Primary Argument Research Articles

Longevity of small-scale (‘baby’) plumes and their role in lithospheric break-up

SUMMARYControversy between advocates of ‘active’ (plume-activated) versus ‘passive’ (driven by external tectonic stresses) modes of continental rifting and break-up has persisted for decades. To a large extent, inconsistencies between observations and models are rooted in the conceptual model of plumes as voluminous upwellings of hot material sourced from the deep mantle. Such large-scale plumes are expected to induce intensive magmatism and topographic uplift, thereby triggering rifting. In this case of an ‘active’ rifting-to-break-up system, emplacement of plume-related magmatism should precede the onset of rifting that is not observed in many rifted continental margins, thus providing a primary argument in favour of an antiplume origin for continental break-up and supercontinent fragmentation. However, mantle plumes are not restricted to whole-mantle (‘primary’) plumes emanating from the mantle-core boundary but also include ‘secondary’ plumes originating from the upper mantle transition zone or shallower. Over the last decades a number of such ‘secondary’ plumes with horizontal diameters of only ∼100–200 km (therefore, sometimes also called ‘baby’ plumes) have been imaged in the upper mantle below Europe and China. The longevity of such small-scale plumes and their impact on geodynamics of continental break-up have so far not been explored. We present results of a systematic parametrical analysis of relatively small thermal anomalies seeded at the base of the lithosphere. In particular, we explore the effects of variations in initial plume temperature (T = 1500–1700 °C) and size (diameter of 80–116 km), characteristics of the overlying lithosphere (e.g. ‘Cratonic’, ‘Variscan’, ‘Mesozoic’ and oceanic) and intraplate tectonic regimes (neutral or far-field extension of 2–10 mm yr–1). In tectonically neutral regimes, the expected decay time of a seismically detectable ‘baby’-plume varies from ∼20 to >200 Myr and is mainly controlled by its initial size and temperature, whereas the effect of variations in the thermotectonic age of the overlying lithosphere is modest. These small but enduring plumes are able to trigger localized rifting and subsequent continental break-up occurring from ∼10 to >300 Myr after the onset of far-field extension. Regardless of the thermomechanical structure of the lithosphere, relatively rapid (tens of Myr) break-up (observed in models with a hot plume and fast extension) favours partial melting of plume material. In contrast, in the case of a long-lasting (a few hundreds of Myr) pre-break-up phase (relatively cold plume, low extension rate), rifting is accompanied by modest decompressional melting of only ‘normal’ sublithospheric mantle. On the basis of the models presented, we distinguish two additional modes of continental rifting and break-up: (1) ‘semi-active’ when syn-break-up magmatism is carrying geochemical signatures of the deep mantle with deformation localized above the plume head not anymore connected by its tail to the original source of hot material and (2) ‘semi-passive’ when the site of final lithospheric rupture is controlled by a thermal anomaly of plume origin but without invoking its syn-break-up melting. These intermediate mechanisms are applicable to several segments of the passive continental margins formed during Pangea fragmentation.

New insights into eutrophication management: Importance of temperature and water residence time

Eutrophication and harmful cyanobacterial blooms threaten water resources all over the world. There is a great controversy about controlling only phosphorus or controlling both nitrogen and phosphorus in the management of lake eutrophication. The primary argument against the dual nutrients control of eutrophication is that nitrogen fixation can compensate the nitrogen deficits. Thus, it is of great necessary to study the factors that can significantly affect the nitrogen fixation. Due to the difference of climate and human influence, the water quality of different lakes (such as water temperature, N:P ratio and water residence time) is also quite different. Numerous studies have reported that the low N:P ratio can intensify the nitrogen fixation capacities. However, the effects of temperature and water residence time on the nitrogen fixation remain unclear. Thus, 30 shallows freshwater lakes in the eastern plain of China were selected to measure dissolved N2 and Ar concentrations through N2: Ar method using a membrane inlet mass spectrometer to quantify the nitrogen fixation capacities and investigate whether the temperature and water residence time have a great impact on nitrogen fixation. The results have shown that the short lake water residence time can severely inhibit the nitrogen fixation capacities through inhibiting the growth of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria, changing the N:P ratio and resuspending the solids from sediments. Similarly, lakes with low water temperature also have a low nitrogen fixation capacity, suggesting that controlling nitrogen in such lakes is feasible if the growth of cyanobacteria is limited by nitrogen.

Predation on small juvenile fishes in shallow estuarine nursery areas: Reply to Baker & Sheaves (2021)

The key criticism by Baker & Sheaves (2021; Mar Ecol Prog Ser 662:205-208) of the Whitfield (2020; Mar Ecol Prog Ser 649:219-234) estuarine littoral predation paradigm review is that shallow water fish nursery habitats contain abundant predator assemblages which may create high predation pressure on the juvenile fish cohorts that occupy these areas. The primary arguments supporting Baker & Sheaves’ criticism arise from a series of papers published by them on piscivorous fish predation in certain tropical Australian estuaries. The counter-argument that shallow littoral areas in estuaries do indeed provide small juvenile fishes with refuge from small and large piscivorous fishes is provided by published papers from 4 different estuary types in South Africa, covering both subtropical and warm-temperate systems. Based on the overall published information, the argument for shallow (<1 m depth) estuarine waters providing major protection for newly settled juveniles appears to be weak in northern Australia but strong in South Africa. The global situation, as outlined in this response, is more supportive of low piscivorous predation in shallow nursery habitats, but further targeted research is needed before we can confirm that littoral estuarine waters are indeed a universal keystone attribute in this regard.

Sport e capitalismo monopolistico. Immagini dalla tradizione della teoria critica dello sport

Sport and monopoly capitalism. Images from the tradition of the critical theory of sport. This paper aims to analyse the most noteworthy theoretical contributions of the critical theory of sport and its reflections on the relationship between sport and monopoly capitalism in the twentieth century. These contributions provide us with an image of the main characteristics of monopoly capitalism, through the mirror of sport, and of the view through which Marxist critics have selected primary themes, problems and arguments. The main thematic focuses are: sport as a central area of industry, in the twentieth century, where capital was able to seek new markets; the capitalist mode of sport production with its productive, social and power relations; the homology between sport and work, characterized by alienation; the use of sport as an ideological, repressive and socializing tool. A fundamental need, expressed by critical theorists, is to emancipate individuals from all the multiple forms of domination that they find in the synergy between sport and monopoly capitalism.

STALKING: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In recent years, the criminal offence of stalking has drawn considerable attention of scientific and professional public. Stalking has been recognized as a criminal offence and a serious social problem since the 1990s. Before that, no state or society had statutes that recognized stalking as a criminal offence. It does not suggest that stalking did not exist before the 1990s. Stalking has always been part of human relations. Prior to enacting the legislation on stalking, many forms of unlawful behavior indicative of stalking were legally considered as harassment. Notably, the media portrayal of celebrity stalking was the catalyst that first exposed the presence of such intrusive behavior and triggered global interest. Based on the prior research on stalking, the author of this paper provides an overview of the criminal offence of stalking, outlines the primary arguments for its incrimination, and summarizes its principle characteristics.

In Defense of the Iowa Caucuses

Following the outcome of the 2020 Iowa Democratic Party caucuses, Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus status is in serious jeopardy. A number of commentators and scholars have criticized the Iowa caucuses. This Article contends the Iowa caucuses are a positive process for American democracy. This Article proffers five primary arguments why Iowa should retain its first-in-the-nation caucus status: 1) the Iowa caucuses promote civic engagement and civic responsibility; 2) the Iowa caucuses promote a personal touch to politics; 3) Iowans take the caucus process seriously; 4) the Iowa caucuses are healthy for democracy; and 5) the Iowa caucuses promote underdog candidates.

Compelled Decryption and the Right Against Self-Incrimination: Obsta Principiis

Amidst the debate over compelled decryption, most courts and commentators have failed to recognize that the Act of Production Doctrine has swallowed the right against self-incrimination. The right against self-incrimination was created for the express purpose of preventing the government from compelling self-incrimination, particularly in the form of oral or written testimony, or by the production of incriminating books and papers. The English and early-American cases make this point in no uncertain terms. “[T]he reason why in such cases a man needs not to answer, is, because that no man ought to accuse himself” and “the defendant is never forced to produce any evidence, though he should hold it in his hands in court.” Yet, in the compelled decryption cases, the right against self-incrimination sounds quite different. In addressing the question of whether a person can be compelled to “produce” a password under the Act of Production Doctrine, one court expressed its understanding that “[t]here is some support for the idea that the written disclosure of the password would amount to direct testimony.” Another court held that the compelled verbal disclosure of a password did not offend the Fifth Amendment because “the communication was sought only for its content and the content has no other value or significance.” The stakes in the compelled decryption cases are immense. The right against self-incrimination is not just a right to silence, it protects the human conscience, the right to privacy, and the value of books and papers. The right against self-incrimination also defines the difference between inquisitorial and accusatorial systems of legal procedure. Should the Act of Production Doctrine persist, the right against self-incrimination will disappear and the principles supported and protected by the right will be washed away. Therefore, this work proceeds in four parts. Part I briefly addresses the question of constitutional interpretation before continuing on to examine the origin and development of the right against self-incrimination in England and America. Then, Part II addresses the history of the Supreme Court’s self-incrimination jurisprudence. Part II first tracks the Court’s original and constitutionally faithful doctrine of self-incrimination, which is termed the Boyd-Bram Analysis. Part II then examines how the Court slowly abandoned the Boyd-Bram Analysis in favor of doctrines fundamentally opposed to the right against self-incrimination, including the Act of Production Doctrine. Part II also provides a detailed analysis of the Act of Production Doctrine’s many faults, and details how the Court was unable to clarify the doctrine in subsequent cases. The chaos that defines the compelled decryption cases is the subject of Part III. As an initial matter, Part III provides a detailed but accessible explanation of how encryption works and addresses common misconceptions. With a technical understanding of encryption in hand, Part III then argues that the inherent flaws of the Act of Production Doctrine explain why the state and lower federal courts have been unable to agree about even the most basic questions of self-incrimination. The two major sources of confusion are linked to the Act of Production Doctrine’s concept of communications and a subsidiary analysis known as the Foregone Conclusion Doctrine. Part III provides a series of tables and figures which quantify the scale of disagreement and confusion over the issue of compelled decryption. Part IV examines the impact of the Supreme Court’s retreat from the Boyd-Bram Analysis on the right against self-incrimination, how the issue of compelled decryption is properly treated under the Fifth Amendment, and the future of self-incrimination jurisprudence. Part IV makes three primary arguments. First, Part IV argues that the compelled decryption cases and the Act of production Doctrine are a direct threat to the letter and spirit of the right against self-incrimination. Second, that compelled decryption violates the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Third, that the Boyd-Bram Analysis is well-positioned to become the Supreme Court’s primary doctrine of self-incrimination.

Toponyms on the ice: The symbolic and iconographical role of Antarctic research base names

Abstract Place names serve a symbolic function in enforcing colonial power over landscapes. Within colonial locales, place names reproduce and reflect the ideological goals of settlers to reinforce or claim space for an individual, group or nation. One toponymically understudied colonial region where place names play a prominent role is the Antarctic, where the names of research bases promote the cultural power of settler nations to symbolically claim the continental landscape. As Antarctica is a geopolitically contested space, Antarctic research base names serve as an ideological purpose in reinforcing claims to the Antarctic, contrasting the ostensibly scientific purpose of research bases. This paper examines Antarctic research base names by categorising and interpreting their naming sources through a critical toponymic lens. This paper discusses general Antarctic naming trends and establishes possible reasons and outcomes of their employment, using three primary arguments: (1) Antarctic research base names are often nationalistic and reflect the implicit geopolitical goals of settler nations, (2) Antarctic research base names reflect and reproduce ongoing polar colonialism and (3) contestation over the naming of Antarctic research bases exemplifies the iconographical and cultural conflict between Antarctic nations. This paper seeks to provoke a future toponymic investigation into Antarctica and study Antarctic cultural landscapes more generally.

The Museum, the Colony, and the Planet: Territories of the Imperial Imagination

Abstract The primary argument of this essay is that the modern Western museum form is a critical site in which to understand the five centuries in which Europe dominated much of the rest of the world. In this imperial epoch, the world was shrunk to the museum and the museum was expanded to represent the colonized world, and nonhuman objects and human subjects were trafficked in connected ways. Now that we may be entering a planetary epoch, and the beginning of the end of globalization, there is an opportunity to build a new way to collect, curate, display, and circulate material forms outside the empire of the modernist museum.

The Effectiveness of Digital Transformation of Learning on Students' Learning Experience, Students' Engagement and Perceived Intellectual Competence: A Mixed-Method Approach

AbstractThis paper investigated the effectiveness of the digital transformation of learning on perceived intellectual competence, student’s engagement and learning experience. To achieve the study findings, a mixed research method was conducted, and 387 students in their first year of high school involved, besides eight teachers from different schools. Within quantitative study, the students took part in a questionnaire using the Online Learning Self-Efficacy Scale (OLSES), the study also used the Learning Object Evaluation Scale for Teachers (LOES-T) and 5-point Likert scale to examine the teachers’ views on students’ engagement with web-based learning tools. On the other hand, the qualitative study involved an interview through the Interwise web conferencing tool. The primary argument presented is that the online learning environment has significantly contributed to students’ learning experience as they can access vast information and knowledge concepts. The study concludes that digital learning sites increase students’ curiosity to learn, enhances their online engagement, and the interactive nature of the online learning environment encourages collaborative learning, hence a perception of high academic self-efficiency and intellectual competence. Teachers also concluded that the digital learning environment improves students' engagement as they regularly interact with web-based learning tools and are motivated to share their knowledge.

Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West by Karla Slocum

Reviewed by: Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West by Karla Slocum Irene Brisson Karla Slocum. Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781469653976 Paperback: 192 pages Black towns in Oklahoma are the eponymous subject of Karla Slocum’s Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West, but her objects of analysis are Black-town stories: stories told by new and old residents, historians, politicians, investors, businesspeople, and tour guides; stories of pasts, presents, and futures. This important and nuanced ethnographic work explores the “appeal of a Black place” to a diverse group of people (including descendants of former Black town residents like the author herself) by attending to narrative and meaning-making alongside the maintenance, development, and reuse of physical places in four of Oklahoma’s thirteen remaining Black towns. Though neither a history of Black towns nor an architectural study of Black town buildings and spaces, Black Towns, Black Futures makes a critical contribution for scholars of the built environment of the southern United States and the Americas at large by showing that the complex reality of twenty-first century Black towns is constructed upon centuries of sedimented racial violence, displacement, and resistance. The book begins with the story of “A Black El Dorado” wherein the author’s great-uncle was run out of business by a white competitor in the Jim Crow South and established a successful barbershop in an Oklahoma Black town. His is an example of a history that begins with a traumatic experience and ends with the town as a site of agency and economic success. Calling in the myth of El Dorado where European colonizers dreamed of finding abundant treasures, Slocum foreshadows the complex and contradictory nature of Black towns and their stories, and she gestures to the colonial entanglements of the United States, Black and Indigenous people, as well as land and property in Oklahoma. In this compelling and thorough introduction, Slocum also situates Oklahoma’s Black towns within broader theoretical and historical debates about Black space including practices of marronage and problematic tropes of Black spaces as exceptional. The four core chapters that follow focus on Black-town histories, heritage tourism, internal and external economic activities, and community formation and maintenance. The first chapter examines themes and variations in residents’ stories including origin stories, the rise and decline of small business, and the vitality and demise of Black schools—all of which exceed simple narratives of success or refuge. In the following chapter, the focus turns to intentionally crafted Black-town histories that are shared via heritage tourism. As Slocum writes, “to do the work of identifying a Black-identified place as both remarkable and normal, as typically American, typically Black, and yet unusually Black, is to do political and social work.”1 The third chapter complicates the most common Black-town history of a bygone era of entrepreneurial success by profiling the contemporary small business owners who provide a service to their communities but struggle to compete with large corporations. They and others are drawn to transform Black-town economies with divergent goals; external investors and private prisons are notable for their profiting from the economic frailty and isolation of Black towns. Boundaries between interior and exterior are blurred in the fourth chapter, which considers how reunions and spectacular events like rodeos keep families connected to Black towns as well as the appeal for descendants of residents and unrelated Black Americans to move into Black towns with their complex bundle of potential and nostalgia. [End Page 66] The primary argument of the book, that “the Black-town reality is more than the Black imaginary of itself, but that does not impede the Black ideal of the space,” is summarized in a short final chapter on the enduring and contradictory appeal of these places.2 Slocum’s complication of the image of Black towns that are often either erased from US history stories or rendered as flat and isolated (and past) places of Black freedom contributes to a robust...

Empowering Academic Stakeholders through Distributive Leadership

The Philippine educational system has engaged into an intensive strategic collaborative pedagogical setting in which education is not only mobilized by educators and school administrators; but more so with the participation of all concerned sectors of society. Everyone is an academic stakeholder par excellence – family, community, local government units, religious sectors, and private industry partners. Moreover, the focus of this present paper is to put forward a discursive analysis among various academic stakeholders into a strategic leadership framework as contextualized into local academic school setup. The primary argument of this paper is that constructivist education at least in the Philippine context is interpretatively structured into a distributive type of academic leadership wherein leadership is primarily decentralized yet collaboratively distributed among primary and secondary stakeholders. Hence, this study is advancing a principle of “distributive leadership through stakeholder mobilization”.

Human Dignity, the Right to be Heard, and Algorithmic Judges

Abstract This article examines the requirements of the right to a fair trial in the context of the use of machine-learning algorithms (MLAs) in judicial proceedings, with a focus on a core component of this right, the right to be heard. Though NGOs and scholars have begun to note that the right to a fair trial may be the best framework to address the challenges raised by MLAs, the actual requirements of the right in this novel context are underdeveloped. This article evaluates two normative approaches to filling this gap. The first approach, the argument from fairness, produces three broad categories of measures for ensuring fairness: measures for increasing the transparency and accountability of MLAs, measures for ensuring the participation of litigants, and measures for securing the impartiality of the human judge. However, this article argues that the argument from fairness cannot provide the necessary normative grounding for the right to a fair trial in the context of MLAs, as it collapses into the concept of ‘algorithmic fairness’. The second approach is based on the concept of human dignity as a status. The primary argument of this article is that the concept of human dignity as a status can provide better normative grounding for the right to a fair trial because it offers an account of human personhood that resists the de-humanization of data subjectification. That richer account of human personhood allows us to think of the trial not only as a vehicle for accurate outcomes, but also as a forum for the expression of human dignity.

Mary Augusta Brazelton, Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China

Mary Augusta Brazelton’s Mass Vaccination is the kind of work we all should be reading during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book is a perceptive analysis of the Chinese state’s long history of privileging the health of the collective over the rights of the individual, which puts into particular relief the ways that China responded to the current pandemic, rigidly enforcing lockdowns, tracking citizens’ movements with cellphone data, implementing routine temperature checks by force, and levying hefty fines for misbehavior. The book’s primary argument is that mass vaccination, which became mandatory in the Maoist era, schooled people in the type of “biological citizenship” that has long been associated with the One Child Policy and other “radically comprehensive programs of state surveillance” (pp.8-10, quote on 8). Brazelton also demonstrates that Chinese scientists actively participated in and contributed to global research on microbiology and immunology. She places China in the center, rather than the margins, of the history of science and global health.

Steps-to-War Theory and Interstate Wars in the Middle East: Is State-Sponsored Terrorism Another Escalating Step?

I employ Steps-to-War theory to analyze interstate wars in the Middle East by adding an additional escalating step: state sponsorship of non-state actors. Remarkably, however, the present scholarship completely overlooks a comprehensive assessment of the impacts and roles of state-sponsored terrorism on escalation of interstate militarized conflicts. None of the conflict studies focuses on state-sponsored terrorism and escalation of interstate conflict. This gap still exists despite a remarkable growth in the conflict literature. This article argues that the Steps-to-War thesis is a useful framework for understanding why states end up fighting wars by answering the questions: How does state-sponsored terrorism escalate interstate conflict? And how does each step intertwine with other steps and make war more likely? This paper’s primary argument is that state-sponsored terrorism increases the likelihood of war by providing another escalating step in conjunction with other steps and, therefore, aligns with Steps-to-War theory, and is one of the leading escalating factors. Ultimately, this article argues that this claim has a solid basis, and the Middle Eastern cases vividly demonstrate the escalatory ability of state-sponsored terrorism because state-sponsored terrorism interacts with and reinforces other escalating factors.

The Performance of Religion: Seeing the Sacred in the Theatre

The Performance of Religion: Seeing the Sacred in the Theatre

Ingrained habits: the “kitchen cars” and the transformation of postwar Japanese diet and identity

ABSTRACT This article explores the history and politics of American-funded food demonstration buses (“kitchen cars”) in postwar Japan. Their express mission was to transform the Japanese national diet. I make two primary arguments. First, at least in the short to medium term, the kitchen cars were a win-win for both the United States and Japan. On the one hand, Japan benefited because the kitchen cars taught Japanese women how to cook cheap, nutritious, mostly easy dishes to improve the health of their families and the nation. On the other hand, these menus were planned specifically to increase consumption of American agricultural products, especially wheat, soy, and corn. For US agricultural and political interests, in addition to supporting the economic recovery and political stability of a Cold War ally, the kitchen cars – along with the school lunch program – were instrumental in teaching Japan to accept and consume American produce. My second argument concerns the reasons for the kitchen cars’ success. I identify the following two factors: staffing by mostly female professional nutritionists, who combined authority with approachability for the kitchen cars’ main audiences of middle-aged, married women; and the kitchen cars’ mobility, which allowed them to reach even remote villages and hamlets.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Abstract This is a review article of Janet Gyatso's 2015 award-winning book, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet. The art-historical aspects of the book—mainly confined to the first chapter, “Reading Paintings, Painting the Medical, Medicalizing the State” and based on a perceptive art-historical reading of a set of medical paintings and its copies—had yet to be reviewed by an academically-trained art historian. This review underscores the fine art-historical insights deserving the attention of art historians working in parallel contexts of the often tense relationship between religious and empirical epistemologies. At the same time, the evaluation of certain readings of the visual record lead to suggested revisions in the support they provide to Gyatso's primary argument. In addition, other precedents of depictions “from life” in Tibetan art history are offered to help contextualize claims of originality or uniqueness. Finally, an analysis is presented of less formal, freehand painting versus more formalized, iconometric execution, calibrated with vernacular subject matter versus iconographically predetermined themes. Both of the painting modes and subject types are combined in the painting set analyzed by Gyatso supporting her assessment of the innovation of the artists selected by the patron, Desi Sangyé Gyatso (1653–1705).

Afterword: whither gender and the far right?

ABSTRACT This afterward synthesizes the primary arguments of each of the contributors to this volume, and suggests several next steps for analyses of gender and the far right. The chapter suggests that there is a need for more serious inquiry in four domains: on the intersections of extremism and gender-based violence, on how gender relates to subcultural and place-based challenges in terms of where women encounter extremist messages and first enter far-right scenes; comparative work on religion and far-right extremism, including more analyses of evangelical Christianity, and the inclusion of more work on gender-based efforts to counter far-right mobilization.

Kognitionsverber og kontrasten mellem indikativ- og infinitivkomplement

Many Danish cognition verbs take both indicative and infinitive complements. We examine what the contrast between the two complement types codes. The literature offers two answers. One is that the contrast has to do with coreferentiality: if the cognition verb’s primary argument is coreferential with the primary argument of the complement, the complement tends to be infinitive; if not, the complement must be indicative. The other answer concerns the contrast between propositions and states-of-affairs: the indicative complement designates a proposition, the infinitive complement a state-of-affairs. Corpus studies support both answers. They also support an analysis of indicatives as proposition markers. But infinitives cannot – straightforwardly – be analysed as state-of-affairs markers.