Creating Neighborhood in Postwar Buffalo, New York: Transformations of the West Side, 1950-1980

This project reconsiders post-World War II neighborhood change by examining how various groups in Buffalo, New York conceptualized, experienced and produced the West Side as a cultural and economic artifact between 1950 and 1980. This approach offers an alternative to conceptualizing neighborhoods as bounded, natural entities and it encourages narratives that complicate the prevailing metaphor of decline in rust belt cities by illuminating other components of postwar neighborhood change than population loss and economic disinvestment. This project uses neighborhood retail as a lens through which to examine how city planners, the West Side Business Men\u27s Club, the Federation of Italian American Societies and individual storeowners reproduced the neighborhood at multiple scales through city planning, local marketing, Columbus Day celebrations, and personal decisions. As the logics of those practices changed alongside shifting social and economic contexts in the depopulating, deindustrializing city, these social agents negotiated the West Side as both a tangible place and an abstract imaginary. While the place-based City and businessmen\u27s club promoted the area as a commercial destination, individual storeowners connected West Side stores to businesses networks that extended across the city. At the same time, the Federation recast the West Side as the old neighborhood, and a launching point for Italian American upward mobility in the region. The first three chapters concentrate on retail patterns at different scales of neighborhood production. The first chapter examines commercial areas of the West Side as sites of city planning intervention, the second chapter considers how the local business organization constructed the Grant-Ferry area as a defined entity through marketing and events, and the third chapter uses the stories of three individual business owners to show how the singular place images of the first two chapters belies personal experience of the same shopping area on the ground. The final chapter shifts to the Federation of Italian American Societies\u27 production of a regional Italian identity that casted the West Side as a place of the past, echoing the sentiments of former West Siders who identified the Grant-Ferry area as an idealized but bygone center of community. Each chapter of the project highlights the Grant-Ferry area as a critical component of neighborhood identity for groups engaging the West Side\u27s the past, present, and future as they responded to citywide and regional transformations. Together, these chapters suggest the importance of understanding neighborhood commercial areas as social and economic resources that stakeholders at multiple scales engage and transform simultaneously during periods of neighborhood change. This project contributes to a growing literature that interrogates the production of neighborhoods as emergent, ongoing processes. Getting beyond the container view of neighborhood reconnects postwar neighborhood change to broader urban development processes by illuminating scalar interconnections that remain obscured in those studies. This study interprets conceptualizations and uses of the West Side by examining how the groups and individuals framed neighborhood identity in planning documents, newspaper reports, maps, city directories, and interviews. Each point of view invoked the neighborhood through different temporal and functional associations, and implicated a different audience of neighborhood identity. This study suggests that using this approach, scholars of urban history and urban studies can better understand American neighborhoods as products of the same forces and contexts that produced other postwar landscapes rather than as sites or survivors of postwar urban decline. This project is also relevant to contemporary neighborhood revitalization efforts on the West Side of Buffalo because it suggests that the rediscovery narrative accompanying new investment is problematic in the same ways as the decline narrative commonly used to frame the last three decades; each explanation centers on a limited cast of stakeholders and severs the historical continuity of the processes that define places

Neighbourhood deprivation and access to early intervention and support for families of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Ensuring families of children with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (e.g., developmental delay, intellectual disability, autism) can access early intervention and support is important. Current research indicates there are family-level socioeconomic disparities of access to early intervention and support, however, there is limited evidence on the relationship between neighbourhood-level socioeconomic deprivation and access to support. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between neighbourhood deprivation and families' access to and unmet need for early intervention and support. We collected cross-sectional data using a survey of 673 parental caregivers of young children with suspected or diagnosed intellectual and/or developmental disabilities in the UK. Multiple regression models were fitted for three early intervention and support outcome variables: access to early intervention; access to services across education, health, social care, and other sectors; and unmet need for services. Each regression model included a neighbourhood deprivation variable based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation and five control variables: family-level economic deprivation, country, caregivers' educational level, developmental disability diagnosis, and informal support sources. Neighbourhood deprivation was a significant independent predictor of access to services, but neighbourhood deprivation was not a significant predictor of access to early intervention or unmet need for services. Families living in the most deprived neighbourhoods accessed fewer services than other families. Socioeconomic disparities of access to early intervention and support, at both a neighbourhood and family level, exist for families of young children with suspected or diagnosed intellectual and/or developmental disabilities in the UK. Future research should focus on policy and other interventions aimed at addressing socioeconomic disparities at the neighbourhood and family level, to ensure equitable access to early intervention and support

Neighbourhood deprivation and access to early intervention and support for families of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Ensuring families of children with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (e.g., developmental delay, intellectual disability, autism) can access early intervention and support is important. Current research indicates there are family‐level socioeconomic disparities of access to early intervention and support, however, there is limited evidence on the relationship between neighbourhood‐level socioeconomic deprivation and access to support. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between neighbourhood deprivation and families' access to and unmet need for early intervention and support. We collected cross‐sectional data using a survey of 673 parental caregivers of young children with suspected or diagnosed intellectual and/or developmental disabilities in the UK. Multiple regression models were fitted for three early intervention and support outcome variables: access to early intervention; access to services across education, health, social care, and other sectors; and unmet need for services. Each regression model included a neighbourhood deprivation variable based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation and five control variables: family‐level economic deprivation, country, caregivers' educational level, developmental disability diagnosis, and informal support sources. Neighbourhood deprivation was a significant independent predictor of access to services, but neighbourhood deprivation was not a significant predictor of access to early intervention or unmet need for services. Families living in the most deprived neighbourhoods accessed fewer services than other families. Socioeconomic disparities of access to early intervention and support, at both a neighbourhood and family level, exist for families of young children with suspected or diagnosed intellectual and/or developmental disabilities in the UK. Future research should focus on policy and other interventions aimed at addressing socioeconomic disparities at the neighbourhood and family level, to ensure equitable access to early intervention and support

FinTech Project B21 - Customer Cross Reference UI

Our team’s project was completed in collaboration with a large financial investment firm. We worked with a software development team in the workplace investing sector on two projects. First, we worked on revising the user interface of an ID cross referencing tool to condense the features, make it more user friendly, and update the user interface to the Angular framework–the current company application standard. Then, we created a similar Angular-based user interface design for a brand new cache refreshing tool. Our work will assist in the company’s efforts of moving its internal tools onto the cloud and the Angular framework so they can more easily be updated. Throughout our project, we utilized an Agile Kanban Methodology to organize our team

A digital intervention to support childhood cognition after the COVID-19 pandemic: a pilot trial

Abstract Difficulties in executive functioning (EF) can result in impulsivity, forgetfulness, and inattention. Children living in remote/regional communities are particularly at risk of impairment in these cognitive skills due to reduced educational engagement and poorer access to interventions. This vulnerability has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and strategies are needed to mitigate long-term negative impacts on EF. Here we propose a pilot trial investigating the benefits, feasibility, and acceptability of a school-based EF intervention for primary school students (6–8 years) living in regional, developmentally vulnerable, and socio-economically disadvantaged communities. Students were randomised to a digital intervention or teaching as usual, for 7 weeks. Children completed measures of EF and parents/educators completed ratings of everyday EF and social/emotional wellbeing at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 3-month follow-up. Change in EFs (primary outcome), everyday EF, and social/emotional wellbeing (secondary outcomes) from pre- to post-intervention and pre-intervention to 3-month follow-up were examined. Feasibility and acceptability of the intervention was assessed through educator feedback and intervention adherence. Protocol Registration: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 20 April 2023. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WT3S2 . The approved Stage 1 protocol is available here: https://osf.io/kzfwn

The Herschel-SPIRE Legacy Survey (HSLS): the scientific goals of a shallow and wide submillimeter imaging survey with SPIRE

A large sub-mm survey with Herschel will enable many exciting science opportunities, especially in an era of wide-field optical and radio surveys and high resolution cosmic microwave background experiments. The Herschel-SPIRE Legacy Survey (HSLS), will lead to imaging data over 4000 sq. degrees at 250, 350, and 500 micron. Major Goals of HSLS are: (a) produce a catalog of 2.5 to 3 million galaxies down to 26, 27 and 33 mJy (50% completeness; 5 sigma confusion noise) at 250, 350 and 500 micron, respectively, in the southern hemisphere (3000 sq. degrees) and in an equatorial strip (1000 sq. degrees), areas which have extensive multi-wavelength coverage and are easily accessible from ALMA. Two thirds of the of the sources are expected to be at z > 1, one third at z > 2 and about a 1000 at z > 5. (b) Remove point source confusion in secondary anisotropy studies with Planck and ground-based CMB data. (c) Find at least 1200 strongly lensed bright sub-mm sources leading to a 2% test of general relativity. (d) Identify 200 proto-cluster regions at z of 2 and perform an unbiased study of the environmental dependence of star formation. (e) Perform an unbiased survey for star formation and dust at high Galactic latitude and make a census of debris disks and dust around AGB stars and white dwarfs

The Herschel-SPIRE Legacy Survey (HSLS): the scientific goals of a shallow and wide submillimeter imaging survey with SPIRE

White paper supplement to the proposal submitted by the HSLS science team to ESA for Herschel open-time programsA large sub-mm survey with Herschel will enable many exciting science opportunities, especially in an era of wide-field optical and radio surveys and high resolution cosmic microwave background experiments. The Herschel-SPIRE Legacy Survey (HSLS), will lead to imaging data over 4000 sq. degrees at 250, 350, and 500 micron. Major Goals of HSLS are: (a) produce a catalog of 2.5 to 3 million galaxies down to 26, 27 and 33 mJy (50% completeness; 5 sigma confusion noise) at 250, 350 and 500 micron, respectively, in the southern hemisphere (3000 sq. degrees) and in an equatorial strip (1000 sq. degrees), areas which have extensive multi-wavelength coverage and are easily accessible from ALMA. Two thirds of the of the sources are expected to be at z > 1, one third at z > 2 and about a 1000 at z > 5. (b) Remove point source confusion in secondary anisotropy studies with Planck and ground-based CMB data. (c) Find at least 1200 strongly lensed bright sub-mm sources leading to a 2% test of general relativity. (d) Identify 200 proto-cluster regions at z of 2 and perform an unbiased study of the environmental dependence of star formation. (e) Perform an unbiased survey for star formation and dust at high Galactic latitude and make a census of debris disks and dust around AGB stars and white dwarfs