Follow the Leader: The Effect of Elite Support on Ballot Referendums for Publicly Financed Sports Stadiums

Since the 1960s, most professional sports facilities have been financed through a mix of private and public funds. Team owners contribute private capital to the project, but the majority of the funding comes from the taxpayer. These public dollars are drawn from the supplementation of existing taxes, or the creation of new taxes in the cities or surrounding counties where the sports franchise operates, and are usually subject to a public vote. In most cases, local citizens do not support the use of taxpayer dollars to fund professional sports stadium subsidies. Previous research demonstrates that the local politicians and corporate executives who benefit from hosting a professional sports franchise can influence voter opinion by reframing the tax increases as a means to remain a “major league city,” and by claiming that the economic value of the project will exceed its costs. In this paper, I argue that local political and corporate elites employ their respective strengths and influence to create a positive frame of stadium subsidies for professional sports franchises and thus generate voter support for these subsidies. I examine the legislative processes that provided public funding for the football and baseball stadiums built in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in the late 1990s. I then use these two cities as a basis for comparison to modern cases in Arlington, San Diego, and Las Vegas, three cities that are currently negotiating financing terms on new professional sports stadiums

'Local site and historical depth': Briggflatts, A Drunk Man, and British Modernist poetics of place

© The Author 2016. This article aims to present new understandings of how place, identity, and text are configured in British modernist poetry, particularly in the extended poem. Focusing chiefly on Basil Bunting's Briggflatts (1966), the discussion explores this poem's alignment of geography and history as sources of identity, noting a stark contrast with the kinds of rootlessness more readily associated with the Poundian long poem. Bunting can be seen to marshal a variety of spatio-temporal signifiers to convey a located identity, and it is demonstrated that Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926) enacts similar processes more explicitly. MacDiarmid and Bunting's historicized and located writing is briefly contrasted with Louis Zukofsky's depthless language, which carries conflicting spatial implications. William Carlos Williams's Paterson is then discussed as representing an American poetics of place that shows key commonalities with Bunting, but works with a distinct conception of history. Ultimately, it is argued that Bunting and MacDiarmid can be viewed as typifying a specifically British modernism, even whilst complicating and interrogating notions of Britishness. Their shared poetics of place are concerned with maintaining roots in the local site, but also asserting Northumbrian and Scottish nationalisms

How Boats Change: Explaining Morphological Variation in European Watercraft, based on an Investigation of Logboats from Bohemia and Moravia, Czech Republic

This thesis examines questions regarding aspects of cultural change in prehistoric and early modern Europe, specifically the transmittal of skills, knowledge and technology. Dugout logboats from Bohemia and Moravia (Czech Republic) are used as proxy artifacts to make this transmittal visible. Boats in general and riverine watercraft specifically, are an unusual class of artifact, as they are neither completely portable nor permanently fixed in place. The movement of watercraft is restricted to a relatively narrow corridor through the landscape. The morphology and construction of logboats are reflective of skill sets and technological traditions. Pre-literate boat construction traditions and technology, spread through personal contact and experience, may thus be traced through close examination of the technical features of surviving examples. In many parts of Europe, however, dugout logboats remain an extremely uncontextualized category of artefact. Placing these vessels in their appropriate geographic, environmental, and human contexts helps us to understand their meaning and forms (and the behavior of their builders and operators). The geographic element of this investigation is especially significant, as the spread of information and skill sets in physical space is a main focus of the thesis. The Czech Lands sit astride one of Europe’s main continental divides, and rivers originating on this territory flow to the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Black Sea. Topographic conditions have funneled travel and transport in this region through the river valleys and across a few key passes or watershed boundaries. Water transport, far more efficient than overland haulage, was likely an important element in trans-continental trade and exchange. Analysis of the surviving logboats from this region indicates that different construction traditions prevailed in different watershed areas. These data also suggest a model explaining the mechanisms by which boats can change. Key elements of the model include an inherent conservatism of boat design; internal change, driven by social or environmental factors; and external change, adopted through the personal experience of the boat builder or operator. The model is subsequently tested against case studies of vessels from other regions of Europe, and other types of watercraft

Alien Registration- Rogers, Samuel T. (Fort Fairfield, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/35691/thumbnail.jp

Laser spectroscopic studies of plasma

This thesis describes the application of sensitive optical absorption techniques in order to probe inductively coupled plasmas of oxygen and nitrogen. Radio frequency plasmas formed from these simple molecular species have found an increasingly important role in many industrial applications and high resolution spectroscopy provides a means to probe their chemistry with unrivalled specificity and sensitivity. In particular, this work applies the technique of cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS) to detect atomic, ionic and electronically excited molecular species as a function of plasma operating conditions. The plasma probed in this work is created in a low pressure (10 − 100 mTorr) inductively coupled plasma chamber by application of up to 500 W of 13.56 MHz radio frequency power via a 1.5 turn double spiral antenna in a stove top arrangement. The optical cavity utilised in the measurements probes the plasma 120 mm below to top window (which separates the driven coil from the plasma) and 50 mm above the lower, ground electrode. CRDS results are supplemented with observations of plasma emission spectra and comprehensively interpreted by kinetic modelling. The work is divided into two sections according to the plasma being probed. The first section concerns oxygen plasma with CRDS measurements of O(3P) and O2(a1∆g) utilising forbidden transitions. These measurements reveal dissociation fractions as high as ≈ 15%, metastable molecule fractions of ≈ 5% and translation temperatures up to ≈ 450 K. The target species, by virtue of their different threshold energies for electron impact production, provide insight into different regions of the electron energy distribution function (EEDF). As a result, measurements of O(3P) and O2(a1∆g) in combination with a volume averaged kinetic plasma model allow changes in the EEDF to be investigated as the plasma transitions from the E to the H-mode of operation. In addition, aspects of the spectroscopy of O2(a1∆g) are clarified with respect to the appropriate sum rule for Honl-London factors, necessary in order to properly deduce absolute concentrations. The volume averaged modelling, although quantitatively useful, does not account for spatial inhomogeneity within the plasma. This inhomogeneity is investigated using measurements of O2(X3Σ−g) in the v = 0 and v = 1 vibrational states. These observations also elucidate the degree of vibrational excitation within the plasma and reveal a vibrational temperature (amongst the low v states) of ≈ 750 ± 150 K at 100 mTorr and 300 W. A 1D model utilising physically reasonable line of sight variation in plasma temperature and composition corroborates the CRDS measurements. The second section of this thesis concerns nitrogen plasma and focuses on CRD measurements of the molecular cation, N+2(X2Σ+g ), and the electronically excited N2(A3Σ+u) state. These species can be probed using allowed transitions, but due to their low density, the sensitivity enhancement afforded by CRDS is still advantageous. Notably, the use of large intracavity radiation intensities to probe allowed transitions results in optical saturation, the effects of which must be carefully accounted for when determining species temperatures and densities. With adjustments made for the effects of optical saturation the CRD measurements show ion (and therefore electron) densities of the order of 109−1010 cm−3 in the plasma bulk (depending on operating conditions) and metastable densities an order of magnitude higher. Interestingly the two species show rather different translational temperatures with the ions typically ≈ 1000 K and the metastables ≈ 600 K. Once again the absolute density measurements are interpreted in terms of a volume averaged kinetic model. The model reveals a limitation in the understanding of nitrogen discharges that has arisen consistently in the literature, namely, the inability to account quantitatively for the density of Nu(A3Σ+u the literature rate coefficients for the processes typically deemed most important in its production and loss. The possible reasons for the discrepancy are explored in depth. In addition, spatially resolved measurements of the same nitrogen species are presented, with particular reference to how ion densities change as the edge of the chamber is approached (in regions known as the plasma pre-sheath and sheath). Measurements with a spatial resolution of ≈ 100 µm show that the ion density is reduced by almost an order of magnitude close to the chamber’s lower electrode. Finally, the effects of saturation on the CRD spectra are explored and the possible contributions to the Lamb dip width are discussed in the context of spectral broadening mechanisms. The laser linewidth is measured by a self-heterodyne beat note experiment to be < 100 kHz indicating that it contributes little to the observed Lamb dip widths (> 100 MHz) and that other processes are dominant. It is concluded that, whilst power broadening plays a significant role in explaining the width of the Lamb dips, the dominant cause of the broadening is unresolved hyperfine structure arising due to the non-zero nuclear spin of 14N

Stressing Mitosis to Death

The final stage of cell division (mitosis), involves the compaction of the duplicated genome into chromatid pairs. Each pair is captured by microtubules emanating from opposite spindle poles, aligned at the metaphase plate, and then faithfully segregated to form two identical daughter cells. Chromatids that are not correctly attached to the spindle are detected by the constitutively active spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC). Any stress that prevents correct bipolar spindle attachment, blocks the satisfaction of the SAC, and induces a prolonged mitotic arrest, providing the cell time to obtain attachment and complete segregation correctly. Unfortunately, during mitosis repairing damage is not generally possible due to the compaction of DNA into chromosomes, and subsequent suppression of gene transcription and translation. Therefore, in the presence of significant damage cell death is instigated to ensure that genomic stability is maintained. While most stresses lead to an arrest in mitosis, some promote premature mitotic exit, allowing cells to bypass mitotic cell death. This mini-review will focus on the effects and outcomes that common stresses have on mitosis, and how this impacts on the efficacy of mitotic chemotherapies

Sexual Selection: The Importance of Long-Term Fitness Measures

New results from a 20-year study of free-living song sparrows confirm that attractive males contribute more offspring than less attractive males. They also reveal that the offspring of preferred males produce more descendents themselves. Females prefer males with a large song repertoire, which further work shows is a condition-dependent indicator of male quality