Kvantifikacija fragmentacije zemljišta u Slovačkoj

During the era of socialist reconstruction the land use was intended to reach large scale agriculture – collectivization. In this period land and land ownership were separated. This situation persisted up to the present day even after the development of socio-economic circumstances. The separation of use and ownership of land, high proportion of land fragmentation and high proportion of state-held agricultural land presents acute issues in regard to land tenure in Slovakia. Current circumstances are forcing the land owner to lend their land. This paper explains that the progress of land tenure situation can be observed via measurement of changes of land fragmentation after processes such as land consolidation. It is imperative to explicitly quantify the scope of land fragmentation. Current methods of land fragmentation calculation in relation to land consolidation are rigid, ad hoc and needlessly complicated. New unified complete yet variable calculation will have wide utilization capabilities in practice. The calculation will enable monitoring of land fragmentation status as well as statistical comparisons correlating with land tenure state in Slovakia.Tijekom razdoblja socijalističke obnove, korištenje zemljišta bilo je usmjereno na postizanje poljoprivrede velikih razmjera – kolektivizacije. U tom je razdoblju bilo odvojeno zemljište od vlasništva nad zemljištem. Takvo je stanje potrajalo sve do danas, čak i nakon nastanka socioekonomskih čimbenika. Odvajanje korištenja zemljišta od vlasništva zemljišta te visoki udio fragmentacije zemljišta i visoki udio državnoga poljoprivrednog zemljišta predstavljaju ozbiljne probleme vezane uz vlasništvo nad zemljištem u Slovačkoj. Trenutne okolnosti prisiljavaju vlasnika zemljišta unajmiti zemljište. Ovaj rad objašnjava kako se napredak stanja s vlasništvom nad zemljištem može promatrati putem praćenja promjena fragmentacije zemljišta nakon postupaka kao što je komasacija zemljišta. Neophodno je eksplicitno kvantificirati opseg fragmentacije zemljišta. Suvremene metode izračunavanja fragmentacije zemljišta vezane uz komasaciju su nefleksibilne i suvišno komplicirane. Novi jedinstveni i cjeloviti izračun s varijablama imat će široku mogućnost primjene u praksi. Izračun će omogućiti praćenje stanja fragmentacije zemljišta, kao i statističke usporedbe, koje su u skladu sa stanjem posjedovanja zemljišta u Slovačkoj

Use of Thematic Maps from Digital Relief Model for Land Consolidation Projecting

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Evaluation of the Status of Real Property in Rural Areas

Municipalities have a great deal of interest in land consolidation. Deciding which municipality is going to be prioritized for land consolidation is not easy; a unified universal selection procedure does not currently exist. The article proposes a procedure for assessing land ownership in a municipality. Municipalities with the worst ratings should be prioritized for land consolidation. The selection of evaluation parameters and their classification into groups is the result of previous experience. The parameters cover a broad spectrum of variables, economic conditions, the spatial structure of the agricultural land, the fragmentation of land and land ownership, the ecological stability of the land, territorial endangerment as well as natural conditions, technical limitations, and other regional specifics. The proposed quantification of the status of real property can be used with the aim of prioritizing municipalities, even with a variable number of evaluation parameters. To test the proposed algorithm, analyses were carried out in three municipalities located in west Slovakia. The municipalities were ranked according to the need to perform land consolidatio

Quantification of Changes in the Shape and Dimensions of Parcels in Land Consolidation

The paper describes the shapes and dimensions of parcels fordifferent types of land management. Firstly, various types ofland management are defined with a theoretical expression of side ratios, which should be used as a basis for drafting new parcels.In later parts of the paper, we discuss a compactness index,which is used to define the compactness of parcels and methods of calculating a compactness index by several authors. Based on the theoretical values of side ratios, we determined compactness index ranges for different types of land management. Our theoretical findings have been verified at the area of interest, i.e., part of the municipality of Stupava. Based on a comparison of the compactness index for parcels of respective owners before and after consolidation, we can evaluate any improvement of the compactness of parcels for their respective owners and, through improving the parcels’ compactness, we can improve land cultivation. Based on these calculations, we can also determine the percentage of parcels in the municipality based on side ratios before and after the consolidation process

Optimisation of insect cell growth in deep-well blocks: development of a high-throughput insect cell expression screen.

This report describes a method to culture insects cells in 24 deep-well blocks for the routine small-scale optimisation of baculovirus-mediated protein expression experiments. Miniaturisation of this process provides the necessary reduction in terms of resource allocation, reagents, and labour to allow extensive and rapid optimisation of expression conditions, with the concomitant reduction in lead-time before commencement of large-scale bioreactor experiments. This therefore greatly simplifies the optimisation process and allows the use of liquid handling robotics in much of the initial optimisation stages of the process, thereby greatly increasing the throughput of the laboratory. We present several examples of the use of deep-well block expression studies in the optimisation of therapeutically relevant protein targets. We also discuss how the enhanced throughput offered by this approach can be adapted to robotic handling systems and the implications this has on the capacity to conduct multi-parallel protein expression studies

Controlling the Orientation and Synaptic Differentiation of Myotubes with Micropatterned Substrates

Micropatterned poly(dimethylsiloxane) substrates fabricated by soft lithography led to large-scale orientation of myoblasts in culture, thereby controlling the orientation of the myotubes they formed. Fusion occurred on many chemically identical surfaces in which varying structures were arranged in square or hexagonal lattices, but only a subset of patterned surfaces yielded aligned myotubes. Remarkably, on some substrates, large populations of myotubes oriented at a reproducible acute angle to the lattice of patterned features. A simple geometrical model predicts the angle and extent of orientation based on maximizing the contact area between the myoblasts and patterned topographic surfaces. Micropatterned substrates also provided short-range cues that influenced higher-order functions such as the localization of focal adhesions and accumulation of postsynaptic acetylcholine receptors. Our results represent what we believe is a new approach for musculoskeletal tissue engineering, and our model sheds light on mechanisms of myotube alignment in vivo

Targeting of Helicobacter pylori vacuolating toxin to lipid raft membrane domains analysed by atomic force microscopy

The Helicobacter pylori vacuolating toxin VacA causes several effects on mammalian cells in vitro, including intracellular vacuolation, formation of pores in the plasma membrane and apoptosis. When added to cells, VacA becomes associated with detergent-resistant membranes, indicating that it binds preferentially to lipid rafts. In the present study, we have used atomic force microscopy to examine directly the association of VacA with lipid domains in supported lipid bilayers. VacA did not bind to lipid bilayers at pH 7.6. In contrast, at pH 4.0, VacA associated with the bilayers in the form of 26-nm oligomeric complexes. VacA bound to bilayers produced from either brain lipids or SM (sphingomyelin) plus cholesterol, each of which lacked detectable lipid domains. Bilayers composed of DOPC (dioleoylphosphatidylcholine), SM and cholesterol contained clearly visible raft-like domains, and VacA preferentially associated with these rafts. VacA bound poorly to raft-like domains in DOPC/SM bilayers, indicating that cholesterol is required for efficient association of VacA with lipid domains. When PS (phosphatidylserine), an anionic phospholipid that does not partition significantly into rafts, was added to the mixture of DOPC, SM and cholesterol, VacA was excluded from the rafts, indicating that it binds more avidly to PS than to the raft components. A typical plasma membrane exhibits pronounced lipid asymmetry, with SM enriched in the outer leaflet and PS in the inner leaflet. Therefore it is probable that the association of VacA with rafts in DOPC/SM/cholesterol bilayers represents a useful model for understanding the interactions of VacA with membranes in vivo