Are Investors the Bad Guys? Tenure and Neighborhood Stability in Chelsea, Massachusetts

In this article, we examine the role of investors and occupant-owners in an urban context during the recent housing crisis. We focus on Chelsea, Massachusetts, because it is a dense city, dominated by multifamily housing structures with high rates of foreclosure for which we have particularly good data. We distinguish between occupant-owners and investors using local data, and we find that many investors are misclassified as occupant-owners in the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. Then, employing a competing risks framework to study ownerships during the period 1998 through mid-2010, we find that local investors, who tend to invest more in relation to purchase prices and sell more quickly, experienced approximately 1.8 times the mortgage foreclosure risk of occupant-owners, conditional on financing. Nonlocal investors have no statistically significant difference in foreclosure risk from occupant-owners. Nonetheless, those owners with subprime purchase mortgages (most of whom are occupant-owners) faced the highest foreclosure risk when house prices fell

To Share or Not to Share? Branded Content Sharing in Twitter

Marketers have long recognized the power of word-of-mouth communication to influence consumer brand perceptions. Social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter make possible an efficient spread of communication to potentially large audiences with the added value of the credibility afforded to earned media. Consequently, marketers seek to encourage social media users to share brand-related messages. But how? To answer this question, we must first understand the decision to share or not to share in a social media context. This paper reports on an investigation as to the source and content of a brand’s tweets as antecedents of an individual’s decision to share that tweet among his/her followers. Our data show that both source and content interact to influence the share decision. Implications and future research are discussed

An experimental study of the stability of oscillatory-flow bed configurations

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, 1984.Bibliography: leaves 100-102.by John McClements Lambie.M.S

The osmo-metabolic approach: a novel and tantalizing glucose-sparing strategy in peritoneal dialysis.

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is a viable but under-prescribed treatment for uremic patients. Concerns about its use include the bio-incompatibility of PD fluids, due to their potential for altering the functional and anatomical integrity of the peritoneal membrane. Many of these effects are thought to be due to the high glucose content of these solutions, with attendant issues of products generated during heat treatment of glucose-containing solutions. Moreover, excessive intraperitoneal absorption of glucose from the dialysate has many potential systemic metabolic effects. This article reviews the efforts to develop alternative PD solutions that obviate some of these side effects, through the replacement of part of their glucose content with other osmolytes which are at least as efficient in removing fluids as glucose, but less impactful on patient metabolism. In particular, we will summarize clinical studies on the use of alternative osmotic ingredients that are commercially available (icodextrin and amino acids) and preclinical studies on alternative solutions under development (taurine, polyglycerol, carnitine and xylitol). In addition to the expected benefit of a glucose-sparing approach, we describe an 'osmo-metabolic' approach in formulating novel PD solutions, in which there is the possibility of exploiting the pharmaco-metabolic properties of some of the osmolytes to attenuate the systemic side effects due to glucose. This approach has the potential to ameliorate pre-existing co-morbidities, including insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes, which have a high prevalence in the dialysis population, including in PD patients

Clinical Practice: Direct-to-consumer genetic testing: To test or not to test, that is the question

In direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing, laboratory-based genetic services are offered directly to the public without an independent healthcare professional being involved. The committee of the Southern African Society for Human Genetics (SASHG) appeals to the public and clinicians to be cautious when considering and interpreting such testing. It is important to stress that currently, the clinical validity and utility of genetic tests for complex multifactorial disorders such as type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases is questionable. The majority of such tests are not scientifically validated and are based on a few preliminary studies. Potential consumers should be aware of the implications of genetic testing that could lead to stigmatisation and discrimination by insurance companies or potential employers of themselves and their family members. Guidelines and recommendations for DTC genetic testing in South Africa (SA) are currently lacking. We provide recommendations that seek to protect consumers and healthcare providers in SA from possible exploitation

In vivo construction of recombinant molecules within the Caenorhabditis elegans germ line using short regions of terminal homology

Homologous recombination provides a means for the in vivo construction of recombinant DNA molecules that may be problematic to assemble in vitro. We have investigated the efficiency of recombination within the Caenorhabditis elegans germ line as a function of the length of homology between recombining molecules. Our findings indicate that recombination can occur between molecules that share only 10 bp of terminal homology, and that 25 bp is sufficient to mediate relatively high levels of recombination. Recombination occurs with lower efficiency when the location of the homologous segment is subterminal or internal. As in yeast, recombination can also be mediated by either single- or double-stranded bridging oligonucleotides. We find that ligation between cohesive ends is highly efficient and does not require that the ends be phosphorylated; furthermore, precise intermolecular ligation between injected molecules that have blunt ends can also occur within the germ line

Differences in the Active Endometrial Microbiota across Body Weight and Cancer in Humans and Mice

Obesity is a risk factor for endometrial cancer. The aim of this study was to determine whether actively replicating microbiota in the endometrium differ between obese vs. lean and cancer vs. benign states. We performed 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing on endometrial tissues from lean and obese women with and without endometrial cancer, and lean and obese mice. Results displayed human endometrial microbiota clustered into three community types (R = 0.363, p = 0.001). Lactobacillus was dominant in community type 1 (C1) while community type 2 (C2) had high levels of Proteobacteria and more cancer samples when compared to C1 (p = 0.007) and C3 (p = 0.0002). A significant increase in the prevalence of the C2 community type was observed across body mass index and cancer (χ2 = 14.24, p = 0.0002). The relative abundance of Lactobacillus was lower in cancer samples (p = 0.0043), and an OTU with 100% similarity to Lactobacillus iners was enriched in control samples (p = 0.0029). Mouse endometrial microbiota also clustered into three community types (R = 0.419, p = 0.001) which were not influenced by obesity. In conclusion, obesity and cancer are associated with community type prevalence in the human endometrium, and Lactobacillus abundance is associated with normal uterine histologies in humans and mice

miR-21 Promotes Fibrogenesis in Peritoneal Dialysis.

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is a life-saving form of renal replacement therapy for those with end-stage kidney disease. Mesothelial cells (MCs) line the peritoneal cavity and help define peritoneal response to treatment-associated injury, a major reason for treatment failure. miRNAs are important regulators, but their roles in peritoneal fibrosis are largely unknown. In this study, miR-21 was one of the most abundant miRNAs in primary MCs, and was up-regulated by the profibrotic cytokine transforming growth factor-β1 and in PD effluent-derived MCs exhibiting mesenchymal phenotypic change. Increased miR-21 was found in peritoneal membrane biopsy specimens from PD patients compared to healthy controls (PD biocompatible, 5.86×, P = 0.0001; PD conventional, 7.09×, P < 0.0001, n = 11 per group). In PD effluent from a cohort of 230 patients, miR-21 was higher in those receiving the therapy long-term compared to new starters (n = 230, miR-21 3.26×, P = 0.001) and associated with icodextrin use (R = 0.52; 95% CI, 0.20-0.84), peritonitis count (R = 0.16; 95% CI, 0.03-0.29), and dialysate cytokines. miR-21 down-regulated programmed cell death 4 and programmed cell death 4 protein was decreased in peritoneal membrane biopsy specimens from PD patients compared to healthy controls. New miR-21 targets were identified that may be important during PD fibrogenesis. These data identify miR-21 as an important effector of fibrosis in the peritoneal membrane, and a promising biomarker in the dialysis effluent for membrane change in patients receiving PD