Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic.

The Black Death (1347-1352 CE) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe's population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic's causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, 'big data palaeoecology', which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death's mortality on a regional scale across Europe.

Equilibrium dynamics of European pre-industrial populations: the evidence of carrying capacity in human agricultural societies.

Human populations tend to grow steadily, because of the ability of people to make innovations, and thus overcome and extend the limits imposed by natural resources. It is therefore questionable whether traditional concepts of population ecology, including environmental carrying capacity, can be applied to human societies. The existence of carrying capacity cannot be simply inferred from population time-series, but it can be indicated by the tendency of populations to return to a previous state after a disturbance.

Human population history revealed by a supertree approach.

Over the past two decades numerous new trees of modern human populations have been published extensively but little attention has been paid to formal phylogenetic synthesis. We utilized the "matrix representation with parsimony" (MRP) method to infer a composite phylogeny (supertree) of modern human populations, based on 257 genetic/genomic, as well as linguistic, phylogenetic trees and 44 admixture plots from 200 published studies (1990-2014). The resulting supertree topology includes the most basal position of S African Khoisan followed by C African Pygmies, and the paraphyletic section of all other sub-Saharan peoples.

Increased diversification rates follow shifts to bisexuality in liverworts.

Shifts in sexual systems are one of the key drivers of species diversification. In contrast to angiosperms, unisexuality prevails in bryophytes. Here, we test the hypotheses that bisexuality evolved from an ancestral unisexual condition and is a key innovation in liverworts.

Historical Biogeography Using Species Geographical Ranges.

Spatial variation in biodiversity is the result of complex interactions between evolutionary history and ecological factors. Methods in historical biogeography combine phylogenetic information with current species locations to infer the evolutionary history of a clade through space and time. A major limitation of most methods for historical biogeographic inference is the requirement of single locations for terminal lineages, reducing contemporary species geographical ranges to a point in two-dimensional space.

Temperature dependence of evolutionary diversification: differences between two contrasting model taxa support the metabolic theory of ecology.

Biodiversity patterns are largely determined by variation of diversification rates across clades and geographic regions. Although there are multiple reasons for this variation, it has been hypothesized that metabolic rate is the crucial driver of diversification of evolutionary lineages. According to the metabolic theory of ecology (MTE), metabolic rate - and consequently speciation - is driven mainly by body size and environmental temperature.

Rapoport's rule, species tolerances, and the latitudinal diversity gradient: geometric considerations.

The most pervasive species-richness pattern, the latitudinal gradient of diversity, has been related to Rapoport's rule, i.e., decreasing latitudinal extent of species' ranges toward the equator.

Species abundance distribution results from a spatial analogy of central limit theorem.

The frequency distribution of species abundances [the species abundance distribution (SAD)] is considered to be a fundamental characteristic of community structure. It is almost invariably strongly right-skewed, with most species being rare. There has been much debate as to its exact properties and the processes from which it results.

The Framingham risk function underestimated absolute coronary heart disease risk in Czech men.

Objectives: The aim was to validate the Framingham coronary heart disease (CHD) risk function with the formula by Wilson et al. (1998) in Czech men.

Methods: The validation was performed within the 20-year primary prevention study of atherosclerotic risk factors (STULONG) including 1417 middle-aged men from the Czech Republic (Prague).

State of the art coronary heart disease risk estimations based on the Framingham heart study.

The aim was to review the most interesting articles dealing with estimations of an individual's absolute coronary heart disease risk based on the Framingham heart study. Besides the Framingham coronary heart disease risk functions, results of validation studies of these Framingham risk functions are discussed. In general, the Framingham risk functions overestimated an individual's absolute risk in external (non-Framingham) populations with a lower occurrence of coronary heart disease compared with the Framingham population, and underestimated it in populations with a higher occurrence of coronary heart disease.

Czech national data standards implementations in ORCA electronic patient record in cardiology.

In the paper we describe the situation concerning Czech data standards and requirements on health care providers. Further we compare the nowadays possibilities of the multimedia electronic patient record ORCA and its extension to fulfill Czech data standards and requirements.

Evaluation of knowledge using ExaMe program on the Internet.

In the paper we describe the function of the ExaMe program that serves for evaluation of students' knowledge using Internet. Evaluation is based on the knowledge base of a given course. Two types of evaluation tests are described.

On development of medical informatics education via European cooperation.

In this paper, we show different activities of the European Center for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology (EuroMISE Center) of Charles University and Academy of Sciences in the field of medical informatics, statistics and epidemiology education and training. The development of these activities started within the TEMPUS-PHARE project in 1993 and they are continuing with the support of another project, particularly the IT EDUCTRA (Information Technologies Education and Training) (Fourth Framework Programme) project. New approaches using the Internet as well as newly developed programmes are described.

Information theoretical approach to constitution and reduction of medical data.

In medical decision problems it is very important to use the most relevant piece of information for decision making. We focus on a special case of diagnostic decision making when we can measure many symptoms and signs and we have to make diagnostic conclusions. We can state the problem as follows.

Analysis of data about epileptic patients using the GUHA method.

In this paper we search for hypotheses on association between the memory quotient and 13 clinical variables examined in a sample of 214 epilepsy patients. We introduce the General Unary Hypotheses Automaton (GUHA) method that automatically generates hypotheses from empirical data by means of computer procedures. Procedure ASSOC of the program GUHA generates and evaluates the hypotheses on symmetrical association or asymmetrical association using quantifiers.

Epidemiology tools program and selected medical applications.

In epidemiological research the calculation of appropriate measures of disease frequency is the basis for a comparison of populations and, therefore, the identification of disease determinants. Two frequencies being compared can be combined into a single summary parameter that estimates the association between an exposure and a disease. This can be accomplished by calculating either the ratio of the measures of disease frequency for two populations which indicates how much more likely one population is to develop a disease than another, or the difference between the frequencies which indicates how much greater the frequency of a disease is in one population compared with the other.

Comparison of survival between two groups using software SAS, S-PLUS and STATISTICA.

In survival analysis, comparison of survival times between two groups of patients is often the goal. For this purpose, Mantel-Haenszel (or log-rank) test is usually used. This paper introduces a concrete example to illustrate similarities as well as differences among the statistical programs SAS, S-PLUS and STATISTICA, when performing Mantel-Haenszel test.

Education and training in medical informatics, statistics and epidemiology in EuroMISE.

The paper gives information on education and training covered by the Joint European Project (JEP) entitled 'Education in the Methodology Field of Health Care, EuroMISE (European Education in Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology)', that has been running for 3 years (1993-1995) under the umbrella of the European TEMPUS-PHARE programme. Training and education in EuroMISE consists of three overlapping methodological branches: Medical informatics (MI), medical statistics (MS) and epidemiology (E). The teaching scheme has been developed in cooperation between 11 universities in the European Union and Charles University in Prague (four medical faculties, the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and the Faculty Hospital) together with the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Institute of Computer Science).

On the medical informatics structure.

This paper contributes to the discussion of R. Haux paper on essential aims and tasks of medical informatics. New views on structure of informatics and consequently medical informatics are given.

Evaluation of data in cardiology by new software tools.

We describe an analysis of cardiology data using new software tools. First we use data of 1417 men aged 40 to 50 years living in the center of Prague gathered in the twenty years lasting longitudinal study. We show some results of application of the programs E.

Medical informatics education in the EuroMISE courses.

The first experience with medical education in courses developed using the guidelines of the Joint European Project EuroMISE under the TEMPUS-PHARE program is presented. Training and education in EuroMISE consists of three overlapping methodological branches: medical informatics, medical statistics, and epidemiology. The teaching scheme has been developed in cooperation with Charles University in Prague and cooperating EC universities.