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The average long-term impact of Darwinian evolution on Earth's habitability remains extremely uncertain. Recent attempts to reconcile this uncertainty by "Darwinizing" nonreplicating biogeochemical processes subject to persistence-based selection conform with the historicity of the geochemical record but lack mechanistic clarity. Here, we present a theoretical framework showing how: 1) A biogeochemical "cycle-biota-variant" (CBV) can be defined non-arbitrarily as one biologically facilitated pathway for net recycling of an essential element, plus the genotypes driving the relevant interconversion reactions. 2) Distinct CBVs can be individuated if they have climatic or geochemical side effects that feed-back on relative persistence. 3) The separation of spatial/temporal scales between the dynamics of such effects and those of conventional Darwinian evolution can introduce a degree of randomness into the relationship between CBVs and their Earth system impact properties, loosely analogous to that between the biochemical causes and evolutionary effects of genetic mutation. 4) Threshold behavior in climate feedback can accentuate biotic impacts and lead to CBV-level "competitive exclusion". 5) CBV-level persistence selection is observationally distinguishable from genotype-level selection by strong covariance between "internal" CBV properties (genotypes and reactions) and "external" climatic effects, which we argue is analogous to the covariance between fitness and traits under conventional Darwinian selection. These factors cannot circumvent the basic fact that local natural selection will often favor phenotypes that ultimately destabilize large-scale geochemical/climatic properties. However, we claim that our results nevertheless demonstrate the theoretical coherence of persistence-selection between non-replicating life--environment interaction patterns and therefore have broad biogeochemical applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Global Change Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Gaia hypothesis is often used as the basis for demonstrating environmental integrity in current arguments within the field of ecological philosophy. However, when citing the Gaia hypothesis, people are often vague when defining its connotations and extensions. By analysing the controversies surrounding the Gaia hypothesis, we can achieve an appropriate conception of its ontology, including the blindness of the strong theoretical approach and the rationality of the weak one. Gaia's naturalistic epistemology, holistic methodology and systematic values can thus be discriminated. Gaia has strong significance for allowing human beings to understand the Earth's ecological environment and is an effective ecological holistic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With some justification, Michel Serres claimed that he was one of the first to make ecology a central question for philosophy. Many of his books explore the ecological emergency and spell out the need to include the more-than-human in any ethical and political response. Yet Serres' thought has been generally neglected in scholarly debate outside France. To highlight the importance of Serres' philosophy, I contrast aspects of his work with Latour's sustained search for a political ecology. I contend that Serres' thought overlaps with but also challenges Latour's approach that has increasingly turned for inspiration to the theory of Gaia proposed by Lovelock and Margulis. I argue that drawing from science, history, fables, the humanities and his own experience, Serres brings together a narrative of the commonality of all living and non-living things that exposes a contractable obligation and formulates the grounding for a new politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the Christian ethical meanings of species loss. We begin with a description of the Dutch colonization of Mauritius, which entailed grave and irreversible species losses that foreshadowed current global realities. Revisiting the Gaia hypothesis, we argue that the whole of creation, including humanity, is interconnected and interdependent, and that it is disastrous when humans ignore our connection to the Earth community. Christians must therefore respond to species loss at theological, ethical, and spiritual levels. The imago dei and the dominion mandate must be construed by Christians to mean responsibility as the most powerful species in the Earth community to offer loving care to the whole of creation. Human responsibility must be highlighted, not archaic understandings of divine power and human weakness. Human connectedness to—rather than alienation from—creation must be nurtured before species loss finally overtakes humanity itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part of the article, biosemiotics will be presented in its historical and theoretical dynamics. New areas of research that have emerged in the speculative field of biosemiotics, such as ecosemiotics, will be explored. In all its developments, biosemiotics, which identifies semiosis with life, excludes inorganic matter from any semiotics processes. However, the inorganic world is a fundamental part of the biosphere, especially if we consider the emergence of life. In order to include inorganic matter within semiotic processes of the biosphere we will use James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis reinterpreted in the light of semiotics. If we use the hypothesis of planet Earth as a living system in its complexity and if we consider that every living system is intrinsically semiotic, then inorganic matter must also participate in semiotics processes. In this sense, the semiotics of the inorganic world reveals that it participates in a sort of non-human agency. This type of speculative semiotics engages semiotics processes that are constitutive of matter and that can be read as the story of the planet itself. In conclusion, I will propose a physiosemiotics as semiotics of matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to the article "Gas Guzzling Gaia, or: A Prehistory of Climate Change Denialism," by Leah Aronowsky in the Winter 2021 issue. It discusses the quasi-mythical status of independent scientist James Lovelock and the inspiration he gave to academics and activists, the Gaia hypothesis proposed by Lovelock, and Aronowsky's survey of the textual material about Lovelock and his works.

This is a review of Soil Grown Tall: The Epic Saga of Life from Earth, by Gregory J. Retallack. In this book, Retallack shows how soils and life have coevolved over the last 3.5 billion years, and what soils tell us about the environments in which various terrestrial organisms have evolved and flourished. A theme of the book is the Proserpina Principle: producers consume CO2, consumers exhale it, and alternating dominance of producers and consumers alternates global warming and cooling, while keeping temperature within life-permitting limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now that we know that Earth-like planets are ubiquitous in the universe, as well as that most of them are much older than the Earth, it is justified to ask to what extent evolutionary outcomes on other such planets are similar, or indeed commensurable, to the outcomes we perceive around us. In order to assess the degree of specialty or mediocrity of our trajectory of biospheric evolution, we need to take into account recent advances in theoretical astrobiology, in particular (i) establishing the history of habitable planets' formation in the Galaxy, and (ii) understanding the crucial importance of "Gaian" feedback loops and temporal windows for the interaction of early life with its physical environment. Hereby we consider an alternative macroevolutionary pathway that may result in tight functional integration of all sub-planetary ecosystems, eventually giving rise to a true superorganism at the biospheric level. The blueprint for a possible outcome of this scenario has been masterfully provided by the great Polish novelist Stanisław Lem in his 1961 novel Solaris. In fact, Solaris offers such a persuasive and powerful case for an "extremely strong" Gaia hypothesis that it is, arguably, high time to investigate it in a discursive astrobiological and philosophical context. In addition to novel predictions in the domain of potentially detectable biosignatures, some additional cognitive and heuristic benefits of studying such extreme cases of functional integration are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I will address the roles played by quantity in Wu Ming-Yi's consideration of nature in Jia li shuibian name jin (So Much Water So Close to Home). I will first examine how he brings the qualitative properties of nature to life by reference to nature's quantitative properties while equally accentuating the importance of the latter. Then, I will investigate a special quantitative term--"one," which can be understood as "one-system"--and discuss how it structures Wu's depiction of nature both according to and beyond James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis and Bruce Clarke's revision of Lovelock. Finally, I will explore how So Much Water anticipates Timothy Morton's notion of hyperobjects, namely objects with very large but finite magnitude in time and/or space, and how the book treats Benoit B. Mandelbrot's concept of fractal as a different, if not better, way of dealing with these hyper-sized objects. In the conclusion, I will touch briefly upon the ambiguous quantity "x," which summarizes the above-mentioned senses of quantity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined a philosophical discourse of the Earth in the New History. The purpose of the study is to prove the practical importance of the philosophical discourse of the Earth for advancing human civilization. The nature of philosophy means the transformation of the discourse and the way of human life in accordance with the intelligible complexity of the Earth and the Universe. A holistic view of the Earth and the Universe is used by humans in the proclaimed cultural ideal, with the help of which they achieve the ordering (harmonization) of their way of life with the laws of the Earth and the Universe. The authors identified and considered three stages of a holistic view of the process of transforming the Earth and the Universe: (1) The concept of the biosphere and noosphere by Vladimir Vernadsky; (2) the Gaia hypothesis by James Lovelock; and (3) the "Evolving matter" theory by Oleg Bazaluk. The use of knowledge about the nature of the Earth and the Universe transformation determines human activities and the limits of an individual's self-actualization. Essentially, a philosophical discourse of the Earth focuses on the practice of human transformation of the Earth and the nearby space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Eurasian Journal of Philology: Science & Education is the property of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This report supports geotourism as an effective method of disaster storytelling, based on the lessons learned during and after the 2013 Izu-Oshima Island Debris Flow Disaster. Geotourism can provide a geological explanation to visitors as to why the disaster occurred in Izu-Oshima island, while also allowing a vital opportunity to help local people impacted by the disaster make sense of their catastrophic experiences. By doing so, individuals involved in geotourism can share a reverence and respect for the living Earth, which enables us to move forward even after experiencing a catastrophic disaster. This function is very similar to what Disaster Storytelling has. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tells the story of the oil and gas origins of the Gaia hypothesis, the theory that the Earth is a homeostatic system. It shows how Gaia's key assumption—that the climate is a fundamentally stable system, able to withstand perturbations—emerged as a result of a collaboration between the theory's progenitor, James Lovelock, and Royal Dutch Shell in response to Shell's concerns about the effects of its products on the climate. The article explains how Lovelock elaborated the Gaia hypothesis and gave it evidential depth through a series of Royal Dutch Shell-funded research projects meant to identify organisms whose biological activities might double as climate-regulating mechanisms. The article goes on to show how this research subsequently laid the foundation for a distinct genre of climate change denialism, in which corporations sowed doubt not by denying the phenomenon of global warming but by naturalizing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how Gaia standing can help with the dispute resolution in environmental litigation. It explores the use of Gaia theory to plaintiffs involved in cases that are focused on the protection of natural or environmental resources. It discusses the truth behind the Gaia theory which promotes the Earth as a functional single entity or a unified organism instead of being composed of groups of individuals of different ecosystems.

This article examines the reinvigoration of outer space imaginaries in the era of global environmental change, and the impacts of these imaginaries on Earth. Privatized space research mobilizes fears of ecological, political, or economic catastrophe to garner support for new utopian futures, or the search for Earth 2.0. These imaginaries reflect dominant global discourses about environmental and social issues, and enable the flow of earthly resources toward an extraterrestrial frontier. In contrast, eco-centric visions emerging from Gaia theory or feminist science fiction project post-earthly life in terms that are ecological, engaged in multispecies relations and ethics, and anticapitalist. In these imaginaries, rather than centering humans as would-be destroyers or saviors of Earth, our species becomes merely instrumental in launching life--a multispecies process--off the planet, a new development in deep evolutionary time. This article traces these two imaginaries and how they are reshaping material and political earthly life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though we are on the precipice of a "bad Anthropocene," humankind should not colonize Mars. Mars is often depicted as our "Planet B"—an evacuation plan for Earth. But in this time of ecological crisis, theologian Sallie McFague suggests that we think of the Earth as God's body and take our obligation to care for our common home seriously. Likewise, in contrast to calls for colonization, I contend that two American historical anecdotes—the safety valve theory and the Yellowstone—illustrate why humanity should think less about becoming Martians and instead find meaning and purpose in remaining Earthlings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the Gaia hypothesis and the claim that freedom could offer a common ground for ecological politics. Topics discussed include public discourse about the state of the planet, reasons for the difficulty of making sense of Gaia, and view of scientist James Lovelock on the Gaia hypothesis.

Using Gaia DR2 data, we present an up-to-date sample of white dwarfs within 20 pc of the Sun. In total we identified 139 systems in Gaia DR2, nine of which are new detections, with the closest of these located at a distance of 13.05 pc. We estimated atmospheric parameters for all stellar remnants based on the Gaia parallaxes and photometry. The high precision and completeness of the Gaia astrometry allowed us to search for wide binary companions. We re-identified all known binaries where both components have accurate DR2 astrometry, and established the binarity of one of the nine newly identified white dwarfs. No new companions were found to previously known 20 pc white dwarfs. Finally, we estimated the local white dwarf space-density to be (4.49 ± 0.38) × 10−3 pc−3, having given careful consideration to the distance-dependent Gaia completeness, which misses known objects at short distances, but is close to complete for white dwarfs near 20 pc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By taking advantage of the superb measurements of position and velocity for an unprecedented large number of stars provided in Gaia DR2, we have generated the first maps of the rotation velocity, V rot, and vertical velocity, V z, distributions as a function of the Galactocentric radius, R gal, across a radial range of 5 < R gal < 12 kpc. In the R  −  V rot map, we have identified many diagonal ridge features, which are compared with the location of the spiral arms and the expected outer Lindblad resonance of the Galactic bar. We have detected also radial wave-like oscillations of the peak of the vertical velocity distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The availability of reliable bolometric corrections and reddening estimates, rather than the quality of parallaxes, will be one of the main limiting factors in determining the luminosities of a large fraction of Gaia stars. With this goal in mind, we provide Gaia G BP, G, and G RP synthetic photometry for the entire MARCS grid and test the performance of our synthetic colours and bolometric corrections against space-borne absolute spectrophotometry. We find indication of a magnitude-dependent offset in Gaia DR2 G magnitudes, which must be taken into account in high-accuracy investigations. Our interpolation routines are easily used to derive bolometric corrections at desired stellar parameters and to explore the dependence of Gaia photometry on T eff, $$\log \,g$$, $$\rm {[Fe/H]}$$, $$[\alpha /\rm {Fe}]$$, and E (B − V). Gaia colours for the Sun and Vega, and T eff-dependent extinction coefficients are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We combine parallaxes from the first Gaia data release with the spectrophotometric distance estimation framework for stars in the fifth RAVE survey data release. The combined distance estimates aremore accurate than either determination in isolation -- uncertainties are on average two times smaller than for RAVE-only distances (three times smaller for dwarfs), and 1.4 times smaller than TGAS parallax uncertainties (two times smaller for giants). We are also able to compare the estimates from spectrophotometry to those from Gaia, and use this to assess the reliability of both catalogues and improve our distance estimates. We find that the distances to the lowest log g stars are, on average, overestimated and caution that they may not be reliable. We also find that it is likely that the Gaia random uncertainties are smaller than the reported values. As a by-product we derive ages for the RAVE stars, many with relative uncertainties less than 20 per cent. These results for 219 566 RAVE sources have been made publicly available, and we encourage their use for studies that combine the radial velocities provided by RAVE with the proper motions provided by Gaia. A sample that we believe to be reliable can be found by taking only the stars with the flag notification 'flag any=0'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to study the prolific and interconnected qualities of the earth from spiritual perspective. The earth maintains and supplies basic requirements for all the living beings on the earth perpetually. Every element in the nature has been interconnected in such a way that nothing seems redundant and none is reckless in ecosystem. But, the dominant anthropocentric concept has weakened the ecosystem. The anthropocentric practice should be replaced by bio-centric one to preserve the earth. Hindu religious concept toward the earth should be brought into practice in order to amend the deteriorated condition of the earth apart from huge capital investment. This paper adopts spiritual ecology and Gaia theory as the base of discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders the challenge of environmental communication by inquiring into the fundamental rhetorical difficulty of thinking in terms of ecology. We discuss two essential yet bewildering aspects of ecology: its focus on interconnection and its use of multiple scales. On this basis, we distil six rhetorical recommendations: a shift from appealing to preexisting values to avenues for transforming values; a shift from arguments from authority to addressing legitimate resistances; a shift from a focus on mutual agreement to a mutual bewilderment; a shift from intellectual comprehension to personal experience; a shift from negative effects to positive connections; and, finally, a shift from a focus on political results to local transformations. We experiment with this rhetorical approach through two applications: for critical reassessments of past articulations we consider the Gaia Hypothesis and Deep Ecology, and for current refinements to environmental problems we consider controversies around Marcellus Shale gas development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study takes food as its scape to propose an Indigenist, Gaian pedagogy and asks what food studies might reveal ecopedagogically for approaches to teaching about Indigenous matters in the context of environmental education and its research. Drawing on empirical research about food and Indigenous-settler relations in Australia, and through analysis of data amassed from student assignments on food sources conducted over a six- year period, I find that there is resistance to taking an Indigenist approach to critical, place-based education (PBE) even as Indigenous scholarship argues for its urgent need. Even more muted is the recognition of Gaian understanding of the need to preserve the languages of “Scapes” to help with this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe methods designed to determine the astrophysical parameters of quasars based on spectra coming from the red and blue spectrophotometers of the Gaia satellite. These methods principally rely on two already published algorithms that are the weighted principal component analysis and the weighted phase correlation. The presented approach benefits from a fast implementation, an intuitive interpretation as well as strong diagnostic tools on the potential errors that may arise during predictions. The production of a semi-empirical library of spectra as they will be observed by Gaia is also covered and subsequently used for validation purpose. We detail the pre-processing that is necessary in order for these spectra to be fully exploitable by our algorithms along with the procedures that are used to predict the redshifts of the quasars, their continuum slopes, the total equivalent width of their emission lines and whether these are broad absorption line (BAL) quasars or not. Performances of these procedures were assessed in comparison with the extremely randomized trees learning method and were proven to provide better results on the redshift predictions and on the ratio of correctly classified observations though the probability of detection of BAL quasars remains restricted by the low resolution of these spectra as well as by their limited signal-to-noise ratio. Finally, the triggering of some warning flags allows us to obtain an extremely pure subset of redshift predictions where approximately 99 per cent of the observations come along with absolute errors that are below 0.1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both social systems and ecosystems there is a need to resolve potential conflicts between the interests of individuals and the collective interest of the community. The collective interests need to survive the turbulent dynamics of social and ecological interactions. To see how different systems with different sets of interactions have different degrees of robustness, we need to look at their different contingent histories. We analyze abstract artificial life models of such systems, and note that some prominent examples rely on explicitly ahistorical frameworks; we point out where analyses that ignore a contingent historical context can be fatally flawed. The mathematical foundations of Gaia theory are presented in a form whose very basic and general assumptions point to wide applicability across complex dynamical systems. This highlights surprising connections between robustness and accumulated contingent happenstance, regardless of whether Darwinian evolution is or is not implicated. Real-life studies highlight the role of history, and artificial life studies should do likewise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the measurements performed in the first 14 months of Gaia operation, we have solved the problem of obtaining the systematic differences between the stellar positions and proper motions of the TGAS (Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution) and Tycho-2 catalogues. By dividing the common stars from the TGAS and Tycho-2 catalogues into three G-magnitude groups for mean values of $$10\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{m} 5,11\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{m} 5,and13\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{m} 0,$$ we have obtained the systematic differences between the stellar equatorial coordinates and proper motions of both catalogues in the form of a decomposition into vector spherical harmonics by taking into account the magnitude equation. The systematic components have been extracted from the individual differences with a probability of 0.977-0.999. The constructed model of systematic differences allows any position measurements performed using Tycho-2 as a reference catalogue to be transformed to the TGAS frame. An important fact is the existence of a magnitude equation in the systematic differences: when passing from bright ( G = 10) to faint ( G = 13) stars, the systematic position differences change within the range from approximately −40 to 15 mas, while the systematic proper motion differences change from −3 to 3 mas yr. The orientation and mutual rotation parameters of the Tycho-2 and TGAS frames have also been found to be different for stars of different magnitudes: when passing from bright to faint stars, the rotation angle of the Tycho-2 frame relative to TGAS changes from 3.51 to 5.63 mas, while the angular velocity of rotation changes from 0.35 to 1.22 mas yr. Based on the developed method that allows the extent to which the systematic errors in the equatorial propermotions of stars affect the results of a kinematic analysis of the Galactic proper motions to be estimated within the Ogorodnikov-Milne model, we have shown that the slope of the Galactic rotation curve and the Oort parameter C are most sensitive to the transition from the Tycho-2 frame to the TGAS one. Their relative changes after the transformation to the TGAS frame reach 56 and 100%, respectively. At the same time, the changes in the estimates of the Oort parameters A and B as well as the linear velocity of the Sun relative to the Galactic center, the Galactic rotation period, the ratio of the epicyclic frequency to the angular velocity of Galactic rotation, and the mass of the Galaxy within the Galactocentric distance of the Sun are not so large, being 2−10%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An exploration of the interconnectedness of the geometries of a water molecule, the geologic and geographic regions of our planet, and the universe as a whole. Water is shown as a crucial 'bridge' passing from the microscopic to the stellar and interstellar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-five years ago this month, Thomas Gold published a seminal manuscript suggesting the presence of a "deep, hot biosphere" in the Earth's crust. Since this publication, a considerable amount of attention has been given to the study of deep biospheres, their role in geochemical cycles and their potential to inform on the origin of life and its potential outside of Earth. Overwhelming evidence now supports the presence of a deep biosphere ubiquitously distributed on Earth in both terrestrial and marine settings. Furthermore, it has become apparent that much of this life is dependent on lithogenically sourced high-energy compounds to sustain productivity. A vast diversity of uncultivated microorganisms has been detected in subsurface environments and we show that H2, CH4 and CO feature prominently in many of their predicted metabolisms. Despite 25 years of intense study, key questions remain on life in the deep subsurface, including whether it is endemic and the extent of its involvement in the anaerobic formation and degradation of hydrocarbons. Emergent data from cultivation and next-generation sequencing approaches continue to provide promising new hints to answer these questions. As Gold suggested and as has become increasingly evident, to better understand the subsurface is critical to further understanding the Earth, life, the evolution of life and the potential for life elsewhere. To this end, we suggest the need to develop a robust network of interdisciplinary scientists and accessible field sites for long-term monitoring of the Earth's subsurface in the form of a deep subsurface microbiome initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At its inception innocent of philosophical or metaphysical designs, the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis was soon liberated from the precincts of scientific cultivation to enter into cultural free association. Nonetheless, scientific and scholarly attention and debate have long precipitated a bona fide discourse of Gaia theory. Moreover, intellectually serious extra-scientific figures of Gaia have also been on the rise in the last decade. This essay treats a selection of these newer Gaian figures, specifically, Isabelle Stengers’s Gaia the Intruder and Bruno Latour’s secular Gaia, in relation to Lovelock’s Gaia and Lynn Margulis’s evocations of autopoietic Gaia. When nuanced through second-order systems theory, the discourse of autopoietic Gaia satisfies Stengers’s and Latour’s demands for a non-holistic, heterogeneous yet coherent Gaia concept fit for communicative efficacy in the so-called Anthropocene epoch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biology and politics have always been permeable to one another, trading metaphors back and forth. This is nowhere more blatant than when people claim to talk about ‘the planet’ as a whole. James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia has often been interpreted as a godlike figure. By reviewing in some detail a critical assessment of Lovelock’s Gaia by one scientist, Toby Tyrrell, the paper tries to map out why it is so difficult for natural as well as social scientists not to confuse Gaia with some sort of Providence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context. Gaia is a space mission that is currently measuring the five astrometric parameters, as well as spectrophotometry of at least 1 billion stars to G = 20:7 mag with unprecedented precision. The sixth parameter in phase space (i.e., radial velocity) is also measured thanks to medium-resolution spectroscopy that is being obtained for the 150 million brightest stars. During the commissioning phase, two fields, one around each ecliptic pole, have been repeatedly observed to assess and to improve the overall satellite performances, as well as the associated reduction and analysis software. A ground-based photometric and spectroscopic survey was therefore initiated in 2007, and is still running to gather as much information as possible about the stars in these fields. This work is of particular interest to the validation of the radial velocity spectrometer outputs. Aims. The paper presents the radial velocity measurements performed for the Southern targets in the 12-17 R magnitude range on high- to mid-resolution spectra obtained with the GIRAFFE and UVES spectrographs. Methods. Comparison of the South Ecliptic Pole (SEP) GIRAFFE data to spectroscopic templates observed with the HERMES (Mercator in La Palma, Spain) spectrograph enabled a first coarse characterisation of the 747 SEP targets. Radial velocities were then obtained by comparing the results of three different methods. Results. In this paper, we present an initial overview of the targets to be found in the 1 sq. deg SEP region that was observed repeatedly by Gaia ever since its commissioning. In our representative sample, we identified one galaxy, six LMC S-stars, nine candidate chromospherically active stars, and confirmed the status of 18 LMC Carbon stars. A careful study of the 3471 epoch radial velocity measurements led us to identify 145 RV constant stars with radial velocities varying by less than 1 km s-1. Seventy-eight stars show significant RV scatter, while nine stars show a composite spectrum. As expected, the distribution of the RVs exhibits two main peaks that correspond to Galactic and LMC stars. By combining [Fe=H] and log g estimates, and RV determinations, we identified 203 members of the LMC, while 51 more stars are candidate members. Conclusions. This is the first systematic spectroscopic characterisation of faint stars located in the SEP field. During the coming years, we plan to continue our survey and gather additional high- and mid-resolution data to better constrain our knowledge on key reference targets for Gaia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Empedocles' zoogony, an original set of single-specialism organisms - solitary hands, eyes, etc. - combined into complex organisms, of which the fittest survived. A less recognized anticipation of (one strand of) the Darwinian tradition relates to the superorganism theory: what is naturally selected for is not the individual and/or its kin, but, as most manifestly in insect colonies, the cooperative group. Empedocles' Love likewise works by promoting co-operation, whose emergence in complex organisms reflects her growing power, and the periodic world-organism, Sphairos, her ultimate triumph. This latter divinity is not a homogeneous blend of the elements, but a single self-sufficient superorganism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Problems of Sustainable Development / Problemy Ekorozwoju is the property of Faculty of Environmental Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The scientific output of the proposed EChO mission (in terms of spectroscopic characterization of the atmospheres of transiting extrasolar planets) will be maximized by a careful selection of targets and by a detailed characterization of the main physical parameters (such as masses and radii) of both the planets and their stellar hosts. To achieve this aim, the availability of high-quality data from other space-borne and ground-based programs will play a crucial role. Here we identify and discuss the elements of the Gaia catalogue that will be of utmost relevance for the selection and characterization of transiting planet systems to be observed by the proposed EChO mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the origins, precursors, and main proponents of climate change tipping points, and the debates that the tipping point concept has occasioned. The importance of dynamical systems theory, GAIA theory, and abrupt climate change to the main proponents of tipping point warning systems is noted and situated in historical context. The 'semantic confusion' that animates contemporary debates, it is suggested, results not simply from a narrow conception of tipping points, but from inattention to the way metaphor was used to reshape climate policy. A deeper understanding of dynamical systems theory and its origins (both mathematical and metaphorical) is recommended for addressing the value of tipping points in policy. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:427-434. doi: 10.1002/wcc.344 For further resources related to this article, please visit the . Conflict of interest: The author has declared no conflicts of interest for this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online virtual trade fairs are becoming a popular way of establishing economic trade relationships nowadays. In the current context of the world economy, new ways of creating virtual environments where suppliers can show their products to potential customers are increasingly in demand. Some people can be found in this kind of scenario representing a role such as, for example, the administrator, the customers or the suppliers. The interaction between them is one of the most important characteristics of these commercial environments. Taking all these concepts into account, this article presents a 3D virtual trade fair that has been defined using an agent-oriented approach. This approach makes it possible to model, understand and implement the virtual economic environment, where interaction is the norm. Moreover, it makes it easy to add new components and meet new requirements in order to develop an open architecture that continuously changes and evolves. In this virtual trade fair, the chosen methodology has been Gaia, widely used for agent-oriented analysis and design of multi-agent systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern whole-organism genome analysis, in combination with biomass estimates, allows us to estimate a lower bound on the total information content in the biosphere: 5.3 × 1031 (±3.6 × 1031) megabases (Mb) of DNA. Given conservative estimates regarding DNA transcription rates, this information content suggests biosphere processing speeds exceeding yottaNOPS values (1024 Nucleotide Operations Per Second). Although prokaryotes evolved at least 3 billion years before plants and animals, we find that the information content of prokaryotes is similar to plants and animals at the present day. This information-based approach offers a new way to quantify anthropogenic and natural processes in the biosphere and its information diversity over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss and compare various positions in leadership theory through the perspective of Kierkegaard's modes of existence. After a brief presentation of the three modes of existence-aesthetic, ethical and religious-and a description of the ironic-reflective interpretation of the change process (expanding contexts), we synthesize leadership theories into the three main positions of instrumental, responsible and spiritual. Later, we compare and integrate the different positions in leadership theory with the three modes of existence. We argue that the various positions in leadership theory represent different modes of existence. This means that leaders (or cultures) anchored within the aesthetical mode of existence tend to prefer the instrumental position, leaders (or cultures) anchored in the ethical mode of existence tend to prefer the responsible position, and leaders (or cultures) anchored in the religious mode of existence tend to prefer the spiritual position. In accordance with this line of reasoning the ironic-reflective interpretation of Kierkegaard's three modes of existence gives a relevant explanation for development of leadership theory, and we delve deeper into some key dimensions in the expanding contexts of ontology, epistemology, ethics, the image of man and organizational ends. We conclude that it is necessary to start a process of transition in the mode of existence and in leadership theory in order to cope with the underlying patterns of the natural, cultural and economic crises we are facing today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]