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Toward the Copular Status of Chinese Clefts -- Evidence from Diachronic Syntax
Get PDFThis paper develops a substantive link between three independent and chronologically separate diachronic patterns in Classical Chinese. In each development, a newly copularized (reanalyzed from lexical sources) morpheme occurs in both a copular clause and a cleft. We argue that this connection can be captured by a theory according to which clefts are a type of the copular construction. Both canonical copular clauses and clefts are thus headed by the same copula verb, hence the tendency for both copular structures to emerge and decline in a coordinated way
The Impact of Organizational Culture on the Outcomes of Mergers and Acquisitions
No full textABSTRACTResearch is lacking regarding an understanding of the cultural factors that may affect the outcomes of mergers or acquisitions Currently, many managers focus solely on the financial gains of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and pay little attention to the potential influence of cultural factors, which may reduce the long-term efficacy of M&As (Singh, 2017). This dissertation used a mixed-methods approach to answer the following three research questions: (a) How do M&As achieve the success objectives of participating companies; (b) How do leadership perceptions of cultural factors contribute to the outcomes of M&as; (c) Can management training in cultural competency factors lead to better leadership perceptions of M&A outcomes? Data was collected from personal interviews as well as from surveys to inform these research questions. Interview data was inductively analyzed to yield key themes and identify potential areas for future research related to influences on the successes and failures of mergers or acquisitions, and how cultural factors may impact success. Survey data from managers of large, publicly-traded technology firms evaluated how managers perceive the success of M&As in meeting their outcomes, as well as how and what cultural factors, such as diversity, context, management, and human resources management may influence these outcomes. In this way, both interview and survey data informed all three research questions. This research will contribute to technology firm managers’ understanding of how to improve the success of future M&As financially, culturally, and operationally
Unmasking the Language of Science through Textual Analyses on Biomedical Preprints and Published Papers
No full textScientific communication is essential for science as it enables the field to grow. This task is often accomplished through a written form such as preprints and published papers. We can obtain a high-level understanding of science and how scientific trends adapt over time by analyzing these resources. This thesis focuses on conducting multiple analyses using biomedical preprints and published papers. In Chapter 2, we explore the language contained within preprints and examine how this language changes due to the peer-review process. We find that token differences between published papers and preprints are stylistically based, suggesting that peer-review results in modest textual changes. We also discovered that preprints are eventually published and adopted quickly within the life science community. Chapter 3 investigates how biomedical terms and tokens change their meaning and usage through time. We show that multiple machine learning models can correct for the latent variation contained within the biomedical text. Also, we provide the scientific community with a listing of over 43,000 potential change points. Tokens with notable changepoints such as “sars” and “cas9” appear within our listing, providing some validation for our approach. In Chapter 4, we use the weak supervision paradigm to examine the possibility of speeding up the labeling function generation process for multiple biomedical relationship types. We found that the language used to describe a biomedical relationship is often distinct, leading to a modest performance in terms of transferability. An exception to this trend is Compound-binds-Gene and Gene-interacts-Gene relationship types
Investigating the Thermal and Kinetic Stability of Thin Films of Molecular Glasses
No full textStable Glasses (SGs) are very dense glasses with remarkable thermodynamic and kinetic stability, that are made by the process of Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD). These glasses are made directly into a low-energy state via surface-mediated equilibration (SME), during PVD. In this work, we are investigating the kinetic and thermodynamic stability of vapor-deposited films of N,N’-Bis(3-methylphenyl)-N,N’-diphenylbenzidine (TPD) of different thicknesses and substrate temperatures. We produced SGs of bulk (\u3e 200 nm) TPD films with a broad range of stability and measured the density change of the films, which is a measure of the thermodynamic stability, upon thermal annealing. To study the kinetics of as-deposited glasses, we have optimized the process of solvent vapor annealing (SVA). When the as-deposited films of TPD are solvent annealed with toluene under the right conditions, a solvent front, analogous to a propagating thermal front, can be produced and measured by in situ spectroscopic ellipsometry. The speed of the solvent front, limited by the relaxation of the medium, gave an indirect estimate of the kinetics of the film. For bulk films of TPD SGs, we observed the strong dependence of the thermodynamic stability on substrate temperatures. The kinetics of the bulk SG films on the other hand, depend not only on the substrate temperature but also on other factors such as the birefrigence of the films and mobility of the solvent front. The thermodynamics and kinetic stability of as-deposited SG films point towards the existence of two regimes in the formation of the SGs. In very thin films (\u3c 60 nm), the density of the as-deposited films exceeds that of the supercooled liquid (SCL) line and follows a new SCL line, at lower temperatures. The transition from the high temperature SCL, to the low temperature SCL happens within a narrow range of substrate temperatures, where the kinetics of the films changes drastically by almost to an order of magnitude. This suggests the existence of a distinct phase that exists in very thin as-deposited films, with a liquid-liquid phase transition, below the glass transition, to the low temperature SCL
Martial\u27s Materials: Materiality in the Literary Epigram
No full textOriginating from inscribed epigram, concerning itself with occasional and satirical matters, and being written during the Flavian period, a time marked by efforts to catalogue and reframe Roman thought and tradition, Martial’s Epigrams understandably so are obsessed with the material world. Material objects, animate or inanimate, are at the center of interest of Martial’s poetry so much, that this dissertation suggests materiality as a fruitful lens through which Martial’s oeuvre as a whole can be approached. To do so, this study is structured into three avenues of investigation: sense perception, the (imagined) transformations of objects that are evoked through word plays, and a play with the representation of books and poets in poetry. This study finds that Martial often calls the very concept of materiality into question. This can occur e.g., when the poet portrays things that are not material, such as a smell, as palpable within his poetry. Elsewhere, the poet implicitly suggests a transformation of the legs of an individual by juxtaposing them with similarly shaped objects. Finally, the poet imagines concepts such as the greatness of an author as a material presence that can take up an entire room. Likewise, Martial alludes to an ubiquitous, dematerialized presence when he claims that “all of Rome reads me” or “I am in everyone’s pocket,” imagining himself as one with his book. The three chapters of my dissertation in conjunction shed light on how Martial’s material worldmaking suggests a coexistence of physical and conceptual materials that can both be captured by literary epigram. Literary epigram, thus, is fruitful for a reflection on matters of materiality: originating from being inscribed in stone, turned into ephemeral entertainment-pieces which lack coherency with one another and can be fragmented by the reader at will, literary epigram comes across as an anti-genre in which the material and the abstract lie close together
The Role of PAQR8 in Breast Cancer Recurrence and Therapy Resistance
No full textBreast cancer is the most common cancer and leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. Despite recent advances in therapies that significantly improve survival rates, recurrent disease due to therapy resistance continues to account for breast cancer mortality. Here, we explore a novel mechanism of therapy resistance that frequently occurs across all subtypes of breast cancer. Copy number (CN) gain of the putative membrane progesterone receptor PAQR8 was one of four focal CN alterations that preferentially occurred in recurrent metastatic tumors compared to primary tumors in breast cancer patients enrolled in the METAMORPH study. Whether PAQR8 plays a functional role in cancer is unknown. Notably, PAQR8 CN gain in recurrent tumors was mutually exclusive with activating ESR1 mutations in patients treated with anti-estrogen therapies, and occurred in \u3e50% of both patients treated with anti-estrogen therapies and those treated with chemotherapy or anti-Her2 agents. Experimentally, we show that PAQR8 is necessary and sufficient for mammary tumor recurrence in mice, spontaneously upregulated and CN gained in post-therapy recurrent tumors from multiple mouse models, and associated with breast cancer progression and poor survival in patients. PAQR8 promoted therapy resistance by enhancing tumor cell survival following estrogen receptor pathway inhibition by fulvestrant or estrogen deprivation, Her2 pathway blockade by lapatinib or Her2 downregulation, or treatment with chemotherapeutic agents. Pro-survival effects of PAQR8 were mediated by a Gi protein-dependent reduction in cAMP levels, did not require progesterone, and involved a PAQR8-dependent decrease in ceramide levels and increase in sphingosine-1-phosphate levels, suggesting that PAQR8 may possess ceramidase activity. Together, our data provide in vivo evidence that PAQR8 plays a functional role in cancer, implicate PAQR8, cAMP, and ceramide metabolism in breast cancer recurrence, and identify a novel mechanism that could contribute to \u3e50% of treatment resistance in breast cancer patients
Integrated Landscape of Cardiac Metabolism in End-Stage Human Non-Ischemic Dilated Cardiomyopathy
No full textHeart failure is a leading cause of mortality worldwide. The failing heart undergoes profound metabolic changes, but a comprehensive evaluation in humans is lacking. We integrate here plasma and cardiac tissue metabolomics of 678 metabolites, genome-wide RNA-seq, and global proteomic studies, to examine metabolic status in 87 explanted human hearts from 39 patients with end-stage heart failure compared to 48 non-failing donors. The data confirm a bioenergetic defect in end-stage human heart failure and reveal a selective depletion of adenylate purines (but not guanylates or pyrimidines), required for maintaining levels of ATP. We observe substantial reductions in fatty acids (FA) and acyl-carnitines in failing tissue, despite elevations in plasma, suggesting defective import of FAs into cardiomyocytes. Glucose levels, in contrast, are elevated in failing hearts. Downstream intermediates of glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway, and glycogen synthesis are reduced, suggesting some blend of upstream bottleneck of glucose phosphorylation or accelerated downstream consumption. Notably, the key enzyme that gates carbohydrate oxidation by the TCA cycle, pyruvate dehydrogenase, is de-repressed, allowing increased lactate and pyruvate burning. TCA intermediates are significantly reduced in failing hearts, perhaps due to shunting of pyruvate towards oxidation. Finally, the bioactive lipid content of failing human hearts is profoundly reprogrammed, with marked reductions in ceramides and elevations in nearly all lysoglycerophospholipids species. Together, these data show profound metabolic and lipid abnormalities in human failing hearts and provide insight into mechanisms contributing to the bioenergetic defect of failing hearts
Overpaying and Undersaving? Correlated Mistakes in Retirement Saving and Health Insurance Choices
Get PDFNot everyone makes wise financial choices. A large body of research documents behavior inconsistent with well-informed consumers maximizing their expected utility of consumption. It remains unknown, however, whether such behavior is correlated across domains. This paper uses two novel datasets to test whether the quality of health insurance and retirement saving decisions are correlated. Using administrative panel data from a large employer, we find that people who overpay for health insurance by choosing a dominated plan are more likely to forego employer matching funds for retirement saving. One-third of employees overpay for health insurance each year by $1,700 and simultaneously make no voluntary retirement contributions. Over just a few years, these choices result in lost savings equal to 4% of the median net worth of families at retirement. The losses are highest for employees with lower salaries, lower educational attainment, and for women. We find this positive correlation in choice quality across domains generalizes to other settings using a survey linked to administrative data on retirement accounts from 10 employers. This finding suggests consumers could reallocate funds from health insurance to retirement saving without sacrificing consumption. We find empirical support for several mechanisms explaining choice quality and consider implications for policy design to improve household economic security
A Simple Technique Using a Modified Nance Appliance as Anchorage for Maxillary Molar Distalization—Two Case Reports
Get PDFMaxillary molar distalization to correct a dental Class II molar relationship and to create space to relieve crowding has been a long-lasting subject of debate in orthodontics. Generally, to distalize maxillary molars, an intra-arch distalization appliance is favored over an inter-arch appliance since it does not utilize mandibular dentition as an anchorage, so some unwanted side effects on mandibular incisors can be avoided. A variety of intra-arch appliances have been developed to distalize maxillary molars, such as the pendulum, Jones jig, first class appliance, distal jet, and modified C-palatal plate. Although they could achieve efficient molar distalization, the learning curve of proper appliance insertion and activation is relatively long. In addition, the appliances are not comfortable for the patients due to the bulky activation units, especially when the activation units are designed in the palatal area. The current manuscript describes a novel and effective maxillary intra-arch molar distalization appliance—a modified Nance appliance technique, which consists of: (1) palatally, a big acrylic button against the palatal rugae and connected to the premolars with wide mesh pads; (2) buccally, regular brackets on maxillary premolars and first molars with sectional round stainless steel archwires and open coil springs between the second premolar and first molar. Either bilateral or unilateral maxillary molar distalization can be achieved with this appliance, and the Class II elastics are not needed. It is simple to be fabricated, delivered, and activated, and it is comfortable for patients. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland
A Comparison of Solar and Wind Energy Development Between Western China and the Western US
Get PDFChina and the US are pursuing carbon neutrality targets as the world\u27s largest emitters. Powered by renewable energy, green electricity is a crucial step to help both countries to realize their carbon neutrality goal. Having similar natural situations and abundant solar and wind resources, both countries\u27 western regions shared significant similarities in the weight of land size, population, and social economy to the nation, which makes both western regions comparable. However, both countries are currently at different developing paces in developing solar and wind energy, which requires an unbiased method to conduct this assessment. This study designed a renewable energy assessment framework by defining vital influential factors and their sub- factors first, then aggregating all normalized values of selected factors to conduct a final performance score for each province and state in both western regions. Additionally, a ranking can be given within each region based on the final normalized score. Overall, the results show that although the two western regions are in different development stages, both share similarities in their solar and wind performance except the performance on social policy, as the western US has more types of solar, and consumers can choose incentives. At the provincial and state level, the top three performers in western China and the western US are Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Ningxia, Colorado, Arizona, and Wyoming, respectively. Based on the performance result, recommended policy implications are given to both western regions for future usage. This framework can be applied to other renewable energy development assessments after successfully defining the key factors and their sub-factors