Analysis and Design of Inter-Story Isolation Systems with Nonlinear Devices

Seismic isolation systems that mitigate seismic response are generally applied at the base of a building; however, architectural, functional, and cost considerations have motivated the application of isolation systems at inter-story locations. In this article, we systematically examine the effectiveness of inter-story isolation systems as a function of their location, and explore alternative approaches for selecting their properties. Single-story isolation systems are shown to be effective in mitigating force demands above the isolation system but less effective in mitigating forces below the isolation system. Finally, the practical aspects of designing an inter-story isolation system to accommodate light loads are discussed.     

Deaf people in Hitler's Europe: conducting oral history interviews with deaf Holocaust survivors

Deaf people living in Europe between 1933 and 1945 were mistreated, forcibly sterilized, incarcerated, and murdered by the Nazis. Their stories have been overlooked or underappreciated because of the complexities of communication and the difficulties historians face gaining access to those communities. This article describes the challenges faced by two United States historians when they interviewed deaf Holocaust survivors in Budapest, Hungary and during a conference, "Deaf People in Hitler's Europe," co-sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Gallaudet University. It also raises general questions of adapting methodologies to facilitate "oral" history interviews for deaf informants.     

Experimentation as infrastructure: Enacting transitions differently through diverse economy-environment assemblages in Aotearoa New Zealand

Radically new economic arrangements are needed for just and sustainable transitions to a more environmentally and ecologically resilient world. Yet little progress is being made to imagine the new economy-environment relations around which resources, actors, and ethics might be configured to enact the novel economic forms needed. This article uses a Social Studies of Economisation and Marketisation (SSEM) approach to examine a suite of differently scaled and structured environmentally focused economic development initiatives in New Zealand. We explore how the initiatives have assembled diverse actors and investment projects into experimental economy-environment relations. Our account highlights experimentation as a pivotal mode of economisation, and we argue that the initiatives studied by us expose a new experimentation-led agenda for transitioning to more environmentally and economically just futures. Working with the idea of experimentation in an SSEM framework, we also argue that the diverse initiatives are creating an experimentation infrastructure that provides a more generative platform for novel economy-environment relations than top–down models of change such as transition pathways. The article opens up a critical politics of environmental economy that focuses attention on emergence, agency, and practice and allows us to reimagine processes of transitioning.     

Private rental investment and socio-spatial disadvantage in Sydney,Australia

This article unpacks the connection between a growing cohort of small-scale but purposive property investors and urban socio-spatial restructuring. We analyse private rental housing as a tenure share to demonstrate its spatial correlation with the suburbanisation of socio-economic disadvantage in Sydney, Australia, between 1991 and 2016. Then, we show how investors drive this emerging pattern by reference to the geography of property owners’ stated investment objectives—low capital outlay, rental yields, and capital growth prospects. We contend that the link between their small-scale activities and the city’s changing socio-spatial structure is an overlooked consequence of private rental sector (PRS) housing financialisation. Importantly, our focus on behaviours exhibited by small-scale rental property owners in PRS financialisation transcends existing analyses that have concentrated on corporate entity activity in this space. That focus also contrasts with framings of private rental growth as a residual outcome of developments elsewhere in the housing market. Such work is significant because it demonstrates the impacts of real estate investment on urban form.     

Probabilistic models of seasonal <Emphasis Type="Italic">Bison</Emphasis> exploitation based on fetal prey osteometry and reproductive phenology

Seasonality studies are a staple of Great Plains archaeology, but obtaining evidence for seasonal food procurement is challenging. This study explores seasonality through the lens of fetal bison remains. A method is developed that produces intra-annual probability distributions for the date of fetal death. These distributions are informed by osteometric data from fetal bison in archaeological contexts, fetal skeletal growth curves, and data-driven models of bison conception dates. Probabilities can be assigned to seasonality hypotheses by examining date intervals across these intra-annual distributions. This method is implemented through an R program and applied to seasonality hypotheses at three archaeological sites containing fetal bison remains: Big Goose Creek (Wyoming), Baker Cave III (Idaho), and the Upper Tucker Site (Texas). Unlike previous efforts to infer seasonality from fetal bison remains, this method provides explicit probabilities showing the level of agreement between the osteometric data and seasonality hypotheses. This probabilistic approach could be extended to seasonality studies involving other animal taxa both within and outside of North America.     

NEW COMPETITION IN SHOPPING-CENTER HIERARCHIES: AN EMPIRICAL COMPARISON OF ALTERNATIVE SPECIFICATIONS*

ABSTRACT. Within the framework of an existing hierarchy of shopping centers, Voronoi diagrams at each level of the hierarchy are used to define infringement on existing centers by new entrants. We distinguish four intensities of infringement—that is, four categorizations of when existing centers face new competition—and label shopping centers accordingly. Our aim is to determine empirically which type of new competition is best explained by various attributes of the incumbent centers. To accomplish this, logit analysis is used to relate the above labels to market-area population, store turnover, age, and hierarchical level of each shopping center in Edmonton, Alberta.     

A Hierarchical Goal-Programming Approach To Environmental Land Use Management

A mathematical goal programming model is described for the purpose of normative policy evaluation of environmental land use management on the Texas Gulf Coast. The model's three-level hierarchy, linking statewide, multicounty, and local models, allows the explicit consideration of competing goals (policies) at different spatial scales. Microlevel impacts of macrolevel environmental policy decisions, and vice versa, can be assessed.     

Heritage as trope: conceptual etymologies and alternative trajectories

The theorization of heritage must necessarily examine the impact of its often concealed status as a metaphor, a figuration framing our use of the term as well as those things described as heritage. Describing elements of the past as heritage is a trope as the past does not leave a testament. This figuration singularizes past, present, and legacy (concealing differences within these terms), as well as ascribing intentionality to the past. These resonances often lend a conservative charge to heritage; however, they might also be viewed as offering a critique of the present. The theorization of heritage should also examine specific histories of how this trope arose. In Britain, John Ruskin’s influential articulation of cultural heritage, for example, drew on the way inheritance featured in political writings of John Locke and Edmund Burke. Theorization of heritage can also be broadened by considering how inheritance is employed in other disciplines, such as its use in phenomenology and poststructuralism, an arc encompassing work by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Luc Marion, Jacques Derrida, and Bernard Stiegler. These investigations help expand the conceptual dimensions of heritage.     

Heads or Tails? Modified Ceramic Gaming Pieces from Colonial California

Modified ceramic disks have been recovered from historic-era sites across the Americas. Small unperforated disks are commonly interpreted as gaming pieces and larger perforated disks are often classified as spindle whorls. Here, we examine these interpretations in light of collections from three colonial-era sites in central California: Mission San Antonio de Padua, Mission San José, and the Rancho San Andrés Castro Adobe. We argue that the small unperforated disks from our study sites were two-sided dice. These gaming pieces facilitated the social cohesion of Native people living in the large, multiethnic Indigenous communities that formed around Spanish colonial missions and later Mexican-era ranchos.