Black Mountain Research Articles

Hafnium, oxygen, neodymium, strontium, and lead isotopic constraints on magmatic evolution of the supereruptive southern Black Mountains volcanic center, Arizona, U.S.A.: A combined LASS zircon–whole-rock study

The >700 km 3 Peach Spring Tuff (PST), erupted at 18.8 Ma from the Silver Creek caldera in the southern Black Mountains volcanic center (SBMVC) of western Arizona, is the only supereruption-scale ignimbrite in the northern Colorado River Extensional Corridor. The SBMVC contains pre- and post-caldera volcanic rocks and caldera-related intrusions (~19–17 Ma) that provide a detailed petrologic record of ignimbrite antecedence and aftermath. Whole-rock Sr-Nd-Pb-Hf isotopic data combined with complementary zircon O and Hf isotopic data from a suite of pre- through post-PST samples provide robust constraints on (1) how the SBMVC evolved with respect to magmatic sources and processes throughout its ~2 Ma history and (2) the petrogenetic relationships between the PST and slightly younger intracaldera plutons. Both pre- and post-PST units have isotopic ranges (ɛ Nd = −8.3 to −11.6, ɛ Hf = −8.2 to −14.0, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr i = 0.709–0.712; 206 Pb/ 204 Pb = 18.19–18.49, 207 Pb/ 204 Pb = 15.60–15.62, 208 Pb/ 204 Pb = 38.95–39.29) that fall within the spectrum of Miocene Colorado River Extensional Corridor rocks and are consistent with mixing of substantial fractions of Proterozoic (Mojave) crust and juvenile material derived from regional enriched mantle. Compared to the PST, which has relatively uniform isotopic ratios (ɛ Nd = −11.4 to −11.7, ɛ Hf = −13.8 to −14.3, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr i = 0.709–0.712; 206 Pb/ 204 Pb = 18.20–18.29, 207 Pb/ 204 Pb = 15.60–15.62, 208 Pb/ 204 Pb = 39.02–39.33), individual pre- and post-PST units are isotopically more variable and generally more primitive. Consistent with whole-rock isotopes, zircon ɛ Hf (−8 to −14) and oxygen δ 18 O (+4.5 to +7.2‰) for most pre- and post-PST units also have wider ranges and more mantle-like values than those of the PST (−12 to −15, +6.1 to +7.1‰). Moreover, zircon isotopic compositions decrease in post-PST samples. A few zircons from post-PST intrusions have δ 18 O values lower than mantle values ( Whole-rock and zircon elemental and isotopic analyses indicate that (1) most pre- and post-PST units are less evolved and less homogenized than the PST itself; (2) intrusions in the Silver Creek caldera are petrogenetically distinct from the PST and therefore represent discrete magmatic pulses, not unerupted PST mush; (3) enriched mantle input increased in the SBMVC following the paroxysmal PST eruption; (4) post-PST history of the SBMVC was characterized by periodic influx of magmas with varying juvenile fractions into pre-existing mushy or solidified intrusions, resulting in variable and incomplete hybridization; and (5) melting and assimilation of hydrothermally altered crust played a relatively minor role in the generation and evolution of magmas in the SBMVC.

The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College by Eva Díaz

Reviewed by: The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College by Eva Díaz Patrick Lee Lucas The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College. By Eva Díaz. ( Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Pp. x, 215. $40.00, ISBN 978-0-226-06798-8.) Eva Díaz traces the founding and short life of Black Mountain College (1933–1957), which was situated in western North Carolina and was home to a small group of faculty who were deeply influential in the evolution of art and design education in the twentieth century. With well-developed prose and [End Page 730] a good narrative, Díaz excels at providing context and content for an important story of experimentation on this campus and in subsequent locations inspired or directly impacted by the Black Mountain College approach to education. By reminding readers how avant-garde the pedagogy of the Black Mountain faculty was, Díaz ably situates the “complicated and contested concept defined by projects as varied as geometric abstraction, serialized and mass production, dome architecture, chance-based musical composition, and explorations of monochromatic painting” (pp. 3–4). Díaz introduces readers to three significant people—“artist Josef Albers, composer John Cage, and architect-designer R. Buckminster Fuller”—singling them out among the faculty as the great innovators who fueled the Black Mountain experience (p. 1). After an introduction that leads readers through the founding of the institution and the complex pedagogical and philosophical positions of its faculty, Díaz unfolds a chapter each on Albers, Cage, and Fuller, the main bulk of the two-hundred-page work. In the chapter on Albers, Díaz stresses how the artist focused on experience rather than outcomes and believed in “an experience in and of perception that facilitates complex understandings of the visual world” (p. 52). In chapter 2 Díaz notes Cage’s opposition to Albers’s approach and explains the composer’s formulation of what he termed the “chance protocol,” a process designed to accentuate “an exploration of uncertainty, not a careful examination of variables” (pp. 103, 57). Careful to provide context for this evolution in the process, Díaz points to the presence of a more mature generation of students and the decline and replacement of the original faculty as factors contributing to the shift. In chapter 3, Díaz analyzes Fuller’s interpretation of “total thinking” as his model of experimentation, one that “leveraged the creativity of the artist and the technological innovativeness of the scientist to completely rethink acts and objects of design” (pp. 103, 101). Significantly, Fuller’s experimentation resulted in the idea that anyone could be a designer and perhaps signaled the beginning of the end for Black Mountain College. Fuller’s own experimentation, Díaz reminds us, stemmed from the “scientificity in a spirit of American technological optimism and exceptionalism” that placed design at the heart of social and technological processes of the mid-twentieth century (p. 147). In the closing chapter of her work, Díaz speculates about the impact of Black Mountain on subsequent generations of educators, connecting the experiments that took place in western North Carolina with prospective research projects to examine Albers’s, Cage’s, and Fuller’s models for experimentation. Díaz’s interpretation of the written evidence seems on target with the evidence in ample supply in the notes. The extensive bibliography provides significant sources for readers to dig into the subject matter more deeply. Though the book includes a wide range of illustrations in black-and-white and in color, this reviewer found the treatment of the chosen images flattened by a lack of critical analysis. Given the visual nature of the fields the author investigates for the book, this oversight seems slightly troubling: how might each piece of visual evidence tell the reader more about the theme of experimentation so central to the volume? While the images are interesting visually, [End Page 731] it is not clear how their inclusion helps tell the story, the chief shortcoming of this otherwise well-conceived publication. Patrick Lee Lucas University of Kentucky College of Design Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Form and Experience: Williams, Dewey, and the Origins of American Postmodernism

In my article, I examine the relationship between the work of William Carlos Williams and John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) and show how their shared concerns create links to post-Second World War performance artists such as Laurie Anderson, the theatrical storyteller Spalding Gray, as well as Happenings master Allan Kaprow. I examine Williams’s impact on what is regarded as early postmodernism in the United States, by tracing Williams connections to Objectivists such as Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen from the 1930s and other culture workers who display what I call a “performative ethos” indebted to John Dewey. I contextualize poetry in relation to everyday experience, but also focus on the semantics of form, in which form emerges through exigencies of a work’s creation. Context and experience produce organic forms, as in the writings of Black Mountain and West Coast poets such as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan, each of whom emphasized breath groups and the visual “field” of the page when imagining a prosody that was structural, but antithetical to accentual syllabic verse. Like performance artists who followed in his wake, I argue that Williams challenged readers to co-create texts to re-evaluate experience as art and art as experience.

Hurricane Camille 1969 and Storm-Triggered Landslides in the Appalachians and a Perspective in a Warmer Climate

This study analyzes storm-triggered landslides in the US Appalachians, in the current geological setting. Concave valleys that favor the convergence of surface runoff are the primary locales for landslides. If the slopes are weathered to the same degree and have the same vegetation coverage, slope orientation (azimuthal) is not critical for slope stability. However, it is found that for the region south of the Black Mountains (North Carolina), north-facing slopes are more prone to slide, because, for the regions not limited by water availability (annual precipitation), the northern slopes usually are grass slopes. For the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, south facing slopes are more prone to slide. Gravity measurements over the past decade reveal that geological conditions, the chute system and underground cracks over the region are stable. Future changes in storm-triggered landslide frequency are primarily controlled by changes in extreme precipitation. Thus, a series of ensemble climate model experiments is carried out to investigate possible changes in future extreme precipitation events, using a weather model forced by atmospheric perturbations from ensemble climate models. Over 50 locations are identified as prone to future landslides. Many of these locales are natural habitats to the Appalachian salamanders. In a future warmer climate, more severe extreme precipitation events are projected because of increased atmospheric water vapor and more frequent passages of tropical cyclone remnants. There is also a likely shift of tropical cyclone tracks and associated extreme precipitations, and the cluster center of Appalachians’s scarps is expected to move westward, with ecological consequences for the endemic salamanders.

The Great Flood, and: The Pig

The Great Flood, and: The Pig Lana Austin (bio) THE GREAT FLOOD Hazard, Kentucky is no differentthan a hundred rural townsstarted as a trading post,funded by coal that turned lungs and hands dark at the startof the twentieth century.And while I love the storyof Hazard folk making the Stone Gap journey,having to go overBig Black Mountain, it isn’tthe shantytowns left behind when businesses went bust,or the lung cancer cases,either, that draw me.It’s the dust and the mud I come to see. The samedust and mud that alwaysclaim this town, where historyis marked by the water that’s made Hazard its own—the Great Flood of ’27,the Great Flood of ’37,and the black magic sevens go on [End Page 82] into the Great Flood of ’57and…where before meteorologists,people could predictthe size of the maelstrom coming by watching the dust swirlin the middle of the streets,a dirty gypsy-likefortune-telling dance, with small bits of graveland earth twisting aroundbefore, overhead, the clouds’bulk fell in grey blocks to the ground until the nearbyKentucky River bredand claimed a new space,making a Venetian world where no public roads survived,just miles and miles of mud. Archivedphotographs have captured thismurky, wet distress: “Note the automobile barely visible under the flood waters,”says the back of one. “Looking acrossthe river from town, see the iron bridge,”says another, “to the train depot that lays destroyed,” [End Page 83] and my personal favorite, “A view up Main Streetwhere Rita’s and Jonnie’s Diner is destroyed”written on the last. I don’t know why I like itso much, except that I can imagine Rita and Jonnie, not unlike my own familyfrom these Eastern Kentucky parts, their determinedpupils paying homage when dilatedto round pieces of coal. I see them methodically boarding uptheir restaurant, still holdingsand bags in their hands as the waterstarts to ooze through the door. [End Page 84] THE PIG Now, you’d thinkif he had enough senseto get up there,he’d have enough senseto get back down.The archived photographdeifies him enough to give himthe benefit of the doubt,standing up there in 1957on that filing cabinet God-like.Reminds me of the Stonewall statue,the pig astride a filing cabinetand Jackson on his horse, bothof them with muscles tightand if they were dogs,their hackles would be up.He must’ve used the office chairthat was found floatingaround the roomto get to his metal refuge.And that must’ve been whyhe couldn’t get down.Those witch-possessedHazard, Kentucky watersrose so much that even somethingfairly big like an office chaircould just float away.Huge things could driftaround, too, like cars. We’re not [End Page 85] talking about today’s tinyFord Fiestas. We mean behemothgas-guzzlers with testosterone-infusednames like Thunderbird,emasculated, bobbingaround in the floodas if they were a little boy’s toyboats in the bathtub.Whatever you do,don’t call the pig cute. [End Page 86] Lana Austin A finalist for the 2015 James Wright Poetry Award, Lana Austin’s work has appeared in Mid-American Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, Southern Women’s Review, and Zone 3. Her first chapbook, In Search of the Wild Dulcimer, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Austin has an MFA from George Mason University. Born and raised in Kentucky, she has lived in England and Italy but currently resides in Alabama with her husband and three children. Copyright © 2016 Berea College

Driving with the Dead by Jane Hicks (review)

Reviewed by: Driving with the Dead by Jane Hicks Erin Keane (bio) Jane Hicks. Driving with the Dead. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 2014. 82 pages. Softcover. $19.95. In Driving With the Dead, poet Jane Hicks’s stunning follow-up to her 2005 debut collection Blood and Bone Remember (winner of the 2006 Appalachian Book of the Year), Hicks turns her rigorous eye toward the poet’s work: “the naming of what matters.” As the title promises, the poems in Driving With the Dead are poems of loss, but Hicks has no time for maudlin remembrances, for the soft, idle elegies of the sated. Instead, Hicks settles her unflinching eye on what truly matters to her—on rural cemeteries and their specific rituals, on the [End Page 122] unraveling of marriages and of innocence, on the dead and what we owe them—with a ferocity and wit that are wholly her own. In “The Color of Loss,” an ars poetica for this collection, Hicks names an understanding of grief that is hidden yet steely, both “blackberries stored in / dark cellars” and “the shadowed eyes of the twin / who stares long into the night and waits / for his still half to speak.” But this birthright, grief, isn’t an indulgence for the poet to coddle. In the concise and determined “A Poet’s Work,” which she dedicates to a three-year-old boy killed by a strip-mine boulder that crashed the side of Black Mountain into the boy’s bedroom, Hicks lays out her demands for herself and her fellow poets: “Spare me the postmodern pout / about dog piss in the gray snow / near the subway entrance” she warns, directing their attention instead to “meth labs that spring up in our rural / gardens” and “mountaintops removed, laid low by greed, / hollows filled, wells poisoned, God’s majesty / flattened, fit only for Wal-Mart, the new Ground Zero.” Here are the fruits of “judicial disregard,” she writes, face them, travel her “ruined roads, moonscape mountains, failed farms” and confront just “how the law measures a baby’s life.” (Spoiler: as worth “less than the price / of a good pickup truck”—ponder that, academic poets preoccupied with the quality of light in a Tuscan monastery.) In another poem for the same boy, the loose sonnet “Black Mountain Breakdown,” Hicks offers a more direct elegy for the dead child. “Things rest / as we left them,” Hicks writes, in a precise explication of grief and its lingering effects, which are also made clear in Hicks’ poems about how survivors in rural communities bear the generational wounds of war. In “Draft Lottery,” Hicks takes the reader back to 1970, inside a small town’s Taco King, where a group of terrified [End Page 123] teenage employees watch the broadcast on the office TV, waiting to find out the sum of the afternoon’s reaping: “Number 22, Dennis out of school, out of options, / slid to the floor.” Hicks turns her grief for the Vietnam generation’s collective loss outward, too. In “Expatriate,” a soldier in World War II never leaves Normandy, his son and wife at home in the U.S. without a nearby grave to tend, only a telegram and “a photo of his seaside / home, manicured and maintained / by French hosts in gratitude for duty.” In “A Poet’s Work,” she calls attention to a contemporary “child who sobs silently, / her mama a nurse in the Guard, called up, / goodnights a webcam image from Basra.” Cemeteries appear frequently in this book, of course, but they’re never commonplace, and are often riddled with unsettling images—the “Beanie bears, balloons, pinwheels, / little lambs” littering the graves of children in “Kindergarten,” the ritual of homecoming picnics spread out in a rural cemetery where, distracted by a gaggle of balloons and a card meant to trace their flight, the speaker stubs her toe on the gravestone of an old boyfriend who died in Vietnam. “I retrieve the balloon card from my pocket and drive / toward the post office drop box to obey / the careful crayon message: send me back.” Throughout the collection, Hicks demonstrates that there is more than one way to tend...

Landscape and Historical Memory in Raymond Williams's People of the Black Mountains

The article addresses Raymond Williams's late novel People of the Black Mountains (1989–90), using Pierre Nora's seminal concept of lieux de memoire both to explicate Williams's writing and as a contrast with it. Starting from Williams's intimate relationship with the landscape of the Black Mountains, the article demonstrates how he provides a secular and demystificatory account of history, in which actual historical determinants can, in a non-metaphorical sense, be seen. The novel is also a final restatement of an opposition that is to be found throughout Williams's career, between writing that is immersed in the immediacy of experience and that which takes in the wider viewpoint. The article concludes by suggesting that Williams can be understood as recasting Nora's opposition between ‘memory’ and ‘history’ as the terms of a cultural and political dialectic, in addition to providing the theoretical basis for locating acts of remembrance.

Timing and rates of Holocene normal faulting along the Black Mountains fault zone, Death Valley, USA

Alluvial fans displaced by normal faults of the Black Mountains fault zone at Badwater and Mormon Point in Death Valley were mapped, surveyed, and dated using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and 10 Be terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) methods. Applying TCN methods to Holocene geomorphic surfaces in Death Valley is challenging because sediment flux is slow and complex. However, OSL dating produces consistent surface ages, yielding ages for a regionally recognized surface (Qg3a) of 4.5 ± 1.2 ka at Badwater and 7.0 ± 1.0 ka at Mormon Point. Holocene faults offsetting Qg3a yield horizontal slip rates directed toward 323° of 0.8 +0.3/–0.2 mm/yr and 1.0 ± 0.2 mm/yr for Badwater and Mormon Point, respectively. These slip rates are slower than the ∼2 mm/yr dextral slip rate of the southern end of the northern Death Valley fault zone and are half as fast as NNW-oriented horizontal rates documented for the Panamint Valley fault zone. This indicates that additional strain is transferred southwestward from northern Death Valley and Black Mountains fault zones onto the oblique-normal dextral faults of the Panamint Valley fault zone, which is consistent with published geodetic modeling showing that current opening rates of central Death Valley along the Black Mountains fault zone are about three times slower than for Panamint Valley. This suggests that less than half of the geodetically determined ∼9–12 mm/yr of right-lateral shear across the region at the latitude of central Death Valley is accommodated by slip on well-defined faults and that distributed deformational processes take up the remainder of this slip transferred between the major faults north of the Garlock fault.

Socioeconomic Metabolism Takes the Stage in the International Environmental Policy Debate: A Special Issue to Review Research Progress and Policy Impacts

Journal of Industrial EcologyVolume 19, Issue 5 p. 689-694 EDITORIAL Socioeconomic Metabolism Takes the Stage in the International Environmental Policy Debate: A Special Issue to Review Research Progress and Policy Impacts Heinz Schandl, Corresponding Author Heinz SchandlAddress correspondence to: Heinz Schandl, CSIRO, Black Mountain Laboratories, Clunies Ross Street, Acton GPO Box 1700, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia. Email: Heinz.Schandl@csiro.auWeb: http://people.csiro.au/S/H/Heinz-SchandlSearch for more papers by this authorDaniel B. Müller, Daniel B. MüllerSearch for more papers by this authorYuichi Moriguchi, Yuichi MoriguchiSearch for more papers by this author Heinz Schandl, Corresponding Author Heinz SchandlAddress correspondence to: Heinz Schandl, CSIRO, Black Mountain Laboratories, Clunies Ross Street, Acton GPO Box 1700, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia. Email: Heinz.Schandl@csiro.auWeb: http://people.csiro.au/S/H/Heinz-SchandlSearch for more papers by this authorDaniel B. Müller, Daniel B. MüllerSearch for more papers by this authorYuichi Moriguchi, Yuichi MoriguchiSearch for more papers by this author First published: 30 September 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12357Citations: 7Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume19, Issue5Special Issue: Special Issue on Frontiers in Socioeconomic Metabolism ResearchOctober 2015Pages 689-694 Translations 《产业生态学报》中文摘要 (JIE Chinese Abstracts) Resúmenes en Español de la Revista de Ecología Industrial (JIE Spanish Abstracts) RelatedInformation

Quality assessment of extracts from unconventional plant raw materials

The results of the quality assessment of hydro-alcoholic extracts from black currant and mountain ash sprigs, which are unconventional raw materials for the food industry are given. According to the research, organoleptic, physicochemical and safety indicators of the extracts obtained comply with the requirements of current regulatory documents. This allows their use in technologies of soft and alcoholic beverages, wines, confectionery and canned food as cheap natural flavoring ingredients. The content of phenolic and aromatic substances in the aqueous-alcoholic extracts of sprigs was investigated. The high content of phenolic compounds allows to use extracts in technologies of wellness foods, improve their storage stability. Extracts from sprigs of black currant and mountain ash are the source of valuable aromatic substances with fruit and almond flavor, so can be used for processing into natural flavors. During the research, data about extracting up to 70...90% of toxic elements, contained in raw materials from sprigs were obtained. Therefore, normalization of their concentration in the extracts depends on their content in raw materials, as well as the input control.

Cædmon and the gift of song in Black Mountain poetry

Robert Duncan’s and Denise Levertov’s poetic interpretations of Bede’s account of Caedmon depict him as the origin of poetic subjectivity, a gift from others and for others. In Duncan’s account the visiting figure becomes Friend Song, and the external command to sing is transformed into an envoy for Duncan’s own works. Levertov’s poem cultivates an alliterative line that draws on the wellspring of Anglo-Saxon verse while playing with the shape of the line. Caedmon retreats among his cattle, ‘dumb among body sounds,’ and finds there a command to join the dance. In both accounts poetic inspiration constitutes a fusion of body and song, and this embodiment resonates with the songs of voices, calling Caedmon and the poets who join with him into a realm of endless giving, ‘into the world that’s all of song/commingling,’ in Duncan’s words, connecting medieval and modern verse.

Advances and challenges in computational prediction of effectors from plant pathogenic fungi.

1 CSIRO Agriculture Flagship, Centre for Environment and Life Sciences, Perth, Western Australia, Australia, 2 CSIRO Agriculture Flagship, Black Mountain Laboratories, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia, 3 CSIRO Agriculture Flagship, Queensland Bioscience Precinct, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 4 University of Western Australia Institute of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia

Hughes/Olson: Whose Music? Whose Era?

This essay uses two poetic works from the 1950s—Langston Hughes’s 1951 sequence Montage of a Dream Deferred and the poetry and poetics of Black Mountain pioneer Charles Olson—to articulate a theory of racially engaged, nonmimetic poetic musicality deriving from the engagement both poets make with the bebop jazz of Charlie Parker and his colleagues. By taking “jazz” less as a specific body of sounds than as a conceptual provocation to rethink the very idea (and ideal) of poetry as a musical phenomenon, Hughes and Olson—both individually and together—help us make new sense of three phenomena: the way poetry relates to musical sounds external to it, the way poetry understands itself as a form of music, and the prospects for racial representation this reevaluation makes possible.

Low-temperature thermochronology of the Black and Panamint mountains, Death Valley, California: Implications for geodynamic controls on Cenozoic intraplate strain

We use apatite and zircon (U-Th)/He thermochronometry to evaluate space-time patterns and tectonic drivers of Miocene to Pliocene deformation within the Death Valley area, eastern California. Zircon He ages from the footwall of the Amargosa–Black Mountains detachment in the Black Mountains record continuous cooling and exhumation from 9 to 3 Ma. Thermal modeling of data from the central Black Mountains suggests that this cooling took place during two intervals: a period of rapid footwall exhumation from 10 to 6 Ma, followed by slower (<5 mm/yr) exhumation since 6 Ma. Cumulative exhumation is estimated to be 10–16 km. Paleodepth reconstruction of cooling ages from the footwall of the Panamint-Emigrant detachment, in the central Panamint Range, also show two periods of cooling. Zircons record late Miocene cooling, whereas apatite He ages show punctuated exhumation at ca. 4 Ma. The results suggest the Panamint Range experienced a minimum of 7.2 km of exhumation since ca. 12 Ma. The new data, when evaluated within the context of published fault timing data, suggest that the transition from Basin and Range extension to dextral transtension is spatially and temporally distinct, beginning at ca. 11–8 Ma in ranges to the east and north of the Black Mountains and migrating westward into eastern Death Valley at 6 Ma. Initiation of dextral transtension was coincident with a major change in plate-boundary relative motion vectors. Data from Panamint Range and several ranges to the west of Death Valley indicate transtension initiated over a large area at ca. 3–4 Ma, coeval with proposed lithospheric delamination in the central and southern Sierra Nevada Range. Our results suggest that the transition from extension to dextral transtension may reflect an evolution in tectonic drivers, from plate-boundary kinematics to intraplate lithospheric delamination.

Testing Taxon Tenacity of Tortoises: evidence for a geographical selection gradient at a secondary contact zone.

We examined a secondary contact zone between two species of desert tortoise, Gopherus agassizii and G. morafkai. The taxa were isolated from a common ancestor during the formation of the Colorado River (4–8 mya) and are a classic example of allopatric speciation. However, an anomalous population of G. agassizii comes into secondary contact with G. morafkai east of the Colorado River in the Black Mountains of Arizona and provides an opportunity to examine reinforcement of species' boundaries under natural conditions. We sampled 234 tortoises representing G. agassizii in California (n - 103), G. morafkai in Arizona (n - 78), and 53 individuals of undetermined assignment in the contact zone including and surrounding the Black Mountains. We genotyped individuals for 25 STR loci and determined maternal lineage using mtDNA sequence data. We performed multilocus genetic clustering analyses and used multiple statistical methods to detect levels of hybridization. We tested hypotheses about habitat use between G. agassizii and G. morafkai in the region where they co-occur using habitat suitability models. Gopherus agassizii and G. morafkai maintain independent taxonomic identities likely due to ecological niche partitioning, and the maintenance of the hybrid zone is best described by a geographical selection gradient model.

Tbilisi Evening

Tbilisi Evening Titsian Tabidze (bio) Translated by Rebecca Gould (bio) March 15, 1927 Tbilisi evening almost died of crying with the music’s voice. The strings carried the heart’s sorrows from the river’s left bank. That’s how the raft man sang, his pine logs bound with swans, his sudden refrain reduced to new hopes’ ashes. My still heart keens with what I have or what I had, what was cast into the fire as I stand naked on the black mountain. I praise the wind of industry. I want to destroy the old country. Icarus’s honeyed wings were melted by the sun’s rays. Forgive me, if I cry for the milky dew of Tbilisi mornings. I envy the flute-player raised on heroic poetry. [End Page 37] I recline on the old raft I cry, bound to the pine swans. My song sings past the old refrain. I live with these dreams. [End Page 38] Titsian Tabidze Titsian Tabidze (1895–1937) was one of most eloquent and sophisticated poets of the literary modernist movement that dominated Georgian literature during the early decades of the twentieth century. Born in rural western Georgia, he passed most of his adult life in cosmopolitan Tbilisi, where he became close friends with Russian and Georgian poets, including his translator Boris Pasternak (winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for literature), Sergei Esenin (d. 1925), and Osip Mandelstam (d. 1938). Like many Russian and Georgian poets of his era, Titsian perished in a purge directed by Stalin’s police chief Lavrenty Beria. In Titsian’s case the stimulus for his execution was his refusal to denounce his close friend and fellow poet, Paolo Iashvili. To date, Titsian’s work has only been systematically translated into Russian, but an interview with his descendants is available in English at https://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/tabidze_8_1_10/. Rebecca Gould Rebecca Gould is a translator of Persian, Russian, and Georgian poetry as well as a scholar, critic, and writer. Her work has appeared in the Hudson Review, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, and Literary Imagination, among many other venues. Her translated volume After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi will be published by Northwestern University Press. Gould has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Association of Literary Translators, and is currently an assistant professor in the humanities at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Copyright © 2015 University of Nebraska Press

Impact of a fire burn on solar irradiance and PV power

Aerosols produced by fire burns can have marked impacts on PV power production. Here we take advantage of an isolated, short-lived but well monitored fire burn event during an otherwise clear sky day – a case of a serendipitous ‘earth experiment’ – to study its impact on both solar irradiance and solar power recorded at the nearby solar lab. The local council controlled burns happened at Black Mountain in Canberra, Australia. Evidence from the solar lab sky-camera images was used to confirm that the sky was clear of clouds during the late afternoon of 4th March 2014 so that the effect of the smoke plume could be isolated, and to observe the development of the plume.Global and direct irradiance observations were compared with those from analogous clear days, as well as with values obtained from a clear sky model, in order to estimate the reduction in irradiance due to the smoke plume. The results showed that global irradiance was reduced by 6.5% and direct irradiance by 9% during a 140min afternoon period, with one-minute reductions of up to 26% and 32% respectively. The spectral global irradiance showed that the smoke had the greatest impact in the wavelength range from 400 to 500nm. A spectral analysis of the impact of smoke on six different PV technologies revealed that the least impact was on the mono-silicon cells used in this study. The resulting effect of solar power output was an overall reduction of 7% during the study period and a peak reduction of 27%.

“Already in Exile”: A Conversation with Moniro Ravanipour

MONIRO RAVANIPOUR is a major cultural and literary figure in postrevolutionary Iran. A prolific author of short stories, novels, children’s book, plays, and screenplays, she is best known for her creation of Jofra, a magical-realist village based on her birthplace on the coast of the Persian Gulf. Among Ravanipour’s most popular titles are The Drowned, Heart of Steel, Gypsy by the Fire, Kanizu, Satan’s Stones, Siria, Siria, and The Frankfurt Airport Woman. She has been the recipient of numerous literary awards, including Best Novel at the Persian Gulf Festival and the Isfahan Literary Festival Prize. In 1998 she received the Golden Tablet Award for Twenty Years of Fiction in Iran. In 2001 she faced trial in Tehran as a result of her advocacy for women’s rights and freedom of speech. In 2006 she was awarded an International Writers Project fellowship at Brown University. Later that year she accepted a three-year visiting-author residency at the Black Mountain Institute’s City of Asylum (UNLV). Two of her titles in Farsi, Kanizu and The Drowned, have been translated into English and are due to be published in 2015. She currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her husband and their son. Omid Fallahazad: You have said that you took writing seriously after a random arrest and a single night spent in jail during the early postrevolution days in Iran. You wanted your success and fame to prevent you from getting killed or forgotten . Ironically, assassination, jail, and other forms of abuse became routine in writers’ lives in Iran. Had you ever foreseen those risks when you were deciding to become a writer? Moniro Ravanipour: Actually, I didn’t make any decision to become a writer, it just happened. OF: How so? MR: I have always enjoyed writing, and did so even when I was a young girl. I liked to listen to stories, to act in plays. But I didn’t take writing seriously until I was arrested. That night in jail, I was alone and it was a terrible night. I felt the cold with my whole body. I thought if I was famous enough, nobody could kill me, or harm me, or make me disappear. So that wasn’t exactly about making a decision to become a writer; it was about being scared, about fearing for my life. But now that I am here, safe and free, believe me, I can’t stop being a writer. Because when I stop writing, I can’t breathe. I get depressed, and I think that I am not alive anymore. OF: But that night in jail, when it occurred to you that you should take writing more seriously, could you ever imagine that becoming a writer would also turn out to be such a dangerous venture? MR: No, no, no, no. OF: Could you predict the risks involved? MR: No. Because I just imagined that if I had the power, the fame, they (the government ) couldn’t kill me; they couldn’t cover feature writing beyond iran Already in Exile” A Conversation with Moniro Ravanipour by Omid Fallahazad “ That night in jail, I was alone and it was a terrible night. I felt the cold with my whole body. I thought if I was famous enough, nobody could kill me, or harm me, or make me disappear. 48 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2015 WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 49 photo : aaron mayes do anything to me. But I never would have predicted that they would kill many writers, regardless of their fame or power. Later, there was a period when it seemed that they had stopped killing writers. By then I had become a member of Kanoon, and I was quite famous. But then they started again and killed many more writers who were as famous as I was. OF: Are you referring to the chain murders of writers in Iran at its height in 1998? MR: Yes. Then I understood that for the extremist, fame provides no safety. They don’t care about your fame; they don’t care about who you are. They don’t care about what you think or what you write about. They just don’t...

블랙마운틴칼리지의 융합형 예술교육

블랙마운틴칼리지의 융합형 예술교육

A new species of Tamasa Distant from an unusual cave-like habitat in Australia (Cicadidae: Cicadinae: Tamasini)

Tamasa caverna n. sp. is described from Black Mountain, northern Queensland, a mountain consisting almost entirely of large rock boulders. The species appears to be unique amongst Cicadidae in that the males sing from under these large boulders far from trees. Notes on its song and behaviour are provided. MouldS, M. S., and J. C. olive. 2014. A new species of Tamasa Distant from an unusual cave-like habitat in Australia (Cicadidae: Cicadinae: Tamasini). Records of the Australian Museum 66(5): 265–270. Introduction The genus Tamasa Distant has recently been redefined and its distinguishing features summarized (Moulds 1990, 2012); it includes four species endemic to eastern Australia. The new species described here is known only from Black Mountain, northern Queensland, and is unique amongst the Cicadidae because the males sing from under giant boulders far from trees. The song of this new species is analyzed and its habit of singing amongst the boulders discussed. Terminology for morphological features and higher classification follow those of Moulds (2005). The following abbreviations have been used for collections housing specimens: AM, Australian Museum, Sydney; JO, Collection of John Olive, Malanda; LWP, collection of L. W. Popple, Brisbane; MSM, collection of M. S. Moulds, Kuranda; QM, Queensland Museum, Brisbane. Family Cicadidae Tribe Tamasini Tamasa caverna n. sp.