Explore the vast range of titles available.

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is an effective water-saving practice for rice cultivation that may however promote nitrogen (N) losses compared to continuous flooding (CF). The interaction between water, crop residue and N fertilization management can influence the contribution of different N sources to plant uptake. We hypothesized that microbial processes driving the source-differentiated N supply for rice uptake during the early growth stages will depend on the interaction between water management, the timing of straw incorporation with respect to flooding and the temporal distribution of mineral N application. Rice was grown for 60 days in mesocosm experiment involving a factorial design with (i) two water regimes (CF vs. AWD) and (ii) three straw and fertilizer managements, during which soil N, porewater chemistry, plant growth and N uptake were evaluated. Source partitioning of plant N between fertilizer-, straw- and soil-derived N was achieved by means of a dual-stable isotope 15N tracing approach. Although AWD reduced total N uptake by about 4–25% with respect to CF, this could only be partly attributed to a lower uptake of fertilizer-N (and lower fertilizer-N use efficiency), suggesting that other N sources were affected by water management. Our findings evidence how the interaction between soil redox conditions and the availability of labile C and inorganic N strongly determined the supply of soil-derived N through microbial feedback and priming responses. Although incorporated straw contributed only minimally to rice N, it represented the primary driver controlling plant N nutrition through these microbial responses. These insights may contribute to identify suitable fertilization practices that favour plant N uptake during the early stages of rice growth under AWD.

Health is more than the absence of disease. It is also more than a biological phenomenon. It is inherently social, psychological, cultural and historical. While this has been recognised by major health actors for decades, open questions remain as to how to build systems that reflect the complexity of health, disease and sickness, and in a context that is increasingly technologised. We argue that an urgent change of approach is necessary. Methods and concepts from the humanities and social science must be embedded in the concepts and methods of the health sciences if we are to promote sustainable interventions capable of engaging with the recognised complexity of health, disease and sickness. Our vision is one of radical interdisciplinarity, integrating aspects of biological, psychological, social and humanities approaches across areas of urgent health need. Radical interdisciplinarity, we argue, entails the practical, methodological and conceptual integration of these approaches to health.

(1) Background: In recent years, the consumption of sprouts, thanks to their high nutritional value, and the presence of bioactive compounds with antioxidant, antiviral and antibacterial properties, is becoming an increasingly widespread habit. Moringa oleifera Lam. (Moringa) seems to be an inexhaustible resource considering that many parts may be used as food or in traditional medicine; on the other hand, Moringa sprouts still lack a proper characterization needing further insights to envisage novel uses and applications. (2) Methods: In this study, a rapid and easy protocol to induce the in vivo and in vitro germination of Moringa seeds has been set up to obtain sprouts and cotyledons to be evaluated for their chemical composition. Moreover, the effects of sprouts developmental stage, type of sowing substrate, and gibberellic acid use on the chemical characteristics of extracts have been evaluated. (3) Results: Moringa seeds have a high germinability, both in in vivo and in vitro conditions. In addition, the extracts obtained have different total phenolic content and antioxidant activity. (4) Conclusions: This research provides a first-line evidence to evaluate Moringa sprouts as future novel functional food or as a valuable source of bioactive compounds.

This volume aims to shed light on how public service value is identified, managed, measured and reported. The chapters cover a range of topics, including theoretical reflections, practical case studies and empirical observations aimed at understanding the concept of public value.

In the last decades, Systems Biology (including cancer research) has been driven by technology, statistical modelling and bioinformatics. In this paper we try to bring biological and philosophical thinking back. We thus aim at making different traditions of thought compatible: (a) causality in epidemiology and in philosophical theorizing-notably, the “sufficient-component-cause framework” and the “mark transmission” approach; (b) new acquisitions about disease pathogenesis, e.g. the “branched model” in cancer, and the role of biomarkers in this process; (c) the burgeoning of omics research, with a large number of “signals” and of associations that need to be interpreted. In the paper we summarize first the current views on carcinogenesis, and then explore the relevance of current philosophical interpretations of “cancer causes”. We try to offer a unifying framework to incorporate biomarkers and omic data into causal models, referring to a position called “evidential pluralism”. According to this view, causal reasoning is based on both “evidence of difference-making” (e.g. associations) and on “evidence of underlying biological mechanisms”. We conceptualize the way scientists detect and trace signals in terms of information transmission, which is a generalization of the mark transmission theory developed by philosopher Wesley Salmon. Our approach is capable of helping us conceptualize how heterogeneous factors such as micro and macro-biological and psycho-social-are causally linked. This is important not only to understand cancer etiology, but also to design public health policies that target the right causal factors at the macro-level.

At a time when the dissemination of online information is synonymous with an abundance of disinformation and misinformation, it is important to extend our reflection beyond debunking and fact-checking. In this article, we consider the cases of (dis-, mis- and mal-)information regarding scientific results. We argue that countering misinformation requires a better understanding of the root cause of the problem. We believe the root cause is trust rather than truth. We argue that trust should be approached from a distinct social epistemological perspective that recognizes differences between data and facts and that treats trust as part of the scientific process and as part of the way publics interpret and use scientific information.

The Shallow Radar (SHARAD) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has imaged the internal stratigraphy of the north polar layered deposits of Mars. Radar reflections within the deposits reveal a laterally continuous deposition of layers, which typically consist of four packets of finely spaced reflectors separated by homogeneous interpacket regions of nearly pure ice. The packet/interpacket structure can be explained by approximately million-year periodicities in Mars' obliquity or orbital eccentricity. The observed ~100-meter maximum deflection of the underlying substrate in response to the ice load implies that the present-day thickness of an equilibrium elastic lithosphere is greater than 300 kilometers. Alternatively, the response to the load may be in a transient state controlled by mantle viscosity. Both scenarios probably require that Mars has a subchondritic abundance of heat-producing elements.

Technologies have always been bearers of profound changes in science, society, and any other aspect of life. The latest technological revolution—the digital revolution—is no exception in this respect. This paper presents the revolution brought about by digital technologies through the lenses of a specific approach: the philosophy of information. It is argued that the adoption of an informational approach helps avoiding utopian or dystopian approaches to (digital) technology, both expressions of technological determinism. Such an approach provides a conceptual framework able to address the ethical challenges that digital technologies pose, without getting stuck in the dichotomous thinking of technological determinism, and to bring together ethics, ontology, and epistemology into a coherent account.

Whilst policymaking will always remain a highly political process, especially amidst crises, evidence-based pandemic management can benefit from adopting a socioecological perspective that integrates multi- and trans-disciplinary insights: from biology, biomedicine, mathematics, statistics, social and behavioural sciences, as well as the perspectives and experiences of non-scientific stakeholders. We make a case for an “integrated inter- and transdisciplinarity” that overcomes the typical additive nature of current interdisciplinary work and better captures the inherent complexity of public health and other public policy problems. We propose systems science and systems thinking approaches as a useful meta-theoretical, self-reflecting approach for such integration to take place. Enabled by systems thinking, the praxis of “integrated inter- and transdisciplinarity” allows for an understanding of public health crises in a human-centred socio-ecological perspective. This grounds more holistic policy responses, which by mobilising the whole of government and whole of society, put individuals, groups, governments and society at large in critical dialogue to co-produce and co-design interventions that address crises in all their physical, social, psychological, economic and political dimensions.

In the science and values literature, scholars have shown how science is influenced and shaped by values, often in opposition to the ‘value free’ ideal of science. In this paper, we aim to contribute to the science and values literature by showing that the relation between science and values flows not only from values into scientific practice, but also from (allegedly neutral) science to values themselves. The extant literature in the ‘science and values’ field focuses by and large on reconstructing, post hoc, how values have influenced science; our reconstruction of the case studies, instead, aims to show that scientific concepts and methods too, because of specific identifiable characteristics, can promote some values rather than (or at the expense of) others. We explain this bidirectional relation in analogy to debates on the normativity of technical artifacts and on feminist approaches in science, and we illustrate our claims with cases from the health sciences and machine learning. While our arguments in this paper also draw on post hoc reconstructions, we intend to show where, in the science in the making, we should engage not only with the question whether a practice is value-laden, but also how specific conceptual and methodological choices can influence values down the road. All in all, these considerations expand the ways in which philosophers can contribute to more value-aware scientific practices.