Miles In Diameter Research Articles

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World

Book Review| September 01 2022 The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World. By Riley Black. 2022. St. Martin’s Press. (ISBN 9781250271044). 287 pp. $28.99. Ebook and audiobook also available. Kirstin Milks, Kirstin Milks Department Editor Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Frank Brown Cloud, Frank Brown Cloud Department Editor Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Robert A. Cooper Robert A. Cooper retired biology teacher bcooper721@gmail.com Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The American Biology Teacher (2022) 84 (7): 451. https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2022.84.7.451 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robert A. Cooper; The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World. The American Biology Teacher 1 September 2022; 84 (7): 451. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2022.84.7.451 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe American Biology Teacher Search Can you imagine what it would have been like to be on Earth 66 million years ago during the aftermath of the asteroid impact that caused the extinction of an estimated 75% of all species, including the non-avian dinosaurs? An asteroid, 7.5 miles in diameter, traveling at over 44,000 miles per hour, struck the Earth along the northern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. The impact caused earthquakes, tsunamis, a global infrared heat pulse hotter than an oven on broil, and global firestorms that pumped soot into the atmosphere blocking out a significant amount of sunlight for an extended period. In The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, science writer Riley Black employs her extensive knowledge of paleontology and vivid imagination to take the reader on a tour of the Cretaceous ecosystem around Hell Creek in Montana at a time just before the impact, then describes the likely aftereffects. In each... You do not currently have access to this content.

Opera House

Opera House Robert Stothart (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Bill Rand [End Page 42] Everything seemed married to everything else. —Gustave Baumann, printmaker, Santa Fe [End Page 43] Overture A mere 7,918 miles in diameter, Earth, our home together, travels a minuscule distance in relation to all that we see on clear nights, light years away out in the stars. The core of our globe is a mix of iron and nickel, solid like a cherry pit. That solid inner core is wrapped in a liquid outer core, and around that a mantle eighteen hundred miles thick, about the distance from New York to Denver. This mantle—solid in parts, liquid in places, plastic in others—roils in convection currents under a relatively thin fourteen-mile crust, a vulnerable skin of sorts that weathers all seasons while holding on in a tenuous relationship with the globe's deeper workings. That crust beneath our feet is constantly buckling, cracking, spreading, wrinkling, and pouring forth to reveal, as a face reveals, what goes on inside. Earth is face-all-over, and its insides are hot, reaching in places eight thousand degrees Fahrenheit. In a similar way, all of us on Earth are hot under our skins. We stay around ninety-eight degrees inside, like a sultry August afternoon. Besides that, our inner emotional temperatures swing wildly. As with our globe, contained though we are, each of our faces displays what's going on and has gone on inside. Look at photographs of Abraham Lincoln through the course of the Civil War. Look at Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, 1936. No matter our cosmetic preparations or our plastic surgeries, our inner churning will mark us in one way or another, and Earth is our stage. We are held in its gravitational clutches under its shifting atmospheres. Earth takes its toll on our inner burnings as we fashion entrances and exits through scenes, strutting and fretting our hours together on this little stage in cosmic space. Certain places on Earth give dramatic views of the globe's inner life: geysers and chromatic pools in Yellowstone's caldera; Spider Woman's perch eight hundred feet above the floor of Canyon de Chelly; Mount Monadnock's bare metamorphic pinnacle out of New Hampshire's woods. We travel for the sublime perspective gained when we visit geologic wonders, even those that take us to the brink of the cataclysmic. The opera house works in much the same way, by giving stage and voice to plays of our inner lives and the way those lives sing to each other through comedy and tragedy. Against the dark, opera stages construct islands of light for the likes of the Dutchman's ghostly ship or the Paris garret shared by a group of poor Bohemians. Technicians, like acrobats high in the rafters, have set and focused lights while timing and blending colors for a concentrated three hours through which our inner [End Page 44] lives play out before us. In lonely arias, tender duets, contentious trios, and exultant choruses, the opera house brings specimen worlds to life in harmonies and dissonances through a marriage of music and words, voices and instruments, texts and scores, costumes and wigs. We buy tickets to view these skillfully constructed worlds where we witness our own faults and eruptions, our deceptions and jealousies, our weddings, our deaths, even our journeys to the underworld: Otello, Così fan tutte, Carmen, Death in Venice, Orphée et Eurydice. Into Opera Each August when my wife, Margot, and I leave our home in Wyoming for the opera, we drive east on Owl Creek Road out to Wyoming 120, then head for Cheyenne and Denver on our way to Santa Fe. The road west of our house disappears up in the mountains. We live in a sheltered angle where two mountain ranges meet. The Owl Creek foothills descend in smooth alluvial fans down to our back pasture. The Absaroka Mountains stretch north and south along the western horizon, a more distant, jagged, granitic ridge. Our road crosses ranchland—neighbors' holdings, large and small. Some raise sheep, but most run cattle. All around us, the landscape...

Grounding and the Objection from Accidental Generalizations

Monistic grounding says that there is one fundamental ground, while pluralistic grounding says that there are many such grounds. Grounding necessitarianism says that grounding entails, but is not reducible to, necessitation, while grounding contingentism says that there are at least some cases where grounding does not entail necessitation. Pluralistic grounding necessitarianism is a very popular position, but accidental generalizations, such as ‘all solid gold spheres are less than one mile in diameter’, pose well-known problems for this view: the many fundamental grounds of such generalizations do not necessitate them. Though there is a straightforward response to this objection, I argue that it fails. Thus the objection from accidental generalizations stands, and proponents of pluralistic grounding necessitarianism face the following dilemma: either give up pluralistic grounding, or give up necessitarianism.

Climate Change: Adaptation, Mitigation, and Critical Infrastructures

On October 22, 2012, an African easterly wave formed in the Caribbean Sea and quickly grew into a tropical storm with frightening potential. It was the hottest year in recorded human history (though that record has subsequently been shattered), and the seawater was unusually warm. Strong winds whipped the wet Caribbean air into a frenzy as the storm moved north and west, and by October 24 the system had become a hurricane. Meteorologists named it Sandy and predicted it would sweep through the Caribbean islands and make landfall somewhere on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Sandy turned out to be more dangerous than anyone initially anticipated. The “superstorm” intensified and grew as it moved across the Caribbean, ultimately covering an area more than one thousand miles in diameter, making it one of the largest hurricanes in American history. Its winds were punishingly severe, yet the weather system was painfully slow, and the steady, relentless storm seemed to pause so that it could inflict extra damage on nearly everything in its path. Sandy hit the Atlantic coast on October 29 — the worst possible moment. Not only was there a full moon with high tides, but there was also an early winter storm with arctic air moving into the northeastern region from the other direction, and the two systems collided to form what journalists called a hybrid “Frankenstorm.” As the primary target of the attacks on September 11, 2001, New York City had spent billions of dollars over the course of the following decade shoring up its security systems and preparing for a catastrophe. Terrorism was not its only con-

Revisiting the Eland Field Lodgepole Mound Complex (Stark County, North Dakota) Twenty Years after its Discovery

Eland Field, the most prolific Lower Mississippian Lodgepole mound complex found to date in the Williston Basin, covers an area of about 6 mi2 and has produced more than 29 MMBO from 16 wells in the 20 years since the field was discovered. Three of the field’s updip wells have each produced more than 4 MMBO from mounds more than 250 ft thick although generally only the top 20 to 30 ft of the mound is perforated. The lower Lodgepole reservoir rocks are commonly called Waulsortian mounds, but they are Waulsortian in age only and not the micrite-rich mudmounds found in the type area of Waulsort, Belgium. Instead of being mudmounds, they are composed mainly of marine-cemented microbial boundstones and skeletal grainstones with local stromatactis structures. The edges of the mounds dip as steeply as 40 to 60 degrees. Such steep dips would be impossible in a typical micrite-rich Waulsortian mound. In addition to the abundant microbial and marine cementation that lithified the Eland Field mound complex penecontemporaneously, organisms such as stalked crinoids, fenestrate bryozoans, and articulated brachiopods and ostracods thrived on the hard substrate provided by the mounds. However, these organisms were themselves incapable of forming a true reef framework. Unusual inward dip of the Upper Bakken black shale and significant thickening of the “Extra Bakken Shale” from zero up to about 40 ft immediately beneath the oil-producing lower Lodgepole mounds both support the idea that something structurally significant such as salt dissolution helped localize mound development. We conclude that dissolution of the Lower Devonian Prairie salt created a fracture network during and immediately after deposition of the upper Bakken black shale that allowed compaction-water expulsion-vents and/or warm springs to initiate formation of carbonate “towers” that localized formation of the Lodgepole mounds. The discovery well for Eland Field, the Knopik #1-11 (NW NW Sec. 11, T139N, R97W), was completed in January 1995 for 2707 BOPD and 1550 MCFGPD with no water. The field was developed over the next few years with up to 16 producing wells and 7 water injection wells. Waterflooding of Eland Field began in 1997 and climbed to over 500,000 barrels per month in just two months. Through September 2015, more than 95 MMBW had been injected into the field, but it has produced over 29.6 MMBO, doubling the 1996 estimated ultimate recovery of 12 to 15 MMBO. The field continues to produce with about a 5.5% oil cut. In terms of total cumulative oil production in the U.S. portion of the Williston Basin, Eland Field contains 3 of the top 10 wells, and other nearby Lodgepole producing fields contain 4 additional top 10 wells. This excellent oil production leads to the question: Is it possible that the only productive Lodgepole mound reservoirs in the Williston Basin, eight of which have been discovered to date (with all but one discovered in the mid-1990s) are limited to a small atoll-like area about 7 miles in diameter in northern Stark County, North Dakota? Certainly the presence of similar Lodgepole mounds in outcrops in central Montana (e.g., Bridger Range and Big Snowy and Little Belt mountains) and in the subsurface of the western Williston Basin suggests that other Lodgepole mound-type reservoirs could occur across much of the basin. The most promising areas in which to search for other Lodgepole mound reservoirs will be those where the Upper Bakken black shale is well developed and thermally mature because it is the source for the oil in the Lodgepole reservoirs in the Eland Field area.

Valles Caldera: Preserving the “Yellowstone of the Southwest”

Valles Caldera: Preserving the “Yellowstone of the Southwest” Jeffrey M. Widener (bio) Located northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, are the majestic Jemez Mountains—a volcanic mountain range that began forming around 20 million years ago (figure 1) (Wolff et al. 2005). This range sits atop the western edge of the Rio Grande rift, an area of extreme volcanic activity, and is part of the Jemez lineament stretching from southeast Arizona to southern Colorado (Heiken et al. 1990). Recurrent tectonic activity formed and re-formed the Jemez Mountains into a range of lava domes, eroded cones, and incised canyons. Of particular interest to researchers are the eruptions of two small vents around 1.5 million years ago. These explosions left the surface unsupported and, as a result, the Toledo Caldera formed. Around 300,000 years later, another eruption, which was about 100 times stronger than the 1980 Mount St. Helens explosion in Washington, demolished the majority of the Toledo Caldera but formed a new one, the Valles Caldera, which measures almost 15 miles in diameter (Wolff and Gardner 1995; Valles Caldera Trust [VCT] 2003). Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The Valles Caldera National Preserve is located in the volcanic Jemez Mountain range (in the distance)—taken from Santa Fe, NM (photo by author). [End Page 583] After a collapse that forms a caldera, resurgent domes can begin to form if uplift occurs owing to pressure pushing molten rock in the magma chamber below the caldera upward. In the Valles Caldera, this started over 70,000 years ago (Martin 2003, 6). Redondo Peak, at 11,254 feet, is the Valles Caldera National Preserve’s only resurgent dome. This resurgence drained the lakes, created rivers, and formed the Cañon de San Diego, where the Jemez settled in the 1700s. Geographers, geologists, and other researchers recognize the Valles Caldera as an exceptional example of an exposed caldera formation, and, indeed, some call it the “Yellowstone of the Southwest” (VCT 2003, 18; Solomon 2004). Like Yellowstone, it is a place worthy of preservation for its beautiful landscapes. It is also of great importance culturally and ecologically to several indigenous groups, particularly the Towa-speaking Jemez Pueblo. The government continues to seek ways to best preserve such areas for posterity. Over the past few decades, United States (US) government officials have tried using new methods of acquiring and paying for publicly owned land. In 1996, Congress placed the Presidio, a historic military base in San Francisco, under the direction of the Presidio Trust—the first charter land management program. Congress implemented this trust not only to “preserve the Presidio’s natural, scenic, cultural, and recreational resources” but also to help it pay for its own upkeep (Presidio Trust [PT] 2010; Fairfax, Gwin, and Huntsinger 2004). Thus, they established a difference between setting aside public land to be government supported and placing public land under a trust that would become self-supporting. In this case, the Presidio Trust manages 80 percent and the National Park Service (NPS) oversees 20 percent (PT 2010). The Valles Caldera National Preserve, established in 2000, is the second site placed in a trust program—the Valles Caldera Trust—but this region has a historical cultural geography much richer than and different from that of the Presidio (figure 2). While several authors have described the history and the problems associated with the land management practices of the NPS and the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) (Foresta 1984; Dilsaver 1994; Spence 1999; Burnham 2000; Williams 2006; Sellers 2009; Runte 2010), only a handful of scholars have researched the land management system of public land trusts (Benton 1998; Fairfax, Gwin, and Huntsinger 2004; Little, Berrens, and Champ 2005; DeBuys and Usner 2006; Sullivan 2008). On the surface, public land trusts are similar to the NPS and USFS models, but the unique trust model focuses more on actual land use and management for sustainability and resilience than the more familiar NPS [End Page 584] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. The Valles Caldera National Preserve (cartography by author). and USFS models do. Both land management models, however, have a number of important roles in...

Technical Challenges for Solution Mining and Salt Cavern Storage to Meet Future Energy and Minerals Demand, And Solution Mining Research Institute's (SMRI) Role

1. Introduction Salt deposits are numerous and found in most regions of the world. The best salt deposits for both salt production and cavern storage tend to be either the thickest bedded salt deposits or salt domes. Without getting into the geology, salt domes are formed as bedded salt is deeply buried and compacted by sediment. The less dense salt rises toward the surface to form massive plugs which can be several miles in diameter by 10 miles deep. Those familiar with U.S. Gulf Coast oil and gas geology know that the Gulf region has over 500 salt domes, many of which have produced oil and gas from traps on the flanks of the domes. Both bedded salt and salt domes are of quiet but great economic importance worldwide, supplying salt as basic feedstock to many chemical production facilities, winter road deicing, water treatment, and food processing. Figure 1 shows bedded and domal salt deposits in France.

Seismic Analysis of a Viscoelastic Damping Isolator

Seismic prevention issues are discussed much more seriously around the world after Fukushima earthquake, Japan, April 2011, especially for those countries which are near the earthquake zone. Approximately1.8×1012kilograms of explosive energy will be released from a magnitude 9 earthquake. It destroys most of the unprotected infrastructure within several tens of miles in diameter from the epicenter. People can feel the earthquake even if living hundreds of miles away. This study is a seismic simulation analysis for an innovated and improved design of viscoelastic damping isolator, which can be more effectively applied to earthquake prevention and damage reduction of high-rise buildings, roads, bridges, power generation facilities, and so forth, from earthquake disaster. Solidworks graphic software is used to draw the 3D geometric model of the viscoelastic isolator. The dynamic behavior of the viscoelastic isolator through shock impact of specific earthquake loading, recorded by a seismometer, is obtained via ANSYS finite element package. The amplitude of the isolator is quickly reduced by the viscoelastic material in the device and is shown in a time response diagram. The result of this analysis can be a crucial reference when improving the design of a seismic isolator.

Canine pulmonary angiostrongylosis: can a worm change its spots?

UNTIL relatively recently in the UK, Angiostrongylus vasorum appeared to be restricted to patches or hotspots in Cornwall (Martin and Neal 1992) and south Wales (Trees 1987), each just a...

Tracing the effects of an enormous meteorite impact 3 billion years ago

The most well‐known and popularized meteorite impact occurred 65 million years ago and left behind the Chicxulub crater, a feature more than 110 miles in diameter. Dust kicked up by the impact, which lingered in the atmosphere for years, may have helped kill all the nonavian dinosaurs along with three quarters of the world's plant and animal species.

The Long Road to Recovery: Environmental Health Impacts of Hurricane Sandy

Building contractor John Pierciey stands in the gutted interior of a 1950s-era home in Manasquan, New Jersey. Wallboard, two layers of wood flooring, a layer of felt—all of it had to be ripped out to rid the house of mold caused by Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge. “This is the sixth house I’ve gutted in a week,” Pierciey says. “Every one is different. You don’t know what you’re going to find until you take them apart.” Residents and volunteers keep warm by a fire barrel in the New Dorp Beach neighborhood of Staten Island, 5 November 2012. Power outages persisted through a cold snap that put temperatures in the single digits. So it is with the environmental health impacts of Hurricane Sandy. Every layer of society, every type of building, has felt the impact of the storm, which struck the U.S. East Coast on 29 October 2012. Incidences of death and illness, though small in number compared with some storms, have come in many forms, the effects still unfolding as time goes by.

Mental Health Effects of Hurricane Sandy

On October 22, 2012, a late-season tropical system was named Sandy by the US National Hurricane Center. The system meandered for several days in warm Caribbean waters, intensifying slowly, gaining forward momentum, and passing directly over Jamaica, eastern Cuba, and the Bahamas. Sandy’s outer rain bands deluged Haiti’s deforested terrain, triggering severe floods and mudslides. Although Sandy was a minimal hurricane, millions were affected across 5 Caribbean nations and Puerto Rico, 100 persons were killed or reported missing, and thousands of homes were damaged. Estimated economic losses ranged from $5 million in Jamaica to $2 billion in Cuba.1 What catapulted this system into a “superstorm” was a rare climate event. At mid-latitudes, Sandy interacted with a polar jet stream that steered the system toward the mid-Atlantic coastline, transforming the system into a hybrid blend of posttropical cyclone and winter storm. The system’s cloud canopy expanded to 1000 miles in diameter as circulating winds funneled ocean waves into the New Jersey shoreline, Long Island Sound, and New York Harbor, inundating portions of Staten Island and southern Manhattan. In the United States, an estimated 60 million people across 24 states experienced a range of storm effects at varying intensities, including wind, rain, flood, coastal surge, and blizzard. The effects of the storm on vulnerable and fragile infrastructure produced power outages for more than 8 million residents; flooded New York City’s subway system and East River tunnels; set off a major fire that destroyed 111 housing units in the Breezy Point section of Queens; disrupted communications; and created acute shortages of gasoline, food, and commodities. Sandy was blamed for 113 US deaths and damaged 200 000 homes. Costs have been estimated at $50 billion, second only to Hurricane Katrina as the nation’s costliest natural disaster.2,3 Over the past 2 decades, considerable research efforts have been focused on populations affected by natural disasters. A rapidly growing body of knowledge is now available to assist in estimating the potential mental health effects of Superstorm Sandy and the differential risks for specific populations and communities. The availability of data from randomized controlled trials on the efficacy of interventions for trauma-exposed populations may enable better planning and implementation of prevention strategies to mitigate the adverse mental health effects of the disaster.

Burning Man, Desire, and the Culture of Empire

A soulful journey through the eight-day festival that claims to be both a social movement and “part of a solution to our modern malaise.”

Response to critics

I’d like to thank my critics for their thoughtful and challenging commentary. I appreciate the time and consideration they have given to my book, and I hope I can do justice to their objections in return. This project started off in my mind as a way of solving a problem for reliabilist theories of justification, namely, their unacceptably lax treatment of doxastic, or inferential, justification. Clairvoyance cases are just the tip of an iceberg: it seems undeniable to me that some beliefs require argument, that they require inferential, or doxastic support, if they are to be justified. ‘‘Simple reliabilism’’ holds that reliability is sufficient for prima facie justification, thus, in essence, denying that any belief requires inferential support. But take any hard-won item of science or philosophy: the belief that reliabilism is true, that bats are more closely related to primates than to rodents, that the moon is 2178 miles in diameter, and so on. There are many more: my belief that it’s likely to rain today, that Christmas is going to be on a Thursday this year, etc. These are beliefs that—for us, at least—require inferential support. Any theory of justification that doesn’t explicitly single out a class of beliefs as requiring doxastic/inferential justification is in danger of refutation from such examples. Coherentists won’t have any trouble here, for they standardly take all beliefs to require support from other beliefs. But this goes too far in the other direction—surely it’s okay to claim that some beliefs are basic, so long as we don’t claim that all are? Reliability seems sufficient for the justification of those beliefs that result from perception, memory, introspection, and perhaps some other sources, as even BonJour (1985, p. 49) admits.

Study of LMDS Videoconferencing System

LMDS is one kind of fixed broadband wireless access network. It uses radio spectrum between 10GHz and 40GHz to transmit voice, video, and data signals within small cell 3-10 miles in diameter. This paper proposes some key technical scenarios to support videoconferencing services transported on LMDS. Firstly, two kinds of typical LMDS lower layer standards made by DAVIC and 802.16 separately are discussed from the angle of supporting video conferencing services. Then, H.323 is studied and recommended as the standard of LMDS video conferencing system. And some strategies are proposed to support H.323 services on LMDS. After that, IP multicast technology, the key supporting technology of H.323, is studied from the angle of running on LMDS. Scenarios for IGMP, RMTP protocol running on LMDS are suggested and analyzed with Markov network queuing theory. The technical scenarios proposed by this paper make use of the transporting property of LMDS to support LMDS videoconferencing system more effectively.

Vanishing and Returning Heroes: Ambiguity and Persistent Hope in an Unea Island Legend

Abstract: Throughout Melanesia, there are stories of creative heroes who leave their people. The tale of Mataluangi is told in Unea, an island in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. The legend of the snake hero is related to its ethnographic context and the story is analyzed to show its conformity to a type of origin myth, vuvumu, that is prevalent in Unea. It is suggested that the structure of this well-known legend and other vuvumu stories influence contemporary politics in Unea as well as how Islanders perceive their history and possible future.Throughout Melanesia, there are stories of creative heroes who leave their people. Peter Lawrence (1964, 1988) traced the development of such stories in Northeastern New Guinea and investigated the political implications of the persistent belief that their heroes will return. This article follows Lawrence in exploring the story of a hero who left and who, like Manup and Kilibob in Lawrence's (1964) account, became the focus of millenarian beliefs. The hero is Mataluangi and his former home is the island of Unea, the most densely populated of the Vitu Islands, a group located northwest of the Willaumez Peninsula in Northwest New Guinea. The article briefly describes the island and local ideas about the cosmos so that the story can be placed in a wider epistemological context. Then it discusses a type of legend, vuvumu, and analyzes the story of Mataluangi, a representative of this narrative type. I suggest that through their local connotations, structural patterns and symbolic significance, legends act as templates on which the Islanders construct versions of their past and future.The Island and Its PeopleUnea is a rugged island approximately six miles in diameter. Three mountains, Kumbu, Tamongone and Kumburi, rise from within an encircling crater wall. The steep upper slopes of Kumbu and Tamongone are covered with primary forest, but the population has risen rapidly in the past 30 years and gardens and coconut plantations now cover Kumburi and encroach on the upper slopes of the other mountains. At lower elevations, the soil is fertile but there are also cliffs, precipitous slopes and lava flows that cannot be cultivated. Stones and boulders protrude from the undergrowth, stand beside paths and adorn settlements.The principal garden crop is the yam, but bananas are important and in the past taro was grown. Before the extensive planting of coconuts and cocoa led to a seasonal dependency on imported rice, plentiful tree crops supplied food for the lean period preceding the yam harvest and provided dietary variety. Unea Islanders are nostalgic about the fruit trees, not only because they provided food but because they distinguished Unea from the mainland which, they claim, is covered with useless trees. Despite the size of the island, there was once a division between seaboard people who specialized in fishing and inland people who hunted wild pig. There was both formal and informal exchange of these specialties. Now the distinction between fishermen and hunters is blurred, because most people catch fish occasionally and there are no more wild pigs.Before contact, Unea was divided into four or more regions, each consisting of several seaboard and inland parishes linked by intermarriage. Parishes were divided into hamlets occupied predominantly by patrilateral extended families. This settlement pattern changed when the Australian administration insisted that large villages be built, but families are now returning to old settlement sites. Women usually move to their husband's residence on marriage but descent is cognatic, so children do not lose their rights in maternal land. The majority of men are locally affiliated with their father's groups, but some use their mother's land and most give labour to both parental groups.Unea lineages are between six and sixteen generations deep. An individual claims membership in several, tracing relationships through all four grandparents. …

Distribution of angiostrongylosis in Cornwall

ABSTRACTOne hundred and ninety‐seven faecal samples were examined for Angiostrongylus vasorum larvae, from dogs throughout Cornwall, which were presented with one or more clinical signs consistent with infection, were known to eat slugs or snails or were related to an infected dog. Twenty samples (10‐1 per cent) contained nematode larvae, of these A vasorum larvae were identified in eight (4‐1 per cent) and larvae of Filaroides species in eight (4‐1 per cent). Seven of the eight dogs positive for A vasorum were found to have been infected within an area six miles in diameter incorporating Redruth. Statistical analysis suggested that this aggregation of cases was unlikely to be a random event (P < 0–01). No correlation between published data on the distribution of the intermediate host, slugs and snails and the cases of A vasorum infection reported in this paper could be found. It is concluded that A vasorum infection is enzootic within a small area around Redruth in the mid‐west of Cornwall.

A Solute‐Transport Simulation of Brackish‐Water Intrusion Near Baltimore, Maryland

ABSTRACTBrackish‐water contamination of the Patuxent aquifer has been a serious water‐quality problem in Baltimore, Maryland, since the early 1900's. The Patuxent aquifer presently contains a circular plume of brackish‐water contamination that is about 5 miles in diameter. This plume is centered on the Patapsco River estuary and is characterized by chloride concentrations that range up to 5,000 milligrams per liter. Borehole data demonstrate that the Arundel Clay Formation, which overlies the Patuxent and functions as a confining bed, has been breached by Pleistocene river channels in the Baltimore area. These erosional channels, which have been subsequently filled with relatively permeable sediments, provide conduits for brackish water to seep from the Patapsco River into the Patuxent aquifer when aquifer water levels arc lower than river water levels.A two‐dimensional areal solute‐transport model of the Patuxent aquifer was used to estimate the future movement of the brackish‐water plume based on alternative strategies of aquifer use. Model simulations suggest that the plume will not spread rapidly if present pumping patterns are continued. Furthermore, sharply curtailing pumpage in the Baltimore area will probably not reduce the size of the plume, although this strategy may slightly decrease the spreading rate. While the plume is presently remaining nearly stationary, new pumping centers southeast of Baltimore could cause brackish water to migrate in that direction, significantly increasing the size of the plume.

A Plague Epidemic in Voluntary Quarantine

In September 1665, an outbreak of plague occurred in Eyam, a small village 10 miles west of Sheffield, in an isolated valley of Derbyshire. Eighty per cent of the population died during the 14 months of the epidemic, a greater proportion than any other community in England. When plague threatened to cause panic and desertion of the village, the vicar of Eyam persuaded the villagers to stay, and to impose a voluntary quarantine on their village, in order to avoid spreading the plague to the surrounding villages. Quarantine was strictly observed for the last five months of the epidemic, when it was at its height. A boundary about one mile in diameter was marked out around the village, and food was left at the boundary for villagers to collect. The parish register can be used to describe the natural history of this plague epidemic in quarantine; in the light of current knowledge of plague epidemiology, it shows the traditional account of the origin of the Eyam plague to be improbable. The pattern of the epidemic suggests a typical epidemic of bubonic plague with a rodent reservoir. The policy of quarantine, rightly judged as heroic, was also tragically misguided, and was probably responsible for the unparalleled mortality.

Minority ethnic television in Los Angeles: A multicultural alternative

On September 9, 1980, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously agreed to encourage the creation of tow-power mini-stations. These television stations, envisioned to be relatively inexpensive to operate after being made functional for an initial investment of tess than a quarter of a million dollars, are designed to help meet the large unsatisfied demand for television in rural areas and among minority and ethnic groups in the urban centers of the nation (Pagano, 1980). Serving areas 12 miles in diameter, these stations have not only the potential of changing the nature of television service, but may have profound effects on the volatile nature ofmulticul. tural interactions and urban education in the United States. The purpose of this article is to examine potential ways of viewing television programming and development in the urban setting and to provide a state of the art description of minority ethnic television in one city prior to the potential explosion of television stations unleashed by the FCC ruling in the late summer of 1980.