The Struggle over Parcel C: How Boston’s Chinatown Won a Victory in the Fight Against Institutional Expansionism and Environmental Racism

For the last fifty years, Boston’s Chinatown has been a shrinking community. Squeezed in by highways on two sides, its land is being gradually consumed by two medical institutions, Tufts University Medical School and New England Medical Center. During the last few decades, these two medical institutions have swallowed up nearly one third of the land in Boston’s Chinatown. Despite this, both medical institutions want more. In its latest attempt at institutional expansion, New England Medical Center made an offer to the City of Boston in early 1993 to acquire a small plot of land in Chinatown called Parcel C, for the purposes of building an eight-story, four hundred and fifty-five car garage on Parcel C. No one could have foreseen what came next—an astonishing outcry and level of protest. Almost immediately, the Chinatown community launched a fierce protest against New England Medical Center’s attempt to buy Parcel C. Literally thousands in this small community came out in opposition against the hospital’s proposed garage

Malmquist Indices of Pre and Post-Deregulation Productivity, Efficiency and Technological Change in the Singaporean Banking Sector

By the end of the 1990s, the Singaporean government had recognised the need to open up its banking sector so as to remain competitive in the global economy. The Monetary Authority of Singapore thus began deregulation of the banking sector in 1999 to strengthening the competitiveness of local banks relative to their foreign competition through mergers. This paper employs a nonparametric Malmquist productivity index to provide measure of productivity, technological change and efficiency gains over the period 1995-2005. The findings reveal some total factor productivity growth associated with deregulation and scale efficiency improvement largely from mergers amongst the local banks.Efficiency, productivity; deregulation; Malmquist indices; banking

Dispersion pattern and sampling plan for Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) in a citrus orchard

The ecology of the psyllid and its spatial distribution as the basis for the development of a reliable sampling plan are very important. The abundance and spatial distribution of Diaphorina citri (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) were studied in a commercial citrus orchard in southwestern Sarawak, Malaysia from April 2013 to December 2014. The spatial distribution of D. citri eggs, nymphs and adults were analysed using Taylor’s power law and Iwao’s patchiness regression. Taylor’s power law fitted the data better and produced higher values of R2 than Iwao’s regression model but did not work well with the egg populations. Based on both regression models, the field dispersion patterns of D. citri eggs, nymphs and adults were aggregated among flush shoots in individual trees as indicated by the regression slopes that were significantly >1. By homogeneity tests on both regression methods, the slopes of Taylor’s power law and Iwao’s regression model did not differ significantly for the D. citri population on honey tangerine for both years. The minimum number of flush shoots per tree required for estimates of D. citri densities varied from 2, 4 and 6 flush shoots for adults, nymphs and eggs, respectively, for the average density of each developmental stage obtained during our studies. Prediction suggested that a sampling plan consisting of 10 trees with the optimum number of six flush shoots per tree was required for a reasonably accurate density estimation of the three life stages of D. citri acceptable enough for population studies and pest management program in citrus orchards

Explicit bounds for the Riemann zeta-function on the 1-line

Explicit estimates for the Riemann zeta-function on the $1$-line are derived using various methods, in particular van der Corput lemmas of high order and a theorem of Borel and Carath\'{e}odory.Comment: 32 page

CAPIR: Collaborative Action Planning with Intention Recognition

We apply decision theoretic techniques to construct non-player characters that are able to assist a human player in collaborative games. The method is based on solving Markov decision processes, which can be difficult when the game state is described by many variables. To scale to more complex games, the method allows decomposition of a game task into subtasks, each of which can be modelled by a Markov decision process. Intention recognition is used to infer the subtask that the human is currently performing, allowing the helper to assist the human in performing the correct task. Experiments show that the method can be effective, giving near-human level performance in helping a human in a collaborative game.Comment: 6 pages, accepted for presentation at AIIDE'1

Distribution patterns of Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) eggs, nymphs and adults in a Malaysian citrus orchard

Spatial distribution of eggs, nymphs and adults of Diaphorina citri (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) was studied in a commercial orchard in SW Sarawak, Malaysia, using mean–variance test, the index of dispersion, and the negative binomial distribution. To further ascertain and confirm the distribution pattern in the population of the psyllid, dispersion indices (index of mean crowding, Lloyd’s index of patchiness, Taylor’s power law and Iwao’s patchiness regression) were calculated. Measurable tests showed that distribution of eggs and nymphs in naturally occurring psyllid populations was highly aggregated, resulting from initially aggregated migration of adults and a contagious dispersion of them on flushes as the population density increased of metals in the present study can be used as suitable reference for future studies

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Positive Youth Development Program for Secondary Students in Macau

A well-tested comprehensive Chinese positive youth development program (Project P.A.T.H.S.) developed in Hong Kong has been modified and adapted for use in Macau. This program aims to help adolescent school children develop positively and to be better prepared for their future. The present study investigated the effectiveness of the Tier 1 Program of “P.A.T.H.S.” for Secondary 2 students of two pilot schools. Since there were “repeating” and “transferring” students joining the program, the effectiveness of the program on these particular groups of participants was also examined. The subjective outcome evaluations including participants' perceptions of the program, program instructors, benefits from the program, and overall satisfaction were positive. Although the longitudinal data from the objective outcome evaluation did not show any notable improvement, the overall effect of the program was found to be positive to the new comers in the junior secondary years. The existing evaluation findings suggest that the Secondary 2 program is especially effective to those newly joining the program. In view of the paucity of youth studies in Macau, the present study can contribute to evidence-based youth work and provide baseline data for the program to be evaluated in the Secondary 3 periods in the future

Calpain mediates epithelial cell microvillar effacement by enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli

A member of the attaching and effacing (AE) family of pathogens, enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) induces dramatic changes to the intestinal cell cytoskeleton, including effacement of microvilli. Effacement by the related pathogen enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) requires the activity of the Ca(+2)-dependent host protease, calpain, which participates in a variety of cellular processes, including cell adhesion and motility. We found that EHEC infection results in an increase in epithelial (CaCo-2a) cell calpain activity and that EHEC-induced microvillar effacement was blocked by ectopic expression of calpastatin, an endogenous calpain inhibitor, or by pretreatment of intestinal cells with a cell-penetrating version of calpastatin. In addition, ezrin, a known calpain substrate that links the plasma membrane to axial actin filaments in microvilli, was cleaved in a calpain-dependent manner during EHEC infection and lost from its normal locale within microvilli. Calpain may be a central conduit through which EHEC and other AE pathogens induce enterocyte cytoskeletal remodeling and exert their pathogenic effects

Incidence and spread of huanglongbing (HLB) or citrus greening disease in relation to the distribution and fluctuation of Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) population in a citrus orchard in Sarawak, Malaysia

Diaphorina citri Kuwayama is a very prolific and most efficient vector for the fast huanglonbing (HLB) transmission which has destroyed nearly all citrus orchards with the economic deficit of RM 6.5 million or USD 1.6 million in Malaysia. D. citri coupled with HLB is therefore the greatest obstacle to the financial development of a sustainable and viable citrus industry in Malaysia. The study was aimed to evaluate the spread of HLB disease vectored by D. citri in relation to its spatial distribution and flight activity in response to flush cycles in a healthy orchard. Four types of yellow traps used to monitor for flight activity of this disease vector were evaluated monthly between June 2011 and December 2012. Both vector populations and HLB disease symptoms were monitored regularly between 2011 and 2014. A molecular diagnostic technique, Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedures was used to confirm the presence of the bacterium in diseased trees. D. citri adult populations expanded exponentially amid durations of cyclic production of new flush growths. The highest number of adult D. citri was captured by Rebel brown-yellow traps followed by Bamboo pole and yellow sticky traps with significant differences during the rainy months with monthly rainfall between 581-919 mm from October 2011 to March 2012 while higher catches were obtained by Bamboo pole traps during the dry months with monthly rainfall from 374-458 mm between May – September 2012. Yellow traps provided an indication of adult abundance and flight activity. It took about 21 months for D. citri population to spread all over the entire citrus garden. Rates of HLB transmission were related to high vector populations and spread was related to dispersing adults. Levels of HLB infected trees as determined by PCR increased progressively from 2.4% to 19.3% and 42.2% within four years after planting. The activity of infective D. citri is the key to HLB disease spread in a citrus orchard

Effect of horticultural mineral oil on Huanglongbing transmission by Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) population in a commercial citrus orchard in Sarawak, Malaysia, Northern Borneo

Diaphorina citri Kuwayama transmits a destructive citrus disease caused by a fastidious bacterium ‘Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus’ (CLas) designated as Huanglongbing (HLB) which posed a risk of detrimental threat to the Malaysian citrus industry. All D. citri life stages show a lumped habit on young flushes and its population fluctuations was closely related to accessibility of young flushes. The study aimed to investigate if the appearance of young flush shoots on citrus influences ACP population fluctuation and if horticultural mineral oil (HMO) could reduce spread of HLB transmission by ACP in a commercial healthy orchard. Field research was carried out from 1 April 2011 to 1 December 2014 in a 2-year-old 1 ha citrus farm that consisted of 200 PCR-certified disease-free grafted non-bearing honey tangerine (Citrus reticulata L.) in southwestern Sarawak, Malaysia. The experiment had two treatments namely control (unsprayed) and nC24 HMO with four replications arranged in a simple randomized block design. ACP eggs, nymphs, and adults per flush shoot was assessed and HLB incidence was monitored for visual inspection of the citrus trees for the current existence of usual signs of characteristic symptoms of HLB such as yellowing shoots, leaf mottling, and corky or enlarged veins on leaves. HLB-specific primer was employed in 16S rDNA polymerase chain reaction to detect the CLas gene in diseased trees. Increase in abundance of D. citri is mainly affected by the citrus flushing cycles and their life stages are completed on these flush shoots. Relative degree of aggregation index for D. citri adults increased during periods of cyclic production of new flush. HMO-treated plots produced a significantly lower percentage up to 11.43% of diseased trees against 42.20% in untreated control plots. HMO is effective against D. citri and recommended to be incorporated in the IPM program to prevent infection and reduce the spread of HLB