Migration Scenarios Research Articles

Undocumented Older Latino Immigrants in the United States: Population Projections and Share of Older Undocumented Latinos by Health Insurance Coverage and Chronic Health Conditions, 2018-2038.

This article focuses on the older Latino undocumented population and anticipates how their current demographic characteristics and health insurance coverage might affect future population size and health insurance trends. We use the 2013-2018 American Community Survey as a baseline to project growth in the Latino 55 and older undocumented population over the next 20 years. We use the cohort component method to estimate population size across different migration scenarios and distinguish between aging in place and new immigration. We also examine contemporary health insurance coverage and chronic health conditions among 55 and older undocumented Latinos from the 2003-2014 California Health Interview Survey. We then project health insurance rates in 2038 among Latino immigrants under different migration and policy scenarios. If current mortality, migration, and policy trends continue, projections estimate that 40% of undocumented Latino immigrants will be 55 years or older by 2038-nearly all of whom will have aged in place. Currently, 40% of older Latino undocumented immigrants do not have insurance. Without policies that increase access to insurance, projections estimate that the share who are uninsured among all older Latinos immigrants will rise from 15% to 21%, and the share who is both uninsured and living with a chronic health condition will rise from 5% to 9%. Without access to health care, older undocumented immigrants may experience delayed care and more severe morbidity. Our projections highlight the need to develop and enact policies that can address impending health access concerns for an increasingly older undocumented Latino population.

HOW THE SATELLITE CITY IS AFFECTING Co2 EMISSIONS

To achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals, many cities are building satellite cities to relieve the population and environment pressure of the central city. However, past experiences showed that long-term effects of such a solution were partially limited, due to limited attention on the effects of energy consumption and carbon emissions, depending on the dynamics of population and industrial development. This paper overcomes the previous limitations, applying a Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning model to the area of Xiong’an New District, an area extending from Hebei province (China) and nearby Beijing, is planned to support the development of Beijing. The proposed model was based on three different population migration, industrial and transposition scenarios to test their impacts on urban greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results show that: (1) Increased population and building area will markedly increase GHG emissions from residential consumption in Hebei province, while slightly decrease GHG emissions in Beijing. (2) Green planning, including industrial structure changes, industrial transformation, will markedly decrease the GHG emissions in Hebei provinces and it can take down for the emissions increase due to the population migration. This paper proved the effectiveness of a multi-scalar, multi-dimensional, and multi-actor modeling approach for a satellite city and new town development planning, implying that a similar approach could be applied in planning and managing the development of future satellite cities.

Origin, migration pathways, and prediction of high carbon dioxide accumulations in the Lower Saxony Basin (northwestern Germany): Part II

Predrill risk assessment for the presence of nonhydrocarbon gases in oil and methane reservoirs is challenging and perhaps commonly an underestimated task. Although the same assessment principles apply for source and migration scenarios, the interplay of both play elements in basin history is different because of diverse origins and oftentimes unusual occurrences of nonhydrocarbon gases. The southern upper Permian Zechstein-2-Carbonate (Ca2) fairway in northwestern Germany represents such a setting, where CO2 contents >60 vol. % have been encountered in an otherwise methane-dominated area. The CO2 is well constrained to be the product from thermal decomposition of ultra–deeply buried Devonian carbonates (part I published in this issue). In this study (part II), CO2-rich tectonic veins sampled for part I have been directionally reoriented in drill cores, showing a dominant northeast-southwest strike. Only very few faults can be identified in seismic data, connecting the deep CO2 source through the approximately 3-km-thick Carboniferous section with the Ca2 reservoir. Fluid inclusion analyses of hydrothermal cements from the northeast-striking veins reveal up to 100 mol % CO2, formation temperatures up to 315°C, and near-lithostatic pressure conditions. The northeast strike of the faults is parallel to the main contraction direction during Late Cretaceous basin inversion and therefore marks the most likely timing for CO2 migration. The high CO2 content wells are located within the hanging wall of seismically defined northeast-striking faults, enabling lateral injection of CO2 into downthrown Ca2 fault blocks. This pattern enhances predictability of nonhydrocarbon gases for neighboring trap structures and in similar petroliferous basins.

A model based on cellular automata for investigating the impact of lockdown, migration and vaccination on COVID-19 dynamics

Background and Objective:COVID-19 pandemic continues unabated due to the rapid spread of new mutant strains of the virus. Decentralized cluster containment is an efficient approach to manage the pandemic in the long term, without straining the healthcare system and economy.In this study, the objective is to forecast the peak and duration of COVID-19 spread in a cluster under different conditions, using a probabilistic cellular automata configuration designed to include the observed characteristics of the pandemic with appropriate neighbourhood schemes and transition rules.Methods: The cellular automata, initially configured to have only susceptible and exposed states, enlarges and evolves in discrete time steps to different infection states of the COVID-19 pandemic. The transition rules take into account the probability and proximity of contact between infected hosts and susceptible individuals. A transmittable and transition neighbourhoods are defined to identify the most probable individuals infected from a single host in a time step.Results: The model with novel neighbourhood schemes and transition rules reproduce the macroscopic behaviour of infection and recovery observed in pandemics. The temporal evolution of the pandemic trajectory is sensitive to lattice size, range, latent and recovery periods but has constraints in capturing the changes in the infectious period. A study of lockdown and migration scenarios shows strict social isolation is crucial in controlling the pandemic. The simulations also indicate that earlier vaccination with a higher capacity and rate is essential to mitigate the pandemic. A comparison of simulated and actual data shows a good match.Conclusions: The study concludes that social isolation during movement and interaction of people can limit the spread of new infections. Vaccinating a large proportion of the population reduces new cases in subsequent waves of the pandemic. The model and algorithm with real-world data as input can quickly forecast the trajectory of the pandemic, for effective response in cluster containment.

An Influx in the Thousands: Late Classic Migration to Perry Mesa

At the time when prehistoric populations were uprooting and relocating themselves across much of the Southwest, an influx of thousands of immigrants possibly arrived onto the elevated and windswept terrain of Perry Mesa in central Arizona. During the Late Classic (A.D. 1280–1400), the expanded populations built large and imposing pueblos equally spaced along the mesa edge and overlooking 1000-foot cliffs. How so many people moved to Perry Mesa in late prehistory is a question we address with survey and ceramic analyses. We assess three migration scenarios: (1) a rapid deployment of a large population en masse for defense; (2) a prolonged migration stream, whereby newcomers steadily arrived to join founder groups, and (3) a scenario that truly was not a migration at all, but rather a local reorganization including the construction of the big pueblos. We also consider how the Perry Mesa case contributes to theory building for migration processes.

Evolutionary history of two rare endemic conifer species from the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Understanding the population genetics and evolutionary history of endangered species is urgently needed in an era of accelerated biodiversity loss. This knowledge is most important for regions with high endemism that are ecologically vulnerable, such as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). The genetic variation of 84 juniper trees from six populations of Juniperus microsperma and one population of Juniperus erectopatens, two narrow-endemic junipers from the QTP that are sister to each other, was surveyed using RNA-sequencing data. Coalescent-based analyses were used to test speciation, migration and demographic scenarios. Furthermore, positively selected and climate-associated genes were identified, and the genetic load was assessed for both species. Analyses of 149 052 single nucleotide polymorphisms showed that the two species are well differentiated and monophyletic. They diverged around the late Pliocene, but interspecific gene flow continued until the Last Glacial Maximum. Demographic reconstruction by Stairway Plot detected two severe bottlenecks for J. microsperma but only one for J. erectopatens. The identified positively selected genes and climate-associated genes revealed habitat adaptation of the two species. Furthermore, although J. microsperma had a much wider geographical distribution than J. erectopatens, the former possesses lower genetic diversity and a higher genetic load than the latter. This study sheds light on the evolution of two endemic juniper species from the QTP and their responses to Quaternary climate fluctuations. Our findings emphasize the importance of speciation and demographic history reconstructions in understanding the current distribution pattern and genetic diversity of threatened species in mountainous regions.

Modeling Vapor Migration for Estimating the Time to Reach Steady State Conditions

AbstractThe design and planning of soil vapor sampling for vapor intrusion assessment require an estimate of the time for vapor migration from the contamination source to reach steady state prior to vapor sampling and analysis for volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This study presents the model derivation, analytical solutions, as well as the assumptions and limitations of a one‐dimensional VOC vapor transport model based on diffusion in porous media and equilibrium partitioning of VOCs in solid, aqueous, and vapor phases. The model assumes a finite domain with boundary conditions that represent the scenarios of vapor migration in the real environment. The derivation of the conceptual model is presented along with its practical use and implications as illustrated through case examples. Consideration of the upper (or exit) boundary condition along with the distance between the source and the applicable boundary, rather than the distance from the source to the measurement point, are shown to be critical in the time estimates as compared to an expression typically used and cited in guidance documents. The study reveals the importance of defining a conceptual model and relevant boundaries in assessing near steady state conditions, and suggests a tiered approach in refining the estimate with increasing level of effort for practical applications in vapor assessment.

The prism of new mobilities. The mobility trajectories of refugees and asylum seekers outside the Italian reception system

ABSTRACT For over twenty years, Italy has faced the phenomenon of so-called “forced” international migrations. By virtue of its geographic position in the Mediterranean, this country constitutes, in many cases, the first landing and the transit country for asylum seekers in their flight from wars, political crises, environmental catastrophes and depletion of resources. This also implied a growing number of “rejections” that is, asylum seekers to whom no form of protection was grantedand are unlikely to return to their country of origin. A segment of them represents an intense geographic mobility or, better to say, multiple mobilities that intersect and fuel each other.Scholars have mostly explored the trajectories of mobility of the native people or so-called “economic migrants”. Much more rarely, refugees and asylum seekers have been perceived and framed as mobile subjects, protagonists of multiple and plural geographic, social, and migration movements.Therefore, this editorial and the whole Special Issue focus on the social changes that are reshaping migration scenarios, with particular attention paid to the paths of international and national mobility of refugees and asylum seekers outside the reception system, as well as their geographical, social and migration trajectories.Specifically, after introducing the topic, this paper, on the one hand, reconstructs the framework of Italian asylum policies, progressively more restrictive and discriminatory and destined to become a model for the entire European Union, analyzing the impact of the legal system and migration policies on the construction of the material and labor vulnerability of migrants and their exploitation within the national labor market. On the other hand, it deepens and reconstructs the theoretical perspectives on the phenomenon of mobility, the intersection between spatial dimension and temporal dimensions. Particular attention is paid to the pandemic and to the sociological interpretations of this phenomenon, the “mirror function” that it performs within society and the global migration scenario, the instrumental uses that have been made of this crisis in the political, economic, legal and social fields and the impact it has had on the common ethnographic and research practices shared by the papers that make up the Special Issue. Finally, the Editorial present the structure of the Special Issue and the contents of the articles, organized according to coherent theoretical and empirical path, aimed at illuminating all the facets of the “prism of new mobility”.

Papua New Guinean Genomes Reveal the Complex Settlement of North Sahul.

The settlement of Sahul, the lost continent of Oceania, remains one of the most ancient and debated human migrations. Modern New Guineans inherited a unique genetic diversity tracing back 50,000 years, and yet there is currently no model reconstructing their past population dynamics. We generated 58 new whole-genome sequences from Papua New Guinea, filling geographical gaps in previous sampling, specifically to address alternative scenarios of the initial migration to Sahul and the settlement of New Guinea. Here, we present the first genomic models for the settlement of northeast Sahul considering one or two migrations from Wallacea. Both models fit our data set, reinforcing the idea that ancestral groups to New Guinean and Indigenous Australians split early, potentially during their migration in Wallacea where the northern route could have been favored. The earliest period of human presence in Sahul was an era of interactions and gene flow between related but already differentiated groups, from whom all modern New Guineans, Bismarck islanders, and Indigenous Australians descend. The settlement of New Guinea was probably initiated from its southeast region, where the oldest archaeological sites have been found. This was followed by two migrations into the south and north lowlands that ultimately reached the west and east highlands. We also identify ancient gene flows between populations in New Guinea, Australia, East Indonesia, and the Bismarck Archipelago, emphasizing the fact that the anthropological landscape during the early period of Sahul settlement was highly dynamic rather than the traditional view of extensive isolation.

Modeling Reactive Solute Transport in Permafrost‐Affected Groundwater Systems

AbstractUnderstanding the interactions between ground freeze‐thaw, groundwater flow, and solute transport is imperative for evaluating the fate of contaminants in permafrost regions. However, predicting solute migration in permafrost‐affected groundwater systems is challenging due to the inherent interactions and coupling between subsurface mass and energy transport processes. To this end, we developed a numerical model that considers coupled groundwater flow, subsurface heat transfer, and solute transport, including water‐ice phase change, solute‐dependent porewater freezing, and temperature‐dependent solute reaction rates. As an illustrative example, we present simulations to investigate the potential for contamination from a municipal wastewater lagoon in the Canadian sub‐arctic. Two‐dimensional groundwater models assuming varying permafrost conditions were developed to evaluate possible contaminant migration scenarios associated with groundwater flow from the lagoon to a river, including the transport of conservative, degradable, and sorbing solutes. Model results reveal important transport mechanisms controlling the behavior of aqueous contaminants in permafrost landscapes as well as the hydrogeologic factors affecting reactive transport in cold regions. Seasonal freeze‐thaw episodically restricts connectivity of transport pathways, which attenuates both transport and reaction rates. However, elevated solute concentrations can depress the freezing temperature of porewater and produce thaw‐induced solute transport. Both thermally driven and solute‐enhanced thaw can decrease ice content in permafrost, which can have significant implications for solute migration. Therefore, thermo‐hydrogeologic process controlling reactive transport in cold‐region groundwater systems must be considered when quantitatively assessing the impact of changing environmental conditions on contaminant hydrogeology.

Editorial introduction

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A New Window into Planet Formation and Migration: Refractory-to-Volatile Elemental Ratios in Ultra-hot Jupiters

Abstract A primary goal of exoplanet characterization is to use a planet’s current composition to understand how that planet formed. For example, the C/O ratio has long been recognized as carrying important information on the chemistry of volatile species. Refractory elements, like Fe, Mg, and Si, are usually not considered in this conversation because they condense into solids like Fe(s) or MgSiO3 and would be removed from the observable, gaseous atmosphere in exoplanets cooler than about 2000 K. However, planets hotter than about 2000 K, called ultra-hot Jupiters (UHJs), are warm enough to largely avoid the condensation of refractory species. In this paper, we explore the insight that the measurement of refractory abundances can provide into a planet’s origins. Through refractory-to-volatile elemental abundance ratios, we can estimate a planet’s atmospheric rock-to-ice fraction and constrain planet formation and migration scenarios. We first relate a planet’s present-day refractory-to-volatile ratio to its rock-to-ice ratio from formation using various compositional models for the rocky and icy components of the protoplanetary disk. We discuss potential confounding factors like the sequestration of heavy metals in the core and condensation. We then show such a measurement using atmospheric retrievals of the low-resolution UV-IR transmission spectrum of WASP-121b with PETRA, from which we estimate a refractory-to-volatile ratio of 5.0 − 2.7 + 6.0 × solar and a rock-to-ice ratio greater than 2/3. This result is consistent with significant atmospheric enrichment by rocky planetismals. Lastly, we discuss the rich future potential for measuring refractory-to-volatile ratios in UHJs with the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope and by combining observations at low and high resolution.

A futures perspective of health, climate change and poverty in the United States

Trend assessments suggest that poverty and health will worsen in the United States in the coming decades and that climate change will exacerbate these trends. An aging society, lack of affordable housing, and automation threaten the economic sustainability of millions of households. Despair, drug abuse, and unhealthy lifestyles have led to the first decline in life spans in the U.S. during a non-war period. Extreme weather events caused by climate change can be anticipated to disrupt economic activities and destroy homes and infrastructure, pushing millions of more Americans into poverty. A warming climate threatens vulnerable individuals, such as elders, with heat stress, increasing levels of air pollution, and increasing risks from new tropical diseases entering the country. It is anticipated that climate change will force tens of millions of Americans from their homes, creating The Great Migration (TGM) scenario. The welfare of the migrants will depend on what types of human settlements they migrate to. Seven different types of settlements are depicted within the TGM scenario, such as Willow Pond settlements that represent radical redesigns of suburbs to make them sustainable and resilient to climate change. Numerous recommendations are provided to foster positive outcomes with respect to TGM, including having the U.S. formally designate that the right to safe and adequate housing is a human right.

Investigating Clumpy Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 Using the Galaxy Zoo

Abstract Giant, star-forming clumps are a common feature prevalent among high-redshift star-forming galaxies and play a critical role in shaping their chaotic morphologies and yet, their nature and role in galaxy evolution remains to be fully understood. A majority of the effort to study clumps has been focused at high redshifts, and local clump studies have often suffered from small sample sizes. In this work, we present an analysis of clump properties in the local universe, and for the first time, performed with a statistically significant sample. With the help of the citizen science-powered Galaxy Zoo: Hubble project, we select a sample of 92 z &lt; 0.06 clumpy galaxies in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 galaxies. Within this sample, we identify 543 clumps using a contrast-based image analysis algorithm and perform photometry as well as estimate their stellar population properties. The overall properties of our z &lt; 0.06 clump sample are comparable to the high-redshift clumps. However, contrary to the high-redshift studies, we find no evidence of a gradient in clump ages or masses as a function of their galactocentric distances. Our results challenge the inward migration scenario for clump evolution for the local universe, potentially suggesting a larger contribution of ex situ clumps and/or longer clump migration timescales.

Self-adapting data migration in the context of schema evolution in NoSQL databases

When NoSQL database systems are used in an agile software development setting, data model changes occur frequently and thus, data is routinely stored in different versions. The management of versioned data leads to an overhead potentially impeding the software development. Several data migration strategies exist that handle legacy data differently during data accesses, each of which can be characterized by certain advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the requirements for the software application, we evaluate and compare different migration strategies through metrics like migration costs and latency as well as precision and recall. Ideally, exactly that strategy should be selected whose characteristics fulfill service-level agreements and match the migration scenario, which depends on the query workload and the changes in the data model which imply an evolution of the database schema. In this paper, we present a methodology of self-adapting data migration, which automatically adjusts migration strategies and their parameters with respect to the migration scenario and service-level agreements, thereby contributing to the self-management of database systems and supporting agile development.

Pushing planets into an inner cavity by a resonant chain

Context. The orbital distribution of exoplanets indicates an accumulation of super-Earth sized planets close to their host stars in compact systems. When an inward disc-driven migration scenario is assumed for their formation, these planets could have been stopped and might have been parked at an inner edge of the disc, or be pushed through the inner disc cavity by a resonant chain. This topic has not been properly and extensively studied. Aims. Using numerical simulations, we investigate the possibility that the inner planets in a resonant chain can be pushed into the disc inner cavity by outer planets. Methods. We performed hydrodynamical and N-body simulations of planetary systems embedded in their nascent disc. The inner edge of the disc was represented in two different ways, resembling either a dead zone inner edge (DZ) or a disc inner boundary (IB). The main difference lies in the steepness of the surface density profile. The innermost planet always has a mass of 10 MEarth, with additional outer planets of equal or higher mass. Results. A steeper profile is able to stop a chain of planets more efficiently than a shallower profile. The final configurations in our DZ models are usually tighter than in their IB counterparts, and therefore more prone to instability. We derive analytical expressions for the stopping conditions based on power equilibrium, and show that the final eccentricities result from torque equilibrium. For planets in thinner discs, we found, for the first time, clear signs for over-stable librations in the hydrodynamical simulations, leading to very compact systems. We also found that the popular N-body simulations may overestimate the number of planets in the disc inner cavity.

Applying MDD in the content management system domain

Content management systems (CMSs) such as Joomla and WordPress dominate today’s web. Enabled by standardized extensions, administrators can build powerful web applications for diverse customer demands. However, developing CMS extensions requires sophisticated technical knowledge, and the complex code structure of an extension gives rise to errors during typical development and migration scenarios. Model-driven development (MDD) seems to be a promising paradigm to address these challenges; however, it has not found adoption in the CMS domain yet. Systematic evidence of the benefit of applying MDD in this domain could facilitate its adoption; however, an empirical investigation of this benefit is currently lacking. In this paper, we present a mixed-method empirical investigation of applying MDD in the CMS domain, based on an interview suite, a controlled experiment, a field experiment, and case studies. During the experiments, we used JooMDD, an MDD infrastructure instantiation for CMS extensions. This infrastructure, which is also presented in this work, consists of a DSL with model editors, code generators, and reverse engineering facilities. We consider three scenarios of developing new (both independent and dependent) CMS extensions and of migrating existing ones to a new major platform version. The experienced developers in our interviews acknowledge the relevance of these scenarios and report on experiences that render them suitable candidates for a successful application of MDD. We found a particularly high relevance of the migration scenario. Our experiments largely confirm the potentials and limits of MDD as identified for other domains. In particular, we found a productivity increase up to factor 11.7 and a quality increase up to factor 2.4 during the development of CMS extensions. Furthermore, our observations highlight the importance of good tooling that seamlessly integrates with already used tool environments and processes.

Past, present, future: tracking and simulating genetic differentiation over time in a closed metapopulation system

Genetic differentiation plays an essential role in the assessment of metapopulation systems of conservation concern. Migration rates affect the degree of genetic differentiation between subpopulations, with increasing genetic differentiation leading to increasing extinction risk. Analyses of genetic differentiation repeated over time together with projections into the future are therefore important to inform conservation. We investigated genetic differentiation in a closed metapopulation system of an obligate forest grouse, the Western capercaillie Tetrao urogallus, by comparing microsatellite population structure between a historic and a recent time period. We found an increase in genetic differentiation over a period of approximately 15 years. Making use of forward simulations accounting for population dynamics and genetics from both time periods, we explored future genetic differentiation by implementing scenarios of differing migration rates. Using migration rates derived from the recent dataset, simulations predicted further increase of genetic differentiation by 2050. We then examined effects of two realistic yet hypothetical migration scenarios on genetic differentiation. While isolation of a subpopulation led to overall increased genetic differentiation, the re-establishment of connectivity between two subpopulations maintained genetic differentiation at recent levels. Our results emphasize the importance of maintaining connectivity between subpopulations in order to prevent further genetic differentiation and loss of genetic variation. The simulation set-up we developed is highly adaptable and will aid researchers and conservationists alike in anticipating consequences of conservation strategies for metapopulation systems.

The Images and Scenarios of Global Migration and COVID-19

The Images and Scenarios of Global Migration and COVID-19

The Use of Scenario Planning for Exploring the Future of Migration: Insights from an Expert Survey

Scenario planning has been gaining popularity during the last decade as a tool for exploring how international migration flows might change under unknown future circumstances. This approach consists in identifying for an outcome of interest the most impactful yet uncertain drivers of change, to then develop narratives that describe how change in these drivers may impact the outcome of interest. When applied to the problem of international migration, however, scenario planning suffers from limitations that reduce the insights that can be derived from such exercises. In this article, we first highlight these limitations by reviewing existing applications of scenario planning to the problem of migration. Then, we propose a new approach that consists in specifying different pathways of change in a set of six predefined drivers, to then ask experts how each of these pathways might impact both migration flows and the other five drivers. We apply our approach to the case of migration pressure and demand from less developed countries to Europe to the horizon 2050. Results from our expert survey underscore the importance of a wider array of drivers for the future of migration than has so far been considered in previous applications of scenario planning. They further suggest that drivers do not change independently from each other, but that specific changes in some drivers are likely to go hand in hand with specific change in other drivers. Lastly, we find that changes in similar drivers could have different effects in sending and receiving countries. We finish by discussing how enhanced, quantified scenarios of migration between less developed countries and Europe can be formulated based on our results.