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Exploring evacuation spill information from the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center database, we examine how firms alter their green innovation activities and strategies in response to environmental spills occurring near their headquarters. We find that, in response to nearby environmental spills, firms increase both environmental innovation input and output. Increases in managers’ perceived risk and compliance cost, in part due to public outrage and reprobation, enhanced local environmental regulations, as well as human capital redeployment, are three plausible underlying economic channels through which environmental risk affects firms’ green innovation.

Mir-9 was recognized as a potential tumor suppressor gene or oncogene in varies of diseases; however, its roles in glioma have not been investigated. Our study was to identify the mRNA expression of mir-9 gene in glioma and correlate abnormal versions of microRNAs with clinicopathological features and investigate the impact of mir-9 in glioma prognosis.Seventy-one glioma samples, which included 22 grade II, 24 grade III, and 25 glioblastoma tumors of previously untreated patients who underwent surgical excision at Qing Hai Province People's Hospital from 2011 to 2014, were included. In addition, 2 epilepsy patients with normal brain tissue were included as a control group. The expression of mir-9 was examined by RT-PCR in formalin-fixed paraffin embedded primary tissue specimens. The clinicopathologic features, the survival rate of glioma patients were also discussed. The RNA expression of mir-9 and glioma prognosis was evaluated using a Chi-square test, Cox regression model, and GraphPad Prism survival curve analysis.There were 16, 20, 21 cases which showed high expression of mir-9 in grade II and III gliomas and glio-blastoma, 16/22 (72.7%), 20/24 (83.3%), 21/25 (84.0%), respectively. The expression of mir-9 was correlated with the grade of glioma. The mir-9 RNA expression in glioblastoma were higher than grade II and III gliomas (p0.05). The higher the grade, the higher the expression, and the difference was significant (p0.05), while it was not correlated with patient nationality, gender, or location (p0.05). Univariate analysis determined that high expression of mir-9, grade, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and patient onset age were associated with glioma patient prognosis (p0.05).The expression of mir-9 plays a role in glioma progression, and may be used as a prognostic marker in glioma.

We examine whether economic links with major customers, an important group of strong stakeholders, act as a deterrent to corporate misconduct. We show that firms with a concentrated customer base are less likely to commit misconduct and pay lower penalties. These findings hold with numerous robustness checks and different attempts to mitigate endogeneity concerns. Consistent with a risk management motive of customers, we find that the negative effect of customer concentration on misconduct is more pronounced when perceived supplier misconduct risk is higher, and that firms with major customers do not engage in more corporate goodness. Exploring underlying economic mechanisms, we find that firms with major customers exhibit improved worker safety, more employee-friendly workplace practices, and less aggressive financial and investment policies. We also provide suggestive evidence that major customers discipline supplier misconduct through both external influence and internal control.

This paper is devoted to an SEIR epidemic model with variable recruitment and both exposed and infected populations having infectious in a spatially heterogeneous environment. The basic reproduction number is defined and the existence of endemic equilibrium is obtained, and the relationship between the basic reproduction number and diffusion coefficients is established. Then the global stability of the endemic equilibrium in a homogeneous environment is investigated. Finally, the asymptotic profiles of endemic equilibrium are discussed, when the diffusion rates of susceptible, exposed and infected individuals tend to zero or infinity. The theoretical results show that limiting the movement of exposed, infected and recovered individuals can eliminate the disease in low-risk sites, while the disease is still persistent in high-risk sites. Therefore, the presence of exposed individuals with infectious greatly increases the difficulty of disease prevention and control.

This paper is devoted to the existence of traveling waves in an age-structured nonlocal dispersal model derived from an epidemic model with vertical infection. The Schauder’s fixed point theorem is employed to show that the traveling wave solution exists for all c > c ∗ .

Background: Soluble ST2 (sST2) is a novel inflammation marker for the prediction of adverse outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus. The aim of the present study was to examine the predictive value of serum sST2 for prognostic outcomes in patients with transient ischemic attack (TIA)/ischemic stroke.Methods: Patients within 24 h after symptom onset were prospectively enrolled based on the TIA/ischemic stroke database of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. The 1-year prognostic outcomes were composite adverse events (including ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, myocardial infarction, and all-cause death) and a combination of major disability and death [modified Rankin Scale (mRS), 3-6]. Cox proportional hazard and logistic regression models were used to evaluate the association between serum sST2 and TIA/ischemic stroke prognosis. The C statistic, net reclassification index (NRI), and integrated discrimination index (IDI) were used to present improvement in risk classification.Results: Serum sST2 levels were positively correlated with National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores. Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated a significantly different risk in composite adverse events between patients with higher and those with lower levels of sST2 ( P =0.006). Serum sST2 was an independent predictor for composite adverse events (HR: 2.517, 95% CI: 1.279-4.956, P =0.008) and major disability or death (OR: 3.126, 95% CI: 1.452-6.728, P =0.004) after multivariate adjustment. The addition of the sST2 to the NIHSS score significantly improved the predictive value for prognostic outcomes in patients with TIA/ischemic stroke (C statistic: 0.021, IDI: 1.91%, P =0.042 for composite adverse events; NRI: 32.82%, P =0.042 for major disability or death).Conclusions: Serum sST2 levels were positively associated with the severity of TIA/ischemic stroke and could independently predict composite adverse events and major disability or death, indicating that sST2 may be a potential prognostic marker for TIA/ischemic stroke.

Ferroelectric HfO2 attracts a huge amount of attention not only for memory and negative capacitance, but also for programmable logic including memory-in-logic and neuromorphic applications. However, the understanding of material fundamentals still needs to be improved. This paper gives material fundamentals and new insights to this ferroelectric material for future device applications. In particular, the key role of dopants, effects of the interface on the ferroelectric phase, and a detailed discussion of the switching kinetics are of central focus. Based on material properties newly obtained, we discuss opportunities of ferroelectric HfO 2 for device applications.

We study the effect of antitakeover provisions (ATPs) on innovation. To establish causality, we use a regression discontinuity approach that relies on locally exogenous variation generated by shareholder proposal votes. We find a positive, causal effect of ATPs on innovation. This positive effect is more pronounced in firms that are subject to a larger degree of information asymmetry and operate in more competitive product markets. The evidence suggests that ATPs help nurture innovation by insulating managers from short-term pressures arising from equity markets. Finally, the number of ATPs contributes positively to firm value for firms involved in intensive innovation activities.

We examine the effect of a firm's accessibility to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), captured by the firm's distance to it, on the materialization of the firm's innovation output. An increase in a firm's distance to the USPTO results in a longer time-to-patent-grant and a reduction in the quantity of patents owned. Accessibility is important for a firm's exploratory, but not for exploitative, innovation activity. The relation is more pronounced for first-time patent applicants, firms with a larger degree of information asymmetry, and before the launch of an electronic filing system. Finally, we show that market reacts positively to the opening of USPTO regional offices for innovation-intensive firms that enjoy a shorter distance to the USPTO, and that the contribution of a firm's patent portfolio to its equity value is larger when the firm is located closer to the USPTO. Our study demonstrates one strategy that firms can use to facilitate the materialization of their innovation outcomes, and highlights the importance of accessibility in fostering an effective innovation ecosystem.

We examine the effect of banks’ interventions on corporate innovation and firms’ value via the lens of debt covenant violations. Banks’ interventions have a significantly negative effect on...

Motivated by a theoretical model, we examine for 43 countries whether it is policy or policy uncertainty that affects technological innovation more. Innovation activities, measured by patent-based proxies, are not, on average, affected by which policy is in place. Innovation activities, however, drop significantly during times of policy uncertainty measured by national elections. The drop is greater for more influential innovations (citations in the right tail, exploratory rather than exploitative innovations) and for innovation-intensive industries. We use close presidential elections and ethnic fractionalization to address endogeneity concerns. We uncover the mechanism underlying the main result by showing that the number of patenting inventors decreases with policy uncertainty. Political compromise, we conclude, encourages innovation.

We examine the effect of foreign institutional investors on firm innovation. Using firm-level data across 26 non-U.S. economies between 2000 and 2010, we show that foreign institutional ownership has a positive, causal effect on firm innovation. We further explore three possible underlying mechanisms through which foreign institutions affect firm innovation: Foreign institutions act as active monitors, provide insurance for firm managers against innovation failures, and promote knowledge spillovers from high-innovation economies. Our article sheds new light on the real effects of foreign institutions on firm innovation.

We examine the effect of unionization on firm innovation, using a regression discontinuity design that relies on “locally” exogenous variation generated by elections that pass or fail by a small margin of votes. Passing a union election results in an 8.7% (12.5%) decline in patent quantity (quality) three years after the election. A reduction in R&D expenditures, reduced productivity of inventors, and departures of innovative inventors appear to be plausible underlying mechanisms through which unionization impedes firm innovation. In response to unionization, firms move their innovation activities away from states where union elections win. Our paper provides new insights into the real effects of unionization. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.

High levels of homocysteine are implicated in many neurovascular and neurodegeneration diseases. Epigallocatechin 3-gallate (EGCG), one of green tea polyphenols, has potential anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory activities. However, it has not been explored whether EGCG has an effect on homocysteine-induced neuro-inflammation and neurodegeneration. In this study, we investigated the effects of EGCG on memory deficit, oxidative stress, neuro-inflammation, and neurodegeneration in hyper-homocysteinemic rats after a 2 wk homocysteine injection by vena caudalis. We found that supplementation of EGCG could rescue deficit of spatial memory induced by homocysteine. Treatment of EGCG significantly reduced the expression of malondialdehyde, glial fibrillary acidic protein, tumor necrosis factor-α, and interleukin-1β and increased glutathione level in the homocysteine-treated group. In TdT-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay and Fluoro-Jade B staining, supplementation of EGCG could attenuate the apoptotic neurons and neurodegeneration. Interestingly, EGCG significantly ameliorated homocysteine-induced cerebrovascular injury. Our data suggest that EGCG could be a promising candidate for arresting homocysteine-induced neurodegeneration and neuro-inflammation in the brain.

Slow healing of gastric mucosa defects caused by endoscopic surgery is a common but severe clinical problem for lack of an effective treatment. Small intestinal submucosa (SIS) is a bio-derived extracellular matrix scaffold with remarkable repairing ability for soft tissue, but its rapid degradation and poor mechanical properties in the stomach environment limit its application for gastric mucosa regeneration. Herein, we modified SIS by genipin, a natural crosslinking agent, to improve its resistance against degradation in gastric juice and to promote the healing of gastric mucosa defects. The crosslinking characteristics of genipin-crosslinked SIS (GP-CR SIS) were evaluated by crosslinking degree, swelling ratio and FITR, respectively. GP-CR SIS was highly resistant to gastric juice digestion and had a great improvement in mechanical properties. Additionally, GP-CR SIS maintained excellent biocompatibility according to a cytotoxicity test, hemolysis test, and rat subcutaneous implant assay. In an in vivo study, we treated defected gastric mucosa with GP-CR SIS in a rabbit endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD)-related ulcer model. After two weeks of surgical treatment, GP-CR SIS significantly expedited wound closure and ameliorated newly constructed tissue by providing a protective microenvironment for rapid granulation tissue formation and accelerating angiogenesis/re-epithelialization. In conclusion, this study demonstrates the huge therapeutic potential of GP-CR SIS scaffolds for accelerating defected gastric mucosa regeneration.

Traumatic peripheral vascular injury is a significant cause of disability and death either in civilian environments or on the battlefield. Penetrating trauma and blunt trauma are the most common forms of vascular injuries. Besides, iatrogenic arterial injury (IAI) is another pattern of vascular trauma. The management of peripheral vascular injuries has been improved in different environments and wars. There are different types of vascular injuries, such as vasospasm, contusion, intimal flaps, intimal disruption or hematoma, external compression, laceration, transection and focal wall defects, etc. The main clinical manifestations of vascular injuries are shock following massive hemorrhage and limb necrosis due to tissue and organ ischemia. Ultrasound, computed tomography angiography (CTA) and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) are most valuable for assessment of peripheral vascular injuries. Angiography remains the gold standard for diagnosing vascular trauma. Immediate hemorrhage control and rapid restoration of blood flow are the primary goals of vascular trauma treatment. There are many operative treatment methods for vascular injuries, such as vascular suture or ligation, vascular wall repair and vascular reconstruction with blood vessel prostheses or vascular grafts. Embolization, balloon dilation and covered stent implantation are the main endovascular techniques. Surgical operation is still the primary treatment for vascular injuries. Endovascular treatment is a promising alternative, proved to be safe and effective, and preferred selection for patients. In summary, rapid diagnosis and timely surgical intervention remain the mainstays of the treatment. However, many issues need to be resolved by further studies. Keywords: Endovascular procedures, Surgical procedures, Operative, Peripheral vascular trauma

The influence of different stress methods on Metal-Oxide-Nitride-Oxide-Silicon (MONOS) layer breakdown was investigated. In this paper, two different stress modes, DC and AC stress, were applied to systematically study stress condition effects on MONOS breakdown. According to the electrical failure analysis (EFA) results, MONOS layer is more vulnerable to dielectric breakdown under AC stress due to its higher defects generation efficiency. Besides, the physical failure analysis (PFA) revealed different breakdown mechanisms for DC and AC stress modes. These results help understand different stress methods impact on 3D NAND flash reliability.

The electricity consumption forecasting (ECF) technology plays a crucial role in the electricity market. The support vector regression (SVR) is a nonlinear prediction model that can be used for ECF. The electricity consumption (EC) data are usually nonlinear and non-Gaussian and present outliers. The traditional SVR with the mean-square error (MSE), however, is insensitive to outliers and cannot correctly represent the statistical information of errors in non-Gaussian situations. To address this problem, a novel robust forecasting method is developed in this work by using the mixture maximum correntropy criterion (MMCC). The MMCC, as a novel cost function of information theoretic, can be used to solve non-Gaussian signal processing, therefore, in the original SVR, the MSE is replaced by the MMCC to develop a novel robust SVR method (called MMCCSVR) for ECF. Besides, the factors influencing users&rsquo, EC are investigated by a data statistical analysis method. We find that the historical temperature and historical EC are the main factors affecting future EC, and thus these two factors are used as the input in the proposed model. Finally, real EC data from a shopping mall in Guangzhou, China, are utilized to test the proposed ECF method. The forecasting results show that the proposed ECF method can effectively improve the accuracy of ECF compared with the traditional SVR and other forecasting algorithms.

The ferroelectricity in fluorite-structure type oxide thin films can be attributed to the stabilization of a noncentrosymmetric orthorhombic phase (space group: Pca21), which is a nonequilibrium phase of bulk HfO2 or ZrO2. Various mechanisms, including surface or interface/grain boundary energy and film stress, have been suggested to stabilize the metastable ferroelectric phase, and kinetic mechanisms have been shown to inhibit the formation of the stable monoclinic phase. Film thickness has been demonstrated to be a critical factor that strongly influences the structure and ferroelectric response of films. Although the film thickness is a key factor for the formation of the ferroelectric phase in fluorite-structure type thin films, details of it have not been clearly elucidated yet. In this chapter, the existing literature on the thickness-dependent ferroelectricity in fluorite-type oxides is comprehensively reviewed, and the previous studies to mitigate the thickness effects are discussed.

The current expansion of China's venture capital (VC) market has chugged into its 10th year in 2019. The mystery of developing from nothing to the second largest market in the world yet fails to make China's VC market more attractive to researchers in this field. Our chapter is attempting to trigger more related research in the near future by first taking a snapshot of such a titan and distilling the central message of what the data have to say about the unique aspects of Chinese venture capitalists raising capital, making deals, and finding exits. We also provide an introduction to alternative forms to traditional VC investments in China and put an end to the chapter with a brief overview of the regulatory environment change for the industry.

Anaerobic digestion is an attractive waste treatment technology, achieving both pollution control and energy recovery. Though the inhibition of polystyrene nanoplastics in anaerobic granular sludge is well studied, no direct evidence has been found on the interaction of methanogens and nanoplastics. In this study, to characterize the location of nanoplastics, Pd-doped polystyrene nanoplastics (Pd-PS) were used to explore the inhibition mechanism of anaerobic sludge through short-term exposure to Methanosarcina acetivorans C2A. The results showed that Pd-PS inhibited the methanogenesis of the anaerobic sludge, and the methane production decreased as the Pd-PS increased, with a 14.29% reduction at the Pd-PS concentration of 2.36 × 1010 particles/mL. Also, Pd-PS interacted with the protein in the extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). Furthermore, Pd-PS inhibited the methanogenesis of M. acetivorans C2A without exhibiting an evident reduction in the growth. The inhibition of Pd-PS on methane was due to the inhibition of methane production related genes, MtaA and mcrA. These results provide potential explication for the inhibition of nanoplastics on the methanogens, which will fulfill the knowledge on the stability of methanogens under the short-term exposure of nanoplastics.

We reported a high-power pure Kerr-lens mode-locked Yb:CALYO laser based on the dual-confocal cavity delivering sub-100-fs pulses. The output pulses at 81 MHz have an average power of 10.4 W and the pulse duration of 98 fs, corresponding to the peak power of 1.14 MW. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest average power ever reported for a Kerr-lens mode-locked Yb-bulk oscillator. Analysis of the dual-confocal cavity was also conducted, which indicates a way to achieve higher average power. We believe the result described in this Letter may pave a way to develop Kerr-lens mode-locked bulk lasers with much higher average power.

Nowadays, various wind power forecasting methods have been developed to improve wind power utilization. Most of these techniques are designed based on the mean square error (MSE) loss, which are very suitable for the assumption that the error distribution obeys the Gaussian distribution. However, there are many outliers in real wind power data due to many uncertain factors such as weather, temperature, and other random factors. Meanwhile, the highly nonlinear process of converting wind energy into wind power may changes the statistical characteristics of errors. Therefore, the prediction model established based on the traditional MSE loss may lead to unsatisfactory results. As a result, a robust short-term wind power hybrid forecasting model based on Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) neural network with Correntropy combining an improved variational mode decomposition (IVMD) and Sample Entropy (SE) is proposed in this work. The IVMD in which the parameter K in the IVMD is determined by the Maximum Correntropy Criterion (MCC) is used to decompose the original wind power data and the decomposed subseries is reconstructed by SE to improve the prediction efficiency. Then the MCC is also utilized to replace the MSE in the classic LSTM network to develop a novel robust hybrid model to forecast the wind power. Finally, four experiments were conducted using real data from two wind farms in China at different sampling intervals to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and the results show that proposed method is more effective than other traditional methods.

Potato protease inhibitors (PPIs) isolate, a major recovery protein from starch waste-water, possesses promising bio-activity and attracts growing attention. In this study, PPIs was extracted with a simple and cost-saving procedure, coupling salting out precipitation and isoelectric point precipitation. Antioxidant activity of PPIs isolate was evaluated by different methods. It displayed the good capacity for scavenging toward ABTS radicals (IC50 = 0.02 mg/mL) and inhibition of lipid peroxidation (IC50 = 0.30 mg/mL), especially, the IC50 was lower than that of ascorbic acid (VC, IC50 = 0.44 mg/mL) and tocopherol (VE, IC50 = 0.34 mg/mL). Moreover, the ABTS radicals scavenging ability remained high level at 50 °C and a pH range of 6–11; the inhibition of lipid peroxidation was stable at 25 °C and a pH range of 2–8. And all the antioxidant activities possessed satisfactory stability under ultrahigh-pressure condition. The results present great potential of PPIs as a high-quality protein with antioxidant function and to be used in functional foods.

Information-based theories of financial intermediation focus on delegated monitoring. However, there is little evidence on how markets discipline intermediaries who fail at this function. We exploit the direct link between corporate fraud and monitoring failure and examine how a venture capital (VC) firm׳s reputation is affected when it fails to prevent fraud in its portfolio companies. We find that reputation-damaged VCs interact differently in the future with their limited partners, other VCs, and IPO underwriters because they are perceived as ineffective monitors. In addition, VCs that fail to prevent fraud experience greater difficulty in taking future portfolio companies public.

Sacrificial anode protection of stainless steel is required in severe application environment. In this paper, two kinds of Fe-based sacrificial anodes (20CrMo and 20CrMn) were used to protect 310S stainless steel. Protective effects were evaluated through constant current test and self-discharge test. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS) were used to analyze the surface morphology and element composition of 310S cathodes after the tests. Experimental result indicates that both Fe-based sacrificial anodes have a driving voltage over 500mV, which enables a longer life than those of the Al-based or Zn-based anodes. The 20CrMo sacrificial anode presented more stable working potential, better state of activation and more uniform corrosion behavior than 20CrMn sacrificial anode did. The 310S cathode protected by 20CrMo had smoother surface and less oxide formation on the substrate.

Three combinations of molecular chaperones from Escherichia coli (i.e., DnaK-DnaJ-GrpEGroEL- GroES, GroEL-GroES, and DnaK-DnaJ-GrpE) were overproduced in E. coli BL21, and their in vitro stabilizing effects on a nitrile hydratase (NHase) were assessed. The optimal gene combination, E. coli groEL-groES (ecgroEL-ES), was introduced into Rhodococcus ruber TH3. A novel engineered strain, R. ruber TH3G was constructed with the native NHase gene on its chromosome and the heterologous ecgroEL-ES genes in a shuttle plasmid. In R. ruber TH3G, NHase activity was enhanced 37.3% compared with the control, TH3. The in vivo stabilizing effect of ecGroEL-ES on the NHase was assessed using both acrylamide immersion and heat shock experiments. The inactivation behavior of the in vivo NHase after immersion in a solution of dynamically increased concentrations of acrylamide was particularly evident. When the acrylamide concentration was increased to 500 g/l (50%), the remaining NHase activity in TH3G was 38%, but in TH3, activity was reduced to 10%. Reactivation of the in vivo NHases after varying degrees of inactivation was further assessed. The activity of the reactivated NHase was more than 2-fold greater in TH3G than in TH3. The hydration synthesis of acrylamide catalyzed by the in vivo NHase was performed with continuous acrylonitrile feeding. The final concentration of acrylamide was 640 g/l when catalyzed by TH3G, compared with 490 g/l acrylamide by TH3. This study is the first to show that the chaperones ecGroEL-ES work well in Rhodococcus and simultaneously possess protein-folding assistance functions and the ability to stabilize and reactivate the native NHases.

In this paper, we examine how the geographic location of firms affects acquisition decisions and value creation for acquirers in takeover transactions. We find that firms located in an urban area are more likely to receive a takeover bid and complete a takeover transaction as a target than firms located in rural areas, and takeover deals involving an urban target are associated with higher acquirer announcement returns, after controlling for the proximity between the target and the acquirer. In addition, a target's urban location significantly attenuates the negative effect of a long distance between the target and the acquirer on acquirer returns, a fact that is documented in the existing literature. Our findings reveal a previously underexplored force—firm location—that can affect takeover transactions, in addition to proximity. Our paper suggests that a firm's location plays an important role in facilitating the dissemination of soft information and enhancing information-based synergies.

A convenient, high efficient method for the reduction of 4-azidonaphthalimide to 4-aminonaphthalimide (1) by using PMe3 has been developed. Several 4-substituted 1,8-naphthalimide iminophosphoranes were also successfully synthesized. Their structures were characterized by NMR and MS analyses. The structures of compounds 2 and 3 were also confirmed by single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. Their optoelectronic properties of these naphthalimides were investigated. The results indicated that their optical properties could be tuned by different phosphine ligands, which make them novel potential organic luminescent materials.

We examine the real effect of partial privatization on corporate innovation. To establish causality, we explore plausibly exogenous variation in the expectation of further partial privatization generated by China's split share structure reform, which mandatorily converts non-tradable shares into freely tradable shares and opens up the gate to the further privatization of state-owned enterprises. We find that partial privatization prospects have a positive effect on corporate innovation. A better alignment of the interests of government agents with those of private shareholders and improved stock price informativeness appear to be two plausible underlying mechanisms. Our paper sheds new light on the real effects of partial privatization.

The effects of gate oxide traps on gate leakage current and device performance of metal–oxide–nitride–oxide–silicon (MONOS)-structured NAND flash memory are investigated through Sentaurus TCAD. The trap-assisted tunneling (TAT) model is implemented to simulate the leakage current of MONOS-structured memory cell. In this study, trap position, trap density, and trap energy are systematically analyzed for ascertaining their influences on gate leakage current, program/erase speed, and data retention properties. The results show that the traps in blocking layer significantly enhance the gate leakage current and also facilitates the cell program/erase. Trap density ∼ 1018 cm−3 and trap energy ∼ 1 eV in blocking layer can considerably improve cell program/erase speed without deteriorating data retention. The result conduces to understanding the role of gate oxide traps in cell degradation of MONOS-structured NAND flash memory.

Manganese and ammonium pollution in surface water sources has become a serious issue. In this study, a pilot-scale filtration system was used to investigate the effect of ammonium on manganese removal during the simultaneous removal of ammonium and manganese from surface water using a manganese co-oxide filter film (MeO

This paper examines the effect of the sharing economy on entrepreneurship. Using Airbnb’s penetration across counties as a proxy for the growth of the sharing economy and venture capital infusions interacted with local tourism as an instrument, we find that Airbnb spurs firm creation. A plausible underlying channel is that Airbnb facilitates short-term rental, which relaxes the financial constraint of potential entrepreneurs. Increases in entrepreneurs’ risk tolerance, local demand, and collateral value caused by Airbnb penetration do not appear to explain our main findings. Airbnb also create new jobs and promotes local employment rate.

We analyze the role of trademarks in entrepreneurial finance, hypothesizing that trademarks play two important roles: a “protective” role, leading to better product market performance; and an “informational” role, signaling higher firm quality to investors. We develop testable hypotheses relating the trademarks held by private firms to characteristics of venture capital (VC) investment in them, their probability of successful exit, IPO and secondary market valuations, institutional investor IPO participation, post-IPO operating performance, and post-IPO information asymmetry. We test these hypotheses using a large and unique dataset of trademarks held by VC-backed private firms and present causal evidence supporting them.

This paper attempts to study the causal effect of examiner busyness on patent quality and firm value. Using a broad set of patent quality measures, we document strong evidence that patents allowed by busy examiners exhibit significantly lower quality. Further, examiner busyness of firms’ patents negatively predicts the firms’ future stock returns, which is consistent with investor underreaction to examiner busyness. Examiners’ experience helps attenuate the negative effect of examiner busyness.

This paper explores how a prominent place-based policy in China, the national high-tech zones, affects local innovation output and entrepreneurial activities. Making use of staggered establishments of national high-tech zones in various Chinese cities, we find that the establishment of national high-tech zones has positive effects on local innovation output and entrepreneurial activities. A number of additional tests suggest that the effects appear causal. Access to finance, reductions in administrative burdens, and talent cultivation are three plausible underlying economic channels. Our paper sheds new light on the evaluation of the effectiveness of China’s place-based policies.

We examine a dark side of corporate venture capital (CVC) programs. Relying on plausibly exogenous variation in passive institutional ownership generated by Russell 1000/2000 index reconstitutions, we show that firms with larger passive institutional ownership cut their CVC investment. This effect is more pronounced for firms with severer managerial agency problems. Further tests show that passive institutional investors induce firms to cut CVC investment in startups that are unrelated to the firms’ core businesses and are of low quality, and when firms have poor track record on CVC investment. By doing so, firm value increases. Our paper uncovers a previously under-explored dark side of CVC programs, their giving rise to managerial agency problems, and helps provide a more complete picture when evaluating CVC programs.

5-nm-Thick ferroelectric Y-doped HfO2 was intensively studied. The thickness dependence of ferroelectric properties indicates that stable ferroelectric characteristics are maintained down to 5-nm-thick by taking care of doping and capping effects. Furthermore, the cycling performance shows no wake-up behavior, no obvious degradation after 108 cycles. These results not only enable us to use ferroelectric HfO 2 for practical application, but also point out intrinsic properties in ultrathin ferroelectric HfO 2 film from materials science point of view.

The subject headings is an approach that improves information search accuracy and comprehensiveness to ap- proach multi-language search and intellectualized concept retrieval. Using this method in network information retrieval tool will improve the efficiency of information retrieval. This paper proposes an idea of calculating the similarity based on the relationship among the words in the subject headings. Utilizing query extension, we create a MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)-based Biomedical Information Semantic Retrieval Model (MBISRM). Finally, we compare the results from MBISRM and Baidu in two category realms. The search results from MBISRM are preferable to that of Baidu overall. This paper offers a new stream of thought on applying subject headings in network information system.

We exploit the deregulation of interstate bank branching laws to test whether banking competition affects innovation. We find robust evidence that banking competition reduces state-level innovation by public corporations headquartered within deregulating states. Innovation increases among private firms that are dependent on external finance and that have limited access to credit from local banks. We argue that banking competition enables small, innovative firms to secure financing instead of being acquired by public corporations. Therefore, banking competition reduces the supply of innovative targets, which reduces the portion of state-level innovation attributable to public corporations. Overall, these results shed light on the real effects of banking competition and the determinants of innovation.