加利福尼亚州立大学

Across many immigrant destination countries, recent immigration law enforcement has expanded in scope and salience, intensifying public debate over deportation, criminal punishment, and the treatment of immigrants in the criminal legal system. Drawing on focal concerns theory, the current study uses the U.S. as an empirical case and a 4 (country of origin: Syria, China, Russia, or Mexico) × 2 (crime severity: felony drug offense or misdemeanor trespassing) × 2 (possibility of judicial error: certain or uncertain witness) × 2 (legality: valid work visa or expired tourist visa) online survey experiment with a national sample of U.S. adults to examine public preferences for deportation and criminal punishment of immigrants arrested for non-immigration offenses. Results indicate that legality is significantly associated with both deportation and imprisonment preferences, and that respondents rely on overlapping considerations when evaluating immigrants’ deportability and criminal culpability. Although the uncertainty of evidence reduces imprisonment preferences, it has no effect on deportation preferences, suggesting greater public tolerance for errors and mistakes in the context of immigrant removal. Together, these findings suggest that punishment decisions involving immigrants are shaped in part by concerns about undocumented status, even when individuals are formally processed through the criminal legal system.

The loss of biodiversity, or species richness, is a growing global environmental concern. At the same time, biodiversity forms the foundation for critical ecosystem services and overall ecosystem health. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates the benefits of spending time in nature for human health; however, less is known about the role of biodiversity in human well-being. This study examines the influence of biodiversity on mental well-being, with a focus on mood and perceived restoration. Using a field experiment, we tested the effect of a biodiversity education sign on forest visitors’ mental well-being. We also measured mammal, bird, and vegetation species richness, along with visitors’ perceptions of biodiversity. Visitors reported significantly improved mood and perceived restoration following their experience in the forest. Model-averaged results indicated that perceived overall biodiversity, soundscape pleasantness, the sign intervention, and season (winter vs. summer) influenced mental well-being outcomes. In contrast, actual biodiversity and perceptions of specific taxa did not affect mental well-being outcomes. While these findings are specific to our study location, they contribute to growing evidence that time spent in nature enhances mood and promotes restoration, and they highlight the importance of perceived ecological quality and soundscape in shaping these experiences. Additionally, educational signage represents a simple, low-cost strategy for improving visitor experiences through biodiversity awareness. Overall, this study demonstrates the value of biodiversity and its role in supporting human well-being.

Combustion of energetic materials involves rapid microsecond-scale chemical dynamics of micron-size particles, requiring diagnostics with high temporal and spatial resolutions. In this work, we introduce a dual high-speed imaging system that synchronizes digital in-line holography (DIH) with three-color pyrometry to track aluminum (Al) droplet agglomeration, ejection, and measure particle temperatures during the combustion of 3Dprinted Al/KClO4 nanothermite composites at equivalence ratios phi = 0.5-2.0. The DIH provides a long depth-offield for capturing in situ particle trajectories and size evolution, while simultaneous pyrometry yields temperature maps of burning particles. Under fuel-rich conditions, Al nanoparticles rapidly sinter and coalesce on the burning surface into large molten droplets before ejection, whereas near-stoichiometric and fuel-lean compositions form smaller, more numerous particles. The average droplet residence time on the surface increases as phi increases, enabling greater droplet growth. Interestingly, the droplet diameter growth rate is temporally constant, indicating a surface-diffusion constrained rate. Measured particle ejection speeds decrease with increasing phi, while the overall burn rate of the composite is paradoxically higher for fuel-rich compositions. This outcome is due to prolonged heat feedback from the hot Al droplets that remain on the surface longer. The combined diagnostics and analysis provide a comprehensive, time-resolved understanding of Al droplet agglomeration in reactive composites, offering critical insights into how microscale particle dynamics influence macroscale combustion performance.

Scholars have long highlighted the impact of family on women’s entrepreneurship, often oscillating between two competing views. The family-as-a-burden perspective suggests that traditional roles assigned to women constrain their entrepreneurial efforts. In contrast, the family-as-an-asset view emphasizes the vital support provided by family members. This study aims to disentangle these competing perspectives in the context of a developing country by examining how different aspects of family influence women entrepreneurs’ operating efficiency and access to external finance. We adopt a mixed-methods approach that combines data from Thailand’s Household Socio-Economic Survey with in-depth interviews conducted with 27 Thai women entrepreneurs. Our findings reveal that caregiving responsibilities hinder both business efficiency and financial access, whereas spousal support enhances these outcomes. We also identify moderating mechanisms: extended families and the presence of employees help mitigate certain burdens while simultaneously signaling greater family obligations to lenders, thereby reducing financial access. This study contributes to gender and entrepreneurship research by unpacking the paradoxical role of family as both a constraint and an enabler, highlighting the cultural specificity of women’s entrepreneurial challenges in emerging economies.

While premodern hominins utilized highland landscapes in East Africa as early as 2 million years ago, the processes by which hominins first utilized southern Africa’s highest mountains - the Maloti-Drakensberg - are relatively unknown. This paper introduces a new site in these southern mountains, Likonong Shelter. The results of our luminescence dating and excavations establish Likonong as the earliest-known site in Highland Lesotho and demonstrate a hominin presence in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains as early as 242,000 years ago. This first suite of archaeological, geochemical and sedimentological data from Likonong charts the progression of hominin-highland engagements from ephemeral encounters during interglacial Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 7 to the intentional exploitation of the landscape under a broader range of environmental conditions. We suggest that social and demographic transformations during the Middle Pleistocene may have triggered highland occupation pulses and potentially cumulative cultural evolution, generating adaptive strategies that allowed for more sustained highland occupation during the Middle to Late Pleistocene transition (occupations dating from late MIS 6 to MIS 5c). Importantly, the stresses placed on foragers by sub-freezing temperatures, snow, and extreme resource stress would have required more innovative and collaborative solutions requiring both behavioral flexibility and the attainment of certain demographic preconditions.