Impacts of Competitive Position on Export Propensity and Intensity: An Empirical Study of Manufacturing Firms in China

We examine the impacts of competitive industry position on firms’ export propensity and intensity in China. Drawing on the resource-based view and the structure-conduct-performance paradigm of firm behavior, we investigate whether firms with competitive industry position through cost leadership or differentiation strategy have different export behaviors. We use a longitudinal data of 213,662 manufacturing firms in China from 1998 to 2005 to show that firms that have developed competitive advantages in the domestic market are more likely to export and have higher levels of export intensity. Indigenous and foreign manufacturing firms exhibit different patterns of export behaviors. Foreign firms with differentiation advantages focus on local market expansion instead of seeking opportunity in export markets.

State Ownership and Firm Innovation in China: An Integrated View of Institutional and Efficiency Logics

Using two longitudinal panel datasets of Chinese manufacturing firms, we assess whether state ownership benefits or impedes firms’ innovation. We show that state ownership in an emerging economy enables a firm to obtain crucial R&D resources but makes the firm less efficient in using those resources to generate innovation, and we find that a minority state ownership is an optimal structure for innovation development in this context. Moreover, the inefficiency of state ownership in transforming R&D input into innovation output decreases when industrial competition is high, as well as for start-up firms. Our findings integrate the efficiency logic (agency theory), which views state ownership as detrimental to innovation, and institutional logic, which notes that governments in emerging economies have critical influences on regulatory policies and control over scarce resources. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on state ownership and firm innovation in emerging economies

Impacts of Competitive Position on Export Propensity and Intensity: An Empirical Study of Manufacturing Firms in China

We examine the impacts of competitive industry position on firms’ export propensity and intensity in China. Drawing on the resource-based view and the structure-conduct-performance paradigm of firm behavior, we investigate whether firms with competitive industry position through cost leadership or differentiation strategy have different export behaviors. We use a longitudinal data of 213,662 manufacturing firms in China from 1998 to 2005 to show that firms that have developed competitive advantages in the domestic market are more likely to export and have higher levels of export intensity. Indigenous and foreign manufacturing firms exhibit different patterns of export behaviors. Foreign firms with differentiation advantages focus on local market expansion instead of seeking opportunity in export markets

Impacts of Competitive Position on Export Propensity and Intensity: An Empirical Study of Manufacturing Firms in China

We examine the impacts of competitive industry position on firms’ export propensity and intensity in China. Drawing on the resource-based view and the structure-conduct-performance paradigm of firm behavior, we investigate whether firms with competitive industry position through cost leadership or differentiation strategy have different export behaviors. We use a longitudinal data of 213,662 manufacturing firms in China from 1998 to 2005 to show that firms that have developed competitive advantages in the domestic market are more likely to export and have higher levels of export intensity. Indigenous and foreign manufacturing firms exhibit different patterns of export behaviors. Foreign firms with differentiation advantages focus on local market expansion instead of seeking opportunity in export markets

Murine esBAF chromatin remodeling complex subunits BAF250a and Brg1 are necessary to maintain and reprogram pluripotency-specific replication timing of select replication domains

Background: Cellular differentiation and reprogramming are accompanied by changes in replication timing and 3D organization of large-scale (400 to 800 Kb) chromosomal domains (‘replication domains’), but few gene products have been identified whose disruption affects these properties. Results: Here we show that deletion of esBAF chromatin-remodeling complex components BAF250a and Brg1, but not BAF53a, disrupts replication timing at specific replication domains. Also, BAF250a-deficient fibroblasts reprogrammed to a pluripotency-like state failed to reprogram replication timing in many of these same domains. About half of the replication domains affected by Brg1 loss were also affected by BAF250a loss, but a much larger set of domains was affected by BAF250a loss. esBAF binding in the affected replication domains was dependent upon BAF250a but, most affected domains did not contain genes whose transcription was affected by loss of esBAF. Conclusions: Loss of specific esBAF complex subunits alters replication timing of select replication domains in pluripotent cells

Genetic effects on gene expression across human tissues

Characterization of the molecular function of the human genome and its variation across individuals is essential for identifying the cellular mechanisms that underlie human genetic traits and diseases. The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project aims to characterize variation in gene expression levels across individuals and diverse tissues of the human body, many of which are not easily accessible. Here we describe genetic effects on gene expression levels across 44 human tissues. We find that local genetic variation affects gene expression levels for the majority of genes, and we further identify inter-chromosomal genetic effects for 93 genes and 112 loci. On the basis of the identified genetic effects, we characterize patterns of tissue specificity, compare local and distal effects, and evaluate the functional properties of the genetic effects. We also demonstrate that multi-tissue, multi-individual data can be used to identify genes and pathways affected by human disease-associated variation, enabling a mechanistic interpretation of gene regulation and the genetic basis of diseas

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 population-representative studies with 222 million children, adolescents, and adults

Background Underweight and obesity are associated with adverse health outcomes throughout the life course. We estimated the individual and combined prevalence of underweight or thinness and obesity, and their changes, from 1990 to 2022 for adults and school-aged children and adolescents in 200 countries and territories. Methods We used data from 3663 population-based studies with 222 million participants that measured height and weight in representative samples of the general population. We used a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends in the prevalence of different BMI categories, separately for adults (age ≥20 years) and school-aged children and adolescents (age 5–19 years), from 1990 to 2022 for 200 countries and territories. For adults, we report the individual and combined prevalence of underweight (BMI <18·5 kg/m2) and obesity (BMI ≥30 kg/m2). For schoolaged children and adolescents, we report thinness (BMI <2 SD below the median of the WHO growth reference) and obesity (BMI >2 SD above the median). Findings From 1990 to 2022, the combined prevalence of underweight and obesity in adults decreased in 11 countries (6%) for women and 17 (9%) for men with a posterior probability of at least 0·80 that the observed changes were true decreases. The combined prevalence increased in 162 countries (81%) for women and 140 countries (70%) for men with a posterior probability of at least 0·80. In 2022, the combined prevalence of underweight and obesity was highest in island nations in the Caribbean and Polynesia and Micronesia, and countries in the Middle East and north Africa. Obesity prevalence was higher than underweight with posterior probability of at least 0·80 in 177 countries (89%) for women and 145 (73%) for men in 2022, whereas the converse was true in 16 countries (8%) for women, and 39 (20%) for men. From 1990 to 2022, the combined prevalence of thinness and obesity decreased among girls in five countries (3%) and among boys in 15 countries (8%) with a posterior probability of at least 0·80, and increased among girls in 140 countries (70%) and boys in 137 countries (69%) with a posterior probability of at least 0·80. The countries with highest combined prevalence of thinness and obesity in school-aged children and adolescents in 2022 were in Polynesia and Micronesia and the Caribbean for both sexes, and Chile and Qatar for boys. Combined prevalence was also high in some countries in south Asia, such as India and Pakistan, where thinness remained prevalent despite having declined. In 2022, obesity in school-aged children and adolescents was more prevalent than thinness with a posterior probability of at least 0·80 among girls in 133 countries (67%) and boys in 125 countries (63%), whereas the converse was true in 35 countries (18%) and 42 countries (21%), respectively. In almost all countries for both adults and school-aged children and adolescents, the increases in double burden were driven by increases in obesity, and decreases in double burden by declining underweight or thinness. Interpretation The combined burden of underweight and obesity has increased in most countries, driven by an increase in obesity, while underweight and thinness remain prevalent in south Asia and parts of Africa. A healthy nutrition transition that enhances access to nutritious foods is needed to address the remaining burden of underweight while curbing and reversing the increase in obesit

Genetic effects on gene expression across human tissues

Characterization of the molecular function of the human genome and its variation across individuals is essential for identifying the cellular mechanisms that underlie human genetic traits and diseases. The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project aims to characterize variation in gene expression levels across individuals and diverse tissues of the human body, many of which are not easily accessible. Here we describe genetic effects on gene expression levels across 44 human tissues. We find that local genetic variation affects gene expression levels for the majority of genes, and we further identify inter-chromosomal genetic effects for 93 genes and 112 loci. On the basis of the identified genetic effects, we characterize patterns of tissue specificity, compare local and distal effects, and evaluate the functional properties of the genetic effects. We also demonstrate that multi-tissue, multi-individual data can be used to identify genes and pathways affected by human disease-associated variation, enabling a mechanistic interpretation of gene regulation and the genetic basis of disease