Spatial Diffusion of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Modeling Implications and Case Study of AIDS Incidence in Ohio

This paper extends a compartmental epidemiological model for HIV transmission and AIDS incidence to include hierarchical and expansion spatial diffusion. An implication of the resultant model is that hierarchical diffusion causes the large infection growth rates of densely populated areas at the top of the central places hierarchy to “chain” down and dominate small local growth rates during the exponential-growth phase of the epidemic. Also, hierarchical diffusion causes a high transient growth rate in the first few years of a local epidemic. The spatial compartmental model fits observed AIDS incidence spatial diffusion patterns in Ohio reasonably well.     

Wealth alone does not buy health: Political capacity,democracy, and the spread of AIDS

Although there have been have numerous studies on AIDS documenting its mortality, its epidemiological features, and its relationship to poverty and development, few studies have systematically analyzed how political factors and policies may help curtail the spread of AIDS. In this paper I consider how a variety of domestic factors influence HIV infection rates across countries. I argue that states with higher state capacity are better able to reduce the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Moreover, I argue that while strong autocracies can implement efficient policies with fewer constraints, democracies tend to be more responsive to the needs of the population and can be more efficient in curtailing the spread of HIV/AIDS. I empirically evaluate the hypotheses using a cross-sectional time-series sample of 117 countries. The empirical results indicate that greater state capacity indeed appears to help curtail HIV/AIDS infection rates.     

A Bayesian Dynamic Spatio-Temporal Interaction Model: An Application to Prostate Cancer Incidence

During the past three decades, prostate cancer incidence has changed substantially in the United States. A fully Bayesian hierarchical spatio-temporal interaction model is proposed to estimate prostate cancer incidence rates in the state of Iowa. We introduce random spatial effects to capture the local dependence among regions, random temporal effects to explain the nonlinearity of rates over time, and random spatio-temporal interactions. In addition, we introduce fixed age effects because most epidemiologic data are strongly related to age. We find that prostate cancer incidence in Iowa counties increased sharply over age while incidence rates increased initially, then decreased over time. We identify hot spots of high and low rates for age groups and time periods using disease mapping.     

Warrior Women,the Holy Spirit and HIV/AIDS in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This article analyses a group of Gogodala Christian women in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea who are referred to as ‘Warrior women’ and who pray, sing and call upon the Holy Spirit to cleanse their own bodies and ‘turn their eyes’, so that they are able to see those who threaten the health and well‐being of the wider community. These women have focused primarily on bringing male practitioners of magic — iwai dala — shadowy and powerful men who operate covertly and away from the gaze of others, out into the open. Whilst this has been happening for many years, the spread of HIV and AIDS into the area, fuelled by what many in the area believe is the rise of unrestrained female and male sexuality and the waning of Christian practice and principles, has meant that those perceived to bring harm to the community through their sexual behaviour have become recent targets for Warrior women. HIV/AIDS, referred to in Gogodala as melesene bininapa gite tila gi — the ‘sickness without medicine’ — is understood as a hidden sickness, one that makes its way through the community without trace until people become visibly ill. Warrior women seek to make both AIDS and those who, through their behaviour, encourage or enable its spread more visible. In the process, however, a small number of them are overcome by the Holy Spirit, so much so that they become daeledaelenapa — mad ‐ their behaviour increasingly characterised by childishness and uncontrolled sexuality.     

Identifying the Impacts of Land-Use Spatial Patterns on Street-Network Accessibility Using Geospatial Methods

While the land use-street network nexus is well acknowledged, evidence for the one-way impacts of land-use patterns on street accessibility is still inadequate. The measurements of land-use patterns and street accessibility lack systematic knowledge. Their empirical correlations also lack geographical variability, constraining site-specific land-use practices. Therefore, this study overcame the aforementioned limitations by examining the two-level spatial models to formulate accessibility-oriented land plans, using a well-developed Chinese city as an example. Firstly, two landscape metrics—Euclidean Nearest-Neighbor Distance (ENN) and Similarity Index (SIMI)—were used to quantify the intra- and inter-land-use configurations, respectively. Both city-level and local accessibility were measured using spatial design network analysis. Performing both ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models, results identified the statistically significant effects of inter-land-use patterns on two-level street accessibility. An exception was that land-use configurations within residential and industrial regions were irrelevant to street accessibility. We also found GWR was a better-fitting model than OLS when estimating locally-varied accessibility, suggesting hierarchical multiscale land-use planning. Overall, locally heterogeneous evidence in this study can substantialize land use-street network interactions and support the decision-making and implementation of place-specific accessibility-oriented land use.     

Investigating the Influence of Spatial and Temporal Granularities on Agent‐Based Modeling

Epidemic agent‐based models (ABMs) simulate individuals in artificial societies that are capable of movement, interaction, and transmitting disease among themselves. ABMs have been used to study the spread of disease at various spatial and temporal scales ranging from small communities to the world, over days, months, and years. The representations of space and time often vary between different epidemic ABMs and can be influenced by factors such as the size of a modeled population, computational requirements, population environments, and disease‐related data. The influence that the representations of space and time have on epidemic ABMs is difficult to assess. Here we show that the finest representations of space and time—termed spatial and temporal granularities (STGs)—in a parsimonious ABM affect speed, intensity, and spatial spread of a synthetic disease. Specifically, we found disease spread faster and more intensely as spatial granularity is coarsened, whereas disease spread slower and less intensely as temporal granularity is coarsened in a parsimonious ABM. Our study is the first to use the same epidemic ABM to examine the influence of STGs. Our results demonstrate that STGs influence ABM dynamics including early disease burnout and that an interrelationship exists between the coarsening of STGs and the speed and intensity at which disease spreads. Our parsimonious ABM is extended based on a structured community model and we found STGs also influence ABM dynamics in a more realistic context that includes hierarchical movement. Broadly, our study serves as a basis for further inquiry toward the influence of space–time representations on more realistic models that include multiscale mobility, routine movements (e.g., commuting), and heterogeneous population distributions.     

The Geography of Zydeco Music

Zydeco music is a blend of African-American and African- French traditions that developed in southwest Louisiana. Although related to Cajun music, zydeco music has been influenced by Caribbean rhythms and urban blues and jazz, and the music now serves as an important indicator of black Creole ethnic identity. From its origins on the prairies of southwest Louisiana, zydeco music has spread to several other areas of the country, particularly Texas and California. Such diffusion is linked to the World War II era out-migration of black Creole families. While its role as a cultural trail is strongest in the core area, zydeco music fulfills the same function elsewhere. The increasing popularity of this music is attributable to commercial recording, radio broadcasts, and concert tours by zydeco musicians.     

Rhythms in urban pathological events: some spatial patterns

Geographical research has demonstrated that there is a marked spatial variability in the ‘incidence’ of many types of pathological events—disruptive events which are unwanted by society. This article extends the scope of this research through the analysis of spatial variability in the characteristics of rhythms in pathological events—‘pathology rhythms’. The approach adopted here is to examine the impact of increasing distance from the Central Business District (CBD)-a major source of timing—on the shape of twenty-four hour pathology rhythms in Newcastle, New South Wales. This is achieved by analysing rhythms for selected types of pathological events, in four zones around the CBD. The results suggest that spatial variability in the shape of pathology rhythms does exist.     

Location and Growth in the Brazilian Northeast

Abstract Clustering of economic performance across jurisdictions has generated considerable research on the spillovers and linkages among geographical neighbors. Much of this work, however, has been aspatial, implying that the influence of location attributes on growth has been largely ignored. In this paper, we examine the contribution of location to regional economic growth using municipio‐level data for the Brazilian Northeast—a historically lagging region of the country. We test if productivity among northeastern municipios is converging to a steady state and whether spatial externalities are linked to productivity growth in individual municipios. We find that, conditional on structural characteristics, productivity among municipios is converging at about 3 percent per year. Further, productivity in individual municipios is positively associated with own‐structural characteristics but negatively associated with productivity growth in neighboring municipios. This means that there are negative spatial externalities coming from productivity improvements in neighboring regions.     

抢劫与抢夺犯罪行为时空分布特征研究——以上海市浦东新区为例

本文以上海市浦东新区为例研究抢劫、抢夺犯罪的时空分布规律及其与城市空间环境的关系。发现两抢犯罪时空分布呈现显著且稳定的规律性。犯罪时间分布与人们的起居、出行时间密切相关;两抢犯罪高发区往往犯罪目标相对集中、人口流动性较大并且作案后便于逃逸;犯罪低发区多为非生活功能的区域。外来人口、商业场所、通勤人口以及交通复杂程度等城市环境因素对两抢案件数量呈显著正向贡献。两抢案件的发生要素可归纳为三个方面:犯罪目标时空上的集聚、较强的人口流动性以及作案后逃逸的方便。     

The rights of a Florida wife: slavery, U.S. expansion, and married women's property law

Civil law rules were adopted in Florida that granted married women property rights long before legal reforms occurred in northern states. This article analyzes white wives' property and law in Florida between 1820 and 1860. Initially, married women's property rights were inadvertently protected by treaty law and limited to women who married before 1818. Wives' right to own separate property in Florida was subsequently reconfirmed in statute and extended to include later marriages. In contrast, nonwhites generally lost the rights and property they had enjoyed under Spain's civil law in the same period. This contrast reveals that in Florida (and other southern borderlands) it was not concern for women, or simply legal precedent, but the desire to incorporate new territory and expand slavery that influenced the development of marital property law. This challenges previous histories, which have excluded the earlier acts in the Southern borderlands and emphasized those passed in the Northeast beginning in the late 1840s. While those later acts were influenced by the early woman's rights movement and by concern for families reduced to poverty during the rise of market capitalism, this case study indicates that expansion of United States territory and slavery were responsible for the earlier married women's property rights in southern borderland territories such as Florida.     

Chocolate on the Borderlands of New Spain

In modern grocery stores, chocolate is a small item dwarfed in the allotted shelf space by its bitter cousins, coffee and tea. Yet, in the first three centuries of the post-Columbian era, the cacao-based drink, once reserved for the elites of Mesoamerica, was transformed into a beverage that was enjoyed across the Spanish colonial world and beyond to the rest of Europe and the respective colonial empires. We explore the archaeological and documentary evidence from both shipwreck and terrestrial sites in the borderland region of New Spain including California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and the Philippines to illustrate the presence and use of chocolate from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. We show that the study of chocolate on the fringes of New Spain provides a lens for understanding the dynamics of larger issues surrounding the birth of the modern global economy.     

长株潭城市群都市区各类城市建设用地的时空变化研究

以长株潭城市群的都市区为研究对象,通过收集1990-2019年中7个年份的8类城市建设用地的空间分布数据,建立空间数据库,并依托各类城市建设用地的增量、对城市群及其片区的贡献率、在城市群中的扩张程度分布的测算,归纳各类城市建设用地时空变化的特征与规律.结果表明:1990-2019年,长株潭城市群都市区的城市建设用地扩张...     

Early North African Cattle Domestication and Its Ecological Setting: A Reassessment

Nearly four decades have passed since an independent North African centre for cattle domestication was first proposed in 1980, based on the Combined Prehistoric Expedition’s work in the Nabta Playa—Bir Kiseiba region of southern Egypt, and the initial rigorous debates between Andrew B. Smith and Fred Wendorf, Romuald Schild and Achilles Gautier. More recently, geneticists have entered the fray with determinations on the spread of haplotypes, and the timing thereof, that extend the scope and increase the complexity of the debate. Here, a new look at the botanical data and a re-analysis of the geology of Bir Kiseiba–Nabta Playa rejects the ecological foundations of the early African domestication model, while a detailed examination of the published osteological and radiometric data from the same area reveals a more nuanced picture than has been recognised to date. These results are placed into context by a wider review of the genetic and other archaeological evidence from the Western Desert of Northeast Africa, where no other cattle remains designated as domesticated have been found. It is concluded that (a) Bos remains from the early Holocene at Nabta Playa—Bir Kiseiba were those of hunted aurochs; (b) domesticated caprines were likely present in Northeast Africa before domesticated cattle; and (c) the domesticated cattle spreading across Northeast and northern Africa, including Nabta Playa—Bir Kiseiba, from the late seventh millennium BC or early sixth millennium BC onwards were descendants of Bos taurus domesticated in the Middle Euphrates area of the Middle East.     

基于夜间灯光数据的中国土地城镇化水平时空动态

基于长时间序列夜间灯光遥感数据,本研究从国家、八大经济区、省、地等四个尺度综合分析了中国1992-2010年土地城镇化水平时空动态特征。结果表明,在1992-2010年间:中国土地城镇化水平增长迅速,年均增长率为8.34%,明显高于同时期人口城镇化水平增长速度;土地城镇化水平区域差异十分显著,东部沿海经济区在八大经济区中土地城镇化水平最高且增长速度最快,香港、澳门特别行政区土地城镇化水平远高于其它省区;土地城镇化的热点区域主要集中分布于长三角、山东半岛、海峡西岸等11个城市群地区。     

Idylls of the piney woods: health and race in southeastern Louisiana, 1878–1956

Scholars have investigated the important connections between racial identity, geography, and environment. Frequently these studies have focused on the location of noxious industries, questions of environmental justice, or segregation of racialized groups in areas of deleterious environmental conditions. In this paper, I argue that beneficial environmental conditions can also be closely tied with racial identity and that racial identity in turn can influence perceptions of the environment. These connections are evident in southern Louisiana—specifically St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana—in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. St. Tammany Parish, located in the piney woods of southeastern Louisiana, served as a health resort for New Orleanians seeking refuge from yellow fever and for other Americans attempting to restore their health. Residents and medical specialists understood the healthful qualities of the parish to emanate from the fragrance of the pine trees and the restorative waters. St. Tammany Parish's reputation for health, however, only applied to people with a white racial identity, despite the fact that St. Tammany Parish had a significant black population. White residents within the parish reserved tuberculosis sanitaria, health clinics, and access to natural springs for white patrons only, even amid fears concerning illness among black residents. Additionally, late nineteenth and early twentieth century medical specialists pointed to morality, criminality, and racial characteristics in their determination of the causes of illness.     

The Role of "Sibling Rivalry" in the "(Re)discovery of America Controversy"

French Louisiana is Catholic country. Because of the association between the Louisiana French and the Roman Catholic Church, the Church's role in French ethnic persistence has always been taken for granted. However, from a paternalistic colonial Church, the Louisiana Catholic Church has become an American one very much out of touch with the cultural character of the population it has served. In the racial field the Church's conformity to American values has impaired the unity of the Louisiana French. In the matter of language the Church has helped to undermine the position of French in French Louisiana society. The assertion of one's Catholicism in French Louisiana at a time of increasing Anglo-American contacts may simply be a reliable way of saying “we are us—not them.”     

Metaphors and fault lines: Case studies of HIV/AIDS in Haiti and Uganda

Farmer, Paul. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. xiv + 338 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00 cloth. Barnett, Tony and Piers Blaikie. AIDS in Africa: Its Present and Future Impact. New York: Guilford Press, 1992. ix + 193 pp. including references and index. $18.95 paper.     

Population geography and HIV/AIDS: The challenge of a ‘wholly exceptional disease’

This paper justifies and elaborates Huw Jones’ identification of HIV/AIDS as a ‘wholly exceptional disease’. It identifies the global pattern of the disease and how geographers have dealt with it, and considers its exceptional character in respect of its medical, demographic and behavioural dimensions. Implications of these dimensions are integrated into discussions of geographers’ use of two major conceptualisations in population analysis: the demographic transition model and disease diffusion models. It is argued that HIV/AIDS is wholly exceptional in that its essentially behavioural character — both in terms of spread and control — must strengthen the case for more explicit behavioural perspectives in population geography.     

Spatial Autoregressive Models for Geographically Hierarchical Data Structures

This article discusses how standard spatial autoregressive models and their estimation can be extended to accommodate geographically hierarchical data structures. Whereas standard spatial econometric models normally operate at a single geographical scale, many geographical data sets are hierarchical in nature—for example, information about houses nested into data about the census tracts in which those houses are found. Here we outline four model specifications by combining different formulations of the spatial weight matrix W and of ways of modeling regional effects. These are (1) groupwise W and fixed regional effects; (2) groupwise W and random regional effects; (3) proximity‐based W and fixed regional effects; and (4) proximity‐based W and random regional effects. We discuss each of these model specifications and their associated estimation methods, giving particular attention to the fourth. We describe this as a hierarchical spatial autoregressive model. We view it as having the most potential to extend spatial econometrics to accommodate geographically hierarchical data structures and as offering the greatest coming together of spatial econometric and multilevel modeling approaches. Subsequently, we provide Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms for implementing the model. We demonstrate its application using a two‐level land price data set where land parcels nest into districts in Beijing, China, finding significant spatial dependence at both the land parcel level and the district level.