Spatial Variability of the ‘Airbnb Effect’: A Spatially Explicit Analysis of Airbnb’s Impact on Housing Prices in Sydney

Over the last decade, the emergence and significant growth of home-sharing platforms, such as Airbnb, has coincided with rising housing unaffordability in many global cities. It is in this context that we look to empirically assess the impact of Airbnb on housing prices in Sydney—one of the least affordable cities in the world. Employing a hedonic property valuation model, our results indicate that Airbnb’s overall effect is positive. A 1% increase in Airbnb density is associated with approximately a 2% increase in property sales price. However, recognizing that Airbnb’s effect is geographically uneven and given the fragmented nature of Sydney’s housing market, we also employ a GWR to account for the spatial variation in Airbnb activity. The findings confirm that Airbnb’s influence on housing prices is varied across the city. Sydney’s northern beaches and parts of western Sydney experience a statistically significant value uplift attributable to Airbnb activity. However, traditional tourist locations focused around Sydney’s CBD and the eastern suburbs experience insignificant or negative property price impacts. The results highlight the need for policymakers to consider local Airbnb and housing market contexts when deciding the appropriate level and design of Airbnb regulation

Establishment of a viable cell detection system for microorganisms in wine based on ethidium monoazide and quantitative PCR

Fermentability and contamination level of wine can be assessed through the detection of viable fermentation-related and spoilage-related microorganisms. Ethidium monoazide in combination with quantitative PCR (EMA-qPCR) has been considered as a promising method to enumerate viable cells. Milling for 80 s by O 500-mu m glass beads is demonstrated to be optimal for DNA extraction from yeasts, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and acetic acid bacteria (AAB) in wine to be used as a template for PCR. EMA-qPCR results from experiments using DNA extracted by this method correlate well with the results of a plating assay (R-2 > 0.99), and a PCR efficiency between 96% and 105% was obtained. Moreover, for all of these microorganisms, EMA treatment of pure cultures at a low concentration (10 mu g/mL) for 20 min photoactivation resulted in effective differentiation between viable and non-viable cells and had no effect on viable cells. Due to sublethal injury to some cells, underestimation of cell counts was found in most of the wine samples tested using the EMA-qPCR method, and a 40-min incubation in recovery medium could completely offset this error. Our results suggest an optimal glass-bead DNA extraction method and EMA treatment suitable for all of the main microorganisms in wine. The EMA-qPCR method was successfully applied to quantify yeasts. Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae), LAB, non-Oenococcus oeni LAB (non-O. oeni LAB) and AAB in wine samples. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

A role for core planar polarity proteins in cell contact-mediated orientation of planar cell division across the mammalian embryonic skin

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2017. Supplementary information accompanies this paper at doi:10.1038/s41598-017-01971-2.The question of how cell division orientation is determined is fundamentally important for understanding tissue and organ shape in both healthy or disease conditions. Here we provide evidence for cell contact-dependent orientation of planar cell division in the mammalian embryonic skin. We propose a model where the core planar polarity proteins Celsr1 and Frizzled-6 (Fz6) communicate the long axis orientation of interphase basal cells to neighbouring basal mitoses so that they align their horizontal division plane along the same axis. The underlying mechanism requires a direct, cell surface, planar polarised cue, which we posit depends upon variant post-translational forms of Celsr1 protein coupled to Fz6. Our hypothesis has parallels with contact-mediated division orientation in early C. elegans embryos suggesting functional conservation between the adhesion-GPCRs Celsr1 and Latrophilin-1. We propose that linking planar cell division plane with interphase neighbour long axis geometry reinforces axial bias in skin spreading around the mouse embryo body.Peer reviewe

The Expression and Localization of N-Myc Downstream-Regulated Gene 1 in Human Trophoblasts

The protein N-Myc downstream-regulated gene 1 (NDRG1) is implicated in the regulation of cell proliferation, differentiation, and cellular stress response. NDRG1 is expressed in primary human trophoblasts, where it promotes cell viability and resistance to hypoxic injury. The mechanism of action of NDRG1 remains unknown. To gain further insight into the intracellular action of NDRG1, we analyzed the expression pattern and cellular localization of endogenous NDRG1 and transfected Myc-tagged NDRG1 in human trophoblasts exposed to diverse injuries. In standard conditions, NDRG1 was diffusely expressed in the cytoplasm at a low level. Hypoxia or the hypoxia mimetic cobalt chloride, but not serum deprivation, ultraviolet (UV) light, or ionizing radiation, induced the expression of NDRG1 in human trophoblasts and the redistribution of NDRG1 into the nucleus and cytoplasmic membranes associated with the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and microtubules. Mutation of the phosphopantetheine attachment site (PPAS) within NDRG1 abrogated this pattern of redistribution. Our results shed new light on the impact of cell injury on NDRG1 expression patterns, and suggest that the PPAS domain plays a key role in NDRG1's subcellular distribution. © 2013 Shi et al

A Novel Universal Primer-Multiplex-PCR Method with Sequencing Gel Electrophoresis Analysis

In this study, a novel universal primer-multiplex-PCR (UP-M-PCR) method adding a universal primer (UP) in the multiplex PCR reaction system was described. A universal adapter was designed in the 5′-end of each specific primer pairs which matched with the specific DNA sequences for each template and also used as the universal primer (UP). PCR products were analyzed on sequencing gel electrophoresis (SGE) which had the advantage of exhibiting extraordinary resolution. This method overcame the disadvantages rooted deeply in conventional multiplex PCR such as complex manipulation, lower sensitivity, self-inhibition and amplification disparity resulting from different primers, and it got a high specificity and had a low detection limit of 0.1 ng for single kind of crops when screening the presence of genetically modified (GM) crops in mixture samples. The novel developed multiplex PCR assay with sequencing gel electrophoresis analysis will be useful in many fields, such as verifying the GM status of a sample irrespective of the crop and GM trait and so on

Heading Down the Wrong Pathway: on the Influence of Correlation within Gene Sets

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Analysis of microarray experiments often involves testing for the overrepresentation of pre-defined sets of genes among lists of genes deemed individually significant. Most popular gene set testing methods assume the independence of genes within each set, an assumption that is seriously violated, as extensive correlation between genes is a well-documented phenomenon.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We conducted a meta-analysis of over 200 datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus in order to demonstrate the practical impact of strong gene correlation patterns that are highly consistent across experiments. We show that a common independence assumption-based gene set testing procedure produces very high false positive rates when applied to data sets for which treatment groups have been randomized, and that gene sets with high internal correlation are more likely to be declared significant. A reanalysis of the same datasets using an array resampling approach properly controls false positive rates, leading to more parsimonious and high-confidence gene set findings, which should facilitate pathway-based interpretation of the microarray data.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These findings call into question many of the gene set testing results in the literature and argue strongly for the adoption of resampling based gene set testing criteria in the peer reviewed biomedical literature.</p

Location, location, location: Beneficial effects of autologous fat transplantation

Visceral adiposity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disorders, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) and associated metabolic diseases. Sub-cutaneous fat is believed to be intrinsically different from visceral fat. To understand molecular mechanisms involved in metabolic advantages of fat transplantation, we studied a rat model of diet-induced adiposity. Adipokine genes (Adiponectin, Leptin, Resistin and Visfatin) were expressed at 10,000 to a million-fold lower in visceral fat depot as compared to peripheral (thigh/chest) fat depots. Interestingly, autologous transplantation of visceral fat to subcutaneous sites resulted in increased gene transcript abundance in the grafts by 3 weeks post-transplantation, indicating the impact of local (residence) factors influencing epigenetic memory. We show here that active transcriptional state of adipokine genes is linked with glucose mediated recruitment of enzymes that regulate histone methylation. Adipose depots have “residence memory” and autologous transplantation of visceral fat to sub-cutaneous sites offers metabolic advantage