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Water reuse with Advanced Water Treatment (AWT) is increasingly appealing for urban areas seeking water supply reliability. In cities facing water scarcity, how can large-scale reuse support reliability and how do reuse operations affect water quality, energy use, and water conservation? This paper presents a systems analysis of metropolitan-scale water reuse and its effects on water supply and quality. For the case study of Los Angeles County, California, USA, hydroeconomic modeling is used to evaluate reuse as a contributor to water supply given urban water conservation, drought-induced water scarcity, and costs and benefits for supply and demand. Results indicate that AWT can be a viable source of supply especially when coupled with conservation. Across modeled scenarios, reuse provides as much as 30% of regional supplies. New water reuse with AWT becomes viable when imported water availability is 50% or less of historic values. Existing indirect potable reuse operations in the county remain important. Systemwide energy intensity of operations increases with greater reuse in the absence of water conservation. Modeled influent flow rates to wastewater treatment plants resemble historical values, but extreme flow events could pose risks. The paper offers a holistic framework to evaluate water reuse as a component of urban water management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mega-events like the Olympics and the Football World Cup routinely harm host cities and societies, largely due to their linkages with ambitious urban development agendas. Concurrently, resident protest has had only limited success in mitigating mega-event-related damages, notwithstanding the growth of resistance networks at local, national, and transnational scales. Contextualised within the broader processes of the Agenda 2020 and New Norm Olympic reforms, this paper explores the tactics of protest against the Summer Olympics in Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how the reforms have moderated some of the more egregious aspects of mega-event harm, while nevertheless preserving some fundamental problems with hosting, albeit in more diffuse or disguised forms. The paper makes sense of these processes through the notion of Potemkinism, conceptualised as a dynamic between the superficial and the substantive, and predicated on obfuscation or concealment. The paper also presents a taxonomy of tactics adopted by host city residents to counter the problems that persist in these processes of Potemkin reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic charging has the potential to overcome the barriers to electric vehicle (EV) adoption by converting road segments into powered lanes (electric roadways or ERs). This paper focuses on examining public acceptance by determining the factors that affect the short-term and long-term intention to purchase an EV and drive on ERs; identifying the clusters of the technology acceptance; and assessing the value of travel time savings (VTTS) for driving on ERs, in general, and for different clusters. A survey was conducted in Los Angeles, California and distributed online, gathering 600 responses. The results showed that respondents' innovativeness, lifestyle and environmental consciousness significantly affect the intention to drive on ERs in the short- and long-run. Public acceptance, in general, seems to be related to charging patterns, safety of commute route, and safety concerns for ERs, among other factors, and depends on the implementation time of the technology. Higher VTTS were found for electrified lanes exclusive for EVs on interstate and arterial roads. People who were classified as positive toward ERs had higher VTTS for ERs followed by those who were neutral and those who were concerned about ERs. This paper can help policymakers and transport operators devise strategies to accelerate EV adoption by appropriately implementing the ER technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article chronicles the early journalism career of the first Chinese American newspaperwoman, Mamie Louise Leung, who reported for the Los Angeles Record from 1926 to 1929. Despite feeling insecure about her lack of journalism experience right out of college and intimidated by the idea of a Chinese girl not standing a chance among American news writers, Leung built a journalism career that spanned five decades. She proved to be a successful newspaperwoman with her intellect, skills, ambition, hard work, and the unique asset of being ethnically Chinese. Even though she was typecast by her bylined stories as a minority reporter covering topics related to the Chinese community in Los Angeles, she took charge of reporting for the important court beat for the Record throughout her tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this hybrid ethnographic case study, I explore how a cadre of Israeli-American parents in Los Angeles navigate the local Hebrew education landscape to seek linguistic resources for their children. I examine how participants envision Hebrew learning and determine the roles of Jewish, Israeli-serving, and public schools in transmitting Hebrew language, Judaism, and Israeli identity. Participants' perspectives on the vitality and utility of American Jewish institutions mediate their interest in various Hebrew learning offerings, surfacing cues that signal an institution's trustworthiness. This paper expands discourse on Hebrew education by foregrounding Israeli-heritage individuals' concerns regarding diasporic Hebrew learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate state of charge (SOC) estimation is considered as the main barrier to adopt Lithium-ion battery-based electric vehicles as alternatives to conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. There are several SOC estimation techniques recommended by many researchers still; they are all not accurate. This paper presents a robust and accurate SOC estimation battery model developed using an independently recurrent neural network (IndRNN). The proposed SOC estimation battery model is developed by training IndRNN constructively under various experimental datasets collected from Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminium Oxide battery cell at different ambient temperatures. Without any prior knowledge about battery internals, the proposed battery model successfully characterizes the non-linear behaviour of the battery effectively. Furthermore, its performance is proved by comparing with similar RNN architecture such as gated recurrent unit (GRU) and long short-term memory (LSTM). The attained results demonstrate that an IndRNN outperformed both GRU and LSTM in terms of accuracy under different electric vehicle drive cycle with minimal root mean square error of 0.7633% and mean absolute error of 0.6389% for diverse temperature conditions. Abbreviations: ANN: artificial neural network; BMS: battery management system; BPNN: back-propagation neural network; DFS: deep feature selection; EV: electric vehicle; FL: fuzzy logic; FNN: feedforward neural network; GA: genetic algorithm; GRU: gated recurrent unit; HWFET: highway fuel economy test; ICE: internal combustion engine; IndRNN: independently recurrent neural network; LA92: Los Angeles 92; LiB: lithium-ion battery; LSTM: long short-term memory; MAE: mean absolute error; MAX: maximum error; RNN: recurrent neural network; RMSE: root mean square error; ReLU: rectified linear unit; SOC: state of charge; SOH: state of health; SVM: support vector machine; US06: supplemental federal test procedure; UDDS: urban dynamometer driving schedule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how social movement organizations shift scale through the case of the immigrant rights movement. This was largely a local movement for the first decades of its existence. However, in the late 1990s, repressive federal policies increased the salience of national politics for many organizations. While recognizing the importance of national politics, many organizations remained mostly engaged in local politics for nearly a decade. The aim of this paper is to examine why immigrant rights organizations stayed local for so long after the threat shifted to the federal level and why they actually shifted to the national scale when they did. It does so by focusing on the case of Los Angeles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perception is presented as a predominant concern in the functioning of a driving system, where it is necessary to understand how the information, events, and actions of each influence the state of the environment and the objectives of the driver, immediately and in the near future. In this context, we present in this paper a driving model composed of five layers which ensure the autonomy and road safety of a driver agent, in particular, we are interested in this article in the concept of perception which is translated by the first three layers of our driving model, which are: visual perception, comprehension and projection, where the execution of these three layers is based on the driving behavior adopted by the driver agent, which is in our case the car-following driving behavior. Furthermore, we present in this paper two simulation scenarios, the first one is realized based on urban area conditions, and the second one is conducted by using Next Generation SIMulation (NGSIM) dataset of a highway in Los Angeles, California. In this context, the experimental results present the effectiveness of our driving model based on the imitation of human behavior and according to reducing the duration of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This gem of an article by Dr. Kate Marcus was tucked away for decades, comfortably settled in a drawer at the Library-Bookstore of the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, readily available as a reprint for those who knew to ask. While preparing for a recent presentation, I tracked it down to refresh my memory of it. Marcus's article is the text of a lecture she presented in May 1956 for the Analytical Psychology Club of Los Angeles. In 1971, her paper was published in The Well-Tended Tree: Essays into the Spirit of Our Times, a Festschrift edited by Hilde Kirsch in honor of James Kirsch on his 70th birthday. As we would expect, Dr. Marcus's article reflects the time period in which it was written. Despite some outdated notions about women and men, it provides interesting and useful interpretations of the male stranger in women's dreams—dreams that are still dreamt today, more than 60 years after her paper was written. Marcus saw into and beyond her era, identifying and celebrating the prospective elements such dreams can offer. Psychological Perspectives wanted to make the article available to an audience wider than those who frequent our institute library-bookstore, and we extend our special thanks to Janet Casewell, and the C. G. Jung Foundation of New York, for allowing us to reprint this wonderful article. We trust Dr. Marcus would be pleased to learn her work is still read and remains of value decades after her death. –Pamela Freundl Kirst, PhD [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become increasingly important in spatial equity studies to understand activity spaces – where people conduct regular out-of-home activities. Big data can advance the identification of activity spaces and the understanding of spatial equity. Using the Los Angeles metropolitan area for the case study, this paper employs geotagged Twitter data to delineate activity spaces with two spatial measures: first, the average distance between users' home location and activity locations; and second, the area covered between home and activity locations. The paper also finds significant relationship between the spatial measures of activity spaces and neighborhood spatial and socioeconomic characteristics. This research enriches the literature that aims to address spatial equity in activity spaces and demonstrates the applicability of big data in urban socio-spatial research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rock music is an integral part of American culture. This paper presents a study of sensing and analysing over 57,000 rock music live performances between 2007 and 2017. Spatial traces of 575 rock music artists performing in concerts nationwide were collected from a major music streaming platform Spotify. Location-based concert data were analysed to explore economic and geographic factors linked to the landscape of rock music live performance and to reveal the importance of population demographics and leisure and hospitality (LH) economics to the culture and music industries from a spatial aspect. Over 90% of rock concerts between 2007 and 2017 were found in 250 counties. The aim of the study is to specify and develop a model that reasonably accounts for spatial heterogeneity present in the concert data. By regressing rock concert data against demographic data and LH establishment data, ordinary least squares (OLS) models were better fitted in metropolitan counties than non-metropolitan counties. Spatial dynamics of concerts were revealed by local R2 values and the obtained structure in the form of spatial heterogeneity was then explained using geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. High population density and LH services in industry-leading cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston exhibit advantages in explaining rock concert distributions. Findings from the models reflect the live music industry's interrelationships to the LH industry and suggest LH services being essential considerations in selecting concert destinations for rock musicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities worldwide have embraced the idea of integrated stormwater management using more decentralised and green infrastructures to enhance urban sustainability. Los Angeles County has recently introduced a new stormwater tax that envisions achieving sustainable stormwater futures through far-reaching infrastructural change. While embracing such visions, however, different actors seek to use tax revenues for diverging infrastructure designs. Our paper therefore explores shifting stormwater politics in Los Angeles by highlighting the social relations underlying technology. Technical disputes that we frame as combinations of material artefacts, discourses, expertise and institutions provoke the specific "material politics" behind the emergence of a hybrid stormwater system in which centralised stormwater practices of incumbent public utilities predominate but increasingly co-exist with more decentralised landscape-centred practices and become interdependent on them. We argue that technical disputes reflect ambiguities about a future stormwater system and engender the renegotiation of responsibility, knowledge orders and the overall rationale of stormwater management. An inherited focus on controlling stormwater volumes thwarts attempts to couple stormwater and urban greening improvements more tightly. We conclude by emphasising that infrastructures are relational systems that carry many potential stormwater futures and by outlining ways to better align stormwater management with wider urban sustainability objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines a carceral history of Los Angeles through the policing of gender, and in particular, the policing of queer brown masculinity. It traces the twinned regimes of gender and prison in Los Angeles to Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo's 16th century colonial fiction about the capture of a gender nonconforming warrior queen Calafia, who ruled the mythical island of California. The violent logics of Calafia's capture persist in the city's carceral expansion and continue to impact gender nonconforming people today. Through an engagement with community histories that document spaces for gender confinement, such as the Daddy Tank, a cellblock used for masculine expressed people and lesbians at the Sybil Brand Institute in the 1970s, this paper centres moments of queer excess that counter such spaces. I follow Nancy Valverde, a Chicana butch elder, whose stories of detention for 'masquerading' in Los Angeles in the 1950s have much to teach us about gender nonconformity – from its policing to the liberatory possibilities of queer resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on formal interviews and ethnographic participant observation, this paper highlights how effective gang intervention programs can and do supplant negativistic masculine identities based on violent criminality with more positivistic masculine identities based on gainful employment, family life, and desistance. The authors examine how this transition occurs at three prominent gang intervention programs in diverse transnational contexts: Los Angeles, Glasgow, and Copenhagen. In contrast to earlier work, the paper also examines how gang members can revert back to negativistic masculine identities, criminality, and violence when the support that these programs provide is withdrawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of sports practice in the re-articulation process of immigrant communities in their places of destination. I will use the case of basketball tournaments held by immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, in the context of the Los Angeles metropolitan region. This Mexican emigration has settled mainly in southern California, in the United States. While the eventual creation of their immigrant communities is explained by the insertion of immigrants in specific labor niches through their social networks, mainly based on sharing the same hometowns of origin, the role of socio-cultural elements such as sports practice and the formation of immigrant public spaces are also significant factors that make possible this process. The examination of these sports practices reveals its centrality in the conformation of these public spaces and with it the development of identification processes that enables the consolidation of immigrant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GeoHumanities is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of GeoHumanities is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study examined the leadership role of Charlotta Bass, the editor/publisher of the California Eagle in Los Angeles during the 1950s. Bass helped lead a massive protest campaign in the legal case for Wesley Robert Wells, an inmate sentenced to death row in 1947. During the Cold War, scholars recognized that Black women challenged patriarchal leadership by creating their own paths toward Black radicalism. Bass' leadership is significant because it adds to pre-Civil Rights Movement activism and protests literature. Her newspaper supported Wells' campaign targeted at bringing awareness of racism within the prison system. Bass also served as the chairman of the Wesley Wells Legal Defense committee, where she produced a newsletter. Bass played a vital role in the case on several fronts as she brought attention to racism within criminal justice practices, prison violence and capital punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentary films and the law make a well-suited pair, due to four key similarities. Firstly, the accessibility of criminal law and its reliance on familiar concepts of good and evil. Secondly, the narrative structure: the arc of accusation, evidence and judgement within a criminal trial mirrors the arc of set up, confrontation and resolution found in cinema. Thirdly, the use of evidence, particularly the use of 'evidence verité' and the assumption of truth associated with photographs. Finally, the law and documentaries have a similar understanding of the concept of truth, as a product of persuasion and argument. As true-crime documentaries garner more attention , the stylistic choices of filmmakers carry more weight on the opinions of their audiences and subsequently the criminal justice system itself. Discussion in this paper focuses on the stylistic choices in documentaries such as Making a Murderer (Demos, Moira, and Laura Ricciardi. 2015. Making a Murderer. Los Angeles, CA: Netflix), The Staircase (de Lestrade, 2014), Southwest of Salem: the story of the San Antonio four (Esquenazi, Deborah. 2016. Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four. New York: Investigation Discovery), and The Night in Question (Theroux, Louis. 2019. The Night in Question. BBC), and their use of emotion, dialogue and footage, and the necessary transparency concerning these choices as well as production choices, to encourage audiences to understand true-crime documentaries as a subjective performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investigation of complaints against the police is important to law, order and justice. The public expects high ethical standards from its police service and when breaches occur, complaints often follow. How the police respond to complaints can influence the trust and confidence that underpins the civilian-police relationship. This paper examines some of the key issues faced by police services in the management of complaints and reviews the effectiveness of mediation as a measure to rebuild relations. The Los Angeles and New York City Police Departments were selected for the study because there are very few civilian-police complaints mediation programs in operation and these sites had reports on the public record that indicated some success. A qualitative case study approach was used, incorporating public source material and interviews with key informants. The findings show that the inclusion of external mediation in police complaints systems offers complainants a transparent, impartial and often restorative mechanism to resolve complaints. However, any perceived conflict surrounding the independence and equity of the mediation vendor can engender police and complainant mistrust in the process. As such, ongoing public and police education on the aims, process and benefits of mediation is required to sustain its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football 5-a-side is a Paralympic sport played among athletes with visual impairment. Although the sport has been featured in the Paralympics since 2004, it is still at its infant stage with only 52 countries having a national team. With the forthcoming 2028 Paralympics scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, California, one concern that the United States has is the absence of a football 5-a-side national team in the country. Thus, this study aims to find the solutions and examines the potential growth of the sport in the United States. Experts from different organizations were recruited to brainstorm the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of fostering the sport from its grassroot level, and further, establish the football 5-a-side national team in the United States. This paper contributes both practical and theoretical aspects in sport development with the transparency of ideas offered by professionals in various fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies offender choice patterns associated with extortion subtypes in El Salvador, Central America. Previous research attributes the rise of extortion in the country to the evolution and propagation of Los Angeles-born street gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18. Data from a unique business victimisation survey is used to analyse 53 decisions in 869 reported cases. The study borrows a multidimensional scaling method used in criminal profiling research to identify offender choice patterns. Cases are classified into extortion subtypes based on identified choice groupings. Key offender choices and location features are compared across extortion subtypes. Offender choice patterns identified in the study are consistent with systemic and opportunistic extortion described in previous literature. About a third of the cases are designated as hybrid extortions due to the blend of choice structuring properties they exhibit, which combines aspects of both systemic and opportunistic extortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hyperloop concept, pod speed competitions and current project developments have recently attracted much publicity. In this paper the transport technology of the vacuumed tube transport project Hyperloop is assessed through a system analysis of its principal aims, functional design, transport capacity and demand in comparison with existing commercial airlines, high-speed rail, and Maglev lines. First, the potential for high-speed long-distance travel demand for Hyperloop based on existing airline transport volumes between major airports in Germany on the one hand, and the proposed Hyperloop link from Los Angeles to San Francisco in California on the other, is assessed in general terms. Second, the technical feasibility of the proposed Hyperloop concept for vehicle design, capacity, operations, propulsion, guidance, energy supply, traffic control, safety, alignment, and construction is discussed in more detail. Third, possible environmental impacts and uncertain investment, operating and maintenance costs for implementation of a Hyperloop line are described. Finally, the risks for further Hyperloop project development and the need for more transparent research are emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A class of prediction regions for a future upper record interval (R s , R l) based on a type-II censored sample from the exponential distribution is presented in this paper. The best prediction region for (R s , R l) is then determined by solving a constrained nonlinear optimization problem. The objective function is the area of the prediction region and the constraints are related to the desired confidence level. According to our approach, it suffices to simultaneously solve four nonlinear equations for deriving the prediction region with minimal area. To show the usefulness of our results, we present a simulation study. Three practical studies regarding times between consecutive telephone calls, lifetimes to breakdown of insulating fluids and annual rainfalls recorded at Los Angeles Civic Center are provided for comparing conservative and optimal prediction regions. In most cases, the reduction in area is appreciable. Finally, some applications and extensions are also pointed out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung and Taos Pueblo leader Ochwiay Biano as a paradigm for experiencing the other. The paper also documents how analysts, colleagues, and students from California continued to nurture this friendship with Biano in the decades following Jung's death in 1961. This enduring friendship is documented, in part, in the personal correspondence between Biano and three Jungian analysts: Dr. James Kirsch of Los Angeles, CA, Wilbur R. Sanford, MD, of San Diego, CA, and his wife, Katherine M. Sanford, author of The Serpent and the Cross (2006). These personal letters, held in the OPUS Archive and Research Center at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA, evidence the relational and respectful thread of this authentic friendship. In this article, I assert that the tradition and practice of analytical psychology enables one to experience an other, recognizing both the dynamism of the whole and the dynamism of multifarious opposites. Dreamwork and active imagination also stimulate a relational practice that supports encounters of difference, experienced in both the inner and outer world. Attention to, and cultivation of, relationship with dream figures (often quite different from our outer world lived reality) introduces us to extraordinary, strange, and unfamiliar figures and images, which can make the unknown more knowable. This practice and capacity enables the possibility for respectful dialogue with people and figures of difference in both the inner and outer world, which is essential for the mutual survival and flourishing of humanity. Ensuing exchanges, deep understanding, and necessary reparations hold the seeds for deep relatedness and mutual transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the twentieth century, several large cities in the United States used murals to promote African-American culture and issues. For example, California had three decades, known as the 'Golden Years' of Afro-American muralism, between the 1970s and the 1990s, although this movement lost steam over time. At the time, public policies in California encouraged muralism in cities like Los Angeles, but today, African-American murals are absent from the visitor's experience. However, literature has demonstrated that mural movements create positive effects as drivers of community development and identity preservation. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore new mural routes in Los Angeles that could be an opportunity to showcase African-American issues, whilst adding value to the visitor's experience. For this purpose, we performed a content analysis of the literature and other documents related to these topics and we classified the city's most representative African-American murals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, using an African Internationalist framework, I examine the life and cultural work of Hugh Masekela and his record label Chisa Records during his time in Los Angeles, from 1966 to 1976. From the wake of the Watts Rebellion and to the eve of the Soweto Uprising, for Masekela and other African musicians in exile, life in Los Angeles deepened their bonds with African American culture. Life in Los Angeles bridged the space between African liberation and Black Power. More importantly it sustained the anti-apartheid movement in exile. Masekela's record label was promoted as the "Home of Afro-American Music". Masekela and his label challenged what I call the collective culture settler colonialism that I define as the white global spatial imaginary. Masekela and other Chisa artists, both South African and African American, generated an internationalist and anticolonial cultural practice that I call the Black global spatial imaginary. In sound, aesthetics, and political practice the Black global spatial imaginary linked Black liberation struggles in Southern California to those in Southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) is caused by the reflux of gastric contents into the esophagus and has a 13% global prevalence that is increasing. GERD symptoms negatively impact physical, social, and emotional quality of life. The Frequency Scale for the Symptoms of GERD (FSSG) and the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS) determine the efficacy of treatment but may not correlate with endoscopically estimated esophageal mucosal injury severity. We aimed to probe the correlation between FSSG, GSRS, and esophageal injury severity to evaluate whether these scores can predict GERD severity. Methods: A total of 2962 patients who underwent physical examinations, including upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, at the Kyoto Kuramaguchi Medical Center, Japan, were enrolled in this study. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy was used to diagnose fundic mucosal atrophy, reflux esophagitis based on the Los Angeles (LA) classification, gastroesophageal flap value function (GEFV) based on Hill's classification, and Barrett's esophagus. Endoscopic diagnoses were examined for correlations with FSSG and GSRS scores. Results: In reflux esophagitis, FSSG and GSRS scores correlated with LA-B and LA-C endoscopic diagnosis but not with LA-M and LA-A endoscopic findings. Multiple regression analysis results were similar. FSSG scores reflected advanced fundic gland mucosal atrophy, while GSRS scores associated with high grade of GEFV. Conclusions: This is the first report to examine the correlation between FSSG and GSRS scores and endoscopic findings in a relatively large patient population. Our findings suggest that these scores can diagnose the severity of reflux esophagitis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although theater-based interventions have emerged as an innovative health education platform, more research is needed to understand how these interventions work and to identify factors that make them successful and replicable in adolescent populations. This paper discusses the first research project conducted on High School Sex Squads (HSSS), which use monologues, skits, songs, dance, spoken word, and other forms of performance art to approach broad topics related to sex, sexuality, and gender. Using focus groups with students and key informant interviews with adult stakeholders, this pilot study explores HSSS with a dual focus on program implementation and impact on High School Sex Squad members. These findings will be translated to real-life program improvement to ensure optimal implementation as the program continues to expand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: α-lipoic acid (ALA) is a natural antioxidant which acts as a cofactor of bioenergetic mitochondrial enzymes. Along with its mitochondrial action, ALA and its reduced form have many biological functions resulting in a wide variety of actions such as anti-inflammation and antioxidant protection, scavenging reactive oxygen species, regenerating other antioxidant agents, such as vitamins C and E, and cytosolic glutathione, chelating the transitional metal ions (e.g. iron and copper), and modulating the signal transduction of nuclear factor. Methods: By selecting papers from PubMed, Science Direct, EBSCO, and databases, this review discusses the biochemical properties of LA, its mechanism of action, pharmacokinetics, and its possible therapeutic role in central nervous system diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Multiple sclerosis, stroke, and spinal cord injury. Results: ALA as an antioxidant and anti-inflammation agent has therapeutical effects on central nervous system diseases, especially multiple sclerosis and PD. Discussion: ALA can be considered as a potentially useful treatment in central nervous disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about artist Paige Smith. In 2005, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Design Communications from Texas Technological University in 2005. She has had several solo exhibitions including "The Box Geode," at The Standard, in Hollywood, California; "Obsessed With Solitude," at Time to Shine Gallery, and "Creeping Portend," at CBRE in Los Angeles, California.

The following paper deals with the relation between infrastructure and power. Against the background of social processes of postmodernisation, the development of the road infrastructure of Los Angeles will be analysed. Heinrich Popitz’s theory of power, which distinguishes between power of action (Aktionsmacht), instrumental (instrumentelle), authoritative (authoritative) and data establishing power (Daten setzende Macht), serves as a basis for the analysis of power. It will be shown that mass mobilisation is connected with all four types of power. Authoritative power as unquestioned imperative of the organisation of everyday life with the help of cars, and data establishing power of the general orientation of transportation to road traffic, play a central role. The paper shows the historical development of different aspects of the power definition of infrastructure, especially viewed in the context of the reduction of contingency through the loss of importance of alternative modes of transport. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, the US has dramatically expanded immigration enforcement. At the same time, some advocates have sought to support “good” immigrants. This paper considers how the resulting good/bad binaries affect undocumented immigrants. I examine a case study in Los Angeles, where policing intertwined with protection. Based on participant observation and interviews, I show that respondents believed state agents classified them either as “bad” criminals or “good”, immigrants. To the extent immigrants identified as “good”, they credited the US with offering them “freedom” and hoped for political inclusion. At the same time, in what I call moralizing regulation, they also performed “good” behaviour and distinguished themselves from those seen as “bad”. Some also tied “good” behaviour to femininity and “acting white”. At the extreme, they blamed other migrants for inviting state mistreatment. The effects were ambivalent: while immigrants appreciated US support, they also adopted and adapted to the state’s moral norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to better engage low-income communities affected by revitalization of the built environment has been well documented in urban planning. Guided by communication infrastructure theory (CIT), this study presents a research project that made concerted efforts at engaging neighborhoods of Northeast Los Angeles that are experiencing rapid gentrification. The project was a partnership with a multi-sector collaborative working on the revitalization of the L.A. River and its surrounding communities. This paper specifically demonstrates how CIT's social ecological orientation was applied to seek input on L.A. River and community revitalization from storytelling networks made up of residents, small businesses, and local media. We also examine the impact of this engaged research on the organizational partners of the collaborative, and their views on community engagement in revitalization. Lastly, we discuss how the lessons learned broadly speak to future opportunities and challenges that aim for communicative planning approaches to urban revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skid Row is an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, also known as the homeless capital of America. Those experiencing homelessness have compounding needs that are largely unmet by existing safety-net systems. The goal of this study is to evaluate the needs of homeless individuals in the Skid Row community, to better tailor services for the homeless population residing in the area. For the study, the International Collegiate Health Initiative (ICHI), a 501(c)-3 nonprofit, conducted a community needs assessment and a comprehensive review of the literature regarding community-based solutions to addressing unmet needs of this population. A cross-sectional survey approach was utilized to conduct a community needs assessment of adults residing in Skid Row. The subsequent descriptive analysis of the data collected reveal unmet needs of individual's health, social, and employment situations among unhoused individuals in Skid Row. Potential exists for the needs of the unhoused population to be met through various community efforts and public health interventions. The identified service priorities for mental health care, medical care, and employment services, are verified by prior literature which identifies high frequency of mental health issues, substance use, and underemployment in the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper works to more fully integrate critical theories of race and privilege with political economy to explore the connections between segregation, property values and violence in US cities. Through the prism of Los Angeles (LA), it exposes the economic mechanisms and history of violent struggle by which whiteness became, and remains, an intrinsic component of high land values. The resulting articulations of racial ideologies and geography, connecting circuits of real estate capital to common sense and racialised constructions of &#x2018.community’, have helped drive LA’s fragmented and unsustainable form and increasing privatisation. They also lie at the root of violence inflicted upon those excluded, both ideologically and physically, from white constructions of community. This dynamic is key for theorising in support of ongoing justice struggles to create safe and sustainable cities for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines proposals for a new park in downtown Los Angeles in light of emerging theories of visual rhetoric. It asks what narratives emerged from a public and unauthorized design competition and the implication of these stories for the future of public space in Los Angeles. As a group, the submissions introduced three visions for the future of the park: it is a place for solitude, a place for digital engagement and a place that celebrates a voyeuristic type of display. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses results from a vehicular emissions research study of over 350 vehicles conducted in three communities in Los Angeles, CA, in 2010 using vehicle chase measurements. The study explores the real-world emission behavior of light-duty gasoline vehicles, characterizes real-world super-emitters in the different regions, and investigates the relationship of on-road vehicle emissions with the socioeconomic status (SES) of the region. The study found that in comparison to a 2007 earlier study in a neighboring community, vehicle emissions for all measured pollutants had experienced a significant reduction over the years, with oxides of nitrogen (NOX) and black carbon (BC) emissions showing the largest reductions. Mean emission factors of the sampled vehicles in low-SES communities were roughly 2–3 times higher for NOX, BC, carbon monoxide, and ultrafine particles, and 4–11 times greater for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) than for vehicles in the high-SES neighborhood. Further analysis indicated that the emission factors of vehicles within a technology group were also higher in low-SES communities compared to similar vehicles in the high-SES community, suggesting that vehicle age alone did not explain the higher vehicular emission in low-SES communities. Evaluation of the emission factor distribution found that emissions from 12% of the sampled vehicles were greater than five times the mean from all of the sampled fleet, and these vehicles were consequently categorized as “real-world super-emitters.” Low-SES communities had approximately twice as many super-emitters for most of the pollutants as compared to the high-SES community. Vehicle emissions calculated using model-year-specific average fuel consumption assumptions suggested that approximately 5% of the sampled vehicles accounted for nearly half of the total CO, PM2.5, and UFP emissions, and 15% of the vehicles were responsible for more than half of the total NOXand BC emissions from the vehicles sampled during the study. Implications: This study evaluated the real-world emission behavior and super-emitter distribution of light-duty gasoline vehicles in California, and investigated the relationship of on-road vehicle emissions with local socioeconomic conditions. The study observed a significant reduction in vehicle emissions for all measured pollutants when compared to an earlier study in Wilmington, CA, and found a higher prevalence of high-emitting vehicles in low-socioeconomic-status communities. As overall fleet emissions decrease from stringent vehicle emission regulations, a small fraction of the fleet may contribute to a disproportionate share of the overall on-road vehicle emissions. Therefore, this work will have important implications for improving air quality and public health, especially in low-SES communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses 16th biennial Society for American City and RegionalPlanning History (SACRPH) conference held on November 5-8, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. Topics of the conference included history of urban planning, industrial decline in Midwest region and urban renewal. other topics such as urbanism are also mentioned.

This paper examines how race, class, and gender intersect to shape professional Latinos’ entrepreneurial incorporation, as observed by the conditions that prompt professional Latinos to start a business, including access to capital and experiences with discrimination. In-depth interviews with professional Latino business owners in Los Angeles reveal that individual human capital – via resources and wealth accrued through corporate careers – facilitates entrepreneurial activity. Race, ethnicity, and gender, as intersectional social group identities, combine with class to shape variegated impacts on access to capital and business experiences by gender and target market. Ethnicity is a resource for those serving the coethnic community and is more significant in shaping business ownership experiences for men who target a racially/ethnically diverse clientele, whereas gender and race are more salient for women outside the coethnic community. This study contributes to the ethnic enterprise literature by going beyond ethnicity to demonstrate that multiple dimensions of identity shape professional Latino/as’ entrepreneurial incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This paper presents the results of ethnographic research conducted with several environmental justice (EJ) organisations in Latino communities of Los Angeles, California. Traditional EJ politics revolves around research and advocacy to reduce discriminatory environmental exposures, risks, and impacts. However, I argue that in recent years there has been a qualitative change in EJ politics, characterised by four main elements: (1) a move away from the reaction to urban environmental “bads” (e.g. polluting industries) in the city towards a focus on the production of nature in the city; (2) strategies that are less dependent on the legal, bureaucratic, and technical “regulatory route”; (3) the formation of a distinctive “Latino environmental ethic” that offers a more complex consideration of the place of race in EJ organising; and (4) a spatial organisation of EJ politics that moves away from hyperlocal, vertical organisation towards diversified city-wide networks that include EJ organisations, mainstream environmental groups, nonprofits, foundations, and entrepreneurs. This shift in EJ movement politics is shaped by broader political-economic changes, including the shift from post-Fordist to neoliberal and now green economy models of urban development; the influence of neoliberal multiculturalism in urban politics; and the increasingly prominent role of Latinos in city, state, and national politics. New spaces of Latino EJ also reflect the ambitions of Los Angeles as a global city, with urban growth increasingly framed in an international discourse of sustainability that combines quality of life, environmental, and economic development rationales. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the effects of oil prices on home values in Kern County, California's top oil producer. Using monthly data from 1990:01 to 2018:03, results from an ARDL model indicate that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between oil prices, unemployment, interest rates, and home values. In the short run, a 1% increase in unemployment and interest rates will decrease home values by 2.06 and 0.82%, respectively. VEDC and GIRFs imply that changes in Kern's home values will influence home prices in San Bernardino County. Los Angeles has the greatest effect on home sales in Kern County. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racism, violence exposure, trauma, and education are inextricably linked, impacting adolescents' current and future well-being. Although trauma--informed care models are being adopted in schools, research is unclear about what individual and institutional factors influence teachers' responses to students exposed to violence-related trauma. Findings from this qualitative convergent mixed-methods study highlight how teachers' personal attributes, identity match, and institutional limitations collectively influence teachers' ability to support their students and their own well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although user-generated content is reported to improve Airbnb host's sales, the impact of Marketer-Generated Content (MGC) on the minimum sales generated from the reviewers who have reviewed the MGC is yet to be explored. This study examines MGC of title descriptions analysis from the City of Los Angeles listing data to understand their importance in predicting hosts' net sales. The analysis employs two complementary econometric approaches: parametric multiple regression and the non-parametric multivariate adaptive regression spline model across three neighbourhood groups and two price groups. The findings indicate hosts can employ MGC to optimize sales and should highlight feature words in the title that best reflect the property characteristics and appeal to a target group that may be location-specific, price-sensitive, or both. The title should be informative and detailed within a limit of 10 words. The novelty of the work is to identify the influence of total sales for respective feature words from the title description of Airbnb property and to analyze their uses in marketing communications. The practical implications indicate that host-generated feature words are crucial in maximizing net sales for the property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major challenge in specifying design requirements for policy-based seismic retrofits is ensuring that the desired performance enhancements are achieved across a portfolio of buildings with diverse structural characteristics and hazard. To address this challenge, a modular optimization methodology is developed. A prediction module uses machine learning-based surrogate models as compact statistical links between building structural characteristics and seismic performance outcomes. The optimization module uses regionally targeted objective functions to determine the retrofit enhancements that achieve the most desirable aggregated performance outcome for the portfolio of buildings. Lastly, the evaluation module benchmarks the performance of the optimized retrofit scheme against the existing inventory as well as more conventional retrofit approaches. The ability of the framework to balance the need for effective (improved performance) and efficient (minimizing cost) retrofits is demonstrated by applying it to the inventory of buildings under the purview of the Los Angeles Soft-Story Ordinance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether middle- and upper-class Latino entrepreneurs retain a sense of ethnic solidarity expressed through community giving that is aimed at promoting the mobility of co-ethnics. I find that middle-class Latino entrepreneurs engage in more unstructured philanthropic activities, such as volunteering their time at Latino-centric organizations or mentoring low-income Latinos. In contrast, elite Latino entrepreneurs are creating ethnic social structures that focus on education and Latino business development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]