Re-defining transport for London’s strategic neighbourhoods from spatial and social perspectives

Neighbourhoods are fundamental spatial units to present social phenomena in urban studies. Many studies use administrative boundaries such as census tracts as representations of neighbourhoods, but such boundaries may poorly represent the underlying social structures and physical attributes which might help define more vernacular conceptions and dialectical evolution of these zones. In this paper, using the goal of creating a new set of ‘Strategic Neighbourhoods’ for Transport for London (TfL) as vehicle for analysis, we evaluate two contrasting spatially and socially focused methodologies of neighbourhood generation. In comparing the outputs of a tertiary-communities (T-Communities) method and a combined Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) cluster analysis method with an earlier iteration of Strategic Neighbourhoods defined by TfL, indices including neighbourhood size, intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), and the number of community centres are calculated to evaluate their relative performance which demonstrate that both methods create neighbourhood boundaries that can better capture intra-group social homogeneity and are more suitable for analysis than the original SNA boundaries. These results are discussed in the context of the dialectic relationship between neighbourhood outcomes, spatial structures, and social characteristics, leading to more widely relevant conclusions that neighbourhood boundary delineation should combine spatial structure, social attributes, and experimental knowledge to effectively sub-divide urban activity

Does judicial foreclosure procedure help delinquent subprime mortgage borrowers?

We conduct comprehensive analyses on whether and how the judicial foreclosure procedure helps subprime mortgage borrowers to reinstate their delinquent loans outside foreclosure liquidation. Even though the transition rates of various exit types are all higher in non-judicial states, we argue such higher rates can be mechanically driven by the faster shrinking pool of delinquent mortgages in non-judicial states over time. Based on the cumulative proportions of various exit types during a period of up to 5 years post the mortgage first become 90 days past due, we find that judicial states offer more opportunities for delinquent borrowers to reinstate their loans outside foreclosure liquidation, especially during a housing market downturn. Cures, modifications, and paid-offs were all important alternative ways to resolve serious delinquencies during 2007–2008. After modifications became widely available in 2009, loan modifications became the most important alternative for subprime borrowers to reinstate their delinquent mortgages outside foreclosure liquidation. The lion\u27s share of the judicial foreclosure benefit shows up after the start of the foreclosure process

The effects of emotion and COVID-19 context priming on the size and color of drawings: based on human figure drawings and tree drawings

IntroductionThis study aimed to investigate the effects of emotional themes and the COVID-19 pandemic context priming on the size and color of drawings.MethodsA 3 (emotion: peacefulness, gratitude, loneliness) × 2 (context: pandemic, regular) mixed design was used and 113 university students in Shanghai were recruited to draw human figures and trees using 10 marker colors.ResultsThe size of the drawings depicting loneliness was smaller than that of the those depicting peacefulness and gratitude. Drawings depicting loneliness used more cool and non-preferred colors; drawings depicting gratitude used more warm and preferred colors. Drawings in the pandemic context were larger, which may reflect the more significant threat perceived by individuals. Drawings in the pandemic context used more red colors, showing symbolic meanings such as danger.DiscussionThe drawing size and drawing color are influenced by emotional themes and the pandemic context priming

Exogenous nitric oxide stimulates early egress of Eimeria tenella sporozoites from primary chicken kidney cells in vitro

Egress plays a vital role in the life cycle of apicomplexan parasites including Eimeria tenella, which has been attracting attention from various research groups. Many recent studies have focused on early egress induced by immune molecules to develop a new method of apicomplexan parasite elimination. In this study, we investigated whether nitric oxide (NO), an immune molecule produced by different types of cells in response to cytokine stimulation, could induce early egress of eimerian sporozoites in vitro. Eimeria tenella sporozoites were extracted and cultured in primary chicken kidney cells. The number of sporozoites egressed from infected cells was analyzed by flow cytometry after treatment with NO released by sodium nitroferricyanide (II) dihydrate. The results showed that exogenous NO stimulated the rapid egress of E. tenella sporozoites from primary chicken kidney cells before replication of the parasite. We also found that egress was dependent on intra-parasitic calcium ion (Ca2+) levels and no damage occurred to host cells after egress. The virulence of egressed sporozoites was significantly lower than that of fresh sporozoites. The results of this study contribute to a novel field examining the interactions between apicomplexan parasites and their host cells, as well as that of the clearance of intracellular pathogens by the host immune system

Two-dimensional anisotropic Dirac materials PtN4C2 and Pt2N8C6 with quantum spin and valley Hall effects

We propose two novel two-dimensional topological Dirac materials, planar PtN4C2 and Pt2N8C6, which exhibit graphene-like electronic structures with linearly dispersive Dirac-cone states exactly at the Fermi level. Moreover, the Dirac cone is anisotropic, resulting in anisotropic Fermi velocities and making it possible to realize orientation-dependent quantum devices. Using the first-principles electronic structure calculations, we have systemically studied the structural, electronic, and topological properties. We find that spin-orbit coupling opens a sizable topological band gap so that the materials can be classified as quantum spin Hall insulators as well as quantum valley Hall insulators. Helical edge states that reside in the insulating band gap connecting the bulk conduction and valence bands are observed. Our work not only expands the Dirac cone material family, but also provides a new avenue to searching for more two-dimensional topological quantum spin and valley Hall insulators.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Genetic Characterization of Toxoplasma gondii from Wild Rodents in Sichuan Province, Southwestern China

Background: Wild rodents are the intermediate hosts of Toxoplasma gondii. The distribution of genetic diversity of T. gondii in wild rodents is of importance to understand the transmission of this parasite. This study aimed to genetically characterize T. gondii isolates from wild rodents in Sichuan province, southwestern China in 2013. Methods: Genomic DNA was extracted from 10 g wild rodents’ brain samples. Semi-nested PCR and multilocous PCR-RFLP technology were performed to examine genetic diversity of T. gondii isolates as described previously. Results: Overall, 181 brain tissues of different wild rodents, including Eothenomys miletus (n=88), Crocidura attenuate (n=9), Rattus rattus sladeni (n=46), Mus musculus Linnaeus (n=6) and R. niviventer (n=32) were tested for T. gondii DNA, respectively. Six of them were positive for the T. gondii B1 gene by semi-nested PCR amplification, 4 showed complete genotyping results for all 11 polymorphic loci (SAG1, SAG2, alt. SAG2, SAG3, BTUB, GRA6, L358, PK1, C22-8, C29-2 and Apico) by PCR-RFLP, determined to represent a potential new genotype (http://toxodb.org/toxo/). Conclusion: These results documented genetic characterization of T. gondii in wild rodents from Sichuan province, and enriched the genetic diversity of T. gondii in China

Epigenome-wide gene–age interaction study reveals reversed effects of MORN1 DNA methylation on survival between young and elderly oral squamous cell carcinoma patients

DNA methylation serves as a reversible and prognostic biomarker for oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) patients. It is unclear whether the effect of DNA methylation on OSCC overall survival varies with age. As a result, we performed a two-phase gene–age interaction study of OSCC prognosis on an epigenome-wide scale using the Cox proportional hazards model. We identified one CpG probe, cg11676291MORN1, whose effect was significantly modified by age (HRdiscovery = 1.018, p = 4.07 × 10−07, FDR-q = 3.67 × 10−02; HRvalidation = 1.058, p = 8.09 × 10−03; HRcombined = 1.019, p = 7.36 × 10−10). Moreover, there was an antagonistic interaction between hypomethylation of cg11676291MORN1 and age (HRinteraction = 0.284; 95% CI, 0.135–0.597; p = 9.04 × 10−04). The prognosis of OSCC patients was well discriminated by the prognostic score incorporating cg11676291MORN1–age interaction (HRhigh vs. low = 3.66, 95% CI: 2.40–5.60, p = 1.93 × 10−09). By adding 24 significant gene–age interactions using a looser criterion, we significantly improved the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of the model at 3- and 5-year prognostic prediction (AUC3-year = 0.80, AUC5-year = 0.79, C-index = 0.75). Our study identified a significant interaction between cg11676291MORN1 and age on OSCC survival, providing a potential therapeutic target for OSCC patients

Liquid-phase permethylation of diethylenetriamine using methanol over robust composite copper catalysts

Pentamethyldiethylenetriamine is a permethylated polyamine that is widely used to prepare foam polyurethane. The current technology for its synthesis relies on diethylenetriamine methylation with formaldehyde under H2. This route is selective, but the use of formaldehyde raises safety and environmental concerns. Herein we present an alternative non-toxic route using methanol as greener and cheaper methylating reagent. The reaction proceeds fast and selectively over composite copper catalysts with a pentamethyldiethylenetriamine yield of 75% and resistance to sintering

Generation of phase-only holograms with high-diffraction-order reconstruction by a U-Net-based neural network: A phase grating perspective

Implicit periodic structure in phase-only holograms will result in many diffraction orders in the diffraction field. We analyzed the diffraction pattern from a phase gratings point of view and proved that the diffraction orders were jointly influenced by the phase factor, the single-beam diffraction factor, and the multibeam interference factor. According to the analysis, we proposed the high-diffraction-order angular spectrum method (HDO-ASM) for the numerical reconstruction of high diffraction orders. Different from the conventional methods of removing high diffraction orders, we chose to reconstruct target images in high diffraction orders with HDO-ASM and a U-Net-based neural network. Finally, the 4 K phase-only holograms with high-diffraction-order reconstruction were generated in 0.09s and had a mean reconstruction quality of 34.3 dB (PSNR) in the DIV2K valid dataset. Theoretical and experimental results demonstrated that there are few speckle noises and fringes in the reconstructed images of holograms generated by the proposed method