Corporate Social Responsibility and Earnings Reporting

Despite increasing interests on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities among managers, the relationship between CSR and firm value through earnings reporting quality is still unclear. Absence of a strong positive effect of CSR on firm value has led researchers to believe that CSR is a res ult of a principal-agent issue between shareholders and managers. This study argues CSR represents a corporate culture that influences how a corporation reports its earnings. CSR influ ences earnings reporting ·instead ofearnings reporting drives CSR to delude shareholders. CSR induces better earnings reporting quality, therefore, CSR has an indirect but positive effect on firm value

Financial Liberalization, the Weekend Effect, and Common Stock Returns in the Thai Stock Market

The purpose of this study is to undertake an empirical analysis of the pattern of the daily equity returns and the day-of-the-week effect on 29 individual stocks in the financial sector of the Thai stock market over the period following the government's attempts to establish Bangkok as an international financial centre the trading time model is used to test the weekend effect, and the study confirms the test results with the nonparametric technique. The results indicate that for a portfolio of 29 stocks, as well as for most individual stocks, Monday and Tuesday returns are positive and returns for the other three days are negative. The Monday average return is the highest, while Friday has the highest volatility of return; (coefficient of variation) is higher than for Monday's returns. The test finds no evidence of the weekend effect, conforming to the pattern found in the South Korean stock market once financial liberalization got underway, and is contrary to the results from oUler small and developing Asian stock markets, such as those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. In essence, me results of this study show no evidence to support the inherent inefficiency of the Thai stock market as has been proposed in previous studies

Currency Substitution via Expected Exchange Rate and Domestic Money Demand: An Empirical Analysis for Japan

In this paper the currency substitution hypothesis is tested empirically on the Japanese money demand, using monthly data from January 1977 to December 1989. Under a flexible exchange rate a rational economic agent forms currency portfolios for both transaction and speculative reasons for demanding money. The nonlinear multivariate maximum likelihood estimation was used to estimate jointly the Japanese money demand and the expected exchange rate equation; possible existence of current substitution is found. The empirical results indicate that (a) the expected exchange rate for the Japanese yen/Canadian dollar shows currency substitution due to speculative demand, and (b) the expected exchange rate of the yen/US dollar shows currency substitution due to transaction demand

Bioassay-guided fractionation of Emilia sonchifolia extract on the induction of ovarian maturation in Fenneropenaeus merguiensis

This study was carried out to identify the active compounds of Emilia sonchifolia on induction of ovarian maturation in Fenneropenaeus merguiensis. The crude extracts from dichloromethane and acetone were investigated in vitro. The crude extract from acetone induced up-regulation of shrimp ovarian peritrophin (SOP) and translationally controlled tumor protein (TCTP) genes, which were highly expressed during early phase of ovarian development higher than dichloromethane extract. Furthermore, fraction 14 (F14) from acetone extract up-regulated both of the SOP and the TCTP genes to the greatest extent. Leading to in vivo study, the effect of ribosomal protein L10a (RPL10a), which acts as shrimp ovarian stimulator plus with F14 on shrimp ovarian maturation was investigated by injection. The best result was observed in the group that received RPL10a plus with F14 at 0.8 μg/g body weight of shrimp. The RPL10a plus F14 enhanced the shrimp ovaries from undeveloped stage to 57% of early developing stage within 15 days. Meanwhile, the control group remained 100% of the undeveloped stage. Hence, F14 seems to play a positive role in the induction of shrimp ovarian maturation. The component of F14 was identified using mass spectroscopy and presented as 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid; 2,4-di-tert-butyl phenol; 2,4,5-trimethoybenzylidene;palmitic acid; 1-heneicosyl formate; 1-heptadecanol; ethyl-4-ethoxybenzoate and stearic acid

CDNA library from the Latex of Hevea brasiliensis

Latex from Hevea brasiliensis contains 30-50% (w/w) of natural rubber (cis-1,4-polyisoprene), the important rawmaterial for many rubber industries. We have constructed a cDNA library from the latex of H. brasiliensis to investigate theexpressed genes and molecular events in the latex. We analyzed 412 expressed sequence tags (ESTs). More than 90% of theEST clones showed homology to previously described sequences in public databases. Functional classification of the ESTsshowed that the largest category were proteins of unknown function (30.1%), 11.4% of ESTs encoded for rubber synthesisrelatedproteins (RS) and 8.5% for defense or stress related proteins (DS). Those with no significant homology to knownsequences (NSH) accounted for 8.7%, primary metabolism (PM) and gene expression and RNA metabolism were 7.8% and6.6%, respectively. Other categories included, protein synthesis-related proteins (6.6%), chromatin and DNA metabolism(CDM 3.9%), energy metabolism (EM 3.4%), cellular transport (CT 3.2%), cell structure (CS 3.2%), signal transduction (ST2.2%), secondary metabolism (SM 1.7%), protein fate (PF 2.2%), and reproductive proteins (RP 0.7%)

The Effect of Commercial Bank Ownership on the Composition of the Loan Portfolio

Thomas Stanley is an Associate Professor of Finance, T. Chotigeat is Professor of Economics, and Craig Roger is an Assistant Professor of Management in the College of Business Administration at Nicholls State University. Jerry Hood is Professor of Finance at Loyola University in New Orleans

Effect of microwave pretreatment on the properties of particleboard made from para rubber wood sawdust with the addition of polyhydroxyalkanoates

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of microwave pretreatment on the properties of particleboard made from para rubber wood sawdust with the addition of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). Para wood sawdust was pretreated with microwaves at different wattages (400, 600 and 800 W) and pretreatment times (5, 10 and 15 min) before being mixed with 10 wt. % of pure PHAs and 10 wt. % freeze-dried cells which contained 46.90% wt. % PHA, in order to make particleboard. The physical and mechanical properties of the particleboard panels obtained were also tested based on the Japanese Industrial Standards A 5098 for particleboard (JIS A5908) including modulus of rupture (MOR), internal bonding (IB), water absorption (WA) and thickness swelling (TS). The results showed that only panel made from 10 wt. % freeze-dried cells and treated with 400 watts for 5 min passed the minimum requirement of IB (1.62 ± 0.06 MPa) and nearly passed that of MOR (7.86 ± 0.67 MPa) but not passed that of WA (40.09 ± 6.53%) and TS (34.69 ± 5.43%). The panels without the addition of PHA cannot test WA and TS values because the panels dispersed immediately when submerged in water. The MOR of panels decreased with increasing wattages and pretreatment time. The wattage and pretreatment time of microwave had little effect on the WA and TS. Based on this study, microwave treatment is an appropriate method for the pretreatment of materials and PHAs can be promoted as potential additives for making particleboard

Computational identification of Penaeus monodon microRNA genes and their targets

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a distinct class of small non-coding RNAs, ~22 nt long, found in a wide variety of organisms.They play important regulatory roles by silencing gene activities at the post-transcriptional level. In this work, we developeda computational workflow to identify conserved miRNA genes in the 10,536 unique Penaeus monodon expressed sequencetags (ESTs). After removing all simple repeats and coding regions in the ESTs, the workflow uses both the conservationof miRNA sequences and several filters obtained from pre-miRNA secondary structure properties to identify conservedmiRNAs. Finally, we discovered six potential conserved miRNA genes such as mir-4152, mir-466k, miR-32*, lin-4, mir-1346 andmir-4310

Effects of culture medium on growth kinetics and fatty acid composition of Chlorella sp. T12

Many factors affect the growth performance of microalgae, especially culture medium impacts growth rate and fatty acid composition. Thus, the aims of this study were to investigate the effects of various culture media including NSIII, Chu No.10, BG11 and BBM on the growth kinetics, biomass productivity, lipid content, lipid productivity and fatty acid profiles of cultivated Chlorella sp.T12. The Chlorella sp.T12 was cultured at 25±2 ºC temperature under continuous 3,500 Lux light intensity for 14 days. The culture in BBM medium allowed the highest of the specific growth rate (0.83±0.69 d-1 ), biomass productivity (0.20±0.05 g/l/d), lipid content of the dry weight (14.434%) and lipid productivity (0.029±0.01 g/l/d) and percentage of unsaturated fatty acid (67.56%). The unsaturated fatty acid meet requirement of fatty acid composition that suitable for biodiesel production. Although, the lipid content of cultivation in NSIII was the lowest, the percentage of saturated fatty acid (51.88%) was the highest that suitable for pharmaceutical and cosmetic production. Therefore, the BBM was the best medium choice for cultivating Chlorella sp.T12 to provide high productivity of biomass and lipids that can be used in biodiesel. NSIII was the best medium choice for cultivating Chlorella sp.T12 for pharmaceutical and cosmetic production