Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do Incomers Pay More for Rural Housing?

The paper explores whether incomers pay a price premium for rural housing and, if so, whether it varies according to the origin of the buyer. Empirical analysis focuses on Aberdeenshire, Scotland, distinguishing between housing in the accessible and remote rural locations within the region. Buyers originating from Aberdeen city are found to pay more than locals in accessible rural housing markets, with the price premium highest in the high-quality housing-market segment. There is, however, no evidence that a price premium is paid by in-migrants from more distant locations. In contrast, consistent with information asymmetry and higher search costs, buyers from the rest of the UK are found to pay significantly more for high-quality properties in the remote rural area. From a methodological perspective the findings support the use of multilevel models which allow for unobserved neighbourhood effects.
Fixation Temperature Affects DNA Integrity in the Testis as Measured by the TUNEL Assay

Mature rat testes and liver were fixed with Bouin’s fluid (BF) or modified Davidson’s fixative (mDF) at room temperature (23°C) or 4°C, and DNA integrity was examined by the TUNEL assay. When testes were fixed in BF, TUNEL-stained cells were more prevalent than when fixation occurred in mDF. Independent of fixative, TUNEL-staining was higher when testes were fixed at room temperature relative to 4°C. Significant effects were present for fixative and temperature of fixation, but not their interaction. Relative to BF, mDF also provided for lower TUNEL-staining in liver, but staining was not affected by fixation temperature. Since the TUNEL assay depends on the detection of fragmented DNA strands, harsh fixatives that induce breaks in the DNA can introduce substantial artifacts. Such potential artifacts are especially prevalent in a tissue such as testes with its ongoing division and differentiation activities. Therefore, the current findings lead the authors to conclude that fixation of mature testes in mDF at 4°C minimizes generation of false TUNEL-positive cells.
Actin coating and compression of fused secretory vesicles are essential for surfactant secretion – a role for Rho, formins and myosin II

Secretion of vesicular contents by exocytosis is a fundamental cellular process. Increasing evidence suggests that post-fusion events play an important role in determining the composition and quantity of the secretory output. In particular, regulation of fusion pore dilation and closure is considered a key regulator of the post-fusion phase. However, depending on the nature of the cargo, additional mechanisms might be essential to facilitate effective release. We have recently described that in alveolar type II (ATII) cells, lamellar bodies (LBs), which are secretory vesicles that store lung surfactant, are coated with actin following fusion with the plasma membrane. Surfactant, a lipoprotein complex, does not readily diffuse out of fused LBs following opening and dilation of the fusion pore. Using fluorescence microscopy, atomic force microscopy and biochemical assays, we present evidence that actin coating and subsequent contraction of the actin coat is essential to facilitate surfactant secretion. Latrunculin B prevents actin coating of fused LBs and inhibits surfactant secretion almost completely. Simultaneous imaging of the vesicle membrane and the actin coat revealed that contraction of the actin coat compresses the vesicle following fusion. This leads to active extrusion of vesicle contents. Initial actin coating of fused vesicles is dependent on activation of Rho and formin-dependent actin nucleation. Actin coat contraction is facilitated by myosin II. In summary, our data suggest that fusion pore opening and dilation itself is not sufficient for release of bulky vesicle cargos and that active extrusion mechanisms are required.
Sustainable leadership at Siam Cement Group

Purpose – This study examines the question of whether sustainable leadership principles, also known as Rhineland leadership, can apply to a listed business in an emerging economy.Design/methodology/approach – Avery's sustainable leadership grid provided the framework for analysis of a major publicly‐listed Thai enterprise, the Siam Cement Group (SCG). A multi‐method case study used semi‐structured interviews with various stakeholders, observations, and internal and external documentation. The Rhineland principles were grouped into six categories for analysis: long‐term perspective, investing in people, organizational culture, innovation, social and environmental responsibility, and behaving ethically.Findings – Overall, data showed moderate to strong evidence for 18 of the 19 grid practices at SCG, the exception being the CEO serving as speaker of the top team rather than being a heroic leader. Moderate evidence was found for consensual and devolved decision making and self‐governing teams. All 16 other e.
Vacancy durations - a model for employer's search

This paper investigates a Dutch data set on vacancy durations and numbers of applicants to enquire employers' search strategies. A nonsequential search process assumes that most vacancies are filled from a pool of applicants, which is formed shortly after the posting of the vacancy. The time spent on recruiting applicants and the duration of the selection process are estimated with a proportional hazard model, via the arrival and attrition rates of applicants.
Diameter Dependence of Leakage Current in Nanowire Junctionless Field Effect Transistors

In this paper, we give a physical insight into the diameter-dependent dominant leakage mechanisms in the nanowire junctionless (NWJL) FETs. Using calibrated 3-D simulations, we show that the off-state current in the NWJLFETs with nanowire diameter less than 10 nm is governed by the drain-induced barrier lowering and the consequent source-to-channel barrier height and barrier thinning, which controls the lateral band-to-band tunneling (L-BTBT)-induced parasitic bipolar junction transistor (BJT) action. Furthermore, the quantum confinement-induced bandgap enhancement is shown to lower the probability of L-BTBT, and hence acts as the dominant mechanism in reducing the off-state current of the NWJLFETs with sub-7 nm diameter. In addition, the hole accumulation due to L-BTBT induces a shielding effect, which results in an inefficient volume depletion, leading to a large off-state current in NWJLFETs with nanowire diameters >15 nm. Furthermore, the impact of gate sidewall spacer on the L-BTBT-induced parasitic BJT in NWJLFETs has also been investigated.
THE NONLINEAR TIME SERIES PROPERTIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT RATES : SOME FURTHER EVIDENCE

The time series properties of unemployment rates for Germany, Japan, the UK and the US are re-examined. Evidence of nonlinear structure in the residuals of the most parsimonious linear ARMA models is reported for all countries except Japan. Modelling this nonlinearity using SETAR models suggests strong asymmetry in unemployment dynamics and the presence of a possible limit cycle for the UK. However, residual diagnostics for these models indicate remaining structure. Alternative TAR models conditioned on past growth rates of industrial production yield substantial reductions in residual variance over both linear and SETAR counterparts, iid residuals in all cases other than the US, and threshold values at or very near zero, clearly identifying the asymmetric behaviour of unemployment during expansionary and contractionary phases of the business cycle.
Tissue-Resident Cytolytic Innate Lymphocytes in Cancer

Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are critical components of tissues in the body, providing a first line of defense against challenges to host integrity. In contrast to strictly cytokine-producing helper ILCs, resident innate lymphocyte populations with cytolytic potential have been identified in multiple tissues in both mouse and human. These cells express the transcription factor Tbet, NK cell receptors, granzymes, perforin, and death receptors, and can directly kill tumor cells. Signals in the tumor microenvironment may promote this response, including the cytokine IL-15 and stress-associated ligands for activating NK receptors. Although there is evidence that these cells are tissue and tumor resident, their lineage remains unclear. Whether they are derived from the NK or helper ILC lineages or represent a third differentiation pathway remains to be determined. A better understanding of their lineage will help clarify their regulation and function in the context of antitumor immunity.
Social Capital, Tourism and Regional Development: SPCC as a Basis for Innovation and Sustainability

Traditional views of regional development have focused on economic factors and potential innovation in technical and resource exploitation processes. Similarly, regional tourism development is usually couched in economic terms, such as number of jobs and increasing land values. This approach usually ignores the social and community aspects of tourism development; thus an alternative view argues that the community needs to be factored into our planning and development strategies to balance the traditional economic view. It is argued in this paper that fostering innovation in regional development is much more than a process of community consultation. Rather, what needs to be factored in is SPCC – social, political and cultural capital. This works in both directions; tourism development depends on a level of social, political and cultural capital in order to be a successful regional development tool (even in economic terms) while at the same time tourism development can be undertaken in a way that contributes to SPCC in the region. The paper outlines the key concepts of social capital, political capital and cultural capital. It does so within the context of regional tourism development and the concepts of systems of innovation and sustainable development.
REVISITING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: RECONCILING THE NEEDS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF FACULTY, RESEARCHERS, AND ADMINISTRATORS WITH THE NEW REALITIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The Journal for Advancement of Marketing Education has published articles on professional development (PD) for ten years. This manuscript reviews highlights and trends in PD coverage over this time period not only in JAME, but also in other marketing and business education journals, with special attention to the areas of teaching, research, and workspace/career management. Recommendations are offered as to future directions for research in professional development. In the second part of the manuscript, an organizing framework with prescriptions for PD is presented, with special emphasis on emerging areas of critical concern in higher education.
Comparing the Impact of Modes of Governance

Public services are provided through a variety of modes of governance. The efficiency and performance of these modes is questioned, however. Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), originally developed by Williamson (1985), has been put forward as an approach to address this issue. TCE was originally developed to analyse commercial transactions. As many authors have pointed out TCE can, however, be used in public sector analysis as well. Decisions of governments to provide particular public services themselves or to contract them out to external partners can be viewed as make-or-buy decisions that are central to the original analysis of commercial transactions. In this paper, we address the issue of extending TCE to the public domain. In addition, we study one type of public service at the Dutch local level. The local government level offers excellent opportunities to study one type of public service under different feasible modes of governance. It, therefore, makes it possible to apply the type of comparative institutional analysis TCE prescribes in a satisfactory way. We address the public service of collecting household waste. Here, a number of institutional changes have resulted in a variety of governance structures. A comparative case study of eight municipalities with a high urbanization degree shows that with regard to this particular public service, alignment between governance structures and transactions matters for efficiency and performance. Prepared for the EGPA conference, Rotterdam 3-6 September 2008
Um índice de avaliação da qualidade da governança corporativa no Brasil

The purpose of this paper is to build an index to measure the quality of governance of Brazilian companies. We also sought to validate this index by confronting it with other indicators that reflect the confidence of investors in companies' good management of their capital. This index encompasses a set of mechanisms implemented in firms to reduce agency problems, concerning the dimensions: board of directors' composition, ownership structure, manager's compensation, protection of minority shareholders, and transparency. It was then validated in a sample of companies listed on Sao Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) between 1997 and 2006. In fact, the index was confronted with indicators of financial investors' trust in a company regarding good governance of their resources, such as financial performance. The quality of governance index was developed by means of the principal components multivariate technique. Actually, the index was constructed as a weighted average of all components generated in this procedure, where the weights are given by their respective variances. The analysis of our index exhibited an effective accrue in the governance levels of the analyzed Brazilian companies. In terms of external validation, we find a positive and significant relationship between Tobin's Q and the governance index. Better, we also document an inverse relationship between the governance index and the risk-adjusted stock return, suggesting that investors require a higher rate of return from firms that present worse governance levels. All of these relationships evidence that financial investors' trust in a company strongly relates to the governance quality expressed by the index. Therefore, the empirical analysis largely validates the proposed governance index. We conclude from the empirical evidence reported in this paper that good governance is of value to the market.
Testing the Equality of Two Proportions for Combined Unilateral and Bilateral Data

In many medical comparative studies (e.g., comparison of two treatments in an otolaryngological study), subjects may produce either bilateral (e.g., responses from a pair of ears) or unilateral (response from only one ear) data. For bilateral cases, it is meaningful to assume that the information between the two ears from the same subject are generally highly correlated. In this article, we would like to test the equality of the successful cure rates between two treatments with the presence of combined unilateral and bilateral data. Based on the dependence and independence models, we study ten test statistics which utilize both the unilateral and bilateral data. The performance of these statistics will be evaluated with respect to their empirical Type I error rates and powers under different configurations. We find that both Rosner's and Wald-type statistics based on the dependence model and constrained maximum likelihood estimates (under the null hypothesis) perform satisfactorily for small to large samples and are hence recommended. We illustrate our methodologies with a real data set from an otolaryngology study.
The Impact of Parental Separation on Young Children ’ s Mental Health

This fascicle is based on data from the Québec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (QLSCD 1998-2010) which is being conducted by the Institut de la statistique du Québec (Québec Institute of Statistics) in collaboration with various partners (lis ted on the back cover). The goal of this study is to gain a better understanding of the trajectories which, during early childhood, lead to children’s success or failure in the education system.
A549 Lung Epithelial Cells Grown as Three-Dimensional Aggregates: Alternative Tissue Culture Model for Pseudomonas aeruginosa Pathogenesis

ABSTRACT A three-dimensional (3-D) lung aggregate model was developed from A549 human lung epithelial cells by using a rotating-wall vessel bioreactor to study the interactions between Pseudomonas aeruginosa and lung epithelial cells. The suitability of the 3-D aggregates as an infection model was examined by immunohistochemistry, adherence and invasion assays, scanning electron microscopy, and cytokine and mucoglycoprotein production. Immunohistochemical characterization of the 3-D A549 aggregates showed increased expression of epithelial cell-specific markers and decreased expression of cancer-specific markers compared to their monolayer counterparts. Immunohistochemistry of junctional markers on A549 3-D cells revealed that these cells formed tight junctions and polarity, in contrast to the cells grown as monolayers. Additionally, the 3-D aggregates stained positively for the production of mucoglycoprotein while the monolayers showed no indication of staining. Moreover, mucin-specific antibodies to MUC1 and MUC5A bound with greater affinity to 3-D aggregates than to the monolayers. P. aeruginosa attached to and penetrated A549 monolayers significantly more than the same cells grown as 3-D aggregates. Scanning electron microscopy of A549 cells grown as monolayers and 3-D aggregates infected with P. aeruginosa showed that monolayers detached from the surface of the culture plate postinfection, in contrast to the 3-D aggregates, which remained attached to the microcarrier beads. In response to infection, proinflammatory cytokine levels were elevated for the 3-D A549 aggregates compared to monolayer controls. These findings suggest that A549 lung cells grown as 3-D aggregates may represent a more physiologically relevant model to examine the interactions between P. aeruginosa and the lung epithelium during infection.
Structural breaks and GARCH models of exchange rate volatility

We investigate the empirical relevance of structural breaks for GARCH models of exchange rate volatility using both in-sample and out-of-sample tests. We find significant evidence of structural breaks in the unconditional variance of seven of eight US dollar exchange rate return series over the 1980-2005 period-implying unstable GARCH processes for these exchange rates-and GARCH(1,1) parameter estimates often vary substantially across the subsamples defined by the structural breaks. We also find that it almost always pays to allow for structural breaks when forecasting exchange rate return volatility in real time. Combining forecasts from different models that accommodate structural breaks in volatility in various ways appears to offer a reliable method for improving volatility forecast accuracy given the uncertainty surrounding the timing and size of the structural breaks. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Policy Versus Place Luck: Achieving Local Economic Prosperity

This research focuses on the relative impact of place luck and economic development policy in contributing to long-term economic growth. Using a unique national data set composed of surveys of public officials, three decades of census data, and a variety of other data covering climate, health, amenities, and so on, the following research questions are addressed: (a) Is economic prosperity better explained by local development policy or simple place luck? (b) Are particular economic development policies more strongly related to prosperity than others? (c) Are there other attributes of cities such as school quality, service quality, and safety, for example, that appear to enhance economic health?
Informal Payments: A Side Effect of Transition or a Mechanism for Sustaining the Illusion of ‘Free’ Health Care? The Experience of Four Regions in the Russian Federation

Abstract Informal payments for health services are widespread in many transition economies in post-communist Europe and the former Soviet Union. Their existence complements and in some cases significantly contributes to the financing of their health systems. It has been suggested that they are the legacy of planned socialist economies and a temporary side effect of the transition from a planned to a market economy. This article discusses the findings of the study investigating the extent and nature of the informal payments and evaluates the policy options on offer. It asserts that despite the level of declared support for moderate cost-sharing by different population groups, it is unlikely that any legalised form of co-payment will affect or replace informal payments, as the government uses them to sustain the illusion of ‘free’ health care. The study argues that the utilitarian gain maximisation principle, calling for the greatest collective welfare in communitarian egalitarianism, and the satisfaction of individual preferences in libertarian economics enable the acceptance of informal payments as a viable policy option.
Closed-loop instrumental variable identification of propofol anesthesia

One of the challenges in the development of high-performance closed-loop anesthetic drug delivery systems is the lack of accurate models. Physiological models have limited accuracy and drug effect varies largely between patients, while data-driven modeling of individual responses is challenging due to limited excitation and disturbances. This paper proposes a multi-input single-output (MISO) approach to deal with the effect of disturbances by identifying a plant model as well as a disturbance model. Furthermore, a MISO extension to closed-loop instrumental variable (IV) identification is proposed. Closed-loop IV methods are consistent without the need for identification of intermediate variables or noise-model parameters. Identification of fewer parameters is expected to be advantageous in this application where excitation is limited. The proposed approach is compared to closed-loop prediction-error methods. IV estimation achieved similar performance to a tailor-made parametrization. Bias in direct output-error (OE) estimates due to noise is limited. Closed-loop methods that require a controller description or that introduce additional computational complexity do not significantly improve model accuracy compared to direct OE estimation in this application.
The New Empirics of Economic Growth

We provide an overview of recent empirical research on patterns of cross-country growth. The new empirical regularities considered differ from earlier ones, e.g., the well-known Kaldor stylized facts. The new research no longer makes production function accounting a central part of the analysis. Instead, attention shifts more directly to questions like, Why do some countries grow faster than others? It is this changed focus that, in our view, has motivated going beyond the neoclassical growth model.