Search

The article focuses on Paper trash from Los Angeles (LA) City Hall and two LA office buildings that may soon be on its way to China. The paper is being analyzed for its export value, and, sometime this summer, China Paper Partners of San Francisco, an affiliate of the Conservatree Paper Co., plans to begin shipping the paper trash to the People's Republic of China, where it will be sorted and recycled. Instead of going into already overburdened landfills on this side of the Pacific, as much as 1,000 tons of paper trash per day may make the voyage to China, where paper material is in great demand.

In two studies, students at California State University, Northridge wrote papers that were checked for plagiarism using plagiarism-detection software. In the first study, half of the students in two classes were randomly selected and told by the professor that their term papers would be scanned for plagiarism using the software. Students in the remainder of each class were not informed that the software would be used. The researcher predicted that students who were explicitly warned about the use of the software would plagiarize less than students who were not, but the warning had no effect. In a second study, students wrote two papers in a series. Their knowledge about plagiarism-detection software was inversely correlated with plagiarism rates on the first paper, but no correlation was found between knowledge and plagiarism on the second paper. Instead, participants were discovered to draw repeatedly from the same sources of plagiarized material across papers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mega-events like the Olympics and the Football World Cup routinely harm host cities and societies, largely due to their linkages with ambitious urban development agendas. Concurrently, resident protest has had only limited success in mitigating mega-event-related damages, notwithstanding the growth of resistance networks at local, national, and transnational scales. Contextualised within the broader processes of the Agenda 2020 and New Norm Olympic reforms, this paper explores the tactics of protest against the Summer Olympics in Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how the reforms have moderated some of the more egregious aspects of mega-event harm, while nevertheless preserving some fundamental problems with hosting, albeit in more diffuse or disguised forms. The paper makes sense of these processes through the notion of Potemkinism, conceptualised as a dynamic between the superficial and the substantive, and predicated on obfuscation or concealment. The paper also presents a taxonomy of tactics adopted by host city residents to counter the problems that persist in these processes of Potemkin reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water reuse with Advanced Water Treatment (AWT) is increasingly appealing for urban areas seeking water supply reliability. In cities facing water scarcity, how can large-scale reuse support reliability and how do reuse operations affect water quality, energy use, and water conservation? This paper presents a systems analysis of metropolitan-scale water reuse and its effects on water supply and quality. For the case study of Los Angeles County, California, USA, hydroeconomic modeling is used to evaluate reuse as a contributor to water supply given urban water conservation, drought-induced water scarcity, and costs and benefits for supply and demand. Results indicate that AWT can be a viable source of supply especially when coupled with conservation. Across modeled scenarios, reuse provides as much as 30% of regional supplies. New water reuse with AWT becomes viable when imported water availability is 50% or less of historic values. Existing indirect potable reuse operations in the county remain important. Systemwide energy intensity of operations increases with greater reuse in the absence of water conservation. Modeled influent flow rates to wastewater treatment plants resemble historical values, but extreme flow events could pose risks. The paper offers a holistic framework to evaluate water reuse as a component of urban water management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic charging has the potential to overcome the barriers to electric vehicle (EV) adoption by converting road segments into powered lanes (electric roadways or ERs). This paper focuses on examining public acceptance by determining the factors that affect the short-term and long-term intention to purchase an EV and drive on ERs; identifying the clusters of the technology acceptance; and assessing the value of travel time savings (VTTS) for driving on ERs, in general, and for different clusters. A survey was conducted in Los Angeles, California and distributed online, gathering 600 responses. The results showed that respondents' innovativeness, lifestyle and environmental consciousness significantly affect the intention to drive on ERs in the short- and long-run. Public acceptance, in general, seems to be related to charging patterns, safety of commute route, and safety concerns for ERs, among other factors, and depends on the implementation time of the technology. Higher VTTS were found for electrified lanes exclusive for EVs on interstate and arterial roads. People who were classified as positive toward ERs had higher VTTS for ERs followed by those who were neutral and those who were concerned about ERs. This paper can help policymakers and transport operators devise strategies to accelerate EV adoption by appropriately implementing the ER technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this hybrid ethnographic case study, I explore how a cadre of Israeli-American parents in Los Angeles navigate the local Hebrew education landscape to seek linguistic resources for their children. I examine how participants envision Hebrew learning and determine the roles of Jewish, Israeli-serving, and public schools in transmitting Hebrew language, Judaism, and Israeli identity. Participants' perspectives on the vitality and utility of American Jewish institutions mediate their interest in various Hebrew learning offerings, surfacing cues that signal an institution's trustworthiness. This paper expands discourse on Hebrew education by foregrounding Israeli-heritage individuals' concerns regarding diasporic Hebrew learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate state of charge (SOC) estimation is considered as the main barrier to adopt Lithium-ion battery-based electric vehicles as alternatives to conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. There are several SOC estimation techniques recommended by many researchers still; they are all not accurate. This paper presents a robust and accurate SOC estimation battery model developed using an independently recurrent neural network (IndRNN). The proposed SOC estimation battery model is developed by training IndRNN constructively under various experimental datasets collected from Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminium Oxide battery cell at different ambient temperatures. Without any prior knowledge about battery internals, the proposed battery model successfully characterizes the non-linear behaviour of the battery effectively. Furthermore, its performance is proved by comparing with similar RNN architecture such as gated recurrent unit (GRU) and long short-term memory (LSTM). The attained results demonstrate that an IndRNN outperformed both GRU and LSTM in terms of accuracy under different electric vehicle drive cycle with minimal root mean square error of 0.7633% and mean absolute error of 0.6389% for diverse temperature conditions. Abbreviations: ANN: artificial neural network; BMS: battery management system; BPNN: back-propagation neural network; DFS: deep feature selection; EV: electric vehicle; FL: fuzzy logic; FNN: feedforward neural network; GA: genetic algorithm; GRU: gated recurrent unit; HWFET: highway fuel economy test; ICE: internal combustion engine; IndRNN: independently recurrent neural network; LA92: Los Angeles 92; LiB: lithium-ion battery; LSTM: long short-term memory; MAE: mean absolute error; MAX: maximum error; RNN: recurrent neural network; RMSE: root mean square error; ReLU: rectified linear unit; SOC: state of charge; SOH: state of health; SVM: support vector machine; US06: supplemental federal test procedure; UDDS: urban dynamometer driving schedule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how social movement organizations shift scale through the case of the immigrant rights movement. This was largely a local movement for the first decades of its existence. However, in the late 1990s, repressive federal policies increased the salience of national politics for many organizations. While recognizing the importance of national politics, many organizations remained mostly engaged in local politics for nearly a decade. The aim of this paper is to examine why immigrant rights organizations stayed local for so long after the threat shifted to the federal level and why they actually shifted to the national scale when they did. It does so by focusing on the case of Los Angeles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rock music is an integral part of American culture. This paper presents a study of sensing and analysing over 57,000 rock music live performances between 2007 and 2017. Spatial traces of 575 rock music artists performing in concerts nationwide were collected from a major music streaming platform Spotify. Location-based concert data were analysed to explore economic and geographic factors linked to the landscape of rock music live performance and to reveal the importance of population demographics and leisure and hospitality (LH) economics to the culture and music industries from a spatial aspect. Over 90% of rock concerts between 2007 and 2017 were found in 250 counties. The aim of the study is to specify and develop a model that reasonably accounts for spatial heterogeneity present in the concert data. By regressing rock concert data against demographic data and LH establishment data, ordinary least squares (OLS) models were better fitted in metropolitan counties than non-metropolitan counties. Spatial dynamics of concerts were revealed by local R2 values and the obtained structure in the form of spatial heterogeneity was then explained using geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. High population density and LH services in industry-leading cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston exhibit advantages in explaining rock concert distributions. Findings from the models reflect the live music industry's interrelationships to the LH industry and suggest LH services being essential considerations in selecting concert destinations for rock musicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perception is presented as a predominant concern in the functioning of a driving system, where it is necessary to understand how the information, events, and actions of each influence the state of the environment and the objectives of the driver, immediately and in the near future. In this context, we present in this paper a driving model composed of five layers which ensure the autonomy and road safety of a driver agent, in particular, we are interested in this article in the concept of perception which is translated by the first three layers of our driving model, which are: visual perception, comprehension and projection, where the execution of these three layers is based on the driving behavior adopted by the driver agent, which is in our case the car-following driving behavior. Furthermore, we present in this paper two simulation scenarios, the first one is realized based on urban area conditions, and the second one is conducted by using Next Generation SIMulation (NGSIM) dataset of a highway in Los Angeles, California. In this context, the experimental results present the effectiveness of our driving model based on the imitation of human behavior and according to reducing the duration of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This gem of an article by Dr. Kate Marcus was tucked away for decades, comfortably settled in a drawer at the Library-Bookstore of the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, readily available as a reprint for those who knew to ask. While preparing for a recent presentation, I tracked it down to refresh my memory of it. Marcus's article is the text of a lecture she presented in May 1956 for the Analytical Psychology Club of Los Angeles. In 1971, her paper was published in The Well-Tended Tree: Essays into the Spirit of Our Times, a Festschrift edited by Hilde Kirsch in honor of James Kirsch on his 70th birthday. As we would expect, Dr. Marcus's article reflects the time period in which it was written. Despite some outdated notions about women and men, it provides interesting and useful interpretations of the male stranger in women's dreams—dreams that are still dreamt today, more than 60 years after her paper was written. Marcus saw into and beyond her era, identifying and celebrating the prospective elements such dreams can offer. Psychological Perspectives wanted to make the article available to an audience wider than those who frequent our institute library-bookstore, and we extend our special thanks to Janet Casewell, and the C. G. Jung Foundation of New York, for allowing us to reprint this wonderful article. We trust Dr. Marcus would be pleased to learn her work is still read and remains of value decades after her death. –Pamela Freundl Kirst, PhD [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become increasingly important in spatial equity studies to understand activity spaces – where people conduct regular out-of-home activities. Big data can advance the identification of activity spaces and the understanding of spatial equity. Using the Los Angeles metropolitan area for the case study, this paper employs geotagged Twitter data to delineate activity spaces with two spatial measures: first, the average distance between users' home location and activity locations; and second, the area covered between home and activity locations. The paper also finds significant relationship between the spatial measures of activity spaces and neighborhood spatial and socioeconomic characteristics. This research enriches the literature that aims to address spatial equity in activity spaces and demonstrates the applicability of big data in urban socio-spatial research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities worldwide have embraced the idea of integrated stormwater management using more decentralised and green infrastructures to enhance urban sustainability. Los Angeles County has recently introduced a new stormwater tax that envisions achieving sustainable stormwater futures through far-reaching infrastructural change. While embracing such visions, however, different actors seek to use tax revenues for diverging infrastructure designs. Our paper therefore explores shifting stormwater politics in Los Angeles by highlighting the social relations underlying technology. Technical disputes that we frame as combinations of material artefacts, discourses, expertise and institutions provoke the specific "material politics" behind the emergence of a hybrid stormwater system in which centralised stormwater practices of incumbent public utilities predominate but increasingly co-exist with more decentralised landscape-centred practices and become interdependent on them. We argue that technical disputes reflect ambiguities about a future stormwater system and engender the renegotiation of responsibility, knowledge orders and the overall rationale of stormwater management. An inherited focus on controlling stormwater volumes thwarts attempts to couple stormwater and urban greening improvements more tightly. We conclude by emphasising that infrastructures are relational systems that carry many potential stormwater futures and by outlining ways to better align stormwater management with wider urban sustainability objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines a carceral history of Los Angeles through the policing of gender, and in particular, the policing of queer brown masculinity. It traces the twinned regimes of gender and prison in Los Angeles to Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo's 16th century colonial fiction about the capture of a gender nonconforming warrior queen Calafia, who ruled the mythical island of California. The violent logics of Calafia's capture persist in the city's carceral expansion and continue to impact gender nonconforming people today. Through an engagement with community histories that document spaces for gender confinement, such as the Daddy Tank, a cellblock used for masculine expressed people and lesbians at the Sybil Brand Institute in the 1970s, this paper centres moments of queer excess that counter such spaces. I follow Nancy Valverde, a Chicana butch elder, whose stories of detention for 'masquerading' in Los Angeles in the 1950s have much to teach us about gender nonconformity – from its policing to the liberatory possibilities of queer resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of sports practice in the re-articulation process of immigrant communities in their places of destination. I will use the case of basketball tournaments held by immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, in the context of the Los Angeles metropolitan region. This Mexican emigration has settled mainly in southern California, in the United States. While the eventual creation of their immigrant communities is explained by the insertion of immigrants in specific labor niches through their social networks, mainly based on sharing the same hometowns of origin, the role of socio-cultural elements such as sports practice and the formation of immigrant public spaces are also significant factors that make possible this process. The examination of these sports practices reveals its centrality in the conformation of these public spaces and with it the development of identification processes that enables the consolidation of immigrant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on formal interviews and ethnographic participant observation, this paper highlights how effective gang intervention programs can and do supplant negativistic masculine identities based on violent criminality with more positivistic masculine identities based on gainful employment, family life, and desistance. The authors examine how this transition occurs at three prominent gang intervention programs in diverse transnational contexts: Los Angeles, Glasgow, and Copenhagen. In contrast to earlier work, the paper also examines how gang members can revert back to negativistic masculine identities, criminality, and violence when the support that these programs provide is withdrawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GeoHumanities is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of GeoHumanities is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A case study for journalistic ethics is presented in which scholars and media professionals outline how they would address the ethical problem: Almost universally, the moral standard in the mainline press is to maintain fierce editorial independence from the business office--to prevent business from influencing editorial decisions. Business management at the "Los Angeles Times" proved the strength of the standard when it entered a profit-sharing agreement with the downtown sports and entertainment arena, the Staples Center. On October 10, 1999, the "Times" published a special issue of its Sunday magazine devoted entirely to the Staples Center. Most of the paper's journalists learned only then of the profit-split arrangement. Reporters and editors then signed a petition that demanded an apology and thorough review by their publisher, Kathryn Downing. She did apologize. Responding to the journalists' protest, Mark Willes, chairman and CEO of parent company Times Mirror, admitted "that the profit-sharing agreement had been a mistake."

The study examined the leadership role of Charlotta Bass, the editor/publisher of the California Eagle in Los Angeles during the 1950s. Bass helped lead a massive protest campaign in the legal case for Wesley Robert Wells, an inmate sentenced to death row in 1947. During the Cold War, scholars recognized that Black women challenged patriarchal leadership by creating their own paths toward Black radicalism. Bass' leadership is significant because it adds to pre-Civil Rights Movement activism and protests literature. Her newspaper supported Wells' campaign targeted at bringing awareness of racism within the prison system. Bass also served as the chairman of the Wesley Wells Legal Defense committee, where she produced a newsletter. Bass played a vital role in the case on several fronts as she brought attention to racism within criminal justice practices, prison violence and capital punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentary films and the law make a well-suited pair, due to four key similarities. Firstly, the accessibility of criminal law and its reliance on familiar concepts of good and evil. Secondly, the narrative structure: the arc of accusation, evidence and judgement within a criminal trial mirrors the arc of set up, confrontation and resolution found in cinema. Thirdly, the use of evidence, particularly the use of 'evidence verité' and the assumption of truth associated with photographs. Finally, the law and documentaries have a similar understanding of the concept of truth, as a product of persuasion and argument. As true-crime documentaries garner more attention , the stylistic choices of filmmakers carry more weight on the opinions of their audiences and subsequently the criminal justice system itself. Discussion in this paper focuses on the stylistic choices in documentaries such as Making a Murderer (Demos, Moira, and Laura Ricciardi. 2015. Making a Murderer. Los Angeles, CA: Netflix), The Staircase (de Lestrade, 2014), Southwest of Salem: the story of the San Antonio four (Esquenazi, Deborah. 2016. Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four. New York: Investigation Discovery), and The Night in Question (Theroux, Louis. 2019. The Night in Question. BBC), and their use of emotion, dialogue and footage, and the necessary transparency concerning these choices as well as production choices, to encourage audiences to understand true-crime documentaries as a subjective performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football 5-a-side is a Paralympic sport played among athletes with visual impairment. Although the sport has been featured in the Paralympics since 2004, it is still at its infant stage with only 52 countries having a national team. With the forthcoming 2028 Paralympics scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, California, one concern that the United States has is the absence of a football 5-a-side national team in the country. Thus, this study aims to find the solutions and examines the potential growth of the sport in the United States. Experts from different organizations were recruited to brainstorm the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of fostering the sport from its grassroot level, and further, establish the football 5-a-side national team in the United States. This paper contributes both practical and theoretical aspects in sport development with the transparency of ideas offered by professionals in various fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investigation of complaints against the police is important to law, order and justice. The public expects high ethical standards from its police service and when breaches occur, complaints often follow. How the police respond to complaints can influence the trust and confidence that underpins the civilian-police relationship. This paper examines some of the key issues faced by police services in the management of complaints and reviews the effectiveness of mediation as a measure to rebuild relations. The Los Angeles and New York City Police Departments were selected for the study because there are very few civilian-police complaints mediation programs in operation and these sites had reports on the public record that indicated some success. A qualitative case study approach was used, incorporating public source material and interviews with key informants. The findings show that the inclusion of external mediation in police complaints systems offers complainants a transparent, impartial and often restorative mechanism to resolve complaints. However, any perceived conflict surrounding the independence and equity of the mediation vendor can engender police and complainant mistrust in the process. As such, ongoing public and police education on the aims, process and benefits of mediation is required to sustain its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies offender choice patterns associated with extortion subtypes in El Salvador, Central America. Previous research attributes the rise of extortion in the country to the evolution and propagation of Los Angeles-born street gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18. Data from a unique business victimisation survey is used to analyse 53 decisions in 869 reported cases. The study borrows a multidimensional scaling method used in criminal profiling research to identify offender choice patterns. Cases are classified into extortion subtypes based on identified choice groupings. Key offender choices and location features are compared across extortion subtypes. Offender choice patterns identified in the study are consistent with systemic and opportunistic extortion described in previous literature. About a third of the cases are designated as hybrid extortions due to the blend of choice structuring properties they exhibit, which combines aspects of both systemic and opportunistic extortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hyperloop concept, pod speed competitions and current project developments have recently attracted much publicity. In this paper the transport technology of the vacuumed tube transport project Hyperloop is assessed through a system analysis of its principal aims, functional design, transport capacity and demand in comparison with existing commercial airlines, high-speed rail, and Maglev lines. First, the potential for high-speed long-distance travel demand for Hyperloop based on existing airline transport volumes between major airports in Germany on the one hand, and the proposed Hyperloop link from Los Angeles to San Francisco in California on the other, is assessed in general terms. Second, the technical feasibility of the proposed Hyperloop concept for vehicle design, capacity, operations, propulsion, guidance, energy supply, traffic control, safety, alignment, and construction is discussed in more detail. Third, possible environmental impacts and uncertain investment, operating and maintenance costs for implementation of a Hyperloop line are described. Finally, the risks for further Hyperloop project development and the need for more transparent research are emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, using an African Internationalist framework, I examine the life and cultural work of Hugh Masekela and his record label Chisa Records during his time in Los Angeles, from 1966 to 1976. From the wake of the Watts Rebellion and to the eve of the Soweto Uprising, for Masekela and other African musicians in exile, life in Los Angeles deepened their bonds with African American culture. Life in Los Angeles bridged the space between African liberation and Black Power. More importantly it sustained the anti-apartheid movement in exile. Masekela's record label was promoted as the "Home of Afro-American Music". Masekela and his label challenged what I call the collective culture settler colonialism that I define as the white global spatial imaginary. Masekela and other Chisa artists, both South African and African American, generated an internationalist and anticolonial cultural practice that I call the Black global spatial imaginary. In sound, aesthetics, and political practice the Black global spatial imaginary linked Black liberation struggles in Southern California to those in Southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A class of prediction regions for a future upper record interval (R s , R l) based on a type-II censored sample from the exponential distribution is presented in this paper. The best prediction region for (R s , R l) is then determined by solving a constrained nonlinear optimization problem. The objective function is the area of the prediction region and the constraints are related to the desired confidence level. According to our approach, it suffices to simultaneously solve four nonlinear equations for deriving the prediction region with minimal area. To show the usefulness of our results, we present a simulation study. Three practical studies regarding times between consecutive telephone calls, lifetimes to breakdown of insulating fluids and annual rainfalls recorded at Los Angeles Civic Center are provided for comparing conservative and optimal prediction regions. In most cases, the reduction in area is appreciable. Finally, some applications and extensions are also pointed out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung and Taos Pueblo leader Ochwiay Biano as a paradigm for experiencing the other. The paper also documents how analysts, colleagues, and students from California continued to nurture this friendship with Biano in the decades following Jung's death in 1961. This enduring friendship is documented, in part, in the personal correspondence between Biano and three Jungian analysts: Dr. James Kirsch of Los Angeles, CA, Wilbur R. Sanford, MD, of San Diego, CA, and his wife, Katherine M. Sanford, author of The Serpent and the Cross (2006). These personal letters, held in the OPUS Archive and Research Center at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA, evidence the relational and respectful thread of this authentic friendship. In this article, I assert that the tradition and practice of analytical psychology enables one to experience an other, recognizing both the dynamism of the whole and the dynamism of multifarious opposites. Dreamwork and active imagination also stimulate a relational practice that supports encounters of difference, experienced in both the inner and outer world. Attention to, and cultivation of, relationship with dream figures (often quite different from our outer world lived reality) introduces us to extraordinary, strange, and unfamiliar figures and images, which can make the unknown more knowable. This practice and capacity enables the possibility for respectful dialogue with people and figures of difference in both the inner and outer world, which is essential for the mutual survival and flourishing of humanity. Ensuing exchanges, deep understanding, and necessary reparations hold the seeds for deep relatedness and mutual transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines taxable sales in the Los Angeles and Miami metropolitan areas to find evidence of the short- and long-run effects of the Rodney King riots and Hurricane Andrew on their respective economies. The comparison of these two events shows that the King riots had a long-term negative effect on Los Angeles' economy while Hurricane Andrew had a short-term positive effect on the Miami economy. The paper also applies the contrasting experiences of Los Angeles and Miami to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In some ways, Katrina is a hybrid of these two events since it combines elements of both a natural disaster and a social disaster. The paper examines how Katrina is similar to each of the previous incidents and how these similarities might affect the recovery of New Orleans following the storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, the Hollywood studios have broadly sought to subdue, rather than explore, the technological possibilities of the Internet. Specifically, the studios have used their ownership of creative works to control the speed and direction of innovation in an emerging digitally networked social and economic environment, which is built upon the Internet and an ecology of hardware and software technologies. In this paper, I use a relational perspective to examine two critical aspects of this case study. The first concerns the cognitive and discursive dimensions of firm strategy. The second concerns the formation and enactment of firm strategy within networks of social relations. The argument is therefore twofold. On the one hand, I argue that the Hollywood studios are seeking to create a "closed" sphere of innovation on a global scale, which enables the absolute defence of property rights. However, this has alienated a broad spectrum of new creative freedoms, causing a "bifurcation" of the networked environment. On the other hand, I argue that this strategic response must be understood in relational terms. The closed sphere has been legitimated, enacted and performed within relational networks at a regional scale in Los Angeles. The paper is based on unprecedented access to the Hollywood studios, combined with interviews across the media, entertainment and technology industries. The overall goal of the paper is to construct an "economic geography" of disruptive innovation under conditions of oligopoly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Southern California closed the Education and the Social Work branch libraries in August 1998. Most of the collections were merged into the humanities and social sciences collection in the Doheny Memorial Library. The remainder of the collection was sent to an off-campus storage facility. Subject specialist librarians were deployed in the School of Education and the School of Social Work to provide library services to faculty and students. This paper explains the new Library Information Centers model and describes how the librarians function/cope without direct access to a paper collection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reports on the conference and exhibition of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) of the Association for Computing Machinery held in Los Angeles, California on August 8-13, 1999. Attendance; Number of exhibitors; Papers presented in the conference which are expected to affect graphics and interactive techniques.

Although theater-based interventions have emerged as an innovative health education platform, more research is needed to understand how these interventions work and to identify factors that make them successful and replicable in adolescent populations. This paper discusses the first research project conducted on High School Sex Squads (HSSS), which use monologues, skits, songs, dance, spoken word, and other forms of performance art to approach broad topics related to sex, sexuality, and gender. Using focus groups with students and key informant interviews with adult stakeholders, this pilot study explores HSSS with a dual focus on program implementation and impact on High School Sex Squad members. These findings will be translated to real-life program improvement to ensure optimal implementation as the program continues to expand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: α-lipoic acid (ALA) is a natural antioxidant which acts as a cofactor of bioenergetic mitochondrial enzymes. Along with its mitochondrial action, ALA and its reduced form have many biological functions resulting in a wide variety of actions such as anti-inflammation and antioxidant protection, scavenging reactive oxygen species, regenerating other antioxidant agents, such as vitamins C and E, and cytosolic glutathione, chelating the transitional metal ions (e.g. iron and copper), and modulating the signal transduction of nuclear factor. Methods: By selecting papers from PubMed, Science Direct, EBSCO, and databases, this review discusses the biochemical properties of LA, its mechanism of action, pharmacokinetics, and its possible therapeutic role in central nervous system diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Multiple sclerosis, stroke, and spinal cord injury. Results: ALA as an antioxidant and anti-inflammation agent has therapeutical effects on central nervous system diseases, especially multiple sclerosis and PD. Discussion: ALA can be considered as a potentially useful treatment in central nervous disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about artist Paige Smith. In 2005, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Design Communications from Texas Technological University in 2005. She has had several solo exhibitions including "The Box Geode," at The Standard, in Hollywood, California; "Obsessed With Solitude," at Time to Shine Gallery, and "Creeping Portend," at CBRE in Los Angeles, California.

The following paper deals with the relation between infrastructure and power. Against the background of social processes of postmodernisation, the development of the road infrastructure of Los Angeles will be analysed. Heinrich Popitz’s theory of power, which distinguishes between power of action (Aktionsmacht), instrumental (instrumentelle), authoritative (authoritative) and data establishing power (Daten setzende Macht), serves as a basis for the analysis of power. It will be shown that mass mobilisation is connected with all four types of power. Authoritative power as unquestioned imperative of the organisation of everyday life with the help of cars, and data establishing power of the general orientation of transportation to road traffic, play a central role. The paper shows the historical development of different aspects of the power definition of infrastructure, especially viewed in the context of the reduction of contingency through the loss of importance of alternative modes of transport. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, the US has dramatically expanded immigration enforcement. At the same time, some advocates have sought to support “good” immigrants. This paper considers how the resulting good/bad binaries affect undocumented immigrants. I examine a case study in Los Angeles, where policing intertwined with protection. Based on participant observation and interviews, I show that respondents believed state agents classified them either as “bad” criminals or “good”, immigrants. To the extent immigrants identified as “good”, they credited the US with offering them “freedom” and hoped for political inclusion. At the same time, in what I call moralizing regulation, they also performed “good” behaviour and distinguished themselves from those seen as “bad”. Some also tied “good” behaviour to femininity and “acting white”. At the extreme, they blamed other migrants for inviting state mistreatment. The effects were ambivalent: while immigrants appreciated US support, they also adopted and adapted to the state’s moral norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expert systems and multimedia are being incorporated into organizations at increasing rates because, while being independently developed, they possess capabilities appropriate for integration with each other. This paper examines the potential for such integration, providing support to users beyond the capabilities of each independently used technology. An integrated system, essential to the city of Los Angeles during the 1992 riots and the 1994 earthquake, is examined to demonstrate the usefulness and benefits of expert systems and multimedia integration. The potential for this integration is further explored by examining issues related to an integration framework where the two technologies support each other. Three integrated prototype systems are reviewed to promote the legitimacy of expert systems and multimedia integration. Preliminary findings conclude that this integration will offer benefits to various applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a letter from the editor, which discusses articles in this issue of "Ozone: Science & Engineering." Also discussed is the Los Angeles World Congress, in Los Angeles, California, which will feature manuscripts on factory designs and operations and the IOA/IUVA World Congress with the Pan American Group, which will feature plant tours as well as nine technical sessions.

The need to better engage low-income communities affected by revitalization of the built environment has been well documented in urban planning. Guided by communication infrastructure theory (CIT), this study presents a research project that made concerted efforts at engaging neighborhoods of Northeast Los Angeles that are experiencing rapid gentrification. The project was a partnership with a multi-sector collaborative working on the revitalization of the L.A. River and its surrounding communities. This paper specifically demonstrates how CIT's social ecological orientation was applied to seek input on L.A. River and community revitalization from storytelling networks made up of residents, small businesses, and local media. We also examine the impact of this engaged research on the organizational partners of the collaborative, and their views on community engagement in revitalization. Lastly, we discuss how the lessons learned broadly speak to future opportunities and challenges that aim for communicative planning approaches to urban revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to move considerations of just sustainability into the realm of urban parks. The Audubon Center at Debs Park, an urban nature centre located within a Los Angeles, CA, park, provides the means to examine one manifestation of just sustainability in urban recreational space; in its espousal of both environmental sustainability and environmental justice-oriented goals, the centre appears to be representative of a justly sustainable project. This paper then suggests that there are numerous avenues through which park projects may engage more robustly with just sustainability and briefly discusses what justly sustainable projects that place distributive and procedural justice at their centres may look like. Accruing evidence for the ecological and social benefits of parks for nature and society underscores the value of a just sustainability agenda in park research and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways academic discourses shaped the field of American independent cinema. Through a discussion of a large number of works that examined the question of independent filmmaking in the USA and were published from the 1940s onwards, the paper provides a number of distinctions between particular approaches to what constitutes American independent cinema, and in effect offers a history of film criticism on the subject. More specifically, it groups work in the field under five different categories, each driven by agendas and objectives that were often conflicting. This conflict can be seen most clearly during the 1980s when a particular group of scholars examined American independent cinema as intricately linked to the Hollywood film industry and the studios while a second cluster of academic researchers located independent film completely outside the mainstream and as part of alternative media. In this respect, independent film production in the USA has come to represent a different set of characteristics for different groups of scholars, which to some extent explains why a consensual definition of the label 'independent film' has remained elusive. (Part 1 of this paper was published in the New Review of Film and Television Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2011.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways academic discourses shaped the field of American independent cinema. Through a discussion of a large number of works that examined the question of independent filmmaking in the USA and were published from the 1940s onwards, the paper provides a number of distinctions between particular approaches to what constitutes American independent cinema, and in effect offers a history of film criticism on the subject. More specifically, it groups work on the field under five different categories, each driven by agendas and objectives that were often conflicting. This conflict can be seen most clearly during the 1980s when a particular group of scholars examined American independent cinema as intricately linked to the Hollywood film industry and the studios while a second cluster of academic researchers located independent film completely outside the mainstream and as part of alternative media. In this respect, independent film production in the USA has come to represent a different set of characteristics for different groups of scholars, which to some extent explains why a consensual definition of the label 'independent film' has remained elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I demonstrate that narrative-based geovisualization contributes to a broader understanding of complex social and inherently spatial phenomena, such as riots, when combined with other data. Past spatial scholarship on riots has analyzed point-distribution data representing damaged structures caused by fires and vandalism. Although this approach is insightful, the analysis of damaged structures engages with just one type of many other significant occurrences during a riot. Since riots are a result of human actions, I am interested in representing other significant occurrences through the eyewitness, on-the-ground accounts—or narratives—that reveal individual observations and experiences. Using the 1992 Los Angeles riots as a case study, I combine point-distribution data and narrative data as a complementary, multiple-methods approach to investigate human actions during riots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preservation and promotion of neighbourhood identity is important in contemporary cities. Los Angeles, long known for its lack of both effective mass transit and, separately, local identity and cohesion among its neighbourhoods, is currently working to address each of these issues, yet little attention has been paid to the possibility that the two can be directly related. This paper investigates how rail transit line identification and station-naming decisions are not only important to community members but can have an impact on the neighbourhood identity. After introducing these ideas with the case of the identification of the Metro 'Expo Line' in LA, the paper turns to a comparison of naming logics for other local institutions and other major transit systems, arguing that cities could benefit from considering 'community supportive' transit design that promotes local identity in addition to more pragmatic wayfinding concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the problem of determining non-parametric confidence intervals for quantiles when available data are in the form of k-records. Distribution-free confidence intervals as well as lower and upper confidence limits are derived for fixed quantiles of an arbitrary unknown distribution based on k-records of an independent and identically distributed sequence from that distribution. The construction of tolerance intervals and limits based on k-records is also discussed. An exact expression for the confidence coefficient of these intervals are derived. Some tables are also provided to assist in choosing the appropriate k-records for the construction of these confidence intervals and tolerance intervals. Some simulation results are presented to point out some of the features and properties of these intervals. Finally, the data, representing the records of the amount of annual rainfall in inches recorded at Los Angeles Civic Center, are used to illustrate all the results developed in this paper and also to demonstrate the improvements that they provide on those based on either the usual records or the current records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]