Global Moment Research Articles

Authoritarian urbanism in Pakistan and Indonesia: a conjunctural comparison of two new cities

ABSTRACT This paper conducts a conjunctural comparison of two planned new cities in Asia: Ravi City in Pakistan, and Nusantara in Indonesia. Planned urbanization, and infrastructure-led development (ILD) more broadly, has been connected in the literature to a rise in authoritarian urbanism. This paper analyses legal sources to situate the historical-geographical trajectories of Ravi City and Nusantara within the global conjunctural moment of ILD. Our legal lens reveals two features of authoritarian urbanism that connect and differentiate our study sites: (1) the legacies of colonial land laws and (2) the scalar politics of land governance. The paper highlights how authoritarian urbanism is exercised, and challenged, in legal arenas such as courts, parliaments, and constitutions. Our method of conjunctural comparison demonstrates that authoritarian urbanism is both transregional and historically-geographically situated. This paper thus advances geographic understandings of authoritarian urbanism and comparative methodology.

China's Neoliberal Authoritarian Social Policy

ABSTRACT: China is commonly regarded as a successful alternative to neoliberal economic policy and development strategy. But China's social policies, which were adopted at a pivotal global moment of postsocialist transition in the 1990s, bear significant traits one would associate with neoliberal economic policy. This article uses the case of old age pensions to support this claim. Pension reforms of the early 2000s transferred unprecedented costs and risks to Chinese households under a new social insurance scheme. Twenty years later, the inherent flaws in financing healthcare and pensions through employer-financed and individualized social insurance have become apparent. The concluding section discusses Xi Jinping's dominance of Chinese politics and the risks and economic insecurities that have afflicted Chinese society under these neoliberal social policies.

Image-free Hu invariant moment measurement by single-pixel detection

The global feature invariant moment plays a crucial role in capturing the feature information of a target. At present, the extraction of the target moment depends on the processing of the two-dimensional image, which leads to the high computational resource occupation due to the large amount of inherent data and the high information redundancy of the image. This reduces the real-time performance of target moment extraction to a certain extent. In order to solve this problem, we introduce a novel strategy for extracting Hu invariant moments, which is based on the combination of single-pixel detection technology and the Hu invariant moments theory. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first proposal of an image-free extraction strategy employing single-pixel detection. The extraction of moments is seamlessly integrated into the single-pixel detection process, facilitating efficient and rapid acquisition, followed by the construction of Hu invariant moments. Theoretical analysis and experimental validation of our proposed method are carried out, demonstrating the effective acquisition of Hu invariant moments. This technology holds substantial application value and prospects in various fields, including target analysis, understanding, classification, and recognition.

Home-office implementation: challenges and changes in people management

PurposeThis paper investigates how organisations responded to the home office imposition during the recent global health crisis and its impacts on people management, detailing the organisational factors crucial for effective home-office implementation.Design/methodology/approachWe used an exploratory design based on a multiple case study with four companies from two contrasting sectors (manufacturing and information technology (IT)). We interviewed a total of 12 managers, including one HR manager (HRms) and two team managers from each company. We also conducted an online questionnaire with open questions, reaching out to 128 home-office workers from the four participating companies. This diverse group consisted of 67 workers from the IT sector and 61 workers from the manufacturing sector. To ensure a comprehensive analysis, we opted for a qualitative approach to examine the data.FindingsFindings enabled detail of the organisational factor of the Belzunegui-Eraso and Erro-Garcés (2020) extended Baruch and Nicholson’s (1997) model into people management issues: organisational culture, team management and human resources management (HRM) practices, as well as the technological support. The results also revealed that people management benefits from the successful home-office implementation, which boosted the digitalisation of human resources (HR) processes.Originality/valueConsidering the lessons learned from the home-office imposition, this research provides original insights into the field by exploring the roles of supervisors and HR managers, in non-health organisations, with different previous remote work experiences, in a recent global disruptive moment, based on a rich qualitative approach. The paper offers concrete guidelines for companies that intend to implement remote work management programs and contributes to deepen the knowledge of home-office experience, offering a model focusing on managers’ roles (HRms and TMs) and HRM practices.

Mitigation mechanism of torsional vortex-induced vibrations using aerodynamic countermeasures: Case study on a typical closed-box girder

In this paper, a torsional simplified vortex model (SVM) framework is deduced from the time-frequency characteristics of the aerodynamic forces and related vortex drift patterns obtained by numerical flow visualization. With the SVM, the mechanism of torsional vortex-induced vibrations (VIVs) in a typical closed-box bridge girder is investigated, and then the mechanism for the mitigation of these VIVs with aerodynamic countermeasures, such as spoilers on handrails or guide vanes near maintenance rails, is analysed. The results reveal that large-amplitude torsional VIVs occur in the bridge girder at an initial angle of attack (AOA) of + 3°. The spoilers can almost eliminate VIVs, whereas the guide vanes can moderately suppress them. The contributions of distributed aerodynamic moment to the global vortex-excited moment (VEM) on the upper surface of both the original and guide vane girders are much larger than those on the lower surface, implying that the aerodynamic behaviour over the upper surface is predominant in exciting and sustaining VIVs. The contributions of distributed aerodynamic moment to the global VEM on the improved girder with spoilers are much smaller than those on the original girder, particularly on the upper surface, which cannot trigger VIVs. Thus, VIVs disappear when the spoilers are installed on handrails. Subsequently, the flow fields during VIVs are obtained by numerical flow visualization. For both the original and guide vane girders, the torsional VIVs are mainly excited by the separated vortices forming at the windward barriers over the upper surface, while the separated vortices over the lower surface also make slight contribution to VIVs. After the guide vanes are installed near the maintenance rails, the scales of vortices over both the upper and lower surfaces are reduced, resulting in a weaker impact on the girder, which is fundamentally responsible for the mitigation effect of the guide vanes.

Strengthening National Regulations in Combating Cross-Border Trafficking: Empirical Approach and the Way Forward

At practical level, both nationally and internationally, various efforts have been made to deal with increasingly acute human trafficking. However, as it turns out in practice, all existing legal instruments have not had a deterrent effect and have broken the chain of human trafficking to this day. Even more so in Indonesia. This article focuses on examining the answer to the problem, namely the national policy to prevent human trafficking and the efforts that can be made to eradicate increasingly complex human trafficking. This qualitative study is related to the policy and implementation of international and national policies to address human trafficking in cross-country border legal research. This paper provides information on the latest trends in research. The results show that the current moment of globalization is witnessing an extraordinary movement of people, legitimate and illegitimate, across national and international borders. This global movement of people has created panic across borders. It manifests itself in strengthening border controls and tightening immigration laws as a threat to the nation-state's security

Just 'a Strange Polish Muslim'?

By concentrating on the case study of Seyfeddin Thadée Gasztowtt (1881–1936)—a peripatetic activist, journalist and convert to Islam of Polish origin, who tied the issue of Poland’s independence to the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim world in the wake of the 1905 Japanese victory over Russia, this paper discusses opportunities of biography for global intellectual history. Focus on mobile individuals who operated in transcultural settings can help us to understand how major turning points in international history become global moments as these moments gain global significance only by virtue of activists seizing them and employing them in the service of their respective causes. A biographical approach gains us insights into how individuals were shaped by these watershed moments and at the same time were productive in them. A microscale analysis offered by biography can elucidate the processes of cross-cultural intellectual transfer and transregional entanglement in all their complexity.

Three-Parameter Electric Dipole Moment Function for the CO Molecule.

A global electric dipole moment function of the ground electronic state of carbon monoxide is constructed by morphing its best theoretical approximants from the literature to the best available experimental data within the framework of the reduced radial curve approach. The resulting functions coincide with their best many-parameter empirical counterparts so closely that they can be used as highly accurate three-parameter representations. Apparently, given the mathematical nature of the problem addressed, this approach can be applied equally well to all radial molecular functions that have similarly cumbersome shapes as the function probed. This means that the property characteristics of diatomic molecules can, in principle, be described with high precision even when as few as three pertinent experimental data points are accurately known. To date, no such functional approximants are available in the literature.

Computational study on reactivity, aromaticity, and absorption spectra of chrysene: effect of BN doping and substituents

Abstract Density functional study (DFT) is performed for understanding the reactivity, aromaticity, and UV-visible absorption spectra of chrysene-based materials. Effect of BN doping on the said parameters are analyzed along with the effect of –Me (methyl), –OH (hydroxyl), –CHO (formyl) –COOH (carboxyl) and –CN (cyano) substituents. Global reactivity parameters viz. energy of HOMO (E HOMO), global hardness (η), chemical potential (μ) and electrophilicity (ω) are computed. Nucleus independent chemical shifts (NICS) values are estimated to study the variation in aromaticity. Time dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) is used to study the UV–Visible absorption spectra. Effects of BN doping and substituents on corresponding dipole moments and band gaps are also analyzed. Presence of BN unit and/or substituents induced considerable impact on global reactivity, dipole moment, band gap and aromaticity of the chosen systems, especially for BN doped chrysene at the edge. Absorption spectra which are red shifted in presence of BN and substituents are mostly found within the UV-region.

Optimization of Reynolds stress model coefficients at multiple discrete flow regions for three-dimensional realizations of fractal-generated turbulence

The quantification of global turbulence statistical moments generated by grid turbulators is crucial for the enhancement of conjugate heat transfer in industrial thermo-fluid systems. As such, there is a need for precise, low-cost alternatives to numerically model three-dimensional flow dynamics of fractal-generated turbulence (FGT) behind multilength-scale square fractal grids (SFGs), in contrast to previously-reported direct numerical simulations. In this study, a numerical framework consisting of multiple applications of the Reynolds stress model (RSM), each employing its own distinct set of optimized coefficient values, is developed by segregating an FGT flow domain into its production and decay regions with Nelder-Mead optimization on key coefficients then performed independently for each region. The flow fields predicted by such RSM framework achieved overall disparities below 3% and 13% w.r.t. reported experimental measurements of mean velocity and turbulence intensity, respectively, considering the evolution in the flow domain along the streamwise, vertical, and spanwise directions. This is therefore the first documentation of any RANS-turbulence model being validated for mean velocity and turbulence intensity predictions of FGT in all three-dimensions. Thereafter, this proposed RSM framework is generalized to predict industry-relevant turbulence statistical moments of four additional FGT flows. The predicted centerline-statistics are verified against reported experiments, and the findings potentially enable realizations of FGT induced by arbitrary SFGs without relying on a posteriori validation while eliminating further reliance on the Nelder-Mead optimization algorithm on a case-by-case basis. The findings indicate a potential to apply the model coefficients as continuous functions of space to simulate the entire FGT domain. Overall, the accurate and numerically sustainable realizations of FGT in 3D provide valuable insights to engineer potent fluid-solid heat transfer via passive turbulence management within HVAC systems.

Which Global Moment Tensor Catalog Provides the Most Precise Non-Double-Couple Components?

Abstract The availability of digital seismic waveform data enabled compilation of seismic moment tensor catalogs that provide information about earthquake source processes beyond what could be derived from earlier methods that assume double-couple sources representing slip on planar faults. This additional versatility involves additional complexity. Moment tensors are determined by inversions minimizing the misfit between observed and synthetic waveforms, and depend on the specifics of the data inverted, the inversion algorithm, and the Earth structure assumed. Hence, substantial uncertainties arise in moment tensors and quantities derived from them, which can be assessed by comparing moment tensors from multiple global and regional catalogs using different data and inversion procedures. While the double-couple (DC) components of moment tensors are generally determined with greater certainty, non-double-couple (NDC) components for the same earthquake sometimes differ significantly between catalogs. This observation raises questions about the reliability of their determination and hence their geological significance. Using the correlation between NDC components in different catalogs, we quantify the reliability of NDC components in moment tensor catalogs through the determination of the effects of unmodeled and inaccurately modeled effects contained in them. We determine that the NDC components in the Global Centroid Moment Tensor catalog are, on average, more precise than in other catalogs, and thus studies on NDC components should be based on this catalog. Furthermore, their uncertainties are largely unrelated to uncertainties in the DC components. Therefore, the reliability of fault angles derived from a moment tensor is largely independent from the reliability of its NDC components.

“The Same Causes Occasioning the Same Effects”: The “Jewish Question”, the “Chinese Question” and the Global Precedents of Exclusion in Late Nineteenth Century Central Europe

AbstractWhy was the “Chinese Question” of immigration control and exclusion in the United States imagined as an appealing precedent for dealing with the “Jewish Question” of emancipation and citizenship in fin-de-siècle Romania, Hungary, and Austria? The present article examines a vast corpus of parliamentary debates, press, and pamphlets, in order to demonstrate how thinking in terms of “questions” enabled historical actors to place themselves within a “global moment” by highlighting structural similarities that would justify the analogy. By rhetorically turning to an America that was placed at the forefront of “liberal” progress, yet now began to explicitly place limits to its inclusiveness, politicians in Central and Eastern Europe sought to present their own exclusionary policies as timely and acceptable, rather than anachronistic affronts to the spirit of the age. Drawing upon this global precedent was therefore hoped to ward off criticism: if “civilized” America could draw the line, be it as a matter of principle or pragmatism, then antisemitism could be justified with reference to Sinophobia.

Geomagnetic paleointensity variations in the northern South China Sea since the Late Pleistocene

The geomagnetic field plays multiple roles in the investigation of the geodynamic processes of Earth's internal fluids and dating of deposition sequences. However, discrepancies in geomagnetic field intensity on suborbital and millennial time scales across different regions have hindered discussions on these topics. In this study, we constructed a master relative intensity curve (SPIS-150) covering the past ∼150 kyr by stacking the data from a new core (PC27) with published intensity curves for the northern South China Sea based on the chronology established through the oxygen isotope stratigraphy and relative paleointensity (RPI) correlation. Rock magnetic experiment results reveal that the sediments effectively record geomagnetic field information, although the magnetic minerals are primarily composed of terrestrial and biogenic magnetite. The stacked relative paleointensity (SPIS-150) exhibits a consistent pattern with the global stacked master curve on the orbital time scale, reflecting dipole-dominated changes in the geomagnetic field. However, specific features, such as the profound intensity lows between 75 and 85 kyr and a relatively low peak during 110–120 kyr, display potential differences with the global stacked virtual axial dipole moment (VADM) curves. Additionally, the disagreement in RPI across different regions have emerged significantly since about 25 kyr. Our record appears to align with the western tropical Pacific Ocean and the southern hemisphere but, to some extent, contradicts the stacked VADM from the northern hemisphere. This pattern may indicate the possible influence of reverse flux patches along the magnetic equator and normal flux patches in the north hemisphere.

Parliament and Revolution: Poland, Finland, and the End of Empire in the Early Twentieth Century

AbstractThis article explores the political trajectories of the early twentieth-century Grand Duchy of Finland and the Kingdom of Poland in the context of the “global parliamentary moment,” when the constitutional script of revolution competed with the more daring script of social revolution. We scrutinize contrastive political choices of socialist parties in these two western borderlands of the Russian Empire. Finland and Poland emerged as independent parliamentary states in 1917–1918 but under manifestly different circumstances. The Finnish socialist party had enjoyed a stable foothold in the formally democratic but practically impotent national parliament since 1907, whereas the Polish socialists boycotted the Russian Duma and envisioned a democratic legislature as a guaranty of a Poland with true people’s power. The Finnish socialists later abandoned parliamentarism in favor of an armed revolution, in 1918, whereas most of their Polish counterparts used the parliamentary ideal of popular sovereignty to restrain the revolutionary upsurge. We argue that the socialist understandings of parliamentarism and revolution were of crucial importance at this juncture. We draw from a broad corpora of political press reports, handwritten newspapers, and leaflets to show how the diachronic sequence of events and synchronic power relations inside the Russian Empire made certain stances toward parliamentarism and revolution more likely at different points in time.

Seismotectonic Stress Regime and Airborne-Gravity Lineament Investigation of the Caribbean region and its Kinematic implications

The tectonic stress regime of the Caribbean region has been studied by stress tensor inversion analysis for the area bounded by Latitudes 17.32o to 23.79o N and Longitudes 81.47o to -60.56o E. A total of two hundred and twenty (220) fault plane solutions (FPS), made up of the seismic (earthquake) events that have occurred in the region of the study were found on the data catalog of the project website of the global centroid moment tensor, were employed in this study. To characterize the stress regimes of the region of study, the classification of the region based on the global moment tensor project is as follows: Cuba-zone, Haiti-zone, Dominican-republic, Monapassage, Puerto Rico, Virgin-Island and the Leeward Island. The gravity geophysical method revealed the presence of multiple or swarms of fractured lines within the same geographical range of study which might have developed over the years as a result of the interaction and coupling effect of the plate boundaries that have close proximity to the region of study. The seismicity pattern indicates that none of the provinces or countries located within the Caribbean region is devoid of large-magnitude earthquake occurrences capable of wreaking severe havoc on the immediate environment. Obviously, our stress tensor inversion result indicates two types of stress regimes namely compression and the strike-slip with different orientations. Cuba-zone, Haiti-zone, Dominican Republic, Monapassage, and Leeward Island are governed mainly by compression stress regimes. In contrast, the strike-slip stress regimes mainly govern the Puerto Rico and the Virgin Island.

Analysis of extreme internal load effects in columns in a semi-submersible support structure for large floating wind turbines

Most studies on floating wind turbine floaters focus on rigid-body motion analysis, while analysis of structural load effects of the floaters is lacked. However, load effect analysis of hull structures is essential for the safety design checks throughout the service lifetime. Therefore, this study carries out the analysis of the extreme internal stress of columns in a 10-MW semi-submersible hull. A novel multibody approach is used for the numerical modelling of the hull structure, which can capture the internal forces and moments of the columns in the time domain. The environmental contour approach is employed to conduct the short-term analysis of the column extreme stresses. Important load cases are determined based on the sensitivity study of combined critical wave periods, important mean wind speeds, and the largest significant wave height with respect to column load effects. Long-term extreme values of the column stresses are predicted by the extrapolated method based on the short-term extreme analysis. Relative importance of internal load components on extreme value estimation of columns is studied. Simplified approaches are proposed to more efficiently predict the long-term extreme values of the column load effects, and applied in a case study. The analysis provides a good insight into the important global forces and moments as well as the direct wave load effect on the column stress analysis, which contributes to improve the design efficiency in engineering practice.

Shear lag effects on global bending moments in a long-span pontoon bridge under self-weight, traffic and environmental loads

The present paper deals with a systematic study of the shear lag effect on the bending moment distribution in girders of representative pontoon-type floating bridges (PTFBs). Comparative and parametric studies for well-developed beam and linear shell models for representative structural components of a reference PTFB subject to representative static and dynamic loads, e.g. self-weight load condition, traffic loads, and wave-induced vertical dynamic loads on PTFB's pontoons are carried out. The study is partly based on a simplified, generic PTFB model, denoted GPTFB. The study shows that elementary beam element models, for which shear lag effects are not accounted for, might, to some extent, inaccurately predict the bending stiffness, eigenmode shapes and eigen frequencies of PTFBs with large width and relatively short span lengths (e.g. the ratio of span length to girder width of PTFBs is less than 7.24), while the inaccurate prediction of beam model in weak axis bending moment in girder of the PTFBs is related to the load pattern and dynamic load frequency range. A practical method is proposed to judge when caution is needed in using elementary beam model for estimating the weak axis global bending moments in girder of PTFBs. In addition, a case study presented in this paper, shows that the part of the girder near the bank abutment might be subjected to complex boundary conditions since the girder is supported by floating pontoons and bottom fixed columns. In this part of the bridge girder, a significant influence of shear lag on weak axis bending moments is observed. Further analysis by using shell elements is necessary to estimate the stresses, including the effect of shear lag, in this part of the girder.

Wave-impact forces and moments due to random waves on a jacket-type platform for different relative submergence of the deck

Force and moment measurements due to wave impacts were conducted on a jacket platform model under six distinct relative deck submergence conditions. The water depth was carefully chosen to facilitate scenarios ranging from sufficient deck air gaps to partial and complete submergence. For the purpose of our analysis, we focused on peak and average peak wave force and moment values. The study uncovers that the peak wave force towards the shore can escalate to 1.5 times the peak wave force towards the sea. Moreover, the ratio of the peak shoreward force to the average peak shoreward force fluctuates between 3 and 4, contingent upon the relative water level at the deck base and the prevailing wave condition. Remarkably, the peak upward wave force on the deck can reach 5 to 7 times the peak inline wave force. A review of existing guidelines suggests a significant need to enhance research regarding the air gap between the deck and the still water level (SWL), as well as its effect on global and local wave forces and moments on the structures. Our finding establishes that the relative water level from the base of the deck is a crucial parameter in the design process of these structures. This study presents a more in-depth understanding of the physical mechanisms at play by utilizing a realistic jacket platform model. It serves as an initial exploration into the influence of air gap and relative water depth on wave-impact forces and moments. The results obtained from this study shed light on optimal design strategies for jacket-type offshore drilling platforms, considering green water effects. This understanding will enhance the life expectancy and survivability of such platforms.

Influence of Load Conditions on the Propeller Wake Evolution

The present work presents numerical research on the wake flows behind a propeller operating under three advance coefficients. Large eddy simulations are adopted to obtain the viscous flow information behind the propeller. In particular, the study highlights the comparison of the evolution characteristics and the flow physics within the propeller wakes with three advance coefficients. The predicted global force and moment coefficients and phase-average statistics of streamwise velocity agree well with the available experimental data. Compared to all other flow structures in the wake, the tip vortices are found to play the most significant role according to the results. During the pairing process of adjacent tip vortices, the tip vortices diffuse circumferentially, leading to enhanced mutual-induction effects. When the advance coefficient is low, the wake becomes distorted, and the pairing process takes place in the middle region of the flow field. As a result of their unstable motion, the four tip vortices generated by the propeller cannot be distinguished individually in the far field. Instead, they break down into smaller vortices and tend to distribute themselves uniformly in the azimuthal direction. The increase in the advance coefficient delays the pairing process. This study offers valuable insights for the design and optimization of marine propellers.

In search of Paulus Vladimiri: Canon, reception, and the (in)conceivability of an Eastern European ‘founding father’ of international law

AbstractWhile many international lawyers are familiar with Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546), very few have even heard of Paulus Vladimiri (1370–1435) – a Polish priest and jurist who made striking similar arguments to Vitoria on legal universality and the rights of non-Christians a full century before Vitoria. This divergence of consciousness, I argue, provides a unique opportunity to explore questions of canon, reception, and the role of ‘founding fathers’ within international legal thought. Centring Vladimiri as an ‘Eastern European’ figure, I argue that his non-reception is largely the result of how Eastern Europe implicitly functions as a distinctly liminal space within international legal thought that makes any possible ‘founding father’ from this region immensely difficult to imagine. I examine this dynamic through the differing postwar efforts of the Polish jurists Kazimierz Grzybowski and C. H. Alexandrowicz to include Vladimiri within the international legal canon. In examining the background structures of twentieth-century international law, I conclude that, in a manner directly connected to the liminality of Eastern Europe, neither Soviet nor Third World nor Western imaginations could easily receive Vladimiri within their fundamentally political narratives of normative order that shaped their international legal approaches. However, despite this historic non-reception, I argue that Vladimiri, and the question of Eastern Europe more generally, holds great promise in our current global moment. Particularly, engaging Eastern Europe’s liminal character offers a more sociologically grounded alternative to the reductionist Schmittian view of international law as a product of inescapable conflict in a world of exclusionary ‘greater spaces’.