The Green New Deal Must Preserve the Existing Nuclear Fleet

Abstract

As the largest source of carbon-free energy in the United States, nuclear energy must play a vital role in reducing emissions. This article suggests the Green New Deal, an ambitious federal proposal to address climate change, should aim to preserve the existing nuclear fleet by authorizing states to establish zero emission credit (“ZEC”) programs. The ZEC programs will provide credits, in the form of revenue, for the carbon-free attribute of nuclear energy. This article posits the ZEC programs should be based on a model ZEC program developed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and explicitly authorized by amendment of the Federal Power Act to avoid issues of preemption.     

Portable high‐resolution automated 3D imaging for footwear and tire impression capture

The forensic science community raised the need for improved evidence recognition, collection, and visualization analytical instrumentation for field and laboratory use. While the 3D optical techniques for imaging static objects have been extensively studied, there is still a major gap between current knowledge and collecting high‐quality footwear and tire impression evidence. Among optical means for 3D imaging, digital fringe projection (DFP) techniques reconstruct 3D shape from phase information, achieving camera‐pixel spatial resolution. This paper presents a high‐resolution 3D imaging technology using DFP techniques dedicated to footwear and tire impression capture. We developed fully automated software algorithms and a graphical user interface (GUI) that allow anyone without training to operate for high‐quality 3D data capture. We performed accuracy evaluations and comparisons comparing with the commercial high‐end 3D scanner and carried out qualitative tests for various impressions comparing with the current practices. Overall, our technology achieves similar levels of accuracy and resolution with a high‐end commercially available 3D scanner, while having the merits of being (1) more affordable; (2) much easier to operate; and (3) more robust. Compared with the current practice of casting, our technology demonstrates its superiority because it (1) is non‐destructive; (2) collects more evidence detail than casts, especially when an impression is fragile; (3) requires less time and money to collect each piece of evidence; and (4) results in a digital file that can easily be shared with other examiners.     

Marginalisation or legitimation? Mainstream party positioning on immigration and support for radical right parties

Abstract

Does mainstream party positioning contribute to marginalising or legitimising niche party positions? This article argues that voter perceptions of the legitimacy and credibility of niche party positions play a role in individuals’ propensity to vote for niche parties. It finds that the adoption of more restrictive immigration positions by mainstream parties increases the likelihood that those people who do not recognise the issue competence of radical right parties on immigration will vote radical right. However, for individuals who already perceive the radical right to be competent on immigration, mainstream party adoption of more restrictive immigration positions has no effect on propensity to vote radical right. In addition, the increase in the propensity of individuals to vote radical right is predominantly a function of mainstream left parties adopting more restrictive immigration positions. These results imply that mainstream parties risk fuelling radical right party support by adopting more restrictive immigration positions.     

Towards an Explanation of Intercommunal Peace in Kabardino-Balkaria: Post-War Nationalities Policy and Late Soviet Society in the North Caucasus

Abstract

This essay examines socio-economic processes during the Soviet period to help explain the causes of peace and conflict in the post-Soviet North Caucasus. It argues that the absence of an ethnically stratified social structure in Kabardino-Balkaria is one of the reasons why this republic enjoyed relative intercommunal peace and stability in the 1990s and early 2000s. By contrast, the surrounding national republics of the North Caucasus that came out of the Soviet era with socio-economic disparities along ethnic lines witnessed higher levels of intercommunal conflict. This essay looks to the understudied topic of post-World War II and late Soviet nationalities policies to explain Kabardino-Balkaria’s divergent historical trajectory.     

Commodity relations and class formation in the Zimbabwean countryside, 1898–1920

By disaggregating the peasantry, this article seeks to explain the variety of experience uncovered by previous local studies of the Zimbabwean countryside. A combination of those pockets of pre‐colonial accumulation which had survived the violence of the 1890s, and the productive reinvestment of income earned in wage labour, gave rise to a distinctive pattern of rural differentiation. By the start of the 1920s a class of small farmers had emerged.     

Land reform and the Portuguese revolution∗

In spite of the fact that the Portuguese Land Reform has been a radical and far‐reaching one, it has received very little attention from British social scientists. This review article looks at three books published in Portugal since April 1974 which are essential reading for anyone interested in this subject. In understanding the development of the Land Reform and the Revolution as a whole it is important to recognise the different types of regional agrarian structure which exist in Portugal. This review pays particular attention to those parts of the three books which deal with these regional questions. The cleavage between those areas in which rural wage‐labourers predominate and those in which peasant farmers are in the majority goes a long way towards explaining both the advances and the defeats of the Portuguese Revolution.