Creating a Public Space for Georeferencing Sanborn Maps: A Louisiana Case Study

As institutional archives digitize their historical map collections and make them publicly available online, new methods for engaging with these materials emerge. Georeferencing the maps transforms their content from static images to dynamic map overlays, and allows for the extraction of geographic data like building footprints or place name coordinates. Many organizations have turned to crowdsourcing to georeference their large holdings, and this thesis approaches crowdsourced georeferencing from the perspective of participatory heritage, taking much inspiration from the idea of the archival commons. To test these ideas, a new extension was created for GeoNode—an open source geospatial content management system—that allows users to georeference map documents in a web browser. Further augmentation facilitated direct ingestion of digital content from the Library of Congress Sanborn Map collection, and a pilot project was conducted to engage the public in georeferencing maps of towns and cities across Louisiana. By the end of the project, 66 participants—from within Louisiana and without—had georeferenced all or a portion of 267 different Sanborn map volumes, creating over 1,500 new layers. These layers combine to create mosaics of 138 different communities across the state, including comprehensive coverage of the city of New Orleans in the years between 1885 and 1893—an especially valuable dataset in its own right. Seamless mosaics will be made from these layers and published via the LSU Atlas data portal for long-term public access. This experience led to new ideas for how to better engage citizens with historical maps of their communities, while the underlying construction of the georeferencing system itself provided insight into how users participated in the work. Ultimately, this thesis lays a conceptual foundation for future efforts of a similar nature, whether they pursue exactly the same technological approach or not

Novel Locomotion Methods in Magnetic Actuation and Pipe Inspection

There is much room for improvement in tube network inspections of jet aircraft. Often, these inspections are incomplete and inconsistent. In this paper, we develop a Modular Robotic Inspection System (MoRIS) for jet aircraft tube networks and a corresponding kinematic model. MoRIS consists of a Base Station for user control and communication, and robotic Vertebrae for accessing and inspecting the network. The presented and tested design of MoRIS can travel up to 9 feet in a tube network. The Vertebrae can navigate in all orientations, including smooth vertical tubes. The design is optimized for nominal 1.5 outside diameter tubes. We developed a model of the Locomotion Vertebra in a tube. We defined the model\u27s coordinate system and its generalized coordinates. We studied the configuration space of the robot, which includes all possible orientations of the Locomotion Vertebra. We derived the expression for the elastic potential energy of the Vertebra\u27s suspensions and minimized it to find the natural settling orientation of the robot. We further explore the effect of the tractive wheel\u27s velocity constraint on locomotion dynamics. Finally, we develop a general model for aircraft tube networks and for a taut tether. Stabilizing bipedal walkers is a engineering target throughout the research community. In this paper, we develop an impulsively actuated walking robot. Through the use of magnetic actuation, for the first time, pure impulsive actuation has been achieved in bipedal walkers. In studying this locomotion technique, we built the world\u27s smallest walker: Big Foot. A dynamical model was developed for Big Foot. A Heel Strike and a Constant Pulse Wave Actuation Schemes were selected for testing. The schemes were validated through simulations and experiments. We showed that there exists two regimes for impulsive actuation. There is a regime for impact-like actuation and a regime for longer duration impulsive actuation

Citizenship, Standing, and Immigration Law

Courts and commentators typically evaluate constitutional immigration law from the perspective of aliens. But that approach pays insufficient attention to the ways immigration law affects the interests and rights of citizens. In particular, an alien-centered approach fails to consider the central role immigration law plays in national self-definition and, consequently, ignores the possibility that immigration law may injure citizens by defining the national political community in constitutionally impermissible ways. Considering federal immigration law from the perspective of citizens, this Article demonstrates that immigration policy, which contemporary constitutional doctrine largely insulates from attack, should not be immune to challenges by citizens. And contrary to the thrust of contemporary doctrine, courts should scrutinize immigration policy for compliance with conventional constitutional norms when citizens\u27 rights are at stake

Partisan Fairness and Redistricting Politics

Courts and scholars have operated on the implicit assumption that the Supreme Court\u27s one person, one vote jurisprudence put redistricting politics on a fixed, ten-year cycle. Recent redistricting controversies in Colorado, Texas, and elsewhere, however, have undermined this assumption, highlighting the fact that most states are currently free to redraw election districts as often as they like. This essay explores whether partisan fairness-a normative commitment that both scholars and the Supreme Court have identified as a central concern of districting arrangements- would be promoted by a procedural rule limiting the frequency of redistricting. While the literature has not considered this question, scholars generally are pessimistic about the capacity of procedural redistricting regulations to curb partisan gerrymandering. In contrast, this essay argues that a procedural rule limiting the frequency of redistricting will promote partisan fairness by introducing beneficial uncertainty in the redistricting process and by regularizing the redistricting agenda