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Exploiting Google's 2010 withdrawal from mainland China, we examine the causal impact of information accessibility on export quality, and find that export quality decreases after Google's exit. The effect is more pronounced for firms and products facing greater information frictions, for firms in regions with local web filters, for firms trading with countries with more online information, and for firms facing fiercer product market competition. The more intensively affected firms also become less productive and their capital intensity declines after Google's exit. Overall, these results suggest that limited information accessibility may impair a country's international competitiveness through deteriorating export quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanoporous gold (NPG) is a promising catalytic material for the oxidation of CO and methanol applications. However, NPGs are prone to extensive macroscopic cracking that often decrease mechanic properties of NPGs and depresses their catalytic action. To produce crack-free NPG with an ultra-finer porosity in room temperature, the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was added in electrochemical dealloying process. SDS has the effect of reducing the surface diffusion of gold which hinder the initial coarsening of ligaments and prevents interior silver atoms from being exposed and dissolved. As a result, the pore and ligment size are finer, but higher residual silver of NPG samples. NPG with pore size down to 2 nm and the ligament 4.0 nm was successfully fabricated with 13.32 mM SDS in perchloric acid solution. The surface diffusion coefficient of Au atoms was 1.6 × 10−24 m2·s−1, nearly 3 orders of magnitude smaller than that of Au atoms in the absence of SDS (2.8 × 10−21 m2·s−1). Nanoindentation results demonstrated that high residual silver content made NPG samples harder and stiffer，the specific surface areas of NPG with 6.66 mM SDS was 190 m2 g−1 by BET. This work provided very important clues on how to control the crack free ultrafine nanoporous structure of other materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Batch time requirements are provided for the separation of binary zeotropic mixtures in two different multivessel columns (with and without vapor bypass), a non-cyclic two-vessel column and a regular batch column based on dynamic simulations. The first three columns are operated as closed (total reflux) systems and the regular batch column is operated as an open (partial reflux) system. We analyze the effects of feed composition, relative volatility and product specification on the time requirements. The multivessel arrangements perform better than the regular batch column, which requires from 4.00 to 34.67% more time to complete a given separation. The elimination of the vapor bypass in the multivessel column is impractical though it has a positive effect on the batch time requirements. Thus, the multivessel column, with the vapor stream bypassing the intermediate vessel, is proposed as the best candidate for a binary zeotropic mixture with low concentration of light component, low relative volatility and high product purity demand. Furthermore, an experimental multivessel column with vapor bypass is built and the corresponding experiments verify the simulations.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5957.2009.02153.x Byline: K.C. Chen (1), Guangzhong Li (1), Lifan Wu (1) Keywords: cross listing; China; Hong Kong; price discovery; A-shares; H-shares Abstract: Abstract: This study extends the cross-listing literature by examining how, and to what extent, the trading of cross-listed China-backed ADRs on the New York Stock Exchange contributes to information flows and price discovery for the corresponding stocks traded in China's A-share market. We find that the cross-listed US prices and Chinese prices are not cointegrated in the long-run and the home market plays a far more important role in both price discovery and volatility spillover than does the US market. The home bias hypothesis still holds for the segmented Chinese A-share market and the location where price discovery actually originates is the essential factor in the process of international information transmission. Author Affiliation: (1)The authors are respectively from California State University, Fresno; City University of New York; and California State University, Los Angeles and Zhongshan University, China. They would like to thank Peter Pope (editor) and an anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggesstions. All errors remain the authors' own. Article History: (Paper received October 2006, revised version accepted April 2009) Article note: (*) Address for correspondence: K.C. Chen, Craig School of Business, California State University, Fresno, CA 93740, USA., e-mail: kchen@csufresno.edu