Fiduciary Duties of Bidder Directors in the Context of Tender Offers - Fair Play in a War

When discussing mergers and acquisitions, most of the focus is given to whether the board of directors of the target company has a right of “self-defense” to stay independent. However, this thesis focuses on the other side of the transaction and seeks to determine whether the bidder in making a tender offer is acting unlawfully. Since a director has unlimited personal liability for a breach of his or her fiduciary duties, the question of whether a takeover-bid can be a breach of a director’s fiduciary duty is of great importance, yet little literature and no case law are devoted to the subject. The author addresses this issue by differentiating the duties of target-directors and bidder-directors during a takeover and by seeking to formulate a set of rules for bidder-directors to follow when making a tender offer. In developing these rules for bidder-directors, the business judgment rule and Smith v. Van Gorkom are considered

Neuropsychological measures of attention and memory function in schizophrenia: relationships with symptom dimensions and serum monoamine activity

BACKGROUND: Some clinical symptoms or cognitive functions have been related to the overall state of monoamine activity in patients with schizophrenia, (e.g. inverse correlation of the dopamine metabolite HVA with delusions or visual-masking performance). However, profiles (as presented here) of the relations of the activity of dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin to neuropsychologic (dys)functions in major patient sub-groups with their very different symptomatic and cognitive characteristics have not been reported. METHODS: Serum measures of dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin turnover were examined by regression analyses for the prediction of performance on 10 neuropsychological measures reflecting left- and right-hemispheric and frontal-, parietal- and temporal-lobe function in 108 patients with schizophrenia and 63 matched controls. The neuropsychological battery included tests of verbal fluency, Stroop interference, trail-making, block-design, Mooney faces recognition, picture-completion, immediate and delayed visual and verbal recall. Paranoid and nonparanoid subgroups were based on ratings from the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Groups with high and low ratings of ideas-of-reference and thought-disorder were formed from a median split on the Scale for Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS). RESULTS: Verbal-fluency and Stroop-interference (left frontal and fronto-cingulate function) were negatively associated with noradrenergic turnover in nonparanoid and thought-disordered patients. High dopamine turnover related to speeded trail-making (frontal modulation of set switching) in those with many ideas-of-reference. In contrast, low dopamine turnover predicted poor recall in nonparanoid patients and those with little thought disorder. Serotonin metabolism did not independently contribute to the prediction any measure of cognitive performance. But, with regard to the relative activity between monoaminergic systems, increased HVA/5-HIAA ratios predicted visual-reproduction and Mooney's face-recognition performance (right-hemisphere functions) in highly symptomatic patients. Decreased HVA/MHPG predicted non-verbal recall. CONCLUSION: Clinical state and function are differentially sensitive to overall levels of monoamine activity. In particular, right-lateralised cerebral function was sensitive to the relative activities of the monoamines. Increased noradrenergic activity was associated with enhanced frontal but impaired temporal lobe function in nonparanoid syndromes. Low dopaminergic activity predicted poor attentional set control in those with ideas-of-reference, but poor recall in nonparanoid patients. These data, especially the HVA/5-HIAA ratios, provide a basis for planning the nature of antipsychotic treatment aimed at patient specific symptom dimensions and cognitive abilities

Análisis cuantitativo de las fases mineralógicas de los clínkeres del cemento portland. Análisis cualitativos y cuantitativos por espectroscopia infrarroja de las fases mineralógicas del clínker del cemento portland

Not availablePara la determinación cuantitativa de las fases mineralógicas del clinker de cemento portland, tan sólo se emplean el análisis microscópico y el de difracción de rayos X. Ambas técnicas exigen una preparación de muestras muy cuidadosa, lo que lleva bastante tiempo. A causa de estas circunstancias surge el interés de desarrollar un procedimiento con el que se pueda obtener resultados de exactitud y con poco trabajo, basado en la espectroscopia infrarroja. En principio existen dificultades, tanto en el método de trabajo como de interpretación de resultados. Por ejemplo, la formación y composición de las fases del clíñker se hallan sometidas a variaciones; por otra parte, aún no se ha llegado a elaborar un procedimiento para estudio por IR de sistemas que contengan varios componentes inorgánicos en estado sólido. Se ha pensado en la realización previa de análisis elementales, con los que se aclararían los de las fases minerales de los clínkeres, ya que no está aún suficientemente resuelto —a pesar de la importancia que esto representa— el análisis cuantitativo de estas fases

A guideline on how to recruit respondents for online surveys using Facebook and Instagram: Using hard-to-reach health workers as an example (Version 1.0)

Social Networking Sites (SNS) offer survey scientists a relatively new tool to recruit participants, especially among otherwise hard-to-reach populations. Facebook and Instagram, in particular, allow the distribution of advertisements to specific subsets of their users at low cost. Researchers can use such targeted advertisements to guide participants to their online questionnaires. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have shown that this approach can be successfully applied to a range of different target groups. However, a certain familiarity with the tools and mechanisms provided by Meta is necessary to employ this sampling method. Therefore, in this guideline, we will first give a general introduction to sampling via advertisements on Facebook and Instagram before providing detailed instructions on the implementation of such a recruitment campaign. This will be followed by a brief summary of a recent study conducted by GESIS using Meta's platforms to recruit professionals in the German health care sector. Finally, we provide recommendations with respect to the reporting of methodological parameters when using this approach, propose a flowchart to visualize sample sizes at different points during the recruitment process and offer a glossary containing definitions of essential terms researchers are confronted with when using Meta's advertisement interface.Soziale Netzwerkseiten (SNS) stellen eine vergleichsweise neue Möglichkeit dar, Teilnehmende für wissenschaftliche Befragungsprojekte zu rekrutieren. Besonderes Potential hat der Ansatz mit Blick auf die Rekrutierung anderweitig schwer erreichbarer Zielgruppen. So ermöglichen Facebook und Instagram die Schaltung kostengünstiger Werbung für genau definierte Teilgruppen der Nutzenden dieser Netzwerke. Entsprechende Werbunganzeigen können von Forschenden genutzt werden, um ausgewählte Personen zu ihren Onlinefragebögen zu leiten. In den letzten Jahren hat eine wachsende Zahl von Studien gezeigt, dass dieser Ansatz erfolgreich auf eine Reihe unterschiedlicher Zielgruppen angewendet werden kann. Allerdings ist eine gewisse Vertrautheit mit den von Meta bereitgestellten Instrumenten und Mechanismen erforderlich, um dieses Verfahren anzuwenden. Daher bieten wir in dieser Guideline zunächst eine allgemeine Einführung in das Sampling über Werbeanzeigen auf Facebook und Instagram, bevor wir eine detaillierte Anleitung für die Durchführung einer solchen Rekrutierungskampagne geben. Danach folgt eine kurze Zusammenfassung einer kürzlich von GESIS durchgeführten Studie, bei der die Meta-Plattformen zur Rekrutierung von Fachkräften aus dem deutschen Gesundheitswesen genutzt wurden. Abschließend geben wir Empfehlungen dazu, welche Parameter in Publikationen berichtet werden sollten, um die Vergleichbarkeit der Ergebnisse zu gewährleisten. Mit diesem Ziel stellen wir auch ein Flussdiagramm zur Visualisierung der Stichprobengrößen zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten des Rekrutierungsprozesses zur Verfügung. Schließlich fassen wir in einem Glossar Definitionen wesentlicher Parameter zusammen, mit denen Forscher bei der Verwendung von Metas Werbeschnittstelle konfrontiert werden

Enhancement of the Zero Phonon Line emission from a Single NV-Center in a Nanodiamond via Coupling to a Photonic Crystal Cavity

Using a nanomanipulation technique a nanodiamond with a single nitrogen vacancy center is placed directly on the surface of a gallium phosphide photonic crystal cavity. A Purcell-enhancement of the fluorescence emission at the zero phonon line (ZPL) by a factor of 12.1 is observed. The ZPL coupling is a first crucial step towards future diamond-based integrated quantum optical devices

Morphological shifts in populations of generalist and specialist amphibians in response to fragmentation of the brazilian Atlantic forest

Volume: 13Start Page: 47End Page: 5

How German health workers’ views on vaccine safety can be swayed by the AstraZeneca controversy

Several COVID-19 vaccines are now licensed, and the success of a rollout often depends on people’s willingness to accept any of them. Health workers are in a unique position to influence the public. Jan Priebe (German Institute for Global and Area Studies), Henning Silber, Christoph Beuthner, Steffen Pötzschke, Bernd Weiß, and Jessica Daikeler (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) show how their recommendations change when they are given different types of information about vaccines

Failure of hydrogenation in protecting polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from fragmentation

A recent study of soft X-ray absorption in native and hydrogenated coronene cations, C$_{24}$H$_{12+m}^+$ $m=0-7$, led to the conclusion that additional hydrogen atoms protect (interstellar) Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules from fragmentation [Reitsma et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 053002 (2014)]. The present experiment with collisions between fast (30-200 eV) He atoms and pyrene (C$_{16}$H$_{10+m}^+$, $m=0$, 6, and 16) and simulations without reference to the excitation method suggests the opposite. We find that the absolute carbon-backbone fragmentation cross section does not decrease but increases with the degree of hydrogenation for pyrene molecules.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure