Expansion of Agriculture in Northern Cold-Climate Regions: A Cross-Sectoral Perspective on Opportunities and Challenges

Agriculture in the boreal and Arctic regions is perceived as marginal, low intensity and inadequate to satisfy the needs of local communities, but another perspective is that northern agriculture has untapped potential to increase the local supply of food and even contribute to the global food system. Policies across northern jurisdictions target the expansion and intensification of agriculture, contextualized for the diverse social settings and market foci in the north. However, the rapid pace of climate change means that traditional methods of adapting cropping systems and developing infrastructure and regulations for this region cannot keep up with climate change impacts. Moreover, the anticipated conversion of northern cold-climate natural lands to agriculture risks a loss of up to 76% of the carbon stored in vegetation and soils, leading to further environmental impacts. The sustainable development of northern agriculture requires local solutions supported by locally relevant policies. There is an obvious need for the rapid development of a transdisciplinary, cross-jurisdictional, long-term knowledge development, and dissemination program to best serve food needs and an agricultural economy in the boreal and Arctic regions while minimizing the risks to global climate, northern ecosystems and communities

Cis-by-Trans Regulatory Divergence Causes the Asymmetric Lethal Effects of an Ancestral Hybrid Incompatibility Gene

The Dobzhansky and Muller (D-M) model explains the evolution of hybrid incompatibility (HI) through the interaction between lineage-specific derived alleles at two or more loci. In agreement with the expectation that HI results from functional divergence, many protein-coding genes that contribute to incompatibilities between species show signatures of adaptive evolution, including Lhr, which encodes a heterochromatin protein whose amino acid sequence has diverged extensively between Drosophila melanogaster and D. simulans by natural selection. The lethality of D. melanogaster/D. simulans F1 hybrid sons is rescued by removing D. simulans Lhr, but not D. melanogaster Lhr, suggesting that the lethal effect results from adaptive evolution in the D. simulans lineage. It has been proposed that adaptive protein divergence in Lhr reflects antagonistic coevolution with species-specific heterochromatin sequences and that defects in LHR protein localization cause hybrid lethality. Here we present surprising results that are inconsistent with this coding-sequence-based model. Using Lhr transgenes expressed under native conditions, we find no evidence that LHR localization differs between D. melanogaster and D. simulans, nor do we find evidence that it mislocalizes in their interspecific hybrids. Rather, we demonstrate that Lhr orthologs are differentially expressed in the hybrid background, with the levels of D. simulans Lhr double that of D. melanogaster Lhr. We further show that this asymmetric expression is caused by cis-by-trans regulatory divergence of Lhr. Therefore, the non-equivalent hybrid lethal effects of Lhr orthologs can be explained by asymmetric expression of a molecular function that is shared by both orthologs and thus was presumably inherited from the ancestral allele of Lhr. We present a model whereby hybrid lethality occurs by the interaction between evolutionarily ancestral and derived alleles

Critical currents and pinning in powder metallurgically processed Chevrel phase bulk superconducting samples

Critical current density (Jc) has been measured in hot isostatically and uniaxially pressed bulk samples of PbMo6S8 (PMS) and SnMo6S8 (SMS) Chevrel phase superconductors (CPS). The obtained pinning force densities (Fp(B, T)) show a scsling in a wide range of temperature (T = 4.2 K−Tc) and field (B = 0–9 T), which is in good agreement with the predictions of the flux line shear (FLS) model. However, the magnitude of Fp is an order of magnitude smaller than the expected values. The PMS sample hot pressed at relatively high temperatures (1200°C) shows long tails in the scaled Fp(B, T) data. In contrast, the SMS samples sintered at similar temperatures show double peaks in Fp(B) for temperatures below 10.5 K. For both compounds the pseudo upper critical field () extracted from the Jc data, especially near Tc, shows deviation from the expected ideal Bc2(T) dependence. The results point out a correlation of Jc and B∗c2s with the morphology of the grain boundaries in terms of granularity and degradation of the superconducting properties

Recognition Of Meteorological Situations With Neural Networks

This paper deals with the estimation of the amount of clouds and number of cloud layers above airports. A neural network model has been developed based on heterogeneous measurements from original instruments, to give a global estimate of cloudiness. A heuristic procedure is then suggested to find the number and heights of the cloud layers, and to divide the cloudiness into its components estimated layer by layer. 1 AMETIS II PROJECT The Ametis II project is a large project of the Swiss Meteorological Institute, which aims at automatizing weather messages sent to airplanes at the Swiss airports. Aeronautical meteorological observations are performed every thirty minutes, by human observers. These observations are encoded in METAR messages, broadcasted to the International Aeronautical Telecommunication Network. These METAR messages encode all the necessary information that airplanes have to know when they are in the vicinity of the airport. Here is an example of such a METAR: LSZH 064..

Conversational metrics, psychopathological dimensions and self-disturbances in patients with schizophrenia

Difficulties in interpersonal communication, including conversational skill impairments, are core features of schizophrenia. However, very few studies have performed conversation analyses in a clinical population of schizophrenia patients. Here we investigate the conversational patterns of dialogues in schizophrenia patients to assess possible associations with symptom dimensions, subjective self-disturbances and social functioning. Thirty-five schizophrenia patients were administered the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the Clinical Language Disorder Rating Scale (CLANG), the Scale for the Assessment of Thought, Language and Communication (TLC), the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience Scale (EASE), and the Social and Occupational Functioning Assessment Scale (SOFAS). Moreover, participants underwent a recorded semi-structured interview, to extract conversational variables. Conversational data were associated with negative symptoms and social functioning, but not with positive or disorganization symptoms. A significant positive correlation was found between “pause duration” and the EASE item “Spatialization of thought”. The present study suggests an association between conversational patterns and negative symptom dimension of schizophrenia. Moreover, our findings evoke a relationship between the natural fluidity of conversation and of the natural unraveling of thoughts

The role of Sn addition on the improvement of J_c in PbMo₆S₈

The influence of Sn on the enhancement of critical current densities, Jc, in the bulk samples of PbMo₆S₈ has been systematically investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), AC susceptibility, and specific heat experiments. The results indicate that the addition of Sn, as an adjunction (dopant) or as a substitution, has a considerable effect on the structural, superconducting, microstructural and grain boundary properties. The observed increase in Jc is discussed in terms of improved interconnectivity between the grains, better homogeneity of the samples, and, more importantly, lower grain boundary contamination