Recent Developments: The Uniform Arbitration Act

Arbitration as a forum for dispute resolution has been a part of the American common law heritage for at least the past one hundred fifty years. However, until recently, state law was almost uniformly biased against arbitration.2 The theory at common law was that either party to an agreement to arbitrate future disputes could void the agreement at any time.3 This legal environment rendered the institution of arbitration impotent in any situation in which one of the parties decided that their interests would be better served if the dispute was resolved in a more traditional court settin

Recent Developments: The Uniform Arbitration Act

Arbitration as a forum for dispute resolution has been a part of the American common law heritage for at least the past one hundred fifty years. However, until recently, state law was almost uniformly biased against arbitration.2 The theory at common law was that either party to an agreement to arbitrate future disputes could void the agreement at any time.3 This legal environment rendered the institution of arbitration impotent in any situation in which one of the parties decided that their interests would be better served if the dispute was resolved in a more traditional court settin

Empirical entropic contributions in computational docking: Evaluation in APS reductase complexes

The results from reiterated docking experiments may be used to evaluate an empirical vibrational entropy of binding in ligand–protein complexes. We have tested several methods for evaluating the vibrational contribution to binding of 22 nucleotide analogues to the enzyme APS reductase. These include two cluster size methods that measure the probability of finding a particular conformation, a method that estimates the extent of the local energetic well by looking at the scatter of conformations within clustered results, and an RMSD-based method that uses the overall scatter and clustering of all conformations. We have also directly characterized the local energy landscape by randomly sampling around docked conformations. The simple cluster size method shows the best performance, improving the identification of correct conformations in multiple docking experiments. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2008Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60220/1/20936_ftp.pd

Governmental Context Determines Institutional Value: Independently Certified Performance and Failure in the Spanish Newspaper Industry

Many societies demand that independent professionals (e.g. auditors) certify the performance of firms. The value placed on such certification (i.e. the public perception of reliability/unreliability that may impact on an organization's success/failure) is not uniform, however, but contingent upon changing political contexts. This study presents and analyses data on the entire population of newspapers in Spain from 1966 to 1993, a time of peaceful transition from military dictatorship to capitalist democracy. Our results highlight the contingent nature of institutional life, demonstrating how changes in political contexts are associated with varying understandings of institutions. In particular, our findings support the prediction that, under a dictatorship, independently certified performance is not instrumental in organizational success or failure whereas, in a modern democracy, the certification process has a positive effect on the survival chances of firms.Publicad