Sudden Influx Research Articles

Coral reef health and management on the verge of a tourism boom: A case study from Miches, Dominican Republic

The Miches Municipality lies in the second poorest province in the Dominican Republic, and its inhabitants rely heavily on nearby coral reefs for food and livelihoods. With the sudden influx of tourism from the completion of a new highway, now is a crucial time to ensure that future tourist development in this region is locally driven and environmentally responsible. As coral reefs are a foundation of Miches' identity, economy, and natural wealth, they play an integral role in the realization of this goal. This study employed global reef monitoring protocols to conduct the first-ever quantitative health assessment of Miches' reefs in order to guide future management practices. Surveys of multi-taxa indicator species were conducted alongside assessments of coral bleaching, disease prevalence, and evidence of anthropogenic impacts. Key findings include extremely low abundances of fishery-targeted species, high prevalence of diseased coral, anchor damage at nearly every site, and high abundances of indicator species for nutrient-based pollution such as fertilizers and raw sewage. Deeper, offshore reefs exhibited better health than shallow, inshore reefs, though they were still more degraded than comparable reefs in Dominican marine protected areas. Overall, Miches reefs are highly threatened by four main factors: overfishing, land-based pollution, human-related structural damage, and coral bleaching. To improve the well-being of the region's coral reefs and the communities that depend on them, an adaptive management plan is recommended that encompasses strong fisheries regulations, basic yet consistent monitoring efforts, and the integration of land-based and marine management practices.

Born in the USA: Breeding Political Violence in Héctor Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier

Born in the USA:Breeding Political Violence in Héctor Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier Dale Pattison (bio) In the summer of 2014, the national news media began reporting on the sudden influx and subsequent detention of migrant women and children crossing the U.S./Mexico border. Fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, these migrants quickly found themselves at the heart of an ongoing debate on the nation's responsibility to care for, or to reject, migrants in need. In addressing the emerging humanitarian crisis, pundits and politicians all too often failed to probe the underlying causes for the sudden increase in immigration from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—all economically disadvantaged countries ravaged by gang violence and long histories of political unrest. Although many commentators would focus on the conditions of violence and poverty in these countries, seldom did the conversation turn to the history of Central America in the twentieth century and the United States' involvement in creating and sustaining a state of political instability in the region.1 What few in the media were willing to acknowledge was that the political dilemma created by these undocumented migrants was in fact a product of the United States' foreign policy in Central America decades earlier. The crisis on the border that occurred in 2014 is in many ways anticipated and foretold in Héctor Tobar's 1998 novel, The Tattooed Soldier, a work that at first glance has little to do with immigration politics or American foreign policy. In presenting a revenge narrative centered on two Guatemalan refugees—enemies in their home country—who bring their blood feud to the streets of Los Angeles, Tobar offers a subtle and prescient critique of the ways in which the United States' foreign policy in Central America in the latter half of the twentieth century—rooted in an emerging doctrine of neoliberalism in the Americas—produced political violence that would ultimately return to haunt the U.S. [End Page 113] at the turn of the twenty-first century. Irrevocably scarred by the human consequences of U.S. economic and military intervention in Guatemala, both characters deliver the political violence that created them, so to speak, to its place of origin: the United States. This article uses Tobar's novel to examine the ways in which political violence—like that experienced by the people of Central America in the latter half of the twentieth century, and embodied in those migrants crossing the U.S./Mexico border—can be neither contained nor repelled by national borders. Once created, political violence moves within and among bodies, and nations that export political violence, Tobar's novel suggests, render themselves susceptible to its inevitable return. The novel's revenge narrative concerns the lives of two Guatemalan refugees, Antonio Bernal and Guillermo Longoria, who meet each other in a Los Angeles city park seven years after their initial confrontation in Guatemala, during which Longoria, a member of the Guatemalan government's elite Jaguar Battalion, ruthlessly murdered Antonio's wife and child. Having escaped Guatemala after experiencing this violence, Antonio struggles to establish himself in Los Angeles, where he has difficulty holding jobs and securing stable living spaces. The novel opens, for instance, with Antonio being evicted from his apartment and thereby entering the state of homelessness that will carry him through the duration of the novel. Believing himself to have escaped the political violence of his past, Antonio is shocked when he stumbles upon Longoria playing chess in nearby MacArthur Park, and all of the repressed memories of his family's murder come flooding back to him. Challenging our inclination to read Antonio as the representative victim of political violence, Tobar focuses more explicitly on situating Longoria, the monstrous ex-soldier indoctrinated by a brutal military regime and trained by the U.S. government, as the unacknowledged victim of political trauma. By providing lengthy narrative detours that develop Longoria's character, Tobar situates him, in addition to Antonio, as paradoxically deserving of our sympathy. In both cases, Tobar concerns himself explicitly with addressing how victims of political violence—particularly those severed from their homelands as a result of political upheaval—process trauma in an environment that denies...

The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the ‘extraordinary child’ in postwar British science fiction

A sudden influx of portrayals of ‘extraordinary children’ emerged in British science fiction after the Second World War. Such children both violated and confirmed the new set of expectations about...

Element chemostratigraphy of the Devonian/Carboniferous boundary – A compositional approach

The Devonian/Carboniferous (D/C) boundary is a critical interval in the Phanerozoic history, which is associated with vigorous climatic perturbations, continental glaciation, global sea-level fall and rapidly increased extinction rates in marine realms. In many sections world-wide, these global changes left a marked lithological signature, in particular the Hangenberg black shale (products of deep-shelf anoxia) and the overlying Hangenberg sandstone (sudden siliciclastic influx into predominantly carbonate depositional environments). Both layers bear a distinct geochemical signature. Even though either or both of these two lithologies are absent at many sections, their correlative counterparts can be indicated by subtle geochemical markers. We studied elemental geochemistry of fourteen D/C boundary sections in six key areas across Europe with the aim to select globally correlatable elemental proxy for the D/C boundary. Analysis of raw/log-transformed geochemical data (EDXRF, c.p.s. units), presenting the standard approach here, indicates that concentrations of terrigenous elements (Al, K, Rb, Ti and Zr) are mainly controlled by diluted Ca (carried by marine calcium carbonate) in limestone facies and, accordingly, their variations can be related to carbonate production in the sea rather than to terrigenous input from continent. Nevertheless, due to the relative nature of geochemical observations, reliance solely on statistical processing of raw data might lead to incomplete picture of multivariate data structure and/or biased interpretations. For this reason, the aim of this contribution is to discuss the logratio alternatives of the standard statistical methods, which may better reflect the relative nature of the data. For this purpose, principal component analysis was employed to reveal main geochemical patterns and while the geochemical signature of the D/C boundary was further analysed using Q-mode clustering that leads to predicative orthonormal logratio coordinates – balances. The comprehensive picture of the multivariate data structure provided by these statistical tools makes them a primary choice for exploratory compositional data analysis. At the same time, it turns out that the standard and compositional approaches have synergic effects. This fact can be extensively used in further geochemical studies.

"Nicaraguan Words": José Coronel, the Vanguardia, and Whitman's "Language Experiment"

IN A 1953 memoir, Jose Coronel Urtecho, the founder of the Nicaraguan avant-garde, recalls the shock of a US visitor who noticed a portrait of Walt in Coronel's isolated estate along the San Juan River, near the border of Costa Rica. Coronel wrote that for his Yankee guest to find in rural Nicaragua surprised him as much as finding a caiman on Beacon Street or a tapir tranquilly in Boston Common.1 Coronel's surreal language frames a strange, exotic-animal Walt who can somehow nonetheless (notice that he is grazing tranquilly) be calmly and easily translated into any new context (Rapido 27). Indeed, the relations between the US and Latin America, of which this portrait-encounter represents an intriguing instance, have often been shaped by both this mutual exotic fascination and by countless literary and cultural translations, intersections, and crosscurrents.2What was doing in Nicaragua? In fact, US and Nicaraguan histories have been inextricably linked since the mid-nineteenth century, when traffic from the California Gold Rush (1848- 1855) across Nicaragua's short inter-oceanic route brought a sudden influx of US capital and culture.3 Later in the 1850s, Tennessee filibuster William Walker took advantage of civil war in Nicaragua to seize power and become-in one of the stranger moments in US history-president of Nicaragua until he was expelled by a Central American coalition. By the early twentieth century, a painful contradiction lay at the heart of Nicaraguan culture: Michele Gobat persuasively argues that while Nicaragua sought to imitate the prosperity and power of the US, many Nicaraguans fiercely resented the United States' frequent military, cultural, and financial interventions into their national affairs.4 And in fact, Jose Coronel himself evinced a conflicted attitude, writing: My personal attitude towards the United States was for many years ambivalent: found myself attracted, would almost say fascinated, and at the same time repelled by them.5But if US involvement in Nicaragua repelled Coronel, US literature had attracted him from a very early age. Having as a child first encountered in Spanish translation and then in Whitman's native tongue, Coronel once claimed, I can almost say that learned to read English reading Poe and Whitman (Rapido 51).6 From 1924 to 1927, while many of his peers went to Europe, the young Coronel chose to live and study in San Francisco, California, where he immersed himself in US literature. When he returned, however, he founded an avant-garde movement that vocally denounced the continued US intervention in Nicaragua, and called for the creation of an authentic, autochthonous Nicaraguan literature and culture. Yet despite this agenda, Coronel's Vanguardia, as it came to be called, remained strongly (and paradoxically) permeated by US literary culture, for Coronel had begun what would be a lifetime of serious engagement with US writers, with Walt occupying a prominent place.Indeed, among Latin American avant-garde writers, Jose Coronel stands out for his depth of reading in Whitman's work. As a poet and a translator, Coronel knew Leaves of Grass, and anthologized poems from it in three different collections.7 Yet few scholars have studied this long trans-continental literary relationship.8 So what did Coronel find compelling in Whitman's work? At stake here is not only an accurate vision of hemispheric literary history, but also an understanding of the real overlap between aesthetics and politics in twentieth-century US-Nicaraguan relations, because the texts of Coronel's group, and the politics of its members, would seriously impact the course of Nicaraguan literature and history. A reading of Coronel's later writings on Whitman, alongside the texts of his Vanguardia, reveals Whitman's presence, as the Nicaraguan avant-garde forged a nationalist, autochthonous literature that sought at the same time to be aesthetically new. …

Absorptive Capacity and the Impact of Commodity Terms of Trade Shocks in Resource Export-Dependent Economies

This paper investigates the role of “absorptive capacity” to manage unexpected shocks to their real economy, with a focus on small, open, natural resource-dependent economies. A quarterly panel data series for 45 countries is constructed, including 23 developing Asian countries for empirical investigation. For the entire sample, the analysis finds that absorptive capacity, choice of exchange rate regime, presence of wealth funds, level of foreign reserves, or degree of resource dependency alone, does not matter when real shocks are introduced to output. However, levels of absorptive capacity or ability to use resource windfalls effectively, and foreign reserves begin to matter when the sample is restricted to resource-dependent countries. Case studies from Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste support this claim highlighting the challenges they face with a sudden influx of natural resource revenues when capacity to effectively use fiscal revenues is limited.

Deriving aerosol hygroscopic mixing state from size-resolved CCN activity and HR-ToF-AMS measurements

The ability of a particle to uptake water and form a cloud droplet depends on its hygroscopicity. To understand its impact on cloud properties and ultimately radiative forcing, knowledge of chemically-resolved mixing state information or the one based on hygroscopic growth is crucial. Typically, global models assume either pure internal or external mixing state which might not be true for all conditions and sampling locations. To investigate into this, the current study employed an indirect approach to infer the probable mixing state. The hygroscopic parameters derived from κ-Kohler theory using size-resolved CCN measurements (κCCN) and bulk/size-resolved aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) measurements (κAMS) were compared. The accumulation mode particles were found to be more hygroscopic (κCCN = 0.24) than Aitken mode (κCCN = 0.13), perhaps due to increased ratio of inorganic to organic mass fraction. The activation diameter calculated from size-resolved CCN activity measurements at 5 different supersaturation (SS) levels varied in the range of 115 nm–42 nm with κCCN = 0.13–0.23 (avg = 0.18 ± 0.10 (±1σ)). Further, κAMS>κCCN was observed possibly due to the fact that organic and inorganic mass present in the Aitken mode was not correctly represented by bulk chemical composition and size-resolved fractional contribution of oxidized OA was not accurately accounted. Better correlation of organic fraction (forg) and κCCN at lower SS explained this behaviour. The decrease in κCCN with the time of the day was more pronounced at lower SS because of the relative mass reduction of soluble inorganic species by ∼17%.Despite the large differences between κ measured from two approaches, less over-prediction (up to 18%) between measured and predicted CCN concentration suggested lower impact of chemical composition and mixing state at higher SS. However, at lower SS, presences of externally mixed CCN-inactive aerosols lead to CCN over-prediction reflecting the significance of aerosol mixing state information. Further examination of the effect of biomass burning aerosols (∼35% in least oxidized biomass burning organic aerosol (BBOA-2 fraction) on hygroscopicity and CCN activity showed increase in the concentration of all AMS measured species (except NH4+ and SO42−), less O:C ratio, and organic mass fraction (forg) peak shift to lower diameter range caused ∼13% change in critical diameter (Da) and ∼40% change in κCCN. Increased deviation of ∼100% between κCCN and κAMS due to sudden influx of internally mixed BBOA caused suppressed hygroscopic growth. This study finally suggests the assumption of pure internally mixed aerosol does not completely hold true for this anthropogenically polluted site.

Modeling Sewer Flow in a Pilgrimage City

AbstractSewerage management in pilgrimage cities has been a challenging task because the sudden influx of pilgrims exerts tremendous pressure on the sewer system. It is a much more challenging problem in the city of Karbala, Iraq, where the number of pilgrims during peak pilgrimage days is gradually increasing because of the rapid growth of the Muslim population due to their improving economic status and mobility. The objective of the present study is to investigate the impact of population on sewer flow in Karbala. A multiple linear regression based on a statistical analysis approach is used to quantify the impacts of population variation in sewer flow in Karbala. The results show that sewer flow in the city typically increases around 0.0115 m3/s for every increase by 1,000 in population. This will be a helpful calculation in understanding, predicting, and abating sewer overflow problems in Karbala.

ACROSS THE HELLESPONT: MAYDOS (ANCIENT MADYTOS), TROY AND THE NORTH-EASTERN AEGEAN IN THE LATE EIGHTH TO EARLY SIXTH CENTURY BC

This article presents new excavation results from three oval or apsidal houses discovered at the site of Maydos-Kilisetepe (ancient Madytos), which is located near the coast of the Hellespont on the Gallipoli peninsula. The houses date to the late eighth to early sixth century bc. The material from Maydos is evaluated in comparison with the nearby site of Troy (Ilion) and situated within the wider context of developments in the north-eastern Aegean region during the Late Geometric to Early Archaic periods. From the mid-eighth to the mid-seventh century, a cultural koine existed in the north-eastern Aegean, shown by the strong similarities in material culture among the sites in the region. Troy was most probably a large regional centre, while Maydos functioned as a smaller settlement within this network. The power and influence of this koine declined or was replaced in the mid-seventh century, when there was a sudden influx of Ionian-style ceramics at Maydos, around the same time that Troy experienced a destruction. The patterns of cultural interactions changed with the establishment of Greek (primarily Ionian and Athenian) colonies on both sides of the Hellespont during the second half of the seventh to the early sixth century.

The Polarizing Effect of the Stimulus: Partisanship and Voter Responsiveness to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Upon signing the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law, President Obama said, expect you, the American people, to hold us accountable for the results of the new legislation. (1) In political science, however, there is substantial debate about the extent to which voters reward or punish their elected officials, and in particular presidents, for their spending choices. Most notably, the voter responsiveness literature has not yet fully considered the effects of polarization. Polling data suggest that the response to the ARRA in general appears to have been filtered through partisanship. Pew Research Center polling data from 2010 and 2012 reveal that almost 80% of Republicans disapproved of stimulus spending, compared with roughly one-fifth of Democrats (Pew Research Center 2012). While it is unsurprising that attitudes toward the program writ large are a reflection of the partisan divide concerning President Obama, it may be that voters respond to actual stimulus spending in a similarly partisan way. Such a result would be consistent with research on the rising salience of partisanship in America's polarized politics (e.g., Abramowitz 2010; Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope 2004; McCarty et al. 2006). Among elected officials, in the media, and among the mass public, partisanship has become increasingly predictive of political behavior. To explore the effects of polarization on electoral rewards for federal spending, we take advantage of a sudden influx of government spending courtesy of the ARRA. In addition to its highly politicized nature, the ARRA represents an excellent case to explore this issue for several reasons. First, the particularly massive and widespread nature of the stimulus offers an unusual opportunity to explore political responsiveness to federal government spending in a wide variety of geographic locales, including heavily Democratic and Republican places. Moreover, the federal government's attempts to claim credit for specific stimulus programs via road signs, speeches, and other publicity render it a particularly good test of political responsiveness: if any federal government spending program were likely to generate a constituent response, it would be something as highly visible as the ARRA. Finally, there have been, to our knowledge, no political science studies that examine the democratic implications of the ARRA. That is, while much scholarship--particularly in economics--has been devoted to the effectiveness and economic effects of the program (Congressional Budget Office [CBO] 2012; Council of Economic Advisers, Executive Office of the President 2011; Feyrer and Sacerdote 2011), there has been no research on the political effects of the initiative. We simply do not have any rigorous empirical evidence on whether the American people did indeed hold the Obama administration or Congress accountable for the successes or failures of this signature piece of legislation. This article proceeds as follows. First, we examine the existing research about voter responsiveness to spending and show that this literature does not create a consistent picture of how we should expect voters to react to public spending. Then, using data on the allocation of the ARRA, we estimate the effects of spending on support for the president's party at the county level. We find that ARRA investments have a positive effect on Democratic vote share only in those counties that are already Democratic leaning; in strongly Republican counties, the effect of increased spending is negative. In total, then, the stimulus had a polarizing effect on the electorate, driving liberal counties to the left and conservative counties to the right. This finding suggests that highly politicized spending can actually be counterproductive for an incumbent Democrat. Rather than being unresponsive (Kriner and Reeves 2012), conservative counties punished Democrats for the spending they received from the stimulus. …

Copper status of exposed microorganisms influences susceptibility to metallic nanoparticles.

Although interactions of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) with various microorganisms have been previously explored, few studies have examined how metal sensitivity impacts NP toxicity. The present study investigated the effects of copper NPs (Cu-NP) exposure on the model alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in the presence and absence of the essential micronutrient copper. The toxic ranges for Cu-NPs and the ionic control, CuCl2 , were determined using a high-throughput adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-based fluorescence assay. The Cu-NPs caused similar mortality in copper-replete and copper-deplete cells (median inhibitory concentration [IC50]: 14-16 mg/L) but were less toxic than the ionic control, CuCl2 (IC50: 7 mg/L). Using this concentration range, the Cu-NP impacts on cell morphology, copper accumulation, chlorophyll content, and expression of stress genes under both copper supply states were assessed. Osmotic swelling, membrane damage, and chloroplast and organelle disintegration were observed by transmission electron microscopy at both conditions. Despite these similarities, copper-deplete cells showed greater accumulation of loosely bound and tightly bound copper after exposure to Cu-NPs. Furthermore, copper-replete cells experienced greater loss of chlorophyll content, 19% for Cu-NPs, compared with only an 11% net decrease in copper-deplete cells. The tightly bound copper was bioavailable as assessed by reverse-transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis of CYC6, a biomarker for Cu deficiency. The increased resistance of copper-deplete cells to Cu-NPs suggests that these cells potentially metabolize excess Cu-NPs or better manage sudden influxes of ions. The results suggest that toxicity assessments must account for the nutritional status of impacted organisms and use toxicity models based on estimations of the bioavailable fractions.

МЫ (НЕ) ПОБЕДИМ! БЕСПОМОЩНОСТЬ ГЕРМАНСКОЙ И ЕВРОПЕЙСКОЙ ЭМИГРАЦИОННОЙ ПОЛИТИКИ

When the mass flight of refugees to Germany via the Balkans began, Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed on August 31, 2015: “We will succeed!” This statement was understood worldwide as an invitation to hundreds thousands of refugees from Syria and other countries to come to Germany. As a result of such welcome policy, almost everywhere in Europe, radical mass scale rejection of any acceptance of refugees among right-wing nationalist groups and within the EU in general rapidly gained support and expressed itself in acts of violence against refugee homes and refugees themselves. This, along with growing difficulties in their accommodation, feeding and providing with clothes, also motivated the established parties to seek ways to limit the sudden mass influx of people. These included tackling the reasons for refugees fleeing their country as well as support for the war against the Islamic State, the stabilization of Afghanistan, larger-scale financial backing for refugee camps in Southern Turkey, Northern Jordan and Lebanon, the establishment of reception camps in Greece and Italy for the purpose of registering and distributing refugees in accordance with an allocation quota for the EU which was to be jointly agreed. However, far more fundamental questions regarding the future European refugee policy and the EU ethno-religious structure should be considered. Several recommendations are presented here for discussion.

ПРАВОВИЙ ЗАХИСТ ГРОМАДЯН ТРЕТІХ КРАЇН У ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОМУ СОЮЗІ

The article is devoted to the legal analysis of the EU common policy in order to provide protection to third country nationals. To control the issues caused by a significant increase of the number of asylum seekers and refugees into the territory of the EU Member States the European Union is developing a common policy on asylum and protection of third-country nationals crossing the external borders of the EU Member States. The EU common policy in this area is the European Union coordination policy to establish common rules for asylum for third-country nationals; establish common rules to provide the additional security for third-country nationals who without obtaining the European asylum in whole, however, need the international protection; to create a common system of temporary protection for displaced persons in regard of their substantial influx; to determine common procedures for granting and withdrawing of a single asylum status or additional protection. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the asylum procedure of third-country nationals. As well as issues related to the protection of external borders, visa and immigration policies TFEU predicts a joint adoption by the European Parliament and the Council decision under the ordinary legislative procedure, id est voting for proposal of the EU Commission. Simultaneously, under the TFEU, if within one or more EU Member States there is an emergency situation characterized by a sudden influx of third-country nationals, the EU Council for the EU Commission proposal and acting after the consultations with the European Parliament may adopt temporary measures in favor of the interesting Member States. Nowadays the European Union is in dynamic and permanent development process of a common policy to provide protection to third-country nationals. This policy is implemented through the use of the EU method of coordination in matters relating to the establishment of the common status of asylum for third-country nationals; determining the status of a common additional protection for third-country nationals; the introduction of a common system of temporary protection for displaced persons; establishing of common procedures for granting and withdrawing of a common asylum status or additional protection.

Frac Sand Mining and the Disruption of Place, Landscape, and Community in Wisconsin

Driven by hydraulic fracturing, sand mining has expanded rapidly in western Wisconsin, with hundreds of mining operations appearing over the past several years. Silica sand is extracted from hills and then shipped by rail around the country, where it is pumped under high pressure with water and chemicals into oil and gas wells. An often overlooked dimension of America's unconventional energy boom, the growth of sand mining in Wisconsin has been incredibly divisive, generating wealth for some lucky landowners while creating new environmental hazards for others. This article documents how people experience mining-related changes and conflicts, drawing on ethnographic interviews with residents living next to mines, processing plants, and hauling routes. While not everyone experiences mining equally, I argue that people grappling with a sudden influx of mining activity suffer significant disruptions that erode their sense of place and belonging. These experiences, however, are rarely taken into account by policymakers, local officials, or others seeking to evaluate the costs and benefits of frac sand mining. This omission underscores the need for ethnographic research to deepen our understanding of how people are impacted by new resource extraction industries.

Toxoplasma gondiicoinfection with diseases and parasites in wild rabbits in Scotland

In wild rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) on an estate in Perthshire, central Scotland, the seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii was 18/548 (3·3%). The wild rabbit could be a T. gondii reservoir and it has potential value as a sentinel of T. gondii in environmental substrates. Toxoplasma gondii was associated with female sex (P < 0·001) and with relatively heavy infections by Eimeria stiedae (P = 0·036). It was not associated with the intensity of coccidial oocysts, the severity of myxomatosis caused by the virus Myxomatosis cuniculi, the intensity of roundworm eggs, the year or season, rabbit age or distance from farm buildings. Coinfections could have been affected by gestational down regulation of type 1 T helper cells. A sudden influx or release of T. gondii oocysts might have occurred. This is the first report of T. gondii in any wild herbivore in Scotland and also the first report of lapine T. gondii as a coinfection with E. stiedae, M. cuniculi and helminths.

Ambient Drone and Apocalypse

Celer and The End of Happiness A good time to listen to Celer's music is early in the morning, around three o'clock. Any later, and road noise would drown it out. In the album Salvaged Violets, high--and low-pitched tones seep in, barely perceptible even on headphones. They are produced on synthesizers, processors of various sorts, and acoustic instruments, but their timbre is uniformly fragile. There are no abrupt attacks, and decays are always attenuated. These tones are too isolated to congeal into harmony; they merely align with each other momentarily, before washing out with the tide. The disc player spins, and the laser reads the data. Naturally, this playback is identical to every other. It will be the same tomorrow, and however many tomorrows remain. I could well play this recording every morning, indefinitely, or at least until the electrical grid collapses. It would matter just as much to me if I heard it constantly, from now until the end. Salvaged Violets might sound like other recent examples of pretty, quiet music. But this impression gives way with repeated listening, especially around the nine-minute mark. The sudden influx of rapidly oscillating drones, colliding as they compete for the same space, proves that this is not just a touristic celebration of beautiful sounds. This is the moment when one's toes clench the precipice shortly before jumping, or the moment immediately preceding the apocalypse. Celer's music, as with so much ambient drone, speaks of the end of time, the end of the world, and all the unresolvable dilemmas that accompany such ends. Croesus was a Lydian king who believed himself blessed. He sought confirmation from Solon of Athens, the lawmaker revered for his wisdom. Croesus asks Solon, Who is the happiest of all men?, whereupon Solon answers with stories of humble men who live to old age in obscurity, or else who die young in their sleep after winning favor from some god. But Croesus wanted Solon to name him the happiest. Solon responds, [Mark] this: until he is dead, keep the word 'happy' in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky. (1) This passage from Herodotus is famous, but what follows is more important. Solon admonishes Croesus to look to the end, rather than the present. Croesus dismisses Solon, and only later learns the meaning in Solon's words. He loses a son in a hunting accident. He concludes two years of mourning with the decision to attack the Persians, and his oracle responds that he will destroy a great empire. (2) Croesus is foolish enough to hear a presentiment of the fall of Persia, but the empire to fall is his own. It would then appear that Croesus is about to reach his own end as the prisoner of the Persian tyrant Cyrus. He is about to be burned alive on a pyre. As the flames char Croesus' hair, Cyrus is moved to spare Croesus, but his men cannot stop the fire's spread. Croesus prays to Apollo for mercy, clouds rush in on what was a perfectly clear sky, and rains put out the fire that was to mark Croesus's final, unhappy ending. Croesus spends the rest of his days as a guest and prisoner in the Persian court, trotted out anytime his captors seek counsel on the behavior of an enemy or the proper course of war. It may well be that Croesus narrowly missed a horrible ending to what had been a blessed life, but strangest of all is his subsequent resurrection, the turnabout that made a king into a slave, a ruler into an advisor. I feel great joy, and great excitement. Something wonderful is coming--liberation from our bodies--but it is also something terrible. Billions of people will suffer. There is no way for me to justify how I could feel happy, by what right I can smile given what I know. And it's unclear whether what I feel is even happiness at all. How can it be, if it cannot last? One could rewrite the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics with apocalypse in mind: Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. …

The dynamics of union responses to migrant workers in Canada

This study examines how five unions in the Canadian province of Alberta responded to a sudden influx of temporary foreign workers (TFWs), as part of Canadian employers’ increased use of migrant workers in the mid-2000s. The authors find three types of response to the new TFW members: resistive, facilitative and active. Furthermore, these responses were dynamic and changing over time. The different responses are best explained not by the unions’ institutional context, but by internal factors shaping each union’s response. Drawing upon the concept of referential unionisms, the study explores how unions’ self-identity shapes their responses to new challenges such as the influx of migrant workers.

Waves of Conversion? the Tsunami, ‘Unethical Conversions,’ and Political Buddhism in Sri Lanka

Kleinfeld (2007) argues that humanitarian space should not be thought of as distinct from the political space, and that the repertoire of humanitarian actions always takes place within this pre-existing political space. This article explores this proposition within the context of the public debates on ‘unethical conversions’ in Sri Lanka following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. While, for my Buddhist informants, the tsunami was seen as enabling a sudden influx of numerous foreign NGOs to Sri Lanka, some of whom were suspected of proselytizing intentions, my Christian informants related to the post-tsunami period as involving a “suspension of hostilities”, which opened new opportunities to prove their worth to Sri Lankan society through their tsunami rehabilitation work. Indeed, some Christian relief organizations were able to temporarily negotiate a humanitarian space for themselves in local particularities. Nevertheless, allegations of ‘unethical conversions’ and the general mistrust of NGOs, which came to dominate Sri Lankan political discourse, were vital issues in the creation of a ‘nationalist’ political discourse which has had extensive and long-term effects.

Meiji Japanese Shakespeare as a Source of Wisdom

Japan absorbed Shakespeare into its culture when there was a sudden influx of western culture into the country after Japan emerged from its period of isolation. Even after the closure of the country came to the end, the legacy of feudal Edo (1603-1868), Japan remained in its culture. Westernisation was equal to modernisation to Japanese at that time, and Shakespeare's works were thought to be books to teach people. The Victorian Shakespeare (modified according to the taste of its readers and audience in addition to the morality of the time) imported to Japan was suitable for the social trend, and the bard himself was treated as a source of wisdom. This paper explores the context of adapting Shakespeare into Japanese culture at the early stage since 1880s, and examines how Shakespeare and his works were treated. The very early Japanese translations were heavily influenced by the way Shakespeare's works were received in Victorian England, the cultural legacy of the Edo period, and the prevalent trend in Japan of admiring the West and combining Japanese and Western cultural elements. In other words, the ‘proper' Shakespeare by Victorian norms was presented to Japan, where he was idolized as an embodiment of Western wisdom. Definitions of the Bard in Japanese stories of heroes, books on drama history, and dictionaries of biography are analysed in this paper. Through the exploration, the paper concludes that Shakespeare was regarded as a source of wisdom in the early Shakespeare reception in Japan.

Flood-Induced Displacement and Civil Conflict

Summary Large, catastrophic floods intensify environmental scarcity and can lead to mass displacement from affected areas. The sudden and mass influx of migrants could increase the risk of social tensions in receiving areas. In this paper, we analyze the impact of the displacement induced by large floods on civil conflict using historical data for 126 countries during 1985–2009. Our results suggest that while the displacement caused by large floods did not ignite new conflicts, it fueled existing conflicts. This effect was larger in developing countries and it receded with time, vanishing five years following the flood.