Adapting to climate change: Combining economics and geomorphology in coastal policy

How is climate change affecting our coastal environment? How can coastal communities adapt to sea level rise and increased storm risk? These questions have garnered tremendous interest from scientists and policy makers alike, as the dynamic coastal environment is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Over half the world population lives and works in a coastal zone less than 120 miles wide, thereby being continuously affected by the changes in the coastal environment [6]. Housing markets are directly influenced by the physical processes that govern coastal systems. Beach towns like Oak Island in North Carolina (NC) face severe erosion, and the tax assesed value of one coastal property fell by 93% in 2007 [9]. With almost ninety percent of the sandy beaches in the US facing moderate to severe erosion [8], coastal communities often intervene to stabilize the shoreline and hold back the sea in order to protect coastal property and infrastructure. Beach nourishment, which is the process of rebuilding a beach by periodically replacing an eroding section of the beach with sand dredged from another location, is a policy for erosion control in many parts of the US Atlantic and Pacific coasts [3]. Beach nourishment projects in the United States are primarily federally funded and implemented by the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) after a benefit-cost analysis. Benefits from beach nourishment include reduction in storm damage and recreational benefits from a wider beach. Costs would include the expected cost of construction, present value of periodic maintenance, and any external cost such as the environmental cost associated with a nourishment project (NOAA). Federal appropriations for nourishment totaled $787 million from 1995 to 2002 [10]. Human interventions to stabilize shorelines and physical coastal dynamics are strongly coupled. The value of the beach, in the form of storm protection and recreation amenities, is at least partly capitalized into property values. These beach values ultimately influence the benefit-cost analysis in support of shoreline stabilization policy, which, in turn, affects the shoreline dynamics. This paper explores the policy implications of this circularity. With a better understanding of the physical-economic feedbacks, policy makers can more effectively design climate change adaptation strategies. (PDF contains 4 pages)

Back pages of No. 45, 1987

Map of Galápagos. Medium Ground Finch (Geospiza fortis), Drawing by Godfrey Merlen.

Back pages of No. 43, 1986

Back cover. Map of Galápagos. Galapagos Penguin, Photo by G.T. Corley Smith.

Back pages of No. 46, 1988

Back cover. Members of Charles Darwin Foundation. Map of Galapagos.

Development of Microfluidic Devices with the Use of Nanotechnology to Aid in the Analysis of Biological Systems Including Membrane Protein Separation, Single Cell Analysis, and Genetic Markers

Computation technology has dramatically changed the world around us; you can hardly find an area where cell phones have not saturated the market, yet there is a significant lack of breakthroughs in the development to integrate the computer with biological environments. This is largely the result of the incompatibility of the materials used in both environments; biological environments and experiments tend to need aqueous environments. To help aid in these development chemists, engineers, physicists and biologists have begun to develop microfluidics to help bridge this divide. Unfortunately, the microfluidic devices required large external support equipment to run the device. This thesis presents a series of several microfluidic methods that can help integrate engineering and biology by exploiting nanotechnology to help push the field of microfluidics back to its intended purpose, small integrated biological and electrical devices. I demonstrate this goal by developing different methods and devices to (1) separate membrane bound proteins with the use of microfluidics, (2) use optical technology to make fiber optic cables into protein sensors, (3) generate new fluidic devices using semiconductor material to manipulate single cells, and (4) develop a new genetic microfluidic based diagnostic assay that works with current PCR methodology to provide faster and cheaper results. All of these methods and systems can be used as components to build a self-contained biomedical device.

Acendam as luzes ,O Mambembe voltou! De Artur Azevedo ao Teatro dos Sete, redenção e idealismo na invenção póstuma da belle époque teatral

Estudo do texto teatral O Mambembe, a partir dos contextos em que foi criado, em 1904, e depois reabilitado, para o público e para a crítica, 55 anos depois. A ótica da recepção destaca esta peça do conjunto da obra de Artur Azevedo, deixando entrever, principalmente a partir de uma possível ideologia de um teatro educador dos sentidos, as contradições do texto com o mundo da diversão teatral na entrada do século XX carioca, sua tentativa de certa forma de escapar a sua massificação, apelando ao passado e à promessa de um futuro mais artístico para o teatro. Na primeira parte se discutem as ideias inaugurais para o teatro de formação na modernidade, e como estas são catalisadas no Brasil em torno de um teatro que civiliza pela formação de almas, até a época de Artur Azevedo. Depois de explorar alguns aspectos históricos da época de O Mambembe, expõe-se um pequeno painel e algumas considerações teóricas sobre a indústria e a estrutura do teatro ligeiro da entrada para o século XX.Na segunda parte do trabalho, ligadas às questões teóricas sobre recepção teatral, são discutidas as noções de teatro e cultura de cada época, através de comentários e críticas de jornais. Depois de uma pequena exposição das mudanças ideológicas e culturais que se passaram no intervalo dos 55 anos entre uma montagem e outra, o trabalho termina com uma proposta de metaforologia do texto a partir das informações colhidas e resultados experimentados

Split-aperture laser pulse compressor design tolerant to alignment and line-density differences

We introduce a four-pass laser pulse compressor design based on two grating apertures with two gratings per aperture that is tolerant to some alignment errors and, importantly, to grating-to-grating period variations. Each half-beam samples each grating in a diamond-shaped compressor that is symmetric about a central bisecting plane. For any given grating, the two half-beams impinge on opposite sides of its surface normal. It is shown that the two split beams have no pointing difference from paired gratings with different periods. Furthermore, no phase shift between half-beams is incurred as long as the planes containing a grating line and the surface normal for each grating of the pair are parallel. For grating pairs satisfying this condition, gratings surfaces need not be on the same plane, as changes in the gap between the two can compensate to bring the beams back in phase. © 2008 Optical Society of America.

Back pages of No. 47, 1989

Back cover

Back page of No. 44, 1986

Membership of CDF Council

Back pages of No. 50, 1991

Back cover. We Need Your Help! Map.

Back pages of No. 51, 1992

Charles Darwin Foundation. Map.

Back pages of No. 52, 1993

Back cover. Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands. Map.

The body social: an enactive approach to the self

This paper takes a new look at an old question: what is the human self? It offers a proposal for theorizing the self from an enactive perspective as an autonomous system that is constituted through interpersonal relations. It addresses a prevalent issue in the philosophy of cognitive science: the body-social problem. Embodied and social approaches to cognitive identity are in mutual tension. On the one hand, embodied cognitive science risks a new form of methodological individualism, implying a dichotomy not between the outside world of objects and the brain-bound individual but rather between body-bound individuals and the outside social world. On the other hand, approaches that emphasize the constitutive relevance of social interaction processes for cognitive identity run the risk of losing the individual in the interaction dynamics and of downplaying the role of embodiment. This paper adopts a middle way and outlines an enactive approach to individuation that is neither individualistic nor disembodied but integrates both approaches. Elaborating on Jonas' notion of needful freedom it outlines an enactive proposal to understanding the self as co-generated in interactions and relations with others. I argue that the human self is a social existence that is organized in terms of a back and forth between social distinction and participation processes. On this view, the body, rather than being identical with the social self, becomes its mediator

Back page of No. 42, 1985

Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands.