Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Evolution of Earnings Management and Firm Valuation: A Cross-Country Analysis

We investigate the determinants of earnings management and its implications for firm value for more than 24,000 firms in 43 countries for the 1990-2003 period. We find that firm characteristics explain at least as much of the variation in earnings management as country characteristics, and that firm characteristics become relatively more important at the turn of the 20th century. Investment opportunities, dependence on external finance, ownership dispersion, cash holdings, and greater visibility and access to global financial markets tend to decrease earnings management, as firms adopt more rigorous standards when they can benefit the most from them. We find a link between earnings management and firm valuation: a move from the 75th to the 25th percentile of earnings management is associated with an increase in Tobin's Q of 16%. The negative relation between earnings management and firm valuation is found to be particularly strong at the turn of the 20th century and for firms with strong investment opportunities and need of external finance.
The histone deacetylase inhibitor trichostatin A derepresses the telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) gene in human cells.

Activation of telomerase, essential for cellular immortalization and transformation, requires the induction of its catalytic component, telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT). However, biochemical and genetic mechanisms for the control of hTERT expression remain undefined. In the present study, we demonstrate that the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor trichostatin A (TSA) induces hyperacetylation of histones at the hTERT proximal promoter, directly transactivates the hTERT gene in normal human telomerase-negative cells, and upregulates hTERT expression in telomerase-positive tumor cells. Overexpression of HDAC1 leads to repression of the hTERT promoter activity. TSA-mediated activation of the hTERT promoter is abolished by the mutation of Sp1 sites at the proximal promoter, suggesting that the effect of TSA is regulated through Sp1 motifs. We also show a physical interaction of Sp1 with HDAC1 and the presence of HDAC1 at the hTERT promoter region. Moreover, hyperacetylation of histones at the hTERT promoter is associated with the natural up-regulation of hTERT expression that occurs in activated T lymphocytes. Taken together, histone acetylation/deacetylation may be a common underlying feature to hTERT transactivation/repression in human normal and malignant cells.
Functional implications of spontaneous sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ release in the heart.

The Cai oscillation generated by the sarcoplasmic reticulum in response to an action potential occurs relatively synchronously within and among cells. The sarcoplasmic reticulum can also generate spontaneous Cai oscillations (S-CaOs), ie, not triggered by sarcolemmal depolarisation. The local increase in Cai due to S-CaOs is equivalent to that induced by an action potential. Heterogeneity of diastolic Cai among cells within myocardial tissue caused by asynchronous S-CaOs leads to heterogeneous myofilament activation, the summation of which produces a Ca2+ dependent component to diastolic tone. The local increases in Cai due to S-CaOs also cause oscillatory sarcolemmal depolarisations due to Ca2+ modulation of the Na-Ca exchanger and of non-specific cation channels. When local S-CaOs within a myocardial cell is sufficiently synchronised the resultant depolarisation summates and can be sufficient to trigger a spontaneous action potential. Inhomogeneous levels of diastolic Cai among cells may lead to heterogeneity in cell coupling and thus may also affect the impulse conduction in myocardial tissue. The magnitude of the S-CaOs induced diastolic tonus and depolarisation varies with the extent to which S-CaOs are synchronised; partially synchronised S-CaOs following an action potential induced Ca2+ release produce an aftercontraction and afterdepolarisation. Inhomogeneity of diastolic sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ loading and sarcomere lengths within individual cardiac cells due to S-CaOs leads to inhomogeneous systolic Cai levels and sarcomere inhomogeneities in response to a subsequent action potential, which compromise the systolic contraction amplitude. Heterogeneity of systolic Cai among cells due to diastolic S-CaOs also leads to heterogeneity of action potential repolarisation times, due to heterogeneous Cai modulation of the Na-Ca exchanger, the non-specific cation channel, the L type Ca2+ channel and, depending upon species, Ca2+ activated K+ channels. S-CaOs occurrence during a long action potential plateau may also modulate the removal of voltage inactivation of L type Ca2+ channels, and affects the likelihood of the occurrence of "early afterdepolarisations. " Thus, as a single entity, S-CaOs may be implicated in diverse manifestation of heart failure--impaired systolic performance, increased diastolic tonus, and an increased probability for the occurrence of arrhythmias.
Occult hepatitis B in Egyptian thalassemic children.

INTRODUCTION Thalassemia is hereditary anemia which requires lifelong transfusion as treatment, and hepatitis viral infection is one of the risks of repeated transfusions. Hepatitis B outbreaks in health-care settings are still a serious public health concern worldwide. Blood samples negative for HBsAg but positive for HBV-DNA, with or without the presence of HBV antibodies, are classified as "occult" HBV infection (OBI). This study investigated the prevalence of occult HBV infection in Egyptian thalassemic children. METHODOLOGY Eighty patients admitted to the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University Hospital, were involved in this prospective study. Strict inclusion criteria were set to nullify the effect of confounding variables and further minimize selection bias. The following laboratory investigations were performed: complete blood count (CBC); serum AST and ALT; albumin; bilirubin; HBsAg; HBeAg; HBcAb; HCV-RNA; and HBV-DNA. RESULTS All our patients had no clinical manifestation suggestive of hepatitis. Molecular biology studies revealed positivity for HCV and HBV at 25% and 32.5% respectively. CONCLUSION The estimated risk of acquiring hepatitis B and C infection in children receiving multiple blood transfusions is surprisingly high. Moreover, occult hepatitis B infection is a considerably risk.
The venture capitalist - entrepreneur relationship

In this master thesis we have performed an explorative study on the VC-entrepreneur relationship. Paper 1 is a literature review of several frameworks describing the VC-entrepreneur relationship, how these frameworks take the VC and/or the entrepreneur's perspective, and their applicability and limitations to the pre- and post-investment stage. Our main findings in this literature review show that little emphasis has been placed on the pre-investment stage and how the VC-entrepreneur relationship is initiated and developed. In addition few scholars take a demand-side view on equity finance which leads to an unbalanced understanding of the forces affecting the market for venture capital. Two main findings from Paper 1 was that social embeddedness may help explain how external parties in the entrepreneur's network may mediate the relation to investors and there is a need to further investigate how the entrepreneur may initiate and build relationships towards investors in an early venture stage. Thus the following papers aim to explore these findings. Paper 2 investigates how outside directors may strengthen entrepreneurial ventures in an early stage by performing explorative case analyses. Our findings suggest that outside directors may strengthen high-growth entrepreneurial ventures in an early stage by increasing the ventures competitive advantage in terms of strategically combining and managing resources. In addition they add legitimacy towards external stakeholders and increases the ventures interaction with its surroundings. The implications from Paper 2 suggest that more qualitative research should be performed on how the outside directors' strengthening contribution to early stage ventures can be related to stage theory. Paper 3 explores how entrepreneurs may develop investment readiness to bridge the financing gap and become seed level investor ready. This was done by conducting an explorative, theory building case study. From exploring the investment readiness we build a model that are able to relate investment readiness to the stages of development, and offers an explanation to how entrepreneurs use social ties as an information transferring mechanism effectively developing the investment readiness of the venture in order to overcome the high level of information asymmetry and risk related to the early stages of venture development. The implications from paper 3 suggest that the use of social ties could improve the entrepreneurs ability to become seed stage investor ready and effectively bridge the gap in early stage venture capital.
A missense GATA3 mutation, Thr272Ile, causes the hypoparathyroidism, deafness, and renal dysplasia syndrome.

CONTEXT The hypoparathyroidism, deafness, renal dysplasia (HDR) syndrome is caused by mutations in the gene encoding GATA3, which belongs to a family of dual zinc-finger transcription factors that have a role in vertebrate embryonic development. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to identify the GATA3 mutation in a HDR patient and determine its functional consequences. PATIENT AND DESIGN: A patient with HDR was studied after approval from the local ethical committee. Leukocyte DNA was used with GATA3-specific primers for PCR amplification, and the DNA sequences of the PCR products were determined. Wild-type and mutant GATA3 constructs were transfected into COS-7 cell, and their functions were assessed by Western blot analysis, immunocytochemistry, EMSAs, luciferase reporter assays, and three-dimensional modeling. RESULTS A novel missense mutation, Thr272Ile, in zinc finger 1 (ZnF1) of GATA3 was identified. Western blot analysis and immunofluorescence revealed that the mutation did not affect nuclear localization of GATA3. However, EMSAs showed it to reduce DNA binding affinity, but not stability, and yeast two-hybrid assays demonstrated that the mutant GATA3 resulted in a loss of interaction with ZnF1 and ZnF6 of the cofactor FOG2. The mutant GATA3 significantly reduced luciferase reporter activity by more than 65% (P < 0.001), and three-dimensional modeling indicated that the functional abnormalities may be due to a loss of Thr272 polar side chain interaction with Leu268. CONCLUSIONS A novel missense HDR-associated GATA3 mutation, Thr272Ile, has been identified and shown to result in reduced DNA binding, a partial loss of FOG2 interaction, and a decrease in gene transcription.
Risk, Employee Incentive Intensity and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence

The agent theory is of central importance to compensation contract, which argues that incentive intensity should be negatively associated with risk. Yet, previous studies have reported mixed findings on this relationship. This study empirically examines this relationship by utilizing data obtained from a major car dealership in Taiwan in which levels of delegation and monitoring costs are held constant. Our overall results support the prediction of agency theory, namely, that auto dealership branches reduce incentive intensity for salespersons when facing higher risks. Importantly, we find that branches giving salespersons lower incentive intensity in more risky environments perform better than those that do not employ compensation practices based on the agency theory.
The understanding and practice of value management by South African construction and project managers : exploratory findings

The nature and extent of value management (VM) practice by professional construction managers and construction project managers in South Africa is investigated using a web-based, online questionnaire survey. The survey explores managers' awareness and understanding of VM, and the nature and extent of the use of VM techniques within their organisations. Descriptive statistics are used to analyse the survey response data. The results suggest that awareness of VM is not widespread among construction managers and construction project managers, and that its actual practice is minimal. This is due largely to the encroachment on the traditional aims of VM by other project management techniques that also seek to facilitate the attainment of value for construction clients. Where VM is used on projects, it is invariably cost-minimisation driven in terms of both the project and the VM process itself. It is recommended that the professional association responsible for the regulation of the activities of construction and project managers should organise suitable training opportunities in value management.
Interpretation of Perturbative Solution for the Scattering From Layered Structure With Rough Interfaces

In this paper the focus is on the intrinsic significance of the first-order perturbative scattering solution for the scattering from layered structures with an arbitrary number of rough interfaces. An exact analytic decomposition of the solution in terms of local interactions is carried out. Consequently, the suitably expanded solution can be expressed as an optical geometric series, where each term of the series is susceptible of a direct physical interpretation. Therefore, the obtained interpretation enables the global scattering phenomenon involved to be visualized as a superposition of local interactions, emphasizing the role of the interference effects in the structure as well. The interpretation opens the way to new techniques for solving the inverse problem, for designing SAR processing algorithms, and for modelling the time-domain response of complex layered structures.
Directors' views on accounting and auditing requirements for SMEs

This research was commissioned by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, to contribute to strategic priorities in connection with better regulation and reducing administrative burdens. The aims were to investigate the directors’ views on present accounting and auditing requirements for SMEs in UK company law and draft simplification proposals made by the European Commission in July 2007; and to identify changes in the financial reporting practices of companies that had participated in a previous study commissioned by the then DTI (Collis, 2003), which focused on issues in connection with raising the audit exemption thresholds.
Running head : short-term memory and hearing status

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of he aring status on age-related decrease in verbal short-term memory (STM) performance. This wa done by administering a battery of verbal STM tasks to elderly and young adult partici pants matched for hearing thresholds, as well as to young normal-hearing control participant s. The matching procedure allowed us to assess the importance of hearing loss as an explana tory f ctor of age-related STM decline. We observed that elderly participants and hearing-matc hed young participants showed equal levels of performance in all verbal STM tasks, and performed overall lower than the normalhearing young control participants. This study prov ides evidence for recent theoretical accounts considering reduced hearing level as an im portant explanatory factor of poor auditory-verbal STM performance in older adults.
Quantitative assessment of aqueous flare and aqueous ‘cells’ in pseudoexfoliation syndrome

Abstract. We used the laser flare‐cell meter to measure aqueous flare and aqueous ‘cells’ in 38 eyes of 38 patients with pseudoexfoliation, in 36 normal control eyes of 36 subjects, and in 19 eyes of 19 patients with chronic open‐angle glaucoma unrelated to pseudoexfoliation. In pseudoexfoliation eyes, both aqueous flare (0.61 ± 0.55 mg/ml human albumin equivalent) and aqueous ‘cells’ (mean 10.70, range 0–50.6 cells/0.075 mm3) were significantly higher than in the normal control group (flare 0.15 ± 0.06 mg/ml, ‘cells’ 0.43, range 0–2, P< 0.0001) and in the glaucoma group without pseudoexfoliation (flare 0.19 ± 0.08 mg/ml, ‘cells’ 0.80, range 0–2.4, P< 0.0001 and P< 0.005). No significant difference could be found between the flare and cell counts of normal eyes and glaucoma eyes without pseudoexfoliation (P> 0.09, P> 0.05) and between PSX eyes with (18 eyes) and without (20 eyes) open‐angle glaucoma (P> 0.99, P> 0.4). Our findings indicate that the blood‐aqueous barrier is impaired in eyes with pseudoexfoliation, and that the laser flare‐cell meter may be a useful tool to quantify these changes. These alterations of the blood‐aqueous barrier need to be considered in medical therapy and intraocular surgery.
Risk of cervical cancer associated with extending the interval between cervical-cancer screenings.

BACKGROUND Although contemporary guidelines suggest that the intervals between Papanicolaou tests can be extended to three years among low-risk women with previous negative tests, the excess risk of cervical cancer associated with less frequent than annual screening is uncertain. METHODS We determined the prevalence of biopsy-proven cervical neoplasia among 938,576 women younger than 65 years of age, stratified according to the number of previous consecutive negative Papanicolaou tests. Using a Markov model that estimates the rate at which dysplasia will progress to cancer, we estimated the risk of cancer within three years after one or more negative Papanicolaou tests, as well as the number of additional Papanicolaou tests and colposcopic examinations that would be required to avert one case of cancer given a particular interval between screenings. RESULTS Among 31,728 women 30 to 64 years of age who had had three or more consecutive negative tests, the prevalence of biopsy-proven cervical intraepithelial neoplasia of grade 2 was 0.028 percent and the prevalence of grade 3 neoplasia was 0.019 percent; none of the women had invasive cervical cancer. According to our model, the estimated risk of cancer with annual Papanicolaou tests for three years was 2 in 100,000 among women 30 to 44 years of age, 1 in 100,000 among women 45 to 59 years of age, and 1 in 100,000 among women 60 to 64 years of age; these risks would be 5 in 100,000, 2 in 100,000, and 1 in 100,000, respectively, if screening were performed once three years after the last negative test. To avert one additional case of cancer by screening 100,000 women annually for three years rather than once three years after the last negative test, an average of 69,665 additional Papanicolaou tests and 3861 colposcopic examinations would be needed in women 30 to 44 years of age and an average of 209,324 additional Papanicolaou tests and 11,502 colposcopic examinations in women 45 to 59 years of age. CONCLUSIONS As compared with annual screening for three years, screening performed once three years after the last negative test in women 30 to 64 years of age who have had three or more consecutive negative Papanicolaou tests is associated with an average excess risk of cervical cancer of approximately 3 in 100,000.
Does Investor Heterogeneity Lead to IPO Overvaluation?

We test the Miller (1977) prediction about IPO overvaluation in a sample of 7,212 U.S. IPOs from 1980 to 2003. According to Miller (1977), owing to the lack of short sales prior to the offer, IPO prices are determined by the most optimistic investors, leading to IPO overvaluation; this initial overvaluation is corrected in the years after the offer as the uncertainty of IPO firms subdues. We hypothesize that investors categorize IPOs by their industries, and we use an industry-level uncertainty measure - industry volatility in excess of the market volatility - as an ex ante proxy for investor heterogeneity of beliefs. We therefore predict that IPOs in volatile industries should have high initial returns, followed by low long-run returns. Generally, IPOs in industries with high excess volatility have much higher initial returns and lower long-run returns in the following 2-3 years than IPOs in industries with low volatility. In time-series tests, we find that excess industry volatility explains half of the annual time-series variation in aggregate initial returns. In cross-sectional tests, when we sort IPOs into three portfolios by excess industry volatility, we find that over the full sample period, high excess industry volatility IPOs have 18% (7%) higher mean (median) initial returns, and 18% (31%) lower mean (median) style-adjusted returns over a 1.5-year period after the offer (skipping the initial 6-month aftermarket lockup period) than low excess industry volatility IPOs. These results are robust to various risk-adjustment procedures. The effect of excess industry volatility on initial returns is about four times stronger during the "tech bubble" period (01/1997 - 03/2000) than during other periods, and the extreme bubble-period IPO initial returns in volatile industries are not reversed until about 4 years after the offer, consistent with the late 1990s' market being a market bubble fueled by investor euphoria. We also find that firm age - our firm-level proxy for uncertainty and investor heterogeneity -affects both short- and long-run IPO performance, in coalition with industry volatility. Our results suggest that investor opinions are more diverse among young firms, as well as among firms in volatile industries. Adding age to industry volatility strengthens the return predictability of investor heterogeneity. These findings lend strong support to Miller's hypothesis that in markets with restricted short-selling, valuations tend to reflect the most optimistic investor's appraisal in the short-run, and revert to the average appraisal in the long-run.
Comparative evaluation of Oxoid Signal and BACTEC radiometric blood culture systems for the detection of bacteremia and fungemia

The Oxoid Signal (Oxoid U.S.A., Inc., Columbia, Md.) blood culture system is a newly described, innovative method for visually detecting growth of microorganisms (D. Sawney, S. Hinder, D. Swaine, and E.Y. Bridson, J. Clin. Pathol. 39:1259-1263, 1986). We did 5,999 paired comparisons of equal volumes (10 ml) of blood in the Oxoid Signal and BACTEC (Johnson Laboratories, Towson, Md.) radiometric blood culture systems at two university hospitals that use identical methods of obtaining and processing specimens. Overall, more microorganisms were detected in the BACTEC system (P less than 0.001), in particular, streptococci (P less than 0.01), fungi (P less than 0.001), and nonfermentative gram-negative rods, especially Acinetobacter species (P less than 0.001). Trends favoring the BACTEC system for detection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Haemophilus species, and Neisseria species were noted. There were no differences in the yield of staphylococci, members of the family Enterobacteriaceae, and anaerobic bacteria. When both systems detected sepsis, the BACTEC did so earlier (P less than 0.001). This advantage was most notable at 24 h (70% of BACTEC positives detected versus 48% of Oxoid positives). The proportion of positives detected after 48 h, however, was similar (BACTEC, 84%; Oxoid, 78%). Revisions in the Oxoid Signal system itself or in the processing of Oxoid bottles appear to be necessary to improve its performance in detecting certain microorganism groups, especially fungi.