Price Adjustment and Liquidity in a Residential Real Estate Market with an Accelerated Information Cascade

We examine the effect of an unannounced information event, Hurricane Katrina, on the liquidity of the residential real estate market in an area proximately located to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Using 2SLS and Weibull techniques applied to a unique MLS data set, we test changes in liquidity in a submarkets framework. Results suggest Katrina created submarket effects with respect to the listing and sales periods of our sample and market liquidity was directly influenced by this event. We suggest that this effect was tied to information flow as owners of heavily damaged properties sought new housing in a nearby area.

Difficult to Show Properties and Utility Maximizing Brokers

This article is the winner of the Real Estate and the Internet manuscript prize (sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers) presented at the American Real Estate Society Annual Meeting. Brokers have long believed that difficult to show properties sell at lower prices and take longer to sell. Where difficult to show properties are defined as those properties that present extraordinary difficulties for a broker in arranging or showing the listing to a particular buyer. Buyers’ recent access to online real estate applications may make the cost of avoiding these properties prohibitive to brokers. Employing a hedonic pricing model and duration modeling techniques, this study finds that property price and marketing time are not significantly affected for these properties. The results suggest that brokers possess limited market power.

Students use of laptops in large lecture classes: distraction, partial attention or productive use

http://editlib.org/p/34929ED-Media. World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications. Proceedings, 2010, v. 2010 n. 1, p. 2136-2141An increasing number of students are bringing personal laptops to their classes and are using laptops during lectures. This increasing use of personal mobile devices has been described as a shift from e-learning (electronic learning) to m-learning (mobile learning). However, a large debate on the appropriateness of the use of laptops in class has emerged. Many teachers describe that students use laptops for surfing the net, emailing, downloading software and using chat forums during class rather than paying attention to the lecture. This paper reports on the use of laptops in a large lecture class of 650+ students and describes a pilot project that introduced an innovative system that was designed to both focus the attention of students during the class and engage them with the course material outside of class. Educational implications and next steps will be discussed.postprin

Compact steep-spectrum sources from the S4 sample

We present the results of 5-GHz observations with the VLA A-array of a sample of candidate Compact Steep Spectrum sources (CSSs) selected from the S4 survey. We also estimate the symmetry parameters of high-luminosity CSSs selected from different samples of radio sources, and compare these with the larger sources of similar luminosity to understand their evolution and the consistency of the CSSs with the unified scheme for radio galaxies and quasars. The majority of CSSs are likely to be young sources advancing outwards through a dense asymmetric environment. The radio properties of CSSs are found to be consistent with the unified scheme, in which the axes of the quasars are observed close to the line of sight, while radio galaxies are observed close to the plane of the sky.Comment: accepted for publication in mnras; 8 pages, figure 1 with 21 images, and two additional figures; 2 table

Managing Unsolicited Ideas for R&D

Existing academic and popular literature suggests that unsolicited ideas, the non-contractual and voluntary submission of innovation-related information from external sources to the firm, offer the promise of a bountiful and low-cost tool to sustain and extend firms' R&D efforts. Yet, in practice, many organizations find it difficult to deal with unsolicited ideas because of high quantity, low quality, and the need to transfer IP ownership. This article identifies a range of practices that allow organizations to meet these challenges and therefore realize some of the potential of unsolicited ideas for R&D

The elixir (or burden) of youth? Exploring differences in innovation between start-ups and established firms

Despite the widely acknowledged role of start-ups in economic development, little is known about their innovative activities compared with those of established firms. Drawing on a sample of 12,209 UK firms, we differentiate between services and manufacturing firms and, using a matching estimator approach, demonstrate that start-ups differ significantly from established firms in their innovation activities. We find that in services, being a start-up increases the likelihood of product innovations. However, in manufacturing, we find no significant differences in the likelihood of product innovation between start-ups and established firms. When examining the returns to innovation, we find that start-ups have a significant advantage both in services and in manufacturing. We explore the implications of these results for theory and policy

Coping with Open Innovation: Responding to the Challenges of External Engagement in R&D

Open innovation often requires wholesale changes to the nature of R&D. However, academic research and managerial practice have paid little attention to the challenges that individuals face in the daily pursuit of open innovation. As a result, there is little understanding of how individuals cope with open innovation, and which organizational practices can support them in this role. Drawing on the experiences of R&D professionals, this article identifies four specific challenges and coping strategies of individuals engaged in open innovation. It proposes a range of open innovation practices that organizations can implement to better equip their staff to undertake effective external engagement

Natriuretic peptide receptors regulate cytoprotective effects in a human ex vivo 3D/bioreactor model

© 2013 Peake et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited