Legal Models and Business Realities of Enterprise Groups - Mismatch and Change

Although conducted world-wide through hundreds of subsidiaries and affiliates, modern large business is, in economic reality, typically a single economically integrated enterprise functioning with a common objective under the control of its parent company. Yet the prevailing legal models are, for the most part, oblivious to this. Mistakenly adopting outmoded concepts inherited from the misty past, these models focus on many separate subsidiary corporations that make up the business and necessarily overlook the larger whole. The result of this outdated view is a mismatch between business reality and legal form which has led so frequently to poor legal and regulatory decision-making and ineffectual public control. While there is change stirring today, overall the law’s response to this mismatch has been piecemeal and unsystematic. After reviewing how we got to this unhappy point, this paper will sketch out a new legal theory of enterprise analysis as the basis of modern corporation law to serve the needs of the Twenty-First Century. In some areas it will replace and in other areas it will supplement existing legal models. Enterprise analysis focuses on the implementation of the underlying policies and rules of the specific body of law at issue, such as securities, tax, or bankruptcy, to determine whether the objectives of that body of law are better served in the specific matter by looking to the whole enterprise or, alternatively, to the particular corporate subsidiary entities involved. While overt recognition of this enterprise analysis has been limited, the American legal system today is in fact applying it in numerous areas

Legal Models and Business Realities of Enterprise Groups - Mismatch and Change

Although conducted world-wide through hundreds of subsidiaries and affiliates, modern large business is, in economic reality, typically a single economically integrated enterprise functioning with a common objective under the control of its parent company. Yet the prevailing legal models are, for the most part, oblivious to this. Mistakenly adopting outmoded concepts inherited from the misty past, these models focus on many separate subsidiary corporations that make up the business and necessarily overlook the larger whole. The result of this outdated view is a mismatch between business reality and legal form which has led so frequently to poor legal and regulatory decision-making and ineffectual public control. While there is change stirring today, overall the law’s response to this mismatch has been piecemeal and unsystematic. After reviewing how we got to this unhappy point, this paper will sketch out a new legal theory of enterprise analysis as the basis of modern corporation law to serve the needs of the Twenty-First Century. In some areas it will replace and in other areas it will supplement existing legal models. Enterprise analysis focuses on the implementation of the underlying policies and rules of the specific body of law at issue, such as securities, tax, or bankruptcy, to determine whether the objectives of that body of law are better served in the specific matter by looking to the whole enterprise or, alternatively, to the particular corporate subsidiary entities involved. While overt recognition of this enterprise analysis has been limited, the American legal system today is in fact applying it in numerous areas

The DeMaDs Open Source Modeling Framework for Power System Malfunction Detection

Modeling and simulation of electrical power systems are becoming increasingly important approaches for the development and operation of novel smart grid functionalities -- especially with regard to data-driven applications as data of certain operational states or misconfigurations can be next to impossible to obtain. The DeMaDs framework allows for the simulation and modeling of electric power grids and malfunctions therein. Furthermore, it serves as a testbed to assess the applicability of various data-driven malfunction detection methods. These include data mining techniques, traditional machine learning approaches as well as deep learning methods. The framework's capabilities and functionality are laid out here, as well as explained by the means of an illustrative example.Comment: 2023 Open Source Modelling and Simulation of Energy Systems (OSMSES

A mapping approach to synchronization in the "Zajfman trap": stability conditions and the synchronization mechanism

We present a two particle model to explain the mechanism that stabilizes a bunch of positively charged ions in an "ion trap resonator" [Pedersen etal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 (2001) 055001]. The model decomposes the motion of the two ions into two mappings for the free motion in different parts of the trap and one for a compressing momentum kick. The ions' interaction is modelled by a time delay, which then changes the balance between adjacent momentum kicks. Through these mappings we identify the microscopic process that is responsible for synchronization and give the conditions for that regime.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures; submitted to Phys Rev

Overexpression of Mcl-1 exacerbates lymphocyte accumulation and autoimmune kidney disease in lpr mice

Cell death by apoptosis has a critical role during embryonic development and in maintaining tissue homeostasis. In mammals, there are two converging apoptosis pathways: the ‘extrinsic’ pathway, which is triggered by engagement of cell surface ‘death receptors’ such as Fas/APO-1; and the ‘intrinsic’ pathway, which is triggered by diverse cellular stresses, and is regulated by prosurvival and pro-apoptotic members of the Bcl-2 family of proteins. Pro-survival Mcl-1, which can block activation of the proapoptotic proteins, Bax and Bak, appears critical for the survival and maintenance of multiple haemopoietic cell types. To investigate the impact on haemopoiesis of simultaneously inhibiting both apoptosis pathways, we introduced the vavP-Mcl-1 transgene, which causes overexpression of Mcl-1 protein in all haemopoietic lineages, into Faslpr/lpr mice, which lack functional Fas and are prone to autoimmunity. The combined mutations had a modest impact on myelopoiesis, primarily an increase in the macrophage/monocyte population in Mcl-1tg/lpr mice compared with lpr or Mcl-1tg mice. The impact on lymphopoiesis was striking, with a marked elevation in all major lymphoid subsets, including the non-conventional double-negative (DN) T cells (TCRβ+ CD4– CD8– B220+ ) characteristic of Faslpr/lpr mice. Of note, the onset of autoimmunity was markedly accelerated in Mcl-1tg/lpr mice compared with lpr mice, and this was preceded by an increase in immunoglobulin (Ig)-producing cells and circulating autoantibodies. This degree of impact was surprising, given the relatively mild phenotype conferred by the vavP-Mcl-1 transgene by itself: a two- to threefold elevation of peripheral B and T cells, no significant increase in the non-conventional DN T-cell population and no autoimmune disease. Comparison of the phenotype with that of other susceptible mice suggests that the development of autoimmune disease in Mcl-1tg/lpr mice may be influenced not only by Ig-producing cells but also other haemopoietic cell types

Towards a Systematic Approach for Smart Grid Hazard Analysis and Experiment Specification

The transition to the smart grid introduces complexity to the design and operation of electric power systems. This complexity has the potential to result in safety-related losses that are caused, for example, by unforeseen interactions between systems and cyber-attacks. Consequently, it is important to identify potential losses and their root causes, ideally during system design. This is non-trivial and requires a systematic approach. Furthermore, due to complexity, it may not possible to reason about the circumstances that could lead to a loss; in this case, experiments are required. In this work, we present how two complementary deductive approaches can be usefully integrated to address these concerns: Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) is a systems approach to identifying safety-related hazard scenarios; and the ERIGrid Holistic Test Description (HTD) provides a structured approach to refine and document experiments. The intention of combining these approaches is to enable a systematic approach to hazard analysis whose findings can be experimentally tested. We demonstrate the use of this approach with a reactive power voltage control case study for a low voltage distribution network.Comment: 2020 IEEE 18th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN

Frequency-adaptive control of a three-phase single-stage grid-connected photovoltaic system under grid voltage sags

The low-voltage ride-through service is carried out in this paper according to the voltage profile described by the IEC 61400-21 European normative when short-duration voltage sags happen, and some instantaneous reactive power is delivered to the grid in accordance with the Spanish grid code; the mandatory limitation of the amplitude of the three-phase inverter currents to its nominal value is carried out with a novel control strategy, in which a certain amount of instantaneous constant active power can also be delivered to the grid when small or moderate voltage sags happen. A Multiple second order generalized integrator frequency-locked loop synchronization algorithm is employed in order to estimate the system frequency without harmonic distortions, as well as to output the positive- and the negative- sequence of the {\alpha}\b{eta} quantities of the three-phase grid voltages when balanced and unbalanced voltage sags happen in a frequency-adaptive scheme. The current control is carried out in the stationary reference frame, which guarantees the cancellation of the harmonic distortions in the utility grid currents using a Harmonic compensation structure, and the implementation of a constant active power control in order to protect the DC link capacitor from thermal stresses avoiding the appearance of large harmonic distortions at twice the fundamental frequency in the DC link voltage. A case study of a three-phase single-stage grid-connected PV system with a maximum apparent power about 500 kVA is tested with several simulations using MATLAB/SIMULINK firstly, and secondly, with some experiments using the Controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) simulation technique for several types of voltage sags in order to do the final validation of the control algorithms

Modeling and design of the vector control for a three-phase single-stage grid-connected PV system with LVRT capability according to the spanish grid code

This article deals with the vector control in dq axes of a three-phase grid-connected photovoltaic system with single-stage topology and low-voltage-ride-through capability. The photovoltaic generator is built using an array of several series-parallel Suntech PV modules and is modeled as a Lookup Table (two-dimensional; 2-D). The requirements adopted when grid voltage sags occur are based in both the IEC 61400-21 European normative and the allowed amount of reactive power to be delivered according to the Spanish grid code, which avoids the disconnection of the inverter under grid faults by a limitation in the magnitude of the three-phase output inverter currents. For this, the calculation of the positive- and negative-sequences of the grid voltages is made and a conventional three-phase Phase-Locked Loop is used for the inverter-grid synchronization, allowing the control of the active and reactive powers solely with the dq components of the inverter currents. A detailed enhanced flowchart of the control algorithm with low-voltage-ride-through capability is presented and several simulations and experiments using Matlab/SIMULINK and the Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation technique, respectively, are run for several types of one- and three-phase voltage sags in order to validate its behavior.This work was supported by: the project "Nuevas topologias para convertidores en MT para grandes Instalaciones Fotovoltaicas" from the Spanish Government (Ref. TEC2016-80136-P) (A. B. Rey-Boue); the European Community's Horizon 2020 Program (H2020/2014-2020) in project "ERIGrid" (Grant Agreement No. 654113) under the Trans-national Access (TA) User Project: 04.003-2018