The GC-Rich Mitochondrial and Plastid Genomes of the Green Alga Coccomyxa Give Insight into the Evolution of Organelle DNA Nucleotide Landscape

Most of the available mitochondrial and plastid genome sequences are biased towards adenine and thymine (AT) over guanine and cytosine (GC). Examples of GC-rich organelle DNAs are limited to a small but eclectic list of species, including certain green algae. Here, to gain insight in the evolution of organelle nucleotide landscape, we present the GC-rich mitochondrial and plastid DNAs from the trebouxiophyte green alga Coccomyxa sp. C-169. We compare these sequences with other GC-rich organelle DNAs and argue that the forces biasing them towards G and C are nonadaptive and linked to the metabolic and/or life history features of this species. The Coccomyxa organelle genomes are also used for phylogenetic analyses, which highlight the complexities in trying to resolve the interrelationships among the core chlorophyte green algae, but ultimately favour a sister relationship between the Ulvophyceae and Chlorophyceae, with the Trebouxiophyceae branching at the base of the chlorophyte crown

Experimentally assessing the effect of search effort on snare detectability

Reducing threats to biodiversity is the key objective of ranger patrols in protected areas. However, efforts can be hampered by rangers' inability to detect threats, and poor understanding of threat abundance and distribution in a landscape. Snares are particularly problematic due to their cryptic nature and limited selectivity with respect to captured animals' species, sex, or age. Using an experimental approach, we investigated the effect of search effort, habitat, season, and team on rangers' detection of snares in a tropical forest landscape. We provide an effort-detection curve, and use our findings to make preliminary predictions about snare detection under different scenarios of patrol effort. Results suggest that the overall probability of a searcher detecting any given snare in a 0.25/km2 area, assuming 60 min (or approximately 2 km) of search effort is 20% (95% CI ± 15–25%), with no significant effect of season, habitat or team. Our models suggested this would increase by approximately 10% with an additional 30mins/1 km of search effort. Our preliminary predictions of the effectiveness of different patrolling scenarios show that detection opportunities are maximised at low effort levels by deploying multiple teams to a single area, but at high effort levels deploying single teams becomes more efficient. Our results suggest that snare detectability in tropical forest landscapes is likely to be low, and may not improve dramatically with increased search effort. Given this, managers need to consider whether intensive snare-removal efforts are the best use of limited resources; the answer will depend on their underlying objectives

Firework displays, firework dramas and illuminations - precursors of cinema?

However one defines cinema, its ability to create a moving image by means of light and colour, its capacity for dramatic presentation and the typical experience of the audience in which a large number of people congregate in the dark and look up at a magnified image glowing in front of and above them must emerge as important characteristics. Since all these features are to be found in the firework display in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they have as much claim to be cited as forerunners of cinema as the mechanical devices of the early nineteenth century more frequently mentioned. This contention is illustrated in what follows by means of German examples.The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher link on this record page. Citation: Watanabe-O'Kelly, H. (1995). 'Firework displays, firework dramas and illuminations - precursors of cinema?', German Life and Letters 48(3), 338-352. [Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0483.1995.tb01635.x/abstract]

Cultural transfer and the eighteenth-century queen consort

Dynastic marriage in the Europe of the ancien régime is built upon the assumption that a high-born woman will leave her natal family and the territory she grew up in and travel to the court and territory of her spouse. Were these foreign-born queens consort able to graft elements that they had brought with them onto the culture they found when they arrived in their new country and so create a new cultural synthesis? What elements from their marital court did they send back home? In other words, did these women function as agents of cultural transfer between their natal and their marital courts, and to what extent was this an ongoing process? What were the factors—personal and political—that enabled one queen to be an active cultural agent and another not? What theories of cultural transfer are useful in examining the influence of these queens? Are there specific features of court culture that distinguish cultural transfer between courts from other cases of transfer? By the mid-eighteenth century is the influence of France so pervasive that the court has become a transnational space? The example chosen to illuminate these questions is Maria Amalia, Princess of Saxony and Poland (1724–1760), who on her marriage in 1738 became Queen of the Two Sicilies and from 1759 was Queen of Spain

Firework displays, firework dramas and illuminations - precursors of cinema?

However one defines cinema, its ability to create a moving image by means of light and colour, its capacity for dramatic presentation and the typical experience of the audience in which a large number of people congregate in the dark and look up at a magnified image glowing in front of and above them must emerge as important characteristics. Since all these features are to be found in the firework display in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they have as much claim to be cited as forerunners of cinema as the mechanical devices of the early nineteenth century more frequently mentioned. This contention is illustrated in what follows by means of German examples

Cultural transfer and the eighteenth-century queen consort

Dynastic marriage in the Europe of the ancien régime is built upon the assumption that a high-born woman will leave her natal family and the territory she grew up in and travel to the court and territory of her spouse. Were these foreign-born queens consort able to graft elements that they had brought with them onto the culture they found when they arrived in their new country and so create a new cultural synthesis? What elements from their marital court did they send back home? In other words, did these women function as agents of cultural transfer between their natal and their marital courts, and to what extent was this an ongoing process? What were the factors—personal and political—that enabled one queen to be an active cultural agent and another not? What theories of cultural transfer are useful in examining the influence of these queens? Are there specific features of court culture that distinguish cultural transfer between courts from other cases of transfer? By the mid-eighteenth century is the influence of France so pervasive that the court has become a transnational space? The example chosen to illuminate these questions is Maria Amalia, Princess of Saxony and Poland (1724–1760), who on her marriage in 1738 became Queen of the Two Sicilies and from 1759 was Queen of Spain

The political woman in German women's writing 1845-1919

This thesis analyses the depiction and its function of politically active women in novels by six female authors from the margins of the democratic revolution of 1848 and the first German women’s movement. The thesis asks (i) what their political stance was in relation to democratic developments and women’s rights, (ii) how they rendered their political convictions into literary form, (iii) which literary images they used, criticised, or invented in order to depict politically active women in their novels in a positive light, and (iv) which narrative strategies they employed to ‘smuggle’ politically and socially radical ideas into what were sometimes only ostensibly conventional plots. The thesis combines intertextual analysis with poetic analyses of individual texts in order to highlight deviant elements in narrative strategy, imagery, or text-internal appraisals by the narrator or author. In order to contextualise the chosen texts as well as my analyses, it draws on the historical environment (social and legal developments, revolutions, technological progress) for the definition of what can be considered radical and political in the period 1845-1919. Additionally, the thesis is firmly grounded in feminist theory, which provides the instruments for highlighting the concepts and circumstances in which the six authors’ works are situated. The essays and novels analysed were written before feminist theory was established; however, their proto-feminist observations, demands, and discursive tactics contributed much to the formation and institutionalisation of feminist thought and, ultimately, theory. In their efforts to construct a positive role model for the political woman, the six authors chosen are united in their notion that such a role model should evolve from bourgeois values of family and work ethics, but the examples manifested in their novels show a great variety of degrees of radicalism.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo