School Microclimates

Outdoor school environments need to be safe, stimulate physical and cognitive development of children and encourage learning. These key requirements are jeopardised by increasing summer heat. Summer heat limits outdoor activities and has adverse effects on physical wellbeing of school children and teachers. Children are particularly vulnerable to heat as they regulate their core temperature through convection, which becomes less effective when it is hot. Based on empirical data collections, this report provides more than 20 practical recommendations on how to reduce the impacts of outdoor heat. Although these recommendations were devised based on work around a public school in Western Sydney, their universal character allows applying them to any school or other urban build infrastructure. Avoiding the use of artificial grass in unshaded spaces, shading black asphalt, allowing natural air flows and using shade materials with highly reflective upper surfaces should be fundamental principles in design and building guidelines for heat-smart schools

In Memoriam, Academician Prof. Dr. Osor Shagdarsuren (1929-2010)

Academician, Professor Osor Shagdarsuren passed away due to apoplexy on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at the age of 81. He was one of the most respected Mongolian ornithologists, biologists, and educators. The Mongolian scientific community has lost one of its greatest members, the premier Mongolian ornithologist

Direct and indirect effects of climate and fishing on changes in coastal ecosystem services: a historical perspective from the North Sea

Humanity depends on the marine environment for a range of vital ecosystem services, at global (e.g. climate regulation), regional (e.g. commercial fisheries) and local scales (e.g. coastal defence and recreation). At the same time, marine ecosystems have been exploited for centuries, and many systems today are under stress from multiple sources. Recent studies have shown how both climate change and fishing have caused long-term changes in the marine environment. However, there is still poor understanding of how these changes influence change in coastal ecosystem services. In this paper, an integrated modelling approach is used to assess how the final delivery of marine ecosystem services to coastal communities is influenced by the direct and indirect effects of changes in ecosystem processes brought about by climate and human impacts, using fisheries of the North Sea region as a case study. Partial least squares path analysis is used to explore the relationships between drivers of change, marine ecosystem processes and services (landings). A simple conceptual model with four variables—climate, fishing effort, ecosystem process and ecosystem services—is applied to the English North Sea using historic ecological, climatic and fisheries time series spanning 1924–2010 to identify the multiple pathways that might exist. As expected, direct and indirect links between fishing effort, ecosystem processes and service provision were significant. However, links between climate and ecosystem processes were weak. This paper highlights how path analysis can be used for analysing long-term temporal links between ecosystem processes and services following a simplified pathway

Trait values and not invasive status determine competitive outcomes between native and invasive species under varying soil nutrient availability

Invasion by exotic plants is often associated with nutrient enrichment of soils, particularly on soils of naturally low fertility. As a consequence, it is likely that the outcome of competitive interactions between native and invasive plants may be mediated by soil nutrient availability. We independently investigated competitive effect and response as well as the occurrence of asymmetric competition among native and invasive plants on soils of varying nutrient availability, using a glasshouse experiment. Seedlings of eight co-occurring pairs of invasive and native species from low fertility Hawkesbury Sandstone-derived soil were grown under low and high nutrient availability. We tested the hypotheses that native species would be competitively superior at low nutrient availability and have trait values associated with a resource conservation strategy while invasive species would be competitively superior at high nutrient availability and have trait values associated with a resource acquisition strategy. We found that nutrient availability did not mediate competitive interactions between invasive and native species. Instead, two invasive and one native species were always competitively superior irrespective of nutrient availability. Competitively superior species displayed a mixture of both resource conservation and acquisition strategies at low and high nutrient availability. In support of previous studies, we found that the a priori classification of invasive and native species does not predict competitive superiority at varying nutrient levels. Rather, species specific differences in trait values provide a competitive advantage in response to nutrient availability.11 page(s

ICHTHYOFAUNA FROM FRESHWATER OF KUMARAKOM REGION OF VEMBANAD LAKE, KOTTAYAM, KERALA, SOUTH INDIA - WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO POST FLOOD

The present study was carried out to better understand the variety of Ichthyofauna in the Kumarakom region of Vembanad Lake. Kumarakom is a popular tourist spot near Kottayam. Kumarakom is an area with abundant indigenous fishery resources and high level of biodiversity. The current study was carried out to identify the fishes of the Kumarakom region of Vembanad Lake following the flood condition for a period of 5 months (September 2019 to January 2020) at 15-day intervals and compared to ichthyofauna of preflood. During the survey, 15 fresh water species were identified.During post-flood conditions, the fish diversity in the Kumarakom Region of Vembanad Lake decreased

Prenatal alcohol alters inflammatory signatures in enteric portal tissues following adult-onset cerebrovascular ischemic stroke

Summary: Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) impairs recovery from cerebrovascular ischemic stroke in adult rodents. Since the gut becomes dysbiotic following stroke, we assessed links between PAE and enteric portal inflammation. Adult control and PAE rat offspring received a unilateral endothelin-1-induced occlusion of the middle cerebral artery. Post-stroke behavioral disabilities and brain cytokines were assessed. Mesenteric adipose and liver transcriptomes were assessed from stroke-exposed and stroke-naive offspring. We identified, in the liver of stroke-naive animals, a moderate correlation between PAE and a gene network for inflammatory necroptosis. PAE inhibited the acute-phase brain inflammatory cytokine response to stroke. Post-stroke neurological function was correlated with an adipose gene network associated with B-lymphocyte differentiation and nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) signaling and with a liver pro-inflammatory gene network. Collectively, PAE inhibits brain inflammation but results in an inflammatory signature in enteric portal tissues after stroke, suggesting that PAE persistently and adversely impacts the gut-brain axis following adult-onset disease

Assessing the relationship between trait-based and horticultural classifications of plant responses to drought

Water availability can be a major abiotic constraint for plant success in urban areas. To ensure resilient green spaces, understanding which species are able to cope with low water availability is paramount for plant selection. However, in the horticultural industry, descriptions of species’ responses to low water availability are oftentimes poorly defined, inconsistent across sources, and informed from the natural habitat of species, personal experience, or both. Therefore, a method to objectively assess tolerances of species to low water availability is needed. Using a multivariate approach, we characterised the drought strategies of 113 horticultural plant species spanning five different growth forms (graminoids, herbs, climbers, shrubs and trees) by using five leaf-level traits (leaf mass per area (LMA), leaf thickness, unit leaf area, leaf dry matter content (LDMC) and leaf water potential at turgor loss point (TLP)). Based on this approach, we found that species clustered into three distinct groups, which correspond to fundamental drought strategies based on previous ecological literature (i.e., ‘dehydration avoiders’ (species with high LMA and LDMC, thick leaves and low (more negative) TLP), ‘dehydration tolerators’ (species with low LMA and LDMC and high (less negative) TLP) and an ‘intermediate’ mixture of the two strategies). We found that the majority of species that were considered as ‘drought tolerant’ by the horticultural industry were classified as either ‘dehydration tolerators’ (31.9 %) or ‘dehydration avoiders’ (42.5 %) using our trait-based approach. We did not find any strong connections between the climate of origin of our species and our trait-based classifications. Distinguishing between dehydration avoidance and dehydration tolerance may help to enhance horticultural guidelines by better informing which species are suitable for particular biophysical and landscape contexts. This trait-based approach allows for evidence-based evaluation of drought strategies of new and emerging species and cultivars that may be suitable for urban landscapes

Spatial distribution of Microtus brandti colonies in abandoned cropland in a buffer zone of The Hustai national Park, Mongolia

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