Review of \u3ci\u3eAmerican Farm Tools: From Hand-Power to Steam-Power\u3c/i\u3e By R. Douglas Hurt

R. Douglas Hurt deals with the invention and development of American farm implements and machinery with a special emphasis on the nineteenth century. The material is organized around the functions of various agricultural machines used in the major grain-growing states. Ten chapters focus on the improvements made in plows, grain drills, corn planters, cultivators, reapers, binders, headers, corn binders, corn shellers, threshing machines, combined harvesters, mowing machines, hay stackers, feed mills, and steam traction engines. The author decided to describe certain lines of farm equipment without trying to catalogue all agricultural tools, implements, and machines. Therefore the reader will not find descriptions of such items as cotton gins, saw mills, blacksmith tools, windmills, irrigation pumps, wagons, buggies, washing machines, and hardware materials. Also, during the period 1892 to 1914, no mention is made of the manufacture of the internal combustion engine and its uses in stationary gas engines, the early tractors, automobiles, trucks, and electric light plants. The judicious use of 219 photographs and illustrations gives a visual presentation of the evolution of rural technology. The verbal descriptions of mechanical and technical matters can be readily understood by the general reader. The book includes a good bibliography and a helpful appendix to aid the reader in understanding the importance of metallurgy as an important factor in the manufacture of farm machinery. Better farm machinery had to wait until the making of steel had been perfected. Some readers would welcome more analysis and interpretation of rural technology. For example, virtually all historians mention that our colonial forefathers used the wooden plow, the sickle, and the flail to grow crops, the same tools used thousands of years earlier in Biblical times. Why was this progress so slow? Why were no new machines invented in colonial America in the 170 years prior to the Revolutionary War? Why did it take two hundred years of experimentation before the first successful track-type Caterpillar engines were built in 1904? Combines were widely used in the Pacific Coast states in the 1880s, yet they were not adopted in the Midwest until the late 1920s, a lag of forty years. Perhaps historians should give more attention to the factors that deter progress and to the obstacles that prevent the adoption of new ideas, to try to explain the inability of people to adopt new methods. Nevertheless, the narrative is informative and well written. American Farm Tools is a fine addition to the historical record

Captain Nathaniel Wyche Hunter and the Florida Indian Campaigns, 1837-1841

In January, 1837, Captain Nathaniel Wyche Hunter arrived at Fort Huleman, Florida, to engage in the military campaigns against the Seminole Indians. His letters and diaries during the next four years provide a vivid account of military life in the Peninsula State. Although his observations do not alter the history of the Seminole wars, they do reflect the thoughts of a perceptive officer facing the frustrations common to this theater of frontier warfare. They also present a soldier’s view of the United States government’s action in removing the Florida Indians to lands beyond the Mississippi river

Review of \u3ci\u3eAmerican Farm Tools: From Hand-Power to Steam-Power\u3c/i\u3e By R. Douglas Hurt

R. Douglas Hurt deals with the invention and development of American farm implements and machinery with a special emphasis on the nineteenth century. The material is organized around the functions of various agricultural machines used in the major grain-growing states. Ten chapters focus on the improvements made in plows, grain drills, corn planters, cultivators, reapers, binders, headers, corn binders, corn shellers, threshing machines, combined harvesters, mowing machines, hay stackers, feed mills, and steam traction engines. The author decided to describe certain lines of farm equipment without trying to catalogue all agricultural tools, implements, and machines. Therefore the reader will not find descriptions of such items as cotton gins, saw mills, blacksmith tools, windmills, irrigation pumps, wagons, buggies, washing machines, and hardware materials. Also, during the period 1892 to 1914, no mention is made of the manufacture of the internal combustion engine and its uses in stationary gas engines, the early tractors, automobiles, trucks, and electric light plants. The judicious use of 219 photographs and illustrations gives a visual presentation of the evolution of rural technology. The verbal descriptions of mechanical and technical matters can be readily understood by the general reader. The book includes a good bibliography and a helpful appendix to aid the reader in understanding the importance of metallurgy as an important factor in the manufacture of farm machinery. Better farm machinery had to wait until the making of steel had been perfected. Some readers would welcome more analysis and interpretation of rural technology. For example, virtually all historians mention that our colonial forefathers used the wooden plow, the sickle, and the flail to grow crops, the same tools used thousands of years earlier in Biblical times. Why was this progress so slow? Why were no new machines invented in colonial America in the 170 years prior to the Revolutionary War? Why did it take two hundred years of experimentation before the first successful track-type Caterpillar engines were built in 1904? Combines were widely used in the Pacific Coast states in the 1880s, yet they were not adopted in the Midwest until the late 1920s, a lag of forty years. Perhaps historians should give more attention to the factors that deter progress and to the obstacles that prevent the adoption of new ideas, to try to explain the inability of people to adopt new methods. Nevertheless, the narrative is informative and well written. American Farm Tools is a fine addition to the historical record

Liftable vector fields over corank one multigerms

In this paper, a systematic method is given to construct all liftable vector fields over an analytic multigerm $f: (\mathbb{K}^n, S)\to (\mathbb{K}^p,0)$ of corank at most one admitting a one-parameter stable unfolding.Comment: 34 pages. In ver. 2, several careless mistakes for calculations in Section 6 were correcte

Energy input is primary controller of methane bubbling in subarctic lakes

Emission of methane (CH4) from surface waters is often dominated by ebullition (bubbling), a transport mode with high‐spatiotemporal variability. Based on new and extensive CH4 ebullition data, we demonstrate striking correlations (r2 between 0.92 and 0.997) when comparing seasonal bubble CH4 flux from three shallow subarctic lakes to four readily measurable proxies of incoming energy flux and daily flux magnitudes to surface sediment temperature (r2 between 0.86 and 0.94). Our results after continuous multiyear sampling suggest that CH4 ebullition is a predictable process, and that heat flux into the lakes is the dominant driver of gas production and release. Future changes in the energy received by lakes and ponds due to shorter ice‐covered seasons will predictably alter the ebullitive CH4 flux from freshwater systems across northern landscapes. This finding is critical for our understanding of the dynamics of radiatively important trace gas sources and associated climate feedback

Levekår for personer med nedsatt funksjonsevne : Fellestrekk og variasjon

-Bakgrunnen for denne rapporten er dels at personer med nedsatt funksjonsevne er en svært sammensatt og heterogen gruppe, og dels behovet for å etablere et godt system for dokumentasjon av levekårene for funksjonshemmete. Formålet har derfor vært (1) å undersøke hva vi vet om fellestrekk og variasjon i levekårene til personer med ulike former for nedsatt funksjonsevne ut fra foreliggende forskning, (2) å påpeke mangler i kunnskapsgrunnlaget, og (3) å drøfte mulige strategier for å bedre kunnskapsgrunnlaget. Størstedelen av arbeidet med rapporten har vært å analysere eksisterende forskning av relevans for problemstillingene

Predictions of local ground geomagnetic field fluctuations during the 7-10 November 2004 events studied with solar wind driven models

The 7-10 November 2004 period contains two events for which the local ground magnetic field was severely disturbed and simultaneously, the solar wind displayed several shocks and negative <i>B<sub>z</sub></i> periods. Using empirical models the 10-min RMS and at Brorfelde (BFE, 11.67° E, 55.63° N), Denmark, are predicted. The models are recurrent neural networks with 10-min solar wind plasma and magnetic field data as inputs. The predictions show a good agreement during 7 November, up until around noon on 8 November, after which the predictions become significantly poorer. The correlations between observed and predicted log RMS is 0.77 during 7-8 November but drops to 0.38 during 9-10 November. For RMS the correlations for the two periods are 0.71 and 0.41, respectively. Studying the solar wind data for other L1-spacecraft (WIND and SOHO) it seems that the ACE data have a better agreement to the near-Earth solar wind during the first two days as compared to the last two days. Thus, the accuracy of the predictions depends on the location of the spacecraft and the solar wind flow direction. Another finding, for the events studied here, is that the and models showed a very different dependence on <i>B<sub>z</sub></i>. The model is almost independent of the solar wind magnetic field <i>B<sub>z</sub></i>, except at times when <i>B<sub>z</sub></i> is exceptionally large or when the overall activity is low. On the contrary, the model shows a strong dependence on <i>B<sub>z</sub></i> at all times

NuSTAR Tests of Sterile-Neutrino Dark Matter: New Galactic Bulge Observations and Combined Impact

We analyze two dedicated NuSTAR observations with exposure ${\sim}190$ ks located ${\sim}10^\circ$ from the Galactic plane, one above and the other below, to search for x-ray lines from the radiative decay of sterile-neutrino dark matter. These fields were chosen to minimize astrophysical x-ray backgrounds while remaining near the densest region of the dark matter halo. We find no evidence of anomalous x-ray lines in the energy range 5--20 keV, corresponding to sterile neutrino masses 10--40 keV. Interpreted in the context of sterile neutrinos produced via neutrino mixing, these observations provide the leading constraints in the mass range 10--12 keV, improving upon previous constraints in this range by a factor ${\sim}2$. We also compare our results to Monte Carlo simulations, showing that the fluctuations in our derived limit are not dominated by systematic effects. An updated model of the instrumental background, which is currently under development, will improve NuSTAR's sensitivity to anomalous x-ray lines, particularly for energies 3--5 keV.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. Text updated to match published version in PRD. Conclusions unchange

Supermodel Analysis of the Hard X-Ray Excess in the Coma Cluster

The Supermodel provides an accurate description of the thermal contribution by the hot intracluster plasma which is crucial for the analysis of the hard excess. In this paper the thermal emissivity in the Coma cluster is derived starting from the intracluster gas temperature and density profiles obtained by the Supermodel analysis of X-ray observables: the XMM-Newton temperature profile and the Rosat brightness distribution. The Supermodel analysis of the BeppoSAX/PDS hard X-ray spectrum confirms our previous results, namely an excess at the c.l. of ~4.8sigma and a nonthermal flux of 1.30+-0.40x 10^-11 erg cm^-2 s^-1 in the energy range 20-80 keV. A recent joint XMM-Newton/Suzaku analysis reports an upper limit of ~6x10^-12 erg cm^-2 s^-1 in the energy range 20-80 keV for the nonthermal flux with an average gas temperature of 8.45+-0.06 keV, and an excess of nonthermal radiation at a confidence level above 4sigma, without including systematic effects, for an average XMM-Newton temperature of 8.2 keV in the Suzaku/HXD-PIN FOV, in agreement with our earlier PDS analysis. Here we present a further evidence of the compatibility between the Suzaku and BeppoSAX spectra, obtained by our Supermodel analysis of the PDS data, when the smaller size of the HXD-PIN FOV and the two different average temperatures derived by XMM-Newton and by the joint XMM-Newton/Suzaku analysis are taken into account. The consistency of the PDS and HXD-PIN spectra reaffirms the presence of a nonthermal component in the hard X-ray spectrum of the Coma cluster. The Supermodel analysis of the PDS data reports an excess at c.l. above 4sigma also for the higher average temperature of 8.45 keV thanks to the PDS FOV considerably greater than the HXD-PIN FOV.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap