Federal Emergency Management Agency

ABSTRACT We examine whether corporate governance mechanisms, especially the market for corporate control, affect the profitability of firm acquisitions. We find that acquirers with more antitakeover provisions experience significantly lower announcement‐period abnormal stock returns. This supports the hypothesis that managers at firms protected by more antitakeover provisions are less subject to the disciplinary power of the market for corporate control and thus are more likely to indulge in empire‐building acquisitions that destroy shareholder value. We also find that acquirers operating in more competitive industries or separating the positions of CEO and chairman of the board experience higher abnormal announcement returns.

ABSTRACT I provide evidence that geographically proximate analysts are more accurate than other analysts. Stock returns immediately surrounding forecast revisions suggest that local analysts impact prices more than other analysts. These effects are strongest for firms located in small cities and remote areas. Collectively these results suggest that geographically proximate analysts possess an information advantage over other analysts, and that this advantage translates into better performance. The well‐documented underwriter affiliation bias in stock recommendations is concentrated among distant affiliated analysts; recommendations by local affiliated analysts are unbiased. This finding reveals a geographic component to the agency problems in the industry.

OBJECTIVES: We used data from a nationally representative sample to examine the associations among 3 dimensions of sexual orientation (identity, attraction, and behavior), lifetime and past-year mood and anxiety disorders, and sex. METHODS: We analyzed data from wave 2 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. RESULTS: Mental health outcomes differed by sex, dimension of sexual orientation, and sexual minority group. Whereas a lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity was associated with higher odds of any mood or anxiety disorder for both men and women, women reporting only same-sex sexual partners in their lifetime had the lowest rates of most disorders. Higher odds of any lifetime mood or anxiety disorder were more consistent and pronounced among sexual minority men than among sexual minority women. Finally, bisexual behavior conferred the highest odds of any mood or anxiety disorder for both males and females. CONCLUSIONS: Findings point to mental health disparities among some, but not all, sexual minority groups and emphasize the importance of including multiple measures of sexual orientation in population-based health studies.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis exerts profound, multilevel inhibitory effects on the female reproductive system. Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and CRH-induced proopiomelanocortin peptides inhibit hypothalamic gonadotropin-releasing hormone secretion, whereas glucocorticoids suppress pituitary luteinizing hormone and ovarian estrogen and progesterone secretion and render target tissues resistant to estradiol. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is thus responsible for the "hypothalamic" amenorrhea of stress, which is also seen in melancholic depression, malnutrition, eating disorders, chronic active alcoholism, chronic excessive exercise, and the hypogonadism of the Cushing syndrome. Conversely, estrogen directly stimulates the CRH gene promoter and the central noradrenergic system, which may explain adult women's slight hypercortisolism; preponderance of affective, anxiety, and eating disorders; and mood cycles and vulnerability to autoimmune and inflammatory disease, both of which follow estradiol fluctuations. Several components of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and their receptors are present in reproductive tissues as autacoid regulators. These include ovarian and endometrial CRH, which may participate in the inflammatory processes of the ovary (ovulation and luteolysis) and endometrium (blastocyst implantation and menstruation), and placental CRH, which may participate in the physiology of pregnancy and the timing of labor and delivery. The hypercortisolism of the latter half of pregnancy can be explained by high levels of placental CRH in plasma. This hypercortisolism causes a transient postpartum adrenal suppression that, together with estrogen withdrawal, may partly explain the depression and autoimmune phenomena of the postpartum period.

ABSTRACT The authors propose a likelihood‐ratio test of the hypothesis that the minimum‐variance frontier of a set of K assets coincides with the frontier of this set and another set of N assets. They study the relation between this hypothesis, exact arbitrage pricing, and mutual fund separation. The exact distribution of the test statistic is available. The authors test the hypothesis that the frontier spanned by three size‐sorted stock portfolios is the same as the frontier spanned by thirty‐three size‐sorted stock portfolios.

This note describes a new framework for the analysis and synthesis of control systems, which constitutes a genuine continuous-time extension of results that are only available in discrete time. In contrast to earlier results the proposed methods involve a specific transformation on the Lyapunov variables and a reciprocal variant of the projection lemma, in addition to the classical linearizing transformations on the controller data. For a wide range of problems including robust analysis and synthesis, multichannel H/sub 2/ stateand output-feedback syntheses, the approach leads to potentially less conservative linear matrix inequality (LMI) characterizations. This comes from the fact that the technical restriction of using a single Lyapunov function is to some extent ruled out in this new approach. Moreover, the approach offers new potentials for problems that cannot be handled using earlier techniques. An important instance is the eigenstructure assignment problem blended with Lyapunov-type constraints which is given a simple and tractable formulation.

Abstract The social behavior of feral horses was studied in the western United States. Stable harem groups with a dominant stallion and bachelor ♂♂ groups occupied overlapping home ranges. Groups spacing, but not territoriality, was expressed. Harem group stability resulted from strong dominance by dominant stallions, and fidelity of group members. Eliminations of group members were usually marked by urine of the dominant stallion. ♂‐♂ aggression involved spacing between harems and dominance in bachelor groups. Marking with feces was important in ♂‐♂ interactions. Foaling occurred in May and early June, following the post‐partum estrous. All breeding was done by harem stallions. Young were commonly nursed through yearling age. These horses showed social organizations similar to other feral horses and plains zebras. Zusammenfassung Von Mai bis November 1970 wurden verschiedene Wildpferd‐Gruppen in den westlichen Vereinigten Staaten untersucht. Die Pferde lebten das ganze Jahr in stabilen Harems mit einem dominanten Hengst oder in weniger stabilen Gruppen aus jungen ♂♂. Weidegebiete überschnitten sich sehr stark, Territorien waren nicht feststellbar. Der Abstand zwischen Gruppen wurde vom dominanten Hengst gewahrt. Der Tageslauf umfaßte regelmäßig Grasen, Ruhen und bei Trockenheit Wanderungen zur Wasserstelle. Wiederkehrende Verhaltens‐ und Verständigungsweisen werden beschrieben. Unbemerkt von den Pferden wurde das Verhalten in Minutenabständen protokolliert. Zusätzlich wurden sechs Gruppen daran gewöhnt, aus nächster Nähe beobachtet zu werden. Die Konstanz der Haremsgruppen wurde durch starke Dominanz des Hengstes und die Treue der Gruppenmitglieder gewahrt. Die Exkremente der Stuten wurden oft von den Haremshengsten mit Urin markiert. Sowohl Stuten als auch Hengste wiesen gruppenfremde Pferde ab. Kämpfe zwischen Hengsten und Zusammentreiben der Stuten dienten meist dazu, die Harems getrennt zu halten; selten ging es darum, zusätzliche Stuten zu bekommen. Harems‐♀♀ zeigten nur wenig entwickelte Rangordnungen. Halberwachsene Hengste wurden von den dominanten ♂ ♂ wegen ihrer starken Unter‐würfigkeit geduldet. Führer, erkennbar am Hüteverhalten wie am Initiieren von Aktivitäten waren meist die dominanten Hengste. In den Junggesellen‐Gruppen bestand eine lineare Rangordnung. Das dominante ♂ behandelte die Gruppe wie seinen Harem. Bei Interaktionen zwischen Harems‐Hengsten wie zwischen Junghengsten spielte Koten eine große Rolle. Die Rangordnung in Junghengst‐Gruppen war beim Koten erkennbar: der Rangniedrigste kotete zuerst, die jeweils Ranghöheren folgten. Alle ♂ ♂ benutzten dieselben Kotplätze, die weitverstreut an Pfaden und Wasserstellen lagen. Im Mai und Anfang Juni fohlten die Stuten, die sofort wieder rossig und dann ausschließlich vom Haremshengst gedeckt wurden. Die Stuten verteidigten ihre Fohlen sehr stark, und auch die dominanten Hengste zeigten Verteidi‐gungsverhalten. Die Fohlen saugten von sich aus und wurden selten abgewiesen. Einjährige wurden gewöhnlich von Stuten gesäugt, die selbst keine oder ihre neugeborenen Fohlen verloren hatten. Fohlen tranken 1,85mal pro h, einjährige 0,97mal pro h, und zwar durchschnittlich 1,5 min lang. In 76% aller Fälle hörten die Tiere freiwillig zu trinken auf. Pferde haben eine sehr ursprüngliche Sozialstruktur, die bei wilden Ponies und Pferden der bei den meisten Zebras ähnlich ist.

The first probabilistic tsunami flooding maps have been developed. The methodology, called probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment (PTHA), integrates tsunami inundation modeling with methods of probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA). Application of the methodology to Seaside, Oregon, has yielded estimates of the spatial distribution of 100‐ and 500‐year maximum tsunami amplitudes, i.e., amplitudes with 1% and 0.2% annual probability of exceedance. The 100‐year tsunami is generated most frequently by far‐field sources in the Alaska‐Aleutian Subduction Zone and is characterized by maximum amplitudes that do not exceed 4 m, with an inland extent of less than 500 m. In contrast, the 500‐year tsunami is dominated by local sources in the Cascadia Subduction Zone and is characterized by maximum amplitudes in excess of 10 m and an inland extent of more than 1 km. The primary sources of uncertainty in these results include those associated with interevent time estimates, modeling of background sea level, and accounting for temporal changes in bathymetry and topography. Nonetheless, PTHA represents an important contribution to tsunami hazard assessment techniques; viewed in the broader context of risk analysis, PTHA provides a method for quantifying estimates of the likelihood and severity of the tsunami hazard, which can then be combined with vulnerability and exposure to yield estimates of tsunami risk.

Mining accidents have occurred since the early days of mining. Therewere a total of 525 mining disasters (incidents with five or more fatalities) in both coal and metal/nonmetal mines from 1900 through 2007 in the United States, resulting in 12,823 fatalities. Most of these disasters involve mine rescue teams, which are specially trained to perform search and rescue operations in extremely hostile environments. Robots have a great potential to assist in these underground operations, searching ahead of rescue teams and reporting conditions that may be hazardous to the teams. When explosive conditions exist or when heavy smoke or unstable ground conditions prevent team members from entering a mine, robots can become an invaluable tool.

Abstract This paper is the primary deliverable of the very first NASA Living With a Star Institute Working Group, Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GIC) Working Group. The paper provides a broad overview of the current status and future challenges pertaining to the science, engineering, and applications of the GIC problem. Science is understood here as the basic space and Earth sciences research that allows improved understanding and physics‐based modeling of the physical processes behind GIC. Engineering, in turn, is understood here as the “impact” aspect of GIC. Applications are understood as the models, tools, and activities that can provide actionable information to entities such as power systems operators for mitigating the effects of GIC and government agencies for managing any potential consequences from GIC impact to critical infrastructure. Applications can be considered the ultimate goal of our GIC work. In assessing the status of the field, we quantify the readiness of various applications in the mitigation context. We use the Applications Readiness Level (ARL) concept to carry out the quantification.

The effects of plasticizers (polyethylene glycols [PEG] 400, 1,450, 8,000 and 20,000, glycerol [G] and propylene glycol [PG]), 30% dry basis, on the physical properties of methylcellulose (MC) films were investigated. With the exception of PG, plasticizers with low molecular weights (G and PEG 400) caused the largest increase in the d101 spacing of the crystal lattice. All plasticizers significantly (α= 0.05) increased oxygen (O2P) and water vapor permeabilities (WVP) of the films as compared to that of unplasticized MC, with PEG 400 having the greatest effect on O2P and G having the greatest effect on WVP. With the exception of PG, all plasticizers decreased the tensile strength of MC films, with PEG 400 causing the largest decrease. With the exception of PG and PEG 400, all plasticizers increased percent elongation values of MC films, with PEG 1,450 having the greatest effect. Glycerol and PEG were the most effective plasticizers for MC. the higher molecular weight plasticizers do provide some plasticizing properties and may be more suitable for applications that require a lower permeability to water vapor than can be achieved with glycerol.

A theory of legal development, derived from cognitive developmental theory, is explicated using U.S. kindergarten to college and cross‐national preadolescent data. Paralleling evidence on universal moral levels, the development of individual orientations vis‐à‐vis legal or rule systems reveals consistent movement from a preconventional law‐obeying, to a conventional law‐maintaining, to a postconventional lawmaking perspective. In both the U.S. and cross‐national samples, “law and order” conventional reasoning is modal reflecting that socialization experiences can accelerate, retard, or crystallize the growth of legal values and roles. Implications of the theory and findings are discussed for legal socialization.

A physically-motivated model for earthquake recurrence based on the Brownian relaxation oscillator is introduced. The renewal process defining this point process model can be described by the steady rise of a state variable from the ground state to failure threshold as modulated by Brownian motion. Failure times in this model follow the Brownian passage time (BPT) distribution, which is specified by the mean time to failure, , and the aperiodicity of the mean, (equivalent to the familiar coefficient of variation). Analysis of 37 series of recurrent earthquakes, M -0.7 to 9.2, suggests a provisional generic value of = 0.5. For this value of , the hazard function (instantaneous failure rate of survivors) exceeds the mean rate for times > 2, and is 2 for all times > . Application of this model to the next M 6 earthquake on the San Andreas fault at Parkfield, California suggests that the annual probability of the earthquake is between 1:10 and 1:13.

BACKGROUND: A prerequisite for many eye tracking and video-oculography (VOG) methods is an accurate localization of the pupil. Several existing techniques face challenges in images with artifacts and under naturalistic low-light conditions, e.g. with highly dilated pupils. NEW METHOD: For the first time, we propose to use a fully convolutional neural network (FCNN) for segmentation of the whole pupil area, trained on 3946 VOG images hand-annotated at our institute. We integrate the FCNN into DeepVOG, along with an established method for gaze estimation from elliptical pupil contours, which we improve upon by considering our FCNN's segmentation confidence measure. RESULTS: The FCNN output simultaneously enables us to perform pupil center localization, elliptical contour estimation and blink detection, all with a single network and with an assigned confidence value, at framerates above 130 Hz on commercial workstations with GPU acceleration. Pupil centre coordinates can be estimated with a median accuracy of around 1.0 pixel, and gaze estimation is accurate to within 0.5 degrees. The FCNN is able to robustly segment the pupil in a wide array of datasets that were not used for training. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: We validate our method against gold standard eye images that were artificially rendered, as well as hand-annotated VOG data from a gold-standard clinical system (EyeSeeCam) at our institute. CONCLUSIONS: Our proposed FCNN-based pupil segmentation framework is accurate, robust and generalizes well to new VOG datasets. We provide our code and pre-trained FCNN model open-source and for free under www.github.com/pydsgz/DeepVOG.

Electrorheological (ER) materials are suspensions of specialized, micron-sized particles in nonconducting oils. When electric fields are applied to ER materials, they exhibit dramatic changes (within milli-seconds) in material properties. Pre-yield, yielding, and post-yield mechanisms are all influenced by the electric field. Namely, an applied electric field dramatically increases the stiffness and energy dissipation properties of these materials. A previously known cubic equation which describes the flow of fluids with a yield stress through a rectangular duct can be applied to annular flow, provided that certain conditions on the material properties are satisfied. An analytic solution and a uniform approximation to the solution, for the rectangular duct Poiseuille flow case is presented. A numerical method is required to solve the flow in annular geometries. The approximation for rectangular ducts is extended to deal with the annular duct case.

Abstract Some recent empirical studies examine the impact of the GATT/WTO on trade. This paper investigates the sample selection bias and the gravity model specification issues in the literature. First, the GATT/WTO not only makes existing trading partners trade more at the intensive margin, but also creates new trading relationships at the extensive margin. Most existing papers exclude zero trade observations and hence ignore the extensive margin. Secondly, due to the violation of some maintained assumptions, the traditional log‐linear gravity regressions fail to uncover the role of the GATT/WTO even at the intensive margin. Using a large bilateral panel dataset including zero trade flows and a more appropriate econometric method, this paper finds that the GATT/WTO has been very effective in promoting world trade at both the intensive and extensive margins.

Body temperature of adult birds taken with a mercury thermometer II.

In a paper published in the Monthly Weather Review in September, 1933, the author discussed long‐time temperature trends, and presented data showing that an unusual and extended warm phase of climate had at that time developed through a more or less regular rise in temperature for a comparatively long period of years. The paper also showed that the prevailing condition was widespread, in fact apparently world‐wide, and in addition that temperature data up through 1932, the terminal of the records presented in that paper, afforded no indication of an impending trend reversal to more normal thermal conditions in the then near future. Up to the end of 1945, records for 13 subsequent years have become available, and these are here presented, supplementary to the original data, to determine tendencies since 1932. They show that the general upward temperature trend continued for several years but that the more recent records Indicate a leveling off, and even contain currently a suggestion of an impending reversal.

Authentication using a path of trusted intermediaries, each able to authenicate the next in the path, is a well-known technique for authenicating entities in a large-scale system. Recent work has extended this technique to include multiple paths in an effort to bolster authentication, but the success of this approach may be unclear in the face of intersecting paths, ambiguities in the meaning of certificates, and interdependencies in the use of different keys. Thus, several authors have proposed metrics to evaluate the confidence afforded by a set of paths. In this paper we develop a set of guiding principles for the design of such metrics. We motivate our principles by showing how previous approaches failed with respect to these principles and what the consequences to authentication might be. We then propose a new metric that appears to meet our principles, and so to be a satisfactory metric of authenticaiton.

The authors propose a likelihood-ratio test of the hypothesis that the minimum-variance frontier of a set of K assets coincides with the frontier of this set and another set of N assets. They study the relation between this hypothesis, exact arbitrage pricing, and mutual fund separation. The exact distribution of the test statistic is available. The authors test the hypothesis that the frontier spanned by three size-sorted stock portfolios is the same as the frontier spanned by thirty-three size-sorted stock portfolios.