Disclosure of environmental violations and the stock market in the Republic of Korea

For almost 20 years, the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Korea has published on a monthly basis a list of enterprises that fail to comply with national environmental laws and regulations. In this paper, the authors examine the reaction of investors to the publication of these lists and show that enterprises appearing on these lists have experienced a significant decline in their market valuation. Firms in developing countries are often said to have no incentives to invest in pollution control because they typically face weak monitoring and enforcement of environmental regulations. The findings of the authors, however, indicate that the inability of formal institutions to control pollution through fines and penalties may not be as serious an impediment to pollution control as is generally argued. Environmental regulators in developing countries could harness market forces by introducing structured programs to release firm-specific information about environmental performance.Pollution Management&Control,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Decentralization,Environmental Economics&Policies,Energy and Environment,Health Economics&Finance,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access

A Dynamic Information-Based Parking Guidance for Megacities considering Both Public and Private Parking

The constantly increasing number of cars in the megacities is causing severe parking problems. To resolve this problem, many cities adopt parking guidance system as a part of intelligent transportation system (ITS). However, the current parking guidance system stays in its infant stage since the obtainable information is limited. To enhance parking management in the megacity and to provide better parking guidance to drivers, this study introduces an intelligent parking guidance system and proposes a new methodology to operate it. The introduced system considers both public parking and private parking so that it is designed to maximize the use of spatial resources of the city. The proposed methodology is based on the dynamic information related parking in the city and suggests the best parking space to each driver. To do this, two kinds of utility functions which assess parking spaces are developed. Using the proposed methodology, different types of parking management policies are tested through the simulation. According to the experimental test, it is shown that the centrally managed parking guidance can give better results than individually preferred parking guidance. The simulation test proves that both a driver???s benefits and parking management of a city from various points of view can be improved by using the proposed methodology

High performance gas sensor platform based on integrated sensing mechanisms

We introduce a gas sensor platform consisting of resistive sensor, thin film transistor (TFT) type sensor, and Si-based field effect transistor (FET) type sensor fabricated on the same wafer. The FET type sensor has a horizontal floating gate interdigitated with the control gate. The schematic structures of these gas sensors are shown in Fig. 1. These gas sensors can be fabricated using only 5 masks. The sensing layer of these sensors is a 15nm thick n-type ZnO film prepared using atomic layer deposition (ALD) in the final process step. Although these sensors have the same sensing material, they have different sensing characteristics because of different sensing mechanisms. Our group has reported the studies of resistive- and FET-type gas sensors having ALD ZnO sensing layer previously [1], [2]. Fig. 2 shows the transfer (I-V) characteristics of these sensors. These sensors have different sensing characteristics when exposed to 500 ppb of oxidizing gas, NO2. When exposed to NO2 gas, the currents of resistive- and TFT-type gas sensors are decreased [2]. On the other hand, the drain current of the FET-type gas sensor increases when exposed to NO2 gas [1], [2]. As a result, the difference in response of these sensors can be used as a fingerprint to more accurately detect the target gas in the gas sensor platform composed of three types of gas sensors. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Insight into highly conserved H1 subtype-specific epitopes in influenza virus hemagglutinin

Influenza viruses continuously undergo antigenic changes with gradual accumulation of mutations in hemagglutinin (HA) that is a major determinant in subtype specificity. The identification of conserved epitopes within specific HA subtypes gives an important clue for developing new vaccines and diagnostics. We produced and characterized nine monoclonal antibodies that showed significant neutralizing activities against H1 subtype influenza viruses, and determined the complex structure of HA derived from a 2009 pandemic virus A/Korea/01/2009 (KR01) and the Fab fragment from H1-specific monoclonal antibody GC0587. The overall structure of the complex was essentially identical to the previously determined KR01 HA-Fab0757 complex structure. Both Fab0587 and Fab0757 recognize readily accessible head regions of HA, revealing broadly shared and conserved antigenic determinants among H1 subtypes. The beta-strands constituted by Ser110-Glu115 and Lys169-Lys170 form H1 epitopes with distinct conformations from those of H1 and H3 HA sites. In particular, Glu112, Glu115, Lys169, and Lys171 that are highly conserved among H1 subtype HAs have close contacts with HCDR3 and LCDR3. The differences between Fab0587 and Fab0757 complexes reside mainly in HCDR3 and LCDR3, providing distinct antigenic determinants specific for 1918 pdm influenza strain. Our results demonstrate a potential key neutralizing epitope important for H1 subtype specificity in influenza virus

Animal Assisted Intervention for Rehabilitation Therapy and Psychotherapy

Animal-assisted Intervention (AAI) is a goal-oriented intervention that intentionally includes or incorporates animals in health, education, and human service for the purpose of therapeutic gains in humans. AAI incorporates human-animal teams in formal human service such as Animal-assisted Therapy (AAT) or Animal-assisted Education (AAE). Animal-assisted Activity (AAA) is the informal AAI often conducted on a volunteer basis by the human-animal team for motivational, educational, and recreational purposes. AAI could be used for rehabilitation therapy and psychotherapy for patients with various symptoms. AAI uses animals, mostly dogs, to aid in healing patients holistically. Dogs have an overwhelming gratitude and exuberance for life and this effect on people is astounding. Furthermore, AAI has been researched and its effectiveness on patients’ outcomes and healing is documented. With a soaring trend of the incorporation of complementary therapies into the mainstream of therapy and health care, animal-facilitated therapy has become a popular interest for the therapy team to integrate into a patient’s plan of therapy

Deep Seawater flow Characteristics Around the Manganese Nodule Collecting Device

AbstractFlow field characteristics with outflow discharge from a collecting device in deep seawater while gathering manganese nodules have been analyzed by CFD. Numerical model is used for the analysis with CFD program of FLUENT. It is assumed that the collecting device is 4.5×5.4×6.7m with outflow speed = 1.75 m/s and the current speed = 0.1m/s.Overall seawater flow field characteristics are largely influenced by the outflow discharge from the collecting device and manganese nodule particle behavior. The outflow discharge effect reaches to about few times of the collecting device in back. As simulation results, flow velocity and streamline distributions are compared including turbulence kinetic energyvariation. This study will be useful for optimal design for manganese nodule collecting device system in deep sea