Seasonaility and Cointegration in the Fishing Industry of Conrwall

This paper examines the evidence for seasonal effects and cointegration between fisheries prices of main species landed into Cornwall. This is the first comprehensive study of fisheries seasonality. The results show significant monthly effects in April and negative monthly effects in February. We also find cointegration between prices, and show that in the long run prices are converged. The results also reveal that Granger causality is unidirectional in fourteen cases and bi-directional in six cases. Examining the form and magnitude of seasonal fluctuations and fish price linkages can be beneficial to fisheries managers in their decisions regarding policy, development and management.Fish prices, Cornwall, Seasonality, Cointegration

IMPACT OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT DURING DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION ON DOWNSTREAM BIM-GIS INTEROPERABILITY FOR RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE

The need for efficient and sustainable infrastructure – always critical to a city – is further gaining momentum as urbanisation creates the challenge of sustainably designing, constructing and operating the built environment. The AECOO industry, directly responsible for addressing this challenge, has adopted the use of BIM and GIS to aid in this endeavour. Both BIM and GIS overlap with respect to capturing aspects of the built environment, but are not interoperable by nature. To ensure a consistent and structured way of managing the information produced within these environments, industry standards such as IFC are implemented. Research to date focuses on addressing the integration between BIM and GIS for buildings by delving into the IFC and CityGML interoperability, which has highlighted significant geometric and semantic barriers that in the stage of integration, cannot be easily manoeuvred. The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight regarding the information lifecycle during Design & Construction in the HS2 Rail Infrastructure project and investigate the impact of current information management processes – and in particular Standards such as IFC, – on BIM-GIS interoperability and lifecycle management of an asset. Results demonstrate the levels of mis mapping during the export to IFC which varies depending on the infrastructure asset type. Discussion shows that these can be addressed by the introduction of additional semantic property sets to facilitate downstream BIM-GIS interoperability for O & M, enabling scope for future work

The Profitability of Chinese banks: impacts of risk, competition and efficiency

Purpose: This study aims to test the impacts of risk-taking behaviour, competition and cost efficiency on bank profitability in China. Design/methodology/approach: A two-step generalized method of moments system estimator is used to examine the impacts of risk, competition and cost efficiency on profitability of a sample of Chinese commercial banks over the period 2003-2013. Findings: The paper finds that credit risk, liquidity risk, capital risk, security risk and insolvency risk significantly influence the profitability of Chinese commercial banks. To be more specific, credit risk is significantly and negatively related to bank profitability; liquidity risk is significantly and positively related to return on assets (ROA) and net interest margin (NIM) but negatively related to return on equity (ROE); capital risk has a significant and negative impact on ROA and NIM but a positive impact on ROE; there is a significant and negative impact of security risk on bank profitability (ROA and NIM). It is found that Chinese commercial banks with higher levels of insolvency risk have higher profitability (ROA and ROE). Finally, higher competition leads to lower profitability in the Chinese banking industry, and Chinese commercial banks with higher levels of cost efficiency have lower ROA. In other words, the structure–conduct–performance paradigm rather than the efficient–structure paradigm holds in the Chinese banking industry. Originality/value: This is the first paper to investigate the impact of different types of risk, including credit risk, liquidity risk, capital risk, security risk and insolvency risk, on bank profitability. This is the first study which uses more accurate measurements of efficiency and competition compared to previous Chinese banking profitability literature and which tests their impact on bank profitability. The findings not only provide a general picture on the risk, efficiency and competition conditions in the Chinese banking industry, but also give valuable information to the Chinese Government and to the banking regulatory authorities to make relevant policies

Surfactant protein A and D polymorphisms and methylprednisolone pharmacogenetics in donor lungs

Objective: Surfactant proteins A and D are important molecules involved in lung allograft innate immunity. Genetic polymorphisms of surfactant proteins A and D are associated with various lung diseases. In this study, surfactant protein A and D expression responses were investigated during pharmacogenetics upon methylprednisolone treatment as observed during lung transplantation. Methods: A human cell line (NCI-H441) and precision-cut lung slices from 16 human donors were incubated with methylprednisolone, and surfactant protein A1, surfactant protein A2, and surfactant protein D messenger RNA and surfactant protein A protein expression were assayed. Surfactant protein A1, A2, and D polymorphisms and surfactant protein A gene and protein expressions were determined. Results: In NCI-H441 cells, methylprednisolone treatment at 10−5 M and 10−6 M reduced surfactant protein A1 and surfactant protein A2 messenger RNA and surfactant protein A protein expression (P <.05). A pharmacogenetic relationship was observed in human donor precision-cut lung slices between the surfactant protein A2 (1Ax) variants: Surfactant protein A1, A2, and D messenger RNA expression were greater for 1A0 versus 1A1 (P <.05); surfactant protein A1/surfactant protein A2 genotype 6A26A2/1A01A0 (n = 5) showed greater surfactant protein A1, A2, and D messenger RNA expression and surfactant protein A protein expression compared with the other surfactant protein A1/surfactant protein A2 genotypes (n = 11) (P <.05). Conclusions: The surfactant protein A genotype and methylprednisolone stimuli influence donor lung surfactant protein A and D expression. Lungs carrying the surfactant protein A2 variant 1A0 have a greater expression of surfactant protein A when treated with methylprednisolone. Surfactant protein A polymorphisms could be used to personalize immunosuppressive regimens

High-Level Annotation of Routing Congestion for Xilinx Vivado HLS Designs

Ever since transistor cost stopped decreasing, customized programmable platforms, such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), became a major way to improve software execution performance and energy consumption. While software developers can use high-level synthesis (HLS) to speed up register-transfer level (RTL) code generation from C++ or OpenCL source code, placement and routing issues, such as congestion, can still prevent achieving an FPGA programming bitstream or dramatically reduce the FPGA implementation performance. Congestion reports from physical design tools refer to thousands of RTL signal names instead of developer-accessible identifiers and statements, considerably complicating the developer understanding and resolution of the issues at the source level. We propose a high-level back-annotation flow that summarizes the routing congestion issues at the source level by analyzing the reports from the FPGA physical design tools and the internal debugging files of the HLS tools. Our flow describes congestion using comments back-annotated on the source code and identifies if the congestion causes are the on-chip memories or the DSP units (multipliers/adders), which are the shared resources very often associated with routing problems on FPGAs. We demonstrate on realistic large designs how the information provided by our flow helps to quickly spot congestion causes at the source level and to solve them using appropriate HLS directives

NKX2-3 (NK2 homeobox 3)

NKX2-3 gene is a member of the homeobox, NKX family. The gene encodes a homeodomain-containing transcription factor. GO (gene ontology) annotations related to this gene include sequence-specific DNA binding and gene-specific transcription factor activity. NKX2-3 is essential for normal development and functions of the small intestine and spleen of embryonic and adult mice. Disruption of Nkx2-3 in mice results in postnatal lethality and abnormal development of the small intestine and the spleen. Villus formation in the small intestine appears considerably delayed in Nkx2-3(null) fetuses due to reduced proliferation of the epithelium, while massively increased growth of crypt cells follows in surviving adults. A complex intestinal malabsorption phenotype and striking abnormalities of gut-associated lymphoid tissue and spleen suggest deranged leukocyte homing. RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry revealed that NKX2-3 controls regional expression of leukocyte homing coreceptor mucosal addressin cell adhesion molecule-1 (MAdCAM-1) in specialized endothelial cells of the viscera. This indicates a potential role for NXK2-3 in establishing the developmental and positional cues in endothelia that regulate leukocyte homing through local control of cellular adhesion. Studies of disease association indicated that NKX2-3 is associated with IBD (both Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis), intestinal fibrosis, colon rectal cancer, and dental caries

Use of the AFX Stent Graft in Patients with Extremely Narrow Aortic Bifurcation: A Multicenter Retrospective Study

Introduction This study analyzed the patient outcomes following endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR) for infrarenal aortic pathologies with very narrow aortic bifurcations using the AFX stent graft. Methods The data was retrieved from the archived medical records of 35 patients treated for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) (48.6%) or penetrating aortic ulcer (PAU) (51.4%) with very narrow aortic bifurcation between January 2013 and May 2020. Patient survival, freedom from endoleak (EL), and limb occlusion were estimated applying the Kaplan-Meier method. Results The mean follow-up time was 20.4 ± 22.8 months. The mean aortic bifurcation diameter was 15.8 ± 2.2 mm. Technical success was 100%, and no procedure-related deaths occurred. Two type II ELs occurred within 30-day follow-up. We observed one common iliac artery stenosis at four months and one type III EL at 54 months in the same patient, both of which required re-intervention. Overall patient survival was 95 ± 5% (AAA: 100%; PAU: 89 ± 10%), freedom from limb occlusion was 94 ± 5% (AAA: 91 ± 9%; PAU: 100%), freedom from type II EL was 94 ± 4% (AAA: 88 ± 8%; PAU: 100%), and freedom from EL type III was 83 ± 15% (AAA: 80 ± 18%; PAU: 100%) at the end of the follow-up period. Conclusions Very narrow aortic bifurcations may predispose patients to procedure-related complications following EVAR. Our results suggest a safe use of the AFX stent graft in such scenarios. The overall short- and long-term procedure-related patient outcomes are satisfying albeit they may seem superior for PAU when compared to AAA

Adolescent gambling behaviour, a single latent construct and indicators of risk: findings from a national survey of New Zealand high school students

This study explores underlying latent construct/s of gambling behaviour, and identifies indicators of “unhealthy gambling”. Data were collected from Youth’07 a nationally representative sample of New Zealand secondary school students (N = 9107). Exploratory factor analyses, item-response theory analyses, multiple indicators-multiple causes, and differential item functioning analyses were used to assess dimensionality of gambling behaviour, underlying factors, and indicators of unhealthy gambling. A single underlying continuum of gambling behaviour was identified. Gambling frequency and ‘gambling because I can’t stop’ were most strongly associated with unhealthy gambling. Gambling to ‘feel better about myself’ and to ‘forget about things’ provided the most precise discriminants of unhealthy gambling. Multivariable analyses found that school connectedness was associated with lower levels of unhealthy gambling