China has a bifurcated land system, with clear distinctions between urban and rural land use rights. While state-owned land in urban areas has become commercially transferable, rural land cannot be transferred. This discrepancy has been exploited by property developers, investors, village heads...

Until 1995 when the Chinese Security Law was enacted, it was acknowledged that “the concept of security appears undeveloped” in China. Nevertheless, as a late but rapid bloomer, China has recently re-jigged its laws relating to mortgages with the introduction of its Property Law. The Chinese...

We examine the role of acquirers’ familiarity with targets’ significant downside risks in M&A. We introduce a measure of a firm’s familiarity with another firm’s business downsides using similarity of their risk factor descriptions. We first show that this measure is distinct from...

As one of the most important n -type thermoelectric (TE) materials, Bi 2 Te 3 has been studied for decades, with efforts to enhance the thermoelectric performance based on element doping, band engineering, etc. In this study, we report a novel bulk-insulating topological material system as a...

TiO 2 as one of critical anode materials for sodium ion batteries (SIBs) has excellent characteristics such as low cost, high safety, small volume expansion and high packing density. However, low conductivity and poor sodium ion diffusion ability prevent it further applications in SIBs. Thus,...

The thixotropic back-extruded tin bronze shaft sleeves were heat-treated at 630 °C, 660 °C, 690 °C and 720 °C for 1 h, respectively. The effect of solution temperature on the microstructure and mechanical properties of thixotropic back-extruded tin bronze shaft sleeve was studied by means of...