The Effect of Blockholders on Bank Valuation

This paper examines the effect of blockholders on bank valuation. We use two measures of bank valuation, namely Tobin\u27s Q and market to book ratio, and two measures of blockholders, namely  number of blockholders and total ownership of all blockholders. Using a sample of publicly-traded bank holding companies in the U.S. from 1996 to 2001, we find a negative relationship between total ownership of all blockholders and bank valuation, but a positive relationship between number of blockholders and bank valuation

Ecology and evolution of shrew-borne orthohantaviruses in Finland

More than 60% of human emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are zoonotic. Zoonoses are infectious diseases of animals (usually vertebrates) that can be transmitted to humans. Hantaviruses are emerging zoonotic pathogens that belong to the genus Orthohantavirus and family Hantaviridae in order Bunyavirales. Hantaviruses pose a serious threat to human health because their infection causes two highly fatal diseases: haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS). Rodents have been regarded as the main reservoir and evolutionary scene of hantaviruses. In the last three decades, our knowledge of hantaviruses has broadened significantly. In contrast to the initial assumption that hantaviruses are mainly carried by rodents, many novel hantaviruses have been detected in shrews, moles and bats during the last few years. These findings raise a number of significant questions about the evolutionary history of hantaviruses, their host association and adaptation, the role and frequency of spillover infections and host-switch events, and most importantly, their pathogenicity.   In Finland, Puumala virus (PUUV) has been regarded as the only rodent-borne hantavirus present in the country. To search for novel hantaviruses other than PUUV, various novel hantaviruses were molecularly identified in different species of Soricomorpha ("shrew-form"). Genetic analyses revealed that four soricomorph-borne hantaviruses circulate in Finland, including Boginia virus (BOGV) in Neomys fodiens and Asikkala virus (ASIV) in Sorex minutus. Common shrews (Sorex araneus) harboured two different hantaviruses: Seewis virus (SWSV) and an Altai-like virus, showing the first evidence of co-existence of two distinct hantavirus species circulating simultaneously in one host species population. This host sharing of two divergent hantaviruses in the European common shrews contradicts hantavirus-host specificity, further implying the complexity of hantavirus evolution.   After screening hundreds of S. araneus from all of Finland, we obtained a large data set of new SWSV sequences that enabled phylogeographic analyses of SWSV. The results demonstrated that this shrew-borne hantavirus is similar to rodent-borne hantaviruses, and the post-glacial spread of SWSV into Finland mirrors that of the host, S. araneus: these shrews colonized Finland from the east after the last ice age (12,000–8,000 years ago) and then subsequently spread along emerging land bridges towards the west or north.   Most new hantaviruses discovered in soricomorph and bat hosts instead of rodents have raised questions as to whether any of them will emerge as human pathogens. Therefore, to predict human exposure risk, novel laboratory techniques for molecular and serological hantavirus detection were developed. No evidence of SWSV infection was found among a panel of 486 patient serum samples; however, we demonstrated a cross-reaction of anti-PUUV serum with shrew-borne hantavirus nucleocapsid (N) protein.   This thesis focused on the diversity, host maintenance and cross-species transmission dynamics of soricomorph-borne hantaviruses. The study presented innovative methods to investigate this pertinent topic at the interface of wildlife diseases and human health. The results provided new insights about the ecology, evolutionary origins and phylogeography, and most importantly, the potential pathogenicity of soricomorph-borne hantaviruses. This knowledge in combination with future studies will hopefully lead to a better understanding of host-parasite relationships.Mer än 60 % av alla infektionssjukdomar som drabbar människor är s.k. zoonoser. En viktig zoonos som kan ge blödarfeber är de som orsakas av Hantavirus. Olika typer av Hantavirus orsakar hos människor allt från lätt feber till mycket allvarlig blödarfeber som kan ha dödlig utgång. Hantavirus bärs huvudsakligen av gnagare, varför gnagare har betraktas som den huvudsakliga s.k. reservoaren för Hantavirus. Under de tre senaste decennierna har dock kunskapen kring Hantavirus ökat kraftigt. Idag anses inte längre Hantavirus bäras enbart av gnagare, utan Hantavirus har även hittats i näbbmöss, mullvadar, fladdermöss och till och med insekter. Dessa fynd föranleder flertalet frågor beträffande Hantavirusens evolutionära historia, deras förhållande och anpassningar till sina värddjur, betydelsen av sporadisk smittöverföring till andra djurarter, förändringar i värdart och framförallt ur ett medicinskt perspektiv deras förmåga att framkalla sjukdom. I Finland har historiskt sett Puumulavirus (PUUV) betraktas som den enda typ av gnagarburet-Hantavirus som funnits i landet. I människor orsakar PUUV en mildare form av blödarfeber som kallas för sorkfeber. I sökandet efter nya Hantavirus skilda från PUUV i Finland provtogs olika insektsätare som bl.a. näbbmöss och mullvadar. Genetisk analys visade att fyra olika insektsätarburna Hantavirus cirkulerar i Finland. Bland dessa återfinns Boginiavirus (BOGV) i vattennäbbmus och Askikkalavirus (ASIV) i dvärgnäbbmus. I vanlig näbbmus återfanns två olika Hantavirus (Seewisvirus, SWSV, och ett Altai-likt virus), vilket var det första fyndet av två olika Hantavirus som samexisterar i en och samma värdartspopulation. Samexistensen av två olika Hantavirus i vanlig näbbmus är kontradiktorisk mot den tidigare för Hantavirus så karaktäristiska värdartsspecificiteten, vilket påvisar komplexiteten i evolutionen av Hantavirus. Vanlig näbbmus som fanns bära på SWSV är vida spridd i euroasien med en utbredning från centrala Sibirien till västra Europa. Fältprovtagning av hundratals vanlig näbbmus från hela Finland och isolering av SWSV från dessa möjliggjorde fylogenetisk analys av finska SWSV. Resultaten visade att detta insektsätarassocierade Hantavirus liknar de gnagarburna Hantavirusen. Introduktionen och spridningen av SWSV i Finland efter den senaste istiden återspeglar dess värd, den vanliga näbbmusens kolonialisering av Finland. Näbbmössen kolonialiserade Finland från öster för ca 8-12 tusen år sedan och spred sig därefter mot väst-nordväst. Upptäckten av Hantavirus bland insektsätare, så som näbbmöss och fladdermöss, har väckt frågan huruvida något av dessa virus kan orsaka sjukdom hos människor likt deras gnagarburna släktingar. För att utvärdera risken av SWSV-smitta till människor upprättades nya diagnostiska metoder för SWSV-diagnostik. Inga tecken av SWSV-infektion hittades bland 486 testade patientblodprov. Däremot observerades en korsreaktivitet mellan α-PUUV antikroppar och nukleokapsidproteinet hos Hantavirus isolerat från näbbmöss. Denna doktorsavhandling fokuserade på mångfalden, bibehållandet av virus hos värddjuret och spridning mellan olika värdarter av Hantavirus isolerade från olika insektsätare. Under arbetes gång har innovativa metoder använts för att studera detta viktiga ämne i gränslandet mellan vilddjurssjukdomar och människors hälsa. Denna doktorsavhandling tillsammans med framtida studier kommer förhoppningsvis att leda till en ökad förståelse av relationen mellan värddjur och de virus de bär på

GII Representation-Based Cross-View Gait Recognition by Discriminative Projection With List-Wise Constraints

Remote person identification by gait is one of the most important topics in the field of computer vision and pattern recognition. However, gait recognition suffers severely from the appearance variance caused by the view change. It is very common that gait recognition has a high performance when the view is fixed but the performance will have a sharp decrease when the view variance becomes significant. Existing approaches have tried all kinds of strategies like tensor analysis or view transform models to slow down the trend of performance decrease but still have potential for further improvement. In this paper, a discriminative projection with list-wise constraints (DPLC) is proposed to deal with view variance in cross-view gait recognition, which has been further refined by introducing a rectification term to automatically capture the principal discriminative information. The DPLC with rectification (DPLCR) embeds list-wise relative similarity measurement among intraclass and inner-class individuals, which can learn a more discriminative and robust projection. Based on the original DPLCR, we have introduced the kernel trick to exploit nonlinear cross-view correlations and extended DPLCR to deal with the problem of multiview gait recognition. Moreover, a simple yet efficient gait representation, namely gait individuality image (GII), based on gait energy image is proposed, which could better capture the discriminative information for cross view gait recognition. Experiments have been conducted in the CASIA-B database and the experimental results demonstrate the outstanding performance of both the DPLCR framework and the new GII representation. It is shown that the DPLCR-based cross-view gait recognition has outperformed the-state-of-the-art approaches in almost all cases under large view variance. The combination of the GII representation and the DPLCR has further enhanced the performance to be a new benchmark for cross-view gait recognition

Spatio-Temporal Mutational Profile Appearances of Swedish SARS-CoV-2 during the Early Pandemic

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus evolved, and we therefore aimed to provide an insight into which genetic variants were enriched, and how they spread in Sweden. Methods: We analyzed 348 Swedish SARS-CoV-2 sequences freely available from GISAID obtained from 7 February 2020 until 14 May 2020. Results: We identified 14 variant sites >= 5% frequency in the population. Among those sites, the D936Y substitution in the viral Spike protein was under positive selection. The variant sites can distinguish 11 mutational profiles in Sweden. Nine of the profiles appeared in Stockholm in March 2020. Mutational profiles 3 (B.1.1) and 6 (B.1), which contain the D936Y mutation, became the predominant profiles over time, spreading from Stockholm to other Swedish regions during April and the beginning of May. Furthermore, Bayesian phylogenetic analysis indicated that SARS-CoV-2 could have emerged in Sweden on 27 December 2019, and community transmission started on February 1st with an evolutionary rate of 1.5425 x 10(-3)substitutions per year. Conclusions: Our study provides novel knowledge on the spatio-temporal dynamics of Swedish SARS-CoV-2 variants during the early pandemic. Characterization of these viral variants can provide precious insights on viral pathogenesis and can be valuable for diagnostic and drug development approaches

Usage of FTA (R) Classic Cards for Safe Storage, Shipment, and Detection of Arboviruses

Infections caused by arthropod-borne RNA viruses are overrepresented among emerging infectious diseases. Effective methods for collecting, storing, and transporting clinical or biological specimens are needed worldwide for disease surveillance. However, many tropical regions where these diseases are endemic lack analytical facilities and possibility of continuous cold chains, which presents challenges from both a biosafety and material preservation perspective. Whatman (R) FTA (R) Classic Cards may serve as an effective and safe option for transporting hazardous samples at room temperature, particularly for RNA viruses classified as biosafety level (BSL) 2 and 3 pathogens, from sampling sites to laboratories. In this study, we investigated the biosafety and perseverance of representative alpha-and flaviviruses stored on FTA (R) cards. To evaluate the virus inactivation capacity of FTA (R) cards, we used Sindbis virus (SINV), chikungunya virus (CHIKV), and Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV). We inoculated susceptible cells with dilution series of eluates from viral samples stored on the FTA (R) cards and observed for cytopathic effect to evaluate the ability of the cards to inactivate viruses. All tested viruses were inactivated after storage on FTA (R) cards. In addition, we quantified viral RNA of JEV, SINV, and tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) stored on FTA (R) cards at 4 degrees C, 25 degrees C, and 37 degrees C for 30 days using two reverse transcriptase quantitative PCR assays. Viral RNA of SINV stored on FTA (R) cards was not reduced at either 4 degrees C or 25 degrees C over a 30-day period, but degraded rapidly at 37 degrees C. For JEV and TBEV, degradation was observed at all temperatures, with the most rapid degradation occurring at 37 degrees C. Therefore, the use of FTA (R) cards provides a safe and effective workflow for the collection, storage, and analysis of BSL 2- and 3-virus RNA samples, but there is a risk of false negative results if the cards are stored at higher temperatures for long periods of time. Conscious usage of the cards can be useful in disease surveillance and research, especially in tropical areas where transportation and cold chains are problematic

Evolution and postglacial colonization of Seewis hantavirus with Sorex araneus in Finland

Hantaviruses have co-existed with their hosts for millions of years. Seewis virus (SWSV), a soricomorph-borne hantavirus, is widespread in Eurasia, ranging from Central Siberia to Western Europe. To gain insight into the phylogeography and evolutionary history of SWSV in Finland, lung tissue samples of 225 common shrews (Sorex araneus) trapped from different parts of Finland were screened for the presence of SWSV RNA. Forty-two of the samples were positive. Partial small (S), medium (M) and large (L) segments of the virus were sequenced, and analyzed together with all SWSV sequences available in Genbank. The phylogenetic analysis of the partial S-segment sequences suggested that all Finnish SWSV strains shared their most recent common ancestor with the Eastern European strains, while the L-segment suggested multiple introductions. The difference between the Land S-segment phylogenies implied that reassortment events play a role in the evolution of SWSV. Of the Finnish strains, variants from Eastern Finland occupied the root position in the phylogeny, and had the highest genetic diversity, supporting the hypothesis that SWSV reached Finland first form the east. During the spread in Finland, the virus has formed three separate lineages, identified here by correlation analysis of genetic versus geographic distance combined with median-joining network analysis. These results support the hypothesis that Finnish SWSV recolonized Finland with its host, the common shrew, from east after the last ice age 12,000-8000 years ago, and then subsequently spread along emerging land bridges towards west or north with the migration and population expansion of its host.Peer reviewe

Prevalence, drug resistance, molecular typing and comparative genomics analysis of MRSA strains from a tertiary A hospital in Shanxi Province, China

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is an important zoonotic pathogen that causes a high incidence rate and mortality worldwide. This study investigated the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains in a tertiary A hospital in Shanxi Province, China, in order to determine the major epidemic clones as well as their antibiotic resistance and virulence characteristics. A total of 212 S. aureus strains were collected in this hospital, and were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing, detection of virulence genes, resistance genes, and efflux pump genes. Among them, 38 MRSA strains were further subjected to detection of biofilm genes, assessment of biofilm formation ability, MLST, spa typing, SCCmec typing, and phylogenetic analysis. The majority of S. aureus strains came from the neonatology department, with secretions and purulent fluid being the main source of samples. The strains showed high resistance to penicillin (98.11%), erythromycin (64.62%) and clindamycin (59.91%), while being sensitive to vancomycin and linezolid. The detection rates of efflux pump genes and resistance genes were high, and there was a significant correlation between resistance gene types and phenotypes, with mecA showing a close correlation with oxacillin. The detection rates of virulence genes and the toxin gene profiles of MSSA and MRSA strains showed significant differences. And the detection rate of biofilm genes in MRSA strains was relatively high, with 13.16% of MRSA strains showing strong biofilm formation ability. The most common epidemic clone of MRSA was ST59-SCCmecIV-t437, followed by ST59-SCCmecV-t437. The former had a higher detection rate of resistance genes and a stronger biofilm formation ability, while the latter had a higher positive rate for pvl gene and stronger pathogenicity, making it more likely to cause systemic infections. Phylogenetic analysis showed that all MRSA strains in this study clustered into three major branches, with distinct differences in antibiotic resistance and virulence characteristics among the branches. ST59-MRSA strains from different species showed consistency and inter-species transmission, but there were differences among ST59-MRSA strains from different geographical locations. In general, most MSSA and MRSA strains exhibited multidrug resistance and carried multiple resistance genes, virulence genes, and biofilm formation genes, warranting further research to elucidate the mechanisms of drug resistance and pathogenesis

Genetic analyses of Seoul hantavirus genome recovered from rats (Rattus norvegicus) in the Netherlands unveils diverse routes of spread into Europe

Seoul virus (SEOV) is the etiologic agent of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome. It is carried by brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), a commensal rodent that closely cohabitates with humans in urban environments. SEOV has a worldwide distribution, and in Europe, it has been found in rats in UK, France, Sweden, and Belgium, and human cases of SEOV infection have been reported in Germany, UK, France, and Belgium. In the search of hantaviruses in brown rats from the Netherlands, we found both serological and genetic evidence for the presence of SEOV in the local wild rat population. To further decipher the relationship with other SEOV variants globally, the complete genome of SEOV in the Netherlands was recovered. SEOV sequences obtained from three positive rats (captured at close trapping locations at the same time) were found highly similar. Phylogenetic analyses demonstrated that two lineages of SEOV circulate in Europe. Strains from the Netherlands and UK, together with the Baxter strain from US, constitute one of these two, while the second includes strains from Europe and Asia. Our results support a hypothesis of diverse routes of SEOV spread into Europe. These findings, combined with other indications on the expansion of the spatial European range of SEOV, suggest an increased risk of this virus for the public health, highlighting the need for increased surveillance.Peer reviewe