When board interlock fell apart, so did political moderation in the boardroom

Directors today are less constrained by the web of peers, and can act on their own idiosyncratic beliefs and ideologies, write Johan Chu and Jerry Davi

Who Killed the Inner Circle? The Breakdown of the American Corporate Elite Network, 1999-2009

This paper analyzes the properties of the board interlock network connecting the largest American corporations between 1999 and 2009. We find that the former stability of the network—in which a handful of banks and multinationals held positions at the center, a few dozen directors served on a large number of boards, and thus the distance between any two companies or directors was short—has largely collapsed during the past decade. There is no longer a stable core of companies that reliably occupies a center, and the mean geodesic has gone up continuously since 2002. The proximal cause is that no cohort of super-connector directors has arisen to take the place of those who have retired. This contrasts with prior generations, in which ambitious individuals sought out multiple board seats for the benefits they provided in status, business connections, and monetary compensation. We speculate that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, along with other corporate governance reforms, has made serving on several boards costly, resulting in the decline in one of sociology’s most-studied networks

Durable Dominance.

I advance an explanation for durable dominance—dominants’ enduring control of vastly disproportionate shares of contested resources in the face of mass entrepreneurial entry and increased competitive parity. I argue that increased, more potent competitive entry and more level rules of competition can benefit dominants. More and stronger new entrants disproportionately disadvantage non-dominants compared to dominants, and weaken near-dominants’ ability to challenge dominants. Durable dominance is observed in many settings, for example, in the increased gap between the wealthiest in the U.S. and everyone else, and in industries where dominant companies maintain their dominance in open, competitive markets. I test the predictions of this theory in two settings. First, I investigate the implications of this theory with thirty years of data on competition among U.S. mutual funds. As predicted by the theory, the effects of increased competitive entry on incumbents were nonlinear: deleterious for incumbent funds on average, but beneficial for dominant funds. New entry of similar competitors depressed future annual flows of investor money into 96.5% of mutual funds, but the top 1.3% of mutual funds gained on average almost $70 million of assets under management from the entry of a similar competitor. Increased competitive entry also increased dominant funds’ probability of remaining dominant for longer than three years. Second, I examine the process of board seat accumulation for directors on the boards of S&P1500 companies. Those with many board seats (dominant directors) compared to those with only one were about twice as likely to gain another seat in 2000, but no more likely by 2010. The theory predicts that such a leveled playing field should prevent non-dominants from rising to dominance, and the data support this prediction. A Monte Carlo simulation supports the causal relationship between the changed micro-dynamics of hiring and the observed non-appearance of new dominant directors. The proposed theory suggests policy implications for dominants, non-dominants, and policy-makers. I close by suggesting future investigations that could test the general applicability of the theory. I argue that the study of most-often-true “social laws” is a useful complement to the current focus on social mechanisms in organization theory.PhDBusiness AdministrationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110376/1/johanchu_1.pd

Phase retrieval from 4-dimensional electron diffraction datasets

We present a computational imaging mode for large scale electron microscopy data, which retrieves a complex wave from noisy/sparse intensity recordings using a deep learning approach and subsequently reconstructs an image of the specimen from the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) predicted exit waves. We demonstrate that an appropriate forward model in combination with open data frameworks can be used to generate large synthetic datasets for training. In combination with augmenting the data with Poisson noise corresponding to varying dose-values, we effectively eliminate overfitting issues. The U-NET based architecture of the CNN is adapted to the task at hand and performs well while maintaining a relatively small size and fast performance. The validity of the approach is confirmed by comparing the reconstruction to well-established methods using simulated, as well as real electron microscopy data. The proposed method is shown to be effective particularly in the low dose range, evident by strong suppression of noise, good spatial resolution, and sensitivity to different atom types, enabling the simultaneous visualisation of light and heavy elements and making different atomic species distinguishable. Since the method acts on a very local scale and is comparatively fast it bears the potential to be used for near-real-time reconstruction during data acquisition.Comment: Accepted conference paper of IEEE ICIP 202

Critical and Near-Critical Branching Processes

Scale-free dynamics in physical and biological systems can arise from a variety of causes. Here, we explore a branching process which leads to such dynamics. We find conditions for the appearance of power laws and study quantitatively what happens to these power laws when such conditions are violated. From a branching process model, we predict the behavior of two systems which seem to exhibit near scale-free behavior--rank-frequency distributions of number of subtaxa in biology, and abundance distributions of genotypes in an artificial life system. In the light of these, we discuss distributions of avalanche sizes in the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sandpile model.Comment: 9 pages LaTex with 10 PS figures. v.1 of this paper contains results from non-critical sandpile simulations that were excised from the published versio

Concert recording 2013-04-11

[Track 01]. Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D. 965 / Franz Schubert -- [Track 02]. Duos for flute and clarinet, op. 34. I. Andante sostenuto ; [Track 03]. II. Allegro risoluto ; [Track 04]. III. Moderato ; [Track 05]. IV. Allegro ma non troppo ; [Track 06]. V. Andante molto ; [Track 07]. VI. Allegro / Robert Muczynski -- [Track 08]. Concert piece no. 2 in D minor, op. 114. I. Allegro con fuoco ; [Track 09]. II. Andante ; [Track 10]. III. Presto / Felix Mendelssohn -- [Track 11]. Quintet for clarinet and strings in A Major, K. 581. I. Allegro ; [Track 12]. II. Larghetto ; [Track 13]. III. Menuetto ; [Track 14]. Allegro con variazioni / W.A. Mozart

A review of pathological findings in impalas (Aepyceros melampus) in South Africa

Impalas (Aepyceros melampus) are common African antelope. A retrospective study was conducted of 251 impala cases from game farms, national parks and zoos submitted by veterinarians and pathologists in South Africa (2003–2016). Histopathology slides as well as records of macroscopic lesions and additional diagnostic tests performed were examined. Non-infectious conditions, such as acute pulmonary congestion and oedema, cachexia, traumatic injury and anaesthetic-related mortality were the most common causes of morbidity and mortality. Bacterial sepsis was the most common infectious disease, whilst skeletal muscle and myocardial sarcocystosis and verminous cholangitis and pneumonia were the most common parasitic diseases. Although the retrospective nature of this study limits the significance of the relative prevalence of lesions in the three locations, management decisions and diagnostic plans may be informed by the results. Impala from game farms had significantly more cachexia cases than those from other locations. Impala from zoos had significantly more lymphoid depletion than those from other locations. These findings suggest that nutrition and pasture management, enclosure design, management of intra- and interspecies aggression and improved anaesthetic protocols could improve animal welfare and survival of impala on game farms and in zoos. This report presents a detailed survey of diseases and conditions found in impala that provides baseline data for veterinary pathologists.The project was conducted at the NZG of the, South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and funded jointly by the SANBI NZG and the Zoological Pathology Program of the University of Illinois.The SANBI NZG and the Zoological Pathology Program of the University of Illinois.http://www.jsava.co.zaam2020Paraclinical Science

Steps and catalytic reactions: CO oxidation with preadsorbed O on Rh(553)

Industrial catalysts are often comprised of nanoparticles supported on high-surface-area oxides, in order to maximise the catalytically active surface area and thereby utilise the active material better. These nanoparticles expose steps and corners that, due to low coordination to neighboring atoms, are more reactive and, as a consequence, are often assumed to have higher catalytic activity. We have investigated the reaction between CO and preadsorbed O on a stepped Rh(553) surface, and show that CO oxidation indeed occurs faster than on the flat Rh(111) surface at the same temperature. However, we do find that this is not a result of reactions at the step sites but rather at the terrace sites close to the steps, due to in-plane relaxation enabled by the step. This insight can provide ways to optimize the shape of the nanoparticles to further improve the activity of certain reactions