Corporate Governance and Market Valuation in China

This paper studies the relationship between the governance mechanisms and the market valuation of publicly listed firms in China empirically. We construct measures for corporate governance mechanisms and measures of market valuation for all publicly listed firms on the two stock markets in China by using data from the firm’s annual reports. We then investigate how the market-valuation variables are affected by the corporate governance variables while controlling for a number of factors commonly considered in market valuation analysis. A corporate governance index is also constructed to summarize the information contained in the corporate governance variables. The index is found to have statistically and economically significant effect on market valuation. The analysis indicates that investors pay a significant premium for well-governed firms in China, benefiting firms that improve their governance mechanisms.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39949/3/wp564.pd

Corporate Governance and Market Valuation in China

This paper studies the relationship between the governance mechanisms and the market valuation of publicly listed firms in China empirically. We construct measures for corporate governance mechanisms and measures of market valuation for all publicly listed firms on the two stock markets in China by using data from the firm’s annual reports. We then investigate how the market-valuation variables are affected by the corporate governance variables while controlling for a number of factors commonly considered in market valuation analysis. A corporate governance index is also constructed to summarize the information contained in the corporate governance variables. The index is found to have statistically and economically significant effect on market valuation. The analysis indicates that investors pay a significant premium for well-governed firms in China, benefiting firms that improve their governance mechanisms.Corporate governance mechanisms, market valuation, corporate governance index, corporate governance premium

Inhibiting Aspergillus flavus growth and degrading aflatoxin B1 by combined beneficial microbes

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is a type of toxin produced by Aspergillus flavus, which has a negative effect on animal production and economic profits. In order to inhibit A. flavus growth and degrade aflatoxin, the optimal  proportion of beneficial microbes such as Lactobacillus casei, Bacillus subtilis and Pichia anomala were selected. The results show that AFB1 production and mycelium weight of A. flavus was decreased by more than 34 folds (161.05 vs. 4.69 µ/L) and 7.7 folds (6.98 vs. 0.90 mg/ml) with the free-cell supernatants of L. casei and B. subtilis (P<0.05), respectively. The optimal proportion of L. casei, B. subtilis and P. anomala was 2:1:2 for inhibiting A. flavus growth determined by 3x3 orthogonal design. Based on the optimal proportion of three microbial species, the maximum AFB1 degradation was during 24 to 48 h incubation (P<0.05). When three species of beneficial microbes were mixed with yeast cell wall and oligosaccharide, both of them could not help the microbes in AFB1 degradation. The combined microbial incubation showed that AFB1 contents in the supernatant and cells were 10.25 (P<0.05) and 3.34 µg/L, lower than the control group (68.55 µg/L), indicating that most of the AFB1 were degraded by the microbes and only a little of them were absorbed and deposited in microbial cells.Key words: Aspergillus flavus, aflatoxin B1 detoxification, beneficial microbes, yeast cell wall, oligosaccharide

Liver Enzymes and Risk of Ischemic Heart Disease and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Mendelian Randomization Study

We used Mendelian randomization to estimate the causal effects of the liver enzymes, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and gamma glutamyltransferase (GGT), on diabetes and cardiovascular disease, using genetic variants predicting these liver enzymes at genome wide significance applied to extensively genotyped case-control studies of diabetes (DIAGRAM) and coronary artery disease (CAD)/myocardial infarction (MI) (CARDIoGRAMplusC4D 1000 Genomes). Genetically higher ALT was associated with higher risk of diabetes, odds ratio (OR) 2.99 per 100% change in concentration (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.62 to 5.52) but ALP OR 0.92 (95% CI 0.71 to 1.19) and GGT OR 0.88 (95% CI 0.75 to 1.04) were not. Genetically predicted ALT, ALP and GGT were not clearly associated with CAD/MI (ALT OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.54 to 1.01, ALP OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.64 to 1.16 and GGT OR 1.08, 95% CI 0.97 to 1.19). We confirm observations of ALT increasing the risk of diabetes, but cannot exclude the possibility that higher ALT may protect against CAD/MI. We also cannot exclude the possibility that GGT increases the risk of CAD/MI and reduces the risk of diabetes. Informative explanations for these potentially contradictory associations should be sought

Achievable Rates for Full-Duplex Massive MIMO Systems With Low-Resolution ADCs/DACs

This paper investigates the uplink and downlink achievable rates of full-duplex (FD) massive multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) systems in which low-resolution analog-to-digital converters/digital-to-analog converters (ADCs/DACs) are employed and maximum ratio combining/maximum ratio transmission processing are adopted. Then, employing an additive quantization noise model, we derive approximate expressions of the uplink and downlink achievable rates, in which the effect of the quantization error, the loop interference, and the inter-user interference is considered. The theoretical results show that using proper power scaling law and more antennas can eliminate the interference and the noise. Furthermore, under the fixed number of antennas, the uplink and downlink approximate achievable rates will become a constant, as the number of quantization bits tends to infinity. Increasing the resolution of ADCs/DACs will limitedly improve the system performance but cause excessive overhead and power consumption, so adopting low-resolution ADCs/DACs in FD massive MIMO systems is sensible

Direct van der Waals Epitaxy of Crack-Free AlN Thin Film on Epitaxial WS2

Van der Waals epitaxy (vdWE) has drawn continuous attention, as it is unlimited by lattice-mismatch between epitaxial layers and substrates. Previous reports on the vdWE of III-nitride thin film were mainly based on two-dimensional (2D) materials by plasma pretreatment or pre-doping of other hexagonal materials. However, it is still a huge challenge for single-crystalline thin film on 2D materials without any other extra treatment or interlayer. Here, we grew high-quality single-crystalline AlN thin film on sapphire substrate with an intrinsic WS2 overlayer (WS2/sapphire) by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, which had surface roughness and defect density similar to that grown on conventional sapphire substrates. Moreover, an AlGaN-based deep ultraviolet light emitting diode structure on WS2/sapphire was demonstrated. The electroluminescence (EL) performance exhibited strong emissions with a single peak at 283 nm. The wavelength of the single peak only showed a faint peak-position shift with increasing current to 80 mA, which further indicated the high quality and low stress of the AlN thin film. This work provides a promising solution for further deep-ultraviolet (DUV) light emitting electrodes (LEDs) development on 2D materials, as well as other unconventional substrates