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A questionnaire survey was carried out to examine the problems caused by invasive alien species (IAS) in Hungarian protected areas (PAs). Results from 144 PAs were evaluated and compared with a previous study of 21 European countries. In the European survey, the most important threats were habitat loss and fragmentation, Hungarian respondents put IAS in first place. Eradication, control and prevention were mentioned among the best strategies against invasive species in both surveys, but Hungarian PA managers emphasized the efficiency of habitat restoration and regulatory as well. Comparing the harmful animals and plants occurring in most Hungarian and European PAs, we found nearly 30% similarity. In most Hungarian PAs domestic cat (Felis catus Linnaeus, 1758) and black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia L.) were indicated as most harmful species. The results of our study draw the attention to the species, which are highly invasive in Hungary, but are missing from the European PAs list, therefore may pose a potential threat to other protected areas of Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Hungarian stay-at-home father—working-mother families from a point of view of how the distribution of unpaid domestic work develops during the period when the father stays at home with his child(ren). It answers the question of what principles and implemented practices govern the division of household labour in these families. According to the perception of the traditional parental role, unpaid domestic work, such as family duties, routine housework, and care work are the responsibility of mothers, while fathers are responsible for the financial stability of the family. In addition to the once prevailing breadwinner father role, nowadays the egalitarian model is becoming increasingly prominent. In parallel, a new father type appears according to which a good father wants to be more involved in the everyday life of the child. An extreme case of this type of involvement is when the father stays at home with his child(ren) and becomes the primary caregiver, and the mother assumes the role of breadwinner. The ratio of such families is growing around the world, but we still know relatively little about them. Our gap-filling, qualitative research is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 31 Hungarian stay-at-home fathers supplemented by a short questionnaire with their partners. The data were analyzed by thematic analysis method. As a main conclusion we could identify two clearly distinguishable groups among the examined couples: families with a rather traditional approach, and families having more egalitarian values concerning gender roles. However, the findings suggest that all of these families can be characterised by egalitarian sharing practices of duties, and at the same time by undoing gender. The distribution of routine housework and care work is based on a time availability perspective, which does not specify any masculine or feminine family duty or work.

The study of a graph theory model of certain telecommunications network problems lead to the concept of path-pairability, a variation of weak linkedness of graphs. A graph G is k-path-pairable if for any set of 2k distinct vertices, si, ti, 1 ≤ i ≤ k, there exist pairwise edge-disjoint si, ti-paths in G, for 1 ≤ i ≤ k. The path-pairability number is the largest k such that G is k-path-pairable. Cliques, stars, the Cartesian product of two cliques (of order at least three) are ‘fully pairable’; that is ⌊n/2⌋-pairable, where n is the order of the graph. Here we determine the path-pairability number of the Cartesian product of two stars.

The two significant factors that influence subjective wellbeing are job and life satisfaction, so the work–life balance, that is, balancing between the two areas, is related to several wellbeing outcomes. This issue is of particular interest in those families, where, even if only temporarily, they have chosen the non-traditional sharing of roles, in which the father becomes the primary caregiver and the mother assumes the role of breadwinner. Very few Hungarian studies focus on families where the mother is the prime breadwinner and there has been no research specifically relating to stay-at-home father–working mother families. The qualitative gap filling research that we conducted was utilized to explore the relationship between achieving work-life balance and wellbeing in case of Hungarian stay-at-home father–working mother couples. A total of 31 families were examined through a semi-structured in-depth interview with the fathers and a short questionnaire with the mothers. All participants were white, heterosexual couples with one to four children. As a result of the analysis, four typical patterns in terms of the stay-at-home father and working mother family dynamics could be identified, including to what extent this non-traditional family format contributes to the father’s, mother’s, or both of their wellbeing.

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Six apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) variants containing the following amino acid changes: Pro3—-Arg, Pro4—-Arg, Lys107—-0 (Lys deletion) Lys107—-Met, Pro165—-Arg, and Glu198—-Lys, and the corresponding normal allele products, were isolated by preparative isoelectric focusing from heterozygous individuals. The apoA-I samples were reconstituted with palmitoyloleoyl phosphatidylcholine (POPC) or dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine (DPPC), and small amounts of cholesterol, into discoidal high density lipoprotein (HDL) complexes in order to examine their lipid binding and structural properties as well as their ability to activate lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT). Starting with initial molar ratios around 100:5:1 for phosphatidylcholine-cholesterol-apolipoprotein, all the normal and variant apoA-Is were completely incorporated into reconstituted HDL (rHDL). The rHDL particle sizes and their distributions were examined by nondenaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, before and after incubation with LDL, to assess the folding of apoA-I in the complexes. Intrinsic Trp fluorescence properties of the rHDL were measured, as a function of temperature and guanidine hydrochloride concentration, to detect conformational differences in the apoA-I variants. In addition, the LCAT reaction kinetics were measured with all the rHDL, and the apparent kinetic constants were compared. In terms of the structure of the rHDL particles, all the normal variant apoA-Is had similar sizes (94, 96 A) and size distributions, and indistinguishable fluorescence properties, with the exception of the Lys107—-0 mutant. This variant formed slightly larger particles that were resistant to rearrangements in the presence of LDL, and had an altered apoA-I conformation in the vicinity of the Trp residues. The kinetic experiments with LCAT indicated that the apoA-I variants, Lys107—-0 and Pro165—-Arg, in rHDL particles had statistically different (30 to 90%) kinetic constants from the corresponding normal allele products; however, the variability in the kinetic constants among the normal apoA-I products was even greater (40 to 430%). Therefore, we conclude that the effects of these six mutations in apoA-I on the activation of LCAT are minor, and that the structural effects on rHDL, and possibly native HDL, are insignificant with the exception of the Lys107—-0 mutation.

The rate of lipolytic enzyme-catalyzed reactions yielding water-soluble products can be measured by isobaric titration. The method is based upon the measurement of the amount of substrate that must be added to a monalayer to maintain constant surface pressure during the course of the enzymatic reaction. The rate constants determined for the hydrolysis of trioctanion and 1,2-diotanoin by pancreatic lipase were identical with those determined by the variable surface pressure method and by a radioactive substrate technique. This direct titrimetric method has a wider dynamic range and more versatility for following surface reactions that previously described systems.

In this study we examined the transfer of lipids between reconstituted high density lipoprotein discs (r-HDL) and human low density lipoproteins (LDL) in the presence and absence of lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT) or of plasma phospholipid transfer protein (PLTP). We found that spontaneous transfer of phospholipids from r-HDL to LDL occurred by an apparent first order reaction with a half-time of 5.8 to 6.9 hr depending on the phospholipid. During the time of incubation of r-HDL with LDL (from 0 to 25 hr), the phospholipid content of r-HDL decreased more than 30%, the free cholesterol content increased 2.5-fold, and low levels of cholesteryl esters appeared in r-HDL. These compositional changes gave rise to small discoidal particles with a limiting diameter of 77 A and two molecules of apoA-I per particle. When LCAT was included in the reaction mixture, the r-HDL lost even more phospholipid, lost some free cholesterol, and gained cholesteryl esters relative to the apolipoprotein content, due to the enzymatic reaction. The products of the LCAT reaction had a diameter of 93 A and three, rather than two, apoA-I molecules per particle. Inclusion of PLTP into the reaction mixture accelerated the transfer of phospholipids (half-time of 1.7 hr) and the formation of the 77 A product. In addition to these compositional and morphological changes, which may be important in the interconversions of native HDL subspecies, the prolonged incubations revealed some slow reactions, such as the esterification of LDL cholesterol by LCAT, a background formation of cholesteryl esters in r-HDL, and an apparent hydrolysis of cholesteryl esters in LDL in the presence of r-HDL.

A connected matching in a graph is a collection of edges that are pairwise disjoint but joined by another edge of the graph. Motivated by applications to Hadwiger’s conjecture, Plummer, Stiebitz, and Toft (2003) introduced connected matchings and proved that, given a positive integer k , determining whether a graph has a connected matching of size at least k is NP-complete. Cameron (2003) proved that this problem remains NP-complete on bipartite graphs, but can be solved in polynomial-time on chordal graphs. We present a polynomial-time algorithm that finds a maximum connected matching in a chordal bipartite graph. This includes a novel edge-without-vertex-elimination ordering of independent interest. We give several applications of the algorithm, including computing the Hadwiger number of a chordal bipartite graph, solving the unit-time bipartite margin-shop scheduling problem in the case in which the bipartite complement of the precedence graph is chordal bipartite, and determining–in a totally balanced binary matrix–the largest size of a square sub-matrix that is permutation equivalent to a matrix with all zero entries above the main diagonal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]