White Voters and Minority Animus in the Era of Trump

Overt and blatant racism of the type that was once used to justify Jim Crow laws and other forms of de facto segregation against Blacks has largely been forced into the margins of society. However, the reduction of overt racism that casts whites as biologically superior to Blacks can be easily confused with a reduction of racism in totality. The election and continued popularity of Donald Trump demonstrates that the conversation on race in the United States needs much more analysis. On multiple occasions during his campaign and presidency, Trump made inflammatory remarks on race and immigration, and yet suffered no consequences from his predominantly white voting base. In three chapters, I analyze various aspects of white voters’ feelings on minority animus, and their relationship to Trump and the GOP. In Chapter 2 I seek to observe whether Trump and non-Trump voters produce contrasting reactions to subtle environmental cues on immigrants. I find Trump voters react quite subtly to the immigrant cue, while non-Trump voters account for most of this polarizing effect. In Chapter 3 I seek to observe how voters’ feelings of resentment toward Blacks might continue to serve as a driver of support for Trump beyond the 2016 election. I also examine the degree to which animus toward immigrants from Central and South America acts as a driver to support Trump after 2016, and to vote for Republican candidates in the 2018 midterms as well. I find approval for Trump and support for GOP candidates in US House, US Senate, and gubernatorial races are strongly associated with racial and immigrant animus. In Chapter 4 I examine differences between partisan groups to see if some association with one partisan group or another exists, and if so, how it changes over time. I find feelings of racial resentment and animus toward immigrants become steadily more associated with white respondents who identify with the Republican Party, and less associated with those who identify with the Democratic Party, over time

Alternate Minimalisms: Repetition, Objectivity, and Process in the Age of Recording

This thesis examines the core concepts of early minimalism and the ways that they were influenced by recording as a medium of musical creation. The first chapter considers early minimalism’s historical lineage as the narrative has been passed down by music scholars, noting over-arching trends and problems of exclusion and misunderstanding inherent within it. Having established the myriad of concepts at the core of the early minimalist movement, the second chapter examines the recording medium’s effect on art music performance, noting trends in repetition, objectivity, and process that are represented within minimalism itself. With these ideas in mind, the idea of “post-minimalism” is interrogated, proposing that a music for the concert hall is not the natural development of the early minimalists’ expansive mission. In the third chapter, analysis of one iconic late-twentieth century musical style, techno music, demonstrates that it is fundamentally of the same artistic spirit as the early minimalists and an alternate manifestation of Minimal art. Ultimately, early minimalism and techno are “alternate minimalisms” of the age of the recording, referencing and embodying the musical consciousness of the twentieth century

Communication: A Key to Optimizing Medication Adherence and Cardiac Outcomes

The purpose of this project was to improve how clinicians communicate to patients about cardiovascular medications to the end of improving adherence and optimizing cardiac outcomes. In this project, clinician knowledge and communication confidence with regard to patient education and medication adherence was assessed using a pre-survey. An educational module to increase awareness and improve clinician-patient communication using the teach-back method was provided to inpatient cardiology clinicians consisting of registered nurses and physicians. The goal of the module and communication tool was to improve patient understanding of cardio-protective medications and increase the motivation to adhere to a chronic illness medication regimen. Knowledge and confidence were re-evaluated following the educational session using a post-survey

The Public Trust Doctrine Fifty Years After Sax and Some Thoughts on Its Future

The public trust doctrine was resurrected by Professor Joe Sax in a famous article a half-century ago. Sax explored the doctrine\u27s history and maintained that it had contemporary significance at the time of the dawn of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Sax thought that the historic use of the doctrine to prevent monopoly use of important waterways could be expanded to meet the felt necessities of the times by protecting important natural resources from unwise or unsustainable depletion for public use, including use by future generations. Sax\u27s vision ignited a substantial expansion in the scope and purposes of the doctrine over the past 50 years. Some of the most surprising developments have occurred internationally, which Sax\u27s article did not expressly anticipate. This analysis, written on the 50th anniversary of Sax\u27s article, examines the public trust doctrine both before and after the article, revealing the considerable effect it has had on courts and legislatures. In addition to suggesting the great debt public trust scholars and the public at large owe to Sax\u27s prescience, the article hazards some predictions about the likely evolution of the doctrine in the future

How residents of the Denver Metropolitan Area (DMA) discern aggression and boldness in coyotes (Canis latrans); connecting value orientation theory to action

Human-wildlife interactions are a fundamental aspect of urbanization, providing humans with a variety of direct and indirect benefits. However, certain human-wildlife interactions can result in conflicts endangering humans, pets, and property. With an established coyote population in Broomfield, Colorado, human residents regularly confront human-coyote conflicts. In this research, I investigate how Broomfield residents perceive coyote behavior and test whether they can distinguish between benign behaviors such as boldness and problematic behaviors such as aggression. Coyotes in urban environments are bolder and thus more likely to be exploratory and engage in escorting behaviors which can easily be confounded with aggression to an untrained eye. This is impactful since aggressive coyotes require wildlife managers to execute lethal management control to avoid future human-coyote conflicts. I use value orientation theory to identify participants with mutualistic values (wildlife as an essential element of the community with similar rights as humans) and domination values (utilitarian perspective on wildlife; wildlife is managed for human use). The variation in association with mutualistic wildlife values coincided with the gradient of knowledge regarding coyote behaviors. Participants that had the largest depth of knowledge on coyote behaviors (i.e., understood bold behaviors in coyotes, identified escorting behavior) had the highest association with mutualistic wildlife values and the lowest with domination wildlife values out of the entire group of participants. Conversely, the participants that confused aggression with boldness had relatively low mutualistic wildlife values. Combining social and biological science can yield results that provide a holistic depiction of human-wildlife conflicts and provide wildlife managers with a range of possible solutions

Spectral GRID invariants and Lagrangian cobordisms

We prove that the filtered GRID invariants of Legendrian links in link Floer homology, and consequently their associated invariants in the spectral sequence, obstruct decomposable Lagrangian cobordisms in the symplectization of the standard contact structure on $\mathbb{R}^3$, strengthening a result by Baldwin, Lidman, and the fifth author.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figure

The Role of Tourism Impacts on Cultural Ecosystem Services

Parks and protected areas are recognized for the important ecosystem services, or benefits, they provide society. One emerging but understudied component is the cultural ecosystem services that parks and protected areas provide. These cultural ecosystem services include a variety of benefits, such as cultural heritage, spiritual value, recreation opportunities, and human health and well-being. However, many of these services can only be provided if people visit these parks and protected areas through tourism opportunities. However, with this tourism use comes a variety of inevitable resource impacts. This current research connects potential impacts from tourism in parks and protected areas to the health and well-being aspect of cultural ecosystem services. We used an MTurk sample to record affective responses across a range of resource conditions. Results demonstrate that as tourism-related ecological impacts increased, positive affect decreased. Decreases in positive affect were more severe for park and protected area scenes featuring informal and/or undesignated social trails when compared to scenes with increasing levels of trampling/vegetation loss. Collectively, the results show that managing tourism in parks and protected areas in a manner that reduces impact is essential to providing beneficial cultural ecosystem services related to human health and well-being

1 GHz, 200 C, SiC MESFET Clapp Oscillator

A SiC Clapp oscillator frabricated on an alumina substrate with chip capacitors and spiral inductors is designed for high temperature operation at 1 gigahertz. The oscillator operated from 30 to 200 C with an output power of 21.8 dBm at 1 gigahertz and 200 C. The efficiency at 200 C is 15 percent. The frequency variation over the temperature range is less than 0.5 percent