Employing an aero-acoustic levitator, the Fe 2 O 3 -16.5 mol% La 2 O 3 eutectic alloy was levitated, melted, undercooled and then solidified under a containerless condition when a continuous laser beam heating system was incorporated. By revealing the surface and cross-sectional microstructures, copious nucleation is confirmed to take place in the undercooled melts solidified by either an external seeding or spontaneous crystallization. The nucleation behaviour of eutectic alloys is summarized, indicating that copious nucleation may be an intrinsic attribute (...) of a eutectic system with the exact eutectic composition in unconstrained solidification. Considering the complexity level of crystal structures of eutectic oxide phases in the Fe 2 O 3 -La 2 O 3 alloy, the linear kinetic constants are approximately estimated and the growth kinetics are discussed. The sluggish growth kinetics of the perovskite-type phase, that is LaFeO 3 with a higher complexity level in a unit cell leads to a decoupled growth within a single eutectic colony when the melt is undercooled to exceed the critical undercooling j T = 125 K. It is the decoupled growth that results in the formation of anomalous eutectics. The present concept based on the kinetic constant of different phases can also be applicable to account for the growth behaviour of other oxide eutectics when considering the stable and metastable eutectic reactions in different solidification conditions. The nucleation behaviour and growth modes in some oxide eutectic systems have been predicted in the free solidification from an undercooled state. (shrink)

We investigate how a broker firm’s initial public offering affects its analysts’ fiduciary duty of providing independent and objective recommendations. We find that the analysts of newly listed broker firms issue more positively biased recommendations in the first 2 to 3 years after their employers’ IPO than before the IPO. The increase in the recommendation bias is greater among analysts of affiliated brokers and brokers that raise additional capital after their IPO than among other analysts. Newly listed broker firms experience (...) significant increases in revenue and trading commission, and the increases are positively related to recommendation bias, after controlling for many other factors. More importantly, recommendation bias decreases as newly listed broker firms season and as the importance of trading commission declines. This suggests that public exposure through a broker firm’s IPO does not enhance the integrity and professional conduct of its financial analysts. Rather, economic incentives make financial analysts more accepting of unethical behavior. The overall results imply that the public trading of financial gatekeepers compromises the ethical relationship between financial service professionals and society in general. (shrink)

Customized bus services are conducive to improving urban traffic and environment, and have attracted widespread attention. However, the problems encountered in the new customized bus mode include the large difference between the basis of customized bus passenger flow data analysis and the basis of the traditional bus passenger flow data analysis, and the difficulty in different vehicle scheduling caused by the combination of traditional and customized bus modes. We propose a customized bus passenger flow analysis algorithm and multi-destination customized bus (...) line capacity scheduling algorithm, and display them in an intuitive way. The experimental results show that the algorithm model established in this paper can basically meet the data requirements of operation and management, and can provide decision support for customized bus line planning. (shrink)