Essays on Discrimination and Spatial Inequality

The Effects of Federal “Redlining” Maps: a Novel Estimation Strategy, with Disa M. Hynsjö Redlining, the systematic denial of credit to residents of a community, is often cited by activists and policymakers as one cause of enduring urban inequality. It is widely understood that the federal government started redlining in the 1930s. Government maps, identifying disadvantaged neighborhoods with the color red, have become a symbol of institutional discrimination. However, historians have disputed the ultimate influence of such maps on access to credit, and evidence of any causal economic impacts is scarce due to a lack of data and estimation challenges. This paper investigates the causal effects of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps and the neighborhood grades they assigned to summarize lending risk in the second half of the 1930s. In particular, we estimate the effects of different grades on homeownership rates, property values and shares of African-Americans between 1940 and 2010. In their time, the HOLC maps were a data analytics tool at the forefront of real estate appraisal techniques that soon became influential in the housing market at large. Our study illustrates how institutional practices can coordinate individual choices and amplify their discriminatory consequences. To measure the short and long-term effects of the HOLC mapping intervention, we propose a new estimation strategy. Spatial discontinuity designs, often used in the literature on this topic, suffer from endogeneity concerns: multiple authors documented socioeconomic differences on opposite sides of boundaries traced by the agency, indicating that the HOLC did not assign border locations and grades randomly. Instead, we exploit an exogenous population threshold that determined which cities were mapped and a machine learning algorithm drawing HOLC maps in control cities. Using the grades predicted by the machine learning model, we apply a grouped difference-in-differences design to measure the causal effects of the HOLC intervention. The causal effects are identified by differences between neighborhoods in treated cities and areas in control cities that would have received the same grade, but were not mapped. This empirical strategy is possible thanks to a new spatial dataset we constructed geocoding full-count Census records between 1910 and 1940. In addition, geographic coordinates let us join tract-level Census data for 1960-2010 and CoreLogic real property data to measure long-term outcomes. We find a substantial reduction in property prices and a 2.4 percentage points decrease in homeownership rates in the lowest grade (red) areas in the short term. For this same grade, the HOLC maps caused a 1.6 percentage points increase in the local share of African-American residents in 1940. We also find a sizable house value reduction in the second to last grade (yellow) areas, showing that the causal impacts were not confined to red areas. Such negative effects for property prices persisted until the early 1980s, shortly after the federal government introduced legislative measures to counteract redlining. The Long Term Effects of Exposure to Non-Traditional Family Structures. Single-mother households have become common in the US over the past fifty years. Economists, sociologists, and psychologists have documented that children from single-headed families have lower intergenerational mobility because of a lack of resources and the type of parenting they receive. However, little is known about the effects of children from single-mother families on their school peers. Taking advantage of the Add Health panel data structure, I estimate the effect of this feature of the adolescents’ social environment on educational achievement and long-run labor market outcomes. My identification strategy is based on cohort-to-cohort variation in the percentage of children without a father figure within a school. The preliminary estimates indicate that exposure to peers with a higher rate of father absence does not have much of an effect on education, employment, or wages

El racionalismo y la espacialidad urbana : Rupturas epistemológicas en el marco del debate modernidad-posmodernidad

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en intentar establecer una aproximación a las nuevas corrientes dentro de la Geografía y el Urbanismo, en el marco del actual debate modernidad-posmodernidad. Denominamos “nuevas corrientes” a aquellas epistemes que postulan una reafirmación de la espacialidad de la vida social, desde un enfoque dialéctico de la relación sociedad-espacio; en oposición a lo que podría denominarse un enfoque “tradicional”, en el que el espacio es concebido como un “despliegue” de otras relaciones sociales. Aun cuando estos enfoques “tradicionales” contienen un fuerte componente crítico -como podría ser el caso de las posturas “antiespacialistas”, cuyo principal referente en América Latina es J. L. Coraggio, las nuevas corrientes se constituyen, al decir de H. Torres, como una “crítica de la crítica”. No es nuestro propósito hacer una historia de las distintas corrientes ni establecer comparaciones entre las corrientes “nuevas” y las “tradicionales”, sino tratar de comprender en qué medida estas posturas, más o menos recientes en el campo de la ciencia, actúan a modo de ruptura frente a ciertos paradigmas vigentes.Facultad de Periodismo y Comunicación Socia

El racionalismo y la espacialidad urbana : Rupturas epistemológicas en el marco del debate modernidad-posmodernidad

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en intentar establecer una aproximación a las nuevas corrientes dentro de la Geografía y el Urbanismo, en el marco del actual debate modernidad-posmodernidad. Denominamos “nuevas corrientes” a aquellas epistemes que postulan una reafirmación de la espacialidad de la vida social, desde un enfoque dialéctico de la relación sociedad-espacio; en oposición a lo que podría denominarse un enfoque “tradicional”, en el que el espacio es concebido como un “despliegue” de otras relaciones sociales. Aun cuando estos enfoques “tradicionales” contienen un fuerte componente crítico -como podría ser el caso de las posturas “antiespacialistas”, cuyo principal referente en América Latina es J. L. Coraggio, las nuevas corrientes se constituyen, al decir de H. Torres, como una “crítica de la crítica”. No es nuestro propósito hacer una historia de las distintas corrientes ni establecer comparaciones entre las corrientes “nuevas” y las “tradicionales”, sino tratar de comprender en qué medida estas posturas, más o menos recientes en el campo de la ciencia, actúan a modo de ruptura frente a ciertos paradigmas vigentes.Facultad de Periodismo y Comunicación Socia

La relación sociedad-espacio y el debate modernidad-posmodernidad

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en intentar establecer una aproximación a las nuevas corrientes dentro de la Geografía y el Urbanismo, en el marco del actual debate modernidad-posmodernidad. Denominamos "nuevas corrientes" a aquellas epistemes que postulan una reafirmación de la espacialidad de la vida social, desde un enfoque dialéctico de la relación sociedad-espacio; en oposición a lo que podría denominarse un enfoque "tradicional", en el que el espacio es concebido como un "despliegue" de otras relaciones sociales. Aun cuando estos enfoques "tradicionales" contienen un fuerte componente crítico -como podría ser el caso de las posturas "antiespacialistas", cuyo principal referente en América Latina es J. L. Coraggio, las nuevas corrientes se constituyen, al decir de H.Torres, como una "crítica de la crítica". No es nuestro propósito hacer una historia de las distintas corrientes ni establecer comparaciones entre las corrientes "nuevas" y las "tradicionales", sino tratar de comprender en qué medida estas posturas, más o menos recientes en el campo de la ciencia, actúan a modo de ruptura frente a ciertos paradigmas vigentes. El punto de partida para nuestro trabajo está dado por una hipótesis y dos supuestos. La hipótesis sostiene que los nuevos enfoques dentro de la teoría espacial significan una ruptura frente la concepción racionalista del espacio y que, como tales, se inscriben en las tendencias producidas por el giro antirracionalista que tiene lugar en el marco del pensamiento posmoderno. Los supuestos que subyacen a esta idea se articulan en torno a la identidad establecida entre modernidad y racionalidad. Hablamos de "supuestos" en tanto en el marco de este trabajo son establecidos simplemente como enunciados descriptivos. Por un lado, partimos de la idea de que el espacio, tal como fuera concebido por los geógrafos a mediados del siglo XIX, lleva inscripta una fuerte presencia racionalista; en segundo lugar aparece la idea que esa racionalidad es coherente y funcional a la expansión capitalista y sus necesidades de control social.Evento también conocido bajo el nombre de "II Jornadas Platenses de Geografía"Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Dental Malocclusion and Body Posture in Young Subjects: A Multiple Regression Study

OBJECTIVES: Controversial results have been reported on potential correlations between the stomatognathic system and body posture. We investigated whether malocclusal traits correlate with body posture alterations in young subjects to determine possible clinical applications. METHODS: A total of 122 subjects, including 86 males and 36 females (age range of 10.8-16.3 years), were enrolled. All subjects tested negative for temporomandibular disorders or other conditions affecting the stomatognathic systems, except malocclusion. A dental occlusion assessment included phase of dentition, molar class, overjet, overbite, anterior and posterior crossbite, scissorbite, mandibular crowding and dental midline deviation. In addition, body posture was recorded through static posturography using a vertical force platform. Recordings were performed under two conditions, namely, i) mandibular rest position (RP) and ii) dental intercuspidal position (ICP). Posturographic parameters included the projected sway area and velocity and the antero-posterior and right-left load differences. Multiple regression models were run for both recording conditions to evaluate associations between each malocclusal trait and posturographic parameters. RESULTS: All of the posturographic parameters had large variability and were very similar between the two recording conditions. Moreover, a limited number of weakly significant correlations were observed, mainly for overbite and dentition phase, when using multivariate models. CONCLUSION: Our current findings, particularly with regard to the use of posturography as a diagnostic aid for subjects affected by dental malocclusion, do not support existence of clinically relevant correlations between malocclusal traits and body postur

The cell nuclei of skeletal muscle cells are transcriptionally active in hibernating edible dormice

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Skeletal muscle is able to react in a rapid, dynamic way to metabolic and mechanical stimuli. In particular, exposure to either prolonged starvation or disuse results in muscle atrophy. At variance, in hibernating animals muscle atrophy may be scarce or absent after bouts of hibernation i.e., periods of prolonged (months) inactivity and food deprivation, and muscle function is fully preserved at arousal. In this study, myocytes from the quadriceps muscle of euthermic and hibernating edible dormice were investigated by a combination of morphological, morphometrical and immunocytochemical analyses at the light and electron microscopy level. The focus was on cell nuclei and mitochondria, which are highly sensitive markers of changing metabolic rate.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Findings presented herein demonstrate that: 1) the general histology of the muscle, inclusive of muscle fibre shape and size, and the ratio of fast and slow fibre types are not affected by hibernation; 2) the fine structure of cytoplasmic and nuclear constituents is similar in euthermia and hibernation but for lipid droplets, which accumulate during lethargy; 3) during hibernation, mitochondria are larger in size with longer cristae, and 4) myonuclei maintain the same amount and distribution of transcripts and transcription factors as in euthermia.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In this study we demonstrate that skeletal muscle cells of the hibernating edible dormouse maintain their structural and functional integrity in full, even after months in the nest. A twofold explanation for that is envisaged: 1) the maintenance, during hibernation, of low-rate nuclear and mitochondrial activity counterbalancing myofibre wasting, 2) the intensive muscle stimulation (shivering) during periodic arousals in the nest, which would mimic physical exercise. These two factors would prevent muscle atrophy usually occurring in mammals after prolonged starvation and/or inactivity as a consequence of prevailing catabolism. Understanding the mechanisms responsible for skeletal muscle preservation in hibernators could pave the way to prevention and treatment of muscle wasting associated with pathological conditions or ageing as well as life in extreme environments, such as ocean deeps or spaceflights.</p

Biofilms formed by Candida albicans bloodstream isolates display phenotypic and transcriptional heterogeneity that are associated with resistance and pathogenicity

Background: Candida albicans infections have become increasingly recognised as being biofilm related. Recent studies have shown that there is a relationship between biofilm formation and poor clinical outcomes in patients infected with biofilm proficient strains. Here we have investigated a panel of clinical isolates in an attempt to evaluate their phenotypic and transcriptional properties in an attempt to differentiate and define levels of biofilm formation.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Results: Biofilm formation was shown to be heterogeneous; with isolates being defined as either high or low biofilm formers (LBF and HBF) based on different biomass quantification. These categories could also be differentiated using a cell surface hydrophobicity assay with 24 h biofilms. HBF isolates were more resistance to amphotericin B (AMB) treatment than LBF, but not voriconazole (VRZ). In a Galleria mellonella model of infection HBF mortality was significantly increased in comparison to LBF. Histological analysis of the HBF showed hyphal elements intertwined indicative of the biofilm phenotype. Transcriptional analysis of 23 genes implicated in biofilm formation showed no significant differential expression profiles between LBF and HBF, except for Cdr1 at 4 and 24 h. Cluster analysis showed similar patterns of expression for different functional classes of genes, though correlation analysis of the 4 h biofilms with overall biomass at 24 h showed that 7 genes were correlated with high levels of biofilm, including Als3, Eap1, Cph1, Sap5, Plb1, Cdr1 and Zap1.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Conclusions: Our findings show that biofilm formation is variable amongst C. albicans isolates, and categorising isolates depending on this can be used to predict how pathogenic the isolate will behave clinically. We have shown that looking at individual genes in less informative than looking at multiple genes when trying to categorise isolates at LBF or HBF. These findings are important when developing biofilm-specific diagnostics as these could be used to predict how best to treat patients infected with C. albicans. Further studies are required to evaluate this clinically.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt

Proyecto de investigación : La concepción del mapa y el proceso cartográfico

El presente trabajo tiene por objeto aportar algunos elementos técnicos y metodológicos para la elaboración de diferentes documentos cartográficos. Se trata del uso combinado de dos herramientas; una teórico-conceptual y otra técnico-metodológica: "los tres momentos de la gráfica" y "los doce pasos del proceso cartográfico", conjuntamente con algunos elementos que son resultado de experiencias recientes en elaboración de cartografía temática y realización de análisis fotogramétrico. El caso presentado corresponde a la elaboración de una carta de usos del suelo. Corresponde efectuar, en primera instancia, un breve repaso de los principales componentes de estos aportes metodológicos. Los tres momentos de la gráfica refieren a tres instancias que sirven de guía para el desarrollo del proceso que abarca desde la concepción del mapa hasta la comunicación de los resultados. Constituyen uno de los productos que resultan del trabajo de Jacques Bertin al frente del Laboratorio de Gráfica de la Escuela de Estudios Superiores de Ciencias Sociales de París. Dice Bertin: "La gráfica moderna es la IMAGEN TRANSFORMABLE Y RECLASIFICABLE que las técnicas elementales ponen a disposición de todos. Es la herramienta de trabajo elaborada con precisión que permite, al que toma decisiones "descubrir lo que debe decir".Evento también conocido bajo el nombre de "II Jornadas Platenses de Geografía"Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Ley provincial de Acceso Justo al Hábitat: un estudio sobre su implementación en los municipios del sur del GBA

El presente constituye un informe de avance de un proyecto de investigación-acción actualmente en curso que se lleva adelante desde el año 2016 y que se propone investigar el estado de implementación de los distintos instrumentos y herramientas que contempla la Ley provincial N° 14.449 de Acceso Justo al Hábitat en el conurbano de la provincia de Buenos Aires, con foco en los Municipio de Lanús y Lomas de Zamora, y elaborar un diagnóstico de las dificultades, obstáculos y desafíos existentes en su ejecución que sirva como insumo para mejorar la gestión y la planificación de las intervenciones en curso y de otras nuevas. A su vez, pretende estudiar el grado de conocimiento que existe sobre la Ley por parte de los órganos provinciales y municipales responsables de su aplicación así como por los destinatarios y personas afectadas por el déficit habitacional existente en la provincia de Buenos Aires y las acciones de difusión y capacitación emprendidas a tal efecto.Eje Territorio y Organizaciones-GT7: La producción de ciudad en la Argentina de hoy: actores, políticas, tensiones y conflictos en el acceso al suelo y la vivienda urbana.Facultad de Trabajo Socia

Molecular Identification and Echinocandin Susceptibility of Candida parapsilosis Complex Bloodstream Isolates in Italy, 2007–2014

The Candida parapsilosis group encompasses three species: C. parapsilosis, C. orthopsilosis, and C. metapsilosis. Here, we describe the incidence and echinocandin susceptibility profile of bloodstream isolates of these three species collected from patients admitted to an Italian university hospital from 2007 to 2014. Molecular identification of cryptic species of the C. parapsilosis complex was performed using polymerase chain reaction amplification of the gene encoding secondary alcohol dehydrogenase, followed by digestion with the restriction enzyme BanI. Minimum inhibitory concentrations were determined using the broth microdilution method according to European Committee for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST EDef 7.2) and Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI M27-A3) guidelines, and the results were compared with those obtained using the E-test and Sensititre methods. Of the 163 C. parapsilosis complex isolates, 136 (83.4%) were identified as C. parapsilosis, and 27 (16.6%) as C. orthopsilosis. The species-specific incidences were 2.9/10,000 admissions for C. parapsilosis and 0.6/10,000 admissions for C. orthopsilosis. No resistance to echinocandins was detected with any of the methods. The percent essential agreement (EA) between the EUCAST and E-test/Sensititre methods for anidulafungin, caspofungin, and micafungin susceptibility was, respectively, as follows: C. parapsilosis, 95.6/97.8, 98.5/88.2, and 93.4/96.3; C. orthopsilosis, 92.6/92.6, 96.3/77.8, and 63.0/66.7. The EA between the CLSI and E-test/Sensititre methods was, respectively, as follows: C. parapsilosis, 99.3/100, 98.5/89.0, and 96.3/98.5; C. orthopsilosis, 96.3/92.6, 100/81.5, and 92.6/88.9. Only minor discrepancies, ranging from 16.9% (C. parapsilosis) to 11.1% (C. orthopsilosis), were observed between the CLSI and E-test/Sensititre methods. In conclusion, this epidemiologic study shows a typical C. parapsilosis complex species distribution, no echinocandin resistance, and it reinforces the relevance of using commercially available microbiological methods to assess antifungal susceptibility. These data improve our knowledge of the national distribution of species of the psilosis group, as there are very few studies of these species in Ital