Assisted Housing Mobility and the Success of Low-Income Minority Families: Lessons for Policy, Practice, and Future Research

Based on results from the Gautreaux desegregation and Moving to Opportunity programs, discusses ways to make assisted housing mobility policies more effective in the long term, including experimenting with target populations and placement areas

Can Escaping From Poor Neighborhoods Increase Employment and Earnings?

Examines whether families who moved to lower poverty areas through the Moving to Opportunity program benefited from more opportunities for employment and higher earnings, what factors affected outcomes, and how relocation intervention could be improved

EmergencyGrid:Planning in Convergence Environments

Government agencies are often responsible for event handling, planning, coordination, and status reporting during emergency response in natural disaster events such as floods, tsunamis and earthquakes. Across such a range of emergency response scenarios, there is a common set of requirements that distributed intelligent computer systems generally address. To support the implementation of these requirements, some researchers are proposing the creation of grids, where final interface and processing nodes perform joint work supported by a network infrastructure. The aim of this project is to extend the concepts of emergency response grids, using a convergence scenario between web and other computational platforms. Our initial work focuses on the Interactive Digital TV platform, where we intend to transform individual TV devices into active final nodes, using a hierarchical planning structure. We describe the architecture of this approach and an initial prototype specification that is being developed to validate some concepts and illustrate the advantages of this convergence planning environment

CoAKTinG: Collaborative Advanced Knowledge Technologies in the Grid

Grid infrastructures coupled with semantic web linkage and reasoning open up intriguing new possibilities for scientific collaboration. In this short paper, we outline the research agenda and collaboration technologies under development within the CoAKTinG project: Collaborative Advanced Knowledge Technologies in the Grid. CoAKTinG will provide tools to assist scientific collaboration by integrating intelligent meeting spaces, ontologically annotated media streams from online meetings, decision rationale and group memory capture, meeting facilitation, issue handling, planning and coordination support, constraint satisfaction, and instant messaging/presence. Their integration is illustrated through an extended use scenario

A Comparison of Vertical Ground Reaction Forces in Single-leg Jump Take-offs and Double-leg Jump Take-offs in Indoor Collegiate Volleyball Players

The purpose of this study was to determine if differences in vertical ground reaction forces (vGRFs) exist between single-leg take-off approaches (SL) and double-leg take-off approaches (DL) and if sex or positional differences existed in vGRFs in SL- or DL-style approaches. It was hypothesized that DL jumps would generate greater vGRFs, males would generate greater vGRFs in both styles, and middle blockers would have higher SL vGRFs while pin hitters would have higher DL vGRFs. Nine collegiate volleyball players (4 female; 5 male) (age: 20.44 ± 1.42 years; height: 186.02 ± 6.44 cm; body mass: 78.21 ± 10.63kg; body fat: 11.66 ±5.62%) were tested. An AMTI force plate collected vGRFs with three recorded trials per approach style per subject with randomization of jump-style order. The level of significance was set at p\u3c 0.05. No significant differences were found between vGRFs and position or SL and DL vGRFs. Males had significantly higher vGRFs overall compared to females (p=0.007). Male SL vGRFs were significantly larger than females (p=0.017). DL, relative SL, and relative DL vGRFs were not significantly different between genders. Height, mass, and body fat percentage had at least moderate correlations to combined vGRFs, and height moderately correlated to DL vGRFs. These results suggest that both takeoffs have similar enough force load to be interchangeable. Strength coaches may use both styles to train their athletes and improve neural integration. Positional jump loads during practice or games may be tracked interchangeably in style regarding the take-off phase

LETM1-Mediated K+ and Na+ Homeostasis Regulates Mitochondrial Ca2+ Efflux

HIGHLIGHTS \u2022 Monovalent cation homeostasis is dysregulated upon LETM1 depletion \u2022 K+/H+ exchange activity is decreased in LETM1 knockdown cells \u2022 LETM1 depletion results in K+ accumulation in the mitochondrial matrix \u2022 LETM1 knockdown does not affect expression of major mitochondrial Ca2+ transport modulators \u2022 LETM1-regulated mitochondrial Ca2+ fluxes are dependent on Na+ Ca2+ transport across the inner membrane of mitochondria (IMM) is of major importance for their functions in bioenergetics, cell death and signaling. It is therefore tightly regulated. It has been recently proposed that LETM1\u2014an IMM protein with a crucial role in mitochondrial K+/H+ exchange and volume homeostasis\u2014also acts as a Ca2+/H+ exchanger. Here we show for the first time that lowering LETM1 gene expression by shRNA hampers mitochondrial K+/H+ and Na+/H+ exchange. Decreased exchange activity resulted in matrix K+ accumulation in these mitochondria. Furthermore, LETM1 depletion selectively decreased Na+/Ca2+ exchange mediated by NCLX, as observed in the presence of ruthenium red, a blocker of the Mitochondrial Ca2+ Uniporter (MCU). These data confirm a key role of LETM1 in monovalent cation homeostasis, and suggest that the effects of its modulation on mitochondrial transmembrane Ca2+ fluxes may reflect those on Na+/H+ exchange activity

Virtual versus Real Nuclear Compton Scattering in the Delta(1232) Region

In this paper we calculate the cross section for Virtual Compton Scattering off nuclei in the delta resonance region. We also calculate the background for the process from Coherent Bremsstrahlung in nuclei and explore the regions where the Virtual Compton Scattering cross section dominates. The study also shows that it is possible to extract the cross section for Real Compton Scattering from the Virtual Compton one in a wide range of scattering angles.Comment: latex , 11 pages, ps.gz file, 16 figure

Cone Spacing Correlates With Retinal Thickness and Microperimetry in Patients With Inherited Retinal Degenerations.

PurposeTo determine whether high-resolution retinal imaging measures of macular structure correlate with visual function over 36 months in retinal degeneration (RD) patients and normal subjects.MethodsTwenty-six eyes of 16 RD patients and 16 eyes of 8 normal subjects were studied at baseline; 15 eyes (14 RD) and 11 eyes (6 normal) were studied 36 months later. Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscopy (AOSLO) was used to identify regions of interest (ROIs) with unambiguous cones at baseline to measure cone spacing. AOSLO images were aligned with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and fundus-guided microperimetry results to correlate structure and function at the ROIs. SD-OCT images were segmented to measure inner segment (IS) and outer segment (OS) thickness. Correlations between cone spacing, IS and OS thickness and sensitivity were assessed using Spearman correlation coefficient ρ with bootstrap analyses clustered by person.ResultsCone spacing (ρ = 0.57, P < 0.001) and macular sensitivity (ρ = 0.19, P = 0.14) were significantly correlated with eccentricity in patients. Controlling for eccentricity, cone spacing Z-scores were inversely correlated with IS (ρ = -0.29, P = 0.002) and OS thickness (ρ = -0.39, P < 0.001) in RD patients only, and with sensitivity in normal subjects (ρ = -0.22, P < 0.001) and RD patients (ρ = -0.38, P < 0.001). After 36 months, cone spacing increased (P < 0.001) and macular sensitivity decreased (P = 0.007) compared to baseline in RD patients.ConclusionsCone spacing increased and macular sensitivity declined significantly in RD patients over 36 months. High resolution images of cone structure correlated with retinal sensitivity, and may be appropriate outcome measures for clinical trials in RD