Genetic evidence of human mediated, historical seed transfer from the Tyrolean Alps to the Romanian Carpathians in Larix decidua (Mill.) forests

International audienceKey messageHistoric transfer of larch from Alpine sources to Southern and Eastern Carpathians has been verified by means of nuclear genetic markers. Tyrolean populations can be differentiated into a north-western and south-eastern group, while Romanian populations are separated according to the Southern and Eastern Carpathians. Low-level introgression from Alpine sources is found in autochthonous Carpathian populations.ContextLarge scale human mediated transfer of forest reproductive material may have strongly modified the gene pool of European forests. Particularly in European larch, large quantities of seeds from Central Europe were used for plantations in Southern and Eastern Europe starting in the mid nineteenth century.AimsOur main objective was to provide DNA marker based evidence for the anthropogenic transfer of Alpine larch reproductive material to native Carpathian populations.MethodsWe studied and compared 12 populations (N = 771) of Larix decidua in the Alps (Austria, Italy) and in the Southern and Eastern Carpathians (Romania) using 13 microsatellites.ResultsHigh genetic diversity (He = 0.752; RS = 9.4) and a moderate genetic differentiation (FST = 0.13; G′ST = 0.28) among populations were found; Alpine and Carpathian populations were clearly separated by clustering methods. A Tyrolean origin of plant material was evident for one out of four adult Romanian populations. In the transferred population, a genetic influence from Carpathian sources was found neither in adults nor in juveniles, while the natural regeneration of two Romanian populations was genetically affected by Alpine sources to a minor degree (2.2 and 2.9% allochthonous individuals according to GeneClass and Structure, respectively). ConclusionTracing back of plant transfer by means of genetic tools is straightforward, and we propose further studies to investigate gene flow between natural and transferred populations

He adored New York. He idolized it out of proportion

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Darstellung der Stadt New York in den filmischen Werken von Woody Allen. Dabei steht die Frage nach der Bedeutung von urbanen Räumen und Urbanität für den Autor und Regisseur und seine Werke im Vordergrund. Auch die Frage, welche der Professor und Geograph Michael J. Dear in seiner Theory of Filmspace stellt, ist für diese Arbeit wesentlich: „[...] how does one read the city in an age when the urban grows increasingly to resemble televisual and cinematic fantasy?“ Im weiteren Verlauf der Arbeit stimme ich Kevin Lynch zu, welcher herausfand, dass heute das reale und imaginierte Bild der Stadt sehr nahe beieinander liegen und so nie vollkommen isoliert voneinander betrachtet werden können. Auf die Filme von Woody Allen bezogen, ist es besonders interessant, dieses Thema genauer zu untersuchen. Seine Werke sind voller Referenzen zu bestimmten Filmen der goldenen Jahre Hollywoods und Bezügen zum Kino und Filmischen im Allgemeinen. Dabei entsprechen seine Filme nicht den bekannten aktuellen Repräsentationen der Stadt, sondern lehnen sich sowohl durch die Themen, als auch durch die Ästhetik an vergangene filmische Stile und Genres an. Er begeht dabei in seinen Filmen durch zahlreiche Verweise auf eruopäische Filmemacher auch formale Wagnisse, die im Amerikanischen Film ungewohnt sind. Nicht nur aus diesen Gründen nehmen seine Filme in der Amerikanischen Filmlandschaft eine absolute Sonderstellung ein. Im Zuge dieser Arbeit stellt sich auch die Frage nach filmsichen Stereotypen und wie sehr sich Woody Allens Werke von diesen abgrenzen. Er schafft im Gegenzug seinen eigenen "Antihelden", den komisch, nervösen Stadtneurotiker. Dieser überaus stolze Bewohner Manhattans liebt New York und verachtet Los Angeles, ein Thema, welches das gesammte Werk des Regisseurs prägt. Aus diesem Grund widmet sich ein Teil der vorliegenden Arbeit auch den (Stadt)landschafltichen Gegensätzen zwischen New York und Los Angeles. Schlussendlich stellt sich die Frage, welche Rolle Woody Allens Filme, einer historisch filmischen Generation treu, im New York von heute spielen können

A Hierarchical Descriptor Framework for On-the-Fly Anatomical Location Matching between Longitudinal Studies

We propose a method to match anatomical locations between pairs of medical images in longitudinal comparisons. The matching is made possible by computing a descriptor of the query point in a source image based on a hierarchical sparse sampling of image intensities that encode the location information. Then, a hierarchical search operation finds the corresponding point with the most similar descriptor in the target image. This simple yet powerful strategy reduces the computational time of mapping points to a millisecond scale on a single CPU. Thus, radiologists can compare similar anatomical locations in near real-time without requiring extra architectural costs for precomputing or storing deformation fields from registrations. Our algorithm does not require prior training, resampling, segmentation, or affine transformation steps. We have tested our algorithm on the recently published Deep Lesion Tracking dataset annotations. We observed more accurate matching compared to Deep Lesion Tracker while being 24 times faster than the most precise algorithm reported therein. We also investigated the matching accuracy on CT and MR modalities and compared the proposed algorithm's accuracy against ground truth consolidated from multiple radiologists.Comment: Registration Methods, 9 pages, MTSAIL & LEAF 202

An activation domain of plasmid R1 TraI protein delineates stages of gene transfer initiation

Bacterial conjugation is a form of type IV secretion that transports protein and DNA to recipient cells. Specific bacteriophage exploit the conjugative pili and cell envelope spanning protein machinery of these systems to invade bacterial cells. Infection by phage R17 requires F-like pili and coupling protein TraD, which gates the cytoplasmic entrance of the secretion channel. Here we investigate the role of TraD in R17 nucleoprotein uptake and find parallels to secretion mechanisms. The relaxosome of IncFII plasmid R1 is required. A ternary complex of plasmid oriT, TraD and a novel activation domain within the N-terminal 992 residues of TraI contributes a key mechanism involving relaxase-associated properties of TraI, protein interaction and the TraD ATPase. Helicase-associated activities of TraI are dispensable. These findings distinguish for the first time specific protein domains and complexes that process extracellular signals into distinct activation stages in the type IV initiation pathway. The study also provided insights into the evolutionary interplay of phage and the plasmids they exploit. Related plasmid F adapted to R17 independently of TraI. It follows that selection for phage resistance drives not only variation in TraA pilins but diversifies TraD and its binding partners in a plasmid-specific manner

Landscape metrics as functional traits in plants: perspectives from a glacier foreland

Spatial patterns of vegetation arise from an interplay of functional traits, environmental characteristics and chance. The retreat of glaciers offers exposed substrates which are colonised by plants forming distinct patchy patterns. The aim of this study was to unravel whether patch-level landscape metrics of plants can be treated as functional traits. We sampled 46 plots, each 1 m x 1 m, distributed along a restricted range of terrain age and topsoil texture on the foreland of the Nardis glacier, located in the South-Eastern Alps, Italy. Nine quantitative functional traits were selected for 16 of the plant species present, and seven landscape metrics were measured to describe the spatial arrangement of the plant species' patches on the study plots, at a resolution of 1 cm x 1 cm. We studied the relationships among plant communities, landscape metrics, terrain age and topsoil texture. RLQ-analysis was used to examine trait-spatial configuration relationships. To assess the effect of terrain age and topsoil texture variation on trait performance, we applied a partial-RLQ analysis approach. Finally, we used the fourth-corner statistic to quantify and test relationships between traits, landscape metrics and RLQ axes. Floristically-defined relevé clusters differed significantly with regard to several landscape metrics. Diversity in patch types and size increased and patch size decreased with increasing canopy height, leaf size and weight. Moreover, more compact patch shapes were correlated with an increased capacity for the conservation of nutrients in leaves. Neither plant species composition nor any of the landscape metrics were found to differ amongst the three classes of terrain age or topsoil texture. We conclude that patch-level landscape metrics of plants can be treated as species-specific functional traits. We recommend that existing databases of functional traits should incorporate these type of data

Automatické generování fotbalových zpráv

Journalism could become a tedious job as its main concern is to create as many articles as possible, usually prioritising quantity over quality. Some articles are quite routine and they need to exist just because most of the population prefers text over raw data. The idea is to ease this job and generate articles, particularly about football in Czech language, automatically from non-linguistic data. This thesis is concerned with analysing implementation of such a linguistic software and moreover offers a brief overview of a Natural Language Generation (NLG) process. The major focus of this overview is on benefits and drawbacks of different approaches to NLG as well as describing NLG tasks and its challenges you need to overcome in order to produce a similar human language (not only Czech) producing program. 1Žurnalistika se může stát velmi unavující hlavně proto, že její úspěch stojí na velkém množství článků většinou na úkor kvality. Některé články jsou spíše rutinní a jejich existence je podmíněna tím, že většina veřejnosti preferuje text před daty v nezpracované podobě. Myšlenkou je si práci v žurnalistice pojednávající o sportu ulehčit a automaticky generovat z dat články v českém jazyce, které shrnují dění v konkrétním fotbalovém utkání. Tato práce se zabývá analýzou implementace takového lingvistického softwaru a navíc nabízí stručný přehled procesu označovaného Natural Language Generation (zkráceně NLG). Přehled se soustředí především na popis jednotlivých podúloh NLG a rozbor problémů spjetého s nimi. Dále porovnává výhody a nevýhody hlavních možných metod, architektur a přístupů při NLG. 1Ústav formální a aplikované lingvistikyInstitute of Formal and Applied LinguisticsFaculty of Mathematics and PhysicsMatematicko-fyzikální fakult

Natural Language Generation system writing football articles

Journalism could become a tedious job as its main concern is to create as many articles as possible, usually prioritising quantity over quality. Some articles are quite routine and they need to exist just because most of the population prefers text over raw data. The idea is to ease this job and generate articles, particularly about football in Czech language, automatically from non-linguistic data. This thesis is concerned with analysing implementation of such a linguistic software and moreover offers a brief overview of a Natural Language Generation (NLG) process. The major focus of this overview is on benefits and drawbacks of different approaches to NLG as well as describing NLG tasks and its challenges you need to overcome in order to produce a similar human language (not only Czech) producing program.

Die Unternehmenskrise im öffentlichen Auftragswesen

Die vorliegende Arbeit beleuchtet die Unternehmenskrise im öffentlichen Auftragswesen. Dabei wird zunächst die Rechtslage in Italien, mit besonderem Bezug auf die Autonome Provinz Bozen-Südtirol, detailliert dargestellt und anschließend eine Rechtsvergleichung mit den korrespondierenden Rechtsinstituten in Österreich und Deutschland angestellt. Hierbei wird insbesondere Bezug auf das Bundesland Tirol und den Freistaat Bayern genommen. Die eigentliche Problemstellung gliedert sich in zwei Unterbereiche, welche sich aus dem Zeitpunkt des Eintritts der Unternehmenskrise ableiten lassen. Einerseits wird geprüft, welche Folgen die Unternehmenskrise auf bereits abgeschlossene öffentliche Aufträge hat. Andererseits wird auch die Frage beantwortet, ob ein Unternehmen in Krisenlage an einem Vergabeverfahren teilnehmen darf und ob die öffentliche Verwaltung Aufträge an solche Unternehmen vergeben darf.von: Fabian Raffl, BScAbweichender Titel laut Übersetzung des VerfassersZusammenfassung in italienischer SpracheUniversität Innsbruck, Diplomarbeit, 2018(VLID)309597