Assessing the relative impacts and economic costs of Japanese knotweed management methods.

Sustainable land management encompasses a range of activity that balance land use requirements with wider conservation and ecosystem impact considerations. Perennial invasive alien plants (IAPs), such as Japanese knotweed, cause severe ecological and socio-economic impacts, and methods to control their spread also come at a cost. Synthetic herbicides are generally viewed as less sustainable and more ecologically damaging than alternative approaches.

Bio-processing of macroalgae : metabolite fractionation from pressed fresh material and ensiling considerations for long-term storage.

Red algae, belonging to the phylum Rhodophyta, contain an abundance of useful chemicals including bioactive molecules and present opportunities for the production of different products through biorefinery cascades. The rhodophyte , commonly termed dulse or dillisk, grows predominantly on the northern coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and is a well-known snack food. Due to its abundance, availability and cultivation capacity, was selected for study as a potential candidate for a biorefinery process.

Evaluation of pyrolysis chars derived from marine macroalgae silage as soil amendments.

Pyrolysis char residues from ensiled macroalgae were examined to determine their potential as growth promoters on germinating and transplanted seedlings. Macroalgae was harvested in May, July and August from beach collections, containing predominantly and ; naturally seeded mussel lines dominated by ; and lines seeded with cultivated . Material was ensiled, pressed to pellets and underwent pyrolysis using a thermo-catalytic reforming (TCR) process, with and without additional steam.

Sulfate transporters involved in sulfate secretion in the kidney are localized in the renal proximal tubule II of the elephant fish (Callorhinchus milii).

Most vertebrates, including cartilaginous fishes, maintain their plasma SO4 (2-) concentration ([SO4 (2-)]) within a narrow range of 0.2-1 mM. As seawater has a [SO4 (2-)] about 40 times higher than that of the plasma, SO4 (2-) excretion is the major role of kidneys in marine teleost fishes.

Morphological and molecular investigations of the holocephalan elephant fish nephron: the existence of a countercurrent-like configuration and two separate diluting segments in the distal tubule.

In marine cartilaginous fish, reabsorption of filtered urea by the kidney is essential for retaining a large amount of urea in their body. However, the mechanism for urea reabsorption is poorly understood due to the complexity of the kidney. To address this problem, we focused on elephant fish (Callorhinchus milii) for which a genome database is available, and conducted molecular mapping of membrane transporters along the different segments of the nephron.