Ronald Reagan, Jesse Unruh and the California Gubernatorial Race, 1970

This essay examines the 1970 gubernatorial race in California between incumbent Ronald Reagan and powerful California legislator Jesse Unruh. Most of the scholarship on this particular subject tends to revolve around Reagan\u27s first campaign for governor, but neglects his re-election campaign. Although Unruh would lose the campaign, he narrowed Reagan\u27s win significantly. This study examines the candidates themselves, the issues facing California at the time, strategies used by each camp, and possible reasons why voters strayed from Reagan to the Unruh camp, and the final outcome of the race

Surveying the Scope of the SU(2)_L Scalar Septet Sector

Extending the Standard Model by adding a scalar field transforming as a septet under $SU(2)_L$ preserves the $\rho$ parameter at tree level and can satisfy experimental constraints on the electroweak parameters $S$ and $T$. This work presents the first fully general phenomenological study of such an extension. We examine constraints on the septet model couplings based on electroweak and Higgs observables, and use LHC searches for new physics to bound the mass of the septet to be above $\sim 400$ GeV at a $95\%$ CL.Comment: pdfLateX, 17 pages, 6 figures, reference added. Version published in JHE

Optimal parallel solution of sparse triangular systems

A method for the parallel solution of triangular sets of equations is described that is appropriate when there are many right-handed sides. By preprocessing, the method can reduce the number of parallel steps required to solve Lx = b compared to parallel forward or backsolve. Applications are to iterative solvers with triangular preconditioners, to structural analysis, or to power systems applications, where there may be many right-handed sides (not all available a priori). The inverse of L is represented as a product of sparse triangular factors. The problem is to find a factored representation of this inverse of L with the smallest number of factors (or partitions), subject to the requirement that no new nonzero elements be created in the formation of these inverse factors. A method from an earlier reference is shown to solve this problem. This method is improved upon by constructing a permutation of the rows and columns of L that preserves triangularity and allow for the best possible such partition. A number of practical examples and algorithmic details are presented. The parallelism attainable is illustrated by means of elimination trees and clique trees

Effects of Corn and Selected Weed Species on Feeding Behavior of the Stalk Borer, \u3ci\u3ePapaipema Nebris\u3c/i\u3e (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

Experiments were conducted in an outdoor insectary to examine behavioral interactions between fifth instar stalk borers, Papaiperna nebris, and potential host plant species. Plants tested included 6- and 8-leaf stage corn, Zea mays, and ten weed species (six broadleaf and four grass) commonly associated with corn production in southern Wisconsin. Broadleaf plants found to be acceptable hosts included Ambrosia trifida, Arnaranthus retroflexus, Rumex crispus, and Chenopodium album; Asclepias syriaca and Abutilon theophrasti were not acceptable as host plants. Corn and the other grass species (Agropyron repens, Bromus inermis, Dactylis glomerata, and Setaria faberi) were found to be acceptable hosts. All acceptable plants also supported larval development to the pupal stage, though on 6-leaf stage corn and the small-stemmed grasses the majority of larvae dispersed before completing development. Larvae developing on corn, A. triftda, and A. retroflexus pupated within the plant stem, whereas larvae developing on the other plants pupated in the soil near the plant on which they fed. Stalk borer larvae required substantially less time to bore into corn stalks than into the stems of the broadleaf plants. In a limited preference experiment, corn was clearly preferred as a host plant over the three broadleaf and one small-stemmed grass species tested

Teleconnection in the martian atmosphere during the 2001 planet-encircling dust storm

Introduction: In July 2001 (Martian year 25), Mars was enshrouded by a thick veil of dust which lasted for several months and obscured the observation of its surface to spacecraft cameras and ground-based telescopes. The emergence and rapid evolution (within a few days) of multiple, isolated, regional dust storms which eventually attained planetary scale extent were observed by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft using high resolution camera images and the thermal profiles and dust opacity measurements pro-vided by the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) [1, 2]. We have applied a technique used in Terrestrial meteorology (sequential data assimilation, [3]) to ob-tain a complete, four-dimensional evolution of all the atmospheric variables during the period of this planet-encircling dust storm, even those which were not di-rectly observed by the MGS satellite, such as surface pressure and winds. We assimilated TES nadir-pointing thermal profiles and total dust opacities in a global circulation model of the Martian atmosphere, developed jointly by the University of Oxford and the Open University in the United Kingdom, with the col-laboration of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dyna-mique in Paris (UK-MGCM) [4, 5, 6]

Defect Detection in Railroad Tapered-Roller Bearings Using Vibration Analysis Techniques

Derailments can often lead to great damage, loss of lives, and massive costs associated with the railroad infrastructure. A significant cause of derailments is premature bearing failure, and therefore bearing condition-monitoring systems that can detect developing defects are of great importance. Based on an investigation conducted at the University of Texas-Pan American on the development of a vibration and temperature monitoring system, an algorithm is devised utilizing various vibration analysis techniques. The proposed algorithm determines whether a bearing is defective, the type of defect present, the defective component (i.e. cup, cone, or roller), and the size of the defect. Speed-dependent thresholds based on the root-mean-square (RMS) of the vibration signal are used to differentiate between a defective bearing and a healthy (defect-free) bearing; the type and location (component) of the defect is determined by tracking the magnitude of the fundamental defect frequencies. Finally, correlations of RMS vs. size are utilized to estimate the area and perimeter

Direct AC Generation from Solar Cell Arrays

Results of the investigation of the performance of solar cells when directly coupled to a conventional three-phase power network are presented. This approach dissociates the electricity production problem from the electric energy storage problem. Extensive studies of the required power inverter are performed. Preliminary simulation results indicate that ac power outputs of better than 90% of the optimum cell power output can be easily achieved by means of a suitably controlled inverter, thereby justifying the elimination of dc loads or local dc electric energy storage devices. It is also shown that the controlling policy for the inverter must depend on the operating conditions of the system, such as cell temperature, solar intensity and power system voltage variations, otherwise the performance of the inverter can deteriorate quite dramatically

A risk assessment of human-robot interface operations to control the potential of injuries/losses at XYZ manufacturing company

Includes bibliographical references

Cancer modeling: from optimal cell renewal to immunotherapy

Cancer is a disease caused by mutations in normal cells. According to the National Cancer Institute, in 2016, an estimated 1.6 million people were diagnosed and approximately 0.5 million people died from the disease in the United States. There are many factors that shape cancer at the cellular and organismal level, including genetic, immunological, and environmental components. In this thesis, we show how mathematical modeling can be used to provide insight into some of the key mechanisms underlying cancer dynamics. First, we use mathematical modeling to investigate optimal homeostatic cell renewal in tissues such as the small intestine with an emphasis on division patterns and tissue architecture. We find that the division patterns that delay the accumulation of mutations are strictly associated with the population sizes of the tissue. In particular, patterns with long chains of differentiation delay the time to observe a second-hit mutant, which is important given that for many cancers two mutations are enough to initiate a tumor. We also investigated homeostatic cell renewal under a selective pressure and find that hierarchically organized tissues act as suppressors of selection; we find that an architecture with a small number of stem cells and larger pools of transit amplifying cells and mature differentiated cells, together with long chains of differentiation, form a robust evolutionary strategy to delay the time to observe a second-hit mutant when mutations acquire a fitness advantage or disadvantage. We also formulate a model of the immune response to cancer in the presence of costimulatory and inhibitory signals. We demonstrate that the coordination of such signals is crucial to initiate an effective immune response, and while immunotherapy has become a promising cancer treatment over the past decade, these results offer some explanations for why it can fail