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    The role of risk communication in public health interventions. An analysis of risk communication for a community quarantine in Germany to curb the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
    (San Francisco, California, US : PLOS, 2021) Scholz, Juliane; Wetzker, Wibke; Licht, Annika; Heintzmann, Rainer; Scherag, André; Weis, Sebastian; Pletz, Mathias; Betsch, Cornelia; Bauer, Michael; Dickmann, Petra; Frey, Rosemary
    Background: Separating ill or possibly infectious people from their healthy community is one of the core principles of non-pharmaceutical interventions. However, there is scarce evidence on how to successfully implement quarantine orders. We investigated a community quarantine for an entire village in Germany (Neustadt am Rennsteig, March 2020) with the aim of better understanding the successful implementation of quarantine measures. Methods: This cross-sectional survey was conducted in Neustadt am Rennsteig six weeks after the end of a 14-day mandatory community quarantine. The sample size consisted of 562 adults (64% of the community), and the response rate was 295 adults, or 52% (33% of the community). Findings: National television was reported as the most important channel of information. Contact with local authorities was very limited, and partners or spouses played a more important role in sharing information. Generally, the self-reported information level was judged to be good (211/289 [73.0%]). The majority of participants (212/289 [73.4%]) approved of the quarantine, and the reported compliance was 217/289 (75.1%). A self-reported higher level of concern as well as a higher level of information correlated positively with both a greater acceptance of quarantine and self-reported compliant behaviour. Interpretation: The community quarantine presented a rare opportunity to investigate a public health intervention for an entire community. In order to improve the implementation of public health interventions, public health risk communication activities should be intensified to increase both the information level (potentially leading to better compliance with community quarantine) and the communication level (to facilitate rapport and trust between public health authorities and their communities). © 2021 Scholz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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    Nonlinear Structured Illumination Using a Fluorescent Protein Activating at the Readout Wavelength
    (San Francisco, California, US : PLOS, 2016) Lu-Walther, Hui-Wen; Hou, Wenya; Kielhorn, Martin; Arai, Yoshiyuki; Nagai, Takeharu; Kessels, Michael M.; Qualmann, Britta; Heintzmann, Rainer
    Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) is a wide-field technique in fluorescence microscopy that provides fast data acquisition and two-fold resolution improvement beyond the Abbe limit. We observed a further resolution improvement using the nonlinear emission response of a fluorescent protein. We demonstrated a two-beam nonlinear structured illumination microscope by introducing only a minor change into the system used for linear SIM (LSIM). To achieve the required nonlinear dependence in nonlinear SIM (NL-SIM) we exploited the photoswitching of the recently introduced fluorophore Kohinoor. It is particularly suitable due to its positive contrast photoswitching characteristics. Contrary to other reversibly photoswitchable fluorescent proteins which only have high photostability in living cells, Kohinoor additionally showed little degradation in fixed cells over many switching cycles.
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    Ideals, practices, and future prospects of stakeholder involvement in sustainability science
    (Washington : National Academy of Sciences, 2017) Mielke, J.; Vermaßen, H.; Ellenbeck, S.
    This paper evaluates current stakeholder involvement (SI) practices in science through a web-based survey among scholars and researchers engaged in sustainability or transition research. It substantiates previous conceptual work with evidence from practice by building on four ideal types of SI in science. The results give an interesting overview of the varied landscape of SI in sustainability science, ranging from the kinds of topics scientists work on with stakeholders, over scientific trade-offs that arise in the field, to improvements scientists wish for. Furthermore, the authors describe a discrepancy between scientists’ ideals and practices when working with stakeholders. On the conceptual level, the data reflect that the democratic type of SI is the predominant one concerning questions on the understanding of science, the main goal, the stage of involvement in the research process, and the science–policy interface. The fact that respondents expressed agreement to several types shows they are guided by multiple and partly conflicting ideals when working with stakeholders. We thus conclude that more conceptual exchange between practitioners, as well as more qualitative research on the concepts behind practices, is needed to better understand the stakeholder–scientist nexus.