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In the 1990s, LEGO failed to keep pace with the revolutionary changes in kids' lives and began sliding into irrelevance. It took a new LEGO management team, faced with the growing rage for electronic toys, few barriers to entry, and ultra-demanding consumers, to reinvent the innovation rule book and transform LEGO into one of the world's most profitable, fastest-growing companies. Robertson reveals how LEGO looked beyond products and learned to leverage a full-spectrum approach to innovation.

Key Points The plant circadian clock comprises multiple interlocked feedback loops and features transcriptional, post-transcriptional (alternative splicing) and post-translational regulation of protein stability, activity and localization. The complexity and interdigitation of the feedback loops with environmental input pathways and output pathways argues persuasively in favour of a network consideration of the circadian system. Circadian regulation of PHYTOCHROME-INTERACTING FACTOR (PIF) transcription together with PHYTOCHROME B (PHYB)-mediated degradation of PIF proteins in the light 'gates' hypocotyl elongation to the late night. This provides an example of external coincidence of light with clock-derived oscillations to impart temporal and environmental sensitivity to growth control. Day length is measured in the leaves via a complex network and results in expression of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), which is subsequently transmitted to the shoot apical meristem, where it complexes with FD to induce floral meristem identity (FMI) genes Responses to abiotic stresses are energetically costly, so plants use the circadian clock to temporally restrict both the basal expression and the induction of response pathways to multiple abiotic stresses, including drought and cold. The timing of the response is coordinated with the normal temporal organization of metabolism and physiology to minimize metabolic incompatibilities and competition for limiting substrates and to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the response. As with responses to abiotic stresses, constitutive expression of defence pathways that confer resistance to pathogens and herbivores is deleterious. Plants use the circadian clock to temporally restrict both the basal expression and the induction of defence pathways to the time of day when the threat posed by pathogens and herbivores is maximal, thereby minimizing this fitness cost. Circadian control of metabolism is widespread. One well-studied example is starch metabolism control, in which the clock anticipates dawn and modulates the rate of nocturnal starch degradation such that starch is used efficiently through the night and not fully depleted prior to dawn, which would result in carbon starvation responses. The plant circadian clock regulates many physiological processes, such as growth, flowering time, abiotic and biotic stress responses, and metabolism. In turn, many of these responses feed back to control the circadian clock. This Review describes the integration of circadian dynamics into the study of plant physiological processes and highlights the importance of incorporating circadian, spatial and temporal information into predictive models to improve crop breeding. The plant circadian clock coordinates the responses to multiple and often simultaneous environmental challenges that the sessile plant cannot avoid. These responses must be integrated efficiently into dynamic metabolic and physiological networks essential for growth and reproduction. Many of the output pathways regulated by the circadian clock feed back to modulate clock function, leading to the appreciation of the clock as a central hub in a sophisticated regulatory network. In this Review, we discuss the circadian regulation of growth, flowering time, abiotic and biotic stress responses, and metabolism, as well as why temporal 'gating' of these processes is important to plant fitness.

It has been nearly 300 years since the first scientific demonstration of a self-sustaining circadian clock in plants. It has become clear that plants are richly rhythmic, and many aspects of plant biology, including photosynthetic light harvesting and carbon assimilation, resistance to abiotic stresses, pathogens, and pests, photoperiodic flower induction, petal movement, and floral fragrance emission, exhibit circadian rhythmicity in one or more plant species. Much experimental effort, primarily, but not exclusively in Arabidopsis thaliana, has been expended to characterize and understand the plant circadian oscillator, which has been revealed to be a highly complex network of interlocked transcriptional feedback loops. In addition, the plant circadian oscillator has employed a panoply of post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms, including alternative splicing, adjustable rates of translation, and regulated protein activity and stability. This review focuses on our present understanding of the regulatory network that comprises the plant circadian oscillator. The complexity of this oscillatory network facilitates the maintenance of robust rhythmicity in response to environmental extremes and permits nuanced control of multiple clock outputs. Consistent with this view, the clock is emerging as a target of domestication and presents multiple targets for targeted breeding to improve crop performance.

يزخر هذا الكتاب الذي قام بتأليفة ديفيد روبرتسون وكينت لاينباك، الكتاب المهم بدراسات الحالة المفيدة والنصائح المدروسة، كما أنه يقدم رؤية واضحة ومبتكرة بشأن الطريقة التي تعمل بها النماذج الابتكارية المختلفة في عصرنا هذا، وهو مثالي لقادة ومديري الشركات الذين يريدون الابتكار بطريقة واقعية ومدروسة أكثر لشركاتهم وعلامتهم التجارية.

During plant domestication and improvement, farmers select for alleles present in wild species that improve performance in new selective environments associated with cultivation and use. The selected alleles become enriched and other alleles depleted in elite cultivars. One important aspect of crop improvement is expansion of the geographic area suitable for cultivation; this frequently includes growth at higher or lower latitudes, requiring the plant to adapt to novel photoperiodic environments. Many crops exhibit photoperiodic control of flowering and altered photoperiodic sensitivity is commonly required for optimal performance at novel latitudes. Alleles of a number of circadian clock genes have been selected for their effects on photoperiodic flowering in multiple crops. The circadian clock coordinates many additional aspects of plant growth, metabolism and physiology, including responses to abiotic and biotic stresses. Many of these clock-regulated processes contribute to plant performance. Examples of selection for altered clock function in tomato demonstrate that with domestication, the phasing of the clock is delayed with respect to the light–dark cycle and the period is lengthened; this modified clock is associated with increased chlorophyll content in long days. These and other data suggest the circadian clock is an attractive target during breeding for crop improvement.

The circadian clock coordinates the daily cyclic rhythm of numerous biological processes by regulating a large portion of the transcriptome. In animals, the circadian clock is involved in aging and senescence, and circadian disruption by mutations in clock genes frequently accelerates aging. Conversely, aging alters circadian rhythmicity, which causes age-associated physiological alterations. However, interactions between the circadian clock and aging have been rarely studied in plants. Here, we investigated potential roles for the circadian clock in the regulation of leaf senescence in plants. Members of the evening complex in Arabidopsis circadian clock, EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3), EARLY FLOWERING 4 (ELF4), and LUX ARRHYTHMO (LUX), as well as the morning component PSEUDO-RESPONSE REGULATOR 9 (PRR9), affect both age-dependent and dark-induced leaf senescence. The circadian clock regulates the expression of several senescence-related transcription factors. In particular, PRR9 binds directly to the promoter of the positive aging regulator ORESARA1 (ORE1) gene to promote its expression. PRR9 also represses miR164, a posttranscriptional repressor of ORE1. Consistently, genetic analysis revealed that delayed leaf senescence of a prr9 mutant was rescued by ORE1 overexpression. Thus, PRR9, a core circadian component, is a key regulator of leaf senescence via positive regulation of ORE1 through a feed-forward pathway involving posttranscriptional regulation by miR164 and direct transcriptional regulation. Our results indicate that, in plants, the circadian clock and leaf senescence are intimately interwoven as are the clock and aging in animals.

Globally, environmental disasters impact billions of people and cost trillions of dollars in damage, and their impacts are often felt most acutely by minority and poor communities. Wildfires in the U.S. have similarly outsized impacts on vulnerable communities, though the ethnic and geographic distribution of those communities may be different than for other hazards. Here, we develop a social-ecological approach for characterizing fire vulnerability and apply it to >70,000 census tracts across the United States. Our approach incorporates both the wildfire potential of a landscape and socioeconomic attributes of overlying communities. We find that over 29 million Americans live with significant potential for extreme wildfires, a majority of whom are white and socioeconomically secure. Within this segment, however, are 12 million socially vulnerable Americans for whom a wildfire event could be devastating. Additionally, wildfire vulnerability is spread unequally across race and ethnicity, with census tracts that were majority Black, Hispanic or Native American experiencing ca. 50% greater vulnerability to wildfire compared to other census tracts. Embracing a social-ecological perspective of fire-prone landscapes allows for the identification of areas that are poorly equipped to respond to wildfires.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and resultant “Stay-at-Home” orders, may have impacted adults’ positive health behaviors (sleep, physical activity) and negative health behaviors (alcohol consumption, drug use, and tobacco use). The purpose of this study was to investigate how these health behaviors changed (increased/improved or decreased/worsened) at the early stages of the pandemic, what participant characteristics were associated with health behavior changes, and why these behavioral changes may have occurred. A convenience sample of 1809 adults residing in the United States completed a 15-min self-report questionnaire in April and May 2020. Multinomial logistic regressions and descriptive statistics were used to evaluate how, for whom, and why these health behaviors changed. Participants were primarily female (67.4%), aged 35–49 years (39.8%), college graduates (83.3%), non-tobacco users (74.7%), and had previously used marijuana (48.6%). Overall, participants primarily reported a decrease in physical activity, while sleep and all of the negative health behaviors remained the same. Changes in negative health behaviors were related (p < 0.05) to sex, age, parental status, educational status, job status, BMI, and depression scores. Changes in positive health behaviors were related (p < 0.05) to sex, parental status, job status, and depression scores. Having more time available during the pandemic was the most commonly cited reason for changing health behaviors (negative and positive). Public health efforts should address the potential for long-term health consequences due to behavior change during COVID-19.