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Researchers have addressed uncertainty in multicriteria decision making from the perspective of the performance values of the alternatives, weighting of the evaluation criteria, and the evaluation methods. Still, they are yet to address the uncertainty caused by the normalization approach. In this paper, we show that different normalization methods, namely sum normalization, min–max normalization, vector normalization, and maximization normalization, can result in different rankings of the alternatives while the performance values and weights are unchanged. We applied the grey system theory to address the problem of uncertainty in this study from three aspects: alternative performance values measurement, criteria weighting, and decision matrix/table normalization within a period. The grey hybrid normalization method is proposed as the main contribution in this paper. Then, we present the rankings of 48 cities under uncertainty to decide the location of a branch office of a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer as a practical example based on the grey entropy weighting method and grey relational analysis with positive and negative references (GRA-PNR) within the period from the year 2019 to 2021. The research results using this approach ranked New York City the best, with a stock market capitalization of economy validity as the top contributor in terms of weighting. Finally, we used simple additive weighting with grey value and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution with grey value methods to validate the study results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have addressed uncertainty in multicriteria decision making from the perspective of the performance values of the alternatives, weighting of the evaluation criteria, and the evaluation methods. Still, they are yet to address the uncertainty caused by the normalization approach. In this paper, we show that different normalization methods, namely sum normalization, min–max normalization, vector normalization, and maximization normalization, can result in different rankings of the alternatives while the performance values and weights are unchanged. We applied the grey system theory to address the problem of uncertainty in this study from three aspects: alternative performance values measurement, criteria weighting, and decision matrix/table normalization within a period. The grey hybrid normalization method is proposed as the main contribution in this paper. Then, we present the rankings of 48 cities under uncertainty to decide the location of a branch office of a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer as a practical example based on the grey entropy weighting method and grey relational analysis with positive and negative references (GRA-PNR) within the period from the year 2019 to 2021. The research results using this approach ranked New York City the best, with a stock market capitalization of economy validity as the top contributor in terms of weighting. Finally, we used simple additive weighting with grey value and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution with grey value methods to validate the study results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physical condition of an occupant's home represents a significant factor in determining the dweller's overall quality of life. This paper provides a statistical framework for measuring housing quality in an urban area through a standardized index. This index is constructed using principal component analysis, incorporating demographic, geographic, and economic factors from the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey. This metric allows for investigating differences in housing quality based upon ownership status. Analysis of the index demonstrates that renters face more housing quality issues than owners. Several of the index's input variables driving these differences were found to exhibit varying effects on housing quality over time, possibly due to events such as the 2008 financial crisis. Implementing this novel statistical framework, housing quality indices can be constructed for other cities to examine housing disparities and inform policies aimed at improving quality of life for urban residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American cities devote significant resources to the implementation of traffic safety countermeasures that prevent pedestrian fatalities. However, the before–after comparisons typically used to evaluate the success of these countermeasures often suffer from selection bias. This paper motivates the tendency for selection bias to overestimate the benefits of traffic safety policy, using New York City's Vision Zero strategy as an example. The NASS General Estimates System, Fatality Analysis Reporting System and other databases are combined into a Bayesian hierarchical model to calculate a more realistic before–after comparison. The results confirm the before–after analysis of New York City's Vision Zero policy did in fact overestimate the effect of the policy, and a more realistic estimate is roughly two-thirds the size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the research of psychologist Elizabeth Phelps and colleagues from New York University on ways of eliminating fearful memories, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. They found that a person's stored memory is called up and experienced anew and re-stored in a process known as reconsolidation. Moreover, she found that these painful memories can be eradicated by using behavioural manipulation or extinction training.

Until a souring national and local economy led them to scale back their plans in 2008, The New School in New York City had been designing a new, 500,000-ft2 "signature building" intended to embody what administrators were calling The new New School, a university committed to progressive, interdisciplinary, urban, global education. The building was to offer glimpses of the horizon of academic infrastructure and media and their potential impact (structural, pedagogic, and symbolic) on the university and its communities. Although the building will not be realized in the form presented to the public in spring 2008, the design deliberations that generated that proposal offer valuable insights into how a university might reembody its ideals in a time of intense globalization and mediatization. Complementing Robert Kirkbride's paper on the pedagogical practice of chainmaking and its historical relationship to learning spaces, we examine in this paper how media can be instrumental in wayfinding, how they can help to organize a building into various "processual" paths that reflect different approaches to learning, and how their presence in learning spaces can enhance teaching and learning. We also discuss how the building can serve as a mediator within the community, reflecting the institution's identity and its pedagogical philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the notion of an embedded system is developed as an analytic model to examine how state–nonprofit relations develop and become differentiated, using the case of HIV/AIDS nonprofit organizations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork among three prominent HIV/AIDS nonprofit organizations in New York City, this paper shows how the kinds of relationships these nonprofit organizations are likely to form with state agencies are based on their embeddedness in the state–nonprofit system of relations. Three forms of embeddedness are distinguished according to the type and regularity of state–nonprofit contact—direct, outsider, and mediating. Importantly, it is shown how the configuration of relations within which an organization is embedded determines many of the organization's constraints and opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a modeling framework for estimating the acute effects of personal exposure to ambient air pollution in a time series design. First, a spatial hierarchical model is used to relate Census tract-level daily ambient concentrations and simulated exposures for a subset of the study period. The complete exposure time series is then imputed for risk estimation. Modeling exposure via a statistical model reduces the computational burden associated with simulating personal exposures considerably. This allows us to consider personal exposures at a finer spatial resolution to improve exposure assessment and for a longer study period. The proposed approach is applied to an analysis of fine particulate matter of <2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5) and daily mortality in the New York City metropolitan area during the period 2001-2005. Personal PM2.5 exposures were simulated from the Stochastic Human Exposure and Dose Simulation. Accounting for exposure uncertainty, the authors estimated a 2.32% (95% posterior interval: 0.68, 3.94) increase in mortality per a 10 μg/m3 increase in personal exposure to PM2.5 from outdoor sources on the previous day. The corresponding estimates per a 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 ambient concentration was 1.13% (95% confidence interval: 0.27, 2.00). The risks of mortality associated with PM2.5 were also higher during the summer months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the spring of 2009, New York City (NYC) experienced the emergence and rapid spread of pandemic influenza A H1N1 virus (pH1N1), which had a high attack rate in children and caused many school closures. During the 2009 fall wave of pH1N1, a school-located vaccination campaign for elementary schoolchildren was conducted in order to reduce infection and transmission in the school setting, thereby reducing the impact of pH1N1 that was observed earlier in the year. In this paper, we describe the planning and outcomes of the NYC school-located vaccination campaign. We compared consent and vaccination data for three vaccination models (school nurse alone, school nurse plus contract nurse, team). Overall, >1,200 of almost 1,600 eligible schools participated, achieving 26.8% consent and 21.5% first-dose vaccination rates, which did not vary significantly by vaccination model. A total of 189,902 doses were administered during two vaccination rounds to 115,668 students at 998 schools included in the analysis; vaccination rates varied by borough, school type, and poverty level. The team model achieved vaccination of more children per day and required fewer vaccination days per school. NYC's campaign is the largest described school-located influenza vaccination campaign to date. Despite substantial challenges, school-located vaccination is feasible in large, urban settings, and during a public health emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Struening et al. demonstrated a widening disparity of low birthweight (LOB) rates among New York City health areas from 1980-1986, clearly a dynamic process. In contrast, the New York City Department of Health reported static citywide LOB rate in 1988-2008. Struening et al. is extended here at the health district level with mapping and regression analyses. Additionally, birthweight data are reported for babies born in 1998-2001 to a group of African-American and Dominican women in Upper Manhattan. The data reported in this paper indicate that both fetal programming of the mother herself (life course model) and stress during or shortly before pregnancy may play a role in LOB. Current stress may arise from past events. Intergenerational effects, thus, could arise from stresses on the grandmother and their residual impacts on the mother as well as new stresses on the mother as an adult. The average weight of babies born to the Upper Manhattan mothers who were born in 1970-1974 was 3,466 g, with 1.6% below 2,500 g; that of babies of mothers born in 1975-1979, 3,320 g, with 6% below 2,500 g. The latter group was born during the 1975-1979 housing destruction. Intergenerational impacts of that event may be reflected in this elevated rate of LOB. Health district maps of LOB incidence ranges show improvement from 1990-2000 and then deterioration in 2005 and 2008. Bivariate regressions of socioeconomic (SE) factors and LOB incidence showed many strong associations in 1990; but by 2000, the number and strength of these associations declined. In 1990, 2000, and 2008, black segregation was the SE factor most strongly associated with LOB. Black segregation and murder rate explained about 85% of the pattern of 1990 LOB. Regressing the 1970-1980 percent population change against the SE factors showed effects even in 2000. The 1990 murder rate and 1989 percentage of public assistance explained over half the 2008 LOB incidence pattern. The housing destruction of the 1970s continued to influence LOB incidence indirectly in 2008. The ability of community and individual to cope with current stressors may hinge on resilience status, which is shaped by past events and circumstances. The present interacts with the past in many ways. Serial displacement exemplifies this interaction of immense importance to public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an earlier paper based on PM2.5 speciation network data, we showed that nickel (Ni) concentrations were much higher in New York City (NYC) than in New Jersey (NJ) and Connecticut (CT), and that the NYC levels, but not those in NJ and CT, were much higher in the winter than in summer. However, all of the speciation sites in NYC were in the northern half of the city. To determine the distributions of Ni and other PM2.5 components within NYC, we collected 8-weeklong filter samples at 10 sites throughout NYC in both winter and summer, and measured the concentrations of the elements by X-ray fluorescence (XRF). The resulting data, together with speciation network site data, were used to construct seasonal average concentration isopleth maps for Ni and vanadium (V). As expected, Ni was much higher in Bronx than in Brooklyn, and much higher in winter than in summer. By contrast, V was higher in Brooklyn than in Bronx, and the winter and summer levels were similar. It appears that space-heating boilers are the major source category for Ni in NYC, whereas the Port of New York is the major source of V. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the paper is the collapse of towers and highscrapers, particularly, the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The deduced equations of progressive collapse are used to refute the generally accepted opinion of experts about progressive collapse of the WTC towers in the free-fall regime, which is the official version of the US government. It is proved that progressive collapse is much slower than free fall. The critical floors where collapses started from are estimated using the well-established fact of the free-fall time of all WTC collapses. To this end, the most comprehensive “hybrid” analysis is advanced taking into account that collapses could start on several floors simultaneously, not on one floor as suggested before. According to this “hybrid” model, at the first stage, several floors collapsed simultaneously as a result of fracture waves causing a dust cloud and, at the second stage, the lower part of tower being intact in the first stage collapsed in the regime of progressive failure. Five different collapse types are studied, including the fastest and slowest collapses, and then the hybrid mode is examined with initial collapse of several floors followed by the “domino-effect” of the remaining floors. It is established that the floors where the WTC collapses started from were located significantly lower than the floors hit by the terrorists and subjected to fire. This conclusion confirms the same former result obtained by using the simple official theory of pure progressive collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the transformation of Five Points neighborhood during the 19th century in New York, New York. Role of working class population on the transformation of the area; Usefulness of excavation in providing day-to-day life information of workers; Presentation of papers at the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Reports the results of a report on the type and amount of rubbish collected in New York City throughout the twentieth century. Method by which the information was obtained; Reasons for increases and decreases in different categories of waste including food, plastics and paper.