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We examine the association between social trust and executives' excess perk consumption. Prior studies suggest that excess perks are the result of agency problem that managers benefit themselves at the expense of shareholders. We hypothesize that social trust can discipline managers' opportunistic behavior and facilitate investors' monitoring, and therefore, constrain the level of excess perks. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we find that social trust is negatively associated with management's excess perks, consistent with our prediction. Our main finding is robust to the instrumental variable approach that mitigates the potential endogeneity concerns. To explore the potential mechanisms through which social trust affects excess perks, we first show that both the social trust status of firms' locations and the social trust status of CEOs' hometowns can affect excess perks. Additional cross-sectional analyses reveal that the negative association between social trust and excess perks is more pronounced in firms with poorer corporate governance and firms with political connections. Finally, we find some evidence that firms located in the high social trust areas use more cash compensation and options granting to keep motivating their managers. This study provides an informal institutional perspective for both policy makers and shareholders to take social trust into account to enhance corporate governance.

Heteroatom-doped carbon materials have been widely used as sodium (Na) and potassium (K) metal anode frameworks to achieve uniform Na and K depositions. If the origin of the Sodiophilicity and potassiophilicity of doping sites in heteroatom-doped carbon host are clearly understood, the nucleation and growth behavior of Na and K can be precisely regulated in working batteries. Herein the Sodiophilicity and potassiophilicity chemistries of carbon materials are probed through first-principles calculations. The local dipole of doping functional groups and charge transfer during Na/K deposition are regarded as key principles to reveal the sodiophilic and potassiophilic nature of doping sites. Especially, O–B, O–S, and O–P co-doping strategy are predicted to be effective methods to improve the Sodiophilicity and potassiophilicity of carbon hosts and thus render safe and dendrite-free Na and K metal anodes. This work affords a deep and insightful understanding of Sodiophilicity and potassiophilicity chemistry of Na and K anodes and establishes general principles of designing highly sodiophilic and potassiophilic carbon frameworks.

Afforestation, through the conversion of upland cropland to forest, is of great significance to land use change in montane (hilly) agricultural landscapes worldwide. Such afforestation is implemented to improve soil and water conservation and facilitate terrestrial carbon sequestration. However, particularly for subtropical and tropical regions, the effects of afforestation on soil N2O emissions have not been well investigated. Therefore, a three-year field experiment was conducted to simultaneously monitor N2O emissions from three paired sites of afforestation with cypress (Cypressus funebris) and adjacent cropland under a wheat-maize rotation system. The experiment was carried out in a subtropical montane agricultural landscape in southwest China. In both forest and cropland ecosystems, the N2O emissions exhibited a pronounced spatial and temporal variability. These variations in N2O emissions can be well explained by the spatiotemporal dynamics of environmental variables, such as soil temperature, WFPS, soil NH4+ or NO3− availability, because these environmental variables correlated significantly with the N2O emissions across different experimental sites and years. The average annual N2O fluxes were 2.69 kg N ha-1 for cropland and 0.13 kg N ha-1 for afforestation. It is noteworthy that the annual N2O fluxes for afforestation found in the present study constitute one of the lowest recorded N2O fluxes for unfertilized forest ecosystems globally. Overall, across all experimental sites and years, afforestation with cypress (Cypressus funebris) stands significantly decreased N2O fluxes by over twenty times relative to the adjacent cropland. This outcome suggests that afforestation could be an effective mitigation strategy for soil N2O emissions in a subtropical montane agricultural landscape.

This paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affects firms’ cost of equity capital. I use analyst earnings forecasts and stock prices data to estimate firms’ cost of equity capital. With 18,740 firm-month observations from September 2019 to August 2020, I show that firms experienced an increase in the cost of equity capital during the pandemic. On average, the cost of equity capital increased about 172 basis-points. The effect is also more pronounced in firms with greater COVID-19 exposure. Overall, I document a significantly adverse impact of COVID-19 on firms’ cost of capital.

Pathogenic bacteria that give rise to infection have posed major health concerns over the past several decades. In this paper, we propose a self-powered active disinfection system controlled by human motions. The system is mainly composed of a multilayered triboelectric nanogenerator (m-TENG) for the harvesting of biomechanical energy and conductive fabrics as electrodes for the wearable disinfection system. The working principle of the system is based on hybrid effects of H2O2 production and electroporation, which provide good disinfection performance toward gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) and gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). In addition, we also demonstrate that the presence of gold-coated tellurium nanowires (Au-Te NWs) on the fabrics increased the strength of local electric field and enhanced the system's disinfection performance. With the help of Au-Te NWs, the disinfection activities of the system reach values of more than 87% and 96% against S. aureus and E. coli, respectively, when the m-TENG was operated at a frequency of 1 Hz for 60 min. Furthermore, the disinfection activity can be strengthened by increasing the operation frequency or electric output of the m-TENG. Alternatively, the generated electricity can be stored in a capacitor to achieve rapid disinfection via an instantaneous discharging process. Because of the fiber-based structure in the disinfection device and the shoe-embedded design of the m-TENG, our proposed self-powered active disinfection system can be easily integrated into commercial textiles to fabricate smart clothes to combat pathogenic bacteria.

In this study, an innovative valorization of petroleum coke fly ash as supplementary cementitious materials in blended cement mortars was investigated. To stabilize and upgrade the properties of fly ash, accelerated carbonation was performed to convert calcium oxide and other calcium-bearing species in fly ash into calcium carbonate. The results indicated the achievable carbonation conversion of fly ash was approximately 40%. The changes in physico-chemical properties of fly ash before and after carbonation also were examined by thermal analysis and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Several material function tests of blended cement mortars with carbonated fly ash, including workability, strength development and durability, were carried out. We found that the strength of cement mortars blended with carbonated fly ash was 20% higher than that of original Portland cement. A mathematical model on the strength development kinetics was developed to elucidate the relationship between mineral compositions and curing times. The carbonated fly ash could facilitate the hydration reaction in blended cement, as well as accelerating the strength development of blended cement by 28%. This study revealed the possibility of establishing a waste-to-resource supply chain by connecting CO2 mineralization with fly ash valorization as cementitious materials.

In the humid subtropics, conversion of cropland to forest has been recognized to influence carbon cycling (e.g., soil CO2 emissions) and the associated ecosystem carbon balance. A three-year field study was conducted in situ to quantitatively evaluate effects of land use change on carbon budget in a cropland (under winter wheat-summer maize rotation) comparison with the adjacent forest ecosystem. During the three-year experimental period, on average, soil heterotrophic respirations were 35.19 mg C·m− 2·h− 1 for the cropland and 40.02 mg C·m− 2·h− 1 for the adjacent forest ecosystem. The quantified net primary production (NPP) were 8724.78 kg C·ha− 1·year− 1 for the cropland (3218.14 kg C·ha− 1 for winter wheat season and 5506.64 kg C·ha− 1 for summer maize season) and 6478.99 kg C·ha− 1·year− 1 for the adjacent forest ecosystem. Thus, the average positive net ecosystem production (NEP) of 5139.33 kg C·ha− 1·year− 1 and 2790.43 kg C·ha− 1·year− 1 were gained in the cropland and the adjacent forest ecosystem, respectively. Nonetheless, if take into consideration of crop grain harvest (i.e., removal), the mean NEP was only 976.69 kg C·ha− 1·year− 1 for cropland which were over three-fold lower than for the adjacent forest ecosystem. The practice of conversion of cropland (maize-wheat rotation system) to forest consequently resulted in an average annual net carbon sequestration of 1813.74 kg C·ha− 1·year− 1 in the study. Therefore, our findings highlight that practices of conversion of subtropical cropland to forest commonly conducted in the last decades act as sinks of atmospheric CO2 in southwest China.

Early fault diagnosis of common rail injectors is essential to reduce diesel engine testing and maintenance costs. Therefore, this paper proposes a new common rail injector early fault diagnosis method, which combines the Maximum Second-order Cyclostationary Blind Deconvolution (CYCBD) optimized by the Seagull Optimization Algorithm (SOA) and Hierarchical Fluctuation Dispersion Entropy (HFDE). First, we use SOA adaptively to seek the optimal filter length of CYCBD and use the optimal CYCBD to filter the fuel pressure signal of the high-pressure fuel pipe. Then, in order to make up for the shortcomings of Multi-scale Fluctuation Dispersion Entropy (MFDE) ignoring high-frequency component information, this paper proposes HFDE to extract the fault characteristics after filtering. Finally, we input the fault characteristics into Least Squares Support Vector Machines (LSSVM) for classification and recognition. Through the analysis of experimental data, the method proposed in this paper can effectively identify the early failure state of the common rail injector. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed method has a higher fault recognition rate.

The fault diagnosis of the common rail injector is an important means to ensure the safe operation of the diesel engine. In order to quickly and accurately identify the fault status of common rail injectors, this paper proposes an intelligent fault diagnosis method for common rail injectors based on Composite Hierarchical Dispersion Entropy (CHDE) and Improved Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm based Least Squares Support Vector Machine (IGOA-LSSVM). First, in order to avoid the inherent shortcomings of Hierarchical Dispersion Entropy, we calculate CHDE as a characteristic parameter to construct a fault characteristic set. Then, this paper proposes the IGOA-LSSVM multi-classifier for pattern recognition, which has higher recognition accuracy and stability than other classifiers. Finally, we use the proposed method to analyze the common rail injector failure data. The results show that the proposed method can not only effectively realize the common rail injector intelligent fault diagnosis but also has a higher fault recognition rate than existing methods.

This study examines whether and how a supplier firm’s customer concentration affects its corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in emerging markets. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we find that customer concentration is negatively associated with supplier CSR performance. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that the negative relation is more pronounced in suppliers without foreign customers or foreign investors, suppliers that are non-state-owned, and suppliers operating in poor legal environments. Finally, channel tests suggest that reduced demand of disclosure from customers and limited awareness of CSR are potential mechanisms through which customer concentration negatively affects CSR performance.

Objective The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between five domain-specific skills of health literacy: Find Health Information (FHI), Appraise Health Information (AHI), Understand Health Information to act (UHI), Actively Manage One’s Health (AMH), and E-health literacy (e-Heals), and health information seeking behaviors and three categories of health outcomes. Methods A survey was implemented and data was collected from 1062 college going adults and analyzed using bivariate tests and multiple regression analysis. Results Among the five domain-specific Health Literacy skills, AHI and e-Heals were significantly associated with the use of traditional sources and the Internet for healthcare information respectively. Similarly and AMH and e-Heals were significantly associated with the use of traditional sources and the Internet for health lifestyle information respectively. Lastly AHI, AMH and e-Heals were significantly associated with the three categories of outcomes, and AFH was significantly associated with cognitive and instrumental outcomes, but not doctor-patient communication outcomes. Conclusion Consumers’ ability to use different health sources for both healthcare and health lifestyle information, and the three categories of health outcomes are associated with different domain-specific health literacy skills. Practice implications Health literacy initiatives may be improved by focusing on clients to develop domain-specific skills that increase the likelihood of using health information sources and accrue benefits.

Using a large sample of hand-collected directors' foreign experience data for Chinese listed companies from 2001 to 2016, we examine the impact of directors with foreign experience on corporate tax avoidance. We find a significantly negative association between directors with foreign experience and tax avoidance, suggesting that these directors can help constrain their firms' tax aggressiveness. The result is robust to Heckman two-stage analysis, instrumental variable approach, inclusion of potential omitted variables, change analysis, and alternative tax avoidance measures. Further analyses reveal that reputation concerns and CSR awareness are potential channels through which returnee directors affect corporate tax avoidance. The negative relation between directors with foreign experience and tax avoidance only holds when directors' foreign experiences are derived from countries or regions with higher investor protections. Non-independent directors with foreign experience have larger impacts on corporate tax avoidance than independent directors, and the effect is more pronounced when directors with foreign experience sit on audit committees. Directors' working and studying experiences both have important impacts on corporate tax avoidance. The result also suggests that the negative relation between directors with foreign experience and tax avoidance is more pronounced in non-state-owned firms. Overall, the findings suggest that directors' foreign experience matters for corporate tax behavior in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms’ embrace of an integrity culture will affect the performance of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Employing manually collected data on corporate culture and 5,149 firm-year observations in China from 2008 to 2016, our empirical study finds that corporate integrity culture has a strong positive effect on CSR performance, suggesting that an integrity-oriented corporate culture helps companies to bear CSR on their own initiative. We further find CEO duality leadership strengthens and analyst coverage attenuates the above relationship. This article is the first to explore the effect of corporate integrity culture on CSR behavior and validates the role of corporate culture as a crucial informal institution in guiding companies to uphold CSR. The empirical results also confirm the role of corporate culture in enhancing the social value of corporations. Our paper is helpful to broaden our understanding of the factors influencing CSR and provides a possible solution to the problem of CSR fulfillment.

This paper examines the impact of high-frequency trading (HFT) on market underreaction to earnings news as measured by the magnitude of post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD). Using a dataset provided by NASDAQ, we are able to better identify HFT activities and reduce measurement errors. We find that the magnitude of PEAD decreases with the increase of HFT. More importantly, we show that this effect is due to HFT's liquidity supplying role (i.e., passive HFT fulfilling market orders), not liquidity demanding role (i.e., HFT initiating market orders). The results also reveal that the effect is more pronounced when earnings surprises are extreme and large. Taken together, HFT seems to help mitigate market inefficiency by providing liquidity.

This study examined the frequency of violence on nurses in Chinese psychiatric hospitals and explored its risk factors and impact on nurses' quality of life (QOL). A survey was conducted with 387 frontline psychiatric nurses in China. Information about experience of workplace violence in the past 6 months, type of workplace violence, and demographic characteristics was collected by a questionnaire. Altogether 319 (82.4%) of 387 nurses reported having experienced at least one type of violent event in the past 6 months. The prevalence of sexual assault, physical and verbal harassment was 18.6%, 61.5% and 78.6%, respectively. Compared to those with no exposure to violence, nurses who were exposed to violence had lower QOL in both the physical and mental domains. Significant predictors of violence against nurses are male sex, receiving college level or higher education and working on rotating duty were independently associated with high risk of violence. Workplace violence against psychiatric nurses commonly occurs in China. Considering the deleterious effects of violence, comprehensive strategies from the perspective of nursing education and training, organizational policy, patient care and staff support are recommended to promote occupational safety in psychiatric settings in China.

Disease recurrence is a main challenge in treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). There is no generally accepted method for preventing recurrence of HCC after resection.To compare the efficacy of a traditional herbal medicine (THM) regimen and transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) in preventing recurrence in post-resection patients with small HCC.This is a multicenter, open-label, randomized, controlled study, which was undertaken in five centers of China. A total of 379 patients who met the eligibility criteria and underwent randomization were enrolled in this trial. One hundred and eighty-eight patients were assigned to the THM group and received Cinobufacini injection and Jiedu Granule, and the other 191 patients were assigned to the TACE group and received one single course of TACE.Primary outcome measures were the annual recurrence rate and the time to recurrence. Incidence of adverse events was regarded as the secondary outcome measure.Among the 364 patients who were included in the intention-to-treat analysis, 67 patients of the THM group and 87 of the TACE group had recurrence, with a hazard ratio of 0.695 (P = 0.048). Median recurrence-free survival of the patients in the THM and TACE groups was 46.89 and 34.49 months, respectively. Recurrence rates at 1, 2 and 3 years were 17.7%, 33.0% and 43.5% for the THM group, and 28.8%, 42.5% and 54.0% for the TACE group, respectively (P = 0.026). Multivariate analysis indicated that the THM regimen had a big advantage for prolonging the recurrence-free survival. Adverse events were mild and abnormality of laboratory indices of the two groups were similar.In comparison with TACE therapy, the THM regimen was associated with diminished risk of recurrence of small-sized HCC after resection, with comparable adverse events. TRIAL REGISTRTION IDENTIFIER: This trial was registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry with the identifier ChiCTR-TRC-07000033.

This paper reports results from a study exploring the multimedia search functionality of Chinese language search engines. Web searching in Chinese (Mandarin) is a growing research area and a technical challenge for popular commercial Web search engines. Few studies have been conducted on Chinese language search engines. We investigate two research questions: which Chinese language search engines provide multimedia searching, and what multimedia search functionalities are available in Chinese language Web search engines. Specifically, we examine each Web search engine's (1) features permitting Chinese language multimedia searches, (2) extent of search personalization and user control of multimedia search variables, and (3) the relationships between Web search engines and their features in the Chinese context. Key findings show that Chinese language Web search engines offer limited multimedia search functionality, and general search engines provide a wider range of features than specialized multimedia search engines. Study results have implications for Chinese Web users, Website designers and Web search engine developers.

We study whether and how CEO severance contracts affect tax avoidance behavior. We examine 13,888 firm year observations for S&P1500 firms between 1992 and 2014, including 11,616 firm-year observations for firms with severance agreements. Using four measures to proxy for tax avoidance activities we find evidence supporting the hypothesis that severance pay is associated with greater tax avoidance. Further analyses show that the effect is more pronounced in firms with weaker corporate governance and firms with less effective monitoring. Our findings suggest that long-term institutional shareholders curtail firm’s tax avoidance activities, likely because tax avoidance might entail excessive risk-taking, facilitate rent extraction and increase information asymmetry.

Using a randomized experiment (Regulation SHO), in which the SEC exempted from short-selling price tests one-third of the Russell 3000 Index firms, we examine the impact of short selling on analyst forecast bias for these pilot firms. We find that short selling reduces analyst earnings forecast optimism. We also show that this effect increases with analyst forecast horizon and is concentrated among firms with greater institutional ownership and more earnings management. In addition, we show that the remaining two-thirds of the Russell 3000 firms also experience a reduction in analyst forecast optimism upon the permanent removal of price tests. Finally, we examine the underlying mechanisms and find that short sellers’ information intermediary role is a possible channel through which analyst forecast optimism is reduced. Our paper provides new evidence on the effect of investors on analyst behaviors.