Sensitivity Analysis for Soil-Structure Interaction Phenomenon Using Stochastic Approach

This article analyses 1.36 million realistic soil-structure interaction (SSI) scenarios in a systematic fashion to define the correlation between soil, structural, and system parameters and interaction effects on the structural response. In the analyses, a soil-shallow foundation-structure model that satisfies design building code requirements is utilized. It has been identified that soil shear wave velocity, shear wave velocity degradation ratio, structure-to-soil stiffness ratio, and structural aspect ratio combined with the system stiffness are the key parameters whose variation significantly affects variation in structural response. The critical range of variation of these parameters resulting in a detrimental SSI effects is also defined.     

Notes,Documents, and Bibliographies

Princess Lieven's Last Diplomatic Confrontation; Daniel H. Thomas

Faisal Ibn Husairi and the Zionists: A Re-examination with Documents; Neil Caplan     

What Was Brewing in the Natufian? An Archaeological Assessment of Brewing Technology in the Epipaleolithic

It has long been speculated that increasing demands for cereals for the purposes of brewing beer led to domestication in the Near Eastern Natufian cultures. While the question of whether cereals were being used in beer production is an important issue, it has remained a difficult proposition to test. We present some new perspectives on traditional brewing techniques relevant to this issue, on archaeological remains, and on the paleoecology of the Near East. Taken together, these observations provide more compelling circumstantial evidence that makes it increasingly likely that brewing of beer was an important aspect of feasting and society in the Late Epipaleolithic.     

'Globalizing' regional development: a global production networks perspective

Recent literature concerning regional development has placed significant emphasis on local institutional structures and their capacity to 'hold down' the global. Conversely, work on inter-firm networks – such as the global commodity chain approach – has highlighted the significance of the organizational structures of global firms' production systems and their relation to industrial upgrading. In this paper, drawing upon a global production networks perspective, we conceptualize the connections between 'globalizing' processes, as embodied in the production networks of transnational corporations, and regional development in specific territorial formations. We delimit the 'strategic coupling' of the global production networks of firms and regional economies which ultimately drives regional development through the processes of value creation, enhancement and capture. In doing so, we stress the multi-scalarity of the forces and processes underlying regional development, and thus do not privilege one particular geographical scale. By way of illustration, we introduce an example drawn from recent research into global production networks in East Asia and Europe. The example profiles the investments of car manufacturer BMW in Eastern Bavaria, Germany and Rayong, Thailand, and considers their implications for regional development.     

After Geopolitics? From the Geopolitical Social to Geoeconomics

Abstract:  This paper makes two central arguments. First, the popular language of geopolitics needs to be understood as historically emerging from and helping create a "geopolitical social", which both crosses and crafts traditional borders of internal and external to the national state. Second, we suggest that geoeconomic social forms are gradually supplanting this geopolitical social. After establishing the geopolitical social associated with traditional geopolitics, from Ratzel to Bismarck, we examine the erosion of geopolitical calculation and the rise of the geoeconomic. We trace emerging geoeconomic social forms in three domains: the reframing of territorial security to accommodate supranational flows; the recasting of social forms of security through the market; and the reframing of the state as geoeconomic agent. Neither an exercise in "critical geopolitics" nor an endorsement of Luttwakian style geoeconomics, this paper assumes no straightforward historical succession from geopolitical to geoeconomic logics, but argues that geoeconomics is nonetheless crucial to the spatial reconfiguration of contemporary political geography.     

Hits and misses when throwing stones at mass analysis

Mass Analysis (MA), a well-recognized method of flake debris analysis, has generated significant interest in size-grade variables for investigating prehistoric lithic technologies, criticism of such usage, and combination methods developed to address some of those criticisms. A recent critique concluded that there are significant sources of error that preclude the use of MA for investigating prehistoric assemblages. We disagree with this generalization, but recognize that uncritical application of MA by non-lithic specialists is unlikely to yield useful results. Confusion as to what constitutes MA versus other size-grade approaches is a significant consideration. We address these issues as well as replicator variability, raw material, debitage mixing, diagnostic signatures, and the necessity of multivariate analysis in demonstrating that in many cases the attacks on MA are based on faulty evidence or are misguided. We advocate the use of a multiple lines of evidence approach that incorporates aspects of MA. Continued experimentation and application to particular archaeological assemblages in a cyclical fashion is necessary to explore more fully the utility of MA.     

Governance at community level: Small towns in rural Victoria

The ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between and within public and private sectors has led to new styles of governing that affect the way that rural communities organise themselves. Some have called this a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ where there has been a convergence of neo-liberal and communitarian ideologies to form the basis of a new relationship between the state, the market and civil society. We analyse the impact of these converging ideologies using a survey of development groups in 35 towns in rural Victoria and explore the types of community governance that have emerged as a response to changes in those towns that lost their local government authorities in the last decade of the twentieth century.