Community Engagement in Academic Health Centers: A Model for Capturing and Advancing Our Successes

Academic health centers (AHCs) are under increased pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of their community-engaged activities, but there are no common metrics for evaluating community engagement in AHCs. Eight AHCs piloted the Institutional Community Engagement Self-Assessment (ICESA), a two-phase project to assess community-engagement efforts. The first phase uses a framework developed by the University of Rochester Medical Center, which utilizes structure, process, and outcome criteria to map CE activities. The second phase uses the Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) Self-Assessment to identify institutional resources for community engagement, and potential gaps, to inform community engagement goal-setting. The authors conducted a structured, directed content analysis to determine the effectiveness of using the two-phase process at the participating AHCs. The findings suggest that the ICESA project assisted AHCs in three key areas, and may provide a strategy for assessing community engagement in AHCs

Can scenario-planning support community-based natural resource management? Experiences from three countries in latin america

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is a concept critical to managing socio-ecological systems, but whose implementation needs strengthening. Scenario-planning is one approach that may offer benefits relevant to CBNRM, but whose potential is not yet well understood. We therefore designed, trialled and evaluated a scenario-planning method intended to support CBNRM at three cases, located in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina. Implementing scenario-planning was judged as worthwhile in all three cases, although aspects of it could be challenging to facilitate. The benefits generated were relevant to strengthening CBNRM: encouraging the participation of local people and using their knowledge; enhanced consideration and adaption of future change; and supporting the development of systems thinking. Tracing exactly when and how these benefits arise is challenging, but two elements of the method seemed particularly useful. Firstly, using a systematic approach to discuss how drivers of change may affect local socio-ecological systems helped to foster systems thinking and identify connections between issues. Secondly, explicitly focusing on how to use and respond to scenarios helped identify specific practical activities ('response options') that would support CBNRM despite the pressures of future change. Discussions about response options also highlighted the need for support by other actors (e.g. policy groups): this raises the question of when and how other actors and other sources of knowledge should be involved in scenario-planning, so as to encourage their buy-in to actions identified by the process. We suggest other CBNRM initiatives may benefit from adapting and applying scenario-planning. However, these initiatives should be carefully monitored since further research is required to understand how and when scenario-planning methods may produce benefits, and their strengths and weaknesses versus other methods

Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above 4×10184{\times}10^{18} eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding $4{\times}10^{18}$ eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers with zenith angles greater than $60^{\circ}$ detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above $5.3{\times}10^{18}$ eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law $E^{-\gamma}$ with index $\gamma=2.70 \pm 0.02 \,\text{(stat)} \pm 0.1\,\text{(sys)}$ followed by a smooth suppression region. For the energy ($E_\text{s}$) at which the spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence of suppression, we find $E_\text{s}=(5.12\pm0.25\,\text{(stat)}^{+1.0}_{-1.2}\,\text{(sys)}){\times}10^{19}$ eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI. Supplemental material in the ancillary file

NRF2 Activation Restores Disease Related Metabolic Deficiencies in Olfactory Neurosphere-Derived Cells from Patients with Sporadic Parkinson's Disease

Extent: 14p.Background: Without appropriate cellular models the etiology of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease remains unknown. We recently reported a novel patient-derived cellular model generated from biopsies of the olfactory mucosa (termed olfactory neurosphere-derived (hONS) cells) which express functional and genetic differences in a disease-specific manner. Transcriptomic analysis of Patient and Control hONS cells identified the NRF2 transcription factor signalling pathway as the most differentially expressed in Parkinson’s disease. Results: We tested the robustness of our initial findings by including additional cell lines and confirmed that hONS cells from Patients had 20% reductions in reduced glutathione levels and MTS [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)- 2-(4-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium, inner salt] metabolism compared to cultures from healthy Control donors. We also confirmed that Patient hONS cells are in a state of oxidative stress due to higher production of H2O2 than Control cultures. siRNA-mediated ablation of NRF2 in Control donor cells decreased both total glutathione content and MTS metabolism to levels detected in cells from Parkinson’s Disease patients. Conversely, and more importantly, we showed that activation of the NRF2 pathway in Parkinson’s disease hONS cultures restored glutathione levels and MTS metabolism to Control levels. Paradoxically, transcriptomic analysis after NRF2 pathway activation revealed an increased number of differentially expressed mRNAs within the NRF2 pathway in L-SUL treated Patient-derived hONS cells compared to L-SUL treated Controls, even though their metabolism was restored to normal. We also identified differential expression of the PI3K/AKT signalling pathway, but only post-treatment. Conclusions: Our results confirmed NRF2 as a potential therapeutic target for Parkinson’s disease and provided the first demonstration that NRF2 function was inducible in Patient-derived cells from donors with uniquely varied genetic backgrounds. However, our results also demonstrated that the response of PD patient-derived cells was not co-ordinated in the same way as in Control cells. This may be an important factor when developing new therapeutics.Anthony L. Cook, Alejandra M. Vitale, Sugandha Ravishankar, Nicholas Matigian, Greg T. Sutherland, Jiangou Shan, Ratneswary Sutharsan, Chris Perry, Peter A. Silburn, George D. Mellick, Murray L. Whitelaw, Christine A. Wells, Alan Mackay-Sim and Stephen A. Woo

A search for ultra-high-energy photons at the Pierre Auger Observatory exploiting air-shower universality

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the most sensitive detector to primary photons with energies above ∼0.2 EeV. It measures extensive air showers using a hybrid technique that combines a fluorescence detector (FD) with a ground array of particle detectors (SD). The signatures of a photon-induced air shower are a larger atmospheric depth at the shower maximum (X$_{max}$) and a steeper lateral distribution function, along with a lower number of muons with respect to the bulk of hadron-induced background. Using observables measured by the FD and SD, three photon searches in different energy bands are performed. In particular, between threshold energies of 1-10 EeV, a new analysis technique has been developed by combining the FD-based measurement of X$_{max}$ with the SD signal through a parameter related to its muon content, derived from the universality of the air showers. This technique has led to a better photon/hadron separation and, consequently, to a higher search sensitivity, resulting in a tighter upper limit than before. The outcome of this new analysis is presented here, along with previous results in the energy ranges below 1 EeV and above 10 EeV. From the data collected by the Pierre Auger Observatory in about 15 years of operation, the most stringent constraints on the fraction of photons in the cosmic flux are set over almost three decades in energy