Third-Party Brokers: How Administrative Burdens on Nonprofit Attorneys Worsen Immigrant Legal Inequality

What happens when an administrative burden regime targets third-party brokers? This article describes the experiences of legal aid immigration attorneys during the Donald Trump administration, which made hundreds of changes to immigration law, policy, and processes. Through interviews with attorneys representing thirty-eight nonprofit legal services organizations, I document the learning, compliance, and psychological costs they incurred during this regime. The resulting consequences of these costs to attorneys’ caseload size and composition have implications for immigrants’ access to free legal services. I argue that targeting administrative burdens at third-party actors on whom people rely for access to government resources and recognition is an effective deterrent and a mechanism for exacerbating unequal outcomes. Future research should examine the impact of administrative burdens on a range of third-party actors who broker people’s access to government institutions and resources

Estimating the Size and Structure of the Underground Commercial Sex Economy in Eight Major U.S. Cities

The underground commercial sex economy (UCSE) generates millions of dollars annually, yet investigation and data collection remain under resourced. Our study aimed to unveil the scale of the UCSE in eight major US cities. Across cities, the UCSE's worth was estimated between $39.9 and$290 million in 2007, but decreased since 2003 in all but two cities. Interviews with pimps, traffickers, sex workers, child pornographers, and law enforcement revealed the dynamics central to the underground commercial sex trade -- and shaped the policy suggestions to combat it

Excitonic condensate and quasiparticle transport in electron-hole bilayer systems

Bilayer electron-hole systems undergo excitonic condensation when the distance d between the layers is smaller than the typical distance between particles within a layer. All excitons in this condensate have a fixed dipole moment which points perpendicular to the layers, and therefore this condensate of dipoles couples to external electromagnetic fields. We study the transport properties of this dipolar condensate system based on a phenomenological model which takes into account contributions from the condensate and quasiparticles. We discuss, in particular, the drag and counterflow transport, in-plane Josephson effect, and noise in the in-plane currents in the condensate state which provides a direct measure of the superfluid collective-mode velocity.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Locked In. Interactions with the Criminal Justice and Child Welfare Systems for LGBTQ Youth, YMSM, and YWSW Who Engage in Survival Sex

In 2011, researchers from the Urban Institute launched a three-year study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) youth; young men who have sex with men (YMSM); and young women who have sex with women (YWSW) engaged in survival sex in New York City. Working in partnership with the New York City–based organization Streetwise and Safe (SAS), researchers trained youth leaders to conduct in-depth interviews with a total of 283 youth who engaged in survival sex in New York City and self-identified as LGBTQ, YMSM, or YWSW. In February 2015, we released the first report in this series, which focused specifically on the experiences and needs of youth engaging in survival sex. In this report, we focus on the youths’ interactions with juvenile and criminal justice systems, in addition to the child welfare system, from the perspectives of both the youths and stakeholders involved in these systems. Locked In features data collected from youth respondents about their experiences of arrest and court involvement, in combination with in-depth interviews with 68 criminal justice, child welfare, and youth-serving professionals across 28 organizations

Single-nucleotide polymorphism-based genetic risk score and patient age at prostate cancer diagnosis

Importance: Few studies have evaluated the association between a single-nucleotide polymorphism-based genetic risk score (GRS) and patient age at prostate cancer (PCa) diagnosis. Objectives: To test the association between a GRS and patient age at PCa diagnosis and to compare the performance of a GRS with that of family history (FH) in PCa risk stratification. Design, Setting, and Participants: A cohort study of 3225 white men was conducted as a secondary analysis of the Reduction by Dutasteride of Prostate Cancer Events (REDUCE) chemoprevention trial, a 4-year, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled multicenter study conducted from March 2003 to April 2009 to evaluate the safety and efficacy of dutasteride in reducing PCa events. Participants were confirmed to be cancer free by prostate biopsy (6-12 cores) within 6 months prior to the study and underwent 10 core biopsies every 2 years per protocol. The dates for performing data analysis were from July 2016 to October 2019. Interventions: A well-established, population-standardized GRS was calculated for each participant based on 110 known PCa risk-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms, which is a relative risk compared with the general population. Men were classified into 3 GRS risk groups based on predetermined cutoff values: low (\u3c0.50), average (0.50-1.49), and high (≥1.50). Main Outcomes and Measures: Prostate cancer diagnosis-free survival among men of different risk groups. Results: Among 3225 men (median age, 63 years [interquartile range, 58-67 years]) in the study, 683 (21%) were classified as low risk, 1937 (60%) as average risk, and 605 (19%) as high risk based on GRS alone. In comparison, 2789 (86%) were classified as low or average risk and 436 (14%) as high risk based on FH alone. Men in higher GRS risk groups had a PCa diagnosis-free survival rate that was worse than that of those in the lower GRS risk group (χ2 = 53.3; P \u3c .001 for trend) and in participants with a negative FH of PCa (χ2 = 45.5; P \u3c .001 for trend). Combining GRS and FH further stratified overall genetic risk, indicating that 957 men (30%) were at high genetic risk (either high GRS or positive FH), 1667 men (52%) were at average genetic risk (average GRS and negative FH), and 601 men (19%) were at low genetic risk (low GRS and negative FH). The median PCa diagnosis-free survival was 74 years (95% CI, 73-75 years) for men at high genetic risk, 77 years (95% CI, 75 to \u3e80 years) for men at average genetic risk, and more than 80 years (95% CI, \u3e80 to \u3e80 years) for men at low genetic risk. In contrast, the median PCa diagnosis-free survival was 73 years (95% CI, 71-76 years) for men with a positive FH and 77 years (95% CI, 76-79 years) for men with a negative FH. Conclusions and Relevance: This study suggests that a GRS is significantly associated with patient age at PCa diagnosis. Combining FH and GRS may better stratify inherited risk than FH alone for developing personalized PCa screening strategies

Surviving the Streets of New York. Experiences of LGBTQ Youth, YMSM, and YWSW Engaged in Survival Sex

In 2011, researchers from the Urban Institute launched a three-year study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) youth; young men who have sex with men (YMSM); and young women who have sex with women (YWSW) engaged in survival sex in New York City. Working in partnership with the New York City–based organization Streetwise and Safe (SAS), researchers trained youth leaders to conduct in-depth interviews with a total of 283 youths who engaged in survival sex in New York City and identified themselves as LGBTQ, YMSM, or YWSW. During these interviews, youth were asked a wide range of questions about their backgrounds and experiences. The information they shared paints a vivid picture of how they survive in the face of adversity, often dealing with issues rooted in poverty, homophobia, transphobia, racism, child abuse, and criminalization

Arts Infusion Initiative, 2010-15: Evaluation Report

For youth involved in the criminal justice system, a better future depends on improving their social and emotional learning skills -- skills like conflict resolution, career readiness and preparation for the future. An assessment by the Urban Institute shows how the Arts Infusion Initiative helped achieve just that for young people detained in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC), and for high-risk youth in the Lawndale, Little Village, Back of the Yards and South Shore communities. From 2010 to 2015, this catalytic approach to restoring the peace for Chicago's youth supported 14 nonprofits providing teens with rigorous arts instruction, infused with social and emotional learning goals. Funded by The Chicago Community Trust, the $2.5 million Initiative built collaborations with the Chicago Police Department, Chicago Public Schools, and Northwestern and Loyola Universities. The Urban Institute's mixed-method evaluation (2.9MB), commissioned by the National Guild for Community Arts Education with funding from the Trust, concluded that "the fields of education, juvenile justice and family and youth services can benefit tremendously from the emergent approaches embodied in the Arts Infusion Initiative." Among the successes their research revealed:Participants showed substantial improvements in social and emotional learning skills, as measured by conflict resolution, future orientation, critical response and career readiness. Improvements ranged from 27% in conflict resolution and career readiness, to 29% for critical response and 36% for future orientation.The initiative helped foster collaboration between program directors, public schools, community policing and the detention center. Examples include the Trust and the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy program working together to open a high-tech digital music lab at JTDC. Chicago Public Schools' plan for a new Digital Arts Career Academy for at-risk and court-involved high school youth is a direct result of the positive effects Arts Infusion had on youth, and of the relationship forged between CPS and the Trust.The program exposed at-risk youth to new skills and technologies that opened their minds to a positive future. Arts Infusion grants enabled many participating programs to purchase -- often for the first time -- modern, professional-grade equipment to which many youth had never been exposed. Better Boys Foundation used its funding to purchase enough modern film lab equipment to serve a full 17-student class -- previous classes had only one camera to share among all students

Two-dimensional electron liquid with disorder in a weak magnetic field

We present the effective theory for low energy dynamics of a two-dimensional interacting electrons in the presence of a weak short-range disorder and a weak perpendicular magnetic field, the filling factor $\nu \gg 1$. We investigate the exchange enhancement of the $g$-factor, the effective mass and the decay rate of the simplest spin wave excitations at $\nu = 2 N + 1$. We obtain the enhancement of the field-induced gap in the tunneling density of states and dependence of the tunneling conductivity on the applied bias.Comment: 17 pages, no figure

On the athermal character of structural phase transitions

The significance of thermal fluctuations on nucleation in structural first-order phase transitions has been examined. The prototype case of martensitic transitions has been experimentally investigated by means of acoustic emission techniques. We propose a model based on the mean first-passage time to account for the experimental observations. Our study provides a unified framework to establish the conditions for isothermal and athermal transitions to be observed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. Let

Quantum magneto-oscillations in a two-dimensional Fermi liquid

Quantum magneto-oscillations provide a powerfull tool for quantifying Fermi-liquid parameters of metals. In particular, the quasiparticle effective mass and spin susceptibility are extracted from the experiment using the Lifshitz-Kosevich formula, derived under the assumption that the properties of the system in a non-zero magnetic field are determined uniquely by the zero-field Fermi-liquid state. This assumption is valid in 3D but, generally speaking, erroneous in 2D where the Lifshitz-Kosevich formula may be applied only if the oscillations are strongly damped by thermal smearing and disorder. In this work, the effects of interactions and disorder on the amplitude of magneto-oscillations in 2D are studied. It is found that the effective mass diverges logarithmically with decreasing temperature signaling a deviation from the Fermi-liquid behavior. It is also shown that the quasiparticle lifetime due to inelastic interactions does not enter the oscillation amplitude, although these interactions do renormalize the effective mass. This result provides a generalization of the Fowler-Prange theorem formulated originally for the electron-phonon interaction.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur