Taking the State Out: Seminoles and Creeks in Late Eighteenth-Century Florida

Between 1750 and 1810, the Muskogee Indians held the upper hand in intercolonial affairs and made Florida Indian country. More than two centuries after Spain had claimed the region as part of its dominion and sent soldiers and missionaries to subdue its inhabitants, the Muskogee Indians enjoyed a sustained period of autonomy that was at odds with the experiences of Indians elsewhere in the Spanish and British empires.\u27 Neither conquered nor subdued, Muskogee Indians still controlled Florida. Technically surrounded by European and later American powers, these Creek and Seminole Indians lived in semi-autonomous villages that routinely disregarded the interests of Spain, Great Britain, and then the United States. Natives ignored and defied European and American forms of justice, determined the terms of trading agreements with their neighbors, and dictated the nature of intermarriages with Europeans and Americans. Native villages, in this context, had few problems contending with imperial forces of power. They harbored, with surprisingly few ramifications, dozens of white fugitives from justice as well as deserting soldiers. They also continuously welcomed runaway African American slaves into their villages and onto their lands. The Muskogees occasionally found European allies and often acted with their support, but they also behaved in ways that frustrated imperial powers

Global sustainability, innovation and governance dynamics of national smart electricity meter transitions

Smart electricity meters are a central feature of any future smart grid, and therefore represent a rapid and significant household energy transition, growing by our calculations from less than 23.5 million smart meters in 2010 to an estimated 729.1 million in 2019, a decadal growth rate of 3013%. What are the varying economic, governance, and energy and climate sustainability aspects associated with the diffusion of smart meters for electricity? What lessons can be learned from the ongoing rollouts of smart meters around the world? Based on an original dataset twice as comprehensive as the current state of the art, this study examines smart meter deployment across 41 national programs and 61 subnational programs that collectively target 1.49 billion installations involving 47 countries. In addition to rates of adoption and the relative influence of factors such as technology costs, we examine adoption requirements, modes of information provision, patterns of incumbency and management, behavioral changes and energy savings, emissions reductions, policies, and links to other low-carbon transitions such as energy efficiency or renewable energy. We identify numerous weak spots in the literature, notably the lack of harmonized datasets as well as inconsistent scope and quality within national cost-benefit analyses of smart meter programs. Most smart meters have a lifetime of only 20 years, leading to future challenges concerning repair, care, and waste. National-scale programs (notably China) account for a far larger number of installations than subnational ones, and national scale programs also install smart meters more affordably, i.e. with lower general costs. Finally, the transformative effect of smart meters may be oversold, and we find that smart electricity meters are a technology that is complementary, rather than disruptive or transformative, one that largely does not challenge the dominant practices and roles of electricity suppliers, firms, or network operators.publishedVersio

Navigating implementation dilemmas in technology- forcing policies: A comparative analysis of accelerated smart meter diffusion in the Netherlands, UK, Norway, and Portugal

This paper addresses the implementation of technology-forcing policies in open-ended diffusion processes that involve companies and regulators as well as consumers and civil society actors. Mobilising insights from the societal embedding of technology framework and policy steering theories, we investigate two implementation dilemmas that relate to an overarching tension between flexibility (to enable technological learning and stakeholder engagement) and coordinated push (to focus actors and drive deployment): a) early or late formulation of initial targets, and b) technocratic or emergent-adaptive implementation styles. We investigate these dilemmas with four comparative case studies of smart electricity meters between 2000 to 2019, which diffused rapidly in the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal, but decelerated in the UK. We relate these differences to policy choices, and identify two patterns for successful implementation of technology-forcing policies: a) start with early targets and a technocratic style, but make adjustments if there are substantial protests or technical problems, and b) start with an emergent-adaptive style and formulate and enforce targets later, once technical and social stabilisation has occurred.publishedVersio

Current and Future Applications of Multispectral (RGB) Satellite Imagery for Weather Analysis and Forecasting Applications

Current and future satellite sensors provide remotely sensed quantities from a variety of wavelengths ranging from the visible to the passive microwave, from both geostationary and low ]Earth orbits. The NASA Short ]term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center has a long history of providing multispectral imagery from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA fs Terra and Aqua satellites in support of NWS forecast office activities. Products from MODIS have recently been extended to include a broader suite of multispectral imagery similar to those developed by EUMETSAT, based upon the spectral channels available from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) aboard METEOSAT ]9. This broader suite includes products that discriminate between air mass types associated with synoptic ]scale features, assists in the identification of dust, and improves upon paired channel difference detection of fog and low cloud events. Future instruments will continue the availability of these products and also expand upon current capabilities. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on GOES ]R will improve the spectral, spatial, and temporal resolution of our current geostationary capabilities, and the recent launch of the Suomi National Polar ]Orbiting Partnership (S ]NPP) carries instruments such as the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the Cross ]track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), which have unrivaled spectral and spatial resolution, as precursors to the JPSS era (i.e., the next generation of polar orbiting satellites. New applications from VIIRS extend multispectral composites available from MODIS and SEVIRI while adding new capabilities through incorporation of additional CrIS channels or information from the Near Constant Contrast or gDay ]Night Band h, which provides moonlit reflectance from clouds and detection of fires or city lights. This presentation will present a review of SPoRT, CIRA, and NRL collaborations regarding multispectral satellite imagery and recent applications within the operational forecasting environmen

Reproducible computational biology experiments with SED-ML - The Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language

Background: The increasing use of computational simulation experiments to inform modern biological research creates new challenges to annotate, archive, share and reproduce such experiments. The recently published Minimum Information About a Simulation Experiment (MIASE) proposes a minimal set of information that should be provided to allow the reproduction of simulation experiments among users and software tools. Results: In this article, we present the Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language (SED-ML). SED-ML encodes in a computer-readable exchange format the information required by MIASE to enable reproduction of simulation experiments. It has been developed as a community project and it is defined in a detailed technical specification and additionally provides an XML schema. The version of SED-ML described in this publication is Level 1 Version 1. It covers the description of the most frequent type of simulation experiments in the area, namely time course simulations. SED-ML documents specify which models to use in an experiment, modifications to apply on the models before using them, which simulation procedures to run on each model, what analysis results to output, and how the results should be presented. These descriptions are independent of the underlying model implementation. SED-ML is a software-independent format for encoding the description of simulation experiments; it is not specific to particular simulation tools. Here, we demonstrate that with the growing software support for SED-ML we can effectively exchange executable simulation descriptions. Conclusions: With SED-ML, software can exchange simulation experiment descriptions, enabling the validation and reuse of simulation experiments in different tools. Authors of papers reporting simulation experiments can make their simulation protocols available for other scientists to reproduce the results. Because SED-ML is agnostic about exact modeling language(s) used, experiments covering models from different fields of research can be accurately described and combined

The SMC SNR 1E0102.2-7219 as a Calibration Standard for X-ray Astronomy in the 0.3-2.5 keV Bandpass

The flight calibration of the spectral response of CCD instruments below 1.5 keV is difficult in general because of the lack of strong lines in the on-board calibration sources typically available. We have been using 1E 0102.2-7219, the brightest supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, to evaluate the response models of the ACIS CCDs on the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), the EPIC CCDs on the XMM-Newton Observatory, the XIS CCDs on the Suzaku Observatory, and the XRT CCD on the Swift Observatory. E0102 has strong lines of O, Ne, and Mg below 1.5 keV and little or no Fe emission to complicate the spectrum. The spectrum of E0102 has been well characterized using high-resolution grating instruments, namely the XMM-Newton RGS and the CXO HETG, through which a consistent spectral model has been developed that can then be used to fit the lower-resolution CCD spectra. We have also used the measured intensities of the lines to investigate the consistency of the effective area models for the various instruments around the bright O (~570 eV and 654 eV) and Ne (~910 eV and 1022 eV) lines. We find that the measured fluxes of the O VII triplet, the O VIII Ly-alpha line, the Ne IX triplet, and the Ne X Ly-alpha line generally agree to within +/-10 % for all instruments, with 28 of our 32 fitted normalizations within +/-10% of the RGS-determined value. The maximum discrepancies, computed as the percentage difference between the lowest and highest normalization for any instrument pair, are 23% for the O VII triplet, 24% for the O VIII Ly-alpha line, 13% for the Ne IX triplet, and 19% for the Ne X Ly-alpha line. If only the CXO and XMM are compared, the maximum discrepancies are 22% for the O VII triplet, 16% for the O VIII Ly-alpha line, 4% for the Ne IX triplet, and 12% for the Ne X Ly-alpha line.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, to be published in Proceedings of the SPIE 7011: Space Telescopes and Instrumentation II: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray 200

Development of Level 2 Calibration and Validation Plans for GOES-R; What is a RIMP?

Calibration and Validation (CalVal) plans for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite version R (GOES-R) Level 2 (L2) products were documented via Resource, Implementation, and Management Plans (RIMPs) for all of the official L2 products required from the GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). In 2015 the GOES-R program decided to replace the typical CalVal plans with RIMPs that covered, for a given L2 product, what was required from that product, how it would be validated, and what tools would be used to do so. Similar to Level 1b products, the intent was to cover the full spectrum of planning required for the CalVal of L2 ABI products. Instead of focusing on step-by-step procedures, the RIMPs concentrated on the criteria for each stage of the validation process (Beta, Provisional, and Full Validation) and the many elements required to prove when each stage was reached

A model‐based motion capture marker location refinement approach using inverse kinematics from dynamic trials

Marker‐based motion capture techniques are commonly used to measure human body kinematics. These techniques require an accurate mapping from physical marker position to model marker position. Traditional methods utilize a manual process to achieve marker positions that result in accurate tracking. In this work, we present an optimization algorithm for model marker placement to minimize marker tracking error during inverse kinematics analysis of dynamic human motion. The algorithm sequentially adjusts model marker locations in 3‐D relative to the underlying rigid segment. Inverse kinematics is performed for a dynamic motion capture trial to calculate the tracking error each time a marker position is changed. The increase or decrease of the tracking error determines the search direction and number of increments for each marker coordinate. A final marker placement for the model is reached when the total search interval size for every coordinate falls below a user‐defined threshold. Individual marker coordinates can be locked in place to prevent the algorithm from overcorrecting for data artifacts such as soft tissue artifact. This approach was used to refine model marker placements for eight able‐bodied subjects performing walking trials at three stride frequencies. Across all subjects and stride frequencies, root mean square (RMS) tracking error decreased by 38.4% and RMS tracking error variance decreased by 53.7% on average. The resulting joint kinematics were in agreement with expected values from the literature. This approach results in realistic kinematics with marker tracking errors well below accepted thresholds while removing variance in the model‐building procedure introduced by individual human tendencies.A new approach for refining human musculoskeletal models algorithmically adjusts motion capture marker locations based on inverse kinematics solutions of dynamic trials. The approach was applied to gait trials from eight able‐bodied subjects and was demonstrated to (a) reduce inverse kinematics marker tracking error overall, (b) reduce inter‐subject tracking error variability, and (c) produce normal walking kinematics for able‐bodied persons.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153769/1/cnm3283_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153769/2/cnm3283.pd

The Modified Weighted Slab Technique: Models and Results

In an attempt to understand the source and propagation of galactic cosmic rays we have employed the Modified Weighted Slab technique along with recent values of the relevant cross sections to compute primary to secondary ratios including B/C and Sub-Fe/Fe for different galactic propagation models. The models that we have considered are the disk-halo diffusion model, the dynamical halo wind model, the turbulent diffusion model and a model with minimal reacceleration. The modified weighted slab technique will be briefly discussed and a more detailed description of the models will be given. We will also discuss the impact that the various models have on the problem of anisotropy at high energy and discuss what properties of a particular model bear on this issue.Comment: LaTeX - AASTEX format, Submitted to ApJ, 8 figures, 20 page