The Effect of an Illinois Wesleyan University Education on Political Ideology

The nation has seen a rebirth of many of the Vietnam-era values in today\u27s students. Protests, mostly in opposition to the war in Iraq, have become frequent events on college campuses. Student organizations advocating equal rights for women, racial minorities and the gay community have made their voice heard in state and federal legislatures. Perhaps there is some truth to the view that college students are a very liberal group that tends to become more liberal as they approach graduation. Many scholars feel that the university environment nurtures this liberalization in the student body. There seems to be a general acceptance of social and economic liberal ideas both in and out of the classroom. Some feel that professors have a large effect on students\u27 political development. Others speculate that the material studied by students awakens new views that tend to push them to the left. Still others believe that it is the effect of peers and the general college environment that has the biggest impact. Whatever the source, it seems as if college students tend to cross the graduation platform more liberal than they arrive. This research will look at the political views of students at Illinois Wesleyan University to see if a liberalizing trend exists within the campus. The source of this liberalization (or lack thereof) will be construed from data provided by several hundred students at the institution

Evaluation of kinesthetic-tactual displays using a critical tracking task

The study sought to investigate the feasibility of applying the critical tracking task paradigm to the evaluation of kinesthetic-tactual displays. Four subjects attempted to control a first-order unstable system with a continuously decreasing time constant by using either visual or tactual unidimensional displays. Display aiding was introduced in both modalities in the form of velocity quickening. Visual tracking performance was better than tactual tracking, and velocity aiding improved the critical tracking scores for visual and tactual tracking about equally. The results suggest that the critical task methodology holds considerable promise for evaluating kinesthetic-tactual displays

Ubiquitous energy storage

This paper presents a vision of a future power system with "ubiquitous energy storage", where storage would be utilized at all levels of the electricity system. The growing requirement for storage is reviewed, driven by the expansion of distributed generation. The capabilities and existing applications of various storage technologies are presented, providing a useful review of the state of the art. Energy storage will have to be integrated with the power system and there are various ways in which this may be achieved. Some of these options are discussed, as are commercial and regulatory issues. In two case studies, the costs and benefits of some storage options are assessed. It is concluded that electrical storage is not cost effective but that thermal storage offers attractive opportunities

Primary Election Systems and Candidate Deviation

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of primary voting systems on the ability of agent-representatives to deviate within the median voter model. While conclusions are consistent with the results found in Gerber and Morton (1998), this paper extends their analysis by including the role played by electoral security and the extant incentives that accompany it. The results presented herein make 2 important contributions to the literature. First, while the report has been consistent with the literature in maintaining that deviation is driven by ideology, these results reflect that institutional arrangements also allow for deviation. Second, the measurement combining ADA and ACU scores reduces the potential of liberal bias or conservative bias by combining these scores into the determination of the dependent variable. Results suggest that more open primaries produce candidates with positions that are closer to those of the median voter. If blanket primaries encourage broader electoral participation by voters, the resulting median voter in such primaries will more closely resemble the median voter in the entire constituency.Election

Enhanced singular jet formation in oil-coated bubble bursting

Bubbles are ubiquitous in many natural and engineering processes, and bubble bursting aerosols are of particular interest because of their critical role in mass and momentum transfer across interfaces. All prior studies claim that bursting of a millimeter-sized bare bubble at an aqueous surface produces jet drops with a typical size of $\boldsymbol{O}$(100 \si{\micro\relax}m), much larger than film drops of $\boldsymbol{O}$(1 \si{\micro\relax}m) from the disintegration of a bubble cap. Here, we document the hitherto unknown phenomenon that jet drops can be as small as a few microns when the bursting bubble is coated by a thin oil layer. We provide evidence that the faster and smaller jet drops result from the singular dynamics of the oil-coated cavity collapse. The unique air-oil-water compound interface offers a distinct damping mechanism to smooth out the precursor capillary waves during cavity collapse, leading to a more efficient focusing of the dominant wave and thus allowing singular jets over a much wider parameter space beyond that of a bare bubble. We develop a theoretical explanation for the parameter limits of the singular jet regime by considering the interplay among inertia, surface tension, and viscous effects. As such contaminated bubbles are widely observed, the previously unrecognized fast and small contaminant-laden jet drops may enhance bubble-driven flux across the interface, contributing to the aerosolization and airborne transmission of bulk substances

Statistics of Random Permutations and the Cryptanalysis Of Periodic Block Ciphers

A block cipher is intended to be computationally indistinguishable from a random permutation of appropriate domain and range. But what are the properties of a random permutation? By the aid of exponential and ordinary generating functions, we derive a series of collolaries of interest to the cryptographic community. These follow from the Strong Cycle Structure Theorem of permutations, and are useful in rendering rigorous two attacks on Keeloq, a block cipher in wide-spread use. These attacks formerly had heuristic approximations of their probability of success. Moreover, we delineate an attack against the (roughly) millionth-fold iteration of a random permutation. In particular, we create a distinguishing attack, whereby the iteration of a cipher a number of times equal to a particularly chosen highly-composite number is breakable, but merely one fewer round is considerably more secure. We then extend this to a key-recovery attack in a "Triple-DES" style construction, but using AES-256 and iterating the middle cipher (roughly) a million-fold. It is hoped that these results will showcase the utility of exponential and ordinary generating functions and will encourage their use in cryptanalytic research.Comment: 20 page

Particle trapping in merging flow junctions by fluid-solute-colloid-boundary interactions

Merging of different streams in channel junctions represents a common mixing process that occurs in systems ranging from soda fountains and bathtub faucets to chemical plants and microfluidic devices. Here, we report a spontaneous trapping of colloidal particles in a merging flow junction when the merging streams have a salinity contrast. We show that the particle trapping is a consequence of nonequilibrium interactions between the particles, solutes, channel, and the freestream flow. A delicate balance of transport processes results in a stable near-wall vortex that traps the particles. We use three-dimensional particle visualization and numerical simulations to provide a rigorous understanding of the observed phenomenon. Such a trapping mechanism is unique from the well-known inertial trapping enabled by vortex breakdown [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 111, 4770 (2014)], or the solute-mediated trapping enabled by diffusiophoresis [Phys..Rev. X 7, 041038 (2017)], as the current trapping is facilitated by both the solute and the inertial effects, suggesting a new mechanism for particle trapping in flow networks

Viscosity measurements of glycerol in a parallel-plate rheometer exposed to atmosphere

Glycerol is a hygroscopic fluid that spontaneously absorbs water vapor from the atmosphere. For applications involving glycerol, care must be taken to avoid exposure to humidity, since its viscosity decreases quickly as water is absorbed. We report experimental measurements of the viscosity of glycerol in a parallel-plate rheometer where the outer interface is exposed to atmosphere. The measurements decrease with time as water is absorbed from the atmosphere and transported throughout the glycerol via diffusion and advection. Measured viscosities drop faster at higher relative humidities, confirming the role of hygroscopicity on the transient viscosities. The rate of viscosity decrease shows a non-monotonic relationship with the rheometer gap height. This behavior is explained by considering the transition from diffusion-dominated transport in the narrow gap regime to the large gap regime where transport is dominated by inertia-driven secondary flows. Numerical simulations of the water absorption and transport confirm this non-monotonic behavior. The experimental viscosity measurements show unexpectedly fast decreases at very small gap heights, violating the parallel-plate, axisymmetric model. We propose that this drop-off may be due to misalignment in the rheometer that becomes non-negligible for small gaps. Theoretical considerations show that secondary flows in a misaligned rheometer dominate the typical secondary inertial flows in parallel-plate rheometers at small gaps. Finally, simulations in a misaligned parallel-plate system demonstrate the same sharp drop-off in viscosity measurements at small gap heights. This modeling can be used to estimate the gap height where misalignment effects dominate the transient glycerol viscosity measurements.Comment: 26 pages, 17 figure