202 research outputs found
"Dark Matter: Some Reflections on the Current Account Debate"
The United States has a large and persistent current account deficit. Yet, U.S.'s income receipts from the rest of the world have exceeded its income payments to the rest of the world for many years. This appears to be paradoxical because for a country with a negative net foreign assets position, such as the U.S., international income payments to the rest of the world are likely to exceed its international income receipts. Hausmann and Sturzenegger (2005) offer an explanation of this apparent paradox. They argue that U.S. current account statistics do not properly measure U.S.'s net foreign assets position and that its actual net foreign assets position is measurably better than the officially estimated position primarily due to the existence of intangible corporate capital invested overseas. In their view the debate about the sustainability of the U.S. current account deficit and the negative net foreign assets position is moot because these deficits and debts are either non-existent or fairly small. This paper critically evaluates Hausmann et al's claims and examines the implications of their hypothesis. It offers, within an analytical framework, alternative explanations that are more consistent with the stylized facts.
Regulatory Change and the Quality of Compliance to Mandatory Disclosure Requirements: Evidence from Bangladesh
The present study investigates the effectiveness of changes in the regulatory environment on the
quality of compliance to mandatory disclosure requirements in Bangladesh. Statistical analysis of the
Mandatory Disclosure Index, as developed in this paper using annual reports of the exchangelisted
firms
before and after the changes in the regulatory environment, shows a significant improvement in the quality
of compliance during the more regulated time period. The size of the firm, the qualification of its
accounting staff that prepares financial statements and the reputation of its auditing firm have significant
positive impact on the quality of compliance. The analysis presented in the study point to two additional
important findings: lack of profitability of the firm does not seem to affect the quality of its compliance,
and the performance of domestic firms are at par with foreign affiliated firms as far as the quality of the
compliance is concerned. The findings reported in the present study lend support to the conventional
notion that well packaged and timed regulations can foster sustainable development in the overall reporting
environment of a country
Robust Zero-crossings Detection in Noisy Signals using Topological Signal Processing
We explore a novel application of zero-dimensional persistent homology from
Topological Data Analysis (TDA) for bracketing zero-crossings of both
one-dimensional continuous functions, and uniformly sampled time series. We
present an algorithm and show its robustness in the presence of noise for a
range of sampling frequencies. In comparison to state-of-the-art software-based
methods for finding zeros of a time series, our method generally converges
faster, provides higher accuracy, and is capable of finding all the roots in a
given interval instead of converging only to one of them. We also present and
compare options for automatically setting the persistence threshold parameter
that influences the accurate bracketing of the roots
Watertight and 2-Manifold Surface Meshes Using Dual Contouring With Tetrahedral Decomposition of Grid Cubes
The Dual Contouring algorithm (DC) is a grid-based process used to generate surface meshes from volumetric data. The advantage of DC is that it can reproduce sharp features by inserting vertices anywhere inside the grid cube, as opposed to the Marching Cubes (MC) algorithm that can insert vertices only on the grid edges. However, DC is unable to guarantee 2-manifold and watertight meshes due to the fact that it produces only one vertex for each grid cube. We present a modified Dual Contouring algorithm that is capable of overcoming this limitation. Our method decomposes an ambiguous grid cube into a maximum of twelve tetrahedral cells; we introduce novel polygon generation rules that produce 2-manifold and watertight surface meshes. We have applied our proposed method on realistic data, and a comparison of the results of our proposed method with results from traditional DC shows the effectiveness of our method
Correlation Between Previous Caesarean Section and Adverse Maternal Outcomes Accordingly With Robson Classification: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Background: The increasing rates of Caesarean section (CS) beyond the WHO standards (10–15%) pose a significant global health concern. Objective: Systematic review and meta-analysis to identify an association between CS history and maternal adverse outcomes for the subsequent pregnancy and delivery among women classified in Robson classification (RC). Search Strategy: PubMed/Medline, EbscoHost, ProQuest, Embase, Web of Science, BIOSIS, MEDLINE, and Russian Science Citation Index databases were searched from 2008 to 2018. Selection Criteria: Based on Robson classification, studies reporting one or more of the 14 adverse maternal outcomes were considered eligible for this review. Data Collection: Study design data, interventions used, CS history, and adverse maternal outcomes were extracted. Main Results: From 4,084 studies, 28 (n = 1,524,695 women) met the inclusion criteria. RC group 5 showed the highest proportion among deliveries followed by RC10, RC7, and RC8 (67.71, 32.27, 0.02, and 0.001%). Among adverse maternal outcomes, hysterectomy had the highest association after preterm delivery OR = 3.39 (95% CI 1.56–7.36), followed by Severe Maternal Outcomes OR = 2.95 (95% CI 1.00–8.67). We identified over one and a half million pregnant women, of whom the majority were found to belong to RC group 5. Conclusions: Previous CS was observed to be associated with adverse maternal outcomes for the subsequent pregnancies. CS rates need to be monitored given the prospective risks which may occur for maternal and child health in subsequent births
Climate Data Empathy
In the era of climate services, which provide globally complete data products in a ready-to-use form, the context of climate data is in danger of being neglected or forgotten. However, the historical and present-day context imprinted on this climate data is important in its own right. The data depend on political, economic and technological factors, as we show with a range of data coverage maps. We term awareness of and sensitivity to this context-dependence “climate data empathy,” and argue that context should be seen as a source of information to be communicated along with the data. Such context not only provides additional information about the data products, but may help in designing communication
strategies and contribute more generally to raising awareness of the contingency of environmental data. Decision making should thus make use of both climate data and its context
Faecalibacterium prausnitzii A2-165 has a high capacity to induce IL-10 in human and murine dendritic cells and modulates T cell responses
Acknowledgements This work was financially supported by the EC FP7 Cross-talk project (PITN-GA-2008-215553). The authors thank the Histology Platform from GABI research unit and especially Abdelhak Boukadiri for their technical support in the histology sample preparation and Marlène Héry, Charline Pontlevoy, Jerome Pottier and André Tiffoche (UE0907 IERP, Jouy en Josas) for their help during animal experiments. The authors thank Rafael Muñoz-Tamayo (INRA) for his help in performing the PCA.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Dynamic Profiling of β-Coronavirus 3CL Mpro Protease Ligand-Binding Sites
β-coronavirus (CoVs) alone has been responsible for three major global outbreaks in the 21st century. The current crisis has led to an urgent requirement to develop therapeutics. Even though a number of vaccines are available, alternative strategies targeting essential viral components are required as a backup against the emergence of lethal viral variants. One such target is the main protease (Mpro) that plays an indispensable role in viral replication. The availability of over 270 Mpro X-ray structures in complex with inhibitors provides unique insights into ligand-protein interactions. Herein, we provide a comprehensive comparison of all nonredundant ligand-binding sites available for SARS-CoV2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV Mpro. Extensive adaptive sampling has been used to investigate structural conservation of ligand-binding sites using Markov state models (MSMs) and compare conformational dynamics employing convolutional variational auto-encoder-based deep learning. Our results indicate that not all ligand-binding sites are dynamically conserved despite high sequence and structural conservation across β-CoV homologs. This highlights the complexity in targeting all three Mpro enzymes with a single pan inhibitor
Comparison of targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro methods for analysing the lung microbiome
BACKGROUND : Targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro method are two of the many methods that have been used to
study the microbiome. The two methods target different regions of the 16 S rRNA gene. The aim of this study was
to compare targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro methods for the ability to discern the microbial composition of the
lung microbiome of COPD patients.
METHODS : Spontaneously expectorated sputum specimens were collected from COPD patients. Bacterial DNA was
extracted and used for targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro method. The analysis was performed using QIIME2
(targeted metagenomics) and IS-Pro software (IS-Pro method). Additionally, a laboratory cost per isolate and time
analysis was performed for each method.
RESULTS : Statistically significant differences were observed in alpha diversity when targeted metagenomics and ISPro
methods’ data were compared using the Shannon diversity measure (p-value = 0.0006) but not with the
Simpson diversity measure (p-value = 0.84). Distinct clusters with no overlap between the two technologies were
observed for beta diversity. Targeted metagenomics had a lower relative abundance of phyla, such as the
Proteobacteria, and higher relative abundance of phyla, such as Firmicutes when compared to the IS-Pro method.
Haemophilus, Prevotella and Streptococcus were most prevalent genera across both methods. Targeted
metagenomics classified 23 % (144/631) of OTUs to a species level, whereas IS-Pro method classified 86 % (55/64) of
OTUs to a species level. However, unclassified OTUs accounted for a higher relative abundance when using the ISPro
method (35 %) compared to targeted metagenomics (5 %). The two methods performed comparably in terms
of cost and time; however, the IS-Pro method was more user-friendly.
CONCLUSIONS : It is essential to understand the value of different methods for characterisation of the microbiome.
Targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro methods showed differences in ability in identifying and characterising OTUs,
diversity and microbial composition of the lung microbiome. The IS-Pro method might miss relevant species and
could inflate the abundance of Proteobacteria. However, the IS-Pro kit identified most of the important lung pathogens, such as Burkholderia and Pseudomonas and may work in a more diagnostics-orientated setting. Both
methods were comparable in terms of cost and time; however, the IS-Pro method was easier to use.SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: Table S1. Inclusion and exclusion criteria for COPD patients in this study. Table S2. Clinical characteristic of patients. Table S3. Comparison of the number of amplicons and operational taxonomic units for each sample for the targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro methods. Figure S1. Relative abundance of specific phyla in the sputum microbiome of COPD participants as detected by targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro methods (n = 23). The dots represent the different abundances of each sample, according to the different phyla. Phyla that are depicted with a single line on the y-axis were not present in any samples for that method. Figure S2. Bar plots showing the relative abundance of genera in the sputum microbiome of COPD participants as characterised by targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro methods (n = 23). The operational taxonomic units that could not be classified at a genus level are indicated as NA on the graph. Figure S3. The distribution of the unclassified operational taxonomic units (OTUs) at a class level of the sputum microbiome of COPD participants for targeted metagenomics and IS-Pro methods by phyla. At a class level, all the OTUs from targeted metagenomics could be classified.National Health Laboratory Service of South Africa (NHLS) Research Trusthttps://bmcmicrobiol.biomedcentral.comam2022Internal MedicineMedical Microbiolog
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