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

Detecting Red Flag of Workplace Crime Using Mobile Data on Abnormal Usage Activities

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how to detect the workplace crime of organizational sales representatives (e.g., sales who work with external customers) through abnormal activities that can be traced by mobile devices and applications. The guardianship capability of organizations is considered as the moderator influencing the monitoring of abnormal usage activities calculated by deep learning. In this study, we conduct event history analysis on the occurrence of workplace crime utilizing a longitudinal panel data set, which comprises 197179 weekly observations in 3 years (2017-2019). Our finding provides evidence that the abnormal activity pattern is an effective signal for identifying workplace crimes. Furthermore, we illustrate how to design monitoring modes based on guardianship capability in order to maximize the effectiveness of mobile monitoring in reducing workplace crimes

Fully Composable and Adequate Verified Compilation with Direct Refinements between Open Modules (Technical Report)

Verified compilation of open modules (i.e., modules whose functionality depends on other modules) provides a foundation for end-to-end verification of modular programs ubiquitous in contemporary software. However, despite intensive investigation in this topic for decades, the proposed approaches are still difficult to use in practice as they rely on assumptions about the internal working of compilers which make it difficult for external users to apply the verification results. We propose an approach to verified compositional compilation without such assumptions in the setting of verifying compilation of heterogeneous modules written in first-order languages supporting global memory and pointers. Our approach is based on the memory model of CompCert and a new discovery that a Kripke relation with a notion of memory protection can serve as a uniform and composable semantic interface for the compiler passes. By absorbing the rely-guarantee conditions on memory evolution for all compiler passes into this Kripke Memory Relation and by piggybacking requirements on compiler optimizations onto it, we get compositional correctness theorems for realistic optimizing compilers as refinements that directly relate native semantics of open modules and that are ignorant of intermediate compilation processes. Such direct refinements support all the compositionality and adequacy properties essential for verified compilation of open modules. We have applied this approach to the full compilation chain of CompCert with its Clight source language and demonstrated that our compiler correctness theorem is open to composition and intuitive to use with reduced verification complexity through end-to-end verification of non-trivial heterogeneous modules that may freely invoke each other (e.g., mutually recursively)

New approaches suggest term and preterm human fetal membranes may have distinct biomechanical properties

Preterm prelabour rupture of membranes is the leading cause of preterm birth and its associated infant mortality and morbidity. However, its underlying mechanism remains unknown. We utilized two novel biomechanical assessment techniques, ball indentation and Optical Coherence Elastography (OCE), to compare the mechanical properties and behaviours of term (≥ 37 weeks) and preterm (33-36 weeks) human fetal membranes from ruptured and non-ruptured regions. We defined the expression levels of collagen, sulfated glycosaminoglycans (sGAG), matrix metalloproteinase (MMP-9, MMP-13), fibronectin, and interleukin-1β (IL-1β) within membranes by biochemical analysis, immunohistochemical staining and Western blotting, both with and without simulated fetal movement forces on membrane rupture with a new loading system. Preterm membranes showed greater heterogeneity in mechanical properties/behaviours between ruptured and non-ruptured regions compared with their term counterparts (displacement rate: 36% vs. 15%; modulus: 125% vs. 34%; thickness: 93% vs. 30%; collagen content: 98% vs. 29%; sGAG: 85% vs 25%). Furthermore, simulated fetal movement forces triggered higher MMP-9, MMP-13 and IL-1β expression in preterm than term membranes, while nifedipine attenuated the observed increases in expression. In conclusion, the distinct biomechanical profiles of term and preterm membranes and the abnormal biochemical expression and activation by external forces in preterm membranes may provide insights into mechanisms of preterm rupture of membranes

Characterisation of Collagen Re-Modelling in Localised Prostate Cancer Using Second-Generation Harmonic Imaging and Transrectal Ultrasound Shear Wave Elastography

Prostate cancer has a poor prognosis and high mortality rate due to metastases. Extracellular matrix (ECM) re-modelling and stroma composition have been linked to cancer progression, including key components of cell migration, tumour metastasis, and tissue modulus. Moreover, collagens are one of the most significant components of the extracellular matrix and have been ascribed to many aspects of neoplastic transformation. This study characterises collagen re-modelling around localised prostate cancer using the second harmonic generation of collagen (SHG), genotyping and ultrasound shear wave elastography (USWE) measured modulus in men with clinically localised prostate cancer. Tempo-sequence assay for gene expression of COL1A1 and COL3A1 was used to confirm the expression of collagen. Second-harmonic generation imaging and genotyping of ECM around prostate cancer showed changes in content, orientation, and type of collagen according to Gleason grades (cancer aggressivity), and this correlated with the tissue modulus measured by USWE in kilopascals. Furthermore, there were clear differences between collagen orientation and type around normal and cancer tissues

Quantitative assessment of the mechanical properties of prostate tissue with optical coherence elastography

© COPYRIGHT SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only. Prostate cancer (PCa) is a heterogeneous disease with multifocal origin. In current clinical care, the Gleason scoring system is the well-established diagnosis by microscopic evaluation of the tissue from trans-rectal ultrasound (TRUS) guided biopsies. Nevertheless, the sensitivity and specificity in detecting PCa can range from 40 to 50% for conventional TRUS B-mode imaging. Tissue elasticity is associated with the disease progression and elastography technique has recently shown promise in aiding PCa diagnosis. However, many cancer foci in the prostate gland has very small size less than 1 mm and those detected by medical elastography were larger than 2 mm. Hereby, we introduce optical coherence elastography (OCE) to quantify the prostate stiffness with high resolution in the magnitude of 10 μm. Following our feasibility study of 10 patients reported previously, we recruited 60 more patients undergoing 12-core TRUS guided biopsies for suspected PCa with a total of 720 biopsies. The stiffness of cancer tissue was approximately 57.63% higher than that of benign ones. Using histology as reference standard and cut-off threshold of 600kPa, the data analysis showed sensitivity and specificity of 89.6% and 99.8% respectively. The method also demonstrated potential in characterising different grades of PCa based on the change of tissue morphology and quantitative mechanical properties. In conclusion, quantitative OCE can be a reliable technique to identify PCa lesion and differentiate indolent from aggressive cancer

dsRNA Virus Model Molecule and the Mechanism of PRRs and its Research Progress in Female Reproductive Tract Infections

Female animal genital tract opening on the body surface, prone to bacterial, viral, parasitic, and other pathogenic microorganism infections, leading to genital tract infectious diseases, such as endometritis, cervicitis, vaginitis, etc. Severe infection can lead to infertility, abortion, and even fetal death. Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is an important model molecule, which is widely present in the genome of viruses and generated in the process of virus replication. In mammals, dsRNA is considered to be an innate immune response signal for viral infection, which binds to the corresponding pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs) In vivo and then exerts biological functions. This review summarizes the signal transduction pathway induced by the binding of dsRNA model molecules to PRRs, research status of female genital tract infections and research progress of dsRNA in simulating viral infection in the female genital tract