This article investigates the profitability of Japanese banks following the major financial crisis that affected the country's economy in the mid-1990s. Further, it examines the determinants of bank profitability for a sample of banks with different ownership structures (City, Trust, Regional, Second Association Regional, Shinkin and Other Credit Cooperatives). We find evidence that well capitalized, efficient banks, with lower credit risks tend to outperform less capitalized, less efficient counterparts with higher credit risks. Second Association Regional banks and Shinkin banks (but not other ownership types) appear to benefit from diversification advantages which feed through to profitability. Furthermore, we find that industry concentration, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and the extent of stock market development play an important role in determining the profitability of Japanese banks.

The CODA 8-Channel High Throughput Non-Invasive Blood Pressure system measures the blood pressure in up to 8 mice or rats simultaneously. The CODA tail-cuff system uses Volume Pressure Recording (VPR) to measure the blood pressure by determining the tail blood volume. A specially designed differential pressure transducer and an occlusion tail-cuff measure the total blood volume in the tail without the need to obtain the individual pulse signal. Special attention is afforded to the length of the occlusion cuff in order to derive the most accurate blood pressure readings. VPR can easily obtain readings on dark-skinned rodents, such as C57BL6 mice and is MRI compatible. The CODA system provides you with measurements of six (6) different blood pressure parameters; systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, mean blood pressure, tail blood flow, and tail blood volume. Measurements can be made on either awake or anesthetized mice or rats. The CODA system includes a controller, laptop computer, software, cuffs, animal holders, infrared warming pads, and an infrared thermometer. There are seven different holder sizes for mice as small as 8 grams to rats as large as 900 grams.

We examine the effects of bank's political connection on bank performance and risk in China. We use hand-collected information on CEOs' professional background to identify their political affiliations, and find that banks whose CEOs have former government experiences have higher return on assets, lower default risk, and lower credit risk. Additionally, politically connected banks have disproportionally higher performance when the CEOs previous worked in the same city where the current bank's headquarter locates, had past banking experiences, spend more on entertainment and travel costs, and have higher previous administrative rankings (e.g., at the provincial or state level). These results suggest that politically connected banks have better access to lending to politically connected firms, which are high yield assets and more likely to be bailed out when in distress. Our results offer a mechanism of political rent seeking, consistent with the institutional environment of China's banking and political system.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging as an attractive paradigm, a typical IoT architecture that U2IoT (Unit IoT and Ubiquitous IoT) model has been presented for the future IoT. Based on the U2IoT model, this paper proposes a cyber-physical-social based security architecture (IPM) to deal with Information, Physical, and Management security perspectives, and presents how the architectural abstractions support U2IoT model. In particular, 1) an information security model is established to describe the mapping relations among U2IoT, security layer, and security requirement, in which social layer and additional intelligence and compatibility properties are infused into IPM; 2) physical security referring to the external context and inherent infrastructure are inspired by artificial immune algorithms; 3) recommended security strategies are suggested for social management control. The proposed IPM combining the cyber world, physical world and human social provides constructive proposal towards the future IoT security and privacy protection.

Classical charge transport, such as longitudinal and Hall currents in weak magnetic fields, is usually not affected by quantum phenomena. Yet relativistic quantum mechanics is at the heart of the spin-orbit interaction, which has been at the forefront of efforts to realize spin-based electronics, new phases of matter, and topological quantum computing. In this work we demonstrate that quantum spin dynamics induced by the spin-orbit interaction is directly observable in classical charge transport. We determine the Hall coefficient R_{H} of two-dimensional hole systems at low magnetic fields and show that it has a sizable spin-orbit contribution, which depends on the density p, is independent of temperature, is a strong function of the top gate electric field, and can reach ∼20% of the total. We provide a general method for extracting the spin-orbit parameter from magnetotransport data, applicable even at higher temperatures where Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations and weak antilocalization are difficult to observe. Our work will enable experimentalists to measure spin-orbit parameters without requiring large magnetic fields, ultralow temperatures, or optical setups.

(2016) Bank regulation, financial crisis, and the announcement effects of seasoned equity offerings of US commercial banks. Journal of Financial Stability, 25, pp. 37-46. (doi:10.1016Stability, 25, pp. 37-46. (doi:10. /j.jfs.2016 This is the author's final accepted version.There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it.http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/120226/ This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Bank Regulation, Financial Crisis, and the Announcement Effects of Seasoned Equity Offerings of US Commercial BanksHui * Corresdonding author Highlight for ReviewThe paper investigates that the cumulative abnormal stock returns around seasonal equity offerings (SEO) announcement for banks vs. nonbanks using a sample of U.S. commercial banks and non-banks between 1982 and 2012. Our find that the SEO announcement effects are significantly higher than those of non-banks, consistent with the hypothesis that bank regulation reduces reduce the likelihood that bank SEOs signal overpriced equity. In addition, the propensity score matching-based difference-in-difference analysis indicates that this difference is reduced during the 2007-09 global financial crisis period and increased after the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. Our results have important implications on the impact of bank regulation and financial crisis on bank SEOs.Our study contributes to the literature in several ways. We first contribute to the debate over whether bank regulation could boost investor confidence and reduce firm equity issuing costs. Our results that banks have higher SEO announcement effects confirm Slovin et al.'s (1991) suggestion that banks are frequent equity issuers due to the low issuing costs. Our results also complement Smith's (1986) findings that utility firms, which operate in a highly regulated industry, also experience relatively higher SEO announcement effects than their less regulated counterparts. Our study offers credence to the theory that regulation could influence investors' perception of information asymmetry between investors and firm managers. To highlight the significance of regulation, we further focus on recent events, such as the financial crisis and the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, to explore their impact on the difference between bank and non-bank SEO announcement stock returns. We find that issuing costs increase during the financial crisis period and decrease when government regulation tightens.Our paper also extends the work of Polonchek et al. (1989), who find that the mean abnormal r...

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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the adjustment model of expatriates in overseas projects by studying two overseas projects of a Chinese state-owned enterprise.Design/methodology/approachBased on the grounded theory, qualitative analysis was performed based on data compiled from 116 pieces of project briefings, 105 questionnaires answered by expatriate workers and 21 interviews conducted to those workers based on briefings and questionnaires.FindingsThe study found that the simulated home is a standard cross-cultural adjustment model for expatriates in Chinese engineering projects, which are project-oriented and often inattentive to employees' individual rights. The simulated home creates a unique work-place and social environment similar to that of expatriates' home country in the cultural setting of the host country, but it also establishes a cultural barrier, limiting the communication between expatriates and the local people, which is not conducive to the cultural exchange between the two sides, causing cultural clashes and consequently hindering the progress of projects.Originality/valueThis research puts forward the model of “simulated home.” And this study bears significance to the cross-cultural adjustment of expatriate workers in Chinese overseas projects.