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Shear Strength of Municipal Solid Waste
Scott M. Merry, Jonathan D. Bray, and Dimitrios Zekkos
While the engineering profession's understanding of the response of municipal solid waste (MSW) to monotonic and cyclic loadings has improved over the past two decades, several important issues remain unresolved. Characterization of the shear strength of MSW is a critical step in performing reliable static and seismic stability analyses of landfills. Landfill stability analyses can be no more reliable than the reliability of the engineer's estimate of the shear strength of the waste. Furthermore, the stress-strain response of MSW needs to be considered to provide compatibility between the mobilized shear strength and the level of deformation along potential failure surfaces. Relevant studies of MSW shear strength are summarized in this state-of-knowledge chapter. Large-scale laboratory test data, which includes direct shear (DS), triaxial (TX), and simple shear (SS) test results, and back-analyses of failed and stable landfill slopes in the field are considered. Findings from a recent comprehensive study by Zekkos (2005) are emphasized. There is large variability in the shear strength of MSW reported in the literature. Obstacles to characterizing the shear strength of MSW include its age, heterogeneity and the difficulty in recovering and testing representative waste samples due to the large size of some waste constituents. Differences in testing procedures employed and in the assumptions made when interpreting the test results also contribute to the variability of the shear strength of MSW. A consistent conceptual framework to perform and to evaluate the results of the laboratory and in-situ tests performed on MSW is required. It is hoped that the recommendations provided as part of the first "International Waste Mechanics Symposium" will address this issue and work toward providing a common framework for advancing the profession's understanding of waste properties and mechanics through developing consensus on the performance and reporting of laboratory and field testing procedures. Published data reported in the literature on the shear strength of MSW are discussed in sections on large-scale tests and back-analyzed assessments. This literature review does not provide complete descriptions of the works completed by researchers, as this information is available in detail in the referenced papers. Instead, key findings are summarized. Following the literature review, a summary of the state-of-knowledge of MSW stress-strain response and strength is presented and recommendations are made for developing a consistent framework for performing and reporting shear strength data on MSW. Currently unresolved issues are also identified.
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Die Sache: The Foundationless Ground of Legal Meaning
Francis J. Mootz III
Chapter Die Sache: The Foundationless Ground of Legal Meaning, in The Semiotics of Law in Legal Education.
Clients do not approach their lawyer with a legal problem but they approach the lawyer with a problem in their everyday life that is articulated through narratives that are not exclusively, or perhaps not at all, legal in nature. The lawyer then must find the legal narrative to adapt to the problem and construct a narrative of law from the resources of legal reasoning. This insight about the work of lawyers as makers and managers of meaning is all too often reduced to a simplistic picture in which the lawyer tells a “story” to trigger the proper elements of the “objective” legal principles. This reinstates the dichotomy that the focus on the narrative character of law is in opposition to the fixed and objective character of the law itself, so that narrative is not appropriate with regard to the law. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and the philosophical term die Sache are premised on the assumption that the other’s horizon of pre-understanding provides a different angle: hermeneutical responsibility is not owed to the other person as a supposed separate subjectivity; instead, it is owed to the subject matter about which the dialogue partners converse: die Sache. This viewpoint has practical import by considering legal reasoning as an exemplary case of our responsibility to die Sache and also has important implications for legal education.
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Gadamer's Rhetorical Conception of Hermeneutics as the Key to Developing a Critical Hermeneutics
Francis J. Mootz III
Gadamer's Rhetorical Conception of Hermeneutics as the Key to Developing a Critical Hermeneutics, in Gadamer and Ricoeur: Critical Horizons for Contemporary.
The rhetorical dimensions of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics have not been fully developed by his commentators, resulting in an overly conservative rendering of his philosophy. Drawing out the rhetorical features of his work, we find that Gadamer regards textual interpretation as a rhetorical accomplishment. This characterization leads to a rich conception of critical hermeneutics. The chapter develops Gadamer's rhetorical hermeneutics by contrasting his approach with Paul Ricoeur's famous intervention in the Gadamer-Habermas debate, and looks to Gadamer's account of legal practice as a manifestation of critical hermeneutics in action.
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THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW IN LEGAL EDUCATION
Francis J. Mootz III and Jan M. Broekman
This book offers educational experiences, including reflections and the resulting essays, from the Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics held during 2008 – 2011 at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law. The texts address educational aspects of law that require attention and that also are issues in traditional jurisprudence and legal theory. The book introduces education in legal semiotics as it evolves in a legal curriculum. Specific semiotic concepts, such as “sign”, “symbol” or “legal language,” demonstrate how a lawyer’s professionally important tasks of name-giving and meaning-giving are seldom completely understood by lawyers or laypeople. These concepts require analyses of considerable depth to understand the expressiveness of these legal names and meanings, and to understand how lawyers can “say the law,” or urge such a saying correctly and effectively in the context of a natural language that is understandable to all of us. The book brings together the structure of the Seminar, its foundational philosophical problems, the specifics of legal history, and the semiotics of the legal system with specific themes such as gender, family law, and business law.
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GADAMER AND RICOEUR: CRITICAL HORIZONS FOR CONTEMPORARY HERMENEUTICS
Francis J. Mootz III and George H. Taylor
Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur were two of the most important hermeneutical philosophers of the twentieth century. Gadamer single-handedly revived hermeneutics as a philosophical field with his many essays and his masterpiece, Truth and Method. Ricoeur famously mediated the Gadamer-Habermas debate and advanced his own hermeneutical philosophy through a number of books addressing social theory, religion, psychoanalysis and political philosophy.
This book brings Gadamer and Ricoeur into a hermeneutical conversation with each other through some of their most important commentators. Twelve leading scholars deliver contemporary assessments of the history and promise of hermeneutical philosophy, providing focused discussion on the work of these two key hermeneutical thinkers. The book shows how the horizons of their thought at once support and question each other and how, in many ways, the work of these two pioneering philosophers defines the issues and agendas for the new century.
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Holistic development, learning, and performance in college and beyond
Glen Rogers, Judith Reisetter Hart, and Marcia Mentkowski
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Techniques for Teaching Law II
Michael Hunter Schwartz, Sophie Sparrow, Gerald F. Hess, and Steve Friedland
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Becoming an equity oriented change agent
Linda E. Skrla, Kathryn B. McKenzie, and James J. Scheurich
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An exploratory investigation of the relationships among representation security, disorganization, and behavior in maltreated children
Linda L. Webster and Rachelle K. Hackett
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Small-Molecule Inhibitors Reveal a New Function for Bcl-2 as a Pro-angiogenic Signaling Molecule
Benjamin David Zeitlin and Jacques E. Nör
Cancer has a complex etiology and displays a wide range of cellular escape pathways that allow it to circumvent treatment. Signaling molecules functionally downstream of the circumvented pathways, and particularly at checkpoints where several of these pathways intersect, provide valuable targets for the development of novel anti-cancer drugs. Bcl-2, a pro-survival signaling molecule, is one such protein. This review examines the efficacy, potency, and function of several small molecule inhibitor drugs targeted to the Bcl-2 family of proteins. The review focuses on the compounds with most available data within the literature and discusses both the anti-cancer and the recently unveiled anti-angiogenic potential of this new class of drugs.
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The Lost Art of Real Cooking
Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafziger Henderson
A food historian and a recipe tester revisit old-fashioned cooking and provide recipes and techniques for making food the inconvenient and difficult-but highly rewarding-way, from pickles to pastry dough.
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You Were on Indian Land: Alcatraz Island as Recalcitrant Memory Space
Teresa Bergman and Cynthia D. Smith
Why do some memories "stick" with us, while others are more ephemeral or utterly lost? This chapter explores the complicated relationships between place, memory, and forgetting at one of the most striking tourist destinations in the United States, Alcatraz Island. We offer this research as a case study through which we can think about the staying power of memories and examine how memories can be made more engaging and enduring. We also delineate the consequences for collective memory when significant events fall short of affixing themselves. Alcatraz Island, located in the San Francisco Bay, is "one of San Francisco's must-see attractions, "1 primarily because of its colorful history as a federal penitentiary. But there is much more to Alcatraz than Al Capone and the Birdman, and much that makes it an ideal site for contemplating how memory works at locations with multiple noteworthy historical events. On Alcatraz Island, Native Americans staged one of the most important civil disobedience events in their contentious history with the U.S. government. The nineteen-month occupation of the island by the Indians of All Tribes remains unmatched in terms of improving U.S. government policies toward Native Americans. Yet, the fact that Alcatraz is hardly remembered for this momentous event is stunning. Approximately 1.3 million tourists visit the island annually, anticipating a tour through the bleak and cavernous once-notorious prison. They bring little, if any, understanding of the importance of this site in Native American history. Once visitors begin their boat ride to and tour of Alcatraz Island, they encounter multiple rhetorical elements and explore prison spaces that produce a compelling official memory of Alcatraz Island. Through a variety of mediated and direct experiences, visitors encounter historically accurate and politically sensitive interpretations of the island's many previous uses before it became a national park in 1973. Even though Alcatraz's varied historical past is well represented in banners, exhibits, and film, there are several powerful physical elements that work to diminish any memory of the site's history as other than a federal penitentiary. This is particularly alarming because Alcatraz Island is one of few nationally preserved locations where one historical event ran counter to a U.S. historical narrative of "progress" or "triumphalism." Many Native American scholars and activists credit the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz Island that took place on November 20, 1969, through June 11, 1971, as being decisive in changing and improving U.S. governmental relations with Native Americans. For instance, Troy Johnson, professor of history and American Indian studies, describes the Occupation as "the most symbolic, the most significant, and the most successful Indian protest in the modern era . . . and [it] remains one of the most noteworthy expressions of patriotism and self-determination by Indian people of this century."2 Why, then, does the experience of Alcatraz fail to make this memory, and its significance, linger? I n this chapter, we investigate the memory and meaningfulness of this particular symbolic protest and what we believe is its troubled relationship to the present-day tourist experience on Alcatraz. Throughout the chapter we call attention to the importance of the visitors' sensory, embodied experience of the island and its spaces. Ultimately, we argue that the visitors' lack of any physical access to the island spaces inhabited during the Occupation seriously and negatively affects both attention to and the staying power of Occupation memories. While visitors can directly engage with the prison by moving through it, walking into cells, and even touching objects, there is no parallel experience of the Occupation available. Clearly the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz is a counternarrative that could offer contemporary audiences particularly affective and resonant messages of nonviolent collective civil disobedience and empowerment; however, we argue that despite the National Park Service's efforts at preservation and representation of the Occupation, this is not the message or memory that tourists take from their Alcatraz Island experience. In spite of the progressive possibilities afforded by Alcatraz's history, the tourist experience at Alcatraz Island-including the island's location, the exhibits, and the architecture-reinscribes respect for government's coercive authority. Alcatraz is an especially recalcitrant location for the inclusion of Occupation memories, even though those events took place on this very site.One of the challenges for historical representation on Alcatraz Island is that this location is now considered a "fun" family tourist destination. For those visiting San Francisco, not only is the Alcatraz Island tour a history lesson, but it also offers tourists a chance to get on a boat and journey into the scenic San Francisco Bay. On a clear day, the views of San Francisco, Marin County, the East Bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge are breathtaking. Once on the water, tourists encounter seabirds, waves, and a bracing wind. The Alcatraz Island tour is part outdoor adventure and part history lesson, and it is this experiential combination that informs our research in analyzing not only what but also how tourists understand and remember this location's history.3 The materiality of an Alcatraz tour, characterized by the visitor's physical and sensory engagement with the island's spaces, overpowers attempts at remembering the counternarratives of resistance available on the island in its visual exhibits and orientation film. Without significant changes to the Native American Occupation representation on the island, Alcatraz as a memory site is a missed opportunity to encounter and retain messages of successful self-determination, empowerment, and civil disobedience. I n order to illustrate how the materiality of Alcatraz dominates its rhetorical messages, we first give a brief outline of the island's history. We then discuss how memory sites work symbolically and materially in the construction of a national identity. This is followed by an analysis of the Alcatraz Island tour, including the boat ride, the orientation film, the cellhouse architecture, and the audio tour, and how these elements affect the memory of the Native American Occupation and privilege the memory of the island's use as a federal penitentiary. We conclude with a discussion of the consequences of losing the memory of the Native American Occupation at Alcatraz Island, as well as the implications of perpetuating the understanding of Alcatraz Island as primarily a location of coercive incarceration. We finally reflect on the implications of the loss of this liberatory message and its effects in constructing a U.S. national identity.
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Advancing Student Learning Outcomes in Community and Technical Colleges
Catherine Crain and Glen Rogers
These case studies describe concrete situations and practices and, from these, draw conclusions that would be useful and relevant for a broad audience of faculty developers and assessment practitioners. The resulting 11 chapters provide an authentic glimpse into assessment at two-year instuttions. The accounts range from how an individual classroom teacher is able to draw out and document student learning outcomes, to how an institution learns over time through implementing assessment initiatives in the context of accreditation, to how institutional assessment coordinators collectively learn as they participate in communities of practice.
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Online occupational education in community colleges: Prevalence and contextual factors
Rod P. Githens, F. Crawford, and T. M. Sauer
This study examined the current state of online occupational programs in community colleges and explored issues related to institutional, economic, and social indicators that influence (a) the offering of online programs and (b) the programmatic connection to workforce development needs. This project is the first national study that categorizes and inventories specific types of online occupational programs in community colleges. The study included a national random sample of 321 institutions in the United States. Data were collected through institutional websites, statewide websites, follow-up emails, and phone inquiries to institutions. The following sections summarize key findings.
A selection of books and book chapters written or edited by faculty at the University of the Pacific.
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