Managing migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion: Regulation,extra‐legal relation and extortion

One major aim of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) integration programme, supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is to foster regional ‘community’ for sharing resources, people and financial flows. This ‘community’ is the target of both economic growth and poverty reduction. The emphasis on ‘community’ in the ADB's mushrooming quantity of documents raises important questions about what kinds of people are included, in what roles and with what kinds of support and protection. This paper explores these questions in relation to the political economy of regulating ethnic migrants from Myanmar working in Thailand. This paper argues that extra‐legal relations between migrants and state/para‐state agents constitute a crucial part of regulation. In transferring the regulation of migration to the national scale, the ADB inadvertently reinforces national differences between Thais and cross‐border people. Additionally, the complicated and fluctuating implementation of national regulations in both countries leaves migrants subject to violence and extortion from state and quasi‐state agents in Thailand. This paper shows that the dynamics of global capitalism require ‘deportable labour’ supplied by ethnic migrants who are included in the GMS community as the most invisible, vulnerable and exploited members.     

The validity of the monocentric city model in a polycentric age: US metropolitan areas in 1990, 2000 and 2010

In this article, we use local indicators of spatial association (LISA) and other spatial analysis techniques to analyze the distribution of centers with high employment density within metropolitan areas. We examine the 359 metropolitan areas across the United States at three points in time (1990, 2000, and 2010) to provide a spatio-temporal panoramic of urban spatial structure. Our analysis highlights three key findings. (1) The monocentric structure persists in a majority of metropolitan areas: 56.5% in 1990, 64.1% in 2000, and 57.7% in 2010. (2) The pattern of employment centers remains stable for most metropolitan areas: the number of centers remained the same for 74.9% of metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2000 and for 85.2% between 2000 and 2010. (3) Compared with monocentric metropolitan areas, polycentric metros are larger and more dense, with higher per-capita incomes and lower poverty rates.     

Metropolitan growth and the mobility and immobility of skilled and creative couples across the life course

The human capital and creative class hypotheses argue that the agglomeration of skilled and creative people is key to economic growth. Migration is assumed to play an important role in forming these agglomerations. However, the results of this study indicate that while younger cohorts of skilled and creative individuals are highly mobile, skilled and creative couples are highly immobile. This research hypothesizes that it is these relatively immobile skilled and creative couples that are behind the link between urban growth and concentrations of skill and creativity. Indeed, this analysis finds a strong empirical link between concentrations of skilled couples, but not creative class couples, and economic growth. Public policies designed to increase the size of the skilled population should be directed at retaining younger cohorts long enough for them to develop the local networks upon which spillover effects rely.     

A constant key length coding scheme for linear quadtrees

ABSTRACT

Although the linear quadtree is popular in both image processing and GIS, most linear quadtree coding methods need in representation a bit length that is proportional to the resolution of images; the proportionality factor is replaced with a constant bit length that induces a more compact linear quadtree. We propose a linear quadtree coding scheme named constant key length quadtree coding (CKQC) that has advantages of easy implementation and decreased memory requirements. The proposed CKQC scheme is developed on the bases of node classification, order of traversal with breadth first and the Morton sequence. The major characteristic is to apply a constant bit length to construct quaternary codes. The bit length of each quaternary code is constant, either four or eight bits, no matter what the resolution of a raster image. In terms of memory space required and duration complexities, the overall performance is analyzed and compared with other methods to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed CKQC scheme. Several experimental results validate the applicability of the proposed scheme.     

Clustering of temporal event processes

A temporal point process is a sequence of points, each representing the occurrence time of an event. Each temporal point process is related to the behavior of an entity. As a result, clustering of temporal point processes can help differentiate between entities, thereby revealing patterns of behaviors. This study proposes a hierarchical cluster method for clustering temporal point processes based on the discrete Fréchet (DF) distance. The DF cluster method is divided into four steps: (1) constructing a DF similarity matrix between temporal point processes; (2) constructing a complete linkage hierarchical tree based on the DF similarity matrix; (3) clustering the point processes with a threshold determined by locating the local maxima on the curve of the pseudo-F statistic (an index which measures the separability between clusters and the compactness in clusters); and (4) identifying inner patterns for each cluster formed by a series of dense intervals, each of which contains at least one event of all processes of the cluster. The contributions of the article are: (1) the proposed DF cluster method can cluster temporal point processes into different groups and (2) more importantly, it can identify the inner pattern of each cluster. Two synthetic data sets were created to illustrate the DF distance between temporal point process clusters (the first data set) and validate the proposed DF cluster method (the second data set), respectively. An experiment and a comparison with a method based on dynamic time warping show that DF cluster successfully identifies the preconfigured patterns in the second synthetic data set. The cluster method was then applied to a population migration history data set for the Northern Plains of the United States, revealing some interesting population migration patterns.     

地震尺度下碳酸盐岩储层的岩石物理建模方法(英文)

碳酸盐岩油藏的强非均质性以及孔隙结构的复杂性,使得作为连接油藏参数与地震参数重要桥梁的岩石物理模型,以及作为油藏预测和定量表征最有效工具的流体替换成为岩石物理建模的难点与重点。在碳酸盐岩储层复杂孔隙结构与地震尺度下碳酸盐岩储层非均质性分析基础上,研究采用岩石网格化方法,将地震尺度下非均质碳酸盐岩储层岩石划分为具有独立岩石参数的均质岩石子体,根据岩石孔隙成因与结构特征采用不同岩石物理模型分步计算岩石子块干岩石弹性模量,并根据不同孔隙连通性进行流体替换,计算饱和不同流体岩石弹性模量。基于计算的岩石子块弹性模量,采用Hashin-Shtrikman-Walpole弹性边界计算理论方法实现地震尺度下碳酸盐岩储层弹性参数计算。通过对含有不同类型孔隙组合碳酸盐岩储层模型的弹性模量进行计算与分析,明确不同孔隙对岩石弹性参数的影响特征,模拟分析结果与实际资料认识一致。     

A review of continental scale hydrological models and their suitability for drought forecasting in (sub-Saharan) Africa

The aim of this review is to provide a basis for selecting a suitable hydrological model, or combination of models, for hydrological drought forecasting in Africa at different temporal and spatial scales; for example short and medium range (1–10 days or monthly) forecasts at medium to large river basin scales or seasonal forecasts at the Pan-African scale. Several global hydrological models are currently available with different levels of complexity and data requirements. However, most of these models are likely to fail to properly represent the water balance components that are particularly relevant in arid and semi-arid basins in sub-Saharan Africa. This review critically looks at weaknesses and strengths in the representation of different hydrological processes and fluxes of each model. The major criteria used for assessing the suitability of the models are (1) the representation of the processes that are most relevant for simulating drought conditions, such as interception, evaporation, surface water-groundwater interactions in wetland areas and flood plains and soil moisture dynamics; (2) the capability of the model to be downscaled from a continental scale to a large river basin scale model; and (3) the applicability of the model to be used operationally for drought early warning, given the data availability of the region. This review provides a framework for selecting models for hydrological drought forecasting, conditional on spatial scale, data availability and end-user forecast requirements. Among 16 well known hydrological and land surface models selected for this review, PCR-GLOBWB, GWAVA, HTESSEL, LISFLOOD and SWAT show higher potential and suitability for hydrological drought forecasting in Africa based on the criteria used in this evaluation.     

库车坳陷复杂高陡构造地震成像研究

复杂构造地震成像主要取决于叠前地震数据品质、偏移速度可靠性和偏移算子成像精度. 库车坳陷异常复杂的近地表条件导致极低信噪比的地震采集数据. 该区逆冲推覆高陡构造刺穿盐体大面积分布, 盐层厚度变化大、顶底面形态复杂, 盐下断裂带破碎、小断块发育, 形成异常复杂的地震成像问题. 本文重点研究三个关键环节:(1)精细的叠前地震预处理研究: 根据该区地震地质复杂性和地震资料特征, 采用一些新的方法技术和技术组合从振幅与时移的大、中、小尺度变化三个层次来解决资料信噪比问题, 重建深部反射信号; (2)三级偏移速度分析研究:利用库车坳陷盐刺穿逆冲推覆构造建模理论及变速成图配套技术解决叠前时间偏移速度场时深转换问题,利用井约束低频速度地震迭代反演技术解决连井层速度场与偏移速度场的融合问题,实现从DMO速度分析、叠前时间偏移速度分析到叠前深度偏移速度分析的有机衔接,建立拓扑结构相对保持的叠前深度偏移速度模型;(3)基于退化Fourier偏移算子的半解析波动方程叠前时间和深度偏移研究, 极大地改善了地震偏移过程中高波数波的成像问题. 通过对库车坳陷大北、博孜、却勒、西秋4和西秋10等复杂高陡构造的叠前时间和深度偏移地震成像处理,取得了较好的应用效果.     

TTI介质qP波逆时偏移中伪横波噪声压制方法

在对地下复杂构造介质,特别是盐丘侧翼及岩下区域进行成像时,相对于传统的各向同性逆时偏移和VTI逆时偏移,具有倾斜对称轴的TTI逆时偏移成像效果最优.不仅反射同相轴更加的连续,而且能量得到了更好的聚焦.传统的各向异性介质全弹性波RTM的计算量大且计算效率低.由于目前仍以纵波勘探为主,因此TTI逆时偏移qP波波动方程的选取显得尤为重要.为了提高计算效率,采用将沿着对称轴方向的横波速度设为零的方法,简化得到qP波波动方程.然而,这样会引入一种严重影响成像效果的低速度、低振幅的qSV波人为干扰.本文建立了qP波方程的完全匹配层控制方程,而后借助于辅助波场采用一种高效的压制伪横波噪声传播的方法,通过模型测试验证了该方法的有效性.     

Predicting the displacement of triple pendulum™ bearings in a full‐scale shaking experiment using a three‐dimensional element

The accuracy of a series spring model to predict the peak displacement and displacement history of Triple Pendulum? (TP) bearings in a strongly shaken, full‐scale building is evaluated in this paper. The series spring model was implemented as a self‐contained three‐dimensional TP bearing element in OpenSees and is now available for general use. The TP bearing element contains the option for constant friction or a generalized friction model that accounts for the effect of instantaneous velocity and compression load on the friction coefficient. Comparison between numerical simulation and experimental data of a five‐story steel moment frame building shows that the peak displacement of isolation system can generally be predicted with confidence using a constant friction coefficient model. The friction coefficient model accounting for the effect of axial load and velocity leads to minor improvement over the constant friction coefficient models in some cases. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.