In this paper we test the hypothesis that the economic transition toward a market economy increases the efficiency of firms. We study 32 Polish electricity distribution companies between 1997-2002, by applying common benchmarking methods to the panel: the nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA), the free disposal hull (FDH), and, as a parametric approach, the stochastic frontier analysis ...

Container terminal production is both an important and complicated element in the contemporary global economy. Amongst other methods, the efficiency of container port or terminal production can potentially be analysed by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) or by the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) Model. This paper aims to evaluate the efficiency of the world’s most important container ports and terminals...

Pokemon 1 is a proto-oncogenic transcriptional regulator that contains a POZ domain at the N-terminus and four Kruppel-like zinc fingers at the C-terminus. Pokemon 1 plays an important role in adipogenesis, osteogenesis, oncogenesis, and transcription of NF-kB responsive genes. Recent reports have shown that biological activities of transcription factors are regulated by sumolylation. We invest...

It is generally known that cofactors play a major role in the production of different fermentation products. This paper is part of a systematic study that investigates the potential of cofactor manipulations as a new tool for metabolic engineering. The NADH/NAD+ cofactor pair plays a major role in microbial catabolism, in which a carbon source, such as glucose, is oxidized using NAD+ and produc...

In this paper, an extension of the generalized data envelopment analysis (GDEA) model has been introduced. In this generalization different cases of production possibility set (PPS) of the extended generalized data envelopment analysis (EGDEA) model are investigated. The proposed EGDEA model is used to evaluate decision’s making units (DMUs) either with full convexity assumption imposed on inpu...

26 Enterobacteria like Escherichia coli generate formate, lactate, acetate and succinate as major 27 acidic fermentation products. Accumulation of these products in the cytoplasm would lead to 28 uncoupling of the membrane potential and therefore they must be either metabolized rapidly 29 or exported from the cell. E. coli has three membrane-localized formate dehydrogenases 30 (FDH) that oxidiz...

This paper proposes a nonparametric efficiency measurement approach for the static portfolio selection problem in a general inputs-outputs space, where inputs can include variance and kurtosis and outputs can include mean and skewness. Our work is in the vein of Briec, Kerstens and Jokung (2007) and Jurzenko, Maillet and Merlin (2006) who develop a directional distance (shortage function) appro...

Oxalic acid is a prevalent fungal metabolite with versatile roles in growth and nutrition, including degradation of plant biomass. However, the toxicity of oxalic acid makes regulation of its intra- and extracellular concentration crucial. To increase the knowledge of fungal oxalate metabolism, a transcriptional level study on oxalate-catabolising genes was performed with an effective lignin-de...

BACKGROUND As a natural fermentation product secreted by Clostridium species, bio-based 1-butanol has attracted great attention for its potential as alternative fuel and chemical feedstock. Feasibility of microbial 1-butanol production has also been demonstrated in various recombinant hosts. RESULTS In this work, we constructed a self-regulated 1-butanol production system in Escherichia coli ...