The role of cyclic climatic regimes and riparian vegetation: a qualitative and quantitative study into the cause of river bank slope instability and channel widening on the Macdonald River, New South Wales.

Numerous case studies have demonstrated the catastrophic nature of channel change experienced on the Macdonald River, a tributary of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, New South Wales. However, there is an absence of studies that clearly state how and why the channel changed as dramatically as it did. As a consequence, the magnitude of, and ultimate controls on the changes to the Macdonald River’s form and processes are not fully appreciated. In this study, a comparison is undertaken on the three existing river morphology perspectives with respect to the Macdonald River. The Warner and Erskine Perspective states the sole importance of the cyclic hydro-climatic conditions of the FDR and DDRs on river morphology. The Brierely and co-workers Perspective states the sole importance of anthropogenic influence in the catchment and on the banks on river morphology. The Intermediate Perspective of Hubble and co-workers considers both existing and conflicting perspectives and states the importance of both cyclic climatic regimes and anthropogenic activity in the catchment and particularly on the river banks, in determining river morphology. Resultantly, a selection of Hubble and co-workers Perspective is made to classify the Macdonald River’s morphology. It is clear, from the analysis of historical aerial photographs, archival sketches, photographs and historical documentation, that riparian vegetation was absent from the banks of the Macdonald River from 1941 as a result of land-clearing practices from the early 19th Century. The banks of the Macdonald River would not have experienced this ‘catastrophic’ channel change between 1949 and 1955 had riparian vegetation remained on the banks. Riparian vegetation has been found to increase the soil-shear strength and hence the stability of river bank slopes, in particularly on the Upper Nepean and the Macdonald Rivers in New South Wales, where vulnerable sands to silty-sands predominate the bank material. This has been further proved with geochemical bank stability modeling

Vergroening, agrarisch natuurbeheer en collectieven : praktijkideeën voor een groenere landbouw

In the Netherlands, there is a strong political and societal commitment to an ambitious greening of agriculture. Besides national and market incentives, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is seen as an important instrument to enhance the basic level of greening in Pillar 1 and to provide further-reaching and more targeted agri-environment measures in Pillar 2. Now that the dust has settled after a protracted greening discussion, the implementation of the greening measures has got underway and the discussion on the CAP post-2020 has already begun, there is an increasing sense of urgency to improve the greening’s ‘value for money’. Even within the farming community – usually not the strongest advocate of strengthened greening – there is a growing awareness that the current system is not fit for the future and that the legitimacy of spending public money is at stake. Moreover, the current system is perceived to be unfair as many farms are exempt from the greening obligations and arable farms carry most of the burden. For this reason, BoerenNatuur.nl, the farmers’ organisation for agri-environment, has investigated grass-roots ideas for an improved greening of agriculture in a project financed by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. Note that the ideas outlined below do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BoerenNatuur.nl and/or the Ministry

Non-invasive monitoring of in vitro gastric milk protein digestion kinetics by 1H NMR magnetization transfer

Processing of milk involves heating, which can modify the structure and digestibility of its proteins. In vitro models are useful for studying protein digestion. However, validating these models with in vivo data is challenging. Here, we non-invasively monitor in vitro gastric milk protein digestion by protein-water chemical exchange detected by 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) magnetization transfer (MT). We obtained either a fitted composite exchange rate (CER) with a relative standard error of ≤10% or the MT ratio (MTR) of the intensity without or with an off-resonance saturation pulse, from just a single spectral acquisition. Both CER and MTR, affected by the variation in the amount of semi-solid protons, decreased during in vitro gastric digestion in agreement with standard protein content analyses. The decrease was slower in heated milk, indicating slower breakdown of the coagulum. Our results open the way to future quantification of protein digestion in vivo by MRI

Annexin A1 regulates TGF-beta signaling and promotes metastasis formation of basal-like breast cancer cells

Annexin A1 (AnxA1) is a candidate regulator of the epithelial-to mesenchymal (EMT)-like phenotypic switch, a pivotal event in breast cancer progression. We show here that AnxA1 expression is associated with ahighly invasivebasal- likebreast cancer subtypeboth in apanel of human breast cancer cell lines as in breast cancer patients and that AnxA1 is functionally related to breast cancer progression. AnxA1 knockdownininvasivebasal- likebreast cancer cells reduced the number of spontaneous lung metastasis, whereas additional expression of AnxA1 enhanced metastatic spread. AnxA1 promotes metastasis formation by enhancingTGF beta/Smad signalingandactin reorganization, which facilitates an EMT-like switch, thereby allowing ef. cient cell migration and invasion of metastatic breast cancer cells.Molecular tumour pathology - and tumour genetic

Independent replication of polymorphisms predicting toxicity in breast cancer patients randomized between dose-dense and docetaxel-containing adjuvant chemotherapy

Introduction: Although pharmacogenomics has evolved substantially, a predictive test for chemotherapy toxicity is still lacking. We compared the toxicity of adjuvant dose-dense doxorubicin-cyclophosphamide (ddAC) and docetaxel-doxorubicincyclophosphamide (TAC) in a randomized multicenter phase III trial and replicated previously reported associations between genotypes and toxicity. Results: 646 patients (97%) were evaluable for toxicity (grade 2 and higher). Whereas AN was more frequent after ddAC (P < 0.001), TAC treated patients more often had PNP (P < 0.001). We could replicate 2 previously reported associations: TECTA (rs1829; OR 4.18, 95% CI 1.84-9.51, P = 0.001) with PNP, and GSTP1 (rs1138272; OR 2.04, 95% CI 1.13-3.68, P = 0.018) with PNP. Materials and methods: Patients with pT1-3, pN0-3 breast cancer were randomized between six cycles A60C600 every 2 weeks or T75A50C500 every 3 weeks. Associations of 13 previously reported single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with the most frequent toxicities: anemia (AN), febrile neutropenia (FN) and peripheral neuropathy (PNP) were analyzed using logistic regression models. Conclusions: In this independent replication, we could replicate an association between 2 out of 13 SNPs and chemotherapy toxicities. These results warrant further validation in order to enable tailored treatment for breast cancer patients