Coriolan v. Immigration and Naturalization Service: A Closer Look at Immigration Law and the Political Refugee

Coriolan liberalized current interpretations of immigration law by relaxing, somewhat, the evidentiary burden facing the alien seeking political refuge in the United States. The concepts articulated in Coriolan provide a more humanitarian approach for refugees and are the key to a more realistic interpretation of the law

Vitalism and the new science : Anne Conway's response to the mechanization of nature

Conway espoused the vitalistic theory of matter as an answer to the faults in the mechanical concepts of nature advocated by Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. Her arguments are relevant to current feminist critiques of modernist epistemological paradigms in the hard and social sciences

The dynamic nearest neighbor policy for the multi-vehicle pick-up and delivery problem

In this paper, a dynamic nearest neighbor (DNN) policy is proposed for operating a fleet of vehicles to serve customers, who place calls in a Euclidean service area according to a Poisson process. Each vehicle serves one customer at a time, who has a distinct origin and destination independently and uniformly distributed within the service area. The new DNN policy is a refined version of the nearest neighbor (NN) policy that is well known to perform sub-optimally when the frequency of customer requests is high. The DNN policy maintains geographically closest customer-to-vehicle assignments, due to its ability to divert/re-assign vehicles that may be already en-route to pick up other customers, when another vehicle becomes available or a new customer call arrives. Two other pertinent issues addressed include: the pro-active deployment of the vehicles by anticipating in which regions of the service area future calls are more likely to arise; and, imposition of limits to avoid prohibitively long customer wait times. The paper also presents accurate approximations for all the policies compared. Extensive simulations, some of which are included herein, clearly show the DNN policy to be tangibly superior to the first-comefirst-served (FCFS) and NN policies

Comparison of immunochromatographic test (ICT) and filariasis test strip (FTS) for detecting lymphatic filariasis antigen in American Samoa, 2016

Circulating filarial antigen (Ag) prevalence, measured using rapid point-of-care tests, is the standard indicator used for monitoring and surveillance in the Global Program to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis. In 2015, the immunochromatographic test (ICT) was replaced with the filariasis test strip (FTS), which has higher reported sensitivity. Despite differences in sensitivity, no changes in recommended surveillance targets were made when the FTS was introduced. In 2016, we conducted lymphatic filariasis surveys in American Samoa using FTS, which found higher Ag prevalence than previous surveys that used ICT. To determine whether the increase was real, we assessed the concordance between FTS and ICT results by paired testing of heparinised blood from 179 individuals (63% FTS-positive). ICT had 93.8% sensitivity and 100% specificity for identifying FTS-positive persons, and sensitivity was not associated with age, gender, or presence of microfilariae. Based on these findings, if ICT had been used in the 2016 surveys, the results and interpretation would have been similar to those reported using FTS. American Samoa would have failed Transmission Assessment Survey (TAS) of Grade 1 and 2 children with either test, and community prevalence would not have been significantly different (4.1%, 95% CI, 3.3–4.9% with FTS vs. predicted 3.8%, 95%, CI: 3.1–4.6% with ICT)

The dendritic and T cell responses to herpes simplex virus-1 are modulated by dietary vitamin E

Previous studies from our laboratory have shown that dietary α-tocopherol (vitamin EVE) is essential for regulating the cytokine and chemokine response in the brain to herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1) infection. The timing of T cell infiltration is critical to the resolution of central nervous system HSV-1 infections. Specifically, the appearance of “neuroprotective” CD8+IFN-γ+ T cells is crucial. During CNS infection, CD8+ T cell priming and expansion in the draining lymph node, followed by recruitment and expansion occurs in the spleen with subsequent accumulation in the brain. Weanling male BALB/cByJ mice were placed on VE deficient (Def) or adequate (Adq) diets for 4 weeks followed by intranasal infection with HSV-1. VE Def mice had fewer CD8+IFN-γ+ T cells trafficking to the brain despite increased CD8+IFN-γ+ T cells and activated dendritic cells in the periphery. VE Def mice had increased T regulatory cells in the periphery and brain and the increase in Tregs decreases CD8+ T cell numbers in the brain. Our results demonstrate that adequate levels of VE are important for trafficking antigen-specific T cells to the brain and dietary VE levels modulate T regulatory and dendritic cells in the periphery

Difficult Dialogues: Faculty Responses to a Gender Bias Literacy Training Program

Diversity training is challenging and can evoke strong emotional responses from participants including resistance, shame, confusion, powerlessness, defensiveness, and anger. These responses create complex situations for both presenters and other learners. We observed 3 experienced presenters as they implemented 41 gender bias literacy workshops for 376 faculty from 42 STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) departments at one Midwestern university. We recorded questions and answers as well as participants’ non-verbal activity during each 2.5-hour workshop. Employing content analysis and critical incident technique, we identified content that elicited heightened activity and challenging dialogues among presenters and faculty. Results from analysis of this observational data found three important findings: (1) presenters continually reinforced the idea that implicit bias is ordinary and pervasive, thus avoiding participant alienation by allowing participants to protect their self-worth and integrity; (2) difficult dialogues were managed calmly without verbal sparring or relinquishing control; (3) the presenters created an environment where individuals were more likely to accept threatening information