5. Exploration and exploitation

‘Exploration and exploitation’ reviews the history of Arctic exploration and exploitation, which owes a great deal to early European encounters with the 'New World'. This topic includes the earliest Viking settlement of Greenland to a succession of European explorers and expeditions that were designed to search for the Northwest Passage. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), which specialized in fur trading, was integral to the early exploitation of the Canadian north since it was chartered in May 1670. The history and presence of industrial-scale mining in the Arctic over the last 300 years also played an important part. The term 'Arctic paradox', used by Arctic observers, describes a series of contradictory pressures facing the region—managing resources, promoting sustainable development, and ensuring that indigenous and northern communities are beneficiaries from any form of resource-led development.

Causes and Management of Gastric and Duodenal Ulcer in Adolescents

Many etiological hypotheses have been suggested to explain the development of peptic ulcers during the last 300 years (including gastric ulcer and duodenal ulcer). In the last two decades, significant progress has been made in understanding the pathophysiology of peptic ulcer disease, particularly with regard to the involvement of Helicobacter pylori and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs). This study will attempt to review literature on etiology and management of gastric and duodenal ulcers among adolescents.

TRANSMUTED EXPLORATION IN EFFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT FOR THE AMAZON

The present article presents historical information about the periods of exploitation, transmuted in the figure of a fallacious development, which in the last 300 years, has not brought effective gains to the population residing in the Amazon. The criticism is based on the historiography of events that took place since Portuguese explorations with hinterland drugs in the 17th and 18th centuries; going through the economic cycle of rubber and mining of minerals; the exploitation of wood from the migratory flow encouraged by the military governments; reaching the present day with the production of agricultural commodities and hydroelectric enterprises. The false developmentalist conceptions make use of the extent to which the Amazon was exploited in the name of false development, said by those who exploit it in the name of progress and not as the effective and sustainable development of those who reside in the Amazon. All of this has resulted in gains for the few, resulting in the social, economic and environmental imbalance of many.

Environmental DNA methods for the analysis of macroorganismal populations

Environmental DNA (eDNA) methods have been widely used to investigate the distribution and abundance/biomass of macroorganisms. eDNA methods analyze DNA collected directly from the environment, such as from water, soil, and air. The techniques have been applied to many taxa inhabiting various aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The recent development of eDNA methods has revolutionized the way we assess macroorganisms in natural environments. In this talk, I will present current developments of eDNA methodology, especially with regard to population analysis using various DNA measurement methods. For example, 1) eDNA was used to assess fish species distributions and abundance/biomass (Takahara et al. 2012, Doi et al. 2017a), 2) quantitative PCR of sedimentary DNA was applied to sediment core samples to detect the DNA of three dominant fish species spanning the last 300 years (Kuwae et al. 2020), and 3) new methods for sampling eDNA from water (Doi et al. 2017b) and on-site measurement (Doi et al. 2020) will be presented. I end by addressing the need for standardized protocols for eDNA monitoring to enable broader uptake of eDNA technology (Minamoto et al. 2021).

From movement into action to manner of causation: changes in argument mapping in the into-causative

Over the last 300 years, the into-causative (he talked his father into giving him money) increased in frequency and lexical diversity. Changes of this kind are often taken as evidence of functional expansion. From a Construction Grammar (CxG) perspective, this paper argues that what appears to be a loss of restrictions on the verbal slot results from changes in argument mapping links. As the construction provides the argument roles by mapping semantics (causer, causee, result) onto syntax (subject, object, oblique), stronger mapping links increasingly facilitated the use of verbs that are semantically and syntactically atypical for the expression of causation. Data from the Corpus of Historical American English confirm three predictions of this hypothesis with respect to shifts in (i) the semantic classes of matrix verbs, (ii) their general argument structure preferences, and (iii) voice-marking. The results provide evidence for a subtle semantic change from movement into action to manner of causation. The increase in frequency and productivity are hence explained as the consequence of the syntactic form becoming a more reliable cue for causative meaning. We discuss implications for models of language change against the background of current issues in Diachronic Construction Grammar (DCxG) pertaining to constructionalization vs. constructional change.

Sedimentary DNA tracks decadal-centennial changes in fish abundance

Far too little is known about the long-term dynamics of populations for almost all macro-organisms. Here, we examined the utility of sedimentary DNA techniques to reconstruct the dynamics in the “abundance” of a species, which has not been previously defined. We used fish DNA in marine sediments and examined whether it could be used to track the past dynamics of pelagic fish abundance in marine waters. Quantitative PCR for sedimentary DNA was applied on sediment-core samples collected from anoxic bottom sediments in Beppu Bay, Japan. The DNA of three dominant fish species (anchovy, sardine, and jack mackerel) were quantified in sediment sequences spanning the last 300 years. Temporal changes in fish DNA concentrations are consistent with those of landings in Japan for all three species and with those of sardine fish scale concentrations. Thus, sedimentary DNA could be used to track decadal-centennial dynamics of fish abundance in marine waters.

The ontological threat of foreign fighters

The threat represented by foreign fighters to their home state has rarely materialised, yet states have increasingly legislated against foreign fighters over the course of the last 300 years. This observation points to the act of legislating as fulfilling some function other than the protection of the state against a physical threat presented by foreign fighter returnees. This paper asks what is problematic about foreign-fighter returnees from the point of view of lawmakers if they do not represent a physical threat? It argues that returnees generate ontological insecurity on the part of lawmakers. Consequently, the act of legislating against them serves to reify the identity of individual lawmakers. This argument is supported using historical case comparison of Westminster parliamentary debates on foreign fighting. This paper finds that what is at stake in foreign-fighter legislation is not the physical security of the national state but the ontological security of lawmakers. These findings point to the need for a shift of the research on foreign fighters that moves beyond the potential terrorist threat they represent to an understanding of what they mean for International Relations.

Disturbance and resilience of a Sphagnum peatland in western Russia (Western Dvina Lakeland) during the last 300 years: A multiproxy, high-resolution study

This paper presents the results of multiproxy research (pollen, charcoal, plant macrofossil and testate amoebae) on the biogenic deposits core from Gorodetsky Moch, an ombrotrophic peatland in western Russia (Western Dvina Lakeland). We reconstructed the impact of disturbance on peatland development in the last 300 years by using chronology of the records based on 14C and 210Pb data set. The multiproxy reconstruction was compared with changes in the land cover using historical maps and Corona images, which provides a unique spatial analysis of past ecological and land-use changes. We aimed to determine the effect of local disturbances (drainage) and land-use changes (landscape openness) on the development of the peatland during the last 300 years. Our study suggests that human activity had a crucial impact on the development of the peatland in the last centuries. The analysis of testate amoebae and plant macrofossils revealed a clear disturbed layer in the second half of the 20th century CE. Most probably, the drainage of the peatland triggered changes in the community of testate amoebae and plants, thereby causing a functional shift in Sphagnum peatland ecosystem. The hydrological stress and vegetation composition shift led to the collapse of mixotrophic testate amoebae. However, the peatland showed strong resilience and recovered toward the end of the 20th century CE and the beginning of the 21st century CE, despite the lower water table. Our study shows an example of the peatland ecosystem that experienced a considerable stress but finally sustained the former function.