Technology adoption and the investment climate : firm-level evidence for Eastern Europe and Central Asia

The international diffusion of technology presents an opportunity for developing economies distant from the world technological frontier to reduce their income gap relative to advanced economies. It is therefore crucial to understand why, when faced with similar technological alternatives different firms in different countries choose to adopt different vintages of capital. This paper examines technology adoption across firms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The findings show that access to complementary inputs - managerial capacity, skilled labor, finance, and good infrastructure - and to international knowledge - through foreign direct investment or exports - is an important correlate of technology adoption. The link between market incentives and technology adoption is more nuanced. Although consumer pressure results in technology adoption, competitor pressure does not, suggesting that only firms with rents are able to adopt technology given substantial resource constraints. Privatized firms exhibit better technology adoption outcomes but only when a clear private owner with a profit incentive is present. Better governance is associated with technology adoption only in the countries that joined the European Union in 2004. Future increases in technology adoption by firms in the region will require complementary reforms of the investment climate.E-Business,Technology Industry,ICT Policy and Strategies,Microfinance,

Unit root tests for panel data: a survey and an application

The importance of a priori check of the existence of unit roots in the panel data comes from the already known effect that the presence of unit roots in time series may cause a misinterpretation of estimated results. Adding the cross-section dimension to the time series dimension offers an advantage in testing for nonstationary and cointegration since cross-section increases the data set used in those tests, thus improving their power. However, the cross-section dimension also brings some new problems into question, namely the existence of cross-section dependency which can bias usual panel data unit root test results in small samples. This paper presents a survey of panel unit root tests, evidencing the most recent developments on the issue, including those that account for the presence of contemporaneous cross-correlation as well as for the presence of heterogeneous serial correlation. Parallel to the developments of panel unit root tests, great attention has also been given to cointegration tests. We briefly review the most widely referred cointegration tests. We apply the reviewed panel unit root tests on an EU social variable which represents the population weight over than 65 years of age. We consider data running from 1970 to 2001. The panel unit root test results reveal to be sensitive to the prior assumptions regarding contemporaneous cross-correlation and heterogeneous serial correlation in small samples. The usual battery of panel unit root tests appear not to be adequate when a panel is composed by a mix of a stationary and nonstationary time series

Microbiota-assisted phytoremediation of metal contaminated soils by sunflower

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Treatment of Polarized Cystic Fibrosis Airway Cells With HGF Prevents VX-661-Rescued F508del-CFTR Destabilization Caused by Prolonged Co-exposure to VX-770

Cystic fibrosis (CF), the most common inherited disease in Caucasians, is caused by mutations in CFTR, the most frequent of which is F508del. F508del causes ER retention and degradation of the mutant CFTR protein, but also defective channel gating and decreased half-life at the plasma membrane. Despite the recent successes with small molecule CFTR modulator drugs, the folding-corrector/gating-potentiator drug combinations approved for CF individuals carrying F508del-CFTR have sometimes produced severe side effects. Previously, we showed that a prolonged, 15-days treatment of polarized bronchial epithelial monolayers with the VX-809+VX-770 combination resulted in epithelial dedifferentiation effects that we found were caused specifically by VX-809. Moreover, prolonged VX-770 exposure also led to the destabilization of VX-809-rescued F508del-CFTR. Notably, co-treatment with the physiological factor HGF prevented VX-809-mediated epithelial differentiation and reverted the destabilizing effect of VX-770 on VX-809-rescued CFTR. Here, we show that prolonged treatment with VX-661, a second-generation corrector developed based on VX-809 structure, does not perturb epithelial integrity of polarized bronchial epithelial monolayers. Yet, its efficacy is still affected by co-exposure to VX-770, the potentiator present in all VX-661-containing combination therapies approved in the United States and Europe for treatment of F508del-CFTR carriers. Importantly, we found that co-treatment with HGF still ameliorated the impact of VX-770 in F508del-CFTR functional rescue by VX-661, without increasing cell proliferation (Ki-67) or altering the overall expression of epithelial markers (ZO-1, E-cadherin, CK8, CK18). Our findings highlight the importance of evaluating the cellular effects of prolonged exposure to CFTR modulators and suggest that the benefits of adding HGF to current combination therapies should be further investigated.This work was supported by the Grant PTDC/BIA-CEL/28408/2017 (to PJ and PM) and Center Grant UID/MULTI/04046/2019 to BioISI, both from the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Soil microbiota benefits from phytoremediation coupled to metal-resistant rhizobacteria

Phytoremediation is used for requalifying soils contaminated with heavy metals (HM). Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) is one of the most studied species for the remediation of HM-contaminated soils. To increase the bioavailability of nutrients and of metals in soils, metal-resistant plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), can be associated to phytoremediation strategies. Soil microbiota can benefit from this association, due to the reduced exposure to HMs toxic effect. In this study, next-generation sequencing (NGS) was applied for investigating shifts in soil microbial community after HMs remediation by sunflowers from a soil amended with Cupriavidus sp. strain 1C2. Sunflower was also grown in a non-contaminated soil (control). Actinobacteria were dominant while Proteobacteria was the second most abundant phylum in both soils. Acidobacteria and Nitrospirae were present in higher relative abundance in the control soil. Results have shown that phytoremediation associated to PGPR induced changes in the contaminated soil microbial community: Acidobacterium (Acidobacteria phylum) and Nitrospira (Nitrospirae phylum) bacterial genera increased their abundance at the end of plant growth. These changes did not occur in the control soil, which presented a more stable bacterial community throughout the experiment. This research increases our knowledge on the relationship between soil microbiota and phytoremediation strategies achievements.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Microbiota-assisted phytoremediation of metal contaminated soils by sunflower

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biomethane production from phytoremediation derived maize biomass via anaerobic digestion

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Provenance does matter: links between winter trophic segregation and the migratory origins of European robins

Amongst migratory species, it is common to find individuals from different populations or geographical origins sharing staging or wintering areas. Given their differing life histories, ecological theory would predict that the different groups of individuals should exhibit some level of niche segregation. This has rarely been investigated because of the difficulty in assigning migrating individuals to breeding areas. Here, we start by documenting a broad geographical gradient of hydrogen isotopes (δ2H) in robin Erithacus rubecula feathers across Europe. We then use δ2H, as well as wing-tip shape, as surrogates for broad migratory origin of birds wintering in Iberia, to investigate the ecological segregation of populations. Wintering robins of different sexes, ages and body sizes are known to segregate between habitats in Iberia. This has been attributed to the despotic exclusion of inferior competitors from the best patches by dominant individuals. We find no segregation between habitats in relation to δ2H in feathers, or to wing-tip shape, which suggests that no major asymmetries in competitive ability exist between migrant robins of different origins. Trophic level (inferred from nitrogen isotopes in blood) correlated both with δ2H in feathers and with wing-tip shape, showing that individuals from different geographic origins display a degree of ecological segregation in shared winter quarters. Isotopic mixing models indicate that wintering birds originating from more northerly populations consume more invertebrates. Our multi-scale study suggests that trophic-niche segregation may result from specializations (arising in the population-specific breeding areas) that are transported by the migrants into the shared wintering grounds

Probable Person-to-Person Transmission of Legionnaires’ Disease

Correspondence to the Editor.Legionnaires’ disease is an often severe form of pneumonia that is typically acquired by susceptible persons (e.g., elderly persons and smokers) through inhalation of aerosols that contain legionella species.1-4 A cluster of cases of this disease occurred in Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal, in 2014