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This paper considers recent studies of global environmental change and their impact on the deltas, social and ecological patches that epitomize an Anthropocene environmental dynamism. Looking into these delta studies, we explore a...
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This paper considers recent studies of global environmental change and their impact on the deltas, social and ecological patches that epitomize an Anthropocene environmental dynamism. Looking into these delta studies, we explore an emerging imagination about human-planet relations. Specifically, we indicate that the relationship between the changing Earth and human activities depicted in these studies is comparable to the kind of affective relations to which the anthropology of science has recently brought attention. While affective relations as anthropologically described depend on the capacity of the body to be affected by other entities, global change research on deltas asks the public to imagine collective life, including infrastructure, land use, resource consumption, and companion species, as composite bodies affected by the changing planet. This imagination is made possible by analogies developed in the vicinity of the notion of resilience, a term that originated in mathematical ecology and complex adaptive systems in computer science. In exploring this interdisciplinary traffic of ideas and models, we elucidate an analogical imagination that crosses the border of machines and organisms.
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In recent decades, scientists have developed a wide array of hydrological, hydrodynamic, and other models to understand the dynamics of the Mekong River Basin. Indeed, the area has been described as 'flooded' with models. Drawing ...
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In recent decades, scientists have developed a wide array of hydrological, hydrodynamic, and other models to understand the dynamics of the Mekong River Basin. Indeed, the area has been described as 'flooded' with models. Drawing on STS and the philosophy of modeling - which has described models as mediating instruments - the first half of this article discusses how and why this proliferation has occurred, focusing on the Cambodian context. Highlighting that models are developed comparatively, with reference to one another, the analysis shows how they have generated a partially connected ecology of comparisons. As each model makes its own image of the Mekong, the ecology as a whole creates a kaleidoscopic effect. In principle, this ecology is important for that of environmental policy-making. In practice, however, it is tremendously difficult for scientists to bridge the ecologies. Examining two cases of NGO-based modeling aiming to influence policy, the second half of the paper offers a comparative analysis of the challenges modeling knowledge faces in Mekong environmental politics.
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Social scientists studying toxic epidemics have often endeavored to shed light on the differences between scientists' and nonscientists' epistemic perspectives. Yet, little attention has been paid to the processes through which a ...
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Social scientists studying toxic epidemics have often endeavored to shed light on the differences between scientists' and nonscientists' epistemic perspectives. Yet, little attention has been paid to the processes through which a toxic epidemic emerges as a phenomenon. A Luoi Valley of Central Vietnam was extensively sprayed with chemical defoliants (including Agent Orange) during the Vietnam War. The latent toxic effects of these chemicals, however, went largely unnoticed until the late 1990s. By juxtaposing the history through which the notion of Agent Orange Sickness emerged in the United States with an ethnographic study of A Luoi, I explore the notion of poison under which Agent Orange became recognizable as a poison.
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The historic flooding that occurred in 2011 in central Thailand revealed fierce struggles over flood protection, which were made particularly complex because of the unruly nature of water itself. The interplay between two forms of...
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The historic flooding that occurred in 2011 in central Thailand revealed fierce struggles over flood protection, which were made particularly complex because of the unruly nature of water itself. The interplay between two forms of infrastructure, each of which shape the flows of water coursing through the Chao Phraya Delta, is key to understanding this complexity. As an ambiguous place in between the sea and land, a delta environment can be seen alternatively as an extension of the sea or as reclaimable land. Constructing infrastructures based on either of these views remakes the landscape accordinglythus making the landscape more terrestrial or more aquatic. In the Chao Phraya Delta, the terrestrial infrastructure, which consists of road networks and land-based urban living, has been overlaid on a pre-existing aquatic infrastructure characterized by canal transport and flood adaptive architecture. Mainly due to state interest in facilitating water transport, the aquatic infrastructure organized the landscape of the delta until the mid-twentieth century. However, since then the introduction of modern irrigation has progressively rendered the delta landscape more terrestrial. Dry land created by the irrigation system made modern forms of agriculture, commerce and industry possible. While this terrestrial trend seemed to take over the entire delta, the terrestrial infrastructure did not eliminate the aquatic one. Instead it created a dynamic interplay between different forms of infrastructure. The 2011 flood foregrounded the centrality of this interplay in flood protection and sheds new light on the role of the aquatic infrastructure.
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Objectives Human walking involves out-of-phase axial rotations of the thorax and pelvis. It has long been believed that this rotational capability is a distinctive feature of the genusHomo. However, Thompson et al. (2015) showed t...
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Objectives Human walking involves out-of-phase axial rotations of the thorax and pelvis. It has long been believed that this rotational capability is a distinctive feature of the genusHomo. However, Thompson et al. (2015) showed that chimpanzees also counter-rotate their thorax relative to the pelvis during bipedal walking, which raised questions regarding the origins and development of this characteristic. In this study, we measured the axial rotation of the trunk during bipedal walking in humans and macaques to investigate if intra-trunk axial rotations are observed in non-hominoid primate species. Materials and methods We collected three-dimensional trunk kinematic data during bipedal walking in six humans and five Japanese macaques. The human subjects walked on a treadmill, and the animal subjects walked on a 5-m runway. During walking, the positions of cluster markers, which defined trunk segments, were recorded by multiple video cameras. Segmentalxyzcoordinates were digitized, and transverse rotations were calculated using motion analysis software. Results Although trunk rotations in the global coordinate system were greater in macaques than in humans, the intra-trunk rotation and range of motion showed a similar pattern in the two species. Conclusions Thoracic rotation relative to the pelvis during bipedal walking is not unique to the hominid lineage but rather a characteristic generated by the mechanical requirements of bipedal walking. The fact that the range of motion of counter rotation is similar in these species infers that an optimal range of rotation exists for bipedal walking.
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To better place the form and motion of the human foot in an evolutionary context, understanding how foot motions change when quadrupeds walk bipedally can be informative For this purpose, we compared the pressures beneath the foot...
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To better place the form and motion of the human foot in an evolutionary context, understanding how foot motions change when quadrupeds walk bipedally can be informative For this purpose, we compared the pressures beneath the foot. during bipedal and quadrupedal walking in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata). The pressure at nine plantar regions was recorded using a pressure mat (120 Hz), while the animals walked on a level walkway at their preferred speeds. The results revealed substantial differences in foot use between the two modes of locomotion, and some features observed during bipedal walking resembled human gait, such as the medial transfer of the center of pressure (COP), abrupt declines in forefoot pressures, and the increased pressure beneath the hallux, all occurring during the late-stance phase In particular, the medial transfer of the COP, which is also observed in bonobos (Vereecke et al Am J Phys Anthropol 120 (2003) 373-383), was due to a biomechanical requirement for a hind limb dominant gait, such as bipedal walking Features shared by bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion that were quite different from human locomotion were also observed, the heel never contacted the ground, a foot longitudinal arch was absent, the hallux was widely abducted, and the functional axis was on the third digit, not the second.
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Background: Lifelong exposure to stressors promotes physiological dysregulation and produces an allostatic load (AL). In European-derived samples, AL associates significantly with sex, age and health.Aim: To assess associations of...
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Background: Lifelong exposure to stressors promotes physiological dysregulation and produces an allostatic load (AL). In European-derived samples, AL associates significantly with sex, age and health.Aim: To assess associations of AL with age, sex, socio-demographic differences and self-reports of diet and ability to complete activities of daily living in older Japanese residing in rural Nagasaki Prefecture.Subjects and methods: In 2011, 96 older residents of Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, were assessed for components of AL. They also self-reported their age, principal life-long occupational activity, educational attainments, marital status, dietary choices and abilities to complete daily living activities.Results: Average age was 67.9 years (range=55-89; SD=8.65). Among these 48 men and 48 women, AL was not related significantly to age, although women showed lower AL than men. AL did not differ significantly between respondents by occupation, marital status, education or abilities to complete daily activities. Women who reported eating more green/yellow vegetables or consuming more meat had lower AL than their counterparts. Men who reported drinking more alcohol spirits had higher AL.Conclusions: Among older Japanese residing outside a major urban area, AL varies significantly by sex, but not age, while being associated with dietary choices. Although lack of association with life ways was not expected, AL apparently assesses physiological dysregulation cross-culturally.
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The primate hand adopts a variety of postures during locomotion. Habitually terrestrial cercopithecine primates are known to use a palmigrade posture at faster speeds to possibly mitigate stresses on the hand skeleton; however, it...
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The primate hand adopts a variety of postures during locomotion. Habitually terrestrial cercopithecine primates are known to use a palmigrade posture at faster speeds to possibly mitigate stresses on the hand skeleton; however, it is unclear whether arboreal or semi-terrestrial species use a similar strategy for adjusting hand posture. Here, we explored intra-individual variation in hand contact patterns during terrestrial locomotion in the Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), a semi-terrestrial cercopithecine primate. Two monkeys were required to walk on the ground at their own preferred speeds or were encouraged to move faster for food rewards. The contact area under the hand and ground reaction forces (GRFs) were measured simultaneously using a tactile pressure sensor, and then hand pressures were calculated offline. We found that hand contact patterns could vary within individuals. The monkeys used predominantly a palmigrade posture within the range of speeds covered in this study (0.72-2.56 m s(-1)). There were two subtypes of palmigrade posture. In one subtype, the hypothenar pad did not contact the substrate, whereas the entire hand contacted the substrate in the other. The palm of the palmigrade hand with total-hand contact experienced similar or lower peak pressure and pressure-time integral than those of the palmigrade hand without hypothenar pad contact even though it experienced higher peak GRFs. The moderate peak pressure experienced by the palmigrade hand with total-hand contact was due to increased contact area under the palm. The total contact area of the fingers and peak GRF to the fingers were relatively unchanged with different patterns of hand contact. These findings provide evidence that when walking on the ground, semi-terrestrial Japanese macaques use a palmigrade posture with total-hand contact to attenuate stresses on hand bones, as do habitually terrestrial species.
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We investigated the effect of Cr substitution at the V site in Sr2VFeAsO3. We found that the valence of introduced Cr is 4+, corresponding to electron doping. In spite of the chemical substitution in the insulating blocking layer,...
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We investigated the effect of Cr substitution at the V site in Sr2VFeAsO3. We found that the valence of introduced Cr is 4+, corresponding to electron doping. In spite of the chemical substitution in the insulating blocking layer, appreciable carrier scattering is generated in the conducting layer. The suppression of superconductivity is moderate, indicating that superconductivity is not very sensitive to the electron filling. On the other hand, a non-magnetic peculiar phase transition at similar to 150 K is rapidly suppressed by Cr substitution, implying that this electronic order shows up only in a narrow range of the electron filling.
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