Blue Water, Brown Water, and Confederate Disloyalty: The Peculiar and Personal Naval Conflict in South Florida during the Civil War

As Florida\u27s political leaders voted on January 10, 1861, to follow the secessionist lead of South Carolina and Mississippi, former Florida Territorial Governor Richard Keith Call observed the multiple and shifting solidarities of the state and warned the winning faction that you have opened the gates of Hell. Call\u27s premonition swayed few power-brokers in Tallahassee, yet his words proved prophetic. Only in recent decades have historians of Florida\u27s Civil War probed past the traditional interpretations of the state\u27s experience as a trifling affair to establish how disruptive and hellish the conflict was on and to the home front. Indeed, scholars such as George E. Buker, Robert A. Taylor, and Tracy J. Revels have opened new and critical windows onto the internally disruptive aspects of the conflict, especially upon those men and women seeking to preserve their limited opportunities in life and the wellbeing of their families. As a result of the war\u27s miseries, numerous Floridians, particularly those in the backcountry far removed from the power and privilege of Middle Florida (the plantation belt), remained Union men or for other personal reasons abandoned the Confederates and cooperated with or sought the protection of local Union forces. By focusing on the peculiar blue-brown water naval operations in south Florida, the following study seeks to add new insight into how the personal disaffections of various groups of hardscrabble Floridians in that region influenced the course and conduct of Florida\u27s own war within a war.

Race, Education, and Regionalism: The Long and Troubling History of School Desegregation in the Sunshine State

In 1845, as Florida joined the Union, the state legislature promulgated a law which stated that any assemblies ... by free negroes and mulattoes, slave or slaves, shall be punished ... with a fine not exceeding twenty dollars, or stripes, not exceeding thirty-nine. This measure, along with extensive and punitive slave codes, virtually eliminated opportunities to establish African American schools in the newest slaveholding state. Florida, true to the code of the white South, wanted to eliminate opportunities for slaves and free blacks to congregate and to pursue education for their children. Although based on the pervasive racial norms of the antebellum South, white Floridians\u27 efforts to deprive African Americans of equal-opportunity education would last through the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This study will chronicle that educational inequality and explore how the Sunshine State\u27s reputed exceptionalism in the Deep South, as reported in the press, the media, and the literature, may not, in fact, match its actual record

Recovery of Pure Economic Loss in Product Liability Actions: An Economic Comparison of Three Legal Rules

This Comment argues that in the allocation of pure economic loss caused by product failure, the negligence rule is generally more efficient than a strict liability rule and that a contract rule is almost always more efficient than a negligence rule. Part II presents a general discussion of the attributes of an economically efficient remedy. In Part III, three legal rules used to allocate pure economic loss are scrutinized under the standards set forth in Part II

Recovery of Pure Economic Loss in Product Liability Actions: An Economic Comparison of Three Legal Rules

This Comment argues that in the allocation of pure economic loss caused by product failure, the negligence rule is generally more efficient than a strict liability rule and that a contract rule is almost always more efficient than a negligence rule. Part II presents a general discussion of the attributes of an economically efficient remedy. In Part III, three legal rules used to allocate pure economic loss are scrutinized under the standards set forth in Part II

Gigahertz Optical Spin Transceiver

We present a time-resolved optical technique to measure electron spin dynamics with GHz dynamical bandwidth, transform-limited spectral selectivity, and phase-sensitive (lock-in) detection. Use of a continuous-wave (CW) laser and fast optical bridge enables greatly improved signal-to-noise characteristics compared to traditional optical sampling (pump-probe) techniques. We demonstrate the technique with a measurement of GHz-spin precession in n-GaAs. This approach may be applicable to other physical systems where stroboscopic techniques cannot be used because of either noise or spectral limitations

Gigahertz Optical Spin Transceiver

We present a time-resolved optical technique to measure electron spin dynamics with GHz dynamical bandwidth, transform-limited spectral selectivity, and phase-sensitive (lock-in) detection. Use of a continuous-wave (CW) laser and fast optical bridge enables greatly improved signal-to-noise characteristics compared to traditional optical sampling (pump-probe) techniques. We demonstrate the technique with a measurement of GHz-spin precession in n-GaAs. This approach may be applicable to other physical systems where stroboscopic techniques cannot be used because of either noise or spectral limitations

Reassessing the Role of APOBEC3G in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection of Quiescent CD4+ T-Cells

HIV-1 is restricted for infection of primary quiescent T-cells. After viral entry, reverse transcription is initiated but is not completed. Various hypotheses have been proposed for this cellular restriction including insufficient nucleotide pools and cellular factors, but none have been confirmed as the primary mechanism for restriction. A recent study by Chiu et al. implicates APOBEC3G, an anti-retroviral cytidine deaminase, as the cellular restriction factor. Here, we attempted to confirm these findings using the same strategy as reported by Chiu et al. of siRNA targeting knock-down of APOBEC3G expression. In contrast to the published study, our results do not support a role for APOBEC3G in restriction of HIV-1 in quiescent CD4+ T-cells. In our study, we tested the same siRNA as reported by Chiu et al. as well as two additional siRNAs targeting APOBEC3G, one of which showed 2-fold greater knock-down of APOBEC3G mRNA. However, none of the three siRNAs tested had a discernable effect on enhancing infection by HIV-1 in quiescent CD4+ T-cells. Therefore, we conclude that the primary mechanism of HIV-1 restriction in quiescent CD4+ T-cells remains to be elucidated