Gay Marriage and the Citizens’ Initiative: A Comparative Analysis

The legalization of gay marriage has become a contentious issue in the United States, especially for individual state governments. The variation between gay marriage policies in US states ranges from complete ban of all partnership benefits to complete marriage equality for homosexual couples. This study seeks to explain this variation by looking at the possible mechanical factors that could affect state gay marriage policies. Specifically, this study looks at the influence the presence or lack of the citizens’ initiative process has on the gay marriage movement. The sample is seven states that have previously or currently legalized gay marriage through at least one branch of the state government. The results show that a correlation does exist between the citizens’ initiative process and the repeal or retention of state gay marriage laws. A state in which citizens’ do not have access to the citizens’ initiative will be more likely to retain gay marriage laws than a state where the initiative process is allowed

Design of an Overmoded Ka-Band Sheet-Beam Coupled-Cavity Traveling-Wave Tube Amplifier

This thesis develops a qualified design for a sheet-beam coupled-cavity slow-wave structure for use in a high-power millimeter wave traveling wave tube amplifier. The main advance realized in the design is the roughly ten-fold increase in power gained by utilizing a sheet, rather than cylindrical, beam while at the same time employing mode-suppression techniques to suppress competing modes that are introduced by the sheet geometry. This design addresses considerations relevant to high-power tubes in general, as well as points specific to the design of a sheet-beam structure. The coupled-cavity structure is designed with the following general characteristics: center frequency of 35 GHz with greater than a 10% bandwidth, and capabilities of 5 kW pulsed output power. The device operating parameters are as follows: a moderate gain of 18 dB, and an experimentally demonstrated sheet electron beam with 3.5 A, 19.5 kV, and 0.3 mm x 4.0 mm beam cross-section. The final design goal has been to limit the interaction length as much as possible to reduce magnet weight and complications. A final design structure is proposed, which produces in excess of 5 kW peak power in simulation with safeguards from instabilities. The structure geometry is based on a novel design for a sheet-beam coupled-cavity slow-wave structure that has been characterized through various analyses, simulations, and experiments. This thesis outlines and details the various techniques used to probe the structure and thus form a full characterization of the structure and proposed amplifier device. The concept espoused by much of this work is to adapt the analyses from cylindrical beam devices for the sheet-beam geometry. Then we make comparisons between the new sheet-beam structure and conventional devices. From these comparisons we draw conclusions on the operation of sheet-beam amplifiers and make design choices accordingly. The final design is validated with fully three-dimensional particle simulations and predicts stable amplification across the range of operation

Tropical Ecology: The Glories of Experiential Learning

Dr. Caleb Gordon specializes in conservation biology, entomology, and ornithology, and teaches the course [Tropical Ecology and Conservation] biannually. It includes a ten-day field trip over spring break where students conduct research projects on site

Despite Federal Moratorium, Eviction Rates Returning to Pre-Pandemic Levels

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Idaho, like many states across the country, faced rising housing costs, low home-vacancy rates and increasing efforts by landlords to evict tenants. Thanks to increased unemployment benefits, federal stimulus checks and eviction moratoriums – all part of the government’s pandemic response – renters’ lives improved slightly in 2020. But with those programs decreasing or disappearing, many Idahoans and other Americans who rent their homes will still struggle to pay rent and face imminent risk of being evicted

Mapping the Asymmetric Thick Disk I. A Search for Triaxiality

A significant asymmetry in the distribution of faint blue stars in the inner Galaxy, Quadrant 1 (l = 20 to 45 degrees) compared to Quadrant 4 was first reported by Larsen & Humphreys (1996). Parker et al (2003, 2004) greatly expanded the survey to determine its spatial extent and shape and the kinematics of the affected stars. This excess in the star counts was subsequently confirmed by Juric et al. (2008) using SDSS data. Possible explanations for the asymmetry include a merger remnant, a triaxial Thick Disk, and a possible interaction with the bar in the Disk. In this paper we describe our program of wide field photometry to map the asymmetry to fainter magnitudes and therefore larger distances. To search for the signature of triaxiality, we extended our survey to higher Galactic longitudes. We find no evidence for an excess of faint blue stars at l > 55 degrees including the faintest magnitude interval. The asymmetry and star count excess in Quadrant 1 is thus not due to a triaxial Thick Disk.Comment: 36 pages, 8 figures. Accepted by Astronomical Journa

Mapping the Asymmetric Thick Disk: II Distance, Size and Mass of the Hercules Thick Disk Cloud

The Hercules Thick Disk Cloud (Larsen et al. 2008) was initially discovered as an excess in the number of faint blue stars between quadrants 1 and 4 of the Galaxy. The origin of the Cloud could be an interaction with the disk bar, a triaxial thick disk or a merger remnant or stream. To better map the spatial extent of the Cloud along the line of sight, we have obtained multi-color UBVR photometry for 1.2 million stars in 63 fields approximately 1 square degree each. Our analysis of the fields beyond the apparent boundaries of the excess have already ruled out a triaxial thick disk as a likely explanation (Larsen, Humphreys and Cabanela 2010) In this paper we present our results for the star counts over all of our fields, determine the spatial extent of the over density across and along the line of sight, and estimate the size and mass of the Cloud. Using photometric parallaxes, the stars responsible for the excess are between 1 and 6 kiloparsecs from the Sun, 0.5 -- 4 kpc above the Galactic plane, and extends approximately 3-4 kiloparsecs across our line of sight. It is thus a major substructure in the Galaxy. The distribution of the excess along our sight lines corresponds with the density contours of the bar in the Disk, and its most distant stars are directly over the bar. We also see through the Cloud to its far side. Over the entire 500 square degrees of sky containing the Cloud, we estimate more than 5.6 million stars and 1.9 million solar masses of material. If the over density is associated with the bar, it would exceed 1.4 billion stars and more than than 50 million solar masses. Finally, we argue that the Hercules-Aquila Cloud (Belokurov et al. 2007) is actually the Hercules Thick Disk Cloud.Comment: 52 pages, 13 figure

Supporting polyrepresentation in a quantum-inspired geometrical retrieval framework

The relevance of a document has many facets, going beyond the usual topical one, which have to be considered to satisfy a user's information need. Multiple representations of documents, like user-given reviews or the actual document content, can give evidence towards certain facets of relevance. In this respect polyrepresentation of documents, where such evidence is combined, is a crucial concept to estimate the relevance of a document. In this paper, we discuss how a geometrical retrieval framework inspired by quantum mechanics can be extended to support polyrepresentation. We show by example how different representations of a document can be modelled in a Hilbert space, similar to physical systems known from quantum mechanics. We further illustrate how these representations are combined by means of the tensor product to support polyrepresentation, and discuss the case that representations of documents are not independent from a user point of view. Besides giving a principled framework for polyrepresentation, the potential of this approach is to capture and formalise the complex interdependent relationships that the different representations can have between each other

Coal Power: Providing Energy, Asthma, Cardiovascular Disease, and Free Abortions

While coal power pollution affects people in a variety of ways, we are focusing on the direct physiological effects of pollution on humans. As such, we are not researching the heat trapping capabilities of carbon dioxide. Additionally, we will not be focusing on the environmental impacts on biodiversity due to nitrogen oxides. Instead, we concentrated on the cardiac, pulmonary, and developmental problems associated with pollution from coal power. ... While not all of these studies were directly linked to point source pollution from coal power plants, the fact that many pollutants released when coal is combusted in power plants are associated with negative health impacts is alarming. The potential damage caused by coal power pollution should reinforce pleas to maintain or increase existing emissions standards as declared in the Clean Air Act. Moreover, attempts to loosen regulations might cause an increase in chronic health problems, interference with children’s development, and premature death

On Using Toeplitz and Circulant Matrices for Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transforms

The Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma is one of the corner stone results in dimensionality reduction. It says that given $N$, for any set of $N$ vectors $X \subset \mathbb{R}^n$, there exists a mapping $f : X \to \mathbb{R}^m$ such that $f(X)$ preserves all pairwise distances between vectors in $X$ to within $(1 \pm \varepsilon)$ if $m = O(\varepsilon^{-2} \lg N)$. Much effort has gone into developing fast embedding algorithms, with the Fast Johnson-Lindenstrauss transform of Ailon and Chazelle being one of the most well-known techniques. The current fastest algorithm that yields the optimal $m = O(\varepsilon^{-2}\lg N)$ dimensions has an embedding time of $O(n \lg n + \varepsilon^{-2} \lg^3 N)$. An exciting approach towards improving this, due to Hinrichs and Vyb\'iral, is to use a random $m \times n$ Toeplitz matrix for the embedding. Using Fast Fourier Transform, the embedding of a vector can then be computed in $O(n \lg m)$ time. The big question is of course whether $m = O(\varepsilon^{-2} \lg N)$ dimensions suffice for this technique. If so, this would end a decades long quest to obtain faster and faster Johnson-Lindenstrauss transforms. The current best analysis of the embedding of Hinrichs and Vyb\'iral shows that $m = O(\varepsilon^{-2}\lg^2 N)$ dimensions suffices. The main result of this paper, is a proof that this analysis unfortunately cannot be tightened any further, i.e., there exists a set of $N$ vectors requiring $m = \Omega(\varepsilon^{-2} \lg^2 N)$ for the Toeplitz approach to work