Banking Scandals and Abnormal Cumulative Returns: An Analysis of the Wells Fargo Fraud Scandal

In September 2016, Wells Fargo Company was fined a large amount of money due to its employees opening unauthorized accounts and credit cards under customer’s names. This paper examines the effects of the lawsuit announcement on the stock market as it pertains to finance, insurance, and real estate firms. The analysis will be completed using the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) and various control variables through univariate and multivariate tests. The results of these tests show that the markets did not lose confidence or trust in banks. Instead, the Wells Fargo scandal generated positive CARs for other banks on the day of the lawsuit announcement

Effort Invested in Cognitive Tasks by Adults with Aphasia: A Pilot Study

The objective of this study was to quantify cognitive effort IWA and control participants dedicate to verbal compared with spatial working memory tasks using HRV. Researchers have found that non-brain injured adults’ physiological stress response is not affected by task type (Callister, Suwarno, & Seals, 1992), but by task difficulty (Fairclough & Houston, 2004; Gendolla & Richter, 2006; Iani, et al., 2004; Ryu & Myung, 2005). Assuming IWA have an impaired ability to allocate effort to the tasks, it was predicted that they would demonstrate no change in HRV from baseline to task for either verbal or spatial tasks. Further, a significant positive relationship between change in HRV and task performance was predicted for control participants, but none was expected for IWA

How difficult is it? How well Adults with Aphasia Perceive Task Demands

Researchers investigating self-ratings of task difficulty and effort allocated to lexical decision tasks in adults with aphasia indicated a mismatch between their perceptions and behavioral performance (e.g. Clark & Robin, 1995; Murray et al., 1997a; Murray et al., 1997b). That is, although participants with aphasia performed more poorly on the language tasks, they did not rate the tasks as more difficult (Murray et al., 1997a, 1997b) or as requiring more effort (Clark & Robin, 1995) compared to control participants. Murray et al., (1997a) reported that this impaired relationship between performance and perceptions was only found for difficulty ratings and not for ratings of perceived accuracy, leading them to conclude that individuals with aphasia are impaired in their ability to perceive the demands of the tasks. The purpose of the current study was to extend these findings by including both pre- and post-task ratings of difficulty for verbal and spatial tasks. We hypothesized that if participants with aphasia are misperceiving the demands of the tasks, the relationship between performance and ratings of difficulty would be less for the pre-task ratings compared to the post-task ratings. Comparing the relationship between difficulty ratings and performance on non-verbal (spatial) and verbal tasks would further reveal whether any deficits in perceiving the task demands are specific to verbal stimuli or a domain-general deficit in evaluating task demands

Prion protein lacks robust cytoprotective activity in cultured cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The physiological function of the cellular prion protein (PrP^C) remains unknown. However, PrP^Chas been reported to possess a cytoprotective activity that prevents death of neurons and other cells after a toxic stimulus. To explore this effect further, we attempted to reproduce several of the assays in which a protective activity of PrP had been previously demonstrated in mammalian cells.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the first set of experiments, we found that PrP over-expression had a minimal effect on the death of MCF-7 breast carcinoma cells treated with TNF-α and <it>Prn-p</it>^{<it>0/0 </it>}immortalized hippocampal neurons (HpL3-4 cells) subjected to serum deprivation. In the second set of assays, we observed only a small difference in viability between cerebellar granule neurons cultured from PrP-null and control mice in response to activation of endogenous or exogenous Bax.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taken together, our results suggest either that cytoprotection is not a physiologically relevant activity of PrP^C, or that PrP^C-dependent protective pathways operative <it>in vivo </it>are not adequately modeled by these cell culture systems. We suggest that cell systems capable of mimicking the neurotoxic effects produced in transgenic mice by N-terminally deleted forms of PrP or Doppel may represent more useful tools for analyzing the cytoprotective function of PrP^C.</p

Preliminary Evidence for using Heart Rate Variability as a Measure of Cognitive Effort

Researchers have suggested that language deficits in individuals with aphasia may result from an inability to adequately allocate effort to verbal tasks (e.g. Clark & Robin, 1995). Heart rate variability has been used as a physiological measure of cognitive effort (e.g. Aasman et al., 1987). The purpose of this study is to establish baseline data and verify the utility of HRV as an indicator of cognitive effort on tasks used with IWA. Relationships among neurologically intact participants’ accuracy on verbal and spatial n-back tasks, the physiological measure of effort (HRV), and perceptions of task difficulty will be reported

Cognitive Effort and Aphasia

Some researchers have suggested that impairments of individuals with aphasia on cognitive-linguistic tasks reflect an impaired ability to match effort with task demands (e.g. Murray et al., 1997, Clark & Robin, 1991). However, a direct physiological measure of effort IWA invest during such tasks is lacking. Heart rate variability is a well-studied measure of the stress response and is an indicator of the effort allocated to cognitively demanding tasks (Hansen et al., 2003). This research will utilize HRV to understand the relationship among perceptions of task difficulty, behavioral performance, and effort allocated to a verbal working memory task

Doodle Health: A Crowdsourcing Game for the Co-design and Testing of Pictographs to Reduce Disparities in Healthcare Communication

Supplementing patient education content with pictographs can improve the comprehension and recall of information, especially patients with low health literacy. Pictograph design and testing, however, are costly and time consuming. We created a Web-based game, Doodle Health, for crowdsourcing the drawing and validation of pictographs. The objective of this pilot study was to test the usability of the game and its appeal to healthcare consumers. The chief purpose of the game is to involve a diverse population in the co-design and evaluation of pictographs. We conducted a community-based focus group to inform the game design. Game designers, health sciences librarians, informatics researchers, clinicians, and community members participated in two Design Box meetings. The results of the meetings were used to create the Doodle Health crowdsourcing game. The game was presented and tested at two public fairs. Initial testing indicates crowdsourcing is a promising approach to pictograph development and testing for relevancy and comprehension. Over 596 drawings were collected and 1,758 guesses were performed to date with 70-90% accuracies, which are satisfactorily high

The changing face of floodplains in the Mississippi River Basin detected by a 60-year land use change dataset

Floodplains provide essential ecosystem functions, yet \u3e80% of European and North American floodplains are substantially modified. Despite floodplain changes over the past century, comprehensive, long-term land use change data within large river basin floodplains are limited. Long-term land use data can be used to quantify floodplain functions and provide spatially explicit information for management, restoration, and flood-risk mitigation. We present a comprehensive dataset quantifying floodplain land use change along the 3.3 million km2 Mississippi River Basin (MRB) covering 60 years (1941–2000) at 250-m resolution. We developed four unique products as part of this work, a(n): (i) Google Earth Engine interactive map visualization interface, (ii) Python code that runs in any internet browser, (iii) online tutorial with visualizations facilitating classroom code application, and (iv) instructional video demonstrating code application and database reproduction. Our data show that MRB’s natural floodplain ecosystems have been substantially altered to agricultural and developed land uses. These products will support MRB resilience and sustainability goals by advancing data-driven decision making on floodplain restoration, buyout, and conservation scenarios

RNASEL and MIR146A SNP-SNP Interaction as a Susceptibility Factor for Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer

Immunity and inflammatory pathways are important in the genesis of non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC). Functional genetic variation in immune modulators has the potential to affect disease etiology. We investigated associations between common variants in two key regulators, MIR146A and RNASEL, and their relation to NMSCs. Using a large population-based case-control study of basal cell (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), we investigated the impact of MIR146A SNP rs2910164 on cancer risk, and interaction with a SNP in one of its putative targets (RNASEL, rs486907). To examine associations between genotype and BCC and SCC, occurrence odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated using unconditional logistic regression, accounting for multiple confounding factors. We did not observe an overall change in the odds ratios for SCC or BCC among individuals carrying either of the RNASEL or MIR146A variants compared with those who were wild type at these loci. However, there was a sex-specific association between BCC and MIR146A in women (ORGC = 0.73, [95%CI = 0.52–1.03]; ORCC = 0.29, [95% CI = 0.14–0.61], p-trend\u3c0.001), and a reduction in risk, albeit not statistically significant, associated with RNASEL and SCC in men (ORAG = 0.88, [95%CI = 0.65–1.19]; ORAA = 0.68, [95%CI = 0.43–1.08], p-trend = 0.10). Most striking was the strong interaction between the two genes. Among individuals carrying variant alleles of both rs2910164 and rs486907, we observed inverse relationships with SCC (ORSCC = 0.56, [95%CI = 0.38–0.81], p-interaction = 0.012) and BCC (ORBCC = 0.57, [95%CI = 0.40–0.80], p-interaction = 0.005). Our results suggest that genetic variation in immune and inflammatory regulators may influence susceptibility to NMSC, and novel SNP-SNP interaction for a microRNA and its target. These data suggest that RNASEL, an enzyme involved in RNA turnover, is controlled by miR-146a and may be important in NMSC etiology

Aging and Environmental Exposures Alter Tissue-Specific DNA Methylation Dependent upon CpG Island Context

Epigenetic control of gene transcription is critical for normal human development and cellular differentiation. While alterations of epigenetic marks such as DNA methylation have been linked to cancers and many other human diseases, interindividual epigenetic variations in normal tissues due to aging, environmental factors, or innate susceptibility are poorly characterized. The plasticity, tissue-specific nature, and variability of gene expression are related to epigenomic states that vary across individuals. Thus, population-based investigations are needed to further our understanding of the fundamental dynamics of normal individual epigenomes. We analyzed 217 non-pathologic human tissues from 10 anatomic sites at 1,413 autosomal CpG loci associated with 773 genes to investigate tissue-specific differences in DNA methylation and to discern how aging and exposures contribute to normal variation in methylation. Methylation profile classes derived from unsupervised modeling were significantly associated with age (P,0.0001) and were significant predictors of tissue origin (P,0.0001). In solid tissues (n = 119) we found striking, highly significant CpG island–dependent correlations between age and methylation; loci in CpG islands gained methylation with age, loci not in CpG islands lost methylation with age (P,0.001), and this pattern was consistent across tissues and in an analysis of blood-derived DNA. Our data clearly demonstrate age- and exposure-related differences in tissue-specific methylation and significant age-associated methylation patterns which are CpG island context-dependent. This work provides novel insight into the role of aging and the environment in susceptibility to diseases such as cancer and critically informs the field of epigenomics by providing evidence of epigenetic dysregulation by age-related methylation alterations. Collectively we reveal key issues to consider both in the construction of reference and disease-related epigenomes and in the interpretation of potentially pathologically important alterations