The Political Legitimacy of Company Law and Regulation

Two interrelated objectives are pursued in this article: the first concerns the relationship and interaction between the UK’s company law and market-based regulation; the second explores the legitimacy of marketbased regulation in light of its potential to mould and influence the substantive law. Although the article finds that the two systems retain carefully defined, essentially consistent and mutually complementary roles, it submits that market-based formations run the risk of not readily or plausibly lending themselves to dominant political and democratic accounts, which are deployed customarily to substantiate the legitimacy of state interventionist techniques. Simultaneously, the deployment of a rival conception of legitimacy, conceived as technocratic expertise and market consensus and conformity, is problematic for a number of theoretical and practical reasons. This has implications for the effects and outcomes of the UK’s company law and governance

The neoliberal (il)legitimacy of the duty of loyalty

The reformulated duty of loyalty now found in s 172 of the Companies Act 2006 has been seen as imprecise or an ambiguous development for directors’ duties. It has generated debate about what is the best reading of the duty, the most fundamental aspect of which is whether this behavioural standard obliges a narrow focus on financial capital or a broader notion of well-being and inclusiveness amongst nonshareholder interests. This article argues that the law as a privileged and constitutive way of society-making can only be understood within a broader conceptual framework rather than the more traditional expository analysis of law. The context in which such an analysis takes place is that of the anti-collectivist, marketbased political project of neoliberalsm. When viewed through this explanatory lens, we see very clearly that English legal doctrine codifies an embedded relationship between managers and shareholders. In doing so, the article shows that the extraction of private benefits of control by shareholders is not an inevitable occurrence, but a decades-long, human-created and contingent phenomenon. While non-shareholder interests are introduced into the duty, this precatory element is merely a potential source of legitimacy to the ideology of the company as a private, exclusively shareholder-oriented enterprise

Correspondence between sound propagation in discrete and continuous random media with application to forest acoustics

Although sound propagation in a forest is important in several applications, there are currently no rigorous yet computationally tractable prediction methods. Due to the complexity of sound scattering in a forest, it is natural to formulate the problem stochastically. In this paper, it is demonstrated that the equations for the statistical moments of the sound field propagating in a forest have the same form as those for sound propagation in a turbulent atmosphere if the scattering properties of the two media are expressed in terms of the differential scattering and total cross sections. Using the existing theories for sound propagation in a turbulent atmosphere, this analogy enables the derivation of several results for predicting forest acoustics. In particular, the second-moment parabolic equation is formulated for the spatial correlation function of the sound field propagating above an impedance ground in a forest with micrometeorology. Effective numerical techniques for solving this equation have been developed in atmospheric acoustics. In another example, formulas are obtained that describe the effect of a forest on the interference between the direct and ground-reflected waves. The formulated correspondence between wave propagation in discrete and continuous random media can also be used in other fields of physics

Acoustic surface wave generation over rigid cylinder arrays on a rigid plane

Propagation of an airborne acoustic pulse from a point source above an array of regularly spaced rigid cylinders on a rigid plane has been investigated using a two-dimensional multiple scattering theory. Time domain simulations show a main arrival and a separate delayed “tail.” Fourier analysis of the tail shows that, for a sufficiently sparse array of cylinders, it is composed of a series of spectral peaks resulting from constructive interference consistent with Bragg diffraction theory and amplitudes depending on the spacing and size of the cylinders. For increasingly compact distributions of cylinders, the lowest frequency peak is dominated by a quarter wavelength “organ pipe” or “gap” resonance in the space between the cylinders. Simulated pressure maps show that there is a transition region in the acoustic field with an extent that depends on the spacing and size of the cylinders. Beyond this region, individual gap resonances combine to create a field that declines exponentially with height, consistent with the behaviour of a surface wave. Data from measurements of acoustic pulses above copper cylinders on rigid fibreboard under anechoic conditions demonstrate some of the predicted characteristics

Time-resolved second harmonic generation study of buried semiconductor heterointerfaces using soliton-induced transparency

The transient second harmonic generation and linear optical reflectivity signals measured simultaneously in reflection from GaAs/GaSb/InAs and GaAs/GaSb heterostructures revealed a new mechanism for creating self-induced transparency in narrow bandgap semiconductors at low temperatures, which is based on the dual-frequency electro-optic soliton propagation. This allows the ultrafast carrier dynamics at buried semiconductor heterointerfaces to be studied

Vegetation in urban streets, squares, and courtyards

One of various ways in which vegetation cover used in the greening of urban areas can help improve the health and well-being of people is in how it changes the acoustic environment. This chapter presents findings of computer simulations and scale modelling to examine and quantify the effectiveness of green roof and green wall (vertical garden) systems in reducing road traffic noise for streets, squares, and roadside courtyards. Noise reduction by sound absorption in reflected and diffracted (over roofs) sound paths is investigated. Particular attention is paid to the importance of vegetation placement relative to the receiver/listening positions. Because the soil substrate used for the vertical walls has good sound absorption properties, it also can be used for green barriers. In this chapter, the effects of a low barrier made of green wall substrate are studied for an installation on the ground and on the top of buildings surrounding a courtyard

Scattering of elastic waves by periodic arrays of spherical bodies

We develop a formalism for the calculation of the frequency band structure of a phononic crystal consisting of non-overlapping elastic spheres, characterized by Lam\'e coefficients which may be complex and frequency dependent, arranged periodically in a host medium with different mass density and Lam\'e coefficients. We view the crystal as a sequence of planes of spheres, parallel to and having the two dimensional periodicity of a given crystallographic plane, and obtain the complex band structure of the infinite crystal associated with this plane. The method allows one to calculate, also, the transmission, reflection, and absorption coefficients for an elastic wave (longitudinal or transverse) incident, at any angle, on a slab of the crystal of finite thickness. We demonstrate the efficiency of the method by applying it to a specific example.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, Phys. Rev. B (in press

Mechanical model of the ultra-fast underwater trap of Utricularia

The underwater traps of the carnivorous plants of the Utricularia species catch their preys through the repetition of an "active slow deflation / passive fast suction" sequence. In this paper, we propose a mechanical model that describes both phases and strongly supports the hypothesis that the trap door acts as a flexible valve that buckles under the combined effects of pressure forces and the mechanical stimulation of trigger hairs, and not as a panel articulated on hinges. This model combines two different approaches, namely (i) the description of thin membranes as triangle meshes with strain and curvature energy, and (ii) the molecular dynamics approach, which consists in computing the time evolution of the position of each vertex of the mesh according to Langevin equations. The only free parameter in the expression of the elastic energy is the Young's modulus E of the membranes. The values for this parameter are unequivocally obtained by requiring that the trap model fires, like real traps, when the pressure difference between the outside and the inside of the trap reaches about 15 kPa. Among other results, our simulations show that, for a pressure difference slightly larger than the critical one, the door buckles, slides on the threshold and finally swings wide open, in excellent agreement with the sequence observed in high-speed videos.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review

For public (and recontextualized) sociology: The promises and perils of public engagement in an age of mediated communication

This article argues for the analysis of public engagement as an essentially mediated activity. Although recent studies note that academic knowledge is increasingly available for consumption by nonacademic audiences, they tell us little about how it gets recontextualized while passing through the hands of media professionals on its way toward such audiences. In Burawoy’s (2005) influential call for the rebirth of public sociology, as in the debates his work provoked, the media is treated solely as a means for the transportation of knowledge. But as this article demonstrates, the media does not simply transport knowledge; it also, and at the same time, translates that knowledge in various, rhetorically consequential ways. Focusing on the mediated trajectory of an attempt by a group of academics to connect with audiences beyond academia, their initial contribution is compared to its subsequent translation(s) across various British newspapers. A discursive analysis reveals the techniques via which a classic form of public sociology came to be recontextualized such that, remarkably, these authors were left appearing to voice nothing but their own petty prejudices. The article concludes by noting that where public engagement involves mediation, public sociology should pay more attention to the recontextualizing affordances of media discourse

The effect of organic carbon content on soil compression characteristics

We investigated the effect of soil organic carbon (SOC) on the consolidation behaviour of soil from two long term field experiments at Rothamsted; the Broadbalk Wheat Experiment and Hoosfield Spring Barley. These experiments are located on soil with similar particle size distributions, and include treatments with SOC contents ranging from approximately 1–3.5 g/100 g. Soils taken from plots with contrasting SOC contents were compressed and deformed in a triaxial cell and the normal consolidation and critical state lines were determined. We found that the compression index was independent of SOC, but the void ratio at any given effective stress was highly correlated with organic carbon content. By comparison with uniaxial compression data, the apparent influence of SOC on the compression index is likely to be due to its effect on soil hydraulic properties rather than any intrinsic effects of strength. The plastic limit test appears to be a useful and simple test to allow direct comparison of soil physical behaviour and expected soil density