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Abstract. Regional land carbon budgets provide insights on the spatial distribution of the land uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and can be used to evaluate carbon cycle models and to define baselines for land-based additional mitigation efforts. The scientific community has been involved in providing observation-based estimates of regional carbon budgets either by downscaling atmospheric CO2 observations into surface fluxes with atmospheric inversions, by using inventories of carbon stock changes in terrestrial ecosystems, by upscaling local field observations such as flux towers with gridded climate and remote sensing fields or by integrating data-driven or process-oriented terrestrial carbon cycle models. The first coordinated attempt to collect regional carbon budgets for nine regions covering the entire globe in the RECCAP-1 project has delivered estimates for the decade 2000–2009, but these budgets were not comparable between regions, due to different definitions and component fluxes reported or omitted. The recent recognition of lateral fluxes of carbon by human activities and rivers, that connect CO2 uptake in one area with its release in another also requires better definition and protocols to reach harmonized regional budgets that can be summed up to the globe and compared with the atmospheric CO2 growth rate and inversion results. In this study, for the international initiative RECCAP-2 coordinated by the Global Carbon Project, which aims as an update of regional carbon budgets over the last two decades based on observations, for 10 regions covering the globe, with a better harmonization that the precursor project, we provide recommendations for using atmospheric inversions results to match bottom-up carbon accounting and models, and we define the different component fluxes of the net land atmosphere carbon exchange that should be reported by each research group in charge of each region. Special attention is given to lateral fluxes, inland water fluxes and land use fluxes.

Urea is the most common nitrogen (N) fertilizer in agriculture, due to its cheaper price and high N content. Although the reciprocal influence between NO3- and NH4+ nutrition are well known, urea (U) interactions with these N-inorganic forms are poorly studied. Here, the responses of two tomato genotypes to ammonium nitrate (AN), U alone or in combination were investigated. Significant differences in root and shoot biomass between genotypes were observed. Under AN+U supply, Linosa showed higher biomass compared to UC82, exhibiting also higher values for many root architectural traits. Linosa showed higher Nitrogen Uptake (NUpE) and Utilization Efficiency (NUtE) compared to UC82, under AN+U nutrition. Interestingly, Linosa exhibited also a significantly higher DUR3 transcript abundance. These results underline the beneficial effect of AN+U nutrition, highlighting new molecular and physiological strategies for selecting crops that can be used for more sustainable agriculture. The data suggest that translocation and utilization (NUtE) might be a more important component of NUE than uptake (NUpE) in tomato. Genetic variation could be a source for useful NUE traits in tomato; further experiments are needed to dissect the NUtE components that confer a higher ability to utilize N in Linosa.

Implementing a circular economy aimed at reusing resources is becoming increasingly important for industry. Microalgae fit within a circular economy by being able to bioremediate nutrient waste and as a source of biomass for several commercial applications. Here, we report a novel validation of a circular economy concept using microalgae at a relevant industrial scale with a new two-phase process. During the first phase biomass was grown autotrophically, biomass was then concentrated using membrane technology for the second phase where mixotrophic conditions were applied to boost growth further. Microalgae cultures were able to grow (13.8 g/L), uptake and bioremediate nutrients (Nitrogen > 134 mg/L/day) from an anaerobic digestion side-stream (digestate), obtaining high quality microalgae biomass (>45% protein content) suitable for use as animal feed, closing the circular economy loop for industrial applications.

Schrödinger [Schrödinger, E., 1944. What is Life? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge] marvelled at how the organism is able to use metabolic energy to maintain and even increase its organisation, which could not be understood in terms of classical statistical thermodynamics. Ho [Ho, M.W., 1993. The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, World Scientific, Singapore; Ho, M.W., 1998a. The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, 2nd (enlarged) ed., reprinted 1999, 2001, 2003 (available online from ISIS website www.i-sis.org.uk)] outlined a novel "thermodynamics of organised complexity" based on a nested dynamical structure that enables the organism to maintain its organisation and simultaneously achieve non-equilibrium and equilibrium energy transfer at maximum efficiency. This thermodynamic model of the organism is reminiscent of the dynamical structure of steady state ecosystems identified by Ulanowicz [Ulanowicz, R.E., 1983. Identifying the structure of cycling in ecosystems. Math. Biosci. 65, 210-237; Ulanowicz, R.E., 2003. Some steps towards a central theory of ecosystem dynamics. Comput. Biol. Chem. 27, 523-530]. The healthy organism excels in maintaining its organisation and keeping away from thermodynamic equilibrium--death by another name--and in reproducing and providing for future generations. In those respects, it is the ideal sustainable system. We propose therefore to explore the common features between organisms and ecosystems, to see how far we can analyse sustainable systems in agriculture, ecology and economics as organisms, and to extract indicators of the system's health or sustainability. We find that looking at sustainable systems as organisms provides fresh insights on sustainability, and offers diagnostic criteria for sustainability that reflect the system's health. In the case of ecosystems, those diagnostic criteria of health translate into properties such as biodiversity and productivity, the richness of cycles, the efficiency of energy use and minimum dissipation. In the case of economic systems, they translate into space-time differentiation or organised heterogeneity, local autonomy and sufficiency at appropriate levels, reciprocity and equality of exchange, and most of all, balancing the exploitation of natural resources--real input into the system--against the ability of the ecosystem to regenerate itself.

Abstract: Five groups of NMRI mice were fed ethanol or sucrose in a nutritionally adequate liquid diet for 9 days. The dietary fat consisted of olive oil with the fatty acid composition 18:1 77%, 18:2 10%, 18:0 and 16:0 12%. The ethanol treated groups received 5% w/v ethanol (E) or isocaloric sucrose (S). Two groups (S‐ and E‐) received the diet without supplement. In two groups (S+ and E +) 7% of the fat was exchanged for arachidonic acid (20:4). In a fifth group (IE +) treated with ethanol and arachidonic acid the diet also contained indomethacin (10 mg/1). The mean intake of ethanol was about 20 g/kg/day. After 9 days animals were killed and liver lipids analyzed after Folch extraction. The post mortem accumulation of prostaglandin E2 in the kidney was measured by GC‐MS. Dietary 20:4 was found to protect mice against fatty liver caused both by a high fat diet alone and in combination with ethanol. The liver triglycerides were 30.7 + 4.3 (S ‐), 46.1+6.9 (E ‐), 6.8 + 0.4 (S +) and 19.4 ±1.8 (E +). Prostaglandin levels in the kidney were depressed by ethanol treatment. Indomethacin gave variable degrees of PG synthesis inhibition. The degree of liver triglyceride accumulation in the IE+ group was inversely propotional to the degree of PG synthesis. The data suggest a role for liver 20:4 cyclooxyganase metabolites in fatty liver caused by high fat diets and ethanol.

AbstractBuddleja davidii is a unique biomass that has many attractive agroenergy features, especially its wide range of growth habitat. The anatomical characteristics of B. davidii were investigated before and after ethanol organosolv pretreatment (one of the leading pretreatment technologies) in order to further understand the alterations that occur to the cellular structure of the biomass which can then be correlated with its enzymatic digestibility. Results showed that the ethanol organosolv pretreatment of B. davidii selectively removes lignin from the middle lamella (ML), which does not significantly disrupt the crystalline structure of cellulose. The removal of ML lignin is a major factor in enhancing enzymatic cellulose‐to‐glucose hydrolysis. The pretreatment also causes cell deformation, resulting in cracks and breaks in the cell wall. These observations, together with characterization analysis of the cell wall polymer material, lend support to the hypothesis that the physical distribution of lignin in the biomass matrix is an important structural feature affecting biomass enzymatic digestibility. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2010;107: 795–801. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Food provides energy and nutrients, but its acquisition requires energy expenditure. In post-hunter-gatherer societies, extra-somatic energy has greatly expanded and intensified the catching, gathering, and production of food. Modern relations between energy, food, and health are very complex, raising serious, high-level policy challenges. Together with persistent widespread under-nutrition, over-nutrition (and sedentarism) is causing obesity and associated serious health consequences. Worldwide, agricultural activity, especially livestock production, accounts for about a fifth of total greenhouse-gas emissions, thus contributing to climate change and its adverse health consequences, including the threat to food yields in many regions. Particular policy attention should be paid to the health risks posed by the rapid worldwide growth in meat consumption, both by exacerbating climate change and by directly contributing to certain diseases. To prevent increased greenhouse-gas emissions from this production sector, both the average worldwide consumption level of animal products and the intensity of emissions from livestock production must be reduced. An international contraction and convergence strategy offers a feasible route to such a goal. The current global average meat consumption is 100 g per person per day, with about a ten-fold variation between high-consuming and low-consuming populations. 90 g per day is proposed as a working global target, shared more evenly, with not more than 50 g per day coming from red meat from ruminants (ie, cattle, sheep, goats, and other digastric grazers).