“You don't go there”: Spatial Strategies of Stigma Negotiation in a Post-Industrial Town

This paper draws on a multimethod ethnographic study, conducted between 2016 and 2017 in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, England—a small and relatively isolated deindustrialising colliery town—examining how residents negotiate living in stigmatised territory. In doing so, microspatial strategies of distancing, avoidance, and deflection are illustrated, revealing how residents reassign and deepen stigma in particular locations within a stigmatised territory. This highlights the relationship between social and physical space, and while spatial strategies of negotiation do not mitigate stigma, they do (re)produce internal social hierarchies within a place that is homogenised from the outside through disparaging narratives. A key contribution reveals the significance of the racialised production of space in shaping how territorial stigma is negotiated within this distinct socio-spatial location. Residents use strategies to redirect the stigma toward those seen as out of place and draw attention away from sticky sites of racialised urban stigma towards symbols of unspoilt rural Englishness.     

The Influence of Dowel-Bearing Strength in Designing Timber Pegged Timber Joints

ABSTRACT

The employment of timber pegs in timber structure joints is a widespread technology in the field of timber frame building in the United States, where the Timber Frame Engineering Council has published a special Standard to supplement the National Design Specification for Wood Construction. The authors have been studying the possibility of supplementing the Eurocode 5 design formulas, thought for timber joints with metal connectors, with specifications needed for a reliable design when employing timber pegs. The field of application envisaged is that of restoring timber structures and results obtained until now are quite encouraging. In this step of the research, more attention has been paid to deformation process: fir and chestnut samples have been tested to determine their dowel-bearing behavior with steel and ash timber peg while double-shear plane joints made of the same wood species, and fastened with steel as well as timber pegs, have been analyzed.     

Potential Use of Foamed Mortar (FM) for Thermal Upgrading of Chinese Traditional Hui-Style Residences

The Hui-style residence is an important architectural heritage of China. The hollow wall structures are widely used to build its exterior wall system. However, the thermal performance of the hollow wall is no longer able to meet the new energy-saving and environmental requirement. This article describes a laboratory study of the development of foamed mortar (FM), with the potential for use in thermal upgrading of the Hui-style hollow wall system without dramatically changing its traditional structure. The key early age, physical, mechanical and thermal properties were systematically measured. Two extended models were respectively developed to calculate compressive strength and thermal conductivity, as a function of porosity. Environment chamber test was also employed to investigate the effectiveness of this novel thermal upgrading approach and the results show that filling the voids with FM can effectively improve the overall thermal resistance of the hollow wall system by 44%, which is almost equal to the overall thermal resistance when using the more expensive commercial inorganic stucco system. In addition, the combination of these two methods yielded an overall thermal resistance of 0.701 m²·K/W, which is even higher than 0.67 m²·K/W for the code required in the hot summer/cold winter climate zone.     

Asylum seekers,Ireland, and the return of the repressed

Abstract

In 2014 residents in Direct Provision Centres for asylum seekers staged a series of protests. The protests, which coincided with the appointment of a new Minister for Justice who announced the Irish government’s plans to reform the asylum system, voiced three clear demands. Firstly, the protestors demanded that all asylum centres be closed; secondly, they demanded that all residents be given the right to remain and work in Ireland; and thirdly, they demanded an end to all deportations. The government’s response to these protests was to appoint a working group in October 2014, made up of representatives of migrant-support NGOs (but without any significant representation of asylum seekers themselves) while also announcing that it intends to reform rather than abolish the system.

Against this background, this paper makes three interlinked theoretical propositions. Firstly, I propose that just as the Irish state and society managed to ignore workhouses, mental health asylums, “mother and baby homes”, Magdalene laundries and industrial schools, they also “manage not to know” of the plight of asylum seekers, precisely because the Direct Provision system isolates asylum applicants, makes them dependent on bed and board and a small “residual income maintenance payment to cover personal requisites”, and makes it difficult for them to organise on a national level. “Managing not to know”, or disavowing, entails the erasure of the Direct Provision system from Ireland’s collective consciousness at a time when increasing emigration is returning to haunt Irish society after years of refusing to confront the pain of emigration. I argue that asylum seekers represent the return of Ireland’s repressed that confronts Irish people, themselves e/migrants par excellence. Secondly, I propose that by taking action and representing themselves, the residents of Direct Provision Centres can no longer be theorised as Agamben’s “bare life”, at the mercy of sovereign power, to whom everything is done and who are therefore not considered active agents in their own right. The third proposition responds to the theme of this special issue, that multiculturalism is “in crisis”, arguing in the conclusion that this “crisis” hardly applies to Ireland, where the brief flirtations with “interculturalism” by state, society but also Irish studies disavow race and racism in favour of a returning obsession with emigration, which enables the continued disavowal of the experiences of asylum seekers in Direct Provision.     

Stone Age fishhooks – how were they dimensioned? Morphology,strength test,and breakage pattern of Neolithic bone fishhooks from Ajvide,Gotland, Sweden

The late Stone Age Pitted Ware site at Ajvide, Gotland, in the Baltic Sea, Sweden, has revealed a large deposit of fishbone and approximately 400 bone fishhooks, complete and incomplete. Cod (Gadus morhua), which is one of the most abundant fish species in the bone assemblage, was probably caught with hook and line fishing. To investigate the fishhooks' field of application, a morphological and morphometric study was performed on 384 available hooks. Two sets of replicas made of four selected original fishhooks were submitted to a strength test. A breakage study of the incomplete hooks in comparison with the strength-tested hooks was carried out in order to distinguish fresh breaks from dry breaks. It seems that a certain morphology for fishhooks was preferred at Ajvide, indicating they were produced by skilled craftsmen for special usage. The strength test showed that the hooks had a weight bearing capacity more than the average size of cod caught at Ajvide. Using results of these tests, we predicted that the mean breaking strength of 46 intact Ajvide hooks was 96.6 ± 26.1 (s.d.) Newtons (equivalent to 9.85 ± 2.7 kg). The design of fishhooks changed somewhat over time, being slightly larger in the oldest layers of the site. The breakage patterns of the hooks show that the bow was the most common area of breakage. The design and weight bearing capacity of the hooks point to a specialized cod fishery from boats in deep water.     

一种新型古丝绸强度测定仪的研制

为了克服目前利用抗拉强度分析方法检测古丝绸老化强度的缺点,通过对古丝绸抗拉强度分析,利用电子天平的称量精度和记录、显示功能,结合控速、控力和固定试样的机械部件,对测定仪的机械、电路、软件部分进行了设计,研制出一种新型的古丝绸强度测定仪。用古丝绸强度测定仪对古丝绸进行了测试,结果显示古丝绸强度测定仪能很好地测定古丝绸的抗拉强度。该仪器为定量测定古代丝织品老化程度提供了一种较为精细的手段。     

战后日本对中国的直接投资

战后日本对华直接投资开始于1979年,呈现出沿海地区集中、投资目的单一、由制造加工转变为注重销售等特点,同时在其发展中也存在着一些问题。为此,中国应在充分认识日本海外直接投资规律的基础上,进一步开放市场,优化投资环境,增强包括日本投资者在内的外国投资者的投资信心,以便吸引更多的投资满足国有企业改革和西部开发对资金、技术和管理的迫切需要。     

Direct Displacement-Based Design of Buildings with Different Seismic Isolation Systems

A displacement-based design (DBD) procedure for buildings equipped with different seismic isolation systems is proposed. It has been derived from the Direct Dispaced-Based Design (DDBD) method recently developed by Priestley et al. [2007] Priestley, M. J. N., Calvi, G. M. and Kowalsky, M. J. 2007. Displacement-Based Seismic Design of Structures, Pavia, , Italy: IUSS Press.  [Google Scholar]. The key aspect of the proposed procedure is the definition of a target displacement profile for the structure. It is assigned by the designer to achieve given performance levels, expressed in terms of maximum displacement of the isolation system and maximum interstory drift. The proposed design procedure has been developed for four different idealized force-displacement relationships, which can describe the cyclic response of a wide variety of isolation systems, including: (i) Lead-Rubber Bearings (LRB); (ii) High-Damping Rubber Bearings (HDRB); (iii) Friction Pendulum Systems (FPS); and (iv) Combinations of lubricated Flat Sliding Bearings (FSB) with different re-centering and/or energy dissipating auxiliary devices. In this article, the background and implementation of the design procedure is presented first. It is followed by the results of validation studies based on nonlinear time-history analyses on different design configurations of base isolated buildings.     

DESIRABLE STRENGTH DISTRIBUTION FOR ASYMMETRIC STRUCTURES WITH STRENGTH-STIFFNESS DEPENDENT ELEMENTS

Recent studies have shown that for many reinforced concrete lateral force-resisting elements (LFRE) stiffness is dependent on strength, and as a result strength assign-ment to these elements would affect both the strength and stiffness distributions in a structure. As a consequence, stiffness distribution cannot be considered known prior to strength assignment. This implies that in assigning strength to LFRE, the designer has the ability not only to prescribe the strength distribution, but also indirectly control the stiffness distribution in the structure. In this paper, a study is made on the seis-mic performance of a number of single-story structures to reconfirm that the “balanced CV-CR location” criterion, previously suggested by the writers, constitutes a desirable strength/stiffness distribution for minimising torsional response of asymmetric reinforced concrete structures.     

高分子彩绘类文物保护涂层材料的性能及应用研究

针对彩绘类陶器保护的特殊要求,筛选性能优良的保护材料。在人工气候箱中对所选择的9种有机高分子文物保护涂层材料进行人工老化试验,分别采用傅立叶红外光谱仪测量试验材料的分子结构,分光光度仪测量颜料的主波长、色纯度和高度的变化,粘接强度仪测量颜料的粘接强度变化。结果表明:PrimalAC33、B72、有机硅的耐老化性能好,颜色变化小,粘接强度高,能很好的起到保护彩绘文物的作用,建议在文物保护领域推广使用。