Itinerant Data: Unveiling Gendered Scrutiny at the Border

This essay traces the ways in which damaged bodies function as readable traumatic testimonies of gendered and racialized postcolonial violence in Somalia. Characters in Nuruddin Farah’s Maps read and learn from each other’s marked bodies while simultaneously instructing the novel’s reader on how to read the narrative. The novel represents traumatic suffering in images of bodily illness and mutilation to signify hypochondriacal responses to the psychic violence that accompanies the physical violation wrought by neocolonialism. Characters’ bodies transgress patriarchal gender role and geographical boundaries, dismantling established constructions of postcolonial nation and personhood. Postcolonial motherhood becomes a new kind of subjectivity that transgresses both anatomical and national borders. As testimony, the narratives and marked bodies in Maps signify social change by suggesting new kinds of bodies rather than by reiterating the established alignment of birth and motherhood with the emerging nation. They suggest new ways of reading Anglophone African postcolonial literatures.

The Coming of Age of EU Regulation of Network Industries and Services of General Economic Interest

This chapter highlights key trends in EU law in the last ten to fifteen years, as regards the regulation of network industries and of services of general economic interest (SGEIs) more generally. Our central claim is that over the relevant period of time, EU law has been—and still is—in the process of moving from one legal paradigm to another. The first paradigm is more traditional, static, formalistic, and self-contained (mono-disciplinary). Its hallmark is the use of legal definitions and concepts to create categories in which phenomena are placed, by way of pigeonholing or labeling, and to which consequences are attached. It was more appropriate in earlier times when EU law was concerned with establishing market access and realizing the Internal Market. The second paradigm is more dynamic, integrative, and inter-disciplinary. Its hallmark is the use of general guidelines and principles to assess specific situations in a wider sectorial setting, with progressive refinement, until the point where a conclusion can be reached and consequences attached. It leads to ‘managed competition’, where EU law integrates other objectives besides market access. As for substantive law, EU electronic communications law, since 2002, presents the best—albeit not complete—example of the new paradigm, with its reliance on technological neutrality and economic analysis. EU energy law has not gone as far down that path. Interestingly, the ECJ judgment in Altmark can be seen as an attempt to steer the law concerning SGEIs away from formalism, towards the new paradigm. However, developments following Altmark show that the other institutions have not fully followed the ECJ. As for institutions, EU electronic communications and energy law have followed a similar path, away from formalistic separations (i) between EU and Member State institutions, (ii) along national borders or (iii) between regulation and competition law. At the same time, the separation between the regulatory authority and the national legislative and executive powers has been strengthened. The policing of SGEIs under Article 106(2) TFEU would benefit from following a similar institutional path.

Summary form only given. Digital architectural archives -public institutions, architecture museums, university institutes, private foundations, by their continue improvement of their interoperability, proficiency and efficiency, contribute to multiply access to information and to promote cultural dissemination at large scale. The expansive process of multidisciplinary knowledge, experienced in today digital environment, combined with the ability to synthetize and recognize new or hidden patterns for new disclosures, is becoming the major asset also for architectural study. Technology supports today's learning process by offering new tools and interactive devices while making learning experience deeper and more informal at the same time. The ongoing global trend of digitization of the architectural heritage, has extensive applications: as conversion of items in visual files, as resources management, as user interface and interaction design, and as multimedia platforms where, at different levels (for curators, designers, scholars, final users, as well as simple amateurs), a creative interpretation offers to set up links among contents, objects, images, texts, audiovideos, via notions and emotions, augmenting exponentially the network effects. Digital archives, upon layouts and filters, allow not only to run digital data flow, to better display their contents and exploit their value (input), but also to create fluent and dynamic links and aggregations, as visual and synthetic mind maps (output). The most diverse architectural institutions around the world rely more and more on digitization, improving accessibility to their collections by creating digital repositories and making them available on websites. The potential of open source databases and powerful research engines, when combined with the imaginative, creative th

Some people argue that the digital archive is an oxymoron (Laermans and Gielen 2007) or more akin to an anarchive (Ernst 2015, Zielinski 2014). Derrida used the word anarchive to signal that “what remains unvanquished remains associated with the anarchi.” Ernst relates it to the digital archive and describes the anarchive as something that cannot be ordered or catalogued because it is constantly re-used, circulated, and expanding, and thus only a metaphorical archive. Similarly, Foster describes how the anarchival is about obscure traces rather than absolute origins, emphasising the incomplete, which may offer openings to new interpretation, or ‘points of departure’ as mentioned by Foster (2004). These various descriptions imply that digital archives, and in particular Web-based archives, function less as a storage space and more as a recycling centre in which the material (the archival document, if one can still use this term) is dynamic. In other words, the default state of the digital archive is re-use instead of storage, circulation rather than centrally organised memory, constant change versus stasis. How to capture and retrieve all this data, information and documentation, but more importantly, in what way does archiving take place on the Web? In what follows I examine projects by artists who in various ways explore the challenges of online archiving. These examples show how information and data is captured and archived on the Web. In particular, how it becomes a networked environment, or performance space characterised by the transition from objects to processes. This new situation, I argue, means moving between dark and light archiving, and it’s the place where a new method of networked coarchiving emerges.

In my contribution to this symposium, I engage with Adrian Favell’s “integration nation” in two ways: I maintain that, in addition to what Favell suggests, the integration nation recently became deterritorialized by reaching out beyond its national borders, designing some people as “immigrants” and subjecting them to “integration policies” before they even leave their country. Governmentality of integration is therefore constitutive of and for border regimes. Furthermore, I propose to distinguish different configurations of the constitution and power of the integration nation in the North Atlantic West. Bringing in Switzerland permits additional insights into the power mechanisms of the integration nation: the linear conception of the new political demography remains in this case quasi “unfinished” as it is almost impossible to become a fully recognized member through citizenship. Yet, this does not mean that the case does not speak to the integration nation issue.

Operational environmental management of European landscapes requires geographical information which is valid and coherent across national borders and only takes natural boundaries as criteria for ordering. However, when combining GIS data from different countries, national borders appear as artificial breaks in many medium- and large-scale thematic GIS, for example, topographical, geological or soil information systems. Inconsistencies in GIS data can be categorised into three types: (1) country specific deviations, (2) inconsistencies due to different data surveying and management procedures and (3) errors. Some of the inconsistencies, such as national attribute names, can be ruled out by simple modifications of the data models without changing the structure of the national databases themselves. Others, such as soil typologies, have to be addressed by intensified co-operation between national authorities. It is concluded that for practical and financial reasons, pragmatic solutions are required in order to integrate national data into a European framework.

While television has never been fully obtained by national borders, the archives that preserve its heritage have long been positioned within nation-centred frameworks. Through wide-scale digitisation, combined with the internationalisation of our societies, more international users are finding their way to these archives, resulting in a transnational (re)circulation of the collections. This article therefore sets out to understand how transnational flows are visible and findable by tracing a clip of Laika the Soviet dog within three digital television archives: EUscreen, the Internet Archive and the CLARIAH Media Suite. It is shown that television archives should paradoxically emphasise the national borders in their collections in order to facilitate transnational television research. While national demarcations may be debated, defining them clearly will guide researchers between and over them.

Nuclear power reactors have been studied, researched, developed, constructed, demonstrated, deployed, operated, reviewed, discussed, praised and maligned in the United States for over half a century. These activities now transcend our national borders and nuclear power reactors are in commercial use by many nations. Throughout the world, many have been built, some have been shut down, and new ones are coming on line. Almost one-fifth of the world’s electricity in 1997 was produced from these reactors. Nuclear power is no longer an unknown new technology.

Transmedia Serial Narration: Crossroads of Media, Story, and Time

THE LANDS WERE NOT EMPTY

Japan-related research in the R.O.C includes various fields such as culture, literature, history, politics, and economics. Among all fields Strategy is a rather uncommon one, its level usually concerns the military and diplomatic strategies of Japan. Scopes of such researches mostly involves the US-Japan Alliance and the “Comprehensive national security Strategy”, and seldom touches Japan’s grand strategy as well as the nation’s “National Defense Program Outline”. On the other hand, the existence of a Japanese grand strategy design that leads the nations national interest and plan her security is under debate. This dissertation , A Study of Japan's Grand Strategy in 21st Century: Understanding and Critique of National Defense Program Guidelines (2012), aims to understand, explain and provide a critique to the thinking, Planning, and moves of the“ Japanese Renaissance” in the 21st century, including discourses on agendas such as the duality of Japanese culture, Japanese political party leadership, US-Japanese Alliance, National power and action, Sino-Japan relation, and the Senkaku Islands dispute. This dissertation applies the strategic studies approach, since the field of grand strategy studies is wide as well as comprehensive and in-depth, it would take an integration to reach a cut discourse. To do so, the dissertation will apply the strategic discourse of the late scholar Niu Shien-Chong. By applying the organic combination of 4 orientations-History, science, art, philosophy, citing Epistemology theories such as Wilhelm Dilthey’s Hermeneutics, Positivism of International relations, and Jurgen Habermas’ Critical theory and their methodological core: the Aufheben of understanding, explaining, Criticizing as an approach to break the boundaries of orientation as to provide a reference for a new methodology of Strategic Studies. From the announcing of Japan’s first “National Defense Program Guideline” to the announcing of the first “Comprehensive national security Strategy”and “Middle-term Defense Plan ” , the strength of the Japanese Self-Defense Force, including the Japanese Coast Guards, is now considered among the best in the world and in Asia. On the other hand, being the 3rd largest economy, Japan’s economic strength is one that must be reckoned with. Continuing her Official Development Assistance programs assisted by her strategic and money diplomacy, trying to buy her way to a seat in the Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, a wish she long desired, Japan possess abundant both soft and hard power, as well as an important roll in the international community. Shinzo Abe will manage to amend the Japanese constitution, and the occasion of exercising her right of collective self-defense. But issues such as the uncertainty of the economy revival, the opposition parties boycott, Sino-Japanese tensions and disputes as well as US-Japanese disagreements, can be the fracturing elements of Japan’s 21th century Grand strategy: A risky hardline expansion strategy under the impartial client relation with the US, with which alongside the nation of Japan resist China, a choice scheduled to realize by 2020A.D, her third founding.

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT EVOLUTION KNOWLEDGE GRAPH OF MUSEUM DISPLAY DESIGN ORIENTED TO AUDIENCE'S PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE

This thesis proposes to read The Unconsoled under the scope of cosmopolitanism. Ishiguro is skilled in transforming the major events or topics into narratives of trivial, minor, or transient episodes of daily life. In this novel, he represents the complication of international involvements or commitments through an ordinary conflict between family and work. One of my first concerns is to investigate what kind of ethical relations and obligations this novel calls for. The other is to explore how the dream-like ploys in this novel influence and confuse the ethical recognition of the distance and the proximity. I try to argue that we not only have obligations to immediate, domestic fellows, but also to foreign, distant people when the demands are concrete and the commitments are needed. In Chapter One, I give a survey of scholarship on The Unconsoled to indicate the insufficiencies of current interpretations. And then by discussing the limitations of the postcolonial approach and the stereotype of ethnic labels, I try to emphasize that cosmopolitan reading is a way to rethink modes of belonging and practices of citizenship in Ishiguro’s works. There are two focuses in Chapter Two. The first one is to investigate the recent developments of cosmopolitanism to see what they inherit from and how they may reverse this tradition. My point is that both normative and ethical cosmopolitan thinkers share an ethical turn and persist on multiple attachments and commitments beyond national borers. Secondly, in order to resolve the conflict between the protagonist Ryder’s domestic and professional duties, I will argue that cosmopolitan ethics is a practice of negotiation and a passion for the everyday experience of the impossible. Ryder’s ethical implications have a more complicated development in surreal scenes set in The Unconsoled. Chapter Three indicates the illogical arrangement of time and space in this novel is the metaphor of changing time in Europe. I will argues although the “vacillation of borders”, in Balibar’s words, uncouples the ethical commitment from the idea of sovereign states, our cosmopolitan involvements are confused by the instability of sudden proximity and distance during the time of changes. Chapter Four will conclude my thesis. To designate Ishiguro as cosmopolitan or to read his works in this way is not to claim that the nation is no longer part of our lived experiences but to imagine the world beyond national borders. Using cosmopolitan ethics as a kind of humanistic discourse, I attempt to point out that Ishiguro breaks the boundary between literature and life and broadens the way we talk about nation and literature.

Major global concerns for today’s world are the implications of climate change and future energy security. The transportation sector plays an important role within this context, as it currently heavily relies on fossil fuels. In order to break this dependence, electric vehicles could play a key role, especially due to their greater energy conversion efficiency compared with conventional vehicles. Furthermore, by using electricity these vehicles can play an important role in the energy system of the future, where energy generation is envisioned to be more sustainable, incorporating a higher share of renewable energy resources. However, as many of these energy sources are intermittent and require energy storage capacities, the batteries of electric vehicles could take up this role; by exchanging information between electricity demand and supply stakeholders in real-time (“smart grid”), an electric vehicle would charge at times of electricity oversupply and stop charging or even supply energy back to the grid for short periods in times of electricity generation shortage, in order to stabilize the electricity network (“vehicle to grid”). But there are also concerns that the electricity grid, which has not been designed with dynamic demands in time and space in mind, could suffer from the large scale integration of electric vehicles. This could manifest itself in powerline and transformer overloads on lower levels of the electricity network distribution infrastructure. This security and stability of the gird is further at risk due to increased distributed energy generation (including alternative energy) and the liberalization of electricity markets. In this case electricity is traded beyond national borders, leading to possible congestion at powerlines. In order to support the analysis and future design of such complex systems including electric vehicles, integrated modeling of energy demand and supply is needed. This dissertation proposes a framework for such modeling, with particular focus on electricity demand modeling for electric vehicles. As many problems within this context require disaggregated models in time and space, e.g. to uncover bottlenecks in the electricity grid, an existing agent-based travel demand simulation called MATSim is used, which allows the modeling of individual preferences. In order to prepare MATSim for simulation of large scale disaggregated electric vehicle scenarios, a new traffic micro-simulation model is implemented together with other performance enhancements to the framework, making use of parallel computation. Additionally, the current parking model in MATSim is rexi placed by a new parking model, which takes parking supply constraints into account and also supports special parking for electric vehicles with integrated electricity charging facilities. The parking choice model has been developed further towards an initial parking search model in the course of this dissertation. Based on this work, a framework has been developed that integrates various models, including a vehicle fleet definition, vehicle energy consumption models and electricity charging models. In addition, various types of charging infrastructure are modeled including stationary infrastructure with plugs and inductive charging along roads. Furthermore, several types of charging schemes are available including smart charging, where an intelligent central entity in the smart grid is assumed which controls the charging of vehicles. During the course of this dissertation it became evident that there is a lack of integrated and detailed electricity demand and supply models, which hampers interdisciplinary work in the field. Therefore, the framework is being generalized and published as open source under the name “Transportation Energy Simulation Framework”. For many models only basic implementations and interfaces are provided. The idea is that other researchers who are experts within their fields can build on top of it, for example models for “vehicle to grid” applications. A case study for the city of Zurich is presented in this dissertation, which highlights the capabilities of the framework to uncover possible bottlenecks in the electricity network. Furthermore, the case study also highlights the ability of the models to support policy design. To the best of the author’s knowledge such integrated modeling is the first of its kind, in terms of methodology, spatial and temporal resolution and scenario size.