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Long-term ecological research in deep lakes offers valuable insights into understanding changes in trophic states and organization of phytoplankton assemblages. Utilizing five decades of phytoplankton taxonomic trait data from pre-alpine Lake Constance, a confirmed negative relationship was found between phosphate and light affinity at the annual community trait level. Drawing inspiration from the stronger community-level tradeoff observed between the affinity for phosphate and light among phytoplankton species in Lake Constance, I hypothesized that resource acquisition traits, characterized by the half-saturation constants for nutrient-limited growth (Mi) and light-limited growth (Hi), should exhibit a negative trade-off mechanism at the community mean trait level, derived from the traits of the species in Lake Constance. The developed model was parametrized using empirical data from the lake. Intra- and inter-annual variation in environmental conditions were incorporated in the model by considering seasonal changes in temperature, light intensity, temperature-influenced exchange rates of the vertical water column, and decadal changes in nutrients in Lake Constance. Simulations reflected observed seasonal dominance patterns of phytoplankton species and predicted differences in relative abundance under varying nutrient supplies, aligning with resource limitation trends. Consistent with empirical observations, a negative relationship between light and phosphorous affinity is observed in the 60-year simulation of Lake Constance. The elucidation of such a trade-off mechanism is expected to facilitate the understanding of the coexistence of phytoplankton species in Lake Constance amidst the decadal changes in phosphorus loading by selecting for higher light affinity during eutrophic phases and higher phosphorus affinity during oligotrophic phases.

Software Architecture (SA) assessment provides an analysis of the quality of a high-level view of software-intensive systems, serving as a quality assurance mechanism. Sustainability is a crucial quality for digital ecosystems and as such, it presents assessment challenges due to the multi-dimensional nature of sustainability. This study addresses the challenge of sustainability assessment in SA. Due to a lack of guided sustainability assessment methods, we use an SA evaluation blueprint which we tailored for sustainability assessment. We use a blend of experience-based and quantitative assessment techniques for the assessment of design decision options. The SA assessment is performed on a case study integrating a SaaS-based solution, a learning management system called Canvas, within an educational institute. Our assessment provides an overview of trade-offs between design decision options. We use elements from an open-source toolkit (SAF Toolkit) and a Sustainability Impact Score (SIS) to identify the possible trade-offs and sustainability impacts across different sustainability dimensions. The assessment results identify the trade-offs between QAs and sustainability dimensions (mainly environmental) per design option. This information can help architects make informed decisions about sustainable design choices. Our evaluation method is designed to allow for the assessment of other SAs.

Humans maintain an intricate balance between storing information in visual working memory (VWM) and just-in-time sampling of the external world, rooted in a trade-off between the cost of maintaining items in VWM versus retrieving information as it is needed. Previous studies have consistently shown that one prerequisite of just-in-time sampling is a high degree of availability of external information, and that introducing a delay before being able to access information led participants to rely less on the external world and more on VWM. However, these studies manipulated availability in such a manner that the cost of sampling was stable and predictable. It is yet unclear whether participants become less reliant on external information when it is more difficult to factor in the cost of sampling that information. In two experiments, participants copied an example layout from the left to the right side of the screen. In Experiment 1, intermittent occlusion of the example layout led participants to attempt to encode more items per inspection than when the layout was constantly available, but this did not consistently result in more correct placements. However, these findings could potentially be explained by inherent differences in how long the example layout could be viewed. Therefore in Experiment 2, the example layout only became available after a gaze-contingent delay, which could be constant or variable. Here, the introduction of any delay led to increased VWM load compared to no delay, although the degree of variability in the delay did not alter behaviour. These results reaffirm that the nature of when we engage VWM is dynamical, and suggest that any disruption to the continuous availability of external information is the main driver of increased VWM usage relative to whether availability is predictable or not.

This research addresses the misalignment gap in social enterprise knowledge across different socio-economic regions, emphasizing the need for localized studies. Focusing on Vietnam, a developing country with emerging social enterprises, the study investigates the strategic practices employed by these enterprises to manage the dual missions of profit and social impact. Through explorative case study method, data was collected by in-depth semi-structured interviews with 07 personnel of an established social enterprise in Vietnam, including heads of departments and employees. The findings reveal three primary categories of strategies: (1) Dual Mission Awareness: Tohe maintains a clear understanding of the boundaries between profit and social missions, (2) Differentiation Strategies: The organization separates its elements to manage the dual missions effectively, ensuring each team focuses on its primary goal, and (3) Integration Strategies: Tohe blends the dual missions at structural, identity, and business levels, promoting cohesion and mutual support between profit-generating and social impact activities. These findings provide valuable insights into managing dual missions in social enterprises, contributing to the broader understanding of strategic management in similar contexts.

Investment and operating costs in security filters are significant financial concerns in airport infrastructure management. Therefore, analysing and balancing both types of expenditure (investment and operation) is crucial. Previous studies have dealt with a concept known as CAPEX-bias, which occurs in situations where infrastructure investment exceeds the limit which an economic efficiency criterion would recommend. This research project proposes scheduling airport security investments to avoid this bias. A total cost model for investment and operation (TOTEX) of airport security filters, applied to different scheduling scenarios over a 15-year planning horizon, is proposed. This model considers the additional costs of investment and operation. The results indicate that the most appropriate planning segments vary depending on whether there is an excess (CAPEX-bias) or a defect of capacity. After analysing the different scenarios, the solution of working with defect of capacity proves to be the most efficient both economically and operationally. The applied model and the results which have been obtained show that balancing investment and operating costs in security filters can lead to an investment scheduling which improves an airport's economic efficiency., Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i Infraestructura

The Sustainable Development Goals are intended to be implemented in an indivisible manner, underlining the importance of interlinkages and interdependencies between different SDG-relevant policy areas. The complexity of synergies and trade-offs that are inherent to SDG interactions increases the risk that governments cherry-pick the SDGs that align with current policy interests and priorities, while neglecting others. No development actor can single-handedly ensure the integrated implementation of sustainable development's economic, environmental and social dimensions. To advance integrated development processes, we therefore seek to answer the following question: what governance mechanisms enable development actors, located in different sectors, in different jurisdictions and at different governance levels, to align their efforts? Drawing on public governance and international development literature we identify ten alignment mechanisms that can be used to create inter-departmental alignment, public–private alignment, donor-recipient alignment and inter-donor alignment. To understand how the different mechanisms manifest themselves in practice, we illustrate how they are used to create synergies and negotiate trade-offs in forest and landscape restoration governance in Ethiopia. Through 20 interviews with public and private actors in Ethiopia, we observe a movement toward more integrated forest and landscape restoration efforts, but also that important mechanisms to create synergies and negotiate trade-offs between different objectives are still missing or do not function as intended. In the discussion and conclusion, we provide insights on how the ten mechanisms can contribute to greater multi-actor alignment at different stages of the policy cycle.

In federated learning, benign participants aim to optimize a global model collaboratively. However, the risk of privacy leakage cannot be ignored in the presence of semi-honest adversaries. Existing research has focused either on designing protection mechanisms or on inventing attacking mechanisms. While the battle between defenders and attackers seems never-ending, we are concerned with one critical question: Is it possible to prevent potential attacks in advance? To address this, we propose the first game-theoretic framework that considers both FL defenders and attackers in terms of their respective payoffs, which include computational costs, FL model utilities, and privacy leakage risks. We name this game the federated learning privacy game (FLPG), in which neither defenders nor attackers are aware of all participants' payoffs. To handle the incomplete information inherent in this situation, we propose associating the FLPG with an oracle that has two primary responsibilities. First, the oracle provides lower and upper bounds of the payoffs for the players. Second, the oracle acts as a correlation device, privately providing suggested actions to each player. With this novel framework, we analyze the optimal strategies of defenders and attackers. Furthermore, we derive and demonstrate conditions under which the attacker, as a rational decision-maker, should always follow the oracle's suggestion not to attack. © 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

Titel: Hur finansierar företagaren sig i en högriskbransch. En studie om hur krögare finansierar sin verksamhet Författare: Hannes Herlin, Kevin Jaeger Handledare: Per-Ola Ulvenblad Examinator: Hans Landström Nivå: Civilekonomuppsats, 30hp Nyckelord: Pecking order, Trade-off, Bootstrapping, Restaurang, Entreprenörskap. Problemformulering: Hur finansierar krögare sin verksamhet och hur kan det förstås? Syfte: Studiens syfte är att beskriva hur krögare finansierar sin verksamhet. Studien skall även analysera vad som påverkar finansieringsvalen. Slutligen ska studien resultera i utveckling av ett begrepp eller påbyggnad av redan existerande teorier gällande finansiering. Litteraturgenomgång och teoretisk referensram: Litteraturgenomgången och den teoretiska referensramen ger en förståelse för hur tidigare forskning har behandlat hur krögare finansierar verksamheten och vad det beror på. Metod: Studien är induktiv med deduktiva steg genom en kvalitativ forskningsstrategi varpå empirin har insamlats med semistrukturerade intervjuer. En tematisk analysmetod har tillämpats. Slutsats: Resultatet visar att krögarna väljer det finansieringssätt som minst inskränker på deras kontroll av bolaget samt dess vision för bolaget. Om en delägare skall göra tillträde väljs hellre en delägare som kan bidra i den dagliga verksamheten via komplimenterande kompetenser än att ta in en ren finansiär., Title: How does the business owner finance their enterprise in a high-risk industry. A study about how restauranteurs finance their business. Author: Hannes Herlin, Kevin Jaeger Supervisor: Per-Ola Ulvenblad Examiner: Hans Landström Key words: Pecking order, Trade-off, Bootstrapping, Restaurant, Entrepreneurship Research questions: How do restauranteurs finance their enterprise and how can it be understood? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe how restauranteurs finance their enterprises. The study shall also analyze what affects the restauranteurs choices of finance. The study will result in the development of a term or a further development of an existing theory. Literary review and Theoretical framework: The literary review and the theoretical framework will give an understanding of how the earlier research has treated how restauranteurs have financed their enterprise and what it depends on. Method: The study is inductive with deductive steps through a qualitative research strategy hence the empirical data has been collected through semi-structured interviews. A thematic method of analysis has been used. Conclusion: The result shows that restauranteurs choose the type of finance that will impact their control of the company and their vision of it the least. If a partner makes an entrance the restauranteur will choose the partner which will provide more competence in the daily operations than the one who will provide more capital.

Purpose: Corporate real estate management (CREM) is complex due to an increasing number of real estate (RE) added values and the tensions between them. RE managers are faced with trade-offs: to choose a higher performance for one added value at the cost of another. CREM research mainly deals with trade-offs in a hypothetical sense, without looking at the characteristics of the RE portfolio nor the specific context in which trade-offs are made. The purpose of this paper is to further develop the concept of real estate value (REV) optimisation with regard to tensions between decreasing CO2 emissions and supporting user activities. Design/methodology/approach: Mixed method study. REV optimisation between user activities and energy efficiency for police stations in the Netherlands built between 2000 and 2020 is analysed. This is complemented by interviews with an RE manager and senior user of police stations and analysis of policy documents. Findings: xThe characteristics of the police station portfolio indicate no correlation between user activities and energy efficiency for the case studied. This is complemented by interviews, from which it becomes clear that there was in fact little tension between supporting user activities and energy efficiency. The performances of these two different added values were optimised separately. Originality/value: This study combines different scales (building and portfolio level) with different types of data: portfolio analysis, document analysis and interviews. This creates a comprehensive image of whether and how the Netherlands police optimised the two RE values., Real Estate Management

CONTEXT: Serious games have gained popularity as an innovative participatory approach to explore the complexity of social-ecological systems, managing the trade-offs between economic and ecological targets. Serious games can be abstract and generic, or more complex and specific. They can be used to raise awareness, increase shared understanding of options and risks, and/or commitment to common goals. OBJECTIVE: We here aim to clarify design principles applied in the FORCES game (Farmer Options and its Risk in Complex Ecological-Social systems) as single-player game to be easily adaptable to diverse (upper) watershed contexts. Three steps involved are game design (balance generic and site-specific information), game use in (and possibly adaptation to) specified context(s) and evaluation of contextualized impacts. METHODS: The FORCES game design was based on three contrasting watershed case studies in East Java, Indonesia, rather than on single, specific case study. Game development consisted of preparation (defining the context, generic core issues and game objectives), development process (ideating, setting the actors, resources, elements, and mechanisms), and assessment (prototyping, exploration of solution space, game trial and player feedback). Fifty-five smallholders played the FORCES in three landscapes to test the game's performance and impact on participants' insights. Therefore, we recorded every game session and performed pre- and post-game interviews for each participant. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The developed FORCES game focuses on decisions of individual farmers involving plot-level plant (annual crops, trees) choices with financial cost-benefits consequences and links to ecological impacts on the litter layer, water balance, and erosion. The FORCES game was successfully applied in three distinct landscapes, demonstrating its adaptability. The game's generic water balance supported the transferability to different contexts, while fine-tuning of plot mana

Multi-criteria optimization (MCO) function has been available on commercial radiotherapy (RT) treatment planning systems to improve plan quality; however, no study has compared Eclipse and RayStation MCO functions for prostate RT planning. The purpose of this study was to compare prostate RT MCO plan qualities in terms of discrepancies between Pareto optimal and final deliverable plans, and dosimetric impact of final deliverable plans. In total, 25 computed tomography datasets of prostate cancer patients were used for Eclipse (version 16.1) and RayStation (version 12A) MCO-based plannings with doses received by 98% of planning target volume having 76 Gy prescription (PTV76 D98%) and 50% of rectum (rectum D50%) selected as trade-off criteria. Pareto optimal and final deliverable plan discrepancies were determined based on PTV76 D98% and rectum D50% percentage differences. Their final deliverable plans were compared in terms of doses received by PTV76 and other structures including rectum, and PTV76 homogeneity index (HI) and conformity index (CI), using a t-test. Both systems showed discrepancies between Pareto optimal and final deliverable plans (Eclipse: −0.89% (PTV76 D98%) and −2.49% (Rectum D50%); RayStation: 3.56% (PTV76 D98%) and −1.96% (Rectum D50%)). Statistically significantly different average values of PTV76 D98%, HI and CI, and mean dose received by rectum (Eclipse: 76.07 Gy, 0.06, 1.05 and 39.36 Gy; RayStation: 70.43 Gy, 0.11, 0.87 and 51.65 Gy) are noted, respectively (p < 0.001). Eclipse MCO-based prostate RT plan quality appears better than that of RayStation.

Trade-offs involving multiple criteria that cannot be satisfied at the same time are ubiquitous in engineering design activities. Navigating trade-off decisions can be challenging, especially when it comes to sustainability-related decisions in early-stage projects. Through a systematic literature review, we unravel the challenges related to sustainability trade-offs in technology development, concept design, and other front-end of innovation activities. The challenges, which were evaluated by experts from industry and academia, range from technical and organisational to psychological aspects.

Visual search is typically studied by requiring participants to memorize a template initially, for which they subsequently search in a crowded display. Search in daily life, however, often involves templates that remain accessible externally, and may therefore be (re)attended for just-in-time encoding or to refresh internal template representations. Here, we show that participants indeed use external templates during search when given the chance. This behavior was observed during both simple and complex search, scaled with task difficulty, and was associated with improved performance. Furthermore, we show that participants used external sampling not only to offload memory, but also as a means of verifying whether the template was remembered correctly at the end of trials.We conclude that the external world may not only provide the challenge (e.g., distractors), but may dynamically ease search. These results argue for extensions of state-of-the-art models of search, because external sampling seems to be used frequently, in at least two ways and is actually beneficial for task performance. Our findings support a model of visual working memory that emphasizes a resource-efficient trade-off between storing and (re)attending external information.

The role of soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration as a 'win-win' solution to both climate change and food insecurity receives an increasing promotion. The opportunity may be too good to be missed! Yet the tremendous complexity of the two issues at stake calls for a detailed and nuanced examination of any potential solution, no matter how appealing. Here, we critically re-examine the benefits of global SOC sequestration strategies on both climate change mitigation and food production. While estimated contributions of SOC sequestration to climate change vary, almost none take SOC saturation into account. Here, we show that including saturation in estimations decreases any potential contribution of SOC sequestration to climate change mitigation by 53%-81% towards 2100. In addition, reviewing more than 21 meta-analyses, we found that observed yield effects of increasing SOC are inconsistent, ranging from negative to neutral to positive. We find that the promise of a win-win outcome is confirmed only when specific land management practices are applied under specific conditions. Therefore, we argue that the existing knowledge base does not justify the current trend to set global agendas focusing first and foremost on SOC sequestration. Away from climate-smart soils, we need a shift towards soil-smart agriculture, adaptative and adapted to each local context, and where multiple soil functions are quantified concurrently. Only such comprehensive assessments will allow synergies for land sustainability to be maximised and agronomic requirements for food security to be fulfilled. This implies moving away from global targets for SOC in agricultural soils. SOC sequestration may occur along this pathway and contribute to climate change mitigation and should be regarded as a co-benefit.

Numerous studies have shown that under a limited water supply, a larger root biomass is associated with an increased above-ground biomass. Root biomass, while genetically controlled, is also greatly affected by the environment with varying plasticity levels. In this context, understanding the relationship between the biomass of shoots and roots appears prudent. In this study, we analyze this relationship in a large dataset collected from multiple experiments conducted up to different growth stages in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and its wild relatives. Four bread wheat mapping populations as well as wild and domesticated members of the Triticeae tribe were evaluated for the root and shoot biomass allocation patterns. In the analyzed dataset the root and shoot biomasses were directly related to each other, and to the heading date, and the correlation values increased in proportion to the length of an experiment. On average, 84.1% of the observed variation was explained by a positive correlation between shoot and root biomass. Scatter plots generated from 6353 data points from numerous experiments with different wheats suggest that at some point, further increases in root biomass negatively impact the shoot biomass. Based on these results, a preliminary study with different water availability scenarios and growth conditions was designed with two cultivars, Pavon 76 and Yecora Rojo. The duration of drought and water level significantly affected the root/shoot biomass allocation patterns. However, the responses of the two cultivars were quite different, suggesting that the point of diminishing returns in increasing root biomass may be different for different wheats, reinforcing the need to breed wheats for specific environmental challenges.

Efforts to understand the mechanisms explaining the relationship between abiotic stress tolerance and range size and filling have hitherto yielded contradictory results. Unlike previous studies that have focused on single stress factors, we here examine the extent to which range size and filling can be explained by tolerance of multiple abiotic stressors (cold, shade, drought and waterlogging). As range metrics, we used range size and filling (the ratio between actual and potential range) for 331 European and North American temperate woody plant species. Stress tolerance strategies were expressed as a multivariate axis reflecting a cold/waterlogging-drought tolerance trade-off. We used mixed models to evaluate the relationship between range size/filling and this multivariate stress tolerance axis, using latitude as a covariate, and phylogeny and plant functional type as random effects. Range size and stress tolerance were negatively correlated, mostly independently of latitude and continent. Thus, cold/wet-tolerant species had the largest range sizes and cold-sensitive/drought-tolerant species the smallest. In contrast, range filling mostly depended on latitude. Our results show that abiotic stress tolerance can explain interspecific differences in range size, and to a lesser extent range filling, which sets up predictions for range size variation in plants that go beyond latitude.

Den svenska hälso- och sjukvården har begränsade resurser vilket kräver att prioriteringar görsför att resurserna ska fördelas så effektivt och rättvist som möjligt. En reell prioriteringssituationdär avvägningen mellan effektivitet och rättvisa blir särskilt tydlig är vid beslut om subventionav förskrivningsläkemedel. När ett sådant prioriteringsbeslut fattas är det relevant att undersökavad resurserna som krävs för en prioriterad behandling i stället hade kunnat generera i form avannan vård, det vill säga att kvantifiera både vinster och förluster i termer av hälsa. I dennauppsats granskas därför beslut om subvention av läkemedel som fattats av Tandvårds- ochläkemedelsförmånsverket (TLV) mellan 2017 och 2022, för att kvantifiera hur avvägningenmellan effektivitet och rättvisa kan ha påverkat den totala hälsan i Sverige. Med hjälp av etttröskelvärde för marginalproduktiviteten i hälso- och sjukvården på 250 000 kronor beräknasnettohälsoeffekten av TLVs beslut. Resultaten visar att av totalt 49 granskade beslut omsubvention av läkemedel har det i 32 fall gjorts en avvägning mellan effektivitet och rättvisa.Endast åtta av besluten har en positiv nettohälsoeffekt, där hälso- och sjukvårdssystemetgenererar mer hälsa än det förlorar till följd av TLVs beslut. För de 17 läkemedel där antaletpatienter som berörs av ett beslut angetts kan en negativ nettohälsoeffekt på -24 060 år i fullhälsa (QALYs) konstateras. Cirka 84 % av de observerade besluten har en negativnettohälsoeffekt och har därmed också påverkat den totala hälsan i Sverige negativt. Resultatendiskuteras sedan med stöd av den svenska etiska plattformen och olika teorier om distributivrättvisa, vilka är möjliga anledningar till att resultatet ser ut som det gör. Att uttrycka kostnadoch effekt i termer av hälsa, som nettohälsoeffekten, tydliggör beslutsfattandet och är en starttill en mer transparent fördelning av samhällets begränsade resurser. Vårt förslag är att införaberäkning av nettohälsoeffekten som kompl, The Swedish healthcare system has limited resources which requires prioritization in order todistribute resources as efficiently and fairly as possible. A real prioritization situation where thetrade-off between efficiency and fairness becomes particularly clear is when deciding tosubsidize prescription drugs. When such prioritization decisions are made, it is relevant toexamine what the resources required for a prioritized treatment could instead have generated inthe form of other care, i.e., to quantify both gains and losses in terms of health. This thesistherefore examines decisions on subsidizing pharmaceuticals made by the Swedish Dental andPharmaceutical Benefits Agency (TLV) between 2017 and 2022, to quantify how the trade-offbetween efficiency and equity may have affected the overall health in Sweden. Using athreshold value for marginal productivity in health care of 250 000 SEK, calculations are madeto determine the Net Health Benefit. The results show that out of a total of 49 revieweddecisions on the subsidization of pharmaceuticals, a trade-off between efficiency and fairnesshas been made in 32 of these. Only eight of the decisions have a positive net health effect, wherethe healthcare system gains more health than it loses. For the 17 drugs where the number ofpatients affected by the decision could be quantified, a negative total Net Health Benefit of -24,060 years of full health (QALYs) was calculated. Approximately 84 % of the observeddecisions have a negative Net Health Benefit and have thus also had a negative impact onoverall health in Sweden. The results are then discussed with support of the Swedish ethicalplatform and various theories concerning distributive justice, which are possible reasons for theresults. Expressing cost and impact in terms of health, as the Net Health Benefit, clarifiesdecision-making and is a start towards a more transparent distribution of society's limitedresources. Our proposal is to introduce calculation of the Net Hea

Urban green infrastructure can help cities tackle biodiversity loss and support well-being, but also contribute to climate change mitigation. This can be enhanced with green infrastructure policies that favor biodiversity, residential well-being, or climate benefits such as carbon sequestration. However, assessing public support for policies favoring specific green infrastructure outcomes, or potential trade-offs between them, is vital to understanding the social implications that such policies may have upon implementation. This paper presents the results of a public participation GIS (PPGIS) survey (n = 3 237) in Helsinki, Finland, concerning public support for policies favoring diverse climate, biodiversity, and well-being outcomes in green infrastructure. The results of the survey, derived with spatial and aspatial analyses, indicate that urban residents strongly support green infrastructure policies that favor climate benefits such as carbon sequestration, and are more willing to compromise the well-being benefits, rather than the biodiversity, of green infrastructure in favor of climate benefits. The results also reveal how support for policies favoring different green infrastructure outcomes varies spatially across the city, manifesting into priority areas of support for climate, biodiversity, and well-being outcomes. Finally, different ways of valuing and utilizing green infrastructure, and the socio-economic background of the respondents, predict support for policies favoring different green infrastructure outcomes. Our methods and results help take global political targets of mitigating climate change and reversing biodiversity loss into practice in cities in a manner that acknowledges the plurality of understandings on how green infrastructure should be managed, for whom, and most importantly, where.

Interacting abiotic stresses exert a fundamental selective pressure on the adaptive syndromes of long-living organisms such as woody plants. However, general patterns and mechanisms describing woody plant adaptations to tolerate multiple abiotic stressors are yet to emerge. This hampers our ability to build predictive frameworks foreseeing species responses to stochastic changes in abiotic stress regimes due to climate change. With this Virtual Special Issue (VSI), we aimed to summarize what we know, and what we do not know, about woody plant adaptations to achieve tolerance to multiple abiotic limitations. To this end, we brought together studies exploring ecological or ecophysiological perspectives on woody plant adaptations to tolerate multiple abiotic stresses. Ecological studies suggest patterns associating trait trade-offs, climate, and biotic interactions with woody plants’ multi-stress tolerance. Ecophysiological studies point to traits and conceptual frameworks that might explain some processes underpinning woody plant multi-stress tolerance. Here, we first revised the definitions of stress and stress tolerance used in ecological and ecophysiological research, providing a nomenclature of tolerance that could be used to unify definitions across research fields. Then, we summarized the main theories and evidence on woody plant adaptations to tolerate multiple abiotic stresses. Finally, we introduced the ecological and ecophysiological perspectives on this matter and placed the contributions to this VSI within the current state of the art. Altogether, this VSI allowed us to identify the lack of large-scale integration of patterns and processes describing woody plant adaptations to multiple abiotic stresses as a major gap in this field.

Under controlled laboratory conditions, previous studies have shown that selection can produce repeatable evolutionary trajectories. Yet, the question remains for many of these studies if, given identical starting populations, evolution in the wild proceeds in a non-random direction. In the present study, we investigated the extent to which rapid evolution in the wild is parallel by monitoring the genetic composition of replicate populations of Daphnia in field mesocosms containing two clonal genotypes. We found parallel changes across all nine mesocosms, in which the same genotype increased in frequency. To probe whether genotype-specific response to resource abundance could have led to this frequency change, we conducted a life-history assay under high-resource abundance and low-resource abundance. We found that resource exploitation differed by genotype, in that, while one genotype (the winner in the field mesocosms) was more fit than the other genotype at high resources, the other genotype performed slightly better at low resources. We suspect that levels of resource abundance found in the summer field mesocosms had values in which the genotype better with abundant resources had the advantage. These findings suggest that variation in certain traits associated with resource acquisition can drive genotype frequency change.

The slow-fast continuum is a commonly used framework to describe variation in life-history strategies across species. Individual life histories have also been assumed to follow a similar pattern, especially in the pace-of-life syndrome literature. However, whether a slow-fast continuum commonly explains life-history variation among individuals within a population remains unclear. Here, we formally tested for the presence of a slow-fast continuum of life histories both within populations and across species using detailed long-term individual-based demographic data for 17 bird and mammal species with markedly different life histories. We estimated adult lifespan, age at first reproduction, annual breeding frequency, and annual fecundity, and identified the main axes of life-history variation using principal component analyses. Across species, we retrieved the slow-fast continuum as the main axis of life-history variation. However, within populations, the patterns of individual life-history variation did not align with a slow-fast continuum in any species. Thus, a continuum ranking individuals from slow to fast living is unlikely to shape individual differences in life histories within populations. Rather, individual life-history variation is likely idiosyncratic across species, potentially because of processes such as stochasticity, density dependence, and individual differences in resource acquisition that affect species differently and generate non-generalizable patterns across species.

Titel: Gemensamt värdeskapande i praktiken Författare: Lydia Frykman och Johanna Wennerström Handledare: Rasmus Nyqvist Bakgrund: I dagens samhälle är utmaningarna inom hållbarhet högst väsentliga, till följd av att företag inte tar sitt fulla ekonomiska, ekologiska och sociala samhällsansvar. CSV har som ett resultat av detta blivit alltmer uppmärksammat då konceptet belyser företagens roll i att driva hållbarhetsutvecklingen framåt. Det saknas däremot empiriskt underlag som visar hur företag kan arbeta för att uppnå gemensamt värdeskapande i praktiken, samt hur den komplexa avvägningen mellan företagsnytta och samhällsnytta ska gå till. Därför undersöker denna kvalitativa studie värdeskapande aktiviteter samt avvägningen mellan företagsnytta och samhällsnytta. Syfte: Syftet är att bidra med en ökad förståelse för de aktiviteter som skapar gemensamt värde, vad som krävs för att företagen ska motiveras till dessa aktiviteter samt för hur företag hanterar den komplexa avvägningen mellan företagsnytta och samhällsnytta. Metod: Denna kvalitativa studie utgår från ett hermeneutiskt perspektiv, har en tvärsnittsdesign och en abduktiv forskningsansats. Det empiriska underlaget samlades in genom två studier, som bestod av semistrukturerade intervjuer med företagsrespondenter och experter inom ämnet. Slutsats: Resultaten från studien tyder på att företagen utövar CSV-aktiviteter i olika utsträckning, men att en stor utmaning är att identifiera när det är ekonomiskt rationellt att uppnå ett gemensamt värde. Vidare har studien klargjort att det finns flera drivkrafter till att uppnå gemensamt värdeskapande. Däremot behöver dagens lagkrav ytterligare förtydligande och förbättring, för att företagen ska agera mer osjälviskt. Studien lyfter avvägningen mellan företagsnytta och samhällsnytta och det framgår att det är denna del som är mest väsentlig i diskussionen om hur företag kan uppnå gemensamt v, Title: Creating Shared Value In PracticeAuthors: Lydia Frykman and Johanna Wennerström Supervisor: Rasmus Nyqvist Background: In today's society, the challenges connected to sustainability are highly significant, as a result of companies not fully taking their economic, environmental and social responsibility. As a result, CSV has received increased attention as the concept highlights companies’ role in driving sustainability forward. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence showing how companies can work to achieve shared value in practice, as well as displaying how the complex trade-off between economic and social value creation should be handled. Therefore, this qualitative study examines value- creating activities and the trade-off between economic and social value creation. Purpose: The aim of the study is to contribute to an increased understanding of the activities that create shared value, what it is that motivates the companies to these activities and for how companies manage the complex trade-off between economic and social value creation. Methodology: This qualitative study is from a hermeneutic perspective, has a cross- sectional study design and an abductive research approach. The empirical evidence was collected through two studies, which consisted of semi-structured interviews with respondents from practice and experts within the field. Conclusion: The results of the study displays that companies practice CSV activities, however it ́s explained that it's hard to determine when it's economically rational to achieve shared value and not. Additionally, the study has clarified several driving forces to achieve shared value. Although, it ́s declared that today's legal regulations need further clarification, in order for companies to act more selflessly. Furthermore, the study highlights the trade-off between economic and social value creation and it appears from the results that this ́s the most essential part in the discussion of how companies can

Evolutionary medicine - i.e. the application of insights from evolution and ecology to biomedicine - has tremendous untapped potential to spark transformational innovation in biomedical research, clinical care and public health. Fundamentally, a systematic mapping across the full diversity of life is required to identify animal model systems for disease vulnerability, resistance, and counter-resistance that could lead to novel clinical treatments. Evolutionary dynamics should guide novel therapeutic approaches that target the development of treatment resistance in cancers (e.g., via adaptive or extinction therapy) and antimicrobial resistance (e.g., via innovations in chemistry, antimicrobial usage, and phage therapy). With respect to public health, the insight that many modern human pathologies (e.g., obesity) result from mismatches between the ecologies in which we evolved and our modern environments has important implications for disease prevention. Life-history evolution can also shed important light on patterns of disease burden, for example in reproductive health. Experience during the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has underlined the critical role of evolutionary dynamics (e.g., with respect to virulence and transmissibility) in predicting and managing this and future pandemics, and in using evolutionary principles to understand and address aspects of human behavior that impede biomedical innovation and public health (e.g., unhealthy behaviors and vaccine hesitancy). In conclusion, greater interdisciplinary collaboration is vital to systematically leverage the insight-generating power of evolutionary medicine to better understand, prevent, and treat existing and emerging threats to human, animal, and planetary health.

Establishing large networks of fully protected marine protected areas (MPAs) is challenging because of displacement costs for fisheries. The use of partially protected areas is often proposed as an alternative. However, how conservation and fisheries outcomes of MPA networks are mediated through time by the level of protection remains uncertain. Here we use a metapopulation model of a commercially exploited demersal coastal fish to assess conservation and fisheries outcomes of alternative management policies. We compare the temporal performances of nonspatial management, large MPAs, or networks of MPAs in an overfished case study. In addition, we assess how the magnitude of both outcomes is mediated by larval connectivity and level of protection. We distinguish the relative contribution to fisheries outcomes of unprotected areas in between MPAs, and unprotected areas further away, receiving less displaced fishing effort and potential biomass export. We show that spatial management outperforms nonspatial management, that conservation and fisheries outcomes increase with increasing levels of protection, that fisheries outcomes in areas in between MPAs are higher when connected through larval dispersal, and that increases in catch are preceded by a short‐term decrease. Our results call for an increase in protection levels to meet both ecological and fisheries management goals.

Indirect land use changes (iLUC) pose a significant challenge to the sustainable production of biomass and bioenergy. The implementation of sustainability certification has the potential to manage this risk effectively. However, there remains an open question regarding how to extend certification schemes to create a credible and reliable approach for accounting for iLUC risks. This study focuses on low iLUC risk biomass production, which can be achieved through the adoption of additionality practices by individual producers. To support the sustainable use of such practices, this study examines whether existing assessment instruments of voluntary certification schemes for trade-offs that might arise from the use of such practices are based on scientific evidence. We found trade-offs that are preferentially addressed by the schemes, and considerable gaps for certain trade-offs. Biomass cultivation on unused land could be determined as the most promising additionality practice in terms of addressing trade-offs. This study contributes to the need to implement additionality practices in low iLUC certification approaches without compromising sustainability by identifying trade-offs as required by European Union low iLUC legislation. Finally, this study presents a decision support tool tailored to certification schemes to verify that certification instruments addressing a particular trade-off are based on scientifically sound methods.

Federated learning (FL) enables participating parties to collaboratively build a global model with boosted utility without disclosing private data information. Appropriate protection mechanisms have to be adopted to fulfill the opposing requirements in preserving privacy and maintaining high model utility. In addition, it is a mandate for a federated learning system to achieve high efficiency in order to enable large-scale model training and deployment. We propose a unified federated learning framework that reconciles horizontal and vertical federated learning. Based on this framework, we formulate and quantify the trade-offs between privacy leakage, utility loss, and efficiency reduction, which leads us to the No-Free-Lunch (NFL) theorem for the federated learning system. NFL indicates that it is unrealistic to expect an FL algorithm to simultaneously provide excellent privacy, utility, and efficiency in certain scenarios. We then analyze the lower bounds for the privacy leakage, utility loss, and efficiency reduction for several widely-adopted protection mechanisms, including Randomization, Homomorphic Encryption, Secret Sharing, and Compression. Our analysis could serve as a guide for selecting protection parameters to meet particular requirements.

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) are presented as significantly interacted. Yet most studies only investigated the direct interactions of SDG targets, and indirect interactions, that is, the interlinkages transmitted through one or more mediums, should also be considered to obtain more accurate interaction estimation and more scientific policy decisions. We first made a methodological contribution by proposing a plus-minus decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory model, which can consider not only the direct synergies and trade-offs but the indirect ones. Then, based on this proposed method, we navigated the complicated network across the SDGs considering both direct and indirect interactions, find out the key interactive ones with a visually directed graph, obtain the weights of each SDG, and define the best governance structures to capitalize on synergies and minimize trade-offs. Results show that, when incorporating indirect interactions, the share of synergy effect of SDGs dominates the total influence, taking up to 98.33%, suggesting that the achievement of the 2030 Agenda can be facilitated through interactions. Although all SDGs should be equally addressed by 2030 suggested by the United Nations, equal importance across 17 SDGs does not mean we have to make the same efforts in achieving each SDG, and SDG 4 and SDG 13 are the top priority to tap into these interaction potentials. Our interdisciplinary analysis across economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection provides a science-driven reference for all UN member states to facilitate achieving the SDGs by maximizing the synergies and minimizing the trade-offs. © 2022 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Indirect land use change (ILUC) is considered a significant challenge, resulting from an increasing demand for biomass and bioenergy. On a political level sustainability certification of biomass-derived products is discussed as one potential instrument to manage the risk of ILUC. However, extending existing schemes towards a credible and reliable certification approach to account for ILUC-risks is still an open challenge. To develop such a certification instrument, so-called “additionality practices” are gaining relevance. Such practices include measures that an individual producer can adopt to provide an amount of biomass in addition to the business-as-usual feedstock production. This applies in particular to the certification of low ILUC-risk biofuels through voluntary certification schemes recognised by the European Commission. To date, however, no studies have been conducted that examine how such schemes account for potential trade-offs that may arise from the use of additionality practices. In preparation of an integrated assessment framework for low ILUC-risk certification, this study presents a gap analysis that examines whether such trade-offs are considered already in existing sustainability certification schemes for biofuels. In this way, we have found trade-offs that are preferentially addressed by the schemes, e.g., biodiversity loss, on the one hand, and considerable gaps for certain trade-offs, e.g., resource depletion, on the other. In addition, we identified biomass cultivation on unused land as the most promising additionality practice. Most schemes already have certification instruments in place to verify the large number of trade-offs that could be identified as preferentially addressed for this additionality practice. Moreover, only a few new criteria and indicators need to be developed for the small number of gaps found for biomass cultivation on unused land. Finally, this paper recommends future work to verify the scientific evidence of existin

Breastfeeding and weaning are actively studied from evolutionary, medical, and social research perspectives because of their close association with infant mortality, lifetime health, and human population dynamics. Each discipline benefits from an interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge regarding the bases, processes, and consequences of these phenomena. However, current social issues related to breastfeeding and weaning have received little attention from an evolutionary biology perspective. We address this gap by reviewing current social issues related to human breastfeeding and weaning in an evolutionary framework. This approach helps build a conceptual framework with the goal of better understanding ultimate causes of or influences on these current social issues. The six social issues reviewed here fall into three categories: the spatiotemporal constraints of breastfeeding, abuse of breast milk as valuable material, and mismatch in breastfeeding practices. Some of these issues have an evolutionary basis. We analyze the structure of these social issues and discuss their possible solutions in terms of extension of the trade-off theory in evolutionary biology. Our discussion on the current social issues in breastfeeding and weaning highlights the effectiveness of an approach rooted in evolutionary theory and biological anthropology.

Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria benefit plants by stimulating their growth or protecting them against phytopathogens. Rhizobacteria must colonize and persist on plant roots to exert their benefits. However, little is known regarding the processes by which rhizobacteria adapt to different plant species, or behave under alternating host plant regimes. Here, we used experimental evolution and whole-population whole-genome sequencing to analyse how Bacillus subtilis evolves on Arabidopsis thaliana and tomato seedlings, and under an alternating host plant regime, in a static hydroponic setup. We observed parallel evolution across multiple levels of biological organization in all conditions, which was greatest for the two heterogeneous, multi-resource, spatially structured environments at the genetic level. Species-specific adaptation at the genetic level was also observed, possibly caused by the selection stress imposed by different host plants. Furthermore, a trade-off between motility and biofilm development was supported by mutational changes in motility- and biofilm-related genes. Finally, we identified several condition-specific and common targeted genes in different environments by comparing three different B. subtilis biofilm adaptation settings. The results demonstrate a common evolutionary pattern when B. subtilis is adapting to the plant rhizosphere in similar conditions, and reveal differences in genetic mechanisms between different host plants. These findings will likely support strain improvements for sustainable agriculture.

As an emerging trend, Green Propulsion has been exponentially growing over the last decades in the space sector. This paper assesses different technologies in a trade-off study weighting their applicability to a specific class of upper stage systems currently developed by many companies and often referred to as kick-stages or orbital stages. In a generic two-stage-to-orbit scenario, many launchers require a system able to go the ‘extra mile’ to deliver one or multiple payloads on orbit(s). That is where the kick stage comes into playing a crucial role. The trade-off study reported here is based on a well-known decision-making tool, the Analytical Hierarchy Process, and is divided into two parts: low-thrust class engines such as monopropellants, including pre-mixed blends, usually employed for attitude and reaction control; and high-thrust engines such as hypergolic bi-propellants combinations used for apogee manoeuvres. Hybrid thrusters are also considered in the analysis with a dedicated parallel trade-off., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Syftet med studien är att undersöka ifall innovation output påverkar kapitalstrukturen på publika svenska bolag samt att förstå ifall effekten skiljer sig mellan OMXS och First North. Studien följer en deduktiv ansats, och kvantitativ data används för att genomföra två multipel regressioner. Resultat från regressionerna analyseras utifrån relevanta teoretiska ramverk. Slutsatsen är att Innovation output har en statistisk signifikant negativ effekt på skuldsättningsgraden för bolag på Nasdaq First North Growth Market. Kanalen genom den har en effekt argumenteras vara genom en minskning i informationsasymmetrin på marknaden för aktiekapital. Effekten är statistiskt signifikant större på First North än vad den är på Nasdaq Stockholm, förklarat av skillnaden i informationsasymmetri mellan marknaderna. Innovation output har emellertid ingen signifikans på skuldsättningsgraden för bolag på Nasdaq Stockholm, The purpose of this study is to determine if innovation output influences the capital structure of Swedish listed companies and to understand if the effect is different on OMXS and First North. The study follows a deductive approach, and quantitative data is used to conduct two multiple regression analyses. The results from the regressions are analyzed based on the relevant theoretical frameworks. The conclusion is that innovation output has a statistically significant negative impact on the leverage ratio of firms listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market. The channel in which it has an effect is through a reduction in the information asymmetry a firm faces in the equity market. The effect is statistically significantly greater than on Nasdaq Stockholm, explained by a difference in the information asymmetry between the two markets. Innovation output is however not found to significantly impact the leverage ratio of firms listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.

Recent discoveries pointed out the importance of the mutual correlation between timing of environmental stress and plant fitness. However, the internal reshaping of plant growth under daily stress sensing, and their metabolic coordination remain to be investigated. Thus, we studied the connection between time of day, growth and defence to understand how plant fitness is affected by diurnal stress inputs. We examined if simulated herbivory (leaf wounding) in the morning, at midday or the evening differentially influence plant defence state vs growth in three crop species of Brassica: broccoli (Brassica oleraceae), turnip greens (B. rapa) and rapeseed (B. napus). The data revealed that plant's tolerance of wounding stress is diurnally regulated in Brassica crops. Trade-offs between biomass and investment in glucosinolates (GSL) and phenolics were affected by timing of leaf stress. Negative correlations between biomass and induction of defence compounds were found for plants treeated in the morning and evening. However, the correlations were positive for midday treatment. Interestingly, we revealed a new connection between plant growth and changes in aliphatic GSLs and flavonoids in response to wounding. These data suggest that metabolic stress-dependent circadian oscillations in leaf defences could be one mechanism conferring a competitive advantage to plants to anticipate daily environmental variations by synchronizing them with growth. Moreover, this work provides first insights into how secondary metabolites are linked to growth response in a timing-related manner.

Conservation offsets promise more cost-effective conservation of biodiversity, especially under economic and environmental change. This is because they represent a more flexible approach to biodiversity conservation, allowing for the economic development of ecologically valuable land, provided that this is offset by the restoration of economically used land. Increasing flexibility in permitted trades, however, does not only promise cost savings but very likely leads to unintended loss of biodiversity. Given there is often political pressure towards more flexibility in the design of offsets, it is important to understand the ecological and economic consequences of flexibility. The trade-off between economic costs and biodiversity is analysed using an ecological-economic modelling that considers the three main types of flexibility: spatial flexibility, temporal flexibility and flexibility in (ecosystem) type. The influence of ecological and economic conditions on the flexibility trade-off is explored.

Supporting food security while maintaining ecosystem sustainability is one of the most important global challenges for humanity. Optimization of cropping systems is expected to promote the ecosystem services of agroecosystems. Yet, how and why cropping system influences the trade-offs between economic profitability and multiple ecosystem services remain poorly understood.We investigate the influence of six cropping systems on trade-offs between economic profitability and multiple ecosystem services after considering 36 agricultural ecosystem properties using field experiment data from 2020 to 2022.We show that designing cropping system is a critical tool to closing the gap between ecosystem sustainability and commercial profitability. Cropping system with three harvests within 2 yr had higher performance in overall ecosystem multiple services through enhancement of supporting, regulating, and economic performance without compromising provisioning compared with four other systems. These systems diminished the trade-off among multiple services, resulting in a ‘win-win’ situation for economics and multiple services. By contrast, the monoculture and double cropping systems lead to a strong trade-off between pairwise services including ecosystem health and profitability.Our work illustrates the substantial potential of rotation systems with three harvests within 2 yr in enforcing ecosystem services and closing the trade-offs among multiple agricultural ecosystem services.

Delayed maintenance is a major issue in Europe, including the Netherlands. The city of Amsterdam recently started a large-scale maintenance project to renew (renovate or replace) many bridges: an issue that other cities will have to face soon. Decision-making for bridge programming (deciding which bridges should be renewed simultaneously using what strategy) is a contemporary issue. The current decision-making in Amsterdam is not structured; as a result, not all options have been considered, and only a few factors are taken into account. Consequently, this programming has resulted in massive costs and project delays. From the literature review, it can be concluded that no DSS exists that considers all criteria, is suitable for simultaneously planning multiple bridges, and is user-friendly for municipalities. Since it is essential to make an informed decision, there is a need to develop a method to look at decision-making in an integral and systematic sense. Therefore a DSS is designed in this study to support this bridge programming. The DSS will systematically show which main effects play a role, the options a municipality can choose, and their advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, it will reveal the trade-offs a municipality will have to weigh when making its choice. The DSS was designed using a case study, namely a part of Amsterdam. In the end, the expert evaluation showed that the DSS is plausible and leads to meaningful insights into decision-making., Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics

Schools are a major source of food waste and an important setting for achieving dietary improvements. Few studies explore the links between food waste and nutrition. This study measured individual plate waste of about 1700 primary school children in peri-urban Viet Nam, adding to evidence on school food waste in low- and middle-income countries. We used survey data to explore whether food waste is associated with personal characteristics such as sex, knowledge and attitudes about nutritious foods. Qualitative interviews and focus groups with teachers, parents, food providers and children helped identify potential causes of food waste. The average student wasted 23% of the food served (approximately 85 g) during lunch, which roughly equates to 15.3 kg of food in a school year. Vegetables were wasted most: children left almost half of their portion unconsumed. Boys wasted less food than girls. Better knowledge and attitudes about fruits and vegetables are associated with less waste of these foods. A large portion was associated with a higher share of wasted food, suggesting the potential trade-off between efforts to cut food waste and efforts to increase consumption of nutritious foods. Students were dissatisfied with the quality of the dishes, especially vegetables were evaluated as undercooked, served too cold and too oily. To reduce food waste, it is critical for schools to prepare food in line with students’ preferences. Food waste reduction could be treated as an intermediate step towards ultimate policy goals such as healthier food consumption.

Against a background of intensifying climate-induced disturbances, the need to enhance the resilience of forests and forest management is gaining urgency. In forest management, multiple trade-offs exist between different demands as well as across and within temporal and spatial scales. However, methods to assess resilience that consider these trade-offs are presently lacking. Here we propose a hierarchical framework of principles, criteria, and indicators to assess the resilience of a social-ecological system by focusing on the mechanisms behind resilience. This hierarchical framework balances trade-offs between mechanisms, different parts of the social-ecological system, ecosystem services, and spatial as well as temporal scales. The framework was developed to be used in a participatory manner in forest management planning. It accounts for the major parts of the forest-related social-ecological system and considers the multiple trade-offs involved. We demonstrate the utility of the framework by applying it to a landscape dominated by Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) in Central Europe, managed for three different management goals. The framework highlights how forest resilience varies with the pursued management goals and related management strategies. The framework is flexible and can be applied to various forest management contexts as part of a participatory process with stakeholders. It thus is an important step towards operationalizing social-ecological resilience in forest management systems.

Purpose: This prospective study evaluates our first clinical experiences with the novel ‘‘BRachytherapy via artificial Intelligent GOMEA-Heuristic based Treatment planning'' (BRIGHT) applied to high-dose-rate prostate brachytherapy. MethodS AND MATERIALs: Between March 2020 and October 2021, 14 prostate cancer patients were treated in our center with a 15Gy HDR-brachytherapy boost. BRIGHT was used for bi-objective treatment plan optimization and selection of the most desirable plans from a coverage-sparing trade-off curve. Selected BRIGHT plans were imported into the commercial treatment planning system Oncentra Brachy. In Oncentra Brachy a dose distribution comparison was performed for clinical plan choice, followed by manual fine-tuning of the preferred BRIGHT plan when deemed necessary. The reasons for plan selection, clinical plan choice, and fine-tuning, as well as process speed were monitored. For each patient, the dose-volume parameters of the (fine-tuned) clinical plan were evaluated. Results: In all patients, BRIGHT provided solutions satisfying all protocol values for coverage and sparing. In four patients not all dose-volume criteria of the clinical plan were satisfied after manual fine-tuning. Detailed information on tumour coverage, dose-distribution, dwell time pattern, and insight provided by the patient-specific trade-off curve, were used for clinical plan choice. Median time spent on treatment planning was 42 min, consisting of 16 min plan optimization and selection, and 26 min undesirable process steps. ConclusionS: BRIGHT is implemented in our clinic and provides automated prostate high-dose-rate brachytherapy planning with trade-off based plan selection. Based on our experience, additional optimization aims need to be implemented to further improve direct clinical applicability of treatment plans and process efficiency.

Uncovering the complex interactions among ecosystem services (ESs) is a prerequisite for managing multiple ESs simultaneously. We mapped the supply of six ESs, quantified their trade-offs/synergies and bundles, determined dominant social-ecological drivers, and subsequently provided sustainable spatial planning and management strategies at both grid and sub-watershed scales. The results revealed that: (1) the patterns of ESs were spatially heterogeneous, with food production decreasing the most, by 14.86% (grid scale) and 17% (sub-watershed scale), and water supply increasing the most, by 22.46% (grid scale) and 22.57% (sub-watershed scale) from 2000 to 2020; (2) ten ES pairs presented synergies while five ES pairs related to food production showed trade-offs at both spatial scales, with three ES pairs at the grid scale and two ES pairs at the sub-watershed scale experiencing declined synergies or increased trade-offs; (3) our spatial-temporal and cross-scale analysis of ES interactions identified ES pairs with declined synergies as an additional priority in ecosystem management and determined ES bundles as a zoning basis for spatial planning at both scales. The similarities and divergences in ES interactions and their drivers at different scales require the linkage and distinct focus of spatial planning at different scales. Thus, we integrated spatial-temporal and cross-scale knowledge on ES interactions into spatial planning to underpin sustainable ecosystem management across scales.

Current global challenges call for a rigorously predictive ecology. Our understanding of ecological strategies, imputed through suites of measurable functional traits, comes from decades of work that largely focussed on plants. However, a key question is whether plant ecological strategies resemble those of other organisms. Among animals, ants have long been recognised to possess similarities with plants: as (largely) central place foragers. For example, individual ant workers play similar foraging roles to plant leaves and roots and are similarly expendable. Frameworks that aim to understand plant ecological strategies through key functional traits, such as the ‘leaf economics spectrum’, offer the potential for significant parallels with ant ecological strategies. Here, we explore these parallels across several proposed ecological strategy dimensions, including an ‘economic spectrum’, propagule size-number trade-offs, apparency-defence trade-offs, resource acquisition trade-offs and stress-tolerance trade-offs. We also highlight where ecological strategies may differ between plants and ants. Furthermore, we consider how these strategies play out among the different modules of eusocial organisms, where selective forces act on the worker and reproductive castes, as well as the colony. Finally, we suggest future directions for ecological strategy research, including highlighting the availability of data and traits that may be more difficult to measure, but should receive more attention in future to better understand the ecological strategies of ants. The unique biology of eusocial organisms provides an unrivalled opportunity to bridge the gap in our understanding of ecological strategies in plants and animals and we hope that this perspective will ignite further interest. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

The root system architecture of a plant changes during salt stress exposure. Different accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana have adopted different strategies in remodelling their root architecture during salt stress. Salt induces a multiphase growth response in roots, consisting of a stop phase, quiescent phase, recovery phase and eventually a new level of homoeostasis. We explored natural variation in the length of and growth rate during these phases in both main and lateral roots and find that some accessions lack the quiescent phase. Using mathematical models and correlation-based network, allowed us to correlate dynamic traits to overall root architecture and discover that both the main root growth rate during homoeostasis and lateral root appearance are the strongest determinants of overall root architecture. In addition, this approach revealed a trade-off between investing in main or lateral root length during salt stress. By studying natural variation in high-resolution temporal root growth using mathematical modelling, we gained new insights in the interactions between dynamic root growth traits and we identified key traits that modulate overall root architecture during salt stress.

Against a background of intensifying climate-induced disturbances, the need to enhance the resilience of forests and forest management is gaining urgency. In forest management, multiple trade-offs exist between different demands as well as across and within temporal and spatial scales. However, methods to assess resilience that consider these trade-offs are presently lacking. Here we propose a hierarchical framework of principles, criteria, and indicators to assess the resilience of a social-ecological system by focusing on the mechanisms behind resilience. This hierarchical framework balances trade-offs between mechanisms, different parts of the social-ecological system, ecosystem services, and spatial as well as temporal scales. The framework was developed to be used in a participatory manner in forest management planning. It accounts for the major parts of the forest-related social-ecological system and considers the multiple trade-offs involved. We demonstrate the utility of the framework by applying it to a landscape dominated by Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) in Central Europe, managed for three different management goals. The framework highlights how forest resilience varies with the pursued management goals and related management strategies. The framework is flexible and can be applied to various forest management contexts as part of a participatory process with stakeholders. It thus is an important step towards operationalizing social-ecological resilience in forest management systems.

The impact of microbial communities on ecosystem function varies due to the diverse biological attributes and sensitivities exhibited by different taxonomic groups. These groups can be classified as always rare (ART), conditionally rare (CRT), dominant, and total taxa, each affecting ecosystem function in distinct ways. Thus, understanding the functional traits of organisms within these taxa is crucial for comprehending their contributions to overall ecosystem function. In our study, we investigated the influence of climate warming on the biogeochemical cycles of the ecosystem in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, utilizing an open top chamber experiment. Simulated warming significantly lowered ecosystem function in the grassland but not in the shrubland. This discrepancy was due to the diverse responses of the various taxa present in each ecosystem to warming conditions and their differing roles in determining and regulating ecosystem function. The microbial maintenance of ecosystem function was primarily reliant on the diversity of bacterial dominant taxa and CRT and was less dependent on ART and fungal taxa. Furthermore, bacterial CRT and dominant taxa of the grassland ecosystem were more sensitive to changing climatic conditions than grassland ART, resulting in a more pronounced negative diversity response. In conclusion, the biological maintenance of ecosystem function during climate warming is dependent on microbiome composition and the functional and response characteristics of the taxa present. Thus, understanding the functional traits and response characteristics of various taxa is crucial for predicting the effects of climate change on ecosystem function and informing ecological reconstruction efforts in alpine regions of the plateau.