Alterations in Epithelial and Mesenchymal Intestinal Gene Expression During Doxorubicin-Induced Mucositis in Mice

In the current study we aimed to gain insight into epithelial-mesenchymal cross-talk and progenitor compartment modulation during doxorubicin (DOX)-induced mucositis in mice. Intestinal segments were collected on various days after DOX treatment. DOX-induced damage at day 1–2 was characterized by increased epithelial proliferation and apoptosis and a decrease in the expression of epithelial differentiation markers. Concurrently, T-cell factor-4 (TCF4) levels increased and the epithelial differentiation enhancing factor, bone morphogenic protein-4 (BMP4), decreased. During severe damage (day 3), BMP4 levels were significantly increased, which inversely correlated with epithelial proliferation. At the same time, the expression of the epithelial differentiation markers was increasing again. At day 7, BMP4 levels were down-regulated, while the levels of the epithelial differentiation markers and TCF4 were normalized again. These data suggest that in response to DOX-induced damage, BMP4 and TCF4 are modulated in such a way that homeostasis of the progenitor compartment is partly preserved

Shifts in Species Composition Constrain Restoration of Overgrazed Grassland Using Nitrogen Fertilization in Inner Mongolian Steppe, China

Long-term livestock over-grazing causes nitrogen outputs to exceed inputs in Inner Mongolia, suggesting that low levels of nitrogen fertilization could help restore grasslands degraded by overgrazing. However, the effectiveness of such an approach depends on the response of production and species composition to the interactive drivers of nitrogen and water availability. We conducted a five-year experiment manipulating precipitation (NP: natural precipitation and SWP: simulated wet year precipitation) and nitrogen (0, 25 and 50 kg N ha-1 yr-1) addition in Inner Mongolia. We hypothesized that nitrogen fertilization would increase forage production when water availability was relatively high. However, the extent to which nitrogen would co-limit production under average or below average rainfall in these grasslands was unknown

Designing sustainable landuse in a 1.5 °C world: the complexities of projecting multiple ecosystem services from land

Land provides a range of critical services for humanity (including the provision of food, water and energy). It also provides many services that are often socially valuable but may not have a market value. Demand projections for land-based services, accounting for the significant requirement for negative emissions needed to meet a 1.5 °C pathway, may exceed what can be sustainably supplied. It is therefore critical to explore how to optimise land use (and if necessary, limit demand), so societies can continue to benefit from all services into the future. Unlike the energy or the transport sectors, however, there is limited understanding or consensus over what ‘optimal’ land use might look like (from a science perspective), or how to bring it about (from a governance perspective)

Combining farmers' decision rules and landscape stochastic regularities for landscape modelling

International audienceLandscape spatial organization (LSO) strongly impacts many environmental issues. Modelling agricultural landscapes and describing meaningful landscape patterns are thus regarded as key-issues for designing sustainable landscapes. Agricultural landscapes are mostly designed by farmers. Their decisions dealing with crop choices and crop allocation to land can be generic and result in landscape regularities, which determine LSO. This paper comes within the emerging discipline called "landscape agronomy", aiming at studying the organization of farming practices at the landscape scale. We here aim at articulating the farm and the landscape scales for landscape modelling. To do so, we develop an original approach consisting in the combination of two methods used separately so far: the identification of explicit farmer decision rules through on-farm surveys methods and the identification of landscape stochastic regularities through data-mining. We applied this approach to the Niort plain landscape in France. Results show that generic farmer decision rules dealing with sunflower or maize area and location within landscapes are consistent with spatiotemporal regularities identified at the landscape scale. It results in a segmentation of the landscape, based on both its spatial and temporal organization and partly explained by generic farmer decision rules. This consistency between results points out that the two modelling methods aid one another for land-use modelling at landscape scale and for understanding the driving forces of its spatial organization. Despite some remaining challenges, our study in landscape agronomy accounts for both spatial and temporal dimensions of crop allocation: it allows the drawing of new spatial patterns coherent with land-use dynamics at the landscape scale, which improves the links to the scale of ecological processes and therefore contributes to landscape ecology.L'organisation du paysage influe sur les problèmes environnementaux. Modéliser les paysages pour les décrire à l'aide de formes significatives est une étage clé. Les paysages agricoles sont principalement construits par les agriculteurs dont les décision d'assolement peuvent être génériques et déterminer des régularités dans l'organisation du paysage. Cet article contribue à l'agronomie des paysage qui est une discipline émergente. Nous cherchons à articuler les échelles du paysage et de l'exploitation agricole en développant deux méthodes : l'une consiste à identifier les décisions des agriculteurs par le bais d'enquêtes, l'autre consiste à retrouver des régularités stochastiques dans le paysage par le bais de fouille de données. Nous avons appliqué cette approche au paysage de la plaine de Niort en France. Les résultats montrent que les décisions des agriculteurs en matière de tournesol et maïs sont génériques et ont des effets sur le paysages que des méthodes de fouille de données révèlent et quantifient

Fetal Programming of Infant Neuromotor Development: The Generation R Study

The objective of the study was to examine whether infant neuromotor development is determined by fetal size and body symmetry in the general population. This study was embedded within the Generation R Study, a population-based cohort in Rotterdam. In 2965 fetuses, growth parameters were measured in mid-pregnancy and late pregnancy. After birth, at age 9 to 15 wks, neuromotor development was assessed with an adapted version of Touwen's Neurodevelopmental Examination. Less optimal neuromotor development was defined as a score in the highest tertile. We found that higher fetal weight was beneficial to infant neurodevelopment. A fetus with a 1-SD score higher weight in mid-pregnancy had an 11% lower risk of less optimal neuromotor development (OR: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.82-0.97). Similarly, a fetus with a 1-SD score larger abdominal-to-head circumference (AC/HC) ratio had a 13% lower risk of less optimal neuromotor development (OR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.79-0.96). These associations were also present in late pregnancy. Our findings show that fetal size and body symmetry in pregnancy are associated with infant neuromotor development. These results suggest that differences in infant neuromotor development, a marker of behavioral and cognitive problems, are at least partly caused by processes occurring early in fetal life. (Pediatr Res 67: 132-137, 2010