Probable changes in lake chemistry in Canada's Atlantic Provinces under proposed North American emission reductions

International audienceAtlantic Canada, located in the extreme north-eastern portion of North America, receives acid precipitation from all major acid emission sources on the eastern part of the continent. The region was glaciated and has thin soils over a generally poorly acid buffering bedrock. Because of regional topography, large groupings of lakes occur in a number of regions. Environment Canada and the Government of New Brunswick have operated lake sampling networks in trend detection studies and have concentrated their work on these lake groupings. The MAGIC model has been applied to these lakes and their catchments to see: a) what initial water chemistry conditions existed before acidification began, b) what the chemistry was like during the worst of regional acid deposition, and c) what it would be like under deposition conditions predicted for new Canadian and US emission reduction proposals. While pH, sulphate, acid neutralisation capacity (ANC) and the sum of the base cations (SBC) of all lakes have been significantly affected by acid deposition, water chemistry conditions are now considerably better than they were in 1975, at the worst of the deposition. However, a 50% reduction in acid deposition from Year 2000 deposition amounts will not return water chemistry to original conditions in most of the region. Keywords: Atlantic Canada, monitoring networks, acidification, predictions, MAGI

Facilitating the Voice of Adolescents in Hospitals Through Art: A Case Report

Adolescence can be a challenging time, but even more so when diagnosed with a serious or chronic illness. Starlight Children's Foundation established the Livewire program after recognizing the unique needs of adolescents in hospitals. This article describes our experience of implementing an art-based project within the Livewire program, designed to facilitate the voice of adolescents with a serious or chronic illness and their siblings. We invited young people across Australia to contribute their artwork which would be used as the design for a deck of playing cards. The final 54 cards were a creative reflection of the unique interests, personalities, and experiences of 45 young people. In this article, we also share the experiences of two young people who contributed to this project. We conclude with our learnings in delivering an art-based project for young people that is not presented directly as “therapy”

Glastir Monitoring & Evaluation Programme. Second year annual report

What is the purpose of Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme? Glastir is the main scheme by which the Welsh Government pays for environmental goods and services whilst the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (GMEP) evaluates the scheme’s success. Commissioning of the monitoring programme in parallel with the launch of the Glastir scheme provides fast feedback and means payments can be modified to increase effectiveness. The Glastir scheme is jointly funded by the Welsh Government (through the Rural Development Plan) and the EU. GMEP will also support a wide range of other national and international reporting requirements. What is the GMEP approach? GMEP collects evidence for the 6 intended outcomes from the Glastir scheme which are focussed on climate change, water and soil quality, biodiversity, landscape, access and historic environment, woodland creation and management. Activities include; a national rolling monitoring programme of 1km squares; new analysis of long term data from other schemes combining with GMEP data where possible; modelling to estimate future outcomes so that adjustments can be made to maximise impact of payments; surveys to assess wider socio-economic benefits; and development of novel technologies to increase detection and efficiency of future assessments. How has GMEP progressed in this 2nd year? 90 GMEP squares were surveyed in Year 2 to add to the 60 completed in Year 1 resulting in 50% of the 300 GMEP survey squares now being completed. Squares will be revisited on a 4 year cycle providing evidence of change in response to Glastir and other pressures such as changing economics of the farm business, climate change and air pollution. This first survey cycle collects the baseline against which future changes will be assessed. This is important as GMEP work this year has demonstrated land coming into the scheme is different in some respects to land outside the scheme. Therefore, future analysis to detect impact of Glastir will be made both against the national backdrop from land outside the scheme and this baseline data from land in scheme. A wide range of analyses of longterm data has been completed for all Glastir Outcomes with the exception of landscape quality and historic features condition for which limited data is available. This has involved combining data with 2013/14 GMEP data when methods allow. Overall analysis of long term data indicates one of stability but with little evidence of improvement with the exception of headwater quality, greenhouse gas emissions and woodland area for which there has been improvement over the last 20 years. Some headline statistics include: 51% of historic features in excellent or sound condition; two thirds of public rights of way fully open and accessible; improvement in hedgerow management with 85% surveyed cut in the last 3 years but < 1% recently planted; 91% of streams had some level of modification but 60% retained good ecological quality; no change topsoil carbon content over last 25 years. What is innovative? GMEP has developed various new metrics to allow for more streamlined reporting in the future. For example a new Priority Bird species Index for Wales which combines data from 35 species indicates at least half have stable or increasing populations. The new GMEP Visual Quality Landscape Index has been tested involving over 2600 respondents. Results have demonstrated its value as an objective and repeatable method for quantifying change in visual landscape quality. A new unified peat map for Wales has been developed which has been passed to Glastir Contract Managers to improve targeting of payments when negotiating Glastir contracts. An estimate of peat soil contribution to current greenhouse gas emissions due to human modification has been calculated. Models have allowed quantification of land area helping to mitigate rainfall runoff. We are using new molecular tools to explore the effects of Glastir on soil organisms and satellite technologies to quantify e.g. small woody features and landcover change. Finally we are using a community approach to develop a consensus on how to define and report change in High Nature Value Farmland which will be reported in the Year 3 GMEP report

Comparison of the oxidative reactivity of recombinant fetal and adult human hemoglobin: implications for the design of hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers.

Hemoglobin based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) have been engineered to replace or augment the oxygen carrying capacity of erythrocytes. However, clinical results have generally been disappointing due, in part due to the intrinsic oxidative toxicity of hemoglobin. The most common HBOC starting material is adult human or bovine hemoglobin. However, it has been suggested that fetal hemoglobin may offer advantages due to decreased oxidative reactivity. Large scale manufacturing of a HBOC will likely ultimately require recombinant sources of human proteins. We therefore directly compared the functional properties and oxidative reactivity of recombinant fetal (rHbF) and recombinant adult (rHbA) hemoglobin. rHbA and rHbF produced similar yields of purified functional protein. No differences were seen in the two proteins in: autoxidation rate; the rate of hydrogen peroxide reaction; NO scavenging dioxygenase activity; and the NO producing nitrite reductase activity. The rHbF protein was: less damaged by low levels of hydrogen peroxide; less damaging when added to human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) in the ferric form; and had a slower rate of intrinsic heme loss. The rHbA protein was: more readily reducible by plasma antioxidants such as ascorbate in both the reactive ferryl and ferric states; less readily damaged by lipid peroxides; and less damaging to phosphatidylcholine liposomes. In conclusion in terms of oxidative reactivity there are advantages and disadvantages to the use of recombinant adult or fetal Hb as the basis for an effective HBOC

A Helitron transposon reconstructed from bats reveals a novel mechanism of genome shuffling in eukaryotes

Helitron transposons capture and mobilize gene fragments in eukaryotes, but experimental evidence for their transposition is lacking in the absence of an isolated active element. Here we reconstruct Helraiser, an ancient element from the bat genome, and use this transposon as an experimental tool to unravel the mechanism of Helitron transposition. A hairpin close to the 3'-end of the transposon functions as a transposition terminator. However, the 3'-end can be bypassed by the transposase, resulting in transduction of flanking sequences to new genomic locations. Helraiser transposition generates covalently closed circular intermediates, suggestive of a replicative transposition mechanism, which provides a powerful means to disseminate captured transcriptional regulatory signals across the genome. Indeed, we document the generation of novel transcripts by Helitron promoter capture both experimentally and by transcriptome analysis in bats. Our results provide mechanistic insight into Helitron transposition, and its impact on diversification of gene function by genome shuffling

Brain function and clinical characterization in the Boston adolescent neuroimaging of depression and anxiety study

We present a Human Connectome Project study tailored toward adolescent anxiety and depression. This study is one of the first studies of the Connectomes Related to Human Diseases initiative and is collecting structural, functional, and diffusion-weighted brain imaging data from up to 225 adolescents (ages 14–17 years), 150 of whom are expected to have a current diagnosis of an anxiety and/or depressive disorder. Comprehensive clinical and neuropsychological evaluations and long-itudinal clinical data are also being collected. This article provides an overview of task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) protocols and preliminary findings (N = 140), as well as clinical and neuropsychological characterization of adolescents. Data collection is ongoing for an additional 85 adolescents, most of whom are expected to have a diagnosis of an anxiety and/or depressive disorder. Data from the first 140 adolescents are projected for public release through the National Institutes of Health Data Archive (NDA) with the timing of this manuscript. All other data will be made publicly-available through the NDA at regularly scheduled intervals. This article is intended to serve as an introduction to this project as well as a reference for those seeking to clinical, neurocognitive, and task fMRI data from this public resource

Topsoil porosity prediction across habitats at large scales using environmental variables

Soil porosity and its reciprocal bulk density are important environmental state variables that enable modelers to represent hydraulic function and carbon storage. Biotic effects and their ‘dynamic’ influence on such state variables remain largely unknown for larger scales and may result in important, yet poorly quantified environmental feedbacks. Existing representation of hydraulic function is often invariant to environmental change and may be poor in some systems, particularly non-arable soils. Here we assess predictors of total porosity across two comprehensive national topsoil (0-15 cm) data sets, covering the full range of soil organic matter (SOM) and habitats (n = 1385 & n = 2570), using generalized additive mixed models and machine learning. Novel aspects of this work include the testing of metrics on aggregate size and livestock density alongside a range of different particle size distribution metrics. We demonstrate that porosity trends in Great Britain are dominated by biotic metrics, soil carbon and land use. Incorporating these variables into porosity prediction improves performance, paving the way for new dynamic calculation of porosity using surrogate measures with remote sensing, which may help improve prediction in data sparse regions of the world. Moreover, dynamic calculation of porosity could support representation of feedbacks in environmental and Earth System Models. Representing the hydrological feedbacks from changes in structural porosity also requires data and models at appropriate spatial scales to capture conditions leading to near-saturated soil conditions

First signs that national cropland organic carbon loss is reversing in British topsoils

High rates of soil organic carbon (SOC) loss from cropland soils are well known, contributing to climate change and compromising soil and ecosystem health. Stabilising and reversing the loss of organic matter from cropland soils is a challenge for all nations to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainable land management (SLM) has been promoted as a mechanism of achieving this, but to date, there is no evidence of positive impacts at scale. Here we show the first signs of the reversal of soil carbon loss in cultivated topsoils in Great Britain, following a period of reported SLM uptake, using 40+ years of national soil monitoring from the UKCEH Countryside Survey. Following a prolonged historic decline at rates of −0.16 t ha −1 year −1 , there was a significant increase in cropland topsoil SOC stocks (0–15 cm) from 2007 to 2019–22 with an accrual rate of 0.17 t ha −1 year −1 , approximately 0.74 MtC year −1 nationally. We discuss reported management shifts in Great Britain in the corresponding period and identify a reduction in conventional tillage and reduced straw removal as potential drivers, but highlight additional evidence gaps worthy of consideration. This increase in topsoil SOC may represent net carbon sequestration or carbon redistribution (geographic or vertical) but nevertheless demonstrates that topsoil properties can be restored at scale and offers hope that a concerted effort by land managers can halt, and potentially reverse, SOC loss from cropland soils

A domesticated harbinger transposase forms a complex with HDA6 and promotes histone H3 deacetylation at genes but not TEs in Arabidopsis

In eukaryotes, histone acetylation is a major modification on histone N‐terminal tails that is tightly connected to transcriptional activation. HDA6 is a histone deacetylase involved in the transcriptional regulation of genes and transposable elements (TEs) in Arabidopsis thaliana. HDA6 has been shown to participate in several complexes in plants, including a conserved SIN3 complex. Here, we uncover a novel protein complex containing HDA6, several Harbinger transposon‐derived proteins (HHP1, SANT1, SANT2, SANT3, and SANT4), and MBD domain‐containing proteins (MBD1, MBD2, and MBD4). We show that mutations of all four SANT genes in the sant‐null mutant cause increased expression of the flowering repressors FLC , MAF4 , and MAF5 , resulting in a late flowering phenotype. Transcriptome deep sequencing reveals that while the SANT proteins and HDA6 regulate the expression of largely overlapping sets of genes, TE silencing is unaffected in sant‐null mutants. Our global histone H3 acetylation profiling shows that SANT proteins and HDA6 modulate gene expression through deacetylation. Collectively, our findings suggest that Harbinger transposon‐derived SANT domain‐containing proteins are required for histone deacetylation and flowering time control in plants

Environment and Rural Affairs Monitoring & Modelling Programme – ERAMMP Year 1 Report 12: ‘Quick Start’ Modelling (Phase 1)

The potential impact of Brexit on the farming sector and wider environment is just one of the many challenges facing the Welsh Government. There are a range of decision and modelling tools which can be used to explore potential outcomes and the areas at risk where the environmental regulatory floor needs to be enhanced or social transition programmes put in place. The same tools can also be used to explore a range of ‘what if’ scenarios for different land management options which could be included in new Payment for Ecosystem Service (PES) schemes or in national land management payment schemes to replace CAP. To meet this challenge in Wales, a partnership between the Welsh Government, their stakeholders and a consortium of research organisations led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) was formed. This partnership, called ERAMMP, (https://erammp.wales/en) combined expert knowledge and a range of decision and modelling tools to examine potential changes in agricultural land use that might result from Brexit, and to explore potential benefits of new land management options