Building Healthy Places with People and for People: Community Engagement for Healthy and Sustainable Communities

Over a 25 year period, residents of the El Sereno  community in Los Angeles have opposed efforts of  investors seeking to build luxury homes on the area  known as Elephant Hill.  After years of community  organizing—canvassing door to door, developing a  broad-based coalition and mobilizing supporters to  attend public hearings—residents declared victory after  the City Council agreed to settle a lawsuit with the  developers by buying the 20-acre site for $6 million to  create a future park.  Residents are glad that a chunk of one of Los Angeles' last undeveloped hillsides  will remain open space in this park poor, working-class Latino community.  Opposition efforts reignited  in 2004 not only to preserve open space, but also to encourage public safety and counter threats to  gentrification.  Elva Yañez, the El Sereno resident who led the most recent efforts to preserve Elephant  Hill, hailed the settlement as a victory for environmental justice: "After a long and hard fought struggle,  the residents of this community have been afforded the environmental protections that are rightfully theirs.   We are pleased that this poorly planned project is not moving forward and environmental justice has  prevailed." [Contreras & Sanchez, 2009; Yañez, personal communication, 2010

Worth a Glance: Using Eye Movements to Investigate the Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory

Results of several investigations indicate that eye movements can reveal memory for elements of previous experience. These effects of memory on eye movement behavior can emerge very rapidly, changing the efficiency and even the nature of visual processing without appealing to verbal reports and without requiring conscious recollection. This aspect of eye movement based memory investigations is particularly useful when eye movement methods are used with special populations (e.g., young children, elderly individuals, and patients with severe amnesia), and also permits use of comparable paradigms in animals and humans, helping to bridge different memory literatures and permitting cross-species generalizations. Unique characteristics of eye movement methods have produced findings that challenge long-held views about the nature of memory, its organization in the brain, and its failures in special populations. Recently, eye movement methods have been successfully combined with neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI, single-unit recording, and magnetoencephalography, permitting more sophisticated investigations of memory. Ultimately, combined use of eye-tracking with neuropsychological and neuroimaging methods promises to provide a more comprehensive account of brain–behavior relationships and adheres to the “converging evidence” approach to cognitive neuroscience

Stream metabolism sources a large fraction of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in two hydrologically contrasting headwater streams

Headwater streams are control points for carbon dioxide (CO$_{2}$) emissions to the atmosphere, with relative contributions to CO$_{2}$ emission fluxes from lateral groundwater inputs widely assumed to overwhelm those from in-stream metabolic processes. We analyzed continuous measurements of stream dissolved CO$_{2}$ and oxygen (CO$_{2}$) concentrations during spring and early summer in two Mediterranean headwater streams from which we evaluated the contribution of in-stream net ecosystem production (NEP) to CO$_{2}$ emission. The two streams exhibited contrasting hydrological regimes: one was non-perennial with relatively small groundwater inflows, while the other was perennial and received significant lateral groundwater inputs. The non-perennial stream exhibited strong inverse coupling between instantaneous and daily CO$_{2}$ and CO$_{2}$ concentrations, and a strong correlation between aerobic ecosystem respiration (ER) and gross primary production (GPP) despite persistent negative NEP. At the perennial stream, the CO$_{2}$–O$_{2}$ relationship varied largely over time, ER and GPP were uncorrelated, and NEP, which was consistently negative, increased with increasing temperature. Mean NEP contribution to CO$_{2}$ emission was 51% and 57% at the non-perennial and perennial stream, respectively. Although these proportions varied with assumptions about metabolic stoichiometry and groundwater CO$_{2}$ concentration, in-stream CO$_{2}$ production consistently and substantially contributed to total atmospheric CO$_{2}$ flux in both streams. We conclude that in-stream metabolism can be more important for driving C cycling in some headwater streams than previously assumed

Patterns and rates of viral evolution in HIV-1 subtype B infected females and males.

Biological sex differences affect the course of HIV infection, with untreated women having lower viral loads compared to their male counterparts but, for a given viral load, women have a higher rate of progression to AIDS. However, the vast majority of data on viral evolution, a process that is clearly impacted by host immunity and could be impacted by sex differences, has been derived from men. We conducted an intensive analysis of HIV-1 gag and env-gp120 evolution taken over the first 6-11 years of infection from 8 Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) participants who had not received combination antiretroviral therapy (ART). This was compared to similar data previously collected from men, with both groups infected with HIV-1 subtype B. Early virus populations in men and women were generally homogenous with no differences in diversity between sexes. No differences in ensuing nucleotide substitution rates were found between the female and male cohorts studied herein. As previously reported for men, time to peak diversity in env-gp120 in women was positively associated with time to CD4+ cell count below 200 (P = 0.017), and the number of predicted N-linked glycosylation sites generally increased over time, followed by a plateau or decline, with the majority of changes localized to the V1-V2 region. These findings strongly suggest that the sex differences in HIV-1 disease progression attributed to immune system composition and sensitivities are not revealed by, nor do they impact, global patterns of viral evolution, the latter of which proceeds similarly in women and men

2016 Snow Melt in the NGEE-Arctic Teller Research Watershed

In April 2016, daily transects were made across the Teller Road Basin to begin the several year process of characterizing the largest event in the northern hydrologic year: snow melt. This year was an experiment to see how much could be accomplished (a full suite of time intensive measurements) during this interval.The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) project is supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science

What Works for Wellbeing? A systematic review of wellbeing outcomes for music and singing in adults

IMS: The role of arts and music in supporting subjective wellbeing (SWB) is increasingly recognised. Robust evidence is needed to support policy and practice. This article reports on the first of four reviews of Culture, Sport and Wellbeing (CSW) commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded What Works Centre for Wellbeing ( https://whatworkswellbeing.org/ ). OBJECTIVE: To identify SWB outcomes for music and singing in adults. METHODS: Comprehensive literature searches were conducted in PsychInfo, Medline, ERIC, Arts and Humanities, Social Science and Science Citation Indexes, Scopus, PILOTS and CINAHL databases. From 5,397 records identified, 61 relevant records were assessed using GRADE and CERQual schema. RESULTS: A wide range of wellbeing measures was used, with no consistency in how SWB was measured across the studies. A wide range of activities was reported, most commonly music listening and regular group singing. Music has been associated with reduced anxiety in young adults, enhanced mood and purpose in adults and mental wellbeing, quality of life, self-awareness and coping in people with diagnosed health conditions. Music and singing have been shown to be effective in enhancing morale and reducing risk of depression in older people. Few studies address SWB in people with dementia. While there are a few studies of music with marginalised communities, participants in community choirs tend to be female, white and relatively well educated. Research challenges include recruiting participants with baseline wellbeing scores that are low enough to record any significant or noteworthy change following a music or singing intervention. CONCLUSIONS: There is reliable evidence for positive effects of music and singing on wellbeing in adults. There remains a need for research with sub-groups who are at greater risk of lower levels of wellbeing, and on the processes by which wellbeing outcomes are, or are not, achieved

IFNAR1-Signalling Obstructs ICOS-mediated Humoral Immunity during Non-lethal Blood-Stage Plasmodium Infection

Funding: This work was funded by a Career Development Fellowship (1028634) and a project grant (GRNT1028641) awarded to AHa by the Australian National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC). IS was supported by The University of Queensland Centennial and IPRS Scholarships. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Light and flow regimes regulate the metabolism of rivers

Mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation drive much of the variation in productivity across Earth's terrestrial ecosystems but do not explain variation in gross primary productivity (GPP) or ecosystem respiration (ER) in flowing waters. We document substantial variation in the magnitude and seasonality of GPP and ER across 222 US rivers. In contrast to their terrestrial counterparts, most river ecosystems respire far more carbon than they fix and have less pronounced and consistent seasonality in their metabolic rates. We find that variation in annual solar energy inputs and stability of flows are the primary drivers of GPP and ER across rivers. A classification schema based on these drivers advances river science and informs management.We thank Ted Stets, Jordan Read, Tom Battin, Sophia Bonjour, Marina Palta, and members of the Duke River Center for their help in developing these ideas. This work was supported by grants from the NSF 1442439 (to E.S.B. and J.W.H.), 1834679 (to R.O.H.), 1442451 (to R.O.H.), 2019528 (to R.O.H. and J.R.B.), 1442140 (to M.C.), 1442451 (to A.M.H.), 1442467 (to E.H.S.), 1442522 (to N.B.G.), 1624807 (to N.B.G.), and US Geological Survey funding for the working group was supported by the John Wesley Power Center for Analysis and Synthesis. Phil Savoy contributed as a postdoc- toral associate at Duke University and as a postdoctoral associate (contractor) at the US Geological Survey

The Role of Depressive Symptomatology in Peri- and Post-Menopause

Objectives: There is evidence that menopausal symptoms manifested at peri-menopause occur less fre- quently when compared to the symptoms experienced at post-menopause. The aim of this study was to investigate this and to test the hypothesis that depressive symptomatology mediates the relationship between menopausal stage and symptom frequency. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 213 women (M age = 52 years), of whom 125 were peri- and 88 post-menopausal. Measures comprised the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale (CES-D) and the Women’s Health Questionnaire (WHQ) vasomotor symptoms and somatic symptoms subscales. Results: Multiple mediated regression analyses provided evidence that somatic symptoms and vasomotor symptoms were less frequent at post- compared to peri-menopause, and that these differences were mediated by depressive symptomatology. Multivariate effect sizes ranged from small to moderate, and univariate effect sizes were uniformly small with wide confidence intervals. Conclusions: The frequency of vasomotor and somatic symptoms appears to increase with depressed affect. The management of symptoms could include interventions of a psychotherapeutic nature, which may offset this effect, particularly in women for whom depressive symptoms are a feature of the climac- teric syndrome. The extent to which depression and the climacteric syndrome may be causally related to one another remains unclear and longitudinal research should further examine the mechanisms of this association