Saturn 5/Voyager load relief study Data base report

Saturn 5/Voyager load relief control syste

Dissemination of Information: Financial and Nonfinancial Disclosure Channels

The objective of this research is to examine capital market determinants and implications associated with voluntary sustainability disclosures and the extent to which the informativeness of disclosure innovations differs based on given attributes of the financial disclosure and overall information environment. In determining the quantity of financial information to disclose, managers face a tradeoff between the benefits of reducing information asymmetry among capital market participants and the costs of aiding potential rivals through revelation of proprietary information. Chapter I examines the firm-level disclosure response as competition among potential rivals differs. I operationalize this construct through use of principal component analysis to capture the competition from potential entrants variable. In Chapter II, I examine the relation between disclosure of nonfinancial information and information asymmetry. I first employ the issuance of a stand-alone sustainability report as a proxy for disclosure of nonfinancial information. I find that the issuance of nonfinancial information is associated with reduced information asymmetry in the market. The relation is stronger for firms with internal control weaknesses and financial statement complexity, indicating a complementary relation between nonfinancial and financial disclosure in the reduction of information asymmetries in these contexts. In the context of increased organizational complexity, the signal appears to be less informative. In Chapter II, I empirically treat the nonfinancial disclosures as homogeneous in nature by assigning a binary variable to disclosing and non-disclosing firms. In reality, substantial variation between ESG disclosures exists. Thus, in Chapter III, I relax the homogeneity assumption and address the evident variation in ESG disclosure content through illustrating that alterations in the overall nonfinancial disclosure content prompt a reduction in information asymmetry. I provide some evidence suggesting that, on average, changes to the overall content of ESG disclosures increase incremental informativeness in a capital market context. By doing so, I build on the empirical conclusions from Chapter II by empirically illustrating that the content of nonfinancial disclosures is informative in a capital market context. I illustrate that, while information disclosure innovations are disseminated through both financial and nonfinancial disclosure channels, nonfinancial disclosure innovations are incrementally informative in their reduction of information asymmetry. The analyses conducted in Chapter III seek to demonstrate that investors heed changes to the textual content of the nonfinancial information in addition to changes in the textual content of financial information. The analysis advances the literature by empirically demonstrating the extent to which the content of voluntary nonfinancial disclosures enhances the information environment relative to financial disclosure information. I also conduct the analysis in the context of alternative information environments, namely in the presence of organizational complexity, internal control weaknesses, and financial statement complexity (i.e. diminished readability). I hypothesize that nonfinancial disclosure innovations are more informative in the presence of more organizational complexity, more internal control weaknesses, and less readable financial disclosures. Taken together, the results are consistent with the argument that capital markets utilize voluntary nonfinancial disclosure information in tandem with financial information. The findings contribute to the understanding of sustainability disclosures and the overarching role of such disclosures

Community structure of Quaternary coral reefs compared with recent life and death assemblages

Abstract.-This paper assesses the reliability with which fossil reefs record the diversity and community structure of adjacent Recent reefs. The diversity and taxonomic composition of Holocene raised fossil reefs was compared with those of modern reef coral life and death assemblages in adjacent moderate and low-energy shallow reef habitats of Madang Lagoon, Papua New Guinea. Species richness per sample area and Shannon-Wiener diversity (HЈ) were highest in the fossil reefs, intermediate in the life assemblages, and lowest in the death assemblages. The taxonomic composition of the fossil reefs was most similar to the combination of the life and death assemblages from the modern reefs adjacent to the two fossil reefs. Depth zonation was recorded accurately in the fossil reefs. The Madang fossil reefs represent time-averaged composites of the combined life and death assemblages as they existed at the time the reef was uplifted. Because fossil reefs include overlapping cohorts from the life and death assemblages, lagoonal facies of fossil reefs are dominated by the dominant sediment-producing taxa, which are not necessarily the most abundant in the life assemblage. Rare or slow-growing taxa accumulate more slowly than the encasing sediments and are underrepresented in fossil reef lagoons. Time-averaging dilutes the contribution of rare taxa, rather than concentrating their contribution. Consequently, fidelity indices developed for mollusks in sediments yield low values in coral reef death and fossil assemblages. Branching corals dominate lagoonal facies of fossil reefs because they are abundant, they grow and produce sediment rapidly, and most of the sediment they produce is not exported. Fossil reefs distinguished kilometer-scale variations in community structure more clearly than did the modern life assemblages. This difference implies that fossil reefs may provide a better longterm record of community structure than modern reefs. This difference also suggests that modern kilometer-scale variation in coral reef community structure may have been reduced by anthropogenic degradation, even in the relatively unimpacted reefs of Madang Lagoon. Holocene and Pleistocene fossil reefs provide a time-integrated historical record of community composition and may be used as long-term benchmarks for comparison with modern, degraded, nearshore reefs. Comparisons between fossil reefs and degraded modern reefs display gross changes in community structure more effectively than they demonstrate local extinction of rare taxa

The Epithelial Sodium Channel (ENaC) Establishes a Trafficking Vesicle Pool Responsible for Its Regulation

The epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) is the rate-limiting step for sodium reabsorption across tight epithelia. Cyclic-AMP (cAMP) stimulation promotes ENaC trafficking to the apical surface to increase channel number and transcellular Na+ transport. Removal of corticosteroid supplementation in a cultured cortical collecting duct cell line reduced ENaC expression. Concurrently, the number of vesicles trafficked in response to cAMP stimulation, as measured by a change in membrane capacitance, also decreased. Stimulation with aldosterone restored both the basal and cAMP-stimulated ENaC activity and increased the number of exocytosed vesicles. Knocking down ENaC directly decreased both the cAMP-stimulated short-circuit current and capacitance response in the presence of aldosterone. However, constitutive apical recycling of the Immunoglobulin A receptor was unaffected by alterations in ENaC expression or trafficking. Fischer Rat Thyroid cells, transfected with α,β,γ-mENaC had a significantly greater membrane capacitance response to cAMP stimulation compared to non-ENaC controls. Finally, immunofluorescent labeling and quantitation revealed a smaller number of vesicles in cells where ENaC expression was reduced. These findings indicate that ENaC is not a passive passenger in regulated epithelial vesicle trafficking, but plays a role in establishing and maintaining the pool of vesicles that respond to cAMP stimulation. © 2012 Edinger et al

The consensus sleep diary: Standardizing prospective sleep self-monitoring

Study Objectives: To present an expert consensus, standardized, patient-informed sleep diary. Methods and Results: Sleep diaries from the original expert panel of 25 attendees of the Pittsburgh Assessment Conference1 were collected and reviewed. A smaller subset of experts formed a committee and reviewed the compiled diaries. Items deemed essential were included in a Core sleep diary, and those deemed optional were retained for an expanded diary. Secondly, optional items would be available in other versions. A draft of the Core and optional versions along with a feedback questionnaire were sent to members of the Pittsburgh Assessment Conference. The feedback from the group was integrated and the diary drafts were subjected to 6 focus groups composed of good sleepers, people with insomnia, and people with sleep apnea. The data were summarized into themes and changes to the drafts were made in response to the focus groups. The resultant draft was evaluated by another focus group and subjected to lexile analyses. The lexile analyses suggested that the Core diary instructions are at a sixth-grade reading level and the Core diary was written at a third-grade reading level. Conclusions: The Consensus Sleep Diary was the result of collaborations with insomnia experts and potential users. The adoption of a standard sleep diary for insomnia will facilitate comparisons across studies and advance the field. The proposed diary is intended as a living document which still needs to be tested, refined, and validate