The Impact on U.K. Acquirers of Domestic, Cross-border, Public and Private Acquisitions

We examine the announcement and post-acquisition share returns of 4,000 acquisitions by U.K. public firms during 1984-1998. We include acquisitions of domestic and cross-border targets, and of both publicly quoted and privately held targets. In acquisitions of domestic public targets, abnormal returns are negative over both the announcement and post-acquisition period. In acquisitions of cross-border public targets, abnormal returns are zero over the announcement period but negative over the post-acquisition period. In contrast, acquisitions of both domestic and cross-border private targets result in positive announcement returns and zero long run returns. The main difference between private and public acquisitions is that glamour acquirers experience negative announcement and long run returns in public acquisitions, whereas glamour acquirers do not under-perform in private acquisitions. Furthermore, whereas the under-performance of domestic public acquisitions is limited to acquirers using non-cash methods of payment, acquirers of domestic private targets that use non-cash methods do not under-perform. Overall, cross-border acquisitions result in lower announcement and long run returns than domestic acquisitions. In cross-border acquisitions involving high?tech firms both announcement and long run returns are positive, whilst non-high-tech cross-border acquisitions experience zero announcement returns followed by negative long run performance. Our results also suggest that, in cross-border acquisitions, the national cultural difference between the bidder and target countries has a significantly negative impact on long run returns. This paper replaces WP214.Mergers and acquisitions; acquirer share returns; Cross-border targets; private targets

Radiative Tau Lepton Pair Production as a Probe of Anomalous Electromagnetic Couplings of the Tau

We calculate the squared matrix element for the process e+ e- --> tau+ tau- gamma allowing for anomalous magnetic and electric dipole moments at the tau tau gamma vertex. No interferences are neglected and no approximations of light fermion masses are made. We show that anomalous moments affect not only the cross section, but also the shape of the photon energy and angular distributions. We also demonstrate that in the case of the anomalous magnetic dipole moment, the contribution from interference involving Standard Model and anomalous amplitudes is significant compared to the contribution from anomalous amplitudes alone. A program to perform the calculation is available and it may be employed as a Monte Carlo generator.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures submitted to Nuclear Physics

Seminoma of Testis Masquerading as Orchitis in an Adult with Paraplegia: Proposed Measures to Avoid Delay in Diagnosing Testicular Tumours in Spinal Cord Injury Patients

Orchitis is common in adult male spinal cord injury (SCI) patients and, therefore, both health professionals and SCI patients themselves tend to attribute testicular swelling to orchitis, with a consequent potential delay in the diagnosis of testicular tumours. A 37-year-old man with paraplegia developed swelling of the right testis. With a presumptive diagnosis of acute bacterial orchitis, he was prescribed ciprofloxacin while awaiting an ultrasound scan. Ultrasound examination of the testis 4 weeks later showed a moderate hydrocele, enlargement and altered echogenicity of both the epididymis and testis, and features of mass-like lesions within the substance of the testis. As these changes might merely have represented a partly treated infection, a follow-up scan was carried out 2 weeks later, which revealed a lobulated mass of mixed echogenicity within the testis and a focal area of increased echogenicity indicative of calcification. A radical orchidectomy performed 19 days later revealed a seminoma. To prevent delay in the diagnosis of testicular tumours in SCI patients, we propose the following measures: (1) patients who develop swelling of the testis should consult a physician as soon as possible for clinical examination; blind antibiotic therapy should be avoided if possible; (2) if clinical examination reveals a hard swelling of the testis and the typical features of acute urinary infection are absent, an ultrasound scan of the scrotum should be performed as soon as possible; (3) in patients with equivocal ultrasound findings, ultrasound-guided, fine-needle aspiration cytology may allow an early diagnosis of testicular malignancy; (4) education of SCI patients and their caregivers is needed to implement these recommendations

Draft genome sequence of Pseudomonas moraviensis R28-S

We report the draft genome sequence of Pseudomonas moraviensis R28-S, isolated from the municipal wastewater treatment plant of Moscow, ID. The strain carries a native mercury resistance plasmid, poorly maintains introduced IncP-1 antibiotic resistance plasmids, and has been useful for studying the evolution of plasmid host range and stability

Cloning of rat GADD45 gene and induction analysis following ionizing radiation in vivo

AbstractA gene encoded GADD45 was isolated from rat and revealed four exons along with a p53 binding consensus sequence and a putative AP-1 site in the third intron. This suggests that the rat GADD45 gene is also involved in the p53 signal pathway related to the G1 cell cycle checkpoint. The rat GADD45 mRNA was induced within 30 min in liver and increased as a function of γ-irradiation. We found that mRNA expression differed substantially in a variety of tissues (brain, liver, kidney, and spleen). The finding of in vivo induction of GADD45 gene may provide insight into the role of GADD45 gene in DNA repair

Mutations in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 reverse transcriptase that make it sensitive to degradation by the viral protease in virions are selected against in patients

AbstractMutations in the thumb subdomain of reverse transcriptase (RT) of HIV-1 can cause this enzyme to be degraded in virions by the viral protease (PR). Many of these mutations confer a temperature-sensitive phenotype on RT and viral replication. The degradation of RT by PR appears to take place after Gag-Pol has been processed. We show here that mutations in other parts of RT, including the RNase H domain, can make RT PR-sensitive and temperature-sensitive. These data explain why some mutations in the RNase H domain, which had little or no effect on the polymerase activity of purified recombinant RT, had a profound effect on viral titer. Because the PR-sensitive phenotype significantly reduced viral titer, we previously suggested that these mutations would be selected against in patients. We also show that RT mutations that are known to confer a temperature sensitive phenotype are rarely found in the Stanford database

Characterizing the transition from diffuse atomic to dense molecular clouds in the Magellanic clouds with [CII], [CI], and CO

We present and analyze deep Herschel/HIFI observations of the [CII] 158um, [CI] 609um, and [CI] 370um lines towards 54 lines-of-sight (LOS) in the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. These observations are used to determine the physical conditions of the line--emitting gas, which we use to study the transition from atomic to molecular gas and from C^+ to C^0 to CO in their low metallicity environments. We trace gas with molecular fractions in the range 0.1<f(H2)<1, between those in the diffuse H2 gas detected by UV absorption (f(H2)<0.2) and well shielded regions in which hydrogen is essentially completely molecular. The C^0 and CO column densities are only measurable in regions with molecular fractions f(H2)>0.45 in both the LMC and SMC. Ionized carbon is the dominant gas-phase form of this element that is associated with molecular gas, with C^0 and CO representing a small fraction, implying that most (89% in the LMC and 77% in the SMC) of the molecular gas in our sample is CO-dark H2. The mean X_CO conversion factors in our LMC and SMC sample are larger than the value typically found in the Milky Way. When applying a correction based on the filling factor of the CO emission, we find that the values of X_CO in the LMC and SMC are closer to that in the Milky Way. The observed [CII] intensity in our sample represents about 1% of the total far-infrared intensity from the LOSs observed in both Magellanic Clouds.Comment: 32 pages, 21 figures, Accepted to Ap