351 research outputs found
Beyond dichotomies: Exploring responses to tackling the sex industry in Nepal.
No full textThe sex industry in Nepal has witnessed a massive resurgence, largely due to the expansion of the entertainment sector in the last decade. It is frequently featured in the national media, often with sensationalistic headlines. However, there is only limited research available on the perceptions of support agencies’ efforts in dealing with sex industry in Nepal. This chapter explores the approaches taken by different agencies in Nepal to intervening in the sex industry. The data for the chapter are derived from semi-structured interviews with donor agencies, government offices, I/NGOs, and other anti-trafficking networks. The findings of the chapter delineate that the rights of women and girls to work in a safe and healthy environment have been largely neglected in Nepal. Despite several attempts to regulate the sex industry, the practices employed by support organisations are often limited to controlling measures (rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration model). Such measures often bound up in the choice/coercion and innocent/savvy dichotomies. The chapter emphasises the importance of looking beyond these dichotomies and addressing the labour exploitation and other human rights violations that women and girls are facing in the Nepalese sex industry
Directional Footing, Degeneracy, and Alignment
No full textThis paper argues from an Optimality Theory perspective that no one-to-one correspondence exists between directional footing effects and individual constraints. Recent work in OT claims that directional footing effects are best captured by the constraints All-Feet-Left (Ft-Left) and All-Feet-Right (Ft-Right) in (1) (e.g. McCarthy & Prince 1993b, 1994; Kirchner 1993; Cohn & McCarthy 1994; Crowhurst & Hewitt, in press; Hewitt 1994a; Kager 1994).
(1) a. All-Feet-Left: Align(Foot, L, PrWd, L)
b. All-Feet-Right: Align(Foot, R, PrWd, R)
This paper argues that the relationship between the alignment constraints in (1) and directional footing is more complicated than has been envisioned. In fact, the OT account presented here reveals directional effects to be epiphenomenal: either of the constraints in (1) may yield rightward or leftward footing, depending on its interaction with constraints requiring syllable-to-foot parsing and binary foot structure (see below). We also show that directionality and stray syllable parsing at edges are dependent: right-to-left and left-to-right effects under Ft-Left dominance co-occur with either the presence or the absence of a degenerate foot, but not with both. This relationship is inverted when Ft-Right dominates Ft-Left. One outcome of this study is that interactions among a small number of constraints leads to a modified typological view of metrical patterns familiar from earlier work.The definitive version of this paper was published in NELS 25: Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society (1995) and is available at http://glsa.hypermart.net/Crowhurst, M., & Hewitt, M. S. (1995). Directional footing, degeneracy, and alignment. In J. N. Beckman (Ed.), NELS 25: Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society (pp. 47-61). Amherst, MA: GLSA (Graduate Linguistic Student Association), Dept. of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts
Southwest Pacific deep-water carbonate chemistry during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition
No full textAfter more than 40 years of research, there is still wide disagreement in defining when the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) occurred, with climate reconstructions ranging from an abrupt versus gradual transition that began as early as 1500 ka and ended as late as 600 ka. Our recent work in the Southwest Pacific (Ocean Drilling Program Site 1123) has provided some evidence for a rapid transition, suggesting that the MPT was initiated by an abrupt increase in global ice volume 900 thousand years ago [1]. This study uses shallow-infaunal benthic foraminifera Uvigerina spp. to disentangle the contributions of deep-water temperature (using Mg/Ca ratios) and ice volume to the oxygen isotopic composition of foraminiferal calcite over the last 1.5 Ma. The resulting sea-level reconstruction across the MPT shows that the critical step in ice-volume variation was associated with the suppression of melting in Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 23, followed by renewed ice growth in MIS 22 to yield a very large ice sheet with 120 m of sea level lowering.
Here, we built on this work with the aim to investigate further the abrupt event centered on MIS 24 to 22 (the ‘900-ka event’) and try to shed some light on the processes and mechanisms that caused the MPT. Different hypotheses account for the origin of the MPT as a response to long-term ocean cooling, perhaps because of lowering CO2. To better quantify the role of the carbon system during the MPT, we reconstruct past changes in bottom water inorganic carbon chemistry from the trace element (B/Ca) and stable isotopic composition of calcite shells of the infaunal benthic foraminifera Uvigerina spp. from 1100 ka to 350 ka at ODP Site 1123. This site was retrieved from Chatham Rise, east of New Zealand in the Southwest Pacific Ocean (41o47.2’S, 171o 29.9’ W, 3290 m water depth) and lies under the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) that flows into the Pacific Ocean, and is responsible for most of the deep water in that ocean; DWBC strength is directly related to processes occurring around Antarctica. The ratio of boron to calcium (B/Ca) in benthic foraminifer shells has proven to be a reliable indicator of the calcite saturation state of ocean bottom waters. The comparison between benthic foraminifera δ18O and δ13C shows a similar trend at ODP Site 1123, implying a close relationship between these climate and carbon cycle signals, and we use our B/Ca record reconstructed from the same samples to explore the potential processes behind this tight coupling.
These results permit preliminary discussion on the deep-water carbonate saturation state during glacial/interglacial cycles. Deep-water temperatures estimates using Mg/Ca and oxygen isotopic composition of seawater (δ18Osw) are available from Site 1123 for the last 1.5 million years [1] and the phase relationship between the different signals is tentatively assessed for the early/middle Pleistocene, when different patterns of climate variability have been inferred from marine and ice cores records.
[1] Elderfield et al. (2012). Evolution of ocean temperature and ice volume through the Mid Pleistocene Climate Transition. Science, vol. 337, 6095, 704-70
North Atlantic millennial-scale climate variability 910 to 790 ka and the role of the equatorial insolation forcing
No full textThe Mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT) was the time when quasi-periodic (similar to 100 kyr), high-amplitude glacial variability developed in the absence of any significant change in the character of orbital forcing, leading to the establishment of the characteristic pattern of late Pleistocene climate variability. It has long been known that the interval around 900 ka stands out as a critical point of the MPT, when major glaciations started occurring most notably in the northern hemisphere. Here we examine the record of climatic conditions during this significant interval, using high-resolution stable isotope records from benthic and planktonic foraminifera from a sediment core in the North Atlantic (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 306, Site U1313). We have considered the time interval from late in Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 23 to MIS 20 (910 to 790 ka). Our data indicate that interglacial MIS 21 was a climatically unstable period and was broken into four interstadial periods, which have been identified and correlated across the North Atlantic region. These extra peaks tend to contradict previous studies that interpreted the MIS 21 variability as consisting essentially of a linear response to cyclical changes in orbital parameters. Cooling events in the surface record during MIS 21 were associated with low benthic carbon isotope excursions, suggesting a coupling between surface temperature changes and the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Time series analysis performed on the whole interval indicates that benthic and planktonic oxygen isotopes have significant concentrations of spectral power centered on periods of 10.7 kyr and 6 kyr, which is in agreement with the second and forth harmonic of precession. The excellent correspondence between the foraminifera 00 records and insolation variations at the Equator in March and September suggests that a mechanism related to low-latitude precession variations, advected to the high latitudes by tropical convective processes, might have generated such a response. This scenario accounts for the presence of oscillations at frequencies equal to precession harmonics at Site U1313, as well as the occurrence of higher amplitude oscillations between the MIS22/21 transition and most of MIS 21, times of enhanced insolation variability
Evolution of Ocean Temperature and Ice Volume Through the Mid-Pleistocene Climate Transition
No full textEarth’s climate underwent a fundamental change between 1250 and 700 thousand years ago, the mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT), when the dominant periodicity of climate cycles changed from 41 thousand to 100 thousand years in the absence of substantial change in orbital forcing. Over this time, an increase occurred in the amplitude of change of deep-ocean foraminiferal oxygen isotopic ratios, traditionally interpreted as defining the main rhythm of ice ages although containing large effects of changes in deep-ocean temperature. We have separated the effects of decreasing temperature and increasing global ice volume on oxygen isotope ratios. Our results suggest that the MPT was initiated by an abrupt increase in Antarctic ice volume 900 thousand years ago. We see no evidence of a pattern of gradual cooling, but near-freezing temperatures occur at every glacial maximum
Benthic Foraminiferal Oxygen Isotope Offsets Over The Last Glacial-Interglacial Cycle
No full textThe oxygen isotope (?18O) offset between contemporaneous benthic foraminiferal species is often assumed constant with time and geographic location. We present an inventory of benthic foraminiferal species ?18O offsets from the major ocean basins covering the last glacial-interglacial cycle, showing that of the twenty down-core records investigated, twelve show significant temporal changes in ?18O offsets that do not resemble stochastic variability. Some of the temporal changes may be related to kinetic fractionation effects causing deglacial/interglacial enrichment or glacial depletion in mainly infaunal species, but additional research is needed to confirm this. In addition to stratigraphic implications the finding of temporally varying offsets between co-existing benthic foraminiferal species could have implications for sea-level, deep water temperature, and regional deep water ?18O estimates
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