Are the flows of exchange-traded funds informative?

Are the flows of exchange-traded funds informative

3-carboxy-4-methyl-5-propyl-2-furanpropanoic acid (CMPF): A metabolite identified after consumption of fish oil and fish

3-carboxy-4-methyl-5-propyl-2-furanpropanoic acid (CMPF): A metabolite identified after consumption of fish oil and fis

Belowground mechanism reveals climate change impacts on invasive clonal plant establishment

Climate change and disturbance can alter invasion success of clonal plants by differentially affecting the clonal traits influencing their establishment as young plants. Clonal traits related to the vegetative reproduction of native Pascopyrum smithii and non-native Bromus inermis grass seedlings were evaluated under altered precipitation frequencies and a single grazing event. Pascopyrum smithii maintained similar vegetative reproduction under three simulated precipitation frequencies whereas B. inermis vegetative reproduction declined as precipitation became more intermittent. Vegetative reproduction of the non-native B. inermis was greater than the native P. smithii under all simulated precipitation frequencies except the most intermittent scenario. A single grazing event did not affect either species’ response to intra-annual precipitation variability but did slightly reduce their clonal growth and increase their bud dormancy. In young plants, clonal traits of the invasive grass favored its superior expansion and population growth compared to the native grass except under the most severe climate change scenario. Grassland restoration using native P. smithii seeds would be successful in most years due to its resilient clonal growth in a changing climate. Clonal infrastructure development in young plants is critical to clonal plant establishment and persistence in a changing climate and under disturbed conditions

A matrix-based pairwise key establishment scheme for wireless mesh networks using pre deployment knowledge

© 2013 IEEE. Due to the nature of wireless transmission, communication in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is vulnerable to many adversarial activities including eavesdropping. Pairwise key establishment is one of the fundamental issues in securing WMNs. This paper presents a new matrix based pairwise key establishment scheme. Mesh client in our scheme only needs to prestore a key seed, which can be used to generate a column of secret matrix. It can establish pairwise keys with other clients after mesh routers broadcast public matrices. Our scheme is motivated by the fact that in WMNs, mesh routers are more powerful than mesh clients, both in computation and communication. Besides, we employ the pre deployment knowledge to reduce the computational cost of mesh clients. Security and complexity analysis show that the new scheme possesses several desirable features: 1) neighbor mesh clients can directly establish pairwise keys; 2) the newscheme is updatable, scalable, and robust against node capture attacks; and 3) communication and storage costs at mesh clients are signifcantly reduced.</p

Clawback Adoptions and Management Earnings Forecasts

We examine the relation between voluntary clawback adoptions in the US and firms’ propensity to issue earnings forecasts and the frequency of such forecasts. We find that clawback adoptions are followed by an increase in the likelihood and frequency of managers issuing earnings forecasts. Further, we find this relation to hold only for firms with an actual increase in financial reporting quality following clawback adoption. We also observe a greater increase in the likelihood and frequency of management forecasts in the post-adoption period among adopters having higher ex-ante information asymmetry. Our results suggest that the improved financial reporting quality following clawback adoptions increases the verifiability (and credibility) of earnings forecasts making them more likely to be used. Our findings are of potential interest to regulators and investors in the US (and elsewhere) interested in the outcomes associated with clawback adoptions for firms’ information environment. In particular, now that clawback adoptions are mandatory (SEC, 2022) our findings suggest that the benefits associated with clawback adoptions may be expected only for a subset of (rather than all) companies subject to the mandate

Characterization of CwlC, an autolysin, and its role in mother cell lysis of Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis

Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis (Bti) has been proven to efficiently control mosquitoes, of which many species are important vectors of human disease. The larvicidal action is attributed to the parasporal crystals formed in the sporulating cells and released upon cell autolysis. In this study, a sporulation-specific cwlC gene that encodes an N-acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine amidase was characterized in Bti strain Bt-59. CwlC was the only cell wall hydrolase in Bti found to contain both MurNAc-LAA and Amidase02_C domains. A recombinant CwlC-His protein was able to digest the Bacillus cell wall. Deletion of the cwlC gene delayed Bti mother cell lysis without impacting vegetative growth or insecticidal efficacy. Transcriptional analyses indicated that cwlC was expressed at the late sporulation stage and was controlled by SigK. Two other cell wall hydrolase genes, cwlB and cwlE, with high expression levels at T14 in Bt-59, were also identified. Like cwlC, cwlB expression was controlled by SigK; in contrast, cwlE was found not to be under the control of this sigma factor and unlike the other two, its gene was found to be plasmid encoded

Local Surveillance of the COVID-19 Outbreak

Given the worldwide pandemic of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its continuing threat brought by the emergence of virus variants, there are great demands for accurate surveillance and monitoring of outbreaks. A valuable metric for assessing the current risk posed by an outbreak is the time-varying reproduction number ((Formula presented.)). Several methods have been proposed to estimate (Formula presented.) using different types of data. We developed a new tool that integrated two commonly used approaches into a unified and user-friendly platform for the estimation of time-varying reproduction numbers. This tool allows users to perform simulations and yield real-time tracking of local epidemic of COVID-19 with an R package

Bacillus Coagulans Enhance the Immune Function of the Intestinal Mucosa of Yellow Broilers

<div><p>ABSTRACT This experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of Bacillus coagulans on the growth performance and immune functions of the intestinal mucosa of yellow broilers. Three hundred and sixty one-day-old yellow chicks were randomly allocated to four treatments groups with six replicates of 15 chicks each. The broilers were randomly subjected to one of the following treatments for 28 days: control group (group1, fed a basal diet) and three treatments (group 2, 3, 4) fed the basal diet supplemented with 100, 200, or 300 mg/kg Bacillus coagulans , respectively). The results showed that for 28 days, compared with the control diet, the dietary addition of 200 mg/kg Bacillus coagulans significantly decreased the feed/gain ratio (F/G) (p<0.05), improved the thymus index, spleen index and bursa index (p<0.05), increased the villus height to crypt depth ratio (V/C) in the duodenum (p<0.05), increased the number of secretory immunoglobulin (sIgA) positive cells ( p<0.05). The dietary addition of 200 mg/kg Bacillus coagulans promoted a significant increase in Lactobacillus spp. populations and suppressed Escherichia coli replication in cecum, compared with the control (p<0.05). Moreover, the dietary addition of 200 mg/kg Bacillus coagulans also significantly enhanced the levels of interferon alpha (IFNα), toll-like receptor (TLR3), and melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5(MDA5) in the duodenum (p<0.05). In conclusion, the dietary addition of Bacillus coagulans significantly improved broiler performance, and enhanced the intestinal mucosal barrier and immune function. The optimal dosage of Bacillus coagulans for yellow broilers was determined as 2×108 cfu/kg.</p></div

Hydrogen liquefaction and storage: Recent progress and perspectives

The global energy sector accounts for ∼75% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Low-carbon energy carriers, such as hydrogen, are seen as necessary to enable an energy transition away from the current fossil-derived energy paradigm. Thus, the hydrogen economy concept is a key part of decarbonizing the global energy system. Hydrogen storage and transport are two of key elements of hydrogen economy. Hydrogen can be stored in various forms, including its gaseous, liquid, and solid states, as well as derived chemical molecules. Among these, liquid hydrogen, due to its high energy density, ambient storage pressure, high hydrogen purity (no contamination risks), and mature technology (stationary liquid hydrogen storage), is suitable for the transport of large-volumes of hydrogen over long distances and has gained increased attention in recent years. However, there are critical obstacles to the development of liquid hydrogen systems, namely an energy intensive liquefaction process (∼13.8 kWh/kgLH2) and high hydrogen boil-off losses (liquid hydrogen evaporation during storage, 1–5% per day). This review focuses on the current state of technology development related to the liquid hydrogen supply chain. Hydrogen liquefaction, cryogenic storage technologies, liquid hydrogen transmission methods and liquid hydrogen regasification processes are discussed in terms of current industrial applications and underlying technologies to understand the drivers and barriers for liquid hydrogen to become a commercially viable part of the emerging global hydrogen economy. A key finding of this technical review is that liquid hydrogen can play an important role in the hydrogen economy - as long as necessary technological transport and storage innovations are achieved in parallel to technology demonstrations and market development efforts by countries committed liquid hydrogen as part of their hydrogen strategies.</p

Targeted quantitation of furan fatty acids in edible oils by gas chromatography/triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (GC-TQ/MS)

Furan fatty acids (FuFAs) have been recognized as beneficial food ingredients to human health. Herein, a targeted quantitation approach by gas chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (GC-TQ/MS) was developed for the identification of FuFAs in common marine and other edible oils in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode without any isolation and enrichment. The limit-of-quantitation (LOQ, 0.6 pg) was determined under the optimized parameters in MRM mode. Identification of FuFAs in common edible oils demonstrated that marine fish oils were concentrated sources of 9-(3-methyl-5-pentylfuran-2-yl)nonanoic acid (9M5), 11-(3,4-dimethyl-5-propylfuran-2-yl)undecanoic acid (11D3) and 11-(3,4-dimethyl-5-pentylfuran-2-yl)undecanoic acid (11D5). However, FuFAs were not identified in common plant oils. Additionally, 11D5 was identified in the lipids of Schizochytrium limacinum at a comparable level with that in marine fish oil. We believe that this protocol could facilitate the qualitative and quantitative analysis of FuFAs in food and biological samples