What do the enterprises concern most now is how the customers value their company. Customer satisfaction is the most important thing for enterprises to focus. Besides, financial statement can not fully reflect the value of the company, we need other information to help us to know value them, and customer satisfaction is such a thing we need. In the past research, they show the relationship between customer satisfaction and equity value. In this article, there is further discussion about this relation- is there any interactive effect between the customer satisfaction and abnormal earning to affect equity value? Would this effect bring incremental information content to help us value the company? The next part of this article is to discompose current customer satisfaction into the former customer satisfaction and the change of customer satisfaction, to see if they both have information content, and if influence abnormal earning and equity value. The main contribute of this article is to have more detail discussion in the information of customer satisfaction. Thus it makes us know more about the customer satisfaction, and give us the other way to think about valuation of the company.

There are 506 announcements of stock repurchases from 1999.8.9 to the end of 2001 after Taiwan adopting the law of treasury stock. It¡¦s obviously that companies issued in the stock market need the law because the percent of applying is up to 37.23%. We study the announcements during 1999.8.9 to 2001.12.31 and try to find out the motives of stock repurchases. For understanding the effect of market prediction, we try to set up a prediction model and separate the result of market prediction to right and wrong. Regarding the factor of affecting the cumulative abnormal return after announcement, we argue that it¡¦s quite similar with cash dividend announcement as companies signal the good news of becoming better in the future. It infers that the effect of announcement relates to former accounting information. The result show as following: (1) the motives to stock repurchases are consistent with optimal leverage ratio hypothesis, dividend or tax hypothesis. The companies would intend to stock repurchase when the board of directors had higher collateral ratio or the enterprise ever used the subsidiary company to repurchase the stock. (2) we can¡¦t prove that the unexpected announcement has higher abnormal return than the expected one. (3) we also can¡¦t prove that the former accounting information affect the abnormal return, but we can see the it positively relates to the free cash flow, undervaluation, and the degree of information asymmetry.

This study examines the impact of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to accelerate the Form 20-F (20-F) filing deadline on the usefulness of 20-Fs. I find that only the large and medium firms experienced a significant increase in market reaction when they accelerated their 20-F filing deadlines to four months after the year-end, while no significant change in market reaction is detected for small firms. I also find that the market did not appear to have reacted to firms who voluntarily further shortened their 20-F reporting lag to less than four months after the year-end. Finally, I find that firms that comply with the SEC’s policy to shorten the 20-F filing deadlines are more likely to restate the financial statements, but the 20-F readability and the possibility of amending their 20-Fs do not seem to be different, compared to the matched non-acceleration firms. Taken together, this study provides consistent evidence suggesting that the “four-month” 20-F filing deadline is beneficial for larger firms while causing no burdens to small firms, and that the accelerated 20-F filing deadline may increase the timeliness of 20-Fs at the expense of the reporting quality.

This paper examines the information content of net income and cash flows for hotel and tourism industry and department store industry in Taiwan. The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trust (NATEIT) has suggested that Net Income is a misleading measure of operating performance for income-producing real estate operating companies. They assert that historical cost based depreciation is inappropriate for income-producing real estate because it is not correlated with changes in the value of those real estates. Thus, the NAREIT has promoted Funds From Operations (FFO) as a supplemental measure of operating performance. FFO is calculated as net income adding depreciation expense and excluding realized gain or loss from the sale of properties. Like the REITs, the hotel and department stores industry hold and operate income-producing real estate. We test the NAREIT proposal that FFO is a more informative measure for real estate operating companies by doing an empirical analysis for hotel industry and department store industry. The results suggest that although FFO is associated with stock market performance, it is not relatively superior to Net Income or incrementally relevant beyond Net Income. Furthermore, results on testing of individual components in deriving FFO from Net Income show that both depreciation expenses and gain or loss from sale of properties is not associated with stock price performance. This indicates that FFO excludes non-value relevant accounting data. Therefore, the test results show little evidence in supporting NAREIT¡¦s claim that FFO is a more informative measure for real estate operating companies. Although we do not have strong evidence to indicate that FFO is a better performance measure than Net Income, it is still a value relevant information in determining the value of income-producing real estate managing companies. The recent passed Taiwan Real Estate Securitization Act provides investors a new channel to invest in income-producing real estate. While it is not likely that FFO will replace Net Income as the main performance measure of the securities under Taiwan Real Estate Securitization Act, FFO could provide investors helpful information in determining the value of these income-producing real estate securities.

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No description available.

A central problem in the bioinformatics is to find the binding sites for regulatory motifs. This is a challenging problem that leads us to a platform to apply a variety of data mining methods. In the efforts described here, a combined motif discovery method that uses mutual information and Gibbs sampling was developed. A new scoring schema was introduced with mutual information and joint information content involved. Simulated tempering was embedded into classic Gibbs sampling to avoid local optima. This method was applied to the 18 pieces DNA sequences containing CRP binding sites validated by Stormo and the results were compared with Bioprospector. Based on the results, the new scoring schema can get over the defect that the basic model PWM only contains single positioin information. Simulated tempering proved to be an adaptive adjustment of the search strategy and showed a much increased resistance to local optima.

My dissertation focuses on (i) the development of new analysis tools and methodologies for analyzing X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) data, and (ii) the comprehensive characterization of materials (nanodiamonds) using a multi-instrument approach. Chapter 1 contains (i) a discussion of the two techniques I focused on most in my work: XPS and ToF-SIMS, (ii) a discussion of the common chemometrics techniques used to analyze data from these methods, and (iii) the advantages/rationale behind the multi-instrument characterization of materials. Chapter 2 describes various good practices for obtaining reasonable peak fits in XPS, which can also be applied to peak fitting data from different techniques. To address the issue of user subjectivity/bias in XPS peak fitting, I introduce two less biased mathematical functions for characterizing XPS narrow scans, namely the equivalent width (EW) and the autocorrelation width (AW). These functions are discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. In Chapter 5, I then introduce uniqueness plots as simple and straightforward graphical tools for assessing the quality of XPS peak fits and for determining whether fit parameters are correlated. This tool is extensively used in spectroscopic ellipsometry, and the mathematics behind it is known in XPS. However, to the best of my knowledge, this graphical tool has never been applied to XPS. ToF-SIMS data analysis is somewhat challenging due to the enormous amounts of data that are collected, and also the matrix effect in SIMS. This amount of information is significantly increased when depth profiles are performed on samples. Chapter 6 discusses a new chemometrics tool that I introduce for analysis of complex data sets, with emphasis on XPS and ToF-SIMS depth profiling data. The new approach is called the Information Content (IC) or entropy, which is adapted from Claude Shannon's work on Information Theory. Chapter 7 then contains a presentation of the comprehensive characterization of five nanodiamond samples used to manufacture particles for liquid chromatography. The advantages of a multi-instrument approach for material characterization and the lack of comprehensive material characterization in the literature are emphasized. To the best of my knowledge this is the most comprehensive characterization of nanodiamonds that has been reported in the literature. Chapter 8 presents conclusions of my work and future work. This thesis also contains six appendices. Appendix 1 contains an article from a scientific magazine that I wrote to highlight the importance and applications of the EW and AW to characterize XPS narrow scans. Appendices 2-5 are application notes I wrote on separations I performed on a nanodiamond based HPLC column. Finally, Appendix 6 describes the ToF-SIMS analysis of the tungsten species in the nanodiamond samples characterized in Chapter 7.

現代化的企業型態，所有權與經營權分離，會計報表可以呈現經營績效讓投資人作為評估的依據，為二者之間的橋樑。 　　根據理性預期理論，一個理性的投資者，當公司宣告盈餘時，投資者會依盈餘宣告所帶來之新資訊調整投資行為，而這些行為即會反應在股價上，亦即盈餘新資訊會包括在股價形成之中。本研究以探討季盈餘宣告與股價變動的關係來證明季盈餘是否具有資訊內涵。 　　本研究擬依序回答下列的研究問題：1.是否季盈餘具有顯著的資訊內涵2.一至三季的資訊內涵與第四季是否有顯著差異3.是否季盈餘的資訊內涵具規模效應。 　　本研究係採t檢定來支持異常報酬異於零的假說，對於假說二及假說三則採兩樣本間的t-test來假定兩組間的平均異常報酬是否有顯著的不同。 　　實證結果如下：一、依未預期盈餘分組，UE為正的有正的異常報酬UE為負的有負的異常報酬，但由於並未達統計上之顯著水準，故未能獲得「季盈餘具有資訊內涵」之結果。二、由實證結果顯示，第四季盈餘宣告較能引起較高之異常報酬，但未達統計上之顯著水準，第四季與1-3季股價之反應，在兩組t-test之中並未達顯著，故無法獲得季盈餘具有季節效應之假說。三、以規模大小所做的t-test亦未達統計上之顯著水準，故結論亦不支持「季盈餘具有規模效應」之假說。

L'impact des activités anthropiques sur la composition atmosphérique est devenu évident depuis la découverte, dans les années quatre-vingt, de la formation d'un trou dans la couche d'ozone au-dessus de l'Antarctique. Depuis lors d'autres menaces environnementales liées aux changements de la composition atmosphérique ont été mises en évidence. Parmi celles-ci, le réchauffement climatique global et la pollution de l'air sont au coeur de l'actualité. Depuis les débuts de l'aéronomie, de nombreux instruments de mesure de la composition atmosphérique ont été développés et déployés au sol, sur ballon, sur avion et sur satellite. Chacun de ces instruments possède ses avantages et ses inconvénients et donne accès à différents aspects d'une atmosphère quadridimensionnelle variable et structurée. Les propriétés telles que la résolution, l'échantillonnage et la gamme accessible des signaux géophysiques mesurés par les systèmes opérationnels varient en fonction de paramètres techniques comme la source de rayonnement, la gamme spectrale, la géométrie de visée, le type d'orbite,... et en fonction des conditions de mesure. Les observations provenant de différents systèmes sont complémentaires. La stratégie internationale actuelle d'observation de notre environnement global vise justement à exploiter cette complémentarité via l'implémentation d'un système coordonné de systèmes d'observation globale de la Terre: le GEOSS. Ce système de systèmes réunira et combinera les données provenant de différents systèmes d'observation de la Terre dans différents domaines (surface, océans, atmosphère, cryosphère,...) pour fournir une information intégrée utile à la société. Concernant la composition de l'atmosphère, la stratégie internationale IGACO a identifié différents moyens pour l'intégration des données. Ils incluent, entre autres, l'amélioration des algorithmes d'inversion, la caractérisation du contenu d'information réel des mesures, le développement de techniques facilitant la comparaison des mesures, la validation continue des données satellitales, le développement d'outils pour faciliter et améliorer le couplage des séries temporelles et l'ingestion des observations dans les modèles numériques de chimie et de transport. Quoique nécessaire, l'intégration des données provenant de systèmes différents n'est pourtant pas évidente. En effet, l'utilisation intégrée des données se confronte à la présence d'erreur générées par les différences d'échantillonnage et de lissage existant entre les signaux géophysiques capturés par des instruments différents. Le travail présenté dans ce manuscrit s'axe autour de cette stratégie d'intégration. Nous développons différents concepts et méthodes utiles à une analyse intégrée des données satellitales. Nous tentons également d'estimer de manière systématique l'impact des différences de lissage et d'échantillonnage dans les quatre dimensions de l'atmosphère: latitude, longitude, altitude et temps. Dans un premier temps, nous étudions de manière séparée deux des principaux éléments du système d'observation globale de la composition atmosphérique: les instruments mesurant le rayonnement rétrodiffusé par l'atmosphère au nadir et les instruments mesurant l'émission infrarouge au limbe. Les mesures UV-visible au nadir ont débuté dans les années septante avec les instruments de type BUV et continuent actuellement avec les séries européennes GOME-2 et chinoise SBUS/TOU. La technique BUV permet de mesurer le profil de l'ozone avec une bonne résolution horizontale mais une faible résolution verticale et une sensibilité variant avec l'altitude. C'est pourquoi nous analysons en détail le contenu d'information et la résolution verticale du profil d'ozone tel que mesuré par GOME, le premier instrument européen de type BUV. La technique d'observation a visée au limbe offre quant à elle une meilleure résolution verticale que la technique BUV, de l'ordre de 1 à 3 km, mais une faible résolution horizontale. C'est pourquoi nous étudions ensuite la résolution et les propriétés de lissage horizontal des mesures de l'instrument européen MIPAS. La validation géophysique des données satellitales est une des étapes essentielles à leur intégration dans un système d'observation globale. Dans la suite de ce travail, nous mettons en pratique les outils développés dans un exercice de validation géophysique des profils d'ozone MIPAS. En tenant en compte l'erreur de lissage horizontal, nous éclairons d'un jour nouveau le bilan d'erreur d'une comparaison. Dans les deux chapitres suivants nous nous intéressons non plus de manière séparée aux éléments du système d'observation global de l'atmosphère mais à leurs possibilités de couplage. Nous étudions d'abord la consistance entre sept jeux de profils d'ozone obtenus à partir d'instruments à géométrie de visée au limbe. Nous étudions les structures méridiennes et temporelles de jeux de données couvrant des régions géographiques et des périodes de temps très différentes en utilisant les réseaux au sol comme référence. Enfin, nous étudions comment les propriétés respectives des systèmes étudiés dans les chapitres précédents se retrouvent dans un produit hybride généré par un réseau neuronal.