Lawful Permanent Residency: What the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services Giveth, It Can Also Take Away

Millions of foreigners strive to become Lawful Permanent Residents of the United States, but that status is limited to those immigrants who meet certain requirements and comply with extensive procedures. There is ample U.S. case law interpreting what it means to be “lawfully admitted for permanent residence.” Until the Sixth Circuit’s decision in 2017 in Kamal Turfah v. United States Citizenship & Immigration Services, however, no circuit court had found that a solely procedural error committed by U.S. immigration authorities could prevent an otherwise eligible immigrant from receiving lawful admission for Lawful Permanent Residency. This Comment assesses the unique situation that the plaintiff in Turfah presented when he was deemed unlawfully admitted, not because of his lack of entitlement to lawful permanent residency, but because U.S. immigration authorities failed to prevent him from entering the country before his father. Further, this Comment analyzes the consequences of the Sixth Circuit’s decision that places an undue burden on immigrants to ensure that immigration authorities are not negligent in their duties, as well as leaves immigrants who were otherwise entitled to lawful permanent residency with their status in flux and with no clear pathway to naturalization

Non-incremental parsing strategies: the role of short-term working memory

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston UniversityThis study sought to investigate further the findings of Caplan et al. (2011) that heightened self-paced reading [SPR] times may cmrelate positively with comprehension measures at points of significantly increased processing load, indicating use of atypical non-incremental parsing methods. Reading comprehension tasks were presented in SPR and eye-tracking paradigms, and three measures of short-term working memory [ST- WM] were administered. Experimental stimuli consisted of early-closure and late-closure sentences, as the former require the reader to revise his or her initial parse of the sentence at a disambiguating word (creating a point of significantly increased processing load) while the latter do not. Independent variables included WM capacity and sentence type, and dependent variables included self-paced reading time [RT], comprehension accuracy, and five measures of eye fixations: first fixation duration, go past time, dwell time, regression out, and regression in. It was hypothesized that participants would show heightened RT correlating positively with comprehension accuracy at the disambiguating point of the early-closure sentences. It was further predicted that this would correspond with a heightened probability of regression out of the area at this same point. Finally, it was predicted that participants with higher ST-WM capacity would be more likely to show these effects, as they were more likely to use them successfully. No correlation between RT and accuracy was found in the SPR paradigm, and while participants did show heightened probability of regression out of the critical phrase in the early-closure than in the late closure sentences, this phenomenon was also present at nearly all other points in the sentence. A significant interaction between ST-WM capacity and sentence type on RT, such that participants with higher WM capacity showed supra-additively high RT at the critical point in early-closure sentences, was observed. This finding indicates that readers with higher ST-WM capacity may persist in processing sentences longer than their lower ST-WM capacity peers, as argued by Stine-Morrow, Ryan, and Leonard (2000)

The Inner Workings of Working Memory:The Effects of Aging and Language Impairment on Tasks Examining Verbal Working Memory

Wright et al. (2007) tested Persons with Aphasia (PWA) using three N-Back tasks featuring different types of linguistic information - phonological, semantic, and syntactic -- to determine whether Verbal Working Memory (VWM) is a single, united resource. The current study tested three PWA with the same tasks, as well as an additional vision-focused task, to expand on this previous research; two groups of cognitively normal individuals were tested using the same protocol to provide a baseline for comparison. Results from the unimpaired groups indicated no effects of aging, and significant differences in performance across all types of information except phonological and visual cues. Results from PWA were inconclusive. The N-Back task, however, was found to cause misleading patterns in accuracy scores for some tests; sensitivity scores are suggested as a better measure of performance on this testing paradigm

Case Report: Recurrent Staphylococcal Scalded Skin Syndrome in Healthy Term Neonate Despite Full Course of Antibiotic Therapy

Background Staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome (SSSS) describes a blistering skin infection caused by the exfoliative toxin in the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. It more commonly affects the infant population and is characterized by large blistering bullae that rupture upon application of pressure. Case description We describe a case of recurrent SSSS in a healthy term neonate who initially presented with a perioral rash on day of life (DOL) 11 that quickly became vesicular with new lesions on the sternum and extremities. The patient’s rash began to resolve upon administration of culture-specific IV antibiotics. She was appropriately treated with a 14-day course and was discharged home. The patient returned on DOL 35 with a perioral rash and generalized reddening of the skin. She was admitted and placed empirically on nafcillin, clindamycin, and vancomycin for concerning recurrence of SSSS. At this time, consults were placed to Dermatology, as well as Allergy & Immunology for possible Epidermolysis Bullosa and immune deficiency. Skin biopsy revealed development of recurrent SSSS. Patient finished another 14-day course of IV antibiotics and was discharged home with resolution of the rash. Conclusion This report discusses a case of recurrent SSSS in a term neonate who received two full courses of antibiotics and has since fully recovered. Key words: Staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome, epidermolysis bullosa, disease recurrenc

Postbaccalaureate STEM Students’ Perceptions of their Training: Exploring the Intersection of Gender and Nativity

The number of international students in graduate school within STEM fields at US institutions has risen dramatically over the last few decades, whereas the numbers of US women attending graduate school in STEM fields has largely stagnated. These trends suggest the importance of intersectionality to understanding individuals’ pursuit of STEM careers. Here we examined doctoral (N = 270) and postdoctoral (N = 27) students\u27 satisfaction with their graduate training at a large, research focused institution in the US as a function of the intersection of participants’ gender and nativity. Participants completed measures of occupational values, perceived fit of their values with STEM research careers, perceptions of discrimination, mentor support, and satisfaction with their graduate training. Results indicated that both international and US-born women both valued family flexibility more than did international and US-born men. Importantly, international, but not US-born, women viewed careers in STEM research as affording, or providing a means of fulfilling, their values. Furthermore, US women were more likely than international women to perceive their gender as the target of discrimination. Stronger belief that research careers do not provide a means for fulfilling one’s values and greater perceptions of gender discrimination were associated with lower ratings of satisfaction with graduate training among women but not men

The inner workings of working memory: Preliminary data from unimpaired populations

Wright et al. (2007) tested Persons With Aphasia (PWA) using three N-Back tasks featuring different types of linguistic information – phonological, semantic, and syntactic -- to determine whether Verbal Working Memory (VWM) is a single, united resource.  The current study tested two groups of cognitively normal individuals with the same tasks, as well as an additional vision-focused task, to expand on this previous research and provide a baseline for future studies of WM in PWA.  Results indicated no effects of aging outside of Reaction Times, and significant differences in performance across all types of information except phonological and visual cues

Not enough, or maybe too much: Associative deficit vs. hyper-binding models of aging in implicit learning

Background. This project investigated the effects of cognitive aging on implicit learning [IL] by testing the competing predictions of two models. One model, the Associative Deficit Hypothesis [ADH], suggests that older adults [OAs] have a specific deficit in their ability to form new relationships in memory, whereas the Hyper-Binding Hypothesis [HBH] suggests that age differences in IL stem from attentional changes in later life. Aims. We contrasted the predictions of these models by addressing the following aims: 1. Determine whether OAs show more context dependence in IL tasks than younger adults. 2. Determine whether OAs show greater interference from unattended stimuli during IL tasks than younger adults. Method. We tested context dependence using a novel protocol that manipulated the informativity of objects and their contexts during a word-learning task, and we adapted an established protocol to examine interference from unattended linguistic stimuli. Results. Neither protocol revealed reliable main effects of age on the learning measure, counter to the predictions of both the ADH and the HBH, although this may be a result of relatively small sample sizes and a wide age range in the older age group. Both experiments provided tentative support of the HBH in their higher-order interactions, but some interactions in the interference protocol contradicted elements of the HBH’s predictions. Post-experimental interviews suggested that participants completed the contextual dependence protocol implicitly but may have been explicitly aware of the patterns present in the interference protocol. Future studies should focus on narrowing the age range of older participants and increasing sample sizes, and in the case of the interference protocol, separating effects of different sources of interference (i.e. interference from attended stimuli versus interference from unattended stimuli.

“Posts are my own”: effects of social media disclaimers on perceptions of employees and their organizations from tweets and retweets

PURPOSE – This study empirically assesses the perceptions the public has of employees and their organization following a [re]tweet, and the additional potential ameliorating effect of a disclaimer distancing the organization from the individual employee’s social media presence. DESIGN/METHOD/APPROACH – A fully-crossed 2 (disclaimer v. no disclaimer) × 2 (positive v. negative valence post) × 2 (post v. retweet) experiment exposed participants (N = 173) to an employee’s personal tweet. Resultant perceptions of both the poster (i.e., goodwill) and the poster’s organization (i.e., organizational reputation) were analyzed using planned contrast analyses. FINDINGS – Findings reveal audiences form impressions of individuals based on both tweeted and retweeted content. Perceptions of both the poster’s goodwill and the poster’s organization were commensurate with the valence of the poster’s tweets, stronger when posts were original tweets rather than retweets, and there was a significant interaction effect between valence and [re]tweet. Disclaimers did not significantly affect perceptions, suggesting employers may be better-served by asking employees to omit reference to their employer on their personal social media accounts. ORIGINALITY/VALUE – This research contributes to understanding how employee and organizational reputations are affected by employees’ personal social media content. Results suggest even when a disclaimer explicitly seeks to distance the employee from the organization, audiences still see the employee as informal brand ambassadors of their organization