Does banking competition affect innovation? Cornaggia, Jess; Mao, Yifei; Tian, Xuan ...
Journal of financial economics,
January 2015, 2015-01-00, 20150101, Letnik:
115, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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We exploit the deregulation of interstate bank branching laws to test whether banking competition affects innovation. We find robust evidence that banking competition reduces state-level innovation ...by public corporations headquartered within deregulating states. Innovation increases among private firms that are dependent on external finance and that have limited access to credit from local banks. We argue that banking competition enables small, innovative firms to secure financing instead of being acquired by public corporations. Therefore, banking competition reduces the supply of innovative targets, which reduces the portion of state-level innovation attributable to public corporations. Overall, these results shed light on the real effects of banking competition and the determinants of innovation.
We describe a framework for designing the sequences of multiple nucleic acid strands intended to hybridize in solution via a prescribed reaction pathway. Sequence design is formulated as a multistate ...optimization problem using a set of target test tubes to represent reactant, intermediate, and product states of the system, as well as to model crosstalk between components. Each target test tube contains a set of desired “on-target” complexes, each with a target secondary structure and target concentration, and a set of undesired “off-target” complexes, each with vanishing target concentration. Optimization of the equilibrium ensemble properties of the target test tubes implements both a positive design paradigm, explicitly designing for on-pathway elementary steps, and a negative design paradigm, explicitly designing against off-pathway crosstalk. Sequence design is performed subject to diverse user-specified sequence constraints including composition constraints, complementarity constraints, pattern prevention constraints, and biological constraints. Constrained multistate sequence design facilitates nucleic acid reaction pathway engineering for diverse applications in molecular programming and synthetic biology. Design jobs can be run online via the NUPACK web application.
The Nucleic Acid Package (NUPACK) is a growing software suite for the analysis and design of nucleic acid systems. The NUPACK web server (http://www.nupack.org) currently enables: Analysis: ...thermodynamic analysis of dilute solutions of interacting nucleic acid strands. Design: sequence design for complexes of nucleic acid strands intended to adopt a target secondary structure at equilibrium. Utilities: evaluation, display, and annotation of equilibrium properties of a complex of nucleic acid strands. NUPACK algorithms are formulated in terms of nucleic acid secondary structure. In most cases, pseudoknots are excluded from the structural ensemble.
In this study, we evaluated sex differences during infection with mouse-adapted H1N1 and H3N2 influenza A viruses (IAVs) in the C57BL/6J mouse model and compared the cytokine and antibody responses ...between plasma and serum samples during IAV infection and vaccination. Lethal doses for both H1N1 and H3N2 IAVs were lower for adult females and they suffered with greater morbidity than adult males when infected with sublethal doses. In influenza virus-infected mice, cytokine responses differed between plasma and serum samples. After inactivated influenza virus vaccination and drift variant challenge, adult female mice had greater antibody responses and were better protected. In influenza-vaccinated and challenged mice, binding antibodies were unaffected between paired plasma or serum samples. However, functional antibody assays, including hemagglutination inhibition, microneutralization, and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity assays, were affected by the use of plasma and serum sample types. Our results indicate that careful consideration is required while selecting plasma versus serum samples to measure cytokine and antibody responses during IAV infection and vaccination.
Information technologies enable programmers and engineers to design and synthesize systems of startling complexity that nonetheless behave as intended. This mastery of complexity is made possible by ...a hierarchy of formal abstractions that span from high-level programming languages down to low-level implementation specifications, with rigorous connections between the levels. DNA nanotechnology presents us with a new molecular information technology whose potential has not yet been fully unlocked in this way. Developing an effective hierarchy of abstractions may be critical for increasing the complexity of programmable DNA systems. Here, we build on prior practice to provide a new formalization of 'domain-level' representations of DNA strand displacement systems that has a natural connection to nucleic acid biophysics while still being suitable for formal analysis. Enumeration of unimolecular and bimolecular reactions provides a semantics for programmable molecular interactions, with kinetics given by an approximate biophysical model. Reaction condensation provides a tractable simplification of the detailed reactions that respects overall kinetic properties. The applicability and accuracy of the model is evaluated across a wide range of engineered DNA strand displacement systems. Thus, our work can serve as an interface between lower-level DNA models that operate at the nucleotide sequence level, and high-level chemical reaction network models that operate at the level of interactions between abstract species.
Background
Despite the large number of anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions performed each year, there remains a significant controversy regarding the effect of the graft source on the ...functional outcome of patients.
Hypothesis
There is no difference in outcomes of autograft versus allograft anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions.
Study Design
Systematic review.
Methods
The authors systematically identified prospective studies (Oxford level of evidence I or II only) that included autograft patients, allograft patients, or both. Objective outcomes that were reported were meta-analyzed; this included pivot-shift results, KT-1000 arthrometer results, International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) scores, Lysholm Scores, graft failures, and postoperative complications. Two statistical analyses were performed. First a primary statistical analysis was performed comparing pooled autograft data (bone–patellar–tendon bone and hamstrings combined) and pooled allograft data (bone–patellar–tendon bone and hamstrings combined). To have a more comprehensive understanding of the differences between each specific graft source, a secondary analysis was performed without pooling the data; this directly compared the 4 types of graft sources that were studied.
Results
Over 400 scientific manuscripts were initially reviewed; 31 manuscripts fulfilled all of the search criteria. There were very few statistically significant differences between autograft and allograft tissue. The KT-1000 arthrometer laxity testing revealed a mean of 1.4 ± 0.2 mm (weighted mean ± standard error of the mean) for the allograft group compared with 1.8 ± 0.1 mm for the autograft group (t = 2.40; P < .02). However, this difference was only for the mean score; there was no statistical significance when considering KT-1000 arthrometer measurements of greater than 3 or 5 mm. The percentage of patients receiving a final IKDC score of “A” (normal knee) was statistically significant for allograft tissue (43.9% ± 5.5%) versus autograft tissue (28.2% ± 1.0%) reconstructions. There was no statistically significant difference between the percentages of IKDC scores of A or B for patients receiving pooled allograft (82.9% ± 4.2%) versus pooled autograft (87.2% ± 0.9%) anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (t = 1.01; P > .1). The graft failure rate was 4.7 ± 0.5 per 100 for autograft reconstructions and 8.2 ± 2.1 per 100 allograft reconstructions; although this may represent a trend, it is not statistically significant (t = 1.49; P > .1). The complication rate was slightly higher for autograft reconstructions at 3.5 ± 0.4 complications per 100 autograft reconstructions compared with 2.4 ± 1.1 complications per 100 allograft reconstructions, but not significant (t = 1.41; P > .1).
Conclusion
After a comprehensive examination and statistical analysis of the modern literature, the authors could not identify an individual graft source that was clearly superior to the other graft sources. This led them to believe that, with currently available data, the graft source has a minimal effect on the outcome of patients undergoing anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction.
Urban Modification of Thunderstorms Niyogi, Dev; Pyle, Patrick; Lei, Ming ...
Journal of applied meteorology and climatology,
05/2011, Letnik:
50, Številka:
5
Journal Article
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A radar-based climatology of 91 unique summertime (May 2000–August 2009) thunderstorm cases was examined over the Indianapolis, Indiana, urban area. The study hypothesis is that urban regions alter ...the intensity and composition/structure of approaching thunderstorms because of land surface heterogeneity. Storm characteristics were studied over the Indianapolis region and four peripheral rural counties approximately 120 km away from the urban center. Using radar imagery, the time of event, changes in storm structure (splitting, initiation, intensification, and dissipation), synoptic setting, orientation, and motion were studied. It was found thatmore than 60% of storms changed structure over the Indianapolis area as compared with only 25% over the rural regions. Furthermore, daytime convection was most likely to be affected, with 71% of storms changing structure as compared with only 42% at night. Analysis of radar imagery indicated that storms split closer to the upwind urban region and merge again downwind. Thus, a larger portion of small storms (50–200 km²) and large storms (>1500 km²) were found downwind of the urban region, whereas midsized storms (200–1500 km) dominated the upwind region. A case study of a typical storm on 13 June 2005 was examined using available observations and the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5), version 3.7.2. Two simulations were performed with and without the urban land use/Indianapolis region in the fourth domain (1.33-km resolution). The storm of interest could not be simulated without the urban area. Results indicate that removing the Indianapolis urban region caused distinct differences in the regional convergence and convection as well as in simulated base reflectivity, surface energy balance (through sensible heat flux, latent heat flux, and virtual potential temperature changes), and boundary layer structure. Study results indicate that the urban area has a strong climatological influence on regional thunderstorms.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
We describe an algorithm for designing the equilibrium base-pairing properties of a test tube of interacting nucleic acid strands. A target test tube is specified as a set of desired “on-target” ...complexes, each with a target secondary structure and target concentration, and a set of undesired “off-target” complexes, each with vanishing target concentration. Sequence design is performed by optimizing the test tube ensemble defect, corresponding to the concentration of incorrectly paired nucleotides at equilibrium evaluated over the ensemble of the test tube. To reduce the computational cost of accepting or rejecting mutations to a random initial sequence, the structural ensemble of each on-target complex is hierarchically decomposed into a tree of conditional subensembles, yielding a forest of decomposition trees. Candidate sequences are evaluated efficiently at the leaf level of the decomposition forest by estimating the test tube ensemble defect from conditional physical properties calculated over the leaf subensembles. As optimized subsequences are merged toward the root level of the forest, any emergent defects are eliminated via ensemble redecomposition and sequence reoptimization. After successfully merging subsequences to the root level, the exact test tube ensemble defect is calculated for the first time, explicitly checking for the effect of the previously neglected off-target complexes. Any off-target complexes that form at appreciable concentration are hierarchically decomposed, added to the decomposition forest, and actively destabilized during subsequent forest reoptimization. For target test tubes representative of design challenges in the molecular programming and synthetic biology communities, our test tube design algorithm typically succeeds in achieving a normalized test tube ensemble defect ≤1% at a design cost within an order of magnitude of the cost of test tube analysis.
The pharmacokinetic behavior of naturally occurring isoflavones has been determined for the first time in healthy adults. We compared plasma kinetics of pure daidzein, genistein and their ...β-glycosides administered as a single-bolus dose to 19 healthy women. This study demonstrates differences in the pharmacokinetics of isoflavone glycosides compared with their respective β-glycosides. Although all isoflavones are efficiently absorbed from the intestinal tract, there are striking differences in the fate of aglycones and β-glycosides. Mean time to attain peak plasma concentrations (tmax) for the aglycones genistein and daidzein was 5.2 and 6.6 h, respectively, whereas for the corresponding β-glycosides, the tmax was delayed to 9.3 and 9.0 h, respectively, consistent with the residence time needed for hydrolytic cleavage of the glycoside moiety for bioavailability. The apparent volume of distribution of isoflavones confirms extensive tissue distribution after absorption. Plasma genistein concentrations are consistently higher than daidzein when equal amounts of the two isoflavones are administered, and this is accounted for by the more extensive distribution of daidzein (236 L) compared with genistein (161 L). The systemic bioavailability of genistein mean AUC = 4.54 μg/(mL · h) is much greater than that of daidzein mean AUC = 2.94 μg/(mL · h), and bioavailability of these isoflavones is greater when ingested as β-glycosides rather than aglycones as measured from the area under the curve of the plasma appearance and disappearance concentrations. The pharmacokinetics of methoxylated isoflavones show distinct differences depending on the position of the methoxyl group in the molecule. Glycitin, found in two phytoestrogen supplements, underwent hydrolysis of the β-glycoside moiety and little further biotransformation, leading to high plasma glycitein concentrations. Biochanin A and formononetin, two isoflavones found in one phytoestrogen supplement, were rapidly and efficiently demethylated, resulting in high plasma genistein and daidzein concentrations typically observed after the ingestion of soy-containing foods. These differences in pharmacokinetics and metabolism have implications for clinical studies because it cannot be assumed that all isoflavones are comparable in their pharmacokinetics and bioavailability. An analysis of 33 phytoestrogen supplements and extracts revealed considerable differences in the isoflavone content from that claimed by the manufacturers. Plasma concentrations of isoflavones show marked qualitative and quantitative differences depending on the type of supplement ingested. These studies indicate a need for improvement in quality assurance and standardization of such products.
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