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Online platforms have become an integral component of the housing search process in the United States and other developed contexts, but recent studies have demonstrated that these platforms offer uneven representation of different neighborhoods. In this study, we use listings covering the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas to assess how GoSection8, a platform uniquely focused on affordable housing and voucher-assisted households, compares with the "mainstream" alternatives of Craigslist, Apartments.com, and Zillow. Through descriptive and regression analyses of the housing and neighborhoods represented on these websites and a new way of measuring the distribution of rental housing opportunities, we advance a multisource perspective on the role of online information exchanges in housing search processes. Specifically, we find that GoSection8 and mainstream alternatives capture spatially segmented information about housing markets, with GoSection8 ads representing units that are more affordable but also more constrained to higher-poverty neighborhoods where assisted households are already concentrated. The findings suggest that disadvantaged households are potentially funneled toward high-poverty, isolated neighborhoods by the operation of stratified information systems available for online housing searches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for effective teaching and learning. Access to ICT is a complex and dynamic phenomenon that significantly impacts teachers' technology practices. There is a need for more extensive studies to explore the dynamics of access and teacher technology practices in various contexts. This study explored the influence of access on the technology practices of secondary school teachers in the Western Cape, South Africa. A qualitative online survey was used to explore the lived experiences of teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. A diverse sample, in terms of gender, age, years of experience of teachers, and socio-economic status of schools, of 22 teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Van Dijk's cumulative model of access to ICT provided a useful lens to explore how and when the dimensions of access supported or hindered teachers' appropriation of ICT. This study found that most respondents were primarily exposed to traditional face-to-face teaching before March 2020. The suspension of in-school teaching, however, caused a dramatic shift in the way teachers interacted with technology, learning materials and learners. Three dimensions of digital inequality, associated with physical access, manifested in South Africa, namely the Virtual Classroom, WhatsApp, and Radio-Television groups. Most participants in this study returned to traditional teaching practices with increased use of technology when schools reopened again. The findings of this study suggest that access to technology is not a linear progression of successive stages that by default culminates in usage. This paper proposes a more holistic contextualised approach to access to create enabling environments for the use of ICT and empower teachers to use ICT in their teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reduction reactions and densification of nanochains assembled from c-Fe2 O3 nanoparticles were investigated using in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Morphological changes and reduction of the metal oxide nanochains were observed during in situ TEM annealing through simultaneous imaging and quantitative analysis of the near-edge fine structures of Fe L2,3 absorption edges acquired by spatially resolved electron energy loss spectroscopy. A change in the oxidation states during annealing of the iron oxide nanochains was observed with phase transformations due to continuous reduction from F2 O3 over Fe3O4, FeO to metallic Fe. Phase transitions during the in situ heating experiments were accompanied with morphological changes in the nanochains, specifically rough-to-smooth surface transitions below 500°C, neck formation between adjacent particles around 500°C, and subsequent neck growth. At higher temperatures, coalescence of FeO particles was observed, representing densification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I. INTRODUCTION II. WHY THE DESUETUDE OF TRADITIONAL BLOCKADE LAW MATTERS i. The Gaza Blockade ii. The Fragmentation of International Law III. THE ARGUMENT THAT TRADITIONAL BLOCKADE RULES ARE CUSTOMARY [...], The legality of Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Expert reports assessing the blockade's legality have routinely relied on a collection of nineteenth-century rules known as traditional blockade law, which are assumed to be part of customary international law. This article finds that this assumption is ill-founded because traditional blockade law is in desuetude and has no binding legal authority. Customary law requires general state practice and the acceptance of that practice as law. The naval blockades of the last century demonstrate that the traditional blockade rules meet neither requirement. Derogations from the traditional rules have been as common as adherence, and these derogations have been accepted without objection from other states. The legality of the Gaza blockade must not be assessed on the basis of old rules that are no longer part of international law.