Food networks: collective action and local development. The role of organic farming as boundary object

This article aims at analyzing the innovation potential of a local food network, which sees different actors that cooperate to build a local organic food production-provision system and progressively develop a broader mobilization on food issues, health and sustainability. The case analyzed is that of Crisoperla, an association located in Italy, between Tuscany and Liguria, which involves organic farmers, social farming and fishermen cooperatives, consumers’ groups and association and agronomists. The analysis is based on the empirical data collected in the 3-year European project SOLINSA (FP7, 2011–2014). The focus is on the role of organic farming and organic food as a boundary object, a binder element around which actors involved work in order to develop common visions, languages and goals and organize their activities. These processes are, in fact, at the basis of the organizational consolidation of the association as well as of the growth of its political awareness and its willingness and capacity to interact with the outside both at local and higher levels

Nitric oxide, cytochrome c oxidase and myoglobin: Competition and reaction pathways

AbstractIt is relevant to cell physiology that nitric oxide (NO) reacts with both cytochrome oxidase (CcOX) and oxygenated myoglobin (MbO2). In this respect, it has been proposed [Pearce, L.L., et al. (2002) J. Biol. Chem. 277, 13556–13562] that (i) CcOX in turnover out-competes MbO2 for NO, and (ii) NO bound to reduced CcOX is “metabolized” in the active site to nitrite by reacting with O2. In contrast, rapid kinetics experiments reported in this study show that (i) upon mixing NO with MbO2 and CcOX in turnover, MbO2 out-competes the oxidase for NO and (ii) after mixing nitrosylated CcOX with O2 in the presence of MbO2, NO (and not nitrite) dissociates from the enzyme causing myoglobin oxidation

A transition towards sustainable food systems in Europe

A growing number of voices – among others the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC, 2017) - have highlighted the need to change the overarching infrastructure of food-related policies. They claim that the European Union does not have a food policy . For example, the General Food Law addresses food safety issues, but not nutrition. Regulations aimed at reducing the environmental impacts of food production are not built in connection with how food is consumed. There are regulations that encourage production systems to improve product quality, but the link to sustainability is not clear. There are rules that regulate information and communication to consumers, but a reference to sustainability is missing. Common Agricultural Policy grants subsidies to 'green' production processes, but most of them concern primarily production actors. Distribution of financial resources over these instruments is largely disproportionate. Often these payments are not linked to clear outcomes and impacts. How could a food policy contribute to shaping sustainable food systems in Europe? It is time for policy makers, academics, and civil society to take a step back and reflect upon appropriate policies infrastructures for transition toward food sustainability. This challenge implies a pervasive process that addresses in a consistent and coherent way the multidimensionality of food – environmental, social, economic, health, ethical and resilience implications - and takes into consideration the reciprocal influences between production, distribution and consumption and their links with broader socio-ecological and socio-technical systems. This process should reorganize food-related policy instruments around societal goals and put in place the necessary instruments to enable the social and institutional change, overcoming barriers. This report proposes a conceptual framework and carries out an assessment of the existing policy infrastructure with the purpose of suggesting points of entry for policy-led transition towards food sustainability in Europe. The system perspective adopted allows us to apply one of the key principles of sustainable development as well as sustainable consumption and implies that policies aiming at sustainability should address consumption issues as well as production patterns. The challenge for a new policy approach is to put in place coordinated policy tools that can affect directly or indirectly this process of alignment, linking together self-responsibility with freedom to act. Rather than pursuing an ambitious program of redesign of the agricultural policy into a broader food policy, we suggest a ‘bottom up’ process of construction of a food policy mix around strategic goals aimed at the integration and coherence between policies, together with the reorganization of existing tools and the introduction of new tools to fill existing gaps. The introduction of strategic tools - such as the EU Sustainable Food Assessment and Action Plan, proposed by the EESC (2017) at the EU level, or urban food strategies at the local level - can contribute to develop new representations of the food system, update policy objectives, verify the adequacy of existing policy instruments with respect to new objectives, identify missing policy instruments and mobilize all stakeholders to build a coherent set of policies. This report lays down some criteria on which this process should be activated

Understanding the role of the Agriculture Knowledge and Innovation System in the Italian agroenergy sector: the case of biogas adoption in Tuscany

The European energy strategy towards 2020 involves increasing the production of renewable energy by agriculture (agroenergy) for moving towards a bio-based economy. The climate deal reached at the COP 21 conference in Paris (2015) supports the position of the EU concerning the sustainable promotion of agroenergy, as it allows save greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil-based energy. However, the diffusion of agroenery in the Mediterranean area is modest and uneven, compared to northern European countries, may be due to the low endowment of productive factors. Besides policy, the debate around the diffusion of agroenergy is particularly lively within the academy. To date, agricultural economists have mainly approached the process of agroenergy adoption on farm through econometric or mathematical programming models. The former aim at explaining the underlying determinants of farmers’ investment choices (revealed or stated). The latter simulate the choices of profit-maximising farmers under different policy or market conditions. Beside rational behaviour, both methodologies assume that farmers can access perfect information, thus missing to investigate knowledge transfer and the role of research and extension services in technology adoption and diffusion. Against this background, this paper deals with knowledge transfer in the agroenergy sector and focuses on the role of networks in that transfer. We also consider the impact of those networks on the transaction costs associated with agroenergy adoption. The aim of this study is understanding the process of biogas diffusion in a region of the Mediterranean area. The paper would add to the literature on innovation in agriculture by depicting the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System behind the diffusion of agroenergy and by identifying the structural components of that system. With this objective in mind, we consider the diffusion of biogas in Tuscany, a NUTS3 region in Italy. We selected Tuscany because prospective biogas adopters should radically change the structure of their farms and because geography and farming systems of Tuscany allow use that region as a proxy for northern areas of the Mediterranean basin. The methodology involves social network analysis, which allows pinpoint the role of the different interest groups in knowledge transfer and the extent to which knowledge management has shaped the biogas sector in Tuscany. Preliminary results highlight the central position of few major knowledge producers from the research sector, which, however, poorly interact among them and with intermediary organisations. In turn, knowledge transfer downstream seems a weakness of the network. Apparently, adopters are self-sufficient in terms of knowledge gathering during the innovation-decision phase. Missing significant intermediaries, adopters may become reliant on technical support and face high transaction costs. Given the irreversibility of biogas adoption, disconnection could significantly affect the costs for daily management. When evenly distributed, small biogas-to-electricity plants may help the distributed generation, while allowing comply with EU’s Renewables Directive. However, the lack of coordination among the components of the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System may hinder the sustainable diffusion of biogas, with the rise of intensive entrepreneurial agro energy farming

The O2-scavenging Flavodiiron Protein in the Human Parasite Giardia intestinalis

The flavodiiron proteins (FDP) are widespread among strict or facultative anaerobic prokaryotes, where they are involved in the response to nitrosative and/or oxidative stress. Unexpectedly, FDPs were fairly recently identified in a restricted group of microaerobic protozoa, including Giardia intestinalis, the causative agent of the human infectious disease giardiasis. The FDP from Giardia was expressed, purified, and extensively characterized by x-ray crystallography, stopped-flow spectroscopy, respirometry, and NO amperometry. Contrary to flavorubredoxin, the FDP from Escherichia coli, the enzyme from Giardia has high O(2)-reductase activity (>40 s(-1)), but very low NO-reductase activity (approximately 0.2 s(-1)); O(2) reacts with the reduced protein quite rapidly (milliseconds) and with high affinity (K(m) < or = 2 microM), producing H(2)O. The three-dimensional structure of the oxidized protein determined at 1.9A resolution shows remarkable similarities with prokaryotic FDPs. Consistent with HPLC analysis, the enzyme is a dimer of dimers with FMN and the non-heme di-iron site topologically close at the monomer-monomer interface. Unlike the FDP from Desulfovibrio gigas, the residue His-90 is a ligand of the di-iron site, in contrast with the proposal that ligation of this histidine is crucial for a preferential specificity for NO. We propose that in G. intestinalis the primary function of FDP is to efficiently scavenge O(2), allowing this microaerobic parasite to survive in the human small intestine, thus promoting its pathogenicity

A Novel Type of Nitric-oxide Reductase ESCHERICHIA COLI FLAVORUBREDOXIN

Escherichia coli flavorubredoxin is a member of the family of the A-type flavoproteins, which are built by two core domains: a metallo-β-lactamase-like domain, at the N-terminal region, harboring a non-heme di-iron site, and a flavodoxin-like domain, containing one FMN moiety. The enzyme fromE. coli has an extra module at the C terminus, containing a rubredoxin-like center. The A-type flavoproteins are widespread among strict and facultative anaerobes, as deduced from the analysis of the complete prokaryotic genomes. In this report we showed that the recombinant enzyme purified from E. coli has nitric-oxide reductase activity with a turnover number of ∼15 mol of NO·mol enzyme−1·s−1, which was well within the range of those determined for the canonical hemeb3 -FeB containing nitric-oxide reductases (e.g. ∼10–50 mol NO·mol enzyme−1·s−1 for the Paracoccus denitrificans NOR). Furthermore, it was shown that the activity was due to the A-type flavoprotein core, as the rubredoxin domain alone exhibited no activity. Thus, a novel family of prokaryotic NO reductases, with a non-heme di-iron site as the catalytic center, was established

Serological screening for Celiac Disease in 382 pre-schoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: Recent investigations suggest a possible common genetic background between Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Celiac Disease (CD). However, studies regarding this association are scarce and often limited by the small sample sizes and/or large heterogeneity among ASD groups in terms of demographic and clinical features. The present study aims to investigate the overall CD prevalence (biopsy proven-CD patients plus screening detected tTG and EMA positive cases) in a large population of pre-schoolers with ASD referred to a tertiary care University Hospital. Methods: We retrospectively collected data about 382 children (mean age: 46.97 ± 13.55 months; age-range: 18-72 months) consecutively diagnosed as ASD (according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition criteria) over the period 2010-2013, and who performed a serological CD screening. Results: The overall CD prevalence was 2.62%, which is statistically significant higher to that reported in the Italian paediatric population (p = 0.0246). Half of these children had no symptoms or risk factors related to CD when they performed the serological screening. Conclusions: If replicated, these data suggest the importance of regular screening for CD in young patients with ASD, and are of relevance for clinical and public health

Evidence for surface faulting earthquakes on the Montereale fault system (Abruzzi Apennines, central Italy)

We conducted paleoseismic studies along the Montereale fault system (MFS; central Italy). The MFS shows geomorphological evidence of Late Quaternary activity and falls within the highest seismic hazard zone of central Apennines, between the epicentral areas of two recent earthquake sequences: 2009 L’Aquila and 2016–2017 central Italy. We excavated two trenches along the San Giovanni fault splay of the system, one intercepting the N140° striking bedrock main fault plane and the other cutting two subparallel fault scarps on the colluvial/alluvial deposits on the fault hanging wall. Excavations revealed repeated fault reactivation with surface faulting in prehistorical and historical times. We recognized and dated seven events in the last 26 kyr. The most recent ground-rupturing event (evb1) possibly occurred 650–1,820 AD, consistent with one of the three main shocks that struck the area in 1,703 AD. A previous event (evb2) occurred between 5,330 BC and 730 BC, while older events occurred at 6,590–5,440 BC (evb3), 9,770–6,630 BC (evb4), and 16,860–13,480 BC (evb5). We documented two older displacement events (evb7 and evb6) between 23,780 BC and 16,850 BC. The minimum vertical slip rate at the trench site in the last 28–24 kyr is 0.3–0.4 mm/year. The inferred average recurrence interval for surface-faulting events along the MFS is no longer than ~4 kyr. Based on the surface fault length ranging between 12 and 20 km, earthquakes with ≥M 6.0 are possible for the MFS. The MFS is an independent earthquake source, and its paleoseismic data are fully comparable with those known for faults in central Apennines.Published2758-27766T. Studi di pericolosità sismica e da maremotoJCR Journa