Celebrating the Physics in Geophysics

As 2005, the International Year of Physics, comes to an end, two physicists working primarily in geophysical research reflect on how geophysics is not an applied physics. Although geophysics has certainly benefited from progress in physics and sometimes emulated the reductionist program of mainstream physics, it has also educated the physics community about some of the generic behaviors of strongly nonlinear systems. Dramatic examples are the insights we have gained into the ``emergent'' phenomena of chaos, cascading instabilities, turbulence, self-organization, fractal structure, power-law variability, anomalous scaling, threshold dynamics, creep, fracture, and so on. In all of these examples, relatively simple models have been able to explain the recurring features of apparently very complex signals and fields. It appears that the future of the intricate relation between physics and geophysics will be as exciting as its past has been characterized by a mutual fascination. Physics departments in our universities should capitalize on this trend to attract and retain young talent motivated to address problems that really matter for the future of the planet. A pressing topic with huge impact on populations and that is challenging enough for both physics and geophysics communities to work together like never before is the understanding and prediction of extreme events.Comment: 6 pages, final version to appear in EOS-AGU Transactions in November 200

Tackling property damage: a guide for local commerce groups, councils and police

Introduction: Property damage is the intentional ‘destruction or defacement of public, commercial and private property’. This covers a range of different acts, including vandalism (eg smashing windows, knocking over letterboxes) and graffiti. Graffiti is the act of marking property with writing, symbols or graphics and is illegal when committed without the property owner’s consent. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Crime Victimisation Survey 2011–2012, malicious property damage was more common than any other property offence, with 7.5 percent of respondents reporting having been a victim in the previous 12 months. The cost of property damage to private property owners, local and state governments and businesses are significant, with an estimated cost of $1,522 per incident (in 2012 dollars) and a total cost to the Australian community of nearly$2 billion each year. Using the handbook This handbook forms part of a series of guides developed by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) to support local commerce groups (ie representative groups for business owners and operators), local government and the police to implement evidence-based crime prevention strategies. This handbook has been developed to help guide project managers through the stages of planning, implementing and evaluating a crime prevention project to reduce property damage offences in their local community, particularly in and around commercial precincts. The handbook provides an overview of the three key stages that are involved in delivering a project to reduce property damage: Stage 1: Planning; Stage 2: Implementation; and Stage 3: Review. These steps do not necessarily need to be undertaken in order. Some steps may be undertaken concurrently or it may be necessary to revisit earlier steps. However, it is vital that some steps, such as consulting stakeholders and planning for evaluation, be undertaken early on in the project. Property damage is a very broad offence category. The choice of a particular intervention or interventions will depend largely on the nature of the local problem. Similarly, the successful implementation of a prevention strategy will often be heavily influenced by the characteristics of the local community. This needs to be considered throughout the life of a project

Formation of Chimneys in Mushy Layers: Experiment and Simulation

In this fluid dyanmics video, we show experimental images and simulations of chimney formation in mushy layers. A directional solidification apparatus was used to freeze 25 wt % aqueous ammonium chloride solutions at controlled rates in a narrow Hele-Shaw cell (1mm gap). The convective motion is imaged with schlieren. We demonstrate the ability to numerically simulate mushy layer growth for direct comparison with experiments

Gender Politics and Secure Services For Women: Reflections on a study of staff understandings of challenging behaviour.

This paper discusses the findings of a Q methodological study that investigated the complexity of professional understandings of (attitudes towards) residents in a secure unit for women with learning disabilities and challenging behaviours. Particular attention is afforded to the critical debate regarding women in psychiatric and secure care, including the significant contribution made to this literature by feminist perspectives. A multiprofessional group of staff (n = 38) participated in the study and nine distinct accounts of women's challenging behaviour are described. Despite a considerable amount of recent policy concern with the position of women in psychiatric services, the findings of this research suggest that many front line staff are reluctant to highlight gender in their explanations of women's behaviour. This supports the assertion by Williams et al. (2001), who were involved in the National Gender Training Initiative (NGTI), that most critical theorizing about women's mental health has had minimal impact at the level of individuals’ understandings of these important issues. This state of affairs suggests a powerful case for the expansion of staff training as provided in the NGTI, which makes gender central to understanding and emphasizes feminist perspectives

The Warriors\u27 Views: Mid-Level Officers on American Interventions, Foreign Policy, and the Road to 9/11, 1993-2001

When President William Jefferson Clinton took office, the United States had entered into a new era, though it was heavily influenced by almost a half-century of Cold War. Foreign policy staples had been embedded into United States foreign policy habits, influencing American decisions even as it tried to transition to a new global environment. The Cold War had left America, but America had a hard time leaving the Cold War. The nation had difficulty transitioning away from applying containment, relying on mutually assured destruction in preventing weapons of mass destruction attacks, and focusing on major conventional warfare when small-scale contingencies dominated American use of the military. Vietnam’s institutional and cultural memory was especially a major influence, affecting America’s entire approach to employing military force. In particular was its impact on leadership’s the hyper-sensitivity to casualties affecting public opinion. In addition, there were too many competing priorities and not enough resources, especially given the military downsizing after America’s Cold War victory, which adversely affected those in the armed forces. Without the Soviet Union as a consistent and stable enemy, America had to come to grips with a very different world full of chaos, disorder, and possibilities. The solution the Clinton Administration put forth was the strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, which drove increased military involvements in multiple small-scale military contingencies. Mid-level American military officers, the majors, commanders, and lieutenant colonels, had a front row seat to how this strategy unfolded. They implemented the military arm of national policy at the lower levels, while still maintaining a more strategic outlook on events. They saw and felt the impacts of foreign policy decisions to use military force. Their writings while attending their advanced military service schools illuminate many aspects of America’s foreign policy during the Clinton Administration that other scholarship could not capture. Their opinions regarding American involvement in Iraq after Desert Storm, Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo, as well as its response to the rise in anti-American Terrorism, reveal many aspects of this new era. In spite of increased global engagement spreading the military thin, increasing stress on the force, mid-level officers demonstrated that they did not have the disdain towards President Clinton that scholarship attributes to the military. They came to accept, and even support, the president’s overall approach. For these officers, Engagement and Enlargement was a policy that was a better strategic fit for the new era than relying on Cold War approaches. However, they consistently felt that American leadership did not implement it well tactically. A significant shortfall of increased American engagement, especially during military budget cuts and downsizing, was that it drew America’s attention towards a multitude of overseas interests and allowed a direct threat, terrorism, to assail the homeland. Mid-level officers plotted the trajectory of American foreign policy from the aftermath of Desert Storm and the intervention in Somalia to these 9/11 attacks, and like their superiors, only a few understood the magnitude of the rising tide of terrorism

We can\u27t reclaim what we don\u27t understand : Teachers\u27 Perceptions of Advocacy and Voice in a Rural Institute of the National Writing Project

This study examines teachers\u27 perceptions of advocacy and voice in a summer institute of the National Writing Project. The Rural Advocacy Institute, a first-time initiative through the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project, offered three weeks of professional development centered on rural education and teaching English language arts in rural public schools. The study is a grounded theory study; grounded theory forces the researcher to stay close to the data, compare data sets, and use reflective writing to identify conceptual categories in the data. Data collection in the study included semi-structured interviews with six K-12 teachers participating in the Institute and twenty-seven hours of video-recordings of all whole-group discussions and writing activities. The grounded theory generated in this study incorporates Robert Brooke\u27s work with underlife and Homi Bhaba\u27s concept of third space in maintaining that researchers, teacher educators, and professional development coordinators must consider the ways teachers negotiate the hybrid discourses created in professional development opportunities. For example, participant-teachers in this study demonstrate an affinity for discourses of advocacy for rural schools, while demonstrating an underlife discourse that often resists the role of advocate. Through Peter Elbow\u27s concept of resonant voice and Bakhtin\u27s concept of answerability, the grounded theory also explains the role of voice in the teachers\u27 discourses on writing and how teachers perceive advocacy. The study argues that analyzing how teachers discuss and view voice, and its relationship to writing and professional agency, is a means of better understanding how and if teachers are able to perceive themselves as advocates

Family Language Policy: Perceptions and Attitudes Toward African American Language

Bidialectal African American families are caught in a Family Language Policy (FLP) dilemma in which the goals of belonging in African American communities, and feeling free and relaxed with language, conflict with parents’ interactional, relational, and political goals of raising children who are accepted in the wider society as educated, respectful, and powerful. This study brings together research in FLP with research on race and language by looking at African American families and how they socialize their children into using AAL Researching the relationship between racial identity and language and the role of racism in FLP for African American parents in particular focuses on a missing factor in many FLP studies, family-external racism. By expanding FLP from blanket determinations of success with their streamlining effects, the field can develop a more inclusive approach that blends families’ linguistic goals, contribute to understanding how bidialectalism is intergenerationally experienced, and how systemic oppression and human agency interact in the family, as well as add depth and complexity to our understanding of AA families’ language policy. To explore the intimate domain of language policy within the 10 AA family homes, qualitative methods – surveys, group family interviews, in-home recordings – and an ethnographic approach to investigating the families’ language policy is employed. Interesting patterns emerged in their responses that lead to the suggestion that race and language are inseparable since they are linked to individuals’ racial identity. This study concludes that if family language researchers are excluding racism as an external factor in their research analysis, whether implicitly or explicitly, they are not providing a comprehensive account of the rationale behind distinct language ideologies, planning, and practices, they are missing important theoretical and practical constructs, and they are limiting the understanding of what causes parents to make particular language decisions

Taming the Code: Effectively Implimenting Software Patents, 5 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 382 (2006)

Software patents are a sore subject for many programmers. Although still in their infancy, they have managed to anger many of those in the programming community. Software patents started to evolve in the early 80’s through multiple court decisions that eventually defined software as statutory patentable material. Although patentable, software has proven to be a formidable match for the examination process. The examination process has proven ineffective in properly examining software patent applications and as result multiple lawsuits based on frivolous patents have emerged. Potential battles such as the one between Creative and Apple over Creative’s patent for a hierarchal file system have become examples for which opponents of software patents can rely. This comment proposes the creation of a third party entity that would be made up of the programming community that would police software patent applications prior to issuance. This entity would alleviate the strain on the USPTO as well as examiners while rebuilding the reputation of software patents and the USPTO