Managing the Solid Waste Crisis

Policymakers at all levels of government now face the difficult task of siting new waste facilities in the face of public apprehension and opposition. This study offers a causal model to evaluate the potential of operation and economic incentives for mitigating siting opposition while controlling for background characteristics and environmental attitudes. Among those incentives evaluated, local committee oversight, property tax credit, and money for schools proved to be the most useful options for tempering opposition among citizens.     

An Explicit Integration Scheme for Solving Dynamic Problems of Solid and Porous Media

In this article, an explicit integration scheme for dynamic finite element analysis is developed and the formulations for linear elastic solid and two-phase porous media are derived. The accuracy and stability characteristics analyses show this scheme is second-order accurate, which is the same as the Central Difference Method (CDM), and possesses a broader scope of stability within the range of normal damping ratios of media. Comparing with the CDM, this explicit scheme requires no matrix factorization even if a non diagonal damping matrix is included. Therefore, the dynamic finite element equations can be integrated economically provided that the mass matrix is diagonal. To demonstrate the validity of the present scheme, three examples are provided. First, taking a single-degree-of-freedom system as an example, the results obtained by the proposed scheme are compared with the exact solutions. Second, the dynamic responses of half-space saturated porous media, subjected to a concentrated load pulse at the surface, are analyzed. Both examples show that the results obtained by the proposed scheme agree well with the analytical solutions. Finally, the dynamic responses of a plane strain plate due to a load pulse are analyzed, respectively, by the proposed procedure and the commercial code ABAQUS (both implicit module and explicit module), and the CPU costs are compared.     

All That Is Solid Melts into the Bay: Anticipatory Ruination and Climate Change Adaptation

This paper explores the shaping of Bangladesh's southern coastal region, often framed as the most climate vulnerable place in the world, as a zone of climate crisis. As rising waters threaten communities inhabiting the low‐lying coastal islands scattered across the deltaic plain, many within the government and donor community have identified shrimp aquaculture as a principal adaptation strategy. Shrimp aquaculture is integral to the dynamics of what I call anticipatory ruination, a discursive and material process of social and ecological destruction in anticipation of real or perceived threats. I elaborate anticipatory ruination as a process that both responds to and produces Bangladesh's climate crisis. I use this concept to explore not only the dynamics taking place in Bangladesh's delta region, but also the ways in which climate crisis is constituted more broadly.     

Seismic Assessment of a Monumental Building through Nonlinear Analyses of a 3D Solid Model

ABSTRACT

The paper analyzes the static behavior and the seismic vulnerability of the “San Francesco ad Alto” building in Ancona (Italy), which is currently used as a Regional Headquarter of the Marche Region by the Italian Army and was formerly a monastery. The global static structural behavior and the dynamic properties have been evaluated using the Finite Element modeling technique, in which the nonlinear behavior of masonry has been taken into account by proper constitutive laws. The concepts of homogenized material and smeared cracking are used to evaluate the capacity of the monastery to withstand lateral loads together with the expected demands resulting from seismic actions (N2 method), using a nonlinear static analysis (pushover). The comparison of seismic demand and capacity confirms the susceptibility of these types of buildings to extensive damage and collapse, as frequently observed in similar buildings. This paper aims to point out that advanced numerical analyses can offer significant information on the understanding of the actual structural behavior of historical buildings. It is believed that the methodology and the overall conclusions of this case study are valid for many historical monasteries in Europe.     

Leaky Borders and Solid Citizens: Governing Security,Prosperity and Quality of Life in a North American Partnership

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), signed by Canada, Mexico and the United States in March 2005, proposes a dramatic reshaping of the continent. This is no simple plan for the intensification of economic and security cooperation. The SPP is much more expansive and includes quality of life issues such as education, science and technology, the environment, and health. But what does it mean that there is an emergent concern with biopolitics, that is, with the lives and bodies of the region's citizens, at the trilateral level? How are these citizens being imagined in the new regional vision? What are the implications for states and sovereignty? This paper addresses these questions by turning first to the trope of “partnership” as it emerges in the SPP, and then to the ways that borders and population mobility are being construed. The discourse of “partnership” signals a new political rationality that is reconfiguring the relationship between the North American states, their markets and their citizens. The repercussions for citizens and citizenship are especially significant, and are most clearly apparent vis‐à‐vis border policies, as I discuss in the following section. While external borders are being hardened against most foreign nationals, mobility across internal borders is becoming more differentiated: more penetrable for some, and impassable for others. The SPP thus promotes a divisive and striated regional space that will help perpetuate the ongoing tensions around illegal immigrants and undocumented workers in North America.     

视野新颖论证扎实的区域社会经济史新作--《劳动力的流动与农村社会经济变迁》评介

近年来,“三农”问题成为决策层与学者们关注的焦点。从现实问题的研究而追溯历史渊源,涌现出一些有价值的研究成果。由中国社会科学出版社出版的《劳动力的流动与农村社会经济变迁——20世纪赣闽粤三边地区实证研究》(温锐、游海华著)一书,以农村生产力中最为活跃的广大农民的流动为切入点,依据大量而翔实的史料,对20世纪