New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: Second in a Series of Reports on the California Votes Initiative

During the first phase of the California Votes Initiative, spanning elections from June 2006 to March 2007, participating community-based organizations personally contacted over 82,000 low-propensity voters, through strategies such as door-to-door outreach and phone calls, plus reached an additional 100,000 voters through less direct methods, such as voter forums and messages to congregations. This outreach inspired many to participate in the electoral process for the first time. The initiative evaluation team worked with the community organizations to imbed field experiments into their outreach efforts, comparing turnout among those targeted for contact and those assigned to control groups. This resulted in strong empirical support for a series of best practices that were detailed in a September 2007 report.1 A second phase of the initiative has continued this path-breaking research with further field experiments in the February and June 2008 elections, with more planned for November 2008. This report briefly reviews the results from the first phase of the initiative, adds findings from February 2008 and June 2008 as available,2 and outlines the follow-up studies planned for November 2008. Many findings from the first phase were confirmed, and the two rounds of experiments conducted so far this year provide valuable refinements to the list of best practices established in that earlier report. 1 Michelson, Melissa R., Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Donald P. Green. 2007. "New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: A Report on the California Votes Initiative" (San Francisco, CA: The James Irvine Foundation). Available at www.irvine.org. 2 In many counties, particularly large ones such as Los Angeles, voting information is not released until several months after an election

New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: Third and Final Report on the California Votes Initiative

This report offers new insights about voter mobilization strategies used in our California Votes Initiative. Launched in 2006, the initiative supported nine nonprofit organizations as they reached out to infrequent voters in low-income and ethnic communities in the San Joaquin Valley and parts of Southern California. This publication, the third and final report on the initiative, summarizes findings from the entirety of the project's experiments. It examines the long-term effects of voter mobilization and the effects of specific approaches, such as canvassing and phone calls, on voter attitudes toward politics and political engagement. Qualitative analyses explore the components of a successful get-out-the-vote campaign and identify five practices organizations of many types may use to increase turnout

New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: A Report on the California Votes Initiative

Evaluates the effectiveness of efforts in California to mobilize voters in communities with significant low-income and minority populations

The Foundations of Latino Voter Partisanship: Evidence from the 2000 Election

Traditionally, the Latino electorate has been considered to be Democratic in partisan affiliation. However, during the 2000 presidential election there were many efforts made by the Republican Party to court Latino voters, suggesting that perhaps Latino voters may be becoming more Republican in orientation. Using a telephone survey of Latino likely voters conducted in the 2000 election, we examine three different sets of correlates of Latino voter partisanship: social and demographic, issue and ideological, and economic. We find that Latino voter partisanship is strongly structured by social and demographic, as well as issue and ideological, factors. We also find that while it is unlikely that changes in economic factors or abortion attitudes will significantly change which parties the different Latino nation-origin groups identify with, it is possible that changes in ideological positions regarding the role of government in providing social services could result in significant changes in Latino party identification

Electromagnetic Form Factors and Charge Radii of Pseudoscalar and Scalar Mesons: A Comprehensive Contact Interaction Analysis

We carry out a comprehensive survey of electromagnetic form factors of all light, heavy and heavy-light ground-state pseudoscalar and scalar mesons. Our analysis is based upon a Schwinger-Dyson equations treatment of a vector $\times$ vector contact interaction. It incorporates confinement and ensures axial vector and vector Ward-Takahashi identities are satisfied along with the corresponding corollaries such as the Goldberger-Treiman relations. The algebraic simplicity of the model allows us to compute the form factors at arbitrarily large virtualities of the probing photon momentum squared with relative ease. Wherever possible and insightful, we compare our results for the electromagnetic form factors and the charge radii with those obtained earlier through Schwinger-Dyson equations, lattice and with experimental observations available. We also comment on the scope and shortcomings of the model.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figure

Infrared based saliva screening test for COVID-19

Abstract: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has resulted in an unprecedented need for diagnostic testing that is critical in controlling the spread of COVID-19. We propose a portable infrared spectrometer with purpose-built transflection accessory for rapid point-of-care detection of COVID-19 markers in saliva. Initially, purified virion particles were characterized with Raman spectroscopy, synchrotron infrared (IR) and AFM-IR. A data set comprising 171 transflection infrared spectra from 29 patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR and 28 testing negative, was modeled using Monte Carlo Double Cross Validation with 50 randomized test and model sets. The testing sensitivity was 93 % (27/29) with a specificity of 82 % (23/28) that included positive samples on the limit of detection for RT-qPCR. Here, we demonstrate a proof-of-concept high throughput infrared COVID-19 test that is rapid, inexpensive, portable and utilizes sample self-collection thus minimizing the risk to healthcare workers and ideally suited to mass screening

A data preparation and migration framework for implementing modular product structures in PLM

This paper reports the research on the complex process of implementing modular product structures in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system. There are many challenges in implementing the system. One main challenge is organising or mapping existing product data and migrating it to the new PLM system. Companies often use a PLM tool for management of CAD files, documents and drawings, but they do not take advantage of the full potential of the PLM system to support the development activities of modular products. Product data management tools are used mainly for product CAD data management and PLM systems support by automating and managing some of the operational complexity of modular product design. The aim of this research is to propose a data model that can be used for implementing modular product structures in a PLM system and a tool that can formalise the existing data so as to migrate it into the PLM system