Dataset of building locations in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s

The aim of this study was to create a dataset of building locations in Poland from the 1970s-1980s. The source information was the historical 1:10 000 Polish topographic map. Building footprints were detected and extracted from approximately 8,500 scanned map sheets using the Mask R-CNN model implemented in Esri ArcGIS Pro software, and converted to point building locations. The dataset of building locations covers the entire country and contains approximately 11 million points representing buildings. The accuracy of the dataset was assessed manually on randomly selected map sheets. The overall accuracy is 95% (F1 = 0.98). The dataset may be used in conjunction with various contemporary land use, land cover and cadastral datasets in a broad range of applications related to long-term changes in rural and urban areas, including urban sprawl and its environmental and social consequences. It can also serve as a highly reliable reference dataset for regional or global settlement products derived, e.g., from early Landsat data.

The global wildland-urban interface

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is where buildings and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle1,2. It is where human-environmental conflicts and risks can be concentrated, including the loss of houses and lives to wildfire, habitat loss and fragmentation and the spread of zoonotic diseases3. However, a global analysis of the WUI has been lacking. Here, we present a global map of the 2020 WUI at 10 m resolution using a globally consistent and validated approach based on remote sensing-derived datasets of building area4 and wildland vegetation5. We show that the WUI is a global phenomenon, identify many previously undocumented WUI hotspots and highlight the wide range of population density, land cover types and biomass levels in different parts of the global WUI. The WUI covers only 4.7% of the land surface but is home to nearly half its population (3.5 billion). The WUI is especially widespread in Europe (15% of the land area) and the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome (18%). Of all people living near 2003-2020 wildfires (0.4 billion), two thirds have their home in the WUI, most of them in Africa (150 million). Given that wildfire activity is predicted to increase because of climate change in many regions6, there is a need to understand housing growth and vegetation patterns as drivers of WUI change.

Historical dataset of mills for Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire/southern Poland from 1880 to the 1930s

In this article, we present the dataset of mills from 1880 and 1920s-1930s in the area of the former Galicia (78,500 km2), now in Ukraine and Poland. The data was obtained as a result of manual vectorisation from 162 map sheets at scales of 1:115,200 and 1:100,000, according to the map legends. We found 4022 mill locations for 1880 and 3588 for the 1920s-1930s. We present them as vector points in shapefile, GML, GeoJSON, KML formats with attributes for seven types of mills for 1880 and ten types of mills for 1920s-1930s, and mills counted in a 10 km grid. The data can be used in economic, demographic and environmental reconstructions, e.g. to estimate historical anthropopressure related to settlement, agriculture and forestry. Mills are often associated with river structures such as floodgates, dams, and millraces and therefore they are a good example of human interference in river ecosystems. They can also be one criteria for identifying areas where the local population used traditional environmental knowledge. It can be useful for a contemporary assessment of the environment's suitability for devices using renewable energy sources. Finally, the data on the remains of former mills is suitable for the protection of cultural heritage sites that are technical monuments related to traditional food processing and industry.

Historical dataset of administrative units with social-economic attributes for Austrian Silesia 1837-1910

Scientists from many disciplines need historical administrative boundaries in order to analyse socio-economic data in space and time. In this paper, we present a set of historical data consisting of administrative unit boundaries and exemplary socio-economic attributes for Austrian Silesia, an historical region located in modern Czechia and Poland. The dataset covers nearly 700 administrative unit boundaries on the level of cadastral or political communes and their subparts and was acquired through manual vectorisation of historical maps (1:28,800) from the period 1837-1841. The local-level units can be easily joined into higher-level divisions such as court or political districts for the period 1837-1910. The data can then be combined with statistical data collected approximately every 10 years for a similar period. Within the quality assessment, the relations between cartographic and census data and their credibility are analysed. The present dataset provides many possibilities for joining a wide range of historical statistical data to better understand various demographic and economic processes based on advanced analyses, e.g., by using GIS.

Mid-19th century road network dataset for Galicia and Austrian Silesia, Habsburg Empire

In this paper, we present the vector dataset of the historical road network of Galicia and Austrian Silesia (>80 000 km²) in the mid-19th century – two regions of the former Habsburg Empire, located in Central Europe. The data were acquired manually from 455 map sheets of the Austrian second military survey map (1:28,800) for the four main road categories, according to the map legend. All the road categories present the roads passable at any time of the year, which was strategic information from the military point of view and build a network of 15 461 km. Currently, the data can be used by various researchers studying migrations, regional development, but also human impact on the environment, like land use change, invasive species introduction or landscape fragmentation. The dataset presents the times just before the most dynamic economic changes of the 19th century, which had a great impact on the region. On the other hand, the road network presented here was developed in the conditions of one country, the Habsburg Empire, which collapsed after the First World War, triggering the rise of new states and remodelling the transport network connections in Central Europe. Additionally, the data are accompanied by the layer of towns and villages with more than 2000 inhabitants, based on the 1857 Austrian census data.

MAPPING SECONDARY FOREST SUCCESSION ON ABANDONED AGRICULTURAL LAND IN THE POLISH CARPATHIANS

Land abandonment and secondary forest succession have played a significant role in land cover changes and forest cover increase in mountain areas in Europe over the past several decades. Land abandonment can be easily observed in the field over small areas, but it is difficult to map over the large areas, e.g., with remote sensing, due to its subtle and spatially dispersed character. Our previous paper presented how the LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and topographic data were used to detect secondary forest succession on abandoned land in one commune located in the Polish Carpathians by means of object-based image analysis (OBIA) and GIS (Kolecka et al., 2015). This paper proposes how the method can be applied to efficiently map secondary forest succession over the entire Polish Carpathians, incorporating spatial sampling strategy supported by various ancillary data. Here we discuss the methods of spatial sampling, its limitations and results in the context of future secondary forest succession modelling.

Yeast has homologs (CNA1 and CNA2 gene products) of mammalian calcineurin, a calmodulin-regulated phosphoprotein phosphatase

Calcineurin, or phosphoprotein phosphatase type 2B (PP2B), is a calmodulin-regulated phosphoprotein phosphatase. We isolated a gene encoding a yeast PP2B homolog (CNA1) by screening a yeast genomic DNA library in the expression vector lambda gt11, first with 125I-labeled yeast calmodulin and then with a human cDNA encoding the catalytic (or A) subunit of calcineurin. The predicted CNA1 gene product is 54% identical to its mammalian counterpart. Using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with oligonucleotide primers based on sequences conserved between CNA1 and mammalian PP2B genes, we isolated a second gene, CNA2. CNA2 is identical to PP2Bw, a partial cDNA clone previously described by others as originating from rabbit brain tissue. Our findings demonstrate that a unicellular eukaryote contains phosphoprotein phosphatases of the 2B class. Haploid cells containing a single cna1 or cna2 null mutation, or both mutations, were viable. MATa cna1 cna2 double mutants were more sensitive than wild-type cells or either single mutant to growth arrest induced by the mating pheromone alpha factor and failed to resume growth during continuous exposure to alpha factor. Thus, calcineurin action antagonizes the mating-pheromone response pathway.

Multiple Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase genes in a unicellular eukaryote

We purified a Ca2+/calmodulin (CaM)-dependent protein kinase (CaM kinase) from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae with properties similar to mammalian type II CaM kinases. Degenerate oligonucleotides designed on the basis of the amino acid sequence of tryptic peptides from the 55 kd subunit of the yeast CaM kinase were used to isolate its gene from a set of lambda gt11-yeast genomic DNA phage clones initially selected by the ability to bind 125I-labelled yeast CaM. The cloned gene (CMK1) encodes an open reading frame that is homologous to the sequences of vertebrate type II CaM kinases. Several criteria demonstrated that the CMK1 gene product is the 55 kd polypeptide. Neither over-production (11-fold) nor complete elimination of the CMK1 gene product had any detectably deleterious effect on yeast cell growth. Extracts from cmk1 delta cells, which lacked detectable p55 using an antiserum raised against a Staphylococcus aureus protein A-CMK1 fusion protein, possessed significant residual Ca2+/CAM-dependent protein kinase activity. Using the CMK1 gene as a probe at low stringency, a second gene (CMK2) encoding another CaM-dependent protein kinase with striking sequence similarity to CMK1 was cloned. Deletion of CMK2, or both CMK1 and CMK2, was not lethal, although loss of CMK2 caused a slow rate of spore germination.

Specificity of binding of NH2-terminal residue of proteins to ubiquitin-protein ligase. Use of amino acid derivatives to characterize specific binding sites

Previous studies have indicated that at least part of the selection of proteins for degradation takes place at a binding site on ubiquitin-protein ligase, to which the protein substrate is bound prior to ligation to ubiquitin. It was also shown that proteins with free NH2-terminal alpha-NH2 groups bind better to this site than proteins with blocked NH2 termini (Hershko, A., Heller, H., Eytan, E., and Reiss, Y. (1986) J. Biol. Chem. 261, 11992-11999). In the present study, we used simple derivatives of amino acids, such as methyl esters, hydroxamates, or dipeptides, to examine the question of whether the protein binding site of the ligase is able to distinguish between different NH2-terminal residues of proteins. Based on specific patterns of inhibition of the binding to ligase by these derivatives, three types of protein substrates could be distinguished. Type I substrates are proteins that have a basic NH2-terminal residue (such as ribonuclease and lysozyme); these are specifically inhibited by derivatives of the 3 basic amino acids (His, Arg, and Lys) with respect to degradation, ligation to ubiquitin, and binding to ligase. Type II substrates (such as beta-lactoglobulin or pepsinogen, that have a Leu residue at the NH2 terminus) are not affected by the above compounds, but are specifically inhibited by derivatives of bulky hydrophobic amino acids (Leu, Trp, Phe, and Tyr). In these cases, the amino acid derivatives apparently act as specific inhibitors of the binding of the NH2-terminal residue of proteins, as indicated by the following observations: (a) derivatives in which the alpha-NH2 group is blocked were inactive and (b) in dipeptides, the inhibitory amino acid residue had to be at the NH2-terminal position. An additional class (Type III) of substrates comprises proteins that have neither basic nor bulky hydrophobic NH2-terminal amino acid residues; the binding of these proteins is not inhibited by homologous amino acid derivatives that have NH2-terminal residues similar to that of the protein. It is concluded that Type I and Type II proteins bind to distinct and separate subsites of the ligase, specific for basic or bulky hydrophobic NH2-terminal residues, respectively. On the other hand, Type III proteins apparently predominantly interact with the ligase at regions of the protein molecule other than the NH2-terminal residue.