Evaluation of non-drug treatment options for Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer’s disease has been described long ago, yet the illness is yet to be fully understood. Though it is true that research and technological advancements have brought us closer to understanding the disease, a truly effective pharmacological cure has not been discovered. With no permanent cure to rely on, AD patients and their caregivers still go through profound struggles in navigating through life with the disease. In this thesis, current literature on the non-pharmacological interventions is presented and discusses the various options that can provide the greatest relief and reap the most health benefits for patients. In total, four different non-drug treatments come into discussion - exercise, music, diet and cognitive interventions. In terms of exercise, research suggests that anaerobic work may be more beneficial than aerobic exercises in preventing the development or progression of mild cognitive dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. This is mostly due to the fact that anaerobic exercises can shift APP processing away from the non-amyloidogenic pathway and increase BDNF levels to offer improved neural protection. Music therapy intervention is evaluated next. This unique treatment is highly valued due to its beneficial effects on AD patients’ emotional well-being. Music therapy can take the forms of singing in groups or as an individual, and it can also incorporate dancing. Not only does music promote neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, but it also alleviates mood, boosts confidence and strengthens will. Diet is another significant component that can have an incredible impact on the AD patients’ wellbeing. Research reveals that diets high in saturated fatty acid should be avoided. On the other hand, diets mirroring the Mediterranean diet, including polyunsaturated fatty acids along with high amounts of vitamin C and folic acid should be readily consumed. Moreover, spices and herbs such as capsaicin should be used in a limited manner to decrease risk for AD. Finally, cognitive therapy is still a popular method for treating mild cognitive impairment and AD. Though cognitive improvement appears to be more modest, some psychostimulation programs combined with pharmacological treatments can play an influential role in achieving cognitive stability. Further research is needed in upgrading the current non-pharmacological interventions with an emphasis on the four treatments. These are available at an affordable cost and can be easily incorporated into the lifestyles of Alzheimer’s patients

Maximizing total job value on a single machine with job selection

This paper describes a single machine scheduling problem of maximizing total job value with a machine availability constraint. The value of each job decreases over time in a stepwise fashion. Several solution properties of the problem are developed. Based on the properties, a branch-and-bound algorithm and a heuristic algorithm are derived. These algorithms are evaluated in the computational study and the results show that the heuristic algorithm provides effective solutions within short computation times

Mandating Board Diversity

California’s Assembly Bill 979 (AB-979) requires companies that are based in California to have a specified minimum number of directors from underrepresented communities. A “director from an underrepresented community” is defined as an individual who self-identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who selfidentifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. AB-979 received much attention for being the first law to mandate greater diversity on corporate boards in terms of race and sexual orientation. Senate Bill 826 (SB-826), which was introduced two years prior, was the first U.S. legislative effort to mandate greater gender diversity on corporate boards. AB-979 and SB-826 have received both intense praise and vehement criticism. The debate over the California board diversity bills raises fundamental questions about the proper role of the state in using its power to regulate corporations to advance public values. In this Article, I summarize and respond to the various legal challenges that have been raised against California’s board diversity bills and argue that the precedent-setting efforts of the California legislature are consistent with the original design of corporate law in the United States, which is built on a model of federalism and state competition

Consumer Primacy: A Dynamic Model of Corporate Governance for Consumer- Centric Businesses

This Article challenges the conventional view that corporate law should principally strive to increase shareholder value, arguing that rather, corporate law should principally strive to ensure consumer satisfaction in consumer-centric businesses. Consumer-centric businesses are defined here as businesses in which consumers occupy a central role in the creation and distribution of corporate value and risks. For example, a consumer of a crowdfunded product does not take shares, but provides capital and product-design feedback during the early and critical stages of the product’s development. A consumer using a ridesharing app makes significant contributions to building the platform and provides real-time ratings and feedback regarding their experience, which are then used to incentivize desirable behavior within the platform. A purchaser of a token in an initial coin offering (ICO) purchases a medium of exchange that can be used within a particular network, with the value of the token being determined by the network’s success. In each of these examples, consumers have taken on roles that are the functional equivalents of the characteristics that legal theories of the firm have long relied upon to justify the law’s treatment of shareholders as owners and principals of firms. Based on this observation, I argue that consumers in these and other consumer-centric businesses should be provided with rights and obligations (such as the right to vote, standing to sue, and participation rights) commensurate to their contributions. In this Article, I show how this consumer-oriented model of the firm, which I refer to as the consumer primacy model, is useful as a mechanism to align corporate and societal interests and to inject diversity, long-termism, accountability, and social responsibility into the corporate boardroom, the lack of which has given rise to long-standing critiques of corporate culture in the United States

Typology of Public-Private Equity

Private equity, which pools funds for investment in private businesses, is one of the largest and fastest growing investment opportunities in the markets today. Private equity traditionally sought investments exclusively from sophisticated investors such as high net worth individuals and institutional investors. More recently, however, a growing number of private equity businesses have gone public and opened their doors to public investors, who are drawn to these investments because of the possibility of high returns and the opportunity to diversify their investment portfolios. In this Article, I review the universe of public-private equity (or PPE) businesses that are traded on the United States stock exchanges to map out how PPE has engaged with public investors. I find that PPE takes a variety of organizational forms, across different jurisdictions, and seeks investments from public investors at multiple levels within the private equity structure. While this variety expands the menu of options available to public investors, ignoring the fact that there are distinct types within the PPE universe can also be the source of investor and regulatory confusion. In this Article, I organize the PPE universe into three types according to whether the public investor is investing in the private equity adviser, fund, or both. This typology catalogs a complex and heterogeneous universe of firms that are sometimes lumped together as one to provide a deeper understanding of the unique structural and governance features of each type of PPE. And, by taking a segmented view of the company, fund, and securities regulatory regimes which apply, this Article takes the first step towards constructing a clear framework through which to understand and regulate PPE

Dynamic Corporate Residual Claimants: A Multicriteria Assessment

Corporate law provides residual claimants with key legal protections and rights, including fiduciary duty protections and voting rights. Under the conventional corporate law framework, shareholders are seen as the residual claimants of corporations because they are the parties who receive the residual profits of the corporation. This profit-oriented view of residual claimancy, however, is incomplete because it considers only one of the multiple criteria that are relevant to residual claimant analysis. In addition to profits, various other criteria have been used to identify the residual claimant of corporations over time, such as the variability of rewards, the wealth effects of one’s decisions, firm-specific investments, risk of loss, and monitoring capacities. The decision to rely on a single criterion (profit) to determine that shareholders are the exclusive residual claimants of corporations is, then, a policy choice that preferences one dimension of residual claimancy over others. This policy choice has had a profound impact on how corporate power and value are distributed in our society. This Article outlines a multicriteria assessment of corporate residual claimants which contemplates a more diverse conception of the residual claim and that could be used to broaden the group of stakeholders that are entitled to enjoy residual claimant protections and rights

Managing Regulatory Blindspots: A Case Study of Leveraged Loans

“Leveraged” loans, or loans rated BB or lower, have reached new peaks in the post-crisis period, approaching nearly two trillion dollars in such loans made globally. This Article assesses U.S. leveraged loan regulation and highlights the ways in which the entity- or institution-based focus of regulation have been the source of critical blindspots which have limited the ability of regulators to monitor and address the risks of leveraged lending. First, the current regulatory strategy, which relies on institutions to set their own definitions of and standards for leveraged lending activities, magnifies regulatory conflicts that are inherent in a fragmented regulatory structure like that of the United States. Second, the institution-based regulatory boundaries in leveraged loan regulation create regulatory gaps and exclude a significant amount of leveraged loans, particularly in the market’s riskiest segments, from regulatory oversight. Third, the regulatory focus on protecting individual institutions from the risks of leveraged lending may inadequately protect or even undermine the safety and soundness of the financial system. To manage these blindspots, the Article suggests a shift toward a loan-based perspective in the regulation of leveraged loans, and describes how this regulatory shift could be achieved by relying on the regulatory infrastructure offered by the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

The Duality of Variance Among ESG Assessments

As more attention is given to environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) considerations of firms, ESG data and ratings providers are serving an increasingly important function in the corporate discourse. It is reported that there were more than 160 ESG data and ratings providers in 2020, and more than 600 ESG ratings and rankings products available globally as of 2018. Even as the ESG provider and product markets have grown exponentially, however, the lack of ESG data has been cited as an impediment to a broader embrace of the ESG movement. One source of this perception of inadequacy originates from the widely reported variance among ESG assessments. Variance among assessments may be a source of concern if it results from inconsistent application of methodologies, poor quality data, conflicts of interest, error, prejudice, or bias. At the same time, convergence is not necessarily a proxy for reliability and may itself also be the product of inflation, laxity, groupthink, or monopolistic market conditions. This was the case with the credit ratings of structured finance products during the 2007–2008 period, which were highly convergent, yet were later found to have been inflated and believed to have been the catalyst of one of the most devastating financial recessions in recent history. It is this duality of variance among assessments, that they can be both harmful and desirable, and the implications of this duality on the ESG movement, that are the subject of this Article. The Article provides an analytical and regulatory framework that can be used to identify and mitigate harmful forms of variance nd convergence among ESG assessments