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YiiP is a dimeric Zn ²⁺/H ⁺ antiporter from Escherichia coli belonging to the cation diffusion facilitator family. We used cryoelectron microscopy to determine a 13-Å resolution structure of a YiiP homolog from Shewanella oneidensis within a lipid bilayer in the absence of Zn ²⁺. Starting from the X-ray structure in the presence of Zn ²⁺, we used molecular dynamics flexible fitting to build a model consistent with our map. Comparison of the structures suggests a conformational change that involves pivoting of a transmembrane, four-helix bundle (M1, M2, M4, and M5) relative to the M3-M6 helix pair. Although accessibility of transport sites in the X-ray model indicates that it represents an outward-facing state, our model is consistent with an inward-facing state, suggesting that the conformational change is relevant to the alternating access mechanism for transport. Molecular dynamics simulation of YiiP in a lipid environment was used to address the feasibility of this conformational change. Association of the C-terminal domains is the same in both states, and we speculate that this association is responsible for stabilizing the dimer that, in turn, may coordinate the rearrangement of the transmembrane helices.

This research investigated the impact of feudalism on the church in medieval Europe, using a qualitative approach and content analysis method. The main goal was to determine how the interconnection of feudal systems impacted the role and operations of the church. The study revealed that, while the church provided significant benefits to medieval society, including social cohesion, education, and welfare, it also experienced substantial secularization. This shift was driven by its engagement in feudal practices and the resultant distorted doctrines. The church’s involvement in the feudal system led to its integration into the socio-political hierarchy, where it held considerable power and land. However, this secular involvement compromised its spiritual authority and mission. This study underscored the dual role of the church as both a spiritual guide and a feudal institution, highlighting the complexities of its influence in medieval Europe.

This paper treats organizations as adaptive systems that have to match the complexity of their environments. The nature of this complexity is analyzed by linking an institutional Information-Space (I-Space) framework to the work of complexity theorists. The I-Space framework identifies the codification, abstraction, and diffusion of information as cultural attributes. Codification involves the assignment of data to categories, thus giving them form. Abstraction involves a reduction in the number of categories to which data needs to be assigned for a phenomenon to be apprehended. Information is diffused through populations of data-processing agents, thus constituting the diffusion dimension. Complexity theorists have identified the stability and structure of algorithmic information complexity in a way that corresponds to levels of codification and abstraction. Their identification of system parts and the richness of cross-coupling draws attention to the fabric of information diffusion. We discuss two modes of adaptation to complex environments: complexity reduction and complexity absorption. Complexity reduction entails getting to understand the complexity and acting on it directly, including attempts at environmental enactment. Complexity absorption entails creating options and risk-hedging strategies, often through alliances. The analysis, and its practical utility, is illustrated with reference to China, the world's largest social system. Historical factors have shaped the nature of complexity in China, giving it very different characteristics than those typical of Western industrial countries. Its organizations and other social units have correspondingly handled this complexity through a strategy of absorption rather than the reduction strategy characteristic of Western societies. Western firms operating in China therefore face a choice between maintaining their norms of complexity reduction or adopting a strategy of complexity absorption that is more consistent with Chinese culture. The specifics of these policy alternatives are explored, together with their advantages and disadvantages. The paper concludes with the outlines of a possible agenda for future research, focusing on the investigation of complexity-handling modes and the contingencies which may bear upon the choice between them.

China's rapid economic development is being accomplished through a system of industrial governance and transaction that differs from Western experience. Here, we identify the broad institutional nature of this distinctiveness within a framework of information codification and diffusion. The emergent features of China's economic order are analyzed with reference to the business system developing there, in particular, the nature of market arrangements, the form of capitalism, and the role of government within that system. The limited extent of codification of information in China and its communal property rights and organization of economic transactions suggest that decentralization from the former state-command system is giving rise to a distinctive institutional form--network capitalism.

In Egyptology, the subordinates of the Hyksos are commonly defined as vassals, often without giving a definition of the concept and as a consequence, the complexity that subordination practices might acquire is overlooked. In this paper, I present a revision of the origin and meaning of the concept of vassal, the underlying paradigms that sustain it, and discuss the scarce evidence as to reconstruct the subordination practices carried out by the Hyksos in Egypt.

Scholars agree that before the Habsburg legislation of 1595–1616, nobility was essentially a social phenomenon in the Southern Low Countries, but the conventions that structured that social consensus are still subject to debate. This article challenges the established opinion that being or becoming noble was a matter of mastering the so-called 'vivre noblement', namely a distinct lifestyle that included large-scale landownership, military service, a patrilineal family structure and a specific material culture that entailed, among other things, clothing, riding horses, carrying swords, hunting, the use of heraldry and specific behavioural patterns in speech, posture and consumption. In-depth research shows that the discourse of noble exclusivity in lifestyle only emerged in the sixteenth century under the impulse of the Habsburg government, and that in the late medieval county of Flanders (the most important principality of the Southern Low Countries), the various elements of the 'vivre noblement' were widely accessible to the many wealthy commoners in town and countryside. A study of the medieval discourse on nobility and a quantitative analysis suggest that nobility was in fact tied to a limited number of seigniories, that is, private property rights which entailed the exertion of public power over village communities. The concluding section of this article draws on social semiotics and anthropological studies on the value of objects to discuss how the ownership of similar objects and symbols by noblemen and wealthy commoners carried different meanings, depending on the social context of its use.

O texto examina o modo como os juristas, dos glosadores a Jacques Cujas, analisaram a definição de feudo na interpretação do direito comum à luz dos escritos de Oberto dell’Orto. Nessa perspectiva, o autor revê aspectos da situação real do feudatário como domínio útil, afirmando a inadequação técnica do usufruto para expressá-la, analisa a posterior caracterização dos feudos como quase-dominium, presente, sobretudo, em alguns juristas entre os séculos XVI e XVII.

The discovery of notorial acts concerning the estate of Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) clarifies the circumstances surrounding his death and the distribution of his estate. The art dealer Edme-François Gersaint (1694-1750) helped create an image of Watteau as a melancholy, unstable, \"proto-Romantic\" artist, and by Gersaint's account even the details of his death fit with this image. It emerges from the new discovery that through inaccuracies and lacunae in his account Gersaint turned Watteau's biography in his own favour. Claiming an exclusive friendship with the most revered painter of his time was a great marketing ploy for an art dealer. (Quotes from original text)