Democratic transition and the evolution of mass politics in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe

Die vergleichende soziologische Wahlforschung ist lange Zeit der Brennpunkt des Studiums des politischen Verhaltens der Bevölkerung gewesen. Hauptsächlich in der Phase der späten 60er und frühen 70er Jahre haben Stein Rokkan und andere Politologen einen begrifflich-theoretischen Bezugsrahmen entwickelt, der die Genese und Natur politischer Prozesse aus den Konflikt- und Spannungslinien einer Gesellschaft (cleavages) heraus erklärt. Der vorliegende Beitrag testet diesen Ansatz anhand der Wahlergebnisse der postsozialistischen Gesellschaften Polen und Rumänien seit der Wende. Die empirische Analyse des Zusammenhangs zwischen der gesamtgesellschaftlichen funktionalen und territorialen Differenzierung für diese Länder bestätigt die Fruchtbarkeit dieses Ansatzes auch für die neuen osteuropäischen Demokratien. In beiden Ländern strukturiert sich die Politik und das Parteiensystem um die Konfliktlinien Staat/Kirche, Regionalismus/Ethnizität und Besitz und Arbeit. (pmb)'The comparative sociology of elections has been a central focus in the study of mass political behavior. Of special concern to pioneers such as Stein Rokkan have been comparative generalizations regarding the genesis and nature of political conflicts and cleavages, and the structuring of mass politics around the poles of government and opposition. The principal task of this analysis is to examine the recent electoral experience of two post-comunist states - Poland and Romania - as they confront the transition toward democratic rule. Both states have had a variety of significant electoral consultations which enable us to identify patterns of stability or change in aggregate voter alignments. Our approach at this stage has been to employ ecological data to draw out inferences about emergent patterns of electoral alignments as they relate to government and opposition in these two societies. The findings suggest elements of both continuity and change. While some groups from the pre-Communist period experienced a political revival and secured electoral niches, the collapse of the Communist order has given rise to new lines of cleavage not evident in the pre-Communist period. The first democratic elections appeared to have been defining events in that they exposed long-standing ethnic, nationalist and regional cleavages which were suppressed by the Communist regime. Regional disparities in economic development also gained political salience and became a major factor in voting patterns. The articulation of these issues was greatly assisted by proportional electoral laws. The evidence suggests an early 'freezing' of partisan differences which have begun to take shape around distinct bases of support in each society.' (author's abstract

The EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database

The EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl), maintained at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) near Cambridge, UK, is a comprehensive collection of nucleotide sequences and annotation from available public sources. The database is part of an international collaboration with DDBJ (Japan) and GenBank (USA). Data are exchanged daily between the collaborating institutes to achieve swift synchrony. Webin is the preferred tool for individual submissions of nucleotide sequences, including Third Party Annotation (TPA) and alignments. Automated procedures are provided for submissions from large-scale sequencing projects and data from the European Patent Office. New and updated data records are distributed daily and the whole EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database is released four times a year. Access to the sequence data is provided via ftp and several WWW interfaces. With the web-based Sequence Retrieval System (SRS) it is also possible to link nucleotide data to other specialist molecular biology databases maintained at the EBI. Other tools are available for sequence similarity searching (e.g. FASTA and BLAST). Changes over the past year include the removal of the sequence length limit, the launch of the EMBLCDSs dataset, extension of the Sequence Version Archive functionality and the revision of quality rules for TPA data

EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database: developments in 2005

The EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database () at the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute, UK, offers a comprehensive set of publicly available nucleotide sequence and annotation, freely accessible to all. Maintained in collaboration with partners DDBJ and GenBank, coverage includes whole genome sequencing project data, directly submitted sequence, sequence recorded in support of patent applications and much more. The database continues to offer submission tools, data retrieval facilities and user support. In 2005, the volume of data offered has continued to grow exponentially. In addition to the newly presented data, the database encompasses a range of new data types generated by novel technologies, offers enhanced presentation and searchability of the data and has greater integration with other data resources offered at the EBI and elsewhere. In stride with these developing data types, the database has continued to develop submission and retrieval tools to maximise the information content of submitted data and to offer the simplest possible submission routes for data producers. New developments, the submission process, data retrieval and access to support are presented in this paper, along with links to sources of further information

Plant-arthropod interactions: who is the winner?

Herbivorous arthropods have interacted with plants for millions of years. During feeding they release chemical cues that allow plants to detect the attack and mount an efficient defense response. A signaling cascade triggers the expression of hundreds of genes, which encode defensive proteins and enzymes for synthesis of toxic metabolites. This direct defense is often complemented by emission of volatiles that attract beneficial parasitoids. In return, arthropods have evolved strategies to interfere with plant defenses, either by producing effectors to inhibit detection and downstream signaling steps, or by adapting to their detrimental effect. In this review, we address the current knowledge on the molecular and chemical dialog between plants and herbivores, with an emphasis on co-evolutionary aspects

Selective Genotyping for Marker Assisted Selection Strategies for Soybean Yield Improvement

Using molecular markers in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] has lead to the identification of major loci controlling quantitative and qualitative traits that include: disease resistance, insect resistance and tolerance to abiotic stresses. Yield has been considered as one of the most important quantitative traits in soybean breeding. Unfortunately, yield is a very complex trait and most yield quantitative trait loci (QTL) that have been identified have had only limited success for marker assisted selection (MAS). The objective of this study was to identify QTL associated with soybean seed yield in preliminary yield trials grown in different environments and to evaluate their effective use for MAS using a yield prediction model (YPM), which included epistasis. To achieve this objective, 875 F5:9 recombinant inbred lines (RIL) from a population developed from a cross between two prominent ancestors of the North American soybean (Essex and Williams 82) were used. The 875 RIL and check cultivars were divided into four groups based on maturity and each group was grown in Knoxville, TN and one other location that had an environment in which the maturity group (MG) was adapted to be grown. Each RIL was genotyped with \u3e50,000 single nucleotide polymorphic markers (SNPs) of which 17,232 were This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. polymorphic across the population. Yield QTL were detected using a single factor (SF) analysis of variance (ANOVA) and composite interval mapping (CIM). Based on CIM, 23 yield QTL were identified. Twenty-one additional QTL were detected using SF ANOVA. Individually, these QTL explained from 4.5% to 11.9% of the phenotypic variation for yield. QTL were identified on all 20 chromosomes and five of the 46 QTL have not been previously reported. This study provides new information concerning yield QTL in soybean and may offer important insights into MAS strategies for soybean