Sprout: A Little Footprint with a Big Impact

This Innovation Portfolio is designed to walk the reader through the essential steps our team took to address the issue of the under-utilization of the Meijer Holland Campus in the fall of 2016. As a satellite campus of Grand Valley State University, the Meijer Holland Campus seeks to engage its local community in a more sustained and in-depth way. This brief begins by introducing the reader to the historical and situational context of the Holland campus, followed by a map displaying the stakeholders involved. Through talking with a number of those stakeholders, we gained valuable insights that were grouped together to reveal key themes which were then leveraged in the process of generating our top five innovations. At the final symposium presentation, we delivered our final innovation: Sprout, a Sustainability and Agriculture Bastion. Collaborator debriefs, interviews and secondary research are also included here and were all additional stepping stones that assisted us in our innovation process

PCDD/PCDF, PCB, and Hexachlorobenzene in soil, bottom ash and products from brickmaking sites in developing countries - Results from surveys in Kenya, Mexico, and South Africa. A contribution to the Standardized Toolkit for Identification and Quantification of Dioxin and Furan Releases in support to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants

The report combines the results from soil sampling campaigns executed in Mexico, South Africa and Kenya in order to assess the impact of artisanal brick making on local environments. Moreover the study serves indirectly (through the comparison of the impact on soils), whether the emission factors for brick kilns obtained in in a separate study in Mexico can be applied to other developing countries. These emission factors will be introduced into the calculation scheme for the National Emission Inventories of unintentional POP's releases ("dioxin toolkit) which is the reporting tool under the reporting obligations laid down in the Stockholm Convention of POPs. Results revealed, that the soils in Mexico are higher contaminated then in South Africa and Kenya, most probably due to the practice of co-incineration of waste (oils), whereas in Africa coal or virgin biomass are used as fuels. In so far the emission factors obtained in Mexico apparently represent the upper range of emission factors for brick making.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

METODOLOGIA PARA MAPEAMENTO DE VULNERABILIDADE COSTEIRA À ELEVAÇÃO DO NÍVEL MÉDIO DO MAR (NMM) EM ESCALA LOCAL

Este trabalho apresenta metodologia para mapeamento da vulnerabilidade costeira à elevação do Nível Médio do Mar (NMM) em escala local, com estudo de caso na orla marítima da Ilha de Madre de Deus/BA. Essa orla marítima é densamente ocupada por bairros residenciais e instalações da indústria petrolífera. Para isso, foi criado um índice de vulnerabilidade costeira com a combinação de quatro variáveis geológicas (geomorfologia, declividade, elevação e taxa de erosão/acreção na face de praia), determinadas em levantamentos sazonais (verão e inverno) de perfis de praia georreferenciados e niveladas em relação ao NMM, e três variáveis de processos físicos costeiros (taxa de elevação do nível médio do mar, altura significativa de onda e amplitude de maré média). O mapa representou a variação da vulnerabilidade relativa ao longo de distintos setores da linha de costa possibilitando identificar a combinação mais crítica das variáveis, ou seja, áreas prioritárias às intervenções antrópicas para redução das vulnerabilidades por meio de estratégias de prevenção, mitigação e/ou adaptação socioeconômicas e ambientais aos impactos da elevação do NMM. Os resultados mostraram alto potencial na aplicação da metodologia em setores de beira-mar, cuja pequena extensão requer o mapeamento em escala de detalh

Recent publications from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative: Reviewing progress toward improved AD clinical trials

INTRODUCTION: The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) has continued development and standardization of methodologies for biomarkers and has provided an increased depth and breadth of data available to qualified researchers. This review summarizes the over 400 publications using ADNI data during 2014 and 2015. METHODS: We used standard searches to find publications using ADNI data. RESULTS: (1) Structural and functional changes, including subtle changes to hippocampal shape and texture, atrophy in areas outside of hippocampus, and disruption to functional networks, are detectable in presymptomatic subjects before hippocampal atrophy; (2) In subjects with abnormal β-amyloid deposition (Aβ+), biomarkers become abnormal in the order predicted by the amyloid cascade hypothesis; (3) Cognitive decline is more closely linked to tau than Aβ deposition; (4) Cerebrovascular risk factors may interact with Aβ to increase white-matter (WM) abnormalities which may accelerate Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression in conjunction with tau abnormalities; (5) Different patterns of atrophy are associated with impairment of memory and executive function and may underlie psychiatric symptoms; (6) Structural, functional, and metabolic network connectivities are disrupted as AD progresses. Models of prion-like spreading of Aβ pathology along WM tracts predict known patterns of cortical Aβ deposition and declines in glucose metabolism; (7) New AD risk and protective gene loci have been identified using biologically informed approaches; (8) Cognitively normal and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects are heterogeneous and include groups typified not only by "classic" AD pathology but also by normal biomarkers, accelerated decline, and suspected non-Alzheimer's pathology; (9) Selection of subjects at risk of imminent decline on the basis of one or more pathologies improves the power of clinical trials; (10) Sensitivity of cognitive outcome measures to early changes in cognition has been improved and surrogate outcome measures using longitudinal structural magnetic resonance imaging may further reduce clinical trial cost and duration; (11) Advances in machine learning techniques such as neural networks have improved diagnostic and prognostic accuracy especially in challenges involving MCI subjects; and (12) Network connectivity measures and genetic variants show promise in multimodal classification and some classifiers using single modalities are rivaling multimodal classifiers. DISCUSSION: Taken together, these studies fundamentally deepen our understanding of AD progression and its underlying genetic basis, which in turn informs and improves clinical trial desig

Prenatal exposures and exposomics of asthma

This review examines the causal investigation of preclinical development of childhood asthma using exposomic tools. We examine the current state of knowledge regarding early-life exposure to non-biogenic indoor air pollution and the developmental modulation of the immune system. We examine how metabolomics technologies could aid not only in the biomarker identification of a particular asthma phenotype, but also the mechanisms underlying the immunopathologic process. Within such a framework, we propose alternate components of exposomic investigation of asthma in which, the exposome represents a reiterative investigative process of targeted biomarker identification, validation through computational systems biology and physical sampling of environmental medi