From Regional to National Clouds: TV Coverage in the Czech Republic

Media, and particularly TV media, have a great impact on the general public. In recent years, spatial patterns of information and the relevance of intangible geographies have become increasingly important. Gatekeeping plays a critical role in the selection of information that is transformed into media. Therefore, gatekeeping, through national media, also co-forms the generation of mental maps. In this paper, correspondence analysis (a statistical method) combined with cloud lines (a new visual analytics technique) is used to analyze how individual major regional events in one of the post-communist countries, the Czech Republic, penetrate into the media on a national scale. Although national news should minimize distortions about regions, this assumption has not been verified by our research. Impressions presented by the media of selected regions that were markedly influenced by one or several events in those regions demonstrate that gatekeepers, especially news reporters, functioned as a filter by selecting only a few specific, and in many cases, unusual events for dissemination.     

Subunit function in eukaryote cytochrome c oxidase. A mutation in the nuclear-coded subunit IV allows assembly but alters the function and stability of yeast cytochrome c oxidase.

Strains of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae disrupted in YCOX4, the nuclear gene encoding cytochrome c oxidase subunit IV, do not assemble a functional or spectrally visible oxidase. We report the characterization of a yeast strain, RM1, expressing a mutated YCOX4 gene which is temperature sensitive for respiration at 37 degrees C, but incorporates cytochrome aa3 over all growth temperatures. The mutant enzyme is less stable than the wild type, with subunit IV readily proteolyzed without gross denaturation of the complex but with a concomitant loss of oxidase activity. When grown fermentatively at 37 degrees C, cytochrome c oxidase from the mutant strain had a turnover number of less than 3% of the normal complex, while Km values and subunit levels were comparable to normal. Thus alterations in subunit IV can perturb the enzyme structure and alter its catalytic rate, implying a role for this subunit in cytochrome c oxidase function as distinct from assembly.     

Ocean Acidification and Increased Temperature Have Both Positive and Negative Effects on Early Ontogenetic Traits of a Rocky Shore Keystone Predator Species

The combined effect of ocean acidification and warming is expected to have significant effects on several traits of marine organisms. The gastropod Concholepas concholepas is a rocky shore keystone predator characteristic of the south-eastern Pacific coast of South America and an important natural resource exploited by small-scale artisanal fishermen along the coast of Chile and Peru. In this study, we used small juveniles of C. concholepas collected from the rocky intertidal habitats of southern Chile (39°S) to evaluate under laboratory conditions the potential consequences of projected near-future levels of ocean acidification and warming for important early ontogenetic traits. The individuals were exposed long-term (5.8 months) to contrasting pCO₂ (ca. 500 and 1400 μatm) and temperature (15 and 19°C) levels. After this period we compared body growth traits, dislodgement resistance, predator-escape response, self-righting and metabolic rates. With respect to these traits there was no evidence of a synergistic interaction between pCO₂ and temperature. Shell growth was negatively affected by high pCO₂ levels only at 15°C. High pCO₂ levels also had a negative effect on the predator-escape response. Conversely, dislodgement resistance and self-righting were positively affected by high pCO₂ levels at both temperatures. High tenacity and fast self-righting would reduce predation risk in nature and might compensate for the negative effects of high pCO₂ levels on other important defensive traits such as shell size and escape behaviour. We conclude that climate change might produce in C. concholepas positive and negative effects in physiology and behaviour. In fact, some of the behavioural responses might be a consequence of physiological effects, such as changes in chemosensory capacity (e.g. predator-escape response) or secretion of adhesive mucous (e.g. dislodgement resistance). Moreover, we conclude that positive behavioural responses may assist in the adaptation to negative physiological impacts, and that this may also be the case for other benthic organisms.     

Proper timing of cytokinesis is regulated by Schizosaccharomyces pombe Etd1

Cytokinesis must be initiated only after chromosomes have been segregated in anaphase and must be terminated once cleavage is completed. We show that the fission yeast protein Etd1 plays a central role in both of these processes. Etd1 activates the guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) Spg1 to trigger signaling through the septum initiation network (SIN) pathway and onset of cytokinesis. Spg1 is activated in late anaphase when spindle elongation brings spindle pole body (SPB)–localized Spg1 into proximity with its activator Etd1 at cell tips, ensuring that cytokinesis is only initiated when the spindle is fully elongated. Spg1 is active at just one of the two SPBs during cytokinesis. When the actomyosin ring finishes constriction, the SIN triggers disappearance of Etd1 from the half of the cell with active Spg1, which then triggers Spg1 inactivation. Asymmetric activation of Spg1 is crucial for timely inactivation of the SIN. Together, these results suggest a mechanism whereby cell asymmetry is used to monitor cytoplasmic partitioning to turn off cytokinesis signaling.     

Effect of bilirubin and its photodegradation products on the respiration of mitochondria isolated from rat liver

In 0.05--0.1 mmol.l-1 concentration, bilirubin inhibits ADP-activated respiration of isolated liver mitochondria; it has no effect on respiration in the absence of ADP. Bilirubin-induced inhibition of respiration is not abolished by serum albumin, but bilirubin bound to serum albumin and the photodegradation products of bilirubin have no inhibitory effect.     

Advantages of Task-Specific Multi-Objective Optimisation in Evolutionary Robotics

The application of multi-objective optimisation to evolutionary robotics is receiving increasing attention. A survey of the literature reveals the different possibilities it offers to improve the automatic design of efficient and adaptive robotic systems, and points to the successful demonstrations available for both task-specific and task-agnostic approaches (i.e., with or without reference to the specific design problem to be tackled). However, the advantages of multi-objective approaches over single-objective ones have not been clearly spelled out and experimentally demonstrated. This paper fills this gap for task-specific approaches: starting from well-known results in multi-objective optimisation, we discuss how to tackle commonly recognised problems in evolutionary robotics. In particular, we show that multi-objective optimisation (i) allows evolving a more varied set of behaviours by exploring multiple trade-offs of the objectives to optimise, (ii) supports the evolution of the desired behaviour through the introduction of objectives as proxies, (iii) avoids the premature convergence to local optima possibly introduced by multi-component fitness functions, and (iv) solves the bootstrap problem exploiting ancillary objectives to guide evolution in the early phases. We present an experimental demonstration of these benefits in three different case studies: maze navigation in a single robot domain, flocking in a swarm robotics context, and a strictly collaborative task in collective robotics.     

Determination of the biological activity of Clostridium difficile toxins in in vivo and in vitro experiments

The biological activity of the filtrates of 29 C. difficile strains was studied in vivo (suckling white mice) and in vitro (cell cultures of different species and origin). The action of the filtrates on the experimental models in vivo was evaluated from the cytotoxic effect index, while in vitro the intensity of the cytotoxic effect was evaluated from the percentage of dead cells in the monolayer. The results of the comparative determination of toxicity characteristics in vivo and in vitro demonstrated that cell cultures were more sensitive experimental models than suckling white mice. The use of cell cultures permitted the quantitative evaluation of the cytotoxic activity of the filtrates under study, as well as the detection of their cell-directed action at minimal concentrations.