Reflecting on Local Ecological Stewardship, Care, and Action across Two Decades of Research

In this perspective, we draw from 20 years of implementing the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) to show how civic actors provide capacity and local knowledge needed for effective decision-making and implementation in the face of multiple interconnected stressors, including climate change and inequality. Urban areas are striving to achieve sustainability and resilience goals while advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. There is broad recognition that systematic change cannot be achieved via single sector solutions. Rather, just and equitable sustainability and resilience outcomes will be achieved through multi-sector, trans-disciplinary efforts led by diverse and inclusive partnerships. Processes of collaboration between groups and across sectors can foster trust and social cohesion to build adaptive environmental governance capacity. Hindering these outcomes is a lack of approaches for identifying civic groups and their networks, understanding their roles in the larger governance system, and harnessing their capacities systematically and at landscape scales. STEW-MAP was developed to address this gap in a natural resources management context and has been applied in 20 locations across the Americas. Synthesizing key insights for practitioners and researchers, we identify the critical role of civic organizations in collaborative, networked governance, while highlighting inequities that affect this stewardship work. We reflect on how stewardship mapping has been used as a decision-support, networking, and visualization tool and identify future research and practitioner directions that fully acknowledge the persistent role of civic groups in caring for the environment and enlivening democratic practice

What is behind smoker support for new smokefree areas? National survey data

BACKGROUND: Some countries have started to extend indoor smokefree laws to cover cars and various outdoor settings. However, policy-modifiable factors around smoker support for these new laws are not well described. METHODS: The New Zealand (NZ) arm of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Survey (ITC Project) derives its sample from the NZ Health Survey (a national sample). From this sample we surveyed adult smokers (n = 1376). RESULTS: For the six settings considered, 59% of smokers supported at least three new completely smokefree areas. Only 2% favoured smoking being allowed in all the six new settings. Support among Maori, Pacific and Asian smokers relative to European smokers was elevated in multivariate analyses, but confidence intervals often included 1.0.Also in the multivariate analyses, "strong support" by smokers for new smokefree area laws was associated with greater knowledge of the second-hand smoke (SHS) hazard, and with behaviours to reduce SHS exposure towards others. Strong support was also associated with reporting having smokefree cars (aOR = 1.68, 95% CI = 1.21 - 2.34); and support for tobacco control regulatory measures by government (aOR = 1.63, 95% CI = 1.32 - 2.01). There was also stronger support by smokers with a form of financial stress (not spending on household essentials). CONCLUSIONS: Smokers from a range of population groups can show majority support for new outdoor and smokefree car laws. Some of these findings are consistent with the use of public health strategies to support new smokefree laws, such as enhancing public knowledge of the second-hand smoke hazard

Biomedical colonialism or local autonomy?: local healers in the fight against tuberculosis

Analiza el papel de los agentes médicos autóctonos y sus conocimientos en las campañas antituberculosas contemporáneas en el África subsahariana. Sitúa la medicina contemporánea, llevada a cabo en África en la herencia cultural de la medicina colonial, para comprender el marco histórico en el que se desarrollaron, a partir de los años setenta del siglo XX, las estrategias de la Organización Mundial de la Salud de promoción y desarrollo de las medicinas 'tradicionales'. En los proyectos sanitarios analizados, se evalúan las prácticas médicas locales y se entrenan a los agentes autóctonos para integrarlos en actividades estrictamente biomédicas: identificación de síntomas, remisión a hospitales o supervisión de tratamientos farmacológicos.The article explores the role played by indigenous medical agents, and their knowledge, within contemporary tuberculosis campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa. To understand the historical framework within which the World Health Organization devised its strategies to promote and develop traditional medicine as of the 1970s, the article contextualizes contemporary medicine as a cultural legacy of colonial medicine. Under the public healthcare projects analyzed in the article, local medical practices were assessed and indigenous agents trained so they could take part in strictly biomedical activities, like symptom identification, referrals to hospitals, or supervision of drug treatments.Trabajo realizado para la obtención del Diploma de Estudios Avanzados (DEA) en el programa de doctorado Salud: Antropología e Historia, bajo la dirección de la profesora Rosa María Medina Doménech

A transcriptomic and epigenomic cell atlas of the mouse primary motor cortex.

Single-cell transcriptomics can provide quantitative molecular signatures for large, unbiased samples of the diverse cell types in the brain1-3. With the proliferation of multi-omics datasets, a major challenge is to validate and integrate results into a biological understanding of cell-type organization. Here we generated transcriptomes and epigenomes from more than 500,000 individual cells in the mouse primary motor cortex, a structure that has an evolutionarily conserved role in locomotion. We developed computational and statistical methods to integrate multimodal data and quantitatively validate cell-type reproducibility. The resulting reference atlas-containing over 56 neuronal cell types that are highly replicable across analysis methods, sequencing technologies and modalities-is a comprehensive molecular and genomic account of the diverse neuronal and non-neuronal cell types in the mouse primary motor cortex. The atlas includes a population of excitatory neurons that resemble pyramidal cells in layer 4 in other cortical regions4. We further discovered thousands of concordant marker genes and gene regulatory elements for these cell types. Our results highlight the complex molecular regulation of cell types in the brain and will directly enable the design of reagents to target specific cell types in the mouse primary motor cortex for functional analysis

A multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex

ABSTRACT We report the generation of a multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex (MOp or M1) as the initial product of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN). This was achieved by coordinated large-scale analyses of single-cell transcriptomes, chromatin accessibility, DNA methylomes, spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomes, morphological and electrophysiological properties, and cellular resolution input-output mapping, integrated through cross-modal computational analysis. Together, our results advance the collective knowledge and understanding of brain cell type organization: First, our study reveals a unified molecular genetic landscape of cortical cell types that congruently integrates their transcriptome, open chromatin and DNA methylation maps. Second, cross-species analysis achieves a unified taxonomy of transcriptomic types and their hierarchical organization that are conserved from mouse to marmoset and human. Third, cross-modal analysis provides compelling evidence for the epigenomic, transcriptomic, and gene regulatory basis of neuronal phenotypes such as their physiological and anatomical properties, demonstrating the biological validity and genomic underpinning of neuron types and subtypes. Fourth, in situ single-cell transcriptomics provides a spatially-resolved cell type atlas of the motor cortex. Fifth, integrated transcriptomic, epigenomic and anatomical analyses reveal the correspondence between neural circuits and transcriptomic cell types. We further present an extensive genetic toolset for targeting and fate mapping glutamatergic projection neuron types toward linking their developmental trajectory to their circuit function. Together, our results establish a unified and mechanistic framework of neuronal cell type organization that integrates multi-layered molecular genetic and spatial information with multi-faceted phenotypic properties

Conserving the roots of trade : Local ecological knowledge of ethnomedicines from Tanga, Tanzania markets

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2008.This dissertation is based on research with healers, vendors, harvesters, and consumers of medicinal plants in a botanically rich, economically poor area where conservation, livelihoods, and health are key concerns. It examines biological and social factors related to the knowledge, procurement, and use of medicinal flora, and considers whether focusing on locally important plants and places can promote larger conservation goals. Methods include: 79 semi-structured interviews on medicinal plant acquisition; 28 market inventories of >250 ethnospecies; 74 local ecological knowledge (LEK) surveys on nine medicinal species; 112 semi-structured household interviews and inventories of home gardens; and 13 focus groups to validate, expand, and return findings. Twenty key species were identified on the basis of their 25% prevalence rate among vendors' stocks and vendors nominating them as important. These are primarily bark and roots of non-cultivated, locally harvested, native trees. Seventeen are widely distributed and found in areas that range from highly anthropogenic to relatively undisturbed, and three are comparatively vulnerable. They are Warburgia stuhlmannii (proposed as endangered due to its limited distribution in Coastal Forests) and Ocotea usambarensis and Morella salicifolia, two montane species which are primarily harvested in forest reserves. While quantitative LEK survey analyses show no significant differences in knowledge among social groups (based on role, gender, experience, age), qualitative analyses indicate that healers have a greater understanding of and adhere more to harvesting pre- and proscriptions. Culturally based and ecologically based knowledge are significantly correlated, but knowledge and behavior are not necessarily consistent with each other. The marketplace is a central locus for knowledge transmission and this transmission is influenced by market demands and motivated by opportunities to supplement livelihoods. The dissertation concludes that phytomedicine harvest is not presently a threat to conservation in Tanga, but the availability of these plants may be limited in the future. This is indicated by local observations of shrinking medicinal plant habitats and populations, and a growing demand for commercial species that are wild harvested but not cultivated. The findings underscore the value of plant medicines to local people's health, livelihoods, and culture and, therefore, their potential to sponsor biodiversity conservation.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 394-413).Also available by subscription via World Wide Web435 leaves, bound 29 c

‘The power of living things’

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