Fire is an ecological disturbance that alters soil microbiomes and the functions they mediate in terrestrial ecosystems. Soil microbial diversity in Mediterranean Basin ecosystems shows resilience to fire following the restoration of plant-soil feedbacks. We hypothesised that microbial functions related to organic matter decomposition and nutrient cycling might show similar patterns of recovery.
The biochemical effects of trees may significantly influence local pedogenesis as well as pedocomplexity, biodiversity and forest dynamics on both stand and landscape scales. One such effect is the decay of tree trunks, which is driven by organisms, and especially by the microbiome. Decomposition modifies soil formation, which due to the existence of many feedbacks affects the composition of the decomposer community.
Nudging is seen to complement or replace existing policy tools by altering people's choice architectures towards behaviors that align with government aims, but has fallen short in meeting those targets. Crucially, governments do not nudge citizens directly, but need private agents to nudge their consumers. Based on this notion, the paper takes on an institutional approach towards nudging. Rather than looking at the relationship between nudger and nudgee, the research analyses the regulatory and market structures that affect nudge implementation by private actors, captured by the ‘budge’ idea.
Wolf-Peter Schill is Deputy Head of the Energy, Transportation, Environment Department at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), where he leads the research area Transformation of the Energy Economy. He engages in open-source power sector modeling, which he applies to economic analyses of renewable energy integration, energy storage, and sector coupling. He holds a diploma in environmental engineering and a doctoral degree in economics from Technische Universität Berlin.
Violence against women is a violation of human rights, crossing all cultures, classes, levels of education, earnings, ethnic and age groups. We conducted a retrospective study to review forensic records of sexual assault examinations carried out in different Italian health facilities and to correlate these findings with the results of the forensic DNA analyses.
Non-target effects of deliberately released organisms into a new environment are of great concern due to their potential impact on the biodiversity and functioning of ecosystems. Whereas these studies often focus on invasive species of macro-organisms, the use of microbial inoculants is often expected to have specific effects on particular functions but negligible overall effects on resident microbial communities. Here, we posit that such introductions often impact native microbial communities, which might influence ecosystem processes.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the guiding policy for agriculture and the largest single budget item in the European Union (EU). Agriculture is essential to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but the CAP's contribution to do so is uncertain. We analyzed the distribution of €59.4 billion of 2015 CAP payments and show that current CAP spending exacerbates income inequality within agriculture, while little funding supports climate-friendly and biodiverse farming regions.
This book chapter advances SDG 3 and 10 by reviewing the literature on culture and family-based psychological interventions for schizophrenia, bipolar, and related (SBR) psychotic spectrum disorder.
This article supports SDGs 7 and 9 by creating a digital twin model of batteries via combining emerging machine learning technologies and battery modeling, achieving more intelligent control and longer battery life, providing key technologies for establishing an intelligent battery management framework in the future.
The new European Commission plans to raise the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target from 40% towards 55% by 2030 and make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Achieving this will require accelerated energy efficiency measures, deeper electrification of sectors currently consuming conventional fuels and the deployment of more renewables, faster. This opinion article looks specifically at the role of photovoltaics (PV), based on scenarios from the Commission's 2018 long-term strategy (LTS) for energy and climate.
