Naming rights, place branding, and the tumultuous cultural landscapes of neoliberal urbanism

In recent decades, urban policymakers have increasingly embraced the selling of naming rights as a means of generating revenue to construct and maintain urban infrastructure. This practice of “toponymic commodification” first emerged with the commercialization of professional sports during the second half of the 20th century and has become an integral part of the policy toolkit of neoliberal urbanism more generally. As a result, the naming of everything from sports arenas to public transit stations has come to be viewed as a sponsorship opportunity, yet such naming rights initiatives have not gone uncontested. This special issue examines the political economy of urban place naming through a series of case studies that consider how the commodification of naming rights is transforming the cultural landscapes of contemporary cities. In this introductory article, we provide an overview of the geographies of toponymic commodification as an emerging research focus within the field of critical urban toponymies and propose several theoretical approaches that can enhance our understanding of the commodification of naming rights as an urban spatial practice. We then discuss the main contributions in this special issue and conclude by exploring potential directions for future research on the geographies of urban toponymic commodification

Joint analysis of stressors and ecosystem services to enhance restoration effectiveness

With increasing pressure placed on natural systems by growing human populations, both scientists and resource managers need a better understanding of the relationships between cumulative stress from human activities and valued ecosystem services. Societies often seek to mitigate threats to these services through large-scale, costly restoration projects, such as the over one billion dollar Great Lakes Restoration Initiative currently underway. To help inform these efforts, we merged high-resolution spatial analyses of environmental stressors with mapping of ecosystem services for all five Great Lakes. Cumulative ecosystem stress is highest in near-shore habitats, but also extends offshore in Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan. Variation in cumulative stress is driven largely by spatial concordance among multiple stressors, indicating the importance of considering all stressors when planning restoration activities. In addition, highly stressed areas reflect numerous different combinations of stressors rather than a single suite of problems, suggesting that a detailed understanding of the stressors needing alleviation could improve restoration planning. We also find that many important areas for fisheries and recreation are subject to high stress, indicating that ecosystem degradation could be threatening key services. Current restoration efforts have targeted high-stress sites almost exclusively, but generally without knowledge of the full range of stressors affecting these locations or differences among sites in service provisioning. Our results demonstrate that joint spatial analysis of stressors and ecosystem services can provide a critical foundation for maximizing social and ecological benefits from restoration investments. www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1213841110/-/DCSupplementa

Flood footprint of the 2007 floods in the UK: The case of the Yorkshire and The Humber region

International headlines over the last few years have been dominated by extreme weather events, and floods have been amongst the most frequent and devastating. These disasters represent high costs and functional disruptions to societies and economies. The consequent breakdown of the economic equilibrium exacerbates the losses of the initial physical damages and generates indirect costs that largely amplify the burden of the total damage. Neglecting indirect damages results in misleading results regarding the real dimensions of the costs and prevents accurate decision-making in flood risk management. To obtain an accurate assessment of total flooding costs, this paper introduces the flood footprint concept, as a novel accounting framework that measures the total economic impact that is directly and indirectly caused to the productive system, triggered by the flooding damages to the productive factors, infrastructure and residential capital. The assessment framework account for the damages in the flooded region as well as in wider economic systems and social networks. The flood footprint builds on previous research on disaster impact analysis based on Input-Output methodology, which considers inter-industry flows of goods and services for economic output. The framework was applied to the 2007 summer floods in the UK to determine the total economic impact in the region of Yorkshire and The Humber. The results suggest that the total economic burden of the floods was approximately 4% of the region's GVA (£2.7 billion), from which over half comes from knock-on effects during the 14 months that the economy of Yorkshire and The Humber last to recover. This paper is the first to apply the conceptual framework of flood footprint to a real past event, by which it highlights the economic interdependence among industrial sectors. Through such interrelationships, the economic impacts of a flooding event spill over into the entire economic system, and some of the most affected sectors can be those that are not directly damaged. Neglecting the impact of indirect damages would underestimate the total social costs of flooding events, and mislead the correspondent actions for risk management and adaptation

Rating impacts in a multi‐stressor world: a quantitative assessment of 50 stressors affecting the Great Lakes

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116318/1/eap2015253717.pd

Muc5ac: a critical component mediating the rejection of enteric nematodes

The mucin Muc5ac is essential for the expulsion of Trichuris muris and other gut-dwelling nematodes

The changes in renal function after a single dose of intravenous furosemide in patients with compensated liver cirrhosis

BACKGROUND: Patients with compensated Child-A cirrhosis have sub clinical hypovolemia and diuretic treatment could result in renal impairment. AIM: To evaluate the changes in renal functional mass as reflected by DMSA uptake after single injection of intravenous furosemide in patients with compensated liver cirrhosis. METHODS: Eighteen cirrhotic patients were divided in two groups; eight patients (group 1, age 56 ± 9.6 yrs, Gender 5M/3F, 3 alcoholic and 5 non alcoholic) were given low intravenous 40 mg furosemide and ten other patients (group 2, age 54 ± 9.9, Gender 6M/4F, 4 alcoholic and 6 non alcoholic) were given high 120 mg furosemide respectively. Renoscintigraphy with 100MBq Of Tc 99 DMSA was given intravenously before and 90 minutes after furosemide administration and SPECT imaging was determined 3 hours later. All patients were kept under low sodium diet (80mEq/d) and all diuretics were withdrawn for 3 days. 8-hours UNa exertion, Calculated and measured Creatinine clearance (CCT) were performed for all patients. RESULTS: Intravenous furosemide increased the mean renal DMSA uptake in 55% of patients with compensated cirrhosis and these changes persist up to three hours after injection. This increase was at the same extent in either low or high doses of furosemide. (From 12.8% ± 3.8 to 15.2% ± 2.2, p < 0.001 in Gr I as compared to 10.6% ± 4.6 to 13.5% ± 3.6 in Gr 2, p < 0.001). In 8 patients (45%, 3 pts from Gr 1 and 5 pts from Gr 2) DMSA uptake remain unchanged. The mean 8 hrs UNa excretion after intravenous furosemide was above 80 meq/l and was higher in Gr 2 as compared to Gr 1 respectively (136 ± 37 meq/l) VS 100 ± 36.6 meq/l, P = 0.05). Finally, basal global renal DMSA uptake was decreased in 80% of patients; 22.5 ± 7.5% (NL > 40%), as compared to normal calculated creatinine clearance (CCT 101 ± 26), and measured CCT of 87 ± 30 cc/min (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: A single furosemide injection increases renal functional mass as reflected by DMSA in 55% of patients with compensated cirrhosis and identify 45% of patients with reduced uptake and who could develop renal impairment under diuretics. Whether or not albumin infusion exerts beneficial effect in those patients with reduced DMSA uptake remains to be determined

Financial incentives to improve adherence to anti-psychotic maintenance medication in non-adherent patients - a cluster randomised controlled trial (FIAT)

Background Various interventions have been tested to achieve adherence to anti-psychotic maintenance medication in non-adherent patients with psychotic disorders, and there is no consistent evidence for the effectiveness of any established intervention. The effectiveness of financial incentives in improving adherence to a range of treatments has been demonstrated; no randomised controlled trial however has tested the use of financial incentives to achieve medication adherence for patients with psychotic disorders living in the community. Methods/Design In a cluster randomised controlled trial, 34 mental health teams caring for difficult to engage patients in the community will be randomly allocated to either the intervention group, where patients will be offered a financial incentive for each anti-psychotic depot medication they receive over a 12 month period, or the control group, where all patients will receive treatment as usual. We will recruit 136 patients with psychotic disorders who use these services and who have problems adhering to antipsychotic depot medication, although all conventional methods to achieve adherence have been tried. The primary outcome will be adherence levels, and secondary outcomes are global clinical improvement, number of voluntary and involuntary hospital admissions, number of attempted and completed suicides, incidents of physical violence, number of police arrests, number of days spent in work/training/education, subjective quality of life and satisfaction with medication. We will also establish the cost effectiveness of offering financial incentives. Discussion The study aims to provide new evidence on the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of offering financial incentives to patients with psychotic disorders to adhere to antipsychotic maintenance medication. If financial incentives improve adherence and lead to better health and social outcomes, they may be recommended as one option to improve the treatment of non-adherent patients with psychotic disorders. Trial Registration Current controlled trials ISRCTN77769281

The race for Ebola drugs: pharmaceuticals, security and global health governance

The international Ebola response mirrors two broader trends in global health governance: (1) the framing of infectious disease outbreaks as a security threat; and (2) a tendency to respond by providing medicines and vaccines. This article identifies three mechanisms that interlink these trends. First, securitisation encourages technological policy responses. Second, it creates an exceptional political space in which pharmaceutical development can be freed from constraints. Third, it creates an institutional architecture that facilitates pharmaceutical policy responses. The ways in which the securitisation of health reinforces pharmaceutical policy strategies must, the article concludes, be included in ongoing efforts to evaluate them normatively and politically

Compressed representation of a partially defined integer function over multiple arguments

In OLAP (OnLine Analitical Processing) data are analysed in an n-dimensional cube. The cube may be represented as a partially defined function over n arguments. Considering that often the function is not defined everywhere, we ask: is there a known way of representing the function or the points in which it is defined, in a more compact manner than the trivial one