The interaction of relativistically intense lasers with opaque targets represents a highly non-linear, multi-dimensional parameter space. This limits the utility of sequential 1D scanning of experimental parameters for the optimization of secondary radiation, although to-date this has been the accepted methodology due to low data acquisition rates. High repetition-rate (HRR) lasers augmented by machine learning present a valuable opportunity for efficient source optimization. Here, an automated, HRR-compatible system produced high-fidelity parameter scans, revealing the influence of laser intensity on target pre-heating and proton generation. A closed-loop Bayesian optimization of maximum proton energy, through control of the laser wavefront and target position, produced proton beams with equivalent maximum energy to manually optimized laser pulses but using only 60% of the laser energy. This demonstration of automated optimization of laser-driven proton beams is a crucial step towards deeper physical insight and the construction of future radiation sources.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Our primary objective was to understand the relationship between incident or recent stressful events and adherence to HIV care in the context of other person, environment, and HIV-specific stressors in a sample of Black women living with HIV (WLWH). METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Thirty in-depth interviews were conducted with Black women living with HIV who receive care at an academic HIV primary care clinic in the Southern region of the United States to elicit stressful events influencing adherence to HIV care. Semi-structured interview guides were used to facilitate discussion regarding stressful events and adherence to HIV care. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were independently coded using a theme-based approach by two experienced coders, findings were compared, and discrepancies were resolved by discussion. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Participants described frequently experiencing incident stressful events including death or serious illness of a close friend or family member, and relationship, financial, and employment difficulties. Furthermore, participants reported experiencing traumatic events such as sexual and physical abuse during childhood and adolescents. While experiencing traumatic events such as sexual and physical abuse during childhood and adolescence may be distressing, these events did not influence adherence to HIV care. However, incident stressful events as defined above did influence adherence to HIV care for some participants, but not for others. For participants who reported that stressful events did not influence adherence to HIV care, factors such as personal motivation, access to social support, and adaptive coping strategies facilitated their engagement in care. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Experiencing stressful events, incident or traumatic, is common among Black WLWH and have the potential to negatively influence adherence to HIV care. Thus, Interventions aimed at identifying and addressing stress, social support, and coping are essential to improve adherence to HIV care behaviors.

Government agencies, environmental consultants, and the public alike are frustrated by poor the coordination between agency planning and environmental impact assessment (EIA). Contracts for project design, construction, and management too often fail to provide for EIA, or to accommodate its results. A systematic review of standard contract documents and guidelines used by one major U.S. government agency revealed that they seldom took into account the need for EIA or provided for integrating the results of EIA into planning. Correcting these deficiencies was not very difficult. Other agencies may be well advised to undertake similar reviews.

Environmental Practice 18: 270–273 (2016)

Cultural resource is a term that means different things to different people. In the United States, it is commonly conflated with the legally defined term historic property, but this conflation can deny consideration to a wide range of culturally valued aspects of the environment. In impact assessment, the jobs of identifying cultural resources and impacts on them are typically assigned to archaeologists and architectural historians, who often apply their own even narrower definitions of the term. This can result in systematically failing to analyze the most important impacts on the most culturally sensitive aspects of the environment. People responsible for environmental impact assessment should think carefully about how to address all kinds of potentially affected cultural resources. This usually involves making sure that those with cultural connections to an environment are involved productively in the assessment and its outcomes.

Environmental Practice 18: 227–231 (2016)

Upon its enactment, the United States’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) established a national policy for promoting the protection and enhancement of the human environment. NEPA sets forth procedural requirements for federal agencies to prepare Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) for any major federal actions that may impact the environment. At the core of these environmental documents is the dominant Western worldview of scientific materialism. In many instances, NEPA’s sole reliance on a Western scientific materialist evaluation of environmental impacts fails to consider and incorporate Native American perspectives of, values about, and relationships with the environment. For example, many Native American Tribes perceive the environment through an animistic ontological lens that embodies a sense of stewardship, manifest through a spiritual, umbilical connectedness to the natural world. Thus, Native American perceptions of the environment often clash with the dominant Western culture’s scientific perspectives, especially as they relate to determining environmental impacts. This conflict of cultural worldviews intensifies when compliance with other federal laws is coupled with the NEPA process. This article examines the effects of employing solely a Western scientific perspective in assessing environmental impacts on indigenous communities through the NEPA process and how this can have the unintended consequence of promoting the perpetuation of colonialist attitudes toward Native peoples. It will also discuss how taking into consideration Native American worldviews can offer more affirmative and inclusive environmental practices associated with the NEPA process.

Environmental Practice 17: 36–45 (2015)

In his article, “The Value and Valuation of Maritime Cultural Heritage”, Stefan Claesson discusses methods by which the relative or absolute value of submerged cultural sites like shipwrecks might be established, to provide rational bases for decisions about their management. He emphasizes systems used in ecosystem valuation, notably an average individual's projected “willingness to pay” (WTP) to preserve something and “willingness to accept” (WTA) its loss. He suggests that systems to apply such measurement devices be built into things like the procedures for addressing impacts on historic properties under Section 106 of the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act.

Two court decisions highlight divergent opinions as to what constitutes a “substantial burden” on the practice of traditional indigenous religions in the United States. One decision, in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, effectively defines the term in such a way as to discriminate against indigenous religious practices; the other, by a district court in the 10th Circuit based on other holdings by that circuit court, gives much more latitude for protecting such practices and the landscapes they often involve.