Notes on the Medical History of Key West, 1822-1832

The years 1818 to 1823 were unquiet times in the northern Caribbean. The Latin nations of the area were either stabilizing their newly gained independence or preparing for further expressions of defiance against their Iberian overlords. In any event there was neither time nor the resources for organizing a military patrol of the waters extending from Venezuela to Tampa Bay, from Yucatan to Puerto Rico. Piracy was virtually unrestrained, and wrecking, considered by some observers to have been an only slightly more honorable enterprise, went unregulated. Shortly after John W. Simonton had acquired the island, then known as Cayo Hueso, and Lieutenant Matthew C. Perry had planted the American flag there in March 1822, Congress was importuned to establish Key West as a port of entry and to provide such military support as might be necessary to protect it from the forays of outlaws and pirates. In a memorial to Congress, Simonton set the tone for innumerable subsequent publicity releases by praising the quality of the harbor, the heathful climate, and the excellence of the fresh spring water abounding there. President James Monroe was persuaded to consider the feasibility of fortifying the island, and, on February 1, 1823, Commodore David Porter was assigned the command of the West Indian Squadron, with instructions to “suppress piracy and protect American citizens and commerce in the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico, and to establish a naval base for supplying the vessels of the squadron.

Critical materials for infrastructure: local vs global properties

Introducing new technologies into infrastructure (wind turbines, electric vehicles, low-carbon materials and so on) often demands materials that are ‘critical’; their supply is likely to be disrupted owing to limited reserves, geopolitical instability, environmental issues and/or increasing demand. Non-critical materials may become critical if introduced into infrastructure, owing to its gigatonne scale. This potentially poses significant risk to the development of low-carbon infrastructure. Analysis of this risk has previously overlooked the relationship between the ‘local properties’ that determine the selection of a technology and the overall vulnerability of the system, a global property. Treating materials or components as elements having fixed properties overlooks optima within the local–global variable space that could be exploited to minimise vulnerability while maximising performance. In this study, a framework for such analysis is presented along with a preliminary measure of relative materials criticality by way of a case study (a wind turbine generator). Although introduction of critical materials (in this case, rare earth metals) enhances technical performance by up to an order of magnitude, the associated increase in criticality may be two or three orders of magnitude. Analysis at the materials and component levels produces different results; design decisions should be based on analysis at several levels

Gendering the careers of young professionals: some early findings from a longitudinal study. in Organizing/theorizing: developments in organization theory and practice

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales