Empowerment in an Era of Self-Determination: The Case of the Washoe Tribe and U.S. Forest Service Co-Management Agreement

ii Abstract Tribes and the U.S. Government have entered into co-management agreements to accommodate tribal interests in regaining access and reasserting traditional practices on ancestral lands that were lost during colonization. While some Native Americans have continued to fight court battles to regain ancestral lands, others have sought negotiated agreements wherein they serve as the principal managers and caretakers of public resources. One such agreement is between the Washoe Tribe and the U.S. Forest Service in the Lake Tahoe basin. The implementation of the co-management agreement allows not only access to ancestral sites but also the restoration of traditional uses, so it is more reflective of the Tribe’s own needs and culture. The Tribe’s goal is to help preserve its rich cultural heritage and historical relationship with Lake Tahoe, while reintegrating traditional ecological knowledge that evolved with this ecosystem for over 9,000 years. The research provides a multi-dimensional understanding of how the co-management agreement emerged, the negotiation process, and the end result. Further, it explores implementation of the agreement from the tribe’s perspective to better understand what the co-management agreement provides to tribal members that they did not already have and how the Forest Service has changed local forest management and consultation practices with the tribe as a result of the agreement. Finally, this research examines what co-management does not change to better understand its limitations in addressing the needs of tribal communities.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environmenthttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40240/1/Adelzadeh Thesis.pd

A study on the political marriages in pre-Islamic period of Iranian history

Women have played an important role as spouses or mothers in Iranian society and the married women and the mothers with many children were respected in the past in Iran. Although, in some historical periods, desires and will of woman in selection of her husband were honored but most of the marriages of convenience were done without considering desire of spouses and generally, woman left her family and got married without her content. This article tries to investigate samples of such marriages in Iran in pre-Islamic period and in Persian literature in order to study the consequences of such attitude in the society by survey on the reasons for political marriages

A study on the political marriages in pre-Islamic period of Iranian history

Women have played an important role as spouses or mothers in Iranian society and the married women and the mothers with many children were respected in the past in Iran. Although, in some historical periods, desires and will of woman in selection of her husband were honored but most of the marriages of convenience were done without considering desire of spouses and generally, woman left her family and got married without her content. This article tries to investigate samples of such marriages in Iran in pre-Islamic period and in Persian literature in order to study the consequences of such attitude in the society by survey on the reasons for political marriages

ReciprocalShell: A hybrid timber system for robotically-fabricated lightweight shell structures

Reciprocal timber systems have been widely studied, however they have never been directly applied to the segmented timber shell structures as cross bracing of the polygonal topologies. For the first time, this paper presents an innovative hybrid timber system developed for design and construction of the robotically-fabricated lightweight timber shell structures. The paper integrates two configurations of wood beams: polygonal framing and reciprocal bracing. While, the polygonal topology of facets enables a constant distance offset for the thickness of the shell, the reciprocal configuration allows for cross bracing of polygonal frames where diagonals within the polygons cannot directly connect corners due to geometric constraints resulted by the free-form surface structure of shell shapes. Joining the cross-bracing elements in the center of the polygons with a reciprocal node reduces the complexity of the connection system at nodes while demonstrating the high load-bearing capacity of joints to withstand structural loads throughout the structure, compared to connecting 5, 6 or 7 beams in a single point. The article discusses the application and limitations of the timber system while presenting the design-to-assembly process of a case study of the small-scale shell demonstrator with the maximum span of 7.5 meters made of 144 wood elements for each polygonal and reciprocal configurations. The results show that the timber system has a great capacity for the rapid and precise assembly and disassembly of prefabricated timber structures. Generation of similar but different solid elements, allowed for the development of a custom CAD data interface for the automated production of numerous pieces, where simple joint details are applied for both alignment and attachment of beams, reducing the design complexity and facilitate the construction phase. As the result, the fabrication process was completely carried out with only a saw blade in a multi-axis robotic fabrication set up that enables the rapid, precise, and accurate cuts and grooves. Both timber configurations generate a uniform distribution of beam size, meaning that the production process created only a minimal amount of offcuts that allows for the use of simple and cost-efficient, short solid wood pieces

Structural Efficiency of a Hybrid Construction System for a Lightweight Timber Shell Demonstrator ReciprocalShell case study

This paper evaluates the structural performance of an innovative hybrid timber system for design and construction of the robotically-fabricated shell structures. The timber system combines two configurations: hexagonal and reciprocal. While the first timber configuration generates the main skeleton of the shell based on the discretization of the input surface, the second configuration enables the cross-bracing within each hexagonal cassette. Joining the cross-bracing elements in the center of the cassettes with a reciprocal node not only resists the deformation of hexagonal cassettes and displacement of elements, but also allows for a more uniform distribution of loads that increases the structural capacity of the timber system, enabling the shell to withstand higher compression and tension forces. The joint system uses the wooden splines and screws to align and reinforce the edge connections, as well as the bolts to fasten the neighboring hexagonal cassettes. The construction system is applied to a case study of a medium-scale shell demonstrator with a maximum span of 7.5 meters that is structurally optimized by form-finding methods. The paper presents a detailed structural analysis including the Finite Element Method (FEM) results, as well as the experimental load test that is carried out to verify the validity and accuracy of the structural calculations

Survey on the Meaning of Love from Nur ad-Din Abd Ar Rahman Jami View Point

ABSTRACT Love is a principle issue of mysticism that causes to humors and quest for perfection of the creatures. Abd Ar Rahman Jami expresses this quest from virtual love toward real love in "Layla and Majnun" eloquently in literature history. Scholars and poets point to words like love, beloved, lover, request, and requestor in their speech. Jami uses these words in his poems explicitly and repeats them as allegorical stories implicitly. This article tries to investigate the meaning of love from Nur ad-Din Abd Ar Rahman Jami view point. KEYWORDS: Abd Ar Rahman Jami, love in Persian literature, Layla and Majnun

Damage Formation: Equations of water block in oil and water wells

Water block or invasion of water into the pores of reservoir forms during the operations of water-based drilling, injection, many perforations, completion fluids, and some other particular processes in the reservoir (such as fingering and conning). Subsequently, the alteration in the shape or composition of the fine particles such as clay (water-wet solids), as a result of the stress on it, in the flow path of the second phase can lead to the permeability decline of reservoir. Consequently, the solvents such as surfactants (as demulsifiers) to lower the surface tension as a phenomenon associated with intermolecular forces (known as capillary action) during flowback are consumed to avoid the emulsions and sludge mostly in the near-wellbore zone or undertreatment and under-injection radius of the reservoir. However, in addition to surging or swabbing the wells to lower the surface tension, using solvents as the wettability changing agent along with base fluid is a common method in the water block elimination from the wellbore, especially in the low permeability porous media or the reservoirs latter its average pressure declined below bubble point. For more profitability, after using solvents in various reservoir characterizations, the trend of their behavior variations in the different lithologies is required to decide on the removed damage percentage. The investigations on this subject involve many experimental studies and have not been presented any mathematical formulas for the damage of water block in the water, oil, and gas reservoirs. These formulas determine selection criteria for the applied materials and increase variable performance. An integrated set of procedures and guidelines for one or more phases in a porous media is necessary to carry out the step-by-step approach at wellhead. Erroneous decisions and difficult situations can also be addressed in the injection wells or saltwater disposal wells, in which water block is a formation damage type. Misconceptions and difficult situations resulting from these injuries can increase water saturation in borehole and affect the fluid transmissibility power in reaching far and near distances of the wellbore, which results in injection rate loss at the wellhead. Accordingly, for the equations of water block here, a set of variables, of a particular domain, for defining relationships between rock- and fluid-based parameters are required. For these equations, at first, the structural classifications of fracture and grain in the layers (d1, d2, and d3) are defined. Afterward, the equations of overburden pressure (Pob) for a definite sectional area surrounding the wellbore for any lithology (in the three categories relative to porosity) are obtained by these structural classifications and other characteristics of rock and fluid. Naturally, prior to equations of overburden pressure in a definite layer or a definite sectional area around the wellbore, the overburden pressure of a point in a layer in the first four equations is expressed. In the second, the estimated overburden pressure equations are applied in driving the equations of removed water block (Bk). The equations of removed water block, themselves, are divided into two groups of equations, i.e., equations of oil wells and equations of saltwater disposal wells, and each group of equations is again classified based on the wettability of reservoir rock (oil-wet or water-wet) in the two ranges of porosity. In the third, after describing these equations (i.e., equations of Bk), the other new variable included in the equations of removed water block, that is, the acid expanding ability (Ik) for a definite oil layer around the wellbore, is presented, which is extracted from (1) the full characteristics of reservoir (including experimental and empirical equations of overburden pressure), (2) the history of producing well, (3) core flooding displacement experiments at laboratory, and (4) the acidic and alkaline solvent properties. Finally, the rate of forming water block (q) is calculated using the value calculated for the removed water block, and, additionally, the trend of using solvents is determined for different rocks using these sets of equations. The acceptance criteria are the nature of rock and fluid in the reservoir circumstances. Equations as a quick and cost-efficient method are also introduced, providing computational methods to determine how much and how the blocked fluid in the reservoir layers is removed from the definite strata around the wellbore after injection operation of acids and solvents, with various degrees of acidity, to the types of lithology during acidizing operations. Moreover, these equations can calculate the removed water block (Bk) after injecting solvents to the different acidic properties in the acidizing, for two categories of porosity which cover all lithologies. The equations also ascertain in the current reservoir conditions how much solvent for a type of lithology is to be mixed with other base fluids

Chronic and structural poverty in South Africa: Challenges for action and research

Ten years after liberation, the persistence of poverty is one of the most important and urgent problems facing South Africa. This paper reflects on some of the findings based on research undertaken as part of the participation of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape in the work of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), situates it within the broader literature on poverty in South Africa, and considers some emergent challenges. Although PLAAS’s survey, being only the first wave of a panel study, does not yet cast light on short term poverty dynamics, it illuminates key aspects of the structural conditions that underpin long-term poverty: the close interactions between asset poverty, employment-vulnerability and subjection to unequal social power relations. Coming to grips with these dynamics requires going beyond the limitations of conventional ‘sustainable livelihoods’ analyses; and functionalist analyses of South African labour markets. The paper argues for a re-engagement with the traditions of critical sociology, anthropology and the theoretical conventions that allow a closer exploration of the political economy of chronic poverty at micro and macro level