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The effects of interactional identity traits (gender, partisanship, and veteran status) on candidate evaluations and electorate voting behaviors in U.S. Congressional elections
Get PDFEvery year, the political candidates who run in the U.S. congressional elections become more and more diverse; there are more women, more veterans, more members of ethnic group minorities in Congress. Political candidates are complex in their identity and what they portray to the electorate. This dissertation examined how candidates’ identity traits (i.e., gender, partisanship, and veteran status) and their interaction affect how voters evaluate such candidates, and the effects such evaluations have on voting behaviors. A pilot study (N = 184 U.S. adult participants) was conducted to develop experimental stimuli. Then, a main study (N = 404 U.S. adult participants) with a 2 (gender: male vs. female) x 2 (partisanship: Republican vs. Democrat) x 2 (veteran status: veteran vs. non-veteran) between-subjects factorial design was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.
Results indicated that female candidates and Democratic candidates were evaluated by participants as higher on competence, trustworthiness, goodwill, and likability compared to male candidates and Republican candidates. Additional mediation analyses showed that competence and likability mediated the relationships between gender and vote choice intent and between partisanship and vote choice intent. The discussion expands on these findings and their theoretical and practical implications, acknowledging the study’s limitations, while also proposing several lines for future research.
Keywords: political communication, gender, politics, identity, elections, voting behaviors
“The modern frontier”: Oklahoma settler memory in the mid-twentieth century
Get PDFIn 2020, the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau launched the “Modern Frontier” campaign to attract tourists, residents, and businesses to Oklahoma City. Surveying the history of what became the state of Oklahoma helps to contextualize this “Modern Frontier” campaign. Three commemorative moments occurred in the aftermath of these segregation laws, the Dust Bowl, and the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act. In 1939, 1948, and 1957, respectively, white boosters (mis)used historical events and constructed historical narratives that celebrated white settlement at the expense of Indigenous peoples and African Americans. I argue that white Oklahomans used a hegemonic settler memory of nostalgia and progress to make Native people (at times) strategically visible and make Black people absent from Oklahoma history. However, the attempt to assert this hegemonic settler memory was met with Native and African American resistance. Ultimately, these three moments suggest that Oklahoma identity and community were under intellectual construction during the mid-century. The degree of a community’s inclusion in the popular memory of place correlated to a group’s relative access to power. Commemorations of the past became moments that shaped the memory landscape of Oklahoma, mobilizing usable histories for the purposes of celebration and tourism. But something else happened that the white boosters did not intend: these commemorations provided the context in which Black and Native Oklahomans negotiated their belonging as historical actors in the popular memory of Indian Territory and Oklahoma
Revealing channelized features through multi-scale workflows in a mixed carbonate siliciclastic setting, Grayburg and San Andres formations, Midland Basin, TX
Get PDFChannelized systems in mixed carbonate-siliciclastic settings are challenging to characterize from the geological standpoint as facies variability is expected to be high (e.g., siliciclastic porous channel fills, carbonate cemented channel fills or even carbonate channel fills). Determining the lithological composition is crucial for not only understanding the basin evolution but also is required for drilling plans either if the channels serve as reservoirs or drilling hazards.
An example of one such compositionally mixed channel system is identified in the San Andres and Grayburg formations in the Midland Basin, TX. For this specific example, channels are presumably siliciclastic infilled while the shelf the channels cut across is dominantly carbonate. An integrated study of core, well-log, and seismic data is conducted to analyze the facies variability of the channelized interval and understand its geomorphological evolution. Seismic attributes such as coherent energy, sweetness and spectral components (CWT) prove to be the most efficient at enhancing the contrast between the clastic vs carbonate elements; demonstrating that it is feasible to depict the lithological heterogeneity between the channel infills and the shelf at a seismic scale. Additionally, conventional seismic interpretation and geometric attributes (e.g., apparent dip, dip azimuth and magnitude, etc.) suggests two categories of channel incisions: type I, characterized by V-shaped bases, straight and mostly oriented in a NE-SW direction; and a type II, that tend to be U-shaped, slightly sinuous, and oriented in a NW-SE trend. Well-log based litho-density techniques such as ρmaa-Umaa and core descriptions support the seismic observations by illustrating the vertical and horizontal heterogeneity and how the channel infills are dominantly siliciclastic in nature. A 3D lithology model constrained to the previous analyses illustrates a dominance of siliciclastics in the Lower San Andres while the Upper San Andres and Grayburg are limestone-rich with episodic siliciclastic events (i.e., related to the channel incisions) and dolostone (in the Upper Grayburg). Lithologies and morphological changes are directly related to changes in the sea level and source rock composition. This study is pioneering in its understanding of the siliciclastic deposition in the middle Guadalupian units in this portion of the Midland Basin, which are referred in literature as the Midland sands and identified as analogs of the Brushy and Cherry Canyon formations in the Delaware Basin
Internalized Racism and Anti-Blackness Among Asian Americans
Get PDFThere is significant theoretical and historical support for the idea that Asian American racial stereotypes are manipulations of White supremacy that are used to enrich anti-Black ideologies. Additionally, empirical research has supported the significant and negative impact that racial discrimination and stereotyping has had on the Asian American experience. Throughout U.S. history, Asian Americans have been racially triangulated vis-à-vis Black and White people as a template for understanding societal racial hierarchies. Specifically, Asian Americans are valorized relative to Black Americans yet are ostracized from civic participation and seen as forever foreigners. According to Racial Triangulation Theory, this pits the interest of Asian Americans against those of Black Americans in a competition for the privileges and opportunities ascribed to White people as a function of White supremacy. However, little to no research has examined the internalization of racial stereotypes within the Asian American community and how this internalization influences perceptions of anti-Blackness. The present effort utilized Racial Triangulation Theory, Asian Critical Race Theory, and Social Identity Theory to examine how internalized racism (i.e., model minority myth and perpetual foreigner stereotype) influences endorsement of Symbolic Racism and support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Findings indicate overall support of the notion that the internalization of racism within Asian Americans predicts perceptions of anti-Blackness. While Social Dominance Orientation was not found to mediate this relationship; moderation analyses revealed a nuanced influence of Ethnic Identity and Other-Group Orientation on the relationship between internalization of racism and anti-Black sentiment. Future research directions and limitations are discussed
Perception is Powerful: Managerial Coaching, Reciprocity, Employees' Perceptions, and Engagement
Get PDFBetween 2021-2022, "Quiet Quitting" topped work-related headlines, and a June 2022 Gallup survey found that 50% of employees were ‘not engaged.’ Not engaged employees are the ones who are ‘quietly quitting.’ Organizations know managers are essential in the employee-organization relationship because employees view them as organizational representatives. This study aimed to address the recent increase in quiet quitting that many organizations have faced by exploring the relationships between managerial coaching and employee social and economic exchange perceptions, the mediating role of socioemotional support, and the influence of internalized reciprocity norms on exchange perceptions. This study also investigated the relationship between managerial coaching and employee engagement, with employee exchange perceptions mediating that relationship. A total of 162 participants provided usable data from an online questionnaire. Managerial coaching correlated to lower levels of economic exchange perception and higher levels of social exchange perception. The relationship between managerial coaching and the perception of economic exchange was much stronger for strong reciprocators than for others. However, reciprocity did not moderate the relationship between managerial coaching and social exchange perception. Managerial coaching was related to employee engagement directly and indirectly through social and economic exchange perceptions. Also, perceptions of social and economic exchange directly impacted employee engagement. The results suggest that organizations should incorporate coaching into their managers' skill sets to improve organizational performance
Fanship scale development
Get PDFFanship is known as the connection an individual has with a fan object (e.g., celebrity, film, sports team, etc). Through this connection, individuals are able to build relationships, create social change, enact attitude/behavioral change, and much more. Researchers have started to explore the concept of fanship; the majority of studies focus on fanship in a critical or interpretive approach. While these types of research are important and needed for the field of literature, studies have not explored the aspects in a post-positivist style approach. This is the main rationale for the current dissertation.
The focus of this dissertation is to create a scale to measure fanship. The first goal of this dissertation was to understand the construct of fanship. While literature has explored the concepts of fanship and fandom, these theoretically similar yet different terms have become conflated. This dissertation attempts to define each concept in its own clear entity. From that point, the dissertation uses scale development to create measurement items that point to the construct of fanship. These items are then run through validation processes (e.g., convergent validation evidence) and collected data to run statistical tests (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis) to result in a fanship scale.
Through the three study processes, a total of 913 participants participated within this dissertation. The dissertation was open to all types of fan objects, and throughout all the participants, the results obtained a wide range of fan objects (e.g., Taylor Swift, University of Texas Longhorns, Marvel). The result of this dissertation is an 18-items fanship scale that has five dimensions: 1) fan emotional/affective ties, 2) fan knowledge, 3) fan community, 4) fan engagement, and 5) fan conversation. The final and fifth dimension is one that is a result of the study’s findings to expand the field of fan studies research. Furthermore, this scale moves the research from a transferable, interpretive, critical standpoint to more of a predictive and generalizability viewpoint.
Both critical and interpretive fan studies research is crucial to the literature, but so is moving fan studies into more post-positivist ideas. By expanding the fan studies research to the post-positive paradigm, research can start to understand fan studies in a new viewpoint. This fanship scale can be used to assist future research in the method of prediction of fanship influence, as well as understanding more of the workings of fanship, such as how types of fans (e.g., sports fans compared to film fans) display their fanship.
This current dissertation has a large focus on fanship itself. However, while being a scale development, a significant amount of this dissertation speaks to methodological approaches and validation evidence used to help make the fanship scale a valid and reliable scale. The results of this dissertation add to the field in many ways, from not only creating a scale itself, along with the results found within the scale development itself (e.g., discussing a new and fifth continuum), but also to taking steps in expanding fan studies into a new light
Visual Privacy Mitigation Strategies in Social Media Networks and Smart Environments
Get PDFThe contemporary use of technologies and environments has led to a vast collection and sharing of visual data, such as images and videos. However, the increasing popularity and advancements in social media platforms and smart environments have posed a significant challenge in protecting the privacy of individuals’ visual data, necessitating a better understanding of the visual privacy implications in these environments. These concerns can arise intentionally or unintentionally from the individual, other entities in the environment, or a company. To address these challenges, it is necessary to inform the design of the data collection process and deployment of the system by understanding the visual privacy implications of these environments. However, ensuring visual privacy in social media networks and smart environments presents significant research challenges. These challenges include accounting for an individual’s subjectivity towards visual privacy, the influence of visual privacy leakage in the environment, and the environment’s infrastructure design and ownership. This dissertation employs a range of methodologies, including user studies, machine learning, and statistics to explore social media networks and smart environments and their visual privacy risks. Qualitative and quantitative studies were conducted to understand privacy perspectives in social media networks and smart city environments.
The findings reveal that individuals and stakeholders possess inherited bias and subjectivity when considering privacy in these environments, leading to a need for visual privacy mitigation and risk analysis. Furthermore, a new visual privacy risk score using visual features and computer vision is developed to investigate and discover visual privacy leakage. However, using computer vision methods for visual privacy mitigation introduces additional privacy and fairness risks while developing and deploying visual privacy systems and machine learning algorithms. This necessitates the creation of interactive audit strategies to consider the broader impacts of research on the community. Overall, this dissertation contributes to advancing visual privacy solutions in social media networks and smart environments by investigating xiii and quantifying the visual privacy concerns and perspectives of individuals and stakeholders, advocating for the need for responsible visual privacy mitigation methods in these environments. It also strengthens the ability of researchers, stakeholders, and companies to protect individuals from visual privacy risks throughout the machine learning pipeline
The Stratiform Radiation Effect on Tropical Organized Deep Convection
Get PDFIdealized studies of self-aggregation have implicated the importance of longwave (LW) cloud-radiative forcing (CRF) in facilitating the upscale development of moist convection. While different cloud structures are known to have distinct CRF, the relative role of distinct cloud and precipitation types in driving upscale development through radiative feedback is largely unexplored. Considering the impact CRF has on convection, we hypothesize that different cloud modes have different effects on mesoscale tropical convection through radiative feedback. We test this hypothesis by analyzing output from Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations of Super Typhoon Haiyan. Using a novel column-by-column precipitation classification scheme, we use this model output to identify the relative contribution of 5 cloud types to the direct LW radiative forcing and the upscale development of convection via LW moist static energy variance. Results indicate that stratiform and anvil regions contribute dominantly to the domain averages of these variables.
We next compared the control simulation (CTL) to sensitivity tests that exclude cloud-radiative feedback (NCRF) either everywhere or only in specific cloud types. These tests indicate that the upscale development of deep convection that manifests in tropical cyclone (TC) genesis is accelerated by CRF, especially of that in stratiform regions. There is a growing consensus from observations that the areal growth of stratiform precipitation is a key precursor to TC genesis and intensification. This observational finding presents a conundrum, given that stratiform precipitation is directly tied to downdrafts, and hence ventilation. Therefore, we hypothesize that the cloud-radiative effect within stratiform cloud regions weakens downdrafts, allowing the environment to moisten more easily. Analysis shows that CTL tests have less downward vertical mass flux in the mid to lower troposphere, indicating weaker (and/or fewer) downdrafts, than that of the NCRF tests, with the greatest differences being in stratiform regions. These findings support our hypothesis that cloud-radiative effects in the stratiform regions weaken downdrafts in developing TCs, in turn allowing the environment to moisten more easily. Understanding the importance of cloud type CRF, especially that of stratiform, could provide insight on the development of tropical convection and TC genesis
Understanding the Lowermost Stratosphere in Current and Future Climates: Composition, Definition, and Tropopause-Overshooting Convection
Get PDFThe troposphere and the stratosphere are two separate layers of the atmosphere whose dynamics, composition, and chemistry are fundamentally different. This leads to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) being a complex region of the atmosphere that is critically important to both weather and climate. The upper troposphere is separated from the lower stratosphere by an identified ‘tropopause’, and any transfer of air across this interface is therefore considered to be stratosphere- troposphere exchange (STE). The difference in composition between the troposphere and the stratosphere makes processes that facilitate STE essential to the climate system. Specifically, the transport of water vapor from the relatively moist troposphere to the much drier lower stratosphere, where water vapor functions as a powerful greenhouse gas, can contribute substantially to the warming climate at the surface. The sources of stratospheric water vapor are still a topic of debate in the scientific community, where the specific contributions of larger-scale processes like the global atmospheric circulation and smaller-scale processes like tropopause-overshooting convection remain unclear, though recent evidence has demonstrated the latter to be more important than was previously thought. This dissertation seeks to clarify the role that tropopause-overshooting convection has in modulating the lower stratospheric water vapor budget in both the present and in the future.
The first component of this dissertation is the creation of a climatology of extreme water vapor concentrations within the lowermost stratosphere, with a complementary analysis exploring the sources and transport pathways of these extreme concentrations. Stratospheric water vapor is a substantial component of the global radiation budget, and therefore important to variability of the climate system. Efforts to understand the distribution, transport, and sources of stratospheric water vapor have increased in recent years, with many studies utilizing long-term satellite observations. Previous work to examine stratospheric water vapor extrema has typically focused on the stratospheric overworld (pressures ≤ 100 hPa) to ensure the observations used are truly stratospheric. However, this leads to the broad exclusion of the lowermost stratosphere, which can extend over depths more than 5 km below the 100 hPa level in the midlatitudes and polar regions and has been shown to be the largest contributing layer to the stratospheric water vapor feedback. Moreover, focusing on the overworld only can lead to a large underestimation of stratospheric water vapor extrema occurrence. Therefore, this dissertation expands on previous work by examining 16 years of Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) observations of water vapor extrema (≥ 8 ppmv) in both the stratospheric overworld and the lowermost stratosphere to create a new lower stratosphere climatology. The resulting frequency of H2O extrema increases by more than 300% globally compared to extrema frequencies within stratospheric overworld observations only, though the percentage increase varies substantially by region and season. Additional context is provided to this climatology through a backward isentropic trajectory analysis to identify potential sources of the extrema. It is shown that, in general, tropopause-overshooting convection presents as a likely source of H2O extrema in much of the world, while meridional isentropic transport of air from the tropical upper troposphere to the extratropical lower stratosphere is also possible.
The second dissertation component takes a step back to examine challenges related to definition of the tropopause. Any study which examines cross-tropopause transport, like the first component of this dissertation, is reliant on an accurately identified tropopause in order to correctly assess STE. Thus, proper definition of the tropopause has far reaching implications for our understanding of Earth’s radiation budget and climate. Definition of the tropopause has remained a focus of atmospheric science since its discovery near the beginning of the 20th century. Few universal definitions (those that can be reliably applied globally and to both common observations and numerical model output) exist and many definitions with unique limitations have been developed over the years. The most commonly used universal definition of the tropopause is the temperature lapse-rate definition established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1957 (the LRT). Despite its widespread use, there are recurrent situations where the LRT definition fails to reliably identify the tropopause. Motivated by increased availability of coincident observations of stability and composition, this study seeks to re-examine the relationship between stability and composition change in the tropopause transition layer and identify areas for improvement in stability-based definition of the tropopause. In particular, long-term (40+ years) balloon observations of temperature, ozone, and water vapor from six locations across the globe are used to identify co-variability between several metrics of atmospheric stability and composition. The results demonstrate that the vertical gradient of potential temperature is a superior stability metric to identify the greatest composition change in the tropopause transition layer, which is used to propose a new universally applicable potential temperature gradient tropopause (PTGT) definition. Application of the new definition to both observations and reanalysis output reveals that the PTGT largely agrees with the LRT, but more reliably identifies tropopause-level composition change when the two definitions differ greatly.
The final component of this dissertation examines the response of tropopause-overshooting convection to a warming climate. Recent field campaigns, observational studies, and modeling work, in addition to the first component of this dissertation, have demonstrated that extratropical tropopause-overshooting convection has a substantial, and previously underestimated impact on UTLS composition, especially stratospheric water vapor. This necessitates improved understanding of how tropopause-overshooting convection may change in a warming climate. A growing body of research indicates that environments conducive to severe thunderstorms will occur more often and be increasingly unstable in the future, but no study has examined how this may be related to increased overshooting. To rectify this, this study leverages an existing pseudo-global warming (PGW) experiment to evaluate potential future changes in tropopause-overshooting convection over North America. The PGW technique applies monthly, three-dimensional projected climate changes in state variables (temperature, humidity, wind, etc.) from global climate models to a weather and research forecasting (WRF) convection-allowing model simulation with a 4-km grid. Specifically, I examine two 10-year simulations consisting of (1) a retrospective period (2003 – 2012) forced by ERA-interim initial and boundary conditions (the control simulation), and (2) the same retrospective period with CMIP5 ensemble-mean high-end emission scenario climate changes added to the initial and boundary conditions (the PGW simulation). Tropopause-overshooting convection is identified as model cloud tops exceeding the potential temperature gradient tropopause, with overshooting in the control simulation validated against observed overshoots from both ground-based radar observations in the United States and GOES satellite observations over North America. The model is shown to effectively simulate the observed regional distribution, annual cycle, and diurnal cycle of tropopause-overshooting convection. The projected response of tropopause-overshooting convection in the PGW simulation is found to be a more than 250% increase across the model domain, and the projected seasonal period of frequent tropopause-overshooting convection was shown to extend into late-summer. Additionally, tropopause-overshooting convection with extreme tropopause-relative heights (> 4 km) are more frequent in a warmed climate scenario.
In summary, this dissertation (1) examines extreme water vapor concentrations in the lowermost stratosphere and how they relate to tropopause-overshooting convection, (2) introduces an improved stability-based tropopause definition to improve future studies of stratosphere-troposphere exchange, and (3) investigates for the first time how tropopause-overshooting convection will respond to climate change
Using Novel Data Analysis Methods to Extract Information from Mass Spectrometry Imaging and Single Cell Mass Spectrometry Results
Get PDFMass spectrometry (MS) is a powerful tool for qualitative and quantitative biological sample analysis, with its high sensitivity, broad applicability, and strong robustness. While insights into ‘what’ and ‘how’ can be provided by mass spectrometry, MS technique coupled with traditional separation methods, such as liquid chromatography LC-MS, do not provide a satisfactory key to the question ‘where’ with high enough resolution. Accordingly, two different types of MS methods are being developed to analyze sample species with spatial resolution, one being single cell mass spectrometry (SCMS), and the other as mass spectrometry imaging (MSI).
In general, SCMS provides chemical insight of individual cells, whereas MSI can reveal the spatial distributions of chemical substances at a micrometer resolution. With the in-house microscale sampling device developed in the Yang group, the Single-probe, SCMS and MSI could be conducted. Both methods require specific protocols for sample treatment, experiment operation, data acquisition, and data analysis. Both SCMS and MSI studies are focused on analysis of small molecules (e.g., metabolites, lipids, and drug compounds). Different from SCMS studies, MSI measurements allow for acquiring spatial information on top of the chemical information provided by MS, and the spatial information has brought more complexity in the output data which require more advanced data analysis tools.
In this dissertation, the background of spatially resolved MS methods, i.e., MSI techniques, are first introduced, followed by a summary of previously published studies on quantitative SCMS metabolomics projects. In Chapter 3, MSI attempts on three different types of samples, including mice retina, patient breast, and co-cultured cancer cell spheroids, are introduced. In Chapter 4, the metabolomic profile changes of heart tissues upon Trypanosoma Cruzi infection have been investigated with the Single-probe MSI technique. The compatibility between MS and two commonly adopted strategies, fixation and staining, is studied, suggesting that X-gal staining has significantly altered the chemical profile. In Chapter 5, to handle SCMS data with better efficiency and higher mass accuracy, a Python-based MS data pretreatment platform with an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) and an innovative peak alignment algorithm is developed to be compatible with improvised SCMS experiments. In Chapter 6, advanced statistical methods used for MS data processing are discussed in the context of MSI study of mice brain with Alzheimer's Disease as an example. The fusion of ion images from MSI and fluorescence images from immunohistology staining has improved the spatial resolution to a higher level, leading to more precise mapping of chemical substances and more findings involved in Alzheimer’s Disease development