The Quandary of 'Made in China': Economic Survival in the Safe Zone Palestine's Import Trade from China since 1994

This thesis provides an alternative prism to analyse China’s prevailing influence in Palestine. Rather than a focus on China’s potential role as a mediator of the Israel-Palestine conflict, it examines the impact of China-Palestine trade (specifically Chinese imports) on the West Bank since the signing of the Protocol on Economic Relations in 1994. The study argues that Chinese imports play a key role in supporting what this thesis terms the ‘Safe Zone’ of Palestinian economic activity: an opportunity for economic survival in the absence of viable alternatives following decades of Israeli occupation. I investigate how and why this commerce emerged, where it is most prevalent, and what are its political implications. This nuanced perspective into the complexities of a globalised Palestinian economy is achieved by adopting the conceptual framework of ‘globalisation from below’ (GFB) to unpack this trade through an inductive and interpretivist research paradigm. This entails sidelining the use of official trade data for a more ethnographically informed methodology utilising participant observation and both semi and unstructured interviews conducted in trader cities in China, the ports and checkpoints governed by Israel, to the markets in Palestine. In Palestine, a ‘diverse’ and ‘extreme’ case selection strategy (Hebron and Barta’a) are employed to show that practices associated with GFB are not homogenously experienced in the West Bank. The thesis finds that the rise and proliferation of such commerce is an outcome of Zionist settler colonialism enacted through a range of formal and informal Israeli occupation policies: specifically, de-development and deterritorialisation. The resultant trade economy that emerges under such conditions is, therefore, not deemed a response to an ‘event’, but part of the ‘structure’ of an ongoing settler colonial project. Concurrently, the findings show that the Safe Zone is double edged, as Israel’s preeminent capacity to regulate this commerce means that it can use it as a mechanism to offer a Palestinian the rewards of economic gain, but at the cost of subservience to ongoing Israeli control. The case studies evidence this by showing the different economic practices that prevail at these sights, but also the spectrum of responses a Palestinian trader might adopt in the absence of a unified strategy of political struggle. This includes behaviours of both individual and collective acquiescence as well as non-violent political resistance towards Israeli settler colonialism. Those engaged in Palestinian commerce are shown to play notable roles beyond economic actors, but for their impact on broader political dynamics. This approach from ‘below’ contributes to an additional interpretation of the Palestinian economy by researching a lesser studied form of economic activity and their affiliated actors. The implications of this are notable as they firstly stress the limited insights that are available from formal trade data in a study of globalised trade in general, and Palestinian commerce in particular. Secondly, they highlight the pervasiveness of Israeli settler colonialism upon all facets of Palestinian life while challenging misleading paradigms such as ‘conflict’ that are more regularly deployed to explain that which transpires in Palestine. Thirdly, they offer Chinese policy makers a valuable perspective to better understand the impact of their trade with Palestine and how it is invariably entangled in broader issues of Israeli domination. In so doing, hopefully informing Chinese policies that recognise the importance of the Safe Zone to Palestinian livelihoods, but also ones that are effectively contextualised and contingent on challenging ongoing Zionist settler colonialism

Origin of rebounds with a restitution coefficient larger than unity in nanocluster collisions

We numerically investigate the mechanism of super rebounds for head-on collisions between nanoclusters in which the restitution coefficient is larger than unity. It is confirmed that the temperature and the entropy of the nanocluters decrease after the super rebounds by our molecular dynamics simulations. It is also found that the initial metastable structure plays a key role for the emergence of the super rebounds.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Inductive seismo-electromagnetic effect in relation to seismogenic ULF emission

International audienceDuring the seismic wave propagation through the crust, the electromagnetic pulse can originate due to MHD conversion in this conductive medium. On the assumption of simple models of seismic wave excitation and attenuation, the problem is reduced to the analysis of a diffusion-like equation for a vector potential function. In this way, we need to change the classical gauge condition. A semi-analytical form of the solution is obtained in a case with constant ground conductivity. Dependencies of the electric and magnetic field components and the pulse duration on distance and crust conductivity have been computed in detail. The results could be useful for the explanation of electromagnetic signals related to coseismic, foreshock and aftershock activity

The dynamically hot stellar halo around NGC 3311: a small cluster-dominated central galaxy

An important open question is the relation between intracluster light and the halos of central galaxies in galaxy clusters. Here we report results from an on going project with the aim to characterize the dynamical state in the core of the Hydra I (Abell 1060) cluster around NGC 3311. Methods: We analyze deep long-slit absorption line spectra reaching out to ~25 kpc in the halo of NGC 3311. Results: We find a very steep increase in the velocity dispersion profile from a central sigma_0=150 km/s to sigma_out ~450 km/s at R ~ 12 kpc. Farther out, to ~25 kpc, sigma appears to be constant at this value, which is ~60% of the velocity dispersion of the Hydra I galaxies. With its dynamically hot halo kinematics, NGC 3311 is unlike other normal early-type galaxies. Conclusions: These results and the large amount of dark matter inferred from X-rays around NGC 3311 suggest that the stellar halo of this galaxy is dominated by the central intracluster stars of the cluster, and that the transition from predominantly galaxy-bound stars to cluster stars occurs in the radial range 4 to 12 kpc from the center of NGC 3311. We comment on the wide range of halo kinematics observed in cluster central galaxies, depending on the evolutionary state of their host clusters.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in A&

VLF/LF sounding of the lower ionosphere to study the role of atmospheric oscillations in the lithosphere-ionosphere coupling

It is shown that sounding of the lower ionosphere boundary by subionospheric signals from powerful VLF/LF transmitters can be a useful tool for the investigation of Planetary Waves (PW) with periods in a range of 2-30 days. A specific spring-time transition in the PW dynamic periodograms is revealed from our analysis of several years data using Tsushima, Japan VLF transmitter (10.2kHz) along the path with length of about 1000km. Earthquake influence m the periodograms could be sometime recognized as an appearance of specific wavelets. We discuss a possibility of PW transportation from the bottom to the upper atmosphere as modulation of shorter-scale gravity waves (GW) inside the troposphere and subsequent demodulation of the GW at the atmosphere-ionosphere boundary for the explanation of observational results. The existence of modulation due to gravity waves in LF signal amplitude is presented to support the above hypothesis

Proper Eighth-Order Vacuum-Polarization Function and its Contribution to the Tenth-Order Lepton g-2

This paper reports the Feynman-parametric representation of the vacuum-polarization function consisting of 105 Feynman diagrams of the eighth order, and its contribution to the gauge-invariant set called Set I(i) of the tenth-order lepton anomalous magnetic moment. Numerical evaluation of this set is carried out using FORTRAN codes generated by an automatic code generation system gencodevpN developed specifically for this purpose. The contribution of diagrams containing electron loop to the electron g-2 is 0.017 47 (11) (alpha/pi)^5. The contribution of diagrams containing muon loop is 0.000 001 67 (3) (alpha/pi)^5. The contribution of tau-lepton loop is negligible at present. The sum of all these terms is 0.017 47 (11) (alpha/pi)^5. The contribution of diagrams containing electron loop to the muon g-2 is 0.087 1 (59) (alpha/pi)^5. That of tau-lepton loop is 0.000 237 (1) (alpha/pi)^5. The total contribution to a_mu, the sum of these terms and the mass-independent term, is 0.104 8 (59) (alpha/pi)^5.Comment: 48 pages, 6 figures. References are correcte

Theory of ω−4/3\omega^{-4/3} law of the power spectrum in dissipative flows

It is demonstrated that $\omega^{-4/3}$ law of the power spectrum with the angular frequency $\omega$ in dissipative flows is produced by the emission of dispersive waves from the antikink of an congested domain. The analytic theory predicts the spectrum is proportional to $\omega^{-2}$ for relatively low frequency and $\omega^{-4/3}$ for high frequency.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

A direction finding technique for the ULF electromagnetic source

International audienceA technique of direction finding is proposed, which can be applied to the magnetic-dipole type source located in the conductive ground. To distinguish a weak ULF source signal from the natural noise a network of multicomponent magnetometers is supposed to be used. The data obtained by the ground-based stations is processed in such a way that a set of partial derivatives of the magnetic perturbations due to the source are found. Comparing these derivatives with theoretical formulae makes it possible, in principle, to find the ULF source parameters such as the distance and amplitude. Averaging the data and a special procedure are proposed in order to exclude random fluctuations in the magnetic moment orientation and to avoid hydrogeological and other local factors

Power-law behavior in the power spectrum induced by Brownian motion of a domain wall

We show that Brownian motion of a one-dimensional domain wall in a large but finite system yields a $\omega^{-3/2}$ power spectrum. This is successfully applied to the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) with open boundaries. An excellent agreement between our theory and numerical results is obtained in a frequency range where the domain wall motion dominates and discreteness of the system is not effective.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure