bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Crises in the Housing Market: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Lessons
Authors: Garriga Carlos , Hedlund Aaron
Published: August 2019

The global financial crisis of 2007–2009 helped usher in a stronger consensus about the central role that housing plays in shaping economic activity, particularly during large boom and bust episodes. The latest research regards the causes, consequences, and policy implications of housing crises with a broad focus that includes empirical and structural analysis, insights from the 2000s experience in the United States, and perspectives from around the globe. Even with the significant degree of heterogeneity in legal environments, institutions, and economic fundamentals over time and across countries, several common themes emerge. Research indicates that fundamentals such as productivity, income, and demographics play an important role in generating sustained movements in house prices. While these forces can also contribute to boom-bust episodes, periods of large house price swings often reflect an evolving housing premium caused by financial innovation and shifts in expectations, which are in turn amplified by changes to the liquidity of homes. Regarding credit, the latest evidence indicates that expansions in lending to marginal borrowers via the subprime market may not be entirely to blame for the run-up in mortgage debt and prices that preceded the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Instead, the expansion in credit manifested by lower mortgage rates was broad-based and caused borrowers across a wide range of incomes and credit scores to dramatically increase their mortgage debt. To whatever extent changing beliefs about future housing appreciation may have contributed to higher realized house price growth in the 2000s, it appears that neither borrowers nor lenders anticipated the subsequent collapse in house prices. However, expectations about future credit conditions—including the prospect of rising interest rates—may have contributed to the downturn. For macroeconomists and those otherwise interested in the broader economic implications of the housing market, a growing body of evidence combining micro data and structural modeling finds that large swings in house prices can produce large disruptions to consumption, the labor market, and output. Central to this transmission is the composition of household balance sheets—not just the amount of net worth, but also how that net worth is allocated between short term liquid assets, illiquid housing wealth, and long-term defaultable mortgage debt. By shaping the incentive to default, foreclosure laws have a profound ex-ante effect on the supply of credit as well as on the ex-post economic response to large shocks that affect households’ degree of financial distress. On the policy front, research finds mixed results for some of the crisis-related interventions implemented in the U.S. while providing guidance for future measures should another housing bust of similar or greater magnitude reoccur. Lessons are also provided for the development of macroprudential policy aimed at preventing such a future crisis without unduly constraining economic performance in good times.
Developmental Origins of Health Inequality
Authors: Conti Gabriella , Mason Giacomo , Poupakis Stavros
Published: August 2019

Building on early animal studies, 20th-century researchers increasingly explored the fact that early events—ranging from conception to childhood—affect a child’s health trajectory in the long-term. By the 21st century, a wide body of research had emerged, incorporating the original fetal origins hypothesis into the developmental origins of health and disease. Evidence from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries suggests that health inequalities are strongly correlated with many dimensions of socioeconomic status, such as educational attainment, and that they tend to increase with age and carry stark intergenerational implications. Different economic theories have been developed to rationalize this evidence, with an overarching comprehensive framework still lacking. Existing models widely rely on human capital theory, which has given rise to separate dynamic models of adult and child health capital within a production function framework. A large body of empirical evidence has also found support for the developmental origins of inequalities in health. On the one hand, studies exploiting quasi-random exposure to adverse events have shown long-term physical and mental health impacts of exposure to early shocks, including pandemics or maternal illness, famine, malnutrition, stress, vitamin deficiencies, maltreatment, pollution, and economic recessions. On the other hand, studies from the 20th century have shown that early interventions of various content and delivery formats improve life course health. Further, given that the most socioeconomically disadvantaged groups show the greatest gains, such measures can potentially reduce health inequalities. However, studies of long-term impacts as well as the mechanisms via which shocks or policies affect health, and the dynamic interaction among them, are still lacking. Mapping the complexities of those early event dynamics is an important avenue for future research.
Regionalism
Authors: Costa Buranelli Filippo , Tskhay Aliya
Published: August 2019

“Regionalism” is a polysemic term that represents both a subfield of international relations (IR) that studies regions of the world and a process of formation of regions themselves. Its meaning and content have evolved substantially from its inception in the 1940s to its most recent contributions in the early 21st century. More precisely, the field of regionalism was severely marked by neofunctionalism theory and an economic reading of international relations in the years of the Cold War and then embraced new contributions from post-positivist and critical theories and methodologies from the 1990s onward, which featured not only different manifestations and causes but also different normative meanings. Regionalism has progressively moved away from Europe over the years (both as a site of production of research and as an empirical case study) to explore non-European and, more widely, non-Western and postcolonial domains, challenging Eurocentric theoretical and epistemological assumptions in IR. In addition, the two subfields of comparative regionalism and interregionalism have become prominent. The field of regionalism is more dynamic than ever, developing, self-innovating, and becoming more conceptually aware, while at the same time being susceptible to weaknesses, blind spots, and potential for further improvement and deeper dialogue with IR theory.
Operational Codes in Foreign Policy: A Deconstruction
Authors: Haas Michael
Published: August 2019

Codes of conduct exist in many areas of life, including cultural, ethical, legal, medical, and scientific. Those pertaining to politics and especially the conduct of foreign policy are crucial for understanding how decision-makers can be effective in dealing with problems involving opposite numbers who subscribe to different codes. Accordingly, the concept of “operational code” has been developed in the study of international politics to refer to a set of lenses that filter how decision-makers perceive, process, and react to situations involving other countries. Although some operational code researchers enlighten puzzles in past history and construct theories, others hope to use the research to advise policy-makers on how to avoid blunders in future decision-making.

The present historiographic essay begins by tracing the foundations of operational code research in the late 1940s. Because some foreign policy leaders appear to adhere more strictly to an operational code than others, a major puzzle is how to determine the essential components of an operational code. Various efforts are contrasted, with a standardization of definitional parameters two decades later. Efforts to develop operational code methodology have developed over time with successes in quantification that are best validated by qualitative analysis. The codes of decision-makers are micro-codes compared to the partisan ideologies (meso-codes) that bring them to office and the political cultures (macro-codes) in which they operate in various countries around the world. What began as a cognitive psychological exercise became transformed into a form of social psychological analysis of decision-makers. A current view is that the upbringing of leaders shapes their goal seeking, whereas occupying the role as leader of a country in the context of world politics also shapes their operational codes. As a result, operational code research has become involved in the continuing quest to determine which major paradigm of social science best provides a coherent explanation for how leaders guide their decision-making.
The Rise of Linear Borders
Authors: Goettlich Kerry
Published: August 2019

Since roughly the late 19th century, international borders have generally been characterized by linearity, or the appearance as a series of one-dimensional points, connected by straight lines. Prior to this, various kinds of frontiers existed globally, some of them being more linear than others, but most included some kind of formal ambiguity. International relations (IR) often takes for granted the historical process which brought about the global linearization of borders, culminating in the late 19th century and still ongoing in ocean spaces and in outer space. But because cross-border relations are the main substance of inquiry in IR, many theories and areas of study in IR contain some perspective on that process, at least implicitly.
Indonesia-US Relations, 1949–1999
Authors: Simpson Bradley
Published: August 2019

The US relationship with the Republic of Indonesia has gone through three distinct phases. From 1945 until 1966 Indonesia’s politics and foreign policy were driven by the imperatives of decolonization and nation building, dominated by its founding President Sukarno and cleaved by bitter rivalry between secular political forces, regional movements, Islamic parties and organizations, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and the armed forces. In the aftermath of the September 30th Movement, an alleged coup by the PKI (the Indonesian Communist Party), under the leadership of General Suharto, launched a campaign of mass murder in which hundreds of thousands of alleged Communists were killed and Sukarno ousted. Suharto would rule Indonesia for the next thirty-two years (1966 to 1998). With the Cold War inside Indonesia effectively over and a staunchly anti-Communist and pro-US regime in power, US-Indonesian relations entered a long period of what one might call authoritarian development in which US officials focused on political stability, supported the military’s heavy involvement in politics, encouraged pro-Western investment and development policies, and sought to downplay growing criticism of Suharto’s abysmal record on human rights, democracy, corruption, and the environment. The end of the Cold War reduced the strategic imperative of backing authoritarian rule in Indonesia, and over the course of the 1990s domestic opposition to Suharto steadily built among moderate Islamic forces, human rights and women’s activists, environmental campaigners, and a burgeoning pro-democracy movement. The Asian financial crisis, which began in the summer of 1997, accelerated the forces undermining Suharto’s rule, forcing his resignation in May 1998 and inaugurating a third phase of formally democratic politics, which continues to the 21st century. Since 1998 US policy has focused on regional economic and security cooperation, counterterrorism, trade relations, and countering the growing regional power of China.
Immigration Policy and US Foreign Policy before 1945
Authors: Montoya Benjamin C.
Published: August 2019

A fear of foreignness shaped the immigration foreign policies of the United States up to the end of World War II. US leaders perceived nonwhite peoples of Latin America, Asia, and Europe as racially inferior, and feared that contact with them, even annexation of their territories, would invite their foreign mores, customs, and ideologies into US society. This belief in nonwhite peoples’ foreignness also influenced US immigration policy, as Washington codified laws that prohibited the immigration of nonwhite peoples to the United States, even as immigration was deemed a net gain for a US economy that was rapidly industrializing from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century.

Ironically, this fear of foreignness fostered an aggressive US foreign policy for many of the years under study, as US leaders feared that European intervention into Latin America, for example, would undermine the United States’ regional hegemony. The fear of foreignness that seemed to oblige the United States to shore up its national security interests vis-à-vis European empires also demanded US intervention into the internal affairs of nonwhite nations. For US leaders, fear of foreignness was a two-sided coin: European aggression was encouraged by the internal instability of nonwhite nations, and nonwhite nations were unstable—and hence ripe pickings for Europe’s empires—because their citizens were racially inferior. To forestall both of these simultaneous foreign threats, the United States increasingly embedded itself into the political and economic affairs of foreign nations.

The irony of opportunity, of territorial acquisitions as well as immigrants who fed US labor markets, and fear, of European encroachment and the racial inferiority of nonwhite peoples, lay at the root of the immigration and foreign policies of the United States up to 1945.
The Role of Congress in the History of US Foreign Relations
Authors: Katsky Clay Silver
Published: August 2019

While presidents have historically been the driving force behind foreign policy decision-making, Congress has used its constitutional authority to influence the process. The nation’s founders designed a system of checks and balances aimed at establishing a degree of equilibrium in foreign affairs powers. Though the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the country’s chief diplomat, Congress holds responsibility for declaring war and can also exert influence over foreign relations through its powers over taxation and appropriation, while the Senate possesses authority to approve or reject international agreements. This separation of powers compels the executive branch to work with Congress to achieve foreign policy goals, but it also sets up conflict over what policies best serve national interests and the appropriate balance between executive and legislative authority. Since the founding of the Republic, presidential power over foreign relations has accreted in fits and starts at the legislature’s expense. When core American interests have come under threat, legislators have undermined or surrendered their power by accepting presidents’ claims that defense of national interests required strong executive action. This trend peaked during the Cold War, when invocations of national security enabled the executive to amass unprecedented control over America’s foreign affairs.
Labor and US Foreign Relations
Authors: McKillen Elizabeth
Published: August 2019

American workers have often been characterized by the press, scholars, and policy-makers as apathetic and ill-informed about foreign policy issues. To highlight this point, scholars have frequently used an anecdote about a blue-collar worker who responded to an interviewer’s questions regarding international issues in the 1940s by exclaiming “Foreign Affairs! That’s for people who don’t have to work for a living.” Yet missing from many such appraisals is a consideration of the long history of efforts by both informal groups of workers and labor unions to articulate and defend the perceived international interests of American workers. During the early years of the American Republic, groups of workers used crowd actions, boycotts, and protests to make their views on important foreign policy issues known. In the late 19th century, emerging national labor unions experimented with interest group lobbying as well as forms of collective action championed by the international labor movement to promote working-class foreign policy interests. Many 20th- and 21st-century US labor groups shared in common a belief that government leaders failed to adequately understand the international concerns and perspectives of workers. Yet such groups often pursued different types of foreign policy influence. Some dominant labor organizations, such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), participated in federal bureaucracies, advisory councils, and diplomatic missions and programs designed to encourage collaboration among business, state, and labor leaders in formulating and promoting US foreign policy. Yet other labor groups, as well as dissidents within the AFL and CIO, argued that these power-sharing arrangements compromised labor’s independence and led some trade union leaders to support policies that actually hurt both American and foreign workers. Particularly important in fueling internal opposition to AFL-CIO foreign policies were immigrant workers and those with specific ethno-racial concerns. Some dissenting groups and activists participated in traditional forms of interest group lobbying in order to promote an independent international agenda for labor; others committed themselves to the foreign policy programs of socialist, labor, or communist parties. Still others, such as the Industrial Workers of the World, advocated strike and international economic actions by workers to influence US foreign policy or to oppose US business activities abroad.
Dwight D. Eisenhower and American Foreign Relations
Authors: Damms Richard V.
Published: August 2019

Probably no American president was more thoroughly versed in matters of national security and foreign policy before entering office than Dwight David Eisenhower. As a young military officer, Eisenhower served stateside in World War I and then in Panama and the Philippines in the interwar years. On assignments in Washington and Manila, he worked on war plans, gaining an understanding that national security entailed economic and psychological factors in addition to manpower and materiel. In World War II, he commanded Allied forces in the European Theatre of Operations and honed his skills in coalition building and diplomacy. After the war, he oversaw the German occupation and then became Army Chief of Staff as the nation hastily demobilized. At the onset of the Cold War, Eisenhower embraced President Harry S. Truman’s containment doctrine and participated in the discussions leading to the 1947 National Security Act establishing the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense. After briefly retiring from the military, Eisenhower twice returned to public service at the behest of President Truman to assume the temporary chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then, following the outbreak of the Korean War, to become the first Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, charged with transforming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a viable military force.

These experiences colored Eisenhower’s foreign policy views, which in turn led him to seek the presidency. He viewed the Cold War as a long-term proposition and worried that Truman’s military buildup would overtax finite American resources. He sought a coherent strategic concept that would be sustainable over the long haul without adversely affecting the free enterprise system and American democratic institutions. He also worried that Republican Party leaders were dangerously insular. As president, his New Look policy pursued a cost-effective strategy of containment by means of increased reliance on nuclear forces over more expensive conventional ones, sustained existing regional alliances and developed new ones, sought an orderly process of decolonization under Western guidance, resorted to covert operations to safeguard vital interests, and employed psychological warfare in the battle with communism for world opinion, particularly in the so-called Third World. His foreign policy laid the basis for what would become the overall American strategy for the duration of the Cold War. The legacy of that policy, however, was decidedly mixed. Eisenhower avoided the disaster of global war, but technological innovations did not produce the fiscal savings that he had envisioned. The NATO alliance expanded and mostly stood firm, but other alliances were more problematic. Decolonization rarely proceeded as smoothly as envisioned and caused conflict with European allies. Covert operations had long-term negative consequences. In Southeast Asia and Cuba, the Eisenhower administration’s policies bequeathed a poisoned chalice for succeeding administrations.
Digital Resources: Malvinas/30, an Interactive Documentary on the South Atlantic Conflict
Authors: Liuzzi Alvaro , Bergero Trpin Tomás
Published: August 2019

The Malvinas War, also known in Spanish as the South Atlantic Conflict (conflicto del Atlántico Sur), was a war between Argentina and the United Kingdom that took place in the Malvinas Islands, South Georgia, and South Sandwich between April 2 and June 14, 1982. During 2012, thirty years after the conflict, the Malvinas/30 web documentary was produced in Argentina, conceived as a transmedia production in real time. It was designed to serve as a space of collective digital memory that would involve users and recreate on social networks the hostile atmosphere of the South Atlantic Islands at the time of the skirmish.

The documentary, produced by an interdisciplinary team, was developed as a continuous interactive production for five months that, by extending its narrative through different digital platforms, sought to allow users to relive the events of the Malvinas War as they had occurred three decades before in 1982. To meet this goal, Malvinas/30 was organized along three central axes: narrative synchronization between past and present (telling the story as if it were happening today); unfolding the story on different media (social networks, traditional media, and other media); and generating interactive responses from users (a collective story as a space for historical memory).
The Labor Movement and Sugar Industry in Tucumán in the 1960s and 1970s
Authors: Nassif Silvia
Published: August 2019

The province of Tucumán, Argentina, has been used as a test case for the fallacious “theory of the two demons” because it is both where a guerrilla movement formed in 1974 and where the country’s first clandestine detention center was established in the “escuelita” of Famaillá during “Operativo Independencia” in 1975. This “theory” reduces the conflict in the province to a confrontation in the Tucumán hills between no more than 150 combatants of the People’s Revolutionary Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, ERP) and 5,000 soldiers of the Argentine Army. This, however, largely conceals the social catastrophe suffered by Tucumán and the high levels of conflict that had already been taking place for more than a decade.

Previously, in August 1966, the provincial territory had been militarized by the new dictatorial government led by Juan Carlos Onganía. On that occasion, militarization sought to guarantee the closure of sugar mills. This generated an unprecedented economic and social crisis. Between 1966 and 1968, eleven mills were closed out of a total of twenty-seven, more than 50,000 jobs were eliminated in the sugar agro-industry alone, medium and small sugarcane producers were severely affected, and more than a quarter of the total population of the province was forced to emigrate in search of new sources of work. Such were the root causes of social conflict, led mainly by the sugar working class assembled in the Tucumán Workers Federation of the Sugar Industry (Federación Obrera Tucumana de la Industria Azucarera, FOTIA), which the 1976 dictatorship was intent on reining in.
Audiovisual Speech Perception and the McGurk Effect
Authors: Rosenblum Lawrence D.
Published: August 2019

Research on visual and audiovisual speech information has profoundly influenced the fields of psycholinguistics, perception psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Visual speech findings have provided some of most the important human demonstrations of our new conception of the perceptual brain as being supremely multimodal. This “multisensory revolution” has seen a tremendous growth in research on how the senses integrate, cross-facilitate, and share their experience with one another.

The ubiquity and apparent automaticity of multisensory speech has led many theorists to propose that the speech brain is agnostic with regard to sense modality: it might not know or care from which modality speech information comes. Instead, the speech function may act to extract supramodal informational patterns that are common in form across energy streams. Alternatively, other theorists have argued that any common information existent across the modalities is minimal and rudimentary, so that multisensory perception largely depends on the observer’s associative experience between the streams. From this perspective, the auditory stream is typically considered primary for the speech brain, with visual speech simply appended to its processing. If the utility of multisensory speech is a consequence of a supramodal informational coherence, then cross-sensory “integration” may be primarily a consequence of the informational input itself. If true, then one would expect to see evidence for integration occurring early in the perceptual process, as well in a largely complete and automatic/impenetrable manner. Alternatively, if multisensory speech perception is based on associative experience between the modal streams, then no constraints on how completely or automatically the senses integrate are dictated. There is behavioral and neurophysiological research supporting both perspectives.

Much of this research is based on testing the well-known McGurk effect, in which audiovisual speech information is thought to integrate to the extent that visual information can affect what listeners report hearing. However, there is now good reason to believe that the McGurk effect is not a valid test of multisensory integration. For example, there are clear cases in which responses indicate that the effect fails, while other measures suggest that integration is actually occurring. By mistakenly conflating the McGurk effect with speech integration itself, interpretations of the completeness and automaticity of multisensory may be incorrect. Future research should use more sensitive behavioral and neurophysiological measures of cross-modal influence to examine these issues.
Works of Art and Mere Real Things—Again
Authors: Gaskell Ivan
Published: August 2019

Citing works by Marcel Duchamp and others, this article argues that the transformation of what Danto termed a mere real thing into an artwork, and of an artwork into a mere real thing, are not symmetrical operations. It argues that mere real things and artworks not only belong to different categories, but that these categories are themselves of different kinds—the former being closed, and the latter open. Viewing mere real things through the lens of art leads to confusion. Amending Goodman’s question, ‘When is art?’, this article suggests that one can only arrive at working definitions of what constitutes both an artwork and a mere real thing on the basis of contingent function. The adequate analysis of any given thing or action necessitates viewing it in accordance with an appropriate paradigm, whether that of an artwork, a thought experiment, or even a prank. Adequate analysis requires disciplinary dexterity, deference when appropriate, and multi-disciplinary attention best achieved through collaboration.
Coastal songbird condition on migratory stopover varies by geographical location and bird age
Authors: McCabe Jennifer D , Leppold Adrienne J , Holberton Rebecca L , Olsen Brian J
Published: August 2019

The period of migration can pose significant energetic challenges as birds attempt to reach their destinations. Suitable stopover habitat is, therefore, important to the success of migrating individuals, especially as they move along major migration corridors and geographic features, like coastlines. In this study, we used metrics of individual body condition (i.e. fat score, size-corrected body mass, and refueling rate) of fall migrants as they moved across the Gulf of Maine region, a complex coastal landscape. We investigated the extent to which these body condition indices varied by stopover site geography (island vs. mainland) and how these spatial patterns varied with species-specific characteristics such as migratory distance, foraging guild, and age. Geography was an important factor explaining variation in all 3 condition indices, and age explained additional variance in 2 of the 3. In general, individuals captured on islands exhibited significantly lower energetic condition than individuals on the mainland, and this pattern held true across all migratory strategies and foraging guilds. Immature individuals had, on average, lower energy reserves, with less fat and lower size-corrected mass than adults among all stopover sites. We also found that at all sites, size-corrected body mass, on average, significantly increased over the capture day, providing evidence that both island and mainland sites provided energetically beneficial stopover habitat. Our finding that birds offshore are in lower body condition at capture than those along the coast is suggestive that birds use mainland sites for longer stopover bouts than island sites, or that poorer condition birds reorient to land during over-water movements disproportionately use off-shore islands as their initial landing area. Decreases in either island or mainland stopover site availability or quality may affect individual fitness, with population-level consequences, but through different ways.
Survival, fidelity, and dispersal of Double-crested Cormorants on two Lake Michigan islands
Authors: Ayers Christopher R , Hanson-Dorr Katie C , Stromborg Ken , Arnold Todd W , Ivan Jacob S , Dorr Brian S
Published: August 2019

Colony fidelity and dispersal can have important consequences on the population dynamics of colonial-nesting birds. We studied survival and inter-colony movements of Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus; cormorants) nesting at Spider and Pilot islands, located 9 km apart in western Lake Michigan, during 2008–2014. We used live resighting and dead recovery data from both colonies, plus dead recoveries from throughout North America, in a multistate live and dead encounter model to estimate annual survival, inter-colony movements, plus temporary and permanent emigration to unmonitored sites. Annual survival averaged 0.37 (annual process variation, σ⌢=0.07) for hatch-year, 0.78 (σ⌢=0.08 ) for second-year, and 0.89 (σ⌢=0.04 ) for after-second year birds. The best approximating model recognized only 2 age classes for transition probabilities, indicating little difference in fidelity and movement probabilities after the natal year. Annual fidelity to Spider and Pilot islands averaged 0.53 (σ⌢=0.17 ) and 0.48 (σ⌢=0.24) for second-year and 0.55 (σ⌢=0.23 ) and 0.62 (σ⌢=0.16 ) for after-second year cormorants, respectively, indicating substantial emigration for both age classes. For birds that dispersed, emigration was approximately equally divided among neighboring colonies, temporary emigration sites from which surviving birds subsequently returned, or permanent emigration sites from which birds never returned (but were still encountered through dead recoveries). Our results indicate that Double-crested Cormorants in the Great Lakes have tremendous potential to disperse, which may help to explain their rapid recolonization following historically low populations in the early 1970s.
A Subset of Olfactory Sensory Neurons Express Forkhead Box J1-Driven eGFP
Authors: Larson Eric D , Pathak Shivani , Ramakrishnan Vijay R , Finger Thomas E
Published: August 2019

Forkhead box protein J1 (FOXJ1), a member of the forkhead family transcription factors, is a transcriptional regulator of motile ciliogenesis. The nasal respiratory epithelium, but not olfactory epithelium, is lined with FOXJ1-expressing multiciliated epithelial cells with motile cilia. In a transgenic mouse where an enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) transgene is driven by the human FOXJ1 promoter, robust eGFP expression is observed not only in the multiciliated cells of the respiratory epithelium but in a distinctive small subset of olfactory sensory neurons in the olfactory epithelium. These eGFP-positive cells lie at the extreme apical part of the neuronal layer and are most numerous in dorsal-medial regions of olfactory epithelium. Interestingly, we observed a corresponding small number of glomeruli in the olfactory bulb wherein eGFP-labeled axons terminate, suggesting that the population of eGFP+ receptor cells expresses a limited number of olfactory receptors. Similarly, a subset of vomeronasal sensory neurons expresses eGFP and is distributed throughout the full height of the vomeronasal sensory epithelium. In keeping with this broad distribution of labeled vomeronasal receptor cells, eGFP-labeled axons terminate in many glomeruli in both anterior and posterior portions of the accessory olfactory bulb. These findings suggest that Foxj1-driven eGFP marks a specific population of olfactory and vomeronasal sensory neurons, although neither receptor cell population possess motile cilia.
Quinolone Consumption by Mothers Increases Their Children’s Risk of Acquiring Quinolone-Resistant Bacteriuria
Authors: Gottesman Bat-Sheva , Low Marcelo , Almog Ronit , Chowers Michal
Published: August 2019

Background

Quinolone resistance has been documented in the pediatric population, although their use is limited in children. This study investigated the effect of maternal quinolone use on gram-negative bacterial resistance to quinolones in their offspring.

Methods

We conducted a population-based, unmatched case-control study during 2010–2017. Cases were all children aged 0.5–17 years with community acquired, gram-negative quinolone-resistant bacteriuria. Controls were similar children with quinolone-sensitive bacteriuria. Only the first positive urine cultures for each child were included. Data on quinolones dispensed to the mother, any antibiotics dispensed to the children, age, sex, ethnicity, and prior hospitalizations were collected. Children with previous quinolone use were excluded.

Results

The study population consisted of 40 204 children. Quinolone resistance was detected in 2182 (5.3%) urine cultures. The median age was 5 years, with 93.7% females and 77.6% Jewish. A total of 26 937 (65%) of the children received any antibiotic and 1359 (3.2%) of the mothers received quinolones in the 6 months preceding bacteriuria. Independent risk factors were quinolone dispensed to the mothers (odds ratio [OR], 1.50 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 1.22–1.85]), Arab ethnicity (OR, 1.99 [95% CI, 1.81–2.19]), and antibiotic dispensed to the child (OR, 1.54 [95% CI, 1.38–1.71]). Compared with children aged 12–17 years, younger children had 1.33–1.43 increased odds for quinolone-resistant bacteriuria.

Conclusions

Quinolone prescription to mothers was linked to increased risk of community-acquired, quinolone-resistant bacteria in their offspring, by about 50%. This is another example of the deleterious ecological effects of antibiotic use and should be considered when prescribing antibiotics.
Influence of Drug Exposure on Vedolizumab-Induced Endoscopic Remission in Anti-Tumour Necrosis Factor [TNF] Naïve and Anti-TNF Exposed IBD Patients
Authors: Verstockt Bram , Mertens Evelien , Dreesen Erwin , Outtier An , Noman Maja , Tops Sophie , Schops Ganel , Van Assche Gert , Vermeire Séverine , Gils Ann , Ferrante Marc
Published: August 2019

Background and Objectives

Vedolizumab has demonstrated efficacy and safety in patients with Crohn's disease [CD] and ulcerative colitis [UC]. Endoscopic outcome data are limited, especially in anti-tumour necrosis factor [TNF] naïve patients. The present study compared endoscopic outcome in anti-TNF naïve and exposed patients, and explored if this was affected by drug exposure.

Methods

We retrospectively analysed all patients initiating vedolizumab at our tertiary referral centre since 2015. For UC, endoscopic improvement was defined as a Mayo endoscopic subscore ≤1 at week 14. For CD, endoscopic remission was defined as absence of ulcerations at week 22. Vedolizumab trough concentrations were measured at week 6, week 14 and during maintenance.

Results

A total of 336 patients were identified [53.3% CD], 20% of them being anti-TNF naïve. Endoscopic improvement was achieved by 56.1% of UC patients and endoscopic remission by 39.1% of CD patients. Endoscopic outcomes were significantly better in anti-TNF naïve vs exposed patients [all: 67.2% vs 42.0%, p = 0.0002; UC: 74.4% vs 50.0%, p = 0.02; CD: 57.1% vs 35.8%, p = 0.03]. Achievement of endoscopic end points significantly impacted long-term treatment continuation [p = 9.7 × 10−13]. A better endoscopic outcome was associated with significantly higher drug exposure in both CD and UC.

Conclusions

The results of this observational, single-centre real-life study suggest that vedolizumab may induce endoscopic remission in both CD and UC. Although anti-TNF naïve patients had a significantly better outcome, 42% of anti-TNF exposed patients still benefited endoscopically. A clear exposure–endoscopic response relationship exists, but not all patients will benefit from treatment intensification. Hence, predictive biomarkers remain necessary.

Podcast

This article has an associated podcast which can be accessed at https://academic.oup.com/ecco-jcc/pages/podcast
Establishment, Hybridization, Dispersal, Impact, and Decline of Diorhabda spp. (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) Released for Biological Control of Tamarisk in Texas and New Mexico
Authors: Knutson Allen E , Tracy James L , Ritzi Chris , Moran Patrick J , Royer Tom , Deloach C Jack
Published: August 2019

Three Diorhabda spp. tamarisk beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) were established in Texas from 2003 to 2010 for biological control of tamarisk (Tamarix spp.): Mediterranean tamarisk beetles, D. elongata (Brullé) from Greece, also established in New Mexico; subtropical tamarisk beetles, D. sublineata (Lucas) from Tunisia; and larger tamarisk beetles, D. carinata (Faldermann) from Uzbekistan. More than one million tamarisk beetles were released at 99 sites. Species establishment success ranged from 52 to 83%. All three species now co-occur in New Mexico with the northern tamarisk beetles, D. carinulata (Desbrochers). A phenotypic hybrid scoring system was developed to assess Diorhabda phenotype distributions and character mixing in hybrid zones. Widespread field populations of bispecific hybrid phenotypes for D. carinata/D. elongata and D. sublineata/D. elongata rapidly appeared following contact of parental species. Initial distributions and dispersal of Diorhabda spp. and hybrids are mapped for Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas, where they produced large-scale tamarisk defoliation and localized dieback for 3–4 yr. However, populations subsequently severely declined, now producing only isolated defoliation and allowing tamarisk to recover. Diorhabda sublineata and D. elongata temporarily produced nontarget spillover defoliation of ornamental athel, Tamarix aphylla (L.) Karst, along the Rio Grande. Hybrid phenotypes were generally bimodally distributed, indicating some degree of reproductive isolation. Additional diagnostic phenotypic characters in males allowed more precise hybrid scoring. Character mixing in some hybrid populations approached or reached that of a hybrid swarm. The significance of hybridization for tamarisk biocontrol is discussed.
Socioeconomic status and benzodiazepine and Z-drug prescribing: a cross-sectional study of practice-level data in England
Authors: Soyombo Stephanie , Stanbrook Rhian , Aujla Harpal , Capewell David , Shantikumar Mary , Kidy Farah , Todkill Daniel , Shantikumar Saran
Published: August 2019

Background

Benzodiazepines and Z-drugs (such as zopiclone) are widely prescribed in primary care. Given their association with addiction and dependence, understanding where and for whom these medications are being prescribed is a necessary step in addressing potentially harmful prescribing.

Objective

To determine whether there is an association between primary care practice benzodiazepine and Z-drug prescribing and practice population socioeconomic status in England.

Methods

This was a cross-sectional study. An aggregated data set was created to include primary care prescribing data for 2017, practice age and sex profiles and practice Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores—a marker of socioeconomic status. Drug doses were converted to their milligram-equivalent of diazepam to allow comparison. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the association between IMD and prescribing (for all benzodiazepines and Z-drugs in total, and individually), adjusting for practice sex (% male) and older age (>65 years) distribution (%).

Results

Benzodiazepine and Z-drug prescribing overall was positively associated with practice-level IMD score, with more prescribing in practices with more underserved patients, after adjusting for age and sex (P < 0.001), although the strength of the association varied by individual drug. Overall, however, IMD score, age and sex only explained a small proportion of the overall variation in prescribing across GP practices.

Conclusion

Our findings may, in part, be a reflection of an underlying association between the indications for benzodiazepine and Z-drug prescribing and socioeconomic status. Further work is required to more accurately define the major contributors of prescribing variation.
A synopsis of recent developments defining how N-glycosylation impacts immunoglobulin G structure and function
Authors: Yamaguchi Yoshiki , Barb Adam W
Published: August 2019

Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are the fastest growing group of drugs with 11 new antibodies or antibody-drug conjugates approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2018. Many mAbs require effector function for efficacy, including antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity triggered following contact of an immunoglobulin G (IgG)-coated particle with activating crystallizable fragment (Fc) γ receptors (FcγRs) expressed by leukocytes. Interactions between IgG1 and the FcγRs require post-translational modification of the Fc with an asparagine-linked carbohydrate (N-glycan). Though the structure of IgG1 Fc and the role of Fc N-glycan composition on disease were known for decades, the underlying mechanism of how the N-glycan affected FcγR binding was not defined until recently. This review will describe the current understanding of how N-glycosylation impacts the structure and function of the IgG1 Fc and describe new techniques that are poised to provide the next critical breakthroughs.
Is evidence-informed urban health planning a myth or reality? Lessons from a qualitative assessment in three Asian cities
Authors: Mirzoev Tolib , Poudel Ak Narayan , Gissing Stefanie , Doan Thi Thuy Duong , Ferdous Tarana , Regmi Shophika , Duong Minh Duc , Baral Sushil , Chand Obindra , Huque Rumana , Hoang Van Minh , Elsey Helen
Published: August 2019

City governments are well-positioned to effectively address urban health challenges in the context of rapid urbanization in Asia. They require good quality and timely evidence to inform their planning decisions. In this article, we report our analyses of degree of data-informed urban health planning from three Asian cities: Dhaka, Hanoi and Pokhara. Our theoretical framework stems from conceptualizations of evidence-informed policymaking, health planning and policy analysis, and includes: (1) key actors, (2) approaches to developing and implementing urban health plans, (3) characteristics of the data itself. We collected qualitative data between August 2017 and October 2018 using: in-depth interviews with key actors, document review and observations of planning events. Framework approach guided the data analysis. Health is one of competing priorities with multiple plans being produced within each city, using combinations of top-down, bottom-up and fragmented planning approaches. Mostly data from government information systems are used, which were perceived as good quality though often omits the urban poor and migrants. Key common influences on data use include constrained resources and limitations of current planning approaches, alongside data duplication and limited co-ordination within Dhaka’s pluralistic system, limited opportunities for data use in Hanoi and inadequate and incomplete data in Pokhara. City governments have the potential to act as a hub for multi-sectoral planning. Our results highlight the tensions this brings, with health receiving less attention than other sector priorities. A key emerging issue is that data on the most marginalized urban poor and migrants are largely unavailable. Feasible improvements to evidence-informed urban health planning include increasing availability and quality of data particularly on the urban poor, aligning different planning processes, introducing clearer mechanisms for data use, working within the current systemic opportunities and enhancing participation of local communities in urban health planning.
Which time investments in the first 5 years of life matter most for children’s language and behavioural outcomes at school entry?
Authors: Gialamas Angela , Haag Dandara G , Mittinty Murthy N , Lynch John
Published: August 2019

Background

The ways children spend their time is one of the most valuable inputs for healthy child development. It is unknown which time investment yields the greatest return for children’s language and behavioural outcomes at school entry.

Methods

We used data from the first three waves (2004, 2006, 2008) of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 4253). At every wave, parents completed 24-h time-use diaries on one randomly selected week and one weekend day. The amount of time children spent on 11 activities at ages 0–1, 2–3 and 4–5 years was analysed. Receptive vocabulary was assessed using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and externalizing behaviours were measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, completed by parents and teachers at 4–5 years. To identify which time investment in the first 5 years of life mattered most for children’s outcomes, a new production function was developed. This production function was estimated using a log–log linear regression model.

Results

Relative to other time investments, time spent on educational activities at 2–3 years of age was the most important time investment for receptive vocabulary and behavioural outcomes at school entry. After adjusting for confounding, every 1 h invested in educational activities at 2–3 years was associated with a 0.95% [95% CI (confidence interval): 0.62, 1.28] increase in receptive vocabulary, and a −5.72% (95% CI: −7.71, −3.73) and −9.23% (95% CI: −12.26, −6.20) reduction in parent- and teacher-reported externalizing problem behaviours. Time invested in play was also important to both receptive vocabulary and behaviour. One hour invested in play at 2–3 and 4–5 years was associated with a 0.68% (95% CI: 0.38, 0.98) and 0.71% (95% CI: 0.39, 1.03) increase in children’s receptive vocabulary at school entry. In addition, time invested in play at 2–3 and 4–5 years was associated with reduced problem behaviours at school entry. In contrast, screen time at all ages was associated with poorer parent- and teacher-reported externalizing problem behaviours.

Conclusions

These results suggest that time invested in educational activities at 2–3 years of age yield the greatest return for children’s receptive vocabulary and behaviour at school entry.