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Recent advances in technology have enabled an unprecedented development of underwater research, extending from near shore to the deepest regions of the globe. However, monitoring of biodiversity is not fully implemented in political agendas and biological observations in the deep ocean have been even more limited in space and time.The Foresight Workshop on Advances in Ocean Biological Observations: a sustained system for deep-ocean meroplankton was convened to to foster advances in the knowledge on deep-ocean invertebrate larval distributions and improve our understanding of fundamental deep-ocean ecological processes such as connectivity and resilience of benthic communities to natural and human-induced disturbance. This Meroplankton Observations Workshop had two specific goals: 1) review the state-of-the-art instrumentation available for meroplankton observations; 2) develop a strategy to implement technological innovations for in-situ meroplankton observation. Presentations and discussions are summarised in this report covering: i) key challenges and priorities for advancing the knowledge of deep-sea larval diversity and distribution: ii) recent developments in technology and future needs for plankton observation, iii) data integration and oceanographic modelling; iv) synergies and added value of a sustained observation system for meroplankton; v) steps for developing a sustained observation system for deep-ocean meroplankton and plans to maximise collaborative opportunities.

The end of state-socialism has produced complex processes of urban change in East and Central Europe including the reshaping of urban identities and urban cultural landscapes in post-socialist cities. The geographical literature focusing on changes in the cultural landscapes of post-socialist cities has emphasized discontinuity from the state-socialist period. The removal and renaming of elements of the built environment and accompanying symbolic forms have been taken to be emblematic of the change of political and social system from state-socialism. While not denying the importance of these processes, this paper argues that such analyses overemphasize the degree and speed of change in the built environment and cultural landscape during the transformation from state-socialism to post-socialism. In particular, it emphasizes the importance of the persistence of elements of the cultural landscapes of ‘socialist cities’ after 1989 through a study of three such elements in Bucharest, Romania.

Critical thinking is often considered an essential learning outcome of institutions in higher education. Previous work has proposed three pedagogical strategies to address this goal: more active, student-centered in-class instruction, assessments which contain higher-order cognitive questions, and greater alignment within a classroom (i.e., high agreement of the cognitive level of learning objectives, assessments, and in-class instruction). Our goals were to determine which of these factors, individually or the interactions therein, contributed most to improvements in university students' critical thinking. We assessed students' higher-order cognitive skills in introductory non-majors biology courses the first and last week of instruction. For each of the fifteen sections observed, we also measured the cognitive level of assessments and learning objectives, evaluated the learner-centeredness of each classroom, and calculated an alignment score for each class. The best model to explain improvements in students' high-order cognitive skills contained the measure of learner-centeredness of the class and pre-quiz scores as a covariate. The cognitive level of assessments, learning objectives, nor alignment explained improvements in students' critical thinking. In accordance with much of the current literature, our findings support that more student-centered classes had greater improvements in student learning. However, more research is needed to clarify the role of assessment and alignment in student learning.

Vailulu’u seamount is an active underwater volcano that marks the end of the Samoan hotspot trail. Vailulu’u has a simple conical morphology with a largely enclosed volcanic crater at relatively shallow water depths, ranging from 590 m (highest point on the crater rim) to 1050 m (crater floor). The crater hosts a 300-m-high central volcanic cone, Nafanua, that was formed between 2001 and 2004. Seismic activity at Vailulu’u included a series of globally recorded magnitude 4.1–4.9 earthquakes in 1973 and 1995, and substantial volcano-tectonic activity recorded over 45 days in 2000, with an average of four earthquakes per day and a maximum of 40 per day. Hypocenter locations are directly located below the major hydrothermal vent areas.

The highest cycle of post‐Lake Bonneville Great Salt Lake in the Bonneville basin, Utah, USA, was thought for many years to have formed the 'Gilbert shoreline' (quotation marks indicate lack of scientific support). Mapping of the 'shoreline' is not reproducible and the concept has multiple problems, including that the 'shoreline' cannot be correlated with the well‐documented major rise of Great Salt Lake during the terminal Pleistocene. To avoid confusion, we propose abandoning the name Gilbert, which previously had been applied informally to both the hypothetical shoreline and lake cycle, and instead we use the name Currey cycle for the lake rise. During the Younger Dryas Currey cycle, Great Salt Lake became fresh to brackish about 12 700 cal a bp, and rose roughly 15 m higher than the modern lake. The end of the Currey cycle marked the beginning of extensive human occupation of the Old River Bed inland delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Archaeological surveys and excavations in the NGotto Forest Reserve, Central African Republic, discovered 98 artefact concentrations or cultural features that included ceramic scatters, iron-ore mines and iron smelting features. These investigations provide, for the first time, a series of radiocarbon dates that chronicle the timing and context of prehistoric occupation along the northern margin of the Congo Basin rain forest in the Central African Republic. Thirty-three age estimates from 19 sites are distributed throughout the late Holocene and together document 2500 years of occupations. A number of the dates are from iron extraction and processing features that reflect extensive pre-colonial use of the area between about AD 1750 and 1840, while a radiocarbon date of 2179 ± 37 BP in direct association with pottery signals settlement by ceramic-bearing peoples perhaps as early as 350 cal. BC. Three radiocarbon dates from two sites reflect occupations during the purported hiatus and reduction in regional forest populations c. 1400-800 BP and five dates from four additional sites in southern Central African Republic rain forests also fall during this interval. In concert with scrutiny of summed probability distributions and potential artefacts embedded within the radiocarbon calibration curve, the number of these dates question the reality of this occupational hiatus, at least in the north-central Congo Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ongoing question in paleoenvironmental reconstructions of the central African rainforest concerns the role that prehistoric metallurgy played in shaping forest vegetation. Here we report evidence of intensive iron-ore mining and smelting in forested regions of the northern Congo Basin dating to the late Holocene. Volumetric estimates on extracted iron-ore and associated slag mounds from prehistoric sites in the southern Central African Republic suggest large-scale iron production on par with other archaeological and historically-known iron fabrication areas. These data document the first evidence of intensive iron mining and production spanning approximately 90 years prior to colonial occupation (circa AD 1889) and during an interval of time that is poorly represented in the archaeological record. Additional site areas pre-dating these remains by 3-4 centuries reflect an earlier period of iron production on a smaller scale. Microbotanical evidence from a sediment core collected from an adjacent riparian trap shows a reduction in shade-demanding trees in concert with an increase in light-demanding species spanning the time interval associated with iron intensification. This shift occurs during the same time interval when many portions of the Central African witnessed forest transgressions associated with a return to moister and more humid conditions beginning 500-100 years ago. Although data presented here do not demonstrate that iron smelting activities caused widespread vegetation change in Central Africa, we argue that intense mining and smelting can have localized and potentially regional impacts on vegetation communities. These data further demonstrate the high value of pairing archeological and paleoenvironmental analyses to reconstruct regional-scale forest histories.