• Energy Research
• Closed Access close
• ZENODO close

AbstractGlobally, lake fish communities are being subjected to a range of scale‐dependent anthropogenic pressures, from climate change to eutrophication, and from overexploitation to species introductions. As a consequence, the composition of these communities is being reshuffled, in most cases leading to a surge in taxonomic similarity at the regional scale termed homogenization. The drivers of homogenization remain unclear, which may be a reflection of interactions between various environmental changes. In this study, we investigate two potential drivers of the recent changes in the composition of freshwater fish communities: recreational fishing and climate change. Our results, derived from 524 lakes of Ontario, Canada sampled in two periods (1965–1982 and 2008–2012), demonstrate that the main contributors to homogenization are the dispersal of gamefish species, most of which are large predators. Alternative explanations relating to lake habitat (e.g., area, phosphorus) or variations in climate have limited explanatory power. Our analysis suggests that human‐assisted migration is the primary driver of the observed compositional shifts, homogenizing freshwater fish community among Ontario lakes and generating food webs dominated by gamefish species.

The number of natural disasters is growing. A considerable number of them derives directly from climate changes and generates a deep impact on cultural heritages. As a result, the need for solutions able to cope with uncertain weather conditions and increased natural disasters is getting urgent. STORM is a European Research and Innovation Action co-funded in the H2020 framework that is aimed at creating intelligent tools which will gather data from libraries, sensors and crowd-sensing techniques in order to enable cultural heritage stakeholders (e.g., the organisations which have to manage the sites) to implement the most appropriate actions in the prevention, response and recovery phases of emergencies which could impact on cultural heritages. More specifically, the project aims at addressing those risks deriving from climate change, which in the near future is going to worsen most of the present hazards, as flash floods, heat waves and forest fires. As such, the approach adopted by the project is particularly fit for the purpose of being integrated with smart city systems which are increasingly growing in number and variety. Even if safety issues are not considered central in the overall concept of smart city, it’s plain that the huge quantity of data that can be gathered and processed in any future STORM-like urban cultural heritage compound should feed into the available smart city systems. On the other way round, the mass of data produced or processed by smart city systems have the potential to impact dramatically on emergency management and prevention activities to be implemented by cultural heritage stakeholders. The paper will illustrate the approach that the STORM project is adopting to mitigate the impact of climate changes on cultural heritages and the mutual benefits which could derive from an integration of the STORM outcomes with smart cities systems through the use of standard emergency data exchange protocols and an integrated framework aimed at improving existing processes related to the three identified areas: Prevention, Response and Policy

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are a key component of the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. WSN nodes are in general battery-powered, thereby and efficient usage of their energy budget is of paramount importance to avoid performance degradation in IoT applications. To this end, this chapter proposes techniques to manage the WSN nodes’ power consumption. The aim of the first technique is to minimize the transmitted power for a given quality of service requirement at the receiver side. To this end, a power control is considered at each WSN node as well as the use of multiple distributed access points at the receiver side. The second technique to reduce the WSN energy consumption is energy harvesting (EH). Namely, the use of artificial light EH is considered to extend the WSN lifetime. Thus, an experimental setup based on a photovoltaic cell, a boost converter and a commercial WSN node is presented. It is shown that under certain settings it is possible to extend the WSN node’s lifetime without bound, when the transmission time period is above a certain threshold.

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature's AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02417-5. Deposited by shareyourpaper.org and openaccessbutton.org. We've taken reasonable steps to ensure this content doesn't violate copyright. However, if you think it does you can request a takedown by emailing help@openaccessbutton.org.

AbstractChromosomal inversion polymorphisms are common in animals and plants, and recent models suggest that alternative arrangements spread by capturing different combinations of alleles acting additively or epistatically to favour local adaptation. It is also thought that inversions typically maintain favoured combinations for a long time by suppressing recombination between alternative chromosomal arrangements. Here, we consider patterns of linkage disequilibrium and genetic divergence in an old inversion polymorphism in Drosophila melanogaster (In(3R)Payne) known to be associated with climate change adaptation and a recent invasion event into Australia. We extracted, karyotyped and sequenced whole chromosomes from two Australian populations, so that changes in the arrangement of the alleles between geographically separated tropical and temperate areas could be compared. Chromosome‐wide linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis revealed strong LD within the region spanned by In(3R)Payne. This genomic region also showed strong differentiation between the tropical and the temperate populations, but no differentiation between different karyotypes from the same population, after controlling for chromosomal arrangement. Patterns of differentiation across the chromosome arm and in gene ontologies were enhanced by the presence of the inversion. These data support the notion that inversions are strongly selected by bringing together combinations of genes, but it is still not clear if such combinations act additively or epistatically. Our data suggest that climatic adaptation through inversions can be dynamic, reflecting changes in the relative abundance of different forms of an inversion and ongoing evolution of allelic content within an inversion.

Plants are sessile organisms that suffer from a multitude of challenges such as abiotic stress or the interactions with competitors, antagonists and symbionts, which influence their performance as well as their eco-physiological and biochemical responses in complex ways. In particular, the combination of different stressors and their impact on plant biomass production and the plant's ability to metabolically adjust to these challenges are less well understood. To study the effects of mineral nitrogen (N) availability, interspecific competition and the association with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) on biomass production, biomass allocation patterns (root/shoot ratio, specific leaf area) and metabolic responses, we chose the model organism Plantago lanceolata L. (Plantaginaceae). Plants were grown in a full factorial experiment. Biomass production and its allocation patterns were assessed at harvest, and the influence of the different treatments and their interactions on the plant metabolome were analysed using a metabolic fingerprinting approach with ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with time-of-flight-mass spectrometry. Limited supply of mineral N caused the most pronounced changes with respect to plant biomass and biomass allocation patterns, and altered the concentrations of more than one third of the polar plant metabolome. Competition also impaired plant biomass production, yet affected the plant metabolome to a much lesser extent than limited mineral N supply. The interaction of competition and limited mineral N supply often caused additive changes on several traits. The association with AMF did not enhance biomass production, but altered biomass allocation patterns such as the root/shoot ratio and the specific leaf area. Interestingly, we did not find significant changes in the plant metabolome caused by AMF. A targeted analysis revealed that only limited mineral N supply reduced the concentrations of one of the main target defence compounds of P. lanceolata, the iridoid glycoside catalpol. In general, the interaction of competition and limited mineral N supply led to additive changes, while the association with AMF in any case alleviated the observed stress responses. Our results show that the joint analysis of biomass/allocation patterns and metabolic traits allows a more comprehensive interpretation of plant responses to different biotic and abiotic challenges; specifically, when multiple stresses interact.

Before being settled on farms, land redistribution must be supported with the essential resources required for sustained farming production, and its beneficiaries must be capacitated. Then, to ensure that farming productions are sustainable, they must be monitored and evaluated. Then, on a larger scale, land reform beneficiaries' livelihoods must be improved. Based on all of the aforementioned criteria, research was begun to build a model that will ensure that land acquisition is done in a sustainable manner, thereby improving beneficiaries' livelihoods.

Moral panic, our predisposition to exaggerate threats against our livelihood and start blaming ourselves, is as old as human history. We always feared “others”, people with skin colors or ethnicity other than ours, people coming from other corners of the globe, and the infectious diseases the strangers might bring along. This paper deals with a new version of such moral panics which is arguably even more intense than the previous ones, but which relates to a new dimension of human experience, namely globalization. The health, economic and environmental challenges we are now faced with are posed globally. The moral panic today stems from this triple challenge. Our central thesis is that these three emergencies are interrelated, but there is no simple causal relationship between them. They can only be addressed in a global manner, while we still live in a world which is segmented into sovereign nation-states.