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High salinity land may provide an alternative resource for the cultivation of dedicated biomass crops for renewable energy and chemicals, thus avoiding competition for land use with food crops. The commercial perennial grass Miscanthus × giganteus is a leading biomass crop; however, its response to salt stress is largely unknown. Miscanthus × giganteus was grown in pots irrigated with nine different NaCl concentrations (0, 2.86, 5.44, 7.96, 10.65, 14.68, 17.5, 19.97 and 22.4 dS m−1). Biomass yield was reduced by 50% at 10.65 dS m−1 NaCl. Root dry matter inhibition occurred at the highest salt concentration tested, while rhizome dry weight and the ratios of root/rhizome and below‐/above‐ground dry matter were not affected by elevated salinity. The accumulative effect of increasing salinity reduced stem height and elongation, while photosynthesis was reduced to a smaller extent. The duration and strength of salinity exacerbated the reduction. Water use efficiency (WUE) was maintained except at the highest salinity and plants maintained stomatal conductance (gs) and leaf water content at low to moderate salinity. Miscanthus × giganteus showed strong induction of the osmoprotectant, proline and no significant increase in malondialdehyde content under increasing salinity. The ash content in leaves, increased, reducing the biomass quality at high salinity concentrations. The effects of salinity on the yield and the availability of land area in European geographical area for agriculture were investigated. Understanding the potential for growth of the C4 biomass crop Miscanthus on underutilized or abandoned land may offer a new range of targets for improved economics, crop management and breeding.

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fights to survive their descent; An American band finds more than they bargained for in Mexico while scouting remote locations for a photo shoot; A young student's exploration into the origins of a mysterious song leads him on a winding, dangerous path through the US's deep south; A group of kids scaring each other with ghost stories discovers alarming consequences. The Best Horror of the Year showcases the previous year's best offerings in horror short fiction. This edition includes award-winning and critically acclaimed authors Mark Morris, Kaaron Warren, John Langan, Carole Johnstone, Brian Hodge, and others. For more than three decades, award-winning editor and anthologist Ellen Datlow has had her finger on the pulse of the latest and most terrifying in horror writing. Night Shade Books is proud to present the tenth volume in this annual series, a new collection of stories to keep you up at night.

Water deficit and salinity stresses are often experienced by plants concurrently; however, knowledge is limited about the effects of combined salinity and water deficit stress in plants, and especially in C4 bioenergy crops. Here we aim to understand how diverse drought tolerance traits may deliver tolerance to combinations of drought and salinity in C4 crops, and identify key traits that influence the productivity and biomass composition of novel Miscanthus genotypes under such conditions. Novel genotypes used included M. sinensis and M. floridulus species, pre-screened for different drought responses, plus the commercial accession Miscanthus × giganteus (M×g.). Plants were grown under control treatments, single stress or combinations of water deficit and moderate salinity stress. Morphophysiological responses, including growth, yield, gas exchange and leaf water relations and contents of proline, soluble sugars, ash and lignin were tested for significant genotypic and treatment effects. The results indicated that plants subjected to combined stresses showed more severe responses compared with single stresses. All novel drought-tolerant genotypes and M×g. were tolerant to moderate salinity stress. Biomass production in M. sinensis genotypes was more resilient to co-occurring stresses than that in M×g. and M. floridulus, which, despite the yield penalty produced more biomass overall. A stay-green M. sinensis genotype adopted a conservative growth strategy with few significant treatment effects. Proline biosynthesis was species-specific and was triggered by salinity and co-occurring stress treatments, mainly in M. floridulus. The ash content was compartmentalized differently in leaves and stems in the novel genotypes, indicating different mechanisms of ion accumulation. This study highlights the potential to select novel drought-tolerant Miscanthus genotypes that are resilient to combinations of stress and is expected to contribute to a deeper fundamental knowledge of different mechanistic responses identified for further exploitation in developing resilient Miscanthus crops.

Abstract We empirically examine social innovation and openness through a survey of social enterprise hybrids in the United Kingdom (UK). Social innovation refers to new products, processes, and services that respond to grand challenges. Social enterprises pursue economic, social, and environmental goals but vary in their goal orientation, namely the relative importance ascribed to such goals. We first explore the relationships between commercial, social, and environmental goal orientation and social innovation performance. Next, we consider the moderating impact of openness to external knowledge and ideas on social innovation performance. Our analysis finds positive and significant relationships between commercial and social goal orientation and social innovation performance, but no relationship with environmental goal orientation. In addition, the use of external sources of knowledge and ideas positively strengthens these relationships for both commercial and social goal orientation but not for environmental goal orientation. Our results reveal some important influences on social innovation, openness, and hybrid organizing.Plain English SummaryHeadline: The more social enterprises focus on both commercial and social goals, the more successful they are in improving their social innovation performance.Social innovation refers to new products, processes, and services that respond to a range of social challenges such as poverty, inequality, homelessness, health, and environmental issues.Our study suggests that the more social enterprises focus on both commercial and social goals, the higher their social innovation performance. In addition, the more open innovation-oriented social enterprises are, that is, the more they use external sources of knowledge and ideas, the more they can benefit from their commercial and social goals to improve their social innovation performance.Implications of our research for practice: social enterprises are encouraged not only to focus on both commercial and social goals but also to build relationships with external stakeholders. These external stakeholders can provide information on entrepreneurial opportunities, how to respond to problems and market and government failures, and how to remain successful while collaborating with a range of partners.

The challenges of feeding an increasing population, an increasingly urban population and within an increasingly challenging global environment have focused ideas on new ways to grow food. Growing food in a controlled environment (CE) is not new but new technologies such as broad-spectrum LEDs and robotics are generating new opportunities. Growth recipes can be tailored to plant species in a CE and plasticity in plant responses to the environment may be utilized to make growth systems more efficient for improved yield and crop quality. Light use efficiency within CE must consider energy requirements, yield and impacts on quality. We hypothesized that understanding how plants change their morphology and physiology in response to light will allow us to identify routes to make light more efficient for delivery of high-quality produce. We focused on responses to light in Lollo rosso lettuce which produces compact, crinkly and highly pigmented leaves. We compared the spectra of the commonly used artificial light sources in indoor farming (compact fluorescence tubes, FL, and broad-spectrum light-emitting diodes, LEDs) at two irradiance levels (270 and 570 μmol m –2 s –1 ). We discovered LEDs (λ P : 451, 634, and 665 nm) produced the same amount of produce for half the incident energy of FL (T5). At higher irradiances LEDs produced 9% thicker leaves, 13% larger rosettes and 15% greater carotenoid content. Leaves differed in light absorptance with plants grown under lower FL absorbing 30% less of mid-range wavelengths. We show that the relative efficiencies of LED and FL is a function of the irradiances compared and demonstrate the importance of understanding the asymptotes of yield and quality traits. Increasing our understanding of structural and biochemical changes that occur under different combination of wavelengths may allow us to better optimize light delivery, select for different ranges of plasticity in crop plants and further optimize light recipes.

This study adopts a multi-level theoretical framework to examine data from 496 entrepreneurs in Ghana. Seven types of innovation activity are analysed against three categories of variables: the characteristics of the entrepreneur, the internal competencies of the firm, and firm location. Across all respondents, the incidence of incremental innovation was far greater than novel innovation. The extent of innovation was related to the education level of the entrepreneur. Firm size and involvement in exporting were positively related to innovation, but firm growth is less systematically so. Innovation was greater in firms located in conurbations compared to firms located in large and small towns. We conclude with suggestions for policy to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in Ghana.

Learning from failure can foster innovation, but how a new product development (NPD) team’s learning from failure affects new product performance requires more insights. In particular, the question remains on how collective efficacy, which discerns team members’ belief to achieve desired goals, affects team learning from failure towards improving new product performance. Using social cognitive theory complemented by sensemaking and attribution theories, we examine the effects of NPD teams’ (experiential and vicarious) learning from failure on new product performance and the moderating effects of collective efficacy on these relationships. With survey data collected from 398 responses within 152 NPD teams in Chinese high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises, we find that both experiential and vicarious learning from failure enhance new product performance in terms of speed to market and product innovativeness. Further, as collective efficacy increases, the positive effect of experiential learning from failure on speed to market is strengthened. However, the positive effect of vicarious learning from failure on product innovativeness is weakened. Our results suggest that NPD teams can benefit from experiential and vicarious learning from failure to improve new product performance but must pay attention to the double-edged effect of collective efficacy. Plain English Summary Failure is a common occurrence in the high-tech industry, especially when it comes to new product development (NPD). However, how NPD teams learn from failure can greatly affect their new product performance—their ability to develop superior novel products and take them to market faster than competitors. NPD teams can learn from their own failure experience (i.e., experiential learning) and that of other NPD teams (i.e., vicarious learning). However, how they believe in their collective power to produce desired results (i.e., collective efficacy) may change the effects of their learning from failure on new product performance. Based on 398 responses within 152 NPD teams in Chinese high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises, we take an evidence-based approach to unpack these relationships. Although experiential and vicarious team learning from failure improves the speed to market and product innovativeness, collective efficacy has double-edged effects on these relationships. Notably, a high level of collective efficacy enables an NPD team to benefit from experiential learning from failure to improve the speed to market. However, it undermines the effort of vicarious learning from failure to enhance product innovativeness. Thus, our study cautions NPD teams on regulating their collective efficacy to benefit new product performance.

More and new sources of biomass are needed for renewable energy and renewable products for the bioeconomy. A leading new source of biomass is the highly sustainable perennial grass crop Miscanthus. The majority of the Miscanthus crop comprises a clone of Miscanthus × giganteus (M × g) of limited genetic variation and poor yield under dry growth conditions. The parental species of M × g, M. sacchariflorus and M. sinensis, are distributed over a large geographical range in Eastern Asia and may be used to improve on M × g. From breeding trials, we selected seven novel hybrids and two control genotypes including M × g. We grew these in a field experiment on drought‐prone soil in Germany with and without irrigation. To identify superior Miscanthus types, we estimated radiation use efficiency (RUE), yield and water use efficiency (WUE) from within‐season measurements made over three contrasting growing seasons. Temporal variations in RUE and WUE for different genotypes varied significantly and two novel hybrids, WAT6 and WAT8, achieved the highest yields. To achieve goodness of fit to yield measurements, genotype‐specific parameters for process descriptions in the model MiscanFor were adjusted for the two superior genotypes. These parameters included earlier shooting and an increased threshold of overheating. When the model was run over ten years, despite generating the highest yield values, WAT8 accumulated less biomass than WAT6 over the longer term. The response of WUE to variation in soil capillary pressure and vapour pressure deficit was examined. WUE of M × g increased with the severity of water stress then declined again. The superior yielding genotypes were more able to sustain biomass accumulation and/or water use under the highest stress. We believe that combining physiology with crop modelling is a powerful way to inform genetic and agronomic improvements needed to secure the future supply of biomass for the bioeconomy. Two recently bred interspecies Miscanthus hybrids (WAT6 and WAT8) produced more biomass than standard Miscanthus × giganteus (M × g) in an irrigated versus rainfed field trial on light soil in Braunschweig, Germany, over three consecutive and highly contrasting years (2016–18). Model simulations with updated parameters for three genotypes and climate data from Braunschweig were used to assess variation in yields in three genotypes from 2012 to 2022, and showed the highest yielding genotype in the study did not produce the highest aggregated yield across ten years.

Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) convey the major output of information collected from the eye to the brain. Thirty subtypes of RGCs have been identified to date. Here, we analyze 6225 RGCs (average of 5000 genes per cell) from right and left eyes by single-cell RNA-seq and classify them into 40 subtypes using clustering algorithms. We identify additional subtypes and markers, as well as transcription factors predicted to cooperate in specifying RGC subtypes. Zic1, a marker of the right eye-enriched subtype, is validated by immunostaining in situ. Runx1 and Fst, the markers of other subtypes, are validated in purified RGCs by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) and immunostaining. We show the extent of gene expression variability needed for subtype segregation, and we show a hierarchy in diversification from a cell-type population to subtypes. Finally, we present a website for comparing the gene expression of RGC subtypes. Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are diverse in cellular function and physiology. This study demonstrates additional RGC heterogeneity using single cell transcriptomic analyses to classify 40 classes of RGCs in early postnatal mice before eye opening.