Academic literature on the topic 'Zimbabwe - discovery and exploration - European'

Social Sciences and Humanities research is divided across a wide array of disciplines, sub- disciplines and languages. While this specialisation makes it possible to investigate the extensive variety of SSH topics, it also leads to a fragmentation that prevents SSH research from reaching its full potential. Use and reuse of research is suboptimal, interdisciplinary collaboration possibilities are often missed partially because of missing standards and referential keys between disciplines. Often, the reuse of data may paradoxically complicate a relevant sorting of data and a trust relationship between researchers. As a result, societal, economic and academic impacts are limited. Conceptually, there is a wealth of transdisciplinary collaborations, but in practice there is a need to help researchers and research institutions to connect them and support them, to prepare the research data for these overarching approaches and to make them findable and usable. The TRIPLE (Targeting Researchers through Innovative Practices and Linked Exploration) project is a practical answer to the above issues, as it aims at designing and developing the European discovery platform dedicated to Social Sciences and Humanities resources. Funded under the European Commission program INFRAEOSC-02-2019 “Prototyping new innovative services”, thanks to a consortium of 19 partners, TRIPLE will develop a full multilingual and multicultural solution for the discovery and the reuse of Social Sciences and Humanities resources. The project started in October 2019 for a duration of 42 months thanks to European funding of 5.6 million €.

Sound-Lines is an interactive sound sculpture composed of sensors that trigger archived sounds and animated words. Our collaborative project, supported by e-MobiLArt (European Mobile Lab for Interactive Media Artists), invites the visitor to engage in a playful exploration of shifting perspectives and perceptual discovery. The collaborating artists are Cliona Harmey (IR), Christine Mackey (IR), Nita Tandon (AU), and Lorraine Walsh (US).

The Canning Basin in northern Western Australia is a large, relatively remote, mainly desert-covered Phanerozoic basin covering 595 000 sq km. Aborigines probably first entered the basin area 30-40 000 years ago, but the main European expeditions were not until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Geological exploration in the basin has been largely devoted to the discovery and exploitation of natural resources, primarily oil. Earliest geological traverses were conducted by geologists of the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA). The accidental discovery of traces of oil in a water well in 1919 in the northern part of the basin diverted exploration to assessment of sediments and structures for petroleum potential. The earliest phase of oil exploration was a pioneering phase, concentrating on surface mapping and surface delineated structures as drilling sites, that was dominated by the Freney Kimberley Oil Company. West Australia Petroleum Ltd became the most active oil exploration company in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, using geophysics as an exploration tool in petroleum search in the basin. The late 1970s and 1980s saw an influx of companies and the application of diverse scientific approaches to the oil search. Persistence was rewarded in 1981 and 1982 with the discovery of the Blina and Sundown fields, small commercial oil accumulations. Commonwealth Government involvement in exploration was initially in the form of financial aid to exploring companies or commissioning specialist consultants for special studies. In the 1940s and 1950s and again in the 1970s the Bureau of Mineral Resources carried out basin-wide regional geological mapping in conjunction with the GSWA; onshore and offshore geophysical surveys were conducted until the 1970s. Exploration has revealed exploitable resources in the basin besides oil - diamonds, lead-zinc, coal, salt, phosphate, uranium, and heavy minerals. Only lead-zinc has present economic viability.

Geophysical observations began in Australia with the arrival of the first European explorers in the late 18th Century and there have been strong connections with European and North American geophysics ever since, both in academic and exploration geophysics. Government institutions, particularly the Bureau of Mineral Resources, have played a large part in the development of the subject in Australia, certainly more so than in North America. Academic research in geophysics has been dominated by that at the Australian National University. Palaeomagnetic research at the Australian National University has been particularly valuable, showing the large northerly drift of the continent in Cainozoic times as part of the Australia-India plate. Heat flow, electrical conductivity and upper mantle seismic velocities have been shown to be significantly different between Phanerozoic eastern Australia and the Western Shield. Geophysical exploration for metals and hydrocarbons began in the 1920s but did not develop strongly until the 1950s and 1960s. There are relatively few Australian geophysical companies and contracting companies, and instrumentation from North America and Europe have played an important role in exploration. Exploration for metals has been hampered by the deep weathered mantle over much of the continent, but the development of pulsed (transient) electromagnetic methods, including an Australian instrument (SIROTEM), has improved the situation. Geophysics has been important in several discoveries of ore-bodies. In hydrocarbon exploration the introduction of common depth point stacking and digital recording and processing in reflection surveys have played an important part in the discovery of offshore and onshore fields, as in other countries.

This article provides new insights into the role of public universities in regional development by looking at their involvement in Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialization (RIS3), a key element of the current European Cohesion Policy. In the latter, stakeholders from the triple or Quadruple Helix (public, private, research and nongovernmental sectors) jointly identify areas for research, development and innovation (RDI) investment. The analysis focuses on the region of Catalonia, which hosts a mix of higher education institutions (HEIs) with different characteristics and different relationships with local innovation stakeholders. The authors examine in-depth one of the main RIS3 funding instruments recently implemented in the region: the Research and Innovation Smart Specialization Strategy for Catalonia Communities. The Communities support the implementation of action plans for industrial research and development, jointly defined by research and private-sector stakeholders in RIS3 strategic areas. The instrument embeds the characteristics of a continuous EDP and enables exploration of the challenges and opportunities that emerge when researchers engage in strategic market-oriented RDI activities. The article highlights how HEIs are evolving and adapting to the new policy environment and concludes with policy implications.

This article explores the significance of musical, cultural and scientific discoveries in the South Seas to European scholars in the second half of the eighteenth century, but in particular to the emerging clique of music historians in England and France. It examines the relationship between Charles Burney and many leading figures in maritime exploration, and the notable interest he took in the discovery and codification of South Sea music. The writing of Dr Burney on this subject is considered, as is his contact with Omai (Mai), a young Tahitian brought to England. Through the examination of correspondence, memoirs and other sources the article also discusses the exposure of ‘noble savages’ Omai and Aotourou to French and Italian music in London and Paris, and the use of their reactions to fuel the controversy between the supporters of these respective styles in late eighteenth-century Europe. Lastly, it briefly mentions a number of eighteenth-century musical works that used the Pacific as their central theme and examines artwork that complemented the concepts of geographical exploration with the musical exploration of Dr Burney.

Events that change the global economy rapidly, without warning, in principle strongly affect mining, which is one of the pillars of global development. After the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mining pillar seems to be relatively stable. In this study, thanks to the meeting of an international team, it was possible to collect and compare a set of data on the impact on mining. In contrast to the general assessments of the stability of the mining sector, the authors decided to assess the impact of Covid-19 at individual stages of the mining project life cycle. In this way, it was possible to identify the most impacted fragments of the mining pillar. It was assessed that the highest influence of Covid-19 is observed in projects implementing feasibility studies and in projects for the development of new mines. The same is true of extracting residual resources in mines prior to the closure decision. The medium impact was confirmed at the exploration and discovery stage. The authors conclude that the impact on the current mining production is smaller and the effects in this case are short term, which is mainly due to a continued strong demand for minerals in China, which has balanced the weaker demand in other parts of the world. On the other hand, stopping the exploration and development of new mines will have a long-term impact, including an increased possibility of disruption of the future security of supplies of raw materials.

The ongoing exploration of biodiversity and the implementation of new molecular tools continue to unveil hitherto unknown lineages. Here, we report the discovery of three species of neotenic beetles for which we propose the new family Iberobaeniidae. Complete mitochondrial genomes and rRNA genes recovered Iberobaeniidae as a deep branch in Elateroidea, as sister to Lycidae (net-winged beetles). Two species of the new genus Iberobaenia , Iberobaenia minuta sp. nov. and Iberobaenia lencinai sp. nov. were found in the adult stage. In a separate incidence, a related sequence was identified in bulk samples of soil invertebrates subjected to shotgun sequencing and mitogenome assembly, which was traced to a larval voucher specimen of a third species of Iberobaenia . Iberobaenia shows characters shared with other elateroid neotenic lineages, including soft-bodiedness, the hypognathous head, reduced mouthparts with reduced labial palpomeres, and extremely small-bodied males without strengthening structures due to miniaturization. Molecular dating shows that Iberobaeniidae represents an ancient relict lineage originating in the Lower Jurassic, which possibly indicates a long history of neoteny, usually considered to be evolutionarily short-lived. The apparent endemism of Iberobaeniidae in the Mediterranean region highlights the importance of this biodiversity hotspot and the need for further species exploration even in the well-studied European continent.

This article presents an overview of palaeofluvial geomorphology research in southern Africa. For the purposes of this article this includes South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. Although interest in fluvial systems has a long history in southern Africa, the scientific study of rivers was initiated by the discovery of the first alluvial diamond along the banks of the Orange River in 1867. Since then, significant progress has been made in unravelling the fluvial history of southern Africa from the early Archaean Ventersdorp Contact Reef River to modern channel process studies. The development of an understanding of palaeofluvial systems has occurred along two main lines. The first was alluvial diamond exploration work undertaken by the large mining houses. The second line was of a more ‘academic’ interest and included determining the impact of superimposition, tectonics, base level and climate changes. The review suggests that southern Africa fluvial systems have shown large-scale changes in drainage pattern, discharge and sediment yield and that these can be related to a complex set of causative factors including the geological template, the Jurassic rifting of Gondwana, tectonic episodes and climate change.