AMPing Racial Attitudes: Comparing the Power of Explicit and Implicit Racism Measures in 2008

In 2008, ANES included for the first time—along with standard explicit measures of old-fashioned and symbolic racism—the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP), a relatively new implicit measure of racial attitudes. This article examines the extent to which four different measures of racial prejudice (three explicit and one implicit) predict public opinion during and after the 2008 election, including Americans' views towards several racial policy issues, their evaluations of, and feelings toward, Barack Obama, and their attitudes toward a Black president in general. Oversamples of African American and Latino respondents in the 2008 ANES enable us to broaden our tests of these measures beyond traditional White samples. We find that racial prejudice played an important role for all racial/ethnic groups but that the traditional explicit measures of racism are by far the stronger predictors for all of our dependent variables (compared to the new implicit measure) for both White and Black respondents. Surprisingly, the AMP adds clear explanatory power only to models in the Latino sample

Event-Driven Political Communication and the Preadult Socialization of Partisanship

This study investigates political communication as a mediator of the socializing effects of major political events. We earlier found that presidential campaigns are occasions for increased crystallization of partisan attitudes among adolescents (Sears and Valentino, 1997). But what drives the socialization process during the campaign? Either the campaign saturates the media environment with political information, socializing all adolescents roughly equally, or greater individual exposure to political information is necessary for significant socialization gains during the campaign. The analyses utilize a three-wave panel study of preadults and their parents during and after the 1980 presidential campaign. Here we find that adolescents exposed to higher levels of political communication experience the largest socialization gains, that the socializing effects of political communication are limited to the campaign season, and that communication boosts socialization only in attitude domains most relevant to the campaign. We conclude that both a high salience event at the aggregate level and high individual levels of communication about the event are necessary to maximize socialization gains.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45491/1/11109_2004_Article_417864.pd

Is It Really Racism?: The Origins of White Americans' Opposition to Race-Targeted Policies

We address the role of racial antagonism in whites’ opposition to racially-targeted policies. The data come from four surveys selected for their unusually rich measurement of both policy preferences and other racial attitudes: the 1986 and 1992 National Election Studies, the 1994 General Social Survey, and the 1995 Los Angeles County Social Survey. They indicate that such opposition is more strongly rooted in racial antagonism than in non-racial conservatism, that whites tend to respond to quite different racial policies in similar fashion, that racial attitudes affect evaluations of black and ethnocentric white presidential candidates, and that their effects are just as strong among college graduates as among those with no college education. Second, we present evidence that symbolic racism is consistently more powerful than older forms of racial antagonism, and its greater strength does not diminish with controls on non-racial ideology, partisanship, and values. The origins of symbolic racism lie partly in both anti-black antagonism and non-racial conservative attitudes and values, and so mediates their effects on policy preferences, but it explains substantial additional variance by itself, suggesting that it does represent a new form of racism independent of older racial and political attitudes. The findings are each replicated several times with different measures, in different surveys conducted at different times. We also provide new evidence in response to earlier critiques of research on symbolic racism

Why do white Americans oppose race-targeted policies? Clarifying the impact of symbolic racism

Measures of symbolic racism (SR) have often been used to tap racial prejudice towar

Coherent Coupled Qubits for Quantum Annealing

Quantum annealing is an optimization technique which potentially leverages quantum tunneling to enhance computational performance. Existing quantum annealers use superconducting flux qubits with short coherence times limited primarily by the use of large persistent currents I[subscript p]. Here, we examine an alternative approach using qubits with smaller I[subscript p] and longer coherence times. We demonstrate tunable coupling, a basic building block for quantum annealing, between two flux qubits with small (approximately 50-nA) persistent currents. Furthermore, we characterize qubit coherence as a function of coupler setting and investigate the effect of flux noise in the coupler loop on qubit coherence. Our results provide insight into the available design space for next-generation quantum annealers with improved coherence.United States. Office of the Director of National IntelligenceUnited States. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects ActivityUnited States. Dept. of Defense. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (FA8721-05-C-0002

Reduction of Murine Colon Tumorigenesis Driven by Enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis Using Cefoxitin Treatment

BACKGROUND: Chronic inflammation and composition of the colon microbiota have been associated with colorectal cancer in humans. The human commensal enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis (ETBF) is linked to both inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer and, in our murine model, causes interleukin 17A (IL-17A)-dependent colon tumors. In these studies, we hypothesized that persistent colonization by ETBF is required for tumorigenesis. METHODS: We established a method for clearing ETBF in mice, using the antibiotic cefoxitin. Multiple intestinal neoplasia mice were colonized with ETBF for the experiment duration or were cleared of infection after 5 or 14 days. Gross tumors and/or microadenomas were then evaluated. In parallel, IL-17A expression was evaluated in wild-type littermates. RESULTS: Cefoxitin treatment resulted in complete and durable clearance of ETBF colonization. We observed a stepwise increase in median colon tumor numbers as the duration of ETBF colonization increased before cefoxitin treatment. ETBF eradication also significantly decreased mucosal IL-17A expression. CONCLUSIONS: The timing of ETBF clearance profoundly influences colon adenoma formation, defining a period during which the colon is susceptible to IL-17A-dependent tumorigenesis in this murine model. This model system can be used to study the microbiota-dependent and molecular mechanisms contributing to IL-17A-dependent colon tumor initiation

1967: Abilene Christian College Bible Lectures - Full Text

LIFTING UP THE CHRIST” Being the Abilene Christian College Annual Bible Lectures 1967 $3.95 Published by ABILENE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE STUDENTS EXCHANGE ACC Station Abilene, Texa

Search for gravitational wave bursts in LIGO's third science run

We report on a search for gravitational wave bursts in data from the three LIGO interferometric detectors during their third science run. The search targets subsecond bursts in the frequency range 100-1100 Hz for which no waveform model is assumed, and has a sensitivity in terms of the root-sum-square (rss) strain amplitude of hrss ~ 10^{-20} / sqrt(Hz). No gravitational wave signals were detected in the 8 days of analyzed data.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. Amaldi-6 conference proceedings to be published in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Agonist-Directed Desensitization of the β2-Adrenergic Receptor

The β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) agonists with reduced tachyphylaxis may offer new therapeutic agents with improved tolerance profile. However, receptor desensitization assays are often inferred at the single signaling molecule level, thus ligand-directed desensitization is poorly understood. Here we report a label-free biosensor whole cell assay with microfluidics to determine ligand-directed desensitization of the β2AR. Together with mechanistic deconvolution using small molecule inhibitors, the receptor desensitization and resensitization patterns under the short-term agonist exposure manifested the long-acting agonism of salmeterol, and differentiated the mechanisms of agonist-directed desensitization between a full agonist epinephrine and a partial agonist pindolol. This study reveals the cellular mechanisms of agonist-selective β2AR desensitization at the whole cell level

Quantum state preparation and macroscopic entanglement in gravitational-wave detectors

Long-baseline laser-interferometer gravitational-wave detectors are operating at a factor of 10 (in amplitude) above the standard quantum limit (SQL) within a broad frequency band. Such a low classical noise budget has already allowed the creation of a controlled 2.7 kg macroscopic oscillator with an effective eigenfrequency of 150 Hz and an occupation number of 200. This result, along with the prospect for further improvements, heralds the new possibility of experimentally probing macroscopic quantum mechanics (MQM) - quantum mechanical behavior of objects in the realm of everyday experience - using gravitational-wave detectors. In this paper, we provide the mathematical foundation for the first step of a MQM experiment: the preparation of a macroscopic test mass into a nearly minimum-Heisenberg-limited Gaussian quantum state, which is possible if the interferometer's classical noise beats the SQL in a broad frequency band. Our formalism, based on Wiener filtering, allows a straightforward conversion from the classical noise budget of a laser interferometer, in terms of noise spectra, into the strategy for quantum state preparation, and the quality of the prepared state. Using this formalism, we consider how Gaussian entanglement can be built among two macroscopic test masses, and the performance of the planned Advanced LIGO interferometers in quantum-state preparation