Post-Pandemic Urbanism: Criteria for a New Normal

Globalization, tourism, virtuality, climate change, and the explosive growth of cities have generated a wide range of stressors, pollutants, and toxins that have been ravaging populations. This, coupled with viral, bacterial, and other pandemics, is rapidly creating a new reality that requires public health factors to be integrated more thoroughly into the planning and design of city regions. This prompts a questioning of the role and form of city centers as well as the distribution of people and activities in city regions. This goes beyond more outdoor spaces, places, and activities and new criteria for indoor events. Moreover, public transport, mobility, and infrastructure in general need to be retooled to deal with these emergent circumstances

Determinants of disaffiliation: an international study

Using a dataset of 15,000 subjects from 32 Western countries, the current study examines individuals who were raised in a certain religion and, at some stage of their lives, left it. Currently, they define their religious affiliation as ‘no religion’. A battery of explanatory variables (country-specific, personal attributes and marriage variables) was employed to test for determinants of this decision. It was found that the tendency of individuals to leave their religion—the most extreme symptom of secularization—is strongly correlated with their liberal beliefs and with parental and spousal religious characteristics. Moreover, country characteristics, as well as personal socio-demographic features seem to be much less relevant, except for the religious diversity of the country that has a positive effect on disaffiliation

Intergenerational transmission of ‘religious capital’. Evidence from Spain

This paper examines intergenerational transmission of ‘religious capital’ from parents to their offspring within an economic framework. The analytical tool is a ‘production function of religiosity’ where parental religious inputs serve as factors of production. The database used is based on a large-scale survey that was conducted in 1998 in Spain. In addition to information on the religious affiliation of the respondent and his parents, it has detailed data on two dimensions of the individual’s religious performance: church attendance and prayer. It also includes information on the mother’s and father’s church attendance when the respondent was a child, as well as the respondent’s participation in mass services at the age of 12. Socio-economic background data are also available. The core findings are: (i) parental religious inputs significantly affect individuals’ religiosity; (ii) interestingly, the route of intergenerational transmission is from mother to daughter and from father to son; and (iii) current mass participation of respondents is more affected by parental- than by own childhood mass attendance

Sulfate reduction in surface sediments of the southeast Atlantic continental margin between 15 degrees 38'S and 27 degrees 57'S (Angola and Namibia)

Sulfate reduction rates in the surface sediments from 17 stations from an along-slope transect (1,300 m) and from a cross-slope transect (855-4,766 m) were determined in the continental margin sediments of the Benguela Upwelling system. Profiles at all sites in the upwelling area showed increasing sulfate reduction rates from near zero at the surface to a peak at 2-5 cm (up to 29 nmol cm(-3) d(-1)) and then decreasing exponentially with depth to near background rates at 10-20 cm depth (<2 nmol cm(-3) d(-1)). Depth-integrated sulfate reduction rates were greatest at 1,300 m and decreased exponentially with water depth. Along the transect following the 1,300-m isobath, depth-integrated sulfate reduction rates were highest in the north Cape Basin (1.16 +/- 0.23 mmol m(-2) d(-1)), decreased over the Walvis Ridge (0.67 +/- 0.02 mmol m(-2) d(-1)), and were lowest in the south Angola Basin (0.31 +/- 0.23 mmol m(-2) d(-1)). Depth-integrated sulfate reduction rates were consistent with the known pattern of coastal upwelling intensities and were also strongly correlated with surface organic carbon concentrations. Sulfate reduction rates, both as a function of depth and in comparison with sediment trap data, indicated that lateral downslope transport of organic carbon occurs. Sulfate reduction was estimated to account for 20-90% of the published rates of total oxygen consumption for the sediments at 1,300 m depth and 3-16% of sediments from 2,000 to 3,000 m depth. Comparison of the sulfate reduction rate profiles with the published diffusive oxygen uptake rates showed that the kinetics of oxygen utilization in the surface sediments are much faster than those for anaerobic organic carbon remineralization, although the underlying cause of the difference was not clear

Comparative safety of anesthetic type for hip fracture surgery in adults: retrospective cohort study

Objective: To evaluate the effect of anesthesia type on the risk of in-hospital mortality among adults undergoing hip fracture surgery in the United States. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: Premier research database, United States. Participants: 73 284 adults undergoing hip fracture surgery on hospital day 2 or greater between 2007 and 2011. Of those, 61 554 (84.0%) received general anesthesia, 6939 (9.5%) regional anesthesia, and 4791 (6.5%) combined general and regional anesthesia. Main outcome measure In-hospital all cause mortality. Results: In-hospital deaths occurred in 1362 (2.2%) patients receiving general anesthesia, 144 (2.1%) receiving regional anesthesia, and 115 (2.4%) receiving combined anesthesia. In the multivariable adjusted analysis, when compared with general anesthesia the mortality risk did not differ significantly between regional anesthesia (risk ratio 0.93, 95% confidence interval 0.78 to 1.11) or combined anesthesia (1.00, 0.82 to 1.22). A mixed effects analysis accounting for differences between hospitals produced similar results: compared with general anesthesia the risk from regional anesthesia was 0.91 (0.75 to 1.10) and from combined anesthesia was 0.98 (0.79 to 1.21). Findings were also consistent in subgroup analyses. Conclusions: In this large nationwide sample of hospital admissions, mortality risk did not differ significantly by anesthesia type among patients undergoing hip fracture surgery. Our results suggest that if the previously posited beneficial effect of regional anesthesia on short term mortality exists, it is likely to be more modest than previously reported

Instability of Glucocorticoid Metabolites in Coyote Scats: Implications for Field Sampling

Studying physiologic stress responses can assist in understanding the welfare of animals. One method of measuring the physiologic stress response is evaluating concentrations of glucocorticoid metabolites in feces. Previously, using an adrenocorticotropic hormone challenge, we found fecal glucocorticoid metabolite levels were a reliable indicator of physiologic stress response in coyotes (Canis latrans). We determine whether glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations remain stable when collecting feces over a 2-week period, a timeframe commonly used in scat surveys for wild canids. We collected feces from 6 captive coyotes maintained at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wildlife Services, National Wildlife Research Center, Predator Research Facility near Millville, Utah, USA, and exposed them to the environment for 13 days during summer (August 26 to September 8, 2011) and winter (January 11–24, 2012). Every 2 days, we collected a sub-sample from each individual scat and then quantified the concentration of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites. We found changes in fecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations over the 13-day period, with values increasing 45–79% from day 1 to day 3 of sampling. There was also high variation in fecal glucocorticoid metabolites among individuals over time. We provide evidence that fecal samples collected in the field even 3 days after defecation will not provide reliable measures of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites and thus recommend using only fresh fecal samples. We also recommend that, due to high individual variability in fecal glucocorticoid metabolites, a large number of individuals be sampled when a population-wide assessment is desired