Margin trading and value relevance of earnings:Evidence from China

Information asymmetry and accounting information effectiveness are important issues in the capital market. Based on a sample of China's A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2021, this paper studies the impact of China's margin trading and short-selling policy on the value relevance of earnings and the unerlying mechanisms. We find that, compared with companies that are not included in margin trading and short selling lists, the earnings value relevance of listed companies increases significantly after allowing for short selling. In addition, margin trading and short selling improve the value relevance of earnings more significantly for firms with higher agency costs and firms with lower information transparency.</p

125I Radiotherapy combined with metronomic chemotherapy may boost the abscopal effect, leading to complete regression of liver metastasis in an SCLC patient with a 58.5-month OS: a case report

The liver is the most common and lethal metastatic site in patients with extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC), and median survival with current standard treatment is only 9–10 months from diagnosis. Clinical observations show that a complete response (CR) is extremely rare in ES-SCLC patients with liver metastasis. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, complete regression of liver metastasis induced by the abscopal effect, boosted primarily by permanent radioactive iodine-125 seeds implantation (PRISI), combined with a low-dose metronomic temozolomide (TMZ) regimen, has not been recorded. Here, we present the case of a 54-year-old male patient who developed multiple liver metastases from ES-SCLC after multiple lines of chemotherapy. The patient was given partial PRISI therapy (two out of six tumor lesions; 38 iodine-125 seeds in one dorsal lesion and 26 seeds in one ventral lesion), which was combined with TMZ metronomic chemotherapy (50 mg/m2/day, days 1–21, every 28 days). The abscopal effect was observed for 1 month after PRISI treatment. After about 1 year, all the liver metastases had completely disappeared, and the patient experienced no relapse. The patient eventually died of malnutrition caused by a non-tumor intestinal obstruction and had an overall survival of 58.5 months after diagnosis. PRISI combined with TMZ metronomic chemotherapy might be considered a potential therapy to trigger the abscopal effect in patients with liver metastases

Exogenous glutathione improves high root-zone temperature tolerance by modulating photosynthesis, antioxidant and osmolytes systems in cucumber seedlings

To investigate the physiological responses of plants to high root-zone temperature (HT, 35 °C) stress mitigated by exogenous glutathione (GSH), cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) seedlings were exposed to HT with or without GSH treatment for 4 days and following with 4 days of recovery. Plant physiological variables, growth, and gene expression related to antioxidant enzymes and Calvin cycle were quantified. The results showed that HT significantly decreased GSH content, the ratio of reduced to oxidized glutathione (GSH/GSSG), chlorophyll content, photosynthesis and related gene expression, shoot height, stem diameter, as well as dry weight. The exogenous GSH treatment clearly lessened the HT stress by increasing the above variables. Meanwhile, HT significantly increased soluble protein content, proline and malondialdehyde (MDA) content as well as O2•− production rate, the gene expression and activities of antioxidant enzymes. The GSH treatment remarkably improved soluble protein content, proline content, antioxidant enzymes activities, and antioxidant enzymes related gene expression, and reduced the MDA content and O2•− production rate compared to no GSH treatment in the HT condition. Our results suggest that exogenous GSH enhances cucumber seedling tolerance of HT stress by modulating the photosynthesis, antioxidant and osmolytes systems to improve physiological adaptation

ESKNet-An enhanced adaptive selection kernel convolution for breast tumors segmentation

Breast cancer is one of the common cancers that endanger the health of women globally. Accurate target lesion segmentation is essential for early clinical intervention and postoperative follow-up. Recently, many convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been proposed to segment breast tumors from ultrasound images. However, the complex ultrasound pattern and the variable tumor shape and size bring challenges to the accurate segmentation of the breast lesion. Motivated by the selective kernel convolution, we introduce an enhanced selective kernel convolution for breast tumor segmentation, which integrates multiple feature map region representations and adaptively recalibrates the weights of these feature map regions from the channel and spatial dimensions. This region recalibration strategy enables the network to focus more on high-contributing region features and mitigate the perturbation of less useful regions. Finally, the enhanced selective kernel convolution is integrated into U-net with deep supervision constraints to adaptively capture the robust representation of breast tumors. Extensive experiments with twelve state-of-the-art deep learning segmentation methods on three public breast ultrasound datasets demonstrate that our method has a more competitive segmentation performance in breast ultrasound images.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Model Simulation of Cucumber Yield and Microclimate Analysis in a Semi-closed Greenhouse in China

Adequate greenhouse environmental management is very important for improving resource use efficiency and increasing vegetable yield. The objective of this study was to explore suitable climate and cultivation management for cucumber to achieve high yield and build optimal yield models in semi-closed greenhouses. A fruit cucumber cultivar Deltastar was grown over 4 years in greenhouse and weekly data of yields (mean, highest and lowest) and environmental variables, including total radiation, air temperature, relative humidity, and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration were collected. Regression analyses were applied to develop the relationships and build best regression models of yields with environmental variables using the first 2 years of data. Data collected in years 3 and 4 were used for model validation. Results showed that total radiation, nutrient, temperature, CO2 concentration, and average nighttime relative humidity had significant correlations with cucumber yields. The best regression models fit the mean, lowest, and highest yields very well with R2 values of 0.67, 0.66, and 0.64, respectively. Total radiation and air temperature had the most significant contributions to the variations of the yields. Our results of this study provide useful information for improving greenhouse climate management and yield forecast in semi-closed greenhouses

A Carbon Nanotube-based Hundred Watt-level Ka-band Backward Wave Oscillator

Carbon nanotube (CNT) cold-cathodes hold much promise in a variety of millimeter-wave and terahertz vacuum electronic radiation devices due to their inherent near instantaneous temporal turn-on and near-ideal ideal field electron emission performance. Here we report on the development of a CNT cold-cathode Ka -band backward-wave oscillator (BWO). Using a novel beam compression stage, theoretical studies, simulation results, and empirical findings collectively demonstrate that this device affords an unprecedentedly high output power of 230 W at a technologically important operating frequency of 33.65 GHz. The developed magnetic injection electron gun achieves a high emission current of 265.5 mA (emission current density of 188.3 mA/cm 2 ) and a high focused beam current density of 18.5 A/cm 2 , which our studies suggest, is essential to the BWOs high output power

NH3-Sensing Mechanism Using Surface Acoustic Wave Sensor with AlO(OH) Film

In this study, AlO(OH) (boehmite) film was deposited onto a surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonator using a combined sol-gel and spin-coating technology, and prepared and used as a sensitive layer for a high-performance ammonia sensor. The prepared AlO(OH) film has a mesoporous structure and a good affinity to NH3 (ammonia gas) molecules, and thus can selectively adsorb and react with NH3. When exposed to ammonia gases, the SAW sensor shows an initial positive response of the frequency shift, and then a slight decrease of the frequency responses. The sensing mechanism of the NH3 sensor is based on the competition between mass-loading and elastic-loading effects. The sensor operated at room temperature shows a positive response of 1540 Hz to 10 ppm NH3, with excellent sensitivity, selectivity and stability

A Low-Voltage, Pre-Modulation Terahertz Oscillator Based on a Carbon Nanotube Cold-Cathode

To develop miniaturized and compact vacuum electron devices, new approaches to device manufacturing must be embraced. Here, a terahertz oscillator based on carbon nanotube (CNT) cold cathode is investigated through particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The studies show that the high-frequency (HF) field excited by the device can modulate the field emission current efficiently, with an output power of 4.6 W at 139.4 GHz obtained at an operating voltage of 2.9 kV and an initial emission current and current density of 15.8 mA and 7.65 A/cm 2 , respectively, and the efficiency is 10.0%

A novel CT-guided technique using medical adhesive for localization of small pulmonary ground-glass nodules and mixed ground-glass nodules (≤20 mm) before video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery

PURPOSE:We aimed to evaluate the success rate and complication occurrence of CT-guided localization of small pure ground-glass nodules (pGGNs) and mixed ground-glass nodules (mGGNs) with medical adhesive injection before video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS).METHODS:From March 2015 to May 2017, 41 patients with 44 small pGGNs and mGGNs underwent CT-guided percutaneous localization with medical adhesive prior to wedge resection by VATS.RESULTS:Localization with medical adhesive was successful in all patients (100%). The nodules (13 pGGNs, 31 mGGNs) had a mean maximal long-axis diameter of 9±4 mm and a mean distance of 10±7 mm from the most superficial edge of the nodule to the visceral pleura. The localization time was 16±8 minutes. There was a moderate inverse relationship between localization time and the nodule diameter (r= -0.42, P = 0.005). Thirty-three nodules with primary lung cancer were pathologically confirmed. There were 3 cases of pneumothorax (7%), 3 cases of parenchyma hemorrhage (7%) and 2 cases of irritable cough (5%), respectively. No conversion to thoracotomy was necessary in any patient.CONCLUSION:CT-guided percutaneous localization with medical adhesive can label small pGGNs and mGGNs prior to VATS, with high success and low complication rates