Gendering the transnational. Gender und Medien transnationaler Historiografie im Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée Marseille (MuCEM)

The article examines how national museums currently try to overcome national narratives by focussing on the former ethnological national museum in France, the MuCEM in Marseille. Starting from the observation that ‘general’ national history is male and white, written mainly by white men and marginalizing women’s lives, this article asks whether the opening of national towards transnational museums leads to a deconstruction of hegemonic identity categories like ‘nation’ and ‘gender’. The paper therefore analyzes one selected display from the MuCEM with a focus on the media used to exhibit transnational history

Are voluntary internal controls-related audit report disclosures informative in IPOs?

Initial public offering (IPO) companies are exempt from Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, leaving investors to assess the quality of an IPO company’s internal controls, which affect the quality of management-provided financial information, without an opinion on internal controls effectiveness from management or the external auditor. When not engaged to opine on the effectiveness of internal controls, auditing standards permit auditors to voluntarily state that their opinion does not extend to internal control effectiveness. Given auditors’ limited ability to distinguish financial reporting quality in the unqualified audit report, the costly nature of audit report modifications, and auditors’ litigation risk concerns, these voluntarily audit report disclosures are likely informative as to the quality of internal controls. Using a sample of IPOs completed on United States equity exchanges from 2005 through 2014, I predict and find that the above-mentioned voluntary internal controls-related audit report disclosure is associated with a higher likelihood of post-IPO auditor-reported internal control deficiencies, lower IPO offer prices, lower post-IPO earnings, and increased post-IPO returns-based risk. These associations are robust to addressing the endogenous nature of the auditor’s disclosure decision. Overall, my results suggest that auditor voluntary disclosures are informative. This research should be of interest to investors, regulators tasked with reforming the audit reporting model, and legislators who recently passed Title I of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act that exempts qualifying IPO companies from Section 404(b) reporting requirements for up to five years

Multifactorial diagnostic NIR imaging of CCK2R expressing tumors

AbstractOptical imaging-based diagnostics identify malignancies based on molecular changes instead of morphological criteria in a non-invasive, irradiation free process. The aim of this study was to improve imaging efficiency by the development of a new Cholecystokinin-2-receptor targeted fluorescent peptide that matches the clinical needs regarding biodistribution and pharmacokinetics while displaying superior target specificity. Furthermore we performed multifactorial imaging of Cholecystokinin-2-receptor and tumor metabolism, since simultaneous targeting of various tumor biomarkers could intensely increase tumor identification and characterization. Affinity and specificity of the fluorescent Cholecystokinin-2-receptor targeted minigastrin (dQ-MG-754) were tested in vitro. We conducted in vivo imaging of the dQ-MG-754 probe alone and in a multifactorial approach with a GLUT-1 targeted probe (IR800 2-DG) on subcutaneous xenograft bearing athymic nude mice up to 24 h after intravenous injection (n = 5/group), followed by ex vivo biodistribution analysis and histological examination. We found specific, high affinity binding (Kd = 1.77 nm ± 0.6 nm) of dQ-MG-754 to Cholecystokinin-2-receptor expressing cells and xenografts as well as favorable pharmacokinetics for fluorescence-guided endoscopy. We successfully performed multifactorial imaging for the simultaneous detection of the Cholecystokinin-2-receptor and GLUT-1 targeted probe. Prominent differences in uptake patterns of the two contrast agents could be detected. The results were validated by histological examinations. The multifactorial imaging approach presented in this study could facilitate cancer detection in diagnostic imaging and intraoperative and endoscopic applications. Especially the dQ-MG-754 probe bears great potential for translation to clinical endoscopy imaging, because it combines specific high affinity binding with renal elimination and a favorable biodistribution

Corrigendum: Valenced action/inhibition learning in humans is modulated by a genetic variant linked to dopamine D2 receptor expression

Motivational salience plays an important role in shaping human behavior, but recent studies demonstrate that human performance is not uniformly improved by motivation. Instead, action has been shown to dominate valence in motivated tasks, and it is particularly difficult for humans to learn the inhibition of an action to obtain a reward, but the neural mechanism behind this behavioral specificity is yet unclear. In all mammals, including humans, the monoamine neurotransmitter dopamine is particularly important in the neural manifestation of appetitively motivated behavior, and the human dopamine system is subject to considerable genetic variability. The well-studied TaqIA restriction fragment length polymorphism (rs1800497) has previously been shown to affect striatal dopamine metabolism. In this study we investigated a potential effect of this genetic variation on motivated action/inhibition learning. Two independent cohorts consisting of 87 and 95 healthy participants, respectively, were tested using the previously described valenced go/no-go learning paradigm in which participants learned the reward-associated no-go condition significantly worse than all other conditions. This effect was modulated by the TaqIA polymorphism, with carriers of the A1 allele showing a diminished learning-related performance enhancement in the rewarded no-go condition compared to the A2 homozygotes. This result highlights a modulatory role for genetic variability of the dopaminergic system in individual learning differences of action-valence interaction