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The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was supposed to be a stepping stone, a policy innovation announced by the White House designed to put pressure on Congress for a broader, lasting set of legislative changes. Those changes never materialized, and the people who hoped to benefit from them have been forced to navigate a tense and contradictory policy landscape ever since, haunted by these unfulfilled promises. Legal Phantoms tells their story. After Congress failed to pass a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013, President Obama pivoted in 2014 to supplementing DACA with a deferred action program (known as DAPA) for the parents of citizens and lawful permanent residents and a DACA expansion (DACA+) in 2014. But challenges from Republican-led states prevented even these programs from going into effect. Interviews with would-be applicants, immigrant-rights advocates, and government officials reveal how such failed immigration-reform efforts continue to affect not only those who had hoped to benefit, but their families, communities, and the country in which they have made an uneasy home. Out of the ashes of these lost dreams, though, people find their own paths forward through uncharted legal territory with creativity and resistance.

Arthropod predators and parasitoids provide valuable ecosystem services in agricultural crops by suppressing populations of insect herbivores. Many natural enemies are influenced by non-crop habitat surrounding agricultural fields, and understanding if, and at what scales, land use patterns influence natural enemies is essential to predicting how landscape alters biological control services. Here we focus on biological control of soybean aphid, Aphis glycines Matumura, a specialist crop pest recently introduced to the north-central United States. We measured the amount of biological control service supplied to soybean in 26 replicate fields across Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota across two years (2005—2006). We measured the impact of natural enemies by experimentally excluding or allowing access to soybean aphid infested plants and comparing aphid population growth over 14 days. We also monitored aphid and natural enemy populations at large in each field. Predators, principally coccinellid beetles, dominated the natural enemy community of soybean in both years. In the absence of aphid predators, A. glycines increased significantly, with 5.3-fold higher aphid populations on plants in exclusion cages vs. the open field after 14 days. We calculated a biological control services index (BSI) based on relative suppression of aphid populations and related it to landscape diversity and composition at multiple spatial scales surrounding each site. We found that BSI values increased with landscape diversity, measured as Simpson's D. Landscapes dominated by corn and soybean fields provided less biocontrol service to soybean compared with landscapes with an abundance of crop and non-crop habitats. The abundance of Coccinellidae was related to landscape composition, with beetles being more abundant in landscapes with an abundance of forest and grassland compared with landscapes dominated by agricultural crops. Landscape diversity and composition at a scale of 1.5 km surrounding the focal field explained the greatest proportion of the variation in BSI and Coccinellidae abundance. This study indicates that natural enemies provide a regionally important ecosystem service by suppressing a key soybean pest, reducing the need for insecticide applications. Furthermore, it suggests that management to maintain or enhance landscape diversity has the potential to stabilize or increase biocontrol services.

This article presents a critical analysis of social scientific research from the past fifteen years on the criminalization of immigration in the United States. Our review reveals three central themes. First, although immigration law is considered federal civil law, immigration enforcement has become substantially intertwined with criminal law enforcement in ways that have broad-ranging and radiating effects on immigrant communities of color. Second, race plays an important bidirectional role in the increasing criminalization of immigration. Specifically, criminalizing immigration results in the racialization of certain immigrant groups as dangerous outsiders, and such racialization has the effect of sustaining and promoting the policies and practices that target or have a disproportionate impact on certain immigrant groups. Third, given the increased externalization of US immigration enforcement programs, the effects of the criminalization of immigration are not limited to the United States. Each of these dynamics operates across multiple sites and in various components of the immigration enforcement system to disproportionately affect immigrants racialized as non-White in the United States. We discuss the important gaps in research and policy implications that follow from our review.

This Article argues that contemporary immigration policy is a site of overcriminalization. To explain how this came to be the case, the Article first evaluates the major developments in immigration law and immigration enforcement that have increased the criminalization of immigration. In the latter half of the twentieth century, three important assumptions undergirded immigration enforcement. The first assumption was that the federal government had the exclusive power to regulate immigration. The second was that, although it was essentially the sole responsibility of the federal government to make and enforce immigration laws, the federal government was actually unable to achieve widespread enforcement of the federal immigration laws on the books. And the third assumption was that state and local governments not only had no role in the regulation of immigration, but also had very little to do with the enforcement of federal immigration law. Of course, these three general statements stand in for a more nuanced set of facts on the ground, but at a basic level, they generate a fairly accurate picture of the state of immigration enforcement as recently as fifteen years ago. Over the past fifteen years, however, all three of these assumptions have given way to new realities. This Article describes the transformation of these three fundamental assumptions of immigration law and discusses the new realities that have replaced them. Adapted from the source document.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, which is probably caused by the cytotoxic effect of the amyloid β -peptide (A β ). We report here molecular changes induced by A β , both in neuronal cells in culture and in rats injected in the dorsal hippocampus with preformed A β fibrils, as an in vivo model of the disease. Results indicate that in both systems, A β neurotoxicity resulted in the destabilization of endogenous levels of β -catenin, a key transducer of the Wnt signaling pathway. Lithium chloride, which mimics Wnt signaling by inhibiting glycogen synthase kinase-3 β promoted the survival of post-mitotic neurons against A β neurotoxicity and recovered cytosolic β -catenin to control levels. Moreover, the neurotoxic effect of A β fibrils was also modulated with protein kinase C agonists/inhibitors and reversed with conditioned medium containing the Wnt-3a ligand. We also examined the spatial memory performance of rats injected with preformed A β fibrils in the Morris water maze paradigm, and found that chronic lithium treatment protected neurodegeneration by rescuing β -catenin levels and improved the deficit in spatial learning induced by A β . Our results are consistent with the idea that A β -dependent neurotoxicity induces a loss of function of Wnt signaling components and indicate that lithium or compounds that mimic this signaling cascade may be putative candidates for therapeutic intervention in Alzheimer's patients.

Context: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome and is strongly associated with obesity, dyslipidaemia and altered glucose regulation. Previous data demonstrated that low circulating levels of tumour necrosis factor weak inducer of apoptosis (sTWEAK) were associated with obesity, diabetes and insulin resistance, all traits associated with an increased risk of NALFD. Circulating sTWEAK levels are expected to be reduced in the presence of NAFLD. Objective: We aimed to explore the relationship between NAFLD and circulating sTWEAK levels in obese patients, and to evaluate the effect of sTWEAK on hepatocyte triglyceride accumulation. Design setting and patients: This is an observational case–control study performed in n =112 severely obese patients evaluated for NAFLD by abdominal ultrasound and n =32 non-obese patients without steatosis. Serum sTWEAK concentrations were measured by ELISA. Multivariable analyses were performed to determine the independent predictors of NAFLD. We analysed TWEAK and Fn14 protein expression in liver biopsies by western blotting and immunohistochemistry. An immortalized primary human hepatocyte cell line (HHL) was used to evaluate the effect of sTWEAK on triglyceride accumulation. Results: We observed a reduction in serum circulating sTWEAK concentrations with the presence of liver steatosis. On multivariable analysis, lower sTWEAK concentrations were independently associated with the presence of NAFLD (odds ratio (OR)=0.023; 95% confidence interval: 0.001–0.579; P <0.022). In human hepatocytes, sTWEAK administration reduced fat accumulation as demonstrated by the reduction in palmitic acid-induced accumulation of triglyceride and the decreased expression of cluster of differentiation 36 ( CD36 ) and perilipin 1 and 2 ( PLIN1 and PLIN2 ) genes. Conclusions: Decreased sTWEAK concentrations are independently associated with the presence of NAFLD. This is concordant with the observation that TWEAK reduces lipid accumulation in human liver cells.

Acidic soils limit plant nutrient availability, leading to deficiencies and reduced crop yields. Agricultural liming agents address these issues and are crucial for deploying silicate amendments used in enhanced rock weathering (ERW) for carbon sequestration and emission reduction. Grower recommendations for liming agents are based on the liming index (LI), which combines the neutralizing value (NV) and fineness rating (FR) to predict a mineral’s acidity neutralization relative to pure calcite. However, the LI was originally developed for carbonate minerals, and its applicability to silicates remains uncertain, with studies often yielding inconclusive results on soil carbon and liming efficiency. This study aims to evaluate the liming efficiency of silicates. We determined the LI of five candidate ERW minerals (basalt, olivine, wollastonite, kimberlite, and montmorillonite) and compared them to pure calcite. Post-NV acid digestion, we characterized the minerals and soils, applying nonparametric statistical tests (Wilcoxon, Kendall) to correlate liming results with LI, dosage, and amendment methods. We developed an empirical model incorporating mineralogy and kinetics to explain silicate behavior in liming, considering soil, climate, and crop factors.

Current evidence supports the notion that β -amyloid deposits or A β intermediates may be responsible for the pathogenesis in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. In the present work, we have assessed the neuroprotective effect of the chronic intraperitoneal administration of a five-amino-acid β -sheet breaker peptide (iA β 5p) on the rat behavioral deficit induced by the intrahippocampal A β -fibrils injection. At 1 month after the injection, animals showed a partial reduction of the amyloid deposits formed and a decreased astrocytic response around the injection site. More importantly, we report that following the iA β 5p treatment, hippocampal-dependent spatial learning paradigms, including the standard Morris water maze and a working memory analysis, showed a significant prevention from impairments induced by A β deposits in the dorsal hippocampus. Thus, it is possible that a noninvasive treatment such as the one presented here with β -sheet breaker peptides may be used as a potential therapy for AD patients.

IntroductionSARS-CoV-2, a highly contagious severe acute respiratory syndrome, has spread to most countries in the world and resulted in a change to practice patterns for the assessment and diagnosis of people with voice disorders. Many services are transitioning to telehealth models to maintain physical distancing measures and conserve personal protective equipment used by healthcare workers during laryngoscopy examinations. The speech–language pathology primary contact (SLPPC) assessment for patients referred to ear, nose and throat (ENT) services in Australia has been shown to reduce waiting times for assessment while streamlining access to ENT assessment and allied health practitioner treatment pathways.Methods and analysisA prospective observational cohort study will see patients in a newly developed telehealth model which uses the principles from a usual care SLPPC assessment protocol. Participants will be offered an initial telehealth assessment (speech–language pathology primary contact telehealth (SLPPC-T)) prior to being prioritised for a face-to-face laryngoscopy assessment to complete the diagnostic process. The telehealth assessment will collect sociodemographic information, personal and family medical history, key symptoms, onset and variability of symptoms, red-flag signs or symptoms for laryngeal malignancy, and clinical voice assessment data for auditory–perceptual and acoustic analysis. The study outcomes include (1) association of signs, symptoms and specific voice measures collected during SLPPC-T with voice disorder classification provided after laryngoscopy; (2) degree of concordance between voice disorder classification after SLPPC-T and after laryngoscopy; (3) health service and patient-related costs and health outcomes of the SLPPC-T; (4) patient and stakeholder views and beliefs about the SLPPC-T process.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval has been granted prior to commencement of the study enrolment by the Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service Human Research Ethics Committee (reference number HREC/2020/QGC/62832). Results will be shared through the publication of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals and presentation at national and international scientific meetings.Trial registration numberACTRN12621000427875.

Caries rates in school-age children are still high enough to be the cause of serious concern for health systems in different countries. The biotechnology strategies studied to decrease these rates include the consumption of probiotics—available via a variety of functional foods obtainable on the market—that are able to inhibit bacteria associated with this disease. In this vein, the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of these foods on the growth of microorganisms in early carious lesions in children aged between 6 and 12. In the first phase, an agar well diffusion method was applied to selected foods, available in supermarkets, which contain probiotics that have already been shown to inhibit Streptococcus mutans (ATCC 25175), and to lower the pH in liquid culture media. In a second phase, these foods (n = 4) were examined in terms of their ability to inhibit the microorganisms in contact with early carious lesions in children and to reduce the pH of mixed cultures combined with the food. The results revealed that, of the foods tested, three inhibit the growth of microorganisms in carious lesions and, at the same time, lower the pH of the culture by more than 2.5 units. The food with the highest inhibitory capacity (14 mm, IQR 13–14) showed a similar effect among patients (P > 0.05), which together with the fact that its sugar concentration is less than 10%, makes it an ideal candidate for clinical study.