The Effect of the Education Realignment on Party Position Taking in the United States

In recent decades, observers of American politics noticed a growing divide in the voting behavior of individuals with and without a college education. Today, Americans with a college degree are much more likely to support the Democratic Party and those without a college degree are much more likely to support the Republican Party. This trend, concentrated among whites, is a reversal of voting behavior in the past. I call this reversal the education realignment: the movement of college educated whites from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party; and of non-college educated whites from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. While there has been much work conducted on the causes of this realignment, there is less work on its effects. This dissertation attempts to fill that gap in our understanding of this phenomenon by examining the effects of the education realignment on party position taking. Because public opinion research finds a consistent effect of educational attainment on a wide variety of political attitudes, this dissertation hypothesizes the removal of less educated voters and addition of highly educated voters in the Democratic Party and the opposite in the Republican Party are likely to affect the kinds of positions both parties take. Specifically, I expect the parties to become more internally united yet further apart from one another on social issues; and to become more internally divided yet closer together on economic issues. This is based on research which finds greater education is associated with more liberal positions on social issues and more conservative positions on economic issues. The theory presented here builds on prior work on party position taking which argued changes in a party\u27s coalition can have significant effects on the kinds of positions that party takes. I test this theory using three different issue areas: (1) LGBTQ+ rights; (2) environmental protection; and (3) economic regulation. Party position taking is measured as the positions taken by both parties\u27 members in the U.S. Congress; and I use data from congressional scorecards produced by interest groups who lobby on these three issue areas. I track outliers in both parties on these issues over time and examine whether these outliers were affected by the education realignment. On the two social issue cases, LGBTQ+ rights and environmental protection, I find strong support for my theory: the education realignment contributed to the removal of socially liberal Republicans and socially conservative Democrats in Congress; and they were replaced by socially liberal Democrats and socially conservative Republicans respectively. This resulted in more polarized parties on social issues, but also parties which were in greater agreement on these issues than in years past. Less support is found for the education realignment affecting party position taking on economic regulation, especially for the Republican Party. Despite increasingly drawing their support from more economically populist, less educated voters, Republicans in Congress maintain very conservative positions on economic policy. There are more robust findings among Democrats: The chief effect of the education realignment was the transformation of who economic conservatives in the Democratic Party are and what kinds of constituents they represent. Whereas in years past, conservative Democrats hailed from less educated constituencies and were outliers on both economic and social issues, today\u27s typical conservative Democrat represents highly educated voters and are only outliers on economic policy. This dissertation finds support for the education realignment affecting party position taking, with the greatest effects on social issues rather than economic issues. As the realignment progresses, these effects should only become more prominent

Water supply of Rolla, Missouri

An essential feature of a prospering town is a system of water supply, to protect property from losses by fire and to furnish water for domestic use. Rolla, a town of about fifteen hundred inhabitants, is without a proper water supply, in consequence of which it has suffered many losses to property, which could have been averted, or at least diminished, had the proper protection been at hand. At present the only fire protection the business part of town has, is derived from one large cistern placed on the principal street, while the protection for the residence portion, is derived from private cicterns sic. The quantity of water in these cisterns is dependant sic on the amount of rainfall, which in this region is very uncertain; therefore, when there is the greatest demand for water in these cisterns, the quantity may be insufficient to meet the necessary requirements. Hence the reason for selecting this subject for our thesis --page 3

Causal Consistency of Structural Equation Models

Complex systems can be modelled at various levels of detail. Ideally, causal models of the same system should be consistent with one another in the sense that they agree in their predictions of the effects of interventions. We formalise this notion of consistency in the case of Structural Equation Models (SEMs) by introducing exact transformations between SEMs. This provides a general language to consider, for instance, the different levels of description in the following three scenarios: (a) models with large numbers of variables versus models in which the `irrelevant' or unobservable variables have been marginalised out; (b) micro-level models versus macro-level models in which the macro-variables are aggregate features of the micro-variables; (c) dynamical time series models versus models of their stationary behaviour. Our analysis stresses the importance of well specified interventions in the causal modelling process and sheds light on the interpretation of cyclic SEMs.Comment: equal contribution between Rubenstein and Weichwald; accepted manuscrip

Enhancement of the ferromagnetic order of graphite after sulphuric acid treatment

We have studied the changes in the ferromagnetic behavior of graphite powder and graphite flakes after treatment with diluted sulphuric acid. We show that this kind of acid treatment enhances substantially the ferromagnetic magnetization of virgin graphite micrometer size powder as well as in graphite flakes. The anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) amplitude at 300 K measured in a micrometer size thin graphite flake after acid treatment reaches values comparable to polycrystalline cobalt.Comment: 3.2 pages, 4 figure

Value-added Teacher Estimates as Part of Teacher Evaluations: Exploring the Effects of Data and Model Specifications on the Stability of Teacher Value-added Scores

In this study we explored the effects of statistical controls, single versus multiple cohort models, and student sample size on the stability of teacher value-added estimates (VAEs). We estimated VAEs for all 5th grade mathematics teachers in a large urban district by fitting two level mixed models using four cohorts of student data. We found that student sample size had the largest effect on changes in teachers’ relative standing and designation into performance groups, while control variables affected VAEs only minimally. However, we also found that teacher VAEs showed a fair degree of stability; year-to-year correlations ranged between .62 and .66, and changes in teacher effectiveness systematically varied by teacher experience, with beginning teachers showing the largest improvements over the four years under study.  Our results suggest that some model specifications are likely to produce teacher value-added scores that can reflect meaningful differences in teachers while we also found that other models might produce VAEs that might be unreliable.   

Leveraging Diffusion-Based Image Variations for Robust Training on Poisoned Data

Backdoor attacks pose a serious security threat for training neural networks as they surreptitiously introduce hidden functionalities into a model. Such backdoors remain silent during inference on clean inputs, evading detection due to inconspicuous behavior. However, once a specific trigger pattern appears in the input data, the backdoor activates, causing the model to execute its concealed function. Detecting such poisoned samples within vast datasets is virtually impossible through manual inspection. To address this challenge, we propose a novel approach that enables model training on potentially poisoned datasets by utilizing the power of recent diffusion models. Specifically, we create synthetic variations of all training samples, leveraging the inherent resilience of diffusion models to potential trigger patterns in the data. By combining this generative approach with knowledge distillation, we produce student models that maintain their general performance on the task while exhibiting robust resistance to backdoor triggers.Comment: 11 pages, 3 tables, 2 figure

Theory of Exciton Migration and Field-Induced Dissociation in Conjugated Polymers

The interplay of migration, recombination, and dissociation of excitons in disordered media is studied theoretically in the low temperature regime. An exact expression for the photoluminescence spectrum is obtained. The theory is applied to describe the electric field-induced photoluminescence-quenching experiments by Kersting et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 1440 (1994)] and Deussen et al. [Synth. Met. 73, 123 (1995)] on conjugated polymer systems. Good agreement with experiment is obtained using an on-chain dissociation mechanism, which implies a separation of the electron-hole pair along the polymer chain.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 2 Postscript figure

Heterobimetallic conducting polymers based on salophen complexes via electrosynthesis

In this work, we report the first electrochemical synthesis of two copolymeric bimetallic conducting polymers by a simple anodic electropolymerization method. The adopted precursors are electroactive transition metal (M = Ni, Cu and Fe) salophen complexes, which can be easily obtained by direct chemical synthesis. The resulting films, labeled poly-NiCu and poly-CuFe, were characterized by cyclic voltammetry in both organic and aqueous media, attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, UV-vis spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and coupled energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The films are conductive and exhibit great electrochemical stability in both organic and aqueous media (resistant over 100 cycles without significant loss in current response or changes in electrochemical behavior), which makes them good candidates for an array of potential applications. Electrochemical detection of ascorbic acid was performed using both materials