KAZAKHSTANI CROSS-LISTED STOCK PRICES, EFFICIENCY MARKET AND IPO

As financial markets become global, foreign financial markets also become more accessible to domestic firms. It is opportunity to local firms to list their shares in a foreign exchange, in most cases a London stock exchange. But not all firms afford to list abroad due to costs associated with transaction and administrative costs. Other barriers can be the requirements, lack of transparency, legal barriers, or even distance to be listed on foreign exchange. Therefore only few Kazakhstani companies can list their shares abroad.This study emphasizes the necessity and importance of learning of main purposes of the companies to list shares abroad. Cross-listing gives opportunity to enlarge their shareholder base and make their stock available to new investors. Secondly, it increases liquidity. In a more liquid market results in higher valuation as well. Finally, by listing on foreign market is usually better in terms of investor protection and disclosure requirements.This study will be focused on an aspect of price sensitivity, and liquidity effect before and after listing abroad. Empirical studies have shown that the value of the listed firms increases in the domestic market upon the announcement of the cross-listing, and especially when the firm comes from less-developed market

OntoCS: A Web-Based System for Collaborative Ontology Construction

A number of studies on ontology editing tools and ontology-based applications have been proposed for automatically processing knowledge and information. However, the existing methodologies and tools for dealing with ontologies have assumed that the system is restricted to a single user. Main motivation of this paper is to foster collaborations between users, because ontology building is an expensive task. Thereby, in this paper, we present a web-based ontology construction and integration system, which is called OntoCS, to support collaborative interactions between people during creating ontologies. Particularly, inexpert users can collect available language resources from the web to describe concepts in a (even unfamiliar) domain. We believe that this collaborative process is implementing collective intelligence. In conclusion, we have shown that the proposed OntoCS system can efficiently edit and manage multiple ontologies over time

Numerical Sensitivity Tests of Volatile Organic Compounds Emission to PM2.5 Formation during Heat Wave Period in 2018 in Two Southeast Korean Cities

A record-breaking severe heat wave was recorded in southeast Korea from 11 July to 15 August 2018, and the numerical sensitivity simulations of volatile organic compound (VOC) to secondarily generated particulate matter with diameter of less than 2.5 mu m (PM2.5) concentrations were studied in the Busan and Ulsan metropolitan areas in southeast Korea. A weather research and forecasting (WRF) model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem) was employed, and we carried out VOC emission sensitivity simulations to investigate variations in PM2.5 concentrations during the heat wave period that occurred from 11 July to 15 August 2018. In our study, when anthropogenic VOC emissions from the Comprehensive Regional Emissions Inventory for Atmospheric Transport Experiment-2015 (CREATE-2015) inventory were increased by approximately a factor of five in southeast Korea, a better agreement with observations of PM2.5 mass concentrations was simulated, implying an underestimation of anthropogenic VOC emissions over southeast Korea. The simulated secondary organic aerosol (SOA) fraction, in particular, showed greater dominance during high temperature periods such as 19-21 July, 2018, with the SOA fractions of 42.3% (in Busan) and 34.3% (in Ulsan) among a sub-total of seven inorganic and organic components. This is considerably higher than observed annual mean organic carbon (OC) fraction (28.4 +/- 4%) among seven components, indicating the enhancement of secondary organic aerosols induced by photochemical reactions during the heat wave period in both metropolitan areas. The PM2.5 to PM10 ratios were 0.69 and 0.74, on average, during the study period in the two cities. These were also significantly higher than the typical range in those cities, which was 0.5-0.6 in 2018. Our simulations implied that extremely high temperatures with no precipitation are significantly important to the secondary generation of PM2.5 with higher secondary organic aerosol fraction via photochemical reactions in southeastern Korean cities. Other possible relationships between anthropogenic VOC emissions and temperature during the heat wave episode are also discussed in this study

Total Factor Productivity of the Korean Firms and Catching up with the Japanese Firms

This paper measured the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of all listed firms in Korea from 1984 to 2005 and compared this TFP of Korean firms with that of Japanese firms. This study used the chain-linked index number method developed by Good et al. (1999) to find that the average TFP of Korean firms grew about 44.1% between 1984 and 2005, with 2.1% annual growth rates. The catch-up index of Korean firms with Japanese firms is defined at an individual firm level for the first time among existing literature. Through this comparison analysis, the researchers found that there were four patterns of catching up methods practiced by Korean firms in closing in on the Japanese firms. These patterns were over catch-up, just catchup, under catch-up, and reverse catch-up. Furthermore, the researchers found that the number of under catch-up and reverse catch-up industries was more than 40% of the firms subjected in the study. In contrast, only 10.1% of all the Korean listed firms and 8.7% of total sales of all the listed firms surpassed Japanese firms in terms of TFP in 2004. Also, the catch-up performance was quite better in bigger firms, which is indicative of polarization in TFP catch-up performance

Fostering Low-Income Homeownership: A Longitudinal Randomized Experiment on Individual Development Accounts

For low-income families, homeownership represents an important strategy to move out of poverty and offers long-term social and economic development opportunities. Individual Development Account (IDA) programs facilitate savings towards assets such as home purchase through matched savings, financial education and case management. Using longitudinal experiment data from the American Dream Demonstration, this study examines the influence of IDA participation on homeownership rates among low-income participants after 18 months (Wave 2) of program participation and after 48 months (Wave 3) at program completion. Involvement in specific home-search activities at Waves 2 and 3 was measured to determine whether these activities mediated the affect of IDA programs on homeownership. Results from this randomized experiment indicated that IDA participation significantly increased homeownership rates at 48 months. Furthermore, participation in the home search activity, clearing debt, at 18 months of program participation mediated the effect of the IDA program on homeownership at 48 months

Proto-type installation of a double-station system for the optical-video-detection and orbital characterisation of a meteor/fireball in South Korea

We give a detailed description of the installation and operation of a double-station meteor detection system which formed part of a research & education project between Korea Astronomy Space Science Institute and Daejeon Science Highschool. A total of six light-sensitive CCD cameras were installed with three cameras at SOAO and three cameras at BOAO observatory. A double-station observation of a meteor event enables the determination of the three-dimensional orbit in space. This project was initiated in response to the Jinju fireball event in March 2014. The cameras were installed in October/November 2014. The two stations are identical in hardware as well as software. Each station employes sensitive Watec-902H2 cameras in combination with relatively fast f/1.2 lenses. Various fields of views were used for measuring differences in detection rates of meteor events. We employed the SonotaCo UFO software suite for meteor detection and their subsequent analysis. The system setup as well as installation/operation experience is described and first results are presented. We also give a brief overview of historic as well as recent meteor (fall) detections in South Korea. For more information please consult http://meteor.kasi.re.kr .Comment: Technical/instrumentation description of a professional meteor detection system, 23 pages, 20 figures (color/monochrome), 5 tables, submitted to the Journal of Korean Astronomical Society (JKAS, http://jkas.kas.org/, http://jkas.kas.org/history.html

Mitochondrial function contributes to oxysterol-induced osteogenic differentiation in mouse embryonic stem cells

AbstractOxysterols, oxidized derivatives of cholesterol, are biologically active molecules. Specific oxysterols have potent osteogenic properties that act on osteoprogenitor cells. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying these osteoinductive effects on embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are unknown. This study investigated the effect of an oxysterol combination of 22(S)-hydroxycholesterol and 20(S)-hydroxycholesterol (SS) on osteogenic differentiation of ESCs and the alterations to mitochondrial activity during differentiation. Osteogenic differentiation was assessed by alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, matrix mineralization, mRNA expression of osteogenic factors, runt-related transcription factor 2, osterix, and osteocalcin, and protein levels of collagen type IA (COLIA) and osteopontin (OPN). Treatment of cells with SS increased osteoinductive activity compared to the control group. Intracellular reactive oxygen species production, intracellular ATP content, mitochondrial membrane potential, mitochondrial mass, mitochondrial DNA copy number, and mRNA expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ coactivators 1α and β, transcription factors involved in mitochondrial biogenesis, were significantly increased during osteogenesis, indicating upregulation of mitochondrial activity. Oxysterol combinations also increased protein levels of mitochondrial respiratory complexes I–V. We also found that SS treatment increased hedgehog signaling target genes, Smo and Gli1 expression. Inhibition of Hh signaling by cyclopamine suppressed mitochondrial biogenesis and ESC osteogenesis. Subsequently, oxysterol-induced Wnt/β-catenin pathways were inhibited by repression of Hh signaling and mitochondrial biogenesis. Transfection of β-catenin specific siRNA decreased the protein levels of COLIA and OPN, as well as ALP activity. Collectively, these data suggest that lipid-based oxysterols enhance differentiation of ESCs toward the osteogenic lineage by regulating mitochondrial activity, canonical Hh/Gli, and Wnt/β-catenin signaling

What Questions do People Ask on a Human Papillomavirus Website? A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Questions

Objective: In 2004, we launched the question and answer (Q&A) section on a human papillomavirus (HPV) website (www.hpvkorea.org) that provides ample and regularly updated information about HPV. The purpose of this study is to collect data pertaining to questions posed on this website about HPV and its related diseases and analyze the type of questions and frequency before and after introduction of HPV vaccine in Korea. Using these results, we intend to determine the clinical and practical implications for doctors treating HPV and for HPV website providers

Fingerprints of Multiple Electron Scatterings in Single-Layer Graphene

The electrons in graphene exhibit unusual behaviours, which can be described by massless Dirac quasiparticles. Understanding electron scattering in graphene has been of significant importance for its future application in electronic devices because electron scattering determines electrical properties such as resistivity and electron transport. There are two types of electron scatterings in graphene: intervalley scattering and intravalley scattering. In single-layer graphene, to date, it has been difficult to observe intravalley scattering because of the suppression of backscattering resulting from the chiral nature of the electrons in graphene. Here, we report the multiple electron scattering behaviours in single-layer graphene on a metallic substrate. By applying one- and two-dimensional Fourier transforms to maps of the local density of states, we can distinguish individual scattering processes from complex interference patterns. These techniques enable us to provide direct evidence of intravalley scattering, revealing a linear dispersion relation with a Fermi velocity of ???7.4 ?? 105 m/s.open