Board Interlocks and Their Impact on Corporate Governance: The Indian Experience - Coping with Corporate Cholesterol

Board interlocks occur when a director of one organization sits on the board of directors of another organization. The causes and consequences of these interlocks have been much debated in the western literature but comparatively little is known about interlocks in Indian corporate boards. Board interlocks are essentially analogous to cholesterol. Both are facts of life. Like good cholesterol, there are aspects of interlocking directorates that are beneficial and there are others that are detrimental to the corporation and its stakeholders and their respective interests. In this study, we find that board interlocks are quite widespread in India. Taking a (numerically) small but nevertheless (in terms of market capitalization) an important slice of available corporate data, we observed that in 2010, ‘highly boarded’ directors (defined as those on the board of 5 or more listed NSE companies) who constitute just 6 percent of the overall pool of directors among NSE100 companies are associated with 486 NSE listed companies which account for a whopping 66 percent of the total market capitalization of all NSE listed companies. Interestingly, there appears to be a marked increase in market capitalization of these ‘highly boarded’ companies, which these ‘highly boarded’ directors are linked to over the last several years. For instance, for the 3 years from 2001 to 2003, the market capitalization of ‘highly boarded’ companies ranged between 33 percent to 43 percent; it moved up to peak of 70 percent in 2007 and was at 66 percent in 2010 (the latest year in the study period). The substantive rise in market capitalization of these ‘highly boarded’ companies has coincided with only a marginal increase (from 5% to 6%) in the proportion of ‘highly boarded’ directorships. These trends suggest that despite the well-intentioned regulatory reforms (a) the extent of over-boarding/interlocking among directors has not come down (there is actually a marginal increase) and (b) there appears to be increasing concentration of power among key individuals. Given the general view that concentration of power in a few individuals or entities is not desirable in the larger interests of society, it would appear that the observed trends in the concentration of power among a handful of the country’s corporate elite is a matter for substantive public policy concern. Finally, the regression analysis indicates a positive impact on Return on Assets (ROA) for ‘highly boarded’ directors signifying a negation of the agency centric conceptualization on the role of multiple directors. Instead, connectedness variables (Eigen vector) which proxy for the Resource dependency hypothesis are quite strongly supported. In a nutshell, from public policy perspective, the analysis potentially reflects the ‘bad cholesterol’ elements of multiple directorships in terms of a tiny segment of ‘highly boarded’ directors controlling a significant portion of the country’s economic prowess, whereas the positive influences on company performance provide some evidence of the ‘good cholesterol’.

Effect of Fluid Suction on an Oscillatory MHD Channel Flow with Heat Transfer

Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is generally concerned with the study of the magnetic properties (behaviour) of electrically conducting fluids (plasmas, liquid metals etc.) moving in an electromagnetic field. The importance of the concept of MHD in various fields such as astrophysics, bio-medical research, missile technology and geophysics motivates the modelling and investigation of MHD flow and transport problems. The role of fluid suction is paramount in laminar flow control and has wide applications in fields such as aeronautical engineering, automobile engineering and rocket science. This fact inspires the study of the effects of fluid suction in flow and transport models. Time dependent flows are widely encountered in engineering applications such as turbines and in physiological studies such as flow of bio-fluid (blood etc.). In the present paper, an attempt has been made to investigate analytically the problem of a time dependent channel flow with heat transfer, where the channel is bounded by two infinite parallel porous walls. The pressure gradient is assumed to be oscillatory in nature. A magnetic field of uniform strength is assumed to be applied normal to the walls. After necessary idealization of the momentum and energy equations, the governing equations of our problem are solved by adopting the regular perturbation technique. The effects of magnetic field, suction velocity, viscous dissipation, Reynolds number, Prandtl number etc. on the flow and heat transfer are studied and demonstrated graphically. It is seen that magnetic field, fluid suction, viscous dissipation, Reynolds number, Prandtl number have a significant effect on the flow and heat transfer characteristic. For instance, the imposition of the magnetic field enhances the rates of heat transfer at the walls and the fluid suction decreases the temperature and aids in laminar flow control

Ionization Cross-Sections of Atoms and Molecules by Electron Impact

Apparent ionization cross-sections of,several atoms and molecules for 70 ev electrons have been measured with the help of a mass spectrometer. By introducing a simple correction an attempt has been made to improve the method of Otvos and Stevenson for the calculation of the ionization cross-sections of atoms and molecules. With this correction, the additivity postulate for the molecular ionization cross-sections appears to hold better the additivity postulate for tho molecular ionization cross-sections appears to hold better

Supercritical-Carbon Dioxide-Assisted Cyclic Deposition of Metal Oxide and Metal Thin Films

Thin films of aluminum oxide and palladium were deposited on silicon at low temperatures (70-120 °C) by a cyclic adsorption/reaction processes using supercritical CO2 solvent. Precursors included Al(hfac)3, Al(acac)3, and Pd(hfac)2, and aqueous H2O2, tert-butyl peracetate, and H2 were used as the oxidants or reductants. For the precursors studied, growth proceeds through a multilayer precursor adsorption in each deposition cycle, and film thickness increased linearly with the number of growth cycles

Case Series of Post-Thrombolysis Patients Undergoing Hemicraniectomy for Malignant Anterior Circulation Ischaemic Stroke

While ischaemic stroke remains a leading cause of death and disability, there have been recent advancements in treatment modalities including thrombolysis and decompressive hemicraniectomy. A retrospective review of patients treated in our NHS teaching hospital, in Plymouth (UK), over a 2 year period identified 17 thrombolysed patients, of whom two had undergone subsequent decompressive hemicraniectomy. These were non-dominant hemisphere strokes in young patients, aged 51 and 57. Initial NIHSS scores were 16 and 17, and they received thrombolysis at 2 hrs 42 min and 5 hrs 10 min post onset of symptoms respectively. CT imaging demonstrated cerebral swelling with significant midline shift in both cases, and decompressive hemicraniectomy was undertaken at 29 hrs 8 min and 27 hrs 30 min post-thrombolysis. We found no significant intra-operative complications attributable to prior use of thrombolytics. Both patients have had acceptable psychological and physical outcomes, with Barthel Index scores of 40 and 25, and MMSE scores of 29/30 and 27/30. We conclude that the use of thrombolytic therapy does not contra-indicate subsequent decompressive hemicraniectomy in well selected patients with non-dominant hemisphere strokes. More research in this field is required to elucidate factors which would facilitate recognition of stroke patients who will benefit most from aggressive medical and neurosurgical intervention

Molecular Basis for Strain Variation in the S. Cerevisiae adhesion Flo11p

FLO11 encodes a yeast cell wall flocculin that mediates a variety of adhesive phenotypes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Flo11p is implicated in many developmental processes, including flocculation, formation of pseudohyphae, agar invasion, and formation of microbial mats and biofilms. However, Flo11p mediates different processes in different yeast strains. To investigate the mechanisms by which FLO11 determines these differences in colony morphology, flocculation, and invasion, we studied gene structure, function, and expression levels. Nonflocculent Saccharomyces cerevisiae Σ1278b cells exhibited significantly higher FLO11mRNA expression, especially in the stationary phase, than highly flocculent S. cerevisiae var. diastaticus. The two strains varied in cell surface hydrophobicity, and Flo11p contributed significantly to surface hydrophobicity in S. cerevisiae var. diastaticus but not in strain Σ1278b. Sequencing of the FLO11 gene in S. cerevisiae var. diastaticus revealed strain-specific differences, including a 15-amino-acid insertion in the adhesion domain. Flo11p adhesion domains from strain Σ1278b and S. cerevisiae var. diastaticus were expressed and used to coat magnetic beads. The adhesion domain from each strain bound preferentially to homologous cells, and the preferences were independent of the cells in which the adhesion domains were produced. These results are consistent with the idea that strain-specific variations in the amino acid sequences in the adhesion domains cause different Flo11p flocculation activities. The results also imply that strain-specific differences in expression levels, posttranslational modifications, and allelic differences outside the adhesion domains have little effect on flocculation

Unsteady MHD free convective flow past a vertical porous plate immersed in a porous medium with Hall current, thermal diffusion and heat source

Abstract An attempt has been made to study the unsteady MHD free convective flow past a vertical porous plate immersed in a porous medium with Hall current, thermal diffusion and heat source. Analytical solution has been found depending on the physical parameters including the Hartmann number M, the Prandtl number Pr, the Grashof number for heat transfer Gr , the Grashof number for mass transfer Gc , the Schmidt number Sc , the Hall parameter m, the Soret number 0 S , heat source S , frequency parameter Ω . The influence of these parameters on velocity, temperature, species concentration, and shearing stress at the plate are demonstrated graphically and the results obtained are discussed. It is found that the concentration at the plate-surface increases under Soret effect. Further, it is observed that the Soret effect causes the main-flow shear stress to rise and the crossflow shear stress to fall. It is also found that a decrease in the Soret effect leads to an increase in both the main flow and crossflow velocities. 2000 Mathematics subject classification: 76 W 0

Comparing titanium elastic nailing and plate osteosynthesis in treating both bone diaphyseal fractures of forearm in children

Background: The present study aimed to compare the outcome of fixation of diaphyseal fractures of both bones of forearm using plate osteosynthesis (PO) and titanium elastic nail (TEN).Methods: This comparative non-randomized clinical trial was done on children aged 5 to 15 years, with diaphyseal fractures of both bone forearm fractures, operated and managed at the department of orthopedics, Assam Medical College and Hospital, Dibrugarh. Intra- and post-operative findings were compared between PO and TEN group patients.Results: Duration of hospital stay was significantly lower in patients in the TEN group (44.75±6.38 minutes) as compared to those in the PO group (69.71±5.91 minutes), p value <0.01. Similarly, duration of hospital stay was significantly lower in patients in the TEN group (5.01±0.67 days) as compared to those in the PO group (8.32±1.44 days), p value <0.05. Based on price criteria, 80% of the patients in the PO group and 85% in TEN group had excellent functional outcome. Radiological union time, maximum radial bow and location of maximal radial bow were found to be statistically similar in the two groups. Complication rate was similar in the two study groups.Conclusions: Based on the results of the present study, we conclude that both PO and TEN are be safely performed in children with diaphyseal both bone forearm fractures. With comparable functional and radiological outcomes, future studies are required before one technique can be recommended over the other

Multilevel Deep Feature Generation Framework for Automated Detection of Retinal Abnormalities Using OCT Images.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) images coupled with many learning techniques have been developed to diagnose retinal disorders. This work aims to develop a novel framework for extracting deep features from 18 pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNN) and to attain high performance using OCT images. In this work, we have developed a new framework for automated detection of retinal disorders using transfer learning. This model consists of three phases: deep fused and multilevel feature extraction, using 18 pre-trained networks and tent maximal pooling, feature selection with ReliefF, and classification using the optimized classifier. The novelty of this proposed framework is the feature generation using widely used CNNs and to select the most suitable features for classification. The extracted features using our proposed intelligent feature extractor are fed to iterative ReliefF (IRF) to automatically select the best feature vector. The quadratic support vector machine (QSVM) is utilized as a classifier in this work. We have developed our model using two public OCT image datasets, and they are named database 1 (DB1) and database 2 (DB2). The proposed framework can attain 97.40% and 100% classification accuracies using the two OCT datasets, DB1 and DB2, respectively. These results illustrate the success of our model

An efficient reduction protocol for the synthesis of beta-hydroxycarbamates from beta-nitro alcohols in one pot : a facile synthesis of (-)-beta-conhydrine

An efficient and practical one-pot protocol for the reduction of b-nitro alcohols to their corresponding N-(tert-butoxycarbonyl) amino alcohols using Zn 13NH4Cl in aqueous methanol is described. Other reducible groups such as ketones and isolated double bonds remained intact. This methodology allows a short synthesis of (�)-b-conhydrine to be achieved