David E. Campbell

See Jane Run: Women Politicians as Role Models for Adolescents

Does the presence of female political role models inspire interest in political activism among young women? We find that over time, the more that women politicians are made visible by national news coverage, the more likely adolescent girls are to indicate an intention to be politically active. Similarly, in cross-sectional analysis, we find that where female candidates are visible due to viable campaigns for high-profile offices girls report increased anticipated political involvement. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this effect does not appear to be mediated through beliefs about the appropriateness of politics for women, nor through perceptions of government responsiveness. Instead, an increased propensity for political discussion, particularly within families, appears to explain the role model effect.

VectorBase: improvements to a bioinformatics resource for invertebrate vector genomics

VectorBase (http://www.vectorbase.org) is a NIAID-supported bioinformatics resource for invertebrate vectors of human pathogens. It hosts data for nine genomes: mosquitoes (three Anopheles gambiae genomes, Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus), tick (Ixodes scapularis), body louse (Pediculus humanus), kissing bug (Rhodnius prolixus) and tsetse fly (Glossina morsitans). Hosted data range from genomic features and expression data to population genetics and ontologies. We describe improvements and integration of new data that expand our taxonomic coverage. Releases are bi-monthly and include the delivery of preliminary data for emerging genomes. Frequent updates of the genome browser provide VectorBase users with increasing options for visualizing their own high-throughput data. One major development is a new population biology resource for storing genomic variations, insecticide resistance data and their associated metadata. It takes advantage of improved ontologies and controlled vocabularies. Combined, these new features ensure timely release of multiple types of data in the public domain while helping overcome the bottlenecks of bioinformatics and annotation by engaging with our user community.

Sticking Together: Classroom Diversity and Civic Education

How does classroom racial diversity affect the civic dimension of American adolescents’ education? Does a high level of diversity correlate with more or less discussion of political issues, a key criterion for an effective civic education? Do different levels of political discussion, in turn, have consequences for the intention of adolescents to become informed voters? Using the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Civic Education Study, this article puts these questions to the empirical test. Results show that racial diversity corresponds to a lower level of political discussion in the classroom. Less political discussion, in turn, correlates with a lower likelihood of adolescents’ stated intention of becoming an informed voter.

Religious “Threat” in Contemporary Presidential Elections

Recent presidential elections have drawn attention to the role religion plays in shaping how Americans vote and highlighted the political relevance of white evangelical Christians, an important group within the Republicans’ base of supporters. Evangelicals see themselves as in tension with a secular society, which affects their political behavior. Drawing on the venerable racial threat literature, I show evidence that evangelicals respond to “religious threat.” The more secularists in their community, the more likely white evangelical Christians were to vote for Republican presidential candidates in 2000 and 1996. These results hold for two distinct ways of identifying white evangelicals, using community data at different levels of aggregation. However, secularists do not appear to respond to the presence of evangelicals in their environment.

Social Capital and Service Learning

Trends in the political engagement of Americas high school students present a paradox. At the same time that an unprecedented number of opportunities exist for American adolescents to get involved in activities with a political flavor like student governments, model United Nations, model Congress, Young Republicans and Young Democrats, and debate clubs, both interest and participation in political activities among high school students is low and declining. This is not unlike what has been observed among adults in the general population. A proliferation of advocacy groups has not resulted in more Americans getting involved in politics. Nor has a never-ending supply of political news on TV and radio, in print, and online led to an increase in the nations attention to political matters. It would be too presumptuous for me to claim that there is a direct causal connection between an increasing supply of opportunities for extracurricular political activities among young people and their declining rates of civic engagement. A more modest claim does seem plausible, however: politics has increasingly become a niche activity, pursued by that relatively small slice of the population who are, as Robert Dahl (1961) famously put it, “ homo politicus ,” i.e., “political junkies.” Television channels provide a telling analogy. Whereas once, events like national political conventions and presidential press conferences would preempt all network programming, they are increasingly shunted off to all-news cable channels and C-SPAN. Ironically, a greater supply of political news has meant that it is easier for people who are not pre-disposed to seek out politically-oriented programming to avoid it.

The Young and the Realigning: A Test of the Socialization Theory of Realignment

Recent research has demonstrated that Democrats and Republicans are divided along religious lines-religiously committed voters (Protestant and Catholic) identify as Republicans, while secularly oriented voters are more likely to be Democrats. This presents an ex- cellent opportunity to test an implication of the Michigan model of party identification-that, in a realigning period, it is young voters who are most likely to reflect the new electoral cleavage. Using the Monitoring the Future archives of over 230,000 surveys administered to high school seniors from 1976 to 1996, I offer evidence that there is a sharp partisan divide defined by religious commitment among youth just on the cusp of obtaining the franchise. Furthermore, data from the National Election Studies (1980-98) confirm that the link between religiosity and Re- publican Party identification is stronger among younger than older

Electric Dipole Moment of the n—π* Singlet State of HCOF

Stark‐effect measurements of the 2480 A band of formyl fluoride have been made. The dipole components are μa′=+1.65±0.1 D and |μb|=2.0(+0.5 or −1.0) D. The sign of μa′ is the same as that of μa″, in disagreement with a picture of excitation localized in the carbonyl group.

Religious Group Cues and Citizen Policy Attitudes in the United States

The public opinion literature shows that cues about the policy positions of social groups influence citizens’ political attitudes. We assess whether cues about religious groups’ positions affect attitudes on three issues: protection of homosexuals in the workplace, improving the socio-economic conditions of African-Americans, and government-provided health insurance. We argue that such cues should shape issue attitudes and condition the impact of religious and political orientations on those attitudes. That should be especially true on issues closely connected to religion and for citizens with low levels of political awareness. We assess this argument with a survey experiment pitting pairs of religious groups on opposite sides of issues. We find that religious group cues matter primarily for cultural attitudes, among less politically-aware individuals, and for the religiously unaffiliated, Democrats, and liberals. The dominant effect is negative, moving these groups away from the positions of religious leaders and especially evangelical leaders.

Lower Extremity Arterial Reconstruction in Patients With Diabetes Mellitus

Foot problems remain the most common reason for hospitalization for patients with diabetes mellitus (1,2). Approximately 20% of the 12–15 million patients with diabetes in the United States can expect to be hospitalized for a foot problem at least once during their lifetime, and account for an annual health care cost for this problem alone in excess of one billion dollars (3). The primary pathological mechanisms of neuropathy and ischemia set the stage for pressure necrosis, ulceration, and multimicrobial infection, which if improperly treated ultimately leads to gangrene and amputation (4). Understanding how the factors of neuropathy, ischemia, and infection are impacting on an individual patient with a foot complication and simultaneously effecting proper treatment for all factors present is essential to foot salvage. Although this chapter focuses on the treatment of ischemia owing to arterial insufficiency, it is important to remember that ischemia is accompanied by infection in approx 50% of patients in our experience (5), and that most, if not all, patients will have peripheral neuropathy present as well. Although focusing on correction of ischemia, often by operative reconstruction or percutaneous intervention, the vascular surgeon cannot ignore these other factors if foot salvage is ultimately to be successful.

Role models revisited: youth, novelty, and the impact of female candidates

ABSTRACT Do female politicians serve as political role models? This paper is the first to employ panel data to examine whether the presence of non-presidential female candidates leads to an increased propensity for political engagement – specifically, discussion – among women. We hypothesize that younger people who are still learning and establishing political engagement habits will become more politically engaged when exposed to female role models. We do not find evidence of a role model effect overall or among co-partisans. We do find that younger women become significantly more likely to discuss politics when they experience a viable and new female candidate. Importantly, we only find this effect when the female candidate is not a current office holder, suggesting the novelty of female candidates may be key. We do not find a similar effect among older women.