Does residential context matter? Neighborhood migrant concentration and citizenship acquisition in the Netherlands

Published online: 12 December 2022Existing studies analyzing the relation between immigrants’ residential environment and their propensity to naturalize produce contradictory findings. These results are difficult to interpret, as studies typically do not measure residential characteristics at a sufficiently fine-grained scale to test hypotheses about social networks and naturalization, do not model the data’s multi-level structure appropriately, and do not account for selection into the residential environment. To address these shortcomings, this article draws on longitudinal micro-data from administrative registers at the neighborhood level in the Netherlands (approximately 1300 residents per neighborhood). We employ a stratified Cox proportional hazard model with shared frailty and inverse probability of treatment weighting to reduce bias due to self-selection into neighborhoods and draw on proxies of social networks in such areas. Our analyses provide support for the ‘migrant enclosure hypothesis,’ as we find that greater migrant concentration in the neighborhood is associated with lower naturalization rates and largely driven by the density of migrant social networks in those residential areas. In the Dutch context, this negative effect of migrant enclosure is especially prevalent among the large, long-settled migrant communities from Morocco and Turkey. We also find support for the ‘naturalization diffusion hypothesis’ and observe that the negative naturalization effect of residing in neighborhoods with higher levels of migrant concentration is offset by the presence of immigrants who have completed the naturalization procedure. Together, these findings reveal a nuanced picture that contrasts with de-contextualized cost-benefit theories of immigrant naturalization and highlights the relevance of the local context of immigrant settlement

In situ reduction of charge noise in GaAs/AlGaAs Schottky-gated devices

We show that an insulated electrostatic gate can be used to strongly suppress ubiquitous background charge noise in Schottky-gated GaAs/AlGaAs devices. Via a 2-D self-consistent simulation of the conduction band profile we show that this observation can be explained by reduced leakage of electrons from the Schottky gates into the semiconductor through the Schottky barrier, consistent with the effect of "bias cooling". Upon noise reduction, the noise power spectrum generally changes from Lorentzian to $1/f$ type. By comparing wafers with different Al content, we exclude that DX centers play a dominant role in the charge noise.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

The hard X-ray and Ti-44 emission of Cas A

We present an analysis of the BeppoSAX high X-ray energy spectrum of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A with an observation time of 83 ks. We measure a flux upper limit of 4.1E-5 ph/cm^2/s (99.7% confidence) of the nuclear decay lines of Ti-44 at 68 keV and 78 keV that is lower and inconsistent with the flux of an accompanying line at 1157 keV measured by CGRO's Comptel. However, if the underlying X-ray continuum is lower, because the spectrum is steepening, the actual Ti-44 flux may be higher and consistent with the Comptel result, although the measured flux of (2.9 +/- 1.0)E-5 ph/cm^2/s under this assumption is still lower than the flux measured by Comptel.Comment: ; JVs present address: AIP, Potsdam ([email protected]). To be published in Advances of Space Research (proc. of the Cospar Conference, Nagoya, 1998). 6 pages, 3 figure

Inhibition of insulin- and insulin-like growth factor-I-stimulated growth of human breast cancer cells by 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 and the vitamin D3 analogue EB1089

1, 25 Dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25-(OH)2D3) and a number of synthetic vitamin D3 analogues with low calcaemic activity, have been shown to inhibit breast cancer cell growth in vitro as well as in vivo. The purpose of the present study was to investigate a possible interaction of 1, 25-(OH)2D3 and the vitamin D3 analogue EB1089 with the insulin-IGF-I regulatory system. The oestrogen receptor-positive MCF-7 human breast cancer cells used in this study are able to grow autonomously and their growth is stimulated by insulin. In order to avoid interference of IGF-binding proteins (IGF-BPs), we used an analogue of IGF-I, long R3 IGF-I, which stimulated MCF-7 cell growth similar to insulin. The growth stimulation by insulin and by long R3 IGF-I was completely inhibited by 1,25-(OH)2D3 and EB1089. Autonomous growth was also inhibited by 1,25-(OH)2D3 and EB1089. The analogue EB1089 was active at 50 times lower concentrations than 1,25-(OH)2D3. It was shown that growth inhibition was not achieved through downregulation of insulin and IGF-I binding after 48 h. Paradoxically, after prolonged treatment (8 days), an upregulation of insulin and IGF-I binding was observed. Two possible intracellular mediators of the insulin-IGF mitogenic signal are C-FOS and mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase. Insulin-induced C-FOS mRNA was inhibited by 1,25-(OH)2D3, suggesting that it could be involved in the growth inhibition by 1,25-(OH)2D3. MAP kinase activation appeared not to be involved in growth stimulation by both insulin and IGF-I. Together, the present study demonstrates that vitamin D3 compounds can block the mitogenic activity of insulin and IGF-I, which may contribute to their tumour suppressive activity observed in vivo. Copyrigh

Development and evaluation of digital twins for district-level heating energy demand simulation.

To achieve the aim of a CO2 neutral built environment in 2050, a large part of the existing housing stock will have to be energetically retrofitted. It has been noted that a neighbourhood-oriented approach will be necessary for the feasibility, affordability and timeliness of this aim. Considering that many different stakeholders are involved in renovations at the neighbourhood level, and that multiple neighbourhoods will have to be retrofitted at the same time, efficient working methods are imperative. To facilitate the design, construction and operation of the new energy infrastructure, a prototype for a digital environment (digital twin) is developed for four Dutch pilot neighbourhoods. In this contribution, the authors will describe a procedure to convert publicly available geo-information to a CityGML model, which is used to simulate the monthly and annual space heating energy demand using SimStadt. To assess model fidelity, the simulation results are compared with publicly available aggregated energy use data. A procedure will be described to split the measured natural gas use into gas usage for space heating, domestic hot water and cooking. It is found that the simulation tends to overestimate the energy demand for space heating by 4 - 125%. This difference is largely explained by the manner in which the thermal properties of the buildings are estimated. In addition, the homogeneity of the neighbourhood in terms of the different building functions present has an impact on the accuracy of the simulation. Finally, possible invalid assumptions concerning setpoint temperatures and internal heating loads are of interest. It is concluded that more accurate simulation results will be obtained through the use of current input data. Most importantly: (i) reliable information on the buildings’ current thermal properties through e.g. energy audits, and (ii) reliable information on the buildings’ setpoint temperatures and internal heating loads through on-board monitoring systems