In recent years, an increasingly influential intellectual consensus on both sides of the Atlantic has presented Europe as a doomed and decadent continent that is being transformed into an Islamic colony called ‘Eurabia’. The term was originally coined by the British-Swiss historian Bat Ye’or to describe what she identified as a secret project between European politicians and the Arab world for the ‘Islamicisation’ of Europe. What began as an outlandish conspiracy theory has become a dangerous Islamophobic fantasy that has moved ever closer towards mainstream respectability, as conservative historians and newspaper columnists, right-wing Zionists and European neofascists find common cause in the threat to ‘Judeo-Christian’ civilisation from Muslim immigrants with supposedly incompatible cultural values.

As large carnivores recover from over-exploitation, managers often lack evidence-based information on species habitat requirements and the efficacy of management practices, particularly where species repopulate areas from which they have long been extirpated. We investigated the movement and habitat use by 2 semi-aquatic carnivores (Australian fur seals Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus and New Zealand fur seals A. forsteri) at the northern end of their distributions in Australia, where after a long absence both are recolonising their historic range. We also assessed male fur seal habitat use overlap with terrestrial and marine protected areas (PAs). While at the margin of the range during winter and early spring, the males remained inshore close to terrestrial sites and where interactions with humans often occur. From early spring, the males from the range margin showed uniform movement toward colonies in the core of the species’ range prior to their breeding seasons. This contrasts with males tracked from the core of the species’ range that returned periodically to colonies during the year, and highlights the importance of range-wide monitoring of a species to inform conservation planning. Habitat use by some males included over 90% of a marine PA at the margin of the species’ range. Most terrestrial haul-outs used were within terrestrial PAs, while sites not protected were on the margin of the range. Despite wide-ranging habits, their dependence on coastal sites, where human access and activities can be regulated and more readily enforced, suggests that terrestrial and marine PAs will continue to play an important role in managing the recovery of these fur seals.

Seismic Reservoir Characterization, also known as reservoir geophysics, has evolved over the past several years into a multi-disciplinary, business-critical function in most ED&P organizations. Sheriff defines reservoir geophysics as "The use of geophysical methods to assist in delineating or describing a reservoir or monitoring the changes in a reservoir as it is produced." Reservoir geophysics is applied across a wide spectrum of the oilfield life cycle from discovery and early development to tertiary recovery. One critical part of this process is careful analysis and understanding of petrophysical properties from well logs and core data (seismic petrophysics). The purpose of this paper is to illustrate why seismic petrophysics is so important and to show how carefully constructed synthetic models can help the geoscientist interpret acoustic and elastic impedance inversion from seismic data. Introduction Well logs are sometimes viewed by geophysicists as "hard data" and not subjected to the same level of scrutiny as the seismic data. This can be a mistake because well logs are susceptible to errors from a number of sources. In this presentation we will examine some of the processes and procedures that allow well logs to be correctly used in Seismic Reservoir Characterization. The basic steps in seismic petrophysics analysis are:Collect and organize input dataPerform geophysical log interpretation for volume minerals, porosity, and fluidsDetermine fluid properties (oil API, brine salinity, etc.) and reservoir pressuretemperaturePerturb reservoir properties using rock physics effective medium models (pseudo-well modeling)Compute synthetic seismic tracesGenerate trend curves and crossplotsCreate graphics and digital output files. Geophysical Well Log Analysis Well log analysis for geophysics differs in several important ways from standard log analysis. In most cases well logs are obtained for the purpose of estimating recoverable hydrocarbon volumes. Therefore the zone of interest is mainly the producing interval(s). For geophysics, well logs form the basis for relating seismic properties to the reservoir. While we are still concerned about producing intervals, we also need good information about all of the rock through which the seismic waves have passed. Therefore our zone of interest is much larger and encompasses basically everything from the surface to total depth. In all cases the log data will require some editing, normalization, and interpretation before they can be used in a reservoir study. Several specific analysis steps will be followed:De-spike and filter to remove or correct anomalous data pointsNormalize logs from all of the selected wells to determine the appropriate ranges and cutoffs for porosity, clay content, water resistivity, etc.Compute the volumetric curves such as total porosity, Vclay, and SwCalibrate the volumetric curves to core data if availableCorrect sonic and density logs for mud filtrate invasion if neededCompute Vshear on all wells. Missing log curves can often be computed with a reasonable degree of certainty. There are two major ways this is done. The first is through application of modern rock physics principles.

Governments frequently insist on their desire to 'protect' the migrants and refugees who attempt to cross their borders from organised crime, people smuggling and trafficking for forced labour or sexual exploitation. But the drift towards 'hard' border enforcement over the last two decades has produced a proliferation of territorial spaces, where undocumented migrants are routinely exposed to the risk of death, physical injury and the most ruthless criminal exploitation, and where no government or institution makes any attempt to protect them or enforce even their most elementary human rights.The Sinai desert, where African migrants are kidnapped, ransomed or raped en route to Israel; the perilous trail that connects sub-Saharan Africa and Somalia to the North African coast; the bottleneck at the Morocco/Algerian border between Oujda and Magnia where migrants face robbery and rape -all these earthly hells are the direct consequence of the callous exclusionary border controls established by some of the wealthiest countries on earth to keep out men, women and children from some of the world's poorest. They have effectively placed migrants at the mercy of the bandits and opportunist robbers, organised criminal gangs, pimps, traffickers and corrupt cops, who prey on migrants precisely because they know that they are legally invisible.All governments insist that they do not want such things to happen -when they acknowledge them at all -but few, if any, are willing to do anything that might detract from the deterrent and punitive function that these extra-legal spaces serve, or which might leave them open to accusations of 'softness'. Of all the twenty-first century's migratory routes, few are more deadly and more horrific in their consequences than the journeys undertaken by Mexican and Central American migrants to reach the US/Mexico border.Every year some 250,000 migrants attempt to escape poverty and violence in Central America by crossing the Guatemalan border into Mexico, riding the rails towards the border towns in the north, and finding a guide or 'coyote' who can take them across the border. In the course of these journeys, migrants are routinely robbed and sometimes killed by 'professional' and 'amateur' criminals who stalk the Mexican migratory routes. In the last few years, there have been numerous stories of migrants forcibly recruited by drug cartels or as slave labourers, of mass graves containing dozens of bodies of those who refused or whose usefulness was exhausted.Female migrants who cross the border into Mexico -effectively the first tier of the US border itself -are likely to be raped as a routine rite of passage, to the point that many women regard their bodies as a 'cuerpomatic' -a form of credit card in which sex pays for the right to continue their journey or simply for the right to live. Many women end their journeys long before reaching the border. Some are snatched off trains, or kidnapped walking the dangerous trails of Chiapas to be tortured or killed, or taken off to brothels to work as s...

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