Changes in mixed ethnicity households and neighbourhood transitions in England and Wales.

Conventional explanations of neighbourhood ethnic transitions consider what drives differential growth in ethnic group populations without regard to household composition. We enrich these nonhousehold approaches by using consistent Census data on neighbourhoods and households for England and Wales for 2001, 2011 and 2021 to analyse connections between mixed-ethnicity households and neighbourhood ethnic diversity. We employ a neighbourhood typology of ethnic diversity that identifies neighbourhoods as either low- or moderate-diversity, or high-diversity, where no single ethnic group is in the majority. We focus particularly on White-majority and highly diverse neighbourhoods given the dominance of the former in residential spaces in England and Wales, and because they are the principal source of transitions to highly diverse neighbourhoods. Mixed-ethnicity households have become an increasingly important feature of the ethnic diversification of England and Wales; by 2021, almost 15% of multiperson households were mixed, a growth from 12% in 2011 and 9% in 2001. We find that higher levels of neighbourhood ethnic diversity are associated with higher shares of mixed-ethnicity households. In high-diversity neighbourhoods, for example, around 30% of multiperson households (nearly a quarter of a million households) were ethnically mixed in 2021. Levels of household mixing in moderate-diversity White neighbourhoods were considerably higher than in low-diversity White neighbourhoods. The same is found for diversifying neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods that become more ethnically diverse were typically home to higher rates of mixed-ethnicity households. Stably moderately diverse White neighbourhoods also had a higher proportion of mixed households. Studies of neighbourhood transition that focus on individuals in neighbourhoods may be missing important processes operating in the intimate spaces of the home. Including this intermediate scale of analysis adds to our understanding of neighbourhood ethnic mixing and processes of integration.

Reconsidering classic ideas in speech communication.

The papers in this special issue provide a critical look at some historical ideas that have had an influence on research and teaching in the field of speech communication. They also address widely used methodologies or address long-standing methodological challenges in the areas of speech perception and speech production. The goal is to reconsider and evaluate the need for caution or replacement of historical ideas with more modern results and methods. The contributions provide respectful historical context to the classic ideas, as well as new original research or discussion that clarifies the limitations of the original ideas.

Armed robbery and the meanings of money.

In this study, we investigate the meanings active armed robbers give to money before, during, and after their crimes and how these meanings shape their offending. We do so by examining interviews undertaken from 1994 to 1995 with robbers in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Prior to their robberies, the interviewees' desperation leads them to define money as essential to survival. Immediately following robberies and in looking back on them, they come to view this essential money in other ways as well-as too time-consuming to get, as "easy," or as guilt-free. These meanings facilitate the contradictory way robbers see money as "fast" after offences. We discuss how these shifting meanings of money shape and are shaped by robbers' structural positions, cultural outlooks, and social relations. In doing so, we also help to explain how the shifting meanings of money play into criminogenic cycles of predatory offending.

Reconsidering commonly used stimuli in speech perception experiments.

This paper examines some commonly used stimuli in speech perception experiments and raises questions about their use, or about the interpretations of previous results. The takeaway messages are: 1) the Hillenbrand vowels represent a particular dialect rather than a gold standard, and English vowels contain spectral dynamics that have been largely underappreciated, 2) the /ɑ/ context is very common but not clearly superior as a context for testing consonant perception, 3) /ɑ/ is particularly problematic when testing voice-onset-time perception because it introduces strong confounds in the formant transitions, 4) /dɑ/ is grossly overrepresented in neurophysiological studies and yet is insufficient as a generalized proxy for "speech perception," and 5) digit tests and matrix sentences including the coordinate response measure are systematically insensitive to important patterns in speech perception. Each of these stimulus sets and concepts is described with careful attention to their unique value and also cases where they might be misunderstood or over-interpreted.

The evolution and stability of multi-ethnic residential neighbourhoods in England.

This paper analyses the most ethnically diverse spaces in England. We define multi-ethnic neighbourhoods as spaces where no one group is in a majority and at least five ethnic groups have representation. Around 4% of all English neighbourhoods (Lower Layer Super Output Areas) met these criteria in 2011. Often mislabelled as "segregated" spaces, the growth of ethnically diverse neighbourhoods helps benchmark increased inter-ethnic contact, yet we know very little about their spatial extent and the dynamics of their expansion. We use Census data for 1991, 2001, and 2011 to consider how neighbourhood-level diversity has changed during a period of substantial increase in ethnic diversity at the national scale. To what extent did these highly diverse areas grow, and what is the geography of that growth? Which types of areas did these neighbourhoods transition from? For example, were multi-ethnic neighbourhoods formerly low or moderately diverse, and which groups dominated these locales? We also consider if multi-ethnic neighbourhoods are here to stay, or if they are compositionally unstable. We reveal a surprising aspect in England's neighbourhood transitions: multi-ethnic neighbourhoods are highly stable, and increasingly so. Some 88% of neighbourhoods that were multi-ethnic in 1991 retained their high-diversity status in 2001, while over 95% of 2001 multi-ethnic neighbourhoods remained highly diverse by 2011. This is a different story to that of the USA, where high-diversity neighbourhoods have received more scholarly attention, and where these neighbourhoods have high attrition rates, functioning as stepping stones to another type of space. We explore the demographic and housing dynamics associated with this stability.

Mixed measures: different definitions of racially diverse neighborhoods compared.

Focusing on neighborhoods that researchers consider particularly diverse, this paper assesses the ways scholars have characterized neighborhood racial diversity in the United States. Social scientists use a variety of methods to define and measure highly racially diverse places, resulting in a single label being used to capture very different aspects of a census tract's racial demography. We examine the criteria used to classify neighborhood racial diversity to bring perspective on the logic behind various approaches. We then group the range of schemas into several broad types from which we choose a representative four. These form the basis for a series of empirical comparisons using U.S. Census data to reveal the contexts where the taxonomies produce similar outcomes and those where they do not. The analysis goes on to consider the implications stemming from the choices social scientists make when they opt for one approach over another.

Introduction to the special issue on the phonetics of under-documented languages.

As scientists, it is important to sample as broadly as possible; however, there is a bias in the research performed on the speech acoustics of the world's languages toward work on languages of convenience (e.g., English). This special issue seeks to initiate increased publication of acoustic research on the sounds of the world's languages. The special issue contains a sample of 25 under-documented languages. While large relative to previous work (particularly in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America), the 23 articles in this issue just scratch the surface. To have a better understanding of the fundamentals of speech communication, it is imperative, as a research community, to make a concerted effort to learn more about how speech sounds are perceived and produced in a wide variety of languages.

Recovering Better from COVID-19 Will Need a Rethink of Multilateralism.

The world economy is experiencing a deep recession amid a still unchecked pandemic. But the commitment to recovering better will not materialize if, as happened after the global financial crisis, the advanced economies resort to a policy mix of austerity, liberalization and quantitative easing. Such an approach will only worsen a whole set of pre-existing conditions and in particular, high inequality, excessive debt (both public and private and weak investment-that will lead to a lost decade, particularly for developing countries. What is needed instead is an expansionary plan for global recovery, that can credibly return even the most vulnerable countries to a stronger position than before the crisis. This paper sets out some of the key elements of such a plan and argues that its implementation will require systematic reforms to the multilateral trade and financial system if a more resilient recovery is to turn into a sustainable and inclusive future.

James Petiver's 1717 Papilionum Britanniae: an analysis of the first comprehensive account of British butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea).

Although the contributions of James Petiver to the early development of systematic natural history are widely acknowledged, he is often criticized for scientific, curatorial and even social shortcomings. This rather dubious reputation is at odds with his standing among entomologists as 'the father of British butterflies'. Shortly before his death in 1718, Petiver published a densely packed eight-page pamphlet entitled Papilionum Britanniae. Analysis of this work, which at first sight makes an apparently exaggerated claim of accounting for 'above eighty English butterflies', reveals that Petiver was an original, perceptive and truly systematic entomologist, in several important respects ahead of his time.

Effect of Two Complementary Mass-Scale Media Interventions on Handwashing with Soap among Mothers.

Poor handwashing behavior is a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally. We evaluated two complementary mass-scale media interventions targeting mothers to increase the frequency of handwashing with soap; one using TV advertising, and the other mobile phone messaging. Television Commercials (TVCs): Mothers of 4-12 year-old children (n = 756) were randomly allocated among four arms: Three different branded TVCs and a fourth, control TVC unrelated to handwashing. TVCs were embedded in blocks of unrelated commercials and shown once a week over four weeks in participants' own homes. Mobile messages: New mothers (n = 598) and mothers of 4-7 year-old children (n = 501) were enrolled in a treatment or control arm. Mothers in the treatment arm received branded mobile phone messages twice weekly for 8 weeks (new mothers) or 4 weeks (mothers of 4-7 year-olds). For TVCs, there were higher rates of handwashing with soap at key occasions in the first (RR: 1.33, p = .002) and second (RR: 1.26, p = .041) of three treatment arms, or 0.4 additional handwashes with soap on key occasions daily. In the mobile study, new mothers (adj-RR: 1.04, p = .035) and general mothers (RR: 1.07, p = .007) receiving the intervention were more likely to wash their hands with soap on key occasions than those in the control group, corresponding to 1.3 and 1.0 more occasions daily. These interventions were associated with significantly greater handwashing with soap, consistent with the hypothesis that branded mass communications can impact habitual lifestyle behaviors relevant to public health.

Where science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates move: Human capital, employment patterns, and interstate migration in the United States.

This research investigates the interstate migration of workers in the United States who have earned an undergraduate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) degree compared with those who have not. We build on previous studies that (a) classified "skilled" workers as having earned an undergraduate degree (b) used net migration gain or loss as a yardstick of relative destination attraction, and (c) advanced the idea that physical amenities play an outsized role in labour market preferences for skilled workers. We calibrate the attractivity of states for three levels of human capital and then evaluate these assessments of relative attractivity to show that workers with different types of human capital respond to different labour market signals in contradictory ways. Amenity, measured by heating degree days, has little to do with the state-to-state migration of workers who have a STEM degree, yet helps explain the migration patterns of workers with no undergraduate degree. Employment growth in a state influences migration for degreed workers in the recessionary years but not in the period of recovery. The opposite holds for workers without a degree. States with high percentages of any type of degreed workers attract both STEM and non-STEM degreed migrants but not those without a degree. States with a large share of STEM degreed workers in their degreed workforce are especially attractive for STEM degreed migrants. The conclusions discuss what the findings imply about diverging access to labour market opportunity by human capital and state higher education policy.

Comparison of purification strategies for antibodies used in a broad spectrum host cell protein immunoassay.

Host cell proteins (HCPs) are a heterogeneous mixture of impurities that should be minimized in bulk preparations of biotechnologically produced medicines. Immunoassays are commonly used to detect and measure HCPs in therapeutic products, and a successful assay is directly dependent on the quality of the polyclonal antibodies (pAbs) used. These pAbs are enriched from antisera of animals immunized with a broad mixture of HCPs, but there is limited information regarding the best strategy for purification of these critical reagents. The use of protein A or protein G affinity chromatography results in purified pAbs that are not entirely HCP-specific, while the use of HCP affinity chromatography results in a more specific pAb population but may be harder to recover fully. In theory, both approaches have advantages and disadvantages for generating optimal reagents. In this study, we compared reagents from these two purification procedures using the same starting material, as well as those from a step-wise combination of the two by evaluating purity, concentration, reagent coverage by Western blotting, and performance in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). This study demonstrates that pAbs purified by each of the methods are very similar in terms of sensitivity, the ability to recognize a broad range of HCPs, and overall performance in an ELISA measuring a range of HCPs in upstream process and final drug substance (DS) samples.

Remaking White Residential Segregation: Metropolitan Diversity and Neighborhood Change in the United States.

Between 1990 and 2010, the white population share in US metropolitan areas fell from 73.5 percent to 60.3 percent. This paper explores how this decline affected the number and composition of white census tracts (tracts in which non-Latino whites constitute the largest group). In 1990, white tracts comprised 82 percent of all metropolitan tracts. By 2010, this percentage had fallen to 70 percent, paralleling the percentage point drop in white population share. This loss was concentrated among the most segregated white tracts - those with low diversity. White tracts that were moderately diverse actually doubled in number between 1990 and 2010 although this increase was insufficient to cancel the loss of low diversity white tracts. We model the effects of metropolitan characteristics on white-tract change by metropolitan area. Greater metropolitan-scale diversity increases the probability that low-diversity white tracts transition to moderate-diversity white. Moderately diverse white tracts, however, become more stable with increased diversity. A large metropolitan percentage of blacks or the foreign born, however, reverses this stabilizing effect, increasing the probability that moderately diverse white tracts transition to non-white tracts (i.e. where a non-white group is the largest group). Thus the level and composition of metropolitan diversity matters for the trajectory of moderately diverse white tracts. Overall, the formation of new white tracts, possibly the result of gentrification, coupled with the emergence of moderately diverse white tracts and an increasing share of whites living in such residential environments, suggests a reconfiguration rather than a dissolving of white dominated neighborhood space in response to increased diversity in surrounding metropolitan contexts.

A PROSPECTIVE ON ZELINSKY'S HYPOTHESIS OF THE MOBILITY TRANSITION.

Wilbur Zelinsky's 1971 paper in Geographical Review entitled the "Hypothesis of the Mobility Transition" was both forward-looking and offered innovative ideas regarding human geographic mobility. One of the most interesting aspects of the paper was a set of predictions for mobility in a "future superadvanced society". Many of these predictions have now come to pass, including a general decline in international and internal migration and residential change, the increasing regulation of migration - especially internally, and the possibility that the widespread adoption of information and communication technologies has impacted human geographic mobility. Hence, this essay looks at the mobility transition not as an obsolete frame of reference but as a prescient, pliable, and adaptable framework which not only informs the study of human geographic mobility today but also, perhaps, even into the future.

The Matching of STEM Degree Holders with STEM Occupations in Large Metropolitan Labor Markets in the United States.

Workers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are vital for regional and national prosperity. Not every person with STEM qualifications, however, finds employment in a STEM job. This article analyzes the geography of this matching between STEM degree holders and certain types of STEM occupations across large metropolitan labor markets in the United States. We find that although labor-market size has no effect, living in denser STEM labor markets elevates the probabilities of matching; having an advanced degree enhances this effect. Women are also far less likely to be matched than men; being black or Latino additionally lowers the chances of matching. Combining spatial effects with individual attributes increases probabilities of matching in places with high concentrations of STEM jobs for women, racial minorities, and the foreign born, but these advantages are often the same for white, native-born men. In denser STEM labor markets the job-matching advantage spans the labor pool, conferring no differential benefit for different population subgroups.

Xanthine oxidoreductase mediates membrane docking of milk-fat droplets but is not essential for apocrine lipid secretion.

KEY POINTS: Xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR) modulates milk lipid secretion and lactation initiation. XOR is required for butyrophilin1a1 clustering in the membrane during milk lipid secretion. XOR mediates apical membrane reorganization during milk lipid secretion. Loss of XOR delays milk fat globule secretion. XOR loss alters the proteome of milk fat globules. ABSTRACT: Apocrine secretion is utilized by epithelial cells of exocrine glands. These cells bud off membrane-bound particles into the lumen of the gland, losing a portion of the cytoplasm in the secretion product. The lactating mammary gland secretes milk lipid by this mechanism, and xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR) has long been thought to be functionally important. We generated mammary-specific XOR knockout (MGKO) mice, expecting lactation to fail. Histology of the knockout glands showed very large lipid droplets enclosed in the mammary alveolar cells, but milk analysis showed that these large globules were secreted. Butyrophilin, a membrane protein known to bind to XOR, was clustered at the point of contact of the cytoplasmic lipid droplet with the apical plasma membrane, in the wild-type gland but not in the knockout, suggesting that XOR mediates 'docking' to this membrane. Secreted milk fat globules were isolated from mouse milk of wild-type and XOR MGKO dams, and subjected to LC-MS/MS for analysis of protein component. Proteomic results showed that loss of XOR leads to an increase in cytoplasmic, cytoskeletal, Golgi apparatus and lipid metabolism proteins associated with the secreted milk fat globule. Association of XOR with the lipid droplet results in membrane docking and more efficient retention of cytoplasmic components by the secretory cell. Loss of XOR then results in a reversion to a more rudimentary, less efficient, apocrine secretion mechanism, but does not prevent milk fat globule secretion.

Vowel and consonant confusions from spectrally manipulated stimuli designed to simulate poor cochlear implant electrode-neuron interfaces.

Suboptimal interfaces between cochlear implant (CI) electrodes and auditory neurons result in a loss or distortion of spectral information in specific frequency regions, which likely decreases CI users' speech identification performance. This study exploited speech acoustics to model regions of distorted CI frequency transmission to determine the perceptual consequences of suboptimal electrode-neuron interfaces. Normal hearing adults identified naturally spoken vowels and consonants after spectral information was manipulated through a noiseband vocoder: either (1) low-, middle-, or high-frequency regions of information were removed by zeroing the corresponding channel outputs, or (2) the same regions were distorted by splitting filter outputs to neighboring filters. These conditions simulated the detrimental effects of suboptimal CI electrode-neuron interfaces on spectral transmission. Vowel and consonant confusion patterns were analyzed with sequential information transmission, perceptual distance, and perceptual vowel space analyses. Results indicated that both types of spectral manipulation were equally destructive. Loss or distortion of frequency information produced similar effects on phoneme identification performance and confusion patterns. Consonant error patterns were consistently based on place of articulation. Vowel confusions showed that perceptions gravitated away from the degraded frequency region in a predictable manner, indicating that vowels can probe frequency-specific regions of spectral degradations.

The neural encoding of formant frequencies contributing to vowel identification in normal-hearing listeners.

Even though speech signals trigger coding in the cochlea to convey speech information to the central auditory structures, little is known about the neural mechanisms involved in such processes. The purpose of this study was to understand the encoding of formant cues and how it relates to vowel recognition in listeners. Neural representations of formants may differ across listeners; however, it was hypothesized that neural patterns could still predict vowel recognition. To test the hypothesis, the frequency-following response (FFR) and vowel recognition were obtained from 38 normal-hearing listeners using four different vowels, allowing direct comparisons between behavioral and neural data in the same individuals. FFR was employed because it provides an objective and physiological measure of neural activity that can reflect formant encoding. A mathematical model was used to describe vowel confusion patterns based on the neural responses to vowel formant cues. The major findings were (1) there were large variations in the accuracy of vowel formant encoding across listeners as indexed by the FFR, (2) these variations were systematically related to vowel recognition performance, and (3) the mathematical model of vowel identification was successful in predicting good vs poor vowel identification performers based exclusively on physiological data.

Talker Versus Dialect Effects on Speech Intelligibility: A Symmetrical Study.

This study investigates the relative effects of talker-specific variation and dialect-based variation on speech intelligibility. Listeners from two dialects of American English performed speech-in-noise tasks with sentences spoken by talkers of each dialect. An initial statistical model showed no significant effects for either talker or listener dialect group, and no interaction. However, a mixed-effects regression model including several acoustic measures of the talker's speech revealed a subtle effect of talker dialect once the various acoustic dimensions were accounted for. Results are discussed in relation to other recent studies of cross-dialect intelligibility.

An investigation of the effects of a hand washing intervention on health outcomes and school absence using a randomised trial in Indian urban communities.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate how an intervention, which combined hand washing promotion aimed at 5-year-olds with provision of free soap, affected illnesses among the children and their families and children's school absenteeism. METHODS: We monitored illnesses, including diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections (ARIs), school absences and soap consumption for 41 weeks in 70 low-income communities in Mumbai, India (35 communities per arm). RESULTS: Outcomes from 847 intervention households (containing 847 5-year-olds and 4863 subjects in total) and 833 control households (containing 833 5-year-olds and 4812 subjects) were modelled using negative binomial regression. Intervention group 5-year-olds had fewer episodes of diarrhoea (-25%, 95% confidence intervals [CI] = -37%, -2%), ARIs (-15%, 95% CI = -30%, -8%), school absences due to illnesses (-27%, 95% CI = -41%, -18%) and eye infections (-46%, 95% CI = -58%, -31%). Further, there were fewer episodes of diarrhoea and ARIs in the intervention group for 'whole families' (-31%, 95% CI = -37%, -5%; and -14%, 95% CI = -23%, -6%, respectively), 6- to 15-year-olds (-30%, 95% CI = -39%, -7%; and -15%, 95% CI = -24%, -6%) and under 5 s (-32%, 95% CI = -41%, -4%; and -20%, 95% CI = -29%, -8%). CONCLUSIONS: Direct-contact hand washing interventions aimed at younger school-aged children can affect the health of the whole family. These may be scalable through public-private partnerships and classroom-based campaigns. Further work is required to understand the conditions under which health benefits are transferred and the mechanisms for transference.