Improving Public Health Communication In A Politically Polarized Environment: Exploring The Use Of Moral Values In Message Framing

Public health practitioners need to engage stakeholders to address today’s complex public health problems. Yet communicating with stakeholders – particularly policy officials – has become more challenging due to political polarization. One promising communications strategy focuses on framing messages that tap into six intuitive moral values, based on Moral Foundations Theory. Previous research has shown a strong connection between people’s moral values and their political affiliation. The purpose of this study was to: (1) assess the intuitive moral values of public health practitioners and local officials in North Carolina; and (2) test the perceived effectiveness of public health messages framed using different moral values among North Carolina local officials. The study hypothesized that public health practitioners would lean toward moral foundations that resonate more with political liberals, whereas local officials would identify with ones that resonate more with conservatives. Methods: An online survey assessed the moral foundations of 372 public health practitioners and 147 local officials in North Carolina. A between-subjects, randomized experiment with local officials tested (1) the perceived effectiveness of values-based messages about policies about COVID-19 and vaping, and (2) related information-seeking behavior. Findings: In multivariate regression models, moral foundation scores consistently varied by political views, education, region, race/ethnicity, and age. As predicted, public health practitioners scored higher on the moral foundations of Care and Fairness, and local officials scored higher on Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity (as well as Liberty). However, public health practitioners and local officials shared a similar overall pattern in their moral foundations. One vaping message framed using Care/Fairness scored higher than one using binding foundations (i.e., Loyalty/Authority/Sanctity). Using binding foundations alone to frame public health messages did not appeal to conservatives. Given the study was conducted during a global pandemic and contentious U.S. presidential election, further research is warranted to test message framing for other public health topics. Implications: Recommendations are offered for using findings to improve how public health practitioners communicate with stakeholders about COVID-19 and other pressing public health issues. A plan is outlined to refine and expand an existing national training program to increase public health practitioner skills to become more effective communicators.Doctor of Public Healt

DataCite Implementation Recommendations: A Report of the DataCite Task Force

This is a task force report outlining recommendations for the University of Michigan Library regarding investment in DataCite tools and policies.DataCite (http://datacite.org/) is a non-profit, international consortium whose members collaboratively address challenges of making data visible and accessible. In the United States, DataCite is represented by three organizations: the California Digital Library (CDL), the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), and the Purdue University Libraries. As an addition to the growing network of services around data in the library, the University of Michigan Library has joined DataCite as a client through the Member or Allocator Agency, Purdue University Libraries. Purdue uses California Digital Library’s EZID service (http://n2t.net/ezid) to offer DataCite Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100249/1/DataCiteTaskForceReport.pdf-

Detector Systems Engineering for Extremely Large Instruments

The scientific detector systems for the ESO ELT first-light instruments, HARMONI, MICADO, and METIS, together will require 27 science detectors: seventeen 2.5 $\mu$m cutoff H4RG-15 detectors, four 4K x 4K 231-84 CCDs, five 5.3 $\mu$m cutoff H2RG detectors, and one 13.5 $\mu$m cutoff GEOSNAP detector. This challenging program of scientific detector system development covers everything from designing and producing state-of-the-art detector control and readout electronics, to developing new detector characterization techniques in the lab, to performance modeling and final system verification. We report briefly on the current design of these detector systems and developments underway to meet the challenging scientific performance goals of the ELT instruments.Comment: Proceedings of the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Conference 202

Fine Tuning of Optical Transition Energy of Twisted Bilayer Graphene via Interlayer Distance Modulation

Twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) represents a family of unique materials with optoelectronic properties tuned by the rotation angle between the two layers. The presented work shows an additional way of tweaking the electronic structure of tBLG: by modifying the interlayer distance, for example by a small uniaxial out-of-plane compression. We have focused on the optical transition energy, which shows a clear dependence on the interlayer distance, both experimentally and theoretically.Comment: accepted to Physical Review B https://journals.aps.org/prb/accepted/dd078Y90H2517b63a1632e870189c8db65254906

Impact of a Randomized Campus/Community Trial to Prevent High-Risk Drinking Among College Students

High-risk drinking by college students continues to pose a significant threat to public health. Despite increasing evidence of the contribution of community-level and campus-level environmental factors to high risk drinking, there have been few rigorous tests of interventions that focus on changing these interlinked environments. The Study to Prevent Alcohol Related Consequences (SPARC) assessed the efficacy of a comprehensive intervention using a community organizing approach to implement environmental strategies in and around college campuses. The goal of SPARC was to reduce high-risk drinking and alcohol-related consequences among college students

Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above 4×10184{\times}10^{18} eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding $4{\times}10^{18}$ eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers with zenith angles greater than $60^{\circ}$ detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above $5.3{\times}10^{18}$ eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law $E^{-\gamma}$ with index $\gamma=2.70 \pm 0.02 \,\text{(stat)} \pm 0.1\,\text{(sys)}$ followed by a smooth suppression region. For the energy ($E_\text{s}$) at which the spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence of suppression, we find $E_\text{s}=(5.12\pm0.25\,\text{(stat)}^{+1.0}_{-1.2}\,\text{(sys)}){\times}10^{19}$ eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI. Supplemental material in the ancillary file

Identification of O-mannosylated Virulence Factors in Ustilago maydis

The O-mannosyltransferase Pmt4 has emerged as crucial for fungal virulence in the animal pathogens Candida albicans or Cryptococcus neoformans as well as in the phytopathogenic fungus Ustilago maydis. Pmt4 O-mannosylates specific target proteins at the Endoplasmic Reticulum. Therefore a deficient O-mannosylation of these target proteins must be responsible for the loss of pathogenicity in pmt4 mutants. Taking advantage of the characteristics described for Pmt4 substrates in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we performed a proteome-wide bioinformatic approach to identify putative Pmt4 targets in the corn smut fungus U. maydis and validated Pmt4-mediated glycosylation of candidate proteins by electrophoretic mobility shift assays. We found that the signalling mucin Msb2, which regulates appressorium differentiation upstream of the pathogenicity-related MAP kinase cascade, is O-mannosylated by Pmt4. The epistatic relationship of pmt4 and msb2 showed that both are likely to act in the same pathway. Furthermore, constitutive activation of the MAP kinase cascade restored appressorium development in pmt4 mutants, suggesting that during the initial phase of infection the failure to O-mannosylate Msb2 is responsible for the virulence defect of pmt4 mutants. On the other hand we demonstrate that during later stages of pathogenic development Pmt4 affects virulence independently of Msb2, probably by modifying secreted effector proteins. Pit1, a protein required for fungal spreading inside the infected leaf, was also identified as a Pmt4 target. Thus, O-mannosylation of different target proteins affects various stages of pathogenic development in U. maydis