Setting policy on asylum: Has the EU got it right?

Policy toward asylum-seekers has been controversial. Since the late 1990s, the EU has been developing a Common European Asylum System, but without clearly identifying the basis for cooperation. Providing a safe haven for refugees can be seen as a public good and this provides the rationale for policy coordination between governments. But where the volume of applications differs widely across countries, policy harmonization is not sufficient. Burden-sharing measures are needed as well, in order to achieve an optimal distribution of refugees across member states. Such policies are economically desirable and are more politically feasible than is sometimes believed

Psychological Inflexibility and Prejudiced Reactions When Exposed to Violent ISIS Propaganda

The purpose of this research is to examine the psychological effect of viewing news stories reporting on violent ISIS propaganda films. In particular, I am seeking to determine whether exposure to these news clips influences how people think about Muslims, Syrian refugees, political candidates, or unfair profiling in security policies, and whether psychological inflexibility, a construct taken from clinical psychology, influences this reaction. Psychological inflexibility is a behavioral trait that describes the degree to which people can tolerate distressing internal events, such as negative emotions, thoughts, and pain, and whether a person modifies his or her own behavior in order to avoid feeling those internal events. Some previous research suggests that psychological inflexibility is one factor that is implicated in discrimination, suggesting that discriminatory acts are attempts at down-regulating distressing internal emotions that occur when a person comes into contact with a person who is different than him or her. It is hypothesized that people high on the trait of psychological inflexibility will react with more prejudice when exposed to news stories depicting violent ISIS propaganda. This would confirm that support for certain political candidates or security policies are attempts to make people feel better when exposed to news about violent threats to their safety, security, or ways of life. To test this theory, a diverse online sample and a student sample will be given a survey that includes a CNN news broadcast of either an ISIS propaganda film, an emotional CNN broadcast unrelated to terrorism, or a neutral CNN broadcast. Then, participants will be given instruments to measure emotional reactions, feelings toward Muslims and others, and support for various security policies. After the main hypothesis is tested, other correlations between personality variables and reactions to other groups will be examined, including opinions about political parties and other historically disadvantaged groups such as migrant farm workers. This study will inform the public, the news media, and others who have a vested interest in terrorism propaganda on the reactions that people have to terrorism and how it is portrayed in the media. It may also shed light on some psychological variables that influence how people respond to terrorism, as well as helping us understand the appeal of various presidential candidates and security policies in light of people\u27s emotions. Finally, it may show how variables from clinical psychology might be relevant in seemingly unrelated academic areas

Anti-Muslim Prejudice When Exposed to News About Terrorism: The Roles of Negative Affect and Psychological Inflexibility

In the United States, some proposed law enforcement policies intended to prevent terrorism may violate the civil rights of American minorities. These policies include random searches by law enforcement, banning Muslims from entering the country, and refusing to grant asylum to Syrian refugees. Additionally, the rise of ISIS has heightened the salience of terrorism across the world and in the United States. The goal of the high-production videos produced by ISIS may be partially intended to create inter-religious conflict in the West. My study examines the effect of news about ISIS propaganda videos on Americans’ opinions about policies that limit the civil rights of Muslims. I also examine one possible moderator of reactions to ISIS propaganda: psychological inflexibility. This psychological factor, developed from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, is a kind of behavioral reactivity to distressing events. I obtained two samples for this experiment: one student sample from a Southeastern university, and a national sample of adults. Results showed that viewing ISIS propaganda raised negative affect in participants in both samples, did not increase support for anti-Muslim security policies, and psychological inflexibility did not play a role in this relationship. However, negative affect did play a role in predicting support for anti-Muslim policies. These results suggest support for anti-Muslim security policies may be more influenced by negative affect than viewing any particular news story in the media. Future research may determine whether other measures of emotional reactivity may be predictive of reactions to terrorism portrayed in the media

Smart Microgel Studies. Interaction of Polyether-Modified Poly(Acrylic Acid) Microgels with Anticancer Drugs

Studies of submillimeter gels composed of covalently cross-linked poly(acrylic acid)-g-poly(ethylene oxide)-b-poly(propylene oxide)-b-poly(ethylene oxide) (Pluronic-PAA) networks are reviewed in light of potential applications of the microgels as drug carriers in oral delivery. The microgels are capable of volumetric transitions in response to environmental stimulae such as pH and temperature. It is shown that the type of Pluronic used in the microgel synthesis changes the structure of the resulting microgels, with the more hydrophobic Pluronic imparting porosity. Microgels based on Pluronic L92 (L92-PAA-EGDMA) possess higher ion-exchange capacity than microgels based on Pluronic F127 (F127-PAA-EGDMA), albeit the former are more hydrophobic. Analogously, more hydrophobic but heterogeneous L92-PAA-EGDMA exhibit superior capacity for equilibrium loading of hydrophobic drugs such as taxol, camptothecin and steroid hormones, as well as higher capacity for weakly basic drugs such as doxorubicin, mitomycin C, and mitoxantrone.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Charmonium properties from lattice QCD + QED: hyperfine splitting, J/ψJ/\psi leptonic width, charm quark mass and aμca_{\mu}^c

We have performed the first $n_f = 2+1+1$ lattice QCD computations of the properties (masses and decay constants) of ground-state charmonium mesons. Our calculation uses the HISQ action to generate quark-line connected two-point correlation functions on MILC gluon field configurations that include $u/d$ quark masses going down to the physical point, tuning the $c$ quark mass from $M_{J/\psi}$ and including the effect of the $c$ quark's electric charge through quenched QED. We obtain $M_{J/\psi}-M_{\eta_c}$ (connected) = 120.3(1.1) MeV and interpret the difference with experiment as the impact on $M_{\eta_c}$ of its decay to gluons, missing from the lattice calculation. This allows us to determine $\Delta M_{\eta_c}^{\mathrm{annihiln}}$ =+7.3(1.2) MeV, giving its value for the first time. Our result of $f_{J/\psi}=$ 0.4104(17) GeV, gives $\Gamma(J/\psi \rightarrow e^+e^-)$=5.637(49) keV, in agreement with, but now more accurate than experiment. At the same time we have improved the determination of the $c$ quark mass, including the impact of quenched QED to give $\overline{m}_c(3\,\mathrm{GeV})$ = 0.9841(51) GeV. We have also used the time-moments of the vector charmonium current-current correlators to improve the lattice QCD result for the $c$ quark HVP contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. We obtain $a_{\mu}^c = 14.638(47) \times 10^{-10}$, which is 2.5$\sigma$ higher than the value derived using moments extracted from some sets of experimental data on $R(e^+e^- \rightarrow \mathrm{hadrons})$. This value for $a_{\mu}^c$ includes our determination of the effect of QED on this quantity, $\delta a_{\mu}^c = 0.0313(28) \times 10^{-10}$.Comment: Added extra discussion on QED setup, some new results to study the effects of strong isospin breaking in the sea (including new Fig. 1) and a fit stability plot for the hyperfine splitting (new Fig. 7). Version accepted for publication in PR

Surface Functionalization of Monodisperse Magnetic Nanoparticles

We present a systematic methodology to functionalize magnetic nanoparticles through surface-initiated atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The magnetite nanoparticles are prepared according to the method proposed by Sun et al. (2004), which leads to a monodisperse population of ~ 6 nm particles stabilized by oleic acid. The functionalization of the nanoparticles has been performed by transforming particles into macro-initiators for the ATRP, and to achieve this two different routes have been explored. The first one is the ligand-exchange method, which consists of replacing some oleic acid molecules adsorbed on the particle surface with molecules that act as an initiator for ATRP. The second method consists in using the addition reaction of bromine to the oleic acid double bond, which turns the oleic acid itself into an initiator for the ATRP. We have then grown polymer brushes of a variety of acrylic polymers on the particles, including polyisopropylacrylamide and polyacrylic acid. The nanoparticles so functionalized are water soluble and show responsive behavior: either temperature responsive behavior when polyisopropylacrylamide is grown from the surface or PH responsive in the case of polyacrylic acid. This methodology has potential applications in the control of clustering of magnetic nanoparticles.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Electrochemically-mediated adsorptive processes for CO2 capture

The capture of anthropogenic carbon dioxide CO2 from industrial and power generation sources, where the concentration of CO2 is relatively high, is an important component in an overall portfolio of low carbon energy sources for climate change mitigation. The US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledges, for instance, that for the foreseeable future coal will continue to play a critical role in the national and global electricity generation, and that innovations in the field of carbon capture from high concentration sources such as coal combustion and coal gasification units are crucial. In addition, on-board carbon capture for reduced emission from vehicles and other mobile sources, which account for almost 30% of all emissions in the US, has garnered interest over the last few years by the automotive, and gas and oil industries. Other sources of much lower CO2 concentration collectively represent a large volume of carbon emissions, and there is thus a growing interest on the part of the DOE and private industries in capture technologies that operate over a wide range of CO2 concentrations, especially at concentrations below 1%. There is also a significant benefit to innovations in the removal of CO2 from enclosed spaces such as in buildings, aircraft, spacecraft and submarines, where the concentration of CO2 is in the 1,000-10,000 ppm range, and the small spaces available limit the types of capture technologies that can be used. The removal of CO2 from buildings to reduce its overall concentration to acceptable levels for human activity will obviate the need for frequent air exchanges and thereby reduce the energy needs for conditioning of fresh air brought into the buildings; this in turn results in fewer CO2 emissions from power plants. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Psychological Inflexibility Predicts Attitudes Toward Syrian Refugees and National Security Policies

Our research examines whether psychological inflexibility predicts support for national security policies that limit civil liberties, unfairly target Muslims, and exclude Syrian refugees from entering the country. New research has suggested that high psychological inflexibility may be implicated in prejudice (Vilardaga, Estevez, Levin, & Hayes, 2012). According to that theory, inflexibility may contribute to discriminatory behaviors because it describes a person\u27s tendency to engage in behaviors aimed at down-regulating internal distress. Recently, an enormous number of refugees from Syria have relocated from Syria into the EU, other Middle Eastern Countries, and in the United States. A political backlash to both the threat of terrorism and the large number of refugees has emerged in the United States, with a number of governors declaring that their states will not accept these refugees. We hypothesize that inflexibility may predict whether people support policies aimed at making the nation safer in light of terrorist threats, even if those policies restrict civil rights or unfairly target minorities. We surveyed 107 students from a southern American university to examine whether psychological inflexibility predicted support for a number of civil rights-restricting security policies, including policies that ban Syrian refugees from entering the country. We found that inflexibility was highly correlated with support for these policies. We then ran a regression to see which personality traits were most predictive of support for banning Syrian refugees from settling in the country. The results showed that political conservatism and inflexibility were both significant predictors, with inflexibility being slightly more predictive

Responsive Azobenzene-Containing Polymers and Gels

The photoviscosity effect in aqueous solutions of novel poly(4-methacryloyloxyazobenzene-co-N,N-dimethyl acrylamide) (MOAB-DMA) was demonstrated. The observed significant reduction in the zero-shear viscosity upon UV-irradiation of MOAB-DMA aqueous solutions was due to the dissociation of the interchain azobenzene aggregates. Such phenomena can be advantageously used in photoswitchable fluidic devices and in protein separation. Introduction of enzymatically degradable azo cross-links into Pluronic-PAA microgels allowed for control of swelling due to degradation of the cross-links by azoreductases from the rat intestinal cecum. Dynamic changes in the cross-link density of stimuli-responsive microgels enable novel opportunities for the control of gel swelling, of importance for drug delivery and microgel sensoric applications.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA