Ganged Up On: How the US immigration system penalises and fails to protect Central American minors who are trafficked for criminal activity by gangs

This article addresses the failures of the United States immigration system to protect Central American minors who were trafficked for exploitation in criminal activities by gangs. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which the US immigration system denies humanitarian protection to Central American minors who were forced to participate in criminal activity by the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18th Street gangs, and instead detains them. The article will examine this trend in the context of a larger proclivity to criminalise immigration in the US, particularly minors fleeing violence in Central America. We draw upon our experience representing Central American minors in their applications for humanitarian immigration relief to highlight how the US immigration system fails to protect this vulnerable population and penalises these children for their own victimisation

ICU Made 4 U: Critical Care Education for Novice Nurses

Background: The novel Coronavirus 2019 (COVID 19) pandemic had a large impact on education in the healthcare setting. At Henry Ford Jackson Hospital (HFJH), due to staffing constraints and emergent clinical needs, nurses hired during the COVID 19 pandemic did not complete standard critical care orientation after March 2020. During yearly learning needs assessments, nurses identified opportunities for enhanced education regarding the management of critically ill patients. Staff Development Educators and Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNSs) within the acuity adaptable units identified a gap in knowledge regarding critical care concepts. At HFJH, acuity adaptable units house critical care patients on the Medical Universal Bed unit and the Surgical Universal Bed unit. Aim: The aim of this quality improvement project was to increase novice nurses’ knowledge of critical care concepts while increasing confidence implementing advanced nursing skills within the patient population. Methods: The Staff Development Educators and CNSs proposed an education program to the nursing leadership and gained support for mandatory attendance. Content was formulated based on input from the interprofessional critical care team and feedback from the nursing learning needs assessments. Nurses caring for the critical care population hired or transferred after March 2020 were required to complete the program. Nurses were given the opportunity to complete and pass a standardized test (score of 80% or higher) in lieu of attending the educational sessions. Three, four-hour sessions were created and included didactic content, simulation with case scenarios, and interactive teaching methods with equipment specific to the intensive care setting. A pre-test was administered prior to content presentation and the post test was administered at the end of the third session. Nurses completed an evaluation for each didactic content presentation and received continuing education credit. Findings: The average score for pre-test was 70.7%. The average post test score was 77.3%. Demonstrating a 6.6% increase following intervention. The results of this quality improvement project indicated that formalized, didactic and simulation education opportunities enhanced the knowledge of critical care concepts for novice nurses. Nurses completed an evaluation for each didactic session with positive feedback and suggestions for additional content. Implications: Nurses with critical care experience opted to participate in the program to enhance their personal growth and knowledge. Based on the pre and post test results, gastrointestinal and parenteral content will be added to future sessions. Tailored education, with a focus on simulation and hands on content, showed to improve nurses understanding of advanced critical care concepts. These didactic, simulation, and hands on learning sessions will be integrated into the onboarding orientation for nurses caring for the critical care population.https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/nursresconf2023/1004/thumbnail.jp

Visualizing sound emission of elephant vocalizations: evidence for two rumble production types

Recent comparative data reveal that formant frequencies are cues to body size in animals, due to a close relationship between formant frequency spacing, vocal tract length and overall body size. Accordingly, intriguing morphological adaptations to elongate the vocal tract in order to lower formants occur in several species, with the size exaggeration hypothesis being proposed to justify most of these observations. While the elephant trunk is strongly implicated to account for the low formants of elephant rumbles, it is unknown whether elephants emit these vocalizations exclusively through the trunk, or whether the mouth is also involved in rumble production. In this study we used a sound visualization method (an acoustic camera) to record rumbles of five captive African elephants during spatial separation and subsequent bonding situations. Our results showed that the female elephants in our analysis produced two distinct types of rumble vocalizations based on vocal path differences: a nasally- and an orally-emitted rumble. Interestingly, nasal rumbles predominated during contact calling, whereas oral rumbles were mainly produced in bonding situations. In addition, nasal and oral rumbles varied considerably in their acoustic structure. In particular, the values of the first two formants reflected the estimated lengths of the vocal paths, corresponding to a vocal tract length of around 2 meters for nasal, and around 0.7 meters for oral rumbles. These results suggest that African elephants may be switching vocal paths to actively vary vocal tract length (with considerable variation in formants) according to context, and call for further research investigating the function of formant modulation in elephant vocalizations. Furthermore, by confirming the use of the elephant trunk in long distance rumble production, our findings provide an explanation for the extremely low formants in these calls, and may also indicate that formant lowering functions to increase call propagation distances in this species'

Elatinaceae are Sister to Malpighiaceae; Peridiscaceae Belong to Saxifragales

Phylogenetic data from plastid (ndhF and rbcL) and nuclear (PHYC) genes indicate that, within the order Malpighiales, Elatinaceae are strongly supported as sister to Malpighiaceae. There are several putative morphological synapomorphies for this clade; most notably, they both have a base chromosome number of X = 6 (or some multiple of three or six), opposite or whorled leaves with stipules, unicellular hairs (also uniseriate in some Elatinaceae), multicellular glands on the leaves, and resin (Elatinacae) or latex (Malpighiaceae). Further study is needed to determine if these features are synapomorphic within the order. Malpighiaceae have previously been inferred as sister to Peridiscaceae based on rbcL sequence data, but the rbcL sequence of Whittonia is a chimera of two sequences, neither of which appears to be Whittonia. Our data from plastid (atpB, rbcL) and nuclear (18S rDNA) genes instead place Peridiscaeace as a member of the Saxifragales.Organismic and Evolutionary Biolog

The complex hybrid origins of the root knot nematodes revealed through comparative genomics

Meloidogyne root knot nematodes (RKN) can infect most of the world's agricultural crop species and are among the most important of all plant pathogens. As yet however we have little understanding of their origins or the genomic basis of their extreme polyphagy. The most damaging pathogens reproduce by mitotic parthenogenesis and are suggested to originate by interspecific hybridizations between unknown parental taxa. We sequenced the genome of the diploid meiotic parthenogen Meloidogyne floridensis, and use a comparative genomic approach to test the hypothesis that it was involved in the hybrid origin of the tropical mitotic parthenogen M. incognita. Phylogenomic analysis of gene families from M. floridensis, M. incognita and an outgroup species M. hapla was used to trace the evolutionary history of these species' genomes, demonstrating that M. floridensis was one of the parental species in the hybrid origins of M. incognita. Analysis of the M. floridensis genome revealed many gene loci present in divergent copies, as they are in M. incognita, indicating that it too had a hybrid origin. The triploid M. incognita is shown to be a complex double-hybrid between M. floridensis and a third, unidentified parent. The agriculturally important RKN have very complex origins involving the mixing of several parental genomes by hybridization and their extreme polyphagy and agricultural success may be related to this hybridization, producing transgressive variation on which natural selection acts. Studying RKN variation via individual marker loci may fail due to the species' convoluted origins, and multi-species population genomics is essential to understand the hybrid diversity and adaptive variation of this important species complex. This comparative genomic analysis provides a compelling example of the importance and complexity of hybridization in generating animal species diversity more generally

Sympatric Australian Lasaea species (Mollusca: Bivalvia) differ in their ploidy levels, reproductive modes and developmental modes

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74949/1/j.1096-3642.1999.tb01382.x.pd

Web-Ice: integrated data collection and analysis for macromolecular crystallography

Synopsis Web-Ice is a scalable, extendable and portable software application for rapid on-line diffraction image analysis, autoindexing and strategy calculation. The Web-Ice architecture, software components and functionality both as a stand-alone application and as part of a beamline control system are described. Abstract New software tools are introduced to facilitate diffraction experiments involving large numbers of crystals. While existing programs have long provided a framework for lattice indexing, Bragg spot integration, and symmetry determination, these initial data processing steps often require significant manual effort. This limits the timely availability of 1 data analysis needed for high-throughput procedures, including the selection of the best crystals from a large sample pool, and the calculation of optimal data collection parameters to assure complete spot coverage with minimal radiation damage. To make these protocols more efficient, we developed a network of software applications and application servers, collectively known as Web-Ice. When the package is installed at a crystallography beamline, a programming interface allows the beamline control software (e.g., Blu-Ice / DCSS) to trigger data analysis automatically. Results are organized based on a list of samples that the user provides, and are examined within a Web page, accessible both locally at the beamline or remotely. Optional programming interfaces permit the user to control data acquisition through the Web browser. The system as a whole is implemented to support multiple users and multiple processors, and can be expanded to provide additional scientific functionality. Web-Ice has a distributed architecture consisting of several stand-alone software components working together via a well defined interface. Other synchrotrons or institutions may integrate selected components or the whole of Web-Ice with their own data acquisition software. Updated information about current developments may be obtained at http://smb.slac.stanford.edu/research/developments/webice

Roaring high and low: composition and possible functions of the Iberian stag's vocal repertoire

We provide a detailed description of the rutting vocalisations of free-ranging male Iberian deer (Cervus elaphus hispanicus, Hilzheimer 1909), a geographically isolated and morphologically differentiated subspecies of red deer Cervus elaphus. We combine spectrographic examinations, spectral analyses and automated classifications to identify different call types, and compare the composition of the vocal repertoire with that of other red deer subspecies. Iberian stags give bouts of roars (and more rarely, short series of barks) that are typically composed of two different types of calls. Long Common Roars are mostly given at the beginning or at the end of the bout, and are characterised by a high fundamental frequency (F0) resulting in poorly defined formant frequencies but a relatively high amplitude. In contrast, Short Common Roars are typically given in the middle or at the end of the bout, and are characterised by a lower F0 resulting in relatively well defined vocal tract resonances, but low amplitude. While we did not identify entirely Harsh Roars (as described in the Scottish red deer subspecies (Cervus elaphus scoticus), a small percentage of Long Common Roars contained segments of deterministic chaos. We suggest that the evolution of two clearly distinct types of Common Roars may reflect divergent selection pressures favouring either vocal efficiency in high pitched roars or the communication of body size in low-pitched, high spectral density roars highlighting vocal tract resonances. The clear divergence of the Iberian red deer vocal repertoire from those of other documented European red deer populations reinforces the status of this geographical variant as a distinct subspecies

Web-Ice: Integrated Data Collection and Analysis for Macromolecular Crystallography

New software tools are introduced to facilitate diffraction experiments involving largenumbers of crystals. While existing programs have long provided a framework for lattice indexing, Bragg spot integration, and symmetry determination, these initial data processing steps often require significant manual effort. This limits the timely availability of data analysis needed for high-throughput procedures, including the selection of the best crystals from a large sample pool, and the calculation of optimal data collection parameters to assure complete spot coverage with minimal radiation damage. To make these protocols more efficient, we developed a network of software applications and application servers, collectively known as Web-Ice. When the package is installed at a crystallography beamline, a programming interface allows the beamline control software (e.g., Blu-Ice / DCSS) to trigger data analysis automatically. Results are organized based on a list of samples that the user provides, and are examined within a Web page, accessible both locally at the beamline or remotely. Optional programming interfaces permit the user tocontrol data acquisition through the Web browser. The system as a whole is implemented to support multiple users and multiple processors, and can be expanded to provide additional scientific functionality. Web-Ice has a distributed architecture consisting of several stand-alone software components working together via a well defined interface. Other synchrotrons or institutions may integrate selected components or the whole of Web-Ice with their own data acquisition software. Updated information about current developments may be obtained at http://smb.slac.stanford.edu/research/developments/webice