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The article outlines the research conducted by Sakari Kauppinen and colleagues regarding the impact RNA molecules in HØrsholm, Denmark. They collaborated with RxGen and Standford University in California wherein they have successfully blocked the activity of one type of microRNA in non-human primates and the compound they developed is a potential treatment for hepatitis C. It also reveals that microRNAs regulate protein synthesis by binding to the messenger RNAs that provide the recipe for protein construction, repressing the relevant protein's production.

Labor unions have long been important political actors, mobilizing voters, shaping their members' attitudes, and influencing representation and economic inequality. However, little is known regarding unions' influence on political knowledge. In this paper, I argue that unions increase their members' political knowledge through two mechanisms: direct information provision and workplace discussion of politics. I use data from recent national election surveys and a matching technique, showing that union members, particularly those with less formal education, who face higher costs in seeking out political information, are significantly more politically knowledgeable than their non-union counterparts and better informed about where political parties and candidates stand on the issues. I conclude by discussing unions' capacity to reduce knowledge gaps and foster a more politically informed electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precautionary nature of risk regulation in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) is an ongoing debate. Theoretical contentions over 'who is more precautionary' confirm that the degree of relative precaution may lead to different levels of protection, but also suggest that precaution needs to be evaluated against different parts of the regulatory process. This paper addresses a new case of transatlantic split which has occurred with the adoption of the EU regulation on alien invasive species. This regulation aims to drive important changes at the trade–environment nexus and reflects Europe's integrated policy approach to environmental, health, and safety risks. We have carried out a comparative analysis by examining parts of the regulatory process. We argue that differences in legal and policy frameworks, risk assessment, and risk management structures have left the EU and the US wide apart as to their risk governance ambitions. The EU exhibits more precautionary approach with regard to these parts, as compared to the US. Our finding suggests that policy divergence, as reflected in this case, is true for both stringency and regulatory process, expanding literature discussions on precaution in these systems. Yet, with the EU's regulation being relatively new, there are still implementation issues up for debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades of his life, Talcott Parsons was often indicted as conservative. More recently, his analyses of contemporary society have been perceived as obsolete. In the present paper, I argue that both these accounts are wrong. Parsons's biographical and intellectual profile is clearly – and rather consistently – that of a New Deal liberal. His "ate" works, moreover, articulate an original view of the integrative processes in modern societies that is still both theoretically compelling and politically relevant. Parsons's view of modernity has made possible the development of a sophisticated theory of societal pluralism, able to deal analytically with the astonishing variety of structural strains (and resources) arising from an increasingly diverse – in racial, religious, ethnic, sexual and moral terms - membership in contemporary societies. His sociological enthusiasm for inclusion has never been blind to the likelihood of backlashes and the strength of discontent such inclusion may bring. His work provides thus some important directions in the current storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons' major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the Joseph McCarthy movement in American politics. In the 1960s, he contributed supportive essays to the Civil Rights movement. Later in the decade and in the 1970s, he contributed to the protection of academic freedoms while also proposing accommodations to the demands of the student movement for more "relevant" teaching and greater participation in university governance. Throughout his career, he taught and worked closely with students of various political views and sought to protect their rights of freedom of political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illuminates, in a discussion of my relationship with him, how Talcott Parsons acted out his commitment to the values of cognitive rationality, how he implemented those values when working with students who did not share his liberal politics. I illustrate how students may learn not only from divergences in perspective with one professor, but also from the contradictions between their teachers's work. There are two contentions here. One concerns the importance of professors encouraging students to encounter points-of-view divergent from the professor's viewpoint, and then the significance of supporting them when they do so. This is possible only when the values of cognitive rationality regulate activity within a university setting. I illustrate these contentions in a discussion of my work with the political sociologist, Barrington Moore, Jr., the economic theorist, Kenneth Arrow, and the political philosopher, Judith Shklar, each of whose work diverged greatly from Parsons's theoretical perspective. Lastly, I contend that an understanding of our teachers's work is manifest in our extension of it, not in criticisms of their ideas, their texts. I show how this was the case in my own work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the citizenship clause of the fourteenth amendment guarantees citizenship to persons born in the United States, the 1996 Immigration Act does not allow illegal immigrant parents to avoid deportation unless such deportation would cause extreme and exceptional hardship to a U.S. citizen relative. This paper reviews the potential adverse effects of such deportation on a child. It presents 12 cases where child and adolescent forensic psychiatric evaluations of U.S. citizen children supported their immigrant parents' petitions for legal resident status. Parent-child attachment, as well as the child's educational status, language proficiencies, acculturation to U.S. culture, and psychiatric distress at the potential deportation, are the factors most helpful in elucidating a child's reaction to this threatened deportation. During the child and adolescent psychiatry evaluations, the parents were interviewed, school records were reviewed and, where appropriate, pediatric records were considered. All the children were examined alone and then as a family unit with their parents using standard DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria [1]. Firstly, considering their clinical diagnoses, a clinical prognosis was made for the possibility if the child were to be forced to go to their parents' country of origin with their deported illegal immigrant parent(s). Secondly, each case was examined and analyzed individually to determine the clinical prognosis of the U.S. citizen child if they were to stay in the United States while the illegal immigrant parent(s) was forced to leave. In all of the 12 cases, there was already pre-existing anxiety in the children secondary to the fear of a negative outcome for the parents in the immigration legal cases. In all of the 12 cases it was also determined that the prognosis for the child's adjustment to being without their parent but remaining in the US would have produced a significant exacerbation of the psychopathology already seen. Furthermore, in all of the 12 cases, were the children to be relocated to their parental culture, unfamiliar to the child's American culture, again, the prognosis was made that a significant exacerbation of psychopathology would occur. On the basis of the findings of the child and adolescent psychiatric evaluations and analyses presented to the court, all of the illegal immigrant parents were permitted to receive permanent resident status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate measurement of solar irradiance is of great significance in many applications, such as climatology, energy and engineering. Deep learning models have achieved good results in solar irradiance prediction for a single site. However, most studies take meteorological parameters as the model inputs and the irradiance values as the model outputs. Because different regions have different climates, only considering the relationship between meteorological parameters and irradiance has limitations. This paper presents a novel scheme for forecasting irradiance. The method considers the hourly irradiance prediction model to be the superposition of two parts: a daily average irradiance prediction model and the irradiance amplitude prediction model. Two submodels were constructed by using deep bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network. For the task of irradiance prediction for 25 stations located in the United States, which are located in five different climates, the proposed method performs best for 21 stations (84%) in terms of the root mean square error, 18 stations (72%) in terms of the mean absolute error, and 17 stations (68%) in terms of the coefficient of determination. Moreover, the method adopted in this study displays a stronger irradiance prediction ability than the traditional methods for 80% of the climates included in the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cannabis is the most prevalent illegal drug used and the second most common cause of ED drug-related complaints in the USA. Recently, newer more potent strains, concentrated THC products, and consumption methods have become available. Objective: Our first objective was to define cannabis use in the USA and provide a summary background on its current preparations, pharmacokinetics, vital sign and physical exam findings, adverse effects, and laboratory testing. Our second objective, using the aforementioned summary as relevant background information, was to present and summarize the care and treatment of the most commonly reported cannabis-related topics relevant to ED physicians. Methods: We first performed an extensive literature search of peer-reviewed publications using New PubMed and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials to identify the most commonly reported cannabis-related topics in emergency care. Once the six topic areas were identified, we undertook an extensive narrative literature review for each section of this paper using New PubMed and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials from the inception of the databases to September 30, 2020. Results: The six subject areas that were most frequently reported in the medical literature relevant to cannabis-related ED care were acute intoxication/overdose, pediatric exposure, cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, cannabis withdrawal, e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI), and synthetic cannabinoids. Conclusion: As cannabis becomes more widely available with the adoption of state medical cannabis laws, ED-related cannabis visits will likely rise. While cannabis has historically been considered a relatively safe drug, increased legal and illegal access to newer formulations of higher potency products and consumption methods have altered the management and approach to ED patient care and forced physicians to become more vigilant about recognizing and treating some new cannabis-related life-threatening conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As constraints on government funding to public universities become a trend in higher education internationally, clarifying the impact of government policies on donor behavior from a comparative perspective is an issue of higher education research. This paper aims to explore the impact of government appropriations and tax policies on macro trends in donations to public research universities in Japan and USA. Panel data of donation revenue to public research universities in both countries is used to answer the following two research questions: (1) whether the trends in capital markets affect the donation revenue of public research universities operating under different tax systems in Japan and USA, and (2) how the level of government support to higher education affects donations to American and Japanese public research universities. The primary finding is that stock prices are positively associated with donations in USA; however, there is no evidence that stock prices have a positive impact on donations to Japanese public research universities. These contrasting results imply that higher stock prices do not always induce donations to universities and that it is important to consider each country's tax structure when looking for possible links between stock prices and donations to universities. Also, donor behavior is independent of the amount of government appropriations received by universities in both Japan and USA; therefore, the recent decreasing trends in government appropriations in both countries do not necessarily attract donors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The responses of North American precipitation to the Atlantic warm pool (AWP) are investigated by using observational data and the NCAR Community Earth System Model. We show that the responses are controlled by different physical mechanisms in different seasons. In the warm season, a large AWP reduces the North Atlantic subtropical high, consistent with Gill's physics. The corresponding influence over North America is northerly wind anomalies in the lower atmosphere, which leads to a precipitation suppression in the central United States. However, in the cold season the AWP's impact on North American precipitation is operated via the teleconnection of cold SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific which are induced by the AWP. A large AWP enhances the local Hadley circulation that moves across the equator to the tropical southeastern Pacific in the boreal summer. This inter-hemispheric process strengthens the atmospheric sinking and then increases the South Pacific subtropical high, resulting in the enhancement of the surface easterly trade wind and thus cold SST anomalies in tropical southeastern Pacific. The wind-evaporation-SST and Bjerknes feedbacks further lead tropical central Pacific SST to a La Niña-like pattern, which is consistent with that the significant and negative correlation between ENSO and the AWP is observed after the 1990s when the AWP leads by 6–9 months. The AWP-induced La Niña-like SST anomalies in the tropical central Pacific further prompts a negative phase of the Pacific North American teleconnection, resulting in decreased precipitation over the southern United States; and vice versa. In addition to the AWP-induced central Pacific-type of ENSO events, the paper also shows the influences of the AWP on SSTs in the North Pacific and Indian Oceans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is in response to the manuscript titled "Ethical oversight of student data in learning analytics: A typology derived from a cross-continental, cross-institutional perspective" (Willis et al. in Educ Technol Res Dev 66(4):1029–1049, 2016). The response is from a K-12 educational environment perspective. Willis, Slade, and Prinsloo's typology of different ethical approaches to learning analytics adds value to the special issue topic of shifting to digital as it provides different ways to view learning analytics as well as the type of approval(s) possibly needed for each view. K-12 educational institutions can utilize the manuscript as a starting place for review of their ethical oversights when analyzing student data as more schools are shifting to digital. A limitation of Willis, Slade, and Prinsloo's manuscript in supporting the shift to digital is that the manuscript was published before the overwhelming shift to digital was mandated as a result of Covid-19. Future work related to the manuscript and with a focus on the K-12 educational environment could include K-12 education agencies deriving a K-12 specific typology from a review of ethical oversight protocols or analyzing the effects of the shift to digital in K-12 on the original typology. During the 2020 pandemic, K-12 schools in the United States moved to digital learning quickly and in large numbers. This move has resulted in a wealth of digital learning analytics available to be used in improving student learning outcomes. However, local education agencies must first make sure they have a clear framework for oversight of how digital learning analytics will be used. K-12 students are at risk of harm if local education agencies do not stop and carefully reflect on the potential risks to students resulting from decisions made as a result of using digital learning analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the background of termite's research by Jared Leadbetter during his journey to Costa Rica in May 2005. It is said that Leadbetter, an environmental microbiologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, took a slice of the termite nest and transported it and its inhabitants, the tropical Nasutitermes termites, to Costa Rica's National Biodiversity Institute wherein he dissected almost 200 termites. Leadbetter found a high concentration of spirochetes, a helical bacteria that are usually associated with disease, in the termite's hindgut. It is claimed that the research implicates spirochetes in the initial hydrolysis of wood polysaccharides, making it a crucial part of the termite's digestive machinery.

The article discusses the complement of Leslie Vosshall, a neurogeneticist at the Rockefeller University in New York, and Hiroaki Matsumi and His Group at Duke University Medical Center, in Durnham, North Carolina, for the experimentation on John Amoore's research on the perception of androstenone, an odorous steroid in the urine and sweat of men in the U.S. Matsunumi arranges the coding region of the OR7D4 gene of 391, an odour receptors in tissue-culture cells, to Vosshal's volunteers. It is then, Vosshal recognizes that there is clear and strong correlation between having the functional receptor in the genome and being very sensitive to androstenone.

The article focuses on the efforts of Rudolph Jaenisch, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to prove the potentials of human embryonic stem-cell research. He claimed that the U.S. government's policy on the certain area of genetics is unreasonable. Jaenisch cited bioethicist William Hurlbut's accelerated nuclear transfer (ANT) proposal as a way to solve the crisis concerning genetic engineering. He has expressed his determination to turn the ANT theory into practice.

Focuses on the experiment made by Cornelia Bargmann in studying the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans in her bid to gain insight into the complex relationship between learning and behavior in the U.S. Implementation of conditioning, a form of learning; Performance of simple experiments exposing worms to a good strain of bacteria and a bad one; Emphasis on the plan of Bargmann to find out how the worms make the associations with good and bad bacteria.

Focuses on the effort of scientist Joe Orenstein to measure how electrons move through semiconductor and superconductor materials in the U.S. Details on the random movement of electrons that generates an overall electrical current in a given direction; Emphasis on the aspect of electron behavior in semiconductors; Accounts on the theory to describe spin motion at the lowest temperature.

Focuses on the study of marine nitrification of ammonia and other marine microorganisms in the U.S. Potential use of Archaea in turning ammonia into nitrites; Difficulty of culturing Archaea; Role of genes in bacterial nitrification.

Highlights the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Conference on Prevention of bilirubin-induced brain injury and kernicterus, held in Bethesda, Maryland, in June 2003.

The article reports that the presentation of the history of coordinated specialty care (CSC) in the United States in the paper by Read and Kohrt (2021). We applaud the focus on CSC and the thoughtful analysis of important historic antecedents. We also are particularly appreciative of the questions the paper raises about model specifcation and the extent to which fdelity to a particular approach to the model of CSC is actually related to outcomes.

The article reports on the oversight investigation conducted by U.S. Congressman John Dingell and his colleagues and staff on the probable fraud and misconduct in the preparation of a paper that was published in the 1986 issue of "Cell." They questioned the authors for exaggerating the mechanism of Bet-1 reagent and the inaccuracies in the text.

Reports on the controversy surrounding a US government position paper on combating global warming. The delay of legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions; The reason environmentalists are upset.

Urban–rural differences in partisan political loyalty are as familiar in the United States as they are in other countries. In this paper, we examine Gallup survey data from the early-2000s through 2018 to understand the urban–rural fissure that has been so noticeable in recent elections. We consider the potential mechanisms of an urban–rural political divide. We suggest that urban and rural dwellers oppose each other because they reside in far apart locations without much interaction and support different political parties because population size structures opinion quite differently in small towns compared with large cities. In particular, we consider the extent to which the compositional characteristics (i.e., race, income, education, etc.) of the individuals living in these locales drives the divide. We find that sizable urban–rural differences persist even after accounting for an array of individual-level characteristics that typically distinguish them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship argues that citizens' support for specific government programs in the United States is affected by the means through which benefits are delivered as well as the distributional consequences of these policies. In this paper, we extend this literature in two ways through a series of novel survey experiments, deployed on a nationally representative sample. First, we directly examine differences in public support for prospective government spending when manipulating the mode of delivery. Second, we examine whether information about the distributional consequences of two existing government programs affects their popularity. We find that citizens have a preference for indirect spending that is independent of the distributional consequences of a given policy and identify mechanisms that may explain this view. Furthermore, we find little evidence that highlighting the regressive effects of current government programs significantly reduces the demand for their policy benefits. Our findings have implications for understanding the political calculus of policy design and the potential for public persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This perspective describes federal efforts in the United States (U.S.) to integrate care for an especially complex, vulnerable, and costly patient population: adults eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid insurance. The goal of the paper is to demystify for clinical policy leaders and practicing clinicians the origins and evolution of the Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs) recently permanently authorized by the U.S. Congress and to explore the potential for these policy changes to help such health plans improve care for the sickest and most vulnerable Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New research reveals spatial variation in a number of subjective measures like happiness and well-being. Yet, scholars remain divided over the geographic scale and attributes that matter. This paper examines how "geographic context"—one's relative income position and the level of income inequality—is associated with individual financial well-being (FWB) at various geographic scales in the U.S. Drawing on data from the 1995 Midlife in the United States survey and the 1990 Census, I identify four major findings: (1) the geographic context is more likely to influence FWB as household income increases, as low-income individuals tend to report poorer FWB regardless of where they live; (2) high-income individuals tend to report greater FWB as their relative income position rises; (3) differences in FWB across income rankings are more pronounced as income inequality increases; and (4) geographic context has the greatest effect on FWB when measured at the extralocal level (labor market area), followed by the context at the local level (Census tract). These findings provide new insight into the salient attributes, as well as scale, of the geographic context that may help shape individual financial well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnography explores a fictional character known as "Sarah" who represents the Black woman's leadership experience in the U.S. federal government. Sarah is professional, loyal, and passionate in her pursuit of authentic leadership. Yet, she continues to struggle to find acceptance in her authentic identity and leadership style amongst her peers. Sarah has learned to create a balance of personal harmony and professional success and seeks to pass this wisdom on to the next generation. This paper contributes to the field of qualitative inquiry by providing poetic musings and insight into the work culture, race, and gender barriers that often impact Black women. Black women's voices were silenced during slavery, and they continue to seek a platform from which they can speak, be heard, and be equally included in modern conversations. Sarah's story seeks to provide voice, wisdom, and a unique forum to share four women's leadership journeys, in a palatable manner, to all audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chair position is essential for implementing progressive changes in higher education institutions. However, the position has been unattractive to many faculties due to its ambiguity and the limited training chairs receive prior to assuming the office. Chairs must balance the dual responsibilities of managing faculty and student affairs who they support and evaluate as they implement the mandates from higher administration. Similarly, they shuttle between their managerial roles and faculty roles while balancing work-life demands. Hence, the purpose of this paper was to explore the managerial approaches of chairs in the USA who were serving in departments in the field of educational leadership to learn how they balance their various responsibilities. Fifteen chairs who are members of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) were interviewed for this study. The theory of liminality was used to understand how chairs serve and manage multiple dimensions of their role and beyond. Overall, the performance of chairs in the study was enhanced by four themes including (a) managing the molecule, (b) people work vs. paperwork, (c) leadership qualities enhance performance, and (d) possessing academic seniority. Based on the findings, we recommend three major support areas for chairs that include providing mentorship opportunities for chairs, advancing leadership role models for chairs, and initiating formal trainings for leadership development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the dynamic interactions of the ethanol, crude oil and corn market prices in the United States from January 2005 up to December 2014. The empirical analysis, for the shake of robustness, employs alternative time series methodologies based on single equation and system estimation approaches to cointegration and more specifically, the autoregressive distributed lags and the Johansen ML cointegration methodologies were applied complementary. The findings reveal a statistically significant long-run causal effect running from crude oil and corn prices to ethanol price as well as from ethanol and corn prices to crude oil price. Additionally, a positive relationship between crude oil price and ethanol price was revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2018 House midterm elections were notable for the number of female candidates who ran and for the extraordinary sums of campaign funds these candidates raised. Both were fueled by the women's marches of 2017 and 2018, the #MeToo movement, and intense opposition to Trump (Adkins and Dulio 2020; Herrnson et al. 2020; Jacobson 2019). In this paper, we explore the intersection of these two phenomena. We show that non-incumbent Democrats, particularly women, running in U.S. House races in 2018 were especially successful raising small donations. Examining preliminary data for the 2019–20 cycle, we then show that the new Democratic freshmen elected in 2018—now incumbents—have sustained their small-dollar fundraising efforts, with women again outpacing men. We conclude by discussing the extent to which heightened reliance on small donations may mark a durable shift in fundraising practices and if so, how such a shift might impact the future politics of the House. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by the perspectives of two practitioners with over ten years of experience addressing stalking issues and a researcher from the field of violence against women, this paper will highlight the trajectory of the United States' response to intimate partner stalking by first discussing advancements that have been made in stalking laws. This will be followed by the practical challenges that law enforcement and service providers continue to face when encountering this crime, despite this progress. There are four major challenges to addressing intimate partner stalking: a) stalking remains a very misunderstood crime; b) building stalking cases proves challenging; c) service providers may lack the knowledge and/or resources needed to respond to stalking victims effectively; and d) research on stalking is limited. The manuscript concludes with practical recommendations for addressing some of these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This grounded study investigated the negotiation of authorship by faculty members, graduate student mentors, and their undergraduate protégés in undergraduate research experiences at a private research university in the northeastern United States. Semi-structured interviews using complementary scripts were conducted separately with 42 participants over a 3 year period to probe their knowledge and understanding of responsible authorship and publication practices and learn how faculty and students entered into authorship decision-making intended to lead to the publication of peer-reviewed technical papers. Herein the theoretical model for the negotiation of authorship developed through the analysis of these interviews is reported. The model identifies critical causal and intervening conditions responsible for the coping strategies faculty and students employ, which, in our study, appear to often produce unfortunate consequences for all involved. The undergraduate student researchers and their graduate student mentors interviewed in this study exhibited a limited understanding of authorship and the requirements for authorship in their research groups. The power differential between faculty and students, the students' limited epistemic development, the busy-ness of the faculty, and the faculty's failure to prioritize authorship have been identified as key factors inhibiting both undergraduate and graduate students from developing a deeper understanding of responsible authorship and publication practices. Implications for graduate education and undergraduate research are discussed, and strategies for helping all students to develop a deeper understanding of authorship are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the association between state religiosity and population mobility during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We use first-party geo-behavioral data collected through mobile phone operating systems, global positioning systems, and Wi-Fi signals to assess changes in the average median distance traveled by approximately 15,000,000 devices over eight weeks (February 24–April 13) in the contiguous United States. Robust regression results show that more religious states tend to exhibit higher average mobility scores and slower average declines in mobility. Findings also suggest that state stay-at-home orders have a weaker impact on mobility in more religious states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper reports a single-group, pre-post pilot of a peer-learning intervention between community health workers (CHWs) in the USA and Village Health Support Guides (Guides) in Cambodia to improve outcomes for Cambodians with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Method: Two US-based CHWs were trained in a culturally derived cardiometabolic education curriculum called Eat, Walk, Sleep (EWS) and they were also trained in principles of peer learning. They in turn trained five Cambodia-based Guides remotely through videoconference with a phablet in EWS. Finally, Cambodia-based Guides met with 58 patients with diabetes, face-to-face in their villages, monthly for 6 months to deliver EWS. US-based CHWs and Cambodia-based Guides responded to surveys at baseline and post-treatment. Patients responded to surveys and provided blood pressure and blood samples at baseline and post-treatment. Results: For US-based CHWs, scores on all surveys of diabetes knowledge, self-evaluation, job satisfaction, and information technology improved, though no statistical tests were run due to sample size. For Cambodia-based Guides, all scores on these same measures improved except for job satisfaction. For patients, n = 60 consented, 2 withdrew, and 7 were lost to follow-up leaving n = 51 for analysis. In paired t tests, patients showed significantly decreased A1c, decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressures, improved attitudes toward medicines, and a trend for switching from all-white to part-brown rice. No changes were detected in self-reported physical activity, medication adherence, sleep quality, or frequency or amount of rice consumed. Conclusion: If proven effective in a controlled trial, cross-country peer learning could eventually help other diaspora communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the role that different components of the academic strength of the secondary-school curriculum (i.e. number, subjects and grades of advanced academic courses) play in explaining social origin differences in access to prestigious universities (but also to other higher education institutions) in Scotland and the USA. A central aim of the paper is to investigate whether the mechanism behind the studied patterns of inequality differs depending on the characteristics of each educational system. Our results show pronounced social class gaps in entering top higher education institutions in both Scotland and the USA. Academic curriculum plays an important role in explaining these social class differences in both countries. However, while in Scotland type of subjects taken at an advanced level is the strongest mediator for the identified social class differences, in the USA, number of advanced subjects is the strongest. Moreover, taking into account the three academic components combined entirely explains the social class differences in Scotland. Considerable inequalities which are not explained by the strength of academic curriculum remain in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is twofold: (a) to define a new concept, the welfare loss that a society experiences due to the segregation of the demographic groups that comprise it and (b) to propose measures that quantify this phenomenon satisfying a set of normative properties. In aggregating the well-being losses (gains) of the groups derived for being concentrated in low-status (high-status) organizational units, this paper embraces the distributive approach adopted in the literature on economic deprivation and poverty. The advantages of these measures are shown by exploring the welfare losses that the United States has experienced from 1980 to 2012 due to occupational segregation by both gender and race/ethnicity. Our analysis shows that our measures reveal certain aspects of the phenomenon that do not emerge when using overall segregation measures. Thus, for example, while nothing seems to have changed in U.S. labor market in the last decade according to some well-known overall segregation measures, the social welfare loss due to segregation has actually increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the continued association of Richard Hofstadter with consensus history. More specifically, it challenges the view that the origins of this conservative trend in American history can be located within The American Political Tradition. Whilst primarily concerned with reinterpreting Hofstadter’s work within its original context, the paper raises questions regarding author intention and both the reception and shifting perceptions of works of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African immigrants in the U.S. have been headlined as America’s “new model minority.” The purpose of this paper is to examine if evidence exists to support the claim of African immigrant students’ (AIS) educational achievement and excellence (a core indicator of the “model minority” theory) in U.S. k-12 schools. Using a multiple methodological research approach and analysis, the study examines whether aggregated and disaggregated data exist to verify AIS’ superior academic achievement in U.S. k-12 schools. The study reveals a lack of data to substantiate the claim. Instead, the study reveals a paucity of research on AIS’ academic performance and achievement in k-12 schools, as well as academic underperformance and underachievement, and the challenges that exist. The notion of a “model minority” attributed to African immigrants is disingenuous and a disservice to AIS in U.S. k-12 schools. The paper discusses significant implications and recommendations for policy and practice that include overhauling the data collection and reporting system, data disaggregation for AIS, debunking the African immigrant “model minority” ascription, preparing culturally responsive and globally competent teachers, and increasing research on AIS in k-12 schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to shed light on the contentious theme of the reception of legal transplantation in the host environment, by examining the 2014 legislative reform of legal capital in China, which at least on paper imitates the enabling settings of US Revised Model Business Corporation Act (RMBCA). The paper looks at the interconnections between national-specific contextual elements, the resultant complexities, and the spillover effects of transplanted configurations in the unique Chinese socio-cultural setting, implicating the discrepancy between the ‘law in practice’ and the borrowed words ‘on the books’, and suggesting the importance of gaining a holistic understanding of ‘law’ involving the legal traditions in both the donor country and the recipient nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blacks have been farming in the USA for about four centuries and in Michigan since the 1830s. Yet, for blacks, owning and retaining farmland has been a continuous challenge. This historical analysis uses environmental justice and food sovereignty frameworks to examine the farming experiences of blacks in the USA generally, and more specifically in Michigan. It analyzes land loss, the precipitous decline in the number of black farmers, and the strategies that blacks have used to counteract these phenomena. The paper shows that the ability of blacks to own and operate farms has been negatively impacted by lack of access to credit, segregation, relegation to marginal and hazard-prone land, natural disasters, organized opposition to black land ownership, and systemic discrimination. The paper examines the use of cooperatives and other community-based organizations to help blacks respond to discrimination and environmental inequalities. The paper assesses how the farming experiences of blacks in Michigan compare to the experiences of black farmers elsewhere. It also explores the connections between Michigan’s black farmers, southern black farmer cooperatives, and Detroit’s black consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper provides a meta-study of security and defence foresight documents by the Atlantic Alliance, European Union and various official bodies linked to the Defence Ministries of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and United States. It focuses on the political and social trends impacting on defence and military issues. In global terms, the following can be discerned: rivalry among major powers, with armed conflict between some not ruled out entirely; armed non-state actors strengthened by new technologies; global competition for natural resources; extensive demographic imbalances and migration flows; global risks associated with fragile states. In terms of European internal policy, the following trends are identified: population ageing and the challenges associated with immigrant integration; empowerment of interest-based and identity networks. The paper begins by familiarising readers with the characteristics of foresight documents and the methodologies used in their preparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For those interested in developing baccalaureate programs in health humanities, this essay draws on our experience of developing a minor in health humanities to share insights on what to expect, strategies that work well, and how to deal with obstacles. These insights range from how to explain the concept of health humanities to stakeholders (faculty, administrators, and community partners) to how to decide where to house a health humanities program. We share our insights in a way that promises to translate well to different institutional contexts. That said, this paper is more relevant for institutional contexts where budgets are stressed and, consequently, proposals to invest in humanities programs are a difficult sell. This paper is divided into sections addressing how to (a) earn institutional support, (b) gain campus buy-in, (c) identify benefits of the proposed program, (d) decide where to house the program, (e) calculate program cost, and (f) secure external funding. We conclude with some final reflections on the current status of our program and why we are committed to health humanities education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically analyses whether worker discouragement is linked to suicide in the United States. This paper argues that discouraged workers might translate their frustration into alcohol or drug consumption rather than committing suicide directly. Based on the linear Granger causality test, this study finds that changes in the number female unemployed workers help to predict changes in female suicide patterns. A 1 % increase in growth in the male unemployment rate with age (45-54) will lead to a 2.8 % increase in the growth of male alcohol-induced deaths. This study finds a nonlinear causality from the female unemployment with age (25-34, 45-54, 50 and over) to drug-induced deaths. These findings suggest the importance of providing treatment for the jobless to reduce the risk for excessive alcohol consumption, drug misuse and suicidal behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 23 years, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has required over 34,000 companies to file over 165,000 annual reports. These reports, the so-called 'Form 10-Ks,' contain a characterization of a company's financial performance and its risks, including the regulatory environment in which a company operates. In this paper, we analyze over 4.5 million references to U.S. Federal Acts and Agencies contained within these reports to measure the regulatory ecosystem, in which companies are organisms inhabiting a regulatory environment. While individuals across the political, economic, and academic world frequently refer to trends in this regulatory ecosystem, far less attention has been paid to supporting such claims with large-scale, longitudinal data. In this paper, in addition to positing a model of regulatory ecosystems, we document an increase in the regulatory energy per filing, i.e., a warming 'temperature.' We also find that the diversity of the regulatory ecosystem has been increasing over the past two decades. These findings support the claim that regulatory activity and complexity are increasing, and this framework contributes an important step towards improving academic and policy discussions around legal complexity and regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity generation currently is the main industrial source of air emissions in the United States. Both researchers and practitioners are interested in conducting studies to evaluate the ecological performance of this industry, in order to propose solutions to curb emissions of air pollutants and to improve the efficiency of converting fossil resources into electric energy. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to assess ecological efficiency where air emissions are used as undesirable outputs. Although conventional DEA does not require a priori information on the input and output weights, weight restrictions can be incorporated to reflect a user's preference over the performance metrics, or to refine the DEA results. Adding weight restrictions voids the fact that DEA scores are independent of the units of measurement. To incorporate weight constraints in ecological efficiency assessment, this paper develops a DEA model that is units-invariant when weight restrictions are imposed. Moreover, the proposed model is equivalent to the standard units-invariant DEA model when weight restrictions are not present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest towards implementing educational gaming into courses within higher education continues to increase, but it requires extensive amounts of resources to create individual games for each course. This paper is a description of a university's effort to create a custom educational game engine to streamline the game development process within the university. This paper includes a discussion of the institutional effort, the game engine itself, as well as a case study of a game created with the custom FLAG (an HTML5 game engine built to run 2D games on any HTML5 compatible device) game engine to illustrate how the FLAG engine can simplify the game development process and promote game-based learning in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the means through which social benefits are delivered—either through a direct government program, or through a tax expenditure program—affects how citizens view social welfare programs and their beneficiaries. Attitudes toward social spending in the United States are strongly conditioned by both racial considerations and perceptions of the deservingness of recipients. We argue that the political cues given by spending conducted through the tax code differ from those given by direct spending in a way that both de-racializes spending attitudes and changes the lens through which citizens evaluate the deservingness of beneficiaries. Through a series of survey experiments, we demonstrate that social benefits delivered through the tax code are less likely to activate racialized thinking than similar or identical benefits delivered directly. This is true, at least in part, because recipients of tax expenditures are perceived as more deserving than recipients of otherwise identical direct spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy researchers suggest that governments respond to societal problems with public policy. However, empirical evidence is mixed regarding the effect of problem severity on state policy adoption in diverse policy areas. One possible cause of these inconsistencies may be attributable to the fact that states' other internal characteristics can affect the way problem severity influences state policy adoption. In this paper, I apply Mohr's (1969) organizational innovation theory to the case of state body-worn camera (BWC) legislation. I examine how the interaction of problem severity with factors representing states' obstacles against innovation and resources supporting innovation explains states' adoption of BWC legislation. The results of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis support the importance of considering this interactive effect. Specifically, results suggest that the problem of police use of deadly force against minority residents has led to the adoption of BWC legislation only when strong resistance from police unions is absent, political or socioeconomic resources are present, or both. This study also discusses implications for scholars and policymakers about the important role of police unions in shaping policy related to police practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Studies generally find no relationship between economic deprivation and terrorist activities, leading to the conclusion that economic conditions have no role in the emergence of terrorist movements. The present paper challenges this conclusion. It argues that collective deprivation affects participation into terrorism, but in different directions depending on the ideology of terrorist movements: far-right terrorism should mobilize more under times of collective deprivation while far-left terrorism should mobilize more under times of collective improvement. Methods: I tested this hypothesis on the PIRUS database about domestic terrorists (N = 1295) in the United States from 1948 to 2016. I analysed whether the proportion of far-right (versus far-left) terrorists in a given year depends on collective deprivation in the US, operationalized through long-term recession of the income and long-term growth of inequality. Results: Hierarchical logistic regression analyses confirmed that far-right terrorism mobilizes more under periods of long-term economic deprivation, while far-left terrorism mobilizes more under improving economic conditions. Besides, the effect of collective deprivation appears to be of socio-tropic nature: it is especially determinant at the national level, rather than at the state or individual level. In contrast, results do not support the view that Islamist terrorism is affected by collective deprivation. Conclusions: The study challenges the view that economic conditions have no role in triggering terrorist mobilization. The differential effect of collective deprivation on far-right and far-left terrorism is compatible with system-justification and backlash theories. Besides, the findings suggest that collective deprivation affects radicalization at an early phase rather than the offending phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perinatal period involves major developmental transitions which can be conceptualized through a biopsychosocial (BPS; Engel in Science 196:129–136, 1977, 10.1126/science.847460, in The American Journal of Psychiatry 137:535–544, 1980, 10.1176/ajp.137.5.535), systemic (von Bertalanffy, General system theory: Foundations, development, applications, George Braziller, New York, 1968) framework. Thus, no one domain of health in the perinatal period can be understood without exploring how the other domains are both impacted by and impacting the others. As a result of COVID-19, popular media is paying special attention to the biomedical domain of women in the perinatal period as it relates to health outcomes and changes in perinatal healthcare policies; however, considerably less attention is being paid to the other BPS health domains and systemic impacts. This paper will outline U.S. changes in healthcare as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic for individuals, couples, and families within the perinatal period (i.e., family planning and conception, prenatal, labor and delivery, and postpartum) and explore the unique psychosocial, systemic impacts. Recommendations for care, including telehealth and virtual support options, and future directions for research will be provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]