Hameroff Was Talking About Living Water Forty Years Ago...,

hameroff  |  Biomolecules have evolved and flourished in aqueous environments, and basic interactions among biomolecules and their pervasive hosts, water molecules, are extremely important. The properties of intracellular water are controversial. Many authors believe that more than 90 percent of intracellular water is in the “bulk” phase-water as it exists in the oceans (Cooke and Kuntz, 1974; Schwan and Foster, 1977; Fung and McGaughy, 1979). This traditional view is challenged

by others who feel that none of the water in living cells is bulk (Troshin, 1966, Cope 1976, Negendank and Karreman, 1979). A middle position is assumed by those who feel that about half of “living” water is bulk and the other half “ordered” (Hinke, 1970; Clegg, 1976; Clegg, 1979; Horowitz and Paine, 1979). This group emphasizes the importance of “ordered” water to cellular structure and function.

Many techniques have been used to study this issue, but the results still require a great deal of interpretation. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), neutron diffraction, heat capacity measurement, and diffusion studies are all inconclusive. Water appears to exist in both ordered and aqueous forms within cells. The critical issue is the relation between intracellular surfaces and water. Surfaces of all kinds are known to perturb adjacent water, but within cells it is unknown precisely how far from the surfaces ordering may extend. We know the surface area of the microtrabecular lattice and other cytoskeleton components is extensive (billions of square nanometers per cell) and that about one fifth of cell interiors consist of these components. Biologist James Clegg (1981) has extensively reviewed these issues. He concludes that intracellular water exists in three phases. 1) “Bound water” is involved in primary hydration, being within one or two layers from a biomolecular surface. 2) “Vicinal water” is ordered, but not directly bound to structures except other water molecules. This altered water is thought to extend 8 to 9 layers of water molecules from surfaces, a distance of about 3 nanometers. Garlid (1976, 1979) has shown that vicinal water has distinct solvent properties which differ from bulk water. Thus “borders” exist between water phases which partition solute molecules. 3) “Bulk water” extends beyond 3 nanometers from cytoskeletal surfaces (Figure 6.4).

Drost-Hansen (1973) described cooperative processes and phase transitions among vicinal water molecules. Clegg points out the potential implications of vicinal water on the function of enzymes which had previously been considered “soluble.” Rather than floating freely in an aqueous soup, a host of intracellular enzymes appear instead to be bound to the MTL surface within the vicinal water phase. Significant advantages appear evident to such an arrangement: a sequence of enzymes which perform a sequence of reactions on a substrate would be much more efficient if bound on a surface in the appropriate order. Requirements for diffusion of the substrate, the most time consuming step in enzymatic processes, would be minimal. Clegg presents extensive examples of associations of cytoplasmic enzymes which appear to be attached to and regulated by, the MTL. These vicinal water multi-enzyme complexes may indeed be part of a cytoskeletal information processing system. Clegg conjectures that dynamic conformational activities within the cytoskeleton/MTL can selectively excite enzymes to their active states.

The polymerization of cytoskeletal polymers and other biomolecules appears to flow upstream against the tide of order proceeding to disorder which is decreed by the second law of thermodynamics. This apparent second law felony is explained by the activities of the water molecules involved (Gutfreund, 1972). Even in bulk aqueous solution, water molecules are somewhat ordered, in that each water molecule can form up to 4 hydrogen bonds with other water molecules. Motion of the water molecules (unless frozen) and reversible breaking and reforming of these hydrogen bonds maintain the far miliar liquid nature of bulk water. Outer surfaces of biomolecules form more stable hydrogen bonding with water, “ordering” the water surrounding them. This results in a decrease in entropy (increased order) and increase in free energy: factors which would strongly inhibit the solubility of biomolecules if not for the effects of hydrophobic interactions. Hydrophobic groups (for example amino acids whose side groups are non-polar, that is they have no charge-like polar groups to form hydrogen bonds in water) tend to combine, or coalesce for two main reasons: Van der Waals forces and exclusion of water. 

Combination of hydrophobic groups “liberate” ordered water into free water, resulting in increased entropy and decreased free energy, factors which tend to drive reactions. The magnitude of the favorable free energy change for the combination of hydrophobic groups depends on their size and how well they fit together “sterically.” A snug fit between groups will exclude more water from hydrophobic regions than will loose fits. Consequently, specific biological reactions can rely on hydrophobic interactions. Forma, tion of tertiary and quaternary protein structure (including the assembly of microtubules and other cytoskeletal polymers) are largely regulated by hydrophobic interactions, and by the effect of hydrophobic regions on the energies of other bonding. A well studied example of the assembly of protein subunits into a complex structure being accompanied by an increase in entropy (decrease in order) is the crystallization of the tobacco mosaic virus. When the virus assembles from its subunits, an increase in entropy occurs due to exclusion of water from the virus surface. Similar events promote the assembly of microtubules and other cytoskeletal elements The attractive forces which bind hydrophobic groups are distinctly different from other types of chemical bonds such as covalent bonds and ionic bonds. These forces are called Van der Waals forces after the Dutch chemist who described them in 1873. At that time, it had been experimentally observed that gas molecules failed to follow behavior predicted by the “ideal gas laws” regarding pressure, temperature and volume relationships. Van der Waals attributed this deviation to the volume occupied by the gas molecules and by attractive forces among the gas molecules. These same attractive forces are vital to the assembly of organic crystals, including protein assemblies. They consist of dipole-dipole attraction, “induction effect,” and London dispersion forces. These hydrophobic Van der Waals forces are subtly vital to the assembly and function of important biomolecules.

Dipole-dipole attractions occur among molecules with permanent dipole moments. Only specific orientations are favored: alignments in which attractive, low energy arrangements occur as opposed to repulsive, high energy orientations. A net attraction between two polar molecules can result if their dipoles are properly configured. The “induction” effect occurs when a permanent dipole in one molecule can polarize electrons in a nearby molecule. The second molecule’s electrons are distorted so that their interaction with the dipole of the first molecule is attractive. The magnitude of the induced dipole attraction force was shown by Debye in 1920 to depend on the molecules’ dipole moments and their polarizability. Defined as the dipole moment induced by a standard field, polarizability also depends on the molecules’ orientation relative to that field. Subunits of protein assemblies like the tobacco mosaic virus have been shown to have high degrees of polarizability. London dispersion forces explain why all molecules, even those without intrinsic dipoles, attract each other. The effect was recognized by F. London in 1930 and depends on quantum mechanical motion of electrons. Electrons in atoms without permanent dipole moments (and “shared” electrons in molecules) have, on the average, a zero dipole, however “instantaneous dipoles” can be recognized. Instantaneous dipoles can induce dipoles in neighboring polarizable atoms or molecules. The strength of London forces is proportional to the square of the polarizability and inversely to the sixth power of the separation. Thus London forces can be significant only when two or more atoms or molecules are very close together (Barrow, 1966). Lindsay (1987) has observed that water and ions ordered on surfaces of biological macromolecules may have “correlated fluctuations” analogous to London forces among electrons. Although individually tenuous, these and other forces are the collective “glue” of dynamic living systems.

Chemists Big Mad About Pollack's Structured Water Science

 ACS  |  You might call Gerald H. Pollack “the Teflon professor.”

Pollack, a bioengineering professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, has been the subject of savage criticism for his heterodox theories about water—yet he continues to enjoy great success.

In the past decade, Pollack claims to have amassed experimental evidence that in addition to ice, liquid, and gas, water can form a fourth, gel-like or liquid-crystalline phase, as well as store charge—a property that would violate the law of electroneutrality in bulk fluids. Most water and electrochemists dismiss his results, saying they can be entirely explained by invoking basic water chemistry, and the presence of impurities.

These weighty judgments don’t seem to have deterred Pollack’s supporters, however. Pollack has published numerous papers on his theories in respected journals, including Physical Review E , and the ACS journals Langmuir and Journal of Physical Chemistry B . And this year, he received a $3.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s new Transformative Research Projects Program (T-R01).

Pollack acknowledges that his research is controversial. “It’s impossible to break new ground without arousing controversy,” he tells C&EN. But, he adds, “I’ve somehow managed to stay funded.”

Despite—or perhaps because of—its ubiquity and central importance in biology, chemistry, and physics, water has long been steeped in controversy. In the 1960s, researchers debated the existence of polywater, a polymerized form of liquid water with high boiling point and viscosity. Polywater was eventually debunked, only to be replaced by the concept of water memory in the 1980s. This idea that liquid water can sustain ordered structures for long periods of time is one of the key tenets of homeopathy, a scientifically suspect concept, in which water supposedly “remembers” features of a solute even after repeated dilutions that remove all solute molecules. Water memory has also been debunked in the pages of Nature (1988, 334, 287).

In recent years, Pollack has moved outside the confines of the cell to the structure of water in general. In an annual faculty lecture at the University of Washington titled “Water, Energy, and Life: Fresh Views From the Water’s Edge,” which is also making rounds on YouTube, Pollack describes what he calls an “exclusion zone” where microspheres in a container of water pull away from the surface, while an organized water gel thousands of layers thick forms. Any energy, whether from sunlight or heat, puts energy into the system, helping to increase the phenomenon, he says.

But as Pollack treads further into the territory of chemists, criticisms of his ideas have become more pointed. A recent paper of his in Langmuir, titled “Can Water Store Charge?” made the argument that pure water, hooked up to electrodes, will form large pH gradients that persist long after the current is turned off (Langmuir 2009, 25, 542). A firestorm ensued.

Until the early 2000s, most of Pollack’s publications centered on bioengineering topics such as the behavior of muscle proteins. But in 2001, he published the book “Cells, Gels, and the Engines of Life,” in which he dismantled the standard view of cells, including ion pumps and membrane channels. He posited instead that the water inside cells is a structured gel that plays a fundamental role in the organization and action of cellular structures.

Some reviewers took Pollack to task: University of Colorado, Boulder, biology professor Michael W. Klymkowsky criticized the book for an “overall style reminiscent of creationist writings” (Nat. Cell Bio. 2001, 3, E213). But some lauded the book’s fresh outlook. Harvard University bioengineering professor Donald Ingber described the book as a “nicely sculpted … polemic against complacency in the cell biology establishment” (Cell 2002, 109, 688).

 

Structured Water Science

pollacklab  |  Water has three phases – gas, liquid, and solid; but findings from our laboratory imply the presence of a surprisingly extensive fourth phase that occurs at interfaces. The formal name for this fourth phase is exclusion-zone water, aka EZ water. This finding may have profound implication for chemistry, physics, and biology.

The impact of surfaces on the contiguous aqueous phase is generally thought to extend no more than a few water-molecule layers. We find, however, that colloidal and molecular solutes are profoundly excluded from the vicinity of hydrophilic surfaces, to distances up to several hundred micrometers. Such large zones of exclusion have been observed next to many different hydrophilic surfaces, and many diverse solutes are excluded. Hence, the exclusion phenomenon appears to be quite general.​

To test whether the physical properties of the exclusion zone differ from those of bulk water, multiple methods have been applied. NMR, infrared, and birefringence imaging, as well as measurements of electrical potential, viscosity, and UV-VIS and infrared-absorption spectra, collectively reveal that the solute-free zone is a physically distinct, ordered phase of water. It is much like a liquid crystal. It can co-exist essentially indefinitely with the contiguous solute-containing phase. Indeed, this unexpectedly extensive zone may be a candidate for the long-postulated “fourth phase” of water considered by earlier scientists.

The energy responsible for building this charged, low entropy zone comes from light. We found that incident radiant energy including UV, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths induce exclusion-zone growth in a spectrally sensitive manner. IR is particularly effective. Five-minute exposure to radiation at 3.1 µm (corresponding to OH stretch) causes an exclusion-zone-width increase of up to three times. Apparently, incident photons cause some change in bulk water that predisposes constituent molecules to reorganize and build the charged, ordered exclusion zone. How this occurs is under study.​

Photons from ordinary sunlight, then, may have an unexpectedly powerful effect that goes beyond mere heating. It may be that solar energy builds order and separates charge between the near-surface exclusion zone and the bulk water beyond — the separation effectively creating a battery. This light-induced charge separation resembles the first step of photosynthesis. Indeed, this light-induced action would seem relevant not only for photosynthetic processes, but also for all realms of nature involving water and interfaces.​

The work outlined above was selected in the first cohort of NIH Transformative R01 awards, which allowed deeper and broader exploration. It was also selected as recipient the 2008 University of Washington Annual Lectureship. Each year, out of the University’s 3,800 faculty members, one is chosen to receive this award. Viewable here, the lecture presents the material in a lively manner, accessible to non-experts.

The material now appears in a book, published 2013, entitled The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid and Vapor. Sample chapters are freely accessible at www.ebnerandsons.com, which also contains published reviews. Reader reviews can be found on Amazon.com.

Many lectures and interviews on the material above can be found on the internet. Of interest are two TEDx talks. The original one presents an outline of the basic discoveries, designed for a lay audience. The second one, 2016, describes the relevance of EZ water for health.

Also of interest may be a short Discovery Channel piece that combines fourth phase water with snowboarding.

 

 

You Already Know Three Times All The Oceans Are Locked In The Mantle...,

earth  |  Scientists from the University of Alabama have discovered a dense layer of ocean floor material that covers the boundary between the Earth’s core and mantle, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances. 

This layer of ancient ocean floor was likely subducted underground as the Earth’s plates shifted, making it denser than the rest of the deep mantle, and it slows seismic waves reverberating beneath the surface. This ultra-low velocity zone (ULVZ) was previously seen only in isolated patches but has now been found to exist across a large region.

“Seismic investigations, such as ours, provide the highest resolution imaging of the interior structure of our planet, and we are finding that this structure is vastly more complicated than once thought,” said study lead author Dr. Samantha Hansen. “Our research provides important connections between shallow and deep Earth structure and the overall processes driving our planet.”

The layer is only tens of kilometers thick, compared to the thickness of the Earth’s dominant layers. This thin layer was detected through high-resolution imaging of seismic signals, which were used to map a variable layer of material across the study region. The properties of the anomalous core-mantle boundary coating include strong wave speed reductions, leading to the name of ultra-low velocity zone.

“Analyzing 1000’s of seismic recordings from Antarctica, our high-definition imaging method found thin anomalous zones of material at the CMB everywhere we probed.” said study co-author Dr. Edward Garnero, a geophysicist at Arizona State University who co-led the research. “The material’s thickness varies from a few kilometers to 10’s of kilometers. This suggests we are seeing mountains on the core, in some places up to 5 times taller than Mt. Everest.”

These underground “mountains” are thought to be former oceanic seafloors that have sunk to the core-mantle boundary. They may play an important role in how heat escapes from the core, which powers the magnetic field. Additionally, material from the ancient ocean floors can also become entrained in mantle plumes or hot spots, which travel back to the surface through volcanic eruptions.

The discovery of this layer provides important insights into the structure and processes of our planet, and it underscores the importance of continued exploration and study of the Earth’s interior. 

“This is a really exciting result, and it provides a critical piece of information for understanding how the Earth works,” said Dr. Garnero. “It’s fascinating to think that we can learn so much about our planet just by listening to the echoes of earthquakes.”

The core-mantle boundary, located approximately 2,000 miles below Earth’s surface, is coated with an ultra-low velocity zone (ULVZ) that ranges from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers thick. This coating was discovered through a seismic network that collected data over three years during four trips to Antarctica.

The team, which included students and researchers from various countries, used 15 stations in the network buried in Antarctica that used seismic waves created by earthquakes from around the world to create an image of the Earth’s interior. The technique is similar to a medical scan of the body. The team was able to probe a large portion of the southern hemisphere in high resolution for the first time using this method.

“We found thin anomalous zones of material at the CMB (core-mantle boundary) everywhere we probed,” said Dr. Garnero. “The material’s thickness varies from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers. This suggests we are seeing mountains on the core, in some places up to 5 times taller than Mt. Everest.”

The ULVZs are thought to be former oceanic seafloors that sank to the core-mantle boundary. Oceanic material is carried into the interior of the planet where two tectonic plates meet and one dives beneath the other, known as subduction zones. 

Accumulations of subducted oceanic material collect along the core-mantle boundary and are pushed by the slowly flowing rock in the mantle over geologic time. The distribution and variability of such material explains the range of observed ULVZ properties.

The ULVZs are comparable to mountains along the core-mantle boundary, with heights ranging from less than about 3 miles to more than 25 miles. The team believes that these underground “mountains” may play an important role in how heat escapes from the core, the portion of the planet that powers the magnetic field. Material from the ancient ocean floors can also become entrained in mantle plumes, or hot spots, that travel back to the surface through volcanic eruptions.

The discovery of the ULVZs and their potential implications for Earth’s heat and magnetic fields provides new insights into the planet’s inner workings, and underscores the importance of continued research in this field.

 

At Pythias' Oasis We Observe Underground Fresh Water Gushing Into The Ocean

peninsuladailynews  |  An underwater spring is gushing water into the ocean at unprecedented levels giving researchers additional insights into plate tectonics but not — despite some news reports — any indications of an impending earthquake.

A seep of warm water about 50 miles off the coast of Newport, Ore., is spouting chemically distinct water into the ocean at rates not seen anywhere else in the world, but that doesn’t mean an earthquake is imminent, according to Evan Solomon, University of Washington oceanography professor.

“We’re not alarmed by the discovery,” said Solomon in a later interview. “The interesting thing about this site is the seep that we discovered has the highest flow rates of any we’ve seen.”

Solomon recently co-authored a study on the vent, and he said some news organizations have sensationalized the report’s findings, portraying the discovery as evidence the Cascadia Subduction Zone — a 600-mile fault line off the coast of the Pacific Northwest running from northern California up to British Columbia — was ready to blow.

That’s not the case, according to Solomon, who said he’s been answering emails from concerned citizens worried about an imminent earthquake.

But the vent — which has been dubbed “Pythia’s Oasis,” does give researchers more information on plate tectonics and what’s known as “locking,” he said.

Tectonic plates are massive pieces of the earth’s surface that rub up against each other, albeit incredibly slowly.

Locking is the region of the plate boundaries that stick, Solomon said, and that causes a build-up of stress that eventually erupts in an earthquake.

This particular vent was discovered about seven years ago, but Solomon said researchers believe it’s been active for at least 1,500 years. 

“Don’t freak out,” Solomon said. “The big thing is the seep site is exciting because the water flow rates are so high. It’s shedding a lot of light on the processes that lead to locking behavior in the subduction zone.”

While other known seeps release water at rates that amount to several centimeters per year, Pythia’s Oasis is sprouting water at several kilometers a year, or roughly half a liter per second, which Solomon called “incredible.”

The seafloor at the oasis is about one kilometer deep, Solomon said, and it’s coming from the plate boundary which is estimated to be another four kilometers down.

What’s also unique about the seep is that what is flowing out is mostly water rather than mostly gas. The water, which is about 16 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding water, is also chemically distinct.

Water flowing out of the oasis is partly freshwater, Solomon said, but not the kind that’s found on the surface. This freshwater is created by seawater becoming chemically dehydrated from minerals in the sediment.

 

Democracy Was Anathema To Disney's Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow

Slate  | In the 1960s, after realizing his spatial limitations in Anaheim, California, Disney began to develop plans for another empire, this time in central Florida. (Disney was said to have hated some of the development that surrounded his California park.) At the time, Florida hadn’t yet exploded, population-wise, into the state we know today. The greater Los Angeles area had more people than every Florida county combined.

As a result, Disney was able to make big upfront demands of the state—and reasonably expected the eager local government to give in. His grand plan wasn’t just about sprawling resorts. He wanted to build an experimental planned city, a utopian company town that would serve as a “blueprint for the future,” where residents would test out new products, no one would be unemployed, and the city’s climate-controlled center would cater to pedestrians who could be ferried about by monorail. Disney called this plan the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. To ensure he could enact his vision without a lot of red tape, he stipulated all kinds of rights to the land without knowing if he’d ever need them, aware that he would never again have greater negotiating power.

This Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow—EPCOT for short—is not the Epcot park we know today, though the amusement park shares the idealized planned city’s (now nostalgic) futurism. The EPCOT that was never built was meant to be a real town—and for that to become realized, the Walt Disney Company needed the authority to develop and run a town. So, Florida granted Disney the right to do everything it needed to make that happen, including controlling zoning and regulations and offering public services. Walt Disney’s death is cited as the reason the city never came to be, but the Disney Company’s hold on zoning, regulations, and public services remained.

That’s Disney’s story, anyway. Richard Foglesong, a former professor at Rollins College and author of Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando, says it’s a fabrication.

Disney’s self-governing district, with all its associated resorts and water parks and sports fields and shopping centers, eventually grew to an enormous size.  And though it never developed any cities of the future, the area held on to its self-governing privileges.

While Foglesong was reporting his 2001 book, which traces Disney’s use of its government immunities and relationship with the surrounding area, he dug into Disney’s archives, poring over company documents and memos. Instead of evidence of serious plans for the development of an idealized city, he found a warning from a lawyer that such a development could threaten Disney’s control of the land. If there were real residents, they would be able to elect a local government and establish the external control that Disney feared.

Disney And The 1964 New York World's Fair

medium  |  Amidst the Cold War, the United States of America continued to thrive off industrial capitalism and consumerism as a way of embodying what America represented — freedom, power, pride and identity. It was during this era that universal exhibitions in the U.S. were used to showcase such themes and continue showing the world how dominate they were, and how much they had achieved thus far in the twentieth century. Corporate companies were the main powerhouses at the world’s fairs and none other shined than WED Enterprises, formed by Walt Disney during the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Influenced by the ideals and values of world’s fairs, Walt visualized a concept ahead of its time — EPCOT.

World’s fairs have always been a site designed to showcase the achievements and technological advancements of nations. The 1964 World’s Fair held at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York focused on showcasing mid-twentieth century American culture and technology, to promote “Peace through Understanding” during the Cold War and Space Age. With the help of over forty-five companies to create exhibitions and attractions, the fair acted as a grand consumer show featuring numerous of products produced in America for uses of transportation, living and consumer electronic needs that would never be repeated at future world’s fairs in America. Among these products and inventions included videoconferencing, the Ford Mustang, push-button telephones and most importantly Disney audio-animatronics — a brand-new state of the art technology that was tested by Walt and later incorporated into his theme parks. Walt’s involvement with the fair began when city planner and fair organizer Robert Moses enlisted him, architect Philip Johnson, artist Donald De Lue and engineers from around the world to mastermind the world’s fair — resulting in a museum-theme-park-carnival monstrosity that rivaled any attraction on the planet. Shortly before the opening of the fair, Walt analyzed the history of fairs through animated depictions. He believed that the fairs originated as “sites of trade and commerce” and would later develop as stages of “talent and art”, before ultimately becoming a “cultured and industrialized monolith of growth and progress.”

“Disney had a huge footprint at the world’s fair, which sprawled over the same square mile in Flushing Meadows as its 1939–1940 predecessor, which also tried to predict the future,” says journalist Lou Lumenick in his New York Post article Tomorrowland’, Disney and their links to the 1964–65 World’s Fair. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, General Motors sponsored an exhibition entitled Futurama, in which guests would ride a vehicle on a conveyour system to view a scale model of what roadways and cities would look like twenty years into the future. Inspired by the attraction, Walt created two pavilions at the 1965 fair — Progressland and the Ford Pavilion. Sponsored by the General Electric Company, the Progressland Pavilion housed the exhibition The Carousel of Progress in a rotating theater with four stages that showed the lifestyle of an American family household during the 1890s, 1920s, 1950s and sometime in the distant future. The Ford Motors Pavilion housed the exhibition Ford’s Magic Skyway in which guests rode fifty actual Ford vehicles, including the brand-new Ford Mustang, that would pass slowly along an upper level track. The ride moved the audience through scenes featuring life-sized audio-animatronic dinosaurs, before passing through a futuristic city and finally arriving back in the present.

While his role was mainly to create exhibitions and attractions through corporation sponsorships, Walt took matters into his own hands to utilize the fair as an experiment to test new technology for the already existing Disneyland in Anaheim, California, as well as drawing up a prototype of his vision for the city of tomorrow — EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). Walt intended to create a utopian city of the future based upon the ideals and values of technology, transportation and community. In a twenty-five minute film shot shortly before his death, he described EPCOT as a city “taking its cues from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry.” Walt hoped that EPCOT would become a “community of tomorrow that will never be completed but will always be introducing and testing, and demonstrating new materials and new systems.” He concluded by saying, “EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world of the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.” His original vision for EPCOT included a model community that would be home to twenty thousand residents and would be shaped in the form of a circle, with different businesses and commercial areas in the center. Around it would be community buildings, schools and recreational complexes, while residential neighborhoods would be on the outskirts of the perimeter. At the time, Walt was fueled by his fascination for transportation and spent countless of time and energy figuring out how to move people from place to place. After unveiling the first monorail on the Western Hemisphere at Disneyland in 1959, Walt utilized the technology from Fords Magic Skyway for the future PeopleMover that opened at Disneyland in 1967. But why was Disney so keen on bringing the concept of EPCOT to life and why did the world’s fair have such an impact?

 

Cop City: A Timeline Of The Atlanta Way

scalawag  |  Cop City is the Atlanta ruling class' chosen solution to a set of interrelated crises produced by decades of organized abandonment in the city. As Gilmore explains, crisis means "instability that can be fixed only through radical measures, which include developing new relationships and new or renovated institutions out of what already exists." These crises included the threat and reality of mass uprisings against police violence, extreme and racialized income inequality and displacement, corporate media narratives in the wake of the 2020 uprisings that threatened the image of the city as a safe place for capital investment and development, and a municipal secession movement that threatened to rob the city of nearly half of its tax revenue following the uprisings.

Designed and propelled by a mix of state, corporate, and nonprofit actors, Cop City would address the overlapping crises facing Atlanta in three ways. First, it would provide a material investment in police capacity on the heels of the uprisings, a project to prepare for and prevent future rebellion. Second, it would represent an ideological investment in the image of Atlanta, signaling to corporations and those attracted by the influx of tech and other high-paying jobs that Atlanta is a stable, securitized city that will protect their interests. And third, Cop City would constitute a geographical investment—one that refashions publicly-owned land in a disinvested area into something new while opening up new opportunities for development. In other words, to borrow from Gilmore, Cop City is a partially geographical solution to a set of crises facing and generated by the city—a means through which a coalition of state and corporate actors have chosen to address years of organized abandonment and its outcomes. 

When thousands of Atlantans took to the streets during the nationwide uprisings of 2020, they were responding to more than the recent police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks. They were responding to decades of social disinvestment, displacement, and police expansion—and calling for a reversal of these dynamics.

Twenty-first-century Atlanta has featured rapid, publicly-subsidized development and gentrification, the further disintegration of the social safety net, the expansion of surveillance and policing, and rising inequality. Since 1990, the share of the city's Black population has decreased from 67 percent to 48 percent, while the median family income and the share of adults with a college degree in the city doubled. Investment firms have gobbled up the housing stock, with bulk buyers accumulating over 65,000 single-family homes throughout the Atlanta metro area in the past decade. As the city has attracted major tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Honeywell—and along with them, more middle and upper-class white people—the city has pushed its Black and working class further out of the city. Choices by policymakers have made Atlanta a lucrative place for big business, but a difficult place to live for the rest of residents. In 2022, for example, Atlanta was named by Money as the best place to live and was identified by Realtor Magazine as the top real estate market in the country. The same year, Atlanta was proclaimed the most unequal city in the country; relatedly, Atlanta is the most surveilled city in the U.S.

How did we get here? Atlanta has long been home to what is known as "the Atlanta Way"—the strategic partnership between Black political leadership and white economic elites that work in service of corporations and upper-class white communities and to the detriment of lower-income Black and working-class communities. While historians such as Maurice Hobson, Adira Drake Rodriguez, and Dan Immergluck have documented the long history of the Atlanta Way throughout the 1900s, we can begin with the leadup to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta as a key accelerant of the Atlanta Way. As Immergluck notes, the decisions made in preparation for the Games "effectively set the stage for long-term gentrification and exclusion in the city, focusing primarily on making the city more attractive to a more affluent set of prospective citizens."

The Atlanta Way EXEMPLIFIES Bourgeois Black Misleadership (NOT A Talented Tenth)

BAR  |  “Black Misleadership class” is not a ‘scientific” term. It is weaponized political terminology, with specific meaning based on Black historical and current political realities. Most often, in our usage at BAR, the term refers to those Black political forces that emerged at the end of the Sixties, eager to join the corporate and duopoly political (mostly Democrat) ranks, and to sell out the interests of the overwhelmingly working class Black masses in the process. It is both an actual and aspirational class, which ultimately sees its interests as tied to those of U.S. imperialism and its ruling circles. It seeks representation in the halls of corporate power, and dreads social transformation, which would upset the class’s carefully cultivated relationships with Power.

We know who these people are, based on their political behaviors. Our job, as conscious “political” people, is to expose their treachery -- so that the Black masses will reject their “misleadership.”

“Until Bruce Dixon’s recantation of December 21, all of BAR’s editors cited the sins and crimes of the 'Black misleadership class.'”

The following is excerpted from an article of mine that has disappeared from BAR’s archives, but which was picked up by the August 31, 2014 Greanville Post, titled, “Black Folks are Going Nowhere Until We Discard the Black Misleadership Class .”

“The current Black Misleadership Class voluntarily joined the enemy camp -- calling it ‘progress’ -- as soon as the constraints of official apartheid were lifted. They exploited the political and business opportunities made possible by a people’s mass movement in order to advance their own selfish agendas and, in the process, made a pact with Power to assist in the debasement and incarceration of millions of their brothers and sisters. In the case of Black elected officials, their culpability is direct and hands-on. The professional ‘interlocutors’ between African Americans and Power, from the local butt-kissing preacher to marquis power-brokers like Al Sharpton, serve as the Mass Black Incarceration State’s firemen….”

Students of Black history will immediately recognize the role played by these Black “firemen”: they are the “House Negroes” that Malcolm X inveighed against ; the aspiring or professional “type of Negro” who, when the master’s house started burning down, “would fight harder to put the master’s house out than the master himself would.” -- Malcolm X, Wayne State University, January 23, 1963.

Malcolm struggled on behalf of the “field Negro,” the working class masses. “House Negro” and “Field Negro” were not scientific terms; they were political weapons that resonated among the Black masses. They had sharp, cutting edges, designed to rebuke and isolate the internal enemy, and to discourage other Black people from collaborating with the ruling class.

Our mission today is no different.

They are the 'House Negroes' that Malcolm X inveighed against.”

In 2013, in a speech marking the first national conference of Students Against Mass Incarceration, at Howard University, I explained why BAR makes “full use” of the term, “Black misleadership class”:

“Some folks might think we mainly use it as an insult. And we DO.

“We believe that denunciation and shaming of those behaviors and politics that are destructive to our people is a good and useful thing to do.

“When people who claim to be Black leaders aid in the destruction of our people, they deserve to be insulted -- “buked and scorned,' as we used to say.

“So, of course we mean to insult these people that we call the Black Misleadership Class….

“They wanted to put their own upwardly mobile faces in high government and corporate places. That meant preserving the system -- not tearing it down.

“They wanted to celebrate their own upward mobility, not agitate for social transformation. So, after 1968, they helped shut the Movement down.

“In order to consolidate their own political power, and curry corporate favor, the Black Misleadership Class directed Black people’s energies toward the narrowest electoral politics and the crassest materialism. Their modus operandi is to treat the masses of Black people as cheerleaders for the upward strivings of a few.

“The ultimate expression of that madness, is that the Black Misleadership Class poured all of its energies into protecting a symbol of ultra-upward Black mobility -- Barack Obama -- while the bottom fell out for the Black masses.

“This is the same class that has historically been far more ashamed over Mass Black Incarceration, than outraged. They resent those Blacks who have been caught up in the criminal justice system, because they mess up the petty bourgeois picture of Black America that they like to paint.

“They have no use for the rest of us, except as props in their for-profit productions.

“So, damn right, we like to insult the Black Misleadership Class. It’s part of our political work. They need to be insulted.

“We need a Movement, not just to deal with our external enemies, but also our internal ones. Because they are killing us, from the inside out.”

Brother Dixon may be willing to give up a perfectly good weapon, but I am not.

Down with the Black misleadership class! Power to the people!

Google "FOP Brad Lemon Tow Lot Scandal" To Understand KCPD Refusing To Do Its Job

kansascity  |  Soon after he became Kansas City’s police chief in 2017, Rick Smith pulled officers away from a strategy credited with reducing homicides.

The effort, called the Kansas City No Violence Alliance, or KC NoVA, garnered national attention after killings dropped to a historic low of 86 in 2014, the fewest in Kansas City in more than four decades.

Under NoVA, law enforcement agencies used “focused deterrence” — targeting violent people and their associates and offering them a choice: change your behavior or go to jail. In exchange, they would get help finding jobs, getting an education and other assistance.

But when homicides increased again by the end of 2015, authorities went back to their separate agencies and “started chasing the bloodstain,” Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said.

By 2019, the strategy was effectively abandoned.

Now, an assessment obtained by The Star offers candid insight into why: Despite the effort’s early success, the Kansas City Police Department had grown weary of the strategy and began to step away, angering other participants who wanted the program to continue.

“Instead of really steering into the problem and retooling ourselves at that moment, we kind of threw in the towel,” Baker, one of the chief architects of KC NoVA, said in December. “We kind of gave up.”

Some key figures who were part of KC NoVA’s launch were reassigned or moved on. Its effectiveness was questioned as killings rose in 2016. Significant elements of the strategy were dismantled over time.

Since then, murders have continued to increase. In 2019, the city nearly hit an all-time record.

Other cities that stuck with and adjusted their focused deterrence strategies over time eventually prevented homicides by targeting a small group of chronic offenders vulnerable to sanctions, supporters of the approach say.

Kansas City police instead announced last summer they were partnering with federal authorities on a program that has been around since 2001 and was retooled in recent years under then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It focuses on targeting the most violent individuals, but not their associates.

That shift, Kansas City police said, was endorsed in an assessment conducted by the National Public Safety Partnership.

“Today, we are focusing the limited resources of the KCPD to the individuals who are ‘trigger pullers,’” the department said, noting it is constantly evaluating what works and what needs to change. “We don’t rule out any potential solution and will consider all options in order to reduce violent crime.”

KCPD Didn't Like It - Stacey Graves Is Now The Chief - Google Brad Lemon..,

KSHB |  The idea is to specifically interact with repeat violent offenders and their friends to give them better life options than violent crime.

The alliance also allows for better inter-agency intelligence sharing on potentially violent suspects.

According to a 2015 University of Missouri-Kansas City study of NoVA's effectiveness, the program had a rocky start. But by 2014, it was operating effectively.

The study concludes NoVA helped dramatically reduce violent crime in 2014 when there were 78 homicides, a 10-year low.

But the study also found the longer NoVA was in place, the less effective it became.

"I think we're a little early to say that NoVA is a success or a long-term failure, we don't know yet," said FOP President Brad Lemon.

The 41 Action News Investigators asked Forte if NoVA was working on March 10.

"Absolutely, crime is down with those people involved in the network by 10 percent since we started NoVA," he said.

While Forte says the specific repeat violent offenders NoVA has targeted aren't committing as many crimes, Kansas City homicides have skyrocketed from a 10-year low of 78 in 2014 to a 10-year high of 128 last year.

And the city is on pace to break last year's record this year.

James, who's on the NoVA Board of Directors, acknowledges the program has its limits.

"Drive-by shootings, domestic violence, those types of things that NoVA is not able to address," he said.

The NoVA study notes in April 2014, Forte permanently transferred 28 officers from the Patrol Bureau to the Violent Crimes Division and another 30 to investigate gun crimes.

Now with violent crime up and the number of officers below 1,300 for the first time in a decade, 41 Action News wanted to know how NoVA fits into the current KCPD picture.

James at the April Kansas City Police Board meeting said even that board doesn't fully understand NoVA's role.

"This is kind of why telling people what NoVA is doing is important because the board doesn't know," he said.

On March 28, the 41 Action News Investigators sent an open records request to KCPD asking how many officers were assigned to NoVA and any numbers showing its impact.

On April 6, Captain Stacey Graves responded by writing, "KCPD does not have any officers specifically assigned to NoVA, all KCPD officers are part of the community collaboration." 

Graves also wrote, "I am waiting on stats for the remainder of your request."

Almost two months later, the 41 Action News Investigators are still waiting for those stats.

A month ago, the 41 Action News Investigators also requested e-mails and other information to find out more details about NoVA's current status.

On Friday morning, the day before Forte's retirement, Graves informed the 41 Action News Investigators that material had been located, but the Investigators don't have it yet.

A KCPD staffing study due to be released before the end of the month may shed more light on NoVA.

Social Network Analysis And Soft Deterrence Worked In Kansas City

UMKC  |  The approach calls for conducting an audit of violent criminals, mapping their connections and using those connections to encourage criminals to police themselves. If a crime is committed, the police can then go after the perpetrator’s entire group – nabbing members for even petty offenses.

“The fact of the matter is, the group members we’re talking about aren’t afraid of police – and they’re not too scared of the prospect of getting arrested. Going to jail is just part of doing business,” Novak said. “But they’re scared to death of people in their social network, like friends, cousins, etc. People in their social network are more effective at regulating their behavior than the criminal justice system.”

In 2013 Fox began helping police conduct social network audits of the area’s criminals. Forty groups or gangs were identified and mapped so the nuances of their leaders and connections to each other could be easily understood.

“Violence spreads much like disease in the network,” Fox said.

As part of focused deterrence, law enforcement reach out to key people in criminal groups through quarterly meetings to get out the message that violence will not be tolerated. If one person in the group missteps, they are told, everyone in the group will be targeted for everything from parole violations to parking tickets to unpaid child support.

“The law enforcement representatives will say, ‘The next group to commit a homicide, we’re going to focus all our law enforcement on all of your group,’ ” Novak said.

The effort also involves offering group members access to social services to help them escape a life of crime.

Novak and Fox are embedded researchers in the project, which is very different from the neutral, observe-only role academics usually take. In this case, they are purposely involved in policy and decision making, such as participating in planning meetings and conducting training with criminal justice officials. This model of “action research” is endorsed and recommended by the US Department of Justice.

The result for the researchers is a first-hand grasp of the process as it unfolds, which they hope provides insight for their research.

“It may be the wave of the future for criminologists,” Novak said.

Focused deterrence has helped reduce crime in Boston, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and High Point, N.C. Novak and Fox say it’s too early to tell whether declining violent crime numbers in Kansas City so far this year can be credited with its implementation here.

But Joseph McHale, a captain in the Kansas City Police Department who manages the NoVA program in that department, said he’s certain a 37 percent reduction in homicides is directly connected to NoVA’s efforts and its work with UMKC.

“We are getting ahead of violence and using intelligence in a way that we never have before,” McHale said.

In the past, a lot of crime fighting has been based on tradition or gut. But through this project, the UMKC professors are helping the area’s top crime fighters – along with the street-level cops – understand the importance of valid and reliable data in making decisions.

Mike Mansur, a spokesman for the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office, said the result will be a long-term change.

“We don’t look at it as a project or a specific effort,” he said. “It’s more a shift in the way law enforcement is approaching the problem of violence.”

Loss of Professional and Managerial Classes (REDUX 8/16/13 and Visioncircle)

nih | The gap between Whites and Blacks in levels of violence has animated a prolonged and controversial debate in public health and the social sciences. Our study reveals that over 60% of this gap is explained by immigration status, marriage, length of residence, verbal/reading ability, impulsivity, and neighborhood context. If we focus on odds ratios rather than raw coefficients, 70% of the gap is explained. Of all factors, neighborhood context was the most important source of the gap reduction and constitutional differences the least important.

We acknowledge the harsh and often justified criticism that tests of intelligence have endured, but we would emphasize 2 facts from our findings. First, measured verbal/reading ability, along with impulsivity/hyperactivity, predicted violence, in keeping with a long line of prior research. Second, however, neither factor accounted for much in the way of racial or ethnic disparities in violence. Whatever the ultimate validity of the constitutional difference argument, the main conclusion is that its efficacy as an explainer of race and violence is weak.

Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that Blacks are segregated by neighborhood and thus differentially exposed to key risk and protective factors, an essential ingredient to understanding the Black–White disparity in violence. The race-related neighborhood features predicting violence are percentage professional/managerial workers, moral/legal cynicism, and the concentration of immigration. We found no systematic evidence that neighborhood- or individual-level predictors of violence interacted with race/ ethnicity. The relationships we observed thus appeared to be generally robust across racial/ ethnic groups. We also found no significant racial or ethnic disparities in trajectories of change in violence.

Similar to the arguments made by William Julius Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged,these results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions may reduce the racial gap in violence. Policies such as housing vouchers to aid the poor in securing residence in middle-class neighborhoods may achieve the most effective results in bringing down the long-standing racial disparities in violence. Policies to increase home ownership and hence stability of residence may also reduce disparities (see model 3, Table 2 ).

Family social conditions matter as well. Our data show that parents being married, but not family configuration per se, is a salient factor predicting both the lower probability of violence and a significant reduction in the Black–White gap in violence. The tendency in past debates on Black families has been either to pathologize female-headed households as a singular risk factor or to emphasize the presence of extended kin as a protective factor. Yet neither factor predicts violence in our data. Rather, being reared in married-parent households is the distinguishing factor for children, supporting recent work on the social influence of marriage and calls for renewed attention to the labor-market contexts that support stable marriages among the poor.

Although the original gap in violence between Whites and Latinos was smaller than that between Whites and Blacks, our analysis nonetheless explained the entire gap in violence between Whites and Latino ethnic groups. The lower rate of violence among Mexican Americans compared with Whites was explained by a combination of married parents, living in a neighborhood with a high concentration of immigrants, and individual immigrant status. The contextual effect of concentrated immigration was robust, holding up even after a host of factors, including the immigrant status of the person, were taken into account.

The limitations of our study raise issues for future research. Perhaps most important is the need to replicate the results in cities other than Chicago. The mechanisms explaining the apparent benefits to those living in areas of concentrated immigration need to be further addressed, and we look to future research to examine Black–White differences in rates of violence that remain unexplained. As with any nonexperimental research, it is also possible we left out key risk factors correlated with race or ethnicity. Still, to overturn our results any such factors would have to be correlated with neighborhood characteristics and uncorrelated with the dozen-plus individual and family background measures, an unlikely scenario. Even controlling for the criminality of parents did not diminish the effects of neighborhood characteristics. Finally, it is possible that family characteristics associated with violence, such as marital status, were themselves affected by neighborhood residence. If so, our analysis would mostly likely have underestimated the association between neighborhood conditions and violence.

We conclude that the large racial/ethnic disparities in violence found in American cities are not immutable. Indeed, they are largely social in nature and therefore amenable to change.

 

The Solution To Black On Black Gun Violence (REDUX Originally Posted 2/12/15)

AmericanThinker |  Sociology, which is sometimes defined as the painful and tedious explication of the obvious, occasionally comes up with useful insights, or at least proof that some useful insights are true. That seems to be the case with a study by Yale sociologist Andrew Papachristos, published in the academic journal Social Science & Medicine, and featured in the Chicago Sun-Times.

It turns out that being arrested with someone else is the best predictor of who will get shot in Chicago. No, not by the police, as the Al Sharptons of the world would like to claim. Shot by another civilian, in the epidemic of shootings that have made Chicago at some times more dangerous than Baghdad.

If you and another person get arrested together in Chicago, you’re both part of a loose network of people with a high risk of getting shot in the future, Yale University researchers say in a newly published study.
Only 6 percent of the people in Chicago between 2006 and 2012 were listed on arrest reports as co-offenders in crimes, the study says. But those people became the victims of 70 percent of the nonfatal shootings in the city over the same period.

The logic is pretty simple: if you are the type of person who goes out and commits crimes with others, you are probably connected to people who commit crimes with some frequency.  And that puts you at risk of getting shot, because people who commit crimes sometimes shoot others who become inconvenient, or who just get in the way.

The study is done with social network analysis, studying who knows who and how they interact, and drawing up networks that reveal the clustering that results from various commonalities.

 The latest Yale University study was built on Papachristos’ previous social-network research into murders on the West Side. He had studied killings between 2005 and 2010 in West Garfield Park and North Lawndale. About 70 percent of the killings occurred in what Papachristos found was a social network of only about 1,600 people — out of a population of about 80,000 in those neighborhoods. Inside that social network, the risk of being killed was 30 out of 1,000. For the others in those neighborhoods, the risk of getting murdered was less than one in 1,000.

These statistics demonstrate the wisdom of the old adage, “Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas.” They also show that it is not per se that is related to the higher incidence of violence in some black communities…

For every 100,000 people, an average of one white person, 28 Hispanics and 113 blacks became victims of nonfatal shootings every year in Chicago over the six-year study period.

… but rather the existence of networks of people who engage in violence and reinforce each other in patters of violent behavior.

There are some useful implications for policing in Chicago IF the race demagogues don’t start calling it profiling: Fist tap Big Don.

UMKC |  An ongoing law enforcement effort to rethink strategies to reduce violent crime in the Kansas City area has its own secret weapon: UMKC.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, part of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, is intimately involved in the Kansas City No Violence Alliance (NoVA). NoVA is a 2-year-old multi-agency effort to reduce gun-related violence.

Chancellor Leo E. Morton serves on NoVA’s governing board, and UMKC faculty members and graduate students are embedded in NoVA’s effort to implement a crime-prevention approach known as “focused deterrence,” which helps police look beyond individual criminals to the criminals’ entire social networks.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police this month called out UMKC’s relationship with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department through NoVA when it awarded the department its 2014 bronze medal for Excellence in Law Enforcement Research Award. The award recognizes law enforcement agencies that demonstrate excellence in conducting and using research to improve police operations and public safety.

UMKC became involved with NoVA at the very beginning. In 2012, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker came to Ken Novak, chair of the Criminal Justice and Criminology Department, to ask how UMKC could help curb a rising tide of violence on Kansas City-area streets. She’d heard about focused deterrence and its success in other cities and wanted to try it here. It just so happened that Andrew Fox had just taken a job as a professor in UMKC’s criminology department, and Fox happened to have experience with focused deterrence.

Racial Self-Destruction In America..., (REDUX Originally Posted 5/23/16)

NYTimes |  Ali-Rashid Abdullah, 67 and broad-shouldered with a neatly trimmed gray beard, is an ex-convict turned outreach worker for Cincinnati’s Human Relations Commission. He or his co-workers were at the scenes of all five of Cincinnati’s shootings with four or more casualties last year, working the crowds outside the yellow police tape, trying to defuse the potential for further gunfire.

They see themselves as stop signs for young black men bound for self-destruction. They also see themselves as truth-tellers about the intersection of race and gun violence — a topic that neither the city’s mayor, who is white, nor its police chief, who is black, publicly addresses.

“White folks don’t want to say it because it’s politically incorrect, and black folks don’t know how to deal with it because it is their children pulling the trigger as well as being shot,” said Mr. Abdullah, who is black.

No one worries more about black-on-black violence than African-Americans. Surveys show that they are more fearful than whites that they will be crime victims and that they feel less safe in their neighborhoods.

Most parents Mr. Abdullah meets are desperate to protect their children but are trapped in unsafe neighborhoods, he said, “just trying to survive.” And some are in denial, refusing to believe that their sons are carrying or using pistols, even in the face of clear evidence.

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“ ‘Not my child,’ ” he said, adopting the resentful tone of a defensive mother. “ ‘It may be his friends, but not my child, because I know how I raised my child.’ ”

His reply, he said, is blunt: “These are our children killing our children, slaughtering our children, robbing our children. It’s our responsibility first.”

African-Americans make up 44 percent of Cincinnati’s nearly 300,000 residents. But last year they accounted for 91 percent of shooting victims, and very likely the same share of suspects arrested in shootings, according to the city’s assistant police chief, Lt. Col. Paul Neudigate.

Nationally, reliable racial breakdowns exist only for victims and offenders in gun homicides, not assaults, but those show a huge disparity.

The gun homicide rate peaked in 1993, in tandem with a nationwide crack epidemic, and then plummeted over the next seven years. But blacks still die from gun attacks at six to 10 times the rate of whites, depending on whether the data is drawn from medical sources or the police. F.B.I. statistics show that African-Americans, who constitute about 13 percent of the population, make up about half of both gun homicide victims and their known or suspected attackers.

“Every time we look at the numbers, we are pretty discouraged, I have to tell you,” said Gary LaFree, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland.

Some researchers say the single strongest predictor of gun homicide rates is the proportion of an area’s population that is black. But race, they say, is merely a proxy for poverty, joblessness and other socio-economic disadvantages that help breed violence.