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Immune checkpoint inhibitor-associated colitis (ICIC) affects approximately 15% of cancer patients treated with immunotherapy. Although histological evaluation is potentially valuable for both the diagnosis of ICIC and evaluation of disease activity, use in clinical practice is heterogeneous. We aimed to develop expert recommendations to standardize histological assessment of disease activity in patients with ICIC. Using the modified Research and Development/University of California Los Angeles (RAND/UCLA) appropriateness methodology, an international panel of 11 pathologists rated the appropriateness of 99 statements on a 9-point Likert scale during two rounds of anonymous voting. Results were discussed between rounds using moderated videoconferences. There are currently no disease-specific instruments for assessing histological features of ICIC. The panel considered that colonoscopy with at least three biopsies per segment from a total of at least five segments, including both endoscopically normal and inflamed areas, was appropriate for tissue acquisition. They agreed that biopsies should be oriented such that the long axis of the colonic crypts is visualized and should be stained with hematoxylin and eosin. Histological items that the panel voted were appropriate to evaluate in ICIC included the degree of structural/architectural change, chronic inflammatory infiltrate, lamina propria and intraepithelial neutrophils, crypt abscesses and destruction, erosions/ulcerations, apoptosis, surface intraepithelial lymphocytosis, and subepithelial collagen thickness. The appropriateness of routine immunohistochemistry was uncertain. These expert recommendations will help standardize assessment of histological activity in patients with ICIC. The panel also identified the development and validation of an ICIC-specific histological index as a research priority.

Vacant and blighted urban land is a widespread and potentially risky environmental condition encountered by millions of people on a daily basis. About 15% of the land in US cities is deemed vacant or abandoned, an area roughly the size of Switzerland. In a citywide cluster randomized controlled trial, we investigated the effects of standardized, reproducible interventions that restore vacant land on the commission of violence, crime, and the perceptions of fear and safety. Quantitative and ethnographic analyses were included in a mixed-methods approach to more fully test and explicate our findings. A total of 541 randomly sampled vacant lots were randomly assigned into treatment and control study arms; outcomes from police and 445 randomly sampled participants were analyzed over a 38-month study period. Participants living near treated vacant lots reported significantly reduced perceptions of crime (-36.8%, P < 0.05), vandalism (-39.3%, P < 0.05), and safety concerns when going outside their homes (-57.8%, P < 0.05), as well as significantly increased use of outside spaces for relaxing and socializing (75.7%, P < 0.01). Significant reductions in crime overall (-13.3%, P < 0.01), gun violence (-29.1%, P < 0.001), burglary (-21.9%, P < 0.001), and nuisances (-30.3%, P < 0.05) were also found after the treatment of vacant lots in neighborhoods below the poverty line. Blighted and vacant urban land affects people's perceptions of safety, and their actual, physical safety. Restoration of this land can be an effective and scalable infrastructure intervention for gun violence, crime, and fear in urban neighborhoods.

BackgroundTo reproduce and report a bioinformatics analysis, it is important to be able to determine the environment in which a program was run. It can also be valuable when trying to debug why different executions are giving unexpectedly different results.ResultsLog::ProgramInfo is a Perl module that writes a log file at the termination of execution of the enclosing program, to document useful execution characteristics. This log file can be used to re-create the environment in order to reproduce an earlier execution. It can also be used to compare the environments of two executions to determine whether there were any differences that might affect (or explain) their operation.AvailabilityThe source is available on CPAN (Macdonald and Boutros, Log-ProgramInfo. http://search.cpan.org/~boutroslb/Log-ProgramInfo/).ConclusionUsing Log::ProgramInfo in programs creating result data for publishable research, and including the Log::ProgramInfo output log as part of the publication of that research is a valuable method to assist others to duplicate the programming environment as a precursor to validating and/or extending that research.

Municipal governments commonly confront the problem of tardy or delinquent property tax payments. We implement an experiment in property tax collection for tardy taxpayers in the City of Philadelphia for the calendar year 2015. The experiment sent one of seven reminder letters to the tardy taxpayers, testing the efficacy of a simple reminder; two alternative reminders stressing economic sanctions; and four alternative reminders emphasizing either that taxpayers receive neighborhood services or city-wide services for their tax payments, that most of their neighbors pay their taxes on time, or that as a citizen in a democracy it is a civic duty to pay taxes on time. Compliance behaviors were compared to a holdout sample that received no reminder letter. The most effective letters were those that threatened an economic sanction for continued non-compliance. These letters were particularly cost-effective in raising additional city revenues. There was no evidence that those receiving a reminder for calendar year 2015 improved their tax compliance behavior in calendar year 2016. Keywords: tax compliance, property taxation, field experiment, deterrence, public service appeal, appeal to civic duty JEL Codes: H2, H7, I. INTRODUCTION Property taxation is the primary tax for most U.S. cities. In fiscal year 2016, 47 percent of all local government revenues and over 72 percent of local taxes [...]

Objectives: This study investigated the extent to which immigrant concentration is associated with reductions in neighborhood crime rates in the City of Los Angeles. Methods: A potential outcomes model using two-stage least squares regression was estimated, where immigrant concentration levels in 1990 were used as an instrumental variable to predict immigrant concentration levels in 2000. The instrumental variables design was used to reduce selection bias in estimating the effect of immigrant concentration on changes in official crime rates between 2000 and 2005 for census tracts in the City of Los Angeles, holding constant other demographic variables and area-level fixed effects. Non-parametric smoothers were also employed in a two-stage least squares regression model to control for the potential influence of heterogeneity in immigrant concentration on changes in crime rates. Results: The results indicate that greater predicted concentrations of immigrants in neighborhoods are linked to significant reductions in crime. The results are robust to a number of different model specifications. Conclusions: The findings challenge traditional ecological perspectives that link immigrant settlement to higher rates of crime. Immigration settlement patterns appear to be associated with reducing the social burden of crime. Study conclusions are limited by the potential for omitted variables that may bias the observed relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood crime rates, and the use of only official crime data which may under report crimes committed against immigrants. Understanding whether immigrant concentration is an important dynamic of changing neighborhood patterns of crime outside Los Angeles will require replication with data from other U. S. cities. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Objectives: This study investigated the extent to which immigrant concentration is associated with reductions in neighborhood crime rates in the City of Los Angeles. Methods: A potential outcomes model using two-stage least squares regression was estimated, where immigrant concentration levels in 1990 were used as an instrumental variable to predict immigrant concentration levels in 2000. The instrumental variables design was used to reduce selection bias in estimating the effect of immigrant concentration on changes in official crime rates between 2000 and 2005 for 835 census tracts in the City of Los Angeles, holding constant other demographic variables and area-level fixed effects. Non-parametric smoothers were also employed in a two-stage least squares regression model to control for the potential influence of heterogeneity in immigrant concentration on changes in crime rates. Results: The results indicate that greater predicted concentrations of immigrants in neighborhoods are linked to significant reductions in crime. The results are robust to a number of different model specifications. Conclusions: The findings challenge traditional ecological perspectives that link immigrant settlement to higher rates of crime. Immigration settlement patterns appear to be associated with reducing the social burden of crime. Study conclusions are limited by the potential for omitted variables that may bias the observed relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood crime rates, and the use of only official crime data which may under report crimes committed against immigrants. Understanding whether immigrant concentration is an important dynamic of changing neighborhood patterns of crime outside Los Angeles will require replication with data from other U.S. cities.

Understanding basic neuronal mechanisms hold the hope for future treatment of brain disease. The 1st international conference on synapse, memory, drug addiction and pain was held in beautiful downtown Toronto, Canada on August 21-23, 2006. Unlike other traditional conferences, this new meeting focused on three major aims: (1) to promote new and cutting edge research in neuroscience; (2) to encourage international information exchange and scientific collaborations; and (3) to provide a platform for active scientists to discuss new findings. Up to 64 investigators presented their recent discoveries, from basic synaptic mechanisms to genes related to human brain disease. This meeting was in part sponsored by Molecular Pain, together with University of Toronto (Faculty of Medicine, Department of Physiology as well as Center for the Study of Pain). Our goal for this meeting is to promote future active scientific collaborations and improve human health through fundamental basic neuroscience researches. The second international meeting on Neurons and Brain Disease will be held in Toronto (August 29-31, 2007).