bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
How Has Rural Tax Reform Affected Farmers and Local Governance in China?
Authors: Tao Ran , Qin Ping 
Published: June 2007

AbstractUsing nationally representative data, the present paper examines the impact of China's ongoing rural tax reform on farmers. The difficulties in further local governance restructuring are also discussed. It is argued that the issues associated with rural taxation and local governance in China result from inherent tension between an increasingly liberalized economic system and a still centralized political system. Although rural tax reform has helped to reduce farmers' tax burdens in the short term, the establishment of an effective local governance regime requires coordinated reforms to downsize local bureaucracy by providing social security for laid‐off cadres, to strengthen local accountability by granting higher local formal tax autonomy, and to promote meaningful participation by expanding local democracy.
China's Industrial Policy in Relation to Electronics Manufacturing
Authors: Zhao Zhongxiu , Huang Xiaoling , Ye Dongya , Gentle Paul 
Published: June 2007

AbstractChina has become the biggest exporter of electronic products in the world. Government policy intervention has contributed significantly to the rapid expansion of the electronics industry. The present paper examines the evolutionary development of industrial policies related to the electronics industry in China and the impacts of such policies on the shaping of the industry. In particular, the relationship between foreign funded enterprises and domestic firms are examined in detail. The future trend of the industry is also discussed in the paper, and the policy focus of the Chinese Government is predicted.
Multiple Forces Driving China's Economic Development: A New Analytic Framework
Authors: Wang Yahua , Hu Angang 
Published: June 2007

AbstractBased on economic growth theory and the World Bank's analytical framework relating to the quality of growth, the present paper constructs a framework that encompasses physical, international, human, natural and knowledge capital to synthetically interpret economic development. After defining the five types of capital and total capital, we analyze the dynamic changes of these types of capital in China and in other countries. The results show that since China's reform and opening up, knowledge, international, human and physical capital have grown rapidly, with speeds of growth higher than that of economic growth. As the five types of capital have all increased at varying paces, the savings level of total capital in China has quadrupled in 25 years and overtook that of the USA in the 1990s. The changes in the five types of capital and total capital reveal that there are progressively multiple driving forces behind China's rapid economic development. Implications for China's long‐term economic development are thereby raised.
Environmental Sensing and Signal Transduction Pathways Regulating Morphopathogenic Determinants of
Candida albicans
Authors: Biswas Subhrajit , Van Dijck Patrick , Datta Asis 
Published: June 2007

SUMMARY

Candida albicans
is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that is found in the normal gastrointestinal flora of most healthy humans. However, under certain environmental conditions, it can become a life-threatening pathogen. The shift from commensal organism to pathogen is often correlated with the capacity to undergo morphogenesis. Indeed, under certain conditions, including growth at ambient temperature, the presence of serum or
N
-acetylglucosamine, neutral pH, and nutrient starvation,
C. albicans
can undergo reversible transitions from the yeast form to the mycelial form. This morphological plasticity reflects the interplay of various signal transduction pathways, either stimulating or repressing hyphal formation. In this review, we provide an overview of the different sensing and signaling pathways involved in the morphogenesis and pathogenesis of
C. albicans
. Where appropriate, we compare the analogous pathways/genes in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
in an attempt to highlight the evolution of the different components of the two organisms. The downstream components of these pathways, some of which may be interesting antifungal targets, are also discussed.
Role of Receptors in
Bacillus thuringiensis
Crystal Toxin Activity
Authors: Pigott Craig R. , Ellar David J. 
Published: June 2007

SUMMARY

Bacillus thuringiensis
produces crystalline protein inclusions with insecticidal or nematocidal properties. These crystal (Cry) proteins determine a particular strain's toxicity profile. Transgenic crops expressing one or more recombinant Cry toxins have become agriculturally important. Individual Cry toxins are usually toxic to only a few species within an order, and receptors on midgut epithelial cells have been shown to be critical determinants of Cry specificity. The best characterized of these receptors have been identified for lepidopterans, and two major receptor classes have emerged: the aminopeptidase N (APN) receptors and the cadherin-like receptors. Currently, 38 different APNs have been reported for 12 different lepidopterans. Each APN belongs to one of five groups that have unique structural features and Cry-binding properties. While 17 different APNs have been reported to bind to Cry toxins, only 2 have been shown to mediate toxin susceptibly in vivo. In contrast, several cadherin-like proteins bind to Cry toxins and confer toxin susceptibility in vitro, and disruption of the cadherin gene has been associated with toxin resistance. Nonetheless, only a small subset of the lepidopteran-specific Cry toxins has been shown to interact with cadherin-like proteins. This review analyzes the interactions between Cry toxins and their receptors, focusing on the identification and validation of receptors, the molecular basis for receptor recognition, the role of the receptor in resistant insects, and proposed models to explain the sequence of events at the cell surface by which receptor binding leads to cell death.
A Biochemical Guide to Yeast Adhesins: Glycoproteins for Social and Antisocial Occasions
Authors: Dranginis Anne M. , Rauceo Jason M. , Coronado Juan E. , Lipke Peter N. 
Published: June 2007

SUMMARY

Fungi are nonmotile eukaryotes that rely on their adhesins for selective interaction with the environment and with other fungal cells. Glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-cross-linked adhesins have essential roles in mating, colony morphology, host-pathogen interactions, and biofilm formation. We review the structure and binding properties of cell wall-bound adhesins of ascomycetous yeasts and relate them to their effects on cellular interactions, with particular emphasis on the agglutinins and flocculins of
Saccharomyces
and the Als proteins of
Candida
. These glycoproteins share common structural motifs tailored to surface activity and biological function. After being secreted to the outer face of the plasma membrane, they are covalently anchored in the wall through modified GPI anchors, with their binding domains elevated beyond the wall surface on highly glycosylated extended stalks. N-terminal globular domains bind peptide or sugar ligands, with between millimolar and nanomolar affinities. These affinities and the high density of adhesins and ligands at the cell surface determine microscopic and macroscopic characteristics of cell-cell associations. Central domains often include Thr-rich tandemly repeated sequences that are highly glycosylated. These domains potentiate cell-to-cell binding, but the molecular mechanism of such an association is not yet clear. These repeats also mediate recombination between repeats and between genes. The high levels of recombination and epigenetic regulation are sources of variation which enable the population to continually exploit new niches and resources.
Viral Proteomics
Authors: Maxwell Karen L. , Frappier Lori 
Published: June 2007

SUMMARY
Viruses have long been studied not only for their pathology and associated disease but also as model systems for molecular processes and as tools for identifying important cellular regulatory proteins and pathways. Recent advances in mass spectrometry methods coupled with the development of proteomic approaches have greatly facilitated the detection of virion components, protein interactions in infected cells, and virally induced changes in the cellular proteome, resulting in a more comprehensive understanding of viral infection. In addition, a rapidly increasing number of high-resolution structures for viral proteins have provided valuable information on the mechanism of action of these proteins as well as aided in the design and understanding of specific inhibitors that could be used in antiviral therapies. In this paper, we discuss proteomic studies conducted on all eukaryotic viruses and bacteriophages, covering virion composition, viral protein structures, virus-virus and virus-host protein interactions, and changes in the cellular proteome upon viral infection.
Risk of injury on artificial turf and natural grass in young female football players
Authors: Steffen Kathrin , Andersen Thor Einar , Bahr Roald 
Published: June 2007

Background:Artificial turf is becoming increasingly popular, although the risk of injury on newer generations of turf is unknown.Aim:To investigate the risk of injury on artificial turf compared with natural grass among young female football players.Study design:Prospective cohort study.Methods:2020 players from 109 teams (mean (SD) 15.4 (0.8) years) participated in the study during the 2005 football season. Time-loss injuries and exposure data on different types of turf were recorded over an eight-month period.Results:421 (21%) players sustained 526 injuries, leading to an injury incidence of 3.7/1000 playing hours (95% CI 3.4 to 4.0). The incidence of acute injuries on artificial turf and grass did not differ significantly with respect to match injuries (rate ratio (RR) 1.0, 95% CI 0.8 to 1.3; p = 0.72) or training injuries (RR 1.0, 95% CI 0.6 to 1.5, p = 0.93). In matches, the incidence of serious injuries was significantly higher on artificial turf (RR 2.0, 95% CI 1.3 to 3.2; p = 0.03). Ankle sprain was the most common type of injury (34% of all acute injuries), and there was a trend towards more ankle sprains on artificial turf than on grass (RR 1.5, 95% CI 1.0 to 2.2; p = 0.06).Conclusion:In the present study among young female football players, the overall risk of acute injuries was similar between artificial turf and natural grass.
XQueC
Authors: Arion Andrei , Bonifati Angela , Manolescu Ioana , Pugliese Andrea 
Published: June 2007

XML compression has gained prominence recently because it counters the disadvantage of the verbose representation XML gives to data. In many applications, such as data exchange and data archiving, entirely compressing and decompressing a document is acceptable. In other applications, where queries must be run over compressed documents, compression may not be beneficial since the performance penalty in running the query processor over compressed data outweighs the data compression benefits. While balancing the interests of compression and query processing has received significant attention in the domain of relational databases, these results do not immediately translate to XML data.
In this article, we address the problem of embedding compression into XML databases without degrading query performance. Since the setting is rather different from relational databases, the choice of compression granularity and compression algorithms must be revisited. Query execution in the compressed domain must also be rethought in the framework of XML query processing due to the richer structure of XML data. Indeed, a proper storage design for the compressed data plays a crucial role here.

The
XQ
ue
C
system (
XQ
uery Processor and
C
ompressor) covers a wide set of XQuery queries in the compressed domain and relies on a workload-based cost model to perform the choices of the compression granules and of their corresponding compression algorithms. As a consequence, XQueC provides efficient query processing on compressed XML data. An extensive experimental assessment is presented, showing the effectiveness of the cost model, the compression ratios, and the query execution times.
The relative worst order ratio for online algorithms
Authors: Boyar Joan , Favrholdt Lene M. 
Published: June 2007

We define a new measure for the quality of online algorithms, the
relative worst order ratio
, using ideas from the max/max ratio [Ben-David and Borodin 1994] and from the random order ratio [Kenyon 1996]. The new ratio is used to compare online algorithms directly by taking the ratio of their performances on their respective worst permutations of a worst-case sequence.

Two variants of the bin packing problem are considered: the classical bin packing problem, where the goal is to fit all items in as few bins as possible, and the dual bin packing problem, which is the problem of maximizing the number of items packed in a fixed number of bins. Several known algorithms are compared using this new measure, and a new, simple variant of first-fit is proposed for dual bin packing.
Many of our results are consistent with those previously obtained with the competitive ratio or the competitive ratio on accommodating sequences, but new separations and easier proofs are found.
From the chair
Authors: Sipior Janice C. , Lending Diane , Amoroso Donald L. , Shayo Conrad , Vowels Susan A. 
Published: June 2007

I am happy to report that the ACM-SIGMIS CPR (Computer Personnel Research) 2007 Conference was a great success!
This year's conference was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA from April 19-21, 2007, http://www.sigmis.org/conferences.html. The theme was "The Global Information Technology Workforce." Please check the ACM Digital Library at: http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm to find the SIGMIS CPR 2007 Conference Proceedings.

Thanks to the members of the 2007 CPR Conference Committee for all their efforts in making this conference a success:

Conference Co-Chairs:
Fred Niederman,
St. Louis University
Mary Sumner,
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Program Co-Chairs:
Diane Lending,
James Madison University
Chelley Vician,
Michigan Tech University

Local Arrangements:
Jo Ellen Moore,
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Susan Yager,
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Treasurer:
Donald Amoroso,
Appalachian State University

Publicity:
Anne Powell,
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Sandra Newton,
University of South Florida

Doctoral Consortium Co-Chairs:
Thomas W. Ferratt,
University of Dayton
Mike Gallivan,
Georgia State University

Please join me in congratulating the recipients of the fourth annual "Magid Igbaria Outstanding Conference Paper of the Year Award:" Tim Klaus, Stephen Wingreen, and J. Ellis Blanton for their paper, "Examining User Resistance and Management Strategies in Enterprise System Implementations." Warm congratulations to all of you!
At the close of the conference, the fifth annual SIGMIS Business Meeting was held. Fred Niederman, St. Louis University, and Mary Sumner, Illinois University Edwardsville, CPR 2007 Conference Co-Chairs, presented a Preliminary Outcome Report for the conference. Donald Amoroso, Appalachian State University, who is the CPR 2008 Conference Chair, provided a Progress Report. Next year's CPR 2008 Conference will be held in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains from April 19--21 in Boone, NC USA. Please visit www.sigmis.org/2008_CPR_Call_for_Papers.pdf for more information
I encourage you to submit your research to the CPR 2008 Conference. Everyone is welcome! Please continue to submit your best work to Data Base.
As always, we thank you for your continued support of SIGMIS. Please feel free to contact any one of us with suggestions or ideas to improve SIGMIS. Have a great summer!
The perceptual evaluation of information systems using the construct of user satisfaction
Authors: Leclercq Aurèlie 
Published: June 2007

This research work concerns the perceptual evaluation of the performance of information systems (IS) and more particularly, the construct of user satisfaction. Faced with the difficulty of obtaining objective measures for the success of IS, user satisfaction appeared as a substitutive measure of IS performance (DeLone & McLean, 1992). Some researchers have indeed shown that the evaluation of an IS could not happen without an analysis of the feelings and perceptions of individuals who make use of it. Consequently, the concept of satisfaction has been considered as a guarantee of the performance of an IS. Also it has become necessary to ponder the drivers of user satisfaction. The analysis of models and measurement tools for satisfaction as well as the adoption of a contingency perspective has allowed the description of principal dimensions that have a direct or less direct impact on user perceptions
The case study of a large French group, carried out through an interpretativist approach conducted by way of 41 semi-structured interviews, allowed the conceptualization of the problematique of perceptual evaluation of IS in a particular field study. This study led us to confirm the impact of certain factors (such as perceived usefulness, participation, the quality of relations with the IS Function and its resources and also the fit of IS with user needs). On the contrary, other dimensions regarded as fundamental do not receive any consideration or see their influence nuanced in the case studied (the properties of IS, the ease of use, the quality of information). Lastly, this study has allowed for the identification of the influence of certain contingency and contextual variables on user satisfaction and, above all, for the description of the importance of interactions between the IS Function and the users
HDTrans
Authors: Sridhar Swaroop , Shapiro Jonathan S. , Bungale Prashanth P. 
Published: June 2007

Dynamic translation is a general purpose tool used for instrumenting programs at run time. Many current translators perform substantial rewriting during translation in an attempt to reduce execution time. When dynamic translation is used as a ubiquitous policy enforcement mechanism, the majority of program executions have no dominating inner loop that can be used to amortize the cost of translation. Even under more favorable usage assumptions, our measurements show that such optimizations offer no significant benefit in most cases. A simpler, more maintainable, adaptable, and smaller translator may be preferable to more complicated designs.
In this paper, we present HDTrans, a light-weight IA-32 to IA-32 binary translation system that uses some simple and effective translation techniques in combination with established trace linearization and code caching optimizations. We also present an evaluation of translation overhead under non-ideal conditions, showing that conventional benchmarks do not provide a good prediction of translation overhead when used pervasively.
A further contribution of this paper is an analysis of the effectiveness of post-compile static pre-translation techniques for overhead reduction. Our results indicate that static pre-translation is effective only when expensive instrumentation or optimization is performed, and that efficient reload of pre-translated code incurs a substantial execution-time penalty.
Characterization of file I/O activity for SPEC CPU2006
Authors: Ye Dong , Ray Joydeep , Kaeli David 
Published: June 2007

SPEC CPU2006 is a compute-intensive benchmark suite designed to stress a computer system's processor, memory subsystem, and compiler. To construct this suite, SPEC has selected benchmarks that are derived from real world applications. When run with their reference inputs, these programs place a significant computational burden on today's mainstream desktops as well as high-end workstations and servers.
For these applications to thoroughly exercise the merits of a particular processor/memory design point, it is necessary to limit the amount of I/O activity generated. Since these applications come from real world applications, the suite developers have considered how best to limit the amount of file-based I/O activity present in these applications. This paper presents the characteristics of file I/O activity in the resulting suite and its overall impact on the performance of these applications. We also report on some of the choices SPEC has made in order to reduce the file I/O activity in some specific programs of the suite.
Evaluating the correspondence between training and reference workloads in SPEC CPU2006
Authors: Gove Darryl , Spracklen Lawrence 
Published: June 2007

Profile feedback (sometimes called Feedback Directed Optimisation FDO) is a useful technique for providing the compiler with additional information about runtime program flow. The compiler is able to use this information to make optimisation decisions that improve the way the code is laid out in memory or determine which routines are inlined, and hence improve the performance of the application.
The use of profile feedback requires the code to be compiled twice. The first time the compiler generates an instrumented version of the application. This instrumented version is then run on one or more 'representative' training workloads to gather profile data. This profile data contains information such as how many times each routine is executed and how frequently each branch is taken. The second pass through the compiler uses this information to make more enlighted optimisation decisions.
The quality of the training data impacts the ability of the compiler to do the best job that it can. This paper discusses a method of assessing the similarity of the training workload to the reference workload, and applies this methodology to evaluate the training workloads in the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark suite.
From the SIGSAM subcommittee on computation of algebraic structures
Authors: Neubüser Joachim 
Published: June 2007

So far, the following colleagues have agreed to act as members of the subcommittee:
<u>John J. Cannon</u>, Department of Pure Mathematics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, N.S.W. 2006, Australia.
(Programs for the investigation of groups, Lie rings, etc.; symbol manipulation languages.)
<u>Stig Flodmark</u>, Institutionen för Teoretisk Fysik, Stockholms Universitet, Vanadisvágen 9, Stockholm VA, Sweden.
(Programs for non-numerical mathematics for application in physics.)
<u>John Mc Kay</u>, Atlas Computer Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Berkshire, England.
(Programs for the investigation of groups.)
<u>Robert J. Plemmons</u>, Mathematics Department, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37916, USA.
(Programs for the investigation of semigroups and related structures.)