Baum and Stiles: The Silent Partners: Institutional Investors and Corporate Control; Austin: Proxy Contests and Corporate Reform; Rubner: The Ensnared Shareholder: Directors and the Modern Corporation

Byggbranschen står inför flera utmaningar eftersom vår medvetenhet om omgivningen ökar och ett mer hållbart förhållningssätt önskas. Ett byggprojekt är traditionellt begränsat av tid, kostnad och kvalitet men det har blivit ett måste att fokusera på miljöaspekter också. Att fokusera på miljöaspekter är en av de stora utmaningar som projekterings- och projektledare står inför i dag. Detta är en utmaning eftersom hållbart byggande kan uppnås på många olika sätt och projektledare har inte djup kunskap inom området. Ny kunskap behövs om till exempel miljöklassificeringar och långsiktiga fördelar med hållbart byggande. För att stödja design -och projektledare i sitt dagliga arbete använder många företag verksamhetssystem som ett verktyg för att lagra och dela kunskap. Systemet ska säkerställa att alla arbetar på rätt sätt och levererar lämplig kvalitet, men systemet bör också stödja de anställda i deras arbete. Konsulter behöver kunna ge råd, stöd och kontrollera de miljömässiga aspekterna av projekten. För att göra detta behöver de omfattande miljöledningsstöd från sitt verksamhetssystem. Denna studie är kvalitativ där intervjuer har genomförts och en enkät skickats ut till WSP’s projektledningsavdelningen i Stockholm. Författaren har gått in i verksamhetssystemet och observerat och kartlagt innehållet för att kunna föreslå förbättringar. Syftet med denna forskning är att undersöka hur ett verksamhetssystem kan stödja projekt -och projekteringsledare inom hållbarhetsfrågor. Genom att göra detta förbättras kunskapshanteringen. Resultaten tyder på att ett verksamhetssystem och miljöstyrningen bör integreras i ett system. Systemet måste vara snabbt och innehålla en effektiv sökfunktion för att förbättra tillgängligheten. Det måste finnas lämpliga verktyg som checklistor, mallar och riktlinjer för att utföra miljöuppgifter. Dessutom behöver de anställda tillräckliga kunskaper om hållbarhet för att kunna använda verktygen och lyckas bedriva hållbar projektledning. Det bör också finnas ett återkopplingsverktyg för de anställda som uppmuntrar dem att komma in med förslag och synpunkter som bidrar till kunskapsdelning i företaget

Altered standards of care for health care providers in the pandemic influenza

Pandemic influenza will pose tremendous challenges to health care providers, state public health authorities, and the public. All will have to conduct business under the most adverse of circumstances. It will be difficult for providers to meet the customary legal standards of care imposed by state and federal regulatory authorities, as well as the common law tort system. This white paper will explore the legal issues associated with altered standards of care in pandemic influenza.William S. and Christine S. Hall Center for Law and Health at the Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis; Indiana University Center for Bioethics; Indiana State Department of Healt

Inferring the Andromeda Galaxy's mass from its giant southern stream with Bayesian simulation sampling

M31 has a giant stream of stars extending far to the south and a great deal of other tidal debris in its halo, much of which is thought to be directly associated with the southern stream. We model this structure by means of Bayesian sampling of parameter space, where each sample uses an N-body simulation of a satellite disrupting in M31's potential. We combine constraints on stellar surface densities from the Isaac Newton Telescope survey of M31 with kinematic data and photometric distances. This combination of data tightly constrains the model, indicating a stellar mass at last pericentric passage of log(M_s / Msun) = 9.5+-0.1, comparable to the LMC. Any existing remnant of the satellite is expected to lie in the NE Shelf region beside M31's disk, at velocities more negative than M31's disk in this region. This rules out the prominent satellites M32 or NGC 205 as the progenitor, but an overdensity recently discovered in M31's NE disk sits at the edge of the progenitor locations found in the model. M31's virial mass is constrained in this model to be log(M200) = 12.3+-0.1, alleviating the previous tension between observational virial mass estimates and expectations from the general galactic population and the timing argument. The techniques used in this paper, which should be more generally applicable, are a powerful method of extracting physical inferences from observational data on tidal debris structures.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures. Accepted by MNRA

Adolescent Self-Consent for Biomedical HIV Prevention Research: Implications for Institutional Review Board Approval and Implementation

Purpose The Adolescent Medicine Trials Network Protocol 113 (ATN113) is an open-label, multisite demonstration project and Phase II safety study of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) preexposure prophylaxis with 15- to 17-year-old young men who have sex with men that requires adolescent consent for participation. The purpose of this study was to examine factors related to the process by which Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and researchers made decisions regarding whether to approve and implement ATN113 so as to inform future biomedical HIV prevention research with high-risk adolescent populations. Methods Participants included 17 researchers at 13 sites in 12 states considering ATN113 implementation. Qualitative descriptive methods were used. Data sources included interviews and documents generated during the initiation process. Results A common process for initiating ATN113 emerged, and informants described how they identified and addressed practical, ethical, and legal challenges that arose. Informants described the process as responding to the protocol, preparing for IRB submission, abstaining from or proceeding with submission, responding to IRB concerns, and reacting to the outcomes. A complex array of factors impacting approval and implementation were identified, and ATN113 was ultimately implemented in seven of 13 sites. Informants also reflected on lessons learned that may help inform future biomedical HIV prevention research with high-risk adolescent populations. Conclusions The results illustrate factors for consideration in determining whether to implement such trials, demonstrate that such protocols have the potential to be approved, and highlight a need for clearer standards regarding biomedical HIV prevention research with high-risk adolescent populations

Associations of vitamin D pathway genes with circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin-D, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin-D, and prostate cancer:a nested case-control study

Vitamin D pathway single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are potentially useful proxies for investigating whether circulating vitamin D metabolites [total 25-hydroxyvitamin-D, 25(OH)D; 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin, 1,25(OH)2D] are causally related to prostate cancer. We investigated associations of sixteen SNPs across seven genes with prostate-specific antigen-detected prostate cancer

Can we Rationally Learn to Coordinate?

In this paper we examine the issue whether individual rationality considerations are sufficient to guarantee that individuals will learn to coordinate. This question is central in any discussion of whether social phenomena (read: conventions) can be explained in terms of a purely individualistic approach. We argue that the positive answers to this general question that have been obtained in some recent work require assumptions which incorporate some convention. This conclusion may be seen as supporting the viewpoint of institutional individualism in contrast to psychological individualism

The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury

The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) is an on-going HST Multicycle Treasury program to image ~1/3 of M31's star forming disk in 6 filters, from the UV to the NIR. The full survey will resolve the galaxy into more than 100 million stars with projected radii from 0-20 kpc over a contiguous 0.5 square degree area in 828 orbits, producing imaging in the F275W and F336W filters with WFC3/UVIS, F475W and F814W with ACS/WFC, and F110W and F160W with WFC3/IR. The resulting wavelength coverage gives excellent constraints on stellar temperature, bolometric luminosity, and extinction for most spectral types. The photometry reaches SNR=4 at F275W=25.1, F336W=24.9, F475W=27.9, F814W=27.1, F110W=25.5, and F160W=24.6 for single pointings in the uncrowded outer disk; however, the optical and NIR data are crowding limited, and the deepest reliable magnitudes are up to 5 magnitudes brighter in the inner bulge. All pointings are dithered and produce Nyquist-sampled images in F475W, F814W, and F160W. We describe the observing strategy, photometry, astrometry, and data products, along with extensive tests of photometric stability, crowding errors, spatially-dependent photometric biases, and telescope pointing control. We report on initial fits to the structure of M31's disk, derived from the density of RGB stars, in a way that is independent of the assumed M/L and is robust to variations in dust extinction. These fits also show that the 10 kpc ring is not just a region of enhanced recent star formation, but is instead a dynamical structure containing a significant overdensity of stars with ages >1 Gyr. (Abridged)Comment: 48 pages including 22 pages of figures. Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal Supplements. Some figures slightly degraded to reduce submission siz

Interacting mindreaders

Could interacting mindreaders be in a position to know things which they would be unable to know if they were manifestly passive observers? This paper argues that they could. Mindreading is sometimes reciprocal: the mindreader's target reciprocates by taking the mindreader as a target for mindreading. The paper explains how such reciprocity can significantly narrow the range of possible interpretations of behaviour where mindreaders are, or appear to be, in a position to interact. A consequence is that revisions and extensions are needed to standard theories of the evidential basis of mindreading. The view also has consequences for understanding how abilities to interact combined with comparatively simple forms of mindreading may explain the emergence, in evolution or development, of sophisticated forms of social cognition