Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Initial public offerings: evidence from the UK

This investigation into the performance of Initial Public Offerings on the new Alternative Investment Market reveals that the expected high level of underpricing, that is usually associated with the risky nature of small, young and growing companies, is not supported by the evidence in this study. Raw and market adjusted figures reveal that IPOs listed on AIM at the London Stock Exchange appear to be only conservatively mispriced when contrasted to main board IPO listings in the US, UK and other countries. Due diligence listing requirements could be offsetting the otherwise risky nature of these small, young and growing companies. Finally AIM is discussed in terms of meeting its own targets and its ability to attract international listings.
Control of SXT Integration and Excision

ABSTRACT The Vibrio cholerae SXT element is a conjugative self-transmissible chromosomally integrating element that encodes resistance to multiple antibiotics. SXT integrates in a site-specific fashion at prfC and excises from the chromosome to form a circular but nonreplicative extrachromosomal form. Both chromosomal integration and excision depend on an SXT-encoded recombinase, Int. Here we found that Int is necessary and sufficient for SXT integration and that int expression in recipient cells requires the SXT activators SetC and SetD. Although no xis-like gene was annotated in the SXT genome, Int was not sufficient to mediate efficient SXT chromosomal excision. We identified a novel SXT Xis that seems to function as a recombination directionality factor (RDF), facilitating SXT excision and inhibiting SXT integration. Although unrelated to any previously characterized RDF, Xis is similar to five hypothetical proteins that together may constitute a new family of RDFs. Using real-time quantitative PCR assays to study SXT excision from the chromosome, we determined that while SXT excision is required for SXT transfer, the percentage of cells containing an excised circular SXT does not appear to be a major factor limiting SXT transfer; i.e., we found that most cells harboring an excised circular SXT molecule do not act as SXT donors. In the absence of prfC, SXT integrated into several secondary attachment sites but preferentially into the 5′ end of pntB. SXT excision and transfer from a donor containing pntB::SXT were reduced, suggesting that the SXT integration site may also influence the element's transmissibility.
Dynamics of Marital Roles in Consumer Decision Making: A Study of Indian Households

This paper tries to explore decision making phenomenon among husbands-wives w.r. t purchase of high involvement items. While selecting the purchase items care has been taken to qualify them in terms of evidence of pronounced decision making, involvement of huge financial outlay, and prolonged consumption over a wide span of time. Since 1970's decision making and subsequent purchase roles played by husband-wives in household has witnessed tremendous to shift in the Western countries. This is governed by demographic factors like increasing women in the workforce, higher educational standards, and delayed age of marriage. As fallout of this trend, the topic assumes significance and effort has been made to study if there is an underlying shift in decision making observed in Indian households. This is achieved through measurement of the relative influence exerted by husbands and wives in purchase decisions
Externalities in Rural Development

The paper tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the consumption growth process. Evidence is found of geographic externalities, stemming from spillover effects of the level and composition of local economic activity and private returns to local human and physical infrastructure endowments. The results suggest an explanation for rural underdevelopment arising from underinvestment in certain externality-generating activities, of which agricultural development emerges as the most important.
Profile of neurocognitive impairments associated with female in-patients with anorexia nervosa

Background. Although many studies have reported impairments of neurocognitive performance in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), these have involved a wide range of assessment methods and some findings are inconsistent. Method. Twenty-five female in-patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of AN, identified from three units specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, volunteered for the study. Twenty-five non-clinical control subjects were recruited, matched for age, gender and estimated IQ. Subjects were assessed with a range of computer-administered neurocognitive tasks from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), which has been validated in many studies of neuropsychiatric disorders. Results. The patient group showed significant but moderate impairments (i.e. less than one standard deviation below the mean performance of the control group) on tests of spatial recognition memory, a planning task and rapid visual information processing, while a subgroup of patients (n=14) showed greater degrees of impairments on at least one of these tests. The degrees of impairments did not correlate with body mass index (BMI). No impairments were observed on tests of spatial span, pattern recognition memory, spatial working memory, matching-to-sample, paired associates learning and set-shifting. Conclusions. The findings, in relation to a mean BMI of 15·3, are compatible with, in general, subtle impairments in neurocognition in AN. However, in those patients with relatively severe degrees of impairments, these may have adverse effects on complex tasks of social and occupational functioning. Further research is needed on the nature of relevant causal mechanisms, including the effects of potentially confounding variables.
Glycine residues in potassium channel-like selectivity filters determine potassium selectivity in four-loop-per-subunit HKT transporters from plants

Plant HKT proteins comprise a family of cation transporters together with prokaryotic KtrB, TrkH, and KdpA transporter subunits and fungal Trk proteins. These transporters contain four loop domains in one polypeptide with a proposed distant homology to K+ channel selectivity filters. Functional expression in yeast and Xenopus oocytes revealed that wheat HKT1 mediates Na+-coupled K+ transport. Arabidopsis AtHKT1, however, transports only Na+ in eukaryotic expression systems. To understand the molecular basis of this difference we constructed a series of AtHKT1/HKT1 chimeras and introduced point mutations to AtHKT1 and wheat HKT1 at positions predicted to be critical for K+ selectivity. A single-point mutation, Ser-68 to glycine, was sufficient to restore K+ permeability to AtHKT1. The reverse mutation in HKT1, Gly-91 to serine, abrogated K+ permeability. This glycine in P-loop A of AtHKT1 and HKT1 can be modeled as the first glycine of the K+ channel selectivity filter GYG motif. The importance of such filter glycines for K+ selectivity was confirmed by interconversion of Ser-88 and Gly-88 in the rice paralogues OsHKT1 and OsHKT2. Surprisingly, all HKT homologues known from dicots have a serine at the filter position in P-loop A, suggesting that these proteins function mainly as Na+ transporters in plants and that Na+/K+ symport in HKT proteins is associated with a glycine in the filter residue. These data provide experimental evidence that the glycine residues in selectivity filters of HKT proteins are structurally related to those of K+ channels.
Periodic‐review inventory models with inventory‐level‐dependent demand

Demand for some items can depend on the inventory level on display, a phenomenon often exploited by marketing researchers and practitioners. The implications of this phenomenon have received scant attention in the context of periodic-review inventory control models. We develop an approach to model periodic-review production/inventory problems where the demand in any period depends randomly, in a very general form, on the starting inventory level. We first obtain a complete analytical solution for a single-period model. We then investigate two multiperiod models, one with lost sales and the other with backlogging, whose optimal policies turn out to be myopic. Some extensions are also discussed. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Labor Market Monopsony

There has been a renewed interest in monopsony in labor markets in recent years that includes both the traditional static approach to monopsony, ably reviewed by Boal and Ransom (1997), and the “new” approach to monopsony with more attention paid to dynamic issues, developed in detail by Manning (2003). The articles presented in this supplement highlight both approaches and illustrate the range of labor market settings in which the exercise of monopsony power may be important. The first use of the term “monopsony” in economics is widely attributed to Robinson (1969). Robinson conceived of monopsony as analogous to monopoly. Whereas monopoly refers to the case of a single seller confronted in a market by many buyers, monopsony refers to the case of a single buyer confronted in a market by many sellers. Just as the monopolist faces a downward-sloping demand curve for his product and
Inhibitor of striate conditionally suppresses cell proliferation in variegated maize.

Since the work done by R.A. Emerson in the 1930s, Inhibitor of striate (Isr) has been recognized as a dose-dependent genetic modifier of variegation in chlorotic leaf striping mutants of maize such as striate2 (sr2). We have shown that Isr specifically inhibits proliferation and differentiation of plastid defective cells in sr2 mutants. Leaf narrowing is due to loss of intermediate veins and ground tissue located at leaf margins, and the few remaining plastid defective cells are of irregular size and aberrant organization. The Isr gene has been cloned by targeted transposon tagging. Isr mRNA is expressed throughout young leaves, but Isr chimeras indicate that the expression of Isr at leaf margins is sufficient to suppress both the lateral expansion of sr2 leaves and the extent of striping. Isr protein appears to encode a chloroplast protein with sequence similarity to a family of bacterial phosphatases involved in carbon catabolite repression or in carbon metabolism. We propose that the action of Isr in nuclear and plastid communication could be triggered by carbon stress.
On the Choice-Based Sample Bias in Probabilistic Business Failure Prediction

Probabilistic business failure prediction models are commonly estimated from non-random samples of companies. The proportion of failure companies in such samples is often much larger than the proportion of failure companies in most real-world decision contexts. This so-called “choice-based sample bias” implies that calculated failure probabilities will be (more or less) biased. The purpose of the paper is to analyse this bias and its consequences for standard applications of probabilistic failure prediction models (for example probit/logit analysis) and in particular to investigate whether the bias can be eliminated without having to re-estimate the underlying statistical model. It is shown that there is a straightforward linkage between sample-based probabilities of failure and the corresponding population-based probabilities. Knowing this linkage, sample-based probabilities can be adjusted for the “choice-based sample bias”, provided that sufficiently large samples of randomly selected failure companies and randomly selected survival companies have been used in the estimation of the underlying statistical model. Empirical observations in previous research are in line with the theoretical results of the paper.
The processing of a Benzo(a)pyrene adduct into a frameshift or a base substitution mutation requires a different set of genes in Escherichia coli

Replication through a single DNA lesion may give rise to a panel of translesion synthesis (TLS) events, which comprise error‐free TLS, base substitutions and frameshift mutations. In order to determine the genetic control of the various TLS events induced by a single lesion, we have chosen the major N2‐dG adduct of (+)‐anti‐Benzo(a)pyrene diol epoxide [(+)‐anti‐BPDE] adduct located within a short run of guanines as a model lesion. Within this sequence context, in addition to the major event, i.e. error‐free TLS, the adduct also induces base substitutions (mostly G → T transversions) and −1 frameshift mutations. The pathway leading to G → T base substitution mutagenesis appears to be SOS independent, suggesting that TLS is most probably performed by the replicative Pol III holoenzyme itself. In contrast, both error‐free and frameshift TLS pathways are dependent upon SOS‐encoded functions that belong to the pool of inducible DNA polymerases specialized in TLS (translesional DNA polymerases), namely umuDC (Pol V) and dinB (Pol IV). It is likely that, given the diversity of conformations that can be adopted by lesion‐containing replication intermediates, cells use one or several translesional DNA polymerases to achieve TLS.
Editorial: Tourism and its Interactions with Climate Change

Anthropogenic climate change is increasingly recognised as a major threat to large sections of both society and the environment. The overwhelming majority of the peer-reviewed literature as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports the view that there is a discernible human influence on the climate system (IPCC, 2001a). This statement will be reinforced with the publication of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007. The studies undertaken by climate scientists have shown that it is not only the magnitude of changes which are increasingly unprecedented but also the rate of those changes. Although there may appear to be contrary views to the consensus of the IPCC, these are few in number, often fragmented, inconsistent or cannot be supported by scientific evidence. It has also been known, anecdotally, for some time that tourism is closely linked to climate, in terms of the climate of the source country of tourists (e.g. the perception of unreliable summers in, for example, northern Europe), the destination country for tourists (e.g. the perception of reliable summers in the Mediterranean) and climate seasonality (the seasonality contrast that drives demand for summer vacations in the Northern Hemisphere). It was not, however, until work by Lise and Tol (2002) that a scientific basis for this link could be described. It has also been well documented that at local, regional and global scales tourism is an economically very significant industry for which forecasts show increasing growth. Since the late 1980s there has been a considerable amount of research undertaken by scientists examining the potential impacts of climate change upon many sectors of the environment and society. This research has been reviewed and reported by Working Group II of the IPCC (1990, 1995, 2001b). Much of this work has concentrated upon single sector studies (e.g. climate change and its impacts upon hydrology or agriculture) or single species or ecosystem types. Integration of the impacts across multiple sectors within a region was originally confined to desktop analysis and subsequent reports. Examples of these include: UK Climate Change Impacts Review Group (CCIRG, 1991); the United States National Assessment (National Assessment Synthesis Team, 2000) and the EU funded ACACIA Project (Parry, 2000). When reviewing the significant volumes of literature on climate change and its impacts it soon becomes clear that there has been very little emphasis or research on climate change and tourism. For example, there has been a plethora of research undertaken on the impacts of
Commodity Booms and Busts

Periodically, the global economy experiences great commodity booms and busts, characterized by a broad and sharp comovement of commodity prices. There have been two such episodes since the Korean War. The first event peaked in 1974 and the second in 2008, 34 years apart. Both created major economic and political shocks, including fallen governments and human suffering due to high food prices. Each occurrence raised serious concerns over food and energy security and led to more government intervention in the commodity markets. Although there is no simple explanation for what causes such complex events, they do share similar characteristics. We find at the core of these cycles a set of contemporaneous supply and demand surprises that coincided with low inventories and that were magnified by macroeconomic shocks and policy responses. In the next few decades, the world faces the prospect of continued increases in the demand for commodities and greater uncertainty about supply. However, because market particip.
High-dose therapy and autologous stem-cell transplantation versus conventional-dose consolidation/maintenance therapy as postremission therapy for adult patients with lymphoblastic lymphoma: results of a randomized trial of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation and the United Kingd

PURPOSE To determine whether a combination of high-dose therapy and autologous stem-cell transplantation (ASCT) is superior to conventional-dose consolidation and maintenance chemotherapy as postremission therapy in adults with lymphoblastic lymphoma. PATIENTS AND METHODS One hundred nineteen patients were entered onto this prospective randomized trial from 37 centers. Patients received standard remission induction therapy, and responding patients were randomized either to continue with a conventional consolidation/maintenance protocol (CC) or to receive high-dose therapy and ASCT. In some centers, patients with HLA-identical sibling donors were registered on the trial but proceeded to allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) without randomization. RESULTS Of the 119 patients entered, 111 were assessable for response to induction therapy. The overall response rate was 82% (56% complete response, 26% partial response). Of the 98 patients eligible for randomization, 65 were randomized, 31 to ASCT and 34 to CC. Reasons for failure to randomize included patient refusal (12 patients), early progression or death on induction therapy (eight patients), excessive toxicity of induction regimen (six patients), and elective allogeneic BMT (12 patients). With a median follow-up of 37 months, the actuarial 3-year relapse-free survival rate is 24% for the CC arm and 55% for the ASCT arm (hazards ratio = 0.55 in favor of the ASCT arm; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.29 to 1.04; P =.065). The corresponding figures for overall survival are 45% and 56%, respectively (hazards ratio = 0.87 in favor of the ASCT arm; 95% CI, 0.42 to 1.81; P =.71). CONCLUSION The use of ASCT in adults with lymphoblastic lymphoma in first remission produced a trend for improved relapse-free survival but did not improve overall survival compared with conventional-dose therapy in this small randomized trial.
Entrepreneurship in technological regimes in metro and non-metro areas

Entrepreneurship (small firm entry) within a defined technological regime is examined using regional, establishment, and industry characteristics in metro, metro-adjacent, and non-metro regions in the state of Kansas, USA. The results show a distinct variation in small firm entry across regions. The variation is explained by the quality of the labour force, industry clustering, establishment size, labour intensity, county establishment growth rate, and the presence of an interstate highway. The contribution of this paper is the empirical examination of the validity of claims that entrepreneurship in technological regimes is more prevalent in the metro region and decreases with increasing remoteness.
Activity-Based Costing in the Hospitality Industry: Evidence From Greece

The purpose of this article is to provide some empirical evidence of the current general trends regarding the practical consideration, adoption, and use of activity-based costing (ABC) in the hospitality industry. To this end, a survey was conducted with 85 firms of the Greek hotel sector with the use of questionnaires. Results showed that the adoption rate of an ABC system could be considered rather satisfactory. For the hotels that have adopted ABC, the survey showed that they apply it throughout all the core areas of management accounting, especially in pricing decisions and customer’s profitability analysis. The nonusers reported that the main reason for rejecting it is the satisfaction of the existing cost accounting system and the high cost of an ABC implementation.
International human rights regime, neoliberalism, and women’s social rights, 1984–2004

World polity scholars posit that the diffusion of world culture and norms increasingly influences human rights as well as women’s rights. However, previous research on women’s rights and policies often neglects women’s social rights and focuses mainly on women’s political rights. In part due to neoliberal restructuring, women’s social rights still lag behind women’s political rights. This research focuses on changes in women’s social rights, as measured by the CIRI human rights index, in 140 countries from 1984 to 2004. To interpret these data, I incorporate world institutionalism and neoliberalism into one single theoretical frame. My analysis reveals that the longer a country is exposed to a neoliberal structural adjustment program, the more governments’ practices regarding women’s social rights deteriorate. Among various linkages to the world polity, only the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) increases nation-states’ likelihood of having improved women’s social rights. These findings suggest that global neoliberal restructuring has a deleterious effect on women’s social rights and challenge the claim that the spread of global culture necessarily leads to improvements in governments’ practices relating to women’s social rights.
A New Fabrication Method of Nano-Fluidic Filters Using Self-Assembly of Nano-Spheres and Surface Tension

We present a simple and an inexpensive method for the fabrication of a nano-scale fluidic filter in a local region of a microchannel by self-assembly of nano-spheres and surface tension. In this work, we use colloid-plug that is formed by surface tension of liquid in a microchannel. When colloid is evaporated, nano-spheres in a colloid are orderly stacked by a capillary force. Orderly stacked nano-spheres form 3-D nano-mesh which can use as a mesh structure of a fluidic filter. We used silica nano-sphere whose diameter is 567±185nm, and silicon microchannel of 50 μm-diameter. Fabricated nano-fluidic filter in a microchannel has median pore diameter of 157nm which was agreement with 113±37nm of 20% of the sphere diameter. From experimental study, we verified a new fabrication method of a nano-fluidic filter in a local region of a microchannel.