Exit polling and racial bloc voting: Combining individual-level and R×\timesC ecological data

Despite its shortcomings, cross-level or ecological inference remains a necessary part of some areas of quantitative inference, including in United States voting rights litigation. Ecological inference suffers from a lack of identification that, most agree, is best addressed by incorporating individual-level data into the model. In this paper we test the limits of such an incorporation by attempting it in the context of drawing inferences about racial voting patterns using a combination of an exit poll and precinct-level ecological data; accurate information about racial voting patterns is needed to assess triggers in voting rights laws that can determine the composition of United States legislative bodies. Specifically, we extend and study a hybrid model that addresses two-way tables of arbitrary dimension. We apply the hybrid model to an exit poll we administered in the City of Boston in 2008. Using the resulting data as well as simulation, we compare the performance of a pure ecological estimator, pure survey estimators using various sampling schemes and our hybrid. We conclude that the hybrid estimator offers substantial benefits by enabling substantive inferences about voting patterns not practicably available without its use.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS353 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

In-flight boundary-layer measurements on a hollow cylinder at a Mach number of 3.0

Skin temperatures, shear forces, surface static pressures, boundary layer pitot pressures, and boundary layer total temperatures were measured on the external surface of a hollow cylinder that was 3.04 meters long and 0.437 meter in diameter and was mounted beneath the fuselage of the YF-12A airplane. The data were obtained at a nominal free stream Mach number of 3.0 (a local Mach number of 2.9) and at wall to recovery temperature ratios of 0.66 to 0.91. The local Reynolds number had a nominal value of 4,300,000 per meter. Heat transfer coefficients and skin friction coefficients were derived from skin temperature time histories and shear force measurements, respectively. In addition, boundary layer velocity profiles were derived from pitot pressure measurements, and a Reynolds analogy factor was obtained from the heat transfer and skin friction measurements. The measured data are compared with several boundary layer prediction methods

Methodology for back-contamination risk assessment for a Mars sample return mission

The risk of back-contamination from Mars Surface Sample Return (MSSR) missions is assessed. The methodology is designed to provide an assessment of the probability that a given mission design and strategy will result in accidental release of Martian organisms acquired as a result of MSSR. This is accomplished through the construction of risk models describing the mission risk elements and their impact on back-contamination probability. A conceptual framework is presented for using the risk model to evaluate mission design decisions that require a trade-off between science and planetary protection considerations

Study of storm time fluxes of heavy ions

Ion composition data sets from Lockheed instruments on a variety of spacecraft were used in combination with each other and with data from other instruments to address a variety of problems regarding plasma sources, energization and transport within the magnetosphere. The availability of data from several differing orbits has given a highly flexible approach to attacking the continually evolving questions of magnetospheric physics. This approach is very successful and should be continued in the future

Direct N-body Simulations of Rubble Pile Collisions

There is increasing evidence that many km-sized bodies in the Solar System are piles of rubble bound together by gravity. We present results from a project to map the parameter space of collisions between km-sized spherical rubble piles. The results will assist in parameterization of collision outcomes for Solar System formation models and give insight into fragmentation scaling laws. We use a direct numerical method to evolve the positions and velocities of the rubble pile particles under the constraints of gravity and physical collisions. We test the dependence of the collision outcomes on impact parameter and speed, impactor spin, mass ratio, and coefficient of restitution. Speeds are kept low (< 10 m/s, appropriate for dynamically cool systems such as the primordial disk during early planet formation) so that the maximum strain on the component material does not exceed the crushing strength. We compare our results with analytic estimates and hydrocode simulations. Off-axis collisions can result in fast-spinning elongated remnants or contact binaries while fast collisions result in smaller fragments overall. Clumping of debris escaping from the remnant can occur, leading to the formation of smaller rubble piles. In the cases we tested, less than 2% of the system mass ends up orbiting the remnant. Initial spin can reduce or enhance collision outcomes, depending on the relative orientation of the spin and orbital angular momenta. We derive a relationship between impact speed and angle for critical dispersal of mass in the system. We find that our rubble piles are relatively easy to disperse, even at low impact speed, suggesting that greater dissipation is required if rubble piles are the true progenitors of protoplanets.Comment: 30 pages including 4 tables, 8 figures. Revised version to be published in Icarus

The Jury System in Contemporary Ireland: In the Shadow of a Troubled Past

Jackson et al discuss the distinctive features of criminal trial by jury in Ireland, both north and south, to explain how the jury continues to survive within modern Ireland and how it also has managed to decline in significance

Perceptions of Transactional and Transformational Leaders According to Gender

The lack of females occupying leadership positions in the modern workplace has prompted the research of this study. In order to better understand the perceptions that exist regarding successful leadership, this study was conducted with the intention of understanding individual leadership style through the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, which measures transactional and transformational leadership styles (Bass and Avolio, 1993). 64 male and female participants, made up of 36 students and 28 individuals in the workforce ages 18-61 with an average age of 31 answered 21 questions to assess their leadership style and 1 to measure who they perceived as a successful leader, with responses coded by gender of responder and response. This study aimed to assess whether males identified more with transactional leadership and females with transformational leadership style, which would confirm current research conducted in the field. The Chi Squared statistical analysis test results showed that 72.4% of males displayed transformational leadership styles, along with 82.9% of females displaying this same style, which showed a lack of significance between gender and difference in leadership style. However, in response to the question asking to identify a successful leader, results showed that most individuals of both gender wrote down a male leader

Counting of discrete Rossby/drift wave resonant triads (again)

The purpose of our earlier note (arXiv:1309.0405 [physics.flu-dyn]) was to remove the confusion over counting of resonant wave triads for Rossby and drift waves in the context of the Charney-Hasegawa-Mima equation. A comment by Kartashov and Kartashova (arXiv:1309.0992v1 [physics.flu-dyn]) on that note has further confused the situation. The present note aims to remove this obfuscation