A substantial body of research has found that social desirability motivates respondents to overstate support for immigration when asked directly, but when provided an unobtrusive means of expressing ...preferences, support declines. In this paper, we ask whether South Koreans follow this pattern, especially with regards to co-ethnic migrants from North Korea and China. We use list experiments to determine whether observed levels of support for general immigration and co-ethnic migration are biased by social desirability. We find that generally respondents overstate their support for co-ethnics from North Korea by a significant amount when asked directly, but not for the other groups, although college-educated respondents overstate their support for general immigration. Social desirability bias with respect to co-ethnics from North Korea is particularly evident in older respondents and males. These findings challenge the notion that native-born citizens prefer co-ethnic immigrants.
•An estimate for the steady convective flux for anisotropic media is developed.•Steady convective dissolution in anisotropic media scales as (kv/kh)1/2.•Steady convective dissolution in heterogeneous ...models scales in the same fashion.•This theoretical estimate can be used in upscaled models.
Enhanced dissolution of CO2 into a saline aquifer due to convective mixing is an important physical process for the secure long-term storage of significant quantities of CO2. Numerical simulations have previously shown that the dissolution rate of CO2 into reservoir brine will stabilise after a certain time period, with only small oscillations about a long-term average. A theoretical estimate for this average long-term mass flux in an isotropic homogeneous reservoir has previously appeared in the literature. In this paper, an estimate for the steady dissolution rate in anisotropic homogenous porous media is developed using a simple theoretical argument. Detailed numerical simulations confirm that the steady dissolution rate scales as (kvkh)1/2 in an anisotropic homogeneous porous media, where kv and kh are the vertical and horizontal permeabilities, respectively. The scaling is also shown to be appropriate for heterogeneous models where vertical heterogeneity is introduced by including a random distribution of impermeable barriers.
Admission of infants to hospital with bronchiolitis consumes considerable healthcare resources each winter. We report an analysis of hospital admissions in England over five decades.
Data were ...analysed from the Hospital In-Patient Enquiry (HIPE, 1968-1985), Hospital Episode Statistics (HES, 1989-2011), Oxford Record Linkage Study (ORLS, 1963-2011) and Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet, 2003-2012). Cases were identified using International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes in discharge records. Bronchiolitis was given a separate code in ICD9 (used in England from 1979). Geographical variation was analysed using Local Authority area boundaries. Maternal and perinatal risk factors associated with bronchiolitis and subsequent admissions for asthma were analysed using record-linkage.
All-England HIPE and HES data recorded 468 138 episodes of admission for bronchiolitis in infants aged <1 year between 1979 and 2011. In 2011 the estimated annual hospital admission rate was 46.1 (95% CI 45.6 to 46.6) per 1000 infants aged <1 year. Between 2004 and 2011 the rates rose by an average of 1.8% per year in the all-England HES data, whereas admission rates to paediatric intensive care changed little (1.3 to 1.6 per 1000 infants aged <1 year). A fivefold geographical variation in hospital admission rates was observed. Young maternal age, low social class, low birth weight and maternal smoking were among factors associated with an increased risk of hospital admission with bronchiolitis.
Hospital admissions for infants with bronchiolitis have increased substantially in recent years. However, cases requiring intensive care have changed little since 2004.
Strategies utilizing the CRISPR/Cas nucleases Cas13 and Cas12 have shown great promise in the development of highly sensitive and rapid diagnostic assays for the detection of pathogenic nucleic ...acids. The most common approaches utilizing fluorophore-quencher molecular beacons require strand amplification strategies or highly sensitive optical setups to overcome the limitations of the readout. Here, we demonstrate a flexible strategy for assembling highly luminescent and colorimetric quantum dot–nucleic acid hairpin (QD-HP) molecular beacons for use in CRISPR/Cas diagnostics. This strategy utilizes a chimeric peptide–peptide nucleic acid (peptide-PNA) to conjugate fluorescently labeled DNA or RNA hairpins to ZnS-coated QDs. QDs are particularly promising alternatives for molecular beacons due to their greater brightness, strong UV absorbance with large emission offset, exceptional photostability, and potential for multiplexing due to their sharp emission peaks. Using Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), we have developed ratiometric reporters capable of pM target detection (without nucleotide amplification) for both target DNA and RNA, and we further demonstrated their capabilities for multiplexing and camera-phone detection. The flexibility of this system is imparted by the dual functionality of the QD as both a FRET donor and a central nanoscaffold for arranging nucleic acids and fluorescent acceptors on its surface. This method also provides a generalized approach that could be applied for use in other CRISPR/Cas nuclease systems.
The intra-image identification of DNA structures is essential to rapid prototyping and quality control of self-assembled DNA origami scaffold systems. We postulate that the YOLO modern object ...detection platform commonly used for facial recognition can be applied to rapidly scour atomic force microscope (AFM) images for identifying correctly formed DNA nanostructures with high fidelity. To make this approach widely available, we use open-source software and provide a straightforward procedure for designing a tailored, intelligent identification platform which can easily be repurposed to fit arbitrary structural geometries beyond AFM images of DNA structures. Here, we describe methods to acquire and generate the necessary components to create this robust system. Beginning with DNA structure design, we detail AFM imaging, data point annotation, data augmentation, model training, and inference. To demonstrate the adaptability of this system, we assembled two distinct DNA origami architectures (triangles and breadboards) for detection in raw AFM images. Using the images acquired of each structure, we trained two separate single class object identification models unique to each architecture. By applying these models in sequence, we correctly identified 3470 structures from a total population of 3617 using images that sometimes included a third DNA origami structure as well as other impurities. Analysis was completed in under 20 s with results yielding an F1 score of 0.96 using our approach.
In my article, I examine the use of foreign currency in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) border economy since the 1980s. I focus not on the US dollar so beloved of elites in Pyongyang ...but on the steady uptake of Chinese renminbi by nonelites, a phenomenon that emerged first from the economy of the border region that the DPRK shares with China. Relying on testimony from structured interviews conducted in 2014 with former DPRK citizens now based in the Republic of Korea, I position the expansion of foreign currency usage within the history of contemporary DPRK marketization, specifically linking that expansion to economic shocks felt in 1992, 2002, and 2009. I conclude by discussing the threats and opportunities presented by the rising tide of foreign currency possession and use.
Using household survey data gleaned from Ghana, we carried out a microeconometric analysis of the relationship between mobile money (m‐money) and multidimensional well‐being. A key feature of this ...paper is the computation of a well‐being index, incorporating important household welfare dimensions including health, education, and wealth, thus allowing an examination of the link between m‐money and well‐being from a multidimensional perspective. Using instrumental variable probit models with phone ownership and public sector employment as instruments, we find that although access to m‐money is important it is its usage that has a profound well‐being effect. We also explore alternative specifications of the models in which access to, and usage of, m‐money explains the variations in the individual well‐being components, which also relate to the Sustainable Development Goals. The results from these alternative specifications suggest that there are significant welfare disparities between those who just have access to m‐money and those who use it frequently. The policy implication of this finding is that measures that encourage m‐money usage would not only promote financial inclusion but also lead to improvement in welfare outcomes and living standards, especially in rural households.
We investigate the contributions of fixed and mobile telecommunications (ICT) and mobile money to economic growth and financial inclusion in a 22-year panel of 146 countries. We extend the Solow ...growth model to include human capital, money, ICT, and mobile money, splitting the sample into sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and the rest of the world (RoW) in addition to the whole sample analysis. We find mobile money affects economic growth through direct and indirect channels. Mobile money has a significant overall positive impact on growth, especially in countries with better mobile phone penetration and more dispersed populations. But its total quantitative effect is not large. Mobile money also tends to improve financial inclusion which in turn promotes growth. There are important differences between the SSA and RoW parameters, implying that the quantitative determinants of growth are different to some extent as between SSA and RoW.
•Mobile money has a positive effect on growth in Africa and elsewhere.•Mobile phone penetration also has a positive effect on growth in Africa.•Mobile money has a notably stronger effect in countries with dispersed populations.•Mobile money also promotes financial inclusion which in turn increases growth.•The growth effects differ in size as between Africa and rest of the world.
Existing literature has produced broadly inconclusive evidence about the asset pricing model which best fits partially integrated markets. This paper examines whether industry and country factors are ...independent factors helping to determine returns in emerging stock markets, or are derived from the stocks’ risk-return characteristics. We link the country-industry decomposition framework to the local and the Global CAPM in a new and more direct way. The results show that country factors are additional independent sources of cross-sectional variation in stock returns before 1996 particularly under the Global CAPM. After 1996, the results suggest partial integration: industry and country factors are both additional independent determinants of cross-sectional variations in stock returns. .
•Country factors are independent sources of stock return variations before 1996.•Post 1996 industry-country factors are jointly sources of stock return variations.•Global CAPM cannot capture the strong country effects due to market segmentation.•Post Asian crisis, integration among emerging markets is better captured by GCAPM.•Beta decompositions are in line with return and conditional risk decompositions.
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