How Service-Learning Can Support the Practice of, and Education About, Collaborative Natural Resource Management

Many researchers agree that contemporary natural resource management requires successful collaboration between diverse stakeholder groups. However, achieving successful collaboration can be challenging. So what makes stakeholder collaborations work and what models exist for educating the next generation of natural resource professionals about successful stakeholder collaboration? The Harwood Union Forest Project, a community-based forestry initiative in Vermont, provides such a model. By forming service-learning partnerships between a public high school and natural resources students at the University of Vermont, the Harwood Union Forest Project has successfully supported community-based forestry activities at the high school’s 180 acre forest, and educated both high school and university students about collaborative natural resource management. This presentation will described the Harwood Union Forest Project and present preliminary findings from a qualitative research study about the impacts of the project’s service-learning partnerships. Service-learning offers a means for academia to support communities in making difficult decisions about complex environmental issues while also educating students about those issues and providing them with hands on experience in the field. The Harwood Union Forest Project offers one model for accomplishing those goals

Cultural ecosystem services and the well-being of refugee communities

The growing field of research into cultural ecosystem services (CES) explores nonmaterial benefits that people receive from ecosystems. These studies have, however, largely overlooked refugee communities. To reduce this gap, we systematically review academic literature on refugee interactions with ecosystems to understand what cultural ecosystem services refugees may experience, and how these services affect their well-being. The results identify a broad range of CES that refugees experience, even though studies do not use CES terminology. Benefits include social relations, mental health, cultural heritage, education, recreation, identity, sense of place, aesthetic, spirituality, perspective, and existence value. Results also show that the majority of studies of refugee—ecosystem interactions occur in agricultural ecosystems. Findings suggest that interactions with ecosystems may ease the resettlement process and overall well-being, including mental health, in many ways. These findings enrich understanding of CES experienced by people of diverse (and in this case traumatic) backgrounds and provide practical implications for those who work in the field of refugee resettlement

The woods around the ivory tower: A systematic review examining the value and relevance of school forests in the United States

Throughout the United States, many institutions of higher education own forested tracts, often called school forests, which they use for teaching, research, and demonstration purposes. These school forests provide a range of benefits to the communities in which they are located. However, because administration is often decoupled from research and teaching, those benefits might not always be evident to the individuals who make decisions about the management and use of school forests, which may undervalue their services and put these areas at risk for sale, development, or over-harvesting to generate revenue. To understand what messages are being conveyed about the value and relevance of school forests, we conducted a systematic literature review and qualitatively coded the resulting literature content using an ecosystem services framework. While school forests provide many important benefits to academic and local communities, we found that most of the existing literature omits discussions about cultural ecosystem services that people may receive from school forests. We discuss the implications of this omission and make recommendations for addressing it

Bibliography of Mountain Biking Research: 1990-2021

Since the 1980s, mountain biking as an outdoor recreation activity has grown rapidly worldwide. Research on mountain biking is growing across many academic disciplines, from medicine to outdoor recreation and tourism research. This bibliography includes peer-reviewed research published on mountain biking within the context of natural resource management from 1990-2021

Aurora A Functional Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) Correlates With Clinical Outcome in Patients With Advanced Solid Tumors Treated With Alisertib, an Investigational Aurora A Kinase Inhibitor

BACKGROUND: Alisertib (MLN8237) is an investigational, oral, selective Aurora A kinase inhibitor. Aurora A contains two functional single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs; codon 31 [F/I] and codon 57 [V/I]) that lead to functional changes. This study investigated the prognostic and predictive significance of these SNPs. METHODS: This study evaluated associations between Aurora A SNPs and overall survival (OS) in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The Aurora A SNPs were also evaluated as predictive biomarkers for clinical outcomes to alisertib in two phase 2 studies (NCT01045421 and NCT01091428). Aurora A SNP genotyping was obtained from 85 patients with advanced solid tumors receiving single-agent alisertib and 122 patients with advanced recurrent ovarian cancer treated with alisertib plus weekly paclitaxel (n=62) or paclitaxel alone (n=60). Whole blood was collected prior to treatment and genotypes were analyzed by PCR. FINDINGS: TCGA data suggested prognostic significance for codon 57 SNP; solid tumor patients with VV and VI alleles had significantly reduced OS versus those with II alleles (HR 1.9 [VI] and 1.8 [VV]; p<0.0001). In NCT01045421, patients carrying the VV alleles at codon 57 (n=53, 62%) had significantly longer progression-free survival (PFS) than patients carrying IV or II alleles (n=32, 38%; HR 0.5; p=0.0195). In NCT01091428, patients with the VV alleles at codon 57 who received alisertib plus paclitaxel (n=47, 39%) had a trend towards improved PFS (7.5months) vs paclitaxel alone (n=32, 26%; 3.8months; HR 0.618; p=0.0593). In the paclitaxel alone arm, patients with the VV alleles had reduced PFS vs modified intent-to-treat (mITT) patients (3.8 vs 5.1months), consistent with the TCGA study identifying the VV alleles as a poor prognostic biomarker. No significant associations were identified for codon 31 SNP from the same data set. INTERPRETATION: These findings suggest that Aurora A SNP at codon 57 may predict disease outcome and response to alisertib in patients with solid tumors. Further investigation is warranted

PPM1D modulates hematopoietic cell fitness and response to DNA damage and is a therapeutic target in myeloid malignancy

PPM1D encodes a phosphatase that is recurrently activated across cancer, most notably in therapy-related myeloid neoplasms. However, the function of PPM1D in hematopoiesis and its contribution to tumor cell growth remain incompletely understood. Using conditional mouse models, we uncover a central role for Ppm1d in hematopoiesis and validate its potential as a therapeutic target. We find that Ppm1d regulates the competitive fitness and self-renewal of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) with and without exogenous genotoxic stresses. We also show that while Ppm1d activation confers cellular resistance to cytotoxic therapy, it does so to a lesser degree than p53 loss, informing the clonal competition phenotypes often observed in human studies. Notably, loss of Ppm1d sensitizes leukemias to cytotoxic therapies in vitro and in vivo, even in the absence of a Ppm1d mutation. Vulnerability to PPM1D inhibition is observed across many cancer types and dependent on p53 activity. Importantly, organism-wide loss of Ppm1d in adult mice is well tolerated, supporting the tolerability of pharmacologically targeting PPM1D. Our data link PPM1D gain-of-function mutations to the clonal expansion of HSCs, inform human genetic observations, and support the therapeutic targeting of PPM1D in cancer

Genome-wide association study identifies 30 loci associated with bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder is a highly heritable psychiatric disorder. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) including 20,352 cases and 31,358 controls of European descent, with follow-up analysis of 822 variants with P &lt; 1 × 10-4 in an additional 9,412 cases and 137,760 controls. Eight of the 19 variants that were genome-wide significant (P &lt; 5 × 10-8) in the discovery GWAS were not genome-wide significant in the combined analysis, consistent with small effect sizes and limited power but also with genetic heterogeneity. In the combined analysis, 30 loci were genome-wide significant, including 20 newly identified loci. The significant loci contain genes encoding ion channels, neurotransmitter transporters and synaptic components. Pathway analysis revealed nine significantly enriched gene sets, including regulation of insulin secretion and endocannabinoid signaling. Bipolar I disorder is strongly genetically correlated with schizophrenia, driven by psychosis, whereas bipolar II disorder is more strongly correlated with major depressive disorder. These findings address key clinical questions and provide potential biological mechanisms for bipolar disorder

US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference

Triacylglycerol Synthesis Enzymes Mediate Lipid Droplet Growth by Relocalizing from the ER to Lipid Droplets

Lipid droplets (LDs) store metabolic energy and membrane lipid precursors. With excess metabolic energy, cells synthesize triacylglycerol (TG) and form LDs that grow dramatically. It is unclear how TG synthesis relates to LD formation and growth. Here, we identify two LD subpopulations: smaller LDs of relatively constant size, and LDs that grow larger. The latter population contains isoenzymes for each step of TG synthesis. Glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase 4 (GPAT4), which catalyzes the first and rate-limiting step, relocalizes from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to a subset of forming LDs, where it becomes stably associated. ER-to-LD targeting of GPAT4 and other LD-localized TG synthesis isozymes is required for LD growth. Key features of GPAT4 ER-to-LD targeting and function in LD growth are conserved between Drosophila and mammalian cells. Our results explain how TG synthesis is coupled with LD growth and identify two distinct LD subpopulations based on their capacity for localized TG synthesis

The Coxiella burnetii Dot/Icm System Delivers a Unique Repertoire of Type IV Effectors into Host Cells and Is Required for Intracellular Replication

Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of human Q fever, is an intracellular pathogen that replicates in an acidified vacuole derived from the host lysosomal network. This pathogen encodes a Dot/Icm type IV secretion system that delivers bacterial proteins called effectors to the host cytosol. To identify new effector proteins, the functionally analogous Legionella pneumophila Dot/Icm system was used in a genetic screen to identify fragments of C. burnetii genomic DNA that when fused to an adenylate cyclase reporter were capable of directing Dot/Icm-dependent translocation of the fusion protein into mammalian host cells. This screen identified Dot/Icm effectors that were proteins unique to C. burnetii, having no overall sequence homology with L. pneumophila Dot/Icm effectors. A comparison of C. burnetii genome sequences from different isolates revealed diversity in the size and distribution of the genes encoding many of these effectors. Studies examining the localization and function of effectors in eukaryotic cells provided evidence that several of these proteins have an affinity for specific host organelles and can disrupt cellular functions. The identification of a transposon insertion mutation that disrupts the dot/icm locus was used to validate that this apparatus was essential for translocation of effectors. Importantly, this C. burnetii Dot/Icm-deficient mutant was found to be defective for intracellular replication. Thus, these data indicate that C. burnetii encodes a unique subset of bacterial effector proteins translocated into host cells by the Dot/Icm apparatus, and that the cumulative activities exerted by these effectors enables C. burnetii to successfully establish a niche inside mammalian cells that supports intracellular replication