Correlates of hazards education for youth: a replication study

Youth and families have been identified as particularly vulnerable to the effects of hazardous events. This study examined correlates of hazards education involvement for youth. Participants were 407 youth between the ages of 7 and 18 who filled out several indices reflecting hazards awareness, risk perceptions, psychological factors, knowledge, and adoption of hazards adjustments and family emergency plans. Additionally, interactive factors were assessed, the extent to which education programs encouraged youth to discuss their learning with parents and whether such discussions occurred. Overall, findings replicated and extended previous research. First, younger children were generally seen to be more prepared; girls, more knowledgeable. Second, youth involved in education programs had significantly higher levels of correct knowledge of readiness and response behaviors, lower levels of incorrect knowledge, and reported more home-based hazards adjustments. One important area where no differences were seen was in the area of family emergency planning. Predictors of increased educational benefits included program recency, encouragement to interact with parents and, to a slightly lesser extent, parent discussion willingness. Combined with previous research indicating that even simple and brief reading and discussion programs can produce tangible benefits, findings here encourage the incorporation of easy-to-do features that can increase benefits for youth and their families.     

Contemporary fiddling in human geography while Rome burns: has quantitative analysis been largely abandoned--and should it be?

Chris Hamnett [Geoforum 34 (2003) 1] has certainly been provocative in his claim that the nature of much contemporary human geography means that the discipline ‘will cease to be taken seriously in the world beyond the narrow confines of academe’ (p. 1). Much of his critique focuses on what he terms ‘post-modernism, new cultural geography and the interpretative turn’ (p. 2) practiced by those he identifies as ‘the new intellectual dilettanti’ (p. 3). In responding, however, our concern is not with that aspect of his critique, but rather with Hamnett’s misrepresentation of one section of contemporary human geography.     

Origin of post‐Minoan caves and volcaniclastic cave fill,Thera (Santorini), Greece

The Aegean island of Thera (Santorini) was covered by tephra from its cataclysmic Late Bronze Age (ca. 3600 yr B.P.) eruption. Vertical exposures of the eruptive sequence show secondary, nonvolcanic, circular (in cross section) features composed of stratified sediment. Many are inaccessible from the floors of modern quarries and appear to be caves filled with younger sediment, but show no connection to the land surface. A filled cave was found in the wall of a modern gully outside the modern quarries, and a filled cave was found in a terrace scarp, well above the modern gully. Natural (and probably rapid) incision by gullies into the thick tephra deposit left many locations with lateral access to tephra. Inhabitants from post‐Minoan to recent times excavated tephra for materials and buildings, and caves were subsequently filled by sporadic (possibly seasonal) flood events that deposited sediment. These gullies may have provided access for modern tephra removal that isolated the filled caves high on the modern quarry walls. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.