Analysis of Market Reactions to TARP Loans Repayment Evidence from Banks

This research presented here mainly focuses on analyzing investors\u27 reactions toward banks\u27 announcement of TARP repayment. Considering huge difference among sample banks, I split the result of abnormal return into subgroups based on banks size and financial performance. And then I conduct comparisons of each group to reveal the possible effects on market reactions casted by size and financial performance. To confirm my results on market reactions to TARP repayment, I perform two regression analyses on both full sample and subsample with cumulative abnormal return (CAR) as dependent variable and controlled variables as independent variables. Data over the period from 2008Q4 to 2013Q4 for 196 and 175 U.S. public banks and bank holding companies is derived from ProPublica website, CRSP data base and COMPSTAT data base. Market model is used to calculate cumulative abnormal return and the OLS method is adopted to run regression. In the end, I find that comparatively larger banks with relatively better accounting performance and relatively higher capital ratios are inclined to make multiple repayments while the comparatively smaller banks with relatively worse accounting performance and relatively worse capital ratios are inclined to pay back loans all at once. Also, I find that investors react positively to news on TARP repayments. Especially, splitting the sample by various possible determinants for CARs, I find that stock market investors remain less optimistic about comparatively larger banks with relatively better accounting performance and relatively higher capital ratios than the comparatively smaller banks with relatively worse accounting performance and relatively worse capital ratios. I suggest that small and struggled companies have more potential to develop after exiting TARP

Development of 13C Fingerprint Tool and Its Application for Exploring Carbon and Energy Metabolism in Cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803

Cyanobacteria are important microbial cell factories that are widely used in the biotechnology filed nowadays. They can use light as the sole energy source to fix CO2, accumulate biomass, and produce various valuable bio-products. Engineered cyanobacterial species can uptake nutrients from wastes to further reduce the cost. Recently, it is reported that cyanobacteria will provide much higher carbon yield than heterotrophs by co-utilizing organic carbons and CO2. However, the quantitative information of such `photo-fermentation\u27 process is still limited. Decoding the carbon metabolism of cyanobacteria during the photo-fermentation process can reveal the functional pathways, carbon distribution, and the energy requirement, all of which will provide guidelines for rational design of metabolic engineering strategies. The emerging of multiple omics tools, e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, proteinomics, and metabolomics analysis, allowed the comprehensive determination of microbial metabolisms. This dissertation describes the development of 13C fingerprint-based method to characterize the carbon metabolic network in cyanobacteria model species Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 and the integration of this method with metabolic flux analysis and transcriptomics analysis to quantify the diverse carbon and energy metabolism regulation under different internal or external stimuli. The project mainly consists of four aspects: (1) developing the GC-MS based low-cost 13C fingerprint method; (2) exploring the carbon metabolic network structure and quantifying the central carbon metabolism under different environmental conditions; (3) determining the energy requirement for cell maintenance in cyanobacteria; (4) investigating the effects of light conditions on cyanobacterial carbon metabolism. These new findings not only improve our understandings of the flexible carbon metabolism employed by cyanobacteria, but also offer evolutionary insight into photosynthesis and potential applications of photo-fermentation

Healing effect of Sanguisorba officinalis L extract on second-degree burns in rats

Purpose: To investigate the healing effect of Sanguisorba officinalis L. extract (SOLE) on seconddegree burns in rats.Methods: Male Sprague Dawley rats, weighing 200 – 220 g, were subjected to deep second-degree skin burns by electrical scald instrument. The animals were divided into three groups as follows: (1) second-degree burns model (control), (2) burns model treated with 1 % silver sulfadiazine (SSD), and (3) burns model treated with SOLE. On days 3, 7 and 14, following administration of drug/extract, the wound area and histopathological changes of rat epidermis were evaluated in all the groups. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of SOLE on Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli was also assessed separately.Results: On day 14, the mean wound area of SOLE treatment group (0.22 ± 0.05 cm2) was significantly smaller than that of control rats (2.67 ± 0.18 cm2, p < 0.01). Histological data indicate that inflammatory cells of burnt rats disappeared and were replaced by new granulation tissue by day 14 for the group treated with SOLE. The antibacterial results revealed that the MIC of SOLE for Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli was 3.5, 14.0 and 7.0 mg·mL-1, respectively.Conclusion: Sanguisorba officinalis L. appears to be an effective medicinal herb for the treatment of second-degree burns.Keywords: Sanguisorba officinalis, Burns, Healing, Antibacterial, Silver sulfadiazin

Challenges in cell culture platform development of mAb production with site-specific incorporation of non-natural amino acid for ADC generation

Ambrx’s mammalian expression platform (EuCODE) enables non-native amino acids (nnAAs) through an expanded genetic code to both generate novel bio-therapeutics and to optimize the performance of antibody drug conjugate (ADC), therapeutic proteins, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), and, bi- and multi-specific medicines. While the ability to control the defined Drug-to-Antibody Ratio (DAR) and payload site can provide an advantage to an ADC, the site-specific incorporation of the NAAs into the antibody heavy chain introduces a unique challenge for antibody production. To enable higher performance benchmarks in time and resources for process development with stringent product quality requirements, a proprietary cell culture platform is being developed and demonstrated fast-track development of high-quality, high-titer processes for producing recombinant proteins from CHO cells. We successfully generated a CHO-K1 cell line, stably expressing engineered amber suppressor tRNA and its cognate tRNA synthetase specific for non-natural amino acid para-acetyl phenylalanine (pAF), to achieve high production of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) containing nnAAs. The stable cell lines were further evolved using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology to sequentially knock out selected genes in glutamine synthesis, and, apoptosis pathways to improve selection efficiency and prevent loss of viable cell mass in production cultures, respectively. Inhibition of apoptosis pathway leads to dramatic increase in viable cell mass and results in extended production time and increased productivity. In this presentation, we will discuss the challenges in cell culture platform development including cell line engineering, systematic DoE-based approaches on optimal chemically defined media and cell culture processes, and, strategies for scale up to clinical and commercial scales

Extraction of Uranium from Seawater: Design and Testing of a Symbiotic System

Uranium present in low concentration in ocean water has the potential to greatly augment the current fuel reserve for nuclear power generation, but the challenge of extracting it economically remains. Two new designs of seawater uranium extraction systems are proposed in this paper—a stationary system and a continuous system—both of which utilize a braided polymer adsorbent. The stationary system simplifies the recovery procedure, and it is predicted to produce uranium at $326/kg. The continuous system is attached to an offshore wind turbine system to eliminate the need for additional mooring and increase the overall energy-gathering ability of the wind farm system. This system could maximize the adsorbent yield and achieve a production cost of$403/kg of uranium.MIT Energy InitiativeS. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundatio