The shrinking city school: following trajectories of shrinkage across three decades of an urban school desert

Late on the evening of January 12th, 2021, the Saint Louis Public Schools (SLPS) Board voted to close seven of its schools and transition one of its high schools to a middle school (Clancy, 2021). Sweeping closures are not a new phenomenon for the residents of St. Louis. Just in the last three decades, SLPS has closed 54 buildings, reducing its sites by 67 percent. What we understand about urban school closure, like those occurring in the city of St. Louis, encompasses official justifications for closure, the history and terms of the policies supporting or driving closure, and the actions taken by school districts as they enact closure. This study joins two spatial concepts, shrinkage and school deserts, through Doreeen Massey's relational politics of the spatial (2008) to explore a) the trajectories of shrinkage (out-migration, economic shifts, and housing) which require negotiation by the Saint Louis Public Schools and b) the resultant uneven distribution of educational access and academic pathways for St. Louis students. Through the creation of a Geographic Information Systems database this study utilizes descriptive statistics as produced from two spatial modeling tools in ARCGIS, each model established a layer which was combined to produce a final GIS database. Two key findings surfaced from this series of analysis. The first is that the variables of shrinkage are not randomly distributed across the St. Louis Metropolitan Area but in fact clustered. The second is a school desert patterning which suggests a) residents of south city, select west and north counties have greater access to a local public school while residents of north city have lost many of their local public schools since the year 2000 and b) a consequential relationship where a block group which shares boundaries with a flourishing school oasis is more likely to be a struggling school desert.Includes bibliographical references

Randomised controlled trial of the clinical and cost effectiveness of a specialist team for managing refractory unipolar depressive disorder

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Around 40 per cent of patients with unipolar depressive disorder who are treated in secondary care mental health services do not respond to first or second line treatments for depression. Such patients have 20 times the suicide rate of the general population and treatment response becomes harder to achieve and sustain the longer they remain depressed. Despite this there are no randomised controlled trials of community based service delivery interventions delivering both algorithm based pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy for patients with chronic depressive disorder in secondary care mental health services who remain moderately or severely depressed after six months treatment. Without such trials evidence based guidelines on services for such patients cannot be derived.</p> <p>Methods/design</p> <p>Single blind individually randomised controlled trial of a specialist depression disorder team (psychiatrist and psychotherapist jointly assessing and providing algorithm based drug and psychological treatment) versus usual secondary care treatment. We will recruit 174 patients with unipolar depressive disorder in secondary mental health services with a Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) score ≥ 16 and global assessment of function (GAF) ≤ 60 after ≥ 6 months treatment. The primary outcome measures will be the HDRS and GAF supplemented by economic analysis incuding the EQ5 D and analysis of barriers to care, implementation and the process of care. Audits to benchmark both treatment arms against national standards of care will aid the interpretation of the results of the study.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>This trial will be the first to assess the effectiveness and implementation of a community based specialist depression disorder team. The study has been specially designed as part of the CLAHRC Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire joint collaboration between university, health and social care organisations to provide information of direct relevance to decisions on commissioning, service provision and implementation.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>Clinical trials.gov identifier NCT01047124</p

The First High Redshift Quasar from Pan-STARRS

We present the discovery of the first high redshift (z > 5.7) quasar from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 (Pan-STARRS1 or PS1). This quasar was initially detected as an i dropoutout in PS1, confirmed photometrically with the SAO Widefield InfraRed Camera (SWIRC) at Arizona's Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) and the Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND) at the MPG 2.2 m telescope in La Silla. The quasar was verified spectroscopically with the the MMT Spectrograph, Red Channel and the Cassegrain Twin Spectrograph (TWIN) at the Calar Alto 3.5 m telescope. It has a redshift of 5.73, an AB z magnitude of 19.4, a luminosity of 3.8 x 10^47 erg/s and a black hole mass of 6.9 x 10^9 solar masses. It is a Broad Absorption Line quasar with a prominent Ly-beta peak and a very blue continuum spectrum. This quasar is the first result from the PS1 high redshift quasar search that is projected to discover more than a hundred i dropout quasars, and could potentially find more than 10 z dropout (z > 6.8) quasars.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

The membrane mucin MUC4 is elevated in breast tumor lymph node metastases relative to matched primary tumors and confers aggressive properties to breast cancer cells

Abstract Introduction Previous studies indicate that overexpression of the membrane-associated mucin MUC4 is potently anti-adhesive to cultured tumor cells, and suppresses cellular apoptotic response to a variety of insults. Such observations raise the possibility that MUC4 expression could contribute to tumor progression or metastasis, but the potential involvement of MUC4 in breast cancer has not been rigorously assessed. The present study aimed to investigate the expression of the membrane mucin MUC4 in normal breast tissue, primary breast tumors and lymph node metastases, and to evaluate the role of MUC4 in promoting the malignant properties of breast tumor cells. Methods MUC4 expression levels in patient-matched normal and tumor breast tissue was initially examined by immunoblotting lysates of fresh frozen tissue samples with a highly specific preparation of anti-MUC4 monoclonal antibody 1G8. Immunohistochemical analysis was then carried out using tissue microarrays encompassing patient-matched normal breast tissue and primary tumors, and patient-matched lymph node metastases and primary tumors. Finally, shRNA-mediated knockdown was employed to assess the contribution of MUC4 to the cellular growth and malignancy properties of JIMT-1 breast cancer cells. Results Immunoblotting and immunohistochemistry revealed that MUC4 levels are suppressed in the majority (58%, p &lt; 0.001) of primary tumors relative to patient-matched normal tissue. On the other hand, lymph node metastatic lesions from 37% (p &lt; 0.05) of patients expressed higher MUC4 protein levels than patient-matched primary tumors. MUC4-positive tumor emboli were often found in lymphovascular spaces of lymph node metastatic lesions. shRNA-mediated MUC4 knockdown compromised the migration, proliferation and anoikis resistance of JIMT-1 cells, strongly suggesting that MUC4 expression actively contributes to cellular properties associated with breast tumor metastasis. Conclusions Our observations suggest that after an initial loss of MUC4 levels during the transition of normal breast tissue to primary tumor, the re-establishment of elevated MUC4 levels confers an advantage to metastasizing breast tumor cells by promoting the acquisition of cellular properties associated with malignancy

Large-scale serum protein biomarker discovery in Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Serum biomarkers in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) may provide deeper insights into disease pathogenesis, suggest new therapeutic approaches, serve as acute read-outs of drug effects, and be useful as surrogate outcome measures to predict later clinical benefit. In this study a large-scale biomarker discovery was performed on serum samples from patients with DMD and age-matched healthy volunteers using a modified aptamer-based proteomics technology. Levels of 1,125 proteins were quantified in serum samples from two independent DMD cohorts: cohort 1 (The Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy-Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center), 42 patients with DMD and 28 age-matched normal volunteers; and cohort 2 (The Cooperative International Neuromuscular Research Group, Duchenne Natural History Study), 51 patients with DMD and 17 age-matched normal volunteers. Forty-four proteins showed significant differences that were consistent in both cohorts when comparing DMD patients and healthy volunteers at a 1% false-discovery rate, a large number of significant protein changes for such a small study. These biomarkers can be classified by known cellular processes and by age-dependent changes in protein concentration. Our findings demonstrate both the utility of this unbiased biomarker discovery approach and suggest potential new diagnostic and therapeutic avenues for ameliorating the burden of DMD and, we hope, other rare and devastating diseases

Functional anonymisation: Personal data and the data environment

Anonymisation of personal data has a long history stemming from the expansion of the types of data products routinely provided by National Statistical Institutes. Variants on anonymisation have received serious criticism reinforced by much-publicised apparent failures. We argue that both the operators of such schemes and their critics have become confused by being overly focused on the properties of the data themselves. We claim that, far from being able to determine whether data are anonymous (and therefore non-personal) by looking at the data alone, any anonymisation technique worthy of the name must take account of not only the data but also their environment. This paper proposes an alternative formulation called functional anonymisation that focuses on the relationship between the data and the environment within which the data exist (their data environment). We provide a formulation for describing the relationship between the data and their environment that links the legal notion of personal data with the statistical notion of disclosure control. Anonymisation, properly conceived and effectively conducted, can be a critical part of the toolkit of the privacy-respecting data controller and the wider remit of providing accurate and usable data

What are we eating? Consumer information requirement within a workplace canteen

The workplace is a captive environment where the overall contribution of the meal served could be an important element of the overall diet. Despite growing demand little information is available to aid healthy dish selection. This study identifies information valued by consumers in the UK, Greece, Denmark and France using best-worst scaling. Value for Money, Nutrition and Naturalness are key elements of information that consumers require to be able to make a conscious decision about dish selection in all four countries. Latent class analysis shows that consumers align to one of five cluster groups, i.e., Value Driven, Conventionalists, Socially Responsible, Health Conscious and Locavores. Understanding key information needs can allow food operators to align their service with consumer preferences across different market segments