Executive Remuneration in New Zealand and Australia - Do Current Laws, Regulations and Guidelines Ensure "Pay for Performance"?

This article undertakes an examination of the current corporate governance frameworks relating to the remuneration of executives, and particularly executive directors, of listed companies in New Zealand and Australia. The theoretical background of the article builds on agency theory and managerial power theory. On this basis, performance-related remuneration is identified as crucial in aligning the divergent interests of shareholders and executives. Theories also suggest that the board of directors alone is not a sufficient mechanism to ensure that performance-related pay is implemented in practice. Examination of substantive remuneration rules regarding the structure and form of remuneration agreements finds that in both New Zealand and Australia the relevant problems are only sparsely addressed in enforceable law. More emphasis is put on procedural remuneration rules. Particularly in the fields of disclosure and shareholder involvement, Australia is a step ahead of New Zealand.&nbsp

Description and interpretation of the internal structure of a Cambrian crustacean compound eye

The exceptionally good preservation of phosphatised. three dimensionally preserved Orsten arthropods permits insight into the internal morphology of ancient compound eyes. Analysis, presented here, of the stalked eyes of a Cambrian Orsten crustacean reveals structures such as a cornea, a crystalline cone, rhabdomers belonging to possibly five or six sensory cells and an absence of a gap (known as the clear-zone) between dioptric structures and the retina. All these features collectively suggest that this compound eye is of the apposition type. Thus, the principle of mosaic vision likely dates back to Cambrian times, more than half a billion years ago. Using well-established methods this eye can be characterised as dim-light adapted and is likely to have belonged to a benthic organism like many others known from fossils of the Cambrian Alum Shale of Sweden. This seems to be one of the oldest known apposition eyes, and the structural differences between it and eyes more closely conforming to the tetraconate system are likely to be related to the small size of the eye and the photic environment in which it had to operate. Differences from typical compound eye organisation, such as for instance a smaller number of retinula cells than the more typical eight found in most tetraconate arthropods, suggest that either the tetraconate system is not basal and universal, as is often assumed, or that modifications to the system enabling the eye to improve photon capture had already occurred during the Cambrian

A global benchmark study using affinity-based biosensors

International audienceTo explore the variability in biosensor studies, 150 participants from 20 countries were given the same protein samples and asked to determine kinetic rate constants for the interaction. We chose a protein system that was amenable to analysis using different biosensor platforms as well as by users of different expertise levels. The two proteins (a 50-kDa Fab and a 60-kDa glutathione S-transferase [GST] antigen) form a relatively high-affinity complex, so participants needed to optimize several experimental parameters, including ligand immobilization and regeneration conditions as well as analyte concentrations and injection/dissociation times. Although most participants collected binding responses that could be fit to yield kinetic parameters, the quality of a few data sets could have been improved by optimizing the assay design. Once these outliers were removed, the average reported affinity across the remaining panel of participants was 620 pM with a standard deviation of 980 pM. These results demonstrate that when this biosensor assay was designed and executed appropriately, the reported rate constants were consistent, and independent of which protein was immobilized and which biosensor was used. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved