The manufacture and utilisation of architectural terracotta and faience.

The revival of terracotta and faience in British architecture was widespread, dramatic in its results and, for two decades, the subject of intense debate. However the materials have been frequently denigrated and more generally disregarded by both architects and historians. This study sets out to record and explain the rise and fall of interest in terracotta and faience, the extent and nature of the industry and the range of architectural usage in the Victorian, Edwardian and inter-war periods. The first two chapters record the faltering use of terracotta as an 'artificial stone', until the material gained its own identity, largely through the appreciation of Italian architecture. In the mid-Victorian period, terracotta will be seen to have become symbolic of the philosophy of the Victoria and Albert Museum and its Art School in attempting to reform both architecture and the decorative arts. The adoption of terracotta was furthered as much by industrial as aesthetic factors; three chapters examine how the exploitation of coal-measure clays, developments in the processes of manufacture, the changing motivation of industrialists and differing economics of production served to promote and then to hinder expansion and adaptation. The practical values of economy, durability and fire-resistance and the aesthetic potential, seen in terms of colour and decorative and sculptural modelling, became inter-related in the work of the architects who made extensive use of architectural ceramics. A correlation emerges between the free Gothic style, exemplified by the designs of Alfred Waterhouse and the use of red terracotta supplied from Ruabon, and between the eclectic Renaissance style and a buff material produced by different manufacturers.These patterns were modified as a result of the adoption of faience for facing external walls as well as interiors, and because of the new architectural requirements and tastes of the twentieth century. The general timidity in exploiting the scope for polychromatic decoration and the increasing opposition to architectural ceramics is contrasted with the most successful schemes produced for cinemas, chain-stores and factories. In the last chapter, those undertaken by the Hathern Station Brick and Terracotta Company between 1896 and 1939 are used as a case study; they confirm that manufacturers, architects and clients were all committed to creating a modern and yet decorative architecture, appropriate for new building types and that would appeal to and be comprehensible to the public.

The Impact of Chinese Culture on European Landscape Design

The English garden design style and the landscape garden movement became the most emblematic cultural achievement of England in the 18th-19th century. The natural garden style proved to be the symbol of the liberal philosophy and the enlightened way of thinking. But the English landscape garden, which can be seen as an idealized view of nature, is inspired by the classical landscape paintings and is also influenced by the classic Chinese gardens, which had recently been described by European travellers. The interest for Chinese culture, architecture and garden design spread around the British island and inspired the talented garden designers. The gardens of Chambers created a new section in the picturesque landscape gardens, the so called anglo-chinoiseric gardens where eastern, mainly Chinese architectural motives and garden elements have been used in most cases without integrating the Chinese nature philosophy. This first, more or less formal effects of Chinese garden design on European landscape architecture were overwritten by garden designers and horticulturalist during the gardenesque period of the early 19th century when great variety in plant design was taken into the focus of landscape architecture.

Are mangroves in the tropical Atlantic ripe for invasion? Exotic mangrove trees in the forests of South Florida

Abstract Two species of mangrove trees of Indo- Pacific origin have naturalized in tropical Atlantic mangrove forests in South Florida after they were planted and nurtured in botanic gardens. Two Bruguiera gymnorrhiza trees that were planted in the intertidal zone in 1940 have given rise to a population of at least 86 trees growing interspersed with native mangrove species Rhizophora mangle, Avicennia germinans and Laguncularia racemosa along 100 m of shoreline; the population is expanding at a rate of 5.6% year-1. Molecular genetic analyses confirm very low genetic diversity, as expected from a population founded by two individuals. The maximumnumber of alleles at any locus was three, and we measured reduced heterozygosity compared to native-range populations. Lumnitzera racemosa was introduced multiple times during the 1960s and 1970s, it has spread rapidly into a forest composed of native R. mangle, A. germinans, Laguncularia racemosa and Conocarpus erectus and now occupies 60,500 m2 of mangrove forest with stem densities of 24,735 ha-1. We estimate the population growth rate of Lumnitzera racemosa to be between 17 and 23% year-1. Populations of both species of naturalized mangroves are dominated by young individuals. Given the long life and water-dispersed nature of propagules of the two exotic species, it is likely that they have spread beyond our survey area. We argue that the species-depauperate nature of tropical Atlantic mangrove forests and close taxonomic relatives in the more species-rich Indo-Pacific region result in the susceptibility of tropical Atlantic mangrove forests to invasion by Indo-Pacific mangrove species.

Unravelling the evolution of autumn colours: an interdisciplinary approach.

Leaf colour change is commonly observed in temperate deciduous forests in autumn. This is not simply a side effect of leaf senescence, and, in the past decade, several hypotheses have emerged to explain the evolution of autumn colours. Yet a lack of crosstalk between plant physiologists and evolutionary ecologists has resulted in slow progress, and so the adaptive value of this colour change remains a mystery. Here we provide an interdisciplinary summary of the current body of knowledge on autumn colours, and discuss unresolved issues and future avenues of research that might help reveal the evolutionary meaning of this spectacle of nature.

Are mangroves in the tropical Atlantic ripe for invasion? Exotic mangrove trees in the forests of South Florida

Two species of mangrove trees of Indo- Pacific origin have naturalized in tropical Atlantic mangrove forests in South Florida after they were planted and nurtured in botanic gardens. Two Bruguiera gymnorrhiza trees that were planted in the intertidal zone in 1940 have given rise to a population of at least 86 trees growing interspersed with native mangrove species Rhizophora mangle, Avicennia germinans and Laguncularia racemosa along 100 m of shoreline; the population is expanding at a rate of 5.6% year-1. Molecular genetic analyses confirm very low genetic diversity, as expected from a population founded by two individuals. The maximumnumber of alleles at any locus was three, and we measured reduced heterozygosity compared to native-range populations. Lumnitzera racemosa was introduced multiple times during the 1960s and 1970s, it has spread rapidly into a forest composed of native R. mangle, A. germinans, Laguncularia racemosa and Conocarpus erectus and now occupies 60,500 m2 of mangrove forest with stem densities of 24,735 ha-1. We estimate the population growth rate of Lumnitzera racemosa to be between 17 and 23% year-1. Populations of both species of naturalized mangroves are dominated by young individuals. Given the long life and water-dispersed nature of propagules of the two exotic species, it is likely that they have spread beyond our survey area. We argue that the species-depauperate nature of tropical Atlantic mangrove forests and close taxonomic relatives in the more species-rich Indo-Pacific region result in the susceptibility of tropical Atlantic mangrove forests to invasion by Indo-Pacific mangrove species.

Diversity and knowledge in the age of nation-building: Space and time in the thought of Yanagita Kunio

The study examines the thought of Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), an influential Japanese nationalist thinker and a founder of an academic discipline named minzokugaku. The purpose of the study is to bring into light an unredeemed potential of his intellectual and political project as a critique of the way in which modern politics and knowledge systematically suppresses global diversity. The study reads his texts against the backdrop of the modern understanding of space and time and its political and moral implications and traces the historical evolution of his thought that culminates in the establishment of minzokugaku. My reading of Yanagita’s texts draws on three interpretive hypotheses. First, his thought can be interpreted as a critical engagement with John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of history, as he turns Mill’s defense of diversity against Mill’s justification of enlightened despotism in non-Western societies. Second, to counter Mill’s individualistic notion of progressive agency, he turns to a Marxian notion of anthropological space, in which a laboring class makes history by continuously transforming nature, and rehabilitates the common people (jomin) as progressive agents. Third, in addition to the common people, Yanagita integrates wandering people as a countervailing force to the innate parochialism and conservatism of agrarian civilization. To excavate the unrecorded history of ordinary farmers and wandering people and promote the formation of national consciousness, his minzokugaku adopts travel as an alternative method for knowledge production and political education. In light of this interpretation, the aim of Yanagita’s intellectual and political project can be understood as defense and critique of the Enlightenment tradition. Intellectually, he attempts to navigate between spurious universalism and reactionary particularism by revaluing diversity as a necessary condition for universal knowledge and human progress. Politically, his minzokugaku aims at nation-building/globalization from below by tracing back the history of a migratory process cutting across the existing boundaries. His project is opposed to nation-building from above that aims to integrate the world population into international society at the expense of global diversity.

The Role of the Everglades Mangrove Ecotone Region (EMER) in Regulating Nutrient Cycling and Wetland Productivity in South Florida

The authors summarize the main findings of the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research (FCE-LTER) program in the EMER, within the context of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), to understand how regional processes, mediated by water flow, control population and ecosystem dynamics across the EMER landscape. Tree canopies with maximum height <3 m cover 49% of the EMER, particularly in the SE region. These scrub/dwarf mangroves are the result of a combination of low soil phosphorus (P < 59 μg P g dw−1) in the calcareous marl substrate and long hydroperiod. Phosphorus limits the EMER and its freshwater watersheds due to the lack of terrigenous sediment input and the phosphorus-limited nature of the freshwater Everglades. Reduced freshwater delivery over the past 50 years, combined with Everglades compartmentalization and a 10 cm rise in coastal sea level, has led to the landward transgression (1.5 km in 54 years) of the mangrove ecotone. Seasonal variation in freshwater input strongly controls the temporal variation of nitrogen and P exports (99%) from the Everglades to Florida Bay. Rapid changes in nutrient availability and vegetation distribution during the last 50 years show that future ecosystem restoration actions and land use decisions can exert a major influence, similar to sea level rise over the short term, on nutrient cycling and wetland productivity in the EMER.

Relative basicities of free base porphyrins; understanding the role of macrocyclic distortion

Porphyrins have been the center of numerous investigations in different areas of chemistry, geochemistry, and the life sciences. In nature the conformation of the porphyrin macrocycle varies, depending on the function of its apoenzyme. It is believed that the conformation of the porphyrin ring is necessary for the enzyme to achieve its function and modify its reactivity. It is important to understand how the conformation of the porphyrin ring will influence its properties. ^ In synthetic porphyrins particular conformations and ring deformations can be achieved by peripheral substitution, metallation, core substitution, and core protonation among other alterations of the macrocycle. The macrocyclic distortions will affect the ring current, the ability of pyrroles to intramolecularly hydrogen bond and the relative basicity of each of the porphyrins. To understand these effects different theoretical models are used. The ground state structure of each of 19 free base porphyrins is determined using molecular mechanics (MM+) and semiempirical methods (PM3). The energetics of deformation of the macrocyclic core is calculated by carrying out single point energy calculations for the conformation achieved by each synthetic compound. Enthalpies of solution and enthalpies of protonation of 10 porphyrins with varying degrees of macrocyclic deformation and varying electron withdrawing groups in the periphery are determined using solution calorimetry. Using Hess's Law, the relative basicity of each of the different free base porphyrins is calculated. NMR results are described, including the determination of free energies of activation of ring tautomerization and hydrogen bonding for several compounds. It was found that in the absence of electronic effects, the greater macrocyclic deformation, the greater the basicity of the porphyrins. This basicity is attenuated by the presence of electron withdrawing groups and ability to of the macrocycle to intramolecularly hydrogen bond. ^

Relative basicities of free base porphyrins : understanding the role of macrocyclic distortion

Porphyrins have been the center of numerous investigations in different areas of chemistry, geochemistry, and the life sciences. In nature the conformation of the porphyrin macrocycle varies, depending on the function of its apoenzyme. It is believed that the conformation of the porphyrin ring is necessary for the enzyme to achieve its function and modify its reactivity. It is important to understand how the conformation of the porphyrin ring will influence its properties. In synthetic porphyrins particular conformations and ring deformations can be achieved by peripheral substitution, metallation, core substitution, and core protonation among other alterations of the macrocycle. The macrocyclic distortions will affect the ring current, the ability of pyrroles to intramolecularly hydrogen bond and the relative basicity of each of the porphyrins. To understand these effects different theoretical models are used. The ground state structure of each of 19 free base porphyrins is determined using molecular mechanics (MM+) and semiempirical methods (PM3). The energetics of deformation of the macrocyclic core is calculated by carrying out single point energy calculations for the conformation achieved by each synthetic compound. Enthalpies of solution and enthalpies of protonation of 10 porphyrins with varying degrees of macrocyclic deformation and varying electron withdrawing groups in the periphery are determined using solution calorimetry. Using Hess's Law, the relative basicity of each of the different free base porphyrins is calculated. NMR results are described, including the determination of free energies of activation of ring tautomerization and hydrogen bonding for several compounds. It was found that in the absence of electronic effects, the greater macrocyclic deformation, the greater the basicity of the porphyrins. This basicity is attenuated by the presence of electron withdrawing groups and ability to of the macrocycle to intramolecularly hydrogen bond.

Database of the GLAMAP project

A uniform chronology for foraminifera-based sea surface temperature records has been established in more than 120 sediment cores obtained from the equatorial and eastern Atlantic up to the Arctic Ocean. The chronostratigraphy of the last 30,000 years is mainly based on published d18O records and 14C ages from accelerator mass spectrometry, converted into calendar-year ages. The high-precision age control provides the database necessary for the uniform reconstruction of the climate interval of the Last Glacial Maximum within the GLAMAP-2000 project.

Data compilation on the biological response to ocean acidification: environmental and experimental context of data sets and related literature

The exponential growth of studies on the biological response to ocean acidification over the last few decades has generated a large amount of data. To facilitate data comparison, a data compilation hosted at the data publisher PANGAEA was initiated in 2008 and is updated on a regular basis (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.149999). By January 2015, a total of 581 data sets (over 4 000 000 data points) from 539 papers had been archived. Here we present the developments of this data compilation five years since its first description by Nisumaa et al. (2010). Most of study sites from which data archived are still in the Northern Hemisphere and the number of archived data from studies from the Southern Hemisphere and polar oceans are still relatively low. Data from 60 studies that investigated the response of a mix of organisms or natural communities were all added after 2010, indicating a welcomed shift from the study of individual organisms to communities and ecosystems. The initial imbalance of considerably more data archived on calcification and primary production than on other processes has improved. There is also a clear tendency towards more data archived from multifactorial studies after 2010. For easier and more effective access to ocean acidification data, the ocean acidification community is strongly encouraged to contribute to the data archiving effort, and help develop standard vocabularies describing the variables and define best practices for archiving ocean acidification data.

Idleness and passion: Hamlet's tragic character in the light of stoicism and medieval Christian philosophy

This thesis explores the character of Hamlet in Shakespeare's same-titled work in the light of certain aspects of stoicism and medieval Christian philosophy. Throughout the course of the play we see Hamlet struggling with his thoughts. At first he deliberates without taking action as a consequence of his reasoning, but in the later stages of the play he gives in to passion, which ultimately leads to his own demise. The thesis gives an account of certain aspects of both philosophies that are displayed in the play and shows how those ideas influence the character of Hamlet and contextualize his personal tragedy. Hamlet fails to follow the philosophies that he praises and to grow as a character by overcoming his passions over the course of the play.

Notes on the Floridian Theory of Strongly Semantic Information

Other

Chaucer and the Disconsolations of Philosophy: Boethius, Agency, and Literary Form in Late Medieval Literature

This study argues that Chaucer's poetry belongs to a far-reaching conversation about the forms of consolation (philosophical, theological, and poetic) that are available to human persons. Chaucer's entry point to this conversation was Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, a sixth-century dialogue that tried to show how the Stoic ideals of autonomy and self-possession are not simply normative for human beings but remain within the grasp of every individual. Drawing on biblical commentary, consolation literature, and political theory, this study contends that Chaucer's interrogation of the moral and intellectual ideals of the Consolation took the form of philosophical disconsolations: scenes of profound poetic rupture in which a character, sometimes even Chaucer himself, turns to philosophy for solace and yet fails to be consoled. Indeed, philosophy itself becomes a source of despair. In staging these disconsolations, I contend that Chaucer asks his readers to consider the moral dimensions of the aspirations internal to ancient philosophy and the assumptions about the self that must be true if its insights are to console and instruct. For Chaucer, the self must be seen as a gift that flowers through reciprocity (both human and divine) and not as an object to be disciplined and regulated.

Chapter one focuses on the Consolation of Philosophy. I argue that recent attempts to characterize Chaucer's relationship to this text as skeptical fail to engage the Consolation on its own terms. The allegory of Lady Philosophy's revelation to a disconsolate Boethius enables philosophy to become both an agent and an object of inquiry. I argue that Boethius's initial skepticism about the pretentions of philosophy is in part what Philosophy's therapies are meant to respond to. The pressures that Chaucer's poetry exerts on the ideals of autonomy and self-possession sharpen one of the major absences of the Consolation: viz., the unanswered question of whether Philosophy's therapies have actually consoled Boethius. Chapter two considers one of the Consolation's fascinating and paradoxical afterlives: Robert Holcot's Postilla super librum sapientiae (1340-43). I argue that Holcot's Stoic conception of wisdom, a conception he explicitly links with Boethius's Consolation, relies on a model of agency that is strikingly similar to the powers of self-knowledge that Philosophy argues Boethius to posses. Chapter three examines Chaucer's fullest exploration of the Boethian model of selfhood and his ultimate rejection of it in Troilus and Criseyde. The poem, which Chaucer called his "tragedy," belonged to a genre of classical writing he knew of only from Philosophy's brief mention of it in the Consolation. Chaucer appropriates the genre to explore and recover mourning as a meaningful act. In Chapter four, I turn to Dante and the House of Fame to consider Chaucer's self-reflections about his ambitions as a poet and the demands of truth-telling.

On the microstructure, growth pattern and original porosity of belemnite rostra: insights from calcitic Jurassic belemnites

Calcitic belemnite rostra are usually employed to perform paleoenvironmental studies based on geochemical data. However, several questions, such as their original porosity and microstructure, remain open, despite they are essential to make accurate interpretations based on geochemical analyses.This paper revisits and enlightens some of these questions. Petrographic data demonstrate that calcite crystals of the rostrum solidum of belemnites grow from spherulites that successively develop along the apical line, resulting in a “regular spherulithic prismatic” microstructure. Radially arranged calcite crystals emerge and diverge from the spherulites: towards the apex, crystals grow until a new spherulite is formed; towards the external walls of the rostrum, the crystals become progressively bigger and prismatic. Adjacent crystals slightly vary in their c-axis orientation, resulting in undulose extinction. Concentric growth layering develops at different scales and is superimposed and traversed by a radial pattern, which results in the micro-fibrous texture that is observed in the calcite crystals in the rostra.Petrographic data demonstrate that single calcite crystals in the rostra have a composite nature, which strongly suggests that the belemnite rostra were originally porous. Single crystals consistently comprise two distinct zones or sectors in optical continuity: 1) the inner zone is fluorescent, has relatively low optical relief under transmitted light (TL) microscopy, a dark-grey color under backscatter electron microscopy (BSEM), a commonly triangular shape, a “patchy” appearance and relatively high Mg and Na contents; 2) the outer sector is non-fluorescent, has relatively high optical relief under TL, a light-grey color under BSEM and low Mg and Na contents. The inner and fluorescent sectors are interpreted to have formed first as a product of biologically controlled mineralization during belemnite skeletal growth and the non-fluorescent outer sectors as overgrowths of the former, filling the intra- and inter-crystalline porosity. This question has important implications for making paleoenvironmental and/or paleoclimatic interpretations based on geochemical analyses of belemnite rostra.Finally, the petrographic features of composite calcite crystals in the rostra also suggest the non-classical crystallization of belemnite rostra, as previously suggested by other authors.