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As New Jersey’s second largest city, Jersey City has experienced a surge in urban redevelopment and new development, particularly its downtown wards closest to New York City. Situated on the Hudson River directly across from downtown New York City, Jersey City is an ideal location for New Jersey developers and realtors to redevelop in order to attract New York City’s financial sector employees and individuals desiring more living space at lower rental or mortgage costs. In other words, downtown Jersey City exemplifies urban gentrification. In the last twenty years, several public policies helped spur waterfront development to attract potentially wealthier residents. In an effort to lure developers and investors, Jersey City officials relied heavily on municipal tax abatements to offset increasingly high property taxes. So after two decades, has Jersey City demonstrated that Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT), tax abatements and other tax policy incentives are in fact feasible in terms of the following questions: What have been the implications of these policies? Who benefited from and who was marginalized from these policies? This paper examines the rising concerns surrounding tax abatements and other pro-development tax policies. By examining a medium sized city like Jersey City, this case study is especially useful in understanding the significant issues and shortcomings with urban redevelopment tax incentives. Too often these incentives benefit a political and financial elite at the economic expense and loss of political rights of long-term residents and renters.

This work offers a political and historical analysis of Newark's modern politics since 1950, culminating with Mayor Cory Booker's rise to power and prominence both in the city and in American political consciousness. Newark's recent political history offers an interesting case study in mayoral elections, community development, and coalition building politics. While Newark is the quintessential post-industrial city, Booker has received critical attention for his post-racial politics since he frequently bypasses racial and traditional urban politics. At the same time, relations between the mayor, the municipal council, and Newark's diverse communities were often so fractious that sustainable coalition building proved to be an elusive goal to resolve longstanding crime, education, and other social problems. Based on original interviews with Cory Booker, city council members, and other prominent Newark politicians, A Post Racial Change is Gonna Come is a powerful history of how Newark became the focal point for transformative politics in urban America.

Law, Politics, and African Americans in Washington, DC explores the legal challenges and triumphs of African Americans and law and politics in Washington, DC, a city whose majority population comprises African Americans. It examines the interconnection between law and politics in Washington, DC, because it is vital to know the legal conditions under which the African American residents of the most powerful city in the world live, based on sound empirical evidence. Law, Politics, and African Americans in Washington, DC addresses two major questions: - Why study African Americans in terms of law and politics? - Why examine law and politics at the local level, in this case Washington, DC?

Designed to familiarize anyone who reads to young children with the essentials of promoting early and emerging literacy. Irwin and Moore share activities that can be used to foster this critical skill development, and have linked these activities to popular children's books.--

Barbour's Pond is a 4.45-ha pond located in Garrett Mountain Reservation in Passaic County in northern New Jersey, one of the most densely populated regions in the United States. Despite its small size and surrounding urban sprawl, the shallow waters of this pond hold 18 species of molluscs. Monthly samples from March 2004 through March 2006 found the highest diversity in December 2004, and in January, June, and July 2005. Additional samples were taken in April 2007 and May 2010 to spot-check relative diversity years after the original sampling period. Total molluscan abundance was greatest in July and November 2004, possibly reflecting new late spring and autumn cohorts. Univariate statistics demonstrate that this pond has a temporally stable and diverse malacofauna. Analysis, of basic environmental parameters including temperature and pH, however, showed little correlation with molluscan diversity over time, underscoring the stable yet complex nature of biodiversity of this small urban pond.

Temperature is a determinant environmental variable in metabolic rates of organisms ultimately influencing important physiological and behavioural features. Stressful conditions such as increasing temperature, particularly within high ranges occurring in the summer, have been suggested to induce flotation behaviour in Corbicula fluminea which may be important in dispersal of this invasive species. However, there has been no experimental evidence supporting this hypothesis. It was already proven that C. fluminea drift is supported by a mucilaginous drogue line produced by mucocytes present in the ctenidia. Detailed microscopic examination of changes in these cells and quantification of clam flotation following one, two and three weeks of exposure to 22, 25 and 30°C was carried out so that the effects of increasing water temperatures in dispersal patterns could be discussed. Results show that changes in temperature triggered an acceleration of the mucocytes production and stimulated flotation behaviour, especially following one week of exposure. Dilution of these effects occurred following longer exposure periods. It is possible that these bivalves perceive changing temperature as a stress and respond accordingly in the short-term, and then acclimate to the new environmental conditions. The response patterns suggest that increasing water temperatures could stimulate C. fluminea population expansion.

The Asian isopod Ianiropsis serricaudis is now well established in fouling communities, often associated with introduced ascidians, throughout the Northern Hemisphere but has gone largely unnoticed because of its diminutive size (typically less than 3 mm in length) and the difficulties of identifying small peracarid crustaceans. Known locations include the northeastern Pacific (Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, and Monterey Bay), the northwestern Atlantic (from the Gulf of Maine to Barnegat Bay, NJ), and the northeastern Atlantic (England and the Netherlands). We predict that this species is widespread along North America and European coasts, and may already be introduced to cold temperate waters of the Southern Hemisphere as well.

The anomalodesmatan family Laternulidae represents a group of bivalves with a very few well-known taxa and many more poorly known taxa. Laternula rostrata (G. B. Sowerby, 1839) and L. anatina (Linnaeus, 1758) occur in close proximity to each other in and along the margins of mangroves of Kungkrabaen Bay, Thailand. Laternula rostrata resides in soft to sandy sediments often within the interstices of mangrove roots located in more open portions of the mangrove mud flat. Laternula anatina lives deeper in the mangrove in more protected environs. Laternula anatina is a smaller bivalve that has a variable shell outline, sometimes a wrinkled shell appearance, thicker periostracum, and frequently extensive umbonal erosion. Both species have high concentrations of external shell spinules anteriorly and closer to the umbos (i.e., in juvenile shell) reflecting functionality in retaining an infaunal position. The larger L. rostrata is thinner shelled and more fragile; has more distinct and longer shell spinules composed of flattened lathes; a glossy external appearance; a longer umbonal slit; and a deeper pallial sinus. Additionally, L. rostrata has a saddle-shaped lithodesma; a lithodesma is absent in L. anatina as is typical of most laternulids. Shell microstructure of both is prismatonacreous, typical of the group, but the prismatic layer is thin and appears truncated into small blocky and/or granular columns in transitional zones. The bulk of the shell is tightly packed sheet nacre. The growth lines in L. rostrata, more pronounced but fewer in number than in L. anatina, appear as shallow rolling “hills” in both the shell and chondrophore. The differences in shell microstructure in these two species are specific to the taxa but based on different habitats and burrowing depths, albeit within the confines of a tropical mangal, could represent biomineralization events that reflect environmental adaptations. Variations in the thickness of the microstructural shell layers of four species of laternulids is compared and we speculate on possible functional and/or environmental relevance of these differences.

Diphenhydramine HCl (DH) and caffeine are commonly detected contaminants in waterways and drinking water nationwide (U.S.A.) and yet little is known of their influence on the development of aquatic molluscs. The antihistamine diphenhydramine blocks the chemical effects of histamine by inhibiting the re-uptake of serotonin (5-HT). Caffeine can influence the regulation of calcium (Ca2 ) and neurotransmitters, such as 5- HT, by inhibiting the re-uptake of adenosine. Serotonin receptor-mediated signaling is key during embryonic development in the freshwater snail Helisoma trivolvis (Say 1816). Embryonic development rates of H. trivolvis depend upon external conditions such as oxygen concentration and temperature. We examine the effects of diphenhydramine (DH) and caffeine on development and reproductive potential of this common aquatic snail. Concentrations of DH at 40.0, 50.0 and 60.0 µM affect the in-capsule embryonic development and hatching rate. Caffeine at 40.0, 50.0 and 60.0 µM show no influence to the hatching rates; however, these caffeine concentrations influence the in-capsule embryonic rotation rate. Eight-month observations of adult H. trivolvis reproductive activities show no influence in number of egg masses deposited when exposed to test concentrations of DH or caffeine.

In the last decade, a wide range of machine learning approaches were proposed and experimented to model highly nonlinear manufacturing processes. However, improving the performance of such models is challenging due to the complexity and high dimensionality of the manufacturing processes in general. In this paper, we propose bidirectional echo state reservoir networks (Bi-ESNs) trained using support vector machine privileged information method (SVM$$+$$) to model a winding machine process. The proposed model will be applied, tested and compared to reported models in the literature such as classical ESN with linear regression, ESN with a linear SVM readout, genetic programming, feedfoward neural network with backpropagation, radial basis function network, adaptive neural fuzzy inference system and local linear wavelet neural network. The developed results show that Bi-ESNs trained with SVM$$+$$are promising. It was able to provide better generalization performance compared to other models.

We developed a curriculum to introduce nanotechnology and photonics concepts to community college students enrolled in a program designed to attract and retain students in technology associate degree programs. Working with the Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena, an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, and the PHOTON projects, funded by the Advanced Technological Education program of NSF, we developed hands-on, inquiry-based activities to address the course goals: improve critical thinking, introduce science and technology concepts common to technology programs and provide opportunity to practice math skills in context. © 2010 SPIE.