A clinical diagnostic model for predicting influenza among young adult military personnel with febrile respiratory illness in Singapore

10.1371/journal.pone.0017468PLoS ONE63

Voluntary adoption of accounting standards prior to implementation date

A s Singapore moves towards globalisation, the fulfillment of investor's information needs becomes more important. This project aims to assess the willingness of Singapore firms in the voluntary adoption of international accounting standards. An analysis of annual reports of public listed companies in Singapore was conducted to determine the extent of voluntary adoption of selected international accounting standards and the characteristics of firms that adopt international accounting standards prior to their implementation in Singapore. The results are analysed at two levels: analysis of adoption of individual standards and a combined analysis pertaining to all the selected accounting standards. In the first part, our results are matched against literature-based hypotheses on characteristics of firms that are likely to voluntarily adopt accounting standards before implementation. In the second part, our results are combined and compared with measurement and disclosure hypotheses based on Gray's cultural framework with reference to the Singapore context. This is to gain a better understanding of Singapore's overall financial reporting climate. Finally, this study ends with recommendations on what can be done to improve the attitudes of Singapore firms in the voluntary adoption of accounting standards.ACCOUNTANC

The impact of group size and group task on group performance in the face-to-face GDSS environment

205 p.An increase in group size may result in a decline of group productivity because the factors that undermine group productivity will become more severe as group size increases [Steiner, 1972]. Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) can help to alleviate the problems that increasing group size can bring to a group (as was found by Gallupe et al. [1992]). The effects of increasing group size may also differ if the task that the group performs changes. Therefore, our objective for undertaking this research is to investigate whether group performance will be affected when groups of different sizes perform different group tasks in the face-to-face GDSS environment. We also aim to find out if group perceptions will change when group size increases.ACCOUNTANC

The scaffold RhoGAP protein ARHGAP8/BPGAP1 synchronizes Rac and Rho signaling to facilitate cell migration

Rho GTPases regulate cell morphogenesis and motility under the tight control of guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) and GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs). However, the underlying mechanism(s) that coordinate their spatiotemporal activities, whether separately or together, remain unclear. We show that a prometastatic RhoGAP, ARHGAP8/BPGAP1, binds to inactive Rac1 and localizes to lamellipodia. BPGAP1 recruits the RacGEF Vav1 under epidermal growth factor (EGF) stimulation and activates Rac1, leading to polarized cell motility, spreading, invadopodium formation, and cell extravasation and promotes cancer cell migration. Importantly, BPGAP1 down-regulates local RhoA activity, which influences Rac1 binding to BPGAP1 and its subsequent activation by Vav1. Our results highlight the importance of BPGAP1 in recruiting Vav1 and Rac1 to promote Rac1 activation for cell motility. BPGAP1 also serves to control the timing of Rac1 activation with RhoA inactivation via its RhoGAP activity. BPGAP1, therefore, acts as a dual-function scaffold that recruits Vav1 to activate Rac1 while inactivating RhoA to synchronize both Rho and Rac signaling in cell motility. As epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), Vav1, RhoA, Rac1, and BPGAP1 are all associated with cancer metastasis, BPGAP1 could provide a crucial checkpoint for the EGFR-BPGAP1-Vav1-Rac1-RhoA signaling axis for cancer intervention.Published versionThis work was supported by the National Medical Research Council, a CBRG New Investigator Grant (CBRG-NIG; R-714-000-115-511 to C.Q.P.), a Journal of Cell Science—The Company of Biologists Travel Fellowship (to C.Q.P.), Cancer Research UK (C6620/A15961 to A.J.R.), and the Mechanobiology Institute of Singapore (to B.C.L.), cofunded by the National Research Foundation and the Ministry of Education, Singapore, and also supported by Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 3 (MOE Grant No: MOE2016-T3-1-002) to B.C.L

Univariate comparison of clinical signs or symptoms between influenza-positive and influenza-negative cases.

<p>Symptoms or signs are ranked by frequency for non-influenza cases. Empirical frequencies of presentation of each symptom or sign are presented in the right column as bars, with 95% confidence intervals represented by whiskers. Symptoms or signs that are statistically discernibly different at the 5% level are displayed in bold font. With 21 tests, the conservative expected number of false discoveries is 1.1.</p

Utility of the predictive probability equation as a clinical diagnostic model in this study under 10-fold cross-validation compared with commonly used ILI criteria (for which no cross-validation is needed).

<p>Utility of the predictive probability equation as a clinical diagnostic model in this study under 10-fold cross-validation compared with commonly used ILI criteria (for which no cross-validation is needed).</p

Multivariate analysis comparing clinical features of influenza-positive with all influenza-negative FRI cases.

<p>*Age, sore throat, running nose, sore eyes or eye pain, chills/rigors, photophobia, Fever ≥37.8°C, Fever ≥38.0°C, and injected pharynx were included in the analysis before non-significant terms were sequentially removed. With nine tests, the conservative expected number of false discoveries is 0.45</p