Birds of a Feather Eat Plastic Together: High Levels of Plastic Ingestion in Great Shearwater Adults and Juveniles Across Their Annual Migratory Cycle

Limited work to date has examined plastic ingestion in highly migratory seabirds like Great Shearwaters (Ardenna gravis) across their entire migratory range. We examined 217 Great Shearwaters obtained from 2008–2019 at multiple locations spanning their yearly migration cycle across the Northwest and South Atlantic to assess accumulation of ingested plastic as well as trends over time and between locations. A total of 2328 plastic fragments were documented in the ventriculus portion of the gastrointestinal tract, with an average of 9 plastic fragments per bird. The mass, count, and frequency of plastic occurrence (FO) varied by location, with higher plastic burdens but lower FO in South Atlantic adults and chicks from the breeding colonies. No fragments of the same size or morphology were found in the primary forage fish prey, the Sand Lance (Ammodytes spp., n = 202) that supports Great Shearwaters in Massachusetts Bay, United States, suggesting the birds directly ingest the bulk of their plastic loads rather than accumulating via trophic transfer. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy indicated that low- and high-density polyethylene were the most common polymers ingested, within all years and locations. Individuals from the South Atlantic contained a higher proportion of larger plastic items and fragments compared to analogous life stages in the NW Atlantic, possibly due to increased use of remote, pelagic areas subject to reduced inputs of smaller, more diverse, and potentially less buoyant plastics found adjacent to coastal margins. Different signatures of polymer type, size, and category between similar life stages at different locations suggests rapid turnover of ingested plastics commensurate with migratory stage and location, though more empirical evidence is needed to ground-truth this hypothesis. This work is the first to comprehensively measure the accumulation of ingested plastics by Great Shearwaters over the last decade and across multiple locations spanning their yearly trans-equatorial migration cycle and underscores their utility as sentinels of plastic pollution in Atlantic ecosystems.

The Massachusetts Bay Company and New England Company (1640–1684): Exportation, Revaluation and the Demise of Corporate Theocratic Governance

Returning to Massachusetts, this chapter focuses on communal responsibility and identity in decline of the MBC’s theocratic governance between 1640 and 1684. Firstly, this chapter investigates the transportation of political knowledge and ideas through corporate membership, assessing the role of individual MBC members such as Hugh Peters, Stephen Winthrop and Henry Vane Jr., in the formation of religious governance in England in the years surrounding the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The chapter also assesses the evolution of corporate evangelism in England and America, with the formation of the New England Company (NEC). It analyses several evangelical works including Roger Williams’s A Yet More Bloody and John Cotton’s The Bloudy Tenent, in order to understand the conflicted development of evangelism within the company, and how it became used to justify territorial expansion and further encroach on English and Native American religious and governmental identity and rights. The chapter concludes by offering an analysis of the downfall of the MBC, emphasising how models of governance strengthened and established out of corporate flexibility could, at the same time, be made brittle and weakened.

The Plymouth Company and Massachusetts Bay Company (1622–1639): Establishing Theocratic Corporate Governance

This chapter examines the development of a different form of corporate religious governance in the Atlantic in the years after the Jamestown massacre. It focuses on the denominational identity of its members and how this influenced the direction and formation of a theocratic model of governance that the company would adopt. This chapter illustrates how the leaders of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay companies, such as William Bradford, John Endicott and John Winthrop, established authoritarian governments by manipulating charter privileges, forming a theocratic model of governance in New England. It examines how the leaders and members of the Plymouth Company and Massachusetts Bay Company, as corporate bodies, established and nurtured a distinct form of governmental identity. By tracing the development of the Massachusetts Bay Company’s congregational theocratic governance through works such as Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, the Winthrop Papers, as well as the Records of the Town of Plymouth and the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay New England, it shows how the joint stock corporation offered its members the legal and structural framework that would dogmatically police the religious behaviour of its members to secure and establish a godly republic.

Assessing The Maturity Of The Asset Lifecycle Management In The Case Of The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)

Asset management is a central capability that organizations have to perform well. Asset management is concerned about the management of assets that are valuable or potentially valuable to an organization. This article focuses on asset management as it is performed in the railway transit industry. The past decade has seen a number of positive changes in the way that transit agencies manage their assets. While many transit agencies have introduced asset management approaches, work still needs to be done in the area of how we assess the maturity of asset management programs. This article proposes a framework for assessing the maturity of asset management programs, especially those that are used to manage individual assets according to their lifecycles. To illustrate the value of the proposed asset management maturity framework, we describe the asset management transformation at a transit agency and use the proposed framework to document the gains of the improvement effort.

The New England Puritans: History, Social Order, and Gender

The article will address the history of the Puritan migration from England to early colonial America, contextualizing their social order and gender in culture in the New World given special emphasis to their theology. The methodology employed is qualitative analysis of factors that: caused Puritan emigration and their early experience in Massachusetts Bay; organized their social structure; and illuminated the position of gender in culture. Generally, Puritans migrated out of New England for varying reasons but primarily out of deep-seated theological frustrations with the Church of England. Their theology is then described and assigned its place as the organizing principle of society; understanding this, gender is consequentially realized as not a particularly useful category of culture for the Puritans although we can observe how cultural works articulated women’s position in society—which was principally as wives, mothers, and worshipers.

Resource endowments and the problem of small change: insights from two American mints, 1600–1700

This article discusses historical evidence from the Potosi mint and Massachusetts Bay mint that illustrates the importance of the resource endowment (in this case silver) for the provision of small change. We show that the availability of silver was fundamental in shaping incentives. The relative scarcity of silver in Massachusetts Bay contributed to the small scale of the mint's operations, and implied that neither the monetary authority nor the mintmaster faced a significant tradeoff between drawing seigniorage from the mint and the production of small-denomination coins. In contrast, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, the abundance of silver, and the consequent large level of production of the mint's heavy peso coin, heightened the tradeoff between the fiscal and monetary objectives of the coinage. We suggest that these incentives negatively affected the production of fractionary coinage in the Peruvian viceroyalty, whereas in Massachusetts Bay the production of small-denomination coins was the norm.

Reverse-Engineering the Covenant: Moses, Massachusetts Bay and the Construction of a City on a Hill

This article examines the famous “city on a hill” sermon delivered by John Winthrop at the start of colonial Massachusetts Bay. It focuses on belief-formation, looking at how Winthrop reverse-engineered the covenant in two senses. First, he found a blueprint for a godly society in the Pentateuch. Moreover, scholars have missed Winthrop’s reversal of the covenant-formation process. In the Pentateuch, God approached Israel with a covenant offer—setting the terms of the agreement and setting the supernatural verification that the covenant was ratified. However, when Massachusetts Bay entered the covenant, Winthrop reversed the order: he approached God, he set the terms of the covenant and the standard of verification that God ratified the covenant. America’s “founding covenant,” though taken by many as a parallel with biblical Israel, is actually its opposite. In reverse-engineering the covenant based on the Pentateuch, Winthrop also altered the role of God and his people. One of the benefits flowing from covenant obedience, Winthrop argued, would be victory in battle against Native Americans.

Anne Hutchinson

Anne Hutchinson engaged a diverse group of powerful men as well as the disenfranchised during the mid-1630s in Boston’s so-called Antinomian Controversy, the name given to the theological battle between John Cotton, who emphasized free grace, and other clerics who focused upon preparation for those seeking salvation. Hutchinson followed Cotton’s position, presented his theology in meetings in her home, and inspired her followers, male and female, to reject pastors opposing Cotton’s position. Hutchinson’s followers included leading men who opposed John Winthrop’s leadership of Massachusetts Bay Colony; this dispute also became an arena where Winthrop reasserted his power. Hutchinson represents the Puritans’ drive for spiritual development within, including her claim of revelation. She is best understood within a transatlantic framework illustrating both the tools of patriarchal oppression and, more importantly, the appeal of Puritan spirituality for women.

Manufacturing in Puritan rural towns in New England 1630–60: ‘A Miller Never Goes to Heaven’

This article is an analysis of the influence of blacksmiths, and saw and grain millers on the development of Puritan communities in the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1630 and 1660. During this period these artisans played a significant role in defining the physical form of the rural Puritan town and its economic development, without intent and in a social and cultural climate where they were often disliked and distrusted. This article focuses on the impacts of these manufacturers on the formation and physical character of Puritan communities in New England.

The Woman in the Wilderness

Medieval and early modern Christianity wrestled uncomfortably with Christianity’s fundamentally chiliastic nature. Just as first-century Christians strove to dissociate their religion from its radical Jewish roots in order to cultivate legitimacy, so did theologians of subsequent centuries strive to downplay apocalypticism in favor of vague millennialism. The magnetic imagery of the Book of Revelation gripped the popular imagination, with its compelling imagery of seven-headed beasts, Christ’s glorious return armed for the final battle with Satan, and descriptions of signs presaging the dawning of the Latter Day. Some theologians could not resist the lure of apocalyptic analysis, and many laypeople yearned to witness the events of Revelation, while others sought to play leading roles in bringing it on. The Reformation refreshed apocalyptic millennialism, and Calvinist Puritans from England transplanted this to the “New World,” which Massachusetts Bay–founder John Winthrop predicted would be a “city on a hill.”