Southeastern Kentuckians remain optimistic through Great Recession: growing concerns about sprawl, housing, and recreational opportunities

In May and June of 2007, Carsey Institute researchers surveyed 1,000 randomly selected respondents from Kentucky’s Harlan and Letcher counties, and between November 2010 and January 2011, they returned to survey 1,020 different randomly selected respondents from the same counties. These two Kentucky counties provide a snapshot of perceptions of community and environmental change in a chronically poor rural place. This brief focuses on the questions asked in both surveys to identify area wide (Harlan and Letcher counties combined) changes since the Great Recession. The surveys reveal that the recession has exacerbated concern about many community-level problems including poverty, affordable housing, sprawl, and a lack of recreational opportunities. Southeastern Kentuckians’ views regarding how environmental resources should be used have also changed. As the demand for jobs has increased, Harlan and Letcher county residents are more likely to believe that natural resources should be used for economic development rather than conserved for the future. Optimism about the future is unchanged despite growing financial instability during the recession

Social impact of the Gulf Oil Disaster: diverging views from communities in Florida and Louisiana

Carsey researchers surveyed over two thousand residents of the Gulf Coast following the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in 2010 to analyze their perception of the spill. Nearly one-half of all Gulf Coast residents perceived damage to the environment and wildlife as the most serious result of the oil spill. Perceptions regarding the impact of the spill reflect the different relationships to the oil economy in the two states--”Floridians are most concerned about effects on tourism and Louisianans on the fishing and oil industries. Louisianans were more than twice as likely as Floridians to think that their state and local governments were doing an excellent job responding to the spill, though this does not account for differences in government responses. Approximately three-fourths of Gulf Coast residents thought that the federal government was doing a poor or fair job responding. The most trusted source of information about the spill for all respondents was scientists. Environmental organizations were the second most trusted source. Network TV news, BP, and websites or blogs were the least trusted sources of information. This brief examines the impact of the spill on Gulf Coast residents and provides important insights that can inform disaster relief efforts in the future to better meet the needs of those affected

How Yoopers see the future of their communities: why residents leave or stay in Michigan\u27s Upper Peninsula

According to a Community and Environment in Rural America survey, Michigan\u27s Upper Peninsula residents, often called Yoopers, said that ties to community and the area\u27s natural beauty were significant factors for those who planned on staying in this rural area, which comprises about a third of Michigan\u27s land mass but only 4 percent of its population. Those planning on leaving cited employment opportunities and energy costs as the most important factors in their decision

Education in chronically poor rural areas lags across generations

As part of the Community and Environment in Rural America (CERA) initiative, the Carsey Institute has been investigating broad trends between rural community types, including the education level of residents and their parents. Since 2007, Carsey researchers have conducted over 17,000 telephone surveys with randomly selected adult Americans from twelve diverse rural locations to ask about both their own and their parents’ educational attainment, as well as their perceptions of school quality in their communities. Survey results conclude that educational achievement varies significantly by type of place in rural America. In chronically poor rural areas, 45 percent of residents have completed only high school or less, compared with 22 to 33 percent in amenity-rich, amenity-transition, and declining resource-dependent rural areas. Although people from all types of rural communities generally have more education than their parents, those in chronically poor rural areas still have relatively low education levels — a disadvantage that persists across generations. This brief highlights the need to invest in the educational systems of chronically poor rural areas where generations of underinvestment have contributed to persistent poverty

IR-transmission glasses formed from oxides of bismuth and tellurium

Bismuth trioxide-tellurium dioxide glasses have improved infrared transmission characteristics

High dielectric thick films for screened circuit capacitors

Techniques and materials have recently been developed to obtain high dielectric films /K of 300 to 800/. High dielectric barium titanate particles are mixed in a barium titanate glass

Gravitational Effects in g Factor Measurements and High-Precision Spectroscopy: Limits of Einstein's Equivalence Principle

We study the interplay of general relativity, the equivalence principle, and high-precision experiments involving atomic transitions and g factor measurements. In particular, we derive a generalized Dirac Hamiltonian, which describes both the gravitational coupling for weak fields, as well as the electromagnetic coupling, e.g., to a central Coulomb field. An approximate form of this Hamiltonian is used to derive the leading gravitational corrections to transition frequencies and g factors. The position-dependence of atomic transitions is shown to be compatible with the equivalence principle, up to a very good approximation. The compatibility of g factor measurements requires a deeper, subtle analysis, in order to eventually restore the compliance of g factor measurements with the equivalence principle. Finally, we analyze small, but important limitations of Einstein's equivalence principle due to quantum effects, within high-precision experiments. We also study the relation of these effects to a conceivable gravitationally induced collapse of a quantum mechanical wave function (Penrose conjecture), and space-time noncommutativity, and find that the competing effects should not preclude the measurability of the higher-order gravitational corrections. Surprisingly large higher-order gravitational effects are obtained for transitions in diatomic molecules.Comment: 19 pages; RevTeX; some typographical errors correcte

Neutrino Pair Cerenkov Radiation for Tachyonic Neutrinos

The emission of a charged light lepton pair by a superluminal neutrino has been identified as a major factor in the energy loss of highly energetic neutrinos. The observation of PeV neutrinos by IceCube implies their stability against lepton pair Cerenkov radiation. Under the assumption of a Lorentz-violating dispersion relation for highly energetic superluminal neutrinos, one may thus constrain the Lorentz-violating parameters. A kinematically different situation arises when one assumes a Lorentz-covariant, space-like dispersion relation for hypothetical tachyonic neutrinos, as an alternative to Lorentz-violating theories. We here discuss a hitherto neglected decay process, where a highly energetic tachyonic neutrinos may emit other (space-like, tachyonic) neutrino pairs. We find that the space-like dispersion relation implies the absence of a q^2 threshold for the production of a tachyonic neutrino-antineutrino pair, thus leading to the dominant additional energy loss mechanism for an oncoming tachyonic neutrino in the medium-energy domain. Surprisingly, the small absolute value of the decay rate and energy loss rate in the tachyonic model imply that these models, in contrast to the Lorentz-violating theories, are not pressured by the cosmic PeV neutrinos registered by the IceCube collaboration.Comment: 7 pages; RevTeX; accepted for publication for Advances in High Energy Physic

An analysis of the variation in wear life of hot pressed molybdenum disulfide-silver electrical contact brushes in vacuum

Wear life analysis of hot pressed molybdenum disulfide-silver electrical contact brushes in vacuu