The Impact Of Immigration Policies On Local Enforcement, Crime And Policing Efficiency

Following a period of increasing immigration enforcement under George W. Bush\u27s administration, the Obama administration reversed immigration policies and issued strict new guidelines to relax enforcement in 2011. The purpose of this paper is to exploit this natural experiment in the enforcement of the immigration laws to study the effects of federal immigration policies on local enforcement, crime and policing efficiency. I use a unique and new data set obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request on several steps of the deportation process. I estimate how the drop in federal immigration enforcement affected county level enforcement, local crime rates and policing efficiency. My empirical analysis suggests that Democratic counties complemented federal policies, by reducing their immigration enforcement, whereas Republican counties tended to maintain higher levels of enforcement and to not react much to the guidelines. Employing a triple-difference approach, I find that Democratic counties with higher non-citizen population shares saw greater increases in clearance rates, a measure of policing efficiency, with no increase in crime rates. The results indicate that reducing immigration enforcement did not increase crime and rather led to an increase in policing efficiency, either because it allowed police to focus efforts on solving more serious crimes or because it elicited greater cooperation of non-citizens with police

Metamodeling of the learning-hiding competition between tumours and the immune system: A kinematic approach

The competitive interaction between the Immune System and tumours is very complex, being non-linear and, to some extent, evolutionary. A fundamental aspect of this evolution is the asynchronous process of mutual learning of the two populations involved the tumoural and the immune cells. In this work, to describe them, we propose a simple non-linear family of super-macroscopic models with non-monotonically time-varying coefficients. Numerical simulations of transitory phases complement the theoretical analysis

Health Screening for Emerging and Non-Communicable Disease Burdens Among the Global Poor

Among adults in rural Malawi, population health screening for high blood pressure (BP) led to a 22-percentage point drop in the likelihood of being hypertensive four years later. Individuals with elevated BP received a referral letter upon initial screening; at follow-up, they had lower BP and higher self-reported mental health than individuals with similar BP who were just below the threshold for referral. Population health screenings can reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases in low-income countries

Health Screening for Emerging Disease Burdens Among the Global Poor

Evidence for the effectiveness of population health screenings to reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases in low income countries remains very limited. We investigate the sustained effects of a health screening in Malawi where individuals received a referral letter if they had elevated blood pressure. Using a regression discontinuity design and a matching estimator, we find that receiving a referral letter reduced blood pressure and the probability of being hypertensive by about 22 percentage points four years later. These lasting effects are explained by a 20 percentage points increase in the probability of being diagnosed with hypertension. There is also evidence of an increase in the uptake of medication, while we do not identify improvements in hypertension-related knowledge or risk behaviors. The health screening had some positive effects on mental health. Overall, this study suggests that population-based hypertension screening interventions are an effective tool to improve health in low-income contexts

Mortality Risk Information, Survival Expectations and Sexual Behaviors

Individuals in low-income settings are often overly pessimistic about their own survival, suggesting that better knowledge about survival risks might encourage investments in health. This paper provides evidence from a randomized experiment that provided mature adults aged 45+ in Malawi with information about mortality risks. Treated individuals are less likely to engage in risky sexual practices one year after the intervention, and they increase other forward-looking behaviors such as investments in agriculture. Expectations of HIV+ people living longer, which makes the pool of potential partners riskier, are a primary driver of reduced sexual risk taking in response to the intervention

The political economy of immigration enforcement: conflict and cooperation under federalism

Selection forces often confound the effects of policy changes. In the immigration enforcement context, we tackle this challenge tracking arrested immigrants along the deportation pipeline, isolating local and federal efforts. 80% of counties exhibit strategic substitutabilities in responding to federal enforcement, while the federal level is very effective at directing its efforts toward cooperative counties. We estimate that changes in the profile of immigration cases, and not weakened federal efforts, drove the reduction in deportations following a 2011 shift in federal priorities. Reducing immigration-court discretion and removing their dependence from the executive would have a significant impact on deportations

Curtailing COVID-19 on a Dollar-a-Day in Malawi: Implications for the Ongoing Pandemic

Utilizing population-based data from the COVID-19 phone survey (N=2,262$) of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) collected during June 2nd--August 17th, 2020, we investigate behavioral, economic and social responses COVID-19 and focus on the crucial role that community leadership and trust in institutions play towards shaping these responses. We argue that the effective response of Malawi to limit the spread of the virus was facilitated by the engagement of local leaders to mobilize communities to adapt and adhere to COVID-19 prevention strategies. Village heads (VHs) played pivotal role in shaping individual\u27s knowledge about the pandemic and the adaption of preventive health behaviors and were crucial for mitigating the negative economic and health consequences of the pandemic. We further show that trust in institutions is of particular importance in shaping individuals\u27 behavior during the pandemic, and these findings highlight the pivotal role of community leadership in fostering better compliance and adoption of public health measures essential to contain the virus. Overall, our findings point to distinctive patterns of pandemic response in a low-income sub-Saharan African rural population that emphasized local leadership as mediators of public health messages and policies. These lessons from the first pandemic wave remain relevant as in many low-income countries behavioral responses to COVID-19 will remain the primary prevention strategy for a foreseeable future

On systems of active particles perturbed by symmetric bounded noises : a multiscale kinetic approach

We consider an ensemble of active particles, i.e., of agents endowed by internal variables u(t). Namely, we assume that the nonlinear dynamics of u is perturbed by realistic bounded symmetric stochastic perturbations acting nonlinearly or linearly. In the absence of birth, death and interactions of the agents (BDIA) the system evolution is ruled by a multidimensional Hypo-Elliptical Fokker–Plank Equation (HEFPE). In presence of nonlocal BDIA, the resulting family of models is thus a Partial Integro-differential Equation with hypo-elliptical terms. In the numerical simulations we focus on a simple case where the unperturbed dynamics of the agents is of logistic type and the bounded perturbations are of the Doering–Cai–Lin noise or the Arctan bounded noise. We then find the evolution and the steady state of the HEFPE. The steady state density is, in some cases, multimodal due to noise-induced transitions. Then we assume the steady state density as the initial condition for the full system evolution. Namely we modeled the vital dynamics of the agents as logistic nonlocal, as it depends on the whole size of the population. Our simulations suggest that both the steady states density and the total population size strongly depends on the type of bounded noise. Phenomena as transitions to bimodality and to asymmetry also occur

Holotranscobalamin Is a Useful Marker of Vitamin B12 Deficiency in Alcoholics

Background. Measurement of serum cobalamin (Cbl) levels is the standard investigation for assessing vitamin B12 deficiency. Falsely increased values of Cbl can be caused by alcoholic liver disease. Measurement of total vitamin B12 serum levels might be misleading in alcoholics, because a tissue metabolic deficiency is possible even with normal serum Cbl levels. Holotranscobalamin (HoloTC), the Cbl metabolically active fraction, is considered as a better index of vitamin B12 deficiency. Methods. For assessing vitamin B12 status, we evaluated 22 adult alcoholic male patients by measuring in parallel serum Cbl, serum folate and red blood cell folate levels, HoloTC levels by the AxSYM assay. Results. HoloTC values were reduced in 3 alcoholics with borderline-low Cbl values. Significant positive correlations were found between serum Cbl and HoloTC levels, serum Cbl and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT). Conclusion. HoloTC measurement is a useful option for assessing vitamin B12 status in alcoholics, particularly in the subjects with borderline Cbl values and may be considered an early marker of vitamin B12 deficiency

Educación ambiental y modelo matemático para conocer un inventario de emisiones presentado en un sitio web

El tráfico vehicular es fuente de emisión de contaminantes que contribuyen a afectar el clima. Un inventario de emisiones vehiculares es la herramienta base para el análisis de la dispersión de contaminantes. Su determinación requiere de mediciones que deben realizarse por organismos oficiales, los cuales no disponen de toda la aparatología necesaria, otros se pueden estimar por modelos matemáticos. Se presenta una interacción entre el proyecto de investigación “Inventario de emisiones vehiculares y estudio de la dispersión de contaminantes gaseosos en el área del gran San Juan”, y el uso de sus resultados, para estimar datos faltantes por métodos numéricos