The Oak Park Redevelopment Plan: Housing Policy Implications for a Community Undergoing Early Stage Gentrification

Abstract: With the reemerging discussion of gentrification in the urban landscape, an exploratory case study of the Oak Park Redevelopment Plan in Sacramento, CA, was conducted in order to better understand the community’s gentrifying characteristics and the implications once the redevelopment goals are met. In addition, a Conceptual Framework [CF] was formulated in order to unpack the components and processes of gentrification. The findings suggest that the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency’s redevelopment polices act as a catalyst for gentrification that exclusively favors the in-migration of middle- and upper-income residents into the area at the expense of lower-income residents. These implications include the displacement of low-income renter-residents, changes to a neighborhood’s socio-economic and cultural characteristics, and the defacto exclusion of low-income residents as they will never be able to afford to live in the gentrified Oak Park neighborhood

Europe: Neither Plan Colombia, nor Peace Process--From Good Intentions to High Frustrations. Working Paper Series, Vol. 2 No. 7, June 2002

(From the introduction). At the same time, a clear message was sent that Europe wanted to distance itself as much as possible from the Plan Colombia, understood as a project centered around counter-insurgency and security issues. After a brief period of uncertainty and the successful and hopeful attempts to revive the Peace Process, the European diplomacy seemed to have its role strengthened from a rank of mere observer to a status of participant in brokering the Peace Process, which was on the verge of collapse in early January 2002. The renewal of the process was then credited to the role of the international community, with heavy European involvement. However, apprehension, pessimism, and a certain degree of realism finally set in the minds of European leaders in view of the decision by President Andrés Pastrana of Colombia to terminate the peace process on February 20, 2002. Considering the continuation of the violent activities perpetrated by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), culminating with the kidnapping of Eduardo Gechem Turbay, a prominent Colombian senator, Pastrana ordered the Colombian troops to enter the territory previously awarded as sanctuary. (4) Meanwhile, under the new Bush administration, U.S. opinion had already shifted toward a more hard line attitude, as former Clinton administration officials reflected in timely columns. (5) Editorials endorsed President Bush’s attempts to make U.S. support more effective. (6) These published opinions confirm that many U.S. elite had significantly shifted toward the idea of more active participation in the Colombian conflict, sidelining the peace negotiations as an apparent result of the attacks of September 11. “Terrorism” was the code word widely used, replacing “counter-insurgency strategy” and “curtailing narco-trafficking” which was the original framework sold to Congress to justify the need for Plan Colombia. The Colombian government began to lobby energetically for the use of U.S. counter-drug trafficking resources in the anti-insurgency activities, equating the fight against the FARC to the military offensive against Al Qaeda. (7) In public statements, the White House limited its position to the parameters outlined by Congress in the fight against drugs. (8

SANTO: Social Aerial NavigaTion in Outdoors

In recent years, the advances in remote connectivity, miniaturization of electronic components and computing power has led to the integration of these technologies in daily devices like cars or aerial vehicles. From these, a consumer-grade option that has gained popularity are the drones or unmanned aerial vehicles, namely quadrotors. Although until recently they have not been used for commercial applications, their inherent potential for a number of tasks where small and intelligent devices are needed is huge. However, although the integrated hardware has advanced exponentially, the refinement of software used for these applications has not beet yet exploited enough. Recently, this shift is visible in the improvement of common tasks in the field of robotics, such as object tracking or autonomous navigation. Moreover, these challenges can become bigger when taking into account the dynamic nature of the real world, where the insight about the current environment is constantly changing. These settings are considered in the improvement of robot-human interaction, where the potential use of these devices is clear, and algorithms are being developed to improve this situation. By the use of the latest advances in artificial intelligence, the human brain behavior is simulated by the so-called neural networks, in such a way that computing system performs as similar as possible as the human behavior. To this end, the system does learn by error which, in an akin way to the human learning, requires a set of previous experiences quite considerable, in order for the algorithm to retain the manners. Applying these technologies to robot-human interaction do narrow the gap. Even so, from a bird's eye, a noticeable time slot used for the application of these technologies is required for the curation of a high-quality dataset, in order to ensure that the learning process is optimal and no wrong actions are retained. Therefore, it is essential to have a development platform in place to ensure these principles are enforced throughout the whole process of creation and optimization of the algorithm. In this work, multiple already-existing handicaps found in pipelines of this computational gauge are exposed, approaching each of them in a independent and simple manner, in such a way that the solutions proposed can be leveraged by the maximum number of workflows. On one side, this project concentrates on reducing the number of bugs introduced by flawed data, as to help the researchers to focus on developing more sophisticated models. On the other side, the shortage of integrated development systems for this kind of pipelines is envisaged, and with special care those using simulated or controlled environments, with the goal of easing the continuous iteration of these pipelines.Thanks to the increasing popularity of drones, the research and development of autonomous capibilities has become easier. However, due to the challenge of integrating multiple technologies, the available software stack to engage this task is restricted. In this thesis, we accent the divergencies among unmanned-aerial-vehicle simulators and propose a platform to allow faster and in-depth prototyping of machine learning algorithms for this drones

The political life of things: Explorations on material culture and consumption in Evangelical groups in Buenos Aires, Argentina

The aim of the article is to explore the material culture of Neo-Pentecostals´ mega-churches in Buenos Aires City, Argentina. In order to do this, we will reconstruct three consumers’ profile and the way that political senses are put into play. Profiles will be analyzed according to (a) the ritual context that eases consumption through specific institutions; (b) the chosen objects and (c) the political meanings that is inferred from the uses and understandings of them. This article is divided into three parts. In the first one, we are going to briefly develop the methodological framework and introduce the concepts of megachurch and material culture. In the second one, we will empirically study three religious consumption itineraries that describe different modalities of participation in the internal life of temples. Lastly, we are going to explore the political senses related to cultural commodities of large Evangelical organizations.Fil: Algranti, Joaquin Maria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Laborales; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Beneficiation of lunar ilmenite

One of the most important commodities lacking in the moon is free oxygen which is required for life and used extensively for propellent. Free oxygen, however, can be obtained by liberating it from the oxides and silicates that form the lunar rocks and regolith. Ilmenite (FeTiO3) is considered one of the leading candidates for production of oxygen because it can be reduced with a reasonable amount of energy and it is an abundant mineral in the lunar regolith and many mare basalts. In order to obtain oxygen from ilmenite, a method must be developed to beneficiate ilmenite from lunar material. Two possible techniques are electrostatic or magnetic methods. Both methods have complications because lunar ilmenite completely lacks Fe(3+). Magnetic methods were tested on eucrite meteorites, which are a good chemical simulant for low Ti mare basalts. The ilmenite yields in the experiments were always very low and the eucrite had to be crushed to xxxx. These data suggest that magnetic separation of ilmenite from fine grain lunar basalts would not be cost effective. Presently, experiments are being performed with electrostatic separators, and lunar regolith is being waited for so that simulants do not have to be employed