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Human presence influences survival of large carnivores in several ways and even outdoor activities can be a source of disturbance. As ungulate prey provide the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) with food for several nights and the pattern of lynx activity is mainly shaped by searching for and consuming large prey, the need to move decreases strongly while the prey is eaten. However, during the day, human activity may drive lynx to move to safe shelters and habitat features such as dense vegetation may increase tolerance. In the Bohemian Forest (Czech Republic), we found 116 prey killed by five GPS–collared lynxes. We tested whether the kill sites were located farther from roads or tourist trails than a set of randomly generated locations and whether presence of roads or tourist trails and habitat structure influenced the distance ‘kill site to daytime resting sites’. At night, with low human activity, lynxes did not avoid roads and even selected the surroundings of tourist trails. The distance ‘kill site to daytime resting sites’ correlated negatively with presence of habitat concealment and distance to tourist trails, suggesting that outdoor activities may have to be considered in lynx management plans.

Czech e-infrastructure project e-INFRA CZ is the only project for ICT services defined on the Road Map of the Czech Republic for Large Infrastructures for Research, Experimental Development and Innovations. It was created by 3 national e-infrastructures: CESNET, CERIT-SC and IT4Innovations. The project provides ICT services mostly for Czech universities and research institutions. High energy physics projects belong to the most demanding users in terms of network, computing and storage capacities. We will describe usage of these three main categories for several HEP and astroparticle physics projects in which Czech institutions are involved. But not only these most visible services are provided. Other services like security CSIRT team, backup solutions, virtualization platform, identity management, Jupyter notebooks, electronic logbook and user support system are extensively used. Many concrete examples will be given on e-INFRA services usage by the Czech WLCG Tier-2 center. We will also present the important role of the e-INFRA project as a national coordinator of international activities in the grid computing (EGI), open science solutions (EOSC) or high-performance computing (EuroHPC).

In this paper we propose a distributed architecture to provide machine learning practitioners with a set of tools and cloud services that cover the whole machine learning development cycle: ranging from the models creation, training, validation and testing to the models serving as a service, sharing and publication. In such respect, the DEEP-Hybrid-DataCloud framework allows transparent access to existing e-Infrastructures, effectively exploiting distributed resources for the most compute-intensive tasks coming from the machine learning development cycle. Moreover, it provides scientists with a set of Cloud-oriented services to make their models publicly available, by adopting a serverless architecture and a DevOps approach, allowing an easy share, publish and deploy of the developed models.

The article deals with the use of acoustic emission to identify the formation of cracks during the mechanical loading in the corrosive attacked weldment S235JR+N. The experiment includes the methodology for continual record of emissive signals, data analysis and monitoring of material response to monitor mechanical stress effect in real time. There is possibility to observe response of corrosive degraded samples in real time during mechanical stress through the suitably designed methodology of detection, process and analysing of acoustic emission signals. It is possible to gain new information about processes rising inside the material by this way of data measurement. The signals of acoustic emission can be used as the way of identification for the micro cracks rising in the inner and also external structure of effortful materials.

Vulvovaginal candidosis (VVC) is a frequently occurring infection of the lower female genital tract, mostly affecting immuno-competent women at childbearing age. Candida albicans is the most prevalent pathogenic yeast—apart from other non-albicans species—related to this fungal infection. Different virulence factors of C. albicans have been identified, which increase the risk of developing VVC. To initiate treatment and positively influence the disease course, fast and reliable diagnosis is crucial. In this narrative review, we cover the existing state of understanding of the epidemiology, pathogenesis and diagnosis of VVC. However, treatment recommendations should follow current guidelines.

Potassium is an essential macronutrient that has been partly overshadowed in root science by nitrogen and phosphorus. The current boom in potassium-related studies coincides with an emerging awareness of its importance in plant growth, metabolic functions, stress tolerance, and efficient agriculture. In this review, we summarized recent progress in understanding the role of K+ in root growth, development of root system architecture, cellular functions, and specific plant responses to K+ shortage. K+ transport is crucial for its physiological role. A wide range of K+ transport proteins has developed during evolution and acquired specific functions in plants. There is evidence linking K+ transport with cell expansion, membrane trafficking, auxin homeostasis, cell signaling, and phloem transport. This places K+ among important general regulatory factors of root growth. K+ is a rather mobile element in soil, so the absence of systemic and localized root growth response has been accepted. However, recent research confirms both systemic and localized growth response in Arabidopsis thaliana and highlights K+ uptake as a crucial mechanism for plant stress response. K+-related regulatory mechanisms, K+ transporters, K+ acquisition efficiency, and phenotyping for selection of K+ efficient plants/cultivars are highlighted in this review.

Tunnels and channels facilitate the transport of small molecules, ions and water solvent in a large variety of proteins. Characteristics of individual transport pathways, including their geometry, physico-chemical properties and dynamics are instrumental for understanding of structure-function relationships of these proteins, for the design of new inhibitors and construction of improved biocatalysts. CAVER is a software tool widely used for the identification and characterization of transport pathways in static macromolecular structures. Herein we present a new version of CAVER enabling automatic analysis of tunnels and channels in large ensembles of protein conformations. CAVER 3.0 implements new algorithms for the calculation and clustering of pathways. A trajectory from a molecular dynamics simulation serves as the typical input, while detailed characteristics and summary statistics of the time evolution of individual pathways are provided in the outputs. To illustrate the capabilities of CAVER 3.0, the tool was applied for the analysis of molecular dynamics simulation of the microbial enzyme haloalkane dehalogenase DhaA. CAVER 3.0 safely identified and reliably estimated the importance of all previously published DhaA tunnels, including the tunnels closed in DhaA crystal structures. Obtained results clearly demonstrate that analysis of molecular dynamics simulation is essential for the estimation of pathway characteristics and elucidation of the structural basis of the tunnel gating. CAVER 3.0 paves the way for the study of important biochemical phenomena in the area of molecular transport, molecular recognition and enzymatic catalysis. The software is freely available as a multiplatform command-line application at http://www.caver.cz.

This contribution reports on ongoing efforts exploring the potential of aerogel-based plasters on historical façades. As a case study, aerogel-based plaster was applied without reinforcement meshes to a small area in the historical main building of the Vienna University of Technology. The objective is to examine the long-term behavior of the plastered surfaces. For this, a monitoring infrastructure has been implemented, which enables the in-situ measurement of temperature, humidity, and heat flux within different layers of the construction using a wireless sensor system. These measurements are intended to offer a before- after comparison of the thermal behavior of the treated components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the mutual spatial positions of pigs during paired social interactions. Impact of preweaning social experience on later social behavior in pigs; Description of the structure and function of FoxPro, a computer program designed to clean the raw data and to identify the mutual body positions of the animals.