States with partisan judicial elections and professionalized courts attract greater campaign contributions

More than twenty US states use competitive elections - some partisan, some not - to choose their judges. As with much of the rest of US politics, judicial candidates are often reliant on campaign contributions from businesses, ideological groups, and individuals. In new research, Brent Boyea finds that where states hold partisan elections and have professionalized courts, individual contributors are much more generous than those where they do not

Wrangling Heavy Metal: Self-Education of Industrial Robot Programming (Case Study

Modern manufacturing processes increasingly demand machine driven solutions When developing robot applications in industry, programmers must be able to safely write code which is reusable, expandable, and well documented This case study explores the following Can an untrained student learn to develop programs for an industrial robot arm which meets industry criteria? What are the dangers of this kind of education process? In 12 5 hours across a 1 month period, the research student studied chapters 6 to 15 within the provided programming manual and performed short lab procedures from the manual to develop an understanding of the robot In 12 5 hours across the next 3 weeks, the student completed their first programming project which swapped the positions of cylinders with basic movement commands During these processes, the student documented their process and designed procedures which would promote safe education and produce industry acceptable code The student successfully educated himself within the guidelines provided by the research mentor The student lamented at the end of the project that there were some flaws in the resulting program and some mistakes were made in the study He reflects that the code would have to be refactored in many ways to be acceptable in industry Regardless, t he student developed a valuable education with a minimal time investment and produced documentation procedures which may serve as valuable references during the education of other student

The Conditional Effects of Ideology and Institutional Structure on Judicial Voting in State Supreme Courts

Two enormously influential perspectives on courts offer fundamentally different predictions about court outcomes and the effects of judge ideology on those outcomes. Well-known to political scientists studying courts, the ideological voting (IV) literature argues that judge ideology is a strong predictor of court outcomes and that those outcomes should be proximate to the policy preferences of courts. Less known to political scientists but highly influential, the law and economics perspective (LE) focuses on settlement behavior of litigants who try to minimize costs and thus estimate likely outcomes in court, and settle simpler cases pre-trial. In this case selection process litigants respond to cues that signal likely outcomes with the result that only complex, less predictable cases make it to trial leading to win-rates that coalesce at fifty percent for plaintiffs or defendants. From this perspective, litigant strategies cancel out the effects of judge ideology and court outcomes do not correspond to judges’ ideological preferences. We reconcile these perspectives by examining tort cases in state supreme courts from 1995 through 1998. The contrasting perspectives stem from the fundamental institutional processes upon which each perspective is based. The LE perspective dominates in states without lower appellate courts (LAC) where process of appeal in these state supreme courts is litigant-driven, with win-rates hovering at fifty percent and deviations from that norm accounted for by forces influencing litigant uncertainty. The ideological voting predicted by the IV literature occurs primarily in the context of state supreme court strategic reversals of LAC decisions---a process commensurate that operating with the U.S. Supreme Court. When it comes to judicial outcomes, institutional structure is a critical element shaping the influence of litigant strategy and judge ideology

The Effect of Short-Term Adventure-Sport Curriculum on the Level of Mental Toughness of Undergraduate Students

Mental toughness (MT) has been associated with both higher academic and physical performance. Adventure sports studies involve exposure to exploratory and risk-taking activities aiming to facilitate positive psychological characteristics. Although such programs are frequently promoted for this purpose, there is lack of empirical evidence concerning the effects of such a curriculum on the levels of MT in undergraduate students. PURPOSE: To examine the efficacy of an adventure-sport curriculum on the levels of MT of freshmen, undergraduate students throughout their first semester in the program. Hypothesis: The MT levels of the participants increase at the end of the semester. METHODS: In total, 13 students agreed to participate. The sample was of the same Expeditionary Studies class, predominantly male (Mage = 18.7, SD = 1.1). The Mental Toughness Index (MTI) was used for data collection. MTI was administered in the first, seventh, twelfth, and fifteenth week of classes. The analysis consisted of one-way ANOVA with repeated measures in IBM SPSS Statistics. The confidence interval was set at 95%. Normality was checked via the Shapiro-Wilk test. Sphericity was checked via the Mauchly’s test. RESULTS: Assumptions were satisfied. The curriculum had a positive effect on students’ levels of MT at the end of the semester (F(3,36) = 7.629, p \u3c 0.01, η2= 0.39). On average, overall MT scores improved by 9.5 points. Therefore, evidence to support the hypothesis was found. However, pairwise comparisons revealed no statistically-significant mean difference between the first and the second assessment. CONCLUSION: These preliminary results indicate that an adventure-sport curriculum may increase the level of MT of undergraduate students, but not before seven weeks. Therefore, the authors suggest that these programs should be considered as facilitators of MT, but caution should be placed on the duration of intervention. MT’s high level of transferability (e.g., from the classroom to the field to personal life) adds significance to these findings. Future studies should include comparison with students of unrelated courses, higher number of assessments, longer periods of intervention, and experimental design. Possible limitations include small sample size, convenience sample, and limited number of assessments

Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop Characteristics of a Manifold Microgroove Aerospace Condenser

High performance condensers are an essential component in many energy conversion, electronics and process systems. Increased capacity and functionality with less and less available space has been a main driving force for development of smart condensers in energy systems. A literature survey of microchannel condensation shows that microchannels are useful for enhancing condensation heat transfer. Our previous work in this area has demonstrated that manifold microgroove heat exchangers operating in single-phase or two-phase modes offer substantially higher heat transfer performance with a greatly reduced pumping power when compared to state-of-art microchannel heat exchangers. Out previous microchannel condensation experiments was using have involved use of small scale manifold microgroove condensers (7 cm2 base area) and a manifold microgroove condenser of this size and capacity has not been investigated before. The goal is to enhance heat transfer performance while minimizing the pumping power, volume and weight. A compact lightweight manifold microgroove condenser, with 60 x 600 micron microgrooves and cooling capacity of 4kW, was fabricated, assembled and tested using two different manifold designs. Experiments using R134a and R236fa as working fluids and two different refrigerant side manifolds were performed. Overall heat transfer coefficient and the pressure drop across a manifold microgroove condenser were calculated and refrigerant side heat transfer coefficient was determined based on water side heat transfer coefficient. 4kW capacity was achieved with an LMTD of 8C. The manifold geometry was found to have a large effect on pressure drop and heat transfer performance as well as flow distribution. A majority of the pressure drop was found to be in the manifold creating poor flow distribution. Future work should focus on optimization of the refrigerant manifold design to reduce pressure drop, increase heat transfer and flow distribution as well as explore the effect of microchannel geometry. Unfortunately current stage of development CFD optimization techniques does not allow optimization of two-phase flow system. An optimization of the airside surface and manifold geometry of heat exchanger that potentially will be coupled with high performance condenser has been performed. It has been concluded that for high performances of single phase flow manifold flow area has to be comparable to microgrooves flow area

Ace In Space

Videogame development is an intense process that includes the creation of layouts, characters, art, and logic. In our Video Game Creation class, we have been continuously learning valuable skills to implement our game, “Ace in Space.” Research Objectives: Understand 3D design for both characters and objects utilizing Sketchup (a 3D modeling software for objects and characters) and Unity (a game engine that uses the C# programing language), along with implementing and understanding the C# programming language using Visual Studio Code to develop our game “Ace In Space”

Polystyrene composites filled with multi-wall carbon nanotubes and indium tin oxide nanopowders: properties, fabrication, characterization

This research was designed to fabricate and characterize novel polyhedral phase segregated microstructures of polystyrene (PS)-matrix composites filled with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) and indium tin oxide (ITO) nanopowders. PS-composites were compression molded with MWNT and ITO separately first. The resulting composites were conducting, and remained optically transparent. Mixtures of MWNT and ITO were then used to form mixed ITO/MWNT PS-composites in order to optimize their transparency and conductivity. This was achieved by fabricating composites with varying concentrations of fillers. Impedance spectroscopy was used to characterize the electrical properties of the PS-composites. Optical properties were characterized by measuring the transmission of light through the PS-composite in the visible light spectrum using a spectrophotometer. The electrical properties and microstructural attributes of the fillers used were also characterized. The main objective of the project was to understand the relationships between the structural, electrical, and optical properties of the PS-composites. The resistivity of PS-composites filled with MWNT ranged from 105 to 1013 Ω cm for samples with 0.007 to 0.9 vol% MWNT. The resistivity of PS-composites filled with ITO ranged from 107 to 1013 Ω cm for PS-composites with 0.034 to 0.86 vol% ITO. PS/ITO composites had a percolation threshold of 0.15, 0.25, or 0.3 phr ITO, depending on the type of ITO used in the composite. The percolation threshold of PS/MWNT composites was found to be 0.01 phr MWNT. Mixed ITO/MWNT PS-composites were already percolated, the concentrations investigated in xv ii this study were already above the percolation threshold of these composites. A time dependence on impedance was found for PS-composites filled with MWNT. As time increases there is a decrease in impedance, and in some cases also a dependence on voltage. All PS-composites showed a dependence on the microstructure of the PS matrix and the filler material. The resistivity and percolation threshold were lower for PS/MWNT composites than PS/ITO composites due to the difference in filler size and aspect ratio, since MWNT have a smaller size. The orientation of PS grains with respect to neighboring grains was found to affect the resistivity of PS/MWNT. PS/MWNT composites with preferentially oriented PS grains were found to have a lower resistivity. Mixed ITO/MWNT PS-composites with the right filler concentrations were able to maintain transmission while decreasing resistivity. The fracture surface of fractured PS-composites prepared in this work indicated that there was bonding between adjacent PS-grains. From this work, it can be concluded that large grain hybrid ITO/MWNT PS-composites provide insight into the effect of combining nanometer sized filler materials together in a polymer matrix on the resultant structural, electrical, and optical properties of the composite. In the future, it is recommended that this study be used to aid research in flexible transparent conducting electrodes using a polymer matrix and hybrid/mixed nanometer sized conducting fillers.M.S.Committee Chair: Gerhardt, Rosario; Committee Member: Shofner, Meisha; Committee Member: Yushin, Gle