Institutional Management of Core Facilities during Challenging Financial Times

The economic downturn is likely to have lasting effects on institutions of higher education, prioritizing proactive institutional leadership and planning. Although by design, core research facilities are more efficient and effective than supporting individual pieces of research equipment, cores can have significant underlying financial requirements and challenges. This paper explores several possible institutional approaches to managing core facilities during challenging financial times.     

Factors of influence on microbial pollution in the atmosphere over Beijing area

Summary The atmospheric microbial pollutants are potentially correlated to population density and activity as well as to human health. The higher the population density is, the heavier the air microbial pollution will become. Some meteorological factors exert great influence on air microbial pollution. Generally, wind, solar radiation and rainfalls purify air and, consequently cause a decrease in atmospheric microbial pollution. On the other hand, prevailing strong winds may favour this pollution, especially in dry conditions and in absence of vegetation. Obviously, relatively high temperatures associated with high RH enhance the growing of microbes. However, the higher the temperature is, the lower the viability of airborne microbes will be; nonetheless, with high RH a decrease in suspended particles may be recorded.     

New Threats to Academic Freedom

Using a specific case as an example, the article argues that the Internet allows dissemination of academic ideas to the general public in ways that can sometimes pose a threat to academic freedom. Since academic freedom is a fundamental element of academia and since it benefits society at large, it is important to safeguard it. Among measures that can be taken in order to achieve this goal, the publication of anonymous research seems to be a good option.     

Evidence from water chemistry as a criterion of ombrotrophy in the mire complexes of Abernethy Forest,Scotland

Question: Can cation analyses of water samples within a peatland site be used to infer solute sources to the samples, and so provide an objective criterion of ombrotrophy? Location: Mire complexes within native Pinus sylvestris forest, in Abernethy Forest, north of the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland, UK. Methods: Chemical analyses of major cations in 200 water samples, and χ² analysis of contingency tables relating species occurrence in the corresponding quadrat samples to the ombrotrophic‐telluric division. Results and conclusions: The chemical data (especially the ratios Ca²⁺/Mg²⁺ and Na⁺/Mg²⁺) indicated a separation of about 140 essentially ombrotrophic samples from about 60 showing clear telluric influence; these conclusions are consistent with published rainwater analyses. For hydrological and meteorological reasons, a sharp separation cannot be expected, so the limit adopted here (Ca/Mg=1.0) is to some extent arbitrary, but the methods described provide a more objective criterion of ombrotrophy than any other. Contingency tables showed highly significant associations between species occurrence and the ombrotrophic‐telluric division. The strongest associations included: (ombrotrophic) Eriophorum vaginatum, Odontoschisma sphagni and Sphagnum cuspidatum; (telluric) Carex panicea, Potentilla erecta, Carex echinata, Narthecium ossifragum, Sphagnum auriculatum s.l., Agrostis canina, Molinia caerulea, Eriophorum angustifolium, and Sphagnum recurvum s.l. The Abernethy mires are arguably more comparable with mire complexes on base‐poor rocks in southern Scandinavia than with most ombrotrophic sites further south and west in Britain. As in Sweden, Narthecium ossifragum and Eriophorum angustifolium, generally ubiquitous on British and Irish ombrotrophic bogs, are “fen” plants at Abernethy.     

The role of environmental factors in the conidiation of the predacious rotiferovorous fungus Zoophagus insidians (Zoopagomycota)

Compared to other groups of fungi, the knowledge of freshwater predacious fungi that feed on trapped rotifers and tardigrades is very limited. They are known to spread and survive under adverse conditions by releasing asexual spores (conidia), but the environmental factors that induce their conidiation are unclear. In this study, we investigated the conidiation of the rotiferovorous fungus Zoophagus insidians isolated from activated sludge and maintained under laboratory conditions in spring water (medium). We found that its conidiation can undergo significant changes in response to various environmental factors, such as medium exchange, presence or absence of prey, lighting conditions, and their combination. Our results revealed a surprisingly high flexibility of this obligate predacious fungus, which being constantly exposed to unpredictable availability of prey in an unstable environment is still able to survive and disperse.     

Local Influence to Detect Influential Data Structures for Generalized Linear Mixed Models

This article discusses the generalization of the local influence measures for normally distributed responses to local influence measures for generalized linear models with random effects. For these models, it is shown that the subject-oriented influence measure is a special case of the proposed observation-oriented influence measure. A two-step diagnostic procedure is proposed. The first step is to search for influential subjects. A search for influential observations is proposed as the second step. An illustration of a two-treatment, multiple-period crossover trial demonstrates the practical importance of the detection of influential observations in addition to the detection of influential subjects.