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Climate change is primarily driven by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Reducing these emissions globally requires a massive effort at the individual, city, and national scales. Urban areas are hotspots of anthropogenic emissions, given the high density of human-based activities, and clarity on the variations of emissions in these areas will enable effective targeted reduction plans. Ho
Social behavior is observed in a wide range of species, and its potential benefits include protection from predators, enhanced feeding, and reproductive opportunities. Experimental approaches using artificial selection on sociability can answer fundamental questions about the evolution of social behavior, such as: Can sociability evolve by artificial selection? Is aggressiveness associated with so
In a prospective study of a consecutive breast cancer series accumulated in the period 1978-82, the S-phase fraction (SPF) and ploidy status were determined by flow cytometry performed on cell nuclei derived from samples of 580 primary tumors. Sixty percent of the tumors were non-diploid. After correction for debris the median SPF values were 7.3% overall, 12% for non-diploid tumors, and 2.9% for
Protein misfolding is a frequently occurring event in living cells and without the quality control, the consequences are disasterous. In this thesis, we studied protein misfolding in vitro by employing a variety of fluorophores, to either detect the highly ordered aggregates of intrinsically disordered proteins/peptides or slight misfolding of a natively folded protein. Misfolding and concurrent
The concept of vandalism is analyzed as a symbolic act. An analysis of vandalism from a situational-positivistic, or a motivational-psychological, approach hardly gives an understanding of vandalism as a meaningful individual and social act. A humanistic and cultural perspective can supply ways to understand a nonprescribed behavior such as vandalism. The original meaning of vandalism is plunderin
Context Agricultural transformation and increased land use intensity often lead to simplified landscapes and biodiversity loss. For animals, one possible mechanism underpinning biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes is the disruption of movements. The disruption of movements may explain, for example, why butterfly communities in agricultural landscapes are often dominated by generalist speci
Climate and weather extremes are sporadically recurring events that may have major local or regional impacts on the society and the environment. These events are typically related to unusually high or low temperature, prolonged dry or wet conditions, heavy precipitation, or extreme winds. Extreme events are part of the overall climate and weather alongside average conditions and variability, and t
Information on the ecological traits of species might improve predictions of climate-driven range shifts. However, the usefulness of traits is usually assumed rather than quantified. Here, we present a framework to identify the most informative traits, based on four key range-shift processes: emigration of individuals or propagules away from the natal location; the distance a species can move; est
Global land-use change has drastic consequences for biodiversity leading to losses of ecological functioning, ecosystem services and human well-being. While species dependent on undisturbed natural habitat are most affected by conversion to agriculture, even populations of disturbance-tolerant species can be endangered in landscapes dominated by high-input mono-cultural cropping systems. This has
Regional climate modeling is a dynamical downscaling technique applied to the results of global climate models (GCMs) in order to acquire more information on climate simulations and climate change projections. GCMs and regional climate models (RCMs) have undergone considerable development over the past few decades, and both have increased in resolution. The higher-resolution edge of RCMs compared
In a north European context, identifying invasive species is far from trivial because the vegetation has been influenced by human activities for thousands of years. New species have immigrated continuously since the end of the last glaciation, both spontaneously and through direct or indirect help by man. Still, newly immigrated species may be problematic in a nature conservation context and may h
Pollination improves the yield of most crop species and contributes to one-third of global crop production, but comprehensive benefits including crop quality are still unknown. Hence, pollination is underestimated by international policies, which is particularly alarming in times of agricultural intensification and diminishing pollination services. In this study, exclusion experiments with strawbe
Biological invasion by non-native tree species can transform landscapes, and as a consequence, has received growing attention from researchers and managers alike. This problem is driven primarily by the naturalisation and invasion of tree species escaping from cultivation or forestry plantations. Furthermore, these invasions can be strongly influenced by the land-use matrix of the surrounding regi
The present day global climate change is fueled by our use of fossil fuels and land use change. The already observed warming and other distinct changes in the climate system stem from these human influences and are ongoing. Due to climate system inertia, a part of the climate system's response to this historical forcing remains to manifest itself, which it will do over time. At the same time, soci
Climate warming will increase the drought exposure of many forests world-wide. It is not well understood how trees adapt their hydraulic architecture to a long-term decrease in water availability. We examined 23 traits characterizing the hydraulic architecture and growth rate of branches and the dependent foliage of mature European beech (Fagus sylvatica) trees along a precipitation gradient (855-
Climate models provide the means of making projections of the future climate, under assumptions on alternative future land-use changes and greenhouse gas emissions. The basis for such climate projections is discussed in this chapter,´together with the presentation of overall climate scenario results of relevance for agriculture. The focus is on the period until 2050.
The synthesis of deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs), building blocks of DNA, can be achieved by two different pathways in the cell. One is called de novo synthesis and the other is known as salvage pathway. The de novo pathway involves synthesis of dNTPs by utilizing basic molecules like sugars, amino acids, CO2, NH3, etc., while in the other pathway, dNTPs are formed by salvaging intra- or
