Media as Other Information for Fundamental Valuation

The media is an important information intermediary. We investigate the informational role of the media by examining whether media content, measured by the sentiment of news articles, contains information about a firm’s fundamental value beyond that conveyed in earnings, book value, and analyst forecasts. We show that incorporating media content into Ohlson’s (1995) residual income model generally improves its ability to predict future residual income, explain current stock prices, and predict future stock prices. Our results are strengthened when media coverage is higher and when media sentiment is more disperse

Free Cash Flows and Price Momentum

This study investigates the role of free cash flows and (cross-sectional and time-series) price momentum in predicting future stock returns. Past returns and free cash flows each positively predict future stock returns after controlling for the other, suggesting that cash flows and momentum both contain valuable and distinctive information about future stock returns. A strategy of buying past winners with high free cash flows and shorting past losers with low free cash flows significantly outperforms the traditional momentum trading strategy. The enhanced performance is not sensitive to investor sentiment, time variations, or transaction costs. Further analysis shows that the incremental cash flow effects are largely attributable to net distributions to equity/debt holders. Overall, our findings shed light on the role of corporate fundamentals in technical trading strategies

New insight into the buckling of growing bilayers

Growth-induced morphological instabilities of film/substrate bilayers are critical for certain (mal)functionalities of biological systems. Understanding the mechanics helps in developing new diagnostics andin designing bio-inspired engineering products, e.g. artificial digital skin.We address gaps in the understanding of the nonlinear mechanics of growing bilayers in the critical and post-critical regimes, particularly when:-the substrate grows much faster than the thin film, and-the film and substrate have comparable stiffnesse

Strategic Use of Volume of Financial Items in 10-K Reports

We investigate whether firms limit the volume of financial items in annual reports (including the financial statements and footnotes) to obfuscate poor future firm performance, and how investors react to this reduced volume. We estimate abnormal volume to capture managers’ discretion over reporting in the 10-K and find that abnormally low volume predicts poor future earnings. This relation is more pronounced in firms where the market has difficulty in detecting managerial intervention in the disclosure process. We also find that abnormally low volume predicts negative future returns, suggesting that managers benefit from disclosing fewer financial items by delaying the incorporation of bad news into stock prices. Further corroborating our results, we find that the volume is abnormally low when there exist strong managerial incentives to withhold bad news and manipulate investor perceptions upward. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the notion that managers attempt to obfuscate poor future performance and inflate current stock prices by disclosing fewer financial items in the 10-K

Practical insights on enzyme stabilization

Enzymes are efficient catalysts designed by nature to work in physiological environments of living systems. The best operational conditions to access and convert substrates at the industrial level are different from nature and normally extreme. Strategies to isolate enzymes from extremophiles can redefine new operational conditions, however not always solving all industrial requirements. The stability of enzymes is therefore a key issue on the implementation of the catalysts in industrial processes which require the use of extreme environments that can undergo enzyme instability. Strategies for enzyme stabilization have been exhaustively reviewed, however they lack a practical approach. This review intends to compile and describe the most used approaches for enzyme stabilization highlighting case studies in a practical point of view.The authors would like to thank Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 – Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. They would like also to thank the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT1135). This study was also supported by Chinese Government Scholarship under China Scholarship Council (No. 201606790036) and Chinese Foundation Key projects of governmental cooperation in International Scientific and Technological Innovation (No. 2016 YFE0115700).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Bioprocessing of bamboo materials

Bamboo culms were processed using microorganisms, and fibre bundles were obtained. Bacteria and fungi with xylanase activity were isolated from the bamboo retting system. Chemical composition analysis of the fibre bundles obtained showed that the components are mainly cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. An increase in cellulose and hemicelluloses content was detected along with a decrease in lignin content after bio-processing. Envi-ronmental Scanning Electronic Microcopy of the fibre bundles (retted) showed great fibre sensibility towards moisture, which could significantly influence mechanical properties. Our results suggested that the bio-processing presented herein contributes to the possible development of a new means of bamboo bio-processing that can be regarded as a primary process to separate fibre bundles from non-cellulosic tissue in the culm.This work was supported by the earmarked fund for Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System (nycytx-19-E23) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities JUSRP211A02

Heat transport capacity of an axial-rotating single- loop oscillating heat pipe for abrasive-milling tools

In order to enhance heat transfer in the abrasive-milling processes to reduce thermal damage, the concept of employing oscillating heat pipes (OHPs) in an abrasive-milling tool is proposed. A single-loop OHP (SLOHP) is positioned on the plane parallel to the rotational axis of the tool. In this case, centrifugal accelerations do not segregate the fluid between the evaporator and condenser. The experimental investigation is conducted to study the effects of centrifugal acceleration (0–738 m/s2), heat flux (9100–31,850 W/m2) and working fluids (methanol, acetone and water) on the thermal performance. Results show that the centrifugal acceleration has a positive influence on the thermal performance of the axial-rotating SLOHP when filled with acetone or methanol. As for water, with the increase of centrifugal acceleration, the heat transfer performance first increases and then decreases. The thermal performance enhances for higher heat flux rises for all the fluids. The flow inside the axial-rotating SLOHP is analyzed by a slow-motion visualization supported by the theoretical analysis. Based on the theoretical analysis, the rotation will increase the resistance for the vapor to penetrate through the liquid slugs to form an annular flow, which is verified by the visualization