Advent of a Link between Ayurveda and Modern Health Science: The Proceedings of the First International Congress on Ayurveda, “Ayurveda: The Meaning of Life—Awareness, Environment, and Health” March 21-22, 2009, Milan, Italy

The First International Congress on Ayurveda was held in Milan, Italy in March 2009 and it has been the first scientific event of this kind in western world. This groundbreaking international congress was devoted to human being as the product of interactions between Awareness, Environment and Health, subjects that the West tends to consider separate and independent, but that are believed deeply connected in Ayurveda, whose interdependence defines “The Meaning of Life”. The Congress established a bridge between indian and western philosophy, scientific and biomedical thinking in order to expand knowledge and healthcare. Main attention and address of the invited speakers was on the concept of “relationships” that, connecting living beings with environment, shape Nature itself. This concept is central in Ayurveda but is also common to other western scientific disciplines such as quantum physics and epigenetics that, in the four Sessions of the Congress, were represented by eminent experts. The importance of this event was underlined by the attendance of more than 400 participants and by noteworthy institutional endorsements, that added a significative political dimension of high social impact due to the topical period for CAM acceptance and integration in Europe

A plant economics spectrum in Mediterranean forests along environmental gradients: Is there coordination among leaf, stem and root traits?

12 páginas..- 4 figuras.-- 70 referencias.--Supporting Information: Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article: Appendix S1. Species list.--Appendix S2. Functional traits list.--Appendix S3. Phylogenetic tree.-- Appendix S4. Pearson correlation coefficients between traits.-- Appendix S5. Relationships between morphologicaltraits, carbon isotope fraction and leaf chlorophyll.-- Appendix S6. Phylogenetic generalized least square analysis.-- Appendix S7. Non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis.-- Appendix S8. Illustration of the scale effects.Questions: Is there any evidence of coordination among leaf, stem and root traits, and thereby of the existence of a plant economics spectrum at the species and community level in Mediterranean forests? Are these traits related to plant size and seed mass? Location: Mediterranean forests and shrublands, Sierra Morena mountains, Córdoba, southern Spain. Methods: We selected nine woody plant communities along a natural local gradient of soil water and nutrient availability. We measured key leaf, stem, root and whole-plant traits for 38 dominant woody plant species. The variation across species of 15 functional traits (of the leaf, stem and root) was analysed and coordination among them was tested. We explored the relationships between these traits (hereafter 'resource-use traits' due to their close association with the acquisition-conservation trade-off) and plant height and seed mass. Finally, we compared results at species level with those calculated at community level, considering community-weighted means (CWMs). Results: We found a significant coordination between traits belonging to different plant organs, and propose the existence of a plant economics spectrum in Mediterranean forests along the environmental gradient. However, weaker relationships were found within groups of species under similar environmental conditions. We did not find the expected orthogonal relationships between plant height, seed mass and resource-use traits. Relationships among functional traits were stronger at the community level than at the species level. Conclusions: This study reveals a high degree of functional coordination between traits belonging to different plant organs at both species and community level, and suggests the existence of a plant economics spectrum across 38 Mediterranean woody plant species. However, this general trend of functional coordination between organs became weaker or disappeared when considering restricted groups of species belonging to environmentally similar sites (e.g. dry vs wet sites), suggesting that the diversification of strategies within communities is not related to the economics spectrum at a lower spatial scale. Interestingly, the high degree of coordination between resource-use traits and seed mass at the community level seems to support the tolerance-fecundity model, which predicts an inverse relationship between fecundity and stress tolerance. © 2015 International Association for Vegetation Science.We thank Miguel Verdú for help with the phylogenetic tree and analyses and Jose Rafael Vera for plant trait analyses. We also thank Jard ın Botánico de Córdoba (Francisca Herrera) and the Semillas Cantueso Company (José Angel Cantueso) for providing seedmass data. We are very grateful to Francesco de Bello for interesting comments on previous versions of the manuscript. This study was funded by the Spanish MEC coordinated project DIVERBOS (CGL2011-30285-C02-01 and C02-02), the Andalusian ANASINQUE project (PGC2010-RNM-5782), the Life + Biodehesa Project (11/BIO/ES/000726), ECO-MEDIT (CGL2014-53236-R) and European FEDER funds. Dr. DavidWalker revised the Englis

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

Diversidad funcional de rasgos radiculares y grado de micorrización de especies leñosas mediterráneas a lo largo de un gradiente de disponibilidad de recursos edáficos

12 páginas, 1 figura, 3 tablas, 27 referencias.-- Conferencia presentada en la Mesa Temática 1. Sesión 1.1: Ecología y diversidad forestal. Flora y fauna protegidas. Congreso celebrado del 10-14, junio, 2013, en Vitoria, España.La diversidad de rasgos funcionales favorece la coexistencia de especies en la comunidad y confiere resiliencia al sistema forestal. Las plantas han desarrollado diferentes estrategias de adaptación a la escasez de agua y nutrientes en el suelo, que se reflejan en los rasgos funcionales de sus raíces y en el grado de asociación con hongos formadores de micorrizas. En el presente trabajo se estudian las diferencias en los rasgos funcionales del sistema radical: contenido en materia seca (RDMC), longitud específica radical (SRL), área específica radical (SRA), densidad radical (TMDR) y diámetro medio (AD) en las raíces finas de 100 plantas pertenecientes a 23 especies leñosas, utilizando el software "Winrhizo". Para las mismas plantas se evaluó el grado de micorrización de hongos ecto-, ectendo- y endomicorrícicos. Las plantas se muestrearon en tres parcelas de Sierra Morena (Córdoba), siguiendo un gradiente topográfico. Se midió la cobertura de cada especie en cada una de las parcelas para calcular la media ponderada (CWM) de cada rasgo a nivel de comunidad. Los resultados de este estudio muestran la diversidad de estrategias funcionales (asociadas al sistema radical) a nivel de especie y a nivel de comunidad en relación a la disponibilidad de recursos en el suelo.Este trabajo ha sido posible gracias al proyecto de investigación coordinado Diverbos (CGL2011-30285-C02-01 y C02-02) financiado por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad y fondos europeos FEDER.Peer reviewe

Data from: Disentangling the relative importance of species occurrence, abundance and intraspecific variability in community assembly: a trait-based approach at the whole-plant level in Mediterranean forests

Understanding which factors and rules govern the process of assembly in communities constitutes one of the main challenges of plant community ecology. The presence of certain functional strategies along broad environmental gradients can help to understand the patterns observed in community assembly and the filtering mechanisms that take place. We used a trait-based approach, quantifying variations in aboveground (leaf and stem) and belowground (root) functional traits along environmental gradients in Mediterranean forest communities (south Spain). We proposed a new practical method to quantify the relative importance of species turnover (distinguishing between species occurrence and abundance) versus intraspecific variation, which allowed us to better understand the assemblage rules of these plant communities along environmental gradients. Our results showed that the functional structure of the studied plant communities was highly determined by soil environment. Results from our modelling approach based on maximum likelihood estimators showed a predominant influence of soil water storage on most of the community functional traits. We found that changes in community functional structure along environmental gradients were mainly promoted by species turnover rather than by intraspecific variability. Specifically, our new method of variance decomposition demonstrated that between-site trait variation was the result of changes in species occurrence rather than in the abundance of certain dominant species. In conclusion, this study showed that water availability promoted the predominance of specific trait values (both in above and belowground fractions) associated to a resource acquisition or conservation strategy. In addition, we provided evidence that changes on community functional structure along the environmental gradient were mainly promoted by a process of species replacement, which represent a crucial step towards a more general understanding of the relative importance of intraspecific versus interspecific trait variation in these woody Mediterranean communities

Data from: Disentangling the relative importance of species occurrence, abundance and intraspecific variability in community assembly: a trait-based approach at the whole-plant level in Mediterranean forests

Understanding which factors and rules govern the process of assembly in communities constitutes one of the main challenges of plant community ecology. The presence of certain functional strategies along broad environmental gradients can help to understand the patterns observed in community assembly and the filtering mechanisms that take place. We used a trait-based approach, quantifying variations in aboveground (leaf and stem) and belowground (root) functional traits along environmental gradients in Mediterranean forest communities (south Spain). We proposed a new practical method to quantify the relative importance of species turnover (distinguishing between species occurrence and abundance) versus intraspecific variation, which allowed us to better understand the assemblage rules of these plant communities along environmental gradients. Our results showed that the functional structure of the studied plant communities was highly determined by soil environment. Results from our modelling approach based on maximum likelihood estimators showed a predominant influence of soil water storage on most of the community functional traits. We found that changes in community functional structure along environmental gradients were mainly promoted by species turnover rather than by intraspecific variability. Specifically, our new method of variance decomposition demonstrated that between-site trait variation was the result of changes in species occurrence rather than in the abundance of certain dominant species. In conclusion, this study showed that water availability promoted the predominance of specific trait values (both in above and belowground fractions) associated to a resource acquisition or conservation strategy. In addition, we provided evidence that changes on community functional structure along the environmental gradient were mainly promoted by a process of species replacement, which represent a crucial step towards a more general understanding of the relative importance of intraspecific versus interspecific trait variation in these woody Mediterranean communities

Data from: Disentangling the relative importance of species occurrence, abundance and intraspecific variability in community assembly: a trait-based approach at the whole-plant level in Mediterranean forests

Understanding which factors and rules govern the process of assembly in communities constitutes one of the main challenges of plant community ecology. The presence of certain functional strategies along broad environmental gradients can help to understand the patterns observed in community assembly and the filtering mechanisms that take place. We used a trait-based approach, quantifying variations in aboveground (leaf and stem) and belowground (root) functional traits along environmental gradients in Mediterranean forest communities (south Spain). We proposed a new practical method to quantify the relative importance of species turnover (distinguishing between species occurrence and abundance) versus intraspecific variation, which allowed us to better understand the assemblage rules of these plant communities along environmental gradients. Our results showed that the functional structure of the studied plant communities was highly determined by soil environment. Results from our modelling approach based on maximum likelihood estimators showed a predominant influence of soil water storage on most of the community functional traits. We found that changes in community functional structure along environmental gradients were mainly promoted by species turnover rather than by intraspecific variability. Specifically, our new method of variance decomposition demonstrated that between-site trait variation was the result of changes in species occurrence rather than in the abundance of certain dominant species. In conclusion, this study showed that water availability promoted the predominance of specific trait values (both in above and belowground fractions) associated to a resource acquisition or conservation strategy. In addition, we provided evidence that changes on community functional structure along the environmental gradient were mainly promoted by a process of species replacement, which represent a crucial step towards a more general understanding of the relative importance of intraspecific versus interspecific trait variation in these woody Mediterranean communities

Woody plant traits database

Functional traits at whole plant level for woody mediterranean plants on three different areas from Córdoba region (Spain

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/‘proxy’ AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele