Fungal evolutionary biology is impeded by the scarcity of fossils, irregular life cycles, immortality, and frequent asexual reproduction. Simple and diminutive bodies of fungi develop inside a substrate and have exceptional metabolic and ecological plasticity, which hinders species delimitation. However, the unique fungal traits can shed light on evolutionary forces that shape the environmental adaptations of these taxa. Higher filamentous fungi that disperse through aerial spores produce amphiphilic and highly surface-active proteins called hydrophobins (HFBs), which coat spores and mediate environmental interactions. We exploited a library of HFB-deficient mutants for two cryptic species of mycoparasitic and saprotrophic fungi from the genus Trichoderma (Hypocreales) and estimated fungal development, reproductive potential, and stress resistance. HFB4 and HFB10 were found to be relevant for Trichoderma fitness because they could impact the spore-mediated dispersal processes and control other fitness traits. An analysis in silico revealed purifying selection for all cases except for HFB4 from T. harzianum, which evolved under strong positive selection pressure. Interestingly, the deletion of the hfb4 gene in T. harzianum considerably increased its fitness-related traits. Conversely, the deletion of hfb4 in T. guizhouense led to the characteristic phenotypes associated with relatively low fitness. The net contribution of the hfb4 gene to fitness was found to result from evolutionary tradeoffs between individual traits. Our analysis of HFB-dependent fitness traits has provided an evolutionary snapshot of the selective pressures and speciation process in closely related fungal species.

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Helium atom scattering (HAS) was used to study the antimony Sb(111) surface beyond the hard-wall model. HAS angular distributions and drift spectra show a number of selective adsorption resonance features, which correspond to five bound-state energies for He atoms trapped in the surface-averaged He-Sb(111) potential. As their best representation, a 9-3 potential with a depth of 4.4 ± 0.1 meV was determined. Furthermore, the charge density corrugation of the surface was analyzed using close-coupling calculations. By using a hybrid potential, consisting of a corrugated Morse potential (short range) and a 9-3 potential (long range), a peak-to-peak corrugation of 17% was obtained. The kinematic focusing effects that occurred were in good agreement with surface phonon dispersion curves from already published density functional perturbation theory calculations.

Elastic and inelastic close-coupling (CC) calculations have been used to extract information about the corrugation amplitude and the surface vibrational atomic displacement by fitting to several experimental diffraction patterns. To model the three-dimensional interaction between the He atom and the Bi(111) surface under investigation, a corrugated Morse potential has been assumed. Two different types of calculations are used to obtain theoretical diffraction intensities at three surface temperatures along the two symmetry directions. Type one consists of solving the elastic CC (eCC) and attenuating the corresponding diffraction intensities by a global Debye–Waller (DW) factor. The second one, within a unitary theory, is derived from merely solving the inelastic CC (iCC) equations, where no DW factor is necessary to include. While both methods arrive at similar predictions for the peak-to-peak corrugation value, the variance of the value obtained by the iCC method is much better. Furthermore, the more extensive calculation is better suited to model the temperature induced signal asymmetries and renders the inclusion for a second Debye temperature for the diffraction peaks futile.

Image and signal analysis applications are substantial in scientific research. Both open source and commercial packages provide a wide range of functions for image and signal analysis, which are sometimes supported very well by the communities in the corresponding fields. Commercial software packages have the major drawback of being expensive and having undisclosed source code, which hampers extending the functionality if there is no plugin interface or similar option available. However, both variants cannot cover all possible use cases and sometimes custom developments are unavoidable, requiring open source applications. In this paper we describe IQM, a completely free, portable and open source (GNU GPLv3) image and signal analysis application written in pure Java. IQM does not depend on any natively installed libraries and is therefore runnable out-of-the-box. Currently, a continuously growing repertoire of 50 image and 16 signal analysis algorithms is provided. The modular functional architecture based on the three-tier model is described along the most important functionality. Extensibility is achieved using operator plugins, and the development of more complex workflows is provided by a Groovy script interface to the JVM. We demonstrate IQM’s image and signal processing capabilities in a proof-of-principle analysis and provide example implementations to illustrate the plugin framework and the scripting interface. IQM integrates with the popular ImageJ image processing software and is aiming at complementing functionality rather than competing with existing open source software. Machine learning can be integrated into more complex algorithms via the WEKA software package as well, enabling the development of transparent and robust methods for image and signal analysis.

The Bi(111) surface was studied by elastic scattering of helium atoms at temperatures between 118 and 423 K. The observed diffraction patterns with clear peaks up to third order were used to model the surface corrugation using the eikonal approximation as well as the GR method. Best fit results were obtained with a rather large corrugation height compared to other surfaces with metallic character. The corrugation shows a slight enhancement of the surface electron density in between the positions of the surface atoms. The vibrational dynamics of Bi(111) were investigated by measurements of the Debye-Waller attenuation of the elastic diffraction peaks and a surface Debye temperature of (84 ± 8) K was determined. A decrease of the surface Debye temperature at higher temperatures that was recently observed on Bi nanofilms could not be confirmed in the case of our single-crystal measurements.

Elastic and inelastic scattering of helium atoms has been used to study the Bi(111) surface. Sharp diffraction peaks are found with results in excellent agreement with previous structure determinations of the Bi(111) surface. The rather large first order peaks with respect to the zero order peak indicate a stronger surface corrugation than observed in helium scattering from other metallic surfaces. Time-of-flight spectra of scattered He atoms clearly reveal two inelastic scattering maxima, which allow a first report on phonon creation and annihilation events on the Bi(111) surface. An estimate of the group velocity shows that the phonon creation peak is likely to correspond to a Rayleigh mode.

The converted time-of-flight (TOF) spectra shown in Fig. 2 have been inadvertently mixed up with the ones already shown in Fig. 3. The correct Fig. 2 is shown here. The caption of Fig. 2 and the conclusions of the article are unchanged. FIG. 2. (Color online) *tamtoegl@tugraz.at