During the late 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) developed a series of area descriptions with color-coded maps of cities that summarized mortgage lending risk. We analyze the maps to explain the oft-noted fact that black neighborhoods overwhelmingly received the lowest rating. Our results suggest that racial bias in the construction of the HOLC maps can explain at most 4 to 20 percent of the observed concentration of black households in the lowest-rated zones. We also provide evidence that the Federal Housing Administration had its own mapping strategies when evaluating mortgages and relied relatively little on the HOLC maps.

How does racial diversity impact institutional outcomes and (in)equality? Discussions about diversity usually focus on how individuals’ identities shape their behavior, but diversity is a group-level characteristic. Scholars must, therefore, consider the relationship between group composition and the individual decisions that shape institutional outcomes. Using felony data from a large U.S. court system, I explore the relationship between racial diversity among the judges comprising a court and individual judges’ decisions. I find that as the percent of Black judges in a courthouse increases white judges are less likely to render incarceration sentences in cases with Black defendants. Increases in racial diversity decrease the Black–white gap in the probability of incarceration by up to 7 percentage points. However, I find no relationship between judge’s racial identities and disparities in their decisions. This study highlights the importance of conceptualizing diversity as a group characteristic and the relationship between institutional context and outcomes.

That black and white Americans disagree about the carceral state is well established; why this is the case is much less clear. Drawing on group hierarchy theory and the state's role in perpetuating group subordination/domination, we theorize that differences in socialization and contact during emergent adulthood produce divergent priors for racial groups and gender subgroups within race. These different starting points shape how people integrate new information from recent contact into their belief systems. Using a survey of over 11,000 respondents, we find that, instead of all groups integrating information the same way, recent direct contact contributes most to negative attitudes among groups whose contact with government agents is least negatively valenced. While interactions with the American carceral state divide opinions considerably among white Americans and women, adulthood contact for black Americans, especially black men, appears to be but ‘a drop in the ocean’ of political life.

Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in patients with chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) and has been implicated as an aetiologic factor of osteoporosis and various skeletal and extra-skeletal issues in SCI patients. Few data were available regarding vitamin D status in patients with acute SCI or immediately assessed at hospital admission. This retrospective cross-sectional study evaluated vitamin D status in SCI patients at admission to a UK SCI centre in January–December 2017. A total of 196 eligible patients with serum 25(OH)D concentration records at admission were recruited. The results found that 24 % were vitamin D deficient (serum 25(OH)D < 25 nmol/l), 57 % of the patients had serum 25(OH)D < 50 nmol/l. The male patients, patients admitted in the winter–spring time (December–May), and patients with serum sodium < 135 mmol/l or with non-traumatic causes had a significant higher prevalence of vitamin D deficiency than their counterparts (28 % males v. 11⋅8 % females, P = 0⋅02; 30⋅2 % in winter–spring v. 12⋅9 % in summer–autumn, P = 0⋅007; 32⋅1 % non-traumatic v. 17⋅6 % traumatic SCI, P = 0⋅03; 38⋅9 % low serum sodium v. 18⋅8 % normal serum sodium, P = 0⋅010). There was a significant inverse association of serum 25(OH)D concentration with body mass index (BMI) (r = −0⋅311, P = 0⋅002), serum total cholesterol (r = −0⋅168, P = 0⋅04) and creatinine concentrations (r = −0⋅162, P = 0⋅02) that were also significant predictors of serum 25(OH)D concentration. Strategies for systematic screening and efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in SCI patients need to be implemented and further investigated to prevent the vitamin D deficiency-related chronic complications.

We present WALLABY pilot data release 1, the first public release of H i pilot survey data from the Wide-field ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind Survey (WALLABY) on the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. Phase 1 of the WALLABY pilot survey targeted three $60\,\mathrm{deg}^{2}$ regions on the sky in the direction of the Hydra and Norma galaxy clusters and the NGC 4636 galaxy group, covering the redshift range of $z \lesssim 0.08$ . The source catalogue, images and spectra of nearly 600 extragalactic H i detections and kinematic models for 109 spatially resolved galaxies are available. As the pilot survey targeted regions containing nearby group and cluster environments, the median redshift of the sample of $z \approx 0.014$ is relatively low compared to the full WALLABY survey. The median galaxy H i mass is $2.3 \times 10^{9}\,{\rm M}_{{\odot}}$ . The target noise level of $1.6\,\mathrm{mJy}$ per 30′′ beam and $18.5\,\mathrm{kHz}$ channel translates into a $5 \sigma$ H i mass sensitivity for point sources of about $5.2 \times 10^{8} \, (D_{\rm L} / \mathrm{100\,Mpc})^{2} \, {\rm M}_{{\odot}}$ across 50 spectral channels ( ${\approx} 200\,\mathrm{km \, s}^{-1}$ ) and a $5 \sigma$ H i column density sensitivity of about $8.6 \times 10^{19} \, (1 + z)^{4}\,\mathrm{cm}^{-2}$ across 5 channels ( ${\approx} 20\,\mathrm{km \, s}^{-1}$ ) for emission filling the 30′′ beam. As expected for a pilot survey, several technical issues and artefacts are still affecting the data quality. Most notably, there are systematic flux errors of up to several 10% caused by uncertainties about the exact size and shape of each of the primary beams as well as the presence of sidelobes due to the finite deconvolution threshold. In addition, artefacts such as residual continuum emission and bandpass ripples have affected some of the data. The pilot survey has been highly successful in uncovering such technical problems, most of which are expected to be addressed and rectified before the start of the full WALLABY survey.

Meltwater drainage beneath ice sheets is a fundamental consideration for understanding ice–bed conditions and bed-modulated ice flow, with potential impacts on terminus behavior and ice-shelf mass balance. While contemporary observations reveal the presence of basal water movement in the subglacial environment and inferred styles of drainage, the geological record of former ice sheets, including sediments and landforms on land and the seafloor, aids in understanding the spatiotemporal evolution of efficient and inefficient drainage systems and their impact on ice-sheet behavior. We highlight the past decade of advances in geological studies that focus on providing process-based information on subglacial hydrology of ice sheets, how these studies inform theory, numerical models and contemporary observations, and address the needs for future research.

Summer 2020 saw widespread protests under the banner Black Lives Matter. Coupled with the global pandemic that kept America’s children in the predominant care of their parents, we argue that the latter half of 2020 offers a unique moment to consider whites’ race-focused parenting practices. We use Google Trends data and posts on public parenting Facebook pages to show that the remarkable levels of protest activity in summer 2020 served as a focusing event that not only directed Americans’ attention to racial concepts but connected those concepts to parenting. Using a national survey of non-Hispanic white parents with white school-age children, we show that most white parents spoke with their children about race during this period and nearly three-quarters took actions to increase racial diversity in their children’s environment or introduce them to racial politics. But the data also show parenting practices to be rife with uncertainty and deep partisan, gender, and socioeconomic divisions. Drawing upon our findings, we call for a renewed focus on political socialization that considers how parenting choices are shaped by political events—including Black Lives Matter—and the possible long-term consequences of racial parenting practices on politics.

Over the last 25 years, radiowave detection of neutrino-generated signals, using cold polar ice as the neutrino target, has emerged as perhaps the most promising technique for detection of extragalactic ultra-high energy neutrinos (corresponding to neutrino energies in excess of 0.01 Joules, or 1017 electron volts). During the summer of 2021 and in tandem with the initial deployment of the Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G), we conducted radioglaciological measurements at Summit Station, Greenland to refine our understanding of the ice target. We report the result of one such measurement, the radio-frequency electric field attenuation length $L_\alpha$. We find an approximately linear dependence of $L_\alpha$ on frequency with the best fit of the average field attenuation for the upper 1500 m of ice: $\langle L_\alpha \rangle = ( ( 1154 \pm 121) - ( 0.81 \pm 0.14) \, ( \nu /{\rm MHz}) ) \,{\rm m}$ for frequencies ν ∈ [145 − 350] MHz.

This paper investigates potential biodiversity valuation tools which actuaries could use in their work. It is an initial research paper into a selection of UK-based biodiversity valuation tools identified by the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs in its publication “Enabling a Natural Capital Approach Guidance”. The “Enabling a Natural Capital Approach Guidance” publication is seen as a comprehensive practical guide to natural capital and therefore is determined a sensible starting point on which to base this research. This research paper is not intended to be an exhaustive exploration of all biodiversity tools available, but rather is intended to identify a selection of tools which may be candidates for further research into their actuarial use case. We conclude that there are tools which merit additional research, and we recommend that these tools be further investigated to understand (i) the specific actuarial use case(s), (ii) whether the tools are applicable to direct infrastructure investments only or a broad range of asset classes, and (iii) whether their scope can be extended beyond the UK.

We describe the scientific goals and survey design of the First Large Absorption Survey in H i (FLASH), a wide field survey for 21-cm line absorption in neutral atomic hydrogen (H i) at intermediate cosmological redshifts. FLASH will be carried out with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope and is planned to cover the sky south of $\delta \approx +40\,\deg$ at frequencies between 711.5 and 999.5 MHz. At redshifts between $z = 0.4$ and $1.0$ (look-back times of 4 – 8 Gyr), the H i content of the Universe has been poorly explored due to the difficulty of carrying out radio surveys for faint 21-cm line emission and, at ultra-violet wavelengths, space-borne searches for Damped Lyman- $\alpha$ absorption in quasar spectra. The ASKAP wide field of view and large spectral bandwidth, in combination with a radio-quiet site, will enable a search for absorption lines in the radio spectra of bright continuum sources over 80% of the sky. This survey is expected to detect at least several hundred intervening 21-cm absorbers and will produce an H i-absorption-selected catalogue of galaxies rich in cool, star-forming gas, some of which may be concealed from optical surveys. Likewise, at least several hundred associated 21-cm absorbers are expected to be detected within the host galaxies of radio sources at $0.4 < z < 1.0$ , providing valuable kinematical information for models of gas accretion and jet-driven feedback in radio-loud active galactic nuclei. FLASH will also detect OH 18-cm absorbers in diffuse molecular gas, megamaser OH emission, radio recombination lines, and stacked H i emission.

The Variables and Slow Transients Survey (VAST) on the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is designed to detect highly variable and transient radio sources on timescales from 5 s to $\sim\!5$ yr. In this paper, we present the survey description, observation strategy and initial results from the VAST Phase I Pilot Survey. This pilot survey consists of $\sim\!162$ h of observations conducted at a central frequency of 888 MHz between 2019 August and 2020 August, with a typical rms sensitivity of $0.24\ \mathrm{mJy\ beam}^{-1}$ and angular resolution of $12-20$ arcseconds. There are 113 fields, each of which was observed for 12 min integration time, with between 5 and 13 repeats, with cadences between 1 day and 8 months. The total area of the pilot survey footprint is 5 131 square degrees, covering six distinct regions of the sky. An initial search of two of these regions, totalling 1 646 square degrees, revealed 28 highly variable and/or transient sources. Seven of these are known pulsars, including the millisecond pulsar J2039–5617. Another seven are stars, four of which have no previously reported radio detection (SCR J0533–4257, LEHPM 2-783, UCAC3 89–412162 and 2MASS J22414436–6119311). Of the remaining 14 sources, two are active galactic nuclei, six are associated with galaxies and the other six have no multi-wavelength counterparts and are yet to be identified.

We present the data and initial results from the first pilot survey of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU), observed at 944 MHz with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. The survey covers $270 \,\mathrm{deg}^2$ of an area covered by the Dark Energy Survey, reaching a depth of 25–30 $\mu\mathrm{Jy\ beam}^{-1}$ rms at a spatial resolution of $\sim$ 11–18 arcsec, resulting in a catalogue of $\sim$ 220 000 sources, of which $\sim$ 180 000 are single-component sources. Here we present the catalogue of single-component sources, together with (where available) optical and infrared cross-identifications, classifications, and redshifts. This survey explores a new region of parameter space compared to previous surveys. Specifically, the EMU Pilot Survey has a high density of sources, and also a high sensitivity to low surface brightness emission. These properties result in the detection of types of sources that were rarely seen in or absent from previous surveys. We present some of these new results here.

Repeated antigen testing of 12 severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)–positive nursing home residents using Abbott BinaxNOW identified 9 of 9 (100%) culture-positive specimens up to 6 days after initial positive test. Antigen positivity lasted 2–24 days. Antigen positivity might last beyond the infectious period, but it was reliable in residents with evidence of early infection.