Marine Isotope Stage 7–6 transition age for beach sediments at Morston,north Norfolk,UK: implications for Pleistocene chronology,stratigraphy and tectonics

Optically stimulated luminescence age estimates for the Pleistocene beach at Morston, north Norfolk, UK, obtained by the single‐aliquot regenerative‐dose protocol, indicate a Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 7–6 transition date. The view that the beach is of Ipswichian (MIS 5e) age, held virtually unanimously for the last 75 years, may now be discarded. The extant beach sequence lies up to ～5 m OD, yet global models suggest that MIS 7–6 sea levels were typically substantially below that of today. The explanation may lie with poorly understood regional tectonic movements. The MIS 7–6 date helps to constrain the ages of glacial deposits that bracket the beach sediments at Morston. The underlying Marly Drift till cannot be younger than MIS 8; this may also be true for the complex assemblage of glaciogenic landforms and sediments, including the Blakeney esker, in the adjacent lower Glaven valley. The well‐established Late Devensian (MIS 2) age of the Hunstanton Till is not compromised by the date of the Morston beach. There is no indication of a proposed Briton's Lane glaciation during MIS 6 times. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A spatio-temporal model of housing prices based on individual sales transactions over time

A spatio-temporal model of housing price trends is developed that focuses on individual housing sales over time. The model allows for both the spatio-temporal lag effects of previous sales in the vicinity of each housing sale, and for general autocorrelation effects over time. A key feature of this model is the recognition of the unequal spacing between individual housing sales over time. Hence the residuals are modeled as a first-order autoregressive process with unequally spaced events. The maximum-likelihood estimation of this model is developed in detail, and tested in terms of simulations based on selected data. In addition, the model is applied to a small data set in the Philadelphia area.     

Identifying irregularly shaped crime hot-spots using a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm

Spatial cluster detection techniques are widely used in criminology, geography, epidemiology, and other fields. In particular, spatial scan statistics are popular and efficient techniques for detecting areas of elevated crime or disease events. The majority of spatial scan approaches attempt to delineate geographic zones by evaluating the significance of clusters using likelihood ratio statistics tested with the Poisson distribution. While this can be effective, many scan statistics give preference to circular clusters, diminishing their ability to identify elongated and/or irregular shaped clusters. Although adjusting the shape of the scan window can mitigate some of these problems, both the significance of irregular clusters and their spatial structure must be accounted for in a meaningful way. This paper utilizes a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm to find clusters with maximum significance while quantitatively tracking their geographic structure. Crime data for the city of Cincinnati are utilized to demonstrate the advantages of the new approach and highlight its benefits versus more traditional scan statistics.     

Transitions in Human Health: Surviving This Millennium by Learning from the Past One Hundred Millennia

We have been living through several decades of great and rapid changes in the human condition. Life expectancies increased markedly during the twentieth century; populations are becoming 'older'; disease profiles are changing. The world is connecting up economically and electronically, market forces have become increasingly dominant, the post-Cold War political landscape has been transformed, cities are expanding rapidly, and material wealth is accruing — albeit unevenly. Meanwhile, however, a range of large-scale environmental changes is occurring, of which the most apparent is global climate change. This reflects a more fundamental process: the biosphere and its life-support systems are straining under the weight of human numbers, intensified food production, escalating carbon-based energy use and the spread of mass consumption behaviours. This revised version was published online in September 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Tourism as a local development strategy in South Africa

The promotion of tourism has been identified as a key strategy that can lead to economic upliftment, community development and poverty relief in the developing world. In the last few years, tourism has also emerged as a significant development option in post–apartheid South Africa. In the context of some current debates on tourism in poor countries, the paper examines how economic, social and environmental resources are being utilized to promote tourism as a local economic development strategy in South Africa, and more specifically it focuses on current local government endeavours in this regard and two communities that have suffered the loss of their economic resource base. Tourism–based development initiatives, one in KwaZulu–Natal and one in the Western Cape, are evaluated in the context of generating economic growth, alleviating poverty and addressing the apartheid legacy of discrimination and inequality. The significance of the dynamics of development processes involved in these initiatives has much wider relevance for local economic development, both within South Africa and elsewhere.     

Automated Digital Photogrammetry: A Valuable Tool for Small‐scale Geomorphological Research for the Non‐photogrammetrist?

Digital photogrammetry provides a tool with which to automatically generate digital elevation models (DEMs). The necessary equipment is now both readily available and affordable: thus there is considerable potential for this technique to be widely adopted in geomorphological studies. But is it possible for geomorphologists without a background in photogrammety to use it successfully? As part of a larger study into rill initiation by overland flow, a non‐metric digital camera and ERDAS IMAGINE OrthoMAX software were used to generate small‐scale DEMs of soil surface microtopography. This paper reports on the procedure used, highlights potential pitfalls, and comments on the quality of the resultant DEMs. Whilst acquisition of high‐quality images using a digital camera is relatively straightforward, problems were subsequently encountered due to the small size of the internal imager and the need for camera calibration. Potential stumbling blocks in the use of the software lay in the setting‐up of ground control points and the use of tie‐points and check‐points, as well as several software glitches not identified in the current manual. Nonetheless, once these problems were overcome the technique proved to be a simple, effective and fast tool for generating high quality microtopographical DEMs. This methodology shows great promise for future geomorphological studies that require these kinds of surface data.