Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: This paper seeks to rethink the infrastructure of broadband cables as more than tools of media distribution and instead focus on the productive aspects of these networks. The first part of this paper examines how the “bundling” of internet, phone, and television services provided by the same company, via the same distribution channels is creating both different kinds of media and new forms of knowledge. In particular, bundling is rearticulating certain understandings of space, both as public and as private via the regulation (and deregulation) of the cables providing the services. While these regulations can reinforce certain class and racial divisions, they can also a site for a potential reinvigoration of a media commons. The second section of this paper looks at how community driven Public, Governmental, and Educational (PEG) access television has been able to conceptualize a media commons through rearticulating cable technology’s active engagement with space, and within specific property regimes. This paper explores how media, as both conduits and content function within this property regime through questioning the social construction of private property, especially as it relates to the production of certain subject positions. This is the basis of a particular discourse surrounding how we think of natural resources, as well as intellectual property, and can elucidate upon the relationship between technology and space.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: For decades, film festivals have provided sites for creation and exchange of film knowledge through screenings, discussion and other interpersonal exchanges. This has been especially evident in the power relations of European nations and wider national industries and films of the global South. In the last twenty years, many festivals have also taken more active roles in production through arrangements of co-production and funding, again allowing European festivals to promote films from specific areas, groups or figures of the developing world.
This paper draws on interviews, film analysis and festival structures to explore this important ongoing change, its functions and impact from Rotterdam, Berlin and Locarno to Pusan and Hong Kong. This analysis also allows us to understand the implications of this changing role for global power, within the world of film as well as across other global parameters.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Over 1.25 million acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management lands in the San Juan Oil and Gas Producing Basin are overlying federal mineral reserves. Well sites in the basin produce five to over 150 barrels per day of brine water ranging from 1000 mg/L to more than 30,000 mg/L of total dissolved salts (TDS). The TDS mainly contain high amounts of sodium and chlorine with electrical conductivity (EC) levels over 10 dS/m and sodium absorption (SAR) ratios over 15.

In 2006 approximately 34 million barrels (42 gallons/barrel) were injected back in into the San Juan Oil and Gas Producing Basin formations. There is over two million barrels of brine water produced per month that are hauled to salt water disposal units at a cost of approximately $3.50/barrel or over $110 million per year.

The objectives of this research from 2003 to 2006 were to select native and non-native grass cultivars that would be salt tolerant and to determine the breaking point for salt levels affecting native and non-native grassland establishment. Cultivars were rated for stand establishment approximately one year after brine water application. Arriba Western, San Luis Slender, Hy Crest Crested Wheatgrasses, and VNS (variety not stated) Bottlebrush Squirreltail resulted in excellent germination and stand establishment regardless of TDS brine water application.

The judicious use of produced water with elevated TDS appears to be a viable strategy for well site and disturbed land rehabilitation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study examines whether youth gang participation produces racial differences in drug selling during adolescence. The sample is the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a 10-year longitudinal study following representative samples of Pittsburgh public school first and seventh grade students. Based on boys' self-reports, we find that although overall African American youth report twice as much drug selling as white youth, there are no racial-ethnic differences in drug selling within four gang status groups (never gang member; ever gang member and before, during or after participation). The overall racial-ethnic differences are produced by the greater likelihood of African American boys to join gangs. There are no differences by race-ethnicity in the extent to which boys predisposed to drug selling join gangs nor in the increase in drug selling associated with gang participation. In future work, we will examine: (1) parent reports and official statistics about youth drug selling, (2) the extent to which differences in neighborhood and school contexts by race-ethnicity explain the greater likelihood of African American boys to join gangs and (3) the extent to which a portion of the greater drug selling of future gang members reflects the recruitment process during which these boys begin to associate with the youth who connect them to the gang.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: to be provided