Are the markets for factories and offices integrated? Evidence from Hong Kong?

Due to the relocation of manufacturing facilities from Hong Kong to Mainland China, it is widely believed that some vacant private factories have been used as offices in Hong Kong. Yet there is no direct and systematic evidence to support this speculation. In fact, according to MacGregor and Schwann (2003), industrial and commercial real estate shares some common features. Our research attempts to investigate empirically the price and volume relationship between industrial and commercial real estate, using both aggregate and disaggregate data from the industrial and commercial property markets in Hong Kong. The study was built on the observation that economic restructuring and geographical distance will affect the substitutability (and thus the correlation) of different types of property, and utilizes commonly used time series techniques for analysis. Policy implications are discussed.aggregation bias, geographical distance, industrial real estate, substitutability

Housing Price Dispersion: An Empirical Investigation

price dispersion, search models, macroeconomic factor, time aggregation

On the Stability of the Implicit Prices of Housing Attributes: A Dynamic Theory and Some Evidence

Given the dramatic fluctuations in aggregate housing prices, this paper attempts to examine whether the implicit prices of different housing attributes are “stable.” Theoretically, this paper provides perhaps the first dynamic, general equilibrium model in which housing attributes’ implicit prices fluctuate. Empirically, this paper models the time paths of different implicit prices as auto-regressive processes by employing a hedonic pricing model on a large set of housing transaction data over a relatively long period of time. An endogenous structural break test is then performed. Except for a few attributes, structural breaks are not detected. Directions for future research are discussed.hedonic pricing; structural break; evolution of valuation; housing attributes

Behavior of water-moderated reactors during rapid transients.

http://www.archive.org/details/behaviorofwaterm00bootU.S. Navy (U.S.N.) author

Factors Affecting Spatial Autocorrelation in Residential Property Prices

Within housing literature, the presence of spatial autocorrelation (S.A.) in housing prices is typically examined horizontally in a two-dimensional setting. However, in the context of apartment buildings, there is also a vertical component of S.A. for housing units located on different floor levels. This paper therefore explores the determinants of both horizontal and vertical S.A. within residential property prices. First, we posit that S.A. in housing prices is a consequence of the price discovery process of real estate, in which property traders acquire price information from recent market transactions (i.e., comparables) to value a subject property. Furthermore, we contend that the extent to which property traders rely on comparables to determine housing prices is governed by the liquidity and volatility conditions of the market, which in turn affects the magnitude of the S.A. By developing and testing several spatial autoregressive hedonic models using open market transaction data for the Hong Kong residential property market, we find that market liquidity tends to increase both vertical and horizontal S.A., whilst market volatility is more prone to increase vertical S.A. but depress horizontal S.A

SOAP3-dp: Fast, Accurate and Sensitive GPU-based Short Read Aligner

To tackle the exponentially increasing throughput of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), most of the existing short-read aligners can be configured to favor speed in trade of accuracy and sensitivity. SOAP3-dp, through leveraging the computational power of both CPU and GPU with optimized algorithms, delivers high speed and sensitivity simultaneously. Compared with widely adopted aligners including BWA, Bowtie2, SeqAlto, GEM and GPU-based aligners including BarraCUDA and CUSHAW, SOAP3-dp is two to tens of times faster, while maintaining the highest sensitivity and lowest false discovery rate (FDR) on Illumina reads with different lengths. Transcending its predecessor SOAP3, which does not allow gapped alignment, SOAP3-dp by default tolerates alignment similarity as low as 60 percent. Real data evaluation using human genome demonstrates SOAP3-dp's power to enable more authentic variants and longer Indels to be discovered. Fosmid sequencing shows a 9.1 percent FDR on newly discovered deletions. SOAP3-dp natively supports BAM file format and provides a scoring scheme same as BWA, which enables it to be integrated into existing analysis pipelines. SOAP3-dp has been deployed on Amazon-EC2, NIH-Biowulf and Tianhe-1A.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PLoS ONE, additional files available at "https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bhclhxpoiubh371/O5CO_CkXQE". Comments most welcom

SOAP3-dp: Fast, Accurate and Sensitive GPU-Based Short Read Aligner

To tackle the exponentially increasing throughput of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), most of the existing short-read aligners can be configured to favor speed in trade of accuracy and sensitivity. SOAP3-dp, through leveraging the computational power of both CPU and GPU with optimized algorithms, delivers high speed and sensitivity simultaneously. Compared with widely adopted aligners including BWA, Bowtie2, SeqAlto, CUSHAW2, GEM and GPU-based aligners BarraCUDA and CUSHAW, SOAP3-dp was found to be two to tens of times faster, while maintaining the highest sensitivity and lowest false discovery rate (FDR) on Illumina reads with different lengths. Transcending its predecessor SOAP3, which does not allow gapped alignment, SOAP3-dp by default tolerates alignment similarity as low as 60%. Real data evaluation using human genome demonstrates SOAP3-dp's power to enable more authentic variants and longer Indels to be discovered. Fosmid sequencing shows a 9.1% FDR on newly discovered deletions. SOAP3-dp natively supports BAM file format and provides the same scoring scheme as BWA, which enables it to be integrated into existing analysis pipelines. SOAP3-dp has been deployed on Amazon-EC2, NIH-Biowulf and Tianhe-1A

Sleep problems in children with autism spectrum disorder in Hong Kong: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a growing prevalence of sleep problems associated with significant behavioral problems and more severe autism clinical presentation. Little is known about the relationships between autism traits and sleep problems in Hong Kong. Therefore, this study aimed to examine whether children with autism have increased sleep problems than non-autistic children in Hong Kong. The secondary objective was to examine the factors associated with sleep problems in an autism clinical sample.MethodsThis cross-sectional study recruited 135 children with autism and 102 with the same age range of non-autistic children, aged between 6 and 12 years. Both groups were screened and compared on their sleep behaviors using the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ).ResultsChildren with autism had significantly more sleep problems than non-autistic children [t(226.73) = 6.20, p < 0.001]. Bed -sharing [beta = 0.25, t(165) = 2.75, p = 0.07] and maternal age at birth [beta = 0.15, t(165) = 2.05, p = 0.043] were significant factors associated with CSHQ score on the top of autism traits. Stepwise linear regression modeling identified that only separation anxiety disorder (beta = 4.83, t = 2.40, p = 0.019) best-predicted CSHQ.ConclusionIn summary, autistic children suffered from significantly more sleep problems and co-occurring separation anxiety disorder brings greater sleep problems as compared to non-autistic children. Clinicians should be more aware of sleep problems to provide more effective treatments to children with autism

The central role of natural killer cells in mediating acute myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination

BACKGROUND: Vaccine-related acute myocarditis is recognized as a rare and specific vaccine complication following mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccinations. The precise mechanisms remain unclear. We hypothesized that natural killer (NK) cells play a central role in its pathogenesis. METHODS: Samples from 60 adolescents with vaccine-related myocarditis were analyzed, including pro-inflammatory cytokines, cardiac troponin T, genotyping, and immunophenotyping of the corresponding activation subsets of NK cells, monocytes, and T cells. Results were compared with samples from 10 vaccinated individuals without myocarditis and 10 healthy controls. FINDINGS: Phenotypically, high levels of serum cytokines pivotal for NK cells, including interleukin-1β (IL-1β), interferon α2 (IFN-α2), IL-12, and IFN-γ, were observed in post-vaccination patients with myocarditis, who also had high percentage of CD57 NK cells in blood, which in turn correlated positively with elevated levels of cardiac troponin T. Abundance of the CD57 NK subset was particularly prominent in males and in those after the second dose of vaccination. Genotypically, killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) KIR2DL5B(-)/KIR2DS3(+)/KIR2DS5(-)/KIR2DS4del(+) was a risk haplotype, in addition to single-nucleotide polymorphisms related to the NK cell-specific expression quantitative trait loci DNAM-1 and FuT11, which also correlated with cardiac troponin T levels in post-vaccination patients with myocarditis. CONCLUSION: Collectively, these data suggest that NK cell activation by mRNA COVID-19 vaccine contributed to the pathogenesis of acute myocarditis in genetically and epidemiologically vulnerable subjects