Reits' Growth Options and Asset Pricing Dynamics across Time

Our paper makes two empirical contributions on REITs' asset pricing over three sequential and mutually exclusive time periods. The first yields the beta estimates of (i) assets, (ii) growth options and (iii) assets-in-place, embedded in the valuations of REITs. We develop a new approach to estimate the latter two betas and, to our knowledge, provide the first-ever REIT evidence on them. The second investigates the evolving roles, from a capital markets viewpoint, of the four pricing factors of the Carhart model on REITs' portfolio returns. In each investigation, we clean out, when needed, the unprecedented and overwhelming effects of GFC and the Eurozone bailout crisis. Our main results show that (i) the betas of growth options are larger than those of assets-in-place, raising a question mark about the 'income stock' description of REITs, (ii) the estimates of the equity beta for REITs are always positive and very highly significant, not consistent with the reports of the 'death of beta' from the mainstream finance literature, (iii) the capital markets' one-year momentum measure does not affect REITs' portfolio returns, and (iv) REITs exhibit a lot of progress in integration into the capital markets

Restoring Justice: The Moderating Role of AI Agent in Consumers’ Reactions to Service Recovery

Service failure is inevitable and service providers have a stake in minimizing the adverse consequences of service failure. As companies increasingly deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents to augment or substitute conventional human customer service agents, there are growing scholarly attempts to elucidate the role of AI agents in shaping consumers’ reactions to service recovery. Synthesizing extant literature on service failure and recovery with restorative justice, this study contextualizes restorative justice to service recovery and examine the interplay of recovery components with agent type (AI vs. human) on restorative justice. We then conducted a scenario-based online experiment to validate our hypothesized relationships. Analytical findings point to the positive effects of empathy and remorse on affective restorative justice, but these relationships are attenuated when they are conveyed by AI agents. Insights from this study hence extends our understanding of AI deployment in customer service and yields practical guidelines for AI agent developers

Graphene Nanoribbon Simulator of Vacancy Defects On Electronic Structure

Graphene Nanoribbon Simulator (GNRSIM) is developed using MATLAB Graphical User Interface Development Environment to study the electronics properties of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs). The main focus of this research is the simulation effects of single vacancy 1 in graphene nanoribbons lattices on electronic structure. The band structure and density of states are explored by using tight binding approximation where a Hamiltonian operator with nearest-neighbor interactions is introduced. The simulator has a wide range of input parameters where user can select armchair or zigzag GNR. The size of the lattices namely width and length can be varied. The location of the vacancy defect can be pinpoint by providing the row and column of the missing atom. The limitation of GNRSIM at present is that it can only accept a single atom vacancy. GNRSIM is able to be executed as a standalone application software in understanding the fundamental properties of semiconductor material and device engineering through ab-initio calculations

Graphene nanoribbon simulator of vacancy defects on electronic structure

Graphene Nanoribbon Simulator (GNRSIM) is developed using MATLAB Graphical User Interface Development Environment to study the electronics properties of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs). The main focus of this research is the simulation effects of single vacancy 1 in graphene nanoribbons lattices on electronic structure. The band structure and density of states are explored by using tight binding approximation where a Hamiltonian operator with nearest-neighbor interactions is introduced. The simulator has a wide range of input parameters where user can select armchair or zigzag GNR. The size of the lattices namely width and length can be varied. The location of the vacancy defect can be pinpoint by providing the row and column of the missing atom. The limitation of GNRSIM at present is that it can only accept a single atom vacancy. GNRSIM is able to be executed as a standalone application software in understanding the fundamental properties of semiconductor material and device engineering through ab-initio calculations

Influence of single vacancy defect at varying length on electronic properties of zigzag graphene nanoribbons

Graphene, identified in 2004, is now an established two-dimensional (2D) material due to its outstanding physical and electronic characteristics namely its superior electrical conductivity. Graphene is a zero-gap material that has linear dispersion with electron-hole symmetry. As pristine sheet, it cannot be utilized in digital logic application without the induction of a band gap inside the band structure. In our work, the modeling and simulation of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) are carried out to determine its electronics properties that are benchmarked with other published simulation data. A 4-Zigzag GNRs (4-ZGNRs) under different length are utilized. A single vacancy defects is introduced at various positions inside the atomic structure. The theoretical model is implemented based on single-neighbour tight binding technique coupled with a non-equilibrium Green’s function formalism. The single vacancy defects are represented by the elimination of tight binding energies in the Hamiltonian matrix. Subsequently, these matrix elements are utilized to compute dispersion relation and density of states (DOS) through Green’s function. It is found that single vacancy defects at different positions in 4-ZGNRs’ atomic structure under varying length has no significant impacts on the sub-band structure but these vacancies impact the DOS that are computed throught Green’s function approach

Engineering the First Chimeric Antibody in Targeting Intracellular PRL-3 Oncoprotein for Cancer Therapy in Mice

Antibodies are considered as ‘magic bullets’ because of their high specificity. It is believed that antibodies are too large to routinely enter the cytosol, thus antibody therapeutic approach has been limited to extracellular or secreted proteins expressed by cancer cells. However, many oncogenic proteins are localized within the cell. To explore the possibility of antibody therapies against intracellular targets, we generated a chimeric antibody targeting the intracellular PRL-3 oncoprotein to assess its antitumor activities in mice. Remarkably, we observed that the PRL-3 chimeric antibody could efficiently and specifically reduce the formation of PRL-3 expressing metastatic tumors. We further found that natural killer (NK) cells were important in mediating the therapeutic effect, which was only observed in a nude mouse model (T-cell deficient), but not in a Severe Combined Immunodeficiency’ (scid) mouse model (B- and T-cell deficient), indicating the anticancer effect also depends on host B-cell activity. Our study involving 377 nude and scid mice suggests that antibodies targeting intracellular proteins can be developed to treat cancer

ACHIKO-M Database for high myopia analysis and its evaluation

Myopia is the leading public health concern with high prevalence in developed countries. In this paper, we present the ACHIKO-M fundus image database with both myopic and emmetropic cases for high myopia study. The database contains 705 myopic subjects and 151 normal subjects with both left eye and right eye images for each subject. In addition, various clinical data is also available, allowing correlation study of different risk factors. We evaluated two state-of-the-art automated myopia detection algorithms on this database to show how it can be used. Both methods achieve more than 90% accuracy for myopia diagnosis. We will also discuss how ACHIKO-M can be a good database for both scientific and clinical research of myopia

PRL-3, a Metastasis Associated Tyrosine Phosphatase, Is Involved in FLT3-ITD Signaling and Implicated in Anti-AML Therapy

Combination with other small molecule drugs represents a promising strategy to improve therapeutic efficacy of FLT3 inhibitors in the clinic. We demonstrated that combining ABT-869, a FLT3 inhibitor, with SAHA, a HDAC inhibitor, led to synergistic killing of the AML cells with FLT3 mutations and suppression of colony formation. We identified a core gene signature that is uniquely induced by the combination treatment in 2 different leukemia cell lines. Among these, we showed that downregulation of PTP4A3 (PRL-3) played a role in this synergism. PRL-3 is downstream of FLT3 signaling and ectopic expression of PRL-3 conferred therapeutic resistance through upregulation of STAT (signal transducers and activators of transcription) pathway activity and anti-apoptotic Mcl-1 protein. PRL-3 interacts with HDAC4 and SAHA downregulates PRL-3 via a proteasome dependent pathway. In addition, PRL-3 protein was identified in 47% of AML cases, but was absent in myeloid cells in normal bone marrows. Our results suggest such combination therapies may significantly improve the therapeutic efficacy of FLT3 inhibitors. PRL-3 plays a potential pathological role in AML and it might be a useful therapeutic target in AML, and warrant clinical investigation

VHZ is a novel centrosomal phosphatase associated with cell growth and human primary cancers

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>VHZ is a VH1-like (member Z) dual specific protein phosphatase encoded by DUSP23 gene. Some of the dual specific protein phosphatases (DSPs) play an important role in cell cycle control and have shown to be associated with carcinogenesis. Here, the expression of VHZ associated with cell growth and human cancers was investigated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We generated a mouse monoclonal antibody (mAb clone#209) and rabbit polyclonal antibodies (rAb) against VHZ. We performed cell proliferation assay to learn how VHZ is associated with cell cycle by retroviral transduction to express VHZ, VHZ(C95S), and control vector in MCF-7 cells. Overexpression of VHZ [but not VHZ(C95S)] in MCF-7 cells promoted cell proliferation compared to control cells. shRNA-mediated knockdown of VHZ in MCF-7 cells showed that reduction of VHZ resulted in increased G1 but decreased S phase cell populations. Using indirect immunofluorescence, we showed that both exogenous and endogenous VHZ protein was localized at the centrosome in addition to its cytoplasmic distribution. Furthermore, using immunohistochemistry, we revealed that VHZ protein was overexpressed either in enlarged centrosomes (VHZ-centrosomal-stain) of some invasive ductal carcinomas (IDC) Stage I (8/65 cases) or in entire cytoplasm (VHZ-cytosol-stain) of invasive epithelia of some IDC Stage II/III (11/47 cases) of breast cancers examined. More importantly, upregulation of VHZ protein is also associated with numerous types of human cancer, in particular breast cancer. VHZ mAb may be useful as a reagent in clinical diagnosis for assessing VHZ positive tumors.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We generated a VHZ-specific mAb to reveal that VHZ has a novel subcellular localization, namely the centrosome. VHZ is able to facilitate G1/S cell cycle transition in a PTP activity-dependent manner. The upregulation of its protein levels in primary human cancers supports the clinical relevance of the protein in cancers.</p

High efficiency synthesis of HKUST-1 under mild conditions with high BET surface area and CO2 uptake capacity

This study focuses on the development of a hydrothermal method for the rapid synthesis of good quality copper benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxylate (referred to as HKUST-1) with high yield under mild preparation conditions to address the issues associated with reported methods. Different synthesis conditions and activation methods were studied to understand their influence on the properties of HKUST-1. It was found that mixing the precursors at 50 °C for 3 h followed by activation via methanol refluxing led to the formation of a product with the highest BET specific surface area of 1615 m2/g and a high yield of 84.1%. The XRD and SEM data illustrated that the product was highly crystalline. The sample was also tested on its capacity in CO2 adsorption. The results showed strong correlation between surface area of the sample and its CO2 uptake at 1 bar and 27 °C. The HKUST-1 prepared in this study demonstrated a high CO2 uptake capacity of 4.2 mmol/g. It is therefore concluded that this novel and efficient method can be used in the rapid preparation of HKUST-1 with high surface area and CO2 uptake capacity