Crawl Space: Driving Over the Anthropocene in a Jeep

The automobile has long been directly and indirectly connected to human conceptions of nature, yet few studies linger with the act of driving as a practice that contributes to how nature is experienced. I argue that a more nuanced understanding of automobility is necessary for any scholars who study both social practices and environmental sustainability. Following the work of the human geographer Doreen Massey, I explore how relations between humans and non-humans, the social and the natural, ideology and practice work together to produce places specific to space and time. I also argue that American automobility is not simply transportation, but is in fact an ideology. As such, specific practices of automobility shift in relation to the ideology, framing how subjects respond to power or to other articulations of subjectivity, and ultimately, produce places. As an example of the work being done by humans, machines, and nature, I focus on the practice of four-wheeling done in Northern California along the Rubicon Trail, a historical, long unimproved road that is claimed to be the toughest in North America. Operating within the ideology of American automobility, four-wheelers have historically used the Rubicon Trail to make and reproduce a natural place that is connected to the use of machines. When such practices were threatened by environmental degradation, four-wheelers worked within environmentalist discourse, while maintaining a distinct subjectivity framed counter to that of an environmentalist, to ensure the continuation of use of the Rubicon Trail

Patent and Contribution: Bringing the Quid Pro Quo into eBay v. MercExchange

In eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., the Supreme Court declared that an injunction granted to stop and prevent patent infringement is like any other injunction, and therefore should only issue after consideration of traditional equitable factors. It is not yet clear whether this decision has truly changed existing patent law, but one thing is certain—injunctions are no longer viewed as a guaranteed remedy for patent infringement. One potential effect of eBay on the world of technology is on the value of patents. Much of the discussion of eBay has focused on the decision’s effect on patent owners who do not practice their patent. Without the threat of a guaranteed permanent injunction, these patent owners will have less bargaining power in licensing negotiations and might get less favorable licensing arrangements. This note discusses this potential change in patent value and its relation to one primary justification for patent law, the quid pro quo, which views the patent as an exchange between the inventor and the public: invention and disclosure in exchange for the right to exclude. In the post-eBay world, the fact that an injunction is no longer a guarantee may reduce the value of the right to exclude. This may create a disparity in the exchange—the inventor may receive less value from the public in the form of a patent while the public receives more from the invention and disclosure through the denial of an injunction. This note argues that eBay need not conflict with the quid pro quo exchange, and that, although current decisions relying on the Supreme Court’s opinion do not do so, courts can and should use eBay to better tailor the patent right to the value of the actual contribution of invention and disclosure

Les rites d'ordination d'arbres. Mise en scène de l'écologie indigène en Thaïlande

International audienceThis paper describes and analyses a tree “ordination” ceremony organized in 1999 by a network of Karen villages. This recent ritual ceremony consists in sanctifying protected forest spaces, which are then symbolically offered to the King, through procedures that combine Buddhism and local spirit cults. The tribute paid to the King allows, in the course of this spectacular performance, to create a space where the main protagonists involved in the management of the national forest resources (the monastic community, the civil servants, the forest wardens, the NGOs, peasants from the plains and from the mountains, their spokesmen and the media) can meet and engage in a non-antagonistic dialogue. In relating the modalities of appropriation of this ritual by Karen mountain people, the intention here is to show how they strive to re-establish a territorial and identitary status that guarantees them the right to stay amidst the “protected areas” controlled in an authoritarian way by the State.Cet article décrit et analyse une cérémonie d’ « ordination » d’arbres organisée en 1999 par un réseau de villages karen, la principale minorité montagnarde de la Thaïlande. Ce dispositif rituel d’origine récente consiste à sanctifier des espaces forestiers protégés, symboliquement offerts au roi, à travers des procédures qui combinent bouddhisme et cultes dédiés aux esprits des cosmologies locales. L’hommage rendu au roi permet, le temps de cette performance spectaculaire, de créer un espace de rencontre et de dialogue pacifié entre les principaux protagonistes concernés par la gestion du capital forestier national : la communauté monastique, les fonctionnaires de l’administration, les gardes forestiers, les organisations non gouvernementales, les paysans des plaines et des montagnes, leurs porte-parole et les médias. En retraçant les modalités d’appropriation de ce rituel par les montagnards karen, le propos est ici de montrer comment ils s’efforcent de refonder un statut territorial et identitaire leur garantissant le droit de rester au sein des « aires protégées », autoritairement contrôlées par l’État

Getting Started with GIS

This is the first chapter of an open source textbook for beginning Geographic Information Systems (GIS) students. It introduces what GIS is and the basics of thinking spatially about problems

Cosmic ray drift, shock wave acceleration and the anomalous component of cosmic rays

A model of the anomalous component of the quiet-time cosmic ray flux is presented in which ex-interstellar neutral particles are accelerated continuously in the polar regions of the solar-wind termination shock, and then drift into the equatorial regions of the inner heliosphere. The observed solar-cycle variations, radial gradient, and apparent latitude gradient of the anomalous component are a natural consequence of this model

On the acceleration of ions by interplanetary shock waves. 1: Single encounter considerations

The acceleration of energetic ions in interplanetary magnetosonic fast-mode shock waves was studied via analytical modeling and numerical simulations. An analytical model that combines both the shock drift and compressional acceleration mechanisms is presented. The analytical predictions of the model are shown to be in good agreement with numerical simulation results

On the acceleration of ions by interplanetary shock waves. 3: High time resolution observations of CIR proton events

Observations within + or - 3 hours of corotating interaction region (CIR) shock waves of proton intensities, pitch angle distribution and crude differential energy spectra of the range of 0.6 E sub p 3.4 MeV are presented. The principle result is the evidence for the persistent flow of particles away from the shock. The observations are found to be in good agreement with the hypothesis of local interplanetary shock acceleration by the shock drift and compression mechanisms. The same set of observations strongly suggest that transit time damping does not play an important role in the acceleration of protons to 1 MeV in the immediate vicinity of CIR shocks

TeV lightcurve of PSR B1259-63/SS2883

The inverse Compton scattering of ultrarelativistic electrons accelerated at the pulsar wind termination shock is believed to be responsible for TeV gamma-ray signal recently reported from the binary system PSR B1259-63/SS2883. While this process can explain the energy spectrum of the observed TeV emission, the detected gamma-ray fluxes do not agree with the published theoretical predictions of the TeV lightcurve. The main objective of this paper is to show that the HESS results can be explained, under certain reasonable assumptions, by inverse Compton scenarios of gamma-ray production in the system. In this paper we study evolution of the energy spectra of relativistic electrons under different assumptions about the acceleration and energy-loss rates of electrons, and the impact of these processes on the lightcurve of IC gamma-rays. We demonstrate that the observed TeV lightcurve can be explained (i) by adiabatic losses which dominate over the entire trajectory of the pulsar with a significant increase towards the periastron, or (ii) by the sub-TeV cutoffs in the energy spectra of electrons due to the enhanced rate of Compton losses close to the periastron. The Compton deceleration of the pulsar wind contributes to the decrease of the nonthermal power released in the accelerated electrons, and thus to the reduction of the IC and synchrotron components of radiation close to the periastron. Although this effect alone cannot explain the observed lightcurves, the Comptonization of the pulsar wind leads to the formation of gamma-radiation with a line-type energy spectrum. While the HESS data already constrain the Lorentz factor of the wind, $\Gamma \le 10^6$, future observations of this object with GLAST should allow a deep probe of the wind Lorentz factor in the range between $10^4$ and $10^6$.Comment: 13 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The outer source of pickup ions and anomalous cosmic rays

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95527/1/grl16222.pd