Scars of War

Scars of War: The Psychological and Physical Traumas of War Depicted through Art.War is shattering, leaving behind gaping wounds in need of healing. Some require bandages, other wounds are psychological and not visible. Both leave a scar. These scars are an inevitable part of the human experience. The psychological and physical ramifications of war exist as long as strife pervades. This collection of works, depicting war from the French Revolution to present day Iraq, illustrates the scarring impact war has on the people and places within its grasp. New technology and art styles have transformed the way we see the world. We go from plate etchings in the earliest works to works responding to the impact of televised images during the Vietnam War, and photographs and abstract art responding to the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Regardless of what way artists choose to depict war, war remains heartbreaking, psychologically and physically destructive, leaving an imprint on the world around us

Dynamics of the Benthic Communities of Pigeon Islets (Guadeloupe Island, Lesser Antilles) from 2012 to 2021 Monitored by a Photo-Quadrats Technique

Since 2012, the benthic communities of the Pigeon Islets (Guadeloupe Island, Lesser Antilles) have been monitored biannually by the National Park of Guadeloupe using photo—quadrats. This monitoring was carried out at 12 coral reef stations distributed around the islets. The data collected from 2012 to 2021 highlight the significant events that disrupted the coral communities of Guadeloupe. Among these remarkable phenomena, an episode of coral bleaching occurred in 2019, followed by the appearance of a new coral disease, Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD), in 2020. As a result of these threats, a drop of 54% of coral cover was observed in the monitored sites, accompanied by a rise of 16% of the surface occupied by macroalgae. The protocol set up by the National Park of Guadeloupe was found to be efficient to follow the temporal dynamics of benthic reef communities

Resilience trinity: safeguarding ecosystem functioning and services across three different time horizons and decision contexts

Ensuring ecosystem resilience is an intuitive approach to safeguard the functioning of ecosystems and hence the future provisioning of ecosystem services (ES). However, resilience is a multi‐faceted concept that is difficult to operationalize. Focusing on resilience mechanisms, such as diversity, network architectures or adaptive capacity, has recently been suggested as means to operationalize resilience. Still, the focus on mechanisms is not specific enough. We suggest a conceptual framework, resilience trinity, to facilitate management based on resilience mechanisms in three distinctive decision contexts and time‐horizons: 1) reactive, when there is an imminent threat to ES resilience and a high pressure to act, 2) adjustive, when the threat is known in general but there is still time to adapt management and 3) provident, when time horizons are very long and the nature of the threats is uncertain, leading to a low willingness to act. Resilience has different interpretations and implications at these different time horizons, which also prevail in different disciplines. Social ecology, ecology and engineering are often implicitly focussing on provident, adjustive or reactive resilience, respectively, but these different notions of resilience and their corresponding social, ecological and economic tradeoffs need to be reconciled. Otherwise, we keep risking unintended consequences of reactive actions, or shying away from provident action because of uncertainties that cannot be reduced. The suggested trinity of time horizons and their decision contexts could help ensuring that longer‐term management actions are not missed while urgent threats to ES are given priority

Passive immune transfer in puppies

Le chiot nait presque agammaglobulinémique. Il acquiert une immunité passive systémique grâce au colostrum au cours des deux premiers jours de vie, La qualité du transfert d’immunité passive (appréciée par la concentration circulante des IgG à deux jours de vie) a un impact sur la santé du chiot et sur son taux de mortalité (multiplié par neuf en cas de déficit de transfert) mais interfère avec l’efficacité vaccinale. Elle est très variable entre portées ainsi qu’entre les chiots d’une même portée. La concentration des IgG du colostrum semble avoir peu d’impact sur la qualité du transfert de l’immunité passive. Ce transfert dépend davantage du délai écoulé entre la naissance et l’ingestion du colostrum du fait, du côté maternel, de la détérioration rapide de la qualité immunologique du colostrum (qui chute de plus de 50% au cours des 24 premières heures post partum) et du côté du nouveau-né, de la fermeture de la barrière intestinale (la perméabilité de l’intestin du chiot aux IgG diminue de moitié toutes les quatre heures pour devenir nulle au-delà de 12 heures de vie). L’activité sérique des gammaglutamyltranférases permet le diagnostic du déficit de transfert d’immunité passive (sensibilité : 87,5% ; spécificité : 80%). Ce déficit peut également être diagnostiqué par le calcul du taux de croissance entre la naissance et l’âge de deux jours (sensibilité : 96,3% ; spécificité : 83,1%). En l’absence de colostrum, peu de solutions sont disponibles pour faire acquérir un transfert d’immunité adéquat : la constitution d’une banque de colostrum est la solution optimale. Outre le transfert d’immunité systémique, les anticorps maternels (principalement les IgA) assurent une immunité locale, digestive dont les rôles à moyen terme pour la protection du chiot contre les entéropathogènes et, à long terme dans l’éduction du système immunitaire digestif, restent à explorer.The puppy, born without immunoglobulins G (IgG), acquires a passive systemic immunity thanks to colostrum during the two first days of life. The quality of passive immune transfer (i.e. blood IgG concentration at two days of age) impacts puppy’s health and its mortality rate but interferes with response to vaccination. It is highly variable between litters and between puppies within litters. Colostrum IgG concentration is of very limited influence on passive immune transfer, which rather depends on the time elapsed between birth and ingestion of colostrum. Deficit in passive immune transfer can be diagnosed through blood gammaglutamyltranferases assay and growth rate over the two first days of life. Colostrum banking is the optimal solution for orphan puppies. In addition to systemic passive immune transfer, maternal antibodies (mainly IgA) would provide local (digestive) immunity, ensuring mid-term protection of the puppies gut together with probably long term training of the digestive immune system

Study on due diligence requirements through the supply chain. Part I, Synthesis report

The aim of the study is: - to provide a detailed examination of the existing regulation and proposals for due diligence in companies’ own operations and through the supply chain for adverse human rights and environmental impacts, including relating to climate change; - to develop and assess regulatory options,including the possibility of introducing due diligence requirements as a legal duty of care at the European level, as well as the initial perceptions of stakeholders relating to possible regulatory options. This is an initial study for the possible development of regulatory options at the EU level. The definitions for the purposes of this study are set out in detail in the full report.publishe

Study on due diligence requirements through the supply chain : FINAL REPORT [Country Reports were authored by Lia Heasman (Denmark, Finland and Sweden)]

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Causes and consequences of dispersal in biodiverse spatially structured systems: what is old and what is new?

Dispersal is a well recognized driver of ecological and evolutionary dynamics, and simultaneously an evolving trait. Dispersal evolution has traditionally been studied in single-species metapopulations so that it remains unclear how dispersal evolves in spatially structured communities and food webs. Since most natural systems are biodiverse and spatially structured, and thus affected by dispersal and its evolution, this knowledge gap should be bridged. Here we discuss whether knowledge established in single-species systems holds in spatially structured multispecies systems and highlight generally valid and fundamental principles. Most biotic interactions form the ecological theatre for the evolutionary dispersal play because interactions mediate patterns of fitness expectations in space and time. While this allows for a simple transposition of certain known drivers to a multispecies context, other drivers may require more complex transpositions, or might not be transferred. We discuss an important quantitative modulator of dispersal evolution in the increased trait dimensionality of biodiverse meta-systems and an additional driver in co-dispersal. We speculate that scale and selection pressure mismatches due to co-dispersal, together with increased trait dimensionality may lead to slower and more "diffuse" evolution in biodiverse meta-systems. Open questions and potential consequences in both ecological and evolutionary terms call for more investigation