Ecosystem properties and principles of living systems as foundation for sustainable agriculture – Critical reviews of environmental assessment tools, key findings and questions from a course process

With increasing demands on limited resources worldwide, there is a growing interest in sustainable patterns of utilisation and production. Ecological agriculture is a response to these concerns. To assess progress and compliance, standard and comprehensive measures of resource requirements, impacts and agro-ecological health are needed. Assessment tools should also be rapid, standardized, userfriendly, meaningful to public policy and applicable to management. Fully considering these requirements confounds the development of integrated methods. Currently, there are many methodologies for monitoring performance, each with its own foundations, assumptions, goals, and outcomes, dependent upon agency agenda or academic orientation. Clearly, a concept of sustainability must address biophysical, ecological, economic, and sociocultural foundations. Assessment indicators and criteria, however, are generally limited, lacking integration, and at times in conflict with one another. A result is that certification criteria, indicators, and assessment methods are not based on a consistent, underlying conceptual framework and often lack a management focus. Ecosystem properties and principles of living systems, including self-organisation, renewal, embeddedness, emergence and commensurate response provide foundation for sustainability assessments and may be appropriate focal points for critical thinking in an evaluation of current methods and standards. A systems framework may also help facilitate a comprehensive approach and promote a context for meaningful discourse. Without holistic accounts, sustainable progress remains an illdefined concept and an elusive goal. Our intent, in the work with this report, was to use systems ecology as a pedagogic basis for learning and discussion to: - Articulate general and common characteristics of living systems. - Identify principles, properties and patterns inherent in natural ecosystems. - Use these findings as foci in a dialogue about attributes of sustainability to: a. develop a model for communicating scientific rationale. b. critically evaluate environmental assessment tools for application in land-use. c. propose appropriate criteria for a comprehensive assessment and expanded definition of ecological land use

iPhone 3G student developer competition

Project Partners: Reynolds Journalism Institute/Missouri School of Journalism, College of Engineering, Trulaske College of Business, College of Education, College of Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources, Apple Inc and AT&T Inc.Proposal for the 2008 project: "iPhone 3G Student Developer Competition." Partners: Reynolds Journalism Institute/Missouri School of Journalism, College of Engineering, Trulaske College of Business, College of Education, College of Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources, Apple Inc and AT&T Inc. Project Description: The above partners propose to sponsor a student contest, modeled on last year's successful RJI/Adobe AIR Student Competition, to develop, test and market native iPhone applications designed to improve the practice and the business of American journalism. Finalist teams will receive private consulting at Apple Inc.'s world headquarters in Cupertino, CA. The project's sponsors will host a symposium in Spring 2009 on the MU campus to showcase the competition as a model for interdisciplinary education and entrepreneurship. The winning student team will attend Apple's 2009 Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco.MU Interdisciplinary Innovations Fun

Difference in the action spectra for UVR8 monomerisation and HY5 transcript accumulation in Arabidopsis

The photoreceptor UV RESISTANCE LOCUS 8 (UVR8) activates photomorphogenic responses when plants are exposed to ultraviolet-B (UV-B) light. However, whereas the absorption spectrum of UVR8 peaks at 280 nm, action spectra for several photomorphogenic UV-B responses show maximal photon effectiveness at 290–300 nm. To investigate this apparent discrepancy we measured the effectiveness of UV wavelengths in initiating two responses in Arabidopsis: photoconversion of homodimeric UVR8 into the monomeric form, which is active in signaling, and accumulation of transcripts of the ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL 5 (HY5) transcription factor, which has a key role in UVR8-mediated responses. When purified UVR8 or Arabidopsis leaf extracts were exposed to UV light monomerisation was maximal at approximately 280 nm, which correlates with the UVR8 absorption spectrum. When intact plants were exposed to UV, monomerisation was most strongly initiated at approximately 290 nm, and this shift in maximal effectiveness could be explained by strong absorption or reflectance at 280 nm by leaf tissue. Notably, the action spectrum for accumulation of HY5 transcripts in the same leaf tissue samples used to assay UVR8 dimer/monomer status peaked at approximately 300 nm. Possible reasons for the difference in maximal photon effectiveness of UVR8 monomerisation and HY5 transcript accumulation in leaf tissue are discussed

Regulation of Arabidopsis gene expression by low fluence rate UV-B independently of UVR8 and stress signaling

UV-B exposure of plants regulates expression of numerous genes concerned with various responses. Sudden exposure of non-acclimated plants to high fluence rate, short wavelength UV-B induces expression via stress-related signaling pathways that are not specific to the UV-B stimulus, whereas low fluence rates of UV-B can regulate expression via the UV-B photoreceptor UV RESISTANCE LOCUS 8 (UVR8). However, there is little information about whether non-stressful, low fluence rate UV-B treatments can activate gene expression independently of UVR8. Here, transcriptomic analysis of wild-type and uvr8 mutant Arabidopsis exposed to low fluence rate UV-B showed that numerous genes were regulated independently of UVR8. Moreover, nearly all of these genes were distinct to those induced by stress treatments. A small number of genes were expressed at all UV-B fluence rates employed and may be concerned with activation of eustress responses that facilitate acclimation to changing conditions. Expression of the gene encoding the transcription factor ARABIDOPSIS NAC DOMAIN CONTAINING PROTEIN 13 (ANAC13) was studied to characterise a low fluence rate, UVR8-independent response. ANAC13 is induced by as little as 0.1 μmol m−2 s−1 UV-B and its regulation is independent of components of the canonical UVR8 signaling pathway COP1 and HY5/HYH. Furthermore, UV-B induced expression of ANAC13 is independent of the photoreceptors CRY1, CRY2, PHOT1 and PHOT2 and phytochromes A, B, D and E. ANAC13 expression is induced over a range of UV-B wavelengths at low doses, with maximum response at 310 nm. This study provides a basis for further investigation of UVR8 and stress independent, low fluence rate UV-B signaling pathway(s)

On the lateral fluid motion during pool boiling via preferentially located cavities

Passively generated lateral motion of fluid during pool boiling on asymmetrically textured mesoscale structures is discussed in this Letter. The surface texture is in the form of 30°–60° mm-scale ratchets with re-entrant cavities located on the 30° face. High speed visualization of growing bubbles from cavities indicates growth and departure normal to the 30° face of the ratchets. A semi-empirical model of net axial liquid velocity due to the non-vertical bubble growth is developed and validated in a pool boiling experiment

Interrogating violence against women and state violence policy: Gendered intersectionalities and the quality of policy in The Netherlands, Sweden and the Uk

This article builds on feminist scholarship on intersectionality to address violence against women, and state policy thereon. It takes up the challenge of analysing the complex, situated and spatial relationship between theorizing on violence against women and state policy on such violence. Drawing on extensive comparative European data, it explores the relations of gender and intersectionality, conceptualized as gendered intersectionalities, by examining how multiple inequalities are made visible and invisible in state policy and debates in the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. Attention is paid to different forms of gendered intersectionalities in policy, for example, tendencies to degender violence against women. A key aim of the article is to investigate how comparative analysis can be a starting point for assessing if, how and to what extent the inclusion of multiple inequalities could increase the quality of policy, for both reducing and stopping violence, and assisting those subject to violence

Epithelial damage and tissue γδ T cells promote a unique tumor-protective IgE response

IgE is an ancient and conserved immunoglobulin isotype with potent immunological function. Nevertheless, the regulation of IgE responses remains an enigma, and evidence of a role for IgE in host defense is limited. Here we report that topical exposure to a common environmental DNA-damaging xenobiotic initiated stress surveillance by γδTCR+ intraepithelial lymphocytes that resulted in class switching to IgE in B cells and the accumulation of autoreactive IgE. High-throughput antibody sequencing revealed that γδ T cells shaped the IgE repertoire by supporting specific variable-diversity-joining (VDJ) rearrangements with unique characteristics of the complementarity-determining region CDRH3. This endogenous IgE response, via the IgE receptor FcεRI, provided protection against epithelial carcinogenesis, and expression of the gene encoding FcεRI in human squamous-cell carcinoma correlated with good disease prognosis. These data indicate a joint role for immunosurveillance by T cells and by B cells in epithelial tissues and suggest that IgE is part of the host defense against epithelial damage and tumor development

Sestrins induce natural killer function in senescent-like CD8(+) T cells

Aging is associated with remodeling of the immune system to enable the maintenance of life-long immunity. In the CD8⁺ T cell compartment, aging results in the expansion of highly differentiated cells that exhibit characteristics of cellular senescence. Here we found that CD27⁻CD28⁻CD8⁺ T cells lost the signaling activity of the T cell antigen receptor (TCR) and expressed a protein complex containing the agonistic natural killer (NK) receptor NKG2D and the NK adaptor molecule DAP12, which promoted cytotoxicity against cells that expressed NKG2D ligands. Immunoprecipitation and imaging cytometry indicated that the NKG2D-DAP12 complex was associated with sestrin 2. The genetic inhibition of sestrin 2 resulted in decreased expression of NKG2D and DAP12 and restored TCR signaling in senescent-like CD27⁻CD28⁻CD8⁺ T cells. Therefore, during aging, sestrins induce the reprogramming of non-proliferative senescent-like CD27⁻CD28⁻CD8⁺ T cells to acquire a broad-spectrum, innate-like killing activity