The Music of the Trees: The Blued Trees Symphony and Opera as Environmental Research and Legal Activism

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
Aviva Rahmani
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Sine Wave ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
Natural Gas Pipelines ◽  
The North ◽  
Legal Activism ◽  
Mock Trial ◽  
Individual Trees ◽  
Music Acoustics

The Blued Trees project is a transdisciplinary thought experiment, physically manifested across miles of the North American continent. It melds ideas about music, acoustics, art and environmental policy. Hundreds of GPS-located individual trees in the path of proposed natural gas pipelines were painted with a sine wave sigil. Each “treenote” contributed to an aerially perceivable composition employing the local terrain. The score is the formal skeleton for systemic changes challenging several laws. A mock trial explored how this project might open new directions in legal activism for Earth rights and contribute to an operatic libretto.

Some Experiments and Observations on the Longevity of Diphyllobothrium Infections

1936 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. T. Leiper
Keyword(s):  
Adult Life ◽  
Infected Fish ◽  
Human Infection ◽  
Natural Occurrence ◽  
Natural Area ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Typical Instance ◽  
Diphyllobothrium Latum

In an article on “The Longevity of Diphyllobothrium latum” published in 1935 in the “Recueil des Travaux dédié au 25-me Anniversaire Scientifique du Professeur Eugène Paviosky 1909−1934”, it is suggested that present day conceptions regarding the longevity of this parasite are erroneous and that multiple successive infections are frequently attributed to a single long-lived specimen. Ward gives a detailed review and analysis of the evidence hitherto published both in general works and special monographs and cites as specially important the history of the occurrence of this species on the North American continent. He points out that the age of the parasite is regularly based on the statement that the host had not been in an infected region for the period indicated. To this statement, Ward puts forward the objections that the distribution of the parasite and the natural occurrence of plerocercoid carrying fish are far more extensive than was formerly suspected and, further, that infected fish are distributed commercially as food to regions far outside their natural area of distribution. He also refers to certain records which seem to indicate that there is a “period of inactivity” during the adult life of the parasite and suggests that its alleged occurrence throws doubt upon the supposed longevity of the parasite. In support of this contention, he cites, as a typical instance, a case of human infection with Diphyllobothrium latum reported by me (Leiper, 1928) as a “cryptic infection”; regarding which he erroneously states that I believed was “latent” for 5 years.

scholarly journals Q fever in South Australia: an outbreak in a meat-works

1962 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Beech ◽  
A. E. Duxbury ◽  
Peter Warner
Keyword(s):  
Q Fever ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Meteorological Conditions ◽  
American Continent ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Epidemiological Features ◽  
Very High ◽  
Abattoir Workers

This paper consists of an epidemiological study of 52 cases of Q fever occurring in metropolitan Adelaide in 1957 and also a description of the results of a survey of 516 sera obtained from abattoir workers.The only case occurring outside the abattoirs was a dairy farmer who probably became infected while visiting the abattoirs. If this were so the incubation period (35 days) of his disease would have been exceptionally long.The general features of the outbreak, which lasted several months, differed from those on the North American continent in that the latter occurred explosively within a few days with very high attack rates. The situation in the Adelaide abattoirs is similar to that in Brisbane, where the disease appears to be endemic. However, unlike in Adelaide, cases are commonly recognized outside the abattoirs in Brisbane.In the abattoirs the disease affected mainly inspectors, those working on killing beef, and those working on offal. Mutton workers were not so severely affected. However, all these groups had similar incidences of low titre antibodies suggesting that in the past Q fever spread equally in all killing departments. In departments not directly associated with slaughtering the incidence both of cases in 1957 and low titre antibodies was relatively small.It was suggested that the epidemiological features of Q fever in Adelaide could be explained by the irregular appearance of animals from infected herds situated perhaps in Queensland—a known endemic area. Perhaps the appearance of such animals in the Adelaide abattoirs might be governed by meteorological conditions such that they were prevented from going to the ordinarily most convenient slaughterhouse.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Angela Calcaterra
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
The North ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Aesthetic Practice ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Native Resistance ◽  
Narrative Mapping ◽  
American Authors

The introduction argues for recognition of specific Native American aesthetic and literary cultures prior to European arrival and highlights their ongoing influence and significance during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During a period of American literary development known for white appropriation of Native American content, Native resistance to Euro-American settler colonialism involved aesthetic practices such as narrative mapping, visual art, storytelling, figurative representation, and adornment. These practices contributed to both Native and non-Native literary production, despite Euro-American authors’ assertions that sophisticated artistic traditions were a European import to the North American continent. Bringing the concepts “literary,” “aesthetic” and “representation” to bear on analysis of cross-cultural encounter, the introduction posits new modes of understanding points of connection or distance between Native and non-Native aesthetic practice.

Geology and Ages of the Islands

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Luisa Carreño ◽  
Javier Helenes
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Gulf Of California ◽  
Baja California ◽  
Distribution Patterns ◽  
Complete Analysis ◽  
Interglacial Period ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
The North ◽  
Geological Processes ◽  
Continental Source

Before middle Miocene times, Baja California was attached to the rest of the North American continent. Consequently, most of the terrestrial fauna and flora of the peninsula had its origins in mainland Mexico. However, the separation of the peninsula and its northwestward displacement resulted in a variety of distribution patterns, isolations, extinctions, origins and ultimate evolution of fauna and flora in several ways. The islands in the Gulf of California have been colonized by species from Baja California and mainland Mexico. Some workers (Soulé and Sloan 1966; Wilcox 1978) consider that many of these islands originated as landbridges. Geographically, most of the islands are closer to the peninsula than to the mainland. Therefore, it has been assumed that the Baja California Peninsula was the origin of most of the organisms inhabiting them (Murphy 1983). Islands separated by depths of 110 m or less from the peninsula or mainland Mexico apparently owe their current insular existence to a rise in sea level during the current interglacial period (Soulé and Sloan 1966). In contrast, little information exists for deep-water islands. Any complete analysis of the distribution and origin of several organic groups inhabiting the Gulf of California islands should involve the consideration of several contrasting models arguing in favor of or against the equilibrium theory (MacArthur and Wilson 1967). In any model, one of the most important features to consider is the relationship between the species inhabiting the gulf islands and the physical and geological processes of formation of the islands, as well as their age, size, and distance from either the peninsula or the mainland. Understanding colonization, migration, and distribution, particularly in some groups, requires information on whether a particular island was ever connected to a continental source. For example, to explain some characteristics of the populations of any island, which presumably had a recent (<10,000-15,000 years) connection to a continental source, it is necessary to evaluate the coastal erosion or the relative rise in the sea level. These factors might contribute to effectively isolating an insular habit or to forming landbridges.

Vanishing Assets: Conservation Status of U.S. Species

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence L. Master ◽  
Lynn S. Kutner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Conservation Status ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
The North ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Urban Markets ◽  
John James Audubon ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
European Colonization

“The air was literally filled with pigeons; the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse.” So observed John James Audubon, the eminent naturalist and bird artist, of a mass migration of passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) passing through Kentucky in 1813. For three days the pigeons poured out of the Northeast in search of forests bearing nuts and acorns. By Audubon’s estimate, the flock that passed overhead contained more than I billion birds, a number consistent with calculations made by other ornithologists. As the pigeons approached their roost, Audubon noted that the noise they made “reminded me of a hard gale at sea passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel.” Indeed, they were so numerous that by some accounts every other bird on the North American continent was probably a passenger pigeon at the time of European colonization (Schorger 1955). Yet despite this extraordinary abundance, barely 100 years later the last passenger pigeon, a female bird named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. The vast flocks of passenger pigeons moved around eastern North America, feeding mostly on the fruits of forest trees such as beechnuts and acorns. Two factors conspired to seal their fate. Because of their huge numbers, the birds were easy to hunt, especially at their roosting sites. Hunters were ingenious in developing increasingly efficient ways to slaughter the birds. Armed with sticks, guns, nets, or sulfur fires, hunters swept through the enormous roosting colonies, carting away what they could carry and feeding the remaining carcasses to their pigs. One of these methods, in which a decoy pigeon with its eyes sewn shut was attached to a perch, or stool, gave rise to the term stool pigeon. As the railroads expanded west, enormous numbers could be sent to major urban markets like New York, where pigeons became the cheapest meat available. They were so cheap and abundant that live birds were used as targets in shooting galleries. At the same time that this frontal assault on the pigeons was under way, human settlers were expanding into the interior of the country, clearing large areas of the forests on which the flocks depended for food.

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