Web Science is Growing Up: interdisciplinary insights and a maturing community at WebSci ’11

ACM Web Science 2011, which ran from 14 – 17 June in Koblenz, Germany, is one of the more interdisciplinary ACM conferences: unlike ACM WWW, which focuses on infrastructure, standards and development, Web Science concerns the Web as an unfolding process. It examines the Web and our society, including politics, economics and law

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

The Empirical Case For 10 GeV Dark Matter

In this article, I summarize and discuss the body of evidence which has accumulated in favor of dark matter in the form of approximately 10 GeV particles. This evidence includes the spectrum and angular distribution of gamma rays from the Galactic Center, the synchrotron emission from the Milky Way's radio filaments, the diffuse synchrotron emission from the Inner Galaxy (the "WMAP Haze") and low-energy signals from the direct detection experiments DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT and CRESST-II. This collection of observations can be explained by a relatively light dark matter particle with an annihilation cross section consistent with that predicted for a simple thermal relic (sigma v ~ 10^-26 cm^3/s) and with a distribution in the halo of the Milky Way consistent with that predicted from simulations. Astrophysical explanations for the gamma ray and synchrotron signals, in contrast, have not been successful in accommodating these observations. Similarly, the phase of the annual modulation observed by DAMA/LIBRA (and now supported by CoGeNT) is inconsistent with all known or postulated modulating backgrounds, but are in good agreement with expectations for dark matter scattering. This scenario is consistent with all existing indirect and collider constraints, as well as the constraints placed by CDMS. Consistency with xenon-based experiments can be achieved if the response of liquid xenon to very low-energy nuclear recoils is somewhat suppressed relative to previous evaluations, or if the dark matter possesses different couplings to protons and neutrons.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

The role of disciplinary analysis in web science education

This paper considers the ways in which Web Science educationcan benefit from an analysis method used to gauge disciplinary representation. Three key contributions are identified:1) driving development of the Web Science curriculum; 2) teaching WebScience, i.e. considering its evolution over time and using the method to foster comparisons of Web Science with other like fields; 3) teaching the analysis method itself as an example of amixed methods, Web Science method.This paper addresses topic #1 of the Web Science Educationactivities (Web Science education programmes design)