Sororities at Gettysburg College During the Haaland Era, 1990-2004

From 1990 to 2004, Gettysburg College’s Greek system dominated student social life and, due to its prominence (and notoriety), attracted the attention of not only students but also faculty and administration during the era of President Gordon A. Haaland. Although fraternities were often the more influential and problematic Greek organizations on campus, Gettysburg’s sororities played a major role in the lives of female students -- offering women a chance to join a community of other women, participate in philanthropy events, and engage in Greek social life. Throughout the Haaland era, Gettysburg’s sororities consisted of a combination of Sigma Kappa, Alpha Xi Delta, Alpha Delta Pi, Chi Omega, Delta Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta, and Sigma Sigma Sigma. During the 14 years, some of these sororities were added, some disappeared, and all witnessed a reduction in membership by the end of Haaland’s presidency. Some sororities had more problematic reputations than others or hazed new members, but sororities were not often perceived as negatively as fraternities were by college faculty and administration -- primarily due to sororities’ lack of chapter houses. Nevertheless, sororities experienced the same administrative changes to Greek life that their male counterparts did, including three shifts in rush/pledge program timing. Beyond these broad changes, other transformations during the Haaland era were more specific to sororities, including the creation of new chapter rooms and the adoption of No Frills Rush

An Education in Hate: The “Granite Foundation” of Adolf Hitler’s Antisemitism in Vienna

Adolf Hitler’s formative years in Vienna, from roughly 1907 to 1913, fundamentally shaped his antisemitism and provided the foundation of a worldview that later caused immense tragedy for European Jews. Combined with a study of Viennese culture and society, the first-hand accounts of Adolf Hitler and his former friends, August Kubizek and Reinhold Hanisch, reveal how Hitler’s vicious antisemitic convictions developed through his devotion to Richard Wagner and his rejection of Viennese “Jewish” Modernism; his admiration of political role models, Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Dr. Karl Lueger; his adoption of the rhetoric and dogma disseminated by antisemitic newspapers and pamphlets; and his perception of the “otherness” of Ostjuden on the streets of Vienna. Altogether, Hitler’s interest in and pursuit of these major influences on his extreme and deadly prejudice against Jews have illuminated how such a figure became a historical possibility

Managing Budgets During Fiscal Stress: Lessons for Local Government Officials

Like many local governments across the nation, cities and counties in California were impacted heavily by recent economic problems. This report examines what happened to local California government revenues during this period, which services have been adjusted, how employee benefits have been treated, and what innovations have been introduced. The report is based on both a web-based survey of 245 California city government officials and face-to-face interviews with chief financial officers in most of the state’s major cities (Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Riverside, Pasadena and Los Angeles). The authors write, “There has always been much interest in the state with 12 percent of the nation’s population. The experiences of California provide lessons for local governments across the nation as they seek to manage the continuing aftershocks of the Great Recession.” The report concludes with recommendations for local governments across the nation. These include: Identify and address structural deficits in a finely grained manner, leaving no major budget category unexamined. Foster citizen engagement to encourage widespread dissemination of fiscal information in order to enhance the legitimacy of public policy choices. Improve the state/local relationship to reduce episodic, convulsive impacts on local public finance

The meiosis-specific Cdc20 family-member Ama1 promotes binding of the Ssp2 activator to the Smk1 MAP kinase.

Smk1 is a meiosis-specific MAP kinase (MAPK) in budding yeast that is required for spore formation. It is localized to prospore membranes (PSMs), the structures that engulf haploid cells during meiosis II (MII). Similar to canonically activated MAPKs, Smk1 is controlled by phosphorylation of its activation-loop threonine (T) and tyrosine (Y). However, activation loop phosphorylation occurs via a noncanonical two-step mechanism in which 1) the cyclin-dependent kinase activating kinase Cak1 phosphorylaytes T207 during MI, and 2) Smk1 autophosphorylates Y209 as MII draws to a close. Autophosphorylation of Y209 and catalytic activity for substrates require Ssp2, a meiosis-specific protein that is translationally repressed until anaphase of MII. Ama1 is a meiosis-specific targeting subunit of the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome that regulates multiple steps in meiotic development, including exit from MII. Here, we show that Ama1 activates autophosphorylation of Smk1 on Y209 by promoting formation of the Ssp2/Smk1 complex at PSMs. These findings link meiotic exit to Smk1 activation and spore wall assembly

Multifractal characterization of stochastic resonance

We use a multifractal formalism to study the effect of stochastic resonance in a noisy bistable system driven by various input signals. To characterize the response of a stochastic bistable system we introduce a new measure based on the calculation of a singularity spectrum for a return time sequence. We use wavelet transform modulus maxima method for the singularity spectrum computations. It is shown that the degree of multifractality defined as a width of singularity spectrum can be successfully used as a measure of complexity both in the case of periodic and aperiodic (stochastic or chaotic) input signals. We show that in the case of periodic driving force singularity spectrum can change its structure qualitatively becoming monofractal in the regime of stochastic synchronization. This fact allows us to consider the degree of multifractality as a new measure of stochastic synchronization also. Moreover, our calculations have shown that the effect of stochastic resonance can be catched by this measure even from a very short return time sequence. We use also the proposed approach to characterize the noise-enhanced dynamics of a coupled stochastic neurons model.Comment: 10 pages, 21 EPS-figures, RevTe

Effect of hydration on conductivity of Ba4La x Ca2-X Nb2O11 + 0.5x (x = 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2) phases

Substitution of Ca by La in initial cubic double perovskite Ba 4(Ca2Nb2)O11[VO]1 allowed obtaining phases with a similar structure with a lower content of structural oxygen vacancies, Ba4(La x Ca2-x Nb 2)O11 + 0.5x [VO]1-0.5x (x = 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2). The impedance technique was used to measure the temperature dependences of conductivity in the atmosphere of dry and humid air. Transport numbers determined using the EMF method in an oxygen-air and water steam concentration cells point to the predominantly hole nature of conductivity in the high-temperature region (T > 600 C) and to predominance of proton conductivity in the low-temperature region. Activation energies of hole and proton conductivity were calculated. Thermogravimetric measurements were carried out under heating from 25 to 1000 C with simultaneous mass-spectrometric determination of evolved H2O and CO2. The properties of the studied Ba4(La x Ca2-x Nb 2)O11 + 0.5x (x = 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2) phases were compared with the earlier studied Ba4-x La x (Ca2Nb 2)O11 + 0.5x phases with similar lanthanum content. © 2013 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd