Plenty of Bark, But Not Much Bite: Putting Teeth Back into Historic Preservation Enforcement in D.C.

Washington, D.C. has one of the largest inventories of protected historic buildings of any city in the United States. Over 25,000 structures stand within the city\u27s borders that are either individually landmarked or contributing buildings within a historic district. These buildings are covered by statutory protection designed to prevent alteration or demolition without consultation with the Office of Historic Preservation (HPO) and/or the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB). Enforcement of these protections relies on HPO\u27s inspectors. While the District currently employs two historic preservation inspectors, recent changes in the structure of HPO and other D.C. bureaucracies brought about a staff reduction in historic preservation enforcement -- hampering the city\u27s best efforts to shepherd the buildings within its charge. In the last several years the number of enforcement actions carried out by HPO has declined precipitously, reflecting inefficiencies symptomatic of the new arrangement. Without significant changes to the current mode of operation, HPO inspectors will be forced to continue enforcement triage while allowing the majority of infractions to escape without consequence. This in turn has a detrimental impact on the number of fines assessed by HPO inspectors, thereby reducing the amount of funds available for historic preservation projects. This is a policy paper, and as such, will lay out in detail the current structure and practices of the historic preservation regime in Washington D.C., analyze its strengths and weaknesses and provide recommendations for improving the process and its overall efficacy

Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Reduces Psychophysically Measured Surround Suppression in the Human Visual Cortex

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a safe, non-invasive technique for transiently modulating the balance of excitation and inhibition within the human brain. It has been reported that anodal tDCS can reduce both GABA mediated inhibition and GABA concentration within the human motor cortex. As GABA mediated inhibition is thought to be a key modulator of plasticity within the adult brain, these findings have broad implications for the future use of tDCS. It is important, therefore, to establish whether tDCS can exert similar effects within non-motor brain areas. The aim of this study was to assess whether anodal tDCS could reduce inhibitory interactions within the human visual cortex. Psychophysical measures of surround suppression were used as an index of inhibition within V1. Overlay suppression, which is thought to originate within the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), was also measured as a control. Anodal stimulation of the occipital poles significantly reduced psychophysical surround suppression, but had no effect on overlay suppression. This effect was specific to anodal stimulation as cathodal stimulation had no effect on either measure. These psychophysical results provide the first evidence for tDCS-induced reductions of intracortical inhibition within the human visual cortex