This paper focuses on the marine foundation eelgrass species, Zostera marina, along a gradient from the northern Baltic Sea to the north-east Atlantic. This vast region supports a minimum of 1480 km2 eelgrass (maximum >2100 km2), which corresponds to more than four times the previously quantified area of eelgrass in Western Europe.Eelgrass meadows in the low salinity Baltic Sea support the highest diversity (4–6 spp.) of angiosperms overall, but eelgrass productivity is low (<2 g dw m-2 d-1) and meadows are isolated and genetically impoverished. Higher salinity areas support monospecific meadows, with higher productivity (3–10 g dw m-2 d-1) and greater genetic connectivity. The salinity gradient further imposes functional differences in biodiversity and food webs, in particular a decline in number, but increase in biomass of mesograzers in the Baltic.Significant declines in eelgrass depth limits and areal cover are documented, particularly in regions experiencing high human pressure. The failure of eelgrass to re-establish itself in affected areas, despite nutrient reductions and improved water quality, signals complex recovery trajectories and calls for much greater conservation effort to protect existing meadows.The knowledge base for Nordic eelgrass meadows is broad and sufficient to establish monitoring objectives across nine national borders. Nevertheless, ensuring awareness of their vulnerability remains challenging. Given the areal extent of Nordic eelgrass systems and the ecosystem services they provide, it is crucial to further develop incentives for protecting them. © 2014 The Authors. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

a synthesis of phenotypic and quantitative genomic traits is provided for bacteria and archaea, in the form of a scripted, reproducible workflow that standardizes and merges 26 sources. The resulting unified dataset covers 14 phenotypic traits, 5 quantitative genomic traits, and 4 environmental characteristics for approximately 170,000 strain-level and 15,000 species-aggregated records. It spans all habitats including soils, marine and fresh waters and sediments, host-associated and thermal. trait data can find use in clarifying major dimensions of ecological strategy variation across species. They can also be used in conjunction with species and abundance sampling to characterize trait mixtures in communities and responses of traits along environmental gradients.

No abstract

No abstract

1. We analysed photosynthetic rates and inorganic carbon use of thirty-five vascular macrophyte spedes collected submerged in eight nutrient-and CO2-rich Danish lowland streams. The spedes were classified in four groups as mainly terrestrial, homophyllous and heterophyllous amphibious and truly submerged. These groups represent plant spedes differently adapted to life in water. 2. Photosynthetic rates measured in water increased in the gradual transition from mainly terrestrial, through amphibious to truly submerged spedes. Spedes normally in contact with air adapted to submergence by increasing the photosynthetic rate at limiting CO2. Photosynthetic rates of submerged parts of heterophyllous amphibious species were close to those of submerged species. Submerged spedes with thin or finely dissected leaves had the highest photosynthetic rates, probably because of low diffusional resistance to uptake of nutrients and gases. 3. In contrast to submerged spedes, terrestrial and amphibious spedes were unable to use HCO3". Extensive oversaturation with CO2 in the streams allows, however, many amphibious spedes to photosynthesize well under water, based on CO2-use alone. Amphibious CO2-users, with very few structural adaptations to life under water, can therefore be as dominant in the submerged vegetation of lowland streams as HCO3"-using water plants. Moreover, the streams provide open space for colonization from the dense vegetation ashore. 4. Among the 1265 Danish herbaceous spedes no less than seventy-five terrestrial species occasionally grow submerged, forty-five spedes are amphibious, and fifty-one are true water plants. These numbers suggest that adaptation to permanent or temporary submergence is an ongoing process involving many spedes and that the land-water interface does not represent as difficult a barrier as often believed.

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a new software, HER2-CONNECT(TM), for digital image analysis of the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) in breast cancer specimens. The software assesses immunohistochemical (IHC) staining reactions of HER2 based on an algorithm evaluating the cell membrane connectivity. The HER2-CONNECT algorithm was aligned to match digital image scorings of HER2 performed by 5 experienced assessors in a training set and confirmed in a separate validation set. The training set consisted of 167 breast carcinoma tissue core images in which the assessors individually and blinded outlined regions of interest and gave their HER2 score 0/1+/2+/3+ to the specific tumor region. The validation set consisted of 86 core images where the result of the automated image analysis software was correlated to the scores provided by the 5 assessors. HER2 fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was performed on all cores and used as a reference standard. The overall agreement between the image analysis software and the digital scorings of the 5 assessors was 92.1% (Cohen's Kappa: 0.859) in the training set and 92.3% (Cohen's Kappa: 0.864) in the validation set. The image analysis sensitivity was 99.2% and specificity 100% when correlated to FISH. In conclusion, the Visiopharm HER2 IHC algorithm HER2-CONNECT(TM) can discriminate between amplified and non-amplified cases with high accuracy and diminish the equivocal category and thereby provides a promising supplementary diagnostic tool to increase consistency in HER2 assessment.

No abstract

Validation of immunohistochemistry (IHC) assays is a subject that is of great importance to clinical practice as well as basic research and clinical trials. When applied to clinical practice and focused on patient safety, validation of IHC assays creates objective evidence that IHC assays used for patient care are "fit-for-purpose." Validation of IHC assays needs to be properly informed by and modeled to assess the purpose of the IHC assay, which will further determine what sphere of validation is required, as well as the scope, type, and tier of technical validation. These concepts will be defined in this review, part 3 of the 4-part series "Evolution of Quality Assurance for Clinical Immunohistochemistry in the Era of Precision Medicine."