Sound Matters:How Sonic Formations Shape the Nuclear Deterrence and Non-Proliferation Regimes

Sound matters for international political sociology. Drawing upon liter- ature from cultural geography and sound studies, we argue that sound contributes to political dynamics that are constitutive of world politics. To capture these dynamics, we offer a set of conceptual frameworks to analyze sound. First, we differentiate the concept of sound from noise and show the importance of doing so. Second, we introduce “sonic formations” as a means of capturing how sound contributes to world politics. Third, we make the case for analyzing sound’s historicity, adaptability, relationality, and performativity (SHARP) in any given context. Fourth, using sonic for- mations and the SHARP framework, we examine an illustrative case study: the nuclear deterrence and non-proliferation regimes. By focusing on the role of sound in these regimes, our preliminary findings demonstrate the utility for the field of undertaking additional work to capture the wider significance of sound. This includes its contributions to shaping relations of power

Volume 05

Introduction from Dean Dr. Charles Ross The Tallis House as an Extension of Emily Tallis in McEwan\u27s Atonement by Ian Karamarkovich Graphic Design by Jessica Cox Graphic Design by Kyle Fowlkes Graphic Design by Allison Pawlowski Incorporating Original Research in The Classroom: A Case Study Analyzing the Influence of the Chesapeake Bay on Local Temperatures by Kaitlin Major, Carrie Dunham and Dr. Kelsey Scheitlin Graphic Design by Kathryn Grayson Graphic Design by Ashley Johnson Facing the Music: Environmental Impact Assessment of Building A Concert Hall on North Campus by Jennifer Nehrt, Kelsey Stolzenbach And Dr. Kelsey Scheitlin Art by Kristin McQuarrie Art by Sara Nelson Art by Melisa Michelle Prosocial Behavior as a Result of Prosocial Music by Jessica Sudlow Graphic Design by Perry Bason Graphic Design by Danielle Dmuchawski Graphic Design by Mariah Asbell Graphic Design by Matthew Sakach Identifying Pathogenic Salmonella Serotypes Isolated from Prince Edward County, VA Waterways via Mutiplex PCR Analysis by Timothy Smith, Jr. Art by Annaliese Troxell Art by T. Dane Summerell Development of Salicylidene Anilines for Application in the High School Laboratory by Sarah Ganrude Graphic Design by Malina Rutherford Graphic Design by Hannah Hopper, and Matthew Sakach Because That\u27s What Daddies Do: Effects of Fathering Patterns on Son\u27s Self and Gender Identities by John Berry, Jr. Graphic Design by James Early Graphic Design by Colleen Festa The Influence of Tropical Cyclones on Chesapeake Bay Dead Zones by Chelsea D. Taylor and Dr. Kelsey Scheitlin Graphic Design by Michelle Maddox Graphic Design by Kaitlyn Smith Graphic Design by Sarah Schu Graphic Design by Perry Bason, Cabell Edmunds, Katherine Grayson, Matthew Sakach, and Kayla Torna

Authenticity and place attachment of major visitor attractions

This paper aims to explore the relationships between place attachment and perceived authenticity of major visitor attractions. The empirical study was conducted with a sample of international tourists to major visitor attractions in two capital cities, Helsinki, Finland and Jerusalem, Israel. The results indicate a positive correlation between place attachment and authenticity. Major visitor attractions located in places with considerable heritage experience value are considered more authentic, and that authenticity of visitor attractions is influenced by place attachment moderated by iconicity and heritage value of the destination region. These findings provide insight to the ways tourists perceive authenticity of visitor attractions and highlight the importance of the heritage value of tourism destinations for strategic planning and marketing purposes

Measurement-Induced State Transitions in a Superconducting Qubit: Within the Rotating Wave Approximation

Superconducting qubits typically use a dispersive readout scheme, where a resonator is coupled to a qubit such that its frequency is qubit-state dependent. Measurement is performed by driving the resonator, where the transmitted resonator field yields information about the resonator frequency and thus the qubit state. Ideally, we could use arbitrarily strong resonator drives to achieve a target signal-to-noise ratio in the shortest possible time. However, experiments have shown that when the average resonator photon number exceeds a certain threshold, the qubit is excited out of its computational subspace, which we refer to as a measurement-induced state transition. These transitions degrade readout fidelity, and constitute leakage which precludes further operation of the qubit in, for example, error correction. Here we study these transitions using a transmon qubit by experimentally measuring their dependence on qubit frequency, average photon number, and qubit state, in the regime where the resonator frequency is lower than the qubit frequency. We observe signatures of resonant transitions between levels in the coupled qubit-resonator system that exhibit noisy behavior when measured repeatedly in time. We provide a semi-classical model of these transitions based on the rotating wave approximation and use it to predict the onset of state transitions in our experiments. Our results suggest the transmon is excited to levels near the top of its cosine potential following a state transition, where the charge dispersion of higher transmon levels explains the observed noisy behavior of state transitions. Moreover, occupation in these higher energy levels poses a major challenge for fast qubit reset

Overcoming leakage in scalable quantum error correction

Leakage of quantum information out of computational states into higher energy states represents a major challenge in the pursuit of quantum error correction (QEC). In a QEC circuit, leakage builds over time and spreads through multi-qubit interactions. This leads to correlated errors that degrade the exponential suppression of logical error with scale, challenging the feasibility of QEC as a path towards fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here, we demonstrate the execution of a distance-3 surface code and distance-21 bit-flip code on a Sycamore quantum processor where leakage is removed from all qubits in each cycle. This shortens the lifetime of leakage and curtails its ability to spread and induce correlated errors. We report a ten-fold reduction in steady-state leakage population on the data qubits encoding the logical state and an average leakage population of less than $1 \times 10^{-3}$ throughout the entire device. The leakage removal process itself efficiently returns leakage population back to the computational basis, and adding it to a code circuit prevents leakage from inducing correlated error across cycles, restoring a fundamental assumption of QEC. With this demonstration that leakage can be contained, we resolve a key challenge for practical QEC at scale.Comment: Main text: 7 pages, 5 figure

Spectacular horizons: the birth of science fiction film, television, and radio, 1900-1959

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Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal Representations of War and Peace

Those in academia who have presented compelling evidence of the interactions between the Iroquois Confederacy and the founders of the American Constitution which plausibly points to the impact of the former on the latter, have been pilloried by their colleagues. While there seems to be no dispute within academia that the Iroquois political system embodied (and continues to embody) many characteristics that we might associate with liberal democracy (e.g., political representation, gender equality, individual freedoms), charges are still made that claims about the influence of the Iroquois on the American political system are unscholarly, without rigour, dogmatic, lacking in ‘objectivity’, and a practice of ‘myth-making’.The key question here is what does this have to do with international relations? The answer in part, is given that liberal democracy and the liberal democratic political system are firmly entrenched in the American national psyche, any suggestion that they are not wholly an ‘American’ (or at least ‘Western’) product is tantamount to a full scale attack on US national identity and the ontological presuppositions that form its foundations. This is particularly acute when Native Americans are involved, for they have traditionally been seen as the uncivilized and savage ‘other’ on the North American continent. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that far from being just window-dressing to (geo)strategic interests as argued by realists, or the ultimate guarantor of peace as argued by democratic peace adherents, the American (and Western) conception of liberal democracy creates the binaries necessary for the war-making practices of the United States and other like minded allies such as Canada

Emancipation or Intoxication? Regimes of Truth, Aztec Ontology, Sun Tzu, and the U.S. “War on Drugs”

Much has already been written on the “War on Drugs”, but very little has been within the discipline of international relations from a critical perspective. A critical perspective is valuable when looking at the “War on Drugs” because mainstream international relations approaches (either reactionary or progressive) get one stuck within a particular discourse that does not ask how the drug prohibition and the “War on Drugs” came to be. From a Foucauldian perspective it is clear that the “War on Drugs” is not about protecting the public from a potential security and health risk as policy-makers have argued, but that the “War on Drugs”, as David Campbell has argued, has more to do with the formation and maintenance of the American (and to a certain extent Western) national identity. Yet, the identity-based nature of the “War on Drugs” has been cloaked within the prevailing drugs discourse. To a large degree, this has been facilitated by a particular “regime of truth” which not only sets the acceptable parameters for legitimate discussion within the drugs discourse, but also operates to define what can be said to exist in the “War on Drugs” while advocating a particular epistemology which further legitimizes these ontological presuppositions. Inspired by Michael Shapiro’s treatment of the subject, the ‘War on Drugs” can best be understood as the transposition of an Aztec Flower War into the modern industrial age. It is clear that the United States has not taken heed of the ancient teachings of Sun Tzu on the “art of war” and his words of wisdom about the importance of self-knowledge and knowledge of the “other” in order to wage effective military campaigns. Due to the fact that the United States knows neither itself nor its enemy (from several different perspectives), it is inevitable that it will lose its Flower War against drugs