Evaluation of Different Approaches for Controlling Phosphorus Pollution in the Maumee River Watershed

There is a growing consensus among scientists and natural resource managers that conservation efforts addressing nonpoint source pollution are most effective when coordinated at a watershed scale. In light of this understanding, the question is how to mobilize effective conservation strategies at the watershed scale in order to ensure desired water quality. With public resources limited, much of this question can be understood as a tension between seeking to put in place those actions that will assure the largest improvements in water quality while striving for the lowest costs to land owners, citizens, and agencies. The Maumee River watershed, whose 8,316 square mile area is over 70% in agricultural land cover, presents an interesting and timely setting for tackling this challenge.1 The Maumee’s tri-state river watershed, spanning OH, IN, and MI, drains into the Western Lake Erie Basin and carries with it an excess load of dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), a nutrient that contributes significantly to the occurrence of harmful algal blooms (HABs). While HABs have been an increasing concern over the last decade, they came to the forefront of national news when in August 2014 the City of Toledo was forced to shut off its drinking water supply sourced from Western Lake Erie to approximately 500,000 metropolitan area residents due to microcystin contamination, a toxin produced by a HAB in Western Lake Erie.2 This report identifies a wide spectrum of conservation practices and policy approaches for reducing DRP at the watershed scale, including both voluntary and regulatory approaches. These are combined with model analysis of the physical watershed’s landscape and an independently designed cost effectiveness analysis in order to create marginal cost of abatement curves that define a suite of possible watershed scale management scenarios structured to achieve optimum improvements to water quality.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111006/1/Evaluation_Different_Approaches_Controlling_Phosphorus_in_Maumee_Watershed_2015.pd

Data-Driven Research for Environmental Justice: How Universities Can Help Move Vulnerable Communities from Surviving to Thriving

The 6th annual Liam's Legacy Symposium was presented on September 27, 2016 at 4:30 p.m. in the Bill Moore Student Success Center, Clary Theater.Dr. Paul Mohai is an environmental sociologist and founder of the Environmental Justice Program at the University of Michigan and member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC).Mustafa Ali is a senior advisor to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.Samantha Shattuck is a member of the newly formed NEJAC Youth Perspectives on Climate Justice Workshop.Runtime: 90:22 minutesThe U.S. environmental justice movement has prompted much research and debate in the past several decades about the existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities around environmentally hazardous sites of a wide variety. Through recent advancements, many of the uncertainties about the existence and magnitude of such disparities are being resolved. At the same time, uncertainties have also existed about the causes of the disparities. Indeed, the most fundamental question - Which came first, the people or the pollution? - has yet to be satisfactorily answered. Are present-day disparities the result of a historical pattern of siting polluting facilities in minority and poor communities, or are they the result of demographic changes after siting? GIS and other recent methodological advancements are applied in a national-level analysis to attempt to answer these questions and to identify the racial, market-based, and socio-political factors that account for present-day environmental disparities

Factors influencing social demands of aquatic ecosystems

Aquatic ecosystems provide services essential to human health and economies. Therefore, resource management programs aim to ensure the sustainable flow of these services. Stakeholder engagement is often a critical tool in learning what services are of priority to the public and may be integral to the success of aquatic ecosystem management because public participation in planning and decision making can generate broader support, e.g., financial, intellectual, and labor, for the management plan. The collection of such information may even be statutorily mandated, such as in the Clean Water Act of the United States, which requires that water bodies be classified for the beneficial uses, e.g., fisheries, drinking water, or recreation, they provide. Past evaluations of stakeholder engagement with aquatic ecosystems have considered a wide range of factors influencing engagement. We conducted a critical review of the literature on characteristics of stakeholders and characteristics of the environment that influence stakeholder engagement and participation with aquatic ecosystems. Our objective was to identify factors that should be considered in the creation of surveys to help encourage the inclusion of ecological and social beneficial uses data in large-scale water monitoring programs. Factors identified in our review were, extent and influence of place-based knowledge; proximity to, and frequency of visitation of the resource(s) being considered; basic demographics such as age, gender, education, and income; home community type; aesthetic appeal of the resource; and primary reason for engagement with the resource. We propose these factors, with subfactors, as a template for survey development

Understanding the Influence of Aesthetics on Site User Experience and Wellbeing

Poster for St. Louis River Summit in March 8-10, 2023 in Superior, WisconsinScience Inventory, CCTE products: https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_search_results.cfm?advSearch=true&showCriteria=2&keyword=CCTE&TIMSType=&TIMSSubTypeID=&epaNumber=&ombCat=Any&dateBeginPublishedPresented=07/01/2017&dateEndPublishedPresented=&dateBeginUpdated=&dateEndUpdated=&DEID=&personName=&personID=&role=Any&journalName=&journalID=&publisherName=&publisherID=&sortBy=pubDate&count=25</p

Trends in handwashing behaviours for COVID-19 prevention: Longitudinal evidence from online surveys in 10 sub-Saharan African countries.

Handwashing is essential for respiratory virus prevention, but uptake of handwashing in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic remains under-explored. This study examines trends in and determinants of handwashing practices for COVID-19 prevention in 10 countries in West, East, and Southern Africa. Data are derived from an online global Facebook survey assessing COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, and practices, fielded in July (Round 1) and November 2020 (Round 2). Adults ≥18 years (N = 29,964) were asked if they practiced handwashing with soap and water in the past week to prevent COVID-19. Design-corrected F-statistics compared knowledge and practice of handwashing, at country and regional levels, between survey rounds. A country-level fixed-effects logistic regression model then identified socio-demographic and ideational correlates of handwashing at Round 2. Most participants were >30 years-old, men, post-secondary educated, and urban residents. Between survey rounds, handwashing prevalence declined significantly across regions and in each country, from a 14% decline (Δ84%-70%) in Tanzania to a 3% decline (Δ92%-89%) in South Africa. Handwashing was higher among participants aged >30 years (Adjusted Odds Ratio [aOR] = 1.25, 95% confidence interval [95%CI]: 1.15-1.35) and with post-secondary education (aOR = 1.62, 95%CI: 1.49-1.77) but lower among men (aOR = 0.71, 95%CI: 0.64-0.78). Ideational factors associated with handwashing included perceived effectiveness of handwashing (aOR = 2.17, 95%CI: 2.00-2.36), knowing someone diagnosed with COVID-19 (aOR = 1.28, 95%CI: 1.18-1.40), and perceived importance of personal action for COVID-19 prevention (aOR = 2.93; 95%CI: 2.60-3.31). Adjusting for socio-demographic and ideational factors, country-level marginal probabilities of handwashing ranged from 67% in Tanzania to 91% in South Africa in Round 2. COVID-19 prevention messages should stress the importance of handwashing, coupled with mask use and physical distancing, for mitigating respiratory disease transmission. Behaviour change communications should be sensitive to resource heterogeneities in African countries, which shape opportunities for sustainable handwashing behaviours

Factors Influencing the Use of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy with Autistic Adults: A Survey of Community Mental Health Clinicians

Cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) can improve anxiety and depression in autistic adults, but few autistic adults receive this treatment. We examined factors that may influence clinicians’ use of CBT with autistic adults. One hundred clinicians completed an online survey. Clinicians reported stronger intentions (p = .001), more favorable attitudes (p \u3c .001), greater normative pressure (p \u3c .001), and higher self-efficacy (p \u3c .001) to start CBT with non-autistic adults than with autistic adults. The only significant predictor of intentions to begin CBT with clients with anxiety or depression was clinicians’ attitudes (p \u3c .001), with more favorable attitudes predicting stronger intentions. These findings are valuable for designing effective, tailored implementation strategies to increase clinicians’ adoption of CBT for autistic adults. Autistic adults have high rates of anxiety and depression (Buck et al. 2014; Croen et al. 2015), and often do not receive quality mental healthcare for these or other co-occurring conditions (Maddox et al. 2019; Roux et al. 2015; Shattuck et al. 2011). Developing strategies to address co-occurring psychiatric conditions is a high research priority for stakeholders in the autistic community (Frazier et al. 2018; Pellicano et al. 2014). Recent research suggests that cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) is effective at treating anxiety and depression in autistic adults (Spain et al. 2015), but many autistic adults do not receive CBT (Roux et al. 2015). This study examined factors that may influence community mental health clinicians’ use of CBT with autistic adults with co-occurring anxiety or depression. Identifying factors that influence clinicians’ use of CBT is crucial for developing mental health services and clinician training programs for autistic adults. The current study focuses on CBT because (1) CBT is a well-established evidence-based treatment for anxiety and depression among adults in the general population, making it the “current gold standard of psychotherapy” (David et al. 2018, p. 1), and (2) CBT is the most studied and supported psychosocial treatment for anxiety and depression in autistic adults (Weiss and Lunsky 2010; White et al. 2018). Few studies have examined reasons why mental health clinicians who work with—or could work with—autistic adults may or may not use CBT with this population. Cooper et al. (2018) surveyed 50 therapists in the UK about their experiences adapting CBT for autistic clients (of any age) and their confidence working with this population. An important study limitation is that the survey respondents were recruited through a training workshop about adapting CBT for autistic people. In this self-selected sample, 64% of therapists had not received prior training on working with autistic clients. On average, they reported feeling moderately confident about using their core therapeutic skills with autistic people (i.e., being empathetic, developing a therapeutic relationship, and gathering information from an autistic client to understand his or her difficulties), and reported less confidence in using other key skills, such as identifying effective therapeutic approaches for autistic clients and using their knowledge of mental health treatments to help autistic clients. However, this study did not test which factors influence the therapists’ intention to use CBT or actual use of CBT with their autistic clients. How can we increase clinicians’ use of CBT with autistic adult clients who present with anxiety or depression? To explore this question, we applied the theory of planned behavior (TPB; Ajzen 1991), a leading causal model of behavior change. The TPB posits that an individual’s attitudes, perceived norms, and/or self-efficacy influence intentions to perform a behavior, and that intentions predict behavior, under circumstances that permit the individual to act (Fig. 1). While the TPB has been used to predict and understand many health-related behaviors (Armitage and Conner 2001), it has only recently been applied to the implementation of evidence-based practices for autistic children in community settings (Fishman et al. 2018, 2019; Ingersoll et al. 2018). For example, Fishman and colleagues (2018) found that autism support classroom teachers’ intentions to use visual schedules with their students strongly predicted their subsequent use of this evidence-based practice. These findings highlight the value of measuring intentions to use specific practices. Fig. 1 The proximal determinants of intention and behavior, as defined by the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen 1991) Full size image The present study is the first to assess TPB constructs in the context of community mental health clinicians providing CBT to autistic adults with co-occurring anxiety or depression. Specifically, we measured community mental health clinicians’ intention, or motivation, to start CBT with their autistic adult clients with co-occurring anxiety or depression, and four potential determinants of this intention (described below): attitudes, descriptive norms, injunctive norms, and self-efficacy towards starting CBT with autistic adults with co-occurring anxiety or depression. To determine whether these associations were specific to working with autistic adults, we also asked about clinicians’ intentions and potential determinants of intentions to start CBT with non-autistic adult clients with anxiety or depression. For the current study, intention to start CBT is a more appropriate outcome than the actual use of CBT with autistic adults because many community mental health clinicians have few to no autistic clients on their caseload and lack training in autism (Maddox et al. 2019). In the TPB, intentions are the most proximal determinant of behavior (Fishbein and Ajzen 2010). Thus, understanding clinicians’ intentions to use a specific evidence-based practice can directly inform future efforts to change clinician behavior and address barriers to treatment access (Fishman et al. 2018; Moullin et al. 2018). In this study, attitudes refer to the clinicians’ perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of starting CBT with their adult clients with co-occurring anxiety or depression. Normative pressure refers to the clinicians’ perceptions of what others like them do (descriptive norms) and what others expect them to do (injunctive norms) when offering anxiety or depression treatment to an adult client. Self-efficacy (also called perceived behavioral control) refers to the clinicians’ sense of agency to start CBT with an adult client. One advantage of considering these factors is that they are malleable and could be targeted with tailored implementation strategies to improve implementation of evidence-based practice (Fishman et al. 2019). However, it is important to note that these factors are only a small subset of possible barriers to clinicians delivering CBT to autistic adults. For example, we do not examine financial or funding issues, agency leadership engagement, implementation climate, organizational policies, or characteristics of the clients (Damschroder et al. 2009). The current study represents a first step in better understanding the research-to-practice gap related to mental health services for autistic adults

Reproducibility of fluorescent expression from engineered biological constructs in E. coli

We present results of the first large-scale interlaboratory study carried out in synthetic biology, as part of the 2014 and 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competitions. Participants at 88 institutions around the world measured fluorescence from three engineered constitutive constructs in E. coli. Few participants were able to measure absolute fluorescence, so data was analyzed in terms of ratios. Precision was strongly related to fluorescent strength, ranging from 1.54-fold standard deviation for the ratio between strong promoters to 5.75-fold for the ratio between the strongest and weakest promoter, and while host strain did not affect expression ratios, choice of instrument did. This result shows that high quantitative precision and reproducibility of results is possible, while at the same time indicating areas needing improved laboratory practices.Peer reviewe