Fire Eaters: Exploring Consumer Preferences for Labeling Extensive Livestock Products Providing Wildfire Prevention Services

Extensive livestock grazing has proved to be a valuable tool to reduce wildfire risk in Mediterranean landscapes. Meat from herds providing wildfire prevention services exhibit sustainability traits that can appeal to ethical consumers and find a suitable niche in local markets. This study assesses the preferences of a consumer sample in the province of Girona (north-eastern Spain) for different lamb meat labeling options from herds providing wildfire prevention services. The aim is to disentangle consumer profiles, providing evidence for improved product labeling. This may increase the added value and the viability of small farms providing this service. Employing a latent class modeling approach, we explore how meat consumption patterns and socioeconomic features may contribute to explain preferences for different meat labeling options. Our results have identified three consumer profiles: traditional rural consumers relying on trust with producers, younger consumers more akin to new labeling schemes, and urban consumers that support local butchers as a trusted information source. Different labeling mechanisms may work in a complementary way to arrive to different audiences of potential consumers. Geographical indication labels can serve as a good departure point, complemented with information cues on environmental factors related to wildfire protection.K.U. was supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN (PyroLife-860787

Alignment between PIN1 Polarity and Microtubule Orientation in the Shoot Apical Meristem Reveals a Tight Coupling between Morphogenesis and Auxin Transport

Morphogenesis during multicellular development is regulated by intercellular signaling molecules as well as by the mechanical properties of individual cells. In particular, normal patterns of organogenesis in plants require coordination between growth direction and growth magnitude. How this is achieved remains unclear. Here we show that in Arabidopsis thaliana, auxin patterning and cellular growth are linked through a correlated pattern of auxin efflux carrier localization and cortical microtubule orientation. Our experiments reveal that both PIN1 localization and microtubule array orientation are likely to respond to a shared upstream regulator that appears to be biomechanical in nature. Lastly, through mathematical modeling we show that such a biophysical coupling could mediate the feedback loop between auxin and its transport that underlies plant phyllotaxis

Use of preventive medication and supplements in general practice in patients in their last year of life: a Retrospective cohort study

Background: Several preventive medications and supplements become inappropriate in the last phase of life due to increased risk of adverse events caused by changed pharmacokinetics, drug-drug interactions, and changed care goals. Information on these preventive medication and supplements use in patients with a life-limiting illness in the home-care setting is limited. The primary aim of this study was to assess the use of four different groups of preventive drugs and supplements, which are inappropriate in adult patients with a life-limiting illness, living at home in the last year of life. The secondary aims were to assess reasons for discontinuing these drugs as documented in the general practitioners’ patient file and whether these reasons affected the time between medication discontinuation and death. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study using the routine primary care database of the Julius General Practitioners’ Network of the University Medical Centre Utrecht, a database consisting of routine care data from GPs from the city of Utrecht and its vicinity. Patients in the homecare setting with a life-limiting illness, diagnosed at least one year before death, were included. Descriptive analyses were used to describe the study population and the frequency of starting, using, and discontinuing medication and supplements in the last year of life. Results: A total of 458 of 666 included patients (69%) used at least one preventive drug in the last year of life. Vitamins were used by 36% of the patients, followed with 35% using cholesterol-lowering medication, 24% using calcium supplements and 9% using bisphosphonates. Bisphosphonates were discontinued by 70% of the users, calcium supplements by 61%, vitamins by 56% and cholesterol-lowering medication by 48% of the users, with a median interval between day of discontinuation and death of 119, 60, 110 and, 65 days, respectively. The median time between medication or supplement discontinuation and death was longest in patients with side effects and who had medication reviews. Conclusion: Many patients in their last phase of life in the home-care setting use inappropriate medication and supplements. Timely medication review may contribute to optimise medication use in the last year of life

A stochastic multicellular model identifies biological watermarks from disorders in self-organized patterns of phyllotaxis

Exploration of developmental mechanisms classically relies on analysis of pattern regularities. Whether disorders induced by biological noise may carry information on building principles of developmental systems is an important debated question. Here, we addressed theoretically this question using phyllotaxis, the geometric arrangement of plant aerial organs, as a model system. Phyllotaxis arises from reiterative organogenesis driven by lateral inhibitions at the shoot apex. Motivated by recurrent observations of disorders in phyllotaxis patterns, we revisited in depth the classical deterministic view of phyllotaxis. We developed a stochastic model of primordia initiation at the shoot apex, integrating locality and stochasticity in the patterning system. This stochastic model recapitulates phyllotactic patterns, both regular and irregular, and makes quantitative predictions on the nature of disorders arising from noise. We further show that disorders in phyllotaxis instruct us on the parameters governing phyllotaxis dynamics, thus that disorders can reveal biological watermarks of developmental systems

Developmental Patterning by Mechanical Signals in Arabidopsis

A central question in developmental biology is whether and how mechanical forces serve as cues for cellular behavior and thereby regulate morphogenesis. We found that morphogenesis at the Arabidopsis shoot apex depends on the microtubule cytoskeleton, which in turn is regulated by mechanical stress. A combination of experiments and modeling shows that a feedback loop encompassing tissue morphology, stress patterns, and microtubule-mediated cellular properties is sufficient to account for the coordinated patterns of microtubule arrays observed in epidermal cells, as well as for patterns of apical morphogenesis

PPR proteins - orchestrators of organelle RNA metabolism.

Pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins are important RNA regulators in chloroplasts and mitochondria, aiding in RNA editing, maturation, stabilisation or intron splicing, and in transcription and translation of organellar genes. In this review, we summarise all PPR proteins documented so far in plants and the green alga Chlamydomonas. By further analysis of the known target RNAs from Arabidopsis thaliana PPR proteins, we find that all organellar-encoded complexes are regulated by these proteins, although to differing extents. In particular, the orthologous complexes of NADH dehydrogenase (Complex I) in the mitochondria and NADH dehydrogenase-like (NDH) complex in the chloroplast were the most regulated, with respectively 60 and 28% of all characterised A. thaliana PPR proteins targeting their genes