The Difference between Level of Trade and the Trade Balance

Evidence for interactions between domains of TatA and TatB from mutagenesis of the TatABC subunits of the twin-arginine translocase Claire M. L. Barrett and Colin Robinson Department of Biological Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK The twin-arginine translocation (Tat) system operates in the plasma membranes of a wide range of bacteria as well as the thylakoid membrane in plant chloro- plasts (reviewed in [1,2]). Working in parallel with the Sec system, it is responsible for the export of a subset of proteins into the periplasm, outer membrane or extracellular medium, and the primary defining attrib- ute of the system is its ability to transport proteins in a fully folded state [3,4]. Particular attention has centred on a series of periplasmic proteins that are exported only after binding redox cofactors such as FeS or molybdopterin centres [5–8] although it should also be emphasized that the system also transports proteins that do not bind cofactors [1,2]. Substrates for the Tat pathway are exported post- translationally [8] after synthesis with cleavable, N-ter- minal signal peptides that almost invariably contain an essential twin-arginine motif in the N-terminal domain [9,10]. They then interact with a translocon in the inner membrane that consists, minimally, of three sub- units (TatABC) in Escherichia coli and several other Gram-negative bacteria studied to date. Genetic stud- ies indicate that the tatABC genes are all important for Tat activity although a fourth gene, tatE, encodes Keywords green fluorescent protein (GFP); Tat system; twin-arginine; protein transport; signal peptide Correspondence C. Robinson, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK Fax: +44 2476523701 Tel: +44 2476523557 E-mail: Crobinson@bio.warwick.ac.uk (Received 13 December 2004, revised 25 February 2005, accepted 8 March 2005) doi:10.1111/j.1742-4658.2005.04654.x The twin-arginine translocation (Tat) system transports folded proteins across the bacterial plasma membrane. Three subunits, TatA, B and C, are known to be involved but their modes of action are poorly understood, as are the inter-subunit interactions occurring within Tat complexes. We have generated mutations in the single transmembrane (TM) spans of TatA and TatB, with the aim of generating structural distortions. We show that sub- stitution in TatB of three residues by glycine, or a single residue by proline, has no detectable effect on translocation, whereas the presence of three gly- cines in the TatA TM span completely blocks Tat translocation activity. The results show that the integrity of the TatA TM span is vital for Tat activity, whereas that of TatB can accommodate large-scale distortions. Near-complete restoration of activity in TatA mutants is achieved by the simultaneous presence of a V12P mutation in the TatB TM span, strongly implying a direct functional interaction between the TatA ⁄ B TM spans. We also analyzed the predicted amphipathic regions in TatA and TatB and again find evidence of direct interaction; benign mutations in either subunit completely blocked translocation of two Tat substrates when present in combination. Finally, we have re-examined the effects of previously ana- lyzed TatABC mutations under conditions of high translocation activity. Among numerous TatA or TatB mutations tested, TatA F39A The Difference between Level of Trade and the Trade Balance The Difference between Level of Trade and the Trade Balance By: OpenStaxCollege A nation’s level of trade may at first sound like much the same issue as the balance of trade, but these two are actually quite separate It is perfectly possible for a country to have a very high level of trade—measured by its exports of goods and services as a share of its GDP—while it also has a near-balance between exports and imports A high level of trade indicates that a good portion of the nation’s production is exported It is also possible for a country’s trade to be a relatively low share of GDP, relative to global averages, but for the imbalance between its exports and its imports to be quite large This general theme was emphasized earlier in Measuring Trade Balances, which offered some illustrative figures on trade levels and balances A country’s level of trade tells how much of its production it exports This is measured by the percent of exports out of GDP It indicates how globalized an economy is Some countries, such as Germany, have a high level of trade—they export 50% of their total production The balance of trade tells us if the country is running a trade surplus or trade deficit A country can have a low level of trade but a high trade deficit (For example, the United States only exports 14% of GDP, but it has a trade deficit of $560 billion.) Three factors strongly influence a nation’s level of trade: the size of its economy, its geographic location, and its history of trade Large economies like the United States can much of their trading internally, while small economies like Sweden have less ability to provide what they want internally and tend to have higher ratios of exports and imports to GDP Nations that are neighbors tend to trade more, since costs of transportation and communication are lower Moreover, some nations have long and established patterns of international trade, while others not Consequently, a relatively small economy like Sweden, with many nearby trading partners across Europe and a long history of foreign trade, has a high level of trade Brazil and India, which are fairly large economies that have often sought to inhibit trade 1/5 The Difference between Level of Trade and the Trade Balance in recent decades, have lower levels of trade Whereas, the United States and Japan are extremely large economies that have comparatively few nearby trading partners Both countries actually have quite low levels of trade by world standards The ratio of exports to GDP in either the United States or in Japan is about half of the world average The balance of trade is a separate issue from the level of trade The United States has a low level of trade, but had enormous trade deficits for most years from the mid-1980s into the 2000s Japan has a low level of trade by world standards, but has typically shown large trade surpluses in recent decades Nations like Germany and the United Kingdom have medium to high levels of trade by world standards, but Germany had a moderate trade surplus in 2008, while the United Kingdom had a moderate trade deficit Their trade picture was roughly in balance in the late 1990s Sweden had a high level of trade and a large trade surplus in 2007, while Mexico had a high level of trade and a moderate trade deficit that same year In short, it is quite possible for nations with a relatively low level of trade, expressed as a percentage of GDP, to have relatively large trade deficits It is also quite possible for nations with a near balance between exports and imports to worry about the consequences of high levels of trade for the economy It is not inconsistent to believe that a high level of trade is potentially beneficial to an economy, because of the way it allows nations to play to their comparative advantages, and to also be concerned about any macroeconomic instability caused by a long-term pattern of large trade deficits The following Clear It Up feature discusses how this sort of dynamic played out in Colonial India Are trade surpluses always beneficial? Considering Colonial India India was formally under British rule from 1858 to 1947 During that time, India consistently had trade surpluses with Great Britain Anyone who believes that trade surpluses are a sign of economic strength and dominance while trade deficits are a sign of economic weakness must find this pattern odd, since it would mean that colonial India was successfully dominating and exploiting Great Britain for almost a century—which was not true Instead, India’s trade surpluses with Great Britain meant that each year there was an overall flow of financial capital from India to Great Britain In India, this flow of financial capital was heavily criticized as the “drain,” and eliminating the drain of financial capital was viewed as one of the many reasons why India would benefit from achieving independence 2/5 The Difference between Level of Trade and the Trade ...STRING-TREE CORRESPONDENCE GRAMMAR: A DECLARATIVE GRAMMAR FORMALISM FOR DEFINING THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN STRINGS OF TERMS AND TREE STRUCTURES YUSOFF ZAHARIN Groupe d'Etudes pour la Traduction Automatique B.P. n ° 68 Universit~ de Grenoble 38402 SAINT-MARTIN-D'HERES FRANCE ABSTRACT The paper introduces a grammar formalism for defining the set of sentences in a language, a set of labeled trees (not the derivation trees of the grammar) for the representation of the interpreta- tion of the sentences, and the (possibly non-pro- jective) correspondence between subtrees of each tree and substrings of the related sentence. The grammar formalism is motivated by the linguistic approach (adopted at GETA) where a multilevel inter- pretative structure is associated to a sentence. The topology of the multilevel structure is 'meaning' motivated, and hence its substructures may not cor- respond projectively to the substrings of the rela- ted sentence. Grammar formalisms have been developed for va- rious purposes. Generative-Transformational Gram- mars, General Phrase Structure Grammars, Lexical Functional Gr-mmar, etc. were designed to be expla- natory models for human language performance, while others like the Definite Clause Grammars were more geared towards direct interpretability by machines. In this naper, we introduce a declarative grammar formalism for the task of establishing the relation between on one hand a set of strings of terms and on the other a set of structural representations - a structural representation being in a form amena- ble to processing (say for translation into another language), where all and only the relevant conten~.s or 'meaning' (in some sense adequate for the purpo- se) of the related string are exhibited. The gram- mar can also be interpreted to perform analysis (given a string of terms, to produce a structural representation capturing the 'meaning' of the string) or to perform generation (given a structu- ral representation, to produce a string of terms whose meaning is captured by the said structural representation). It must be emphasised here that the grammar writer is at liberty (within certain constraints)to design the structural representation for a given string of terms (because its topology is indepen- dent of the derivation tree of the grammar), as well as the nature of the correspondence between the two (for example, according to certain linguis- tic criteria). The grammar formalism is only a tool for expressing the structural representation, the related string, and the correspondence. The formalism is motivated by the linguistic approach (adopted at GETA) where a multilevel in~r- pretative structure is associated to a sentence. The multilevel structure is 'meaning' motivated, and hence its substructures may not correspond pro- jectively to the substrings of the related sentence The characteristic of the linguistic approach is the design of the multilevel structures, while the grammar RESEARC H Open Access The cross-sectional associations between sense of coherence and diabetic microvascular complications, glycaemic control, and patients’ conceptions of type 1 diabetes Aila J Ahola 1,2,3 , Markku Saraheimo 1,2 , Carol Forsblom 1,2 , Kustaa Hietala 1,2 , Per-Henrik Groop 1,2* , the FinnDiane Study Group Abstract Background: Sense of coherence (SOC) has been associated with various self-care behaviours in the general population. As the management of type 1 diabetes heavily relies on self-management, the SOC concept could also prove important in this populatio n. This paper is a report of a study conducted among patients with type 1 diabetes to assess the associations between SOC and glycaemic control, microvascular complications, and patients’ conceptions of their disease. Methods: Altogether 1,264 adult patients (45% men, age range 18-82 years) with type 1 diabetes participated in this cross-sectional study. SOC was evaluated using a 13-item SOC questionnaire. Standardized assays were used to determine HbA 1c . Nephropathy status was based on albumin excretion rate and retinal laser-treatment was used as an indication of severe retinopathy. Patients’ subjective conceptions of diabetes were studied using a questionnaire. Results: Higher SOC scores, reflecting stronger SOC, were associated with lower HbA 1c values. Strong SOC was independently associated with reaching the HbA 1c level <7.5%. Adjusting for diabetes duration, age at onset, socioeconomic status and HbA 1c , weak SOC was associated with the presence of nephropathy among men, but not women. No associations were observed between SOC and severe retinopathy. Four dimensions describing patients’ conceptions of HbA 1c , complications, diabetes control and hypoglycaemia were formed from the diabetes questionnaire. Weak SOC was independently associated with worse subjective conceptions in the dimensions of HbA 1c and hypoglycaemia. Furthermore among men, an association between weak SOC and the complications factor was observed. Conclusion: Interventions to improve patients’ SOC, if available, could improve patients’ metabolic control and therefore also reduce the incidence of diabetic complications. Introduction Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease that is frequently associated with severe vascular complications [1]. Importantly, diabetic complications account for the major morbidity and mortality associated with the dis- ease [2]. Therefore prevention of these complications, by means of strict glycaemic control, is of major impor- tance in the management of type 1 diabetes [3]. Con- scientious daily self-care practices, that include frequent blood glucose monitoring and meticulous meal plan- ning, are strongly emphasized [4,5], b ut despite these meeting the treatment goals has shown to be fairly diffi- cult [6]. Therefore, identification of factors that contri- bute to the improved diabetes management would be of specific importance. * Correspondence: per-henrik.groop@helsinki.fi 1 Folkhälsan Institute of Genetics, Folkhälsan Research Center, Biomedicum Helsinki, Finland Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Ahola et al. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2010, 8:142 Vietnam Journal of Mathematics 34:3 (2006) 275–284 Some Results on the Relation Between Pluripolarity of Graphs and Holomorphicity Le Mau Hai and Phung Van Manh Deparment of Mathematics, Hanoi University of Education 136 Xuan Thuy Rd., Hanoi, Vietnam Received February 14, 2005 Revised April 13, 2006 Abstract. The aim of this paper is to give some results on the relation between pluripolarity of graphs and holomorphicity of complex-valued functions. In particular, we investigate the relation between the pluripolarity of graphs and the holomorphicity of Hartogs type and of Forelli type. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 32H02, 32H25, 32U05. Keywords: Pluripolar sets, Holomorphic graphs of Hartogs type, holomorphic graphs of Forelli type. 1. Introduction In 2003 Shcherbina proved the following result which solves a problem posed several years ago by Chirka (see [4]): Let D be a domain in C n and f : D → C be a continuous function. The graph Γ(f )off is pluripolar subset of C n+1 if and only if f is holomorphic (see [10]). Next, Shcherbina extented the above result to the multi-functions. Namely he proved that if a 1 (z), ··· ,a m (z) are continuous on D such that the set: E = {(z, w) ∈ D × C : w m + a 1 (z)w m−1 + + a m (z)=0} is a pluripolar set in C n+1 then a 1 (z), ···,a m (z) are holomorphic on D (see [11]). In this paper we give some results of type of Shcherbina on the relation between pluriporlarity of graphs and holomorphicity of complex-valued functions defined on a domain in C n . In particular we establish the relation between the 276 Le Mau Hai and Phung Van Manh pluripolarity of graphs and the holomorphicity of Hartogs type and of Forelli type (see Theorems 3.2 and 4.1 below). The paper is organized as follows. Beside the introduction, the paper contains three sections. In the second one we recall some well-known facts in the pluripotential theory. The third section is devoted to present holomorphic graphs of Hartogs type. The fourth one deals with holomorphic graphs of Forelli type. 2. Basic Definitions In this section we recall some notions and fix some notations. 2.1. Let D be a domain in C n and ϕ : D → [−∞, +∞). ϕ is called plurisub- harmonic on D if ϕ is upper semi-continuous and the restriction of ϕ to the intersection of D with every complex line is subharmonic. The cone of plurisub- harmonic functions on D is denoted by PSH(D). A set E of C n is called plurip olar if for every a ∈ E there exitsts a neighbor- hood U = U (a)ofa, ϕ ∈ PSH(U ), ϕ is not identity to −∞ such that ϕ = −∞ on U ∩ E. A basic theorem of Josefson (see [6], Theorem 4.7.4) asserts that if E is pluripolar in a domain D in C n then there exists a plurisubharmonic function ϕ on C n , ϕ is not identity to −∞ but E ⊂{z ∈ D : ϕ(z)=−∞}. 2.2. We recall the relatively extremal function due to Siciak (see [13]). Let D be a domain in C n and A ⊂ D. The relatively extremal function h A,D of A to D is defined by h A,D = sup{u : u ∈ PSH(D),u≤ 1,u   A ≤ 0}. By h ∗ A,D we denote the upper semicontinuous regularization of h A,D . A set A ⊂ D is called locally pluriregular if for any a ∈ A and any neighborhood U = U (a)ofa we have h ∗ A∩U,U (a)=0. 2.3. Let D ⊂ C n be a domain and f : D → C be a complex-valued function defined on D. The graph of f is the set Γ(f)={(z, f (z)) : z ∈ D}⊂D × C. 3. Holomorphic Graphs of Hartogs Type The main aim of this section is to give a result above holomorphicity of a complex-valued function under assumption that it is separately continuous and its graph is pluripolar. As well-known that in the main result of Shcherbina (see [10]), Shcherbina assume that if f : D → C is a continuous function and the graph Γ(f)off is a pluripolar set in C n+1 then f is holomorphic on D. Now we prove a such result but under assumption weaker than the theorem of Shcherbina. At the same time, this result itself is a form of Hartogs theorem. However before proving this result we establish some results on the relation between holomorphicity of RESEARCH Open Access The dynamic pattern of end-tidal carbon dioxide during cardiopulmonary resuscitation: difference between asphyxial cardiac arrest and ventricular fibrillation/pulseless ventricular tachycardia cardiac arrest Katja Lah 1,2 , Miljenko Križmarić 2 , Štefek Grmec 1,2,3,4* Abstract Introduction: Partial pressure of end-tidal carbon dioxide (PetCO2) during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) correlates with cardiac output and consequently has a prognostic value in CPR. In our previous study we confirmed that initial PetCO2 value was significantly higher in asphyxial arrest than in ventricular fibrillation/ pulseless ventricular tachycardia (VF/VT) cardiac arrest. In this study we sought to evaluate the pattern of PetCO2 changes in cardiac arrest caused by VF/VT and asphyxial cardiac arrest in patients who were resuscitated accordi ng to new 2005 guidelines. Methods: The study included two cohorts of patients: cardiac arrest due to asphyxia with initial rhythm asystole or pulseless electrical activity (PEA), and cardiac arrest due to arrhythmia with initial rhythm VF or pulseless VT. PetCO2 was measured for both groups immediately after intubation and repeatedly every minute, both for patients with or without return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). We compared the dynamic pattern of PetCO2 between groups. Results: Between June 2006 and June 2009 resuscitation was attempted in 325 patients and in this study we included 51 patients with asphyxial cardiac arrest and 63 patients with VF/VT cardiac arrest. The initial values of PetCO2 were significantly higher in the group with asphyxial cardiac arrest (6.74 ± 4.22 kilopascals (kPa) versus 4.51 ± 2.47 kPa; P = 0.004). In the group with asphyxial cardiac arrest, the initial values of PetCO2 did not show a significant difference when we compared patients with and without ROSC (6.96 ± 3.63 kPa versus 5.77 ± 4.64 kPa; P = 0.313). We confirmed significantly higher initial PetCO2 values for those with ROSC in the group with primary cardiac arrest (4.62 ± 2.46 kPa versus 3.29 ± 1.76 kPa; P = 0.041). A significant difference in PetCO2 values for those with and without ROSC was achieved after five minutes of CPR in both groups. In all patients with ROSC the initial PetCO2 was again higher than 1.33 kPa. Conclusions: The dynamic pattern of PetCO2 values during out-of-hospital CPR showed higher values of PetCO2 in the first two minutes of CPR in asphyxia, and a prognostic value of initial PetCO2 only in primary VF/VT cardiac arrest. A prognostic value of PetCO2 for ROSC was achieved after the fifth minute of CPR in both groups and remained present until final values. This difference seems to be a useful criterion in pre-hospital diagnostic procedures and attendance of cardiac arrest. * Correspondence: grmec-mis@siol.net 1 Center for Emergency Medicine Maribor, Cesta proletarskih brigad 21, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Lah et al. Critical Care 2011, 15:R13 http://ccforum.com/content/15/1/R13 © 2011 Lah et al.; licensee BioMe d Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro vided the original work is properly cited. Introduction Capnomet ry and capnography have gained a crucial role in monitoring critically ill patients in the pre-hospital setting [1-5]. They can be u sed as a detector for correct endotracheal tube placement, to monitor the adequacy of ventilation, ensure a proper nasogastric tube place- ment, recognize changes in alveolar dead space, help describe a proper emptying pattern of alveoli, help esti- mate the deepness of sedation and relaxation in criti- cally ill, help in diagnostics of severe pulmonary embolism, and can be used in cardiac arrest patients as a pr ognostic determinant of outcome and in ... rebuilt and that is a good thing Key Concepts and Summary There is a difference between the level of a country’s trade and the balance of trade The level of trade is measured by the percentage of. .. 3/5 The Difference between Level of Trade and the Trade Balance nearby trading partners and a limited history of international trade will tend to have lower levels of trade The level of trade. .. the balance of trade, since this is determined by both imports and exports, and by national levels of physical investment and savings 4/5 The Difference between Level of Trade and the Trade Balance