Fish out of water: consumers' unfamiliarity with the appearance of commercial fish species

Seafood labels play an increasingly key role in assisting consumers in purchasing processed and featureless fish products, and in encouraging sustainable fishing and aquaculture practices. While informed purchasing choices are typically influenced by traceability and labelling awareness, they also depend on the consumers’ ability to identify and discriminate the fish species available on the market, which to date remains notably unexplored. We asked 720 people across six European countries to identify pictures of six fish species commonly sold in Europe. We reveal that European consumers have a poor understanding of the appearance of the fish they consume (overall ∼ 30% correct identification), with British consumers performing the poorest and Spanish ones doing best. We noted cultural association with some species, whereby the most regionally consumed fish are more easily recognized. We argue that despite recent improvements in technological solutions, stakeholder dialogue, and policy implementation, seafood market transparency will remain open to malpractice until consumers restore connection with their food

Prospects and challenges of environmental DNA (eDNA) monitoring in freshwater ponds

Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis is a rapid, non-invasive, cost-efficient biodiversity monitoring tool with enormous potential to inform aquatic conservation and management. Development is ongoing, with strong commercial interest, and new uses are continually being discovered. General applications of eDNA and guidelines for best practice in freshwater systems have been established, but habitat-specific assessments are lacking. Ponds are highly diverse, yet understudied systems that could benefit from eDNA monitoring. However, eDNA applications in ponds and methodological constraints specific to these environments remain unaddressed. Following a stakeholder workshop in 2017, researchers combined knowledge and expertise to review these applications and challenges that must be addressed for the future and consistency of eDNA monitoring in ponds. The greatest challenges for pond eDNA surveys are representative sampling, eDNA capture, and potential PCR inhibition. We provide recommendations for sampling, eDNA capture, inhibition testing, and laboratory practice, which should aid new and ongoing eDNA projects in ponds. If implemented, these recommendations will contribute towards an eventual broad standardisation of eDNA research and practice, with room to tailor workflows for optimal analysis and different applications. Such standardisation will provide more robust, comparable, and ecologically meaningful data to enable effective conservation and management of pond biodiversity

BUILDING BRIDGES FOR INNOVATION IN AGEING : SYNERGIES BETWEEN ACTION GROUPS OF THE EIP ON AHA

The Strategic Implementation Plan of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) proposed six Action Groups. After almost three years of activity, many achievements have been obtained through commitments or collaborative work of the Action Groups. However, they have often worked in silos and, consequently, synergies between Action Groups have been proposed to strengthen the triple win of the EIP on AHA. The paper presents the methodology and current status of the Task Force on EIP on AHA synergies. Synergies are in line with the Action Groups' new Renovated Action Plan (2016-2018) to ensure that their future objectives are coherent and fully connected. The outcomes and impact of synergies are using the Monitoring and Assessment Framework for the EIP on AHA (MAFEIP). Eight proposals for synergies have been approved by the Task Force: Five cross-cutting synergies which can be used for all current and future synergies as they consider overarching domains (appropriate polypharmacy, citizen empowerment, teaching and coaching on AHA, deployment of synergies to EU regions, Responsible Research and Innovation), and three cross-cutting synergies focussing on current Action Group activities (falls, frailty, integrated care and chronic respiratory diseases).Peer reviewe

Testing the Effect of Relative Pollen Productivity on the REVEALS Model: A Validated Reconstruction of Europe-Wide Holocene Vegetation

Reliable quantitative vegetation reconstructions for Europe during the Holocene are crucial to improving our understanding of landscape dynamics, making it possible to assess the past effects of environmental variables and land-use change on ecosystems and biodiversity, and mitigating their effects in the future. We present here the most spatially extensive and temporally continuous pollen-based reconstructions of plant cover in Europe (at a spatial resolution of 1 degrees x 1 degrees) over the Holocene (last 11.7 ka BP) using the 'Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites' (REVEALS) model. This study has three main aims. First, to present the most accurate and reliable generation of REVEALS reconstructions across Europe so far. This has been achieved by including a larger number of pollen records compared to former analyses, in particular from the Mediterranean area. Second, to discuss methodological issues in the quantification of past land cover by using alternative datasets of relative pollen productivities (RPPs), one of the key input parameters of REVEALS, to test model sensitivity. Finally, to validate our reconstructions with the global forest change dataset. The results suggest that the RPPs.st1 (31 taxa) dataset is best suited to producing regional vegetation cover estimates for Europe. These reconstructions offer a long-term perspective providing unique possibilities to explore spatial-temporal changes in past land cover and biodiversity

Erratum: Constraints on dark matter-nucleon effective couplings in the presence of kinematically distinct halo substructures using the DEAP-3600 detector (Physical Review D (2020) 102 (082001) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.102.082001)

In the article, the Non-Relativistic Effective Field Theory (NREFT) rate calculations were determined using the wimpy_nreft software [1], which was updated on September 29, 2021, to include a previously missing (q/mN)2 factor in the implementation. This update affects the results related to the O3 operator that now scales as (q/mN)4 instead of (q/mN)2. The corrections to Figs. 2, 6, 9, 10, and 11 are presented below. The couplings to O3 constrained by this analysis are higher than those reported in the article. Additionally: (i) In Sec. V A, operator O3 is suppressed at low recoil energies, exhibiting now a peak around 50 keV (Fig. 2). (ii) The third paragraph in Sec. V B should read as follows: “The operator O3 is proportional to (q/mN)4, while O11 goes as (q/mN)2. O3 is described by the F'' multipole operator [discussed in Eqs. (9) and (10)], while O11 is described by M. Since the former operator is related to spin-orbit coupling, it couples to the two unpaired neutrons and proton holes in 40 Ar , rather than to all 40 nucleons. This leads to a suppression of ~10 2 in addition to the extra q2 suppression.” (iii) In Sec. V F, the statement “Operators that introduce a factor of q2 to the DM response function, such as O3, O5, and O11 change the shape of the recoil energy spectrum, compared to O1” should read “Operators that introduce a factor of q2 or q4 to the DM response function, such as O3, O5, and O11 change the shape of the recoil energy spectrum, compared to O1.” (iv) The sentence in Sec. VI “Constraints on operators proportional to v? are weaker than those proportional to q, which are weaker than those proportional to neither” should read “Constraints on operators proportional to vn? are weaker than those proportional to q raised to the same power, which in turn are weaker than constant couplings.” (v) In Sec. VI, exclusion curves on O3 and data to reproduce its recoil energy spectra were uploaded to a new Zenodo version [2]. (Figure Presented)

Building Bridges for Innovation in Ageing : Synergies between Action Groups of the EIP on AHA

The Strategic Implementation Plan of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) proposed six Action Groups. After almost three years of activity, many achievements have been obtained through commitments or collaborative work of the Action Groups. However, they have often worked in silos and, consequently, synergies between Action Groups have been proposed to strengthen the triple win of the EIP on AHA. The paper presents the methodology and current status of the Task Force on EIP on AHA synergies. Synergies are in line with the Action Groups' new Renovated Action Plan (2016-2018) to ensure that their future objectives are coherent and fully connected. The outcomes and impact of synergies are using the Monitoring and Assessment Framework for the EIP on AHA (MAFEIP). Eight proposals for synergies have been approved by the Task Force: Five cross-cutting synergies which can be used for all current and future synergies as they consider overarching domains (appropriate polypharmacy, citizen empowerment, teaching and coaching on AHA, deployment of synergies to EU regions, Responsible Research and Innovation), and three cross-cutting synergies focussing on current Action Group activities (falls, frailty, integrated care and chronic respiratory diseases)