Backing the horse or the jockey? Due diligence, agency costs, information and the evaluation of risk by business angel investors

This paper explores the argument that business angel investors are more concerned with managing and minimising agency risk than market risk. Based on data on the due diligence process from a survey of business angels in the UK, the paper concludes that business angels do view entrepreneur characteristics and experience as having the greatest impact on the perceived riskiness of an investment opportunity. Further, they emphasise personal and informal over formal sources of information in the due diligence process, and seek information on both the entrepreneur and the venture in determining valuation. Indeed, the reliance of business angels on short-term and subjective information to value investment opportunities leads to the conclusion that their approach to valuation is not a function of the conventional protocols of financial analysis, but of personal relations and assessment

The heavy ion composition in 3HE-rich solar flares

The 3He-rich flares show a tendency to be enriched in heavy ions, and that this enrichment covers the charge range through Fe. The discovery of this association was responsible, in part, for the discarding of 3He enrichment models which involved spallation or thermonuclear reactions, since such models were unable to produce heavy nuclei enhancement. Results of a survey of heavy nucleus abundances observed in 66 3He-rich flares which occurred over the period October 1978 to June 1982 are presented

High-precision determination of the light-quark masses from realistic lattice QCD

Three-flavor lattice QCD simulations and two-loop perturbation theory are used to make the most precise determination to date of the strange-, up-, and down-quark masses, $m_s$, $m_u$, and $m_d$, respectively. Perturbative matching is required in order to connect the lattice-regularized bare- quark masses to the masses as defined in the \msbar scheme, and this is done here for the first time at next-to-next-to leading (or two-loop) order. The bare-quark masses required as input come from simulations by the MILC collaboration of a highly-efficient formalism (using so-called ``staggered'' quarks), with three flavors of light quarks in the Dirac sea; these simulations were previously analyzed in a joint study by the HPQCD and MILC collaborations, using degenerate $u$ and $d$ quarks, with masses as low as $m_s/8$, and two values of the lattice spacing, with chiral extrapolation/interpolation to the physical masses. With the new perturbation theory presented here, the resulting \msbar\ masses are m^\msbar_s(2 {GeV}) = 87(0)(4)(4)(0) MeV, and \hat m^\msbar(2 {GeV}) = 3.2(0)(2)(2)(0) MeV, where \hat m = \sfrac12 (m_u + m_d) is the average of the $u$ and $d$ masses. The respective uncertainties are from statistics, simulation systematics, perturbation theory, and electromagnetic/isospin effects. The perturbative errors are about a factor of two smaller than in an earlier study using only one-loop perturbation theory. Using a recent determination of the ratio $m_u/m_d = 0.43(0)(1)(0)(8)$ due to the MILC collaboration, these results also imply m^\msbar_u(2 {GeV}) = 1.9(0)(1)(1)(2) MeV and m^\msbar_d(2 {GeV}) = 4.4(0)(2)(2)(2) MeV. A technique for estimating the next order in the perturbative expansion is also presented, which uses input from simulations at more than one lattice spacing

The heavy ion compositional signature in 3He-rich solar particle events

A survey of the approx. 1 MeV/nucleon heavy ion abundances in 66 He3-rich solar particle events was performed using the Max-Planck-Institut/University of Maryland and Goddard Space Flight Center instruments on the ISEE-3 spacecraft. The observations were carried out in interplanetary space over the period 1978 October through 1982 June. Earlier observations were confirmed which show an enrichment of heavy ions in HE3-rich events, relative to the average solar energetic particle composition in large particle events. For the survey near 1.5 MeV/nucleon the enrichments compared to large solar particle events are approximately He4:C:O:Ne:Mg:Si:Fe = 0.44:0.66:1.:3.4:3.5:4.1:9.6. Surprising new results emerging from the present broad survey are that the heavy ion enrichment pattern is the same within a factor of approx. 2 for almost all cases, and the degree of heavy ion enrichment is uncorrelated with the He3 enrichment. Overall, the features established appear to be best explained by an acceleration mechanism in which the He3 enrichment process is not responsible for the heavy ion enrichment, but rather the heavy ion enrichment is a measure of the ambient coronal composition at the sites where the He3-rich events occur

Radiation risks from large solar energetic particle events

Solar energetic particles (SEPs) constitute a radiation hazard to both humans and hardware in space. Over the past few years there have been significant advances in our knowledge of the composition and energy spectra of SEP events, leading to new insights into the conditions that contribute to the largest events. This paper summarizes the energy spectra and frequency of large SEP events, and discusses the interplanetary conditions that affect the intensity of the largest events

Hybrid Superconductor-Quantum Point Contact Devices using InSb Nanowires

Proposals for studying topological superconductivity and Majorana bound states in nanowires proximity coupled to superconductors require that transport in the nanowire is ballistic. Previous work on hybrid nanowire-superconductor systems has shown evidence for Majorana bound states, but these experiments were also marked by disorder, which disrupts ballistic transport. In this letter, we demonstrate ballistic transport in InSb nanowires interfaced directly with superconducting Al by observing quantized conductance at zero-magnetic field. Additionally, we demonstrate that the nanowire is proximity coupled to the superconducting contacts by observing Andreev reflection. These results are important steps for robustly establishing topological superconductivity in InSb nanowires

Evolving UK policy on diversity in the armed services: multiculturalism and its discontents

Reflecting a generally multiculturalist rhetoric, UK policy in this area has hitherto focussed on enhancing the degree to which the armed services represent or reflect the ethnic makeup of the UK population. Ambitious targets have been set and some progress made in moving towards them. However, the dynamics of population change, together with the diverse preferences of ethno-religious minorities, have meant that the goal of representativeness has remained out of reach. At the same time, the armed services have continued to struggle with an ongoing recruitment problem while the volume of operational commitments has shown little sign of reducing