Connor Hooper - Chicago Public Housing Demolitions and Individual Sense of Political Belonging

Brian Jacob and other scholars have pointed out how public housing in inner city areas has affected labor supply, student achievement, and a sense of belonging. However, little research has been conducted on how such particular public housing developments have shaped political orientations among low-income residents. The purpose of this research is to understand whether or not the individuals’ experiences with public housing demolitions across Chicago have affected voting participation, civic engagement, and political interest and efficacy among African-Americans who in the past have lived or currently live in Chicago public housing. Over 35 Chicago public housing residents who were either forced to relocate or who chose to move on their own prior to federal plans for demolition were surveyed. Findings were analyzed by utilizing STATA. Evidence suggests that relocation does not impact political engagement among residents who were forced to relocate; however, analyzing mean scores of survey data that measured voting participation in the 2012 presidential election, local elections, and congressional elections in 2014, residents who were forced to relocate voted at lower levels and were likely to vote at lower rates in the 2014 congressional elections. Also, residents who were forced to relocate demonstrated more neighborhood trust and tended to do favors for their neighbors at higher levels than residents who were not forced to relocate. In addition, evidence suggest that residents who had better than average experiences with Chicago public housing were more political efficacious than residents who had worse than average experiences with public housing. This research ends with a discussion of policy implications explaining how residential mobility impacts voter turnout rates and necessary steps to resolve such issues. Chicago Public Housing Demolitions and Individual Sense of Political Belonging by Connor Hooper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.https://epublications.marquette.edu/mcnair_2014/1004/thumbnail.jp

Findings ways to survive : 24 (Auckland) Battalion and the experiential learning curve : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Defence and Strategic Studies at Massey University

For many years New Zealand's military historiography has been dogged by the myth New Zealanders were natural soldiers. James Belich believes that this myth had its origins in the Boer War, where Social Darwinism, attempts in New Zealand to forge a national identity, as well the British moral panic about the declining physical attributes of their fighting men, all collided and placed the New Zealand soldier up on a pedestal as an example of the moral fitness of New Zealand, and a validation of the notion that New Zealand was a 'Better Britain'.1 (James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000, Auckland, Allen Lane Penguin Books, 2001, pp.97-98, 104-105. ) Despite the trauma experienced by thousands of New Zealanders who witnessed combat during the First and Second World Wars, the public refutation of this myth by high profile soldiers such as Major-General Howard Kippenberger, and attempts by historians to try and dispel this myth, it continues to be repeated and as recent as 2004 the television documentary programme, The Khaki All Blacks, was expounding this argument, whilst John Thomson's 2004 book Warrior Nation, promotes such a myth in a subtle form.2 (David Crerar and Steven Orsbourn, Khaki All Blacks, Auckland, Oxygen Television, 2004: John Thomson, Warrior Nation: New Zealanders at the Front 1900-2000, Christchurch, Hazard Press, 2000.) This thesis will address this myth by examining 24 (Auckland) Battalion's experiential learning curve: That is, how did 24 Battalion acquire military experience and knowledge, both from internal Battalion sources, as well as from external agencies and then disseminate that knowledge and experience to prepare for military operations? While it is difficult to quantify an intangible value such as 'experience', enough information can be derived from a number of sources that can give an overall picture of the patterns of experience and the changes of experience levels during three periods of 24 Battalion's life. These three case studies are the lead up to the Greek Campaign (February 1940 to February 1941), the Second Battle of El Alamein (September and October 1942) and finally, the Third Battle of Cassino (January and February 1944). These three periods assess how prepared the personnel of 24 Battalion were for upcoming operations and what preparations, both through formal process such as training, and informal processes like a buddy system, were utilised to overcome perceived deficiencies. Finally 24 Battalion's actions in the three subsequent periods of operations are then studied in detail so the question can be asked, what impact did experience and the acquisition of military knowledge have on 24 Battalion's primary infantry role

Conformal manifolds: ODEs from OPEs

The existence of an exactly marginal deformation in a conformal field theory is very special, but it is not well understood how this is reflected in the allowed dimensions and OPE coefficients of local operators. To shed light on this question, we compute perturbative corrections to several observables in an abstract CFT, starting with the beta function. This yields a sum rule that the theory must obey in order to be part of a conformal manifold. The set of constraints relating CFT data at different values of the coupling can in principle be written as a dynamical system that allows one to flow arbitrarily far. We begin the analysis of it by finding a simple form for the differential equations when the spacetime and theory space are both one-dimensional. A useful feature we can immediately observe is that our system makes it very difficult for level crossing to occur.Comment: 19+4 pages, 5 figures, PDF LaTeX, v2: Cleaner argument, v3: Now aware of prior work, v4: Published version with more checks of the free boso

LOW-COST REMOTE WEATHER INFORMATION SYSTEM PHASE I AND PHASE 2

Remote Weather Information Systems (RWIS) are an important part of deciding maintenance activities and scheduling. However, the cost of RWIS limits the number of systems that can be deployed. Because of the lack of power and the high power budget of commonly used systems, some locations are not suitable for RWIS even though the information would be of great value. This project focuses on the development of a low-cost, low-power RWIS that is suitable for remote locations and allows for a higher density of RWIS. The system produced under this study uses less than 10 watts of power and costs less than $10,000 for the basic system. The system has performed well in Fairbanks, Alaska, over two winters. In addition, the system has been fully integrated into the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities RWIS network.WeatherCloud Inc

Development of a new Thomson parabola spectrometer for analysis of laser accelerated ions

This thesis details my work on developing a new Thomson parabola spectrometer for use at the SCARLET Laser Facility at The Ohio State University. The SCARLET laser facility is a 300 TW laser reaching peak intensities exceeding 10 21 W/cm 2 . The laser is used to study laser-matter interactions and plasma phenomena. The laser-matter interactions accelerate multiple types of particles and to understand the interactions it is necessary to have diagnostic tools to characterize the accelerated particles. In order to measure the charged particles a common device is a Thomson parabola spectrometer. A Thomson parabola spectrometer uses parallel electric and magnetic fields that are perpendicular to the incoming particles. This causes deflection of the particles based on their charge-to-mass ratio and energy. Therefore, the Thomson parabola spectrometer allows us to determine what particles are present and what their energy range is. I designed a new spectrometer to replace the existing Thomson parabola spectrometer which had problems during operation that reduced performance. Using a MATLAB code, I first modeled the performance of the new design to determine physical dimensions and field strengths that would allow for 1 MeV resolution of protons up to a maximum energy of 40 MeV. This resulted in a 5 cm long magnetic field with a field strength of 0.12 T and 10 cm electrodes with a voltage difference of 6 kV. These physical dimensions were used to create a SolidWorks model. As of this writing, the newly designed Thomson parabola spectrometer has been built and is currently being installed for use on future experiments.No embargoAcademic Major: Engineering Physic

Structural Incentives for Political Party Polarization

Politics is often thought of as a pie cut in half and split between republicans and democrats. A more accurate representation would be a pie cut into several uneven slices; most of the small pieces would go to the democrats and the few large slices would go to republicans. The existing literature on political parties indicates that parties are not mirror opposites of one another. Issue density is not uniform among the parties. Since the New Deal, democrats have pushed extensive policy from Social Security to new roads and dams. The trend to expand the scope of government policy continues today in the form of universal healthcare, combating global warming, and gay rights. The tendency of democrats to expand their policy agenda stems from the makeup of the party. Unlike republicans, the Democratic party is composed of a coalition of interest groups. Republicans, in contrast, can be described as ideological and have held consistent over time. Republicans are more easily thought of in terms of big ideological principles that include low taxes, defense, and family values. Republicans, being more ideological, have a few core tenants. Democrats, being a coalition of interest groups, have a wide and diverse set of principles but less support behind each issue area. Given two political parties, one with a smaller but deeper set of beliefs and a second with a wider and shallower set of beliefs, the group with a smaller number of principles will find it relatively more difficult to compromise. Since politicians are single-minded seekers of reelection, they try to capture a comfortable number of votes to become reelected; however, if the party with the smaller number of principles were to compromise on a single principle, they would risk losing a proportionally greater number of voters. For instance, let us assume two political parties ‘R’ and ‘D’. R holds two principles ‘1’ and ‘2’, while D holds principles ‘3’, ‘4’, ‘5’, ‘6’, and ‘7’. If R compromises on principle 2 to gain access to voters from principle area 3, they risk losing half of their voter base, assuming 1 and 2 contain equal numbers of voters who care deeply about that principle. Whereas if D compromises on principle 3 to gain access to voters from principle area 2 they risk only losing one-fifth of their voter base, assuming 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 all contain equal numbers of voters who care deeply about that issue. Therefore, republicans are disincentivized from compromising while democrats have an incentive to work with republicans. Democrats compromise because they are likely to gain more votes from sacrificing small areas for a bigger traditionally republican area.Governmen