Creating pathways for positive change

One of the key recommendations of the 2012 report, Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing, is “empowering people to make sustainable choices.” Prepared by the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability (2012), this landmark report reframes sustainability while—like other reports before it—challenging those in the conservation community to consider how to create the pathways to empower people to make sustainable choices, to change their future, to be resilient. The hope of empowering people to make sustainable choices is not new, but the approaches and tools by which improved decision-making is facilitated and supported are changing rapidly. This article examines emerging, successful trends in communication and its link to change management. It explores contextualizing a problem or challenge, influencing policy through strategic communication, engaging stakeholders, and managing change. To better describe these linkages, this article presents a sample change strategy, the processes used to manage change, and the various aspects of a change management approach. Creating pathways for positive change is of special interest to the representatives of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Commission on Education and Communication (CEC), who developed this article. Sharing a vision of a global community that loves and values nature, the Commission facilitates capacity building, change management, knowledge management, learning processes and communication activities worldwide as a way to create pathways for positive change.14 page(s

VR as a Persuasive Technology “in the Wild”. The Effect of Immersive VR on Intent to Change Towards Water Conservation

The combination of VR with the correct psychological mechanism could become a powerful persuasionsystem to stimulate intent to change towards important environmental issues such as water conservation.However, very limited research has been reported on VR usage in this area. Therefore, we conducted abetween-groups study to investigate whether the level of presence felt in a VR environment together with a trigger mechanism such as guilt could spark intent to change towards water conservation. Participants were exposed to a persuasive message about water conservation in one of three conditions: audio only, simple VR and visually rich VR. Forty participants completed the study “in the wild”. The results showed that while intent to change increased in all three groups, both VR groups indicated lower levels of change than the audio only group. Additionally, a positive correlation, albeit small, was found between presence and cued recall along with presence and intent to change. These results furthermore showed that presence could play a role in behavior modification and intent to change

The degree of HIV-1 amino acid variability is strictly related to different disease progression rates

The aim of this study is to evaluate the amino acid variability of HIV-1 Gp41, C2\u2013V3, and Nef in a group of patients characterized by different disease progression rates. HIV-1 sequences were collected from 19 Long term non progressor patients (LTNPs), 9 slow progressors (SPs), and 11 rapid progressors (RPs). Phylogenetic trees were estimated by MEGA 6. Differences in amino acid variability among sequences belonging to the 3 groups have been evaluated by amino acid divergence, Shannon entropy analysis, and the number of amino acid mutations (defined as amino acid variations compared with HxB2). The involvement of amino acid mutations on epitope rich regions was also investigated. The population was mainly composed of males (74.3%) and HIV-1 subtype B strains (B: 92.32%, CRF_12BF, A1, C: 2.56% each). Viral load (log10 copies/mL) and CD4+T cell count (cells/mm3) were 3.9 (3.5\u20134.2) and 618 (504\u2013857) in LTNPs, 3.3 (2.8\u20134.7) and 463 (333\u2013627) in SPs, and 4.6 (4.3\u20135.3) and 201 (110\u2013254) in RPs. Gp41 and C2\u2013V3 amino acid divergence was lower in LTNP and SP strains compared to RPs (median value: 0.085 and 0.091 vs. 0.114, p = 0.005 and 0.042) and a trend of lower variability was observed for Nef (p = 0.198). A lower entropy value was observed at 10, 3, and 7 positions of Gp41, C2\u2013V3, and Nef belonging to LTNPs and at 7, 3, and 1 positions of Gp41, C2\u2013V3, and Nef belonging to SPs compared with RPs (p < 0.05). Focusing on epitope rich regions, again a higher degree of conservation was observed in Gp41 and C2\u2013V3 sequences belonging to LTNPs and SPs compared to those belonging to RPs. This study shows that the extent of amino acid variability correlates with a different HIV-1 progression rate. This variability also involves CTL epitope rich regions, thus suggesting its involvement in the immune escape process modulation