Lo Life

Lo-Life: An American Classic takes the reader on a tripto New York City in the early 80s-a time when crimeand violence ran the streets. The infamous Lo-Lifegang emerged from this tumultuous time. Formedby crews of teenagers from the Brownsville and CrownHeights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, they made a namefor themselves by dressing head-to-toe in expensive RalphLauren clothing, or "Lo." Polo apparel-and other preppy80s fashion labels like Guess, Nautica, and Benetton,among others-represented an aspirational lifestyle forthese kids from rough neighborhoods just struggling toget by. Fighting for style and survival, the Lo-Lifestargeted these brands, and would acquire them by anymeans necessary, including stick-ups, shoplifting, and hustling. A reign of terror ensued, when your new wintercoat could make you the target for a robbery-or worse. What started as an informal gang uniform organizedaround clean designs and bright colors, became adevotion to a lifestyle brand, and eventually created anassociation between the streets and luxury that wouldfundamentally change the fashion industry. Lo-Life: AnAmerican Classic documents the personal collectionsof exclusive archival vintage photographs amassed bythe crew and interviews with original members,presenting the first comprehensive oral history of thisnotorious New York collective. Lo-Life is the remarkable story of a small group of teenagersfighting to make a name for themselves who eventuallymade themselves seen, heard, and emulated globally. Love and Loyalty!

As fatigue and fracture mechanics approaches are used more often for determining the useful life and/or inspection intervals for complex structures, realization sets-in that all factors are not well known or characterized. Indeed, inherent scatter exists in initial material quality and in material performance. Furthermore, projections of component usage in determination of applied stresses are inexact at best and are subject to much discrepancy between projected and actual usage. Even the models for predicting life contain inherent sources of error based on assumptions and/or empirically fitted parameters. All of these factors need to be accounted for to determine a distribution of potential lives based on combination of the aforementioned variables, as well as other factors. The purpose of this symposium was to create a forum for assessment of the state-of-the-art in incorporating these uncertainties and inherent scatter into systematic probabilistic methods for conducting life assessment.

This open access book explores the increasing role of psychoactive substances in contemporary everyday life, focussing on women's use. Drawing on an ethnographic study in Sweden, it uses cultural studies and queer phenomenology to analyse the women’s narratives of drug use relating to themes that encompass social, legal, cultural, embodied and gendered perspectives on drugs in the contemporary Western world. It examines topics such as stigma, happiness, children, the body, gifts, the drug market, medication, sickness and health and also the orientation of themselves towards others, to social and cultural norms, to drug laws and to the substances. It discusses how drug related spaces and directions be analysed in terms of gender and class, and how, in turn, the directions of contemporary society and culture can be affected by drug use. It speaks to academics in Sociology, Criminology, Ethnology, Gender studies, Law and History.