After the honeymoon: The Obama effect on political attitudes and participation

My dissertation takes a mixed-methods approach to investigating the possibility of a lasting Obama Effect on the political attitudes and behaviors of Obama supporters from 2008. Defining the Obama Effect as the extraordinary enthusiasm surrounding Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, I argue that a short term Obama Effect was clearly present in 2008 based on Obama’s electoral success, fundraising prowess, and ability to inspire volunteerism, as well as on the historic nature of his candidacy. But I ask, was it a lasting effect? My quantitative analyses—built upon panel survey data from the American National Election Studies—suggest little evidence of a lasting campaign effect that was positive and/or unique to Obama supporters. With regard to attitudes and behaviors such as political interest, political efficacy, or attendance of political events, Obama supporters often showed relative declines or stagnation over time when compared to nonsupporters or supporters of previous presidents. My qualitative analysis—based upon interviews with 30 former volunteers from the 2008 Obama campaign—does, however, indicated that the Obama Effect had a deep and lasting impact on his most enthusiastic support base, those who volunteered for his campaign. Many former Obama volunteers remained highly interested, civically engaged, and continually inspired as a result of their activism for the 2008 Obama campaign. In sum, I conclude that while that campaign may not have had its desired transformational effect on the broader American electorate, it did produce a positive and indeed a lasting impact on its most enthusiastic supporters

A method for risk analysis of nuclear reactor accidents

Originally presented as the first author's thesis, (Ph. D.)--in the M.I.T. Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, 1976Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-208)Prepared for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research no. AT(49-24)-026

Skyrme-Random-Phase-Approximation description of E1 strength in 92-100Mo

The isovector dipole E1 strength in Mo isotopes with A=92,94,96,98,100 is analyzed within the self-consistent separable random-phase approximation (SRPA) model with Skyrme forces SkT6, SkM*, SLy6, and SkI3. The special attention is paid to the low-energy region near the particle thresholds (4-12 MeV), which is important for understanding of astrophysical processes. We show that, due to a compensation effect, the influence of nuclear deformation on E1 strength below 10-12 MeV is quite modest. At the same time, in agreement with previous predictions, the deformation increases the strength at higher energy. At 4-8 MeV the strength is mainly determined by the tail of E1 giant resonance. The four Skyrme forces differ in description of the whole giant resonance but give rather similar results below 12 MeV.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys. (E) as contribution to Proceedings of 15th Nuclear Physics Workshop (Kazimierz, Poland, 2008

FRANTIC 5 (a version of FRANTIC II) : a computer code for evaluating system aging effect

"November 1986."Includes bibliographical referencesThe FRANTIC 5 code is a modification of the FRANTIC II code for time dependent unavailability analysis. FRANTIC 5 is specially adapted for modeling the aging effects on system and component performance. The FRANTIC 5 code uses the linear aging model, i.e., based on the assumption that component failure rates increase linearly in time. The constant failure rate and the aging acceleration rate for a component can be changed during the plant life, which allows the creation of different time scales for components as a function of the replacement or any significant maintenance or repair action on the component. FRANTIC 5 preserves most of the unique features of FRANTIC II, for example the modeling of periodic testing. The output from FRANTIC 5 consists of the system mean unavailabilities, tables of the system unavailabilities at designated time points and the system mean unavailabilities between consecutive tests. The code is applied for evaluation of aging effects of the Auxiliary Feedwater System of Arkansas Nuclear Unit 1. The usefulness of the method will depend upon the availability of the component aging data needed to develop the model parameters.Prepared for EG&G Idaho, Inc. special research subcontract no. C86-10094

Time dependent unavailability analysis to standby safety systems

"Prepared for Brookhaven National Laboratory."Includes bibliographical references (p. 280-284)Contract no. BNL-54668