2018, Barfuss, W., Donges, J.F., Lade, S.J., Kurths, J.

Optimizing economic welfare in environmental governance has been criticized for delivering short-term gains at the expense of long-term environmental degradation. Different from economic optimization, the concepts of sustainability and the more recent safe operating space have been used to derive policies in environmental governance. However, a formal comparison between these three policy paradigms is still missing, leaving policy makers uncertain which paradigm to apply. Here, we develop a better understanding of their interrelationships, using a stylized model of human-environment tipping elements. We find that no paradigm guarantees fulfilling requirements imposed by another paradigm and derive simple heuristics for the conditions under which these trade-offs occur. We show that the absence of such a master paradigm is of special relevance for governing real-world tipping systems such as climate, fisheries, and farming, which may reside in a parameter regime where economic optimization is neither sustainable nor safe.

2009, Koseska, A., Zaikin, A., Kurths, J., García-Ojalvo, J.

Many cellular processes require decision making mechanisms, which must act reliably even in the unavoidable presence of substantial amounts of noise. However, the multistable genetic switches that underlie most decision-making processes are dominated by fluctuations that can induce random jumps between alternative cellular states. Here we show, via theoretical modeling of a population of noise-driven bistable genetic switches, that reliable timing of decision-making processes can be accomplished for large enough population sizes, as long as cells are globally coupled by chemical means. In the light of these results, we conjecture that cell proliferation, in the presence of cell-cell communication, could provide a mechanism for reliable decision making in the presence of noise, by triggering cellular transitions only when the whole cell population reaches a certain size. In other words, the summation performed by the cell population would average out the noise and reduce its detrimental impact.

2017, Gasparrini, A., Guo, Y., Sera, F., Vicedo-Cabrera, A.M., Huber, V., Tong, S., de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho, M., Nascimento Saldiva, P.H., Lavigne, E., Matus Correa, P., Valdes Ortega, N., Kan, H., Osorio, S., Kyselý, J., Urban, A., Jaakkola, J.J.K., Ryti, N.R.I., Pascal, M., Goodman, P.G., Zeka, A., Michelozzi, P., Scortichini, M., Hashizume, M., Honda, Y., Hurtado-Diaz, M., Cesar Cruz, J., Seposo, X., Kim, H., Tobias, A., Iñiguez, C., Forsberg, B., Åström, D.O., Ragettli, M.S., Guo, Y.L., Wu, C.-F., Zanobetti, A., Schwartz, J., Bell, M.L., Dang, T.N., Van, D.D., Heaviside, C., Vardoulakis, S., Hajat, S., Haines, A., Armstrong, B.

Background: Climate change can directly affect human health by varying exposure to non-optimal outdoor temperature. However, evidence on this direct impact at a global scale is limited, mainly due to issues in modelling and projecting complex and highly heterogeneous epidemiological relationships across different populations and climates. Methods: We collected observed daily time series of mean temperature and mortality counts for all causes or non-external causes only, in periods ranging from Jan 1, 1984, to Dec 31, 2015, from various locations across the globe through the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Research Network. We estimated temperature–mortality relationships through a two-stage time series design. We generated current and future daily mean temperature series under four scenarios of climate change, determined by varying trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions, using five general circulation models. We projected excess mortality for cold and heat and their net change in 1990–2099 under each scenario of climate change, assuming no adaptation or population changes. Findings: Our dataset comprised 451 locations in 23 countries across nine regions of the world, including 85 879 895 deaths. Results indicate, on average, a net increase in temperature-related excess mortality under high-emission scenarios, although with important geographical differences. In temperate areas such as northern Europe, east Asia, and Australia, the less intense warming and large decrease in cold-related excess would induce a null or marginally negative net effect, with the net change in 2090–99 compared with 2010–19 ranging from −1·2% (empirical 95% CI −3·6 to 1·4) in Australia to −0·1% (−2·1 to 1·6) in east Asia under the highest emission scenario, although the decreasing trends would reverse during the course of the century. Conversely, warmer regions, such as the central and southern parts of America or Europe, and especially southeast Asia, would experience a sharp surge in heat-related impacts and extremely large net increases, with the net change at the end of the century ranging from 3·0% (−3·0 to 9·3) in Central America to 12·7% (−4·7 to 28·1) in southeast Asia under the highest emission scenario. Most of the health effects directly due to temperature increase could be avoided under scenarios involving mitigation strategies to limit emissions and further warming of the planet. Interpretation: This study shows the negative health impacts of climate change that, under high-emission scenarios, would disproportionately affect warmer and poorer regions of the world. Comparison with lower emission scenarios emphasises the importance of mitigation policies for limiting global warming and reducing the associated health risks. Funding: UK Medical Research Council.

2018, Heino, M., Puma, M.J., Ward, P.J., Gerten, D., Heck, V., Siebert, S., Kummu, M.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) peaked strongly during the boreal winter 2015-2016, leading to food insecurity in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Besides ENSO, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are known to impact crop yields worldwide. Here we assess for the first time in a unified framework the relationships between ENSO, IOD and NAO and simulated crop productivity at the sub-country scale. Our findings reveal that during 1961-2010, crop productivity is significantly influenced by at least one large-scale climate oscillation in two-thirds of global cropland area. Besides observing new possible links, especially for NAO in Africa and the Middle East, our analyses confirm several known relationships between crop productivity and these oscillations. Our results improve the understanding of climatological crop productivity drivers, which is essential for enhancing food security in many of the most vulnerable places on the planet.

2013, Hellen, E.H., Dana, S.K., Kurths, J., Kehler, E., Sinha, S.

We report the experimental verification of noise-enhanced logic behaviour in an electronic analog of a synthetic genetic network, composed of two repressors and two constitutive promoters. We observe good agreement between circuit measurements and numerical prediction, with the circuit allowing for robust logic operations in an optimal window of noise. Namely, the input-output characteristics of a logic gate is reproduced faithfully under moderate noise, which is a manifestation of the phenomenon known as Logical Stochastic Resonance. The two dynamical variables in the system yield complementary logic behaviour simultaneously. The system is easily morphed from AND/NAND to OR/NOR logic.

2011, Hellen, E.H., Volkov, E., Kurths, J., Dana, S.K.

An electronic analog of a synthetic genetic network known as the repressilator is proposed. The repressilator is a synthetic biological clock consisting of a cyclic inhibitory network of three negative regulatory genes which produces oscillations in the expressed protein concentrations. Compared to previous circuit analogs of the repressilator, the circuit here takes into account more accurately the kinetics of gene expression, inhibition, and protein degradation. A good agreement between circuit measurements and numerical prediction is observed. The circuit allows for easy control of the kinetic parameters thereby aiding investigations of large varieties of potential dynamics.

2014, Neuman, Y., Marwan, N., Cohen, Y.

Predicting a transition point in behavioral data should take into account the complexity of the signal being influenced by contextual factors. In this paper, we propose to analyze changes in the embedding dimension as contextual information indicating a proceeding transitive point, called OPtimal Embedding tRANsition Detection (OPERAND). Three texts were processed and translated to time-series of emotional polarity. It was found that changes in the embedding dimension proceeded transition points in the data. These preliminary results encourage further research into changes in the embedding dimension as generic markers of an approaching transition point.

2013, Winck, F.V., Arvidsson, S., Riaño-Pachón, D.M., Hempe, S., Koseska, A., Nikoloski, Z., Gomez, D.A.U., Rupprecht, J., Mueller-Roeber, B.

The unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a long-established model organism for studies on photosynthesis and carbon metabolism-related physiology. Under conditions of air-level carbon dioxide concentration [CO 2], a carbon concentrating mechanism (CCM) is induced to facilitate cellular carbon uptake. CCM increases the availability of carbon dioxide at the site of cellular carbon fixation. To improve our understanding of the transcriptional control of the CCM, we employed FAIRE-seq (formaldehyde-assisted Isolation of Regulatory Elements, followed by deep sequencing) to determine nucleosome-depleted chromatin regions of algal cells subjected to carbon deprivation. Our FAIRE data recapitulated the positions of known regulatory elements in the promoter of the periplasmic carbonic anhydrase (Cah1) gene, which is upregulated during CCM induction, and revealed new candidate regulatory elements at a genome-wide scale. In addition, time series expression patterns of 130 transcription factor (TF) and transcription regulator (TR) genes were obtained for cells cultured under photoautotrophic condition and subjected to a shift from high to low [CO2]. Groups of co-expressed genes were identified and a putative directed gene-regulatory network underlying the CCM was reconstructed from the gene expression data using the recently developed IOTA (inner composition alignment) method. Among the candidate regulatory genes, two members of the MYB-related TF family, Lcr1 (Low-CO2 response regulator 1) and Lcr2 (Low-CO2 response regulator 2 ), may play an important role in down-regulating the expression of a particular set of TF and TR genes in response to low [CO2]. The results obtained provide new insights into the transcriptional control of the CCM and revealed more than 60 new candidate regulatory genes. Deep sequencing of nucleosome-depleted genomic regions indicated the presence of new, previously unknown regulatory elements in the C. reinhardtii genome. Our work can serve as a basis for future functional studies of transcriptional regulator genes and genomic regulatory elements in Chlamydomonas.

2011, Costa, L., Rybski, D., Kropp, J.P.

Although developing countries are called to participate in CO 2 emission reduction efforts to avoid dangerous climate change, the implications of proposed reduction schemes in human development standards of developing countries remain a matter of debate. We show the existence of a positive and time-dependent correlation between the Human Development Index (HDI) and per capita CO 2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Employing this empirical relation, extrapolating the HDI, and using three population scenarios, the cumulative CO 2 emissions necessary for developing countries to achieve particular HDI thresholds are assessed following a Development As Usual approach (DAU). If current demographic and development trends are maintained, we estimate that by 2050 around 85% of the world's population will live in countries with high HDI (above 0.8). In particular, 300 Gt of cumulative CO 2 emissions between 2000 and 2050 are estimated to be necessary for the development of 104 developing countries in the year 2000. This value represents between 20 % to 30 % of previously calculated CO 2 budgets limiting global warming to 2°C. These constraints and results are incorporated into a CO 2 reduction framework involving four domains of climate action for individual countries. The framework reserves a fair emission path for developing countries to proceed with their development by indexing country-dependent reduction rates proportional to the HDI in order to preserve the 2°C target after a particular development threshold is reached. For example, in each time step of five years, countries with an HDI of 0.85 would need to reduce their per capita emissions by approx. 17% and countries with an HDI of 0.9 by 33 %. Under this approach, global cumulative emissions by 2050 are estimated to range from 850 up to 1100 Gt of CO 2. These values are within the uncertainty range of emissions to limit global temperatures to 2°C.

2013, Pradhan, P., Reusser, D.E., Kropp, J.P.

Changing food consumption patterns and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been a matter of scientific debate for decades. The agricultural sector is one of the major GHG emitters and thus holds a large potential for climate change mitigation through optimal management and dietary changes. We assess this potential, project emissions, and investigate dietary patterns and their changes globally on a per country basis between 1961 and 2007. Sixteen representative and spatially differentiated patterns with a per capita calorie intake ranging from 1,870 to <3,400 kcal/day were derived. Detailed analyses show that low calorie diets are decreasing worldwide, while in parallel diet composition is changing as well: a discernable shift towards more balanced diets in developing countries can be observed and steps towards more meat rich diets as a typical characteristics in developed countries. Low calorie diets which are mainly observable in developing countries show a similar emission burden than moderate and high calorie diets. This can be explained by a less efficient calorie production per unit of GHG emissions in developing countries. Very high calorie diets are common in the developed world and exhibit high total per capita emissions of 3.7-6.1 kg CO2eq./day due to high carbon intensity and high intake of animal products. In case of an unbridled demographic growth and changing dietary patterns the projected emissions from agriculture will approach 20 Gt CO2eq./yr by 2050.