335 research outputs found
Late Holocene mud sedimentation and diagenesis in the Firth of Thames: Bentonites in the making
No full textLate Holocene mud sedimentation in the southern Firth of Thames has been described from analysis of a number of shallow marine sediment cores. Three distinct lithofacies are distinguished on the basis of sediment texture and mineralogy. A laterally extensive greenish grey mud, typically bioturbated and massive, with sporadic uncorrelatable interbedded shell layers is termed the Firth of Thames mud facies. Nearer shore sediments are usually coarser and are subdivided into two facies: a siliciclastic sand facies (river mouth sand facies) comprising more prominent interbeds of sand in mud and associated with sedimentation at the mouth of the Waihou River; and a mixed terrigenous-carbonate gravel facies (delta fan gravel facies) associated with deposition on small delta fans adjacent to streams draining the Coromandel Range. The areal distribution of all three facies over the late Holocene has been controlled largely by northward progradation of the coastal Hauraki Lowland associated with the rapid sediment infilling of the Firth of Thames since sea level reached its present height 6500 y B.P. From seismic evidence the Holocene muds are up to 10m thick. The cores in this study penetrated only to 5.5m sub-bottom depth and yielded an oldest radiocarbon age of 5000 y B.P. The age data indicate an average rate of offshore vertical sediment accumulation of 1.5 mm/y.
Up to 15 km of progradation of the southern shoreline of the coastal Hauraki Lowland has occurred over the late Holocene at an average rate of up to 2.5 m/y, notably from 3500 y B.P to 1200 y B.P. Progradation is evidenced by the occurrence of coarsening-upward sequences in nearer shore cores of the Firth of Thames, as well as their changing faunal composition, particularly the upward increase in abundance of the foraminifer Ammonia beccarri, a good indicator of brackish water conditions, which suggests a gradual seaward encroachment of the freshwater influence of the Waihou River over the late Holocene. Basal muds which are similar in composition to marine sediments of the Firth of Thames are overlain by peat dated at 6025 y B.P in a peat core from Kopouatai Peat Bog, and suggest that marine conditions existed in this inland region of the Hauraki Depression prior to 6025 y B.P.
Muds range from silty clays to clayey silts and consist principally of volcanic glass, smectite and halloysite, with smaller amounts of other volcanic-derived siliciclasts and allophane and illite, as well as skeletal carbonate (mainly aragonite) and organic matter. A contemporaneous decrease in the abundance of volcanic glass (55-15 wt % down-core) and an increase in smectite concentration (8-45 wt % down-core) occurs with sub-bottom depth. Specific mineralogical analyses (XRD and IR) and evidence from scanning electron microscopy suggest the smectite is montmorillonitic in composition and authigenic in nature. Moreover, the absence of smectite in the bottom sediments of rivers draining the Hauraki Lowland precludes a detrital origin.
The diagenetic transformation of volcanic glass to smectite in sediments of the Firth of Thames is described by a sequential kinetic model which involves a parabolic dissolution coupled with a first order precipitation of smectite via the formation of an intermediate hydrated glass phase. The rate constant calculated from the sequential kinetic model is 3.35 x 10⁻⁴y⁻¹. The half-life of the glass is 1475 y, implying rapid early diagenetic alteration of volcanic glass to smectite to form late Holocene bentonitic deposits. Thermodynamic stability considerations imply that the first order precipitaion of smectite may be favoured by conditions of pH and Na⁺ activity typical of interstitial fluids having sea water salinity under mildly anoxic conditions
The nature of domestic electricity-loads and effects of time averaging on statistics and on-site generation calculations
No full textWright was lead author. Firth is a Research Assistant, supervised by Wright
Storegga Slide
No full textGlasgow-based author of short stories and psychological thrillers, Louise has developed a poetic statement about our shared origins and culture, accompanied by a series of words translated between Scots and European mainland languages which demonstrate that though our dialects are different we can still be understood.
Emlyn Firth will use a typographic approach to illustrate Louise’s work, playing with themes of language and communication
Marine Spatial Planning in Action: Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters case study
No full textNo abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author. The Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 makes provision for statutory marine planning in Scotland’s seas. • Regional marine spatial planning is being piloted in the Pentland Firth & Orkney Waters area (Figure 1). • This non statutory process will be used to inform the statutory Regional Marine Plans
Inanimation
No full textMy practice borrows from early material processes of animation. The tools and techniques I primarily use were developed for commercial entertainment but are now obsolete outside of education and experimentation. The demanding labor process of producing cel animation independently applies technical constraints to my practice and forces a close examination of motion. I find my technique of tracing acute changes in images to be generative because the action of drawing and redrawing creates unexpected and unnatural movements. The motion created by unedited hand-drawn animation is slippery and constantly appears on the verge of transformation. My animations are short compiled loops of subjects which endlessly repeat small gestures and actions. Animating compact loops creates a perpetual anticipation of change while always rejecting progression. The movement produced in my loops refuses classification under the dichotomy of still and moving and instead calls for a more complex understanding of motion. My looping animations are primarily made for non-theater settings like galleries and web-based settings. In the current internet landscape, time-based media are regularly encountered in perpetual forms like gifs or endlessly scrolling websites. These new forms recall a history of cinema and early cinema devices where emerging technologies restricted media viewing to short repeating clips. Linear timelines as well as beginnings and ends in media have become unfamiliar with the new pervasiveness of looped forms. Working within a late-capitalist context where political power and resistance seem to operate in terms of perpetuity, my work examines a complex kind of movement where endless motion and stillness are simultaneously depicted. My practice involves animating scenes where constrained depictions of movement, change and progress are complicated by unusual treatments of space and time
Exploring the Hoard: Constructing New Maps of Understanding
No full textHow do images and diagrams inform cultural identity and the navigation of social space? This is a core question motivating my art practice.
To produce my artwork, I glean images and texts from magazine collections, which I deconstruct and reconfigure into new iconographies. My goal in this process is to simultaneously destabilize knowledge systems that pretend to obscure uncertainty, even while hinting at possible new understandings. Building on the history of collage as a critical strategy, I explore the role of technical images in identity formation, knowledge production, and expressions of power and authority. In this way, my work maps contextual frameworks that span disparate image cultures and identity systems.
The ‘hoard’, as a type of collection, is an important space for my practice; I see the hoard as an archive and active site of social and political possibilities — a physical manifestation of the excess of capitalist culture (In this text, I will refer to the hoard as a metaphor for the overwhelming volume of cultural imagery at large as well as, a specific collection of print imagery that I see as physical symptom of the pressure of image culture). I mine these archives for veins of source materials, looking for patterns that emerge through formal aesthetic similarities. Colour and line speak from within images to reveal possible hybrid visualizations and derive new trajectories of meaning. In this work, I am exorcising my suspicion of a tendency to slip into a passive viewing position; in this way, my work is calling to (and being beckoned by) Vilém Flusser’s cautionary writings on the inherent perils of technical images in mass media.
My works traverse image and objecthood. I transform print materials into photographs, then into pixels, and finally to printed-paper structures. In this way I usher meanings from objecthood to image and back again, questioning visual language along the way. With each work, I engage in a struggle to decipher and map historical traces of print images. At the same time, I am actively trying to confuse, question, and re-code visual tropes, questioning the impact of images on identity construction and broader ontologies. I bury my tracks knee-deep in scrap
Intensive Interaction: a Research Review
No full textIntensive Interaction is a socially interactive approach to supporting and developing the pre verbal communication and sociability of people with severe or profound learning disabilities, or severe autism. Developed in the 1980’s from the psychological model of ‘augmented mothering’ the approach currently has an increasing number of proponents who make claims for increased social responsiveness due to the use of the approach. This short paper aims to evaluate some of the evidential claims of consequential increased social responses from people with severe and profound and multiple learning disabilities due to the use of Intensive Interaction techniques. Thus the paper presents a review of findings presented in relevant research papers which have been published in generally recognised academic journals.
From this review the author concludes that although expanding, the current body of research has been limited in scope and scale, and has generally been conducted by a small number of Intensive Interaction practitioners and advocates. However, increased client social responsiveness was consistently reported across the research projects reviewed.
In conclusion, this paper advocates for further systematic research into the approach by the wider research community to further develop the evidential base of the approach
UK Clinicians' Knowledge of and Attitudes to the Prenatal Diagnosis of Single Gene Disorders
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John Rupert Firth historian of linguistics and founder of the "London school"
No full textEtudié principalement pour ses travaux en phonologie, John Rupert Firth (1890-1960) occupe une place clé en linguistique anglo-saxonne. Il est un représentant éminent des études philologiques qui ont prévalu jusqu’au début du XXᵉ siècle, par sa culture du passé et son attachement à l’histoire des langues etdes sciences, qui font écho à sa formation d’historien. Paradoxalement, il a orienté ces savoirs et expériences vers l’avenir, en donnant une nouvelle impulsion aux sciences du langage en Grande-Bretagne,avec l’avènement de la linguistique en tant que discipline académique. Ses écrits dénotent un horizon de rétrospection très riche dans le temps et dans l’espace. Il s’y inscrit dans la continuité des expérimentations phonétiques du XIXᵉ siècle (Sweet, Bell). Ces références participent à la constitution de ce que l’on nomme la « linguistique firthienne », dont l’objet de la présente thèse est précisément d’étudier les contours. Ses concepts linguistiques (contexte de situation, sens par collocation, colligation ou langue restreinte) et phonologiques (phonesthésie, analyse prosodique) sont étudiés et mis en perspective au fil de cette thèse. Ils s’appuient sur le fonctionnalisme et la transdisciplinarité dans une approche plurilingue où les langues asiatiques jouent un rôle majeur pour la prise de conscience d’un eurocentrisme que l’auteur a cherché à dépasser. Firth est le fondateur de la London School, l’initiateur d’un héritage porté par plusieurs générations de linguistes anglo-saxons (Robins, Halliday, Crystal). Notre étude se donne pour but d’évaluer quelles ont été sa place et sa contribution réelles dans l’histoire des idées linguistiques.Mainly studied for his work in phonology, John Rupert Firth (1890-1960) played an outstanding role in English linguistics. He stands in line with the philological studies that prevailed up until the beginning of the 20th century through his culture of the past and his commitment to the history of languages and of sciences, both echoing his academic education in history. However, he turned these knowledge and experiences towards the future, giving a new impetus to language sciences in Great Britain and eventually leading to the recognition of general linguistics as an independent academic discipline. His writings show a wide retrospective horizon both in time and space. He defined himself as in continuity with 19thcentury phonological experiments (Sweet, Bell). These references contribute to the formation of what is known as “Firthian linguistics”, whose contours this dissertation aims at defining. His linguistic and phonological concepts (context of situation, meaning by collocation, colligation, restricted languages as well as phonaesthesia and prosodic analysis) are studied here and put into perspective. They rely on functionalism and transdisciplinarity in a multilingual approach where Asiatic languages foster the awareness of a eurocentrism the author tried to overcome. Firth was the founder of the London School,initiating a legacy embodied by many generations of English linguists (Robins, Halliday, Crystal). Our study aims thus at assessing his real place and contribution to the history of linguistic thought
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