Harnessing Remote Sensing to Accomplish Full Carbon Accounting: Workshop Report

The workshop "Harnessing Remote Sensing to Accomplish Full Carbon Accounting" was held on December 9-11th, 1999 at IIASA with the intention of meeting the following objectives: (1) To Promote the mutual interests of remote sensing and carbon science communities by exchanging the ideas regarding the requirements for carbon accounting and the current available products derived from remote sensing land information systems; (2) To produce strategic recommendations on how to improve FCA at different scales with the use of remote sensing tools; and, (3) To develop a Framework to Apply Recommendations for Sub-global and National-Level Case Studies. Although these ambitious targets were only part met, three discussion group sessions resulted in describing: What is required to implement full carbon accounting; How remote sensing can be used to assist this implementation; and, How remote sensing can be used to reduce the uncertainties related to FCA. This report summarizes the presentations, discussions and results of this workshop and outlines the next steps to be taken by IIASA

The EAGLE concept - A vision of a future European Land Monitoring Framework

Abstract. This paper describes the EAGLE concept, an object-oriented data model for land moni-toring. It highlights the background situation in the field of land monitoring, identifies the team in-volved, explains the technical and strategic considerations behind the concept, describes the cur-rent status of the harmonization and the developments made and outlines the future activities and requirements. After the structure and the content of the data model and matrix are explained, ex-amples are given on how to use the matrix. Besides its possible function as a semantic translation tool between different classification systems, it also can help to analyze class definitions to find semantic gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies and can serve as data model for new mapping initia-tives. On the long-term, the EAGLE concept aims at sketching a vision of a future integrated and harmonized European land monitoring system, which is designed to store all kinds of environmen-tally relevant information on the Earth´s surface, coming from both national and European data sources. Being still in the state of development, some first applications and test cases are under way. This paper also dedicates a chapter referring to the context between the concept and remote sensing in general as well as the relation between land monitoring and the principles of the Euro

Short-term memory for emotional faces in dysphoria

The study aimed to determine if the memory bias for negative faces previously demonstrated in depression and dysphoria generalises from long- to short-term memory. A total of 29 dysphoric (DP) and22 non-dysphoric (ND) participants were presented with a series of faces and asked to identify the emotion portrayed (happiness, sadness, anger, or neutral affect). Following a delay, four faces were presented (the original plus three distractors) and participants were asked to identify the target face. Half of the trials assessed memory for facial emotion, and the remaining trials examined memory for facial identity. At encoding, no group differences were apparent. At memory testing, relative to ND participants, DP participants exhibited impaired memory for all types of facial emotion and for facial identity when the faces featured happiness, anger, or neutral affect, but not sadness. DP participants exhibited impaired identity memory for happy faces relative to angry, sad, and neutral, whereas ND participants exhibited enhanced facial identity memory when faces were angry. In general, memory for faces was not related to performance at encoding. However, in DP participants only, memory for sad faces was related to sadness recognition at encoding. The results suggest that the negative memory bias for faces in dysphoria does not generalise from long- to short-term memory

The transcription factor STAT6 mediates direct repression of inflammatory enhancers and limits activation of alternatively polarized macrophages

The molecular basis of signal-dependent transcriptional activation has been extensively studied in macrophage polarization, but our understanding remains limited regarding the molecular determinants of repression. Here we show that IL-4-activated STAT6 transcription factor is required for the direct transcriptional repression of a large number of genes during in vitro and in vivo alternative macrophage polarization. Repression results in decreased lineage-determining transcription factor, p300, and RNA polymerase II binding followed by reduced enhancer RNA expression, H3K27 acetylation, and chromatin accessibility. The repressor function of STAT6 is HDAC3 dependent on a subset of IL-4-repressed genes. In addition, STAT6-repressed enhancers show extensive overlap with the NF-κB p65 cistrome and exhibit decreased responsiveness to lipopolysaccharide after IL-4 stimulus on a subset of genes. As a consequence, macrophages exhibit diminished inflammasome activation, decreased IL-1β production, and pyroptosis. Thus, the IL-4-STAT6 signaling pathway establishes an alternative polarization-specific epigenenomic signature resulting in dampened macrophage responsiveness to inflammatory stimuli

LandSense: Coupling citizen science and earth observation data to promote environmental monitoring

The Horizon 2020 project, LandSense, is a modern citizen observatory for Land Use & Land Cover (LULC) monitoring, that connects citizens with Earth Observation (EO) data to transform current approaches to environmental decision making. Citizen Observatories are community-driven mechanisms to complement existing environmental monitoring systems and can be fostered through EO-based mobile and web applications, allowing citizens to not only play a key role in LULC monitoring, but also to be directly involved in the co-creation of such solutions. Within LandSense, citizens can participate in ongoing demonstration pilots using their own devices (e.g. mobile phones and tablets), through interactive reporting, gaming applications and mapathons. Campaigns in Vienna, Toulouse, Amsterdam, Serbia, Spain and Indonesia address topics such as urban greenspaces, agricultural management and biodiversity/habitat threat monitoring. For example, in the case of Toulouse and Indonesia, hotspots of change in LULC are identified through Sentinel 2 time series analysis. These hotspots are then validated by citizens and interested stakeholders either directly on-site via customized mobile applications, providing geotagged photos, or remotely via the online LandSense Engagement platform. The presentation will not only showcase the tools and results from these campaigns, but also highlight how citizen-driven observations can contribute to sustainable development. Such initiatives present clear opportunities to integrate citizen-driven observations with established authoritative data sources to further extend GEOSS and Copernicus capacities, and support comprehensive environmental monitoring systems. In addition, these applications have considerable potential in lowering expenditure costs on in-situ data collection and current calibration/validation approaches within the processing chain of environmental monitoring activities both within and beyond Europe

AMP-activated protein kinase - not just an energy sensor

Orthologues of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) occur in essentially all eukaryotes as heterotrimeric complexes comprising catalytic α subunits and regulatory β and γ subunits. The canonical role of AMPK is as an energy sensor, monitoring levels of the nucleotides AMP, ADP, and ATP that bind competitively to the γ subunit. Once activated, AMPK acts to restore energy homeostasis by switching on alternate ATP-generating catabolic pathways while switching off ATP-consuming anabolic pathways. However, its ancestral role in unicellular eukaryotes may have been in sensing of glucose rather than energy. In this article, we discuss a few interesting recent developments in the AMPK field. Firstly, we review recent findings on the canonical pathway by which AMPK is regulated by adenine nucleotides. Secondly, AMPK is now known to be activated in mammalian cells by glucose starvation by a mechanism that occurs in the absence of changes in adenine nucleotides, involving the formation of complexes with Axin and LKB1 on the surface of the lysosome. Thirdly, in addition to containing the nucleotide-binding sites on the γ subunits, AMPK heterotrimers contain a site for binding of allosteric activators termed the allosteric drug and metabolite (ADaM) site. A large number of synthetic activators, some of which show promise as hypoglycaemic agents in pre-clinical studies, have now been shown to bind there. Fourthly, some kinase inhibitors paradoxically activate AMPK, including one (SU6656) that binds in the catalytic site. Finally, although downstream targets originally identified for AMPK were mainly concerned with metabolism, recently identified targets have roles in such diverse areas as mitochondrial fission, integrity of epithelial cell layers, and angiogenesis

A morphological study of retinal changes in unilateral amblyopia using optical coherence tomography image segmentation.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the possible structural changes of the macula in patients with unilateral amblyopia using optical coherence tomography (OCT) image segmentation. PATIENTS AND METHODS: 38 consecutive patients (16 male; mean age 32.4+/-17.6 years; range 6-67 years) with unilateral amblyopia were involved in this study. OCT examinations were performed with a time-domain OCT device, and a custom-built OCT image analysis software (OCTRIMA) was used for OCT image segmentation. The axial length (AL) was measured by a LenStar LS 900 device. Macular layer thickness, AL and manifest spherical equivalent refraction (MRSE) of the amblyopic eye were compared to that of the fellow eye. We studied if the type of amblyopia (strabismus without anisometropia, anisometropia without strabismus, strabismus with anisometropia) had any influence on macular layer thickness values. RESULTS: There was significant difference between the amblyopic and fellow eyes in MRSE and AL in all subgroups. Comparing the amblyopic and fellow eyes, we found a statistically significant difference only in the thickness of the outer nuclear layer in the central region using linear mixed model analysis keeping AL and age under control (p = 0.032). There was no significant difference in interocular difference in the thickness of any macular layers between the subgroups with one-way between-groups ANCOVA while statistically controlling for interocular difference in AL and age. CONCLUSIONS: According to our results there are subtle changes in amblyopic eyes affecting the outer nuclear layer of the fovea suggesting the possible involvement of the photoreceptors. However, further studies are warranted to support this hypothesis