Transit: An analysis of networked criminal groups and criminal opportunities at transit ports

Like the path of many contraband commodities, trafficked cultural objects cross countless legal borders and intersect with the legitimate market world at a number of critical transit junctures, which supports the concept of a single “grey” market. These transit settings, where different elements of trafficking networks must converge, are sites of vulnerability for criminals and opportunity for law enforcement intervention. For this discussion, the case study of Subhash Kapoor’s trafficking network will be used as a frame of reference throughout the essay to support the idea that a port, as an interface in the global supply chain, is a critical site for analysis and understanding of international trafficking in cultural objects. What follows is a discussion of conceptualisations of organised crime in late modernity, a spatial analysis of the global cultural heritage trade, and an overview of the securitisation and role of sea ports in trade

Integrated Navigation System: Not a Sum of Its Parts

Similar to the evolutionary process for living organisms, marine navigation systems are becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated. Both by design and function, shipboard and shore-based navigation systems are no longer individual equipment components operating independently. Instead, the trend is toward integration, data fusion and synergy. One example of this are new Performance Standards being considered by IMO to achieve a “harmonized” presentation of all navigation-related information on the display of an integrated navigation system (INS). Unlike a dedicated display for ECDIS or radar, the new INS displays will be a task-oriented composite presentations that enable the mariner to configure the display for an operational situation by selecting specific chart, radar, radar plotting aids (ARPA) and AIS information that is required for the task-at-hand. This paper gives a brief overview of the trend toward the development of INS. In addition to a brief summary of IMO performance standards for navigation equipment/systems, specific mention is made about a BSH (Germany) report on the “Functional Scope and Model of INS.” A discussion is provided about the challenges of providing navigation safety information that goes beyond traditional boundaries of products and services. Currently, many agencies continue to produce individual products and services on a component basis. Hydrographic offices grapple with trying to provide multiple products and services for paper charts, raster navigational charts (RNCs) and electronic navigational charts (ENCs) while a same time, Coast Guard and Maritime Safety agencies focus on improving Aids-to-Navigation (AtoN), Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), AIS networks -- and more recently, port security. In some respects, the continued concentration on separate products and services represents an organizational reluctance to change. This in turn, results in a fragmented, sub-optimal approach to the safety-of-navigation caused by the inability to provide mariners with “seamless” information at reasonable cost. In particular, hydrographic offices must be willing to recognize that chart information can no longer be considered to be separate, individual products. When it comes to the provision and use of chart-related information for use in an INS, the focus needs to shift to what information is actually desired, how it will be provided, what other information it will be used with, and whether it is truly up-todate

A Browser-based IDE for the MUzECS Platform

We report on a scalable, portable, and secure visual development environment for programming embedded Arduino platforms with Chromebooks in a successful secondary school computer science curriculum. Our web-based environment is part of the larger MUzECS project, an inexpensive replacement module for the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) course being widely deployed in United States high schools. Students use MUzECS to gain a deeper understanding of computing, through a set of blocks which provide appropriate abstractions for working with low-level hardware. MUzECS improves upon the existing curriculum module by reducing the hardware cost by an order of magnitude, while still preserving the key ECS pillars of computer science content, student inquiry and classroom equity. Programming with visual blocks provides a more attractive tool for introductory courses than traditional approaches, and yet enables high-impact exploration activities such as building a series of embedded musical instruments. The current work combines and modifies several existing tools to eliminate technical barriers on low-cost platforms like Chromebooks, such as the reliance on special block-based toolchains, remote compilation servers, or multi-stage transfers for student code

THE EFFECT OF SPATIAL PATTERNS OF SOIL HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY AND DEPTH ON LOCAL AND HILLSLOPE SCALE SHALLOW WATER TABLE DYNAMICS

Much research in forested headwater catchments has focused on the role of topography for organizing subsurface flow and the hydrologic connectivity of upland flow paths to stream networks. However, little work has been conducted to evaluate how localized and hillslope scale patterns of hydraulic conductivity and soil depth contribute to spatial patterns of water table duration, magnitude, and connectivity. I monitored shallow groundwater dynamics in wells distributed across a 1st order hillslope in the Lubrecht Experimental Forest, Montana. Additionally, I collected in-situ measurements of soil saturated hydraulic conductivity and soil depth at 10m intervals across the study hillslope and compared these values to the well hydrologic response. Similar to previous studies, my results indicated that upslope accumulated area was a first-order control on the duration of soil saturation. However, I found that local soil hydraulic properties modulate hillslope scale controls on the duration, magnitude, and extent of groundwater development. Generally, local contributing areas with higher saturated hydraulic conductivity values exhibited lower magnitudes of water table depth and variability in water table depths, lower median water table height, and less cumulative duration of hydrologic connectivity with upslope landscape positions. Additionally, areas with more variable bedrock topography required higher antecedent wetness conditions for the development of transient water tables. These results demonstrate not only the importance of hillslope scale topography for controlling hillslope water table dynamics, but the need to also consider local patterns of soils characteristics and bedrock topography. This study advances the science of hydrology by addressing previously unresolved questions regarding the relative roles of spatial patterns in topography, hydraulic conductivity and soil depth on local and hillslope scale shallow water table dynamics. A better understanding of these local and nonlocal processes may contribute to improved conceptualizations of factors affecting runoff generation and the degree of watershed scale hydrologic connectivity that influences discharge dynamics in forested mountain watersheds

The Man-pocalpyse: \u3ci\u3eDoomsday Preppers\u3c/i\u3e and the Rituals of Apocalyptic Manhood

This essay argues that recent male performances of disaster preparedness in reality television recuperate a preindustrial model of hegemonic masculinity by staging the plausible “real world” conditions under which manly skills appear necessary for collective survival. Representations of masculinity in uncertain times intensify the masculinity-in-crisis motif to cultivate anticipation of an apocalyptic event that promises a final resolution to male alienation. An examination of Nat Geo’s Doomsday Preppers illustrates how these staged performances of everyday life cultivate a dangerous vision of apocalyptic manhood that consummates a fantasy of national virility in the demise of feminine society

American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment (Book Review)

With the recent inflection in rhetorical scholarship on theorizing citizenship, Jason Edward Black’s American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment is a timely reminder that the early formation of U.S. civic identity was predicated on the erasure of indigenous sovereignty, culture, and identity. Black’s project also disabuses readers of the historical misconception that this erasure was a unidirectional process wherein indigenous peoples ultimately succumbed to the onslaught of Western colonization. Instead, Black begins with the assumption that U.S. public culture is, in part, the outcome of a dialectical struggle between Euro-Americans and American Indians over the meaning of land, sovereignty, and national identity. By critically analyzing the voices of American Indian resistance to colonization throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Black illustrates how American Indian nations indicted the master narratives of U.S. nationalism by pointing to the fissures and contradictions in the concept of national belonging. Evincing the rhetorical agency of American Indians throughout the uneven and haphazard process of colonization, Removal and Allotment demonstrates that American public culture is invariably shaped, and sometimes thwarted, by those it subjugated. This project illustrates the kind of insights garnered from decolonial methodologies, where the rhetorical critic operates with skepticism toward official discourse and Western knowledge production, presuming that there is an epistemic advantage to be gained by heeding the voices of those who are subjugated by colonialism. The result is a project that shows the complexities of indigenous agency and identity throughout resistance to Euro-American colonization

Non-Destructive Evaluation of Stay Cable Bridge Systems

Stay cable bridge systems have been used for centuries and as engineering knowledge and new materials has developed, these bridges have become larger, more elegant, and overall greater engineering feats. As these bridges become more popular, it is not only important to carefully design these bridges, but also to routinely inspect the health of the in-service bridges. Detrimental conditions such as corrosion, section loss, strand breakage, segregated grout, voided grout, water infiltration, and general tendon deterioration in the anchorage system are documented issues that can occur within stay cable bridges and can have extremely harmful effects. In order to monitor the health of these bridges, non-destructive evaluation (NDE) can be a very useful tool in order to inspect these bridges without having to repair the system after inspection. In this research, ground penetrating radar, magnetic flux leakage, infrared thermography, ultrasonic tomography, sounding, and borescope inspections are all performed on a series of mock-up stay cable specimens fabricated with certain detrimental conditions located within. The applicability, capabilities, and limitations of each NDE method are evaluated based on empirical data from physical testing. Furthermore, each method is ranked in categories of precision, accuracy, ease of use, inspection requirements, and cost. This research concludes that only magnetic flux leakage has the ability to determine any sort of steel strand defects, including corrosion, section loss, and strand breakage; and it was very effective in doing so, as testing data closely matched fabricated defects. Ground penetrating radar, infrared thermography, ultrasonic tomography, and sounding were all able to accurately identify grout voids within the tendon but could not differentiate between a voided region and a region infiltrated with water or poor grout conditions. In future research, additional testing to differentiate testing results between these three conditions should be explored, as each one can require completely different solutions to remedy the problem. In addition, none of the methods explored in this research were able to detect any defects within the concrete masses representative of the anchorage regions, although infrared thermography and sounding were effective at determining voided areas within the grout caps. Lastly, borescope inspection was a very useful tool to qualitatively evaluate conditions that have already been identified by one of the other methods

Chastity for Democracy: Surplus Repression and the Rhetoric of Sex Education

Moving from opposition to participation, the Adolescent Family Life Act (1981) and the development of abstinence education marks the conservative movement’s pivot to a rhetorical strategy of tolerance that enabled it to coopt the public culture of sex discourse. Working from Herbert Marcuse’s theory of “surplus repression,” I argue that the New Right seized the liberationist argument for open public discourse about sexuality to sublimate libidinal desires into a national project of familial (re)productivity. The AFLA is significant in the rhetorical history of sex education because it demarcates the transition to a productive form of biopolitics that sought to manage sexuality by instrumentalizing rather than censuring bodily desire. Conservative sex talk illustrates how Eros—transgressive, creative, and erotic desires—is channeled into the discursive production of hyperfunctional subjects invested in their own subjugation

\u3ci\u3eIt Follows\u3c/i\u3e: Precarity, Thanatopolitics, and the Ambient Horror Film

In the 2014 horror film It Follows, a teenage woman is terrorized by a fatal curse that passes from victim to victim via sexual intercourse. The subject of the curse is relentlessly pursued by vacant-minded assassins that take the form of friends, loved ones, and strangers. The film is set near the infamous dividing line of Detroit’s 8 Mile Road, between what remains of the suburban working-class and the sacrifice zone of post-industrial urban triage. I argue that It Follows confronts audiences with the spectral manifestation of precarity: the deliberate and unequal redistribution of human fragility to populations who are the most socially and economically vulnerable. First, the generic shift from a specific monster to an anonymous and relentless force redeploys horror convention to draw attention to the conditions that induce horror within the prevailing socioeconomic order. Second, the film renders such precarity visible by contrasting the mise-en-scène of the suburban enclave with zones of postindustrial ruin, the relative comfort of the former predicated on the vulnerability of the latter. The film maps a landscape of postindustrial ruin, enacting a visual and narrative critique of thanatopolitics, the biopolitical organization of death under late capitalism