5,021 research outputs found
Market Power and Competition in Audit Markets
This study investigates the impact of audit firmsâ market power on audit fees in MSA-Industry audit markets. We propose that the state of competition in each MSA-Industry market reflects two components. The first component is the audit firmsâ collective market power over their clients, and the second is the audit firmsâ relative competitive positions with respect to each other. We argue that the measured concentration of the market is positively associated with the audit firmsâ collective market power over their clients, and tends to increase audit fees for all engagements. In addition, the fees charged by a specific audit firm are a function of its relative competition position in the market. We document that audit fees increase in market concentration and decrease in the audit firmâs relative size as compared to the largest audit firm in the market. Given the fact that an inconsistent relationship between audit fees and market concentration is often documented in the extant literature, this paper advances our understanding of the impact of audit market concentration on competition in audit markets from both theoretical and empirical perspectives
Characterization of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome in rural regions of Zhejiang, China.
Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV) infections have recently been found in rural regions of Zhejiang. A severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) surveillance and sero-epidemiological investigation was conducted in the districts with outbreaks. During the study period of 2011-2014, a total of 51 SFTSV infection cases were identified and the case fatality rate was 12% (6/51). Ninety two percent of the patients (47/51) were over 50 years of age, and 63% (32/51) of laboratory confirmed cases occurred from May to July. Nine percent (11/120) of the serum samples from local healthy people without symptoms were found to be positive for antibodies to the SFTS virus. SFTSV strains were isolated by culture using Vero, and the whole genomic sequences of two SFTSV strains (01 and Zhao) were sequenced and submitted to the GenBank. Homology analysis showed that the similarity of the target nucleocapsid gene from the SFTSV strains from different geographic areas was 94.2-100%. From the constructed phylogenetic tree, it was found that all the SFTSV strains diverged into two main clusters. Only the SFTSV strains from the Zhejiang (Daishan) region of China and the Yamaguchi, Miyazakj regions of Japan, were clustered into lineage II, consistent with both of these regions being isolated areas with similar geographic features. Two out of eight predicted linear B cell epitopes from the nucleocapsid protein showed mutations between the SFTSV strains of different clusters, but did not contribute to the binding ability of the specific SFTSV antibodies. This study confirmed that SFTSV has been circulating naturally and can cause a seasonal prevalence in Daishan, China. The results also suggest that the molecular characteristics of SFTSV are associated with the geographic region and all SFTSV strains can be divided into two genotypes
Efficacy and Safety of Modified Banxia Xiexin Decoction (Pinellia Decoction for Draining the Heart) for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
The clinicopathological factors associated with disease progression in Luminal a breast cancer and characteristics of metastasis: A retrospective study from a single center in China
Background/Aim: This study investigated the
clinicopathological factors associated with outcomes in
patients with Luminal A breast cancer. Patients and
Methods: Retrospective analysis of the association of
clinicopathological factors and breast cancer outcome in
421 patients with newly diagnosed Luminal-A breast cancer
that were enrolled from January 2008 to December 2014.
Clinicopathological data were analyzed to validate the
relationship with disease free survival (DFS) and overall
survival (OS). Kaplan-Meier curves and log-rank tests were
used to analyze the value of clinicopathological factors
(tumor size, node status and lymphovascular invasion), and
subsequent Cox regression analysis revealed significant
prognostic factors. Results: With a median of 61 months
follow up, the 5-year DFS and 5-year OS rate were 98.3%
and 99.3%. Cox multivariate regression analysis showed that
clinical anatomic stage, tumor size, status of lymph nodes,
lymphovascular invasion and systemic treatment are strong
prognostic factors for clinical outcome in patients with
Luminal-A breast cancer. Of all 413 patients with stage I-III
breast cancer, 14 presented with metastasis (3.4%) during
the follow up. Bone (6/14, 42.9%) was the most common site
of metastasis followed by liver (5/14, 35.7%) and lung (4/14,
28.6%). The median survival time after metastasis was 20.4
months. Of all the sites of distant metastasis, liver metastasis
was the only factor that affected survival time after
metastasis (Ï2=6.263, p=0.012). Conclusion: Patients with
Luminal A breast cancer have excellent outcomes. Liver
metastasis is an important factor compressing the survival
time after distant metastasis presents
Turn-Level Active Learning for Dialogue State Tracking
Dialogue state tracking (DST) plays an important role in task-oriented
dialogue systems. However, collecting a large amount of turn-by-turn annotated
dialogue data is costly and inefficient. In this paper, we propose a novel
turn-level active learning framework for DST to actively select turns in
dialogues to annotate. Given the limited labelling budget, experimental results
demonstrate the effectiveness of selective annotation of dialogue turns.
Additionally, our approach can effectively achieve comparable DST performance
to traditional training approaches with significantly less annotated data,
which provides a more efficient way to annotate new dialogue data.Comment: EMNLP 2023 Main Conferenc
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