Why Donald Trump never really had a “woman” problem among Republican voters.

Ahead of the 2016 election, many commentators speculated that Donald Trump’s “woman” problem would effectively hand the election to Hillary Clinton. In new research Erin C. Cassese explains why this was not the case. Using data from the American National Election Study, she finds that Republican women are much closer to Republican men than Democratic men or women on every issue but gun control. Republican women, she writes, are just as ideologically extreme as Republican men, and will vote for their party’s candidate regardless of policy appeals or accusations of sexism

Applications of Cement-Based Smart Composites to Civil Structural Health Monitoring: A Review

In recent years, cement-based smart composites (CSCs) doped with conductive filler have attracted increasing research interest because of their high potentiality as self-sensing materials for civil Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications. Nevertheless, several issues are still open and need further studies. This paper presents an extensive state-of-the-art in which investigations on CSCs are summarized and critically revised, with the primary aim of outlining the main limits and development points. The literature review first addresses in detail several specific issues related to fabrication and operation as sensing elements of CSC samples. State-of-the-art applications of CSCs to SHM of reduced-, medium- and full-scale structural prototypes are extensively reviewed afterwards, resulting in a database useful to critically revise the main trends and open issues of the research in this field

Experimental behavior of existing RC columns strengthened with HPFRC jacket under concentric and eccentric compressive load

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures built before the 1970 represent a large portion of the existing European buildings stock. Their obsolescence in terms of design criteria, materials, and functionality is becoming a critical issue for guaranteeing adequate compliance with current structural codes. Recently, a new jacketing system based on the use of high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (HPFRC) has been introduced for strengthening existing RC building members. Despite the promising aspects of the HPFRC jacketing technique, currently, a comprehensive and systematic technical framework for its implementation is still missing. In this paper, the experimental performance of RC columns strengthened with the HPFRC jacket subjected to pure axial load and combined axial load-bending moment uncoupled from shear is investigated. The test outcomes confirmed a significant improvement of the structural performance for the strengthened columns, especially for higher values of eccentricity. Finally, a standard-based practice-oriented analytical tool for designing retrofit interventions using the HPFRC jacket is proposed. The comparison between the calculated and experimental results revealed a satisfactory prediction capability

Convergence in measure under Finite Additivity

We investigate the possibility of replacing the topology of convergence in probability with convergence in $L^1$. A characterization of continuous linear functionals on the space of measurable functions is also obtained

Integrating Gender into the Political Science Core Curriculum

The New Research on Gender in Political Psychology Conference brought together new and experienced teachers with interests in gender politics. The conference session Teaching Gender throughout the Curriculum generated a great deal of discussion concerning the pedagogical practice of gender mainstreaming. Gender mainstreaming-the integration of gendered content into courses required for a major-was recognized as one of 11 recommendations for reforming the undergraduate political science curriculum in the 1991 APSA report Liberal Learning an The Political Science Major: A Report to the Profession (popularly referred to as the Wahlke Report). Little information is available on the prevalence of gender courses in the undergraduate curriculum, but the data that does exist suggest such courses are uncommon (Brandes et al. 2001). We found virtually no data on the practice of gender mainstreaming in political science and little data in the way of assessing the impact of gendered content when students are exposed to it. This absence of data suggests gender mainstreaming has not emerged as a serious priority for curricular reform. © 2012 American Political Science Association

Using multisensory instruction to support reading growth in a fifth grade general education classroom

The purpose of this research study was to engage fifth grade students in multisensory instruction in order to improve reading, specifically at the complex word level. Embedding multisensory techniques can be effective in promoting engagement in reading for students in fifth grade. The goal of this research project was to determine the effects that multisensory instruction has on readers in fifth grade. The main research question that guided this study was: How does multisensory instruction support growth in reading for 5th grade students? Five students in fifth grade participated in a five-week study where data was gathered to determine their growth in reading, and their levels of engagement during each multisensory instructional strategy. The data suggests that incorporating activities that are comprised of more than one modality increases student\u27s decoding abilities and reading engagement. Engaging students in instruction on morphological awareness, using multisensory strategies, increases reading performance

Scientific prospects in soft gamma-ray astronomy enabled by the LAUE project

This paper summarizes the development of a successful project, LAUE, supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and devoted to the development of long focal length (up to 100 m) Laue lenses for hard X--/soft gamma--ray astronomy (80-600 keV). The apparatus is ready and the assembling of a prototype lens petal is ongoing. The great achievement of this project is the use of bent crystals. From measurements obtained on single crystals and from simulations, we have estimated the expected Point Spread Function and thus the sensitivity of a lens made of petals. The expected sensitivity is a few $\times10^{-8}$ photons cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ keV$^{-1}$. We discuss a number of open astrophysical questions that can settled with such an instrument aboard a free-flying satellite.Comment: 17 pages, 18 figures, published in Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 8861, id. 886106 17 pp. (2013

Development status of the LAUE project

We present the status of LAUE, a project supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and devoted to develop Laue lenses with long focal length (up to 100 meters), for hard X--/soft gamma--ray astronomy (80-600 keV). Thanks to their focusing capability, the design goal is to improve the sensitivity of the current instrumention in the above energy band by 2 orders of magnitude, down to a few times $10^{-8}$ photons/(cm$^2$ s keV).Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, presented at the Space Telescopes and Instrumentation Symposium in Amsterdam, 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray Conference. Published in the Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 8443, id. 84430B-84430B-9 (2012

The practices of apartheid as a war crime: a critical analysis

The human suffering caused by the political ideology of apartheid in South Africa during the Apartheid era (1948-1994) prompted worldwide condemnation and a variety of diplomatic and legal responses. Amongst these responses was the attempt to have apartheid recognised both as a crime against humanity in the 1973 Apartheid Convention as well as a war crime in Article 85(4)(c) of Additional Protocol I. This article examines the origins, nature and current status of the practices of apartheid as a war crime and its possible application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Portal venous gas after a failed endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography attempt in a patient with a large hepatocellular carcinoma: A case report

The cause of hepatic portal vein gas (HPVG) is variable. Good knowledge of the possible causes, combined with the clinical assessment of the patient and a good quality imaging, is required to correctly identify the underlying cause of HPVG and to best predict the prognosis