Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Proprotein-processing endoproteases PC6 and furin both activate hemagglutinin of virulent avian influenza viruses

Among the proprotein-processing subtilisin-related endoproteases, furin has been a leading candidate for the enzyme that activates the hemagglutinin (HA) of virulent avian influenza viruses. In the present study, we examined the cleavage activity of two other recently isolated ubiquitous subtilisin-related proteases, PACE4 and PC6, using wild-type HA of A/turkey/Ireland/1378/83 (H5N8) and a series of its mutant HAs. Vaccinia virus-expressed wild-type HA was not cleaved in human colon adenocarcinoma LoVo cells, which lack active furin. This processing defect was corrected by the expression of furin and PC6 but not of PACE4 and a control wild-type vaccinia virus. PC6 showed a sequence specificity similar to that with the endogenous proteases in cultured cells. When LoVo cells were infected with a virulent avian virus, A/turkey/Ontario/7732/66 (H5N9), only noninfectious virions were produced because of the lack of HA cleavage. However, when the cells were coinfected with vaccinia virus that expressed either furin or PC6, the avian virus underwent multiple cycles of replication, indicating that both furin and PC6 specifically cleave the virulent virus HA at the authentic site. These data suggest that PC6, as well as furin, can activate virulent avian influenza viruses in vivo, implying the presence of multiple HA cleavage enzymes in animals.
Epitaxial Graphene Technology for Quantum Metrology

Graphene grown on silicon carbide by high-temperature annealing (SiC/G) is a strong contender in the race towards large-scale graphene electronics applications. The unique electronic properties of this system lead to a remarkably robust and accurate Hall resistance quantisation of 0.1 parts per billion, making SiC/G devices highly desirable for the endeavour of quantum resistance metrology. However, major challenges for this technology remain, such as control of the charge carrier density and reproducibility of material growth and device properties. The main aims of the work presented in this Thesis are to understand and improve the performance and reproducibility of SiC/G devices for quantum Hall resistance metrology. Moreover, in this work we developed further understanding of material issues such as the homogeneity of SiC/G for applications in quantum metrology, and ultimately wafer scale electronics. By correlating the nanoscopic growth features of SiC/G with electron transport measurements, we were able to reveal the wafer scale electronic homogeneity of monolayer graphene grown on SiC. We developed disparate gating methods to enable quantum Hall effect at lower magnetic fields (B = 2-5 T) and to study electron transport close to charge neutrality, useful for metrology. We investigated the role of the reconstructed SiC morphology and bilayer graphene inclusions on the reproducibility of nominally monolayer graphene quantum Hall devices, and reveal the important consequences for quantum resistance metrology. The above-mentioned studies were assisted by the development of optical microscopy methods to accurately identify single and multilayer domains of epitaxial graphene in addition to the nanoscopic details of the reconstructed SiC surface. This was found to be an important step of rapid and non-invasive quality control leading to improved device performance and reproducibility for quantum metrology applications. While the focus has been placed on quantum metrology devices, the findings and technologies developed in this Thesis work are readily applicable to investigate other two-dimensional materials and graphene systems, in both research and industrial environments.
Keeping the Gates? Women as Ministers in Australia, 1970-96

Contrary to expectations based on 1980s west-European research, women's representation in Australian cabinets over the last quarter century has exceeded their proportional strength in parliaments. The paper examines this and canvasses explanations. Consistent with west-European findings, Australian women ministers are overrepresented in social portfolio areas and underrepresented in defining and physical resource mobilisation areas. The paper considers implications and explanations of women's work in cabinet. 'There are only two ways of getting into the Cabinet. One way is to crawl up the staircase of preferment on your belly; the other way is to kick them in the teeth. ' Aneurin Bevan quoted in Hennessy (1986, 94)
Forecasting International Tourism Demand and Uncertainty for Three Small Island Tourism Economies

Volatility in monthly international tourist arrivals is the squared deviation from the mean monthly international tourist arrivals, and is widely used as a measure of risk or uncertainty. Fluctuating variations, or conditional volatility, in international monthly tourist arrivals are typically associated with unanticipated events. The time-varying effects related to many small island tourism economies, such as natural disasters, ethnic conflicts, crime, the threat of terrorism, and business cycles in tourist source countries, can lead to substantive variations in monthly international tourist arrivals. This paper shows how the GARCH model can be used to forecast international tourism demand and uncertainty by modelling the conditional volatility in monthly international tourist arrivals to three small island tourism economies that have extensive monthly observations on international tourist arrivals, namely Barbados, Cyprus and Fiji. The paper demonstrates the importance of modelling conditional volatility in establishing accurate confidence interval forecasts of monthly international tourist arrivals for the three countries.
A Role for Intercellular Antigen Transfer in the Recognition of EBV-Transformed B Cell Lines by EBV Nuclear Antigen-Specific CD4+ T Cells1

The CD4+ T cell response to EBV may have an important role in controlling virus-driven B lymphoproliferation because CD4+ T cell clones to a subset of EBV nuclear Ag (EBNA) epitopes can directly recognize virus-transformed lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) in vitro and inhibit their growth. In this study, we used a panel of EBNA1, 2, 3A, and 3C-specific CD4+ T cell clones to study the route whereby endogenously expressed EBNAs access the HLA class II-presentation pathway. Two sets of results spoke against a direct route of intracellular access. First, none of the clones recognized cognate Ag overexpressed in cells from vaccinia vectors but did recognize Ag fused to an endo/lysosomal targeting sequence. Second, focusing on clones with the strongest LCL recognition that were specific for EBNA2- and EBNA3C-derived epitopes LCL recognition was unaffected by inhibiting autophagy, a postulated route for intracellular Ag delivery into the HLA class II pathway in LCL cells. Subsequently, using these same epitope-specific clones, we found that Ag-negative cells with the appropriate HLA-restricting allele could be efficiently sensitized to CD4+ T cell recognition by cocultivation with Ag-positive donor lines or by exposure to donor line-conditioned culture medium. Sensitization was mediated by a high m.w. antigenic species and required active Ag processing by recipient cells. We infer that intercellular Ag transfer plays a major role in the presentation of EBNA-derived CD4 epitopes by latently infected target cells.
Inviting Strangers to Participate in Collaborative Consumption through Mobile App

ABSTRACT Mobile technology has facilitated an emerging form of consumption practices called collaborative consumption. In this study, we investigate one such manifestation whereby merchants send group discount coupons to nearby consumers and encourage them to invite surrounding people to enjoy the discount together. We are interested to know if timing (morning vs. afternoon) and message framing (active vs. passive mutual helping tone) would increase the chance of an individual deciding to invite strangers (and invite a higher proportion of strangers if they did) to participate in the collaborative consumption. Facilitating the participation among strangers can help elevate the reach and influence of collaborative consumption, allowing its potential to be better exploited. Our field experiment findings show that in general people are more likely to invite strangers (and also a higher proportion of strangers in all their invitations) in the morning than in the afternoon. In addition, a message framed to ask the focal individual to actively help others enjoy the deal (active tone) is more effective than a message framed passively, i.e., to let others help him/her (passive tone) in the morning. However, passive tone framing can induce individuals to invite a higher proportion of strangers in the afternoon if they did invite others. These findings have important implications to merchants and app providers on how to more fully tap into the potential of collaborative consumption via mobile technology.
Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles

Prior to elections, governments (at all levels) frequently undertake a consumption binge. Taxes are cut, transfers are raised, and government spending is distorted towards highly visible items. The "political business cycle" (better be thought of as "the political budget cycle") has been intensively examined, at least for the case of national elections. A number of proposals have been advanced for mitigating electoral cycles in fiscal policy. The present paper is the first effort to provide a fully-specified equilibrium framework for analyzing such proposals. A political budget cycle arises here via a multidimensional signaling process, in which incumbent leaders try to convince voters that they have recently been doing an excellent job in administering the government. Efforts to mitigate the cycle can easily prove counterproductive, either by impeding the transmission of information or by inducing politicians to select more costly ways of signaling. The model also indicates new directions for empirical research.
Dimensions of Strong Brand and Risk: Based on a Liquidity-Augmented Capital Asset Pricing Model

This article investigates the trade-off of developing a brand facing a firm. Establishing the brand on the one hand reduces liquidity (subjective) risk perceived by investors through effective marketing, but on the other hand increases market (objective) risk through incurring a substantial advertising expenditure to accumulate intangible assets. I estimate the model parameters using a new liquidity-augmented Capital Asset Pricing Model developed by Liu (2006). I find that as advertising expenditure increases, the brand lowers liquidity risk associated with perceived risk by consumers and investors, but increases market risk associated with asset-market structure. Although the impact through which the role of brands operated differed somewhat across industry characteristics, I find that the general impact of brand contribution is empirically plausible across the firm products.
Phase integral theory, coupled wave equations, and mode conversion.

Phase integral or WKB theory is applied to multicomponent wave equations, i.e., wave equations in which the wave field is a vector, spinor, or tensor of some kind. Specific examples of physical interest often have special features that simplify their analysis, when compared with the general theory. The case of coupled channel equations in atomic or molecular scattering theory in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is examined in this context. The problem of mode conversion, also called surface jumping or Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg transitions, is examined in the multidimensional case, and cast into normal form. The group theoretical principles of the normal form transformation are laid out, and shown to involve both the Lorentz group and the symplectic group.
The Common Core State Standards Initiative: an Overview.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate decision making in the Common Core State Standards Initiative as the change process moved from research, development and diffusion activities to adoption of the Common Core State Standards by the states. A decision-oriented evaluation model was used to describe the four stages of planning, structuring, implementing and recycling decisions in the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Content analysis and survey methods were used to analyse literature referring to the Common Core State Standards and to obtain verification of information reported on the Common Core State Standards from officials of national organisations and state education agencies. The results showed that planning, structuring and implementing decisions made during the change process were effective in producing Common Core State Standards that satisfied the expectations of most stakeholders, but recycling decisions needed to modify the Common Core State Standards Initiative remain unresolved. Awareness about a lack of agreement between what standards based education is intended to be and what it actually is led policy makers to determine that common standards offered a solution to this problem. The setting for decision making in attaining this solution involved attempting a large change supported by a low understanding of how to accomplish the change. This setting required the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers to design an action plan for programming the segments of research, development, diffusion and adoption of the Common Core State Standards in advance. Decisions about the extent, to which the desired ends of the Common Core State Standards Initiative have been attained, have focused attention on determining a new governance structure. All of the states, except for Alaska and Texas, joined the Common Core State Standards Initiative by signing a memorandum of agreement. By July 2011, all of the participating states, except for Montana, Nebraska and Virginia, had adopted the Common Core State Standards formally or provisionally. State profiles for each of these states describe the process of adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards by referring to plans for teacher development, curriculum alignment, instructional materials selection, assessment alignment, and accountability systems design. The results showed that effective decision making in planning, structuring and implementing the Common Core State Standards Initiative led most of the participating states to adopt the Common Core State Standards readily, and to initiate plans for implementation by aligning state standards and curriculum to the Common Core State Standards and to provide professional development for educators.
Open- and Closed-Skill Exercise Interventions Produce Different Neurocognitive Effects on Executive Functions in the Elderly: A 6-Month Randomized, Controlled Trial

This study aimed to explore the effects of open- and closed-skill exercise interventions on the neurocognitive performance of executive functions in the elderly. Sixty-four healthy elderly males were randomly assigned to either a closed-skill (bike riding or brisk walking/jogging, n = 22), open-skill (table tennis, n = 21), or control (n = 21) group. Various neuropsychological [e.g., accuracy rates (AR) and reaction time (RT)] and electrophysiological [e.g., event-related potential (ERP) P3 component] measures were assessed during a variant of the task-switching paradigm, as well as an N-back task at baseline and after either a 6-month exercise intervention or control period. The results showed that, when performing the task-switching paradigm, the two exercise groups relative to control group showed significantly faster RTs in the switch trials after the exercise intervention. However, the RT facilitation in the non-switch and switch trials post-exercise relative to pre-exercise only emerged in the open-skill group. In terms of the N-back task, the two exercise groups significantly increased ARs in the 1-back condition after the exercise intervention, and the beneficial AR effect on the 2-back condition only emerged in the closed-skill group. In addition, the two exercise groups exhibited significantly larger P3 amplitudes on the frontal-to-parietal cortex areas after the exercise intervention relative to the baseline when performing the two cognitive tasks. These neurocognitive results still remained unchanged even when the confounding factors (e.g., cardiorespiratory fitness, social participation, and BMI) were controlled for. The present study concluded that, although 6-month open- and closed-skill exercise interventions facilitate overall electrophysiological effects (i.e., increased ERP P3 amplitudes) on the frontal-to-parietal cortices in the elderly, the two exercise modes produced different levels of neuropsychologically beneficial effects on RTs of the task-switching paradigm (i.e., lessened RTs) and ARs of the N-back task (i.e., enhanced ARs). The distinctive neurocognitive changes induced by open- and closed-skill exercise have implications for task switching and working memory in elderly individuals, especially with such cognitive functioning impairments.
Unfunded pension liabilities and sponsoring firm credit risk: an international analysis of corporate bond spreads

This paper tests empirically whether pension information derived by corporate pension accounting disclosures is priced in corporate bond spreads. The model represents a hybrid of more traditional accounting ratio-based models of credit risk and structural models of bond spreads initiated by Merton (1974). The model is fitted to 5 years of data from 2002 to 2006 featuring companies from the US and Europe. The paper finds that while unfunded pension liabilities are priced in the overall sample, they are not priced as aggressively as traditional leverage. Furthermore, an extended model shows that the pension–credit risk relation is most evident in the US and Germany, where unfunded pension liabilities are priced more aggressively than traditional forms of leverage. No pension–credit risk relation is found in the other countries sampled, notably the UK, Netherlands and France.
The CAPM and Equity Return Regularities

Differential returns on dividend and capital gains income, systematic abnormal returns surrounding ex-dividend dates, excess returns on small versus large capitalization stocks, excess returns on low versus high price-earnings ratio stocks-these are among the recent findings that cast doubt on the traditional Capital Asset Pricing Model and tease investors with the promise of systematic excess returns. Some of these effects are undoubtedly related. Tests indicate, for example, that the higher a portfolio's price to book ratio, the higher the corresponding values of market capitalization, PIE and stock price. Furthermore, P/E, dividend yield, price and PIE effects all experience significant January seasonals. What has not been conclusively determined is whether the effects are additive. So far, it appears that the dividend yield and size effects are not mnutually exclusive. Investors may want to use a strategy employing several of these characteristics, rather than one. Efforts to explain the size effect have focused on January, because the effect is concentrated in that month. The most common hypothesis attributes this to year-end tax-loss selling, but the evidence is less than conclusive. Evidence strongly suggests, however, that, among small firms, those with the largest abnormal returns tend to be the firms that have recently become small, that either don't pay dividends or have higher dividend yields, and that have lower prices and low PIE ratios.
Evaluating the performance of different willingness to pay question formats for valuing environmental restoration in rural China

This paper compares protest rates and willingness to pay (WTP) using a payment card versus single and double bounded voter referendum contingent valuation question formats. Using a chi-square test, the payment card had a significantly higher protest rate (6.7 per cent) than the voter referendum question format (2.2 per cent). The median WTP of the single bounded and double bounded referendum format exceeds the payment card by a factor of nine and seven, respectively. The median WTP from the referendum formats represent about 8 per cent of income, while the payment card results represents about 1 per cent of income. These large differences in WTP between question formats are double what have been found in past studies. We believe this result may be due to excessive yea saying at high bid amounts in the dichotomous choice question formats. This behavior may arise in our case study in rural China because citizens have not had a long history of open elections or voting on tax referenda.
STATES AS LABORATORIES: A Reprise

▪ Abstract As laboratories, states are faced with a new agenda of social experimentation. This article first considers state elections and parties, including state realignment, party endorsements and primary elections, uncontested seats, and campaign finance. A second topic is the governorship, including governors' careers, changes in power, party leadership, and legislative programs and tactics used in negotiating with legislators. A third section considers the state legislatures, including term limits, professionalism, leadership, committees, roll-call voting, and representation. Another subject closely related to all aspects is the variety and organization of interest groups, their power, and whom they represent. The conclusion is that the states as laboratories are now equipped to handle the social experimentation that devolution has handed down to them.
Progress Towards Modeling Ship/Aircraft Dynamic Interface

Previous efforts, for which high performance computing modernization program (HPCMP) computer time was utilized, employed state-of-the-art computation fluid dynamics (CFD) methods to create time-accurate ship airwake models that are far beyond the rudimentary stochastic airwake models used previously. Realistic airwake models are required for realistic pilot workload and aircraft performance characteristics. The CFD airwake models were integrated with existing flight simulation models in a semi-coupled fashion such that the aircraft performance is affected by the presence of the ship airwake, but the airwake characteristics are not affected by the presence of the aircraft. This semi-coupled approach has worked relatively well for applications such as ship design comparisons for first-order airwake effects on aircraft operations. However, the lack of coupling between the ship and aircraft has limited the usefulness of flight simulations for applications such as flight envelope development and aircraft test and evaluation. This paper examines the initial steps taken through the HPCMP Grand Challenge program to model the coupled ship and aircraft system
Patterns in Japanese Common Stock Returns: Day of the Week and Turn of the Year Effects

Stock markets in the United States and foreign countries exhibit a strong weekly seasonal, an empirical regularity for which no theoretical explanation has been found. One's belief in this phenomenon would be strengthened if it is known to also occur in capital markets separated from those in the United States by distance, institutional arrangements, and culture.