Three essays on corporate governance, risk and cross listing.

n Chapter 1, we set up an equilibrium model which emphasizes cost of corporate governance. The model indicates that better corporate governance increases the likelihood of dispersed corporate ownership structure. In Chapter 2, we use a sample of democratic firms (with 5 or less anti-takeover provisions) from the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC) database and use idiosyncratic volatility as a proxy for information from the market of corporate control as in Ferreira and Laux (2007) to link the equity performance, market of corporate control and corporate governance. We find that firms which are the least vulnerable to takeover threat (the least idiosyncratic risk) outperform the others. We also find that market information of takeover vulnerability is negatively related to future merger and acquisition shocks. All these effects are mitigated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002. Chapter 3 examines the decision to list abroad by Chinese companies in the form of ADRs and foreign IPOs from 1993 to 2005. Subsequent to the listing events, the issuers experience a significant drop in profitability, tangible assets ratio, and asset turnover. There is no significant change in capital expenditure. Stock returns after the listing events are generally negative for ADR and foreign IPO stocks. More significantly, these stocks under-perform the market in the post-event window ranging from three days to three years

Microstructure, phase transformation, electrochemistry, X-ray visibility and mechanical properties

Funding Information: Supporting for the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration (No. U1933129 ), Key Program of the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (No. 19JCZDJC39000 ). JPO acknowledges the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia ( FCT ) for its support via the project UID/00667/2020 (UNIDEMI). JPO acknowledges funding by national funds from FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia , I.P., in the scope of the projects LA/P/0037/2020 , UIDP/50025/2020 and UIDB/50025/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute of Nanostructures, Nanomodelling and Nanofabrication – i3N. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The AuthorsWire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) technology was used for the fabrication of NiTiTa (2.5 at. % Ta) shape memory alloys (SMAs) for the first time, using commercialy available NiTi wire and Ta foil as the feedstock materials. The addition of Ta significantly increased the phase transformation temperatures, leading to a room-temperature microstructure composed of both B19′ martensite and B2 austenite, and (Ti,Ta)2Ni precipitates distributed at the grain boundaries. Compared with the WAAM fabricated NiTi counterpart, the corrosion potential (Ecorr) of the NiTiTa material increased from − 0.55 to − 0.44 V, while the corrosion current density (Icorr) decreased from 1.90 × 10−6 to 4.2 × 10−7 A/cm2. The X-ray brightness increased from 19.6 to 56.4 %. These results indicate that the addition of Ta can enhance the corrosion resistance and X-ray visibility of NiTiTa parts. Furthermore, the WAAM fabricated NiTiTa material was able to retain a stable superelastic response under 10 loading-unloading cycles, highlighting the great potential application value in the biomedical field. Our work provides an innovative method for additively manufacturing NiTi-based multi-component SMAs through WAAM.publishersversionpublishe

Biogenic flower-shaped Au-Pd nanoparticles: Synthesis, SERS detection and catalysis towards benzyl alcohol oxidation

～40 nm flower-shaped Au-Pd bimetallic nanoparticles were prepared in a facile and eco-friendly way based on the simultaneous bioreduction of HAuCl 4 and Na2PdCl4 with ascorbic acid and Cacumen Platycladi leaf extract at room temperature. Characterization techniques, such as transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction, were employed to confirm that the as-synthesized nanoparticles were alloys. The obtained flower-shaped Au-Pd alloy nanoparticles exhibited an excellent surface enhanced Raman spectroscopic activity with rhodamine 6G and efficient catalytic ability for the oxidation of benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde. ? 2014 The Royal Society of Chemistry

Disruption of splicing-regulatory elements using CRISPR/Cas9 to rescue spinal muscular atrophy in human iPSCs and mice

We here report a genome-editing strategy to correct spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Rather than directly targeting the pathogenic exonic mutations, our strategy employed Cas9 and guide-sgRNA for the targeted disruption of intronic splicing-regulatory elements. We disrupted intronic splicing silencers (ISSs, including ISS-N1 and ISS + 100) of survival motor neuron (SMN) 2, a key modifier gene of SMA, to enhance exon 7 inclusion and full-length SMN expression in SMA iPSCs. Survival of splicing-corrected iPSC-derived motor neurons was rescued with SMN restoration. Furthermore, co-injection of Cas9 mRNA from Streptococcus pyogenes (SpCas9) or Cas9 from Staphylococcus aureus (SaCas9) alongside their corresponding sgRNAs targeting ISS-N1 into zygotes rescued 56% and 100% of severe SMA transgenic mice (Smn , SMN2 ). The median survival of the resulting mice was extended to >400 days. Collectively, our study provides proof-of-principle for a new strategy to therapeutically intervene in SMA and other RNA-splicing-related diseases. -/- tg/

An Investigation on Institutionalization of Websites of Firms

Websites as an IT artifact have been utilized by companies for over a decade. The structure of websites may show isomorphic patterns, explainable by the conformity of firms to institutional pressures. However, there is insufficient evidence in prior literature to confirm the existence of such patterns. Following institutional theory, we examined website structures of firms. We selected industry sectors and firm reputation levels as institutional forms. Based on a sample of 28 Fortune 500 firms, we conducted content analysis using a descriptive taxonomy provided by Piccoli et al. (2004). The results revealed 1) that websites of firms are isomorphic within an industry sector, but polymorphic across industry sectors, and 2) websites of firms do not differ across reputation levels. These results are discussed in depth, and managerial implications are suggested.clos

The impact of participation in agricultural industry organizational models on crop yields: evidence from Chinese wheat growers

Abstract Increasing income for grain farmers is crucial to mobilise farmers’ incentive for grain cultivation. This article, based on the survey data of 2032 wheat growers in Anhui Province, China, employs the Logit model, multinomial Logit model, and entropy balance-OLS regression method to empirically analyze the factors influencing wheat growers’ participation in agricultural industrial organization models and the impact of their participation decisions on planting returns. The research found that: (1) Wheat growers with richer resource endowments are more likely to participate in agricultural industrial organization models. Factors such as household head’s education level, training experience, quality of arable land, scale of operation, and labor endowment are crucial determinants of wheat growers’ decisions to participate in industrial organization models. (2) Participation in agricultural industrial organizations significantly enhances the net income of wheat growers. Comparatively, the income-boosting effect is more pronounced for those participating in the “household + farmer cooperatives/agricultural enterprises” model. (3) The mechanisms through which wheat growers’ participation in different agricultural industrial organization models affects their crop yields vary. The income-enhancing effects of wheat growers' participation in the “household + farmer cooperatives/agricultural enterprises” model of industrial organization primarily stem from the improvement in land productivity and market bargaining power. On the other hand, the income-enhancing effects of participation in the “household + village collective + farmer cooperatives/agricultural enterprises” model are mainly attributed to the improvement in market bargaining power. The policy implication is that priority should be given to cultivating and developing industrial organisations based on the model of “household + farmers’ co-operatives/agribusinesses” in regions where farmers are richly endowed with resources, and at the same time, the development of industrial organisations based on the model of “household + village collectives + farmers’ co-operatives/agribusinesses” should be supplemented in accordance with local conditions. At the same time, the development of “household + village collectives + farmers’ cooperatives/agribusinesses” mode is supplemented according to local conditions

Preparation and characterization of paraffin/palygorskite shape-stable composite phase change materials for thermal energy storage

With the depletion of energy, energy efficiency received more and more attention. Thermal energy storage (TES) using latent heat of phase change materials can balance the non-equalizing distribution of heat in time and space, and improve energy utilization. In this work, Raw palygorskite (Raw-PAL) was used as the carrier to prepare paraffin/palygorskite shape-stable composite phase change materials (CPCM) through a novel pretreatment by alkalization, acidification and calcination. The Raw-PAL after treatment by the combination of alkalization/ calcination/ acidification (PAL-3) has the maximum adsorption capacity for paraffin. The micromorphology, chemical compatibility, thermal properties and stability of paraffin/PALs were studied. The results of BET and SEM showed that the pretreatment can increase the specific surface area and pore volume of PAL, which has a positive significance to improve the paraffin mass fraction in CPCM. DSC results indicated that the melting enthalpy and melting temperature of paraffin/PAL-3 are 89.2 J/g and 58.55 degrees C respectively. After cyclic test for 300 times, the melting enthalpy of paraffin/PAL-3 can still maintain 96.2% of the initial value and the shape remained unchanged at 80 degrees C for 12 h. The results showed that the paraffin/PAL-3 CPCM was a shape-stable phase change material with potential application

The Extended Bag of Words Model for Visual Recognition and Categorization

With the development of science and technology, more and more images need to be recognized and categorized. Although the classical Bag of Words (BoW) model has played a great role in the past, there are still many limitations about it, i.e. low precision and accuracy, high complexity of computation, etc. In this paper, it is improved and extended from four ways. Firstly, the features filtered from the background are sampled to reduce the influence of background noise. Secondly, the spatial relationship among all features is integrated with the classical BoW vector to improve the accuracy of recognition and categorization. Thirdly, vocabulary tree is constructed by applying hierarchical K mean value, in order to obtain more reasonable vocabulary list and greatly reduce the clustering time. Fourthly, a weighted visual word histogram is considered, in order to stand out the essential difference among images. At last, some experiments are conducted to show the advantage of the proposed method

Biodegradability of Polyurethane Foam from Liquefied Wood Based Polyols

Polyurethane foam (PUF) was prepared from liquefied wood with polymethylene polyphenylisocyanate by one-shot method, with organosilicon as surfactant, water as blowing agent and stannous octoate and triethylene diamine as co-catalyst. The biodegradability of the PUF was studied by soil burial for a period of 12 months. The Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) study, morphological observation and percent weight loss were used to discuss the biodegradability of polyurethane foam from liquefied wood. The FT-IR analyses showed that the PUF had biodegraded via oxidation of the ether soft segment or degradation of wood components. The weight loss rate showed that the addition of liquefied wood could accelerate the degradation of PUF