Investing in Abolition

This Article situates the prison within a broader macro-financial trend, what I call “community capture.” As private equity firms have consolidated the market for carceral services, they have also gained control over other essential social infrastructure, like housing and healthcare. By layering debt, fees, and aggressive profit expectations over companies or assets that provide for basic needs, their strategies intensify the economic pressures communities face. These strategies rely on various forms of coordination and legal protection from contestation. To demonstrate this process in the context of mass incarceration, this Article tells the story of Securus, a dominant carceral service company that had four different private equity owners in a six-year period. This Article also explains the legal and political foundations of the carceral services market, which similarly demonstrate illuminating continuities, rather than differences, with the broader political economy. It offers a novel expression of how courts interpret what the Eighth Amendment demands of the state in terms of provisioning to prisoners: the provisioning of basic needs as credit. The proliferation of so-called “pay-to-stay” fees supports this interpretation in particular. This creditor–debtor relationship ultimately compels prisoners to work to support the carceral system. In this sense, the Eighth Amendment represents an added constitutional layer that accommodates forced carceral labor. Meanwhile, austerity politics and notions of family responsibility help legitimize market-based provisioning in prisons. The ways in which debt and family responsibility operate in the wider economy find similar expression here. How it works “on the outside” tends to legitimize coercive dynamics “on the inside.” This combined picture underscores the urgency of an abolitionist project that understands broader political–economic transformation as necessary to shrink the carceral state. This Article’s final Part explores what it means to “invest in abolition,” stressing the importance of a national focus that taps into federal monetary power

The Criminal System Under Racial Capitalism

In 2021, major segments of the business lobby converged around a consensus for criminal system reform. As the United States experienced historic levels of labor market tightness, business groups argued for removing “barriers” to employment that system-involved people face. Just a few months later, the orientation of business to the criminal system was decidedly more mixed. By March 2022, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s most powerful business lobby, had stepped to the forefront of the national moral panic around retail theft, launching a vigorous campaign to defend and even strengthen criminal punishment across the country. Anchoring its analysis in the concept of racial capitalism, this Article argues that these disparate pictures, together, illustrate the criminal system’s constitutive role in the U.S. political-economic order. The criminal system plays such a role, I argue, by serving as both a labor governance institution and as a staging ground for struggles around how the U.S. political economy should work, and for whom. The Article proceeds as follows. Part I develops the concept of racial capitalism to anchor the analysis that follows. Part II surveys the leading scholarly accounts of the criminal system’s labor governance functions. I then reconstruct and supplement these accounts to develop a new theoretical framework. I argue that the criminal system should be understood as rationing total available employment, and channeling and sorting system-involved people into precarious work. In these respects, the system functions as a foil to the idea of a federal job guarantee, which labor and civil rights groups struggled for unsuccessfully in the 1970s. This theoretical groundwork leads into a critique of the business community’s consensus around reform, which is better understood as part of a multilayered strategy to preserve an imbalance of power between workers and employers. Part III develops an account of the prison-industrial-complex to explain how its structural foundations, rooted in state and local balance sheets, prime the criminal system to serve as a staging ground for broader political-economic struggle. While recent scholarship has focused on the critiques and demands of abolitionist and other left social movements to illustrate this function, I look in the other ideological direction. I analyze how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has used the issue of retail theft to simultaneously strengthen the criminal system across the country, as well as to defend its idea of “American free enterprise.” This case study shows how racialized state violence and anti-state ideas about free enterprise are joined together in a project of mutual justification. Part IV concludes. Given the overall picture this Article develops, I argue that we should revisit the idea of a federal job guarantee, as a path not taken, and potential program for the future. But whether the criminal system ceases to function as a major labor governance institution any time soon will depend, in part, on whether labor movements recognize its constitutive role in the broader political economy and oppose it. The business lobby, on the other hand, has already made the connection

A Pilot Study Comparing HPV-Positive and HPV-Negative Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinomas by Whole Exome Sequencing.

Background. Next-generation sequencing of cancers has identified important therapeutic targets and biomarkers. The goal of this pilot study was to compare the genetic changes in a human papillomavirus- (HPV-)positive and an HPV-negative head and neck tumor. Methods. DNA was extracted from the blood and primary tumor of a patient with an HPV-positive tonsillar cancer and those of a patient with an HPV-negative oral tongue tumor. Exome enrichment was performed using the Agilent SureSelect All Exon Kit, followed by sequencing on the ABI SOLiD platform. Results. Exome sequencing revealed slightly more mutations in the HPV-negative tumor (73) in contrast to the HPV-positive tumor (58). Multiple mutations were noted in zinc finger genes (ZNF3, 10, 229, 470, 543, 616, 664, 638, 716, and 799) and mucin genes (MUC4, 6, 12, and 16). Mutations were noted in MUC12 in both tumors. Conclusions. HPV-positive HNSCC is distinct from HPV-negative disease in terms of evidence of viral infection, p16 status, and frequency of mutations. Next-generation sequencing has the potential to identify novel therapeutic targets and biomarkers in HNSCC

Differential Evolution Biogeography Based Optimization for Linear Phase Fir Low Pass Filter Design

This paper presents an efficient way of designing Linear Phase Finite Impulse Response (FIR) Filter using hybrid Differential Evolution (DE) and Biogeography based optimization (BBO) algorithms. DE is a fast and robust evolutionary algorithm tool for global optimization. On the other hand, BBO uses migration operator to share information among solutions. FIR filter of order 20 is designed using fitness function that is based on minimization of maximum ripples in pass band and stop band of the filter response. The result obtained from Differential Evolution Biogeography Based Optimization (DEBBO) for the FIR low pass filter is good in convergence speed and solution quality in terms of pass band ripple, stop band ripple, transition width. Keywords: DE, BBO, DEBBO, Convergence, FIR Filter

Management of Psychosis in Parkinson’s Disease: Emphasizing Clinical Subtypes and Pathophysiological Mechanisms of the Condition

Investigation into neuropsychiatric symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is sparse and current drug development is mainly focused on the motor aspect of PD. The tight association of psychosis with an impaired quality of life in PD, together with an important underreporting of this comorbid condition, contributes to its actual insufficient assessment and management. Furthermore, the withdrawal from access to readily available treatment interventions is unacceptable and has an impact on PD prognosis. Despite its impact, to date no standardized guidelines to the adequate management of PD psychosis are available and they are therefore highly needed. Readily available knowledge on distinct clinical features as well as early biomarkers of psychosis in PD justifies the potential for its timely diagnosis and for early intervention strategies. Also, its specific characterisation opens up the possibility of further understanding the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms giving rise to more targeted therapeutic developments in the nearer future. A literature review on the most recent knowledge with special focus on specific clinical subtypes and pathophysiological mechanisms will not only contribute to an up to date practical approach of this condition for the health care providers, but furthermore open up new ideas for research in the near future

Pea Seed Proteins: A Nutritional and Nutraceutical Update

Grain legumes are well known as staple sources of soluble protein worldwide. Pea is essentially the most quickly growing crop for immediate human consumption and has the potential for higher effect as being a protein supply for foods processing apps. Pea seeds are an essential source of plant-based proteins. The better acceptance of pea protein-rich food is due to pea manifold attributes, excellent functional qualities, high vitamin value, accessibility, and comparatively small cost. Pea proteins are not merely nutritional amino acids but are an indispensable source of bioactive peptides that offer health benefits. This chapter focuses on the present information of isolation methods, extraction, and of seed proteins in pea. Overall, we believe that analogous research and advancement on pea proteins would be required for further more substantial increase in pea protein utilization is envisaged

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Developing Standard Treatment Workflows—way to universal healthcare in India

Primary healthcare caters to nearly 70% of the population in India and provides treatment for approximately 80–90% of common conditions. To achieve universal health coverage (UHC), the Indian healthcare system is gearing up by initiating several schemes such as National Health Protection Scheme, Ayushman Bharat, Nutrition Supplementation Schemes, and Inderdhanush Schemes. The healthcare delivery system is facing challenges such as irrational use of medicines, over- and under-diagnosis, high out-of-pocket expenditure, lack of targeted attention to preventive and promotive health services, and poor referral mechanisms. Healthcare providers are unable to keep pace with the volume of growing new scientific evidence and rising healthcare costs as the literature is not published at the same pace. In addition, there is a lack of common standard treatment guidelines, workflows, and reference manuals from the Government of India. Indian Council of Medical Research in collaboration with the National Health Authority, Govt. of India, and the WHO India country office has developed Standard Treatment Workflows (STWs) with the objective to be utilized at various levels of healthcare starting from primary to tertiary level care. A systematic approach was adopted to formulate the STWs. An advisory committee was constituted for planning and oversight of the process. Specialty experts' group for each specialty comprised of clinicians working at government and private medical colleges and hospitals. The expert groups prioritized the topics through extensive literature searches and meeting with different stakeholders. Then, the contents of each STW were finalized in the form of single-pager infographics. These STWs were further reviewed by an editorial committee before publication. Presently, 125 STWs pertaining to 23 specialties have been developed. It needs to be ensured that STWs are implemented effectively at all levels and ensure quality healthcare at an affordable cost as part of UHC