Abnormal market return from real estate divestiture and acquisition announcements in a developing country

Real estate asset divestitures and acquisitions (D&A) are conducted as part of corporate restructuring. This study attempts to fill the knowledge gap on abnormal market return (AR) towards D&A activities during recession in a developing country. The samples are Malaysian listed non-real estate companies that conducted D&A during the 2008 financial crisis. Event study methodology is used to determine AR surrounding D&A announcements within (-10day, +10day) event window. Results show that both D&A announcements bring insignificant AR on and near the announcement date (-1 to +1). Prior to announcement, divesting (acquiring) companies incur negative (positive) AR, indicating that any leakage of information on divestiture (acquisition) is not favored (favored) by the market. Post-announcement results show that divesting companies continued to experience negative ARs even though majority of such companies divested at premium prices. However, acquiring companies experience significant and negative post-announcement AR. This is plausibly due to the majority of acquiring companies paid a premium above valuation for their acquisitions. In summary, the market frowns upon divestitures in general and acquisitions of real estate assets above their valuations during economic recessions

Maize meal fortification is associated with improved vitamin A and iron status in adolescents and reduced childhood anaemia in a food aid-dependent refugee population

Abstract Objective To assess changes in the Fe and vitamin A status of the population of Nangweshi refugee camp associated with the introduction of maize meal fortification. Design Pre- and post-intervention study using a longitudinal cohort. Setting Nangweshi refugee camp, Zambia. Subjects Two hundred and twelve adolescents (10-19 years), 157 children (6-59 months) and 118 women (20-49 years) were selected at random by household survey in July 2003 and followed up after 12 months. Results Maize grain was milled and fortified in two custom-designed mills installed at a central location in the camp and a daily ration of 400 g per person was distributed twice monthly to households as part of the routine food aid ration. During the intervention period mean Hb increased in children (0·87 g/dl; P < 0·001) and adolescents (0·24 g/dl; P = 0·043) but did not increase in women. Anaemia decreased in children by 23·4 % (P < 0·001) but there was no significant change in adolescents or women. Serum transferrin receptor (log10-transformed) decreased by −0·082 μg/ml (P = 0·036) indicating an improvement in the Fe status of adolescents but there was no significant decrease in the prevalence of deficiency (−8·5 %; P = 0·079). In adolescents, serum retinol increased by 0·16 μmol/l (P < 0·001) and vitamin A deficiency decreased by 26·1 % (P < 0·001). Conclusions The introduction of fortified maize meal led to a decrease in anaemia in children and a decrease in vitamin A deficiency in adolescents. Centralised, camp-level milling and fortification of maize meal is a feasible and pertinent intervention in food aid operation

Cerebral endothelial cell derived small extracellular vesicles improve cognitive function in aged diabetic rats

Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) mediate cell-cell communication by transferring their cargo biological materials into recipient cells. Diabetes mellitus (DM) induces cerebral vascular dysfunction and neurogenesis impairment, which are associated with cognitive decline and an increased risk of developing dementia. Whether the sEVs are involved in DM-induced cerebral vascular disease, is unknown. Therefore, we studied sEVs derived from cerebral endothelial cells (CEC-sEVs) of aged DM rats (DM-CEC-sEVs) and found that DM-CEC-sEVs robustly inhibited neural stem cell (NSC) generation of new neuroblasts and damaged cerebral endothelial function. Treatment of aged DM-rats with CEC-sEVs derived from adult healthy normal rats (N-CEC-sEVs) ameliorated cognitive deficits and improved cerebral vascular function and enhanced neurogenesis. Intravenously administered N-CEC-sEVs crossed the blood brain barrier and were internalized by neural stem cells in the neurogenic region, which were associated with augmentation of miR-1 and -146a and reduction of myeloid differentiation primary response gene 88 and thrombospondin 1 proteins. In addition, uptake of N-CEC-sEVs by the recipient cells was mediated by clathrin and caveolin dependent endocytosis signaling pathways. The present study provides ex vivo and in vivo evidence that DM-CEC-sEVs induce cerebral vascular dysfunction and neurogenesis impairment and that N-CEC-sEVs have a therapeutic effect on improvement of cognitive function by ameliorating dysfunction of cerebral vessels and increasing neurogenesis in aged DM rats, respectively

The Alzheimer's Biomarker Consortium-Down Syndrome: Rationale and methodology.

INTRODUCTION: Adults with Down syndrome (DS) are at exceptionally high risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD), with virtually all individuals developing key neuropathological features by age 40. Identifying biomarkers of AD progression in DS can provide valuable insights into pathogenesis and suggest targets for disease modifying treatments. METHODS: We describe the development of a multi-center, longitudinal study of biomarkers of AD in DS. The protocol includes longitudinal examination of clinical, cognitive, blood and cerebrospinal fluid-based biomarkers, magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography measures (at 16-month intervals), as well as genetic modifiers of AD risk and progression. RESULTS: Approximately 400 individuals will be enrolled in the study (more than 370 to date). The methodological approach from the administrative, clinical, neuroimaging, omics, neuropathology, and statistical cores is provided. DISCUSSION: This represents the largest U.S.-based, multi-site, biomarker initiative of AD in DS. Findings can inform other multidisciplinary networks studying AD in the general population

Identification of QTL genes for BMD variation using both linkage and gene-based association approaches

Low bone mineral density (BMD) is a risk factor for osteoporotic fracture with a high heritability. Previous large scale linkage study in Northern Chinese has identified four significant quantitative trait loci (QTL) for BMD variation on chromosome 2q24, 5q21, 7p21 and 13q21. We performed a replication study of these four QTL in 1,459 Southern Chinese from 306 pedigrees. Successful replication was observed on chromosome 5q21 for femoral neck BMD with a LOD score of 1.38 (nominal p value = 0.006). We have previously identified this locus in a genome scan meta-analysis of BMD variation in a white population. Subsequent QTL-wide gene-based association analysis in 800 subjects with extreme BMD identified CAST and ERAP1 as novel BMD candidate genes (empirical p value of 0.032 and 0.014, respectively). The associations were independently replicated in a Northern European population (empirical p value of 0.01 and 0.004 for CAST and ERAP1, respectively). These findings provide further evidence that 5q21 is a BMD QTL, and CAST and ERAP1 may be associated with femoral neck BMD variation

European bone mineral density loci are also associated with BMD in East-Asian populations

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links fieldMost genome-wide association (GWA) studies have focused on populations of European ancestry with limited assessment of the influence of the sequence variants on populations of other ethnicities. To determine whether markers that we have recently shown to associate with Bone Mineral Density (BMD) in Europeans also associate with BMD in East-Asians we analysed 50 markers from 23 genomic loci in samples from Korea (n = 1,397) and two Chinese Hong Kong sample sets (n = 3,869 and n = 785). Through this effort we identified fourteen loci that associated with BMD in East-Asian samples using a false discovery rate (FDR) of 0.05; 1p36 (ZBTB40, P = 4.3×10(-9)), 1p31 (GPR177, P = 0.00012), 3p22 (CTNNB1, P = 0.00013), 4q22 (MEPE, P = 0.0026), 5q14 (MEF2C, P = 1.3×10(-5)), 6q25 (ESR1, P = 0.0011), 7p14 (STARD3NL, P = 0.00025), 7q21 (FLJ42280, P = 0.00017), 8q24 (TNFRSF11B, P = 3.4×10(-5)), 11p15 (SOX6, P = 0.00033), 11q13 (LRP5, P = 0.0033), 13q14 (TNFSF11, P = 7.5×10(-5)), 16q24 (FOXL1, P = 0.0010) and 17q21 (SOST, P = 0.015). Our study marks an early effort towards the challenge of cataloguing bone density variants shared by many ethnicities by testing BMD variants that have been established in Europeans, in East-Asians

A human PrM antibody that recognizes a novel cryptic epitope on dengue E glycoprotein

10.1371/journal.pone.0033451PLoS ONE74

Identification of microbial community in the urban environment: The concordance between conventional culture and nanopore 16S rRNA sequencing

IntroductionMicrobes in the built environment have been implicated as a source of infectious diseases. Bacterial culture is the standard method for assessing the risk of exposure to pathogens in urban environments, but this method only accounts for &lt;1% of the diversity of bacteria. Recently, full-length 16S rRNA gene analysis using nanopore sequencing has been applied for microbial evaluations, resulting in a rise in the development of long-read taxonomic tools for species-level classification. Regarding their comparative performance, there is, however, a lack of information.MethodsHere, we aim to analyze the concordance of the microbial community in the urban environment inferred by multiple taxonomic classifiers, including ARGpore2, Emu, Kraken2/Bracken and NanoCLUST, using our 16S-nanopore dataset generated by MegaBLAST, as well as assess their abilities to identify culturable species based on the conventional culture results.ResultsAccording to our results, NanoCLUST was preferred for 16S microbial profiling because it had a high concordance of dominant species and a similar microbial profile to MegaBLAST, whereas Kraken2/Bracken, which had similar clustering results as NanoCLUST, was also desirable. Second, for culturable species identification, Emu with the highest accuracy (81.2%) and F1 score (29%) for the detection of culturable species was suggested.DiscussionIn addition to generating datasets in complex communities for future benchmarking studies, our comprehensive evaluation of the taxonomic classifiers offers recommendations for ongoing microbial community research, particularly for complex communities using nanopore 16S rRNA sequencing

Prevalence and Risk Factors of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Infection in Southern Chinese Women – A Population-Based Study

Background: Persistent high-risk type Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is recognized as a necessary cause of cervical cancer. This study aimed to compare the HPV prevalence and risk factors between women residing in Hong Kong (HK) and Guangzhou (GZ) region of China. Methodology/Principal Findings: A total of 1,570 and 1,369 women were recruited from HK and GZ, respectively. The cytology samples were collected and tested for HPV infection. The overall and type-specific HPV prevalence and the potential risk factors for acquisition of HPV infection were studied. Women with normal cytology in the GZ cohort had significantly higher HPV prevalence (10%) than those in the HK cohort (6.2%, p<0.001). The patterns of the age-specific HPV prevalence were also different between the two cohorts. In the HK cohort, women at the age of 20-29 years old had the highest prevalence and a second peak was observed in the age of ≥60 years old. In the GZ cohort, the highest HPV prevalence was also observed in 20-29 years old but declined as the age increased and a second peak was not seen. HPV16 and HPV52 were the most common high-risk types found in the HK and GZ cohorts, respectively. Age was the most consistently observed independent risk factor for HPV infection in the HK, while the number of sexual partners had association in the GZ cohort. Conclusions/Significance: Our study provides the current status and the epidemiological characteristics of HPV prevalence in Southern Chinese women. The results strongly suggested that population education and the effective cervical cancer screening would be vital in the prevention of cervical cancer. © 2011 Liu et al.published_or_final_versio

Withania somnifera Root Extract Enhances Chemotherapy through ‘Priming’

Withania somnifera extracts are known for their anti-cancerous, anti-inflammatory and antioxidative properties. One of their mechanisms of actions is to modulate mitochondrial function through increasing oxidative stress. Recently ‘priming’ has been suggested as a potential mechanism for enhancing cancer cell death. In this study we demonstrate that ‘priming’, in HT-29 colon cells, with W. somnifera root extract increased the potency of the chemotherapeutic agent cisplatin. We have also showed the W. somnifera root extract enhanced mitochondrial dysfunction and that the underlying mechanism of ‘priming’ was selectively through increased ROS. Moreover, we showed that this effect was not seen in non-cancerous cells