City of Women, City of Foreign Men: Working Spaces and Re-working Identities Among Female Sex Workers in Bangkok's Tourist Zone

In this paper I propose that spatially-informed and agency-centred treatments of prostitution as a practice can fruitfully highlight the moral and symbolic economies operating in the lives of women as they engage and disengage with prostitution in the tourist sex trade zones of Bangkok. By re-examining and re-contextualising the practices of prostitution in terms of interacting spatial/socio-cultural fields, we can gain more useful insights than heretofore obtained through a mono-dimensional political economy or gender-culture framework. We must accept that women sex workers are part of the geography of socio-economic transformation, responding to the centralisation and expansion of key sectors of the Thai economy. I conceptualise this broader geography as involving "oscillation" between urban and rural "places" (which represent key "fields" of value), and at the level of the city (and the tourist leisure infrastructure) as "movement" between different work sites and "arenas" of identity formation. Within this complex of circulation and engagement, women strategise to maximise what may be described as survival and status resources (conversion of income into cultural capital) aiming towards recovery of meaningful self-identity.     

Convective scaling of the average dissipation rate of temperature variance in the atmospheric surface layer

The flux of sensible heat from the land surface is related to the average rate of dissipation of temperature fluctuations in the atmospheric surface layer through the temperature variance budget equation. In many cases it is desirable to estimate the heat flux from measurement or inference of the dissipation rate. Here we study how the dissipation rate scales with atmospheric stability, using three inertial range methods to calculate the dissipation rate: power spectra, second order structure functions, and third order structure functions. Experimental data are analyzed from a pair of field experiments, during which turbulent fluctuations of velocity and temperature were measured over a broad range of neutral and unstable atmospheric flows. It is shown that the temperature dissipation rate scales with a single convective power law continuously from near-neutral to strongly unstable stratification. The dissipation scaling is found to nearly match production in the near-neutral region, but to be consistently lower than production in the more convective regimes. The convective scaling is shown to offer a simplified means of computing sensible heat flux from the dissipation rate of temperature variance.Also at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MarylandAlso at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico.     

The local effect of intermittency on the inertial subrange energy spectrum of the atmospheric surface layer

Orthonormal wavelet expansions are applied to atmospheric surface layer velocity measurements. The effect of intermittent events on the energy spectrum of the inertial subrange is investigated through analysis of wavelet coefficients. The local nature of the orthonormal wavelet transform in physical space makes it possible to identify a relationship between the inertial subrange slope of the local wavelet spectrum and a simple indicator (i.e. the local variance of the signal) of local intermittency buildup. The slope of the local wavelet energy spectrum in the inertial subrange is shown to be sensitive to the presence of intermittent events. During well developed intermittent events (coherent structures), the slope of the energy spectrum is somewhat steeper than -5/3, while in less active regions the slope is found to be flatter than -5/3. When the slopes of local wavelet spectra are ensemble averaged, a slope of -5/3 is recovered for the inertial subrange.     

Late Cretaceous mafic dykes in the Dharwar craton

Palaeomagnetic, geochemical and geochronological studies have been conducted on a set of dolerite dykes intruding the Peninsular gneisses near Huliyurdurga town, Karnataka, as a reconnaissance survey indicated a Cretaceous age for them. The dykes are mainly tholeiitic in composition with their 87Sr/86Sr ratios tightly clustered around 0·7045. Their palaeomagnetic data (D _m =329°,I _m =−55°) and the corresponding palaeopole coordinates (λ _p = 34°S,L _p =108°E) are strikingly close to those of the Deccan Traps to the north. Whole rock K-Ar ages of these dykes ranging between 69 and 84 Ma are also similar to the range of K-Ar ages of the Deccan basalts. The chemical, palaeomagnetic and temporal coherence between the dykes and the Deccan basalts indicate that they may indeed be tectonically related events.     

The origin ofBe in island-arc volcanic rocks

The presence of cosmogenic¹⁰Be (t_1/2 = 1.5 × 10⁶ y) in island-arc volcanic rocks has been interpreted as indicating that sediments are subducted to the depths of island-arc magma genesis [1,2]. We have measured¹⁰Be and⁹Be (the stable common isotope) in phenocryst and groundmass fractions separated from four Aleutian volcanic rocks.¹⁰Be and⁹Be covary linearly in three of the rocks proving that the¹⁰Be was incorporated prior to the formation of phenocrysts. In the other rock¹⁰Be and⁹Be do not covary; the lack of covariation indicates either that the rock incorporated¹⁰Be during weathering or that⁹Be-rich xenocrysts were incorporated by mechanical mixing. Our results strongly support the hypothesis of Brown et al. [1] and Tera et al. [2] that sediments containing¹⁰Be are an integral part of island-arc magmatic systems. As we cannot identify the depth at which the¹⁰Be was incorporated we still cannot completely rule out the possibility of assimilation of sediments or altered crust near the Earth's surface as a source of¹⁰Be.     

Earthquake analysis of a class of torsionally-coupled buildings

An effective procedure is summarized without derivation for estimating the maximum response of a class of torsionally-coupled, multi-storey buildings due to earthquake ground motion characterized by response spectra. The analysis procedure is shown to be efficient and to provide insight into torsional coupling effects because the maximum response of such a torsionally-coupled, N-storey building in its njth mode of vibration is determined exactly by analysing (i) the response in the jth vibration mode (j = 1,2, N) of the corresponding torsionally-uncoupled, N-storey system; and (ii) the response in the nth vibration mode (n = 1, 2 for a one-way symmetric plan) of an associated torsionally-coupled, one-storey system. It is also demonstrated that an earlier, simpler approach in which the total (considering all vibration modes) response of the building is determined from the total response of the two simpler systems is strictly valid only under restrictive conditions, which are identified, but the simpler approach leads to results that are accurate to a useful degree.     

The global-average production rate ofBe

Precipitation collected in continuously open containers for about a year at seven sites around the United States was analyzed for¹⁰Be,⁹⁰Sr,²¹⁰Pb and²³⁸U. Based on these data and long-term precipitation,⁹⁰Sr and²¹⁰Pb delivery patterns, the stratospheric, tropospheric and recycled¹⁰Be components in the collections were estimated and the global¹⁰Be production rate was assessed. Single station production rate estimates range from 0.52 × 10⁶ atoms cm⁻² yr⁻¹ to 2.64 × 10⁶ atoms cm⁻² yr⁻¹. The mean value is 1.21 × 10⁶ atoms cm⁻² yr⁻¹ with a standard error of 0.26 × 10⁶ atoms cm⁻² yr⁻¹.     

Flood inundation mapping in a part of Mahanadi river basin

Man has had to live with floods since the very inception of his existence. Fury of flood causes heavy damages to both life and property. Accurate flood inundation data is one of the essential requirements for effective management of flood problem. Remote Sensing methods are well suited for acquiring flood inundation data because of synoptic, repetitive coverage of the satellite data. This paper briefs on an attempt to map flood inundated areas in a part of Mahanadi river basin using remote sensing data.     

Computer simulation and modelling of mechanical properties of particulates

The mechanical properties of particulate systems are studied from a micromechanics point of view. Two approaches, namely, computer simulation and micro-structural continuum modelling are used. The computer simulation method is used to study the uniformity of the strain field and effect of particle rotations. These results are then used to evaluate the applicability of the micro-structural continuum model. Potential applications of the micro-structural continuum model in the study of mechanical properties of soils are discussed.