The Politics of Race and Class and the Changing Spatial Fortunes of the McCarren Pool in Brooklyn, New York, 1936-2010

This paper explores the changing spatial properties of the McCarren Pool and connects them to the politics of race and class. The pool was a large liberal government project that sought to improve the leisure time of working class Brooklynites and between 1936 and the early 1970s it was a quasi-public functional space. In the 1970s and the early 1980s, the pool became a quasi-public dysfunctional space because the city government reduced its maintenance and staffing levels. Working class whites of the area engaged into neighborhood defense in order to prevent the influx of Latinos and African Americans into parts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint and this included the environs of the McCarren Pool. The pool was shut down in 1983 because of a mechanical failure. Its restoration did not take place because residents and storekeepers near the vicinity of the pool complained that by the 1970s, it was only African Americans and Latinos who patronized the pool and that their presence in the neighborhood undermined white exclusivity. For two decades, the McCarren Pool became a multi-use alternative space frequented by homeless people, graffiti artists, heroin users, teenagers, and drug dealers. Unlike previous decades, during this period, people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds frequented the pool area in a relatively harmonious manner. In the early part of the twenty-first century, a neoliberal city administration allowed a corporation to organize music concerts in the pool premises and promised to restore the facility into an operable swimming pool. The problem with this restoration project is that the history of the pool between the early 1970s and the early 2000s is downplayed and this does not serve well former or future users of the poo

Recurrent Chromosome 16p13.1 Duplications Are a Risk Factor for Aortic Dissections

Chromosomal deletions or reciprocal duplications of the 16p13.1 region have been implicated in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, epilepsies, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this study, we investigated the association of recurrent genomic copy number variants (CNVs) with thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections (TAAD). By using SNP arrays to screen and comparative genomic hybridization microarrays to validate, we identified 16p13.1 duplications in 8 out of 765 patients of European descent with adult-onset TAAD compared with 4 of 4,569 controls matched for ethnicity (P = 5.0×10−5, OR = 12.2). The findings were replicated in an independent cohort of 467 patients of European descent with TAAD (P = 0.005, OR = 14.7). Patients with 16p13.1 duplications were more likely to harbor a second rare CNV (P = 0.012) and to present with aortic dissections (P = 0.010) than patients without duplications. Duplications of 16p13.1 were identified in 2 of 130 patients with familial TAAD, but the duplications did not segregate with TAAD in the families. MYH11, a gene known to predispose to TAAD, lies in the duplicated region of 16p13.1, and increased MYH11 expression was found in aortic tissues from TAAD patients with 16p13.1 duplications compared with control aortas. These data suggest chromosome 16p13.1 duplications confer a risk for TAAD in addition to the established risk for neuropsychiatric disorders. It also indicates that recurrent CNVs may predispose to disorders involving more than one organ system, an observation critical to the understanding of the role of recurrent CNVs in human disease and a finding that may be common to other recurrent CNVs involving multiple genes

Accessibility gaps between public and private transport in the Tel Aviv metropolitan region and ways to overcome them

Contains fulltext : 87122.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)5 p

Accessibility gaps between public and private transport in the Tel Aviv metropolitan region and ways to overcome them

Within this thesis, several diseases central in the field of cardiovascular disease will be outlined. First, the central dogma of molecular biology, RNA biology in general, RNA (alternative)splicing and the role of RNA-binding proteins within these processes will be discussed to enhance the accessibility to non-molecular biologists. Subsequently, the current literature and insights into the RNA-binding protein Quaking will be outlined. Thereafter, a brief summary of the role of many distinct RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) in the cardiovascular system is provided, detailing their importance in the heart and cells of the blood vessels. This review provides some historical and biological perspectives, while simultaneously highlighting many recent advances in our understanding of RBP function in cardiovascular health and disease. By harnessing established and novel techniques, including RNA-sequencing, this thesis will describe the role of Quaking in vascular stenosis, atherosclerosis, inflammation and endothelial barrier function. Collectively, Quaking can be described as a genome-wide governor of RNA-processing that results in the proper translation into functional proteins. This thesis describes which RNA transcripts are under control of Quaking, which alternative transcripts are being generated through modulation by Quaking, while also describing the unique role for this protein in health and cardiovascular and renal disease.</p