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The Icelandic volcano Askja’s eruption in 1875 was in several respects an important moment in the history of volcanology and adjacent fields of science. A series of expeditions in the decades following the volcanic activity led to the discovery and mapping of a previously unknown volcanic system, while observations of the ashfall from the eruption’s climax were used to produce the first-ever spatially and temporally detailed ash dispersal map. Later, the buried ashes on Iceland played part in the founding of the method of tephrochronology by Sigurdur Thorarinsson through his work at Stockholm University College in 1932-1944. The Askja-1875 tephra has since become a well-used marker horizon in modern tephrochronological research, providing a precise age estimate to recent natural archives. This review summarises the scientific history of studies of the eruption and the ashes it produced, and compiles and briefly examines the currently available compositional data of the Askja-1875 tephra, also providing code for a simple workflow in such statistical efforts.
Author:Simon Larsson
Funders:Stockholm University
Reviewers:2
License:CC BY
4tephra, tephrochronology, volcanology, geochemistry
Findings from the neurosciences and their implications are subjects that are discussed and debated outside the specialised research context and by people that are not themselves part of the neuroscientific community. The article presents an empirical study of the ways that neuroscientific knowledge is represented in mass media. A sample consisting of all texts published in a major daily Swedish newspaper during one year that addressed the brain and neuroscience (n=202) was subjected to a qualitative analysis to elucidate how the brain and the relationship between brain and mental phenomena were represented. The results show that both objectifying and subjectifying representations of the brain are prevalent in the data. The representations of the relationship between brain and mind involves localisation of mental phenomena to structures and processes of the brain, explicit and implicit reductionist interpretations of neuroscientific findings as well as an element of identification where the brain is represented as something that defines the person. The results also highlight the role of metaphor and metonymy in these representations. In the discussion, the understanding of brain as an object susceptible to external influence and the notion of a double subjectivity are related to views on moral responsibilities.
Author:Robert Ohlsson
Funders:Stockholm University
Reviewers:2
License:CC BY
4neuroscience, media, popularisation, metaphor