Do generic gTLDs require their own ex ante regulation?

This article reviews ICANN's treatment of applications to create new Top Level Domains based on generic terms (e.g. .book, .motorcycles), reserved for exclusive use by the applicant. It finds little evidence in past domain name history that such registrations represented a risk to competition. Had applicants made abusive use of their domains then existing law would have provided appropriate remedies in any case. Theory suggests that such a novel market was unsuitable for prospective regulatory action and that, by converting potential monopolies into potential cartels, ICANN's action may even have made the competition risk worse.     

Reflections on Environmentalism and the River Diversion Projects

In a companion paper to “Environmentalism in the USSR: The Opposition to the River Diversion Projects,” two geographers survey the current status of water transfer research after cancellation of the European and Siberian diversion projects and offer a different perspective on the debates leading to that cancellation. Implications of a demand-side approach to Centra! Asian water management problems are then assessed in light of (a) contradictory objectives of expanding irrigated hectarage and mitigating environmental deterioration in the Aral basin and (b) the problematic nature of projected water savings and costs involved in their realization. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 052, 124, 720.     

Present but not prevalent: identifying the organizational correlates of researcher-practitioner partnerships in U.S. Law Enforcement

ABSTRACT

Federal funding streams, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and policing executives and scholars alike have advocated for more researcher-practitioner partnerships in American law enforcement. While a few studies have explored the growth and prevalence of research partnerships in policing, less attention has been placed on the organizational correlates of such collaborative relationships. Using a nationally representative sample of US law enforcement agencies, the current study investigated participation in what we term ‘rigorous partnerships’ – more formal, long-term relationships between researchers and practitioners with increased opportunity for interactive knowledge exchange. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed, with a specific focus on the barriers and impediments that both parties face for successful collaborative efforts and research translation.     

China's Shanzhai Culture: ‘Grabism’ and the politics of hybridity

This article focuses on the broad spread of shanzhai culture in 2008, exploring the central question: what is it that brings such disparate phenomena together under one label? Shanzhai things have typically emerged from new spaces for participation in production beyond the control of formerly monopolistic authorities. But things are not necessarily shanzhai by birth, for it is also an identity affixed to things by consumers. The shanzhai identity's inherent ambiguity—almost the same but not quite—brings with it a dimension of disruption of authority (cf. Bhabha), but its political standpoints are elusive. Using insights from hybridity theory, this article characterizes shanzhai as a contemporary successor to what Lu Xun termed Grabism: the active reappropriation of economic and cultural authority for diverse local purposes, which have themselves been shaped and redefined by those same authorities.     

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.