During the analysis of alien and invasive flora of Europe, as a threat to biodiversity, data for Croatia were missing. The aim of our research was to analyse distributional patterns and range size of all invasive alien plants (64) for the state area (57,000 km 2 ). They were detected on 49% of the state territory, averaging five taxa per 35 km 2 . The greatest number of invasive plants (> 30 per grid cell) was recorded in the major urban centres, increasing in the south-east direction and reflecting positive correlation with temperature and negative with altitude. The most endangered areas are in the Mediterranean region, especially on islands. The number of invasive plants increased with habitat diversity and almost 75% of all sites with invasive plants are located within a few habitats with direct anthropogenic influence. The results should provide a reliable regional and global basis for strategic planning regarding invasive alien plants management.

Automated Programming Assessment Systems (APAS) are used for overcoming problems associated with manually managed programming assignments, such as objective and efficient assessing in large classes and providing timely and helpful feedback. In this paper we survey the literature and software in this field and identify the set of necessary features that make APAS comprehensive -such that it can support all key stages in the assessment process. Put differently, comprehensive APAS is generic enough to meet the demands of ''any'' computer science course. Despite the vast number of publications, the choice of software turns out to be very limited. We contribute by developing Edgar, a comprehensive open-source APAS which, to the best of our knowledge, exceeds any other similar free and/or open-source tool. Edgar is the result of three years of development and usage in, for the time being, eight courses dealing with various programming languages and paradigms (C, Java, SQL, etc.). Edgar supports various text-based programming languages, multi-correct multiple-choice questions, provides rich exam logging and monitoring infrastructure to prevent potential fraudulent behaviour, and subsequent data analysis and visualization of students' scores, exams, question quality, etc. It can be deployed on all major operating systems and is written in a modular fashion so that it can be adjusted and scaled to a custom fit. We comment on the architecture and present data from real-world use-cases to support these claims. Edgar is in active use today (1000+ students per semester) and it is being constantly developed with new features.

No abstract

The Balkan Peninsula is recognized as an important centre of native and endemic plant species diversity as well as an important wildlife refuge area. However, although Croatia hosts more than half of plant species found on the Balkan Peninsula, the endemic taxa have never been evaluated or used to define conservation priorities. We analyzed the qualitative composition of the endemic and range restricted species, their spatial distribution, centres of endemism, and conservation status (non-IUCN).         We generated an updated and annotated checklist of 349 endemic or range-restricted plant taxa (6.9% of the entire native flora), subdivided in 231 species, 103 subspecies and 15 hybrids and belonging to 149 genera and 43 families. Among the 231 species, 69 are considered endemic to Croatia and confined to a small area (< 4,500 km2), while 162 are considered range restricted species, which have larger ranges and/or are shared with neighbouring countries. The genera Centaurea and Hieracium have the highest number of endemic and range restricted taxa.         Spatial analyses indicated two notable centres of species richness—the mountainous Dinaric Alps and the SE Adriatic coast, including the islands. Regions with a high richness of range-restricted taxa did not coincide with areas of high richness of endemic species.         Taxa exhibited modest bimodality with respect to altitudinal distribution. In addition, the greatest diversity of taxa is concentrated in northwest of Croatia and could be related to differences in mean annual air temperatures and the duration of insolation.                As regards their conservation status, 13 of the 349 taxa are endangered, and 62 are near threatened or vulnerable. Despite relatively strong legal protection of endemic and range restricted species, 37 taxa remain unprotected. Changes in conservation practice are therefore proposed.

No abstract