Behavioural Aspects of Office Space Structures in the City: The Case of Warsaw’s Business Districts

Agglomeration and urbanisation externalities accelerate the concentration of commercial activities in the urban space and the creation of business districts. As a result, besides the usual central business district (CBD), large cities also have more recent, peripheral, and specialised secondary business districts (SBDs). There is little substantial research on the formation of SBDs in rapidly globalising, semi-peripheral locations, especially in post-socialist metropolises of Central and Eastern Europe. This includes Warsaw, Poland, which is being transformed into an emerging global metropolis. The article aims to determine the differences between the CBD and the SBD in Warsaw in terms of their attractiveness to companies and employees and the spatial behaviours of employees, especially in terms of transport and shopping. The research hypotheses indicate the differences between the two districts in terms of the type of agglomeration economies, transport accessibility, and components of the competitive advantage, as well as the characteristics of companies in those districts. The data are from a survey conducted in 2017–2018 among companies and their employees in both business districts, and they are analysed using basic statistical techniques and discriminatory analysis. The results confirmed there are significant differences between the two Warsaw business areas, mainly in terms of their transport accessibility and urbanisation externalities. In terms of transport, there is a greater role for public transport and rail in the CBD and for motorway and airport proximity in the SBD. Urbanisation externalities are significantly diminished by the traffic congestion in the SBD. The study also revealed that the development of commercial areas in Warsaw—a post-socialist city with a neoliberal model of spatial planning—follows only in some aspects the spatial patterns of business areas in other Western European metropolises.

Global Analysis of the Relationship between Reconstructed Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) and Gross Primary Production (GPP)

Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is increasingly known as an effective proxy for plant photosynthesis, and therefore, has great potential in monitoring gross primary production (GPP). However, the relationship between SIF and GPP remains highly uncertain across space and time. Here, we analyzed the SIF (reconstructed, SIFc)–GPP relationships and their spatiotemporal variability, using GPP estimates from FLUXNET2015 and two spatiotemporally contiguous SIFc datasets (CSIF and GOSIF). The results showed that SIFc had significant positive correlations with GPP at the spatiotemporal scales investigated (p < 0.001). The generally linear SIFc–GPP relationships were substantially affected by spatial and temporal scales and SIFc datasets. The GPP/SIFc slope of the evergreen needleleaf forest (ENF) biome was significantly higher than the slopes of several other biomes (p < 0.05), while the other 11 biomes showed no significant differences in the GPP/SIFc slope between each other (p > 0.05). Therefore, we propose a two-slope scheme to differentiate ENF from non-ENF biome and synopsize spatiotemporal variability of the GPP/SIFc slope. The relative biases were 7.14% and 11.06% in the estimated cumulative GPP across all EC towers, respectively, for GOSIF and CSIF using a two-slope scheme. The significantly higher GPP/SIFc slopes of the ENF biome in the two-slope scheme are intriguing and deserve further study. In addition, there was still considerable dispersion in the comparisons of CSIF/GOSIF and GPP at both site and biome levels, calling for discriminatory analysis backed by higher spatial resolution to systematically address issues related to landscape heterogeneity and mismatch between SIFc pixel and the footprints of flux towers and their impacts on the SIF–GPP relationship.

Identification of Novel GSK-3β Inhibitors through Docking Based Virtual Screening and Biological Evaluation

GSK-3β is a key regulator in insulin, Wnt and NF-κB signaling pathways. Dysregulation of GSK-3β is often related to tumors and diabetes. Inhibiting it might provide cure for diabetes, tumors, neurodegeneration and brain ischemia. Although there are a number of reported GSK-3β inhibitors, the scaffold is limited. Herein we report a discriminatory analysis-based molecular docking on the Specs database, and identified 3 novel GSK-3β inhibitors with moderate IC50 (ranging from 17.42 μM to 6.74 μM) in the following in vitro biological test. Further dynamic simulations and docking pose analysis were performed to give a better understanding on the binding conformation of 3 hit compounds AK- 777/09836064, AK-968/37185006 and AN-698/41607072, which would provide basis for further optimization.

NMR-Based Metabolomic Analyses to Identify the Effect of Harvesting Frequencies on the Leaf Metabolite Profile of a Moringa oleifera Cultivar Grown in an Open Hydroponic System

Moringa oleifera Lam. is one of the world’s most useful medicinal plants. Different parts of the M. oleifera tree contain a rich profile of important minerals, proteins, vitamins, and various important bioactive compounds. However, there are differences in the phytochemical composition of the medicinal plant’s raw materials due to seasonal variation, cultivation practices, and post-harvest processing. The main objective of this study was therefore to determine the effect of harvesting frequencies on selected bioactive compounds of a M. oleifera cultivar (PKM1) grown in a hydroponic system under a shade net structure. Three harvesting frequency treatments were applied in the study, with the plants harvested at every 30 days (high frequency), 60 days (intermediate frequency), and 90 days (low frequency) respectively. 1H-NMR was used for data acquisition, and multivariate data analysis by means of principal component analysis (PCA), partial least square discriminatory analysis (PLS-DA), and orthogonal partial least square discriminatory analysis (OPLS-DA) were applied to determine the changes in the leaf metabolite profile, and also to identify the spectral features contributing to the separation of samples. Targeted metabolite analysis was used to match the NMR peaks of the compounds with the NMR chemical shifts of the contribution plot. The contribution plot showed that the increase in concentration of some compounds in aliphatic, sugar and aromatic regions contributed to the separation of the samples. The results revealed that intermediate and low harvesting frequencies resulted in a change in the leaf metabolite profile. Compounds such as chlorogenic acid, ferulic acid, vanillic acid, wogonin, esculetin, niazirin, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) showed an increase under intermediate and low harvesting frequencies. These results provide insight into the effect of harvesting frequencies on the metabolite profile and associated medicinal activity of M. oleifera.

Forensic features and genetic legacy of the Baloch population of Pakistan and the Hazara population across Durand-line revealed by Y chromosomal STRs

ABSTRACTHazara population across Durand-line has experienced extensive interaction with Central Asian and East Asian populations. Hazara individuals have typical Mongolian facial appearances and they called themselves descendants of Genghis Khan’s army. The people who speak the Balochi language are called Baloch. Previously, a worldwide analysis of Y-chromosomal haplotype diversity for rapidly mutating (RM) Y-STRs and with PowerPlex Y23 System (Promega Corporation Madison, USA) kit was created with collaborative efforts, but Baloch and Hazara population from Pakistan and Hazara population from Afghanistan were missing. A limited data with limited number of markers and samples is available which poorly define these populations. So, in the current study, Yfiler Plus PCR Amplification Kit loci were examined in 260 unrelated Hazara individuals from Afghanistan, 153 Hazara individuals, and 111 Balochi individuals from Baluchistan Pakistan. For the Hazara population from Afghanistan and Pakistan overall, 380 different haplotypes were observed on these 27 Y-STR loci, gene diversities ranged from 0.51288 (DYS389I) to 0.9257 (DYF387S1) and haplotype diversity was 0.9992 +/- 0.0004. For the Baloch population, every individual was unique at 27 Y-STR loci, gene diversity ranged from 0.5718 (DYS460) to 0.9371(DYF387S1). Twelve haplotypes shared between 178 individuals while only two haplotypes among these twelve were shared between 87 individuals in Hazara populations. Rst and Fst pairwise genetic distance analyses, multidimensional scaling (MDS) plot, Neighbor-joining (NJ) tree, linear discriminatory analysis (LDA), and median-joining network (MJNs) were performed, which shed light on the history of Hazara and Baloch populations. Interestingly null alleles were observed at DYS448 with specific mutation patterns in Hazara populations. The results of our study showed that the Yfiler Plus PCR Amplification Kit marker set provided substantially stronger discriminatory power in the Baloch population of Pakistan and the Hazara population across the Durand-line.