bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Preoperative fall risk assessment score as a prognostic factor in gastric cancer patients after gastrectomy
Authors: Kouzu Keita , Tsujimoto Hironori , Nagata Hiromi , Sugasawa Hidekazu , Ishibashi Yusuke , Hase Kazuo , Kishi Yoji , Ueno Hideki
Published: October 2020

Objective

Falls are related to frailty, which is known as an unfavorable prognosticator of gastric cancer. In this study, we investigated the influence of the fall risk assessment score on short- and long-term prognoses in patients with gastric cancer after gastrectomy.

Methods

A total of 430 patients who underwent gastrectomy for gastric cancer were included in this retrospective study. The fall risk assessment score was scored by nursing staffs on admission. We investigated the relationships between the fall risk assessment score and clinicopathological findings, postoperative outcomes and prognoses. We assigned patients with a fall risk assessment score ≥7 to the high-risk group (92 cases, 21.4%) and those with a fall risk assessment score <6 to the low-risk group (338 cases, 78.6%).

Results

There were no significant differences between the two groups in pathological stage of gastric cancer and postoperative complications, but the high-risk group had significantly longer postoperative hospital stays than the low-risk group (P < 0.001). The overall and the relapse-free survival rates in the high-risk group were significantly lower than those in the low-risk group. The high-risk group was one of the independent poor prognostic factors for overall survival, with a hazard ratio of 2.91 (P ≤ 0.001) in univariate analysis and a hazard ratio of 2.74 (P = 0.008) in multivariate analysis.

Conclusions

While the fall risk assessment score is an objective and easy-to-use method to assess fall risk and frailty, it may present a prognostic factor in gastric cancer.
Jaguars and pumas exhibit distinct spatiotemporal responses to human disturbances in Colombia’s most imperiled ecoregion
Authors: Figel Joe J , Botero-Cañola Sebastián , Sánchez-Londoño Juan David , Racero-Casarrubia Javier
Published: October 2020

Coexistence of sympatric felids is facilitated by mutual avoidance and the partitioning of habitats, prey, and time. Anthropogenic disturbances disrupt this coexistence in fragmented landscapes, potentially triggering cascading influences in ecological communities. We used photographic data from 8,717 trap nights (November 2014–June 2016) at 87 camera trap sites in Colombia’s middle Magdalena River basin to compare spatiotemporal overlap among jaguars (Panthera onca), pumas (Puma concolor), their prey, and humans, at sites of high and low disturbance, as determined by the human influence index. Human disturbance events (e.g., domestic dogs, livestock, and humans, including armed hunters) comprised 38% of all photographs at high disturbance sites and 29% of all photographs at low disturbance sites. Differential spatiotemporal overlaps were recorded between felids and their prey at high versus low disturbance sites, with jaguars exhibiting only 13% temporal overlap with humans at high disturbance sites. Among prey, temporal overlap was greater than spatial overlap for both felids across the study area. Compared to jaguars, pumas displayed more temporal overlap with all anthropogenic variables and more spatial overlap with most anthropogenic variables, suggesting lesser sensitivity to human disturbances. This study provides the first insights into the responses of a threatened large carnivore, jaguar, to camera trap-derived human disturbance variables in an unprotected landscape. It also highlights the importance of using multiple disturbance types for evaluating human impacts on large carnivores.
A unique cricetid experiment in the northern high-Andean Páramos deserves tribal recognition
Authors: Pardiñas Ulyses F J , Curay Jenny , Brito Jorge , Cañón Carola
Published: October 2020

While hypsodonty mostly is associated with medium to large body sizes in sigmodontine rodents, high-crowned molars combined with small bodies rarely are recorded. This latter condition is present in Neomicroxus (Sigmodontinae, incertae sedis), a genus of high-Andean cricetids also characterized by a noticeable set of cranial traits, including enlarged turbinals and rostrum, slanting zygomatic plate, and a marked backward displacement of the vertical ramus of the dentary, linked with an enlargement of the basicranial region. These morphological features, combined with the isolated position of this lineage in molecular-based phylogenies, indicate that Neomicroxus should be situated in a new tribe. We name and describe this Páramo novelty monotypic clade here. As a working hypothesis, the hypsodonty displayed by this group is considered an evolutionary response to continued volcanic ash falls that characterized the region during the Neogene. A reappraisal of tribe recognition within the two cricetid largest subfamilies, arvicolines and sigmodontines, is made, coupled with a discussion about the role of morphological convergence in “long-nose” cricetids.
Maternal SARS-CoV-2 Infection Associated to Systemic Inflammatory Response and Pericardial Effusion in the Newborn: A Case Report
Authors: Lima Andressa R O , Cardoso Cynthia C , Bentim Priscilla R B , Voloch Carolina M , Rossi Átila D , da Costa Raissa Mirella M S C , da Paz Juliana Aparecida S , Agostinho Rafael F , Figueiredo Valéria R F S , Júnior Jarba S S , de Almeida Luiz G P , Gerber Alexandra L , Abuassi Clarissa A , Rodrigues Natalia F , Tanuri Amilcar , Bozza Patricia T , Bastos Cesar S , de Vasconcelos Ana Tereza R , Kruger Stella Beatriz , Vallim Giovanna Geórgia P C A , Nishihara Roberto J , Barroso Shana Priscila C , Morrot Alexandre
Published: October 2020

Vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has already been described, while clinical consequences to the fetus are still under investigation. This article reports a case of systemic fetal inflammatory response and pericardial effusion. As far as is known, this is the first case of fetal/neonatal cardiac complications related to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Choosing Wisely: Computed Tomography in the Diagnosis of Adolescents With Intrathoracic Tuberculosis
Authors: Kakalia Spenta , Chakravarty Aparna , Manson David , Lam Ray , Waters Valerie , Kitai Ian
Published: October 2020

In a retrospective study of adolescents with intrathoracic tuberculosis (TB), 26 out of the 81 (32%) patients had undergone chest computed tomography (CT). Chest CT was considered unnecessary in 7 (27%), necessary in 7 (27%), and possibly/probably helpful in 12 (46%). Promptly obtaining specimens for sputum smear microscopy, molecular testing, as well as culture for Mycobacterium tuberculosis could avoid several unnecessary CTs.
Comprehensive epigenome and transcriptome analysis of carbon reserve remobilization in indica and japonica rice stems under moderate soil drying
Authors: Wang Guanqun , Li Xiaozheng , Li Yongqiang , Ye Nenghui , Li Haoxuan , Zhang Jianhua
Published: October 2020

Moderate soil drying (MD) imposed at the post-anthesis stage significantly improves carbon reserve remobilization in rice stems, increasing grain yield. However, the methylome and transcriptome profiles of carbon reserve remobilization under MD are obscure in indica and japonica rice stems. Here, we generated whole-genome single-base resolution maps of the DNA methylome in indica and japonica rice stems. DNA methylation levels were higher in indica than in japonica and positively correlated with genome size. MD treatment had a weak impact on the changes in methylation levels in indica. Moreover, the number of differentially methylated regions was much lower in indica, indicating the existence of cultivar-specific methylation patterns in response to MD during grain filling. The gene encoding β-glucosidase 1, involved in the starch degradation process, was hypomethylated and up-regulated in indica, resulting in improved starch to sucrose conversion under MD treatment. Additionally, increased expression of MYBS1 transactivated the expression of AMYC2/OsAMY2A in both indica and japonica, leading to enhanced starch degradation under MD. In contrast, down-regulated expression of MYB30 resulted in increased expression of BMY5 in both cultivars. Our findings decode the dynamics of DNA methylation in indica and japonica rice stems and propose candidate genes for improving carbon reserve remobilization.
Natural polymorphisms in a pair of NSP2 homoeologs can cause loss of nodulation in peanut
Authors: Peng Ze , Chen Huiqiong , Tan Lubin , Shu Hongmei , Varshney Rajeev K , Zhou Zhekai , Zhao Zifan , Luo Ziliang , Chitikineni Annapurna , Wang Liping , Maku James , López Yolanda , Gallo Maria , Zhou Hai , Wang Jianping
Published: October 2020

Microbial symbiosis in legumes is achieved through nitrogen-fixing root nodules, and these are important for sustainable agriculture. The molecular mechanisms underlying development of root nodules in polyploid legume crops are largely understudied. Through map-based cloning and QTL-seq approaches, we identified a pair of homoeologous GRAS transcription factor genes, Nodulation Signaling Pathway 2 (AhNSP2-B07 or Nb) and AhNSP2-A08 (Na), controlling nodulation in cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.), an allotetraploid legume crop, which exhibited non-Mendelian and Mendelian inheritance, respectively. The segregation of nodulation in the progeny of Nananbnb genotypes followed a 3:1 Mendelian ratio, in contrast to the 5:3~1:1 non-Mendelian ratio for nanaNbnb genotypes. Additionally, a much higher frequency of the nb allele (13%) than the na allele (4%) exists in the peanut germplasm collection, suggesting that Nb is less essential than Na in nodule organogenesis. Our findings reveal the genetic basis of naturally occurred non-nodulating peanut plants, which can be potentially used for nitrogen fixation improvement in peanut. Furthermore, the results have implications for and provide insights into the evolution of homoeologous genes in allopolyploid species.
Potassium content diminishes in infected cells ofMedicago truncatulanodules due to the mislocation of channels MtAKT1 and MtSKOR/GORK
Authors: Fedorova Elena E , Coba de la Peña Teodoro , Lara-Dampier Victoria , Trifonova Natalia A , Kulikova Olga , Pueyo José J , Lucas M Mercedes
Published: October 2020

Rhizobia establish a symbiotic relationship with legumes that results in the formation of root nodules, where bacteria encapsulated by a membrane of plant origin (symbiosomes), convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. Nodules are more sensitive to ionic stresses than the host plant itself. We hypothesize that such a high vulnerability might be due to defects in ion balance in the infected tissue. Low temperature SEM (LTSEM) and X-ray microanalysis of Medicago truncatula nodules revealed a potassium (K+) decrease in symbiosomes and vacuoles during the life span of infected cells. To clarify K+ homeostasis in the nodule, we performed phylogenetic and gene expression analyses, and confocal and electron microscopy localization of two key plant Shaker K+ channels, AKT1 and SKOR/GORK. Phylogenetic analyses showed that the genome of some legume species, including the Medicago genus, contained one SKOR/GORK and one AKT1 gene copy, while other species contained more than one copy of each gene. Localization studies revealed mistargeting and partial depletion of both channels from the plasma membrane of M. truncatula mature nodule-infected cells that might compromise ion transport. We propose that root nodule-infected cells have defects in K+ balance due to mislocation of some plant ion channels, as compared with non-infected cells. The putative consequences are discussed.
Search for dormant black holes in ellipsoidal variables I. Revisiting the expected amplitudes of the photometric modulation
Authors: Gomel Roy , Faigler Simchon , Mazeh Tsevi
Published: October 2020

Ellipsoidal variables present light-curve modulations caused by stellar distortion, induced by tidal interaction with their companions. An analytical approximated model of the ellipsoidal modulation is given as a discrete Fourier series by Morris & Naftilan. Based on numerical simulations using the phoebe code, we present here updated amplitudes of the first three harmonics of the model. The expected amplitudes are given as a function of the mass ratio and inclination of the binary system and the fillout factor of the primary – the ratio between the stellar radius and that of its Roche lobe. The corrections can get up to 30 per cent relative to the Morris & Naftilan model for fillout factors close to unity. The updated model can be instrumental in searching for short-period binaries with compact-object secondaries in large data sets of photometric light curves. As shown in one OGLE light-curve example, the minimum mass ratio can be obtained by using only the amplitudes of the three harmonics and an estimation of the stellar temperature. High enough amplitudes can help to identify binaries with mass ratios larger than unity, some of which might have compact companions.
The value of the Hubble–Lemaître constant queried by Type Ia supernovae: a journey from the Calán-Tololo Project to the Carnegie Supernova Program
Authors: Hamuy Mario , Cartier Régis , Contreras Carlos , Suntzeff Nicholas B
Published: October 2020

We assess the robustness of the two highest rungs of the ‘cosmic distance ladder’ for Type Ia supernovae and the determination of the Hubble–Lemaître constant. In this analysis, we hold fixed Rung 1 as the distance to the LMC determined to 1 per cent using detached eclipsing binary stars. For Rung 2, we analyse two methods, the TRGB and Cepheid distances for the luminosity calibration of Type Ia supernovae in nearby galaxies. For Rung 3, we analyse various modern digital supernova samples in the Hubble flow, such as the Calán-Tololo, CfA, CSP, and Supercal data sets. This metadata analysis demonstrates that the TRGB calibration yields smaller H0 values than the Cepheid calibration, a direct consequence of the systematic difference in the distance moduli calibrated from these two methods. Selecting the three most independent possible methodologies/bandpasses (B, V, J), we obtain H0 = 69.9 ± 0.8 and H0= 73.5 ± 0.7 $\, \rm km\, s^{-1} \, Mpc^{-1}$from the TRGB and Cepheid calibrations, respectively. Adding in quadrature the systematic uncertainty in the TRGB and Cepheid methods of 1.1 and 1.0 $\, \rm km\, s^{-1} \, Mpc^{-1}$, respectively, this subset reveals a significant 2.0σ systematic difference in the calibration of Rung 2. If Rung 1 and Rung 2 are held fixed, the different formalisms developed for standardizing the supernova peak magnitudes yield consistent results, with a standard deviation of 1.5 $\, \rm km\, s^{-1} \, Mpc^{-1}$, that is, Type Ia supernovae are able to anchor Rung 3 with 2 per cent precision. This study demonstrates that Type Ia supernovae have provided a remarkably robust calibration of R3 for over 25 yr.
Identification of AKARI infrared sources by the Deep HSC Optical Survey: construction of a new band-merged catalogue in the North Ecliptic Pole Wide field
Authors: Kim Seong Jin , Oi Nagisa , Goto Tomotsugu , Ikeda Hiroyuki , Ho Simon C-C , Shim Hyunjin , Toba Yoshiki , Hwang Ho Seong , Hashimoto Tetsuya , Barrufet Laia , Malkan Matthew , Kim Helen K , Huang Ting-Chi , Matsuhara Hideo , Miyaji Takamitsu , Pearson Chris , Serjeant Stephen , Santos Daryl Joe D , Kim Eunbin , Pollo Agnieszka , Jeong Woong-Seob , Wang Ting-Wen , Momose Rieko , Takagi Toshinobu
Published: October 2020

The North Ecliptic Pole field is a natural deep-field location for many satellite observations. It has been targeted many times since it was surveyed by the AKARI space telescope with its unique wavelength coverage from the near- to mid-infrared (mid-IR). Many follow-up observations have been carried out, making this field one of the most frequently observed areas with a variety of facilities, accumulating abundant panchromatic data from the X-ray to the radio wavelength range. Recently, a deep optical survey with the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) at the Subaru telescope covered the NEP-Wide (NEPW) field, which enabled us to identify faint sources in the near- and mid-IR bands, and to improve the photometric redshift (photo-z) estimation. In this work, we present newly identified AKARI sources by the HSC survey, along with multiband photometry for 91 861 AKARI sources observed over the NEPW field. We release a new band-merged catalogue combining various photometric data from the GALEX UV to submillimetre (sub-mm) bands (e.g. Herschel/SPIRE, JCMT/SCUBA-2). About ∼20 000 AKARI sources are newly matched to the HSC data, most of which seem to be faint galaxies in the near- to mid-infrared AKARI bands. This catalogue is motivating a variety of current research, and will be increasingly useful as recently launched (eROSITA/ART-XC) and future space missions (such as JWST, Euclid, and SPHEREx) plan to take deep observations in the NEP field.
Histone sumoylation promotes Set3 histone-deacetylase complex-mediated transcriptional regulation
Authors: Ryu Hong-Yeoul , Zhao Dejian , Li Jianhui , Su Dan , Hochstrasser Mark
Published: October 2020

Histones are substrates of the SUMO (small ubiquitin-like modifier) conjugation pathway. Several reports suggest histone sumoylation affects transcription negatively, but paradoxically, our genome-wide analysis shows the modification concentrated at many active genes. We find that trans-tail regulation of histone-H2B ubiquitylation and H3K4 di-methylation potentiates subsequent histone sumoylation. Consistent with the known control of the Set3 histone deacetylase complex (HDAC) by H3K4 di-methylation, histone sumoylation directly recruits the Set3 complex to both protein-coding and noncoding RNA (ncRNA) genes via a SUMO-interacting motif in the HDAC Cpr1 subunit. The altered gene expression profile caused by reducing histone sumoylation matches well to the profile in cells lacking Set3. Histone H2B sumoylation and the Set3 HDAC coordinately suppress cryptic ncRNA transcription initiation internal to mRNA genes. Our results reveal an elaborate co-transcriptional histone crosstalk pathway involving the consecutive ubiquitylation, methylation, sumoylation and deacetylation of histones, which maintains transcriptional fidelity by suppressing spurious transcription.
PTRF/cavin-1 remodels phospholipid metabolism to promote tumor proliferation and suppress immune responses in glioblastoma by stabilizing cPLA2
Authors: Yi Kaikai , Zhan Qi , Wang Qixue , Tan Yanli , Fang Chuan , Wang Yunfei , Zhou Junhu , Yang Chao , Li Yansheng , Kang Chunsheng
Published: October 2020

Background

Metabolism remodeling is a hallmark of glioblastoma (GBM) that regulates tumor proliferation and the immune microenvironment. Previous studies have reported that increased polymerase 1 and transcript release factor (PTRF) levels are associated with a worse prognosis in glioma patients. However, the biological role and the molecular mechanism of PTRF in GBM metabolism remain unclear.

Methods

The relationship between PTRF and lipid metabolism in GBM was detected by nontargeted metabolomics profiling and subsequent lipidomics analysis. Western blotting, quantitative real-time PCR, and immunoprecipitation were conducted to explore the molecular mechanism of PTRF in lipid metabolism. A sequence of in vitro and in vivo experiments (both xenograft tumor and intracranial tumor mouse models) were used to detect the tumor-specific impacts of PTRF.

Results

Here, we show that PTRF triggers a cytoplasmic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2)–mediated phospholipid remodeling pathway that promotes GBM tumor proliferation and suppresses tumor immune responses. Research in primary cell lines from GBM patients revealed that cells overexpressing PTRF show increased cPLA2 activity—resulting from increased protein stability—and exhibit remodeled phospholipid composition. Subsequent experiments revealed that PTRF overexpression alters the endocytosis capacity and energy metabolism of GBM cells. Finally, in GBM xenograft and intracranial tumor mouse models, we showed that inhibiting cPLA2 activity blocks tumor proliferation and prevents PTRF-induced reduction in CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes.

Conclusions

The PTRF-cPLA2 lipid remodeling pathway promotes tumor proliferation and suppresses immune responses in GBM. In addition, our findings highlight multiple new therapeutic targets for GBM.
Henri Lefebvre
Authors: Zieleniec Andy
Published: October 2020

Henri Lefebvre is now established as one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century. Over a long life (b. 1901–d. 1991) he wrote and published prodigiously more than sixty books and several hundred articles on a range of issues and themes. His legacy and lasting impact not only includes being the most influential and seminal theorist on the reprioritization of space in social and critical analysis but also recognition for his contribution to the analysis of everyday life, modernity, the Right to the City, and the urban. He continues to influence and inspire research across a number of disciplines and fields; these include rural and regional studies, sociology, geography, politics, philosophy, and urban studies. Lefebvre’s commitment Marxism; his nondogmatic and humanist approach to the definition, discussion, extension, and application of key concepts; and his integration of those concepts into his various analyses of the rural and the city, of the state, of space and politics, and of modernity and everyday life led him to a conflicted relationship and at times marginalization within the structuralist-influenced French Academy and the Communist Party of France in which he was a member for thirty years. His anti-Stalinist stance and nonconformist opposition to the structural determinism prevalent within the party led to his expulsion, but throughout the 1960s, as professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg and latterly at the new university at Nanterre, he became one of the most respected teachers and intellectuals inspiring and influencing the May 1968 student revolt. Lefebvre’s work after that, still influenced and committed to Marxist dialectics and critique, increasingly focused on the urban, the social production of space, everyday life, modernity, and the survival of capitalism. Of these his introduction of the concept of the right to the city and the social production of space have been immensely influential for a range of urban scholars and theorists and his work as a whole is being increasingly adopted, adapted, and extended by a variety of researchers of the city in a range of disciplines. The works selected below reflect Lefebvre’s long career and extensive corpus of work. However, only those books and articles that have been translated into English are included here. They represent his exegesis of Marxism and its application to a range of themes that were applied or are important for urban analysis. The secondary literature cited is organized thematically and while not comprehensive provides an overview of the expanding literature on, about, and applying Lefebvrian analysis.
Riots
Authors: Moran Matthew
Published: October 2020

Riots have long been an area of interest for researchers but the study of this form of collective disorder has always proved challenging. Riots are fluid and highly volatile events, intense outbursts of emotionally charged violence that often seem devoid of any clear, underlying logic. The task is further complicated by the fact that every riot is unique in the sense that it arises from a particular combination of causal and contextual factors that may vary considerably from event to event. Classical thinking on riots (see From Classical to Contemporary Perspectives on Riots) was underpinned by notions of irrationality and criminality, but this trend was reversed over the course of the 20th century as rational approaches to understanding collective behavior gained momentum. Contemporary research, much of it empirical, has sought to adopt a holistic approach to the study of riots, combining an understanding of immediate crowd dynamics with the broader contextual factors surrounding riots.
Squatter Settlements
Authors: Chattaraj Shahana
Published: October 2020

Squatter settlements, widespread in urban Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia, are a characteristic feature of contemporary urbanization. Also known as shantytowns, slums, favelas in Brazil, and bustees in South Asia, they involve the extralegal occupation and settlement of public or private land, often by migrants from rural areas. Unplanned and typically located on peripheral or marginal land, squatter settlements have poor infrastructure and inadequate public services, including water, health, and sanitation. Houses tend to be auto-constructed and built incrementally. Residents of squatter settlements generally lack legally recognized rights to the land they occupy, and may lead precarious lives. The majority work in the informal economy, in insecure, low-wage jobs or are self-employed. State policies in many countries, seeking to curb a migrant influx to big cities, criminalize land encroachment but fail to address the housing needs of the urban poor. Squatter settlements may be demolished in slum clearance programs. Nonetheless, many such settlements endure and grow, over time acquiring public services and rights. Well-known slums like Mumbai’s Dharavi, Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, and Nairobi’s Kibera are populous, established, and diverse cities within cities. They are both celebrated and deplored in popular and academic accounts, as symbols of human resilience and entrepreneurship, or products of uneven development and global and national inequities. Early literature on squatter settlements located their growth in the distorted urbanization of what was known as the Third World, divorced from industrial modernization. Squatters were considered economically marginal, akin to peasants rather than “modern” urban citizens. Ethnographic and empirical research complicated these perspectives, providing insight into the lived experience and social, economic, and political organization of squatter settlements. Slums began to be viewed as solutions to challenges of housing, livelihoods, and economic growth. “Self-build” housing was celebrated, as was small-scale entrepreneurship. In-situ improvement and tenure legalization became preferred policy approaches. Later, critical urban theorists rejected notions of “underdevelopment” and development and argued that informal processes such as squatting were integral to urbanization in the Global South. As the world urbanizes, with population growth concentrated in developing world cities, slums have reemerged as sites for social-scientific inquiry. Debates about their relationship to growth and development, their viability as communities and living environments, and about policy approaches and outcomes continue to animate the literature. These debates reflect the fact that squatter settlements across the world, and even within cities, are heterogeneous and dynamic, within varied histories and trajectories.
Business Improvement Districts
Authors: Stokes Robert , Martinez Julia
Published: October 2020

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are a form of special purpose government that utilize special assessments on real property to deliver services to a spatially defined commercial area. The first BIDs emerged in North America in the early to mid-1970s. They grew tremendously in the early 1990s, with some current estimates exceeding 1,500 BIDs globally as of 2018. While the legal and administrative process to create and govern BIDs varies in the United States based on state laws and local ordinances, they are typically created through a vote of affected property owners after some period of public disclosure and hearings. BIDs vary widely in their geographic size and capacity for assessment collection, ranging from $20 million-plus annual budgets and covering entire central business districts, to sub-$100,000 budgets with service areas that cover a few blocks of a neighborhood commercial strip. Assessments are typically collected by local governments and then passed on to BID operating organizations, which are usually governed by nonprofit organizations. Many BIDs also augment their assessment budgets through gifts, grants, contracts, and fees for services. These funds are used to support services that often include some mix of common area sanitation, security, marketing, and landscaping. Many large US cities have extensively used BIDs as an economic development tool, with cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles each having over forty BIDs. The growth of BIDs has been linked to set of larger of fiscal, social, and economic problems that cities faced during the era of economic restructuring and deindustrialization. BIDs filled a void left by many city governments’ inability to organize, fund, and manage services directed toward the problems facing many commercial areas, which often included crime, homelessness, and disorderly public environments. As BIDs have matured and are now a common feature of the urban landscape, they have grown in their capacities as organizations, with some comprehensive organizations fulfilling more ambitious functions related to infrastructure provision, social service coordination, urban planning, and public space management. Academic work around BIDs has been pursued by researchers and theorists across law, social science, and public affairs literatures. The dominant themes in academic work on BIDs has been organized around their various forms and functions; their accountability to the public; their effectiveness, especially in the areas of crime prevention and economic development; and social equity issues, with special attention often given to their interaction with homeless populations.
Natural Disasters and their Impact on Cities
Authors: Skidmore Mark , Lim Jungmin
Published: October 2020

Two significant trends suggest that it will be increasingly important to consider urban resilience to natural disasters in the coming years. First, there is a consensus among most climate scientists that we are experiencing a period of significant and ongoing climate change, and it is expected that there will be an increase in the number and severity of extreme climate events in the coming years. Second, the global population is increasingly becoming urbanized, and many cities are located in coastal areas that are vulnerable to severe climatic events. As these trends play out over time, the potential for disaster losses and impact increases. At the same time, the growth of urban populations produces greater concentrations of people vulnerable to natural disasters. When disasters strikes in rural areas, there may be damage to structures and crops, but compared to urban areas, recovery and the restoration of basic functions is relatively straightforward. However, given the concentration of people and complexity of systems, urban disasters can lead to significantly greater impacts. Preparation for and recovery from major urban disasters is of paramount importance in order to minimize these losses. Further, natural disasters represent a significant threat to key technological systems that support urban life. The failure of technological systems due to disasters is a major concern to urban planners and policymakers, as lengthy disruptions are an ongoing threat to life well after the direct impacts conclude. This bibliography summarizes a body of work on natural disaster impacts in cities. It is organized into five sections. The first section presents research on the growing General Overviews: Disaster Risk in Cities and Urban Areas, with an emphasis on low-lying coastal or riverside locations. This section also highlights the consensus among urban planning scholars that disaster risk management should be integrated into urban planning and management more generally. Section 2 considers the Various Impacts of Natural Disasters on Cities and Urban Areas, including economic and labor market impacts, effects on housing markets and property values, and health impacts, including loss of life. In section 3, a series of articles on Urban Disaster Vulnerability and Risk Factors are summarized, focusing on the underlying societal conditions and systems that determine vulnerability. Section 4, Extreme Heat in Urban Areas, considers the narrower topic of heat vulnerability, which is very important given that many urban areas generate heat islands. The last section addresses Disaster Management and Mitigation in Cities and Urban Areas, including the political and governance challenges of implementing adaptation strategies, measuring and building resilience, and recovery and reconstruction.
Black Suburbs
Authors: Johnson Kimberley
Published: October 2020

Black suburbanization and black suburbs were not the focus of social science research until the 1960s. The rise of the civil rights movement, the emergence of a growing black middle class, and the enactment of the 1968 Fair Housing Act allowed for much greater movement of blacks into largely segregated white suburbs. Research on black suburbs and black suburbanization has largely traced rates of growth as well as patterns of settlement. In many metropolitan areas, black suburbanization has extended the segregated residential patterns of the core cities. Other research has focused on the creation of political and social identities of the mostly middle-class blacks who initially moved into the suburbs. Research since 2000 has focused on older, inner-ring suburbs where many working-class and poor African Americans have settled. This bibliography highlights works that explore the distinctiveness of black suburbs. Early histories of black suburbs are included, as well as more recent work that places their emergence as part of recent trends in urban and suburban history. Differentiating these suburbs from each other and from other suburbs has played a large role in how scholars understand black suburbanization, as varying across space, place, and time. Since 2000 the role of race, ethnicity, and immigration has also shaped black suburbs by reshaping political coalitions and social understandings. America’s growing economic inequality has been reflected in the transformation of urban-centric social welfare services to the new political, economic, and physical landscape of American suburbs. Recent research suggests that black suburbs are distinctive, and that policy choices and governance varies along with this distinctiveness. As such, this bibliography centers black suburbanization and black suburbs as its core topic. This means that this review will not cover the key works that have established the centrality of race in shaping white suburbanization, such as Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), Lizabeth Cohen’s Consumer Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), and David M. P. Freund’s Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007). While these works are important, black suburbs and suburbanization largely remain secondary to their core focus. This also means that changes in central city black neighborhoods, as well black urban politics, will also not be a focus of the bibliography.
Urban Infrastructure
Authors: Wu Weiping , Mehta Deepa
Published: October 2020

Infrastructure has an indispensable, positive role in development. There has been much written about the role of urban infrastructure: besides its function of raising the productivity of labor and capital, infrastructure contributes to the welfare of households. Its provision is a lengthy process of financing, construction, and maintenance that involves a multitude of players. With accelerating urbanization, every year developing countries invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new infrastructure, with sizeable portion in transport, power, telecommunications, and water supply and sanitation. For this reason, this entry focuses on these four sectors of urban infrastructure in the context of developing countries and its various regions, while incorporating an understanding of the fundamental role of urban infrastructure for growth and development. To study urban infrastructure in emerging markets and developing economies means grasping the multiple frameworks for infrastructure provision and financing mechanisms, as well as considering the growing arena of private participation in infrastructure. Furthermore, the literature is examining several pressing challenges, such as the infrastructure investment gap and infrastructure capacity gap. Simply, the infrastructure investment gap highlights the financing shortfalls for new infrastructure development and rehabilitation of existing projects. The infrastructure capacity gap primarily recognizes the existing shortages of the necessary infrastructure as well as the institutional shortfalls that limit options for both policymakers and investors. The selected articles demonstrate how these core challenges are addressed through regionally and sector-specific processes of urban infrastructure planning, financing, and service delivery.
Lagos
Authors: Bigon Liora
Published: October 2020

Lagos, the erstwhile political capital of Nigeria (1914‒1991), still constitutes the country’s commercial capital and a prominent port in West Africa. It is a highly cosmopolitan megacity of over fifteen million residents and is projected to be the world’s largest city by 2100, with close to ninety million residents. Facing a series of crises in terms of infrastructure, transportation, public health, economics, unemployment, urban violence, and extra-legal settlements, Lagos has also remained Nigeria’s economic engine: its thriving commercial and industrial activity is responsible for more than half of the nation’s economic development. In spite of its many ambiguities, urban life in this city is characterized by much innovation and resilience. Originating in an island settlement that developed from a small Yoruba village based on farming and fishing in the 17th century, Lagos played a central role in the transatlantic slave trade, following which the British colonial regime was established. The city has gradually extended toward the mainland and undergone intense urbanization since the colonial and the postcolonial periods. The literature on Lagos is especially rich and embraces many aspects and fields of research, which are faithfully reflected in the fifteen sections of this article. These sections move from multidisciplinary general overviews to the city’s geopolitical and economic position as a coastal port polity, including demography, ethnicity issues and postcolonial state governance, crime, and unemployment. They also move from aspects of urban planning and infrastructure to architecture and architectural debates, via extra-legal settlements (“slums”), also covering cultural expressions related to society, religion, and gender; toponymy and anthroponomy; and literary works such as novels, plays, and film. Special attention is given to monographs, articles, and primary sources in history, many of them written by contemporary Nigerian scholars or the indigenous Yoruba-speaking elite during the colonial period. These include precolonial history and slavery and colonial history with some central topics such as colonial public health.
Urban Innovation Systems
Authors: van Winden Willem
Published: October 2020

There are good reasons to study urban innovation from a systemic perspective. A key finding in innovation research is that organizations rarely innovate in isolation, but in interaction with clients, competitors, suppliers, and other organizations. A system perspective is useful in understanding and analyzing these interactions. Cities and urban regions are increasingly recognized as key milieus in which these interactions occur. The urban innovation system approach conceptualizes the city or urban region as a context in which innovations emerge from complex interactions between urban actors—firms, citizens, governments, knowledge institutes— in a particular institutional setting. The systemic view of innovation departs from traditional linear models that depict innovation as a staged process that starts with (basic) scientific research and ends with commercialization by companies. Innovation processes are much more complex and diverse, influenced by multiple actors that interact in networks with feedback loops, and involving many types of knowledge beyond scientific knowledge. Urban innovation systems are nested in innovation systems on other spatial levels—regional, national, international. Studies on urban innovation systems seek to explain how innovations emerge in an urban context, why urban regions differ in their innovative performance, and also address questions on the governance and management of such systems. Studies in this field draw from a variety of disciplines including economic geography, urban and regional economics, political sciences, innovation studies, social sciences, and urban planning.
Megaprojects
Authors: Sankaran Shankar , Freeder Daphne , Pitsis Alexandra , Clegg Stewart , Drouin Nathalie , Caron Marie-Andrée
Published: October 2020

“Megaprojects” is a term used to refer to projects and events that encompass large-scale projects in size, cost, space, time, energy, and influence. They are synonymous with large engineering projects, complex projects, large transport or energy projects, and large infrastructure projects, and are often composed of multilayered discrete projects forming a larger scale complex project. Some of the complexity deals with difficulty in quantifying the long-terms costs or benefits or fully realising the whole life cycle of the megaproject prior to commencement. Megaprojects are often shaped by contextual factors. Where complexity is related to technical aspects of the project it also includes organizational aspects and the scope of the project. Some of these projects are multifaceted and relate to science research, engineering infrastructure, or private and public construction of buildings and/or other venues. Megaprojects affect societies that undertake them, urban planning aspects, and social relationships between stakeholders engaged in executing all the elements involved in creating them. They have an impact on a number of areas both locally and globally. This includes extending notions of urban planning to accommodate large-scale construction. These projects can be significant in terms of social and/or economic factors in a positive or negative sense. There have been debates and criticism on the need and function of megaprojects and whether they are beneficial constructs or detrimental to society.
Cape Town
Authors: Smit Warren
Published: October 2020

Cape Town is the second-largest city in South Africa, with a population of over four million people. Established by Dutch colonists in 1652, it is a diverse and complex city, with a long history of segregation and inequity. The city continues to be characterized by high levels of inequity, most tangibly manifested in the presence of informal settlements. Much of this inequity is along racial lines as a result of enforced spatial segregation during colonial and apartheid times. Since South Africa’s transition to democracy in the 1990s, the city has continued to evolve, with significant urban regeneration initiatives (such as the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront) and with major governance reforms (with the fifty-seven local government bodies and regional government body that existed in the early 1990s being merged into one local government body in 2000). Cape Town has been the site of much research, from a range of perspectives. During the apartheid era, this research largely focused on the implementation of apartheid segregation and the resistance to apartheid, whereas since the 1990s, the focus has been on the implementation of developmental local government, continued inequities, and the roll-out of neoliberalism. Research from a “developmental local government” perspective has focused on government reform and the large amount of service delivery (for example, housing delivery) that has occurred since the 1990s. Another major focus of research has been on the implementation of neoliberal urban strategies and the resistance of civil society to this (although some scholars of “southern urbanism” would argue that the importance of Neoliberalism in Cape Town and other cities in the Global South has been overemphasized by scholars from the Global North). Given its location in a magnificent setting with unique levels of biodiversity, tourism and the urban interface with the natural environment have also become major topics of research. Probably the most effective reflections of life in Cape Town have been in fiction and popular nonfiction works, so it is important to also consider these as well. The bibliography is structured in the following sections: History of Cape Town (to 1990); Overviews of Post-Apartheid Cape Town (after 1990); Poverty, Inequality, and Exclusion in Cape Town; Place and Space in Cape Town; Governance of Cape Town; Neoliberalism in Cape Town; Crime and Violence in Cape Town; Tourism in Cape Town; Cape Town and the Natural Environment; and Fiction and Popular Works about Cape Town.
Precolonial Urbanisms
Authors: Baumanová Monika
Published: October 2020

Urbanism as a phenomenon of human culture has been a popular theme for research in many academic disciplines, including architecture, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, and geography. Near Eastern and European case studies served as the ultimate definition of urbanism well into the 1980s and inspired the compilation of several “trait lists,” which were used to classify precolonial settlements in the rest of the world. However, as a consequence of this tendency, which then dominated academic research, many cultural traditions recognized as urban today and multiple forms of the built environment were for a long time denied their urban status. This is especially the case of precolonial towns and cities of the Global South, which importance was downplayed and misinterpreted, also for political reasons, in the colonial and early postcolonial era. This article reverses the traditional approach and, in terms of regional works, it focuses specifically on the precolonial urban traditions that may be found in the Americas, Africa, and South and East Asia, while the urban traditions of Europe, Egypt, and the Near East are mentioned only for comparison. The geographical areas discussed here have been most intensively studied by archaeologists, who collect and analyze the material evidence with the ever-increasing use of interdisciplinary approaches. Today, archaeological research highlights the global variety of cultural heritage and human experience as well as the multitude of unique forms and structures of cities that flourished outside of and/or preceded modern European colonial influence. A range of theoretical stances and methodological approaches have been developed that strive to uncover the unique aspects of urbanisms that predated or took shape independently of the era of modern European colonialism, such as social organization, economics, architectural styles, cultural traditions, or sensory perception. There have also been developments in the field of comparative approaches that highlight and reflect on the underlying aspects of urbanism shared between societies or making them unique. On their basis, we can arrive at understanding the built environments as representations of social configurations and traditions.