Regional accents modulate perspective in geographical space

In this study, participants listened to first-person statements that mentioned a character who was approaching a geographical location close to (Tenerife, Canary Islands) or distant from the participant (Madrid, Spanish peninsula), pronounced with either the participants' local or a distal regional accent. Participants more often judged approaching statements as coherent when they refer to a close place pronounced with local accent or refer to a distant place with distal accent, rather than when they refer to a close place with distal accent or to a distant place with local accent. These results strongly suggest that the local accent induces listeners to keep their own geographical perspective, whereas the distal accent determines shifting to another’s perspective. In sum, a subtle paralinguistic cue, the speaker’s regional accent, modulates the participants’ geographic perspective when they listen to identical first-person sentences with approaching deictic verbs.

PADDY FIELD CONVERSION IN INDONESIA IN A CONTEMPORARY GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE: A CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW OF HUMAN-NATURE DIALECTICS

Experts from various perspectives have widely reviewed the patterns, processes, reasons, and impacts of paddy field conversion. However, most of these reviews tend to understand paddy fields from the physical-material dimension. By using the perspective of contemporary geography, this paper provides a critical conceptual overview of the conversion of paddy fields through the elaboration of human-nature dialectic as a central theme in the discipline of geography. The dialectic also contains identity, spatial awareness, and spatial-symbolic order issues that affect the existence of farmers and their paddy fields. This critical review results in the argument that the relationship between farmers and paddy fields represents a spatial-symbolic order that contains values, enthusiasm, identity, and living traditions. The identity and existence of farmers are part of the existence of paddy fields. Paddy fields have become part of the minds and consciousness of the farmers. The conversion of paddy fields will reduce the eco-cultural relations in this order and replace it with a capitalistic system.Keywords: contemporary geography, human-nature dialectic, paddy field conversion, spatial-symbolic order, sustainable agriculture

Contribution of Renewable Energy Consumption to CO2 Emission Mitigation: A Comparative Analysis from a Global Geographic Perspective

Renewable energy consumption (REC) has an important significance in mitigating CO2 emissions. However, currently, few scientists have analyzed the underlying impact of REC from a global geographic perspective. Thus, here, we divide the world into seven regions to study this impact during the period 1971–2016 using the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI). These regions were East Asia and the Pacific (EAP), Europe and Central Asia (ECA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Middle East and North Africa (MENA), North America (NA), South Asia (SA), and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The results showed that ECA had the most obviously mitigating effect of −10.13%, followed by NA and MENA (−3.91% and −3.87%, respectively). Inversely, EAP had the largest driving effect of 4.12%, followed by SA (3.43%) and the others. Globally, REC had an overall mitigating contribution of −11.04% to total CO2 change. These results indicate that it is still important to exploit and utilize renewable energy, especially in presently developing or underdeveloped countries. Moreover, for some countries at a certain stage, their REC effects were negative, but, concurrently, their energy intensity effects were positive. These results show that some developing countries recently reduced carbon emissions only by extensively using renewable energy, not by enhancing energy-use efficiency. Finally, some policy implications for reducing CO2 in different countries are recommended.

On the Systematics and Biodiversity of the Palaeoannelida

Palaeoannelida Weigert and Bleidorn, 2016 is an old clade branching off at the base of the Annelida radiation. It includes two morphologically and ecological divergent groups of sedentary burrowers and tube-dwellers: Magelonidae Cunningham and Ramage, 1888, and Oweniidae Rioja, 1917. Magelonids are characterised by a flattened, shovel-shaped prostomium and a pair of ventral papillated palps. Oweniids have simplified bodies lacking parapodia or appendages and are easily distinguished by the presence of oval patches of packed uncini, each with two distal curved teeth. The present review aims to summarise available information about the diversity of forms and life strategies displayed in the group, providing some guidelines for species identification and the techniques commonly used for their study. In addition, the assumed geographic distributions of some taxa are critically discussed. A brief introduction about the evolutionary relationships, systematics, and taxonomic history is given for both Magelonidae and Oweniidae. The motivation of this review is to highlight the main knowledge gaps from a taxonomic, methodological, and geographic perspective, aiming at stimulating further research into members of this clade.

Toward a Multilingual Victorian Transatlanticism

This essay argues that scholarship being done under the sign of transatlantic studies, and Victorian transatlantic studies in particular, is problematically focused on the anglophone northern Atlantic region. Challenging both the essentialness and the disciplinary primacy of the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, I argue instead that the entire nineteenth-century Atlantic world was a geographically and linguistically permeable space. Paying attention to crossings from north to south and vice versa is both methodologically and ethically necessary. From a methodological perspective, it can help us produce much more thorough answers to the questions transatlantic studies purports to ask about identity and community. But reading beyond anglophone British and U.S. American texts can also help us decolonize our reading and thinking. Of course, work like this requires scholars to read in second and third languages; as such, this essay discusses and denaturalizes the institutional barriers to multilingual English studies. It also offers a case study—a brief reading of a novel by Argentine writer Vicente Fidel López—demonstrating the insights that can be gained by expanding both our geographic perspective and our methodological toolbox.