Venture Capital Contracting and Syndication: An Experiment in Computational Corporate Finance

This paper develops a model to study how entrepreneurs and venture-capital investors deal with moral hazard, effort provision, asymmetric information and hold-up problems. We explore several financing scenarios, including first-best, monopolistic, syndicated and fully competitive financing. We solve numerically for the entrepreneur's effort, the terms of financing, the venture capitalist's investment decision and NPV. We find significant value losses due to holdup problems and under-provision of effort that can outweigh the benefits of staged financing and investment. We show that a commitment to later-stage syndicate financing increases effort and NPV and preserves the option value of staged investment. This commitment benefits initial venture capital investors as well as the entrepreneur.

Focusing on ICT in Rural and Regional Education in Australia

National priorities set by an Australian ministerial taskforce provide clear guidelines to develop pedagogy that integrates ICT. Although these guidelines do not specifically address rural and regional schools needs, the two priorities: promoting pedagogic leadership and creating new learning environments, are of particular interest. But how are these priorities reflected in the realities of rural and regional schools? Focus group interviews were conducted at a selection of rural and regional schools in each state and territory across Australia. These provided teachers, parents and students with the opportunity to identify key issues in relation to ICT in their schools. Issues identified by the focus groups were; the state of equipment in schools, comparability between home and school ICT experiences for students, pedagogical approaches, leadership, professional development and availability of ICT specialist teachers

Detection of IUPAC and IUPAC-like chemical names

Motivation: Chemical compounds like small signal molecules or other biological active chemical substances are an important entity class in life science publications and patents. Several representations and nomenclatures for chemicals like SMILES, InChI, IUPAC or trivial names exist. Only SMILES and InChI names allow a direct structure search, but in biomedical texts trivial names and Iupac like names are used more frequent. While trivial names can be found with a dictionary-based approach and in such a way mapped to their corresponding structures, it is not possible to enumerate all IUPAC names. In this work, we present a new machine learning approach based on conditional random fields (CRF) to find mentions of IUPAC and IUPAC-like names in scientific text as well as its evaluation and the conversion rate with available name-to-structure tools

Structural insights on TRPV5 gating by endogenous modulators.

TRPV5 is a transient receptor potential channel involved in calcium reabsorption. Here we investigate the interaction of two endogenous modulators with TRPV5. Both phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PI(4,5)P2) and calmodulin (CaM) have been shown to directly bind to TRPV5 and activate or inactivate the channel, respectively. Using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), we determined TRPV5 structures in the presence of dioctanoyl PI(4,5)P2 and CaM. The PI(4,5)P2 structure reveals a binding site between the N-linker, S4-S5 linker and S6 helix of TRPV5. These interactions with PI(4,5)P2 induce conformational rearrangements in the lower gate, opening the channel. The CaM structure reveals two TRPV5 C-terminal peptides anchoring a single CaM molecule and that calcium inhibition is mediated through a cation-π interaction between Lys116 on the C-lobe of calcium-activated CaM and Trp583 at the intracellular gate of TRPV5. Overall, this investigation provides insight into the endogenous modulation of TRPV5, which has the potential to guide drug discovery

Evaluation of Adjunctive Mycophenolate for Large Vessel Giant Cell Arteritis

Funding: We are grateful to Versus Arthritis (grant 22088) and PMR/GCA Scotland for supporting our workPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Apport de la géochimie et de la pétrologie à la connaissance de la métallurgie primaire du plomb argentifère au Moyen Âge

Les vestiges laissés par les ateliers métallurgiques de production de plomb argentifère sont souvent assez mal conservés. Aussi, la reconstitution des procédés passe par l’étude pétrochimique des scories, déchets produits au cours des opérations métallurgiques. Après avoir passé en revue les différents procédés de transformation de la galène en plomb et les réactions chimiques associées, nous présentons les résultats d’études pétrochimiques de deux sites (les ateliers du Mont Lozère dans les Cévennes et le site de Pfaffenloch dans les Vosges), pour lesquels des hypothèses concernant le procédé peuvent être proposées. Sur le Mont Lozère deux procédés semblent s’être succédés : d’abord le procédé par « grillage et réduction » par lequel le minerai théoriquement grillé est introduit dans un fourneau fonctionnant au charbon de bois ; puis le procédé « par précipitation » par lequel le minerai non grillé est introduit directement dans le fourneau en mélange avec des ajouts. À Pfaffenloch, seul le deuxième procédé semble avoir été mis en œuvre puisque une forte proportion de la gangue est détectée dans les scories. L’ajout en fer est représenté par la gangue elle-même formée par un carbonate de fer. Ce dernier procédé semble être daté aux alentours du xive-xve siècle.Remnants of lead-silver production workshops are often poorly preserved. Therefore, a reconstitution of the used processes requires a petrochemical study of slags, which are wastes produced by metallurgical operations. After having reviewed the different processes used to transform galena into lead, we present results of petrochemical studies from two sites : the Mont-Lozère workshops (Cevennes, French Massif Central) and the Pfaffenloch site (Vosges Mountains), for which hypothesis about the used process may be proposed. For the Mont Lozère, two processes seem to have succeeded : firstly a “roasting and reduction” process during which an ore previously roasted is introduced in a wood-coal furnace ; followed by a “precipitation” process during which the ore is introduced directly in the furnace, but with additions. For the Pfaffenloch site, only the second process seems to have been used, because a significant proportion of the gangue has been observed in the slags, implying that the ore could not have been roasted. Adds of iron comes from the gangue, consisting of an iron carbonate. This last process has been dated of 14-15th centuries

Articulating Loss: A Thematic Framework for Understanding Coastal Heritage Transformations

This is the final version. Available on open access from Routledge via the DOI in this recordThe coast is a dynamic landscape characterised by change. Although coastal change can provide opportunities to engage with the past as archaeological sites are exposed and uncovered, it also means that climate change pressures are likely to exacerbate and accelerate the inevitable loss of coastal heritage. Many projects and initiatives focus on protecting and saving threatened sites, but there has been less attention to developing tools that will help the heritage profession manage and communicate about loss. New strategies are needed to help heritage professionals engage with communities confronted with the vulnerability of valued coastal heritage sites, and to counter perceptions of mismanagement and misunderstanding. This paper aims to develop language to better articulate the ways in which change and loss are likely to be experienced at coastal heritage sites, so that the challenges and opportunities presented by each situation may be fully appreciated by heritage managers and communities navigating these changes. It does not address the question of how to preserve and protect, but conversely seeks to explore how to respond to and understand loss.Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC