Welcome Home to Japan: Repatriation of Foreign Profits by Japanese Multinationals

The empirical literature suggests that repatriation decisions of U.S. multinational corporations are influenced by taxes. Although the U.S. and Japan adopt the same foreign tax credit system, we have found no evidence that corporate taxes have significantly affected dividend repatriation of Japanese multinationals. Instead, we have found that almost half of Japanese foreign affiliates pay dividends and their average marginal dividend payout rate is about twenty percent. The results also suggest that the repatriation behavior varies across industries and countries. Furthermore, parent companies' financial status is found to influence the profit remittance of their foreign affiliates.Japanese multinationals, repatriation, foreign tax credits

The Interior Dynamics of Water Planets

The ever-expanding catalog of detected super-Earths calls for theoretical studies of their properties in the case of a substantial water layer. This work considers such water planets with a range of masses and water mass fractions (2 to 5 M_Earth, 0.02% to 50% H2 O). First, we model the thermal and dynamical structure of the near-surface for icy and oceanic surfaces, finding separate regimes where the planet is expected to maintain a subsurface liquid ocean and where it is expected to exhibit ice tectonics. Newly discovered exoplanets may be placed into one of these regimes given estimates of surface temperature, heat flux, and gravity. Second, we construct a parameterized convection model for the underlying ice mantle of higher ice phases, finding that materials released from the silicate iron core should traverse the ice mantle on the timescale of 0.1 to 100 megayears. We present the dependence of the overturn times of the ice mantle and the planetary radius on total mass and water mass fraction. Finally, we discuss the implications of these internal processes on atmospheric observables.Comment: 9 page 4 figure

Anomalous negative excursion of carbon isotope in organic carbon after the last Paleoproterozoic glaciation in North America

Early Paleoproterozoic time (2.5–2.0 Ga) spanned a critical phase in Earth's history, characterized by repeated glaciations and an increase in atmospheric oxygen (the Great Oxidation Event (GOE)). Following the last and most intense glaciation of this period, marine carbonates record a large positive excursion of δ^(13)C value (termed the “Lomagundi event”) between about 2.2 and 2.1 Ga coinciding with the global appearances of red beds and sulfates, which suggest an accumulation of high levels of atmospheric oxygen. Here we report the discovery of large negative excursions of δ^(13)C in organic matter (down to −55‰) from quartzose sandstones (of the Marquette Range and the Huronian Supergroups, North America) intermediate in age between the last Paleoproterozoic glaciation and the possible onset of the Lomagundi event. The negative excursion is concomitant with the appearance of intensely weathered quartzose sandstones, which may represent hot and humid conditions. There are some interpretations that potentially explain the negative excursions: (1) redeposition of older ^(13)C-depleted kerogen, (2) later post-depositional infiltration of oil, (3) active methane productions by methanogens in shallow-marine environments, or (4) dissociation of methane hydrate. If the latter two were the case, they would provide clues for understanding the environmental change connecting the intense glaciation and an increase in oxygen

How many ontogenetic points are needed to accurately describe the ontogeny of a cephalopod conch? A case study of the modern nautilid Nautilus pompilius

Recent advancements in tomographic techniques allow for detailed morphological analysis of various organisms, which has proved difficult in the past. However, the time and cost required for the post-processing of highly resolved tomographic data are considerable. Cephalopods are an ideal group to study ontogeny using tomography as the entire life history is preserved within a conch. Although an increasing number of studies apply tomography to cephalopod conchs, the number of conch measurements needed to adequately characterize ontogeny remains unknown. Therefore, the effect of different ontogenetic sampling densities on the accuracy of the resultant growth trajectories needs to be investigated. Here, we reconstruct ontogenetic trajectories of a single conch of Nautilus pompilius using different numbers of ontogenetic points to assess the resulting accuracies. To this end, conch parameters were measured every 10°, 30°, 45°, 90°, and 180°. Results reveal that the overall patterns of reconstructed growth trajectories are nearly identical. Relatively large errors appear to occur where growth changes occur, such as the points of hatching and the onset of morphogenetic countdown before the attainment of maturity. In addition, a previously undocumented growth change before hatching was detected when measurements were taken every 10°, 30°, and 45°, though this growth change was obscured when fewer measurements were used (90° and 180°). The lower number of measurements also masks the subtle fluctuating patterns of conch parameters in middle ontogeny. We conclude that the measurements of a conch every 30° and 45° permit a reasonably precise description of conch ontogeny in nautilids. Since ammonoids were likely more responsive to external stimuli than to nautilids, a much denser sampling may be required for ammonoids. Subjects Developmental Biology, Marine Biology, Paleontology, Taxonomy, Zoology Keywords Cephalopods, Nautiloidea, Morphometrics, Ontogeny, Conch, Tomograph

Strategic use of new generation antidepressants for depression: SUN(^_^) D protocol update and statistical analysis plan

Background: SUN(^_^)D, the Strategic Use of New generation antidepressants for Depression, is an assessor-blinded, parallel-group, multicenter pragmatic mega-trial to examine the optimum treatment strategy for the first- and second-line treatments for unipolar major depressive episodes. The trial has three steps and two randomizations. Step I randomization compares the minimum and the maximum dosing strategy for the first-line antidepressant. Step II randomization compares the continuation, augmentation or switching strategy for the second-line antidepressant treatment. Step III is a naturalistic continuation phase. The original protocol was published in 2011, and we hereby report its updated protocol including the statistical analysis plan. Results: We implemented two important changes to the original protocol. One is about the required sample size, reflecting the smaller number of dropouts than had been expected. Another is in the organization of the primary and secondary outcomes in order to make the report of the main trial results as pertinent and interpretable as possible for clinical practices. Due to the complexity of the trial, we plan to report the main results in two separate reports, and this updated protocol and the statistical analysis plan have laid out respective primary and secondary outcomes and their analyses. We will convene the blind interpretation committee before the randomization code is broken. Conclusion: This paper presents the updated protocol and the detailed statistical analysis plan for the SUN(^_^)D trial in order to avoid reporting bias and data-driven results. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01109693(registered on 21 April 2010)

Controls of Atmospheric Methane on Early Earth and Inhabited Earth-like Terrestrial Exoplanets

Methane (CH4) is a primarily biogenic greenhouse gas. As such, it represents an essential biosignature to search for life on exoplanets. Atmospheric CH4 abundance on Earth-like inhabited exoplanets is likely controlled by marine biogenic production and atmospheric photochemical consumption. Such interactions have been previously examined for the case of the early Earth where primitive marine ecosystems supplied CH4 to the atmosphere, showing that the atmospheric CH4 response to biogenic CH4 flux variations is nonlinear, a critical property when assessing CH4 reliability as a biosignature. However, the contributions of atmospheric photochemistry, metabolic reactions, or solar irradiance to this nonlinear response are not well understood. Using an atmospheric photochemical model and a marine microbial ecosystem model, we show that production of hydroxyl radicals from water vapor photodissociation is a critical factor controlling the atmospheric CH4 abundance. Consequently, atmospheric CH4 partial pressure (pCH4) on inhabited Earth-like exoplanets orbiting Sun-like stars (F-, G-, and K-type stars) would be controlled primarily by stellar irradiance. Specifically, irradiance at wavelengths of approximately 200-210 nm is a major controlling factor for atmospheric pCH4 when the carbon dioxide partial pressure is sufficiently high to absorb most stellar irradiance at 170-200 nm. Finally, we also demonstrated that inhabited exoplanets orbiting near the outer edge of K-type stars' habitable zones are better suited for atmospheric pCH4 buildup. Such properties will valuably support future detection of life signatures

Deese-roediger-McDermott paradigm: Effect of previous recall and type of memory task

Pretendeu-se averiguar se a activação dos itens críticos no paradigma de Deese-Roediger-McDermott também ocorreria numa tarefa de completamento. Para analisar a contaminação explícita explorámos a existência de resultados dissociados em função da manipulação do nível de processamento. Na tarefa de completamento, a primação semântica foi estatisticamente superior à primação directa. A ausência do efeito do nível de processamento demonstra que o teste foi de memória implícita. Também avaliámos o impacto de uma tarefa de evocação numa tarefa de memória posterior. Verificámos que a evocação prévia anulou o efeito do nível de processamento na tarefa de reconhecimento. Na tarefa de completamento de inícios de palavras, o incremento de inícios de palavras completados com associados só foi expressivo quando as palavras foram codificadas superficialmente.This study aimed to verifj whether lhe activation ofcritical items in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm ofproducing false memories could also occur in the word stem completion task. The finding that lhe levei ofprocessing did not seem to have any effect on the word stem completion task supported lhe conclusion that the stem completion task was in fact an irnplicit memory test. The impact of a previous recali in a followng memory task was also evaluated. The results indicated that lhe previous recall inhibited the effect ofthe processing levei in lhe recognition task. In the word stem completion task lhe increase ofstems completed with associates was only relevam when words were encoded superficialiy.(undefined