The Perks of Being a Whistleblower: Designing Efficient Leniency Programs in New Antitrust Jurisdictions

This Article develops a framework for effective leniency policy design in jurisdictions that have limited or no mileage enforcing antitrust laws. Through an extensive review of legal and economic studies of leniency and comparative analysis, the Article identifies hurdles common to young systems that may be tackled with analogous solutions. Some issues simply require a methodological enforcement strategy and time. Others, however, call for a readjustment of either the leniency programs or the antitrust systems they help to enforce. While the latter approach is preferable, it is more difficult to implement. This Article focuses on leniency and recommends three general strategies: rethinking the magnitude of the reward where penalties for collusion are modest, reducing discretion to enhance transparency and predictability in the pre-enforcement experience phase, and ensuring a balance between the adequate protection of confidentiality and the need to foster international cooperation efforts to dismantle cartels. These proposals aim to contribute to enhancing the efficiency of new systems and to fostering a glocalized deterrent effect that is paramount to combatting the biggest and most harmful collusive practices

Advisory Service Marketing Profiles for Corn in 2001

Agricultural Finance,

Dendritic Cells Pulsed with Intact Streptococcus pneumoniae Elicit both Protein- and Polysaccharide-specific Immunoglobulin Isotype Responses In Vivo through Distinct Mechanisms

Immature bone marrow–derived myeloid dendritic cells (BMDCs) are induced to undergo phenotypic maturation and secretion of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-6, IL-12, and IL-10 when pulsed in vitro with intact Streptococcus pneumoniae. After transfer to naive mice, pulsed BMDCs induce immunoglobulin (Ig) isotype responses specific for both protein and polysaccharide pneumococcal antigens, having in common the requirement for viable BMDCs, T cells, and B7-dependent costimulation in the recipient mice. Whereas primary Ig isotype responses to bacterial proteins uniformly require BMDC expression of major histocompatibility complex class II, CD40, and B7, and the secretion of IL-6, but not IL-12, similar requirements for antipolysaccharide Ig responses were only observed for the IgG1 isotype

Advisory Service Marketing Profiles for Soybeans over 2002-2004

This report presents marketing profiles and loan deficiency payment/marketing loan gain profiles for the advisory services followed by the AgMAS Project for the 2002, 2003 and 2004 soybean crops. Marketing profiles are constructed by plotting the cumulative net amount priced under each program’s set of recommendations throughout the crop year. Loan deficiency payment/marketing loan gain (LDP/MLG) profiles are constructed by plotting the cumulative percentage of the crop on which the LDP/MLG was claimed during the crop year. Marketing profiles provide information to evaluate the style of advisory services in several ways. The percentage of crop priced is a measure of within-crop year price risk. The higher the proportion of a crop priced, the lower the sensitivity of the farmer’s position value to crop price changes. For example, when 100% of the crop is priced there is no price sensitivity, which means that changes in price do not affect the value of the farmer’s position. On the other hand, when the amount priced is 0%, the value of the farmer’s position will vary in the same proportion as the change in price. Marketing profiles, therefore, allow investigating the evolution of price sensitivity under each service’s set of recommendations along the marketing window. Marketing profiles also provide other useful information. The number of steps in the profile lines and the location of these steps in the marketing window provide information about timing, frequency and size of recommended transactions. It is also possible to determine from the marketing profile figures how intensely a program uses options markets, since when options positions are open the profile line is irregular. In the same way, LDP/MLG profiles provide information about the size and timing of LDP/MLG claims.Agricultural Finance,

Advisory Service Marketing Profiles for Corn over 2002-2004

This report presents marketing profiles and loan deficiency payment/marketing loan gain profiles for the advisory services followed by the AgMAS Project for the 2002, 2003 and 2004 corn crops. Marketing profiles are constructed by plotting the cumulative net amount priced under each program’s set of recommendations throughout the crop year. Loan deficiency payment/marketing loan gain (LDP/MLG) profiles are constructed by plotting the cumulative percentage of the crop on which the LDP/MLG was claimed during the crop year. Marketing profiles provide information to evaluate the style of advisory services in several ways. The percentage of crop priced is a measure of within-crop year price risk. The higher the proportion of a crop priced, the lower the sensitivity of the farmer’s position value to crop price changes. For example, when 100% of the crop is priced there is no price sensitivity, which means that changes in price do not affect the value of the farmer’s position. On the other hand, when the amount priced is 0%, the value of the farmer’s position will vary in the same proportion as the change in price. Marketing profiles, therefore, allow investigating the evolution of price sensitivity under each service’s set of recommendations along the marketing window. Marketing profiles also provide other useful information. The number of steps in the profile lines and the location of these steps in the marketing window provide information about timing, frequency and size of recommended transactions. It is also possible to determine from the marketing profile figures how intensely a program uses options markets, since when options positions are open the profile line is irregular. In the same way, LDP/MLG profiles provide information about the size and timing of LDP/MLG claims.Agricultural Finance,

Flux flow resistivity and vortex viscosity of high-Tc films

The flux flow regime of high-T$_{\rm c}$ samples of different normal state resistivities is studied in the temperature range where the sign of the Hall effect is reversed. The scaling of the vortex viscosity with normal state resistivity is consistent with the Bardeen-Stephen theory. Estimates of the influence of possible mechanisms suggested for the sign reversal of the Hall effect are also given.Comment: 3 pages. 4 figures upon reques

Development of a mechanism and an accurate and simple mathematical model for the description of drug release: Application to a relevant example of acetazolamide-controlled release from a bio-inspired elastin-based hydrogel

Producción CientíficaTransversality between mathematical modeling, pharmacology, and materials science is essential in order to achieve controlled-release systems with advanced properties. In this regard, the area of biomaterials provides a platform for the development of depots that are able to achieve controlled release of a drug, whereas pharmacology strives to find new therapeutic molecules and mathematical models have a connecting function, providing a rational understanding by modeling the parameters that influence the release observed. Herein we present a mechanism which, based on reasonable assumptions, explains the experimental data obtained very well. In addition, we have developed a simple and accurate “lumped” kinetics model to correctly fit the experimentally observed drug release behavior. This lumped model allows us to have simple analytic solutions for the mass and rate of drug release as a function of time without limitations of time or mass of drug released, which represents an important step-forward in the area of in vitro drug delivery when compared to the current state of the art in mathematical modeling. As an example, we applied the mechanism and model to the release data for acetazolamide from a recombinant polymer. Both materials were selected because of a need to develop a suitable ophthalmic formulation for the treatment of glaucoma. The in vitro release model proposed herein provides a valuable predictive tool for ensuring product performance and batch-to-batch reproducibility, thus paving the way for the development of further pharmaceutical devices.Este trabajo forma parte de los Proyectos de Investigación financiados por la Comisión Europea a través del Fondo Social Europeo (FSE) y de la Consejería de Educación mediante el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (ERDF), el MINECO (Proyectos MAT2013-41723-R, MAT2013-42473-R, PRI−PIBAR-2011-1403 y MAT2012-38043), la Junta de Castilla y León (Proyectos VA155A12, VA152A12, and VA244U13), el CIBER-BBN y el Instituto de Salud Carlos III mediante el Centro de Medicina Regenerativa y Terapia Celular de Castilla y León

Experimental and Computational Fluid Dynamic study of an active ventilated façade integrating battery and distributed MPPT

Ventilated Façades integrating photovoltaic panels are a promising way to improve efficiency and the thermal-physical performances of buildings. Due the inherent intermittence of the non-programmable renewable energy sources, their increasing usage implies the use of energy storage systems to mitigate the mismatch between power generation and the buildings’ load demand. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the thermo-fluid dynamic performances of a prototype integrating a photovoltaic cell and a battery as a module of an active ventilated façade. Based on an experimental setup, a numerical study in steady state conditions of flow through the air cavity of the module has been carried out and implemented in a fluid-dynamics Finite Volume code. In order to assess the viability of the prototype, the calibrated model was lastly used to predict thermal performance of the prototype on different climate conditions supporting its further improvement

Enhancement of synchronized vortex lattice motion in hybrid magnetic/amorphous superconducting nanostructures

Superconducting a-Mo_(3)Si and Nb films have been grown on arrays of Ni nanodots. We have studied the vortex lattice dynamics close to critical temperatures. Different vortex lattice configurations are obtained with the same array unit cell. These different vortex lattices occur at matching conditions between the vortex lattice and the array unit cell. The interplay between the random intrinsic pinning of the superconducting films and the periodic pinning of the array govern the vortex lattice configurations. Different vortex lattice configurations and enhancement of synchronized vortex lattice motion are obtained by increasing the periodic pinning strength and decreasing the random pinning strength