• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.559-575
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• 2014

Individual investors are increasingly flocking to message boards to seek, clarify, and exchange information. Businesses like Seekingalpha.com and business magazines like Fortune are evaluating, synthesizing, and reporting the comments made on message boards or blogs. In March of 2012, Yahoo! Finance Message Boards recorded 45 million unique visitors per month followed by AOL Money and Finance (19.8 million), and Google Finance (1.6 million) [McIntyre, 2012]. Previous studies in the finance literature suggest that online communities often provide more accurate information than analyst forecasts [Bagnoli et al., 1999; Clarkson et al., 2006]. Some studies empirically show that the volume of posts in online communities have a positive relationship with market activities (e.g., trading volumes) [Antweiler and Frank, 2004; Bagnoli et al., 1999; Das and Chen, 2007; Tumarkin and Whitelaw, 2001]. The findings indicate that information in online communities does impact investors' investment decisions and trading behaviors. However, research explicating the correlation between information on online communities and stock market activities (e.g., trading volume) is still evolving. Thus, it is important to ask whether a volume of posts on online communities influences trading volumes and whether trading volumes also influence these communities. Online stock message boards offer two different types of information, which can be explained using an economic and a psychological perspective. From a purely economic perspective, one would expect that stock message boards would have a beneficial effect, since they provide timely information at a much lower cost [Bagnoli et al., 1999; Clarkson et al., 2006; Birchler and Butler, 2007]. This indicates that information in stock message boards may provide valuable information investors can use to predict stock market activities and thus may use to make better investment decisions. On the other hand, psychological studies have shown that stock message boards may not necessarily make investors more informed. The related literature argues that confirmation bias causes investors to seek other investors with the same opinions on these stock message boards [Chen and Gu, 2009; Park et al., 2013]. For example, investors may want to share their painful investment experiences with others on stock message boards and are relieved to find they are not alone. In this case, the information on these stock message boards mainly reflects past experience or past information and not valuable and predictable information for market activities. This study thus investigates the two roles of stock message boards-providing valuable information to make future investment decisions or sharing past experiences that reflect mainly investors' painful or boastful stories. If stock message boards do provide valuable information for stock investment decisions, then investors will use this information and thereby influence stock market activities (e.g., trading volume). On the contrary, if investors made investment decisions and visit stock message boards later, they will mainly share their past experiences with others. In this case, past activities in the stock market will influence the stock message boards. These arguments indicate that there is a correlation between information posted on stock message boards and stock market activities. The previous literature has examined the impact of stock sentiments or the number of posts on stock market activities (e.g., trading volume, volatility, stock prices). However, the studies related to stock sentiments found it difficult to obtain significant results. It is not easy to identify useful information among the millions of posts, many of which can be just noise. As a result, the overall sentiments of stock message boards often carry little information for future stock movements [Das and Chen, 2001; Antweiler and Frank, 2004]. This study notes that as a dependent variable, trading volume is more reliable for capturing the effect of stock message board activities. The finance literature argues that trading volume is an indicator of stock price movements [Das et al., 2005; Das and Chen, 2007]. In this regard, this study investigates the correlation between a number of posts (information on stock message boards) and trading volume (stock market activity). We collected about 100,000 messages of 40 companies at KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) from Paxnet, the most popular Korean online stock message board. The messages we collected were divided into in-trading and after-trading hours to examine the correlation between the numbers of posts and trading volumes in detail. Also we collected the volume of the stock of the 40 companies. The vector regression analysis and the granger causality test, 3SLS analysis were performed on our panel data sets. We found that the number of posts on online stock message boards is positively related to prior stock trade volume. Also, we found that the impact of the number of posts on stock trading volumes is not statistically significant. Also, we empirically showed the correlation between stock trading volumes and the number of posts on stock message boards. The results of this study contribute to the IS and finance literature in that we identified online stock message board's two roles. Also, this study suggests that stock trading managers should carefully monitor information on stock message boards to understand stock market activities in advance.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.237-246
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• 2011

To explore the sources of carbonaceous material in the airborne particulate matter (PM), comprehensive PM sampling was performed (3 to 14 January 2010) at a traffic hot spot site (HS), Farm Gate, Dhaka using several samplers: AirMetrics MiniVol (for $PM_{10}$ and $PM_{2.5}$) and MOUDI (for size fractionated submicron PM). Long-term PM data (April 2000 to March 2006 and April 2000 to March 2010 in two size fractions ($PM_{2.2}$ and $PM_{2.2-10}$) obtained from two air quality-monitoring stations, one at Farm Gate (HS) and another at a semi-residential (SR) area (Atomic Energy Centre, Dhaka Campus, (AECD)), respectively were also analyzed. The long-term PM trend shows that fine particulate matter concentrations have decreased over time as a result of government policy interventions even with increasing vehicles on the road. The ratio of $PM_{2.5}/PM_{10}$ showed that the average $PM_{2.5}$ mass was about 78% of the $PM_{10}$ mass. It was also found that about 63% of $PM_{2.5}$ mass is $PM_1$. The total contribution of BC to $PM_{2.5}$ is about 16% and showed a decreasing trend over the years. It was observed that $PM_1$ fractions contained the major amount of carbonaceous materials, which mainly originated from high temperature combustion process in the $PM_{2.5}$. From the IMPROVE TOR protocol carbon fraction analysis, it was observed that emissions from gasoline vehicles contributed to $PM_1$ given the high abundance of EC1 and OC2 and the contribution of diesel to $PM_1$ is minimal as indicated by the low abundance of OC1 and EC2. Source apportionment results also show that vehicular exhaust is the largest contributors to PM in Dhaka. There is also transported $PM_{2.2}$from regional sources. With the increasing economic activities and recent GDP growth, the number of vehicles and brick kilns has significantly increased in and around Dhaka. Further action will be required to further reduce PM-related air pollution in Dhaka.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.380-392
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• 1980

Six coordinate low spin iron(Ⅱ) complexes of vicinal-dioximes, [Fe$(DH)_2B_2$] and [Fe$(DH)_2$B(CO)]($(DH)_2$=$(CHDH)_2$(bis(1,2-cyclohexadinedioximato) bivalent anion), $(DPGH)_2$-(bis(diphenylglyoximato) bivalent anion), $(F{\alpha}DH)_2(bis(furil-{\alpha}-dioximato)$ bivalent anion); B = monodentate neutral nitrogen base), have been prepared and their physical properties have been investigated with respect to the effects of the equatorial ligands, $(DH)_2$. The order of ${\pi}$-acceptor CO stretching frequency for [Fe$(DH)_2$B(CO)] is $(F{\alpha}DH)_2$ > $(DPGH)_2$> $(CHDH)_2$, while non-${\pi}$-acceptor $NH_3$ stretching frequencies for [Fe$(DH)_2(NH_3)_2$] show the opposite order to that of CO, i.e., $(CHDH)_2$ > $(DPGH)_2$ > $(F{\alpha}DH)_2$. These infrared spectral data together with Fe-N (oxime) and Fe-N (oxime) and Fe-N (B) stretching frequency data suggest that the nitrogen atoms of $(CHDH)_2$ are more basic and poorer ${\pi}$-acceptors than the corresponding nitrogen atoms of $(DPGH)_2$ and $(F{\alpha}DH)_2$, respectively. It has been found from the electronic spectral data of [Fe$(DH)_2$] and [Fe$(DH)_2$B(CO)] that the energy of the charge transfer band from iron(Ⅱ) to $(DH)_2$ increases as the basicity of $(DH)_2$ increases.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.23-32
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• 1999

Combined MRI and Relaxogram approach was introduced as a very useful tool for fat study. The phantoms simulating homogeneous mixture of fat and non-fat environments were measured with spin echo pulse sequence on a 0.15 T whole body imager. From 45 scans, the Tl values were obtained by fitting the data to continuous distribution (CONTIN) of relaxation time. This relaxogram gives broad distributions of relaxation time, which are characterized by a number of peaks with characteristic T1 values. Two distinct peaks in relaxogram were observed and identified as signals from com oil and gelatin gel. This model system can be served as simulating the distribution of fat in muscle. Also the relative ratio of two components, which is proportional to the area under the peak, is estimated and compared to nominal values. Based on the good agreement between two predictions, the values from our proposed method agreed with nominal values within $\pm$7 % error. The effects of different concentration of contrast agent and different region of interest are presented. To optimize total scan times, the minimum required data points and so further reduction in total scan times are discussed.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.69-114
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• 2010

This study investigates the voluntary corporate disclosure of environmental information via stand-alone environmental reports or company web-sites. Quality of disclosure was assessed using the content analysis index proposed by Clarkson et al. (2008) based on GRI guidelines. Descriptive statistics on disclosure scores by category suggest that the level of disclosure is low relative to the expectation implied by the GRI reporting guidelines, and points to the need for improvement in the future. Specific areas where improvement is required include the disclosure of environmental performance indicators. Corporate environmental performance was measured in terms of the percentage of toxic wastes that was treated or processed by each firm and economic performance, by industry-adjusted annual return, which was subject to a series of association tests designed to explore the interrelations among environmental disclosure, environmental performance, and economic performance. The individual equation approach based on OLS procedures suggests a positive association between environmental performance and the level of discretionary environmental disclosures, which is not the case between environmental and economic performance. An integrated analysis using simultaneous equations approach does not indicate any significant relationships among three constructs, suggesting the lack of endogeneity, inconsistent with Al-Tuwaijri et al. (2004). Additional analysis assesses the level of environmental disclosure made in footnotes to the audited annual reports, which suggests that the quality of disclosure is very low and that footnote disclosure does not serve as a meaningful channel for the provision of corporate environmental information.