Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plasticity of repetitive DNA in response to metal stress in Bryophytes

Abstract The relationship between environmental stresses and the genome was investigated by examining the behaviour of repetitive DNA in response to lead or cadmium in two Bryophytes, differing from a physiological and an ecological point of view, namely the aquatic moss L. riparium and the terricolous moss F. hygrometrica. Using different experimental approaches, a direct relationship was shown to exist in these two mosses between the metal-induced stress and repetitive DNA. In fact, in both organisms, metal treatment was accompanied by a selective amplification of some GC-rich repetitive DNA sequences forming peculiar agglomerates inside the nucleus; this amplification is quantitatively proportional to the time of exposure of the plants to the metals and stops upon removal of the metal from the culture medium. Results show that ribosomal DNA sequences are involved in this metal-induced repetitive DNA agglomerate formation, although they are not the only repetitive sequences present within the heterochromatic DNA agglomerates. The plasticity of the genome of the Bryophytes in response to external stimuli, and the fact that repetitive DNA is involved in this plasticity are discussed.
Real Identity of Witheringia sellowiana (Solanaceae), Typification, and Chromosome Number

Abstract The identity of Witheringia sellowiana, a narrow endemic species from São Paulo (Brazil), is reconsidered. After analysis of the protologue and the morphological characters of the type material and recent flowering collections, a new combination is proposed ( Aureliana sellowiana (Sendtn.) Barboza & Stehmann). A lectotype and epitype are designated here. A detailed description and illustration, an analysis of the karyotype of A. sellowiana, and a discussion of its closest relatives are provided. A key to differentiate the species of Aureliana is also given.
Switching On-Off Snail: LOXL2 Versus GSK3?

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is considered as an essential determinant ofcarcinoma progression. The transcription factor Snail controls EMT by repressing Ecadheringene expression and other epithelial genes. Snail protein stability and cellularlocalization is finely controlled by GSK3? -dependent phosphorylation and subsequentubiquitination. GSK3? phosphorylates Snail at two different motifs which induce itsnuclear export and association with ? -Trcp thus leading to Snail degradation. Recently,Snail was found to interact physical and functionally with LOXL2, a member of thelysyl oxidase gene family. Interestingly, LOXL2 seems to attenuate the GSK3? -dependent Snail degradation. Here, we discuss the relevance of this new potentialmechanism of regulation and the role of LOXL2 during carcinoma progression.
Asymmetric Capital Structure Adjustments: New Evidence from Dynamic Panel Threshold Models

We develop a dynamic panel threshold model of capital structure to test the dynamic trade-off theory, allowing for asymmetries in firms’ adjustments toward target leverage. Our novel estimation approach is able to consistently estimate heterogeneous speeds of adjustment in different regimes as well as to properly test for the threshold effect. We consider several proxies for adjustment costs that affect the asymmetries in capital structure adjustments and find evidence that firms with large financing imbalance (or a deficit), large investment or low earnings volatility adjust faster than those with the opposite characteristics. Firms not only adjust at different rates but also seem to adjust toward heterogeneous leverage targets. Moreover, we document a consistent pattern that firms undertaking quick adjustment are over-levered with a financing deficit and rely heavily on equity issues to make such adjustment.
Investor Attention, Overconfidence and Category Learning

Motivated by psychological evidence that attention is a scarce cognitive resource, we model investors' attention allocation in learning and study the effects of this on asset-price dynamics. We show that limited investor attention leads to category-learning behavior, i.e., investors tend to process more market and sector-wide information than firm-specific information. This endogenous structure of information, when combined with investor overconfidence, generates important features observed in return comovement that are otherwise difficult to explain with standard rational expectations models. Our model also demonstrates new cross-sectional implications for return predictability.
Ecology of the Asian elephant in southern India. II. Feeding habits and crop raiding patterns

ABSTRACT The Asian elephant's foraging strategy in its natural habitat and in cultivation was studied in southern India during 1981–83. Though elephants consumed at least 112 plant species in the study area, about 85% of their diet consisted of only 25 species from the order Malvales and the families Leguminosae, Palmae, Cyperaceae and Gramineae. Alteration between a predominantly browse diet during the dry season with a grass diet during the early wet season was related to the seasonally changing protein content of grasses. Crop raiding, which was sporadic during the dry season, gradually increased with more area being cultivated with the onset of rains. Raiding frequency reached a peak during October-December, with some villages being raided almost every night, when finger millet (Eleusine coracana) was cultivated by most farmers. The monthly frequency of raiding was related to the seasonal movement of elephant herds and to the size of the enclave. Of their total annual food requirement, adult bull elephants derived an estimated 9.3% and family herds 1.7% in quantity from cultivated land. Cultivated cereal and millet crops provided significantly more protein, calcium and sodium than the wild grasses. Ultimately, crop raiding can be thought of as an extension of the elephant's optimal foraging strategy.
A Projection Method for Public Health and Long-Term Care Expenditures

This paper proposes a new set of public health and long-term care expenditure projections until 2060, seven years after a first set of projections was published by the OECD. It disentangles health from long-term care expenditure, as well as the demographic from the non-demographic drivers, and refines the previous methodology, in particular by extending the country coverage. Regarding health care, non-demographic drivers are identified, with an attempt to better understand the residual expenditure growth by determining which share can be explained by the evolution of health prices and technology effects. Concerning LTC, an estimation of the determinants of the number of dependants (people needing help in their daily life activities) is provided. A cost-containment and a cost-pressure scenario are provided, together with sensitivity analysis. On average across OECD countries, total health and long-term care expenditure is projected to increase by 3.3 and 7.7 percentage points of GDP between 2010 and 2060 in the cost-containment and the cost-pressure scenarios respectively. For the BRIICS over the same period, it is projected to increase by 2.8 and 7.3 percentage points of GDP in the cost-containment and the cost-pressure scenarios respectively.
Mineral Oil: The Best Xylene Substitute for Tissue Processing Yet?

Abstract A simple and effective method for the substitution of mineral oil for xylene in tissue processing is described. After a short dehydration with ethanol, tissue fragments are immersed in a mixture of ethanol, isopropyl alcohol, and mineral oil at 45°C and 50°C, with vacuum / pressure /agitation in order to complete the dehydration and initiate the infiltration that is finalized with mineral oil and melted paraffin wax in separate and consecutive steps. Using random samples from 38 different types of tissue, 92 pairs of slides were prepared, half from specimens processed with xylene and the other half with the new procedure. Each of the 92 pairs of slides, that included 12 different conventional histochemical stains and 21 different immunohistocliemical stains, was evaluated 9 times in a blind test by as many reviewers. The evaluation of the results with the X2 test showed that processing tissue with mineral oil is equivalent to processing tissue with xylene. Furthermore, mineral oil poses no health or environmental risks and has microtomy advantages as well. Since June199 this new procedure Ilas been the standard method for tissue processing at Mount Sinai Meclical Center of Greater Miami. (The J Histotechnol 23:143, 2000)
Entrepreneurial Orientation in Mexican Microenterprises

Over the past 30 years research on Entrepreneurship Orientation (EO) has provided valuable information regarding strategy, entrepreneurship and aspects of performance at the firm-level. In the entrepreneurial universe, microenterprises play a very special role in the business context of the economy. However, they have not been relatively present in the EO research. This paper studies the EO-performance relationship in a group of microenterprises in Mexico and includes the Dominant Logic (DL) as a variable that moderates this relationship. The results indicate that risk taking, proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness variables from the EO influence the microenterprise performance. In addition, the external DL conceptualization moderates the EO-performance relationship. This paper shows the conclusions of the investigation as well as the limitations and identifies future research methods.
Efficient Multipowers

We show how to minimize the asymptotic variance of multipower estimators using a linear combination of optimal powers. Taking advantage of the lower variance provided by this technique allows to build superior estimators of integrated volatility powers. In particular, we focus on a new efficient quarticity estimator and we show, using simulated data, that we can drastically reduce the mean square error of traditional estimators. The implementation on US stock prices corroborates our theoretical findings and further shows that efficient quarticity noticeably reduces the number of detected jumps, and improves the quality of volatility forecasts.
Health and Retirement

The choice of a retirement date is one of the most important decisions facing older workers. It is a decision that will affect their economic well-being for the remainder of their lives. One factor that undoubtedly impacts this choice is the worker's health. However, the many studies examining the relationship between health and retirement have failed to agree on the relative importance of health compared with financial variables. Efforts to do so have been hampered by the difficulty of correctly measuring health status. Much of the concern centers on the fear that subjective reports of health are biased by individuals using poor health as a justification for early retirement. This paper takes advantage of a unique measure of labor force attachment, the subjective probability of continued work, to reexamine the role of health and changes in health status. By focusing exclusively on workers, I eliminate the concern about justification bias among retired individuals and find that subjective reports of health do have important effects on retirement, effects that are arguably stronger than those of the financial variables. The effects of subjective health remain large even when the model includes more objective measures of health, such as disease conditions. I also find that changes in retirement expectations are driven to a much greater degree by changes in health than by changes in income or wealth.
Lumpy Investment, Uncertainty, and Monetary Policy

This paper studies the roles of lumpy investment and fluctuation in firm-level uncertainty in determining the investment channel of monetary policy. Empirically, I show that higher uncertainty makes firms more cautious about investment when facing monetary stimulus. I then develop a heterogeneous firm New Keynesian model with a comprehensive capital adjustment cost structure, including partial irreversibility, a random fixed cost, and a quadratic cost. These costs lead firms to pursue an asymmetrically generalized (S,s) investment rule. Hence, monetary policy works primarily through the extensive margin of investment. Upon an uncertainty shock, the (S,s) inaction region is enlarged, and a conventional monetary policy shock is not large enough to motivate firms at the extensive margin. As a result, the effectiveness of monetary policy is reduced. I calibrate the model so that it matches the dynamic moments of investment, which is key to generating this result. I show that this calibration implies that an aggregate shock to firm-level uncertainty estimated by Bloom et al. (2018) reduces the impact of a monetary policy shock on investment by about two-third. This reduction is about 90% of what I find in the data. Therefore, the aggregate effect of monetary policy depends on lumpy investment and time-varying uncertainty.
Family Firm Local Involvement and the Local Home Bias Phenomenon

Research has documented that most of retail and institutional investors exhibit a strong preference for stocks issued by nearby listed firms (i.e. Local Home Bias). This phenomenon shapes corporate market value and the cost of funding. In this paper, we investigate whether the Local Home Bias is enhanced in family firms as a consequence of their symbiotic connection with the local community. Using a dataset of 2,951 Italian firm-year observations (1,481 are family firms) over the period 1999-2011, we find that Local Home Bias is not a widespread phenomenon and mainly occurs in founding family firms where the founder serves as CEO. The Local Home Bias is absent in non-family firms or in family firms where the owner has acquired control through a market transaction. Overall, results suggest that locally committed family firms trigger investor preference for local stocks and, in doing so, exploit the dedicated local clientele which shrinks the cost of funding. Ultimately, we argue the social contributions of family firms to the local community could even have opportunistic traits and a non-trivial economic effect.
Does Late-acting Self-incompatibility (LSI) Show Family Clustering? Two More Species of Bignoniaceae with LSI:Dolichandra cynanchoides and Tabebuia nodosa

Abstract By means of hand pollination experiments and fluorescence microscopy the breeding systems and pollen tube growth were studied in Dolichandra cynanchoides and Tabebuia nodosa , two bignoniaceous species of the Chaco woodland of NE Argentina. Both species abscised all selfed pistils within 4–8 d although self pollen tubes grew successfully to the ovary and penetrated many ovules. Both species therefore show ‘late-acting self-incompatibility’ (LSI) or ‘ovarian sterility’ (OS) type control of selfing. LSI-OS has been reported in 17 species of the Bignoniaceae, and is also clustered in families such as the Bombacaceae-Sterculiaceae, Fabaceae and Myrtaceae. The implications of such family clustering are discussed, with regard to current hypotheses for the action of LSI-OS phenomena.
Geographic Clustering and Resource Reallocation Across Firms in Chinese Industries

We examine the effects of China's industrial clustering on resource reallocation efficiency across firms. Based on our county-industry level DBI index panel, we find that industrial clustering significantly increases local industries' productivity by lifting the average firm productivity and reallocating resources from less to more productive firms. Moreover, we find major mechanisms through which resource reallocation is improved within clusters: (i) clusters facilitate higher entry rates and exit rates; and (ii) within clusters' environment the dispersion of individual firm's markup is significantly reduced, indicating intensified local competition within clusters. The identification issues are carefully addressed by instrumental variable (IV) regressions.
Valuation Techniques and the Economics of Software as a Service

A significant amount of literature favors the notion that a real-options approach to capital budgeting is superior to the conventional discounted cash flow technique when uncertainty is present in the investment opportunity. Unlike traditional licensed-based software, SaaS1 inherently provides the buyer with the flexibility to change the course of the investment as uncertainty related to the product or service is resolved. In this respect, SaaS changes the game with regard to the economic benefits provided by the product or service. The SaaS model builds management flexibility into the investment decision and that same flexibility may be valuable when uncertainty is present. With that said, the question at hand is whether or not conventional valuation techniques such as DCF2 can be counted on to make accurate SaaS capital budgeting decisions. And if such methods cannot be counted on, do OPM3 techniques such as binomial lattices or modified Black Scholes models provide a more accurate picture of their value? The final and perhaps more important question seeks to understand which of the two methods is most likely to be used by finance professionals when making SaaS capital budgeting decisions. This paper will show that a considerable gap exists between those that intend to use conventional DCF models versus more sophisticated OPM techniques when making capital investment decisions that involve SaaS. This gap should be a concern for those that buy or sell products and services delivered via SaaS for the value of flexibility may go unrecognized.
COVID-19, Fiscal Stimulus, and Credit Ratings

COVID-19 pandemic has rattled the global economy and has required governments to undertake massive fiscal stimulus to prevent the economic fallout of social distancing policies. In this paper, we compare the fiscal response of governments from around the world and its main determinants. We find sovereign credit ratings as one of the most critical factors determining their choice. First, the countries with one level worse rating announced 0.3 percentage points lower fiscal stimulus (as a percentage of their GDP). Second, these countries also delayed their fiscal stimulus by an average of 1.7 days. We identify 22 most vulnerable countries, based on their rating and stringency, and find that a stimulus equal to 1 percent of their GDP adds up to USD 87 billion. In order to fight the pandemic, long term loans from multilateral institutions can help these stimulus starved economies.
Equity Valuation: Forecasting Earnings Based on Probability Distributions Linked to Rating Categories

The paper continues an equity valuation model based on a random process modelling of earnings and book value, coupled with rating categories and rating migration. In essence, earnings and book value probability distributions are related to rating categories, and the probability of an issue to have a certain rating category at a certain time is calculated. Based on this, earnings are forecast as probability distributions. As reflected by the output distributions, in general, given its premises, the valuation model more realistically models inherent uncertainty, particularly increased uncertainty with time. It is noted that this approach to equity valuation is rather similar to reduced form models used with bond valuation. As a consequence, the probability of default is naturally incorporated into the valuation model. The necessary input earnings per book value, and book value growth, probability distributions are simulated, in accordance with preceding research, and the resultant output earnings, and book value, probability distributions are calculated and outlined.
A Dynamic Model of Health, Addiction, Education, and Wealth

This paper formulates and estimates a dynamic model of health, addiction, education, and wealth in order to understand the well-established positive empirical relationship between education and health. In our model, agents make decisions on schooling, consumption of addictive goods, and saving/borrowing over the lifecycle. Agents differ in their endowments of cognitive and noncognitive skills and initial health and face endogenously-determined borrowing constraints. The consumption of unhealthy addictive goods, joined with low levels of cognitive and noncognitive skills, and limited access to credit markets generate a constellation of bad health, and low levels of education and wealth, which is further reinforced by the complementary between education and health as individuals age. The model is estimated on data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97, using a two-step estimation procedure that combines factor analysis and the simulated method of moments. Using the model, we quantify the causal relationship between education and health. We then conduct counterfactual policy experiments to assess (1) how excise tax policies on the consumption of addictive goods affect health, education, and wealth, and (2) how policies that improve endowments affect health, addiction, education, and wealth.
Conservation challenges in urban seascapes: promoting the growth of threatened species on coastal infrastructures

Summary With nearly two-thirds of the human population concentrated along coastlines, coastal development and urbanized seascapes are inevitable. Proliferation of coastal and marine infrastructures, such as breakwaters, ports, seawalls and offshore installations, is associated with loss of natural habitats. This calls for new strategies aimed at elevating the ecological and biological value of coastal infrastructures, while minimizing their ecological footprint. We explored the feasibility of using coastal defence structures as a scaffold for the conservation of threatened marine species. We experimented with fucoids, canopy-forming algae on Mediterranean coasts, in the light of their declared conservation priority. We transplanted juveniles of Cystoseira barbata to a number of breakwaters and natural sites along the Adriatic Sea (Italy) and tested which factors could facilitate or inhibit its successful establishment. Survival of transplanted C. barbata was greater at most artificial and natural sites examined compared to the native sites where severe habitat loss was ongoing. Survival was greater at landward compared to seaward positions on the infrastructure, while no relevant effects of substratum characteristics (horizontal vs. vertical orientation, variable composition and increasing complexity) were observed. Lack of surrounding adult fronds did not impair the survival or growth of the transplants, suggesting a high transplantation potential also on novel infrastructures. Success of transplantation in areas remote from the source population was limited by biotic disturbance, which was more intense on coastal infrastructures in sedimentary environments compared to natural rocky sites. Synthesis and applications. Coastal and marine infrastructures can be harnessed to enhance desired species (such as threatened canopy-forming algae). A comprehensive understanding of the ecological functioning of these urban seascapes compared to natural habitats is required to minimize detrimental impacts, or potentially increase the ecological value, of coastal structures and efficiently incorporate such strategies into management and conservation actions. We investigated the influence of habitat type (including natural and artificial), surface complexity, herbivore exclusion, proximity to established populations and orientation on the transplantation success of threatened algae.