Reported Earnings and Analyst Forecasts as Competing Sources of Information: A New Approach

We study information flows between earnings and forecasts, using suitably adapted Granger causality tests. This approach complements existing cross-sectional studies by abstracting from stock market reactions to information, and focussing on dynamic interactions between information flows instead. We find bi-directional causality in timeseries of analyst earnings forecasts and reported earnings, supporting our expectation that forecasts contribute to information that is reflected in future reports. Further, our evidence of feedback suggests that past reports and forecasts are both reflected in future forecasts, implying that the information in reports has inherent value, and that forecasts do not fully substitute for reports.

Two-dimensional binary arrays with good autocorrelation

Calabro and Wolf (1968)Inform. Contr. 11) investigate the autocorrelation properties of certain periodic two-dimensional arrays. This note points out a relationship between periodic p × q-arrays with two-level autocorrelation and difference sets in the group C(p) × C(q), where C(n) denote the cyclic group of order n. This observation enables us to construct several families of such arrays, some of which are perfect

Enhancing Student Learning with Podcasting, a Newly Emergent Social Technology

The complement between pull and push learning modes is believed to be contributable to enriching students\u27 learning experiences. Podcasting, a push technology, can be used to push teaching materials to the students\u27 handheld devices, allowing them to study without any geographical and temporal constraints. The students can then revise the materials according to their own preferences. This explicit push technology together with students\u27 implicit pull motivation can encourage the students to learn in a more efficient way. As the students have the autonomy to choose their preferred media to access learning materials, it is believed to be able to increase students\u27 satisfaction in the learning process. We implemented this idea in one of the courses taught in a university in Hong Kong. The encouraging findings confirmed with our belief that podcasting can help students to learn better by increasing their learning satisfaction

Solving Complex Logistics Problems with Multi-Artificial Intelligent System

The economy, which has become more information intensive, more global and more technologically dependent, is undergoing dramatic changes. The role of logistics is also becoming more and more important. In logistics, the objective of service providers is to fulfill all customers’ demands while adapting to the dynamic changes of logistics networks so as to achieve a higher degree of customer satisfaction and therefore a higher return on investment. In order to provide high quality service, knowledge and information sharing among departments becomes a must in this fast changing market environment. In particular, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have achieved significant attention for enhancing the agility of supply chain management, as well as logistics operations. In this research, a multi-artificial intelligence system, named Integrated Intelligent Logistics System (IILS) is proposed. The objective of IILS is to provide quality logistics solutions to achieve high levels of service performance in the logistics industry. The new feature of this agile intelligence system is characterized by the incorporation of intelligence modules through the capabilities of the case-based reasoning, multi-agent, fuzzy logic and artificial neural networks, achieving the optimization of the performance of organizations

Unpacking the impact of social media analytics on customer satisfaction : do external stakeholder characteristics matter?

Purpose Underpinned by the lens of Contingency Theory (CT), the purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate whether the impact of social media analytics (SMA) on customer satisfaction (CS) is contingent on the characteristics of different external stakeholders, including business partners (i.e. partner diversity), competitors (i.e. localised competition) and customers (i.e. customer engagement). Design/methodology/approach Using both subjective and objective measures from multiple sources, we collected primary data from 141 hotels operating in Greece and their archival data from TripAdvisor and the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels (HCH) database to test the hypothesised relationships. Data were analysed through structural equation modelling. Findings This study confirms the positive association between SMA and CS, but it remains subject to the varied characteristics of external stakeholders. We find that an increase in CS due to the implementation of SMA is more pronounced for firms that (1) adopt a selective distribution strategy where a limited number of business partners are chosen for collaboration or (2) operate in a highly competitive local environment. The results further indicate that high level of customer engagement amplifies the moderating effect of partner diversity (when it is low) and localised competition (when it is high) on the SMA–CS relationship. Originality/value The study provides novel insights for managers on the need to consider external stakeholder characteristics when implementing SMA to enhance firms' CS, and for researchers on the value of studying SMA implementation from the CT perspective

Circulating human leucine-rich a-2-glycoprotein 1 mRNA and protein levels to detect acute appendicitis in patients with acute abdominal pain

Background Elevated levels of circulating plasma and urine leucine-rich-2-glycoprotein-1 (LRG1) protein has been found in patients with acute appendicitis (AA) and may be useful for diagnosis. This study aimed to investigate whether combined tests including circulating LRG1 mRNA levels improve the early diagnosis of AA. Methods Between December 2011 and October 2012, a prospective study was conducted on patients aged 18 years or older presenting to the ED with acute abdominal pain (< 7 days of symptom onset). Levels of whole blood LRG1 mRNA and plasma LRG1 protein taken from these patients within 24 h of arrival (mean 12.4 h) were analyzed. The primary outcome was AA. Results Eighty-four patients (40 (47.6%) with AA and 44 (52.4%) without AA; mean age 35 years; 41.6% males) were recruited. Median whole blood LRG1 mRNA and plasma LRG1 levels were higher in AA patients than in non-AA. Of 40 AA patients, 13 (32.5%) were diagnosed as complicated AA. In ROC analysis of LRG1 mRNA (normalized to GAPDH), LRG1 protein and Alvarado score for discriminating AA and non-AA, the areas under the curve (AUC) were 0.723, 0.742 and 0.805 respectively. The AUC of combination of normalized LRG1 mRNA, LRG1 protein and Alvarado score was 0.845. Conclusion A combination of modified whole blood LRG1 mRNA levels, plasma LRG1 protein and Alvarado score at the ED may be useful to diagnose simple and complicated AA from other causes of abdominal pain

NTMG (N-terminal Truncated Mutants Generator for cDNA): an automatic multiplex PCR assays design for generating various N-terminal truncated cDNA mutants

The sequential deletion method is generally used to locate the functional domain of a protein. With this method, in order to find the various N-terminal truncated mutants, researchers have to investigate the ATG-like codons, to design various multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) forward primers and to do several PCR experiments. This web server (N-terminal Truncated Mutants Generator for cDNA) will automatically generate groups of forward PCR primers and the corresponding reverse PCR primers that can be used in a single batch of a multiplex PCR experiment to extract the various N-terminal truncated mutants. This saves much time and money for those who use the sequential deletion method in their research. This server is available at http://oblab.cs.nchu.edu.tw:8080/WebSDL/

CFD simulations of the spent fuel pool in the loss of coolant accident

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.The study utilized the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methodology to investigate the thermal hydraulic behavior during the hypothetical event of normal operation and loss of cooling accident occurring at spent fuel pool. The boiling time, water level decreasing rate, fuel exposure time and temperature response after fuel exposure for the nuclear power plants under the accident were predicted in this study. We also analyze the flow and heat transfer for the single Atrium-10 fuel bundle. The details of the physics will be shown in this study. The results indicate that the fuel temperature in the pool will not exceed 1200°C to avoid the water-metal reaction after failure of RHR system for 4.578 days. We find that the velocity in the bundle are much faster than outside of the bundle under the LOCA accident.dc201

Technique of anaesthesia in pulmonary hypertension and thrombophilia in early pregnancy

Pulmonary hypertension in pregnancy is a rare condition but is associated with a high mortality. We report the case of a 29 year old female in early pregnancy with Protein C and S deficiency with recurrent deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism and subsequent secondary pulmonary hypertension. The patient was counselled and consented for termination of pregnancy with tubal sterilization. She was administered continuous spinal anaesthesia with invasive monitoring. The successful anaesthetic management of this condition is described

Enhancement of Commercial Antifungal Agents by Kojic Acid.

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