Winners, losers, and perceived mandates : voter explanations of the 1998 Gubernatorial and 2000 Presidential elections in Florida.

Elections are sometimes seen as legitimizing institutions, promoting system-level support among citizens by providing them with input into the political process. However, prior research has found that is less true among the supporters of losing candidates, who often exhibit lower levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy. We analyze two statewide surveys in Florida (following the gubernatorial and senatorial elections of 1998, and the controversial presidential election of 2000), and find that (1) losers do exhibit lower levels of political trust, satisfaction with democracy, and beliefs that government is responsive to citizens; (2) losers also are more likely to endorse sour grapes rationalizations of the election outcome, and less likely to accept mandate interpretations; (3) the meanings that voters ascribe to the election mediate the relationship between winning/losing and political trust, but have limited effects on other system support variables; and (4) perceptions of procedural fairness moderate the relationships between candidate support and system support. These findings suggest that the so-called legitimizing function of elections is far from a universal phenomenon

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t: Citizens’ ambivalence about abortion

Recent research has recognized that many people simultaneously hold positive and negative attitudes about important political issues. This paper reviews the concept of attitudinal ambivalence and introduces a survey measure of ambivalence adapted from the experimental literature. An analysis of two statewide telephone surveys of Florida voters reveals that (1) a number of voters have ambivalent attitudes about abortion rights; (2) the amount of ambivalence varies according to the circumstances (elective versus traumatic) under which an abortion is obtained; (3) ambivalence about elective abortions is essentially unrelated to ambivalence about traumatic abortions; (4) voters who support abortion right

Immunological considerations of modern animal models of malignant primary brain tumors

Recent advances in animal models of glioma have facilitated a better understanding of biological mechanisms underlying gliomagenesis and glioma progression. The limitations of existing therapy, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, have prompted numerous investigators to search for new therapeutic approaches to improve quantity and quality of survival from these aggressive lesions. One of these approaches involves triggering a tumor specific immune response. However, a difficulty in this approach is the the scarcity of animal models of primary CNS neoplasms which faithfully recapitulate these tumors and their interaction with the host's immune system. In this article, we review the existing methods utilized to date for modeling gliomas in rodents, with a focus on the known as well as potential immunological aspects of these models. As this review demonstrates, many of these models have inherent immune system limitations, and the impact of these limitations on studies on the influence of pre-clinical therapeutics testing warrants further attention

Improved non-contact 3D field and processing techniques to achieve macrotexture characterisation of pavements

Macrotexture is required on pavements to provide skid resistance for vehicle safety in wet conditions. Increasingly, correlations between macrotexture measurements captured using non-contact techniques and tyre-pavement contact friction are being investigated in order to enable more robust and widescale measurement and monitoring of skid resistance. There is a notable scarcity of research into the respective accuracy of the non-contact measurement techniques at these scales. This paper compares three techniques: a laser profile scanner, Structure from Motion photogrammetry and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS). We use spectral analysis, areal surface texture parameters and 2D cross-correlation analysis to evaluate the suitability of each approach for characterising and monitoring pavement macrotexture. The results show that SfM can produce successful measures of the areal root mean square height (Sq), which represents pavement texture depth and is positively correlated with skid resistance. Significant noise in the TLS data prevented agreement with the laser profiler but we show that new filtering procedures result in significantly improved values for the peak density (Spd) and the arithmetic peak mean curvature (Spc), which together define the shape and distribution of pavement aggregates forming macrotexture. However, filtering the TLS data results in a trade-off with vertical accuracy, thus altering the reliability of Sq. Finally, we show the functional areal parameters Spd and Spc are sensitive to sample size. This means that pavement specimen size of 150 mm × 150 mm or smaller, when used in laboratory or field observations, are inadequate to capture the true value of areal surface texture parameters. The deployment of wider scale approaches such as SfM and spectrally filtered TLS are required in order to successfully capture the functional areal parameters (Spc and Spd) for road surfaces

Seasonal Signals Observed in Non-Contact Long-Term Road Texture Measurements

Texture is required on road pavements for safe vehicle braking and manoeuvres. This paper provides a unique analysis of long-term texture obtained using traffic speed condition survey (TRACS) data from 14 sites, located along a north to south transect spanning the longest highway in the UK. A total of 19 years of sensor measured texture depth (SMTD) data have been analyzed using spatial filtering techniques and compared with meteorological and traffic datasets. The results for hot rolled asphalt (HRA) surfaces reveal that changes to SMTD follow a linearly increasing trend with time. The “rate of change” is influenced by the order of magnitude of annual average daily traffic (AADT), when factored for the percentage of heavy goods vehicles. This linear trend is disrupted by environmental parameters, such as rainfall events and seasonal conditioning. In the summer, this signal is evident as a transient peak in the “rate of change” of texture greater than 0.04 mm, and in the winter as a reduction. The transient changes in texture corresponded to above average rainfall occurring in the week prior to SMTD measurement. The signal observed demonstrates an inverse pattern to the classically understood seasonal variation of skid resistance in the UK, where values are low in the summer and high in the winter. The findings demonstrate for the first time that texture measurements experience a seasonal signal, and provide compelling evidence pointing toward surface processes (such as polishing and the wetting and drying of surface contaminants) causing changes to texture that are affecting seasonal variation in skid resistance

Quantifying long-term rates of texture change on road networks

Texture is required on pavements to provide safe and comfortable ride performance for users. This paper provides the first meaningful analysis of a long-term study of texture data obtained using TRACS (TRAffic Speed Condition Survey) at a site in the UK. TRACS data were collected annually, over a 2 km stretch of motorway from 1995 to 2019. A new data analysis approach utilising time series data with spectral analysis and spatial filtering procedures is presented. The results reveal that the approach enables legacy TRACS laser profile Sensor Measured Texture Depth (SMTD) data to be used to determine long term rates of change in road surface macrotexture. Thus, the technique has unlocked the potential for SMTD data collected annually for 7000 km of the Strategic Road Network in the UK, to inform road maintenance programmes by extrapolation. Additionally, results expose a systematic periodicity occurring each year within the SMTD data studied, corresponding to longitudinal oscillations with wavelengths between 33 and 62 m. The time-invariant periodicity of these oscillations suggests that it is ‘imprinted’ in the early life of the pavement. ‘Imprinting’ may theoretically arise with cyclic tyre loading applied by the suspension systems of heavy vehicles or during road construction

Introducing Health Promotion Agenda-Setting for Health Education Practitioners

Health professionals must continuously address health promotion issues using the latest strategies and research. Currently in health care, too often an underdeveloped and under supported agenda prioritizes problems, issues, and solutions. Further, an ongoing competition exists among issues due to an undocumented agenda-setting process to gain the attention of media, public, and policy makers. Agendasetting is based on the belief that the media influence what we talk about, rather than controlling what we think, and how often an issue appears in the media influences the policy agenda (Dearing & Rogers, 1996). If an issue is “salient” and receives frequent or expansive coverage by media, audience members will talk more about that issue than one that is not as salient. A Health Promotion Agenda-Setting approach works to specify and prioritize problems and alternative solutions for increasing media exposure and setting agendas for “sustained” courses of action, (Kozel et al., 2003). The crucial link between agenda-setting and the process of establishing effective legislation, policy, and programs has been researched. However, many health practitioners do not understand what agenda setting is, nor how to apply agenda setting within the field of health education. Professional development in Health Promotion Agenda-Setting offers health education practitioners new knowledge, skills, methods, and opportunities to strengthen practices that influence the public health agenda and transform health promotion leadership

Retrieval of Precise Radial Velocities from Near-Infrared High Resolution Spectra of Low Mass Stars

Given that low-mass stars have intrinsically low luminosities at optical wavelengths and a propensity for stellar activity, it is advantageous for radial velocity (RV) surveys of these objects to use near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. In this work we describe and test a novel RV extraction pipeline dedicated to retrieving RVs from low mass stars using NIR spectra taken by the CSHELL spectrograph at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, where a methane isotopologue gas cell is used for wavelength calibration. The pipeline minimizes the residuals between the observations and a spectral model composed of templates for the target star, the gas cell, and atmospheric telluric absorption; models of the line spread function, continuum curvature, and sinusoidal fringing; and a parameterization of the wavelength solution. The stellar template is derived iteratively from the science observations themselves without a need for separate observations dedicated to retrieving it. Despite limitations from CSHELL's narrow wavelength range and instrumental systematics, we are able to (1) obtain an RV precision of 35 m/s for the RV standard star GJ 15 A over a time baseline of 817 days, reaching the photon noise limit for our attained SNR, (2) achieve ~3 m/s RV precision for the M giant SV Peg over a baseline of several days and confirm its long-term RV trend due to stellar pulsations, as well as obtain nightly noise floors of ~2 - 6 m/s, and (3) show that our data are consistent with the known masses, periods, and orbital eccentricities of the two most massive planets orbiting GJ 876. Future applications of our pipeline to RV surveys using the next generation of NIR spectrographs, such as iSHELL, will enable the potential detection of Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes in the habitable zones of M dwarfs.Comment: 64 pages, 28 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in PAS