The pricing of green bonds: external reviews and the shades of green

We investigate the asset pricing implications of the greenness of bonds. To estimate a green-pricing effect, we determine the ‘green bond premium’ as the difference between the yields of matched conventional and green-labeled bonds. On a cross-sectional average, green bonds experience a statistically significant positive premium. This premium increases with external greenness evaluations, i.e., investors accept premiums of up to 5 basis points for bonds with a substantial environmental agenda. This external validation effect, which is strongest for bonds that are rated dark-green, may offset not incurring information costs, as this effect decreases with increasing age of bonds

Functional diversity of CTCFs is encoded in their binding motifs

CTCF ChIP-seq data. Cell lines and statistics for the ChIP-seq data used in the study. (DOCX 55 kb

Image Denoising via L

The L0 gradient minimization (LGM) method has been proposed for image smoothing very recently. As an improvement of the total variation (TV) model which employs the L1 norm of the gradient, the LGM model yields much better results for the piecewise constant image. However, just as the TV model, the LGM model also suffers, even more seriously, from the staircasing effect and the inefficiency in preserving the texture in image. In order to overcome these drawbacks, in this paper, we propose to introduce an effective fidelity term into the LGM model. The fidelity term is an exemplar of the moving least square method using steering kernel. Under this framework, these two methods benefit from each other and can produce better results. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme is promising as compared with the state-of-the-art methods

Prevention measures of the infection disease in Belgium and its revelation to COVID-19

Abstract: The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought great challenges to China and even the world public health. Belgium has rich experiences in the prevention and control of infectious diseases. By searching the related literature and policy documents, this study reviews the emergency management laws and regulations, organization framework, funding, emergency system in Belgium and summarizes the successful experience of Belgian policies and measures for the prevention and control of epidemic Ebola in 2014.On this basis, the paper puts forward suggestions for COVID-19: To establish permanent infectious disease risk assessment team, build a cloud platform for prevention and control of infectious diseases by using big data and conduct practices regularly for the prevention of the infectious diseases. Key words: Belgium, prevention and control of infectious diseases, COVID-1

Cellulase Recycling after High-Solids Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation of Combined Pretreated Corncob

Despite the advantageous prospect of second-generation bioethanol, its final commercialization must overcome the primary cost impediment due to enzyme assumption. To solve this problem, this work achieves high-concentration ethanol fermentation and multi-round cellulase recycling through process integration. The optimal time and temperature of the re-adsorption process were determined by monitoring the adsorption kinetics of cellulases. Both glucose and cellobiose inhibited cellulase adsorption. After 96 h of ethanol fermentation, 40% of the initial cellulase remained in the broth, from which 62.5% of the cellulase can be recycled and reused in fresh substrate re-adsorption for 90 min. Under optimum conditions, i.e., pH 5.0, dry matter loading of 15 wt%, cellulase loading of 45 FPU/g glucan, two cycles of fermentation and re-adsorption can yield two-fold increased ethanol outputs and reduce enzyme costs by over 50%. The ethanol concentration in each cycle can be achieved at levels greater than 40 g/L