Santa Clara County Research Articles

Facebook’s forum selection clause not ‘liked’ by Supreme Court of Canada

In Douez v. Facebook, Inc., 2017 SCC 33, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada held Facebook’s forum selection clause, which required that all disputes be litigated in Santa Clara County (California), unenforceable.

Drought, water access, and urban agriculture: a case study from Silicon Valley

ABSTRACTIn California, the growing popularity of urban agriculture (UA) has unfolded against a backdrop of historic drought. While UA is often celebrated as an urban sustainability strategy, it must be able to persist during drought if it is to perform these functions. Using Santa Clara County – the geographic core of Silicon Valley – as a case study, we use interviews and surveys to explore the implications of drought for UA. We show how developing an understanding of water access for UA during a drought requires examining the social and institutional context of water management and use. In metropolitan California, the highly decentralised water supply system combined with the diverse institutional arrangements that support UA create an uneven landscape of water access. Consequently, the pressure to change water-consuming practices – that is, the stress that institutional drought responses place on different water users – is geographically and socially differentiated. Among UA water users, responses to drought have also varied, in part because the possibilities for change are constrained by the sociotechnical arrangements of UA sites and the different purposes of UA.

From Clean Rooms to Dirty Water: Labor, Semiconductor Firms, and the Struggle over Pollution and Workplace Hazards in Silicon Valley

Abstract This article argues that labor activists initiated Silicon Valley’s antitoxics movement and were the driving force behind environmental remediation in the region in the first half of the 1980s. In order to unionize semiconductor plants, activists associated with SCCOSH and United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, a left-wing union, attacked corporate negligence regarding worker safety and health. SCCOSH later allied itself with the Central Labor Council of Santa Clara County to push for the cleanup of aquifers contaminated by the semiconductor industry. The activists ultimately failed to organize Silicon Valley, but their campaigns led to a revolution in safety among microelectronics firms and to large-scale remediation efforts conducted under the EPA’s Superfund program.

A moving target: The geographic evolution of Silicon Valley, 1953–1990

This article provides an empirical examination of high-tech firm location data from 1953 to 1990 to show a dramatic shift in geographic centre of what is now called Silicon Valley. Universities (most notably Stanford), venture capital and law firms acted as magnets for divisions of established firms and local start-ups. These institutions combined with the Santa Clara County’s available land to pull the high-tech region’s epicentre south-eastwards from San Francisco, an early source of investment capital and legal expertise. These findings add another element (spatial change) for consideration in explaining the evolution of industry clusters.

Searching for Isard’s Regional Essence

At the inception of the Southern Regional Science Association in the early 1960s, Walter Isard maintained that areal regions are fundamental units of observation and analysis. To this day, understanding the special significance of regions motivates much of our empirical research. In my address, I argue that regional fixed effects estimates from regression analysis can help us comprehend the distinctive character of areal units. This paper offers two examples from my research. First, I present the results of a regression model that explains regional knowledge spillovers in U.S. counties. Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) has by far the largest fixed effect estimate of any U.S. county. Overall, the county level fixed effects for knowledge spillovers follow a pattern of rapid exponential decay. Next, I inspect neighborhood fixed effects taken from a hedonic housing price model of the Charleston, South Carolina region. The results suggest a clear preference for coastal proximity as reflected in house prices. For neighborhoods away from the coast, the fixed effects estimates exhibit a steep decline toward zero. Like Silicon Valley’s regional advantage in knowledge, beachfront neighborhoods benefit from an exclusive, time invariant advantage that is hard, if not impossible, to replicate in space.

Prioritizing Which Homeless People Get Housing Using Predictive Algorithms

We present the methodology for developing a predictive model for identifying homeless persons likely to have high future costs for public services. It was developed by linking administrative records from 2007 through 2012 for seven Santa Clara County agencies and identifying 38 demographic, clinical and service utilization variables with the greatest predictive value. 57,259 records from 2007 to 2009 were modelled, and the algorithm was validated using 2010 and 2011 records to predict high cost status in 2012. The model generated a good area under the ROC curve of 0.83. A business case scenario shows that two-thirds of the top 1,000 high-cost users predicted by the model are true positives with estimated post-housing cost reductions of over $19,000 per person in 2011. The model performed very well in giving low scores to homeless persons with one-time cost spikes, achieving the desired result of excluding cases with single-year rather than ongoing high costs. This triage tool identifies individuals for whom the solution of housing costs less than the problem of homelessness. These individuals are likely to remain homeless and use public services extensively, setting them apart from the majority of homeless individuals who have short stints and use fewer services. The tool is a predictive analytic statistical algorithm that uses 38 pieces of information to calculate the probability that a homeless individual will have ongoing high costs. The information includes age, gender, time spent in jail, medical diagnoses, and use of hospital facilities. The purpose of the tool is to produce accurate and objective ranking scores for targeting scarce housing and service resources in order to make the greatest possible headway in ending chronic homelessness.

The rise of food banks and the challenge of matching food assistance with potential need: towards a spatially specific, rapid assessment approach

In the United States, food banks served an estimated 46 million people in 2015. A combination of government policy reforms and political economic trends contributed to the rising numbers of individuals relying on private food assistance in the US, the United Kingdom and other high-income countries. Although researchers frequently map urban food environments, this project is one of the first to map private food assistance and potential need at the census-tract scale. We utilize Geographic Information Systems, demographic data, and food assistance locations to develop a rapid assessment tool that could support food banks, pantries, soup kitchens, and government agencies that seek to answer the question of whether people with the greatest need have food distribution sites in close proximity. We define access based on distance and then calculate potential food insecurity using either poverty rates or a food insecurity index. We apply these methods in a case study analysis of Santa Clara County, California. Our findings suggest that food assistance distribution locations match the areas of potential need in more than 80% of urban census tracts. However, there are several potentially underserved locations and populations that could benefit from new food assistance operations. The poverty and index-based approaches show significant spatial overlap in mapped areas of high food insecurity and low access. The poverty only approach produces a higher estimate of food insecurity rates, is easier to calculate, and draws attention to the need to address poverty as a root cause of hunger.

Latino Adults' Perspectives on Treating Tobacco Use Via Social Media.

BackgroundLatinos are the largest minority group in the United States, and in California they outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Smoking cessation programs tailored for Latino culture, and this population’s specific smoking patterns, are needed. Online social networks for smoking cessation have high potential for Latinos, but have not been tested to date.ObjectiveBuilding a research program on social media apps for cancer prevention in diverse populations, this qualitative study assessed acceptability of tobacco treatment that was distributed via social media for Latino smokers.MethodsWe conducted three focus groups with Latino adults who were former and current smokers recruited from Santa Clara County, California in 2015 (N=32). We assessed participants’ smoking histories, attempts to quit, social media exposure, and receptivity to a social media-based smoking cessation intervention. Audio transcripts were translated and coded for themes.ResultsParticipants reported factors driving their tobacco use and motivations to quit, and emphasized the importance of community and family in influencing their smoking initiation, cravings and triggers, attempts to quit, and abstinence. Participants valued the communal aspect of social media and suggested strategically tailoring groups based on key features (eg, age, gender, language preference). Participants reported preferring visual, educational, and motivational messages that were connected with existing services.ConclusionsParticipants generally voiced acceptability of a social media-delivered intervention to help them quit smoking, viewed the intervention as well-equipped for catering to the strong community orientation of Latinos, and suggested that the platform was able to address variation within the population through strategic group creation. As a group member reflected, “Podemos hacerlo juntos” (We can do it together).

The Power of Community Action: AntiiPayday Loan Ordinances in Three Metropolitan Areas

Local ordinances that restrict payday lending constitute an important strategy in the overall attack on this problematic form of lending. In this report, made possible by the generous support of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, we describe and analyze campaigns in three locales that differ markedly in the opportunities and challenges faced by ordinance advocates. The locales are Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in California (“Silicon Valley”); Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant counties in Texas; and Salt Lake County in Utah. This report finds both commonalities and important variations among these campaigns. While there is no single recipe for a successful ordinance campaign, our comparative analysis suggests the following ten lessons for payday lending opponents and other advocates of social reform via local action.

The Power of Community Action: Anti-Payday Loan Ordinances in Three Metropolitan Areas

Local ordinances that restrict payday lending constitute an important strategy in the overall attack on this problematic form of lending. In this report, made possible by the generous support of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, we describe and analyze campaigns in three locales that differ markedly in the opportunities and challenges faced by ordinance advocates. The locales are Santa Clara and San Mateo counties in California (“Silicon Valley”); Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant counties in Texas; and Salt Lake County in Utah. This report finds both commonalities and important variations among these campaigns. While there is no single recipe for a successful ordinance campaign, our comparative analysis suggests the following ten lessons for payday lending opponents and other advocates of social reform via local action.

Unmanned aerial systems for agriculture and natural resources

Feature Unmanned aerial systems for agriculture and natural resources Sean D. Hogan, Drone Service Coordinator, Informatics and GIS Statewide Program, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Maggi Kelly, Director, Informatics and GIS Statewide Program, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources; Faculty Director, Geospatial Innovation Facility, College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley; Professor and UC Cooperative Extension Specialist, Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley Brandon Stark, Director of the Center of Excellence on Unmanned Aircraft System Safety, UC Merced and UC Office of the President YangQuan Chen, Director, Mechatronics, Embedded Systems and Automation (MESA) Lab, UC Merced S mall unmanned aerial systems (UAS), also known as drones or unmanned aerial vehicles, have a rapidly growing role in research and practice in agriculture and natural resources. Here, we present the parameters and key limitations of the technology, summarize current regulations and cover examples of University of California research enabled by UAS technology. Motorized UAS were introduced as a potential remote sensing tool for scientific research in the late 1970s. However, due to a variety of limitations (the weight and limited functionality of available sensors and cameras, the lack of GPS-guided autopi- lots and so on) these platforms had few practical applica- tions (Przybilla and Wester-Ebbinghaus 1979; Wester- Ebbinghaus 1980; cited by Colomina and Molina 2014). For years, UAS technology was led by military needs and ap- plications. The relatively few applications in research and agriculture included deployments in Japan for crop dusting and in Australia for meteorological studies (Colomina and Molina 2014). In the past decade, several factors have greatly increased the utility and ease of use of UAS, while prices have fallen. Consumer demand drove the hobby craft industry to make major improvements in UAS vehicles. Integrating improved battery tech- nology, miniature inertia measurement units (IMU, initially developed for smartphones), GPS and cus- tomizable apps for smartphones and tablets has deliv- ered improved flight longevity, reliability, ease of use and the ability to better utilize cameras and other sen- sors needed for applications in agriculture and natu- ral resources (see below, Types of UAS). Innovations in sensor technology now include dozens of models of lightweight visible-spectrum and multispectrum cameras capable of capturing reliable, scientifically valid data from UAS platforms (see UAS sensors) (Whitehead and Hugenholtz 2014). Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has helped fa- cilitate increased UAS use, with rule changes adopted in August 2016 that lowered what have previously been significant regulatory obstacles to the legal use of UAS for research and commercial purposes (see Regulations sidebar). UC faculty throughout California are using UAS in a wide range of agricultural and environmental research projects — from grazed rangelands to field crops and orchards, forests, lakes and even the ice sheets of Greenland http://calag.ucanr.edu • JANUARY–MARCH 2017 5 Will Suckow The Inspire 1 drone, made by DJI, flies with an RGB camera over the UC Berkeley Blue Oak Ranch Reserve in Santa Clara County.

A Pediatric Profile of a Homeless Patient in San Jose, California.

The causes of homelessness are complex and poorly understood. This paper describes the homeless population in Santa Clara County, California in terms of Adverse Childhood Events, Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs), and family breakdown. Respondents reported severely traumatic childhoods; 78.7% grew up in a household with a person with drug or alcohol dependence and 64.6% endured psychological abuse as a child. Seventy-six percent of subjects recalled at least one TBI, 58.4% with loss of consciousness. Nineteen percent were in foster care as children and 40.2% reported having someone other than a parent as a primary caregiver. Fifty-three percent felt they had moved too much as children, and 37.5% had experienced homelessness as children. Santa Clara County has both the highest median income and the highest rate of unsheltered homelessness in the nation. Leaders and community members should work together to improve the lives of the home-less and to prevent another generation of homeless people.

A Bone Health Intervention for Chinese Immigrants in Santa Clara County.

Among Chinese immigrants, osteoporosis is undertreated, misdiagnosed, and a leading cause of fragility fractures. In orthopaedic surgery departments, prevention education and health behavior change programs are necessary to improve their bone health. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an osteoporosis prevention education program on participants' self-efficacy with regard to exercise and nutrition when provided by an orthopaedic surgery team during an annual Chinese Health Fair in Santa Clara County, CA. This pilot study used a single-group pretest and posttest design. Chinese immigrants at risk of osteoporosis were recruited during a 1-day health fair. The Bone Health Intervention (BHI) included orthopaedic surgeon consultation, visual aids including osteoporosis images and bone models, a video that included a discussion on calcium and vitamin D in the Chinese diet and culturally-acceptable exercise, and osteoporosis educational handouts. The Osteoporosis Self-Efficacy Scale (OSES) was utilized to measure participants' confidence in the ability to participate in self-care behaviors related to physical activity and calcium intake before and after the intervention. Paired t tests were used to compare participants' OSES scores pre- and postintervention. There was a significant increase in mean OSES scores postintervention, indicating that the intervention could be an effective method of increasing participants' self-efficacy regarding calcium intake and time spent in exercising. These results indicate that a culturally meaningful education program can potentially reduce fragility fracture risk. Orthopaedic health providers are ideal candidates to deliver preventive care education to improve outcomes for Chinese immigrants.

Spatial Modeling of Lidar-Derived Woody Biomass Estimates Collected Along Transects in a Heterogeneous Savanna Landscape

Waveforms from the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite have successfully estimated footprint-level canopy height and aboveground biomass even in structurally complex savanna ecosystems. However, at the landscape level wall-to-wall maps are preferred since they are more easily integrated with other geospatial data products. We evaluated and compared the utility of inverse distance weighting, cokriging, regression kriging and image segmentation methods to create wall-to-wall maps from footprint-level estimates of biomass across a 13 600-Ha Oak savanna landscape in Santa Clara county, California. The four methods estimated biomass with between 39% (inverse distance weighting) and 66% (image segmentation) of variance explained and RMSE of 42% and 32% of the mean, respectively. When more waveforms were available across or along track to characterize patch biomass with the image segmentation method, 78% of variance in biomass was explained (RMSE = 21% of the mean). Overall, the mean biomass estimated by the four methods did not differ significantly but a visual inspection of the output maps showed marked differences in the ability of each model to mimic the primary variable's landscape-level trend. We conclude that transects of lidar data can be used to create wall-to-wall biomass maps in savannas but the methods require a higher sampling intensity and informative auxiliary data to reproduce the variability of the biomass across the landscape. We recommend that future satellite lidar missions increase the sampling intensity across track so that biomass observations are made and characterized at the scale at which they vary

From Clean Rooms to Dirty Water: Labor, Semiconductor Firms, and the Struggle over Pollution and Workplace Hazards in Silicon Valley

This article argues that labor activists initiated Silicon Valley's antitoxics movement and were the driving force behind environmental remediation in the region in the first half of the 1980s. In order to unionize semiconductor plants, activists associated with SCCOSH and United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, a left-wing union, attacked corporate negligence regarding worker safety and health. SCCOSH later allied itself with the Central Labor Council of Santa Clara County to push for the cleanup of aquifers contaminated by the semiconductor industry. The activists ultimately failed to organize Silicon Valley, but their campaigns led to a revolution in safety among microelectronics firms and to large-scale remediation efforts conducted under the EPA's Superfund program.

Pleistocene vertebrates of Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County, California)

Here we report on late Pleistocene fossil vertebrates from new and previously described localities in Santa Clara County, California. The three new localities and specimens include: a partial mammoth pelvis from UCMP V91128 (Lawrence Expressway E); a juvenile cranial specimen of Mammuthus columbi from UCMP V99597 (SCVWD “Lupe” Mammoth), now on display at the San Jose Children’s Discovery Center; and a relatively diverse assemblage of medium- to large-sized mammals, including a nearly complete forelimb of Paramylodon harlani from UCMP V99891 (Babcock’s Bones). We also reassess specimens and assemblages from the following eight previously known localities: Molecular Medicine Building (UCMP V90003); Alma Street Underpass at Page Mill Road (USGS M1203); Mountain View Dump (USGS M1227); Sunnyvale Sewer (USGS M1218); Calabaza, Sunnyvale Sewer (USGS M1218A); Matadero Creek (USGS M1001); Matadero Creek, Veteran’s Hospital (USGS M1202); and Milpitas (UCMP V4916). All localities discussed, except Matadero Creek and Veterans Hospital, are mapped in areas with surficial Holocene deposits, and therefore, these Pleistocene-aged assemblages suggest that Pleistocene deposits are closer to the surface in Santa Clara County than may have been previously thought. Material described here highlights the needed resources for mitigation management in Santa Clara County.

YTH StreetConnect: Development and Usability of a Mobile App for Homeless and Unstably Housed Youth.

BackgroundHomeless and unstably housed (H/UH) youth are disproportionately affected by sexual health issues, including human immunodeficiency virus/sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy, and dating violence, and are at a higher risk for poor mental health and underutilization of services. Research suggests that linking health care to H/UH adolescents might help improve their continuity of care, with most preferring to access health care information via the Internet. YTH StreetConnect is a dual-purpose mobile app that helps H/UH youth access health and vital services in Santa Clara County, CA, USA. We developed YTH StreetConnect PRO in parallel with the youth app as a companion tablet app for providers who serve H/UH youth.ObjectiveThe objective of our study was to develop a mobile app to support H/UH youth and their providers in accessing health and vital resources, and to conduct usability and feasibility testing of the app among H/UH youth and technical consultants with local expertise in serving H/UH youth.MethodsFormative research included a literature review on H/UH youths’ mobile phone and Internet usage. In January 2015, we conducted interviews with medical and service providers of H/UH youth. Usability and feasibility testing were done with target audiences. Additionally, we conducted focus groups with youth regarding the app’s youth friendliness, accessibility, and usefulness.ResultsH/UH youth and their providers noted the app’s functionality, youth friendliness, and resources. Usability testing proposed improvements to the app, including visual updates to the user interface, map icons, new underrepresented resource categories, and the addition of a peer rating system. Limitations included a small sample size among H/UH youth and providers and a single site for the study (Santa Clara County, CA), making the findings ungeneralizable to the US population.ConclusionsYTH StreetConnect is a promising way to increase service utilization, provide referral access, and share resources among H/UH youth and providers. Input from H/UH youth and providers offers insights on how to improve future models of YTH StreetConnect and similar programs that assist H/UH youth.

Notes from the Field: Outbreak of Serogroup B Meningococcal Disease at a University - California, 2016.

On January 31, 2016, the Santa Clara County Public Health Department (SCCPHD) was notified of a suspected case of meningococcal disease in a university undergraduate student. By February 2, two additional suspected cases had been reported in undergraduate students living on the same campus. The index patient (patient A) required intensive care, whereas patients B and C had milder illness; there were no deaths. All three patients were part of overlapping social networks and had attended the same events during the week before the onset of patient A's symptoms, but whether they had direct contact with one another could not be verified. Serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis was identified in cerebrospinal fluid and blood from patient A and in blood from patient B. Serogroup B has been responsible for all U.S. college outbreaks of meningococcal disease since 2011 (1). Laboratory results for patient C were inconclusive.

Epidemiology and Genetic Diversity of Anaplasma phagocytophilum in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

In California, the agent of human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA), Anaplasma phagocytophilum, is transmitted by western black-legged ticks (Ixodes pacificus). Cases of HGA are infrequent in California but do occur annually. We investigated nymphal and adult western black-legged tick populations in 20 recreational areas in California's San Francisco Bay Area (Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma counties). Overall, prevalence of A. phagocytophilum in adult ticks was 0.8% (11/1,465), and in nymphal ticks was 4.2% (24/568), though presence was patchy and prevalence varied locally. We detected significant sequence variation in our quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-positive samples. This included four sequences that grouped within a clade that contains clinical human and veterinary isolates as well as four others that grouped with sequences from PCR-positive lizards from northern California. Tick populations in our study sites harbor genetically diverse strains of A. phagocytophilum, which may influence potential risk in the region.

Perspectives of Mobile Versus Fixed Mammography in Santa Clara County, California: A Focus Group Study.

Objective: Our aim was to examine underserved women’s perceptions on mobile versus fixed mammography in Santa Clara, California through a focus group study.Background: Research has shown that medically underserved women have higher breast cancer mortality rates correlated with under-screening and a disproportional rate of late-stage diagnosis. The Community Health Partnership in Santa Clara County, California runs the Community Mammography Access Project (CMAP) that targets nearly 20,000 medically underserved women over the age of 40 in the county through the collaborative effort of an existing safety net of healthcare providers. However, little data exists on the advantages or disadvantages of mobile mammography units from the patient perspective. Methods: We assessed underserved women’s perspectives on mammography services in Santa Clara County through two focus groups from women screened at mobile or fixed site programs. Patients were recruited from both CMAP clinics and a county hospital, and focus group data were analyzed using content analysis.Results: We found that women from both the mobile and fixed sites shared similar motivating factors for getting a mammogram. Both groups recognized that screening was uncomfortable but necessary for good health and had positive feedback about their personal physicians. However, mobile participants, in particular, appreciated the atmosphere of mobile screening, reported shorter wait times, and remarked on the good communication from the clinic staff and empathetic treatment they received. However, mobile participants also expressed concern about the quality of films at mobile sites due to delayed initial reading of the films. Conclusions: Mobile mammography offers a unique opportunity for women of underserved populations to access high satisfaction screenings, and it encourages a model similar to CMAP in other underserved areas. However, emphasis should be placed on providing a warm and welcoming environment for patients and ensuring the quality of mammography images.