Using Pedestrian Counts to Assess Community-Wide Interventions to Increase Physical Activity in Rural Cuba, NM

Rural residents are often less active than urban and suburban residents. Reasons cited in the literature include certain environmental barriers such as lack of sidewalks, bike lanes, and affordable exercise facilities. The VIVA-Step Into Cuba project aims to address these barriers in Cuba, NM, by implementing community-wide interventions to increase physical activity. The aim of this study was to determine whether the implemented interventions resulted in an increase in walking over time. The data were collected according to methods established by the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Project. These methods included field observations performed by trained researchers and community members on three days of the week (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday) during two time intervals (12 noon-2 pm and 5 pm-7 pm). The total sample included counts of pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-motorized traffic obtained in the month of May from 2010-2015 and totaled 1,772 observations in three established locations. Data were characterized by type of traffic, location, gender, age, and year. Analysis showed a decline in travels over the study period, with an average decrease of 9. 08 people per year. There was an increase of about 5.2 pedestrians per year among individuals under the age of 18. Weather may have accounted for the decline, as rain was documented on observation dates for the last three years, while the first three were indicated as sunny or mild weather. These results will be used by the VIVA project to tailor further interventions to increase physical activity in rural communities in New Mexico.https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/prc-posters-presentations/1011/thumbnail.jp

Using Object-Oriented Classification for Coastal Management in the East Central Coast of Florida: A Quantitative Comparison between UAV, Satellite, and Aerial Data

High resolution mapping of coastal habitats is invaluable for resource inventory, change detection, and inventory of aquaculture applications. However, coastal areas, especially the interior of mangroves, are often difficult to access. An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), equipped with a multispectral sensor, affords an opportunity to improve upon satellite imagery for coastal management because of the very high spatial resolution, multispectral capability, and opportunity to collect real-time observations. Despite the recent and rapid development of UAV mapping applications, few articles have quantitatively compared how much improvement there is of UAV multispectral mapping methods compared to more conventional remote sensing data such as satellite imagery. The objective of this paper is to quantitatively demonstrate the improvements of a multispectral UAV mapping technique for higher resolution images used for advanced mapping and assessing coastal land cover. We performed multispectral UAV mapping fieldwork trials over Indian River Lagoon along the central Atlantic coast of Florida. Ground Control Points (GCPs) were collected to generate a rigorous geo-referenced dataset of UAV imagery and support comparison to geo-referenced satellite and aerial imagery. Multi-spectral satellite imagery (Sentinel-2) was also acquired to map land cover for the same region. NDVI and object-oriented classification methods were used for comparison between UAV and satellite mapping capabilities. Compared with aerial images acquired from Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the UAV multi-spectral mapping method used in this study provided advanced information of the physical conditions of the study area, an improved land feature delineation, and a significantly better mapping product than satellite imagery with coarser resolution. The study demonstrates a replicable UAV multi-spectral mapping method useful for study sites that lack high quality data

Análise da (in) constitucionalidade das áreas rurais consolidadas em áreas de preservação permanente instituídas pela Lei nº 12.651/2012: análise à luz do postulado da vedação ao retrocesso e da regra da proporcionalidade

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar o instituto das áreas rurais consolidadas em áreas de preservação permanente, instituído pela Lei nº 12.651 de 2012 por meio da aplicação do método dedutivo legal, baseando-se na interpretação da lei, da doutrina e da jurisprudência. São examinadas as flexibilizações que a lei trouxe à proteção ambiental brasileira em seus artigos 7º §3º, 59 §§4º e 5º, 60, 61-A, 61-B e 63. A controvérsia acerca do instituto perdura desde a sua criação, tendo sido questionado pela ADI 4902, e declarado constitucional pelo Superior Tribunal Federal em Março de 2018. Buscando a melhor interpretação à luz da Constituição Federal, observa-se que o instituto afronta a CF/88 ao flexibilizar os padrões de proteção ambiental já alcançados pela legislação e pela Constituição Federal, no tocante às áreas de preservação permanente. O instituto viola, ainda, o postulado da vedação ao retrocesso, posto que foi criado sem justificativa técnico-científica e ignorando o padrão de proteção mínimo ao conferir benesses não plausíveis a quem estava irregular antes de 22 de julho de 2008. Sendo o instituto, por fim, considerado inadequado e inconstitucional, conforme a regra da Proporcionalidade, pois confere um alto grau de ameaça às funções das APPs, se mostrando nitidamente contrário ao direito ambiental constitucional e à proteção conferida pela legislação ambiental.http://repositorio.uniceub.br/retrieve/33293/21410002%20Hannah%20Danciger.pd

Investigations into the Modification of DNA by Doxorubicin Analogs

Doxorubicin (DOX) is an anthracycline chemotherapeutic that has seen widespread use to treat numerous cancer types. Its mechanism of action is still unclear, but is thought to include the intercalation of DNA, halting transcription and inducing apoptosis. Although DOX has shown strong antitumor activity, its usage is limited due to a dose-dependent onset of cumulative and irreversible life-threatening cardiac damage. Consequently, the harmful side effects necessitate the need for the production of new, less harmful anthracycline chemotherapeutics with greater effectiveness for the treatment of cancer. Three analogs of DOX (P-DOX, GPX-150 and GPX-160) have been synthesized and determined to have antitumor activity against multiple cancer cell lines. This study seeks to investigate the mechanism by which these analogs display their activity, specifically probing for DNA modification. Each compound was tested for and found to have greater DNA-modifying abilities than DOX by the alkaline COMET, DNA gel electrophoresis, and the K-SDS DNA-protein crosslinking assays. These and related experimental results will be presented

From complex social interventions to interventions in complex social systems: future directions and unresolved questions for intervention development and evaluation

Complex systems approaches to social intervention research are increasingly advocated. However, there have been few attempts to consider how models of intervention science, such as the Medical Research Council (MRC) complex interventions framework, might be re-framed through a complex systems lens. This paper identifies some key areas in which this framework might be reconceptualised, and a number of priority areas where further development is needed if alignment with a systems perspective is to be achieved. We argue that a complex systems perspective broadens the parameters of ‘relevant’ evidence and theory for intervention development, before discussing challenges in defining feasibility in dynamic terms. We argue that whole systems evaluations may be neither attainable, nor necessary; acknowledgment of complexity does not mean that evaluations must be complex, or investigate all facets of complexity. However, a systems lens may add value to evaluation design through guiding identification of key uncertainties, and informing decisions such as timings of follow-up assessments

SET domain containing 2 (SETD2) influences metabolism and alternative splicing during myogenesis

Epigenetic regulatory mechanisms are increasingly recognized as crucial determinants of cellular specification and differentiation. During muscle cell differentiation (myogenesis), extensive remodelling of histone acetylation and methylation occurs. Several of these histone modifications aid in the expression of muscle-specific genes and the silencing of genes that block lineage commitment. Therefore, the identification of new epigenetic regulatory mechanisms is of high interest. Still, the functional relevance of numerous histone modifications during myogenesis remain completely uncertain. In this study, we focus on the function of H3K36me3 and its epigenetic writer, SET domain containing 2 (SETD2), in the context of muscle cell differentiation. We first observed that SETD2 expression increases during myogenesis. Targeted depletion of SETD2 in undifferentiated (myoblasts) and differentiated (myotubes) muscle cells reduced H3K36me3 levels and induced profound changes in gene expression and slight alterations in alternative splicing, as determined by deep RNA-sequencing analysis. Enzymes that function in metabolic pathways were upregulated in response to SETD2 depletion. Furthermore, we demonstrated that upregulation of several glycolytic enzymes was associated with an increase in intracellular pyruvate levels in SETD2-depleted cells, indicating a novel role for SETD2 in metabolic programming during myogenesis. Together, our results provide new insight into the signalling pathways controlled by chromatin-modifying enzymes and their associated histone modifications during muscle cell differentiation

ANÁLISE DA INTERFACE ENTRE O DIREITO URBANÍSTICO E O MEIO AMBIENTE PARA O DESENVOLVIMENTO DE CORREDORES ECOLÓGICOS URBANOS NO PLANEJAMENTO URBANÍSTICO

Os Corredores Ecológicos são conexões que modificam a paisagem natural ao reconstituir o fluxo da diversidade biológica entre ecossistemas naturais, sendo o principal instrumento para a conectividade da paisagem fragmentada no meio urbano e para a conservação da biodiversidade urbana. O presente artigo tem por objetivo analisar a interface do Direito Urbanístico com o meio ambiente a partir do estudo dos Corredores Ecológicos no meio urbano. Para tanto, a partir do estudo da legislação nacional, buscar-se-á demonstrar que o desenvolvimento dos Corredores Ecológicos Urbanos se mostra como uma técnica ambientalmente sustentável para que o planejamento urbano concretize objetivos urbanísticos e ambientais

Infants on the move: bibliometric analyses of observational vs. digital means of screening infant development

Neurodevelopmental disorders are on the rise, yet their average diagnosis is after 4.5 years old. This delay is partly due to reliance on social-communication criteria, which require longer maturation than scaffolding elements of neuromotor control. Much earlier criteria could include reflexes, monitoring of the quality of spontaneous movements from central pattern generators and maturation of intentional movements and their overall sensation. General Movement Assessment (GMA) studies these features using observational means, but the last two decades have seen a surge in digital tools that enable non-invasive, continuous tracking of infants’ spontaneous movements. Despite their importance, these tools are not yet broadly used. In this work, using CiteSpace, VOSViewer and SciMAT software, we investigate the evolution of the literature on GMA and the methods in use today, to estimate how digital techniques are being adopted. To that end, we created maps of key word co-occurrence networks, co-author networks, document co-citation analysis and strategic diagrams of 295 publications based on a search in the Web of Science, Dimensions and SCOPUS databases for: ‘general movement assessment’ OR ‘general movements assessment’. The nodes on the maps were categorized by size, cluster groups and year of publication. We found that the state-of-the-art methodology to diagnose neurodevelopmental disorders still relies heavily on observation. Several groups in classical GMA research have branched out to incorporate new techniques, but few groups have adopted digital means. We report on additional analyses of methods and biosensors usage and propose that combining traditional clinical observation criteria with digital means may allow earlier diagnoses and interventional therapies for infants