Seismic Response of a Four-Story Miniature Building with Replaceable Plastic Hinges

To emphasize on linear and nonlinear seismic behavior of building systems in education, a four-story miniature moment-resisting frame steel building was designed, built, and tested in a shaking table at the Structures Laboratory of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. A prominent feature of the building is the incorporation of elements designed to form plastic hinges that can be easily replaced after a test with minimum effort and at a very low cost. This model is mainly aimed at education in undergraduate and graduate structural dynamics/earthquake engineering courses and it has also been used to support research. This article describes in detail the main features of the building, its design, and discusses the response of the building to two input ground motions. Because the use of pushover analyses is becoming an industry standard, the some relevant results will be compared with those predicted by such kind of analyses. This article is written in very simple terms and is aimed at the undergraduate and graduate student, at educators in structural design and at structural engineers involved in seismic design of building structures. This article covers many aspects that are seldom highlighted in building behavior to earthquake excitation and that are not always covered in design codes or guidelines.     

A self conscious science

Schweder, Richard, and Robert LeVine, eds. Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. viii + 359 pp. including name and subject indices. $42.50 cloth.     

Latin America: trade and culture at a crossroads

ABSTRACT

Trade liberalization took the cultural community in Latin America by surprise, forcing a defensive reaction that took years to generate adequate public policy responses. However, cultural policy has changed unevenly in the region. Two issues became the center of culture and trade debates after the 1990s: cultural industry production and traditional indigenous knowledge. Mexico, by far the largest producer of audiovisual content on the continent, has been reluctant to adopt defensive approaches or red lines during trade negotiations. In fact, Chile is the only country that negotiated a ‘cultural reserve’ in its FTA with the United States. Regarding traditional knowledge, only states with large indigenous populations like Guatemala, Panama but especially Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador in the Andean Region dedicated significant efforts to fight for intellectual property protection for traditional knowledge, including benefit-sharing for the commercial use of genetic resources, derived through indigenous collective knowledge.     

Iran: Island of Stability orLand in Turmoil

Iran is a critical state in international relations because of its natural resources, its strategic location, its controversial conservative Islamic regime and its effect on shifting the balance of power in the Middle East. As a result, Iran is facing pressure from all sides. There are currently four possible future scenarios for Iran: the Iranian regime will remain stable; the Iranian regime will become increasingly unstable; the stability of the Iranian regime depends on international action; the Iranian regime will reform itself from within. It is only by improving its image, that the U.S. can positively affect any of these scenarios. Iran has historically been an essential actor in the international arena because ofits strategic location and its position as a major oil producer; Iran is currently the fourth largest producer of crude oil, the third largest holder of proven oil reserves and the second largest holder of natural gas reserves. Today, Iran remains a critical state, not only because of its strategic location and its abundance of natural resources, but also because of its alleged role as a “state sponsor of terror,” its nuclear program, its human rights abuses, its controversial conservative Islamic regime which is at odds with America, and its effect on shifting the balance of power in the Middle East, especially in light of the U.S. removal of the Taliban and Hussein regimes, two of Iran's biggest threats (Stockman, 2004). It is because of a combination of these factors that the Iranian government is feeling much pressure from all angles. Domestically, the Iranian regime is feeling pressure from the Iranian society as the regime is shifting back from a trend towards liberalism as represented by the Khatami government, towards Ahmadinejad's more conservative and traditional regime. Manifestations of this disapproval were seen in the 2007 municipal elections, in which reformers won the plurality of votes (Not Pro‐Prez or Pro‐Reform, 2006). Internationally, Iran has been accused of being a state sponsor of terror and has been labeled by the American government as a member of the “axis of evil,” and as a violator of human rights. Finally, within the regime itself, Ahmadinejad's confrontational foreign policy has caused a split within the conservative block; dividing the pragmatists who want to engage in trade and resume relations with the West, and those who adhere to a strict interpretation of the Islamic Revolution by welcoming confrontation with the West. Furthermore, tensions exist, not only between the reform minded Majlis and the conservative Council of Guardians, but also between the Majlis and the president, who has recently been criticized for his aggressive foreign policy that is isolating Iran from the world.     

Multiple historical geographies: responses and resistance to colonial conservation schemes in East Africa

Examining four colonial soil conservation schemes in East Africa that were part of the modernising project of colonialism, this article considers multiple historical geographies of the colonised world. There were multiple modernities: while information and ideas flowed in many directions between (and within) the metropole and colonies, the particular ‘modernity’ that was put into practice was shaped by its context. The article highlights therefore that – despite playing to the same tune of modernity – colonialism was highly differentiated in the way that its policies played out on the ground. Furthermore, the ‘colonised’ acted and reacted to the policies in highly differentiated ways that depended on their particular context in time and space. All but one of the soil conservation schemes examined were rejected and there was significant resistance to them. Much of the existing literature on such schemes examines them in the context of essentially political processes, and in particular their influence on rising nationalism. Whilst these processes are important, this paper shows that there were other, non-political, factors that influenced the reception they were given, which need to be considered too. These ‘everyday’ details were about the practical and technical nature of the schemes, and by exploring these aspects of the schemes, and comparing them, the article highlights why most were rejected. It suggests that different aspects of conservation schemes need to be explored for a firm understanding of the reasons behind resistance to such schemes.