Would the reputation and behaviour of the Chinese stock exchange be a disincentive to investors considering a Chinese REIT?

China has drawn the world’s attention with the emergence, rapid growth and increasing maturity of its real estate market in the past twenty years. Currently the world’s third largest economy, China was the second largest Asian country for commercial property transaction capital flows in 2006 (JLL, 2007). International investors have recently shown considerable interest regarding property investment in China, via both direct and indirect property and changes to the rules governing internal funds are likely to initiate high levels of effective demand from domestic institutions too. China is yet to develop a Real Estate Investment trust (REIT) market; despite this investment demand encouragement for development of pilot REITs by the PRC government has waxed and waned with political imperatives to manage market and economic volatility. Chinese REITs would theoretically provide the opportunity for investors to access Chinese “property” returns with liquidity and flexibility and might further play a significant role in stabilising the Chinese capital market in the medium and long term. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the reputation and behaviour of the Chinese stock exchanges is a disincentive to investors considering a Chinese REIT. This is addressed firstly by assessing Chinese stock market volatility compared to that of the Hong Kong and Singapore stock exchanges. Secondly, a survey was used to explore Chinese domestic investors’ attitudes to investment in Chinese property REITs and their preferences amongst the three main Asian stock exchanges where Chinese REITs might potentially be available

The Fisher-KPP equation over simple graphs: Varied persistence states in river networks

In this article, we study the growth and spread of a new species in a river network with two or three branches via the Fisher-KPP advection-diffusion equation over some simple graphs with every edge a half infinite line. We obtain a rather complete description of the long-time dynamical behavior for every case under consideration, which can be loosely described by a trichotomy (see Remark 1.7), including two different kinds of persistence states as parameters vary. The phenomenon of "persistence below carrying capacity" revealed here appears new, which does not occur in related models of the existing literature where the river network is represented by graphs with finite-lengthed edges, or the river network is simplified to a single infinite line

Drivers Of Knowledge Contribution Quality And Quantity In Online Question And Answering Communities

A large portion of previous research on knowledge sharing in virtual community focuses on organization-sponsored professional virtual communities (PVC) while nowadays numerous nonwork- related virtual communities are gaining popularity. This study investigates the phenomenon of knowledge sharing in one popular type of non-work-related virtual community, online question and answering community. Anchoring on the self-determination theory, this study identifies three types of motivations to share knowledge in the community. Particularly, rewards in reputation system, which we further divide into rewards for quantity and for quality, are classified as extrinsic motivation; learning is classified as internalized extrinsic motivation and enjoy helping is classified as intrinsic motivation. Moreover, while previous studies tend to hold a monolithic view of knowledge contribution, this study regards quantity and quality as two important parts of knowledge contribution and argues there are different underlying mechanisms leading to them. Therefore we investigate the effects of the three motivations on quantity and quality separately. An online survey with 367 participants was conducted in a leading Chinese online question and answering community to test the research model. Results show that the motivational factors do have different effects on quality and quantity of knowledge contribution. While rewards in reputation systems for quantity can effectively enhance knowledge contribution quantity, rewards for quality do not lead to high quality knowledge contribution. Learning is revealed as a crucial motivational factor in this context as it is positively related with both aspects of knowledge contribution. Finally, enjoy helping is weakly related with knowledge contribution quality and strongly associated with knowledge contribution quantity. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Performance Measures to Assess Resiliency and Efficiency of Transit Systems

Transit agencies are interested in assessing the short-, mid-, and long-term performance of infrastructure with the objective of enhancing resiliency and efficiency. This report addresses three distinct aspects of New Jersey’s Transit System: 1) resiliency of bridge infrastructure, 2) resiliency of public transit systems, and 3) efficiency of transit systems with an emphasis on paratransit service. This project proposed a conceptual framework to assess the performance and resiliency for bridge structures in a transit network before and after disasters utilizing structural health monitoring (SHM), finite element (FE) modeling and remote sensing using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). The public transit systems in NY/NJ were analyzed based on their vulnerability, resiliency, and efficiency in recovery following a major natural disaster

Knowledge Contribution in Online Question and Answering Communities: Effects of Groups Membership

Online question and answering community is a popular type of online community for people to seek and share knowledge. After years of development, a recent trend of these communities is to leverage group wisdom by implementing group feature, which allows users to form self-organizing groups and contribute knowledge to the community as group members. This new pattern of user organization poses challenge to extant knowledge sharing literature which so far hasn’t considered the effect of group membership on individual knowledge contribution behavior. Drawing on social identity theory, this study proposes that group membership can both directly enhance individual users’ knowledge contribution as well as moderate the relationship between the behavioral determinants--MOA (motivation, opportunity and ability) factors and knowledge contribution. A field survey with 367 participants in a leading online question and answering community with group feature was conducted to test the research model. Results largely provide support for the model

Baicalein inhibits cell development in papillary thyroid cancer by regulating miR-206/RAP1B pathway

Purpose: To investigate the therapeutic effect of baicalein on papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) cells in vitro and its underlying molecular mechanism.Methods: The human PTC cell line TPC-1 was divided into five groups and treated with distilled water or baicalein at 10, 20, 50, or 100 μM. Next, miR-206, miR-206 inhibitor, the respective negative controls of miR-206 and miR-206 inhibitor, RAP1B small interfering RNA (siRNA), and control vector siRNA were synthesized and transfected into TPC-1 cells. Cell viability, migration, and invasion were measured using the 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2-H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) and Transwell assays. miR-206 expression and Ras-related protein (RAP1B) levels were assessed by quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and western blotting, respectively.Results: Baicalein inhibited TPC-1 cell viability, migration and invasion, upregulated miR-206 expression, and reduced the RAP1B level in a concentration-dependent manner (p < 0.01). miR-206 negatively regulated RAP1B expression and increased the baicalein-induced reduction of RAP1B expression. Moreover, RAP1B overexpression relieved the suppression of cell viability, migration, and invasion caused by baicalein (p < 0.01).Conclusion: Baicalein suppresses cell growth in PTC cells by regulating the miR-206/RAP1B pathway, providing a new therapeutic strategy for PTC treatment. Keywords: Baicalein, Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC), miR-206, RAP1B, Cell viability, Cell invasio

Strain rate dependent mechanical properties in single crystal nickel nanowires

We measure the strain rate dependence of 0.2% offset yield stress in single-crystal nickel nanowires with diameters ranging from 80 to 300 nm. In situ tensile experiments with strain rates from 10 4 s 1 to 10 2 s 1 were conducted, and the small activation volume ( 10b3, where b is the Burgers vector length) and high strain-rate sensitivity ( 0.1) were obtained. These results agreed with atomistic simulations. Our work provides insights into the strength-limiting and rate-controlling mechanism of plasticity at the nanoscale