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1

Evans, D. V., and J. N. Newman. "Report on the First International Workshop on Water Waves and Floating Bodies." Journal of Fluid Mechanics 174 (January 1987): 521–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022112087000223.

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A workshop was held at MIT in February 1986 for specialists performing theoretical research on the interactions of water waves with floating or submerged bodies. The principal applications of this field are related to ship hydrodynamics and to wave loadings on offshore platform. In addition to the traditional approach based on linearization of the wave and body motions, substantial progress has been made on nonlinear problems including both analytical and numerical studies. Subsequent workshops are planned on an annual basis.
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2

Mrówczyński, Radosław, Marco d’Ischia, Haeshin Lee, and Stefan Jurga. "1st Symposium on Polydopamine and NanoTech Poland 2018: Conference Report." Biomimetics 3, no. 4 (2018): 37. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics3040037.

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The NanoTech Poland is an annual international conference with a strong scientific agenda focused on nanotechnology in energy, environment, and biomedicine. The Nanotech Poland 2018 was held at the NanoBioMedical Centre and Department of Physics at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań from June 6th to June 9th. The aim of NanoTech Poland 2018 was to bring together the scientific community’s principal investigators, scientists, researchers, analysts, clinicians, policy makers, industry experts, and well-established and budding entrepreneurs to discuss the present and future perspectives in nanotechnology and nanoscience research and development. This year, the 1st Symposium on Polydopamine was held on June 6th. This forum was dedicated to the application of polydopamine and related catechol materials in a variety of research fields, both at the nano- and macroscale. The symposium gathered leading scientists from this important research field from top universities and institutions that have been involved in the research revolved around polydopamine. With over 200 national and international participants, NanoTech Poland 2018 and the 1st Symposium on Polydopamine provided a forum to present and discuss the latest scientific news from the field of nanotechnology with a strong interdisciplinary aspect and bioinspired materials.
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3

Ngoc, Hoang Thi Huyen, Tran Thi Thuy Van, Nguyen Manh Ha, Nguyen Quoc Binh, and Mai Thanh Tan. "Bioclimatic assessments for tea cultivation in Western Nghe An." VIETNAM JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCES 41, no. 1 (2019): 81–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.15625/0866-7187/41/1/13586.

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Bioclimatology is applied for growing tea in the West of Nghe An province, where the tea is considered as a high economic efficient plant to be priorly cultivated for reducing poverty and getting rich. Based on the bioclimatic characteristics of tea plant and regional climatic data from 1980 to 2014, the bioclimatic diagrams are built and the tea cultivability is mapped in term of annual average temperature and total precipitation, for this region with regarding its district of Con Cuong as an analytical key. The climate, including both temperature and precipitation, in Con Cuong is relatively suitable for the tea plantation. The Western Nghe An, a land of approx. 1.4 million ha, could be classified in five areas with different suitability for tea plant. The unfavorable area occupies only 1% of total region and the four favorable rests account for 99% of total, in which, the most favorable area is largest with about 746,355 ha, i.e. over 50% of whole region. The three other areas are cultivable but they are less favorable in terms of either temperature or precipitation. Growing tea in Western Nghe An, even in favorable areas, it should be taken into account of the weather disadvantages in certain moments of the year such as extreme dry, cold, hot and rainy events.ReferencesAhmed S., 2014. Tea and the taste of climate change, www.herbalgram.org, issue, 103, 44–51.Ahmed S., Stepp J.R., Orians C., Griffin T., Matyas C., 2014. Effects of extreme climate events on tea (Camellia sinensis) functional quality validate indigenous farmer knowledge and sensory preferences in tropical China. PloS one, 9(10), e109126.Bhagat R.M., Deb Baruah R., Safique S., 2010. climate and tea [camellia sinensis (l.) o. kuntze] Production with Special Reference to North Eastern India: A Review. Journal of Environmental Research And Development, 4(4), 1017–1028.Carr M., 1972. The Climatic Requirements of the Tea Plant: A Review. Experimental Agriculture, 8(01), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0014479700023449.Carr M.K.V., Stephen W., 1992. Climate, weather and the yield of tea. In: Tea Cultivation to consumtpion. K.C. Wilson and M.N. Clifford (Eds). Chapman and Hall, 87–135.Daleen Lotter, David le Maitre, 2014. Modeling the distribution of Aspalathus linearis (Rooibos tea): implications of climate change for livelihoods dependent on both cultivation and harvesting from the wild. Ecology and Evolution, 4(8), 1209–1221.Ducan J.M.A., Saikia S.D., Gupta N., Biggs E.M., 2016. Observing climate impacts on tea yield in Assam, India. Applied Geogr., 77, 64–71.Institute of Geography, 2016. Department of Climatically Geography. The precipitation and temperature data at meteorological measuring stations in the West of Nghe An Province between 1984 and 2014. Data stored at Department of Climatically Geography, Institute of Geography, Ha Noi, 46p.Gaussen H., 1954. 8 ème Congrès international de Botanique. Section 7 et 3. Paris.Hadfield W., 1976. The effect of high temperature on some aspects of the physiology and cultivation of tea bush (Camellia sinensis) in North East India. In: Light as an Ecological factor. G.C. Evans, R. Bainbridge and O. Rackham (Eds.) Blackwel Sci. Publ., London, 477–495.Hoang Luu Thu Thuy, 2012. The comprehensive assessment of natural, socio-economic and environmental conditions for environmental protection planning in Nghe An Province. Doctoral Thesis. Institude of Geography, Hanoi, 150p.Huang Shoubo, 1989. Meteorology of tea plants in China: a review. Agri. Forest Meteorol., 47, 19–30.Huang Shoubo, 1991. A study on the ecological climates of some famous tea growing areas in high mountainous regions of China. Chinese Geographical Science, 1(2), 121–128.International Center for Tropical Agriculture, 2017. Identification of suitable tea growing areas in Malawi under climate change scenarios. Ciat report, Cali, Colombia, 39p.Kabir S.E., 2001. A study on Ecophysiology of Tea (Camellia sinensis) with special reference to the influence of climatic factors on physiology of a few selected Tea clones of Darjeering. International Journal of Tea Science, 1(4), 1–9.Kandiah S., Thevadasan T., 1980. Quantification of weather parameters to predict tea yields. Tea Q., Srilanka, 49(1), 25–33.Kaye L., 2014. Climate change threatens Sri Lanka’s tea industry. Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit. Available at: www.triplepundit.com/2014/06/climate-changethreatens-sri-lanka-tea-industry. Accessed July 25, 2014.Nakayama A., Harada S., 1962. Studies on the effect on the growth of tea plant. IV. The effect of temperature on the growth of young plants in summer. Bull. Tea Res. Station, Japan, 1, 28–40.Nguyen Bao Ve, 2005. The syllabus of industrial trees. Hanoi Argricultural Publishing House, 224p.Nguyen Dai Khanh, 2003. The assessment of agricultural climatic conditions for tea’s growth in major tea regions of Vietnam. Doctoral Thesis. Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, 149p.Nguyen Khanh Van, Nguyen Thi Hien, Phan Ke Loc, Nguyen Tien Hiep, 2000. The bioclimatic diagrams of Vietnam. Vietnam National University Publishing House, Ha Noi, 126p.Nguyen Van Hong, 2017. Analyzing, assessing landscape for agriculture, forestry development and biodiversity conservation in the southwestern border districts in Nghe An province. Doctoral thesis. Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 150p.Nguyen Van Tao (ed.), 2004. Completing the asexual propagation process of LDP1 and LDP2 cultivars by cuttings in order to transfer to production. State Project of production pilot, coded KC.06.DA.09.NN. Institute of Tea Research, Phu Tho, 50p.Nkomwa E.C., Joshua M.K., Ngongondo C., Monjerezi M., Chipungu F., 2014. Assessing indigenous knowledge systems and climate change adaptation strategies in agriculture: A case study of Chagaka Village, Chikhwawa, Southern Malawi. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 67–69, 164–172.Pham Hoang Ho, 2003. An Illustrated Flora of Vietnam, 2, 430–434. Youth Publishing House, 952p.Rebecca Boehm, Sean B. Cash, Bruce T. Anderson, Selena Ahmed, Timothy S. Griffin, Albert Robbat Jr., John Richard Stepp, Wenyan Han, Matt Hazel and Colin M. Orians, 2016. Association between Empirically Estimated Monsoon Dynamics and Other Weather Factors and Historical Tea Yields in China: Results from a Yield Response Model. Climate, 4, 20; doi:10.3390/cli4020020. www.mdpi.com/journal/climate.Schepp K., 2014. Strategy to adapt to climate change for Michimikuru tea farmers in Kenya. Adap CC Report. 2008. Available at: www.adapcc.org/en/kenya.htm. Accessed July 25, 2014.Sen A.R., Biswas A.K., Sanyal D.K., 1966. The Influence of Climatic Factors on the Yield of Tea in the Assam Valley, J. App. Meteo., 5(6), 789–800.Statistics Office of Nghe An Province, 2016. The annual abstracts of statistics 2015. Nghe An Publishing House, Nghe An, 453p.Tanton T.W., 1982. Environmental factors affecting yield of tea (camellia sinensis). Effect of air temperature. Expl. Agri., 18, 47–52.The People’s Committee of Nghe An Province, 2013. The Decision No. 448/QĐ-UBND dated 31/01/2013 to approve the hi-tech agriculture planning on the production of tea in Nghe An Province.The People’s Committee of Nghe An Province, 2013. The Decision No. 6290/QĐ-UBND dated 24/12/2013 to approve the adjustments and supplements for the development of Nghe An tea Industrial zone planning in 2013–2020.Walter H, Lieth, 1967. Klimadiagram - Weltatlas. Veb Gustav Fischer Verlag Jena.Wijeratne M.A., 1996. Vulnerability of Sri Lanka tea production to global climate change. Water, Air and Soil Pollution, 92(1-2), 87–94.Wijeratne M.A., Anandacoomaraswamy A., Amarathunga M., Ratnasiri J., 2007. Assessment of impact of climate change on productivity of tea (Camellia sinensis L.) plantations in Sri Lanka, 119–126.http://nghean.gov.vn, 05/06/2015. Many crops are withered in Con Cuong.http://baonghean.vn, 25/03/2013. Drought threaten rice and tea in Con Cuong. http://baonghean.vn/con-cuong-han-han-de-doa-lua-che-44581.html.
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4

Mangal, Anupam K., Chinmay Rath, Bonthu Susmitha, Ashish K. Tripathi, and Mukesh B. Chincholikar. "Medico-Ethno Botanical Survey: An Overview of CCRAS Contributions." Journal of Drug Research in Ayurvedic Sciences 2, no. 3 (2017): 188–240. http://dx.doi.org/10.5005/jp-journals-10059-0019.

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ABSTRACT Aim Medico-Ethno Botanical Survey (MEBS) was initiated by the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS) in 1969 with the main aim of survey and documentation of medicinal plants of India used in Ayurveda system of medicine. Through its five peripheral institutes, namely Regional Ayurveda Research Institute for Metabolic Disorders (RARIMD)— Bengaluru, Regional Ayurveda Research Institute for Gastro-Intestinal Disorders (RARIGID)—Guwahati, Regional Ayurveda Research Institute (RARI)—Itanagar, RARI—Jhansi, and RARI—Ranikhet, the Council has surveyed every part of phytogeographic regions across the country, including the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. During these survey tours, various medicinal plants were collected and preserved as Herbarium and Museum specimens. The survey team collects and supplies authentic raw drug samples for studies under various projects inside and outside the Council, including the projects under Central Scheme of Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia Committee (APC). Herbarium and Museum centers located in various institutes of CCRAS are being used as reference centers for UG/PG/M.Phil./Ph.D. students and researchers for correct identification/authentication of their plant specimens or raw drug materials. Further, the folk-claims collected during the exploration work provide lead for validation and effective development of drugs based on traditional knowledge and not from any codified system of medicine. Ayurvedic ancient texts also explain the importance of medicinal plant survey. Materials and methods The gross physical achievements including the beneficiaries of MEBS, details of forest divisions, medicinal plant species collected, and preparation of Herbarium specimens during the reporting period 1969 to 2016 were compiled, summarized, and presented based on the information available in the published monographs, technical reports, and annual reports of CCRAS. Conclusion India is rich in its diverse natural resources and treated as one of the biggest natural biodiversity countries of the world. The cultural diversity in the country is represented by many cultural groups, including the tribes and others. The contributions of CCRAS are significant in extending Medico-Ethno Botanical Program across the country and also preserving the valuable ethnomedical knowledge prevailing among tribal communities through systematic survey, identification, preservation, documentation, and validation of medicinal plants. How to cite this article Rath C, Susmitha B, Tripathi AK, Chincholikar MB, Mangal AK, Srikanth N. Medico-Ethno Botanical Survey: An Overview of CCRAS Contributions. J Drug Res Ayurvedic Sci 2017;2(3):188-240.
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Alperin, B. L., I. V. Zibareva, and A. A. Vedyagin. "Analysis of scholarly articles’ publication speed with SciAct CRIS-system." Bibliosphere, no. 1 (April 29, 2020): 83–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.20913/1815-3186-2020-1-83-92.

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One of the most important competitive advantages of researchers / research organizations is their individual visibility in professional community depending on scientific importance of results obtained. Under hard competitive conditions, however, not only results as such are essentially important for the visibility but also the amount of publications reflecting them. This amount depends, amongst other factors, on scholarly journals’ publication speeds. In Russia, an annual amount of publications accounted in the WoS / Scopus is adapted as the main criterion for institutes of the RAS on the state task fulfillment, thus making the speed of research results publishing critically important. The article reflects the results of the statistical analysis of publication speeds of materials for the authors affiliated with the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis (BIC), Siberian Branch of the RAS. The statistical analysis of journal publication speeds is performed with the aid of the CRIS-system SciAct. The system embraces more than 20 modes of scientific activities and accounts journal articles, conferences proceedings, patents, dissertations, etc. It contains profiles of authors, organizations and journals and allows preparing various reports and accounts in one click. With array of more than 8 thousands of BIC articles 1960–2019 in 712 scholarly journals, the authors determined the minimal, maximal and median values of their publication speeds. Results obtained allow recommending journals with median articles’ publication speed of 1–2 months to the staff of physical-chemical research organizations. The approach and its results are useful for research planning.
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Schmidt, Ulrike, Helen Sharpe, Savani Bartholdy, et al. "Treatment of anorexia nervosa: a multimethod investigation translating experimental neuroscience into clinical practice." Programme Grants for Applied Research 5, no. 16 (2017): 1–208. http://dx.doi.org/10.3310/pgfar05160.

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BackgroundAnorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe psychiatric condition and evidence on how to best treat it is limited.ObjectivesThis programme consists of seven integrated work packages (WPs) and aims to develop and test disseminable and cost-effective treatments to optimise management for people with AN across all stages of illness.MethodsWP1a used surveys, focus groups and a pre–post trial to develop and evaluate a training programme for school staff on eating disorders (EDs). WP1b used a randomised controlled trial (RCT) [International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) 42594993] to evaluate a prevention programme for EDs in schools. WP2a evaluated an inpatient treatment for AN using case reports, interviews and a quasi-experimental trial. WP2b used a RCT (ISRCTN67720902) to evaluate two outpatient psychological therapies for AN. WP3 used a RCT (ISRCTN06149665) to evaluate an intervention for carers of inpatients with AN. WP4 used actimetry, self-report and endocrine assessment to examine physical activity (PA) in AN. WP5 conducted a RCT (ISRCTN18274621) of an e-mail-guided relapse prevention programme for inpatients with AN. WP6 analysed cohort data to examine the effects of maternal EDs on fertility and their children’s diet and growth. WP7a examined clinical case notes to explore how access to specialist ED services affects care pathways and user experiences. Finally, WP7b used data from this programme and the British Cohort Study (1970) to identify the costs of services used by people with AN and to estimate annual costs of AN for England.ResultsWP1a: a brief training programme improved knowledge, attitudes and confidence of school staff in managing EDs in school. WP1b: a teacher-delivered intervention was feasible and improved risk factors for EDs in adolescent girls. WP2a: both psychological therapies improved outcomes in outpatients with AN similarly, but patients preferred one of the treatments. WP2b: the inpatient treatment (Cognitive Remediation and Emotional Skills Training) was acceptable with perceived benefits by patients, but showed no benefits compared with treatment as usual (TAU). WP3: compared with TAU, the carer intervention improved a range of patient and carer outcomes, including carer burden and patient ED symptomatology. WP4: drive to exercise is tied to ED pathology and a desire to improve mood in AN patients. PA was not increased in these patients. WP5: compared with TAU, the e-mail-guided relapse prevention programme resulted in higher body mass index and lower distress in patients at 12 months after discharge. WP6: women with an ED had impaired fertility and their children had altered dietary and growth patterns compared with the children of women without an ED. WP7a: direct access to specialist ED services was associated with higher referral rates, lower admission rates, greater consistency of care and user satisfaction. WP7b: the annual costs of AN in England are estimated at between £45M and £230M for 2011.ConclusionsThis programme has produced evidence to inform future intervention development and has developed interventions that can be disseminated to improve outcomes for individuals with AN. Directions for future research include RCTs with longer-term outcomes and sufficient power to examine mediators and moderators of change.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN42594993, ISRCTN67720902, ISRCTN06149665 and ISRCTN18274621.FundingThis project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research programme and will be published in full inProgramme Grants for Applied Research; Vol. 5, No. 16. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.
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Nejatinamini, Sara, David Campbell, Jenny Godley, et al. "Modifiable Risk Factors Mediate Associations Between Socioeconomic Position and Cardiovascular Disease Morbidity and Mortality." Current Developments in Nutrition 5, Supplement_2 (2021): 167. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzab035_075.

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Abstract Objectives Morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are higher among individuals with a lower, compared to those with a higher socioeconomic position (SEP). However, the contribution of modifiable risk factors to these inequities is not known. This study aimed to examine whether and to what extent modifiable risk factors mediate associations between SEP and CVD morbidity and mortality in a nationally representative sample of Canadian adults. Methods We used a population-based prospective observational cohort design whereby participants who completed the Canadian Community Health Survey (2000–2011; n = 289,800) were followed longitudinally for CVD morbidity and mortality using administrative health and mortality data in the Discharge Abstract Database and the Canadian Mortality Database until 31 March 2013. Participants were included if they were at least 35 years of age and did not self-report CVD at the time of survey administration. The exposure of interest was SEP, which was measured as a latent variable consisting of annual household income and educational attainment. Potential mediators included smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. The primary outcome of interest was CVD morbidity and mortality, which was defined as the first fatal or nonfatal CVD event that occurred during follow-up (6.2 years). Generalized structural equation modeling was used to test the mediating effects of modifiable risk factors in associations between SEP and CVD morbidity and mortality. Results SEP was associated with CVD morbidity and mortality. Modifiable risk factors mediated 80% of associations between SEP and CVD morbidity and mortality. Smoking was the most important mediator of these associations. Obesity mediated associations between SEP and CVD individually and jointly with diabetes or hypertension. Conclusions These findings point to modifiable risk factors as potential targets for interventions to reduce inequities in CVD morbidity and mortality. Knowledge of pathways linking SEP with CVD is essential to inform targeted interventions to reduce socioeconomic inequities in CVD morbidity and mortality. Funding Sources This study was funded by a Libin Cardiovascular Research Institute of Alberta Innovation Seed Grant and the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award in Community Health.
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Hens, Luc, Nguyen An Thinh, Tran Hong Hanh, et al. "Sea-level rise and resilience in Vietnam and the Asia-Pacific: A synthesis." VIETNAM JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCES 40, no. 2 (2018): 127–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.15625/0866-7187/40/2/11107.

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Climate change induced sea-level rise (SLR) is on its increase globally. Regionally the lowlands of China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and islands of the Malaysian, Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos are among the world’s most threatened regions. Sea-level rise has major impacts on the ecosystems and society. It threatens coastal populations, economic activities, and fragile ecosystems as mangroves, coastal salt-marches and wetlands. This paper provides a summary of the current state of knowledge of sea level-rise and its effects on both human and natural ecosystems. The focus is on coastal urban areas and low lying deltas in South-East Asia and Vietnam, as one of the most threatened areas in the world. About 3 mm per year reflects the growing consensus on the average SLR worldwide. The trend speeds up during recent decades. The figures are subject to local, temporal and methodological variation. In Vietnam the average values of 3.3 mm per year during the 1993-2014 period are above the worldwide average. Although a basic conceptual understanding exists that the increasing global frequency of the strongest tropical cyclones is related with the increasing temperature and SLR, this relationship is insufficiently understood. Moreover the precise, complex environmental, economic, social, and health impacts are currently unclear. SLR, storms and changing precipitation patterns increase flood risks, in particular in urban areas. Part of the current scientific debate is on how urban agglomeration can be made more resilient to flood risks. Where originally mainly technical interventions dominated this discussion, it becomes increasingly clear that proactive special planning, flood defense, flood risk mitigation, flood preparation, and flood recovery are important, but costly instruments. Next to the main focus on SLR and its effects on resilience, the paper reviews main SLR associated impacts: Floods and inundation, salinization, shoreline change, and effects on mangroves and wetlands. The hazards of SLR related floods increase fastest in urban areas. This is related with both the increasing surface major cities are expected to occupy during the decades to come and the increasing coastal population. In particular Asia and its megacities in the southern part of the continent are increasingly at risk. The discussion points to complexity, inter-disciplinarity, and the related uncertainty, as core characteristics. An integrated combination of mitigation, adaptation and resilience measures is currently considered as the most indicated way to resist SLR today and in the near future.References Aerts J.C.J.H., Hassan A., Savenije H.H.G., Khan M.F., 2000. Using GIS tools and rapid assessment techniques for determining salt intrusion: Stream a river basin management instrument. 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Barker, Karen L., Jon Room, Ruth Knight, et al. "Outpatient physiotherapy versus home-based rehabilitation for patients at risk of poor outcomes after knee arthroplasty: CORKA RCT." Health Technology Assessment 24, no. 65 (2020): 1–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.3310/hta24650.

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Abstract:
Background Over 100,000 primary knee arthroplasty operations are undertaken annually in the UK. Around 15–30% of patients do not report a good outcome. Better rehabilitation strategies may improve patient-reported outcomes. Objectives To compare the outcomes from a traditional outpatient physiotherapy model with those from a home-based rehabilitation programme for people assessed as being at risk of a poor outcome after knee arthroplasty. Design An individually randomised, two-arm controlled trial with a blinded outcome assessment, a parallel health economic evaluation and a nested qualitative study. Setting The trial took place in 14 NHS physiotherapy departments. Participants People identified as being at high risk of a poor outcome after knee arthroplasty. Interventions A multicomponent home-based rehabilitation package delivered by rehabilitation assistants with supervision from qualified therapists compared with usual-care outpatient physiotherapy. Main outcome measures The primary outcome was the Late Life Function and Disability Instrument at 12 months. Secondary outcomes were the Oxford Knee Score (a disease-specific measure of function); Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score; Quality of Life subscale; Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly; EuroQol-5 Dimensions, five-level version; and physical function assessed using the Figure-of-8 Walk Test, 30-Second Chair Stand Test and Single Leg Stance. Data on the use of health-care services, time off work and informal care were collected using participant diaries. Results In total, 621 participants were randomised. A total of 309 participants were assigned to the COmmunity based Rehabilitation after Knee Arthroplasty (CORKA) home-based rehabilitation programme, receiving a median of five treatment sessions (interquartile range 4–7 sessions). A total of 312 participants were assigned to usual care, receiving a median of four sessions (interquartile range 2–6 sessions). The primary outcome, Late Life Function and Disability Instrument function total score at 12 months, was collected for 279 participants (89%) in the home-based CORKA group and 287 participants (92%) in the usual-care group. No clinically or statistically significant difference was found between the groups (intention-to-treat adjusted difference 0.49 points, 95% confidence interval –0.89 to 1.88 points; p = 0.48). There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in any of the patient-reported or physical secondary outcome measures at 6 or 12 months post randomisation. The health economic analysis found that the CORKA intervention was cheaper to provide than usual care (£66 less per participant). Total societal costs (combining health-care costs and other costs) were lower for the CORKA intervention than usual care (£316 less per participant). Adopting a societal perspective, CORKA had a 75% probability of being cost-effective at a threshold of £30,000 per quality-adjusted life-year. Adopting the narrower health and social care perspective, CORKA had a 43% probability of being cost-effective at the same threshold. Limitations The interventions were of short duration and were set within current commissioning guidance for UK physiotherapy. Participants and treating therapists could not be blinded. Conclusions This randomised controlled trial found no important differences in outcomes when post-arthroplasty rehabilitation was delivered using a home-based, rehabilitation assistant-delivered rehabilitation package or a traditional outpatient model. However, the health economic evaluation found that when adopting a societal perspective, the CORKA home-based intervention was cost-saving and more effective than, and thus dominant over, usual care, owing to reduced time away from paid employment for this group. Further research could look at identifying the risk of poor outcome and further evaluation of a cost-effective treatment, including the workforce model to deliver it. Trial registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN13517704. Funding This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 24, No. 65. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.
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10

Fama, Angelo, Peter Martin, Cristine Allmer, et al. "Vulnerable Elders Survey-13 (VES-13) Predicts 1-Year Mortality Risk in Newly Diagnosed Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL)." Blood 134, Supplement_1 (2019): 69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood-2019-129499.

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Introduction. The VES-13 is a simple, self-reported, function based tool originally developed to screen community-dwelling populations to identify persons age 65 years and older at risk of death and functional decline, including death in the next 12 months. The VES-13 items include patient's age, self-rated overall health status, functional limitations in physical activity, and functional disabilities in more complex activities of daily living. As part of the Lymphoma Epidemiology of Outcomes (LEO) cohort study, we collected self-reported VES-13 data at study enrollment on all participants regardless of age, and here we report on the prevalence of vulnerable status defined by the VES-13 and its association with 1-year mortality, overall, stratified at age 65 years, and in the subset of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) treated with immunochemotherapy. Methods. From 7/2015 to 6/2017, 3253 participants with NHL were enrolled within 6 months of their diagnosis into the LEO cohort. 2004 were evaluable on VES-13, and 1183 (59%) completed it before the initiation of therapy. VES-13 scores range from a minimum of 0 (low risk for decline) to a maximum of 10 (greatest risk for decline), and a score ≥3 was classified as vulnerable. Clinical, pathology and treatment data were abstracted using a standard protocol, and participants were contacted every 6 months for the first three years and then annually thereafter to identify outcomes. Medical records were reviewed by LEO clinicians to classify cause of death according to a standard protocol. Therapy was determined by the treating physician, and this was independent of knowledge of the VES-13 score. The association of VES-13 with 1-year mortality from date of diagnosis was estimated using odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) from logistic regression models, which also provided model c-statistics. Results. The median age of the 2004 participants in this analysis was 62 years (range 18-94); 57% were male; 54% were ≥65 years; and 28% had a normal body mass index (BMI), 1% were underweight, 35% were overweight, and 36% were obese. Clinically, 59% of participants had an aggressive subtype, 65% were stage III-IV, 24% had B-symptoms, and 11% had a performance status (PS) of ≥2. Overall, 28% of participants were classified as vulnerable (95% CI 26%-30%), with a higher prevalence among those completing the survey after initiation of therapy (38%, 95% 34%-41%) versus before initiation of therapy (22%, 95% CI 20%-24%), and a higher prevalence for those ≥65 years (32%, 95% CI 29%-34%) versus <65 (25%, 95% CI 22%-28%). During the first year of follow-up, there were 147 deaths, with 61% due to lymphoma, 14% therapy-related, 12% due to another malignancy, 3% other causes, and 10% unknown. Significant univariate predictors of 1-year mortality included vulnerable status, older age, PS 2+, stage III-IV, aggressive subtype, lower quality of life score, lower BMI, and 1 or more comorbidities, and were included the backward stepwise modeling. Vulnerable status (OR=3.26, 95% CI 2.15-4.96) was retained in the final model that also included age, PS, stage, and NHL subtype (Table), with a model c-statistic of 0.81. As shown in the Table, these associations were similar whether VES-13 was assessed before (c-statistic 0.77) or after (c-statistic 0.81) initiation of therapy. After adjustment for age, PS, stage and NHL subtype, vulnerable status predicted 1-year mortality in participants ≥65 years (OR=1.96, 95% CI 1.15-3.36; model c-statistic 0.80) as well as <65 years (OR=6.38, 95% CI 3.07-13.3; model c-statistic 0.83). Finally, in the DLBCL patients treated with immunochemotherapy (N=521), vulnerable status (38% of patients) also predicted 1-year mortality (OR=2.11, 95% CI 1.05-4.26) after adjusting for age, PS and stage (model c-statistic 0.78). Conclusion. Based on a self-administered VES-13, 28% of newly diagnosed NHL patients in the LEO cohort were classified as vulnerable, including 25% of those <65 years, and vulnerable status was a strong predictor of 1-year-mortality, even in the subset of DLBCL patients treated with presumed curative intent. These results highlight the potential value of screening for vulnerable status overall and across a wider age spectrum in order to optimize patient management and reduce early mortality. Disclosures Martin: Karyopharm: Consultancy; Sandoz: Consultancy; I-MAB: Consultancy; Celgene: Consultancy; Janssen: Consultancy; Teneobio: Consultancy. Casulo:Gilead: Honoraria, Other: Travel, accommodation, expenses; Celgene: Research Funding; Roche: Other: Travel, accommodation, expenses. Cohen:Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, Inc.: Research Funding; Bristol-Meyers Squibb Company: Research Funding; Hutchison: Research Funding; Astra Zeneca: Research Funding; Lymphoma Research Foundation: Research Funding; ASH: Research Funding; LAM Therapeutics: Research Funding; UNUM: Research Funding; Gilead/Kite: Consultancy; Janssen Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy; Seattle Genetics, Inc.: Consultancy, Research Funding; Genentech, Inc.: Consultancy, Research Funding. Farooq:Kite Pharma: Research Funding; Celgene: Honoraria. Friedberg:Acerta: Other: Data & Safety Monitoring Committee; Bayer: Honoraria, Other: Data & Safety Monitoring Committee. Kahl:Seattle Genetics: Consultancy; ADC Therapeutics: Consultancy, Research Funding; BeiGene: Consultancy; TG Therapeutics: Consultancy. Lossos:Janssen Scientific: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; NIH: Research Funding; Seattle Genetics: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Maurer:Nanostring: Research Funding; Celgene: Research Funding; Morphosys: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Nastoupil:Spectrum: Honoraria; Genentech, Inc.: Honoraria, Research Funding; Gilead: Honoraria; Janssen: Honoraria, Research Funding; Novartis: Honoraria; TG Therapeutics: Honoraria, Research Funding; Bayer: Honoraria; Celgene: Honoraria, Research Funding. Rutherford:Heron: Consultancy, Honoraria; Janssen Scientific Affairs: Consultancy, Honoraria; AstraZeneca: Consultancy, Honoraria; Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria; Juno Therapeutics Inc: Consultancy, Honoraria; Seattle Genetics: Consultancy, Honoraria; Verastem: Consultancy, Honoraria; Karyopharm: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Flowers:National Cancer Institute: Research Funding; BeiGene: Consultancy, Research Funding; Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group: Research Funding; Genentech, Inc./F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd: Consultancy, Research Funding; Pharmacyclics/Janssen: Consultancy, Research Funding; AbbVie: Consultancy, Research Funding; Bayer: Consultancy; Spectrum: Consultancy; Karyopharm: Consultancy; Acerta: Research Funding; TG Therapeutics: Research Funding; Millenium/Takeda: Research Funding; AstraZeneca: Consultancy; Optimum Rx: Consultancy; V Foundation: Research Funding; Celgene: Consultancy, Research Funding; Burroughs Wellcome Fund: Research Funding; Denovo Biopharma: Consultancy; Gilead: Consultancy, Research Funding. Cerhan:NanoString: Research Funding; Janssen: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Celgene: Research Funding.
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Khotijah, Lilis, Tuti Suryati, and M. Fandi. "Karakteristik dan Potongan Komersial Karkas Domba Muda Umur lima Bulan Dengan Ransum Komplit yang disuplementasi Minyak bunga matahari." Jurnal Ilmu Nutrisi dan Teknologi Pakan 17, no. 3 (2019): 78–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.29244/jintp.17.3.78-82.

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The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of graded levels of sunflower seed oil (SSO) supplementation on lamb five-month-old carcass characteristics and commercial cuts. Used 18 local male lambs, weaned, aged about 2 months, weight (10.21 ± 2.29 kg). Experimental design used group random design. Each group of sheep get a complete ration with a different level of sunflower seed oil (SSO), namely (P0) = 0% SSO (control); (P1) = 4% SSO; (P2) = 6% SSO. After animal five old age or 90 days feeding, randomly selected tree animals from each group were slaughtered The measured parameters include, weight slaughter, carcasses composition (meats, bones, fats), and commercial cuts of carcasses (leg, loin, shoulder, breast, neck, shank, flank, rack). The observation showed that the parameters are not affected by the treatment. It can be concluded that the addition of 6% sunflower oil in a complete ration keeping the characteristics and commercial cut of local lamb.
 Key words: slaughter weight, carcass composition, lamb, sunflower seed oil
 DAFTAR PUSTAKA
 [AUS-MEAT]. 2005. Sheep Meat. ISBN 0 9578793 69. https://www.ausmeat.com.au/media/1275/9-sheepmeat.pdf. Diunduh 15 Juni 2019.
 [BSN] Badan Standardisasi Nasional Indonesia. 2008. Mutu Karkas dan Daging Kambing/Domba. Standar Nasional Indonesia. 3925. Jakarta (ID): Badan Standardisasi Nasional Indonesia
 [NRC] National Research Council. 2007. Nutrient Requirements of Small Ruminants: Sheep, Goats, Cervids, and New World Camelids. Washington DC (US): The National Academies Pr.
 Ensminger M E. 2002. Sheep and Goat Science. Illinois (US): Interstate Publisher.
 Francisco A, Dentinho MT, Alves SPP, Portugal V, Fernandes F, Sengo S, Jerónimo E, Oliveira MA, Costa P, Sequeira A, Bessa RJB, Santos-Silva J. 2015. Growth performance, carcass and meat quality of lambs supplemented with increasing levels of a tanniferous bush (Cistus ladanifer L.) and vegetable oils. Meat Science. 100, p. 272-282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.meatsci.2014.10.014
 Gatenby RM, Doloksaribu M, Bradford GE, Romjaii GE, Batubara L, Mirza I. 1995. Reproductive performance of sumatera and hair sheep crossbred ewes. SR-CRSP Annual Report 1994 - 1995, Sungai Putih, Sumatera Utara.
 González L, Moreno T, Bispo E, Dugan MER, Franco D. 2014. Effect of supplementing different oils: Linseed, sunflower and soybean, on animal performance, carcass characteristics, meat quality and fatty acid profile of veal from “Rubia Gallega” calves. Meat Science. 96 (2): Part A. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.meatsci.2013.09.027
 Hendri. 1986. Studi perbandingan distribusi perdagingan kambing kacang dan domba priangan pada dua tingkat umur. Karya Ilmiah. Fakultas Peternakan. Institut Pertanian Bogor.
 Herman R. 1993. Perbandingan pertumbuhan komposisi tubuh dan karkas antara domba Priangan dan Ekor Gemuk. [disertasi]. Fakultas Pasca sarjana. Institut Pertanian Bogor. Bogor.
 Lambuth TR, Kemp JD, Glimp HA. 1970. Effect of rate of gain a slaughter weight on lamb carcass composition. Journal of Animal Science. 30: 27-35.
 Marinova P, Banskalieva, VS Alexandrov, Tzvetkova S, Stanchev V. 2001. Carcass Composition and meat qulity of kids fed sunflower oil supplemented diet. Small Rumminant Resources. 42 (3): 217-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0921-4488(01)00245-0.
 Mir PS, McAllister TA, Zaman S, Morgan Jones, SD, He ML, Aalhus JL, Jeremiah LE, Goonewardene LA, Weselake RJ and Mir Z. 2003. Effect of dietary sunflower oil and vitamin E on beef cattle performance, carcass characteristics and meat quality. Canada Journal of Animal Science. 83: 53–66
 Morgado E, Ezequiel JMB, Galzerano L, Sobrinho S. 2013. Performance and carcass characteristics of lambs fed with carbohydrate sources associated to sunflower oil. Bioscience Journal. 29 (3): 712-720 
 Purbowati E, Sutrisno CI, Baliarti E, Budhi SPS, Lestariana W. 2006. Karakteristik fisik otot longissimus dorsi dan biceps femoris domba lokal jantan yang dipelihara di pedesaan pada bobot potong yang berbeda. Jurnal Protein. 13(2):147-153
 Rasmani. 2010. Komposisi fisik dan potongan komersial karkas domba lokal jantan pada tingkat kecepatan pertumbuhan yang berbeda dengan pemeliharaan secara intensif. Bogor (ID): IPB.
 Rousset-Akrim S, Young OA, Berdague JL. 1997. Diet and growth effects in panel assessment of sheepmeat odour and flavour. Meat Science. 45:169-181.
 Supriyati. 2012. Pertumbuhan kambing Peranakan Etawah prasapih yang diberi susu pengganti. Jurnal Ilmu Ternak dan Veteriner. 17(2): 142-151.
 Rahayu, S, Astuti DA, Satoto KB, Priyanto R, Khotijah L , Suryati T, Baihaqi M 2011. Produksi domba balibu UP3 Jonggol melalui strategi perbaikan pakan berbasis Indigofera sp. dan limbah tauge. Laporan Penelitian Unggulan Fakultas. IPB, Dirjendikti Kementrian Pendidikan Nasional.
 Radunz, AE, Wickersham LA, Loerch SC, Fluharty FL, Reynolds CK, and Zerby HN. 2009. Effects of dietary polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation on fatty acid composition in muscle and subcutaneous adipose tissue of lambs. Journal of Animal Science. 87: 4082-4091.
 Wiryawan KG, Astuti DA, Priyanto R, Suharti S. 2009. Optimalisasi pemanfaatan rumput dan legum pohon terhadap performa, produksi, dan kualitas daging domba jonggol. Laporan Penelitian. Bogor (ID): Fakultas Peternakan IPB
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Riedner, Rachel C., Bill Briscoe, Alexander Van der Horst, Carol Hayes, and Gary White. "Collaborating between Writing and STEM: Teaching Disciplinary Genres, Researching Disciplinary Interventions, and Engaging Science Audiences." Journal of Academic Writing 10, no. 1 (2020): 223. http://dx.doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v10i1.581.

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Collaborating between Writing and STEM: Teaching Disciplinary Genres, Researching Disciplinary Interventions, and Engaging Science Audiences
 This poster describes a multi-pronged effort to build a writing curriculum in Physics and other STEM fields at the George Washington University, USA. These efforts include curricular collaboration, a research study conducted by the Physicists and Writing Scholars, and external funding initiatives.
 This project first began as a curricular collaboration through our Writing in the Disciplines (WID) curriculum, initiated by observations among Physics faculty that undergraduate students lack Physics specific writing skills. Writing faculty responded to this observation by introducing Physics faculty to the idea that writing can and must be taught, that the genres of Physics can be taught by Physics faculty, and that a focus on the writing process can improve student writing. Our curricular goal was to demonstrate to faculty who are unfamiliar with writing studies that writing is a means to learn in Physics (Anderson et al., 2017).
 The first phase of our effort was to persuade Physics faculty that writing contributes to learning in Physics; we describe a collaboration between Physics and Writing faculty that developed assignments and made curricular interventions. This collaboration built upon scholarship in writing studies that argues genre instruction develops capacities and skills for student writing (Swales, 1990; Winsor, 1996). While genre is not a new concept in Writing Studies, for many Physics faculty the idea that they can teach – and have students learn – how to write in disciplinary genres is novel. Collaboration around curricular revisions enabled Writing and Physics faculty to teach students that learning how to write in a new genre is a skill that can be practiced (Ericsson, 2006; Kellogg & Whiteford, 2009). We developed a process for students to follow when faced with types of writing common to Physics, but potentially new to them, such as the abstract (written), lab research notebook (written), article summary (oral), letter to colleague (written), cover letter and resumé (written), elevator pitch (oral), proposal (written and oral), presentation on issues of ethics and equity in STEM (oral), research presentation (oral), poster (written), poster presentation (oral), final research report (written), and Symposium presentation (oral). The collaboration thus created pedagogical exchange between faculty as well as scholarly synergy between the disciplines of Physics and Writing Studies.
 Physics faculty have observed that the curricular collaboration has had measurable results for students. Physics student participation in the campus research day has increased dramatically. We attribute this rise partly to the increased, explicit attention in classroom settings to how to engage with Physics genres of writing, especially abstracts and research posters.
 While the collaboration successfully brought together a small but solid group of Writing and Physics faculty, it also raised questions about how to persuade a broader range of Physics faculty, and other science faculty, that teaching disciplinary genres can improve student writing, and that writing is a means of learning. Given that faculty in STEM disciplines find empirical research persuasive, our next step was to undertake a collaborative research project to measure the impact of the teaching of writing in Physics. The new curricular focus on genre asked students to conceptualize themselves as scientific writers in relation to specific Physics or STEM audiences. The collaborative research therefore investigates if teaching Physics genres improves writing and enables students to conceptualize themselves as emerging scientists engaged in professional communication (Poe et al., 2010; Winsor, 1996). Our longitudinal analysis of student writing in Physics evaluates writing from three sequenced courses, the first before faculty-developed genre assignments, and then after genre assignments. We developed a rubric that evaluates general outcomes – audience, genre, structure, style – and a rubric that evaluates specialized learning outcomes – acknowledgement of past scholarship, working with models, incorporating scholarship, articulation of research questions, working with graphs, and articulation of methods. Preliminary research analysis shows that explicitly teaching Physics genres increases student’s abilities to write successfully in Physics, enabling students to understand how knowledge is communicated persuasively to audiences. Our goal with this research is to show STEM faculty through research by Physicists and Writing Studies scholars that teaching writing socializes students into the discipline of Physics, leading them to identify as professional scientists (Allie et al, 2010; Gere et al., 2019). This increase is exemplified by the large number of students volunteering to present a poster during the University wide research day, giving them experience presenting to an educated audience outside of Physics.
 Thus, a combination of strategies – curricular collaboration and intervention, collaborative research from within the discipline of Physics, and successful external funding – are what demonstrate to scientists that teaching genre and teaching writing are central to science education. Based on this experience, our contribution is that shared pedagogical and research collaborations, and funding, are what make the knowledge of Writing Studies persuasive to scientists.
 We have seen success with these efforts. At George Washington, other STEM faculty have observed successes in the Physics curriculum, and have joined efforts to bring writing more explicitly into their curriculum. This year, we began a Writing in STEM symposium that has grown to include faculty in Chemistry, Systems Engineering, Mathematics, Geography, Mechanical Engineering, and other fields. We have also seen an uptick in STEM courses in the WID curriculum. The Physics and Writing research collaboration has led to a National Science Foundation (NSF) submission on genre, and an NSF award for a study of writing and engineering judgement, being conducted by Writing faculty and Systems Engineering faculty.
 References
 Allie, S., Armien, M.N., Burgoyne, N, Case, J.M., Collier-Reed, B.I, Craig, T.S., Deacon, A, Fraser, D.M.,Geyer, Z, Jacobs, C., Jawitz, J., Kloot, B., Kotta, L., Langdon, G., le Roux, K., Marshall, D, Mogashana,D., Shaw,C., Sheridan, G., & Wolmarans, N. (2009). Learning as acquiring a discursive identity through participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education. European Journal of Engineering Education, 34(4), 359-367. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043790902989457
 Anderson, P., Anson, C. M., Fish, T., Gonyea, R. M., Marshall, M., Menefee-Libey, W Charles Paine, C., Palucki Blake, L. & Weaver, S. (2017). How writing contributes to learning: new findings from a national study and their local application. Peer Review, 19(1), 4.
 Ericsson, K. A. (2009). The Influence of experience and deliberate practice on the development of superior expert performance. In K. A. Ericsson, R. R. Hoffman, A. Kozbelt & A. M Williams (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp 685–705). Cambridge University Press.
 Gere, A. R., Limlamai, N., Wilson, E., Saylor, K., & Pugh, R. (2019). Writing and conceptual learning in science: an analysis of assignments. Written communication, 36(1), 99–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088318804820
 Kellogg, R., & Whiteford, A. (2009). Training advanced writing skills: the case for deliberate practice. Educational psychologist, 44(4), 250–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520903213600
 Poe, M., Lerner, N., & Craig, J. (2010). Learning to communicate in science and engineering: Case studies from MIT. MIT Press.
 Swales, J. (1990). Discourse analysis in professional contexts. Annual review of applied linguistics, 11, 103–114.
 Winsor, D. A.(1996) Writing like an engineer: A rhetorical education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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13

Hayat, Anees, Asia Riaz, and Nazia Suleman. "Effect of gamma irradiation and subsequent cold storage on the development and predatory potential of seven spotted ladybird beetle Coccinella septempunctata Linnaeus (Coleoptera; Coccinellidae) larvae." World Journal of Biology and Biotechnology 5, no. 2 (2020): 37. http://dx.doi.org/10.33865/wjb.005.02.0297.

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Seven spot ladybird beetle, (Coccinella septempunctata) is a widely distributed natural enemy of soft-bodied insect pests especially aphids worldwide. Both the adult and larvae of this coccinellid beetle are voracious feeders and serve as a commercially available biological control agent around the globe. Different techniques are adopted to enhance the mass rearing and storage of this natural enemy by taking advantage of its natural ability to withstand under extremely low temperatures and entering diapause under unfavorable low temperature conditions. The key objective of this study was to develop a cost effective technique for enhancing the storage life and predatory potential of the larvae of C. septempunctata through cold storage in conjunction with the use of nuclear techniques, gamma radiations. Results showed that the host eating potential of larvae was enhanced as the cold storage duration was increased. Gamma irradiation further enhanced the feeding potential of larvae that were kept under cold storage. Different irradiation doses also affected the development time of C. septempuntata larvae significantly. Without cold storage, the lower radiation doses (10 and 25 GY) prolonged the developmental time as compared to un-irradiated larvae. Furthermore, the higher dose of radiation (50GY) increased the developmental time after removal from cold storage. This study first time paves the way to use radiation in conjunction with cold storage as an effective technique in implementation of different biological control approaches as a part of any IPM programs.Key wordGamma irradiations; cold storage, Coccinella septempunctata larvae; predatory potential; integrated pest management programme.INTRODUCTIONNuclear techniques such as gamma radiations have a vast application in different programmes of biological control including continuous supply of sterilized host and improved rearing techniques (Greany and Carpenter, 2000; Cai et al., 2017). Similarly irradiation can be used for sentinel-host eggs and larvae for monitoring survival and distribution of parasitoids (Jordão-paranhos et al., 2003; Hendrichs et al., 2009; Tunçbilek et al., 2009; Zapater et al., 2009; Van Lenteren, 2012). Also, at the production level, such technique may facilitate the management of host rearing, improve quality and expedite transport of product (Fatima et al., 2009; Hamed et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2009). Gamma irradiations can also be used to stop insect’s development to enhance host suitability for their use in different mass rearing programs (Celmer-Warda, 2004; Hendrichs et al., 2009; Seth et al., 2009). Development and survival of all insects have a direct connection with temperatures which in turn affect the physical, functional and behavioral adaptations (Ramløy, 2000). Many insects living in moderate regions can survive at low temperature by process of diapause. A temperature between 0 to 10oC may cause some insects to become sluggish and they only become active when the temperature is suitable. Such insects show greater adaptations to flexible temperature regimes for better survival. Many studies have reported this concept of cold-hardiness in insects in general (Bale, 2002; Danks, 2006) and specifically in coccinellid beetles over past years (Watanabe, 2002; Koch et al., 2004; Pervez and Omkar, 2006; Labrie et al., 2008; Berkvens et al., 2010). Using this cold hardiness phenomenon, many coccinellids have been studied for the effect of cold storage such as Coccinella undecimpunctata (Abdel‐Salam and Abdel‐Baky, 2000), Coleomegilla maculata (Gagné and Coderre, 2001) and Harmonia axyridis (Watanabe, 2002). This natural phenomenon, therefore, can be a helpful tool in developing low temperature stockpiling for improving mass-rearing procedures (Mousapour et al., 2014). It may provide a significant output in terms of providing natural enemies as and when required during pest infestation peaks (Venkatesan et al., 2000). Use of irradiation in conjunction with cold storage proves to be an effective technique in implementation of different biological control approaches as a part of any IPM programme. A study reported that the pupate of house fly, Musca domestica irradiated at dose of 500 Gy and can stored up to 2 months at 6°C for future use for a parasitoid wasp Spalangia endius rearing (Zapater et al., 2009). Similarly, when irradiated at 20 GY, parasitic wasps Cotesia flavipes were stored safely up to two months without deterioration of their parasitic potential (Fatima et al., 2009). Similarly, bio-control program of sugarcane shoot borer Chilo infescatellus proved successful through the use of irradiation combined with cold storage of its egg and larval parasitoids Trichogramma chilonis and C. flavipes (Fatima et al., 2009). Less mobile life stages such as larvae are of significance in any IPM strategy because they remain on target site for more time period as compared to adults. Therefore, use of predatory larvae is very promising in different biological control approaches because of their immediate attack on pests and more resistance to unfavorable environmental conditions than delicate egg stage. In addition, with their augmentation into fields, larval stage shows their presence for longer time than adult stage and their feeding potential is also satisfactory as that of adults. For the best utilization of these predators in the field and maximum impact of 3rd and 4th larval instars on prey, we should encourage late 2nd second instar larvae of predatory beetles in the fields as these instars have more feeding capacity due to increased size and ability to handle larger preys.In spite of higher significance, there is little information available about the effect of cold storage on the survival of larval instars of different ladybird beetles and its effect on their predatory potential. Very few studies report the use of cold storage for non-diapausing larval stage like for Semiadalia undecimnotata and only one study reported the short-term storage (up to two weeks) of 2nd and 3rd instar coccinellid, C. maculate, without any loss in feeding voracity of larvae after storage (Gagné and Coderre, 2001). The survival of 3rd and 4th larval instars of C. undecimpunctata for 7 days after storage at 5oC was reported in a study but the survival rate declined after 15-60 days of storage (Abdel‐Salam and Abdel‐Baky, 2000). As C. septempunctata is considered one of the voracious predators (Afroz, 2001; Jandial and Malik, 2006; Bilashini and Singh, 2009; Xia et al., 2018) and diapause is a prominent feature of this beetle and it may undergo facultative diapause under suitable laboratory conditions (Suleman, 2015). No information is available to date about the combined effect of cold storage and irradiation on the larval instars of this species.OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to devise a cost effective technique for the cold storage and its effect on the subsequent predatory potential of the seven spotted ladybird beetle larvae in conjunction with the use of gamma radiations. Hypothesis of the study was that an optimum length of low temperature treatment for storage purpose would not affect the predation capacity of C. septempunctata larvae and their developmental parameters including survival and pupation will remain unaffected. Furthermore, use of gamma irradiation will have some additional effects on survival and feeding capacity of irradiated C. septempunctata larvae. Such techniques can be utilized in different biocontrol programs where short term storage is required. So these larvae can be successfully imparted in different IPM programs against sucking complex of insect pests as a component of biological control strategyMATERIALS AND METHODSPlant materials: Collection and rearing of C. septempunctata: Adult C. septempunctata were collected from the wheat crop (in NIAB vicinity and farm area) in the month of March during late winter and early in spring season 2016-2017. They were kept in plastic jars and were fed with brassica aphids. Under controlled laboratory conditions (25+2oC, 16h: 8h L:D and 65+5% R.H.), eggs of C. septempuctata were obtained and after hatching, larvae were also given brassica aphids as dietary source. Larvae of second instar were selected for this experiment (as the first instar is generally very weak and vulnerable to mortality under low temperatures). As the larvae approached second instar, they were separated for the experimentation. Irradiation of larvae at different doses: Irradiation of larvae was carried out by the irradiation source 137CS at Radiation laboratory, and the larvae were then brought back to the IPM laboratory, Plant Protection Division, Nuclear Institute for Agriculture and Biology (NIAB) Faisalabad. Radiation doses of 10 GY (Grey), 25 GY and 50 GY were used to treat the second instar larvae. There were three replicates for each treatment and five larvae per replicate were used. Control treatment was left un-irradiated.Cold storage of irradiated larvae: In present work, second instar C. septempunctata larvae were studied for storage at low temperature of 8oC. The larvae were kept at 8oC for 0, I and II weeks where week 0 depicts no cold treatment and this set of larvae was left under laboratory conditions for feeding and to complete their development. For larvae that were kept under cold storage for one week at 8°C, the term week I was devised. Similarly, week II denotes the larvae that remained under cold conditions (8°C) for two continuous weeks. Larvae were removed from cold storage in their respective week i.e., after week I and week II and were left under laboratory conditions to complete their development by feeding on aphids. Data collection: For recording the predatory potential of C. septempunctata larvae, 100 aphids were provided per larva per replicate on a daily basis until pupation as this number was more than their feeding capacity to make sure that they were not starved (personal observation). Observations were recorded for survival rate, developmental time and feeding potential. Data analysis: Data were statistically analysed by Statistical Software SPSS (Version 16.0). The data were subjected to normality check through the One-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Non normal data were transformed to normal data which were then used for all parametric variance tests. One-way and two-way analyses of variance were used. For comparison between variables, LSD test at α 0.05 was applied.RESULTSFeeding potential of irradiated larvae after removal from cold storage: Results showed an increase in the feeding potential of C. septempunctata larvae with increased cold storage duration. The feeding potential was significantly higher for the larvae that spent maximum length of time (week II) under cold storage conditions followed by week I and week 0. Gamma irradiations further enhanced the feeding potential of larvae that were kept under cold storage. When larvae were irradiated at 10 GY, the eating capacity of larvae increased significantly with the duration of cold storage. Similarly, larvae that were irradiated at 25 GY, showed increase in feeding potential on aphids as the time period of cold storage increased. The feeding potential of larvae that were irradiated at 50 GY, was again significantly increased with increase of cold storage duration. When different radiation doses were compared to week 0 of storage, there was a significant difference in feeding potential and larvae irradiated at 50 GY consumed the maximum numbers of aphids when no cold storage was done followed by larvae irradiated at 10 and 25 GY. With the other treatment, where larvae were kept under cold storage for one week (week I) the larvae irradiated at 50GY again showed the highest feeding potential. The feeding potential of irradiated larvae was again significantly higher than the un-irradiated larvae that were kept for two weeks (week II) under cold storage (table 1).Two-way ANOVA was performed to check the interaction between the different radiation doses and different lengths of storage durations for feeding potential of C. septempunctata larvae on aphids. The feeding potential of larvae irradiated at different doses and subjected to variable durations of cold storage were significantly different for both the radiation doses and cold storage intervals. Furthermore, the interaction between the radiation doses and storage duration was also significant meaning that the larvae irradiated at different doses with different length of cold storage were having significant variations in feeding levels (table 2).Developmental time of irradiated larvae after removal from cold storage: Significant difference was found in the development time of the larvae of C. septempunctata when irradiated at different doses at week 0 (without cold storage). The larvae irradiated at 10 GY took the maximum time for development and with the increase in irradiation dosage, from 25 to 50 GY, the time of development was shortened. The larvae irradiated at 50 GY had the same development time as the un-irradiated ones. When, the irradiated larvae were subjected to cold storage of one week duration (week I), their development time after removal from storage condition varied significantly. The larvae irradiated at 25 GY took the maximum time for development followed by larvae irradiated at 50 GY and 10 GY. There was an indication that the development time was extended for irradiated larvae as compared to un-irradiated larvae.Results also depicted a significant difference in the time taken by irradiated larvae to complete their development after taken out from cold storage of two weeks duration (week II). As the storage time of irradiated larvae increased, the development time was prolonged. Results showed that the larvae that were irradiated at 25 and 50 GY, took the maximum time to complete their development. With the prolonged duration of cold storage up to two weeks (week II), this difference of development time was less evident at lower doses (10 GY). The larvae irradiated at 10 GY showed a significant difference in their developmental duration after being taken out of cold storage conditions of the week 0, I and II. There was no difference in the developmental duration of larvae that were un-irradiated and subjected to different regimes of storage. Un-irradiated larvae were least affected by the duration of storage. With the increase in the storage time, a decrease in the developmental time was recorded. Larvae that were irradiated at 10 GY, took the maximum period to complete their development when no cold storage was done (week 0) followed by week I and II of cold storage. When the larvae irradiated at 25 GY were compared for their development time, there was again significant difference for week 0, I and II of storage duration. Maximum time was taken by the larvae for their complete development when removed from cold storage after one week (week I). With the increase in storage duration the time taken by larvae to complete their development after removal from cold storage reduced.When the larvae were removed after different lengths of cold storage duration i.e., week 0, week I and week II, there was a significant difference in the developmental time afterwards. Results have shown that the higher dose of radiation, increased the developmental time after removal from cold storage. The larvae irradiated at 50 GY took the longest time to complete their development after removal from cold storage (week I and week II) as compared the larvae that were not kept under cold storage conditions (week 0) (table 3).Interaction between the different radiation doses and different lengths of storage durations for development time of larvae were checked by two-way ANOVA. The development time of larvae irradiated at different doses and subjected to variable durations of cold storage were significantly different for both the doses and cold storage intervals. Furthermore, the interaction between the radiation doses and storage duration was also significant meaning that the larvae irradiated at different doses with different length of cold storage were having significant variations in development times (table 4). DISCUSSIONThe present research work indicates the possibility of keeping the larval instars of C. septempunctata under cold storage conditions of 8oC for a short duration of around 14 days without affecting its further development and feeding potential. Furthermore, irradiation can enhance the feeding potential and increase the development time of larval instars. This in turn could be a useful technique in mass rearing and field release programmes for biological control through larval instars. Usually temperature range of 8-10oC is an optimal selection of low temperature for storage as reported earlier for eggs two spotted ladybird beetle, Adalia bipunctata and the eggs of C. septempunctata (Hamalainen and Markkula, 1977), Trichogramma species (Jalali and Singh, 1992) and fairyfly, Gonatocerus ashmeadi (Hymenoptra; Mymaridae) (Leopold and Chen, 2007). However, a study reported more than 80% survival rate for the coccinellid beetle, Harmonia axyridis for up to 150 days at moderately low temperature of 3-6oC (Ruan et al., 2012). So there is great flexibility in coccinellid adults and larvae for tolerating low temperature conditions. After removal from cold storage, larvae showed better feeding potential with consumption of more aphids when compared to normal larvae that were not placed under low temperature conditions. This indicates that when the adult or immature insect stages are subjected to low temperature environment, they tend to reduce their metabolic activity for keeping them alive on the reserves of their body fats and sustain themselves for a substantial length of time under such cold environment. Hereafter, the larval instars that were in cold storage were behaving as if starved for a certain length of time and showed more hunger. This behavior of improved or higher feeding potential of stored larvae has been reported previously (Chapman, 1998). Hence, the feeding potential of C. septempunctata larvae significantly increased after cold storage. Gagné and Coderre (2001) reported higher predatory efficacy in larvae of C. maculata when stored at the same temperature as in the present study i.e., 8oC. Similarly, Ruan et al. (2012) showed that the multicolored Asian ladybug, H. axyridis, when stored under cold conditions, had more eating capacity towards aphids Aphis craccivora Koch than the individuals that were not stored. Such studies indicate that the higher feeding potential in insects after being subjected to low temperature environmental conditions could be due to the maintenance of their metabolism rate to a certain level while utilizing their energy reserves to the maximum extent (Watanabe, 2002).The individuals coming out from cold storage are therefore capable of consuming more pray as they were in a condition of starvation and they have to regain their energy loss through enhanced consumption. Furthermore, the starvation in C. septempunctata has previously been reported to affect their feeding potential (Suleman et al., 2017). In the present study, the larval development was delayed after returning to normal laboratory conditions. Cold storage affects the life cycle of many insects other than coccinellids. The cold storage of green bug aphid parasitoid, Lysiphlebus testaceipes Cresson (Hymenoptra; Braconidae) mummies increased the life cycle 3-4 times. Nevertheless, in current study the development process of stored larvae resumed quickly after taking them out and larvae completed their development up to adult stage. Similar kinds of results were reported for resumption of larval development after removal from cold storage conditions. Such studies only report satisfactory survival rates and development for a short duration of cold storage but as the length of storage is increased, it could become harmful to certain insects. Gagné and Coderre (2001) reported that cold storage for longer period (three weeks) proved fatal for almost 40% of larvae of C. maculata. Furthermore, in the same study, the feeding potential of C. maculata larvae was also affected beyond two weeks of cold storage due to the loss of mobility after a long storage period. Many studies have reported that longer durations of low temperature conditions can either damage the metabolic pathways of body cells or may increase the levels of toxins within the bodies of insects. Also, low temperature exposure for longer duration may cause specific interruptions in the insect body especially neuro-hormones responsible for insect development, which could be dangerous or even life threatening.Chen et al. (2004) also reported that the biological qualities of parasitized Bemisia tabaci pupae on population quality of Encarsia formosa were affected negatively with increase in cold storage duration. Similarly, the egg hatchability of green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea Stephen was lost completely beyond 18 days of cold storage (Sohail et al., 2019). However, in the present study the cold storage was done for maximum two weeks and it is to be regarded as a short term storage hence the survival rate was satisfactory. Longer periods of cold storage for larvae are not considered safe due to their vulnerable state as compared to adults which are hardier. Also 2nd instar larvae used in the present study for cold storage for being bigger in size and physical stronger than 1st instar. Abdel‐Salam and Abdel‐Baky (2000) reported that in C. undecimpunctata the cold storage of 3rd and 4th larval instars was higher and considered safer than early larval instars. The same study showed sharp decline in survival rate after two weeks and there was no survival beyond 30-60 days of cold storage. The present study showed that short term storage of the larvae of C. septempunctata could be done without any loss of their feeding potential or development so the quality of predator remained unaffected. Similar kind of work for many other insects had been reported previously where cold storage technique proved useful without deteriorating the fitness of stored insects. For example, the flight ability of reared codling moth Cydia pomonella Linnaeus remained unaffected after removal from cold storage (Matveev et al., 2017). Moreover, a sturdy reported that pupae of a parasitoid wasp Trichogramma nerudai (Hymenoptera; Trichogrammatidae) could be safely put in cold storage for above than 50 days (Tezze and Botto, 2004). Similarly, a technique of cold storage of non-diapausing eggs of black fly Simulium ornaturm Meigen was developed at 1oC. Another study reported safe storage of a predatory bug insidious flower bug Orius insidiosus for more than 10 days at 8°C (Bueno et al., 2014).In present study without cold storage, the lower doses of 10 and 25 GY prolonged the developmental time as compared to un-irradiated larvae and higher doses of irradiations in conjunction with cold storage again significantly prolonged the developmental time of larvae when returned to the laboratory conditions. Salem et al. (2014) also reported that Gamma irradiations significantly increased the duration of developmental stages (larvae and pupae) in cutworm, Agrotis ipsilon (Hufnagel). In another study, where endoparasitic wasps Glyptapanteles liparidis were evaluated with irradiated and non-irradiated gypsy moth Lymantria dispar larvae for oviposition, it was found that non-irradiated larvae had a shorter time to reach the adult stage as compared to irradiated larvae (Novotny et al., 2003). Both for higher doses with cold storage and lower doses without cold storage extended the larval duration of C. septempunctata. In another study when the parasitoid wasp Habrobracon hebetor was irradiated at the dose of 10 GY, it resulted in prolonged longevity (Genchev et al., 2008). In the same study, when another parasitoid Ventruria canescens was irradiated at lower doses of 4GY and 3 GY, it resulted in increased emergence from the host larvae, while gamma irradiations at the dose of 1 GY and 2 GY significantly stimulated the rate of parasitism (Genchev et al., 2008). The current study also indicated higher rates of predation in the form of increased feeding potential of larvae as a result of irradiations at lower doses.CONCLUSIONThe outcome of the current study shows that storage of 2nd instar C. septempunctata at low temperature of 8oC for a short duration of about 14 days is completely safe and could have broader application in different biocontrol programs. Such flexibility in storage duration can also assist in different mass rearing techniques and commercial uses. The combination of gamma radiation with low temperature cold storage could be a useful tool in developing different biological pest management programs against sucking insect pests. Incidence of periodic occurrence of both the target insect pests with their predatory ladybird beetles in synchrony is an important aspect that could be further strengthened by cold storage techniques. Therefore, short or long term bulk cold storage of useful commercial biocontrol agents and then reactivating them at appropriate time of pest infestation is a simple but an advantageous method in mass rearing programs. Increased feeding capacity of stored larvae is another edge and hence such larvae may prove more beneficial as compared to unstored larvae. Both cold storage and improved feeding of the C. septempuctata larvae can be utilized for implementation of IPM for many sucking insect pests of various crops, fruits and vegetables. Due to some constraints this study could not be continued beyond two weeks but for future directions, higher doses and longer duration periods could further elaborate the understanding and better application of such useful techniques in future IPM programmes on a wider scale. Also, some other predatory coccinellid beetle species can be tested with similar doses and cold storage treatments to see how effective this technique is on other species as well.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We acknowledge the Sugarcane Research and Development Board for providing a research grant (No. SRDB/P/4/16) to carry out this research work. 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Alweera, Diluka, Nisha Sulari Kottearachchi, Dikkumburage Radhika Gimhani, and Kumudu Senarathna. "Single nucleotide polymorphisms in GBBSI and SSIIa genes in relation to starch physicochemical properties in selected rice (Oryza sativa L.) varieties." World Journal of Biology and Biotechnology 5, no. 2 (2020): 23. http://dx.doi.org/10.33865/wjb.005.02.0305.

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Abstract:
Starch quality is one of the most important agronomic traits in rice (Oryza sativa L). In this study, we identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the Waxy and Alk genes of eight rice varieties and their associations with starch physicochemical properties.vi.e.vamylose content (AC) and gelatinization temperature (GT). Seven Sri Lankan rice varieties, Pachchaperumal, Herathbanda, At 354, Bg 352, Balasuriya, H 6 and Bw 295-5 were detected as high amylose varieties while Nipponbare exhibited low amylose content. In silico analysis of the Waxy gene revealed that all tested Sri Lankan varieties possessed ‘G’ (Wxa allele) instead of ‘T’ in the first intron which could explain varieties with high and intermediate amylose content. All Sri Lankan varieties had ‘A’ instead of ‘C’ in exon 6 of the Waxy gene and this fact was tally with the varieties showing high amylose content. Therefore, possessing the Wxa allele in the first intron and ‘A’ in exon 6 could be used as a molecular marker for the selection of high amylose varieties as validated using several Sri Lankan varieties. All Sri Lankan varieties except, Bw 295-5 exhibited the intermediate type of GT which could not be explained using the so far reported allelic differences in the Alk gene. However, Bw 295-5 which is a low GT variety had two nucleotide polymorphisms in the last exon of the Alk gene, i.e. ‘G’ and ‘TT’ that represent low GT class. Therefore, it can be concluded that sequence variations of Waxy and Alk genes reported in this study are useful in breeding local rice varieties with preferential amylose content and GT class.Key word Alk gene, amylose content, single nucleotide polymorphism, Waxy gene.INTRODUCTIONRice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the leading food crops of the world. More than half of the world’s population relies on rice as the major daily source of calories and protein (Sartaj and Suraweera, 2005). After grain yield, quality is the most important aspect of rice breeding. Grain size and shape largely determine the market acceptability of rice, while cooking quality is influenced by the properties of starch. In rice grains starch is the major component that primarily controls rice quality. Starch consists of two forms of glucose polymers, relatively unbranched amylose and a highly branched amylopectin. Starch-synthesizing genes may contribute to variation in starch physicochemical properties because they affect the amount and structure of amylose and amylopectin in rice grain (Kharabian-Masouleh et al., 2012). Amylose content (AC), gelatinization temperature (GT) and gel consistency (GC) is the three most important determinants of eating and cooking quality. Amylose content is the ratio of amylose amount present in endosperm to total starch content. Rice varieties are grouped based on their amylose content into waxy (0-2%), very low (3-9%), low (10-19%), intermediate (20-25%), and high (> 25%) (Kongseree and Juliano, 1972). The most widely used method for amylose determination is a colorimetric assay where iodine binds with amylose to produce a blue-purple color, which is measured spectrophotometrically at a single wavelength (620nm). Low amylose content is usually associated with tender, cohesive and glossy cooked rice; while, high amylose content is associated with firm, fluffy and separate grains of cooked rice. The Waxy (Wx) gene, which encodes granule-bound starch synthase I (GBSSI), is the major gene controlling AC in rice (Nakamura, 2002). The Waxy gene is located on chromosome six and various single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of Wx were found, including a ‘G’ to ‘T’ SNP of the first intron, ‘A’ to ‘C’ SNP of the sixth exon and ‘C’ to ‘T’ SNP of the tenth exon (Larkin and Park, 2003). The ‘AGGTATA’ sequence at the 5’splice-junction coincides with the presence of the Wxa allele, while the ‘AGTTATA’ sequence coincides with the presence of the Wxb allele. Therefore, all intermediate and high amylose cultivars had ‘G’ nucleotide while low amylose cultivars had ‘T’ nucleotide at the putative leader intron 5′ splice site. The cytosine and thymidine (CT) dinucleotide repeats in the 5’- untranslated region (UTR) of the Waxy gene were reported to be a factor associated with AC. However, the relationship between these polymorphisms and amylose contents is not clear. Amylopectin chain length distribution plays a very important role to determine GT in cooked rice. The time required for cooking is determined by the gelatinization temperature of starch. It is important because it affects the texture of cooked rice and it is related to the cooking time of rice. The gelatinization temperature is estimated by the alkali digestibility test. It is measured by the alkali spreading value (ASV). The degree of spreading value of individual milled rice kernels in a weak alkali solution (1.7% KOH) is very closely correlated with gelatinized temperature. According to the ASV, rice varieties may be classified as low (55 to 69°C), intermediate (70 to 74°C) and high (> 74°C) GT classes. In a breeding program ASV is extensively used to estimate the gelatinization temperature. The synthesis of amylopectin is more complex than that of amylose. Polymorphisms in the starch synthase IIa (SSIIa) gene which is recognized as the Alk gene are responsible for the differences in GT in rice (Umemoto and Aoki, 2005; Waters et al., 2006). Two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the last exon of the Alk gene are responsible for the differences in GT in rice. The biochemical analysis clearly showed that the function of the amino acids caused by these two SNPs is essential for SSIIa enzyme activity (Nakamura et al., 2005) and those are ‘G’/‘A’ SNP at 4424 bp position and ‘GC’/‘TT’ SNPs at 4533/4534 bp position with reference to Nipponbare rice genomic sequence. Based on the SNPs, Low SSIIa enzyme activity results in S-type amylopectin, which is enriched in short chains whereas high SSIIa enzyme activity produces L-type amylopectin (Umemoto et al., 2004). Therefore, the combination of ‘G’ at SNP3 and ‘GC’ at SNP4 is required to produce L-type rice starch and this has a higher GT relative to S-type starch. GC is a standard assay that is used in rice improvement programs to determine the texture of softness and firmness in high amylose rice cultivars. Intermediate and low amylose rice usually has soft gel consistency. Sequence variation in exon 10 of the Waxy gene associates with GC (Tran et al., 2011).OBJECTIVES The objectives of this study were to detect polymorphisms in major starch synthesizing genes among several rice cultivars as models and to determine the relationship between their SNP variations and starch physicochemical properties. Also, we analyzed major starch synthesizing gene sequences of several Sri Lankan rice varieties in silico aiming at utilizing this information in rice breeding programs.MATERIALS AND METHODSPlant materials: Seeds of eight Oryza sativa L. accessions were obtained from the Rice Research and Development Institute (RRDI), Bathalagoda, Sri Lanka and Gene Bank of Plant Genetic Resource Center (PGRC), Gannoruwa.Characterization of grain physical parameters: Grain length and width were determined using a vernier caliper. Ten grains from each sample were collected randomly and measured to obtain the average length and width of the milled rice. The average length and width were recorded as their length and width. Based on the length and width of the grains, the milled rice grains were classified into four classes (table 1) according to the method accepted by RRDI Bathalagoda, Sri Lanka.According to the scale L/S – Long Slender, L/M – Long Medium, I/B – Intermediate Bold and S/R –Short RoundAnalysis of amylose content: Initially, rice samples were dehusked and polished prior to milling. Ten whole – milled rice kernels of eight rice samples were ground separately by using mortar and pestle. Amylose content per 100 mg was determined by measuring the blue value of rice varieties as described by Juliano (1971). About 100mg rice sample was shifted into a 100 mL volumetric flask and 1mL of 95% ethanol was added. Then 9mL of 1N NaOH was added and the content was boiled for 20min. at boiling temperature to gelatinize the starch. After cooling the content, the volume was made up to 100mL and 5mL of starch solution was pipetted out into a 100mL volumetric flask. The blue color was developed by adding 1mL of 1N acetic acid and 2 mL of iodine solution (0.2g iodine and 2.0g potassium iodine in 10 mL aqueous solution). Then volume was made up to 100mL with distilled water and the solution was kept for 20min. after shaking. Finally, the absorbance of the solution was measured at 620nm using Spectrophotometer T80 (PG Instruments Limited) as described by Juliano (1971). The standard curve was prepared using 40mg of potato-amylose to calculate the amylose content of rice varieties through absorbance values. Forty mg of potato amylose was put into a 100 mL of volumetric flask and 1ml of 95% ethanol and 9mL of NaOH were added and content was heated for 20min at boiling temperature. After cooling the content volume of the solution was made up to 100mL using distilled water. Then 1mL, 2mL, 3mL, 4mL and 5mL of amylose solution were pipetted out into 100mL flasks. Then 0.2mL, 0.4mL, 0.6mL, 0.8mL and 1mL of 1N acetic acid were added to the flasks respectively. Finally, 2mL of iodine solution was added to each flask and volume was made up to 100mL with distilled water. Solutions were stood up for 20min. after shaking and absorbance values were measured at 620nm. Measured absorbance values were plotted at 620nm against the concentration of anhydrous amylose (mg).Analysis of gelatinization temperature: GT was indirectly measured on rice by the alkali spreading value. Husked and polished seeds per accession were used for the analysis. Selected duplicate sets of six milled grains without cracks of each sample were put into Petri dishes. About 10mL of 1.7% KOH was added and grains were spread in the petri dish to provide enough space. The constant temperature at 30°C was maintained to ensure better reproducibility. After 23hrs, the degree of disintegration was quantified by a standard protocol with a numerical scale of 1–7 (table 2) as reported by Cruz and Khush (2000). As reported by Juliano (2003), GT of rice was determined using the alkaline spreading scale, where 1.0-2.5: High (74-80 °C), 2.6-3.4: High-intermediate (70-74 °C), 3.5-5.4: Intermediate (70-74 °C) and 5.5-7.0 Low: (55-70 °C).Bioinformatics and statistical analysis: The available literature was used to identify the most likely candidate genes associated with rice starch quality and their SNPs of each gene (Hirose et al., 2006; Waters and Henry, 2007; Tran et al., 2011). In all the tested varieties except Bg 352 and At 354, the DNA sequence of each gene was retrieved from the Rice SNP Seek database (http://snp-seek.irri.org/). The gene sequences of At 354 and Bg 352 were obtained from the National Research Council 16-016 project, Wayamba University of Sri Lanka. Multiple sequence alignment was conducted for the DNA sequence using Clustal Omegavsoftware (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/msa/clustalo/). Starch physiochemical data obtained were subjected to a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Duncan’s New Multiple Range Test (DNMRT) to determine the statistical differences among varieties at the significance level of p ≤ 0.05. Statistical analysis was done using SAS version 9.1 (SAS, 2004).ESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Physical properties of rice grains: Physical properties such as length, width, size, shape and pericarp color of rice grains obtained from eight different rice varieties are given in table 3. Classification of rice grains was carried out, according to their sizes and shapes based on Juliano (1985). The size of the rice grains was determined as per grain length while grain shape was determined by means of length and width ratio of the rice kernel. In the local market, rice is classified as Samba (short grain), Nadu (intermediate grain) and Kora (long/medium) based on the size of the grain (Pathiraje et al., 2010). Lengths of rice kernels were varied from 5.58 to 6.725 mm for all varieties. The highest grain length and width were given by At 354 and Pachchaperumal respectively. The varieties, Bw 295-5 and H 6 showed a length: width ratio over 3 which is considered as slender in grain shape. Bw 295-5, H 6, At 354, Bg 352 and Nipponbare possessed white pericarp and others possessed red pericarp.Relationship between amylose content and SNPs variation of waxy loci in selected varieties: Amylose content was measured in seven Sri Lankan rice varieties and one exotic rice variety. Amylose content of the evaluated varieties varied significantly with p ≤ 0.05 with the lowest of 15.11% and highest of 28.63% which were found in Nipponbare and Bw 295-5, respectively (table 4). The majority of the evaluated varieties fell into the high AC category (between 25-28%). Only Nipponbare could be clearly categorized under the low amylose group (table 4). The amylose content of Bg 352, Pachchaperumal and Herathbanda have already been determined by early studies of Rebeira et al. (2014) and Fernando et al. (2015). Most of the data obtained in the present experiment has agreed with the results of previous studies. Major genes such as Waxy and their functional SNPs have a major influence on amylose in rice (Nakamura et al., 2005). Accordingly, single nucleotide polymorphism, ‘G’/‘T’, at the 5’ leader intron splice site of the GBSSI has explained the variation in amylose content of varieties. Accordingly, high and intermediate amylose varieties have ‘AGGTATA’ while low amylose varieties have the sequence ‘AGTTATA’, which might lead to a decrease in the splicing efficiency. Therefore, the GBSSI activity of Nipponbare might be considerably weak and resulted in starch with low amylose content. Hence, producing ‘G’/‘T’ polymorphism clearly differentiates low amylose rice varieties, as reported by Nakamura et al. (2005). In GBSSI, Larkin and Park (2003) identified an ‘A’/‘C’ polymorphism in exon 6 and a ‘C’/‘T’ polymorphism in exon 10 which resulted in non- synonymous amino acid change. Chen et al. (2008) reported that the non-synonymous ‘A’/‘C’ SNP at exon 6 had the highest possible impact on GBSSI. Accordingly, the ‘A’/‘C’ polymorphism in exon 6 causes a tyrosine/serine amino acid substitution while the ‘C’/‘T’ polymorphism in exon 10 causes a serine/proline amino acid substitution. In view of this information, there is a relationship between the polymorphism detected by in silico analysis and amylose content obtained from our experiment. Out of the eight tested rice varieties, only one variety, Nipponbare was categorized as low amylose variety (10-19%) and it exhibited ‘T’ nucleotide at the intron splice site (table 4; figure 1). Varieties such as Pachchaperumal, Balasuriya, Bw 295-5, H 6, Herathbanda, At 354 and Bg 352 which contained high amylose (> 25%), had ‘G’ and ‘A’ nucleotides at intron splice site and exon 6 respectively (table 4; figure 1). The predominant allelic pattern of intron splice site and exon 6 are different in varieties containing intermediate amylose content (20-25%) which showed ‘G’ and ‘C’ nucleotides respectively. Of these selected rice varieties, none of the intermediate type amylose variety was found.Relationship between gel consistency and SNPs variation in Waxy loci: In this study, GC data of Herathbanda, Hondarawalu, Kuruluthuda, Pachchaperumal and Bg 352 were obtained from Fernando et al. (2015). The results of Tran et al. (2011) showed that the exon 10 ‘C’/‘T’ SNP of Wx has mainly affected GC. Accordingly, rice with a ‘C’ at exon 10 had soft and viscous gels once cooked. However, a sample with a ‘T’ had short and firm gels. In this study, Herathbanda, Hondarawalu, Kuruluthuda and Pachchaperumal had ‘C’ nucleotide and Bg 352 had ‘T’ nucleotide in exon 10 (table 5; figure 2). However, ‘C’/‘T’ substitution analysis could not be used to explain the GC of tested varieties.Relationship between gelatinized temperature and SNPs variation of Alk loci in selected rice varieties: Although there were differences in the scores, the degree of disintegration of all samples was saturated at 23 hrs. Most of the selected rice varieties showed the intermediate disintegration score. Varieties, Pachchaperumal, Balasuriya, H 6, Herathbanda, At 354 and Bg 352 were categorized into intermediate GT class (70–74°C) as indicated by an alkali spreading (AS) value of 5 (table 6; figure 3). Nipponbare and Bw 295-5 showed the highest disintegration score indicating the dispersion of all grains. Hence these varieties were categorized into low GT class (55-69°C) as indicated by an AS value of 6 (table 6; figure 3). However, high GT class rice varieties (> 74°C) were not found in the tested samples. Chromosomal mutation within the Alk gene has led to a number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Umemoto et al. (2004) identified four SNPs in Alk gene. Thus, SNP3 and SNP4 may be important genetic polymorphisms that are associated with GT class. According to the SNP3 and SNP4, eight rice varieties could be classified into either high GT or low GT types. If there is ‘A’ instead of ‘G’ at 4424 bp position of Alk gene with reference to Nipponbare rice genomic sequence, it codes methionine instead of valine amino acid residue in SSIIa, whilst two adjacent SNPs at bases 4533 and 4534 code for either leucine (‘GC’) or phenylalanine (‘TT’). Rice varieties with high GT starch had a combination of valine and leucine at these residues. Rice varieties with low GT starch had a combination of either methionine and leucine or valine and phenylalanine at these same residues. Nipponbare carried the ‘A’ and ‘GC’ nucleotides, while Bw 295-5 carried the ‘G’ and ‘TT’ nucleotides. Hence these varieties were classified into low GT class. Varieties such as Pachchaperumal, Balasuriya, H 6, Herathbanda, At 354 and Bg 352 carried ‘G’ and ‘GC’ nucleotides and these varieties were classified into high GT rice varieties. However, intermediate GT status could not be determined by SNP3 and SNP4 mutation of Alk gene (table 6; figure 4).In silico analysis of the polymorphisms in GBSSI gene and Alk genes of rice varieties retrieved from Rice-SNP-database: In this study, GBSSI gene and Alk gene were compared with the sequences retrieved from the Rice-SNP-Seek database to validate the SNPs further. As previously reported by Ayres et al. (1997), all low amylose varieties had the sequence ‘AGTTATA’ in exon 1. In agreement with preliminary work done by Larkin and Park (2003), all of the intermediate amylose varieties have the allelic pattern of GCC. All of the high amylose varieties have either the GAC or GAT allele of GBSSI. Among 42 rice accessions with the Sri Lankan pedigree, four allelic patterns were found; TAC, GCC, GAC and GAT (table 7). In this allelic pattern, the first letter corresponds to the ‘G’/‘T’ polymorphism in 5’ leader intron splice-junction, the second letter corresponds to the ‘A’/‘C’ polymorphism in exon 6 and the third letter corresponds to the ‘C’/‘T’ polymorphism in exon10 of Waxy gene. Analysis of the ‘G’/‘T’ polymorphism in the Wx locus showed that 41 rice cultivars shared the same ‘AGGTATA’ sequence at the 5’ leader intron splice-junction. But only 1 rice cultivar, Puttu nellu was found with ‘T’ nucleotide in intron1/exon1 junction site, which could be categorized as a low amylose variety (table 7). As discussed above, varieties with an intermediate level of apparent amylose could be reliably distinguished from those with higher apparent amylose based on a SNP in exon 6. Hence, only three rice varieties Nalumoolai Karuppan, Pannithi and Godawel with ‘C’ nucleotide in exon 6 exhibited the possibility of containing intermediate amylose content (table 7). High activity of GBSSI produces high amylose content leading to a non-waxy, non-sticky or non-glutinous phenotype. Therefore, according to the in silico genotypic results, rest of the 38 rice varieties may produce high amylose content in the endosperm (table 7). Proving this phenomenon. Abeysekera et al. (2017) has reported that usually, most of Sri Lankan rice varieties contain high amylose content. Targeted sequence analysis of exon 8 of the Alk gene in 42 different rice cultivars were found with three SNP polymorphisms that resulted in a changed amino acid sequence and, of these three SNPs, two SNPs were reported to be correlated with possible GT differences. Accordingly, Puttu nellu and 3210 rice varieties carried the ‘G’ and ‘TT’ nucleotides in SNP3 and SNP4 respectively (table 7). Hence these varieties can be classified into low GT class and except these two; other rice varieties carried the ‘G’ and ‘GC’ nucleotides in SNP3 and SNP4 respectively. Therefore, those varieties can possibly be classified into high GT rice varieties (table 7). However, further experiments are necessary to check the phenotypic variations for grain amylose content and GT class of in silico analyzed rice varieties. CONCLUSION Present results revealed the relationship between SNPs variation at Waxy loci and the amylose content of selected rice varieties. Accordingly, Pachchaperumal, At 354, Bg 352, Herathbanda, H 6, Balasuriya and Bw 295-5 with high amylose content had ‘G’ instead of ‘T’ in the first intron exhibiting the presence of Wxa allele with reference to Nipponbare which had low amylose content. Also all tested varieties had ‘A’ in exon 6 of the Waxy gene. Thus present findings i.e. presence of Wxa allele and SNP ‘A’ in exon 6 could be used as a potential molecular marker for the selection of high amylose varieties. In addition, Bw 295-5 which is a low GT variety, had two SNPs variations in the last exon of the Alk gene i.e. ‘G’ and ‘TT’ which is likely to be used to represent low GT class. Accordingly, sequence variations identified in Waxy and Alk genes could be utilized in the future rice breeding programs for the development of varieties with preferential amylose content and GT class.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSDirector and staff of the Gene Bank, Plant Genetic Resources Center, Gannoruwa are acknowledged for giving rice accessions.CONFLICT OF INTERESTAuthors have no conflict of interest.REFERENCESAbeysekera, W., G. Premakumara, A. Bentota and D. S. Abeysiriwardena, 2017. Grain amylose content and its stability over seasons in a selected set of rice varieties grown in Sri Lanka. Journal of agricultural sciences Sri Lanka, 12(1): 43-50.Ayres, N., A. McClung, P. Larkin, H. Bligh, C. Jones and W. Park, 1997. Microsatellites and a single-nucleotide polymorphism differentiate apparentamylose classes in an extended pedigree of us rice germ plasm. Theoretical applied genetics, 94(6-7): 773-781.Chen, M.-H., C. Bergman, S. Pinson and R. Fjellstrom, 2008. Waxy gene haplotypes: Associations with apparent amylose content and the effect by the environment in an international rice germplasm collection. Journal of cereal science, 47(3): 536-545.Cruz, N. D. and G. Khush, 2000. Rice grain quality evaluation procedures. Aromatic rices, 3: 15-28.Fernando, H., T. Kajenthini, S. Rebeira, T. Bamunuarachchige and H. Wickramasinghe, 2015. Validation of molecular markers for the analysis of genetic diversity of amylase content and gel consistency among representative rice varieties in sri lanka. Tropical agricultural research, 26(2): 317-328.Hirose, T., T. Ohdan, Y. Nakamura and T. Terao, 2006. Expression profiling of genes related to starch synthesis in rice leaf sheaths during the heading period. Physiologia plantarum, 128(3): 425-435.Juliano, B., 1971. A simplified assay for milled rice amylose. Journal of cereal science today, 16: 334-360.Juliano, B. O., 1985. Rice: Chemistry and technology. The american association of cereal chemists. Inc. St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, 774.Juliano, B. O., 2003. Rice chemistry and quality. Island publishing house. Island publishing house, Manila: 1-7.Kharabian-Masouleh, A., D. L. Waters, R. F. Reinke, R. Ward and R. J. Henry, 2012. Snp in starch biosynthesis genes associated with nutritional and functional properties of rice. Scientific reports, 2(1): 1-9.Kongseree, N. and B. O. Juliano, 1972. Physicochemical properties of rice grain and starch from lines differing in amylose content and gelatinization temperature. Journal of agricultural food chemistry, 20(3): 714-718.Larkin, P. D. and W. D. Park, 2003. Association of waxy gene single nucleotide polymorphisms with starch characteristics in rice (Oryza sativa L.). Molecular Breeding, 12(4): 335-339.Nakamura, Y., 2002. Towards a better understanding of the metabolic system for amylopectin biosynthesis in plants: Rice endosperm as a model tissue. Plant cell physiology, 43(7): 718-725.Nakamura, Y., P. B. Francisco, Y. Hosaka, A. Sato, T. Sawada, A. Kubo and N. Fujita, 2005. Essential amino acids of starch synthase iia differentiate amylopectin structure and starch quality between Japonica and Indica rice varieties. Plant molecular biology, 58(2): 213-227.Pathiraje, P., W. Madhujith, A. Chandrasekara and S. Nissanka, 2010. The effect of rice variety and parboiling on in vivo glycemic response. Journal of tropical agricultural research, 22(1): 26-33.Rebeira, S., H. Wickramasinghe, W. Samarasinghe and B. Prashantha, 2014. Diversity of grain quality characteristics of traditional rice (Oryza sativa L.) varieties in sri lanka. Tropical agricultural research, 25(4): 470-478.Sartaj, I. Z. and S. A. E. R. Suraweera, 2005. Comparison of different parboiling methods on the quality characteristics of rice. Annals of the Sri Lankan Department of Agriculture, 7: 245-252.Tran, N., V. Daygon, A. Resurreccion, R. Cuevas, H. Corpuz and M. Fitzgerald, 2011. A single nucleotide polymorphism in the waxy gene explains a significant component of gel consistency. Theoretical applied genetics, 123(4): 519-525.Umemoto, T. and N. Aoki, 2005. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms in rice starch synthase iia that alter starch gelatinisation and starch association of the enzyme. Functional plant biology, 32(9): 763-768.Umemoto, T., N. Aoki, H. Lin, Y. Nakamura, N. Inouchi, Y. Sato, M. Yano, H. Hirabayashi and S. Maruyama, 2004. Natural variation in rice starch synthase iia affects enzyme and starch properties. Functional plant biology, 31(7): 671-684.Waters, D. L. and R. J. Henry, 2007. Genetic manipulation of starch properties in plants: Patents 2001-2006. Recent patents on biotechnology, 1(3): 252-259.Waters, D. L., R. J. Henry, R. F. Reinke and M. A. Fitzgerald, 2006. Gelatinization temperature of rice explained by polymorphisms in starch synthase. Plant biotechnology journal, 4(1): 115-122.
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Park, B. J., J. J. Choi, J. S. Choe, et al. "Development of ultra-pure NaI(Tl) detectors for the COSINE-200 experiment." European Physical Journal C 80, no. 9 (2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8386-8.

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AbstractThe annual modulation signal observed by the DAMA experiment is a long-standing question in the community of dark matter direct detection. This necessitates an independent verification of its existence using the same detection technique. The COSINE-100 experiment has been operating with 106 kg of low-background NaI(Tl) detectors providing interesting checks on the DAMA signal. However, due to higher backgrounds in the NaI(Tl) crystals used in COSINE-100 relative to those used for DAMA, it was difficult to reach final conclusions. Since the start of COSINE-100 data taking in 2016, we also have initiated a program to develop ultra-pure NaI(Tl) crystals for COSINE-200, the next phase of the experiment. The program includes efforts of raw powder purification, ultra-pure NaI(Tl) crystal growth, and detector assembly techniques. After extensive research and development of NaI(Tl) crystal growth, we have successfully grown a few small-size (0.61–0.78 kg) thallium-doped crystals with high radio-purity. A high light yield has been achieved by improvements of our detector assembly technique. Here we report the ultra-pure NaI(Tl) detector developments at the Institute for Basic Science, Korea. The technique developed here will be applied to the production of NaI(Tl) detectors for the COSINE-200 experiment.
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"Meeting Report: 2007 Annual Meeting of Japanese Society for Synchrotron Radiation Research." Synchrotron Radiation News 20, no. 3 (2007): 2–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08940880701401094.

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"Correlation of ultrasonic characteristics with microstructure Smith, R.L.; Dixon, T.E. UKAEA underlying research programme annual report, April 1987–March 1988, chapter 3.7.4, p. 34 (Nov. 1988)." NDT & E International 22, no. 5 (1989): 302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0963-8695(89)91166-3.

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18

"I. Lindemann in Physics." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 41, no. 2 (1987): 181–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.1987.0004.

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LINDEMANN’S father was of French Alsacian origin and came to England around the time that Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. He married a widow whose first husband had bought ‘Sidholme’, the largest of the Regency villas in the part of Sidmouth (Devon) called Elysian Fields. The house was built in 1826 by the Earl of Buckingham and stands in 14 acres of grounds with 300 different varieties of tree. An addition had soon to be made to the house when the Earl fell out with the local rector and wanted to hold his own services; it became the music room in the Lindemanns’ time and was where Lindemann heard Paderewski play. Lindemann’s father had a laboratory and observatory in the grounds and some of Lindemann’s research was done there. When Mrs Lindemann died in 1927 the house passed to her son by her first marriage and the Lindemanns were distressed that he immediately sold it with the contents, forcing them to move. The observatory was given to the University College of the South West (which became Exeter University) and this was acknowledged in the 5th Annual Report and Prospectus of 1927. An Adam Hilger astronomical spectroscope dating from about 1885 is in a show case at the University and carries the statement ‘This spectroscope was probably used at Sidmouth, where A. F. Lindemann (father of the late Lord Cherwell) had an observatory at his home’. ‘Sidholme’ is now a Methodist Guild holiday home.
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19

Jaaniste, Luke Oliver. "The Ambience of Ambience." M/C Journal 13, no. 2 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.238.

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Well, you couldn't control the situation to that extent. The world just comes in on top of you. It creeps under the door. It falls out of the sky. It's all around. (Leunig) Like the world that cartoonist Michael Leunig describes, ambience is all around. Everywhere you go. You cannot get away from it. You cannot hide from it. You cannot be without it. For ambience is that which surrounds us, that which pervades. Always-on. Always by-your-side. Always already. Here, there and everywhere. Super-surround-sound. Immersive. Networked and cloudy. Ubiquitous. Although you cannot avoid ambience, you may ignore it. In fact, ambience is almost as ignored as it is pervasive. For the most part, our attention is given over to what’s in front of us, what we pick up, what we handle, what is in focus. Instead of ambience, our phenomenal existence is governed by what we bring into the foreground of our lives. Our attention is, almost by definition, occupied not by what is ambient, but what is salient (Jaaniste, Approaching Ch. 1). So, when Brian Eno coined the term Ambient Music in the 1970s (see Burns; Radywyl; and Ensminger in this issue), he was doing something strange. He was bringing ambience, as an idea and in its palpable sonic dimension, into salience. The term, and the penchant for attuning and re-thinking our connections to our surroundings, caught on. By the end of the twentieth century, it was deemed by one book author worthy of being called the ambient century (Prendergast). Eno is undoubtedly the great populariser of the term, but there’s a backstory to ambience. If Spitzer’s detailed semantic analysis of ‘ambience’ and its counterpart ‘milieu’ published back in the 1940s is anything to go by, then Newtonian physics had a lot to do with how ambience entered into our Modern vernacular. Isaac Newton’s laws and theories of gravity and the cosmos offered up a quandary for science back then: vast amounts of empty space. Just like we now know that most of an atom is empty space, within which a few miserly electrons, protons, neutrons and other particle fly about (and doesn’t that seem weird given how solid everything feels?) so too it is with planets, stars, galaxies whose orbits traverse through the great vacuum of the universe. And that vacuum Newton called ambience. But maybe outer-space, and ambience, is not actually empty. There could be dark matter everywhere. Or other things not yet known, observed or accounted for. Certainly, the history of our thinking around ambience since its birth in physics has seen a shift from vacuity to great density and polyphony. Over time, several ‘spaces’ became associated with ambience, which we might think of as the great scapes of our contemporary lives: the natural environment, the built environment, the social world, the aesthetic worlds encountered ‘within’ artefacts, and the data-cloud. Now is not the time or place to give a detailed history of these discursive manoeuvres (although some key clues are given in Spizter; and also Jaaniste, Approaching). But a list of how the term has been taken up after Eno–across the arts, design, media and culture–reveals the broad tenets of ambience or, perhaps, the ambience of ambience. Nowadays we find talk of (in alphabetical order): ambient advertising (Quinion), aesthetics (Foster), architecture (CNRS; Sample), art (Desmarias; Heynen et al.), calculus (Cardelli), displays (Ambient Displays Reserch Group; Lund and Mikael; Vogel and Balakrishnan), fears (Papastergiadis), findability (Morville), informatics (Morville), intelligence (Weber et al.), media (Meeks), narratives (Levin), news (Hagreaves and Thomas), poetics (Morton), television (McCarthy), and video (Bizzocchi). There’s probably more. Time, then, to introduce the authors assembled for this special ‘ambient’ issue of M/C Journal. Writing from the globe, in Spain, Ukraine, Canada, United Sates, and New Zealand, and from cities across Australia, in Melbourne, Canberra and Perth, they draw on and update the ambience of ambience. Alison Bartlett, in our feature article, begins with bodies of flesh (and sweat and squinting) and bodies of thought (including Continental theory). She draws us into a personal, present tense and tensely present account of the way writing and thinking intertwine with our physical locality. The heat, light and weathered conditions of her place of writing, now Perth and previously Townsville, are evoked, as is some sort of teased out relation with Europe. If we are always immersed in our ambient conditions, does this effect and affect everything we do, and think? Bruce Arnold and Margalit Levin then shift gear, from the rural and natural to the densely mediated contemporary urban locale. Urban ambience, as they say, is no longer about learning to avoid (or love?) harsh industrial noises, but it’s about interactivity, surveillance and signalling. They ambivalently present the ambient city as a dialectic, where feeling connected and estranged go hand-in-hand. Next we explore one outcome or application of the highly mediated, iPhone and Twitter-populated city. Alfred Hermida has previously advanced the idea of ‘ambient journalism’ (Hermida, Twittering), and in his M/C Journal piece he outlines the shift from ambient news (which relies on multiple distribution points, but which relays news from a few professional sources) to a journalism that is ambiently distributed across citizens and non-professional para-journalists. Alex Burns takes up Hermida’s framework, but seeks to show how professional journalism might engage in complex ways with Twitter and other always-on, socially-networked data sources that make up the ‘awareness system’ of ambient journalism. Burns ends his provocative paper by suggesting that the creative processes of Brian Eno might be a model for flexible approaches to working with the ambient data fields of the Internet and social grid. Enter the data artist, the marginal doodler and the darkened museum. Pau Waelder examines the way artists have worked with data fields, helping us to listen, observe and embody what is normally ignored. David Ensminger gives a folklorist-inspired account of the way doodles occupy the ambient margins of our minds, personalities and book pages. And Natalia Radywyl navigates the experiences of those who encountered the darkened and ambiguously ambient Screen Gallery of the Australian Centre for Moving Image, and ponders on what this mean for the ‘new museum’. If the experience of doodles and darkened galleries is mainly an individual thing, the final two papers delve into the highly social forms of ambience. Pauline Cheong explores how one particular type of community, Christian churches in the United States, has embraced (and sometimes critiqued) the use of Twitter to facilitate the communal ambience, 140 characters at a time. Then Christine Teague with Lelia Green and David Leith report on the working lives of transit officers on duty on trains in Perth. This is a tough ambience, where issues of safety, fear, confusion and control impact on these workers as much as they try to influence the ambience of a public transport network. The final paper gives us something to pause on: ambience might be an interesting topic, but the ambience of some people and some places might be unpalatable or despairing. Ambience is morally ambivalent (it can be good, bad or otherwise), and this is something threading through many of the papers before us. Who gets to control our ambient surrounds? Who gets to influence them? Who gets to enjoy them, take advantage of them, ignore them? For better or worse. The way we live with, connect to and attune to the ambience of our lives might be crucially important. It might change us. And it might do so on many levels. As is now evident, all the great scapes, as I called them, have been taken up in this issue. We begin with the natural environment (Bartlett’s weather) and the urban built environment (Arnold and Levin; and also Radywyl). Then we enter the data-cloud (Herminda; Burns; Waelder, and also Cheong), shifting into the aesthetic artefact (Waelder; Ensminger; Radywyl), and then into the social sphere (Cheong; Teague, Green and Leith). Of course, all these scapes, and the authors’ concerns, overlap. Ambience is a multitude, and presses into us and through us in many ways. References Ambient Displays Research Group. “Ambient Displays Research Group.” 25 July 2006 ‹http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Research/Projects/CS/io/ambient/›. Bizzocchi, Jim. “Ambient Video: The Transformation of the Domestic Cinematic Experience.” Media Environments and the Liberal Arts Conference, 10-13 June 2004, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York. 26 July 2006 ‹http://www.dadaprocessing.com› [third version of this essay]. Cardelli, Luca. “Mobility and Security.” Lecture notes for Marktoberdorf Summer School 1999, summarising several Ambient Calculus papers by Luca Cardelli & Andrew Gordon. Foundations of Secure Computation. Eds. Friedrich L. Bauer and Ralf Steinbrüggen. NATO Science Series. Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Foundations of Secure Computation, Marktoberdorf, Germany, 27 July - 8 Aug. 1999. 3-37. ‹http://lucacardelli.name/Papers/Mobility%20and%20Security.A4.pdf›. CNRS. “UMR CNRS 1563: Ambiances architecturales et urbaines”. 2007. 9 Feb. 2007 ‹http://www.archi.fr/RECHERCHE/annuaireg/pdf/UMR1563.pdf›. Desmarias, Charles. “Nothing Compared to This: Ambient, Incidental and New Minimal Tendencies in Contemporary Art.” Catalogue essay for exhibition curated by Charles Desmarais at Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, 25 Sep. - 28 Nov. 2004. Foster, Cheryl. “The Narrative and the Ambient in Environmental Aesthetics.” Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism 56.2 (Spring 1998): 127-137. Hargreaves, Ian, and James Thomas. “New News, Old News.” ITC/BSC (October 2002). 3 May 2010 ‹http://legacy.caerdydd.ac.uk/jomec/resources/news.pdf›. Herminda, Alfred. “Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism.” Journalism Practice (11 March 2010). 3 May 2010 ‹http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a919807525›. Heynen, Julian, Kasper Konig, and Stefani Jansen. Ambiance: Des deux cơtes du Rhin. To accompany an exhibition of the same name at K21 Kuntstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, 15 Oct. 2005 – 12 Feb. 2006. Köln: Snoeck. Jaaniste, Luke. Approaching the Ambient: Creative Practice and the Ambient Mode of Being. Doctoral thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2007. 3 May 2010 ‹http://www.lukejaaniste.com/writings/phd›. Leunig, Michael. “Michael Leunig”. Enough Rope with Andrew Denton. ABC Television, 8 May 2006. 3 May 2010 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1632918.htm›. Lund, Andreas, and Mikael Wiberg. “Ambient Displays beyond Convention.” HCI 2004, The 18th British HCI Group Annual Conference, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, 6-10 Sep. 2004. 18 Oct. 2005 ‹http://www.informatik.umu.se/~mwiberg/designingforattention_workshop_lund_wiberg.pdf›. Manovich, Lev. “Soft Cinema: Ambient Narratives.” Catalogue for the Soft Cinema Project presented at Future Cinema: The Cinemtic Imaginary after Film at ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, 16 Nov. 2002 - 30 March 2003. McCarthy, Anna. Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. Meeks, Cyan. Ambient Media: Meanings and Implications. Masters of Fine Arts thesis, Graduate School of the State University of New York, Department of Media Study, August 2005. Morton, Timothy. “Why Ambient Poetics?: Outline for a Depthless Ecology.” The Wordsworth Circle 33.1 (Winter 2002): 52-56. Morville, Peter. Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become. O’Reilly Media, 2005. Papastergiadis, Nikos. “Ambient Fears.” Artlink 32.1 (2003): 28-34. Prendergast, Mark. The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance, the Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Quinion, Michael. “Ambient Advertising.” World Wide Words 5 Sep. 1998. 3 Aug. 2006 ‹http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-amb1.htm›. Sample, Hilary. “Ambient Architecture: An Environmental Monitoring Station for Pasadena, California.” 306090 07: Landscape with Architecture. 306090 Architecture Journal 7 (Sep. 2004): 200-210. Spitzer, Leo. “Milieu and Ambiance: An Essay in Historical Semantics (Part 2).” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 3.2 (Dec. 1942): 169–218. Vogel, Daniel, and Ravin Balakrishnan. “Interactive Public Ambient Displays: Transitioning from Implicit to Explicit, Public to Personal, Interaction with Multiple Users.” Proceedings of the 18th ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Large Public Displays session, Santa Fe. New York: ACM Press. 137-146. Weber, W., J.M. Rabaey, and E. Aarts. Eds. Ambient Intelligence. Berlin: Springer, 2005.
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Caluya, Gilbert. "The Architectural Nervous System." M/C Journal 10, no. 4 (2007). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2689.

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 If the home is traditionally considered to be a space of safety associated with the warm and cosy feeling of the familial hearth, it is also continuously portrayed as a space under threat from the outside from which we must secure ourselves and our families. Securing the home entails a series of material, discursive and performative strategies, a host of precautionary measures aimed at regulating and ultimately producing security. When I was eleven my family returned home from the local fruit markets to find our house had been ransacked. Clothes were strewn across the floor, electrical appliances were missing and my parents’ collection of jewellery – wedding rings and heirlooms – had been stolen. Few things remained untouched and the very thought of someone else’s hands going through our personal belongings made our home feel tainted. My parents were understandably distraught. As Filipino immigrants to Australia the heirlooms were not only expensive assets from both sides of my family, but also signifiers of our homeland. Added to their despair was the fact that this was our first house – we had rented prior to that. During the police interviews, we discovered that our area, Sydney’s Western suburbs, was considered ‘high-risk’ and we were advised to install security. In their panic my parents began securing their home. Grills were installed on every window. Each external wooden door was reinforced by a metal security door. Movement detectors were installed at the front of the house, which were set to blind intruders with floodlights. Even if an intruder could enter the back through a window a metal grill security door was waiting between the backroom and the kitchen to stop them from getting to our bedrooms. In short, through a series of transformations our house was made into a residential fortress. Yet home security had its own dangers. A series of rules and regulations were drilled into me ‘in case of an emergency’: know where your keys are in case of a fire so that you can get out; remember the phone numbers for an emergency and the work numbers of your parents; never let a stranger into the house; and if you need to speak to a stranger only open the inside door but leave the security screen locked. Thus, for my Filipino-migrant family in the 1990s, a whole series of defensive behaviours and preventative strategies were produced and disseminated inside and around the home to regulate security risks. Such “local knowledges” were used to reinforce the architectural manifestations of security at the same time that they were a response to the invasion of security systems into our house that created a new set of potential dangers. This article highlights “the interplay of material and symbolic geographies of home” (Blunt and Varley 4), focusing on the relation between urban fears circulating around and within the home and the spatial practices used to negotiate such fears. In exploring home security systems it extends the exemplary analysis of home technologies already begun in Lynn Spigel’s reading of the ‘smart home’ (381-408). In a similar vein, David Morley’s analysis of mediated domesticity shows how communications technology has reconfigured the inside and outside to the extent that television actually challenges the physical boundary that “protects the privacy and solidarity of the home from the flux and threat of the outside world” (87). Television here serves as a passage in which the threat of the outside is reframed as news or entertainment for family viewing. I take this as a point of departure to consider the ways that this mediated fear unfolds in the technology of our homes. Following Brian Massumi, I read the home as “a node in a circulatory network of many dimensions (each corresponding to a technology of transmission)” (85). For Massumi, the home is an event-space at the crossroads of media technologies and political technologies. “In spite of the locks on the door, the event-space of the home must be seen as one characterized by a very loose regime of passage” (85). The ‘locked door’ is not only a boundary marker that defines the inside from the outside but another technology that leads us outside the home into other domains of inquiry: the proliferation of security technologies and the mundane, fearful intimacies of the home. In this context, we should heed Iris Marion Young’s injunction to feminist critics that the home does provide some positives including a sense of privacy and the space to build relationships and identities. Yet, as Colomina argues, the traditional domestic ideal “can only be produced by engaging the home in combat” (20). If, as Colomina’s comment suggests, ontological security is at least partially dependent on physical security, then this article explores the ontological effects of our home security systems. Houses at War: Targeting the Family As Beatriz Colomina reminds us, in times of war we leave our homelands to do battle on the front line, but battle lines are also being drawn in our homes. Drawing inspiration from Virilio’s claim that contemporary war takes place without fighting, Colomina’s article ‘Domesticity at War’ contemplates the domestic interior as a “battlefield” (15). The house, she writes, is “a mechanism within a war where the differences between defense [sic] and attack have become blurred” (17). According to the Home Security Precautions, New South Wales, October 1999 report conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 47% of NSW dwellings were ‘secure’ (meaning that they either had a burglar alarm, or all entry points were secured or they were inside a security block) while only 9% of NSW households had no home security devices present (Smith 3). In a similar report for Western Australia conducted in October 2004, an estimated 71% of WA households had window security of some sort (screens, locks or shutters) while 67% had deadlocks on at least one external door (4). An estimated 27% had a security alarm installed while almost half (49%) had sensor lights (Hubbard 4-5). This growing sense of insecurity means big business for those selling security products and services. By the end of June 1999, there were 1,714 businesses in Australia’s security services industry generating $1,395 million of income during 1998-99 financial year (McLennan 3; see also Macken). This survey did not include locksmith services or the companies dealing with alarm manufacturing, wholesaling or installing. While Colomina’s article focuses on the “war with weather” and the attempts to control environmental conditions inside the home through what she calls “counterdomesticity” (20), her conceptualisation of the house as a “military weapon” (17) provides a useful tool for thinking the relation between the home, architecture and security. Conceiving of the house as a military weapon might seem like a stretch, but we should recall that the rhetoric of war has already leaked into the everyday. One hears of the ‘war on drugs’ and the ‘war on crime’ in the media. ‘War’ is the everyday condition of our urban jungles (see also Diken and Lausten) and in order to survive, let alone feel secure, one must be able to defend one’s family and home. Take, for example, Signal Security’s website. One finds a panel on the left-hand side of the screen to all webpages devoted to “Residential Products”. Two circular images are used in the panel with one photograph overlapping the other. In the top circle, a white nuclear family (stereotypical mum, dad and two kids), dressed in pristine white clothing bare their white teeth to the internet surfer. Underneath this photo is another photograph in which an arm clad in a black leather jacket emerges through a smashed window. In the foreground a black-gloved hand manipulates a lock, while a black balaclava masks an unrecognisable face through the broken glass. The effect of their proximity produces a violent juxtaposition in which the burglar visually intrudes on the family’s domestic bliss. The panel stages a struggle between white and black, good and bad, family and individual, security and insecurity, recognisability and unidentifiability. It thus codifies the loving, knowable family as the domestic space of security against the selfish, unidentifiable intruder (presumed not to have a family) as the primary reason for insecurity in the family home – and no doubt to inspire the consumption of security products. Advertisements of security products thus articulate the family home as a fragile innocence constantly vulnerable from the outside. From a feminist perspective, this image of the family goes against the findings of the National Homicide Monitoring Program, which shows that 57% of the women killed in Australia between 2004 and 2005 were killed by an intimate partner while 17% were killed by a family member (Mouzos and Houliaras 20). If, on the one hand, the family home is targeted by criminals, on the other, it has emerged as a primary site for security advertising eager to exploit the growing sense of insecurity – the family as a target market. The military concepts of ‘target’ and ‘targeting’ have shifted into the benign discourse of strategic advertising. As Dora Epstein writes, “We arm our buildings to arm ourselves from the intrusion of a public fluidity, and thus our buildings, our architectures of fortification, send a very clear message: ‘avoid this place or protect yourself’” (1997: 139). Epstein’s reference to ‘architectures of fortification’ reminds us that the desire to create security through the built environment has a long history. Nan Ellin has argued that fear’s physical manifestation can be found in the formation of towns from antiquity to the Renaissance. In this sense, towns and cities are always already a response to the fear of foreign invaders (Ellin 13; see also Diken and Lausten 291). This fear of the outsider is most obviously manifested in the creation of physical walls. Yet fortification is also an effect of spatial allusions produced by the configuration of space, as exemplified in Fiske, Hodge and Turner’s semiotic reading of a suburban Australian display home without a fence. While the lack of a fence might suggest openness, they suggest that the manicured lawn is flat so “that eyes can pass easily over it – and smooth – so that feet will not presume to” (30). Since the front garden is best viewed from the street it is clearly a message for the outside, but it also signifies “private property” (30). Space is both organised and lived, in such a way that it becomes a medium of communication to passers-by and would-be intruders. What emerges in this semiotic reading is a way of thinking about space as defensible, as organised in a way that space can begin to defend itself. The Problematic of Defensible Space The incorporation of military architecture into civil architecture is most evident in home security. By security I mean the material systems (from locks to electronic alarms) and precautionary practices (locking the door) used to protect spaces, both of which are enabled by a way of imagining space in terms of risk and vulnerability. I read Oscar Newman’s 1972 Defensible Space as outlining the problematic of spatial security. Indeed, it was around that period that the problematic of crime prevention through urban design received increasing attention in Western architectural discourse (see Jeffery). Newman’s book examines how spaces can be used to reinforce human control over residential environments, producing what he calls ‘defensible space.’ In Newman’s definition, defensible space is a model for residential environments which inhibits crime by creating the physical expression of a social fabric that defends itself. All the different elements which combine to make a defensible space have a common goal – an environment in which latent territoriality and sense of community in the inhabitants can be translated into responsibility for ensuring a safe, productive, and well-maintained living space (3). Through clever design space begins to defend itself. I read Newman’s book as presenting the contemporary problematic of spatialised security: how to structure space so as to increase control; how to organise architecture so as to foster territorialism; how to encourage territorial control through amplifying surveillance. The production of defensible space entails moving away from what he calls the ‘compositional approach’ to architecture, which sees buildings as separate from their environments, and the ‘organic approach’ to architecture, in which the building and its grounds are organically interrelated (Newman 60). In this approach Newman proposes a number of changes to space: firstly, spaces need to be multiplied (one no longer has a simple public/private binary, but also semi-private and semi-public spaces); secondly, these spaces must be hierarchised (moving from public to semi-public to semi-private to private); thirdly, within this hierarchy spaces can also be striated using symbolic or material boundaries between the different types of spaces. Furthermore, spaces must be designed to increase surveillance: use smaller corridors serving smaller sets of families (69-71); incorporate amenities in “defined zones of influence” (70); use L-shaped buildings as opposed to rectangles (84); use windows on the sides of buildings to reveal the fire escape from outside (90). As he puts it, the subdivision of housing projects into “small, recognisable and comprehensible-at-a-glance enclaves is a further contributor to improving the visual surveillance mechanism” (1000). Finally, Newman lays out the principle of spatial juxtaposition: consider the building/street interface (positioning of doors and windows to maximise surveillance); consider building/building interface (e.g. build residential apartments next to ‘safer’ commercial, industrial, institutional and entertainment facilities) (109-12). In short, Newman’s book effectively redefines residential space in terms of territorial zones of control. Such zones of influence are the products of the interaction between architectural forms and environment, which are not reducible to the intent of the architect (68). Thus, in attempting to respond to the exigencies of the moment – the problem of urban crime, the cost of housing – Newman maps out residential space in what Foucault might have called a ‘micro-physics of power’. During the mid-1970s through to the 1980s a number of publications aimed at the average householder are printed in the UK and Australia. Apart from trade publishing (Bunting), The UK Design Council released two small publications (Barty, White and Burall; Design Council) while in Australia the Department of Housing and Construction released a home safety publication, which contained a small section on security, and the Australian Institute of Criminology published a small volume entitled Designing out Crime: Crime prevention through environmental design (Geason and Wilson). While Newman emphasised the responsibility of architects and urban planners, in these publications the general concerns of defensible space are relocated in the ‘average homeowner’. Citing crime statistics on burglary and vandalism, these publications incite their readers to take action, turning the homeowner into a citizen-soldier. The householder, whether he likes it or not, is already in a struggle. The urban jungle must be understood in terms of “the principles of warfare” (Bunting 7), in which everyday homes become bodies needing protection through suitable architectural armour. Through a series of maps and drawings and statistics, the average residential home is transformed into a series of points of vulnerability. Home space is re-inscribed as a series of points of entry/access and lines of sight. Simultaneously, through lists of ‘dos and don’ts’ a set of precautionary behaviours is inculcated into the readers. Principles of security begin codifying the home space, disciplining the spatial practices of the intimate, regulating the access and mobility of the family and guests. The Architectural Nervous System Nowadays we see a wild, almost excessive, proliferation of security products available to the ‘security conscious homeowner’. We are no longer simply dealing with security devices designed to block – such as locks, bolts and fasteners. The electronic revolution has aided the production of security devices that are increasingly more specialised and more difficult to manipulate, which paradoxically makes it more difficult for the security consumer to understand. Detection systems now include continuous wiring, knock-out bars, vibration detectors, breaking glass detectors, pressure mats, underground pressure detectors and fibre optic signalling. Audible alarm systems have been upgraded to wire-free intruder alarms, visual alarms, telephone warning devices, access control and closed circuit television and are supported by uninterruptible power supplies and control panels (see Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineers 19-39). The whole house is literally re-routed as a series of relays in an electronic grid. If the house as a security risk is defined in terms of points of vulnerability, alarm systems take these points as potential points of contact. Relays running through floors, doors and windows can be triggered by pressure, sound or dislocation. We see a proliferation of sensors: switching sensors, infra-red sensors, ultrasonic sensors, microwave radar sensors, microwave fence sensors and microphonic sensors (see Walker). The increasing diversification of security products attests to the sheer scale of these architectural/engineering changes to our everyday architecture. In our fear of crime we have produced increasingly more complex security products for the home, thus complexifying the spaces we somehow inherently feel should be ‘simple’. I suggest that whereas previous devices merely reinforced certain architectural or engineering aspects of the home, contemporary security products actually constitute the home as a feeling, architectural body capable of being affected. This recalls notions of a sensuous architecture and bodily metaphors within architectural discourse (see Thomsen; Puglini). It is not simply our fears that lead us to secure our homes through technology, but through our fears we come to invest our housing architecture with a nervous system capable of fearing for itself. Our eyes and ears become detection systems while our screams are echoed in building alarms. Body organs are deterritorialised from the human body and reterritorialised on contemporary residential architecture, while our senses are extended through modern security technologies. The vulnerable body of the family home has become a feeling body conscious of its own vulnerability. It is less about the physical expression of fear, as Nan Ellin has put it, than about how building materialities become capable of fearing for themselves. What we have now are residential houses that are capable of being more fully mobilised in this urban war. Family homes become bodies that scan the darkness for the slightest movements, bodies that scream at the slightest possibility of danger. They are bodies that whisper to each other: a house can recognise an intrusion and relay a warning to a security station, informing security personnel without the occupants of that house knowing. They are the newly produced victims of an urban war. Our homes are the event-spaces in which mediated fear unfolds into an architectural nervous system. If media plug our homes into one set of relations between ideologies, representations and fear, then the architectural nervous system plugs that back into a different set of relations between capital, fear and the electronic grid. The home is less an endpoint of broadcast media than a node in an electronic network, a larger nervous system that encompasses the globe. It is a network that plugs architectural nervous systems into city electronic grids into mediated subjectivities into military technologies and back again, allowing fear to be disseminated and extended, replayed and spliced into the most banal aspects of our domestic lives. References Barty, Euan, David White, and Paul Burall. Safety and Security in the Home. London: The Design Council, 1980. Blunt, Alison, and Ann Varley. “Introduction: Geographies of Home.” Cultural Geographies 11.1 (2004): 3-6. Bunting, James. The Protection of Property against Crime. Folkestone: Bailey Brothers & Sinfen, 1975. Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineers. Security Engineering. London: CIBSE, 1991. Colomina, Beatriz. “Domesticity at War.” Assemblage 16 (1991): 14-41. Department of Housing and Construction. Safety in and around the Home. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1981. Design Council. The Design Centre Guide to Domestic Safety and Security. London: Design Council, 1976. Diken, Bülent, and Carsten Bagge Lausten. “Zones of Indistinction: Security and Terror, and Bare Life.” Space and Culture 5.3 (2002): 290-307. Ellin, Nan. “Shelter from the Storm or Form Follows Fear and Vice Versa.” Architecture of Fear. Ed. Nan Ellin. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Epstein, Dora. “Abject Terror: A Story of Fear, Sex, and Architecture.” Architecture of Fear. Ed. Nan Ellin. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Fiske, John, Bob Hodge, and Graeme Turner. Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987. Geason, Susan, and Paul Wilson. Designing Out Crime: Crime Prevention through Environmental Design. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 1989. Hubbard, Alan. Home Safety and Security, Western Australia. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005. Jeffery, C. Ray. Crime Prevention through Environmental Design. Beverley Hills: Sage, 1971. Macken, Julie. “Why Aren’t We Happier?” Australian Financial Review 26 Nov. 1999: 26. Mallory, Keith, and Arvid Ottar. Architecture of Aggression: A History of Military Architecture in North West Europe, 1900-1945. Hampshire: Architectural Press, 1973. Massumi, Brian. Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. McLennan, W. Security Services, Australia, 1998-99. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000. Morley, David. Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Mouzos, Jenny, and Tina Houliaras. Homicide in Australia: 2004-05 National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) Annual Report. Research and Public Policy Series 72. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2006. Newman, Oscar. Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design. New York: Collier, 1973. Puglini, Luigi. HyperArchitecture: Space in the Electronic Age. Basel: Bikhäuser, 1999. Signal Security. 13 January 2007 http://www.signalsecurity.com.au/securitysystems.htm>. Smith, Geoff. Home Security Precautions, New South Wales, October 1999. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000. Spigel, Lynn. Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. Thomsen, Christian W. Sensuous Architecture: The Art of Erotic Building. Munich and New York: Prestel, 1998. Walker, Philip. Electronic Security Systems: Better Ways to Crime Prevention. London: Butterworths, 1983. Young, Iris Marion. “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme.” Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger. Eds. Nancy J. Holland and Patricia Huntington. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State UP, 2001. 
 
 
 
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Harrison, Karey. "Building Resilient Communities." M/C Journal 16, no. 5 (2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.716.

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This paper will compare the metaphoric structuring of the ecological concept of resilience—with its roots in Holling's 1973 paper; with psychological concepts of resilience which followed from research—such as Werner, Bierman, and French and Garmezy and Streitman) published in the early 1970s. This metaphoric analysis will expose the difference between complex adaptive systems models of resilience in ecology and studies related to resilience in relation to climate change; compared with the individualism of linear equilibrium models of resilience which have dominated discussions of resilience in psychology and economics. By examining the ontological commitments of these competing metaphors, I will show that the individualistic concept of resilience which dominates psychological discussions of resilience is incompatible with the ontological commitments of ecological concepts of resilience. Because the ontological commitments of the concepts of ecological resilience on the one hand, and psychological resilience on the other, are so at odds with one another, it is important to be clear which concept of resilience is being evaluated for its adequacy as a concept. Having clearly distinguished these competing metaphors and their ontological commitments, this paper will show that it is the complex adaptive systems model of resilience from ecology, not the individualist concept of psychological resilience, that has been utilised by both the academic discussions of adaptation to climate change, and the operationalisation of the concept of resilience by social movements like the permaculture, ecovillage, and Transition Towns movements. Ontological Metaphors My analysis of ontological metaphors draws on insights from Kuhn's (114) account of gestalt perception in scientific paradigm shifts; the centrality of the role of concrete analogies in scientific reasoning (Masterman 77); and the theorisation of ontological metaphors in cognitive linguistics (Gärdenfors). Figure 1: Object Ontological commitments reflect the shared beliefs within a community about the sorts of things that exist. Our beliefs about what exists are shaped by our sensory and motor interactions with objects in the physical world. Physical objects have boundaries and surfaces that separate the object from not-the-object. Objects have insides and outsides, and can be described in terms of more-or-less fixed and stable “objective” properties. A prototypical example of an “object” is a “container”, like the example shown in Figure 1. Ontological metaphors allow us to conceive of “things” which are not objects as if they were objects by picking “out parts of our experience and treat them as [if they were] discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind” (Lakoff and Johnson 25). We use ontological metaphors when we imagine a boundary around a collection of things, such as the members of a team or trees in a forest, and conceive of them as being in a container (Langacker 191–97). We can then think of “things” like a team or forest as if they were a single entity. We can also understand processes and activities as if they were things with boundaries. Whether or not we characterise some aspect of our experience as a noun (a bounded entity) or as a verb (a process that occurs over time) is not determined by the nature of things in themselves, but by our understanding and interpretation of our experience (Langacker 233). In this paper I employ a technique that involves examining the details of “concrete images” from the source domains for metaphors employed in the social sciences to expose for analysis their ontological commitments (Harrison, “Politics” 215; Harrison, “Economics” 7). By examining the ontological metaphors that structure the resilience literature I will show how different conceptions of resilience reflect different beliefs and commitments about the sorts of “things” there are in the world, and hence how we can study and understand these “things.” Engineering Metaphors In his discussion of engineering resilience, Holling (“Engineering Vs. Ecological” 33) argues that this conception is the “foundation for economic theory”, and defined in terms of “resistance to disturbance and the speed of return to the equilibrium” or steady state of the system. Whereas Holling takes his original example of the use of the engineering concept of resilience from economics, Pendall, Foster, & Cowell (72), and Martin-Breen and Anderies (6) identify it as the concept of resilience that dominates the field of psychology. They take the stress loading of bridges to be the engineering source for the metaphor. Figure 2: Pogo stick animation (Source: Blacklemon 67, CC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pogoanim.gif). In order to understand this metaphor, we need to examine the characteristics of the source domain for the metaphor. A bridge can be “under tension, compression or both forces at the same time [and] experiences what engineers define as stress” (Matthews 3). In order to resist these forces, bridges need to be constructed of material which “behave much like a spring” that “strains elastically (deforms temporarily and returns to its original shape after a load has been removed) under a given stress” (Gordon 52; cited in Matthews). The pogostick shown in Figure 2 illustrates how a spring returns to its original size and configuration once the load or stress is removed. WGBH Educational Foundation provides links to simple diagrams that illustrate the different stresses the three main designs of bridges are subject to, and if you compare Computers & Engineering's with Gibbs and Bourne's harmonic spring animation you can see how both a bridge under live load and the pogostick in Figure 2 oscillate just like an harmonic spring. Subject to the elastic limits of the material, the deformation of a spring is proportional to the stress or load applied. According to the “modern theory of elasticity [...] it [is] possible to deduce the relation between strain and stress for complex objects in terms of intrinsic properties of the materials it is made of” (“Hooke’s Law”). When psychological resilience is characterised in terms of “properties of individuals [that] are identified in isolation” (Martin-Breen and Anderies 12); and in terms of “behaviours and attributes [of individuals] that allow people to get along with one another and to succeed socially” (Pendall, Foster, and Cowell 72), they are reflecting this engineering focus on the properties of materials. Martin-Breen and Anderies (42) argue that “the Engineering Resilience framework” has been informed by ontological metaphors which treat “an ecosystem, person, city, government, bridge, [or] society” as if it were an object—“a unified whole”. Because this concept of resilience treats individuals as “objects,” it leads researchers to look for the properties or characteristics of the “materials” which individuals are “made of”, which are either elastic and allow them to “bounce” or “spring” back after stress; or are fragile and brittle and break under load. Similarly, the Designers Institute (DINZ), in its conference on “Our brittle society,” shows it is following the engineering resilience approach when it conceives of a city or society as an object which is made of materials which are either “strong and flexible” or “brittle and fragile”. While Holling characterises economic theory in terms of this engineering metaphor, it is in fact chemistry and the kinetic theory of gases that provides the source domain for the ontological metaphor which structures both static and dynamic equilibrium models within neo-classical economics (Smith and Foley; Mirowski). However, while springs are usually made out of metals, they can be made out of any “material [that] has the required combination of rigidity and elasticity,” such as plastic, and even wood (in a bow) (“Spring (device)”). Gas under pressure turns out to behave the same as other springs or elastic materials do under load. Because both the economic metaphor based on equilibrium theory of gases and the engineering analysis of bridges under load can both be subsumed under spring theory, we can treat both the economic (gas) metaphor and the engineering (bridge) metaphor as minor variations of a single overarching (spring) metaphor. Complex Systems Metaphors Holling (“Resilience & Stability” 13–15) critiques equilibrium models, arguing that non-deterministic, complex, non-equilibrium and multi-equilibrium ecological systems do not satisfy the conditions for application of equilibrium models. Holling argues that unlike the single equilibrium modelled by engineering resilience, complex adaptive systems (CAS) may have multi or no equilibrium states, and be non-linear and non-deterministic. Walker and Salt follow Holling by calling for recognition of the “dynamic complexity of the real world” (8), and that “these [real world] systems are complex adaptive systems” (11). Martin-Breen and Anderies (7) identify the key difference between “systems” and “complex adaptive systems” resilience as adaptive capacity, which like Walker and Salt (xiii), they define as the capacity to maintain function, even if system structures change or fail. The “engineering” concept of resilience focuses on the (elastic) properties of materials and uses language associated with elastic springs. This “spring” metaphor emphasises the property of individual components. In contrast, ecological concepts of resilience examine interactions between elements, and the state of the system in a multi-dimensional phase space. This systems approach shows that the complex behaviour of a system depends at least as much on the relationships between elements. These relationships can lead to “emergent” properties which cannot be reduced to the properties of the parts of the system. To explain these relationships and connections, ecologists and climate scientists use language and images associated with landscapes such as 2-D cross-sections and 3-D topology (Holling, “Resilience & Stability” 20; Pendall, Foster, and Cowell 74). Figure 3 is based on an image used by Walker, Holling, Carpenter and Kinzig (fig. 1b) to represent possible states of ecological systems. The “basins” in the image rely on our understanding of gravitational forces operating in a 3-D space to model “equilibrium” states in which the system, like the “ball” in the “basin”, will tend to settle. Figure 3: (based on Langston; in Walker et al. fig. 1b) – Tipping Point Bifurcation Wasdell (“Feedback” fig. 4) adapted this image to represent possible climate states and explain the concept of “tipping points” in complex systems. I have added the red balls (a, b, and c to replace the one black ball (b) in the original which represented the state of the system), the red lines which indicate the path of the ball/system, and the black x-y axis, in order to discuss the image. Wasdell (“Feedback Dynamics” slide 22) takes the left basin to represents “the variable, near-equilibrium, but contained dynamics of the [current] glacial/interglacial period”. As a result of rising GHG levels, the climate system absorbs more energy (mostly as heat). This energy can force the system into a different, hotter, state, less amenable to life as we know it. This is shown in Figure 3 by the system (represented as the red ball a) rising up the left basin (point b). From the perspective of the gravitational representation in Figure 3, the extra energy in the basin operates like the rotation in a Gravitron amusement ride, where centrifugal force pushes riders up the sides of the ride. If there is enough energy added to the climate system it could rise up and jump over the ridge/tipping point separating the current climate state into the “hot earth” basin shown on the right. Once the system falls into the right basin, it may be stuck near point c, and due to reinforcing feedbacks have difficulty escaping this new “equilibrium” state. Figure 4 represents a 2-D cross-section of the 3-D landscape shown in Figure 3. This cross-section shows how rising temperature and greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in a multi-equilibrium climate topology can lead to the climate crossing a tipping point and shifting from state a to state c. Figure 4: Topographic cross-section of possible climate states (derived from Wasdell, “Feedback” 26 CC). As Holling (“Resilience & Stability”) warns, a less “desirable” state, such as population collapse or extinction, may be more “resilient”, in the engineering sense, than a more desirable state. Wasdell (“Feedback Dynamics” slide 22) warns that the climate forcing as a result of human induced GHG emissions is in fact pushing the system “far away from equilibrium, passed the tipping point, and into the hot-earth scenario”. In previous episodes of extreme radiative forcing in the past, this “disturbance has then been amplified by powerful feedback dynamics not active in the near-equilibrium state [… and] have typically resulted in the loss of about 90% of life on earth.” An essential element of system dynamics is the existence of (delayed) reinforcing and balancing causal feedback loops, such as the ones illustrated in Figure 5. Figure 5: Pre/Predator model (Bellinger CC-BY-SA) In the case of Figure 5, the feedback loops illustrate the relationship between rabbit population increasing, then foxes feeding on the rabbits, keeping the rabbit population within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Fox predation prevents rabbit over-population and consequent starvation of rabbits. The reciprocal interaction of the elements of a system leads to unpredictable nonlinearity in “even seemingly simple systems” (“System Dynamics”). The climate system is subject to both positive and negative feedback loops. If the area of ice cover increases, more heat is reflected back into space, creating a positive feedback loop, reinforcing cooling. Whereas, as the arctic ice melts, as it is doing at present (Barber), heat previously reflected back into space is absorbed by now exposed water, increasing the rate of warming. Where negative feedback (system damping) dominates, the cup-shaped equilibrium is stable and system behaviour returns to base when subject to disturbance. [...]The impact of extreme events, however, indicates limits to the stable equilibrium. At one point cooling feedback loops overwhelmed the homeostasis, precipitating the "snowball earth" effect. […] Massive release of CO2 as a result of major volcanic activity […] set off positive feedback loops, precipitating runaway global warming and eliminating most life forms at the end of the Permian period. (Wasdell, “Topological”) Martin-Breen and Anderies (53–54), following Walker and Salt, identify four key factors for systems (ecological) resilience in nonlinear, non-deterministic (complex adaptive) systems: regulatory (balancing) feedback mechanisms, where increase in one element is kept in check by another element; modularity, where failure in one part of the system will not cascade into total systems failure; functional redundancy, where more than one element performs every essential function; and, self-organising capacity, rather than central control ensures the system continues without the need for “leadership”. Transition Towns as a Resilience Movement The Transition Town (TT) movement draws on systems modelling of both climate change and of Limits to Growth (Meadows et al.). TT takes seriously Limits to Growth modelling that showed that without constraints in population and consumption the world faces systems collapse by the middle of this century. It recommends community action to build as much capacity as possible to “maintain existence of function”—Holling's (“Engineering vs. Ecological” 33) definition of ecological resilience—in the face of failing economic, political and environmental systems. The Transition Network provides a template for communities to follow to “rebuild resilience and reduce CO2 emissions”. Rob Hopkins, the movements founder, explicitly identifies ecological resilience as its central concept (Transition Handbook 6). The idea for the movement grew out of a project by (2nd year students) completed for Hopkins at the Kinsale Further Education College. According to Hopkins (“Kinsale”), this project was inspired by Holmgren’s Permaculture principles and Heinberg's book on adapting to life after peak oil. Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is a design system for creating agricultural systems modelled on the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems (Mollison ix; Holmgren xix). Permaculture draws its scientific foundations from systems ecology (Holmgren xxv). Following CAS theory, Mollison (33) defines stability as “self-regulation”, rather than “climax” or a single equilibrium state, and recommends “diversity of beneficial functional connections” (32) rather than diversity of isolated elements. Permaculture understands resilience in the ecological, rather than the engineering sense. The Transition Handbook (17) “explores the issues of peak oil and climate change, and how when looked at together, we need to be focusing on the rebuilding of resilience as well as cutting carbon emissions. It argues that the focus of our lives will become increasingly local and small scale as we come to terms with the real implications of the energy crisis we are heading into.” The Transition Towns movement incorporate each of the four systems resilience factors, listed at the end of the previous section, into its template for building resilient communities (Hopkins, Transition Handbook 55–6). Many of its recommendations build “modularity” and “self-organising”, such as encouraging communities to build “local food systems, [and] local investment models”. Hopkins argues that in a “more localised system” feedback loops are tighter, and the “results of our actions are more obvious”. TT training exercises include awareness raising for sensitivity to networks of (actual or potential) ecological, social and economic relationships (Hopkins, Transition Handbook 60–1). TT promotes diversity of local production and economic activities in order to increase “diversity of functions” and “diversity of responses to challenges.” Heinberg (8) wrote the forward to the 2008 edition of the Transition Handbook, after speaking at a TotnesTransition Town meeting. Heinberg is now a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute (PCI), which was established in 2003 to “provide […] the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated economic, energy, environmental, and equity crises that define the 21st century [… in] a world of resilient communities and re-localized economies that thrive within ecological bounds” (PCI, “About”), of the sort envisioned by the Limits to Growth model discussed in the previous section. Given the overlapping goals of PCI and Transition Towns, it is not surprising that Rob Hopkins is now a Fellow of PCI and regular contributor to Resilience, and there are close ties between the two organisations. Resilience, which until 2012 was published as the Energy Bulletin, is run by the Post Carbon Institute (PCI). Like Transition Towns, Resilience aims to build “community resilience in a world of multiple emerging challenges: the decline of cheap energy, the depletion of critical resources like water, complex environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, and the social and economic issues which are linked to these. […] It has [its] roots in systems theory” (PCI, “About Resilience”). Resilience.org says it follows the interpretation of Resilience Alliance (RA) Program Director Brian Walker and science writer David Salt's (xiii) ecological definition of resilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.“ Conclusion This paper has analysed the ontological metaphors structuring competing conceptions of resilience. The engineering resilience metaphor dominates in psychological resilience research, but is not adequate for understanding resilience in complex adaptive systems. Ecological resilience, on the other hand, dominates in environmental and climate change research, and is the model of resilience that has been incorporated into the global permaculture and Transition Towns movements. References 2nd year students. Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan. Kinsale, Cork, Ireland: Kinsale Further Education College, 2005. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/KinsaleEnergyDescentActionPlan.pdf>. Barber, Elizabeth. “Arctic Ice Continues to Thin, and Thin, European Satellite Reveals.” Christian Science Monitor 11 Sep. 2013. 25 Sep. 2013 ‹http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2013/0911/Arctic-ice-continues-to-thin-and-thin-European-satellite-reveals>. Bellinger, Gene. “Prey/Predator Model.” SystemsWiki 23 Nov. 2009. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://systemswiki.org/index.php?title=Prey/Predator_Model>. Blacklemon67. "Pogo Animation." Wikipedia 2007. 24 Sep. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pogoanim.gif>. Computers & Engineering. Bridge Trucks Animated Stress Plot 1. 2003. GIF file. SAP2000 Bridge Design. ‹http://www.comp-engineering.com/announce/bridge/demo/truck_1.gif>. DINZ. “Resilience Engineering: 'Our Brittle Society' - The Sustainability Society - May 18th 2012.” The Designers Institute. 2013. 11 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.dinz.org.nz/Events/2012/May/47965>. Gärdenfors, Peter. “Cognitive Semantics and Image Schemas with Embodied Forces.” Embodiment in Cognition and Culture. Ed. John Michael Krois et al. John Benjamins Publishing, 2007. 57–76. 8 Nov. 2012 ‹http://oddelki.ff.uni-mb.si/filozofija/files/Festschrift/Dunjas_festschrift/gardenfors.pdf>. Garmezy, N, and S Streitman. “Children at Risk: The Search for the Antecedents of Schizophrenia. Part I. Conceptual Models and Research Methods.” Schizophrenia Bulletin 8 (1974): 14–90. NCBI PubMed 14 Aug. 2013 ‹http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/8/14.full.pdf>. Gibbs, Keith, and John Bourne. “The Helical Spring.” Schoolphysics 2013. 15 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.schoolphysics.co.uk/animations/Helical_spring_shm/index.html>. Gordon, James Edward. Structures: Or, Why Things Don’t Fall Down. London: Plenum Press, 1978. Harrison, Karey. “Image Schemas and Political Ontology.” Communication, Cognition and Media: Political and Economic Discourse. Ed. Augusto Soares da Silva et al. Portugal: Aletheia, forthcoming. ———. “Ontological Commitments of Ethics and Economics.” Economic Thought 2.1 (2013): 1–19. 23 Apr. 2013 ‹http://et.worldeconomicsassociation.org/article/view/64>. Heinberg, Richard. Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-carbon World. New Society Publishers, 2004. Holling, Crawford Stanley. “Engineering Resilience versus Ecological Resilience.” Engineering within Ecological Constraints. Ed. Peter Schulze. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996. 31–44. 11 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4919&page=31>. ———. “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4.1 (1973): 1–23. 11 Aug. 2013 ‹http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/RP-73-003.pdf>. Holmgren, David. Permaculture: Principles & Pathways beyond Sustainability. Holmgren Design Services, 2002. Hopkins, Rob. “Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan (2005).” Transition Culture: an Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent. n.d. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://transitionculture.org/essential-info/pdf-downloads/kinsale-energy-descent-action-plan-2005/>. ———. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Green Books, 2008. Print. ———. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Free edit version. ‹http://www.appropedia.org/Category:The_Transition_Handbook: Appropedia.org> 2010. 16 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/CSC2600/transition-handbook.pdf>. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, 1962. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 1980. Langacker, Ronald W. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites. Vol. 1. Stanford University Press, 1987. Langston, Art. “Tipping Point” or Bifurcation Between Two Attractor Basins. 2004. 25 Sep. 2013. ‹http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/figure1.html>. Martin-Breen, Patrick, and J. Marty Anderies. Resilience: A Literature Review. Rockefeller Foundation, 2011. 8 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/blog/resilience-literature-review>. Masterman, Margaret. “The Nature of a Paradigm.” Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Eds. Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave. Cambridge University Press, 1970. 59–89. Matthews, Theresa. “The Physics of Bridges.” Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. 2013. 14 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2001/5/01.05.08.x.html>. Meadows, Donella H. et al. The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Universe Books, 1972. Mirowski, Philip. “From Mandelbrot to Chaos in Economic Theory.” Southern Economic Journal 57.2 (1990): 289–307. Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual. Tagari Publications, 1988. PCI. “About.” Post Carbon Institute. 16 July 2012. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.postcarbon.org/about/>. ———. “About Resilience.org.” Resilience 16 July 2012. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.resilience.org/about>. Pendall, Rolf, Kathryn A. Foster, and Margaret Cowell. “Resilience and Regions: Building Understanding of the Metaphor.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 3.1 (2010): 71–84. 4 Aug. 2013 ‹http://cjres.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/1/71>. RA. “About RA.” Resilience Alliance 2013. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/about_ra>. Smith, Eric, and Duncan K. Foley. “Classical Thermodynamics and Economic General Equilibrium Theory.” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 32.1 (2008): 7–65. Transition Network. “About Transition Network.” Transition Network. 2012. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.transitionnetwork.org/about>. Walker, B. H., and David Salt. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Island Press, 2006. Walker, Brian et al. “Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–Ecological Systems.” Ecology and Society 9.2 (2004): 5. Wasdell, David. “A Topological Approach.” The Feedback Crisis in Climate Change: The Meridian Report. n.d. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.meridian.org.uk/Resources/Global%20Dynamics/Feedback%20Crisis/frameset1.htm?p=3>. ———. “Beyond the Tipping Point: Positive Feedback and the Acceleration of Climate Change.” The Foundation for the Future, Humanity 3000 Workshop. Seattle, 2006. ‹http://www.meridian.org.uk/_PDFs/BeyondTippingPoint.pdf>. ———. “Feedback Dynamics and the Acceleration of Climate Change.” Winterthur, 2008. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.crisis-forum.org.uk/events/Workshop1/Workshop1_presentations/wasdellpictures/wasdell_clubofrome.php>. Werner, Emmy E., Jessie M. Bierman, and Fern E. French. The Children of Kauai: A Longitudinal Study from the Prenatal Period to Age Ten. University of Hawaii Press, 1971.WGBH. “Bridge Basics.” Building Big. 2001. 14 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/bridge/basics.html>. Wikipedia contributors. “Gravitron.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 20 Sep. 2013. 25 Sep. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitron>. ———. “Hooke’s Law.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 8 Aug. 2013. 15 Aug. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke%27s_law>. ———. “Spring (device).” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 9 Aug. 2013. 24 Sep. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_(device)>. ———. “System Dynamics.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 9 Aug. 2013. 13 Aug. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics>.
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Johansson, Lars. "Overvåking av norsk kosthold - metoder og resultater." Norsk Epidemiologi 10, no. 1 (2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.5324/nje.v10i1.512.

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<strong><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><p align="left"> </p></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;">SAMMENDRAG</span></span></strong><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><p align="left">Kunnskap om endringer i matvarenes sammensetning og befolkningens kosthold er grunnleggende for utforming</p><p align="left">og oppfølging av en helsefremmende mat- og ernæringspolitikk. Dagens system for overvåking av</p><p align="left">kostholdet bygger først og fremst på en matvaredatabase og opplysninger om forbruket av matvarer fra tre</p><p align="left">typer datasett; matforsyningsstatistikk, forbruksundersøkelser og kostholdsundersøkelser. Det avgis årlig en</p><p align="left">vurdering av utviklingen i norsk kosthold i forhold til mat- og ernæringspolitiske målsettinger. Det norske</p><p align="left">systemet for overvåking av kostholdet er blitt betydelig styrket i løpet av 1990-årene ved innføringen av</p><p align="left">regelmessige kostholdsundersøkelser blant landsrepresentative utvalg av befolkningen i ulike aldersgrupper</p><p align="left">og økte ressurser til analyse av næringsinnholdet i matvarer. Det er imidlertid beskjedent sammenlignet med</p><p align="left">datainnsamlingen i land som USA og Storbritannia. Det norske overvåkingssystemet er forsatt i en</p><p align="left">utviklingsfase, og det må justeres og kompletteres etter hvert. Dessuten vil det arbeides med å kvalitetssikre</p><p align="left">datainnsamlingen.</p><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><p align="left">Johansson L.</p></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><p align="left"> </p></span></span><p align="left"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;">Surveillance of the diet in Norway – methods and results.</span></span></strong><em><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><p align="left">Nor J Epidemiol</p></span></span></em></span><em><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;"><p align="left"> </p></span></em></span><strong><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;">ENGLISH SUMMARY</span></span></strong><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><p align="left">Knowledge about changes in composition and intake of foods, as well as changes in the prevalence of dietrelated</p><p align="left">health problems is fundamental for an effective food and nutrition policy. The National Council on</p><p align="left">Nutrition and Physical Activity is responsible for evaluating changes in the diet. Annually the Council publishes</p><p align="left">reports about trends in the Norwegian diet, and suggests measures to improve the diet. The Council, in</p><p align="left">cooperation with the National Food Authority and the Institute for Nutrition Research, University of Oslo,</p><p align="left">has established a national food and dietary surveillance system. This system is mainly based on a food</p><p align="left">database and food consumption data. The food consumption data include three principally different data</p><p align="left">sets: food supplies, household consumption surveys, and dietary surveys. Food supplies have been published</p><p align="left">annually since 1952. Household consumption surveys among random nation-wide samples of private</p><p align="left">households have been performed annually by Statistics Norway since 1975. Dietary surveys were included</p><p align="left">on a regular basis in the surveillance system in 1993 when the first Norwegian nation-wide dietary surveys</p><p align="left">among students 13 and 18 years old and the general population aged 16-79 years were conducted. The</p><p align="left">second dietary survey among the general population was made in 1997, and the first survey among infants</p><p align="left">was performed in 1998-99. The second survey among children 5-13 years is planned for 2000-2001. The</p><p align="left">Norwegian surveillance system has been considerably improved during the 1990s. However, the collection</p><p align="left">of dietary data is still modest compared to what is done in the USA and Great Britain. The system is</p><p>developing, and will be adjusted and supplemented. Quality assurance of methods will be given priority.</p></span></span></em><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">2000; </span></span><strong><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;">10 </span></span></strong><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">(1): 31-42.</span></span></p>
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Champion, Katherine M. "A Risky Business? The Role of Incentives and Runaway Production in Securing a Screen Industries Production Base in Scotland." M/C Journal 19, no. 3 (2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1101.

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IntroductionDespite claims that the importance of distance has been reduced due to technological and communications improvements (Cairncross; Friedman; O’Brien), the ‘power of place’ still resonates, often intensifying the role of geography (Christopherson et al.; Morgan; Pratt; Scott and Storper). Within the film industry, there has been a decentralisation of production from Hollywood, but there remains a spatial logic which has preferenced particular centres, such as Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney and Prague often led by a combination of incentives (Christopherson and Storper; Goldsmith and O’Regan; Goldsmith et al.; Miller et al.; Mould). The emergence of high end television, television programming for which the production budget is more than £1 million per television hour, has presented new opportunities for screen hubs sharing a very similar value chain to the film industry (OlsbergSPI with Nordicity).In recent years, interventions have proliferated with the aim of capitalising on the decentralisation of certain activities in order to attract international screen industries production and embed it within local hubs. Tools for building capacity and expertise have proliferated, including support for studio complex facilities, infrastructural investments, tax breaks and other economic incentives (Cucco; Goldsmith and O’Regan; Jensen; Goldsmith et al.; McDonald; Miller et al.; Mould). Yet experience tells us that these will not succeed everywhere. There is a need for a better understanding of both the capacity for places to build a distinctive and competitive advantage within a highly globalised landscape and the relative merits of alternative interventions designed to generate a sustainable production base.This article first sets out the rationale for the appetite identified in the screen industries for co-location, or clustering and concentration in a tightly drawn physical area, in global hubs of production. It goes on to explore the latest trends of decentralisation and examines the upturn in interventions aimed at attracting mobile screen industries capital and labour. Finally it introduces the Scottish screen industries and explores some of the ways in which Scotland has sought to position itself as a recipient of screen industries activity. The paper identifies some key gaps in infrastructure, most notably a studio, and calls for closer examination of the essential ingredients of, and possible interventions needed for, a vibrant and sustainable industry.A Compulsion for ProximityIt has been argued that particular spatial and place-based factors are central to the development and organisation of the screen industries. The film and television sector, the particular focus of this article, exhibit an extraordinarily high degree of spatial agglomeration, especially favouring centres with global status. It is worth noting that the computer games sector, not explored in this article, slightly diverges from this trend displaying more spatial patterns of decentralisation (Vallance), although key physical hubs of activity have been identified (Champion). Creative products often possess a cachet that is directly associated with their point of origin, for example fashion from Paris, films from Hollywood and country music from Nashville – although it can also be acknowledged that these are often strategic commercial constructions (Pecknold). The place of production represents a unique component of the final product as well as an authentication of substantive and symbolic quality (Scott, “Creative cities”). Place can act as part of a brand or image for creative industries, often reinforcing the advantage of being based in particular centres of production.Very localised historical, cultural, social and physical factors may also influence the success of creative production in particular places. Place-based factors relating to the built environment, including cheap space, public-sector support framework, connectivity, local identity, institutional environment and availability of amenities, are seen as possible influences in the locational choices of creative industry firms (see, for example, Drake; Helbrecht; Hutton; Leadbeater and Oakley; Markusen).Employment trends are notoriously difficult to measure in the screen industries (Christopherson, “Hollywood in decline?”), but the sector does contain large numbers of very small firms and freelancers. This allows them to be flexible but poses certain problems that can be somewhat offset by co-location. The findings of Antcliff et al.’s study of workers in the audiovisual industry in the UK suggested that individuals sought to reconstruct stable employment relations through their involvement in and use of networks. The trust and reciprocity engendered by stable networks, built up over time, were used to offset the risk associated with the erosion of stable employment. These findings are echoed by a study of TV content production in two media regions in Germany by Sydow and Staber who found that, although firms come together to work on particular projects, typically their business relations extend for a much longer period than this. Commonly, firms and individuals who have worked together previously will reassemble for further project work aided by their past experiences and expectations.Co-location allows the development of shared structures: language, technical attitudes, interpretative schemes and ‘communities of practice’ (Bathelt, et al.). Grabher describes this process as ‘hanging out’. Deep local pools of creative and skilled labour are advantageous both to firms and employees (Reimer et al.) by allowing flexibility, developing networks and offsetting risk (Banks et al.; Scott, “Global City Regions”). For example in Cook and Pandit’s study comparing the broadcasting industry in three city-regions, London was found to be hugely advantaged by its unrivalled talent pool, high financial rewards and prestigious projects. As Barnes and Hutton assert in relation to the wider creative industries, “if place matters, it matters most to them” (1251). This is certainly true for the screen industries and their spatial logic points towards a compulsion for proximity in large global hubs.Decentralisation and ‘Sticky’ PlacesDespite the attraction of global production hubs, there has been a decentralisation of screen industries from key centres, starting with the film industry and the vertical disintegration of Hollywood studios (Christopherson and Storper). There are instances of ‘runaway production’ from the 1920s onwards with around 40 per cent of all features being accounted for by offshore production in 1960 (Miller et al., 133). This trend has been increasing significantly in the last 20 years, leading to the genesis of new hubs of screen activity such as Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney and Prague (Christopherson, “Project work in context”; Goldsmith et al.; Mould; Miller et al.; Szczepanik). This development has been prompted by a multiplicity of reasons including favourable currency value differentials and economic incentives. Subsidies and tax breaks have been offered to secure international productions with most countries demanding that, in order to qualify for tax relief, productions have to spend a certain amount of their budget within the local economy, employ local crew and use domestic creative talent (Hill). Extensive infrastructure has been developed including studio complexes to attempt to lure productions with the advantage of a full service offering (Goldsmith and O’Regan).Internationally, Canada has been the greatest beneficiary of ‘runaway production’ with a state-led enactment of generous film incentives since the late 1990s (McDonald). Vancouver and Toronto are the busiest locations for North American Screen production after Los Angeles and New York, due to exchange rates and tax rebates on labour costs (Miller et al., 141). 80% of Vancouver’s production is attributable to runaway production (Jensen, 27) and the city is considered by some to have crossed a threshold as:It now possesses sufficient depth and breadth of talent to undertake the full array of pre-production, production and post-production services for the delivery of major motion pictures and TV programmes. (Barnes and Coe, 19)Similarly, Toronto is considered to have established a “comprehensive set of horizontal and vertical media capabilities” to ensure its status as a “full function media centre” (Davis, 98). These cities have successfully engaged in entrepreneurial activity to attract production (Christopherson, “Project Work in Context”) and in Vancouver the proactive role of provincial government and labour unions are, in part, credited with its success (Barnes and Coe). Studio-complex infrastructure has also been used to lure global productions, with Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney all being seen as key examples of where such developments have been used as a strategic priority to take local production capacity to the next level (Goldsmith and O’Regan).Studies which provide a historiography of the development of screen-industry hubs emphasise a complex interplay of social, cultural and physical conditions. In the complex and global flows of the screen industries, ‘sticky’ hubs have emerged with the ability to attract and retain capital and skilled labour. Despite being principally organised to attract international production, most studio complexes, especially those outside of global centres need to have a strong relationship to local or national film and television production to ensure the sustainability and depth of the labour pool (Goldsmith and O’Regan, 2003). Many have a broadcaster on site as well as a range of companies with a media orientation and training facilities (Goldsmith and O’Regan, 2003; Picard, 2008). The emergence of film studio complexes in the Australian Gold Coast and Vancouver was accompanied by an increasing role for television production and this multi-purpose nature was important for the continuity of production.Fostering a strong community of below the line workers, such as set designers, locations managers, make-up artists and props manufacturers, can also be a clear advantage in attracting international productions. For example at Cinecitta in Italy, the expertise of set designers and experienced crews in the Barrandov Studios of Prague are regarded as major selling points of the studio complexes there (Goldsmith and O’Regan; Miller et al.; Szczepanik). Natural and built environments are also considered very important for film and television firms and it is a useful advantage for capturing international production when cities can double for other locations as in the cases of Toronto, Vancouver, Prague for example (Evans; Goldsmith and O’Regan; Szczepanik). Toronto, for instance, has doubled for New York in over 100 films and with regard to television Due South’s (1994-1998) use of Toronto as Chicago was estimated to have saved 40 per cent in costs (Miller et al., 141).The Scottish Screen Industries Within mobile flows of capital and labour, Scotland has sought to position itself as a recipient of screen industries activity through multiple interventions, including investment in institutional frameworks, direct and indirect economic subsidies and the development of physical infrastructure. Traditionally creative industry activity in the UK has been concentrated in London and the South East which together account for 43% of the creative economy workforce (Bakhshi et al.). In order, in part to redress this imbalance and more generally to encourage the attraction and retention of international production a range of policies have been introduced focused on the screen industries. A revised Film Tax Relief was introduced in 2007 to encourage inward investment and prevent offshoring of indigenous production, and this has since been extended to high-end television, animation and children’s programming. Broadcasting has also experienced a push for decentralisation led by public funding with a responsibility to be regionally representative. The BBC (“BBC Annual Report and Accounts 2014/15”) is currently exceeding its target of 50% network spend outside London by 2016, with 17% spent in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Channel 4 has similarly committed to commission at least 9% of its original spend from the nations by 2020. Studios have been also developed across the UK including at Roath Lock (Cardiff), Titanic Studios (Belfast), MedicaCity (Salford) and The Sharp Project (Manchester).The creative industries have been identified as one of seven growth sectors for Scotland by the government (Scottish Government). In 2010, the film and video sector employed 3,500 people and contributed £120 million GVA and £120 million adjusted GVA to the economy and the radio and TV sector employed 3,500 people and contributed £50 million GVA and £400 million adjusted GVA (The Scottish Parliament). Beyond the direct economic benefits of sectors, the on-screen representation of Scotland has been claimed to boost visitor numbers to the country (EKOS) and high profile international film productions have been attracted including Skyfall (2012) and WWZ (2013).Scotland has historically attracted international film and TV productions due to its natural locations (VisitScotland) and on average, between 2009-2014, six big budget films a year used Scottish locations both urban and rural (BOP Consulting, 2014). In all, a total of £20 million was generated by film-making in Glasgow during 2011 (Balkind) with WWZ (2013) and Cloud Atlas (2013), representing Philadelphia and San Francisco respectively, as well as doubling for Edinburgh for the recent acclaimed Scottish films Filth (2013) and Sunshine on Leith (2013). Sanson (80) asserts that the use of the city as a site for international productions not only brings in direct revenue from production money but also promotes the city as a “fashionable place to live, work and visit. Creativity makes the city both profitable and ‘cool’”.Nonetheless, issues persist and it has been suggested that Scotland lacks a stable and sustainable film industry, with low indigenous production levels and variable success from year to year in attracting inward investment (BOP Consulting). With regard to crew, problems with an insufficient production base have been identified as an issue in maintaining a pipeline of skills (BOP Consulting). Developing ‘talent’ is a central aspect of the Scottish Government’s Strategy for the Creative Industries, yet there remains the core challenge of retaining skills and encouraging new talent into the industry (BOP Consulting).With regard to film, a lack of substantial funding incentives and the absence of a studio have been identified as a key concern for the sector. For example, within the film industry the majority of inward investment filming in Scotland is location work as it lacks the studio facilities that would enable it to sustain a big-budget production in its entirety (BOP Consulting). The absence of such infrastructure has been seen as contributing to a drain of Scottish talent from these industries to other areas and countries where there is a more vibrant sector (BOP Consulting). The loss of Scottish talent to Northern Ireland was attributed to the longevity of the work being provided by Games of Thrones (2011-) now having completed its six series at the Titanic Studios in Belfast (EKOS) although this may have been stemmed somewhat recently with the attraction of US high-end TV series Outlander (2014-) which has been based at Wardpark in Cumbernauld since 2013.Television, both high-end production and local broadcasting, appears crucial to the sustainability of screen production in Scotland. Outlander has been estimated to contribute to Scotland’s production spend figures reaching a historic high of £45.8 million in 2014 (Creative Scotland ”Creative Scotland Screen Strategy Update”). The arrival of the program has almost doubled production spend in Scotland, offering the chance for increased stability for screen industries workers. Qualifying for UK High-End Television Tax Relief, Outlander has engaged a crew of approximately 300 across props, filming and set build, and cast over 2,000 supporting artist roles from within Scotland and the UK.Long running drama, in particular, offers key opportunities for both those cutting their teeth in the screen industries and also by providing more consistent and longer-term employment to existing workers. BBC television soap River City (2002-) has been identified as a key example of such an opportunity and the programme has been credited with providing a springboard for developing the skills of local actors, writers and production crew (Hibberd). This kind of pipeline of production is critical given the work patterns of the sector. According to Creative Skillset, of the 4,000 people in Scotland are employed in the film and television industries, 40% of television workers are freelance and 90% of film production work in freelance (EKOS).In an attempt to address skills gaps, the Outlander Trainee Placement Scheme has been devised in collaboration with Creative Scotland and Creative Skillset. During filming of Season One, thirty-eight trainees were supported across a range of production and craft roles, followed by a further twenty-five in Season Two. Encouragingly Outlander, and the books it is based on, is set in Scotland so the authenticity of place has played a strong component in the decision to locate production there. Producer David Brown began his career on Bill Forsyth films Gregory’s Girl (1981), Local Hero (1983) and Comfort and Joy (1984) and has a strong existing relationship to Scotland. He has been very vocal in his support for the trainee program, contending that “training is the future of our industry and we at Outlander see the growth of talent and opportunities as part of our mission here in Scotland” (“Outlander fast tracks next generation of skilled screen talent”).ConclusionsThis article has aimed to explore the relationship between place and the screen industries and, taking Scotland as its focus, has outlined a need to more closely examine the ways in which the sector can be supported. Despite the possible gains in terms of building a sustainable industry, the state-led funding of the global screen industries is contested. The use of tax breaks and incentives has been problematised and critiques range from use of public funding to attract footloose media industries to the increasingly zero sum game of competition between competing places (Morawetz; McDonald). In relation to broadcasting, there have been critiques of a ‘lift and shift’ approach to policy in the UK, with TV production companies moving to the nations and regions temporarily to meet the quota and leaving once a production has finished (House of Commons). Further to this, issues have been raised regarding how far such interventions can seed and develop a rich production ecology that offers opportunities for indigenous talent (Christopherson and Rightor).Nonetheless recent success for the screen industries in Scotland can, at least in part, be attributed to interventions including increased decentralisation of broadcasting and the high-end television tax incentives. This article has identified gaps in infrastructure which continue to stymie growth and have led to production drain to other centres. 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Karlin, Beth, and John Johnson. "Measuring Impact: The Importance of Evaluation for Documentary Film Campaigns." M/C Journal 14, no. 6 (2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.444.

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Abstract:
Introduction Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this sentiment, arguing that, "despite widespread speculation about the impact of documentaries, the topic has received relatively little systematic attention" ("Evolving"). And earlier this year, the introduction to a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on documentary film stated, "documentary film, despite its growing influence and many impacts, has mostly been overlooked by social scientists studying the media and communication" (Nisbet and Aufderheide 451). Film has been studied extensively as entertainment, as narrative, and as cultural event, but the study of film as an agent of social change is still in its infancy. This paper introduces a systematic approach to measuring the social impact of documentary film aiming to: (1) discuss the context of documentary film and its potential impact; and (2) argue for a social science approach, discussing key issues about conducting such research. Changes in Documentary Practice Documentary film has been used as a tool for promoting social change throughout its history. John Grierson, who coined the term "documentary" in 1926, believed it could be used to influence the ideas and actions of people in ways once reserved for church and school. He presented his thoughts on this emerging genre in his 1932 essay, First Principles of Documentary, saying, "We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form" (97). Richard Barsam further specified the definition of documentary, distinguishing it from non-fiction film, such that all documentaries are non-fiction films but not all non-fiction films are documentaries. He distinguishes documentary from other forms of non-fiction film (i.e. travel films, educational films, newsreels) by its purpose; it is a film with an opinion and a specific message that aims to persuade or influence the audience. And Bill Nichols writes that the definition of documentary may even expand beyond the film itself, defining it as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" (12). Documentary film has undergone many significant changes since its inception, from the heavily staged romanticism movement of the 1920s to the propagandist tradition of governments using film to persuade individuals to support national agendas to the introduction of cinéma vérité in the 1960s and historical documentary in the 1980s (cf. Barnouw). However, the recent upsurge in popularity of documentary media, combined with technological advances of internet and computers have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for film to serve as both art and agent for social change. One such opportunity is in the creation of film-based social action campaigns. Over the past decade, filmmakers have taken a more active role in promoting social change by coordinating film releases with action campaigns. Companies such as Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc., etc.) now create "specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films" (Participant Media). In addition, a new sector of "social media" consultants are now offering services, including "consultation, strategic planning for alternative distribution, website and social media development, and complete campaign management services to filmmakers to ensure the content of nonfiction media truly meets the intention for change" (Working Films). The emergence of new forms of media and technology are changing our conceptions of both documentary film and social action. Technologies such as podcasts, video blogs, internet radio, social media and network applications, and collaborative web editing "both unsettle and extend concepts and assumptions at the heart of 'documentary' as a practice and as an idea" (Ellsworth). In the past decade, we have seen new forms of documentary creation, distribution, marketing, and engagement. Likewise, film campaigns are utilizing a broad array of strategies to engage audience members, including "action kits, screening programs, educational curriculums and classes, house parties, seminars, panels" that often turn into "ongoing 'legacy' programs that are updated and revised to continue beyond the film's domestic and international theatrical, DVD and television windows" (Participant Media). This move towards multi-media documentary film is becoming not only commonplace, but expected as a part of filmmaking. NYU film professor and documentary film pioneer George Stoney recently noted, "50 percent of the documentary filmmaker's job is making the movie, and 50 percent is figuring out what its impact can be and how it can move audiences to action" (qtd. in Nisbet, "Gasland"). In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, coined the term "transmedia storytelling", which he later defined as "a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience" ("Transmedia"). When applied to documentary film, it is the elements of the "issue" raised by the film that get dispersed across these channels, coordinating, not just an entertainment experience, but a social action campaign. Dimensions of Evaluation It is not unreasonable to assume that such film campaigns, just like any policy or program, have the possibility to influence viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Measuring this impact has become increasingly important, as funders of documentary and issue-based films want look to understand the "return on investment" of films in terms of social impact so that they can compare them with other projects, including non-media, direct service projects. Although we "feel" like films make a difference to the individuals who also see them in the broader cultures in which they are embedded, measurement and empirical analysis of this impact are vitally important for both providing feedback to filmmakers and funders as well as informing future efforts attempting to leverage film for social change. This type of systematic assessment, or program evaluation, is often discussed in terms of two primary goals—formative (or process) and summative (or impact) evaluation (cf. Muraskin; Trochim and Donnelly). Formative evaluation studies program materials and activities to strengthen a program, and summative evaluation examines program outcomes. In terms of documentary film, these two goals can be described as follows: Formative Evaluation: Informing the Process As programs (broadly defined as an intentional set of activities with the aim of having some specific impact), the people who interact with them, and the cultures they are situated in are constantly changing, program development and evaluation is an ongoing learning cycle. Film campaigns, which are an intentional set of activities with the aim of impacting individual viewers and broader cultures, fit squarely within this purview. Without formulating hypotheses about the relationships between program activities and goals and then collecting and analyzing data during implementation to test them, it is difficult to learn ways to improve programs (or continue doing what works best in the most efficient manner). Attention to this process enables those involved to learn more about, not only what works, but how and why it works and even gain insights about how program outcomes may be affected by changes to resource availability, potential audiences, or infrastructure. Filmmakers are constantly learning and honing their craft and realizing the impact of their practice can help the artistic process. Often faced with tight budgets and timelines, they are forced to confront tradeoffs all the time, in the writing, production and post-production process. Understanding where they are having impact can improve their decision-making, which can help both the individual project and the overall field. Summative Evaluation: Quantifying Impacts Evaluation is used in many different fields to determine whether programs are achieving their intended goals and objectives. It became popular in the 1960s as a way of understanding the impact of the Great Society programs and has continued to grow since that time (Madaus and Stufflebeam). A recent White House memo stated that "rigorous, independent program evaluations can be a key resource in determining whether government programs are achieving their intended outcomes as well as possible and at the lowest possible cost" and the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched an initiative to increase the practice of "impact evaluations, or evaluations aimed at determining the causal effects of programs" (Orszag 1). Documentary films, like government programs, generally target a national audience, aim to serve a social purpose, and often do not provide a return on their investment. Participant Media, the most visible and arguably most successful documentary production company in the film industry, made recent headlines for its difficulty in making a profit during its seven-year history (Cieply). Owner and founder Jeff Skoll reported investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company and CEO James Berk added that the company sometimes measures success, not by profit, but by "whether Mr. Skoll could have exerted more impact simply by spending his money philanthropically" (Cieply). Because of this, documentary projects often rely on grant funding, and are starting to approach funders beyond traditional arts and media sources. "Filmmakers are finding new fiscal and non-fiscal partners, in constituencies that would not traditionally be considered—or consider themselves—media funders or partners" (BRITDOC 6). And funders increasingly expect tangible data about their return on investment. Says Luis Ubiñas, president of Ford Foundation, which recently launched the Just Films Initiative: In these times of global economic uncertainty, with increasing demand for limited philanthropic dollars, assessing our effectiveness is more important than ever. Today, staying on the frontlines of social change means gauging, with thoughtfulness and rigor, the immediate and distant outcomes of our funding. Establishing the need for evaluation is not enough—attention to methodology is also critical. Valid research methodology is a critical component of understanding around the role entertainment can play in impacting social and environmental issues. The following issues are vital to measuring impact. Defining the Project Though this may seem like an obvious step, it is essential to determine the nature of the project so one can create research questions and hypotheses based on a complete understanding of the "treatment". One organization that provides a great example of the integration of documentary film imbedded into a larger campaign or movement is Invisible Children. Founded in 2005, Invisible Children is both a media-based organization as well as an economic development NGO with the goal of raising awareness and meeting the needs of child soldiers and other youth suffering as a result of the ongoing war in northern Uganda. Although Invisible Children began as a documentary film, it has grown into a large non-profit organization with an operating budget of over $8 million and a staff of over a hundred employees and interns throughout the year as well as volunteers in all 50 states and several countries. Invisible Children programming includes films, events, fundraising campaigns, contests, social media platforms, blogs, videos, two national "tours" per year, merchandise, and even a 650-person three-day youth summit in August 2011 called The Fourth Estate. Individually, each of these components might lead to specific outcomes; collectively, they might lead to others. In order to properly assess impacts of the film "project", it is important to take all of these components into consideration and think about who they may impact and how. This informs the research questions, hypotheses, and methods used in evaluation. Film campaigns may even include partnerships with existing social movements and non-profit organizations targeting social change. The American University Center for Social Media concluded in a case study of three issue-based documentary film campaigns: Digital technologies do not replace, but are closely entwined with, longstanding on-the-ground activities of stakeholders and citizens working for social change. Projects like these forge new tools, pipelines, and circuits of circulation in a multiplatform media environment. They help to create sustainable network infrastructures for participatory public media that extend from local communities to transnational circuits and from grassroots communities to policy makers. (Abrash) Expanding the Focus of Impact beyond the Individual A recent focus has shifted the dialogue on film impact. Whiteman ("Theaters") argues that traditional metrics of film "success" tend to focus on studio economic indicators that are far more relevant to large budget films. Current efforts focused on box office receipts and audience size, the author claims, are really measures of successful film marketing or promotion, missing the mark when it comes to understanding social impact. He instead stresses the importance of developing a more comprehensive model. His "coalition model" broadens the range and types of impact of film beyond traditional metrics to include the entire filmmaking process, from production to distribution. Whiteman (“Theaters”) argues that a narrow focus on the size of the audience for a film, its box office receipts, and viewers' attitudes does not incorporate the potential reach of a documentary film. Impacts within the coalition model include both individual and policy levels. Individual impacts (with an emphasis on activist groups) include educating members, mobilizing for action, and raising group status; policy includes altering both agenda for and the substance of policy deliberations. The Fledgling Fund (Barrett and Leddy) expanded on this concept and identified five distinct impacts of documentary film campaigns. These potential impacts expand from individual viewers to groups, movements, and eventually to what they call the "ultimate goal" of social change. Each is introduced briefly below. Quality Film. The film itself can be presented as a quality film or media project, creating enjoyment or evoking emotion in the part of audiences. "By this we mean a film that has a compelling narrative that draws viewers in and can engage them in the issue and illustrate complex problems in ways that statistics cannot" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Awareness. Film can increase public awareness by bringing light to issues and stories that may have otherwise been unknown or not often thought about. This is the level of impact that has received the most attention, as films are often discussed in terms of their "educational" value. "A project's ability to raise awareness around a particular issue, since awareness is a critical building block for both individual change and broader social change" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Engagement. Impact, however, need not stop at simply raising public awareness. Engagement "indicates a shift from simply being aware of an issue to acting on this awareness. Were a film and its outreach campaign able to provide an answer to the question 'What can I do?' and more importantly mobilize that individual to act?" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This is where an associated film campaign becomes increasingly important, as transmedia outlets such as Facebook, websites, blogs, etc. can build off the interest and awareness developed through watching a film and provide outlets for viewers channel their constructive efforts. Social Movement. In addition to impacts on individuals, films can also serve to mobilize groups focused on a particular problem. The filmmaker can create a campaign around the film to promote its goals and/or work with existing groups focused on a particular issue, so that the film can be used as a tool for mobilization and collaboration. "Moving beyond measures of impact as they relate to individual awareness and engagement, we look at the project's impact as it relates to the broader social movement … if a project can strengthen the work of key advocacy organizations that have strong commitment to the issues raised in the film" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). Social Change. The final level of impact and "ultimate goal" of an issue-based film is long-term and systemic social change. "While we understand that realizing social change is often a long and complex process, we do believe it is possible and that for some projects and issues there are key indicators of success" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This can take the form of policy or legislative change, passed through film-based lobbying efforts, or shifts in public dialogue and behavior. Legislative change typically takes place beyond the social movement stage, when there is enough support to pressure legislators to change or create policy. Film-inspired activism has been seen in issues ranging from environmental causes such as agriculture (Food Inc.) and toxic products (Blue Vinyl) to social causes such as foreign conflict (Invisible Children) and education (Waiting for Superman). Documentary films can also have a strong influence as media agenda-setters, as films provide dramatic "news pegs" for journalists seeking to either sustain or generation new coverage of an issue (Nisbet "Introduction" 5), such as the media coverage of climate change in conjunction with An Inconvenient Truth. Barrett and Leddy, however, note that not all films target all five impacts and that different films may lead to different impacts. "In some cases we could look to key legislative or policy changes that were driven by, or at least supported by the project... In other cases, we can point to shifts in public dialogue and how issues are framed and discussed" (7). It is possible that specific film and/or campaign characteristics may lead to different impacts; this is a nascent area for research and one with great promise for both practical and theoretical utility. Innovations in Tools and Methods Finally, the selection of tools is a vital component for assessing impact and the new media landscape is enabling innovations in the methods and strategies for program evaluation. Whereas the traditional domain of film impact measurement included box office statistics, focus groups, and exit surveys, innovations in data collection and analysis have expanded the reach of what questions we can ask and how we are able to answer them. For example, press coverage can assist in understanding and measuring the increase in awareness about an issue post-release. Looking directly at web-traffic changes "enables the creation of an information-seeking curve that can define the parameters of a teachable moment" (Hart and Leiserowitz 360). Audience reception can be measured, not only via interviews and focus groups, but also through content and sentiment analysis of web content and online analytics. "Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights that would otherwise remain hidden" (Manyika et al. 5). These new tools are significantly changing evaluation, expanding what we can learn about the social impacts of film through triangulation of self-report data with measurement of actual behavior in virtual environments. Conclusion The changing media landscape both allows and impels evaluation of film impacts on individual viewers and the broader culture in which they are imbedded. Although such analysis may have previously been limited to box office numbers, critics' reviews, and theater exit surveys, the rise of new media provides both the ability to connect filmmakers, activists, and viewers in new ways and the data in which to study the process. This capability, combined with significant growth in the documentary landscape, suggests a great potential for documentary film to contribute to some of our most pressing social and environmental needs. A social scientific approach, that combines empirical analysis with theory applied from basic science, ensures that impact can be measured and leveraged in a way that is useful for both filmmakers as well as funders. In the end, this attention to impact ensures a continued thriving marketplace for issue-based documentary films in our social landscape. References Abrash, Barbara. "Social Issue Documentary: The Evolution of Public Engagement." American University Center for Social Media 21 Apr. 2010. 26 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/›. Aufderheide, Patricia. "The Changing Documentary Marketplace." Cineaste 30.3 (2005): 24-28. Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Barrett, Diana and Sheila Leddy. "Assessing Creative Media's Social Impact." The Fledgling Fund, Dec. 2008. 15 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.thefledglingfund.org/media/research.html›. Barsam, Richard M. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1992. BRITDOC Foundation. The End of the Line: A Social Impact Evaluation. London: Channel 4, 2011. 12 Oct. 2011 ‹http://britdoc.org/news_details/the_social_impact_of_the_end_of_the_line/›. Cieply, Michael. "Uneven Growth for Film Studio with a Message." New York Times 5 Jun. 2011: B1. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. "Emerging Media and Documentary Practice." The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs. Aug. 2008. 22 Sep. 2011. ‹http://www.gpia.info/node/911›. Grierson, John. "First Principles of Documentary (1932)." Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. Eds. Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 97-102. Hart, Philip Solomon and Anthony Leiserowitz. "Finding the Teachable Moment: An Analysis of Information-Seeking Behavior on Global Warming Related Websites during the Release of The Day After Tomorrow." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 3.3 (2009): 355-66. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. ———. "Transmedia Storytelling 101." Confessions of an Aca-Fan. The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. 22 Mar. 2007. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html›. Madaus, George, and Daniel Stufflebeam. "Program Evaluation: A Historical Overview." Evaluation in Education and Human Services 49.1 (2002): 3-18. Manyika, James, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Brad Brown, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, and Angela Hung Byers. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity. McKinsey Global Institute. May 2011 ‹http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/big_data/›. Muraskin, Lana. Understanding Evaluation: The Way to Better Prevention Programs. Washington: U.S. Department of Education, 1993. 8 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www2.ed.gov/PDFDocs/handbook.pdf›. Nichols, Bill. "Foreword." Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Eds. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997. 11-13. Nisbet, Matthew. "Gasland and Dirty Business: Documentary Films Shape Debate on Energy Policy." Big Think, 9 May 2011. 1 Oct. 2011 ‹http://bigthink.com/ideas/38345›. ———. "Introduction: Understanding the Social Impact of a Documentary Film." Documentaries on a Mission: How Nonprofits Are Making Movies for Public Engagement. Ed. Karen Hirsch, Center for Social Media. Mar. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://aladinrc.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/4634/1/docs_on_a_mission.pdf›. Nisbet, Matthew, and Patricia Aufderheide. "Documentary Film: Towards a Research Agenda on Forms, Functions, and Impacts." Mass Communication and Society 12.4 (2011): 450-56. Orszag, Peter. Increased Emphasis on Program Evaluation. Washington: Office of Management and Budget. 7 Oct. 2009. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/memoranda_2010/m10-01.pdf›. Participant Media. "Our Mission." 2011. 2 Apr. 2011 ‹http://www.participantmedia.com/company/about_us.php.›. Plantinga, Carl. Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Trochim, William, and James Donnelly. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 3rd ed. Mason: Atomic Dogs, 2007. Ubiñas, Luis. "President's Message." 2009 Annual Report. Ford Foundation, Sep. 2010. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.fordfoundation.org/about-us/2009-annual-report/presidents-message›. Vladica, Florin, and Charles Davis. "Business Innovation and New Media Practices in Documentary Film Production and Distribution: Conceptual Framework and Review of Evidence." The Media as a Driver of the Information Society. Eds. Ed Albarran, Paulo Faustino, and R. Santos. Lisbon, Portugal: Media XXI / Formal, 2009. 299-319. Whiteman, David. "Out of the Theaters and into the Streets: A Coalition Model of the Political Impact of Documentary Film and Video." Political Communication 21.1 (2004): 51-69. ———. "The Evolving Impact of Documentary Film: Sacrifice and the Rise of Issue-Centered Outreach." Post Script 22 Jun. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.allbusiness.com/media-telecommunications/movies-sound-recording/5517496-1.html›. Winston, Brian. Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited. London: British Film Institute, 1995. Working Films. "Nonprofits: Working Films." Foundation Source Access 31 May 2011. 5 Oct. 2011 ‹http://access.foundationsource.com/nonprofit/working-films/›.
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Hackett, Lisa J. "Addressing Rage: The Fast Fashion Revolt." M/C Journal 22, no. 1 (2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1496.

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Abstract:
Wearing clothing from the past is all the rage now. Different styles and aesthetics of vintage and historical clothing, original or appropriated, are popular with fashion wearers and home sewers. Social media is rich with images of anachronistic clothing and the major pattern companies have a large range of historical sewing patterns available. Butterick McCall, for example, have a Making History range of patterns for sewers of clothing from a range of historical periods up to the 1950s. The 1950s styled fashion is particularly popular with pattern producers. Yet little research exists that explains why anachronistic clothing is all the rage. Drawing on 28 interviews conducted by the author with women who wear/make 1950s styles clothing and a survey of 229 people who wear/make historical clothing, this article outlines four key reasons that help explain the popularity of wearing/making anachronistic clothing: It argues that there exists rage against four ‘fast fashion’ practices: environmental disregard, labour breaches, poor quality, and poor fit. Ethical consumption practices such as home sewing quality clothes that fit, seeks to ameliorate this rage. That much of what is being made is anachronistic speaks to past sewing techniques that were ethical and produced quality fitting garments rather than fashion today that doesn’t fit, is of poor quality, and it unethical in its production. Fig. 1: Craftivist Collective Rage: Protesting Fast FashionRage against Fast Fashion Rage against fast fashion is not new. Controversies over Disney and Nike’s use of child labour in the 1990s, the anti-fur campaigns of the 1980s, the widespread condemnation of factory conditions in Bangladesh in the wake of the 2016 Rana Plaza collapse and Tess Holiday’s Eff Your Beauty Standards campaign, are evidence of this. Fast fashion is “cheap, trendy clothing, that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments … at breakneck speed” (Rauturier). It is produced cheaply in short turnarounds, manufactured offshore by slave labour, with the industry hiding these exploitative practices behind, and in, complex supply chains. The clothing is made from poor quality material, meaning it doesn’t last, and the material is not environmentally sustainable. Because of this fast fashion is generally not recycled and ends up as waste in landfills. This for Rauturier is what fast fashion is: “cheap, low quality materials, where clothes degrade after just a few wears and get thrown away”. The fast fashion industry engages in two discrete forms of obsolescence; planned and perceived. Planned obsolescence is where clothes are designed to have a short life-span, thus coercing the consumer into buying a replacement item sooner than intended. Claims that clothes now last only a few washes before falling apart are common in the media (Dunbar). This is due to conscious manufacturing techniques that reduce the lifespan of the clothes including using mixed fibres, poor-quality interfacing, and using polyester threads, to name a few. Perceived obsolescence is where the consumer believes an otherwise functioning item of clothing to no longer to be valued. This is borne out in the idea that an item is deemed to be “in vogue” or “in fashion” and its value to the consumer is thus embedded in that quality. Once it falls out of fashion is deemed worthless. Laver’s “fashion cycle” elucidated this idea over eighty years ago. Since the 1980s the fashion industry has sped up, moving from the traditional twice annual fashion seasons to the fast fashion system of constantly manufacturing new styles, sometimes weekly. The technologies that have allowed the rapid manufacturing of fast fashion mean that the clothes are cheaper and more readily available. The average price of clothing has dropped accordingly. An item that cost US$100 in 1993 only cost US$59.10 in 2013, a drop of 41 per cent (Perry, Chart). The average person in 2014 bought 60 per cent more clothing that they did in 2000. Fast fashion is generally unsaleable in the second-hand market, due to its volume and poor design and manufacture. Green notes that many charity clothing stores bin a large percentage of the fast fashion items they receive. Environmental Rage Consumers are increasingly expressing rage about the environmental impact of fast fashion. The production of different textiles places different stresses on the environment. Cotton, for example, accounts for one third of the fibres found in all textiles, yet it requires high levels of water. A single cotton shirt needs 2,700 litres of water alone, the equivalent to “what one person drinks in two-and-a-half years” (Drew & Yehounme). Synthetics don’t represent an environmentally friendly alternative. While they may need less water, they are more carbon-intensive and polyester has twice the carbon footprint of cotton (Drew & Yehounme). Criticisms of fast fashion also include “water pollution, the use of toxic chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste”. Textile dyeing is the “second largest polluter of clean water globally.” The inclusion of chemical in the manufacturing of textiles is “disruptive to hormones and carcinogenic” (Perry, Cost). Naomi Klein’s exposure of the past problems of fast fashion, and revelations such as these, inform why consumers are enraged by the fast fashion system. The State of Fashion 2019 Report found many of the issues Klein interrogated remain of concern to consumers. Consumers continue to feel enraged at the industry’s disregard for the environment (Shaw et al.) any many are seeking alternative sources of sustainable fashion. For some consumers, the ethical dilemmas are overcome by purchasing second-hand or recycled clothing, or participate in Clothing Exchanges. Another alternative to ameliorating the rage is to stop buying new clothes and to make and wear their own clothes. A recent article in The Guardian, “’Don’t Feed the Monster!’ The People Who Have Stopped Buying New Clothes” highlights the “growing movement” of people seeking to make a “personal change” in response to the ethical dilemmas fast fashion poses to the environment. While political groups like Fashion of Tomorrow argue for collective legislative changes to ensure environmental sustainability in the industry, consumers are also finding their own individual ways of ameliorating their rage against fast fashion. Over recent decades Australians have consistently shown concern over environmental issues. A 2016 national survey found that 63 per cent of Australians considered themselves to be environmentalists and this is echoed in the ABC’s War on Waste programme which examined attitudes to and effects of clothing waste in Australia. In my interviews with women wearing 1950s style clothing, almost 65 per cent indicated a distinct dissatisfaction with mainstream fashion and frustration particularly with pernicious ‘fast fashion’. One participant offered, “seeing the War on Waste and all the fast fashion … I really like if I can get it second hand … you know I feel like I am helping a little bit” [Gabrielle]. Traid, a network of UK charity clothes shops diverts 3 000 tonnes of clothes from landfill to the second-hand market annually, reported for 2017-18 a 30 per cent increase in its second-hand clothes sales (Coccoza). The Internet has helped expand the second-hand clothing market. Two participants offered these insights: “I am completely addicted to the Review Buy Swap and Sell Page” [Anna] and “Instagram is huge for girls like us to communicate and get ideas” [Ashleigh]. Slave Rage The history of fashion is replete with examples of exploitation of workers. From the seamstresses of France in the eighteenth century who had to turn to prostitution to supplement their meagre wages (Jones 16) to the twenty-first century sweatshop workers earning less than a living wage in developing nations, poor work conditions have plagued the industry. For Karl Marx fashion represented a contradiction within capitalism where labour was exploited to create a mass-produced item. He lambasted the fashion industry and its “murderous caprices”, and despite his dream that the invention of the sewing machine would alleviate the stress placed on garment workers, technology has only served to intensify its demands on its poor workers (Sullivan 36-37). The 2013 Rena Plaza factory disaster shows just how far some sections of the industry are willing to go in their race to the bottom.In the absence of enforceable, global fair-trade initiatives, it is hard for consumers to purchase goods that reflect their ethos (Shaw et al. 428). While there is much more focus on better labour practices in the fashion industry, as the Baptist World Aid Australia’s annual Ethical Fashion Report shows, consumers are still critical of the industry and its labour practices.A significant number of participants in my research indicated that they actively sought to purchase products that were produced free from worker exploitation. For some participants, the purchasing of second-hand clothing allowed them to circumnavigate the fast fashion system. For others, mid-century reproduction fashion was sourced from markets with strong labour laws and “ethically made” without the use of sweat shop labour” [Emma]. Alternatively, another participant rejected buying new vintage fashion and instead purchased originally made fashion, in this case clothing made 50 to 60 years ago. This was one was of ensuring “some poor … person has [not] had to work really hard for very little money … [while the] shop is gaining all the profits” [Melissa]. Quality Rage Planned obsolescence in fashion has existed at least since the 1940s when Dupont ensured their nylon stockings were thin enough to ladder to ensure repeat custom (Meynen). Since then manufacturers have deliberately used poor techniques and poor material – blended fabrics, unfinished seams, unfixed dyes, for example – to ensure that clothes fail quickly. A 2015 UK Barnardo’s survey found clothes were worn an average of just seven times, which is not surprising given that clothes can last as little as two washes before being worn out (Dunbar). Extreme planned obsolescence in concert with perceived obsolescence can lead to clothes being discarded before their short lifespan had expired. The War on Waste interviewed young women who wore clothes sometimes only once before discarding them.Not all women are concerned with keeping up to date with fashion, instead wanting to create their own identify though clothes and are therefore looking for durability in their clothes. Many of the women interviewed for this research were aware of the declining quality of clothes, often referring to those made before the fast fashion era as evidence of quality clothing. For many in this study, manufacturing of classically styled clothing was of higher concern than mimicking the latest fashion trend. Some indicated their “disgust” at the poor quality of fast fashion [Gabrielle]. Others has specific outrage at the cost of poorly made fast fashion: “I don’t like spending a lot of money on clothing that I know may not necessarily be well made” [Skye] and “I got sick of dresses just being see through … you know, seeing my bras under things” [Becky]. For another: “I don’t like the whole mass-produced thing. I don’t think that they are particularly well made … Sometimes they are made with a tiny waist but big boobs, there’s no seams on them, they’re just overlocked together …” [Vicky]. For other participants in this research fast fashion produced items were considered inferior to original items. One put it is this way: “[On using vintage wares] If something broke, you fixed it. You didn’t throw it away and go down to [the shop] and buy a new one ... You look at stuff from these days … you could buy a handbag today and you are like “is this going to be here in two years? Or is it going to fall apart in my hands?” … there’s that strength and durability that I do like” [Ashleigh]. For another, “vintage reproduction stuff is so well made, it’s not like fast fashion, like Vivien of Holloway and Pin Up Girl Clothing, their pieces last forever, they don’t fall apart after five washes like fast fashion” [Emma]. The following encapsulates the rage felt in response to fast fashion. I think a lot of people are wearing true vintage clothing more often as a kind of backlash to the whole fast fashion scene … you could walk into any shop and you could see a lot of clothing that is very, very cheap, but it’s also very cheaply made. You are going to wear it and it’s going to fall apart in six months and that is not something that I want to invest in. [Melissa]Fit RageFit is a multi-faceted issue that affects consumers in several ways: body size; body shape; and height. Body size refers to the actual physical size of the body, whether one is underweight, slim, average, muscular or fat. Fast fashion body size labelling reflects what the industry considers to be of ‘normal sizes’, ranging from a size 8 through to a size 16 (Hackett & Rall). Body shape is a separate, if not entirely discrete issue. Women differ widely in the ratios between their hips, bust and waist. Body shape distribution varies widely within populations, for example, the ‘Size USA’ study identified 11 different female body shapes with wide variations between populations (Lee et al.). Even this doesn’t consider bodies with physical disabilities. Clothing is designed to fit women of ‘average’ height, thus bodies that are taller or shorter are often excluded from fast fashion (Valtonen). Even though Australian sizing practices are based on erroneous historical data (Hackett and Rall; Kennedy), the fast fashion system continues to manufacture for average body shapes and average body heights, to the exclusion of others. Discrimination through clothing sizes represents one way in which social norms are reinforced. Garments for larger women are generally regarded as less fashionable (Peters 48). Enraged consumers label some of the offerings ‘fat sacks’, ‘tents’ and ‘camouflage wear’ (Colls 591-592). Further, plus size is often more expensive and having been ‘sized up’ from smaller sizes, the result is poor fit. Larger body’s therefore have less autonomy in fashioning their identity (Peters 45). Size restrictions can lead to consumers having to choose between going without a desired item or wearing a size too small for them as no larger alternative is available (Laitala et al. 33-34).The ideology behind the thin aesthetic is that it is framed as aspirational (Barry) and thus consumers are motivated to purchase clothes based upon a desire to fit in with this beauty ideal. This is a false dichotomy (Halliwell and Dittmar 105; Bian and Wang). For participants in this research rage at fashion fashions persistance in producing for ‘average’ sized women was clearly evident. For a plus-size participant: “I don’t suit modern stuff. I’m a bigger girl and that’s not what style is these days. And so, I find it just doesn’t work for me” [Ashleigh]. For non-plus participants, sizing rage was also evident: I’m just like a praying mantis, a long string bean. I’m slim, tall … I do have the body shape … that fast fashion catered for, and I can still dress in fast fashion, but I think the idea that so many women feel excluded by that kind of fashion, I just want to distance myself from it. So, so many women have struggles in the change rooms in shopping centres because things don’t fit them nicely. [Emma] For this participant reproduction fashion wasn’t vanity sized. That is, a dress from the 1950s had the body measurements on the label rather than a number reflecting an arbitrary and erroneous sizing system. Some noted their disregard for standardised sizing systems used exclusively for fast fashion: “I have very non-standard measurements … I don’t buy dresses for that reason … My bust and my waist and my hips don’t fit a standard. You know I can’t go “ooh that’s a 12, that’s an 18”. You know, I don’t believe in standard sizing basically” [Skye]. Variations of sizing by brands adds to the frustration of fashion consumers: “if someone says 'I’m a size 16' that means absolutely nothing. If you go between brands … [shop A] XXL to a [shop B] to a [shop C] XXL to a [shop D] XXL, you know … they’re not the same. They won’t fit the same, they don’t have the same fit” [Skye]. These women recognise that their body shape, size and/or height is not catered for by fast fashion. This frees them to look for alternatives beyond the product offerings of the mainstream fashion industry. Although the rage against aspects of fast fashion discussed here – environmental, labour, quality and fit – is not seeing people in the streets protesting, people are actively choosing to find alternatives to the problem of sourcing clothes that fit their ethos. ReferencesABC Television. "Coffee Cups and Fast Fashion." War on Waste. 30 May 2017. Barnardo's. "Once Worn, Thrice Shy – British Women’s Wardrobe Habits Exposed!" 11 June 2015. 1 Mar. 2019 <http://www.barnardos.org.uk/news/press_releases.htm?ref=105244http://www.barnardos.org.uk/news/press_releases.htm?ref=105244>.Barry, Ben. "Selling Whose Dream? A Taxonomy of Aspiration in Fashion Imagery." Fashion, Style & Popular Culture 1.2 (2014): 175-92.Cocozza, Paula. “‘Don’t Feed The Monster!’ The People Who Have Stopped Buying New Clothes”. The Guardian 19 Feb. 2019. 20 Feb. 2019 <http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/feb/19/dont-feed-monster-the-people-who-have-stopped-buying-new-clothes#comment-126048716>.Colls, Rachel. "‘Looking Alright, Feeling Alright’: Emotions, Sizing and the Geographies of Women's Experiences of Clothing Consumption." Social & Cultural Geography 5.4 (2004): 583-96.Drew, Deborah, and Genevieve Yehounme. "The Apparel Industry’s Environmental Impact in 6 Graphics." World Resources Institute July 2005. 24 Feb. 2018 <http://www.wri.org/blog/2017/07/apparel-industrys-environmental-impact-6-graphics>.Dunbar, Polly. "How Your Clothes Are Designed to Fall Apart: From Dodgy Stitching to Cheap Fabrics, Today's Fashions Are Made Not to Last – So You Have to Buy More." Daily Mail 18 Aug. 2016. 25 Feb. 2018 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3746186/Are-clothes-fall-apart-dodgy-stitching-cheap-fabrics-today-s-fashions-designed-not-buy-more.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3746186/Are-clothes-fall-apart-dodgy-stitching-cheap-fabrics-today-s-fashions-designed-not-buy-more.html>.Hackett, Lisa J., and Denise N. Rall. "The Size of the Problem with the Problem of Sizing: How Clothing Measurement Systems Have Misrepresented Women’s Bodies from the 1920s – Today." Clothing Cultures 5.2 (2018): 263-83.Kennedy, Kate. "What Size Am I? Decoding Women's Clothing Standards." Fashion Theory 13.4 (2009): 511-30.Klein, Naomi. No Logo, No Space, No Choice, No Jobs: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. London: Flamingo, 2000.Laitala, Kirsi, Ingun Grimstad Klepp, and Benedict Hauge. "Materialised Ideals Sizes and Beauty." Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 3 (2011): 19-41.Laver, James. Taste and Fashion. London: George G. Harrap, 1937.Lee, Jeong Yim, Cynthia L. Istook, Yun Ja Nam, Sun Mi Pak. "Comparison of Body Shape between USA and Korean Women." International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology 19.5 (2007): 374-91.Perry, Mark J. "Chart of the Day: The CPI for Clothing Has Fallen by 3.3% over the Last 20 Years, while Overall Prices Increased by 63.5%." AEIdeas 12 Oct. 2013. 4 Jan. 2019 <http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-the-cpi-for-clothing-has-fallen-by-3-3-over-the-last-20-years-while-overall-prices-increased-by-63-5/http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-the-cpi-for-clothing-has-fallen-by-3-3-over-the-last-20-years-while-overall-prices-increased-by-63-5/>. Perry, Patsy. “The Environmental Cost of Fast Fashion.” Independent 8 Jan. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/environment-costs-fast-fashion-pollution-waste-sustainability-a8139386.html>.Peters, Lauren Downing. "You Are What You Wear: How Plus-Size Fashion Figures in Fat Identity Formation." Fashion Theory 18.1 (2014): 45-71.Rauturier, Solene. “What Is Fast Fashion?” 1 Aug. 2010. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/>.Shaw, Deirdre, Gillian Hogg, Edward Shui, and Elaine Wilson. "Fashion Victim: The Impact of Fair Trade Concerns on Clothing Choice." Journal of Strategic Marketing 14.4 (2006): 427-40.Sullivan, Anthony. "Karl Marx: Fashion and Capitalism." Thinking through Fashion. Eds. Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik. London: I.B. Tauris, 2016. 28-45. Valtonen, Anu. "Height Matters: Practicing Consumer Agency, Gender, and Body Politics." Consumption Markets & Culture 16.2 (2013): 196-221.
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Molnar, Tamas. "Spectre of the Past, Vision of the Future – Ritual, Reflexivity and the Hope for Renewal in Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Climate Change Communication Film "Home"." M/C Journal 15, no. 3 (2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.496.

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About half way through Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s film Home (2009) the narrator describes the fall of the Rapa Nui, the indigenous people of the Easter Islands. The narrator posits that the Rapa Nui culture collapsed due to extensive environmental degradation brought about by large-scale deforestation. The Rapa Nui cut down their massive native forests to clear spaces for agriculture, to heat their dwellings, to build canoes and, most importantly, to move their enormous rock sculptures—the Moai. The disappearance of their forests led to island-wide soil erosion and the gradual disappearance of arable land. Caught in the vice of overpopulation but with rapidly dwindling basic resources and no trees to build canoes, they were trapped on the island and watched helplessly as their society fell into disarray. The sequence ends with the narrator’s biting remark: “The real mystery of the Easter Islands is not how its strange statues got there, we know now; it's why the Rapa Nui didn't react in time.” In their unrelenting desire for development, the Rapa Nui appear to have overlooked the role the environment plays in maintaining a society. The island’s Moai accompanying the sequence appear as memento mori, a lesson in the mortality of human cultures brought about by their own misguided and short-sighted practices. Arthus-Bertrand’s Home, a film composed almost entirely of aerial photographs, bears witness to present-day environmental degradation and climate change, constructing society as a fragile structure built upon and sustained by the environment. Home is a call to recognise how contemporary practices of post-industrial societies have come to shape the environment and how they may impact the habitability of Earth in the near future. Through reflexivity and a ritualised structure the text invites spectators to look at themselves in a new light and remake their self-image in the wake of global environmental risk by embracing new, alternative core practices based on balance and interconnectedness. Arthus-Bertrand frames climate change not as a burden, but as a moment of profound realisation of the potential for change and humans ability to create a desirable future through hope and our innate capacity for renewal. This article examines how Arthus-Bertrand’s ritualised construction of climate change aims to remake viewers’ perception of present-day environmental degradation and investigates Home’s place in contemporary climate change communication discourse. Climate change, in its capacity to affect us globally, is considered a world risk. The most recent peer-reviewed Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases has increased markedly since human industrialisation in the 18th century. Moreover, human activities, such as fossil fuel burning and agricultural practices, are “very likely” responsible for the resulting increase in temperature rise (IPPC 37). The increased global temperatures and the subsequent changing weather patterns have a direct and profound impact on the physical and biological systems of our planet, including shrinking glaciers, melting permafrost, coastal erosion, and changes in species distribution and reproduction patterns (Rosenzweig et al. 353). Studies of global security assert that these physiological changes are expected to increase the likelihood of humanitarian disasters, food and water supply shortages, and competition for resources thus resulting in a destabilisation of global safety (Boston et al. 1–2). Human behaviour and dominant practices of modernity are now on a path to materially impact the future habitability of our home, Earth. In contemporary post-industrial societies, however, climate change remains an elusive, intangible threat. Here, the Arctic-bound species forced to adapt to milder climates or the inhabitants of low-lying Pacific islands seeking refuge in mainland cities are removed from the everyday experience of the controlled and regulated environments of homes, offices, and shopping malls. Diverse research into the mediated and mediatised nature of the environment suggests that rather than from first-hand experiences and observations, the majority of our knowledge concerning the environment now comes from its representation in the mass media (Hamilton 4; Stamm et al. 220; Cox 2). Consequently the threat of climate change is communicated and constructed through the news media, entertainment and lifestyle programming, and various documentaries and fiction films. It is therefore the construction (the representation of the risk in various discourses) that shapes people’s perception and experience of the phenomenon, and ultimately influences behaviour and instigates social response (Beck 213). By drawing on and negotiating society’s dominant discourses, environmental mediation defines spectators’ perceptions of the human-nature relationship and subsequently their roles and responsibilities in the face of environmental risks. Maxwell Boykoff asserts that contemporary modern society’s mediatised representations of environmental degradation and climate change depict the phenomena as external to society’s primary social and economic concerns (449). Julia Corbett argues that this is partly because environmental protection and sustainable behaviour are often at odds with the dominant social paradigms of consumerism, economic growth, and materialism (175). Similarly, Rowan Howard-Williams suggests that most media texts, especially news, do not emphasise the link between social practices, such as consumerist behaviour, and their environmental consequences because they contradict dominant social paradigms (41). The demands contemporary post-industrial societies make on the environment to sustain economic growth, consumer culture, and citizens’ comfortable lives in air-conditioned homes and offices are often left unarticulated. While the media coverage of environmental risks may indeed have contributed to “critical misperceptions, misleading debates, and divergent understandings” (Boykoff 450) climate change possesses innate characteristics that amplify its perception in present-day post-industrial societies as a distant and impersonal threat. Climate change is characterised by temporal and spatial de-localisation. The gradual increase in global temperature and its physical and biological consequences are much less prominent than seasonal changes and hence difficult to observe on human time-scales. Moreover, while research points to the increased probability of extreme climatic events such as droughts, wild fires, and changes in weather patterns (IPCC 48), they take place over a wide range of geographical locations and no single event can be ultimately said to be the result of climate change (Maibach and Roser-Renouf 145). In addition to these observational obstacles, political partisanship, vested interests in the current status quo, and general resistance to profound change all play a part in keeping us one step removed from the phenomenon of climate change. The distant and impersonal nature of climate change coupled with the “uncertainty over consequences, diverse and multiple engaged interests, conflicting knowledge claims, and high stakes” (Lorenzoni et al. 65) often result in repression, rejection, and denial, removing the individual’s responsibility to act. Research suggests that, due to its unique observational obstacles in contemporary post-industrial societies, climate change is considered a psychologically distant event (Pawlik 559), one that is not personally salient due to the “perceived distance and remoteness [...] from one’s everyday experience” (O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole 370). In an examination of the barriers to behaviour change in the face of psychologically distant events, Robert Gifford argues that changing individuals’ perceptions of the issue-domain is one of the challenges of countering environmental inertia—the lack of initiative for environmentally sustainable social action (5). To challenge the status quo a radically different construction of the environment and the human-nature relationship is required to transform our perception of global environmental risks and ultimately result in environmentally consequential social action. Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Home is a ritualised construction of contemporary environmental degradation and climate change which takes spectators on a rite of passage to a newfound understanding of the human-nature relationship. Transformation through re-imagining individuals’ roles, responsibilities, and practices is an intrinsic quality of rituals. A ritual charts a subjects path from one state of consciousness to the next, resulting in a meaningful change of attitudes (Deflem 8). Through a lifelong study of African rituals British cultural ethnographer Victor Turner refined his concept of rituals in a modern social context. Turner observed that rituals conform to a three-phased processural form (The Ritual Process 13–14). First, in the separation stage, the subjects are selected and removed from their fixed position in the social structure. Second, they enter an in-between and ambiguous liminal stage, characterised by a “partial or complete separation of the subject from everyday existence” (Deflem 8). Finally, imbued with a new perspective of the outside world borne out of the experience of reflexivity, liminality, and a cathartic cleansing, subjects are reintegrated into the social reality in a new, stable state. The three distinct stages make the ritual an emotionally charged, highly personal experience that “demarcates the passage from one phase to another in the individual’s life-cycle” (Turner, “Symbols” 488) and actively shapes human attitudes and behaviour. Adhering to the three-staged processural form of the ritual, Arthus-Bertrand guides spectators towards a newfound understanding of their roles and responsibilities in creating a desirable future. In the first stage—the separation—aerial photography of Home alienates viewers from their anthropocentric perspectives of the outside world. This establishes Earth as a body, and unearths spectators’ guilt and shame in relation to contemporary world risks. Aerial photography strips landscapes of their conventional qualities of horizon, scale, and human reference. As fine art photographer Emmet Gowin observes, “when one really sees an awesome, vast place, our sense of wholeness is reorganised [...] and the body seems always to diminish” (qtd. in Reynolds 4). Confronted with a seemingly infinite sublime landscape from above, the spectator’s “body diminishes” as they witness Earth’s body gradually taking shape. Home’s rushing rivers of Indonesia are akin to blood flowing through the veins and the Siberian permafrost seems like the texture of skin in extreme close-up. Arthus-Bertrand establishes a geocentric embodiment to force spectators to perceive and experience the environmental degradation brought about by the dominant social practices of contemporary post-industrial modernity. The film-maker visualises the maltreatment of the environment through suggested abuse of the Earth’s body. Images of industrial agricultural practices in the United States appear to leave scratches and scars on the landscape, and as a ship crosses the Arctic ice sheets of the Northwest Passage the boat glides like the surgeon’s knife cutting through the uppermost layer of the skin. But the deep blue water that’s revealed in the wake of the craft suggests a flesh and body now devoid of life, a suffering Earth in the wake of global climatic change. Arthus-Bertrand’s images become the sublime evidence of human intervention in the environment and the reflection of present-day industrialisation materially altering the face of Earth. The film-maker exploits spectators’ geocentric perspective and sensibility to prompt reflexivity, provide revelations about the self, and unearth the forgotten shame and guilt in having inadvertently caused excessive environmental degradation. Following the sequences establishing Earth as the body of the text Arthus-Bertrand returns spectators to their everyday “natural” environment—the city. Having witnessed and endured the pain and suffering of Earth, spectators now gaze at the skyscrapers standing bold and tall in the cityscape with disillusionment. The pinnacles of modern urban development become symbols of arrogance and exploitation: structures forced upon the landscape. Moreover, the images of contemporary cityscapes in Home serve as triggers for ritual reflexivity, allowing the spectator to “perceive the self [...] as a distanced ‘other’ and hence achieve a partial ‘self-transcendence’” (Beck, Comments 491). Arthus-Bertrand’s aerial photographs of Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo fold these distinct urban environments into one uniform fusion of glass, metal, and concrete devoid of life. The uniformity of these cultural landscapes prompts spectators to add the missing element: the human. Suddenly, the homes and offices of desolate cityscapes are populated by none other than us, looking at ourselves from a unique vantage point. The geocentric sensibility the film-maker invoked with the images of the suffering Earth now prompt a revelation about the self as spectators see their everyday urban environments in a new light. Their homes and offices become blemishes on the face of the Earth: its inhabitants, including the spectators themselves, complicit in the excessive mistreatment of the planet. The second stage of the ritual allows Arthus-Bertrand to challenge dominant social paradigms of present day post-industrial societies and introduce new, alternative moral directives to govern our habits and attitudes. Following the separation, ritual subjects enter an in-between, threshold stage, one unencumbered by the spatial, temporal, and social boundaries of everyday existence. Turner posits that a subjects passage through this liminal stage is necessary to attain psychic maturation and successful transition to a new, stable state at the end of the ritual (The Ritual Process 97). While this “betwixt and between” (Turner, The Ritual Process 95) state may be a fleeting moment of transition, it makes for a “lived experience [that] transforms human beings cognitively, emotionally, and morally.” (Horvath et al. 3) Through a change of perceptions liminality paves the way toward meaningful social action. Home places spectators in a state of liminality to contrast geocentric and anthropocentric views. Arthus-Bertrand contrasts natural and human-made environments in terms of diversity. The narrator’s description of the “miracle of life” is followed by images of trees seemingly defying gravity, snow-covered summits among mountain ranges, and a whale in the ocean. Grandeur and variety appear to be inherent qualities of biodiversity on Earth, qualities contrasted with images of the endless, uniform rectangular greenhouses of Almeria, Spain. This contrast emphasises the loss of variety in human achievements and the monotony mass-production brings to the landscape. With the image of a fire burning atop a factory chimney, Arthus-Bertrand critiques the change of pace and distortion of time inherent in anthropocentric views, and specifically in contemporary modernity. Here, the flames appear to instantly eat away at resources that have taken millions of years to form, bringing anthropocentric and geocentric temporality into sharp contrast. A sequence showing a night time metropolis underscores this distinction. The glittering cityscape is lit by hundreds of lights in skyscrapers in an effort, it appears, to mimic and surpass daylight and thus upturn the natural rhythm of life. As the narrator remarks, in our present-day environments, “days are now the pale reflections of nights.” Arthus-Bertrand also uses ritual liminality to mark the present as a transitory, threshold moment in human civilisation. The film-maker contrasts the spectre of our past with possible visions of the future to mark the moment of now as a time when humanity is on the threshold of two distinct states of mind. The narrator’s descriptions of contemporary post-industrial society’s reliance on non-renewable resources and lack of environmentally sustainable agricultural practices condemn the past and warn viewers of the consequences of continuing such practices into the future. Exploring the liminal present Arthus-Bertrand proposes distinctive futurescapes for humankind. On the one hand, the narrator’s description of California’s “concentration camp style cattle farming” suggests that humankind will live in a future that feeds from the past, falling back on frames of horrors and past mistakes. On the other hand, the example of Costa Rica, a nation that abolished its military and dedicated the budget to environmental conservation, is recognition of our ability to re-imagine our future in the face of global risk. Home introduces myths to imbue liminality with the alternative dominant social paradigm of ecology. By calling upon deep-seated structures myths “touch the heart of society’s emotional, spiritual and intellectual consciousness” (Killingsworth and Palmer 176) and help us understand and come to terms with complex social, economic, and scientific phenomena. With the capacity to “pattern thought, beliefs and practices,” (Maier 166) myths are ideal tools in communicating ritual liminality and challenging contemporary post-industrial society’s dominant social paradigms. The opening sequence of Home, where the crescent Earth is slowly revealed in the darkness of space, is an allusion to creation: the genesis myth. Accompanied only by a gentle hum our home emerges in brilliant blue, white, and green-brown encompassing most of the screen. It is as if darkness and chaos disintegrated and order, life, and the elements were created right before our eyes. Akin to the Earthrise image taken by the astronauts of Apollo 8, Home’s opening sequence underscores the notion that our home is a unique spot in the blackness of space and is defined and circumscribed by the elements. With the opening sequence Arthus-Bertrand wishes to impart the message of interdependence and reliance on elements—core concepts of ecology. Balance, another key theme in ecology, is introduced with an allusion to the Icarus myth in a sequence depicting Dubai. The story of Icarus’s fall from the sky after flying too close to the sun is a symbolic retelling of hubris—a violent pride and arrogance punishable by nemesis—destruction, which ultimately restores balance by forcing the individual back within the limits transgressed (Littleton 712). In Arthus-Bertrand’s portrayal of Dubai, the camera slowly tilts upwards on the Burj Khalifa tower, the tallest human-made structure ever built. The construction works on the tower explicitly frame humans against the bright blue sky in their attempt to reach ever further, transgressing their limitations much like the ill-fated Icarus. Arthus-Bertrand warns that contemporary modernity does not strive for balance or moderation, and with climate change we may have brought our nemesis upon ourselves. By suggesting new dominant paradigms and providing a critique of current maxims, Home’s retelling of myths ultimately sees spectators through to the final stage of the ritual. The last phase in the rite of passage “celebrates and commemorates transcendent powers,” (Deflem 8) marking subjects’ rebirth to a new status and distinctive perception of the outside world. It is at this stage that Arthus-Bertrand resolves the emotional distress uncovered in the separation phase. The film-maker uses humanity’s innate capacity for creation and renewal as a cathartic cleansing aimed at reconciling spectators’ guilt and shame in having inadvertently exacerbated global environmental degradation. Arthus-Bertrand identifies renewable resources as the key to redeeming technology, human intervention in the landscape, and finally humanity itself. Until now, the film-maker pictured modernity and technology, evidenced in his portrayal of Dubai, as synonymous with excess and disrespect for the interconnectedness and balance of elements on Earth. The final sequence shows a very different face of technology. Here, we see a mechanical sea-snake generating electricity by riding the waves off the coast of Scotland and solar panels turning towards the sun in the Sahara desert. Technology’s redemption is evidenced in its ability to imitate nature—a move towards geocentric consciousness (a lesson learned from the ritual’s liminal stage). Moreover, these human-made structures, unlike the skyscrapers earlier in the film, appear a lot less invasive in the landscape and speak of moderation and union with nature. With the above examples Arthus-Bertrand suggests that humanity can shed the greed that drove it to dig deeper and deeper into the Earth to acquire non-renewable resources such as oil and coal, what the narrator describes as “treasures buried deep.” The incorporation of principles of ecology, such as balance and interconnectedness, into humanity’s behaviour ushers in reconciliation and ritual cleansing in Home. Following the description of the move toward renewable resources, the narrator reveals that “worldwide four children out of five attend school, never has learning been given to so many human beings” marking education, innovation, and creativity as the true inexhaustible resources on Earth. Lastly, the description of Antarctica in Home is the essence of Arthus-Bertrand’s argument for our innate capacity to create, not simply exploit and destroy. Here, the narrator describes the continent as possessing “immense natural resources that no country can claim for itself, a natural reserve devoted to peace and science, a treaty signed by 49 nations has made it a treasure shared by all humanity.” Innovation appears to fuel humankind’s transcendence to a state where it is capable of compassion, unification, sharing, and finally creating treasures. With these examples Arthus-Bertrand suggests that humanity has an innate capacity for creative energy that awaits authentic expression and can turn humankind from destroyer to creator. In recent years various risk communication texts have explicitly addressed climate change, endeavouring to instigate environmentally consequential social action. Home breaks discursive ground among them through its ritualistic construction which seeks to transform spectators’ perception, and in turn roles and responsibilities, in the face of global environmental risks. Unlike recent climate change media texts such as An Inconvenient Truth (2006), The 11th Hour (2007), The Age of Stupid (2009), Carbon Nation (2010) and Earth: The Operator’s Manual (2011), Home eludes simple genre classification. On the threshold of photography and film, documentary and fiction, Arthus-Bertrand’s work is best classified as an advocacy film promoting public debate and engagement with a universal concern—the state of the environment. The film’s website, available in multiple languages, contains educational material, resources to organise public screenings, and a link to GoodPlanet.info: a website dedicated to environmentalism, including legal tools and initiatives to take action. The film-maker’s approach to using Home as a basis for education and raising awareness corresponds to Antonio Lopez’s critique of contemporary mass-media communications of global risks. Lopez rebukes traditional forms of mediatised communication that place emphasis on the imparting of knowledge and instead calls for a participatory, discussion-driven, organic media approach, akin to a communion or a ritual (106). Moreover, while texts often place a great emphasis on the messenger, for instance Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, Leonardo DiCaprio in The 11th Hour, or geologist Dr. Richard Alley in Earth: The Operator’s Manual, Home’s messenger remains unseen—the narrator is only identified at the very end of the film among the credits. The film-maker’s decision to forego a central human character helps dissociate the message from the personality of the messenger which aids in establishing and maintaining the geocentric sensibility of the text. Finally, the ritual’s invocation and cathartic cleansing of emotional distress enables Home to at once acknowledge our environmentally destructive past habits and point to a hopeful, environmentally sustainable future. While The Age of Stupid mostly focuses on humanity’s present and past failures to respond to an imminent environmental catastrophe, Carbon Nation, with the tagline “A climate change solutions movie that doesn’t even care if you believe in climate change,” only explores the potential future business opportunities in turning towards renewable resources and environmentally sustainable practices. The three-phased processural form of the ritual allows for a balance of backward and forward-looking, establishing the possibility of change and renewal in the face of world risk. The ritual is a transformative experience. As Turner states, rituals “interrupt the flow of social life and force a group to take cognizance of its behaviour in relation to its own values, and even question at times the value of those values” (“Dramatic Ritual” 82). Home, a ritualised media text, is an invitation to look at our world, its dominant social paradigms, and the key element within that world—ourselves—with new eyes. It makes explicit contemporary post-industrial society’s dependence on the environment, highlights our impact on Earth, and reveals our complicity in bringing about a contemporary world risk. The ritual structure and the self-reflexivity allow Arthus-Bertrand to transform climate change into a personally salient issue. This bestows upon the spectator the responsibility to act and to reconcile the spectre of the past with the vision of the future.Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Dr. Angi Buettner whose support, guidance, and supervision has been invaluable in preparing this article. 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Mocatta, Gabi, and Erin Hawley. "Uncovering a Climate Catastrophe? Media Coverage of Australia’s Black Summer Bushfires and the Revelatory Extent of the Climate Blame Frame." M/C Journal 23, no. 4 (2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1666.

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Abstract:
The Black Summer of 2019/2020 saw the forests of southeast Australia go up in flames. The fire season started early, in September 2019, and by March 2020 fires had burned over 12.6 million hectares (Werner and Lyons). The scale and severity of the fires was quickly confirmed by scientists to be “unprecedented globally” (Boer et al.) and attributable to climate change (Nolan et al.).The fires were also a media spectacle, generating months of apocalyptic front-page images and harrowing broadcast footage. Media coverage was particularly preoccupied by the cause of the fires. Media framing of disasters often seeks to attribute blame (Anderson et al.; Ewart and McLean) and, over the course of the fire period, blame for the fires was attributed to climate change in much media coverage. However, as the disaster unfolded, denialist discourses in some media outlets sought to veil this revelation by providing alternative explanations for the fires. Misinformation originating from social media also contributed to this obscuration.In this article, we investigate the extent to which media coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires functioned both to precipitate a climate change epiphany and also to support refutation of the connection between catastrophic fires and the climate crisis.Environmental Communication and RevelationIn its biblical sense, revelation is both an ending and an opening: it is the apocalyptic end-time and also the “revealing” of this time through stories and images. Environmental communication has always been revelatory, in these dual senses of the word – it is a mode of communication that is tightly bound to crisis; that has long grappled with obfuscation and misinformation; and that disrupts power structures and notions of the status quo as it seeks to reveal what is hidden. Climate change in particular is associated in the popular imagination with apocalypse, and is also a reality that is constantly being “revealed”. Indeed, the narrative of climate change has been “animated by the revelations of science” (McNeish 1045) and presented to the public through “key moments of disclosure and revelation”, or “signal moments”, such as scientist James Hansen’s 1988 US Senate testimony on global warming (Hamblyn 224).Journalism is “at the frontline of environmental communication” (Parham 96) and environmental news, too, is often revelatory in nature – it exposes the problems inherent in the human relationship with the natural world, and it reveals the scientific evidence behind contentious issues such as climate change. Like other environmental communicators, environmental journalists seek to “break through the perceptual paralysis” (Nisbet 44) surrounding climate change, with the dual aim of better informing the public and instigating policy change. Yet leading environmental commentators continually call for “better media coverage” of the planetary crisis (Suzuki), as climate change is repeatedly bumped off the news agenda by stories and events deemed more newsworthy.News coverage of climate-related disasters is often revelatory both in tone and in cultural function. The disasters themselves and the news narratives which communicate them become processes that make visible what is hidden. Because environmental news is “event driven” (Hansen 95), disasters receive far more news coverage than ongoing problems and trends such as climate change itself, or more quietly devastating issues such as species extinction or climate migration. Disasters are also highly visual in nature. Trumbo (269) describes climate change as an issue that is urgent, global in scale, and yet “practically invisible”; in this sense, climate-related disasters become a means of visualising and realising what is otherwise a complex, difficult, abstract, and un-seeable concept.Unsurprisingly, natural disasters are often presented to the public through a film of apocalyptic rhetoric and imagery. Yet natural disasters can be also “revelatory” moments: instances of awakening in which suppressed truths come spectacularly and devastatingly to the surface. Matthewman (9–10) argues that “disasters afford us insights into social reality that ordinarily pass unnoticed. As such, they can be read as modes of disclosure, forms of communication”. Disasters, he continues, can reveal both “our new normal” and “our general existential condition”, bringing “the underbelly of progress into sharp relief”. Similarly, Lukes (1) states that disasters “lift veils”, revealing “what is hidden from view in normal times”. Yet for Lukes, “the revelation tells us nothing new, nothing that we did not already know”, and is instead a forced confronting of that which is known yet difficult to engage with. Lukes’ concern is the “revealing” of poverty and inequality in New Orleans following the impact of Hurricane Katrina, yet climate-related disasters can also make visible what McNeish terms “the dark side effects of industrial civilisation” (1047). The Australian bushfires of 2019/2020 can be read in these terms, primarily because they unveiled the connection between climate change and extreme events. Scorching millions of hectares, with a devastating impact on human and non-human communities, the fires revealed climate change as a physical reality, and—for Australians—as a local issue as well as a global one. As media coverage of the fires unfolded and smoke settled on half the country, the impact of climate change on individual lives, communities, landscapes, native animal and plant species, and well-established cultural practices (such as the summer camping holiday) could be fully and dramatically realised. Even for those Australians not immediately impacted, the effects were lived and felt: in our lungs, and on our skin, a physical revelation that the impacts of climate change are not limited to geographically distant people or as-yet-unborn future generations. For many of us, the summer of fire was a realisation that climate change can no longer be held at arm’s length.“Revelation” also involves a temporal collapse whereby the future is dragged into the present. A revelatory streak of this nature has always existed at the heart of environmental communication and can be traced back at least as far as the environmentalist Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring revealed a bleak, apocalyptic future devoid of wildlife and birdsong. In other words, environmental communication can inspire action for change by exposing the ways in which the comforts and securities of the present are built upon a refusal to engage with the future. This temporal rupture where the future meets the present is particularly characteristic of climate change narratives. It is not surprising, then, that media coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires addressed not just the immediate loss and devastation but also dread of the future, and the understanding that summer will increasingly hold such threats. Bushfires, Climate Change and the MediaThe link between bushfire risk and climate change generated a flurry of coverage in the Australian media well before the fires started in the spring of 2019. In April that year, a coalition of 23 former fire and emergency services leaders warned that Australia was “unprepared for an escalating climate threat” (Cox). They requested a meeting with the new government, to be elected in May, and better funding for firefighting to face the coming bushfire season. When that meeting was granted, at the end of Australia’s hottest and driest year on record (Doyle) in November 2019, bushfires had already been burning for two months. As the fires burned, the emergency leaders expressed frustration that their warnings had been ignored, claiming they had been “gagged” because “you are not allowed to talk about climate change”. They cited climate change as the key reason why the fire season was lengthening and fires were harder to fight. "If it's not time now to speak about climate and what's driving these events”, they asked, “– when?" (McCubbing).The mediatised uncovering of a bushfire/climate change connection was not strictly a revelation. Recent fires in California, Russia, the Amazon, Greece, and Sweden have all been reported in the media as having been exacerbated by climate change. Australia, however, has long regarded itself as a “fire continent”: a place adapted to fire, whose landscapes invite fire and can recover from it. Bushfires had therefore been considered part of the Australian “normal”. But in the Australian spring of 2019, with fires having started earlier than ever and charring rainforests that did not usually burn, the fire chiefs’ warning of a climate change-induced catastrophic bushfire season seemed prescient. As the fires spread and merged, taking homes, lives, landscapes, and driving people towards the water, revelatory images emerged in the media. Pictures of fire refugees fleeing under dystopian crimson skies, masked against the smoke, were accompanied by headlines like “Apocalypse Now” (Fife-Yeomans) and “Escaping Hell” (The Independent). Reports used words like “terror”, “nightmare” (Smee), “mayhem”, and “Armageddon” (Davidson).In the Australian media, the fire/climate change connection quickly became politicised. The Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack interviewed by the ABC, responding to a comment by Greens leader Adam Bandt, said connecting bushfire and climate while the fires raged was “disgraceful” and “disgusting”. People needed help, he said, not “the ravings of some pure enlightened and woke capital city greenies” (Goloubeva and Haydar). Gladys Berejiklian the NSW Premier also described it as “inappropriate” (Baker) and “disappointing” (Fox and Higgins) to talk about climate change at this time. However Carol Sparks, Mayor of bushfire-ravaged Glen Innes in rural NSW, contradicted this stance, telling the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) “Michael McCormack needs to read the science”. Climate change, she said, was “not a political thing” but “scientific fact” (Goloubeva and Haydar).As the fires merged and intensified, so did the media firestorm. Key Australian media became a sparring ground for issue definition, with media predictably split down ideological lines. Public broadcasters the ABC and SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), along with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian Australia, predominantly framed the catastrophe as wrought by climate change. The Guardian, in an in-depth investigation of climate science and bushfire risk, stated that “despite the political smokescreen” the connection between the fires and global warming was “unequivocal” (Redfearn). The ABC characterised the fires as “a glimpse of the horrors of climate change’s crescendoing impact” (Rose). News outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia, however, actively sought to play down the fires’ seriousness. On 2 January, as front pages of newspapers across the world revealed horrifying fiery images, Murdoch’s Australian ran an upbeat shot of New Year’s Day picnic races as its lead, relegating discussion of the fires to page 4 (Meade). More than simply obscuring the fires’ significance, News Corp media actively sought to convince readers that the fires were not out of the ordinary. For example, as the fires’ magnitude was becoming clear on the last day of 2019, The Australian ran a piece comparing the fires with previous conflagrations, claiming such conditions were “not unprecedented” and the fires were “nothing new” (Johnstone). News Corp’s Sky News also used this frame: “climate alarmists”, “catastrophise”, and “don’t want to look at history”, it stated in a segment comparing the event to past major bushfires (Kenny).As the fires continued into January and February 2020, the refutation of the climate change frame solidified around several themes. Conservative media continued to insist the fires were “normal” for Australia and attributed their severity to a lack of hazard reduction burning, which they blamed on “Greens policies” (Brown and Caisley). They also promoted the argument, espoused by Energy Minister Angus Taylor, that with only “1.3% of global emissions” Australia “could not have meaningful impact” on global warming through emissions reductions, and that top-down climate mitigation pressure from the UN was “doomed to fail” (Lloyd). Foreign media saw the fires in quite different terms. From the outside looking in, the Australian fires were clearly revealed as fuelled by global heating and exacerbated by the Australian government’s climate denialism. Australia was framed as a “notorious climate offender” (Shield) that was—as The New York Times put it—“committing climate suicide” (Flanagan) with its lack of coherent climate policy and its predilection for mining coal. Ouest-France ran a headline reading “High on carbon, rich Australia denies global warming” in which it called Scott Morrison’s position on climate change “incomprehensible” (Guibert). The LA Times called the Australian fires “a climate change warning to its leaders—and ours”, noting how “fossil fuel friendly Morrison” had “gleefully wielded a fist-sized chunk of coal on the floor of parliament in 2017” (Karlik). In the UK, the Independent online ran a front page spread of the fires’ vast smoke plume, with the headline “This is what a climate crisis looks like” (Independent Online), while Australian MP Craig Kelly was called “disgraceful” by an interviewer on Good Morning Britain for denying the fires’ link to climate change (Good Morning Britain).Both in Australia and internationally, deliberate misinformation spread by social media additionally shaped media discourse on the fires. The false revelation that the fires had predominantly been started by arson spread on Twitter under the hashtag #ArsonEmergency. While research has been quick to show that this hashtag was artificially promoted by bots (Weber et al.), this and misinformation like it was also shared and amplified by real Twitter users, and quickly spread into mainstream media in Australia—including Murdoch’s Australian (Ross and Reid)—and internationally. Such misinformation was used to shore up denialist discourses about the fires, and to obscure revelation of the fire/climate change connection. Blame Framing, Public Opinion and the Extent of the Climate Change RevelationAs studies of media coverage of environmental disasters show us, media seek to apportion blame. This blame framing is “accountability work”, undertaken to explain how and why a disaster occurred, with the aim of “scrutinizing the actions of crisis actors, and holding responsible authorities to account” (Anderson et al. 930). In moments of disaster and in their aftermath, “framing contests” (Benford and Snow) can emerge in which some actors, regarding the crisis as an opportunity for change, highlight the systemic issues that have led to the crisis. Other actors, experiencing the crisis as a threat to the status quo, try to attribute the blame to others, and deny the need for policy change. As the Black Summer unfolded, just such a contest took place in Australian media discourse. While Murdoch’s dominant News Corp media sought to protect the status quo, promote conservative politicians’ views, and divert attention from the climate crisis, other Australian and overseas media outlets revealed the fires’ link to climate change and intransigent emissions policy. However, cracks did begin to show in the News Corp stance on climate change during the fires: an internal whistleblower publicly resigned over the media company’s fires coverage, calling it a “misinformation campaign”, and James Murdoch also spoke out about being “disappointed with the ongoing denial of the role of climate change” in reporting the fires (ABC/Reuters).Although media reporting on the environment has long been at the forefront of shaping social understanding of environmental issues, and news maintains a central role in both revealing environmental threats and shaping environmental politics (Lester), during Australia’s Black Summer people were also learning about the fires from lived experience. Polls show that the fires affected 57% of Australians. Even those distant from the catastrophe were, for some time, breathing the most toxic air in the world. This personal experience of disaster revealed a bushfire season that was far outside the normal, and public opinion reflected this. A YouGov Australia Institute poll in January 2020 found that 79% of Australians were concerned about climate change—an increase of 5% from July 2019—and 67% believed climate change was making the bushfires worse (Australia Institute). However, a January 2020 Ipsos poll also found that polarisation along political lines on whether climate change was indeed occurring had increased since 2018, and was at its highest levels since 2014 (Crowe). This may reflect the kind of polarised media landscape that was evident during the fires. A thorough dissection in public discourse of Australia’s unprecedented fire season has been largely eclipsed by the vast coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that so quickly followed it. 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Dwyer, Simon. "Highlighting the Build: Using Lighting to Showcase the Sydney Opera House." M/C Journal 20, no. 2 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1184.

Full text
Abstract:
IntroductionThe Sydney Opera House is Australia’s, if not the world’s, most recognisable building. It is universally recognised as an architectural icon and as a masterpiece of the built environment, which has captured the imagination of many (Commonwealth of Australia 4). The construction of the Sydney Opera House, between 1959 and 1973, utilised many ground-breaking methods and materials which, together, pushed the boundaries of technical possibilities to the limits of human knowledge at the time (Commonwealth of Australia 36, 45). Typical investigations into the Sydney Opera House focus on its architects, the materials, construction, or the events that occur on its stages. The role of the illumination, in the perception and understanding of Australia’s most famous performing arts centre, is an under-investigated aspect of its construction and its use today (Dwyer Backstage Biography 1; Dwyer “Utzon’s Use” 131).This article examines the illumination of the Sydney Opera House from the perspective of light as a construction material, another element that is used to ‘build’ the structure on Bennelong Point. This article examines the illumination from an historical view as Jørn Utzon’s (1918-2008) concepts for the building, including the lighting design intentions, were not all realised as he did not complete the project. The task of finishing this structure was allocated to the architectural cooperative of Hall, Todd & Littlemore who replaced Utzon in 1966. The Danish-born Utzon was appointed in January 1957 having won an international competition, from a field of over 230 entries, to design a national opera house for Sydney. He quickly began the task of resolving his design, transforming the roughly-sketched concepts presented in his competition entry, into detailed drawings that articulated how the opera house would be realised. The iteration of these concepts can be most succinctly identified in Utzon’s formal design reports to the Opera House Committee which are often referred to based on the colour of their cover design. The first report, the ‘red book’ was issued in 1958 with further developments of the architectural and services designs outlined in the ‘yellow book’ which followed in 1962. The last of the original architects’ publications was the Utzon Design Principles (2002) which was created as part of the reengagement process—between the Government of New South Wales and the Sydney Opera House with the original architect—that commenced in 1999.As with many modern buildings (such as Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center, Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church or Adrian D. Smith’ Burj Khalifa), concrete was selected to form the basic structural element of the Sydney Opera House. Working with the, now internationally-renowned, engineering firm Ove Arup and Partners, Utzon designed some of the most significant shapes and finishes that have become synonymous with the site. The concrete elements range from basic blade walls with lustrous finishes to the complex, shape-changing beams that rise from under the monumental stairs and climb to terminate in the southern foyers. Thus, demonstrating the use of concrete as both a structural element and a high quality architectural finish. Another product used throughout the Sydney Opera House is granite. As a hardwearing stone, it is used in a crushed form as part of the precast panels that line the walls and internal flooring and as setts on the forecourt. As with the concrete the use of the same material inside and out blurs the distinction between interior and exterior. The forecourt forms a wide-open plaza before the building rises like a headland as it meets the harbour. The final, and most recognisable element is that of the shell (or roof) tiles. After many years of research Utzon settled on a simple mix of gloss and matt tiles of approximately 120mm square that, carefully arranged, produced a chevron shaped ‘lid’ and results in an effect likened to snow and ice (Commonwealth of Australia 51).These construction elements would all remain invisible if not illuminated by light, natural or artificial. This paper posits that the illumination reinforces the architecture of the structure and extends the architectural and experiential narratives of the Sydney Opera House across time and space. That, light is—like concrete, granite and tiles—a critical component of the Opera House’s build.Building a Narrative with LightIn creating the Sydney Opera House, Utzon set about harnessing natural and artificial illumination that are intrinsic parts of the human condition. Light shapes every facet of our lives from defining working and leisure hours to providing the mechanism for high speed communications and is, therefore, an obvious choice to reinforce the structure of the building and to link the built environment with the natural world that enveloped his creation. Light was to play a major role in the narrative of the Sydney Opera House starting from a patron’s approach to the site.Utzon’s staged approach to a performance at the Sydney Opera House is well documented, from the opening passages of the Descriptive Narrative (Utzon 1-2) to the Lighting Master Plan (Steensen Varming). The role of artificial light in the preparation of the audience extends beyond the simple visibility necessary to navigate the site. Light provides a linking element that guides an audience member along their ‘journey’ through several phases of transformation from the physicality of the city on the forecourt to “another world–a make believe atmosphere, which will exclude all outside impressions and allow the patrons to be absorbed into the theatre mood, which the actors and the producers wish to create” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2) in the theatres. Utzon conceived of light as part of the storytelling process, expressing the building’s narrative in a way that allows illumination is to be so much more than signposts to points of activity such as cloaking areas, theatre entries and the like. The lighting was intended to delineate various stages on the ‘journey’ noted above, to reinforce the transition from one world to another such that the combination of light and architecture would provide a series of successive stimuli that would build until the crescendo of the performance itself. This supports the transition of the visitor from the world of the everyday into the narrative of the Sydney Opera House and a world of make believe. Yet, in providing a narrative between these two ‘worlds’ the lighting becomes an anchor—or an element held in suspension – a mediator in the tension between the city at the beginning of the ‘journey’ and the ‘other world’ of the performance at the end. There is a balance to be maintained between illuminating the Sydney Opera House so that it remains prominent in its harbour location, easily read as a distinct sculptural structure on the peninsular separate from, but still an essential part of, the city that lies beyond Circular Quay to the south. Utzon alludes to the challenges of crafting the illumination so that it meets these requirements, noting that the illumination of the broardwalks “must be compatible with the lighting on the approach roads” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 68) while maintaining that “the floodlit building will be the first and last impression for [… an audience] to receive” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1). These lighting requirements are also tempered by the desire that the “night time [...] view will be all lights and reflections, [that] stretch all along the harbour for many miles” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1) reinforcing the use of light as an anchor that provides both a point of reference and serves as a mediator of the Sydney Opera House’s place within the city.The narrative of the materials and elements that are combined to give the final, physical form its striking sensory presence is also told through light, in particular colour. Or, perhaps more precisely in an illumination sense, the accurate reproduction of colour and by extension accurate presentation of the construction materials used in the creation of the Sydney Opera House. Expression of the ‘truth’ in the materials he used was important for Utzon and the faithful representation of details such as the fine grains in timber and the smooth concrete finishes required careful lighting to enhance these features. When extended to the human occupants of the Sydney Opera House, there is a short, yet very descriptive instruction: the lighting is to give “life to the skin and hair on the human form in much the same way as the light from candles” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Thus, the narrative of the materials and their quality was as important as the final structure and those who would occupy it. It is the role of light to build upon the story of the materials to contribute to the overall narrative of the Sydney Opera House.Building an Experience through IlluminationUtzon envisaged that light would do much more than provide illumination or tell the narrative of the materials he had selected – light was also to build a unique architectural experience for a patron. The experience of light was to be subtle; the architecture was to retain a position of centre stage, reinforced by, rather than ever replaced by, the illumination. In this way, concealed lighting was proposed which would be “designed in close collaboration with the acoustical engineers as they will become an integral part of overall acoustic design” and “installed in carefully selected places based on knowledge gleaned from experimental work” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Through concealing the light source, the architecture did not become cluttered or over powered by a dazzling array of fixtures and fittings that detracted from the audience’s experiences. For instance, to illuminate the monumental steps, Utzon proposed that the fittings would be recessed into the handrails, while the bar and lounge areas would be lit from discreet fittings installed within the plywood ceiling panels (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 16) to create an experience of light that was unified across the site. In addition to the aesthetical improvements gained from the removal of the light sources from the field of view, unwanted glare is also reduced reinforcing the ‘whole’ of the architectural experience.During the time that Utzon was conceptualising the illumination of the Sydney Opera House, the Major Hall (what is now known as the Concert Hall) was envisaged as what might be considered as a modern multipurpose venue, one that could accommodate among other activities: symphonic concerts; opera; ballet and dance; choral concerts; pageants and mass meetings (NSW Department of Local Government 24). The Concert Hall was the terminus for the ‘journey’—where the actors and audience find themselves in the same space, the ‘other world’—“a make believe atmosphere, which will exclude all outside impressions and allow the patrons to be absorbed into the theatre mood, which the actors and the producers wish to create” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2). This other world was to sumptuously explode with rich colours “which uplift you in that festive mood, away from daily life, that you expect when you go to the theatre, a play, an opera or a concert” (Utzon Utzon Design Principles 34). These highly decorated and colourful finishes contrast with the white shells further highlighting the ‘journey’ that has taken place. Utzon proposed to use the illumination to reinforce this distance and provide the link between the natural colours of the raw materials used outside the theatre and highly decorated colours of the performance spaces.The lighting treatment of the theatres extended into the foyers and their public amenities to ensure that the lighting design contributed to the overall enhancement of a patron’s visit and delivered the experience of the ‘journey’ that was envisaged by Utzon (Dwyer “Utzon’s Use” 130-32). This standardised approach was in concert with Utzon’s architectural philosophy where repetitive systems of construction elements were utilised, for instance, in the construction of the shells. Utzon clearly articulated this approach in The Descriptive Narrative, noting that “standard light fittings will be chosen […] to suit each location” (67), however the standardisation would not compromise other considerations of the space such as the acoustical performance, with Utzon noting that the “fittings for auditoria and rehearsal rooms must be of necessity, designed in close collaboration with the acoustical engineers as they will become an integral part of over acoustic design” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Another parallel between the architectural development of the Sydney Opera House and Utzon’s approach to the lighting concepts was, uncommon at the time, his preference for prototyping and experimentation with lighting effects and various fittings (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). A sharp contrast to the usual practices of the day which relied upon more straightforward procurement processes with generic rather than tailored solutions. Peter Hall, of Hall, Todd & Littlemore, discussed the typical method of lighting design which was prevalent during the construction of the Sydney Opera House, as a method which “amounted to the electrical engineers laying out on a plan sufficient off-the-shelf light fittings to achieve the desired illumination levels […] the resulting effects were dull even if brightly lit” (Hall 180). Thus, Utzon’s careful approach to ensure that light and architecture were in harmony as “nothing is introduced into the scheme, before it has been carefully investigated and has proved to be the right solution to the problem” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2) was highly innovative for its time.The use of light to provide an experience was not necessarily new, for example RSL Clubs, theme parks and department stores all used light to attract attention to their products and services, however the scale and proposed execution of these concepts was pioneering for Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. Utzon’s concepts provided a highly experiential unified design to provide the patron with a unique architectural experience built through the careful use of light.Building the Scenery with LightArchitecture might be considered set design on a grand scale (for example see Raban, Rasmuseen and Read). Both architects and set designers are concerned with the relationship between the creative designs and the viewers and both set up opportunities for interactions between people (as actors or users) and structure. However, without light, the scene remains literally, in the dark, isolated from its surroundings and unperceetable to an audience.Utzon was acutely aware of the relationship between the Sydney Opera House and the city in which it stands. The positioning of the structure on the site is no accident and the interplay between the ‘sails’ and the sun is perhaps the most recognised lighting feature of the Sydney Opera House. By varying the angle of the shells, the reflections and the effects of the sunlight are constantly varying depending on the viewer’s position and focus. More importantly, these subtle variations in the light enhance the sculptural effect of the direct illumination and help create the effect of “matt snow and shining ice” (Commonwealth of Australia 51): the ‘shimmer of life’ so desired by Utzon as the sunlight strikes the ceramic tiles. This ‘shimmer’ is not the only natural lighting effect. The use of the different angles ensures variation in the light, clouds and resulting shadows to heighten interest and create an ever-changing scene that plays out on the shells as the sun moves across the sky, as Utzon notes, “something new goes on all the time and it is so important–this interplay is so important that together with the sun, the light and the clouds, it makes it a living thing” (Utzon Sydney Opera House 49). This scene is enhanced by the changing quality of the sunlight; the shells appear to be deep amber at first light their shadows long and faint before becoming shorter and stronger as the sun moves towards its midday position with the colour changing slowly to ‘pure’ white before the shadows change sides, the process reverses and they again disappear under the cover of darkness. Although the scene replays daily, the relative location of the sun and changing weather patterns ensure infinite variation in the effect.This changing scene, on a grand scale, with light as the central character is just as important as the theatrical performances taking place indoors on the stages. With a mobile audience, the detailing of the visual scene that is the structure becomes more important. The Sydney Opera House competes for attention with shipping movements in the harbour, the adjacent bridge with the ant-like procession of climbers and the activities of the city to the south. Utzon foresaw this noting that the “position on a peninsular, which is overlooked from all angles makes it important to maintain an all-round elevation. There can be no backsides to the building and nothing can be hidden from the view” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1). The use of natural light to enhance the sculptural form and reinforce isolation of the structure on the peninsular, centre stage on the harbour is therefore not a coincidence. Utzon has deliberately harnessed the natural light to ensure that the Sydney Opera House is just as vibrant a performer as its surroundings. In this way, Utzon has used light to anchor the Sydney Opera House both in the city it serves and for the performances it houses.It is not just the natural light that is used as such an anchor point. Utzon planned for artificial lighting of the sails and surrounding site to ensure that after dark the ‘shimmer’ of the white tiles would be maintained with an equivalent, if manufactured, effect. For Utzon, the sculptural qualities of structure were important and should be clearly ‘read’ at night, even against a dark harbour on one side and the brighter city on the other. Through the use of artificial lighting, Utzon set the scene on Bennelong Point with the structure clearly centred in the set that is the Sydney skyline. This reinforced the notion that a journey into the Sydney Opera House was something special, a transition from the everyday to the ‘other’ world.ConclusionFor Utzon light was just as essential as concrete and other building materials for the design of the Sydney Opera House. The traditional bright lights of the stage had no place in the architectural illumination, replaced instead by a much more subtle, understated use of light, and indeed its absence. Utzon planned for the lighting to envelope an audience but not to smother them. Unfortunately, he was unable to complete his project and in 1968 J.M. Waldram was eventually appointed to complete the lighting design. Waldram’s lighting solutions—many of which are still in place today—borrowed or significantly drew upon Utzon’s original illumination concepts, thus demonstrating their strength and timeless qualities. In this way light builds on the story of the structure, reinforcing the architecture of the building and extending the narratives of the construction elements used to build the Sydney Opera House.AcknowledgementsThe author acknowledges the assistance of Rachel Franks for her input on an early draft of this article and thanks the blind peer reviewers for their generous feedback and suggestions, of course any remain errors or omissions are my own. ReferencesCommonwealth of Australia. Sydney Opera House Nomination by the Government of Australia for Inscription on the World Heritage List. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2006.Cleaver, Jack. Surface and Textured Finishes for Concrete and Their Impact upon the Environment. Sydney: Steel Reinforcement Institute of Australia, 2005.Dwyer, Simon. A Backstage Biography of the Sydney Opera House. Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ) 2016: 1-10.———. “Utzon’s Use of Light to Influence the Audience’s Perception of the Sydney Opera House”. Inhabiting the Meta Visual: Contemporary Performance Themes. Eds. Helene Gee Markstein and Arthur Maria Steijn. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary P, 2016.Hall, Peter. Sydney Opera House: The Design Approach to the Building with Recommendations on Its Conservation. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 1990.NSW Department of Local Government. An International Competition for a National Opera House at Bennelong Point Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: Conditions and Program (“The ‘Brown’ Book”). Sydney: NSW Government Printer, 1957.Raban, Jonathan. Soft City. London: Picador, 2008.Rasmuseen, Steen. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology P, 1964.Read, Gary. “Theater of Public Space: Architectural Experimentation in the Théâtre de l'Espace (Theater of Space), Paris 1937.” Journal of Architectural Education 58.4 (2005): 53-62.Steensen Varming. Lighting Master Plan. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 2007.Utzon, Jørn. Sydney Opera House: The Descriptive Narrative. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 1965.———. The Sydney Opera House. Zodiac, 1965. 48-93.———. Untitled. (The ‘Red’ Book). Unpublished, 1958.———. Untitled. (The ‘Yellow’ Book). Unpublished, 1962.———. Utzon Design Principles. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 2002.
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