High-resolution Pliocene and Pleistocene sequences exposed on land in New Zealand are some of the few detailed records of widepread marine bioevents and paleoclimatic changes in the Southern Hemisphere. Marine biostratigraphy calibrated in deep-sea cores by paleomagnetic reversals has been the primary basis for the chronology of these sequences. We have determined ages for several tephra beds which now provide an independent numerical age calibration for a well-studied marine and terrestrial section in Wairarapa. By using the isothermal plateau fission track (ITPFT) method on volcanic glass we have overcome the problems of partial track fading and detrital mineral contamination, which hindered earlier studies, to reveal a new chronology extending back to nearly 5 Ma.

Our ages for the Hikawera Tuff (4.91 ± 0.25 Ma) and Spooner Tuff (3.44 ± 0.13 Ma) are consistent with the appearance and disappearance of many early Pliocene foraminiferial species, validating their age calibration in New Zealand. However, some fossil occurrences, including coccoliths, differ temporally by as much as 0.55 Ma, perhaps due to local tectonic-induced recycling.

Four Pleistocene tephra beds (Potaka tephra (1.00 ± 0.03 Ma), Kaukatea tephra (0.87 ± 0.05 Ma), Rangitawa tephra (ca. 0.35 Ma) and Kawakawa tephra (ca. 0.22 Ma)) are now recognised in the Wairarapa sequence via stratigraphic and new geochemical and age data. These beds allow direct correlation to other marine and terrestrial basins, as well as volcanic regions in New Zealand, and will ultimately aid in a regional paleoenvironmental reconstruction where bioevents are absent. The tephra ages indicate that the marine sediment accumulation rates varied from 90 to 250 m/Ma between different sections of the Pliocene and reached ca. 350 m/Ma in the last 2.4 Ma, when the sequence displays pronounced glacioeustatic cyclic deposition. In the terrestrial realm, the oldest loess in New Zealand is now constrained to between 1.00 and 0.87 Ma.     

Calculation of the thermodynamic and geochemical consequences of nonideal mixing in the system H2O-CO2-NaCl on phase relations in geologic systems: Equation of state for H2O-CO2-NaCl fluids at high pressures and temperatures

Fluid inclusion analyses leave little doubt that solutions containing large concentrations of H₂O, CO₂, and electrolytes are involved in a wide range of geologic processes. Although the miscibility gap in the system H₂O-CO₂ occurs only at low temperatures, experimental data reported by Takenouchi and Kennedy (1965) and Gehrig (1980) indicate that the addition of 6 weight percent NaCl relative to H₂O + Nacl extends the region of immiscibility in the system H₂O-CO₂-NaC] to ≥700°C at 500 bars and mole fractions of CO₂ (X_CO2) ? 0.1. In contrast, addition of 20 weight percent NaCl relative to H₂O + NaCl at 700°C and 500 bars expands the miscibility gap to X_CO2 ? 0.2. At 2000 bars, addition of 20 and 35 weight percent NaCl relative to H₂O + NaCl causes the miscibility gap to extend to ~500° and ~700°C, respectively, at . The existence of the immiscible region in this high-pressure/temperature environment has a profound effect on temperatures of equilibration for metamorphic mineral assemblages (Bowers and Helgeson, 1983). To determine the extent to which nonideality in the ternary system affects these equilibria, the modified Redlich-Kwong (MRK.) equation of state was fit to pressure-volume-temperature data taken from Gehrig (1980) along pseudobinaries for which is constant. Fugacity coefficients of the components were then generated from the fugacity coefficient analog of the MRK equation of state and these coefficients were used together with solubility data to determine the compositions of the coexisting immiscible phases. The tie lines connecting the coexisting phases shift in orientation from nearly parallel to the H₂O-CO₂ binary at low temperatures to almost perpendicular to this binary at high temperatures.     

Magnetic polarity stratigraphy of the Pleistocene section at Portland (Victoria), Australia

Three to seven oriented paleomagnetic samples were collected from 16 sites in the Nelson Bay and Bridgewater formations at Portland, Victoria, which contains the recently discovered Nelson Bay local fauna (L.F.). The entire section has reversed polarity. These results, along with Globorotalia truncatulinoides within the section, and the presence of underlying middle Pliocene-dated basalts, indicate that the Portland section, and the included Nelson Bay L.F., was deposited within the late Matuyama Chron between 1.66 and 0.73 myr ago. This represents the first well-documented pre-¹⁴C Pleistocene mammalian fauna in Australia calibrated in direct stratigraphic context with absolute dating methods. In addition, the reversed polarity for the Bridgewater Formation confirms the previous hypothesis that the depositional history of this beach-sand deposit is time-transgressive across the Brunhes-Matuyama boundary.     

Conditions of diamond growth: a proton microprobe study of inclusions in West Australian diamonds

Crystalline primary inclusions in diamonds from the Argyle and Ellendale lamproites have been analyzed for Mn, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, Pb, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Ta, Ba and Mo by proton microprobe. Eclogite-suite inclusions dominate at Argyle and occur in equal proportions with peridotite-suite inclusions at Ellendale. Eclogitic phases present include garnet, omphacitic clinopyroxene, coesite, rutile, kyanite and sulfide. Eclogitic clinopyroxenes are commonly rich in K and contain 300–1060 ppm Sr and 3–70 ppm Zr: K/Rb increases with K content up to 1400 at 0.7–1.1% K. Rutiles have high Zr and Nb contents with Zr/Nb=1.5–4 and Nb/Ta 16. Of the peridotite-suite inclusions, olivine commonly contains > 10 ppm Sr and Mo; Cr-pyropes are depleted in Sr, Y and Zr, and enriched in Ni, relative to eclogitic garnets.Eclogite-suite diamonds grew in host rocks that were depleted in Mn, Ni and Cr, and enriched in Sr, Zn, Cu, Ga and Ti, relative to Type I eclogite xenoliths from the Roberts Victor Mine. Crystallization temperatures of the eclogite-suite diamonds, as determined by coexisting garnet and clinopyroxene from single diamonds, range from 1085 to 1575° C. Log K _D (C _i ^cpx /C _i ^gnt ) varies linearly with 1/T for Zr, Sr and Ga in most of the same samples. This supports the validity of the temperature estimates; Argyle eclogite-suite diamonds have grown over a T range 400° C. Comparison with data from eclogite xenoliths in kimberlites suggests that K _D ^Sr and K _D ^Zr are mainly T-dependent, while K _D ^Ga may be both temperature-and pressuredependent. K _D ^Ni , K _D ^Cu and K _D ^Zn show no T dependence in these samples.In several cases, significant major-and/or trace-element disequilibrium is observed between different grains of the same mineral, or between pyroxene and garnet, within single diamonds. This implies that these diamonds grew in an open system; inclusions trapped at different stages of growth record changes in major and trace-element composition occurring in the host rock. Diamond growth may have been controlled by a fluid flux which introduced or liberated carbon and modified the composition of the rock. The wide range of equilibration temperatures and the range of composition recorded in the inclusions of single diamonds suggest that a significant time interval was involved in diamond growth.