| 1. |
- van der Ent, Florian, et al.
(author)
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Structure and Mechanism of a Cold-Adapted Bacterial Lipase
- 2022
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In: Biochemistry. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0006-2960 .- 1520-4995. ; 61:10, s. 933-942
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The structural origin of enzyme cold-adaptation has been the subject of considerable research efforts in recent years. Comparative studies of orthologous mesophilic-psychrophilic enzyme pairs found in nature are an obvious strategy for solving this problem, but they often suffer from relatively low sequence identity of the enzyme pairs. Small bacterial lipases adapted to distinctly different temperatures appear to provide an excellent model system for these types of studies, as they may show a very high degree of sequence conservation. Here, we report the first crystal structures of lipase A from the psychrophilic bacterium Bacillus pumilus, which confirm the high structural similarity to the mesophilic Bacillus subtilis enzyme, as indicated by their 81% sequence identity. We further employ extensive QM/MM calculations to delineate the catalytic reaction path and its energetics. The computational prediction of a rate-limiting deacylation step of the enzymatic ester hydrolysis reaction is verified by stopped-flow experiments, and steady-state kinetics confirms the psychrophilic nature of the B. pumilus enzyme. These results provide a useful benchmark for examining the structural basis of cold-adaptation and should now make it possible to disentangle the effects of the 34 mutations between the two enzymes on catalytic properties and thermal stability.
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| 2. |
- De Ridder, Reglindis
(author)
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‘Het is verruktelijk’ : Hoe audiovisuele vertalers het heft in eigen handen kunnen nemen
- 2019
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In: Filter (Bussum). - 0929-9394 .- 2352-0876. ; 26:4, s. 21-28
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Research into children’s audiovisual media often focuses on issues such as the psychological impact of exposure to violence and aggression on children’s behaviour and the influence of media on children’s views on gender, body image and ethnicity. As children are more malleable than adults and, as a result, more vulnerable to such media, its impact can indeed be considerable. The same applies to the influence of the language used in such media on children's linguistic development, since the target audience is still at an early stage of acquiring this (native or foreign) language. However, in many countries, children programmes are mostly imported and, hence, have to be translated. Audiovisual translation research into children’s media is, therefore, arguably even more important. Even in so-called “subtitling countries”, these - mainly dubbed - audiovisual products, but also the language used therein are, thus, worthy of closer scrutiny. With audiovisual translation studies having moved away from purely linguistic analyses, some scholars (Di Giovanni 2011, Pavesi 2018) have - rightfully so - called for a reappraisal of the study of the language of audiovisual translation (without ignoring its multimodality), particularly, in such programmes for children. Children’s programmes have been criticized for being out of touch with reality when it comes to portraying children (e.g. Götz et al. 2018). Many children, therefore, will not recognize themselves or the people around them in the characters they are presented with, but also linguistically such programmes can be out of touch with the linguistic reality in which children live. In this paper, I discuss these diversity issues in children's television and what translation strategies have recently been adopted in Sweden and Belgium to compensate for these on-going issues in children's media.
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| 3. |
- Bivik, Caroline, et al.
(author)
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Novel Genes Involved in Controlling Specification of Drosophila FMRFamide Neuropeptide Cells
- 2015
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In: Genetics. - : Genetics Society of America. - 0016-6731 .- 1943-2631. ; 200:4, s. 1229-1244
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The expression of neuropeptides is often extremely restricted in the nervous system, making them powerful markers for addressing cell specification . In the developing Drosophila ventral nerve cord, only six cells, the Ap4 neurons, of some 10,000 neurons, express the neuropeptide FMRFamide (FMRFa). Each Ap4/FMRFa neuron is the last-born cell generated by an identifiable and well-studied progenitor cell, neuroblast 5-6 (NB5-6T). The restricted expression of FMRFa and the wealth of information regarding its gene regulation and Ap4 neuron specification makes FMRFa a valuable readout for addressing many aspects of neural development, i.e., spatial and temporal patterning cues, cell cycle control, cell specification, axon transport, and retrograde signaling. To this end, we have conducted a forward genetic screen utilizing an Ap4-specific FMRFa-eGFP transgenic reporter as our readout. A total of 9781 EMS-mutated chromosomes were screened for perturbations in FMRFa-eGFP expression, and 611 mutants were identified. Seventy-nine of the strongest mutants were mapped down to the affected gene by deficiency mapping or whole-genome sequencing. We isolated novel alleles for previously known FMRFa regulators, confirming the validity of the screen. In addition, we identified novel essential genes, including several with previously undefined functions in neural development. Our identification of genes affecting most major steps required for successful terminal differentiation of Ap4 neurons provides a comprehensive view of the genetic flow controlling the generation of highly unique neuronal cell types in the developing nervous system.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- van der Ent, R. J., et al.
(author)
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Contrasting roles of interception and transpiration in the hydrological cycle - Part 2 : Moisture recycling
- 2014
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In: Earth System Dynamics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 2190-4979 .- 2190-4987. ; 5:2, s. 471-489
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The contribution of land evaporation to local and remote precipitation (i.e. moisture recycling) is of significant importance to sustain water resources and ecosystems. But how important are different evaporation components in sustaining precipitation? This is the first paper to present moisture recycling metrics for partitioned evaporation. In the companion paper Wang-Erlandsson et al. (2014) (hereafter Part 1), evaporation was partitioned into vegetation interception, floor interception, soil moisture evaporation and open-water evaporation (constituting the direct, purely physical fluxes, largely dominated by interception), and transpiration (delayed, biophysical flux). Here, we track these components forward as well as backward in time. We also include age tracers to study the atmospheric residence times of these evaporation components. We present a new image of the global hydrological cycle that includes quantification of partitioned evaporation and moisture recycling as well as the atmospheric residence times of all fluxes. We demonstrate that evaporated interception is more likely to return as precipitation on land than transpired water. On average, direct evaporation (essentially interception) is found to have an atmospheric residence time of 8 days, while transpiration typically resides for 9 days in the atmosphere. The process scale over which evaporation recycles is more local for interception compared to transpiration; thus interception generally precipitates closer to its evaporative source than transpiration, which is particularly pronounced outside the tropics. We conclude that interception mainly works as an intensifier of the local hydrological cycle during wet spells and wet seasons. On the other hand, transpiration remains active during dry spells and dry seasons and is transported over much larger distances downwind, where it can act as a significant source of moisture. Thus, as various land-use types can differ considerably in their partitioning between interception and transpiration, our results stress that land-use changes (e.g. forest-to-cropland conversion) do not only affect the magnitude of moisture recycling, but could also influence the moisture recycling patterns and lead to a redistribution of water resources. As such, this research highlights that land-use changes can have complex effects on the atmospheric branch of the hydrological cycle.
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| 6. |
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Medier & politik. Om arbetarrörelsens mediestrategier under 1900-talet
- 2007
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Editorial collection (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this interdisciplinary study, eight Swedish scholars present an overall view of relations between the Swedish Labour Movement and visual media during the twentieth century. Spanning from early photojournalism and documentary film to contemporary bloggs and websites, the essays focus upon the ways in which media and politics have related to and also used each other in the public sphere during the last hundred years.
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| 7. |
- Jiang, W., et al.
(author)
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Implementation of an internet-based remote controller with guaranteed exponential stabilization
- 2008
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In: Proceedings of the World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation (WCICA). - 9781424421145 ; , s. 4063-4068
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this article, an Internet-based remote control system is designed and implemented. The communication is based on the Master-Slave structure. The Master PC communicates with the Slave from about 40km away by UDP protocol. In order to guarantee the Master and Slave clocks to be synchronized, the NTP (Network Time Protocol) is used in both sides. The packets are sent together with time-stamps. The controller design (master) relies on a remote observer that achieves a state prediction of the application (slave), despite the variable communication delays. The Slave comprises a PC and a robot Miabot of Merlin company. The protocol Bluetooth is used between the local PC and the robot. Internet-based remote systems are subject to variable time delays (including communication and data-sampling delays) and data packets losses (due to the unstable Internet network). We have continuously tested the RTT (round-trip-time) between the two PCs in the daytime and nighttime by the protocol ICMP (Internet Control Message). From these tests, an evaluation of the maximal time delay is obtained. Our structure allows one to guarantee an exponential stabilization performance, which is proven via a Lyapunov-Krassovski functional technique and involves the estimated delay upperbound. This means that the guaranteed decay rate is computed (via some LMI optimization) in relation to some maximal value of the communication delays. Of course, for greater delay values, the performance cannot be guaranteed anymore and an alternative solution has to be considered. In our system, we give a command for the robot to stop until the communication comes back to a sufficient quality.
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| 8. |
- van den Heuvel, Martijn, et al.
(author)
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Towards Verification-based Development of In-Vehicle Safety Critical Software : A Case Study
- 2010
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In: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. - New York, New York, USA : ACM Press. - 9781605589152 ; , s. 35-38
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The ever increasing software complexity in the safety critical automotive domain induces new challenges in ensuring a fault-free system design. In this paper we propose a novel approach using Analytical Software Design (ASD). The ASD toolsuite provides means to develop software that is robust by construction. We show the integration of the ASD approach in the commonly used development workflow using Matlab/Simulink by means of a case study.
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| 9. |
- Kania, Magdalena, 1980-, et al.
(author)
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Older active users of ICTs make sense of their engagement
- 2017
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In: Seminar.net. - 1504-4831. ; 13:1, s. 1-17
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Research on older people’s ICT usage tends to focus on either the ways in which they go about learning to use these technologies or the impact that ICTs have on their lives. This research seems, in other words, to take for granted that older people are ‘digital immigrants’ as the digital divide debate proposed. Research that specifically looks at the ways in which older ICT users make sense of their engagement with these technologies is still limited. This article explores therefore – through focus group interviews – how a group of older people who are active ICT users make sense of their ‘digital nativeness’. The analysis shows that the interviewees are well aware that their ICT proficiency differentiated them from their peers, which is why they make sense of their ICT usage by making reference to the issues that make them ‘exceptional’ older people. These include the fact that they have used computers for many years and therefore made ICT usage an everyday habit early on; the fact that most older people do not have the skills that they themselves have, which is why they feel the need to share them with others; and the fact that their lifelong experience means they can use these technologies in judicious ways. By bringing attention to how older active ICT users make sense of their engagement, this article contributes to the notion of the digital spectrum and the debate on the inequalities that ICT proficiency brings about.
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| 10. |
- Karantininis, Konstantinos
(author)
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Tracing Uganda's global primary organic pineapple value chain
- 2016
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In: African Crop Science Journal. - : African Journals Online (AJOL). - 1021-9730 .- 2072-6589. ; 24, s. 15-33
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The organic sector is one of the fastest growing sectors globally. The sector provides an opportunity for developing countries to export high value products in the global market. One such opportunity for Uganda is the export of organic pineapples. The organic pineapple enterprise is relatively new, having existed for approximately 10 years. This paper traces the organic pineapple value chain, characterises and explains the functions of the actors in the chain. The study used the Global Value Chain Analysis Framework, using data obtained from 140 organic farmers, 10 exporters and 3 support institutions in Uganda. It is clear from the study that the chain is private- sector-driven, has relatively young smallholder farmers, and comprises of 10 small scale export companies. Only 45% of the organic pineapples produced by farmers reach the organic consumers. Reasons for this included limited processing capacity of exporters, competition from conventional buyers and the few local organic consumers. Other reasons were declining soil fertility, limited regulative institutional support and poor infrastructure. We recommend increased use of soil amendments, favourable legislations and investment environment, increased horizontal coordination among exporters and increasing the range of the organic export products in order to increase organic pineapple sales.
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