Search

Accelerating food systems transformation in the face of climate change and other global crises requires myriad changes across all levels, themes, and geographies. This calls for re-thinking the roles of agricultural research for development (AR4D). In this perspective article we use the metaphor of ‘swarms’ and ‘swarming’ to illustrate a more distributed way of working with a set of approaches that, if implemented jointly, may help AR4D researchers and their institutions to step up the pace and scale for food systems transformation, as urgently called for in global dialogues around the UN Food System Summit, COP 26, and beyond. We identify four roles for AR4D within swarmed design: facilitating the directionality of swarms, fostering swarm mentality and creativity, engaging with swarms in different innovation spaces, and building up and monitoring swarm intelligence. Enacting these roles would require an enabling environment, with the main food systems actors working together in four priority areas: aligning allies around shared visions and innovation portfolios, coupling tailored funding schemes and reworked incentive systems, building more permanent spaces for boundary work, and exploring new ways for structuring science.

If climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is meaningfully to address the development challenges posed by climate change, effective approaches will be needed to scale up research findings. Here, eleven case studies are used to exemplify scaling-up strategies based on (1) value chains and private sector involvement, (2) information and communication technologies and agro-advisory services, and (3) policy engagement. We evaluated these case studies and the scaling strategies they exemplify, using a simple conceptual framework from the field of scaling up nutrition interventions. Results showed that these different strategies exhibit different characteristics; all offer considerable potential for taking CSA interventions to scale, but there still may be unavoidable trade-offs to consider when choosing one strategy over another, particularly between reaching large numbers of farmers and addressing farmers' specific contexts. The case studies highlighted several challenges: estimating the costs and benefits of different scaling activities, integrating knowledge across multiple levels, and addressing equity issues in scaling up. The case studies outlined here will continue to be monitored and evaluated, thus strengthening the evidence base around effective scaling-up strategies that can contribute to achieving food and nutrition security under climate change in the coming decades.

We consider the question of what is needed for climate services to support sub-Saharan African farmers’ adaptation needs at the scale of the climate challenge. Consistent with an earlier assessment that mutually reinforcing supply-side and demand-side capacity constraints impede the development of effective climate services in Africa, our discussion of strategies for scaling up practices that meet farmers’ needs, and opportunities to address long-standing obstacles, is organized around: (a) meeting farmers’ climate information needs; (b) supporting access, understanding and use; and (c) co-production of services. A widespread gap between available information and farmers’ needs is associated with entrenched seasonal forecast convention and obstacles to using observational data. Scalable innovations for producing more locally relevant historical and forecast climate information for farm decision-making are beginning to be adopted. Structured participatory communication processes help farmers relate complex climate information to their experience, and integrate it into their management decisions. Promising efforts to deliver rural climate services strategically combine communication channels that include participatory processes embedded in existing agricultural advisory systems, and innovations in interactive broadcast media. Efforts to engage farmers in co-production of climate services improve delivery to farmers and dialogue among stakeholders, but often with little impact on the usability of available information. We discuss challenges and options for capturing farmers’ evolving demands, and aggregating and incorporating this information into iterative improvements to climate services at a national scale. We find evidence that key weaknesses in the supply and the demand sides of climate services continue to reinforce each other to impede progress towards meeting farmers’ needs at scale across Africa. Six recommendations target these weaknesses: (1) change the way seasonal forecasts are produced and presented regionally and nationally, (2) use merged gridded data as a foundation for national climate information products, (3) remove barriers to using historical data as a public good, (4) mobilize those who work on the demand side of climate services as an effective community of practice, (5) collectively assess and improve tools and processes for communicating climate information with rural communities, and (6) build iterative co-production processes into national climate service frameworks.

Newborns are considered difficult to protect against infections shortly after birth, due to their ineffective immune system that shows quantitative and qualitative differences compared to adults. However, here we show that a single vaccination of mice at birth with a replication-deficient live vaccine Modified Vaccinia Ankara [MVA] efficiently induces antigen-specific B- and T-cells that fully protect against a lethal Ectromelia virus challenge. Protection was induced within 2 weeks and using genetically modified mice we show that this protection was mainly T-cell dependent. Persisting immunological T-cell memory and neutralizing antibodies were obtained with the single vaccination. Thus, MVA administered as early as at birth induced immediate and long-term protection against an otherwise fatal disease and appears attractive as a new generation smallpox vaccine that is effective also in children. Moreover, it may have the potential to serve as platform for childhood vaccines as indicated by measles specific T- and B-cell responses induced in newborn mice vaccinated with recombinant MVA expressing measles antigens.

To perform their various functions, protein surfaces often have to interact with each other in a specific way. Usually, only parts of a protein are accessible and can act as binding sites. Because proteins consist of polypeptide chains that fold into complex three-dimensional shapes, binding sites can be divided into two different types: linear sites that follow the primary amino acid sequence and discontinuous binding sites, which are made up of short peptide fragments that are adjacent in spatial proximity. Such discontinuous binding sites dominate protein–protein interactions, but are difficult to identify. To meet this challenge, we combined a computational, structure-based approach and an experimental, high-throughput method. SUPERFICIAL is a program that uses protein structures as input and generates peptide libraries to represent the protein's surface. A large number of the predicted peptides can be simultaneously synthesised applying the SPOT technology. The results of a binding assay subsequently help to elucidate protein–protein interactions; the approach is applicable to any kind of protein. The crystal structure of the complex of hen egg lysozyme with the well-characterised murine IgG1 antibody HyHEL-5 is available, and the complex is known to have a discontinuous binding site. Using SUPERFICIAL, the entire surface of lysozyme was translated into a peptide library that was synthesised on a cellulose membrane using the SPOT technology and tested against the HyHEL-5 antibody. In this way, it was possible to identify two peptides (longest common sequence and peptide 19) that represented the discontinuous epitope of lysozyme. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

SummaryThere is an urgent need to coat the surfaces of medical devices, including implants, with antimicrobial agents to reduce the risk of infection. A peptide array technology was modified to permit the screening of short peptides for antimicrobial activity while tethered to a surface. Cellulose-amino-hydroxypropyl ether (CAPE) linker chemistry was used to synthesize, on a cellulose support, peptides that remained covalently bound during biological assays. Among 122 tested sequences, the best surface-tethered 9-, 12-, and 13-mer peptides were found to be highly antimicrobial against bacteria and fungi, as confirmed using alternative surface materials and coupling strategies as well as coupling through the C and N termini of the peptides. Structure-activity modeling of the structural features determining the activity of tethered peptides indicated that the extent and positioning of positive charges and hydrophobic residues were influential in determining activity.

Current prophylactic vaccines work via the induction of B and T cell mediated memory that effectively control further replication of the pathogen after entry. In the case of therapeutic or post-exposure vaccinations the situation is far more complex, because the pathogen has time to establish itself in the host, start producing immune-inhibitory molecules and spread into distant organs. So far it is unclear which immune parameters have to be activated in order to thwart an existing lethal infection. Using the mousepox model, we investigated the immunological mechanisms responsible for a successful post-exposure immunization with modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA). In contrast to intranasal application of MVA, we found that intravenous immunization fully protected mice infected with ectromelia virus (ECTV) when applied three days after infection. Intravenous MVA immunization induced strong innate and adaptive immune responses in lethally infected mice. By using various gene-targeted and transgenic mouse strains we show that NK cells, CD4 T cells, CD8 T cells and antibodies are essential for the clearance of ECTV after post-exposure immunization. Post-exposure immunization with MVA is an effective measure in a murine model of human smallpox. MVA activates innate and adaptive immune parameters and only a combination thereof is able to purge ECTV from its host. These data not only provide a basis for therapeutic vaccinations in the case of the deliberate release of pathogenic poxviruses but possibly also for the treatment of chronic infections and cancer.

Der demografische Wandel bezeichnet Veranderungen in der Bevolkerungsstruktur, die plakativ mit den Begriffen „alter“, „bunter“ und „weniger“ auf den Punkt gebracht werden konnen. Die dahinter liegenden Prozesse wie steigende Lebenserwartungen, steigende Zuwanderungen und sinkende Geburtenraten werden die Kultur- und Freizeitmarkte kUnftig vor erhebliche Herausforderungen stellen. Trotz der Dringlichkeit des Themas sind die Uberlegungen zu den Folgen des demografischen Wandels fUr die Kulturlandschaft bislang jedoch noch nicht sehr weit gediehen. Zum einen liegt noch wenig Zahlenwerk vor. Zum anderen wurde das Thema zunachst nur zogerlich von der Kulturpolitik, den Kulturinstitutionen und der offentlichkeit aufgegriffen. Wichtige Anstose gaben in den vergangenen Jahren Vorreiter wie zum Beispiel die Stiftung Niedersachsen (Tagung „Kultur und demografischer Wandel“, 2005), das Institut fUr Landes- und Stadtentwicklungsforschung und Bauwesen des Landes Nordrhein- Westfalen (Fachgesprachsreihe „Demografischer Wandel — Konsequenzen fUr die kulturelle Infrastruktur“, 2005) und das NRW KulturSekretariat (Tagung „Kultur und Alter“, 2006)