The Role of Small and Medium-sized Centers for Territorial Development in Switzerland

This paper describes the role of small and medium-sized urban centers in Switzerland. Switzerland is a highly urbanized country where small and medium-sized urban centers play an important role in ensuring a balanced national urban system. Besides the four largest metropolitan regions （Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Bern）, small and medium-sized towns function as central places for a wider, often extensive hinterland. They provide opportunities for living and working and they connect rural and mountain regions to national and international networks. Using secondary statistics and a case study, the paper shows that small and medium-sized urban centers are home to significant concentrations of export-oriented industries. Firms in these value-adding secondary sectors are rooted in these places and benefit from strong local embeddedness while also being oriented towards global markets. Small and medium-sized urban centers also profit from their strong local identities. While these places face various challenges, they function as important pillars in creating a balanced regional development pattern. Swiss regional development policy follows the goal of polycentric spatial development and it employs various instruments that aim to ensure a balanced urban system.

Balanced bilinguals favor lexical processing in their opaque language and conversion system in their shallow language

Referred to as orthographic depth, the degree of consistency of grapheme/phoneme correspondences varies across languages from high in shallow orthographies to low in deep orthographies. The present study investigates the impact of orthographic depth on reading route by analyzing evoked potentials to words in a deep (French) and shallow (German) language presented to highly proficient bilinguals. ERP analyses to German and French words revealed significant topographic modulations 240-280ms post-stimulus onset, indicative of distinct brain networks engaged in reading over this time window. Source estimations revealed that these effects stemmed from modulations of left insular, inferior frontal and dorsolateral regions (German>French) previously associated to phonological processing. Our results show that reading in a shallow language was associated to a stronger engagement of phonological pathways than reading in a deep language. Thus, the lexical pathways favored in word reading are reinforced by phonological networks more strongly in the shallow than deep orthography.

Spider Venoms Potentially Lethal to Humans

Spiders have one pair of venom glands, and only a few families have reduced them completely (Uloboridae, Holarchaeidae) or modified them to another function (Symphytognathidae or Scytodidae, see Suter and Stratton 2013). All other 42,000 known spider species (99%) utilize their venom to inject it into prey items, which subsequently become paralysed or are killed. Spider venom is a complex mixture of hundreds of components, many of them interacting with cell membranes or receptors located mainly in the nervous or muscular system (Herzig and King 2013). Spider venom, as it is today, has a 300-million-yearlong history of evolution and adaptation and can be considered as an optimized tool to subdue prey. In Mesothelae, the oldest spider group with less than 100 species, the venom glands lie in the anterior part of the cheliceral basal segment. They are very small and do not support the predation process very effectively. In Mygalomorphae, the venom glands are well developed and fill the basal cheliceral segment more or less completely. Many of these 3,000 species are medium- to large-/very large-sized spiders, and they have created the image of being dangerous beasts, attacking and killing a variety of animals, including humans. Although this picture is completely wrong, it is persistent and contributes considerably to human arachnophobia. The third group of spiders, Araneomorphae or “modern spiders”, comprises 93% of all spider species. The venom glands are enlarged and extend to the prosoma; the openings of the venom ducts are moved from the convex to the concave side of the cheliceral fangs and enlarged as well. These changes save the chelicerae from the necessity of being large, and hence, on the average, araneomorph spiders are much smaller than mygalomorphs. Nevertheless, they possess relatively large venom glands, situated mainly in the prosoma, and may also have rather potent venom.

The sub-lethal effects and tissue concentration of the human pharmaceutical atenolol in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss).

Atenolol is a highly prescribed anti-hypertensive pharmaceutical and a member of the group of β-blockers. It has been detected at concentrations ranging from ng L(-1) to low μg L(-1) in waste and surface waters. The present study aimed to assess the sub-lethal effects of atenolol on rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and to determine its tissue-specific bioconcentration. Juvenile rainbow trout were exposed for 21 and 42 days to three concentration levels of atenolol (1 μg L(-1) - environmentally relevant concentration, 10 μg L(-1), and 1000 μg L(-1)). The fish exposed to 1 μg L(-1) atenolol exhibited a higher lactate content in the blood plasma and a reduced haemoglobin content compared with the control. The results show that exposure to atenolol at concentrations greater than or equal to 10 μg L(-1) significantly reduces both the haematocrit value and the glucose concentration in the blood plasma. The activities of the studied antioxidant enzymes (catalase and superoxide dismutase) were not significantly affected by atenolol exposure, and only the highest tested concentration of atenolol significantly reduced the activity of glutathione reductase. The activities of selected CYP450 enzymes were not affected by atenolol exposure. The histological changes indicate that atenolol has an effect on the vascular system, as evidenced by the observed liver congestion and changes in the pericardium and myocardium. Atenolol was found to have a very low bioconcentration factor (the highest value found was 0.27). The bioconcentration levels followed the order liver>kidney>muscle. The concentration of atenolol in the blood plasma was below the limit of quantification (2.0 ng g(-1)). The bioconcentration factors and the activities of selected CYP450 enzymes suggest that atenolol is not metabolised in the liver and may be excreted unchanged.