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The impact of corporate governance on narrative disclosure tone : a machine learning approach
Get PDFPurpose This study examines the influence of corporate governance indicators (CGIs) on the textual tone of nonfinancial firms in a developing economy. Design/methodology/approach The data from 1,250 annual reports of listed nonfinancial firms in Pakistan are collected for 10 years. The narrative disclosure tone (NDT) is derived using the sentiment analysis of annual reports, resulting in six distinct NDT scores. The CGIs data are also extracted from the annual reports. The fixed effects model is used as the primary analytical tool, supplemented by machine learning-based linear regression. System GMM and two-stage least squares regressions are employed for robustness checks. Findings The findings reveal that most CGIs significantly influence all six NDTs. These results align with the existing theoretical literature, except those related to audit committee independence and gender diversity. Research limitations/implications The study is limited to the use of annual reports as a source of narrative disclosures. Future research might employ other sources, such as earning press releases and social media. Practical implications Within the unique regulatory environment of Pakistan, the study offers insights for regulators to enhance the efficacy of independent directors, discourage concentrated ownership and promote the inclusion of women in board subcommittees to establish the authenticity of textual disclosures. Originality/value The study adds to the limited literature on the determinants of NDT. It underscores the importance of understanding textual tone for informed investor decision-making and restoring investor confidence. Moreover, it contributes by focusing on six NDTs and exploring the interplay between CGIs and textual tone.Peer reviewe
3D printed tooling for injection molded microfluidics
Get PDFFunding: This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant EP/N509668/1 and by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 262613. This study was partially funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Award “FAKIR”, reference 648892. This research was funded as part of the North West Centre for Advanced Manufacturing. The North West Centre for Advanced Manufacturing (NWCAM) project is supported by the European Union's INTERREG VA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB).Microfluidics have been used for several decades to conduct a wide range of research in chemistry and the life sciences. The reduced dimensions of these devices give them advantages over classical analysis techniques such as increased sensitivity, shorter analysis times, and lower reagent consumption. However, current manufacturing processes for microfluidic chips either limit them to materials with unwanted properties, or are not cost-effective for rapid-prototyping approaches. Here the authors show that inlays for injection moulding can be 3D printed, thus reducing the skills, cost, and time required for tool fabrication. They demonstrate the importance of orientation of the part during 3D printing so that features as small as 100 × 200 µm can be printed. They also demonstrate that the 3D printed inlay is durable enough to fabricate at least 500 parts. Furthermore, devices can be designed, manufactured, and tested within one working day. Finally, as demonstrators they design and mould a microfluidic chip to house a plasmonic biosensor as well as a device to house liver organoids showing how such chips can be used in organ-on-a-chip applications. This new fabrication technique bridges the gap between small production and industrial scale manufacturing, while making microfluidics cheaper, and more widely accessible.Peer reviewe
The land question in Anglo-French political economy, 1750-1830
No full textThis thesis examines the political economy of land reform in Anglo-French political economy between c. 1750 and 1830. One of the main aims is to provide a comprehensive historical answer to the vexed question about the seeming discrepancy between the rhetoric and reality of land reform, especially in the American Revolution and in British political economy from Adam Smith to Thomas Paine and beyond. In doing so, the thesis explores, among other things, the way in which parental affection became a central topic of discussion in the debates about land reform and inheritance in the 18th and early 19th century. More specifically, the thesis shows how parental affection became a source of optimism in the late 18th century, only to become associated with great fear following the French Revolution. More broadly, the thesis provides a reinterpretation of Anglo-French political economy that places questions regarding the tenure, transfer and taxation of land at the centre of political economy. Another aim of this thesis is to show how the question of agricultural self-sufficiency was connected to the problem of jealousy of trade between nations, as well as to show how the debate about the best organisation of agriculture, often referred to as the ‘large farm-small farm debate’, was not merely a debate about economic efficiency but involved a much starker choice between civilisation and barbarism. Most importantly, however, it is a central claim of this thesis that the political economy of the Anglo-French world between 1750 and 1830 had as one of its primary concerns the question whether civilisation could be entrusted to the living; that is, whether the will of the dead, insofar as it pertained to the distribution of land, ought to curtail the will of the living generation."This work was supported by Social-Økonomisk Forskningsbibliotek (Copenhagen, Denmark).
This work was supported by the Henry George Foundation (London, UK).
This work was supported by Fonden Henry Georges Minde (Copenhagen, Denmark)."--Fundin
(E,E)-1,5-Diethoxy-1,5-diphenylpenta-1,4-dien-3-one
Get PDFThe title compound has been fully characterised for the first time. Fully assigned 1H and 13C NMR spectra, and the X-ray structure are presented.Peer reviewe
Isoselenourea‐catalyzed enantioselective pyrazolo‐heterocycle synthesis enabled by self‐correcting amide and ester acylation
Get PDFFunding: The research leading to these results has received funding from the EaSI-CAT centre for Doctoral Training (M.I.P., M.T.W., and A.S.G.). A.D.S. and M.I.P. thank the EPSRC Programme Grant “Boron: Beyond the Reagent” (EP/W007517) for support. MB thanks EaStCHEM and the School of Chemistry for support.Pyrazole heterocycles are prevalent in a wide range of medicinal and agrochemical compounds, and as such, the development of methods for their enantioselective incorporation into molecular scaffolds is highly desirable. This manuscript describes the effective formation of fused pyrazolo-pyridones and -pyranones in high enantioselectivity (up to >99:1 er) via an isoselenourea (HyperSe) catalyzed enantioselective [3 + 3]-Michael addition-cyclization process using readily available pyrazolylsulfonamides or pyrazolones as pronucleophiles and α,β-unsaturated anhydrides as starting materials. Mechanistic analysis indicates an unusual self-correcting reaction pathway involving preferential [1,2]-addition of the pronucleophile to initially generate an intermediate amide or ester that can be intercepted by isoselenourea acylation, leading to productive formation of the fused heterocyclic products with high enantiocontrol. The scope and limitations of this process are developed across a range of examples, with insight into the factors leading to the observed enantioselectivity provided by density functional theory (DFT) analysis.Peer reviewe
A joint effort to discover and characterize two resonant mini-Neptunes around TOI-1803 with TESS, HARPS-N, and CHEOPS
Get PDFFunding: LBo, GBr, VNa, IPa, GPi, RRa, GSc, VSi, and TZi acknowledge support from CHEOPS ASI-INAF agreement no. 2019-29-HH.0. TZi acknowledges NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant Program for the use of the Titan V GPU card and the Italian MUR Departments of Excellence grant 2023-2027 “Quantum Frontiers”. C.B. acknowledges support from the Swiss Space Office through the ESA PRODEX program. This work has been carried out within the framework of the NCCR PlanetS supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grants 51NF40_182901 and 51NF40_205606. ML acknowledges support of the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant number PCEFP2_194576. A.S. acknowledges support from the Swiss Space Office through the ESA PRODEX program. YAl acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under grant 200020_192038. The Belgian participation to CHEOPS has been supported by the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) in the framework of the PRODEX Program, and by the University of Liège through an ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. L.D. thanks the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) for the provision of financial support in the framework of the PRODEX Programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) under contract number 4000142531. ABr was supported by the SNSA. ACMC acknowledges support from the FCT, Portugal, through the CFisUC projects UIDB/04564/2020 and UIDP/04564/2020, with DOI identifiers 10.54499/UIDB/04564/2020 and 10.54499/UIDP/04564/2020, respectively. This work has been supported by the PRIN-INAF 2019 “Planetary systems at young ages (PLATEA)”. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the ERDF “A way of making Europe” through projects PID2019-107061GB-C61, PID2019-107061GB-C66, PID2021- 125627OB-C31, and PID2021-125627OB-C32, from the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CEX2019- 000920-S), from the Centre of Excellence “María de Maeztu” award to the Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (CEX2020-001058-M), and from the Generali- tat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the ERDF “A way of making Europe” through projects PID2019-107061GB-C61, PID2019-107061GB-C66, PID2021- 125627OB-C31, and PID2021-125627OB-C32, from the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CEX2019- 000920-S), from the Centre of Excellence “María de Maeztu” award to the Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (CEX2020-001058-M), and from the General- itat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. S.C.C.B. acknowledges support from FCT through FCT contracts nr. IF/01312/2014/CP1215/CT0004. ACC acknowledges support from STFC consolidated grant number ST/V000861/1, and UKSA grant number ST/X002217/1. P.E.C. is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Erwin Schroedinger Fellowship, program J4595-N. This project was supported by the CNES. This work was supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through national funds and by FEDER through COM- PETE2020 through the research grants UIDB/04434/2020, UIDP/04434/2020, 2022.06962.PTDC. O.D.S.D. is supported in the form of work contract (DL 57/2016/CP1364/CT0004) funded by national funds through FCT. B.- O. D. acknowledges support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under contract number MB22.00046. This project has received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation for project 200021_200726. It has also been carried out within the framework of the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant 51NF40_205606. The authors acknowledge the financial support of the SNSF. M.F. and C.M.P. gratefully acknowledge the support of the Swedish National Space Agency (DNR 65/19, 174/18). D.D. acknowledges support from the TESS Guest Investigator Program grant 80NSSC23K0769. DG gratefully acknowledges financial support from the CRT foundation under Grant No. 2018.2323 “Gaseous or rocky? Unveiling the nature of small worlds”. D.P. acknowledges the support from the Isti- tuto Nazionale di Oceanografia e Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS) and CINECA through the program “HPC-TRES (High Performance Computing Training and Research for Earth Sciences)” award number 2022-05 as well as the support of the ASI-INAF agreement No. 2021-5-HH.1-2022. DT acknowledges the support from the European Research Council via the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme ERC Synergy “ECOGAL” Project GA-855130. DRC acknowledges partial support from NASA Grant 18-2XRP18_2-0007. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program (ExoFOP; DOI: 10.26134/Exo- FOP5) website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at Keck Observatory, which is a private 501(c)3 non-profit organization operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the Native Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. M.G. is an F.R.S.- FNRS Senior Research Associate. MNG is the ESA CHEOPS Project Scientist and Mission Representative, and as such also responsible for the Guest Observers (GO) Programme. MNG does not relay proprietary information between the GO and Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) Programmes, and does not decide on the definition and target selection of the GTO Programme. MP acknowledge support from the European Union – NextGenerationEU (PRIN MUR 2022 20229R43BH) and the "Programma di Ricerca Fondamentale INAF 2023. CHe acknowledges support from the European Union H2020-MSCA-ITN-2019 under Grant Agreement no. 860470 (CHAMELEON). KGI is the ESA CHEOPS Project Scientist and is responsible for the ESA CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme. She does not participate in, or contribute to, the definition of the Guaranteed Time Programme of the CHEOPS mission through which observations described in this paper have been taken, nor to any aspect of target selection for the programme. K.W.F.L. was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemein- schaft grants RA714/14-1 within the DFG Schwerpunkt SPP 1992, Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets. This work was granted access to the HPC resources of MesoPSL financed by the Region Ile de France and the project Equip@Meso (reference ANR-10-EQPX-29-01) of the programme Investisse- ments d’Avenir supervised by the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche. P.M. acknowledges support from STFC research grant number ST/R000638/1. This work was also partially supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (PI Queloz, grant number 327127). NCSa acknowledges funding by the European Union (ERC, FIERCE, 101052347). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. S.G.S. acknowledge support from FCT through FCT contract nr. CEECIND/00826/2018 and POPH/FSE (EC). The Portuguese team thanks the Portuguese Space Agency for the provision of financial support in the framework of the PRODEX Programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) under contract number 4000142255. GyMSz acknowledges the support of the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH) grant K-125015, a a PRODEX Experiment Agreement No. 4000137122, the Lendület LP2018-7/2021 grant of the Hungarian Academy of Science and the support of the city of Szombathely. V.V.G. is an F.R.S-FNRS Research Associate. JV acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under grant PZ00P2_208945. NAW acknowledges UKSA grant ST/R004838/1. TWi acknowledges support from the UKSA and the University of Warwick. KAC acknowledges support from the TESS mission via subaward s3449 from MIT. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. TESS data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program (ExoFOP; DOI: 10.26134/ExoFOP5) website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. Co-funded by the European Union (ERC, FIERCE, 101052347). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This work was supported by FCT – Fun- dação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through national funds and by FEDER through COMPETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Interna- cionalização by these grants: UIDB/04434/2020; UIDP/04434/2020. This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. Part of the LCOGT telescope time was granted by NOIRLab through the Mid-Scale Innovations Program (MSIP). MSIP is funded by NSF. This is paper is based on observations made with the MuSCAT3 instrument, developed by the Astrobiology Center and under financial supports by JSPS KAKENHI (JP18H05439) and JST PRESTO (JPMJPR1775), at Faulkes Telescope North on Maui, HI, operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory. This work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP24H00017 and JSPS Bilateral Program Number JPJSBP120249910.Context . The discovery and characterization of mini-Neptunes hold a potentially crucial impact on planetary formation and evolution theories. Estimating their orbital parameters and atmospheric properties would provide valuable hints to improve formation and atmospheric models. Aims . We present the discovery of two mini-Neptunes near a 2:1 orbital resonance configuration orbiting the K0 star TOI-1803. We describe in detail their orbital architecture and suggest some possible formation and evolution scenarios. Methods . Using CHEOPS, TESS, and HARPS-N datasets, we estimated the radius and the mass of both planets. We used a multidimensional Gaussian process with a quasi-periodic kernel to disentangle the planetary components from the stellar activity in the HARPS-N dataset. We performed dynamical modeling to explain the orbital configuration and performed planetary formation and evolution simulations. For the least dense planet, we assumed different atmospheric compositions and defined possible atmospheric scenarios with simulated JWST observations. Results . TOI-1803 b and TOI-1803 c have orbital periods of ∼6.3 and ∼12.9 days, respectively, residing in close proximity to a 2:1 orbital resonance. Ground-based photometric follow-up observations have revealed significant transit timing variations (TTV) with an amplitude of ∼10 min and ∼40 min, respectively, for planets b and -c. With the masses computed from the radial velocities dataset, we obtained a density of (0.39 ± 0.10) ρ⊕ and (0.076 ± 0.038) ρ⊕ for planets b and -c, respectively. TOI-1803 c is among the least dense mini-Neptunes currently known, and due to its inflated atmosphere, it is a suitable target for transmission spectroscopy with JWST. With NIRSpec observations, we could understand whether the planet has kept its primary atmosphere or not, which would constrain our formation models. Conclusions . We report the discovery of two mini-Neptunes close to a 2:1 orbital resonance. The detection of significant TTVs from ground-based photometry opens scenarios for a more precise mass determination. TOI-1803 c is one of the least dense mini-Neptunes known so far, and it is of great interest among the scientific community since it could constrain current formation scenarios. JWST observations could give us valuable insights to characterize this interesting system.Peer reviewe
A case of swine influenza A(H1N2)v in England, November 2023
Get PDFFunding: The RCGP RSC’s principal funder is UKHSA. MZ holds an NIHR Senior Investigator Award (NIHR201395). BM, IB, ACB, JJ, AMPB were funded by the U.K. Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, UK (Defra); the devolved administrations of the Scottish and the Welsh Governments (Grant Numbers SV3041 and SE2213). Swine influenza virus research in the UK undertaken by NSL, BM, IB, AB, JJ, AB that contributed viruses, human sera, data and analyses within the laboratory, public and animal health investigations was in part funded by the NIH Centres of Excellence in Influenza Research and Response programme: AA No. 75N93021C00015 through a collaboration between Penn-CEIRR, USDA-ARS, APHA, the Royal Veterinary College and the Francis Crick Institute†. JC, BK, KH, MZ, RM, JLB, CW, MC, WW, DW, IO, SP, AL, SC, MB are all employed by UKHSA.Under International Health Regulations from 2005, a human infection caused by a novel influenza A virus variant is considered an event that has potential for high public health impact and is immediately notifiable to the World Health Organisation. We here describe the clinical, epidemiological and virological features of a confirmed human case of swine influenza A(H1N2)v in England detected through community respiratory virus surveillance. Swabbing and contact tracing helped refine public health risk assessment, following this unusual and unexpected finding.Peer reviewe
Urban waste piles are reservoirs for human pathogenic bacteria with high levels of multidrug resistance against last resort antibiotics : a comprehensive temporal and geographic field analysis
Get PDFFunding: This work was supported by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) as part of the GCRF SPACES project [grant number NE/ V005847/1] and the NERC Plastic Vectors project, “Microbial hitch-hikers of marine plastics: the survival, persistence & ecology of microbial communities in the ‘Plastisphere’” [grant number NE/S005196/1].Inadequate waste management and poor sanitation practices in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) leads to waste accumulation in urban and peri-urban residential areas. This increases human exposure to hazardous waste, including plastics, which can harbour pathogenic bacteria. Although lab-based studies demonstrate how plastic pollution can increase the persistence and dissemination of dangerous pathogens, empirical data on pathogen association with plastic in real-world settings are limited. We conducted a year-long spatiotemporal sampling survey in a densely populated informal settlement in Malawi, quantifying enteric bacterial pathogens including ESBL-producing E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., and Vibrio cholerae. Culture-based screening and molecular approaches were used to quantify the presence of each pathogen, together with the distribution and frequency of resistance to antibiotics. Our data indicate that these pathogens commonly associate with urban waste materials. Elevated levels of these pathogens precede typical infection outbreaks, suggesting that urban waste piles may be an important source of community transmission. Notably, many pathogens displayed increased levels of AMR, including against several 'last resort' antibiotics. These findings highlight urban waste piles as potential hotspots for the dissemination of infectious diseases and AMR and underscores the need for urgent waste management interventions to mitigate public health risks. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.]Peer reviewe
The coupled tearing-thermal instability in coronal current sheets from the linear to the non-linear stage
Get PDFFunding: J. De Jonghe acknowledges funding by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Consolidated Grant ST/W001195/1. S. Sen acknowledges support by the European Research Council through the Synergy Grant #810218 (‘The Whole Sun’, ERC-2018-SyG).In the solar corona, magnetically sheared structures are unstable to both tearing and thermal instabilities in a coupled fashion. However, how the choice of linear perturbation modes influences the time-scale to achieve the thermal runaway in a coupled tearing–thermal coronal current sheet is not well understood to date. Here, we model a force-free Harris current sheet under solar coronal conditions to investigate this coupling in the linear and non-linear regimes. In the linear regime, we adopt the magnetohydrodynamic spectroscopy code legolas to compare the current sheet under thermal and thermoresistive conditions, after which we initialize non-linear simulations (with mpi-amrvac) with the unstable, linear tearing and thermal perturbations obtained with legolas. It is shown that part of the unstable thermal quasi-continuum adopts tearing properties in the linear stage, but that it is not until the non-linear stage is reached that a true thermal ‘runaway’ effect leads to condensations inside tearing-induced flux ropes. Hence, the linear stage is governed by the dominant tearing instability whilst condensations form due to tearing–thermal coupling in the non-linear stage. Our results imply that perturbing an equilibrium current sheet with the fastest growing linear mode skips the mode-mixing phase in which the dominant instability traditionally emerges, and significantly reduces the time-scale to enter into the non-linear stage and thermal runaway process from its equilibrium configuration.Peer reviewe
Semblances of truth : the romantic lyric revisited
Get PDFThe ‘Romantic lyric’ as an idea or critical entity finds itself doubly maligned in contemporary lyric studies. As a perceived product of New Criticism, it finds itself accused by historicists of bringing about the ‘lyricisation’ of poetry in twentieth-century criticism, and, as a mimetic model of subjective expression, it’s disfavoured by lyric theorists who view it as a stepping stone towards the currently common misconception that lyrics are a species of dramatic monologue. Yet returning to the Romantics themselves, we discover other models of the lyric that sit outside the expressive model or the paradigm of lyricisation, and which may well be of use to contemporary lyric studies. This essay offers a reading of one such model in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in the form of lyric’s semblance character: Coleridge is peculiarly and persistently concerned with the way the world appears to be (which is often not how the world really is), and his lyric poetry figures as a kind of seemingness in its own right, and one that reflects on the nature of appearances themselves. Before making a case for lyric semblance, this essay offers an overview of the state of lyric studies today, taking as exemplary the work of Virginia Jackson and Jonathan Culler; it places emphasis on the role of the ‘Romantic lyric’ in both accounts, and teases out some of what’s at stake in the tension between historicism and formalism that is at the centre of lyric studies today.Peer reviewe
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