Buffalo\u27s Demolition Strategy

Buffalo, New York is one of many U.S. cities that experienced an extreme decline in population since the mid-twentieth century. Migration out of the city has been crippling, the population declining by nearly 50 percent from 1950 to 2000. Many people left the city for the surrounding suburbs, an area that experienced a 50 percent increase in population over this same period. Now, Buffalo faces the challenge of an outdated infrastructure that is much too large for its 21st Century needs. Mass exodus has left the city ravaged with vacant and abandoned properties that deter investment, foster crime, and significantly lower property values, continuing the cyclical decay on the city. Ending this crisis is a necessary part of reviving The Queen City

The Role of Cultural Models of Self-Worth in Vicarious Experiences of Wrongdoing

This research sought to understand why people from different cultures respond in fundamentally different ways to their own ingroup transgressions. We predicted that in face cultures, where self-worth is defined by one's reputation, ingroup transgressions would elicit vicarious shame and withdrawal tendencies, especially in public; in dignity cultures, however, where self-worth does not depend on reputation and justice is a focal concern, ingroup transgressions would elicit vicarious guilt and reparative behavior. In Study 1, participants responded to hypothetical ingroup transgressions. In Study 2, sorority and fraternity members recalled a time when a group member committed a wrongdoing. In Study 3, we simulated a real ingroup offense in the lab. We found partial support for our hypotheses in Study 1; face predicted distancing behavior, mediated by image-threat appraisals and shame, but only in public. The results in Studies 2 and 3 were less clear, and suggest evidence for motivated distortion

Importance of complete assessment in the work-up of late onset mania

A female, age 78, with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), history of major depression, and hypothyroidism presents for mood and anxiety concerns. Her mood is depressed, and sleep, appetite, energy, and concentration are poor. She recently saw a geriatric psychiatrist and described no past manic episodes, psychotic symptoms, or family history for bipolar disorder. No one has concerns about her cognition. She began levothyroxine 150 mcg 3 weeks ago for newly diagnosed hypothyroidism. On exam, she is talkative, overinclusive, has almost pressured speech, labile mood, and lid lag. Neuropsychology testing, CBC, and CMP are normal. TSH is 0.173. She is diagnosed with GAD exacerbated by hyperthyroidism due to over-replaced thyroid hormone causing a hypomanic syndrome. Possibly she was hyperthyroid prior to burnout and recent hypothyroid state, explaining the temporality of her manic symptoms. She reports feeling better at follow-up after medication adjustment. Late-onset mania is a (hypo)manic syndrome in a person 50 or older without a previous history of mania3. 5-10% of patients are 50+ years when they experience their first manic episode of bipolar disorder2. However, (hypo)manic syndromes can also be due to vascular etiology, dementia, medications, renal failure, and thyroid derangement. One study reports a 2.8% prevalence of organic cause of mania in those \u3e65 compared to 1.2% prevalence in those Almeida, O. P., & Fenner, S. (2002). Bipolar disorder: similarities and differences between patients with illness onset before and after 65 years of age. International psychogeriatrics, 14(3), 311–322. Arnold, I., Dehning, J., Grunze, A., & Hausmann, A. (2021). Old Age Bipolar Disorder-Epidemiology, Aetiology and Treatment. Medicina, 57(6), 587. Sami, M., Khan, H., & Nilforooshan, R. (2015). Late onset mania as an organic syndrome: A review of case reports in the literature. Journal of affective disorders, 188, 226–231.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/emet_posters/1036/thumbnail.jp

Health information systems: international lessons

At present Ireland lacks really effective and usable health information systems. The priorities listed in the draft ‘Information for Action’ report cannot be realised within the constraints of the existing systems. Our health information systems are not people centred; they do not facilitate assessment of quality; they make measurement of equity very hard; they do not support an adequate level of democratic or political accountability. The current systems lack credibility with health service staff, at least partly because they seldom see any results from them. There is no adequate system for analysis of and reporting on most of the current Irish health information systems. Despite these problems, components of our systems work well, and produce data of high quality. The Irish Cancer registry provides accurate, timely reports on cancer incidence in Ireland. The National Disease surveillance Centre does excellent work on the collection analysis and dissemination of infectious disease data. The quality of the data collected in the HIPE system by ESRI, and in the Vital Statistics system by the CSO are good. The national disability register works well. It is imperative that the existing systems are not broken in the attempt to bring in new systems. There are many different models in Europe and elsewhere of working health information systems. We would particularly suggest that elements of the systems used in New Zealand, Finland, Scotland and Canada could provide models for further development in Ireland. Specifically, New Zealand has a working model of an e-health Internet; Finland has a good model of a registry based system; Canada has a working model of systems using and analysing health data. Scotland has a very interesting system, with very close integration with primary care. This is a weakness of the Canadian, and especially the Finnish systems. Devising a system based on the best elements of these systems would produce a very powerful tool indeed. It is also worth noting that such a system might lead to substantial opportunities for Irish IT companies here and abroad

Life as the End of Life: Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, and Secular Aesthetics

PhDThis thesis elucidates the relationship between the emergence of literary aestheticism and ambiguities in the status and meaning of religious doubt in late Victorian Britain. Aestheticism has often been understood as a branch of a larger, epochal crisis of religious faith: a creed of ‘art-for-art’s-sake’ and a cult of beauty are thought to have emerged to occupy the vacuum created by the departure of God, or at least by the attenuation of traditional forms of belief. However, the model of secularisation implicit in this account is now often challenged by historians, sociologists, and literary critics, and it fails to capture what was at stake in Swinburne and Pater’s efforts to reconceptualise aesthetic experience. I suggest affinities between their shared insistence that art be understood as an independent, disinterested realm, a creed beyond creeds, and secularisation understood as the emptying of religion from political and social spheres. Secondly, I analyse how Swinburne and Pater use the apparently neutral space created by their relegation of religion to imagine the secular in far more radical terms than conventional Victorian models of religious doubt allowed. Their varieties of aestheticism often posit secularism not as a disillusioning effect of modern rationality but as a primordial enchantment with the sensuous and earthly, prior to a ‘fall’ into religious transcendence. I explore their tendency to identify this ideal of the secular with aesthetic value, as well as the paradoxes produced by their efforts to efface the distinctions between the religious and the aesthetic. My argument proceeds through close readings that reveal how the logic of aestheticism grows out of Swinburne’s and Pater’s efforts to challenge and refashion the models of religious doubt and secularism established by a previous generation of Victorian writers – Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, and Alfred Tennyson – and situates this shared revisionary impulse within larger debates surrounding the idea of secularisation.Westfield Trust scholarship from Queen Mary, and an Overseas Research Student Award

Skid Row: Mitigating Los Angeles' Infamous Human Crisis

Emergency-level societal health risks are imminent for all of LA County as tens of thousands of its current residents are either housing-insecure or chronically homeless—a demographic which has increased by 28% in LA County in just the past year. Local governments’ ambitious steps to increase the supply of affordable housing is unlikely to significantly offset the rising homeless count, as citizens are falling into homelessness faster than housing is capable of sustainably increasing to meet the need. In this memo, historical and current federal, state, and local mitigation efforts are analyzed and contrasted with alternative policy solutions in order to produce an original policy recommendation. The result is a recommendation for the Garcetti Administration to support a California Affordable Opportunity Act (CAOA), to be passed through the California State legislature, which would codify local California governments’ right to incentivize economic emigration by expanding their Continuum of Care services to include emigration assistance for eligible residents who are at-risk of, or currently experiencing, homelessness. LA County’s tens of thousands of severely mentally ill, substance-addicted, and disabled homeless residents will not be effectively cared for as intended until its work-capable and low-income residents who have been priced out of the housing market pursue economic opportunity elsewhere, rather than fall into or remain in local homelessness, absorbing finite government resources intended to mitigate the crisis. Such economic opportunities exists currently in the regions of the U.S. offering livable minimum-wages and acceptable housing conditions, which Continuum of Care case workers should be assisting eligible applicants to obtain through programs such as the proposed American Opportunity Loan (AOL) program. In conclusion, California Continuums of Care are incomplete without programs designed to incentivize the movement of low-income workers away from unaffordable, impacted housing areas attributed to as the leading cause of homelessness, toward economic opportunity elsewhere, and LA County should be the first to implement an AOL program

Linking child travel routes and routine health data

ABSTRACT Objectives Linking routinely collected health and environment data can allow for large scale evaluations of how our environment impacts our health. Our data linkage approach advances previous research where residence-based environmental exposures were anonymously linked in the SAIL databank using Residential Anonymous Linking Fields (RALFs). The dose-response relationship between exposure to food and dietary intake has not been widely investigated. Previous research found conflicting views on whether increased environmental exposure to unhealthy food contributes to higher BMIs. This may have been due to different methodological approaches, including imprecise exposures, small numbers, and the use of self-reported BMIs. Approach This investigation calculated food exposure environments for routes from all homes to and from school. A Geographic Information System was used to calculate the environmental exposures along all potential routes up to a maximum age-appropriate walking distance from each school. Once within the SAIL databank we selected relevant routes using linked demographic and pupil datasets. To maintain privacy, the primary (doctoral) researcher generating the environmental exposures, did not have access to the final household-level exposure data in their identifiable form. The researcher automated their method so a second researcher could run the GIS analysis. Accuracy of modelled exposures will be compared with actual routes collected from GPS traces of children walking to school. Results Removing access to the final identifiable household-level route exposures enabled the primary researcher to complete analysis on the combined household and individual-level data within the secure environment. The environmental exposures were linked with routine health data from the SAIL databank; including BMI as an indicator of obesity. BMI data for 4-5 year olds, and a sample of 1300 13-14 year olds were linked to associated environmental exposures. Conclusion Depending on modelled accuracy, a GIS and data linkage approach may allow the investigation of natural experiments and intervention evaluation at the scale of the total population. This is the first step towards anonymously modelling part of the daily exposure environment using routine data. A limitation is the lack of routinely collected BMI data for older children and teenagers an age when they are more likely to have the option to choose to buy food on the school route. This work will have many potential applications, including the delivery and evaluation of multiple school and workplace commuting interventions