This study uses greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data to investigate the effect of carbon risk on the cost of equity capital. The Korean government launched the GHG Energy Target Management Scheme in ...2010 and required designated companies to report GHG data verified by third-party sources. An empirical analysis of a sample of 379 firms from the period 2007 to 2011 suggests the following: carbon intensity (proxy for carbon risk) is positively related to the cost of equity capital. Additionally, the effect of carbon intensity on the cost of equity capital is no different between companies that voluntarily disclosed sustainability reports and those that did not. Finally, the effect of carbon intensity on the cost of equity capital is lower for individual firms that belong to industrial sectors with large GHG emissions in terms of volume. This result has an important implication for the companies' CEOs, management, policymakers, and investors. Companies' efforts to improve carbon productivity are suggestively compensated by the reduction in the cost of capital, which then increases the firm's value. The results are also indicative of how the effective management of GHG lessens the negative effect of carbon risk on the cost of equity capital.
There is a dearth of research on corporate governance and total sustainability disclosure (economic, environmental, and social) in developing, particularly South Asian, countries. This is unique ...cross-country research on South Asian countries’ corporate governance elements and total sustainability disclosure practices. The study considers a set of insightful theories, namely, the signaling and agency theories of understanding the motives and drivers of sustainability reporting. Based on data from the Global Reporting Initiative database, the study analyzes Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. We have collected annual report and sustainability reports from the GRI database for the period between 2009 and 2016. Based on the signaling and agency theories, the study investigates how board and shareholding structures convey signals to the market and different stakeholders. Our empirical results find that total sustainability disclosure has a positive and significant relationship with foreign shareholding, institutional shareholding, board independence, and board size. On the other hand, we document that director shareholding is negatively but significantly associated with total sustainability disclosure. Therefore, we conclude that corporate governance elements have very strong influential power to send positive signals to the market that lead to reduced information asymmetry and ensuring honest signals from different stakeholders.
We analyzed metabolites from a 50% aqueous methanol extract of green teas treated with different shade periods (0, 15, 18, and 20 days) to investigate the effect of low light on their nutritional and ...sensory qualities. The shaded groups could be clearly distinguished from the control (0 day), and the 20 day group was separated from the 15 and 18 day groups. The shade treatment increased quercetin-galactosylrutinoside, kaempferol-glucosylrutinoside, epicatechin gallate, epigallocatechin gallate, tryptophan, phenylalanine, theanine, glutamine, glutamate, and caffeine levels but decreased quercetin-glucosylrutinoside, kaempferol-glucoside, gallocatechin, and epigallocatechin levels. Further studies on the nutritional benefits of these metabolites are needed. However, this result, along with the sensory evaluation and color measurement data, suggests that shade treatment improves the nutritional and sensory quality of green tea. Thus, we proposed a metabolomic pathway related to the effect of low light, which could elucidate the relationship between low light and tea quality.
► Catechins decreased during tea fermentation and it resulted in increase of tannins. ► Caffeine was higher in green tea due to the loss during tea fermentation. ► Total soluble phenolics and ...antioxidant capacity decreased during fermentation. ► Tea fermentation significantly changed the profile of volatile aroma compounds.
Monomeric flavonoids (flavan 3-ols or tea catechins) present in Camellia sinensis leaf are transformed to polymeric theaflavin and thearubigin by oxidation occurring during tea fermentation. The distinctive colour, decreased bitterness and astringency, and characteristic flavour are derived from the fermentation process giving fermented teas a marked distinction from non-fermented green tea. Even though teas are available in many different fermentation levels from green to black, the difference in phytochemicals and volatile compounds in teas with different degrees of fermentation has not been fully investigated yet within the same tea leaf. The objective of this study was to observe non-volatile phytochemicals including polyphenolic and volatile compounds changes by oxidation under strict processing control and to evaluate the degree of fermentation for the maximum antioxidant capacity with the same tea material. Harvested tea leaf was immediately processed to different degrees of oxidative fermentation (0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%). Tea infusions brewed with each processed tea leaf were analysed for polyphenolic profile, total soluble phenolics, antioxidant capacity, and volatile profile using LC–MS, HPLC, Folin–Ciocalteu assay, Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC), and GC–MS analyses. The flavonoids in non-fermented green tea were significantly lessened during the oxidative fermentation process and the decreased monomeric flavonoids were transformed to polymeric theaflavin and thearubigin as the leaves were more processed. Total soluble phenolics and antioxidant capacity were significantly higher as tea leaves were less processed with a high correlation with individual polyphenolic changes. Volatile compounds present in tea leaf were analysed by GC–MS to observe changes due to processing and were utilised to create a model to differentiate fermentation based on volatile composition. Twenty-four compounds were used to build an initial model which was optimised to 16 compounds with complete separation of the groups using discriminant function analysis. The data suggested that fermentation diminished antioxidant capacity of tea and could result in lowering potential health benefits from flavonoids. This result should be considered for tea manufacturing and the development of functional foods desiring maximum potential health benefits from antioxidant flavonoids in tea.
While there has been a sufficient amount of research and empirical evidence on the factors that influence a company's decisions to voluntarily disclose carbon information, little research has been ...done on the carbon disclosure practices of ETS-affected companies, in Asian countries, in particular. Considering this, it is essential to shed light on more diverse linkages between carbon performance and voluntary carbon disclosure (VCD) under ETSs taking into account the specific context of each individual country. Drawing on the Korean ETS-affected companies with a contents analysis of their sustainable reports from 2015 to 2019, the present research seeks to address the existing knowledge gaps in the current literature on carbon disclosure. In doing so, hierarchical ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis is used to infer causality and assess the findings. The findings empirically prove a positive relationship between carbon performance and VCD, which means that the affected companies under the Korean ETS are likely to disclose more when they have favorable carbon reduction performance. Furthermore, this link tends to be amplified for companies with a high percentage of foreign sales, while the role of media visibility interacts differently with carbon performance in influencing VCD.
► This is a first report of Alnus firma as Pb hyperaccumulator. ► Alnus firma is a suitable for metal phytostabilization and Pb hyperaccumulation. ► Bacillus tubingenisis is an efficient PGP ...entophytic bacterium. ► B. tubingenisis showed good heavy metal removal efficiency from mine tailing. ► B. tubingenisis enhanced the growth and heavy metal accumulation of A. firma.
Phytoremediation shows potential for remediating mine tailing sites contaminated with heavy metals. Our aim was to isolate, characterize, and assess the potential of endophytic bacteria to enhance growth and metal accumulation by the hyperaccumulator Alnus firma. A bacterial strain isolated from roots of Pinus sylvestris had the capacity to remove heavy metals from mine tailing and was identified as Bacillus thuringiensis GDB-1 based on 16S ribosomal DNA sequencing. GDB-1 exhibited plant growth-promoting traits, including 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) deaminase activity, indole acetic acid (IAA) and siderophore production, and P solubilization. The efficiency of GDB-1 to remove heavy metals was influenced by pH and initial metal concentration. Removal capacity (mg/l) was 77% for Pb (100), 64% for Zn (50), 34% for As (50), 9% for Cd (10), 8% for Cu (10), and 8% for Ni (10) during the active growth cycle in heavy metal-amended, mine tailing extract medium. Inoculating soil with GDB-1 significantly increased biomass, chlorophyll content, nodule number, and heavy metal (As, Cu, Pb, Ni, and Zn) accumulation in A. firma seedlings. Results indicate that inoculating the native plant A. firma with B. thuringiensis GDB-1 improves its efficiency for phytoremediation of soil containing mine tailings contaminated with heavy metals.
Most existing commercial real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) instruments are bulky because they contain expensive fluorescent detection sensors or complex optical structures. In this paper, ...we propose an RT-PCR system using a camera module for smartphones that is an ultra small, high-performance and low-cost sensor for fluorescence detection. The proposed system provides stable DNA amplification. A quantitative analysis of fluorescence intensity changes shows the camera’s performance compared with that of commercial instruments. Changes in the performance between the experiments and the sets were also observed based on the threshold cycle values in a commercial RT-PCR system. The overall difference in the measured threshold cycles between the commercial system and the proposed camera was only 0.76 cycles, verifying the performance of the proposed system. The set calibration even reduced the difference to 0.41 cycles, which was less than the experimental variation in the commercial system, and there was no difference in performance.
The objective of this study is to design and synthesize substituted η
-chromium(0) tricarbonyl metal complexes carrying
-carborane units as potential boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) agents. In ...this study, 1,2-diphenyl-
-carborane (
) units were used as starting materials to generate biologically active species. We investigated how the structural changes of
substituted with chromium(0) tricarbonyl affect the biological properties, and 1-(Phenyl-η
-chromium(0) tricarbonyl)-2-phenyl-
-carborane (
) and 1,2-bis(phenyl-η
-chromium(0) tricarbonyl)-
-carborane (
) species were produced in moderate yields. The molecular structures of compounds
-
were identified and established by infrared (IR);
H,
B, and
C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and X-ray crystallography analyses. Crystal structures of 1,2-diphenyl-
-carborane and the corresponding chromium complexes
,
, and
were obtained. In an in vitro study using B16 and CT26 cancer cells containing the triphenyl-
-carboranyl chromium(0) complexes
and
, which we reported previously, compounds
and
accumulated at higher levels than compounds
and
. However, the phenylated
-carboranyl chromium complexes have been found to be more cytotoxic than
-boronophenylalanine (BPA).
The lack of portability and high cost of multiplex real-time PCR systems limits the device to be used in POC. To overcome this issue, this paper proposes a compact and cost-effective fluorescence ...detection system that can be integrated to a multiplex real-time PCR equipment. An open platform camera with embedded lens was used instead of photodiodes or an industrial camera. A compact filter wheel using a sliding tape is integrated, and the excitation LEDs are fixed at a 45° angle near the PCR chip, eliminating the need of additional filter wheels. The results show precise positioning of the filter wheel with an error less than 20 μm. Fluorescence detection results using a reference dye and standard DNA amplification showed comparable performance to that of the photodiode system.
With the active development of mobile devices, a variety of ultra-small, high-definition, and open platform-based cameras are being mass-produced. In this paper, we established an emulation system to ...verify the bio-imaging performance of the bulky and expensive high-performance cameras and various smartphone cameras that have been used in bio-imaging devices. In the proposed system, the linearity of the brightness gradient change of four types of cameras was compared and analyzed. Based on these results, three cameras were selected in order of excellent linearity, and gel image analysis results were compared.
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