Toxinogenicity and cytotoxicity of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Alternaria,Aspergillus</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Penicillium</Emphasis> moulds isolated from working environments

There is currently limited research available on the secondary metabolites of moulds in workplaces. The aim of this study was to determine the mould contamination in museums (N = 4), composting plants (N = 4) and tanneries (N = 4) and the secondary metabolite profiles of Alternaria, Aspergillus and Penicillium isolates from these workplaces. Alternaria, Aspergillus and Penicillium species were identified using the ITS1/2 sequence of the rDNA region. Mould metabolites were quantitatively analysed on standard laboratory medium and mineral medium containing materials specific to each workplace using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. We also examined the cytotoxicity of the moulds using MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazolyl-2)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assays. Air microbiological contamination analyses showed a number of microorganisms, ranging from 2.4 × 10³ CFU m^?3 (composting plants) to 6.8 × 10⁴ CFU m^?3 (tanneries). We identified high percentages of Alternaria, Aspergillus and Penicillium moulds (air 57–59%, surfaces 10–65%) in all workplaces. The following moulds were the most cytotoxic (>90%): Alternaria alternata, A. limoniasperae, Aspergillus flavus, Penicillium biourgeianum, P. commune and P. spinulosum. The same mould species isolated from different working environments exhibited varying toxigenic and cytotoxic properties. Modifying the culture medium to simulate environmental conditions most often resulted in the inhibition of secondary metabolite production. Moulds isolated from the working environments produced the following mycotoxins (ng g^?1): chanoclavines (0.28–204), cyclopiazonic acid (27.1–1045), fumigaclavines (0.33–10,640,000), meleagrin (0.57–13,393), roquefortins (0.01–16,660), rugulovasines (112–220), viridicatin (0.12–957), viridicatol (4.23–2753) and quinocitrinines (0.07–1104), which may have a negative impact on human health.     

Evolution of the Vico lavas,Roman volcanic region,Italy

A petrochemical study of representative lavas from Vico, relative to their established stratigraphic succession, shows that the erupted magma was recurrent in composition. The predominant differentiation trend of the lava suite, illustrated by means of a principal component analysis (Le Maitre, 1968), leads to trachytic residual compositions which can be interpreted in terms of crystal fractionation processes under volcanic pressure regime.     

Beryllium Geochemistry in the Lesni Potok Catchment (Czech Republic), 7 Years of Systematic Study

The biogeochemical study was carried out at the Lesni potok (LP)catchment, Central Bohemia, Czech Republic. The ecosystem was impacted by heavy acid depositionduring the industrial development in 1980–1990. The catchment is forested mostly by two tree species, Norwayspruce and European beech. The Be concentration in the granite bedrock is 12.6 mg kg^-1. Theplagioclase contains the highest Be concentrations out of the rock-forming minerals. Elevatedconcentration of Be (5.4 mu;g L^-1) in surface waters is a result of its mobilization from the soils(3.9 mg kg^-1) and weathered rock by acid precipitation. As the pH of the precipitation and consecutivelypH of the surface waters is increasing in the Czech Republic, the Be concentrations in the surface watersgradually decrease. Groundwater with high pH values contains lower concentrations of Be (0.17 g L^-1)than surface waters. The soils at prone area of the catchment are depleted in Be compared to thesoils in the riparian zones. The vegetation located on the prone area contains lower concentrations of theBe than vegetation at riparian zones. The monitoring of Be in the environment is important with respectto its possible harmful effects on aquatic biota and root systems of the plants.     

Mechanical quality of bedrock with increasing ductile deformation

Most of the rocks in Precambrian shield areas have experienced a complex structural and metamorphic evolution, processes which have a strong influence on bedrock quality. The properties vary on both a local and a regional scale. It is highly beneficial to know the variations in detail when exploiting the rocks for industrial purposes. The main objective of the investigation was to study the variation of rock mechanical properties in an originally more or less isotropic rock at various stages of ductile deformation. The rocks investigated were Paleoproterozoic and with ages of ca. 1.80-1.88 Ga, and the areas chosen for sampling were situated north-east of Lake Vänern (Kristinehamn; 10 samples), south of the city of Eskilstuna, South Central Sweden (5 samples) and south of Ödeshög, near Lake Vättern in southern Sweden (7 samples). The 12 samples from the latter two areas are described in this investigation, while the 10 samples from Kristinehamn have been published earlier (Göransson et al., 2004). A comprehensive study of various parameters of importance for bedrock quality has been performed on all samples, e.g. studded tyre test (STT) and Los Angeles test (LA), uniaxial compressive strength (UCS), ultrasonic velocity, perimeter measurements of mineral phases, and petrographic and chemical analyses. The weakly deformed and massive (more or less isotropic) rocks show a tendency towards better properties of abrasion (STT) than the strongly deformed rocks and this can also be said for UCS, reflecting the greater ability of rocks to split along foliation planes. This is not entirely unambiguous, as the more deformed rocks, such as the mylonites, may have varying properties. This depends on the combined effects of, e.g. grain size, recrystallisation and foliation. However, the brittleness (LA) shows somewhat better values with increased deformation. This may depend on higher amounts of dark minerals, as their existence does not affect this test as much as in the case of abrasion tests. The perimeter values of the mineral phases display generally higher values, i.e. grain boundaries for the more strongly deformed rocks are more complicated. However, the values for the investigated mylonites may vary between low and high. The lower value may be due to dynamic recrystallisation and the creation of triple points (static recrystallisation) making the rock weaker. Besides, the development of a strong foliation may decrease rock strength despite the usually finer grain size. The results show that it is extremely important to consider all possible variations of bedrock before classification and exploitation, as the bedrock material in fact is highly heterogeneous.     

Delineation and classification of rural–urban fringe using geospatial technique and onboard DMSP–Operational Linescan System

This study aims to analyse the processes and patterns of peri-urbanization using diurnal earth observation data-sets from onboard DMSP–Operational Linescan System. In this study, multiple correlation, simple and conditional linear regression are used to find out the degree of relationship and spatial behavioural pattern of the factors responsible for the urbanization. All the factors are standardized using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) coupled fuzzy membership functions. AHP is used to derive the weighting of the factors to produce the urbanity index. In total three functional zones – urban, rural and urban shadow are generated based on factor standardization and spatial contiguity index. Urban fringe is sharing ≥ 60% of Urbanity Index followed by rural fringe (39.50–60% of urbanity index) and urban shadow <39.50% of urbanity index. Shape index indicates that the city is going through unplanned development following cross to star shape growth.     

GIS-based landslide susceptibility modeling: A comparison between fuzzy multi-criteria and machine learning algorithms

Hazards and disasters have always negative impacts on the way of life.Landslide is an overwhelming natural as well as man-made disaster that causes loss of natural resources and human properties throughout theworld.The present study aimed to assess and compare the prediction efficiency of different models in landslide susceptibility in the Kysuca river basin,Slovakia.In this regard,the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory combining with the analytic network process(FDEMATEL-ANP),Na?ve Bayes(NB)classifier,and random forest(RF)classifier were considered.Initially,a landslide inventory map was produced with 2000 landslide and nonlandslide points by randomly dividedwith a ratio of 70%:30%for training and testing,respectively.The geospatial database for assessing the landslide susceptibility was generated with the help of 16 landslide conditioning factors by allowing for topographical,hydrological,lithological,and land cover factors.The ReliefF methodwas considered for determining the significance of selected conditioning factors and inclusion in the model building.Consequently,the landslide susceptibility maps(LSMs)were generated using the FDEMATEL-ANP,Na?ve Bayes(NB)classifier,and random forest(RF)classifier models.Finally,the area under curve(AUC)and different arithmetic evaluation were used for validating and comparing the results and models.The results revealed that random forest(RF)classifier is a promising and optimum model for landslide susceptibility in the study area with a very high value of area under curve(AUC=0.954),lower value of mean absolute error(MAE=0.1238)and root mean square error(RMSE=0.2555),and higher value of Kappa index(K=0.8435)and overall accuracy(OAC=92.2%).     

Detection Capability of Selected Seismic Stations in Central Europe

The 50% and 90% P-wave detection thresholds of 3 Austrian, 2 Czech, 5 German, 1 Hungarian and 3 Slovak seismic stations have been determined for four intervals of epicentral distances by a direct method using the maximum-likelihood technique. The USGS-NEIC Earthquake Data Reports covering the period from January 1990 to November 1994 were used as the reference system. The seismic stations Kaperské Hory (KHC, Czech Republic) and Collmberg (CLL, Germany) are the stations with the best detection capabilities for all investigated intervals of epicentral distances.     

The chemistry of barium anomalies in the Berisal Complex, Simplon Region, Switzerland

The petrographic and geochemical features of two zoisite–celsian gneiss outcrops from the Berisal Complex, characterised by a syn-kinematic mineral assemblage that contains celsian and barium white micas and a maximum whole-rock BaO content of 8.36 wt%, are described. The outcrops are enclosed in a larger body of garnet-bearing two-mica augen-gneiss, which has intrusive contacts with the surrounding garnet–biotite–muscovite paragneiss, and also contains small outcrops of two-mica clinozoisite gneiss. The zoisite–celsian gneisses are strongly enriched in all alkaline-earth elements, are depleted in the alkali elements, and have high Zr/Hf and Nb/Ta ratios compared with the surrounding gneisses. The zoisite–celsian, two-mica clinozoisite, and garnet-bearing two-mica augen-gneisses have Al/CNK molar ratios >1, and the zoisite–celsian gneisses are also enriched in Zr, Y, and Nb. Chondrite-normalised patterns for the rare earth elements (REE) show light REE enrichment, with a negative Eu anomaly. On the basis of field and geochemical data it is argued that the barium anomalies in the Berisal complex are the result of igneous fractionation of barium into anorthosite-dominated cognate inclusions within a larger volume of calc-alkaline peraluminous melt. On the basis of U–Pb zircon ages, a conservative estimate for the age of magma crystallisation is placed at 460 ± 10 Ma, and thus was related to significant late Ordovician granitoid magmatism in Gondwana-derived microcontinents during collision between Avalonia-Cadomia and Gondwana.     

Neutron stars:a relativistic study

We study the inner structure of a neutron star from a theoretical point of view and the outcome results are compared with observed data. We propose a stiff equation of state relating pressure with matter density. From our study we calculate mass(M),compactness(u) and surface redshift(Zs) for two binary millisecond pulsars,namely PSR J1614–2230 and PSR J1903+327,and four X-ray binaries,namely Cen X-3,SMC X-1,Vela X-1 and Her X-1,and compare them with recent observational data.Finally,we examine the stability for such a type of theoretical structure.     

The fate of moderately volatile elements in impact events—Lithium connection between the Ries sediments and central European tektites

Lithium abundances and isotope compositions are presented for a suite of sediments from the surroundings of the Ries Impact structure, paralleled by new Li data for central European tektites (moldavites) from several substrewn fields (South Bohemia, Moravia, Cheb Basin, Lusatia), including a specimen from the newly discovered substrewn field in Poland. The data set was supplemented by three clay fractions isolated from sedimentary samples. Moldavites measured in this study show a very narrow range in δ⁷Li values (?0.6 to 0.3‰ relative to L‐SVEC) and Li contents (23.9–48.1 ppm). This contrasts with sediments from the Ries area which show remarkable range in Li isotope compositions (from ?6.9 to 13.4‰) and Li contents (0.6–256 ppm). The OSM sediments which, based on chemical similarity, formed the major part of moldavites, show a range in δ⁷Li values from ?2.0 to 7.9‰ and Li contents from 5.8 to 78.9 ppm. Therefore, the formation of moldavites was apparently accompanied by large‐scale mixing, paralleled by chemical and isotope homogenization of their parent matter. The proposed Li mixing model indicates that sands, clayey sediments, and low volumes of carbonates are the major components for tektite formation whereas residual paleokarst sediments could have been a minor but important component for a subset of moldavites. Striking homogenization of Li in tektites, combined with limited Li loss during impacts, may suggest that moderately volatile elements are not scavenged and isotopically fractionated during large‐scale collisions, which is consistent with recent models. In general, whether homogenization of bodies with distinct Li isotope systematics takes place, or collision of bodies with similar Li systematics operates cannot be resolved at present stage but Li isotope homogeneity of solar system planets and asteroidal bodies tentatively implies the latter.