The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women's Status in India

Cable and satellite television have grown rapidly throughout the developing world. The availability of cable and satellite television exposes viewers to new information about the outside world, which may affect individual attitudes and behaviors. This paper explores the effect of the introduction of cable television on gender attitudes in rural India. Using a three-year individual-level panel dataset, we find that the introduction of cable television is associated with improvements in women's status. We find significant increases in reported autonomy, decreases in the reported acceptability of beating and decreases in reported son preference. We also find increases in female school enrollment and decreases in fertility (primarily via increased birth spacing). The effects are large, equivalent in some cases to about five years of education in the cross section, and move gender attitudes of individuals in rural areas much closer to those in urban areas. We argue that the results are not driven by pre-existing differential trends. These results have important policy implications, as India and other countries attempt to decrease bias against women.

College House for Students with Disabilities

For my honors project, I created an on campus residence hall for students with accommodations. These accommodations went beyond what is required by law to what is comfortable and helpful for students will all different types of needs. This residence hall is new construction allowing for the newest and best materials and finishes to help in the solution of excepting all students. However, before I could get to the solution I completed research on existing and new residence halls on campus and how they are meeting student\u27s needs and accommodations. From there, I developed what is needed in this new residence hall and started designing. Through this design process, I finalized a concept based on bee hives and the sense of a welcoming environment. I chose materials and finishes accordingly and was able to design a residences hall meeting the needs for students with accommodations

Tidal Decay and Stable Roche-Lobe Overflow of Short-Period Gaseous Exoplanets

Many gaseous exoplanets in short-period orbits are on the verge or are in the process of Roche-lobe overflow (RLO). Moreover, orbital stability analysis shows tides can drive many hot Jupiters to spiral inevitably toward their host stars. Thus, the coupled processes of orbital evolution and RLO likely shape the observed distribution of close-in exoplanets and may even be responsible for producing some of the short-period rocky planets. However, the exact outcome for an overflowing planet depends on its internal response to mass loss, and the accompanying orbital evolution can act to enhance or inhibit RLO. In this study, we apply the fully-featured and robust Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) suite to model RLO of short-period gaseous planets. We show that, although the detailed evolution may depend on several properties of the planetary system, it is largely determined by the core mass of the overflowing gas giant. In particular, we find that the orbital expansion that accompanies RLO often stops and reverses at a specific maximum period that depends on the core mass. We suggest that RLO may often strand the remnant of a gas giant near this orbital period, which provides an observational prediction that can corroborate the hypothesis that short-period gas giants undergo RLO. We conduct a preliminary comparison of this prediction to the observed population of small, short-period planets and find some planets in orbits that may be consistent with this picture. To the extent that we can establish some short-period planets are indeed the remnants of gas giants, that population can elucidate the properties of gas giant cores, the properties of which remain largely unconstrained.Comment: Accepted to "Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy" special issue on tides. Several changes based on referee comments, including to the title of the paper. Some new analysis of non-conservative (but still stable) mass transfer as well. Article repository and data files linked to here -- http://www.astrojack.com/research

A Convex Parameterization of Controllers Constrained to use only Relative Measurements

We consider the optimal controller design problem for distributed systems in which subsystems are equipped with sensors that measure only differences of quantities such as relative (rather than absolute) positions and velocities. While such problems can be set up as a standard problem of robust output feedback control, we illustrate with a counterexample that this may be undesirable and then propose an alternate equivalent formulation. In particular, we provide an example of sparsity constraints that are not quadratically-invariant with respect to a standard formulation of a given plant, but that can be written as quadratically-invariant constraints with respect to a transformed version of this problem. In effect, our transformation provides a path to convert the controller design problem to an equivalent convex program. This problem transformation relies on a novel parameterization of controllers with general relative measurement structures that we derive here. We further illustrate the usefulness of this novel parameterization through an example of optimal consensus design with prescribed communication delays within the controller.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

JME 4110 Seed Cross-Breeze Distance Tester

Because seeds vary in shape, size, and weight, their behaviors in cross-breezes vary as well. The customer’s laboratory is researching seeds for prairie grasses. Their laboratory currently has data for seed structures; however, data for seed dispersion is needed to provide a better correlation to known environmental and genetic factors such as precipitation and DNA changes. The Seed Cross-Breeze Distance Tester is a controlled chamber designed to test the distance a seed will travel in a user-specified windspeed

Barriers to Rural Mental Health Care: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Mental Health Outcomes, Services, and Help-Seeking

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.May 2019. Major: Family Social Science. Advisor: Tai Mendenhall. 1 computer file (PDF); ix, 115 pages.Existing rural mental research points to several concerns regarding symptoms and outcomes (e.g., mental health status, mental health symptoms, suicide rates). Research also identifies several barriers that inhibit rural residents from accessing quality mental health services (e.g., factors influencing the availability of services, accessibility of services, and acceptability of services). Investigations that compare rural mental health outcomes and help-seeking to urban counterparts are limited; what does exist points to mixed findings about differences between groups. The research presented here aims to elucidate the limited understanding of barriers to mental health care in rural communities via a two-study, mixed-methods investigation. Study 1 is an analysis of an existing dataset collected in eight counties in Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2015. The survey includes questions about behaviors, outcomes, and social determinants of health and mental health and includes (N = 6,976) responses. Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were used to assess the impact of geographic location (measured by RUCA codes) on mental health symptoms, help-seeking behaviors, and specific barriers to seeking help. Demographic covariates – including age, education level, gender, and income – were also considered. Results reveal some variation between the chi-square and logistic regression analyses, and hypotheses for the disparities are discussed. Findings from the logistic regression analyses revealed no significant differences across rural and urban groups for indication of mental health symptoms, though age and gender did account for some variance. The rural group was more likely to indicate delayed or forgone help-seeking behaviors, and the urban group was more likely to indicate attitudinal barriers to seeking mental health care. Study 2 is a qualitative study that followed a Hermeneutic phenomenological design. The goal of this study was to increase understanding of barriers to rural mental health care via rich descriptions of lived experiences with those barriers. Thirteen (N = 13) family physicians who practice in the same geographic area as the dataset in Study 1 were recruited using convenience and snowball sampling techniques. Family physicians were chosen for these key informant interviews because existing research suggests that primary care often serves as the front line of mental health care in rural communities. Their ability to speak to their own experiences, and to the experiences of their patients, also facilitated the gathering of a range of perspectives and rich descriptions. Findings were organized into seven overarching themes; key ideas therein pointed to both the presence of structural and attitudinal barriers to mental health care, and to ideas physicians have for overcoming them. Implications from the two studies point to the need for continued investigation into the presence of barriers to mental health care for rural communities, and ideas for maximizing existing resources. Differences between structural and attitudinal barriers are discussed alongside findings from these two studies, and future research should continue to investigate the differences between these categories of barriers. Increased understanding of what prevents rural communities from accessing needed mental health care will increase the efficiency and efficacy of future interventions aimed at reducing barriers and increasing access to care