Community Engagement Grants: Assessing the Impact of University Funding and Engagements

While university-community partnerships have become a common practice for many universities, little empirical evidence is available exploring the impact of such partnerships for either the community partners or the university. This project collected data from a series of university-community engagement grants funded by Virginia Commonwealth University to understand the importance and consequences of its funding for the community partners, the university, the faculty, and the community members involved with the projects. Characteristics of the funded projects contributing to positive and continued engagement were identified. Differences in outcomes as identified by the university partner and the community partners were also identified

Geophysical structure of the Southern Alps orogen, South Island, New Zealand

The central part of the South Island of New Zealand is a product of the transpressive continental collision of the Pacific and Australian plates during the past 5 million years, prior to which the plate boundary was largely transcurrent for over 10 My. Subduction occurs at the north (west dipping) and south (east dipping) of South Island. The deformation is largely accommodated by the ramping up of the Pacific plate over the Australian plate and near-symmetric mantle shortening. The initial asymmetric crustal deformation may be the result of an initial difference in lithospheric strength or an inherited suture resulting from earlier plate motions. Delamination of the Pacific plate occurs resulting in the uplift and exposure of mid-crustal rocks at the plate boundary fault (Alpine fault) to form a foreland mountain chain. In addition, an asymmetric crustal root (additional 8 - 17 km) is formed, with an underlying mantle downwarp. The crustal root, which thickens southwards, comprises the delaminated lower crust and a thickened overlying middle crust. Lower crust is variable in thickness along the orogen, which may arise from convergence in and lower lithosphere extrusion along the orogen. Low velocity zones in the crust occur adjacent to the plate boundary (Alpine fault) in the Australian and Pacific plates, where they are attributed to fracturing of the upper crust as a result of flexural bending for the Australian plate and to high pressure fluids in the crust derived from prograde metamorphism of the crustal rocks for the Pacific plate

Colombia's cyberinfrastructure for biodiversity: Building data infrastructure in emerging countries to foster socioeconomic growth

Science and innovation are not a luxury but a prerequisite for social and economic development (Annan, 2003)

Chemical abundances of the Galactic H II region NGC 3576 derived from VLT echelle spectrophotometry

We present echelle spectrophotometry of the Galactic H II region NGC 3576. The data have been taken with the VLT UVES echelle spectrograph in the 3100 to 10400 angstroms range. We have measured the intensities of 458 emission lines, 344 are permitted lines of H0, He0, C+, N0, N+, N++, O0, O+, Ne+, S++, Si0, Si+, Ar0 and Ar+; some of them are produced by recombination and others mainly by fluorescence. Electron temperatures and densities have been determined using different continuum and line intensity ratios. We have derived He+, C++, O+, O++ and Ne++ ionic abundances from pure recombination lines. We have also derived abundances from collisionally excited lines for a large number of ions of different elements. Remarkably consistent estimations of t2 have been obtained by comparing Balmer and Paschen to [O III] temperatures, and O++ and Ne++ ionic abundances obtained from collisionally excited and recombination lines. The chemical composition of NGC 3576 is compared with those of other Galactic H II regions and with the one from the Sun. A first approach to the gas-phase Galactic radial abundance gradient of C as well as of the C/O ratio has been made.Comment: 25 pages, 14 tables, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

Standards Recommendations for the Earth BioGenome Project

Funder: Howard Hughes Medical InstituteFunder: National Science Foundation; Grant(s): DBI:IIBR:CAREER #1943371A global international initiative such as the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) requires both agreement and coordination on standards to ensure that the collective effort generates rapid progress towards its goals. To this end, the EBP initiated five technical standards committees comprising volunteer members from the global genomics scientific community: Sample Collection and Processing, Sequencing and Assembly, Annotation, Analysis, and, IT and Informatics. The current versions of the resulting standards documents are available on the EBP website, with the recognition that opportunities, technologies and challenges may improve or change in the future requiring flexibility for the EBP to meet its goals. Here, we describe some highlights from the proposed standards, and areas where additional challenges will need to be met.NIH, EMBL, NSF, Smithsonian, NMNH, USDA, HHM

Standards recommendations for the Earth BioGenome Project

A global international initiative, such as the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), requires both agreement and coordination on standards to ensure that the collective effort generates rapid progress toward its goals. To this end, the EBP initiated five technical standards committees comprising volunteer members from the global genomics scientific community: Sample Collection and Processing, Sequencing and Assembly, Annotation, Analysis, and IT and Informatics. The current versions of the resulting standards documents are available on the EBP website, with the recognition that opportunities, technologies, and challenges may improve or change in the future, requiring flexibility for the EBP to meet its goals. Here, we describe some highlights from the proposed standards, and areas where additional challenges will need to be met

Aberrant crossed corticospinal facilitation in muscles distant from a spinal cord injury.

Crossed facilitatory interactions in the corticospinal pathway are impaired in humans with chronic incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI). The extent to which crossed facilitation is affected in muscles above and below the injury remains unknown. To address this question we tested 51 patients with neurological injuries between C2-T12 and 17 age-matched healthy controls. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation we elicited motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in the resting first dorsal interosseous, biceps brachii, and tibialis anterior muscles when the contralateral side remained at rest or performed 70% of maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) into index finger abduction, elbow flexion, and ankle dorsiflexion, respectively. By testing MEPs in muscles with motoneurons located at different spinal cord segments we were able to relate the neurological level of injury to be above, at, or below the location of the motoneurons of the muscle tested. We demonstrate that in patients the size of MEPs was increased to a similar extent as in controls in muscles above the injury during 70% of MVC compared to rest. MEPs remained unchanged in muscles at and within 5 segments below the injury during 70% of MVC compared to rest. However, in muscles beyond 5 segments below the injury the size of MEPs increased similar to controls and was aberrantly high, 2-fold above controls, in muscles distant (>15 segments) from the injury. These aberrantly large MEPs were accompanied by larger F-wave amplitudes compared to controls. Thus, our findings support the view that corticospinal degeneration does not spread rostral to the lesion, and highlights the potential of caudal regions distant from an injury to facilitate residual corticospinal output after SCI