Do Local Analysts Know More? A Cross-Country Study of the Performance of Local Analysts and Foreign Analysts

This paper examines whether analysts resident in a country make more precise earnings forecasts for firms in that country than analysts who are not resident in that country. Using a sample of 32 countries, we find that there is an economically and statistically significant analyst local advantage even after controlling for firm and analyst characteristics. The importance of the local advantage is inversely related to the quality of the information provided by firms. In particular, the local advantage is high in countries where earnings are smoothed more, less information is disclosed by firms, and firm idiosyncratic information explains a smaller fraction of stock returns. The local advantage is also negatively related to market participation by foreign investors and by institutions and positively related to holdings by insiders. U.S. investors underweight a country's stocks more in their portfolios if that country has a higher analyst local advantage.

Highly Efficient Midinfrared On-Chip Electrical Generation of Graphene Plasmons by Inelastic Electron Tunneling Excitation

Inelastic electron tunneling provides a low-energy pathway for the excitation of surface plasmons and light emission. We theoretically investigate tunnel junctions based on metals and graphene. We show that graphene is potentially a highly efficient material for tunneling excitation of plasmons because of its narrow plasmon linewidths, strong emission, and large tunability in the midinfrared wavelength regime. Compared to gold and silver, the enhancement can be up to 10 times for similar wavelengths and up to 5 orders at their respective plasmon operating wavelengths. Tunneling excitation of graphene plasmons promises an efficient technology for on-chip electrical generation and manipulation of plasmons for graphene-based optoelectronics and nanophotonic integrated circuits.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Compositional and thermal characteristics of palm olein-based diacylglycerol in blends with palm super olein

Palm olein-based diacylglycerol (POL-DAG) was blended with palm super olein (POoo) in various concentrations (10–90%), with increments of 10% (wt/wt) POL-DAG. The physical and chemical characteristics, i.e., iodine value, acylglycerol content, fatty acid composition, melting and crystallization profiles and solid fat content, for POL-DAG, POoo and their binary blends were evaluated. The mid-infrared FTIR was used to determine the absorption bands of the different concentrations of the oil blends. Only slight differences of FAC and IV were observed. POL-DAG:POoo blends showed significant changes (p < 0.05) in DAG content and decreases in TAG content with increasing POL-DAG content. The DSC thermograms showed that the addition of different concentrations of POL-DAG changed the melting and crystallization behavior of the oil blends (POL-DAG:POoo). The crystallization onset point increased (p < 0.05) with an increasing POL-DAG concentration (10–90%). POL-DAG has the same absorption bands as POoo, with the exception of several minor peaks that appeared at (I) 2954 cm− 1, (II) 1267 cm− 1, (III) 1199 cm− 1, (IV) 1222 cm− 1 and (V) 966 cm− 1. This study will provide essential information for the palm oil industry to identify the most suitable POL-DAG blends with desirable physicochemical properties for food application purposes

Influence of rectangular steel splice-sleeve for precast concrete connection

Precast concrete building system has gained its popularity in Malaysia because of the many advantages such as high quality of structural components, less labour intensive at the construction site, and shorter completion time of a project. One of the constraints in precast concrete structures is to ensure that the connections are strong enough to ensure the structural integrity and robustness of the overall frames. In this study, a total of nine rectangular steel splice-sleeve connections were tested experimentally under incremental tensile loads. Two steel plates were inserted and welded to each end of the steel splice-sleeve. The steel plates act as shear key to provide the interlocking mechanism to the grout and to enhance the bond property between the grout and the splice. These plates were adopted to prevent the grout slippage from the sleeve. The grout strength, embedded steel bar lengths and the size of the steel sleeve splice were varied among the specimens to study their effect on the tensile performance of the connection. The results showed that the higher strength of grout, longer embedded length of steel bar and smaller size of the sleeve contributes to a higher ultimate tensile load

Gelsolin induces colorectal tumor cell invasion via modulation of the urokinase-type plasminogen activator cascade

Gelsolin is a cytoskeletal protein which participates in actin filament dynamics and promotes cell motility and plasticity. Although initially regarded as a tumor suppressor, gelsolin expression in certain tumors correlates with poor prognosis and therapy-resistance. In vitro, gelsolin has anti-apoptotic and pro-migratory functions and is critical for invasion of some types of tumor cells. We found that gelsolin was highly expressed at tumor borders infiltrating into adjacent liver tissues, as examined by immunohistochemistry. Although gelsolin contributes to lamellipodia formation in migrating cells, the mechanisms by which it induces tumor invasion are unclear. Gelsolin’s influence on the invasive activity of colorectal cancer cells was investigated using overexpression and small interfering RNA knockdown. We show that gelsolin is required for invasion of colorectal cancer cells through matrigel. Microarray analysis and quantitative PCR indicate that gelsolin overexpression induces the upregulation of invasion-promoting genes in colorectal cancer cells, including the matrix-degrading urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA). Conversely, gelsolin knockdown reduces uPA levels, as well as uPA secretion. The enhanced invasiveness of gelsolin-overexpressing cells was attenuated by treatment with function-blocking antibodies to either uPA or its receptor uPAR, indicating that uPA/uPAR activity is crucial for gelsolin-dependent invasion. In summary, our data reveals novel functions of gelsolin in colorectal tumor cell invasion through its modulation of the uPA/uPAR cascade, with potentially important roles in colorectal tumor dissemination to metastatic sites

Targeting cancer addiction for SALL4 by shifting its transcriptome with a pharmacologic peptide

Sal-like 4 (SALL4) is a nuclear factor central to the maintenance of stem cell pluripotency and is a key component in hepatocellular carcinoma, a malignancy with no effective treatment. In cancer cells, SALL4 associates with nucleosome remodeling deacetylase (NuRD) to silence tumor-suppressor genes, such as PTEN. Here, we determined the crystal structure of an amino-terminal peptide of SALL4(1-12) complexed to RBBp4, the chaperone subunit of NuRD, at 2.7 Å, and subsequent design of a potent therapeutic SALL4 peptide (FFW) capable of antagonizing the SALL4-NURD interaction using systematic truncation and amino acid substitution studies. FFW peptide disruption of the SALL4-NuRD complex resulted in unidirectional up-regulation of transcripts, turning SALL4 from a dual transcription repressor-activator mode to singular transcription activator mode. We demonstrate that FFW has a target affinity of 23 nM, and displays significant antitumor effects, inhibiting tumor growth by 85% in xenograft mouse models. Using transcriptome and survival analysis, we discovered that the peptide inhibits the transcription-repressor function of SALL4 and causes massive up-regulation of transcripts that are beneficial to patient survival. This study supports the SALL4-NuRD complex as a drug target and FFW as a viable drug candidate, showcasing an effective strategy to accurately target oncogenes previously considered undruggable

Multinational characterization of neurological phenotypes in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

Neurological complications worsen outcomes in COVID-19. To define the prevalence of neurological conditions among hospitalized patients with a positive SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test in geographically diverse multinational populations during early pandemic, we used electronic health records (EHR) from 338 participating hospitals across 6 countries and 3 continents (January–September 2020) for a cross-sectional analysis. We assessed the frequency of International Classification of Disease code of neurological conditions by countries, healthcare systems, time before and after admission for COVID-19 and COVID-19 severity. Among 35,177 hospitalized patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, there was an increase in the proportion with disorders of consciousness (5.8%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.7–7.8%, pFDR < 0.001) and unspecified disorders of the brain (8.1%, 5.7–10.5%, pFDR < 0.001) when compared to the pre-admission proportion. During hospitalization, the relative risk of disorders of consciousness (22%, 19–25%), cerebrovascular diseases (24%, 13–35%), nontraumatic intracranial hemorrhage (34%, 20–50%), encephalitis and/or myelitis (37%, 17–60%) and myopathy (72%, 67–77%) were higher for patients with severe COVID-19 when compared to those who never experienced severe COVID-19. Leveraging a multinational network to capture standardized EHR data, we highlighted the increased prevalence of central and peripheral neurological phenotypes in patients hospitalized with COVID-19, particularly among those with severe disease

Application of infrared thermography in computer aided diagnosis

The invention of thermography, in the 1950s, posed a formidable problem to the research community: What is the relationship between disease and heat radiation captured with Infrared (IR) cameras? The research community responded with a continuous effort to find this crucial relationship. This effort was aided by advances in processing techniques, improved sensitivity and spatial resolution of thermal sensors. However, despite this progress fundamental issues with this imaging modality still remain. The main problem is that the link between disease and heat radiation is complex and in many cases even non-linear. Furthermore, the change in heat radiation as well as the change in radiation pattern, which indicate disease, is minute. On a technical level, this poses high requirements on image capturing and processing. On a more abstract level, these problems lead to inter-observer variability and on an even more abstract level they lead to a lack of trust in this imaging modality. In this review, we adopt the position that these problems can only be solved through a strict application of scientific principles and objective performance assessment. Computing machinery is inherently objective; this helps us to apply scientific principles in a transparent way and to assess the performance results. As a consequence, we aim to promote thermography based Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems. Another benefit of CAD systems comes from the fact that the diagnostic accuracy is linked to the capability of the computing machinery and, in general, computers become ever more potent. We predict that a pervasive application of computers and networking technology in medicine will help us to overcome the shortcomings of any single imaging modality and this will pave the way for integrated health care systems which maximize the quality of patient care

Triple-negative, basal-like, and quintuple-negative breast cancers: better prediction model for survival

Background: Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) and basal-like breast cancers (BLBCs) are known as poor outcome subtypes with a lack of targeted therapy. Previous studies have shown conflicting results regarding the difference of prognostic significance between TNBCs and BLBCs. In this study, we aimed to characterize the prognostic features of TNBCs, in view of BLBCs and quintuple-negative breast cancers (QNBC/5NPs). Methods: Using tissue microarray-based immunohistochemical analysis, we categorized 951 primary breast cancers into four or five subtypes according to the expression of ER, PR, HER2, and basal markers (CK5/6, EGFR). Results: The results of this study showed that both TNBCs and BLBCs were associated with high histological and/ or nuclear grades. When the TNBCs are divided into two subtypes by the presence of basal markers, the clinicopathologic characteristics of TNBCs were mainly maintained in the BLBCs. The 5-subgrouping was the better prediction model for both disease free and overall survival in breast cancers than the 4-subgrouping. After multivariate analysis of TNBCs, the BLBCs did not have a worse prognosis than the QNBC/5NPs. Interestingly, the patients with BLBCs showed significant adjuvant chemotherapy benefit. In addition, QNBC/5NPs comprised about 6~8% of breast cancers in publicly available breast cancer datasets Conclusion: The QNBC/5NP subtype is a worse prognostic subgroup of TNBCs, especially in higher stage and this result may be related to adjuvant chemotherapy benefit of BLBCs, calling for caution in the identification of subgroups of patients for therapeutic classification

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT