Syracuse University

Studies find that banks realize gains and losses on investment securities to signal changes in future operating performance. We do not find evidence of this behavior using a sample beginning after the enactment of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard 115 (SFAS 115). We hypothesize that SFAS 115’s fair value disclosure requirement caused managers to stop signaling with realized gains and losses (RGL) by increasing the transparency of RGL earnings management. Our tests indicate a significant reduction in the association between RGL and future earnings changes after SFAS 115, suggesting that the standard reduced RGL signaling. Consistent with a loss of valuable information, we find that analyst forecast quality decreased and information asymmetry increased for affected banks. Collectively, these findings suggest that SFAS 115 reduced earnings management with RGL, as the FASB intended, but may have reduced the informativeness of financial reporting at banks that previously used asset sales to signal.

Let X be a compact normal complex space of dimension n and L be a holomorphic line bundle on X. Suppose that $\Sigma =(\Sigma _1,\ldots ,\Sigma _\ell )$ is an $\ell$-tuple of distinct irreducible proper analytic subsets of X, $\tau =(\tau _1,\ldots ,\tau _\ell )$ is an $\ell$-tuple of positive real numbers, and let $H^0_0(X,L^p)$ be the space of holomorphic sections of $L^p:=L^{\otimes p}$ that vanish to order at least $\tau _jp$ along $\Sigma _j$, $1\le j\le \ell$. If $Y\subset X$ is an irreducible analytic subset of dimension m, we consider the space $H^0_0 (X|Y, L^p)$ of holomorphic sections of $L^p|_Y$ that extend to global holomorphic sections in $H^0_0(X,L^p)$. Assuming that the triplet $(L,\Sigma ,\tau )$ is big in the sense that $\dim H^0_0(X,L^p)\sim p^n$, we give a general condition on Y to ensure that $\dim H^0_0(X|Y,L^p)\sim p^m$. When L is endowed with a continuous Hermitian metric, we show that the Fubini-Study currents of the spaces $H^0_0(X|Y,L^p)$ converge to a certain equilibrium current on Y. We apply this to the study of the equidistribution of zeros in Y of random holomorphic sections in $H^0_0(X|Y,L^p)$ as $p\rightarrow \infty$.

Despite expectations that suicide rates would surge during the pandemic, the national suicide rate declined in the United States in 2020 before returning to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. Explanations of the decline in suicides at the national level include a “pulling-together effect” in the face of a crisis and a shorter than expected pandemic recession. However, suicide rates and the change over time in suicide rates vary substantially across US states. At various times during the pandemic states enacted physical-distancing and economic support policies that may have affected suicide rates. We examined the association between state-level physical-distancing and economic support policy contexts and suicide rates among US adults ages 25–64 years during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that a 1-SD increase in the stringency of a state's physical-distancing policies was associated with a 5.3% reduction in male suicide rates but was not associated with female suicide rates. Economic support policies were not associated with suicide rates for the period as a whole. The results support the growing evidence that COVID-19 policies had indirect and unintended consequences beyond their direct effect on COVID-19 transmission and death, in this case to reduce suicides among working-age males.

The concept of complex harmonic potential in a doubly connected condenser (capacitor) is introduced as an analogue of the real-valued potential of an electrostatic vector field. In this analogy the full differential of a complex potential plays the role of the gradient of the scalar potential in the theory of electrostatics. The main objective in the non-static fields is to rule out having the full differential vanish at some points. Nevertheless, there can be critical points where the Jacobian determinant of the differential turns into zero. The latter is in marked contrast to the case of real-valued potentials. Furthermore, the complex electric capacitor also admits an interpretation of the stored energy intensively studied in the theory of hyperelastic deformations. Engineers interested in electrical systems, such as energy storage devises, might also wish to envision complex capacitors as electromagnetic condensers which, generally, store more energy that the electric capacitors.

The eastern flank of the tropical Northern Andes (0.5–3.5°N) is characterized by variations in tectonic style due to strain partitioning, and thus an ideal setting to explore how along‐strike differences in rock uplift rate scale with relief and elevation. Here we quantify erosion and topography and their relationship along the Eastern Cordillera using new cosmogenic nuclide data, previously published thermochronology data, and topographic metrics. We found higher median cosmogenic nuclide‐derived erosion rates along the southern and northern sections of the study area (∼600 m/Myr) compared to the central part (∼140 m/Myr). The same trend is observed in erosion rates derived from thermochronology data, with values of 360 m/Myr in the south and north, and 160 m/Myr in the central zone, indicating that erosion patterns have remained constant since at least Pliocene times. Spatial variations in erosion rate correspond to changes in structural style due to strain partitioning; high erosion rates in the north and south are associated with dominant reverse faulting, while lower erosion rates in the central region coincide with dominant strike‐slip deformation. Cosmogenic nuclide erosion rates and channel steepness follow a power law relationship with a slope exponent n = 2.2—corresponding to a high sensitivity of erosion to channel steepness. This nonlinear‐scaling between erosion and topography derived from local erosion data is consistent with along‐orogen differences in channel steepness index, fluvial relief, and maximum elevation. Erosion rates in the northern and southern zones are ∼4.3 times higher than those in the central zone, but topographic metrics such as channel steepness, maximum elevation and fluvial relief are only ∼1.2–1.8x greater. This suggests that high sensitivity of erosion to channel steepness, likely caused by incision thresholds combined with steady river discharge, limits along‐orogen differences in relief along the Northern Andes.

Chronic pain is common in primary care and can be influenced by alcohol use. Co-occurring pain and at-risk alcohol use is associated with poor outcomes, but the prevalence of this co-occurrence is less well understood. This study aims to establish the prevalence of at-risk alcohol use in a sample of VA primary care patients with chronic pain, and determine health characteristics and care utilization of these patients. Eligible VA primary care patients with a musculoskeletal condition (n = 47,091) were classified as at risk, low risk, or abstainers based on responses to annual alcohol screening. Differences across groups in demographics, comorbid health conditions, health factors, and healthcare encounters were assessed. 45.7% of participants were abstainers, 38.5% were low risk, and 15.8% were at risk. Comparisons revealed abstainers to have higher frequencies of health conditions, as well as higher rates of emergency department and primary care utilization. At-risk patients had the highest rate of overall healthcare utilization and, when compared directly to low-risk patients, were more likely to be diagnosed with many physical and mental health conditions. Primary care teams will benefit from considering the impact of alcohol when treating patients with chronic pain. Further prioritization of integrated primary care is recommended.

Recently, we coined the term ‘corrination’ to describe the conjugate modification of a peptide, protein, small molecule, or radionuclide with a corrin ring‐containing molecule. By exploiting the innate chemico‐physical properties of corrin ring‐containing compounds, both in general and specifically via the innate dietary B12 uptake pathway in mammals, corrination has been explored for drug development and targeted/localized delivery of probes and therapeutics. Most recently, it is in the field of peptide‐based therapeutics that corrination is generating significant interest. Peptide‐based drugs possess several limitations that restrict their clinical application, including poor solubility and stability, low oral bioavailability, and negative side effects often due to drug distribution. Therefore, methods must be developed to address these issues without affecting the peptide's functionality. In this review, we describe the design and synthetic approaches to peptide corrination, along with examples, which demonstrate the broad applicability of the technique, namely 1) mitigated peptide aggregation, 2) improved protection against proteolysis, 3) reduced side effects via targeted localization 4) regioselective production of peptide disulfide bonds, 5) improved oral drug absorption. We describe how corrination offers a facile route to improving peptide pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties, making this a useful platform technology in the field of peptide drug development.

Despite knowing about climate risks for decades, oil and gas companies continually increase production. Infants, children, and adolescents are most vulnerable to intensifying air pollution and other upheavals of climate emergency. Here, we illustrate localized impacts of global processes by focusing on the Suncor Oil Refinery in Commerce City, Colorado, the state's only oil refinery and a major polluter. The Suncor facility illustrates broader structural and environmental health vulnerabilities of living and/or attending school near fossil fuel infrastructure. Drawing on community‐based, in‐depth interview data from 53 participants, we show how children have been affected by the facility's pollution. In 93% of interviews, worries over children's health problems—including respiratory problems, chronic illnesses such as asthma and cancer, developmental disorders, nosebleeds, and dizziness—emerged as primary concerns and consistent and harmful sources of stress and ongoing trauma. Rather than being adequately protected by regulations, children instead face excessive asthma rates, other health issues, and contested illness responses from medical providers. Their parents, teachers, and other caretakers face exceptional structural limitations to protecting them. We establish key localized harms of oil refining and answer the call for more rigorous examinations of how fossil fuel‐based systems impact children's quality of life.

The recent addition of data journalists to several dozen U.S. public radio newsrooms has created multiple new hybridities in the form. No longer are numbers and large datasets “audio poison.” Instead, they are an essential tool for these journalists, who prize journalism’s interpretive function, expressing information in new ways and challenging conventions of broadcast newsroom employment. This study, which relies on semi-structured interviews with 13 public radio data journalists, uses Carlson’s boundary work typology to analyze the ways in which data journalists are expanding the boundaries of U.S. public radio journalism, as well as ways in which they have pushed back against expulsionary pressures. This study’s findings problematize the idea that the results of boundary work must be expressed as in-or-out proposition. Rather, U.S. public radio data journalists suggest their boundaries are a continuum where they may be conditionally accepted by their colleagues, depending on deadlines and on the skills possessed by non-data journalists.

This secondary data analysis examined how adolescent early non-coital sexual and romantic behaviors and intentions vary by U.S. Latine origin (e.g., Cuban-, Dominican-, Mexican-, Puerto Rican-, Central and South American, and Other-origin), and explored whether these differences remained when accounting for demographic and cultural factors (e.g., familism). We used data from the baseline and Year 3 follow-ups of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Latine early adolescents ( N = 2411; M age = 11.97, SD = .67) reported on their romantic intentions (40%), romantic behaviors or whether they wanted or have had a boyfriend/girlfriend (27%), and early sexual behaviors (i.e., kissing 10% and touching 3%). When controlling for demographic and cultural factors, gender and race explained some differences. Some remain. For instance, Mexican-origin adolescents reported the lowest prevalence of early romantic behaviors. Findings may help understand national origin differences in romantic and sexual behaviors and tailor prevention programs among these Latine subgroups.

Performing reliable Rietveld analysis on tens or hundreds of powder diffraction datasets from parametric or time-resolved experiments often poses a bottleneck in extracting meaningful results from the data. While automated analysis of data has recently been demonstrated, high temperature annealing studies, during which phase transformations occur and lattice parameters may change due to repartitioning of elements, are prime examples where automation by a simple phase identification from a database of room temperature structures or automation by sequential refinements is likely to fail. To enable reliable, efficient, automated Rietveld analysis, we present a Python package named Spotlight, building on established Rietveld packages such as MAUD, GSAS, or GSAS-II, which extends the refinement of best fit parameters to a global optimization using an ensemble of optimizers leveraging hierarchical parallel execution on high-performance computing clusters. Spotlight further enables the efficient design of refinement plans through the iterative automated machine-learning of a surrogate for the refinement on which the global optimizations are performed until results from the surrogate converge to the response surface data. We demonstrate Spotlight with the analysis of uranium molybdenum and Ti–6Al–4V datasets, as well as in two open-source tutorials analyzing aluminium oxide and lead sulphate.

Astrocytes are a major cell type in the central nervous system (CNS) that play a key role in regulating homeostatic functions, responding to injuries, and maintaining the blood-brain barrier. Astrocytes also regulate neuronal functions and survival by modulating myelination and degradation of pathological toxic protein aggregates. Astrocytes have recently been proposed to possess both autophagic activity and active phagocytic capability which largely depend on sufficiently acidified lysosomes for complete degradation of cellular cargos. Defective lysosomal acidification in astrocytes impairs their autophagic and phagocytic functions, resulting in the accumulation of cellular debris, excessive myelin and lipids, and toxic protein aggregates, which ultimately contributes to the propagation of neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative pathology. Restoration of lysosomal acidification in impaired astrocytes represent new neuroprotective strategy and therapeutic direction. In this review, we summarize pathogenic factors, including neuroinflammatory signaling, metabolic stressors, myelin and lipid mediated toxicity, and toxic protein aggregates, that contribute to lysosomal acidification impairment and associated autophagic and phagocytic dysfunction in astrocytes. We discuss the role of lysosomal acidification dysfunction in astrocyte-mediated neuroinflammation primarily in the context of neurodegenerative diseases along with other brain injuries. We then highlight re-acidification of impaired lysosomes as a therapeutic strategy to restore autophagic and phagocytic functions as well as lysosomal degradative capacity in astrocytes. We conclude by providing future perspectives on the role of astrocytes as phagocytes and their crosstalk with other CNS cells to impart neurodegenerative or neuroprotective effects.

In theory, ectomycorrhizal (EM) and saprotrophic fungi compete for nitrogen (N) found in soil organic matter. However, both positive and negative effects of EM fungi on decomposition have been observed across systems, with opposing implications for soil carbon (C) storage. The conditions driving the context dependency of fungal guild interactions remain poorly understood, which has limited our ability to predict the effects of EM fungi on biogeochemical cycling at regional and global spatial scales. To address this knowledge gap, we used a publicly available dataset of soil fungal communities to examine global patterns of relative EM and saprotrophic abundance and their influence on soil carbon and nutrient cycling. We demonstrate that EM fungal dominance and its effects on C and N cycling are predictable across the globe using only soil C : N stoichiometry, host tree functional group, and soil pH as predictors. We argue that because soil pH influences the availability and enzymatic catabolism of organic N, it determines the dominant N acquisition strategy of EM fungi, which in turn governs the directional effect of EM–saprotroph interactions on rates of organic matter decomposition in forests.

Efficient production and processing of poplar biomass feedstock requires costly pretreatments and enzyme additives. Transgenic alterations of poplar can reduce the need for these inputs by increasing biomass, improving lignocellulose quality, and enhancing nutrient uptake. Previously, a transgenic line of poplar expressing a bacterial hyperthermophilic endoglucanase (TnCelB) in hybrid poplar (P39, Populus alba × grandidentata) was developed and characterized. This study reports the effects on the TnCelB transgenic poplar line under a reduced nutrient treatment. Overall, the nutrient treatment was the source of more observed significant differences than the genotype. Wild type and TnCelB poplar had similar responses in biomass allocation and net photosynthesis. TnCelB trees had a wrinkled leaf phenotype and relative to wild type, had reduced total biomass, reduced water use efficiency, and a decreased proportion of cellulose to hemicellulose and lignin. In low nutrient conditions, TnCelB trees had increased structural carbohydrates with stable lignin values. The TnCelB line presents a viable option for poplar biomass feedstock, offering biomass comparable to wild type poplar and more efficient processing, with only mild negative phenotypes.

The ability of shape memory polymeric materials to repair physical damage and restore original functionality is of great significance in self‐healing technologies, offering a broad application. In this study, we present a novel approach: electrospun shape memory‐assisted self‐healing (SMASH) polymer blends, which build upon prior research utilizing latent crosslinkable polyurethane (x‐PU). By homogeneously blending x‐PU with linear polyurethane (l‐PU) and electrospinning the solution, we produced a family of blends with varying compositions. These blends were characterized through thermal, mechanical, and microstructural analyses, and their self‐healing capabilities were evaluated using a series of damage types. Among the compositions, the 80:20 (w/w x‐PU:l‐PU) blend demonstrated superior healing performance, achieving an average healing efficiency (η) of 92.2% for puncture damage. The introduction of structural anisotropy during electrospinning further enhanced the healing efficiency, particularly for fibers oriented perpendicular to the damage direction. These findings underscore the importance of compositional tuning and structural optimization in enhancing SMASH performance. This work highlights a scalable and versatile platform for self‐healing materials, with promising implications for extending the lifespan and functionality of polymeric systems in practical applications.

Scholars have documented historical contexts and contemporary practice of school counseling in China, highlighting the increase of school-based mental health services in schools and government support. We identified some sporadic empirical evidence concerning school counseling interventions in Chinese schools within various geographic regions. There is a lack of comprehensive and critical review of school counseling development and practice in China. In response to the gap, we performed a systematic review of articles on school counseling in China published between 2004 and 2023. Our review generated five categories: (1) Development of the Profession; (2) Social–Cultural Contexts; (3) School Counselor Roles and Activities, Counseling Interventions, and Outcomes; (4) Theoretical Models; and (5) China–West Comparison. Our findings further illuminated sociopolitical and sociocultural contexts intertwined with the development and practice of school counseling in China. We also noted stark contrasts within school counseling practice across school settings and geographic regions of China. We advocate for legitimacy and unification of school counselors’ professional identity and allocation of resources for school counseling practice in rural China.