Agromere: how to integrate urban agriculture in the development of the Dutch city of Almere?

Urban agriculture produces green city areas with as an extra dimension providing food, energy, care, education or recreation for the civilians. And thus it can contribute to a more sustainable and liveable cities. The objective of the project Agromere is to create a process which will lead to a new residential quarter where agriculture is fully integrated in city live. Agromere is situated in the fast growing city of Almere, the Netherlands. In a combined stakeholder and design process a township is designed which integrates living (5,000 inhabitants) with urban agriculture on 250 ha. During this process an enthusiastic network of stakeholders has been established which developed innovating and unique ideas on urban farming. The potential for organic farming in the city is high because of its emphasis on animal welfare and consumer relations

Defining the role of common variation in the genomic and biological architecture of adult human height

Using genome-wide data from 253,288 individuals, we identified 697 variants at genome-wide significance that together explained one-fifth of the heritability for adult height. By testing different numbers of variants in independent studies, we show that the most strongly associated ∼2,000, ∼3,700 and ∼9,500 SNPs explained ∼21%, ∼24% and ∼29% of phenotypic variance. Furthermore, all common variants together captured 60% of heritability. The 697 variants clustered in 423 loci were enriched for genes, pathways and tissue types known to be involved in growth and together implicated genes and pathways not highlighted in earlier efforts, such as signaling by fibroblast growth factors, WNT/β-catenin and chondroitin sulfate-related genes. We identified several genes and pathways not previously connected with human skeletal growth, including mTOR, osteoglycin and binding of hyaluronic acid. Our results indicate a genetic architecture for human height that is characterized by a very large but finite number (thousands) of causal variants