Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets

The turning to the XXI century has been marked by reforms in corporate governance practices around the world. Whether due to shocks caused by the economic crisis in East Asia, Russia and Latin America, or by financial scandals in the United States and Europe, the fact is that the way of doing business has changed in terms of demands for greater corporate transparency and accountability, shifts in control of ownership, empowerment of new types of owners and so on. Consequently, countries and firms have adapted their corporate governance policies and practices to this new governance environment. In this chapter, we discuss the foundation of corporate governance, that is, corporate ownership. In particular, we explore the current patterns of the ownership structure of publicly listed firms in six emerging countries. To do so, we have collected firm ownership data for listed firms in Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland during the first decade of the XXI century, and we compare our data with existing ownership research of these countries in the late 1990s. We conclude that although concentration of corporate shareholdings continues to be a common denominator among these emerging countries, the processes and structures controlling firms across countries is remarkably different. For instance, the privatization process in the 1990s, in spite of having different motivations and goals in Latin American and Eastern Europe shaped much of the corporate ownership transformations. Our chapter offers a comparative analysis of the corporate ownership changes in emerging markets.

Regulation of reactive oxygen species during plant immunity through phosphorylation and ubiquitination of RBOHD.

Production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is critical for successful activation of immune responses against pathogen infection. The plant NADPH oxidase RBOHD is a primary player in ROS production during innate immunity. However, how RBOHD is negatively regulated remains elusive. Here we show that RBOHD is regulated by C-terminal phosphorylation and ubiquitination. Genetic and biochemical analyses reveal that the PBL13 receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase phosphorylates RBOHD's C-terminus and two phosphorylated residues (S862 and T912) affect RBOHD activity and stability, respectively. Using protein array technology, we identified an E3 ubiquitin ligase PIRE (PBL13 interacting RING domain E3 ligase) that interacts with both PBL13 and RBOHD. Mimicking phosphorylation of RBOHD (T912D) results in enhanced ubiquitination and decreased protein abundance. PIRE and PBL13 mutants display higher RBOHD protein accumulation, increased ROS production, and are more resistant to bacterial infection. Thus, our study reveals an intricate post-translational network that negatively regulates the abundance of a conserved NADPH oxidase

Anisotropic properties of MgB2 by torque magnetometry

Anisotropic properties of superconducting MgB2 obtained by torque magnetometry are compared to theoretical predictions, concentrating on two issues. Firstly, the angular dependence of Hc2 is shown to deviate close to Tc from the dependence assumed by anisotropic Ginzburg-Landau theory. Secondly, from the evaluation of torque vs angle curves it is concluded that the anisotropy of the penetration depth gamma_lambda has to be substantially higher at low temperature than theoretical estimates, at least in fields higher than 0.2 T.Comment: 2 p.,2 Fig., submitted to Physica C (M2S-Rio proceedings); v2: 1 ref adde

Comparação dos elementos previstos para as “rodovias que perdoam” da CEDR com as normas brasileiras

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Civil e Ambiental, 2019.Segundo o Internacional Transport Forum (ITF) os acidentes de trânsito têm impacto devastador no mundo inteiro, de forma que todo ano morrem 1,25 milhão de pessoas nas rodovias com entre 20 e 50 milhões gravemente feridas, causando uma perca econômica gigantesca na ordem de 2 a 5% do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB) de cada país. Então esses dados mostram que mortes no trânsito e acidentes graves são inaceitáveis tanto socialmente quanto economicamente. Com esse paradigma em vista foi criada a Visão Segura para reduzir os acidentes graves e mortes no trânsito a zero na Suécia. Posteriormente, em conjunto com o modelo de desenvolvimento sustentável criou-se o sistema seguro. Nesse sistema seguro toda a cadeia produtiva desde o projetista até os gestores das rodovias tem culpabilidade pelo acidente, gerando a necessidade de rodovias mais seguras desde o projeto. Essas rodovias mais seguras são as rodovias autoexplicativas e que perdoam. O presente trabalho traz um estudo sobre o conceito inerente ao conceito das rodovias que perdoam, verificando quais elementos são necessários para perdoar os erros dos motoristas e reduzir as consequências dos acidentes. Dessa forma é realizada uma análise dos elementos previstos para as rodovias que perdoam descritos no documento da CEDR (2013) e os compara com elementos previstos nas normas e manuais brasileiros, de forma a viabilizar a identificação de elementos relevantes para a segurança das rodovias e que não são ainda contemplados nas normativas brasileiras. A análise entre a normativa e manuais brasileiros com o documento da CEDR (2013) abrange 18 pontos, dos quais apenas 5 já são abordados de forma satisfatória nos documentos brasileiros. Dessa forma, 15 de 18 pontos (72% do total) não são abordados, possibilitando concluir que as normas e manuais brasileiros tem elementos condizentes com o conceito de rodovias que perdoam, porém confirma que o país e está muito aquém do necessário para efetivamente propiciar a segurança requerida na infraestrutura rodoviária brasileira. Diante disso, evidenciase a necessidade de desenvolver estudos para analisar esses conceitos e possibilitar uma melhor averiguação sobre cada elemento para o contexto brasileiro, de forma que seja possível demonstrar o impacto qualitativo e quantitativo das limitações das normas e manuais brasileiros

Anisotropy and internal field distribution of MgB2 in the mixed state at low temperatures

Magnetization and muon spin relaxation on MgB2 were measured as a function of field at 2 K. Both indicate an inverse-squared penetration depth strongly decreasing with increasing field H below about 1 T. Magnetization also suggests the anisotropy of the penetration depth to increase with increasing H, interpolating between a low Hc1 and a high Hc2 anisotropy. Torque vs angle measurements are in agreement with this finding, while also ruling out drastic differences between the mixed state anisotropies of the two basic length scales penetration depth and coherence length.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Extremely large magnetoresistance in few-layer graphene/boron-nitride heterostructures

Understanding magnetoresistance, the change in electrical resistance upon an external magnetic field, at the atomic level is of great interest both fundamentally and technologically. Graphene and other two-dimensional layered materials provide an unprecedented opportunity to explore magnetoresistance at its nascent stage of structural formation. Here, we report an extremely large local magnetoresistance of ~ 2,000% at 400 K and a non-local magnetoresistance of > 90,000% in 9 T at 300 K in few-layer graphene/boron-nitride heterostructures. The local magnetoresistance is understood to arise from large differential transport parameters, such as the carrier mobility, across various layers of few-layer graphene upon a normal magnetic field, whereas the non-local magnetoresistance is due to the magnetic field induced Ettingshausen-Nernst effect. Non-local magnetoresistance suggests the possibility of a graphene based gate tunable thermal switch. In addition, our results demonstrate that graphene heterostructures may be promising for magnetic field sensing applications

Luminosity Distribution of Gamma-Ray Burst Host Galaxies at redshift z=1 in Cosmological Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic Simulations: Implications for the Metallicity Dependence of GRBs

We study the relationship between the metallicity of gamma-ray burst (GRB) progenitors and the probability distribution function (PDF) of GRB host galaxies as a function of luminosity using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation. We impose a maximum limit to the gas metallicity in which GRBs can occur, and examine how the predicted luminosity PDF of GRB host galaxies changes in the simulation. We perform the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and show that the result from our simulation agrees with the observed luminosity PDF of core-collapse supernovae (SNe) host galaxies when we assume that the core-collapse SNe trace star formation. When we assume that GRBs occur only in a low-metallicity environment with Z\lesssim 0.1 \Zsun, GRBs occur in lower luminosity galaxies, and the simulated luminosity PDF becomes quantitatively consistent with the observed luminosity PDF. The observational bias against the host galaxies of optically dark GRBs owing to dust extinction may be another reason for the lower luminosities of GRB host galaxies, but the observed luminosity PDF of GRB host galaxies cannot be reproduced solely by the dust bias in our simulation.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures, minor revisions, one added figure, accepted for publication in Ap