BUSINESS CYCLE AND LONG-TERM DEBT: EFFECTS ON HOTEL OPERATING LEASE

Over the last 25 years, many hotel operators have chosen to lease their property instead of owning as a financing strategy. This paper examines the combined and separate contributions of business cycles and a firm’s level of long-term debt on hotel owner/operator use of operating leases. The results indicate that operating leases were used more often during contracting business cycles and less often during cycles of expansion. According to the results, operating leases and long-term debt are not complementary, although they are increasingly treated as complements when the economy suffers a downturn

Donating breastmilk: Regulated and unregulated practices: A review of the ethical issues

Breastmilk is the optimal source of nutrition for babies although there are a range of situations in which breastfeeding is difficult, including prematurity. Human milk is donated in the UK in both regulated and unregulated ways. A network of human milk banks receive and distribute donor milk, primarily to premature and sick infants, supported by NICE guidance (NICE, 2010) and the UK Association for Milk Banking (UKAMB). Variations in the geographical spread and funding of the banks mean that women who want to donate or receive breastmilk are not always able to do so. Discourse around the ethics of the provision and use of human milk in this way often emphasises issues of risk and safety.There are also ways in which breastmilk is donated informally, often using the terminology of ‘sharing’, usually to full-term infants. Some women feed each other’s babies via friendship groups whilst others contact each other using online (often international) networks specifically set up for the purpose of peer-to-peer human milk sharing. Health bodies in a number of countries (although not in the UK) have issued warnings against obtaining breastmilk in this way, focussing again on ‘danger’ and ‘risk’ and drawing on limited research evidence (Keim et al, 2013; Stuebe et al., 2014, cited in Palmquist and Doehler, 2014). In the UK the issues were raised in a recent BMJ editorial (Steele et al, 2015). Other researchers have compared the risk of sharing breastmilk with the (known) risks of formula feeding (Gribble and Hausman, 2012).These topics have been the subject of a range of academic papers as well as online discussions, raising questions about the ethical issues and obligations in both regulated and unregulated practices of milk donation. These include the nature of donation and whether donors and recipients are viewed differently according to the mode of donation (milk bank vs. milk sharing; donating vs. selling) and the situation of the recipient. Is the ethics of ‘giving’ a body product different when the product is human milk rather than blood or organs? Is this an area which should remain unregulated, as a private practice, or should it be more widely or formally considered? In addition there are a range of Issues relating to the perception of human milk – as both ‘white/liquid gold’ and ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas, 1966) – which draw on ideas of cultural unease about women’s bodily fluids. Milk for use in milk banks is depersonalised but there is unease about sharing intimate bodily fluids with known/unknown others. The focus here is on informal milk sharing – why and how it happens (the lived experience of donors and recipients) and how both donation and risk are framed and accounted for. What is known is mostly from the US and Australia; women who use websites for milk sharing talk about ‘informed choice’. Where they examine all the available evidence, share information about milk collection and storage and gather knowledge about the donor (e.g. is the donor breastfeeding her own baby?). Health professionals and non-professionals working with pregnant and lactating women may be asked for advice and need to consider these issues. My conclusion is that breastmilk donation differs from other forms of donation in important ways; donating and sharing breastmilk has increased in prevalence and possibilities but the scale and scope of informal milk sharing in the UK is unknown. Many opportunities to donate and receive breastmilk have arisen in grassroots woman-to-woman ways (in a similar way to other forms of parenting and breastfeeding support). Ideas of risk frame the ‘official’ reaction to sharing breastmilk via the internet (but not in the UK) and little is known about how individual women understand and make sense of these risks

Microrollers Flow Uphill as Granular Media

Pour sand into a container and only the grains near the top surface move. The collective motion associated with the translational and rotational energy of the grains in a thin flowing layer is quickly dissipated as friction through multibody interactions. Alternatively, consider what will happen to a bed of particles if one applies a torque to each individual particle. In this paper, we demonstrate an experimental system where torque is applied at the constituent level through a rotating magnetic field in a dense bed of microrollers. The net result is the grains roll uphill, forming a heap with a negative angle of repose. Two different regimes have been identified related to the degree of mobility or fluidization of the particles in the bulk. Velocimetry of the near surface flowing layer reveals the collective motion of these responsive particles scales in a similar way to flowing bulk granular flows. A simple granular model that includes cohesion accurately predicts the apparent negative coefficient of friction. In contrast to the response of active or responsive particles that mimic thermodynamic principles, this system results in macroscopic collective behavior that has the kinematics of a purely dissipative granular system

Neurophysiological correlates of excitement in men with recent-onset psychosis

Objective: Right frontal function, as indicated by the N200 component of the event-related potential during target detection, has previously been associated with excitement (excitement, impulsivity, hostility, uncooperativeness) in men with a long-term diagnosis of schizophrenia. The current study investigated excitement in relation to N200 in men who had recently experienced their first episode of psychosis. Subjects and methods: Twenty men who had recently suffered their first psychotic episode underwent a clinical interview and auditory oddball task. Results: Multiple linear regression analysis showed that 58% of the variance in the excitement symptom cluster was explained by a positive association with frontal midline N200 amplitude and an inverse association with right frontal N200 amplitude. The latter was not apparent in the initial correlation, suggesting suppression by the midline activity. These associations were not explained by drug use, medication or negative symptoms. However, the correlation between excitement and midline N200 was stronger in drug users, and that between right frontal N200 and excitement was stronger in nonusers. Conclusion: Findings support the independent contributions to excitement of mechanisms reflected in midline and right frontal N200 amplitude respectively during the early stages of psychosis

Neuromorphometric characterization with shape functionals

This work presents a procedure to extract morphological information from neuronal cells based on the variation of shape functionals as the cell geometry undergoes a dilation through a wide interval of spatial scales. The targeted shapes are alpha and beta cat retinal ganglion cells, which are characterized by different ranges of dendritic field diameter. Image functionals are expected to act as descriptors of the shape, gathering relevant geometric and topological features of the complex cell form. We present a comparative study of classification performance of additive shape descriptors, namely, Minkowski functionals, and the nonadditive multiscale fractal. We found that the proposed measures perform efficiently the task of identifying the two main classes alpha and beta based solely on scale invariant information, while also providing intraclass morphological assessment

The Acid Test of Fluoride: How pH Modulates Toxicity

Background: It is not known why the ameloblasts responsible for dental enamel formation are uniquely sensitive to fluoride ($F^−$). Herein, we present a novel theory with supporting data to show that the low pH environment of maturating stage ameloblasts enhances their sensitivity to a given dose of $F^−$. Enamel formation is initiated in a neutral pH environment (secretory stage); however, the pH can fall to below 6.0 as most of the mineral precipitates (maturation stage). Low pH can facilitate entry of $F^−$ into cells. Here, we asked if $F^−$ was more toxic at low pH, as measured by increased cell stress and decreased cell function. Methodology/Principal Findings: Treatment of ameloblast-derived LS8 cells with $F^−$ at low pH reduced the threshold dose of $F^−$ required to phosphorylate stress-related proteins, PERK, eIF2α, JNK and c-jun. To assess protein secretion, LS8 cells were stably transduced with a secreted reporter, Gaussia luciferase, and secretion was quantified as a function of $F^−$ dose and pH. Luciferase secretion significantly decreased within 2 hr of $F^−$ treatment at low pH versus neutral pH, indicating increased functional toxicity. Rats given 100 ppm $F^−$ in their drinking water exhibited increased stress-mediated phosphorylation of eIF2α in maturation stage ameloblasts (pH<6.0) as compared to secretory stage ameloblasts (pH∼7.2). Intriguingly, $F^−$-treated rats demonstrated a striking decrease in transcripts expressed during the maturation stage of enamel development (Klk4 and Amtn). In contrast, the expression of secretory stage genes, AmelX, Ambn, Enam and Mmp20, was unaffected. Conclusions: The low pH environment of maturation stage ameloblasts facilitates the uptake of $F^−$, causing increased cell stress that compromises ameloblast function, resulting in dental fluorosis