State Lawmakers Must Step in to Remedy Supreme Court Voting Rights Blunder

This June, a 6-3 Supreme Court decision further eroded the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by upholding an Arizona law that disqualifies ballots cast by voters at any poll site other than the one assigned — an administrative technicality that has been shown to disproportionately impact minority communities in multiple states

Quickly End NY’s Suppressive Ballot Policy

Earlier this year, with the 2022 midterm elections looming, New York’s Democratic members of Congress sued their own state Board of Elections in federal court for unconstitutional practices that disqualify ballots cast by duly registered voters. Chief among the alleged violations of New Yorkers’ right to vote is the practice of fully disqualifying so-called “wrong church” ballots cast by lost or misdirected voters at poll sites other than the ones to which they are assigned

A Way to Guarantee Voting Rights

In 2004, state legislator Andrea Stewart-Cousins faced nine-term Republican Nick Spano in a state Senate election. The election was very close, certified in favor of Spano by 18 votes

Soil Moisture Retrieval with Airborne PALS Instrument over Agricultural Areas in SMAPVEX16

NASA's SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) calibration and validation program revealed that the soil moisture products are experiencing difficulties in meeting the mission requirements in certain agricultural areas. Therefore, the mission organized airborne field experiments at two core validation sites to investigate these anomalies. The SMAP Validation Experiment 2016 included airborne observations with the PALS (Passive Active L-band Sensor) instrument and intensive ground sampling. The goal of the PALS measurements are to investigate the soil moisture retrieval algorithm formulation and parameterization under the varying (spatially and temporally) conditions of the agricultural domains and to obtain high resolution soil moisture maps within the SMAP pixels. In this paper the soil moisture retrieval using the PALS brightness temperature observations in SMAPVEX16 is presented

Epidemiology of Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma and Its Association with Epstein Barr Virus in Northern China

BACKGROUND: The incidence of classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) and its association with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) varies significantly with age, sex, ethnicity and geographic location. This is the first report on epidemiological features of cHL patients from Northern regions of China. These features are compared to data from a previously published Dutch cHL population. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: 157 cHL patients diagnosed between 1997 and 2008 in the North of China were included after histopathological re-evaluation. The Dutch population-based cohort consisted of 515 cHL patients diagnosed between 1987 and 2000. EBV status was determined by in situ hybridization of EBV- encoded small RNAs. In the Chinese population, tumor cells of 39% of the cHL patients were EBV+ and this was significantly associated with male sex, mixed cellularity subtype and young age (<20 y). The median age of the Chinese patients was 9 years younger than that of the Dutch patients (28 y vs. 37 y). In addition, the age distribution between the two populations was strikingly different in both the EBV+ subgroups (p<0.001) and the EBV- subgroups (p = 0.01). The mixed cellularity subtype was almost 3x more frequent amongst the Chinese (p<0.001). CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: CHL patients from Northern regions of China show a distinctive age distribution pattern with a striking incidence peak of EBV+ mixed cellularity cases among children and adolescents and another high incidence peak of EBV- nodular sclerosis cases in young adults. In comparison to Dutch cHL patients there are pronounced differences in age distribution, subtype and EBV status, presumably caused by complex gene-environmental interactions

The Metallicities of Low Stellar Mass Galaxies and the Scatter in the Mass-Metallicity Relation

In this investigation we quantify the metallicities of low mass galaxies by constructing the most comprehensive census to date. We use galaxies from the SDSS and DEEP2 survey and estimate metallicities from their optical emission lines. We also use two smaller samples from the literature which have metallicities determined by the direct method using the temperature sensitive [OIII]4363 line. We examine the scatter in the local mass-metallicity (MZ) relation determined from ~20,000 star-forming galaxies in the SDSS and show that it is larger at lower stellar masses, consistent with the theoretical scatter in the MZ relation determined from hydrodynamical simulations. We determine a lower limit for the scatter in metallicities of galaxies down to stellar masses of ~10^7 M_solar that is only slightly smaller than the expected scatter inferred from the SDSS MZ relation and significantly larger than what is previously established in the literature. The average metallicity of star-forming galaxies increases with stellar mass. By examining the scatter in the SDSS MZ relation, we show that this is mostly due to the lowest metallicity galaxies. The population of low mass, metal-rich galaxies have properties which are consistent with previously identified galaxies that may be transitional objects between gas-rich dwarf irregulars and gas-poor dwarf spheroidals and ellipticals.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. 17 pages, 17 figure

SLAPex Freeze/Thaw 2015: The First Dedicated Soil Freeze/Thaw Airborne Campaign

Soil freezing and thawing is an important process in the terrestrial water, energy, and carbon cycles, marking the change between two very different hydraulic, thermal, and biological regimes. NASA's Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission includes a binary freeze/thaw data product. While there have been ground-based remote sensing field measurements observing soil freeze/thaw at the point scale, and airborne campaigns that observed some frozen soil areas (e.g., BOREAS), the recently-completed SLAPex Freeze/Thaw (F/T) campaign is the first airborne campaign dedicated solely to observing frozen/thawed soil with both passive and active microwave sensors and dedicated ground truth, in order to enable detailed process-level exploration of the remote sensing signatures and in situ soil conditions. SLAPex F/T utilized the Scanning L-band Active/Passive (SLAP) instrument, an airborne simulator of SMAP developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and was conducted near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, in October/November, 2015. Future soil moisture missions are also expected to include soil freeze/thaw products, and the loss of the radar on SMAP means that airborne radar-radiometer observations like those that SLAP provides are unique assets for freeze/thaw algorithm development. This paper will present an overview of SLAPex F/T, including descriptions of the site, airborne and ground-based remote sensing, ground truth, as well as preliminary results

Analysis of Soil Freeze/Thaw Signatures During Slapex F/T Campaign

Permanently frozen and seasonally frozen soils occur over a large portion of the Earth's land surface. Changes in the freeze/thaw state of the land surface reflects major changes in thermal and hydraulic properties as well as acting as a "switch" for many ecological processes. In short, soil freeze/thaw state is a fundamental land surface variable in the water and energy cycles, and it connects to the carbon cycle. Surface freeze/thaw state is observable by passive and active microwave sensors. For example, NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission includes a freeze/thaw data product. Such satellite sensing offers routine all-season and all-weather global observations of soil freeze/thaw state with the application of suitable algorithms. We describe early finding from the SLAPex Freeze/Thaw campaign, believed to be the first airborne campaign of its type, focusing on soil freeze/thaw

HLA expression in relation to HLA type in classic Hodgkin lymphoma patients

Several human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles are strongly associated with susceptibility to classic Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL), also in subgroups stratified for presence of the Epstein–Barr virus (EBV). We tested the hypothesis that the pressure on cHL tumour cells to lose HLA expression is associated with HLA susceptibility alleles. A meta-analysis was carried out to identify consistent protective and risk HLA alleles in a combined cohort of 839 cHL patients from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Tumour cell HLA expression was studied in 338 cHL cases from these two cohorts and correlated to the presence of specific susceptibility HLA alleles. Carriers of the HLA-DRB1*07 protective allele frequently lost HLA class II expression in cHL overall. Patients carrying the HLA-DRB1*15/16 (DR2) risk allele retained HLA class II expression in EBV− cHL and patients with the HLA-B*37 risk allele retained HLA class I expression more frequently than non-carriers in EBV+ cHL. The other susceptibility alleles showed no significant differences in expression. Thus, HLA expression by tumour cells is associated with a subset of the protective and risk alleles. This strongly suggests that HLA associations in cHL are related to peptide binding capacities of specific HLA alleles

The use of virtual reality as a potential restorative environment in school during recess

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