Managerial multitasking in the mutual fund industry

We examine the determinants and consequences of mutual fund managers simultaneously managing multiple funds. Well-performing managers multitask by taking over poorly performing funds or launching new funds. Subsequent to multitasking, funds run by managers prior to multitasking (i.e., incumbent funds) experience performance deterioration while the performance of the acquired funds improves. Multitasking increases the assets of fund companies but results in a wealth transfer from shareholders of the incumbent funds to those of the funds the managers take over. Multitasking arrangements are terminated when investors recognize the associated agency problem and withdraw their capital from the incumbent funds

A Systematic Review on Different Treatment Methods of Bone Metastasis from Cancers

Background and objective Skeletal metastase is one of the most common complications related to advanced cancer. The aim of this study is to analyze the effectiveness and safety of radiotherapy plus intravenous bisphosphonates versus radiotherapy alone for treating bone metastasis. Methods We searched the Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMBASE, CBM, CNKI and VIP, as well as the reference lists of reports and reviews. The quality of included trials was evaluated by the Cochrane Handbook. Data were extracted and evaluated by two reviewers independently. The Cochrane Collaboration’s Rev-Man 5.0 was used for data analysis. Results Twenty-two trials involving 1 585 patients were included. Compared with radiotherapy alone, radiotherapy plus intravenous bisphosphonates was more effective in total effective rate of pain relive (RR=1.21, 95%CI: 1.13-1.30, P < 0.001), average abated time (WMD=16.00, 95%CI: 10.12-21.88, P < 0.001), and quality of life (RR=1.25, 95%CI: 1.08-1.45, P=0.003, with significant differences. Side effects have no significant differences between the two groups except fever (RR=5.61, 95%CI: 3.11-10.13, P < 0.001). Conclusion Current evidence supports more effective of radiotherapy plus intravenous bisphosphonates for bone metastases. The combine treatment is safe and effective

Divalent cations activate TRPV1 through promoting conformational change of the extracellular region

Divalent cations Mg and Ba selectively and directly potentiate transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 heat activation by lowering the activation threshold into the room temperature range. We found that Mg potentiates channel activation only from the extracellular side; on the intracellular side, Mg inhibits channel current. By dividing the extracellularly accessible region of the channel protein into small segments and perturbing the structure of each segment with sequence replacement mutations, we observed that the S1-S2 linker, the S3-S4 linker, and the pore turret are all required for Mg potentiation. Sequence replacements at these regions substantially reduced or eliminated Mg-induced activation at room temperature while sparing capsaicin activation. Heat activation was affected by many, but not all, of these structural alternations. These observations indicate that extracellular linkers and the turret may interact with each other. Site-directed fluorescence resonance energy transfer measurements further revealed that, like heat, Mg also induces structural changes in the pore turret. Interestingly, turret movement induced by Mg precedes channel activation, suggesting that Mg-induced conformational change in the extracellular region most likely serves as the cause of channel activation instead of a coincidental or accommodating structural adjustment

Internal versus External Replacement of Mutual Fund Managers

I use a unique dataset of 1,808 mutual fund manager replacements to study the determinants and the subsequent impact of the choice between hiring the successor from within (internal hire) and outside (external hire) the fund family. I find that fund families prefer to replace their top performers with internal hires and bottom performers with external hires. External hires demonstrate superior ability to turn around bottom performing funds, but exhibit inferior ability to maintain the record of top performing funds. I find no cross-sectional difference in post-replacement performance between internal and external successors, indicating fund families, in general, make their replacement decisions optimally. I do, however, find that funds that deviate from the optimal decision have subsequent sub-par performance. Overall, the evidence suggests that portfolio managers play a pivotal role in determining mutual fund performance

The Galactic extinction and reddening from the South Galactic Cap U-band Sky Survey: u band galaxy number counts and u−ru-r color distribution

We study the integral Galactic extinction and reddening based on the galaxy catalog of the South Galactic Cap U-band Sky Survey (SCUSS), where $u$ band galaxy number counts and $u-r$ color distribution are used to derive the Galactic extinction and reddening respectively. We compare these independent statistical measurements with the reddening map of \citet{Schlegel1998}(SFD) and find that both the extinction and reddening from the number counts and color distribution are in good agreement with the SFD results at low extinction regions ($E(B-V)^{SFD}<0.12$ mag). However, for high extinction regions ($E(B-V)^{SFD}>0.12$ mag), the SFD map overestimates the Galactic reddening systematically, which can be approximated by a linear relation $\Delta E(B-V)= 0.43[E(B-V)^{SFD}-0.12$]. By combing the results of galaxy number counts and color distribution together, we find that the shape of the Galactic extinction curve is in good agreement with the standard $R_V=3.1$ extinction law of \cite{ODonnell1994}

Isolation and analysis of a very virulent Marek’s disease virus strain in China

BACKGROUND: A severe MD was broken out at a farm in Shandong, China, despite FC126 vaccination of the chickens at 1-day-old. The mortality of the flocks reached up to 38.3%. The infected chickens were found to have MD pathological changes, including enlargement of spleens, livers and kidneys, and tumors occured on organs later. Samples were collected from the chickens for diagnosis. METHODS: The collected samples were inoculated into primary duck embryo fibroblast (DEF) cells, and the MDV strain named SD2012-1 was isolated. In order to identify the isolate, amplification by PCR and sequencing of oncogenic Meq and vIL-8 gene were processed, the obtained sequences were compared with the sequences of reference strains, and SD2012-1 was used to challenge immunized SPF chickens. RESULTS: A very virulent MDV isolate strain, SD2012-1, was isolated from a chicken flock in Shandong Province, China, the isolate had the characteristics of very virulent MDV-1, nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequence comparisons of Meq and vIL-8 gene of SD2012-1 with those of reference strains showed SD2012-1 had high homology with MDV strains isolated from China, SD2012-1 could break through the protection provided by HVT vaccine and HVT + SB-1 vaccine immunization and caused the mortality of SPF chickens over 60%. The immune failure occured at the farm could be due to the improper selection of vaccines. SD2012-1 produced death later and the gross postmortem lesions of chickens died early and later were different. CONCLUSIONS: MDV strain SD2012-1 isolated from Shandong Province, China was found to have the characteristics of very virulent MDV-1, which could break through the protection provided by HVT vaccine and HVT + SB-1 vaccine, the virus seemed to have a long latent period, and cause different gross postmortem lesions of chickens between chickens died early and later. A better immunization way should be chosen to prevent infection of this MDV strain in field

EUS assisted transmural cholecystogastrostomy fistula creation as a bridge for endoscopic internal gallbladder therapy using a novel fully covered metal stent

BACKGROUND: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has become the “gold standard” for treating symptomatic gallstones. Innovative methods, such as a scarless therapeutic procedure through a natural orifice are being introduced, and include transgastric or transcolonic endoscopic cholecystectomy. However, before clinical implementation, instruments still need modification, and a more convenient treatment is still needed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of endoscopic internal gallbladder therapy such as cholecystolithotomy in an animal survival model. METHODS: Four pigs underwent endoscopic-ultrasound (EUS)-guided cholecystogastrostomy and the placement of a novel covered mental stent. Four weeks later the stents were removed and an endoscope was advanced into the gallbladder via the fistula, and cholecystolithotomy was performed. Two weeks later the pigs were sacrificed, and the healing of the fistulas was assessed. RESULTS: EUS-guided cholecystogastrostomy with mental stent deployment was successfully performed in all the animals. Four weeks after the procedure, the fistulas had formed and all the stents were removed. Endoscopic cholecystolithotomy was performed through each fistula. All the animals survived until they were sacrificed 2 weeks later. The fistulas were found to be completely healed. CONCLUSIONS: This study reports the first endoscopic transmural cholecystolithotomy after placement of a novel mental stent in an animal survival model

Taxonomy-Based Pruning in Generalized Frequent Itemsets Mining

The original purpose of data mining is for analysis of supermarket transaction data. Now with the rapid development in business, industry and science, data mining is used in lots of domains, so mining interesting information from large database becomes more important. Data mining includes two main parts: frequent itemsets mining and association rules mining. And frequent itemsets mining plays an essential role between them. Our thesis is focused on frequent itemsets mining. Previous studies on frequent itemsets mining is at single or multiple concept level, however, mining frequent itemsets at flexible multiple concept level may help finding more specific and useful information from huge data. In this thesis, four methods are introduced for mining frequent itemsets at flexible multiple level by extension of Apriori and Eclat algorithms. We also implement two algorithms for frequent pairs mining. We draw some conclusions about which method is suitable for which distributions of data

CrossFusion: Interleaving Cross-modal Complementation for Noise-resistant 3D Object Detection

The combination of LiDAR and camera modalities is proven to be necessary and typical for 3D object detection according to recent studies. Existing fusion strategies tend to overly rely on the LiDAR modal in essence, which exploits the abundant semantics from the camera sensor insufficiently. However, existing methods cannot rely on information from other modalities because the corruption of LiDAR features results in a large domain gap. Following this, we propose CrossFusion, a more robust and noise-resistant scheme that makes full use of the camera and LiDAR features with the designed cross-modal complementation strategy. Extensive experiments we conducted show that our method not only outperforms the state-of-the-art methods under the setting without introducing an extra depth estimation network but also demonstrates our model's noise resistance without re-training for the specific malfunction scenarios by increasing 5.2\% mAP and 2.4\% NDS