Help or Hurt? The Impact of ESG on Firm Performance in S&P 500 Non-Financial Firms

The paper aims to investigate the impact of ESG practice on firms’ financial performance in the context of U.S. market from 2018 to 2020. The paper examines a sample of 57 U.S. non-financial firms belonging to the S&P 500. The Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) estimation is employed with an instrumental variable - the political views of the states where the studied firms are located. The paper shows that having a better practice of ESG could enhance firms’ financial performance measured by ROA, ROE, and TobinQ. These findings are consistent with the stakeholder-focused theory instead of shareholder-focus perspective. In addition, the magnitude of the influence of the ESG practice on TobinQ is significantly higher than that of the ESG-ROA and ESG-ROE relations. It reveals that the ESG benefits could make the firms appear more attractive to investors, creating higher market values of the firms’ assets and then higher TobinQ ratio. Not as the TobinQ enhancement, the significant improvement in ROA and ROE would be realized in the long run rather than short term. The low managerial ownership in the U.S. market may increase the chance of ESG overinvestment by the firms’ managers, hence reducing firm value. However, under the pressure of the investors’ strong demand for socially responsible investing, the U.S. firms tend to become involved in ESG activities, obtaining a strong stakeholder commitment and thus creating additional firm value in the long run

INVESTMENT TRENDS OF VIETNAMESE YOUNG PEOPLE

To examine the investment trends of Vietnamese young people, the research team surveyed the investment trends of young people living, studying, and working in Vietnam. Survey results show that the investment trends of young people today are diverse in investment types such as (1) Real estate investment, (2) Financial investment, (3) Gold investment; (4) Bank deposit… The research team also learned from survey participants about their priorities for investment channels and clarified the investment characteristics of young people. Through analyzing survey data, the research team had some discussions on investment trends of young people, raising young people's awareness of investment activities and choosing appropriate investment channels to optimize profitability for young investors and minimize risks

Parametric model checking timed automata under non-Zenoness assumption

International audienc

ViHOS: Hate Speech Spans Detection for Vietnamese

The rise in hateful and offensive language directed at other users is one of the adverse side effects of the increased use of social networking platforms. This could make it difficult for human moderators to review tagged comments filtered by classification systems. To help address this issue, we present the ViHOS (Vietnamese Hate and Offensive Spans) dataset, the first human-annotated corpus containing 26k spans on 11k comments. We also provide definitions of hateful and offensive spans in Vietnamese comments as well as detailed annotation guidelines. Besides, we conduct experiments with various state-of-the-art models. Specifically, XLM-R$_{Large}$ achieved the best F1-scores in Single span detection and All spans detection, while PhoBERT$_{Large}$ obtained the highest in Multiple spans detection. Finally, our error analysis demonstrates the difficulties in detecting specific types of spans in our data for future research. Disclaimer: This paper contains real comments that could be considered profane, offensive, or abusive.Comment: EACL 202

Ambient-temperature conversion of metakaolin to sub-micron LTA zeolite and its copper ion removal efficiency

Nowadays “green” processes such as room temperature processes are interested in new researches for production of practical-important solid materials. Zeolitic LTA materials are commonly prepared by hydrothermal transformation using sodium hydroxide (NaOH), sodium aluminate (NaAlO2), and sodium metasilicate (Na2SiO3) at high temperatures (95 – 100 ◦C). In this study, sub-micron zeolite LTA was prepared at ambient temperature from metakaolin which is easily obtained from kaolin mineral. The prepared materials were characterized using various methods, including XRD to identify their structure, SEM and EDX to analyze the shape and proportional components of the elements, and the N2 adsorption–desorption method to determine the surface area and pore volume. Regarding the Cu2+ ion adsorption capability of the synthetic zeolite, the experimental results revealed that the sub-micron zeolite LTA has potential applications in practice because its adsorption rate exceeds that of the commercial zeolite and the rate constant of the second–order kinetics model of the prepared zeolite was 1.7 times higher than that of the commercial zeolite

Stimulation of shoot regeneration through leaf thin cell layer culture of Passiflora edulis Sims.

Passiflora edulis Sims. belonged to the genus Passiflora, is one of the important economic crops of the world as well as Vietnam. Nowadays, the commercial P. edulis is mainly propagated by seeds, cuttings and grafting; however, these methods still have some limitations such as genetic degradation and heterogeneity and the spread of pathogenic viruses. Micro-propagation has been used for clonal breeding and disease-free plant breeding, as well as providing a source of materials for Passiflora breeding. In this study, leaf explants of P. edulis Sims. (2.0-month-old) excised from the in vitro culture of ex vitro axillary buds cut longitudinally and transversally into thin cell layers (lTCL and tTCL) were used as plant materials to evaluate the shoot regeneration. In addition, the effects of explant age and lighting condition on shoot regeneration were also investigated. After 8 weeks of culture, the results showed that shoot regeneration rate (100%) and shoot multiplication coefficient (13.33) of the in vitro leaf-tTCL-4 were higher than those of other treatments and control. The shoot regeneration rate of P. edulis Sims. also varied with the change of explant age. The highest shoot regeneration rate (100%) was obtained from leaf explants of 1.5-month-old shoots after 8 weeks of culture. Moreover, the light (fluorescent lamps with photoperiod of 16 hours/day and lighting intensity of 40 - 45 μmol.m-2.s-1) improved not only morphogenesis rate, but also shoot regeneration rate (100%) of leaf explants after 8 weeks of culture. This study provided a novel method for rapid micro-propagation of P. edulis Sims

Real-time Damper Force Estimation for Automotive Suspension: A Generalized H2/LPV Approach

The real-time knowledge of the damper force is of paramount importance in controlling and diagnosing automotive suspension systems. This study presents a generalized H2/LPV observer for damper force estimation of a semi-active electro-rheological (ER) suspension system. First, an extended quarter-car model augmented with the nonlinear and dynamical model of the semi-active suspension system is written into the quasi-LPV formulation. Then, the damper force estimation method is developed through a generalized H2/LPV observer whose objective is to handle the impact of unknown road disturbances and sensor noise on the estimation errors of the state variables thanks to the H2 norm. The measured sprung and unsprung mass accelerations of the quarter-car system are used as inputs for the observer. The proposed approach is simulated with validated model of the 1/5-scaled real vehicle testbed of GIPSA-lab. Simulation results show the performance of the estimation method against unknown disturbances, emphasizing the effectiveness of the damper force estimation in real time

Studying Magnetic Fields and Dust in M17 Using Polarized Thermal Dust Emission Observed by SOFIA/HAWC

We report on the highest spatial resolution measurement to date of magnetic fields (B-fields) in M17 using thermal dust polarization measurements taken by SOFIA/HAWC+ centered at a wavelength of 154 μm. Using the Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi method, in which the polarization angle dispersion calculated using the structure function technique is the quantity directly observed by SOFIA/HAWC+, we found the presence of strong B-fields of 980 ± 230 and 1665 ± 885 μG in the lower-density M17-N and higher-density M17-S regions, respectively. The B-field morphology in M17-N possibly mimics the fields in gravitationally collapsing molecular cores, while in M17-S the fields run perpendicular to the density structure. M17-S also displays a pillar feature and an asymmetric large-scale hourglass-shaped field. We use the mean B-field strengths to determine Alfvénic Mach numbers for both regions, finding that B-fields dominate over turbulence. We calculate the mass-to-flux ratio, λ, finding λ = 0.07 for M17-N and 0.28 for M17-S. These subcritical λ values are consistent with the lack of massive stars formed in M17. To study dust physics, we analyze the relationship between dust polarization fraction, p, emission intensity, I, gas column density, N(H2), polarization angle dispersion function, S, and dust temperature, T d. p decreases with intensity as I −α with α = 0.51. p tends to first increase with T d, but then decreases at higher T d. The latter feature, seen in M17-N at high T d when N(H2) and S decrease, is evidence of the radiative torque disruption effect

TẠO DÒNG CÁC GEN MÃ HÓA CHITINASE 42 kDa CỦA Trichoderma asperellum VÀO VECTOR BIỂU HIỆN THỰC VẬT pMYV719 ĐỂ PHỤC VỤ CHUYỂN GEN

In this study, chitinase genes containing a signal peptide sequence, such as Chi42, syncodChi42-1 and syncodChi42-2, were cloned in the plant expression vector pMYV719 and successfully transferred into Agrobacterium tumefaciens LBA 4404. Among them, Chi42 is a wild-type gene of Trichoderma asperellum SH16. Both genes syncodChi42-1 and syncodChi42-2 are derived from Chi42, which was optimized for codon usage for plant expression. Agrobacterium bacteria-harbouring pMYV719/chitinase vector was used for genetic transformation into peanuts (Arachis hypogaea L.) to enhance resistance to phytopathogenic fungi in further studies.Trong nghiên cứu này, các gen chitinase mang trình tự peptide tín hiệu như Chi42, syncodChi42-1 và syncodChi42-2 đã được tạo dòng trong vector biểu hiện thực vật pMYV719 và biến nạp thành công vào vi khuẩn Agrobacterium tumefaciens LBA 4404. Trong đó, gen Chi42 là kiểu gen hoang dại từ chủng nấm Trichoderma asperellum SH16. Hai gen syncodChi42-1 và syncodChi42-2 có nguồn gốc từ gen Chi42 đã được tối ưu hóa bộ ba sử dụng để biểu hiện thực vật. Vi khuẩn A. tumefaciens mang các gen chitinase được sử dụng để chuyển gen vào cây lạc (Arachis hypogaea L.) trong các nghiên cứu tiếp theo để cải thiện khả năng kháng nấm bệnh của chúng