Climate change adaptation and health in Southeast Asia: What do regional organisations contribute?

Around the world climate change is already impacting on health, via more frequent and intense extreme weather events, as well as by altering the prevalence and distributions of vector- and water-borne diseases. The high and rapidly growing population in Southeast Asia is heavily reliant on agriculture for livelihoods, which makes it vulnerable to climate change impacts such as sea level rise and typhoons. In this context, regional organisations are playing an increasingly important role in climate change adaptation and health. For example, the Asian Development Bank and the Asia-Pacific Regional Forum on Health and Environment are both involved in adaptation and health initiatives. Despite this, however, there is a lack of empirical research on the value added by regional organisations to adaptation and health actions and initiatives. Prepared as a thesis by compilation, this research helps fill this gap by examining the effectiveness of regional organisations supporting national level adaptation and health in Southeast Asia. A three-step process was used for this examination. Firstly, three national case studies were conducted in Southeast Asia, focussing on adaptation and health. These individual pieces of research used an open-ended research methodology to limit researcher bias, with the goal of identifying similarities and differences in governance-related adaptation and health challenges across the case-study countries. Secondly, a systematic framework was developed for assessing regional organisations supporting climate change adaptation. So as to be applicable across sectors and geographies, the framework was developed outside of Southeast Asia and outside the health sector. Thirdly, the resultant framework was used to guide the research examining regional organisations supporting adaptation and health initiatives in Southeast Asia, to both determine their strengths and weaknesses, and to identify pathways to improve their effectiveness. The main findings of this research were that, first, coordination challenges exist between organisations, sectors and scales, as well as across sub-national boundaries. In all cases, poor coordination is limiting and constraining adaptation and health. Further, coordination challenges are limiting adaptation and health in all three case study countries, despite different levels of development and different governance arrangements. Second, regional organisations are not necessarily well-placed for direct project implementation, but maymore effectively support adaptation through creating enabling environments at the national level. This may be done through supporting national level capacity building, and acting as specialised knowledge banks, such as for climate-modelling data. Third, where there is a lack of coordination, mandate overlaps for regional organisations working in the same region have negative impacts on climate change adaptation, including adaptation and health. A final finding is that institutionalised and incentivised coordination between such regional organisations would benefit adaptation and health initiatives in two key ways. Firstly, both the administrative workload on developing country government agencies and redundancies in the work of regional organisations would be reduced. Secondly, better inter-organisation coordination would provide regional organisations with a stronger foundation for supporting countries to coordinate across scales, sectors and boundaries. The findings outlined in the paragraph above are the basis for the five primary contributions to the academic literature that this thesis makes. Firstly, coordination is a major adaptation and health constraint, regardless of governance arrangements, ideologies or scales. Secondly, a framework for assessing regional organisations coordinating climate change adaptation was developed. Thirdly, the utility of the developed framework was demonstrated across three regions, as well as across sectors. Fourth, integrating the strengths of project and governance approaches provides an avenue for improving adaptation and health results. The final theoretical contribution of this thesis is that integrating the strengths of these two approaches, by coordinating collaboratively, will enable better regional organisation support for coordination within countries. This body of work will provide insights for national governments as well as regional and international organisations on how they can improve their interactions to better support adaptation and health outcomes

Regional organisations and climate change adaptation in small island developing states

Regional organisations play a central role in coordinating regional climate change adaptation responses across small island developing states, 58 countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. The effectiveness of these organisations in coordinating adaptation efforts is underexplored in the academic literature, and this paper helps to fill the gap. By developing the Framework for Assessing Regional Organisations Coordinating Climate Change Adaptation, it qualitatively assesses the adaptation-related inputs, projects/programmes and outputs of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme. This assessment is enriched by data gathered through interviews with national and regional climate change and development officials in the Caribbean and Pacific. It finds that regional organisations are more effective with respect to their adaptation-related inputs and outputs, but are less effective in coordinating adaptation projects/programmes. It recommends that, in addition to differentiating organisational mandates, regional organisations should focus on resolving the major climate-related information deficit issues, helping countries to develop ready to finance investment projects, building national-level capacities to adapt and supporting the creation of an enabling environment for climate change adaptation.They acknowledge: the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University for financial support to undertake fieldwor

Geological Specimens Database Project

This project tasked us with creating a high-usability web application for the Valparaiso University Department of Geology and its geological specimens collection. The application is made using HTML/CSS, PHP, and SQL to hold and show mineral specimen data collected by the professors within the Geology Department. The purpose of this application is to allow students and professors to easily store and access data on the rocks and minerals that they collect. The students can input a unique code or keyword into a search bar within the application, or scan a unique QR code to search specimens of minerals within the collection. Once queried, the application displays the mineral\u27s name, date of collection, who it was collected by, the region the mineral was found, a description of the mineral, as well as photos of the specimen

Coordination and health sector adaptation to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta

This research examines the impact of three coordination dimensions on health sector adaptation to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: cross-scale, cross-sectoral, and cross-boundary. While tasks are divided up between government ministries and departments in Vietnam, there is little collaboration on issues that span mandates. Similarly, while water flows in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta take resource management and health concerns across provincial boundaries, formal mechanisms for interprovincial collaboration are lacking. While decentralization efforts have sought to devolve authority and decision making to lower levels, there is continued state-centered top-down policy making, and this limits collaborative coordination across scales. All three of these issues inhibit health sector adaptation to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, and though these coordination issues are recognized by the Vietnamese government, to date there has been little success in addressing them. The authors hope to stimulate further debate and discussion of coordination problems, and conclude that despite some significant challenges, the South West Steering Committee could play a facilitating role coordinating climate change responses in health and other sectors across the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. As an analysis of governance, this research is applicable to other areas and sectors in Vietnam, as well as to other parts of South East Asia

An ITAM-signaling pathway controls cross-presentation of particulate but not soluble antigens in dendritic cells

Dendritic cells (DC) possess a unique capacity for presenting exogenous antigen on major histocompatibility class I, a process that is referred to as cross-presentation, which serves a critical role in microbial and tumor immunity. During cross-presentation, antigens derived from pathogen-infected or tumor cells are internalized and processed by DCs for presentation to cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). We demonstrate that a signaling pathway initiated by the immunoreceptor tyrosine–based activation motif (ITAM)–containing adaptors DAP12 and FcRγ utilizes the Vav family of Rho guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) for processing and cross-presentation of particulate, but not soluble, antigens by DCs. Notably, this novel pathway is crucial for processing and presentation of particulate antigens, such as those associated with Listeria monocytogenes bacteria, yet it is not required for antigen uptake. Mechanistically, we provide evidence that in DCs, Vav GEFs are essential to link ITAM-dependent receptors with the activation of the NOX2 complex and production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which regulate phagosomal pH and processing of particulate antigens for cross-presentation. Importantly, we show that genetic disruption of the DAP12/FcRγ–Vav pathway leads to antigen presentation defects that are more profound than in DCs lacking NOX2, suggesting that ITAM signaling also controls cross-presentation in a ROS-independent manner

How Many Thymocytes Audition for Selection?

T cell maturation requires the rearrangement of clonotypic T cell receptors (TCR) capable of interacting with major histocompatibility complex (MHC) ligands to initiate positive and negative selection. Only 3–5% of thymocytes mature to join the peripheral T cell pool. To investigate the basis for this low success rate, we have measured the frequency of preselection thymocytes capable of responding to MHC. As many as one in five MHC-naive thymocytes show upregulation of activation markers on exposure to MHC-expressing thymic stroma in short-term reaggregate culture. The majority of these cells display physiological changes consistent with entry into the selection process within 24 h. By exposing TCR transgenic thymocytes to a range of MHC–peptide complexes, we show that CD69 induction is indicative of thymocyte selection, positive or negative. Our data provide evidence that the fraction of thymocytes that qualify to enter the thymic selection process far exceeds the fraction that successfully complete it, and suggest that most MHC-reactive thymocytes are actively eliminated in the course of selection

Cancer immunoediting by the innate immune system in the absence of adaptive immunity

Cancer immunoediting is the process whereby immune cells protect against cancer formation by sculpting the immunogenicity of developing tumors. Although the full process depends on innate and adaptive immunity, it remains unclear whether innate immunity alone is capable of immunoediting. To determine whether the innate immune system can edit tumor cells in the absence of adaptive immunity, we compared the incidence and immunogenicity of 3'methylcholanthrene-induced sarcomas in syngeneic wild-type, RAG2, and RAG2x γc mice. We found that innate immune cells could manifest cancer immunoediting activity in the absence of adaptive immunity. This activity required natural killer (NK) cells and interferon γ (IFN-γ), which mediated the induction of M1 macrophages. M1 macrophages could be elicited by administration of CD40 agonists, thereby restoring editing activity in RAG2x γc mice. Our results suggest that in the absence of adaptive immunity, NK cell production of IFN-γ induces M1 macrophages, which act as important effectors during cancer immunoediting

Global carbon budget 2019

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere – the “global carbon budget” – is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on land use and land use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its growth rate (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) and terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) are estimated with global process models constrained by observations. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (BIM), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the last decade available (2009–2018), EFF was 9.5±0.5 GtC yr−1, ELUC 1.5±0.7 GtC yr−1, GATM 4.9±0.02 GtC yr−1 (2.3±0.01 ppm yr−1), SOCEAN 2.5±0.6 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 3.2±0.6 GtC yr−1, with a budget imbalance BIM of 0.4 GtC yr−1 indicating overestimated emissions and/or underestimated sinks. For the year 2018 alone, the growth in EFF was about 2.1 % and fossil emissions increased to 10.0±0.5 GtC yr−1, reaching 10 GtC yr−1 for the first time in history, ELUC was 1.5±0.7 GtC yr−1, for total anthropogenic CO2 emissions of 11.5±0.9 GtC yr−1 (42.5±3.3 GtCO2). Also for 2018, GATM was 5.1±0.2 GtC yr−1 (2.4±0.1 ppm yr−1), SOCEAN was 2.6±0.6 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 3.5±0.7 GtC yr−1, with a BIM of 0.3 GtC. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 407.38±0.1 ppm averaged over 2018. For 2019, preliminary data for the first 6–10 months indicate a reduced growth in EFF of +0.6 % (range of −0.2 % to 1.5 %) based on national emissions projections for China, the USA, the EU, and India and projections of gross domestic product corrected for recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy for the rest of the world. Overall, the mean and trend in the five components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2018, but discrepancies of up to 1 GtC yr−1 persist for the representation of semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. A detailed comparison among individual estimates and the introduction of a broad range of observations shows (1) no consensus in the mean and trend in land use change emissions over the last decade, (2) a persistent low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) an apparent underestimation of the CO2 variability by ocean models outside the tropics. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new global carbon budget and the progress in understanding of the global carbon cycle compared with previous publications of this data set (Le Quéré et al., 2018a, b, 2016, 2015a, b, 2014, 2013). The data generated by this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/gcp-2019 (Friedlingstein et al., 2019)

Increased HIV-1 transcriptional activity and infectious burden in peripheral blood and gut-associated CD4+ T cells expressing CD30

HIV-1-infected cells persist indefinitely despite the use of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART), and novel therapeutic strategies to target and purge residual infected cells in individuals on ART are urgently needed. Here, we demonstrate that CD4+ T cell-associated HIV-1 RNA is often highly enriched in cells expressing CD30, and that cells expressing this marker considerably contribute to the total pool of transcriptionally active CD4+ lymphocytes in individuals on suppressive ART. Using in situ RNA hybridization studies, we show co-localization of CD30 with HIV-1 transcriptional activity in gut-associated lymphoid tissues. We also demonstrate that ex vivo treatment with brentuximab vedotin, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that targets CD30, significantly reduces the total amount of HIV-1 DNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained from infected, ART-suppressed individuals. Finally, we observed that an HIV-1-infected individual, who received repeated brentuximab vedotin infusions for lymphoma, had no detectable virus in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Overall, CD30 may be a marker of residual, transcriptionally active HIV-1 infected cells in the setting of suppressive ART. Given that CD30 is only expressed on a small number of total mononuclear cells, it is a potential therapeutic target of persistent HIV-1 infection