Bringing Farm Advisors into the Sustainability Conversation: Results from a Nitrogen Workshop in the U.S. Midwest

Increasingly, farmers are looking to private sector advisors to inform their nitrogen decisions, but little is known about these important actors. We held a Sustainable Nitrogen Roundtable workshop to bring together important groups—private sector farm advisors, Extension educators, scientists, and farmers—to discuss new research and more sustainable use of nitrogen in midwestern cropping systems. We gained important insights by reaching outside academia and including private sector farm advisors as valued participants. Ninety percent of participants found that their understanding of varied viewpoints on nitrogen management improved, and an equal proportion would recommend such a workshop to a colleague

Using Dialogue to Engage Agricultural Audiences in Cooperative Learning About Climate Change: A Strategy with Broad Implications

Dialogue with stakeholders has been recognized as an effective educational strategy for addressing complex topics such as climate change. We report here on the Carbon, Energy, and Climate fishbowl discussion series developed by Michigan State University Extension to assist the state\u27s agricultural community in understanding and adapting to the changing climate. Facilitated dialogue reduced barriers to communication and promoted cooperative learning for target audiences and the project team, generating useful information on the current status of climate change adaptation within Michigan\u27s agriculture sector and revealing needs to be addressed by future Extension programming. Using a dialogue-based approach such as the one we describe can highlight challenges and opportunities Extension faces in addressing various complex issues with diverse audiences

Lung Cancer Occurrence in Never-Smokers: An Analysis of 13 Cohorts and 22 Cancer Registry Studies

Michael Thun and colleagues pooled and analyzed comprehensive data on lung cancer incidence and death rates among never-smokers to examine what factors other than active smoking affect lung cancer risk

Using Stakeholder Needs Assessments and Deliberative Dialogue to Inform Climate Change Outreach Efforts

Farmers represent a large group of Extension stakeholders who stand to be affected by increased climate variability and change. Yet climate change can be a polarizing topic. In order to be sensitive to this reality, meet stakeholder education needs, and carry out the land-grant mission, we used a participatory decision model known as deliberation with analysis to inform climate change programming around agriculture. We designed evaluation tools for each phase of the project. This method strengthened relationships with stakeholders and enabled Michigan State University to move forward with climate change programming

Sequential defects in cardiac lineage commitment and maturation cause hypoplastic left heart syndrome

BACKGROUND: Complex molecular programs in specific cell lineages govern human heart development. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) is the most common and severe manifestation within the spectrum of left ventricular outflow tract obstruction defects occurring in association with ventricular hypoplasia. The pathogenesis of HLHS is unknown, but hemodynamic disturbances are assumed to play a prominent role. METHODS: To identify perturbations in gene programs controlling ventricular muscle lineage development in HLHS, we performed whole-exome sequencing of 87 HLHS parent-offspring trios, nuclear transcriptomics of cardiomyocytes from ventricles of 4 patients with HLHS and 15 controls at different stages of heart development, single cell RNA sequencing, and 3D modeling in induced pluripotent stem cells from 3 patients with HLHS and 3 controls. RESULTS: Gene set enrichment and protein network analyses of damaging de novo mutations and dysregulated genes from ventricles of patients with HLHS suggested alterations in specific gene programs and cellular processes critical during fetal ventricular cardiogenesis, including cell cycle and cardiomyocyte maturation. Single-cell and 3D modeling with induced pluripotent stem cells demonstrated intrinsic defects in the cell cycle/unfolded protein response/autophagy hub resulting in disrupted differentiation of early cardiac progenitor lineages leading to defective cardiomyocyte subtype differentiation/ maturation in HLHS. Premature cell cycle exit of ventricular cardiomyocytes from patients with HLHS prevented normal tissue responses to developmental signals for growth, leading to multinucleation/polyploidy, accumulation of DNA damage, and exacerbated apoptosis, all potential drivers of left ventricular hypoplasia in absence of hemodynamic cues. CONCLUSIONS: Our results highlight that despite genetic heterogeneity in HLHS, many mutations converge on sequential cellular processes primarily driving cardiac myogenesis, suggesting novel therapeutic approaches