415 research outputs found
Essays in Corporate Finance
Thesis advisor: Philip E. StrahanThe first essay of this dissertation measures the real effect of increases in local deposit supply on local economic outcomes. To identify this effect, I use exogenous variation in local deposit supply from oil and natural gas shale discoveries. A change in deposit supply should have its largest effect on areas where credit supply frictions are the strongest. I find that the effect is strongest in areas dominated by small banks. The second essay analyzes the investment policies of public and private natural gas firms, and is joint work with Jérôme Taillard. We find that privately held firms are 60% less responsive to natural gas price changes than publicly traded firms. Additionally, we find that private firms do not respond to new shale investment opportunities, whereas public firms do. We believe these results are consistent with private firms having a higher cost of external capital. The third essay empirically tests whether firms increase risk taking activity when they are close to distress due to the risk taking incentives of equity-holders. I find that firms actually reduce risk taking when they are close to distress, and in the years prior to bankruptcy. This evidence suggests that risk reduction incentives may be more important for the average firm as it gets close to distress.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014.Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management.Discipline: Finance
Circulating microRNAs Reveal Time Course of Organ Injury in a Porcine Model of Acetaminophen-Induced Acute Liver Failure
Acute liver failure is a rare but catastrophic condition which can progress rapidly to multi-organ failure. Studies investigating the onset of individual organ injury such as the liver, kidneys and brain during the evolution of acute liver failure, are lacking. MicroRNAs are short, non-coding strands of RNA that are released into the circulation following tissue injury. In this study, we have characterised the release of both global microRNA and specific microRNA species into the plasma using a porcine model of acetaminophen-induced acute liver failure. Pigs were induced to acute liver failure with oral acetaminophen over 19h±2h and death occurred 13h±3h thereafter. Global microRNA concentrations increased 4h prior to acute liver failure in plasma (P<0.0001) but not in isolated exosomes, and were associated with increasing plasma levels of the damage-associated molecular pattern molecule, genomic DNA (P<0.0001). MiR122 increased around the time of onset of acute liver failure (P<0.0001) and was associated with increasing international normalised ratio (P<0.0001). MiR192 increased 8h after acute liver failure (P<0.0001) and was associated with increasing creatinine (P<0.0001). The increase in miR124-1 occurred concurrent with the pre-terminal increase in intracranial pressure (P<0.0001) and was associated with decreasing cerebral perfusion pressure (P<0.002)
The T2K ND280 Off-Axis Pi-Zero Detector
The Pi-Zero detector (P{\O}D) is one of the subdetectors that makes up the
off-axis near detector for the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) long baseline neutrino
experiment. The primary goal for the P{\O}D is to measure the relevant cross
sections for neutrino interactions that generate pi-zero's, especially the
cross section for neutral current pi-zero interactions, which are one of the
dominant sources of background to the electron neutrino appearance signal in
T2K. The P{\O}D is composed of layers of plastic scintillator alternating with
water bags and brass sheets or lead sheets and is one of the first detectors to
use Multi-Pixel Photon Counters (MPPCs) on a large scale.Comment: 17 pages, submitted to NIM
- …