Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Corporate Governance on the Disclosure of Manager-Adjusted Non-GAAP Earnings

This paper investigates the association between corporate governance and the disclosure of non-GAAP earnings measures in quarterly earnings announcements. The results reveal that the previously documented decrease in the probability of disclosure of non-GAAP earnings after Regulation G is lower in firms with (1) a higher level of institutional ownership and (2) more independent members on the board of directors. These results suggest that firms with stronger corporate governance mechanisms are less likely to make misleading earnings adjustments and, as a result, they have lower incentives to cease reporting manager-adjusted earnings numbers in the presence of SEC scrutiny. Interestingly, the presence of strong corporate governance mechanisms appears to decrease investors' reliance on adjusted earnings measures. An analysis of the market's reaction to earnings announcements indicates that both a high proportion of institutional ownership and a high percentage of outside directors are associated with a lower market reaction to non-GAAP earnings.
Substrate specificity, inhibition and enzymological analysis of recombinant human glutamate carboxypeptidase II

Glutamate carboxypeptidase II (GCPII, EC 3.4.17.21) is a membrane peptidase expressed in a number of tissues such as kidney, prostate and brain. The brain form of GCPII (also known as NAALADase) cleaves N‐acetyl‐aspartyl glutamate to yield free glutamate. Animal model experiments show that inhibition of GCPII prevents neuronal cell death during experimental ischaemia. GCPII thus represents an important target for the treatment of neuronal damage caused by excess glutamate. In this paper we report expression of an extracellular portion of human glutamate carboxypeptidase II (amino acids 44–750) in Drosophila Schneider's cells and its purification to homogeneity. A novel assay for hydrolytic activity of recombinant human GCPII (rhGCPII), based on fluorimetric detection of released alpha‐amino groups was established, and used for its enzymological characterization. rhGCPII does not show dipeptidylpeptidase IV‐like activity assigned to the native form of the enzyme previously. Using a complete set of protected dipeptides, substrate specificity of rhGCPII was elucidated. In addition to the previously described substrates, four novel compounds, Ac‐Glu‐Met, Ac‐Asp‐Met and, surprisingly, Ac‐Ala‐Glu and Ac‐Ala‐Met were identified as substrates for GCPII, and their respective kinetic constants determined. The glycosylation of rhGCPII was found indispensable for the enzymatic activity.
Evaluation of a new combined SpO2/PtcCO2 sensor in anaesthetized paediatric patients

Background The recently introduced TOSCA monitor (Linde Medical Sensors AG, Basel, Switzerland) combines pulse oximetry (SpO2) and transcutaneous PCO2 (PtcCO2) monitoring in a single ear sensor. The aim of the present study was to evaluate accuracy of the TOSCA monitor to estimate SaO2 and PaCO2 in anaesthetized children.
Biological properties of an anti-bacterial membrane for guided bone regeneration: an experimental study in rats.

OBJECTIVE The biosafety and efficacy of silver-hydroxyapatite-titania/polyamide nanocomposite (nAg-HA-TiO(2)/PA) membrane as a guided bone regeneration (GBR) barrier were investigated based on a rat subcutaneous and critical-size calvarial defect model. MATERIAL AND METHODS Thirty-six Sprague-Dawley albino rats were divided into nAg-HA-TiO(2)/PA membrane test, expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (e-PTFE) membrane control and blank control. Inflammatory response and bone regeneration in each group were evaluated using morphological, serological, radiographic and histological techniques at 1, 4 and 8 weeks, respectively, after implantation. RESULTS For subcutaneous implantation, slight degradation of nAg-HA-TiO(2)/PA membranes was observed by scanning electron microscope at 4 and 8 weeks. Histopathologic examination demonstrated a thinner layer of granulation tissue in the vicinity of nAg-HA-TiO(2)/PA membranes than that of e-PTFE membranes. For cranial defect implantation, the serum alkaline phosphatase level was remarkably higher in nAg-HA-TiO(2)/PA group than that in e-PTFE group. Radiographic and histomorphometric analysis showed a fully closed cranial defect for both nAg-HA-TiO(2)/PA and e-PTFE groups at 8 weeks. No remarkable difference was found between the two groups regarding the integral optical density of neo-bone at each time interval. CONCLUSION nAg-HA-TiO(2)/PA membranes demonstrated better biocompatibility and similar osteoinductive activity compared with e-PTFE membranes. nAg-HA-TiO(2)/PA composite membranes provided a good prospect for further research and development in anti-bacterial GBR membrane.
Local Biotic Environment Shapes the Spatial Scale of Bacteriophage Adaptation to Bacteria

The ecological, epidemiological, and evolutionary consequences of host-parasite interactions are critically shaped by the spatial scale at which parasites adapt to hosts. The scale of interaction between hyperparasites and their parasites is likely to be influenced by the host of the parasite and potentially likely to differ among within-host environments. Here we examine the scale at which bacteriophages adapt to their host bacteria by studying natural isolates from the surface or interior of horse chestnut leaves. We find that phages are more infective to bacteria from the same tree relative to those from other trees but do not differ in infectivity to bacteria from different leaves within the same tree. The results suggest that phages target common bacterial species, including an important plant pathogen, within plant host tissues; this result has important implications for therapeutic phage epidemiology. Furthermore, we show that phages from the leaf interior are more infective to their local hosts than phages from the leaf surface are to theirs, suggesting either increased resistance of bacteria on the leaf surface or increased phage adaptation within the leaf. These results highlight that biotic environment can play a key role in shaping the spatial scale of parasite adaptation and influencing the outcome of coevolutionary interactions.
The utility of employee flows as a driver of marketing productivity.

The movement or flow of employees into, around and out of organisations (‘employee flow’) has long been a central issue in human resource management and industrial psychology. This is especially so for the specific element of employee turnover, but also applies to staffing and internal talent development. Employee flow is especially salient in a South African context characterised by scarce skills. The voluminous literature on employee flow has tended to view each element such as recruitment or turnover separately, and has generally focused on internal outcomes (e.g. commitment or satisfaction). This thesis attempts to add two crucial features, namely EF as a whole system (i.e. inflows, intraorganisation flows and outflows of staff in conjunction), and customer-based outcomes. Something of a synthesis is thus sought between EF and ideas of marketing productivity. Marketing productivity has been proposed as one of the most important foci of the marketing discipline (Rust, Ambler, Carpenter, Kumar, & Srivastava, 2004; Sheth & Sisodia, 2002). It refers to links between marketing and organisational performance or value. Models such as the ‘service profit chain’ (Heskett, Sasser & Schlesinger, 1997) identify the antecedents of marketing productivity to be internal organisation characteristics such as staff satisfaction or loyalty. This thesis seeks to expand such models in the context of a system of EFs. Advanced decision theoretic utility theories of EF (e.g. Boudreau & Berger, 1985) allow for the complete, integrated value of employee movements over time to be modelled. Such a model is constructed and links to marketing metrics, notably service perceptions, investigated. Organisational value arising via the outcomes for customers are further
Positive and negative effects of high energy consumption on reproduction in lactating dairy cows.

Seven years after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, John Smith (name changed by request) had found that the management headaches associated with running a 500 cow dairy were becoming overwhelming. He had built a newer freestall facility using a loan from his banker and was able to stock it with the 100 dairy cows purchased from his father’s operation and many other cows purchased from surrounding operations. He now had the operation filled for the last 3 years. He had one problem with drainage into his lagoon that had resulted in one end of the barn being flooded on some occasions, but other than that, he was happy with the new facilities. The new double-8 parallel parlor was extremely efficient, and he had gone to 3-times per day milking to increase milk production and to utilize the parlor to greater capacity. His diet was balanced by a local nutrition professional, and he had been fairly pleased with the results. Milk production had climbed to where it now averaged over 85 lb/cow/day with 3.51% fat and 3.01% protein. His somatic cell count had dropped to 142,000 cells/ml and so he was pleased with his milk quality. His problem was that he continually had to buy springing heifers to keep the facility full. He had purchased 45 springing heifers during the last year, and it seemed that he would have to purchase about the same number during the coming year. Even though it had been over 3 years since he had first filled the facility with cows, he just could not generate enough heifers from his own operation to keep the facility full. He knew he had reproduction problems but was not able to determine how to resolve them. He felt that part of the problem was the extremely high energy ration that his nutritionist had recommended about 11 months earlier. He had detected a lot of lame cows since that time. He did all of the artificial insemination (AI) in his herd and felt that he had a good technique; however, he did split straws (breed 2 cows with 1 straw of semen) in more than half of the breedings. Our group from the University of Wisconsin-Madison was asked to come in and do an evaluation of his operation as part of a class for our advanced undergraduate and graduate students. In this class, the students work with faculty members to diagnose any problems and help to design practical solutions for the participating dairy producers.
COPPER ENZYMES IN ISOLATED CHLOROPLASTS. POLYPHENOLOXIDASE IN BETA VULGARIS.

The chloroplast, as the seat of chlorophyll pigments in plants, occupies a unique position in the economy of the green cell. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the reactions and properties of chloroplasts as a result of the work of Hill (11, 12) and Hill and Scarisbrick (13, 14) who demonstrated that the reaction characteristic of photosynthesis in green plants, the evolution of oxygen, occurs in appreciable quantities in isolated chloroplasts under the influence of light and in the presence of suitable oxidants (2, 7, 8, 26). In the course of an investigation of oxygen evolution by isolated chloroplasts it was deemed important to explore their enzymatic composition. Of special interest were considered enzymes capable of participating in oxidation-reduction reactions, and more particularly, those localized principally, if not entirely, in the chloroplasts. This paper presents evidence that a copper enzyme, polyphenoloxidase (otherwise known as tyrosinase or catecholase), is localized in the chloroplasts of spinach beet (chard), Beta vu? garis.
The non-executive director of Australian statutory authorities

Abstract This paper is based on a review of the board composition of material Commonwealth Statutory Authoritieswith particular focus on the profile of non-executive directors. The analysis examines the mix of non-executive directors gender, remuneration, length of board membership and the number of other directorshipsheld andThe paper will review the roles of directors and outline a number of additional requirements these directorshave in comparison to directors of private sector organisations and highlight the paradoxial requirement ofindependence. The paper concludes questioning the need for independent directors (if there are any) on theboards of Commonwealth Statutory Authorities. Keywords Non-executive directors, corporate governance Publication Details This conference paper was originally published as Bowrey, G & Cortese, CL, The non-executive director ofAustralian statutory authorities, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand(AFAANZ) conference, 1-3 July 2007, Queensland.
Inverting dynamic force microscopy: From signals to time-resolved interaction forces

Transient forces between nanoscale objects on surfaces govern friction, viscous flow, and plastic deformation, occur during manipulation of matter, or mediate the local wetting behavior of thin films. To resolve transient forces on the (sub) microsecond time and nanometer length scale, dynamic atomic force microscopy (AFM) offers largely unexploited potential. Full spectral analysis of the AFM signal completes dynamic AFM. Inverting the signal formation process, we measure the time course of the force effective at the sensing tip. This approach yields rich insight into processes at the tip and dispenses with a priori assumptions about the interaction, as it relies solely on measured data. Force measurements on silicon under ambient conditions demonstrate the distinct signature of the interaction and reveal that peak forces exceeding 200 nN are applied to the sample in a typical imaging situation. These forces are 2 orders of magnitude higher than those in covalent bonds.
Treatment of Knee Osteoarthritis with Autologous Expanded Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells: 50 Cases Clinical and MRI Results at One Year Follow-Up

Knee osteoarthritis is one of the most prevalent joint diseases, causing pain, function loss and disability, leading to a progressive cartilage degeneration induced by biochemical changes in its composition. Current available treatments focus on addressing symptoms and joint replacement is the last treatment option. Advanced therapies with mesenchymal stem cells build new expectations to improve the results of OA treatments. MSC applied in animal models, show encouraging results in modulating inflammation and joint cartilage repair. Several studies applied autologous mesenchymal stem cells to treat knee osteoarthritis in humans by means of an intra-articular injection. Our team previously conducted a pilot study applying 40×10e6 autologous bone marrow expanded mesenchymal cells in 12 patients affected with knee osteoarhtritis through intra-articular infusion. After 2 years we obtained excellent clinical and quantitative MRI outcome measures, no adverse events reported.
Antibacterial Mechanisms of Berberine and Reasons for Little Resistance of Bacteria

Objective To study the antibacterial mechanisms of berberine and try to understand the reasons why bacteria cells difficultly resisted to it.Methods Detecting the minimal inhibitory concentration(MIC) of bacterial cultures incubated under sub-MIC concentration of berberine,Huanglian,and Neomycin for more than 200 generations,in order to analyze the bacteria resistance.Detecting the binding kinetics of berberine to DNA,RNA,and proteins.Observing the changes in bacterial cell surface structure with scanning electron microscopy.Detecting the Ca2 +and K +released from berberine-treated bacterial cells with atomic absorption spectrum.Detection the absorption of methyl-3H-thymine ( 3 H-dT),3 H-uridine( 3 H-U),and 3 H-tyrosine( 3 H-Tyr)into berberine-treated bacterial cells.Results MICs of bacterial cultures,growing more than 200 generations in MH medium with 1/2 MIC of berberine(BA200) or Huanglian(HA200),did not increase compared to the control,while remarkably increased in MH medium with 1/2 MIC of Neomycin (NA200). In addition,from the culture NA200 it was easy to isolate resistant mutant strains which could grow in MH medium with more than four times MIC Neomycin,but from the culture BA200 and HA200 it was difficult to isolate berberine or Huanglian mutant strains could grow in MH medium with more than four times MIC berberine or Huanglian.The binding kinetics of berberine to DNA,RNA,and proteins illustrated that berberine could easily and tightly bind to DNA and RNA,and hardly dis-bind from DNA-and RNA-berberine complexes.Berberine could easily bind to protein too,but also easily dis-bind from berberine-protein complex.The bacterial cells treated with berberine sharply decreased the absorption of 3 H-dT,3 H-U,and 3 H-Tyr,as the radioactive precursors of DNA,RNA,and protein biosynthesis.Berberine could damage bacterial cell surface structure,especially for Gram-negative bacteria.Ca2 +and K + released from berberine-treated cells increased significantly compared to the control.Conclusion All of above results indicate that bacterial cells could not easily become resistant mutants to berberine.The mechanisms for the bactericidal effect of berberine include:inhibiting DNA duplication,RNA transcription,and protein biosynthesis;influencing or inhibiting enzyme activities;destructing the bacterial cell surface structure and resulting in Ca2 +and K +released from cells.All of the berberine bactericidal mechanisms are the most essential physiological functions for a live cell,if influenced any one such function,the mutation would be lethal mutation,so that it is difficult to get berberine resistant cells.The results in this paper also prefigure that berberine and its related Chinese medicines would provide a feasible way to control antibiotic resistance problem.
Cryptococcus neoformans-Cryptococcus gattii Species Complex: an International Study of Wild-Type Susceptibility Endpoint Distributions and Epidemiological Cutoff Values for Amphotericin B and Flucytosine

ABSTRACT Clinical breakpoints (CBPs) are not available for the Cryptococcus neoformans-Cryptococcus gattii species complex. MIC distributions were constructed for the wild type (WT) to establish epidemiologic cutoff values (ECVs) for C. neoformans and C. gattii versus amphotericin B and flucytosine. A total of 3,590 amphotericin B and 3,045 flucytosine CLSI MICs for C. neoformans (including 1,002 VNI isolates and 8 to 39 VNII, VNIII, and VNIV isolates) and 985 and 853 MICs for C. gattii, respectively (including 42 to 259 VGI, VGII, VGIII, and VGIV isolates), were gathered in 9 to 16 (amphotericin B) and 8 to 13 (flucytosine) laboratories (Europe, United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, and South Africa) and aggregated for the analyses. Additionally, 442 amphotericin B and 313 flucytosine MICs measured by using CLSI-YNB medium instead of CLSI-RPMI medium and 237 Etest amphotericin B MICs for C. neoformans were evaluated. CLSI-RPMI ECVs for distributions originating in ≥3 laboratories (with the percentages of isolates for which MICs were less than or equal to ECVs given in parentheses) were as follows: for amphotericin B, 0.5 μg/ml for C. neoformans VNI (97.2%) and C. gattii VGI and VGIIa (99.2 and 97.5%, respectively) and 1 μg/ml for C. neoformans (98.5%) and C. gattii nontyped (100%) and VGII (99.2%) isolates; for flucytosine, 4 μg/ml for C. gattii nontyped (96.4%) and VGI (95.7%) isolates, 8 μg/ml for VNI (96.6%) isolates, and 16 μg/ml for C. neoformans nontyped (98.6%) and C. gattii VGII (97.1%) isolates. Other molecular types had apparent variations in MIC distributions, but the number of laboratories contributing data was too low to allow us to ascertain that the differences were due to factors other than assay variation. ECVs may aid in the detection of isolates with acquired resistance mechanisms.
A radiative transfer model to simulate light scattering in a compact granular medium using a Monte‒Carlo approach: Validation and first applications

A new radiative transfer model to simulate light scattering in a compact granular medium using a Monte‒Carlo approach is presented. The physical and compositional properties of the sample can be specified at the grain scale, thus allowing to simulate different kinds of heterogeneties/mixtures within the sample. The radiative transfer is then calculated using a ray tracing approach between the grains, and probabilistic physical parameters such as a single scattering albedo and a phase function at the grain level. The reflectance and the albedo can be computed at different scales and for different geometries: from the grain scale to the sample one. The photometric behavior of the model is validated by comparing the bidirectional reflectance obtained for various media and geometries with the one of semi‒infinite multilayer models, and a few first applications are presented. This model will be used to refine our understanding of visible/NIR remote sensing data of planetary surfaces, as well as future measurements of hyperspectral microscopes which may be able to resolve spatial compositional heterogeneities within a given sample.
Non-nutritive sucking habits after three years of age: A case-control study

Background: Non-nutritive sucking habits can result in negative consequences on the development of orofacial structures and occlusion. Aim: Assess factors associated with non-nutritive sucking habits in children after 3 years old. Materials and Methods: A case-control study was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, a cross-sectional study was conducted with 638 children aged 3-6 years. In the second stage, a case-control study (1:2) was conducted. The case group included all children who presented some non-nutritive sucking habits in the first stage of the study (n = 110). The control group (n = 220) was made up of children who had never presented non-nutritive sucking habits, matched to the case group for gender and age. The data were collected during the national poliomyelitis vaccination campaign, through a questionnaire applied to parents/guardians with questions related to the presence of sucking habits, sociodemographic aspects, birth aspects, and early life of the child. Statistical analysis involved descriptive analysis, chi-square test, Mann-Whitney test, and conditional logistic regression. Results: Reduction in maternal education was a protective factor for the development of non-nutritive sucking habits (education ≤8 years OR = 0.38, CI 95%: 0.16, 0.89, P = 0.025). Prematurity (OR = 3.30, CI 95%: 1.13, 9.69, P = 0.030) and a longer period using a baby bottle (OR = 1.03, CI 95%: 1.01, 1.05, P = 0.006) remained associated with a greater possibility of the occurrence of sucking habits, regardless of monthly family income. Conclusion: Non-nutritive sucking habits were associated with maternal education, premature birth, and greater time of bottle feeding in children after 3 years old.