Twin Towers Research Articles

Review of Literature Regarding Progressive Collapse of WTC Twin Towers – A Call for Re-evaluation (Updated Version 2)

Review of Literature Regarding Progressive Collapse of WTC Twin Towers – A Call for Re-evaluation (Updated Version 2)

Introduction to the special issue on aggression and violence in the military

Aggressive and violent behaviors are often present in the military. This special issue focused on violence in the military is timely as the United States military has been involved in continuous overseas contingency operations for nearly two decades due to the infamous “9/11” attacks on the twin towers and pentagon. In this introduction to the special issue, the guest editors illuminate some of the topics focused on military aggression and violence and briefly review the broad nature of the research conducted in this area. The guest editors conclude with a summary of the key findings of the articles that appear in this special issue.

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

Reviewed by: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi Colin Cutler (bio) frankenstein in baghdad Ahmed Saadawi, trans. Jonathan Wright Penguin Books https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529924/frankenstein-in-baghdad-by-ahmed-saadawi/ 288 pages; Print, $18.00 I grew up on and around Air Force bases, and was twelve when I watched the Twin Towers fall; my dad's flight out of Offutt Air Force Base was grounded while they were taxiing. Six years later, my older brother was in Iraq with the Army as part of the surge, and I signed up for Army ROTC the next year—I eventually became an infantry officer with the Virginia National Guard. While I was in training, I read books about our current wars: Lone Survivor and House to House stand out in my memory. The main thing that I remember is the intensely personal detail about fellow soldiers, down to their hobbies and quirks, and the relative facelessness of those they ran across in the course of their missions, whether combatant or noncombatant or in that murky area between. When I first read Frankenstein in Baghdad a few years ago, it was a revelation: here were the faces of the Iraqi people who lived through a war that went on around them and sometimes cut through them, punctuating their lives with the uncertainty of bullets and suicide bombers and vehicle-borne IEDs. Part magical realism, part war story, part political intrigue, part neighborhood drama, Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad is set in the cracked-windowed suburbs of Iraq's capital in 2005. It revolves around an aspiring journalist, an Assyrian Orthodox widow with her ikon of St. George, an arak-drinking junkman, and the corpse the junkman stitches together from the unburied body parts of IED victims. Winner of the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, with the English translation shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, Frankenstein in Baghdad is an eviscerating look at America's most recent wars through the eyes of those who lived through them as bystanders. [End Page 27] The book opens with a bang. Starting off with an IED may be initially shocking to the reader, but two hundred yards from the exploding bomb, a widow continues on her way to prayer at the Orthodox church and doesn't notice. Similar scenes throughout the book display the randomness of violence in a war zone and how it is absorbed into daily life. This, in turn, contributes to a pervadingly dark humor both among the characters and in the narration. The cordons are inept at catching a monster terrorizing the neighborhood, and the intelligence directorate attempting to catch the monster relies on astrologers for its assessments. Faces and their transformation are crucial to the book. Elishva, the Orthodox widow, is in nearly constant conversation and negotiation with her ikon of St. George the Martyr and his "angelic face" for the return of her son, lost in the Iran-Iraq War two decades before. When she believes she has finally received her wish, she cuts the face out of the portrait. Hadi, the junkman who stitches together the pieces of IED victims because the police will only bury complete bodies, creates a monster—and is later shocked when his own face is burned and turned into a grotesque. Meanwhile, when the monster begins his forays for vengeance, he is only known as having a deformed face. At one point, a cordon is formed around the neighborhood by the Iraqi and US militaries, and Mahmoud, the journalist, realizes that "what … all [the detainees] had in common … was that they were ugly. Some had genetic defects, others had been disfigured by burns, and others seemed to be insane." When one of the astrologers encounters the Whatsitsname, he asks to see his face. The monster responds, "What's the point of that? It changes. I don't have a permanent face." But the astrologer's wish is granted, and he believes "it was the face of his own personal past, which he had thought had no face or features." What he realizes, with the brutality of an axe blow, is that even those who are trying to solve...

Responsible Adults by Patricia Ann McNair

Reviewed by: Responsible Adults by Patricia Ann McNair Jane Rosenberg LaForge (bio) responsible adults Patricia Ann McNair Cornerstone Press https://www3.uwsp.edu/english/cornerstone/Pages/BOOKS.aspx 202 pages; Print, $18.85 In any other world, freelance editor and substitute teacher Sandy Olsen would seem a paragon of responsibility. She worries over the home lives of her students and takes her cat to the veterinarian for what might as well be a mental health visit; there's nothing physically wrong with her pet. But Sandy also might be a little too candid, telling one fragile student, "Lonely isn't always bad." Her impulse to do good may lead to more harm than she can imagine. Even if you don't blame her after reading "Regarding Alix," one of eighteen short stories in Patricia Ann McNair's Responsible Adults, you might still wonder over the unsettling strangeness of her guilt, its understated quality and dissociation from reality. Or perhaps Sandy, like her creator, is living under unusual circumstances, where the consequences of thoughtless or feckless actions are not necessarily immediate. But they are always damning. There are some frighteningly irresponsible adults in McNair's second collection of short stories: drunken and divorced parents, junkie brothers and oblivious pet owners, most who live in the fictional midwestern town of New [End Page 88] Hope, Illinois. New Hope is two hundred miles outside Chicago, Sandy tells us; it is alternately rustic and working class; a former site of industrial might, and once agriculturally prosperous. Now weighed down by the ennui, it also hosts hoarding, random acts of carelessness, and other bad decisions that will reverberate long after they are made manifest. One story, "Things You Know but Would Rather Not," is built on a premise similar to Kathryn Harrison's 1993 novel Exposure, in which a child is made to pose for a parent's artfully staged, distasteful photographs. In the novel, the child grows to become a deeply troubled woman. For McNair, the damage is still percolating within Mary Alice, an independent and intellectually curious thirteen-year-old. At a gallery showing her mother's photographs, Mary Alice reports on her image: "You could see the bruises on her shins, the ones from everyday use of her legs, her big feet. There was a shadow at the tops of her legs, just under the sheet, something black and mysterious. She looked closer. It was true what they said; her eyes were foggy, not right. … All she knew for certain was that she was hideous." When the photos make her beautiful, Mary Alice's mother rips them apart, stashing the scraps in the cat litter. Her most immediate wish is to die: "It gave her something to focus on. Something all her own to look forward to." "Things You Know but Would Rather Not" is one of the rare McNair stories told in third person, rather than as a first-person confession. Perhaps because of this, we do not get as complete an understanding why Mary Alice's mother insists on publicly humiliating her. We only learn the scale of that humiliation, how it seeps into their interactions. Where McNair's other culpable but unaccountable grown-ups fall on a scale of maliciousness or liability is not necessarily the point. McNair is seeking neither justice for characters who have been wronged nor redemption for the perpetrators. She is more interested in characters such as Sandy, who in hewing to what they believe is the path of the best intentions, nevertheless haunt in this compilation of neglect and absentmindedness. Responsible Adults is an investigation into what constitutes responsibility when so much of life is out of our control. The 2001 destruction of the Twin Towers, otherwise known as 9/11, is one event none of McNair's narrators could have stopped, and it hovers in the background. Two months after 9/11, Sandy is happy to flee Chicago and a "high-rise apartment in the city where planes came in over the lake and circled [End Page 89] overhead" for the woodsy setting of a boarding school. Once the semester ends, she thinks back to the pre-9/11 era as "before any...

The effects of terrorism events and changes in the US Homeland Security Advisory System on national park visitation

ABSTRACT The impacts of terrorism events and the subsequent Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) on visitation to US National Park Service (NPS) sites are examined. A spatial random effects model, using a panel of monthly site visitation (1979–2013), spanning the period between two major terrorism events, is applied. Results show increased visitation after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but a decrease in visitation after 9/11. The decline in park visitation diminishes the farther the park site is from the twin towers, and the more time has passed since 9/11. Elevated terrorism threat levels under HSAS have a negative impact on visitation, but the impact of the warning decays over time. The interaction effect indicates that large visitation sites close to the Twin Towers may experience more visitation after the HSAS level increases. We suggest that the negative HSAS time effect may be due to some potential visitors choosing to stay home, while the positive interaction effect may indicate substitution towards visiting NPS sites.

From Café Culture to Tweets

From Café Culture to Tweets

The Role of the NATO in Collective Security and how it has transformed and evolved over the years

This paper is about how and for what purpose NATO as an organization for collective security was established. To begin with, this paper says that NATO was established to counter and contain the communist threat in the shape of Russia. This was an era of the cold war. However, once the cold war was over and Russian disintegration happened in 1989, NATO didn't disappear but defined for itself a changing role in the changing world. It was because of this newly defined role that NATO survived and outlived its primary purpose. However,since the terrorists' attack on the twin towers on 9/11, NATO has further transformed to undertake military operations in areas that fall beyond its scope of operations. It has been seen as involved not only in military operations but also in humanitarian assistance in countries hit by natural calamities. Data for the paper was collected through secondary sources, including research papers and other collectable materials.

Spontaneous Collapse Mechanism of World Trade Center Twin Towers and Progressive Collapse in General

The collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) Towers during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, remains one of the most tragic catastrophes in the field of structural engineering. This paper first reviews a mathematical model that explains the process of the total collapse of the Twin Towers and shows that the downward collapse progression below the impacted floors was spontaneous. The model is based on a continuum description of the motion of the crush front and captures various types of energy dissipation during the collapse. The predictions of this model match all the observations, including the video records of the first few seconds of motion of both towers, the seismic records of the collapse durations for both towers, the mass and size distributions of comminuted concrete particles, and the fast expansion of dust clouds during collapse with the booms generated. This catastrophe provoked general interest in other types of progressive collapse of buildings. This is the subject of the second part of this paper, in which a three-dimensional stochastic computational model for the collapse of RC frame buildings is presented. The occurrence probabilities of different collapse patterns are predicted. The model is further extended to investigate the delayed collapse behavior of RC frames. The results of the analysis shed light on the emerging trend of probabilistic analysis and design of structures against progressive collapse.

The Structural Design and Analysis of a Symmetrical Twin-tower Conjoined Building with Vibration Absorber

Throughout the ages, earthquakes have caused numerous instability and destruction of buildings. With the increasing of the height and volume of modern buildings, the seismic force on the buildings gradually increases. To avoid serious damage and ensure the safety, seismic design has become a crucial element in the analysis and design of the structure. In traditional seismic design, increasing stiffness of the building is usually adopted to reduce the structural response during an earthquake. This approach is usually costly, and the effect of practical application is not obvious, which could not fundamentally enhance the bearing capacity of the structure. Basing on existing researches, both theoretical and physical model of symmetrical, conjoined twin tower is made, meanwhile, the reasonable design using damping vibration absorber with the function of energy dissipation, utilizes the movement of additional weight to reduce vibration amplitude of main body structure. The use of shaking table test on the analysis and verification of bearing capacity of the model of symmetrical, conjoined twin tower with vibration absorber, improves the seismic performance of the building. It helps propel innovative and practical design ideas in structural seismic design of symmetrical conjoined twin tower.

Der 11. September 2001 als Epochenbruch

Abstract In world public opinion, the events of September 11, 2001, are often interpreted as the beginning of a new epoch. It seems as if the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon buildings near Washington were the initial spark for a change not only in the Middle Eastern world, but also intervened in the relations between the Middle East, the Islamic world and the West. We are still far from defining the period in which September 11 took place as a time between two epochs, i.e., as an epochal threshold. However, there are sufficient indicators that justify assuming the process a rupture of an existing epochal order. An approach to the question, which caesura the events of September 11 meant, and in which process of upheaval this caesura took place, requires to visualize again which consequences and which backgrounds had related to the events themselves. For this purpose, I will proceed in six steps, which, however, will be formulated in very different breadth. I will focus on religion, political representation, and social change. There are good reasons to assume that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, did not define a caesura in the narrow sense, but should be interpreted as part of a profound social, cultural, and political change. We must assume that this change has been part of a global process of rupture and that we can define the period in which the terror of September 11, 2001, took place as an epochal break. This epochal break affects not only epistemic orders, but above all the normative order marked by the balance of society and religion.

Retrofitting The Atrium Of CST Adm Building: To Achieve Optimum Thermal Comfort.

Energy efficiency and renewable energy have become the twin towers of sustainable development and this ultimate goal can be achieved only if the energy conservation at all levels is efficiently practiced. Energy consumption is the world’s growing concern with building sector topping the energy consumers list. The buildings with its HVAC (Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning) components and other mechanical system have become one of the world’s largest energy consumers. The building envelope evolution have shown that the wider scope of façade system and glazing options, have further led to solar responsive challenges & massive energy loss. In College of Science & Technology, there are many active means of cooling installed at every corner of the building due to its location and extreme summer heat. Atrium at the east-front of ADM building have necessarily failed in regulating diurnal temperature due to its extensive glazing ratios and areas exposed to the direct sun rays. This research is an attempt to intervene the space: at structure as well as material level to maximize its thermal comfort during daytime through a simulation approach.

ISLAMOPHOBIA IN CANADA: THE ROLE OF CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS IN SHAPING ATTITUDES TOWARDS ISLAM AND MUSLIMS

The issue of Islamophobia got attention from researchers, academicians and journalist for the last three decades However the issue got enormous attention after the Twin Towers were attacked on 9/11, 2001, in USA. This study examines how media portray the issue of Islamophobia. For that purpose, two leading newspapers of Canada namely Globe and Mail and Toronto Star selected for content analysis. This study uses content analysis by selecting the articles published on Islamophobia in two leading newspapers of Canada namely The Toronto Star and The Globe & Mail for a period of three months (January to March 2017). There are several parts of a newspaper that are analyzed (i.e. stories, content framing, priming and overall structure). In the first step, we go through the newspaper and identify all the stories. In the second stage, we identify the framing and priming of the stories and articles on Islamophobia. The main focus of this study is to examine the framing of the stories related to Muslims and Islamophobia in Toronto Star and The Globe & Mail newspapers. Moreover, this study concentrated on issue of Islamophobia before and after the Quebec Mosque attack. The main results of the study show that during this period, the negative stories published on Islamophobia are more evident from Toronto Star and Globe and Mail newspaper despite the fact that both newspapers are liberal according to their theme of the stories. As compare to Globe and Mail, Toronto Star published more articles on Islamophobia. Keywords: Islamophobia, Attitudes, Content Analysis

War on Terror: Socio-Economic Ramifications for Pakistan

After the attack on the American twin tower on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration launched a war against the terrorists and Al-Qaeda hiding in Afghanistan. During this war, Pakistan became the front-line state due to its proximity to Afghanistan. The American war on terror also brought disastrous effects on Pakistan. Due to the war on terror, Pakistan faced and is still facing a number of challenges in its social and economic spheres. This paper is an attempt to highlight the socio-economic challenges faced by Pakistan due to the war on terror. The paper revolves around these research questions. What are the socio-economic effects of the war on terror on Pakistan? What socio-economic cost was paid by Pakistan during the war on terror? What are the implications of the war on terror for Pakistan?

Development of Learn to Think (LTT) Model Based on Integrated Twin Tower (ITT) to Increase Scientific and Spiritual Creativity of students in the Early Childhood Islamic Education

The learning model is one way that can increase student creativity. The study aimed to describe and explain the validity of the Integrated Twin Tower (ITT) based Learn To Talk (LTT) learning model. The research method uses Educational Design Research (EDR) to develop a new product. The ITT-based LTT model was developed in order to increase students' creativity. In addition, as follow-up research from the recommendations of previous researchers. The development of this model will be used as teaching material in the classroom. Blended Web Mobile Learning (BWML) is based on the development of ITT-based LTT learning by following John Deway's line of thought. The results of the content validity of the learning model product, which include needs, novelty, theory, planning, and implementation, get an average value of 3.80; 4.00; 4.00; 4.00; and 3.50 with a very valid category. The results of construct validity, the results were obtained with valid categories for all of them. In that way, the ITT-based LTT learning model can be alternative learning to improve students' scientific creative thinking skills.

Mad Men and the Falling Bodies of 9/11

In this article, Daniel Adleman and Chris Vanderwees explore the unique manner in which AMC’s Mad Men remediates traumatic images of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on Manhattan’s Twin Towers. The authors take up the production of the show’s title sequence, the media controversy surrounding its representation of 9/11’s falling bodies, and Don Draper’s perilous trajectory over the course of the series. Their analyses lead Adleman and Vanderwees to dwell on Mad Men’s portrayal of the advertising industry as a crucible of, and synecdoche for, unfettered capitalism. The authors contend that Mad Men’s falling man sequence ultimately serves as an uncanny commentary on American political anxieties, contradictions, and uncertainties at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Why Is There Nothing—Rather Than Something?

Why Is There Nothing—Rather Than Something? Jeffrey R. Di Leo (bio) It is not often that one can date the high point of a philosopher's career to a movie scene. And it is even less frequent that the philosopher would disavow said film. But such is the case with Jean Baudrillard. On March 31, 1999, directors Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, released The Matrix. The film, which the Wachowski's said was inspired by Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation (1994), prominently featured the book as a prop early in the film. But unlike say Heineken, which is used as a prop in Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015)—and has been a corporate partner with the James Bond film franchise since Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)—Baudrillard had no corporate skin in The Matrix. In fact, he said that the film was not representative of his philosophical views in Simulacra and Simulation—and claimed that The Matrix was the type of film the evil Matrix program (from the film) would make about the Matrix. Says Baudrillard, "the real nuisance in this movie is that the brand-new problem of the simulation is mistaken with the very classic problem of illusion, already mentioned by Plato." Shortly after the release of The Matrix, Baudrillard's theoretical star would come crashing down in the scholarly world via his views on the fall of the Twin Towers and terrorism. But his popular image as the philosophical inspiration of The Matrix, a film whose box office receipts were nearly half a billion dollars, would make Simulacra and Simulation one of the most well-known props for postmodern philosophy. But two decades removed from the hoopla of the film and the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and more than a quarter of a century from the publication of the book, should we still be blaming Baudrillard for the death of theory? Or does that famous prop have a very different legacy in contemporary theory? Given time and distance, I'm more inclined now to the latter view. [End Page 1] But to make my case, we will need to go back to some of the lesser-known philosophical work that led to Simulacra and Simulation—and forward to a key work that came after it. _______ Jean Baudrillard's world is one filled with objects. "Our urban civilization is witness to an ever-accelerating procession of generations of products, appliances and gadgets," he comments in The System of Objects (1968), "by comparison with which mankind appears to be a remarkably stable species." This book, his first, argues that social life is structured by our consumption of these objects. "Could we classify," asks Baudrillard, "the luxuriant growth of objects as we do a flora or fauna, complete with tropical and glacial species, sudden mutations, and varieties threatened by extinction?" Baudrillard explores the classification system of consumer objects that code social behavior and consumer groups. In this work, he reconsiders consumer society through a Marxism tempered by Ferdinand de Saussure and Sigmund Freud, that is, by use of linguistic categories rather than economic ones. For him, we live in a consumer society wherein traditional Marxist analysis fails to capture the status of objects. Commodities post-1945 have a communicational structure that can only be captured by a semiotics that relies not on a referential model akin to Charles Peirce, but rather a differential one like Saussure. Baudrillard's semiotics combines aspects of Freud and Saussure to show how in the commodity word and image is related to desire, rather than use value or utility. Symbols provide the codes that differentiate one consumer product from another. Upon consumption, symbols then transfer meaning from the product to its consumer. Moreover, as a poststructuralist, the free-play of this semiotics is potentially endless, and provides the consumer with a strong sense of freedom and self-determination within the hyperreality of the new semiotic condition of consumer society. It is hyperreality because in Baudrillard's system one cannot get outside of the fantasies and desires generated by consumer consumption within the system of objects. In Baudrillard's economy of signs, individuals are not making consumption choices based on tastes in...

Analysis of horizontal vibration characteristics of unequal height twin towers of rigid connected structure

The twin-tower concatenated building with unequal height is highly favored by architects, because of its distinctive appearance and specific building function. Recently, the dynamic characteristics and earthquake action of the unequal height twin towers with the rigid connected structures have been assessed utilizing engineering experience and finite element analysis. However, the technical guidance at the theoretical level is rarely reported. Here, to reveal the dynamic characteristics of unequal height twin towers with the rigid connected structures, the equivalent design method for isolated structures was employed. The Higher Tower (S1) is equivalent to a two-particle two-degree-of-freedom system in the unequal height twin towers with a maximum height of 60 m, while the Lower Tower (S2) is equivalent to a single particle one-degree-of-freedom system. The variation law of their first-order natural vibration periods in the parallel conjoined direction was then analyzed using a simplified structural dynamics method. To investigate the coupling of frequencies and changing law of mode shapes, a three-degree-of-freedom system was established in the vertical conjoined direction. The simplified structural dynamics models were compared to the finite element simulation and validated further by an engineering practice. The results indicate that there are numerous plane and torsion coupling modes in the direction of the vertical rigid connection. The equipment and function area with heavy load should be set in the S1 area when the total stiffness meets the requirements in the direction of the vertical rigid connecting body, whereas the stiffness of the S2 should be controlled to the lowest extent. By analyzing engineering examples and comparing them to numerical simulations, the simplified structural dynamics methods can be used to control and optimize the design scheme to determine a reasonable position for the connecting body within the tower height.

The Total Collapse of the Twin Towers: What It Would Have Taken to Prevent It Once Collapse Was Initiated

It is generally taken as a given that there is no reasonable design concept that could have prevented the collapse of the Twin Towers, once it was initiated, from progressing all the way down to the ground. This view is rooted in the idea that the force generated during the inevitable impact between what may be called the intact upper section (IUS) and the intact lower section (ILS)—meaning the building sections above and below the initially lost columns, respectively—will exceed by at least one order of magnitude the capacity of the latter. On closer inspection, this turns out to be only partially correct—it is correct with regard to the topmost floor plate of the ILS but not with regard to the columns below this floor plate. This paper shows that if the ILS in the Twin Towers had been topped by a stronger-than-ordinary floor plate allowing the columns below to respond properly, rather than be bypassed, these columns—and with them the ILS—would likely have survived. The paper subsequently proposes a building design concept consisting in the insertion of strengthened floor plates in intervals of 10–20 stories.

September 11 as a Terrorist Atack in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "History of the Airplane"

The September 11 attacks, also called the 9/11 attacks, the series of plane hijackings and suicide attacks perpetrated in 2001 by 19 militants connected with the Islamic extremist organizations Al-Qaeda against goals in the United States, are the deadliest terrorist attacks and an extraordinary event on American soil. The attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. caused widespread death and destruction and sparked a massive United States counter-terrorism efforts. This study aims to explore the main trend of contemporary American poetry that deals with the topic of the September 11 attacks and to show the impact of September 11, 2001, on contemporary American poets. Many contemporary American poets in the period following the attack on the Twin Towers were influenced by the September 11 attacks. Many of the American poets consider the September 11 attacks a terrorist attack, and these poets are the ones who believe in the theory of terrorism, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti is one of them.

An American Identity: The Shifting Sands of Democracy

ABSTRACT The bombings of the World Trade Twin Towers, New York, on September 11th, 2001, marked a turning point in American history. This paper explicates on the impact that this terrorist act on American soil had on an emerging nascent and complex multicultural identity. Informed by both my personal and professional life, the analytic work with Marianna, a young adult, sheds some light on internal and external factors that contribute to a feeling of safety in a world that feels increasingly unsafe.