Archaeological Investigation at the Marshall Powder Mill (41HS17), Confederate States of America 1863-1865, Harrison County, Texas: 1994 Season

The Northeast Texas Archeological Society, in conjunction with the East Texas, Dallas, and Tarrant County archeological societies, reinstated archaeological investigations at the Marshall Powder Mill (41HS17) in 1994 following several years of delicate negotiations with the landowner about the value of preserving this archaeological site. The Marshall Powder Mill manufactured gunpowder, small arms and cannon, and refurbished weaponry, and was one of several arsenals that served the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederate States of America from 1863 to 1865. None have been thoroughly investigated archaeologically, however, thereby ignoring a major aspect of the Confederacy\u27s war effort, and an important industrial enterprise. Building foundations, earthworks, roads, and an artificial channel race remain essentially undisturbed within the Loop 390 corridor and the privately-owned portions of the site; the eastern one-third of the site has been destroyed by a modern lumber mill. Although the site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, there is no concerted plan for preservation of this Civil War military-industrial complex. Little historical documentation exists as to the number and types of buildings, their locations, or the activities that were conducted at the Marshall Powder Mill. The single map in the National Archives was captured by Federal troops in 1864, and only indicates a few of the buildings and none of the earthworks. Apparently the Confederates were concerned with security, and the commander, Major George D. Alexander, destroyed or removed all records prior to Federal occupation of the site in 1865. Therefore, the archaeological remains speak the clearest about the Marshall Powder Mill\u27s buildings and their functions, and may be the only sure means of reconstructing the layout and design of the arsenal, as well as ancillary fortifications, buildings, and structures around Marshall that date to the Civil War period

Federal Minimum Wage, Tax-Transfer Earnings Supplements, and Poverty

[Excerpt] This report focuses on the impact of minimum wage and tax-transfer earnings supplements for workers of different family types. It does so through illustrating how the minimum wage and federal tax-transfer policies affect the income of a minimum wage worker who works full-time, full-year in four different family types: a single childless worker; a worker supporting a married couple; a single mother with two children; and a married couple with two children. These family types are chosen to highlight the different treatment federal tax-transfer policies have on workers of different family types. They were not chosen as representative of most minimum wage workers. The illustrations show the impact of policies on two childless workers—one married, one not. They also show the impact of two workers with children—one married, one not. The report highlights how policies differ between families with children, and families without children. This report supplements these illustrations with some background on policies, as well as some policy considerations that apply generally to debates on the minimum wage and tax-transfer policies. Full-year, full-time work at the minimum wage is not common. In 2012, 32% of workers earning the minimum wage worked full-time. Again, the illustrations were not chosen to be representative of most minimum wage workers. Full-time, full-year work was chosen for illustrative purposes. Additionally, the income produced by full-time, full year work at the minimum wage is an important policy benchmark, as it reflects the federally-determined minimum income for someone with full-time involvement in the labor force. This report • describes current law minimum wage and tax-transfer earnings supplement policies; • provides the illustrations of gross earnings and net income (after taxes and SNAP benefits) for full-time full-year minimum wage workers at both the current minimum wage ($7.25 per hour) and the proposed$10.10 minimum wage; and • discusses some of the policy implications of addressing poverty through both the minimum wage and federally-funded earnings supplements

Diffusion coefficients for multi-step persistent random walks on lattices

We calculate the diffusion coefficients of persistent random walks on lattices, where the direction of a walker at a given step depends on the memory of a certain number of previous steps. In particular, we describe a simple method which enables us to obtain explicit expressions for the diffusion coefficients of walks with two-step memory on different classes of one-, two- and higher-dimensional lattices.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figure

A TARGET MOTAD ANALYSIS OF A CROP AND LIVESTOCK FARM IN JEFFERSON COUNTY, FLORIDA

An analysis of a typical crop and livestock farm in North Florida is presented. The analysis incorporates the potential competition and complementarity among crop and beef cattle enterprises. A Target MOTAD model is developed to account for risk in a decision framework. The results indicate that when income risk is ignored, peanuts, watermelon, and stocker cattle are the only enterprises included in the optimal solution. When income risk is heavily weighted, the optimal solution includes peanuts, watermelon, stocker cattle, cow-calf, and irrigated soybeans. The results suggest that the persistence of cow-calf production may be explained as a stabilizer of income.Farm Management,

An Adaptive Total Variation Algorithm for Computing the Balanced Cut of a Graph

We propose an adaptive version of the total variation algorithm proposed in [3] for computing the balanced cut of a graph. The algorithm from [3] used a sequence of inner total variation minimizations to guarantee descent of the balanced cut energy as well as convergence of the algorithm. In practice the total variation minimization step is never solved exactly. Instead, an accuracy parameter is specified and the total variation minimization terminates once this level of accuracy is reached. The choice of this parameter can vastly impact both the computational time of the overall algorithm as well as the accuracy of the result. Moreover, since the total variation minimization step is not solved exactly, the algorithm is not guarantied to be monotonic. In the present work we introduce a new adaptive stopping condition for the total variation minimization that guarantees monotonicity. This results in an algorithm that is actually monotonic in practice and is also significantly faster than previous, non-adaptive algorithms

Computation of laminar viscous-inviscid interactions in high-speed internal flows

A review is given of computations for a series of nominally 2-D laminar viscous-inviscid interactions. Comparisons were made with detailed experimental shock tunnel results. The shock wave boundary layer interactions considered were induced by a compression ramp in one case and by an externally generated incident shock in the second case. In general, good agreement was reached between the grid refined calculations and experiment for the incipient and small separation conditions. For the highly separated flow, 3-D calculations which included the finite span effects of the experiment were required in order to obtain agreement with the data

Multiclass Total Variation Clustering

Ideas from the image processing literature have recently motivated a new set of clustering algorithms that rely on the concept of total variation. While these algorithms perform well for bi-partitioning tasks, their recursive extensions yield unimpressive results for multiclass clustering tasks. This paper presents a general framework for multiclass total variation clustering that does not rely on recursion. The results greatly outperform previous total variation algorithms and compare well with state-of-the-art NMF approaches

Investigation into the selection of viewing configurations for three-component planar Doppler velocimetry measurements.

A method for the calculation of three orthogonal velocity components in planar Doppler velocimetry (PDV) using four or more measured velocity components (to the three typically used) is presented. The advantages and disadvantages are assessed by use of a Monte Carlo simulation and experimental measurements of the velocity field of a rotating disk. The addition of a fourth velocity component has been shown to lead to reductions in the final errors of up to 25%. The selection of viewing configurations for experiments is discussed by simulation of the level of errors in measured velocity components and investigation of the final level of errors in the orthogonal velocity components. Experimental measurements of the velocity field of a rotating disk are presented, demonstrating the effect of the viewing configuration on the final level of error