Analyzing the pattern and causes of phenotypic and genetic variation within and among populations might help to understand life history variability in plants, and to predict their responses to changing environmental conditions. Here we compare phenotypic variation and genetic diversity of the widespread herb Plantago coronopus across Europe, and evaluate their relationship with environmental an...

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) ORF5 gene sequences were generated by RT-PCR from 55 field isolates collected in Illinois and eastern Iowa. Spatial and temporal patterns of genetic variation in the virus were examined on a local geographical scale in order to test the hypothesis that the genetic similarity of PRRSV isolates (measured as their percentage pairwise ORF5...

It has long been argued that populations living on the edges of the species geographical range should exhibit stronger environmentally imposed variations in abundances than populations living near the centre of this range. This so-called ‘Species Range Hypothesis’ is tested here for the recruitment of 62 marine fish populations of the northeast Atlantic, belonging to 17 species. The pattern of ...

Plant distributions are dynamic but the role of plant-insect interactions in controlling range dynamics is not well understood. Enemy release, for example could facilitate plant range expansion under climate change. We conducted a transplant experiment with the evergreen tree Ilex aquifolium L. in both the historical and the expanding range in Denmark to study possible effects of geographical p...

BACKGROUND Switzerland had the highest life expectancy at 82.8 years among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in 2011. Geographical variation of life expectancy and its relation to the socioeconomic position of neighbourhoods are, however, not well understood. METHODS We analysed the Swiss National Cohort, which linked the 2000 census with mortality re...

In recent years, a growing interest has been given to trajectory data mining applications that permit to support mobility prediction with the aim of anticipating or pre-fetching possible services. Proposed approaches typically consider only spatio-temporal information provided by collected trajectories. However, in some scenarios, such as that of tourist supporting, semantic information which e...

The 1999 outbreak of West Nile (WN) virus in the northeastern United States was the first known natural occurrence of this flavivirus in the Western Hemisphere. In 1999 and 2000, 82 independent Connecticut WN virus isolates were cultured from nine species of birds, five species of mosquitoes, and one striped skunk. Nucleotide sequences obtained from these isolates identified 30 genetic changes,...

This research investigates the influence of place of residence and diabetic patient's socioeconomic position on their use of health services in a universal health care system. This retrospective cross-sectional population-based study is based on the joint use of the Health Insurance information systems, an ecological indicator of social deprivation and an indicator of potential spatial accessib...

various and complex human activities in geographical contexts need proper ground if at most efficiency is to be achieved. land preparation regulates the relationship between human, space, and human activities. land preparation has various dimensions related to value system, political, scientific, artistic, and defense-security aspects. one of the most important dimensions of land preparation is...