Centering Race and Structural Racism in Immigration Policy Research: Considerations and Lessons from the Field

Foregrounding race and racism in immigration research is a critical priority because the majority of immigrants in the US are people of color, and conceptions of race intersect with the lived experiences of immigrant communities at multiple levels. Historical and structural racism have also shaped immigration policies and other policies that lead to disparities in outcomes. Yet the intersections between the US immigration system and racism have been neglected in both policy and policy research circles. This is critical for understanding the experiences of all immigrants of color and their descendants, including Latino immigrants, whose identities have been racialized, as well as Black, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Indigenous, and other immigrants who have received less attention in policy research but constitute a rising share of new immigrant arrivals. These issues were explored in a September 2021 virtual workshop on centering race and structural racism in immigration policy research that convened leaders in policy research and advocacy. Discussions focused on how race and structural racism influence the experiences of immigrants, who policy research has left out, and which policies and issues demand research attention. In addition, the discussion explored how immigration policy researchers can work with community partners and address data limitations. This brief provides key priorities and themes discussed during the workshop and identifies promising practices, ideas, and considerations for better addressing the intersections between immigration, race, and structural racism in policy-oriented research

Bilirubin-Induced Neurological Damage: Current and Emerging iPSC-Derived Brain Organoid Models

Bilirubin-induced neurological damage (BIND) has been a subject of studies for decades, yet the molecular mechanisms at the core of this damage remain largely unknown. Throughout the years, many in vivo chronic bilirubin encephalopathy models, such as the Gunn rat and transgenic mice, have further elucidated the molecular basis of bilirubin neurotoxicity as well as the correlations between high levels of unconjugated bilirubin (UCB) and brain damage. Regardless of being invaluable, these models cannot accurately recapitulate the human brain and liver system; therefore, establishing a physiologically recapitulating in vitro model has become a prerequisite to unveil the breadth of complexities that accompany the detrimental effects of UCB on the liver and developing human brain. Stem-cell-derived 3D brain organoid models offer a promising platform as they bear more resemblance to the human brain system compared to existing models. This review provides an explicit picture of the current state of the art, advancements, and challenges faced by the various models as well as the possibilities of using stem-cell-derived 3D organoids as an efficient tool to be included in research, drug screening, and therapeutic strategies for future clinical applications

Content Analysis of Hospital Reviews From Differing Sources: Does Review Source Matter?

Social media has had an impact on how patients find and evaluate medical professionals and their experiences of modern healthcare. Qualitative research in healthcare has increased its focus on social media. The present study examined 497 reviews of hospitals in the Pittsburgh area across three websites: Google, Yelp, and Healthgrades. Using computerized content analysis tools (CATA), we analyzed positive and negative comments to identify key themes. Key themes and words included “doctor,” “hospital,” “staff,” and “time.” These findings highlight the importance of medical staff to patient experience. Results indicated that Yelp had the lowest average rating. CATA also revealed that the central term for Google reviews was “hospital,” for Healthgrades reviews it was “doctor,” and the central term for Yelp reviews was “patient.” These central terms reflect the focus of each website. The present study highlights the importance of healthcare professionals understanding the source of reviews and being cautious about how social media comments are used in decision-making about the practice. Future research should try to expand this approach to other cities and countries to evaluate cross-cultural effects on social media comments

On the Integration of Blockchain and SDN: Overview, Applications, and Future Perspectives

Blockchain (BC) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are leading technologies which have recently found applications in several network-related scenarios and have consequently experienced a growing interest in the research community. Indeed, current networks connect a massive number of objects over the Internet and in this complex scenario, to ensure security, privacy, confidentiality, and programmability, the utilization of BC and SDN have been successfully proposed. In this work, we provide a comprehensive survey regarding these two recent research trends and review the related state-of-the-art literature. We first describe the main features of each technology and discuss their most common and used variants. Furthermore, we envision the integration of such technologies to jointly take advantage of these latter efficiently. Indeed, we consider their group-wise utilization -- named BC-SDN -- based on the need for stronger security and privacy. Additionally, we cover the application fields of these technologies both individually and combined. Finally, we discuss the open issues of reviewed research and describe potential directions for future avenues regarding the integration of BC and SDN. To summarize, the contribution of the present survey spans from an overview of the literature background on BC and SDN to the discussion of the benefits and limitations of BC-SDN integration in different fields, which also raises open challenges and possible future avenues examined herein. To the best of our knowledge, compared to existing surveys, this is the first work that analyzes the aforementioned aspects in light of a broad BC-SDN integration, with a specific focus on security and privacy issues in actual utilization scenarios.Comment: 42 pages, 14 figures, to be published in Journal of Network and Systems Management - Special Issue on Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers in Network and Service Managemen

Sixth Class Students' Performance and Confidence Levels Before and After Training in Clinical Skills Laboratories

Background: Acquisition of basic clinical skills by undergraduate medical students is becoming of greater concern. Clinical skills laboratories may provide a comfortable environment for training and may allow students to gain adequate performance level. The aim of this study is to evaluate students' performance and confidence levels before and after training of selected procedural skills; also to explore students' expectation towards skills laboratory training. Methods: Two questionnaires were conducted before and after training sessions in the clinical skills laboratory, school of medicine, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan. The skills selected for this study: suture practice, venous access, arterial access, intradermal and intramuscular injection, central venous cannulation, male and female urinary catheterization, nasogastric tube placement and rectal examination. Although fifty-seven 6th year medical students filled the first questionnaire at the beginning before training, only 29 students could attend all training sessions, and fill the second questionnaire. Results: For all trained clinical skills, the mean students' performance scores and confidence levels were significantly increased after training (P <0.001). Expectations of students for skills laboratory were high. Conclusions: The students' performance and confidence levels were significantly improved after training in the clinical skills laboratory

AquaSonic: Acoustic Manipulation of Underwater Data Center Operations and Resource Management

Underwater datacenters (UDCs) hold promise as next-generation data storage due to their energy efficiency and environmental sustainability benefits. While the natural cooling properties of water save power, the isolated aquatic environment and long-range sound propagation in water create unique vulnerabilities which differ from those of on-land data centers. Our research discovers the unique vulnerabilities of fault-tolerant storage devices, resource allocation software, and distributed file systems to acoustic injection attacks in UDCs. With a realistic testbed approximating UDC server operations, we empirically characterize the capabilities of acoustic injection underwater and find that an attacker can reduce fault-tolerant RAID 5 storage system throughput by 17% up to 100%. Our closed-water analyses reveal that attackers can (i) cause unresponsiveness and automatic node removal in a distributed filesystem with only 2.4 minutes of sustained acoustic injection, (ii) induce a distributed database's latency to increase by up to 92.7% to reduce system reliability, and (iii) induce load-balance managers to redirect up to 74% of resources to a target server to cause overload or force resource colocation. Furthermore, we perform open-water experiments in a lake and find that an attacker can cause controlled throughput degradation at a maximum allowable distance of 6.35 m using a commercial speaker. We also investigate and discuss the effectiveness of standard defenses against acoustic injection attacks. Finally, we formulate a novel machine learning-based detection system that reaches 0% False Positive Rate and 98.2% True Positive Rate trained on our dataset of profiled hard disk drives under 30-second FIO benchmark execution. With this work, we aim to help manufacturers proactively protect UDCs against acoustic injection attacks and ensure the security of subsea computing infrastructures.Comment: Accepted to IEEE S&P 202

Benthic macroinvertebrate community shifts based on Bti-induced chironomid reduction also decrease Odonata emergence

Chironomid larvae (Diptera: Chironomidae) often dominate aquatic macroinvertebrate communities and are a key food source for many aquatic predators, such as dragonfly and damselfly larvae (Odonata). Changes in aquatic macroinvertebrate communities may propagate through terrestrial food webs via altered insect emergence. Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti)-based larvicides are widely used in mosquito control but can also reduce the abundance of non-biting chironomid larvae. We applied the maximum field rate of Bti used in mosquito control three times to six mesocosms in a replicated floodplain pond mesocosm (FPM) system in spring for two consecutive years, while the remaining six FPMs were untreated. Three weeks after the third Bti application in the first year, we recorded on average a 41% reduction of chironomid larvae in Bti-treated FPMs compared to untreated FPMs and a shift in benthic macroinvertebrate community composition driven by the reduced number of chironomid, Libellulidae and Coenagrionidae larvae (Odonata). Additionally, the number of emerging Libellulidae (estimated by sampling of exuviae in the second year) was reduced by 54% in Bti-treated FPMs. Since Odonata larvae are not directly susceptible to Bti, our results suggest indirect effects due to reduced prey availability (i.e., chironomid larvae) or increased intraguild predation. As Libellulidae include species of conservation concern, the necessity of Bti applications to their habitats, e.g. floodplains, should be carefully evaluated