Earth processes in wake of Gujarat earthquake reviewed from space

             Earth processes in wake of Gujarat earthquake 

                               reviewed from space

             Two years after a devastating earthquake in Gujarat, India, scientists from many disciplines met at an international workshop to share the latest knowledge about Earth system processes related to this natural disaster. The meeting particularly focused on the use of spaceborne technology to study the effects of lithosphere-atmosphere-ionosphere interaction prior to and following the earthquake. More than 80 of the participants were affiliated with research and academic institutions in India, and several scientists from the United States, Germany Russia, and China also participated.

            Soon after the earthquake on 26 January 2001, Indian scientists established a Global Positioning System (GPS) network to monitor crustal motion around the earthquake's epicenter in cooperation with scientists from Japan, Germany, and the United States. Observations made by routine GPS measurements in the past have shown that the Bhuj area has significantly shifted anti-clockwise. The leveling observations made by the Survey of India show that the Santal Pur Bhuj Block was uplifted up to 60 cm, while Bhuj, Bhachau, and Mundra subsided ∼60 cm. The need to establish a dense network of level lines and gravity stations in Kachchh was stressed at the meeting.

Ashis Nandy vs. the state of Gujarat

Ashis Nandy vs. the state of Gujarat: authoritarian developmentalism, democracy and the politics of Narendra Modi

             This article aims to unravel the rise of Gujarat's current Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his brand of personality politics that has dominated Gujarati politics in the past decade. It uses the legal battle between the eminent sociologist Ashis Nandy and the Government of Gujarat, that unfolded in 2008, as a case study to illustrate the dominant impulses of what has been termed ‘Moditva’ or the Modi model and its implications. The state-sanctioned prosecution of Ashis Nandy over a newspaper article that criticized the Gujarati middle classes was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court of India but the legal battle, and the public discourse around it, serves as a useful prism to understand the deeper processes at work within Moditva and the particular brand of authoritarian developmentalism it offers, with little scope for dissent. The legal battle erupted just a few months before a galaxy of India's top industrialists publicly backed Modi as a future prime minister, hailing his excellent developmental record post-2002 and the creation of an investment-friendly climate in Gujarat. At one level, the Nandy case can be read as a straight narrative of an iconic battle for freedom of speech, one in which Gujarat and its politics were once again at the centre of the debate. But the debate about Moditva is also a metaphor for alternative visions for India. Its future trajectory will be decisive not only for the future of Gujarat but equally for the future of the BJP and for the idea of India itself.

Late Cenozoic exhumation of the Cascadia accretionary wedge in the Olympic Mountains, northwest Washington State

Abstract

The apatite fission-track method is used to determine the exhumation history of the Olympic subduction complex, an uplifted part of the modern Cascadia accretionary wedge. Fission-track ages are reported for 35 sandstones from the Olympic subduction complex, and 7 sandstones and 1 diabase from the Coast Range terrane, which structurally overlies the Olympic subduction complex. Most sandstone samples give discordant results, which means that the variance in grains ages is much greater than would be expected for radioactive decay alone. Discordance in an unreset sample is caused by a mix of detrital ages, and in a reset sample is caused by a mix of annealing properties among the detrital apatites and perhaps by U loss from some apatites. Discordant grain-age distributions can be successfully interpreted by using the minimum age, which is the pooled age of the youngest group of concordant fission-track grain ages in a dated sample. The inference is that this fraction of apatites has the lowest thermal stability, and will be the first to reset on heating and the last to close on cooling. Comparison of the minimum age with depositional age provides a simple distinction between reset samples (minimum age younger than deposition) and unreset samples (minimum age older than deposition). The success of the minimum-age approach is demonstrated by its ability to resolve a well-defined age-elevation trend for reset samples from the Olympic subduction complex. Microprobe data suggest that the apatites that make up the minimum-age fraction are mostly fluorapatite, which has the lowest thermal stability for fission tracks among the common apatites.

Reset minimum ages are all younger than 15 Ma, and show a concentric age pattern; the youngest ages are centered on the central massif of the Olympic Mountains and progressively older ages in the surrounding lowlands. Unreset localities are generally found in coastal areas, indicating relatively little exhumation there. Using a stratigraphically coordinated suite of apatite fission-track ages, we estimate that prior to the start of exhumation, the base of the fluorapatite partial annealing zone was located at ∼100 °C and ∼4.7 km depth. The temperature gradient at that time was 19.6 ± 4.4 °C/km, similar to the modern gradient in adjacent parts of the Cascadia forearc high.

Apatite and previously published zircon fission-track data are used to determine the exhumation history of the central massif. Sedimentary rocks exposed there were initially accreted during late Oligocene and early Miocene time at depths of 12.1–14.5 km and temperatures of ∼242–289 °C. Exhumation began at ca. 18 Ma. A rock currently at the local mean elevation of the central massif (1204 m) would have moved through the alpha-damaged zircon closure temperature at about 13.7 Ma and ∼10.0 km depth, and through the fluorapatite closure temperature at about 6.7 Ma and ∼4.4 km depth. On the basis of age-elevation trends and paired cooling ages, we find that the exhumation rate in the central massif has remained fairly constant, ∼0.75 km/m.y., since at least 14 Ma. Apatite fission-track data are used to construct a contour map of long-term exhumation rates for the Olympic Peninsula. The average rate for the entire peninsula is ∼0.28 km/m.y., which is comparable with modern erosion rates (0.18 to 0.32 km/m.y.) estimated from sediment yield data for two major rivers of the Olympic Mountains.

We show that exhumation of this part of the Cascadia forearc high has been dominated by erosion and not by extensional faulting. Topography and erosion appear to have been sustained by continued accretion and thickening within the underlying Cascadia accretionary wedge. The rivers that drain the modern Olympic Mountains indicate that most of the eroded sediment is transported into the Pacific Ocean, where it is recycled back into the accretionary wedge, either by tectonic accretion or by sedimentary accumulation in shelf and slope basins. The influx of accreted sediments is shown to be similar to the outflux of eroded sediment, indicating that the Olympic segment of the Cascadia margin is currently close to a topographic steady state. The record provided by our fission-track data, of a steady exhumation rate for the central massif area since 14 Ma, suggests that this topographic steady state developed within several million years after initial emergence of the forearc high.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Few things seem to us as natural as the multiplicity of vernacular languages that different peoples use for making sense of life through texts, that is, for making literature. And few things seem as unnatural as their abandonment and gradual disappearance in the present. In fact, literary language loss is often viewed as part of a more general reduction of cultural diversity, one considered as dangerous as the reduction of biological diversity to which it is often compared. The homogenization of culture today, of which language loss is one aspect, seems without precedent in human history, at least for the scope, speed, and manner in which changes are taking place.

This commonsense view of the world needs two important qualifications. First, the vernacular ways of being that we see vanishing everywhere were themselves created over time. These are not primeval ways of autochthons, for autochthons (like the Spartoi of Thebes, "the sown people" born from the dragon teeth planted by Cadmus) do not exist outside their own mythical self-representation. Second, by the very fact of their creation, the new vernaculars replaced a range of much older cultural practices. These earlier practices, which seemed to belong to everywhere in general and nowhere in particular, affiliated their users to a larger world rather than a smaller place. They were, in a sense to be argued out in this essay, cosmopolitan practices. These great transformations in the course of the last two millennia -- from the old cosmopolitan to the vernacular, and from the vernacular to the new and disquieting cosmopolitan of today -- resulted from choices made by people at different times and places, for very complex reasons. Studying the history of such choices may have something important, perhaps even urgent, to tell us about choices available to us in the future.

In earlier work I have studied the period following the old cosmopolitan epoch, which I called thevernacular millennium. This began in southern Asia and western Europe with remarkable simultaneity in the early second millennium, and it developed with equally striking parallels over the following five centuries. I say "began" emphatically: vernacular literary cultures were initiated by the conscious decisions of writers to reshape the boundaries of their cultural universe by renouncing the larger world for the smaller place, and they did so in full awareness of the significance of their decision. New, local ways of making culture -- with their wholly historical and factitious local identities -- and, concomitantly, new ways of ordering society and polity came into being, replacing the older translocalism. These developments in culture and power are historically linked, at the very least by the fact that using a new language for communicating literarily to a community of readers and listeners can consolidate if not create that very community, as both a sociotextual and a political formation.

While the literary-cultural processes of this reshaping are remarkably similar in southern Asia and western Europe, the political logics they followed appear to have differed fundamentally. In Europe, vernacularization accompanied and enabled the production of the nation-state; in India, it accompanied and enabled the production of a political form we may neutrally call the vernacular polity, in order to signal its difference. In both worlds, however, vernacularization helped initiate an early-modern era, each again marked by its specific type of modernity. And it is only now for the first time, when this epoch seems to be drawing to a close as vernacular modes of cultural and political being are everywhere coming under powerful pressures from an altogether new universalizing order of culture-power (call it globalization, or liberalization, or Americanization), that we may begin to conceive of this past history as a whole and make some sense of it for cultural and political theory.

I would like here to elaborate on these earlier arguments by situating the vernacular millennium within a comparative-historical account of the cosmopolitanisms that preceded it. These, too, comprised forms of identity that reveal themselves as produced and entirely provisional; they are located securely in time and in the choices made by the producers of culture...

Voices of Hindutva: Creating and Exploiting Religious Binarie

Voices of Hindutva:
Creating and Exploiting Religious Binarie

This article is being published under a pseudonym, as the author fears that he would otherwise risk physical
injury. Though as a general policy the Journal of Inter­Religious Dialogue™ discourages the use of pseudonyms as
a potential hindrance to open and direct dialogue, it has made an exception due to the special circumstances of
the author and the desire to broaden the scope of dialogue to include more challenging topics to discuss.
Abstract
In 2002, Gujarat, India experienced a traumatizing episode of communal violence in which
Muslims, a religious minority, were actively targeted. It is widely believed that the state
government, run and influenced by extreme Hindu Nationalist (Hindutva) groups, may be
partly responsible for this. Although the extent of their logistical involvement is debated,
the rhetoric of many Hindutva organizations creates and demonizes a religious other. In
contrast to the majority of Hindus and the majority of Indians, leaders of a number of
Hindutva elements use language that creates pervasive religious binaries, which are
instrumental in the recurrence of violence. The political success of Hindutva groups in
Gujarat may therefore complicate peace‐building efforts, as illustrated by the dynamics of
responses by local non‐governmental organizations (NGO’s) to the violence.
On February 27, 2002, a train carrying Hindutva volunteers caught fire in the town
of Godhra, killing 55‐60 pilgrims inside one coach. Although various reasons have been
cited, including arson by a Muslim mob, the cause of the fire is still debated. The very next
day, communal riots erupted in the city of Ahmedabad and in some villages around the
state. The United States Government estimates that by the end of the period of rioting,
2,000 people were killed and 100,000 were displaced and moved to relief camps
(“International Religious Freedom”). Humanitarian organizations claim that up to 2,500
were killed and 140,000 were displaced (Parker 2008). These riots have been called
“pogroms” by professionals from various fields, including scholars such as Steven
Wilkinson (2005, 3) and Paul Brass (2003, 390), because of the highly disproportionate
number of Muslim casualties.
Allegations of governmental involvement are directed at the Sangh Parivar, a closely
linked family of organizations that promotes an extreme Hindu nationalist ideology called
Hindutva. Through its many branches, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishva
Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the Bajrang Dal, Hindutva ideology plays a significant role in
arenas as diverse as politics, education, youth organization, social mobilization, and even
paramilitary training. However, it is crucial to distinguish between Hindutva and Hindu,
because only a minority of Hindus and a minority of Indians support the ideology itself.
This piece is not intended as a polemic against Hindus, the vast majority of whom embrace
peaceful and tolerant belief systems. Rather, it uses the 2002 Gujarat Riots as a case study
to show how a well‐organized group can systematically wield rhetoric and political power
to establish a religious “other” and, arguably, call for violence.
Few dispute that Hindu‐Muslim riots yield tangible political gains for these Sangh
Parivar organizations (Brass 2003, 6). Their repeated democratic election, both in and
beyond Gujarat, may be construed as evidence of the effectiveness of their incendiary
rhetoric. But the link between their rhetoric and recurring communal violence has yet to be
widely appreciated. Notwithstanding their exact level of involvement in the 2002 Riots,
which is still being examined and debated, the messages put forth by Hindutva leaders
exaggerate two binaries: Hinduism versus Islam, and Hindus versus Muslims. This paper
seeks to demonstrate that these reified categories are then exploited to issue calls for inter‐
religious violence.
The first binary reified by Hindutva organizations is that of Hinduism versus Islam.
In an interview, the notorious VHP leader, Praveen Togadia, described Islam as having an
“exclusively totalitarian system (“We, Hindus and…”).” With help from madrasas in
spreading its fundamentalist ideologies, Islam encourages violent jihad and the killing of
non‐Muslims. In contrast, Togadia proclaims that “Hinduism is synonymous with harmony
(Ibid).” After creating this binary, he calls Islam’s intolerant ideologies the root of the
problem (Ibid).  Praveen Togadia, having since been accused of participating in the riots
himself, is a high ranking official in the VHP, which the U.S. State Department cites as an
“extremist” organization that has instigated violence (Swami, “International Religious
Freedom,” Rajghatta).

Tradition and the Individual Talent

                                               Tradition and the Individual Talent 

1 In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its
absence. We cannot refer to “the tradition” or to “a tradition”; at most, we employ the adjective in saying
that the poetry of So-and-so is “traditional” or even “too traditional.” Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear
except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to the work
approved, of some pleasing archaeological reconstruction. You can hardly make the word agreeable to English
ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archaeology.

2 Certainly the word is not likely to appear in our appreciations of living or dead writers. Every nation,
every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the
shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. We know, or think we
know, from the enormous mass of critical writing that has appeared in the French language the critical method
or habit of the French; we only conclude (we are such unconscious people) that the French are “more critical”
than we, and sometimes even plume ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were the less spontaneous.
Perhaps they are; but we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should
be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about
it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism. One of the facts that might come to light in this
process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least
resembles anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is
the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors,
especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be
enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best,
but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their
immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of
full maturity.

3 Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate
generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, “tradition” should positively be
discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than
repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you
must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly
indispensable to any one who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical
sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense
compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole
of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a
simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the
timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer
traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his
own contemporaneity.

4 No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the
appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him,
for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical,
criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not onesided; what happens when a new
work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The
existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new
(the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order
to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so
the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity
between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English
literature will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is
directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities. 

A New Direction for Ultrasound Therapy in Sports Medicine

Abstract

Ultrasound therapy is a widely available and frequently used electrophysical agent in sports medicine. However, systematic reviews and meta-analyses have repeatedly concluded that there is insufficient evidence to support a beneficial effect of ultrasound at dosages currently being introduced clinically. Consequently, the role of ultrasound in sports medicine is in question. This does not mean that ultrasound should be discarded as a therapeutic modality. However, it does mean that we may need to look in a new direction to explore potential benefits. A new direction for ultrasound therapy has been revealed by recent research demonstrating a beneficial effect of ultrasound on injured bone. During fresh fracture repair, ultrasound reduced healing times by between 30 and 38%. When applied to non-united fractures, it stimulated union in 86% of cases. These benefits were generated using low-intensity (>0.1 W/cm2) pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS), a dose alternative to that traditionally used in sports medicine. Although currently developed for the intervention of bone injuries, LIPUS has the potential to be used on tissues and conditions more commonly encountered in sports medicine. These include injuries to ligament, tendon, muscle and cartilage. This review discusses the effect of LIPUS on bone fractures, the dosages introduced and the postulated mechanisms of action. It concludes by discussing the relevance of these latest findings to sports medicine and how this evidence of a beneficial clinical effect may be implemented to intervene in sporting injuries to bone and other tissues. The aim of the paper is to highlight this latest direction in ultrasound therapy and stimulate new lines of research into the efficacy of ultrasound in sports medicine. In time this may lead to accelerated recovery from injury and subsequent earlier return to activity.