Demand and Supply of Crop Infraspecific Diversity on Farms: Towards a Policy Framework for On-Farm Conservation

Interest is increasing worldwide in on-farm conservation as a component of a strategy to conserve crop genetic resources. On-farm conservation may require outside support to small-scale farmers in areas of crop domestication and diversity. This paper argues that crop infraspecific diversity maintained by farming households in these areas results from the interplay between demand and supply for this diversity (i.e., its loss may be demand- or supply-related). In the first instance, interventions should be aimed at increasing the value of crop diversity for farmers or decreasing the farm-level opportunity costs of maintaining diversity. In the second instance, interventions should decrease the transaction costs of accessing crop diversity. It may be difficult, however, to distinguish in empirical research, whether the constraints to diversity are demand- or supply-related. Therefore the process of supporting on-farm conservation should be kept as open as possible and both demand and supply interventions should be available.Crop Production/Industries,

Geometric back-reaction in pre-inflation from relativistic quantum geometry

The pre-inflationary evolution of the universe describes the beginning of the expansion from a static initial state, such that the Hubble parameter is initially zero, but increases to an asymptotic constant value, in which it could achieve a de Sitter (inflationary) expansion. The expansion is driven by a background phantom field. The back-reaction effects at this moment should describe vacuum geometrical excitations, which are studied with detail in this work using Relativistic Quantum Geometry.Comment: improved versio

Charged and electromagnetic fields from relativistic quantum geometry

In the Relativistic Quantum Geometry (RQG) formalism recently introduced, was explored the possibility that the variation of the tensor metric can be done in a Weylian integrable manifold using a geometric displacement, from a Riemannian to a Weylian integrable manifold, described by the dynamics of an auxiliary geometrical scalar field $\theta$, in order that the Einstein tensor (and the Einstein equations) can be represented on a Weyl-like manifold. In this framework we study jointly the dynamics of electromagnetic fields produced by quantum complex vector fields, which describes charges without charges. We demonstrate that complex fields act as a source of tetra-vector fields which describe an extended Maxwell dynamics.Comment: improved versio

Stress and Decision Making: Effects on Valuation, Learning, and Risk-taking

A wide range of stressful experiences can influence human decision making in complex ways beyond the simple predictions of a fight-or-flight model. Recent advances may provide insight into this complicated interaction, potentially in directions that could result in translational applications. Early research suggests that stress exposure influences basic neural circuits involved in reward processing and learning, while also biasing decisions toward habit and modulating our propensity to engage in risk-taking. That said, a substantial array of theoretical and methodological considerations in research on the topic challenge strong cross study comparisons necessary for the field to move forward. In this review we examine the multifaceted stress construct in the context of human decision making, emphasizing stress’ effect on valuation, learning, and risk-taking

Costless metabolic secretions as drivers of interspecies interactions in microbial ecosystems

Metabolic exchange mediates interactions among microbes, helping explain diversity in microbial communities. As these interactions often involve a fitness cost, it is unclear how stable cooperation can emerge. Here we use genome-scale metabolic models to investigate whether the release of “costless” metabolites (i.e. those that cause no fitness cost to the producer), can be a prominent driver of intermicrobial interactions. By performing over 2 million pairwise growth simulations of 24 species in a combinatorial assortment of environments, we identify a large space of metabolites that can be secreted without cost, thus generating ample cross-feeding opportunities. In addition to providing an atlas of putative interactions, we show that anoxic conditions can promote mutualisms by providing more opportunities for exchange of costless metabolites, resulting in an overrepresentation of stable ecological network motifs. These results may help identify interaction patterns in natural communities and inform the design of synthetic microbial consortia.We thank Dr. Niels Klitgord for pioneering ideas that inspired launch of this work. We are also grateful to David Bernstein, Joshua E. Goldford, Meghan Thommes, Demetrius DiMucci, and all members of the Segre Lab for helpful discussions. A.R.P. is supported by a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellowship. This work was supported by funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (purchase request no. HR0011515303, contract no. HR0011-15-C-0091), the U.S. Department of Energy (grants DE-SC0004962 and DE-SC0012627), the NIH (grants 5R01DE024468, R01GM121950, and Sub_P30DK036836_P&F), the National Science Foundation (grants 1457695 and NSFOCE-BSF 1635070), MURI Grant W911NF-12-1-0390, the Human Frontiers Science Program (grant RGP0020/2016), and the Boston University Inter-disciplinary Biomedical Research Office. (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship; Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellowship; HR0011515303 - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; HR0011-15-C-0091 - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; DE-SC0004962 - U.S. Department of Energy; DE-SC0012627 - U.S. Department of Energy; 5R01DE024468 - NIH; R01GM121950 - NIH; Sub_P30DK036836_PF - NIH; 1457695 - National Science Foundation; NSFOCE-BSF 1635070 - National Science Foundation; W911NF-12-1-0390 - MURI Grant; RGP0020/2016 - Human Frontiers Science Program; Boston University Inter-disciplinary Biomedical Research Office)Published versio

Matching pre-equilibrium dynamics and viscous hydrodynamics

We demonstrate how to match pre-equilibrium dynamics of a 0+1 dimensional quark gluon plasma to 2nd-order viscous hydrodynamical evolution. The matching allows us to specify the initial values of the energy density and shear tensor at the initial time of hydrodynamical evolution as a function of the lifetime of the pre-equilibrium period. We compare two models for the pre-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma, longitudinal free streaming and collisionally-broadened longitudinal expansion, and present analytic formulas which can be used to fix the necessary components of the energy-momentum tensor. The resulting dynamical models can be used to assess the effect of pre-equilibrium dynamics on quark-gluon plasma observables. Additionally, we investigate the dependence of entropy production on pre-equilibrium dynamics and discuss the limitations of the standard definitions of the non-equilibrium entropy.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures,v2: minor modifications and updated references. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.