The executive committee of the Greek Professional Association of Social Work in an age of austerity: examining its response

This paper explores the response by the Greek Association of Social Workers (SKLE) to Greece's current economic crisis. Socioeconomic conditions in Greece have deteriorated rapidly since the imposition of a Structural Adjustment Programme as a condition of the loan Troika provided to Greece to address its class-based public debt crisis. Interviews were conducted with SKLE Executive Committee members to examine SKLE's response in the context of newly raised inequalities. Research results show that SKLE recognised the negative consequences to both service users and its members. However, SKLE continues to reformulate its strategy mostly as a social partner. SKLE's previous strategy entailed amongst other things the analysis of policy proposals and participation in welfare related government committees. This strategy is no longer relevant because decision-making powers have been transferred to transnational bodies. This paper elaborates on these findings and discusses the barriers that prohibit SKLE from differentiation of its strategy. Although the research is country specific, it has implications for the broader global debate because professional associations must reformulate their strategies for better serving of both their constituents and the collective good based on the social justice mandate of the profession.

The latest LGM culmination of the Garda Glacier (Italian Alps) and the onset of glacial termination. Age of glacial collapse and vegetation chronosequence

In the deglacial sequence of the largest end moraine system of the Italian Alps, we focused on the latest culmination of the Last Glacial Maximum, before a sudden downwasting of the piedmontane lobe occupying the modern lake basin. We obtained a robust chronology for this culmination and for the subsequent deglacial history by cross-radiocarbon dating of a proximal fluvioglacial plain and of a deglacial continuous lake sedimentation. We used reworked dinocysts to locate sources of glacial abrasion and to mark the input of glacial meltwater until depletion. The palynological record from postglacial lake sediments provided the first vegetation chronosequence directly reacting to the early Lateglacial withdrawal so far documented in the Alps.

Glacier collapse occurred soon after 17.46 +/- 0.2 ka cal BP, which is, the Manerba advance culmination. Basin deglaciation of several overdeepened foreland piedmont lakes on southern and northern sides of the Alps appears to be synchronous at millennial scale and near-synchronous with large-scale glacial retreat at global scale. The pioneering succession shows a first afforestation step at a median modeled age of 64 years after deglaciation, while rapid tree growth lagged 7 centuries. Between 16.4 +/- 0.16 and 15.5 +/- 0.16 ka cal BP, a regressive phase interrupted forest growth marking a Lateglacial phase of continental-dry climate predating GI-1. This event, spanning the most advanced phases of North-Atlantic H1, is consistently radiocarbon-framed at three deglacial lake records so far investigated on the Italian side of the Alps. Relationships with the Gschnitz stadial from the Alpine record of Lateglacial advances are discussed

Higher effort-reward imbalance and lower job control predict exit from the labour market at the age of 61 years or younger: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Background: We examined whether higher effort-reward imbalance (ERI) and lower job control are associated with exit from the labour market. 

Methods: There were 1263 participants aged 50-74 years from the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing with data on working status and work-related psychosocial factors at baseline (wave 2; 2004-2005), and working status at follow-up (wave 5; 2010-2011). Psychosocial factors at work were assessed using a short validated version of ERI and job control. An allostatic load index was formed using 13 biological parameters. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Exit from the labour market was defined as not working in the labour market when 61 years old or younger in 2010-2011. 

Results: Higher ERI OR=1.62 (95% CI 1.01 to 2.61, p=0.048) predicted exit from the labour market independent of age, sex, education, occupational class, allostatic load and depression. Job control OR=0.60 (95% CI 0.42 to 0.85, p=0.004) was associated with exit from the labour market independent of age, sex, education, occupation and depression. The association of higher effort OR=1.32 (95% CI 1.01 to 1.73, p=0.045) with exit from the labour market was independent of age, sex and depression but attenuated to non-significance when additionally controlling for socioeconomic measures. Reward was not related to exit from the labour market. 

Conclusions: Stressful work conditions can be a risk for exiting the labour market before the age of 61 years. Neither socioeconomic position nor allostatic load and depressive symptoms seem to explain this association.

A revised age of AD 667-699 for the latest major eruption at Rabaul

The most recent major eruption at Rabaul was one of the largest known events at this complex system, having a VEI rating of 6. The eruption generated widespread airfall pumice lapilli and ash deposits and ignimbrites of different types. The total volume of pyroclastic material produced in the eruption exceeded 11 km3 and led to a new phase of collapse within Rabaul Caldera. Initial 14C dating of the eruptive products yielded an age of about 1400 yrs BP, and the eruption became known as the "1400 BP" eruption. Previous analyses of the timing of the eruption have linked it to events in AD 536 and AD 639. However, we have re-evaluated the age of the eruption using the Bayesian wiggle-match radiocarbon dating method, and the eruption is now thought to
have occurred in the interval AD 667-699. The only significant equatorial eruptions recorded in both Greenland and Antarctic ice during this interval are at AD 681 and AD 684, dates that coincide with frost rings in bristlecone pines of western USA in the same years. Definitively linking the Rabaul eruption to this narrow age range will require identification of Rabaul tephra in the ice records. However, it is proposed that a new working hypothesis for the timing of the most recent major eruption at Rabaul is that it occurred in the interval AD 681-684.

The Middle Stone Age of Eastern Africa

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) covers the evolution, emergence, and dispersal of Homo sapiens. This article focuses on archaeological data and on published material from key stratified sites with some form of geochronological control from across eastern Africa. The MSA is often characterised by a shift from handaxe production towards discoidal and Levallois techniques. Although evidence for the controlled use of fire remains minimal, it seems likely that MSA hominins used it, as well as being highly skilled in working stone and probably bone and wood. MSA hominins appear to have exploited a range of different ecozones and many MSA sites are focused on ecotones, maximising access to resources. Over time, use of rockshelters and caves also seems to have increased. Although much work remains, the MSA is presently one of the most exciting and dynamic periods in the study of human evolution.

C Dupré, The Age of Dignity (Hart 2015)

Bob Dylan famously searched high and low for it and left us wondering ‘what it’s gonna take’ to find it. These days, the elusive dignity – and her equally, if not more, elusive cousin human dignity – has captured the imagination of not just the poet and philosopher, but also, in light of its increasing prominence in an array of legal contexts, the legal scholar. Catherine Dupré’s The Age of Dignity comes at a high point in (human) dignity scholarship, with the publication of numerous texts in the English language emerging on the subject, and with interest in it looking unlikely to dissipate any time soon. In this review, I consider (human) dignity’s promise and pitfalls as it transpires in Dupré’s wide-ranging and ambitious monograph.

Gathering Antipathy:Irish Immigrants and Race in America's Age of Emancipation

Contribution to an edited collection on the Irish Diaspora focusing on the antagonism between Famine-era Irish immigrants to the US and their estrangement from the main currents of social reform (including antislavery). An intervention in an ongoing debate over immigrant Irish and their ostensible embrace of a proslavery outlook in the late antebellum United States.

Sedimentology, structure and age estimate of five continental slope submarine landslides, eastern Australia

Sedimentological and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C data provide estimates of the structure and age of five submarine landslides (∼0.4–3 km3) present on eastern Australia's continental slope between Noosa Heads and Yamba. Dating of the post-slide conformably deposited sediment indicates sediment accumulation rates between 0.017 m ka–1 and 0.2 m ka–1, which is consistent with previous estimates reported for this area. Boundary surfaces were identified in five continental slope cores at depths of 0.8 to 2.2 m below the present-day seafloor. Boundary surfaces present as a sharp colour-change across the surface, discernible but small increases in sediment stiffness, a slight increase in sediment bulk density of 0.1 g cm–3, and distinct gaps in AMS 14C ages of at least 25 ka. Boundary surfaces are interpreted to represent a slide plane detachment surface but are not necessarily the only ones or even the major ones. Sub-bottom profiler records indicate that: (1) the youngest identifiable sediment reflectors upslope from three submarine landslides terminate on and are truncated by slide rupture surfaces; (2) there is no obvious evidence for a post-slide sediment layer draped over, or burying, slide ruptures or exposed slide detachment surfaces; and (3) the boundary surfaces identified within the cores are unlikely to be near-surface slide surfaces within an overall larger en masse dislocation. These findings suggest that these submarine landslides are geologically recent (<25 ka), and that the boundary surfaces are either: (a) an erosional features that developed after the landslide, in which case the boundary surface age provides a minimum age for the landslide; or (b) detachment surfaces from which slabs of near-surface sediment were removed during landsliding, in which case the age of the sediment above the boundary surface indicates the approximate age of landsliding. While an earthquake-triggering mechanism is favoured for the initiation of submarine landslides on the eastern Australian margin, further evidence is required to confirm this interpretation.