Knowing that you matter, matters! The Interplay of Meaning, Monetary Incentives, and Worker Recognition

__Abstract__ We manipulate workers' perceived meaning of a job in a field experiment. Half of the workers are informed that their job is important, the other half are told that their job is of no relevance. Results show that workers exert more effort when meaning is high, corroborating previous findings on the relationship between meaning and work effort. We then compare the effect of meaning to the effect of monetary incentives and of worker recognition via symbolic awards. We also look at interaction effects. While meaning outperforms monetary incentives, the latter have a robust positive effect on performance that is independent of meaning. In contrast, meaning and recognition have largely similar effects but interact negatively. Our results are in line with image-reward theory (Benabou and Tirole 2006) and suggest that meaning and worker recognition operate via the same channel, namely image seeking

Optimal Portfolio Allocation under a Probabilistic Risk Constraint and the Incentives for Financial Innovation

We derive, in a complete markets environment, an investor's optimal portfolio allocation subject to both a budget constraint and a probabilistic risk constraint. We demonstrate that the set of feasible portfolios need not be connected or convex, while the number of local optima increases exponentially with the number of securities implying that finding the optimal portfolio is computationally complex (NP hard). The resulting optimal portfolio allocation may not be monotonic in the state-price density. A novel type of financial innovation, which splits states of nature, is shown to weakly enhance welfare, restore monotonicity in the state-price density, and may reduce complexity

Who will use pre-trip traveler information and how will they respond?: Insights from Zhongshan metropolitan area, China

The Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is able to make the transportation system safer, smoother, and more sustainable. The research and practice of pre-trip traveler information (PTI), an indispensable component of ITS, is very limited in China. With data collected from Zhongshan Metropolitan Area, China, this empirical study revealed the socio-demographics of potential PTI users and feasible travel responses in daily trips under PTI. Young-and-middle-aged, influential, and motorized males were the most potential PTI users, while unemployed young females the least. Among the motorized potential users who habitually traveled by car, the high-income sub-group was least likely to shift travel modes under PTI. The younger white-collar or blue-collar had a lower propensity to shift to bicycle, but the younger blue-collar workers were more likely to shift to walking. The low income preferred to shift to bus rather than elevated light rail due to the difference of travel cost. The findings will fa

Fermionic entanglement in itinerant systems

We study pairwise quantum entanglement in systems of fermions itinerant in a lattice from a second-quantized perspective. Entanglement in the grand-canonical ensemble is studied, both for energy eigenstates and for the thermal state. Relations between entanglement and superconducting correlations are discussed in a BCS-like model and for $\eta$-pair superconductivity.Comment: 8 Pages LaTeX, 5 Figures included. Presentation improved, results and references adde

Trace and antitrace maps for aperiodic sequences, their extensions and applications

We study aperiodic systems based on substitution rules by means of a transfer-matrix approach. In addition to the well-known trace map, we investigate the so-called `antitrace' map, which is the corresponding map for the difference of the off-diagonal elements of the 2x2 transfer matrix. The antitrace maps are obtained for various binary, ternary and quaternary aperiodic sequences, such as the Fibonacci, Thue-Morse, period-doubling, Rudin-Shapiro sequences, and certain generalizations. For arbitrary substitution rules, we show that not only trace maps, but also antitrace maps exist. The dimension of the our antitrace map is r(r+1)/2, where r denotes the number of basic letters in the aperiodic sequence. Analogous maps for specific matrix elements of the transfer matrix can also be constructed, but the maps for the off-diagonal elements and for the difference of the diagonal elements coincide with the antitrace map. Thus, from the trace and antitrace map, we can determine any physical quantity related to the global transfer matrix of the system. As examples, we employ these dynamical maps to compute the transmission coefficients for optical multilayers, harmonic chains, and electronic systems.Comment: 13 pages, REVTeX, now also includes applications to electronic systems, some references adde

Synthesis, Biological Evaluation and Mechanism Studies of Deoxytylophorinine and Its Derivatives as Potential Anticancer Agents

Previous studies indicated that (+)-13a-(S)-Deoxytylophorinine (1) showed profound anti-cancer activities both in vitro and in vivo and could penetrate the blood brain barrier to distribute well in brain tissues. CNS toxicity, one of the main factors to hinder the development of phenanthroindolizidines, was not obviously found in 1. Based on its fascinating activities, thirty-four derivatives were designed, synthesized; their cytotoxic activities in vitro were tested to discover more excellent anticancer agents. Considering the distinctive mechanism of 1 and interesting SAR of deoxytylophorinine and its derivatives, the specific impacts of these compounds on cellular progress as cell signaling transduction pathways and cell cycle were proceeded with seven representative compounds. 1 as well as three most potent compounds, 9, 32, 33, and three less active compounds, 12, 16, 35, were selected to proform this study to have a relatively deep view of cancer cell growth-inhibitory characteristics. It was found that the expressions of phospho-Akt, Akt, phospho-ERK, and ERK in A549 cells were greater down-regulated by the potent compounds than by the less active compounds in the Western blot analysis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report describing phenanthroindolizidines alkaloids display influence on the crucial cell signaling proteins, ERK. Moreover, the expressions of cyclin A, cyclin D1 and CDK2 proteins depressed more dramatically when the cells were treated with 1, 9, 32, and 33. Then, these four excellent compounds were subjected to flow cytometric analysis, and an increase in S-phase was observed in A549 cells. Since the molecular level assay results of Western blot for phospho-Akt, Akt, phospho-ERK, ERK, and cyclins were relevant to the potency of compounds in cellular level, we speculated that this series of compounds exhibit anticancer activities through blocking PI3K and MAPK signaling transduction pathways and interfering with the cell cycle progression

A Complete Sequence and Transcriptomic Analyses of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) Mitochondrial Genome

Based on next-generation sequencing data, we assembled the mitochondrial (mt) genome of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) into a circular molecule of 715,001 bp in length. The mt genome of P. dactylifera encodes 38 proteins, 30 tRNAs, and 3 ribosomal RNAs, which constitute a gene content of 6.5% (46,770 bp) over the full length. The rest, 93.5% of the genome sequence, is comprised of cp (chloroplast)-derived (10.3% with respect to the whole genome length) and non-coding sequences. In the non-coding regions, there are 0.33% tandem and 2.3% long repeats. Our transcriptomic data from eight tissues (root, seed, bud, fruit, green leaf, yellow leaf, female flower, and male flower) showed higher gene expression levels in male flower, root, bud, and female flower, as compared to four other tissues. We identified 120 potential SNPs among three date palm cultivars (Khalas, Fahal, and Sukry), and successfully found seven SNPs in the coding sequences. A phylogenetic analysis, based on 22 conserved genes of 15 representative plant mitochondria, showed that P. dactylifera positions at the root of all sequenced monocot mt genomes. In addition, consistent with previous discoveries, there are three co-transcribed gene clusters–18S-5S rRNA, rps3-rpl16 and nad3-rps12–in P. dactylifera, which are highly conserved among all known mitochondrial genomes of angiosperms

Functional identification of the prnABCD operon and its regulation in Serratia plymuthica

The antibiotic pyrrolnitrin (PRN) is a tryptophan-derived secondary metabolite that plays an important role in the biocontrol of plant diseases due to its broad-spectrum of antimicrobial activities. The PRN biosynthetic gene cluster remains to be characterised in Serratia plymuthica, though it is highly conserved in PRN-producing bacteria. To better understand PRN biosynthesis and its regulation in Serratia, the prnABCD operon from S. plymuthica G3 was cloned, sequenced and expressed in Escherichia coli DH5α. Furthermore, an engineered strain prnind which is a conditional mutant of G3 prnABCD under the control of the Ptac promoter was constructed. This mutant was able to overproduce PRN with isopropylthiogalactoside (IPTG) induction by overexpressing prnABCD, whilst behaving as a conditional mutant of G3 prnABCD in the absence of IPTG. These results confirmed that prnABCD is responsible for PRN biosynthesis in strain G3. Further experiments involving lux-/dsRed-based promoter fusions, combined with site-directed mutagenesis of the putative σS extended -10 region in the prnA promoter, and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis extended our previous knowledge about G3, revealing that quorum sensing (QS) regulates PRN biosynthesis through cross talk with RpoS, which may directly activated prnABCD transcription. These findings suggest that PRN in S. plymuthica G3 is produced in a tightly controlled manner, and has diverse functions, such as modulation of cell motility, in addition to antimicrobial activities. Meanwhile, the construction of inducible mutants could be a powerful tool to improve PRN production, beyond its potential use for the investigation of the biological function of PRN