text:
This specific ISBN edition is currently not available.View all copies of this ISBN edition:
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (1886-1962) was a working-class writer and socialist activist who campaigned for social and economic justice and the rights of working-class men and women. A poet, journalist, writer for children, and novelist, she worked in the Lancashire cotton mills from the age of eleven until her early twenties. She left the mills through the patronage of the popular socialist author and Clarion leader, Robert Blatchford, and worked as a journalist in London and as a teacher at Bebel House Women's College and Socialist Education Centre, before returning North to her roots. She had two daughters and edited the Clear Light, the organ of the National Union for Combating Fascism, with her husband from their home in the 1920s. She wrote at least ten novels, making her a rare example of a female working-class novelist.Pamela Fox is Professor of English at Georgetown University specialising in working-class literature and culture as well as feminist and cultural theory. She is the author of 'Class Fictions: Shame and Resistance in the British Working-Class Novel, 1890-1945' (1994) and 'Natural Acts: Gender, Race, And Rusticity in Country Music' (2009). She is also co-editor of 'Old Roots, New Routes: The Cultural Politics of Alt.Country Music', with Barbara Ching (2008).Nicola Wilson is a lecturer in the English Literature department at the University of Reading. She is the author of 'Home in British Working-Class Fiction' (2015) and has published on working-class writing in 'Key Words; The Oxford History of the Novel in English, vol. 7' (2015) and 'A History of British Working Class Literature' (2016). In 2011 she introduced and edited Ethel Carnie Holdsworth's 1925 novel, 'This Slavery' (Trent), and is Series Editor of The Ethel Carnie Holdsworth Series.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Book Description Unknown, 2007. Condition: Very Good. Seller Inventory # U9780548311714


text:
There are always at least two sides to every story. In the real life romantic tale of King Edward’s VIII’s abdication of the British throne for the woman he loved, American divorcée Wallis Simpson, Simpson is often portrayed as manipulative to Edward’s pliable nature. The fact that his brother had to then take over the throne is memorably portrayed in “The King’s Speech”. “W.E.” gives the twist, the point of view of Wallis and how difficult the relationship was ON HER, from start to end.
The big surprise in this film is that it is co-written and co-produced by Madonna. Love her or hate her, she has an artist’s soul and a flair for theater that certainly comes through in the film. Why “W.E.”? It is, supposedly, the abbreviation Wallis came up with for “Wallis” and “Edward” and the way they lovingly signed their joint name in love letters.
Wallis’ story is told in flashbacks, mirrored by Wally Winthrop, a young woman who, like her mother and grandmother were obsessed with Wallis Simpson, even naming Wally after her. Abbie Cornish stands out as the beautiful, sad, longing Wally whose marital troubles and emotions run parallel to her idol’s. She even conjures up visions of Wallace for comfort and guidance.
The storyline is confusing at first with the two Wallace’s and reflections on Wallace Simpson’s first of three marriages (her first two husbands
look a lot alike). Once you get into the initial groove of who is who and which time periods you are slipping back and forth into, you are hooked. The pacing is very good and you get sucked in easily. The only annoying thing remaining, and it was a big one for me, is the cinematography. I know it’s supposed to be very artsy to do tight, fast close-ups of things and 360 degree pans of people and places to create a sense of urgency, confusion and fear but c’mon! Let the actors and the scenery do some of that work all on their own without making our heads spin.
Cigarette smoking and its sensual, curling wafts almost become a character in both storylines, evoking the suffocation of the situations in the lives of these two women. The clothing and room interiors are gorgeous. The music is perfectly suited. Madonna’s behind-the-scenes work is impressive and gives credence to this next chapter in her career.
W.E. is Written by Madonna and Alek Keshishian, produced by Madonna and Kris Thykier and stars Abbie Cornish, Oscar Isaac, James D’Arcy, Andrea Riseborough, Natalie Dormer, Richard Coyle, James Fox and Laurence Fox.
The film opens today.

domain: entertainment


Deanna Watson and her siblings often clashed with her mother’s boyfriend, who the 16-year-old is now charged with stabbing to death, neighbors told the Observer on Thursday.
Watson, a student at Myers Park High, is charged with murder in Omar Dunbar’s killing on Wednesday. She made her first appearance in Mecklenburg District Court on Thursday, wearing shackles and a red county jail uniform covering her 5-foot-3 frame. She was jailed with bail set at $1 million.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police responded to three separate domestic violence complaints at Watson’s home a week before Dunbar was killed, according to WBTV, the Observer’s news partner. Neighbors said Mecklenburg Department of Social Services had been involved with the family, but a county spokesman said privacy laws prevented him from releasing any information about a DSS case.
Neighbors told the Observer on Thursday that Watson and her siblings often described Dunbar as punishing them by hitting them or kicking them out of the apartment.
Dunbar, 36, had been dating Watson’s mother for three years, said family friend Kamela Friday, who lived nearby.
Watson is the oldest child and a mother figure to her brothers and sisters. On Facebook three summers ago, she posted one video captioned: “Baby sis reading.”
She and Dunbar also had the most acrimony, Friday said. When Dunbar was around, Watson would often knock on neighbors’ doors, saying she’d been put out and needed a place to stay.
On Tuesday morning, neighbors say they saw the police at Watson’s home again. Friday said she later learned from Watson’s siblings that the police were called after Dunbar hit one of the younger boys.
Later that night, Watson’s mother went to work at a nearby Target. Watson was awakened by a confrontation between Dunbar and one of the children, said Friday, who described talking with Watson’s siblings afterward.
“He grabbed (him) by the legs and pulled him out of the bed and pulled him down the stairs,” Friday said. “Deanna was like ‘Leave my brother alone. Leave him alone. Just leave.’ And he spat in her face.”
Dunbar was stabbed during a fight that happened afterward, Friday said.
Friday said two friends called her early Wednesday, saying she needed to check on Watson and her siblings. As she walked toward the apartment, Friday said, “I see the blood because he’s dead in the kitchen. It was all over the floor.”
Ashonda Dunbar, Omar Dunbar’s wife, declined to speak in detail with the Observer, saying only, “What’s being portrayed is not him. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Clayton Hanson contributed.


MUSHY WIDMAIER - MY WORLD | Revisiting The
2006 - The
latest release from pianist Mushy Widmaier, almost
twenty years after the highly acclaimed "Kote
ou" (Mushi & Lakansyel), offers a journey
to the Arrawak World. With no surprise, this CD
confirms again that Mushy is a skillful and highly
advanced pianist and a talented arranger. This project
reunites the upper crust of Haitian musicians and
for his second release, after more than 22 years,
Mushy Widmaier demonstrates deep skills at musical
CD opens with the "Dance of the Arrawaks":
a tribute to the former inhabitants of Haiti Quysqueya.
The melody of this piece is articulated into joyful
phrases. The pianist, for his solo, uses harmonic
structures supported by a series of dissonant chords
(active left hand) that make the piece sounds dramatic
and very interesting. The incorporation of one of
our folk song "Men yo", hummed in unison
at the closure of the piece, is well done. There
are many good pieces on this album. To name a few,
Ayizan, Malouk, Ti Djo and Oye-o are to be considered
new icons in the pianist's repertoire.
could make a review of each single piece on this
CD and dissect them section by section, but the
exercise would be useless. The reader can easily
discover that by listening to the CD. Although the
pieces on the album exhibit real craftsmanship,
"My World" did not meet my expectations.
I am under the impression that the pianist is still
looking for his own "language". One oddity
on this album is the omnipresence of the synthesizer.
Indeed Mushy has developed the killing habit (in
my opinion) of inserting the cold electric sound
of the synthesizer everywhere. Perhaps it is because
he still carries the Pat Metheny Group (PMG) influence
in his sleeves (hard to believe after 22 years).
The choir lines on "Dance of the Arrawak"
renders that Brazilian flavor so typical of PMG.
The release of "Kote ou?", in 1983, (Reissued
by Crossover Record in 1996) paradoxically introduced
many listeners to the music of the PMG.
better understand my point, I think it is important
to revisit history a bit. "The influence of
electric sound has reached its apogee in the history
of jazz music in the 70's. With rock and soul appealing
to a younger generation, jazz musicians were torn
between following conventional approaches to their
music and pursuing the avant-garde. Miles Davis
(again!) chose another direction, one that incorporated
the influences of rock and soul music as well as
modal and contemporary approaches to jazz. This
music became known as fusion. with revolutionary
"super groups" led by Wayne Shorter and
Joe Zawinul (Weather Report), Chick Corea (Return
To Forever), John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra),
Herbie Hancock, and Michael Brecker (Brecker Brothers).
By no coincidence, most of the leaders of the fusion
movement had spent time in the '60s or '70s Miles
Davis groups. For the reader's information, all
these musicians have their own distinctive styles.
During these years, fusion became increasingly innovative
and adventurous, melding the wild energy of rock
guitarist Jimi Hendrix with the advanced technical
proficiency of the most evolved jazz musicians.
Fusion often incorporated elements of world music
- Latin, African, Indian, and Caribbean influences.
The fusion style with its very accessible rock-oriented
textures gained widespread popularity but declined
by the end of the decade. In its place rose a somewhat
less aggressive form of electric music called "contemporary"
jazz, as well as the "neo-classic" period
of the 1980s." Miles Davis' huge influence
upon a whole generation of musicians is a brilliant
illustration on how positive and rewarding musical
influences can be. Many prominent musicians in jazz
tend to converge toward a more acoustic and avant-garde
sound as they grow in terms of musical experience
and language/style development. Acoustic sound seems
to be the common vector to convey such an experience.
Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Hendrix, Sonny
Sharrock, Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, to name a few,
are unique folks in their categories. They have
developed their own identity through the study of
previous master's works and exploration of cutting-edge
electric sound. Such a prowess does not happen overnight
and producing in the shadow of your major influences
might not drive to this distinctive language that
emerges from rich and diverse musical experiences.
CD could be classified in the contemporary jazz
period. Nowadays, musicians have at their disposal
a humungous amount of materials to work on. These
resources are incessantly revisited by young jazz
prodigies. Consequently, innovation is more difficult
to achieve, since everybody has access to the same
information and most young jazz players exhibit
talents and astonished virtuosity in the execution
of the standards. The value of a jazz piece, in
my opinion, should lay more upon the distinctive
and original approach of the composer/interpreter
than the technical virtuosity applied in rendering
such a piece. There's been decade of controversies
and acid criticisms on the music perception of the
"neo-classics" who advocate a flawless
mastery of the forms. Their detractors always emphasize
on the coldness of their too-much-perfect-music.
a listener, my judgment of this CD is based on a
triangular approach. I looked at:
1. The uniqueness and originality of the
(distinctive musical touch/personality of the musician)
2. The cleverness of the conception. (The
idea that drives the album)
3. The technical accomplishment. (Talent
as a musician)
CD "My world" exhibits strength on the
last two criteria; but the first requirement of
this trilogy is missing. It is in reality an intrusion
into somebody else's world. The jazz musician must
be able to incessantly extend his/her musical skills
and reinvent himself (herself) every day. The mere
fact of reaching technical ability does not suffice.
The ultimate goal is not only to master the form,
but to deeply touch the soul of the listener through
a very distinctive style. Mushy has still to find
his own voice in this musical intricacy he seems
to affectionate so much. As Keith Jarret put it
so well:" It is not only about playing right,
it is about the rightness of the music".
It is worth to buy this CD. Mushy Widmaier is one
of our most valuable Jazz Icon. I like to keep track
of my folks' progress. I somewhat hope for some
future project on acoustic piano exclusively.
Alphonse Piard, Jr.
September 6, 2006


text:
Atherton Insurance Services
Protect your residents and your bottom line.
In this era of shrinking budgets, increasing costs, and volatile vacancy rates, owners and management companies in the student housing sector are searching for new ways to protect their bottom line. Today’s security deposits are inadequate to cover damage due to resident negligence, which result in more losses to the owner/manager that cut deeply into the bottom line. Luckily, renters insurance is here to help.
Over the years, property managers have misunderstood renters insurance. They believed it was strictly for the protection of their residents, and they simply recommended it to them upon move-in. In addition, parents are under the mistaken belief that their homeowners insurance will cover their children when they are not living at home.
Today, student renters insurance also offers substantial protection for the property owner and the management company. Damage to the building from accidental kitchen fires, overflowing bathtubs and toilets, carpet cuts and stains, damaged countertops, broken windows, etc., are covered under the liability portion of the student renters insurance policy. This is beneficial to the property owner/manager in several ways:
The owner/manager is not paying for damages or the insurance deductible out of the operating revenue.
The owner/manager does not have to file an insurance claim. Fewer claims save money in premiums, when the policy renews.
The owner/manager can avoid resident-related property insurance claim issues with the renters policy in place.
The owner/manager can use the owner renters insurance program as a marketing advantage.
The owner sponsored renters insurance program can aid in resident retention.
Riders for pets and other coverage benefits the owner/manager and the resident.
Student renters insurance also covers the resident’s belongings in the case of theft, even when stolen from their automobile. Plus, the resident’s liability coverage protects them wherever they go, not just in their apartment. These are a couple of misunderstood facts that your residents will find very important.
Recent technological advancements in Internet speed and real-time interface capability have made it possible for leasing office staff to market, monitor, and track their student resident’s renters policies. These programs are convenient and affordable, averaging between $10 to $15 per month for $50,000 of liability and $120,000 of property damage (the actual cost varies by region and property). New software and interactive portals now offer a level of protection not seen before in the industry. Not since online credit screening became feasible in the late 1990s has such a powerful tool for protecting your bottom line been available.
There are three major providers of owner sponsored renter’s insurance programs. Each has its own advantages. Renters insurance programs have been successfully implemented in large multifamily communities, small privately owned apartment buildings, senior living communities, private schools and state and private colleges and universities.
— Kraig Kast is President of Atherton Insurance Services, a unit of Atherton Trust Co., which can be found on the Web at www.athertontrust.com.

domain: finance


text:
Here is a short film directed by Gaëtan Delalande and featuring model and skateboarder Andrey Tarasov, which features in the newest edition of Client U.S. #16. For a better understanding of the film, check out Gaëtan’s artist statement below plus some of the photographs of Andrey and stills from the film, as featured in the editorial. The music in the film is by Christopher Owens and is titled Heroine (Got Nothing On You).
I’ve always been attracted to the city of Los Angeles. First, as a skateboarder kid, I read many things about this place where all the best skaters were gathering. It was a dream for many because everything happening in the skateboarding world took place there. As a photographer, I finally had the opportunity to get to LA whilst working for a musician.
But my real chance was to meet Andrey there, a truly passionate man, living his dream of being a model and skateboarder, sharing his love for the city and showing me the best spots and views LA could offer. I’ve been idealizing this city for years and Andrey gave me the best sight I could have imagined. This film relates the time we spent together, between Mulholland drive to some legendary skateboarding spots.
– Gaëtan Delalande
Client U.S. #16 – Order Digital & Print editions:
Order casebound Hardcover, Perfect-bound Softcover & Digital Editions. Link: https://bit.ly/3xSMSln
Some stills from the film…

domain: artistic


text:
Husband’s Meat Menu
Sunday: Steak, baked potato & Green Beans
Monday: Hot Roast Beef Sandwiches w/horseradish sauce & Steak Fries
Tuesday: Ground Beef Tacos, ranch beans & sm. salad
Wednesday: Spaghetti, Garlic bread & green salad
Thursday: Campbell’s Lemon-Broccolli chicken*, rice & veggies
Friday: Pizza & green salad
Saturday: Hamburgers, pasta salad, fries, & apple slices
Sunday: Baked Potato topped with diced Italian tomatoes, a dollup of sour cream and green onion & Side of green beans
Monday: N/A (my one day of beef)
Tuesday: Lentil Tacos, ranch beans & sm. salad
Wednesday: Spaghetti w/diced Italian tomatoes and grated Parmesan cheese, garlic bread & green salad
Thursday: N/A (could mix with tofu, but I am eating the chicken)
Friday: Pizza topped with Veggies & green salad
Saturday: Yummy Veggie burgers (I get them from Costco. totally yummy!), pasta salad, fries, & apple slices
Last Week: I didn’t make the stovetop meatloaf cuz I forgot to buy stuffing during my grocery store trip. But the new teriyaki sauce for my Salmon… that was delish!
Our recipe planning… I make at least one pasta dish, one mexican dish… and now I seem to be incorporating one Campbell’s dish due to its simplicity! Now, I want to start Crockpotting, also because of its simplicity.
This also concludes that I have partially met a resolution by cooking a new recipe from at least one of my cookbooks. 😉
Find more great Meal Plans at I’m an Oranizing Junkie Meal Plan Mondays. Enjoy!

domain: food


Landscape Engineering Impacts the Long-Term Stability of Agricultural Populations
Explaining the stability of human populations provides knowledge for understanding the resilience of human societies to environmental change. Here, we use archaeological radiocarbon records to evaluate a hypothesis drawn from resilience thinking that may explain the stability of human populations: Faced with long-term increases in population density, greater variability in the production of food leads to less stable populations, while lower variability leads to more stable populations. However, increased population stability may come with the cost of larger collapses in response to rare, large-scale environmental perturbations. Our results partially support this hypothesis. Agricultural societies that relied on extensive landscape engineering to intensify production and tightly control variability in the production of food experienced the most stability. Contrary to the hypothesis, these societies also experienced the least severe population declines. We propose that the interrelationship between landscape engineering and increased political-economic complexity reduces the magnitude of population collapses in a region.
Freeman, Jacob; Anderies, John M.; Beckman, Noelle G.; Robinson, Erick; Baggio, Jacopo A.; Bird, Darcy; Nicholson, Christopher; Finley, Judson Byrd; Capriles, José M.; Gil, Adolfo F.; Byers, David; Gayo, Eugenia; and Latorre, Claudio. (2021). "Landscape Engineering Impacts the Long-Term Stability of Agricultural Populations". Human Ecology, 49(4), 369-382. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-021-00242-z


text:
Mortgage industry experts are alerting professionals and consumers about a concerning new trend in fraud. Fraudsters have discovered a way to exploit artificial intelligence (AI) technology to mimic individuals’ voices, allowing them to craft convincing voicemails and emails. This is a significant development that poses a heightened risk of fraud, warns industry expert Cronkright.
– AI technology is being harnessed by fraudsters to replicate individuals’ voices.
– Fraudsters are able to create realistic voicemails and emails through AI simulation.
– This emerging practice increases the risk of fraud for both professionals and consumers.
– Mortgage industry professionals should remain vigilant to prevent falling victim to the fraudulent activities employing AI technology.
The utilization of AI to mimic voices for the purpose of perpetrating fraud is a troubling development. It is essential for mortgage industry professionals and consumers alike to stay informed and exercise caution to mitigate the risk of falling victim to these fraudulent activities.
You can read this full article at: https://www.housingwire.com/articles/how-scammers-are-using-ai-to-commit-new-fraud-in-real-estate/(subscription required)
Note Servicing Center provides professional, fully compliant loan servicing for private mortgage investors so they can avoid the aggravation of servicing their own loans and just relax and get paid. Contact us today for more information.


text:
Oklahoma City Thunder vs Houston Rockets takes place in the in Game 2 of their round 1 playoff series on Wednesday night. The Thunder will be looking to build upon their big win in Game 1 and will be confident of the win tonight. The game is scheduled to tip off at 7 p.m. ET and can be watched online through free live stream (details below).
The Thunder came out of the blocks fast in Game 1, and James Harden's Rockets were unable to contain them. Oklahoma came through with a massive win margin of 29 points and if that game is anything to go by this could easily be a long and painful series for the Rockets.
The Rockets have an immense task ahead of them if they are going to turn around this series. They must win 4 of the next six games, and if they lose again tonight it might be too much for them.
The Thunder outplayed the Rockets in just about every department in Game 1 and that will have knocked Houston's confidence big time. They will have to put that bad performance behind them and start all over again tonight. If they come into this game with any negativity from the first game then this one too could be over before it even starts tonight.
Houston shot under 40 percent in Game 1, hitting just 8-of-36 three-point attempts. They were also out-rebounded, stole fewer passes, blocked fewer shots and turned the ball over more than their rivals. Not a good omen for today's game.
Oklahoma City Thunder vs Houston Rockets is scheduled to tip off at 7 p.m. ET and can be watched online through free live stream from Chesapeake Energy Arena, Oklahoma City, by clicking here.

domain: game


text:
[Series] The DIVERGENT trilogy by Veronica Roth (all 3 pdf ebooks + mp3 audiobooks) — FULL Download #198
The DIVERGENT trilogy by Veronica Roth (all 3 pdf e-books + mp3 audiobooks)
● Divergent (2011) read by Emma Galvin 🎧 96 kbps, 3 CDs
● Insurgent (2012) read by Emma Galvin 🎧 96 kbps, 3 CDs
● Allegiant (2013) read by Emma Galvin & Aaron Stanford 🎧 96 kbps, 3 CDs
Divergent is the debut novel of American novelist Veronica Roth, published by HarperCollins Children's Books in 2011. The novel is the first of the Divergent trilogy, a series of young-adult dystopian novels set in the Divergent Universe. The novel Divergent features a post-apocalyptic version of Chicago and follows Beatrice "Tris" Prior as she explores her identity within a society that defines its citizens by their social and personality-related affiliation with five factions, which removes the threat of anyone exercising independent will and re-threatening the population's safety. Underlying the action and dystopian focused main plot is a romantic subplot between Tris and one of her instructors in the Dauntless faction, nicknamed Four.
• If links don't show up, DELETE the "HTTPS://" in the address bar
• Learn how to PASS Ads here
• Download SumatraPDF Reader here for FREE!
• Links broken? Please comment to report, thanks!!

domain: library


text:
Poland Day Six
Today was a different kind of day. Instead of starting on the bus, we began our day with a walking tour of Krakow.
Before we began the tour, we were divided into groups and given a sheet of paper. This sheet of paper contained the cornerstones of a Jewish community. This program was done to teach us about the importance of having a Jewish community. Many of us do not realize how lucky we are having so many services available to us and we take most of them for granted. We discussed the necessity of maintaining a Jewish community and protecting the dwindling Jewish population.
After the community building exercise we began our walking tour of the Jewish quarter in Krakow. We saw the cemetery where the famous Rabbi Ramah is buried and the Shul that is dedicated in his memory. We then went to another Shul that was at the forefront of modern Shul architecture and design as well as one of the first Shuls outside of the historic Jewish quarter. After the tour of the Jewish quarter, we enjoyed a Pizur lunch.
After lunch, we moved onto the Krakow ghetto. We toured to relatively small Ghetto learning about the resistance that occurred outside of the ghetto. We finished the tour in the main square in which there is a memorial for those who perished when the ghetto was liquidated.
We then continued onto Schindler’s factory. This was an extremely important stop for on this tour. As a grandchild of someone who was on Schindler’s List and someone who worked at that factory, I felt a deep connection to the place. Seeing the gates that my grandfather would have passed through on his way to work struck a deep chord within me. At these gates I shared my grandfather’s story with the group.
Our next stop was also of importance to me. We visited the concentration camp Płaszów where my grandfather was an inmate. This camp was especially hard for most of us as there was nothing left. Unlike Belzec, there is life growing there and a park where people walk their dogs, ride their bikes and enjoy coffee with friends. At the camp, we read the letter our parents had made for us on the reasons of why coming on this trip is of importance. As we were at Płaszów, reading letters from our parents many people got emotional. We ended the day by seeing the monument that the Russians had erected in honour of the victims of Płaszów.
We are heading to bed early as we are off on an early flight to Israel tomorrow.

domain: sociology


The Lungs of the Planet
Late one afternoon last October, Scott Saleska encountered a weirder than usual welcome to the remote Brazilian research station he’d been coming to for 17 years to study how the Amazon rainforest breathes. Arriving at the base of a 67-meter (220-foot) flux tower that juts up through the rainforest canopy, he clipped his climbing harness to a galvanized steel safety cable and started up. Dragging electronic replacement parts in a haul bag, Saleska rose rung by rung on his way to troubleshoot two malfunctioning sensors clamped high on the triangular structure, which measures just eighteen inches wide on each side, and rises like a vertical proboscis above the teeming green forest.
The dry season was normally in full force by now, but when Saleska reached the pinnacle of the jungle lightning rod, he saw a portentous grey wave crashing toward him, targeting the galvanized steel spire on which he stood. Fearing a lightning strike like one that had recently fried some of the tower’s instruments, Saleska scrambled down and unclipped his harness just as a monsoon-quality downpour swamped the research station with an hours-long tropical deluge.
The unseasonable storm was just the first punch in Saleska’s latest bout of Amazon fieldwork, an endeavor comprised of equal parts logistics, groundbreaking science, and gambiarra, a Brazilian Portuguese word that means essentially what MacGyver does when he improvises his way out of thorny situations with his beloved Swiss army knife and a roll of duct tape.
The primary aim of Saleska’s research is to assess the implications of the climate dilemma we’re in—essentially, to chart the Amazon’s respiratory state—using significantly more sophisticated tools than MacGyver ever had: sonic anemometers for micro-meteorological measurements, spectroradiometers to gauge leaf age, and hand-held porometers that measure the rate of water evaporating from the surfaces of individual leaves.
Saleska has chosen this place to do his work because the world’s largest contiguous rainforest contains clues that can help scientists diagnose the implications of Earth’s changing vital signs. By taking various measurements of the jungle’s life-sustaining functions, such as the water loss and carbon uptake of individual leaves during photosynthesis, and cross-referencing on-the-ground measurements of leaf production against satellite imagery, Saleska and his many collaborators are creating a detailed portrait of the Amazon’s biogeochemical functions—as Saleska puts it, “from the leaf to the landscape.”
This ecological research station in the Tapajós National Forest in northern Brazil has been literally instrumental in helping Saleska and his multinational colleagues explore three vital and interrelated scientific questions: Which factors control carbon dioxide and water vapor fluxes, or exchanges, between the forest and the atmosphere during “normal” seasonal dry periods and during extreme drought periods of El Niño years? How will climate changes affect the 5.4-million-square-kilometer (2.1-million-square-mile) Amazon forest’s ability to absorb atmospheric carbon, including the increased carbon from fossil fuel burning that’s causing the planet to warm in the first place? And how will feedback from these changes alter environmental systems and patterns around the planet?
Climate scientists can now project with confidence that an increasingly warmer world will produce more extreme weather patterns that have the potential to dramatically affect the life cycle of tropical forests. Higher temperatures are likely to dry out some parts of the rainforest and contribute to more frequent droughts and catastrophic wildfires. Disturbed forests that have been logged, or forests such as the Tapajós that are already relatively dry because of their location may experience increased stressors on tree health that reduce those forests’ ability to absorb CO2.
The question is, “How, and by how much?”
Among Saleska’s surprising findings are indications that this part of the Amazon rainforest tends to “green up” and continue to absorb carbon dioxide even during the dry season—in fact, the trees here absorb more carbon in the dry season than in the wet season. One implication for this is that the forest may be more resilient than previously thought in the face of at least some of the changes climate scientists and ecologists predict as the planet warms.
That’s the good news. In order for that to happen, however, the Amazon rainforest has to survive widespread land clearing as well as the rising temperatures that are projected to reach levels by the end of the century that the region hasn’t seen in 10 million years. Exactly where is the tipping point at which climate change would cause the forest to become a source instead of a repository, or sink, of atmospheric carbon? That’s a question Saleska and his collaborators are trying to answer.
A tree falls in the forest
Even under ideal circumstances, field research ranges from the mundane to the arduous, whether in the tropical rainforest, Norwegian Arctic, or in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, where Saleska also works. To generate anything useful from a field season in the Amazon, researchers must possess the usual traits of endurance, stubbornness, perseverance, resourcefulness, physical stamina, patience, and an immense capacity to transform abstract data points into original thought and insightful analysis.
For Saleska’s Brazilian rainforest work, he adds another suite of job descriptions to his main occupation as professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson: logistics coordinator, computer programmer, electrical engineer, human resources expert, diplomat, budget administrator, linguist, climber, and, on this late October day, lumberjack.
After descending from the flux tower just as the storm hit, Saleska hung up his harness for the day. With his Brazilian colleague, 33-year-old Kleber Silva Campos, in the passenger seat, Saleska drove down the 8-kilometer (5-mile) rutted dirt track that led to a two-lane asphalt road, which would take them to the relative comfort of the team’s “base camp” compound, another half hour drive from the Tapajós forest entrance.
As he drove, Saleska turned to Silva Campos, a local who had recently completed his Masters degree in environmental science in nearby Santarém at the Federal University of Western Pará, known by its Portuguese acronym, UFOPA. In the pidgin Portuguenglish the two of them used with each other, Saleska quietly said he hoped no trees had fallen across the road during the downpour. Silva Campos retorted, “Não fala assim,” which translates to “Don’t say that!”
Not a hundred meters later, they came upon two Cecropia trees that had fallen across the muddy track during the early part of the storm, which had still not let up. With the crepuscular light dissipating with tropical swiftness, about to add darkness to the dripping damp, Saleska and Silva Campos took stock. They had one machete in the car, which seemed like a comically undersized tool to chop through the fallen trees, each the diameter of a telephone pole. There was an occasionally functioning chain saw at base camp 24 kilometers (15 miles) away, but no reliable way to communicate with anybody there, even if a car was available. Inside their vehicle, there was no rope strong enough to drag the deadfall.
As Silva Campos drove back to the flux tower to retrieve a second machete, Saleska started hacking. Tepid rain cascaded from a seemingly endless source, and the enveloping darkness screeched equatorial menace. After the nocturnal baton dropped, a riot of squawks and chirps mixed with rain spatter, creating a multi-sensory forest orchestra complemented by the musty aroma of rain-soaked leaves and decomposition.
It was vaguely reassuring to know that jaguars rarely attack humans, and that the most venomous pit vipers, black scorpions, wolf spiders, white-kneed tarantulas, and Brazilian giant centipedes that call this forest home tend to stay away from big clearings.
The trees had fallen on a perfect perpendicular axis to the road, which meant it would be necessary to cleave two breaks in the trunks to allow the car to pass. Silva Campos, who had grown up in a nearby village, returned with the second machete and worked like a machine, hacking non-stop with strategically angled chops every couple seconds. Saleska, swinging with no less intent but perhaps a little less practice, was only a third of the way through his side when Silva Campos had broken through his.
Sweating but unruffled, Saleska paused and invoked Archimedes, the ancient Greek father of physics, to plan the next step. “If I had a lever large enough,” Archimedes famously said, “I could move the Earth.”
They sheathed the machetes and engineered a system of pre-industrial mechanical advantage, using a stump as a fulcrum and a smaller tree as a lever. The lever snapped. As Archimedes might have suggested, they needed a larger lever.
Despite the setback, the two eventually cleared the impasse and, exhausted, sweaty, and soaked to the pores, emerged from the rainforest.
After a brief stop at base camp, Saleska then drove another hour to Santarém to attend a Halloween party hosted by his Brazilian colleagues. They had all gathered to welcome “Scotchy” (as the name Scott is pronounced here) back to the Amazon.
As increases in global temperatures unleash ecological and meteorological mayhem around the planet, understanding how this iconic biome works has become more important than ever.
A carbon trove in trouble
Ever since British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace traveled to Santarém in the 1850s to study life in “some far land where endless summer reigns,” the Amazon has captivated scientists from a wide range of disciplines. Geographically, the rainforest spans nine countries and is two-thirds the size of the continental United States. Ecologically, it hosts the most fecund biodiversity on the planet: 20 percent of the world’s bird species, more than 400 mammal species, 40,000 plant species, and two and a half million identified insect species—not to mention myriad other invertebrates and microbial and fungal life forms. Hydrologists know that the Amazon River, by far the largest aqueous artery on the planet, feeds one-fifth of all the freshwater that flows into the oceans, more than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined. Biophysicists estimate that a comparable amount of water flows upwards from the rainforest, each tropical tree pumping a geyser of water into the atmosphere, doing its part to drive the global water cycle.
If your field is biogeochemical ecology, as Saleska describes his hybrid research discipline, the Amazon contains a “treasure trove of carbon and water interactions.”
Biogeochemical ecology attempts to explain the complex exchanges and relationships taking place in the natural world—essentially, to determine how chemicals and biological systems interact to sustain life. Most of us give little thought to the tiny pores, called stomata, on the surface of a leaf. But those openings act like tiny mouths, allowing the leaf to consume carbon dioxide and release water. Through photosynthesis, the leaf uses the sun’s energy to convert CO2 into sugars and complex carbohydrates that the plant then uses to drive its functions and build its structures. When the plant is photosynthesizing, it releases oxygen; when it’s burning sugars, it produces CO2. Those same processes at work within a single leaf are at play throughout the forest, the biome, and the planet.
But it all starts with the leaf.
Each leaf is its own biogeochemical factory, producing a series of interactions that help drive global water and carbon cycles. Saleska’s job—and that of his colleagues—is to take what they’re observing and measuring in the forest and figure out how these single-leaf and single-plant interactions “scale up” to create global impacts that affect life on Earth, now and into the future.
A tropical rainforest’s ability to take a deep breath depends in large part on a somewhat surprising factor—the age of its leaves. Explore this interactive infographic to learn why.
The Amazon’s biogeochemical exchanges are important on multiple fronts. For starters, the region’s immensity, unparalleled biodiversity, and critical role in the planet’s carbon and water cycles means that what happens in the Amazon doesn’t stay in the Amazon. The fates of this and other tropical forests are intimately connected to the fate of the rapidly changing planet in the Anthropocene, the current geological age in which humans have become a dominant force affecting Earth’s climate and environmental processes. As increases in global temperatures unleash ecological and meteorological mayhem around the planet, understanding how this iconic biome works has become more important than ever.
“We have a huge task ahead to improve our scientific knowledge of the ecosystem,” said José Mauro S. Moura, a professor of biogeochemistry at UFOPA who has worked with Saleska’s group. This task is even more pressing because the Brazilian Amazon forest has shrunk by about one-fifth since 1970 due to large-scale land disturbances, especially those caused by logging and industrial agricultural of crops and cattle. “We already know it’s not a good place to plant soy beans,” he told me over a meal of pirarucu, a giant Amazon River fish, at a restaurant near Santarém.
Moura put his fork down and added: “We also know it’s a really good place for a forest.”
To the flux tower
To get to this research site, approximately 350 kilometers (218 miles) south of the equator, it’s a multi-hop flight from wherever you start in North America to Santarém. From the Santarém airport, it’s another hour south by car on a rural two-lane road, passing increasingly smaller villages dotted with lojas (little stores), borracharias (repair shops) and churrascurias (barbeque buffets), nearly every one sporting its own shaded veranda. As human settlements thin, the road follows the lush border of a protected forest on the right, and a razed forest planted with soy and manioc on the left.
At the entrance of the Floresta Nacional de Tapajós, an armed guard with a clipboard stops us at a locked gate. The guard, who monitors not just scientific access but also potential illegal loggers, greets Saleska with a warm handshake and opens the gate.
The research team today includes the machete machine Silva Campos and 32-year-old Deliane Penha, a PhD student at UFOPA. Silva Campos’s main job is to maintain the flux tower’s infrastructure and instruments, while Penha painstakingly gathers data on the water content of and flows through the forest’s trees. She does so by taking measurements of individual leaves while suspended from hanging walkways strung through the research site. The third member of the team is Neill Prohaska, a 36-year-old PhD candidate in Saleska’s lab in the University of Arizona’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Prohaska’s dissertation focuses on seasonal cycles of photosynthesis and respiration. His tree-climbing prowess allows him to install monitoring devices a hundred feet above the forest floor and take measurements directly from tree crowns, sometimes while eye-to-eye with the area’s howler and capuchin monkeys.
The 600,000-hectare (2,300 square mile [about the size of Delaware]) Tapajós forest is managed by the Chico Mendes Institute for Conservation of Biodiversity, named after the environmental activist who was assassinated in 1988. It sits toward the northern edge of the Amazon rainforest, which means it is drier than other rainforest regions. Because of its relatively long dry season—about equal in length to the wet season—it may be a harbinger for a warmer future that is projected to produce hot, dry conditions, here and elsewhere in the tropics.
In addition to the daily physical challenges of Amazon research, shifting political priorities and funding problems abound. Construction on the flux tower began in 1999, a collaboration between NASA and the Brazilian space agency INPE. The tower has enjoyed a series of benefactors since then, including the National Science Foundation. Today it is funded through a partnership between Saleska’s lab (funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and other sources) and the Brazilian government’s LBA, the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia. But that situation is in flux as a recent political crisis in Brazil has sent ripples throughout the country’s economy, and caused a reorganization of its national science funding agencies. Saleska’s own funding depends on maintaining a flow of research grants in an increasingly difficult domestic funding environment.
The field research station’s centerpiece is the soaring flux tower, surrounded by a locked yellow chain-link fence to deter unauthorized visitors. Taut guy-wires stretch out in four directions, holding the spire in place (with one calamitous exception in 2006, when a tree fell on several of the wires and the structure bent in two, like a performer taking a bow).
The flux tower is loaded with a multitude of sensors designed to track the flux—the movement of a gas in or out of a space—of CO2 and water vapor from the forest floor to above the forest canopy, which averages about 45 meters (148 feet) high. Sensors measure CO2 and H20 concentrations eight times per second at multiple heights along the tower, and also monitor daily and seasonal fluctuations.
The research station’s nerve center consists of two small lime-green concrete-walled shacks, continually air-conditioned to protect the data collection systems from the paralyzing tropical humidity and heat. The instruments are powered by a diesel generator located a kilometer away, with a high voltage line running through black plastic conduit alongside the dirt track like a long, undulating python.
Scattered inside one shack is an array of wires, cords, connectors, and of course computers to process and store data from the tower’s system. The second shack is filled with cables, spare parts, and what looks like a search-and-rescue squad’s arsenal of climbing harnesses, ropes, carabiners, and other mountaineering gear never intended to be used to scale 45-meter (150-feet) guaruburana trees.
Finally, the area surrounding the flux tower is booby-trapped with scientific measuring devices, from 10-meter (33-feet) deep pits used to measure soil moisture content to a variety of tree-mounted solar-powered devices that measure light quality in the forest dangling from trees like misshapen fruit.
How hard is it to repair a broken sensor when you’re harnessed to the top of a 220-foot tower in the middle of the hot-and-humid Amazon rainforest? Take a 360-degree peek as Scott Saleska gives it a go.
Sink or source?
The day after the rain-soaked machete fest, we drove back to the tower and Saleska verbally roamed through some scientific history and philosophy that gives his work context. The scientific understanding that human activities could influence global climate began in the mid-1800s, he said, with discoveries by Joseph Fourier and John Tyndall. This was right around the same time that Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace were formulating the theory of evolution—and Wallace was roaming the Amazon.
It would be another 100 years, however, before Charles David Keeling began constructing a long-term data set in the 1950s on Hawaii’s big island that definitively showed rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The data would change the course of scientific history.
Keeling’s measurements showed seasonal shifts in levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which fell during the Northern Hemispheric spring due to increased photosynthesis, and rose again during the winter months when forests stopped photosynthesizing. More importantly, over the decades, the “Keeling curve” also showed a marked upward trajectory of atmospheric carbon dioxide—from 315 parts per million in 1958 to more than 405 parts per million this winter.
This influx of CO2, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, coupled with the loss of forest cover and other land disturbances as well as huge human population growth, instigated a cascade of rapid changes in Earth’s systems, from record-setting global average temperatures and rapid glacial melt to dramatic shifts in the behavior, distribution, and longevity of countless organisms around the globe.
When Saleska began his career, a debate raged in scientific circles: Were rainforests sources or sinks, either releasing carbon into the atmosphere or sucking it up like giant, leafy sponges? “Nobody really knew what the forest was doing,” Saleska says. How did the movement of carbon dioxide in and out of individual leaves at different times of day, at different times of the year, and from year to year affect this critical equation, especially as conditions changed in a warming world?
The way to figure it out, Saleska thought, was to emulate the infamous bank robber Willy Sutton, who said he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.” For Saleska, interested in what CO2 was doing in a changing world, he decided he needed to be where the carbon was: the Amazon rainforest.
Breaking new ground
After the flux tower became functional in 2000, Saleska didn’t have to wait long to collect enough data to make a scientific splash. In 2003, he was the lead author of a paper in the prestigious journal Science that challenged forest ecology orthodoxy. Conventional wisdom held that during the dry season (fall and winter in the northern hemisphere), leaves slow or even cease their photosynthetic processes, therefore absorbing less atmospheric carbon dioxide.
But measurements coming from the flux tower flew in the face of those expectations. In the Tapajós, early measurements indicated that many of forest’s trees were, in fact, actively “flushing,” or growing new leaves, in the dry season—and therefore, photosynthesizing at even higher rates at that time of year than in the wet season. Also, in this broad-leafed, evergreen, tropical forest, light seemed to be a more important factor than rainfall in the forest’s photosynthetic dance. The assumption had been that tropical forests would be very drought sensitive, since they had shallow roots and couldn’t access deeper soil water.
The measurements of dry-season flushing were so surprising, said Wofsy, Saleska’s post-doctoral advisor at Harvard, that Saleska and the team started to do what any good scientist should: “Try to break the data.” They looked for anomalies or artifacts that might have slipped into their instrumentation calibration, or in the analysis of those measurements. “When you get a contrary result, you look a little harder,” said Wofsy, in a phone interview from his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
It turns out that the conventional landscape ecology wisdom about seasonal leaf production had been derived from temperate (mid-latitude) forests and from satellite measurements, and those data had been baked into global climate models. Saleska’s work offered a new way of looking at the rainforest, which sent some global climate modelers back to their supercomputers to re-think their landscape-scale carbon-flux numbers. “Modelers and satellite people don’t like to be told their ideas are upside down,” said Wofsy. “It turns out the forest is growing like gangbusters in the dry season.”
The Science paper headline, with Saleska as lead author, was innocuous enough: Carbon in Amazon Forests: Unexpected Seasonal Fluxes and Disturbance-Induced Losses. But it helped chart a new direction in the field, and encouraged Saleska to keep returning to the Tapajós.
Armed with a suite of high-tech tools, scientists are measuring the flow of gases into and out of the Amazon rainforest to underand how this iconic ecosystem responds to seasonal and climatic shifts. See their surprising findings in this data visualization.
When we reached the field station on day two, Saleska climbed the tower to troubleshoot the equipment failures. Prohaska, the PhD student and master of aerial gambiarra, gave me a tour of the research site. He advised me to put on my newly purchased snake gaiters to protect my lower extremities from bushmasters (a species of pit viper) and other venomous forest denizens.
Prohaska is a Tucson native who started rock climbing at 15, then worked as a research technician and industrial climber for Biosphere 2 before plying his climbing skills as a rigger for circuses and concerts. He joined Saleska’s Tapajós crew as a technician while working on a Masters in Latin American studies, before starting his PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology. Fluent in Portuguese, Prohaska does everything from finding functioning ATMs in Santarém where he can withdraw cash to pay for generator fuel to coaxing expensive research equipment back from recalcitrant customs officials.
Prohaska’s high-flying skills have enabled him to set up a remarkable network of walkways 30 meters (100 feet) above the forest floor. He shoots slingshots and crossbows with fishing line attached to get his first access to high limbs capable of holding his weight. He then uses the line to pull ropes up into the canopy, testing the strength of the limbs as he does. When he’s ready to leave the forest floor, he climbs with uncanny speed using rock-climbing ascenders called jumars attached to nylon webbing that he uses to coordinate his feet and arms in a balletic vertical dance.
To finish our tour, Prohaska led me down a 200-meter (218-yard) boardwalk to the “walkup tower,” which looks like a precarious stack of freestanding scaffolding rising almost 140 feet above the forest floor, higher than almost all of the tallest trees. One anomaly breaks the endless sea of green: Rising above the canopy on the flux tower a few hundred meters away, we could see Saleska silhouetted against the coming dusk, still fiddling with the instruments.
Get a 360-degree sense for what it feels like to conduct field research in one of the hottest, buggiest offices on the planet.
“A rehearsal for hell”
Keeping all these sensors, computers, inverters, voltage regulators, air conditioners, and generators running is a constant battle against equatorial entropy. Mold, rust, power outages, rain, and insects eating through rubber wire insulation all create obstacles to gathering these tiny building blocks of scientific discovery.
Saleska, down from the tower, sat in the air-conditioned shack with Silva Campos, hunched over a computer on a wooden stool. The device that measures wind speed had been malfunctioning, as had another sensor designed to measure the relative amounts of water vapor and carbon dioxide. At last, they’d narrowed down one problem to a faulty wire or a faulty connector.
Saleska tinkered with a circuit board, replacing a broken component. I joked that he had to suddenly become an electrical engineer as well as an ecologist, and he off-handedly said, well, EE was his minor at M.I.T. He then coded the new information into the computer.
Outside in the dripping heat, Penha and Prohaska slipped into climbing harnesses draped with locking carabiners, ascending devices, descending devices, nylon webbing, a leaf porometer for Penha for her work measuring water vapor exchanges, and Prohaska’s hyperspectral camera, which measures leaf composition. The scientists don snake gaiters when on the ground, and mosquito head nets when they’re in the trees, more for the gnats that can carry leishmaniasis (a parasite-borne skin disease) than for the mosquitoes, which can carry malaria and Zika.
Penha completed her Master’s in environmental science and moved to the countryside with her husband and two children to teach high school biology, when the forest—and Saleska’s lab—beckoned. At first, Penha said, she had reservations about working with foreigners, whom she feared would exploit her as a local source of cheap labor.
Then she met Saleska and Prohaska, and her opinion quickly changed. She liked how they sought her opinion on how to organize their own work. Still, Penha recalled that the first day climbing up to Prohaska’s perches in the canopy felt like a “rehearsal for hell,” since she feared heights more than the tree snakes and spiders that are now her daily companions.
Penha says that as a kid growing up in the Amazon, the forest didn’t appear remarkable to her. But the more she studied it, the more the ecosystem’s intricacies charmed her. Now, she says, “Each little piece is surprising.”
Penha measures the hydraulic functions of leaves. Her field days begin at 3 a.m., when she gears up and climbs to the hanging walkways, which range from 18 to 36 meters (60 to 20 feet) off the forest floor, and are as much as 40 meters (130 feet) long. From 4 a.m. until 8 p.m., she takes her porometer and cruises two different walkways, taking four measurements on each leaf, five leaves per tree, 14 trees a day, every two hours. Which adds up to 280 separate measurements per day that collectively capture the movement of CO2 into and water out of specific leaves over time. It’s a laborious, intensive process, to say the least, but it’s also an essential building block of the Saleska lab’s research.
To help complete the connection between the leaf and the landscape, other researchers take measurements of leaf litter quantity on the forest floor, read dendrometer bands to chart trunk growth, take laser measurements of tree crown reflectivity, and conduct spectral surveys of leaf flushing. Having precise micro-data, such as how individual stomata in a leaf absorb carbon dioxide and release water over the course of a day, is the kind of ground-truthing that adds to the scientists’ understanding of the life cycle of leaves, trees, and the forest as a whole.
Ultimately, this information can be scaled up, cross-referenced with satellite data, and applied to global climate models. “It’s so important to have the data from these flux towers,” says Michela Figueira, a biology professor at UFOPA. The data that Saleska’s team gathers “paints a detailed picture of what’s really happening in the forest.”
That data, Figueira said, doesn’t stay in one scientific silo. One of Saleska’s gifts, she said, is that “he’s not stuck in one field. He has this view of every process to help him make sense of the tower measurements.” Other measurements, including satellite data, are important, she says, but “Scotch knows you can’t simply take a picture and say, `okay, the forest is like that.’”
The next day, Prohaska climbed to a high limb of a 40-meter (130-foot) tree, and suddenly broke into a free-hanging twerk. “Aaaaaaants,” he yelled, after he had disturbed a nest. The angry colony used his rope as a conduit to engulf him. After rappelling down, he shook the ants off in a series of emphatic, sweeping gestures.
Amazingly, Prohaska said after repelling the ant invasion, there have been few accidents and incidents among the fieldworkers over the years. True, one grad student did get stung by a black scorpion, but after 24 hours of basically being paralyzed, he emerged unscathed. There have been a number of open wounds, one case of leishmaniasis, some nasty insect bites and a car crash. For a station that’s been operating in the middle of the Amazon since 2000, that’s an impressive safety record.
Prohaska has become something of a leaf-whisperer. He can tell the age of a leaf the way a pediatrician can gauge a child’s age. Some leaves can live for years, he explained, while others die off and are replaced in months. Each of the 300 species of trees grows and drops leaves at different rates. “Trees here don’t just lose their leaves once a year,” he said. “It’s a constant turnover.”
How the forest takes up carbon fascinates Prohaska. Stomatal conductance, he explained, is essentially the relationship between evaporation and evapotranspiration. Leaf water potential describes, among other things, the optimal time for leaves to open their stomata and “eat” carbon dioxide. “A leaf is like a little factory powered by light,” he says. But leaves pay a price to eat their atmospheric fuel. “To gain CO2,” he said, “you have to lose water.”
Prohaska’s swiftness when climbing is especially helpful here because, he said, “the hardest part about tropical research is sample size.” It’s always difficult to measure the essential functions of leaves—photosynthesis and respiration—because leaves obviously live at the ends of tree branches. Inconveniently, some Amazonian trees don’t even bother with branches until they’re 20 or more meters (65 feet) off the forest floor, since the competition for light makes it a waste of energy to sprout low limbs.
Up in the walkways, Prohaska takes hyperspectral camera measurements that help determine the changing quantity of the leaves over time. Since leaves are reflective in the infrared, he can shoot laser pulses into the canopy, similar to radar. In this way he can document leaf density at different heights in the canopy, and how that changes over time. He can also calibrate a model that gives an average age of leaves and some sense of the leaf quality, vital components for any modeler trying to understand the landscape-scale implications of daily and seasonal changes.
“Not only will these forests be affected by climate change, they themselves will affect climate as well”
Hot, dirty work
Research papers that Saleska has co-authored since that landmark Science paper in 2003 continue to build on his initial observations: Seasonal dry and rainy seasons per se are not the most important driver of leaf production, or the photosynthetic uptake of atmospheric CO2 in the Amazon. Perhaps more importantly, it has become clear to increasing numbers of scientists that satellite data and computer models alone cannot project what a warmer world will do to the forest’s role as a sink or a source. It’s going to take some hot, dirty work. “Changes to the carbon cycle in tropical forests could affect global climate, but predicting such changes has been previously limited by lack of field-based data,” wrote Christopher E. Doughty and colleagues in a special section of the American Geophysical Union’s publication Global Biogeochemical Cycles in May 2015.
The February 26, 2016 Science magazine with the cover line, “Amazon photosynthesis,” was devoted to the subject of carbon exchanges. In an article authored by Jin Wu, who works with Saleska at the University of Arizona (Saleska is a co-author), Wu wrote, “Ultimately, understanding the evolutionary and physiological basis for phenological mechanisms may be critical to predicting the long-term response and resiliency of tropical forests to changing climate.”
Which, in translation, means that in order to help scientists project future climate changes, people like Saleska and Penha and Prohaska will have to continue gathering their sweaty, buggy, gambiarra-infused data.
Like many scientists, Saleska doesn’t like to wade into contemporary political debates. But he won’t shy away from his conviction that human-caused climate change is breeding consequences that will only increase with inaction. “Not only will these forests be affected by climate change, they themselves will affect climate as well,” he said, as he prepared to leave the Tapajós to visit another flux tower farther up the Amazon, near Manaus.
“If we proceed with climate change the way we have been, the fate of this forest will likely be grim no matter what its degree of resilience,” Saleska said. “Resilience just isn’t enough to counteract the massive hammer blow of the amount of climate change that would happen if humans do not slow their impact.”
Why, I asked, does he do this? “Because I’m a scientist and a human being, both. This is an incredible frontier of knowledge and it’s an incredibly exciting experience to be part of the forefront of the advance of human knowledge about how the world works.”
Sitting in a folding chair and shedding his work boots for sandals, Saleska put on his human hat. “You can’t help but come here and be completely awestruck by the beauty of the forest, and also sobered by the threat that the forest is under.” He pointed at the flux tower. “I may have climbed that tower 50 times, 60 times. Almost every single time I go up there, I stop and take a look around and look at the beauty of the forest and think, `This is my office. This is my lab.’”
He got up and finished the thought. “Once you’ve visited the Amazon, once you’ve been in the forest, it never leaves your imagination or your heart.”
“If we proceed with climate change the way we have been, the fate of this forest will likely be grim no matter what its degree of resilience”
A big enough lever?
My last day at the field station, I clipped in for my own vertical field trip up the flux tower at sunset. In every direction, I could see the slanting light illuminating a thousand shifting hues of green as the sun met the western horizon over the Tapajós River.
As the forest chatter at day’s end rose in volume and emanated into the canopy, I imagined the cornucopia of life forms below, settling in for their nighttime rituals: venomous bushmasters and benign blue butterflies, tiny leafcutter ants and giant anteaters, jacarandas and jaguars, all playing their intricate and essential roles in keeping the rainforest—and planet—vibrant.
The Amazon spread out below me like an undulating carpet. A soft, warm breeze moved like a melody and coaxed the trees into a swaying, rhythmic dance. I imagined the forest beginning to exhale, its daylong work of photosynthesis done, the nocturnal creatures beginning their shift.
I thought about what Saleska told me when I asked about his Archimedes quote: “Fossil fuel burning is Archimedes’ lever that will move the Earth unless we stop it,” he said.
Could science be a large enough lever to right it? I asked him.
Saleska paused. “That’s an interesting question,” he said, raising a single eyebrow.
Additional photo and video content created by Director of Photography Bryan Liscinsky, and Camera Operator/Drone Pilot Bruno Senna.
Corey Rich is an acclaimed director, photographer and Nikon Ambassador who is known for fearlessly documenting some of world’s wildest places. His work has appeared on close to 100 magazine covers, including the pages of The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and National Geographic. Rich is a founding partner of Novus Select and is based in South Lake Tahoe, California.


text:
Russia CCCP Retro Tracksuit Jacket 1970's
The Soviet Union were an established major power of international football in the 1970's, even finishing as European Nation's Cup runners up to West Germany in 1972.
This retro tracksuit top is one of the most popular at 6 Yard Box & it's easy to see why. Crafted by COPA, this beautifully recreated CCCP jacket comes in a bright Soviet Red & features CCCP wording woven onto the chest.
Each one comes with a fit & feel that closely matches what the players would have originally worn, as well as arriving in a presentation box for that added touch of class.
• Design, fit & feel of the original jacket
• Woven CCCP wording on the front
• Full-length metal front zip & open side pockets
• Ribbed collar, sleeve cuffs & hem
• Comes in a presentation gift box
• 50% cotton, 50% polyester
• Made in Europe

domain: design


Scion, the budget-conscious brand from Toyota Motor Corps. (NYSE: TM) aimed at a younger demographic, revealed the 2014 tC Sports Coupe in a flashy press conference Thursday at the 2013 New York Auto Show.
Doug Murtha, Scion's vice president, said that the brand has introduced a younger consumer to Toyota and, despite being a relatively young company, it's celebrating its 10th anniversary with the introduction of a limited edition "10 Series" version of the FRS, xB, iQ and xD. Each of the cars will be painted in Silver Ignition and will include some flashy touches.
The 2014 tC Sports Coupe features a more aggressive look for Scion. The front of the 2014tC Sports Coupe has been remodeled and will include a new hood and headlights that give the car a more "muscular" look. The 2014 tC Sports Coupe will sit on 18-inch alloy wheels and the vehicle's more aggressive look would not be complete without some LED lights for the tail lamps and LED lighting for the front and back grille.
With the 2014 tC Sports Coupe, Scion introduces the new Scion Standard Display Audio that will be standard in new vehicles. The display will include a 6.1 inch touchscreen, HD Stereo capability, Bluetooth integration and controls located on the steering wheel. To get even more out of Scion's new display system, there will be an optional "BeSpoke Premium Audio" system that will let drivers sync their listening experiences, including 30,000 radio station, to their smart phones using Aha.
The 2014 tC Sports Coupe features a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine and drivers can choose between a six-speed automatic or manual transmission and the automatic version includes the same Dynamic Rev Management system found in the FRS. The 2014 tC Sports Coupe will be in dealerships by June.
The 10 Series line of limited edition vehicles and each of the cars will have some unique touches to celebrate Scion's 10th anniversary and will be limited to just 10,000 vehicles. When drivers enter the interior, the Scion logo will flash on the dashboard before fading out to the number "10." The silver scheme continues inside the car as each vehicle features silver seatbelts, an illuminated shift knob and interior that will include a sequentially numbered badge. A locator badge will glow blue when drivers unlock the vehicle. Scion's 10 Series will arrive in dealerships in June.


text:
Gremlins actor Dick Miller has died, aged 90
31 January 2019, 13:26
Dick Miller - a popular character actor in many Hollywood films - has died at the age of 90.
He was perhaps best known for playing Murray Futterman in the 1984 film Gremlins, and made hundreds of film and TV appearances.
Miller also appeared in films such as The Terminator, Piranha and the original 1960 version of The Little Shop of Horrors.
Although his most famous character appeared to be killed in Gremlins, he returned to the role for the 1990 sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
Director Joe Dante paid tribute to Miller, describing him as "one of my best friends and most treasured collaborators."
Dick Miller also worked with directors including James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, and famously played a gun shop owner who shows Arnold Schwarzenegger his weapons in The Terminator in 1984.
As a lifelong fan of Dick Miller, I was overjoyed to work with him in Corvette Summer. He turned what could have been a throwaway part into a mimi-masterpiece of effortless comic invention. I was awestruck by his timing, energy & a career that spanned 6 decades! #OneOfAKind #RIP pic.twitter.com/H7dCmzgSok— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) January 31, 2019
Rest in peace, Dick Miller. Terrific character actor.— John Carpenter (@TheHorrorMaster) January 31, 2019
His final film role was in the horror Hanukkah, which has yet to be released.
The actor died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday (January 30), with his wife Lainie, daughter Barbara and granddaughter Autumn at his side.
His family said: "His sense of humour and the unique way he looked at the world won him many lifelong friends and worldwide fans."


Concrete Dust Suppression System. Innovative Technology Summary Report [electronic resource].
- Washington, D.C. : United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Environmental Management, 1998.
Oak Ridge, Tenn. : Distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
- Physical Description:
- 27 pages : digital, PDF file
- Additional Creators:
- United States. Department of Energy. Office of Environmental Management and United States. Department of Energy. Office of Scientific and Technical Information
- Restrictions on Access:
- Free-to-read Unrestricted online access
- The improved technology is a water-based dust suppression system for controlling concrete dust generated by demolition equipment, in this case a demolition ram. This demonstration was performed to assess the effectiveness of this system to (1) minimize the amount of water used to suppress potentially contaminated dust, (2) focus the water spray on the dust-generating source and (3) minimize the dust cloud generated by the demolition activity. The technology successfully reduced the water required by a factor of eight compared to the traditional (baseline) method, controlled the dust generated, and permitted a reduction in the work force. The water spray can be focused at the ram point, but it is affected by wind. Prior to the use of this dust control system, dust generated by the demolition ram was controlled manually by spraying with fire hoses (the baseline technology). The improved technology is 18% less expensive than the baseline technology for the conditions and parameters of this demonstration, however, the automated system can save up to 80% versus the baseline whenever waste water treatment costs are considered. For demolishing one high-walled room and a long slab with a total of 413 m³ (14,580 ft³) of concrete, the savings are $105,000 (waste water treatment included). The improved technology reduced the need for water consumption and treatment by about 88% which results in most of the savings.
- Report Numbers:
- E 1.99:doe/em-0411
E 1.99: ost reference 2154
ost reference 2154
- Published through SciTech Connect.
" ost reference 2154"
"OST Reference 2154"
View MARC record | catkey: 14109871


text:
“Keeping the Score in CA” kickoff concert & media event outside of Los Angeles City Hall on Aug. 19, 2017. (Photos: Linda A. Rapka)
“Momentum is strong, and we can’t let up now!” That was the dominant message on Saturday, Aug. 19 at the “Keeping the Score in CA” free concert and rally at city hall where a crowd of 150 gathered to hear music, politicians and union leaders push for the AB 1300, the music scoring tax credit that will help keep good jobs in California.
“When you look at the overall state budget, the value of retaining these jobs here is of significant state interest,” Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon (D-57th), told the crowd who gathered to hear performances by musicians including Rickey Minor (bandleader for the 69th Annual Emmy Awards whose credits also include “The Tonight Show” and “American Idol”) and Siddhartha Khosla (composer for NBC’s “This Is Us”).
California Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon addresses the crowd at the AFM “Keeping the Score in California,” with (from left) RMA’s Marc Sazer, RMALA’s Steve Dress, AFM Local 47’s John Acosta, LA County Federation of Labor’s Rusty Hicks, and Local UNITE HERE Local 11’s Jordan Fein. (Photo: Paula Parisi / MaxTheTrax)
With three top California assemblyman singing their tune at the American Federation of Musicians’ “Keeping the Score in California” event, it appears as if the tax incentive designed to keep recording work in the state is destined for passage. “I don’t see it as a question of if it’s going to happen, I see it as a question of when it’s going to happen,” said Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, who in April introduced the measure, AB 1300. Continue reading →
As part of an ongoing effort to return scoring jobs to California, some 150 music professionals supporting Los Angeles musician unions gathered on Saturday (Aug. 19) at Los Angeles City Hall for a free concert. They included members of Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians, SAG-AFTRA and IATSE; and other music groups including the Society of Composers and Lyricists, the American Youth Symphony, the L.A. Chamber Orchestra, and the Recording Academy of Los Angeles.
Longtime “American Idol” music director Rickey Minor led a six-man band in music throughout the event, and songwriters Siddhartha Khosla and Chris Pierce performed “We Can Always Come Back to This,” the Memphis-soul-style song that proved popular during the past season of “This Is Us.” Continue reading →
The livelihoods of Hollywood musicians have long been under siege as major movie and TV productions continue to outsource scoring to other states as well as abroad.
Local instrumentalists have tried pressuring the major studios to bring more scoring back to Los Angeles and many are backing a new state bill from Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon (D-Whittier) that would increase tax credits doled out to movie productions that choose to do their music scoring in California.
On Saturday, musicians will step up their protest by staging a free concert at L.A. City Hall, starting at 10:30 a.m. The event is designed to raise awareness of the state bill and bring attention to the issue of runaway scoring. Continue reading →
Work for Los Angeles studio musicians continues to decline as production companies find cheaper alternatives elsewhere, so musicians’ union executives are backing California legislation designed to provide financial incentives to return film- and TV-scoring jobs back to Hollywood.
Assembly Bill 1300, the “Music Scoring Tax Credit Bill,” recently introduced by Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, would offer a 30 percent tax credit to U.S. productions made in foreign countries, as well as for low-budget films, that use California musicians. Union officials believe that passage could mean millions in regained wages for studio players. Continue reading →
Rank-and-file AFM Local 47 musicians Tim Davies and Marc Sazer joined KPCC The Frame’s John Horn in studio to talk about the benefits a new music tax credit would have for music jobs in California.
Introduced in April 2017 by Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, AB 1300, the Music Scoring Tax Credit, would implement a long-sought system for supporting film and television music scoring jobs in California by bringing overseas scoring home.
The bill is aimed at bringing the success of our film and television tax system to musicians and the scores that are an integral part of every film and TV project.
AB 1300 will expand domestic film and TV music scoring by boosting state tax credit for foreign productions
LOS ANGELES, CA (June 13, 2017) — As California suffers an exodus of film and television music jobs, musicians are battling offshoring head-on with a new bill that would boost the state tax credit for foreign productions.
AB 1300, recently introduced by Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, would bring the success of the California Film & TV Tax Credit Program to musicians and the scores that are an integral part of every motion picture and TV project. Continue reading →
Introduced in April 2017 by Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, AB 1300 – the Music Scoring Tax Credit – would implement a long-sought system for supporting film and television music scoring jobs in California by bringing overseas scoring home. The bill is aimed at bringing the success of our California film and television tax system to musicians and the scores that are an integral part of every film and TV project.
How would it work?
Foreign productions: The bill would provide a 30% credit for motion pictures shot outside of North America employing 35 or more musicians and completing at least 75% of the scoring in California.
Low-budget provision: Projects $5 million or under — regardless of filming location — employing nine or more musicians and completing at least 75% of the scoring in California would also qualify.

domain: news


text:
Edward MengAssistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr. Meng joined the faculty of Cedarville University in 2023. His areas of interest include sensors, embedded systems, wearable devices, data fusion, IoT, optics, and interface electronics. Dr. Meng is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Education and Credentials
- PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Auburn University
- MS in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Auburn University
- BS in Optical Information Science and Technology, Guizhou University, China
- Y. Meng, S. Mabry, P. Stewart, K. Cannon, L. Liu, M. Bolding, L. Zhang and M. L. Adams, “Correlating the Passive Response of Eye and Brain to Head Impact using MEMS IMUs on 3D-Printed Human Head Phantom,” in Physiological Measurement, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 035005, Apr. 2020.
- Y, Wu, Y. Meng and M. L. Adams, “An Optical Biosensor Based on Liquid-Core Waveguide and Gold Gratings," in Sensors and Actuators A: Physical vol. 300, pp. 111592, Dec. 2019.
- Y. Meng, R. N. Dean and M. L. Adams, "Improving the Phase Delay Capacitive Interface Circuit Technique using MOSFET Switches," in Measurement Science and Technology, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 025107, Nov. 2019.
- J. C. Prather, Y. Meng, M. Bolt, T. Horton and M. L. Adams, “Wireless Head Impact Monitoring System Utilizing Eye Movement as a Surrogate for Brain Movement," in AEU - International Journal of Electronics and Communications, vol. 105, pp. 54-61, Jun. 2019.
- Y. Meng, B. Bottenfield, M. Bolding, L. Liu and M. L. Adams, "Sensing Passive Eye Response to Impact Induced Head Acceleration Using MEMS IMUs," in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 182-191, Feb. 2018.
- Y. Meng and R. N. Dean, "A Technique for Improving the Linear Operating Range for a Relative Phase Delay Capacitive Sensor Interface Circuit," in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 624-630, March 2016.
- Hobbies: Reading, traveling, watching movies, ping pong, and board games.
- Why Cedarville: God has led me all the way here, and I am full of joy and thankfulness.

domain: literature