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"Hammond, Andrew"
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TERRITORIAL EXCEPTIONALISM AND THE AMERICAN WELFARE STATE
Federal law excludes millions of American citizens from crucial public benefits simply because they live in the United States territories. If the Social Security Administration determines a low-income individual has a disability, that person can move to another state and continue to receive benefits. But if that person moves to, say, Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands, that person loses their right to federal aid. Similarly with SNAP (food stamps), federal spending rises with increased demand—whether because of a recession, a pandemic, or a climate disaster. But unlike the rest of the United States, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa receive a limited amount of federal food assistance, regardless of need. That's why, after Hurricane Maria, despite additional congressional action, over a million Puerto Rican residents lost food assistance. And with Medicaid, federal law caps medical assistance for each of these five territories, a limit that does not exist for the fifty states or the District of Columbia. This Article draws much-needed attention to these discrepancies in legal status and social protection. It surveys the eligibility rules and financing structure of disability benefits, food assistance, and health insurance for low-income Americans in the states and the territories. A comprehensive account of these practices provokes questions about the tiers of citizenship built by a fragmented and devolved American state. Part I invokes the scholarship on social citizenship, the idea that an individual cannot meaningfully participate in society without some modicum of economic security. Part I then explores the tension between that normative commitment and one of the defining features of the American welfare state—federalism. It then elaborates the exceptional legal status of Americans who live in U.S. territories. Part II provides a comprehensive overview of federal food, medical, and disability assistance and, in doing so, demonstrates how the American territories inhabit a different and, in many ways, dilapidated corner of the American welfare state. Part III begins with an analysis of ongoing cases in federal court that challenge this facial discrimination. It then canvasses legislation introduced in Congress that would make significant progress in putting territorial Americans on par with Americans in the fifty states. To conclude, Part IV brings the states back in, using the earlier discussion of territories as an invitation to imagine an American welfare state built on a foundation other than a racial order.
Journal Article
The creation and selection of mutations resistant to a gene drive over multiple generations in the malaria mosquito
Gene drives have enormous potential for the control of insect populations of medical and agricultural relevance. By preferentially biasing their own inheritance, gene drives can rapidly introduce genetic traits even if these confer a negative fitness effect on the population. We have recently developed gene drives based on CRISPR nuclease constructs that are designed to disrupt key genes essential for female fertility in the malaria mosquito. The construct copies itself and the associated genetic disruption from one homologous chromosome to another during gamete formation, a process called homing that ensures the majority of offspring inherit the drive. Such drives have the potential to cause long-lasting, sustainable population suppression, though they are also expected to impose a large selection pressure for resistance in the mosquito. One of these population suppression gene drives showed rapid invasion of a caged population over 4 generations, establishing proof of principle for this technology. In order to assess the potential for the emergence of resistance to the gene drive in this population we allowed it to run for 25 generations and monitored the frequency of the gene drive over time. Following the initial increase of the gene drive we observed a gradual decrease in its frequency that was accompanied by the spread of small, nuclease-induced mutations at the target gene that are resistant to further cleavage and restore its functionality. Such mutations showed rates of increase consistent with positive selection in the face of the gene drive. Our findings represent the first documented example of selection for resistance to a synthetic gene drive and lead to important design recommendations and considerations in order to mitigate for resistance in future gene drive applications.
Journal Article
A CRISPR–Cas9 gene drive targeting doublesex causes complete population suppression in caged Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes
Complete population collapse of malaria vector
Anopheles gambiae
in cages is achieved using a gene drive that targets
doublesex
.
In the human malaria vector
Anopheles gambiae
, the gene
doublesex
(
Agdsx
) encodes two alternatively spliced transcripts,
dsx-female
(
AgdsxF
) and
dsx-male
(
AgdsxM
), that control differentiation of the two sexes. The female transcript, unlike the male, contains an exon (exon 5) whose sequence is highly conserved in all
Anopheles
mosquitoes so far analyzed. We found that CRISPR–Cas9-targeted disruption of the intron 4–exon 5 boundary aimed at blocking the formation of functional AgdsxF did not affect male development or fertility, whereas females homozygous for the disrupted allele showed an intersex phenotype and complete sterility. A CRISPR–Cas9 gene drive construct targeting this same sequence spread rapidly in caged mosquitoes, reaching 100% prevalence within 7–11 generations while progressively reducing egg production to the point of total population collapse. Owing to functional constraint of the target sequence, no selection of alleles resistant to the gene drive occurred in these laboratory experiments. Cas9-resistant variants arose in each generation at the target site but did not block the spread of the drive.
Journal Article
Experimental observation of the marginal glass phase in a colloidal glass
The replica theory of glasses predicts that in the infinite dimensional mean field limit, there exist two distinct glassy phases of matter: stable glass and marginal glass. We have developed a technique to experimentally probe these phases of matter using a colloidal glass. We avoid the difficulties inherent in measuring the long time behavior of glasses by instead focusing on the very short time dynamics of the ballistic to caged transition. We track a single tracer particle within a slowly densifying glass and measure the resulting mean squared displacement (MSD). By analyzing the MSD, we find that upon densification, our colloidal system moves through several states of matter. At lowest densities, it is a subdiffusive liquid. Next, it behaves as a stable glass, marked by the appearance of a plateau in the MSD whose magnitude shrinks with increasing density. However, this shrinking plateau does not shrink to zero; instead, at higher densities, the system behaves as a marginal glass, marked by logarithmic growth in the MSD toward that previous plateau value. Finally, at the highest experimental densities, the system returns to the stable glass phase. This provides direct experimental evidence for the existence of a marginal glass in three dimensions.
Journal Article
أدب الحرب الباردة : كتابة الصراع الكوني
كانت الحرب الباردة هي الصراع الأطول في قرن أهم ما يميزه هو حجم هذا الصراع وضراوته. في المعركة بين الغرب الديمقراطي والشرق الشيوعي، لم يمر عام تقريبا دون أن يقوم الغرب بتنظيم أو خوض أو تمويل حرب خارجية خلفت الملايين من القتلى الدراسات التي يضمها هذا الكتاب تحلل الرد الأدبي على الإنقلابات والتمردات وعمليات الاحتلال في أنحاء مختلفة من هذا الكوكب، وتستكشف التوجهات الفكرية والأسلوبية لعداءات وخصومات الحرب الباردة كما ظهرت فى الكتابة العالمية.
Book
A male-biased sex-distorter gene drive for the human malaria vector Anopheles gambiae
Only female insects transmit diseases such as malaria, dengue and Zika; therefore, control methods that bias the sex ratio of insect offspring have long been sought. Genetic elements such as sex-chromosome drives can distort sex ratios to produce unisex populations that eventually collapse, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are unknown. We report a male-biased sex-distorter gene drive (SDGD) in the human malaria vector
Anopheles gambiae
. We induced super-Mendelian inheritance of the X-chromosome-shredding I-PpoI nuclease by coupling this to a CRISPR-based gene drive inserted into a conserved sequence of the
doublesex
(
dsx
) gene. In modeling of invasion dynamics, SDGD was predicted to have a quicker impact on female mosquito populations than previously developed gene drives targeting female fertility. The SDGD at the
dsx
locus led to a male-only population from a 2.5% starting allelic frequency in 10–14 generations, with population collapse and no selection for resistance. Our results support the use of SDGD for malaria vector control.
A sex-distorter gene drive causes population collapse in the malaria mosquito.
Journal Article