Participatory value evaluation for the evaluation of flood protection schemes

Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) is a new survey method which elicits citizens' preferences over the allocation of public budgets as well as their private income. In a PVE, citizens are asked to choose the best portfolio of projects given a governmental and a private budget constraint. First, this paper aligns PVE with the traditional Kaldor...

Class-II dihydroorotate dehydrogenases from three phylogenetically distant fungi support anaerobic pyrimidine biosynthesis

Background: In most fungi, quinone-dependent Class-II dihydroorotate dehydrogenases (DHODs) are essential for pyrimidine biosynthesis. Coupling of these Class-II DHODHs to mitochondrial respiration makes their in vivo activity dependent on oxygen availability. Saccharomyces cerevisiae and closely related yeast species harbor a cytosolic Class...

Contrasting the recommendations of participatory value evaluation and cost-benefit analysis in the context of urban mobility investments

Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) is a new method to assess the desirability of government projects. In a PVE, individuals select their preferred portfolio of government projects given a constrained public budget. Individuals’ preferences for (the impacts of) government projects can be determined based on these choices. The obtained...

The underlying mechanisms of improved balance after one and ten sessions of balance training in older adults

Training improves balance control in older adults, but the time course and neural mechanisms underlying these improvements are unclear. We studied balance robustness and performance, H-reflex gains, paired reflex depression, and co-contraction duration in ankle muscles after one and ten training sessions in 22 older adults (+65 yrs)....

Synthetic Genomics From a Yeast Perspective

Synthetic Genomics focuses on the construction of rationally designed chromosomes and genomes and offers novel approaches to study biology and to construct synthetic cell factories. Currently, progress in Synthetic Genomics is hindered by the inability to synthesize DNA molecules longer than a few hundred base pairs, while the size of the...

Long-read direct RNA sequencing of the mitochondrial transcriptome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveals condition-dependent intron abundance

Mitochondria fulfil many essential roles and have their own genome, which is expressed as polycistronic transcripts that undergo co- or posttranscriptional processing and splicing. Due to the inherent complexity and limited technical accessibility of the mitochondrial transcriptome, fundamental questions regarding mitochondrial gene...

Exploring the potential of yeast mitochondria for synthetic cell research

Building synthetic cells is extremely interesting from a fundamental perspective, as the ability to rationally build viable, dividing, and self-maintaining cells provides knowledge on the minimal requirements to sustain life. This should enhance our understanding about which biological parts are minimally required for a cell to live, and how...

Migration and clinical outcomes of a novel cementless hydroxyapatite-coated titanium acetabular shell: two-year follow-up of a randomized controlled trial using radiostereometric analysis

Aims The objective of this study was to compare the two-year migration and clinical outcomes of a new cementless hydroxyapatite (HA)-coated titanium acetabular shell with its previous version, which shared the same geometrical design but a different manufacturing process for applying the titanium surface. Methods Overall, 87 patients...

Influence of marker-selection method in radiostereometric analysis of total knee arthroplasty on tibial baseplate migration patterns: a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial with 5-year follow-up

Background and purpose — Different marker-selection methods are applied to represent implant and tibial seg-ments in radiostereometric analysis (RSA) studies of total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Either a consistent set of markers throughout subsequent RSA examinations (“consistent-marker method”) is used or all available markers at each follow...