World Trade Center

The World Trade Center attack, though constituting an unprecedented disaster, nevertheless generated many of the features seen in other disasters in the U.S. Such features include the convergence of volunteers and donations of supplies, which are well- documented in the literature. Their appearance typically is problematic, since they both introduce needed resources and present additional management challenges for public officials

In cases of mass disaster, there is often a need for managing, analyzing, and comparing large numbers of biological samples and DNA profiles. This requires the use of laboratory information management systems for large-scale sample logging and tracking, coupled with bioinformatic tools for DNA database searching according to different matching algorithms, and for the evaluation of the significance of each match by likelihood ratio calculations. There are many different interrelated factors and circumstances involved in each specific mass disaster scenario that may challenge the final DNA identification goal, such as: the number of victims, the mechanisms of body destruction, the extent of body fragmentation, the rate of DNA degradation, the body accessibility for sample collection, or the type of DNA reference samples availability. In this paper, we examine the different steps of the DNA identification analysis (DNA sampling, DNA analysis and technology, DNA database searching, and ...

« Tu n’as rien vu à Hiroshima » : on se souvient de la phrase qui revient comme un leitmotiv dans Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959). Quoiqu’elle ait connu elle aussi l’expérience de la guerre, l’héroïne française de ce film écrit par Marguerite Duras semble incapable, aux yeux de son amant japonais, de saisir vraiment ce qui se trouve devant elle : une ville détruite où le passé traumatique flotte à l’ombre des immeubles fraîchement reconstruits. Les touristes arrivant aujourd’hui au sud de Manhattan sont un peu dans son cas : pour comprendre quelque chose à ce qui s’est passé là, il leur faudrait dépasser très largement les limites de ce qu’on leur donne à voir.

Summary—In the wake of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, more than 9,000 counselors went to New York City to offer aid to rescue workers, families, and direct victims of the violence of September 11, 2001. These mental health professionals assumed that many New Yorkers were at high risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and they hoped

Cet article analyse comment le film World Trade Center d’Oliver Stone met en scène les attentats du 11 septembre 2001. À travers l’analyse de quatre séquences situées dans les vingt premières minutes du film, il s’agira de montrer comment la représentation médiatique a pu octroyer au 11/9 une identité visuelle préétablie auprès de laquelle toute reconstitution filmique semble contrainte de se positionner. Mais la transposition de l’événement en fiction cinématographique doit-elle nécessairement passer par l’adaptation de ses images ? Quels écarts Oliver Stone essaie-t-il d’établir avec les canons médiatiques sur lesquels reposent la mémoire collective ? De quelle singularité, de quelle autonomie formelle World Trade Center peut-il se targuer ?

Purpose To examine health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and World Trade Center (WTC) cough syndrome conditions in male firefighters who retired due to a 9/11-related pulmonary disability. Methods From 3/1/2008 to 1/31/2009, we contacted 275 disability-retired firefighters and compared their HRQoL and current aerodigestive conditions to those from WTC-exposed non-disabled retired and active firefighters. Relationships between HRQoL and explanatory variable(s) were examined using multivariable linear regression models. Results Mean physical component summary (PCS) scores were lowest in disabled retirees compared with non-disabled retirees and actives: 36.4 (9.6), 49.4 (8.7), and 53.1 (5.1), respectively (P P  Conclusion WTC cough syndrome conditions predict lower HRQoL scores even 8 years after exposure, independent of retirement status. These data suggest that monitoring physical conditions of individuals with occupational exposures might help identify those at risk for impaired HRQoL.

Objective: We sought to estimate the lifetime risk of asbestos-related cancer for residents of Lower Manhattan attributable to asbestos released into the air by the 9/11 attack on New York City's World Trade Center (WTC). Methods: Exposure was estimated from available data and reasoned projections based on these data. Cancer risk was assessed using an asbestos risk model that differentiates

L’effondrement des trois tours du World Trade Center a généré une contamination environnementale sans précédent, créant des quantités massives de poussières qui se sont ajoutées au panache d’émissions reliées à la combustion des lieux (ayant perduré plus de cent jours) et aux émissions des véhicules et équipements à moteur diesel requis pour les secours et le nettoyage. Les tours, en plus des matériaux de  construction tels que ciment, verre, métaux et amiante, contenaient différents produits toxiques dans les équipements et mobilier tels que métaux lourds, plastiques et BPC qui ont été en partie brûlés. Ce  mélange complexe de contaminants toxiques pour la santé et l’environnement s’est dispersé à travers la ville et à l’intérieur de plusieurs édifices. Plus de 400 000 personnes ont été exposées aux poussières suite à l’événement. La composition et l’étendue de la contamination étaient inconnues.

Depuis l’événement, plusieurs études démontrent la toxicité de cette exposition pour la santé humaine. Les principaux problèmes de santé associés à cette exposition sont des troubles respiratoires persistants (systèmes supérieurs et inferieurs) dont une augmentation des cas
d’asthme, des troubles gastro-intestinaux et des maux de tête. Les conséquences à long terme demeurent inconnues; la toxicité des produits présents dans l’air et les édifices présage une augmentation de la prévalence de cancers dans la population affectée.

This article approaches Joel Meyerowitz’s Ground Zero photography in 'Aftermath' through a theorization of aesthetics and the event. I attempt to move beyond the common scholarly claim that Meyerowitz’s images of ruins and destruction have simply functioned as government propaganda for the War on Terror. I draw from Jill Bennett’s recent work on aesthetics and Gilles Deleuze’s 'The Logic of Sense' in order to conceptualize photography as an affective and aesthetic encounter with the event in its becoming. I contend that Meyerowitz’s more recent publication of his photography in 'Aftermath' enables affective encounters through sublime and uncanny aesthetics. Approaching aesthetics as an affective encounter, a kind of sense event that is distinctive through its abstraction of the historical event, I argue that an examination of the affective dimensions of ruins might map the potential for viewers of Meyerowitz’s photographs to be caught between multiple and contradictory histories and geographies, memories and temporalities, affects and imaginings. I outline how the aesthetics of Meyerowitz’s 'Aftermath' aligns with reactionary politics, but I also attempt to recover some of the ethical possibilities in these aesthetics, which are overwritten through the dominant discourses surrounding Ground Zero. Ultimately, I maintain that Meyerowitz’s 'Aftermath' confronts viewers with the repressed imagery of ruins of destruction, imagery that uncannily communicates political anxieties, which both serve and run counter to the intense memorialization and victory culture narrativization of Ground Zero.

Hardly a day passes without reports of new threats in or about the Internet. Denial of service, worms, viruses, spam, and divulged credit card information highlight the major security threats. At the same time, we are bombarded by reports that privacy is at the greatest risk of all time, caused by the massive ability to store and search information and to trace activities across the Internet. In this paper, we address issues of conflict that exist between security mechanisms and privacy, including the tradeoffs from a public safety and well-being standpoint, and the technology that can facilitate a suitable balance between privacy and protection priorities. The recent brutal attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept 11, 2001, confirm the connection between security, privacy, and public safety. To protect our liberties and freedoms it is therefore essential that we adopt a holistic security approach.

The distressing sight of people jumping or falling out of the World Trade Center has become an integral part of our collective imaginary of 9/11. Photographs capturing their jump and subsequent fall into the abyss have burned into our memories. Although such traumatizing images were quickly taken out of circulation in print media, they have had a long afterlife on the Internet and in the arts. In the realm of literature, a number of texts, especially novels, have addressed 9/11’s falling bodies, or “jumpers,” as they were also called: Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers (2004), Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World (2004), Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007) are perhaps the most well-known. Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days (2005), although rarely discussed as a 9/11 novel, and even less so in relation to the falling bodies, also evokes images of the falling people, albeit differently from these novels. This chapter compares Cunningham’s and DeLillo’s novels on the basis of the techniques they employ to represent images of the 9/11 jumpers.
The notion of ekphrasis will serve as a lens through which to compare the two novels. An ancient rhetorical tool for describing visual images through words, ekphrasis has been defined and applied in a variety of ways (Hagstrum 1958; Krieger 1967; Heffernan 1993; Wagner 1996). Most significantly for my purposes in this chapter, W. J. T. Mitchell (1994) distinguishes three moments of ekphrasis: indifference, hope, and fear, each of which describes the writer’s emotional disposition towards the image/text dialectic. After discussing the problematic relationship between image and text in relation to photographs of the jumpers, I use Mitchell’s terminology to look at ekphrasis as a means of verbalizing terrorizing images. Subsequently, I introduce the term “phantomogenic ekphrasis” to examine how Specimen Days and Falling Man approximate images of the 9/11 jumpers.

Dreams about 9/11 -- Paper presented at the 19th Annual International Conference for The International Association for the Study of Dreams, Tufts University, Medford, Boston, Massachusetts; 05/2002
An analysis of trauma dreams collected after 9/11

The attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center were unprecedented acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. The disaster provides an opportunity to understand the responses of young children to a traumatic event of this proportion. This retrospective study took place within a year of the attacks and examined the relationship of levels of exposure to the World