Board of Directors Monitoring of CEO Insider Trading: Before and After the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

This study investigates the impact monitoring by the board of directors had on the incidence of insider trading by firm chief executive officers (CEO) and on the abnormal returns they realized from 1996 to 2008. The study also analyzes the impact the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) had on this relationship. The results show that CEOs earned significant abnormal returns on their buy and sell trades during this period. Furthermore, the results show that internal governance mechanisms such as board independence and CEO/Chairman duality reduce abnormal return and the intensity of CEOs\u27 insider trades. The results are particularly significant for trades with more significant underlying nonpublic information. The results also show that SOX significantly reduced the abnormal returns and the intensity of CEOs’ insider trades. The results show that SOX weakened the impact of board independence in mitigating CEOs\u27 insider trades, while it increased the impact of the CEO/chairman duality. The results indicate that internal governance mechanisms generally have more pronounced impact on sell trades than on buy trades

Eterično ulje u perzijskoj kadulji, Salvia rhytidea Benth.

Chemical composition of volatile compounds from Salvia rhytidea Benth. was analyzed, for the first time, by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The volatiles were isolated from dried aerial parts of the plant by hydro-distillation. A total yield of 2.0 mg of essential oil per g of plant dry mass was obtained and sixty compounds were identified, representing 98.2% of total volatiles. The essential oil was characterized by a high content of hydrocarbon and oxygenated monoterpenes. The main constituents were p-cymene-8-ol (11.9%), spathulenol (7.3%), pulegone (6.4%), sabinene (5.8%), terpinen-4-ol (5.5%) and alpha-copaene (5.3%).Po prvi put je ispitivan kemijski sastav hlapljivih komponenata iz biljke Salvia rhytidea Benth. plinskom kromatografijom/masenom spektrometrijom. Hlapljivi sastojci su izolirani iz osušenih vršnih dijelova biljke destilacijom vodenom parom. Dobiveno je 2,0 mg eteričnog ulja po gramu suhe biljke, a identificirano je 60 spojeva (98,2% od ukupnih hlapljivih komponenata). Eterično ulje sadrži visoki udio ugljikovodičnih i oksigeniranih monoterpena. Glavni sastojci su p-cimen-8-ol (11,9%), spatulenol (7,3%), pulegon (6,4%), sabinen (5,8%), terpinen-4-ol (5,5%) i alpha-kopaen (5,3%)

Eterično ulje u perzijskoj kadulji, Salvia rhytidea Benth.

Chemical composition of volatile compounds from Salvia rhytidea Benth. was analyzed, for the first time, by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The volatiles were isolated from dried aerial parts of the plant by hydro-distillation. A total yield of 2.0 mg of essential oil per g of plant dry mass was obtained and sixty compounds were identified, representing 98.2% of total volatiles. The essential oil was characterized by a high content of hydrocarbon and oxygenated monoterpenes. The main constituents were p-cymene-8-ol (11.9%), spathulenol (7.3%), pulegone (6.4%), sabinene (5.8%), terpinen-4-ol (5.5%) and alpha-copaene (5.3%).Po prvi put je ispitivan kemijski sastav hlapljivih komponenata iz biljke Salvia rhytidea Benth. plinskom kromatografijom/masenom spektrometrijom. Hlapljivi sastojci su izolirani iz osušenih vršnih dijelova biljke destilacijom vodenom parom. Dobiveno je 2,0 mg eteričnog ulja po gramu suhe biljke, a identificirano je 60 spojeva (98,2% od ukupnih hlapljivih komponenata). Eterično ulje sadrži visoki udio ugljikovodičnih i oksigeniranih monoterpena. Glavni sastojci su p-cimen-8-ol (11,9%), spatulenol (7,3%), pulegon (6,4%), sabinen (5,8%), terpinen-4-ol (5,5%) i alpha-kopaen (5,3%)

Robust Design of Supply Network Subject to Disruptions by Considering Congestion Effects

This thesis is focused on the supply chain disruptions and it reviews cost-efficient risk mitigation strategies to sustain supply chain functionality when disruptions occur. In particular, we study the robust design of supply flow subject to minor operational risks and major disruptions. The contingent sourcing along with strategic stock is incorporated as risk management strategies. We consider a firm with two suppliers where the main supplier is cost-effective but prone to disruptions and the back-up supplier is reliable but expensive. The back-up supplier can scale up its capacity according to a speed related to its configuration in order to supply the required flow of material when the main supplier disrupts. When minor disruption occurs, the strategic stock can cover the losses. The design problem considered is to determine optimal strategic stock level and response speed of volume-flexible back-up supplier. The back-up supplier might not provide the required supply level instantaneously due to non-steady production state and congestion during the response time. Therefore, there could be material shortages if the actual level of available capacity during the response time is ignored. The first chapter includes the incorporation of the clearing function into a contingency capacity planning model in order to represent the impact of congestion. The appropriate response speed is selected through a decision tree analysis considering different attitudes of the decision maker towards risk. The results show that considering congestion impact is especially critical for risk-neutral decision makers. The second chapter considers the randomness associated with the available capacity through a two-stage robust optimization model. The results show improvement in the quality of optimal solution by considering the randomness. The objective in the third chapter is to find an equitable solution which has an efficient performance with respect to all plausible scenarios. Therefore, the Ordered Weighted Averaging aggregation operator is incorporated in the objective function of a MIP robust model. In order to address the computational complexity associated with large set of scenarios, a novel clustering based scenario reduction model based on location covering model is proposed. The results show that the proposed methodology provide an accurate reduced scenario set within relatively short computational time

Comparison of effectiveness and safety of labetalol and hydralazine on blood pressure during cataract surgery in patients with hypertension

Introduction: Cataract surgery is one of the most commonlyperformed surgeries, and patients over the age of60 are major candidates for this procedure. Hypertensionis one of the most commonly reported diseases in this agegroup. Since hypertension is associated with poor surgeryoutcomes, it is important to find appropriate medicationsfor controlling the optimal blood pressure of patients.Therefore, the present study aimed to compare the effectof labetalol and hydralazine on blood pressure duringcataract surgery.Materials and Methods: A total of 63 patients undergoingcataract surgery in 2014-2015 were enrolled in thisclinical trial, and randomly assigned to the hydralazinegroup (n=30) and the labetalol group (n=33). Systolic,diastolic, and mean arterial blood pressure and heart ratewere recorded at 0, 5, 10, and 15 minutes.Findings: Changes in the heart rate were similar in bothgroups and had an increasing trend from baseline to 15minutes. In terms of changes in blood pressure after druginjection, labetalol resulted in a more rapid decrease in systolic,diastolic, and mean arterial blood pressures than hydralazine,so that their values were significantly lower in thelabetalol group than the hydralazine group after 5 minutes.Conclusion: Both labetalol and hydralazine seem to besuitable for controlling blood pressure during surgery.However, the more rapid effect of labetalol than hydralazineon lowering blood pressure and the reflex tachycardia,observed most often with hydralazine, should be consideredwhen selecting them

Deep Learning Model With Adaptive Regularization for EEG-Based Emotion Recognition Using Temporal and Frequency Features

Since EEG signal acquisition is non-invasive and portable, it is convenient to be used for different applications. Recognizing emotions based on Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is an important active BCI paradigm for recognizing the inner state of persons. There are extensive studies about emotion recognition, most of which heavily rely on staged complex handcrafted EEG feature extraction and classifier design. In this paper, we propose a hybrid multi-input deep model with convolution neural networks (CNNs) and bidirectional Long Short-term Memory (Bi-LSTM). CNNs extract time-invariant features from raw EEG data, and Bi-LSTM allows long-range lateral interactions between features. First, we propose a novel hybrid multi-input deep learning approach for emotion recognition from raw EEG signals. Second, in the first layers, we use two CNNs with small and large filter sizes to extract temporal and frequency features from each raw EEG epoch of 62-channel 2-s and merge with differential entropy of EEG band. Third, we apply the adaptive regularization method over each parallel CNN’s layer to consider the spatial information of EEG acquisition electrodes. The proposed method is evaluated on two public datasets, SEED and DEAP. Our results show that our technique can significantly improve the accuracy in comparison with the baseline where no adaptive regularization techniques are used

High Risk Situations Predicting Relapse in Self-Referred Addicts to Bushehr Province Substance Abuse Treatment Centers

Background: Relapse prevention is a medical intervention designed for educating cognitive and behavioral skills to avoid continued drug abuse and relapse. Objectives: This study examined high risk situations for relapse for self-referred addicts are related in Bushehr province substance abuse treatment centers. Patients and Methods: The present study is descriptive cross-sectional. The sample size consisted of 609 self-referred addicts to Bushehr province substance abuse centers. IDTS Marlatt questionnaire was used. Analytical and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: The findings showed that 73.1% of addicts have used substance during the past 12 months, and 72% have experienced a full relapse. Unpleasant emotions and physical discomfort was the most important reason for relapse and testing personal control and pleasure emotions the least important reason. Interpersonal factors have also a great role in this regard. Conclusions: Considering the high rates of relapse, more attention should be paid to reasons for relapse. It seems necessary that both clinical and psychological approaches would be undertaken simultaneousl

Pollution Load Assessment in the Soil and Water Resources: A Case Study in Karun River Drainage Basin, Southwest of Iran

Agricultural, industrial and urban waste discharges along with natural factors such as drought conditions are the main cause of decline in soil and water resources quality.  Karun and Dez rivers, the largest drainage basin in the southwest region of Iran, are an important components in the climate system, and play a key role in human health and life of the study area. The issue has grown in importance in recent developments in sectors of agriculture, industry and urban that it has considerably affected water quality and increased contamination loads to the rivers. The aim of this paper is to determine and assess the contamination status and pollution loads to the studied rivers. The main issues addressed in this paper are pollution loads of: a) Agricultural drainage, b) urban wastewaters, and c) industrial wastewaters. A total of 284 samples consist of 24 sources of agricultural drainages outlet, 9 sources of industrial wastewaters discharges, 38 sources of urban wastewaters discharges were collected during four times in 2013-14 in an attempt to make each season one sample. 15 physical and chemical parameters including flow rate, COD, PO4, BOD, DO, NO3, NH3, TSS, pH, EC, TDS, Total Coliform, Fecal Coliform, Cl-1 and SO4-2 were determined for each sample. Results showed that agricultural activities had the higher risk of degrading the quality of soil and water resources in Khuzestan Plain and Karun basin in salinity and increased load of soluble salts (TDS).The Agricultural drainages, with the capacity of 2,375×106 m3.yr-1, and a salt pollution load of 11,862×103 kg.d-1 had the greatest contribution among pollutants. Dez River in Haft-Tapeh region with the 285×103 kg.d-1 of organic pollution based on chemical oxygen demand (COD) being discharged by the sugarcane industries subsidiaries, such as KaghazPars and Harir, is considered sensitive and vulnerable regarding natural self-purification. Results show that Ahvaz, by discharging 400×103 m3.d-1 of urban wastewater to Karun River, from the gateway to the southern end of the city, is one of the major centers of organic pollution based on biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and ammonia and microbial pollution loads