American Mission activities in Libya 2005–16: report

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 135-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Kane ◽  
William Raynolds ◽  
Sam Carrier
Keyword(s):  
Capacity Building ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Heritage Management ◽  
Cultural Preservation ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Unesco World Heritage ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Mission ◽  
Capacity Building Programme

AbstractThis essay outlines the capacity-building work of the American Archaeological Mission to Libya between the years 2005 and 2016. This work was made possible by grants from the US Embassy to Libya, the US State Department Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP) and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in Washington, DC. The principles and objectives underlying our capacity-building programme were inspired by the 2003 UNESCO World Heritage Centre Mission Report by Giovanni Boccardi, in particular his recommendation that the Libyan Department of Antiquities obtain training in the best modern cultural heritage management practices via sustained partnerships with external professionals and organisations.

scholarly journals Developing Pavement Marking Management Systems: A Theoretical Model Framework Based on the Experiences of the US Transportation Agencies

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Alireza Sassani ◽  
Omar Smadi ◽  
Neal Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Asset Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
Pavement Markings ◽  
The Us ◽  
Pavement Marking ◽  
Transportation Agencies

Pavement markings are essential elements of transportation infrastructure with critical impacts on safety and mobility. They provide road users with the necessary information to adjust driving behavior or make calculated decisions about commuting. The visibility of pavement markings for drivers can be the boundary between a safe trip and a disastrous accident. Consequently, transportation agencies at the local or national levels allocate sizeable budgets to upkeep the pavement markings under their jurisdiction. Infrastructure asset management systems (IAMS) are often biased toward high-capital-cost assets such as pavements and bridges, not providing structured asset management (AM) plans for low-cost assets such as pavement markings. However, recent advances in transportation asset management (TAM) have promoted an integrated approach involving the pavement marking management system (PMMS). A PMMS brings all data items and processes under a comprehensive AM plan and enables managing pavement markings more efficiently. Pavement marking operations depend on location, conditions, and AM policies, highly diversifying the pavement marking management practices among agencies and making it difficult to create a holistic image of the system. Most of the available resources for pavement marking management focus on practices instead of strategies. Therefore, there is a lack of comprehensive guidelines and model frameworks for developing PMMS. This study utilizes the existing body of knowledge to build a guideline for developing and implementing PMMS. First, by adapting the core AM concepts to pavement marking management, a model framework for PMMS is created, and the building blocks and elements of the framework are introduced. Then, the caveats and practical points in PMMS implementation are discussed based on the US transportation agencies’ experiences and the relevant literature. This guideline is aspired to facilitate PMMS development for the agencies and pave the way for future pavement marking management tools and databases.

John Philip Sousa’s Historic Resistance to Technology in Music Learning

2021 ◽  
pp. 153660062110339
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Thibeault
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Music Technology ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Music Learning ◽  
Sound Recordings ◽  
Us Congress ◽  
The Us

In this article, I explore John Philip Sousa’s historic resistance to music technology and his belief that sound recordings would negatively impact music education and musical amateurism. I review Sousa’s primary arguments from two 1906 essays and his testimony to the US Congress from the same year, based on the fundamental premise that machines themselves sing or perform, severing the connection between live listener and performer and thus rendering recordings a poor substitute for real music. Sousa coined the phrase “canned music,” and I track engagement with this phrase among the hundreds of newspapers and magazines focused on Sousa’s resistance. To better understand the construction of Sousa’s beliefs, I then review how his rich musical upbringing around the US Marine Band and the theaters of Washington DC lead to his conception of music as a dramatic ritual. And I examine the curious coda of Sousa’s life, during which he recanted his beliefs and conducted his band for radio, finding that in fact these experiences reinforced Sousa’s worries. The discussion considers how Sousa’s ideas can help us better to examine the contemporary shift to digital music by combining Sousa’s ideas with those of Sherry Turkle.

scholarly journals Enhancing capacities of riparian professionals to address and resolve transboundary issues in international river basins: experiences from the Lower Mekong River Basin

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 3183-3197 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Douven ◽  
M. L. Mul ◽  
B. Fernández-Álvarez ◽  
S. Lam Hung ◽  
N. Bakker ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Capacity Building ◽  
Training Evaluation ◽  
River Basins ◽  
Mekong River ◽  
Training Methods ◽  
Training And Education ◽  
International River Basins ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
International River ◽  
Capacity Building Programme

Abstract. This paper analyses the design and impact of capacity building programmes aimed at enhancing capacities of riparian professionals to address and resolve transboundary issues in international river basins. The case study is a programme developed by the Mekong River Commission (MRC). A post-training evaluation was applied to assess its impact in terms of individual capacity enhancement and change (use and application of knowledge, factors hampering application, and change in function and opportunities within the organisation). The design of the Capacity Building Programme of the MRC Flood Management and Mitigation Programme required a well balanced range of subjects (such as IWRM (integrated water resources management), model and decision support systems, and international water law). The post-training evaluation, 6 months after the last training workshop, showed an increase in familiarity with the topics for all 37 respondents, with the highest increase for the respondents with few years of working experience and from training and education institutions. The relevance of the subjects taught was highlighted by 95% of the respondents, and 78% of the participants had already used some of the acquired knowledge in their job. The respondents indicated that they did not have sufficient opportunities to apply all knowledge. The phased implementation and training of lecturers during the training workshops had a good impact, directly through increasing involvement in facilitation and delivery of the capacity building programme and through the use of the knowledge gained in short courses and development of curricula at their institute. For these types of capacity building programmes, a few recommendations can be made. The selection of participants is crucial for the application of the learned knowledge in their work. The integrative nature of transboundary water issues calls for a capacity building programme addressing a wide range of subjects, which can be understood by a wide range of professionals from different sectors. Training methods should also address this integrative nature through, e.g. roleplays and case studies. A successful capacity building programme needs to address the three levels of capacity building (enabling environment, organisations, and individual staff) and involve national and regional training and education institutes.

Disappointments and Legacies of Social Indicators

1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Eleanor Innes
Keyword(s):  
Research Council ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Indicators Movement ◽  
Science Research Council

The social indicators movement has been a disappointment to its originators. By the late 1970s, at least in the US, the great hopes for social indicators to become a major influence on public policy had been tempered. The outpouring of literature using the term ‘social indicators’ dwindled. Policy scientists turned their attention to other topics or found new labels for their interests. The Social Science Research Council closed its Social Indicators Research Center in Washington, DC and stopped publishing its newsletter. And in the US no annual social report seemed likely to be institutionalized. Many observers decided the social indicators movement was a failure.

The Politics of Place

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa F. Baird
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
World Heritage ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Unesco World Heritage ◽  
Politics Of Place ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Customary Laws

This chapter presents research on the UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape Uluru-Kata Tjuta in Australia. Drawing from ethnographic interviews of heritage experts and archival research, the chapter examines the politics embedded within managing and interpreting cultural landscapes in World Heritage contexts. It asks: how do heritage designations affect claims to traditional homelands, resources, and subsistence and resource management practices? The data show how largely apolitical and ahistorical narratives reconfigured the historical and social conditions of the park and redefined Traditional Owners' relationship to Country. It argues that state and national laws and World Heritage and national park policies work in ways that force Traditional Owners to make claims within systems that are largely incompatible with their custodial responsibilities, knowledge practices, and customary laws.

Postal Maps, 1860–83

Paper Trails ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 53-74
Author(s):  
Cameron Blevins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
American West ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Short Supply ◽  
The Us ◽  
Postal Network

During the 1860s and 1870s the US Post underwent a period of breakneck, unstable expansion in the western United States. Chapter 3 details the efforts of postal administrators to track all of these changes through a new mapmaking initiative under a cartographer named Walter Nicholson. The Topographer’s Office offers a window into the efforts of government officials in Washington, DC, to administer the nation’s western periphery. Nicholson’s postal maps were highly sought after across the federal government, offering valuable spatial information about the region that was often in short supply. Yet the struggles of Nicholson and his employees to keep pace with the never-ending flurry of changes to the region’s postal network is a testament to the ongoing barriers to centralized oversight imposed by the geography of the American West.

A Century of US Diplomatic Security

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-36
Author(s):  
Patrick Cullen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Military Units

The United States' diplomatic security apparatus that operates today from Washington DC to Iraq and Afghanistan is uniquely massive. It is incomparable in its size, budget, degree of institutionalization, and level of sophistication when set against both other nations as well as its own humble origins in WWI. To understand why this is so, the first half of this chapter historically maps and causally explains how, and why, US diplomatic security has been transformed over the course of its modern hundred-year history. The second half provides an empirically rich study of the various roles and functions of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the US military units that protect the US diplomatic mission.

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