Achmed the dead terrorist and humor in popular geopolitics

The critical geopolitics literature has engaged popular culture and media in many forms, usually focused on mass media or elite-produced niche media. The issue of humor as a form of popular culture with geopolitical content has been explored only recently by geographers. This paper utilizes disposition theory, with its emphasis on social context, to link humor and geopolitical analyses of humor. The analysis of two Jeff Dunham comedy skits centering on the character Achmed the Dead Terrorist demonstrates the utility of disposition theory as a construct to situate humor in the context of its original production and as a fluid, global phenomenon that is shared through various social networks via the Internet.     

Limits on the trapping of atmospheric CH4 in martian polar ice analogs

Recent detection of methane (CH₄) on Mars has generated interest in possible biological or geological sources, but the factors responsible for the reported variability are not understood. Here we explore one potential sink that might affect the seasonal cycling of CH₄ on Mars - trapping in ices deposited on the surface. Our apparatus consisted of a high-vacuum chamber in which three different Mars ice analogs (water, carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide clathrate hydrates) were deposited in the presence of CH₄ gas. The ices were monitored for spectroscopic evidence of CH₄ trapping using transmission Fourier-Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and during subsequent sublimation of the ice films the vapor composition was measured using mass spectrometry (MS). Trapping of CH₄ in water ice was confirmed at deposition temperatures <100 K which is consistent with previous work, thus validating the experimental methods. However, no trapping of CH₄ was observed in the ice analogs studied at warmer temperatures (140 K for H₂O and CO₂ clathrate, 90 K for CO₂ snow) with approximately 10 mTorr CH₄ in the chamber. From experimental detection limits these results provide an upper limit of 0.02 for the atmosphere/ice trapping ratio of CH₄. If it is assumed that the trapping mechanism is linear with CH₄ partial pressure and can be extrapolated to Mars, this upper limit would indicate that less than 1% is expected to be trapped from the largest reported CH₄ plume, and therefore does not represent a significant sink for CH₄.     

Spectral Irradiance and Phytoplankton Community Composition in a Blackwater-Dominated Estuary,Winyah Bay,South Carolina,USA

We investigated spatial and temporal relationships between spectral irradiance and phytoplankton community composition in the blackwater-influenced estuary Winyah Bay, South Carolina. Upstream, high concentrations of chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) absorbed blue wavelengths, resulting in a predominantly red light field. Green light prevailed downstream near the lower-CDOM coastal ocean, and phytoplankton community composition was distinct from upstream and mid-estuarine communities. Diatoms were abundant throughout the estuary in January, August, and October, cryptophytes dominated in July, and chlorophytes were abundant in December 2006. Only diatoms and chlorophytes showed significant covariation with the spectral attenuation coefficient (k(λ)): Chlorophytes showed positive relationships with k(442) (blue light) while diatoms were negatively correlated with k(442) and k(490) (violet to blue). Phytoplankton community composition in Winyah Bay appears to be driven by strong horizontal flow rather than gradients in spectral irradiance, but results indicate that water color is likely to play a greater role in blackwater-influenced estuaries with longer residence times.     

Changes in the parkland-boreal forest boundary in northwestern Ontario over the Holocene

Changes in vegetation were tracked from a well-dated sediment core from a boreal lake, Lake 239, at ～200-year resolution over the Holocene. This presently oligotrophic lake is located ～100-km east from the present-day parkland-forest ecotone in northwestern Ontario. Near-shore sediment core transects from Lake 239 have previously shown this lake was at least 8-m lower than present in the mid-Holocene, or ～58% less lake volume in comparison to today. Large shifts were expected in the terrestrial vegetation if the low lake levels were related to climate. The core from Lake 239 shows increases in the relative abundance and concentration of pollen such as Cupressaceae and Ambrosia, indicating a more open boreal forest between ～4500–8000 cal yr BP. Pollen-based inferences of average, summer and winter temperatures suggest that temperatures were on average up to 1–2 °C warmer than today, with winter temperatures up to 4 °C warmer. The pollen inferences also suggest enhanced precipitation, likely in the summer, but with an overall increase in evaporation and evapotranspiration resulting in reduced effective moisture. To assess regional climate changes, pollen-based reconstructions of temperature and precipitation were developed and synthesized from sediment cores from eight previously published lakes, from which pollen sites were available to both the west and east of Lake 239, spanning present-day prairie lakes to forested lakes up to 300 km east of the prairie-boreal ecotone. All sites show shifts in pollen assemblages that indicate a warm mid-Holocene period; prairie sites west of the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) show mid-Holocene decreases in precipitation relative to today, whereas sites near or east of ELA show consistent increases in precipitation, but with increased temperatures and enhanced evaporation during the mid-Holocene.     

Measurements of high-frequency shallow-water acoustic phasefluctuations

A shallow-water high-frequency (HF) acoustic propagation experiment was conducted just off shore in Panama City, FL. Several broad-band high-resolution sources and receivers were mounted on stable platforms and deployed in water depths of 8-10 m. Signals covering the frequency range from 20 to 200 kHz were transmitted from the sources to two spatially separated receivers. The data were analyzed to provide estimates of the signal phase variances as a function of frequency and source-to-receiver range. These phase variabilities are correlated with small-scale water column thermal variabilities and ocean swell conditions     

A stochastic interpretation of the tailing effect in solute transport

 The advection-dispersion equation (ADE) is inadequate for describing tails in solute breakthrough curves. Re-examination of solute breakthrough curves from one-dimensional experiments in porous media and channel flow literature shows a consistent discrepancy compared with solutions to the ADE. The leading tail of breakthrough curves is sharper, and the trailing tail is longer and smoother, than best fitting, least-squares ADE solutions. A random particle simulation exercise shows that the ADE may firstly be erroneous because of the assumption of time steps over which random solute movements are considered independent. Definition of such time steps hinges upon the slowest random movements, such as those predominantly by molecular diffusion. A second potential source of error is the highly skewed nature of the inverse distribution of underlying, micro-scale velocities, which causes slow convergence to normality under the central limit theorem.     

Effect of salinity and temperature on survival and development of young zebra (Dreissena polymorpha) and quagga (Dreissena bugensis) mussels

We reared larval zebra mussels,Dreissena polymorpha, and quagga mussels,D. bugensis, through and beyond metamorphosis (settlement) at salinities of 0–8‰. Juvenile zebra mussels gradually acclimated to 8‰ and 10‰ have been reared at these salinities for over 8 mo. Tolerance to both higher temperatures and higher salinities increases with larval age in both species (though zebra mussel embryos and larvae have a greater degree of salinity tolerance than quagga mussel embryos and larvae). Thus, only 6% of 3-day-old zebra mussel veligers survived after exposure to 4‰ for 8 additional days, whereas there was 22% survival of veligers placed in 4‰ at day 13 and grown to settlement 11 d later. Zebra mussel pediveligers, acclimated to increasing salinity in 2‰ increments beginning at day 23, continued to survive and grow in 8‰ after 5-mo exposure, though the growth rates of these juveniles were significantly less than those of juveniles reared in lower salinities. Quagga mussels did not metamorphose and settle as quickly as zebra mussel pediveligers. No quagga mussel pediveligers had settled before exposure to artificial fresh water (AFW), 2‰ 4‰, 6‰, and 8‰ on day 30. Percent settlement of these quagga mussel juveniles (based on 100% survival at the start of experiments on day 30) was 90% in AFW, 67% at 2‰, 69% at 4‰, 46% at 6‰, and 0.1% at 8‰.