Expanding Our Reach: Direct Client Representation vs. Policy and Advocacy Impact in a Transactional Clinic

The 2016 presidential election was met immediately around the country with calls to action for lawyers to provide legal representation and resources to vulnerable populations that would inevitably be affected by the incoming presidential administration. Lawyers showed up en masse, for example, at airports to offer services to travelers and families impacted by the executive order banning individuals from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country. Those lawyers were not alone. Calls also went out around the clinical community to use clinicians’ positions and resources in ways that further our work on behalf of communities which suddenly found themselves potential targets of a new administration. Many transactional clinicians saw the outcry as an “all hands on deck” alarm and asked themselves how they could help. Transactional clinics, compared with other law school clinics, face unique challenges in responding to threats facing client populations. Our colleagues in other clinics offer students the opportunity to work on advocacy projects, community education initiatives, impact litigation, or other work designed to achieve outcomes beyond individual client representation. Many transactional clinics, however, are structured entirely around representing individual entrepreneurs, businesses, and charities in a range of legal issues. This focus is the result of two phenomena. First, a disproportionate number of law students plan to pursue a transactional practice after graduation compared to the number of transactional experiences available in law school. Second, all clinical experiences are time-limited, and students generally have relatively little transactional law experience to draw on, limiting the amount of work that a transactional clinic can take on during the course of a semester. Representing individual businesses or nonprofits seemingly restricts the impact of students’ work—they can only represent one or two clients per semester. Many businesses and nonprofits remain unserved. Every clinic faces trade-offs between directly representing individual clients and taking on projects with broader policy and advocacy goals. For transactional clinics, that trade-off is between giving students hardto- obtain transactional experience through representing individual entrepreneurs and organizations and allowing students to assist a wider group through other initiatives. Balancing these trade-offs is particularly important for clinicians interested in leveraging student resources to make their clinics agents of change in a community. This commentary explores different options for accomplishing these broader goals, trade-offs that these options pose, and how clinicians navigate those challenges. The following summarizes ideas and challenges, and suggests ways to balance trade-offs and further integrate change-making into clinic design. In the wake of the 2016 election, transactional clinicians will undoubtedly increasingly design clinic work around impact. This commentary aims to help those clinicians in that effort

Helping resolve the interactome by means of label free interactio analysis

Comunicaciones a congreso

Technological city and cultural criticism: challenges, limits, politics

Background Technology has become a ‘life companion’ in our cities. Thanks to its fascinating power and the huge economic interest behind it, technology has recently reached an ‘epic’ role in our expectations for exiting the profound crisis we are in. The city represents the perfect place for such a marvel. Even if we really cannot get along without it, nevertheless technology has a ‘dark side’ that needs to be known. Methods In this, paper we try to understand if and why we have to protect the place of the critical debate starting from our cities. Do the problems of our cities really have to do with the lack of technologies? Results Critical thinking makes us understand that we need to enforce the tools that people can use to recognize the benefits and menaces of technologies, avoiding the illusion of embracing the idea of a city that is good just because it is ‘smart’. Innovation and equity are not two spontaneously cooperating issues. Conclusions Urbanism and urban politics have new challenges ahead that are harder than we think. This paper presents five proposals to open a discussion suggesting some first steps

The impractical supremacy of the local identity on the worthless soils of Mappano

Introduction: Soil is under pressure worldwide. In Italy, in the last two decades, land consumption has reached an average rate of 8 m2, demonstrating the failure of urban planning in controlling these phenomena. Despite the renewed recognition of the central role of soil resources, which has triggered numerous initiatives and actions, soil resources are still seen as a second-tier priority. No governance body exists to coordinate initiatives to ensure that soils are appropriately represented in decision-making processes. Global Soil Partnership draws our attention to the need for coordination to avoid fragmentation of efforts and wastage of resources. Both at a global and at a local level, the area of fertile soils is limited and is increasingly under pressure by competing land uses for settlement, infrastructure, raw materials extraction, agriculture, and forestry. Discussion and Evaluation: Here, we show that an administrative event, such as the creation of a new small municipality, can take place without any consideration of land and soil risks. This is particularly problematic in the Italian context as recent studies demonstrate that increasing local power in land use decisions coupled with weak control by the central administration and the high fragmentation and small dimension of municipalities has boosted land consumption. The fragmentation of municipalities has been detrimental to land conservation. Case description: The case study of Mappano (in the northwestern Italian region of Piedmont on the periphery of the regional capital city of Turin) is emblematic to demonstrate the role played by the supremacy of local identity or local interests despite the acknowledged importance of the key role played by soil everywhere. The contradiction highlighted by this case raises discussion amid some crucial issues as to the role of local urban planning and the protection of soil, which cannot be fragmented or subject to local short-term visions/interests. Conclusions: In this perspective, urban planning has to address soil and land issues by introducing new rules and competences at the local level and beyond

IL SUOLO SOPRA TUTTO.

“Non lo fa nessuno”. Questo si sentiva dire Matilde Casa, sindaco di Lauriano (TO), quando proponeva qualcosa di innovativo per il suo piccolo Comune. Poi un giorno arrivano la querela e il rinvio a giudizio. La sua colpa? Aver impedito la costruzione di “quaranta belle villette”, trasformando un terreno edificabile in agricolo. Una vicenda incredibile che avrà un “lieto fine” ma che suscita molte (e amare) riflessioni. Il libro - un lavoro a più mani - parte proprio da questa storia. Matilde Casa racconta la propria difficile esperienza nel suo aspetto giudiziario e umano e la “solitudine amministrativa” che ha vissuto. Paolo Pileri, urbanista e militante del suolo, affronta il tema della cronica “disgiunzione” italiana tra politica e saperi esperti, la cui vittima designata è proprio il suolo. Per tentare infine una sintesi. Come ricongiungere l’elaborazione accademica sul tema alle scelte delle pubbliche amministrazioni? Le proposte finali che ne scaturiscono sono tanto radicali quanto chiare: forgiare una cultura ambientale e civica nelle scuole, all’università, nella formazione politica; invitare i piccoli Comuni a cooperare; restituire allo Stato - perché centrale - la responsabilità sui temi legati al suolo; pungolare il legislatore perché adotti gli strumenti più efficaci a difendere i terreni dal cemento. Prefazione di Luca Mercalli, appassionato difensore del suolo

Indolent lymphoma: the pathologist's viewpoint

Indolent lymphomas have recently been the object of numerous studies, which have focused on new aspects relevant both for the better comprehension of their histogenesis and the identification of new therapeutic strategies. As marginal-zone lymphoma (MZL) represents the category of indolent lymphomas that has obtained more benefit from such an approach, the authors focused on the most recent achievements and not yet solved controversies in this area. In spite of their postulated common derivation, the three categories of MZL of the WHO Classification appear dissimilar. In fact, they show significant molecular differences among them as well as a certain heterogeneity within each group. By no means, there is a cogent need of more refined tools to revise these neoplasms and to produce a more rational grouping. The recent identification of the IRTA gene family corresponding to IG-like receptors differentially expressed in B-cells might contribute to their better understandin

GLUT1 expression patterns in different Hodgkin lymphoma subtypes and progressively transformed germinal centers

Background: Increased glycolytic activity is a hallmark of cancer, allowing staging and restaging with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron-emission-tomography (PET). Since interim-PET is an important prognostic tool in Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), the aim of this study was to investigate the expression of proteins involved in the regulation of glucose metabolism in the different HL subtypes and their impact on clinical outcome. Methods: Lymph node biopsies from 54 HL cases and reactive lymphoid tissue were stained for glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1), lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHA) and lactate exporter proteins MCT1 and MCT4. In a second series, samples from additional 153 HL cases with available clinical data were stained for GLUT1 and LDHA. Results: Membrane bound GLUT1 expression was frequently observed in the tumor cells of HL (49% of all cases) but showed a broad variety between the different Hodgkin lymphoma subtypes: Nodular sclerosing HL subtype displayed a membrane bound GLUT1 expression in the Hodgkin-and Reed-Sternberg cells in 56% of the cases. However, membrane bound GLUT1 expression was more rarely observed in tumor cells of lymphocyte rich classical HL subtype (30%) or nodular lymphocyte predominant HL subtype (15%). Interestingly, in both of these lymphocyte rich HL subtypes as well as in progressively transformed germinal centers, reactive B cells displayed strong expression of GLUT1. LDHA, acting downstream of glycolysis, was also expressed in 44% of all cases. We evaluated the prognostic value of different GLUT1 and LDHA expression patterns; however, no significant differences in progression free or overall survival were found between patients exhibiting different GLUT1 or LDHA expression patterns. There was no correlation between GLUT1 expression in HRS cells and PET standard uptake values. Conclusions: In a large number of cases, HRS cells in classical HL express high levels of GLUT1 and LDHA indicating glycolytic activity in the tumor cells. Although interim-PET is an important prognostic tool, a predictive value of GLUT1 or LDHA staining of the primary diagnostic biopsy could not be demonstrated. However, we observed GLUT1 expression in progressively transformed germinal centers and hyperplastic follicles, explaining false positive results in PET. Therefore, PET findings suggestive of HL relapse should always be confirmed by histology

Protein kinase CK2 is widely expressed in follicular, Burkitt and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas and propels malignant B-cell growth.

Serine-threonine kinase CK2 is highly expressed and pivotal for survival and proliferation in multiple myeloma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and mantle cell lymphoma. Here, we investigated the expression of \u3b1 catalytic and \u3b2 regulatory CK2 subunits by immunohistochemistry in 57 follicular (FL), 18 Burkitt (BL), 52 diffuse large B-cell (DLBCL) non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) and in normal reactive follicles. In silico evaluation of available Gene Expression Profile (GEP) data sets from patients and Western blot (WB) analysis in NHL cell-lines were also performed. Moreover, the novel, clinical-grade, ATP-competitive CK2-inhibitor CX-4945 (Silmitasertib) was assayed on lymphoma cells. CK2 was detected in 98.4% of cases with a trend towards a stronger CK2\u3b1 immunostain in BL compared to FL and DLBCL. No significant differences were observed between Germinal Center B (GCB) and non-GCB DLBCL types. GEP data and WB confirmed elevated CK2 mRNA and protein levels as well as active phosphorylation of specific targets in NHL cells. CX-4945 caused a dose-dependent growth-arresting effect on GCB, non-GCB DLBCL and BL cell-lines and it efficiently shut off phosphorylation of NF-\u3baB RelA and CDC37 on CK2 target sites. Thus, CK2 is highly expressed and could represent a suitable therapeutic target in BL, FL and DLBCL NHL