Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions: An Agenda for Rebuilding America's Older Core Cities

Explores opportunities for community collaborations to promote economic development and neighborhood revitalization, and offers strategies for public/private investment. Includes case studies in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh

Reinvigorating Springfield’s Economy: Lessons from Resurgent Cities

As part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's commitment to supporting efforts to revitalize the economy of Springfield, Massachusetts, this paper analyzes the economic development approaches of other mid-sized manufacturing-oriented cities during the past half century. From among a comparison group of 25 municipalities that were similar to Springfield in 1960, the study identifies 10 'resurgent cities' that have made substantial progress in improving living standards for their residents, and that are recognized as vital communities in a broader sense by experts on urban economic development and policy. These case studies suggest that industry mix, demographic composition, and geographic position are not the key factors distinguishing the resurgent cities from Springfield. Instead, the most important lessons from the resurgent cities concern leadership and collaboration. Initial leadership in these cities came from a variety of key institutions and individuals. In some cases, the turnaround started with efforts on the part of the public sector, while in other cases nongovernmental institutions or private developers were at the forefront. Regardless of who initiated the turnaround, economic redevelopment efforts spanned decades and involved collaborations among numerous organizations and sectors

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Raman spectroscopic study of antioxidant pigments from cup corals Tubastraea spp

NoChemical investigation of nonindigenous Tubastraea coccinea and T. tagusensis by Raman spectroscopy resulted in the identification of carotenoids and indolic alkaloids. Comparison of Raman data obtained for the in situ and crude extracts has shown the potential of the technique for characterizing samples which are metabolic fingerprints, by means of band analysis. Raman bands at ca. 1520, 1160, and 1005 cm–1 assigned to ν1(C═C), ν2(C—C), and ρ3(C—CH3) modes were attributed to astaxanthin, and the band at 1665 cm–1 could be assigned to the ν(C—N), ν(C—O), and ν(C—C) coupled mode of the iminoimidazolinone from aplysinopsin. The antioxidant activity of the crude extracts has also been demonstrated, suggesting a possible role of these classes of compounds in the studied corals