Toward a Sustainable Marketplace: Expanding Options and Benefits for Consumers

While popular interest in sustainable consumption continues to grow, there is a persistent gap between consumers’ typically positive explicit attitudes towards sustainability and their actual consumption behaviours. This gap can be explained, in part, by the belief that choosing to consume sustainably is both constraining and reduces individual-level benefits. While the belief that sustainable consumption depends on making trade-offs is true in some contexts, increasingly consumers are finding that more sustainable forms of consumption can provide both an expanded set of options and additional, individual-level benefits. In this essay, we discuss and illustrate an expanded set of options and benefits across the consumption cycle: from acquisition to usage and disposition. An underlying theme is the separation of material ownership from the extraction of consumer benefits across the consumption cycle. We believe that this ongoing evolution of products - and even business models - has the potential to simultaneously increase value to consumers as well as speed progress towards a more sustainable marketplace

Infection Risk Potential of South American Spongospora subterranea f.sp. subterranea Root Gall and Tuber Lesion Inoculum on Potato ( Solanum tuberosum ssp. tuberosum )

Spongospora subterranea f. sp. subterranea causes the potato diseases powdery scab on tubers and galls on roots, and occurs in most potato production areas worldwide. The pathogen was probably introduced to Europe from South America in the 16th century. Three different genotype clusters have been found worldwide: the genetically variable groups from South America (native), and, in contrast, the nearly clonal group outside South America (invasive). An inoculation experiment was carried out with the long-day potato host ‘Agria' comparing three different native Spongospora resting spore inocula with an invasive one, to determine the infection risk potential on a widely grown potato subspecies. All inocula led to root infection. Invasive tuber lesion sporosori from ‘Agria' produced the greatest amount of infection, whereas the tuber lesion inoculum from the Venezuelan S. tuberosum ssp. tuberosum host and the root gall inoculum from the Colombian S. phureja host caused the least infections. The inoculum genotypes corresponded to all of the three previously described groups. Most root galls showed the invasive group type, independent of the inoculum. These results suggest that the most successful invasive genotype is still present in native pathogen populations and emphasize the need for continued quarantine vigilance to prevent new virulent recombinants of the pathogen

Infection Risk Potential of South American Spongospora subterranea f.sp. subterranea Root Gall and Tuber Lesion Inoculum on Potato (Solanum tuberosum ssp. tuberosum)

ISSN:1874-9380ISSN:0003-0589ISSN:1099-209

Multicore fiber optic imaging reveals that astrocyte calcium activity in the mouse cerebral cortex is modulated by internal motivational state.

Astrocytes are a direct target of neuromodulators and can influence neuronal activity on broad spatial and temporal scales in response to a rise in cytosolic calcium. However, our knowledge about how astrocytes are recruited during different animal behaviors remains limited. To measure astrocyte activity calcium in vivo during normative behaviors, we utilize a high-resolution, long working distance multicore fiber optic imaging system that allows visualization of individual astrocyte calcium transients in the cerebral cortex of freely moving mice. We define the spatiotemporal dynamics of astrocyte calcium changes during diverse behaviors, ranging from sleep-wake cycles to the exploration of novel objects, showing that their activity is more variable and less synchronous than apparent in head-immobilized imaging conditions. In accordance with their molecular diversity, individual astrocytes often exhibit distinct thresholds and activity patterns during explorative behaviors, allowing temporal encoding across the astrocyte network. Astrocyte calcium events were induced by noradrenergic and cholinergic systems and modulated by internal state. The distinct activity patterns exhibited by astrocytes provides a means to vary their neuromodulatory influence in different behavioral contexts and internal states

Number of <i>Spongospora subterranea</i> f.sp. <i>subterranea</i> samples collected, genotyped and sequenced, sorted by geographical region.

a<p>Number of root gall samples in brackets.</p

Pairwise estimates of <i>F_ST</i> between sampled regions (above diagonal) and corresponding p-values (below diagonal).

ns<p>non-significant after Bonferroni correction.</p

Inferred phylogeny of <i>Spongospora subterranea</i> f.sp. <i>subterranea</i> and other Plasmodiophorids.

<p>The evolutionary relationship of <i>Spongospora subterranea</i> f.sp. <i>subterranea</i> and other Plasmodiophorids was inferred using the Maximum Likelihood method on the concatenated ITS and <i>actin</i> sequences. The bootstrap consensus tree inferred from 500 replicates is taken to represent the evolutionary history of the taxa analyzed. Branches corresponding to partitions reproduced in less than 50% bootstrap replicates are collapsed. The tree is drawn to scale, with branch lengths measured in the number of substitutions per site. The number of samples possessing a particular haplotype is given in parenthesis. The underlined haplotypes were detected in the introduced regions Europe (EU), Africa (AF), Asia (AS), Australasia (AU), and North America (NA). tu, haplotypes detected from tuber lesions; ga, haplotypes detected from root galls. GeneBank accession numbers are given for the outgroup species.</p

Disease symptoms caused by, and life cycle stages of, <i>Spongospora subterrane</i> f.sp. <i>subterranea</i>.

<p>Disease symptoms on potato: a) powdery scab lesions. b) root galls. and life cycle stages of the pathogen: c) Sporosorus containing resting spores. d) Single, biflagellate primary zoospore. Bars = 5 µm. Pictures a) and b) taken by R. Lamberts.</p

Genetic diversity parameters of <i>Spongospora subterranea</i> f.sp. <i>subterranea</i> within the sampled regions, determined using six microsatellite markers.

a<p>N = Sample size.</p>b<p>cnum = Number of multilocus genotypes.</p>c<p>ssg = Site-specific genotypes; clones specific to a region and not shared with other regions.</p>d<p>cf = Clonal fraction; proportion of individual samples originating from asexual reproduction.</p>e<p>G = Nei’s corrected diversity (genotypic diversity).</p>f<p>H = Nei’s Gene Diversity.</p>g<p>I_A = Index of association to tests the null hypothesis of linkage equilibrium for multilocus data. Significance of deviation from equilibrium expectations are indicated by asterisks. *, p<0.05, **, p<0.01, ***, p<0.001; ns = non-significant; na = not enough diversity for estimation.</p