Seasonal pattern of regional carbon balance in the central Rocky Mountains from surface and airborne measurements

[1] High-elevation forests represent a large fraction of potential carbon uptake in North America, but this uptake is not well constrained by observations. Additionally, forests in the Rocky Mountains have recently been severely damaged by drought, fire, and insect outbreaks, which have been quantified at local scales but not assessed in terms of carbon uptake at regional scales. The Airborne Carbon in the Mountains Experiment was carried out in 2007 partly to assess carbon uptake in western U.S. mountain ecosystems. The magnitude and seasonal change of carbon uptake were quantified by (1) paired upwind-downwind airborne CO2 observations applied in a boundary layer budget, (2) a spatially explicit ecosystem model constrained using remote sensing and flux tower observations, and (3) a downscaled global tracer transport inversion. Top-down approaches had mean carbon uptake equivalent to flux tower observations at a subalpine forest, while the ecosystem model showed less. The techniques disagreed on temporal evolution. Regional carbon uptake was greatest in the early summer immediately following snowmelt and tended to lessen as the region experienced dry summer conditions. This reduction was more pronounced in the airborne budget and inversion than in flux tower or upscaling, possibly related to lower snow water availability in forests sampled by the aircraft, which were lower in elevation than the tower site. Changes in vegetative greenness associated with insect outbreaks were detected using satellite reflectance observations, but impacts on regional carbon cycling were unclear, highlighting the need to better quantify this emerging disturbance effect on montane forest carbon cycling.

Provincialism and the modern diaspora: T.S. Eliot and David Jones

This article considers how T. S. Eliot's promotion of the work of the Anglo-Welsh poet David Jones after the Second World War further involved him in a process of considering the resonances of the local and familiar as operative within the displacements of modernity. This promotion therefore retrospectively prioritized an aspect of Eliot's poetics which had been present, but occluded, all along. Conversely, the article considers how similar resonances in Jones's own work were enhanced by his encounter with Eliot's translation of the Francophone Caribbean poet St-John Perse's Anabase, an encounter which enabled Jones to establish an idiom responsive to the divergent cultural affinities inherent in ‘our situation’.

Dancing in translation: Irina Brook’s mise en scène of 'Danser à Lughnasa', Jean-Marie Besset’s translation of Brian Friel’s 'Dancing at Lughnasa'

This essay contributes to debates about theatre and cross-cultural encounter through an analysis of Irina Brook’s 1999 Swiss / French co-production of Irish playwright Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, in a French translation by Jean-Marie Besset. While the translation and Brook’s mise en scène clearly identified the source text and culture as Irish, they avoided cultural stereotypes, and rendered the play accessible to francophone audiences without entirely assimilating it to a specific Swiss or French cultural context. Drawing on discourses of theatre translation, and concepts of cosmopolitanism and conviviality, the essay focuses on the potential of such textual and theatrical translation to acknowledge specific cultural traces but also to estrange the familiar perceptions and boundaries of both the source and target cultures, offering modes of interconnection across diverse cultural affiliations.

A newly discovered portrait of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David

This article establishes the authenticity of a half length portrait of Napoleon, long thought to be a copy.

Assessing the carcinogenic potential of low-dose exposures to chemical mixtures in the environment: the challenge ahead

Lifestyle factors are responsible for a considerable portion of cancer incidence worldwide, but credible estimates from the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) suggest that the fraction of cancers attributable to toxic environmental exposures is between 7% and 19%. To explore the hypothesis that low-dose exposures to mixtures of chemicals in the environment may be combining to contribute to environmental carcinogenesis, we reviewed 11 hallmark phenotypes of cancer, multiple priority target sites for disruption in each area and prototypical chemical disruptors for all targets, this included dose-response characterizations, evidence of low-dose effects and cross-hallmark effects for all targets and chemicals. In total, 85 examples of chemicals were reviewed for actions on key pathways/mechanisms related to carcinogenesis. Only 15% (13/85) were found to have evidence of a dose-response threshold, whereas 59% (50/85) exerted low-dose effects. No dose-response information was found for the remaining 26% (22/85). Our analysis suggests that the cumulative effects of individual (non-carcinogenic) chemicals acting on different pathways, and a variety of related systems, organs, tissues and cells could plausibly conspire to produce carcinogenic synergies. Additional basic research on carcinogenesis and research focused on low-dose effects of chemical mixtures needs to be rigorously pursued before the merits of this hypothesis can be further advanced. However, the structure of the World Health Organization International Programme on Chemical Safety 'Mode of Action' framework should be revisited as it has inherent weaknesses that are not fully aligned with our current understanding of cancer biology.

Of tropics, prisons and bicycles: a conversation with David Arnold

David Arnold who retired this year as the Professor of Asian and Global History at the University of Warwick remains one of the most prolific historians of colonial medicine and modern South Asia. A founding member of the subaltern studies collective, he is considered widely as a pioneer in the histories of colonial medicine, environment, penology, hunger and famines within South Asian studies and beyond. In this interview he recalls his formative inspirations, ideological motivations and reflects critically on his earlier works, explaining various shifts as well as map- ping the possible course of future work. He talks at length about his forthcoming works on everyday technology, food and monsoon Asia. Finally, he shares with us his desire of initiating work on an ambitious project about the twin themes of poison and poverty in South Asian his- tory, beginning with the Bengal famine in the late eighteenth century and ending with the Bhopal gas tragedy of the early 1980s. This conversation provides insights into the ways in which the field of medical history in modern South Asia has been shaped over the past three decades through interactions with broader discussions on agency, resistance, power, everydayness, subal- tern studies, global and spatial histories. It hints further at the newer directions which are being opened up by such persisting intellectual entanglements.

The COnvective Precipitation Experiment (COPE): investigating the origins of heavy precipitation in the southwestern UK

A recent field campaign in southwest England used numerical modeling integrated with aircraft and radar observations to investigate the dynamic and microphysical interactions that can result in heavy convective precipitation. The COnvective Precipitation Experiment (COPE) was a joint UK-US field campaign held during the summer of 2013 in the southwest peninsula of England, designed to study convective clouds that produce heavy rain leading to flash floods. The clouds form along convergence lines that develop regularly due to the topography. Major flash floods have occurred in the past, most famously at Boscastle in 2004. It has been suggested that much of the rain was produced by warm rain processes, similar to some flash floods that have occurred in the US. The overarching goal of COPE is to improve quantitative convective precipitation forecasting by understanding the interactions of the cloud microphysics and dynamics and thereby to improve NWP model skill for forecasts of flash floods. Two research aircraft, the University of Wyoming King Air and the UK BAe 146, obtained detailed in situ and remote sensing measurements in, around, and below storms on several days. A new fast-scanning X-band dual-polarization Doppler radar made 360-deg volume scans over 10 elevation angles approximately every 5 minutes, and was augmented by two UK Met Office C-band radars and the Chilbolton S-band radar. Detailed aerosol measurements were made on the aircraft and on the ground. This paper: (i) provides an overview of the COPE field campaign and the resulting dataset; (ii) presents examples of heavy convective rainfall in clouds containing ice and also in relatively shallow clouds through the warm rain process alone; and (iii) explains how COPE data will be used to improve high-resolution NWP models for operational use.