Soil compaction alleviation as a solution in the climate stress mitigation

Tillage-induced soil compaction has often occurred in the Pannonian region. This form of compaction occurs on arable lands both in Hungary (1.82 million ha) and in Croatia (0.97 million ha) having negative impacts on crop production. In this study the tillage-induced compaction is discussed as an indicator of climate stress on arable fields. The research is based on soil condition monitoring and measuring that was started 32 years ago and on short and long-term experiments assessing the compaction impacts on the crops. The survey comprised 1870 monitoring places and 38 experimental plots. The following points were chosen for monitoring: 1. Root zone state (to a depth of 0-50 cm). 2. Occurrence of compacted layer (indicating the risk). 3. Extension of the compacted layer (indicating the degree of damage). 4. Long term effects of tillage (deterioration or improvement). 5. Tillage-induced drought and water-logging damage impacts on yield loss. The formation and location of compaction provided information concerning the depth, the method and the type of tillage applied, along with the expected risk for crop production under extreme climate conditions. The main objectives of the study are: 1. Occurrence and the extent of tillage-pan compaction in soils. 2. Consequences on water management in each of the years covered by the experiments. 3. Soil quality consequences. 4. Alleviation of pan-compaction by mechanical and biological methods. Long-term assessing has convincingly proven a correlation between tillage-pan compaction and the degree of climate stress. In view of the findings trends in soil tillage can be grouped into the following categories: climate damage mitigating and climate-stress increasing ones

Bat ticks revisited: Ixodes ariadnae sp. nov. and allopatric genotypes of I. vespertilionis in caves of Hungary

BACKGROUND: In Europe two ixodid bat tick species, Ixodes vespertilionis and I. simplex were hitherto known to occur. METHODS: Bat ticks were collected from cave walls and bats in Hungary. Their morphology and genotypes were compared with microscopy and conventional PCR (followed by sequencing), respectively. RESULTS: A year-round activity of I. vespertilionis was observed. Molecular analysis of the cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene of twenty ticks from different caves showed that the occurrence of the most common genotype was associated with the caves close to each other. A few specimens of a morphologically different tick variant were also found and their COI analysis revealed only 86-88% sequence homology with I. simplex and I. vespertilionis, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The microenvironment of caves (well separated from each other) appears to support the existence of allopatric I. vespertilionis COI genotypes, most likely related to the distance between caves and to bat migration over-bridging certain caves. The name I. ariadnae sp. nov. is given to the new tick species described here for the first time

Anaplasma phagocytophilum in ticks and tissues collected from wild birds in Romania

Abstract. Anaplasma phagocytophilum are potentially emerging tick-borne pathogen, whereas many issues about ecology, reservoir host specificity, are still unclear. The material analyzed in this study was collected along 5 years (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) of fieldwork from 88 locations, from 32 out of 42 counties of Romania. A total of 3,794 birds belonging to 125 species were assessed, made up by 879 carcasses and 2,915 alive birds. A total of 278 birds belonging to 37 species were found infested with ticks (9.53%), with individual prevalence ranging from 0 to 50%. Anaplasma spp. were detected in 8 cases (1.7%) of 459 analyzed ticks collected from two specimens of Rook one Robin, one Blackbird and one Chaffinch. The ticks found to carry Anaplasma spp., were Haemaphysalis concinna (1 larvae), I. arboricola (4 larvae), and I. ricinus (2 larvae and 2 nymphs). Tissue samples resulted in the detection of Anaplasma spp. from heart of one Robin and one Song Thrush, with a relative prevalence of 1.66%. The low prevalence of A. phagocytophilum in bird-fed ticks corresponds to previous investigations, suggesting that birds have a reduced reservoir competence for human granulocytic anaplasmosis agents

Comparative Network Analysis of Preterm vs. Full-Term Infant-Mother Interactions

Several studies have reported that interactions of mothers with preterm infants show differential characteristics compared to that of mothers with full-term infants. Interaction of preterm dyads is often reported as less harmonious. However, observations and explanations concerning the underlying mechanisms are inconsistent. In this work 30 preterm and 42 full-term mother-infant dyads were observed at one year of age. Free play interactions were videotaped and coded using a micro-analytic coding system. The video records were coded at one second resolution and studied by a novel approach using network analysis tools. The advantage of our approach is that it reveals the patterns of behavioral transitions in the interactions. We found that the most frequent behavioral transitions are the same in the two groups. However, we have identified several high and lower frequency transitions which occur significantly more often in the preterm or full-term group. Our analysis also suggests that the variability of behavioral transitions is significantly higher in the preterm group. This higher variability is mostly resulted from the diversity of transitions involving non-harmonious behaviors. We have identified a maladaptive pattern in the maternal behavior in the preterm group, involving intrusiveness and disengagement. Application of the approach reported in this paper to longitudinal data could elucidate whether these maladaptive maternal behavioral changes place the infant at risk for later emotional, cognitive and behavioral disturbance

Loci Memoriae Hungaricae

Pál S. Varga: Introduction - 7 ; 1. Theoretical Approaches - 21 ; Aleida Assmann: The Transformative Power of Memory - 22 ; Jan Assmann: Communicative and Cultural - 36 ; Pim den Boer: Lieux de Mémoire in Comparative Perspective - 44 ; 2.Discussion/Diskussion - 51 ; Pál S. Varga: Kollektives Gedächtnis und Geschichtswissenschaften (Diskussionseröffnung) - 52 ; Harald D. Gröller: Diskussionsbeitrag bez. des Eröffnungsreferats von Pál S. Varga - 59 ; Csaba Gy. Kiss: Diskussionsbeitrag zum Eröffnungsreferat von Pál S. Varga - 64 ; Ferenc Velkey: Gedächtnis und Geschichte. Kommentare zur Diskussionseröffnung von Pál S. Varga - 67 ; Péter György: Memory Fallen Apart: the Case of Two Cemeteries - 72 ; Aleida Assmann: Response to Péter György, “Memory Fallen Apart: the Case of Two Cemeteries” - 78 ; Tamás Bényei: Remembering from Outside: A Response to Péter György’s Essay - 81 ; 3. Ungarische Erinnerungsorte im zentraleuropäischen Kontext - 89 ; István Bitskey: Ein religiöser Erinnerungsort in Mitteleuropa: Tyrnau (Nagyszombat, Trnava), das „Klein-Rom“ (Eine Fallstudie) - 90 ; Márta Fata: Erinnerungsort Bauernkrieg? Müntzer und Dózsa in der Geschichtspolitik der DDR und der Volksrepublik Ungarn im Vergleich - 101 ; 4. The Socio-Psychological Approach - 115 ; Ákos Münnich, István Hidegkuti: Structural Characteristics of Sites of National Memory - 11

Discrete molecular dynamics can predict helical prestructured motifs in disordered proteins.

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) lack a stable tertiary structure, but their short binding regions termed Pre-Structured Motifs (PreSMo) can form transient secondary structure elements in solution. Although disordered proteins are crucial in many biological processes and designing strategies to modulate their function is highly important, both experimental and computational tools to describe their conformational ensembles and the initial steps of folding are sparse. Here we report that discrete molecular dynamics (DMD) simulations combined with replica exchange (RX) method efficiently samples the conformational space and detects regions populating alpha-helical conformational states in disordered protein regions. While the available computational methods predict secondary structural propensities in IDPs based on the observation of protein-protein interactions, our ab initio method rests on physical principles of protein folding and dynamics. We show that RX-DMD predicts alpha-PreSMos with high confidence confirmed by comparison to experimental NMR data. Moreover, the method also can dissect alpha-PreSMos in close vicinity to each other and indicate helix stability. Importantly, simulations with disordered regions forming helices in X-ray structures of complexes indicate that a preformed helix is frequently the binding element itself, while in other cases it may have a role in initiating the binding process. Our results indicate that RX-DMD provides a breakthrough in the structural and dynamical characterization of disordered proteins by generating the structural ensembles of IDPs even when experimental data are not available