The soil and plant biogeochemistry sampling design for The National Ecological Observatory Network

Human impacts on biogeochemical cycles are evident around the world, from changes to forest structure and function due to atmospheric deposition, to eutrophication of surface waters from agricultural effluent, and increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will contribute to understanding human effects on biogeochemical cycles from local to continental scales. The broad NEON biogeochemistry measurement design focuses on measuring atmospheric deposition of reactive mineral compounds and CO2 fluxes, ecosystem carbon (C) and nutrient stocks, and surface water chemistry across 20 eco‐climatic domains within the United States for 30 yr. Herein, we present the rationale and plan for the ground‐based measurements of C and nutrients in soils and plants based on overarching or “high‐level” requirements agreed upon by the National Science Foundation and NEON. The resulting design incorporates early recommendations by expert review teams, as well as recent input from the larger natural sciences community that went into the formation and interpretation of the requirements, respectively. NEON\u27s efforts will focus on a suite of data streams that will enable end‐users to study and predict changes to biogeochemical cycling and transfers within and across air, land, and water systems at regional to continental scales. At each NEON site, there will be an initial, one‐time effort to survey soil properties to 1 m (including soil texture, bulk density, pH, baseline chemistry) and vegetation community structure and diversity. A sampling program will follow, focused on capturing long‐term trends in soil C, nitrogen (N), and sulfur stocks, isotopic composition (of C and N), soil N transformation rates, phosphorus pools, and plant tissue chemistry and isotopic composition (of C and N). To this end, NEON will conduct extensive measurements of soils and plants within stratified random plots distributed across each site. The resulting data will be a new resource for members of the scientific community interested in addressing questions about long‐term changes in continental‐scale biogeochemical cycles, and is predicted to inspire further process‐based research

A world of cobenefits : solving the global nitrogen challenge

Houlton, Benjamin Z. University of California. John Muir Institute of the Environment. Davis, CA, USA.Houlton, Benjamin Z. University of California. Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. Davis, CA, USA.Almaraz, Maya. University of California. Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. Davis, CA, USA.Aneja, Viney. North Carolina State University at Raleigh. Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences. Raleigh, NC, USA.Austin, Amy T. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA). Buenos Aires, Argentina.Austin, Amy T. CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiológicas y Ecológicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura (IFEVA). Buenos Aires, Argentina.Bai, Edith. Chinese Academy of Sciences. Institute of Applied Ecology. CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management. Shenyang, China.Bai, Edith. Northeast Normal University. School of Geographical Sciences. Changchun, China.Cassman, Kenneth. University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. Lincoln. NE, USA.Compton, Jana E. Environmental Protection Agency. Western Ecology Division. Washington, DC, USA.Davidson, Eric A. University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Appalachian Laboratory. Cambridge, MD, USA.865-872Nitrogen is a critical component of the economy, food security, and planetary health. Many of the world's sustainability targets hinge on global nitrogen solutions, which, in turn, contribute lasting benefits for (i) world hunger; (ii) soil, air, and water quality; (iii) climate change mitigation; and (iv) biodiversity conservation. Balancing the projected rise in agricultural nitrogen demands while achieving these 21st century ideals will require policies to coordinate solutions among technologies, consumer choice, and socioeconomic transformation

Recommended Actions for Improved Care Transitions: Mental Ilnesses and/or Substance Use Disorders

The transition period between care settings is the most vulnerable time for patients and their caregivers. The unique vulnerabilities for patients with mental illnesses such as depression, mania, anxiety, schizophrenia and/or substance use disorders* heighten the need for coordinated transitions and aftercare. In 2010, depression was the fourth diagnosis by volume for readmissions in Minnesota according to the Potentially Preventable Readmissions data collected by the Minnesota Hospital Association

Prevalence of Disorders Recorded in Dogs Attending Primary-Care Veterinary Practices in England

Purebred dog health is thought to be compromised by an increasing occurence of inherited diseases but inadequate prevalence data on common disorders have hampered efforts to prioritise health reforms. Analysis of primary veterinary practice clinical data has been proposed for reliable estimation of disorder prevalence in dogs. Electronic patient record (EPR) data were collected on 148,741 dogs attending 93 clinics across central and south-eastern England. Analysis in detail of a random sample of EPRs relating to 3,884 dogs from 89 clinics identified the most frequently recorded disorders as otitis externa (prevalence 10.2%, 95% CI: 9.1-11.3), periodontal disease (9.3%, 95% CI: 8.3-10.3) and anal sac impaction (7.1%, 95% CI: 6.1-8.1). Using syndromic classification, the most prevalent body location affected was the head-and-neck (32.8%, 95% CI: 30.7-34.9), the most prevalent organ system affected was the integument (36.3%, 95% CI: 33.9-38.6) and the most prevalent pathophysiologic process diagnosed was inflammation (32.1%, 95% CI: 29.8-34.3). Among the twenty most-frequently recorded disorders, purebred dogs had a significantly higher prevalence compared with crossbreds for three: otitis externa (P = 0.001), obesity (P = 0.006) and skin mass lesion (P = 0.033), and popular breeds differed significantly from each other in their prevalence for five: periodontal disease (P = 0.002), overgrown nails (P = 0.004), degenerative joint disease (P = 0.005), obesity (P = 0.001) and lipoma (P = 0.003). These results fill a crucial data gap in disorder prevalence information and assist with disorder prioritisation. The results suggest that, for maximal impact, breeding reforms should target commonly-diagnosed complex disorders that are amenable to genetic improvement and should place special focus on at-risk breeds. Future studies evaluating disorder severity and duration will augment the usefulness of the disorder prevalence information reported herein

Foliar δ15N values characterize soil N cycling and reflect nitrate or ammonium preference of plants along a temperate grassland gradient

The natural abundance of stable 15N isotopes in soils and plants is potentially a simple tool to assess ecosystem N dynamics. Several open questions remain, however, in particular regarding the mechanisms driving the variability of foliar δ15N values of non-N2 fixing plants within and across ecosystems. The goal of the work presented here was therefore to: (1) characterize the relationship between soil net mineralization and variability of foliar Δδ15N (δ15Nleaf − δ15Nsoil) values from 20 different plant species within and across 18 grassland sites; (2) to determine in situ if a plant’s preference for NO3− or NH4+ uptake explains variability in foliar Δδ15N among different plant species within an ecosystem; and (3) test if variability in foliar Δδ15N among species or functional group is consistent across 18 grassland sites. Δδ15N values of the 20 different plant species were positively related to soil net mineralization rates across the 18 sites. We found that within a site, foliar Δδ15N values increased with the species’ NO3− to NH4+ uptake ratios. Interestingly, the slope of this relationship differed in direction from previously published studies. Finally, the variability in foliar Δδ15N values among species was not consistent across 18 grassland sites but was significantly influenced by N mineralization rates and the abundance of a particular species in a site. Our findings improve the mechanistic understanding of the commonly observed variability in foliar Δδ15N among different plant species. In particular we were able to show that within a site, foliar δ15N values nicely reflect a plant’s N source but that the direction of the relationship between NO3− to NH4+ uptake and foliar Δδ15N values is not universal. Using a large set of data, our study highlights that foliar Δδ15N values are valuable tools to assess plant N uptake patterns and to characterize the soil N cycle across different ecosystems

A World of Cobenefits: Solving the Global Nitrogen Challenge

Nitrogen is a critical component of the economy, food security, and planetary health. Many of the world\u27s sustainability targets hinge on global nitrogen solutions, which, in turn, contribute lasting benefits for (i) world hunger; (ii) soil, air, and water quality; (iii) climate change mitigation; and (iv) biodiversity conservation. Balancing the projected rise in agricultural nitrogen demands while achieving these 21st century ideals will require policies to coordinate solutions among technologies, consumer choice, and socioeconomic transformation

Quantitative assessment of the expanding complementarity between public and commercial databases of bioactive compounds

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since 2004 public cheminformatic databases and their collective functionality for exploring relationships between compounds, protein sequences, literature and assay data have advanced dramatically. In parallel, commercial sources that extract and curate such relationships from journals and patents have also been expanding. This work updates a previous comparative study of databases chosen because of their bioactive content, availability of downloads and facility to select informative subsets.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Where they could be calculated, extracted compounds-per-journal article were in the range of 12 to 19 but compound-per-protein counts increased with document numbers. Chemical structure filtration to facilitate standardised comparisons typically reduced source counts by between 5% and 30%. The pair-wise overlaps between 23 databases and subsets were determined, as well as changes between 2006 and 2008. While all compound sets have increased, PubChem has doubled to 14.2 million. The 2008 comparison matrix shows not only overlap but also unique content across all sources. Many of the detailed differences could be attributed to individual strategies for data selection and extraction. While there was a big increase in patent-derived structures entering PubChem since 2006, GVKBIO contains over 0.8 million unique structures from this source. Venn diagrams showed extensive overlap between compounds extracted by independent expert curation from journals by GVKBIO, WOMBAT (both commercial) and BindingDB (public) but each included unique content. In contrast, the approved drug collections from GVKBIO, MDDR (commercial) and DrugBank (public) showed surprisingly low overlap. Aggregating all commercial sources established that while 1 million compounds overlapped with PubChem 1.2 million did not.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>On the basis of chemical structure content <it>per se </it>public sources have covered an increasing proportion of commercial databases over the last two years. However, commercial products included in this study provide links between compounds and information from patents and journals at a larger scale than current public efforts. They also continue to capture a significant proportion of unique content. Our results thus demonstrate not only an encouraging overall expansion of data-supported bioactive chemical space but also that both commercial and public sources are complementary for its exploration.</p