The Hydraenidae (Insecta: Coleoptera) of the Maltese Archipelago (Central Mediterranean)

The Hydraenidae of the Maltese Archipelago are reviewed, based on literature records and examination of historical and recently collected specimens. A total of eleven species is included of which Hydraena (s.str.) sub impressa REY, Ochthebius (s.str.) fossulatus MULSANT, O. (s.str.) punctatus STEPHENS, and O. (s.str.) viridis PEYRON (species complex) are recorded from the Maltese Islands for the first time. The records of the following four species by CAMERON & CARUANA GATTO (1907) are based on misidentifications: Hydraena (s.str.) nigrita GERMAR (= H. (s.str.) subimpressa REY), Ochthebius (s.str.) foveolatus GERMAR (= O. (s.str.) eyrei JACH, and O. (s.str.) fossulatus MULSANT), O. (s.str.) lanuginosus REICHE & SAULCY (= O. (s.str.) punctatus STEPHENS), and O. (s.str.) sub integer MULSANT & REy (= O. (s.str.) celatus JACHpeer-reviewe

Optimization of the Control System Parameters with Use of the New Simple Method of the Largest Lyapunov Exponent Estimation.

This text covers application of Largest Lapunov Exponent (LLE) as a criterion for control performance assessment (CPA) in a simulated control system. The main task is to find a simple and effective method to search for the best configuration of a controller in a control system. In this context, CPA criterion based on calculation of LLE by means of a new method [3] is compared to classical CPA criteria used in control engineering [1]. Introduction contains references to previous publications on Lyapunov stability. Later on, description of classical criteria for CPA along with formulae is presented. Significance of LLE in control systems is explained. Moreover, new efficient formula for calculation of LLE [3] is shown. In the second part simulation of the control system used for experiment is described. The next part contains results of the simulation in which typical criteria for CPA are compared with criterion based on value of LLE. In the last part results of the experiment are summed up and conclusions are drawn

Numerical analysis of creation of the local concentrations of stresses in research of internal load of rooling bearings

W pracy przedstawiono wyniki analizy numerycznej powstawania lokalnych koncentracji naprężeń elementów tocznych w warunkach pracy. Obliczenia przeprowadzono dla elementów wykonanych z materiału idealnie sprężystego oraz z materiału sprężystoplastycznego z kinematycznym wzmocnieniem liniowym. W pracy zaprezentowano modelowanie strefy styku. Obliczenia wykonano, stosując MES, profesjonalny pakiet ANSYS.The paper presents the results of the numerical analysis of the local concentrations of stresses of rolling elements in working condition and process of modelling of the contact zone. Calculations were done for the elements made of the elastic-ideally plastic material and the elastic-plastic material with kinematic linear reinforcement using MES, professional package ANSYS

Increased vegetative development and sturdiness of storekeeper-transgenic tobacco

The STOREKEEPER (STK) family of DNA-binding proteins work as transcription factors and the ectopic expression of two stk-like genes from Arabidopsis thaliana, stk01 (At1g61730) and stk03 (At4g00238), in tobacco increased the number of vegetative internodes and promoted plant and leaf size, stem diameter and sturdiness. The development of these plants started with rosette formation while pronounced shoot elongation and flowering was delayed. Moreover, when the STK01 and STK03 proteins were fused to the Herpes Simplex Virus VP16 transcriptional activation domain and expressed in tobacco the vigorous storekeeper-phenotype did not appear indicating that transgenic STK-like proteins in part worked as repressors of tobacco reproductive development. Furthermore, Yeast Two-Hybrid screenings proved that STK01 and STK03 can form homodimers and heterodimers with further members of the STKlike family. Therefore, we assume that interactions between transgenic Arabidopsis STKs and resident tobacco STKs could have contributed to the observed developmental changes in transgenic tobacco. Our findings open up promising applications for overexpression of stk-like genes in crops that benefit from increased sturdiness and vegetative organ development, such as tobacco in molecular farming approaches, biomass-based energy crops and medicinal plants that produce bioactive compounds in leaves

Structural modification of nanohydroxyapatite Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2 related to Eu3+ and Sr2+ ions doping and its spectroscopic and antimicrobial properties

The Eu3+ and Sr2+ ions co-doped hydroxyapatite nanopowders (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) were synthesized via a precipitation method and post heat-treated at 500 °C. The concentration of Eu3+ ions was established in the range of 0.5–5 mol% to investigate the site occupancy preference. The concentration of Sr2+ ions was set at 5 mol%. The structural and morphological properties of the obtained materials were studied by an X-ray powder diffraction, a transmission electron microscopy techniques and infrared spectroscopy. As synthesized nanoparticles were in the range of 11–17 nm and annealed particles were in the range of 20–26 nm. The luminescence properties in dependence of the dopant concentration and applied temperature were investigated. The 5D0 → 7F0 transition shown the abnormally strong intensity for annealed materials connected with the increase of covalency character of Eu3+–O2− bond, which arise as an effect of charge compensation mechanism. The Eu3+ ions occupied three possible crystallographic sites in these materials revealed in emission spectra: one Ca(1) site with C3 symmetry and two Ca(2) sites with Cs symmetry arranged as cis and trans symmetry. The antibacterial properties of Eu3+ and Sr2+ ions doped and co-doped hydroxyapatite nanopowders were also determined against Gram-negative pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli. Obtained results suggest that both europium and strontium ions may implement antibacterial properties for hydroxyapatites. In the most cases, better antibacterial effect we noticed for dopants at 5 mol% ratio. However, the effect is strongly species- and strain-dependent feature

A Shift from 2D Design Paradigm of the 19 th Century to 3D/CityGML, BIM, 3D Printing and Some of Smarter Cities in Poland

A road from paper-based-administration of the 80-ties to Smart Cities of today is being showed in this paper. Shift from paper do digital environment started with regaining of Polish independence in 1989, 26 years ago. The first e-mail from Poland was sent in 1990 year, 19 years after the first e-mail on the world of Ray Tomlinson (1971). Transfter of legal responsibilities, legal power, competences and finance from the top to local levels resulted in revolution in IT sector, which was the first commercial sector running in apost comunist country, in the 80-ties and the beginning of 90ties.Pressure for changes was visible exspecially in the biggest cities, and were initially connected with process of “mucicipalization” – i.e. – transfering of ownership of land from the state level to the level of municipalities. Signum Tempori of this time, was a process of transfer of state owned land to the city property of the City of Gdansk, where more than 30000 real estates of of the market value of 750 million US dollars were transferred and became municipal between 1992 and 1994 years. More and more LIS (Land Information Systems) and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) were implemented, without interoperability rules and standards. Lack of ability to adapt centrain common standards between State Surveying and the biggest cities resulted in appearance of more than 20 graphical applications and more then 20 textual databases applications which required later substantial efforts and costs to overcome information chaos. 10 biggest metropolitan Polish Cities spend more then 3 times than the General Office of Geodesy and Cadasrte of Poland, between 1991 and 1994. Gradual implementaion of INSPIRE Directive and the Law of National Infrastrructure of Spatial Information created unprecedented shitf from paper maps and paper records to almost all digital Poland. Expenditures of c.a. 650 million PLN were assigned to creation of digital representaion of all 34 data layers of INSPIRE Directive for the impelmentaion period of 2010 to 2019. Nevertheless, this amount has been almost doubled in the first 3 years, taking into acccount expenditures of only regional and local GIS/SDI Projects. Polish spatial and economic conditions created spatio-economic background, within which more than 65 % of GDP of Poland is located within 12 metropolitan areas, and at the same time around 67 % of Polish GDP is being generated by more than 4 million of micro or small businesses (often small “family” businesses.).Polish Spatial Planning Law of 2003 has weakened spatial planning regulation, allowing for certain “exception from the rule”, which became a new rule in itself. Basically, this “door” in the law to obtain building permint outside the borders of local development plan – resulted in issuing of more than 700 000 building permits – all located ouside territories of local spatial development plans between 2003 and 2015. Therefore we observe freely flowing process of urban sprawl on one hand and increased land consumption, expecially in the peri-urban zones of all metropolitan cities, and on the other hand, from the economic point of view – Poland has experienced unprecedented GDP growth in recent 10 or 12 years. Nevertheless several really interesting projects have been kicked-off by metropolitan cities, regions and General Survey of Poland (GUGIK). One of the most interesting projects – ISOK (Informatic System of State Protection against Extraordinary Threads) was impelmented between 2011 and 2015, at the cost of c.a. 300 million PLN, resulting in creation of laser scanning data for 92 % of territory of Poland. Continuation of this project was secured in the autumn of 2015 year, devoting budget of 189 million PLN for the project called CAPAP (acronyme from “ Centre of Spatial Analysis of Public Administration), which aim is to provide 3D model of all buildings in Poland, in compliance with CityGML LOD 2 (second Level of Detail), withing the time frame 2016 – 2018. So, all territory of Poland will become 3D in 3 years time in accordance with CityGLM LoD2 and some studies and pilot projects going in this direction are being described in this paper. Some recent exercises with 3D printing of new urban projects are being reported at the end of article

Sensitivity of land-atmosphere coupling strength in dependence of land cover and atmospheric thermodynamics over Europe

Biogeophysical feedbacks between the land surface and the atmosphere have been identified to heavily control the climate system. Land-atmosphere (L-A) coupling strength is a concept to quantify the feedback processes. However, the quantification is still subject to uncertainties, in particular, in the context of land surface influences on local convective precipitation. On the one hand, feedback processes are the result of a chain of complex interactions between various components in the L-A system all exhibiting spatiotemporal variability. On the other hand, L-A coupling strength is not a directly measurable quantity. It can be assessed with different scientific approaches, which makes the quantification dependent on the methodology and the availability of suitable data sets. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to investigate the impact of changes in the vegetation cover and the atmospheric thermodynamic conditions on the long-term coupling signal between the land surface and the triggering of deep moist convection during the European summer. The convective triggering potential low-level humidity index framework, which is a commonly used L-A coupling metric, classifies a day in favor for L-A coupling or not, based on the prevailing thermodynamic conditions in the atmosphere. The daily classifications are used to measure the frequency of days with favorable conditions during the study period, and to identify regions with high frequencies of favorable conditions as coupling hot spots. The framework is applied to model output from regional climate model (RCM) simulations with WRF-NoahMP with diverging land cover conducted over the historical period 1986-2015 for the Euro-CORDEX domain. Impacts of changes in vegetation cover are analyzed by comparing the L-A coupling strength from two sensitivity experiments with idealized extreme land use and land cover changes (LULCCs) against a simulation with realistic land cover. A posteriori modifications to the temperature and moisture output fields of the simulation with realistic land cover were implemented to analyze impacts of systematic changes in the atmospheric thermodynamic conditions. A potential coupling hot spot with predominantly positive feedbacks was identified over Eastern Europe. In Southern Europe and Europes coastal areas, the coupling is regularly inhibited by very dry, very wet or stable conditions in the atmosphere. The location of the hot spot appeared insensitive to LULCCs and changes in the thermodynamic conditions. None of the sensitivity tests within a realistic range of temperature and moisture modifications for a recent climate period, led to a disappearance of the hot spot or to overcome the causes for inhibiting coupling in the respective areas in summer. Nevertheless, the experiments demonstrated also considerable variance of the coupling strength within the hot spot region. LULCCs changed the turbulent heat fluxes from the land surface, and thus the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) heating and moistening. This impacted the boundary layer development of each day. It also caused changes in the average thermodynamic characteristics during the study period, which changed the frequency of favorable pre-conditioning for convection triggering and enhanced the variance in the coupling strength in the hot spot. Both effects were identified to influence the land surface control on the occurrence of convective precipitation. Furthermore, the sensitivity tests with a posteriori modifications revealed uncertainties in the predominant atmospheric response to differently wet surfaces around the Black Sea, shown by a disagreement in the predominant coupling pathway between the modification cases. The findings further indicate uncertainty in whether the hot spot expands over Central Europe, as the feedback signal was sensitive to changes in temperature and moisture. Additionally, the model has a warm and dry bias in this area, which suggests an overestimation of the humidity deficit. The large humidity deficit, in turn, was the inhibiting factor for a high frequency of occurrence of favorable pre-conditions for deep moist convection. The analyses reveal a sensitivity of the L-A coupling strength and atmospheric response to the prevailing land surface and atmospheric conditions in the hot spot. This highlights the need to consider both the land surface state and its impact on L-A coupling strength with respect to predictions of convective precipitation events in strongly coupled regions (and periods). Given that L-A coupling provides predictive skill for climate projections and seasonal forecasts, improved understanding about causes of variability in L-A coupling strength is crucial for improvements therein.Biogeophysikalische Rückkopplungsprozesse zwischen Landoberfläche und Atmosphäre haben einen großen Einfluss auf das Klimasystem. Allerdings unterliegt ihre Quantifizierung, allen voran des Einflusses der Landoberflächen auf die Auslösung konvektiver Niederschläge, weiterhin großen Unsicherheiten. Ursachen dafür sind die Komplexität der Interaktionen im Land-Atmosphären (L-A)-System unter Beteiligung vieler verschiedener Komponenten, die alle unterschiedlich starker räumlich-zeitlicher Variabilität unterliegen. Zudem ist die L-A Kopplungsstärke keine direkt messbare, sondern eine diagnostische Größe, die noch dazu mit verschiedenen wissenschaftlichen Ansätzen untersucht wird, sodass Ergebnisse sowohl von derWahl der Metrik, als auch von der Qualität und dem Zugang zu geeigneten Datensätzen abhängt. Das Ziel dieser Doktorarbeit ist die Untersuchung, ob und wie sich Änderungen in der Landnutzung und den thermodynamischen Bedingungen der Atmosphäre auf die potentielle Kopplungsstärke zwischen Landoberflächenfeuchte und dem Auslösen von hochreichender Konvektion in den europäischen Sommermonaten auswirken. Dafür wurden drei Klimasimulationen mit dem regionalen Klimamodel WRF-NoahMP für den historischen Zeitraum 1986-2015 für die Euro-CORDEX Domain durchgeführt, die sich in der Landbedeckung unterscheiden. Die Kopplungsstärke wurde mit Hilfe der L-A-Kopplungsmetrik Convective triggering potential low-level humidity index Framework analysiert, welche die Häufigkeit von förderlichen Bedingungen für lokal ausgelöste Konvektion in der Atmosphäre quantifiziert. Durch den Vergleich der Ergebnisse der Kopplungsmetrik für die Simulationen mit verschiedener Landbedeckung konnten die Einflüsse von Änderungen in der Vegetation analysiert werden. Weitere systematische Änderungen in den thermodynamischen Bedingungen und deren Auswirkungen auf die Kopplungsstärke konnten mit Hilfe von nachträglichen Modifikationen der Temperatur- und Feuchtefelder der Simulation mit realistischer Landbedeckung erfasst werden. Sämtliche Analysen zeigten einen Kopplungshotspot über Ost- und Nordosteuropa, wo vorwiegend positive Rückkopplungen zwischen Landoberfläche und konvektiven Niederschlägen auftreten. Die Lage des Hotspots wir nicht durch Änderungen der Landbedeckung oder der Atmosphärenstruktur beeinflusst. Keine der Temperatur- und Feuchteänderungen, deren Spektrum einen realistischen Rahmen für das gegenwärtige Klima abdecken, konnten ein Verschwinden des Hotspots herbeiführen oder die Ursachen für die Unterdrückung von Rückkopplungen (zu starke Trockenheit, Feuchte oder Stabilität in der Atmosphäre) über Südeuropa und in Küstennähe beseitigen. Allerdings zeigen die Experimente und Sensitivitätstests eine deutliche Varianz in der Kopplungsstärke in der Hotspotregion. Landnutzungsänderungen modifizieren die Aufteilung der Wärmeflüsse an der Landoberfläche und beeinflussen, ob die Grenzschicht vorwiegend feuchter oder aufgeheizt wird. Dadurch wird die Grenzschichtentwicklung jedes Tages beeinflusst, aber auch die mittleren thermodynamischen Eigenschaften der Atmosphäre, welche direkt mit förderlichen Vorbedingungen für das Auslösen von hochreichender Konvektion in Verbindung stehen und diese verändern. Beides wirkt sich auf den Einfluss der Landoberfläche auf das Auftreten konvektiver Niederschläge aus. Zusätzlich zeigten die Sensitivitätstests Unsicherheiten in der Reaktion der Atmosphäre auf die Variabilität der Landoberflächenfeuchte um das Schwarze Meer, und der Ausdehnung des Hotspots über Zentraleuropa. Die Ausdehnung wird von den Temperatur- und Feuchtemodifikationen beeinflusst, und im Modell wird das Feuchtedefizit in dieser Region überschätzt. Das regelmäßig hohe Feuchtedefizit ist die Hauptursache für das Verhindern von Rückkopplungen in dieser Region. Sämtliche Analysen zeigen eine Sensitivität der L-A Kopplungsstärke und der Reaktion der Atmosphäre auf die Landoberflächen- und Atmosphärenbedingungen im Hotspot. Daher ist es notwendig, sowohl die Landoberflächenbedingungen selber, als auch deren Einfluss auf die Kopplungsstärke zu berücksichtigen, um konvektiven Niederschlag akkurat vorhersagen zu können, vor allem in stark gekoppelten Regionen bzw. Zeiträumen. Da L-A Kopplung auch einen prognostischen Wert für Klimaprojektionen und saisonale Vorhersagen hat, trägt ein erhöhtes Verständnis über Ursachen für Variabilität in L-A Kopplungsstärke zu deren Verbesserung bei