Different requirements of functional telomeres in neural stem cells and terminally differentiated neurons

Telomeres have been studied extensively in peripheral tissues, but their relevance in the nervous system remains poorly understood. Here, we examine the roles of telomeres at distinct stages of murine brain development by using lineage-specific genetic ablation of TRF2, an essential component of the shelterin complex that protects chromosome ends from the DNA damage response machinery. We found that functional telomeres are required for embryonic and adult neurogenesis, but their uncapping has surprisingly no detectable consequences on terminally differentiated neurons. Conditional knockout of TRF2 in post-mitotic immature neurons had virtually no detectable effect on circuit assembly, neuronal gene expression, and the behavior of adult animals despite triggering massive end-to-end chromosome fusions across the brain. These results suggest that telomeres are dispensable in terminally differentiated neurons and provide mechanistic insight into cognitive abnormalities associated with aberrant telomere length in humans

Synthesizing plausible futures for biodiversity and ecosystem services in Europe and Central Asia using scenario archetypes

Scenarios are a useful tool to explore possible futures of social-ecological systems. The number of scenarios has increased dramatically over recent decades, with a large diversity in temporal and spatial scales, purposes, themes, development methods, and content. Scenario archetypes generically describe future developments and can be useful in meaningfully classifying scenarios, structuring and summarizing the overwhelming amount of information, and enabling scientific outputs to more effectively interface with decision-making frameworks. The Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) faced this challenge and used scenario archetypes in its assessment of future interactions between nature and society. We describe the use of scenario archetypes in the IPBES Regional Assessment of Europe and Central Asia. Six scenario archetypes for the region are described in terms of their driver assumptions and impacts on nature (including biodiversity) and its contributions to people (including ecosystem services): business-as-usual, economic optimism, regional competition, regional sustainability, global sustainable development, and inequality. The analysis shows that trade-offs between nature’s contributions to people are projected under different scenario archetypes. However, the means of resolving these trade-offs depend on differing political and societal value judgements within each scenario archetype. Scenarios that include proactive decision making on environmental issues, environmental management approaches that support multifunctionality, and mainstreaming environmental issues across sectors, are generally more successful in mitigating trade-offs than isolated environmental policies. Furthermore, those scenario archetypes that focus on achieving a balanced supply of nature’s contributions to people and that incorporate a diversity of values are estimated to achieve more policy goals and targets, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi targets. The scenario archetypes approach is shown to be helpful in supporting science-policy dialogue for proactive decision making that anticipates change, mitigates undesirable trade-offs, and fosters societal transformation in pursuit of sustainable development

Intercomparison of regional-scale hydrological models and climate change impacts projected for 12 large river basins worldwide—a synthesis

An intercomparison of climate change impacts projected by nine regional-scale hydrological models for 12 large river basins on all continents was performed, and sources of uncertainty were quantified in the framework of the ISIMIP project. The models ECOMAG, HBV, HYMOD, HYPE, mHM, SWAT, SWIM, VIC and WaterGAP3 were applied in the following basins: Rhine and Tagus in Europe, Niger and Blue Nile in Africa, Ganges, Lena, Upper Yellow and Upper Yangtze in Asia, Upper Mississippi, MacKenzie and Upper Amazon in America, and Darling in Australia. The model calibration and validation was done using WATCH climate data for the period 1971–2000. The results, evaluated with 14 criteria, are mostly satisfactory, except for the low flow. Climate change impacts were analyzed using projections from five global climate models under four representative concentration pathways. Trends in the period 2070–2099 in relation to the reference period 1975–2004 were evaluated for three variables: the long-term mean annual flow and high and low flow percentiles Q10 and Q90, as well as for flows in three months high- and low-flow periods denoted as HF and LF. For three river basins: the Lena, MacKenzie and Tagus strong trends in all five variables were found (except for Q10 in the MacKenzie); trends with moderate certainty for three to five variables were confirmed for the Rhine, Ganges and Upper Mississippi; and increases in HF and LF were found for the Upper Amazon, Upper Yangtze and Upper Yellow. The analysis of projected streamflow seasonality demonstrated increasing streamflow volumes during the high-flow period in four basins influenced by monsoonal precipitation (Ganges, Upper Amazon, Upper Yangtze and Upper Yellow), an amplification of the snowmelt flood peaks in the Lena and MacKenzie, and a substantial decrease of discharge in the Tagus (all months). The overall average fractions of uncertainty for the annual mean flow projections in the multi-model ensemble applied for all basins were 57% for GCMs, 27% for RCPs, and 16% for hydrological models.Intercomparison of regional-scale hydrological models and climate change impacts projected for 12 large river basins worldwide—a synthesispublishedVersio

Synthesizing plausible futures for biodiversity and ecosystem services in europe and central asia using scenario archetypes

Scenarios are a useful tool to explore possible futures of social-ecological systems. The number of scenarios has increased dramatically over recent decades, with a large diversity in temporal and spatial scales, purposes, themes, development methods, and content. Scenario archetypes generically describe future developments and can be useful in meaningfully classifying scenarios, structuring and summarizing the overwhelming amount of information, and enabling scientific outputs to more effectively interface with decision-making frameworks. The Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) faced this challenge and used scenario archetypes in its assessment of future interactions between nature and society. We describe the use of scenario archetypes in the IPBES Regional Assessment of Europe and Central Asia. Six scenario archetypes for the region are described in terms of their driver assumptions and impacts on nature (including biodiversity) and its contributions to people (including ecosystem services): Business-as-usual, economic optimism, regional competition, regional sustainability, global sustainable development, and inequality. The analysis shows that trade-offs between nature’s contributions to people are projected under different scenario archetypes. However, the means of resolving these trade-offs depend on differing political and societal value judgements within each scenario archetype. Scenarios that include proactive decision making on environmental issues, environmental management approaches that support multifunctionality, and mainstreaming environmental issues across sectors, are generally more successful in mitigating tradeoffs than isolated environmental policies. Furthermore, those scenario archetypes that focus on achieving a balanced supply of nature’s contributions to people and that incorporate a diversity of values are estimated to achieve more policy goals and targets, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi targets. The scenario archetypes approach is shown to be helpful in supporting science-policy dialogue for proactive decision making that anticipates change, mitigates undesirable trade-offs, and fosters societal transformation in pursuit of sustainable development. © 2019 by the author(s)

Die Bewertung von hydrologischen Auswirkungen des Klimawandels und dessen Implikationen für Wasserressourcenmanagement über Ebenen : von lokaler bis europäischer Ebene

The impacts of climate change can become a trigger for critical changes in the spatial and temporal distribution of water resources in many regions in Europe. This will lead from obviously negative effects in some regions to creation of opportunities in others. In the face of future changes: economic, social and environmental, both natural and triggered by anthropogenic activities, the effective water resources management is becoming a very intricate matter and a serious challenge for the practitioners and scientists. In order to ensure sustainability and robustness of the water management strategies, the impacts of climate change and associated risks have to be quantified and included in the water management plans. In this Thesis an assessment of impacts of the high-end and moderate climate change scenarios on water resources in Europe was performed by means of application of the process-based eco-hydrological catchment-scale model SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model) coupled with the reservoir and water allocation modules. The assessment was conducted at three scales. Firstly, it was performed at the scale of Europe, considering eight representative river basins with varying climatic conditions and anthropogenic services. Then, the scale was narrowed down to a single, highly-regulated river basin in the semi-arid region in Spain, and the impacts of climate change on the reservoirs functioning were assessed. Third, a possibility to harmonize the inter-sectoral water allocation scheme within a highly altered human-hydrological system in the headwaters of the Tagus river basin, Spain in the semi-arid region under reduction in water availability triggered by the projected climate change was evaluated applying a scenario-based approach. The extrapolation of results allows concluding that the moderate and high-end climate change scenarios of global warming across Europe would lead to decreasing trends in water availability in the southern river basins, an overall increase in discharge of the northern river basins, and increase in winter discharge and decrease in summer water flows in the central European catchments. Besides, a shift in seasonality (due to earlier snow melt) was projected in basins of central and northern Europe. The difference between the high-end and moderate global warming scenarios becomes evident after the mid-century. These findings support the previously reported results of the other studies, mostly conducted with the global-scale models, confirming the robustness of the trends found. Further, the scaled down assessment of the water scarce catchment in southern Europe, the Tagus river basin, offers a glance on the effects of projected climate change on water resources availability and influence of potential changes on hydropower generation of the three important reservoirs in the basin. The results indicate a substantial decrease of discharge and, consequently, a strong decrease in hydropower production under both future climate scenarios. The findings also show that the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of the reservoirs depend on their size. Further, on the example of a single water management unit in the headwaters of the same semi-arid southern catchment of the Tagus River it was shown that a shift to sustainable water management strategy and river restoration is possible even under reduced water availability in future. The results suggest that adaptation of the complex water management system to climate change and a shift to a more sustainable management of those could be parts of one joint strategy to cope with climate change impacts. Though it is impossible to give precise quantitative assessment of all future changes triggered by climate warming, the accounting for climate change impacts may help to take right decisions in the water resources allocation and water management, to assure good environmental conditions and avoid potential socio-economic conflicts in river basins. Even in the face of significant uncertainties, associated with climate projections, managers can pursue an adaptation strategy, based on the win-win or no-regret solutions to minimize the worst potential consequences. The work, conducted for this Thesis, has contributed to European and Iberian Case studies of the EU funded Project “IMPRESSIONS: Impacts and risks from high-end scenarios: Strategies for innovative solutions”.Die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels können zu Änderungen in der räumlichen und zeitlichen Verteilung von Wasserressourcen in vielen Regionen Europas führen. Für einige Regionen wird es offensichtlich zu negativen Auswirkungen führen, während es in anderen auch zu Verbesserungen führen kann. Angesichts der zukünftigen wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und ökologischen Veränderungen, natur- oder menschbedingt, wird ein effektives Wasserressourcenmanagement zu einem sehr komplexen Problem und stellt eine Herausforderung für die Wissenschaft und die Praxis dar. Um die Effektivität und Robustheit von Wasserressourcenmanagementstrategien sicher zu stellen, müssen Auswirkungen und damit verbunden Risiken des Klimawandels abgeschätzt und in die Wasserressourcenplanungen mit einbezogen werden. In dieser Dissertation werden die Auswirkungen von extremen und moderaten Klimawandelszenarien auf Wasserressourcen in Europa mittels des hydrologischen, prozessbasierten SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model) Models bewertet, das mit einem Wasserspeicher- und Wasserverteilungsmodul gekoppelt ist. Die Bewertung wurde auf drei Skalen durchgeführt: Als erstes wurden auf europäischer Ebene acht repräsentative Einzugsgebiete mit verschiedenen klimatischen und wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen modelliert. Auf Einzugsgebietsebene wurde der stark regulierte, semiaride Tajo Fluss simuliert und die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels auf drei Talsperren bewertet. Zuletzt wurde die Möglichkeit mittels einer Szenario-basierten Analyse bewertet, die inter-sektorale Wasserverteilung im Oberlauf des erheblich anthropogen veränderten Tajo Flusses angesichts der zukünftig reduzierten Wassermengen anzupassen. In Anbetracht der extremen und moderaten Klimaszenarien lassen sich folgende Trends bei den Wasserressourcen Europas erkennen: Die Wasserverfügbarkeit wird sich in den südlichen Einzugsgebieten verringern und in nördlichen erhöhen. In Zentraleuropa werden sich die Abflüsse im frühen Winter erhöhen und im Sommer reduzieren. Gleichzeitig ist in Zentral- und Norduropa mit Veränderungen in der Abflusssaisonalität zu rechnen, die durch die erhöhten Temperaturen und damit verbundene frühere Schneeschmelzen verursacht werden. Die Unterschiede zwischen den Auswirkungen von extremen und moderaten Klimawandelszenarien werden erst ab Mitte des 21. Jahrhunderts deutlich. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen diejenigen früherer Studien, die überwiegend auf globalen Modellen basierten, und die Robustheit der gefundenen Trends. In den südlichen Einzugsgebieten wurde die Bewertung der Auswirkungen der extremen und moderaten Klimawandelszenarien auf die Wasserressourcenverfügbarkeit und Wasserkraftnutzung bei drei repräsentativen Talsperren durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen eine erhebliche Reduzierung der Abflüsse im Tajo-Einzugsgebiet in allen drei Talsperren unabhängig vom Klimaszenario, was zu einer starken Reduzierung der Stromerzeugung führt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Klimavulnerabilität von Talsperren und deren Anpassungskapazität von ihrer Größe abhängig sind. Anhand des Oberlaufs des Tajo-Einzugsgebiets wurde bestätigt, dass die Umstellung auf nachhaltige Wasserressourcenmanagementstrategien und Gewässerrenaturierung auch mit reduzierten Abflüssen möglich ist. Diese Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Anpassungsstrategien für komplexe Wassersysteme und deren Umstellung auf nachhaltigere Managementmethoden gemeinsam die Klimaauswirkungen verringern können. Obwohl es nicht möglich ist, exakte quantitative Bewertungen von Klimaauswirkungen zu erstellen, kann die Berücksichtigung von Klimaauswirkungen helfen, richtige Entscheidungen bei der Wasserbereitstellung und dem Wassermanagement zu treffen, den ökologischen Zustand des Einzugsgebiets zu verbessern und potenzielle soziale Konflikte um Wasserressourcen zu vermeiden. Angesichts der hohen Unsicherheiten, die mit der Klimafolgenforschung verbunden sind, können Manager eine Anpassungsstrategie verfolgen, die auf „win-win“ Lösungen basiert. Die Studien, die in dieser Dissertation beschrieben werden, haben zu den europäischen und iberischen Fallstudien des EU finanzierten Projekts „IMPRESSIONS: Impacts and Risks from high-end scenarios: strategies for innovative solutions“ beigetragen.EC/FP7/603416/IMPRESSION

Determining the best location of carbon dioxide sensor

Aim of this Thesis work was to give a review to demand control ventilation system and to investigate a better location of building automation systems carbon dioxide sensor in recently renovated D-Building of Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences. There was installed a de-mand control ventilation system and occupants are complaining about bad indoor air quality. One classroom was chosen for investigations. Research was conducted with four stages. First, carbon dioxide concentrations measured by existing sensor were compared to two calibrated detectors. Second, measurements of maxi-mum and minimum air flow rates were conducted. Third, levels of carbon dioxide were measured during long occupancy period in three different places: one – at location of existing sensor, two other locations were chosen according to guidelines for wall-mounted sensors given by ASHRAE organization. Last stage was to determine the air flow patterns in the room. Results of this work are given in graphs and tables. Due to low occupancy density during measurements it is possible only to assume that the better place for sensors location is ac-cording to ASHRAE recommendations, but here more investigations are needed

Electronic Supplementary to Doctoral Dissertation

This Electronic Supplementary contains the SWIM Model set up, calibrated and validated for all eight river basins, together with executables, used to perform modelling experiments for Doctoral Thesis "The assessment of hydrological impacts of climate change and their implications for water management across scales: from the local to European scale"EC/FP7/603416/IMPRESSION

Primary competencies for secondary school: psychological features of successful learning at transition grades

As the transition period from primary to secondary education is difficult for many students, our strive is to study the psychological features, which may scaffold student’s promotion and provide for future successful learning. We consider the educational media to be a complex system of psychological features, which depend on the content of education and the way, in which the educational process is organized. The “activity-and-content oriented” educational media devised after theoretical principles of the Developmental Instruction (Davydov), according to our hypothesis, provides sound bases for primary competencies formation, which are vital for secondary education. To test this assumption, we have diagnosed the quality of reflection, analysis, planning, model-acquisition and model-application, achieved by 204 students from two different educational media (“activity-and-content oriented” and “knowledge oriented”). For assessment purposes two diagnostic tools were used: “Transpositions” and “Moon” test. Both tests exploited contexts, which were unfamiliar to both groups of students. The results show, that students from the “activity-and-content” oriented educational media performed significantly better in most cognitive primary concepts. We consider these findings to support our major hypothesis, that educational media is a powerful source to scaffold students’ primary competencies’ formation, which in its turn provides for successful learning in secondary school

Discharge Alterations of the Mures River, Romania under Ensembles of Future Climate Projections and Sequential Threats to Aquatic Ecosystem by the End of the Century

Abstract: This study aims to assess the potential alterations in the hydrological regime attributed to projected climate change in one of the largest rivers in the Carpathian Area, the Mures River, and to estimate associated threats to riverine ecosystem. The eco-hydrological model, Soil and Water Integrated Model (SWIM), was applied on the Mures River basin, calibrated and validated against records at a gauging station in Alba-Julia town. A set of nine future projections for climatic parameters under one emissions scenario A1B over the period 1971-2100 were fed into the SWIM model. To provide functional link between hydrological regimes and riverine ecosystems, each of the nine simulated discharge time series were introduced into the IHA (Indicators of Hydrological Alterations) tool. Triggered changes in hydrological patterns of the Mures River were assessed at the basin and sub-basin scales. The obtained results present a strong agreement through all nine climate projections; suggesting an increase in the discharge of Mures River for the winter season; a decrease in summer and prolongation of the low flow periods by the end of the century. Anticipated changes would pose threats to aquatic ecosystems; altering normal life-cycles; and depleting natural habitats of species