Timing and depositional environments of a Middle Pleistocene glaciation of northeast England: New evidence from Warren House Gill, County Durham

At various times during the Quaternary, north-eastern England was a zone of confluence between dynamic ice lobes sourced from the Pennines, northern Scotland, the Cheviots, and Scandinavia. The region thus has some of the most complex exposures of Middle to Late Pleistocene sediments in Britain, with both interglacial and glacial sediments deposited in terrestrial and marine settings. We investigated sedimentary sequences exposed on the coastline of County Durham at Warren House Gill, and present a new model of British and Fennoscandian Ice Sheet interaction in the North Sea Basin during the Middle Pleistocene. The stratigraphy at Warren House Gill consists of a lower diamicton and upper estuarine sediments, both part of the Warren House Formation. They are separated from the overlying Weichselian Blackhall and Horden tills by a substantial unconformity. The lower diamicton of the Warren House Formation is re-interpreted here as an MIS 8 to 12 glaciomarine deposit containing ice-rafted lithics from north-eastern Scotland and the northeast North Sea, and is renamed the ‘Ash Gill Member’. It is dated by lithological comparison to the Easington Raised Beach, Middle Pleistocene Amino Acid Racemisation values, and indirectly by optically stimulated luminescence. The overlying shallow subaqueous sediments were deposited in an estuarine environment by suspension settling and bottom current activity. They are named the ‘Whitesides Member’, and form the uppermost member of the Warren House Formation. During glaciation, ice-rafted material was deposited in a marine embayment. There is no evidence of a grounded, onshore Scandinavian ice sheet in County Durham during MIS 6, which has long been held as the accepted stratigraphy. This has major implications for the currently accepted British Quaternary Stratigraphy. Combined with recent work on the Middle Pleistocene North Sea Drift from Norfolk, which is now suggested to have been deposited by a Scottish ice sheet, the presence of a Scandinavian ice sheet in eastern England at any time during the Quaternary is becoming increasingly doubtful.

Exploring the role of Associate Dean in UK universities

This paper reports on a research project, funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, which explored the under-researched role of the Associate Dean in UK Universities. Specifically, the project aimed to explore how the role was defined, perceived and experienced across a range of post and pre 1992 Universities. Data was collected through 15 interviews and a follow up on-line survey completed by 172 Associate Deans across the UK.

Long term changes in EUV and X-ray emissions from the solar corona and chromosphere as measured by the response of the Earth’s ionosphere during total solar eclipses from 1932 to 1999

Measurements of the ionospheric E region during total solar eclipses in the period 1932-1999 have been used to investigate the fraction of Extreme Ultra Violet and soft X-ray radiation, phi, that is emitted from the limb corona and chromosphere. The relative apparent sizes of the Moon and the Sun are different for each eclipse, and techniques are presented which correct the measurements and, therefore, allow direct comparisons between different eclipses. The results show that the fraction of ionising radiation emitted by the limb corona has a clear solar cycle variation and that the underlying trend shows this fraction has been increasing since 1932. Data from the SOHO spacecraft are used to study the effects of short-term variability and it is shown that the observed long-term rise in phi has a negligible probability of being a chance occurrence.

Living the Revolution: urban communes & soviet socialism, 1917-1932

This book follows a revolutionary trend popular among young activists and would-be radicals after 1917, the formation of collective units of cohabitation and association known as 'urban communes'. In these spaces, activists tried to live what they understood as the 'socialist lifestyle', self-consciously putting Marxist and Bolshevik theories into practice. By telling the story of the urban communes, this book reveals how grand revolutionary ideals, such as collectivism, equality, proletarian ethics, and modern practice, were experienced, understood, and appropriated on a human level. This enables us to better understand the messy realities of the early Soviet state, showing how ideological beliefs and revolutionary contingencies actually came into being during this time.

Apple pollination: demand depends on variety and supply depends on pollinator identity

Insect pollination underpins apple production but the extent to which different pollinator guilds supply this service, particularly across different apple varieties, is unknown. Such information is essential if appropriate orchard management practices are to be targeted and proportional to the potential benefits pollinator species may provide. Here we use a novel combination of pollinator effectiveness assays (floral visit effectiveness), orchard field surveys (flower visitation rate) and pollinator dependence manipulations (pollinator exclusion experiments) to quantify the supply of pollination services provided by four different pollinator guilds to the production of four commercial varieties of apple. We show that not all pollinators are equally effective at pollinating apples, with hoverflies being less effective than solitary bees and bumblebees, and the relative abundance of different pollinator guilds visiting apple flowers of different varieties varies significantly. Based on this, the taxa specific economic benefits to UK apple production have been established. The contribution of insect pollinators to the economic output in all varieties was estimated to be £92.1M across the UK, with contributions varying widely across taxa: solitary bees (£51.4M), honeybees (£21.4M), bumblebees (£18.6M) and hoverflies (£0.7M). This research highlights the differences in the economic benefits of four insect pollinator guilds to four major apple varieties in the UK. This information is essential to underpin appropriate investment in pollination services management and provides a model that can be used in other entomolophilous crops to improve our understanding of crop pollination ecology.

Joseph E. Atkins, Dean of Students

Joseph E. Atkins, Dean of Students reading The Seven Sins of Memory by Daniel L. Schacter ( BF376 .S33 2001 )

Press Release on Dean Halpernnulls Appointment Part Two

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Press Release on Dean Halpernnulls Appointment

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Mighty Impressive: After 38 years as dean, vice president, dancer, and friend, Janice Kassman retires. But her legacy lives on

After 38 years, longtime dean Janice Kassman has retired. She leaves a legacy of accomplishment and countless Colby friends.

Class Act: Dean of Admissions Parker Beverage retires after helping to enroll more than 11,000 Colby students

Over a quarter century of hard work, retiring Dean of Admissions Parker Beverage had a hand in Colby’s steady rise.

April 1999: Dean Retires; Web Resources; Excellence Report

Inside this Issue: Dean’s FarewellMilestonesInfo-MagicActive PeopleFriends’ ProgramsExcellence

E da fronteira veio um pioneiro : a frontier thesis de Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932)

O historiador Frederick Jackson Turner (1862-1931) é considerado o grande pai da historiografia moderna nos Estados Unidos. Sua frontier thesis postulava a centralidade da expansão das fronteiras ocidentais no processo de formação da nacionalidade estadunidense e na consolidação da democracia política naquela nação, abandonando uma história política factual e introduzindo uma interpretação calcada em fatores econômicos e sociais, com claras implicações presentistas. Graças a esta análise revolucionária, Turner tornou-se uma espécie de patrono da profissionalização da disciplina nos Estados Unidos, formando toda uma geração de historiadores a partir de seus seminários na Universidade Estadual do Wisconsin e em Harvard. Não só isso, mas a sua teoria encontrou apelo entre elementos da classe política e empresarial, incluindo dois Presidentes da República, Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) e Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). A explicação para tal sucesso pode ser encontrada na relação entre a frontier thesis e o Mito da Fronteira, através de uma narrativa que fazia uso dos ícones e imagens do Mito enquadrados em uma retórica extremamente persuasiva. Nas páginas dos escritos de Turner, os norte-americanos marcham triunfalmente em direção a conquista de todo o continente, justificada pelo seu amor à democracia e por sua devoção ao progresso material e mental dos homens. Com isso, o historiador conseguiu unir uma valorização do agrarianismo primitivo com um elogio à evolução histórica dos Estados Unidos.

Um Vice-reinado na República do pós-30: Juarez Távora, as interventorias do Norte e a Guerra de 1932

Esta tese investiga a trajetória da região geopolítica conhecida como Norte, durante o Governo Provisório varguista (1930-1934). Ela começou a ser gestada no imediato pós- 30 e, nos anos seguintes, tornou-se uma das forças políticas mais ativas de todo o período. O Norte era formado pelo então território federal do Acre e os estado do Amazonas, Pará, Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia e Espírito Santo. Nesta conjuntura, as principais posições políticas e militares nesses estados passaram a ser ocupadas pelos que adotaram a autodesignação de revolucionários nortistas. A invenção e consolidação dessa identidade política tinha como elemento agregador o reconhecimento de Juarez Távora como grande líder e representante dos interesses da região junto ao Governo Provisório. Chamado ironicamente, por seus opositores, de “Vice-rei do Norte”, Távora liderou esse grupo durante todo o período, construindo uma importante aliança entre essa região geopolítica e o Governo Provisório. Desse modo, o Norte, seus revolucionários e seu líder foram os principais apoiadores de Vargas na defesa do projeto de centralização política, em oposição a outras correntes, sobretudo as que pregavam o retorno ao regime constitucional. Dessa forma, o Norte participou decisivamente do processo de radicalização que desembocou na guerra civil de 1932, enviando milhares de soldados para os campos de batalha e combatendo, dentro da região, os possíveis aliados do movimento rebelde liderado por São Paulo. Com o fim da guerra e confirmado o retorno do país ao regime constitucional, apesar da tentativa de permanecer como um grande bloco político, a região se fragmenta e os antigos laços que definiam a identidade dos revolucionários nortistas se dissolvem, assim como a liderança indiscutível de seu líder e herói, Juarez Távora.