Planetary Boundaries and the Doughnut frameworks: A review of their local operability

The concept of Planetary Boundaries has sparked debate around tipping points and the limits of the Earth System for over a decade. Among the most investigated aspects is how to downscale this global concept to a country level, to make it operative at scales at which decisions are taken and policies applied. Specifically how to achieve applicability locally while keeping global relevance, however, remains unclear. The same is true for the "Doughnut" concept, which builds on the Planetary Boundaries framework and adds a social component to create a "Safe and Just Operating Space" (SJOS) within which humanity should live. This paper reviews these two concepts in detail, focusing on their local operability. Synthesis of the literature reveals that, during the downscaling process, either the global meaning of the Planetary Boundaries or the local characteristics of a country are lost. Further, the SJOS remains a very theoretical concept because a match does not exist between the Planetary Boundaries and the social components of the Doughnut. Identification of this problem therefore suggests that future work should calculate the Planetary Boundaries globally for each ecosystem first, and then downscale them by country. In this way, the global relevance of the Planetary Boundaries would hold, and the framework could apply to local policies. Furthermore, the ecosystem services could link the Planetary Boundaries with the social aspects of the Doughnut, and hence contribute to understanding why a country lies within or outside the SJOS

Potential carbon loss from Scottish peatlands under climate change

Open Access via Springer Compact Agreement. Acknowledgements: This work was possible thanks to a Studentship from the Macaulay Development Trust.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Epidemiology and Microbiology of Skin and Soft Tissue Infections: Preliminary Results of a National Registry

Skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) represent a wide range of clinical conditions characterized by a considerable variety of clinical presentations and severity. Their aetiology can also vary, with numerous possible causative pathogens. While other authors previously published analyses on several types of SSTI and on restricted types of patients, we conducted a large nationwide surveillance programme on behalf of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases to assess the clinical and microbiological characteristics of the whole SSTI spectrum, from mild to severe life-threatening infections, in both inpatients and outpatients. Twenty-five Infectious Diseases (ID) Centres throughout Italy collected prospectively data concerning both the clinical and microbiological diagnosis of patients affected by SSTIs via an electronic case report form. All the cases included in our database, independently from their severity, have been managed by ID specialists joining the study while SSTIs from other wards/clinics have been excluded from this analysis. Here, we report the preliminary results of our study, referring to a 12-month period (October 2016–September 2017). During this period, the study population included 254 adult patients and a total of 291 SSTI diagnoses were posed, with 36 patients presenting more than one SSTIs. The type of infection diagnosed, the aetiological micro-organisms involved and some notes on their antimicrobial susceptibilities were collected and are reported herein. The enrichment of our registry is ongoing, but these preliminary results suggest that further analysis could soon provide useful information to better understand the national epidemiologic data and the current clinical management of SSTIs in Italy