Building social resilience in North Korea can mitigate the impacts of climate change on food security.

Adaptation based on social resilience is proposed as an effective measure to mitigate hunger and avoid food shocks caused by climate change. But these have not been investigated comprehensively in climate-sensitive regions. North Korea (NK) and its neighbours, South Korea and China, represent three economic levels that provide us with examples for examining climatic risk and quantifying the contribution of social resilience to rice production. Here our data-driven estimates show that climatic factors determined rice biomass changes in NK from 2000 to 2017, and climate extremes triggered reductions in production in 2000 and 2007. If no action is taken, NK will face a higher climatic risk (with continuous high-temperature heatwaves and precipitation extremes) by the 2080s under a high-emissions scenario, when rice biomass and production are expected to decrease by 20.2% and 14.4%, respectively, thereby potentially increasing hunger in NK. Social resilience (agricultural inputs and population development for South Korea; resource use for China) mitigated climate shocks in the past 20 years (2000-2019), even transforming adverse effects into benefits. However, this effect was not significant in NK. Moreover, the contribution of social resilience to food production in the undeveloped region (15.2%) was far below the contribution observed in the developed and developing regions (83.0% and 86.1%, respectively). These findings highlight the importance of social resilience to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on food security and human hunger and provide necessary quantitative information.

Spatial-temporal evolution and responses of ecosystem service value under land use change in the Yellow River Basin:A case study of Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region, Northwest China.

The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region is located in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin in the Northwestern China, with vulnerable ecosystems. It is important to define the regional pattern of ecological security. The ecological and economic issues in this region deserved more investigation. By integrating land use data and the socio-economic data from 1995 to 2020, and using spatial analysis and geodetector, we investigated the spatial-temporal variations of land use and ecosystem service value (ESV) and the driving forces of spatial variations of ESV in the region. The results showed that the cultivated land and unused land in the study area were decreasing, whereas the construction land and forest land increased from 1995 to 2020. The overall ESV in the region showed a "decrease-increase" trend, which decreased by 1.2% from 1995 to 2000 and increased by 1.0% from 2000 to 2020. Grassland provided the largest ESV, contributing a prominent regulation on function and service. The results of geodetector indicated that NDVI was the dominant driving factor for the spatial variation, while temperature and per capita net income of farmers were the important factors. There were mainly 32 types of the index of driving forces with the spatial difference of ESV (q value) being more than 30%. The q value of NDVI and soil type was nearly 46%. The spatial variation of ESV in Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region was affected by the interactive enhancement among natural, socio-economic factors, and policy factors.

The expression of KRT2 and its effect on melanogenesis in alpaca skins.

In order to investigate the effects of the keratin 2 (KRT2) on alpaca melanocyte in vivo and vitro, the immunohistochemistry (IHC), quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR), Western blot, and alpaca melanocytes transfection methods were used. The results showed that mRNA and protein expression of KRT2 was highly expressed in brown skin in comparison with that in white skin. Moreover, we found that KRT2 was expressed in alpaca melanocytes in vitro by immunocytochemistry. After transfection with KRT2 in alpaca melanocytes, the relative mRNA and protein expression of KRT2, microphthalmia-associtated transcription factor (MITF), tyrosinase (TYR) and tyrosinase-related protein 1 (TYRP1) in alpaca skin melanocytes was increased with significant differences; a further result was the increase of melanin production. The results suggested that KRT2 functions in alpaca hair color formation, which offered an essential theoretical basis for further exploration of the role of melanogenesis.