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The real estate market has a significant impact on people's daily life. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the real estate market from both spatial and temporal perspectives, while there is still a lack of research in real estate industries. In this paper, a regional house price mining and forecasting (RHPMF) framework is proposed to help people intuitively understand the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of the urban estate market based on real-world housing data and urban contexts such as demographics and criminal records. Specifically, the RHPMF framework introduces a context-aware matrix factorization to extract crucial spatial and temporal price factors for revealing the housing market. Meanwhile, the RHPMF can forecast future regional house prices by manipulating the two price factors. Consequently, this study presents extensive exploratory analysis and experiments in Virginia Beach, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles to verify the proposed RHPMF. These case studies indicate that the RHPMF framework can accurately capture the market's spatial distribution and temporal evolution and forecast future regional house prices compared with recent baselines. The experimental results suggest the great potential of the proposed RHPMF for applications in real estate industries. • Unleash a new perspective to understand the regional market of real estate. • A context-aware matrix factorization is proposed to fuse information. • The decomposed factors explain the spatial and temporal evolution. • The fused information improves the forecasting accuracy of house prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Richard Neutra's architecture is known full well due to several publications. They sometimes contain elegant perspectives of presentation made by the architect in its day to illustrate his projects. However, his travel sketches have been hardly studied and, to the best of our knowledge, they have not yet been analyzed in a specialized paper. The present study has the aim to set some of these sketches, currently housed in the Library Digital Collections of the University of California in Los Angeles, in context and make them public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out of what some call America’s first truly multiracial riot in Los Angeles in 1992 was spawned a clarion call from Black newspapers to build an interminority alliance to avert a repeat performance. This article examines whether and how the Los Angeles Sentinel changed its coverage of Black–Asian American relations in the years after 1992. Using Ethnic NewsWatch, the author analyzed 102 articles published from 1993 to 2000 that included some discussion about that connection. Several things stand out: (a) The Sentinel’s reporting for that period almost tripled output from all Black newspapers for 1980-1992; (b) the focus and breadth of coverage changed, from highlighting enmity between Korean (American) merchants and Blacks to emphasizing interminority collaboration and inclusion in a wide range of settings; and (c) rarely noted were intimate relationships and personal ties. The Sentinel provides proof that news organizations can significantly improve their coverage of race relations very quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Rates for Diabetes Mellitus continue to rise in most urban areas of the United States, with a disproportionate burden suffered by minorities and low income populations. This paper presents an approach that utilizes address level data to understand the geography of this disease by analyzing patients seeking diabetes care through an emergency department in a Los Angeles County hospital. The most vulnerable frequently use an emergency room as a common care access point, and such care is especially costly. A fine scale GIS analysis reveals hotspots of diabetes related health problems and provides output useful in a clinic setting. Indeed these results were used to support the work of a progressive diabetes clinic to guide management and intervention strategies. Results: Hotspots of diabetes related health problems, including neurological and kidney issues were mapped for vulnerable populations in a central section of Los Angeles County. The resulting spatial grid of rates and significance were overlaid with new patient residential addresses attending an area clinic. In this way neighbourhood diabetes health characteristics are added to each patient's individual health record. Of the 29 patients, 4 were within statistically significant hotspots for at least one of the conditions being investigated. Conclusions: Although exploratory in nature, this approach demonstrates a novel method to conduct GIS based investigations of urban diabetes while providing support to a progressive diabetes clinic looking for novel means of managing and intervention. In so doing, this analysis adds to a relatively small literature on fine scale GIS facilitated diabetes research. Similar data should be available for most hospitals, and with due consideration for preserving spatial confidentiality, analysis outputs such as those presented here should become more commonly employed in other investigations of chronic diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scarcity of strong ground motion records presents a challenge for making reliable performance assessments of tall buildings whose seismic design is controlled by large‐magnitude and close‐distance earthquakes. This challenge can be addressed using broadband ground‐motion simulation methods to generate records with site‐specific characteristics of large‐magnitude events. In this paper, simulated site‐specific earthquake seismograms, developed through a related project that was organized through the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) Ground Motion Simulation Validation (GMSV) Technical Activity Group, are used for nonlinear response history analyses of two archetype tall buildings for sites in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino. The SCEC GMSV team created the seismograms using the Broadband Platform (BBP) simulations for five site‐specific earthquake scenarios. The two buildings are evaluated using nonlinear dynamic analyses under comparable record suites selected from the simulated BBP catalog and recorded motions from the NGA‐West database. The collapse risks and structural response demands (maximum story drift ratio, peak floor acceleration, and maximum story shear) under the BBP and NGA suites are compared. In general, this study finds that use of the BBP simulations resolves concerns about estimation biases in structural response analysis which are caused by ground motion scaling, unrealistic spectral shapes, and overconservative spectral variations. While there are remaining concerns that strong coherence in some kinematic fault rupture models may lead to an overestimation of velocity pulse effects in the BBP simulations, the simulations are shown to generally yield realistic pulse‐like features of near‐fault ground motion records. [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]

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been connected to loss of employment, social withdrawal or isolation, impaired occupational functioning, development of a co-existing psychiatric disorder, suicidal ideations, self-harming behaviors, and potential for substance abuse problems (Hughes, Lusk, & Strause, 2016). Resnick and Rosenheck's (2020) research found that the rate of competitive employment at discharge from a Compensated Work Therapy program (program funded with Department of Veteran Affairs) was 30% for Veterans with PTSD compared to 36% for Veterans without PTSD. Another study found that of post-9/11 Veterans surveyed in Los Angeles, 65% stated that they needed meaningful help finding a job (Zogas, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to (1) provide information related to how to assess and improve psychological readiness for Veterans with PTSD, (2) identify reasonable accommodations for Veterans with PTSD, and (3) other vocational intervention strategies to increase employability/placeability of Veterans with PTSD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aeronautical community is currently researching technology that might lead to commercial hypersonic aircraft that would cruise at Mach 5–8 in the middle or upper stratosphere and would transfer passengers from London to New York or from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just a couple of hours. Depending on the engine technology to be adopted, these aircraft will potentially release substantial amounts of water vapor and nitrogen oxides around 30–40 km altitude. We show here that the operation of a large fleet of such aircraft could potentially deplete considerable amounts of ozone in the stratosphere, which would lead to a substantial increase in biologically damaging ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's surface. The calculations are based on a specific emission scenario, which carries large uncertainties but can easily be scaled to account for the type of aircraft engine to be eventually adopted, improved technology to be expected, and the size and operation conditions of the future aircraft fleet. Plain Language Summary: Commercial hypersonic aircraft, if developed in the future, will be flying at Mach 5 to 8 in the middle to upper stratosphere (30 to 40 km altitude) to carry passengers in a couple of hours from London to New York or from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Depending on the adopted technology and fleet size, the powerful engines of such airplanes may release substantial amounts of water and nitrogen oxides in the stratosphere, which could potentially damage the protecting ozone layer and hence increase the level of biologically damaging ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth surface. The paper uses an advanced global atmospheric model to assess the impact of a potential fleet of hypersonic aircraft. Key Points: Hypersonic transport (HST) releasing nitrogen oxides and water vapor have the potential to reduce the stratospheric ozone abundancePer Tg injection of nitrogen oxides, the calculated ozone depletion is larger for aircraft flying at 30 km than 40 km altitudeOzone decrease near the HST flight altitude is reduced by about a third when temperature and dynamical feedbacks are taken into account [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Missing data recovery is an important and yet challenging problem in imaging and data science. Successful models often adopt certain carefully chosen regularization. Recently, the low dimensional manifold model (LDMM) was introduced by [S. Osher, Z. Shi, and W. Zhu, Low Dimensional Manifold Model for Image Processing, Technical report, cam report 16-04, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2016] and shown to be effective in image inpainting. The authors of [Low Dimensional Manifold Model for Image Processing, Technical report, cam report 16-04, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2016] observed that enforcing low dimensionality on the image patch manifold serves as a good image regularizer. In this paper, we observe that having only the low dimensional manifold regularization is not enough sometimes, and we need smoothness as well. For that, we introduce a new regularization by combining the low dimensional manifold regularization with a higher order CU rvature RE gularization, which we call new regularization CURE for short. The key step of CURE is to solve a biharmonic equation on a manifold. We further introduce a weighted version of CURE, called WeCURE, in a similar manner as the weighted nonlocal Laplacian (WNLL) method [Z. Shi, S. Osher, and W. Zhu, Weighted nonlocal Laplacian on interpolation from sparse data, J. Sci. Comput., 73 (2017), pp. 1164-1177]. Numerical experiments for image inpainting and semisupervised learning show that the proposed CURE and WeCURE significantly outperform LDMM and WNLL, respectively. [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]

The places that people go and interact with others, along with the characteristics of those places, determine degrees of sexual health risk and concomitant prevention opportunities for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM). The objective of this paper is to use syndemic theory to guide analyses of 20 in-depth interviews with African American and Hispanic/Latinx MSM living in Los Angeles. We describe the places in which African American and Latinx MSM interviewees live and socialize, and how these places influence sexual behavior, drug use, and access to health care. We find common spatial patterns in mobility, incongruence in residential and sexual places, and differing geographic patterns of sex by men who use geo-social hook-up apps. Significant instability in home life and varying forms of mobility and risk-taking were a response to cumulative disadvantage and intersecting structural forces including poverty, racism, and homophobia. Our results strongly suggest that geographic mobility is a syndemic factor for HIV risk among MSM in Los Angeles, as mobility amplified negative impacts of other syndemic factors. Innovative place-interventions to reduce HIV incidence and disparities in HIV need to acknowledge the synergistic factors that drive higher HIV incidence among AA and Latinx MSM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the geological and geotechnical potentialities of Ntem formations from the Memve'ele dam construction. Stratigraphic formations on the dam site consist from top to bottom sand, silty sand, silty, silty clay, very to moderate weathered rocks with a thickness of about 0.5–3 m above a sound bed rock which are represented by Ntem formations. These rocks have main mineral associations represented by orthopyroxene, clinopyroxene, quartz, plagioclase and garnet, display reaction textures, idiomorphic crystals, straight boundaries between crystals, the iron bearing amphibole, biotite and epidote, quartz ribbons and iron minerals (ilmenite and magnetite) are also present. All these permit to class them from granulite to amphibolite facies metamorphic conditions; therefore they are very hard and appear good for civil applications. The permeability has thickness from 0 to 13 m in the depth with Lugeon values higher than 15 UL. The RQD values are permitted to class these rocks as being moderated to good resistant. These character features which improve their geophysical properties (e.i. hard quality) have permitted that the dam and powerhouse foundations refitting on them. According to geophysical properties and rock mass rating, the rock mass is fair and good and is classified to class II and III. All these indicate that the rock mass is well compacted and sound with sparsely spaced discontinuities. The Ntem formations have uniaxial compressive strength under saturated condition generally higher than 40 Mpa, dry density or specific weight not less than 2.7 g/cm3, low porosity (average from 0.69 to 0.83%), low coefficient of water absorption (average from 0.012 to 0.04%), deformation modulus from 82.3 to 87.86 Gpa, Los Angeles and Micro Deval values are lower than 40% and 20% respectively, swelling risks are very limited with low values (1.07–1.11%) of sulphate, under 4.5% of cement and low values (0–0.07%) obtained during alkali-reaction test. All these have permitted that to obtain concrete aggregate and rip rap by crushing and processing these rocks from quarry during the dam, spillway, powerhouse and road constructions. These results confirm use of these formations during Memve'ele dam constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multivariate Bayesian inference can bring significant benefits to seismic hazard analysis: its multivariate feature enables computing scalar and vector hazard without making any approximations; Correlations between intensity measures are implicitly modeled, permitting direct simulation of ground motion selection tools such as the conditional mean spectrum and the generalized conditioning intensity measure. Its updating feature enables a seamless integration of new ground motion data into the hazard results. In this paper, we first develop a multivariate Bayesian ground motion model through the NGA-West2 database. The model functional form considers fault type, magnitude and distance dependencies, and also the linear and the rock intensity-dependent site response. We use a hybrid Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling to perform Bayesian inference consisting of Gibbs step and a multilevel Metropolis–Hastings step. We then perform several checks on the model to ensure that it is unbiased. Finally, we illustrate the merits of this multivariate Bayesian analysis through practical and contemporary examples, which include: ground motion model updating with ground motion data recorded in the last four years and not part of the NGA-West2 database; computation of scalar and vector seismic hazard using the un-updated and updated ground motion models for Los Angeles, CA; and simulation of the conditional mean spectrum under scalar and vector IM conditioning while accounting for different sources of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a continuum model for the movement of agents on a lattice, taking into account location desirability, local and far-range migration, and localized entry and exit rates. Specifically, our motivation is to qualitatively describe the homeless population in Los Angeles. The model takes the form of a fully nonlinear, nonlocal, non-degenerate parabolic partial differential equation. We derive the model and prove useful properties of smooth solutions, including uniqueness and L 2 -stability under certain hypotheses. We also illustrate numerical solutions to the model and find that a simple model can be qualitatively similar in behavior to observed homeless encampments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many applications involving regression analysis, explanatory variables (or covariates) may be imprecisely measured or may contain missing values. Although there exists a vast literature on measurement error modeling to account for errors-in-variables, and on missing data methodology to handle missingness, very few methods have been developed to simultaneously address both. In this paper, we consider likelihood-based multiple imputation to handle missing data, and combine this with two well-known functional measurement error methods: simulation-extrapolation and corrected score. This unified approach has several appealing characteristics: the model fitting procedure is easy to understand and off-the-shelf software can be incorporated into the modeling framework; no calibration data or a validation subset is required in the model fitting procedure; and the missing data component of the proposed approach is likelihood-based which allows standard likelihood machinery. We demonstrate our methods on simulated datasets and apply them to daily ozone pollution measurements in Los Angeles where observed covariates consist of missing data and imprecise measurements. We conclude that the proposed methods substantially reduce bias and mean squared errors in regression coefficients, in comparison to methods that ignore either measurement error or missingness in covariates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Young people experiencing homelessness have alarmingly high rates of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use, which is associated with sexual risk behaviors such as unprotected sex, trading sex, and sex with multiple casual partners. Few risk reduction programs for this population have been developed and rigorously evaluated, particularly those that address both of these interrelated behaviors, use a collaborative and non-judgmental approach, and are feasible to deliver in settings where homeless young people seek services. This paper describes the protocol of a study evaluating a four-session Motivational Interviewing (MI)-based group risk reduction intervention for this population. The protocol has been shown to be efficacious in pilot work over 3 months with 200 homeless young adults [1]. The current study seeks to refine the intervention protocol and evaluate the program on a larger scale. Methods/design: In a cluster-cross-over randomized controlled trial, 18–25 year olds will receive the AWARE risk reduction program (n = 200) or standard care (n = 200) at one of three drop-in centers serving homeless youth in the Los Angeles area. We will evaluate intervention effects on primary outcomes of AOD use and sexual risk behavior, as well as secondary outcomes of health-related quality of life and social stability, over a 12-month period. Discussion: This project has the potential to fill a significant gap in prevention services by demonstrating that a brief intervention, feasible to deliver within settings where young people experiencing homelessness typically seeks services, can significantly reduce the interrelated problems of AOD use and sexual risk behavior. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03735784. Registered November 18, 2018, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/record/NCT03735784 (retrospectively registered) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Spiritual practices enable homeless people to experience social recognition. • Spiritual practices allow an active engagement with homeless agency. • Spirituality influences homeless people's production of public space. • Contribute to less stigmatizing and more person-centered policies. This paper examines spiritual and healing practices of homeless people on the Venice boardwalk in Los Angeles. Combining scholarship on geographies of homelessness, spirituality, and therapeutic landscapes, this paper makes three contributions. First, drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, it examines the ways in which spiritual healing (such as crystal therapy, psychic reading, Tarot card reading and therapeutic touch) can generate temporary and more enduring landscapes of healing and wellbeing. Second, the paper considers the performative work of such practices in negotiating existing, and affirming new, homeless subject-positions. In doing so, it highlights the potential of spirituality in bringing homeless people's inner worlds to the surface, challenging their agency, performativity and self-perceptions. Lastly, the paper concludes by calling for geographers to study the intersection of homelessness, therapeutic landscapes, and geographies of spirituality in order to better understand the body/mind/place/spirit imbrications for homeless people. [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]

This paper examines results from two waves of officer surveys, administered before and after deployment of body-worn cameras (BWCs) in two divisions within the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Officer surveys were administered in LAPD's Mission and Newton divisions at two time points, pre-BWC deployment (August and September 2015; Wave I) and post-deployment (summer of 2016; Wave II). This fixed-sample survey contained 52 questions designed to measure officer perceptions of BWCs across a variety of domains. Questions were tailored to provide consistency across sites for comparison with other studies. Results varied by division, with Mission officers becoming more critical and Newton officers becoming slightly more supportive of BWCs over time. Similarities and differences in officer perceptions both between divisions and from pre- to post-deployment are discussed at length, as are the implications for policy and practice including obtaining organizational support and officer buy-in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluated alternative test methods to determine the crushing potential of aggregates and documented the influence of aggregate characteristics on the engineering properties of asphalt mixes. Six aggregates sampled from different sources were subjected to various aggregate tests, including the Los Angeles abrasion, micro-Deval, soundness magnesium, and acid insoluble tests. A Superpave mix with a 12.5-mm (1/2-in.) nominal maximum aggregate size gradation was produced with each aggregate source using the same PG 64-22 asphalt binder. The mixtures were produced to investigate the impact of aggregate properties on their volumetric properties as well as the tensile strength from the indirect tension tests and rutting potential from the Hamburg wheel tracking tests. Correlation analyses among the measured parameters identified the aggregate crushing value as a promising alternative test method to quantify the crushing potential of aggregates and to adjust the gradation accordingly to produce mixtures with optimized volumetric properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pancreatic enucleation (PE) is a viable option for the removal of non-malignant pancreatic masses leading to complete preservation of organ function. Nevertheless, PE is associated with substantial rates of post-operative pancreatic fistula (POPF), particularly when the mass is close to the main pancreatic duct (MPD). Preoperative stenting of the MPD may prevent its injury when performing PE. This paper describes a novel technique of "deep" PE preceded by endoscopic stenting of the MPD.Methods: From January 2017 to May 2019, patients with small pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors proximal to the MPD were candidates for PE with previous stenting of the MPD at the University of Verona, Italy, and at the UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, California. The endoscopic stenting was scheduled either the day before or 3 weeks before surgery, depending on the participating institute.Results: Ten patients were included in this pilot study. The endoscopic procedure was successful and well tolerated in all cases. Open, laparoscopic and robotic PE were performed. Seven patients had surgical complications. Among these, six developed a post-operative pancreatic fistula (POPF), but neither grade C fistulas nor disruptions of the MPD were detected. At pathology, a low grade pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor was confirmed in all cases.Conclusion: In the setting of high-volume centers, this procedure is safe, and it is associated with acceptable short-term surgical morbidity. The preoperative stenting of the MPD might extend the surgical indications for PE. [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]

The research presented in this paper addresses the effect of coarse recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) on drying shrinkage of concrete designated for transportation infrastructure. Six types of RCA were employed at 30 to 100% replacement rates of virgin coarse aggregate. Two binder systems, including a binary cement with 25% Class C fly ash and a ternary system with 35% fly ash and 15% slag were employed. Three different water-cementitious materials ratios (w/cm) of 0.37, 0.40, and 0.45 were considered. Test results indicate that the use of RCA increased drying shrinkage by up to 110% and 60% after 7 and 90 days of drying, respectively. Correlations with R2 of up to 0.85 were established to determine the shrinkage at 7, 28, 56, and 90 days as a function of aggregate properties, including specific gravity, water absorption, and Los Angeles abrasion resistance of the combined coarse aggregates. The water absorption of the combined coarse aggregate was shown to be a good index to showcase the effect of RCA on shrinkage. Contour graphs were developed to determine the effect of RCA content and its key physical properties on 90-day drying shrinkage of concrete intended for rigid pavement construction. A classification system available in the literature was also used to suggest the maximum allowable replacement rates for use of RCA in a hypothetical case study. Results suggest replacement rates of 100%, 70%, and 50% (% wt.) to limit the 90-day shrinkage to 500 μɛ when RCA of A-1, A-2, and A-3 Classes are available, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the results of a survey of faculty members at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in Los Angeles, California regarding their understanding of and familiarity with the concept of fake news. With very few studies published on the attitudes of teaching faculty at universities, this study is a unique approach to the issues facing educators, knowledge creators, and information specialists. The paper examines the origins of the term "fake news", the factors contributing to its current prevalence, and proposes a new definition. It also reports upon the attitudes that teaching faculty hold, and how they define fake news within their specific disciplines. Though nearly all surveyed faculty felt fake news was an important topic that impacted them professionally, the researchers also find that faculty across all disciplines and ranks, ages, and gender, hold widely differing conceptions of fake news. This lack of consensus may have future implications for students in particular and higher education in general and are worth exploring further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explains the method to process, analyze and predict traffic patterns in Los Angeles county using Big Data and Machine Learning. The dataset is used from a popular navigating platform in the USA, which tracks information on the road using connected users’ devices and also collects reports shared by the users through the app. The dataset mainly consists of information about traffic jams and traffic incidents reported by users, such as road closure, hazards, accidents. The major contribution of this paper is to give a clear view of how the large-scale road traffic data can be stored and processed using the Big Data system - Hadoop and its ecosystem (Hive). In addition, analysis is explained with the help of visuals using Business Intelligence and prediction with classification machine learning model on the sampled traffic data is presented using Azure ML. The process of modeling, as well as results, are interpreted using metrics: accuracy, precision and recall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental contamination, a legacy of industrial activity borne by numerous sites around the world, poses health risks for surrounding communities and presents serious cleanup challenges. One such site, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), served as an aerospace and nuclear energy research facility for over 50 years, during which time radioactive and other hazardous materials were unintentionally and intentionally released into the surrounding environment. These releases, including the partial meltdown of a sodium reactor, were hidden from the public for three decades. The site is now located in suburban Los Angeles, with 730,000 people living within a 10-mile radius. This paper evaluates the technical and social challenges underlying site cleanup at SSFL, including a complex geological setting, uncertain contaminant information, and a convoluted, evolving regulatory framework. These challenges, paired with historical secrecy on the part of responsible organizations and unclear layers of responsibility, have led to uncertainty and distrust within the surrounding community. Lessons learned from other remediated sites are assessed and recommendations for the SSFL cleanup are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines taxable sales in the Los Angeles and Miami metropolitan areas to find evidence of the short- and long-run effects of the Rodney King riots and Hurricane Andrew on their respective economies. The comparison of these two events shows that the King riots had a long-term negative effect on Los Angeles' economy while Hurricane Andrew had a short-term positive effect on the Miami economy. The paper also applies the contrasting experiences of Los Angeles and Miami to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In some ways, Katrina is a hybrid of these two events since it combines elements of both a natural disaster and a social disaster. The paper examines how Katrina is similar to each of the previous incidents and how these similarities might affect the recovery of New Orleans following the storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, the Hollywood studios have broadly sought to subdue, rather than explore, the technological possibilities of the Internet. Specifically, the studios have used their ownership of creative works to control the speed and direction of innovation in an emerging digitally networked social and economic environment, which is built upon the Internet and an ecology of hardware and software technologies. In this paper, I use a relational perspective to examine two critical aspects of this case study. The first concerns the cognitive and discursive dimensions of firm strategy. The second concerns the formation and enactment of firm strategy within networks of social relations. The argument is therefore twofold. On the one hand, I argue that the Hollywood studios are seeking to create a "closed" sphere of innovation on a global scale, which enables the absolute defence of property rights. However, this has alienated a broad spectrum of new creative freedoms, causing a "bifurcation" of the networked environment. On the other hand, I argue that this strategic response must be understood in relational terms. The closed sphere has been legitimated, enacted and performed within relational networks at a regional scale in Los Angeles. The paper is based on unprecedented access to the Hollywood studios, combined with interviews across the media, entertainment and technology industries. The overall goal of the paper is to construct an "economic geography" of disruptive innovation under conditions of oligopoly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the struggles of the Mexican American civil rights in Los Angeles, California during the early Cold War era. Accordingly, the paper explains the ways in which those mid-century campaigns for Mexican American civil rights were fundamentally cooperative. The paper also highlighted the significance of the struggle of the Mexican American civil rights for Mexican Americans' quest for full citizenship

Scholars have recently reconceptualized the archive not only as a repository of knowledge, but also as an active producer and arbiter of knowledge. The study of archives, from this perspective, must attend to processes as well as products. This paper examines UCLA's Archiving Filipino American Music in Los Angeles (AFAMILA) project as a case study of collaborative archiving, from the perspective that both methodology, the strategies and practices of collecting, and musical content, the sounds collected, determine the meaning of music archives. Furthermore, the study seeks to demonstrate how the collaborative approach, with its emphasis on dialogue and exchange, subverts the discourses of power that have historically shaped music archiving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Southern California closed the Education and the Social Work branch libraries in August 1998. Most of the collections were merged into the humanities and social sciences collection in the Doheny Memorial Library. The remainder of the collection was sent to an off-campus storage facility. Subject specialist librarians were deployed in the School of Education and the School of Social Work to provide library services to faculty and students. This paper explains the new Library Information Centers model and describes how the librarians function/cope without direct access to a paper collection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies a market in pollution permits launched in Los Angeles in 1994. This tradable permit market has been projected to lead to substantial cost savings due to the flexibility it provides firms in terms of compliance with environmental regulation. This paper shows that transaction costs can play an important role in the initial years of the program. The transaction cost variables have been defined to include search costs and information costs. These costs are significant in explaining non-participation of some firms in the market. The study also draws policy implications for the development of future emissions trading programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the conference and exhibition of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) of the Association for Computing Machinery held in Los Angeles, California on August 8-13, 1999. Attendance; Number of exhibitors; Papers presented in the conference which are expected to affect graphics and interactive techniques.

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]

Building upon intensive ethnographic research on the undocumented youth movement in Los Angeles, this paper investigates the backstage work done by the leaders and activists within a movement to create cohesive and disciplined frontstage performances. These backstage techniques and strategies are important to examine because frontstage unity is not natural or automatic. As most campaigns are made up of heterogeneous individuals, organizations and groups, frontstage coherence is something that needs to be worked upon. We show that this essential backstage work consists of 1) training activists to become disciplined frontstage performers; 2) converging the feelings of activists through emotionally intensive disciplinary techniques; and 3) managing differences and conflicts in the free spaces of the movement. This paper thus aims to encourage scholars to look under the hood of public protests and give greater weight to studying the backstage work needed to produce strong and powerful voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voter mobilization by unions has garnered some attention from scholars, and is seen as an important political tool. Unions often mobilize voters repeatedly across several campaigns; however, the literature treats mobilization as a singular event. This paper empirically analyzes turnout of 85,064 registered voters over 14 months at five election intervals in Los Angeles, exploring whether union-led mobilization is subject to diminishing returns across multiple elections. Results indicate that diminishing returns occur; three or more contacts are no more beneficial than one or two. Contact in recent elections is more effective than distant contact, and results differ slightly by contact type. [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]

Accurate estimation of building height is crucial for urban aesthetics and urban planning as it enables an accurate calculation of the shadow period, the effective management of urban energy consumption, and thorough investigation of regional climatic patterns and human-environment interactions. Although three-dimensional (3D) cadastral data, ground measurements (total station, Global Positioning System (GPS), ground laser scanning) and air-based (such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle—UAV) measurement methods are used to determine building heights, more comprehensive and advanced techniques need to be used in large-scale studies, such as in cities or countries. Although satellite-based altimetry data, such as Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat-2) and Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI), provide important information on building heights due to their high vertical accuracy, it is often difficult to distinguish between building photons and other objects. To overcome this challenge, a self-adaptive method with minimal data is proposed. Using building photons from ICESat-2 and GEDI data and building footprints from the New York City (NYC) and Los Angeles (LA) open data platform, the heights of 50,654 buildings in NYC and 84,045 buildings in LA were estimated. As a result of the study, root mean square error (RMSE) 8.28 m and mean absolute error (MAE) 6.24 m were obtained for NYC. In addition, 46% of the buildings had an RMSE of less than 5 m and 7% less than 1 m. In LA data, the RMSE and MAE were 6.42 m and 4.66 m, respectively. It was less than 5 m in 67% of the buildings and less than 1 m in 7%. However, ICESat-2 data had a better RMSE than GEDI data. Nevertheless, combining the two data provided the advantage of detecting more building heights. This study highlights the importance of using minimum data for determining urban-scale building heights. Moreover, continuous monitoring of urban alterations using satellite altimetry data would provide more effective energy consumption assessment and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents updates related to the Organization of American Historians (OAH) as of 1984. Recipient of the Louis Pelzer Memorial Award for 1983; Job vacancies at the "The Journal of American History" publication; Details of a survey on OAH members released by Lewis Perry at the business meeting of the OAH in Los Angeles, California on April 6, 1984.

The present paper contains a translation of Steven Shapin's article entitled Is There a Crisis of Truth? published in the Los Angeles Review of Books in December 2019. The translation was made in contact with the author and with the editor of the aforementioned journal, Michele Pridmore-Brown. Shapin kindly provided us with an appendix about the article, presenting a brief update on the theme, almost two years after its publication. Seeking the best way to present an article that deals with current issues, we bring a brief biography of the author, as well as a reflective effort on how the "Truth Crisis" and denialism have been conveyed and debated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the generalized SEIHRDP (susceptible–exposed–infective–hospitalized–recovered–death–insusceptible) fractional-order epidemic model is established with individual migration. Firstly, the global properties of the proposed system are studied. Particularly, the sensitivity of parameters to the basic reproduction number are analyzed both theoretically and numerically. Secondly, according to the real data in India and Brazil, it can all be concluded that the bilinear incidence rate has a better description of COVID-19 transmission. Meanwhile, multi-peak situation is considered in China, and it is shown that the proposed system can better predict the next peak. Finally, taking individual migration between Los Angeles and New York as an example, the spread of COVID-19 between cities can be effectively controlled by limiting individual movement, enhancing nucleic acid testing and reducing individual contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A new MDCEV model with ordered preferences (MDCEV-OP) to analyze multiple discrete-continuous choices at a disaggregate level. • Application for disaggregate episode-level analysis of individuals' activity participation and time allocation. • Proposed framework with IID Gumbel error terms yields closed-from likelihood expression. • Proposed model provides better fit and predictive accuracy than the traditional MDCEV model applied at the episode level. This paper formulates a novel, multiple discrete-continuous extreme value model with ordered preferences (MDCEV-OP) to analyze multiple discrete-continuous (MDC) choices at a disaggregate level, including the number of instances different alternatives are chosen and the amount of consumption at each instance of choice. In doing so, the proposed model ensures a logically consistent prediction of multiple choice instances of an alternative. Specifically, the model prevents the prediction of positive allocation to the jth instance (i.e., a frequency of j episodes) of a good while predicting zero allocation to the (j-1)th or lower-numbered instances of that alternative. This is achieved by imposing a non-increasing order on the baseline-preference parameters of different choice instances of an alternative. The model results in a conditional likelihood function, where the likelihood arising from the optimality conditions of the utility maximization problem is conditioned on the ordering of baseline marginal utilities. Combining this strategy with independent and identically distributed (IID) Gumbel stochastic terms in the utility functions results in a closed-form likelihood expression that is not much more difficult than that of the MDCEV model. The proposed framework is applied for an empirical analysis of disaggregate, episode-level activity participation and time allocation behavior of non-working adults in Los Angeles, California. The empirical MDCEV-OP model provided better fit and predictive accuracy (in both estimation and validation datasets) for analyzing episode-level activity participation than a disaggregate MDCEV model that does not recognize the logical ordering of episodes. At the same time, the activity-level predictions aggregated from the episode-level predictions of the MDCEV-OP model do not deviate significantly from the predictions of an aggregate MDCEV model. These results highlight the efficacy of the proposed model for analyzing episode-level activity generation and time allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a partial transcription of a long conversation between the sociologist Zsuzsa Berend (University of California, Los Angeles) and the anthropologist Corinna Sabrina Guerzoni (Western Fertility Institute, Los Angeles) on US surrogacy. It is the outcome of an interview occurred on 6th October 2017 in Los Angeles, transcribed and revised by both the authors. The text analyzes some fundamental concepts that Berend explored in her book The Online Word of Surrogacy (2016) and offers some food for thought to read the US commercial surrogacy with other lenses. Berend's study offers an in-depth analysis of compensated surrogacy in the US and unique perspective for a better understanding of the experiences and points of view of the women directly involved in this assisted reproductive practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geographical presentation of a house, which refers to the sightseeing and topography near the house, is a critical factor to a house buyer. The street map is a type of common data in our daily life, which contains natural geographical presentation. This paper sources real estate data and corresponding street maps of houses in the city of Los Angeles. In the case study, we proposed an innovative method, attention-based multi-modal fusion, to incorporate the geographical presentation from street maps into the real estate appraisal model with a deep neural network. We firstly combine the house attribute features and street map imagery features by applying the attention-based neural network. After that, we apply boosted regression trees to estimate the house price from the fused features. This work explored the potential of attention mechanism and data fusion in the applications of real estate appraisal. The experimental results indicate the competitiveness of proposed method among state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers commonly "shrink" raw quality measures based on statistical criteria. This paper studies when and how this transformation's statistical properties would confer economic benefits to a utility‐maximizing decision‐maker across common asymmetric information environments. I develop the results for an application measuring teacher quality. The presence of a systematic relationship between teacher quality and class size could cause the data transformation to do either worse or better than the untransformed data. I use data from Los Angeles to confirm the presence of such a relationship and show that the simpler raw measure would outperform the one most commonly used in teacher incentive schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homelessness is a long-standing issue in American cities, with significant human consequences. However, current public management research does not typically include research on public agencies responding to the needs of the homeless. This paper uses a case study to explore the disconnect between public management research and those living on the margins of society as homeless. The case study illustrates the potential for multiple streams of research in public management to effectively research the complexities of homelessness. This paper makes the case for that public agency responses to the varied dimensions of homelessness align with public management research, with the potential to expand the scope of public management research to benefit the homeless as a marginalized community. A case study of homelessness in Los Angeles County is explored to show the potential for welldeveloped lines of public management research to be applied to the public agency response to homelessness. This paper contributes three components to public management research: one, noting that homelessness is understudied in public management; two, applying current research streams in public management to develop analytic leverage for understanding the public management dimensions of homelessness; and three, exploring the potential for varied streams of public management research to address a marginalized community of vulnerable individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislation in the State of California mandates reductions in emissions of short‐lived climate pollutants of 40% from 2013 levels by 2030 for CH4. Identification of the sector(s) responsible for these emissions and their temporal and spatial variability is a key step in achieving these goals. Here, we determine the emissions of CH4 in Los Angeles from 2011–2017 using a mountaintop remote sensing mapping spectrometer. We show that the pattern of CH4 emissions contains both seasonal and nonseasonal contributions. We find that the seasonal component peaks in the winter and is correlated (R2 = 0.58) with utility natural gas consumption from the residential and commercial sectors and not from the industrial and gas‐fired power plant sectors. The nonseasonal component is (22.9 ± 1.4) Gg CH4/month. If the seasonal correlation is causal, about (1.4 ± 0.1)% of the commercial and residential natural gas consumption in Los Angeles is released into the atmosphere. Plain Language Summary: CH4 is a desirable target for greenhouse gas emission reductions because emission controls will have a rapid impact on radiative forcing. However, its emission budget is highly uncertain and poorly quantified. This paper reports new results from a novel mountaintop remote sensing spectrometer overlooking the Los Angeles basin. The study shows that the megacity's methane emissions are strongly correlated with the consumption of natural gas by residential and commercial consumers, with a leakage rate of (1.4 ± 0.1)%, while the nonseasonal component is (22.9 ± 1.4) Gg CH4/month. By identifying a clear relationship between CH4 emissions and natural gas consumption, our results provide strong constraints on the pathways for fugitive CH4 emissions from the natural gas distribution system in Los Angeles. Key Points: A mountaintop remote sensing spectrometer is used to derive the time series and spatial pattern of methane emissions in LA basinThe methane emissions in the LA basin are strongly correlated with the consumption of natural gas by residential and commercial consumersAbout (1.4 ± 0.1)% of the residential and commercial natural gas consumption in LA is released into the atmosphere [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks the question – who moves into what kinds of neighbourhoods and what kind of residential sorting is occurring in the ethnically diverse metropolitan region of Los Angeles. The study examines residential selections across a typology of neighbourhood types in the Los Angeles metropolitan region using residential mobility data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS). Similar to recent work in the UK and Canadian contexts, ethnic groups demonstrate moderately strong relationships between their socio‐economic statuses and their neighbourhood contexts. Both behaviour, that is, actual moves and preferences, are consistent with a tendency to increased mixing and declining segregation in the residential mosaic. In particular, the expressed residential preferences and the choices of these households provide an explanatory context for the overall decline in segregation. [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]