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The crayfish Orconectes limosus was first found in the Grodno province of Belarus in June, 1997. It has immigrated from Poland and at present has become established in the rivers Shlyamitsa, Marykha, and Chernaya Gancha, and the Avgustovsky Channel. It is thought to have been in this region for about 6–10 years. Along these rivers, Orconectes limosus has penetrated into the Neman River draining to the Baltic Sea. A stable population of the intruder is known in the Shlyamitsa. The single trap catch per day amounted to 22 individuals. Mean sizes were 7.49 ± 0.76 cm for females and 7.42 ± 0.74 cm for males. Orconectes limosus has been found in the diet of the perch (Perca fluviatilis),burbot (Lota lota),and mink (Mustela vison).

This article examines the firm-level and regional determinants of inward FDI into Polish firms in the framework of sectoral analysis. All Polish companies with foreign capital (21 895 firms) were divided into three basic groups: firms of manufacturing sector (11 064 firms), services (6718) and sales (4149). This investigation includes the period from 2003 to 2012 (10 years). The main aim of this article is to determine what factors (firm-level or regional) have more impact on FDI attraction and how their impact depends on a sector which a host firm operates in. The firm-level characteristics which were used in this analysis were total assets of a host firm, its productivity, firm size, R&D expenditure, level of high-skilled workers and age of a recipient firm. The regional determinants of inward FDI into Polish firms were: the economic potential of a region in which a firm operates, the road and rail road density of this region and the location of a firm: closer to EU or non-EU countries and closer to seaside or to the capital city – Warsaw.

The storage protein napin is one of the major protein components of Brassica napus L. (oilseed rape) seeds. To investigate the transcriptional regulation of the napin promoter, different constructs of the napin gene napA promoter were fused to the Escherichia coli uidA gene and transformed into B. napus. A-152-bp promoter construct directed a strong expression of the marker gene in mature seeds. The 5' deletion of an additional 8 completely abolished this activity. This deletion disrupted sequence motifs that are similar to an E-box, (CA decreases NNTG) and an ABRE (CGCCA decreases CGTGTCC) element (identify is indicated by bold face). Further, internal deletion of a segment corresponding to -133 to -121 caused an eightfold reduction in the activity of the -152 construct. This region contains an element, CAAACAC, conserved in many storage-protein gene promoters. These results imply that the E-box/ABRE-like sequence is a major motif of the napA promoter and suggest that the CAAACAC sequence is important for high activity of the napA promoter. Similar results have been obtained by analysing some of the constructs in transgenic tobacco, suggesting that many of the cis-elements in the napA promoter are conserved, at least in dicotyledonous species.