| 1. |
- Tinetti, G., et al.
(författare)
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A chemical survey of exoplanets with ARIEL
- 2018
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Ingår i: Experimental Astronomy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0922-6435 .- 1572-9508. ; 46:1, s. 135-209
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-like planets to large gas giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital parameters of a planet to the nature of its parent star. We have little idea whether the chemistry of a planet is linked to its formation environment, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet’s birth, and evolution. ARIEL was conceived to observe a large number (~1000) of transiting planets for statistical understanding, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a range of host star types using transit spectroscopy in the 1.25–7.8 μm spectral range and multiple narrow-band photometry in the optical. ARIEL will focus on warm and hot planets to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres which should show minimal condensation and sequestration of high-Z materials compared to their colder Solar System siblings. Said warm and hot atmospheres are expected to be more representative of the planetary bulk composition. Observations of these warm/hot exoplanets, and in particular of their elemental composition (especially C, O, N, S, Si), will allow the understanding of the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few million years. ARIEL will thus provide a representative picture of the chemical nature of the exoplanets and relate this directly to the type and chemical environment of the host star. ARIEL is designed as a dedicated survey mission for combined-light spectroscopy, capable of observing a large and well-defined planet sample within its 4-year mission lifetime. Transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy methods, whereby the signal from the star and planet are differentiated using knowledge of the planetary ephemerides, allow us to measure atmospheric signals from the planet at levels of 10–100 part per million (ppm) relative to the star and, given the bright nature of targets, also allows more sophisticated techniques, such as eclipse mapping, to give a deeper insight into the nature of the atmosphere. These types of observations require a stable payload and satellite platform with broad, instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect many molecular species, probe the thermal structure, identify clouds and monitor the stellar activity. The wavelength range proposed covers all the expected major atmospheric gases from e.g. H2O, CO2, CH4 NH3, HCN, H2S through to the more exotic metallic compounds, such as TiO, VO, and condensed species. Simulations of ARIEL performance in conducting exoplanet surveys have been performed – using conservative estimates of mission performance and a full model of all significant noise sources in the measurement – using a list of potential ARIEL targets that incorporates the latest available exoplanet statistics. The conclusion at the end of the Phase A study, is that ARIEL – in line with the stated mission objectives – will be able to observe about 1000 exoplanets depending on the details of the adopted survey strategy, thus confirming the feasibility of the main science objectives.
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| 2. |
- Bengtsson, Jan, et al.
(författare)
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Towards valuation of biodiversity in agricultural soils: A case for earthworms
- 2019
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Ingår i: Ecological Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0921-8009 .- 1873-6106. ; 159, s. 291-300
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Soil biodiversity is deteriorating in Europe due to an on-going intensification of agriculture, climate change and food production supporting measures of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Nevertheless, the CAP tries to take biodiversity into account via proposing a range of agri-environmental measures. These ES contribute to food security, climate change mitigation, water retention and plant biomass growth. Healthy soils also help to prevent erosion, desertification, and landslides and to stabilise crop yields. The provision of ES by soil biota is a result of their impact on soil processes in interaction with soil conditions as well as soil management practices of the farmers such as tillage or crop rotations. Some taxa amongst soil biota play key roles in regulating soil processes. With respect to biocontrol of soil-borne pests, the earthworm species Lumbricus terrestris is known to play an important role in suppressing toxigenic plant pathogens, such as Fusarium culmorum and its mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON). We highlight the importance of earthworms for pest control to conceptualise and show how farmers' management practices influence soil ecosystem services and outline how this can be examined in a socio-ecological context by providing a concrete example of an economical evaluation of ES provided by earthworms.
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| 3. |
- Chami, Nathalie, et al.
(författare)
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Exome Genotyping Identifies Pleiotropic Variants Associated with Red Blood Cell Traits
- 2016
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Ingår i: American Journal of Human Genetics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0002-9297 .- 1537-6605. ; 99:1, s. 8-21
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Red blood cell (RBC) traits are important heritable clinical biomarkers and modifiers of disease severity. To identify coding genetic variants associated with these traits, we conducted meta-analyses of seven RBC phenotypes in 130,273 multi-ethnic individuals from studies genotyped on an exome array. After conditional analyses and replication in 27,480 independent individuals, we identified 16 new RBC variants. We found low-frequency missense variants in MAP1A (rs55707100, minor allele frequency [MAF] = 3.3%, p = 2 x 10(-10) for hemoglobin [HGB]) and HNF4A (rs1800961, MAF = 2.4%, p < 3 x 10(-8) for hematocrit [HCT] and HGB). In African Americans, we identified a nonsense variant in CD36 associated with higher RBC distribution width (rs3211938, MAF = 8.7%, p = 7 x 10(-11)) and showed that it is associated with lower CD36 expression and strong allelic imbalance in ex vivo differentiated human erythroblasts. We also identified a rare missense variant in ALAS2 (rs201062903, MAF = 0.2%) associated with lower mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular hemoglobin (p < 8 x 10(-9)). Mendelian mutations in ALAS2 are a cause of sideroblastic anemia and erythropoietic protoporphyria. Gene-based testing highlighted three rare missense variants in PKLR, a gene mutated in Mendelian non-spherocytic hemolytic anemia, associated with HGB and HCT (SKAT p < 8 x 10(-7)). These rare, low-frequency, and common RBC variants showed pleiotropy, being also associated with platelet, white blood cell, and lipid traits. Our association results and functional annotation suggest the involvement of new genes in human erythropoiesis. We also confirm that rare and low-frequency variants play a role in the architecture of complex human traits, although their phenotypic effect is generally smaller than originally anticipated.
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| 4. |
- Jarvis, Nicholas, et al.
(författare)
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Long-term effects of grass-clover leys on the structure of a silt loam soil in a cold climate
- 2017
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Ingår i: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-8809 .- 1873-2305. ; 247, s. 319-328
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Grass/legume leys are commonly included in the crop rotation in mixed farming systems in cold or humid regions in order to sustain the supply of nutrients and maintain soil fertility. Leys are also known to sequester soil organic carbon and also improve the structural stability and mechanical properties of soil. However, few studies have investigated the long-term effects of ley rotations on the architectural properties of the structural pore space in soil. We investigated the effects of grass/clover leys on soil structure in the topsoil and upper subsoil of a silt loam in a long-term field trial established in 1956 at Offer in northern Sweden. This experiment includes four treatments with varying proportions of ley (1, 2, 3 or 5 years) in 6-year rotations. We used X-ray tomography to quantify topsoil structural pore space at a resolution of 65 mu m in the first year of arable cropping following the ley break, a few weeks after sowing in spring. Earthworm populations were quantified by both hand-sorting and chemical extraction, while near-saturated infiltration was measured as a proxy for soil structure in the upper subsoil. In the topsoil, the treatments with a greater proportion of ley had larger organic carbon contents, smaller bulk densities and larger porosities. However, effects of crop rotation on the pore space were limited to pores smaller than 65 pm, as no treatment effects were found for the volume, size distribution, connectivity or complexity of the X-ray imaged pore space, even though the grass-clover leys promoted larger numbers and biomass of topsoil-dwelling earthworm species. Furthermore, no positive effects of grass/clover leys on organic carbon content and soil structure were found in the subsoil. The macropore infiltration capacity in upper subsoil was generally very small (overall median value of 3 mm h(-1)) indicating a lack of functional macroporosity below plough depth. Consistent with these results, no individuals of deep-burrowing earthworm species were found at the site, while previous observations showed only shallow rooting, both of which are attributed to the cold climate and poor subsoil drainage.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Joshi, Peter K, et al.
(författare)
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Directional dominance on stature and cognition in diverse human populations
- 2015
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 523:7561, s. 459-462
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Homozygosity has long been associated with rare, often devastating, Mendelian disorders, and Darwin was one of the first to recognize that inbreeding reduces evolutionary fitness. However, the effect of the more distant parental relatedness that is common in modern human populations is less well understood. Genomic data now allow us to investigate the effects of homozygosity on traits of public health importance by observing contiguous homozygous segments (runs of homozygosity), which are inferred to be homozygous along their complete length. Given the low levels of genome-wide homozygosity prevalent in most human populations, information is required on very large numbers of people to provide sufficient power. Here we use runs of homozygosity to study 16 health-related quantitative traits in 354,224 individuals from 102 cohorts, and find statistically significant associations between summed runs of homozygosity and four complex traits: height, forced expiratory lung volume in one second, general cognitive ability and educational attainment (P < 1 × 10(-300), 2.1 × 10(-6), 2.5 × 10(-10) and 1.8 × 10(-10), respectively). In each case, increased homozygosity was associated with decreased trait value, equivalent to the offspring of first cousins being 1.2 cm shorter and having 10 months' less education. Similar effect sizes were found across four continental groups and populations with different degrees of genome-wide homozygosity, providing evidence that homozygosity, rather than confounding, directly contributes to phenotypic variance. Contrary to earlier reports in substantially smaller samples, no evidence was seen of an influence of genome-wide homozygosity on blood pressure and low density lipoprotein cholesterol, or ten other cardio-metabolic traits. Since directional dominance is predicted for traits under directional evolutionary selection, this study provides evidence that increased stature and cognitive function have been positively selected in human evolution, whereas many important risk factors for late-onset complex diseases may not have been.
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| 7. |
- Kehoe, Laura, et al.
(författare)
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Make EU trade with Brazil sustainable
- 2019
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 364:6438, s. 341-
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 8. |
- Kolb, Gundula S., et al.
(författare)
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Effects of Nesting Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) on Soil Chemistry, Microbial Communities and Soil Fauna
- 2015
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Ingår i: Ecosystems. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1432-9840 .- 1435-0629. ; 18:4, s. 643-657
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Seabirds act as vectors transporting marine nutrients to land by feeding on fish while nesting and roosting on islands. By depositing large amounts of nutrient-rich guano on their nesting islands they strongly affect island soils, vegetation and consumers. However, few studies have investigated how nesting seabirds affect soil communities. In this study, we investigated how cormorant nesting colonies affect soil chemistry, soil microbes and soil and litter fauna on their nesting islands in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. We found that cormorant colonies strongly increase organic soil N and P concentrations, and the effect is stronger close to cormorant nests. Microbial communities were studied by extracting phospholipid fatty acids (PLFA) from the soil. The total amounts of PLFA and the amount of PLFA indicating bacterial biomass were lower on active cormorant islands than on reference islands. Furthermore, PLFA structure and thus microbial community structure differed between cormorant and reference islands. Among ten investigated soil and litter arthropod groups three groups (Thysanoptera, Araneae and Oribatida) showed lower densities and one group (Astigmata) showed higher densities in soils on active cormorant than on reference islands. Some arthropod groups showed strong spatial variation on the cormorant islands. Astigmata, Mesostigmata and Diptera showed higher densities in soil samples close to cormorant nests, whereas Oribatida, Collembola and Hemiptera showed lower densities in litter samples close to cormorant nests than in samples taken 3-20 m away from nests. Overall, the cormorant colonies strongly affected soil ecosystems of their nesting islands, but causal correlations between arthropod densities and soil factors were difficult to reveal. One likely reason may be that nesting cormorant islands are very heterogeneous habitats showing large spatial variation in both soil properties as well as fauna densities.
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| 9. |
- Persson, Tryggve, et al.
(författare)
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High species richness in spruce stumps
- 2017
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Ingår i: Stump harvesting: impact on climate and environment. ; :Task 43: 2017:02, s. 54-66
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 10. |
- Persson, Tryggve, et al.
(författare)
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Hög artmångfald i granstubbar
- 2017
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Ingår i: Stubbskörd – hur påverkas klimat och miljö?. - 9789157694546 ; , s. 56-65
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Bokkapitel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)
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