The MIGCLIM R package - seamless integration of dispersal constraints into projections of species distribution models

The MIGCLIM R package is a function library for the open source R software that enables the implementation of species-specific dispersal constraints into projections of species distribution models under environmental change and/or landscape fragmentation scenarios. The model is based on a cellular automaton and the basic modeling unit is a cell that is inhabited or not. Model parameters include dispersal distance and kernel, long distance dispersal, barriers to dispersal, propagule production potential and habitat invasibility. The MIGCLIM R package has been designed to be highly flexible in the parameter values it accepts, and to offer good compatibility with existing species distribution modeling software. Possible applications include the projection of future species distributions under environmental change conditions and modeling the spread of invasive species.

Influence of Individual Characteristics on Work Engagement and Job Stress in a Sample of National and Foreign Workers in Switzerland

In most Western postindustrial societies today, the population is aging, businesses are faced with global integration, and important migration flows are taking place. Increasingly work organizations are hiring crossnational and multicultural workteams. In this situation it is important to understand the influence of certain individual and cultural characteristics on the process of professional integration. The present study explores the links between personality traits, demographic characteristics (age, sex, education, income, and nationality), work engagement, and job stress. The sample consisted of 618 participants, including 394 Swiss workers (200 women, 194 men) and 224 foreigners living and working in Switzerland (117 women, 107 men). Each participant completed the NEO-FFI, the UWES, and the GWSS questionnaires. Our results show an interaction between age and nationality with respect to work engagement and general job stress. The levels of work engagement and job stress appear to increase with age among national wotkers, whereas they decrease among foreign workers. In addition, work engagement was negatively associated with Neuroticism and positively with the other four personality dimensions. Finally, job stress was positively associated with Neuroticism and Conscientiousness, and negatively associated with Extraversion. However, the strength of these relationships appeared to vary according to the worker's nationality, age, sex, education, and income.

Integration and development in schizotypy research : an introduction to the special supplement

In its fifth decade of existence, the construct of schizotypy is recapturing the early scientific interest it attracted when Paul E. Meehl (1920-2003), who coined the term, pioneered the field of schizotypy research. The International Lemanic Workshop on Schizotypy, hosted at the University of Geneva in December 2013, recently offered an opportunity to address some of the fundamental questions in contemporary schizotypy research and situate the construct in the greater scheme of future scientific projects on schizophrenia and psychological health research. What kind of knowledge has schizotypy research provided in furthering our understanding of schizophrenia? What types of questions can schizotypy research tackle, and which are the conceptual and methodological frameworks to address them? How will schizotypy research contribute to future scientific endeavors? The International Lemanic Workshop brought together leading experts in the field around the tasks of articulating the essential findings in schizotypy research, as well as providing some key insights and guidance to face scientific challenges of the future. The current supplement contains 8 position articles, 4 research articles, and 1 invited commentary that outline the state of the art in schizotypy research today

Mechanisms governing lentivirus integration site selection.

An essential step of the life cycle of retroviruses is the stable insertion of a copy of their DNA genome into the host cell genome, and lentiviruses are no exception. This integration step, catalyzed by the viral-encoded integrase, ensures long-term expression of the viral genes, thus allowing a productive viral replication and rendering retroviral vectors also attractive for the field of gene therapy. At the same time, this ability to integrate into the host genome raises safety concerns regarding the use of retroviral-based gene therapy vectors, due to the genomic locations of integration sites. The availability of the human genome sequence made possible the analysis of the integration site preferences, which revealed to be nonrandom and retrovirus-specific, i.e. all lentiviruses studied so far favor integration in active transcription units, while other retroviruses have a different integration site distribution. Several mechanisms have been proposed that may influence integration targeting, which include (i) chromatin accessibility, (ii) cell cycle effects, and (iii) tethering proteins. Recent data provide evidence that integration site selection can occur via a tethering mechanism, through the recruitment of the lentiviral integrase by the cellular LEDGF/p75 protein, both proteins being the two major players in lentiviral integration targeting.

Regional-scale integration of multi-scale hydrological and geophysical data using a two-step Bayesian sequential simulation approach

Significant progress has been made with regard to the quantitative integration of geophysical and hydrological data at the local scale for the purpose of improving predictions of groundwater flow and solute transport. However, extending corresponding approaches to the regional scale still represents one of the major challenges in the domain of hydrogeophysics. To address this problem, we have developed a regional-scale data integration methodology based on a two-step Bayesian sequential simulation approach. Our objective is to generate high-resolution stochastic realizations of the regional-scale hydraulic conductivity field in the common case where there exist spatially exhaustive but poorly resolved measurements of a related geophysical parameter, as well as highly resolved but spatially sparse collocated measurements of this geophysical parameter and the hydraulic conductivity. To integrate this multi-scale, multi-parameter database, we first link the low- and high-resolution geophysical data via a stochastic downscaling procedure. This is followed by relating the downscaled geophysical data to the high-resolution hydraulic conductivity distribution. After outlining the general methodology of the approach, we demonstrate its application to a realistic synthetic example where we consider as data high-resolution measurements of the hydraulic and electrical conductivities at a small number of borehole locations, as well as spatially exhaustive, low-resolution estimates of the electrical conductivity obtained from surface-based electrical resistivity tomography. The different stochastic realizations of the hydraulic conductivity field obtained using our procedure are validated by comparing their solute transport behaviour with that of the underlying ?true? hydraulic conductivity field. We find that, even in the presence of strong subsurface heterogeneity, our proposed procedure allows for the generation of faithful representations of the regional-scale hydraulic conductivity structure and reliable predictions of solute transport over long, regional-scale distances.