Cross-listing and Corporate Malfeasance: Evidence from P-chip Firms

The rapid growth of the private sector in China in recent decades has created a large number of capital-hungry private sector firms. An increasing number of these firms choose to raise equity capital on international exchanges, which typically have stronger disclosure, corporate governance, and investor protection regulations. In light of international investors’ and regulators’ concerns about the corporate finance practice of China’s private sector firms, particularly regarding the integrity of their reported earnings, we investigate whether these firms aggressively manipulate their accounts by examining those listed in Hong Kong, commonly known as P-chips. We find systematic evidence that P-chips engage in more earnings management and other corporate misbehaviors than their counterparts in Hong Kong. We posit and provide evidence consistent with cross-jurisdictional enforcement difficulty as a possible explanation to P-chips’ questionable practice, and discuss its implications

The effect of bi-level positive airway pressure on postoperative pulmonary function following gastric surgery for obesity

AbstractThe severely obese patient has varying degrees of intrinsic reduction of expiratory flow rates and lung volumes. Thus, the severely obese patient is predisposed to postoperative atelectasis, ineffective clearing of respiratory secretions, and other pulmonary complications. This study evaluated the effect of bi-level positive airway pressure (BiPAP) on pulmonary function in obese patients following open gastric bypass surgery. Patients with a body mass index (BMI) of at least 40 kg/m2 who were undergoing elective gastric bypass were eligible to be randomized to receive either BiPAP during the first 24 h postoperatively or conventional postoperative care. Patients with significant cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases were excluded from the study. Forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1.0), peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR), and percent hemoglobin oxygen saturation (S pO2) were measured preoperatively, and on postoperative days 1, 2, and 3. Twenty-seven patients were entered in the study, 14 received BiPAP and 13 received conventional postoperative care. There was no significant difference preoperatively between the study and control groups in regards to age, BMI, FVC, FEV1.0. PEFR or S pO2. Postoperatively, expiratory flow was decreased in both groups. However, the FVC and FEV1.0 were significantly higher on each of the three consecutive postoperative days in the patients who received BiPAP therapy. The S pO2 was significantly decreased in the control group over the same time period. Prophylactic BiPAP during the first 12–24 h postoperatively resulted in significantly higher measures of pulmonary function in severely obese patients who had undergone elective gastric bypass surgery. These improved measures of pulmonary function, however, did not translate into fewer hospital days or a lower complication rate in our study population of otherwise healthy obese patients. Further study is necessary to determine if BiPAP therapy in the first 24 postoperative hours would be of benefit in severely obese patients with comorbid illnesses who have undergone elective gastric bypass

Risk factors associated with preterm birth among singletons following assisted reproductive technology in Australia 2007-2009-a population-based retrospective study

© Xu et al. Background: Preterm birth, a leading cause of neonatal death, is more common in multiple births and thus there has being an increasing call for reducing multiple births in ART. However, few studies have compared risk factors for preterm births amongst ART and non-ART singleton birth mothers. Methods: A population-based study of 393,450 mothers, including 12,105 (3.1%) ART mothers, with singleton gestations born between 2007 and 2009 in 5 of the 8 jurisdictions in Australia. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression models were conducted to evaluate socio-demographic, medical and pregnancy factors associated with preterm births in contrasting ART and non-ART mothers. Results: Ten percent of singleton births to ART mothers were preterm compared to 6.8% for non-ART mothers (P 34), socioeconomic disadvantage (most disadvantaged quintile Odds Ratio (OR) 0.95, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 0.77-1.17), smoking (OR 1.12, 95%CI: 0.79-1.61) and priminarity (OR 1.19, 95% CI: 1.05-1.35, AOR not significant) shown to be associated with elevated risk of preterm birth for non-ART mothers were not demonstrated for ART mothers, even after adjusting for potential confounders. Nonetheless, in multivariable analysis, the association between ART and the elevated risk for singleton preterm birth persisted after controlling for all included confounding medical, pregnancy and socio-economic factors (AOR 1.51, 95% CI: 1.42-1.61). Conclusions: Preterm birth rate is approximately one-and-a-half-fold higher in ART mothers than non-ART mothers albeit for singleton births after controlling for confounding factors. However, ART mothers were less subject to the adverse influence from socio-demographic factors than non-ART mothers. This has implications for counselling prospective parents

Investigation of the association of weight loss with radiographic hip osteoarthritis in older community-dwelling female adults

Objective: Most guidelines recommending weight loss for hip osteoarthritis are based on research on knee osteoarthritis. Prior studies found no association between weight loss and hip osteoarthritis, but no previous studies have targeted older adults. Therefore, we aimed to determine whether there is any clear benefit of weight loss for radiographic hip osteoarthritis in older adults because weight loss is associated with health risks in older adults. Methods: We used data from white female participants aged ≥65 years from the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures. Our exposure of interest was weight change from baseline to follow-up at 8 years. Our outcomes were the development of radiographic hip osteoarthritis (RHOA) and the progression of RHOA over 8 years. Generalized estimating equations (clustering of 2 hips per participant) were used to investigate the association between exposure and outcomes adjusted for major covariates. Results: There was a total of 11,018 hips from 5509 participants. There was no associated benefit of weight loss for either of our outcomes. The odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for the development and progression of RHOA were 0.99 (0.92–1.07) and 0.97 (0.86–1.09) for each 5% weight loss, respectively. The results were consistent in sensitivity analyses where participants were limited to those who reported trying to lose weight and who also had a body mass index in the overweight or obese range. Conclusion: Our findings suggest no associated benefit of weight loss in older female adults in the structure of the hip joint as assessed by radiography

Walking in the Cloud: Parallel SimRank at Scale

Accepted Posterpublished_or_final_versio

Comparison of Kansei Engineering and AttrakDiff to Evaluate Kitchen Products

Kansei Engineering can be used to create scales to measure perceptions and evaluations of products in a particular context. To what extent do specifically constructed Kansei scales reveal more information about a product than a more generic, prestructured instrument, such as AttrakDiff? This case study identified relevant affective and pragmatic Kansei attributes that influence the purchase of a range hood (cooker hood). 102 customers rated the extent to which each of 10 range hoods possessed these attributes. In addition, AttrakDiff was used to measure hedonic and pragmatic quality perceptions. There was a general high correspondence between AttrakDiff and Kansei. While Kansei provided richer and more specific feedback, it was more resource intensive to carry out

Design of a ferrite rod antenna for harvesting energy from medium wave broadcast signals

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting is an emerging technology that has the potential to eliminate the need for batteries and reduce maintenance costs of sensing applications. The antenna is one of the critical components that determines its performance and while antenna design has been well researched for the purpose of communication, the design for RF energy harvesting applications has not been widely addressed. The authors present an optimised design for such an antenna for harvesting energy from medium wave broadcast transmissions. They derive and use a model for computing the optimal antenna configuration given application requirements on output voltage and power, material costs and physical dimensions. Design requirements for powering autonomous smart meters have been considered. The proposed approach was used to obtain the antenna configuration that is able to deliver 1 mW of power to 1 kΩ load at a distance of up to 9 km, sufficient to replace batteries on low-power sensing applications. Measurements using a prototype device have been used to verify the authors simulations

Numerical studies of the fractional quantum Hall effect in systems with tunable interactions

The discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect in GaAs-based semiconductor devices has lead to new advances in condensed matter physics, in particular the possibility for exotic, topological phases of matter that possess fractional, and even non-Abelian, statistics of quasiparticles. One of the main limitations of the experimental systems based on GaAs has been the lack of tunability of the effective interactions between two-dimensional electrons, which made it difficult to stabilize some of the more fragile states, or induce phase transitions in a controlled manner. Here we review the recent studies that have explored the effects of tunability of the interactions offered by alternative two-dimensional systems, characterized by non-trivial Berry phases and including graphene, bilayer graphene and topological insulators. The tunability in these systems is achieved via external fields that change the mass gap, or by screening via dielectric plate in the vicinity of the device. Our study points to a number of different ways to manipulate the effective interactions, and engineer phase transitions between quantum Hall liquids and compressible states in a controlled manner.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, updated references; review for the CCP2011 conference, to appear in "Journal of Physics: Conference Series

In utero exposure to breast cancer treatment: a population-based perinatal outcome study

© 2019, Cancer Research UK. Chemotherapy during a viable pregnancy may be associated with adverse perinatal outcomes. We conducted a prospective cohort study to examine the perinatal outcomes of babies born following in utero exposure to chemotherapy in Australia and New Zealand. Over 18 months we identified 24 births, of >400 g and/or >20-weeks’ gestation, to women diagnosed with breast cancer in the first or second trimesters. Eighteen babies were exposed in utero to chemotherapy. Chemotherapy commenced at a median of 20 weeks gestation, for a mean duration of 10 weeks. Twelve exposed infants were born preterm with 11 by induced labour or pre-labour caesarean section. There were no perinatal deaths or congenital malformations. Our findings show that breast cancer diagnosed during mid-pregnancy is often treated with chemotherapy. Other than induced preterm births, there were no serious adverse perinatal outcomes