The framework of land degradation neutrality (LDN) and the concept of sustainable land management (SLM) are ways to instigate action required to address land degradation. Although land and water ...management approaches supporting SLM and the achievement of LDN exist, the transition to sustainable agricultural systems is hindered by various factors and the achievement of LDN is lagging behind. More information on such approaches is needed to sensitize decision-makers for fostering their implementation. This study responds to this need by examining the alignment of the following land and water management approaches with SLM and LDN: agroecology, climate-smart agriculture, conservation agriculture, forest landscape restoration, integrated agriculture, regenerative agriculture, and rewilding. The alignment assessment used a formative methodological approach combining literature review and extensive expert consultations, and is structured along the SLM and LDN pillars of ecosystem health, food security, and human-wellbeing, each comprised by several criteria, as well as selected cross-cutting socioeconomic criteria that span all pillars. The results indicate that each of the approaches contributes to SLM and the achievement of LDN in different ways and to varying degrees, with none of the approaches embracing principles or practices that directly conflict with the criteria of SLM and LDN. A higher degree of alignment was identified for the ecosystem health and food security pillars, while most gaps in alignment concern criteria of the human wellbeing pillar along with certain cross-cutting criteria. The results of the assessment led to the identification of entry points for addressing gaps in alignment via supplementary activities that directly target the gaps during project planning and implementation, as well as through adhering to principles and established guidelines. Importantly, conclusions about the degree of alignment or about gaps in alignment of an approach with SLM and LDN criteria are conceptually indicative, but may change in actual practice depending on where and how projects are implemented. Notwithstanding, clarifying the approaches' contribution to SLM and the achievement of LDN can help overcome the lack of formal intergovernmental recognition of the approaches, prevent misinterpretation, and ensure their strategic inclusion in broader efforts to remedy land degradation.
Life is completely dependent on water. To analyze the role of water as a solvent in biology, we replaced water with heavy water (D2O) and investigated the biological effects by a wide range of ...techniques, using Schizosaccharomyces pombe as model organism. We show that high concentrations of D2O lead to altered glucose metabolism and growth retardation. After prolonged incubation in D2O, cells displayed gross morphological changes, thickened cell walls, and aberrant cytoskeletal organization. By transcriptomics and genetic screens, we show that the solvent replacement activates two signaling pathways: (1) the heat-shock response pathway and (2) the cell integrity pathway. Although the heat-shock response system upregulates various chaperones and other stress-relieving enzymes, we find that the activation of this pathway does not offer any fitness advantage to the cells under the solvent-replaced conditions. However, limiting the D2O-triggered activation of the cell integrity pathway allows cell growth when H2O is completely replaced with D2O. The isolated D2O-tolerant strains may aid biological production of deuterated biomolecules.
In complex networks a common task is to identify the most important or “central” nodes. There are several definitions, often called centrality measures, which often lead to different results. Here, ...we introduce
fingerprints of networks, which we define as correlation plots of local and global network properties. We show that these fingerprints are suitable tools for characterizing networks beyond single-quantity distributions. In particular, we study the correlations between four local and global measures, namely the degree, the shortest-path betweenness, the random-walk betweenness and the subgraph centrality on different random-network models like Erdős–Rényi, small-world and Barabási–Albert as well as on different real networks like metabolic pathways, social collaborations and computer networks and compare those fingerprints to determine the quality of those basic models. The correlation fingerprints are quite different between the real networks and the model networks questioning whether the models really reflect all important properties of the real world.
Abstract
Objectives
To (i) describe the nationwide antimicrobial susceptibility of Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) isolates cultured across Brazil in 2018–20 and compare it with NG antimicrobial ...resistance data from 2015–16, and (ii) present epidemiological data of the corresponding gonorrhoea patients in 2018–20.
Methods
Twelve representative sentinel sites cultured NG isolates from men with urethral discharge. Susceptibility to eight antimicrobials was examined using agar dilution method, according to WHO standards. The consenting participants were invited to provide epidemiological data.
Results
In total, 633 NG isolates (one isolate per participant) were analysed, and 449 (70.9%) questionnaires were answered. Heterosexual (68.2%) and homosexual (23.1%) sexual orientations were common, and most prevalent types of unprotected sexual intercourse were vaginal insertive (69.9%), oral giving (56.6%) and anal insertive (47.4%). The levels of in vitro NG resistance to ciprofloxacin, tetracycline, benzylpenicillin, azithromycin, cefixime, gentamicin, spectinomycin and ceftriaxone were 67.3%, 40.0%, 25.7%, 10.6%, 0.3%, 0%, 0% and 0%, respectively. Compliance with the recommended first-line ceftriaxone 500 mg plus azithromycin 1 g therapy was high (90.9%).
Conclusions
Compared with 2015–16, ciprofloxacin resistance has remained high and azithromycin and cefixime resistance rates have increased in Brazil. Resistance remained lacking to ceftriaxone, gentamicin and spectinomycin, which all are gonorrhoea treatment options. The increasing azithromycin resistance in Brazil and internationally may threaten the future use of azithromycin in dual regimens for treatment of gonorrhoea. Consequently, continued and enhanced quality-assured surveillance of gonococcal AMR, and ideally also treatment failures and including WGS, is imperative in Brazil and worldwide.
Increasingly, national programs and leaders are looking at interdisciplinary collaborations as essential to future research. Twelve years ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of ...Research on Women's Health (ORWH) developed and implemented the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH) K12 program to focus on interdisciplinary mentored career development for junior faculty in women's health research.
We applied a mixed-methods approach using an electronic survey and in-person presentations and discussions to understand best practices and lessons learned for interdisciplinary mentoring across BIRCWH K12 program leaders.
We received responses from all 29 active BIRCWH programs. Factors associated with success included ensuring sufficient protected time for regular (weekly or biweekly) mentoring; mentors promoting the research independence of the Scholar; a team mentoring approach, including career as well as content mentors; and explicit and clear expectations outlined between the Scholar and mentor. The majority of programs conduct formal evaluations of mentorship, and 79% of programs offer training in mentorship for either Scholars, mentors, or both. This article presents program leaders' best practices, challenges, and lessons learned from mentoring junior faculty who are conducting women's health research, whether basic, clinical, behavioral, translational, or health services research, using an interdisciplinary mentoring approach.
The ribosomal small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene has emerged as an important genetic marker for taxonomic identification in environmental sequencing datasets. In addition to being present in the nucleus ...of eukaryotes and the core genome of prokaryotes, the gene is also found in the mitochondria of eukaryotes and in the chloroplasts of photosynthetic eukaryotes. These three sets of genes are conceptually paralogous and should in most situations not be aligned and analyzed jointly. To identify the origin of SSU sequences in complex sequence datasets has hitherto been a time-consuming and largely manual undertaking. However, the present study introduces Metaxa (http://microbiology.se/software/metaxa/), an automated software tool to extract full-length and partial SSU sequences from larger sequence datasets and assign them to an archaeal, bacterial, nuclear eukaryote, mitochondrial, or chloroplast origin. Using data from reference databases and from full-length organelle and organism genomes, we show that Metaxa detects and scores SSU sequences for origin with very low proportions of false positives and negatives. We believe that this tool will be useful in microbial and evolutionary ecology as well as in metagenomics.
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