Permanent Employment-Based Immigration and the Per-country Ceiling

[Excerpt] The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) specifies a complex set of categories and numerical limits for admitting lawful permanent residents (LPRs) to the United States that includes economic priorities among the admission criteria. These priorities are addressed primarily through the employment-based immigration system, which consists of five preference categories. Each preference category has specific eligibility criteria; numerical limits; and, in some cases, distinct application processes. The INA allocates 140,000 visas annually for all five employment-based LPR categories, roughly 12% of the 1.1 million LPRs admitted in FY2017. The INA further limits each immigrant-sending country to an annual maximum of 7% of all employment-based LPR admissions, known as the per-country ceiling, or “cap.” Prospective employment-based immigrants follow two administrative processing trajectories depending on whether they apply from overseas as “new arrivals” seeking LPR status or from within the United States seeking to adjust to LPR status from a temporary status that they currently possess. While some prospective employment-based immigrants can self-petition, most require U.S. employers to petition on their behalf. In both cases, the Department of State (DOS) is responsible for allocating the correct number of employment-based immigrant “visa numbers” or slots, according to numerical limits and the per-country ceiling specified in the INA. This report reviews the employment-based immigration process by examining six pools of pending petitions and applications, representing prospective employment-based immigrants and any accompanying family members at different stages of the LPR process. While four of these pools represent administrative processing queues, two result from the INA’s numerical limitations on employment-based immigration and the per-country ceiling

Algorithms for Efficient Top-Down Join Enumeration

For a DBMS that provides support for a declarative query language like SQL, the query optimizer is a crucial piece of software. The declarative nature of a query allows it to be translated into many equivalent evaluation plans. The process of choosing a suitable plan from all alternatives is known as query optimization. The basis of this choice are a cost model and statistics over the data. Essential for the costs of a plan is the execution order of join operations in its operator tree, since the runtime of plans with different join orders can vary by several orders of magnitude. An exhaustive search for an optimal solution over all possible operator trees is computationally infeasible. To decrease complexity, the search space must be restricted. Therefore, a well-accepted heuristic is applied: All possible bushy join trees are considered, while cross products are excluded from the search. There are two efficient approaches to identify the best plan: bottom-up and top-down join enumeration. But only the top-down approach allows for branch-and-bound pruning, which can improve compile time by several orders of magnitude, while still preserving optimality. Hence, this thesis focuses on the top-down join enumeration. In the first part, we present two efficient graph-partitioning algorithms suitable for top-down join enumeration. However, as we will see, there are two severe limitations: The proposed algorithms can handle only (1) simple (binary) join predicates and (2) inner joins. Therefore, the second part adopts one of the proposed partitioning strategies to overcome those limitations. Furthermore, we propose a more generic partitioning framework that enables every graph-partitioning algorithm to handle join predicates involving more than two relations, and outer joins as well as other non-inner joins. As we will see, our framework is more efficient than the adopted graph-partitioning algorithm. The third part of this thesis discusses the two branch-and-bound pruning strategies that can be found in the literature. We present seven advancements to the combined strategy that improve pruning (1) in terms of effectiveness, (2) in terms of robustness and (3), most importantly, avoid the worst-case behavior otherwise observed. Different experiments evaluate the performance improvements of our proposed methods. We use the TPC-H, TPC-DS and SQLite test suite benchmarks to evaluate our joined contributions

Optimization Techniques for Complex Multi-query Applications

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Extending dynamic-programming-based plan generators: beyond pure enumeration

The query optimizer plays an important role in a database management system supporting a declarative query language, such as SQL. One of its central components is the plan generator, which is responsible for determining the optimal join order of a query. Plan generators based on dynamic programming have been known for several decades. However, some significant progress in this field has only been made recently. This includes the emergence of highly efficient enumeration algorithms and the ability to optimize a wide range of queries by supporting complex join predicates. This thesis builds upon the recent advancements by providing a framework for extending the aforementioned algorithms. To this end, a modular design is proposed that allows for the exchange of individual parts of the plan generator, thus enabling the implementor to add new features at will. This is demonstrated by taking the example of two previously unsolved problems, namely the correct and complete reordering of different types of join operators as well as the efficient reordering of join operators and grouping operators

Enduring Ethnic Conflict: The Institutional Origins of Conflict in Myanmar

Myanmar has a history of divisive institutions built during the British colonial period and the Japanese occupation. Colonial legacies suggest Myanmar’s enduring ethnic conflict is path dependent, sustained by a self-reproductive system of violence. Yet, wartime disruption and Japanese institution building, as well as later ceasefire politics and limited ethnic defection, challenge theories of path dependency. This thesis compares distinct periods of institution building and the experiences of three ethnic minority groups in Myanmar, revealing a disastrous institutional trajectory that continues to reinforce ethnic conflict. In doing so, this thesis yields key insights to the conditions that precipitate change in the behavioral expression of ethnic identity during conflict

Isolation of Circulating Tumor Cells with Acoustophoresis : Towards a biomarker assay for prostate cancer

Microfluidics has emerged as an essential approach in the development of novel technological platforms to detect and isolate rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood of cancer patients. Micro-scaled fluidic systems offer means to precisely control fluid flow. This enables cell separation when combined with techniques for manipulating cells across fluid streams. Various microfluidic methods have been developed, either using passively generated forces or an applied force field methodology to move cells across streamlines. Acoustophoresis uses ultrasonic standing waves to separate cells and particles in microfluidic channels. An acoustic standing wave field generates acoustic forces that acts on cells and particles based on their individual acoustic properties and forms the basis for the cell separation technology explored in this thesis. In this dissertation, a novel approach for live CTC isolation has been developed. Micron-sized elastomeric particles with negative acoustic contrast were used for negative selection acoustophoresis. The surface of the elastomeric particles was functionalized to bind WBCs through the CD45 antigen, which enabled their transportation to pressure antinodes and facilitated an enrichment of cancer cells at the pressure node. Live cell negative selection acoustophoresis was demonstrated as a proof-of-concept study in paper 1 and was further extended to carry out processing of whole blood by a two-step acoustophoresis method in paper 2. The sample throughput is an important parameter for microfluidic processing of clinical samples, especially for rare cell applications where a larger volume might be required for the detection of target cells. In paper 3, a fluid inertia phenomenon that may compromise cell separation performance at higher flow velocities was discovered. The inertial effects in an acoustofluidic device at increased sample throughputs and its consequences on particle separations were therefore investigated. Through numerical modelling and experimental validation, the main reason for the impaired acoustophoresis separation, at elevated flow rates, was attributed to the formation of a curved fluid boundary between the sample and sheath flow, both at the inlet of the separation channel as well as at the outlet flow splitter.Finally, paper 4 outlines the benchmarking of CTC-acoustophoresis to the FDA cleared CELLSEARCH system in a comparative clinical study. Higher numbers of CTCs were detected after acoustophoretic processing of the patient samples as compared to the CELLSEARCH system. Further studies are currently being conducted to establish the full performance characteristics of CTC-acoustophoresis in the laboratory setting.To conclude, the presented dissertation extends the use of acoustophoresis towards the clinical application of CTC enrichment of live and fixed cells. The aim of establishing an efficient technology that can target the full heterogeneity of the rare tumor cells is essential for the development of novel CTC biomarker assays for metastatic cancer. This dissertation builds towards the goal of an unbiased CTC isolation approach

Isolation and Analysis of Circulating Tumor Cells in Genitourinary Cancers

While accessible by a relatively noninvasive blood draw, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) remain difficult to study because of their rarity and their presence amongst the billions of surrounding normal blood cells. Of particular promise and utility to the in-depth study of CTCs are those technologies making use of microfluidics and nanomaterials, such as the graphene oxide (GO) Chip. The GO Chip has been applied to a 41-patient metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) cohort. CTCs were enumerated from whole blood for all patients (range: 3-166 CTCs/mL, median: 20 CTCs/mL). Clusters of CTCs, defined as two or more directly adjacent CTCs, were observed in 26/41 patients, and ranged in size from 2-8 CTCs/cluster. Within the CTC population, the percentage of CTCs present as clusters ranged from 0-54.8%. Additionally, a parallel device was run for 36 patients to ultimately obtain RNA to use in RT-qPCR to assess levels of 96 genes of interest. Enumeration and RNA expression data were compared with clinical outcomes including overall survival, radioclinical progression, and PSA progression. An eight-gene score was determined to be highly prognostic of overall survival (AUC: 0.88), with the genes comprising the score suggesting the importance of a dedifferentiated expression phenotype in poor prognosis. Follow-up work in prostate cancer investigated the role of HER2 and EGFR in prostate cancer metastasis. Analysis of tissue microarrays showed HER2 expression in prostate cancer and bone metastases. Primary and secondary prostate sphere formation was dependent on high EGFR expression as determined by FACS, but not on HER2 expression. EGFR was also implicated in survival in transit as shown by the presence of EGFR+ CTCs isolated by the GO Chip in 9/10 mCRPC patients assays, with an average of 35.5% of CTCs showing EGFR expression. Dual inhibition of HER2 and EGFR in mouse xenograft models prevented tumor growth. HER2 and EGFR as well as ADAM15 and CD31 were studied in bladder cancer CTCs as well. In a preliminary study primarily for optimization, antibodies were chosen for higher sensitivity capture as well as to stain bladder CTCs for the markers of interest. Ultimately, CTCs were isolated from five metastatic bladder cancer patients (range: 5-499 CTCs/mL), and a combination of staining antibodies that showed low background in the healthy control was chosen. EGFR+ and CD31+ CTCs were observed, while HER+ and ADAM15+ CTCs were not, and clusters of CTCs were isolated from some patients. To address drawbacks in the current technology, two strategies were attempted to enable cell release. A layer-by-layer (LbL) substrate enclosed in a microfluidic chamber featured different disadvantages based on film composition, but a thermosensitive polymer substrate enable release when cooled below its lower critical solution temperature of 12-13°C. The polymer-GO composite showed between 84.9 and 95.2% capture efficiency of EpCAM expressing cell lines and released over 91% of cells captured from whole blood. Using this device, CTCs were captured from 2/3 pancreatic cancer patients and 8/10 breast cancer patients. FISH for HER2 was performed on CTCs isolated from one breast cancer patient. With high performing technologies to separate them from the noise of other cells in the blood, CTCs can provide information about disease spread in genitourinary cancers. The future incorporation of CTC-related information into clinical decision making has the potential to better inform treatment selection and disease prognosis.PHDChemical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140934/1/mollykoz_1.pd

Computer-Based Modeling of K-12 Faculty Activities: A Case Study

This thesis sought to lay the foundation for an application for tracking K-12 teacher activities. Its primary contribution is a descriptive model of K-12 activities. The work\u27s starting point, the Faculty Activities System project, is an ETSU initiative that seeks to produce a tool for university-level academic accountabilities management. It was possible to adapt the FAS project\u27s data model for K-12 activities. The resulting model was validated by experts in the field of education and teachers and administrators across Tennessee. A second strategy for model validation, using national and state legislation and expert recommendations, determined that the model did well at capturing teachers\u27 professional growth and contributions to the school and community, but fell short at capturing student improvement, the learning environment, teaching strategies, portfolios, and self-assessment. The data model was realized as a multi-file XML schema, which was tested for well-formedness and validity using a sample data document

U.S. MEDIATED PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN A CRISIS: ROMANIAN CASE ANALYSIS OF ROMANIAN MEDIA VERSUS U.S. EMBASSY FRAMING

This thesis studies a case of U.S. mediated public diplomacy in Romania by analyzing the Romanian media framing as compared to the U.S. embassy’s framing of a public diplomacy crisis. It seeks to participate in the discussion about public diplomacy in general and mediated public diplomacy in particular. The case, from 2004, concerns the death of Romanian rock star, Teo Peter, in a car accident caused by an American marine serving in the U.S. embassy. A public diplomacy crisis situation focuses on the U.S. mediated public diplomacy efforts to prevent damaging its image; and also intensifies media’s interest on writing about the subject. The analysis in this study is based on the investigation of the similarities and differences in the frames used in the press releases and news articles to construct the image of the same event. The thesis employs Entman’s concept of U.S. mediated public diplomacy when analyzing the framing process of two of the major actors presented in his model: the target nation media and the U.S. public and media diplomacy (U.S. officials in that country). Benoit’s model is used to better explain the press releases’ framing. Framing analysis was chosen as a qualitative research method, as this study aims to explore the images created by mass media or by public diplomacy efforts (through the press releases) when they construct a specific reality for the same public diplomacy crisis. Three major Romanian national, daily newspapers and the U.S. embassy’s press releases were analyzed. The findings revealed that the Romanian media framed the public diplomacy crisis in a different way than the U.S. officials framed it. It seems that the U.S. failed in promoting its framing of the public diplomacy crisis to the Romanian media and therefore the public