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Pomegranate is an old plant made up by flowers, roots, fruits and leaves, native to Central Asia and principally cultivated in the Mediterranean and California (although now widespread almost all over the globe). The current use of this precious plant regards not only the exteriority of the fruit (employed also for ornamental purpose) but especially the nutritional and, still potential, health benefits that come out from the various parts composing this one (carpellary membranes, arils, seeds and bark). Indeed, the phytochemical composition of the fruit abounds in compounds (flavonoids, ellagitannins, proanthocyanidins, mineral salts, vitamins, lipids, organic acids) presenting a significant biological and nutraceutical value. For these reasons, pomegranate interest is increased over the years as the object of study for many research groups, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector. Specifically, in-depth studies of its biological and functional properties and the research of new formulations could be applied to a wide spectrum of diseases including neoplastic, cardiovascular, viral, inflammatory, metabolic, microbial, intestinal, reproductive and skin diseases. In this review, considering the increasing scientific and commercial interest of nutraceuticals, we reported an update of the investigations concerning the health-promoting properties of pomegranate and its bioactive compounds against principal human pathologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contiguous United States (CONUS) harbor a significant non-native species diversity. However, spatiotemporal trends of some groups such as terrestrial gastropods (i.e., land snails and slugs) have not been comprehensively considered, and therefore management has been hindered. Here, our aims were to 1.) compile a dataset of all non-native terrestrial gastropod species with CONUS occurrence records, 2.) assess overarching spatiotemporal patterns associated with these records, 3.) describe the continental origin of each species, and 4.) compare climatic associations of each species in their indigenous and introduced CONUS ranges. We compiled a georeferenced dataset of 10,097 records for 22 families, 48 genera, and 69 species, with > 70% of records sourced from the citizen science database iNaturalist. The species Cornu aspersum Müller, 1774 was most prevalent with 3,672 records. The majority (> 92%) of records exhibit an indigenous Western European and Mediterranean distribution, with overlap in broad-scale climatic associations between indigenous and CONUS ranges. Records are most dense in urban metropolitan areas, with the highest proportion of records and species richness in the state of California. We show increased prevalence of non-native species through time, largely associated with urbanized areas with high human population density. Moreover, we show strong evidence for a role for analogous climates in dictating geographic fate and pervasiveness between indigenous and CONUS ranges for non-native species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article problematizes the development of affordable housing as a form of equity planning. Through both qualitative and quantitative data, the article examines three affordable housing projects within a redevelopment plan in Santa Ana, California. The research finds that a narrow focus on affordable housing, as it is designed and produced within the larger affordable housing complex, facilitates the process of gentrification and displacement. The findings show that equity is more than housing production alone. When affordability is defined at a larger scale, and the planning process is stripped of substantive community participation, affordable housing loses its more equitable underpinnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. A subset of patients with fibromyalgia (FM) exhibit a large fiber demyelinating peripheral polyneuropathy akin to that seen in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP). It has been suggested that this demyelinating process is likely to be immune mediated. Because it is known that similar large fiber neuropathic lesions may be associated with a cutaneous small fiber neuropathy, we sought to determine the prevalence of small fiber neuropathy, as measured by epidermal nerve fiber density (ENFD), in a series of patients with FM and clinically healthy control subjects. Methods. Forty-one consecutive patients with FM and 47 control subjects underwent a 3-mm punch skin biopsy at the proximal thigh and distal leg near the ankle, for analysis of the ENFD. Patients with FM who had clinical evidence of a disorder known to be associated with small fiber neuropathy were excluded. The patients with FM also underwent pinwheel testing and vibratory testing for hypesthesia and serologic testing for a series of cytokine, circulating immune complex, and complement measurements. Results. All patients with FM had evidence of stocking hypesthesia. The ENFD of patients with FM was lower than that of control subjects at both the calf (mean ± SD 5.8 ± 2.8 versus 7.4 ± 1.9; P = 0.0002) and thigh (9.3 ± 3.2 versus 11.3 ± 2.0; P = 0.0007). There was an inverse correlation between calf ENFD and age at the time of skin biopsy in patients with FM (r = -0.29, P = 0.03) but not in control subjects; however, analysis of covariance showed that this relationship could not be explained by aging alone. Serologic evaluation showed an inverse correlation between calf ENFD in patients with FM and the interleukin-2 receptor (IL-2R) level (r=-0.28, P = 0.04). However, an inverse correlation between thigh ENFD and serum IL-2R levels did not reach significance (P = 0.08). Analysis of thigh-to-calf ENFD ratios suggested that the ENFD decline in FM is affected by both a diffuse and a length-dependent process. Conclusion. The calf and thigh ENFD in patients with FM is significantly diminished compared with that in control subjects. Advancing age alone cannot explain this finding. Calf ENFD was inversely correlated, although weakly, with serum levels of IL-2R. These findings suggest that small fiber neuropathy is likely to contribute to the pain symptoms of FM; that pain in this disorder arises, in part, from a peripheral immunemediated process; and that measurement of ENFD may be a useful clinical tool in FM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonconforming people and activities challenge municipal governments. Using the US city of West Hollywood, California, as a case study, this paper argues planning tools such as design interventions for commercial streets cannot intentionally include nonconforming people or activities. West Hollywood drew national attention when it incorporated in 1984 as a progressive city with unique demographics, most notably a high percentage of gay residents. In the subsequent decades, it became a more exclusive city of leisure and entertainment. This case study helps explain why the redesign of its commercial streets became more exclusive despite the city's continued progressive politics and commitment to diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses panel data collected at the block group level from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census to explore neighborhood change in the Silicon Valley region of Northern California. This was a period of rapid economic expansion and displacement of the white majority by immigrants of Asian and Hispanic descent. The argument that economic prosperity promotes ethnic group assimilation is confronted by mixed findings that ethnic residential segregation intensified in Silicon Valley during the 1990s, regardless of the income level of neighborhoods, and that some second generation immigrants have begun to assimilate residentially. Results support the argument that more recent immigrants, regardless of education, are likely to reside in areas populated by members of their ethnic group. In addition, upward mobility does not necessarily mean ethnic minorities will leave ethnic neighborhoods and desegregate the larger metropolitan area, which also creates the potential for proliferation of more affluent ethnic neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the process of institutional change at the leading ports of the United States: Los Angeles and Long Beach. In order to do so, it makes use of the structure of provision-approach and the concept of regime politics which allows for a systematic analysis and comparison. Key questions are: how are both ports institutionally structured? How do they evolve in relation to each other? And what is the role of agency in this process? The paper reveals how both ports remain institutionally different in spite of competition. This persistent institutional diversity can be explained by that fact that institutions represent territorially rooted structures of power in which competitive performance will not always be the decisive interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Park planning and development in the Los Angeles metropolitan area offer an opportunity to explore the assertion that “Western cities are now being managed, organized and governed in different ways” leading to a ‘new urban politics,” and the suggestion that urban regime theory captures cultural and civil societal influences and organizations in its descriptions of coalitions and their roles in promoting places. This article examines park provision in Los Angeles historically and in the contemporary period through interviews and current documents, as well as through newspaper articles and park bond proposition language. The resulting analysis suggests that civil society organizations such as nonprofits act in quite similar ways to traditional urban regime business interests. Nonprofits should be examined for their roles in creating a new urban politics, including structures of governance. Additionally, in the environmental area, these organizations have become significant actors in determining land uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses HIV-positive men's sexual behaviors with partners at risk for infection in Los Angeles, California. Association of safer sex with interpersonal communication variables; Prevalence of protected anal or vaginal intercourse; Need for post-test counseling.

This article presents the results of a comparative study of environmental policy making in Toronto and Los Angeles. The study was intended to explain how social formations at the urban scale play an increasingly important role in constructing environmental policy and practice as articulated in documents, rhetoric and political actions. It is suggested that environmental policy is embedded in broader and more long-term political goals, and that ecological discourse is not only about the environment but also brings together various social projects under the environmental protection flag. The four case studies— in Toronto, contaminated soil and the Don River were examined, and in Los Angeles air pollution and the Los Angeles River—revealed considerable variation but all reflected an agenda of ecological modernisation. In particular it was found that demands for maintaining or improving environmental integrity and coherence have lost legitimacy to concerns for efficiency, competitiveness, marketability, flexibility and development. Similarly, market driven regulation and an openness to civil society have played a major role in transforming policy making apparatuses. In contrast, the cases revealed that relationships between nature and society go beyond those expected in ecological modernisation theory and include both social ecology and urban ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critique of the recent work on global economic and state restructuring in the broader political economy literature. It argues that much of this work, because of its theoretical reliance on regulation theory, offers only a partial account of the state and state restructuring. The paper offers a framework for understanding state restructuring and the state's role in economic regulation that adds more explicitly political imperatives to the existing regulation account. The methodological goals of the regulationist literature have led it to focus too heavily on the reproduction of capitalist relations as the primary object of state policies and institutions. That focus should be enlarged to include an explicit analysis of the important element of state-citizen relations. In addition to helping reproduce capitalist relations, state policies must also reproduce a condition of political legitimacy between state and citizen in order to ensure the continued reproduction of state institutions and state sovereignty. While the statecitizen relation is closely bound up with economic relations, it also includes non-economic, more purely political aspects. I argue that the imperative of state-citizen legitimacy will play an important role in how the state is restructured in the present crisis. The paper ends by offering a case study of the local state in Los Angeles in order to illustrate how state-citizen political legitimacy can play an important role in state restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses governance restructuring in Los Angeles, California and Toronto, Ontario. In Toronto an aggressively neoliberal provincial Ontario government decreed an amalgamation of six individual municipal governments and one regional administration. The consolidationist argument, often associated with dirigiste government and compact central city ideals, has now become the means of choice to integrate regional blubber belt hegemony in more than one jurisdiction in Ontario. In Toronto and Los Angeles, what appear to be limited struggles over local jurisdiction and administration of service delivery, are struggles over the urban dimensions of a globalized work, at least in part. Amalgamation and secession become fighting metaphors of change in the war of position in which urban actors find themselves in the age of the global city. Although the old City of Toronto, had retained its hegemony in the region since the introduction of Metro government exactly because it has become one, albeit the strongest, player in a regionally federated system of metropolitan governance, its position had also been waning in the final years of the Metro model.

This article explores growth politics in the United States by examining the case of Los Angeles. Recent observers of Los Angeles have noted that growth interests in the city increasingly lack the political coordination to effectively accomplish their projects. One writer has even announced the collapse of the growth machine in the region. Such an assertion is extraordinay, given the power most authors ascribe to growth coalitions and given Los Angeles' strong pro-growth history. The article presents evidence that the machine has not collapsed, but the political consensus for growth has eroded severely over the past 15 years by a variety of factors. The article then argues that the same general processes that have caused the demise of the growth consensus in Los Angeles are in place in other cities and will likely have similar effects on growth politics there. The article ends by detailing some implications that the end of the growth consensus might have for local politics in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The California Supreme Court's decision in Comden v. Superior Court (1978) limited the ability of attorneys to testify for clients they represent at both contract negotiations and later at trial proceedings. The court's decision raises the question of whether this rule ought to be applied to labor arbitration. This article traces the history of the prohibition and analyzes the rationales underlying it. The author concludes that the attorney-witness rule should not be applied to arbitration. He bases that decision on several arguments. First, the rule relates to trials, not arbitrations; arbitration proceedings are so different from trials that a rule covering arbitration would have to do so explicitly. Second, the rationales for the rule are inapplicable to arbitration. Third, the rule conflicts with the National Labor Relations Act's guarantee of freedom of choice in the selection of bargaining representatives. Thus, the author finds that arbitrators ought not apply the rule to attorneys who testify at arbitration hearings as to what transpired during contract negotiations or about other pre-arbitral matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research indicates that a diet rich in whole grains may reduce the risk of prevalent chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some cancers, and that risk for these diseases varies by ethnicity. The objective of the current study was to identify major dietary sources of grains and describe their contribution to B vitamins in five ethnic groups.Methods: A cross-sectional mail survey was used to collect data from participants in the Multiethnic Cohort Study in Hawaii and Los Angeles County, United States, from 1993 to 1996. Dietary intake data collected using a quantitative food frequency questionnaire was available for 186,916 participants representing five ethnic groups (African American, Latino, Japanese American, Native Hawaiian and Caucasian) aged 45-75 years. The top sources of grain foods were determined, and their contribution to thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, and folic acid intakes were analyzed.Results: The top source of whole grains was whole wheat/rye bread for all ethnic-sex groups, followed by popcorn and cooked cereals, except for Native Hawaiian men and Japanese Americans, for whom brown/wild rice was the second top source; major contributors of refined grains were white rice and white bread, except for Latinos. Refined grain foods contributed more to grain consumption (27.1-55.6%) than whole grain foods (7.4-30.8%) among all ethnic-sex groups, except African American women. Grain foods made an important contribution to the intakes of thiamin (30.2-45.9%), riboflavin (23.1-29.2%), niacin (27.1-35.8%), vitamin B6 (22.9-27.5%), and folic acid (23.3-27.7%).Conclusions: This is the first study to document consumption of different grain sources and their contribution to B vitamins in five ethnic groups in the U.S. Findings can be used to assess unhealthful food choices, to guide dietary recommendations, and to help reduce risk of chronic diseases in these populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]