Rethinking European and Afghan policy approaches to migration 9 February 2021 — 12:30PM TO 1:30PM Anonymous (not verified) 19 January 2021 Online

Speakers argue for a more multidimensional approach to migration, and for a nuanced reassessment of policy.

Please note this is an online event. Please register using the link below to finalize your registration.

Afghanistan is a key country of origin for asylum seekers in Europe, and the prime global recipient of EU development assistance. It was one of the first nations to conclude a migration partnership agreement with the EU, in 2016.

Implementation has been thwarted, however, by war and violence, limited state capacity, entrenched economic deprivation, internal displacement and the unfolding impact of COVID-19.

The speakers argue for a more multidimensional approach to migration, and for a nuanced reassessment of policy. They underscore the strength of Afghanistan’s responses to migration, returns, reintegration, security and peace, and point to the need for synchronizing the EU’s policy approaches.

They argue that effective policy must consider the historical significance of mobility for Afghanistan and the need for coherent regional responses to migration.

This event launches the publication The EU and the Politics of Migration Management in Afghanistan.

Jan Goedgebeur, Jorik Jooken, On-Hei Solomon Lo, Ben Seamone and Carol T. Zamfirescu
Math. Comp. 93 (), 3059-3082.
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Gurmeet K. Bakshi, Jyoti Garg and Gabriela Olteanu
Math. Comp. 93 (), 3027-3058.
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Pierre Lairez, Eric Pichon-Pharabod and Pierre Vanhove
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2985-3025.
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Torin Greenwood, Jonathan Kariv and Noah Williams
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2959-2983.
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Daniel A. Goldston, Apoorva Panidapu and Jordan Schettler
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2943-2958.
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Zhaonan Wang and Yingpu Deng
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2921-2942.
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Martin Ehler and Karlheinz Gröchenig
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2885-2919.
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Haiyong Wang
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2861-2884.
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Ran Gu and Bing Gao
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2837-2860.
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Ole Løseth Elvetun and Bjørn Fredrik Nielsen
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2811-2836.
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Thomas O. Gallouët, Andrea Natale and Gabriele Todeschi
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2769-2810.
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Zhaohui Fu, Tao Tang and Jiang Yang
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2745-2767.
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Katherine Baker, Lehel Banjai and Mariya Ptashnyk
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2711-2743.
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Selim Esedoḡlu, Jiajia Guo and David Li
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2679-2710.
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T. De Ryck and S. Mishra
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2643-2677.
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Constantin Carle and Marlis Hochbruck
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2611-2641.
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Buyang Li, Zongze Yang and Zhi Zhou
Math. Comp. 93 (), 2557-2586.
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What causes wine legs (tears)? Andrea Bertozzi explains and describes how to generate legs.

Math's connection with cooking extends beyond the mathematical constant that sounds like a dessert. For example, using differential equations to model fluid flow and heat transfer, research teams have found how spaghetti curls as it's cooked, how to rotate a pan to make the perfect crepe (thin pancake), and the temperature setting to get the perfect steak. Mathematics helps understand cooking, and parallels it in that following a recipe can lead to good results, but asking questions like "What if we tried this?" can lead to a masterpiece. Eugenia Cheng talks about the mathematics of cooking and baking.

We've seen that the availability of hospital beds is important during a pandemic, and it's important during normal times as well. Whether it's for emergency medical help or for a scheduled procedure (for example, chemotherapy), access to hospital space, staff, and equipment can be a matter of life and death. Mathematics helps medical center staff manage their resources more efficiently so that they are available when needed. An optimization technique called integer programming is used along with tools from statistics, probability, and machine learning to create better schedules for operating rooms, treatment centers, and the people who staff them. David Scheinker talks about the mathematics involved in hospital operations.

Math may sometimes seem as if it's comprised of countless meaningless unconnected exercises, but in reality, it's much more. It's figuring out how to do something, and, even better, why something works the way it does. The math you're doing now can open doors for you so that you can answer deep questions yourself about a subject or idea that you're interested in. Give those questions a shot and perhaps someday also help others solve their problems. Five mathematicians (Alexander Diaz-Lopez, Trachette Jackson, Francis Su, Erika Tatiana Camacho, and Deanna Haunsperger) talk about what mathematics means to them.

Ricardo Bermudez-Otero and Tobias Galla discuss the mathematics describing the evolution of human languages. The sounds and structures of the world's approximately 7,000 languages never stop changing. Just compare the English in Romeo and Juliet or the Spanish in Don Quixote to the modern forms. But historical records give an incomplete view of language evolution. Increasingly, linguists draw upon mathematical models to figure out which features of a language change often and which ones change more rarely over the course of thousands of years. A new model inspired by physics assigns a "temperature" to many sounds and grammatical structures. Features with higher temperatures are less stable, so they change more often as time goes on. The linguistic thermometer will help researchers reconstruct how our languages came to be, and how they might change in future generations.

Angela Robinson explains the math behind the next generation of cryptographic algorithms. Whenever you log in to a website, send an email, or make an online purchase, you're counting on your data being sent securely, without hackers being able to crack the code. Our standard cryptographic systems hinge on mathematical problems that stump present-day computers, like finding the prime factors of a very large number. But in the coming decades, powerful quantum computers are expected to be able to rapidly solve some such problems, threatening the security of our online communications. To develop new methods that can withstand even the most sophisticated quantum computer, cryptographers are using a wide range of mathematical tools, many of which were originally developed without any real-life applications in mind.

Tim Chumley explains the connections between random billiards and the science of heat and energy transfer. If you've ever played billiards or pool, you've used your intuition and some mental geometry to plan your shots. Mathematicians have gone a step further, using these games as inspiration for new mathematical problems. Starting from the simple theoretical setup of a single ball bouncing around in an enclosed region, the possibilities are endless. For instance, if the region is shaped like a stadium (a rectangle with semicircles on opposite sides), and several balls start moving with nearly the same velocity and position, their paths in the region soon differ wildly: chaos. Mathematical billiards even have connections to thermodynamics, the branch of physics dealing with heat, temperature, and energy transfer.

Malena Espanol explains how she and others use linear algebra to correct blurry images. Imagine snapping a quick picture of a flying bird. The image is likely to come out blurry. But thanks to mathematics, you might be able to use software to improve the photo. Scientists often deal with blurry pictures, too. Linear algebra and clever numerical methods allow researchers to fix imperfect photos in medical imaging, astronomy, and more. In a computer, the pixels that make up an image can be represented as a column of numbers called a vector. Blurring happens when the light meant for each pixel spills into the adjacent pixels, changing the numbers in a way that can be mathematically represented as an enormous matrix. But knowing that matrix is not enough if you want to reconstruct the original (non-blurry) image.

Stacey Finley from University of Southern California discusses how mathematical models support the research of cancer biology. Cancer research is a crucial job, but a difficult one. Tumors growing inside the human body are affected by all kinds of factors. These conditions are difficult (if not impossible) to recreate in the lab, and using real patients as subjects can be painful and invasive. Mathematical models give cancer researchers the ability to run experiments virtually, testing the effects of any number of factors on tumor growth and other processes — all with far less money and time than an experiment on human subjects or in the lab would use.

Imelda Flores Vazquez from Econometrica, Inc. explains how economists use mathematics to evaluate the efficacy of health care policies. When a hospital or government wants to adjust their health policies — for instance, by encouraging more frequent screenings for certain diseases — how do they know whether their program will work or not? If the service has already been implemented elsewhere, researchers can use that data to estimate its effects. But if the idea is brand-new, or has only been used in very different settings, then it's harder to predict how well the new program will work. Luckily, a tool called a microsimulation can help researchers make an educated guess.

Dr. Abiy Tasissa of Tufts University, discusses the mathematics he and colleagues used to study particle collider data, including optimal transport and optimization. Collider physics often result in distributions referred to as jets. Dr. Tasissa and his team used "Earth Mover's Distance" and other mathematical tools to study the shape of jets. "It is interesting for me to see how mathematics can be applied to study these fundamental problems answering fundamental equations in physics, not only at the level of formulating new ideas, which is, in this particular case, a notion of distance, but also how the importance of designing fast optimization algorithms to be able to actually compute these distances," says Dr. Tasissa.

Time: 10:00 AM, Location: E1.012 (Hearing Room)

Time: 9:00 AM, Location: E1.028 (Hearing Room)

We are extremely excited to announce on behalf of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) that the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), Molecular & Cellular Proteomics (MCP), and the Journal of Lipid Research (JLR) will be published as fully open-access journals beginning in January 2021. This is a landmark decision that will have huge impact for readers and authors. As many of you know, many researchers have called for journals to become open access to facilitate scientific progress, and many funding agencies across the globe are either already requiring or considering a requirement that all scientific publications based on research they support be published in open-access journals. The ASBMB journals have long supported open access, making the accepted author versions of manuscripts immediately and permanently available, allowing authors to opt in to the immediate open publication of the final version of their paper, and endorsing the goals of the larger open-access movement (1). However, we are no longer satisfied with these measures. To live up to our goals as a scientific society, we want to freely distribute the scientific advances published in JBC, MCP, and JLR as widely and quickly as possible to support the scientific community. How better can we facilitate the dissemination of new information than to make our scientific content freely open to all?For ASBMB journals and others who have contemplated or made the transition to publishing all content open access, achieving this milestone generally requires new financial mechanisms. In the case of the...

Soun-Hi Kwon
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 6021-6022.
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Tsz-Kiu Aaron Chow and Yangyang Li
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 5993-6020.
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Yinji Li, Zhiwei Wang and Xiangyu Zhou
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 5947-5992.
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Alexandra Kjuchukova, Allison N. Miller, Arunima Ray and Sümeyra Sakallı
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 5905-5946.
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Otto Overkamp
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 5863-5903.
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Ahmed Elshafei, Ana Cristina Ferreira, Miguel Sánchez and Abdelghani Zeghib
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 5837-5862.
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Daniel Le, Bao V. Le Hung, Stefano Morra, Chol Park and Zicheng Qian
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 5749-5786.
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Carolyn S. Gordon and Michael R. Jablonski
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 5673-5704.
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Ming-Lun Hsieh and Shunsuke Yamana
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 377 (), 5617-5672.
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