4 research outputs found
EXTRACTING THE FUTURE: AN ANALYSIS OF PETROCULTURE IN APOCALYPTIC WORKS
No full textThis thesis explores the critique of petroculture seen in mid- and post-apocalyptic literature. Chapter One, “Parable of the Sower: A Pre-Apocalyptic World Planting Petrocultures Destiny” argues Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower critiques American petroculture by demonstrating the destruction and devastation society is heading for under current societal structures. Chapter Two, “The Road: The Crumbling Remains of Petroculture” argues Cormac McCarthy’s The Road critiques American petroculture through its infrastructural collapse. Chapter Three, “‘Covehithe’: A Weird, Post-Apocalyptic Story Birthing the Future of Petroculture” explores how China Miéville’s “Covehithe” employs magical realism to communicate a different view of global petroculture, one that utilizes horror to install fear in its readers. This thesis explains the start to petroleum oil’s long reign on society. I argue these pieces of literature critique petroculture through mid- and post-apocalyptic imagery and dramatize the imminent destruction of our most precious social structures
“All the Bright Eyes of the Kingdom”: Charlotte Lennox's Discursive Communities
No full textThis article argues that Charlotte Lennox innovates with nonstandard narrative techniques to conjure up lively new discursive communities. In her most famous work, The Female Quixote (1752), Lennox experiments with the formal feature of chapter titles, whose insouciant, disembodied voice emerges as the text's most distinct and powerful narrative force. This voice presents itself as corrective and collective, demonstrating the benefits of a community and redefining the authority of the author. In her less well-known periodical, The Lady's Museum (1760-61), Lennox introduces an eidolon, “The Trifler,” whose lively voice recalls The Female Quixote's chapter titles. As the periodical continues, the Trifler's individual voice gives way to an even livelier assortment of voices, which debate the Trifler's right to her “title”. In both works, Lennox explores the tension between instruction and delight. Her writing offers far more than a straightforward, laudable project of female education, as she imagines pleasing discursive communities in which meaning in general, and “titles” in particular, are debated, challenged, and in flux.</jats:p
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Time dependent slab temperatures, metamorphism, and mechanical properties; insights from dynamic subduction models
No full textThe thermal structure of subduction zones enacts a first-order control on many geological processes and properties, including the locus and degree of slab devolatilization, and the associated densities and strengths of subducting material. Modeling studies with fixed subduction geometries and plate velocities have been used to map out how various subduction parameters affect the pressure-temperature conditions of slabs and, in turn, the depths of major dehydration reactions. However, there is abundant geological evidence that slab properties, and the associated temperatures, evolve over few-Myr timescales. In this study, we use numerical subduction models to target this time dependence. Specifically, we focus on the styles and drivers of thermal transience and the imprint of this on subducting slab dehydration and slab strength. Specifically, we have developed 2-D and 3-D subduction models that enable slab properties to evolve through time in a dynamically consistent fashion using the ASPECT finite element code. We use these models to investigate: i) the extent to which slab thermal conditions - and the associated metamorphic reactions and slab strength - evolve throughout the lifetime of a subduction zone, ii) the effects of first-order subduction zone properties on this evolution, and iii) the degree to which three-dimensionality (i.e., the presence of a slab edge) impacts this evolution. Regardless of imposed basic subduction parameters (e.g., plate ages, crustal strengths), our model subduction zones exhibit highly time-dependent thermal evolutions. The slab top, for example, exhibits rapid cooling during initiation and slower cooling subsequently, with along-strike temperature variations of up to approximately 40 degrees C in the 3-D models. This thermal transience has fundamental implications for the geophysical and geochemical evolution of subduction zones; it manifests in a strong time dependence of dehydration depths and magnitudes and, in turn, substantial variability in slab strength. [Copyright Author(s) 2023. CC Attribution 4.0 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
The implications of large home range size in a solitary felid, the leopard (Panthera pardus)
No full textDATA AVAILABILITY : All raw data are available from the corresponding author upon
reasonable request.SUPPLEMENTARY DATA SD1.—Two additional figures and a
detailed appendix of site locations are provided.The size of the home range of a mammal is affected by numerous factors. However, in the normally solitary, but polygynous, Leopard (Panthera pardus), home range size and maintenance is complicated by their transitory social grouping behavior, which is dependent on life history stage and/or reproductive status. In addition, the necessity to avoid competition with conspecifics and other large predators (including humans) also impacts upon home range size. We used movement data from 31 sites across Africa, comprising 147 individuals (67 males and 80 females) to estimate the home range sizes of leopards. We found that leopards with larger home ranges, and in areas with more vegetation, spent longer being active and generally traveled faster, and in straighter lines, than leopards with smaller home ranges. We suggest that a combination of bottom-up (i.e., preferred prey availability), top-down (i.e., competition with conspecifics), and reproductive (i.e., access to mates) factors likely drive the variability in Leopard home range sizes across Africa. However, the maintenance of a large home range is energetically expensive for leopards, likely resulting in a complex evolutionary trade-off between the satisfaction of basic requirements and preventing potentially dangerous encounters with conspecifics, other predators, and people.The Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada and a Hugh Kelly
Fellowship from Rhodes University, Grahamstown,
South Africa.https://academic.oup.com/jmammal2024-09-11hj2024Mammal Research InstituteZoology and EntomologySDG-15:Life on lan
