Long before word recently broke that white referees in the National Basketball Association were calling fouls at a higher rate on black athletes than on white athletes, and long before studies found racial disparities in how black and white applicants get called for job interviews, researchers no...

At the core of this fall's debate over Iraq lies one simple question: Can an increased number of U.S. troops subdue the Iraqi insurgency?

In the courts and in Congress, Sen. Larry Craig is fighting to withdraw his guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge that may suggest he tried to solicit sex from a man in June at a Minneapolis airport bathroom. Rather than resign yesterday, as the senator had promised and Republicans had hoped, Craig...

If you were Barack Obama, you would be scratching your head, too.

With just over five minutes to play in yesterday's game against the New York Jets, the Washington Redskins found themselves on their own 23-yard line facing a fourth and one. The team, which was ahead by just three points, elected to do what teams normally do in such situations: They played it safe...

What do the war in Iraq, your Christmas shopping and this week's Thanksgiving dinner have in common?

In the interest of promoting democracy, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, recently announced that he had to lock up most of his country's democracy activists. And because he wanted the Pakistani Supreme Court to independently rule on whether he could continue as president, Musharraf also...

Nearly four decades ago, psychologist Stanley Milgram had a volunteer stand stock still on a busy New York sidewalk and look up at the sky. About one in every 25 passersby stopped to look up, too. When five volunteers were recruited to sky-gaze, nearly one in five passersby stopped to look up.

Two sociologists and a mathematician recently conducted an experiment that provides an intriguing window into the presidential candidate selection that begins this week. Matthew Salganik, Duncan Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodds had a large group of people rate 48 songs. Based on these ratings, the...

Mitt Romney wants to round up 12 million illegal immigrants and deport them. John Edwards wants to put an end to lobbyists. All the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates rail against the ways of Washington.

John McCain once called televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," but now the Republican senator from Arizona is currying favor with social conservatives. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) now opposes the Iraq war, although she used to support it. Sen. Barack Obama...

On the eve of crucial presidential primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has found himself dogged by questions about his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. As the Democratic front-runner's popularity has suffered after public statements by Wright about ra...

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.

People hate Mondays. And they love Fridays. The Carpenters crooned about being blue in "Rainy Days and Mondays." The restaurant chain T.G.I. Friday's might restrict its clientele to workaholics if it were to rename itself T.G.I. Monday's.

One hundred forty-three years ago, women's suffrage advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton faced a conundrum: With the Civil War over, Stanton had to decide whether to support the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, which enabled black men to vote -- at a time when white women such as herself...

It happens all the time: Two guys in a garage come up with a cool new technology -- and dream of making it big. A thousand people take time off work to campaign for a visionary politician because they feel they are doing something to change the world. A million kids hit baseballs -- and wonder what...

A few years ago, psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Thierry Devos showed the names of a number of celebrities to a group of volunteers and asked them to classify the well-known personalities as American or non-American. The list included television personality Connie Chung and tennis star Michael ...

After nearly two years of political jockeying for the presidency, hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising and wall-to-wall campaign coverage in the media, nearly half of all Americans eligible to cast ballots in the presidential election may not bother to vote. Turnout for primaries, as well...

Last year, as the financial meltdown was getting underway, a scientist named Yaneer Bar-Yam developed a computer model of the economy. Instead of the individuals, companies and brokers that populate the real economy, the model used virtual actors. The computer world allowed Bar-Yam to do what...

There is so much that is peculiar, irregular, silly, or downright twisted in mathematical verbiage that, certainly, we could all benefit from some soul-searching on the language of our culture. Some of mathematics usage is confusing (e. g. overuse of … Continue reading →

I didn’t go to the joint meetings (JMM) this year. This is despite the following good reasons I had to go:  I’m in my fifth year, applying for jobs, and this is the time when you’re supposed to get out … Continue reading →

Hi all, 2020 has been a complicated year so far, and things are only going to get more complicated as the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve been thinking a lot about teaching recently, (as I’m the instructor for a class of undergrad … Continue reading →

Across Europe, grassroots efforts have emerged in the wake of crisis that draw members of the public into the process of receiving refugees and supporting their integration. This policy brief examines the many forms community-based or private sponsorship can take, what benefits such approaches may hold for European communities, and the tradeoffs policymakers face in their implementation.

During the 2015–16 migration crisis, European asylum systems were stretched to a breaking point. Yet many of the structural issues that contributed to failures to register newcomers, insufficient reception capacity, and growing backlogs of asylum cases existed before—and many remain unresolved. This report critically evaluates Common European Asylum System legal and operational shortcomings at a time when reform is on the table.

Fostering the social and economic inclusion of refugees has long been the domain of governments and NGOs. In the wake of the 2015–16 European migration and refugee crisis, however, new actors have emerged and taken on important roles in integrating newcomers. This report describes key discussions and takeaways from an MPI Europe conference on these developments.

European countries have ramped up their investments in helping refugees find work and integrate into society. Yet little hard evidence exists of what programs and policies work best. This report proposes a new framework for thinking smartly about integration programming, using cost-benefit analysis to look beyond short-term, economic outcomes to also measure indirect benefits through a social-value concept.

As European asylum systems are tested again by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has injected the need for social distancing during processing and in reception centers, it appears lessons learned during the 2015-16 migration and refugee crisis may be fading. Chief among them: A number of Member States have phased out their buffer capacity. This MPI Europe commentary explores the diametrically different approaches taken to asylum during the pandemic.

Migration between Mexico and the United States has changed dramatically in recent years, but policies and political rhetoric in both countries have not always kept up. This report, which draws from discussions of a high-level Mexico-U.S. study group convened by MPI and El Colegio de México, explores this new migration reality and how the two governments could work more closely together to address shared policy challenges.

La migración entre México y Estados Unidos ha cambiado dramáticamente en los últimos años, pero las políticas y la retórica política en ambos países no se han actualizado a este contexto a la misma velocidad. Este reporte explora esta nueva realidad migratoria y cómo los dos gobiernos podrían trabajar juntos para abordar los desafíos de políticas públicas que tienen en común.

Six million immigrant workers are at the frontlines of keeping U.S. residents healthy and fed during the COVID-19 pandemic, representing disproportionate shares of physicians, home health aides, and retail-store pharmacists, for example. They also are over-represented in sectors most immediately devastated by mass layoffs, yet many will have limited access to safety-net systems and to federal relief, as this fact sheet details.

Across the United States, nearly 2 million immigrants with college degrees are unemployed or stuck in low-skilled jobs. This skill underutilization, known as “brain waste,” varies significantly by state. These fact sheets offer a profile of these highly skilled immigrants and estimate their forgone earnings and resulting unrealized tax receipts in eight states: California, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.

By winding down DACA over six months, President Trump may have addressed a short-term political dilemma. But this action ensures debate will rage on in search of a lasting solution, as many in Congress and beyond recognize the loss of work authorization and deportation relief will affect not only DACA recipients and their families, but also employers, universities, and communities alike, as this commentary explores.

With immigrants and their U.S.-born children poised to be the main source of labor-force growth, these adults are an important target for efforts to build the skills of the U.S. workforce to meet the knowledge-based economy of tomorrow. This fact sheet and state data snapshots explore the characteristics of adults without an academic degree or professional credential, by immigrant generation, race/ethnicity, and more.

Over the last several years it has become clear that higher order assemblies on membranes, exemplified by signalosomes, are a paradigm for the regulation of many membrane signaling processes. We have recently combined two-color direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (dSTORM) with the (Clus-DoC) algorithm that combines cluster detection and colocalization analysis to observe the organization of 5-lipoxygenase (5-LO) and 5-lipoxygenase–activating protein (FLAP) into higher order assemblies on the nuclear envelope of mast cells; these assemblies were linked to leukotriene (LT) C4 production. In this study we investigated whether higher order assemblies of 5-LO and FLAP included cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2) and were linked to LTB4 production in murine neutrophils. Using two- and three-color dSTORM supported by fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy we identified higher order assemblies containing 40 molecules (median) (IQR: 23, 87) of 5-LO, and 53 molecules (62, 156) of FLAP monomer. 98 (18, 154) molecules of cPLA2 were clustered with 5-LO, and 77 (33, 114) molecules of cPLA2 were associated with FLAP. These assemblies were tightly linked to LTB4 formation. The activation-dependent close associations of cPLA2, FLAP, and 5-LO in higher order assemblies on the nuclear envelope support a model in which arachidonic acid is generated by cPLA2 in apposition to FLAP, facilitating its transfer to 5-LO to initiate LT synthesis.

In Staphylococcus aureus–caused endocarditis, the pathogen secretes staphylocoagulase (SC), thereby activating human prothrombin (ProT) and evading immune clearance. A previous structural comparison of the SC(1–325) fragment bound to thrombin and its inactive precursor prethrombin 2 has indicated that SC activates ProT by inserting its N-terminal dipeptide Ile1-Val2 into the ProT Ile16 pocket, forming a salt bridge with ProT's Asp194, thereby stabilizing the active conformation. We hypothesized that these N-terminal SC residues modulate ProT binding and activation. Here, we generated labeled SC(1–246) as a probe for competitively defining the affinities of N-terminal SC(1–246) variants preselected by modeling. Using ProT(R155Q,R271Q,R284Q) (ProTQQQ), a variant refractory to prothrombinase- or thrombin-mediated cleavage, we observed variant affinities between ∼1 and 650 nm and activation potencies ranging from 1.8-fold that of WT SC(1–246) to complete loss of function. Substrate binding to ProTQQQ caused allosteric tightening of the affinity of most SC(1–246) variants, consistent with zymogen activation through occupation of the specificity pocket. Conservative changes at positions 1 and 2 were well-tolerated, with Val1-Val2, Ile1-Ala2, and Leu1-Val2 variants exhibiting ProTQQQ affinity and activation potency comparable with WT SC(1–246). Weaker binding variants typically had reduced activation rates, although at near-saturating ProTQQQ levels, several variants exhibited limiting rates similar to or higher than that of WT SC(1–246). The Ile16 pocket in ProTQQQ appears to favor nonpolar, nonaromatic residues at SC positions 1 and 2. Our results suggest that SC variants other than WT Ile1-Val2-Thr3 might emerge with similar ProT-activating efficiency.

Macfarlane likes to walk. In The Wild Places, he visits mountains, woods, water. In The Old Ways, he follows the ancient paths that cross the British isles, that go through wood, by the sea shore, and over the downs. His England (and Scotland) however, is multilayered; he is aware not only of the physical landscape surrounding him but of the history of the land through which he walks. A walk take him from point A to point B in physical space, as well as through centuries of time. In his author's note, Macafarlane observes:

"It is an exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt ancient paths, of the tales that tracks keep and tell, of pilgrimage and trespass, of songlines and their singers and of the strange continents that exist within countries" (p.xi).

While Americans are criticized for being such a highly mobile society, humans have always traveled. Early hunter-gatherers did not stay in one place, but roamed within a fairly wide territory. The early sea-farers such as the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans (marine archaeology has shown that they sailed more than we have associated with them) and the Vikings all traveled the roads of the sea. The medieval Crusades were holy wars, but they were also the mass movement of men, women, and children walking across Europe, then by boat from southern Italian ports to the Holy Land. Within Europe itself, bands of pilgrims walked from their homes along the tracks to Canterbury or St. James de Campostela. Merchants in ancient and medieval times traveled in caravans along the land and sea routes of the Silk Roads.

The difference between the modern traveler of today and that of the past is that travelers today are less exposed to the world around them. When you are encased in a plane or enclosed in a fast car, you lose awareness of the physical world outside of you. The electronic devices that we use to distract ourselves during our journeys - our DVD players, Ipods, tablets and ebook readers, all cut us off from the landscape and  fellow travelers around us. Macfarlane deliberately chooses to travel on foot (and by small boat) to connect with the physical world around him during his modern secular pilgrimage.

BRUSSELS — While the European Union has called on Member States to expand channels for foreign workers as a way to meet labour market needs and potentially tackle spontaneous migration, they have struggled to deliver on this pledge. To date, policies have focused more on attracting high-skilled workers, but less attention has been paid to admission of low- or middle-skilled nationals. Policymakers would do well not to overestimate the potential of legal channels to reduce irregular migration.

First report examines Canadian challenges & solutions in housing Syrian refugees

WASHINGTON — Four years after the peak of the 2015–16 migration and refugee crisis in Europe and amid swelling arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border and elsewhere, new evidence sheds light on how well countries have responded to an unprecedented surge in mixed flows of humanitarian, economic and family migrants.

WASHINGTON — Latinos and immigrants are at least twice as likely to lack health insurance coverage as the overall population in three central Kansas City metro counties, a new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) study reveals. In fact, they are four times as likely to be uninsured in Johnson County, Kansas. 

WASHINGTON — As host countries in Europe, North America and beyond prioritize getting refugees and other newly arrived migrants into work, another challenge has received less attention: Helping those who may never find jobs participate meaningfully in their new communities. Newcomers who are not in the workplace (particularly refugee women, migrants who are unskilled or illiterate and the elderly) are at high risk for social isolation.

WASHINGTON — A new age of migration has been ushered in by large-scale spontaneous migration flows on both sides of the Atlantic, which have upended asylum adjudications systems and placed enormous stress on reception, housing and social services, particularly in Europe.

WASHINGTON – A pesar de que los gobiernos de América Latina y el Caribe han tomado medidas generosas e innovadoras para lidiar con el desplazamiento forzado desde Venezuela y más recientemente desde Nicaragua, la cálida bienvenida se ha enfriado en algunos lugares a medida que el número de entradas, la presión sobre los servicios públicos y la preocupación del público aumenta.

WASHINGTON – Four years since the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law, all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have developed accountability plans that include blueprints for serving English Learners (ELs), as well as measuring these students’ progress and being accountable for their outcomes. This marked a significant development, as EL performance was previously not well integrated with factors that determined whether a school was performing well or poorly.

WASHINGTON – While the new Trump administration public charge rule is likely to vastly reshape future legal immigration based on its test to assess if a person might ever use public benefits in the future, the universe of non-citizens who could be denied a green card based on current benefits use is quite small.

Brussels and Gütersloh, 05.03.2020 — Anticipated reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), which was high on the agenda as nearly 2 million asylum seekers arrived at Europe’s door in 2015-16, quickly fell victim to EU Member State competing views on what constitutes equal burden-sharing, domestic politics around migration and the urgency of first addressing overtaxed national asylum systems.

WASHINGTON – The federal Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) requires states to publicly report annual performance and graduation rates for students in a range of areas, breaking out results for subgroups with unique characteristics, including English Learners (ELs). The objective is to help schools identify and close achievement gaps experienced by historically underserved groups of students.

WASHINGTON — Six million immigrant workers are at the frontlines of keeping U.S. residents healthy, safe and fed during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data issued today. While the foreign born represented 17 percent of the 156 million civilians working in 2018, they account for larger shares in pandemic-response frontline occupations: 29 percent of all physicians in the United States, 38 percent of home health aides and 23 percent of retail-store pharmacists, for example.

WASHINGTON – Even as 1.5 million immigrants and refugees are already employed in the U.S. health care system as doctors, registered nurses and pharmacists, another 263,000 foreign-born health care graduates are on the sidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic—many of them because of difficulties getting their credentials accepted by employers and licensing bodies.

WASHINGTON – As more than 33 million U.S. workers have lost their jobs since March amid the pandemic-induced economic crisis, immigrants are among the most vulnerable: They are more likely than the U.S. born to be laid off and to live in communities with high COVID-19 infection rates, and less likely to have health insurance coverage and access to a doctor or other usual source of health care.

As the top destination in Europe for asylum seekers in recent years, Germany has rolled out a number of integration policy changes. Based on an early look at how newcomers’ integration is progressing, the report finds the policies have had ambiguous implications. The report also provides insights into the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the asylum seeker and refugee population.