General aspects of organocatalytic cyclizations

Ring-forming reactions are an essential part of synthetic chemistry and allow access to a range of useful natural products and biologically important molecules. The applications of organocatalysis to the synthesis of functionalized, enantiopure structures really begins where organocatalysis itself begins; with the Hajos-Parrish reaction in the 1970s for the synthesis of steroids using proline. This chapter then will review the uses of organocatalysts in cyclization methodology – from the initial Hajos-Parrish discovery to current advances in the field.

Harvesting fruit of equivalent chronological age and fruit position shows individual effects of UV radiation on aspects of the strawberry ripening process

The effect of UV radiation on fruit secondary compounds of strawberry cv ‘Elsanta’ was recorded taking chronological age and fruit position on the truss into account. When fruit of similar age post-anthesis, and truss position were compared, we found that the concentration of secondary compounds differed according to fruit position on the truss. UV radiation hastened the rate of colour development and resulted in an increase in fruit anthocyanin (14–31%), flavonoid (9–21%) and phenolic (9–20%) contents at harvesting; but it had no effect on fruit soluble solid content, pH and volatile composition. It did, however, increase leaf flavonoid (16%) and phenolic (8%) concentrations. Fruit ripened under a UV transparent film were firmer, smaller but greater in number than fruit ripened under a UV opaque film. Overall, the results indicate that UV radiation does not affect all aspects of strawberry ripening but independently alters rate of colour development and fruit firmness

Normative, systemic and procedural aspects: a review of indicator‐based sustainability assessments in agriculture

Several methods for assessing the sustainability of agricultural systems have been developed. These methods do not fully: (i) take into account the multi‐functionality of agriculture; (ii) include multidimensionality; (iii) utilize and implement the assessment knowledge; and (iv) identify conflicting goals and trade‐offs. This paper reviews seven recently developed multidisciplinary indicator‐based assessment methods with respect to their contribution to these shortcomings. All approaches include (1) normative aspects such as goal setting, (2) systemic aspects such as a specification of scale of analysis, (3) a reproducible structure of the approach. The approaches can be categorized into three typologies. The top‐down farm assessments focus on field or farm assessment. They have a clear procedure for measuring the indicators and assessing the sustainability of the system, which allows for benchmarking across farms. The degree of participation is low, potentially affecting the implementation of the results negatively. The top‐down regional assessment assesses the on‐farm and the regional effects. They include some participation to increase acceptance of the results. However, they miss the analysis of potential trade‐offs. The bottom‐up, integrated participatory or transdisciplinary approaches focus on a regional scale. Stakeholders are included throughout the whole process assuring the acceptance of the results and increasing the probability of implementation of developed measures. As they include the interaction between the indicators in their system representation, they allow for performing a trade‐off analysis. The bottom‐up, integrated participatory or transdisciplinary approaches seem to better overcome the four shortcomings mentioned above.

Aspects of the large scale tropical atmospheric circulation

An account is given of a number of recent studies with idealised models whose aim is to further understanding of the large-scale tropical atmospheric circulation. Initial-value integrations with a model with imposed heating are used to discuss aspects of the Asian summer monsoon, including constraints on cross-equatorial flow into the monsoon. The summer descent in the Mediterranean region and on the eastern sides of the summer subtropical anticyclones are seen to be associated with the monsoons to their east. An aqua-planet GCM is used to investigate the relationship between simple SST distributions and tropical convection and circulation. The existence of strong equatorial convection and Hadley cells is found to depend sensitively on the curvature of the meridional profile in SST. Zonally confined SST maxima produce convective maxima centred to the west and suppression of convection elsewhere. Strong equatorial zonal flow changes are found in some experiments and three mechanisms for producing these are investigated in a model with imposed heating. 1.

Predicting the impact of the EU common agricultural policy reform in England: micro and macroeconomic aspects

In this article we investigate the effects of the European CAP reform on a selection of arable crops in England, both at a regional and national level. The results show that the CAP reform will push farmers to adjust to the new market conditions, which will cause a further restructuring of the English agricultural business sector. Our results show that, under the new market conditions, economically-small farms will increase their output by allocating more land to cereals, whereas economically-large farms will need to decrease land allocated to cereals to reduce production costs and achieve better returns.

Investigating orthographic and semantic aspects of word learning in poor comprehenders

This study compared orthographic and semantic aspects of word learning in children who differed in reading comprehension skill. Poor comprehenders and controls matched for age (9-10 years), nonverbal ability and decoding skill were trained to pronounce 20 visually presented nonwords, 10 in a consistent way and 10 in an inconsistent way. They then had an opportunity to infer the meanings of the new words from story context. Orthographic learning was measured in three ways: the number of trials taken to learn to pronounce nonwords correctly, orthographic choice and spelling. Across all measures, consistent items were easier than inconsistent items and poor comprehenders did not differ from control children. Semantic learning was assessed on three occasions, using a nonword-picture matching task. While poor comprehenders showed equivalent semantic learning to controls immediately after exposure to nonword meaning, this knowledge was not well retained over time. Results are discussed in terms of the language and reading skills of poor comprehenders and in relation to current models of reading development.