HUMBOLDT'S MEXICAN TEXTS AND LANDSCAPES*

ABSTRACT. While in New Spain from 1803 to 1804, Alexander von Humboldt interacted with some of its landscapes and the texts that represented them. Analysis of those interactions regarding the Basin of Mexico and the Gulf lowlands demonstrates what purely text‐based studies of the production of places cannot: The contrasting landscape elements and patterns that had emerged over millennia during precolonial times in those two places, their relative degrees of depopulation during the colonial era, and the relative degrees of rigor Humboldt applied to interacting with the resulting landscapes and the texts that represented them greatly affected his representations of those places in his 1811 Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle‐Espagne. His representations of the precolonial Basin of Mexico as productively developed and of the precolonial Gulf lowlands as pristine have influenced the transformations of those places in the two centuries after New Spain became the Mexican republic through its wars of independence (1810–1821).     

Geochemistry and sequence stratigraphy of regional Upper Cretaceous limestone units, offshore eastern Canada

Hydrocarbons occur in two regional, Upper Cretaceous limestone units—the Turonian-Coniacian Petrel Member, and the Santonian-Maastrichtian Wyandot Formation. The units form important seismic markers beneath the Scotian Shelf and the Grand Banks of Eastern Canada. They mainly consist of bioturbated chalk and minor amounts of calcareous mudstone. A search for source rock using the Δ log R technique showed intervals with source potential, but testing of core and cuttings by Rock-Eval analysis showed no source potential. Three issues are the main cause for the inconsistency: (1) unconsolidated shales that likely included organic material were lost during sample washing; (2) severe contamination by mud additives; and (3) presence of gas. The organic matter found on the shelf has been strongly oxidised, but the distal facies of these limestone units and condensed shale units above and below may yet have potential to form source rock, beyond the studied areas.     

Exploring the attractions of city centre living: evidence and policy implications in British cities

The British city centre has been the focus of dynamic housing development and repopulation strategies as a key dimension of the government's urban renaissance programme. Through large scale interview surveys in the provincial city centres of Bristol and Swansea, this paper explores the positive and negative features of city centre living, and how these vary amongst a range of social and physical characteristics. The findings suggest that the practical and mundane attractions of city centre living are more important than the more widely publicised lifestyle and cultural attractions of the city centre commonly emphasised in the gentrification literature. Moreover, the research points to differences in attitudes between age groups, with younger adults placing greater value on the range of social and cultural activities in the city centre, whilst older people express high levels of satisfaction with the attractiveness of the environment. A number of policy implications emerge to encourage inclusive marketing strategies within the continued urban renaissance, particularly to challenge the negative perceptions and promote the varied attractions of city centre living to a mix of social groups.     

The influence of edge sites on the development of surface charge on goethite nanoparticles: A molecular dynamics investigation

Large-scale molecular simulation of proton accumulations were carried out on (i) (110) and (021) slabs immersed in aqueous solution and (ii) a series of model goethite nanoparticles of dimension 2 to 8 nm with systematically varying acicularity and (110)/(021) surface areas. In the slab systems, the (021) surface exhibits 15% more proton charge per unit area than the (110) surface. In the particulate systems, the acicular particles having the highest (110)/(021) ratio accumulate the most charge, opposite to the trend expected from the slab simulations, indicating that, at length scales on the order of 10 nm, the slab results are not a good indicator of the overall charging behavior of the particles. The primary reason for the discrepancy between the particulate systems and slab systems is the preferential accumulation of protons at acute (110)-(110) intersections. Charge accumulates preferentially in this region because excess proton charge at an asperity is more effectively solvated than at a flat interface.     

Long lifetimes of β-glucosidase,leucine aminopeptidase,and phosphatase in Arctic seawater

The active lifetime of extracellular enzymes is a critical determinant of the effectiveness of enzyme production as a means for heterotrophic marine microbes to obtain organic substrates. Here, we report lifetimes of three classes of extracellular enzyme in Arctic seawater. We also investigated the relative importance of photochemical processes and particle-associated processes in inactivating extracellular enzymes. Enzyme inactivation in filtered seawater was slow, with apparent half-lives of enzyme activities on the order of hundreds of hours. The presence of particles (including cells) did not significantly change inactivation rates, suggesting that the long half-lives observed in filtered seawater were realistic for enzymes in unfiltered seawater. Phosphatase and leucine aminopeptidase were susceptible to photoinactivation, but only under high intensity UV-B and UV-C illumination; there was no evidence for increased inactivation rates under natural illumination at our study site in Ny Ålesund, Svalbard. Comparison of inactivation rates of commercially-obtained enzymes from non-marine sources with the extracellular enzymes naturally present in Arctic seawater suggests that the natural enzymes contain structural features that confer longer lifetimes, consistent with observations reported by others from a range of field sites that cell-free enzymes can contribute a substantial fraction of total hydrolytic activity in the water column.     

Dating megafaunal extinction on the Pleistocene Darling Downs,eastern Australia: the promise and pitfalls of dating as a test of extinction hypotheses

A key to understanding Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction dynamics is knowledge of megafaunal ecological response(s) to long-term environmental perturbations. Strategically, that requires targeting fossil deposits that accumulated during glacial and interglacial intervals both before and after human arrival, with subsequent palaeoecological models underpinned by robust and reliable chronologies. Late Pleistocene vertebrate fossil localities from the Darling Downs, eastern Australia, provide stratigraphically-intact, abundant megafaunal sequences, which allows for testing of anthropogenic versus climate change megafauna extinction hypotheses. Each stratigraphic unit at site QML796, Kings Creek Catchment, was previously shown to have had similar sampling potential, and the basal units contain both small-sized taxa (e.g., land snails, frogs, bandicoots, rodents) and megafauna. Importantly, sequential faunal horizons show stepwise decrease in taxonomic diversity with the loss of some, but not all, megafauna in the geographically-small palaeocatchment. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of our intensive, multidisciplinary dating study of the deposits (>40 dates). Dating by means of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) ¹⁴C (targeting bone, freshwater molluscs, and charcoal) and thermal ionisation mass spectrometry U/Th (targeting teeth and freshwater molluscs) do not agree with each other and, in the case of AMS ¹⁴C dating, lack internal consistency. Scanning electron microscopy and rare earth element analyses demonstrate that the dated molluscs are diagenetically altered and contain aragonite cements that incorporated secondary young C, suggesting that such dates should be regarded as minimum ages. AMS ¹⁴C dated charcoals provide ages that occur out of stratigraphic order, and cluster in the upper chronological limits of the technique (～40–48 ka). Again, we suggest that such results should be regarded as suspicious and only minimum ages. Subsequent OSL and U/Th (teeth) dating provide complimentary results and demonstrate that the faunal sequences actually span ～120–83 ka, thus occurring beyond the AMS ¹⁴C dating window. Importantly, the dates suggest that the local decline in biological diversity was initiated ～75,000 years before the colonisation of humans on the continent. Collectively, the data are most parsimoniously consistent with a pre-human climate change model for local habitat change and megafauna extinction, but not with a nearly simultaneous extinction of megafauna as required by the human-induced blitzkrieg extinction hypothesis. This study demonstrates the problems inherent in dating deposits that lie near the chronological limits of the radiocarbon dating technique, and highlights the need to cross-check previously-dated archaeological and megafauna deposits within the timeframe of earliest human colonisation and latest megafaunal survival.     

Oil prices and energy technology innovation: An empirical analysis

To achieve environmental sustainability and reduce their vulnerability to oil shocks, countries can develop new energy technologies. Technological advances reduce the cost of structural changes in the energy economy, and thus also increase the political feasibility of such changes. But what explains international variation in the form and quality of energy technology innovation? We build on previous theories and offer an integrated account: increasing oil prices reinforce existing sectoral innovation systems, both politically and economically, thus allowing public policymakers and private entrepreneurs to profitably invest in new energy technologies. We test this theoretical argument against data on public R&D expenditures and patents in the domain of renewable energy technology for industrialized countries from 1989 to 2007. We find strong support for the interactive hypothesis. Thus, we contribute to literatures on (i) domestic responses to international shocks, (ii) environmental sustainability and energy security, and (iii) the political economy of technology innovation.