Journal articles on the topic 'Traffic signs and signals Design and construction'

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1

Tama, Yuanda Patria. "Fenomena Lalu Lintas Simpang Bersinyal di Kota Bekasi (Studi Kasus: Simpang Tol Bekasi Timur)." JURNAL PEMBANGUNAN WILAYAH & KOTA 11, no. 4 (December 29, 2016): 195. http://dx.doi.org/10.14710/pwk.v12i2.12895.

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The transportation’s problem that common in Indonesia is a limitation of road space and intersection that needed to conduct the traffic flow. An accident and degradation of intersection’s performance, it’s caused by the driver’s attitude which have a less concern to the traffic law. This research attempt to observe the driver violation which influences the characteristic of urban’s intersection to find out the phenomenon of traffic’s signal intersection. The strategy to design the intersection in East Bekasi highway for reducing driver violation by using the side friction factor that consists of extending the radius of junction sleeves, constructing lay bay in bus stop, demolition the street vendor, ojek base and public transportation. Also, the geometric intersection factor consists of installation signs, marka reparation, constructing the pedestrian facility, and specific stopping area for motorcycle, then the traffic’s characteristic factor consists of an intensive supervising by policeman, constructing the priority track to turn left on red and installation signs.
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Xiong, Jun Yu, Xiao Hui Du, Jia Qi Wang, and Hui Li Zhai. "A Optimized Design of One Traffic Circle." Advanced Materials Research 588-589 (November 2012): 1632–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.588-589.1632.

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In this paper we use queuing theory to analysis the incoming traffic, developed an effective way to control the traffic of a circle by using stop signs and yield signs,and calculated the traffic capacity and average waiting time of this method. Then, we use signals to control the traffic and improve the original method by a analysis the ways the car can pass through the circle crossing. Taking into account of the traffic flow in the different time of a day, we got the light's signal period to adapt to the features of the traffic flow.
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Ford, Garry L., and Dale L. Picha. "Teenage Drivers’ Understanding of Traffic Control Devices." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1708, no. 1 (January 2000): 1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/1708-01.

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Teenage drivers are involved in traffic crashes more often than any other driver group, and their fundamental knowledge of traffic control devices and rules of the road is extremely important in safe driving. Only limited data exist, however, on teenage drivers’ understanding of traffic control devices, and little research has been done on determining their comprehension thereof. Research was performed to document teenage drivers’ ability to understand 53 traffic control devices. These traffic control devices included 6 combinations of sign shape and color; 8 regulatory signs; 14 warning signs; 7 school, highway–railroad grade crossing, and construction warning signs; 7 pavement markings; and 11 traffic signals. Research results were then compared with previous comprehension studies to identify specific traffic control devices that the driving public continually misunderstands. In general, the results indicated that surveyed teenage drivers understood the traffic control devices to some degree. Only nine devices were understood by more than 80 percent of the respondents. The devices found problematic to teenage drivers include combinations of sign shape and color, warning-symbol signs, white pavement markings, flashing intersection beacons, and circular red/green arrow left-turn-signal displays. Recommendations include revising states’ drivers handbooks and increasing emphasis in the driver education curriculum to clarify the meaning and intent of problematic traffic control devices.
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Xiao, Jian, Jian Zhao, Liulin Yang, Juanxia He, Yu Li, and Yuxiao Li. "Study on the Deocclusion of the Visibility Window of Traffic Signs on a Curved Highway." Journal of Advanced Transportation 2020 (January 16, 2020): 1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/4291018.

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Highway navigation is often affected by complex topography, and the flat curve plays an important role in the horizontal alignment design of a highway. Many curves are formed, where visibility could be decreased. Thus, the indicative function of a traffic sign plays a crucial role in ensuring driving safety at the curve. Due to the blocked visibility, the probability of the traffic sign occlusion at the curve of operating highways is quite high. It is urgent to consider the clearing obstructions around traffic signs at curves during highway construction. In this study, the potential of visual occlusion for traffic signs on curved highways was investigated. Firstly, the driver’s visibility window that contains traffic signs was defined and criteria of visual occlusion were proposed. Secondly, a geometric occlusion design formula was established to mimic the visual recognition process of traffic signs on a curved highway, yielding the formula to calculate the visibility window. Finally, the occlusion design formula was applied into a case study of the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway (Hunan section), in which visibility windows were calculated and analyzed. The obtained results verified the correctness and effectiveness of the occlusion design formula developed in this study.
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Liu, Shi Long, Zhi Dong Guo, and Miao Dong. "Research on Application of Traffic Signs in Rural Highway Security Engineering." Applied Mechanics and Materials 361-363 (August 2013): 2315–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.361-363.2315.

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Traffic signs are widely used in rural highway security engineering due to low cost, strong directive performance. The paper conducts the research and discussion combined with the design principles, control points of construction technology, analysis of quality inspection and evaluation and analysis on safety effect of traffic signs in the security engineering of Cai-Gou road. This paper provides references for the implementation of security engineering principles which is safe, effective, economic, practical.
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6

He, Song, Hao Xue, Lejiang Guo, Xin Chen, and Jun Hu. "Intelligent Vehicle Design based on PaddlePaddle and Deep Learning." Journal of Physics: Conference Series 2132, no. 1 (December 1, 2021): 012003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/2132/1/012003.

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Abstract ABSTRACT.In order to visualize the applications of deep learning based intelligent vehicle in the real field vividly, especially in the unmanned cases in which it realizes the integration of various technologies such as automatic data acquisition, data model construction, automatic curve detection, traffic signs recognition, verification of the unmanned driving, etc. A M-typed Model intelligent vehicle that is embedded with a high-performance board from Baidu named Edge Board is adopted by this study. The vehicle is trained under the PaddlePaddle deep learning frame and Baidu AI Studio Develop platform. Through the autonomous control scheme design and the non-stop study on the deep learning algorithm, an intelligent vehicle model based on PaddlePaddle deep learning is here. The vehicle has the function of automatic driving on the simulated track. In addition, it can distinguish several traffic signs and make feedbacks accordingly.
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7

Bryden, James E., Laurel B. Andrew, and Jan S. Fortuniewicz. "Work Zone Traffic Accidents Involving Traffic Control Devices, Safety Features, and Construction Operations." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1650, no. 1 (January 1998): 71–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/1650-09.

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There were 496 work zone traffic accidents on New York State Department of Transportation construction projects from 1994 through 1996. These accidents involved impacts with work zone traffic control devices and safety features; construction features, such as pavement bumps and joints; drainage features; excavations and materials; and construction vehicles, equipment, and workers. These items, which include all of the features introduced into the roadway environment by construction activity, represent one-third of all work zone accidents and 37 percent of those involving serious injury. Channelizing devices, arrow panels, signs, and other traffic control devices generally resulted in little harm when impacted. Impact attenuators, both fixed and truck mounted, also performed well. Although portable concrete barriers prevent vehicle intrusions, impacts with barrier are severe events. Barriers must be properly designed and limited to only those locations where they are needed to protect more serious hazards. Construction vehicles, equipment, and workers were involved in over 20 percent of all work zone accidents, resulting in serious injuries. Although intrusions by private vehicles into work spaces are a serious concern, construction vehicles, equipment, and workers in open travel lanes are also a serious concern. Good design of work zone traffic control plans, combined with adequate training and supervision of workers, is essential to control both concerns.
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8

Cho, Taejun, Myeong-Han Kim, and Hyo-Seon Ji. "Odyssey for the Standard Design of Highway Minor Structures (Cantilever Columns for Signs, Luminaries, Traffic Signals)." Journal of the Korean Society for Advanced Composite Structures 6, no. 3 (September 30, 2015): 62–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.11004/kosacs.2015.6.3.062.

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9

Azzam, Diya Mahmoud, and Craig C. Menzemer. "Numerical Study of Stiffened Socket Connections for Highway Signs, Traffic Signals, and Luminaire Structures." Journal of Structural Engineering 134, no. 2 (February 2008): 173–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(asce)0733-9445(2008)134:2(173).

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10

Domínguez, Hugo, Alberto Morcillo, Mario Soilán, and Diego González-Aguilera. "Automatic Recognition and Geolocation of Vertical Traffic Signs Based on Artificial Intelligence Using a Low-Cost Mapping Mobile System." Infrastructures 7, no. 10 (October 4, 2022): 133. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/infrastructures7100133.

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Road maintenance is a key aspect of road safety and resilience. Traffic signs are an important asset of the road network, providing information that enhances safety and driver awareness. This paper presents a method for the recognition and geolocation of vertical traffic signs based on artificial intelligence and the use of a low-cost mobile mapping system. The approach developed includes three steps: First, traffic signals are detected and recognized from imagery using a deep learning architecture with YOLOV3 and ResNet-152. Next, LiDAR point clouds are used to provide metric capabilities and cartographic coordinates. Finally, a WebGIS viewer was developed based on Potree architecture to visualize the results. The experimental results were validated on a regional road in Avila (Spain) demonstrating that the proposed method obtains promising, accurate and reliable results.
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Lidström, Mats. "Using Advanced Driving Simulator as Design Tool in Road Tunnel Design." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1615, no. 1 (January 1998): 51–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/1615-07.

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To obtain more information for tunnel design problems, a virtual model of some proposed tunnel designs was developed to demonstrate the design in advance and to be used as a platform for future tunnel research projects. By combining this model with an advanced driving simulator, the designers can virtually drive through their drawings before construction work is started. In comparison with traditional animation techniques, an interactive virtual model combined with a driving simulator has proved to be useful in many aspects. It is an excellent tool for testing proposed positions of road signs in the tunnel. It is easier to compare alternative sign positions with the three-dimensional virtual tunnel model than with ordinary drawings. Some visual traps not foreseen in the original sign-position design were corrected after detection in the simulator. Traffic engineers reported that they became involved in the tunnel design process at an earlier stage than before, enabling them to work in the final tunnel environment long before the actual tunnel was built. The ability to work early in the design process makes it possible for traffic engineers, architects, and safety engineers to evaluate their designs while other solutions still can be considered.
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12

Kozin, Yuriy. "Road Traffic Light in New Configuration." Journal of Road Safety 32, no. 1 (February 1, 2021): 52–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.33492/jrs-d-20-00253.

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The three-color system containing signals of the same circular shape has been in existence for over a hundred years. Each traffic signal has been justifiably selected to have a special color light to correspond to human psychoemotional reaction (red – stop, yellow – caution, green – go) to a given color signal (British Standards, 2015) and to comply with the laws of physics (The Motivated Engineer, 2015) – Rayleigh’s scattering law (Banc SpaceTek, 2017). The main downsides of the traditional road traffic light include the following: • The uniform circular shape of light signals results in uncertainty and difficulties for road users with color blindness and visual impairments, resulting in the need for restrictions or bans on driving license issuance in some countries. This uncertainty becomes particularly acute in conditions of low visibility. • According to the concept of harmony of form and color (Itten, 1961), a green light alone corresponds to the circular (spherical-like) shape of the signal. Red and amber lights harmoniously combine with other geometrical shapes. • The uniform shape of light signals prevents the implementation of the original compact combined model of traffic lights. For example, during the day, colorblind people can tell which signal is which because there is a standard position assigned: top – bottom or right – left (Oliveira, Souza, Junior, Sales & Ferraz, 2015). This becomes problematic if the compact combined models of traffic lights are used. Engineers and inventors have been trying to solve these problems by introducing random changes in the light signal shape and complicating the traffic light design. For a long time there have been different proposals about how to eliminate the demerits of the existing traffic lights: from arbitrary changes in the signal shape (Patterson, 1988) to transformation of traffic lights into a single-section display panel (Kulichenko, 2011) which replaces among others stationary road signs. However, technical solutions like these deprive the traffic light of its signal uniformity and conciseness (simplicity, clarity and precision of its controlling effect), features which help safe traffic regulation in a busy and dynamic mode. Technical modernization of individual signal components has been going hand in hand with technological developments as light sources, diffusers, lenses, controllers, materials, control systems, timers, etc. are improved. However, adequate design and aesthetic proposals are considerably behind. The aim of this paper is to propose a concept of creating control signals of traffic light that harmonize color and form, and, as a result, to create a new model of traffic light that will be convenient for all road users.
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13

Fouad, Fouad H., and Elizabeth Calvert. "Design of Cantilevered Overhead Sign Supports." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1928, no. 1 (January 2005): 39–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0361198105192800104.

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The AASHTO 2001 Standard Specifications for Structural Supports for Highway Signs, Luminaires and Traffic Signals include revised wind load provisions and new criteria for fatigue design. These provisions and criteria differ considerably from those in previous editions of the specifications, and their impact on the design of cantilevered overhead sign supports has not been fully studied. This study assesses the effect of these provisions and criteria on the design of cantilevered overhead sign support structures with the horizontal support composed of a four-chord truss. Wind and fatigue load design calculations of typical structures, located at sites across the United States, were performed with the design provisions of the 2001 supports specifications and compared with design in accordance with the previous edition of the specifications. The induced forces in the primary members of the cantilevered sign support structure were calculated, and corresponding member sizes and weights were estimated. The results of the study demonstrated the effect of the wind and fatigue load provisions on the design of cantilevered overhead sign support structures.
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14

Barvinska, Khrystyna, and Oleh Hrytsun. "Comparative analysis of the driver's psychological perception of information and the use of road sign recognition systems." Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Transport 16, no. 2 (January 17, 2023): 3–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.31649/2413-4503-2022-16-2-3-8.

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This article analyzes drivers' psychophysiological perception of information on the road and the advantages of using means of automatic use of signs (TSR). A survey of drivers was conducted on the road section where traffic organization changed. The drivers were chosen with different driving experiences, age categories, and needs for using the car, but they used the road section under investigation even before its reconstruction. Drivers of vehicles by age category were divided into three categories: under 25 years of age (category 1), 42% of drivers aged 26 to 50 years (category 2), and 19% of drivers aged 50 and older (category 3). It was established that 47% of the first drivers' category use automatic road sign recognition tools, 31% of the second category use the TSR system, and only 22% of the third category use the road sign recognition system. Four new road signs were installed during the development of the design schemes for organizing traffic in the middle section at a distance of 50 m. Based on this, an additional survey was conducted on drivers' memorization of specific new signs installed on the investigated section of the road. The results of the survey of drivers of different age categories were taken into account. It was studied that the most perceived number of road signs for the third category of drivers are observed at a distance of 50 to 150 m. At a distance of 50 to 150 m, they concentrate their attention, and after 150 m, they forget about the changed scheme in the traffic organization. In conclusion, drivers, getting used to traffic routes, lose vigilance, and pay less attention to existing information signals, which causes them to make wrong decisions when changing traffic organization on certain road sections. It is proposed to use automatic road sign recognition tools that are not affected by external and internal factors to increase the reliability of drivers and ensure road safety.
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Lee, Eul-Bum, Hojung Lee, and Massod Akbarian. "Accelerated Pavement Rehabilitation and Reconstruction with Long-Life Asphalt Concrete on High-Traffic Urban Highways." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1905, no. 1 (January 2005): 56–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0361198105190500106.

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Rehabilitation of urban highways is a critical issue confronting the California Department of Transportation because the state has a significant inventory of overaged, heavily trafficked urban highways showing extensive signs of distress. This paper presents the innovative pavement rehabilitation technologies and techniques that the agency applied in the first asphalt concrete (AC) project for its Long-Life Pavement Rehabilitation Strategies (LLPRS) program. A 4.4-km stretch of deteriorated concrete pavement on I-710 in Long Beach was rehabilitated successfully with 230 mm of AC overlay or 325 mm of full-depth AC replacement during eight 55-h weekend closures. The pilot project proved that the accelerated (fast-track) rehabilitation with 55-h weekend closures is a viable option that can drastically shorten the overall construction time and lessen the negative effects of construction in an urban area. The project also proved that AC pavement designed to provide a design life of 30-plus years can be constructed in a series of weekend closures even on the most heavily loaded truck route in the state. The construction-monitoring study indicated that contractor productivities were noticeably improved (through the learning effect) as weekend closures were repeated. In addition, the pay factor clause in the contract effectively encouraged the contractor's awareness of quality. The traffic measurements study showed that traffic operated at free-flow speeds throughout the surrounding highways and arterial roads during the construction weekends. It is expected that the construction and traffic management techniques adopted in this project will be used in LLPRS projects on California urban highways with high-traffic volumes.
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Jung, Chanyoung, Daegyu Lee, Seungwook Lee, and David Hyunchul Shim. "V2X-Communication-Aided Autonomous Driving: System Design and Experimental Validation." Sensors 20, no. 10 (May 20, 2020): 2903. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s20102903.

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In recent years, research concerning autonomous driving has gained momentum to enhance road safety and traffic efficiency. Relevant concepts are being applied to the fields of perception, planning, and control of automated vehicles to leverage the advantages offered by the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication technology. This paper presents a V2X communication-aided autonomous driving system for vehicles. It is comprised of three subsystems: beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) perception, extended planning, and control. Specifically, the BLOS perception subsystem facilitates unlimited LOS environmental perception through data fusion between local perception using on-board sensors and communication perception via V2X. In the extended planning subsystem, various algorithms are presented regarding the route, velocity, and behavior planning to reflect real-time traffic information obtained utilizing V2X communication. To verify the results, the proposed system was integrated into a full-scale vehicle that participated in the 2019 Hyundai Autonomous Vehicle Competition held in K-city with the V2X infrastructure. Using the proposed system, the authors demonstrated successful completion of all assigned real-life-based missions, including emergency braking caused by a jaywalker, detouring around a construction site ahead, complying with traffic signals, collision avoidance, and yielding the ego-lane for an emergency vehicle. The findings of this study demonstrated the possibility of several potential applications of V2X communication with regard to autonomous driving systems.
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McCarthy, Christine. ""From over-sweet cake to wholemeal bread": the Home & Building years: New Zealand Architecture in the 1940s." Architectural History Aotearoa 5 (October 31, 2008): 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.26686/aha.v5i0.6760.

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In 1940, when Helen Gosset, writing for the New Zealand Home & Building, asked her readers to "[a]nalyze for a moment the intricate exterior design which meets one's eye from the streets of a modern city," she gave a vivid account of urban life of that decade:A complexity of motor wheels, iron girders, tall window - dotted buildings, flashing electric signs, vivid shop windows, traffic signals, and as a back drop for all this, the bustle of modern industry. These things make up the lives of moderns. Is it any wonder that they find a certain comfort in straight lines and the absence of ornament?
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Liu, Qiujia, Jiali Deng, Yifan Shen, Wenxin Wang, Zhan Zhang, and Linjun Lu. "Safety and Efficiency Analysis of Turbo Roundabout with Simulations Based on the Lujiazui Roundabout in Shanghai." Sustainability 12, no. 18 (September 11, 2020): 7479. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su12187479.

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Traditional multilane roundabouts have many branch lanes without traffic signs and channelization, which leads to a high tendency for traffic collisions. Turbo roundabouts are a new design that has the potential to reduce lane-change conflicts using canalization to force drivers to keep in specific lanes based on their intended destination. This paper evaluates the safety and efficiency performance of turbo roundabouts for the case of a five-leg roundabout called Lujiazui in Shanghai and provides design and construction guidelines when applying the turbo design. The models for the Lujiazui roundabout and the reconstructed turbo version were built in Vissim, and a comprehensive series of experiments under different traffic volumes and central island radii was performed. Afterward, the conflict statistics extracted from the trajectory files in the Surrogate Safety Assessment Model (SSAM) were analyzed using the conflict severity index (CSI) and were then integrated to calculate the modified conflict frequency (MCF) for safety performance evaluation. A comparative efficiency analysis was also conducted as a supplement. Based on the results, the relative characteristics for safety and efficiency between the turbo and original designs of the Lujiazui roundabout were analyzed. Suggestions to apply the turbo design on a five-leg roundabout are introduced.
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Elvik, Rune. "Effects on Road Safety of Converting Intersections to Roundabouts: Review of Evidence from Non-U.S. Studies." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1847, no. 1 (January 2003): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/1847-01.

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A meta-analysis of studies reported outside the United States was performed to evaluate the effects on road safety of converting intersections to roundabouts. Twenty-eight studies that provided 113 estimates of effect were evaluated. State-of-the-art techniques of meta-analysis were applied to synthesize evidence from these evaluation studies. A meta-regression analysis was performed, and the possible presence of publication bias was tested and adjusted using the trim-and-fill method. The results show that roundabouts are associated with a 30% to 50% reduction in the number of injury accidents. Fatal accidents are reduced by 50% to 70%. Effects on property damage accidents are highly uncertain, but in three-leg intersections, an increase often will occur. Evidence from the evaluation studies, although highly uncertain, suggests that the effect of roundabouts on injury accidents is greater in four-leg intersections than in three-leg intersections, and it is greater in intersections previously controlled by yield signs than in intersections previously controlled by traffic signals. Few studies have evaluated in detail the effects on safety of design parameters for roundabouts. Findings are inconsistent, but the majority of studies find that small roundabouts (a small diameter of the central traffic island) are safer than large roundabouts (a large diameter of the central traffic island).
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Rash-ha Wahi, Rabbani, Narelle Haworth, Ashim Kumar Debnath, and Mark King. "Influence of Type of Traffic Control on Injury Severity in Bicycle–Motor Vehicle Crashes at Intersections." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2672, no. 38 (May 14, 2018): 199–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0361198118773576.

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Many studies have identified factors that contribute to bicycle–motor vehicle (BMV) crashes, but little is known about determinants of cyclist injury severity under different traffic control measures at intersections. Preliminary analyses of 5,388 police-reported BMV crashes from 2002 to 2014 from Queensland, Australia revealed that cyclist injury severity differed according to whether the intersection had a Stop/Give-way sign, traffic signals or no traffic control. Therefore, separate mixed logit models of cyclist injury severity (fatal/hospitalized, medically treated, and minor injury) were estimated. Despite similar distributions of injury severity across the three types of traffic control, more factors were identified as influencing cyclist injury severity at Stop/Give-way controlled intersections than at signalized intersections or intersections with no traffic control. Increased injury severity for riders aged 40–49 and 60+ and those not wearing helmets were the only consistent findings across all traffic control types, although the effect of not wearing helmets was smaller at uncontrolled intersections. Cyclists who were judged to be at fault were more severely injured at Stop/Give-way and signalized intersections. Speed zone influenced injury severity only at Stop/Give-way signs and appears to reflect differences in intersection design, rather than speed limits per se. While most BMV crashes occurred on dry road surfaces, wet road surfaces were associated with an increased cyclist injury severity at Stop/Give-way intersections. The results of this study will assist transport and enforcement agencies in developing appropriate mitigation strategies to improve the safety of cyclists at intersections.
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Liu, Xiling, Yuan Zeng, Ling Fan, Shuquan Peng, and Qinglin Liu. "Investigation on Rupture Initiation and Propagation of Traffic Tunnel under Seismic Excitation Based on Acoustic Emission Technology." Sensors 22, no. 12 (June 16, 2022): 4553. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22124553.

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Traffic tunnels are important engineering structures in transportation, and their stability is critical to traffic safety. In particular, when these tunnels are in an earthquake-prone area, the rupture process under seismic excitation needs to be studied in depth for safer tunnel design. In this paper, based on a construction project on the Nairobi-Malaba railway in East Africa, a laboratory shaking table test with 24 working cases of seismic excitation on a mountain tunnel is designed, and the acoustic emission (AE) technique is employed to investigate the tunnel rupture process. The results show that the high frequency components between 20 and 30 kHz of AE signals are the tunnel rupturing signals under the seismic excitation under such conditions. The tunnel vault and the arch foot are prone to rupture during the seismic excitation, and the initial rupture in the arch foot and vault of the tunnel occur under the horizontal and vertical Kobe wave seismic excitation, respectively, with a maximum acceleration of 0.4 g. After the rupture initiation, the tunnel arch foot continues to rupture in the subsequent working cases regardless of whether the excitation direction is horizontal or vertical, while the tunnel vault does not rupture continuously with the implementation of the subsequent excitations. Moreover, the Kobe seismic wave has a higher degree of damage potential to underground structures than the El seismic wave.
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Mak, King K., Roger P. B. ligh, and William B. Wilson. "Wyoming Road Closure Gate." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1528, no. 1 (January 1996): 38–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0361198196152800104.

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Road closure gates are used to close certain highways when driving conditions become too hazardous under severe winter weather conditions. The Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) developed a new road closure gate design that had not been crash tested to determine whether it would meet nationally recognized safety standards. WYDOT sponsored a study at the Texas Transportation Institute to crash test and evaluate the new road closure gate design and, as appropriate, to improve the design from the standpoints of safety performance, cost, and practicality. The original road closure gate design was crash tested and failed to meet the guidelines set forth in NCHRP Report 350 and the 1985 AASHTO Standard Specifications for Structural Supports for Highway Signs, Luminaires, and Traffic Signals. The design was then modified and crash tested with successful results. The modified road closure gate design consists of a standard 8.84-m (29-ft)-high luminaire support pole structure with a mast arm and light standard, a four-bolt slip base breakaway base, a telescoping fiberglass-aluminum gate arm with an electric in-line linear actuator lift mechanism, and a gate arm bracket to restrict the lateral movement of the gate arm when it is in the up position. The road closure gate design has been adopted by WYDOT and accepted by FHWA for use on the National Highway System.
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Hajializadeh, Donya. "Deep-Learning-Based Drive-by Damage Detection System for Railway Bridges." Infrastructures 7, no. 6 (June 14, 2022): 84. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/infrastructures7060084.

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With the ever-increasing number of well-aged bridges carrying traffic loads beyond their intended design capacity, there is an urgency to find reliable and efficient means of monitoring structural safety and integrity. Among different attempts, vibration-based indirect damage identification systems have shown great promise in providing real-time information on the state of bridge damage. The fundamental principle in an indirect vibration-based damage identification system is to extract bridge damage signatures from on-board measurements, which also embody vibration signatures from the vehicle and road/rail profile and can be contaminated due to varying environmental and operational conditions. This study presents a numerical feasibility study of a novel data-driven damage detection system using train-borne signals while passing over a bridge with the speed of traffic. For this purpose, a deep Convolutional Neural Network is optimised, trained and tested to detect damage using a simulated acceleration response on a nominal RC4 power car passing over a 15 m simply supported reinforced concrete railway bridge. A 2D train–track interaction model is used to simulate train-borne acceleration signals. Bayesian Optimisation is used to optimise the architecture of the deep learning algorithm. The damage detection algorithm was tested on 18 damage scenarios (different severity levels and locations) and has shown great accuracy in detecting damage under varying speeds, rail irregularities and noise, hence provides promise in transforming the future of railway bridge damage identification systems.
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Nunez, Edgar, and Fouad H. Fouad. "Estimation of Second-Order Effects for Pole-Type Structures." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1740, no. 1 (January 2000): 151–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/1740-19.

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The design of pole-type structures for highway supports requires computation of second-order effects induced by the interaction of vertical gravitational and transverse wind loads. The 1994 Standard Specifications for Structural Supports for Highway Signs, Luminaires, and Traffic Signals provides two methods to account for those second-order effects. The first method uses a simplified approach by introducing a factor, CA, into the combined stress ratio equation. The second method requires the computation of the exact bending stresses by means of a nonlinear analysis. Most structural design codes specify simplified methods for the evaluation of second-order effects to facilitate the design of structural members by using the forces obtained in a first-order static analysis. Therefore, simplified methods must be accurate to be considered an adequate alternative to a more sophisticated analysis. The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of the simplified method by using the CA factor to estimate the second-order effects for pole-type structures. An analytical study that included 241 pole configurations was conducted to evaluate the CA factor. Exact solutions were computed by using a computer program capable of performing second-order analysis. The study indicated that for typical pole-type structures, the results obtained with the CA factor were highly conservative. On the basis of the results, a modified expression for the CA factor is proposed. Results obtained by use of the modified expression for the CA factor were within 10 percent of those obtained by use of the “exact” nonlinear analysis.
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Gallow, Mohamed S., Fouad H. Fouad, and Ian E. Hosch. "Mitigating Fatigue in Cantilevered Overhead Sign Structures." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2522, no. 1 (January 2015): 18–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2522-02.

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Cantilevered overhead sign structures (COSSs) are widely used across highways in the United States. Several cases of excessive vibrations and failures caused by fatigue wind loads from natural and truck-induced wind gusts have been reported. Not enough research has included the effect of making structural design modifications on the fatigue performance of COSSs. Under fatigue wind-induced loads, the dynamic characteristics (frequency and damping) of COSSs are important parameters affecting their structural behavior. When frequencies of wind load and the structure match, resonance may occur, causing excessive vibrations, depending on the frequency value. If accompanied fatigue stresses exceed the fatigue endurance limit, failure occurs after a certain number of loading cycles. The objective of this study was to investigate stiffness and mass distribution of COSSs to control the structural frequency, thus mitigating fatigue caused by wind-induced gusts. For this purpose, modifications in the members' shape, arrangement, size, and layout of structure were examined. Three layouts were compared: four-chord, two-chord, and monotube COSSs. These layouts were designed according to the 2013 AASHTO Standard Specifications for Structural Supports for Highway Signs, Luminaires, and Traffic Signals and modeled with SAP2000. Wind pressure power spectral density and time history loading functions were applied to these structures to simulate natural and truck-induced wind gusts, respectively. Results showed that the vertical mono-tube COSS design with curved end post had the least mass, but fatigue stresses were comparable with the four-chord COSS. The two-chord COSS design had the largest mass and exhibited the highest fatigue stresses.
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Kuzin, A. A., A. V. Miakinkov, K. S. Fomina, and S. A. Shabalin. "A Method of Spatial Processing for a Railway Crossing Control Radar System." Journal of the Russian Universities. Radioelectronics 25, no. 5 (November 28, 2022): 42–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.32603/1993-8985-2022-25-5-42-55.

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Introduction. Railway crossing is a source of increased danger for vehicles and pedestrians. To increase the safety of traffic at railway crossings, radar systems based on antenna arrays (AA) can be used. The important requirements for radar at a railway crossing are a wide field of view (up to 90 degrees) and, at the same time, a high accuracy in determining coordinates. Therefore, an analysis of methods for constructing AAs and spatial processing for an automatic traffic control system at a railway crossing seems to be a relevant research task. Aim. Design of a method for constructing the topology of an AA and spatial processing of a radar system for monitoring traffic at a railway crossing, providing a wide field of view with a high accuracy in determining the coordinates of targets. Materials and methods. The considered method was developed based on the theory of space-time signal processing. The design of the analyzed AA topologies was carried out by the finite element method (FEM) and the finite differ-ence time domain method (FDTD) based on segments of a microstrip transmission line. Results. A method for constructing a filled transceiver antenna array and a beamforming algorithm, which provide high angular resolution and unambiguous measurement of the target's angular coordinates in a wide field of view with relatively low computational complexity, was developed. Mathematical and electrodynamic modeling of the designed AA topologies was performed. Adjusted values of the radiation patterns (RP) of the transmitting and receiving AA were obtained, which showed good agreement with the calculated values. The main design solutions regarding the construction of AA radar for a railway crossing control system are presented to provide a wide field of view when determining the coordinates of targets. Conclusion. It was shown that the width of the resulting RP can be reduced by several times compared to the width of the receiving RP when using two transmitting antennas located at the edges of the aperture. This approach is similar to that used in the MIMO technology, although requiring no coherence of transmission channels and use of a system of orthogonal signals. The findings determine the prospects of using the developed method.
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Porto, Maria Luiza Lucena. "Construction and validation of an instrument of collection of data of the aged one in the program of health of the family." Online Brazilian Journal of Nursing 3, no. 3 (December 20, 2004): 80–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.17665/1676-4285.20044940.

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The main study design was a methodology type research to test the construction and validation of an instrument of data collection data for the attendance of the elderly people subscribed in the Health Family Program, anchored in the Theory of the Basic Human Need studied by Horta, and developed in three phases: 1) construction of the instrument, 2) validation of content of the instrument and 3) clinical testing with the elderly. In the first phase a review of literature was made aiming the definition of the 36 basic human’s needs and the identification of signals and symptoms of the elderly. The initial version of the instrument was guided by a list of affected necessities of the elderly, end 579 signals and symptoms were identified, and the Likert Scale was considered for each one of them. The second phase of the research was carried out in two stages. In the first stage a preliminary version of the instrument was directed to a group of twenty nurses, professors and nursing assistants, to test the content validate of the signals and symptoms a pre-test was made and 60,0% return was harvested. Out of 579 signals and symptoms, 181 harvested a average weighted mean of 80 which represented 80% of the total. With this results for the second stage for the construction of the instrument, a final format was made out, having seven components: 1) Identification, 2) General conditions, 3) Functional evaluation, including, instrumental and advanced the activities of the life daily, 4) Cognitive evaluation, 5) Evaluation of the social and familiar situation, 6) Evaluation of the basic human needs, and 7) Other information of interest for the nurses. In the second stage this instrument was directed to the twelve nurses for evaluation of the form and content of its final version, Out of 181 signals and symptoms, 12 return and harvested a average weighted mean of 8,0 which represented of the 67% of the total. The overall responses indicated through the findings, was found to be an applicable instrument to be used in the Health Family Program. Further testing was pursed. The last phase of the research, a clinical application of the instrument was made with twelve elderly persons in the Health Family Unit of the Sanitary District III, in the city of Recife - Pernambuco, to verify adequacy of the instrument in a practical and real context with 25 minutes standard application to fulfill the blanks. The overall data indicated that the methodology to test the construction and validation of the instrument of data collection for the attendance of elderly people in Health Family Program, has a strong degree of reliability and internal validity, demonstrating that the proposed instrument can be largely used for all the practical purpose by nursing professional assistance, teaching and research, whenever becomes necessary to collect reliable data related to the elderly people, their signs and symptoms.
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Karolak, Juliusz, Wiktor B. Daszczuk, Waldemar Grabski, and Andrzej Kochan. "Temporal Verification of Relay-Based Railway Traffic Control Systems Using the Integrated Model of Distributed Systems." Energies 15, no. 23 (November 29, 2022): 9041. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/en15239041.

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Relay-based traffic control systems are still used in railway control systems. Their correctness is most often verified by manual analysis, which does not guarantee correctness in all conditions. Passenger safety, control reliability, and failure-free operation of all components require formal proof of the control system’s correctness. Formal evidence allows certification of control systems, ensuring that safety will be maintained in correct conditions and the in event of failure. The operational safety of systems in the event of component failure cannot be manually checked practically in the event of various types of damage to one component, pairs of components, etc. In the article, we describe the methodology of automated system verification using the IMDS (integrated model of distributed systems) temporal formalism and the Dedan tool. The novelty of the presented verification methodology lays in graphical design of the circuit elements, automated verification liberating the designer from using temporal logic, checking partial properties related to fragments of the circuit, and fair verification preventing the discovering of false deadlocks. The article presents the verification of an exemplary relay traffic control system in the correct case, in the case of damage to elements, and the case of an incorrect sequence of signals from the environment. The verification results are shown in the form of sequence diagrams leading to the correct/incorrect final state.
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Lusk, Anne, Walter Willett, Vivien Morris, Christopher Byner, and Yanping Li. "Bicycle Facilities Safest from Crime and Crashes: Perceptions of Residents Familiar with Higher Crime/Lower Income Neighborhoods in Boston." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16, no. 3 (February 7, 2019): 484. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16030484.

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While studies of bicyclist’s perceptions of crime and crash safety exist, it is also important to ask lower-income predominantly-minority residents what bicycle-route surface or context they perceive as safest from crime and crashes. With their insights, their chosen bike environments could be in engineering guidelines and built in their neighborhoods to improve residents’ health and lessen their risk of exposure to crime or crashing. This study involved two populations in Boston: (a) community-sense participants (eight groups-church/YMCA n = 116); and (b) street-sense participants (five groups-halfway house/homeless shelter/gang members n = 96). Participants ranked and described what they saw in 32 photographs of six types of bicycle environments. Quantitative data (Likert Scale 0–6 with 0 being low risk of crime/crash) involved regression analysis to test differences. Qualitative comments were categorized into 55 themes for surface or context and if high or low in association with crime or crashes. For crime, two-way cycle tracks had a significantly lower score (safest) than all others (2.35; p < 0.01) and share-use paths had a significantly higher score (least safe) (3.39; p < 0.01). For crashes, participants rated shared-use paths as safest (1.17) followed by two-way cycle tracks (1.68), one-way cycle tracks (2.95), bike lanes (4.06), sharrows (4.17), and roads (4.58), with a significant difference for any two groups (p < 0.01) except between bike lane and sharrow (p = 0.9). Street-sense participants ranked all, except shared-use paths, higher for crime and crash. For surface, wide two-way cycle tracks with freshly painted lines, stencils, and arrows were low risk for crime and a cycle track’s median, red color, stencils, and arrows low risk for crash. For context, clean signs, balconies, cafes, street lights, no cuts between buildings, and flowers were low risk for crime and witnesses, little traffic, and bike signals low risk for crash. As bicycle design guidelines and general Crime Perception Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles do not include these details, perhaps new guidelines could be written.
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Chabanenko, Diomyd, and Oleksandr Polіvoda. "Violation of consolidation of the femur after untimely dynamization of the intramedullary blocking rod." ORTHOPAEDICS, TRAUMATOLOGY and PROSTHETICS, no. 1 (October 5, 2021): 69–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.15674/0030-59872021169-72.

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Violation of femoral fracture consolidation after blocking intra­medullary osteosynthesis is a fairly common pathology, and requires the attention of physicians due to its prevalence. There are several reasons for this complication: it is the instabi­lity in the system «bone-implant», and the untimely dynamization of the locking nail. Methods. This article presents a case of fracture violated consolidation after blocking intramedullary osteosynthesis caused a nonunion due to nail failure. Results. Patient was injured on 29.12.2018, as a result of a traffic accident. 01.15.2019, the surgery was performed: closed reduction, blocking intramedullary osteosynthesis of the fracture of the middle shaft of the right thigh, static fixation of the nail. Next visit to the clinic was on 02.01.2020, because of pain in the middle third of the thigh, problems with axial weight-bearing on the right leg, limitation of the flexion in the right knee joint. Control radiographs demonstrated no signs of consolidation of the femoral shaft fracture, and migration of the distal locking screw. 08.01.2020 revision surgical treatment was performed. Given the presence of 5 mutually perpendicular holes in the distal part of the nail, two of them were locked in the anterio-posterior view by the free hand method, the migrated screw in the distal part of the nail was replaced, and the nail was dynamized in the proximal part taking into account its design features. Conclusions. To normalize the consolidation processes in patients with nonunion femoral fractures, bone physiology and the positive effect of autocompression should be considered. The described case demonstrates the necessity for timely dynamization of the blocking nail, which confirms our own observations and literature data. Despite the fact that the dynamization of the nail was performed 1 year after blocking intramedullary osteosynthesis, fracture consolidation occurred 5 months after its implementation. Key words. Femoral fracture, blocked intramedullary osteosynthesis, disorders consolidation, dynamization of the construction.
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Ruzhentsev, Nikolay, Simeon Zhyla, Vladimir Pavlikov, Gleb Cherepnin, Eduard Tserne, Anatoliy Popov, and Anton Sobkolov. "BLOCK DIAGRAM OF A MULTI-FREQUENCY RADIOMETRIC COMPLEX FOR UAV DETECTION IN DIFFERENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS." Information and Telecommunication Sciences, no. 2 (December 21, 2021): 50–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.20535/2411-2976.22021.50-57.

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Background. Technologies for the production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of various classes are rapidly developing in Ukraine and the world. Small in terms of weight and dimensions and almost invisible for most information and measurement systems, UAVs began to be used in various industries - from the national economy to multimedia and advertising. Together with their useful application, new dangers and incidents have appeared - a collision of UAVs with people, structures, cultural monuments, the transportation of criminal goods, terrorist acts, flights over prohibited areas and within airports. UAV detection and control of their movement in populated areas and near critical objects are becoming one of the most important tasks of air traffic control services. The existing systems of the optical, acoustic and radar ranges cannot effectively perform such tasks in difficult meteorological conditions. As an addition to the already developed detection systems, it is proposed to use radiometric systems that register the UAV's own radio-thermal radiation. The authors have developed the theoretical foundations for the construction of multifrequency complexes necessary for the specification of their structural schemes. Objective. The purpose of the paper is development of a scheme for a multi-frequency radiometric complex for detecting UAVs in different meteorological conditions based on optimal algorithms. Methods. Analysis of the experience in the development of radiometric systems and methods for dealing with fluctuations in the gain of receivers, optimal operations for processing signals of intrinsic radio-thermal radiation, investigations of the probabilistic characteristics of detection and analysis of the domestic market of microwave technology developers will make it possible to develop a scheme of a multifrequency radiometric complex that will perform reliable measurements in various meteorological conditions. Results. A block diagram of a four-frequency radiometric complex is proposed, which can be implemented in practice and is capable of performing reliable measurements in various meteorological conditions. The frequencies 10 GHz, 20 GHz, 35 GHz, and 94 GHz were chosen as the resonant frequencies for tuning the radiometric receivers. For a given design and characteristics of receivers, the probabilities of detecting a UAV were calculated depending on the range of its flight. Conclusions. From the results of the analysis of the existing achievements in the development of radiometric systems in Ukraine and the elemental base of microwave components available on the market, it follows that the Ku and K bands have the worst characteristics of spatial resolution, but are all-weather. The Ka and W bands are highly sensitive to radio-thermal radiation against the background of a clear sky, but are completely "blind" in a cloudy atmosphere and in rain. The results of calculating the detection ranges with a probability of 0.9 lie in the range from 1 to 3 km, depending on the condition of the atmosphere. These results coincide with the known detection ranges of optical, acoustic and radar systems, but the selected parameters of the receivers do not correspond to potential world achievements and can be improved.
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Nayyar, Anand, Pijush Kanti Dutta Pramankit, and Rajni Mohana. "Introduction to the Special Issue on Evolving IoT and Cyber-Physical Systems: Advancements, Applications, and Solutions." Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience 21, no. 3 (August 1, 2020): 347–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.12694/scpe.v21i3.1568.

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Internet of Things (IoT) is regarded as a next-generation wave of Information Technology (IT) after the widespread emergence of the Internet and mobile communication technologies. IoT supports information exchange and networked interaction of appliances, vehicles and other objects, making sensing and actuation possible in a low-cost and smart manner. On the other hand, cyber-physical systems (CPS) are described as the engineered systems which are built upon the tight integration of the cyber entities (e.g., computation, communication, and control) and the physical things (natural and man-made systems governed by the laws of physics). The IoT and CPS are not isolated technologies. Rather it can be said that IoT is the base or enabling technology for CPS and CPS is considered as the grownup development of IoT, completing the IoT notion and vision. Both are merged into closed-loop, providing mechanisms for conceptualizing, and realizing all aspects of the networked composed systems that are monitored and controlled by computing algorithms and are tightly coupled among users and the Internet. That is, the hardware and the software entities are intertwined, and they typically function on different time and location-based scales. In fact, the linking between the cyber and the physical world is enabled by IoT (through sensors and actuators). CPS that includes traditional embedded and control systems are supposed to be transformed by the evolving and innovative methodologies and engineering of IoT. Several applications areas of IoT and CPS are smart building, smart transport, automated vehicles, smart cities, smart grid, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture, smart healthcare, smart supply chain and logistics, etc. Though CPS and IoT have significant overlaps, they differ in terms of engineering aspects. Engineering IoT systems revolves around the uniquely identifiable and internet-connected devices and embedded systems; whereas engineering CPS requires a strong emphasis on the relationship between computation aspects (complex software) and the physical entities (hardware). Engineering CPS is challenging because there is no defined and fixed boundary and relationship between the cyber and physical worlds. In CPS, diverse constituent parts are composed and collaborated together to create unified systems with global behaviour. These systems need to be ensured in terms of dependability, safety, security, efficiency, and adherence to real‐time constraints. Hence, designing CPS requires knowledge of multidisciplinary areas such as sensing technologies, distributed systems, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, real-time computing, computer networking, control theory, signal processing, embedded systems, etc. CPS, along with the continuous evolving IoT, has posed several challenges. For example, the enormous amount of data collected from the physical things makes it difficult for Big Data management and analytics that includes data normalization, data aggregation, data mining, pattern extraction and information visualization. Similarly, the future IoT and CPS need standardized abstraction and architecture that will allow modular designing and engineering of IoT and CPS in global and synergetic applications. Another challenging concern of IoT and CPS is the security and reliability of the components and systems. Although IoT and CPS have attracted the attention of the research communities and several ideas and solutions are proposed, there are still huge possibilities for innovative propositions to make IoT and CPS vision successful. The major challenges and research scopes include system design and implementation, computing and communication, system architecture and integration, application-based implementations, fault tolerance, designing efficient algorithms and protocols, availability and reliability, security and privacy, energy-efficiency and sustainability, etc. It is our great privilege to present Volume 21, Issue 3 of Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience. We had received 30 research papers and out of which 14 papers are selected for publication. The objective of this special issue is to explore and report recent advances and disseminate state-of-the-art research related to IoT, CPS and the enabling and associated technologies. The special issue will present new dimensions of research to researchers and industry professionals with regard to IoT and CPS. Vivek Kumar Prasad and Madhuri D Bhavsar in the paper titled "Monitoring and Prediction of SLA for IoT based Cloud described the mechanisms for monitoring by using the concept of reinforcement learning and prediction of the cloud resources, which forms the critical parts of cloud expertise in support of controlling and evolution of the IT resources and has been implemented using LSTM. The proper utilization of the resources will generate revenues to the provider and also increases the trust factor of the provider of cloud services. For experimental analysis, four parameters have been used i.e. CPU utilization, disk read/write throughput and memory utilization. Kasture et al. in the paper titled "Comparative Study of Speaker Recognition Techniques in IoT Devices for Text Independent Negative Recognition" compared the performance of features which are used in state of art speaker recognition models and analyse variants of Mel frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCC) predominantly used in feature extraction which can be further incorporated and used in various smart devices. Mahesh Kumar Singh and Om Prakash Rishi in the paper titled "Event Driven Recommendation System for E-Commerce using Knowledge based Collaborative Filtering Technique" proposed a novel system that uses a knowledge base generated from knowledge graph to identify the domain knowledge of users, items, and relationships among these, knowledge graph is a labelled multidimensional directed graph that represents the relationship among the users and the items. The proposed approach uses about 100 percent of users' participation in the form of activities during navigation of the web site. Thus, the system expects under the users' interest that is beneficial for both seller and buyer. The proposed system is compared with baseline methods in area of recommendation system using three parameters: precision, recall and NDGA through online and offline evaluation studies with user data and it is observed that proposed system is better as compared to other baseline systems. Benbrahim et al. in the paper titled "Deep Convolutional Neural Network with TensorFlow and Keras to Classify Skin Cancer" proposed a novel classification model to classify skin tumours in images using Deep Learning methodology and the proposed system was tested on HAM10000 dataset comprising of 10,015 dermatoscopic images and the results observed that the proposed system is accurate in order of 94.06\% in validation set and 93.93\% in the test set. Devi B et al. in the paper titled "Deadlock Free Resource Management Technique for IoT-Based Post Disaster Recovery Systems" proposed a new class of techniques that do not perform stringent testing before allocating the resources but still ensure that the system is deadlock-free and the overhead is also minimal. The proposed technique suggests reserving a portion of the resources to ensure no deadlock would occur. The correctness of the technique is proved in the form of theorems. The average turnaround time is approximately 18\% lower for the proposed technique over Banker's algorithm and also an optimal overhead of O(m). Deep et al. in the paper titled "Access Management of User and Cyber-Physical Device in DBAAS According to Indian IT Laws Using Blockchain" proposed a novel blockchain solution to track the activities of employees managing cloud. Employee authentication and authorization are managed through the blockchain server. User authentication related data is stored in blockchain. The proposed work assists cloud companies to have better control over their employee's activities, thus help in preventing insider attack on User and Cyber-Physical Devices. Sumit Kumar and Jaspreet Singh in paper titled "Internet of Vehicles (IoV) over VANETS: Smart and Secure Communication using IoT" highlighted a detailed description of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) with current applications, architectures, communication technologies, routing protocols and different issues. The researchers also elaborated research challenges and trade-off between security and privacy in area of IoV. Deore et al. in the paper titled "A New Approach for Navigation and Traffic Signs Indication Using Map Integrated Augmented Reality for Self-Driving Cars" proposed a new approach to supplement the technology used in self-driving cards for perception. The proposed approach uses Augmented Reality to create and augment artificial objects of navigational signs and traffic signals based on vehicles location to reality. This approach help navigate the vehicle even if the road infrastructure does not have very good sign indications and marking. The approach was tested locally by creating a local navigational system and a smartphone based augmented reality app. The approach performed better than the conventional method as the objects were clearer in the frame which made it each for the object detection to detect them. Bhardwaj et al. in the paper titled "A Framework to Systematically Analyse the Trustworthiness of Nodes for Securing IoV Interactions" performed literature on IoV and Trust and proposed a Hybrid Trust model that seperates the malicious and trusted nodes to secure the interaction of vehicle in IoV. To test the model, simulation was conducted on varied threshold values. And results observed that PDR of trusted node is 0.63 which is higher as compared to PDR of malicious node which is 0.15. And on the basis of PDR, number of available hops and Trust Dynamics the malicious nodes are identified and discarded. Saniya Zahoor and Roohie Naaz Mir in the paper titled "A Parallelization Based Data Management Framework for Pervasive IoT Applications" highlighted the recent studies and related information in data management for pervasive IoT applications having limited resources. The paper also proposes a parallelization-based data management framework for resource-constrained pervasive applications of IoT. The comparison of the proposed framework is done with the sequential approach through simulations and empirical data analysis. The results show an improvement in energy, processing, and storage requirements for the processing of data on the IoT device in the proposed framework as compared to the sequential approach. Patel et al. in the paper titled "Performance Analysis of Video ON-Demand and Live Video Streaming Using Cloud Based Services" presented a review of video analysis over the LVS \& VoDS video application. The researchers compared different messaging brokers which helps to deliver each frame in a distributed pipeline to analyze the impact on two message brokers for video analysis to achieve LVS & VoS using AWS elemental services. In addition, the researchers also analysed the Kafka configuration parameter for reliability on full-service-mode. Saniya Zahoor and Roohie Naaz Mir in the paper titled "Design and Modeling of Resource-Constrained IoT Based Body Area Networks" presented the design and modeling of a resource-constrained BAN System and also discussed the various scenarios of BAN in context of resource constraints. The Researchers also proposed an Advanced Edge Clustering (AEC) approach to manage the resources such as energy, storage, and processing of BAN devices while performing real-time data capture of critical health parameters and detection of abnormal patterns. The comparison of the AEC approach is done with the Stable Election Protocol (SEP) through simulations and empirical data analysis. The results show an improvement in energy, processing time and storage requirements for the processing of data on BAN devices in AEC as compared to SEP. Neelam Saleem Khan and Mohammad Ahsan Chishti in the paper titled "Security Challenges in Fog and IoT, Blockchain Technology and Cell Tree Solutions: A Review" outlined major authentication issues in IoT, map their existing solutions and further tabulate Fog and IoT security loopholes. Furthermore, this paper presents Blockchain, a decentralized distributed technology as one of the solutions for authentication issues in IoT. In addition, the researchers discussed the strength of Blockchain technology, work done in this field, its adoption in COVID-19 fight and tabulate various challenges in Blockchain technology. The researchers also proposed Cell Tree architecture as another solution to address some of the security issues in IoT, outlined its advantages over Blockchain technology and tabulated some future course to stir some attempts in this area. Bhadwal et al. in the paper titled "A Machine Translation System from Hindi to Sanskrit Language Using Rule Based Approach" proposed a rule-based machine translation system to bridge the language barrier between Hindi and Sanskrit Language by converting any test in Hindi to Sanskrit. The results are produced in the form of two confusion matrices wherein a total of 50 random sentences and 100 tokens (Hindi words or phrases) were taken for system evaluation. The semantic evaluation of 100 tokens produce an accuracy of 94\% while the pragmatic analysis of 50 sentences produce an accuracy of around 86\%. Hence, the proposed system can be used to understand the whole translation process and can further be employed as a tool for learning as well as teaching. Further, this application can be embedded in local communication based assisting Internet of Things (IoT) devices like Alexa or Google Assistant. Anshu Kumar Dwivedi and A.K. Sharma in the paper titled "NEEF: A Novel Energy Efficient Fuzzy Logic Based Clustering Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network" proposed a a deterministic novel energy efficient fuzzy logic-based clustering protocol (NEEF) which considers primary and secondary factors in fuzzy logic system while selecting cluster heads. After selection of cluster heads, non-cluster head nodes use fuzzy logic for prudent selection of their cluster head for cluster formation. NEEF is simulated and compared with two recent state of the art protocols, namely SCHFTL and DFCR under two scenarios. Simulation results unveil better performance by balancing the load and improvement in terms of stability period, packets forwarded to the base station, improved average energy and extended lifetime.
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Aguilar, Victor. "Safety Factor for Drilled Shaft Foundations Subjected to Wind-Induced Torsion." DFI Journal The Journal of the Deep Foundations Institute 14, no. 1 (October 13, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.37308/dfijnl.20191014.211.

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Public transportation agencies commonly use drilled shaft foundations as support of mast arm traffic signs and signal pole structures. These structures and their foundations are subjected to wind-induced torsion. Design provisions can be found in AASHTO specifications for structural supports for highway signs, luminaires and traffic signals; nevertheless, those standards do not provide guidance to estimate the torsional resistance of drilled shaft foundations, or what an appropriate factor of safety (or resistance factor) for design could be. Although load and resistance factors format is desired because AASHTO is moving in that direction, still many Departments of Transportation design requirements are based on factors of safety. In this study, a probabilistic approach is used to recommend a rational procedure to determine factors of safety that consider the uncertainties and the consequences of failure. This procedure can be modified for load and resistance factors design calibration, as well. The skin friction approach was calibrated employing reliability analysis, available statistics, published experimental data, and simulations. However, a lack of field test data has been noticed. Factors of safety for cohesive, cohesionless, and layered soils are recommended. They are presented as a function of the target reliability index, and which in-situ test is performed to obtain the soil strength properties. Three alternatives were considered: standard penetration test, cone penetration test, and vane shear test. The procedure described can be used by practitioners to select appropriate factors of safety based on local conditions when statistical parameters from a particular site investigation are available.
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Anene, W. C. "Investigation into the Understanding of Traffic Signs, Symbols and Safety Rules among Drivers in Southern Nigeria." Journal of Engineering Research and Reports, September 8, 2022, 41–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.9734/jerr/2022/v23i517610.

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Aims: This study examines the understanding of traffic signs and symbols as a safety measure towards accident reduction among drivers in Southern Nigeria. It investigated the understanding of traffic signs and symbols by drivers in Nigeria with regards to their personal characteristics such as age, educational background, and driving experience and also determined the major factors influencing the high rate of road traffic accidents in Nigeria. Study Design: Investigation into the level of knowledge of drivers in understanding traffic signs and symbols in Southern Nigeria. Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted in Southern Nigeria, from September, 2017 to December, 2017. Methodology: 600 questionnaires were administered within the various city parks in Anambra, Enugu, Delta, and Lagos states but 476 of the respondents participated. A total of 27 symbols, which includes ten regulatory signs, nine warning signs, three traffic signals lights, and five road pavement markings were investigated. Miscellaneous questions for driving under special conditions, mechanical factors, and general guides were also assessed among the drivers. The use of Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS), as a tool was employed to analyze the data obtained from the respondents. Results: The analysis showed that there is a low understanding of traffic signs and symbols by drivers in Southern Nigeria. The overall average percentage of drivers who correctly understood the regulatory signs was 59%, warning signs was 64.2%, and pavement markings was 31.8%. The average knowledge percentage of drivers for driving under special conditions, speed/mechanical factor, and general guides are 43%, 53.66%, and 46.4% respectively. From the statistical -analysis of the findings, there is significance prove that age, driving experience, and educational background play an important role in drivers’ understanding of traffic signs and symbols. Conclusion: It is recommended that drivers are properly trained and sensitized on the correct meaning of traffic signs and symbols. The body concerned for issuing a driver’s license should carefully test the drivers’ knowledge before issuing a driver’s license and also traffic law court should be established for the prosecution of defaulters.
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Theiss, LuAnn, Laura Higgins, and Gerald L. Ullman. "Improved Practices for Temporary Work Zone Guide Signs." Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, June 25, 2022, 036119812211035. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/03611981221103593.

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Freeway reconstruction projects often involve adding lanes and improving entrance and exit ramps. Sign supports for overhead guide signs are sometimes removed early in the project to make way for construction activities. In addition, roadside guide signs may need to be relocated and replaced with temporary guide signs. The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices provides guidance for work zone guide signs in Part 6, stating that temporary guide signs shall have black legend and border on an orange background. But permanent guide signs follow Part 2 of the MUTCD, which prescribes white legend and border on a green background for guide signs in general. Thus, many long-term freeway work zones may have guide signs in both color schemes that change throughout the project as the construction work progresses. The constrained conditions often seen in these work zones can also result in guide signs that use a variety of fonts, font sizes, sign sizes, and placement positions. This paper describes the human factors study that was performed to assess motorist understanding of various work zone guide signage strategies. Based on the results, the researchers were able to develop recommendations for long-term work zone guide sign design and placement to improve uniformity for the traveling public.
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Patočka, Miroslav, and Martin Smělý. "MODERN TURBO-ROUNDABOUTS AND THEIR DESIGNING IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC." Jurnal Teknologi 78, no. 5-3 (May 8, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.11113/jt.v78.8507.

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Even though the turbo roundabouts have been designed in the Czech Republic since the beginning of this century, until the middle of 2015, there was no national regulation which would describe the way of their construction. As a result of this, there are only 10 turbo-roundabouts with various widths of design elements and different traffic signs in the Czech Republic now. From this number there are some that even cannot be considered a turbo-roundabout. The aim of this paper is to present the results we gained within the research project and to present readers with the approach to the construction of geometry of turbo-roundabouts in the conditions of Czech road network and existing legislation and standards.
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Natanael, Neil Haezer, Anak Agung Gede Sugianthara, and Naniek Kohdrata. "Desain Bahu Jalan Letjen S. Parman, Kelurahan Panjer, Kecamatan Denpasar Selatan, Kawasan Niti Mandala Renon Denpasar - Bali." Jurnal Arsitektur Lansekap, April 29, 2022, 71. http://dx.doi.org/10.24843/jal.2022.v08.i01.p08.

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Letjen S. Parman Roadside design, Sumerta Kelod, County District East Denpasar. Denpasar is one out of nine districts/cities and it is the most populated in Bali Province. Rapid population growth leads to an increase in its population density that affects traffic growth in Denpasar City. Letjen S. Parman is one of the business district roads in the Renon Field area located in the heart of Denpasar City that is often used for public with or without vehicles, which makes this area dense and requires a balance of infrastructure and supporting traffic signs and signals to ensure safety and enhance convenience. Roadsides of Letjen S. Parman Road is still often converted by the public into a parking space and a marketplace. The purpose of this study was to research traffic rules along Letjen S. Parman road and users’ opinions on it. Methodology employed to conduct the study was direct survey and collecting the data by direct field observations, interviews, and questionnaires. The research revealed that, according to traffic laws, Letjen S. Parman roadsides were not supposed to be misused by road users. Pedestrians who use Letjen S. Parman roadsides also feel disturbed by road users who inappropriately turned them into parking spots or a marketplace. The result of the study is related to design recommendations to solve traffic problems along Letjen S. Parman Road as well as a point of reference for relevant agencies and government officials.
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Kilareski, Walter P. "Highway Intersection Sight Distance Guidelines & Measurements." Journal of the National Academy of Forensic Engineers 16, no. 1 (January 1, 1999). http://dx.doi.org/10.51501/jotnafe.v16i1.563.

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Many Highway Accidents Occur At Intersections That Are Not Controlled By Traffic Signals. Intersecting Roadways, Driveways, And Entrances To Shopping Malls Are Only A Few Examples Of Where Crashes Occur. In Some Cases Tort Lawsuits Are Brought Against The Highway Agency Claiming That There Was A Lack Of Sight Distance At The Intersection. Unfortunately, Many Engineers And Accident Reconstruction Professionals Do Not Understand Intersection Sight Distance Requirements And Guidelines. This Confusion Often Leads To Needless Litigation. This Paper Will Review The Highway Design Guidelines (Aashto) Which Are Used To Evaluate Intersection Sight Distance For Both Turning And Straight Through Traffic Movements. It Will Explain The Rationale For The Criteria And How It Should Be Applied For Accident Analysis. The Drivers Responsibility, Under The Vehicle Code, At An Intersection Is Reviewed. A Case Study Will Be Used As An Example To Explain The Procedures For Field Measurements At An Intersection.
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Nibalvos, Ian Mark. "Wika sa Pampublikong Espasyo: Isang Pag-aaral sa Tanawing Pangwika ng Maynila." Scientia - The International Journal on the Liberal Arts 6, no. 2 (December 30, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.57106/scientia.v6i2.76.

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This research used descriptive approach to illustrate the Linguistic Landscape of the city of Manila as a center of commerce andmulticulturalism. The goal of the study is to identify or describe the languages that are seen or that exist in public spaces of the city, identify the vitality of languages and assess the implications of the language landscape of Manila in the Filipino language situation at present. The researchers took pictures of signs in four selected areas in Manila. It was then categorized based on the taxonomy of Spolsky and Cooper which include: 1.) road signs; 2.) advertising signs; 3.) warning; 4.) names of buildings; 5.) informational signs; 6.) plaque plots; 7.) things; and 8.) graffiti. Photographs also categorized whether it is monolingual, bilingual or multilingual and if it is “top-down” or “bottom-up”. The measure of the vitality of languages spreading across the city was based on the Ethnolinguistic Vitality (EV) theory used in the studies of Giles, Bourhis and Taylor to determine which language is the most dominant or widely used in the linguistic landscape. This research only covers the description of the linguistic landscape of Manila by determining the languages existing in the city and their vitality as evident in the road signs, advertising signs, warning, name of buildings, informational signs, things and graffiti. . It also examined the implications of the linguistic landscape of Manila to the current situation or state of the Filipino language and the challenges it faces in its development. It was discovered that there are six languages spreading and existing in the city such as: English, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Spanish. Among these languages, English is the most dominantly used. This study shows that English language is given more importance than Filipino, which is the country’s national language. English language is being used in meaningful activities such as providing information, advertising signs, and building names. The researcher proposes further studies of language learning in other major cities in the Philippines to determine the extent of the spread of Filipino language and dialects thereby maintaining, strengthening and improving the country’s national language more than the value exhibited with the use of the English language. References Akindele, D. O. (2011). Linguistic Landscapes as Public Communication: A Study of Public Signage in Gaborone Botswana. International Journal of Linguistics. Retrievedfrom http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/ijl/article/view/1157/pdf Almario, V. S. (2003). Nasyonalisasyon ng Filipino. Wikang Filipino sa Loob atLabas ng Akademya’t Bansa: Unang Soucebook ng SANGFIL 1994 – 2001. Manila:Pambansang Komisyon para sa Kultura at mga Sining, 11 – 14. Backhaus, P. (2007). Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualismin Tokyo. SKY Journal of Linguistics. Retrieved from http://www.linguistics.fi/julkaisut/SKY2007/ZABRODSKAJA_BOOK%20REVIEW.pdf Ben-Rafael, et al. (2006). Linguistic Landscape as a Symbolic Construction of PublicSpace: The Case of Israel. International Journal of Multilingualism, (3) 1. 7 – 30. Retrievedfrom http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14790710608668383 Bourhis, R. Y., Giles, H., & Rosenthal, D. (1981). Notes on the construction of a“Subjective Vitality Questionnaire” for ethnolinguistic groups. Journal of Multilingualand Multicultural Development, 2, 145 – 155. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254333394_Notes_on_the_construction_of_a_’Subjective_Vitality_Question naire’_for_ethnolinguistic_groups Burdick, C. (2012). Mobility and Language in Place:A Linguistic Landscape of LanguageCommodification. Cultural Heritage in European Societies and Spaces. Retrieved fromh t t p : / / s c h o l a r w o r k s . u m a s s . e d u / c g i / v i e w c o n t e n t .cgi?article=1006&context=chess_student_research David, R. S. (2003). Politika ng Wika, Wika ng Politika. Wikang Filipino sa Loobat Labas ng Akademya’t Bansa: Unang Soucebook ng SANGFIL 1994 – 2001. Manila:Pambansang Komisyon para sa Kultura at mga Sining, 15 – 22. De Quiros, C. (2003). Ang Kapangyarihanng Wika, Ang Wika ng Kapangyarihan.Wikang Filipino sa Loob at Labas ng Akademya’t Bansa: Unang Soucebook ngSANGFIL 1994 – 2001. Manila: Pambansang Komisyon para sa Kultura at mga Sining, 28 – 33. Desiderio, L. (2012). NSO: Number of foreign citizens residing in Phl now over177,000. The Philippine Star. Retrieved from http://www.philstar.com:8080/headlines/2012/11/26/873745/nso-number-foreign-citizens-residing-phlnow-over-177000 Espiritu, C. (2015) Language Policies in the Philippines. National Commision forCulture and the Arts. Retrieved from http://www.ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/articles-on-c-n a/article.php?igm=3&i=217 Giles, H., Bourhis, R. Y. & Taylor, D. M. (1977). Towards a theory of language inethnic group relations. In H. Giles (Ed.). Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations.London, UK: Academic Press. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265966525_Giles_H_Bourhis_RY_Taylor_DM_1977_Towards_a_theory_of_language_in_ethnic_group_relations_In_H_Giles_Ed_Language_Ethnicity_and_Intergroup_Relations_pp_307-348_London_UK_Academic_Press Gorter, D. (2013). Linguistic Landscapes in a Multilingual World. Annual Reviewof Applied Linguistic. Cambridge University Press. 33, 190-212. Harwood, J., Giles, H., & Bourhis, R. Y. (1994). The genesis of vitality theory: Historicalpatterns and discoursal dimensions. International Journal of the Sociologyof Language. 108, 167-206. Retrieved from http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jharwood/pdf/harwood%20giles%20bourhis%20IJSL%201994.pdf Johnson, P., Giles, H., & Bourhis. R. Y. (1983). The viability of ethnolinguistic vitality:A reply. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 4, 255 – 269 Retrievedfrom http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01434632.1983.9994115 Landry R. & Bourhis, R. (1997). Linguistic Landscape and Ethnoliguistic Vitality:An Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. Retrieved fromhttp://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261927X970161002 Lumbera, B. (2003). Ang Usapin ng Wika at Panitikang Filipino at ang Paglahokng Pilipinas a Globalisasyon. Wikang Filipino sa Loob at Labas ng Akademya’t Bansa:Unang Soucebook ng SANGFIL 1994 – 2001. Manila: Pambansang Komisyonpara sa Kultura at mga Sining, 11 – 14. Pennycook, A. (1994). The cultural politics of Emglish as an international language,London: Longman. Santiago, C. C. (2016). Ang Filipino Bilang Wikang Opisyal. Pandiwa: Lathalaanpara sa Wika at Kultura. Manila: Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino, (4) 1, 53.Santos, B. (2003). Ang SANGFIL at ang Dokumentasyon ng Pag-unlad ng Filipino.Ang Wikang Filipino sa Loob at Labas ng Akademya’t Bansa: Unang Soucebookng SANGFIL 1994 – 2001. Manila: Pambansang Komisyon para sa Kultura atmga Sining, 1– 6. Slembrouck, S. (2011). Linguistic Landscapes in the City of Ghent: An EmpericalStudy. Ghent University (Master’s Thesis). Retrieved from https://lib.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/001/786/702/RUG01-001786702_2012_0001_AC.pdf Spolsky, B. (2009). Prolegomena to a Sociolinguitic Theory of Public Signage. InE. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds) Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London:Routledge. Torkington, K. (2009). Exploring the linguistic landscape: the case of the ‘GoldenTriangle’ in the Algarve, Portugal. Papers from the Lancaster University PostgraduateConference in Linguistics and Language Teaching. Retrieved from http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/events/laelpgconference/papers/v03/Torkington.pdf Yagmur, K. & Kroon, S. (2003). Ethnoliguistic Vitality Perceptions and LanguageRevitalisation in Bashkorotstan. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.Retrieved from https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/files/817249/ethnolinguistic.pdf Zafra, G. (2014). Ang Wika sa pampublikong espasyo: kaso ng tanawing pangwikasa UP Campus. University of the Philippines. Manila _________________. (2015). Safety signs and signals: The Health Safety (Safety Signsand Signals) Regulations 1996. Health and Safety Executive. Retrieved from _________________ . (2005). Rule XII: General Design and Construction Requirements(2004 Revised IRR of PD 1096). Department of Public Works and Highways.Retrieved from http://www.architectureboard.ph/1%20LAWS%20(&Regns)ON%20ARCH3/National%20Building%20Code%20of%20the%20Philippines%20(Anotated)/Rule%20 X_Signs.pdf __________________. Industry Performance for Travel and Toursim. Department ofTourism. Retrieved from http://www.tourism.gov.ph/pages/industryperformance.aspx __________________. Philippines: Rules and Reguations on Trademarks, ServiceMarks, Tradenames and Markedor Stamped Containers. Retreived from http://www.jpo.go.jp/ shiryou_e/s_sonota_e/fips_e/pdf/philippines_e/e_syouhyou.pdf
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40

Diehl, Heath. "Performing (in) the Grave." M/C Journal 4, no. 3 (June 1, 2001). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1910.

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The following essay constitutes a theoretical journey through the landscape of the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt, one narrated from the perspective of those who live on to mourn, to remember. To some critics, my approach might at once appear radical or unorthodox since I focus on how Quilt spectators engage with the artifact and are thereby implicated in the history of the epidemic, rather than on how the dead are made to speak from beyond the grave. My intent is not to invalidate the claims made or the conclusions reached by other critics who have written persuasively about how the Quilt facilitates a voice (both individual and collective) for those who have died of AIDS-related illnesses; indeed, such critics have contributed a wealth of significant knowledge to critical understandings of the pedagogical and political functions of the Quilt. My intent, rather, is to respond to a set of as yet unexplored questions about how the ever-evolving landscape of the AIDS epidemic has altered the nature and purpose of Quilt spectatorship. When the Quilt was created in 1985, “naming names” was an important strategy for political survival, especially given the institutional apathy that silenced and marginalized all who were infected and/or affected by the epidemic. However, over the past sixteen years, apathy has slowly given way to increased attention by medical and media institutions. No longer is memory and reverence enough. Now, we must ask ourselves how the Quilt can continue to be used to combat the emergent obstacles that have sprung up in the wake of apathy and silence. This is not to suggest that remembrance, mourning, and reverence are not still significant responses to the epidemic; we cannot forgot the past, lest we repeat it. But it is to suggest that as we look back, we also must move forward and continue to chart new horizons for how our minds and bodies engage with the Quilt as a social and political space. Throughout this essay, then, my conclusions are at best tentative, offered more as a gesture of hope than as a model for survival. It is my hope that critics can continue to press against social spaces both with caution and determination because those actions matter. We must act with caution because there can be devastating consequences of asserting claims to visibility and location. We must act with determination because there are equally perilous consequences of not doing so. Since its meager beginnings, the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt has undergone exponential changes in size, shape, and scope, but critical responses to the Quilt have remained stagnant with most critics attributing to the Quilt a single meaning and purpose: to revere the dead. Cultural critic Peter S. Hawkins, for instance, argues that "the Quilt . . . is most profoundly about the naming of names" (760), while journalist Jerry Gentry suggests that the Quilt bespeaks "a national and international constructive expression of grief" (550), a grief which most powerfully resonates in the loss of individual lives. While "naming names" is a politically important function of the Quilt, critics who read the artifact as only motivated by memory assume that exhibitions of the artifact facilitate a static model of performance. For such critics, the Quilt represents a mass graveyard--both as a place of interment and as a place in which ideological meanings are circumscribed by the fixity and stillness of reverence. (This reading is partly enabled by the fact that each panel measures the size of a human grave.) Not only does this reading universalize the meaning of the Quilt but also it establishes a monolithic viewing position from which to receive that meaning. Here, I outline an alternative model of reception which is implicit in the design and display of the Quilt. While this model acknowledges reverence as one potential response to the Quilt, it does not foreclose other ways of reading. Rather than facilitating a grave performance, then, the Quilt enables performances within the grave. These performances are constituted in/through a dynamic exchange between speaker and listener, text and context, and work to produce a range of ideological meanings and subject positions. To understand how the Quilt locates its viewers within a particular subject position, it is first necessary to specify the speaker-listener relationship established in displays of the Quilt. This relationship is played out through a series of confessional utterances which, as Michel Foucault explains in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, imply a dialectic relationship between speaker and listener in which subjectivity is predicated on subjection (61-62). The speaker's desire to confess necessitates the presence of a listener, one not wholly passive since his/her presence incites and enables the will to confess. In this way, both speaker and listener are marked as active/passive agents in an exchange characterized by reciprocity and negotiation. Because speakers and listeners simultaneously serve as subject and object of the confession, the exchange cannot be represented as static (active/passive) or unidirectional (sender-message-receiver). Since many critics already have carefully delineated the processes through which the Quilt directs the address of the panels and constitutes the dead as subjects, here I want to focus on how spectators are constructed as subjects who bear witness. Critics typically posit viewers of the Quilt as unified, coherent, monolithic subjects; yet Foucault's discussion of the confessional exchange assumes a subject-in-process. For me, this process is most accurately characterized as schizophrenic. My use of schizophrenia is tropic rather than diagnostic, in that the term works figuratively to describe subject formation rather than to identify the nature of psychiatric disturbance. Two characteristics (which are derived from the symptomatology of the psychic disorder schizophrenia) define the schizophrenic spectator: one, the loss of "normal" associations; and two, the presence of "auditory hallucinations." The first characteristic of schizophrenic spectators is the loss of "normal" associations. Remi J. Cadoret notes that in schizophrenics, "[t]hought processes appear to lose their normal associations, or usual connecting links, so that the individual is often unable to focus his [sic] thinking upon a particular mental task" (481). For schizophrenics, conventional relational markers (such as chronology, causality, temporality, and spatiality) no longer order cognition; instead, these markers are distorted (if not entirely ineffectual), creating for the schizophrenic a fractured sense of self in/and world. Without these normal associations, the schizophrenic wanders aimlessly (and often in isolation) through a chaotic world in search of structure, meaning, and purpose. Temporal associations provide perhaps the most common means of ordering experience. Viewed as a linear progression characterized by movement, change, and renewal, time structures the historical and the everyday by sequencing, demarcating, and hierarchizing events. Within the Quilt, this sense of progression is supplanted by perpetual repetition of the present. Elsley has offered a similar observation, noting that the Quilt operates in a "transitory present" tense, it "exists in a continual state of becoming" (194). In one sense, this perpetual present tense derives from the fact that no two displays of the Quilt are identical. Panels are ordered differently, new names and panels are added, older panels begin to show signs of wear-and-tear. A perpetual present tense also derives from the fact that the Quilt charts the progression of an epidemic that is itself ongoing, incomplete. Thus, the landscape of the Quilt is re-mapped in light of advances in HIV-treatment, softening/tightening of social mores, and changes in AIDS demographics. Another common means of ordering experience is though spatial associations. Location orders the social through architecture, urban planning, and zoning, endowing spaces with a well-defined purpose and layout. Yet the Quilt provides few signals regarding how spectators are intended to navigate its surface. As Weinberg notes, the Quilt is a "great grid" with "no narrative, no start or finish" (37). By describing the Quilt as a "grid," Weinberg implicitly ascribes to the artifact a controlling logic, a unified design--what in quilting parlance is termed a patchwork sampler. This design pattern, however, does not direct the flow of spectators in a single stream of traffic. This is so because, unlike a Drunkard's Path or Double Wedding Band pattern in which the individual panel blocks work together to create a unified design across the surface of the quilt, a patchwork sampler is constituted by a series of single panel blocks, each with a unique design, history, and logic. As a result, patrons' movements are guided by associations and punctuated by pauses, interruptions, and abrupt changes in course. The randomness of engagement is further enabled by the muslin walkways which visually separate the panels, marking each as distinct and disallowing any sense of continuity (narrative, spatial) among them. The routes which visitors of the Quilt traverse thus are transitory and ephemeral, simultaneously charted and erased in the moment of passing by. The second characteristic of schizophrenic spectators is the presence of auditory hallucinations. Cadoret defines these hallucinations as "the perception of auditory stimuli, or sounds, where none are externally present . . . . The voices . . . may repeat his [sic] thoughts or actions, argue with him [sic], or threaten, scold, or cure him [sic]" (481). Auditory hallucinations can lead the schizophrenic to believe that s/he is under constant surveillance or can cause the schizophrenic to slip further into a self-contained, isolated world of delusion. That the Quilt is made up of "a myriad of individual voices" (Elsley 192) is immediately apparent in the number of individuals who have taken part in its construction and display. With each quilt panel, spectators are confronted with multiple voices--the person who has died, the person(s) who made the block, the person(s) who stitched the block to others for a specific display, and so on. Moreover, the Quilt places these "individual voices . . . in the context of community" (Elsley 191). For Quilt spectators, then, memories of a life lived coexist with grief over a life cut short, anger at institutional apathy and systemic homophobia, faith in the import of remembering those who have died, and so on. Each of these voices vie for the spectator's attention, facilitating a gaze that is dynamic, multidirectional, mobile. Because the gaze is not fixed, the Quilt cannot convey a solitary truth claim to its viewers; rather, spectators must immerse themselves within the delusion and confusion of voices, imposing some sense of order on their own viewing experiences. Given that persons with AIDS continue to be marginalized within American culture, my use of the schizophrenic spectator to trace the reception dynamic of Quilt exhibits might appear to perpetuate, rather than unsettle, dominant ideological formations. Of course, this is the critical conundrum at the center of all investigations into subject formation: that is, "how to take an oppositional relation to power that is, admittedly, implicated in the very power one opposes" (Butler 17). Despite the potential pitfalls, I nonetheless use the trope of schizophrenia precisely because it recognizes the ways in which Quilt spectators, persons with AIDS, and persons who have died of AIDS-related illnesses are divested of the power and authority to speak even before they begin speaking. Furthermore, because the schizophrenic subject is founded on ever-shifting affinities (in time, across space), the position enables spectators to chart alternative lines of relation among institutional practices, ideological formations, and individual experiences, thus potentially mobilizing and sustaining a shared political program. It is on these twin goals of pedagogy and polemics that the NAMES Project originally was founded, and it is to these goals that we now must return. References Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997. Cadoret, Remi J. "Schizophrenia." Collier's Encyclopedia. Vol. 20. Eds. Lauren S. Bahr, et. al. New York: Collier's, 1997. 480-482. Elsley, Judy. "The Rhetoric of the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt: Reading the Text(ile)." AIDS: The Literary Response. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. New York: Twayne, 1992. 187-196. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990. Gentry, Jerry. "The NAMES Project: A Catharsis of Grief." The Christian CENTURY 23 May 1989: 550-551. Hawkins, Peter S. "Naming Names: The Art of Memory and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt." Critical Inquiry 19(Summer 1993): 752-779. Weinberg, Jonathan. "The Quilt: Activism and Remembrance." Art in America 80(Dec. 1992): 37, 39.
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Salajegheh, M., A. Molina, and K. Fu. "Home Telemedicine: Encryption is Not Enough." Journal of Medical Devices 3, no. 2 (June 1, 2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.3134785.

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Implantable medical devices and home monitors make use of wireless radio communication for both therapeutic functions and remote monitoring of patients' vital signs. While our past work showed that lack of cryptographic protection results in disclosure of private medical data and manipulation of therapies (Halperin et al., IEEE S&P, 2008) our present work shows that even using encryption is insufficient to protect the confidentiality of patient telemetry. Our experiment analyzes the security of data traffic patterns of two sets of real medical telemetry: a corpus from PhysioNet (an online biomedical research database) and a network trace of a live disaster drill using Harvard's CodeBlue medical sensor network (Chen et al., DCOSS, 2008). Our work shows that even if a wireless medical device uses encryption, patient data can leak to unauthorized parties who need not be near the patient. Our measurements show that data packet timing information and headers distinguish the types of medical and monitoring devices even if traditional cryptographic mechanisms are used. Furthermore, the highly repetitive nature of medical data, such as ECG or respiration signals, leads to additional privacy vulnerabilities that cannot be easily mitigated by means of encryption without significant modification. Data compression technology further exposes encrypted telemetry to cryptanalysis. The information leakage of telemetry could facilitate unauthorized tracking of a patient because an ECG is known to uniquely identify a person in a predetermined group (Biel et al., IEEE I&M, 2002). Moreover, our study shows that data packet padding, encryption, authentication, and other common defenses against security threats require significant energy, storage, and computation that impose on the already scarce battery and space resources. Two of our experiments show how to automatically recover data from encrypted telemetry using Bayesian classifiers. In one experiment, we encrypted an ECG signal. By observing only the length of the digitally encrypted data, we were able to reconstruct sufficient information about the original ECG data that we determined the patient's heart rate. Using similar techniques, we recovered a leaked respiration signal that visually matches the original signal. Our findings show the weakness of using common cryptographic techniques on highly periodic and often compressed medical telemetry. Our work further discusses techniques to mitigate these security and privacy risks in wireless medical telemetry systems. However, all known techniques require extra energy, computation, and bandwidth from the medical device. The lesson learned is that encryption is not enough to protect the privacy of medical telemetry, and that reasonable assurance for security and privacy will require an energy budget. Future design of medical devices will have to make difficult tradeoffs between battery life versus security and privacy. This work was supported by NSF grants CNS-0627529, CNS-0716386, and CNS-0831244.
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Ward, Christopher Grant. "Stock Images, Filler Content and the Ambiguous Corporate Message." M/C Journal 10, no. 5 (October 1, 2007). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2706.

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A central concern of media studies is to understand the transactions of meaning that are established between the encoders and decoders of media messages: senders and receivers, authors and audiences, producers and consumers. More precisely, this discipline has aimed to describe the semantic disconnects that occur when organisations, governments, businesses, and people communicate and interact across media, and, further, to understand the causes of these miscommunications and to theorise their social and cultural implications. As the media environment becomes complicated by increasingly multimodal messages broadcast to diverse languages and cultures, it is no surprise that misunderstanding seems to occur more (and not less) frequently, forcing difficult questions of society’s ability to refine mass communication into a more streamlined, more effective, and less error-prone system. The communication of meaning to mass audiences has long been theorised (e.g.: Shannon and Weaver; Schramm; Berlo) using the metaphor of a “transmitted message.” While these early researchers varied in their approaches to the study of mass communication, common to their theoretical models is to characterise miscommunication as a dysfunction of the pure transmission process: interference that prevents the otherwise successful relay of meaning from a “sender” to a “receiver.” For example, Schramm’s communication model is based upon two individuals sharing “fields of experience”; error and misunderstanding occur to the extent that these fields do not overlap. For Shannon and Weaver, these disconnects were described explicitly as semantic noise: distortions of meaning that resulted in the message received being different from what was being transmitted. While much of this early research in mass communication continues to be relevant to students of communication and media studies, the transmission metaphor has been called into question for the way it frames miscommunication as a distortion of otherwise clear and stable “meaning,” and not as an inevitable result of the gray area that lies between every sender’s intention and a receiver’s interpretation. It is precisely this problem with the transmission metaphor that Derrida calls into question. For Derrida (as well as for many post-structuralists, linguists, and cultural theorists) what we communicate cannot necessarily be intended or interpreted in any stable fashion. Rather, Derrida describes communication as inherently “iterable … able to break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely unsaturable fashion” (“Signature” 320). Derrida is concerned that the transmission metaphor doesn’t account for the fact that all signs (words, images, and so on) can signify a multitude of things to different individuals in different contexts, at different points in time. Further, he reminds us that any perceived signification (and thus, meaning) is produced finally, not by the sender, but by the receiver. Within Derrida’s conception of communication as a perpetually open-ended system, the concept of noise takes on a new shape. Perhaps ambiguous meaning is not the “noise” of an otherwise pure system, but rather, perhaps it is only noise that constitutes all acts of communication. Indeed, while Derrida agrees that the consistency and repetition of language help to limit the effects of iterability, he believes that all meaning is ambiguous and never final. Therefore, to communicate is to perpetually negotiate this semantic ambiguity, not to overcome it, constrain it, or push it aside. With these thoughts in mind, when I return to a focus on mass media and media communication, it becomes readily apparent that there do exist sites of cultural production where noise is not only prolific, but where it is also functional—and indeed crucial to a communicator’s goals. Such sites are what Mark Nunes describes as “cultures of noise”: a term I specify in this paper to describe those organised media practices that seem to negotiate, function, and thrive by communicating ambiguously, or at the very least, by resisting the urge to signify explicitly. Cultures of noise are important to the study of media precisely for the ways they call into question our existing paradigms of what it means to communicate. By suggesting that aberrant interpretations of meaning are not dysfunctions of what would be an otherwise efficient system, cultures of noise reveal how certain “asignifying poetics” might be productive and generative for our communication goals. The purpose of this paper is to understand how cultures of noise function by exploring one such case study: the pervasive use of commercial stock images throughout mass media. I will describe how the semantic ambiguity embedded into the construction and sale of stock images is productive both to the stock photography industry and to certain practices of advertising, marketing, and communicating corporate identity. I will begin by discussing the stock image’s dependence upon semantic ambiguity and the productive function this ambiguity serves in supporting the success of the stock photography industry. I will then describe how this ambiguity comes to be employed by corporations and advertisers as “filler content,” enabling these producers to elide the accountability and risk that is involved with more explicit communication. Ambiguous Raw Material: The Stock Industry as a Culture of Noise The photographic image has been a staple of corporate identity for as long as identity has been a concern of corporations. It is estimated that more than 70% of the photographic images used in today’s corporate marketing and advertising have been acquired from a discrete group of stock image firms and photography stock houses (Frosh 5). In fact, since its inception in the 1970’s, increasing global dependence on stock imagery has grown the practice of commercial stock photography into a billion dollar a year industry. Commercial stock images are somewhat peculiar. Unlike other non-fiction genres of stock photography (e.g., editorial and journalistic) commercial stock images present explicitly fictive, constructed scenes. Indeed, many of the images of business workers, doctors, and soccer moms that one finds through a Google Image search are actually actors hired to stage a scene. In this way, commercial stock images share much more in common with the images produced for advertising campaigns, in that they are designed to support branding and corporate identity messages. However, unlike traditional advertising images, which are designed to deliver a certain message for a quite specific application (think ‘Tide stain test’ or ‘posh woman in the Lexus’), commercial stock images have been purposely constructed with no particular application in mind. On the contrary, stock images must be designed to anticipate the diverse needs of cultural intermediaries—design firms, advertising agencies, and corporate marketing teams—who will ultimately purchase the majority of these images. (Frosh 57) To achieve these goals, every commercial stock image is designed to be somewhat open-ended, in order to offer up a field of potential meanings, and yet these images also seem to anticipate the applications of use that will likely appeal to the discourses of corporate marketing and advertising. In this way, the commercial stock image might best be understood as undefined raw material, as a set of likely potentialities still lacking a final determination—what Derrida describes as “undecided” meaning: “I want to recall that undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for example, of meaning, but also of acts). These possibilities are highly determined in strictly concerned situations … they are pragmatically determined. The analyses that I have devoted to undecidability concern just these determinations and these definitions, not at all some vague “indeterminacy”. I say “undecidability” rather than “indeterminacy” because I am interested more in relations of force, in everything that allows, precisely, determinations in given situations to be stabilised through a decision … .” (Limited 148) A stock image’s ambiguity is the result of an intentional design process whereby the stock photography industry presents the maximum range of possible meanings, and yet, falls artfully short of “deciding” any of them. Rather, it is the advertisers, designers, and marketers who ultimately make these decisions by finding utility for the image in a certain context. The more customers that can find a use for a certain image, the more this image will be purchased, and the more valuable that particular stock image becomes. It is precisely in this way that the stock photography industry functions as a culture of noise and raises questions of the traditional sender-to-receiver model of communication. Cultures of noise not only embrace semantic ambiguity; they rely upon this ambiguity for their success. Indeed, the success of the stock photography industry quite literally depends upon the aberrant and unpredictable interpretations of buyers. It is now quite explicitly the “receiver,” and not the “sender,” who controls meaning by imbuing the image with meaning for a specific context and specific need. Once purchased, the “potentialities” of meaning within a stock image become somewhat determined by its placement within a certain context of circulation, such as its use for a banking advertisement or healthcare brochure. In many cases, the meaning of a given stock image is also specified by the text with which it is paired. (Fig. 1) Using text to control the meaning of an image is what Roland Barthes describes as anchorage, “the creator’s (and hence society’s) right of inspection over the image; anchorage is a control, bearing a responsibility in the face of the projective power of pictures-for the use of the message” (156). By using text to constrain how an image should be interpreted, the subjects, forms, and composition of a stock image work to complement the textual message in a clear and defined way. Fig. 1: Courtesy of Washington Mutual. Used by permission. Barthes’ textual anchorage: In advertising and marketing, the subject, form and composition of a stock image are made specific by the text with which the image is paired. Filler Content: Advertising and Marketing as a Culture of Noise In other marketing and advertising messages, I observe that stock images are used in quite a different way, as filler content: open-ended material that takes the place of more explicit, message-oriented elements. As a culture of noise, filler content opposes the goal of generating a clear and specific message. Rather, the goal of filler content is to present an ambiguous message to consumers. When stock images are used as filler content, they are placed into advertising and marketing messages with virtually the same degree of ambiguity as when the image was originally constructed. Such images receive only vague specificity from textual anchorage, and little effort is made by the message producer to explicitly “decide” a message’s meaning. Consider the image (Fig. 2) used in a certain marketing design. Compared with Figure 1, this design makes little attempt to specify the meaning of the image through text. On the contrary, the image is purposely left open to our individual interpretations. Without textual anchorage, the image is markedly “undecided.” As such, it stages the same ambiguous potential for final consumers as it did for the advertiser who originally purchased the image from the stock image house. Fig. 2: Courtesy of VISA.com. Used by permission. Filler content: What meaning(s) does the image have for you? Love? Happiness? Leisure? Freedom? The Outdoors? Perhaps you rode your bike today? While filler content relies upon audiences to fill in the blanks, it also inserts meaning by leveraging the cultural reinforcement of other, similar images. Consider the way that the image of “a woman with a headset” has come to signify customer service (Fig. 3). The image doesn’t represent this meaning on its own, but it works as part of a larger discourse, what Paul Frosh describes as an “image repertoire” (91). By bombarding us incessantly with a repetition of similar images, the media continues to bolster the iconic value that certain stock images possess. The woman with the headset has become an icon of a “Customer Service Representative” because we are exposed to a repetition of images that repeatedly stage the same or similar scene of this idea. As Frosh suggests, “this is the essence of the concept-based stock image: it constitutes a pre-formed, generically familiar visual symbol that calls forth relevant connotations from the social experience of viewers…” (79). Fig. 3: The image repertoire: All filler content depends upon the iconic status of certain stock photography clichés, categories and familiar scenes. Perhaps you have seen these images before? As a culture of noise, stock images in advertising and marketing function as filler content in two ways: 1) meaning is left undecided by the advertiser who intends for customers to create their own interpretations of an advertisement; 2) meaning is generated by the ideological constructs of an “image repertoire” that is itself promulgated by the stock photography industry. As such, filler content signals a shift in the goals of modern advertising and marketing, where corporate messages are designed to be increasingly ambiguous, and meaning seems to be decided more than ever by the final audience. As marketing psychologists Kim and Kahle suggest: Advertising strategy … may need to be changed. Instead of providing the “correct” consumption episodes, marketers could give … an open-ended status, thereby allowing consumers to create the image on their own and to decide the appropriateness of the product for a given need or situation. (63) The potentiality of meanings that was initially embedded into stock images in order to make them more attractive to cultural intermediaries, is also being “passed on” to the final audiences by these same advertisers and marketers. The same noisy signification that supported the sale of stock photos from the stock industry to advertisers now also seems to support the “sale” of messages that advertisers pass on to their audiences. In the same way as the stock photography industry, practices of filler content in advertising also create a culture of noise, by relying upon ambiguous messages that end customers are now forced to both produce and consume. Safe and Vague: The Corporate Imperative Ambiguous communication is not, by itself, egregious. On the contrary, many designers believe that creating a space for thoughtful, open-ended discovery is one of the best ways to provide a meaningful experience to end users. Interaction designer and professor Philip Van Allen describes one such approach to ambiguous design as “productive interaction”: “an open mode of communication where people can form their own outcomes and meanings … sharing insights, dilemmas and questions, and creating new opportunities for synthesis” (56). The critical difference between productive interaction and filler content is one of objective. While media designers embrace open-ended design as a way to create deeper, more meaningful connections with users, modern advertising employs ambiguous design elements, such as stock images, to elide a responsibility to message. Indeed, many marketing and organisational communication researchers (e.g.: Chreim; Elsbach and Kramer; Cheney) suggest that as corporations manage their identities to increasingly disparate and diverse media audiences, misunderstandings are more likely to bring about identity dissonance: that is, “disconnections” between the identity projected by the organisation and the identity attributed to an organisation by its customer-public. To grapple with identity dissonance, Samia Chreim suggests that top managers may choose to engage in the practice of dissonance avoidance: the use of ambiguous messages to provide flexibility in the interpretations of how customers can define a brand or organisation: Dissonance avoidance can be achieved through the use of ambiguous terms … organisations use ambiguity to unite stakeholders under one corporate banner and to stretch the interpretation of how the organisation, or a product or a message can be defined. (76) Corporations forgo the myriad disconnects and pitfalls of mass communication by choosing never to craft an explicit message, hold a position, or express a belief that customers could demur or discount. In such instances, it appears that cultures of noise, such as filler content, may service a shrewd corporate strategy that works to mitigate their responsibility to message. A Responsibility to Message This discussion of “cultures of noise” contributes to media studies by situating semantic noise as productive, and indeed, sometimes vital, to practices of media communication. Understanding the role of semantic noise in communication is an important corner for media scholars to turn, especially as today’s message producers rely and thrive upon certain productive aspects of ambiguous communication. However, this discussion also suggests that all media messages must be critically evaluated in quite a different way. While past analyses of media messages have sought to root out the subversive and manipulative factors that resided deep down in our culture, cultures of noise suggest that it is now also important for media studies to consider the deleterious effects of media’s noisy, diluted, and facile surface. Jean Baudrillard was deeply concerned that the images used in media are too often “used for delusion, for the elusion of communication … for absolving face-to-face relations and social responsibilities. They don’t really lead to action, they substitute for it most of the time” (203). Indeed, while the stock image as filler content may solve the problems faced by corporate message producers in a highly ramified media environment, there is an increasing need to question the depth of meaning in our visual culture. What is the purpose of a given image? What is the producer trying to say? Is it relying on end users to find meaning? Are the images relying an iconic repertoire? Is the producer actually making a statement? And if not, why not? As advertising and marketing continues to shape the visual ground of our culture, Chreim also warns us of our responsibility to message: What is gained in avoiding [identity dissonance] can be lost in the ability to create meaning for stakeholders. Over-reliance on abstract terms may well leave the organisation with a hollow core, one that cannot be appropriated by [customers] in their quest for meaning and identification with the organisation. (88) While cultures of noise may be productive in mitigating the problems of dissonance and miscommunication, and while they may signal new opportunity spaces for design, media, and mass communication, we must also remember that a reliance on ambiguity can sometimes cripple our ability to say anything meaningful at all. References Barthes, Roland. “The Rhetoric of the Image”. The Rhetoric of the Image. Trans. Richard Howard. Berkeley: U of California P, 1977. Baudrillard, Jean. “Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality.” Reading Images. Ed. Julia Thomas. Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000. Berlo, David K. The Process of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1960. Chreim, Samia. “Reducing Dissonance: Closing the Gap between Projected and Attributed Identity”. Corporate and Organizational Identities: Integrating Strategy, Marketing, Communication and Organizational Perspectives. Eds. B. Moingeon and G. Soenen. Chicago: Routledge, 2002. Derrida, Jacques. “Signature, Event. Context.” Derrida, Jacques: Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: 1982. Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern UP, 1988. Frosh, Paul. The Image Factory. New York: Berg, 2003. Gettyimages.com. Getty Images. 20 Oct. 2007 http://gettyimages.mediaroom.com>. Kahle, Lynn R., and Kim Chung-Hyun, eds. Creating Images and the Psychology of Marketing Communication. New Jersey: Lawrence Elbaum Associates, 2006 Shannon, Claude F., and Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana, Ill.: The University of Illinois Press, 1964. Schramm, Wilbur. “How Communication Works”. The Process and Effects of Mass Communication, ed. Wilbur Schramm. Urbana, Ill.: U of Illinois P, 1961. Van Allen, Philip. “Models”. The New Ecology of Things. Pasadena: Media Design Program, Art Center College of Design, 2007. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ward, Christopher Grant. "Stock Images, Filler Content and the Ambiguous Corporate Message." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0711/04-ward.php>. APA Style Ward, C. (Oct. 2007) "Stock Images, Filler Content and the Ambiguous Corporate Message," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0711/04-ward.php>.
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Goggin, Gerard. "‘mobile text’." M/C Journal 7, no. 1 (January 1, 2004). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2312.

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Mobile In many countries, more people have mobile phones than they do fixed-line phones. Mobile phones are one of the fastest growing technologies ever, outstripping even the internet in many respects. With the advent and widespread deployment of digital systems, mobile phones were used by an estimated 1, 158, 254, 300 people worldwide in 2002 (up from approximately 91 million in 1995), 51. 4% of total telephone subscribers (ITU). One of the reasons for this is mobility itself: the ability for people to talk on the phone wherever they are. The communicative possibilities opened up by mobile phones have produced new uses and new discourses (see Katz and Aakhus; Brown, Green, and Harper; and Plant). Contemporary soundscapes now feature not only voice calls in previously quiet public spaces such as buses or restaurants but also the aural irruptions of customised polyphonic ringtones identifying whose phone is ringing by the tune downloaded. The mobile phone plays an important role in contemporary visual and material culture as fashion item and status symbol. Most tragically one might point to the tableau of people in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, or aboard a plane about to crash, calling their loved ones to say good-bye (Galvin). By contrast, one can look on at the bathos of Australian cricketer Shane Warne’s predilection for pressing his mobile phone into service to arrange wanted and unwanted assignations while on tour. In this article, I wish to consider another important and so far also under-theorised aspect of mobile phones: text. Of contemporary textual and semiotic systems, mobile text is only a recent addition. Yet it is already produces millions of inscriptions each day, and promises to be of far-reaching significance. Txt Txt msg ws an acidnt. no 1 expcted it. Whn the 1st txt msg ws sent, in 1993 by Nokia eng stdnt Riku Pihkonen, the telcom cpnies thought it ws nt important. SMS – Short Message Service – ws nt considrd a majr pt of GSM. Like mny teks, the *pwr* of txt — indeed, the *pwr* of the fon — wz discvrd by users. In the case of txt mssng, the usrs were the yng or poor in the W and E. (Agar 105) As Jon Agar suggests in Constant Touch, textual communication through mobile phone was an after-thought. Mobile phones use radio waves, operating on a cellular system. The first such mobile service went live in Chicago in December 1978, in Sweden in 1981, in January 1985 in the United Kingdom (Agar), and in the mid-1980s in Australia. Mobile cellular systems allowed efficient sharing of scarce spectrum, improvements in handsets and quality, drawing on advances in science and engineering. In the first instance, technology designers, manufacturers, and mobile phone companies had been preoccupied with transferring telephone capabilities and culture to the mobile phone platform. With the growth in data communications from the 1960s onwards, consideration had been given to data capabilities of mobile phone. One difficulty, however, had been the poor quality and slow transfer rates of data communications over mobile networks, especially with first-generation analogue and early second-generation digital mobile phones. As the internet was widely and wildly adopted in the early to mid-1990s, mobile phone proponents looked at mimicking internet and online data services possibilities on their hand-held devices. What could work on a computer screen, it was thought, could be reinvented in miniature for the mobile phone — and hence much money was invested into the wireless access protocol (or WAP), which spectacularly flopped. The future of mobiles as a material support for text culture was not to lie, at first at least, in aping the world-wide web for the phone. It came from an unexpected direction: cheap, simple letters, spelling out short messages with strange new ellipses. SMS was built into the European Global System for Mobile (GSM) standard as an insignificant, additional capability. A number of telecommunications manufacturers thought so little of the SMS as not to not design or even offer the equipment needed (the servers, for instance) for the distribution of the messages. The character sets were limited, the keyboards small, the typeface displays rudimentary, and there was no acknowledgement that messages were actually received by the recipient. Yet SMS was cheap, and it offered one-to-one, or one-to-many, text communications that could be read at leisure, or more often, immediately. SMS was avidly taken up by young people, forming a new culture of media use. Sending a text message offered a relatively cheap and affordable alternative to the still expensive timed calls of voice mobile. In its early beginnings, mobile text can be seen as a subcultural activity. The text culture featured compressed, cryptic messages, with users devising their own abbreviations and grammar. One of the reasons young people took to texting was a tactic of consolidating and shaping their own shared culture, in distinction from the general culture dominated by their parents and other adults. Mobile texting become involved in a wider reworking of youth culture, involving other new media forms and technologies, and cultural developments (Butcher and Thomas). Another subculture that also was in the vanguard of SMS was the Deaf ‘community’. Though the Alexander Graham Bell, celebrated as the inventor of the telephone, very much had his hearing-impaired wife in mind in devising a new form of communication, Deaf people have been systematically left off the telecommunications network since this time. Deaf people pioneered an earlier form of text communications based on the Baudot standard, used for telex communications. Known as teletypewriter (TTY), or telecommunications device for the Deaf (TDD) in the US, this technology allowed Deaf people to communicate with each other by connecting such devices to the phone network. The addition of a relay service (established in Australia in the mid-1990s after much government resistance) allows Deaf people to communicate with hearing people without TTYs (Goggin & Newell). Connecting TTYs to mobile phones have been a vexed issue, however, because the digital phone network in Australia does not allow compatibility. For this reason, and because of other features, Deaf people have become avid users of SMS (Harper). An especially favoured device in Europe has been the Nokia Communicator, with its hinged keyboard. The move from a ‘restricted’, ‘subcultural’ economy to a ‘general’ economy sees mobile texting become incorporated in the semiotic texture and prosaic practices of everyday life. Many users were already familiar with the new conventions already developed around electronic mail, with shorter, crisper messages sent and received — more conversation-like than other correspondence. Unlike phone calls, email is asynchronous. The sender can respond immediately, and the reply will be received with seconds. However, they can also choose to reply at their leisure. Similarly, for the adept user, SMS offers considerable advantages over voice communications, because it makes textual production mobile. Writing and reading can take place wherever a mobile phone can be turned on: in the street, on the train, in the club, in the lecture theatre, in bed. The body writes differently too. Writing with a pen takes a finger and thumb. Typing on a keyboard requires between two and ten fingers. The mobile phone uses the ‘fifth finger’ — the thumb. Always too early, and too late, to speculate on contemporary culture (Morris), it is worth analyzing the textuality of mobile text. Theorists of media, especially television, have insisted on understanding the specific textual modes of different cultural forms. We are familiar with this imperative, and other methods of making visible and decentring structures of text, and the institutions which animate and frame them (whether author or producer; reader or audience; the cultural expectations encoded in genre; the inscriptions in technology). In formal terms, mobile text can be described as involving elision, great compression, and open-endedness. Its channels of communication physically constrain the composition of a very long single text message. Imagine sending James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in one text message. How long would it take to key in this exemplar of the disintegration of the cultural form of the novel? How long would it take to read? How would one navigate the text? Imagine sending the Courier-Mail or Financial Review newspaper over a series of text messages? The concept of the ‘news’, with all its cultural baggage, is being reconfigured by mobile text — more along the lines of the older technology of the telegraph, perhaps: a few words suffices to signify what is important. Mobile textuality, then, involves a radical fragmentation and unpredictable seriality of text lexia (Barthes). Sometimes a mobile text looks singular: saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or sending your name and ID number to obtain your high school or university results. Yet, like a telephone conversation, or any text perhaps, its structure is always predicated upon, and haunted by, the other. Its imagined reader always has a mobile phone too, little time, no fixed address (except that hailed by the network’s radio transmitter), and a finger poised to respond. Mobile text has structure and channels. Yet, like all text, our reading and writing of it reworks those fixities and makes destabilizes our ‘clear’ communication. After all, mobile textuality has a set of new pre-conditions and fragilities. It introduces new sorts of ‘noise’ to signal problems to annoy those theorists cleaving to the Shannon and Weaver linear model of communication; signals often drop out; there is a network confirmation (and message displayed) that text messages have been sent, but no system guarantee that they have been received. Our friend or service provider might text us back, but how do we know that they got our text message? Commodity We are familiar now with the pleasures of mobile text, the smile of alerting a friend to our arrival, celebrating good news, jilting a lover, making a threat, firing a worker, flirting and picking-up. Text culture has a new vector of mobility, invented by its users, but now coveted and commodified by businesses who did not see it coming in the first place. Nimble in its keystrokes, rich in expressivity and cultural invention, but relatively rudimentary in its technical characteristics, mobile text culture has finally registered in the boardrooms of communications companies. Not only is SMS the preferred medium of mobile phone users to keep in touch with each other, SMS has insinuated itself into previously separate communication industries arenas. In 2002-2003 SMS became firmly established in television broadcasting. Finally, interactive television had arrived after many years of prototyping and being heralded. The keenly awaited back-channel for television arrives courtesy not of cable or satellite television, nor an extra fixed-phone line. It’s the mobile phone, stupid! Big Brother was not only a watershed in reality television, but also in convergent media. Less obvious perhaps than supplementary viewing, or biographies, or chat on Big Brother websites around the world was the use of SMS for voting. SMS is now routinely used by mainstream television channels for viewer feedback, contest entry, and program information. As well as its widespread deployment in broadcasting, mobile text culture has been the language of prosaic, everyday transactions. Slipping into a café at Bronte Beach in Sydney, why not pay your parking meter via SMS? You’ll even receive a warning when your time is up. The mobile is becoming the ‘electronic purse’, with SMS providing its syntax and sentences. The belated ingenuity of those fascinated by the economics of mobile text has also coincided with a technological reworking of its possibilities, with new implications for its semiotic possibilities. Multimedia messaging (MMS) has now been deployed, on capable digital phones (an instance of what has been called 2.5 generation [G] digital phones) and third-generation networks. MMS allows images, video, and audio to be communicated. At one level, this sort of capability can be user-generated, as in the popularity of mobiles that take pictures and send these to other users. Television broadcasters are also interested in the capability to send video clips of favourite programs to viewers. Not content with the revenues raised from millions of standard-priced SMS, and now MMS transactions, commercial participants along the value chain are keenly awaiting the deployment of what is called ‘premium rate’ SMS and MMS services. These services will involve the delivery of desirable content via SMS and MMS, and be priced at a premium. Products and services are likely to include: one-to-one textchat; subscription services (content delivered on handset); multi-party text chat (such as chat rooms); adult entertainment services; multi-part messages (such as text communications plus downloads); download of video or ringtones. In August 2003, one text-chat service charged $4.40 for a pair of SMS. Pwr At the end of 2003, we have scarcely registered the textual practices and systems in mobile text, a culture that sprang up in the interstices of telecommunications. It may be urgent that we do think about the stakes here, as SMS is being extended and commodified. There are obvious and serious policy issues in premium rate SMS and MMS services, and questions concerning the political economy in which these are embedded. Yet there are cultural questions too, with intricate ramifications. How do we understand the effects of mobile textuality, rewriting the telephone book for this new cultural form (Ronell). What are the new genres emerging? And what are the implications for cultural practice and policy? Does it matter, for instance, that new MMS and 3rd generation mobile platforms are not being designed or offered with any-to-any capabilities in mind: allowing any user to upload and send multimedia communications to other any. True, as the example of SMS shows, the inventiveness of users is difficult to foresee and predict, and so new forms of mobile text may have all sorts of relationships with content and communication. However, there are worrying signs of these developing mobile circuits being programmed for narrow channels of retail purchase of cultural products rather than open-source, open-architecture, publicly usable nodes of connection. Works Cited Agar, Jon. Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone. Cambridge: Icon, 2003. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill & Wang, 1974. Brown, Barry, Green, Nicola, and Harper, Richard, eds. Wireless World: Social, Cultural, and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. London: Springer Verlag, 2001. Butcher, Melissa, and Thomas, Mandy, eds. Ingenious: Emerging youth cultures in urban Australia. Melbourne: Pluto, 2003. Galvin, Michael. ‘September 11 and the Logistics of Communication.’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17.3 (2003): 303-13. Goggin, Gerard, and Newell, Christopher. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Digital in New Media. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Harper, Phil. ‘Networking the Deaf Nation.’ Australian Journal of Communication 30. 3 (2003), in press. International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ‘Mobile Cellular, subscribers per 100 people.’ World Telecommunication Indicators <http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/> accessed 13 October 2003. Katz, James E., and Aakhus, Mark, eds. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2002. Morris, Meaghan. Too Soon, Too Late: History in Popular Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: U of Indiana P, 1998. Plant, Sadie. On the Mobile: The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life. < http://www.motorola.com/mot/documents/0,1028,296,00.pdf> accessed 5 October 2003. Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book: Technology—schizophrenia—electric speech. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "‘mobile text’" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2004, Jan 12). ‘mobile text’. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>
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Sexton-Finck, Larissa. "Violence Reframed: Constructing Subjugated Individuals as Agents, Not Images, through Screen Narratives." M/C Journal 23, no. 2 (May 13, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1623.

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What creative techniques of resistance are available to a female filmmaker when she is the victim of a violent event and filmed at her most vulnerable? This article uses an autoethnographic lens to discuss my experience of a serious car crash my family and I were inadvertently involved in due to police negligence and a criminal act. Employing Creative Analytical Practice (CAP) ethnography, a reflexive form of research which recognises that the creative process, producer and product are “deeply intertwined” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 930), I investigate how the crash’s violent affects crippled my agency, manifested in my creative praxis and catalysed my identification of latent forms of institutionalised violence in film culture, its discourse and pedagogy that also contributed to my inertia. The article maps my process of writing a feature length screenplay during the aftermath of the crash as I set out to articulate my story of survival and resistance. Using this narrative inquiry, in which we can “investigate how we construct the world, ourselves, and others, and how standard objectifying practices...unnecessarily limit us” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 924), I outline how I attempted to disrupt the entrenched power structures that exist in dominant narratives of violence in film and challenge my subjugated positioning as a woman within this canon. I describe my engagement with the deconstructionist practices of writing the body and militant feminist cinema, which suggest subversive opportunities for women’s self-determination by encouraging us to embrace our exiled positioning in dominant discourse through creative experimentation, and identify some of the possibilities and limitations of this for female agency. Drawing on CAP ethnography, existentialism, film feminism, and narrative reframing, I assert that these reconstructive practices are more effective for the creative enfranchisement of women by not relegating us to the periphery of social systems and cultural forms. Instead, they enable us to speak back to violent structures in a language that has greater social access, context and impact.My strong desire to tell screen stories lies in my belief that storytelling is a crucial evolutionary mechanism of resilience. Narratives do not simply represent the social world but also have the ability to change it by enabling us to “try to figure out how to live our lives meaningfully” (Ellis 760). This conviction has been directly influenced by my personal story of trauma and survival when myself, my siblings, and our respective life partners became involved in a major car crash. Two police officers attending to a drunken brawl in an inner city park had, in their haste, left the keys in the ignition of their vehicle. We were travelling across a major intersection when the police car, which had subsequently been stolen by a man involved in the brawl – a man who was wanted on parole, had a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit, and was driving at speeds exceeding 110kms per hour - ran a red light and crossed our path, causing us to crash into his vehicle. From the impact, the small four-wheel drive we were travelling in was catapulted metres into the air, rolling numerous times before smashing head on into oncoming traffic. My heavily pregnant sister was driving our vehicle.The incident attracted national media attention and our story became a sensationalist spectacle. Each news station reported erroneous and conflicting information, one stating that my sister had lost her unborn daughter, another even going so far as to claim my sister had died in the crash. This tabloidised, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’, culture of journalism, along with new digital technologies, encourages and facilitates the normalisation of violent acts, often inflicted on women. Moreover, in their pursuit of high-rating stories, news bodies motivate dehumanising acts of citizen journalism that see witnesses often inspired to film, rather than assist, victims involved in a violent event. Through a connection with someone working for a major news station, we discovered that leading news broadcasters had bought a tape shot by a group of men who call themselves the ‘Paparazzi of Perth’. These men were some of the first on the scene and began filming us from only a few metres away while we were still trapped upside down and unconscious in our vehicle. In the recording, the men are heard laughing and celebrating our tragedy as they realise the lucrative possibilities of the shocking imagery they are capturing as witnesses pull us out of the back of the car, and my pregnant sister incredibly frees herself from the wreckage by kicking out the window.As a female filmmaker, I saw the bitter irony of this event as the camera was now turned on me and my loved ones at our most vulnerable. In her discussion of the male gaze, a culturally sanctioned form of narrational violence against women that is ubiquitous in most mainstream media, Mulvey proposes that women are generally the passive image, trapped by the physical limits of the frame in a permanent state of powerlessness as our identity is reduced to her “to-be-looked-at-ness” (40). For a long period of time, the experience of performing the role of this commodified woman of a weaponised male gaze, along with the threat of annihilation associated with our near-death experience, immobilised my spirit. I felt I belonged “more to the dead than to the living” (Herman 34). When I eventually returned to my creative praxis, I decided to use scriptwriting as both my “mode of reasoning and a mode of representation” (Richardson, Writing Strategies 21), test whether I could work through my feelings of alienation and violation and reclaim my agency. This was a complex and harrowing task because my memories “lack[ed] verbal narrative and context” (Herman 38) and were deeply rooted in my body. Cixous confirms that for women, “writing and voice...are woven together” and “spring from the deepest layers of her psyche” (Moi 112). For many months, I struggled to write. I attempted to block out this violent ordeal and censor my self. I soon learnt, however, that my body could not be silenced and was slow to forget. As I tried to write around this experience, the trauma worked itself deeper inside of me, and my physical symptoms worsened, as did the quality of my writing.In the early version of the screenplay I found myself writing a female-centred film about violence, identity and death, using the fictional narrative to express the numbness I experienced. I wrote the female protagonist with detachment as though she were an object devoid of agency. Sartre claims that we make objects of others and of ourselves in an attempt to control the uncertainty of life and the ever-changing nature of humanity (242). Making something into an object is to deprive it of life (and death); it is our attempt to keep ourselves ‘safe’. While I recognise that the car crash’s reminder of my mortality was no doubt part of the reason why I rendered myself, and the script’s female protagonist, lifeless as agentic beings, I sensed that there were subtler operations of power and control behind my self-objectification and self-censorship, which deeply concerned me. What had influenced this dea(r)th of female agency in my creative imaginings? Why did I write my female character with such a red pen? Why did I seem so compelled to ‘kill’ her? I wanted to investigate my gender construction, the complex relationship between my scriptwriting praxis, and the context within which it is produced to discover whether I could write a different future for myself, and my female characters. Kiesinger supports “contextualizing our stories within the framework of a larger picture” (108), so as to remain open to the possibility that there might not be anything ‘wrong’ with us, per se, “but rather something very wrong with the dynamics that dominate the communicative system” (109) within which we operate: in the case of my creative praxis, the oppressive structures present in the culture of film and its pedagogy.Pulling FocusWomen are supposed to be the view and when the view talks back, it is uncomfortable.— Jane Campion (Filming Desire)It is a terrible thing to see that no one has ever taught us how to develop our vision as women neither in the history of arts nor in film schools.— Marie Mandy (Filming Desire)The democratisation of today’s media landscape through new technologies, the recent rise in female-run production companies (Zemler) in Hollywood, along with the ground-breaking #MeToo and Time’s Up movements has elevated the global consciousness of gender-based violence, and has seen the screen industry seek to redress its history of gender imbalance. While it is too early to assess the impact these developments may have on women’s standing in film, today the ‘celluloid ceiling’ still operates on multiple levels of indoctrination and control through a systemic pattern of exclusion for women that upholds the “nearly seamless dialogue among men in cinema” (Lauzen, Thumbs Down 2). Female filmmakers occupy a tenuous position of influence in the mainstream industry and things are not any better on the other side of the camera (Lauzen, The Celluloid Ceiling). For the most part, Hollywood’s male gaze and penchant for sexualising and (physically or figuratively) killing female characters, which normalises violence against women and is “almost inversely proportional to the liberation of women in society” (Mandy), continues to limit women to performing as the image rather than the agent on screen.Film funding bodies and censorship boards, mostly comprised of men, remain exceptionally averse to independent female filmmakers who go against the odds to tell their stories, which often violate taboos about femininity and radically redefine female agency through the construction of the female gaze: a narrational technique of resistance that enables reel woman to govern the point of view, imagery and action of the film (Smelik 51-52). This generally sees their films unjustly ghettoised through incongruent classification or censorship, and forced into independent or underground distribution (Sexton-Finck 165-182). Not only does censorship propose the idea that female agency is abject and dangerous and needs to be restrained, it prevents access to this important cinema by women that aims to counter the male gaze and “shield us from this type of violence” (Gillain 210). This form of ideological and institutional gatekeeping is not only enforced in the film industry, it is also insidiously (re)constituted in the epistemological construction of film discourse and pedagogy, which in their design, are still largely intrinsically gendered institutions, encoded with phallocentric signification that rejects a woman’s specificity and approach to knowledge. Drawing on my mutually informative roles as a former film student and experienced screen educator, I assert that most screen curricula in Australia still uphold entrenched androcentric norms that assume the male gaze and advocate popular cinema’s didactic three-act structure, which conditions our value systems to favour masculinity and men’s worldview. This restorative storytelling approach is argued to be fatally limiting to reel women (Smith 136; Dancyger and Rush 25) as it propagates the Enlightenment notion of a universal subjectivity, based on free will and reason, which neutralises the power structures of society (and film) and repudiates the influence of social positioning on our opportunity for agency. Moreover, through its omniscient consciousness, which seeks to efface the presence of a specific narrator, the three-act method disavows this policing of female agency and absolves any specific individual of responsibility for its structural violence (Dyer 98).By pulling focus on some of these problematic mechanisms in the hostile climate of the film industry and its spaces of learning for women, I became acutely aware of the more latent forms of violence that had conditioned my scriptwriting praxis, the ambivalence I felt towards my female identity, and my consequent gagging of the female character in the screenplay.Changing Lenses How do the specific circumstances in which we write affect what we write? How does what we write affect who we become?— Laurel Richardson (Fields of Play 1)In the beginning, there is an end. Don’t be afraid: it’s your death that is dying. Then: all the beginnings.— Helene Cixous (Cixous and Jensen 41)The discoveries I made during my process of CAP ethnography saw a strong feeling of dissidence arrive inside me. I vehemently wanted to write my way out of my subjugated state and release some of the anguish that my traumatised body was carrying around. I was drawn to militant feminist cinema and the French poststructuralist approach of ‘writing the body’ (l’ecriture feminine) given these deconstructive practices “create images and ideas that have the power to inspire to revolt against oppression and exploitation” (Moi 120). Feminist cinema’s visual treatise of writing the body through its departure from androcentric codes - its unformulaic approach to structure, plot, character and narration (De Lauretis 106) - revealed to me ways in which I could use the scriptwriting process to validate my debilitating experience of physical and psychic violence, decensor my self and move towards rejoining the living. Cixous affirms that, “by writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into…the ailing or dead figure” (Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa 880). It became clear to me that the persistent themes of death that manifested in the first draft of the script were not, as I first suspected, me ‘rehearsing to die’, or wanting to kill off the woman inside me. I was in fact “not driven towards death but by death” (Homer 89), the close proximity to my mortality, acting as a limit, was calling for a strengthening of my life force, a rebirth of my agency (Bettelheim 36). Mansfield acknowledges that death “offers us a freedom outside of the repression and logic that dominate our daily practices of keeping ourselves in order, within the lines” (87).I challenged myself to write the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the unexplored and to allow myself to go to places in me that I had never before let speak by investigating my agency from a much more layered and critical perspective. This was both incredibly terrifying and liberating and enabled me to discard the agentic ‘corset’ I had previously worn in my creative praxis. Dancyger and Rush confirm that “one of the things that happens when we break out of the restorative three-act form is that the effaced narrator becomes increasingly visible and overt” (38). I experienced an invigorating feeling of empowerment through my appropriation of the female gaze in the screenplay which initially appeased some of the post-crash turmoil and general sense of injustice I was experiencing. However, I soon, found something toxic rising inside of me. Like the acrimonious feminist cinema I was immersed in – Raw (Ducournau), A Girl Walks Home at Night (Amirpour), Romance (Breillat), Trouble Every Day (Denis), Baise-Moi (Despentes and Thi), In My Skin (Van), Anatomy of Hell (Breillat) – the screenplay I had produced involved a female character turning the tables on men and using acts of revenge to satisfy her needs. Not only was I creating a highly dystopian world filled with explicit themes of suffering in the screenplay, I too existed in a displaced state of rage and ‘psychic nausea’ in my daily life (Baldick and Sartre). I became haunted by vivid flashbacks of the car crash as abject images, sounds and sensations played over and over in my mind and body like a horror movie on loop. I struggled to find the necessary clarity and counterbalance of stability required to successfully handle this type of experimentation.I do not wish to undermine the creative potential of deconstructive practices, such as writing the body and militant cinema, for female filmmakers. However, I believe my post-trauma sensitivity to visceral entrapment and spiritual violence magnifies some of the psychological and physiological risks involved. Deconstructive experimentation “happens much more easily in the realm of “texts” than in the world of human interaction” (hooks 22) and presents agentic limitations for women since it offers a “utopian vision of female creativity” (Moi 119) that is “devoid of reality...except in a poetic sense” (Moi 122). In jettisoning the restorative qualities of narrative film, new boundaries for women are inadvertently created through restricting us to “intellectual pleasure but rarely emotional pleasure” (Citron 51). Moreover, by reducing women’s agency to retaliation we are denied the opportunity for catharsis and transformation; something I desperately longed to experience in my injured state. Kaplan acknowledges this problem, arguing that female filmmakers need to move theoretically beyond deconstruction to reconstruction, “to manipulate the recognized, dominating discourses so as to begin to free ourselves through rather than beyond them (for what is there ‘beyond’?)” (Women and Film 141).A potent desire to regain a sense of connectedness and control pushed itself out from deep inside me. I yearned for a tonic to move myself and my female character to an active position, rather than a reactive one that merely repeats the victimising dynamic of mainstream film by appropriating a reversed (female) gaze and now makes women the violent victors (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 130). We have arrived at a point where we must destabilise the dominance-submission structure and “think about ways of transcending a polarity that has only brought us all pain” (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 135). I became determined to write a screen narrative that, while dealing with some of the harsh realities of humanity I had become exposed to, involved an existentialist movement towards catharsis and activity.ReframingWhen our stories break down or no longer serve us well, it is imperative that we examine the quality of the stories we are telling and actively reinvent our accounts in ways that permit us to live more fulfilling lives.— Christine Kiesinger (107)I’m frightened by life’s randomness, so I want to deal with it, make some sense of it by telling a film story. But it’s not without hope. I don’t believe in telling stories without some hope.— Susanne Bier (Thomas)Narrative reframing is underlined by the existentialist belief that our spiritual freedom is an artistic process of self-creation, dependent on our free will to organise the elements of our lives, many determined out of our control, into the subjective frame that is to be our experience of our selves and the world around us (107). As a filmmaker, I recognise the power of selective editing and composition. Narrative reframing’s demand for a rational assessment of “the degree to which we live our stories versus the degree to which our stories live us” (Kiesinger 109), helped me to understand how I could use these filmmaking skills to take a step back from my trauma so as to look at it objectively “as a text for study” (Ellis 108) and to exercise power over the creative-destructive forces it, and the deconstructive writing methods I had employed, produced. Richardson confirms the benefits of this practice, since narrative “is the universal way in which humans accommodate to finitude” (Writing Strategies 65).In the script’s development, I found my resilience lay in my capacity to imagine more positive alternatives for female agency. I focussed on writing a narrative that did not avoid life’s hardships and injustices, or require them to be “attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted, and falsified” (Nietzsche and Hollingdale 68), yet still involved a life-affirming sentiment. With this in mind, I reintroduced the three-act structure in the revised script as its affectivity and therapeutic denouement enabled me to experience a sense of agentic catharsis that turned “nauseous thoughts into imaginations with which it is possible to live” (Nietzsche 52). Nevertheless, I remained vigilant not to lapse into didacticism; to allow my female character to be free to transgress social conventions surrounding women’s agency. Indebted to Kaplan’s writing on the cinematic gaze, I chose to take up what she identifies as a ‘mutual gaze’; an ethical framework that enabled me to privilege the female character’s perspective and autonomy with a neutral subject-subject gaze rather than the “subject-object kind that reduces one of the parties to the place of submission” (Feminism and Film 135). I incorporated the filmic technique of the point of view (POV) shot for key narrative moments as it allows an audience to literally view the world through a character’s eyes, as well as direct address, which involves the character looking back down the lens at the viewer (us); establishing the highest level of identification between the spectator and the subject on screen.The most pertinent illustration of these significant scriptwriting changes through my engagement with narrative reframing and feminist film theory, is in the reworking of my family’s car crash which became a pivotal turning point in the final draft. In the scene, I use POV and direct address to turn the weaponised gaze back around onto the ‘paparazzi’ who are filming the spectacle. When the central (pregnant) character frees herself from the wreckage, she notices these men filming her and we see the moment from her point of view as she looks at these men laughing and revelling in the commercial potential of their mediatised act. Switching between POV and direct address, the men soon notice they have been exposed as the woman looks back down the lens at them (us) with disbelief, reproaching them (us) for daring to film her in this traumatic moment. She holds her determined gaze while they glance awkwardly back at her, until their laughter dissipates, they stop recording and appear to recognise the culpability of their actions. With these techniques of mutual gazing, I set out to humanise and empower the female victim and neutralise the power dynamic: the woman is now also a viewing agent, and the men equally perform the role of the viewed. In this creative reframing, I hope to provide an antidote to filmic violence against and/or by women as this female character reclaims her (my) experience of survival without adhering to the culture of female passivity or ressentiment.This article has examined how a serious car crash, being filmed against my will in its aftermath and the attendant damages that prevailed from this experience, catalysed a critical change of direction in my scriptwriting. The victimising event helped me recognise the manifest and latent forms of violence against women that are normalised through everyday ideological and institutional systems in film and prevent us from performing as active agents in our creative praxis. There is a critical need for more inclusive modes of practice – across the film industry, discourse and pedagogy – that are cognisant and respectful of women’s specificity and our difference to the androcentric landscape of mainstream film. We need to continue to exert pressure on changing violent mechanisms that marginalise us and ghettoise our stories. As this article has demonstrated, working outside dominant forms can enable important emancipatory opportunities for women, however, this type or deconstruction also presents risks that generally leave us powerless in everyday spaces. While I advocate that female filmmakers should look to techniques of feminist cinema for an alternative lens, we must also work within popular film to critique and subvert it, and not deny women the pleasures and political advantages of its restorative structure. By enabling female filmmakers to (re)humanise woman though encouraging empathy and compassion, this affective storytelling form has the potential to counter violence against women and mobilise female agency. Equally, CAP ethnography and narrative reframing are critical discourses for the retrieval and actualisation of female filmmakers’ agency as they allow us to contextualise our stories of resistance and survival within the framework of a larger picture of violence to gain perspective on our subjective experiences and render them as significant, informative and useful to the lives of others. This enables us to move from the isolated margins of subcultural film and discourse to reclaim our stories at the centre.ReferencesA Girl Walks Home at Night. Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour. Say Ahh Productions, 2014.Anatomy of Hell. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Tartan Films, 2004. Baise-Moi. Dirs. Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. FilmFixx, 2000.Baldick, Robert, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965.Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.Citron, Michelle. Women’s Film Production: Going Mainstream in Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television. Ed. E. Deidre Pribram. London: Verso, 1988.Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1.4 (1976): 875-893.Cixous, Helene, and Deborah Jenson. "Coming to Writing" and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.Dancyger, Ken, and Jeff Rush. Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully Breaking the Rules. Boston, MA: Focal Press, 2002.De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.Dyer, Richard. The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002.Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. California: AltaMira, 2004.Filming Desire: A Journey through Women's Cinema. Dir. Marie Mandy. Women Make Movies, 2000.Gillain, Anne. “Profile of a Filmmaker: Catherine Breillat.” Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981-2001. Eds. Roger Célestin, Eliane Françoise DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 206.Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery. London: Pandora, 1994.Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. London: Routledge, 2005.hooks, bell. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990.In My Skin. Dir. Marina de Van. Wellspring Media, 2002. Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Routledge, 1988.———. Feminism and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Kiesinger, Christine E. “My Father's Shoes: The Therapeutic Value of Narrative Reframing.” Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature, and Aesthetics. Eds. Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn Ellis. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002. 107-111.Lauzen, Martha M. “Thumbs Down - Representation of Women Film Critics in the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers - A Study by Dr. Martha Lauzen.” Alliance of Women Film Journalists, 25 July 2012. 4-5.———. The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 100, 250, and 500 Films of 2018. Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film San Diego State University 2019. <https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2018_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf>.Mansfield, Nick. Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2000.Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Methuen, 2002.Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in Feminism and Film. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. 34-47.Nietzsche, Friedrich W. The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Francis Golffing. New York: Doubleday, 1956.Nietzsche, Friedrich W., and Richard Hollingdale. Beyond Good and Evil. London: Penguin Books, 1990.Raw. Dir. Julia Ducournau. Petit Film, 2016.Richardson, Laurel. Writing Strategies: Reaching Diverse Audiences. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1990.———. Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997.———. “Writing: A Method of Inquiry.” Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman K Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000.Romance. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Trimark Pictures Inc., 2000.Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London: Routledge, 1969.Sexton-Finck, Larissa. Be(com)ing Reel Independent Woman: An Autoethnographic Journey through Female Subjectivity and Agency in Contemporary Cinema with Particular Reference to Independent Scriptwriting Practice. 2009. <https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/1688/2/02Whole.pdf>.Smelik, Anneke. And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.Smith, Hazel. The Writing Experiment: Strategies for Innovative Creative Writing. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005.Thomas, Michelle. “10 Years of Dogme: An Interview with Susanne Bier.” Future Movies, 5 Aug. 2005. <http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/filmmaking.asp?ID=119>.Trouble Every Day. Dir. Claire Denis. Wild Bunch, 2001. Zemler, Mily. “17 Actresses Who Started Their Own Production Companies.” Elle, 11 Jan. 2018. <https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/g14927338/17-actresses-with-production-companies/>.
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Ibrahim, Yasmin. "Commodifying Terrorism." M/C Journal 10, no. 3 (June 1, 2007). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2665.

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Abstract:
Introduction Figure 1 The counter-Terrorism advertising campaign of London’s Metropolitan Police commodifies some everyday items such as mobile phones, computers, passports and credit cards as having the potential to sustain terrorist activities. The process of ascribing cultural values and symbolic meanings to some everyday technical gadgets objectifies and situates Terrorism into the everyday life. The police, in urging people to look out for ‘the unusual’ in their normal day-to-day lives, juxtapose the everyday with the unusual, where day-to-day consumption, routines and flows of human activity can seemingly house insidious and atavistic elements. This again is reiterated in the Met police press release: Terrorists live within our communities making their plans whilst doing everything they can to blend in, and trying not to raise suspicions about their activities. (MPA Website) The commodification of Terrorism through uncommon and everyday objects situates Terrorism as a phenomenon which occupies a liminal space within the everyday. It resides, breathes and co-exists within the taken-for-granted routines and objects of ‘the everyday’ where it has the potential to explode and disrupt without warning. Since 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings Terrorism has been narrated through the disruption of mobility, whether in mid-air or in the deep recesses of the Underground. The resonant thread of disruption to human mobility evokes a powerful meta-narrative where acts of Terrorism can halt human agency amidst the backdrop of the metropolis, which is often a metaphor for speed and accelerated activities. If globalisation and the interconnected nature of the world are understood through discourses of risk, Terrorism bears the same footprint in urban spaces of modernity, narrating the vulnerability of the human condition in an inter-linked world where ideological struggles and resistance are manifested through inexplicable violence and destruction of lives, where the everyday is suspended to embrace the unexpected. As a consequence ambient fear “saturates the social spaces of everyday life” (Hubbard 2). The commodification of Terrorism through everyday items of consumption inevitably creates an intertextuality with real and media events, which constantly corrode the security of the metropolis. Paddy Scannell alludes to a doubling of place in our mediated world where “public events now occur simultaneously in two different places; the place of the event itself and that in which it is watched and heard. The media then vacillates between the two sites and creates experiences of simultaneity, liveness and immediacy” (qtd. in Moores 22). The doubling of place through media constructs a pervasive environment of risk and fear. Mark Danner (qtd. in Bauman 106) points out that the most powerful weapon of the 9/11 terrorists was that innocuous and “most American of technological creations: the television set” which provided a global platform to constantly replay and remember the dreadful scenes of the day, enabling the terrorist to appear invincible and to narrate fear as ubiquitous and omnipresent. Philip Abrams argues that ‘big events’ (such as 9/11 and 7/7) do make a difference in the social world for such events function as a transformative device between the past and future, forcing society to alter or transform its perspectives. David Altheide points out that since September 11 and the ensuing war on terror, a new discourse of Terrorism has emerged as a way of expressing how the world has changed and defining a state of constant alert through a media logic and format that shapes the nature of discourse itself. Consequently, the intensity and centralisation of surveillance in Western countries increased dramatically, placing the emphasis on expanding the forms of the already existing range of surveillance processes and practices that circumscribe and help shape our social existence (Lyon, Terrorism 2). Normalisation of Surveillance The role of technologies, particularly information and communication technologies (ICTs), and other infrastructures to unevenly distribute access to the goods and services necessary for modern life, while facilitating data collection on and control of the public, are significant characteristics of modernity (Reiman; Graham and Marvin; Monahan). The embedding of technological surveillance into spaces and infrastructures not only augment social control but also redefine data as a form of capital which can be shared between public and private sectors (Gandy, Data Mining; O’Harrow; Monahan). The scale, complexity and limitations of omnipresent and omnipotent surveillance, nevertheless, offer room for both subversion as well as new forms of domination and oppression (Marx). In surveillance studies, Foucault’s analysis is often heavily employed to explain lines of continuity and change between earlier forms of surveillance and data assemblage and contemporary forms in the shape of closed-circuit television (CCTV) and other surveillance modes (Dee). It establishes the need to discern patterns of power and normalisation and the subliminal or obvious cultural codes and categories that emerge through these arrangements (Fopp; Lyon, Electronic; Norris and Armstrong). In their study of CCTV surveillance, Norris and Armstrong (cf. in Dee) point out that when added to the daily minutiae of surveillance, CCTV cameras in public spaces, along with other camera surveillance in work places, capture human beings on a database constantly. The normalisation of surveillance, particularly with reference to CCTV, the popularisation of surveillance through television formats such as ‘Big Brother’ (Dee), and the expansion of online platforms to publish private images, has created a contradictory, complex and contested nature of spatial and power relationships in society. The UK, for example, has the most developed system of both urban and public space cameras in the world and this growth of camera surveillance and, as Lyon (Surveillance) points out, this has been achieved with very little, if any, public debate as to their benefits or otherwise. There may now be as many as 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain (cf. Lyon, Surveillance). That is one for every fourteen people and a person can be captured on over 300 cameras every day. An estimated £500m of public money has been invested in CCTV infrastructure over the last decade but, according to a Home Office study, CCTV schemes that have been assessed had little overall effect on crime levels (Wood and Ball). In spatial terms, these statistics reiterate Foucault’s emphasis on the power economy of the unseen gaze. Michel Foucault in analysing the links between power, information and surveillance inspired by Bentham’s idea of the Panopticon, indicated that it is possible to sanction or reward an individual through the act of surveillance without their knowledge (155). It is this unseen and unknown gaze of surveillance that is fundamental to the exercise of power. The design and arrangement of buildings can be engineered so that the “surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action” (Foucault 201). Lyon (Terrorism), in tracing the trajectory of surveillance studies, points out that much of surveillance literature has focused on understanding it as a centralised bureaucratic relationship between the powerful and the governed. Invisible forms of surveillance have also been viewed as a class weapon in some societies. With the advancements in and proliferation of surveillance technologies as well as convergence with other technologies, Lyon argues that it is no longer feasible to view surveillance as a linear or centralised process. In our contemporary globalised world, there is a need to reconcile the dialectical strands that mediate surveillance as a process. In acknowledging this, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have constructed surveillance as a rhizome that defies linearity to appropriate a more convoluted and malleable form where the coding of bodies and data can be enmeshed to produce intricate power relationships and hierarchies within societies. Latour draws on the notion of assemblage by propounding that data is amalgamated from scattered centres of calculation where these can range from state and commercial institutions to scientific laboratories which scrutinise data to conceive governance and control strategies. Both the Latourian and Deleuzian ideas of surveillance highlight the disparate arrays of people, technologies and organisations that become connected to make “surveillance assemblages” in contrast to the static, unidirectional Panopticon metaphor (Ball, “Organization” 93). In a similar vein, Gandy (Panoptic) infers that it is misleading to assume that surveillance in practice is as complete and totalising as the Panoptic ideal type would have us believe. Co-optation of Millions The Metropolitan Police’s counter-Terrorism strategy seeks to co-opt millions where the corporeal body can complement the landscape of technological surveillance that already co-exists within modernity. In its press release, the role of civilian bodies in ensuring security of the city is stressed; Keeping Londoners safe from Terrorism is not a job solely for governments, security services or police. If we are to make London the safest major city in the world, we must mobilise against Terrorism not only the resources of the state, but also the active support of the millions of people who live and work in the capita. (MPA Website). Surveillance is increasingly simulated through the millions of corporeal entities where seeing in advance is the goal even before technology records and codes these images (William). Bodies understand and code risk and images through the cultural narratives which circulate in society. Compared to CCTV technology images, which require cultural and political interpretations and interventions, bodies as surveillance organisms implicitly code other bodies and activities. The travel bag in the Metropolitan Police poster reinforces the images of the 7/7 bombers and the renewed attempts to bomb the London Underground on the 21st of July. It reiterates the CCTV footage revealing images of the bombers wearing rucksacks. The image of the rucksack both embodies the everyday as well as the potential for evil in everyday objects. It also inevitably reproduces the cultural biases and prejudices where the rucksack is subliminally associated with a specific type of body. The rucksack in these terms is a laden image which symbolically captures the context and culture of risk discourses in society. The co-optation of the population as a surveillance entity also recasts new forms of social responsibility within the democratic polity, where privacy is increasingly mediated by the greater need to monitor, trace and record the activities of one another. Nikolas Rose, in discussing the increasing ‘responsibilisation’ of individuals in modern societies, describes the process in which the individual accepts responsibility for personal actions across a wide range of fields of social and economic activity as in the choice of diet, savings and pension arrangements, health care decisions and choices, home security measures and personal investment choices (qtd. in Dee). While surveillance in individualistic terms is often viewed as a threat to privacy, Rose argues that the state of ‘advanced liberalism’ within modernity and post-modernity requires considerable degrees of self-governance, regulation and surveillance whereby the individual is constructed both as a ‘new citizen’ and a key site of self management. By co-opting and recasting the role of the citizen in the age of Terrorism, the citizen to a degree accepts responsibility for both surveillance and security. In our sociological imagination the body is constructed both as lived as well as a social object. Erving Goffman uses the word ‘umwelt’ to stress that human embodiment is central to the constitution of the social world. Goffman defines ‘umwelt’ as “the region around an individual from which signs of alarm can come” and employs it to capture how people as social actors perceive and manage their settings when interacting in public places (252). Goffman’s ‘umwelt’ can be traced to Immanuel Kant’s idea that it is the a priori categories of space and time that make it possible for a subject to perceive a world (Umiker-Sebeok; qtd. in Ball, “Organization”). Anthony Giddens adapted the term Umwelt to refer to “a phenomenal world with which the individual is routinely ‘in touch’ in respect of potential dangers and alarms which then formed a core of (accomplished) normalcy with which individuals and groups surround themselves” (244). Benjamin Smith, in considering the body as an integral component of the link between our consciousness and our material world, observes that the body is continuously inscribed by culture. These inscriptions, he argues, encompass a wide range of cultural practices and will imply knowledge of a variety of social constructs. The inscribing of the body will produce cultural meanings as well as create forms of subjectivity while locating and situating the body within a cultural matrix (Smith). Drawing on Derrida’s work, Pugliese employs the term ‘Somatechnics’ to conceptualise the body as a culturally intelligible construct and to address the techniques in and through which the body is formed and transformed (qtd. in Osuri). These techniques can encompass signification systems such as race and gender and equally technologies which mediate our sense of reality. These technologies of thinking, seeing, hearing, signifying, visualising and positioning produce the very conditions for the cultural intelligibility of the body (Osuri). The body is then continuously inscribed and interpreted through mediated signifying systems. Similarly, Hayles, while not intending to impose a Cartesian dichotomy between the physical body and its cognitive presence, contends that the use and interactions with technology incorporate the body as a material entity but it also equally inscribes it by marking, recording and tracing its actions in various terrains. According to Gayatri Spivak (qtd. in Ball, “Organization”) new habits and experiences are embedded into the corporeal entity which then mediates its reactions and responses to the social world. This means one’s body is not completely one’s own and the presence of ideological forces or influences then inscribe the body with meanings, codes and cultural values. In our modern condition, the body and data are intimately and intricately bound. Outside the home, it is difficult for the body to avoid entering into relationships that produce electronic personal data (Stalder). According to Felix Stalder our physical bodies are shadowed by a ‘data body’ which follows the physical body of the consuming citizen and sometimes precedes it by constructing the individual through data (12). Before we arrive somewhere, we have already been measured and classified. Thus, upon arrival, the citizen will be treated according to the criteria ‘connected with the profile that represents us’ (Gandy, Panoptic; William). Following September 11, Lyon (Terrorism) reveals that surveillance data from a myriad of sources, such as supermarkets, motels, traffic control points, credit card transactions records and so on, was used to trace the activities of terrorists in the days and hours before their attacks, confirming that the body leaves data traces and trails. Surveillance works by abstracting bodies from places and splitting them into flows to be reassembled as virtual data-doubles, and in the process can replicate hierarchies and centralise power (Lyon, Terrorism). Mike Dee points out that the nature of surveillance taking place in modern societies is complex and far-reaching and in many ways insidious as surveillance needs to be situated within the broadest context of everyday human acts whether it is shopping with loyalty cards or paying utility bills. Physical vulnerability of the body becomes more complex in the time-space distanciated surveillance systems to which the body has become increasingly exposed. As such, each transaction – whether it be a phone call, credit card transaction, or Internet search – leaves a ‘data trail’ linkable to an individual person or place. Haggerty and Ericson, drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the assemblage, describe the convergence and spread of data-gathering systems between different social domains and multiple levels (qtd. in Hier). They argue that the target of the generic ‘surveillance assemblage’ is the human body, which is broken into a series of data flows on which surveillance process is based. The thrust of the focus is the data individuals can yield and the categories to which they can contribute. These are then reapplied to the body. In this sense, surveillance is rhizomatic for it is diverse and connected to an underlying, invisible infrastructure which concerns interconnected technologies in multiple contexts (Ball, “Elements”). The co-opted body in the schema of counter-Terrorism enters a power arrangement where it constitutes both the unseen gaze as well as the data that will be implicated and captured in this arrangement. It is capable of producing surveillance data for those in power while creating new data through its transactions and movements in its everyday life. The body is unequivocally constructed through this data and is also entrapped by it in terms of representation and categorisation. The corporeal body is therefore part of the machinery of surveillance while being vulnerable to its discriminatory powers of categorisation and victimisation. As Hannah Arendt (qtd. in Bauman 91) had warned, “we terrestrial creatures bidding for cosmic significance will shortly be unable to comprehend and articulate the things we are capable of doing” Arendt’s caution conveys the complexity, vulnerability as well as the complicity of the human condition in the surveillance society. Equally it exemplifies how the corporeal body can be co-opted as a surveillance entity sustaining a new ‘banality’ (Arendt) in the machinery of surveillance. Social Consequences of Surveillance Lyon (Terrorism) observed that the events of 9/11 and 7/7 in the UK have inevitably become a prism through which aspects of social structure and processes may be viewed. This prism helps to illuminate the already existing vast range of surveillance practices and processes that touch everyday life in so-called information societies. As Lyon (Terrorism) points out surveillance is always ambiguous and can encompass genuine benefits and plausible rationales as well as palpable disadvantages. There are elements of representation to consider in terms of how surveillance technologies can re-present data that are collected at source or gathered from another technological medium, and these representations bring different meanings and enable different interpretations of life and surveillance (Ball, “Elements”). As such surveillance needs to be viewed in a number of ways: practice, knowledge and protection from threat. As data can be manipulated and interpreted according to cultural values and norms it reflects the inevitability of power relations to forge its identity in a surveillance society. In this sense, Ball (“Elements”) concludes surveillance practices capture and create different versions of life as lived by surveilled subjects. She refers to actors within the surveilled domain as ‘intermediaries’, where meaning is inscribed, where technologies re-present information, where power/resistance operates, and where networks are bound together to sometimes distort as well as reiterate patterns of hegemony (“Elements” 93). While surveillance is often connected with technology, it does not however determine nor decide how we code or employ our data. New technologies rarely enter passive environments of total inequality for they become enmeshed in complex pre-existing power and value systems (Marx). With surveillance there is an emphasis on the classificatory powers in our contemporary world “as persons and groups are often risk-profiled in the commercial sphere which rates their social contributions and sorts them into systems” (Lyon, Terrorism 2). Lyon (Terrorism) contends that the surveillance society is one that is organised and structured using surveillance-based techniques recorded by technologies, on behalf of the organisations and governments that structure our society. This information is then sorted, sifted and categorised and used as a basis for decisions which affect our life chances (Wood and Ball). The emergence of pervasive, automated and discriminatory mechanisms for risk profiling and social categorising constitute a significant mechanism for reproducing and reinforcing social, economic and cultural divisions in information societies. Such automated categorisation, Lyon (Terrorism) warns, has consequences for everyone especially in face of the new anti-terror measures enacted after September 11. In tandem with this, Bauman points out that a few suicidal murderers on the loose will be quite enough to recycle thousands of innocents into the “usual suspects”. In no time, a few iniquitous individual choices will be reprocessed into the attributes of a “category”; a category easily recognisable by, for instance, a suspiciously dark skin or a suspiciously bulky rucksack* *the kind of object which CCTV cameras are designed to note and passers-by are told to be vigilant about. And passers-by are keen to oblige. Since the terrorist atrocities on the London Underground, the volume of incidents classified as “racist attacks” rose sharply around the country. (122; emphasis added) Bauman, drawing on Lyon, asserts that the understandable desire for security combined with the pressure to adopt different kind of systems “will create a culture of control that will colonise more areas of life with or without the consent of the citizen” (123). This means that the inhabitants of the urban space whether a citizen, worker or consumer who has no terrorist ambitions whatsoever will discover that their opportunities are more circumscribed by the subject positions or categories which are imposed on them. Bauman cautions that for some these categories may be extremely prejudicial, restricting them from consumer choices because of credit ratings, or more insidiously, relegating them to second-class status because of their colour or ethnic background (124). Joseph Pugliese, in linking visual regimes of racial profiling and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the aftermath of 7/7 bombings in London, suggests that the discursive relations of power and visuality are inextricably bound. Pugliese argues that racial profiling creates a regime of visuality which fundamentally inscribes our physiology of perceptions with stereotypical images. He applies this analogy to Menzes running down the platform in which the retina transforms him into the “hallucinogenic figure of an Asian Terrorist” (Pugliese 8). With globalisation and the proliferation of ICTs, borders and boundaries are no longer sacrosanct and as such risks are managed by enacting ‘smart borders’ through new technologies, with huge databases behind the scenes processing information about individuals and their journeys through the profiling of body parts with, for example, iris scans (Wood and Ball 31). Such body profiling technologies are used to create watch lists of dangerous passengers or identity groups who might be of greater ‘risk’. The body in a surveillance society can be dissected into parts and profiled and coded through technology. These disparate codings of body parts can be assembled (or selectively omitted) to construct and represent whole bodies in our information society to ascertain risk. The selection and circulation of knowledge will also determine who gets slotted into the various categories that a surveillance society creates. Conclusion When the corporeal body is subsumed into a web of surveillance it often raises questions about the deterministic nature of technology. The question is a long-standing one in our modern consciousness. We are apprehensive about according technology too much power and yet it is implicated in the contemporary power relationships where it is suspended amidst human motive, agency and anxiety. The emergence of surveillance societies, the co-optation of bodies in surveillance schemas, as well as the construction of the body through data in everyday transactions, conveys both the vulnerabilities of the human condition as well as its complicity in maintaining the power arrangements in society. Bauman, in citing Jacques Ellul and Hannah Arendt, points out that we suffer a ‘moral lag’ in so far as technology and society are concerned, for often we ruminate on the consequences of our actions and motives only as afterthoughts without realising at this point of existence that the “actions we take are most commonly prompted by the resources (including technology) at our disposal” (91). References Abrams, Philip. Historical Sociology. Shepton Mallet, UK: Open Books, 1982. Altheide, David. “Consuming Terrorism.” Symbolic Interaction 27.3 (2004): 289-308. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Faber & Faber, 1963. Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Fear. 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Ball, eds. “A Report on the Surveillance Society.” Surveillance Studies Network, UK, Sep. 2006. 14 April 2007 http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/ practical_application/surveillance_society_full_report_2006.pdf>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ibrahim, Yasmin. "Commodifying Terrorism: Body, Surveillance and the Everyday." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/05-ibrahim.php>. APA Style Ibrahim, Y. (Jun. 2007) "Commodifying Terrorism: Body, Surveillance and the Everyday," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/05-ibrahim.php>.
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