Morphological Variation in Cephalogonimus americanus (Trematoda: Cephalogonimidae) from Amphibians in Colorado

A collection of western toads, Bufo boreas Baird and Girard, 1852, and neotenic tiger salamanders, Ambystoma tigrinum (Green) from Sheep Lake, Horseshoe Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, were examined for helminths in the spring of 1966. Oswaldo-Cruzia subauricularis (Rudolphi, 1819) was found in Bufo boreas and Ophiotaenia filarioides (LaRue, 1909) in Ambystoma tigrinum. In addition, both hosts harbored Spironoura pretiosa Ingles, 1936, Phylloclistomum bufonis Frandsen, 1957 and Cephalogonimus americanus. The last species differed greatly in appearance in the two hosts and these differences are reported herein

Chiropteran Mortality

The study of chiropteran mortality is a difficult one because observations concerning mass mortality, predation, and fatal accidents are sporadic and unexpected. Almost every known predaceous animal preys on bats from time to time; but (with one or two rare exceptions) do so only when an occasional opportunity presents itself, and do not specialize in bat predation. Our knowledge of bat pathology is meager. Mass-mortalities have been reported only from sight observations, and the causative organisms rarely ascertained, because of the unexpected encounter. The relationships between human and chiropteran diseases are becoming much better understood; this study is mostly oriented toward man, and not toward the cause and effect of disease in the chiroptera. The longevity of certain bats is known to range between 15 and 20 years; but their unique activities make them rather prone to accident. They become impaled on such sharp objects as barbed wire, and locust, burdock, and cactus spines. They fall into water holes and drown, get entrapped in tar pits, get electrocuted on high-power lines, etc., but remain among the most abundant mammals on earth today. We have attempted to assemble the literature on all known causes of mortality in bats but cannot, of course, cite all noted occurrences

The Effect of Macro Information Environment Change on the Quality of Management Earnings Forecasts

The 1990s were characterized by substantial increases in the performance of and investor reliance on financial analysts. Because managers possess superior private information and issue forecasts to align investors’ expectations with their own, we predict that managers increased the quality of their earnings forecasts during the 1990s in order to keep pace with the improved forward-looking information provided by financial analysts, upon which investors increasingly relied. Using a sample of 2,437 management earnings forecasts, we document an increase in management earnings forecast precision, management earnings forecast accuracy, and managers’ tendency to explain earnings forecasts in 1993-1996 relative to 1983-1986. Given that these forecast characteristics are linked to greater informativeness and credibility, we also document that the information content of management earnings forecasts, as measured by the strength of share price responses to forecast news, increased in 1993 -1996 relative to 1983-1986. As expected, the increased information content of management forecasts primarily occurred for firms covered by financial analysts

The Relationship between Dioxin-Like Polychlorobiphenyls and IGF-I Serum Levels in Healthy Adults: Evidence from a Cross-Sectional Study

OBJECTIVE: Insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) and dioxin-like polychlorobiphenyls (DL-PCBs) have been associated with the pathogenesis of several diseases like cancer, diabetes and growth disorders. Because it has been suggested that organohalogenated contaminants could influence IGF-I levels in adults, the potential relationship between DL-PCBs and IGF-I serum levels was studied in 456 healthy adults from a representative sample of the general population of the Canary Islands (Spain). DESIGN: Free circulating serum levels of IGF-I and IGFBP-3 were measured through an ELISA methodology, while the serum levels of the 12 DL-PCBs congeners (IUPAC numbers # 77, 81, 105, 114, 118, 123, 126, 156, 157, 167, 169, and 189) were measured by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS). RESULTS: DL-PCBs 156 and 167, Total DL-PCBs body burden (∑PCBs: sum over the 12 measured DL-PCBs), and Total toxic burden (in terms of toxic equivalence to dioxins: ∑TEQs) showed a trend of inverse association with IGF-I serum levels in the whole studied population. After adjusting for potential confounders, including gender, body mass index (BMI), age, and IGF-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3), younger (18-45 years) women with lower BMI (<27 kg/m(2)) and detectable levels of DL-PCB-156 showed significantly lower IGF-I levels than those in the same age and BMI subgroup with non-detectable levels of DL-PCB-156 (p<0.001). Similarly, ∑PCBs and ∑TEQs showed a tendency to an inverse association with IGF-I levels in the same group of women (p=0.017 and p=0.019 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that DL-PCBs could be involved in the regulation of the IGF-system in a way possibly influenced by gender, age and BMI. Although these results should be interpreted with caution, such circumstances could contribute to explain the development of diseases associated to the IGF system

Many Labs 5:Testing pre-data collection peer review as an intervention to increase replicability

Replication studies in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If these studies use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data-collection peer review by experts may address shortcomings and increase replicability rates. We selected 10 replication studies from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P; Open Science Collaboration, 2015) for which the original authors had expressed concerns about the replication designs before data collection; only one of these studies had yielded a statistically significant effect (p < .05). Commenters suggested that lack of adherence to expert review and low-powered tests were the reasons that most of these RP:P studies failed to replicate the original effects. We revised the replication protocols and received formal peer review prior to conducting new replication studies. We administered the RP:P and revised protocols in multiple laboratories (median number of laboratories per original study = 6.5, range = 3?9; median total sample = 1,279.5, range = 276?3,512) for high-powered tests of each original finding with both protocols. Overall, following the preregistered analysis plan, we found that the revised protocols produced effect sizes similar to those of the RP:P protocols (?r = .002 or .014, depending on analytic approach). The median effect size for the revised protocols (r = .05) was similar to that of the RP:P protocols (r = .04) and the original RP:P replications (r = .11), and smaller than that of the original studies (r = .37). Analysis of the cumulative evidence across the original studies and the corresponding three replication attempts provided very precise estimates of the 10 tested effects and indicated that their effect sizes (median r = .07, range = .00?.15) were 78% smaller, on average, than the original effect sizes (median r = .37, range = .19?.50)

Morphological Variation in Cephalogonimus americanus (Trematoda: Cephalogonimidae) from Amphibians in Colorado

A collection of western toads, Bufo boreas Baird and Girard, 1852, and neotenic tiger salamanders, Ambystoma tigrinum (Green) from Sheep Lake, Horseshoe Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, were examined for helminths in the spring of 1966. Oswaldo-Cruzia subauricularis (Rudolphi, 1819) was found in Bufo boreas and Ophiotaenia filarioides (LaRue, 1909) in Ambystoma tigrinum. In addition, both hosts harbored Spironoura pretiosa Ingles, 1936, Phylloclistomum bufonis Frandsen, 1957 and Cephalogonimus americanus. The last species differed greatly in appearance in the two hosts and these differences are reported herein

Chiropteran Mortality

The study of chiropteran mortality is a difficult one because observations concerning mass mortality, predation, and fatal accidents are sporadic and unexpected. Almost every known predaceous animal preys on bats from time to time; but (with one or two rare exceptions) do so only when an occasional opportunity presents itself, and do not specialize in bat predation. Our knowledge of bat pathology is meager. Mass-mortalities have been reported only from sight observations, and the causative organisms rarely ascertained, because of the unexpected encounter. The relationships between human and chiropteran diseases are becoming much better understood; this study is mostly oriented toward man, and not toward the cause and effect of disease in the chiroptera. The longevity of certain bats is known to range between 15 and 20 years; but their unique activities make them rather prone to accident. They become impaled on such sharp objects as barbed wire, and locust, burdock, and cactus spines. They fall into water holes and drown, get entrapped in tar pits, get electrocuted on high-power lines, etc., but remain among the most abundant mammals on earth today. We have attempted to assemble the literature on all known causes of mortality in bats but cannot, of course, cite all noted occurrences

Why Do Managers Explain Their Earnings Forecasts?

Managers often explain their earnings forecasts by linking forecasted performance to their internal actions and the actions of parties external to the firm. These attributions potentially aid investors in the interpretation of management forecasts by confirming known relationships between attributions and profitability or by identifying additional causes that investors should consider when forecasting earnings. We investigate why managers choose to provide attributions with their forecasts and whether the attributions are related to security price reactions to management earnings forecasts. Using a sample of 951 management earnings forecasts issued from 1993 to 1996, we find that attributions are more likely for larger firms, less likely for firms in regulated industries, less likely for forecasts issued over longer horizons, more likely for bad news forecasts, and more likely for forecasts that are maximum type. Furthermore, attributions are associated with greater absolute price reactions to management forecasts, more negative price reactions to management forecasts (forecast news held constant), and a greater price reaction per dollar of unexpected earnings. Our findings hold after control for the aforementioned determinants of attributions and after control for other firm- and forecast-specific variables that are often associated with security prices. Copyright University of Chicago on behalf of the Institute of Professional Accounting, 2004.