Summary
Collections of micro‐organisms are a crucial element of life science research infrastructure but are vulnerable to loss and damage caused by natural or man‐made disasters, the untimely death ...or retirement of personnel, or the loss of research funding. Preservation of biological collections has risen in priority due to a new appreciation for discoveries linked to preserved specimens, emerging hurdles to international collecting and decreased funding for new collecting. While many historic collections have been lost, several have been preserved, some with dramatic rescue stories. Rescued microbes have been used for discoveries in areas of health, biotechnology and basic life science. Suggestions for long‐term planning for microbial stocks are listed, as well as inducements for long‐term preservation.
Crime and Social Interactions Glaeser, Edward L.; Sacerdote, Bruce; Scheinkman, José A.
The Quarterly journal of economics,
05/1996, Letnik:
111, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences; this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and ...benefits of crime. We present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross-city variance of crime rates. This model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes, moderate in more serious crimes, and almost negligible in murder and rape.
Measuring Trust Glaeser, Edward L.; Laibson, David I.; Scheinkman, José A. ...
The Quarterly journal of economics,
08/2000, Letnik:
115, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We combine two experiments and a survey to measure trust and trustworthiness-two key components of social capital. Standard attitudinal survey questions about trust predict trustworthy behavior in ...our experiments much better than they predict trusting behavior. Trusting behavior in the experiments is predicted by past trusting behavior outside of the experiments. When individuals are closer socially, both trust and trustworthiness rise. Trustworthiness declines when partners are of different races or nationalities. High status individuals are able to elicit more trustworthiness in others.
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of rapidly frozen biological specimens, or cryo-EM, would benefit from the development of a phase plate for in-focus phase contrast imaging. Several types of ...phase plates have been investigated, but rapid electrostatic charging of all such devices has hindered these efforts. Here, we demonstrate electron phase manipulation with a high-intensity continuous-wave laser beam, and use it as a phase plate for TEM. We demonstrate the laser phase plate by imaging an amorphous carbon film. The laser phase plate provides a stable and tunable phase shift without electrostatic charging or unwanted electron scattering. These results suggest the possibility for dose-efficient imaging of unstained biological macromolecules and cells.
How effective are restrictions on mobility in limiting COVID-19 spread? Using zip code data across five U.S. cities, we estimate that total cases per capita decrease by 19% for every ten percentage ...point fall in mobility. Addressing endogeneity concerns, we instrument for travel by residential teleworkable and essential shares and find a 25% decline in cases per capita. Using panel data for NYC with week and zip code fixed effects, we estimate a decline of 30%. We find substantial spatial and temporal heterogeneity; east coast cities have stronger effects, with the largest for NYC in the pandemic’s early stages.
This is an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Urban Economics on “Urbanization in Developing Countries: Past and Present”. We argue that the rapid urbanization and the rise of cities ...in the developing world demand new avenues of research and much more research to deal with the urban issues facing billions of people across the world that current work barely covers. This issue contains papers which move in that direction and signals a commitment by the journal to pursue this agenda.
Summary
Advances in fungal biosystematics and molecular genetics have clarified relationships among the wood‐decay fungi and are providing new tools for their detection and identification. Species ...complexes of forest pathogens, including those within Heterobasidion, Armillaria, Laetiporus, and Phellinus, are being resolved. The ability to isolate fungal DNA directly from wood without in intermediate culturing step will greatly facilitate sampling and disease detection and has applications in forest disease management, hazard tree assessment, invasive species detection, and carbon cycling, sequestration and climate change research. Recent changes in fungal nomenclature and their application to forest pathology are discussed.
Urban Decline and Durable Housing Glaeser, Edward L.; Gyourko, Joseph
The Journal of political economy,
04/2005, Letnik:
113, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Urban decline is not the mirror image of growth, and durable housing is the primary reason the nature of decline is so different. This paper presents a model of urban decline with durable housing and ...verifies these implications of the model: (1) city growth rates are skewed so that cities grow more quickly than they decline; (2) urban decline is highly persistent; (3) positive shocks increase population more than they increase housing prices; (4) negative shocks decrease housing prices more than they decrease population; (5) if housing prices are below construction costs, then the city declines; and (6) the combination of cheap housing and weak labor demand attracts individuals with low levels of human capital to declining cities.
Economic growth in a cross-section of cities Glaeser, Edward L.; Scheinkman, JoséA.; Shleifer, Andrei
Journal of monetary economics,
08/1995, Letnik:
36, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We examine the relationship between urban characteristics in 1960 and urban growth between 1960 and 1990. Income and population growth move together, and both types of growth are (1) positively ...related to initial schooling, (2) negatively related to initial unemployment, and (3) negatively related to the initial share of employment in manufacturing. Racial composition and segregation are uncorrelated with urban growth across all cities, but in cities with large nonwhite communities segregation is positively correlated with population growth. Government expenditures (except for sanitation) are uncorrelated with growth; government debt is positively correlated with later growth.
More than 19 percent of people in American central cities are poor. In suburbs, just 7.5 percent of people live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to ...come from wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap (the traditional explanation of urban poverty). A significant income elasticity for land exists only because the rich eschew apartment living, and that elasticity is still too low to explain the poor's urbanization. The urbanization of poverty comes mainly from better access to public transportation in central cities.
PDF
