Expense or Capitalize R&D – SFAS 2 Revisited

FASB’s Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 2 requires that most of the expenditures incurred in Research and Development Activity be expensed in the period incurred. Expensing a long term asset understates assets and understates true income for a firm in the period, and if R&D activity is material then the users of financial statements are misled into making non-optimal decisions regarding investment and lending to such firms. This paper presents arguments for recording of R&D expenditures as creation of an asset and suggests time periods over which this asset may be amortized. Cross-lagged panel technique is used to infer the direction of causality. Keywords: Research and Development, causality, cross-lagged pane

Investigating the effect of a 3D physical microenvironment on hepatocyte structure, function, and adhesion signalling

Presenting cells with a two -dimensional (2D) substrate, as is the case with traditional cell culture, causes them to aberrantly flatten out, and lose their characteristic cell shape. With the case of liver cells, their cuboidal cell shape is vital to cell -specific functions, such as xenobiotic metabolism. Accordingly, culturing hepatocytes in 2D may produce results that do not accurately reflect the behavior of such cells in-vivo. Cells in vivo are in constant contact with the ECM across three dimensions whereas culturing cells in 2D monolayers will alter the geometry of the cell leading to cytoskeletal remodeling and aberrant polarisation. As the cytoskeleton is physically and biochemically linked to the nucleus, this change in cell shape will in turn change the gene expression profile of the cell, leading to differences in cell behaviours such as proliferation, differentiation, and tissue -specific function. Mammalian cells respond to changes in the chemical composition and dimensionality of their microenvironment through complex signalling events at adhesion sites along their membrane. Changes in the microenvironment can result in up/down regulation of integrins, and changes in signalling downstream of adhesion. Using a commercially available highly porous polystyrene scaffold, a method was developed to propagate cells continually in 3D. This model has been used to analyse how long -term growth under 3D conditions affects cytoskeletal organisation and whether adhesion signalling differs between 2D and 3D maintained cells. Cells maintained in 3D show significant cytoskeletal re - organisation and significant changes in cell morphology. 3D maintained cells generally adopt a more physiological morphology than 2D counterparts. These changes are amplified the longer the cells are maintained and propagated in 3D. In addition, these cells show a significant decrease in the phosphorylation of Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) and higher levels of α5β1.The differences in morphology and adhesion signaling between 2D and 3D maintained cells appear to lead to enhanced hepatic functionality. Under the conditions tested, 3D maintained HepG2s showed higher drug resistance to model xenobiotics, as well as generally higher levels of albumin, urea and glucose metabolism. 2D and 3D maintained cells also showed different levels of gene expression of key metabolic enzymes. As such, it could be argued that 3D propagation results in cells in vitro more closely reflecting the activity of their counterparts in vivo

Explainable Text Classification in Legal Document Review A Case Study of Explainable Predictive Coding

In today's legal environment, lawsuits and regulatory investigations require companies to embark upon increasingly intensive data-focused engagements to identify, collect and analyze large quantities of data. When documents are staged for review the process can require companies to dedicate an extraordinary level of resources, both with respect to human resources, but also with respect to the use of technology-based techniques to intelligently sift through data. For several years, attorneys have been using a variety of tools to conduct this exercise, and most recently, they are accepting the use of machine learning techniques like text classification to efficiently cull massive volumes of data to identify responsive documents for use in these matters. In recent years, a group of AI and Machine Learning researchers have been actively researching Explainable AI. In an explainable AI system, actions or decisions are human understandable. In typical legal `document review' scenarios, a document can be identified as responsive, as long as one or more of the text snippets in a document are deemed responsive. In these scenarios, if predictive coding can be used to locate these responsive snippets, then attorneys could easily evaluate the model's document classification decision. When deployed with defined and explainable results, predictive coding can drastically enhance the overall quality and speed of the document review process by reducing the time it takes to review documents. The authors of this paper propose the concept of explainable predictive coding and simple explainable predictive coding methods to locate responsive snippets within responsive documents. We also report our preliminary experimental results using the data from an actual legal matter that entailed this type of document review.Comment: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Dat

Placental changes in hypertensive pregnancy: a comparison with normotensive pregnancy

Background: Hypertensive pregnancy may be responsible for vascular damage, enhanced systemic inflammation and insulin resistance in the placenta as oxygen and nutrient transfer is impaired and oxidative stress is generated affecting the placental growth and development. Placental growth pattern in hypertensive pregnancies shows a variable pattern owing to placental insufficiency. Present study was done to investigate the morphological and histological changes in placenta in hypertensive pregnancy.Methods: A total of 42 pregnant women with hypertensive disorder with gestational age 28-42 weeks and singleton pregnancy were enrolled as cases in the study. A total of 42 matched normotensive pregnant women were enrolled as controls. All the women were followed up till delivery. At delivery, placental specimen were collected and assessed for morphological, morphometric and histological changes. Findings were compared with normotensives. Data was compared using Independent sample’s ‘t’-test and Chi-square test.Results: Mean age of cases was 27.60±4.37 years, majority were gravida 1/2 (66.7%), 45.2% had moderate to severe edema, 50% had urinary albumin levels >100 mg/dl. A total of 8 (19.0%) had gestational hypertension, 16 (38.1%) had preeclampsia, 10 (23.8%) had severe preeclampsia and 8 (19.0%) had eclampsia. Mean placental weight and diameter of cases was significantly higher than that of control group. Mean placental thickness was also higher but difference was not significant statistically. Calcification, infarction and hematoma were seen in 45.2%, 16.7% and 11.9% of cases as compared to 28.6%, 4.97% and 0% of controls. Histologically, syncytial knots, cytotrophoblastic cellular proliferation, hyalinized area, proliferation of medium sized blood vessels, stromal fibrosis and fibrinoid necrosis in significantly higher proportion of cass as compared to controls (p<0.05). Mean fetoplacental ratio was 5.01±0.99 and 5.24±0.61 in controls (p=0.195).Conclusions: Hypertension during pregnancy affects the placental growth and development

Predicting invasive breast cancer versus DCIS in different age groups.

BackgroundIncreasing focus on potentially unnecessary diagnosis and treatment of certain breast cancers prompted our investigation of whether clinical and mammographic features predictive of invasive breast cancer versus ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) differ by age.MethodsWe analyzed 1,475 malignant breast biopsies, 1,063 invasive and 412 DCIS, from 35,871 prospectively collected consecutive diagnostic mammograms interpreted at University of California, San Francisco between 1/6/1997 and 6/29/2007. We constructed three logistic regression models to predict the probability of invasive cancer versus DCIS for the following groups: women ≥ 65 (older group), women 50-64 (middle age group), and women &lt; 50 (younger group). We identified significant predictors and measured the performance in all models using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC).ResultsThe models for older and the middle age groups performed significantly better than the model for younger group (AUC = 0.848 vs, 0.778; p = 0.049 and AUC = 0.851 vs, 0.778; p = 0.022, respectively). Palpability and principal mammographic finding were significant predictors in distinguishing invasive from DCIS in all age groups. Family history of breast cancer, mass shape and mass margins were significant positive predictors of invasive cancer in the older group whereas calcification distribution was a negative predictor of invasive cancer (i.e. predicted DCIS). In the middle age group--mass margins, and in the younger group--mass size were positive predictors of invasive cancer.ConclusionsClinical and mammographic finding features predict invasive breast cancer versus DCIS better in older women than younger women. Specific predictive variables differ based on age

Scar endometriosis: not a rarity now a day

Endometriosis at the site of previous surgery scar is much on the rise now-a-days mainly due to increased rate of caesarean sections. Generally, it presents as a triad of underlying mass at the incision site, cyclical menstrual scar pain with or without discharge from scar site, and history of previous gynecological or obstetric surgery leads to the preoperative diagnosis. In rare cases, the clinical presentation is atypical, and diagnosis is mad after surgical excision. Here we discuss a case of scar endometriosis that presented to us with complaint of greenish coloured discharge from a lesion below the primary scar site 5 years after the primary surgery. Through this article, authors wish to discuss the etiology, management and preventive measures for scar endometriosis