UNVEILING HIDDEN DISTRICTS: ASSESSING THE ADOPTION PATTERNS OF BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS IN CALIFORNIA

A wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests that, in the wake of tax revolts, cities have responded with a proliferation of special assessment districts which directly link taxes and their local public good beneficiaries. Despite this, there is no systematic evidence on the adoption patterns of these districts, likely because they are not surveyed by the U.S. Census of Governments. This paper begins to fill this gap by reporting the results of a survey on the adoption patterns of one class of special assessment districts, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), in the state of California. A BID is formed when a majority of merchants or property owners in a commercial neighborhood vote in favor of a package of local taxes and expenditures; once passed, assessments are legally binding on all members of the commercial neighborhood. I find that roughly half of all larger cities in California have at least one BID; among the universe of cities in four Southern California counties, that figure falls to about one-fifth. On the demand side, theory and evidence suggest that BIDs should be adopted in heterogeneous cities to supplement local public goods to neighborhood taste. On the supply side, theory argues that BIDs solve the collective action problem arising in the provision of public goods when the number of group members is large. In particular, older commercial neighborhoods have many landowners who may have trouble coordinating the provision of local public goods, in contrast to the single mall developer who can write contracts to internalize externalities. Combining the survey data with demographic, institutional and political data, I find strong support for the supply-side story, and some evidence that the interaction of supply and demand explain BID adoption.

VOLUNTEERING TO BE TAXED: BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS AND THE EXTRA-GOVERNMENTAL PROVISION OF PUBLIC SAFETY

When the median voter's preference sets the level of local public goods, some voters are left unsatisfied. Is there an institution by which subsets of voters can resolve the collective action problem and increase the local provision of public goods? If so, what are the consequences? In response to problems such as crime and vandalism, neighborhood property owners have established Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) to provide local public goods. When a BID is approved by a majority of property owners in a neighborhood, state law makes contributions to the BID budget mandatory. This resolution of the neighborhood's collective action problem reduces crime - BIDs in the city of Los Angeles are robustly associated with crime declines of 5 to 9 percent. Indeed, crime falls regardless of estimation technique: fixed effects; comparing BIDs to neighborhoods that considered, but did not adopt, BIDs; using propensity score matching; and comparing BIDs to their neighbors. Strikingly, these declines are purchased cheaply. Attributing all BID expenditure to violent crime reduction, and thus ignoring the impact of BID expenditure on many quality-of-life crimes, BIDs spend $21,000 to avert one violent crime. This higher bound estimate is substantially lower than the$57,000 social cost of a violent crime.

Fibroblast growth factor signaling in the developing serotonergic system and anxiety-related behavior

Anxiety disorders are some of the most commonly diagnosed psychopathologies in both pediatric and adult populations and have been linked to disrupted brain serotonergic systems. The risk for adult anxiety disorders increases in people with a history of childhood or adolescent anxiety, and the average age of onset for anxiety is eleven years old. These data suggest that anxiety has neurodevelopmental origins, yet our understanding of how anxiety-related serotonergic neurocircuits are formed and how their malformation contributes to the etiology of anxiety disorders is far from complete. This dissertation examined the role of fibroblast growth factor 8 (Fgf8) signaling in the development of midbrain serotonergic neurons and anxiety-like behavior. Fgf8 is a signaling molecule that coordinates the genesis of the putative midbrain region. My hypothesis is that moderately reduced Fgf8 signaling during development impacts the structure and function of anxiety-related serotonergic neuronal subpopulations, thereby leading to anxiety-related behavior. Using adult male mice genetically altered to produce one-third less Fgf8, we observed defects specifically in anxiety- and panic-related serotonergic subpopulations. These defects included 1) fewer serotonergic neurons, 2) abnormal activation and functional responses of serotonergic neurons following a stressful stimulus, and 3) increased baseline anxiety-like behaviors. The results from this dissertation expand our knowledge on how developmental disruption of specific subpopulations of serotonergic neurons can affect their structural and functional integrity, thereby contributing to the persistent manifestation of anxiety behaviors. Overall, this dissertation suggests a role of Fgf signaling in the neurodevelopment of circuits that are disrupted in anxiety and affective disorders

“Time and life is fragile” : An integrative review of nurses’ experiences after patient death in adult critical care

Introduction: Providing bereavement support and care to families is an aspect of critical care nursing practice that can be rewarding, yet emotionally and psychologically challenging. Whilst significant research has focused on end-of-life care in critical care, less is known about nurses’ experiences after patient death. Aim: The aim of this study was to synthesise research evidence on the experience of registered nurses after patient death in adult critical care. Design: A structured integrative review of the empirical literature was undertaken. A combination of keywords, synonyms, and Medical Subject Headings were used across the Cumulative Index Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Complete, Ovid Medline, PsycInfo, Embase, and Emcare databases. Records were independently assessed against inclusion and exclusion criteria. A process of forward and backward chaining was used to identify additional papers. All papers were assessed for quality. Narrative synthesis was used to analyse and present the findings. Results: From the 4643 records eligible for screening, 36 papers reporting 35 studies were included in this review, representing the voices of 1687 nurses from more than 20 countries. Narrative synthesis revealed three themes: (i) postmortem care, which encompassed demonstrating respect and dignity for the deceased, preparation of the deceased, and the concurrent death rituals performed by nurses; (ii) critical care nurses' support of bereaved families, including families of potential organ donors and the system pressures that impeded family support; and (iii) nurses’ emotional response to patient death including coping mechanisms. Conclusions: Whilst a focus on the provision of high-quality end-of-life care should always remain a priority in critical care nursing, recognising the importance of after-death care for the patient, family and self is equally important. Acknowledging their experience, access to formal education and experiential learning and formal and informal supports to aid self-care are imperative

An institutional explanation for the stickiness of federal grants

Researchers have struggled to understand why federal block grants, contrary to economic theory, have a large stimulative effect on the spending of state and local governments. This article proposes and tests an institutional explanation for this effect. We argue that certain budgetary rules, by limiting the ability of subnational governments to respond to voter demands for increased spending, may systematically force lawmakers to under-provide public goods. When this occurs, governments are likely to treat grant revenue as a supplement to total expenditures and not return this money to voters in the form of a tax cut as suggested by existing theory. To evaluate our hypothesis, we use data on the Community Development Block Grant program and municipal tax and expenditure limitations. Results show that restrictive fiscal institutions significantly increase the stimulative power of federal grant revenue. (JEL H7, H4, R5

DesignShop for systemic transformation

Despite over 40 years of applied systemic co-design practice, MG Taylor’s DesignShop methodology has remained a proprietary black box. DesignShop has found its way into the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos (Evans, Taylor, & Bird, 2018), and counts practitioners among the ranks of major professional services firms such as PwC, Capgemini, and KMPG. Senior DesignShop practitioners recently stated “it is safe to claim that the DesignShop is the most employed, systematic, commercially delivered, large group process on the planet” (Evans, Taylor, & Bird, 2018, p. 347), yet scholars and practitioners in the broader systems and design co-creation arenas, such as Peter Jones (2018), have noted the difficulty of getting a clear picture of what this proprietary methodology entails

Violence Against Women: Effective Interventions and Practices with Perpetrators – A literature Review

First paragraph: This report presents a review of literature on effective interventions and practices to deal with perpetrators of violence against women. The key focus is with those interventions and practices which are aimed at reducing re-offending, rather than primary prevention and or public education work. The review was commissioned by the Scottish Government in order to inform development of Scotland's strategy for preventing the causes and consequences of violence against women

Elevated Incidences of Antimicrobial Resistance and Multidrug Resistance In the Maumee River (Ohio, USA), a Major Tributary of Lake Erie

Maumee River, the major tributary in the western basin of Lake Erie, serves as one of major sources of freshwater in the area, supplying potable, recreational, and industrial water. In this study we collected water samples from four sites in the Maumee River Bay between 2016–2017 and E. coli was isolated, enumerated, and analyzed for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and multidrug resistance (MDR). Strikingly, 95% of the total isolates were found to be resistant to at least one antibiotic. A very high resistance to the drugs cephalothin (95.3%), ampicillin (38.3%), tetracycline (8.8%), gentamicin (8.2%), ciprofloxacin (4.2%), cefoperazone (4%), and sulfamethoxazole (1.5%) was observed within isolates from all four sampling sites. Percentages of AMR and MDR was consistently very high in the summer and fall months, whereas it was observed to be lowest in the winter. A remarkably high number of the isolates were detected to be MDR—95% resistant to ≥1 antibiotic, 43% resistant to ≥2 antibiotics, 15% resistant to ≥3 antibiotics, 4.9% resistant to ≥4 antibiotic and 1.2% resistant to ≥5 antibiotics. This data will serve in better understanding the environmental occurrence and dissemination of AMR/MDR in the area and assist in improving and establishing control measures

Exploring University-Community Collaborations

The Riverside neighborhood bears multiple burdens of environmental harm. Running the gamut from groundwater contamination in subsurface waters to lead in soils and dust and paint to particulate matter in the air from highways and industry, these environmental insults harm the physical, mental, and economic well-being of the community. The community has also faced an information gap where data was scarce, hard to locate, and sometimes wrong. Activists have long worked to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood, but faced barriers in the form of policies (e.g. Red Lining, zoning variances, disinvestment in public services such as street lights and sidewalks) and practices (e.g. absentee landlords, illegal dumping). Features such as the Central Canal that were developed into recreational amenities in other parts of the city were minimally maintained or restricted from use by residents. In the face of these challenges, IUPUI faculty, students, and community members have partnered on multiple projects to document the history of environmental harms, assess exposure and risk of residents’ exposomes, and share information in ways that are accessible and relevant for residents. The work supports the agency and activism of the community, particularly as it faces pressures of gentrification and university encroachment with the prospect of 16 Tech project expansion. The work also takes place in the context of contested interests and harmful legacies as representatives of an urban university that displaced longtime residents work to partner ethically and transparently with those same communities. As a result, current faculty-community collaborations operate within a space complicated by the problematic legacy of harm and ongoing structural racism. However well-intentioned, faculty, students and community members have to navigate that history and enduring power dynamics as they design their research, identify relevant questions, and share results in ways that are accessible and meaningful to community members