Healthy Options: A Community-Based Program to Address Food Insecurity

The objectives of this study are to better understand the lived experience of food insecurity in our community and to examine the impact of a community-based program developed to increase access to local, healthy foods. Participants were given monthly vouchers to spend at local farmers’ markets and invited to engage in a variety of community activities. Using a community-based participatory research framework, mixed methods were employed. Survey results suggest that most respondents were satisfied with the program and many increased their fruit and vegetable consumption. However, over 40% of respondents reported a higher level of stress over having enough money to buy nutritious meals at the end of the program. Photovoice results suggest that the program fostered cross-cultural exchanges, and offered opportunities for social networking. Building upon the many positive outcomes of the program, community partners are committed to using this research to further develop policy-level solutions to food insecurity

TransCom model simulations of methane: Comparison of vertical profiles with aircraft measurements

To assess horizontal and vertical transports of methane (CH4) concentrations at different heights within the troposphere, we analyzed simulations by 12 chemistry transport models (CTMs) that participated in the TransCom-CH4 intercomparison experiment. Model results are compared with aircraft measurements at 13 sites in Amazon/Brazil, Mongolia, Pacific Ocean, Siberia/Russia, and United States during the period of 2001-2007. The simulations generally show good agreement with observations for seasonal cycles and vertical gradients. The correlation coefficients of the daily averaged model and observed CH4 time series for the analyzed years are generally larger than 0.5, and the observed seasonal cycle amplitudes are simulated well at most sites, considering the between-model variances. However, larger deviations show up below 2 km for the model-observation differences in vertical profiles at some locations, e.g., at Santarem, Brazil, and in the upper troposphere, e.g., at Surgut, Russia. Vertical gradients and concentrations are underestimated at Southern Great Planes, United States, and Santarem and overestimated at Surgut. Systematic overestimation and underestimation of vertical gradients are mainly attributed to inaccurate emission and only partly to the transport uncertainties. However, large differences in model simulations are found over the regions/seasons of strong convection, which is poorly represented in the models. Overall, the zonal and latitudinal variations in CH4 are controlled by surface emissions below 2.5 kmand transport patterns in the middle and upper troposphere. We show that the models with larger vertical gradients, coupled with slower horizontal transport, exhibit greater CH4 interhemispheric gradients in the lower troposphere. These findings have significant implications for the future development of more accurate CTMs with the possibility of reducing biases in estimated surface fluxes by inverse modelling

Temperature calibration of Mg/Ca ratios in the intermediate water benthic foraminifer Hyalinea balthica

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 12 (2011): Q04003, doi:10.1029/2010GC003333.Core top samples from Indonesian and northeast Atlantic depth transects were used to calibrate Mg/Ca and δ18O in tests of the calcitic benthic foraminifer Hyalinea balthica to bottom water temperature between 4°C and 13°C. This shallow infaunal species is primarily abundant in neritic to upper bathyal sediments (<600 m). Both linear and exponential calibrations suggest a temperature sensitivity of ~12% per °C that is ~4 times higher than observed in other species of deep-sea benthic foraminifera. Culture experiments support the core top calibration. We find no discernible effect of salinity and saturation on Mg/Ca. Comparison between the measured benthic foraminiferal δ18O and predicted equilibrium values suggests that on average H. balthica δ18O is 0.64‰ ± 0.13‰ lower than predicted from the equilibrium composition. To test the reliability of using paired H. balthica Mg/Ca and δ18O measurements for reconstructing seawater δ18Osw and salinity, we apply this calibration to another depth transect from Cape Ghir off NW Africa, which was not included in the calibration. Based on error analysis of the calibration data and this validation test, we show that the uncertainty of reconstructing bottom water temperature and salinity from paired Mg/Ca and δ18O measurements of H. balthica is better than ±0.7°C and ±0.69 practical salinity scale, respectively. The small uncertainties allow for the reconstruction of seawater density to better than 0.3σθ units, which is precise enough for the identification of specific water masses and reconstruction of changes in their properties. We propose that the relatively high Mg content and temperature sensitivity of H. balthica might be due to minor, biologically mediated contribution of high-Mg calcite to the primarily low Mg calcite test, which is influenced by the ambient temperature. This hypothesis, if correct, suggests that benthic species with relatively high Mg/Ca may be better suited for deepwater temperature reconstructions than species that have thus far been more commonly used.This project was funded by NSF Awards OCE 02‐20922 and 09‐02977 to YR, OCE 09‐28607 to MK, OCE02‐20776 to DWO, and DFG priority program INTERDYNAMIK to AM

Fabrication of MEMS Microshutter Arrays for Cryogenic Applications

Two-dimensional MEMS microshutter arrays are being developed for use as a high contrast field selector for the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We present details of microshutter array fabrication and give results of work done to optimize the flatness of microshutter elements through film stress control for both room temperature and cryogenic (35K) operation

Production of He-4 and (4) in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV at the LHC

Results on the production of He-4 and (4) nuclei in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S = 2.76 TeV in the rapidity range vertical bar y vertical bar <1, using the ALICE detector, are presented in this paper. The rapidity densities corresponding to 0-10% central events are found to be dN/dy4(He) = (0.8 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.3 (syst)) x 10(-6) and dN/dy4 = (1.1 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.2 (syst)) x 10(-6), respectively. This is in agreement with the statistical thermal model expectation assuming the same chemical freeze-out temperature (T-chem = 156 MeV) as for light hadrons. The measured ratio of (4)/He-4 is 1.4 +/- 0.8 (stat) +/- 0.5 (syst). (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe

26th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS*2017): Part 3 - Meeting Abstracts - Antwerp, Belgium. 15–20 July 2017

This work was produced as part of the activities of FAPESP Research,\ud Disseminations and Innovation Center for Neuromathematics (grant\ud 2013/07699-0, S. Paulo Research Foundation). NLK is supported by a\ud FAPESP postdoctoral fellowship (grant 2016/03855-5). ACR is partially\ud supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Incorporation of GC/MS into an Environmental Science Curriculum

Incorporating modern analytical instrumentation such as GC-MS into an interdisciplinary environmental science program presents many challenges. The most daunting challenge is the variety of disciplines from which students come and their limited understanding of chemistry and chemical analysis