Structural basis of proton-coupled potassium transport in the KUP family

Potassium homeostasis is vital for all organisms, but is challenging in single-celled organisms like bacteria and yeast and immobile organisms like plants that constantly need to adapt to changing external conditions. KUP transporters facilitate potassium uptake by the co-transport of protons. Here, we uncover the molecular basis for transport in this widely distributed family. We identify the potassium importer KimA from Bacillus subtilis as a member of the KUP family, demonstrate that it functions as a K+/H+ symporter and report a 3.7 Å cryo-EM structure of the KimA homodimer in an inward-occluded, trans-inhibited conformation. By introducing point mutations, we identify key residues for potassium and proton binding, which are conserved among other KUP proteins

An experimental study on fitness distributions of tree shapes in GP with one-point crossover

Proceeding of: 12th European Conference, EuroGP 2009, Tübingen, Germany, April 15-17In Genetic Programming (GP), One-Point Crossover is an alternative to the destructive properties and poor performance of Standard Crossover. One-Point Crossover acts in two phases, first making the population converge to a common tree shape, then looking for the best individual within that shape. So, we understand that One-Point Crossover is making an implicit evolution of tree shapes. We want to know if making this evolution explicit could lead to any improvement in the search power of GP. But we first need to define how this evolution could be performed. In this work we made an exhaustive study of fitness distributions of tree shapes for 6 different GP problems. We were able to identify common properties on distributions, and we propose a method to explicitly evaluate tree shapes. Based on this method, in the future, we want to implement a new genetic operator and a novel representation system for GP.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and FEDER under contract TIN2005-08818-C04 (the OPLINK project) and by Comunidad de Madrid under contract 2008/00035/001 (Técnicas de Aprendizaje Automático Aplicadas al Interfaz Cerebro-Ordenador)Publicad

The impact of environmental performance on stock prices in the green and innovative context

.This study examines the impact of environmental performance on firms' stock prices, considering the moderating effect of the green and innovative environmental context by country. Renewable energy policies, green technologies, and foreign trade form this environmental context of interest for the reduction of carbon emissions. Using a sample of 2638 firm-year observations for the firms listed in the main stock index of 16 European countries over the period of 2005–2017, we find that environmental performance is value-relevant, except during the worst years of a crisis, when it is not significant. Two elements of the green technological framework, namely, renewable energy policies and the potential transmission effect of technology through foreign trade, are valued by investors as offsetting factors of the positive effect exerted by carbon performance on the firm's value. This is consistent with the slow and costly adoption of greener technologies. However, registered green patents appear to be a turning point, showing a significant positive effect on the relationship between firms' environmental performances and their market values. Again, the crisis period interferes with deepening the negative effect of renewable energy policies and cancelling out the effect of green patents and foreign trade. On one hand, our results highlight the market's role in making inefficiencies visible and showing the potential future losses of green and innovative policies; on the other hand, the hampering interference of crisis periods must be considered by policymakers.S

Patrones comunes de fracaso y reorganización por sector y país para las PYMEs de seis países europeos utilizando PDFR

This study contributes to identifying common distress patterns in financial indicators by sector and country in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain as well as ex-post signals of reorganization success. We use PDFR that provides a distance-to-failure measure and allows us to track the behavior of different features of the firm proxied by accounting ratios. Our results show that indicators of financial structure, followed by working capital, profitability on assets, margin over sales and cash flow to assets, are the most discriminant variables of failed SMEs across all sectors and countries analyzed. By contrast, during reorganization, return on assets and its components are the main initial drivers of recovery, whereas the financial structure factors show a progressive but slow recovery. Boosting and Z-scores are used for robustness.Este estudio contribuye a la identificación de patrones comunes de fracaso en indicadores financieros por sector y país en Alemania, España, Finlandia, Francia, Italia y Portugal, así como a la identificación de patrones comunes de éxito en la reorganización. Utilizamos PDFR, que proporciona una medida de distancia al fracaso y permite hacer un seguimiento de la evolución de la empresa a través de sus ratios contables. Nuestros resultados muestran que los indicadores de estructura financiera, seguidos de fondo de maniobra, rentabilidad sobre activos, margen sobre ventas y *cashflow* sobre activos, son las variables más discriminantes de las pymes clasificadas como fracasadas, en todos los sectores y países analizados. En contraste, durante la reorganización, la rentabilidad sobre activos y sus componentes son los principales inductores iniciales de la recuperación, mientras que los indicadores de estructura financiera muestran una progresiva pero lenta recuperación. Se utilizan Boosting y Z-score como medidas de robustez

The Freundlich model of adsorption for calculation of specific surface areaS

The specific surface area of solids and the surface area occupied by the active phase (metal or oxide) on a support are parameters of the utmost importance in adsorption and catalysis. For the determination of the former, the BET equation is universally established. For the evaluation of the latter the works of selective chemisorption, initiated by Emmett and Brunauer (I ), for metals and by Bridges et al. (2) and Weller et al. (3), for oxides have come to represent important contributions. Some of the classical models of adsorption have also been used for evaluation of specific surfaces (Langmuir equation) (4) and the dispersion of supported metals or oxides (Freundlich equation) (5). Both of them are applicable to physisorption as well as chemisorption processes

Splitting of the middle layer of LPW SAFNWC/MSG satellite product in order to improve the monitoring of pre-convective environments

Seven of the infrared channels from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imagery (SEVIRI) instrument, on board the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), are used to retrieve Layer Precipitable Water (LPW) and Stability Analysis Imagery (SAI) in the SAFNWC framework. Both products are retrieved using a statistical retrieval based on neural networks; they are routinely generated every fifteen minutes at a satellite horizontal resolution of 3 km in NADIR only in cloud-free areas. Many factors are involved in the development of severe weather and these parameters are only some of the indicators. However, due to the high resolution of these products, the use of them in conjunction with satellite and radar images can help to identify mesoscale features related to convection. The MSG moisture and parcel instability time trend fields are especially useful during the period previous to convection. Once the outbreak of convection occurs, the products calculated in the clear air pixels surrounding the convective system can give us hints to anticipate its evolution. SAFNWC LPW and SAI were analyzed for a severe weather event during August 2004. A thunderstorm over Teruel (Spain) produced intense precipitation and hail; a tornado developed while this thunderstorm was moving towards SE. The pre-convective parcel potential buoyancy and moisture SAFNWC products changed in a way that was consistent with the observed intense convective activity. In previous studies, the atmospheric moisture in medium levels, which has been proven to be relevant in some cases, was represented by only one level parameter (ML: middle layer LPW). However, it was observed that this layer is too thick to do an adequate analysis of moisture available for convection. Hence, an improvement on the LPW algorithm has been carried out by splitting the middle layer into two new sub-layers (approximately separated at 700 hPa) and training two new neural networks. The impact of monitoring moisture in the new sub-layers separately in this severe weather event has been tested, and the improvements achieved have been evaluated