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With the substantial growth and spread of non-white immigrants in the United States in the past 40 years, scholars of segregation have struggled to adapt dichotomous metrics and indices designed to model two-group segregation between more than two racial or ethnic groups. Entropy based metrics have grown more popular because they are a relatively simple and mathematically acccurate means of portraying multi-group segregation levels across a city. This paper expands on the family of entropy based indexes and introduces a local entropy score (LES) that distinguishes between the related but conceptually distinct phenomena of diversity and integration. After showing that LES can be used to recreate the entropy index, the paper turns to a case study of Philadelphia, which shows how LES produces a substantially different portrait of supposedly integrated Philadelphia neighobrhoods compared to traditional merics, and, subsequently, how LES shows that the growth of pan-ethnic and pan-racial immigrant neighborhoods in the city largely excludes the local black population. The paper concludes with a consideration of how incorporating separate measures of segregation and diversity into studies of residential racial patterns enhances sociological understanding of racial segregation levels and patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability has become an urgent requirement and challenge for society as well as for decision makers in policy and economy, considering the limited resources and growing consumption. Sustainability is interpreted in ecological, economic and social dimensions. Ecologically, non-renewable resources must not be disposed anymore but regained in product and material cycles. Managing material cycles requires the coordination of companies along the end-of-life processing chain. However, a central coordinating institution may not appear. Developing and supporting bottom-up structures, which integrate recycling companies on a voluntary basis seems promising. This paper describes an approach of how to organize bottom-up recycling networks. Considering different goals in recycling, like material value or focus on special materials, technological strategies for WEEE-waste are evaluated and matched with actual material prices. Companies are able to compare their course of action with theoretical options in order to improve competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Cosmic Microwave Background is measured by satellite observation with great precision. It offers insight into its origin in early states of the universe. Unexpected low multipole amplitudes of the incoming CMB radiation may be due to a multiply connected topology of cosmic 3-space. We present and analyze the geometry and homotopy for the family of Platonic spherical 3-manifolds, provide their harmonic analysis, and formulate topological selection rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]