Invasion impact is conditioned by initial vegetation states

Abstract Biological invasion is a crucial problem in the world because of its negative consequences for protected areas. The degradation stage of vegetation might affect the success of invasion. One of the most abundant and threatening invasive species is the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L.) which has invaded already 23 countries of Europe and in several habitat types its further spreading is promoted by climate change. Pannonian sand grassland is one of the most threatened habitat by common milkweed invasion. Therefore, invasion in sand grassland vegetation is an important issue. However, the effects of the invasive plant in the open sand grassland are rather controversial. In order to clarify the existing contradictory results, the study was carried out in a strictly protected area, near Fülöpháza (Hungary) in a reserve core area in a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Microcoenological study was applied to determinate the fine-scale community characteristics of non-invaded and invaded stands in natural and seminatural vegetation and data were processed by Juhász-Nagy's information theory models. Shannon diversity of species combinations (compositional diversity) which describes the ways of the coexistence of species, and the number of realized species combinations were used for measuring beta diversity. Differences between stands were analyzed by two-way ANOVA. The maximum compositional diversity of species and main life-forms (annuals, perennials and cryptogams) did not differ significantly between the non-invaded and invaded stands. In contrast, significantly larger characteristic areas of compositional diversity were detected in the invaded stands. Based on these results, it could be concluded that diversity of species combinations did not change but those values have shifted to coarser scales in case of invaded stands. The direction of this change suggests a kind of impoverishment in the presence of Asclepias. Thus, it is worth mentioning from the invasion management point of view that protection of the habitats against disturbance is a more cost-effective and successful way than protection against the establishment or extirpation of invasive species, since disturbance facilitates the invasions throughout the impoverishment of the community

Time evolution in the Morse potential using supersymmetry: dissociation of the NO molecule

We present an algebraic method for treating molecular vibrations in the Morse potential perturbed by an external laser field. By the help of a complete and normalizable basis we transform the Schr\"{o}dinger equation into a system of coupled ordinary differential equations. We apply our method to calculate the dissociation probability of the NO molecule excited by chirped laser pulses. The dependence of the molecular dipole-moment on the interatomic separation is determined by a quantum-chemical method, and the corresponding transition dipole moments are given by approximate analytic expressions. These turn out to be very small between neighboring stationary states around the vibrational quantum number $m=42$, therefore we propose to use additional pulses in order to skip this trapping state, and to obtain a reasonable dissociation probability.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Analysis of stop-gain and frameshift variants in human innate immunity genes.

Loss-of-function variants in innate immunity genes are associated with Mendelian disorders in the form of primary immunodeficiencies. Recent resequencing projects report that stop-gains and frameshifts are collectively prevalent in humans and could be responsible for some of the inter-individual variability in innate immune response. Current computational approaches evaluating loss-of-function in genes carrying these variants rely on gene-level characteristics such as evolutionary conservation and functional redundancy across the genome. However, innate immunity genes represent a particular case because they are more likely to be under positive selection and duplicated. To create a ranking of severity that would be applicable to innate immunity genes we evaluated 17,764 stop-gain and 13,915 frameshift variants from the NHLBI Exome Sequencing Project and 1,000 Genomes Project. Sequence-based features such as loss of functional domains, isoform-specific truncation and nonsense-mediated decay were found to correlate with variant allele frequency and validated with gene expression data. We integrated these features in a Bayesian classification scheme and benchmarked its use in predicting pathogenic variants against Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) disease stop-gains and frameshifts. The classification scheme was applied in the assessment of 335 stop-gains and 236 frameshifts affecting 227 interferon-stimulated genes. The sequence-based score ranks variants in innate immunity genes according to their potential to cause disease, and complements existing gene-based pathogenicity scores. Specifically, the sequence-based score improves measurement of functional gene impairment, discriminates across different variants in a given gene and appears particularly useful for analysis of less conserved genes

Eletroejaculação e características seminais em caititus (Tayassu tajacu) - resultados parciais.

Resumo 31.006. Disponível também on-line

Reconstruction of Trees from Jumbled and Weighted Subtrees

Let T be an edge-labeled graph, where the labels are from a finite alphabet Sigma. For a subtree U of T the Parikh vector of U is a vector of length |Sigma| which specifies the multiplicity of each label in U. We ask when T can be reconstructed from the multiset of Parikh vectors of all its subtrees, or all of its paths, or all of its maximal paths. We consider the analogous problems for weighted trees. We show how several well-known reconstruction problems on labeled strings, weighted strings and point sets on a line can be included in this framework. We present reconstruction algorithms and non-reconstructibility results, and extend the polynomial method, previously applied to jumbled strings [Acharya et al., SIAM J. on Discr. Math, 2015] and weighted strings [Bansal et al., CPM 2004], to deal with general trees and special tree classes

Dynamics of HIV latency and reactivation in a primary CD4+ T cell model.

HIV latency is a major obstacle to curing infection. Current strategies to eradicate HIV aim at increasing transcription of the latent provirus. In the present study we observed that latently infected CD4+ T cells from HIV-infected individuals failed to produce viral particles upon ex vivo exposure to SAHA (vorinostat), despite effective inhibition of histone deacetylases. To identify steps that were not susceptible to the action of SAHA or other latency reverting agents, we used a primary CD4+ T cell model, joint host and viral RNA sequencing, and a viral-encoded reporter. This model served to investigate the characteristics of latently infected cells, the dynamics of HIV latency, and the process of reactivation induced by various stimuli. During latency, we observed persistence of viral transcripts but only limited viral translation. Similarly, the reactivating agents SAHA and disulfiram successfully increased viral transcription, but failed to effectively enhance viral translation, mirroring the ex vivo data. This study highlights the importance of post-transcriptional blocks as one mechanism leading to HIV latency that needs to be relieved in order to purge the viral reservoir

Performance of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter of the HERMES Experiment

The performance of the electromagnetic calorimeter of the HERMES experiment is described. The calorimeter consists of 840 radiation resistant F101 lead-glass counters. The response to positrons up to 27.5 GeV, the comparison between the measured energy and the momentum reconstructed from tracking, long-term stability, hadron rejection and neutral meson invariant mass reconstruction are shown.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures, LaTeX, accepted by NI

Desenvolvimento de protocolo de sedação e analgesia em caititus (Tayassu tajacu) para coleta de sêmen por eletroejaculação.

Conbravet. Disponível também on-line