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In the past decade, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation's (HOLC) so-called 'redlining' maps have gone from a niche corner of urban historical scholarship to the centre of mainstream narratives about racism in the United States. In this paper, I map this journey and trace the contours of the ongoing debates that have emerged, identifying two competing camps I call 'HOLC Culpablism' and 'HOLC Scepticism'. Finding these perspectives to have run up against their self-imposed limitations, I outline a research agenda that breaks from the debate's narrow confines by envisioning HOLC's mapping materials anew. My proposed approach recasts the maps and their accompanying field notes as windows into the governing racial–spatial ideology of 20th-century US real estate capital. In doing so, it invites researchers to reimagine the map grades as dynamic categories reflecting a particular spatiotemporal conception of value that is highly contingent on an area's estimated racial trajectory. This reformulation, I argue, not only opens new possibilities for studying the HOLC mapping programme but suggests that the power of these maps has almost certainly been underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medication abortion with pills (mifepristone and misoprostol) challenges the spatiality of abortion provision because it creates the possibility for safe, self‐managed abortion outside of clinical infrastructure. This possibility has been contested by pro‐ and anti‐abortion actors for as long as medication abortion has been in existence. In this paper, I offer a legal geography account of medication abortion technology that examines how medication abortion has been regulated in the United States. Conceptually, the paper uses a legal geography methodology to probe the social spatialities that abortion laws construct. Empirically, the paper analyses trends in legislation to restrict medication abortion and two significant court challenges where abortion providers brought suit against medication abortion restrictions. Drawing on legislation and litigation over mifepristone, I demonstrate that restrictions on it function by anchoring mifepristone inside the clinical spaces and regulatory frameworks established for surgical abortion. In this way, mifepristone regulations circumscribe its availability in order to prevent the creation of alternative models for abortion provision that could re‐arrange its geography and expand abortion access. Medication abortion pills challenge the spatiality of abortion provision because they create the possibility for safe, self‐managed abortion outside of clinical infrastructures. This paper offers a legal geography account of medication abortion technology that examines how medication abortion has been regulated in the United States. The paper analyses trends in legislation to restrict medication abortion and two significant court challenges where abortion providers brought suit against medication abortion restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to tell episodes of the geographical trajectory of radical geographer Clark Akatiff based on his own reflections and statements by people who know him as friend, colleague, or teacher. The authors make a plea to pay more attention to "small stories" and "minor geographies" in studies on the history of geography and to employ unconventional narratives that provide insights into how geographers engage with the world, express their political and philosophical standpoints, inspire others, and lead an essentially geographical life. Personal accounts like Akatiff's do not oppose the dominant discourse of key thinkers in the discipline as it is told in textbooks, but enrich geography's history by revealing grassroots stories that are frequently overlooked in academia and downplayed as ephemeral, in this case the origins of radical geography in the United States and the legacy of geographer William Bunge. The authors argue that research must follow a more inclusive, multivocal approach that consists of listening to stories and recording narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the uneven geographies of politicisation through the case of the undocumented immigrant youth movement in the United States, known as the Dreamers. Engaging the "urban political" literature, the paper maintains that politicisation involves the constitution of a subject that disrupts the order through claims for equality. The paper identifies the process of transforming highly marginalised and repressed people into an actual disruptive political subject. It suggests a three‐stage, spatially mediated process. First, "free spaces" are frontline sites that allow marginalised and risk‐averse groups like undocumented immigrants to meet with others, forge emotional bonds, and construct transgressive collective identities. Second, the potential of free spaces to politicise marginalised groups varies by geographical setting. Geographical settings, like large central cities, with high levels of organisational density and some ideological support facilitate politicisation more than settings with low organisational density and high hostility. Third, the uneven geographies of politicisation results in a political subject that is constituted and divided by core–periphery relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication of Fenneman's two volumes on physiography: The Physiography of Western United States and the Physiography of Eastern United States, was the culmination of over 20 years of work toward formalization of the physiographic regions in the United States. This paper details the relevant works that predate these volumes, the two volumes themselves, as well as briefly describing Fenneman's career and the continued use of the works 80 plus years post-publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balochistan has always been a territory divided by influential tribal chieftains. A bifurcated social fabric and emergence of princely States is a result of this divided nature of political landscape of Balochistan. The geographical terrain and the history of Baloch's constant moment and migration is partly responsible for the late arrival of any kind of political arrangement among warring tribes and spheres of influences. This paper will take a closer look to Balochistan's princely States, their recent history, geography and religious profiles. The paper will examine some of available historical records and other sources such as legends and traditions to trace the historical emergence of a Baloch confederacy in the name of Khanate of Kalat and its role and relation with difference (semi)autonomous princely States. The paper will examine the relationship between the British colonial government in India and the princely States of Balochistan and will seek to understand causes of the demise of Kalat domination over the autonomous regions and princely States. In consequence of the waning power of Kalat many tribes and princely States asserted their independence and went to make separate arrangement with the British and also later on with newly independent Muslim State of Pakistan. The paper will particularly examine the situation of three major autonomous regions: Makran, Lasbela and Kharan. The paper will also shit lights on the geography and religious profiles of four princely States which later on constituted Balochistan province. The paper argues that the colonial Forward Policy and its implication helped many autonomous regions to assert their independence from Kalat. Overall, the paper will take a critical view of the Khanate and its relation with three major princely States which in consequence define the emergence of first Baloch independency and its demise. The balancing act of these States and Kalat was the key triangular relationship to maintain the first confederacy of Baloch tribes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Based on single cross-sectional data, prior research finds evidence of “transportation assimilation” among U.S. immigrants: the length of stay in the U.S. is negatively correlated with public transit use. This paper revisits this question by using repeated cross-sectional data, and examines the trend of transportation assimilation over time. Methods and results: Using 1980, 1990, 2000 1% census and 2010 (1%) American Community Survey, I examine the relationship between the length of stay in the U.S. and public transit ridership among immigrants. I first run regressions separately in four data sets: I regress public transit ridership on the length of stay, controlling for other individual and geographic variables. I then compare the magnitudes of the relationship in four regressions. To study how the rate of transportation assimilation changes over time, I pool the data set and regress public transit ridership on the length of stay and its interactions with year dummies to compare the coefficients across surveys. Results confirm the conclusion of transportation assimilation: as the length of stay in the U.S. increases, an immigrant’s public transit use decreases. However, the repeated cross-section analysis suggests the assimilation rate has been decreasing in the past few decades. Conclusions: This paper finds evidence of transportation assimilation: immigrants become less likely to ride public transit as the length of stay in the U.S. increases. The assimilation rate, however, has been decreasing over time. This paper finds that the rate of public transit ridership among new immigrants upon arrival, the geographic distribution of immigrants, and the changing demographics of the U.S. immigrants play roles in affecting the trend of transportation assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the immediate post-Second World War years in Europe were about decolonisation, in the United States it was the opposite. Those years were about imperial expansion driven by Cold War imperatives. Led by the military, including US covert intelligence agencies, the social sciences were also enlisted, albeit frequently reconceived as the behavioural or human sciences. Geographical knowledge was incorporated too, but similarly reconfigured. A new disciplinary formation known as area studies was in ascendance. It represented a new way of conceiving the 'international' and provided a national infrastructure of expertise for managing the work of empire. However, it was typically not offered by geography departments, or taught by geographers. Rather, new, independent, regionally specific area departments burgeoned across American university campuses from 1945. Area studies had an especial early grip at Ivy League universities, which was ironic given that during the same period those universities were dismantling their conventional geography departments. Consequently, American geography and geographers for the most part did not contribute to shaping US post-war imperial expansion. This was despite the long historical involvement by geographers in previous imperial ventures, and, specifically, the significant participation of American geographers both within the State Department and the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War. This paper examines early post-war American imperial expansion and area studies without geography. • Explores how social science supported American imperial expansion during the Cold War. • Identifies post-Second World War area studies as a crucial national infrastructure of knowledge. • Analyses national security funders' efforts to multiply and employ area experts. • Shows that area studies and geography rarely mixed in the 1940s and 1950s. • Argues that geography's absence from early area studies distinguishes American empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prophylactic interventions such as vaccine allocation are some of the most effective public health policy planning tools. The supply of vaccines, however, is limited and an important challenge is to optimally allocate the vaccines to minimize epidemic impact. This resource allocation question (which we refer to as VID) has multiple dimensions: when, where, to whom, etc. Most of the existing literature in this topic deals with the latter (to whom), proposing policies that prioritize individuals by age and disease risk. However, since seasonal influenza spread has a typical spatial trend, and due to the temporal constraints enforced by the availability schedule, the when and where problems become equally, if not more, relevant. In this paper, we study the VID problem in the context of seasonal influenza spread in the United States. We develop a national scale metapopulation model for influenza that integrates both short and long distance human mobility, along with realistic data on vaccine uptake. We also design GA, a greedy algorithm for allocating the vaccine supply at the state level under temporal constraints and show that such a strategy improves over the current baseline of pro-rata allocation, and the improvement is more pronounced for higher vaccine efficacy and moderate flu season intensity. Further, the resulting strategy resembles a ring vaccination applied spatiallyacross the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers and others have recently addressed the problematic of area studies by suggesting alternate ways to recognize the connectedness of peoples and places. However, some areas seem so self-evident as to resist their undoing. One such area is the nation state. In this paper, I examine the resilience of the nation state as area through the example of Japanese studies. I discuss the emergence in the United States of Japanese studies as a field, and thus Japan as an area worthy of study, due to its enemy status in World War II, which highlights a troubling disciplinary origin in interrogation that still haunts the academy. I continue by explaining how Japan’s postwar amnesia of its pre-1945 empire and the influence of one research monograph in particular helped produce the enduring notion of a homogeneous and spatially isolated Japan. Subsequent decades of research have tried to undermine this notion, albeit without questioning the ontology of Japan itself. In this paper, I outline challenges to unthinking the nation state as area, including existing institutional barriers and the role of Japanese studies as a source of professional identity, both in general and for me personally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into the role of place in shaping inequalities in health has focused largely on examining individual and/or localised drivers, often using a context-composition framing. Whilst this body of work has advanced considerably our understanding of the effects of local environments on health, and re-established an awareness of the importance of place for health, it has done so at the expense of marginalising and minimising the influences of macro political and economic structures on both place and health. In this paper, we argue that: (i) we need to scale up our analysis, moving beyond merely analysing local horizontal drivers to take wider, vertical structural factors into account; and (ii) if we are serious about reducing place-based health inequalities, such analysis needs be overtly linked to appropriate policy levers. Drawing on three case studies (the US mortality disadvantage, Scotland's excess mortality, and regional health divides in England and Germany) we outline the theoretical and empirical value of taking a more political economy approach to understanding geographical inequalities in health. We conclude by outlining the implications for future research and for efforts to influence policy from 'scaling up' geographical research into health inequalities. • Health-place research commonly examines focuses individual and/or localised drivers. • Health geography should 'scale up' analysis of health-place relationships. • Research needs to account for wider, vertical and structural factors. • Political economic approaches add value to insight on geographic health inequalities. • Considers the policy implications of taking a political economy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationally, juvenile justice reforms have largely rolled back the surge in youth incarceration that resulted from the "tough on crime" era of the late 1990s and early 2000s: the numbers of young people arrested, detained, and placed in the justice system has fallen by half to the lowest numbers the country has seen since the 1980s. This paper analyzes gender-specific trends in juvenile justice involvement to assess whether declines in juvenile justice-involved youth population have made it possible to eliminate the practice of detaining or placing girls in juvenile justice facilities in many jurisdictions around the country. Descriptive data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics "Arrest Data Analysis Tool" as well as the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's "Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics" and "Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement" are compiled to provide an overview of gender demographics and charge severity at arrest and placement over time. Findings indicate that in many states girls numbers are sufficiently small and the severity of their offenses sufficiently low-level that targeted policy changes, diversion efforts, and investment community-based prevention and intervention programing could eliminate confinement altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to produce timely and accurate flu forecasts in the United States can significantly impact public health. Augmenting forecasts with internet data has shown promise for improving forecast accuracy and timeliness in controlled settings, but results in practice are less convincing, as models augmented with internet data have not consistently outperformed models without internet data. In this paper, we perform a controlled experiment, taking into account data backfill, to improve clarity on the benefits and limitations of augmenting an already good flu forecasting model with internet-based nowcasts. Our results show that a good flu forecasting model can benefit from the augmentation of internet-based nowcasts in practice for all considered public health-relevant forecasting targets. The degree of forecast improvement due to nowcasting, however, is uneven across forecasting targets, with short-term forecasting targets seeing the largest improvements and seasonal targets such as the peak timing and intensity seeing relatively marginal improvements. The uneven forecasting improvements across targets hold even when “perfect” nowcasts are used. These findings suggest that further improvements to flu forecasting, particularly seasonal targets, will need to derive from other, non-nowcasting approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes environmental systems games developed for energy and water resource use designed to be adaptable from high school to undergraduate use. Two of the games are computer simulations with adjustable levels of difficulty that can be done in a computer lab or as a homework assignment. The third is a peer-to-peer roleplayer game designed for an immersive in-class simulation. For the energy and the peer-to-peer water games, we describe (1) the overall strategy or story line adopted, (2) the manner in which the game is played by students in a classroom setting, (3) the use of scientific literature in conceptualizing and parameterizing the game, and (4) possible game extensions. Preliminary data from use at the undergraduate level shows that the games are very well-received by students and, consistent with other research on quasi-experimental simulations, likely enhance learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Backup capability of solar and storage differs by region in the U.S. • Small batteries can meet a limited set of critical loads in most counties. • Electric cooling and heating loads are typically hardest loads to backup. • Household building attributes like efficiency can impact results up to 20% • Resiliency value needs to be high to motivate adoption of solar-plus-storage. Customer concerns over electric system resilience could drive early adoption of behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage (BTM PVESS), especially as wildfire, hurricane, and other climate-driven risks to electric grids become more pronounced. However, the resilience benefits of BTM PVESS are poorly understood, especially for residential customers, owing to lack of data and methodological challenges, making it difficult to forecast adoption trends. In this paper, we develop a methodology to model the performance of BTM PVESS in providing backup power across a wide range of customer types, geography / climate conditions, and long duration power interruption scenarios, considering both whole-building backup and backup of specific critical loads. We combine novel, disaggregated end-use load profiles across the continental United States with temporally and geospatially aligned solar generation estimates. We then implement a PVESS dispatch algorithm to calculate the amount of load served during interruptions. We find that PVESS with 10 kWh of storage can meet a limited set of critical loads in most United States counties during any month of the year, though this capability drops to meeting only 86% of critical load, averaged across all counties and months, when heating and cooling are considered critical. Backup performance is lowest in winter months where electric heat is common (southeast and northwest U.S.) and in summer months in places with large cooling loads (southwest and southeast U.S.). Winter backup performance varies by roughly 20% depending on infiltration rates, while summer performance varies by close to 15% depending on the efficiency of the central air-conditioning system. Differences in temperature set-points in Harris County correspond to a 40% range in winter backup performance and a 20% range in summer performance. Economic calculations show that a customer's resilience value of PVESS must be high to motivate adoption of these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most current scientific policies incorporate debates on cities and the geographic organisation of scientific activity. Research on ‘world cities’ develops the idea that interconnected agglomerations can better take advantage of international competition. Thus, the increasing concentration of activities in these cities at the expense of others could be observed by certain scholars using measures based on scientific publications. Others, however, show that an opposite trend is emerging: the largest cities are undergoing a relative decline in a country’s scientific activities. To go beyond this seeming contradiction, this paper provides a global analysis of all countries with papers in the Web of Science over the period 1987–2007. The author’s addresses were geocoded and grouped into agglomerations. Registering of papers was based on the fractional counting of multi-authored publications, and the results are unambiguous: deconcentration is the dominant trend both globally and within countries, with some exceptions for which explanations are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The persistent relationship between race and unemployment among young men and women has been among the most vexing problems faced by Black communities in the Post-Civil Rights era. Researchers have tried to identify mechanisms through which racial status continues to bear on employment status by identifying individual attributes that render workers of different racial identities similarly likely to secure employment. When Black and White workers with similar human capital profiles have different odds of employment, we are left to speculate about what is behind those differences. In this paper, I demonstrate that racial differences in the odds of unemployment are greater in some states than in others and suggest that some part of the racial employment gap can be explained by state-level attributes. First, however, we must identify convincing measures of the strength of association between race and employment status across states. I offer four such measures and rank the states on each. We are left with some surprising answers to the question “where does race matter most?” and empirical foundations for a research agenda that sheds new light on racial employment gaps by treating labor markets rather than labor market participants as the units of observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: As gentrification continues in New York City as well as other urban areas, residents of lower socioeconomic status maybe at higher risk for residential displacement. Yet, there have been few quantitative assessments of the health impacts of displacement. The objective of this paper is to assess the association between displacement and healthcare access and mental health among the original residents of gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City. Methods: We used 2 data sources: 1) 2005–2014 American Community Surveys to identify gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City, and 2) 2006–2014 Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System. Our cohort included 12,882 residents of gentrifying neighborhoods in 2006 who had records of emergency department visits or hospitalization at least once every 2 years in 2006–2014. Rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations post-baseline were compared between residents who were displaced and those who remained. Results: During 2006–2014, 23% were displaced. Compared with those who remained, displaced residents were more likely to make emergency department visits and experience hospitalizations, mainly due to mental health (Rate Ratio = 1.8, 95% confidence interval = 1.5, 2.2), after controlling for baseline demographics, health status, healthcare utilization, residential movement, and the neighborhood of residence in 2006. Conclusions: These findings suggest negative impacts of displacement on healthcare access and mental health, particularly among adults living in urban areas and with a history of frequent emergency department visits or hospitalizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The main purpose of this paper is to examine geographic variation in unmet need for mental health care among racially/ethnically diverse adults with psychiatric disorders in the US.Methods: Drawn from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES; 2001-2003), adults with any past year psychiatric disorder diagnosis (n = 3211) from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds were selected for analyses. Using weighted data, descriptive analyses and logistic regression analyses were conducted.Results: Two-thirds of the total sample had unmet mental health care need, which differed significantly by race/ethnicity (p < .001). Logistic regression analyses show regional variation of the effect of race/ethnicity in unmet need: after adjusting for covariates, Latinos in the South, Blacks and Latinos in the Midwest, and Latinos and Asians in the West had higher unmet need than non-Hispanic Whites, whereas no significant racial/ethnic effects were found in the Northeast.Conclusions: Findings suggest that geographic region plays an important role in the sufficient use of mental health services among racial/ethnic minorities. Further research should elucidate reasons for geographic disparities in mental health care among racial/ethnic minority adults to reduce disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roadway elevation data is critical for a variety of transportation analyses. However, it has been challenging to obtain such data and most roadway GIS databases do not have them. This paper intends to address this need by proposing a method to extract roadway elevation data from Google Earth (GE) for transportation applications. A comprehensive accuracy assessment of the GE-extracted elevation data is conducted for the area of conterminous USA. The GE elevation data was compared with the ground truth data from nationwide GPS benchmarks and roadway monuments from six states in the conterminous USA. This study also compares the GE elevation data with the elevation raster data from the U.S. Geological Survey National Elevation Dataset (USGS NED), which is a widely used data source for extracting roadway elevation. Mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) are used to assess the accuracy and the test results show MAE, RMSE and standard deviation of GE roadway elevation error are 1.32 meters, 2.27 meters and 2.27 meters, respectively. Finally, the proposed extraction method was implemented and validated for the following three scenarios: (1) extracting roadway elevation differentiating by directions, (2) multi-layered roadway recognition in freeway segment and (3) slope segmentation and grade calculation in freeway segment. The methodology validation results indicate that the proposed extraction method can locate the extracting route accurately, recognize multi-layered roadway section, and segment the extracted route by grade automatically. Overall, it is found that the high accuracy elevation data available from GE provide a reliable data source for various transportation applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancestral state reconstruction in Bayesian phylogeography of virus pandemics have been improved by utilizing a Bayesian stochastic search variable selection (BSSVS) framework. Recently, this framework has been extended to model the transition rate matrix between discrete states as a generalized linear model (GLM) of genetic, geographic, demographic, and environmental predictors of interest to the virus and incorporating BSSVS to estimate the posterior inclusion probabilities of each predictor. Although the latter appears to enhance the biological validity of ancestral state reconstruction, there has yet to be a comparison of phylogenies created by the two methods. In this paper, we compare these two methods, while also using a primitive method without BSSVS, and highlight the differences in phylogenies created by each. We test six coalescent priors and six random sequence samples of H3N2 influenza during the 2014–15 flu season in the U.S. We show that the GLMs yield significantly greater root state posterior probabilities than the two alternative methods under five of the six priors, and significantly greater Kullback-Leibler divergence values than the two alternative methods under all priors. Furthermore, the GLMs strongly implicate temperature and precipitation as driving forces of this flu season and nearly unanimously identified a single root state, which exhibits the most tropical climate during a typical flu season in the U.S. The GLM, however, appears to be highly susceptible to sampling bias compared with the other methods, which casts doubt on whether its reconstructions should be favored over those created by alternate methods. We report that a BSSVS approach with a Poisson prior demonstrates less bias toward sample size under certain conditions than the GLMs or primitive models, and believe that the connection between reconstruction method and sampling bias warrants further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking European world music charts since 1991 as a surrogate measure of the salience of global economic and geographical linkages in world music production, our paper offers an in-depth analysis into the clustered and transnational dynamics therein. We substantiate the claim that the valorisation of commodified musical content has traditionally been removed from its place of origin and centred on metropolitan areas in Western Europe and the USA. However, the paper suggests a growing diversification in the geography of production, with the emergence of secondary centres with an international and national orientation. It also offers promising avenues for further research into the positionality of cultural mediation and the increasing prominence of hybrid musical output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the history of credit scoring in Britain, and how this technology was imported from the US and adapted by the British retail banking sector. It seeks to highlight the elites who develop the social codes embedded within credit scoring software, to offer insight into the complex techno-economic networks that produce the geographies of financial inclusion, exclusion, and differential risk pricing. It is argued that the scientific status of these systems is questionable, due to the social interactions involved within the statistical modelling. Finally, the paper suggests that the spaces of credit are fluid, based upon the frequent social recalibrations of these models [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our replication of Deaton and Lubotsky's [(2003). Mortality, inequality and race in American cities and states. Social Science & Medicine, 56.] study “Mortality, Inequality and Race in American Cities and States" identifies a coding error in the econometric analysis in the original paper. Correcting the error changes the basic results of the paper with respect to inequality and mortality in a relevant and substantive way. We also propose an alternative interpretation of the other main result of the paper regarding racial composition and mortality. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the Department of Energy's (DOE) largest multipurpose science and energy laboratory. As an interdisciplinary research organization, access to information plays a critical part in the success of the many research efforts in progress at the Laboratory. The Research Library, in a supportive role, enables staff to fulfill the Laboratory's mission by making available a myriad of information resources including paper and electronic maps. The Research Library Geographic Information System (GIS) workstation was developed to better serve library customers by providing convenient access to a variety of mapping resources. The GIS workstation functions as a supplement to the paper map collection by providing customers with maps in an electronic format that can easily be inserted into memos, reports, and journal articles. Customer interest, together with the growing availability of low-cost and user-friendly mapping software, led to the development of the GIS workstation, which hosts an array of commercial mapping software that enables customers to produce ready-made topographic maps, current and historical maps, and road maps. Customers may also create customized maps using their own data or data supplied by the software vendor. This article focuses on the development, implementation, and use of the library's GIS workstation by providing a brief description of hardware components, mapping resources, and how these resources are used by Laboratory staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that US–Scandinavian intelligence relations in general, and Signals Intelligence (Sigint) relations in particular, during the period 1945 through 1960 were more extensive and complicated than had previously been believed. Bilateral US intelligence liaison relations with nominally neutral Sweden were of particular importance in the early years of the Cold War given its geographic location adjacent to the northwestern portion of the USSR. Moreover, the importance of Sigint received from the three principal Scandinavian countries covered by this paper (Norway, Denmark, and Sweden) proved to be quite important to the US intelligence community during the early years of the Cold War, when the US Sigint infrastructure was relatively weak and stretched thin by commitments in Asia and elsewhere. This paper covers the quantity, quality, and types of intelligence information provided to the US by each of the Scandinavian nations, demonstrating that the nature of US intelligence relations with these countries changed substantially as time went by. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current spatial database systems offer limited querying capabilities beyond binary topological relations. This paper introduces a model for projective relations between regions to support other qualitative spatial queries. The relations are ternary because they are based on the collinearity invariant of three points under projective geometry. The model is built on a partition of the plane into separate zones that are obtained from projective properties of two reference objects: Then, by considering the empty/nonempty intersections of a primary object with these zones, the model is able to distinguish between 34 different projective relations. Then, the paper proposes original algorithms for computing the relations under the assumption that regions of the plane are stored as vector polygons in a spatial database. These algorithms run in optimal O(n log n) time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Park-and-ride services are an integral component of many public transit systems in the United States. A necessary step when analyzing and planning for such services is to delineate catchment areas for park-and-ride facilities. Previous approaches for delineating catchment/market areas are either problematic or have unrealistic data requirements. This paper develops a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based approach for delineating market areas. The detailed approach simultaneously accounts for park-and-ride facility accessibility and user travel direction. It is shown that the developed approach performs better than existing approaches. Further, this paper provides a detailed and formal description of these approaches, which should facilitate interpretation and implementation in a GIS environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers have, in recent years, attempted to develop an anti-racist research and teaching agenda. Critical to this endeavour has been an engagement directly with the theories and philosophies of key activists and scholars, such as W. E. B. DuBois and Richard Wright. Contributing to this effort, I provide a study of Malcolm X. As an activist and outspoken member of the African American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, Malcolm X re-articulated Black radical thought in significant ways. In particular, Malcolm X placed a territorial dimension at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement and in so doing re-conceptualized the theoretical and practical linkages between the African American movement and other ‘Third World’ movements. The immediate purpose of this paper therefore is to delineate the territorial dimensions of the revolutionary thought of Malcolm X. Heuristically, this paper is situated within four broad areas of inquiry: revolutions and social movements; the thinking of space; anti-racist geographies; and the imbrication of gender and revolutionary thought. More broadly, however, this paper reiterates the call for a more sustained engagement by geographers on the theories and philosophies of Black radical intellectuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an example of applied military geography focusing on a particular problem arising from the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977. One of the provisions of the treaty required the United States (US) military to completely withdraw from and relinquish its military and government facilities to the Republic of Panama prior to midnight on 31 December 1999. In so doing, the US army turned over to the Panama government all of its military bases, some of which had been used since World War I to test materiel, equipment and systems within a tropical environment. Given its global mission and responsibilities, the US army has a well-established practice of testing its materiel, equipment and systems throughout the entire range of potential operating environments. The US experience in the Pacific in World War II and in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War clearly demonstrated the need to test the performance of new equipment under the harsh conditions found in tropical jungles. Furthermore, since 1960, nearly 75 per cent of all international and internal armed conflicts have been in countries that are totally or partially in the tropics. This paper presents the findings of a scientific panel that was organised to propose a new location for testing US army materiel and systems within a tropical environment. Rather than simply choosing a location analogous to Panama, the panel sought to develop a methodology that could be employed for site selection based on any set of environmental criteria. This study is a classical locational analysis and reconfirms the integrative nature of geography and its utility for solving complex problems that cut across disciplinary boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Franz Boas as an aspiring professional geographer during the 1880s: his Baffin Land research, his publications, his participation in geography organizations, and his struggle to attain a university appointment in geography. Frustrated by a seeming lack of opportunity for advancement in Germany, Boas explored career opportunities as a geographer in America and launched a series of unsuccessful but meaningful attempts to dominate the intellectual direction of American geography. Finally, the article reviews the circumstances surrounding Boas's appointment as an anthropologist at Clark University in 1889. Through examining Boas's own words and actions, the paper demonstrates that his professional identification with geography was lengthier and stronger than earlier accounts have suggested. It also critiques the myth of a Baffin Land “conversion” to anthropology, and delineates the circumstances of his shift from German human geography to his Americanist recasting of anthropology after 1889. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial distribution of income shapes the structure and organisation of cities and its understanding has broad societal implications. Despite an abundant literature, many issues remain unclear. In particular, all definitions of segregation are implicitely tied to a single indicator, usually rely on an ambiguous definition of income classes, without any consensus on how to define neighbourhoods and to deal with the polycentric organization of large cities. In this paper, we address all these questions within a unique conceptual framework. We avoid the challenge of providing a direct definition of segregation and instead start from a definition of what segregation is not. This naturally leads to the measure of representation that is able to identify locations where categories are over- or underrepresented. From there, we provide a new measure of exposure that discriminates between situations where categories co-locate or repel one another. We then use this feature to provide an unambiguous, parameter-free method to find meaningful breaks in the income distribution, thus defining classes. Applied to the 2014 American Community Survey, we find 3 emerging classes—low, middle and higher income—out of the original 16 income categories. The higher-income households are proportionally more present in larger cities, while lower-income households are not, invalidating the idea of an increased social polarisation. Finally, using the density—and not the distance to a center which is meaningless in polycentric cities—we find that the richer class is overrepresented in high density zones, especially for larger cities. This suggests that density is a relevant factor for understanding the income structure of cities and might explain some of the differences observed between US and European cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common policy approach to reducing childhood obesity aims to shape the environment in which children spend most of their time: neighborhoods and schools. This paper uses richly detailed data on the body mass index (BMI) of all New York City public school students in grades K-8 to assess the potential for place-based approaches to reduce child obesity. We document variation in the prevalence of obesity across NYC public schools and census tracts, and then estimate the extent to which this variation can be explained by differences in individual-level predictors (such as race and household income). Both unadjusted and adjusted variability across neighborhoods and schools suggest place-based policies have the potential to meaningfully reduce child obesity, but under most realistic scenarios the improvement would be modest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While only 1–2% of US residents self-identify as Buddhist, this faith is expanding and diffusing rapidly despite its dissonance with American individualism and traditional Judeo-Christian ideals. Using data from recent surveys of religion, Internet searches, and a phone survey, this paper explores the diffusion of Buddhism into four distinct cultural settings: Colorado (secular, progressive), Utah (Mormon, conservative), New Mexico (Catholic, politically moderate), and Arizona (mixed-Christian, conservative). A total of 276 Buddhist organizations were found. Organizations were classified based on tradition, number of active members, ethnic composition, and date established. A time sequence analysis was done to study patterns of diffusion. Simple and multiple regressions were performed to explore factors responsible for the degree of presence of Buddhist groups. Attributes included: education level, ethnicity, political ideology based on voting patterns, and population total and density. Colorado had the greatest number of Buddhist organizations, but New Mexico had a slightly higher ratio relative to population. Arizona had the second largest number of groups, but a low ratio. Utah proved to be the least receptive state for Buddhism in both number of groups and ratio. Our study explores the cultural geography of Buddhism in the Four Corners States to explain the patterns discovered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces a special issue of the journal on the subject of Project Varenius, a three-year effort funded by the US National Science Foundation to advance geographical information science. Geographical information is first defined as an abstraction of primitive tuples linking geographical locations to general descriptors. Geographical concepts originate in the human mind, and are instantiated in geographical information. Geographical information technologies apply digital methods to geographical information. Finally, geographical information science is defined as the set of basic research issues arising from these technologies. Three motivations are presented for research in this area: scientific, technological, and societal. Within the project, geographical information science is structured by a three-part framework that includes cognitive, computational, and societal issues. The paper ends with an introduction to these three parts, which define the infrastructure of the project and are discussed at length by the subsequent three papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on several conferences on geography, held in 1985. It is reported that the "National Speleological Society Annual Meeting" was held during June 23-29 in Frankfort, Kentucky. The Society is involved in the exploration and mapping of caves and furthering research in cave and karst science. This convention was attended by nearly 1,000 people who participated in five days of papers, nine mini-courses, sixteen workshops, and several field trips. The "Ninth World Forestry Congress," reportedly, was held during July 1-10 in Mexico City. The Congress was organized under the auspices of the Mexican Covernment through its Ministry of Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources and with collaboration of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Delegates representing forestry and agricultural government agencies, private industry, research and teaching, and international organizations participated in paper sessions and field trips. The topic of this convention was "Forestry Resources in the Integral Development of Society." The article further reports that the "Twenty-first Annual American Water Resources Association Conference and Symposium" was held during August 11-16 in Tucson, Arizona. The conference theme was "Water Demand: Sharing a Limited Resource" and the symposium theme "Groundwater Contamination and Reclamation."

The title of this paper suggests at least two possible points of departure. First, one can argue that spatial patterns are themselves an important feature in the study of social life which deserves our attention: that there is a significant geographical dimension to social interaction. Secondly, the title also implies that various social groups interact differentially with one another: that interaction is itself a proper focus for social investigation. Both points will be developed in the present paper with respect to ethnic minorities in Britain and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Public health policies are designed for specific subsets of the population. Evidence that a policy is effectively designed should be based on whether it effectively addresses its mission. A critical factor is determining whether utilization patterns reflect the mission and the efficacy of public health policies, particularly during early stages of implementation. We assert that utilization patterns can be effectively assessed using geographic information systems (GIS).Objective: This paper uses the Silver Alert program, a recently implemented public health policy, as a case for how and why GIS can be used to examine utilization patterns.Design: GIS are employed to visualize and spatially analyze a new health policy--North Carolina's Silver Alert policy. We use visualized data and spatial statistics to assess utilization patterns and mission adherence.Results: Results show disproportionate utilization patterns of the Silver Alert policy. In particular, an outstanding number of Silver Alerts were used in Wake County and its surrounding counties, which are both the political and media center of North Carolina. Other counties, including populous counties, had few if any alerts.Conclusion: Findings suggest that the North Carolina's Silver Alert policy needs to be adjusted to more effectively address its mission. We identify several factors that need further examination prior to a statewide evaluation. From this case study, we propose ways future programs, particularly the introduction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014, might use GIS to examine utilization patterns as a means to better understand whether and in what ways the health care needs of the public are being met with such a policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diabetes is a major public health problem in the United States. Over 29 million residents are currently diagnosed with the disease. Further, with such a large percentage of the U.S. population being diabetic, an interesting spatial pattern for the disease has emerged. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the geodemographic correlates of Type 2 diabetes in the United States. Specifically, using a nationwide database of age-adjusted, county level estimates for diabetes prevalence, we provide an exploratory spatial analysis of lifestyle groups and their connection with diabetes. Results suggest that geodemographic information can be effective in pinpointing risky lifestyle environments and may provide basic guidance for identifying at-risk populations in order to target intervention efforts more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the golden age of philanthropy. Over the 55-year period 1998–2052, bequests to charity in the USA alone are estimated to be between $109 and $454 billion per year. This paper exhorts geographers to give critical attention to less-than-charitable consequences of the so-called ‘new philanthropy’ among the super-rich. It sets out a number of areas that appear to warrant critical geographical inquiry, including: bonds between philanthropic engagement and place; diaspora philanthropy; jurisdictional taxation arrangements favouring the wealthy and super-rich; characteristics of culturally variegated philanthropy; and philanthropy’s geographical links with spaces of exploitation and territories of guilt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, immigration has emerged as a highly contentious local issue in the United States, particularly in non-traditional settlement areas like new metropolitan gateways and suburban communities. This paper uses survey data from the Pew Research Center to analyse how geographic context within and across metropolitan gateways influences both perceptions of the local impacts of immigration, as well as respondents' attitudes toward immigration as a national issue. While immigrant concentration is positively associated with perceptions of immigration as a local problem, a relative absence of immigrants in a respondent's community predicts negative attitudes towards immigrants at the national level. Further, areas that respond unfavourably to immigration at the local level do not always coincide with the areas that are most opposed to immigration to the United States more generally. As such, this analysis identifies tangible differences between immigration as a local and national issue, suggesting a distinct unevenness in the multi-scalar politics of US immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article draws from several distinct scholarly literatures to outline a new framework emphasizing the spatial dimensions of mass incarceration in postwar American society. First, the analysis re-contextualizes the nation's vast prison expansion in light of disinvestment and destabilization in black urban neighborhoods during the immediate postwar decades. Second, the paper recasts the geographic shift toward prison development in economically depressed, rural areas as an opportunistic, but ultimately ineffective, attempt to counter rural poverty. The result is a prison apparatus that not only criminalizes urban poverty and upholds racial hierarchies but also links the perceived economic stability and political power of lower-class, rural whites to the continued penal confinement of poor, urban blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper discusses the probability density distribution of the power output from arrays of turbines distributed over different geographical areas. Based on a model of a square array of turbines, estimates are obtained for the reduction in the standard deviation of the power output from the turbine arrays as a function of the area of the square. This simple model is used to derive an estimate for the reduction in the power standard deviation for different lands masses – the UK, Europe and the USA. It is then shown that the probability distribution of the array power output can reasonably be represented by the Weibull distribution which is then used to estimate the percentage of time that the array power output drops below some fraction of the mean power. It is shown that for the UK, the power output can be expected to drop below 10% of the mean power for about 6% of the time whereas for a European scale grid, this percentage falls to around 0.3% of the time. It is even lower for a land mass like the USA. The implications of these findings for the design of a wind power back-up system are then discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Urban studies literature suggests that anti-blight resources are frequently deployed in arbitrary fashions for short-term political objectives, rather than in concentrated, empirically-driven ways intended to manage complex urban problems. This creates an ambiguous and subjective conceptualization of blight in practice, which often leads to mismatches between actual urban conditions and codified public policy targets. Therefore, this research points to the practical need for an operational definition of blight. It is reasonable to assume that focusing anti-blight efforts in spaces identified using empirical data will increase the efficiency of a city's policy efforts. To that end this paper quantifies blight with an approach that is replicable by virtually any city in the United States. We then examine blight patterns for a selected city using spatial clustering methods that highlight areas where policy intervention might be warranted. The findings demonstrate how spatial analysis combined with contextual urban geographic information can assist local policymakers in identifying and understanding the geographies of blight in their municipalities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes local and regional geographic variability in the use of antidepressant, antipsychotic and stimulant medications in the United States. Using a data set that covers 60% of prescriptions written in the United States, we find that use of antidepressants in three digit postal codes ranged from less than 1% of residents to more than 40% residents. Stimulant and antipsychotic use exhibited similar levels of local geographic variability. A Kulldorf Spatial Scan identified clusters of elevated use of antidepressants (RR 1.46; p<0.001), antipsychotics (RR 1.42; p<0.001), and stimulants (RR 1.77; p<0.001). Using a multilevel model, we find that access to health care, insurance coverage and pharmaceutical marketing efforts explain much of the geographic variation in use. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The geography Mexican migration to the U.S. has experienced deep transformations in both its origin composition and the destinations chosen by migrants. To date, however, we know little about how shifting migrant origins and destinations may be linked to each another geographically and, ultimately, structurally as relatively similar brands of economic restructuring have been posited to drive the shifts in origins and destinations. In this paper, we describe how old and new migrant networks have combined to fuel the well-documented geographic expansion of Mexican migration. We use data from the 2006 Mexican National Survey of Population Dynamics, a nationally representative survey that for the first time collected information on U.S. state of destination for all household members who had been to the U.S. during the 5 years prior to the survey. We find that the growth in immigration to southern and eastern states is disproportionately fueled by undocumented migration from non-traditional origin regions located in Central and Southeastern Mexico and from rural areas in particular. We argue that economic restructuring in the U.S. and Mexico had profound consequences not only for the magnitude but also for the geography of Mexican migration, opening up new region-to-region flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]