Toward a Theory Relating Political Discourse, Media, and Public Opinion

This paper presents a multimethod investigation of framing in the government–media–public interaction during the so-called partial-birth abortion (PBA) debate in the U.S. Operationalizing framing as the use of the word "baby" or "fetus," content analysis first shows that opposing political elites employed almost exclusive vocabularies in attempts to justify their views and shape attitudes. Time-series analysis then charts the path of "baby's" discursive dominance from congressional discourse through news and editorials to citizens. Finally, experimental results support 2 microlevel hypotheses. First, uptake—exposure to articles featuring the exclusive use of "baby" or "fetus," respectively, increased or decreased support for banning PBA. Second, emergence—participants exposed to discourse using both terms converged upon a response independent of the words' relative proportions. In contrast to probabilistic survey response models, these findings support the idea that a kind of public reason can emerge from the interaction of citizens' judgment processes and elite communication.     

Tailored liquid‐crystal switching on ferroelectric polymer films

Abstract— The development of voltage‐controlled visible‐wavelength progression in displays and optical data storage devices using ferroelectric polymers and liquid crystals is described. Ferroelectric polymers are materials that have a ready distribution of dipoles which can be oriented by manipulating material composition and external fields. Utilizing the charge polarization distribution, their performance as an alignment layer for inducing liquid‐crystal alignment is presented. The switching response of the devices was tailored by changing the material composition through copolymers and nanoclay doping.     

群创挤入iSuppli 前十大ODM行列

2006年，香港冠捷科技有限公司（TPV）年收入实现72亿美元，成功晋级前十强。2007年，群创光电年收入超过30亿美元，成为ODM精英分子。此外，尽管受季节性因素影响，前十大ODM厂商2007年第二季度收入普遍下滑，但群创当期收入保持增长（参见图1）。继冠捷和群刨将其商业模式转为主攻品牌产品之后，它们分别取代了明基和宏达电在iSuppli ODM排名中的地位。[第一段]     

Formal Mathematics for Mathematicians

The collection of works for this special issue was inspired by the presentations given at the 2011 AMS Special Session on Formal Mathematics for Mathematicians: Developing Large Repositories of Advanced Mathematics. The issue features a collection of articles by practitioners of formalizing proofs who share a deep interest in making computerized mathematics widely available.     

The yin-yang driving urinary tract infection and how proteomics can enhance research,diagnostics, and treatment

Bacterial urinary tract infections (UTIs) afflict millions of people worldwide both in the community and the hospital setting. The onset, duration, and severity of infection depend on the characteristics of the invading pathogen (yin), as well as the immune response elicited by the infected individual (yang). Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) account for the majority of UTIs, and extensive investigations by many scientific groups have elucidated an elaborate pathogenic UPEC life cycle, involving the occupation of extracellular and intracellular niches and the expression of an arsenal of virulence factors that facilitate niche occupation. This review will summarize the current knowledge on UPEC pathogenesis; the host immune responses elicited to combat infection; and it will describe proteomics approaches used to understand UPEC pathogenesis, as well as drive diagnostics and treatment options. Finally, new strategies are highlighted that could be applied toward furthering our knowledge regarding host-bacterial interactions during UTI.     

An optimal image transform for threshold-based cloud detection using heteroscedastic discriminant analysis

We present a simple image transform that optimally combines four image channels into a greyscale image for threshold-based cloud detection. These image channels, namely blue, green, red and near infrared, are present on many low Earth-orbit resource satellites. Applying a single threshold to a greyscale image is a computationally efficient method suitable for onboard implementation. We used heteroscedastic discriminant analysis (HDA), which is a generalization of the popular dimension-reducing linear discriminant analysis, to transform the image. Comparative tests between HDA, existing transforms from the remote-sensing literature (the haze optimized and D transforms), as well as the single red and blue image channels were conducted. Although thin clouds remain challenging for global threshold-based techniques, the HDA transform consistently gave the best average segmentation errors across the test dataset. This dataset consisted of 32 1 megapixel Quickbird and Landsat images. HDA has not previously been applied to remote-sensing data.     

Data center demand response: Avoiding the coincident peak via workload shifting and local generation

Demand response is a crucial aspect of the future smart grid. It has the potential to provide significant peak demand reduction and to ease the incorporation of renewable energy into the grid. Data centers’ participation in demand response is becoming increasingly important given their high and increasing energy consumption and their flexibility in demand management compared to conventional industrial facilities. In this paper, we study two demand response schemes to reduce a data center’s peak loads and energy expenditure: workload shifting and the use of local power generation. We conduct a detailed characterization study of coincident peak data over two decades from Fort Collins Utilities, Colorado and then develop two algorithms for data centers by combining workload scheduling and local power generation to avoid the coincident peak and reduce the energy expenditure. The first algorithm optimizes the expected cost and the second one provides a good worst-case guarantee for any coincident peak pattern, workload demand and renewable generation prediction error distributions. We evaluate these algorithms via numerical simulations based on real world traces from production systems. The results show that using workload shifting in combination with local generation can provide significant cost savings (up to 40% under the Fort Collins Utilities charging scheme) compared to either alone.     

Thermal conductivity of ME771 glass-epoxy laminate from millikelvin temperatures to 4 K

Permaglas ME771 is a glass-epoxy laminate which is suitable for use at cryogenic temperatures. We have measured the thermal conductivity of a sample of this material between 64 mK and 4.2 K in the direction parallel to the reinforcing fibres, enabling us to make a comparison with the better known material G-10CR. The thermal conductivity follows the form that would be expected for such a material, and is similar to that of G-10CR, which has a similar (room temperature) tensile strength. We comment on some confusion that has arisen over the difference between G-10CR, a material specifically produced for cryogenic use, and G-10, the more common equivalent.     

Synthesis and characterization of chloro-sulphide glass-ceramics containing neodymium(III) ions

In this paper, we describe the preparation of Nd³⁺ doped glass-ceramics in the (GeS₂)₇₀-(Ga₂S₃)₂₀-(CsCl)₁₀ system. Neodymium has been introduced as metallic powder or incorporated as sulphide. Appropriate heat treatments of the base-glass lead to glass-ceramics with controllable crystal sizes that are transparent in the visible and infrared spectral ranges. X-ray diffraction as well as electron diffraction techniques were used to investigate the crystallization process. Differential scanning calorimetry indicates that neodymium ions are poor nucleating agents in this glass compared to erbium ions. Luminescence measurements were also performed and point out that although the ceramization process increases significantly the luminescence efficiency, the neodymium ions are only partially incorporated in the nanocrystals.