Active processes, morphology, and dynamics of icy debris fans: Landform evolution along rapidly degrading escarpments in alpine regions undergoing recent deglaciation

In the past few decades the impacts of climate warming have been significant in alpine glaciated regions. Many valley glaciers formerly linked as distributary glaciers to high-level icecaps have decoupled at their icefalls, exposing major escarpments and generating a suite of dynamic landforrns dominated by mass wasting. Ice-dominated landforms, here termed icy debris fans, develop rapidly by ice avalanching, rockfall, and icy debris flow. Field-based reconnaissance studies at two alpine settings, the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska and the Southern Alps of New Zealand, provide a preliminary morphogenetic model of spatial and temporal evolution of icy debris fans in a range of alpine settings. The influence of these processes on landform evolution is largely unrecognized in the literature dealing with post-glacial landform adjustment known as the paraglacial. A better understanding of these dynamic processes will be increasingly important because of the extreme geohazards characterizing these areas. Our field studies show that after glacier decoupling, icy debris fans begin to form along the base of bedrock escarpments at the mouths of catchments and prograde over valley glaciers. The presence of a distinct catchment, apex, and fan morphology distinguishes these landforms from other landforms common in periglacial hillslope settings receiving abundant clastic debris and ice. Ice avalanching is the most abundant process involved in icy debris fan formation. Fans developed below weakly incised catchments are dominated by ice avalanching and are composed primarily of ice with minor lithic detritus. Typically, avalanches fall into the fan catchments where sediments transform into grainflows that flow onto the fans. Once on the fans, avalanche deposits ablate rapidly, flattening and concentrating lithic fragments at the surface. Icy debris fans may become thick enough to become glaciers with splay crevasse systems. Fans developed below larger, more complex catchments are composed of higher proportions of lithic detritus resulting from temporary storage of ice and lithic detritus deposits within the catchment. Episodic outbursts of meltwater from the icecap may mix with the stored sediments and mobilize icy debris flows (mixture of ice and lithic clasts) onto the fans. Our observations indicate that the entire evolutionary cycle of icy debris fans probably occurs during an early paraglacial interval (i.e., decades to 100 years). Observations comparing avalanche frequency, volume, and fan morphologic evolution at the Alaska site between 2006 and 2010 illustrate complex response between icy debris fans even within the same cirque - where one fan may be growing while others are downwasting because of differences in ice supply controlled by their respective catchments and icecap contributions. As ice supply from the icecap diminishes through time, icy debris fans rapidly downwaste and eventually evolve into talus cones that receive occasional but ephemeral ice avalanches.

Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus apella) Fail to Be Equitable in an Ultimatum Game

The ultimatum game is a commonly used economics game testing humans' sense of fairness. In the game, a "proposer" is given a sum of money and is told they can split it however they want with another human partner. The partner can then either accept the division and both proposer and responder receive the proposed amounts, or the responder can reject the offer and neither player will get anything. Human subjects from most western cultures typically share almost half of an allotted amount, but it remains unknown whether our close primate relatives share this generosity. Recent attempts to present chimpanzees with the ultimatum game have provided inconclusive results, with some studies finding the animals share humans' disposition to behave 'fairly' and others concluding that chimpanzees act selfishly to maximize their own rewards. Capuchin monkeys are known to share many human and chimpanzee social and cooperative behaviors, and this study was the first to present capuchin monkeys with a version of the ultimatum game. Subjects were presented with two differently colored tokens representing different qualitative reward contingencies, one equitable and the other inequitable in favor of the subject proposer. Subjects could select and place one of the tokens in a transfer container. The capuchins were first tested with a "dictator game" where, after the subject monkey selected a token, the rewards (equitable or inequitable) were distributed to the subject and a nearby partner monkey that was not an active participant. The capuchins were then tested on an ultimatum game in which after the subject selected and placed a token in the container, the container was moved to the partner. The partner needed to remove the token and transfer it back to the experimenter for the rewards to be distributed. As such, the partner could reject the subject's offer by refusing to participate and neither would receive a reward. The experiment was conducted to determine if the subject monkey would select the equitable reward option rather than the selfish option in order to maintain the partner's cooperation in the task. Capuchin subjects behaved selfishly and selected the inequitable token significantly more often than the equitable token in both the dictator and ultimatum game with no significant difference in preference between the two games. Interestingly, despite the occasional occurrence of rejection by the partner monkeys (resulting in no reward for the subject), subjects never altered their strategy, continuing to prefer the selfish token. The study may indicate that capuchin monkeys have an inability to judge the effect of their behavior on a conspecific's reward outcome, or an indifference to the outcome if there is an individual cost associated with behaving prosocially.

Defining "Drunk" in Early Modern Germany

Explores the role of the drinking of alcoholic beverages in early modern Germany. Definition of drunkenness; Notions on harm caused by alcohol consumption on different types of persons; Recommendation of occasional immoderate drinking to rid the body of impurities.