Numerical Fragility Analysis of Vertical-Pile-Supported Wharves in the Western United States

This study develops seismic fragility curves for vertical-pile-supported wharves commonly found in the western United States. Nonlinear time-history analyses of a two-dimensional numerical model under two ground motion suites are performed. The results show that the jumbo container cranes increase by 10.8% in the wharf deck drift. By using the experiment-based limit states, the proposed fragility curves demonstrate that, at a PGA of 0.50 g, the probabilities of exceeding slight, moderate, extensive, and complete limit states are approximately 23.0%, 7.0%, 4.0%, and 3.0%, respectively, while at a PGA of 1.00 g, the exceeding probabilities increase to 44.0%, 19.0%, 14.0%, and 11.0%, respectively.     

Management skills for artists: ‘learning by doing’?

Although artists must usually be self‐reliant when managing their business, an artist’s education typically concentrates on artistic skills rather than managerial knowledge. This paper analyses the current curricula of 154 art institutions (public and private), focussing on the so‐called DACH countries (Austria, Germany and Switzerland). The results show a deficit in the implementation of economic and, especially, business‐related topics in the education of artists at art universities and institutions. A glimpse at Anglo‐American countries shows that, unlike in Europe, art schools are more open‐minded about implementing economic content into their curricula.     

Culture for competitiveness: valuing diversity in EU-Europe and the ‘creative city’ of Berlin

The European Union (EU) has in recent years propagated an approach to ‘culture’ that pulls together support for the creative and cultural industries with diversity-sensitive immigration and integration strategies, drawing on popular policy visions of the ‘creative’ and ‘intercultural’ city. This approach emphasizes the role that the diversity of culture, as personal resource, can play in enhancing economic competitiveness. The article examines its logic and possible effects through an analysis of EU documents and policy in Berlin. Berlin intersects with the EU’s agenda, using EU structural funds and participating in the European program ‘Intercultural Cities’. It is shown that the attempt to use ‘culture for competitiveness’ equates support-worthy ‘diversity’ with forms of culture that conform to (neo)liberal values and priorities. The attempt to shape a cosmopolitan place attractive for investment and the high-skilled feeds into gentrification processes that create ‘diverse’ neighborhoods where ‘difference’ has no place.     

The union Européenne des fédéralistes and its ‘third force’ programme

Environmental Education (EE) is broadly discussed in the Federal Republic of Germany. The different conceptions may be classified as the cognitive, the emotive, the cognitive-experiential and the system-critical model. In the article, the role of institutions in the educational system, dealing with EE, is described. Current activities in empirical research work and some findings on EE in German schools are reported.     

From dates to demography in later prehistoric Ireland? Experimental approaches to the meta-analysis of large C data-sets

We present a series of iterative methods to examine the problems associated with summed probability functions (SPFs) based on archaeological radiocarbon data. As a case study we use an SPF generated from a substantial radiocarbon data-set from the Irish Later Bronze and Iron Ages. We use simple numerical methods to show that real patterns can be deciphered from SPFs that can be used to trace and evaluate patterns of change. However, our results suggest that SPFs should not be used as a simple index of past human activity.     

From aisling to chora: female allegories of the nation in contemporary Irish women's poetry

Contemporary Irish women poets use female tropes of Irish nationalism as a potent site for revising traditional conceptions of femininity, maternity, and cultural identity. Arguably, female tropes of aisling poetry inhabit the same cultural location that anchors the societal role of motherhood as theorised by Julia Kristeva. Kristeva's work highlights mothers' important function in regulating the drives and preparing children for entrance into the symbolic order of society, in relation to which mothers remain structurally liminal. The Platonic chora, an amorphous receptacle from which forms emerge, symbolises this position at the threshold. This essay shows that Irish women poets revise female allegories of the nation either by aligning them with women's lived experience, as Eavan Boland has done, or by re-evaluating them from within their liminality, through stylistic experimentation or irony, which the analysis of poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Rita Ann Higgins demonstrates.