Red Rural, Blue Rural; Rural Does Not Always Equal Republican

In this fact sheet, authors Dante Scala and Kenneth Johnson examine voting data for nearly 9,000 rural residents to identify how voting patterns differ across rural areas comparing farm and recreational counties to those elsewhere in rural America. They also examine voting data from the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections for each rural county. Scala and Johnson report that rural America is not the undifferentiated Republican bastion depicted by commentators. While Republican presidential candidates do best in rural counties dominated by farming, Democratic presidential candidates do well in rural counties dominated by recreation. In “battleground” states, these rural differences may impact tightly contested elections

Beyond Urban Versus Rural:

In this brief, authors Dante Scala and Kenneth Johnson examine voting patterns over the last five presidential elections. They report that although rural voters and urban voters are often portrayed as polar opposites, their differences are best understood as a continuum, not a dichotomy. From the largest urban cores to the most remote rural counties, they found significant variations in voting. Hillary Clinton nearly matched Barack Obama’s 2012 performance in most urban areas. Clinton’s defeat was due, in part, to her failure to match the performance of recent Democratic Presidential nominees in less populated areas. Though many commentators argued that the faster population growth and growing diversity on the urban side of the rural–urban continuum would give Democrats a significant advantage in 2016, the election demonstrated that what happens at the rural end of the continuum remains important

New Voters Will Influence Outcome in New Hampshire Primary

In this data snapshot, authors Kenneth Johnson, Dante Scala, and Andrew Smith discuss factors going into New Hampshire\u27s 2020 Primary that could influence the outcome

Integrating genomics and phylogenetics in understanding the history of Trichinella species

In 2004, funding was received by Washington University’s Genome Sequencing Center through NHGRI, to completely sequence several nematode genomes as part of a holistic effort to advance our understanding of the human genome and evolution within the Metazoa. Trichinella spiralis was among this group of worms because of its strategic location at the base of the phylum Nematoda, and the belief that extant species represented an ancient divergent event that occurred as early as the Paleozoic. At the same time, a concerted effort was put forth to solidify the phylogeny of extant species of Trichinella based upon molecular analyses of a multi-gene system to understand the history of the genus and thereby enhance utilization of the forthcoming sequence data. Since the inception of this research, several findings have emerged: (1) the size of T. spiralis genome estimated by flow cytometry (71.3 Mb) is substantially smaller than originally predicted (270 Mb); (2) to date, a subset of the total of 3,534,683 sequences have been assembled into a 59.3 Mb unique sequence; (3) 19% of the assembled sequence is comprised of repetitive elements; and (4) sequence data are predicated upon extant T. spiralis which probably diverged as little as 20 million years ago. Thus, the utility of the T. spiralis genome as representative of an archaic species must be tempered with the knowledge that encapsulated and non-encapsulated clades probably separated during the mid-Miocene as temperate ecosystems changed

Many new voters make the Granite State one to watch in November

A third of potential voters in New Hampshire during the fall of 2008 have become eligible to vote in the state. Further, these potential new voters are more likely to identify with the Democratic Party and less likely to identify as Republicans than are established New Hampshire voters, contributing to the state\u27s purple status

The star cluster system of the 3 Gyr old merger remnant NGC 1316: Clues from optical and near-infrared photometry

The giant merger remnant galaxy NGC 1316 (Fornax A) is an ideal probe for studying the long-term effects of a past major merger on star cluster systems, given its spectroscopically derived merger age of ~3 Gyr which we reported in a recent paper. Here we present new ground-based, large-area optical and near-IR imaging of star clusters in NGC 1316, complemented with deep HST/WFPC2 imaging. We find that the optical-near-IR colours and luminosities of the brightest ~10 clusters in NGC 1316 are consistent with those of intermediate-age (2-3 Gyr) populations. Unlike `normal' giant ellipticals, the B-I colour distribution of clusters in NGC 1316 is not clearly bimodal. However, the luminosity functions (LFs) of the blue and red parts of the cluster colour distribution are different: The red cluster LF is well represented by a power law with index -1.2 +/- 0.3, extending to about 1.5 mag brighter (in B) than those of typical giant ellipticals. In contrast, the shape of the blue cluster LF is consistent with that of `normal' spiral and elliptical galaxies. We conclude that the star cluster system of NGC 1316 is a combination of a population of age ~3 Gyr having roughly solar metallicity and a population of old, metal-poor clusters which probably belonged to the pre-merger galaxies. After the 3 Gyr old, metal-rich clusters fade to an age of 10 Gyr, they will form a red `peak' in a bimodal cluster colour distribution. This `red peak' will have a colour consistent with that found in `normal, old' giant ellipticals of the same galaxy luminosity (taking age dimming into account). These features of the star cluster system of NGC 1316 are fully consistent with scenarios for forming `normal' giant elliptical galaxies through gas-rich mergers at look-back times \ga 10 Gyr.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX format, figures included using psfig.sty. Accepted by MNRAS. Abstract below is abridged (full abstract in paper). Used 8-bit mapping to limit size of figures (24-bit mapping in MNRAS paper

Factorization and Criticality in Finite XXZ Systems of Arbitrary Spin

We analyze ground state (GS) factorization in general arrays of spins si with XXZ couplings immersed in nonuniform fields. It is shown that an exceptionally degenerate set of completely separable symmetry-breaking GSs can arise for a wide range of field configurations, at a quantum critical point where all GS magnetization plateaus merge. Such configurations include alternating fields as well as zero-bulk field solutions with edge fields only and intermediate solutions with zero field at specific sites, valid for d-dimensional arrays. The definite magnetization-projected GSs at factorization can be analytically determined and depend only on the exchange anisotropies, exhibiting critical entanglement properties. We also show that some factorization-compatible field configurations may result in field-induced frustration and nontrivial behavior at strong fields.Fil: Cerezo, M. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Rossignoli, Raúl Dante. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; Argentina. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas; ArgentinaFil: Canosa, Norma Beatriz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Ríos, E.. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional; Argentin

The antiferromagnetic phase of the Floquet-driven Hubbard model

A saddle point plus fluctuations analysis of the periodically driven half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model is performed. For drive frequencies below the equilibrium gap, we find discontinuous transitions to time-dependent solutions. A highly excited, generically non-thermal distribution of magnons occurs even for drive frequencies far above the gap. Above a critical drive amplitude, the low-energy magnon distribution diverges as the frequency tends to zero and antiferromagnetism is destroyed, revealing the generic importance of collective mode excitations arising from a non-equilibrium drive

Lift & Drag Effects of a Variable-Angle Winglet System

Winglets are systems that are used on aircraft to reduce drag and ultimately save money on fuel and pollution costs. A winglet exists on the end of a wing to reduce the amount of drag that affects each wing during flight. In 2020, these winglet systems are fixed and vary between aircraft based on different flight and geometry characteristics. The result of this is that each winglet is only optimal at a single design point or a single flight scenario. A variable angle winglet system would allow the winglet to be optimal at multiple design points. In this experiment, a variable-angle winglet system is investigated based on different angles of attack, altitudes, and speeds. The results are found using computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel testing. In the preliminary experiments it was found that the differences in air speed, altitude, and pitch for each flight condition affect the optimal cant angle significantly. The significance demonstrates the practicality of further research regarding potential prototyping and implementation