Academic literature on the topic 'American literature, minority authors'

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on minority-owned commercial banks in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examine performance differences between African-American (AA) commercial banks and other minority (OM)-owned banks. Also, the authors compare AA bank performance with that of their peer-group banking institutions. Findings – Employing data both before and after the recessionary period of 2008-2009, the authors find significant performance differences between minority ownership categories. For example, prior to 2008, AA banks held a significant advantage over OM-owned banks in net interest income as a percentage of average assets. This competitive advantage was somewhat offset by relatively weak loan portfolios and failure to contain costs. The 2008 crisis served to exacerbate the negatives of African-American banks while their positive differences essentially disappeared. Originality/value – The focus is different than the previous studies on minority-owned banks. The authors are especially interested in how AA banks have fared – relative to banking industry peer institutions, but also, relative to OM-owned banks.

The present study contextualizes how symbolism is employed by writers of ethnically minority in the United States as an avenue of their agency and criticism against the dominant white perspective. The history of American minorities is marred with legacy of racial discrimination and segregation which highlights the inequality of race. Literature as a cultural production captures the experiences of the marginalized and the use of symbolism is intended to transform themes into the field of aesthetics. This study is a qualitative research which is conducted through the post-nationalist American Studies framework in order to focus on the minorities’ experience instead of the Anglo-Saxon outlook. The object of the study is three playscripts written from authors from Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American to emphasize how discrimination is faced by multi-ethnic. The finding suggests how symbolism in these literary works intends to counter the stereotypical representation of Mexican-American, aligns with the passive resistance of the Civil Right Movement and subvert binary opposition of East and West which exoticizing the East. Keywords : minority literature in the U.S , symbolism, post-national

Terrorist (2006) by John Updike has been classified within the post-9/11 novel genre where many American authors depict their counter-narratives to the horrific event of 9/11. The novel revolves around the life of a young teenager named Ahmad and his religious mentor, Shaikh Rashid, who are accused as terrorists. This study problematises the issue of the identity of Muslim characters in facing oppression using the concept of cultural imperialism by Iris Marion Young (1990), focussing on the social treatment of Muslim minority characters in America perceived as inferior to the entire American cultural mainstream. The objective of this study then is to examine the author’s depictions of the American society as the cultural imperialism persecuting Muslim characters. The findings highlight the Muslim characters’ inability to emulate the prevailing American cultural imperialism which oppresses them. As such, the study’s originality lies in the interpretation of the aversive affinity between Muslim minority groups and American cultural imperialism from a social perspective. Thus, the social aspects of social oppression and the American cultural imperialism will be the core of the study’s novelty regarding the view of Muslims in America in the years ensuing the events of 9/11.

In literary theory, the works of (ethnic) minority authors–and similarly, the works of authors dealing with minorities–are often referred to as “assimilation narrative.” This term tends to suggest that minority authors, who write in the language of their country, seek a place in society through assimilation. Assimilation, however, means melting up in the majority nation by adopting all the values, customs and way of life characteristic of the majority, and abandoning, leaving behind, giving up the original traditional values, ethics, lifestyle, religion etc. of the minority. Assimilation means disappearing without a trace, continuing life as a new person, with new values, language, a whole set of new cultural assets. In this paper an effort is made to show that this is in fact not what many of the ethnic minority writers look for, so the term assimilation narrative is in many, although certainly not all, the cases, erroneuosly applied. It is justified to make a distinction between assimilation and integration narratives, as the two are not the same. In the paper examples are provided from Hispanic-American literature (Mexican-American, Puerto Rican and Dominican), across a range of genres from prose through drama to poetry, and also, examples are discussed when the author does in fact seek assimilation, as well as stories in which neither assimilation, nor integration is successful.

The purpose of this article is to provide a review of research and theory focusing on factors that have been cited as contributing to the retention and graduation of African-American students attending predominantly White institutions. The authors use recommendations cited in the literature to develop a model for predominantly White institutions to provide African-American students with positive learning experiences. While African-American students are the primary focus of this discussion, the model can be adapted to meet the needs of other minority students in higher education.

Investigating the relationship between immigration, middleman minority status, transnationalism, and U.S. foreign trade, the authors assembled a census-based data file that contains aggregate-level variables for 88 foreign-born groups by national origin between 1980 and 1990. They regressed immigrant characteristics and immigration volume upon time-lagged import/export statistics from the same 88 nations between 1985 and 1995. Results show the independent influence on exports of immigrant entrepreneurship, transnationalism, and middleman minority status. But these variables, exhaustively derived from the existing literature, had no effect on U.S. imports; they only affected exports. The authors propose that the discrepancy between imports and exports arises because of the dominance of English as a world business language. In this situation, foreigners need no help from immigrants when they export to the United States; but native-born, monolingual Americans need the help of bicultural immigrants when they export. The empirical results suggest that immigrant entrepreneurs enhance the United States' exports and thus reduce the United States' balance of payments deficit.

Introduction: Large disparities exist in smoking rates during pregnancy by racial/ethnic status. Aims: The current review examined controlled studies that predominantly included racial/ethnic-minority pregnant smokers for providing smoking cessation treatment. Methods: Two authors independently conducted the literature searches in the standard databases using a combination of the keywords with minority, pregnancy, smoking and cessation identifiers. Results: The searches identified nine articles that met the inclusion criteria. Only two studies exclusively targeted specific minority groups. Most of them provided some form of brief smoking cessation counselling, with two combining with incentives and one combining with pharmacotherapy. Two studies provided intensive cognitive interventions. Pregnant smokers of American Indian or Alaska Native, Hispanic subgroups, and Asian or Pacific Islander are under-studied. Conclusions: Future studies to treat minority pregnant smokers could target under-studied minority groups and may need to directly and intensely target smoking behaviour, address cultural and psychosocial issues in an individualised and comprehensive manner, and analyse the cost-benefit of an intervention.

We assess the rate of replication for empirical papers in the 2010 American Economic Review. Across 70 empirical papers, we find that 29 percent have 1 or more citation that partially replicates the original result. While only a minority of papers has a published replication, a majority (60 percent) have either a replication, robustness test, or an extension. Surveying authors within the literature, we find substantial uncertainty over the number of extant replications.

Over the past three decades, many higher education scholars have engaged in efforts to counter the stereotype that Asian Americans achieve universal and unparalleled academic success. While most of these scholars adopt an anti-oppression approach, some researchers have claimed that this literature reinforces oppressive deficit paradigms. To understand this conflict in existing literature, the current authors utilize an anti-imperialistic approach to analyze scholarship on the model minority myth. The current analysis reveals little evidence that research on the myth reinforced hegemonic deficit thinking. Instead, authors find that scholars largely utilized complex and multifaceted antideficit approaches, challenged dominant essentialist model minority frames, engaged in strategic (anti-)essentialism to navigate complex pan-racial contexts, and reframed the myth to achieve diverse purposes that speak to different audiences. Several implications for conducting critiques of literature reviews and future research on the myth are discussed.

Views of racial identity have shifted greatly throughout American history and are a crucial part of American culture. The 1930s was an era in which national policies redefined what it meant to be “white”, and the great depression impacted the poor disproportionally. This paper explores the development of racial identity in the 1930s by focusing on three particular literary works from this time in the United States using both textual analysis and qualitative analysis. By analyzing these three novels, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, it can be found that not only the larger social and economic background of the time affected and even created these works, but authors’ personal experiences played important roles. The proportion of the effect of the social environment to the effect of unique personal circumstances in these novels varies greatly—it can be found that while The Grapes of Wrath can almost be entirely attributed to what happened in real life (thus the use and development of realism), Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Good Earth have personal experiences integrated into the lines that have close connections to the author’s personal identity as a member of a certain cultural group. These differences might stem from the difference between being in the majority or minority racially.

In her novel Arabian Jazz, Diana Abu-Jaber attempts to explore the Arab American identity as something new; as an identity that exists related to, but ultimately separate from, the Arab and American identities from which it was originally created. This thesis discusses the emergence of the depiction of the Arab American female identity in the novel, examining how the characters explore issues of race, class, imperialism, and sex within both the Arab and the American cultures as those issues shape female identity. The thesis also presents a rhetorical analysis of the speeches that allow the characters a voice with respect to how identity is shaped and reshaped throughout the novel.

There are many different doorways into the world of book publishing and it can be challenging, but there are choices that can make it easier. Aspiring publishers often have a hard time breaking into this world because they have no guide. This thesis will be a guide to traversing the different avenues into the world of publishing. Prospective publishers, editors, and writers will be provided with a landscape of what it’s like to work in book publishing. It will also cover the two different ways that people become publishers, an overview of the basic requirements that publishing houses look for in potential employees, and the basic process of what publishers do.

A travers une étude interculturelle détaillée et comparée de la production théâtrale minoritaire canadienne et américaine, ma thèse cherche à mettre en lumière les les apports thématiques et esthétiques du théâtre multi-ethnicque nord-américain contemporain à la tradition anglo-américaine du 20ème siècle. Les communautés asiatiques, africaines et aborigènes sont retenues comme poste d'observation privilégié de l'expression esthétique de la condition multiculturelle postcoloniale dans le théâtre nord-américain de la période allant de 1972 à nos jours. Sur base d'un corpus de pièces de théâtre, ma recherche m'a permis de redéfinir les grandes articulations des notions d'hybridité, d'identité et de communauté/nation postcoloniale.<p><p>Through a detailed cross-cultural approach of the English Canadian and American minority theatrical production, my thesis aims to identify the thematic and aesthetic contributions of multi-ethnic North American drama to the Anglo-American tradition of the 20th century. My study examines North American drama from the vantage points of African, Asian, and Native communities from 1972 until today. Relying on a number of case studies, my research opened up new avenues for rethinking the notions of hybridity and identity in relation to the postcolonial community/nation. <p><br>Doctorat en Langues et lettres<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The works of John Milton Oskison, Cherokee writer, originally published in popular magazines, have been out of print since the 1920s. Oskison's stories have often been dismissed as sentimental and lacking a Native American focus; a more diligent reading, however, shows subtle and complex Native American motifs and concerns. John Oskison was born in Indian Territory in 1874, attended Willie Halsell College, Stanford and Harvard Universities, and then began to write for major New York magazines. It was not necessarily popular nor politically advantageous at that time to be known as Indian, especially if one wished to influence public opinion as a journalist. Oskison's Native American point of view and sympathy are strongly coded in the text, embedded in narrative displacements and rhetorical silences. His are "writerly" texts; at the most superficial level readers may see only populist and assimilationist "messages," but the narrative complexities belie such easy readings. Oskison grappled with the issues of being a highly educated mixed-blood trying to defend a tribal heritage while speaking in the most public arenas. This dissertation is a critical examination of the way this struggle manifests itself in his literary production.

The purpose of this thesis is to problematize the relationship between suicide and the author. On the basis of a deconstructive approach, it will study the effect of the self-inflicted death of the writer, namely the emergence of a dual figure, the "suicide-author". To deconstruct the suicide-author, this thesis will combine theoretical issues with examples taken from authors who killed themselves, including texts written by the suicides and by their survivors. Such texts will be referred to as "memorial texts" and will constitute a key element in the deconstruction of the figure of the author, namely his/her "posthumous persona". The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I, comprising the first three chapters, will propose an anti-teleological theorizing of suicide, followed by a study of the role of memorial texts in the deconstruction of the figure of the suicide author and a problematizing of Roland Barthes's concept of the "death of the author" in the context of the multiplicity of deaths of the suicide-author. In Chapter Two, the study of memorial texts will be developed in conjunction with analysis of selected examples, such as Yukio Mishima, Mario de Sa-Carneiro, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergei Esenin, Raymond Roussel, Walter Benjamin, Anne Sexton, and Virginia Woolf. Also divided into three chapters, Part II is dedicated to an extended analysis of the thesis' case study, namely Sylvia Plath. Rather than focusing on Plath's suicide as an individual unique case, the second part aims at extending and complementing the discussion of the issues previously proposed. Of particular interest is the magnifying of such issues offered by the mythical aura of the Plath case. Chapter Four deals with the "voice of the other", the deconstruction of Plath's image by the living, including both those who had known her in person and the so called "anonymous witnesses" to her suicide, namely critics, journalists, et al. Chapter Five focuses on the "voice of the deceased", as emanating from Plath's writings. Finally, Chapter Six analyses the Plath-Hughes dialogue, with attention to Hughes's particular role in the deconstruction of her posthumous persona.

Adaptations of works have the potential to bring their subject matter to a new audience. This thesis explores the adaptation of Russian fairy tales into novels by authors Orson Scott Card and Joy Preble by looking at how they present Russian fairy tales, folkloric figures, and fairy tale structure to an American audience.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2003.<br>Thesis research directed by: English Language and Literature. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

On the long road towards the abolition of the slave trade and enslavement, European and American books for children, published in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, sought to engage their intended young readers in the debate. In this chapter I counterpoint fictional characterizations of the enslaved with those in autobiographical accounts and in newspaper fugitive slave advertisements. The children’s books of the time depicted the enslaved as objects of pity and in need of rescuing. That positioned them as ideal subjects for authors attempting to cultivate empathy and sensibility in their young readers. Actual enslaved people told a different story, recording both the brutality and savagery of enslavers and their own sustained resistance to enslavement.

While the model minority stereotype depicts Asian Americans as having somehow “made it” in American society, rarely does the discourse involve Asian American athletes. The purpose of this chapter is to delineate how race and the model minority myth were an integral part of the media coverage and affected perceptions of the phenomenon known colloquially as “Linsanity,” which charted the unprecedented rise of Jeremy Lin. In 2012, Jeremy Lin became one of the most famous players in the NBA. By exploring the popular press coverage of this event, fueled by the Internet and social media, the intersection of the model minority myth and athletics are investigated. Through a combination of media critique and analysis, narrative, psychological literature, and coverage of other Asian and Asian American athletes, the authors illustrate how racism was a prominent factor and a significant part of the everyday discourse that permeated the coverage of Jeremy Lin.

Abstract How should we conceive of the relationship between science and religion? We often think of this as a theoretical question, pondered in the dispassionate halls of academia. However, the way in which we conceptualize this relationship in the public sphere also impacts the working lives of scientists, as well as the lived experience of laypeople and the concrete decisions they make. The author of this chapter argues that American lay Christians, as well as American laypeople more generally, view the relationship between science and religion as one of conflict. By contrast, conflict is a minority view in the academic literature on science and religion, where most authors defend a harmonious relationship (such as independence, dialogue, and integration). The author places the conflict view in a historical and contemporary sociological context and argues that the disconnect between the academic literature and public perception should lead us to reflect on the social role of the science and religion debate.

The United States produced a number of early utopian visions of suburban dispersal, demonstrating that Americans had inherited some of the anti-urban tendencies of their British forebears. An early feminist science-fiction novel by Mary Griffith insisted that cities could be great, but she was decidedly in the minority. After consuming British science fiction in the 1870s, American authors dominated utopian literature in the 1880s, many providing it with new urgency by engaging head-on with the rise of the industrial corporation. These writers were a heterogeneous bunch—ranging from math teachers to Spiritualist bohemians—but while they were often politically opposed to one another, they were consistent in their concept of utopia: life in large, complex cities such as New York or Boston was maddening, and a new world of glass, metal, synthetic stone, whirring machines, and, most importantly, endless greenery, needed to rise in place of the terrible city.

An image has long haunted the study of American culture. It limits our thought, shapes our values. We speak of the “mainstream,” and we imply by that term the existence of other work, minor rills and branches. In prose, the writing of men like Franklin, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Eliot, Hemingway, Faulkner, Bellow—to name some of the central figures—constituted the “mainstream.” Others—writers of color, most women writers, “regional” or “ethnic” male and female authors—might, we said, be assimilated into the mainstream, though probably they would continue to constitute tributaries, interesting and often sparkling, but finally of less importance. They would, we tacitly assumed, be judged by the standards and aesthetic categories we had developed for the canonical writers. At best, we acknowledged that including in the canon writers like Wharton, Cather, Chopin, and Ellison might change somewhat our definition of the mainstream, but the intellectual model imposed by that mainstream image, this Great River theory of American letters, has persisted even among mildly revisionist critics. Such critics have continued to focus on a severely limited canon of “major” writers based on historical and aesthetic categories from this slightly augmented mainstream. The problem we face is that the model itself is fundamentally misleading. The United States is a heterogeneous society whose cultures, while they overlap in significant respects, also differ in critical ways. A normative model presents those variations from the mainstream as abnormal, deviant, lesser, perhaps ultimately unimportant. That kind of standard is no more helpful in the study of culture than is a model, in the study of gender differences, in which the male is considered the norm, or than are paradigms, in the study of minority or ethnic social organization and behavior based on Anglo-American society. What we need, rather, is to pose a comparativist model for the study of American literature. It is true that few branches of academe in the United States have been so self-consciously indifferent to comparative study as has been the field we call “American literature.”

A text can travel between languages and cultures through translation, but this “travel” can be rather complicated when the text not only goes, but goes back to the culture of origin. This can happen when the text is about the culture of the target language. Translating Memoir of Geisha by Arthur Golden (1997) into Japanese can be one example. Due to the expected level of readers’ cultural knowledge, the translator will have to use some different translation strategies compared to when the text is translated into other languages. This “travel” of the text can be even more complicated if the author’s first language or original cultural background is different from the language in which s/he writes the text – for example, an author whose first language is Japanese, but writing his/her text in English, about stories that take place in Japan – and then the text is translated into Japanese by a translator, to be published in Japan. This is the case of Kyoko Mori, a Japanese-American writer who had grown up in Japan until she moved to U.S. as an adult. Her first novel, Shizuko’s Daughter was published in U.S. in 1993. It is autobiographical, and therefore the story takes place in Japan, with all its personages being Japanese. The novel was translated by Makiko Ikeda and published in Japan in 1995. Four of Mori’s novels are published in Japan, but the author never translated her own novels into Japanese. This happened before the cross-border literature boom in Japan and may be considered as its precursor. In the present study, the “travel” of this text will be studied from two aspects – exoticisation and translation. The novel belongs to the minority literature in U.S., and its Japanese aspects seem to be emphasized in its reading (in its cover or in book reviews), whereas in Japan, its publication was called “Reimported Japanese literature”, and the fact it was written in English attracted great attention. It was an exoticisation from both ends. As for the translation, source and target texts will be studied in detail, to identify the cases of change, addition (of extra information), omission, correction of culturally wrong information (if any) and their motives will be considered. Unnatural expressions and translationese will also be studied, considering if they can be avoided when the first language of the author is Japanese.

The Tay people are an ethnic minority of Vietnam. Tay literature has many unique facets with relevance to cultural identity. It plays an important part in the diversity and richness of Vietnamese literature. In this study, Tay literature in Vietnam is analyzed through a cultural perspective, by placing Tay literature in its development from its birth to the present, together with the formation of the ethnic group, and historical and cultural conditions, focusing on the typical customs of the Tay people in Vietnam. The researcher examines Tay literature through poems of Nôm Tày, through the works of some prominent authors, such as Vi Hong, Cao Duy Son, in the Cao Bang province of Vietnam. Cao Bang is home to many Tay ethnic people and many typical Tay authors. The research also locates individual contributions of those authors and their works in terms of artistic language use and cultural symbolic features of the Tay people. In terms of art language, the article isolates the unique use of Nôm Tay characters to compose stories which affect the traditional Tay luon, sli, and so forth, and hence the use of language that influences poetry and proverbs of Tay people in the story of Vi Hong, Cao Duy Son. Assuming a symbolic framework, the article examines the symbols of birds and flowers in Nôm Tay poetry and the composition of Vi Hong, Cao Duy Son, so to point out the uniqueness of the Tay identity. The above research issue is necessary to help us better appreciate the cultural values preserved in Tay literature, thereby, affirming the unique cultural identity of the Tay people and planning to preserve and develop these unique cultural features from which emerges the risk of falling into oblivion in modern social life in Vietnam. In addition, this is also a research direction that can be extended to Thai, Mong, Dao, etc, ethnic minorities in Vietnam.

[This Proceedings paper was revised and published in the 2019 issue of the journal Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, Volume 16] Aim/Purpose: Little is known of the cultural competence or leadership styles of a minority owned newspaper. This autoethnography serves to benchmark one early 1990s example. Background: I focused on a series of flashbacks to observe an African American weekly newspaper editor-in-chief for whom I reported to 25 years ago. In my reflections I sought to answer these questions: How do minorities in entrepreneurial organizations view their own identity, their cultural competence? What degree of this perception is conveyed fairly and equitably in the community they serve? Methodology: Autoethnography using both flashbacks and article artifacts applied to the leadership of an early 1990s African American weekly newspaper. Contribution: Since a literature gap of minority newspaper cultural competence examples is apparent, this observation can serve as a benchmark to springboard off older studies like that of Barbarin (1978) and that by examining the leadership styles and editorial authenticity as noted by The Chicago School of Media Theory (2018), these results can be used for comparison to other such minority owned publications. Findings: By bringing people together, mixing them up, and conducting business any other way than routine helped the Afro-American Gazette, Grand Rapids, proudly display a confidence sense of cultural competence. The result was a potentiating leadership style, and this style positively changed the perception of culture, a social theory change example. Recommendations for Practitioners: For the minority leaders of such publications, this example demonstrates effective use of potentiating leadership to positively change the perception of the quality of such minority owned newspapers. Recommendations for Researchers: Such an autoethnography could be used by others to help document other examples of cultural competence in other minority owned newspapers. Impact on Society: The overall impact shows that leadership at such minority owned publications can influence the community into a positive social change example. Future Research: Research in the areas of culture competence, leadership, within minority owned newspapers as well as other minority alternative publications and websites can be observed with a focus on what works right as well as examples that might show little social change model influence. The suggestion is to conduct the research while employed if possible, instead of relying on flashbacks.

The article deals with satirical tendencies in Swedish literature and cinema of the end of the 20th — beginning of the 21st century. On the example of the book by C.-J. Vallgren “This is for you for a brochure, Mr. Bachmann” and R. Östlund’s paintings “Turist” (“Force Majeure”), “Voluntarily-compulsory”, “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness”, the main problems of Swedish society are analyzed, which are becoming pan-European scale. The paper concludes that both authors consider the most significant problems to be the disappearance of independent thinking, the distortion of ethical principles, the fear of losing personal well-being against the backdrop of growing ethnic and class contradictions in Europe, indicating the beginning of a new socio-political stage in society. Comprehending European double standards, hypocrisy, ostentatious political correctness, the authors testify that European society is turning into a refined capitalist minority that has lost its main value orientation — Christian humanism. The poetics of the literary and cinematographic works of Vallgren and Östlund differ significantly from the methods of their predecessors: modern authors abandon the satirical principles of secondary convention, allowing themselves only slight exaggeration. This testifies to the desire for journalism, documentary depiction, the movement from fiction to non-fiction, to the understanding of the historical context and socio-political perspective.

This paper reviews several statistical problems arising in Naval Engineering that the authors were involved with professionally or at NSWCCD over the past several years. The considered problems relate to statistical uncertainty, characterizing rare events, and ocean modeling, and naturally involve a stochastic component which needs to be accounted for through statistical methods. In statistical uncertainty, for example, one problem consists of constructing confidence intervals for measured quantities of interest (e.g. the variance of a ship motion) when temporal dependence in a signal needs to be taken into account. In characterizing rare events (e.g. ship capsizing or broaching to), a common problem is to estimate their frequency, which can be carried out under the umbrella of the statistical Extreme Value Theory. In ocean modeling, spatiotemporal statistical modeling of significant wave height has attracted much attention, especially in the context of modern treatments of “big data.” The focus throughout this work is on the theoretical underpinnings of these statistical problems, related work in the Statistics literature, and some open future directions.

Private security in Serbia gained importance after the democratic reforms in 2000. The field of private security has been researched from the aspect of legal and security sciences, but not historically. By analyzing the content of available domestic and foreign literature, the authors will try to answer the questions of how and when did the development of private security companies and private security in general begin? What are the roots of private security? What was it like in Western European and North American countries, and what was it like in Serbia? What are the reasons for the emergence of private security? Applying the historical method, the authors conclude that the development of private security was influenced by numerous factors, which can be systematized into two groups: 1) internal (psychological) and 2) external (social) factors. A subjective sense of security is one of the most important internal drivers of human activity. Each person will do everything to maintain their own safety and the safety of their property and family, or to regain their lost security. Social circumstances in some countries have significantly influenced the development of private security. Keywords: private security, Serbia, USA, Western Europe

Composite materials have excellent in-plane mechanical properties. However, they have a low resistance to impact damage. Low-velocity impacts (LVI) produce barely visible impact damage (BVID) on the surface of the laminate but with the potential to produce significant internal damage, such as delamination and matrix cracking. Composite materials' impact damage evaluation still largely relies on experimental results rather than numerical simulations because of the material's multiple damage mechanisms. In an attempt to mitigate cost and time requirements for large-scale experimental studies, there have been significant strides toward enhancing computational simulations to incorporate and predict damage mechanisms observed in composite structures. However, current computational models have limitations in how they capture the impact response and damage spread in laminated composites. The present study compares the predictive capabilities of two commercially available software, ABAQUS and LS-Dyna, to assess their feasibility in capturing the impact response and damage spread on laminated composites. The computational responses will also be compared with the responses obtained experimentally. To the authors' best knowledge, there has not been any report in the literature that compares the predicting capabilities of these two softwares. IM7/977-3 graphite epoxy unidirectional laminates with a 32-ply layup [-45/0/45/90]4S were manufactured according to the ASTM D7136/D7136M-12. Drop weight impact tests were performed in an Instron CEAST 9350. The samples were subjected to LVI energies of 30 J. From each test, the contact force, displacement, velocity, energy and impact duration time were recorded to compare with the predicted responses from the computational models. To evaluate the internal damage area, nondestructive inspection (NDI) was performed on all the samples with X-ray. The objective is to compare the internal damage per layer of each experiment with the internal damage obtained from the ABAQUS and LS-Dyna computational models. For the ABAQUS model, the intralaminar damage (ply failure) model consisted of a continuum damage model, Hashin failure criterion, and a damage evolution model based on equivalent displacement. The interlaminar damage (delamination) was incorporated through a cohesive surface interaction with a bilinear traction-separation law. In the LS-Dyna model, MAT261 Laminated Fracture Daimler-Pinho material card was used as the intralaminar damage model. MAT261 is a continuum damage model with linear softening evolution based on fracture toughness. The interlaminar damage was incorporated through a Tiebreak contact algorithm with a bilinear traction-separation behavior. Preliminary studies have shown that the ABAQUS/Explicit model showed a good correlation with the experimental results in terms of contact force, impact duration time, and displacement. On the other hand, the LS-Dyna MAT261 material model underpredicted the contact force, impact duration time, and displacement. The extreme differences in the LS-Dyna simulation are attributed to MAT261’s algorithm requiring element deletion during the simulation to maintain stability. Therefore, the striker never rebounded and continued penetrating the laminate. Further impact energies will be explored with the ABAQUS computational model. For LS-Dyna, different venues need to be explored in calibration for MAT261’s material model to account for the element deletion’s energy loss or use a different material model.

Abstract The successful deployment and widespread adoption of downhole flow control systems across the industry has extended well life and reduce field development costs. This paper summarizes the evolution of downhole flow control technologies from the simple slickline operated sliding side doors in wells completed in multiple layers, to surface controlled downhole valves with infinitely variable chokes to advanced downhole architecture with sensors that monitor inflow performance and valves that facilitate multi-zone inflow optimization. The paper also identifies challenges for current systems and opportunities for research and development. A comprehensive and chronological history of flow-control equipment design families like Inflow Control Devices (ICD) and Interval Control Valves (ICV) are discussed to depict the evolution of field challenges and appropriate solutions. The lessons learned and best practices and compiled from literature review, input from subject matter experts and from the authors’ own experienceThe paper reviews the important downhole sensors that are deployed along with the tubing to continuously monitor well performance. Selected system architectures that incorporate a combination of one or more of the above technologies are discussed with an evaluation of their merits and demerits. Through recent noticeable advancements in material science and sensing capabilities in oil and gas industry, designing a well completion is even more challenging. The advent of new and emerging completion technologies and growing computing power ratifies that the digital oilfield age is already in motion. Downhole surveillance through integrated sensors and gauges, large data analytics combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence has made a future for data-driven autonomous dynamic reservoir optimization possible. However, there needs to be a balance between feature additions and value additions to keep focus on the pivotal goal of producing oil at the lowest cost per barrel out of the ground. In addition, there should be an emphasis on total cost of ownership, reliability, and safety of equipment, especially as the complexity in the technologies increases. This is best accomplished through industry standards such as the American Petroleum Institute (API) and Advanced Well Equipment Standards (AWES), which serve as yardsticks for measuring the quality, reliability, and safety of new technology designs. While advanced completion technology is created to enhance oil recovery, it is often more complex in design and field installation and comes at a higher cost than existing field-proven technologies. The authors introduce classification methods for such technologies based on function, feature and definition. The effort is to clarify the plethora of terminologies flooding the Oil field dictionary such as Autonomous, Automated, Active, Passive etc. This paper presents the pros and cons of existing and emerging flow control integrated technologies using a comparative matrix based on a total cost, perceived risk and realized value perspective, emphasizing reliability and a fit-for-purpose application approach. This can serve as a selection criterion guide to reservoir and production professionals.

Aim/Purpose: This paper provides the results of the preliminary analysis of the findings of an ongoing study that seeks to examine the social media use, cultural and political awareness, civic engagement, issue prioritization, and social activism of Gen Z students enrolled at four different institutional types located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The aim of this study is to look at the group as a whole as well as compare findings across populations. The institutional types under consideration include a mid-sized majority serving or otherwise referred to as a traditionally white institution (TWI) located in a small coastal city on the Atlantic Ocean, a small Historically Black University (HBCU) located in a rural area, a large community college located in a county that is a mixture of rural and suburban and which sits on the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and graduating high school students enrolled in career and technical education (CTE) programs in a large urban area. This exploration is purposed to examine the behaviors and expectations of Gen Z students within a representative American region during a time of tremendous turmoil and civil unrest in the United States. Background: Over 74 million strong, Gen Z makes up almost one-quarter of the U.S. population. They already outnumber any current living generation and are the first true digital natives. Born after 1996 and through 2012, they are known for their short attention spans and heightened ability to multi-task. Raised in the age of the smart phone, they have been tethered to digital devices from a young age with most having the preponderance of their childhood milestones commemorated online. Often called Zoomers, they are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation and are on track to be the most well-educated generation in history. Gen Zers in the United States have been found in the research to be progressive and pro-government and viewing increasing racial and ethnic diversity as positive change. Finally, they are less likely to hold xenophobic beliefs such as the notion of American exceptionalism and superiority that have been popular with by prior generations. The United States has been in a period of social and civil unrest in recent years with concerns over systematic racism, rampant inequalities, political polarization, xenophobia, police violence, sexual assault and harassment, and the growing epidemic of gun violence. Anxieties stirred by the COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these issues resulting in a powder keg explosion occurring throughout the summer of 2020 and leading well into 2021. As a result, the United States has deteriorated significantly in the Civil Unrest Index falling from 91st to 34th. The vitriol, polarization, protests, murders, and shootings have all occurred during Gen Z’s formative years, and the limited research available indicates that it has shaped their values and political views. Methodology: The Mid-Atlantic region is a portion of the United States that exists as the overlap between the northeastern and southeastern portions of the country. It includes the nation’s capital, as well as large urban centers, small cities, suburbs, and rural enclaves. It is one of the most socially, economically, racially, and culturally diverse parts of the United States and is often referred to as the “typically American region.” An electronic survey was administered to students from 2019 through 2021 attending a high school dual enrollment program, a minority serving institution, a majority serving institution, and a community college all located within the larger mid-Atlantic region. The survey included a combination of multiple response, Likert scaled, dichotomous, open ended, and ordinal questions. It was developed in the Survey Monkey system and reviewed by several content and methodological experts in order to examine bias, vagueness, or potential semantic problems. Finally, the survey was pilot tested prior to implementation in order to explore the efficacy of the research methodology. It was then modified accordingly prior to widespread distribution to potential participants. The surveys were administered to students enrolled in classes taught by the authors all of whom are educators. Participation was voluntary, optional, and anonymous. Over 800 individuals completed the survey with just over 700 usable results, after partial completes and the responses of individuals outside of the 18-24 age range were removed. Findings: Participants in this study overwhelmingly were users of social media. In descending order, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Tik Tok were the most popular social media services reported as being used. When volume of use was considered, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter were the most cited with most participants reporting using Instagram and Snapchat multiple times a day. When asked to select which social media service they would use if forced to choose just one, the number one choice was YouTube followed by Instagram and Snapchat. Additionally, more than half of participants responded that they have uploaded a video to a video sharing site such as YouTube or Tik Tok. When asked about their familiarity with different technologies, participants overwhelmingly responded that they are “very familiar” with smart phones, searching the Web, social media, and email. About half the respondents said that they were “very familiar” with common computer applications such as the Microsoft Office Suite or Google Suite with another third saying that they were “somewhat familiar.” When asked about Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard, Course Compass, Canvas, Edmodo, Moodle, Course Sites, Google Classroom, Mindtap, Schoology, Absorb, D2L, itslearning, Otus, PowerSchool, or WizIQ, only 43% said they were “very familiar” with 31% responding that they were “somewhat familiar.” Finally, about half the students were either “very” or “somewhat” familiar with operating systems such as Windows. A few preferences with respect to technology in the teaching and learning process were explored in the survey. Most students (85%) responded that they want course announcements and reminders sent to their phones, 76% expect their courses to incorporate the use of technology, 71% want their courses to have course websites, and 71% said that they would rather watch a video than read a book chapter. When asked to consider the future, over 81% or respondents reported that technology will play a major role in their future career. Most participants considered themselves “informed” or “well informed” about current events although few considered themselves “very informed” or “well informed” about politics. When asked how they get their news, the most common forum reported for getting news and information about current events and politics was social media with 81% of respondents reporting. Gen Z is known to be an engaged generation and the participants in this study were not an exception. As such, it came as no surprise to discover that, in the past year more than 78% of respondents had educated friends or family about an important social or political issue, about half (48%) had donated to a cause of importance to them, more than a quarter (26%) had participated in a march or rally, and a quarter (26%) had actively boycotted a product or company. Further, about 37% consider themselves to be a social activist with another 41% responding that aren’t sure if they would consider themselves an activist and only 22% saying that they would not consider themselves an activist. When asked what issues were important to them, the most frequently cited were Black Lives Matter (75%), human trafficking (68%), sexual assault/harassment/Me Too (66.49%), gun violence (65.82%), women’s rights (65.15%), climate change (55.4%), immigration reform/deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) (48.8%), and LGBTQ+ rights (47.39%). When the schools were compared, there were only minor differences in social media use with the high school students indicating slightly more use of Tik Tok than the other participants. All groups were virtually equal when it came to how informed they perceived themselves about current events and politics. Consensus among groups existed with respect to how they get their news, and the community college and high school students were slightly more likely to have participated in a march, protest, or rally in the last 12 months than the university students. The community college and high school students were also slightly more likely to consider themselves social activists than the participants from either of the universities. When the importance of the issues was considered, significant differences based on institutional type were noted. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was identified as important by the largest portion of students attending the HBCU followed by the community college students and high school students. Less than half of the students attending the TWI considered BLM an important issue. Human trafficking was cited as important by a higher percentage of students attending the HBCU and urban high school than at the suburban and rural community college or the TWI. Sexual assault was considered important by the majority of students at all the schools with the percentage a bit smaller from the majority serving institution. About two thirds of the students at the high school, community college, and HBCU considered gun violence important versus about half the students at the majority serving institution. Women’s rights were reported as being important by more of the high school and HBCU participants than the community college or TWI. Climate change was considered important by about half the students at all schools with a slightly smaller portion reporting out the HBCU. Immigration reform/DACA was reported as important by half the high school, community college, and HBCU participants with only a third of the students from the majority serving institution citing it as an important issue. With respect to LGBTQ rights approximately half of the high school and community college participants cited it as important, 44.53% of the HBCU students, and only about a quarter of the students attending the majority serving institution. Contribution and Conclusion: This paper provides a timely investigation into the mindset of generation Z students living in the United States during a period of heightened civic unrest. This insight is useful to educators who should be informed about the generation of students that is currently populating higher education. The findings of this study are consistent with public opinion polls by Pew Research Center. According to the findings, the Gen Z students participating in this study are heavy users of multiple social media, expect technology to be integrated into teaching and learning, anticipate a future career where technology will play an important role, informed about current and political events, use social media as their main source for getting news and information, and fairly engaged in social activism. When institutional type was compared the students from the university with the more affluent and less diverse population were less likely to find social justice issues important than the other groups. Recommendations for Practitioners: During disruptive and contentious times, it is negligent to think that the abounding issues plaguing society are not important to our students. Gauging the issues of importance and levels of civic engagement provides us crucial information towards understanding the attitudes of students. Further, knowing how our students gain information, their social media usage, as well as how informed they are about current events and political issues can be used to more effectively communicate and educate. Recommendations for Researchers: As social media continues to proliferate daily life and become a vital means of news and information gathering, additional studies such as the one presented here are needed. Additionally, in other countries facing similarly turbulent times, measuring student interest, awareness, and engagement is highly informative. Impact on Society: During a highly contentious period replete with a large volume of civil unrest and compounded by a global pandemic, understanding the behaviors and attitudes of students can help us as higher education faculty be more attuned when it comes to the design and delivery of curriculum. Future Research This presentation presents preliminary findings. Data is still being collected and much more extensive statistical analyses will be performed.

Recent literature has emphasized the importance of transport costs and infrastructure in explaining trade, access to markets, and increases in per capita income. For most Latin American countries, transport costs are a greater barrier to U.S. markets than import tariffs. The authors investigate the determinants of shipping costs to the U.S. with a large database of more than 300,000 observations per year on shipments of products at the six-digit HS level from different ports around the world. In addition, the authors find that efficiency of ports is an important determinant of shipping costs. Inefficient ports also increase handling costs, which are one of the components of shipping costs. The authors try to explain variations in port efficiency and find that they are linked to excessive regulation, the prevalence of organized crime, and the general condition of the country's infrastructure. Finally, the authors present a number of success stories in Latin America to show that private involvement in port management leads to efficiency and lower costs whenever it is accompanied by labor reform, and when monopoly power is reduced through either regulation or competition.

This working paper first introduces tradable permits as part of an overall taxonomy of economic instruments in the field of water management. In this context, three fundamentally different fields of application of tradable permits systems relating to water are presented: tradable water abstraction rights, tradable rights to water-based resources and tradable water pollution rights. Next, the authors provide literature-based empirical evidence of the international experience with tradable water pollution rights (case studies from the US and Australia). Subsequently, the authors make recommendations on the strategies for introducing tradable water pollution rights, they point out opportunities and limitations and discuss the instrument's compatibility in instrument 'mixes'. This paper was prepared for the Technical Seminar on the Feasibility of the Application of Tradable Water Permits for Water Management in Chile, organized by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the National Environment Commission of Chile (CONAMA) held on November 13th and 14th, 2003 in Santiago de Chile.

Edge lane roads (ELRs), also known as advisory bike lanes or advisory shoulders, are a type of shared street where two-way motor vehicle (MV) traffic shares a single center lane, and edge lanes on either side are preferentially reserved for vulnerable road users (VRUs). This work comprises a literature review, an investigation of ELRs’ operational characteristics and potential road user interactions via simulation, and a study of crash data from existing American and Australian ELRs. The simulation evaluated the impact of various factors (e.g., speed, volume, directional split, etc.) on ELR operation. Results lay the foundation for a siting criterion. Current American siting guidance relies only upon daily traffic volume and speed—an approach that inaccurately models an ELR’s safety. To evaluate the safety of existing ELRs, crash data were collected from ELR installations in the US and Australia. For US installations, Empirical Bayes (EB) analysis resulted in an aggregate CMF of .56 for 11 installations observed over 8 years while serving more than 60 million vehicle trips. The data from the Australian State of Queensland involved rural one-lane, low-volume, higher-speed roads, functionally equivalent to ELRs. As motor vehicle volume grows, these roads are widened to two-lane facilities. While the authors observed low mean crash rates on the one-lane roads, analysis of recently converted (from one-lane to two-lane) facilities showed that several experienced fewer crashes than expected after conversion to two-lane roads.