scholarly journals Palaeogeographic and palaeoenvironmental characteristics of major marine incursions in northwestern Europe during the Westphalian C (Bolsovian)

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 331-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiel DUSAR ◽  
Eva PAPROTH ◽  
Maurice STREEL ◽  
Martin J.M. BLESS

The Westphalian C was a time of marked tectonic and climatic changes within the Variscan Foreland, but our understanding of these changes is hampered by a poor appreciation of large-scale palaeogeography and palaeogeographic evolution within this key stratigraphic interval. The distribution of tonsteins, marine bands and faunal occurrences related to marine incursions or the proximity of marine conditions in Britain and on the European mainland during the Westphalian C (Bolsovian) is briefly summarised. The favoured environmental conditions of some selected fossil taxa (Lingula, arenaceous foraminifers, Geisina, conchostracan faunas and Torispora producing tree ferns) are highlighted. A palaeogeographic model shows the relationship between major sedimentary facies belts in the Westphalian C of western Europe and the influence of major marine incursions on the distribution pattern of incursion-related faunas. The frequent succession of transgressive-regressive faunal phases in beds with marine faunas and the close correlation between the distribution of these beds and the distribution of upper delta plain environments in the Westphalian C of northwestern Europe suggest that marine incursions were long-lived, related to glacio-eustatic events, and cannot be regarded as catastrophic « flash floods ».

Author(s):  
Jürgen Ehlers

The last 2–3 Ma have witnessed climatic changes of a scale unknown to the preceding 300 Ma. In the cold periods vegetation was reduced to a steppe, giving rise to large-scale aeolian deposition of sand and loess and river sands and gravels. In the warm stages, flora and fauna recolonized the region. Parts of Europe were repeatedly covered by mountain glaciers or continental ice sheets which brought along huge amounts of unweathered rock debris from their source areas. The ice sheets dammed rivers and redirected drainage towards the North Sea. They created a new, glacial landscape. This chapter presents an outline of the climatic history, and in particular the glacial processes involved in shaping the landscapes of western Europe. By convention, geologists generally tend to draw stratigraphical boundaries in marine deposits because they are more likely to represent continuous sedimentation and relatively consistent environments in comparison to terrestrial sediments. However, marine deposits from the period in question are relatively rarely exposed at the surface. According to a conclusion of the International Geological Congress 1948 the Tertiary/Quaternary boundary was defined as the base of the marine deposits of the Calabrian in southern Italy. In the Calabrian sediments fossils are found that reflect a very distinct climatic cooling (amongst others the foraminifer Hyalinea baltica). This climatic change roughly coincides with a reversal of the earth’s magnetic field; it is situated at the upper boundary of what is called the Olduvai Event. Consequently, it is relatively easy to identify; its age is today estimated at 1.77 Ma (Shackleton et al. 1990). However, in contrast to the older parts of the earth’s history, the significant changes within the Quaternary are not changes in faunal composition but changes in climate. For reasons of long-term climatic evolution the base of the Calabrian is not a very suitable global boundary. Its adoption excludes some of the major glaciations from the Quaternary. Therefore, in major parts of Europe another Tertiary/Quaternary boundary is in use, based on the stratigraphy of the Lower Rhine area (e.g. Zagwijn 1989). Here the most significant climatic change is already recorded as far back as the Gauss/Matuyama magnetic reversal (some 2.6 Ma ago).


Inner Asia ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-214
Author(s):  
Christian Ressel

AbstractMy analysis of cooperation strategies considers pastoralism in the context of its long-term relationship to the steppe environment, geographical conditions and seasonal climatic changes. Under the influence of socialist state policies, previous socio–economic patterns were superseded by a ‘progressive’ re-organisation of production that created a new frame for economic action. The resultant forms of cooperation, as implemented by herders, related to different modes of production, which D. Sneath describes as ‘specialist’ and ‘domestic’ modes. During the collective period these modes largely correlated with different concepts of animal property.Within large–scale collective farms communal production became central to herders’ activities. Specialist production was carried out with collective-owned animals according to new formal structures, whereas the management of limited private herds was largely unaffected by official regulations and continued to be organised informally. Correspondingly, different cooperation strategies among herders’ groups were implemented in accordance with different kinds of social obligations and interests, each being adjusted adequately to the given socio-economic and environmental conditions. The differences between concepts of socialist society and the way herders acted in practice to some degree enabled the accumulation of larger private herds and facilitated the continuation of ‘old’ pre-collective patterns under ‘new’ socialist conditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 222 ◽  
pp. 05004
Author(s):  
Irma Martyn ◽  
Yaroslav Petrov ◽  
Sergey Stepanov ◽  
Artem Sidorenko

The article discusses the issue of the relationship between climate change and the productivity of oceanic ecosystems. The data on the course of the number of commercial populations in the productive zone of the ocean are analyzed. Comparison of data on climate fluctuations and populations of commercial fish over a period of 16 years, which will reveal the conjugation of climate fluctuations and fish productivity. On the basis of the results obtained, a model is proposed for predicting the abundance of a commercial species for several years, depending on the climate. The results obtained provide an answer to the question of whether long-term fluctuations in the abundance of commercial species are influenced by the climate or large-scale fishing.


2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
Jeroen de Ridder

Discussions about the relationship between science and religion have never been absent from the public arena, but they seem to have made something of a comeback in the past decade or two. It is hard to say what accounts for such large-scale developments in society. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it has become increasingly clear that the secularization thesis, i.e., the claim that the modernization and rationalization of societies goes hand in hand with the gradual disappearance of religion, must be put to rest at the graveyard of disconfirmed sociological predictions. Religion is here to stay, it now appears. Thoroughly secularized societies like those we find in Western Europe may be exceptional rather than exemplary.


VASA ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Hanji Zhang ◽  
Dexin Yin ◽  
Yue Zhao ◽  
Yezhou Li ◽  
Dejiang Yao ◽  
...  

Summary: Our meta-analysis focused on the relationship between homocysteine (Hcy) level and the incidence of aneurysms and looked at the relationship between smoking, hypertension and aneurysms. A systematic literature search of Pubmed, Web of Science, and Embase databases (up to March 31, 2020) resulted in the identification of 19 studies, including 2,629 aneurysm patients and 6,497 healthy participants. Combined analysis of the included studies showed that number of smoking, hypertension and hyperhomocysteinemia (HHcy) in aneurysm patients was higher than that in the control groups, and the total plasma Hcy level in aneurysm patients was also higher. These findings suggest that smoking, hypertension and HHcy may be risk factors for the development and progression of aneurysms. Although the heterogeneity of meta-analysis was significant, it was found that the heterogeneity might come from the difference between race and disease species through subgroup analysis. Large-scale randomized controlled studies of single species and single disease species are needed in the future to supplement the accuracy of the results.


Author(s):  
Ron Harris

Before the seventeenth century, trade across Eurasia was mostly conducted in short segments along the Silk Route and Indian Ocean. Business was organized in family firms, merchant networks, and state-owned enterprises, and dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Arabic traders. However, around 1600 the first two joint-stock corporations, the English and Dutch East India Companies, were established. This book tells the story of overland and maritime trade without Europeans, of European Cape Route trade without corporations, and of how new, large-scale, and impersonal organizations arose in Europe to control long-distance trade for more than three centuries. It shows that by 1700, the scene and methods for global trade had dramatically changed: Dutch and English merchants shepherded goods directly from China and India to northwestern Europe. To understand this transformation, the book compares the organizational forms used in four major regions: China, India, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The English and Dutch were the last to leap into Eurasian trade, and they innovated in order to compete. They raised capital from passive investors through impersonal stock markets and their joint-stock corporations deployed more capital, ships, and agents to deliver goods from their origins to consumers. The book explores the history behind a cornerstone of the modern economy, and how this organizational revolution contributed to the formation of global trade and the creation of the business corporation as a key factor in Europe's economic rise.


2020 ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Vladimir Batiuk

In this article, the ''Cold War'' is understood as a situation where the relationship between the leading States is determined by ideological confrontation and, at the same time, the presence of nuclear weapons precludes the development of this confrontation into a large-scale armed conflict. Such a situation has developed in the years 1945–1989, during the first Cold War. We see that something similar is repeated in our time-with all the new nuances in the ideological struggle and in the nuclear arms race.


1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Henk L. F. Saeijs

The Delta Project is in its final stage. In 1974 it was subjected to political reconsideration, but it is scheduled now for completion in 1987. The final touches are being put to the storm-surge barrier and two compartment dams that divide the Oosterschelde into three areas: one tidal, one with reduced tide, and one a freshwater lake. Compartmentalization will result in 13% of channels, 45% of intertidal flats and 59% of salt marshes being lost. There is a net gain of 7% of shallow-water areas. Human interventions with large scale impacts are not new in the Oosterschelde but the large scale and short time in which these interventions are taking place are, as is the creation of a controlled tidal system. This article focusses on the area with reduced tide and compares resent day and expected characteristics. In this reduced tidal part salt marshes will extend by 30–70%; intertidal flats will erode to a lower level and at their edges, and the area of shallow water will increase by 47%. Biomass production on the intertidal flats will decrease, with consequences for crustaceans, fishes and birds. The maximum number of waders counted on one day and the number of ‘bird-days' will decrease drastically, with negative effects for the wader populations of western Europe. The net area with a hard substratum in the reduced tidal part has more than doubled. Channels will become shallower. Detritus import will not change significantly. Stratification and oxygen depletion will be rare and local. The operation of the storm-surge barrier and the closure strategy chosen are very important for the ecosystem. Two optional closure strategies can be followed without any additional environmental consequences. It was essential to determine a clearly defined plan of action for the whole area, and to make land-use choices from the outset. How this was done is briefly described.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Karami ◽  
Brandon Bookstaver ◽  
Melissa Nolan

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted nearly all aspects of life and has posed significant threats to international health and the economy. Given the rapidly unfolding nature of the current pandemic, there is an urgent need to streamline literature synthesis of the growing scientific research to elucidate targeted solutions. While traditional systematic literature review studies provide valuable insights, these studies have restrictions, including analyzing a limited number of papers, having various biases, being time-consuming and labor-intensive, focusing on a few topics, incapable of trend analysis, and lack of data-driven tools. OBJECTIVE This study fills the mentioned restrictions in the literature and practice by analyzing two biomedical concepts, clinical manifestations of disease and therapeutic chemical compounds, with text mining methods in a corpus containing COVID-19 research papers and find associations between the two biomedical concepts. METHODS This research has collected papers representing COVID-19 pre-prints and peer-reviewed research published in 2020. We used frequency analysis to find highly frequent manifestations and therapeutic chemicals, representing the importance of the two biomedical concepts. This study also applied topic modeling to find the relationship between the two biomedical concepts. RESULTS We analyzed 9,298 research papers published through May 5, 2020 and found 3,645 disease-related and 2,434 chemical-related articles. The most frequent clinical manifestations of disease terminology included COVID-19, SARS, cancer, pneumonia, fever, and cough. The most frequent chemical-related terminology included Lopinavir, Ritonavir, Oxygen, Chloroquine, Remdesivir, and water. Topic modeling provided 25 categories showing relationships between our two overarching categories. These categories represent statistically significant associations between multiple aspects of each category, some connections of which were novel and not previously identified by the scientific community. CONCLUSIONS Appreciation of this context is vital due to the lack of a systematic large-scale literature review survey and the importance of fast literature review during the current COVID-19 pandemic for developing treatments. This study is beneficial to researchers for obtaining a macro-level picture of literature, to educators for knowing the scope of literature, to journals for exploring most discussed disease symptoms and pharmaceutical targets, and to policymakers and funding agencies for creating scientific strategic plans regarding COVID-19.


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