New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: Second in a Series of Reports on the California Votes Initiative

During the first phase of the California Votes Initiative, spanning elections from June 2006 to March 2007, participating community-based organizations personally contacted over 82,000 low-propensity voters, through strategies such as door-to-door outreach and phone calls, plus reached an additional 100,000 voters through less direct methods, such as voter forums and messages to congregations. This outreach inspired many to participate in the electoral process for the first time. The initiative evaluation team worked with the community organizations to imbed field experiments into their outreach efforts, comparing turnout among those targeted for contact and those assigned to control groups. This resulted in strong empirical support for a series of best practices that were detailed in a September 2007 report.1 A second phase of the initiative has continued this path-breaking research with further field experiments in the February and June 2008 elections, with more planned for November 2008. This report briefly reviews the results from the first phase of the initiative, adds findings from February 2008 and June 2008 as available,2 and outlines the follow-up studies planned for November 2008. Many findings from the first phase were confirmed, and the two rounds of experiments conducted so far this year provide valuable refinements to the list of best practices established in that earlier report. 1 Michelson, Melissa R., Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Donald P. Green. 2007. "New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: A Report on the California Votes Initiative" (San Francisco, CA: The James Irvine Foundation). Available at www.irvine.org. 2 In many counties, particularly large ones such as Los Angeles, voting information is not released until several months after an election

New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: Third and Final Report on the California Votes Initiative

This report offers new insights about voter mobilization strategies used in our California Votes Initiative. Launched in 2006, the initiative supported nine nonprofit organizations as they reached out to infrequent voters in low-income and ethnic communities in the San Joaquin Valley and parts of Southern California. This publication, the third and final report on the initiative, summarizes findings from the entirety of the project's experiments. It examines the long-term effects of voter mobilization and the effects of specific approaches, such as canvassing and phone calls, on voter attitudes toward politics and political engagement. Qualitative analyses explore the components of a successful get-out-the-vote campaign and identify five practices organizations of many types may use to increase turnout

New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: A Report on the California Votes Initiative

Evaluates the effectiveness of efforts in California to mobilize voters in communities with significant low-income and minority populations

High-Speed Photothermal Patterning of Doped Polymer Films.

Organic semiconductors (OSCs) offer a new avenue to the next-generation electronics, but the lack of a scalable and inexpensive nanoscale patterning/deposition technique still limits their use in electronic applications. Recently, a new lithographic etching technique has been introduced that uses molecular dopants to reduce semiconducting polymer solubility in solvents and a direct-write laser to remove dopants locally, enabling rapid OSC etching with diffraction limited resolution. Previous publications postulated that the reaction that enables patterning is a photochemical reaction between photoexcited dopants with neutral solvent molecules. In this work, we analyze the photoinduced dissolution kinetics of F4TCNQ doped P3HT films using time-resolved in situ optical probing. We find two competing mechanisms that control de-doping and dissolution: the first is the photochemical reaction posited in the literature, and the second involves direct heating of the polymer by the laser, inducing increased solubility for both the polymer and dopant. We show that the wavelength-specific photochemical effect is dominant in low photon doses while the photothermal effect is dominant with high excitation rates regardless of laser wavelength. With sufficiently high optical intensity input, the photothermal mechanism can in principle achieve a high writing speed up to 1 m/s. Our findings bring new insights into the mechanisms behind laser direct writing of OSCs based on dopant induced solubility control and enable ultraprecise fabrications of various device configurations in large-scale manufacturing

X-ray determination of compressive residual Stresses in spring steel generated by high-speed water Quenching

Automotive components manufacturers use the 5160 steel in leaf and coil springs. The industrial heat treatment process consists in austenitizing followed by the oil quenching and tempering process. Typically, compressive residual stresses are induced by shot peening on the surface of automotive springs to bestow compressive residual stresses that improve the fatigue resistance and increase the service life of the parts after heat treatment. In this work, a high-speed quenching was used to achieve compressive residual stresses on the surface of AISI/SAE 5160 steel samples by producing high thermal gradients and interrupting the cooling in order to generate a case-core microstructure. A special laboratory equipment was designed and built, which uses water as the quenching media in a high-speed water chamber. The severity of the cooling was characterized with embedded thermocouples to obtain the cooling curves at different depths from the surface. Samples were cooled for various times to produce different hardened case depths. The microstructure of specimens was observed with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to estimate the magnitude of residual stresses on the surface of the specimens. Compressive residual stresses at the surface and sub-surface of about -700 MPa were obtained.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Impact of Sample Preparation Methods on Single-Cell X-ray Microscopy and Light Elemental Analysis Evaluated by Combined Low Energy X-ray Fluorescence, STXM and AFM

Background: Although X-ray fluorescence microscopy is becoming a widely used technique for single-cell analysis, sample preparation for this microscopy remains one of the main challenges in obtaining optimal conditions for the measurements in the X-ray regime. The information available to researchers on sample treatment is inadequate and unclear, sometimes leading to wasted time and jeopardizing the experiment's success. Many cell fixation methods have been described, but none of them have been systematically tested and declared the most suitable for synchrotron X-ray microscopy. Methods: The HEC-1-A endometrial cells, human spermatozoa, and human embryonic kidney (HEK-293) cells were fixed with organic solvents and cross-linking methods: 70% ethanol, 3.7%, and 2% paraformaldehyde; in addition, HEK-293 cells were subjected to methanol/ C3H6O treatment and cryofixation. Fixation methods were compared by coupling low-energy X-ray fluorescence with scanning transmission X-ray microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Results: Organic solvents lead to greater dehydration of cells, which has the most significant effect on the distribution and depletion of diffusion elements. Paraformaldehyde provides robust and reproducible data. Finally, the cryofixed cells provide the best morphology and element content results. Conclusion: Although cryofixation seems to be the most appropriate method as it allows for keeping cells closer to physiological conditions, it has some technical limitations. Paraformaldehyde, when used at the average concentration of 3.7%, is also an excellent alternative for X-ray microscopy

Photometry of ET Andromedae and pulsation of HD 219891

ET And is a binary system with a B9p(Si) star as the main component. We report on the photometric observing campaigns in 1988, 1989 and 1994 which confirmed the rotation period of 1(.)(d)618875 for ET And while refuting other published values. Furthermore, the controversial issue of pulsational stability of ET And is resolved since we have discovered pulsation for HD 219891, which was the main comparison star and sometimes exclusively used. The frequency of 10.0816 d(-1), a semi-amplitude of 2.5 mmag, T(eff) and M(v) suggest this comparison star to be a delta Scuti variable close to the blue border of the instability strip. The pulsational stability of ET And could be clearly established and hence no need exists to derive new driving mechanisms for stars between the classical instability strip and the region of slowly pulsating B-type (SPB) stars

A data preparation and migration framework for implementing modular product structures in PLM

This paper reports the research on the complex process of implementing modular product structures in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system. There are many challenges in implementing the system. One main challenge is organising or mapping existing product data and migrating it to the new PLM system. Companies often use a PLM tool for management of CAD files, documents and drawings, but they do not take advantage of the full potential of the PLM system to support the development activities of modular products. Product data management tools are used mainly for product CAD data management and PLM systems support by automating and managing some of the operational complexity of modular product design. The aim of this research is to propose a data model that can be used for implementing modular product structures in a PLM system and a tool that can formalise the existing data so as to migrate it into the PLM system