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Global climate models predict more frequent periods of drought stress alternated by heavier, but fewer rainfall events in the future. Biodiversity studies have shown that such changed drought stress may be mitigated by plant species richness. Here, we investigate if grassland communities, differing in species richness, respond differently to climatic extremes within the growing season. In a 3-year outdoor mesocosm experiment, four grassland species in both monoculture and mixture were subjected to a rainfall distribution regime with two levels: periods of severe drought in the summer intermitted by extreme rainfall events versus regular rainfall over time. Both treatments received the same amount of water over the season. Extreme rainfall combined with drought periods resulted in a 15% decrease in aboveground biomass in the second and third year, compared to the regular rainfall regime. Root biomass was also reduced in the extreme rainfall treatment, particularly in the top soil layer (- 40%). All species developed higher water use efficiencies (less negative leaf δ13C) in extreme rainfall than in regular rainfall. These responses to the rainfall/drought treatment were independent of species richness, although the mixtures were on an average more productive in terms of biomass than the monocultures. Our experimental results suggest that mixtures are similarly able to buffer these within-season rainfall extremes than monocultures, which contrasts with findings in the studies on natural droughts. Our work demonstrates the importance of investigating the interactions between rainfall distribution and drought periods for understanding effects of climate change on plant community performance.

16 pages, 7 figures, 1 table The model of Paillard and Parrenin (Earth Planet Sci Lett 227(3-4):263-271, 2004) has been recently optimized for the last eight glacial cycles, leading to two different relaxation models with model-data correlations between 0.8 and 0.9 (García-Olivares and Herrero (Clim Dyn 1-25, 2012b)). These two models are here used to predict the effect of an anthropogenic CO2 pulse on the evolution of atmospheric CO2, global ice volume and Antarctic ice cover during the next 300 kyr. The initial atmospheric CO2 condition is obtained after a critical data analysis that sets 1300 Gt as the most realistic carbon Ultimate Recoverable Resources (URR), with the help of a global compartmental model to determine the carbon transfer function to the atmosphere. The next 20 kyr will have an abnormally high greenhouse effect which, according to the CO2 values, will lengthen the present interglacial by some 25 to 33 kyr. This is because the perturbation of the current interglacial will lead to a delay in the future advance of the ice sheet on the Antarctic shelf, causing that the relative maximum of boreal insolation found 65 kyr after present (AP) will not affect the developing glaciation. Instead, it will be the following insolation peak, about 110 kyr AP, which will find an appropriate climatic state to trigger the next deglaciation. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht This study has been carried out in the framework of project TIC-MOC (CTM2011-28867), funded by the 2008-2011 Spanish R+D Plan. C. Herrero acknowledges a CSIC JAE-Predoc scholarship co-financed by the European Social Fund (FSE) Peer Reviewed

Las secuencias polínicas, y en concreto las obtenidas a partir de sedimentos limnéticos, se han revelado como la herramienta más eficaz a la hora de valorar los cambios climáticos cuaternarios a nivel regional y su incidencia sobre los ecosistemas. Una parte importante de los registros obtenidos en el NW ibérico, presenta una antigüedad menor de 3.000; las secuencias continuas de más de 6.000 años, que alcanzan cronologías de 10.000 o 12.000 años, se limita a grandes turberas de zonas de montaña; finalmente, los periodos de más de 17.000 años, únicamente aparecen representados en sedimentos fosilizados, en los que se han obtenido registros continuos de 10.000 o 20.000 años y excepcionalmente periodos de más de 50.000. Las más de 200 secuencias disponibles para el NW ibérico, permiten realizar una correcta evaluación de la incidencia de los cambios climáticos y de la influencia antrópica sobre los ecosistemas, a lo largo de los últimos 100.000 años. La abundancia de datos, accede a reconocer la diferente influencia de estos cambios sobre las distintas áreas biogeográficas del territorio.

Over the past two years, the world’s population has been tested by the COVID-19 health emergency. This has changed population habits worldwide by encouraging a sedentary lifestyle and overnutrition. Isolation and reduction of social life, for most of the population, was mandatory but it quickly became a new lifestyle. Nowadays, we are encountering the consequences with an increase in nutritional associated disorders and conditions that cause illnesses in the general population. These disorders include diet excesses that lead to obesity and diet deficiencies and malnutrition which could rapidly lead to death. These eating disorders are very complex to manage because they become mental disorders which can negatively impact physical or mental health. This work will disucss the benefits associated with the mindfulness–exercise–nutrition (MEN) technique. From a nutritional point of view it will focus on the nutritional effect of a plant-based diet, such as the Mediterranean diet (MD) which has a high tryptophan content which can increase serotonin (the “feel good” hormone) levels. The MEN technique takes a multidisciplinary approach and aims to integrate healthy behaviors into clinical practice using healthy eating, active living, and mindfulness. This method includes controlled physical movements, stretching techniques such as yoga, and aerobic exercise to achieve optimal mental and physical health. This literature review, carried out using the PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases, aims to investigate the latest research on this topic. This study may be useful for healthcare professionals and clinicians and may help patients to be more self-aware, encouraging them to lead a healthier lifestyle, make thoughtful choices, and ameliorate their mental health. The final aim of this study is to promote physiological homeostasis and well-being.

The world, society and education are constantly evolving, and to respond to these changes, the main governmental institutions have been proposing different global strategies to focus efforts in the same direction. Currently, the United Nations and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have presented a series of indicators that could help to minimise the environmental, economic and social instability we are experiencing. In this sense, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been described as a fundamental factor. Specifically, in previous work, we argued that physical education (PE) could be a good tool to contribute to SDGs. Based on this, no research analysing the voices of Physical Education Teachers (PET) on how this contribution could be made has been identified in previous literature. Therefore, the objectives of this research are: (1) to analyse the voices and opinions of active PETs in terms of the knowledge they have about Sustainable Development (SD); (2) to determine their opinions about the contribution that PE could make to SDGs; and finally, (3) to identify the challenges and limitations of pedagogical action of SD in PE. For this purpose, a qualitative analysis through a semi-structured interview with 41 active PETs was carried out. The main findings will be presented and discussed around four themes: (a) agreement on the concept of sustainability; (b) PE can contribute to the achievement of SDGs; (c) ambiguity in applying SDGs to PE lessons; and (d) teachers’ constraints on how to implement SDGs in PE. It seems to indicate that PETs do not have a multidimensional vision of sustainable development. While they recognise the potential of PE to contribute to SDGs through awareness raising and student learning, they point to its pedagogical and formative constraints as the main barriers to being able to contribute. They pointed to a lack of knowledge on how to do so, guidelines on how to integrate ESD, lack of involvement, shortage of time or resources in school physical education.

Fil: Marchelli, Paula. Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Patagonia Norte. Estacion Experimental Agropecuaria San Carlos de Bariloche; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina

Intravenous infusion of ethanol (EtOH) (up to 0.1 ml kg-1 min-1) does not modify the blood pressure in conscious rabbits. In this range of doses, EtOH brings about an increase of the pressure responses induced by norepinephrine (NE) with respect to values obtained in the absence of EtOH. Similar experiments have been performed on the isolated rat tail artery: EtOH perfusion does not modify the basal tone of the preparation up to 2% concentration, while the contractile response to NE administration is potentiated. The supersensitivity of the arteries to NE induced by EtOH, is a function of EtOH concentration and can be represented by a bellshaped curve reaching the maximal value at 1% EtOH, whereby concentrations larger than 2% induce an inhibition of NE activity. The present experiments suggest that the potentiation of the contractile effects of NE induced by EtOH might be related to an enhancement of the rate of calcium transport due to the increase in cell membrane plasticity induced by EtOH.

Significance Bioethanol produced from waste biomass from crops has the potential to provide a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based transportation fuel that does not compete with human food supply. The main obstacle to this approach is the resistance of this biomass to digestion. Thus, expensive energetic pretreatment and high enzyme inputs are needed to increase digestion. In this study, we screened a population of randomly mutated plants for digestibility with the aim of identifying novel factors that impact on this trait. We found a number of mutants with high digestibility and no impairments in growth or fitness. These mutants show a range of alterations in cell-wall composition, and we have mapped and characterized the mutant with the highest increase in digestibility.

Asseng, S. et al. Crop models are essential tools for assessing the threat of climate change to local and global food production1. Present models used to predict wheat grain yield are highly uncertain when simulating how crops respond to temperature2. Here we systematically tested 30 different wheat crop models of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project against field experiments in which growing season mean temperatures ranged from 15 °C to 32 °C, including experiments with artificial heating. Many models simulated yields well, but were less accurate at higher temperatures. The model ensemble median was consistently more accurate in simulating the crop temperature response than any single model, regardless of the input information used. Extrapolating the model ensemble temperature response indicates that warming is already slowing yield gains at a majority of wheat-growing locations. Global wheat production is estimated to fall by 6% for each °C of further temperature increase and become more variable over space and time. We thank the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project and its leaders C. Rosenzweig from NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University (USA), J. Jones from University of Florida (USA), J. Hatfield from United States Department of Agriculture (USA) and J. Antle from Oregon State University (USA) for support. We also thank M. Lopez from CIMMYT (Turkey), M. Usman Bashir from University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (Pakistan), S. Soufizadeh from Shahid Beheshti University (Iran), and J. Lorgeou and J-C. Deswarte from ARVALIS—Institut du Végétal (France) for assistance with selecting key locations and quantifying regional crop cultivars, anthesis and maturity dates and R. Raymundo for assistance with GIS. S.A. and D.C. received financial support from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). C.S. was funded through USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture award 32011-68002-30191. C.M. received financial support from the KULUNDA project (01LL0905L) and the FACCE MACSUR project (031A103B) funded through the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). F.E. received support from the FACCE MACSUR project (031A103B) funded through the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2812ERA115) and E.E.R. was funded through the German Science Foundation (project EW 119/5-1). M.J. and J.E.O. were funded through the FACCE MACSUR project by the Danish Strategic Research Council. K.C.K. and C.N. were funded by the FACCE MACSUR project through the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). F.T., T.P. and R.P.R. received financial support from FACCE MACSUR project funded through the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MMM); F.T. was also funded through National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41071030). C.B. was funded through the Helmholtz project ‘REKLIM—Regional Climate Change: Causes and Effects’ Topic 9: ‘Climate Change and Air Quality’. M.P.R. and P.D.A. received funding from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS). G.O’L. was funded through the Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation and the Department of Environment and Primary Industries Victoria, Australia. R.C.I. was funded by Texas AgriLife Research, Texas A&M University. E.W. and Z.Z. were funded by CSIRO and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) through the research project ‘Advancing crop yield while reducing the use of water and nitrogen’ and by the CSIRO-MoE PhD Research Program. Peer reviewed