Pleasures, perversities, and partnerships : the historical emergence of LGBT-police relationships

Relationships between LGBT people and police have been turbulent for some time now, and have been variously characterized as supportive (McGhee, 2004) and antagonistic (Radford, Betts, & Ostermeyer, 2006). These relationships were, and continue to be, influenced by a range of political, legal, cultural, and social factors. This chapter will examine historical and social science accounts of LGBT-police histories to chart the historical peaks and troughs in these relationships. The discussion demonstrates how, in Western contexts, we oscillate between historical moments of police criminalizing homosexual perversity and contemporary landscapes of partnership between police and LGBT people. However, the chapter challenges the notion that it is possible to trace this as a lineal progression from a painful past to a more productive present. Rather, it focuses on specific moments, marked by pain or pleasure or both, and how these moments emerge and re-emerge in ways that shaped LGBT-police landscapes in potted, uneven ways. The chapter concludes noting how, although certain ideas and police practices may shift towards more progressive notions of partnership policing, we cannot just take away the history that emerged out of mistrust and pain.

A Human identification technique using images of the iris and wavelet transform

A new approach for recognizing the iris of the human eye is presented. Zero-crossings of the wavelet transform at various resolution levels are calculated over concentric circles on the iris, and the resulting one-dimensional (1-D) signals are compared with model features using different dissimilarity functions.

Sensationalizing death? Graphic disaster images in the tabloid and broadsheet press

Debates over the extent of graphic imagery of death in newspapers often suffer from generalized assertions that are based on inadequate or incomplete empirical evidence. Newspapers are believed to display death in very graphic ways, with particularly the tabloid press assumedly leading a race to the bottom. This article reports the results of a study of tabloid and broadsheet images of death from the 2010 Haiti earthquake in eight Western European and North American countries. It shows that, far from omnipresent, graphic images of death are relatively rare. While tabloids overall display a larger percentage of graphic images, this was not the case everywhere, with particularly the UK, Canada and the US displaying strong similarities between tabloids and broadsheets. In Austria, Germany, Norway and Switzerland, on the other hand, there were distinct differences between the two types. The article argues that different extents of tabloidization may account for these differences.

Detecting and Analyzing Linear Structures in Biomedical Images : A Case Study Using Corneal Nerve Fibers

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is one of the most common long-term complications of diabetes. The accurate detection and quantification of DPN are important for defining at-risk patients, anticipating deterioration, and assessing new therapies. Current methods of detecting and quantifying DPN, such as neurophysiology, lack sensitivity, require expert assessment and focus primarily on large nerve fibers. However, the earliest damage to nerve fibers in diabetic neuropathy is to the small nerve fibers. At present, small nerve fiber damage is currently assessed using skin/nerve biopsy; both are invasive technique and are not suitable for repeated investigations.

Re-presenting the past : authenticity and the historical novel

This project involved writing Turrwan (great man), a novel set in Queensland in the nineteenth century, and an investigation into the way historical novels portray the past. Turrwan tells the story of Tom Petrie, who was six when he arrived with his family at the notorious Moreton Bay Penal Colony in 1837. The thesis examines historical fiction as a genre with particular focus on notions of historical authenticity. It analyses the complexities involved in a non-Indigenous person writing about the Australian Aboriginal people, and reflects on the process of researching, planning and writing a historical novel.

The visibility of disaster deaths in news images : a comparison of newspapers from 15 countries

The extent to which newspapers display graphic images of death has rarely been studied in relation to the degree of the visibility of bodies, nor do many comparative analyses exist. This has led to a narrow understanding of how and why audiences are exposed to human suffering around the world. In examining newspaper images of the dead from the 2010 Haiti earthquake across 15 countries, this study develops a graphic image content scale to measure such visualizations. It finds significant differences in graphic images across the studied sample, both in terms of the amount of images and the degree of visibility of death. The study argues that major sociocultural influences, such as different religious traditions and societal levels of violence are part of the reason for the differences.

Knitted images : corporeal theorising

Feeling the wool and needles and constructing the knitting is very different to looking at knitting or thinking about knitting. Creating with the material slows everything down enough to enable significant connection with the process. Knitting as a mode for researching involves corporeal activity/philosophy that foregrounds a physical rationality, and this offers critical investigation of knowledge conventions that hierarchize intellectual activity as something that seeks to justify or clarify via a cerebral mode of presenting reasonable and rational arguments...

Knitted images : specimens

Knitting, as a conduit for multiple literacies takes on embodied practice and becomes research, investigation, theorization, and brings about physical and metaphysical theorizing on Deleuzian and Guattarian (1980/1987) concepts of the rhizome: the looping and constructing of the knitted planes prompt thoughts about the project that seem just ‘beyond the level of consciousness’ (Semetsky 2007, p. 200)...

Knitted images : interception

Feeling the wool and needles and constructing the knitting is very different to looking at knitting or thinking about knitting. Creating with the material slows everything down enough to enable significant connection with the process. Knitting as a mode for researching involves corporeal activity/philosophy that foregrounds a physical rationality, and this offers critical investigation of knowledge conventions that hierarchize intellectual activity as something that seeks to justify or clarify via a cerebral mode of presenting reasonable and rational arguments...

A discussion of “Estimating the historical and future probabilities of large terrorist events'' by Aaron Clauset and Ryan Woodard

The terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 appeared to be a harbinger of increased terrorism and violence in the 21st century, bringing terrorism and political violence to the forefront of public discussion. Questions about these events abound, and “Estimating the Historical and Future Probabilities of Large Scale Terrorist Event” [Clauset and Woodard (2013)] asks specifically, “how rare are large scale terrorist events?” and, in general, encourages discussion on the role of quantitative methods in terrorism research and policy and decision-making. Answering the primary question raises two challenges. The first is identify- ing terrorist events. The second is finding a simple yet robust model for rare events that has good explanatory and predictive capabilities. The challenges of identifying terrorist events is acknowledged and addressed by reviewing and using data from two well-known and reputable sources: the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism-RAND database (MIPT-RAND) [Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism] and the Global Terror- ism Database (GTD) [National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) (2012), LaFree and Dugan (2007)]. Clauset and Woodard (2013) provide a detailed discussion of the limitations of the data and the models used, in the context of the larger issues surrounding terrorism and policy.

Knitted images : drawing patterns

This Arts Based Education Research (Eisner 2008) work provides potent opportunity to consider different problems and challenges that impact on the progress of research (art as data making) and the theories being explored. It provides opportunity to transport ideas across between research activity, and teaching practices...

Knitted images : cartographies

Through the making of these works I research teachers. Here, I push a/r/tography (Irwin & Springgay 2008) into ca/r/tography - a process of mapping that is multitexural, mutable; moving between theorization, creation, process, research, and mapped by me as I wander between artist, researcher, teacher...

Toward a more holistic analysis of international news flows

The study of international news flows has been a dominant topic of international communication research during the past 50 years. This paper critically reviews past approaches to the analysis of news flows and identifies the main strands of research in this field. In line with some previous critiques of the field, we argue that past research has for too long been influenced by dichotomous debates that failed to take account of the complexities of international news decisions. A new direction is needed in order for news flow research to provide better answers to the recurring questions. This new direction is not a break from past approaches but rather an integration of all different approaches, which would provide researchers with a more holistic framework for analyzing international news flows. This new approach calls for a combination of political, economic, geographic, historical, social and cultural factors, including perspectives from other disciplines, such as anthropology and linguistics.