The electron transfer molecules plastoquinone and ubiquinone are formed by the condensation of aromatic head groups with long-chain prenyl diphosphates. In the present paper we report the cloning and characterization of two genes from tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) responsible for the production of solanesyl and decaprenyl diphosphates. SlSPS (S. lycopersicum solanesyl diphosphate synthase) is t...

We study a model where agents, located in a social network, decide whether to exert e¤ort or not in experimenting with a new technology (or acquiring a new skill, innovating, etc.). We assume that agents have strong incentives to free ride on their neighbors’e¤ort decisions. In the static version of the model e¤orts are chosen simultaneously. In equilibrium, agents exerting e¤ort are never conn...

The ISO Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) consists of four parts an Overview of the reference model, the Descriptive Model, the Prescriptive Model, and the Architectural Semantics. The four parts provide the concepts and rules of distributed processing to ensure openness between interacting distributed application components. Openness is a combination of characteristics, i...

We estimated the past and future age-standardised incidence rates of mesothelioma by birth cohort and by period of diagnosis in South East England. We extracted data on patients diagnosed with mesothelioma (International Classification of Diseases-10 C45) between 1960 and 2009 from the Thames Cancer Registry. We calculated the age-standardised incidence rates using the European standard populat...

Glycogen constitutes the major carbon storage source in cyanobacteria, as starch in algae and higher plants. Glycogen and starch synthesis is linked to active photosynthesis and both of them are degraded to glucose in the dark to maintain cell metabolism. Control of glycogen biosynthesis in cyanobacteria could be mediated by the regulation of the enzymes involved in this process, ADP-glucose py...

We examined the inhibitory effects of three flavonolignans and their dehydro- derivatives, taxifolin and quercetin on the activity of the Na(+)/K(+)-ATPase (NKA). The flavonolignans silychristin, dehydrosilychristin and dehydrosilydianin inhibited NKA with IC50 of 110 ± 40 μM, 38 ± 8 μM, and 36 ± 14 μM, respectively. Using the methods of molecular modeling, we identified several possible bindin...

Regulators require financial institutions to estimate counterparty default risks from liquid CDS quotes for the valuation and risk management of OTC derivatives. However, the vast majority of counterparties do not have liquid CDS quotes and need proxy CDS rates. Existing methods cannot account for counterparty-specific default risks; we propose to construct proxy CDS rates by associating to ill...

This paper examines the relation between cash-flow availability and investment spending in the Netherlands. In particular, we are interested whether managerial discretion and/or asymmetric information drive the positive relation between cash-flow and investment spending. This relation is positive for both firms with low and high investment opportunities. It is however significantly larger for f...

This paper evaluates the weak-form efficiency of the crude oil markets using the artificial neural network (ANN) model. Based on the daily historical data of the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil spot price over the period (02 January 198631 December 2013), the model was trained using backpropagation algorithm. The output of the neural network represents the predicted prices which are con...

Octaprenyl pyrophosphate synthase (OPPs) catalyzes the chain elongation of farnesyl pyrophosphate (FPP) via consecutive condensation reactions with five molecules of isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP) to generate all-trans C40-octaprenyl pyrophosphate. The polymer forms the side chain of ubiquinone that is involved in electron transport system to produce ATP. Our previous study has demonstrated th...