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Ecological intensification measures to improve productivity and decrease nitrogen surplus in wheat-maize/watermelon intercropping system
Get PDFIntercropping is a promising ecological intensification practice thanks to its improved crop yield and nutrient use efficiency compared with mono-cropping. However, there are constraints for achieving higher yields and efficiencies, and little is known about how to address such constraints. We conducted a field experiment to examine the impacts of ecological intensification measures (pollination services and cover crop addition) on productivity and nitrogen (N) surplus in wheat-maize/watermelon intercropping. During the watermelon growing season, we investigated pollination services using three treatments (full cover, semi-cover, no cover), and evaluated fruit set rate, yield and pollination service index. During the maize growing season, we evaluated the impact of a cover crop chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) on maize growth and soil residual inorganic N using three treatments (no cover crop, one and two cover crops). Compared with the full cover treatment, semi-cover and no cover treatments increased the fruit set rate of watermelon by 42.95% and 73.85%, and fruit yield by 10.84 Mg/ha and 11.48 Mg/ha, respectively. Pollination services accounted for 57.5% of relative watermelon yield. Compared with the control (no cover crops), planting cover crops increased the maize yield and N uptake. Planting cover crops reduced the apparent N surplus by 25.9-26.0 kg/ha compared to no cover crops. After the maize was harvested, inorganic N was largely distributed below the 60 cm soil depth. Providing pollination services and planting cover crops appears to be promising ecological intensification measures that improve productivity and decrease the N surplus of the intercropping system
One hundred priority questions for the development of sustainable food systems in sub-Saharan Africa
Get PDFSub-Saharan Africa is facing an expected doubling of human population and tripling of food demand over the next quarter century, posing a range of severe environmental, political, and socio-economic challenges. In some cases, key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are in direct conflict, raising difficult policy and funding decisions, particularly in relation to trade-offs between food production, social inequality, and ecosystem health. Here we use a horizon-scanning approach to identify 100 practical or research-focused questions that, if answered, would have the greatest positive impact on addressing these trade-offs and ensuring future productivity and resilience of food-production systems across sub-Saharan Africa. Through direct canvassing of opinions, we obtained 1339 questions from 331 experts based in 55 countries. We then used online voting and participatory workshops to produce a final list of 100 questions divided into 12 thematic sections spanning topics from gender inequality to technological adoption and climate change. Using data on the background of respondents, we show that perspectives and priorities can vary, but are largely consistent across different professional and geographical contexts. We hope these questions provide a template for establishing new research directions and prioritising funding decisions in sub-Saharan Africa
Contemporary Graphic Narratives of the End: Sketching an Ecopolitics of Disorientation and Solidarity through Sf Bande Dessinée
Get PDFThis article focuses on visions of the end in contemporary science fiction bande dessinée to explore the combined potentialities of the sf genre and the comics medium for imaginaries of world-rebuilding in the Anthropocene, and to develop an ecopolitics of disorientation and solidarity for a collapsing world. Bringing an ecocritical approach to queer and feminist theorizations of the politics of disorientation, it first discusses texts that draw (counter-)narratives of Anthropocenic futures, in which other-than-human agencies, spatialities and temporalities take centre stage in unsettling ways and collapse Western master narratives of the environment. In Jérémy Perrodeau’s Crépuscule, the non-linear storylines of an artificially created and now contaminated planet collide and assemble to disrupt the myth of a ‘virgin land’, rendering the erasure and slow re-inscription of genocidal and ecocidal violence. In Enki Bilal’s trilogy Coup de sang, it is the illusory hyper-separation of humans from nature that is dismantled through post-apocalyptic elemental graphics. The article then explores ways in which disorientation becomes fully productive as part of an ecopolitics when it is entwined with solidarity, a term that here extends beyond the human and is understood as a praxis of both care and resistance, drawing on ecofeminism and environmental philosophy. This is explored through Ludovic Debeurme’s trilogy Epiphania, which critiques and dissolves the human-animal boundary into enmeshed relationalities in sf visions toward multispecies communities and bodily and ethical mutations; and Jeanne Burgart Goutal and Aurore Chapon’s ReSisters, a choral narrative that makes use of comics’ potential for diffractive and participatory readings to draw the outlines of an ecofeminist uprising
Touch localization after nerve repair in the hand:Insights from a new measurement tool
Get PDFErrors of touch localization after hand nerve injuries are common, and their measurement is important for evaluating functional recovery. Available empirical accounts have significant methodological limitations, however, and a quantitatively rigorous and detailed description of touch localization in nerve injury is lacking. Here, we develop a new method of measuring touch localization and evaluate its value for use in nerve injury. Eighteen patients with transection injuries to the median/ulnar nerves and 33 healthy controls were examined. The hand was blocked from the participant's view and points were marked on the volar surface using an ultraviolet (UV) pen. These points served as targets for touch stimulation. Two photographs were taken, one with and one without UV lighting, rendering targets seen and unseen, respectively. The experimenter used the photograph with visible targets to register their locations, and participants reported the felt position of each stimulation on the photograph with unseen targets. The error of localization and its directional components were measured, separate from misreferrals-errors made across digits, or from a digit to the palm. Nerve injury was found to significantly increase the error of localization. These effects were specific to the territory of the repaired nerve and showed considerable variability at the individual level, with some patients showing no evidence of impairment. A few patients also made abnormally high numbers of misreferrals, and the pattern of misreferrals in patients differed from that observed in healthy controls. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We provide a more rigorous and comprehensive account of touch localization in nerve injury than previously available. Our results show that touch localization is significantly impaired following median/ulnar nerve transection injuries and that these impairments are specific to the territory of the repaired nerve(s), vary considerably between patients, and can involve frequent errors spanning between digits. </p
A comprehensive guide to MEGA-PRESS for GABA measurement
Get PDFThe aim of this guideline is to provide a series of evidence-based recommendations that allow those new to using MEGA-PRESS to produce high-quality data for the measurement of GABA levels using edited magnetic resonance spectroscopy with the MEGA-PRESS sequence at 3T. GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter of the central nervous system and has been increasingly studied due to its relevance in many clinical disorders of the central nervous system. MEGA-PRESS is the most widely used method for quantification of GABA at 3T, but is technically challenging and operates at a low signal-to-noise ratio. Therefore, the acquisition of high-quality MRS data relies on avoiding numerous pitfalls and observing important caveats. The guideline was developed by a working party that consisted of experts in MRS and experts in guideline development and implementation, together with key stakeholders. Strictly following a translational framework, we first identified evidence using a systematically conducted scoping literature review, then synthesized and graded the quality of evidence that formed recommendations. These recommendations were then sent to a panel of 21 world leaders in MRS for feedback and approval using a modified-Delphi process across two rounds. The final guideline consists of 23 recommendations across six domains essential for GABA MRS acquisition (Parameters, Practicalities, Data acquisition, Confounders, Quality/reporting, Post-processing). Overall, 78% of recommendations were formed from high-quality evidence, and 91% received agreement from over 80% of the expert panel. These 23 expert-reviewed recommendations and accompanying extended documentation form a readily useable guideline to allow those new to using MEGA-PRESS to design appropriate MEGA-PRESS study protocols and generate high-quality data.</p
Run-of-river hydropower in the UK and Ireland: The case for abstraction licences based on future flows
Get PDFRun-of-river hydropower in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland is a small but vital component of renewable electricity generation that enhances grid diversification and resilience, contributes to the net-zero emissions targets, and provides local community benefits. Planning approval by environmental regulators for hydropower water abstraction is based on the abstraction licence conditions (ALCs) that dictate when and how much water may be taken from a given stream location. Although ALCs for non-environmentally sensitive rivers vary across England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Ireland, the impacts of these variations on power generation are not fully understood. Here, we investigate how ALC variations across the UK and Ireland have historically impacted water abstraction and power generation and might continue to do so under future climate conditions. Specifically, we apply five distinct ALCs combination sets, as laid out by the five environmental regulators in the region, to historical observed streamflows and future projected flows (modelled for the RCP8.5 scenario using the EXP-HYDRO hydrological model), at 531 hydropower sites across the UK and Ireland. We then calculate the daily water abstraction potential for each hydropower site and the collective power generation potential separately for Great Britain and the Island of Ireland. Our results show that the ALCs that permit greater use of lower flows allow for more power generation than those that enable abstraction during high flow conditions. The most optimal combination of ALCs for power generation, when compared to those currently in use, increases future generation potential by 30.4% for Great Britain and 24.4% for the island of Ireland, while maintaining environmental protection as per the Welsh guidelines. Our results suggest that ALC policy and regulatory reforms are needed to provide optimal use of future streamflows for hydropower generation while ensuring protection for the environment is maintained
