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Biden defends immigration policy during State of the Union, blaming Republicans in Congress for refusing to act
Jean Lantz Reisz, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Co-Director, USC Immigration Clinic, University of Southern California President Joe Biden delivered the annual State of the Union address on March 7, 2024, casting a wide net on a range of major themes – the economy, abortion rights, threats to democracy, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine – that are preoccupying many Americans heading into the November presidential election. The president also addressed massive increases in immigration at the southern border and the political battle in Congress over how to manage it. “We can fight about the border, or we can fix it. I’m
Asthma meds have become shockingly unaffordable − but relief may be on the way
Ana Santos Rutschman, Professor of Law, Villanova School of Law The price of asthma medication has soared in the U.S. over the past decade and a half. The jump – in some cases from around a little over US$10 to almost $100 for an inhaler – has meant that patients in need of asthma-related products often struggle to buy them. Others simply can’t afford them. To make matters worse, asthma disproportionately affects lower-income patients. Black, Hispanic and Indigenous communities have the highest asthma rates. They also shoulder the heaviest burden of asthma-related deaths and hospitalizations. Climate change will likely worsen asthma rates and, consequently, these disparities. I’m a health law professor at Villanova University, where I study whether patients
My Malaysia ordeal shows how religion can fuse with populist nationalism to silence dissent
Ahmet T. Kuru, Professor of Political Science, San Diego State University I hadn’t expected my book tour in Malaysia to end with a confrontation with men who identified themselves as police in a Kuala Lumpur airport. I arrived in the Muslim-majority country in early January 2024 to promote the Malay translation of my book “Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment,” an academic analysis of the political and socioeconomic crises facing many Muslim societies today. But my visit attracted unwarranted attention. Some conservatives and Islamists labeled me in social media a “liberal” – a term used by Malaysia’s federal agency administering Islamic affairs to denote those against the official religion,
The ‘average’ revolutionized scientific research, but overreliance on it has led to discrimination and injury
Zachary del Rosario, Assistant Professor of Engineering, Olin College of Engineering When analyzing a set of data, one of the first steps many people take is to compute an average. You might compare your height against the average height of people where you live, or brag about your favorite baseball player’s batting average. But while the average can help you study a dataset, it has important limitations. Uses of the average that ignore these limitations have led to serious issues, such as discrimination, injury and even life-threatening accidents. For example, the U.S. Air Force used to design its planes for “the average man,”
COVID-19 rapid tests still work against new variants – researchers keep ‘testing the tests,’ and they pass
Nathaniel Hafer, Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine, UMass Chan Medical SchoolAnuradha Rao, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Emory UniversityApurv Soni, Assistant Professor of Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School By September 2020, just six months after COVID-19 triggered shutdowns across the U.S., it was clear that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, had mutated from its original form. The question quickly arose whether existing rapid antigen tests could detect newly emerging variants. Using clinical samples obtained from diagnostic labs throughout the U.S. from 2020 to 2023, the National Institutes of Health, through its Variant Task Force, analyzed the effectiveness of more than 100 rapid antigen test kits
The tools in a medieval Japanese healer’s toolkit: from fortunetelling and exorcism to herbal medicines
Alessandro Poletto, Lecturer in East Asian Religions, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis “The Tale of Genji,” often called Japan’s first novel, was written 1,000 years ago. Yet it still occupies a powerful place in the Japanese imagination. A popular TV drama, “Dear Radiance” – “Hikaru kimi e” – is based on the life of its author, Murasaki Shikibu: the lady-in-waiting whose experiences at court inspired the refined world of “Genji.” Romantic relationships, poetry and political intrigue provide most of the novel’s action. Yet illness plays an important role in several crucial moments, most famously when one of
Yes, Trump’s PACs really can pay his legal fees
Richard Briffault, Joseph P. Chamberlain Professor of Legislation, Columbia University Campaign finance data released at the end of January 2024 revealed that Save America, a political action committee founded and controlled by former President Donald Trump, spent more than US$50 million in 2023 on legal fees resulting from Trump’s multiple criminal and civil cases. OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit tracking campaign funds, found that other Trump-aligned organizations also paid a combined $10 million in additional legal fees for Trump in 2023. Though I have spent much of my career as a scholar of campaign finance law, I’m not certain whether that use of campaign donations is
What is IVF? A nurse explains the evolving science and legality of in vitro fertilization
Heidi Collins Fantasia, Associate Professor of Nursing, UMass Lowell Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 ended the federal right to abortion, legislative attention has extended to many other aspects of reproductive rights, including access to assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, or IVF, after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling in February 2024. University of Massachusetts Lowell associate professor and department chair of the school of nursing Heidi Collins Fantasia explains how this decades-old procedure works and what its tenuous legal status means for prospective parents. What is IVF? IVF is a type of artificial reproductive technology that allows