Accounting for Change: Assessing Top-line Implications of New Revenue Recognition Principles

The impending implementation of new FASB guidance regarding the practice of revenue recognition will presumably alter the periodic presentation of top-line business performance. In anticipation of these impacts, this study seeks to isolate contractual business relationships within the automotive supply chain industry in order to illuminate certain changes and make financial statement users aware that corresponding adjustments may have to be made to their perception of revenue results. By outlining the differences between new and historical U.S. GAAP, and applying the anticipated quantitative effects of such shifts within a propositional study, I seek to produce conclusions that investors and analysts can use to better interpret current and future revenue data. Using historical company figures as a basis, incremental influences are applied to disaggregated portions of contract revenue, and final revenue figures are reconstructed to reflect the implications of new accounting guidance. This study displays the potential relative movement of these periodic revenue results as businesses transition away from their established accounting practices and into a new recognition model

Method for serial passage of infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) in rainbow trout

Transmission is a fundamental component of pathogen fitness. A better understanding of pathogen transmission can greatly improve disease management. In particular, controlled studies of multiple rounds of natural transmission (i.e. serial passage) can provide powerful epidemiological and evolutionary inferences. However, such studies are possible in only a few systems because of the challenges in successfully initiating and maintaining transmission in the laboratory. Here we developed an efficient and reproducible cohabitation method for conducting controlled experiments investigating the effects of serial passage on infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) in rainbow trout. This method was used to investigate the transmission efficiency and kinetics of viral shedding of IHNV over 3 serial passages. Transmission efficiency decreased from 100 to 62.5% over the passage steps and was associated with a decrease in virus shedding into water. A shift in the peak of viral shedding was also observed, from Day 2 post immersion for passage 0 to at least 24 h later for all subsequent passages. Finally, the characterization of viruses after 1 round of transmission and propagation on cells showed no change in glyco protein (G gene) sequences or viral virulence compared to the ancestral virus stock. The methods developed provide valuable tools for reproducible population-level studies of IHNV epidemiology and evolution

Analysis of Microtubule Sliding Patterns in Chlamydomonas Flagellar Axonemes Reveals Dynein Activity on Specific Doublet Microtubules

Generating the complex waveforms characteristic of beating eukaryotic cilia and flagella requires spatial regulation of dynein-driven microtubule sliding. To generate bending, one prediction is that dynein arms alternate between active and inactive forms on specific subsets of doublet microtubules. Using an in vitro microtubule sliding assay combined with a structural approach, we determined that ATP induces sliding between specific subsets of doublet microtubules, apparently capturing one phase of the beat cycle. These studies were also conducted using high Ca2+ conditions. InChlamydomonas, high Ca2+ induces changes in waveform which are predicted to result from regulating dynein activity on specific microtubules. Our results demonstrate that microtubule sliding in high Ca2+ buffer is also induced by dynein arms on specific doublets. However, the pattern of microtubule sliding in high Ca2+ buffer significantly differs from that in low Ca2+. These results are consistent with a ‘switching hypothesis’ of axonemal bending and provide evidence to indicate that Ca2+ control of waveform includes modulation of the pattern of microtubule sliding between specific doublets. In addition, analysis of microtubule sliding in mutant axonemes reveals that the control mechanism is disrupted in some mutants

You Look So Good for Your Age: First Steps of Creating a Measure of Daily Experiences of Ageism

Ageism refers to the combined stereotypes, prejudice, and discriminatory behaviors based on someone’s presumed age. Older adults are viewed with mixed (ambivalent) perceptions, such that they are viewed as being warm, but not very capable. Thus, there are multiple forms of ageism. Hostile ageism refers to the overtly negative ageism, whereas benevolent ageism refers to the seemingly kind form of ageism that still reinforces negative stereotypes (e.g., giving your seat to someone, assuming they are fragile or weak). Most research on ageism has referred to attitudes, both inter-and intra-group, directed toward older adults and aging. This work has found that hostile attitudes and views of aging predict worse health and well-being, totaling a cost of up to $63 billion per year (Levy et al., 2020). However, little research has examined how ageism is experienced across a lifespan sample (younger, middle aged, and older adults) and presently no current research has examined how ageism is experienced in a daily diary method. The goal of our research is to create a way to measure daily experiences of ageism to use in a future daily diary study

Limited available evidence supports theoretical predictions of reduced vaccine efficacy at higher exposure dose

Understanding the causes of vaccine failure is important for predicting disease dynamics in vaccinated populations and planning disease interventions. Pathogen exposure dose and heterogeneity in host susceptibility have both been implicated as important factors that may reduce overall vaccine efficacy and cause vaccine failure. Here, we explore the effect of pathogen dose and heterogeneity in host susceptibility in reducing efficacy of vaccines. Using simulation-based methods, we find that increases in pathogen exposure dose decrease vaccine efficacy, but this effect is modified by heterogeneity in host susceptibility. In populations where the mode of vaccine action is highly polarized, vaccine efficacy decreases more slowly with exposure dose than in populations with less variable protection. We compared these theoretical results to empirical estimates from a systematic literature review of vaccines tested over multiple exposure doses. We found that few studies (nine of 5,389) tested vaccine protection against infection over multiple pathogen challenge doses, with seven studies demonstrating a decrease in vaccine efficacy with increasing exposure dose. Our research demonstrates that pathogen dose has potential to be an important determinant of vaccine failure, although the limited empirical data highlight a need for additional studies to test theoretical predictions on the plausibility of reduced host susceptibility and high pathogen dose as mechanisms responsible for reduced vaccine efficacy in high transmission settings

Immune-mediated competition in rodent malaria is most likely caused by induced changes in innate immune clearance of merozoites

Malarial infections are often genetically diverse, leading to competitive interactions between parasites. A quantitative understanding of the competition between strains is essential to understand a wide range of issues, including the evolution of virulence and drug resistance. In this study, we use dynamical-model based Bayesian inference to investigate the cause of competitive suppression of an avirulent clone of Plasmodium chabaudi (AS) by a virulent clone (AJ) in immuno-deficient and competent mice. We test whether competitive suppression is caused by clone-specific differences in one or more of the following processes: adaptive immune clearance of merozoites and parasitised red blood cells (RBCs), background loss of merozoites and parasitised RBCs, RBC age preference, RBC infection rate, burst size, and within-RBC interference. These processes were parameterised in dynamical mathematical models and fitted to experimental data. We found that just one parameter μ, the ratio of background loss rate of merozoites to invasion rate of mature RBCs, needed to be clone-specific to predict the data. Interestingly, μ was found to be the same for both clones in single-clone infections, but different between the clones in mixed infections. The size of this difference was largest in immuno-competent mice and smallest in immuno-deficient mice. This explains why competitive suppression was alleviated in immuno-deficient mice. We found that competitive suppression acts early in infection, even before the day of peak parasitaemia. These results lead us to argue that the innate immune response clearing merozoites is the most likely, but not necessarily the only, mediator of competitive interactions between virulent and avirulent clones. Moreover, in mixed infections we predict there to be an interaction between the clones and the innate immune response which induces changes in the strength of its clearance of merozoites. What this interaction is unknown, but future refinement of the model, challenged with other datasets, may lead to its discovery

Des Moines Area Community College Creative Writing Contest 1976-2001

Award-Winning Works For the Academic Year · 2000-2001https://openspace.dmacc.edu/creativewriting/1002/thumbnail.jp

Tumour micro-environment elicits innate resistance to RAF inhibitors through HGF secretion.

Drug resistance presents a challenge to the treatment of cancer patients. Many studies have focused on cell-autonomous mechanisms of drug resistance. By contrast, we proposed that the tumour micro-environment confers innate resistance to therapy. Here we developed a co-culture system to systematically assay the ability of 23 stromal cell types to influence the innate resistance of 45 cancer cell lines to 35 anticancer drugs. We found that stroma-mediated resistance is common, particularly to targeted agents. We characterized further the stroma-mediated resistance of BRAF-mutant melanoma to RAF inhibitors because most patients with this type of cancer show some degree of innate resistance. Proteomic analysis showed that stromal cell secretion of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) resulted in activation of the HGF receptor MET, reactivation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase (PI(3)K)-AKT signalling pathways, and immediate resistance to RAF inhibition. Immunohistochemistry experiments confirmed stromal cell expression of HGF in patients with BRAF-mutant melanoma and showed a significant correlation between HGF expression by stromal cells and innate resistance to RAF inhibitor treatment. Dual inhibition of RAF and either HGF or MET resulted in reversal of drug resistance, suggesting RAF plus HGF or MET inhibitory combination therapy as a potential therapeutic strategy for BRAF-mutant melanoma. A similar resistance mechanism was uncovered in a subset of BRAF-mutant colorectal and glioblastoma cell lines. More generally, this study indicates that the systematic dissection of interactions between tumours and their micro-environment can uncover important mechanisms underlying drug resistance

School support, chaos, routines, and parents' mental health during COVID-19 remote schooling

Remote schooling due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) created profound challenges for families. In this investigation, we examined parents' depression and anxiety during remote schooling and their associations with parents' reports of school support. We also evaluated indirect and interactive (i.e., moderation) associations. Participants were parents (N = 152, 92.8% mothers, 65.1% Black) from an urban area with high rates of COVID-19. Of the 152 parents, 27.6% reported elevated levels of depression and 34.2% reported elevated anxiety. Regression analyses showed that school support was negatively associated with parents' depression (β = -.33, p < .01) and anxiety (β = -.21, p < .01). There was an indirect association between school support and parents' mental health via household chaos and daily routines. Reported COVID-19 impact moderated the direct association between school support and parental depression and anxiety. There was a statistically significant association between school support and parents' depression and anxiety when COVID-19 impact was low or moderate, but not when COVID-19 impact was high. These results may suggest that for parents who were not highly impacted by the pandemic, school support buffered the association between stress and parents' mental health problems; parents most impacted by COVID-19 may need additional support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).K01 MH110600 - NIMH NIH HHS; L40 MH117714 - NIMH NIH HHSAccepted manuscrip