Race, Place, and Identity: Examining Place Identity in the Racialized Landscape of Buckhead, Atlanta

This thesis examines the role of racialized practices in the discourses and processes that alter place identity. Drawing on ethnography from the East Village of Buckhead, a once vibrant nightlife district in Atlanta, I examine how discourses of danger, colorblindness, and the race card have been employed to “whitewash” the discussions about the redevelopment of the Village. In effect, the business and civic elite of Atlanta (and Buckhead) deployed racialized conceptualizations of group identity. In particular, they utilized “public safety” discourses to influence the Atlanta city government to support the redevelopment effort. This led to the elimination of the establishments that attracted African American partygoers in large numbers. Using interviews with government agents, night club operators, and Buckhead civic and business leaders, combined with archival analysis of newspaper accounts, I implemented a hybrid content-discourse analysis to explore the ways in which the discourses of race and place concerning the East Village changed between 2000 and 2008

Symmetry Transition in Thin Films of Diblock Copolymer/Homopolymer Blends

The effect of blending small weight fractions of low molecular weight majority block homopolymer on the structure of multilayer films of spherical morphology poly(styrene-b-2vinylpyridine) [PS−P2VP] has been studied. The structure of the films was characterized with grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In multilayer films of PS−P2VP, competition between hexagonal packing of the spherical domains preferred at the surfaces with the BCC (110) packing preferred by the internal layers leads to a transition in the packing symmetry as the number of sphere layers (n) is increased.(1) Neat PS−P2VP exhibits hexagonal close-packed (HCP) symmetry up through n = 4, but at four layers coexistence of hexagonal and face-centered orthorhombic phases is observed. At n = n* = 5 the face-centered orthorhombic structure (FCO) is the stable phase. On increasing n further, the FCO phase continuously distorts to approach the arrangement of the BCC (110) plane. We observe that blending a small weight fraction of low molecular weight PS homopolymer with PS−P2VP suppresses this transition and stabilizes the hexagonal close-packed arrangement beyond four layers. Moreover, n* increases with increasing weight fraction of incorporated homopolymer for the small weight fractions of homopolymer used in this study. Self-consistent-field theory simulations designed to mimic the experimental system corroborate that n* is expected to increase and show that the PS homopolymer segregates to the interstices of the HCP unit cell. This suggests that the homopolymer reduces the stretching of the PS block and the free energy penalty of HCP relative to BCC inner layers. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the excessive stretching requirement in an HCP arrangement is the cause of its higher free energy as compared to the BCC lattice

Review Essay—Official History, Not “Instant Analysis”

Shield and Sword: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf Wa

The control of gullies

Cover title

Developing Cost-Effective Inspection Sampling Plans for Energy-Efficiency Programs at Southern California Edison

This paper summarizes the results of the development and implementation of a decision model for a major California utility company. The company’s program managers use the model to select the most cost-effective sampling inspection plan for managing a portfolio of energy-efficiency programs. The decision model can be used to evaluate the performance of possible sampling strategies based on historical data. We illustrate the application of our decision model to a specific program. We further highlight several key implementation success factors and discuss the benefits that the utility company accrued from using the decision model

The Kepler Follow-up Observation Program

The Kepler Mission was launched on March 6, 2009 to perform a photometric survey of more than 100,000 dwarf stars to search for terrestrial-size planets with the transit technique. Follow-up observations of planetary candidates identified by detection of transit-like events are needed both for identification of astrophysical phenomena that mimic planetary transits and for characterization of the true planets and planetary systems found by Kepler. We have developed techniques and protocols for detection of false planetary transits and are currently conducting observations on 177 Kepler targets that have been selected for follow-up. A preliminary estimate indicates that between 24% and 62% of planetary candidates selected for follow-up will turn out to be true planets.Comment: 12 pages, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letter

A Modular Strategy for Fully Conjugated Donor–Acceptor Block Copolymers

A novel strategy for the synthesis of fully conjugated donor–acceptor block copolymers, in a single reaction step employing Stille coupling polymerization of end-functional polythiophene and AA + BB monomers, is presented. The unique donor–acceptor structure of these block copolymers provides a rich self-assembly behavior, with the first example of a fully conjugated donor–acceptor block copolymer having two separate crystalline domains being obtained

Kepler-4B: A Hot Neptune-Like Planet of A G0 Star Near Main-Sequence Turnoff

Early time-series photometry from NASA's Kepler spacecraft has revealed a planet transiting the star we term Kepler-4, at R.A. = 19(h)02(m)27.(s)68, delta = +50 degrees 08'08 '' 7. The planet has an orbital period of 3.213 days and shows transits with a relative depth of 0.87 x 10(-3) and a duration of about 3.95 hr. Radial velocity (RV) measurements from the Keck High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer show a reflex Doppler signal of 9.3(-1.9)(+1.1) m s(-1), consistent with a low-eccentricity orbit with the phase expected from the transits. Various tests show no evidence for any companion star near enough to affect the light curve or the RVs for this system. From a transit-based estimate of the host star's mean density, combined with analysis of high-resolution spectra, we infer that the host star is near turnoff from the main sequence, with estimated mass and radius of 1.223(-0.091)(+0.053) M(circle dot) and 1.487(-0.084)(+0.071) R(circle dot).We estimate the planet mass and radius to be {M(P), R(P)} = {24.5 +/- 3.8 M(circle plus), 3.99 +/- 0.21 R(circle plus)}. The planet's density is near 1.9 g cm(-3); it is thus slightly denser and more massive than Neptune, but about the same size.W. M. Keck FoundationNASA's Science Mission DirectorateAstronom

Kepler Observations of Transiting Hot Compact Objects

Kepler photometry has revealed two unusual transiting companions orbiting an early A-star and a late B-star. In both cases the occultation of the companion is deeper than the transit. The occultation and transit with follow-up optical spectroscopy reveal a 9400 K early A-star, KOI-74 (KIC 6889235), with a companion in a 5.2 day orbit with a radius of 0.08 Rsun and a 10000 K late B-star KOI-81 (KIC 8823868) that has a companion in a 24 day orbit with a radius of 0.2 Rsun. We infer a temperature of 12250 K for KOI-74b and 13500 K for KOI-81b. We present 43 days of high duty cycle, 30 minute cadence photometry, with models demonstrating the intriguing properties of these object, and speculate on their nature.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJL (updated to correct KOI74 lightcurve