Factors affecting the underpricing of junior mining initial public offerings in a “hot issue” market

The pricing of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) is an area of interest to practitioners and academics alike given the empirical regularity of investors in IPOs making very large first day returns. These first day returns are as a result of share underpricing. Academics have explained the underpricing phenomenon in terms of ex ante uncertainty, namely the risk of pricing, off take and issuing of such shares. In an attempt to predict the degree of the phenomenon much work has been done in linking underpricing to company, issue and market related factors that are known prior to the listing (ex ante as opposed to ex post information). In the case of junior mining companies, underpricing is exacerbated by a lack of financial information making these issues difficult to value since such unseasoned companies have no past earnings history on which to base predictions of future earnings. Given this context, this study identified relevant factors from secondary sources which could be used to proxy the level of ex ante uncertainty and therefore correlate with the degree of underpricing. The analysis firstly sought to ensure that underpricing exists for the issues, market and time period of interest. Secondly the presence of a “hot issue” period (Ritter, 1984), which is exclusive to the natural resources sector, was investigated. Finally the relationship between underpricing and the relevant factors was explored using hypothesis testing about means and regression analysis. It was found that underpricing does indeed exist for junior mining listings on the Toronto Venture Exchange (TSX-V) between 2005-2007. This said no evidence of the “hot issue” period could be found. In terms of linking company, issue and market related factors to the degree of underpricing this study failed to identify any significant predictors. It is argued that junior mining listings on the TSX-V may be a special case since some of these factors have successfully been used, by other researchers, to predict the degree of underpricing of mining IPOs. The fact that junior mining IPO’s listed on the TSX-V show a constant degree of underpricing over time implies that investors do not build market specific factors (market sentiment and commodity price) into the listing price. Rather investors seem to demand a constant degree of underpricing regardless of the market situation to compensate them for the “unknown” exploration risk.Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)unrestricte

Time-, Frequency-, and Wavevector-Resolved X-Ray Diffraction from Single Molecules

Using a quantum electrodynamic framework, we calculate the off-resonant scattering of a broad-band X-ray pulse from a sample initially prepared in an arbitrary superposition of electronic states. The signal consists of single-particle (incoherent) and two-particle (coherent) contributions that carry different particle form factors that involve different material transitions. Single-molecule experiments involving incoherent scattering are more influenced by inelastic processes compared to bulk measurements. The conditions under which the technique directly measures charge densities (and can be considered as diffraction) as opposed to correlation functions of the charge-density are specified. The results are illustrated with time- and wavevector-resolved signals from a single amino acid molecule (cysteine) following an impulsive excitation by a stimulated X-ray Raman process resonant with the sulfur K-edge. Our theory and simulations can guide future experimental studies on the structures of nano-particles and proteins

Variation in ampicillin dosing for lower respiratory tract infections and neonatal bacterial infections in US children\u27s hospitals

OBJECTIVE: We examined ampicillin dosing in pediatric patients across 3 conditions: (1) bacterial lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) in infants and children \u3e3 months, (2) neonates with suspected or proven sepsis, and (3) neonates with suspected central nervous system (CNS) infections. We compared our findings to dosing guidance for these specific indications. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: The study included data from 32 children\u27s hospitals in the United States. METHODS: We reviewed prescriptions from the SHARPS study of antimicrobials, a survey of antibiotic prescribing from July 2016 to December 2017. Prescriptions were analyzed for indication, total daily dose per kilogram, and presence of antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) review. LRTI prescriptions were compared to IDSA recommendations for community-acquired pneumonia. Neonatal prescriptions were compared to recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Prescriptions were categorized as optimal (80%-120% of recommended dosing), suboptimal (\u3c80% of recommended dosing), or excessive (\u3e120% of recommended dosing). RESULTS: Among 1,038 ampicillin prescriptions, we analyzed 88 prescriptions for LRTI, 499 prescriptions for neonatal sepsis, and 27 prescriptions for neonatal CNS infection. Of the LRTI prescriptions, 77.3%were optimal. Of prescriptions for neonatal sepsis, 81.6% were excessive compared to AAP bacteremia recommendations but 78.8% were suboptimal compared to AAP meningitis guidelines. Also, 48.1% of prescriptions for neonatal CNS infection were suboptimal, and 50.6% of prescriptions were not reviewed by the ASP. CONCLUSIONS: LRTI dosing is generally within the IDSA-recommended range. However, dosing for neonatal sepsis often exceeds the recommendation for bacteremia but is below the recommendation for meningitis. This variability points to an important opportunity for future antimicrobial stewardship efforts

Application of an antibiotic spectrum index in the neonatal intensive care unit

Antimicrobial stewardship programs typically use days of therapy to assess antimicrobial use. However, this metric does not account for the antimicrobial spectrum of activity. We applied an antibiotic spectrum index to a population of very-low-birth-weight infants to assess its utility to evaluate the impact of antimicrobial stewardship interventions

Mitigation measures to reduce entanglements of migrating whales with commercial fishing gear

The West Coast Rock Lobster Managed Fishery (WCRLMF) transitioned to a quota based fishery, and year-round fishing, which corresponded with a spike in whale entanglements in 2013. This presented industry with a challenging social issue, to reduce entanglements without impacting on the financial benefits that the shift to year-round quota fishing had afforded

National Urban Database and Access Portal Tool, NUDAPT

Based on the need for advanced treatments of high resolution urban morphological features (e.g., buildings, trees) in meteorological, dispersion, air quality and human exposure modeling systems for future urban applications, a new project was launched called the National Urban Database and Access Portal Tool (NUDAPT). NUDAPT is sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and involves collaborations and contributions from many groups including federal and state agencies and from private and academic institutions here and in other countries. It is designed to produce and provide gridded fields of urban canopy parameters for various new and advanced descriptions of model physics to improve urban simulations given the availability of new high-resolution data of buildings, vegetation, and land use. Additional information include gridded anthropogenic heating and population data is incorporated to further improve urban simulations and to encourage and facilitate decision support and application linkages to human exposure models. An important core-design feature is the utilization of web portal technology to enable NUDAPT to be a Community based system. This web-based portal technology will facilitate customizing of data handling and retrievals (http://www.nudapt.org). This article provides an overview of NUDAPT and several example applications

20th to 21st Century Relative Sea and Land Level Changes in Northern California: Tectonic Land Level Changes and their Contribution to Sea-Level Rise, Humboldt Bay Region, Northern California

Sea-level changes are modulated in coastal northern California by land-level changes due to the earthquake cycle along the Cascadia subduction zone, the San Andreas plate boundary fault system, and crustal faults. Sea-level rise (SLR) subjects ecological and anthropogenic infrastructure to increased vulnerability to changes in habitat and increased risk for physical damage. The degree to which each of these forcing factors drives this modulation is poorly resolved. We use NOAA tide gage data and ‘campaign’ tide gage deployments, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data, and National Geodetic Survey (NGS) first-order levelling data to calculate vertical land motion (VLM) rates in coastal northern California. Sea-level observations, highway level surveys, and GNSS data all confirm that land is subsiding in Humboldt Bay, in contrast to Crescent City where the land is rising. Subtracting absolute sea-level rate (~1.99 mm/year) from Crescent City (CC) and North Spit (NS) gage relative sea-level rates reveals that CC is uplifting at ~2.83 mm/year and NS is subsiding at ~3.21mm/year. GNSS vertical deformation reveals similar rates of ~2.60 mm/year of uplift at Crescent City. In coastal northern California, there is an E-W trending variation in vertical land motion that is primarily due to Cascadia megathrust fault seismogenic coupling. This interseismic subsidence also dominates the N-S variation in vertical land motion in most of the study region. There exists a second-order heterogeneous N-S trend in vertical land motion that we associate to crustal fault-related strain. There may be non-tectonic contributions to the observed VLM rates