bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Involvement of transglutaminase in ex vivo maturation of cornified envelopes in the stratum corneum
Authors: Hirao T. 
Published: November 2003

SynopsisThe cornified envelope (CE) is a thin insoluble structure enveloping corneocytes, and is essential for the barrier function of the stratum corneum (SC). Our previous studies revealed that immature CEs are detected in the outermost layer of SC of barrier‐impaired epidermis including the face and in various inflammatory disorders, using a non‐invasive method to evaluate CE maturity. However, factors attributable for immaturity of CEs are still unclear. The aim of the present study is to clarify whether immature CEs in the SC have the potential to mature. SC samples, in which immature CEs abundantly exist, were collected from the cheek of healthy volunteers by tape‐stripping, and were incubated ex vivo under the humidified air at 37 °C. Then, CE maturity was evaluated by staining with a combination of anti‐involucrin and Nile red to detect involucrin antigenicity in the immature CEs and hydrophobicity in the mature CEs, respectively. Ex vivo incubation of the SC resulted in the conversion of immature CEs into mature CEs in terms of loss of involucrin antigenicity and acquisition of hydrophobicity. Application of buffer solutions of various pH onto the SC prior to incubation revealed that maturation of CEs was proceeded at range of pH 5–7, corresponding to intrinsic pH range within the SC. Chelating agents, ethylenediamine‐N, N, N′, N′,‐tetraacetic acid (EDTA) and ethyleneglycol bis(β‐aminoethylether)‐N,N,N′,N′‐tetraacetic acid (EGTA), and thiol alkylating agents, N‐ethylmaleimide and iodoacetamide, inhibited the maturation. Labelled cadaverine as an exogenous substrate for transglutaminase (TGase) could be incorporated into CEs during maturation. Extractable involucrin‐like protein detected in the SC samples before incubation concomitantly disappeared with CE maturation, suggesting incorporation of endogenous substrates into the CEs. These results obviously demonstrate that maturation of CEs was mediated by TGase activity in the SC, and that immature CEs found in the outermost face SC have potential to mature by cross‐linking of endogenous CE precursors present in the SC. Reduction of environmental humidity during ex vivo incubation of the SC resulted in marked suppression of maturation of CEs, and application of a moisturizer, glycerine, onto the SC replenished the suppression of maturation, suggesting that water content in the SC may affect the TGase reaction in the SC. Therefore, various factors, including a decrease in the water content in the SC, may account for impaired maturation of CEs in the face SC.
Taste preferences in fishes
Authors: Kasumyan Alexander O , Døving Kjell B 
Published: November 2003

AbstractThe fish gustatory system provides the final sensory evaluation in the feeding process. Unlike other vertebrates, the gustatory system in fish may be divided into two distinct subsystems, oral and extraoral, both of them mediating behavioural responses to food items brought in contact with the fish. The abundance of taste buds is another peculiarity of the fish gustatory system. For many years, morphological and electrophysiological techniques dominated the studies of the fish gustatory system, and systematic investigations of fish taste preferences have only been performed during the last 10 years. In the present review, basic principles in the taste preferences of fish are formulated. Categories or types of taste substances are defined in accordance with their effects on fish feeding behaviour and further mediation by the oral or extraoral taste systems (incitants, suppressants, stimulants, deterrents, enhancers and indifferent substances). Information on taste preferences to different types of substances including classical taste substances, free amino acids, betaine, nucleotides, nucleosides, amines, sugars and other hydrocarbons, organic acids, alcohols and aldehydes, and their mixtures, is summarised. The threshold concentrations for taste substances are discussed, and the relationship between fish taste preferences with fish systematic position and fish ecology is evaluated. Fish taste preferences are highly species‐specific, and the differences among fish species are apparent when comparing the width and composition of spectra for both the stimulants and the deterrents. What is evident is that there is a strong similarity in the taste preferences between geographically isolated fish populations of the same species, and that taste preferences are similar in males and females, although at the individual level, it may vary dramatically among conspecifics. What is noteworthy is that taste responses are more stable and invariable for highly palatable substances than for substances with a low level of palatability. Taste preferences as a function of pH is analysed. There is a good correspondence between development of the gustatory system in fish ontogeny and its ability to discriminate taste properties of food items. There is also a correspondence between oral and extraoral taste preferences for a given species; however, there is no correlation between smell and taste preferences. Taste preferences in fish show low plasticity (in relation to the diet), appear to be determined genetically and seem to be patroclinous. Fish feeding motivation and various environmental factors like water temperature and pollutants such as heavy metals and low pH water may shift fish taste preferences. Comparisons between bioassay and electrophysiological data show that palatability is not synonymous with excitability in the gustatory system. The chemical nature of stimulants and deterrents in various hydrobionts is outlined. The significance of basic knowledge in fish taste preferences for aquaculture and fisheries is emphasised.
The barefoot ecologist goes fishing
Authors: Prince Jeremy D 
Published: November 2003

AbstractHaliotid (abalone) fisheries are comprised of small‐scale (<5 km2) stocks and serve as a model for many such fisheries. Extremely valuable to local fishing communities in aggregate, these micro‐stocks are myriad and complex to study, monitor, assess and manage. Micro‐stocks need assessment and management at local scales to prevent small components from suffering the tragedy of commons. This paper asks how can we ever hope to address the research and management needs of so many small resources? Community‐based and territorial rights‐based systems may help in sustaining these resources, but servicing the technical needs of many small communities of stakeholders raises problems. A new generation of ‘barefoot ecologists’ is envisaged to perform this task.
Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History
Authors: McNeill J. R. 
Published: November 2003

AbstractThis article aims to consider the robust field of environmental history as a whole, as it stands and as it has developed over the past twenty‐five years around the world. It necessarily adopts a selective approach but still offers more breadth than depth. It treats the links between environmental history and other fields within history, and with other related disciplines such as geography. It considers the precursors of environmental history, its emergence since the 1970s, its condition in several settings and historiographies. Finally it touches on environmental history's relationship to social theory and to the natural sciences as they have evolved in recent decades. It concludes that while there remains plenty of interesting work yet to do, environmental history has successfully established itself as a legitimate field within the historical profession, and has a bright future, if perhaps for discouraging reasons.
Nature and Technology in History
Authors: Schatzki Theodore R. 
Published: November 2003

AbstractThis essay sketches an expanded theoretical conception of the roles of nature and technology in history, one that is based on a social ontology that does not separate nature and society.History has long been viewed as the realm of past human action. On this conception, nature is treated largely as an Other of history, and technology is construed chiefly as a means for human fulfillment. There is no history of nature, and the history of technology becomes the history of useful products.The essay discusses the changes wrought in these understandings by a social ontology that depicts social existence as inherently transpiring in nexuses of practices and material arrangements. The first implication is that the domain of history should be expanded from the realm and course of past human activity to the realm and course of past practice‐arrangement nexuses. In turn, this wider conception transforms the significance of nature and technology in history.Until recently, most accounts of the relationship between society/history and nature have presumed that society and history are separate from nature. On my account, by contrast, nature is part of society: a component of the practice—arrangement nexuses through which social life progresses. Human history, consequently, is a social—natural history that encompasses the varying presence and roles of nature in human coexistence. Technology, meanwhile, is not just useful products, and not just a mediator of society/history and nature. It also is (1) something through which humans manage social life and the nature that is part of it, largely by drawing nature into this site and thereby conjointly transforming society, technology, and nature in history; and (2) something that, over time, plays an increasingly central role in the nexuses where social life transpires. Through technology, in short, social—natural history takes form and advances.
Spaces of Consumption in Environmental History
Authors: Klingle Matthew W. 
Published: November 2003

AbstractConsumption has emerged as an important historical subject, with most scholars explaining it as a vehicle for therapeutic regeneration, community formation, or economic policy. This work all but ignores how consumption begins with changes to the material world, to physical nature. While environmental historians have something important, even unique, to say about consumption, the split between materialist and cultural analyses within the field has dulled its ability to study consumption as a process and phenomenon that unfolds over space and time. By borrowing techniques from geography and ecology, environmental historians can analyze how space is socially produced through time, an insight that can help to connect material and cultural change in a sustained manner. Spatial histories can also unmask the relationships between production and consumption, and nature and culture, and thereby transcend and subvert seemingly fixed boundaries, from the local to the global. They can also further propel environmental historians into new realms of inquiry, such as international trade and the human body. Historicizing the spaces of consumption may also help to foster a more radical and democratic environmentalism, especially in developed nations, by compelling environmentalists to reassess the distancing effects of consumption upon their politics and attitudes toward those who produce commodities and consumer goods.
The Dynamics of Institutional and Individual Trading
Authors: Griffin John M. , Harris Jeffrey H. , Topaloglu Selim 
Published: November 2003

AbstractWe study the daily and intradaily cross‐sectional relation between stock returns and the trading of institutional and individual investors in Nasdaq 100 securities. Based on the previous day's stock return, the top performing decile of securities is 23.9% more likely to be bought in net by institutions (and sold by individuals) than those in the bottom performance decile. Strong contemporaneous daily patterns can largely be explained by net institutional (individual) trading positively (negatively) following past intradaily excess stock returns (or the news associated therein). In comparison, evidence of return predictability and price pressure are economically small.
Regulation Fair Disclosure and Earnings Information: Market, Analyst, and Corporate Responses
Authors: Bailey Warren , Li Haitao , Mao Connie X. , Zhong Rui 
Published: November 2003

AbstractWith the adoption of Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD), market behavior around earnings releases displays no significant change in return volatility (after controlling for decimalization of stock trading) but significant increases in trading volume due to difference in opinion. Analyst forecast dispersion increases, and increases in other measures of disagreement and difference of opinion suggest greater difficulty in forming forecasts beyond the current quarter. Corporations increase the quantity of voluntary disclosures, but only for current quarter earnings. Thus, Reg FD seems to increase the quantity of information available to the public while imposing greater demands on investment professionals.
What Type of Process Underlies Options? A Simple Robust Test
Authors: Carr Peter , Wu Liuren 
Published: November 2003

AbstractWe develop a simple robust method to distinguish the presence of continuous and discontinuous components in the price of an asset underlying options. Our method examines the prices of at‐the‐money and out‐of‐the‐money options as the option's time‐to‐maturity approaches zero. We show that these prices converge to zero at speeds that depend upon whether the underlying asset price process is purely continuous, purely discontinuous, or a combination of both. We apply the method to S&P 500 index options and find the existence of both a continuous component and a jump component in the index.
Do Price Discreteness and Transactions Costs Affect Stock Returns? Comparing Ex‐Dividend Pricing before and after Decimalization
Authors: Graham John R. , Michaely Roni , Roberts Michael R. 
Published: November 2003

AbstractBy the end of January 2001, all NYSE stocks had converted their price quotations from 1/8s and 1/16s to decimals. This study examines the effect of this change in price quotations on ex‐dividend day activity. We find that abnormal ex‐dividend day returns increase in the 1/16 and decimal pricing eras, relative to the 1/8 era, which is inconsistent with microstructure explanations of ex‐day price movements. We also find that abnormal returns increase in conjunction with a May 1997 reduction in the capital gains tax rate, as they should if relative taxation of dividends and capital gains affects ex‐day pricing.
Competition among Trading Venues: Information and Trading on Electronic Communications Networks
Authors: Barclay Michael J. , Hendershott Terrence , McCormick D. Timothy 
Published: November 2003

AbstractThis paper explores the competition between two trading venues, Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs) and Nasdaq market makers. ECNs offer the advantages of anonymity and speed of execution, which attract informed traders. Thus, trades are more likely to occur on ECNs when information asymmetry is greater and when trading volume and stock‐return volatility are high. ECN trades have greater permanent price impacts and more private information is revealed through ECN trades than though market‐maker trades. However, ECN trades have higher ex ante trading costs because market makers can preference or internalize the less informed trades and offer them better executions.
Divestitures and Divisional Investment Policies
Authors: Dittmar Amy , Shivdasani Anil 
Published: November 2003

ABSTRACTWe study a sample of diversified firms that alter their organizational structure by divesting a business segment. These firms experience a reduction in the diversification discount after the divestiture. We show that the efficiency of segment investment increases substantially following the divestiture and that this improvement is associated with a decrease in the diversification discount. Our results support the corporate focus and financing hypotheses for corporate divestitures. We demonstrate that inefficient investment is partly responsible for the diversification discount and show that asset sales lead to an improvement in the efficiency of investment for remaining divisions.
Time trends in disability pensioning for rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and soft tissue rheumatism in Norway 1968—97
Authors: Holte Hilde H. , Tambs Kristian , Bjerkedal Tor 
Published: November 2003

Aims: Disability pensioning with musculoskeletal diagnoses increased more than general disability pensioning in Norway during 1968—97. Incidences of disability pensioning for three main musculoskeletal diseases — rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and soft tissue rheumatism — during the period 1968—97 were assessed. Changes in incidence were related to changes in Norwegian society with respect to prevalence of these diseases, the number of individuals having high probability of disability pensioning for these diseases, the labour market and legal amendments that may have changed the probability of being granted a disability pension among these patients. Methods: Data on all new disability pensioners aged 50—66 years registered by the National Insurance Administration during 1968—97 and the total population of Norway excluding disability pensioners were used to calculate annual incidence rates of disability pension for the selected musculoskeletal diagnoses. Results: The incidence of disability pension for soft tissue rheumatism and osteoarthritis increased during the study period, and both increased more than the incidence of disability pension in general. The incidence of disability pension for rheumatoid arthritis decreased when compared with disability pensioning in general. The year an upward or downward trend started is similar for osteoarthritis and soft tissue rheumatism for men and women in the age groups studied. Conclusion: Changes in prevalence of a disease seem to be an important factor in explaining differences in time trends of disability pensioning with different diagnoses. Changes in unemployment, female employment, number of manual workers or the legal system do not appear to be related to the increases in incidence of disability pensioning with musculoskeletal diseases.
The Enlargement of the European Union and the Redistribution of Seigniorage Wealth
Authors: Feist Holger 
Published: November 2003

In the course of the EU enlargement process, the participation of accession countries in the European Monetary Union might lead to a significant redistribution of seigniorage wealth if current regulations prevail. In general, accession countries will be winners from this redistribution, for example Poland with 12.9 billion euros, Romania with 9.9 billion euros or Hungary with 3.3 billion euros. Correspondingly, the current member countries of the European Union face costs of 35.3 billion euros in total, the biggest part of which has to be borne by Germany.I am grateful to Mirja Bopst, Ulrich Hange, Hans‐Werner Sinn, as well as the editors of this journal and their referees for helpful comments.
Competition for Sainthood and the Millennial Church
Authors: Ferrero Mario 
Published: November 2003

The Roman Catholic Church has been turning out new saints for two millennia. The argument advanced here is that the saint–making process is arranged as an open contest for sainthood: by combining competitive initiative and pressure from below with exclusive adjudication from above, it provides effective incentives for participants to direct their efforts toward the best interests of the church. This is a key factor that counters bureaucratic ossification and keeps the church thriving. The argument implies that the secular pattern of canonizations should mirror the changing pattern of church demand rather than any exogenous supply of saintly persons, and should translate into a pattern of rise and decline of religious orders which specialize in particular virtues meeting particular demands. Statistical data on canonizations in the second millennium strongly support this empirical implication.An earlier draft of this paper was presented at a panel on Public Choice and the Millennium in the annual meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Siena, 26–29 April, 2000, whose participants provided interesting discussion. The author is particularly indebted to George Akerlof, Vani Borooah, Alberto Cassone, Joan Delaney Grossman, Gregory Grossman, Ronald Wintrobe, Robert Young, and a referee of this Journal for useful comments and suggestions. The revised version was completed while the author was visiting professor at the Department of Economics of the University of California at Berkeley, whose support is gratefully acknowledged.
The Impact of Intelligence and Institutional Improvements on Economic Growth
Authors: Weede Erich , Kämpf Sebastian 
Published: November 2003

Standard indicators of human capital endowment — like literacy, school enrollment ratios or years of schooling — suffer from a number of defects. They are crude. Mostly, they refer to input rather than output measures of human capital formation. Occasionally, they produce implausible effects. They are not robustly significant determinants of growth. Here, they are replaced by average intelligence. This variable consistently outperforms the other human capital indicators in spite of suffering from severe defects of its own. The immediate impact of institutional improvements, i.e., more government tolerance of private enterprise or economic freedom, on growth it is in the same order of magnitude as intelligence effects are.The senior author is responsible for picking a ‘politically incorrect’ topic, i.e., analyzing the impact of IQ or average intelligence. The junior author has done the data compilation and the computations.
Multilaboratory Evaluation of a Viability Assay for Measurement of Opsonophagocytic Antibodies Specific to the Capsular Polysaccharides of
Streptococcus pneumoniae
Authors: Romero-Steiner Sandra , Frasch Carl , Concepcion Nelydia , Goldblatt David , Käyhty Helena , Väkeväinen Merja , Laferriere Craig , Wauters Dominique , Nahm Moon H. , Schinsky Mark F. , Plikaytis Brian D. , Carlone George M. 
Published: November 2003

ABSTRACT
Opsonophagocytosis is a correlate of protection that measures the functional activity of vaccine-induced antibodies. A standardized opsonophagocytosis assay (OPA) should be used as part of the evaluation of current and future pneumococcal (Pnc) polysaccharide (Ps)-based vaccines. We enrolled five laboratories to evaluate a previously standardized viability OPA. Each laboratory was provided with a detailed OPA protocol, seven target Pnc strains (serotypes 4, 6B, 9V, 14, 18C, 19F, and 23F), two quality control sera and 12 paired sera (blinded) from adult donors who received one dose of the 23-valent Pnc Ps vaccine. Laboratories sent their results to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for analysis. Sera were tested in duplicate (single run), and the results were averaged to yield a single OPA titer (≥50% killing) for each serum sample. The percentage of sera within one or two dilutions of the calculated median OPA titer was determined for each laboratory and for each serotype. In general, laboratories were capable of detecting OPA titers within one or two dilutions of the median for at least 75 and 88%, respectively, of the sera tested. The level of agreement with the median OPA titers varied depending on the participating laboratory (overall agreement = 0.8 [99% confidence interval = 0.75 to 0.85]). All OPA median titers reported for quality control sera were within one dilution of the expected titer. We conclude that this OPA can be done in multiple laboratories with a high degree of interlaboratory reproducibility.