Using Contexts and Constraints for Improved Geotagging of Human Trafficking Webpages

Extracting geographical tags from webpages is a well-motivated application in many domains. In illicit domains with unusual language models, like human trafficking, extracting geotags with both high precision and recall is a challenging problem. In this paper, we describe a geotag extraction framework in which context, constraints and the openly available Geonames knowledge base work in tandem in an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model to achieve good performance. In preliminary empirical investigations, the framework improves precision by 28.57% and F-measure by 36.9% on a difficult human trafficking geotagging task compared to a machine learning-based baseline. The method is already being integrated into an existing knowledge base construction system widely used by US law enforcement agencies to combat human trafficking.Comment: 6 pages, GeoRich 2017 workshop at ACM SIGMOD conferenc

U.S. Retailers: Responsible for the Global Sweatshop Crisis

This report provides an overview of the global sweatshop system, and offers a closer look at some of the more “prominent perpetrators” within the system, including: Ann Taylor, Abercrombie & Fitch, Eddie Bauer, Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and J. Crew

Performance of 18-Story Steel Momentframe Buildings during a large San Andreas Earthquake - A Southern California-Wide End-to-End Simulation

The mitigation of seismic risk in urban areas in the United States and abroad is of major concern for all governments. Unfortunately no comprehensive studies have attempted to address this issue in a rigorous, quantitative manner. This study tackles this problem head-on for one typical class of tall buildings in southern California. The approach adopted here can be used as a template to study earthquake risk in other seismically sensitive regions of the world, such as Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, China, South American countries (Chile, Bolivia, etc.), and the west coast of the United States (in particular, Seattle). In 1857 a large earthquake of magnitude 7.9 [1] occurred on the San Andreas fault with rupture initiating at Parkeld in Central California and propagating in a southeasterly direction over a distance of more than 360 km. Such a unilateral rupture produces signicant directivity toward the San Fernando and Los Angeles basins. Indeed, newspaper reports (Los Angeles Star [2, 3]) of sloshing observed in the Los Angeles river point to long-duration (1-2 min) and long-period (2-8 s) shaking, which could have a severe impact on present-day tall buildings, especially in the mid-height range. To assess the risk posing tall steel moment-frame buildings from an 1857-like earthquake on the San Andreas fault, a nite source model of the magnitude 7.9 November 3, 2002 Denali fault earthquake is mapped on to the San Andreas fault with rupture initiating at Parkeld in Central California and propagating a distance of about 290 km in a south-easterly direction. As the rupture proceeds down south from Parkeld and hits the big bend on the San Andreas fault, it sheds off a signicant amount of energy into the San Fernando valley, generating large amplitude ground motion there. A good portion of this energy spills over into the Los Angeles basin with many cities along the coast such as Santa Monica and Seal Beach and more inland areas going east from Seal beach towards Anaheim experiencing long-duration shaking. In addition, the tail-end of the rupture sheds energy from SH/Love waves into the Baldwin Park-La Puente region, which is bounded by a line of mountains that creates a mini-basin, further amplifying the ground motion. The peak velocity is of the order of 1 m.s in the Los Angeles basin, including downtown Los Angeles, and 2 m.s in the San Fernando valley. Signicant displacements occur in the basins but not in the mountains. The peak displacements are in the neighborhood of 1 m in the Los Angeles basin and 2 m in the San Fernando valley. The ground motion simulation is performed using the spectral element method based seismic wave propagation program, SPECFEM3D. To study the effects of the ground motion simulated at 636 sites (spread across southern California, spaced at about 3.5 km each way), computer models of an existing 18-story steel moment-frame building and a redesigned building with the same conguration (redesigned to current standards using the 1997 Uniform Building Code) are analyzed using the nonlinear structural analysis program, FRAME3D. For these analyses, the building Y direction is aligned with the geographical north direction. As expected, the existing building model fares much worse than the redesigned building model. Fracture occurs in at least 25% of the connections in this building when located in the San Fernando valley. About 10% of connections fracture in the building when located in downtown Los Angeles and the mid-Wilshire district (Beverly Hills), while the numbers are about 20% when it is located in Santa Monica, west Los Angeles, Inglewood , Alhambra, Baldwin Park, La Puente, Downey, Norwalk, Brea, Fullerton, Anaheim and Seal Beach. The peak interstory drifts in the middle-third and bottom-third of the existing building are far greater than the top-third pointing to damage being localized to the lower oors. The localization of damage in the lower oors rather than the upper oors could potentially be worse because of the risk of more oors pancaking on top of each other if a single story gives way. Consistent with the extent of fracture observed, the peak drifts in the existing building exceed 0.10 when located in the San Fernando valley, Baldwin Park and neighboring cities, Santa Monica, west Los Angeles and neighboring cities, Norwalk and neighboring cities, and Seal Beach and neighboring cities, which is well into the postulated collapse regime. When located in downtown Los Angeles and the mid-Wilshire district, the building would barely satisfy the collapse prevention criteria set by FEMA [4] with peak drifts of about 0.05. The performance of the newly designed 18-story steel building is signicantly better than the existing building for the entire region. However, the new building still has signicant drifts indicative of serious damage when located in the San Fernando valley or the Baldwin Park area. When located in coastal cities (such as Santa Monica, Seal Beach etc.), the Wilshire-corridor (west Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, etc.), the mid-city region (Downey, Norwalk, etc.) or the booming Orange County cities of Anaheim and Santa Ana, it has peak drifts of about 0.05, once again barely satisfying the FEMA collapse prevention criteria [5]. In downtown Los Angeles it does not undergo much damage in this scenario. Thus, even though this building has been designed according to the latest code, it suffers damage that would necessitate closure for some time following the earthquake in most areas, but this should be expected since this is a large earthquake and building codes are written to limit the loss of life and ensure "collapse prevention" for such large earthquakes, but not necessarily limit damage. Unfortunately, widespread closures such as this could cripple the regional economy in the event of such an earthquake. A second scenario considered in the study involves the same Denali earthquake source mapped to the San Andreas fault but with rupture initiating in the south and propagating to the north (with the largest amount of slip occurring to the north in Central California) instead of the other way around. The results of such a scenario indicate that ground shaking would be far less severe demonstrating the effects of directivity and slip distribution in dictating the level of ground shaking and the associated damage in buildings. The peak drifts in existing and redesigned building models are in the range of 0.02-0.04 indicating that there is no signicant danger of collapse. However, damage would still be signicant enough to warrant building closures and compromise life safety in some instances. The ground motion simulation and the structural damage modeling procedures are validated using data from the January 17, 1994, Northridge earthquake while the band-limited nature of the ground motion simulation (limited to a shortest period of 2 s by the current state of knowledge of the 3-D Earth structure) is shown to have no signicant effect on the response of the two tall buildings considered here with the use of observed records from the 1999 Chi Chi earthquake in Taiwan and the 2001 Tokachi-Oki earthquake in Japan

Determination of urban volatile organic compound emission ratios and comparison with an emissions database

During the NEAQS-ITCT2k4 campaign in New England, anthropogenic VOCs and CO were measured downwind from New York City and Boston. The emission ratios of VOCs relative to CO and acetylene were calculated using a method in which the ratio of a VOC with acetylene is plotted versus the photochemical age. The intercept at the photochemical age of zero gives the emission ratio. The so determined emission ratios were compared to other measurement sets, including data from the same location in 2002, canister samples collected inside New York City and Boston, aircraft measurements from Los Angeles in 2002, and the average urban composition of 39 U.S. cities. All the measurements generally agree within a factor of two. The measured emission ratios also agree for most compounds within a factor of two with vehicle exhaust data indicating that a major source of VOCs in urban areas is automobiles. A comparison with an anthropogenic emission database shows less agreement. Especially large discrepancies were found for the C2-C4 alkanes and most oxygenated species. As an example, the database overestimated toluene by almost a factor of three, which caused an air quality forecast model (WRF-CHEM) using this database to overpredict the toluene mixing ratio by a factor of 2.5 as well. On the other hand, the overall reactivity of the measured species and the reactivity of the same compounds in the emission database were found to agree within 30%. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union

Striatal dopamine D1-type receptor availability: no difference from control but association with cortical thickness in methamphetamine users.

Chronic methamphetamine use poses potentially devastating consequences for directly affected individuals and for society. Lower dopamine D2-type receptor availability has been observed in striata of methamphetamine users as compared with controls, but an analogous comparison of D1-type receptors has been conducted only on post-mortem material, with no differences in methamphetamine users from controls in the caudate nucleus and putamen and higher D1-receptor density in the nucleus accumbens. Released from neurons when methamphetamine is self-administered, dopamine binds to both D1- and D2-type receptors in the striatum, with downstream effects on cortical activity. Thus, both receptor subtypes may contribute to methamphetamine-induced alterations in cortical morphology and behavior. In this study, 21 methamphetamine-dependent subjects and 23 healthy controls participated in positron emission tomography and structural magnetic resonance imaging for assessment of striatal D1- and D2-type receptor availability and cortical gray-matter thickness, respectively. Although D2-type receptor availability (BPnd) was lower in the methamphetamine group, as shown previously, the groups did not differ in D1-type BPnd. In the methamphetamine group, mean cortical gray-matter thickness was negatively associated with cumulative methamphetamine use and craving for the drug. Striatal D1-type but not D2-type BPnd was negatively associated with global mean cortical gray-matter thickness in the methamphetamine group, but no association was found between gray-matter thickness and BPnd for either dopamine receptor subtype in the control group. These results suggest a role of striatal D1-type receptors in cortical adaptation to chronic methamphetamine use

Building thermal performance, extreme heat, and climate change

The leading source of weather-related deaths in the United States is heat, and future projections show that the frequency, duration, and intensity of heat events will increase in the Southwest. Presently, there is a dearth of knowledge about how infrastructure may perform during heat waves or could contribute to social vulnerability. To understand how buildings perform in heat and potentially stress people, indoor air temperature changes when air conditioning is inaccessible are modeled for building archetypes in Los Angeles, California, and Phoenix, Arizona, when air conditioning is inaccessible is estimated. An energy simulation model is used to estimate how quickly indoor air temperature changes when building archetypes are exposed to extreme heat. Building age and geometry (which together determine the building envelope material composition) are found to be the strongest indicators of thermal envelope performance. Older neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Phoenix (often more centrally located in the metropolitan areas) are found to contain the buildings whose interiors warm the fastest, raising particular concern because these regions are also forecast to experience temperature increases. To combat infrastructure vulnerability and provide heat refuge for residents, incentives should be adopted to strategically retrofit buildings where both socially vulnerable populations reside and increasing temperatures are forecast

Maize Germplasm Conservation in Southern California's Urban Gardens: Introduced Diversity Beyond ex situ and in situ Management.

Contemporary germplasm conservation studies largely focus on ex situ and in situ management of diversity within centers of genetic diversity. Transnational migrants who transport and introduce landraces to new locations may catalyze a third type of conservation that combines both approaches. Resulting populations may support reduced diversity as a result of evolutionary forces such as genetic drift, selection, and gene flow, yet they may also be more diverse as a result of multiple introductions, selective breeding and cross pollination among multiple introduced varietals. In this study, we measured the amount and structure of maize molecular genetic diversity in samples collected from home gardens and community gardens maintained by immigrant farmers in Southern California. We used the same markers to measure the genetic diversity and structure of commercially available maize varieties and compared our data to previously reported genetic diversity statistics of Mesoamerican landraces. Our results reveal that transnational dispersal creates an opportunity for the maintenance of maize genetic diversity beyond its recognized centers of diversity

Radiation-induced myeloid leukemia in murine models.

The use of radiation therapy is a cornerstone of modern cancer treatment. The number of patients that undergo radiation as a part of their therapy regimen is only increasing every year, but this does not come without cost. As this number increases, so too does the incidence of secondary, radiation-induced neoplasias, creating a need for therapeutic agents targeted specifically towards incidence reduction and treatment of these cancers. Development and efficacy testing of these agents requires not only extensive in vitro testing but also a set of reliable animal models to accurately recreate the complex situations of radiation-induced carcinogenesis. As radiation-induced leukemic progression often involves genomic changes such as rearrangements, deletions, and changes in methylation, the laboratory mouse Mus musculus, with its fully sequenced genome, is a powerful tool in cancer research. This fact, combined with the molecular and physiological similarities it shares with man and its small size and high rate of breeding in captivity, makes it the most relevant model to use in radiation-induced leukemia research. In this work, we review relevant M. musculus inbred and F1 hybrid animal models, as well as methods of induction of radiation-induced myeloid leukemia. Associated molecular pathologies are also included