Grants

NIMH - National Institute of Mental Health

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Rates of adolescent depression are increasing, and 20% of adolescents in the United States now experience a depressive episode each year. Effective treatments exist, but most adolescents with depression do not receive them because they prefer to self-manage their symptoms, cannot access treatment, or perceive treatment to be too time-consuming or inconvenient. Delivering interventions digitally (i.e., through the internet or a smartphone application) is scalable, accessible, efficacious, and appealing to adolescents. However, digital interventions have low real-world uptake and engagement, and many users drop out in the first few minutes. Single-session interventions (SSIs) address these critical limitations by delivering an entire intervention in a single encounter and have shown promise for engaging mechanisms of action and ameliorating adolescent depression. Therefore, this project will adapt a gold standard treatment for adolescent depression – interpersonal psychotherapy for adolescents (IPT-A) – into a brief, web-based SSI. To reach adolescents with depression, this study includes a partnership with Mental Health America (MHA), a nonprofit advocacy organization that hosts a widely used online depression screen on their website. A deployment-focused approach will be utilized, with a focus on implementation on MHA’s screening website. Aim 1 will design the SSI based on pilot data and in consultation with experts in SSI design and IPT-A, an advisory board of adolescents and providers, and MHA staff. Aim 2 will refine the SSI by iteratively soliciting and incorporating feedback from three cohorts of five adolescents with depression (total n=15) recruited after screening positive for depression on MHA’s website. Among adolescents (n=200) screening positive for depression on MHA’s website, Aim 3 will evaluate the SSI’s acceptability, feasibility, immediate effects on the mechanism of action (interpersonal skill knowledge), and effects on depressive symptoms in a randomized controlled trial with follow-up assessments at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months. In addition to directly addressing an important public health problem, this project includes training and research activities that will enable Dr. Funkhouser to gain expertise in: (1) digital mental health intervention design methods, (2) implementation science principles and methodologies, (3) clinical trials evaluating digital mental health interventions, and (4) grant writing and networking. The research aims and training goals will be accomplished with mentorship from leading experts in SSIs, implementation science, biostatistics, and IPT-A. This training and mentorship will also prepare Dr. Funkhouser to submit a R01 application and achieve his long- term career goal of becoming an independent investigator focused on designing, evaluating, and disseminating digital depression interventions that increase young people’s access to and utilization of effective support.

NIGMS - National Institute of General Medical Sciences

ABSTRACT Tissues exhibit spatially heterogeneous viscoelastic mechanics during development, disease progression, and wound repair, but dissecting how viscoelasticity regulates in vivo phenomena remains challenging. This MIRA tackles this key challenge through the invention of the first hydrogel 3D cell culture platform with photopatterned spatiotemporal control of viscoelasticity and stress relaxation. Theme 1: Enacting spatiotemporal control of hydrogel viscoelasticity to match heterogeneous tissue mechanics. Knowledge Gap: Tissue viscoelasticity varies, with stress relaxation timescales spanning seconds to hours. This heterogeneity influences cell-microenvironment interactions, but current 3D models fail to replicate it. Rationale: Our hydrogel system combines phototunable slow-relaxing dynamic covalent crosslinks and fast- relaxing guest-host interactions, enabling spatiotemporal viscoelasticity control to mimic tissue mechanics. Preliminary data show robust MSC spreading in these hydrogels. Hypothesis: Hydrogels patterned with varying viscoelasticity, guided by nanoindentation of tissues, will differentially regulate stromal cell responses via YAP/TAZ and TRPV4. Outcomes: Rheology and nanoindentation will guide the fabrication of hydrogels mimicking patient tissue mechanics. These models will elucidate how viscoelasticity regulates cell behavior. Theme 2: Determining how immune cells influence stromal cell mechanotransduction in viscoelastic hydrogels. Knowledge Gap: Fibroproliferative diseases involve an inflammatory, stiffened ECM, but the role of mechanics in immune-driven stromal activation is unclear. Rationale: We previously showed M2 macrophages promote IL6-dependent fibroblast activation in 2D culture, but it is unknown how viscoelasticity modulates immune-stromal interactions in 3D hydrogels. Hypothesis: Slower stress relaxation suppresses IL6-driven fibroblast activation in 3D, even with pro-fibrotic immune cells. Outcomes: Using spatial transcriptomics and knockout cell lines, we will uncover how viscoelasticity shapes immune-stromal crosstalk. Theme 3: Creating bioprinted viscoelastic hydrogels capable of both protease-dependent and protease-independent remodeling. Knowledge Gap: Digital light processing (DLP) bioprinting achieves high fidelity but typically requires dense crosslinking that restricts cell functions. Rationale: Building on our hydrogel platform from Theme 1, we will use DLP to print structures with complex architectures. Incorporating MMP- degradable crosslinks will enable enzymatic remodeling alongside viscoelastic relaxation. Hypothesis: Dual remodeling hydrogels (protease-dependent and protease-independent) will support robust cell viability, spreading, and mechanosensing. Outcomes: Advanced hydrogel platforms will model tissue complexity and reveal how cells integrate viscoelastic and enzymatic cues, advancing understanding of cell-ECM interactions.

NIGMS - National Institute of General Medical Sciences

PROJECT SUMMARY Biocatalysis is quickly emerging a set of synthetic power tools for the direct synthesis of chemical matter. By leveraging enzymes, Nature’s chemical palette for molecular editing, chemists have been able to readily decorate molecules with high complexity, in a highly selective fashion. The potential of biocatalysis has been illustrated in its growing use in the pilot scale preparation of therapeutics to treat serious human illness. This proposal approaches chemoenzymatic synthesis using biocatalysts from two vantage points. In the first case, the focus is on retrosynthesis guided enzyme discovery by comparison to known biosynthetic pathways. This will be used to enable the preparation of polyhydroxylated tropolones, highly oxygenated aromatic small molecules that have broad bioactivities that span from antimicrobial to antiviral and antineoplastic applications. In a different vein, biocatalysts will be used to expedite the synthesis of spirocyclic tropolone natural products, malettinins B, C and E. In both cases, enzymes are borrowed from bacterial and fungal tropolone biosynthesis. This approach will extend into independent research into the synthesis of spiroisoxazoline small molecules, compounds with equally potent bioactivities isolated from marine sponges, via library screening of cytochrome P450 enzymes. In a different lens, the proposal will also delve into investigative reaction design by searching for hidden reaction pathways across enzyme families. This approach will first be investigated in the context of amino acid functionalization by using a library of native pyridoxal phosphate (PLP)-dependent enzymes that perform a wide range of reactions in Nature. Although the enzymes perform differing reactions, the presence of the PLP cofactor drives the reactivity. This mentored research approach will be translated into independent research on terpene cyclase enzyme libraries for the enzymatic synthesis of carbocycles via cationic rearrangement and cyclization reaction development.

NSF

This project examines how the designers of artificial intelligence (AI) tools influence user interactions. A key focus is on the work of conversation designers and user experience (UX) professionals who write AI dialogue and determine how AI systems respond. The project includes fieldwork among these researchers and designers to understand how their choices affect interactions between AI and users. Project findings are adapted into new educational resources to improve digital interactions. The project involves a mixed-methods ethnographic study that uses participant observation and interviews with conversational user experience professionals across multiple field sites. The study population represents various company sizes and approaches to AI development. By employing the embedded laboratory observation methods pioneered by anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), the project asks: how professionals define usability for conversational systems without visual interfaces; how cultural contexts influence AI conversation design practices; and how expertise in conversational user experience evolves as the field develops. The project team intends to examine the sociocultural practices that shape human-AI interaction design. The project contributes to user experience education along with translational work in the development of pedagogical resources and industry partnerships that prepare students for careers designing AI systems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

“Photoelectrochemistry” describes the process of taking sunlight and converting it, first, into electrical energy and, second, into chemicals. The chemicals produced could be a fuel like hydrogen, or they could be other desirable products with other commercial uses. Usually, the energy from sunlight is collected using photovoltaic solar cells made from silicon that generate electrical energy. These solar cells are typically seen on rooftops. However, these systems are not currently used to produce chemicals because it is not cost-effective. This project uses the same semiconductor material silicon to make millions of microscopic particles that each behave as a miniature solar cell. The project will design the particles to produce high voltages that make them capable of doing chemistry. Unlike a panel on a rooftop, these particles can simply be suspended in water to do the chemistry, providing a new method to perform photoelectrochemistry. The project will develop the fundamental principles to make the particles, stabilize them in water, and make them perform chemistry efficiently. It will involve undergraduate and graduate students who will gain experience in nanomaterials synthesis, microfabrication, electrochemistry, solid-state catalysis, optical measurements, and optoelectronic modeling. A broad set of outreach efforts will be pursued, including programs and demonstrations in elementary schools and local libraries and an annual public science exposition. Multijunction Si nanowire photocatalysts blur the distinction between, on the one hand, a photovoltaic structure connected to an electrolyzer, and on the other, a semiconductor photoelectrode performing catalysis. The structures are created by a bottom-up vapor-liquid-solid growth process that permits the synthesis of a precise multijunction structure containing both p-i-n solar cells and n-p tunnel junctions in a high aspect ratio particulate form factor hundreds of nanometers in diameters and microns in length. They offer unique advantages for particle suspension reactors, including (1) usage of earth-abundant and non-toxic Si, (2) broadband light absorption into the near infrared, (3) photovoltage tunable for specific reaction chemistry by number of p-i-n junctions, and (4) spatial separation of anodic and cathodic reactions due to the high aspect ratio and axial orientation of the photovoltaic structure. Because the nanostructures uniquely contain both photovoltaic and photoelectrode elements, numerous fundamental scientific questions arise about the single-particle properties, ensemble interactions, and co-catalyst functionality. Thus, the overarching goals of this project are to understand (1) the chemical effects of liquid solution on individual nanowire photovoltaic and photocatalyst properties, (2) the electrochemical and photonic interactions of nanowires in suspension, and (3) co-catalyst design principles that enable well-controlled and efficient photoelectrochemical reactions. The project combines measurements on single nanowires and ensembles of nanowires in suspension with simulation and modeling efforts to predict and interpret their properties. The project will provide fundamental insights into the operation of particle suspension reactors that are applicable not just to Si nanowires but also to a range of photocatalyst material systems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

2440352 (MacMartin). Climate change is already bringing damages to the US and elsewhere, and these will continue to get worse with continued emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Even with efforts to reduce emissions, there will still be significant impacts, both economic and human, resulting from future climate change. An additional option that could potentially reduce many climate damages is to cool the planet by reflecting a tiny bit more sunlight back to space. However, there is not yet sufficient information to support informed decisions. The two ideas most often suggested are Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB, the main focus of this work) and Stratospheric Aerosol Intervention (SAI). MCB would involve spraying sea salt aerosols into low clouds over the ocean to increase (force) cloud reflectivity, providing local and global cooling. The regional climate effects and associated impacts of MCB would depend quite strongly on where and how much forcing is applied, suggesting the potential to design an MCB approach to achieve multiple climate objectives. While there has been similar research conducted for SAI, there has been much more limited work treating MCB as a design problem. This project first aims to fill this gap, designing an MCB strategy to simultaneously manage multiple climate objectives by tuning the amount of forcing in different regions. This is an essential step towards assessing the climate impacts of MCB, and thus evaluating what role it might play in managing future climate risks. Furthermore, the combination of SAI and MCB may be able to reduce climate impacts better than either alone; the second goal is thus to assess this potential. Finally, this project will support integration of expertise between climate scientists and engineering, strengthening both disciplines. Given the risks of climate change, it is essential to understand to what extent different solar geoengineering approaches might contribute to an overall portfolio of response options. This project will introduce systematic design principles into Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) research, and will carefully assess how SAI and MCB might complement each other. Existing MCB simulations have often simply introduced some specified perturbation and evaluated what happens, rather than starting with desired outcomes and determining both where to perturb, and how much forcing to apply in different regions, in order to achieve those outcomes. The broader MCB research community is now exploring how forcing in different regions affects the climate differently. This project will leverage this momentum, and build on the experience gained with SAI, by using optimization tools to systematically evaluate MCB as a design problem and develop multi-degree-of-freedom feedback algorithms to achieve desired climate outcomes in the presence of uncertainty. The approach thus introduces new tools that will be broadly useful for the research community going forward, and defines an approach for systematically evaluating the benefits and risks of MCB. Furthermore, this approach will enable a simultaneous optimization combining SAI and MCB to assess whether their combination could be “better” than either alone. Simulations will be conducted in climate models for different regions, and for combinations of regions. The final simulations conducted as part of this research will be made available to the climate impacts modeling community to better assess the role of MCB in managing future climate risks. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

European Commission - HORIZON

Designing new ways of risk awareness and enhanced disaster preparedness. Call: Civil Security for Society 2026. Programme: HORIZON. Keywords: Disaster resilience and crisis management, Incident Response, Security. Open call from the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.

NSF

Throughout the United States, elementary classrooms include students with a range of communicative practices and strengths, including strengths in speaking one or more languages, and strengths in generating and understanding different types of representations. Although an emerging body of research has begun to explore how individual teachers can productively leverage these communicative strengths toward enhanced science learning and further develop language through science, there is currently little research on how larger-scale district infrastructures can be designed to support science learning that leverages and supports language development. This project will address this critical gap by developing a process through which school districts can design comprehensive infrastructures that leverage a broad range of linguistic and communicative practices for enhanced science learning among elementary students. Specifically, researchers will partner with district experts in multiple roles, including supervisors, specialists, coaches, principals, and educators. Together, they will envision, co-design, implement, and refine materials that foster the use of research-based practices in science learning, such as using multiple forms of language and communication in the context of standards-aligned tasks in which students explain phenomena or use engineering design processes to develop solutions to problems. Research will explore whether and how different components of the district infrastructure influence elementary educators' science teaching. This project will result in a framework and processes that school districts can adapt as they develop their own instructional visions and systems of teacher support that improve science learning for all elementary students. In this exploratory project, researchers will partner with school districts to co-develop coherent infrastructures that support science learning and language development among elementary students. These infrastructures include a shared instructional vision; a tailored needs assessment; coherent professional learning materials; routines that shape teachers' daily practice; and additional tools as identified during the co-design process. Design-based implementation research will be used to develop and study infrastructure, including investigating how the elementary educators interpret the resulting recommended teaching practices, and whether and how components of the district infrastructure influence their science instruction. Research will also explore how specific envisioning and co-design processes support or constrain the design of district infrastructures and how instructional leaders in different roles learn to support science instruction that leverages the communicative strengths of elementary learners. To achieve these research purposes, the project team will use qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze a range of data sources, such as transcripts from classroom observations and interviews; artifacts from district meetings (e.g., transcripts of audio-recordings, field notes, and participant-generated products); and validated surveys. After initial co-design work with one school district, five districts, each of which includes a significant population of multilingual elementary students, will hold inter-district implementation meetings in which they iteratively discuss, evaluate, and refine the infrastructural materials, prior to their dissemination on a national level. Ultimately, this project will result in empirically-based materials that school districts can use to build coherent systems that support elementary students' science learning, forming the foundation for future success in science pathways for students across the nation who engage in a variety of linguistic and communicative practices. This project is supported by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) which seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Desjardins Foundation

Supports financial literacy, youth entrepreneurship, and cooperative education primarily in Quebec and across Desjardins communities.

Montville

Desjardins Park Playground

NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

Dessoff Choirs, Inc.

City of Oakland

To support Destiny's Outreach Programs that will engage young people in high-quality, hands-on, and transformative dance, theater, and martial arts experiences during after-school hours

Public Services and Procurement Canada | Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada

At the end of each fiscal year, government-wide financial information is published in the Public Accounts. This dataset, based on the Volume III of the Public Accounts, provides a detailed listing of the transfer payments (i.e. cash payments and accrued charges) aggregating to $100,000 or over to a recipient (one individual or organization). A transfer payment is a grant, contribution or other payment made by the Government for which no goods or services are received. This detail shows the ministry, department, the name and location of the recipient, together with the total amount paid. Appendices referenced in the dataset can be found in the Official Record of Information. In cases where certain organizations have more than one place of business, their Head Office location was used for reporting purposes. In addition, this statement presents, for each class of recipients, the total amount of payments to a recipient aggregating to less than $100,000 and the total number of re

NINR - National Institute of Nursing Research

Abstract Eysz, Inc. is developing a mobile health (mHealth) platform, the Eysz HV Recorder, to remotely diagnose and monitor childhood absence epilepsy (CAE) to improve patient management and reduce the time to seizure freedom. Early treatment of CAE is critical, but absence seizures are currently challenging to identify, and diagnosis is frequently delayed. The gold standard for seizure detection is video EEG (VEEG), but VEEG has several drawbacks for treatment management of CAE, causing most clinicians to rely on self-reports, even though studies have shown that patients and caregivers report only about 6% and 14% of all absence seizures, respectively. Thus, there is an urgent need for an accurate remote monitoring to assist clinicians in assessing treatment response over time for patients with CAE. The Eysz HV Recorder is an mHealth app used to assist clinicians in the diagnosis of CAE and is currently being used in pediatric and child neurology clinics and undergoing a post-marketing study. The Eysz app guides patients through hyperventilation (HV) while giving continuous feedback to safely and effectively provoke absence seizures while video-recording the patient's face. The recording is then analyzed by a child neurologist and a report is sent to the treating physician. Our preliminary results from our post-marketing clinical study have shown that our video analyses have a sensitivity close to 100% and a specificity of 92% compared to VEEG for seizures greater than 7 seconds in duration. This Fast Track SBIR project seeks to develop and test a home-based version of the Eysz HV Recorder, enabling more frequent and convenient assessment of the patient’s treatment regimen. The FDA has requested additional testing prior to in-home use of the Eysz HV Recorder; therefore, this Fast Track proposal seeks to develop an in-home version of the app and validate safety protocols prior to launching an in-home study that will support FDA clearance of the app. Phase I Aim 1: Define and validate user and system requirements to ensure safety, usability, data quality, and regulatory compliance. Phase I Aim 2: Build and validate the software and training materials, using a standard risk-based software development approach. We will also develop training and educational materials for caregivers. Phase I Aim 3: Test safety procedures and app usability in a clinical setting. We will iteratively introduce the app and training materials to cohorts of users in a clinical setting to evaluate usability and data quality. After meeting our Go/No Go Milestones for Phase I, we will proceed to Phase II Aim 4: Perform an at-home study to assess usability, adherence, diagnostic accuracy and safety. This pivotal study will test the use of the app by caregivers in real-life home environments. This study will provide key data to support FDA clearance of the app and will set the stage for its future deployment as a tool for at-home monitoring and management of CAE.

NCI - National Cancer Institute

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Project Summary: Pleuropulmonary blastoma (PPB) is the most common lung cancer of childhood, now known to be related to pathogenic variation in DICER1, a critical regulator of embryogenesis. Nearly all clinically significant PPB is diagnosed in children under 7 years of age. Type I PPB is a purely cystic tumor with a layer of primitive malignant cells. Type I PPB may progress to Type II PPB, a mixed cystic and solid tumor, or Type III PPB, a highly aggressive, purely solid sarcoma. Children with Type I PPB are treated with surgery with or without chemotherapy; however it is not clear which children require chemotherapy and which children can be safely observed. Children with Type II or III PPB face an overall survival of only 74 and 53% respectively. In Types I, II and III PPB, there is a need for risk stratification so that children with residual or progressive disease can receive more intensive tumor-directed treatment and children with a favorable prognosis can be spared unnecessary side effects. Since 1988, the International PPB Registry, based at Children’s Minnesota, has been enrolling children with PPB in an effort to improve outcomes for this rare tumor. Our industrial partner, ResourcePath, has developed DICER-Dx, a blood-based assay to detect DICER1hotspot circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). We hypothesize that the unique molecular pathogenesis of DICER1-related tumors can be exploited to facilitate tumor monitoring in PPB. This project focuses on 1) the clinical validation of novel "liquid biopsy" assays for sensitive detection and quantification of tumor burden in Types I, II and III PPB and 2) delivery of current and future DICER1-related advances to children globally, leveraging our emerging partnership with Beijing Children’s Hospital to increase accrual and accelerating successful completion of the proposed work. Relevance: These assays will apply to children and adults with DICER1-related cancers and improve upon existing tumor monitoring while minimizing the risks of diagnostic radiation and sedation. DICER-Dx provides a new way to measure DICER1-related cancer burden and response to therapy and therefore represents a pioneering application of liquid biopsy technology in childhood cancer. These assays may be useful not only in clinical practice, but also as companion diagnostics in preclinical drug development and clinical trials and will be an essential component of future translational studies for the International PPB/DICER1 Registry. Additionally, validation of these biomarkers is the next critical step in our efforts to develop ctDNA-based biomarkers for use in healthy children and young adults with DICER1 pathogenic variation at elevated risk of DICER1-related cancers.

ATSDR - Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

ABSTRACT Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare, neurodegenerative condition that results in rapidly progressive muscle weakness and, ultimately, death from respiratory failure within 2-5 years of symptoms onset. The VCU Department of Neurology runs the largest ALS clinic in the region and, over the past 4 years, began witnessing an uptick in incident ALS cases. In partnership with the ALS Association, we analyzed the spatial distribution of ALS in Virginia. We identified apparent spatial ALS clustering with the highest relative risk of 3.75 for developing ALS in these “hotspots.” It should be mentioned that ALS has a global incidence of 2 per 100,000. There is mounting evidence that ALS stems from a combination of genetic susceptibility, age-related cellular damage, and environmental exposure. We, therefore, investigated whether local environmental factors contributed to increased ALS risk in these “hotspots.” Analysis of drinking water samples from households of ALS patients from this cluster identified elevated levels of a plasticizer dtBHQ (2,5-ditert-butylhydroquinone). At this point, it is unknown how dtBHQ appears in drinking water in these regions, but a reported application of dtBHQ is in the coatings of water pipes. Nonetheless, the presence of dtBHQ is intriguing, given some reports that at high doses, dtBHQ can cause muscle weakness and damage motor endplates in rats. Next, we investigated whether low-level exposure to dtBHQ could cause motor impairment in laboratory animals. Using a Zebrafish model system, we found that dtBHQ at nanomolar concentrations decreased touch-evoked response and caused shortening of primary motor axons and reduced branching indicative of motor circuit dysfunction. These preliminary results led us to propose a central hypothesis that the presence of a plasticizer dtBHQ in the environment of ALS clusters activates molecular mechanisms that cause motor neuron toxicity, contributing to the elevated risk of ALS in these hotspots. We are applying under Funding Option B and our proposal meets both of the RFA-TS-25-036 funding objectives by identifying a potential environmental risk factor for ALS and investigating how this risk factor contributes to the pathophysiology of ALS. Thus, for this investigation, in Aim 1, we will investigate the environmental and occupational risk factors in our ALS clusters through deep qualitative interviews. We will also compare this data with the National ALS Registry Epidemiological data of registrants from Central Virginia and the National cohort. In Aim 2, we will collect water specimens from households in ALS clusters and analyze them for dtBHQ levels and the presence of other toxicants. In Aim 3, we will investigate whether sustained, low-level exposure to dtBHQ activates neurotoxic pathways that cause motor neuron toxicity and lead to the expression of ALS-like phenotype using zebrafish and mice as model systems. This study will provide new data on the presence of a novel environmental toxicant and its role in elevating the risk of ALS in humans.

NIAID - National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Project Summary / Abstract Bacillary dysentery or shigellosis is caused by bacteria of the Shigella species: S. dysenteriae, S. flexneri, S boydii, and S. sonnei. Infections range from mild or asymptomatic to severe bloody diarrhea, so reported prevalence grossly underestimates actual prevalence. Shigellosis is a global public health concern and antimicrobial resistance has compounded the problem. Moreover, shigellosis is also sexually transmitted in the United States, Europe, and other developed countries. Such outbreaks are driven by the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of S. flexneri infecting men who have sex with men. The objective of this proof-of-concept study is to demonstrate that wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) using digital PCR to detect pathogen molecular markers can provide a more accurate picture of community prevalence of bacterial pathogens than traditional case reporting. Wastewater surveillance for viral pathogens has been in use for decades and its use to monitor SARS-CoV-2 is now widely applied globally. Analogous methods for wastewater surveillance of bacterial pathogens by digital PCR has lagged. We will develop and validate methods to detect Shigella, an important bacterial agent of diarrheal disease, in wastewater. We will also field test the methods to assess shigellosis prevalence at community and building scale and link the data to the actual population residing in the wastewater collection area. We will provide actionable data to the local health department which can then develop targeted public health interventions. The independent but complementary aims in demonstrating the proof-of-concept are: 1. Develop and validate sensitive, specific, and reproducible WBE methods for detection of Shigella species in wastewater using digital PCR. Three subaims will: 1.1) optimize methods for extraction and detection of Shigella in wastewater using laboratory-grown strains of Shigella species to “spike” authentic wastewater and laboratory prepared “synthetic” wastewater; 1.2) validate molecular targets for differentiation of S. flexneri from S. sonnei in wastewater; and 1.3) culture of Shigella from wastewater to assess antibiotic resistance genotypes and phenotypes. 2. Assess proof-of-concept of WBE as a public health tool for Shigella at community and building scale with emphasis on high risk congregate populations, i.e., day care centers. Two subaims will: 2.1) measure the prevalence of Shigella species at community scale by sampling at the wastewater treatment plant intake and using wastewater flow rate as a population normalization marker; and 2.2) extend shigellosis surveillance to building scale targeting high risk congregate pediatric populations. Strengths of this proposal are the innovative application of WBE to a bacterial pathogen, our method for population normalization, differentiation of Shigella species, prevalence measurement of Shigella species at community and building scale, and the expertise of our multidisciplinary team.

Friends of Detective Cookie Chess Park

This project is to plan and design an outdoor chess park, and multi-functional community space. The space would honor the work and influence of Dectective Denis `Cookie` Bouldin's decade-old chess club an its positive impact on the youth of South Seattle.

Friends of Detective Cookie Chess Park

The Friends of Detective Cookie Chess Club and the Rainier Beach community will continue their work with a landscape architect to develop a site survey and 30% Street Improvement Permit (SIP) construction drawings for the 'Chess Park' located at 9100 Rainier Ave South. The work is scheduled to be completed in early 2018.

Friends of Detective Cookie Chess Park

The Friends of Detective Cookie Chess Club will continue working with a landscape architect, and civil engineer to develop the 60% Street Improvement Permit (SIP) construction drawings to submit to SDOT by late Spring 2019. This phase includes the permit review by SDOT. The resulting, permitted drawings will then be ready for the next phase of construction, separate from this proposal.

Friends of Detective Cookie Chess Park

The Friends of Detective Cookie Chess Park is planning Phase 4 of the project. The Detective Cookie Chess Park located at 9100 Rainer Ave S envisions a inter-generational, multicultural community space where neighbors can gather and play chess while honoring Detective Cookie, a local policewoman, who started a youth Chess Club over 12 years ago in Rainier Beach. Phase 4 will focus on initial construction of the park beginning with demo, grading and drainage, and utilities. This project is expected to be completed in the late Fall of 2021.

NSF

The National Science Foundation’s ground-breaking Advanced LIGO gravitational-wave observatories continue to explore the dark universe and have now measured the collision of over 250 black hole pairs. This award supports gravitational-wave detector technology research to improve the observational reach of the Advanced LIGO observatories. Their sensing is improved by controlling thermal distortion effects when operating at high laser power, and by lowering the thermal noise in their test mass mirror coatings. Specifically, this award explores technology to integrate solid-state laser cooling in optical mirror coatings to create radiation-balanced mirrors exhibiting no thermal deformations. It also supports investigating the suitability of much lower thermal noise crystalline optical mirror coatings. Both technologies can find much wider use in precision sensing and high-power laser applications, with examples including their use in laser fusion and defense. This award supports (i) investigating solid-state laser cooling to control thermal lensing in gravitational wave interferometers, to optimize ion-beam-sputtered materials for use in laser-cooled optical coatings. (ii) Characterizing the performance of low-noise crystalline coatings under high-power optical conditions found in gravitational-wave detectors. (iii) Preparing the LIGO Hanford detector for its O5 observation run, installing hardware to preheat optics so thermal transients during lock acquisition can be avoided. And (iv) designing test mass actuators to be used in the suspensions of the next-generation observatory Cosmic Explorer. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF

The project involvew research in two main directions in descriptive set theory, which is a branch of mathematics in which modern set-theoretic methods are used to develop the theory of subsets of the real line and related structures which are in turn the fundamental objects of mathematical analysis used throughout mathematics and its applications. One of the directions concerns developing the structural theory of sets in models of the axiom of determinacy. This is important as this axiom holds in various mathematical universes which interact with the ``true'' universe and also because it is giving us the theory of definable objects which is a central goal of descriptive set theory. A second direction concerns the theory of definable equivalence relations. This is a relatively recent area of descriptive set theory which has been investigated extensively the past several decades. This area interacts heavily with a number of different areas of mathematics and provides a unifying framework for them. There are a number of fundamental problems that remain open in this area concerning the structure of countable Borel equivalence relations in particular, but significant progress has been made in the last few years. The project will further develop these methods with a goal of attacking some of these problems. This project will involve graduate students. Specifically, the combinatorics of non-wellordered sets in models of determinacy is a main line of the first direction of the proposal. An example is Chan's recent proof of the ``ABCD'' conjecture describing the relation between cardinalities of the form A^B for ordinals A and B (the conjecture roughly speaking asserts that the only relations between these cardinalities are the obvious ones). The principal investigator along with Chan and Trang have isolated a general principle about infinity Borel sets which also proves the ABCD conjecture and seems likely to have other applications. There are, however, many fundamental questions concerning these non-wellordered cardinalities that remain open which the proposal plans to investigate. The theory of countable Borel equivalence relations has shown much progress in recent years. For example, one of the central questions is the hyperfiniteness question which asks which groups have the property that all of their Borel actions generate only hyperfinite (an increasing union of equivalence relations with finite classes) equivalence relations. Recent work has shown that this class extends to include the polycyclic groups, so, in particular contains finitely generated groups of exponential growth. How much further this extends is an open problem. Some new techniques have been introduced recently by the principal investigator and co-authors which will help answer several structuring questions for actions of Z^n and other fairly simple groups. This hopefully leads to marking the boundary of what types of Borel or continuous structurings can be done in an invariant manner. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NIMH - National Institute of Mental Health

Project Abstract On a moment-by-moment basis, each animal must consider its environment, experience, and goals to choose future actions. The striatum, including its dorsal and ventral portions, is an evolutionarily old structure that helps animals choose their actions and update action plans based on experience. Within this structure, dopamine places a crucial function in these processes. Dopamine signals in two ways – with slowly changing “tonic” levels and rapidly changing “phasic” signals. It has been proposed that tonic dopamine has fundamentally different functions and represents different features of experience than phasic dopamine. We have developed methods to measure tonic and phasic levels of dopamine in real-time as mice behave in a variety of contexts. We will use this new technology to examine the mechanisms and function of tonic dopamine levels to understand how perturbations of dopamine contribute to the cause and treatment of human neuropsychiatric disease.