How Laws Affect Contracts: Evidence from Yankee Bond Covenants

We examine how country-level legal and institutional differences in creditor and shareholder rights shape the use of bond covenants. Using comprehensive debt covenant information for a sample of Yankee bonds issued by firms from more than 50 countries, we find that bond contracts for firms incorporated in countries with stronger creditor rights use fewer restrictive covenants. This finding suggests that creditor rights laws substitute for debt covenants in reducing the agency cost of debt. On the other hand, bond contracts for firms incorporated in legal regimes with stronger shareholder rights include more covenants, suggesting that greater shareholder rights may actually increase the shareholder-bondholder agency conflict. These results are robust to alternative measures of creditor rights and shareholder rights. We also document that stronger firm-level corporate governance is positively related to the use of restrictive covenants even after controlling for country institutions.Covenants, contracts, creditor rights, shareholder rights, corporate governance

Debt Reallocation in Multinational Firms: Evidence from the UK Worldwide Debt cap

How do multinational firms respond to reforms that limit interest deductibility? In this paper, we analyze debt reallocation of multinationals after the implementation of a worldwide debt cap in the UK in 2010. We find that multinationals affected by the cap significantly reduced the tested debt ratio, suggesting the cap is effective. Affected multinationals increased debt holdings and the fraction of subsidiaries in non-UK subsidiaries facing a high corporate tax rate, while shrank operations in low tax countries. Although the cap allowed the UK tax authority to collect more tax revenue from affected multinationals, it did not change their worldwide effective tax rate. There is also evidence that the debt cap induced non-UK headquartered multinationals to shrink their operation in the UK. Our findings provide causal evidence for tax-motivated debt reallocation within multinationals, and shed light on how multinationals can circumvent regulations via adjusting their debt policies and organizational structures

Long-Term Orientation and Tax Avoidance Regulations

In this paper, we explore the relationship between the culture of the country where a multinational corporation (MNC) is headquartered and the MNC\u27s stock market reaction to tax avoidance regulations. Specifically, we examine the different responses of MNCs following the implementation of the 2010 UK reform that restricted profit shifting for a specific group of firms. We find that, in countries with short-term-oriented cultures, MNCs affected by this reform experienced positive stock market responses relative to their unaffected counterparts. This is not found in long-term-oriented cultures. This difference in response can partly be explained by the differing perceptions of the role tax havens play in tax minimization practices between more long-term-oriented cultures and those oriented towards the short term. We provide evidence that investors from more future-oriented cultures may recognize the short-lived effectiveness of a regulation ex ante, and thus price the quasi-exogenous market shock differently than their more short-term-oriented counterparts

MRSI: A Fast Pattern Matching Algorithm for Anti-virus Applications

Anti-virus applications play an important role in today’s Internet communication security. Virus scanning is usually performed on email, web and file transfer traffic flows at intranet security gateways. The performance of popular anti-virus applications relies on the pattern matching algorithms implemented in these security devices. The growth of network bandwidth and the increase of virus signatures call for high speed and scalable pattern matching algorithms. Motivated by several observations of a real-life virus signature database from Clam-AV, a popular anti-virus application, a fast pattern matching algorithm named MRSI is proposed in this paper. Compared to the current algorithm implemented in Clam-AV, MRSI achieved an 80%~100 % faster virus scanning speed without excessive memory usages

Packet Classification Algorithms: From Theory to Practice

Abstract—During the past decade, the packet classification problem has been widely studied to accelerate network applications such as access control, traffic engineering and intrusion detection. In our research, we found that although a great number of packet classification algorithms have been proposed in recent years, unfortunately most of them stagnate in mathematical analysis or software simulation stages and few of them have been implemented in commercial products as a generic solution. To fill the gap between theory and practice, in this paper, we propose a novel packet classification algorithm named HyperSplit. Compared to the well-known HiCuts and HSM algorithms, HyperSplit achieves superior performance in terms of classification speed, memory usage and preprocessing time. The practicability of the proposed algorithm is manifested by two facts in our test: HyperSplit is the only algorithm that can successfully handle all the rule sets; HyperSplit is also the only algorithm that reaches more than 6Gbps throughput on the Octeon3860 multi-core platform when tested with 64-byte Ethernet packets against 10K ACL rules. Keywords-algorithm; classification; multi-core; performance I

Does Circulating Antibody Play a Role in the Protection of Piglets against Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus?

The contribution of circulating antibody to the protection of naïve piglets against porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) was evaluated using a passive antibody transfer model. Piglets (n = 62) derived from 6 sows were assigned to one of 6 different treatments using a randomized block design which provided for allocation of all treatments to all sows\u27 litters. Each treatment was designed to achieve a different level of circulating anti-PEDV antibody via intraperitoneally administration of concentrated serum antibody. Piglets were orally inoculated with PEDV (USA/IN/2013/19338E, 1 x 103 TCID50 per piglet) 24 hours later and then monitored for 14 days. Piglets remained with their dam throughout the experiment. Sow milk samples, piglet fecal samples, and data on piglet clinical signs, body weight, and body temperature were collected daily. Fecal samples were tested by PEDV real-time reverse transcriptase PCR. Serum, colostrum, and milk were tested for PEDV IgG, IgA, and virus-neutralizing antibody. The data were evaluated for the effects of systemic PEDV antibody levels on growth, body temperature, fecal shedding, survival, and antibody response. The analysis showed that circulating antibody partially ameliorated the effect of PEDV infection. Specifically, antibody-positive groups returned to normal body temperature faster and demonstrated a higher rate of survivability than piglets without PEDV antibody. When combined with previous literature on PEDV, it can be concluded that both systemic antibodies and maternal secretory IgA in milk contribute to the protection of the neonatal pig against PEDV infections. Overall, the results of this experiment suggested that passively administered circulating antibodies contributed to the protection of neonatal piglets against PEDV infection

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Methylprednisolone as Adjunct to Endovascular Thrombectomy for Large-Vessel Occlusion Stroke

Importance It is uncertain whether intravenous methylprednisolone improves outcomes for patients with acute ischemic stroke due to large-vessel occlusion (LVO) undergoing endovascular thrombectomy. Objective To assess the efficacy and adverse events of adjunctive intravenous low-dose methylprednisolone to endovascular thrombectomy for acute ischemic stroke secondary to LVO. Design, Setting, and Participants This investigator-initiated, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was implemented at 82 hospitals in China, enrolling 1680 patients with stroke and proximal intracranial LVO presenting within 24 hours of time last known to be well. Recruitment took place between February 9, 2022, and June 30, 2023, with a final follow-up on September 30, 2023.InterventionsEligible patients were randomly assigned to intravenous methylprednisolone (n = 839) at 2 mg/kg/d or placebo (n = 841) for 3 days adjunctive to endovascular thrombectomy. Main Outcomes and Measures The primary efficacy outcome was disability level at 90 days as measured by the overall distribution of the modified Rankin Scale scores (range, 0 [no symptoms] to 6 [death]). The primary safety outcomes included mortality at 90 days and the incidence of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage within 48 hours. Results Among 1680 patients randomized (median age, 69 years; 727 female [43.3%]), 1673 (99.6%) completed the trial. The median 90-day modified Rankin Scale score was 3 (IQR, 1-5) in the methylprednisolone group vs 3 (IQR, 1-6) in the placebo group (adjusted generalized odds ratio for a lower level of disability, 1.10 [95% CI, 0.96-1.25]; P = .17). In the methylprednisolone group, there was a lower mortality rate (23.2% vs 28.5%; adjusted risk ratio, 0.84 [95% CI, 0.71-0.98]; P = .03) and a lower rate of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (8.6% vs 11.7%; adjusted risk ratio, 0.74 [95% CI, 0.55-0.99]; P = .04) compared with placebo. Conclusions and Relevance Among patients with acute ischemic stroke due to LVO undergoing endovascular thrombectomy, adjunctive methylprednisolone added to endovascular thrombectomy did not significantly improve the degree of overall disability.Trial RegistrationChiCTR.org.cn Identifier: ChiCTR210005172

State Laws and Debt Covenants

We examine whether state laws impact the use of debt covenants by using a sample of U.S. public bond issues from 1987 to 2004. We consider variation in state laws with respect to the minimum asset-to-debt ratio necessary for a payout and with respect to antitakeover statutes. We find that firms incorporated in states with stricter restrictions on distributions are less likely to include debt covenants that constrain payouts, limit additional debt, or restrict the sale of assets. Thus, state payout restrictions appear to be a substitute for the use of these debt covenants. On the other hand, firms incorporated in states with stronger antitakeover statutes are somewhat more likely to use debt covenants. This finding is consistent with the notion that firms with antitakeover protection are more likely to suffer from agency problems and, thus, are more likely to use debt covenants to minimize agency costs. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..

Performance evaluation and improvement of algorithmic approaches for packet classification

Packet classification is crucial to the implementation of several advanced services that require the capability to distinguish traffic in different flows, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems and many QoS implementations. Although hardware solutions, such as TCAMs, provide high search rate, they do not scale to large rulesets. Instead, some of the most promising algorithmic research embraces the practice of leveraging the data redundancy in real-life rulesets to improve high performance packet classification. In this paper, we provide a general framework for discerning relationships and distinctions of the design-space of existing packet classification algorithms. We deeply studied several best-known algorithms, such as RFC, HiCuts and HyperCuts according to this framework and suggest for each algorithm an improved scheme. All algorithms we studied, along with their improved version, are objectively accessed using both real-life and synthetic rulesets. The C source codes we wrote for these algorithms are publicly shared on our web-site. 1 1