Latino politics in the United States : a diverse minority and its growing influence

These der Arbeit ist, dass man weder von den Latinos als einer homogenen Einheit, noch einer geeinten politischen Strategie dieser Gruppe sprechen kann. Da Latinos seit 2003 mit etwa 41.3 Millionen Menschen die größte Minderheit in den USA sind und ihre Zahl auch in Zukunft schnell wachsen wird, nimmt ihr Einfluss auf die Gesellschaft im Allgemeinen und die Politik im Besonderen zu. Spanischsprachige Fernsehkanäle und Radiostationen, sowie Zeitungen und Zeitschriften gehören längst zum Alltag der USA und stehen für eine wachsende „Hispanisierung“ des Landes. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit wird ein Überblick gegeben, der die demographischen und wirtschaftlichen Besonderheiten der Latinos im Allgemeinen beleuchtet. Diese Bevölkerungsgruppe ist im Vergleich zu weißen Anglo Amerikanern durchschnittlich ärmer und verfügt über niedrigere Bildungsstandards. Dies wirkt sich auf die ausgeübten Berufe und somit auf das Einkommen aus. Latinos sind im Durchschnitt jünger als jede andere Bevölkerungsgruppe in den USA, was die zukünftige Zusammensetzung der amerikanischen Gesellschaft beeinflussen wird. Durch die Vielzahl an Herkunftsländern und der damit einhergehenden Heterogenität der Latinos sind politische Absichten, sowie die Partizipation am politischen Prozess in den USA, jedoch äußerst unterschiedlich. Die drei größten Nationalitäten – Mexikaner, Kubaner, Puerto Ricaner – dienen hierbei als Beleg für diese These. Alle drei Gruppen werden vor dem Hintergrund ihrer spezifischen historischen Erfahrungen untersucht. Um politische Aktivitäten und Möglichkeiten der jeweiligen Nationalitäten zu verstehen, ist es fundamental, die historischen Beziehungen der jeweiligen Länder zu den USA zu beleuchten . Trotz dieser ausgeprägten Heterogenität unter den Latinos, birgt eine Vereinheitlichung, wie sie mit den Begriffen Latino und Hispanic gewollt ist, auch neue Möglichkeiten und Vorteile. Als numerisch starker, politischer Akteur können Latinos in Zukunft erheblichen Einfluss auf die Politik des Landes ausüben, vorausgesetzt sie finden einen gemeinsamen Nenner. Demographen gehen davon aus, dass im Jahre 2050 jeder zweite US-Bürger als Latino zu bezeichnen ist, weshalb die beiden großen Parteien vor einigen Jahren damit begannen, diese Bevölkerungsgruppe zu umwerben. Aller Diversität zum Trotz gehen einige politische Analysten, sowie Demoskopen, weiterhin von einem homogenen Akteur aus. Tatsächlich betrachten viele Latinos aller Ethnien Themen wie Immigration, Sozialversicherung, oder auch Bildung als wichtige Probleme, die es zu lösen gilt. Sollten die Latinos in den USA, trotz ihrer Vielschichtigkeit, einheitliche Interessen definieren und diese gemeinsam verfolgen, wird die größte Minderheit zu einem noch wichtigeren politischen Akteur, der seinen Einfluss, sowohl auf nationale wie auch internationale Themen, geltend machen wird.This paper is intended to show how Latinos in general and Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, and Puerto Ricans in particular, engage politically in the United States. Latinos execute their influence by voting or in non-electoral activities like campaign work or financial contributions. As an individual, one participates as a member of society and possibly as a member of an interest group, i.e. a party. Thus, to be successful, it is necessary to combine one’s personal interest with that of others in order to form an alliance that, due to its size, may have an impact on the political stage. This study will show which factors are necessary and which steps were taken to gain and enhance Latino political influence. In doing so, it will become clear that Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, and Puerto Ricans all started their struggle from diverse backgrounds and possess significantly different goals. Although common language unites these three national-origin groups, they do not have the same political and economic resources at their disposal. Decisive differences in immigration politics, naturalization, and economic opportunities become visible and will prove a distinct heterogeneity of Latinos concerning political behavior and goals. Political activities of Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, and Puerto Ricans will be outlined as well as how they differ from each other. In doing so, it is necessary to take notice of their specific histories and legal experiences upon arrival in the United States. Furthermore, different demographic factors of the three national-origin groups additionally affect political participation. An understanding of Latino political participation should be in the interest of the U.S. public as well as scholars engaging in American Studies. This biggest minority increasingly makes its presence felt in the electoral arena, especially at the state level. In states such as California, Texas, Florida and New Mexico Latinos constitute decisive voting blocs. But also, Latinos nationwide enlarge their political clout, due to cumulative numbers and a more developed political consciousness. With this national and state level significance of the Latino electorate, examining their policy preferences and goals has become progressively more important to the understanding of the U.S. political scene. The approach here is twofold. First, political participation of the Latino population as a whole will be researched; using numbers and results from the presidential election 2004. In this part of the paper, the concept of pan-ethnicity using the label Latino will be used to sum up Spanish-speaking nationalities and their political efforts. In order to be eligible to vote, certain legal requirements are to be met, so factors that account for voting will be outlined first. In accordance with the large share of non-citizens among the Latino population, it is also necessary to examine their non-electoral political activities. The second part will portray Latinos in more detail, examining the three largest national-origin groups. By demonstrating their specific histories and varied experiences and opportunities in U.S. politics, it will become clear that when talking about Latino Politics, it is indispensable to bear in mind the heterogeneity of America’s biggest minority and the side effects this has

Data Centric Peer-to-Peer Communication in Power Grids

We study the use of peer-to-peer based declarative data management to enable efficient monitoring and control of power transmission and distribution networks. We propose methods and an architecture for data centric communication in power networks; a proof-of-concept decentralized communication infrastructure is presented that uses and advances state of the art peer-to-peer and distributed data management protocols to provide real time access to network state information. We propose methods for adaptive network reconfiguration and self-repair mechanisms to handle fault situations. To efficiently handle complex queries, we present a centralized metadata index, and propose a query language and execution method that allows us to handle high volume data streams in-network

A surrogate modeling approach for fatigue damage assessment of floating wind turbines

Fatigue analysis for floating wind turbines poses a novel challenge to calculation workflows if a probabilistic load environment is to be considered. The increased complexity of the structure itself as well as its interaction with the environment require a coupled and more detailed analysis with respect to resolution of environmental conditions compared to fixed bottom systems. Different approaches to address the computing challenge for floating turbines are possible to support engineering judgement and have been investigated in the past, with conservative binning on the one end of the accuracy scale and computation intensive Monte Carlo simulations on the other end. This study investigates the feasibility of regression based surrogate models based on radial basis functions. The investigation performed here is aligned with work performed in the H2020 project LIFES50+. Consequently, the considered system is the DTU 10MW Reference Wind Turbine installed on the LIFES50+ OO-Star Wind Floater Semi 10MW. The site under investigation is the LIFES50+ Site B (Gulf of Maine) medium severity representative site. Results show a similar convergence of lifetime fatigue load prediction as with Monte Carlo simulations indicating that this technique may be an alternative if a response model of the considered system is of interest. This may be interesting if damage loading is to be calculated at a different site and if a classification of met-ocean conditions is available

Application of a Monte Carlo procedure for probabilistic fatigue design of floating offshore wind turbines

Fatigue load assessment of floating offshore wind turbines poses new challenges on the feasibility of numerical procedures. Due to the increased sensitivity of the considered system with respect to the environmental conditions from wind and ocean, the application of common procedures used for fixed-bottom structures results in either inaccurate simulation results or hard-to-quantify conservatism in the system design. Monte Carlo-based sampling procedures provide a more realistic approach to deal with the large variation in the environmental conditions, although basic randomization has shown slow convergence. Specialized sampling methods allow efficient coverage of the complete design space, resulting in faster convergence and hence a reduced number of required simulations. In this study, a quasi-random sampling approach based on Sobol sequences is applied to select representative events for the determination of the lifetime damage. This is calculated applying Monte Carlo integration, using subsets of a resulting total of 16 200 coupled time-domain simulations performed with the simulation code FAST. The considered system is the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU) 10 MW reference turbine installed on the LIFES50+ OO-Star Wind Floater Semi 10 MW floating platform. Statistical properties of the considered environmental parameters (i.e., wind speed, wave height and wave period) are determined based on the measurement data from the Gulf of Maine, USA. Convergence analyses show that it is sufficient to perform around 200 simulations in order to reach less than 10 % uncertainty of lifetime fatigue damage-equivalent loading. Complementary in-depth investigation is performed, focusing on the load sensitivity and the impact of outliers (i.e., values far away from the mean). Recommendations for the implementation of the proposed methodology in the design process are also provided

Comparison of measured and simulated structural loads of an offshore wind turbine at Alpha Ventus

A comparison of fatigue and extreme loads from simulations with full-scale measurements collected over a period of ten months in the offshore test field, Alpha Ventus, is presented in this paper. There are two goals of this study: (1) to check if the measured range of fatigue and extreme loads can be captured correctly by simulations when the variations of relevant environmental parameters are taken into account; and (2) to investigate if measured extreme loads can be reproduced by simulations when ten-minute averages of the environmental parameters are used. The results show a good overall match of loads when the variation of environmental parameters is considered but an insufficient match when the events of maximum load occurrence are compared

Optimization of floating offshore wind turbine platforms with a self-tuning controller

The dynamic response of floating offshore wind turbines is complex and requires numerous design iterations in order to converge at a cost-efficient hull shape with reduced responses to wind and waves. In this article, a framework is presented, which allows the optimization of design parameters with respect to user-defined criteria such as load reduction and material costs. The optimization uses a simplified nonlinear model of the floating wind turbine and a self-tuning model-based controller. The results are shown for a concrete three-column semi-submersible and a 10MW wind turbine, for which a reduction of the fluctuating wind and wave loads is possible through the optimization. However, this happens at increased material costs for the platform due to voluminous heave plates or increased column spacing

Improved tank test procedures for scaled floating offshore wind turbines

This study collects issues from previous tank test campaigns of scaled Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT), compares the different scaling methodologies, points out critical aspects and shows possible alternatives and recommendations for future tests depending on the specific objective. Furthermore, it gives practical recommendations for the modeling and construction of scaled rotors. The presented scaling procedure will be applied in tank tests within the EU Seventh Framework Program InnWind (ENERGY.2012.2.3.1 "Innovative wind conversion systems (10-20MW) for offshore applications")