Predicting Problem-Solving Performance Using Concept Map

A growing community of researchers applies the concept map for elicitation and representation individual’s knowledge structure especially within knowledge-intensive processes in organizations. As an extension of prior works on concept map, this study aims to explore a new indicator of structural properties of concept map from an information entropy perspective to predict an individual’s problem-solving performance. From the information processing view of problem-solving, Information Theory provides the framework to formulate a new indicator called EntropyAvg. A controlled experiment was carried out to validate the predictive ability of the new indicator. The results demonstrate that EntropyAvg is able to estimate an individual’s problem-solving performance beyond two other widely adopted indicators, i.e., complexity and integration. The theoretical and practical contributions of this study are also discusse

China

Economic development processes in post-1949 China can be divided into two periods. In the first, 1950-70, the economy was extensively and intensively controlled by the state with a priority for developing heavy industries. In the second, since the 80s and known as the \u27reform period,\u27 the Chinese economy has increasingly been integrated with the world economy and relying on light (rural) industries as the prime motor of economic growth. Yet, in both these periods, Chinese policymakers shared the same \u27developmental\u27 philosophy in which social costs, that is the reproduction costs of human labour and nature, are largely ignored. The following is a critical sketch of government policies and their impact on the domestic population in these two periods

Convergence in Health Care Expenditure of 14 EU Countries: New Evidence from Non-linear Panel Unit Root Test

This paper attempts to examine the convergence hypothesis of health care expenditure per capita of 14 European Union (EU) countries during the 1975–2008 period by applying the Cerrato et al., (2009) nonlinear panel unit root test. Although the conventional linear panel unit root tests reject the null uniformly, the Cerrato et al., (2009) test shows evidence that one cannot reject the null hypothesis of unit root for health care expenditures of each country relative to the EU average, after taking nonlinearity into account. Our results are robust using different reference countries. The empirical findings imply that the exisitng “ EU health policy reforms” and “ European law on health care provision” may not able to encourage greater health care convergence in EU

Financial Development, Econmic Growth and R&D Cyclical Movement

This paper builds up an endogenous growth model à la Aghion and Howitt (1992) and Boucekkine et al (2005). We assume that R&D firms use only investment good as input, instead of final good as hypothesized in the above two models. We show that investment price will be a negative function of aggregate quality index; and thus decline over time. In this model, subsidy on R&D has growth-enhancing effect. Moreover, this model predicts unambiguously that R&D is procyclical

A Probabilistic Generative Model for Latent Business Networks Mining

The structural embeddedness theory posits that a company’s embeddedness in a business network impacts its competitive performance. This highlights the theoretical and practical values toward business network mining and analysis. Given the fact that latent business relationships may exist and business networks continuously evolve over time, a manual approach for the discovery and analysis of business network is ineffective. Though numerous research has been devoted to social network discovery and analysis, relatively little research is conducted on business network discovery. Guided by the design science research methodology, the main contribution of our research is the design and development of a novel probabilistic generative model for latent business relationship mining. The proposed method can effectively and efficiently discover evolving latent business networks over time. Our experimental results confirm that the proposed method outperforms the well-known vector space model based latent business relationship mining method by 28% in terms of AUC value

Cigarette Smoke-Induced Cerebral Cortical Interleukin-6 Elevation is not Mediated Through Oxidative Stress

The author group has previously established an in vivo subchronic cigarette smoke (CS) exposure rat model, in which the systemic oxidative burden as well as the modulation of local anti-oxidative enzymes in the lung has been demonstrated. Oxidative stress has been shown to induce pro-inflammatory cytokine release, including interleukin (IL)-6 in the airways. In this study, we aimed to investigate the changes in IL-6 production, as well as the oxidative/anti-oxidative responses in the cerebral cortex using the same in vivo model. IL-6 was determined by RT-PCR and western-blot analysis. Local oxidative and anti-oxidative responses were determined by measuring cerebral cortical malondialdehyde (MDA) and advanced oxidation protein product (AOPP) levels, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase activities, and the reduced to oxidized glutathione (GSH/GSSG) ratio. Nitrite level was measured by fluorescent spectrophotometry. Our results demonstrated a significant increase in both IL-6 mRNA and protein levels. Reductions of SOD activity and manganese (Mn)SOD protein level were observed together with the increased level of superoxide measured by chemiluminescent signal, after 56 days of CS exposure. There were no significant changes in the cerebral cortical levels of MDA, AOPP, catalase activity, and the GSH/GSSG ratio. Nitrite level was significantly reduced, together with the decreased protein level of nNOS in the cerebral cortex, after 56 days of CS exposure. Our results suggest that exposure to CS induces IL-6 expression in the cerebral cortex, which is not mediated by the oxidative/anti-oxidative imbalance

Analysis of telephone network traffic based on a complex user network

The traffic in telephone networks is analyzed in this paper. Unlike the classical traffic analysis where call blockings are due to the limited channel capacity, we consider here a more realistic cause for call blockings which is due to the way in which users are networked in a real-life human society. Furthermore, two kinds of user network, namely, the fully-connected user network and the scale-free network, are employed to model the way in which telephone users are connected. We show that the blocking probability is generally higher in the case of the scale-free user network, and that the carried traffic intensity is practically limited not only by the network capacity but also by the property of the user network.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, accepted for Physica

The Conditional CAPM, Cross-Section Returns and Stochastic Volatility

Bansal and Yaron (2004) demonstrate, by calibration, that the Consumption-Based Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM) can be rescued by assuming that consumption growth rate follows a stochastic volatility model. They show that the conditional equity premium is a linear function of conditional consumption and market return volatilities, which can be estimated handily by various Generalized Autoregressive Conditonal Heterskedasticity (GARCH) and Stochastic Volatility (SV) models.We find that conditional consumption and market volatilities are capable of explaining cross-sectional return differences. The Exponential GARCH (EGARCH) volatility can explain up to 55% variation of return and the EGARCH model augmented with (cay) ̂ -a cointegrating factor of consumption, labor income and asset wealth growth- greatly enhance model performance. We proceed to test another hypothesis: if Bansal and Yaron estimator is an unbiased estimator of true conditional equity premium, then the instrumental variables for estimating conditional equity premium should no longer be significant.We demonstrate that once the theoretical conditional risk premium is added to the model, it renders all instrumental variables redundant. Also, the model prediction is consistent with observed declining equity premium

A R&D Based Real Business Cycle Model

The New Keynesian Real Business Cycle model with staggered price adjustment is augmented with a R&D producing sector. Two sources of economic shocks are considered, namely random paritcipation (perturbances to value of alternative investment opportunities in another sector) and financial intermediation (shocks to the cost of raising capital in the financial intermediation market). We find that, when comparing to the baseline model, both models can explain pro-cyclical R&D spending. Additionally, the investment oversensitivity problem is corrected. However, only the financial intermediation model is consistent with the observed finding that volatility of R&D is larger than that of investment and output

Comparative transcriptomics of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in response to antibiotic treatments

Abstract Multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, a major hospital-acquired pathogen, is a serious health threat and poses a great challenge to healthcare providers. Although there have been many genomic studies on the evolution and antibiotic resistance of this species, there have been very limited transcriptome studies on its responses to antibiotics. We conducted a comparative transcriptomic study on 12 strains with different growth rates and antibiotic resistance profiles, including 3 fast-growing pan-drug-resistant strains, under separate treatment with 3 antibiotics, namely amikacin, imipenem, and meropenem. We performed deep sequencing using a strand-specific RNA-sequencing protocol, and used de novo transcriptome assembly to analyze gene expression in the form of polycistronic transcripts. Our results indicated that genes associated with transposable elements generally showed higher levels of expression under antibiotic-treated conditions, and many of these transposon-associated genes have previously been linked to drug resistance. Using co-expressed transposon genes as markers, we further identified and experimentally validated two novel genes of which overexpression conferred significant increases in amikacin resistance. To the best of our knowledge, this study represents the first comparative transcriptomic analysis of multidrug-resistant A. baumannii under different antibiotic treatments, and revealed a new relationship between transposons and antibiotic resistance