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The Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996 allows US banks to adopt subchapter S status. Banks use this status to avoid double taxation. However, the Act restricts the number of shareholders for subchapter S banks to 100. Many banks adopt subchapter S and then transition back to C banks. We investigate why Subchapter S banks convert to C banks. We find that when these subchapter S banks are in financial distress, they convert to C banks to access additional equity capital needed to write off losses and rebalance their asset portfolio. Post-conversion, we observe a marked increase in equity, a decline in risk factors, and an improvement in profitability ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aimed to investigate the effect of an interdisciplinary STEM course on children's attitudes of learning and engineering design skills. A total of 449 elementary school children in China were recruited from three different grade levels (i.e., second, fourth and sixth grade) to participate in this study. All participants attended a weekly interdisciplinary STEM course for two consecutive semesters. In order to understand how an integrative STEM curriculum interplayed with participants' attitudes of learning and engineering design skills, we conducted two measures to assess the results: the attitude measure (i.e., the attitude of learning questionnaire) and the outcome measure (i.e., the STEM knowledge assessment and the scenario design assessment). Meanwhile, pre-and-posttests were implemented for each measure when comparing the differences in learning. Our findings revealed that an interdisciplinary STEM course led to positive changes in children's attitudes of learning, yet its effect on different grade levels could vary depending on children's cognitive development. In addition, interdisciplinary learning experiences significantly improved second and fourth graders' engineering design skills, particularly in the scenario design assessment. Lastly, we summarized the relationship between one's attitudes of learning and engineering design skills along with its educational implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new acenaphthylene derivative, salviarisanal (1), has been isolated from the aerial part of Salvia arisanensis, together with six known compounds, carnosol (2), 16-hydroxycarnosol (3), ferruginol (4), cryptotanshinone (5), salvileucantholide (6), and dugesin B (7). The structure of the new compound 1 was determined through spectroscopic and MS analyses. Among the isolates, cryptotanshinone (5) exhibited cytotoxicities with IC50 values of 5.38, 7.16, 4.84, and 9.10 μM, respectively, against DLD-1, CCRF-CEM, HL-60, and IMR-32 cell lines. 16-Hydroxycarnosol (3) also exhibited cytotoxicities with IC50 values of 7.42 and 6.73 μM, respectively, against DLD-1 and IMR-32 cell lines. In addition, salviarisanal (1), carnosol (2), 16-hydroxycarnosol (3), and ferruginol (4) showed potent inhibition with IC50 values of 18.45, 30.33, 27.58, and 35.05 μM, respectively, against LPS-induced NO generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new measure-resend ASQKD protocol. The proposed ASQKD protocol uses only single photons, needs fewer pre-shared keys and even provides better qubit efficiency than the state-of-the-art ASQKD protocols. The security proof shows the robustness of the proposed protocol under the collective attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the nature of micro-electromechanical systems, the vector magnitude (VM) activity of accelerometers varies depending on the wearing position and does not identify different levels of physical fitness. Without an appropriate energy expenditure (EE) estimation equation, bias can occur in the estimated values. We aimed to amend the EE estimation equation using heart rate reserve (HRR) parameters as the correction factor, which could be applied to athletes and non-athletes who primarily use ankle-mounted devices. Indirect calorimetry was used as the criterion measure with an accelerometer (ankle-mounted) equipped with a heart rate monitor to synchronously measure the EE of 120 healthy adults on a treadmill in four groups. Compared with ankle-mounted accelerometer outputs, when the traditional equation was modified using linear regression by combining VM with body weight and/or HRR parameters (modified models: Model A, without HRR; Model B, with HRR), both Model A (r: 0.931 to 0.972; ICC: 0.913 to 0.954) and Model B (r: 0.933 to 0.975; ICC: 0.930 to 0.959) showed the valid and reliable predictive ability for the four groups. With respect to the simplest and most reasonable mode, Model A seems to be a good choice for predicting EE when using an ankle-mounted device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, silicon oxynitride (SiOxNy) films and three-paired organosilicon/SiOxNy multilayered structures prepared by the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition were respectively deposited onto the polyethylene terephthalate and silicon substrate with overcut and undercut patterned photoresist to mimic the packaging of the patterned organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and surface contaminants. The step coverage at the bottom and sidewall surface was conducted from the cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy observations. A methodology for investigating the position-dependent coverage at the concave region of the sidewall surface on the undercut patterns was developed. The increase in the water vapor transmission when these barrier structures were deposited onto polyethylene terephthalate substrate was linked to the decrease in their coverage at the sidewall surface, which was ascribed to the reduction in the diffusion path for water vapor permeation. It also was demonstrated that the degradation in the barrier property was significant as those structures coated onto the undercut patterns originating from the precursors hardly arrived at the concave region. However, although the film growth at the concave region of the sidewall surface was limited, paired organosilicon/SiOxNy structures still showed a superior barrier property to that of single SiOxNy film as the appearance of the organosilicon film in the paired structure was favorable to prolonging the diffusion length for water vapor permeation. The investigation into the barrier structures coated onto the patterned surface was beneficial for better understanding the package reliability on the patterned OLED devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of sulfide, sulfite and sulfate on the methanogenesis in an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket process indicated that their relative toxicity towards degradation of total volatile fatty acid varied as SO42−-S>SO32−-S>S2−. The anaerobic biogranules' activity decreased by 50% when each gram of biomass came into contact with 32, 24 and 16 mg of S2−, SO32−-S and SO42−-S, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) are mature lymphocytes that circulate in the blood rather than being localized to organs. A reliable label-free collection approach that can viably and appropriately isolate PBLs to establish in vitro culture systems is crucial for basic research and clinical requirements. However, isolation of PBLs from whole blood is difficult, and so the development of a rapid and safe method to perform this task is required. Microfluidic technology offers opportunities that challenge the performance of macroscale methods. In this study, we proposed a simple spiral microfluidic chip for efficient and high-throughput isolation of lymphocytes from a sample with prelysed RBCs. This spiral microfluidic platform does not rely on antibodies or biological markers for labeling cells of interest while isolating lymphocytes but rather enriches B and T lymphocytes through the different physical properties that are intrinsic to lymphocytes and other blood cells. The device was used to achieve high-throughput (~1.3 × 105 cells/min) separation of lymphocytes with high viability (>95%). Compared with previous approaches, our device provided rapid, label-free, high-throughput, and safe lymphocyte separation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]