Exploring Black-Jewish Alliances In America And On College Campuses

Black and Jewish communities collaborated substantially from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s. These efforts helped progress educational, political and social equality for Blacks and Jews in America. However, political, racial and economic factors have strained community ties in recent decades. College students at campuses nationwide have begun reviving Black-Jewish relations through joint programming and dialogue. Yale University, The University of Texas at Austin and Brandeis University each house unique models of Black-Jewish collaboration. One-on-one dialogue, coupled with an intentional shift in perspective, can help combat implicit and explicit racial biases in society. The practical and psychological benefits of forming Black-Jewish student alliances on campus far outweigh the time commitment and obstacles that may arise.Plan II Honors Progra

The State of Preschool 2009

Provides data on state-funded pre-K programs for the 2008-09 school year and examines the recession's effects on expanding enrollment and raising standards. Ranks states by percentage of children enrolled, funding per child, and quality benchmarks met

Fashioning Entitlements: A Comparative Law and Economic Analysis of the Judicial Role in Environmental Centralization in the U.S. and Europe

This paper identifies and evaluates, from an economic point of view, the role of the judiciary the steady shift of environmental regulatory authority to higher, more centralized levels of government in both the U.S. and Europe. We supply both a positive analysis of how the decisions made by judges have affected the incentives of both private and public actors to pollute the natural environment, and normative answers to the question of whether judges have acted so as to create incentives that move levels of pollution in an efficient direction, toward their optimal, cost-minimizing (or net-benefit-maximizing) levels. Highlights of the analysis include the following points: 1) Industrial-era local (state or national) legislation awarding entitlements to pollute was almost certainly inefficient due to a fundamental economic obstacle faced by those who suffer harm from the over-pollution of publicly owned natural resources: the inability to monetize and credibly commit to repay the future economic value of reducing pollution. 2) When industrial era pollution spilled across state lines in the US, the federal courts, in particular the Supreme Court, fashioned a federal common law of interstate nuisance that set up essentially the same sort of blurry, uncertain entitlements to pollute or be free of pollution that had been created by the state courts in resolving local pollution disputes. We argue that for the typical pollution problem, a legal regime of blurry interstate entitlements - with neither jurisdiction having a clear right either to pollute or be free of pollution from the other - is likely to generate efficient incentives for interjursidictional bargaining, even despite the public choice problems besetting majority-rule government. Interestingly, a very similar system of de facto entitlements arose and often stimulated interjursidictional bargaining in Europe as well as in the U.S. 3) The US federal courts have generally interpreted the federal environmental statutes in ways that give clear primacy to federal regulators. Through such judicial interpretation, state and local regulators face a continuing risk of having their decisions overridden by federal regulators. This reduces the incentives for regulatory innovation at the state and local level. Judicial authorization of federal overrides has thus weakened the economic rationale for cooperative federalism suggested by economic models of principal-agent relationships. As a result of the principle of attribution, there is less risk in Europe that (like in the US) courts would enlarge the federal purview and thereby limit the powers of the Member States. Despite this principle, the power of the European bureaucracy (that is, the European Commission) has steadily increased and led to a steady shift of environmental regulatory competencies to the European level. This shift is only sometimes normatively desirable, and yet there is little that the ECJ can or will do to slow it

Cross-Reactive T Cells Are Involved in Rapid Clearance of 2009 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza Virus in Nonhuman Primates

In mouse models of influenza, T cells can confer broad protection against multiple viral subtypes when antibodies raised against a single subtype fail to do so. However, the role of T cells in protecting humans against influenza remains unclear. Here we employ a translational nonhuman primate model to show that cross-reactive T cell responses play an important role in early clearance of infection with 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus (H1N1pdm). To “prime” cellular immunity, we first infected 5 rhesus macaques with a seasonal human H1N1 isolate. These animals made detectable cellular and antibody responses against the seasonal H1N1 isolate but had no neutralizing antibodies against H1N1pdm. Four months later, we challenged the 5 “primed” animals and 7 naive controls with H1N1pdm. In naive animals, CD8+ T cells with an activated phenotype (Ki-67+ CD38+) appeared in blood and lung 5–7 days post inoculation (p.i.) with H1N1pdm and reached peak magnitude 7–10 days p.i. In contrast, activated T cells were recruited to the lung as early as 2 days p.i. in “primed” animals, and reached peak frequencies in blood and lung 4–7 days p.i. Interferon (IFN)-γ Elispot and intracellular cytokine staining assays showed that the virus-specific response peaked earlier and reached a higher magnitude in “primed” animals than in naive animals. This response involved both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Strikingly, “primed” animals cleared H1N1pdm infection significantly earlier from the upper and lower respiratory tract than the naive animals did, and before the appearance of H1N1pdm-specific neutralizing antibodies. Together, our results suggest that cross-reactive T cell responses can mediate early clearance of an antigenically novel influenza virus in primates. Vaccines capable of inducing such cross-reactive T cells may help protect humans against severe disease caused by newly emerging pandemic influenza viruses

ATM Deficiency Confers Specific Therapeutic Vulnerabilities in Bladder Cancer

Ataxia-telangiectasia mutated (ATM) plays a central role in the cellular response to DNA damage and ATM alterations are common in several tumor types including bladder cancer. However, the specific impact of ATM alterations on therapy response in bladder cancer is uncertain. Here, we combine preclinical modeling and clinical analyses to comprehensively define the impact of ATM alterations on bladder cancer. We show that ATM loss is sufficient to increase sensitivity to DNA-damaging agents including cisplatin and radiation. Furthermore, ATM loss drives sensitivity to DNA repair-targeted agents including poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and Ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related (ATR) inhibitors. ATM loss alters the immune microenvironment and improves anti-PD1 response in preclinical bladder models but is not associated with improved anti-PD1/PD-L1 response in clinical cohorts. Last, we show that ATM expression by immunohistochemistry is strongly correlated with response to chemoradiotherapy. Together, these data define a potential role for ATM as a predictive biomarker in bladder cancer

Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: Mapping the Milky Way, Nearby Galaxies, and the Distant Universe

We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopy for thousands of nearby galaxies (median $z\sim 0.03$). The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) is mapping the galaxy, quasar, and neutral gas distributions between $z\sim 0.6$ and 3.5 to constrain cosmology using baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions, and the shape of the power spectrum. Within eBOSS, we are conducting two major subprograms: the SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources (SPIDERS), investigating X-ray AGNs and galaxies in X-ray clusters, and the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), obtaining spectra of variable sources. All programs use the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory; observations there began in Summer 2014. APOGEE-2 also operates a second near-infrared spectrograph at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, with observations beginning in early 2017. Observations at both facilities are scheduled to continue through 2020. In keeping with previous SDSS policy, SDSS-IV provides regularly scheduled public data releases; the first one, Data Release 13, was made available in 2016 July

Comparative analysis of metazoan chromatin organization

Genome function is dynamically regulated in part by chromatin, which consists of the histones, non-histone proteins and RNA molecules that package DNA. Studies in Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosoph ..

Association of the PHACTR1/EDN1 genetic locus with spontaneous coronary artery dissection

Background: Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is an increasingly recognized cause of acute coronary syndromes (ACS) afflicting predominantly younger to middle-aged women. Observational studies have reported a high prevalence of extracoronary vascular anomalies, especially fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) and a low prevalence of coincidental cases of atherosclerosis. PHACTR1/EDN1 is a genetic risk locus for several vascular diseases, including FMD and coronary artery disease, with the putative causal noncoding variant at the rs9349379 locus acting as a potential enhancer for the endothelin-1 (EDN1) gene. Objectives: This study sought to test the association between the rs9349379 genotype and SCAD. Methods: Results from case control studies from France, United Kingdom, United States, and Australia were analyzed to test the association with SCAD risk, including age at first event, pregnancy-associated SCAD (P-SCAD), and recurrent SCAD. Results: The previously reported risk allele for FMD (rs9349379-A) was associated with a higher risk of SCAD in all studies. In a meta-analysis of 1,055 SCAD patients and 7,190 controls, the odds ratio (OR) was 1.67 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.50 to 1.86) per copy of rs9349379-A. In a subset of 491 SCAD patients, the OR estimate was found to be higher for the association with SCAD in patients without FMD (OR: 1.89; 95% CI: 1.53 to 2.33) than in SCAD cases with FMD (OR: 1.60; 95% CI: 1.28 to 1.99). There was no effect of genotype on age at first event, P-SCAD, or recurrence. Conclusions: The first genetic risk factor for SCAD was identified in the largest study conducted to date for this condition. This genetic link may contribute to the clinical overlap between SCAD and FMD