A Stained Glass Ceiling? Mitt Romney and Mormonism

Did Mitt Romney’s religion—Mormonism—help or hurt him in his campaigns for the presidency? While Romney’s religious affiliation was generally viewed as an electoral liability, Americans’ ambivalence about Mormons presented the possibility that, depending on framing, it could be neutralized or could perhaps even become a political asset. Survey experiments during both Romney’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns suggest that although Romney’s religion was a detriment when he ran the first time, it had largely ceased to be an issue in 2012. Although Mormonism did not have much effect on Romney’s performance at the polls in the general election of 2012, however, Romney’s candidacy has had an effect on perceptions of Mormonism. In the wake of his campaign, attitudes toward Mormons have become politically polarized, with Republicans holding a far more positive view of them than Democrats, with Independents in the middle

Chaos at Fifty

In 1963 Edward Lorenz revealed deterministic predictability to be an illusion and gave birth to a field that still thrives. This Feature Article discusses Lorenz's discovery and developments that followed from it.Comment: For an animated visualization of the Lorenz attractor, click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu4RdmBVdp

The Civic Side of School Choice: An Empirical Analysis of Civic Education in Public and Private Schools

Esta investigación busca analizar la representación de los contenidos de la memoria y de la posmemoria vinculados a hechos traumáticos ocurridos durante el Conflicto Armado Interno (1980-2000) en dos películas peruanas de ficción argumental, La teta asustada (2009), de Claudia Llosa, y Paraíso (2010), de Héctor Gálvez. Ellas tienen como centros de sus acciones dramáticas a personajes que determinan sus trayectorias y modelan sus identidades en relación con sus pasados, con la memoria de la violencia y con las narraciones de esas circunstancias, tal como las escucharon y aprendieron de sus madres. Ambas películas dan cuenta de la importancia de reflexionar sobre el pasado, mantener viva la memoria de lo ocurrido y apelar a la ficción para construir personajes que encarnan asuntos que no están resueltos aún en la conciencia de los peruanos y que requieren seguir siendo debatidos

Environmental Benefits Associated with Online Instruction

Meta-analyses indicate that online learning and face-to-face instruction are similar in learning achievement and course satisfaction. In this study, we ask whether offering courses online results in behavior change such that fewer driving trips are made to campus. The environmental consequences are assessed by calculating the CO2 emissions savings. The results indicate that offering a class of 100 students with an online format leads to reduced CO2 savings of 5-7 tons, and knowledge of such an environmental benefit can lead to enhanced student satisfaction with distance learning

Spectroscopy of a synthetic trapped ion qubit

$^{133}\text{Ba}^+$ has been identified as an attractive ion for quantum information processing due to the unique combination of its spin-1/2 nucleus and visible wavelength electronic transitions. Using a microgram source of radioactive material, we trap and laser-cool the synthetic $A$ = 133 radioisotope of barium II in a radio-frequency ion trap. Using the same, single trapped atom, we measure the isotope shifts and hyperfine structure of the $6^2 \text{P}_{1/2}$ $\leftrightarrow$ $6^2 \text{S}_{1/2}$ and $6^2 \text{P}_{1/2}$ $\leftrightarrow$ $5^2 \text{D}_{3/2}$ electronic transitions that are needed for laser cooling, state preparation, and state detection of the clock-state hyperfine and optical qubits. We also report the $6^2 \text{P}_{1/2}$ $\leftrightarrow$ $5^2 \text{D}_{3/2}$ electronic transition isotope shift for the rare $A$ = 130 and 132 barium nuclides, completing the spectroscopic characterization necessary for laser cooling all long-lived barium II isotopes