General calculation of 4f−5d4f-5d transition rates for rare-earth ions using many-body perturbation theory

The $4f-5d$ transition rates for rare-earth ions in crystals can be calculated with an effective transition operator acting between model $4f^N$ and $4f^{N-1}5d$ states calculated with effective Hamiltonian, such as semi-empirical crystal Hamiltonian. The difference of the effective transition operator from the original transition operator is the corrections due to mixing in transition initial and final states of excited configurations from both the center ion and the ligand ions. These corrections are calculated using many-body perturbation theory. For free ions, there are important one-body and two-body corrections. The one-body correction is proportional to the original electric dipole operator with magnitude of approximately 40% of the uncorrected electric dipole moment. Its effect is equivalent to scaling down the radial integral \ME {5d} r {4f}, to about 60% of the uncorrected HF value. The two-body correction has magnitude of approximately 25% relative to the uncorrected electric dipole moment. For ions in crystals, there is an additional one-body correction due to ligand polarization, whose magnitude is shown to be about 10% of the uncorrected electric dipole moment.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

3D model of amphioxus steroid receptor complexed with estradiol

The origins of signaling by vertebrate steroids are not fully understood. An important advance was the report that an estrogen-binding steroid receptor [SR] is present in amphioxus, a basal chordate with a similar body plan as vertebrates. To investigate the evolution of estrogen binding to steroid receptors, we constructed a 3D model of amphioxus SR complexed with estradiol. This 3D model indicates that although the SR is activated by estradiol, some interactions between estradiol and human ER[alpha] are not conserved in the SR, which can explain the low affinity of estradiol for the SR. These differences between the SR and ER[alpha] in the steroid-binding domain are sufficient to suggest that another steroid is the physiological regulator of the SR. The 3D model predicts that mutation of Glu-346 to Gln will increase the affinity of testosterone for amphioxus SR and elucidate the evolution of steroid binding to nuclear receptors

Presence of arthralgia exacerbates decreased quality of life in hidradenitis suppurativa patients

Hidradenitis suppurativa is characterized by chronic follicular occlusion that presents with recurrent nodules, inflamed abscesses, and scarring. Research has shown that these patients have a decreased quality of life. In addition to its psychosocial effects, hidradenitis suppurativa has recently been associated with joint pathology. In this study, we distributed a survey consisting of the Short Form 12 Health Survey, used for assessing health outcomes, along with additional questions about joint pain to an online hidradenitis suppurativa support group in order to understand the effect of comorbid arthralgia on quality of life in this disease. The respondents in this study had significantly reduced physical health composite scores-12 (PCS-12), (35.8 versus 50, P<0.001) and mental health composite scores-12 (MCS-12), (33.7 versus 50, P<0.001) scores compared to the general population. Additionally, patients reporting severe arthralgia had significantly lower PCS-12 (32.3 versus 36.5; P<0.05) and MCS-12 (33.3 versus 40.5; P<0.001) scores compared to those with mild arthralgia. Despite the effect of comorbid arthralgia on quality of life, only 11% reported having been asked about joint pain by their dermatologist. Routine screening questions concerning associated arthralgia and diminished quality of life may be helpful during clinician assessment and treatment of hidradenitis suppurativa patients

What do Experts Know About Ranking Journal Quality? A Comparison with ISI Research Impact in Finance

Experts possess knowledge and information that are not publicly available. The paper is concerned with the ranking of academic journal quality and research impact using a survey of experts from a national project on ranking academic finance journals. A comparison is made with publicly available bibliometric data, namely the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (hereafter ISI) for the Business - Finance category. The paper analyses the leading international journals in Finance using expert scores and quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), and highlights the similarities and differences in the expert scores and alternative RAMs, where the RAMs are based on alternative transformations of citations taken from the ISI database. Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to answer the perennial questions as to When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited (see Chang et al. (2011a, b, c)). The RAMs include the most widely used RAM, namely the classic 2-year impact factor including journal self citations (2YIF), 2-year impact factor excluding journal self citations (2YIF*), 5-year impact factor including journal self citations (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, PIBETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors), 2-year Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (2Y-STAR), Historical Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (H-STAR), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), and Cited Article Influence (CAI). As data are not available for 5YIF, Article Influence and CAI for 13 of the leading 34 journals considered, 10 RAMs are analysed for 21 highly-cited journals in Finance. Harmonic mean rankings of the 10 RAMs for the 34 highly-cited journals are also presented. It is shown that emphasizing the 2-year impact factor of a journal, which partly answers the question as to When published papers are cited, to the exclusion of other informative RAMs, which answer Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited, can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal impact and influence relative to the Harmonic Mean rankings. A simple regression model is used to predict expert scores on the basis of RAMs that capture journal impact, journal policy, the number of high quality papers, and quantitative information about a journal.Expert scores; Journal quality; Research assessment measures; Impact factor; IFI; C3PO; PI-BETA; STAR; Eigenfactor; Article Influence; h-index

How Should Journal Quality be Ranked? An Application to Agricultural, Energy, Environmental and Resource Economics

The Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (hereafter ISI) category of Economics has one of the largest numbers of journals, at 304, of any ISI discipline, and hence has wide coverage. The paper analyses the leading international journals in the Economics sub-disciplines of Energy, Environmental and Resource Economics using quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), and highlights the similarities and differences in alternative RAMs. The RAMs are based on alternative transformations of citations taken from the ISI database. Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to answer the perennial questions as to When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited (see Chang et al. (2011a, b, c)). The RAMs include the most widely used RAM, namely the classic 2-year impact factor including journal self citations (2YIF), 2-year impact factor excluding journal self citations (2YIF*), 5-year impact factor including journal self citations (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors), 2-year Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (2Y-STAR), Historical Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (H-STAR), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), and Cited Article Influence (CAI). As data are not available for 5YIF, Article Influence and CAI for one of the 20 journals considered, 13 RAMs are analysed for 19 highly-cited journals in Energy, Environmental and Resource Economics in the ISI category of Economics. Harmonic mean rankings of the 13 RAMs for the 19 highly-cited journals are also presented. It is shown that emphasizing the 2-year impact factor of a journal, which partly answers the question as to When published papers are cited, to the exclusion of other informative RAMs, which answer Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited, can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal impact and influence relative to the Harmonic Mean rankings.Research assessment measures; Impact factor; IFI; C3PO; PI-BETA; STAR; Eigenfactor; Article Influence; h-index

Daily Tourist Arrivals, Exchange Rates and Volatility for Korea and Taiwan

Both domestic and international tourism are a major source of service export receipts for many countries worldwide, and is also increasingly important in Taiwan. One of the three leading tourism source countries for Taiwan is the Republic of Korea, which is a source of short haul tourism. Daily data from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 2008 are used to model the Korean Won / New Taiwan $exchange rate and tourist arrivals from Korea to Taiwan, as well as their associated volatility. The sample period includes the Asian economic and financial crises in 1997, and a significant part of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Inclusion of the exchange rate allows approximate daily price effects on Korean tourism arrivals to Taiwan to be captured. The Heterogeneous Autoregressive (HAR) model is used to capture long memory properties in exchange rates and Korean tourist arrivals, to test whether alternative estimates of conditional volatility are sensitive to the long memory in the conditional mean, and to examine asymmetry and leverage in volatility. The empirical results show that the conditional volatility estimates are not sensitive to the long memory nature of the conditional mean specifications. The QMLE for the GARCH(1,1), GJR(1,1) and EGARCH(1,1) models for Korean tourist arrivals to Taiwan and the Korean Won / New Taiwan$ exchange rate are statistically adequate and have sensible interpretations. Asymmetry (though not leverage) is found for several alternative HAR models.

Citations and Impact of ISI Tourism and Hospitality Journals

The paper analyses the leading international journals in Tourism and Hospitality Research using quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), highlights the similarities and differences in alternative RAMs, shows that several RAMs capture similar performance characteristics of highly cited journals, and shows that some other RAMs have low correlations with each other, and hence add significant informational value. Several RAMs are discussed for the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science database (hereafter ISI). Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to answer the questions as to When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited. The RAMs include the most widely used RAM, namely the classic 2-year impact factor including journal self citations (2YIF), 2-year impact factor excluding journal self citations (2YIF*), 5-year impact factor including journal self citations (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors), 2-year Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (2Y-STAR), Historical Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (H-STAR), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), and Cited Article Influence (CAI). As data are not available for 5YIF, Article Influence and CAI for 11 of the 14 journals considered, 10 RAMs are analysed for 14 highly-cited journals in Tourism and Hospitality in the ISI category of Hospitality, Leisure, Sports & Tourism. Harmonic mean rankings of the 10 RAMs for the 14 highly-cited journals are also presented. It is shown that emphasizing the 2-year impact factor of a journal, which partly answers the question as to When published papers are cited, to the exclusion of other informative RAMs, which answer Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited, can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal impact.Research assessment measures, Impact factor, IFI, C3PO, PI-BETA, STAR, Eigenfactor, Article Influence, h-index.

"Aggregation, Heterogeneous Autoregression and Volatility of Daily International Tourist Arrivals and Exchange Rates"

Tourism is a major source of service receipts for many countries, including Taiwan. The two leading tourism countries for Taiwan, comprising a high proportion of world tourist arrivals to Taiwan, are Japan and USA, which are sources of short and long haul tourism, respectively. As it is well known that a strong domestic currency can have adverse effects on international tourist arrivals, daily data from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 2008 are used to model the world price and US$/ New Taiwan$ and Yen/ New Taiwan $exchange rates, and tourist arrivals from the world, USA and Japan to Taiwan, as well as their associated volatility. The sample period includes the Asian economic and financial crises in 1997, and part of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Inclusion of the exchange rate allows approximate daily price effects on world, US and Japanese tourist arrivals to Taiwan to be captured. The Heterogeneous Autoregressive (HAR) model does not reproduce the theoretical hyperbolic decay rates associated with fractionally integrated (or long memory) time series models, but it can nevertheless approximate quite accurately and parsimoniously the slowly decaying correlations associated with such models. The HAR model is used to approximate long memory properties in daily exchange rates and international tourist arrivals, to test whether alternative short and long run estimates of conditional volatility are sensitive to the approximate long memory in the conditional mean, to examine asymmetry and leverage in volatility, and to examine the effects of temporal and spatial aggregation. The empirical results show that the conditional volatility estimates are not sensitive to the approximate long memory nature of the conditional mean specifications. The QMLE for the GARCH(1,1), GJR(1,1) and EGARCH(1,1) models for world, US and Japanese tourist arrivals to Taiwan, and the world price and US$ / New Taiwan $and Yen/ New Taiwan$ exchange rates, are statistically adequate and have sensible interpretations. Asymmetry (though not leverage) is found for several alternative HAR models for the world, US and Japanese tourist arrivals to Taiwan. For policy purposes, these empirical results suggest that an arbitrary choice of data frequency or spatial aggregation will not lead to robust findings as they are generally not independent of the level of aggregation used.