Slum clearance and relocation: a reassessment of social outcomes combining short-term and long-term perspectives

Abstract

Housing research rarely takes a long-term view of the impacts of short-term housing changes. Thus, in studies of post-war relocation, narratives of ‘loss of community’ and ‘dislocation’ have dominated the debate for decades. This paper combines a ‘re-study’ methodology with oral histories to re-examine the experience of relocation into high-rise flats in Glasgow in the 1960s and 1970s. We find that both the immediate and longer term outcomes of relocation varied greatly; while some people failed to settle and felt a loss of social relations, many others did not. People had agency, some chose to get away from tenement life and others chose to move on subsequently as aspirations changed. Furthermore, relocation to high-rise was not always the life-defining event or moment it is often depicted to be. Outcomes from relocation are mediated by many other events and experiences, questioning its role as an explanatory paradigm in housing studies.     

Chirality Dependence of Amyloid β Cellular Uptake and a New Mechanistic Perspective

Amyloid β is an inherently disordered peptide that can form diverse neurotoxic aggregates, and its 42-amino-acid isoform is believed to be the agent responsible for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Cellular uptake of the peptide is a pivotal step for it to be able to exert many of its toxic actions. The cellular uptake process is complex, and numerous competing internalization pathways have been proposed. To date, it remains unclear which of the uptake mechanisms are particularly important for the overall process, and improvement of this understanding is needed, so that better molecular AD therapeutics can be designed. Chirality can be used as a unique tool to study this process, because some of the proposed mechanisms are expected to proceed in stereoselective fashion, whereas others are not. To shed light on this important issue, we synthesized fluorescently labeled enantiomers of amyloid β and quantified their cellular uptake, finding that uptake occurs in stereoselective fashion, with a typical preference for the l stereoisomer of ≈5:1. This suggests that the process is predominantly receptor-mediated, with likely minor contributions of non-stereoselective mechanisms.     

Inhibition of return in discrimination tasks.

Although inhibition of return is known to affect a wide range of detection tasks, it has not been found consistently in discrimination tasks. To examine this issue, 5 experiments were conducted in which participants discriminated between a visual target and a distractor. The responses were not inhibited if, before the onset of stimuli, attention had been overtly oriented (i.e., an eye movement was made) to the future target location and the stimulus at that location was the same symbol as the upcoming target. However, if attention was covertly oriented (i.e., no eye movement was made) to the future location of the target, or if the stimulus at the earlier attended location was a symbol different from the target, responses to the target were inhibited. Overall, the findings provide insights into the relation between movements of attention and discrimination judgments and support the notion that inhibition of return is an attentional phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatially diffuse inhibition affects multiple locations: A reply to Tipper, Weaver, and Watson (1996).

S. Tipper, B. Weaver, and F. Watson (see record 84-02784) suggest that J. Pratt and R. A. Abrams's (see record 1996-16290-001) failure to find inhibition of return for more than the most recently cued location was because their 2-target display did not adequately capture some of the complexity of real-world visual environments. However, Tipper et al. tested a special case because they always cued 3 out of 4 potential targets (allowing cued and uncued locations to be segregated into 2 spatial regions). The authors show that only the 1 most recently cued location will be inhibited when 2 nonadjacent targets out of 4 possible targets are cued, but both cued locations will be inhibited when they are adjacent. Also, only the 1 most recently cued location was inhibited when 3 nonadjacent targets out of 6 potential target locations were cued. Thus, in a complex environment in which several cued locations are interspersed among noncued locations, inhibition of return will occur for only the 1 most recently attended location, consistent with conclusions of Pratt and Abrams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relevance of cue reactivity to understanding alcohol and smoking relapse.

Several learning-based theories have been forwarded to account for the problem of drug relapse, including conditioned withdrawal, conditioned compensatory responding, appetitive motivational models, and social learning models. The various models are compared and evaluated against available evidence from studies with humans pertaining to alcohol and tobacco addiction. Studies that are reviewed focus primarily on the antecedents and consequences of alcohol and smoking relapse, as well as on reactions to cues that have been associated with prior drug ingestion, in an attempt to understand their motivational relevance. Problems in evaluating the various relapse models in humans are discussed. It is concluded that the appetitive model is better supported than the withdrawal model, and the compensatory model is least supported. Reactions to substance use stimuli may play an important role in alcohol and smoking relapse. Concepts drawn from the various theoretical models are linked tentatively in a schematic diagram of a hypothesized sequence of cognitive/affective, physiological, and behavioral events that lead to initial drug use after a period of abstinence (slip) and then to continued use (a relapse). The treatment implications of some of the cue reactivity models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in predicting final examination grades: The influence of past performance, attributions, and achievement motivation.

43 male and 41 female undergraduates reported their high school and last semester GPAs, their 1st and 2nd midterm grades, and their final exam predictions. Ss also rated the influence that ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck had on their performances and completed Mehrabian's achievement motivation scale. Regression analyses provided support for the attribution model of achievement expectations. All Ss used ability to explain their successes; however, males attributed failures to lack of effort while females often used luck to explain their performances. Although both sexes earned equal midterm scores and predicted similar final grades, males based their predictions solely on the 2 midterms. Females' predictions were significantly affected by both midterm performance and achievement motivation. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Programming Languages and Direct-Execution Computer Architecture

Besides offering fast execution speed, the direct-execution architecture permits highly interactive programming, language definition, and the measurement of language complexity.     

Phosphopleckstrin inhibits gbetagamma-activable platelet phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase

Pleckstrin, the prototypic protein containing two copies of the pleckstrin homology domain, is a prominent substrate of protein kinase C in platelets and neutrophils. Both cell types have p85 subunit-containing phosphoinositide 3-kinase (p85/PI3K) and non-p85-containing PI3K (PI3Kgamma) that is activated by betagamma subunits of heterotrimeric GTP-binding proteins. We have shown that a PI3K product, phosphatidylinositol (PI) 3,4,5-trisphosphate, promotes pleckstrin phosphorylation in platelets. Since pleckstrin homology domains are thought to interact with Gbetagamma heterodimers and/or PI(4,5)P2, we have examined the effects of recombinant pleckstrins on platelet PI3Kgamma and p85/PI3K activities. Depending upon its phosphorylation/charged state, pleckstrin inhibits PI3Kgamma, but not p85/PI3K. Pleckstrin-mediated inhibition of PI3Kgamma is overcome by excess Gbetagamma and is restricted to PI(4,5)P2 as substrate, i.e. pleckstrin does not inhibit phosphorylation of PI()P or PI. Consistent with this, activation of protein kinase C by exposure of platelets to beta-phorbol diester (to increase endogenous pleckstrin phosphorylation) prior to platelet lysis causes inhibition of Gbetagamma-stimulatable PI3K activity only with respect to PI(4,5)P2 substrate. This phosphopleckstrin-mediated inhibition is overcome by increasing concentrations of Gbetagamma. We propose that phosphorylation of pleckstrin may constitute an important inhibitory mechanism for PI3Kgamma-mediated cell signaling.     

Staining of cell surface human CD4 with 2'-F-pyrimidine-containing RNA aptamers for flow cytometry

We have used recombinant human CD4 presented on beads as an affinity matrix to screen a 2'-F-pyrimidine-containing RNA library with a complexity of approximately 10(14) molecules. Affinity-selected aptamers bind recombinant CD4 with low nanomolar equilibrium dissociation constants. These high-affinity aptamers conjugated to different fluorophores such as fluorescein and phycoerythrin were used to stain cells, expressing human CD4 on cell surface, for analysis by flow cytometry. Aptamers, conjugated to fluorophores, stained mouse T cells that express human CD4 on the surface, but not the control mouse T cells lacking human CD4. The control cells, however, do express mouse CD4 whose extracellular domain has 55% sequence identity to the human form. These human CD4-specific aptamers selectively stained CD4(+) T cells in a preparation of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. These results and others suggest that aptamers are emerging as a versatile class of molecules that can be used for various diagnostic applications performed under different formats or platforms.