Detention-as-spectacle

Using a combination of migration studies, political sociology, and policy studies, this paper explores the contradictions and violence of immigration detention, its architectures, and its audiences. The concept of “detention-as-spectacle” is developed to make sense of detention’s hypervisible and obscured manifestations in the European Union. We focus particularly on two case studies, the United Kingdom and Malta, which occupy different geopolitical positions within the EU. Detention-as-spectacle demonstrates that detention is less related to deterrence and security than to displaying sovereign enforcement, control, and power. A central aspect of the sovereign spectacle is detention’s purported ability to order and even halt “crises” of irregular immigration, while simultaneously creating and reinforcing these crises. The paper concludes by examining recent disruptions to the spectacle, and their implications

Cubesat mission with technological demonstrator payload for high data rate downlink and health monitoring

The HyperCube payload will be composed by two different technological experiment, an high data-rate C band antenna, and a demonstrator for a remote structural health monitoring system. The first one has been thought with the aim to give Cubesats the capability to download an high quantity of data; it could be useful either if the data requiring the high data-rate downlink is on-board generated or simply retransmitted. The applications for which this payload could be used are several; an example for the first category of application is to download the data generated by another payload; the high data-rate capability could be necessary due to the narrow visibility window with the ground station, affected also by the absence of an active AOCS subsystem, which makes difficult the alignment of the on board antenna with the ground one. But the C band antenna could also be used to act as a “space–repeater”, downloading up–linked information. The second payload is related to the need to take under strictly control the health of the structures (not only the ones strictly belonging to primary structures, but also that of any subsystem component). In order to do that, smart materials are integrated into the structural component that need to be monitored; in particular, piezoelectric patches are used as sensors. As the structure is stressed, and the integrated piezoelectric sensors are subjected to mechanical deformation, they produce an electric signal; acquiring and properly studying the produced signal it is possible to monitor the mechanical condition of the structures. The health monitoring system is completed by a MicroController Unit which acquires, samples and stores the signal produced, and a transmitting system, which could be the C band antenna, or the TT&C antenna which each satellite needs

Governing migration from the margins

No abstract available

Borders, (dis)order, and exclusion: migration governance at the margins

No abstract available

A Novel Highly Accurate Finite-Element Family

A novel Nth order finite element for interior acoustics and structural dynamics is presented, with N arbitrarily large. The element is based upon a three-dimensional extension of the Coons patch technique, which combines high-order Lagrange and Hermite interpolation schemes. Numerical applications are presented, which include the evaluation of the natural frequencies and modes of vibration of (1) air inside a cavity (interior acoustics) and (2) finite-thickness beams and plates (structural dynamics). The numerical results presented are assessed through a comparison with analytical and numerical results. They show that the proposed methodology is highly accurate. The main advantages however are (1) its flexibility in obtaining different level of accuracy (p-convergence) simply by increasing the number of nodes, as one would do for h-convergence, (2) the applicability to arbitrarily complex configurations, and (3) the ability to treat beam- and shell-like structures as three-dimensional small-thickness elements

Study on an air-launched constellation of tactical micro-satellites for defence Use

The great attention on air-launched microsatellites is due on one hand to the possibilities given by the miniaturization push, making the same performances of traditional satellites achievable with smaller systems, and on the other hand to the disruptive advantages allowed by air-launch techniques, providing Italy not only with an autonomous launch capability, but also with the flexibility to choose the orbit inclination and the launch time, enabling a responsive approach at lower costs respect to ground based launches. In this study, several issues related to this subject are analyzed. A constellation of four microsatellites for electro-optical Earth Observation (EO) is conceived, namely ITAFμSAT (i.e. ITalian Tactical Formation of μ-SATellites). ITAFμSAT is designed to achieve a sub-metric spatial resolution and to offer a high revisit frequency on a specified target area to satisfy military needs. ITAFμSAT is designed to be responsive and the system is conceived to guarantee a fast access to space since the mission is called, through a Plug-and-Play (PnP) approach; to provide Italy with a proprietary system, built, launched and operated on-purpose for its contingent needs; and to complete the information supplied by other EO systems with high quality images captured in a very short time

Design Methodologies of Aeronautical Structures with Acoustic Constraints

The aim of this thesis is to present a finite element methodology, based upon a three-dimensional extensions of the classical Hermite interpolation and of the Coons Patch, for the evaluation of the natural modes of vibration of the air inside cavities (interior acoustics) and of elastic structures (structural dynamics). This methodology is thought for acoustic applications within Multidisciplinary Desing and Optimization, where computational effectiveness is a key attribute, especially during iterative optimization. The distinguishing feature of the proposed technique is its high efficiency, with the possibility to capture relatively high spatial frequency modes (essential in acoustics) even using a limited number of degrees of freedom. Also, the element is quite flexible and may be used for modeling any three-dimensional geometry. For instance, thin-wall structures like shells and plates are treated with three-dimensional brick elements with a single element along the thickness. An additional advantage is related to the possibility of applying a quasi-static reduction, which allows one to eliminate those degrees of freedom associated with the derivatives while maintaining a high level of accuracy, so that to further improve the effectiveness of the element. The classical one-dimensional Hermite interpolation is an interpolating technique of order three that uses the function and its derivative at the end points of the element. The classical Hermite technique for one-dimensional domains can be extended to higher orders, by including higher derivatives as nodal unknowns, thereby increasing the class of the element. Then, the three-dimensional extension is obtained combining the Hermite polynomials in each direction. For example, in the three-dimensional third-order interpolation, the unknowns are the nodal values of the function, of its three partial derivatives, of its three mixed second derivatives, and of its third mixed derivative. Similarly to the one-dimensional approach, higher orders are then obtained by including higher derivatives at nodes. The Hermite element, even that of order three, is rarely used because of problems that arise whenever the domain is not topologically hexahedral, that is when the coordinate lines (and so the base vectors) of two adjacent blocks present a discontinuity. Specifically, as far as the first-order derivatives are concerned, the problem has been removed by assuming as unknowns the Cartesian coordinates of the gradient, since they are continuous across block boundaries. The problem remains for the higher-order derivatives: in order to express them in terms of Cartesian components, their set should be complete (in particular, we have only the mixed second derivatives and, hence, incomplete information on the Hessian matrix). The remedies to this issue are key features of the present thesis. In particular, two solutions have been proposed in this thesis: (1) the high-order derivatives relative to different blocks are treated as independent unknowns at the block boundaries; (2) a new 3-D high-order internal-nodes family of elements based upon the Coons Patch is used: these elements are defined so as to have only the function and the three derivatives as nodal unknowns (thereby, the higher the order of the element the higher the quantity of internal nodes needed for the interpolation). To be specific, the Coons Patch pertain the interpolation over a quadrilateral surface. Given the four edge lines, the Coons Patch is obtained as the sum of the two linear interpolations between opposite boundary lines, minus a bilinear interpolation through the four corner points. From this technique stems the idea of a new family of elements, which edges are generated using the Hermite interpolation. The objective is to extend the use of high-order elements based on a Hermite approach also to generically complicated geometries, so as to take advantage of their effectiveness. These elements will be referred to as Hybrid elements. The validation is based upon the evaluation of the natural eigenvalues (or natural frequencies) and modes of the air vibrating inside hexahedral cavities as well as of those of elastic thin plates (for each of this case exact or accurate solutions are available). Applications to quite complicated structures, such as curved domains (cylindrical cavities) or very simplified wing-boxes are presented. The results are compared with those obtained using commercial softwares (such as Ansys). Comparisons with the literature are also included

Interiores*

Vanguardia es un término que aplicamos corrientemente a la creación artística, en particular cuando nos enfrentamos a determinada producción estética sin poder encasillarla, ni vincularla directamente con aquello que nos resulta conocido. Así solemos llamar a lo que se opone francamente a lo establecido. Hablamos de vanguardia cuando el presente es confuso, cuando nos sentimos rodeados por posibles genialidades o absurdas banalidades sin poder discriminar unas de otras

Interiors

La música como arte y ciencia, su relación con la tecnología, y los aspectos creativos de una composición actual conforman la temática de este artículo. Interiores (2004) es una pieza de cámara con procesamiento electrónico del sonido en tiempo real, escrita en el marco de la Tesis de Doctorado Un modelo para la simulacióndel Espacio en Música. En esta obra se plantea una fuerte integración de los parámetros musicales con el espacio virtual que rodea al oyente, simulado a través de ocho parlantes dispuestos en los vértices de un cubo imaginario, ubicado en una sala de conciertos. Music as art and science, its relation with technology, and the creative aspects of a current composition make up the theme of this article. Interiors (2004) is a piece of chamber music with electronic processing of the sound in real time, written within the framework of the Doctoral Thesis, A model for the simulation of Space in Music. This work proposes a strong integration of the musical parameters with the virtual space that surrounds the listener, simulated by means of eight loudspeakers placed in the vertices of an imaginary cube, located in a concert hall