The Beacon, November 17, 2008

Vol. 21, Issue 41, 8 pages

9-11 Memorial: Commemoration and Reflection

Ceremony held at the fountain outside the Maidique Campus to commemorate the events of September 11, 2011. Community leaders in attendance include Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

Regional aspects of Miami crime fiction

This thesis argues that forces of literary regionalism and postmodern culture are behind the explosion of crime fiction being written in and about South Florida by a growing number of resident authors. Research included four methods of investigation: 1. A critical reading of many of the novels that make up the sub-genre. 2. A study of the theories of regionalism, postmodernism and the genre of the crime fiction. 3. Interviews with a number of the authors and a prominent Miami book seller. 4. Sociological studies of Miami in terms of historical events and their cultural significance. Today's South Florida crime fiction authors cast their narratives in the old genre of the detective novel where characters are delineated according to traditional definitions of good and evil. Evil characters threaten established order. What makes South Florida crime fiction different from traditional detective fiction is its interest in the exotic, postmodern culture and setting of South Florida. Like the region, the villains are exotic and the order that they threaten is postmodern. There is less of an interest in attributing a larger social meaning to the heroes. Rather, there is an ontological interest in the playing out of good against evil in an almost mythical setting that magnifies economic, environmental and racial issues. There is a unique cultural diversity of the city due to the geographical location of Miami in relationship to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the political forces at work in the region. South Florida's subtropical climate, fragile ecosystem, and elements of frontier life in a cosmopolitan city work to support Miami crime fiction. The setting personifies the unpredictability and pastiche of a postmodern world and may call for a new definition for literature that relies on non-traditional regional characteristics.

Bottlenose dolphins

http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/fce_lter_photos/1263/thumbnail.jpg

Global compilation of benthic data sets I

Approaches to quantify the organic carbon accumulation on a global scale generally do not consider the small-scale variability of sedimentary and oceanographic boundary conditions along continental margins. In this study, we present a new approach to regionalize the total organic carbon (TOC) content in surface sediments (<5 cm sediment depth). It is based on a compilation of more than 5500 single measurements from various sources. Global TOC distribution was determined by the application of a combined qualitative and quantitative-geostatistical method. Overall, 33 benthic TOC-based provinces were defined and used to process the global distribution pattern of the TOC content in surface sediments in a 1°x1° grid resolution. Regional dependencies of data points within each single province are expressed by modeled semi-variograms. Measured and estimated TOC values show good correlation, emphasizing the reasonable applicability of the method. The accumulation of organic carbon in marine surface sediments is a key parameter in the control of mineralization processes and the material exchange between the sediment and the ocean water. Our approach will help to improve global budgets of nutrient and carbon cycles.

Seawater carbonate chemistry and biological processes during experiments with four species of marine diatoms

The effect of pCO2 on carbon acquisition and intracellular assimilation was investigated in the three bloom-forming diatom species, Eucampia zodiacus (Ehrenberg), Skeletonema costatum (Greville) Cleve, Thalassionema nitzschioides (Grunow) Mereschkowsky and the non-bloom-forming Thalassiosira pseudonana (Hust.) Hasle and Heimdal. In vivo activities of carbonic anhydrase (CA), photosynthetic O2 evolution, CO2 and HCO3? uptake rates were measured by membrane-inlet mass spectrometry (MIMS) in cells acclimated to pCO2 levels of 370 and 800 ?atm. To investigate whether the cells operate a C4-like pathway, activities of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (RubisCO) and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC) were measured at the mentioned pCO2 levels and a lower pCO2 level of 50 ?atm. In the bloom-forming species, extracellular CA activities strongly increased with decreasing CO2 supply while constantly low activities were obtained for T. pseudonana. Half-saturation concentrations (K1/2) for photosynthetic O2 evolution decreased with decreasing CO2 supply in the two bloom-forming species S. costatum and T. nitzschioides, but not in T. pseudonana and E. zodiacus. With the exception of S. costatum, maximum rates (Vmax) of photosynthesis remained constant in all investigated diatom species. Independent of the pCO2 level, PEPC activities were significantly lower than those for RubisCO, averaging generally less than 3%. All examined diatom species operate highly efficient CCMs under ambient and high pCO2, but differ strongly in the degree of regulation of individual components of the CCM such as Ci uptake kinetics and extracellular CA activities. The present data do not suggest C4 metabolism in the investigated species.

Mineralogy of northern Indian Ocean surface sediments and of suspended sediments of Indian rivers (Table 2 and 5)

The solid phases from surface sediments, atmospheric dusts, and rivers of the Indian Ocean environment have been analyzed for their clay minerals and quartz. Such data have been used to delimit the transport paths and sources of the detrital minerals in the oceanic deposits. Diagnostic in distinguishing fluvial and eolian inputs to the northern Indian Ocean is a combination of the clay mineral assemblages and of their geographic distributions. River borne solids are the primary components of the Bay of Bengal deposits. The eastern part receives its continental input through the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system, while drainage of the Indian Peninsula by rivers introduces solids to the western part. The former materials are characterized by high illite and chlorite in the clay mineral assemblages; the latter by montmorillonite. The winds over the Bay bear distinctive dust burdens based upon their directions. However, their contributions to the sediments are insignificant. The eastern sector of the Arabian Sea receives major contributions of continental debris from the rivers and the high montmorillonite levels clearly indicate a source in the Indian Peninsula. The rest of the Sea appears to receive most of its land-derived materials from the north, perhaps the desert regions of northern India and West Pakistan, and they are wind-borne. These materials are also transported to the equatorial regions of the Indian Ocean. A gradient in attapulgite, just north of the equator, may indicate an eolian contribution to the Arabian Sea from the African continent. The halogenated hydrocarbon pesticides were assayed in the southwest monsoon winds and enter the Bay of Bengal at levels of a half ton per month, an amount comparable to those introduced by other wind and river systems to the marine environment.

La poesía social de Juan L. Ortiz (1936-1946)

En 1943, y de manera concluyente, Alvaro Yunque incluyó a Juan L. Ortiz en el selecto y reducido grupo de "Poetas Comunistas" que coronan los dos tomos de la antología Poetas sociales de la Argentina. Dicha ubicación representa un hito en la trayectoria de la figura y de la obra de Ortiz dentro de la sociabilidad comunista, y supone un contraste no solo con la imagen que se tiene hoy de él (un poeta aislado en su comarca, en las riberas entrerrianas) sino con los signos propios de su escritura evanescente y simbolista. El primer capítulo de esta tesis, «Juan L. Ortiz y el comunismo criollo», incluye una exhaustiva revisión de publicaciones y testimonios tendientes a conformar un cuerpo documental que acredite dicho vínculo. Representa, a su vez, un ajuste no sólo en relación a su imagen de poeta, sino también a la circulación de sus poemas en el período. El capítulo que le sigue, «La poesía social de Juan L. Ortiz», da cuenta de los nuevos horizontes que abre esta perspectiva y coloca su obra -específicamente la escrita entre los años 1936 y 1946- en relación con la tradición de la poesía social en argentina, y, de manera puntual, con la tradición de los escritores e intelectuales vinculados al Partido Comunista Argentino, especialmente con los poetas José Portogalo, José Pedroni, Luis Gudiño Kramer, Emma Barrandeguy, Amaro Villanueva y Raúl González Tuñón, y con la producción crítica de Alvaro Yunque y Héctor Pablo Agosti

La poesía social de Juan L. Ortiz (1936-1946)

En 1943, y de manera concluyente, Alvaro Yunque incluyó a Juan L. Ortiz en el selecto y reducido grupo de "Poetas Comunistas" que coronan los dos tomos de la antología Poetas sociales de la Argentina. Dicha ubicación representa un hito en la trayectoria de la figura y de la obra de Ortiz dentro de la sociabilidad comunista, y supone un contraste no solo con la imagen que se tiene hoy de él (un poeta aislado en su comarca, en las riberas entrerrianas) sino con los signos propios de su escritura evanescente y simbolista. El primer capítulo de esta tesis, «Juan L. Ortiz y el comunismo criollo», incluye una exhaustiva revisión de publicaciones y testimonios tendientes a conformar un cuerpo documental que acredite dicho vínculo. Representa, a su vez, un ajuste no sólo en relación a su imagen de poeta, sino también a la circulación de sus poemas en el período. El capítulo que le sigue, «La poesía social de Juan L. Ortiz», da cuenta de los nuevos horizontes que abre esta perspectiva y coloca su obra -específicamente la escrita entre los años 1936 y 1946- en relación con la tradición de la poesía social en argentina, y, de manera puntual, con la tradición de los escritores e intelectuales vinculados al Partido Comunista Argentino, especialmente con los poetas José Portogalo, José Pedroni, Luis Gudiño Kramer, Emma Barrandeguy, Amaro Villanueva y Raúl González Tuñón, y con la producción crítica de Alvaro Yunque y Héctor Pablo Agosti

La poesía social de Juan L. Ortiz (1936-1946)

En 1943, y de manera concluyente, Alvaro Yunque incluyó a Juan L. Ortiz en el selecto y reducido grupo de "Poetas Comunistas" que coronan los dos tomos de la antología Poetas sociales de la Argentina. Dicha ubicación representa un hito en la trayectoria de la figura y de la obra de Ortiz dentro de la sociabilidad comunista, y supone un contraste no solo con la imagen que se tiene hoy de él (un poeta aislado en su comarca, en las riberas entrerrianas) sino con los signos propios de su escritura evanescente y simbolista. El primer capítulo de esta tesis, «Juan L. Ortiz y el comunismo criollo», incluye una exhaustiva revisión de publicaciones y testimonios tendientes a conformar un cuerpo documental que acredite dicho vínculo. Representa, a su vez, un ajuste no sólo en relación a su imagen de poeta, sino también a la circulación de sus poemas en el período. El capítulo que le sigue, «La poesía social de Juan L. Ortiz», da cuenta de los nuevos horizontes que abre esta perspectiva y coloca su obra -específicamente la escrita entre los años 1936 y 1946- en relación con la tradición de la poesía social en argentina, y, de manera puntual, con la tradición de los escritores e intelectuales vinculados al Partido Comunista Argentino, especialmente con los poetas José Portogalo, José Pedroni, Luis Gudiño Kramer, Emma Barrandeguy, Amaro Villanueva y Raúl González Tuñón, y con la producción crítica de Alvaro Yunque y Héctor Pablo Agosti

Barite Accumulation rates across Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)

Barite accumulation rates (BAR) have been measured from 12 DSDP/ODP site globally (DSDP site 525, 549 and ODP site 690, 738, 1051, 1209, 1215, 1220, 1221, 1263,1265 and 1266A) to reconstruct the export production across Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) around 55.9 million year ago. Our results suggesting a general increase in export productivity. We propose that changes in marine ecosystems, resulting from high atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 and ocean acidification, led to enhanced carbon export from the photic zone to depth, thereby increasing the efficiency of the biological pump. We estimate that an annual carbon export flux out of the euphotic zone and into the deep ocean waters could have amounted to about 15 Gt during the PETM. About 0.4% of this carbon is expected to have entered the refractory dissolved organic pool, where it could be sequestered from the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. Our estimates are consistent with the amount of carbon redistribution expected for the recovery from the PETM.

Organic geochemistry of sediments from sapropel 94 of ODP Hole 161-974C

Analysis of the molecular composition of the organic matter (OM) from whole sediment samples can avoid analytical bias that might result from isolation of components from the sediment matrix, but has its own analytical challenges. We evaluated the use of GC * GC-ToFMS to analyze the pyrolysis products of six whole sediment samples obtained from above, within and below a 1 million year old OM-rich Mediterranean sapropel layer. We found differences in pyrolysis products

(Table 1) Sample locations and clay mineral data of sediment surface samples from the Barents Sea region

A new surface sediment sample set gained in the western Barents Sea by the MAREANO program has been analysed for basic clay mineral assemblages. Distribution maps including additional samples from earlier German research cruises to and off Svalbard are compiled. Some trends in the clay mineral assemblages are related to the sub-Barents Sea geology because the Quaternary sediment cover is rather thin. Additionally, land masses like Svalbard and northern Scandinavia dominate the clay mineral signal with their erosional products. Dense bottom water, very often of brine origin, that flows within deep troughs, such as the Storfjorden or Bear Island Trough, transport the clay mineral signal from their origin to the Norwegian-Greenland Sea.

Enigmas monetarios en el derecho local. Los mencales y maravedís en los fueros castellanos

La historia de la moneda en la Castilla medieval ha estado siempre mediatizada por la convivencia no siempre armónica entre dos sistemas monetarios muy diferentes. Uno basado en la plata, de origen europeo, otro centrado en el oro, de raíces árabes. La necesidad de conectar y de establecer unas equivalencias entre ellos se convirtió pronto en una necesidad, máxime cuando las monedas de oro incrementaron sus variantes. En esta compleja situación aparecen mencales y maravedís citados conjuntamente en muchos fueros: Zorita, Uclés, Cuenca,... sin que su naturaleza quede del todo clara. Este artículo compara estas referencias y analiza las equivalencias que los unen. Como colofón al trabajo podemos afirmar que los maravedís citados en cada texto corresponden a monedas áureas de distinto peso y valor mientras el mencal es identificado con un ponderal de oro que los relaciona.