The factors determining uptake of energy crop cultivation and woodland creation in England: Insights from farmers and landowners

Perennial energy crops (PECs) and trees have key roles to play in delivering the negative emissions needed for the UK to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Significant changes to land use are needed and the decision to make changes will lie with individual landowners. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this research explores the attitudes of farmers and landowners in England to replacing traditional arable and livestock farming with growing annual or perennial energy crops or planting trees. It was concluded that considerable government policy intervention will be needed to overcome the many economic and social barriers in place including lack of markets and attractive contracts for growers, high establishment costs, loss of annual income, high prices available for cereal crops and the cultural division between farming and forestry. Although energy crops and woodland creation are generally researched and regulated separately, this research suggests that annual energy crops, PECs and woodland creation form a spectrum of land use options for a landowner, with the propensity to adopt these crops being determined predominantly by crop attributes including the risk of planting and the term of commitment

Seasonality and depth distribution of the abundance and activity of ammonia oxidizing microorganisms in marine coastal sediments (North Sea)

Microbial processes such as nitrification and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) are important for nitrogen cycling in marine sediments. Seasonal variations of archaeal and bacterial ammonia oxidizers (AOA and AOB) and anammox bacteria, as well as the environmental factors affecting these groups, are not well studied. We have examined the seasonal and depth distribution of the abundance and potential activity of these microbial groups in coastal marine sediments of the southern North Sea. This was achieved by quantifying specific intact polar lipids as well as the abundance and gene expression of their 16S rRNA gene, the ammonia monooxygenase subunit A (amoA) gene of AOA and AOB, and the hydrazine synthase (hzsA) gene of anammox bacteria. AOA, AOB, and anammox bacteria were detected and transcriptionally active down to 12 cm sediment depth. In all seasons, the abundance of AOA was higher compared to the AOB abundance suggesting that AOA play a more dominant role in aerobic ammonia oxidation in these sediments. Anammox bacteria were abundant and active even in oxygenated and bioturbated parts of the sediment. The abundance of AOA and AOB was relatively stable with depth and over the seasonal cycle, while anammox bacteria abundance and transcriptional activity were highest in August. North Sea sediments thus seem to provide a common, stable, ecological niche for AOA, AOB, and anammox bacteria

Cold tolerance strategy and cold hardiness of the invasive zigzag elm sawfly Aproceros leucopoda (Hymenoptera: Argidae)

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Dust detection by the wave instrument on STEREO: nanoparticles picked up by the solar wind?

The STEREO/WAVES instrument has detected a very large number of intense voltage pulses. We suggest that these events are produced by impact ionisation of nanoparticles striking the spacecraft at a velocity of the order of magnitude of the solar wind speed. Nanoparticles, which are half-way between micron-sized dust and atomic ions, have such a large charge-to-mass ratio that the electric field induced by the solar wind magnetic field accelerates them very efficiently. Since the voltage produced by dust impacts increases very fast with speed, such nanoparticles produce signals as high as do much larger grains of smaller speeds. The flux of 10-nm radius grains inferred in this way is compatible with the interplanetary dust flux model. The present results may represent the first detection of fast nanoparticles in interplanetary space near Earth orbit.Comment: In press in Solar Physics, 13 pages, 5 figure

Acetate degradation at low pH by the moderately acidophilic sulfate reducer Acididesulfobacillus acetoxydans gen. nov. sp. nov.

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2022.816605/full#supplementary-materialIn acid drainage environments, biosulfidogenesis by sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) attenuates the extreme conditions by enabling the precipitation of metals as their sulfides, and the neutralization of acidity through proton consumption. So far, only a handful of moderately acidophilic SRB species have been described, most of which are merely acidotolerant. Here, a novel species within a novel genus of moderately acidophilic SRB is described, Acididesulfobacillus acetoxydans gen. nov. sp. nov. strain INE, able to grow at pH 3.8. Bioreactor studies with strain INE at optimum (5.0) and low (3.9) pH for growth showed that strain INE alkalinized its environment, and that this was more pronounced at lower pH. These studies also showed the capacity of strain INE to completely oxidize organic acids to CO2, which is uncommon among acidophilic SRB. Since organic acids are mainly in their protonated form at low pH, which increases their toxicity, their complete oxidation may be an acid stress resistance mechanism. Comparative proteogenomic and membrane lipid analysis further indicated that the presence of saturated ether-bound lipids in the membrane, and their relative increase at lower pH, was a protection mechanism against acid stress. Interestingly, other canonical acid stress resistance mechanisms, such as a Donnan potential and increased active charge transport, did not appear to be active.This work was financed by ERC grants to AS (project 323009) and JS (project 694569), the research program TTW under project number 14797, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to IS-A, and a Gravitation grant (SIAM 024.002.002) of the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to AS and JS.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Nonlinear ion-acoustic (IA) waves driven in a cylindrically symmetric flow

By employing a self-similar, two-fluid MHD model in a cylindrical geometry, we study the features of nonlinear ion-acoustic (IA) waves which propagate in the direction of external magnetic field lines in space plasmas. Numerical calculations not only expose the well-known three shapes of nonlinear structures (sinusoidal, sawtooth, and spiky or bipolar) which are observed by numerous satellites and simulated by models in a Cartesian geometry, but also illustrate new results, such as, two reversely propagating nonlinear waves, density dips and humps, diverging and converging electric shocks, etc. A case study on Cluster satellite data is also introduced.Comment: accepted by AS

Fatty Acid and Hopanoid Adaption to Cold in the Methanotroph Methylovulum psychrotolerans

Three strains of aerobic psychrotolerant methanotrophic bacteria Methylovulum psychrotolerans, isolated from geographically remote low-temperature environments in Northern Russia, were grown at three different growth temperatures, 20, 10 and 4°C and were found to be capable of oxidizing methane at all temperatures. The three M. psychrotolerans strains adapted their membranes to decreasing growth temperature by increasing the percent of unsaturated fatty acid (FAs), both for the bulk and intact polar lipid (IPL)-bound FAs. Furthermore, the ratio of βOH-C16:0 to n-C16:0 increased as growth temperature decreased. The IPL head group composition did not change as an adaption to temperature. The most notable hopanoid temperature adaptation of M. psychrotolerans was an increase in unsaturated hopanols with decreasing temperature. As the growth temperature decreased from 20 to 4°C, the percent of unsaturated M. psychrotolerans bulk-FAs increased from 79 to 89 % while the total percent of unsaturated hopanoids increased from 27 to 49 %. While increased FA unsaturation in response to decreased temperature is a commonly observed response in order to maintain the liquid-crystalline character of bacterial membranes, hopanoid unsaturation upon cold exposition has not previously been described. In order to investigate the mechanisms of both FA and hopanoid cold-adaption in M. psychrotolerans we identified genes in the genome of M. psychrotolerans that potentially code for FA and hopanoid desaturases. The unsaturation of hopanoids represents a novel membrane adaption to maintain homeostasis upon cold adaptation

Disentangling the lipid divide: Identification of key enzymes for the biosynthesis of membrane-spanning and ether lipids in Bacteria

Bacterial membranes are composed of fatty acids (FAs) ester-linked to glycerol-3-phosphate, while archaea have membranes made of isoprenoid chains ether-linked to glycerol-1-phosphate. Many archaeal species organize their membrane as a monolayer of membrane-spanning lipids (MSLs). Exceptions to this “lipid divide” are the production by some bacterial species of (ether-bound) MSLs, formed by tail-to-tail condensation of FAs resulting in the formation of (iso) diabolic acids (DAs), which are the likely precursors of paleoclimatological relevant branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether molecules. However, the enzymes responsible for their production are unknown. Here, we report the discovery of bacterial enzymes responsible for the condensation reaction of FAs and for ether bond formation and confirm that the building blocks of iso-DA are branched iso-FAs. Phylogenomic analyses of the key biosynthetic genes reveal a much wider diversity of potential MSL (ether)–producing bacteria than previously thought, with importantt implications for our understanding of the evolution of lipid membranes