Rise of the Renter Nation: Solutions to the Housing Affordability Crisis

Private homeownership cannot serve as our only model for decent, stable housing. While the most recent speculative bubble raised the proportion of homeowners nationwide to 70 percent of all households, this gain was an illusion that vanished as the market collapsed. A longer view reveals that for three decades before the bubble began in the mid-1990s, homeownership rates hovered around 64 percent, despite massive federal and market support. Further, the historic average obscures important and severe racial disparities in homeownership rates, which have never exceeded 50 percent for black and Latino populations. Yet, policy and even much of the progressive analysis of the housing crisis seem incapable of acknowledging -- much less acting on -- these realities. The result is a national dialogue about the housing crisis that all but ignores the growing renter class, where the crisis is concentrated, and retains a myopic focus on private ownership. The following report is a reality check. It attempts to redirect the conversation and provide an agenda for genuine housing security for all

Safety and in vivo immune assessment of escalating doses of oral laquinimod in patients with RRMS

Background Laquinimod is an oral immunomodulator in clinical development to treat relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). Laquinimod is in clinical development for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and Huntington Disease (HD). The objective of this study is to assess the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics (PK) and cytoimmunologic effects following escalating doses of laquinimod in patients with RRMS. Methods One hundred twelve patients were randomly assigned to laquinimod/placebo in a series of separate dose- escalating cohorts starting from a daily oral dose of 0.9 mg/1.2 mg escalating to 2.7 mg, in 0.3 mg increments. Results Twenty-eight patients received placebo and 84 received laquinimod ranging from 0.9 to 2.7 mg. No deaths occurred. One serious adverse event (SAE) of perichondritis was reported, which was unrelated to laquinimod (0.9 mg). There was no increased incidence of adverse events (AEs) with escalating doses. Laquinimod-treated patients showed more abnormal laboratory levels in liver enzymes, P-amylase, C-reactive protein (CRP), and fibrinogen, but most shifts were clinically non- significant. The exposure of laquinimod was dose proportional and linear in the tested dose range. An immunological substudy showed significant dose- dependent decreases in 6-sulpho LacNAc + dendritic cell (slanDC) frequency following laquinimod compared to placebo. Conclusion Laquinimod doses up to 2.7 mg were safely administered to patients with RRMS. An in vivo effect of laquinimod on the innate immune system was demonstrated. Trial registration EudraCT Number: 2009-011234-99. Registered 23 June 2009

Housing Justice in Unequal Cities

Housing Justice in Unequal Cities is a global research network funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS 1758774) and housed at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. This open-access volume, co-edited by Ananya Roy and Hilary Malson, brings together movement-based and university-based scholars to build a shared field of inquiry focused on housing justice. Based on a convening that took place in Los Angeles in January 2019, at the LA Community Action Network and at the University of California, Los Angeles, the essays and interventions situate housing justice in the long struggle for freedom on stolen land. Embedded in the stark inequalities of Los Angeles, our work is necessarily global, connecting the city’s Skid Row to the indebted and evicted in Spain and Greece, to black women’s resistance in Brazil, to the rights asserted by squatters in India and South Africa. Learning from radical social movements, we argue that housing justice also requires a commitment to research justice. With this in mind, our effort to build a field of inquiry is also necessarily an endeavor to build epistemologies and methodologies that are accountable to communities that are on the frontlines of banishment and displacement

Genome-wide computational analysis reveals cardiomyocyte-specific transcriptional cis-regulatory motifs that enable efficient cardiac gene therapy

Gene therapy is a promising emerging therapeutic modality for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and hereditary diseases that afflict the heart. Hence, there is a need to develop robust cardiac-specific expression modules that allow for stable expression of the gene of interest in cardiomyocytes. We therefore explored a new approach based on a genome-wide bioinformatics strategy that revealed novel cardiac-specific cis-acting regulatory modules (CS-CRMs). These transcriptional modules contained evolutionary-conserved clusters of putative transcription factor binding sites that correspond to a "molecular signature" associated with robust gene expression in the heart. We then validated these CS-CRMs in vivo using an adeno-associated viral vector serotype 9 that drives a reporter gene from a quintessential cardiac-specific a-myosin heavy chain promoter. Most de novo designed CS-CRMs resulted in a > 10-fold increase in cardiac gene - expression. The most robust CRMs enhanced cardiac-specific transcription 70- to 100-fold. Expression was sustained and restricted to cardiomyocytes. We then combined the most potent CS-CRM4 with a synthetic heart and muscle-specific promoter (SPc5-12) and obtained a significant 20-fold increase in cardiac gene expression compared to the cytomegalovirus promoter. This study underscores the potential of rational vector design to improve the robustness of cardiac gene therapy

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Complete vertebrate mitogenomes reveal widespread repeats and gene duplications

Abstract: Background: Modern sequencing technologies should make the assembly of the relatively small mitochondrial genomes an easy undertaking. However, few tools exist that address mitochondrial assembly directly. Results: As part of the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) we develop mitoVGP, a fully automated pipeline for similarity-based identification of mitochondrial reads and de novo assembly of mitochondrial genomes that incorporates both long (> 10 kbp, PacBio or Nanopore) and short (100–300 bp, Illumina) reads. Our pipeline leads to successful complete mitogenome assemblies of 100 vertebrate species of the VGP. We observe that tissue type and library size selection have considerable impact on mitogenome sequencing and assembly. Comparing our assemblies to purportedly complete reference mitogenomes based on short-read sequencing, we identify errors, missing sequences, and incomplete genes in those references, particularly in repetitive regions. Our assemblies also identify novel gene region duplications. The presence of repeats and duplications in over half of the species herein assembled indicates that their occurrence is a principle of mitochondrial structure rather than an exception, shedding new light on mitochondrial genome evolution and organization. Conclusions: Our results indicate that even in the “simple” case of vertebrate mitogenomes the completeness of many currently available reference sequences can be further improved, and caution should be exercised before claiming the complete assembly of a mitogenome, particularly from short reads alone

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Policing Development: Urban Renewal as Neo-liberal Security Strategy

This paper examines the evolution of policing in the townships of Cape Town in the context of a neo-liberalising city. Policing is situated in relation to the shifting meaning of security, the city's emphasis on economic growth and attempts to develop the townships through a law-enforcement-driven urban renewal process. Research conducted in the city suggests that current approaches to urban renewal risk exacerbating social instability by reproducing aggressive forms of policing associated with the apartheid era. Further, as crime is framed as a security threat because of the danger it is thought to pose to market-led growth, urban governance in the townships increasingly takes on the character of a containment strategy. Current security ideology and policing practice create an expanding law enforcement web in which millions of poor residents are caught annually and which appears to undermine the very developmental goals used to justify its expansion.

Introduction: Locating right to the city in the Global South

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