Mechanical Irritation in Vascularized Composite Tissue Allotransplantation Triggers Localized Skin Rejection.

Background: Mechanical and thermal stress has been observed to trigger skin rejection in hand-transplanted patients. This study aims to investigate this phenomenon.

Methods: Syngeneic and allogeneic orthotopic hindlimb transplantations were performed using male rats (Brown Norway to Lewis).

Farmland biodiversity and agricultural management on 237 farms in 13 European and two African regions.

Farmland is a major land cover type in Europe and Africa and provides habitat for numerous species. The severe decline in farmland biodiversity of the last decades has been attributed to changes in farming practices, and organic and low-input farming are assumed to mitigate detrimental effects of agricultural intensification on biodiversity. Since the farm enterprise is the primary unit of agricultural decision making, management-related effects at the field scale need to be assessed at the farm level.

Gains to species diversity in organically farmed fields are not propagated at the farm level.

Organic farming is promoted to reduce environmental impacts of agriculture, but surprisingly little is known about its effects at the farm level, the primary unit of decision making. Here we report the effects of organic farming on species diversity at the field, farm and regional levels by sampling plants, earthworms, spiders and bees in 1470 fields of 205 randomly selected organic and nonorganic farms in twelve European and African regions. Species richness is, on average, 10.