Preventing Erroneous Expedited Removals: Immigration Judge Review and Requests for Reconsideration of Negative Credible Fear Determinations

The Central American refugee crisis has renewed criticism of expedited removal, which allows immigration officials to remove without a hearing certain noncitizens who seek to enter or have entered the United States. Asylum seekers who arrive at the border or ports of entry without entry documents undergo a screening process to determine whether they have a “credible fear of persecution.” An individual who receives a positive credible fear determination is entitled to a full hearing before an immigration judge. In contrast, an individual who receives a negative credible fear determination is typically subjected to expedited removal. Scholars and human rights advocates have long argued that the credible fear determination process fails to adequately identify bona fide asylum seekers, and that the power vested in individual immigration officers is susceptible to abuse. This Comment examines two little-discussed administrative mechanisms that can prevent the erroneous expedited removal of asylum seekers: review of a negative credible fear determination by an immigration judge (IJ); and requests for reconsideration (RFRs), whereby a person who receives a negative credible fear determination may petition the Asylum Office for a positive fear finding or a re-interview. The Comment describes the mechanics of, and current practices surrounding, IJ review and RFRs. Data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suggest that IJ review and RFRs dramatically improve the accuracy of credible fear determinations, particularly in cases involving detained families. But the immigration agencies have failed to consistently implement either process, undermining their potential to prevent the removal of people who may face persecution in their home countries. This Comment concludes by proposing reforms to fortify IJ review and RFRs. EOIR should allow counsel to advocate on behalf of clients during IJ review and should permit asylum seekers to introduce before the IJ information not disclosed during the credible fear interview. Moreover, USCIS should direct the Asylum Office to grant an asylum seeker’s RFR upon a showing that an official erred during the credible fear interview or that a second interview will yield new information about the asylum seeker’s claim

Perceiving text and image in Apollinaire's calligrammes

Literary scholars have recently become increasingly interested in the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved in reading, and have incorporated scientific research in this area into their critical approaches to texts. This article argues that such an approach is particularly appropriate when authors explicitly engage with the way in which their texts are visually taken in and processed. This is the case with Guillaume Apollinaire, whose calligrammes are informed by a theory of visual-verbal simultaneity stipulating that the reader should be simultaneously aware of both textual and pictorial aspects of the poem. Experimental research in the psychology of reading and picture perception is used to assess this theory of simultaneity, and specifically to challenge Michel Foucault's claim that reading and viewing are mutually exclusive processes. The article concludes by considering further applications of psychological research to word and image studies

The 3-minute Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) Embedded in a Wrist-worn Device: Time of Day Effects

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2019 Annual MeetingThe article of record as published may be found at https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1071181319631144The study assesses the utility of the 3-minute version of the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) embedded in a wrist-worn device (interstimulus interval – ISI =1 - 4 seconds) to detect changes in performance between a morning and an afternoon data collection session. The experiment utilized a randomized, within-subject, repeated-measures design with two factors, device type (wrist-worn PVT, laptop PVT, Go/No-Go task) and time of day (morning, afternoon). Results showed that performance in both the wrist-worn 3-minute PVT (ISI = 1 – 4 seconds) and the 5-minute Go/No-Go task (180 trials, 80% Go/20% No Go; ISI = 0.5 – 1.0 seconds) differed between the morning and the afternoon sessions but not the laptop-based PVT. We discuss these findings under the light of the differences in task characteristics between the wrist-worn and the laptop PVT

Major Superficial White Matter Abnormalities in Huntington's Disease

Background: The late myelinating superficial white matter at the juncture of the cortical gray and white matter comprising the intracortical myelin and short-range association fibers has not received attention in Huntington's disease. It is an area of the brain that is late myelinating and is sensitive to both normal aging and neurodegenerative disease effects. Therefore, it may be sensitive to Huntington's disease processes. Methods: Structural MRI data from 25 Pre-symptomatic subjects, 24 Huntington's disease patients and 49 healthy controls was run through a cortical pattern-matching program. The surface corresponding to the white matter directly below the cortical gray matter was then extracted. Individual subject's Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) data was aligned to their structural MRI data. Diffusivity values along the white matter surface were then sampled at each vertex point. DTI measures with high spatial resolution across the superficial white matter surface were then analyzed with the General Linear Model to test for the effects of disease. Results: There was an overall increase in the axial and radial diffusivity across much of the superficial white matter (p < 0.001) in Pre-symptomatic subjects compared to controls. In Huntington's disease patients increased diffusivity covered essentially the whole brain (p < 0.001). Changes are correlated with genotype (CAG repeat number) and disease burden (p < 0.001). Conclusions: This study showed broad abnormalities in superficial white matter even before symptoms are present in Huntington's disease. Since, the superficial white matter has a unique microstructure and function these abnormalities suggest it plays an important role in the disease

Speech Communication

Contains research objectives and summary of research on six research projects and reports on three research projects.National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 RO1 NS04332-13)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 MH5825-01)National Institutes of Health (Grant 1 T32 NS07040-01)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 NS007960)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 HD019120)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 F22 HD01919-01)U. S. Army (Contract DAAB03-75-C-0489)National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 RO1 NS04332-12

Clindamycin Pharmacokinetics and Safety in Preterm and Term Infants

ABSTRACT Clindamycin may be active against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus , a common pathogen causing sepsis in infants, but optimal dosing in this population is unknown. We performed a multicenter, prospective pharmacokinetic (PK) and safety study of clindamycin in infants. We analyzed the data using a population PK analysis approach and included samples from two additional pediatric trials. Intravenous data were collected from 62 infants (135 plasma PK samples) with postnatal ages of 40 to 60 weeks PMA, 9 mg/kg) resulted in an unbound, steady-state concentration at half the dosing interval greater than a MIC for S. aureus of 0.12 μg/ml in >90% of infants. There were no adverse events related to clindamycin use. (This study has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under registration no. NCT01728363.

Log odds of carrying an Ancestral Mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2 for a Defined personal and family history in an Ashkenazi Jewish woman (LAMBDA)

INTRODUCTION: Ancestral mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 are common in people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and are associated with a substantially increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Women considering mutation testing usually have several personal and family cancer characteristics, so predicting mutation status from one factor alone could be misleading. The aim of this study was to develop a simple algorithm to estimate the probability that an Ashkenazi Jewish woman carries an ancestral mutation, based on multiple predictive factors. METHODS: We studied Ashkenazi Jewish women with a personal or family history of breast or ovarian cancer and living in Melbourne or Sydney, Australia, or with a previous diagnosis of breast or ovarian cancer and living in the UK. DNA samples were tested for the germline mutations 185delAG and 5382insC in BRCA1, and 6174delT in BRCA2. Logistic regression was used to identify, and to estimate the predictive strength of, major determinants. RESULTS: A mutation was detected in 64 of 424 women. An algorithm was developed by combining our findings with those from similar analyses of a large study of unaffected Jewish women in Washington. Starting with a baseline score, a multiple of 0.5 (based on the logistic regression estimates) is added for each predictive feature. The sum is the estimated log odds ratio that a woman is a carrier, and is converted to a probability by using a table. There was good internal consistency. CONCLUSIONS: This simple algorithm might be useful in the clinical and genetic counselling setting. Comparison and validation in other settings should be sought

Automatic morphometry in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment.

Accepted versio

An Acoustic examination of the effects of word frequency and utterance position on 2-year-olds' production of 3rd person singular -s

Some variability in children’s productions of grammatical morphemes reflects contextual factors. Transcription has shown that 3rd person singular –s production is more robust utterance-finally compared to utterance-medially, and in simple versus complex codas. Acoustic analyses were used to examine further the influence of utterance position, and to examine whether word frequency affects morpheme production. The speech of 14 children (mean age = 2;3) was obtained using an elicited-production task. Results replicated the positional effect, but showed that morphemes were equally produced in low versus high frequency verbs, which suggests that contextual and lexical factors contribute differentially to morphological development.4 page(s