Community-Based Housing: Potential for a New Strategy

While the housing problem in the United States has changed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed that one-third of the nation is ill-housed, it has by no means disappeared. For most low-income people, and to a lesser extent for moderate income people, housing still presents formidable problems. Academics and housing analysts recognize four major aspects of the housing problem: affordability (ratio of housing costs to income), adequacy (including quality and overcrowding), neighborhood conditions, and availability. Over the past decade, the nature of the country\u27s housing problem has undergone some important transformations. Until ten years ago the phrase housing problem conjured up images of low quality housing and overcrowded conditions that were principally the concern of low-income and minority people. By the late 1970s, however, a new aspect of the housing problem-affordability-had become fixed in the American consciousness. Since that time there has been general agreement among housing analysts that the burden of housing costs relative to income has gotten worse, while overall quality has improved. Although blacks and other minorities have benefited from these improvements, their housing situations remain considerably worse than those of the general population

Federal homeownership policy and home finance : a study in program operations and impacts on the consumer.

Thesis. 1976. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch.Vita.Bibliography: p. 534-549.Ph.D

Nucleon structure from mixed action calculations using 2+1 flavors of asqtad sea and domain wall valence fermions

We present high statistics results for the structure of the nucleon from a mixed-action calculation using 2+1 flavors of asqtad sea and domain wall valence fermions. We perform extrapolations of our data based on different chiral effective field theory schemes and compare our results with available information from phenomenology. We discuss vector and axial form factors of the nucleon, moments of generalized parton distributions, including moments of forward parton distributions, and implications for the decomposition of the nucleon spin.Comment: 68 pages, 47 figures. Main revision points: improved discussion of chiral fits and systematic uncertainties, several minor refinements. Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.

Willingness-to-pay for services provided by the Clinical Services Improvement Project (CSI) in Egypt

Willingness-to-pay (WTP) surveys are increasingly used in reproductive health programs to predict the impact of price changes on revenues, utilization, and client profile. The FRONTIERS program worked with the Clinical Services Improvement (CSI) project and the Cairo Demographic Center to carry out a WTP survey in six CSI clinics in Egypt. The survey found that most clients would be willing to pay higher prices for CSI services, and WTP did not vary much by client economic status. However, predictive validity was low when all reasons for client discontinuation were included. WTP surveys have the potential to be useful tools for predicting client response to price increases, but predictions for methods like DMPA (which have high discontinuation for method-related reasons) must be adjusted downward using data on method discontinuation from program statistics or from the literature

Sexually transmitted infections (STI) in men who have sex with men (MSM)

The impact of increasingly efficient antiretroviral therapy (ART) on survival and general well-being has contributed to a "business as usual" attitude to sex among men who have sex with men (MSM). There has been a recent marked increase of sexually transmitted infections (STI) including syphilis, LGV and Hepatits C among MSM. STIs located in the oral cavity or rectum are asymptomatic in over 80% and 50%, respectively and these sites must be seen as important reservoirs. On the other hand severe proctitis may be mistreated as inflammatory bowel disease without adequate medical history and testing. Due to the reappearance of syphilis, all genital ulcers, non-itching exanthema and severe disease symptoms (e.g. fever, fatigue, lymphadenopathy, hepato-splenomegaly, increased liver enzymes, neurological and ophthalmologic symptoms without other explanations) should lead to testing for syphilis. There is a marked association between STIs and HIV. Syphilis, LGV and Hepatits C are strongly overrepresented in HIV positive MSM, while gonorrhoea, LGV and syphilis increase the HIV susceptibility. Syphilis leads to increased viral load in HIV positive. The major risk factors for Hepatitis B are number of sex partners and receptive anal intercourse. High grade Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) anal lesions can progress to cancer. There is a 30 fold increase risk for anal cancer among MSM, a risk that is doubled in HIV infection, making anal cancer one of the most common non-AIDS tumors. All MSM should be offered Hepatitis A and B vaccination and the inclusion of boys in HPV vaccination programs must be considered. The aim of this article is to describe asymptomatic and symptomatic bacterial and viral STIs of the oral cavity, penis/urethra and rectum and the sexually transmittable viral Hepatitis and HIV in MSM and to inspire the medical establishment to adhere to testing guidelines in this group. This article is built on a review of published findings, the presentation of own data on Gonorrhoea and chlamydia and our own experience in treating all STIs including HIV in MSM since 1982 at a Gay Men's Health Clinic (Venhälsan) at Stockholm South General Hospital, Sweden

Lipoatrophy of the footpad in HIV-treated patients is associated with increased PAI-1

Purpose: To describe lipoatrophy of the plantar pedis fat pads in HIV patients with or without long-term antiretroviral therapy (ART); to compare the characteristics of ART patients with and without plantar pedis lipoatrophy; and to examine the effects of HIV and metabolic/cardiovascular risk parameters and treatment history on plantar pedis lipoatrophy. Design: One hundred and thirty four patients who started PI-ART in 1996 and 49 treatment naïve patients, recruited 2004, were examined and graded for lipoatrophy of five body compartments including the plantar fat pads eight years after start of ART. Baseline HIV- and ART-related factors were documented together with follow up metabolic/cardiovascular risk parameters. Results: Plantar pedis lipoatrophy occurred more often among ART patients (60%) than among treatment naïve patients (12%; p <0.001). ART patients with plantar lipoatrophy were older, had higher PAI-1 values, a higher prevalence of lipoatrophy in other body compartments, and longer stavudine and didanosine treatment history as compared to patients without plantar lipoatrophy. In multiple logistic regression, the best predictive model for plantar lipoatrophy was increased PAI-1 when HIV and metabolic/cardiovascular risk parameters were studied and treatment with didanosine when treatment history was studied. Increased PAI-1 was not associated to lioatrophy in any other location. Conclusions: Plantar lipoatrophy is common among patients on long-term ART and, although often overlooked, may cause significant discomfort. The association to PAI-1, a well known marker of increased cardiovascular risk, is intriguing and further focuses on the need of an active approach to evaluating and lowering cardiovascular risk factors in long-term HIV treatment

Nucleon Generalized Parton Distributions from Full Lattice QCD

We present a comprehensive study of the lowest moments of nucleon generalized parton distributions in N_f=2+1 lattice QCD using domain wall valence quarks and improved staggered sea quarks. Our investigation includes helicity dependent and independent generalized parton distributions for pion masses as low as 350 MeV and volumes as large as (3.5 fm)^3, for a lattice spacing of 0.124 fm. We use perturbative renormalization at one-loop level with an improvement based on the non-perturbative renormalization factor for the axial vector current, and only connected diagrams are included in the isosinglet channel.Comment: 40 pages, 49 figures; Revised chiral extrapolations in sections A-K, main conclusions unchange

Brane universes tested by supernovae

We discuss observational constrains coming from supernovae Ia \cite{Perlmutter99} imposed on the behaviour of the Randall-Sundrum models. In the case of dust matter on the brane, the difference between the best-fit general relativistic model with a $\Lambda$-term \cite{Perlmutter99} and the best-fit brane models becomes detectable for redshifts $z > 0.6$. It is interesting that brane models predict brighter galaxies for such redshifts which is in agreement with the measurement of the $z = 1.7$ supernova \cite{Riess01} and with the New Data from the High Z Supernovae Search Team \cite{schmit02}. We also demonstrate that the fit to supernovae data can also be obtained, if we admit the "super-negative" dark energy $p = - (4/3) \varrho$ on the brane, where the dark energy in a way mimics the influence of the cosmological constant. It also appears that the dark energy enlarges the age of the universe which is demanded in cosmology. Finally, we propose to check for dark radiation and brane tension by the application of the angular diameter of galaxies minimum value test.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, REVTEX4, amended versio