Full latitudinal marine atmospheric measurements of iodine monoxide

14 pags., 7 figs., 4 tabs.Iodine compounds destroy ozone (O3) in the global troposphere and form new aerosols, thereby affecting the global radiative balance. However, few reports have described the latitudinal distribution of atmospheric iodine compounds. This work reports iodine monoxide (IO) measurements taken over unprecedented sampling areas from the Arctic to the Southern Hemisphere and spanning sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of approximately 0 to 31.5°C. The highest IO concentrations were observed over the Western Pacific warm pool (WPWP), where O3 minima were also measured. There, a negative correlation was found between O3 and IO mixing ratios at extremely low O3 concentrations. This correlation is not explained readily by the O3-dependent oceanic fluxes of photolabile inorganic iodine compounds, which is the dominant source in recent global-scale chemistry transport models representing iodine chemistry. Actually, the correlation rather implies that O3-independent pathways can be similarly important in the WPWP. The O3-independent fluxes result in a 15% greater O3 loss than that estimated for O3-dependent processes alone. The daily O3 loss rate related to iodine over the WPWP is as high as approximately 2ppbv (parts per billion by volume) despite low O3 concentrations of approximately 10ppbv, with the loss being up to 100% greater than that without iodine. This finding suggests that warming SST driven by climate change might affect the marine atmospheric chemical balance through iodine-ozone chemistry. Copyright:This study was supported by the KAKENHI (grant nos. 16KK0017 and 21H04933), and by the ArCS (Arctic Challenge for Sustainability; grant no. JPMXD1300000000) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan. This study has also received funding from the European Research Council Executive Agency under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (grant no. ERC2016-COG 726349; CLIMAHAL). This study was also supported, in part, by funding from Fukuoka University (grant no. 197103).Peer reviewe

Octacosanol and policosanol prevent high-fat diet-induced obesity and metabolic disorders by activating brown adipose tissue and improving liver metabolism

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is an attractive therapeutic target for treating obesity and metabolic diseases. Octacosanol is the main component of policosanol, a mixture of very long chain aliphatic alcohols obtained from plants. The current study aimed to investigate the effect of octacosanol and policosanol on high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity. Mice were fed on chow, or HFD, with or without octacosanol or policosanol treatment for four weeks. HFD-fed mice showed significantly higher body weight and body fat compared with chow-fed mice. However, mice fed on HFD treated with octacosanol or policosanol (HFDo/p) showed lower body weight gain, body fat gain, insulin resistance and hepatic lipid content. Lower body fat gain after octacosanol or policosanol was associated with increased BAT activity, reduced expression of genes involved in lipogenesis and cholesterol uptake in the liver, and amelioration of white adipose tissue (WAT) inflammation. Moreover, octacosanol and policosanol significantly increased the expression of Ffar4, a gene encoding polyunsaturated fatty acid receptor, which activates BAT thermogenesis. Together, these results suggest that octacosanol and policosanol ameliorate diet-induced obesity and metabolic disorders by increasing BAT activity and improving hepatic lipid metabolism. Thus, these lipids represent promising therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of obesity and obesity-related metabolic disorders

Cultural Forms of Organization: Importance of Learning Process and Human Empowerment for Sustainable Development in Modern Africa

The African continent's population basically still relies on agriculture. Twothirds of the African population rely their employment and food on family farms, defined as farms that rely on family labour, which works on 62% of the land. Recent trends in African development are placing family farming at the centre of the international agenda so as to achieve positive change throughout global food systems. The Africanist anthropology both worldwide and in Japan, reflecting the fact that African societies are basically established on family farming, the discipline has maintained focusing on the relationship between humans and environment from perspectives of cultural context in the fields. Therefore, future of family farming has huge importance both in practice and theory of African development. Based on these trends of African studies and development, the author, focusing on the field of African family farming, will try to explain rural development in three African countries-Niger, Kenya, and Malawi—based on his own research. The author attempts to clarify that, notwithstanding the global trend of worldwide sustainable development, rural development in Africa has several potentially important characteristic dispositions, based on family farming: culturally embedded dynamics of learning, cultural forms of organization, and culturally tractable ways of empowerment