This case study analysed the expert judgments of a rehabilitation counsellor. The counsellor was given 37 accident victims' self-ratings of health, energy, daily activities, self-esteem, personal relations, financial resources and living conditions. The accident victims also rated their own overall quality of life as poor or good. The expert was required to make judgments about whether the quality of life was poor or good in each case and matched the ratings of the accident victims in 64.8% of cases. The results suggest that under conditions of uncertainty and complexity an expert may be more accurate than chance but still fail to use the properties of information to their maximum advantage.

We examine the influence of “battleground” designation by presidential campaign strategists on the political activation and involvement of resource poor voters, particularly those in lower income brackets. We hypothesize that increased exposure to campaign stimuli may provide lower income voters in the contested states with an appreciable advantage over those in the “blackout” states by underwriting the costs associated with becoming engaged. Our findings show that the condition of living on contested electoral terrain does have a positive impact on the political interest and engagement levels of lower income voters. The results reinforce the importance of the political campaign as an instrument of democracy. Modern campaign strategies can diversify the electorate in meaningful ways, but the influence of the campaign is also limited by the narrow geographic targeting of party resources.

Academics and political practitioners alike have long concerned themselves with the representativeness of primary electorates. Hoping to moderate the ideological extremity of primary voters, state parties have increasingly adopted more open primary eligibility rules. This article explores the extent to which open and modified-open primaries actually attract a more representative electorate than their closed counterparts. Using state-level exit poll data from 1988 through 2000, we compare the ideological, age, and income representation of primary electorates with general election voters. We find that open primaries result in the ideological convergence of the parties’ primary electorates, although the extent of this convergence is contingent upon the candidate choices within individual election years. Notably, open primaries are responsible for the inclusion of younger participants in both parties’ primaries. While reformed primary structure may weaken party control over the nomination process, it clearly results in more moderate and more representative primary electorates.

Photolithographic processing capabilities of ion implanted polymer (IIP) films spin-coated onto silicon substrates were evaluated to determine the optimum conditions for producing stable, small geometry devices. Films which had a thickness approximately equivalent to or less than the mean range of ions in the polymer had good quality and stability, and could be patterned without change of conductivity to form small geometry resistors with dimensions of 10 to 50 micrometers. Sixteen-element, packaged resistor arrays were produced from ion implanted poly(styrene-acrylonitrile) films. High quality films with resistivities from 400 ohms/square to 10 megohms/square could be produced by the ion implantation technique. Suspended conducting polymer bridges were formed from IIP resistors by etching of a sacrificial layer underlying the IIP film. Electrical and mechanical properties of the bridges are presented.

This paper is a sequel to our earlier paper [2] entitled Saturation and simple extensions of models of Peano arithmetic. Among other things, we will answer some of the questions that were left open there. In §1 we consider the question of whether there are lofty models of PA which have no recursively saturated, simple extensions. We are still unable to answer this question; but we do show in that section that these models are precisely the lofty models which are not recursively saturated and which are κ-like for some regular κ. In §2 we use diagonal methods to produce minimal models of PA in which the standard cut is recursively definable, and other minimal models in which the standard cut is not recursively definable. In §3 we answer two questions from [2] by exhibiting countable models of PA which, in the terminology of this paper, are uniformly ω-lofty but not continuously ω-lofty and others which are continuously ω-lofty but not recursively saturated. We also construct a model (assuming ◇) which is not recursively saturated but every proper, simple cofinal extension of which is ℵ1-saturated. Finally, in §4 we answer another question from [2] by proving that for regular κ ≥ ℵ1; every κ-saturated model of PA has a κ-saturated proper, simple extension which is not κ+-saturated.

Our notation and terminology are quite standard. Anything unfamiliar to the reader and not adequately denned here is probably defined in §1 of [2]. All models considered are models of Peano arithmetic.