Are pre-compiled citation indexes of peer-reviewed journals an adequate control for research quality? A case study of library and information science

Looks at the South African Department of Education’s new recommendations for the evaluation of higher education research in South Africa, and examines two primary aspects: the use of pre-compiled journal lists from overseas, and the apparent reliance on peer review as a guarantee of quality. Pointing out that these are tried and tested standards of quality, the authors argue that there are nonetheless disciplinary differences between experimental sciences – such as physics or chemistry – and other disciplines that make these measures difficult to apply across the spectrum. They present an analysis of library and information science publications in the chosen lists and point to the weakness of the selection of titles in this discipline. In addition, there are extra difficulties for scientists from South Africa and the developing world in securing publication in premier international library and information science journals. The authors conclude by calling for the employment of other, additional evaluation measures in an integrated system

Library Cultures of Data Curation: Adventures in Astronomy

University libraries are partnering with disciplinary data producers to provide long-term digital curation of research datasets. Managing dataset producer expectations and guiding future development of library services requires understanding the decisions libraries make about curatorial activities, why they make these decisions, and the effects on future data reuse. We present a study, comprising interviews (n=43) and ethnographic observation, of two university libraries who partnered with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) collaboration to curate a significant astronomy dataset. The two libraries made different choices of the materials to curate and associated services, which resulted in different reuse possibilities. Each of the libraries offered partial solutions to the SDSS leaders’ objectives. The libraries’ approaches to curation diverged due to contextual factors, notably the extant infrastructure at their disposal (including technical infrastructure, staff expertise, values and internal culture, and organizational structure). The Data Transfer Process case offers lessons in understanding how libraries choose curation paths and how these choices influence possibilities for data reuse. Outcomes may not match data producers’ initial expectations but may create opportunities for reusing data in unexpected and beneficial ways

Resilience theory incorporated into urban wastewater systems management. State of the art

This is the final version of the article. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Government bodies, utilities, practitioners, and researchers have growing interest in the incorporation of resilience into wastewater management. Since resilience is a multidisciplinary term, it is important to review what has been achieved in the wastewater sector, and describe the future research directions for the forthcoming years. This work presents a critical review of studies that deal with resilience in the wastewater treatment sector, with a special focus on understanding how they addressed the key elements for assessing resilience, such as stressors, system properties, metrics and interventions to increase resilience. The results showed that only 17 peer-reviewed papers and 6 relevant reports, a small subset of the work in wastewater research, directly addressed resilience. The lack of consensus in the definition of resilience, and the elements of a resilience assessment, is hindering the implementation of resilience in wastewater management. To date, no framework for resilience assessment is complete, comprehensive or directly applicable to practitioners; current examples are lacking key elements (e.g. a comprehensive study of stressors, properties and metrics, examples of cases study, ability to benchmark interventions or connectivity with broader frameworks). Furthermore, resilience is seen as an additional cost or extra effort, instead of a means to overcome project uncertainty that could unlock new opportunities for investment.The authors thank the consultancy team in Water Research, Strategic Advisory Services Research in Atkins UK, and Corinne Trommsdorff from IWA, for their constructive comments and support. Their contribution is highly appreciated. This work has been supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 642904 - TreatRec ITN-EID project, and by the Ministry of Economy and competitiveness for the Ramon and Cajal grant from Lluís Corominas (RYC-2013-14595) and for the REaCH project (CTM2015-66892-R, MINECO/FEDER, EU). LEQUIA and ICRA were recognized as consolidated research groups by the Catalan Government with codes 2014-SGR-1168 and 2014-SGR-291, respectively. The second and fifth authors acknowledge support from the UK Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council grant EP/K006924/1

Storylines of UK drought based on the 2010–2012 event

Spatially extensive multi-year hydrological droughts cause significant environmental stress. The UK is expected to remain vulnerable to future multi-year droughts under climate change. Existing approaches to quantify hydrological impacts of climate change often rely solely on global climate model (GCM) projections following different emission scenarios. This may miss out low-probability events with significant impacts. As a means of exploring such events, physical climate storyline approaches aim to quantify physically coherent articulations of how observed events could hypothetically have unfolded in alternative ways. This study uses the 2010–2012 drought, the most recent period of severe hydrological drought in the UK, as a basis and analyses storylines based on changes to (1) precondition severity, (2) temporal drought sequence, and (3) climate change. Evidence from multiple storylines shows that the maximum intensity, mean deficit, and duration of the 2010–2012 drought were highly influenced by its meteorological preconditions prior to drought inception, particularly for northern catchments at shorter timescales. The influence of progressively drier preconditions reflects both the spatial variation in drought preconditions and the role of physical catchment characteristics, particularly hydrogeology in the propagation of multi-year droughts. There are two plausible storylines of an additional dry year with dry winter conditions repeated either before the observed drought or replacing the observed dramatic drought termination confirm the vulnerability of UK catchments to a “third dry winter” storyline. Applying the UKCP18 climate projections, we find that drought conditions worsen with global warming with a mitigation of drought conditions by wetter winters in northern catchments at high warming levels. Comparison of the storylines with a benchmark drought (1975–1976) and a protracted multi-year drought (1989–1993) shows that, for each storyline (including the climate change storylines), drought conditions could have matched and exceeded those experienced during the past droughts at catchments across the UK, particularly for southern catchments. The construction of storylines based on observed events can complement existing methods to stress test UK catchments against plausible unrealised droughts

Response of soil health indicators to dung, urine and mineral fertilizer application in temperate pastures

Healthy soils are key to sustainability and food security. In temperate grasslands, not many studies have focused on soil health comparisons between contrasting pasture systems under different management strategies and treatment applications (e.g. manures and inorganic fertilisers). The aim of this study was to assess the responses of soil health indicators to dung, urine and inorganic N fertiliser in three temperate swards: permanent pasture not ploughed for at least 20 years (PP), high sugar ryegrass with white clover targeted at 30% coverage reseeded in 2013 (WC), and high sugar ryegrass reseeded in 2014 (HG). This study was conducted on the North Wyke Farm Platform (UK) from April 2017 to October 2017. Soil health indicators including soil organic carbon (SOC, measured by loss of ignition and elemental analyser), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), total nitrogen (TN), C:N ratio, soil C and N bulk isotopes, pH, bulk density (BD), aggregate stability, ergosterol concentration (as a proxy for fungi biomass), and earthworms (abundance, mass and density) were measured and analysed before and after application of dung and N fertilizer, urine and N fertiliser, and only N fertiliser. The highest SOC, TN, DOC, ergosterol concentration and earthworms as well as the lowest BD were found in PP, likely due to the lack of ploughing. Differences among treatments were observed due to the application of dung, resulting in an improvement in chemical indicators of soil health after 50 days of its application. Ergosterol concentration was significantly higher before treatment applications than at the end of the experiment. No changes were detected in BD and aggregate stability after treatment applications. We conclude that not enough time had passed for the soil to recover after the ploughing and reseeding of the permanent pasture, independently of the sward composition (HG or WC). Our results highlight the strong influence of the soil management legacy in temperate pasture and the positive effects of dung application on soil health over the short term. In addition, we point out the relevance of using standardised methods to report soil health indicators and some methodological limitations

Elucidating three-way interactions between soil, pasture and animals that regulate nitrous oxide emissions from temperate grazing systems

Pasture-based livestock farming contributes considerably to global emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a powerful greenhouse gas approximately 265 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Traditionally, the estimation of N2O emissions from grasslands is carried out by means of plot-scale experiments, where externally sourced animal excreta are applied to soils to simulate grazing conditions. This approach, however, fails to account for the impact of different sward types on the composition of excreta and thus the functionality of soil microbiomes, creating unrealistic situations that are seldom observed under commercial agriculture. Using three farming systems employing contrasting pasture management strategies at the North Wyke Farm Platform, an instrumented ruminant grazing trial in Devon, UK, this study measured N2O emissions from soils treated with cattle urine and dung collected within each system as well as standard synthetic urine shared across all systems, and compared them against two forms of controls with and without inorganic nitrogen fertiliser applications. Soil microbial activity was regularly monitored through gene abundance to evaluate interactions between sward types, soil amendments, soil microbiomes and, ultimately, N2O production. Across all systems, N2O emissions attributable to cattle urine and standard synthetic urine were found to be inconsistent with one another due to discrepancy in nitrogen content. Despite previous findings that grasses with elevated levels of water-soluble carbohydrates tend to generate lower levels of N2O, the soil under high sugar grass monoculture in this study recorded higher emissions when receiving excreta from cattle fed the same grass. Combined together, our results demonstrate the importance of evaluating environmental impacts of agriculture at a system scale, so that the feedback mechanisms linking soil, pasture, animals and microbiomes are appropriately considered

Landuse and soil degradation in the southern Maya lowlands, from Pre-Classic to Post-Classic times : The case of La Joyanca (Petén, Guatemala)

International audienceThis work focuses on the impact of Maya agriculture on soil degradation. In site and out site studies in the area of the city of La Joyanca (NW Petén) show that "Maya clays" do not constitute a homogeneous unit, but represent a complex sedimentary record. A high resolution analysis leads us to document changes in rates and practices evolving in time in relation with major socio-political and economic changes. It is possible to highlight extensive agricultural practices between Early Pre-classical to Late Pre-classical times. Intensification occurs in relation with reduction of the fallow duration during Pre-classic to Classic periods. The consequences of these changes on soil erosion are discussed. However, it does not seem that the agronomic potential of the soils was significantly degraded before the end of the Classic period

Trans-mitochondrial coordination of cristae at regulated membrane junctions

Reminiscent of bacterial quorum sensing, mammalian mitochondria participate in inter-organelle communication. However, physical structures that enhance or enable interactions between mitochondria have not been defined. Here we report that adjacent mitochondria exhibit coordination of inner mitochondrial membrane cristae at inter-mitochondrial junctions (IMJs). These electron-dense structures are conserved across species, resistant to genetic disruption of cristae organization, dynamically modulated by mitochondrial bioenergetics, independent of known inter-mitochondrial tethering proteins mitofusins and rapidly induced by the stable rapprochement of organelles via inducible synthetic linker technology. At the associated junctions, the cristae of adjacent mitochondria form parallel arrays perpendicular to the IMJ, consistent with a role in electrochemical coupling. These IMJs and associated cristae arrays may provide the structural basis to enhance the propagation of intracellular bioenergetic and apoptotic waves through mitochondrial networks within cells

Opportunities for mobilizing recalcitrant phosphorus from agricultural soils: a review

Background : Phosphorus (P) fertilizer is usually applied in excess of plant requirement and accumulates in soils due to its strong adsorption, rapid precipitation and immobilisation into unavailable forms including organic moieties. As soils are complex and diverse chemical, biochemical and biological systems, strategies to access recalcitrant soil P are often inefficient, case specific and inconsistently applicable in different soils. Finding a near-universal or at least widely applicable solution to the inefficiency in agricultural P use by plants is an important unsolved problem that has been under investigation for more than half a century. Scope : In this paper we critically review the strategies proposed for the remobilization of recalcitrant soil phosphorus for crops and pastures worldwide. We have additionally performed a meta-analysis of available soil 31P–NMR data to establish the potential agronomic value of different stored P forms in agricultural soils. Conclusions : Soil inorganic P stocks accounted on average for 1006 ± 115 kg ha−1 (57 ± 7%), while the monoester P pool accounted for 587 ± 32 kg ha−1 (33 ± 2%), indicating the huge potential for the future agronomic use of the soil legacy P. New impact driven research is needed in order to create solutions for the sustainable management of soil P stocks