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"Bird, Michael"
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Studio voices : art and life in twentieth-century Britain
Studio Voices' explores the multi-layered experiences of modern and contemporary British artists in their own words, drawing on the author's original research in the Artists' Lives audio archive at the British Library. Michael Bird's fascinating oral history of the lives and working practices of artists over the last century, extracted from the huge and growing archive of artists' interviews recorded since 1990, allows us to eavesdrop on artists' life-story conversations, which range through creative practice and professional achievements, childhood memories, family life, relationships, and unexpected, incidental epiphanies of self-awareness.
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A global carbon and nitrogen isotope perspective on modern and ancient human diet
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses are widely used to infer diet and mobility in ancient and modern human populations, potentially providing a means to situate humans in global food webs. We collated 13,666 globally distributed analyses of ancient and modern human collagen and keratin samples. We converted all data to a common “Modern Diet Equivalent” reference frame to enable direct comparison among modern human diets, human diets prior to the advent of industrial agriculture, and the natural environment. This approach reveals a broad diet prior to industrialized agriculture and continued in modern subsistence populations, consistent with the human ability to consume opportunistically as extreme omnivores within complex natural food webs and across multiple trophic levels in every terrestrial and many marine ecosystems on the planet. In stark contrast, isotope dietary breadth across modern nonsubsistence populations has compressed by two-thirds as a result of the rise of industrialized agriculture and animal husbandry practices and the globalization of food distribution networks.
Journal Article
A 33,000-year paleohydrological record from Sanamere Lagoon, north-eastern tropical savannas of Australia
There are very few records of past terrestrial environmental change of any time period for the Australian tropical savannas. Here we document the hydrological development of Sanamere Lagoon, north Queensland, from a 1.72 m sediment sequence with a basal age of ca. 33 ka. We measure a variety of proxies reflecting environmental change within and around the lagoon, including grain size, elemental and diatom abundance, and carbon and nitrogen isotope composition. By integrating the interpretation of multiple proxies, we show that regional climatic events, such as the reactivation of the monsoon at 15 ka and sea-level rise ending at 7 ka, are reflected in local ecosystem change and a diversity of biogeochemical responses in Sanamere Lagoon. This record makes a significant contribution to the development of records of environmental change from an under-studied region in tropical Australia through the Holocene to the LGM and beyond—a step towards enabling a more detailed understanding of regional monsoon (paleo)dynamics. In particular, this study highlights nuances in the effect of Indonesian-Australian Summer monsoon dynamics in a region less affected by sea level and continental shelf drowning complexities.
Journal Article
Molecular Decolonization: An Indigenous Microcosm Perspective of Planetary Health
Indigenous peoples are resilient peoples with deep traditional knowledge and scientific thought spanning millennia. Global discourse on climate change however has identified Indigenous populations as being a highly vulnerable group due to the habitation in regions undergoing rapid change, and the disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality already faced by this population. Therefore, the need for Indigenous self-determination and the formal recognition of Indigenous knowledges, including micro-level molecular and microbial knowledges, as a critical foundation for planetary health is in urgent need. Through the process of Indigenous decolonization, even at the smallest molecular scale, we define a method back to our original selves and therefore to our planetary origin story. Our health and well-being is directly reflected at the planetary scale, and we suggest, can be rooted through the concept of molecular decolonization, which through the English language emerged from the ‘First 1000 Days Australia’ and otherwise collectively synthesized globally. It is through our evolving understanding of decolonization at a molecular level, which many of our Indigenous cultural and healing practices subtly embody, that we are better able to translate the intricacies within the current Indigenous scientific worldview through Western forms of discourse.
Journal Article
Stable Isotope Anatomy of Tropical Cyclone Ita, North-Eastern Australia, April 2014
The isotope signatures registered in speleothems during tropical cyclones (TC) provides information about the frequency and intensity of past TCs but the precise relationship between isotopic composition and the meteorology of TCs remain uncertain. Here we present continuous δ18O and δ2H data in rainfall and water vapour, as well as in discrete rainfall samples, during the passage of TC Ita and relate the evolution in isotopic compositions to local and synoptic scale meteorological observations. High-resolution data revealed a close relationship between isotopic compositions and cyclonic features such as spiral rainbands, periods of stratiform rainfall and the arrival of subtropical and tropical air masses with changing oceanic and continental moisture sources. The isotopic compositions in discrete rainfall samples were remarkably constant along the ~450 km overland path of the cyclone when taking into account the direction and distance to the eye of the cyclone at each sampling time. Near simultaneous variations in δ18O and δ2H values in rainfall and vapour and a near-equilibrium rainfall-vapour isotope fractionation indicates strong isotopic exchange between rainfall and surface inflow of vapour during the approach of the cyclone. In contrast, after the passage of spiral rainbands close to the eye of the cyclone, different moisture sources for rainfall and vapour are reflected in diverging d-excess values. High-resolution isotope studies of modern TCs refine the interpretation of stable isotope signatures found in speleothems and other paleo archives and should aim to further investigate the influence of cyclone intensity and longevity on the isotopic composition of associated rainfall.
Journal Article
Early human settlement of Sahul was not an accident
The first peopling of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea and the Aru Islands joined at lower sea levels) by anatomically modern humans required multiple maritime crossings through Wallacea, with at least one approaching 100 km. Whether these crossings were accidental or intentional is unknown. Using coastal-viewshed analysis and ocean drift modelling combined with population projections, we show that the probability of randomly reaching Sahul by any route is <5% until ≥40 adults are ‘washed off’ an island at least once every 20 years. We then demonstrate that choosing a time of departure and making minimal headway (0.5 knots) toward a destination greatly increases the likelihood of arrival. While drift modelling demonstrates the existence of ‘bottleneck’ crossings on all routes, arrival via New Guinea is more likely than via northwestern Australia. We conclude that anatomically modern humans had the capacity to plan and make open-sea voyages lasting several days by at least 50,000 years ago.
Journal Article