Fostering Participation and Capacity Building with Neighborhood Information Systems.

Applying information to decision making, monitoring neighborhood conditions, targeting resources, and recommending action have long been key urban planning functions. Increasingly, nonprofit organizations like community development corporations (CDCs) carry out these functions in distressed urban areas. Scholars in multiple disciplines argue that “data democratization”—increased access to data—would support a wide range of community change efforts. Proponents of a specific data delivery tool—neighborhood information systems (NIS)—claim that the technology can increase public participation and build capacity in distressed urban neighborhoods. This research evaluates these claims in Cleveland where the mortgage foreclosure crisis has left a glut of vacant and abandoned properties and a dire need to prioritize activities with limited resources. The research provides an integrated theoretical framework, bringing together four distinct bodies of knowledge for the first time: science and technology studies; participation, capacity, and capacity building; geographic information systems; and management information systems. The mixed-methods approach employed includes interviews with sixty community development professionals in Cleveland and a longitudinal regression analysis of thirty CDCs’ housing rehabilitation outcomes between July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2011. NIS increased the networking capacity of CDCs engaged in the city’s Code Enforcement Partnership by improving communication between partners. NIS also increased programmatic capacity, especially as measured by the percentage of CDC-owned properties sold to new owners who pay taxes on those properties. Staff in one CDC successfully leveraged NIS to improve public participation, a measure of political capacity. The findings also suggest that access to NIS does not fundamentally change CDC priorities. This research helps to fill specific gaps in multiple bodies of knowledge and features an in depth analysis of threats to validity, practical implications for decision-making with NIS, and recommendations for NIS developers and funders. Developers and funders in other cities may wish to consider their role as not just democratizing data—but providing a platform for partnerships by enabling organizations to better share data in order to achieve shared objectives.PHDUrban and Regional PlanningUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111415/1/davideps_1.pd

The inevitability of unconditionally deleterious substitutions during adaptation

Studies on the genetics of adaptation typically neglect the possibility that a deleterious mutation might fix. Nonetheless, here we show that, in many regimes, the first substitution is most often deleterious, even when fitness is expected to increase in the long term. In particular, we prove that this phenomenon occurs under weak mutation for any house-of-cards model with an equilibrium distribution. We find that the same qualitative results hold under Fisher's geometric model. We also provide a simple intuition for the surprising prevalence of unconditionally deleterious substitutions during early adaptation. Importantly, the phenomenon we describe occurs on fitness landscapes without any local maxima and is therefore distinct from "valley-crossing". Our results imply that the common practice of ignoring deleterious substitutions leads to qualitatively incorrect predictions in many regimes. Our results also have implications for the substitution process at equilibrium and for the response to a sudden decrease in population size.Comment: Corrected typos and minor errors in Supporting Informatio

Alternative Models of Dynamics in Binary Time-Series-Cross-Section Models: The Example of State Failure

This paper investigates a variety of dynamic probit models for time-series-cross-section data in the context of explaining state failure. It shows that ordinary probit, which ignores dynamics, is misleading. Alternatives that seem to produce sensible results are the transition model and a model which includes a lagged latent dependent variable. It is argued that the use of a lagged latent variable is often superior to the use of a lagged realized dependent variable. It is also shown that the latter is a special case of the transition model. The relationship between the transition model and event history methods is also considered: the transition model estimates an event history model for both values of the dependent variable, yielding estimates that are identical to those produced by the two event history models. Furthermore, one can incorporate the insights gleaned from the event history models into the transition analysis, so that researchers do not have to assume duration independence. The conclusion notes that investigations of the various models have been limited to data sets which contain long sequences of zeros; models may perform differently in data sets with shorter bursts of zeros and ones

Up-Regulated Expression of Extracellular Matrix Remodeling Genes in Phagocytically Challenged Trabecular Meshwork Cells

Cells in the trabecular meshwork (TM), the tissue responsible for draining aqueous humor out of the eye, are known to be highly phagocytic. Phagocytic function in TM cells is thought to play an important role in the normal functioning of the outflow pathway. Dysfunction of phagocytosis could lead to abnormalities of outflow resistance and increased intraocular pressure (IOP). However, the molecular mechanisms triggered by phagocytosis in TM cells are completely unknown.Gene expression profile analysis of human TM cells phagocytically challenged to E. coli or pigment under physiological and oxidative stress environment were performed using Affymetrix U133 plus 2.0 array and analyzed with Genespring GX. Despite the differential biological response elicited by E. coli and pigment particles, a number of genes, including MMP1, MMP3, TNFSF11, DIO2, KYNU, and KCCN2 showed differential expression with both phagocytic ligands in all conditions. Data was confirmed by qPCR in both human and porcine TM cells. Metacore pathway analysis and the usage of recombinant adenovirus encoding the dominant negative mutant of IkB identified NF-κB as a transcription factor mediating the up-regulation of at least MMP1 and MMP3 in TM cells with phagocytosis. In-gel zymography demonstrated increased collagenolytic and caseinolytic activities in the culture media of TM cells challenge to E. coli. In addition, collagenolytic I activity was further confirmed using the self-quenched fluorescent substrate DQ-Collagen I.Here we report for the first time the differential gene expression profile of TM cells phagocytically challenged with either E. coli or pigment. Our data indicate a potential role of phagocytosis in outflow pathway tissue homeostasis through the up-regulation and/or proteolytic activation of extracellular matrix remodeling genes

Strong partnerships make good partners: Insights about physician-hospital relationships from a study of physician executives

While physicians are likely to respond favorably in concept to hospital-based disease management and other clinical programs, they are less likely to accept their structural and functional characteristics. Because of their role at the hospital-physician interface, hospital physician executives are often tasked with implementing such programs. Given the challenges involved, a deeper understanding of the role of these executives in building the hospital-physician relationship will therefore be an important contribution. To this end, we surveyed senior physician executives at hospitals and health systems (n = 326), to assess their view of the hospital-physician relationship at their institutions, focusing especially on the role of medical staff cohesion. This article presents several of our key findings, in particular that (1) many physician executives identified their medical staff as having relatively low cohesion and (2) the perceived level of medical staff cohesion correlated strongly with the level of physician support for organizational priorities, the degree of constructive physician involvement, and success in improving the physician-hospital relationship. In light of these findings, we conclude by offering concrete recommendations for physician executives and others seeking to build medical staff cohesion in the service of clinical improvement