The history of the South Side Railroad, 1846-1870

The South Side Rail Road, chartered in 1846, was the fourth railroad to serve the city of Petersburg, Virginia, and, upon its completion in 1854, was the only direct rail link the city had through the Virginia Piedmont to Lynchburg and points west. The railroad was a major conveyor of trade through the Southside region of Virginia and served as an engine of economic development for the area. During the Civil War the road was a vital means of transportation of men and materiel for the Confederate government. After the war, General William Mahone, a railroad professional and war hero, was elected president of the South Side. In 1870, he consolidated the road into his railroad empire, the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio Railroad Company. This thesis examines the organization, construction, financing, and operation of the South Side Rail Road Company from its origin in 1846 to its merger in 1870. It has relied primarily upon such sources as the annual reports and business records of the company, newspaper and journal accounts, and journals, reports, and acts of the Virginia General Assembly

Feeding beets and potatoes for butter

The farmers of Iowa are growing sugar beets to learn the adaptation of the soils and climates of the state to sugar production. The feeding value of the beet entire without the sugar extracted, is a matter of interest to them. The crop of potatoes in 1891 was large, and where they were unsalable owing to remoteness from markets, or for other causes, it became interesting to ascertain feeding values for dairy products. In conformity with inquiries concerning these subjects, this station fed four cows during three months, beginning December 1st, 1891, and ending February 29, 1892

Replication Data for: BARP: Improving Mister P with Bayesian Additive Regression Trees

Multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) is the current gold standard for extrapolating opinion data from nationally representative surveys to smaller geographic units. However, innovations in non-parametric regularization methods can further improve the researcher's ability to extrapolate opinion data to a geographic unit of interest. I test an ensemble of regularization algorithms and find that there is room for substantial improvement on the multilevel model via more sophisicated methods of regularization. I propose a modified version of MRP that replaces the multilevel model with a non-parametric approach called Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART or, when combined with post-stratification, BARP). I compare both methods across a number of data contexts, demonstrating the benefits of applying more powerful regularization methods to extrapolate opinion data to target geographical units. I provide an R package that implements the BARP method along with other regularization algorithms

Replication Data for: Testing Social Science Network Theories with Online Network Data: An Evaluation of External Validity

Bisbee and Larson replication data from an MTurk study comparing online and offline social network ties and code to reproduce all analyses

Feeding beets and potatoes for butter

The farmers of Iowa are growing sugar beets to learn the adaptation of the soils and climates of the state to sugar production. The feeding value of the beet entire without the sugar extracted, is a matter of interest to them. The crop of potatoes in 1891 was large, and where they were unsalable owing to remoteness from markets, or for other causes, it became interesting to ascertain feeding values for dairy products. In conformity with inquiries concerning these subjects, this station fed four cows during three months, beginning December 1st, 1891, and ending February 29, 1892.</p

Replication Data for: The Millennium Development Goals and Education: Accountability and Substitution in Global Assessment

Precise international metrics and assessments may induce governments to alter policies in pursuit of more favorable assessments according to these metrics. In this paper, we explore a secondary effect of global performance indicators (GPIs). Insofar as governments have finite resources and make trade-offs in public goods investments, a GPI that precisely targets the provision of a particular public good may cause governments to substitute away from the provision of other, related, public goods. We argue that both the main effect of the GPI (on the measured public good) and this substitution effect vary systematically based on the domestic political institutions and informational environments of targeted states. Specifically, we contend that both the main and substitution effects of GPIs should be largest for governments that are least accountable (opaque and nondemocratic) and should be smallest for those that are most accountable. We illustrate the logic of these arguments using a formal model and test these claims using data on primary and secondary enrollment rates across 114 countries. We find that countries substitute toward primary (which is targeted by the Millennium Development Goals) and away from secondary (which is not), and that these effects are mitigated as accountability rises

Solution conformational preferences of glutaric, 3-hydroxyglutaric, 3-methylglutaric acid, and their mono- and dianions

Conformational preferences of glutaric, 3-hydroxyglutaric and 3-methylglutaric acid, and their mono- and dianions have been investigated with the aid of NMR spectroscopy. In contrast to succinic acid, glutaric acid displays essentially statistical conformational equilibria in polar and non-polar solutions of high and low hydrogen-bonding ability with no clear evidence for intramolecular hydrogen-bonding interactions. The acid ionization constant ratios, K_1/K_2, in D_2O and DMSO of glutaric, 3-hydroxyglutaric, and 3-methylglutaric acids also indicate that intramolecular interactions are much less important than, or indeed insignificant, for shorter-chain acids. FTIR studies on 3-methylglutaric acid indicate some preference for either association with solvent or dimerization, depending on the solvent, rather than intramolecular hydrogen bonding