Censusing manatees: a report on the feasibility of using aerial surveys and mark and recapture techniques to conduct a population survey of the West Indian Manatee

This report results from an invitation to review the needs and prospects for capture-recapture and aerial census studies of the manatee (Trichechus manatus) in Florida. Three aerial reconnaissance flights provided a first hand view of manatee habitats, as follows: May 3, Suwannee River to Kings Bay and Crystal River (Rathbun, Eberhardt), May 4, Vero Beach to Ft. Lauderdale and Ft. Myers by way of Whitewater Bay (Rose, Percival, Eberhardt), and May 5, Cape Canaveral to Jacksonville, St. Johns River and Blue Spring (Rose, Kinnaird, Eberhardt). (24 page document

Multimodal Deep Learning for Scientific Imaging Interpretation

In the domain of scientific imaging, interpreting visual data often demands an intricate combination of human expertise and deep comprehension of the subject materials. This study presents a novel methodology to linguistically emulate and subsequently evaluate human-like interactions with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images, specifically of glass materials. Leveraging a multimodal deep learning framework, our approach distills insights from both textual and visual data harvested from peer-reviewed articles, further augmented by the capabilities of GPT-4 for refined data synthesis and evaluation. Despite inherent challenges--such as nuanced interpretations and the limited availability of specialized datasets--our model (GlassLLaVA) excels in crafting accurate interpretations, identifying key features, and detecting defects in previously unseen SEM images. Moreover, we introduce versatile evaluation metrics, suitable for an array of scientific imaging applications, which allows for benchmarking against research-grounded answers. Benefiting from the robustness of contemporary Large Language Models, our model adeptly aligns with insights from research papers. This advancement not only underscores considerable progress in bridging the gap between human and machine interpretation in scientific imaging, but also hints at expansive avenues for future research and broader application

Visualization using R to Support Scientific Research and Data Analysis

As technology continues to develop, scientists are gathering data at an accelerated pace. Yet in order for this data to be useful, scientists need to be able to make sense of these large quantities of data, glean crucial information, and highlight essential details. Therefore, it has become increasingly important to explore different avenues for displaying data, in order to successfully extend this information to the broader community. The goal of this project was to experiment with and evaluate the visualization capabilities of R. More specifically, to determine how the Shiny package within R can be used to create interactive visuals to express complex results. Additionally, the Plotly package allowed for the creation of interactive graphs in which the user can isolate variables to view desired information. Finally, the Shiny Dashboard package was critical in the organization of a user-friendly platform containing data in various formats. All of this information can now be applied to other projects in order to efficiently and effectively communicate the results to sponsors, policy makers, the next generation of scientists, and the broader community

Inclined Surface Locomotion Strategies for Spherical Tensegrity Robots

This paper presents a new teleoperated spherical tensegrity robot capable of performing locomotion on steep inclined surfaces. With a novel control scheme centered around the simultaneous actuation of multiple cables, the robot demonstrates robust climbing on inclined surfaces in hardware experiments and speeds significantly faster than previous spherical tensegrity models. This robot is an improvement over other iterations in the TT-series and the first tensegrity to achieve reliable locomotion on inclined surfaces of up to 24\degree. We analyze locomotion in simulation and hardware under single and multi-cable actuation, and introduce two novel multi-cable actuation policies, suited for steep incline climbing and speed, respectively. We propose compelling justifications for the increased dynamic ability of the robot and motivate development of optimization algorithms able to take advantage of the robot's increased control authority.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures, IROS 201

The Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead: Post-Emancipation Transitions of an African American Family in Central Texas Vol. 1

In conjunction with the proposed construction of the southwest segment of State Highway 45 in southern Travis County, the Texas Department of Transportation sponsored archeological testing and data recovery efforts at the Ransom Williams farmstead. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., conducted an interdisciplinary community-based historic archeological study of the farmstead from 2005 through 2011. Extensive archival research reveals that the 45-acre farm was owned and occupied by Ransom Williams and his wife Sarah, both former slaves, from about 1871 to ca. 1905. The Williams family lived in the predominantly white rural community of Bear Creek, but they had connections to the nearby freedmen communities of Antioch Colony in northern Hays County and Manchaca in southern Travis County. The stories of the Ransom Williams family and their connections to these communities are enhanced by extensive oral history research, with over 46 hours of taped and transcribed interviews with 27 descendant community members. Data recovery investigations focused on a landscape archeological study to define the layout and design of the entire farmstead, including a stock pond and a network of dry-laid rock walls that facilitated water drainage, demarcated property boundaries, and formed livestock pens. Intensive hand excavations were used to examine features associated with the Williams house, outbuildings and activity areas, and a large trash midden. This work recovered more than 26,000 artifacts. They constitute an impressive material culture assemblage that is associated, with few exceptions, with the Williams family tenure on the land. The combined archival data, oral history interviews, and archeological evidence tell the fascinating story of how one African American farm family lived and thrived in central Texas during Reconstruction and into the Jim Crow era

Roadmaps to Utopia: Tales of the Smart City

Notions of the Smart City are pervasive in urban development discourses. Various frameworks for the development of smart cities, often conceptualized as roadmaps, make a number of implicit claims about how smart city projects proceed but the legitimacy of those claims is unclear. This paper begins to address this gap in knowledge. We explore the development of a smart transport application, MotionMap, in the context of a £16M smart city programme taking place in Milton Keynes, UK. We examine how the idealized smart city narrative was locally inflected, and discuss the differences between the narrative and the processes and outcomes observed in Milton Keynes. The research shows that the vision of data-driven efficiency outlined in the roadmaps is not universally compelling, and that different approaches to the sensing and optimization of urban flows have potential for empowering or disempowering different actors. Roadmaps tend to emphasize the importance of delivering quick practical results. However, the benefits observed in Milton Keynes did not come from quick technical fixes but from a smart city narrative that reinforced existing city branding, mobilizing a growing network of actors towards the development of a smart region. Further research is needed to investigate this and other smart city developments, the significance of different smart city narratives, and how power relationships are reinforced and constructed through them

Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites (BORTAS) experiment: design, execution and science overview

We describe the design and execution of the BORTAS (Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites) experiment, which has the overarching objective of understanding the chemical aging of air masses that contain the emission products from seasonal boreal wildfires and how these air masses subsequently impact downwind atmospheric composition. The central focus of the experiment was a two-week deployment of the UK BAe-146-301 Atmospheric Research Aircraft (ARA) over eastern Canada, based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Atmospheric ground-based and sonde measurements over Canada and the Azores associated with the planned July 2010 deployment of the ARA, which was postponed by 12 months due to UK-based flights related to the dispersal of material emitted by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, went ahead and constituted phase A of the experiment. Phase B of BORTAS in July 2011 involved the same atmospheric measurements, but included the ARA, special satellite observations and a more comprehensive ground-based measurement suite. The high-frequency aircraft data provided a comprehensive chemical snapshot of pyrogenic plumes from wildfires, corresponding to photochemical (and physical) ages ranging from 45 sr 10 days, largely by virtue of widespread fires over Northwestern Ontario. Airborne measurements reported a large number of emitted gases including semi-volatile species, some of which have not been been previously reported in pyrogenic plumes, with the corresponding emission ratios agreeing with previous work for common gases. Analysis of the NOy data shows evidence of net ozone production in pyrogenic plumes, controlled by aerosol abundance, which increases as a function of photochemical age. The coordinated ground-based and sonde data provided detailed but spatially limited information that put the aircraft data into context of the longer burning season in the boundary layer. Ground-based measurements of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) over Halifax show that forest fires can on an episodic basis represent a substantial contribution to total surface PM2.5