The balance of Polo-like kinase 1 in tumorigenesis

Polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1) belongs to a family of conserved serine/threonine kinases with a polo-box domain, which have similar but non-overlapping functions in the cell cycle progression. Plk1 plays a key role to ensure the normal mitosis. Interestingly, overexpression of Plk1 is associated with tumor development and could serve as a prognostic marker for many cancers. Due to Plk1 overexpression, several Plk1 inhibitors have been developed and tested for the cancer treatment. However, in a recent study, it has been suggested that down-regulation of Plk1 could also induce aneuploidy and tumor formation in vivo. Therefore, a normal level of Plk1 is important for mitosis. And caution should be taken when Plk1 inhibitors are used in the clinical trial and their side effects including tumorigenesis should be carefully evaluated

Surface and Edge States in Topological Semi-metals

We study the topologically non-trivial semi-metals by means of the 6-band Kane model. Existence of surface states is explicitly demonstrated by calculating the LDOS on the material surface. In the strain free condition, surface states are divided into two parts in the energy spectrum, one part is in the direct gap, the other part including the crossing point of surface state Dirac cone is submerged in the valence band. We also show how uni-axial strain induces an insulating band gap and raises the crossing point from the valence band into the band gap, making the system a true topological insulator. We predict existence of helical edge states and spin Hall effect in the thin film topological semi-metals, which could be tested with future experiment. Disorder is found to significantly enhance the spin Hall effect in the valence band of the thin films

How to Invest in Stocks of Family Business Groups? Case Study of WALSIN Group in Taiwan

The impact of family business groups on the industry has drawn different views. A major challenge for investors is to understand the business model of enterprises and enhance the trading performance in the financial market. Using the data of WALSIN family group, this article adopts generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model (EGARCH) to investigate the volatility of stock prices of WALSIN family group. The overall evidence suggests that the relationship between the leverage effect after including the leading company variable and the absence of the leading company appears to be significant at the 1% level. Therefore, the leverage effect after including the leading company has a certain effect on the financial operation of the family business group. In other words, it is helpful to include the leverage effect of the leading company in the portfolio, which can stabilize the trading performance of the WALSIN family group.Furthermore, this study adopts Granger causality and program trading to test the strategy of following the leader of WALSIN family group. The net trading profit during this period is 71.03%. The results show that the technical analysis tested in this study can lead to trading profits and investors can increase their trading profits by following the leader in the family owned business

Financial Liberalization, Economic Growth and Investment Strategy: Lessons from Taiwan for New Industrial Countries

To examine the impact of foreign capital inflows on Taiwan’s economy after internet bubbles of 2000, this study adopts data from the first quarter of 2001 to the second quarter 2015 to test if foreign capital inflows have positive impacts on Taiwan’s economic growth. This study also uses program trading and aims to prove that with financial liberalizations, the investment efficiency of foreign institutional investors is better than domestic institutional investors. The results from the error correction model shows that capital formation, domestic savings and foreign direct investment all have positive relationships with the real economic growth. However, the rate of financing and foreign debt and depreciation all have negative relationships with the real economic growth. The results are all statistically significant. Hence, they do not completely support the hypothesis that foreign capital inflows are beneficial for economic growth. Moreover, this study proves that the futures market in Taiwan is not strong-form market efficient. This result provides support for the hypothesis that the investment efficiency of foreign institutional investors is higher than that of domestic institutional investors. Investors can therefore raise their investment performance by following the investment strategies of foreign institutional investors.

Why are the Performances of Business Groups Different? A Case Study of Formosa Plastics Group and Far Eastern Group

This study examines the difference in performances of two business groups, Formosa Plastics Group and Far Eastern Group, under the impact of financial tsunami (2007.10.29~2017.8.10). The aim of this study is to help investors understand the operating model of business groups and use the herding effect to enhance the trading performance in financial markets. The empirical evidence shows that for the Formosa Plastics Group, the news impact curve (based on EGARCH model) including the leading company is flatter when the news impact is less than zero (that is, negative news impact) than the news impact curve excluding the leading company. In contrast, the news impact curve of the Far Eastern Group is steeper when the leading company is included. Moreover, when the leading company is included as an endogeneous variable in the model as a filter for the program trading simulation, results show that investors can profit from the Formosa Plastics Group. Therefore, business groups that include the leading company have lower risks. It is beneficial to the stability of the market trading by incorporating the leverage effect of the leading company in business groups. On the contrary, the leading company of the Far Eastern Group does not have such an effect. The absolute profits and the increment of performance are both lower than that of the Formosa Plastics Group. The results suggest that the diversification strategy of Far Eastern Group is worse than the vertical integration strategy of the Formosa Plastics Group. The implication is that investors should carefully choose the business group for investment if they are to utilize the herding effect in investment