Sustainability science in education : analysis of master's programmes' curricula

Sustainability science is an emerging, free-standing scientific discipline. It has introduced a new approach to both sustainability research and educational programmes, while evoking novel perspectives to stronger societal contextualization. Among several other areas of sustainability research, competencies for sustainability have become a focal topic of sustainability education research. This research explores the educational programmes and the representation of the theory-based key competencies for sustainability. Through a qualitative content study of 45 master programmes associated with sustainability science, we aim to understand what kind of sustainability competencies can be found in sustainability science master's programmes and how they reflect the current discussions of the discipline of sustainability science and possibly drive the future education in the field. The study reveals that commonly suggested competencies including systems thinking, anticipatory, strategic, interpersonal, and normative competencies were frequently mentioned as content and learning outcomes in the curricula and are firmly present and widely employed in sustainability education. Additionally, this study identified three other clusters of competencies: diverse modes of thinking, methodological plurality, and competencies for autonomy. In addition to the contribution to education in the field by suggesting three emerged competencies for sustainability science specifically, we aim to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the discipline by suggesting a process-oriented framing of sustainability science.Peer reviewe

Cerebrospinal fluid cytokines in Lyme neuroborreliosis

Background: Lyme neuroborreliosis (LNB) is one of the manifestations of Lyme disease. Although it is known that immune reaction of LNB patients is dominated by Th1 and Th2 responses and patients have elevated numbers of B cells in their cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), not all the cells involved in inflammation and cytokine secretion have been characterized. The current diagnostics of LNB is based on intrathecal production of antibodies. In recent years, the measurement of chemokine CXCL13 concentration from the CSF has been introduced as a new promising diagnostic tool for LNB to complement the antibody-based diagnostic methods. A few other cytokines have also been analyzed as possible diagnostic markers. However, multiplex analyses simultaneously evaluating the concentrations of a large number of different cytokines in the CSF of LNB patients have been lacking thus far. Extensive cytokine profiling CSF samples of LNB patients would also help in understanding the complex immunopathogenesis of LNB.Methods: CSF samples were analyzed from 43 LNB patients, 19 controls, 18 tick-borne encephalitis patients, and 31 multiple sclerosis patients. In addition, CSF samples from 23 LNB patients obtained after the antibiotic treatment were examined. Altogether, the concentrations of 49 different cytokines were determined from all of the samples. The concentrations of 48 different cytokines were analyzed by magnetic bead suspension array using the Bio-Plex Pro Human Cytokine 21- and 27-plex panels, and the concentration of CXCL13 was analyzed by an ELISA based method.Results: Distinct cytokine profiles which were able to distinguish LNB patients from controls, tick-borne encephalitis patients, multiple sclerosis patients, and LNB patients treated with antibiotics were identified. LNB patients had elevated concentrations of all major T helper cell type cytokines (Th1, Th2, Th9, Th17, and Treg) in their CSF.Conclusions: Despite the great differences in the CSF cytokine profiles of different patient groups, CXCL13 still remained as the best marker for LNB. However, IL-1ra might also be helpful as a marker for the antibiotic treatment response. Concerning the immunopathogenesis, this is the first report suggesting the involvement of Th9 cells in the immune response of LNB

The regional aerosol-climate model REMO-HAM

REMO-HAM is a new regional aerosol-climate model. It is based on the REMO regional climate model and includes most of the major aerosol processes. The structure for aerosol is similar to the global aerosol-climate model ECHAM5-HAM, for example the aerosol module HAM is coupled with a two-moment stratiform cloud scheme. On the other hand, REMO-HAM does not include an online coupled aerosol-radiation nor a secondary organic aerosol module. In this work, we evaluate the model and compare the results against ECHAM5-HAM and measurements. Four different measurement sites were chosen for the comparison of total number concentrations, size distributions and gas phase sulfur dioxide concentrations: Hyytiälä in Finland, Melpitz in Germany, Mace Head in Ireland and Jungfraujoch in Switzerland. REMO-HAM is run with two different resolutions: 50 × 50 km2 and 10 × 10 km2. Based on our simulations, REMO-HAM is in reasonable agreement with the measured values. The differences in the total number concentrations between REMO-HAM and ECHAM5-HAM can be mainly explained by the difference in the nucleation mode. Since we did not use activation nor kinetic nucleation for the boundary layer, the total number concentrations are somewhat underestimated. From the meteorological point of view, REMO-HAM represents the precipitation fields and 2 m temperature profile very well compared to measurement. Overall, we show that REMO-HAM is a functional aerosol-climate model, which will be used in further studies

Borrelia valaisiana resist complement-mediated killing independently of the recruitment of immune regulators and inactivation of complement components

Spirochetes belonging to the Borrelia (B.) burgdorferi sensu lato complex differ in their resistance to complement-mediated killing, particularly in regard to human serum. In the present study, we elucidate the serum and complement susceptibility of B. valaisiana, a genospecies with the potential to cause Lyme disease in Europe as well as in Asia. Among the investigated isolates, growth of ZWU3 Ny3 was not affected while growth of VS116 and Bv9 was strongly inhibited in the presence of 50% human serum. Analyzing complement activation, complement components C3, C4 and C6 were deposited on the surface of isolates VS116 and Bv9, and similarly the membrane attack complex was formed on their surface. In contrast, no surface-deposited components and no aberrations in cell morphology were detected for serum-resistant ZWU3 Ny3. While further investigating the protective role of bound complement regulators in mediating complement resistance, we discovered that none of the B. valaisiana isolates analyzed bound complement regulators Factor H, Factor H-like protein 1, C4b binding protein or C1 esterase inhibitor. In addition, B. valaisiana also lacked intrinsic proteolytic activity to degrade complement components C3, C3b, C4, C4b, and C5. Taken together, these findings suggest that certain B. valaisiana isolates differ in their capability to resist complement-mediating killing by human serum. The molecular mechanism utilized by B. valaisiana to inhibit bacteriolysis appears not to involve binding of the key host complement regulators of the alternative, classical, and lectin pathways as already known for serum-resistant Lyme disease or relapsing fever borreliae

Spatial distributions and seasonal cycles of aerosol climate effects in India seen in a global climate-aerosol model

Climate-aerosol interactions in India are studied by employing the global climate-aerosol model ECHAM5-HAM and the GAINS inventory for anthropogenic aerosol emissions. Model validation is done for black carbon surface concentrations in Mukteshwar and for features of the monsoon circulation. Seasonal cycles and spatial distributions of radiative forcing and the temperature and rainfall responses are presented for different model setups. While total aerosol radiative forcing is strongest in the summer, anthropogenic forcing is considerably stronger in winter than in summer. Local seasonal temperature anomalies caused by aerosols are mostly negative with some exceptions, e.g., parts of northern India in March-May. Rainfall increases due to the elevated heat pump (EHP) mechanism and decreases due to solar dimming mechanisms (SDMs) and the relative strengths of these effects during different seasons and for different model setups are studied. Aerosol light absorption does increase rainfall in northern India, but effects due to solar dimming and circulation work to cancel the increase. The total aerosol effect on rainfall is negative for northern India in the months of June-August, but during March-May the effect is positive for most model setups. These differences between responses in different seasons might help converge the ongoing debate on the EHPs and SDMs. Due to the complexity of the problem and known or potential sources for error and bias, the results should be interpreted cautiously as they are completely dependent on how realistic the model is. Aerosol-rainfall correlations and anticorrelations are shown not to be a reliable sole argument for deducing causality

Vilnius Declaration on chronic respiratory diseases : multisectoral care pathways embedding guided self-management, mHealth and air pollution in chronic respiratory diseases

Correction: Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Article Number: 49 DOI: 10.1186/s13601-020-00357-4 Published: DEC 17 2020Background: Over 1 billion people suffer from chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma, COPD, rhinitis and rhinosinusitis. They cause an enormous burden and are considered as major non-communicable diseases. Many patients are still uncontrolled and the cost of inaction is unacceptable. A meeting was held in Vilnius, Lithuania (March 23, 2018) under the patronage of the Ministry of Health and several scientific societies to propose multisectoral care pathways embedding guided self-management, mHealth and air pollution in selected chronic respiratory diseases (rhinitis, chronic rhinosinusitis, asthma and COPD). The meeting resulted in the Vilnius Declaration that was developed by the participants of the EU Summit on chronic respiratory diseases under the leadership of Euforea. Conclusion: The Vilnius Declaration represents an important step for the fight against air pollution in chronic respiratory diseases globally and has a clear strategic relevance with regard to the EU Health Strategy as it will bring added value to the existing public health knowledge.Peer reviewe

Bi-Modal Person Recognition on a Mobile Phone: using mobile phone data

This paper presents a novel fully automatic bi-modal, face and speaker, recognition system which runs in real-time on a mobile phone. The implemented system runs in real-time on a Nokia N900 and demonstrates the feasibility of performing both automatic face and speaker recognition on a mobile phone. We evaluate this recognition system on a novel publicly-available mobile phone database and provide a well defined evaluation protocol. This database was captured almost exclusively using mobile phones and aims to improve research into deploying biometric techniques to mobile devices. We show, on this mobile phone database, that face and speaker recognition can be performed in a mobile environment and using score fusion can improve the performance by more than 25% in terms of error rates

Texture classification of proteins using support vector machines and bio-inspired metaheuristics

6th International Joint Conference, BIOSTEC 2013, Barcelona, Spain, February 11-14, 2013[Abstract] In this paper, a novel classification method of two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis images is presented. Such a method uses textural features obtained by means of a feature selection process for whose implementation we compare Genetic Algorithms and Particle Swarm Optimization. Then, the selected features, among which the most decisive and representative ones appear to be those related to the second order co-occurrence matrix, are used as inputs for a Support Vector Machine. The accuracy of the proposed method is around 94 %, a statistically better performance than the classification based on the entire feature set. This classification step can be very useful for discarding over-segmented areas after a protein segmentation or identification process

European Summit on the Prevention and Self-Management of Chronic Respiratory Diseases: report of the European Union Parliament Summit (29 March 2017)

On March 29, 2017, a European Summit on the Prevention and Self-Management of Chronic Respiratory Diseases (CRD) was organized by the European Forum for Research and Education in Allergy and Airway Diseases. The event took place in the European Parliament of Brussels and was hosted by MEP David Borrelli and MEP Sirpa Pietikainen. The aim of the Summit was to correspond to the needs of the European Commission and of patients suffering from CRD to join forces in Europe for the prevention and self-management. Delegates of the European Rhinologic Society, European Respiratory Society, European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, European Academy of Paediatrics, and European Patients Organization EFA all lectured on their vision and action plan to join forces in achieving adequate prevention and self-management of CRD in the context of Precision Medicine. Recent data highlight the preventive capacity of education on optimal care pathways for CRD. Self-management and patient empowerment can be achieved by novel educational on-line materials and by novel mobile health tools enabling patients and doctors to monitor and optimally treat CRDs based on the level of control. This report summarizes the contributions of the representatives of different European academic stakeholders in the field of CRD

Caenorhabditis elegans Genomic Response to Soil Bacteria Predicts Environment-Specific Genetic Effects on Life History Traits

With the post-genomic era came a dramatic increase in high-throughput technologies, of which transcriptional profiling by microarrays was one of the most popular. One application of this technology is to identify genes that are differentially expressed in response to different environmental conditions. These experiments are constructed under the assumption that the differentially expressed genes are functionally important in the environment where they are induced. However, whether differential expression is predictive of functional importance has yet to be tested. Here we have addressed this expectation by employing Caenorhabditis elegans as a model for the interaction of native soil nematode taxa and soil bacteria. Using transcriptional profiling, we identified candidate genes regulated in response to different bacteria isolated in association with grassland nematodes or from grassland soils. Many of the regulated candidate genes are predicted to affect metabolism and innate immunity suggesting similar genes could influence nematode community dynamics in natural systems. Using mutations that inactivate 21 of the identified genes, we showed that most contribute to lifespan and/or fitness in a given bacterial environment. Although these bacteria may not be natural food sources for C. elegans, we show that changes in food source, as can occur in environmental disturbance, can have a large effect on gene expression, with important consequences for fitness. Moreover, we used regression analysis to demonstrate that for many genes the degree of differential gene expression between two bacterial environments predicted the magnitude of the effect of the loss of gene function on life history traits in those environments