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Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires balancing demands on land between agriculture (SDG 2) and biodiversity (SDG 15). The production of vegetable oils, and in particular palm oil, illustrates these competing demands and trade-offs. Palm oil accounts for 40%1 of the current global annual demand for vegetable oil as food, animal feed, and fuel (210 million tons2 (Mt)), but planted oil palm covers less than 5-5.5%3 of total global oil crop area (ca. 425 Mha)4 , due to oil palm’s relatively high yields5. Recent oil palm expansion in forested regions of Borneo, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula, where >90% of global palm oil is produced, has led to substantial concern around oil palm’s role in deforestation. Oil palm expansion’s direct contribution to regional tropical deforestation varies widely, ranging from 3% in West Africa to 47% in Malaysia. Oil palm is also implicated in peatland draining and burning in Southeast Asia. Documented negative environmental impacts from such expansion include biodiversity declines, greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollution. However, oil palm generally produces more oil per area than other oil crops, is often economically viable in sites unsuitable for most other crops, and generates considerable wealth for at least some actors. Global demand for vegetable oils is projected to increase by 46% by 2050. Meeting this demand through additional expansion of oil palm versus other vegetable oil crops will lead to substantial differential effects on biodiversity, food security, climate change, land degradation, and livelihoods. Our review highlights that, although substantial gaps remain in our understanding of the relationship between the environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts of oil palm, and the scope, stringency and effectiveness of initiatives to address these, there has been little research into the impacts and trade-offs of other vegetable oil crops. Greater research attention needs to be given to investigating the impacts of palm oil production compared to alternatives for the trade-offs to be assessed at a global scale.\ud Over the past 25 years, global oil crops have expanded rapidly, with major impacts on land use. The land used for growing oil crops grew from 170 million ha (Mha) in 1961 to 425 Mha in 2017 or ~30% of all cropland world-wide. Oil palm, soy, and rapeseed together account for >80% of all vegetable oil production with cotton, groundnuts, sunflower, olive, and coconut comprising most of the remainder (Table 1, Figure 1). These crops, including soy (125 Mha planted area) and maize (197 Mha planted area), are also used as animal feed and other products.\ud Oil palm is the most rapidly expanding oil crop. This palm originates from equatorial Africa where it has been cultivated for millennia, but it is now widely grown in Southeast Asia. Between 2008 and 2017, oil palm expanded globally at an average rate of 0.7 Mha per year, and palm oil is the leading and cheapest edible oil in much of Asia and Africa. While it has been estimated that palm oil is an ingredient in 43% of products found in British supermarkets, we lack comparable studies for the prevalence of other oils.\ud As a wild plant, the oil palm is a colonising species that establishes in open areas. Cultivated palms are commonly planted as monocultures, although the tree is also used in mixed, small-scale and agroforestry settings. To maximize photosynthetic capacity and fruit yields, oil palm requires a warm and wet climate, high solar radiation, and high humidity. It is thus most productive in the humid tropics, while other oil crops, except coconut, grow primarily in subtropical and temperate regions (Table 1). Moreover, because oil palm tolerates many soils including deep peat and sandy substrates, it is often profitable in locations where few other commodity crops are viable. The highest yields from planted oil palm have been reported in Southeast Asia5 . Yields are generally lower in Africa and the Neotropics, likely reflecting differences in climatic conditions including humidity and cloud cover, as well as management, occurrence of pests and diseases, and planting stock.\ud Palm oil is controversial due to its social and environmental impacts and opportunities. Loss of natural habitats, reduction in woody biomass, and peatland drainage that occur during site preparation are the main direct environmental impacts from oil palm development. Such conversion typically reduces biodiversity and water quality and increases greenhouse gas emissions, and, when fire is used, smoke and haze. Industrial oil palm expansion by large multi-national and national companies is also often associated with social problems, such as land grabbing and conflicts, labour exploitation, social inequity16 and declines in village-level well-being. In producer countries, oil palm is a valued crop that brings economic development to regions with few alternative agricultural development options, and generates substantial average livelihood improvements when smallholder farmers adopt oil palm. Here we review the current understanding of the environmental impacts from oil palm cultivation and assess what we know about other oil crops in comparison. Our focus is on biodiversity implications and the environmental aspects of sustainability, and we acknowledge the importance of considering these alongside socio-cultural, political, and economic outcomes.

Abstract : Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) has recently been shown to becapable of instantaneously imaging and continuously monitoring fish populations over continentalshelf-scale areas, covering thousands of km2. We show how OAWRS can be used in a variety ofoceanic ecosystems to remotely assess populations and study the behavior of fish and other marineorganisms, such as Antarctic krill, to help the study of marine ecology and the ecosystem-basedapproach to fisheries management.

Arbeidet har sett på muligheten for å overføre dagens metodikk for «klimagassframskrivninger i jordbrukssektoren» til «avrenning av næringsstoffer til vann fra jordbruksaktivitet og økologisk tilstand i vannforekomster». Jordbruk og vannmiljø er brukt som eksempel for å vurdere hvorvidt metoder som benyttes nasjonalt og internasjonalt i klimaarbeidet kan brukes for å utvikle kunnskapsgrunnlaget og verktøykassen for styring av oppnåelse av flere klima- og miljømål i 2030 og 2050. Vi har vurdert at det er faglig mulig å utarbeide framskrivninger for avrenning av næringsstoffer fra jordbrukssektoren. For å kunne utarbeide slike framskrivninger er det imidlertid behov for å tilpasse konseptet til vannforvaltningen og videreutvikle både datagrunnlag og modellverktøy. Vi anbefaler derfor at det igangsettes et arbeid for å utvikle modellverktøy og teste ut konseptet i noen pilotområder. Det bør i denne sammenheng også vurderes hvor ressurs- og kompetansekrevende det vil være for forvaltningen å lage slike framskrivninger. Prosjektleder/Hovedforfatter Solrun Figenschau Skjellum

Avoiding collisions is an essential goal of the control system of autonomous vehicles. This paper presents a reactive algorithm for avoiding obstacles in a three‐dimensional space, and shows how the algorithm can be applied to an underactuated underwater vehicle. The algorithm is based on maintaining a constant avoidance angle to the obstacle, which ensures that a guaranteed minimum separation distance is achieved. The algorithm can thus be implemented without knowledge of the obstacle shape. The avoidance angle is designed to compensate for obstacle movement, and the flexibility of operating in 3D can be utilized to implement traffic rules or operational constraints. We exemplify this by incorporating safety constraints on the vehicle pitch and by making the vehicle seek to move behind the obstacle, while also minimizing the required control effort. The underactuation of the vehicle induces a sway and heave movement while turning. To avoid uncontrolled gliding into the obstacle, we account for this movement using a Flow frame controller, which controls the direction of the vehicle's velocity rather than just the pitch and yaw. We derive conditions under which it is ensured that the resulting maneuver is safe, and these results are verified trough simulations and through full‐scale experiments on the Hugin HUS autonomous underwater vehicle. The latter demonstrates the performance of the proposed algorithm when applied to a case with unmodeled disturbances and sensor noise, and shows how the modular nature of the collision avoidance algorithm allows it to be applied on top of a commercial control system. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Field Robotics published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

The signals from photoreceptors modify plant morphogenesis and regulate the timing of flowering. In the long-day plant petunia, flowering is accelerated under blue (B) and white (W) light compared to red (R) light. In Arabidopsis thaliana L., ELF genes are involved in circadian clock-associated regulation of flowering under different light conditions. In this study, we aimed to assess the involvement of ELF genes in control of flowering by light quality in petunia. Two ELF4-like genes, PhELF4-1 and PhELF4-2 with 76% and 70% similarity to orthologues in pepper but low overall similarity to ELF genes in A. thaliana L., were characterized in petunia and their expression patterns studied under different light qualities. Both genes showed a rhythmic expression pattern and higher expression under B light from light emitting diodes (LED) and W light from fluorescent lamps than under R LED light from LED. For both genes, the expression peaked towards the end of the day, 12 h after start of a 14 h photoperiod. Compared with PhELF4-2, PhELF4-1 expression showed higher amplitude with significantly higher peak expression. As investigated for PhELF4-1, such an expression rhythm was kept for two days after transfer of the plants to continuous lighting using B LED, indicating a circadian rhythm. PhELF4-1 also responded with a phase shift after transfer to short days of an 8 h photoperiod. These results indicate that PhELF4-like genes in petunia are under photoperiodic control involving a circadian clock and play a role in signal transduction from one or more B light photoreceptors.

This review evaluated the association of place of residence (urban/rural) and under-five mortality in middle- and low-income countries. Both English and Spanish language studies conducted during the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) period (1990 to 2015) were reviewed. Twenty-six cross-sectional studies, all in the English language, were selected for further review. Published data were used for this analysis. A funnel plot was produced to ascertain the presence of publication bias. The combined relative risk for under-five mortality was estimated using a random-effects model and a meta-regression was conducted on 15 of the 26 studies. The studies had a combined effect size of 1.47 (95% confidence interval, 1.27–1.67). The results of the meta-regression showed a positive association between the relative risk and the percentage of the rural population for the various regions/countries. The coefficient for the variable rural population percentage was 0.007, indicating that for every one percent increase in the rural population percentage, there was a 0.007 increase in the relative risk for under-five mortality. However, this was not significant (p-value = 0.3). Rural disadvantage persists in middle- and low-income countries. This is important to evaluate policies and programmes designed to remove the gap in under-five mortality rates between urban and rural areas.

The effect of temperature on tree phenology and growth has gained particular attention in relation to climate change. While a number of reports indicate that warming can extend the length of the growing season and enhance tree growth rates, it is still debated whether temperature also affects biomass partitioning. Addressing the question of whether trees grown at different elevations invest similarly in various organs, we established four sites along an elevational gradient (320 to 595 m a.s.l.) in managed Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karts) stands regenerating after clearcuts in central Norway. There, differences in temperature, bud break, tree growth, and allometric scaling were measured in small spruce trees (up to 3 m height). The results showed that bud break and shoot growth are affected by temperature, as lower sites completed the bud break process 5 days earlier than the higher sites did. There was some evidence indicating that the summer drought of 2018 affected tree growth during the season, and the implications of this are discussed. The allometric scaling coefficients did not change for the crown volume (slope value range 2.66&ndash 1.12), but this did not affect the general scaling of the crown volume with tree height. Our results showed that different local environmental conditions affect both the growth rate and phenology in Norway spruce trees but, on the contrary, that the biomass partitioning among different parts of the tree remains essentially unchanged. This demonstrates that the allometric approach is an important tool for unraveling true vs. apparent plant plasticity, which in turn is an essential awareness for predicting plant responses to environmental changes. 0.96) against tree height. A slight difference was found in the scaling coefficients of crown length against tree height (slope value range 1.04&ndash 0.89), and tree diameter (0.89&ndash 2.84), crown radius (0.77&ndash