Ungulate management in European national parks: Why a more integrated European policy is needed.

1. Primary objectives of national parks usually include both, the protection of natural processes and species conservation. When these objectives conflict, as occurs because of the cascading effects of large mammals (i.e., ungulates and large carnivores) on lower trophic levels, park managers have to decide upon the appropriate management while considering various local circumstances. 2. To analyse if ungulate management strategies are in accordance with the objectives defined for protected areas, we assessed the current status of ungulate management across European national parks using the naturalness concept and identified the variables that influence the management. 3. We collected data on ungulate management from 209 European national parks in 29 countries by means of a large-scale questionnaire survey. Ungulate management in the parks was compared by creating two naturalness scores. The first score reflects ungulate and large carnivore species compositions, and the second evaluates human intervention on ungulate populations. We then tested whether the two naturalness score categories are influenced by the management objectives, park size, years since establishment, percentage of government-owned land, and human impact on the environment (human influence index) using two generalized additive mixed models. 4. In 67.9% of the national parks, wildlife is regulated by culling (40.2%) or hunting (10.5%) or both (17.2%). Artificial feeding occurred in 81.3% of the national parks and only 28.5% of the national parks had a non-intervention zone covering at least 75% of the area. Furthermore, ungulate management differed greatly among the different countries, likely because of differences in hunting traditions and cultural and political backgrounds. Ungulate management was also influenced by park size, human impact on the landscape, and national park objectives, but after removing these variables from the full model the reduced models only showed a small change in the deviance explained. In areas with higher anthropogenic pressure, wildlife diversity tended to be lower and a higher number of domesticated species tended to be present. Human intervention (culling and artificial feeding) was lower in smaller national parks and when park objectives followed those set by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 5. Our study shows that many European national parks do not fulfil the aims of protected area management as set by IUCN guidelines. In contrast to the USA and Canada, Europe currently has no common ungulate management policy within national parks. This lack of a common policy together with differences in species composition, hunting traditions, and cultural or political context has led to differences in ungulate management among European countries. To fulfil the aims and objectives of national parks and to develop ungulate management strategies further, we highlight the importance of creating a more integrated European ungulate management policy to meet the aims of national parks.

Advancing the Sustainability of US Agriculture through Long-Term Research.

Agriculture in the United States must respond to escalating demands for productivity and efficiency, as well as pressures to improve its stewardship of natural resources. Growing global population and changing diets, combined with a greater societal awareness of agriculture's role in delivering ecosystem services beyond food, feed, fiber, and energy production, require a comprehensive perspective on where and how US agriculture can be sustainably intensified, that is, made more productive without exacerbating local and off-site environmental concerns. The USDA's Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network is composed of 18 locations distributed across the contiguous United States working together to integrate national and local agricultural priorities and advance the sustainable intensification of US agriculture. We explore here the concept of sustainable intensification as a framework for defining strategies to enhance production, environmental, and rural prosperity outcomes from agricultural systems. We also elucidate the diversity of factors that have shaped the past and present conditions of cropland, rangeland, and pastureland agroecosystems represented by the LTAR network and identify priorities for research in the areas of production, resource conservation and environmental quality, and rural prosperity. Ultimately, integrated long-term research on sustainable intensification at the national scale is critical to developing practices and programs that can anticipate and address challenges before they become crises.

The impact of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic on agricultural production and livelihoods in Liberia.

There is unequivocal evidence in the literature that epidemics adversely affect the livelihoods of individuals, households and communities. However, evidence in the literature is dominated by the socioeconomic impacts of HIV/AIDS and malaria, while evidence on the impact of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) on households' livelihoods remains fragmented and scant. Our study investigates the effect of the EVD epidemic on the livelihoods of Liberian households using the Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF). The study also explores the effect of the EVD epidemic on agricultural production and productive efficiency of farm households using Spatial Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SSFA). We collected data from 623 households across Liberia in 2015, using a systematic random sampling design. Our results indicated that the annual income of sample households from communities where EVD occurred did not differ from the annual income of households from communities where EVD did not occur. Nonetheless, the majority of sample households reported a decrease in their income, compared to their income in the year before the survey. This suggests that the impact of the EVD epidemic might not only have been limited to communities directly affected by the epidemic, but also it may have indirectly affected communities in areas where EVD was not reported. We also found that the community-level incidence of EVD negatively affected crop production of farm households, which may have exacerbated the problem of food insecurity throughout the country. Moreover, we found that the EVD epidemic weakened the society's trust in Liberian institutions. In a nutshell, our results highlight that epidemics, such as the recent EVD outbreak, may have long-lasting negative effects on the livelihoods of a society and their effect may extend beyond the communities directly affected by the epidemics. This means that the nation's recovery from the impact of the epidemic would be more challenging, and the social and economic impacts of the epidemic may extend well beyond the end of the health crisis.

Experiments on long wavelength (1550 nm) "plug and play" quantum cryptography systems.

An interferometric quantum cryptographic system at 1550nm wavelength using gated InGaAs Avalanche Photo Diodes as single-photon receivers is demonstrated for a transmission distance up to 40 km.

Experimental demonstration of three mutually orthogonal polarization states of entangled photons

Linearly polarized classical light can be expressed in a vertical and a horizontal component. Geometrically rotating vertically polarized light by 90 degrees will convert it to the orthogonal horizontal polarization. We have experimentally generated a two-photon state of light which evolves into an orthogonal state upon geometrical rotation by 60 degrees. Rotating this state by an additional 60 degrees will yield a state which is mutually orthogonal to the first two states. Generalizing this procedure, one can generate N+1 mutually orthogonal N-photon states that cyclicly evolve from one to another upon a geometric rotation by 180/(N+1) degrees.