Tracing the Anthropocene bomb-spike in urban strata of Vienna

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Meszar ◽  
Karin Hain ◽  
Michael Wagreich ◽  
Kira Lappé ◽  
Martin Mosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Chemical Separation ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Sandy Sediment ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Starting Date ◽  
Park Area ◽  
The 1960S

<p>Urban anthropogenic strata forms the layered archaeosphere in the underground of large cities. In a transdisciplinary project involving geosciences, isotope physics and urban archaeology, funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), we looked for artificial isotopes in urban layers around the proposed starting date of the Anthropocene in the middle of the 20th century. The tested archaeological site is situated in the heart of Vienna, in a park area at Karlsplatz, adjacent to the renovated Vienna Museum. Excellent and detailed 3D archaeological stratigraphy sets age constraints around 1922, post-1945, and around the 1960s. A layer on top of the WWII rubble that fills fundaments of a 1922 building post-dates 1945, and pre-dates the finishing shaping of the human-made park ground of 1959, the date of the opening of the Vienna Museum. We focused on the fine-grained (clayey-sandy) sediment matrix on top of the WWII rubble, at the base of and mixed with backfilled soil material. The sieved fraction below 2 mm grain size was dried and pulverised. This sediment sample was prepared for chemical separation of actinides which were then analysed by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) using the setup at the Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator (VERA, Isotope Physics Group). We identified several artificial radionuclides including U-236, Np-237, Pu-239, Pu-240. Isotope ratios like Pu-240/Pu-239 and in particular U-233/U-236, which was only recently introduced as anthropogenic tracer by the VERA group, clearly point to atmospheric atomic bomb fallout material of the 1950s to 1960s. A significant input of Chernobyl (1986) material can be excluded based on the ratio Pu-241/Pu-239. Thus, the 1952-1964 bomb-spike as the possible primary (GSSP) marker of the Anthropocene can be identified and used even in coarse urban anthropogenic sediments of big cities, exemplifying the correlation potential of these radionuclide markers.</p>

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 178-184
Author(s):  
Vince Houghton
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Scientific Intelligence ◽  
Security System ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Soviet Science ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Failure ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact

Even the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb in August, 1949 did not convince most Americans to reconsider their perception of Soviet science. American scientific, military, and policymaking elite spread blame widely for the intelligence failure, but refused to acknowledge the possibility of Soviet scientific strength as the primary culprit. Instead, they latched onto ideas that mitigated the impact of Soviet scientific ability. While the rest of the American national security system was improving, the refusal to give Soviet science the credit where credit was due meant that the American scientific intelligence apparatus continued to falter well into the 1950s. The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) – which was explicitly created to collect, analyze, and disseminate intelligence concerning enemy scientific development – did not become an effective intelligence agency until the 1960s, despite the emerging Soviet atomic threat.

Certification, Lawsuits and the Role of Epidemiology in the Yokkaichi Asthma Episode in the 1960s and 1970s: Lessons and Legacy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danyang Feng
Keyword(s):  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Certification System ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City ◽  
Asthma Episode

Summary Yokkaichi asthma, one of the four big pollution diseases of Japan, occurred as a result of the operation of local petrochemical complexes in the city of Yokkaichi in the early 1960s. This article explores how Yokkaichi asthma was caused, how it was certified by local government and how the air pollution victims ultimately won a lawsuit against the polluting corporations. Yoshida Katsumi, a Medical Professor at Mie Prefectural University, consulted the Atomic Bomb Medical Law to establish Yokkaichi’s own certification system. Because both leukaemia and asthma are non-specific diseases, they may also be caused by non-pollution-related factors. In the Yokkaichi lawsuit, Yoshida applied the epidemiological causation to the legal judgment for the purpose of providing compensation to individuals. As the case for compensation unfolded from 1967 to 1972, epidemiological knowledge, legal theory and social norms were deployed to advance the plaintiffs’ claim, whose success set a good example for other legal proceedings.

scholarly journals So Easy to See: Muriel Rukeyser and Berenice Abbott’s unfinished collaboration

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Rowena Kennedy-Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
Muriel Rukeyser ◽  
Lost Potential ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

This essay reassembles from archival materials the lost collaboration between Muriel Rukeyser and Berenice Abbott, So Easy to See, which pairs Abbott’s innovative Super-Sight photographs with Rukeyser’s poetic-theoretical discussions of ‘seeing’ in order to discuss lesbian desire, the atomic bomb, the relationship between art and science, and female genius. The work was repeatedly rejected by male editors and curators, who demeaned and undervalued the innovative nature of the project, in part because Abbott and Rukeyser dared to assert themselves as scientific experts; nevertheless, it is an intellectually rich and artistically innovative collaboration by two of the twentieth century’s most versatile artists. From the early 1940s through the 1960s, in a period in the U.S. defined by the elevation of the sciences over the arts, they shared a similar goal: to develop new methods for demonstrating the uses of and relationships between the arts and the sciences. Through their collaboration, Rukeyser and Abbott worked against accepted gendered and disciplinary boundaries, in order to show how ‘science and art meet and might meet in our time’ as sources of imaginative possibility and social progress. In doing so, they engendered questions about what kinds of collaborative and artistic practices are sanctioned, about the ontology of things and the everyday, about materialist philosophy and about the radical possibilities of interdisciplinarity. By making visible this lost collaboration, this essay participates in the recovery of an innovative and exciting modernist collaboration, and asks us to see both the lost potential of its inventiveness as well as to contextualise its disappearance. In order to see their work on ‘seeing’, we must also undertake an exploration into the cultural mechanisms that obfuscated it at mid-century.

scholarly journals Digital Survey for the Archaeological Analysis and the Enhancement of Gropina Archaeological Site

Heritage ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 848-857 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Bertocci ◽  
Andrea Arrighetti ◽  
Matteo Bigongiari
Keyword(s):  
Laser Scanner ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Evolutionary Models ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Virtual Platform ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Archaeological Analysis ◽  
Digital Survey

This paper concerns the path of knowledge that leads to the understanding of the morphology and evolution of the archaeological area discovered in the 1960s below the parish church of Gropina (AR). By dealing with archaeological surveying methods, the attention is focused on the digital survey technologies used, integrating data from laser scanner instruments with photogrammetric ones. The morphological base was necessary for the preparation of stratigraphic analyses, and allowed us to check the previous studies carried out on the building to extract a periodized planimetry. Finally, the digital drawing technologies have allowed us to hypothesize the schematic evolutionary models of the different phases of the building, and to use the digital survey to create a virtual platform through which to interact with the archaeological site, which is now closed to visitors.

Hybrid knowledge: the transnational co-production of the gas centrifuge for uranium enrichment in the 1960s

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN KRIGE
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Uranium Enrichment ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Gas Centrifuge ◽  
Hybrid Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Circulation ◽  
National Power ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractThe ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of knowledge circulation is explored in a study of the encounter between American and British nuclear scientists and engineers who together developed a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium in the 1960s. A fine-grained analysis of the transnational encounter reveals that the ‘how’ engages a wide variety of sometimes mundane modes of exchange in a series of face-to-face interactions over several years. The ‘why’ is driven by the reciprocal wish to improve the performance of the centrifuge, though this motive is embedded in the asymmetric field of the ‘special relationship’ in nuclear matters between the United Kingdom and the United States. The result of the encounter is co-produced, hybrid knowledge in which the national provenance of the contributions from each side of the Atlantic is at once diluted and a contested site for the affirmation of national power.

Late Quaternary Geology and Geochronology of Diring Yuriakh, An Early Paleolithic Site in Central Siberia

1999 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Waters ◽  
Steven L. Forman ◽  
James M. Pierson
Keyword(s):  
Late Quaternary ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Quaternary Geology ◽  
Paleolithic Site ◽  
Lena River ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Early Paleolithic ◽  
Eolian Sediments ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Eolian Deposits

AbstractDiring Yuriakh, an archaeological site on the highest terrace of the Lena River in subarctic eastern Siberia, provides evidence for the oldest and northern-most Early Paleolithic occupation in Asia. Stratigraphic and sedimentological studies at the site show that artifacts occur on a single eolian deflation surface that is underlain by fluvial sediments with inset cryogenic sand wedges and overlain by eolian deposits. Thermoluminescence ages on the fine-grained extracts from the eolian sediments and sand wedges that bound the artifact level indicate that the occupation occurred >260,000 yr B.P. and may possibly date between 270,000 and 370,000 yr B.P. This study documents that the artifacts from Diring Yuriakh are an order of magnitude older than artifacts from any previously reported site from Siberia. The antiquity and subarctic location of Diring Yuriakh indicates that people developed a subsistence strategy capable of surviving rigorous conditions in Siberia by ≥260,000 yr B.P.

Apocalyptic Fiction, 1950–2015

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather J. Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Economic Collapse ◽  
The 1960S

From 1950 to the 2010s, the genre known as apocalyptic fiction has grown in prominence, moving from the mass-market domain of science fiction to a more central position in the contemporary literary scene. The term “apocalyptic fiction” can be understood to encompass both depictions of cataclysms that destroy the Earth and texts that portray the aftermath of a disaster that annihilates a nation, civilization, or all but a few survivors of the human population. The term itself finds its roots in the book of Revelation, and while contemporary apocalyptic fiction tends to be largely secular in its worldview, important traces of the Christian tradition linger in these texts. Indeed, while apocalyptic fiction has evolved over the past sixty-five years in response to historical transformations in Western societies, much of it remains wedded to Revelation’s representation of women as the cause of apocalyptic destruction. The material of the 1950s reflects Cold War anxieties about nuclear war while presenting sexually liberated women as implicated in the same modernity that has created the atomic bomb. People of color are also depicted as threats that must be contained. The apocalyptic fiction of the 1960s registers a fascination with genetic, social, and literary mutation, ambivalently treating a variety of “others” as both toxic and potentially useful ambassadors to some new, postmodern condition. The 1970s see the emergence of feminist apocalypses, works that react against the sexist tendency to conflate female power and sexuality with apocalyptic menace. The 1980s introduce the “American apocalypse,” a subgenre that imagines a disaster befalling America in specifically economic terms. The 1990s, meanwhile, find combinations of the feminist and American apocalypse, while also beginning to bring environmental peril into focus. From 2000 forward, there is a renewed interest in broader, more global disasters, in part informed by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Formally, this is the era of the “metapocalypse”—apocalyptic fictions that are self-reflexive about the conventions of the genre, including those involving gender and race. Nonetheless, several of the novels in this period still unapologetically introduce figures that recall Jezebel and Babylon from Revelation. Finally, the period since 2010 has seen a revived emphasis on economic collapse precipitated by neoliberal capitalism as well as the anthropocene.

scholarly journals Making “The Garden City of the South”: Beautification, Preservation, and Downtown Planning in Augusta, Georgia

2019 ◽  
pp. 153851321987327
Author(s):  
J. Mark Souther
Keyword(s):  
Historic Preservation ◽  
Garden City ◽  
Downtown Revitalization ◽  
Civic Leaders ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Southern City ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Horticulture ◽  
Planning Approaches

This article illuminates how a smaller southern city engaged broader planning approaches. Civic leaders, especially women, pushed and partnered with municipal administrations to beautify Augusta, Georgia, a city with extraordinarily wide streets and a long tradition of urban horticulture. Their efforts in the 1900s to 1950s, often in concert with close by planners, led to a confluence of urban beautification, historic preservation, and downtown revitalization in the 1960s. This coordinated activity reshaped Augusta’s cityscape, exacerbated racial tensions, and enshrined principles of the City Beautiful, Garden City, and parks movements long after they receded in large cities, influencing the work of nationally prominent planners commissioned in the 1970s and 1980s.

Flattening and Unpacking Human Genetic Variation in Mexico, Postwar to Present

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Víctor Hugo Anaya-Muñoz ◽  
Vivette García-Deister ◽  
Edna Suárez-Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Native American ◽  
Human Genetics ◽  
Genomic Diversity ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Multidisciplinary Analysis ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Social Demographic

ArgumentThis paper analyzes the research strategies of three different cases in the study of human genetics in Mexico – the work of Rubén Lisker in the 1960s, INMEGEN's mapping of Mexican genomic diversity between 2004 and 2009, and the analysis of Native American variation by Andrés Moreno and his colleagues in contemporary research. We make a distinction between an approach that incorporates multiple disciplinary resources into sampling design and interpretation (unpacking), from one that privileges pragmatic considerations over more robust multidisciplinary analysis (flattening). These choices have consequences for social, demographic, and biomedical practices, and also for accounts of genetic variation in human populations. While the former strategyunpacksfine-grained genetic variation – favoring precision and realism, the latter tends toflattenindividual differences and historical depth in lieu of generalization.

Main trends in transformation of Central Asian macroregion ethnic space from 1897 to 2017

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
A.G. Manakov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Two Stages ◽  
Population Counts

The main trends in the ethnic transformation of the post-Soviet space were set long before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The most striking example of this is the process of ethnic transformation in the macroregion, including the territory of the young states of Central Asia (Kazakhstan and the republics of Middle Asia). The aim of the study is to identify the main trends in the transformation of the ethnic space of the Central Asian macroregion over a 120-year interval. For this, a set of ethnic indicators (ethnic mosaic, homogeneity, concentration, etc.) were used, calculated according to the results of censuses and population counts, as well as the methods which have been created in Russian cultural geography. As a part of the study period, two stages were distinguished, characterized by directly opposite trends in the transformation of the ethnic space of the macroregion. The first stage lasted until the end of the 1950s. It was characterized by a decrease in the share of the titular nations of the republics as a result of a significant migration influx of the population from outside the macroregion, which led to an increase in the degree of multi-ethnicity of the territory. Since the 1960s an increase in the share of the titular nations of the republics began, which was a consequence of the demographic explosion of the indigenous population and the migration outflow of non-titular peoples of the republics, and the concentration of titular ethnic groups within their republics increased. The most significant ethnic restructuring throughout the period was experienced by Kazakhstan and the North of Kyrgyzstan. In the second stage the ethnic structure of the population has undergone a radical transformation of all large cities in the macroregion underwent.

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