587 research outputs found
Corporate ownership and control in Victorian Britain
© Economic History Society 2014. Using ownership and control data for 890 firm-years, this article examines the concentration of capital and voting rights in British companies in the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that both capital and voting rights were diffuse by modern-day standards. However, this does not necessarily mean that there was a modern-style separation of ownership from control in Victorian Britain. One major implication of our findings is that diffuse ownership was present in the UK much earlier than previously thought, and given that it occurred in an era with weak shareholder protection law, it somewhat undermines the influential law and finance hypothesis. We also find that diffuse ownership is correlated with large boards, a London head office, non-linear voting rights, and shares traded on multiple markets
Analyzing the tidal-related origin of subinertial flows through the Strait of Gibraltar
The effects of tidal dynamics on subinertial flows through the Strait of Gibraltar are analyzed. As found in previous studies, an empirical orthogonal function analysis of subinertial currents at the Camarinal Sill yields two dominant oscillation modes. The first mode presents a barotropic character and rather irregular fluctuations and it has been related to meteorological forcing. The second mode is baroclinic and presents a clear deterministic behavior with time that seems to be related to tidal forcing. Against the hypothesis proposed in previous studies stating that tidal mixing cycles explain the second mode, we show, by using a one-dimensional numerical model of two-layer immiscible shallow water, that the origin of this mode may basically be related to nonlinear interactions among the main semidiurnal tidal constituents through the advective terms in the momentum balance and other nonlinear terms in the volume conservation equations. That mode is also crucial to understanding the vertical shear time variations of the horizontal currents. In particular, it minimizes the differences in the maximum shear between neap and spring tides
The diffusion and impact of the corporation in 1910
With new and comprehensive data on the international spread of listed and unlisted corporations before the First World War, this article shows the prominence of common law and Scandinavian civil law in the process. This association is interpreted as demonstrating the strong contribution of liberal (laissez-faire) industrial stances. The findings confirm an extended version of Rajan and Zingales's hypothesis that trade and capital openness are necessary for companies to flourish. Despite the possibilities that companies were created for fraud and exploitation, countries using the corporate form more extensively before 1914 had higher GDP per capita. Through this process, the benefit of imperialism extended to British dominions, but not much, if at all, to British dependent colonies
Sub-parsec supermassive Binary Quasars: expectations at z<1
We investigate the theoretical expectations for detections of supermassive
binary black holes that can be identified as sub-parsec luminous quasars.
To-date, only two candidates have been selected in a sample comprising 17,500
sources selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar Catalog at
z<0.70 (Boroson & Lauer 2009) In this Letter, we use models of assembly and
growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in hierarchical cosmologies to study
the statistics and observability of binary quasars at sub-parsec separations.
Our goal is twofold: (1) test if such a scarce number of binaries is consistent
with theoretical prediction of SMBH merger rates, and (2) provide additional
predictions at higher redshifts, and at lower flux levels. We determine the
cumulative number of expected binaries in a complete, volume limited sample.
Motivated by Boroson & Lauer (2009), we apply the SDSS Quasar luminosity cut
(M_i<-22) to our theoretical sample, deriving an upper limit to the observable
binary fraction. We find that sub-parsec quasar binaries are intrinsically
rare. Our best models predict ~0.01 deg^-2 sub-parsec binary quasars with
separations below ~10^4 Schwarzschild radii (v_orb>2000 km/s) at z<0.7, which
represent a fraction ~6x10^-4 of unabsorbed quasars in our theoretical sample.
In a complete sample of ~10,000 sources, we therefore predict an upper limit of
~10 sub-parsec binary quasars. The number of binaries increases rapidly with
increasing redshift. The decreasing lifetime with SMBH binary mass suggests
that lowering the luminosity threshold does not lead to a significant increase
in the number of detectable sub-parsec binary quasars.Comment: ApJ Letters, in pres
A global corporate census: publicly traded and close companies in 1910
In 1910 the world had almost half a million corporations, only one-hundredth of today's total. About one-fifth—with over half of corporate capital—were publicly tradable, higher portions than today. Most publicly quoted corporations traded in Europe and the British Empire, but most close (private) corporations operated in the US, which, until the 1940s, had more corporations per capita than anywhere else. The 83 countries surveyed here differed markedly in company numbers, corporate capital/GDP ratios, and average corporate size. Enclave economies—dominated by quoted (and often foreign-owned) companies—had the largest average sizes, while other nations had more varied mixes of large quoted corporations and close company small and medium enterprises
Planet Populations as a Function of Stellar Properties
Exoplanets around different types of stars provide a window into the diverse
environments in which planets form. This chapter describes the observed
relations between exoplanet populations and stellar properties and how they
connect to planet formation in protoplanetary disks. Giant planets occur more
frequently around more metal-rich and more massive stars. These findings
support the core accretion theory of planet formation, in which the cores of
giant planets form more rapidly in more metal-rich and more massive
protoplanetary disks. Smaller planets, those with sizes roughly between Earth
and Neptune, exhibit different scaling relations with stellar properties. These
planets are found around stars with a wide range of metallicities and occur
more frequently around lower mass stars. This indicates that planet formation
takes place in a wide range of environments, yet it is not clear why planets
form more efficiently around low mass stars. Going forward, exoplanet surveys
targeting M dwarfs will characterize the exoplanet population around the lowest
mass stars. In combination with ongoing stellar characterization, this will
help us understand the formation of planets in a large range of environments.Comment: Accepted for Publication in the Handbook of Exoplanet
A rocky planet transiting a nearby low-mass star
M-dwarf stars -- hydrogen-burning stars that are smaller than 60 per cent of
the size of the Sun -- are the most common class of star in our Galaxy and
outnumber Sun-like stars by a ratio of 12:1. Recent results have shown that M
dwarfs host Earth-sized planets in great numbers: the average number of M-dwarf
planets that are between 0.5 to 1.5 times the size of Earth is at least 1.4 per
star. The nearest such planets known to transit their star are 39 parsecs away,
too distant for detailed follow-up observations to measure the planetary masses
or to study their atmospheres. Here we report observations of GJ 1132b, a
planet with a size of 1.2 Earth radii that is transiting a small star 12
parsecs away. Our Doppler mass measurement of GJ 1132b yields a density
consistent with an Earth-like bulk composition, similar to the compositions of
the six known exoplanets with masses less than six times that of the Earth and
precisely measured densities. Receiving 19 times more stellar radiation than
the Earth, the planet is too hot to be habitable but is cool enough to support
a substantial atmosphere, one that has probably been considerably depleted of
hydrogen. Because the host star is nearby and only 21 per cent the radius of
the Sun, existing and upcoming telescopes will be able to observe the
composition and dynamics of the planetary atmosphere.Comment: Published in Nature on 12 November 2015, available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature15762. This is the authors' version of the
manuscrip
Aptamer-based multiplexed proteomic technology for biomarker discovery
Interrogation of the human proteome in a highly multiplexed and efficient manner remains a coveted and challenging goal in biology. We present a new aptamer-based proteomic technology for biomarker discovery capable of simultaneously measuring thousands of proteins from small sample volumes (15 [mu]L of serum or plasma). Our current assay allows us to measure ~800 proteins with very low limits of detection (1 pM average), 7 logs of overall dynamic range, and 5% average coefficient of variation. This technology is enabled by a new generation of aptamers that contain chemically modified nucleotides, which greatly expand the physicochemical diversity of the large randomized nucleic acid libraries from which the aptamers are selected. Proteins in complex matrices such as plasma are measured with a process that transforms a signature of protein concentrations into a corresponding DNA aptamer concentration signature, which is then quantified with a DNA microarray. In essence, our assay takes advantage of the dual nature of aptamers as both folded binding entities with defined shapes and unique sequences recognizable by specific hybridization probes. To demonstrate the utility of our proteomics biomarker discovery technology, we applied it to a clinical study of chronic kidney disease (CKD). We identified two well known CKD biomarkers as well as an additional 58 potential CKD biomarkers. These results demonstrate the potential utility of our technology to discover unique protein signatures characteristic of various disease states. More generally, we describe a versatile and powerful tool that allows large-scale comparison of proteome profiles among discrete populations. This unbiased and highly multiplexed search engine will enable the discovery of novel biomarkers in a manner that is unencumbered by our incomplete knowledge of biology, thereby helping to advance the next generation of evidence-based medicine
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Inflation and Dark Energy from spectroscopy at z > 2
The expansion of the Universe is understood to have accelerated during two
epochs: in its very first moments during a period of Inflation and much more
recently, at z < 1, when Dark Energy is hypothesized to drive cosmic
acceleration. The undiscovered mechanisms behind these two epochs represent
some of the most important open problems in fundamental physics. The large
cosmological volume at 2 < z < 5, together with the ability to efficiently
target high- galaxies with known techniques, enables large gains in the
study of Inflation and Dark Energy. A future spectroscopic survey can test the
Gaussianity of the initial conditions up to a factor of ~50 better than our
current bounds, crossing the crucial theoretical threshold of
of order unity that separates single field and
multi-field models. Simultaneously, it can measure the fraction of Dark Energy
at the percent level up to , thus serving as an unprecedented test of
the standard model and opening up a tremendous discovery space
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