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- Author or Editor: B. Sz.-Nagy x
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Urban areas have been growing radically worldwide, causing considerable changes in biodiversity of natural habitats. In floodplain forests, we studied the effects of urbanization on ground-dwelling spider assemblages along a rural–suburban–urban gradient in Hungary. We tested three traditional hypotheses (intermediate disturbance hypothesis, habitat specialist hypothesis and hygrophilous species hypothesis) and two novel expectations (shade-preferring species hypothesis, and disturbance sensitive species hypothesis) on spiders. We found that the total number of species was higher in the suburban habitat than in rural and urban ones, supporting the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. We found a decrease in the species richness of forest specialist and shade-preferring species along the urbanization gradient. We found that the number of hygrophilous and disturbance sensitive species was the lowest in the urban habitat. The spider assemblages of the rural and suburban habitats were clearly separated from the assemblages of urban habitats. Based on our findings we emphasize that low and moderate intensity of forest management contributes to the preservation of the local species richness in floodplain forests.
Without Abstract
The main function of the Kis-Balaton Water Protection System is to retain nutrients and total suspended solids, thus protecting the water quality of Lake Balaton. In this paper, the toxic nature of the sediment in the 2nd reservoir of the KBWPS has been characterised, using a battery of tests: Vibrio fischeri acute bioassay on whole sediment samples, and V. fischeri bioassay on pore water and elutriate samples. The latest version of the V. fischeri bioluminescence inhibition was applied, the Flash assay which uses a kinetic mode and is able to detect the toxicity of solid, turbid/coloured samples. Whole sediment toxicity showed a clear spatial distribution of toxicity, in parallel with elutriate toxicity. However, no pore water toxicity was detected, leading to the conclusion that contaminants are not water soluble.
Abstract
Purpose
The present study compares the efficacy of refractive surgery using third-generation and sixth-generation laser vision correction procedures in terms of postoperative visual acuity. The goal of the authors was to determine whether advances in laser technology had improved patients' uncorrected visual acuity, as measured at six-month follow-ups.
Materials/Methods
Results were reported from one of Europe's leading laser eye clinics, which has performed an outstandingly high number of treatments (over 100,000). The results of the clinic's first 10,000 treatments and most recent 10,000 treatments were evaluated.
Results
The analysis was performed by treated dioptric range and age group. The raw six-month visual acuity results show a statistically significant improvement over the last 10,000 interventions. The treatments resulted in significant improvements in all groups compared to the previous technology. With the new devices, visual acuity increased to above 1.0 in young myopes. The best results were seen in patients between 18 and 45 years of age, in the dioptric range between −1.0 D and −6.0 D.
Conclusions
It can be concluded that advances in technology improved refractive outcomes in all patient groups. This conclusion has excellent reliability and predictability due to the particularly high number of cases.
Thermobifidas are thermophilic, aerobic, lignocellulose decomposing actinomycetes. The Thermobifida genus includes four species: T. fusca, T. alba, T. cellulosilytica, and T. halotolerans. T. fusca YX is the far best characterized strain of this taxon and several cellulases and hemicellulases have been cloned from it for industrial purposes targeting paper industry, biofuel, and feed applications. Unfortunately, sequence data of such enzymes are almost exclusively restricted to this single species; however, we demonstrated earlier by zymography that other T. alba and T. cellulosilytica strains encode the same enzyme sets. Recently, the advances in whole genome sequencing by the use of next generation genomics platforms accelerated the selection process of valuable hydrolases from uncharacterized bacterial species for cloning purposes. For this purpose T. cellulosilytica TB100T type strain was chosen for de novo genome sequencing. We have assembled the genome of T. cellulosilytica strain TB100T into 168 contigs and 19 scaffolds, with reference length of 4 327 869 bps, 3 589 putative coding sequences, 53 tRNAs, and 4 rRNAs. The analysis of the annotated genome revealed the existence of 27 putative hydrolases belonging to 14 different glycoside hydrolase (GH) families. The investigation of identified, cloned, and heterologously multiple cellulases, mannanases, xylanases, and amylases may result in industrial applications beside gaining useful basic research related information.
Abstract
Thermobifida alba is the mesophilic member of the Thermobifida genus, the genome and enzyme sets of which have not been described and published yet. Thermobifida strains are thermotolerant actinomycete, which possess wide sets of cellulose and hemicellulose hydrolysing enzymes. Previously, three endomannanases (Man5ATh, Man5ATc, and Man5AThf) of thermobifidas were cloned and investigated, and hereby the endomannanase of T. alba DSM 43795 is described. All four endomannanases belong to the glycoside hydrolase family 5, their sizes are around 50–55 kDa. Their structure consists of a catalytic domain and a carbohydrate binding module, while there is an interdomain linker region in-between consisting repetitive tetrapeptide motifs (eg.: PPTEPTD-Ta, PTDP-Tc, TEEP-Tf, DPGT-Th). The pH optima of Man5A enzymes from T. alba, Thermobifida halotolerans, Thermobifida cellulosilytica, and Thermobifida fusca are slightly different (6.5, 7.0, 7.5, and 8.0, respectively), however, the temperature optima of the enzymes were detected within a wider range of 65–75 °C. In this research, Man5ATa exhibited the lowest Michaelis-Menten constant (KM) (0.13 mM) on LBG-mannan substrate, while others shared similar kinetic parameters: 0.9–1.7 mM of KM. Despite the high sequence similarity of the investigated mannanases, they exhibit different temperature stability parameters. These different functional characteristics can be advantageous for industrial applications producing biologically active, oligomannan prebiotics under different conditions.
Abstract
We report a case of an infant with spontaneous chylothorax due to the congenital malformation of a small lymph vessel of the chest wall. Conservative therapy with omitting long-chain fatty acids from the diet, fat-free nutrition, total parenteral nutrition and intravenous somatostatin did not result in the decrease of pleural effusion. Thoracic surgical intervention performing thoracic duct ligation and using fibrin sealants was applied after 10 days of unsuccessful conservative therapy, and resulted in the complete recovery of the patient. Our experience support the already existing observations, that in cases where the daily loss of chyle exceeds 100 ml per age years and/or lasts longer than 2 weeks, early surgical intervention is recommended.
