Road Networks, Social Disorganization And Lethality, An Exploration Of Theory And An Examination Of Covariates

Utilizing a Criminal Event Perspective, the analyses of this dissertation test a variety of relationships to the dependent variable: the Criminal Lethality Index. Data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, the Census and American Community Survey, the American Trauma Society, and data derived from the Census’s mapping TIGER files are combined to create a database of 190 cities. This database is used to test road network connectivity (Gama Index), medical resources, criminal covariates and Social Disorganization variables in relation to a city’s Criminal Lethality Index. OLS regression demonstrates a significant and negative relationship between a city’s Gama Index and its Criminal Lethality Index. In addition, percent male, percent black, median income and percent of the population employed in diagnosing and treating medical professions were all consistently positively related to Criminal Lethality. The percent of males 16 to 24, percent of single parent households, and Concentrated Disadvantage Index were all consistently and negatively related to Criminal Lethality. Given these surprising results, additional diagnostic regressions are run using more traditional dependent variables such as the number of murders in a city and the proportion of aggravated assaults with major injuries per 100,000 population. These reveal the idiosyncratic nature of utilizing the Criminal Lethality Index. This dependent variable has proven useful in some circumstances and counterintuitive in others. The source of the seemingly unintuitive results is the fact that certain factors only reduce murders but many factors impact both murder and aggravated assaults, thereby creating difficultly when trying to predict patterns in Criminal Lethalit

Vienna's Transnational Fringe: Arts Funding, Aesthetic Agitation, and Europeanization

This dissertation deals with a subculture of transnational fringe artists, which is emerging in Europe in the early part of the twenty first century. It examines this subculture within the confines of Vienna, Austria, which was once the capital of a grand supra-national empire that spanned much of Central and Eastern Europe. Vienna is the site of this case study because in recent years the city has been instituting a self-conscious internationalization of its fringe scene, which resulted from local politicians' desires to help the city regain some of its long lost symbolic capital and become a legitimate competitor in an expanding and converging European field of cultural and economic production. In Vienna's struggle for symbolic capital, the city's subculture of fringe artists is defined by their need to collaborate with the socio-political demands of the local government. They are also impacted by the requirement that they adhere to the economic, ideological, and aesthetic demands of transnational social spaces, i.e. co-production venues and fringe festivals, throughout Europe. The artists are enmeshed in external pressures as they forge paths for themselves within an increasingly uniform European fringe scene. The artists' complicity in the processes of globalization and Europeanization, which enable their subculture as they threaten to divest them of their "avant-garde impulse," causes the artists to adopt a highly ironic posture in their work. This posture, which is evident in their performances, may be partially to blame for a widespread claim that European fringe artists are suffering from an aesthetic crisis. An examination of two fringe groups, i.e. Toxic Dreams and Superamas, which are thriving within Vienna's current system, reveals how any analysis of the aesthetics and ideologies of the performances being generated in the context of Europe's fringe scene must take into account the material realities that the artists are facing. In this dissertation the term conglomerate performance is used a as a descriptor for the emergent genre that is adapted from a media-induced and "McDonalidized" system of cultural production within a specific, yet vital niche of European culture

Phase Space Renormalization and Finite BMS Charges in Six Dimensions

We perform a complete and systematic analysis of the solution space of six-dimensional Einstein gravity. We show that a particular subclass of solutions -- those that are analytic near $\mathcal{I}^+$ -- admit a non-trivial action of the generalised Bondi-Metzner-van der Burg-Sachs (GBMS) group which contains \emph{infinite-dimensional} supertranslations and superrotations. The latter consists of all smooth volume-preserving Diff$\times$Weyl transformations of the celestial $S^4$. Using the covariant phase space formalism and a new technique which we develop in this paper (phase space renormalization), we are able to renormalize the symplectic potential using counterterms which are \emph{local} and \emph{covariant}. We then construct charges which faithfully represent the GBMS algebra and in doing so, settle a long-standing open question regarding the existence of GBMS symmetries in higher dimensional non-linear gravity. Finally, we show that the semi-classical Ward identities for the supertranslations and superrotations are precisely the leading and subleading soft-graviton theorems respectively.Comment: 75 pages, 1 figur

Thermodynamics of accelerating AdS4_4 black holes from the covariant phase space

We study the charges and first law of thermodynamics for accelerating, non-rotating black holes with dyonic charges in AdS$_4$ using the covariant phase space formalism. In order to apply the formalism to these solutions (which are asymptotically locally AdS and admit a non-smooth conformal boundary $\mathscr{I}$) we make two key improvements: 1) We relax the requirement to impose Dirichlet boundary conditions and demand merely a well-posed variational problem. 2) We keep careful track of the codimension-2 corner term induced by the holographic counterterms, a necessary requirement due to the presence of "cosmic strings" piercing $\mathscr{I}$. Using these improvements we are able to match the holographic Noether charges to the Wald Hamiltonians of the covariant phase space and derive the first law of black hole thermodynamics with the correct "thermodynamic length'' terms arising from the strings. We investigate the relationship between the charges imposed by supersymmetry and show that our first law can be consistently applied to various classes of non-supersymmetric solutions for which the cross-sections of the horizon are spindles.Comment: 42 pages, 1 figur

Prolonged constant load cycling exercise is associated with reduced gross efficiency and increased muscle oxygen uptake

This study investigated the effects of prolonged constant load cycling exercise on cycling efficiency and local muscle oxygen uptake responses. Fourteen well-trained cyclists each completed a 2-h steady-state cycling bout at 60% of their maximal minute power output to assess changes in gross cycling efficiency (GE) and muscle oxygen uptake (mVO2) at time points 5, 30, 60, 90, and 120 min. Near-infrared spatially resolved spectroscopy (NIRS) was used to continually monitor tissue oxygenation of the Vastus Lateralis muscle, with arterial occlusions (OCC) applied to assess mVO2 . The half-recovery time of oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO2 ) was also assessed pre and post the 2-h cycling exercise by measuring the hyperemic response following a 5-min OCC. GE significantly declined during the 2-h cycling bout (18.4 ± 1.6 to 17.4 ± 1.4%; P < 0.01). Conversely, mVO2 increased, being significantly higher after 90 and 120 min than at min 5 (+0.04 mlO2 /min/100 g; P = 0.03). The half-recovery time for HbO2 was increased comparing pre and post the 2-h cycling exercise (+7.1 ± 19s), albeit not significantly (d: 0.48; P = 0.27). This study demonstrates that GE decreases during prolonged constant load cycling exercise and provides evidence of an increased mVO2 , suggestive of progressive mitochondrial or contractile inefficiency

Effect of lactation on maternal postpartum cardiac function and adiposity: a murine model

Lactation is associated with reduction in maternal metabolic disease and hypertension later in life; however, findings in humans may be confounded by socioeconomic factors. We sought to determine the independent contribution of lactation on cardiovascular parameters and adiposity in a murine model

Comparison of Alpha-Element Enhanced Simple Stellar Population Models with Milky Way Globular Clusters

We present simple stellar population (SSP) models with scaled-solar and alpha-element enhanced abundances. The SSP models are based on the Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database, our library of synthetic stellar spectra, and a detailed systematic variation of horizontal-branch (HB) morphology with age and metallicity. In order to test the relative importance of a variety of SSP model ingredients, we compare our SSP models with integrated spectra of 41 Milky Way Globular Clusters (MWGCs) from Schiavon et al. (2005). Using the Mg b and Ca4227 indices, we confirm that Mg and Ca are enhanced by about +0.4 and +0.2 dex, respectively, in agreement with results from high resolution spectra of individual stars in MWGCs. Balmer lines, particularly Hgamma and Hdelta, of MWGCs are reproduced by our alpha-enhanced SSP models not only because of the combination of isochrone and spectral effects but also because of our reasonable HB treatment. Moreover, it is shown that the Mg abundance significantly influences Balmer and iron line indices. Finally, the investigation of power-law initial mass function (IMF) variations suggests that an IMF much shallower than Salpeter is unrealistic because the Balmer lines are too strong on the metal-poor side to be compatible with observations.Comment: 38 pages, 18 figures, AJ accepted. Models are available from http://astro.wsu.edu/hclee/sp_LWD09.html and http://astro.wsu.edu/hclee/sp.htm