Competitiveness and sustainability: can ‘smart city regionalism’ square the circle?

Increasingly, the widely established, globalisation-driven agenda of economic competitiveness meets a growing concern with sustainability. Yet, the practical and conceptual co-existence—or fusion—of these two agendas is not always easy. This includes finding and operationalising the ‘right’ scale of governance, an important question for the pursuit of the distinctly transscalar nature of these two policy fields. ‘New regionalism’ has increasingly been discussed as a pragmatic way of tackling the variable spatialities associated with these policy fields and their changing articulation. This paper introduces ‘smart (new) city-regionalism’, derived from the principles of smart growth and new regionalism, as a policy-shaping mechanism and analytical framework. It brings together the rationales, agreed principles and legitimacies of publicly negotiated polity with collaborative, network-based and policy-driven spatiality. The notion of ‘smartness’, as suggested here as central feature, goes beyond the implicit meaning of ‘smart’ as in ‘smart growth’. When introduced in the later 1990s the term embraced a focus on planning and transport. Since then, the adjective ‘smart’ has become used ever more widely, advocating innovativeness, participation, collaboration and co-ordination. The resulting ‘smart city regionalism’ is circumscribed by the interface between the sectorality and territoriality of policy-making processes. Using the examples of Vancouver and Seattle, the paper looks at the effects of the resulting specific local conditions on adopting ‘smartness’ in the scalar positioning of policy-making

Guiding-center dynamics of vortex dipoles in Bose-Einstein condensates

A quantized vortex dipole is the simplest vortex molecule, comprising two counter-circulating vortex lines in a superfluid. Although vortex dipoles are endemic in two-dimensional superfluids, the precise details of their dynamics have remained largely unexplored. We present here several striking observations of vortex dipoles in dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates, and develop a vortex-particle model that generates vortex line trajectories that are in good agreement with the experimental data. Interestingly, these diverse trajectories exhibit essentially identical quasi-periodic behavior, in which the vortex lines undergo stable epicyclic orbits.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

American jihadi terrorism: A comparison of homicides and unsuccessful plots

While the number of American jihadi terrorist attacks remains relatively rare, terrorist plots thwarted by law enforcement have increased since September 11, 2001. Although these law enforcement blocks of would-be terrorists are considered counterterrorism triumphs by the FBI, human rights and civil liberty watch groups have conversely suggested that those who plan for attacks alongside government informants and undercover agents may be unique and essentially dissimilar from terrorists. Underlying this debate is the empirical question of how planned yet unsuccessful attacks and their plotters compare to successful terrorist homicides and their perpetrators. The current study addresses this question by comparatively examining jihadi terrorist homicides and unsuccessful plots occurring in part or wholly on U.S. soil between 1990 and 2014. Data for this study come from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), an open-source database with information on terrorism and extremist crimes. Based on these data, descriptive statistics are provided for several incident, offender, and target variables across three jihadi terrorist violence categories, including homicides, plots with specified targets, and plots with non-specific targets. We find several important differences across categories of terrorist violence, suggesting that unsuccessful plotters and their intended crimes vary from their more successful terrorist counterparts

A Mixed-Method Analysis of Fatal Attacks on Police by Far-Right Extremists

Several recent high-profile homicides of police officers have brought increased attention to issues of far-right extremist violence in the United States. We still, however, know very little about why (and how) certain encounters between far-right extremists and police result in violence. To fill this research gap, we conduct a mixed-method analysis of far-right antipolice homicides based on quantitative and qualitative data from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database. We begin by categorizing cases based on key aspects of homicide storylines. We then comparatively analyze attributes of event precursor, transaction, and aftermath stages across four storyline categories. Finally, a case study is purposively selected to follow-up on each storyline category to better capture the nuances of fluid homicide processes. Our findings have important implications for identifying triggering events, escalation factors, and other situated sets of conditions and circumstances that contribute to deadly outcomes for police officers

Adrift upon a salinity-stratified sea

The structure and variability of upper-ocean properties in the Bay of Bengal (BoB) modulate air-sea interactions, which profoundly influence the pattern and intensity of monsoonal precipitation across the Indian subcontinent. In turn, the bay receives a massive amount of freshwater through river input at its boundaries and from heavy local rainfall, leading to a salinity-stratified surface ocean and shallow mixed layers. Small-scale oceanographic processes that drive variability in near-surface BoB waters complicate the tight coupling between ocean and atmosphere implicit in this seasonal feedback. Unraveling these ocean dynamics and their impact on air-sea interactions is critical to improving the forecasting of intraseasonal variability in the southwest monsoon. To that end, we deployed a wave-powered, rapidly profiling system capable of measuring the structure and variability of the upper 100 m of the BoB. The evolution of upper-ocean structure along the trajectory of the instrument’s roughly two-week drift, along with direct estimates of vertical fluxes of salt and heat, permit assessment of the contributions of various phenomena to temporal and spatial variability in the surface mixed layer depth. Further, these observations suggest that the particular “barrier-layer” stratification found in the BoB may decrease the influence of the wind on mixing processes in the interior, thus isolating the upper ocean from the interior below, and tightening its coupling to the atmosphere abov

Transforming Piecemeal Social Engineering into Grand Crime Prevention Policy: Toward a New Criminology of Social Control

This Article focuses on the Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) approach in criminology, which expands the crime reduction role well beyond the justice system. SCP sees criminal law in a more restrictive sense, as only part of the anticrime effort in governance. We examine the “general” and “specific” responses to crime problems in the SCP approach. Our review demonstrates that the most serious barrier to converting SCP techniques into policy remains the gap that exists between problem identification and problem response. We discuss past large-scale SCP interventions and explore the complex links between them and SCP’s better known specificity and piecemeal approach. We develop a graded framework for selecting responses that acknowledge the local, political, and organizational issues involved in identifying and choosing them. This framework determines when SCP interventions and policies can be crafted on the macro level to eliminate or greatly reduce the problem everywhere, and when interventions should be limited to a piecemeal, local approach to eliminate only the specific problem. Finally, we situate this analysis within the general context of the relationship between science and policy, noting the challenges in converting scientific observations into broad social policy and the expansion of crime control beyond criminal justice into the realm of government regulation and partnerships with nongovernmental agencies

Transforming Piecemeal Social Engineering into Grand Crime Prevention Policy: Toward a New Criminology of Social Control

This Article focuses on the Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) approach in criminology, which expands the crime reduction role well beyond the justice system. SCP sees criminal law in a more restrictive sense, as only part of the anticrime effort in governance. We examine the “general” and “specific” responses to crime problems in the SCP approach. Our review demonstrates that the most serious barrier to converting SCP techniques into policy remains the gap that exists between problem identification and problem response. We discuss past large-scale SCP interventions and explore the complex links between them and SCP’s better known specificity and piecemeal approach. We develop a graded framework for selecting responses that acknowledge the local, political, and organizational issues involved in identifying and choosing them. This framework determines when SCP interventions and policies can be crafted on the macro level to eliminate or greatly reduce the problem everywhere, and when interventions should be limited to a piecemeal, local approach to eliminate only the specific problem. Finally, we situate this analysis within the general context of the relationship between science and policy, noting the challenges in converting scientific observations into broad social policy and the expansion of crime control beyond criminal justice into the realm of government regulation and partnerships with nongovernmental agencies

Daclatasvir in combination with asunaprevir and beclabuvir for hepatitis C virus genotype 1 infection with compensated cirrhosis

Importance Effective and well-tolerated, interferon-free regimens are needed for treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and cirrhosis. Objective All-oral therapy with daclatasvir (nonstructural protein 5A [NS5A] inhibitor), asunaprevir (NS3 protease inhibitor), and beclabuvir (nonnucleoside NS5B inhibitor), with or without ribavirin, was evaluated in patients with HCV genotype 1 infection and compensated cirrhosis. Design, Setting, and Participants The UNITY-2 study was conducted between December 2013 and October 2014 at 49 outpatient sites in the United States, Canada, France, and Australia. Patients were treated for 12 weeks, with 24 weeks of follow-up after completion of treatment. Adult patients with cirrhosis were enrolled in 2 cohorts: HCV treatment-naive or HCV treatment-experienced. Statistical analyses were based on historical controls; there were no internal controls. Interventions All patients received twice-daily treatment with the fixed-dose combination of daclatasvir (30 mg), asunaprevir (200 mg), and beclabuvir (75 mg). In addition, patients within each cohort were stratified according to HCV genotype 1 subtype (1a or 1b) and randomly assigned (1:1) to receive double-blinded weight-based ribavirin (1000-1200 mg/d) or matching placebo. Main Outcomes and Measures Sustained virologic response at posttreatment week 12 (SVR12). Results One hundred twelve patients in the treatment-naive group and 90 patients in the treatment-experienced group were treated and included in the analysis. Enrolled patients were 88% white with a median age of 58 years (treatment-naive group) or 60 years (treatment-experienced group); 74% had genotype 1a infection. SVR12 rates were 98% (97.5% CI, 88.9%-100%) for patients in the treatment-naive group and 93% (97.5% CI, 85.0%-100.0%) for those in the treatment-experienced group when ribavirin was included in the regimen. With the fixed-dose combination alone, response rates were 93% (97.5% CI, 85.4%-100.0%) for patients in the treatment-naive group and 87% (97.5% CI, 75.3%-98.0%) for those in the treatment-experienced group. Three serious adverse events were considered to be treatment related and there were 4 adverse event–related discontinuations. Treatment-emergent grade 3 or 4 alanine aminotransferase elevations were observed in 4 patients, of which 1 had concomitant total bilirubin elevation. Conclusions and Relevance In this open-label uncontrolled study, patients with chronic HCV genotype 1 infection and cirrhosis who received a 12-week oral fixed-dose regimen of daclatasvir, asunaprevir, and beclabuvir, with or without ribavirin, achieved high rates of SVR12

K-12 School Shootings in Context: New Findings from The American School Shooting Study (TASSS)

The American School Shooting Study (TASSS) is an ongoing mixed-method project funded by the National Institute of Justice to catalog US school shootings. It has amassed data based on open sources and other public materials dating back to 1990. This brief presents new insights from TASSS, diving deeper into the database's potential to examine the locations, timing, and student involvement of youth-perpetrated gun violence

The radicalization of democracy: conflict, social movements and terrorism

The idea of democracy is being championed across the world, with some fifty new countries embracing this type of political system between 1974 and 2011 (Freedom House, 2016). Simultaneously, however, dissatisfaction has grown due to the perceived incapacity of democracy to deal with collective problems, hence the necessity to reconfigure it and redraw some of its principles. This paper links the analysis of the recent evolution of democratic systems with the trajectory of socio-political conflicts and the changing features of contemporary terrorism. It examines, therefore, two intertwined phenomena, namely the radicalization of democracy and the radicalization of the other. It concludes by stressing that encouraging dissent and heeding contentious claims made by social movements may be one way of mitigating both types of radicalization. Embedded in the tradition of critical criminology, this paper attempts to demonstrate that only by outflanking conventional categories of analysis can the criminological community aspire to grasp such thorny contemporary phenomena