scholarly journals The international tephra research group ‘Commission on Tephrochronology’ and its activities – the first 60 years

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Lowe ◽  
Peter M. Abbott ◽  
Takehiko Suzuki ◽  
Britta J. L. Jensen

Abstract. Modern tephra studies per se began almost 100 years ago (in the late 1920s) but the first collective of tephrochronologists, with a common purpose and nascent global outlook, was not formed until 7 September, 1961, in Warsaw, Poland. On that date, the inaugural ‘Commission on Tephrochronology’ (COT) was ratified under the aegis of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). COT’s formation can be attributed largely to the leadership of Kunio Kobayashi of Japan, the commission’s president for its first 12 years. We were motivated to record COT’s heritage for posterity and also because the discipline of tephrochronology, including the study of cryptotephras, continues to grow globally at a significant rate. This is recognition of tephrochronology as both a unique correlational and age-equivalent dating method, and as a complementary method in other fields, such as volcanology, in which tephra research has been employed to develop eruption histories and hazards and to help understand volcano-climate interactions. In this article, we review the history of COT (which also functioned under other names, abbreviated as COTS, CEV, ICCT, COTAV, SCOTAV, INTAV) under the umbrella of INQUA for 53 of the last 60 years, or under IAVCEI (International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior) for seven of the last 60 years, including since 2019. We describe the development of the commission and its subsequent activities that include organising nine specialist tephra-field meetings in seven different countries, numerous conference sessions or workshops, and generating tephra-themed issues of journals/books or specialist internet documents or websites. The commission began to prosper after 1987 when key changes occurred, and it has blossomed further, especially in the past decade or so as an entire new cohort of specialists has emerged alongside new analytical and dating techniques to become a vibrant global group today. We name 29 elected officers involved with COT since 1961 and their roles, and 15 honorary life members. We also document the aims of the commission and conclude by evaluating its legacies and current and future work.

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (S349) ◽  
pp. 481-488
Author(s):  
Suzanne Débarbat

AbstractThe research about women in astronomy began in 1988 following a request received from Wilfried Schröder, now deceased but, at that time, in charge of the Interdivision Commisssion on History, which was included in the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) attached to the IUGG International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. The results obtained concerning “Astronomy, Geophysics and Women”, presented at the symposium “The history of geomagnetism and aeronomy”, were published (Débarbat 1989) in Advances in Geosciences in the form of a short paper. The IAU began to publish, in 1992, membership statistics in its Information Bulletin IB 68, including percentages of women and men, and several papers were published on the subject up to the last one Statistics on Women in IAU Membership (Débarbat 1989). Recent results are given including examples from the past.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Schwartz ◽  
Cécile Gautheron ◽  
Richard A Ketcham ◽  
Fabrice Brunet ◽  
Arnaud Agranier ◽  
...  

<p>This contribution investigates the use of the (U-Th-Sm)/He dating method to unravel the exhumation history of ultramafic ophiolite rocks. Magnetite-bearing rocks are widely distributed on the Earth's surface and are associated with a large range of geological and geodynamic settings. However, little is known of the crystallization and exhumation history of in case of oceanic accretion to orogenic zones, due to a lack of datable minerals. In the past few years, the (U-Th-Sm)/He method applied on magnetite or spinel appears to be very relevant and promising. However, the applicability of this method to access the thermal history has never been quantitatively investigated, limiting the age interpretation. To highlight the applicability and to access geological information using magnetite (U-Th-Sm)/He method (MgHe), we applied it on a well-known high-pressure low-temperature alpine ophiolite (Rocher Blanc ophiolite, Western Alps) where the P-T-t exhumation history is well constrained. A study of magnetite petrology, mineralogy and geochemistry has allowed us to characterize that magnetite crystallize at T>250°C. MgHe ages that range between apatite and zircon fission track (AFT and ZFT) ages of surrounding rocks in agreement with the known thermal sensitivity of those methods. MgHe data were co-inverted with AFT and ZFT data to determine the most robust thermal history associated with the ophiolite cooling. This first MgHe age inversion is consistent with experimental He diffusion data, opening the use of MgHe as a thermochronometer. This result allows us to refine the thermal history and to precise the geodynamical context associated to the final exhumation of this alpine ophiolite.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-172
Author(s):  
Mioara Mandea ◽  
Eduard Petrovský

Abstract. Throughout the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics's (IUGG's) centennial anniversary, the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy is holding a series of activities to underline the ground-breaking facts in the area of geomagnetism and aeronomy. Over 100 years, the history of these research fields is rich, and here we present a short tour through some of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy's (IAGA's) major achievements. Starting with the scientific landscape before IAGA, through its foundation until the present, we review the research and achievements considering its complexity and variability, from geodynamo up to the Sun and outer space. While a number of the achievements were accomplished with direct IAGA involvement, the others represent the most important benchmarks of geomagnetism and aeronomy studies. In summary, IAGA is an important and active association with a long and rich history and prospective future.


Author(s):  
Magdaleen Swanepoel

Medicine and law were related from early times. This relation resulted as a necessity of protecting communities from the irresponsible acts of impostors. Various legal codes dealing with medical malpractice existed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Islam, Greece, Rome, Persia and India. Over the course of the past 30 years, interest in the history of psychiatry has boomed. Much of this proliferation of interest has taken place under the broad influence of postmodernism and has resulted in multiple and diverse histories that no longer seek to provide a linear narrative of constant evolutionary progress. Rather, these new histories explore and disrupt taken for granted assumptions about the past and provide a starting point for discussion and debate about the some of the very foundations of mental health care in South Africa. As a matter of practical importance knowledge of how knowledge accrues and knowledge of the mistakes of the past is of prime importance in preventing similar mistakes in present and future work. An important reason for specifically understanding historical psychiatry is the fact that many of the uncertainties experienced in the present are a direct result of decisions made in the past. The key issue is that while it is tempting to experience current psychiatric and legal approaches towards the mentally disordered as natural and permanent, an understanding of the past helps mental health and legal practitioners to see things in a different perspective. Psychiatric and legal approaches towards the mentally disordered have changed over time and can undoubtedly also be changed in future. Therefore, the research conducted in this article focuses on the history and development of law and psychiatry including prehistoric times, the Arabian countries, the Nile Valley as well as Greece and Rome.


1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 759-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Morris-Suzuki

A specter is haunting europe and, indeed, the rest of the world: not, of course the specter of Communism, but of that other big C—Culture. At the 1991 Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia, Prof. Ying-Shih Yu of Princeton University argued in his keynote address that the most important current trend in historical studies was the recognition of “culture as a relatively autonomous force in history” (Yu 1991, 21). For too long, he suggested, historians have looked at the past through a narrow window shaped by the values of the west, and particularly by the all-powerful western notion of history as the pursuit of “scientific truth.” To break through this constricting frame we need to recognize “that the history of every society or people deserves to be studied not only as a part of world history but also on account of its intrinsic values” (Yu 1991, 26); we need, in other words, to accept Watanabe Hiroshi's notion that every society or region may be “‘particular’ in its own way like an individual” (quoted in Yu 1991, 23).


Author(s):  
Anne Fleming

Over the past century, legal history and economic history developed as separate fields of scholarship. Their separation reflects an understanding of law and economy as distinct objects that may be pulled apart and each analysed apart from the other. Yet, even assuming that law and economy are separable, it is undeniable that they interact. This chapter first maps the state of the field over the past several decades, identifying two major questions that have guided much of the scholarship on the border between legal and economic history. It then describes two of the theoretical frameworks available to legal historians for conceptualizing the relationship between law and economy. Finally, it argues that future work on the history of political economy should put aside measuring the impact of law on economy (and vice versa) and instead explore how the boundary between law and economy has been constructed and maintained over time.


1872 ◽  
Vol 18 (83) ◽  
pp. 397-414
Author(s):  
Henry Maudsley

In beginning the work of this Section, over which I have the honour to preside, I shall confine myself to a few introductory remarks of a general character, leaving to those who will come after me the more exact scientific work of which we have fair promise in the papers that are to be read. The occasion seems fitting to take a short survey of the position of medical psychology in relation to certain important questions of the day, and to consider the bearing which its progress must eventually have upon them. Permit me, then, to ask you, first, to look back a little way at what medical psychology was, in order the better to realise what it is, and, if possible, to forecast something of the character of its future work. A glance at the past will show how great a step forward has been made, and may yield some reason for congratulation; a glance at the present, showing, as it cannot fail to do, how small a proportion the gains bear to what remains to be acquired, will prove that as yet we have rather discovered the right path than made much way on it—that we are, in truth, only on the threshold of the history of medical psychology as a science.


1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. W. Small

It is generally accepted that history is an element of culture and the historian a member of society, thus, in Croce's aphorism, that the only true history is contemporary history. It follows from this that when there occur great changes in the contemporary scene, there must also be great changes in historiography, that the vision not merely of the present but also of the past must change.


1962 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
M. Schwarzschild

It is perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the past decade in astronomy that the evolution of some major classes of astronomical objects has become accessible to detailed research. The theory of the evolution of individual stars has developed into a substantial body of quantitative investigations. The evolution of galaxies, particularly of our own, has clearly become a subject for serious research. Even the history of the solar system, this close-by intriguing puzzle, may soon make the transition from being a subject of speculation to being a subject of detailed study in view of the fast flow of new data obtained with new techniques, including space-craft.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard

Purpose The current “specific language impairment” and “developmental language disorder” discussion might lead to important changes in how we refer to children with language disorders of unknown origin. The field has seen other changes in terminology. This article reviews many of these changes. Method A literature review of previous clinical labels was conducted, and possible reasons for the changes in labels were identified. Results References to children with significant yet unexplained deficits in language ability have been part of the scientific literature since, at least, the early 1800s. Terms have changed from those with a neurological emphasis to those that do not imply a cause for the language disorder. Diagnostic criteria have become more explicit but have become, at certain points, too narrow to represent the wider range of children with language disorders of unknown origin. Conclusions The field was not well served by the many changes in terminology that have transpired in the past. A new label at this point must be accompanied by strong efforts to recruit its adoption by clinical speech-language pathologists and the general public.


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