Venture Capital and Corporate Governance

We consider data from 16 Asian countries, 16 European countries and the US to investigate the relationship between venture capital and corporate governance. There are five main findings. First, the variable measuring law and order is negatively related to the importance of venture capital finance. Second, the allocation of investment across different stages and different industries depends more on macroeconomic factors than on corporate governance variables. Third, in Low-GDP countries the allocation of venture capital is greater for low technology industries than for high technology industries. Fourth, venture capital boomed and became significant in many countries during the stock market boom or "bubble" of the late 1990's. Finally, a comparison of Asian and European venture capital shows that in Asia there was more investment in early stage projects while in Europe there was more investment in late stage projects. Also, in Europe there was more investment in medical and biotechnology industries.

Slow in Motion but Smart in Learning and Memory: Behavioral Changes in Adult NR3A Knockout Mice

The expression of NMDA receptor subunit NR3A is high in the neonatal brain but low in adults. However, its functional role in the adult brain is obscure. Using wild-type (WT) and NR3A knockout (KO) mice, we show here that NR3A plays imperative roles in multiple behavioral functions in adults. NR3A deletion produced a slow locomotor phenotype with enhanced memory capacities. Hippocampal slices from juvenile and adult NR3A KO mice showed greater long-term potentiation (LTP) compared to WT slices. NR3A deletion resulted in increased expression and phosphorylation of calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKII). CaMKII inhibition abrogated the enhanced LTP in NR3A KO slices. NR3A KO mice were also more sensitive to acute and chronic pain. These data reveal for the first time that NR3A, despite its low expression, plays several critical roles in behavioral activities in adults and may be a therapeutic target for modulating behaviors under normal and pathological conditions

Establishment of a nomogram model for acute chest pain triage in the chest pain center

BackgroundAcute myocardial infarction (AMI) is the leading life-threatening disease in the emergency department (ED), so rapid chest pain triage is important. This study aimed to establish a clinical prediction model for the risk stratification of acute chest pain patients based on the Point-of-care (POC) cardiac troponin (cTn) level and other clinical variables.MethodsWe conducted a post-hoc analysis of the database from 6,019 consecutive patients (excluding prehospital-diagnosed non-cardiac chest pain patients) attending a local chest pain center (CPC) in China between October 2016 and January 2019. The plasma concentration of cardiac troponin I (cTnI) was measured using a POC cTnI (Cardio Triage, Alere) assay. All the eligible patients were randomly divided into training and validation cohorts by a 7:3 ratio. We performed multivariable logistic regression to select variables and build a nomogram based on the significant predictive factors. We evaluated the model's generalization ability of diagnostic accuracy in the validation cohort.ResultsWe analyzed data from 5,397 patients that were included in this research. The median turnaround time (TAT) of POC cTnI was 16 min. The model was constructed with 6 variables: ECG ischemia, POC cTnI level, hypotension, chest pain symptom, Killip class, and sex. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) in the training and validation cohorts was 0.924 and 0.894, respectively. The diagnostic performance was superior to the GRACE score (AUC: 0.737).ConclusionA practical predictive model was created and could be used for rapid and effective triage of acute chest pain patients in the CPC

N-[2-(2-Chloro­phen­yl)-2-hydroxy­ethyl]propan-2-aminium chloride

In the title compound, C11H17ClNO+·Cl−, the side chain of the ethyl­amine group is orientated approximately perpendicular to the benzene ring, the dihedral angle between the C/C/N plane of the ethyl­amine group and the benzene plane being 83.5 (3)°. In the crystal structure, inter­molecular O—H⋯Cl and N—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds are observed. The crystal studied was an inversion twin with a 0.51 (10):0.49 (10) domain ratio

MVF-Net: Multi-View 3D Face Morphable Model Regression

We address the problem of recovering the 3D geometry of a human face from a set of facial images in multiple views. While recent studies have shown impressive progress in 3D Morphable Model (3DMM) based facial reconstruction, the settings are mostly restricted to a single view. There is an inherent drawback in the single-view setting: the lack of reliable 3D constraints can cause unresolvable ambiguities. We in this paper explore 3DMM-based shape recovery in a different setting, where a set of multi-view facial images are given as input. A novel approach is proposed to regress 3DMM parameters from multi-view inputs with an end-to-end trainable Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Multiview geometric constraints are incorporated into the network by establishing dense correspondences between different views leveraging a novel self-supervised view alignment loss. The main ingredient of the view alignment loss is a differentiable dense optical flow estimator that can backpropagate the alignment errors between an input view and a synthetic rendering from another input view, which is projected to the target view through the 3D shape to be inferred. Through minimizing the view alignment loss, better 3D shapes can be recovered such that the synthetic projections from one view to another can better align with the observed image. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over other 3DMM methods.Comment: 2019 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognitio

μ4-Sulfido-bis­{(μ-2-furyl­methane­thiol­ato)bis­[tricarbonyl­iron](Fe—Fe)}

The title compound, [Fe4(C5H5OS)2S(CO)12], was prepared by the direct reaction of Fe3(CO)12 and 2-furyl­methane­thiol in tetra­hydro­furan. Desulfurization took place readily to form an Fe4S3 cluster. The mol­ecule consists of two similar [(μ-2-C4H3O—CH2S)Fe2(CO)6] moieties joined to a spiro-type four-coordinate μ4-S atom such that this bridging sulfur is tetra­hedrally coordinated to the four Fe atoms. In each diiron subcluster core, the 2-furyl­methane­thiol­ate ligand bridges the two Fe atoms

Fractionated irradiation induced radio-resistant esophageal cancer EC109 cells seem to be more sensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chemo-radiotherapy, a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, is the most frequent treatment for patients with esophageal cancer. In the process of radiotherapy, the radiosensitive cancer will become a radio-resistant one.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In order to detect the chemotherapeutic drug sensitivity in radio-resistant cancer cells and improve the therapy efficiency, we firstly established a radio-resistant esophageal cancer cell model (referred to as EC109/R) from the human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell line EC109 through fractionated irradiation using X-rays. The radio-sensitivity of EC109/R cells was measured by clonogenic assay. To detect the drug sensitivity for EC109/R compared to its parent cells, we employed MTT method to screen the effectiveness of five different drugs commonly used in clinical therapy. The ratio of apoptosis was examined by flow cytometry.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>EC109/R cells were more sensitive to 5-fluorouracil, doxorubicin, paclitaxel and etoposide, but tolerant to cisplatin compared to its original cells.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study implies that fractionated irradiation induced radio-resistant esophageal cancer cell is more sensitive to certain kind of chemotherapeutic drugs. It provides evidence for choosing the sequence of radiotherapy and chemotherapy in esophageal cancer.</p