The prairie grass dividing: The history of the Saunders County Farmers\u27 Alliance, 1889-1897

The Farmers Alliance was one of the most important agricultural organizations in late nineteenth century America. This thesis traces the history of the Alliance movement in Saunders County, Nebraska, where it was one of the strongest in the state between 1889 and 1892. In addition, it examines the emergence of third party Populist politics, as they relate to this farm organization. Saunders County, located in eastern Nebraska, developed a strong Alliance movement culture, that included cooperative ventures, an educational program and social activities. Several producer and consumer cooperative ventures were started by members after they joined the organization. In some cases, these cooperatives lasted well into the contemporary era. The Alliance encouraged women’s participation in a way that was unlike other agricultural organizations before it. Alliance-sponsored Oyster dinners, picnics, and parades enhanced social interaction among farmers who lived in sparsely populated areas of the county. Political education, which was promoted through the dispersal of reform literature, debates, and discussion, proved central to politicizing Alliance members. The County Alliance also collaborated with the Knights of Labor in Wahoo to pursue common political and social objectives. The organization’s movement culture created an Alliance experience, which altered the political consciousness of its members. As a result, Saunders County became a leading center of Populist activity in Nebraska throughout the 1890s. Coinciding with this development, however, was the decline of the Alliance itself, as many of its members left the organization for the new political movement

Environmental Judicial Interpretation and Agency Review: An Empirical Investigation of Judicial Decision-Making in the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act

Political ideology has long been associated with the manner in which judges make judicial decisions. Extensive empirical research has established the link between a judge s political ideology and how they rule on cases. However, little research has been conducted specifically in environmental law. Indeed, what research is available looks at environmental law in general and has not asked any questions concerning how political ideology might affect decision-making concerning specific environmental statutes. This article seeks to partially fill this void by looking specifically at how political ideology affects whether judges affirm or reverse agency action with respect to the Clean Water Act versus the Clean Air Act. The data used in this analysis were collected from seventy environmental law cases, which include 116 instances of statutory interpretation and 347 judicial votes concerning cases appealed to the U.S. Courts of Appeal over a three-year period from 2003 to 2005. Findings indicate that political ideology is a much more important factor in Clean Water Act cases as compared to Clean Air Act cases. Furthermore, evidence shows that panel composition was much more important for Clean Water Act decisions as opposed to Clean Air Act decisions. These findings are placed within the genera/framework of understanding legal decisions as a product of both legal interpretation and political preferences

Enriched biodiversity data as a resource and service

Background: Recent years have seen a surge in projects that produce large volumes of structured, machine-readable biodiversity data. To make these data amenable to processing by generic, open source “data enrichment” workflows, they are increasingly being represented in a variety of standards-compliant interchange formats. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and taxonomists came together to address the challenges and highlight the opportunities in the enrichment of such biodiversity data by engaging in intensive, collaborative software development: The Biodiversity Data Enrichment Hackathon. Results: The hackathon brought together 37 participants (including developers and taxonomists, i.e. scientific professionals that gather, identify, name and classify species) from 10 countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. The participants brought expertise in processing structured data, text mining, development of ontologies, digital identification keys, geographic information systems, niche modeling, natural language processing, provenance annotation, semantic integration, taxonomic name resolution, web service interfaces, workflow tools and visualisation. Most use cases and exemplar data were provided by taxonomists. One goal of the meeting was to facilitate re-use and enhancement of biodiversity knowledge by a broad range of stakeholders, such as taxonomists, systematists, ecologists, niche modelers, informaticians and ontologists. The suggested use cases resulted in nine breakout groups addressing three main themes: i) mobilising heritage biodiversity knowledge; ii) formalising and linking concepts; and iii) addressing interoperability between service platforms. Another goal was to further foster a community of experts in biodiversity informatics and to build human links between research projects and institutions, in response to recent calls to further such integration in this research domain. Conclusions: Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use case, areas of inadequacy were discussed and are being pursued further. It was striking how many possible applications for biodiversity data there were and how quickly solutions could be put together when the normal constraints to collaboration were broken down for a week. Conversely, mobilising biodiversity knowledge from their silos in heritage literature and natural history collections will continue to require formalisation of the concepts (and the links between them) that define the research domain, as well as increased interoperability between the software platforms that operate on these concepts

The SuperCam Remote Sensing Instrument Suite for Mars 2020

International audienceThe Mars 2020 rover, essentially a structural twin of MSL, is being built to a) characterize the geology and history of a new landing site on Mars, b) find and characterize ancient habitable environments, c) cache samples for eventual return to Earth, and d) demonstrate in-situ production of oxygen needed for human exploration. Remote-sensing instrumentation is needed to support the first three of these goals [1]. The SuperCam instrument meets these needs with a range of instrumentation including the highest-resolution remote imaging on the rover, two different techniques for determining mineralogy , and one technique to provide elemental compositions. All of these techniques are co-boresighted, providing rapid comprehensive characterization. In addition, for targets within 7 meters of the rover the laser shock waves brush away the dust, providing cleaner surfaces for analysis. SuperCam will use an advanced version of the AEGIS robotic target selection software

The SuperCam Instrument Suite on the Mars 2020 Rover: Science Objectives and Mast-Unit Description

On the NASA 2020 rover mission to Jezero crater, the remote determination of the texture, mineralogy and chemistry of rocks is essential to quickly and thoroughly characterize an area and to optimize the selection of samples for return to Earth. As part of the Perseverance payload, SuperCam is a suite of five techniques that provide critical and complementary observations via Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Time-Resolved Raman and Luminescence (TRR/L), visible and near-infrared spectroscopy (VISIR), high-resolution color imaging (RMI), and acoustic recording (MIC). SuperCam operates at remote distances, primarily 2-7 m, while providing data at sub-mm to mm scales. We report on SuperCam's science objectives in the context of the Mars 2020 mission goals and ways the different techniques can address these questions. The instrument is made up of three separate subsystems: the Mast Unit is designed and built in France; the Body Unit is provided by the United States; the calibration target holder is contributed by Spain, and the targets themselves by the entire science team. This publication focuses on the design, development, and tests of the Mast Unit; companion papers describe the other units. The goal of this work is to provide an understanding of the technical choices made, the constraints that were imposed, and ultimately the validated performance of the flight model as it leaves Earth, and it will serve as the foundation for Mars operations and future processing of the data.In France was provided by the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). Human resources were provided in part by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and universities. Funding was provided in the US by NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Some funding of data analyses at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was provided by laboratory-directed research and development funds

Empathy and Collective Action in the Prisoner\u27s Dilemma

Economists guided by evolutionary psychology have theorized that in an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma reciprocal behavior is a product of evolutionary design, where individuals are guided by an innate sense of fairness for equal outcomes. Empathy as a pro-social emotion could be a key to understanding the psychological underpinnings of why and who tends to cooperate in a collective act. In short, why are some individuals more prone to participate in collective-action? The hypothesis that a pro-social psychological disposition stemming from self-reported empathy will lead to grouporiented behavior in an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game is tested. Results suggest that an empathetic disposition does not lead to a higher rate of cooperation, but interacts with environmental conditioning to produce either a highly cooperative or highly uncooperative personality type

Variance, Violence, and Democracy: A Basic Microeconomic Model of Terrorism

Much of the debate surrounding contemporary studies of terrorism focuses upon transnational terrorism. However, historical and contemporary evidence suggests that domestic terrorism is a more prevalent and pressing concern. A formal microeconomic model of terrorism is utilized here to understand acts of political violence in a domestic context within the domain of democratic governance.This article builds a very basic microeconomic model of terrorist decision making to hypothesize how a democratic government might influence the sorts of strategies that terrorists use. Mathematical models have been used to explain terrorist behavior in the past. However, the bulk of inquires in this area have only focused on the relationship between terrorists and the government, or amongst terrorists themselves. Central to the interpretation of the terrorist conflict presented here is the idea that voters (or citizens) are also one of the important determinants of how a government will respond to acts of terrorism

Political behavior and emotional disposition: Empathy and the collective action problem

This study investigates the effects of an empathetic emotional disposition in decision making. The hypothesis that empathy is a general guide to collective action decisions is proposed and tested. Evolutionary theory posits that group level selection has endowed humans with a propensity for cooperative behavior in the absence of selective incentives by equipping the human mind with pro-social emotions. Three separate studies are used to investigate the importance of empathy in collective action problems. The first study utilizes a survey methodology to understand how empathy impacts citizens\u27 likelihood of electoral participation. The second study investigates how empathy facilitates cooperation in an iterated Prisoner\u27s Dilemma. Finally, an experiment using a galvanic skin response monitor is utilized in order to analyze the accuracy of empathy in predicting political in-group/out-group associations. Findings indicate that empathy is not only a significant predictor of behavior, but is a conditional characteristic that can promulgate defection as well as cooperative behavior

Political behavior and emotional disposition: Empathy and the collective action problem

This study investigates the effects of an empathetic emotional disposition in decision making. The hypothesis that empathy is a general guide to collective action decisions is proposed and tested. Evolutionary theory posits that group level selection has endowed humans with a propensity for cooperative behavior in the absence of selective incentives by equipping the human mind with pro-social emotions. Three separate studies are used to investigate the importance of empathy in collective action problems. The first study utilizes a survey methodology to understand how empathy impacts citizens\u27 likelihood of electoral participation. The second study investigates how empathy facilitates cooperation in an iterated Prisoner\u27s Dilemma. Finally, an experiment using a galvanic skin response monitor is utilized in order to analyze the accuracy of empathy in predicting political in-group/out-group associations. Findings indicate that empathy is not only a significant predictor of behavior, but is a conditional characteristic that can promulgate defection as well as cooperative behavior