The Growth Effects of Institutional Instability

Both institutional quality and institutional stability have been argued to stimulate economic growth. But to improve institutional quality, a country must endure a period of institutional change, which implies at least a little and possibly a lot of institutional instability. We investigate the growth effects of institutional quality and instability, using the political risk index from the ICRG in a cross-country study of 132 countries, measuring instability as the coefficient of variation. Using the aggregate index, we find evidence that institutional quality is positively linked to growth. While institutional instability is negatively related to growth in the baseline case, there are indications that the effect can be positive in rich countries, suggesting that institutional reform is not necessarily costly even during a transition period. Sensitivity analysis, e.g., decomposing the political risk index by using both its constituting components and the results of a principal components analysis, using other measures of institutional quality and excluding outliers, confirm the general results, with qualifications.Institutions; Instability; Growth; Transaction costs; Uncertainty

Does the increase in house prices influence the creation of business startups?: the case of Sweden

Entrepreneurs are at the core of economic development in that they start new businesses or make existing firms grow. To fulfill this important role, entrepreneurs need access to finance. Owing to information asymmetry and the relatively high risk associated with business start-ups, many financiers shy away from engaging in relationships with firms during the early stages of their development. Based on the existing body of knowledge on the financing of entrepreneurship, we know that insider finance is of paramount importance in the early stages of firms’ development. We expand this knowledge base by analyzing the influence of house prices on business start-ups across municipalities in Sweden. In our analysis, we include data from all municipalities in Sweden. Our data on house prices and control variables are collected in period one, and our data on the frequency of start-ups are collected in period two. We find that rising house prices in a municipality lead to a higher frequency of start-ups. In our regression analysis, we find that a 1% increase in house prices leads to a 0.14% increase in start-ups. Our findings are in line with the limited international research that has been previously conducted, and for this reason, they could be seen as a vital addition to the existing body of knowledge within the area of entrepreneurship and regional development.

Evolved Art with Transparent, Overlapping, and Geometric Shapes

In this work, an evolutionary art project is presented where images are approximated by transparent, overlapping and geometric shapes of different types, e.g., polygons, circles, lines. Genotypes representing features and order of the geometric shapes are evolved with a fitness function that has the corresponding pixels of an input image as a target goal. A genotype-to-phenotype mapping is therefore applied to render images, as the chosen genetic representation is indirect, i.e., genotypes do not include pixels but a combination of shapes with their properties. Different combinations of shapes, quantity of shapes, mutation types and populations are tested. The goal of the work herein is twofold: (1) to approximate images as precisely as possible with evolved indirect encodings, (2) to produce visually appealing results and novel artistic styles.Comment: Proceedings of the Norwegian AI Symposium 2019 (NAIS 2019), Trondheim, Norwa

Multi-Agent Programming Contest 2012 - The Python-DTU Team

We provide a brief description of the Python-DTU system, including the overall design, the tools and the algorithms that we plan to use in the agent contest.Comment: 4 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1110.010

ひらがな

Bakgrund: Penningflöden är, till skillnad från redovisat resultat, svåra att manipulera och därmed relevanta att redovisa. Redovisningsrådet har inför 1999 kommit med en ny rekommendation, RR 7:98, beträffande kassaflödesanalyser. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att öka förståelsen för kassaflödesanalyser och traditionella finansieringsanalyser genom att studera deras framtagande, informationsinnehåll och användningsområde. Genomförande: Vi behandlar teorier,principer, tekniker och regler om finansieringsanalyser. Vi har även undersökt attityder till finansieringsanalyser hos svenska börsnoterade banker och skogsbolag samt analytikers åsikter om finansieringsanalyser i dessa branscher. Resultat: I skogsbranschen är finansieringsanalysen av central betydelse. Däremot är de flesta intressenter eniga om att finansieringsanalyser inte är relevanta för banker. Bankerna är dock tvungna att börja upprätta finansieringsanalys p g a en lagändring. Nästan alla bolag kommer att följa RR 7:98, vilket ökar jämförbarheten mellan bolag nationellt och internationellt, eftersom RR 7:98 ansluter till ett internationellt synsätt

Checkpointing with Time Gaps for Unsteady Adjoint CFD

© Springer International Publishing AG 2019. Gradient-based optimisation using adjoints is an increasingly common approach for industrial flow applications. For cases where the flow is largely unsteady however, the adjoint method is still not widely used, in particular because of its prohibitive computational cost and memory footprint. Several methods have been proposed to reduce the peak memory usage, such as checkpointing schemes or checkpoint compression, at the price of increasing the computational cost even further. We investigate incomplete checkpointing as an alternative, which reduces memory usage at almost no extra computational cost, but instead offers a trade-off between memory footprint and the fidelity of the model. The method works by storing only selected physical time steps and using interpolation to reconstruct time steps that have not been stored. We show that this is enough to compute sufficiently accurate adjoint sensitivities for many relevant cases, and does not add significantly to the computational cost. The method works for general cases and does not require to identify periodic cycles in the flow

DNA barcode library for European Gelechiidae (Lepidoptera) suggests greatly underestimated species diversity

For the first time, a nearly complete barcode library for European Gelechiidae is provided. DNA barcode sequences (COI gene – cytochrome c oxidase 1) from 751 out of 865 nominal species, belonging to 105 genera, were successfully recovered. A total of 741 species represented by specimens with sequences ≥ 500bp and an additional ten species represented by specimens with shorter sequences were used to produce 53 NJ trees. Intraspecific barcode divergence averaged only 0.54% whereas distance to the Nearest-Neighbour species averaged 5.58%. Of these, 710 species possessed unique DNA barcodes, but 31 species could not be reliably discriminated because of barcode sharing or partial barcode overlap. Species discrimination based on the Barcode Index System (BIN) was successful for 668 out of 723 species which clustered from minimum one to maximum 22 unique BINs. Fifty-five species shared a BIN with up to four species and identification from DNA barcode data is uncertain. Finally, 65 clusters with a unique BIN remained unidentified to species level. These putative taxa, as well as 114 nominal species with more than one BIN, suggest the presence of considerable cryptic diversity, cases which should be examined in future revisionary studies.For the first time, a nearly complete barcode library for European Gelechiidae is provided. DNA barcode sequences (COI gene - cytochrome c oxidase 1) from 751 out of 865 nominal species, belonging to 105 genera, were successfully recovered. A total of 741 species represented by specimens with sequences >= 500bp and an additional ten species represented by specimens with shorter sequences were used to produce 53 NJ trees. Intraspecific barcode divergence averaged only 0.54% whereas distance to the Nearest-Neighbour species averaged 5.58%. Of these, 710 species possessed unique DNA barcodes, but 31 species could not he reliably discriminated because of barcode sharing or partial barcode overlap. discrimination based on the Barcode Index System (BIN) was successful for 668 out of 723 species which clustered from minimum one to maximum 22 unique BINs. Fifty-five species shared a BIN with up to four species and identification from DNA barcode data is uncertain. Finally, 65 clusters with a unique BIN remained unidentified to species level. These putative taxa, as well as 114 nominal species with more than one BIN, suggest the presence of considerable cryptic diversity, cases which should be examined in future revisionary studies.Peer reviewe

Diversity of respiratory parameters and metabolic adaptation to low oxygen tension in mesenchymal stromal cells

Objective Cell metabolism has been shown to play an active role in regulation of stemness and fate decision. In order to identify favorable culture conditions for mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) prior to transplantation, this study aimed to characterize the metabolic function of MSCs from different developmental stages in response to different oxygen tension during expansion. Materials and methods We cultured human fetal cardiac MSCs and human adult bone-marrow MSCs for a week under hypoxia (3% O2) and normoxia (20% O2). We performed mitochondrial characterization and assessed oxygen consumption- and extracellular acidification-rates (OCR and ECAR) in addition to oxygen-sensitive respiration and mitochondrial complex activities, using both the Seahorse and Oroboros systems. Results Adult and fetal MSCs displayed similar basal respiration and mitochondrial amount, however fetal MSCs had lower spare respiratory capacity and apparent coupling efficiency. Fetal MSCs expanded in either hypoxia or normoxia demonstrated similar acidification rates, while adult MSCs downregulated their aerobic glycolysis in normoxia. Acute decrease in oxygen tension caused a higher respiratory inhibition in adult compared to fetal MSCs. In both sources of MSCs, minor changes in complex activities in normoxic and hypoxic cultures were found. Conclusions In contrast to adult MSCs, fetal MSCs displayed similar respiration and aerobic glycolysis at different O2 culture concentrations during expansion. Adult MSCs adjusted their respiration to glycolytic activities, depending on the culture conditions thus displaying a more mature metabolic function. These findings are relevant for establishing optimal in vitro culturing conditions, with the aim to maximize engraftment and therapeutic outcome.CC BY-NC-ND 4.0Corresponding author: Department of Surgical Sciences, Uppsala University, 751 85, Uppsala, Sweden. E-mail address: [email protected] (K.-H. Grinnemo).Available online 3 February 2022, Version of Record 5 February 2022The project was funded by Karolinska Institute-Mayo Clinic Collaborative Grant 2013; The Swedish Research Council young investigator: 2013–3590; Stockholm county; The Swedish Research Council; The Family Erling-Persson Foundation; ERC-2018-AdG (834860 EYELETS); Uppsala county; Uppsala County Association against Heart and Lung Diseases; and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (agreement no. 075-15-2020-899).</p

Enhanced metabolism and negative regulation of ER stress support higher erythropoietin production in HEK293 cells

Recombinant protein production can cause severe stress on cellular metabolism, resulting in limited titer and product quality. To investigate cellular and metabolic characteristics associated with these limitations, we compare HEK293 clones producing either erythropoietin (EPO) (secretory) or GFP (non-secretory) protein at different rates. Transcriptomic and functional analyses indicate significantly higher metabolism and oxidative phosphorylation in EPO producers compared with parental and GFP cells. In addition, ribosomal genes exhibit specific expression patterns depending on the recombinant protein and the production rate. In a clone displaying a dramatically increased EPO secretion, we detect higher gene expression related to negative regulation of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, including upregulation of ATF6B, which aids EPO production in a subset of clones by overexpression or small interfering RNA (siRNA) knockdown. Our results offer potential target pathways and genes for further development of the secretory power in mammalian cell factories