Limited liability and shares’ pricing: sufficient but not necessary

Limited liability has been seen as crucial for the development of capital markets. In this paper I use the CAPM to analyze how a company is priced differently under different liability regimes. I reach the conclusion that as far as the pricing and liquidity of shares is concerned, the positive features of a limited liability regime are common to “pro rata†unlimited liability. The prevalence of the unlimited liability regime over regimes of unlimited liability, prorata (or joint and several) should then be traced in other benefits that limiting liability may bring. Literature and history point to the relationship between bankruptcy procedures and liability regimes as the area where the limited liability regimes may be more cost effective and easier to implement.Corporation and Securities Law

The introduction of limited liability in nineteenth century England

In this paper I have analysed the development of company law from 1720 through to 1857. During this long period of time, company law assumed the characteristics it has now. At the starting point, company law stood with incorporation granted by the Crown or Parliament on one side and partnership regulated by common law on the other. The development of the modern corporation needed the definition of what were the problems connected to the fact that a firm is run in association and what is the legal framework that allows to solve efficiently with the lowest costs these problems. In this paper I show that the introduction of limited liability gets its meaning from the exact definition of many other aspects of company life, such as bankruptcy procedures, directors’ power and responsibility, shareholders rights, publicity regime for company acts. Accordingly it’s shown that the introduction of the limited liability regime can’t be studied in isolation and it was just the last step in a complex development process.Corporation and Securities Law

The Tradition of Saint Patrick's Purgatory between Visionary Literature and Pilgrimage Reports

Saint Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Western Europe. The tradition of the Purgatory is strictly connected with the diffusion of a text, the Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii, composed in the last part of the twelfth century, which tells of an Otherworld journey undertaken physically by a living person after having crossed a geographical threshold located in Ireland. This treatise, however, does not explicitly mention any recognizable place on the Irish isle. On the other hand, there exist accounts of a pilgrimage ritual a few years later in a place that can be identified as an island (or two) on the Lough Derg in the North of Ireland. In other words, in the tradition of Saint Patrick's Purgatory, the primary literary text originated and developed independently from a given place, just as the ritual of pilgrimage to the Purgatory was independent from a given text. But both the text and pilgrimage came together in Avignon around 1353, from which time both textual traditions and pilgrimage reports began to interact and modify each other, inspiring and shaping new texts and new ritual forms, while creating fictional characters derived from historical figures and, conversely, portraying literary characters as historical figures.El Purgatorio de San Patricio en Lough Derg es uno de los lugares de peregrinación más importantes de la Europa Occidental. La tradición del Purgatorio está estrictamente relacionada con la difusión de un texto, el Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii, compuesto a finales del siglo XII, que relata el viaje al otro mundo experimentado por una persona viva, físicamente, después de haber cruzado un portal geográfico localizado en Irlanda. Sin embargo, este tratado no menciona explícitamente ningún lugar reconocible en la isla irlandesa. Por otro lado, años después se tuvo noticia de una peregrinación a un lugar que sería posible identificar como una isla (o dos) en Lough Derg, en el norte de Irlanda. En otras palabras, en la tradición del Purgatorio de San Patricio, el texto literario primario nació y se desarrolló independientemente de un lugar geográfico concreto, y, asimismo, el ritual de peregrinación al Purgatorio nació independientemente de ningún texto. Pero ambos, texto y peregrinación, coincidieron en Aviñón alrededor del año 1353, y a partir de ese momento tanto las tradiciones textuales como los informes de peregrinación comenzaron a interactuar entre sí, modificándose mutuamente, inspirando y moldeando nuevos relatos y nuevas formas rituales, creando personajes ficticios derivados de figuras históricas y, al contrario, atestiguando personajes literarios como figuras históricas

Machine learning methods to predict outcomes of pharmacological treatment in psychosis

In recent years, machine learning (ML) has been a promising approach in the research of treatment outcome prediction in psychosis. In this study, we reviewed ML studies using different neuroimaging, neurophysiological, genetic, and clinical features to predict antipsychotic treatment outcomes in patients at different stages of schizophrenia. Literature available on PubMed until March 2022 was reviewed. Overall, 28 studies were included, among them 23 using a single-modality approach and 5 combining data from multiple modalities. The majority of included studies considered structural and functional neuroimaging biomarkers as predictive features used in ML models. Specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) features contributed to antipsychotic treatment response prediction of psychosis with good accuracies. Additionally, several studies found that ML models based on clinical features might present adequate predictive ability. Importantly, by examining the additive effects of combining features, the predictive value might be improved by applying multimodal ML approaches. However, most of the included studies presented several limitations, such as small sample sizes and a lack of replication tests. Moreover, considerable clinical and analytical heterogeneity among included studies posed a challenge in synthesizing findings and generating robust overall conclusions. Despite the complexity and heterogeneity of methodology, prognostic features, clinical presentation, and treatment approaches, studies included in this review suggest that ML tools may have the potential to predict treatment outcomes of psychosis accurately. Future studies need to focus on refining feature characterization, validating prediction models, and evaluate their translation in real-world clinical practice

A new catechol-functionalized polyamidoamine as an effective SPION stabilizer

A synthetic strategy was established for decorating and stabilizing superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) with a zwitterionic linear polyamidoamine (PAA). The strategy was successfully tested with a PAA coded ISA23 previously found endowed with interesting biological properties, such as biocompatibility, degradability in aqueous media and stealth-like properties when injected in test animals. A post-synthetic functionalization with catechol-bearing moieties of a preformed PAA was successfully carried out. ISA23 was obtained by polyaddition reactions of methyl-piperazine and 2,2-bis(acrylamidoacetic) acid. It was functionalized using nitrodopamine and 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)carbodiimide as coupling agent, to randomly form amide bonds with 17% of ISA23 carboxylic groups (ISA23-ND). SPIONs were prepared by a thermal decomposition synthesis in 1-octadecene with oleic acid, and then transferred in water by two distinct ligand exchange procedures: i) the direct displacement of oleate molecules from SPION surface by ISA23 in a biphasic (n-hexane/water) environment; ii) the two-step method involving an intermediate small molecule, tetramethylammonium hydroxide, used as a transient transfer agent, which was in turn exchanged with ISA23-ND in a second exchange step occurring in water. The two-step procedure provided a SPION@PAA nanocomposite more stable than that obtained by the one-step procedure in the presence of an applied external magnetic field. ATR-FTIR spectroscopy, \u3b6-potential and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) showed the presence of the ISA23 on the SPION surface. In particular, TGA showed that the ISA23-ND amount on the NPs accounted for 26% of the overall nanocomposite mass. The nanocomposite size was determined by both TEM (21.1\ub12.9 nm) and DLS measurements (hydrodynamic size 100\ub128 nm). SPION@ISA23-ND were re-suspended after lyophilization reverting to their pristine dimensions. The SPION@ISA23-ND adsorption of BSA in water, considered as the first stage of phagocytosis, was very low, suggesting that ISA23 could impart stealthiness to SPION@ISA23-ND. 1H-NMR relaxivity measurements showed an r2 value of 158 s-1 mmol-1 L (vs 100 s-1 mmol-1L for Endorem\uae) at relevant clinical fields for magnetic resonance imaging (from 0.2 to 1.5 T). SPION@ISA23-ND was tested on HeLa cells and their internalization was visualized by reflectance microscopy. Finally, with the aim of prepare a new dual magneto-optical system, a synthetic procedure to decorate SPION@ISA23-ND with a fluorescent dye was devised, even though the emission intensity of the resultant conjugate was lower than expected, possibly due to luminescence quenching caused by the closeness of emitting moieties to the SPION surface

A Preliminary Study

Bioelectrical Impedance Spectroscopy (BIS) allows assessing the composition of body districts noninvasively and quickly, potentially providing important physiological/clinical information. However, neither portable commercial instruments nor more advanced wearable prototypes simultaneously satisfy the demanding needs of unobtrusively tracking body fluid shifts in different segments simultaneously, over a broad frequency range, for long periods and with high measurements rate. These needs are often required to evaluate exercise tests in sports or rehabilitation medicine, or to assess gravitational stresses in aerospace medicine. Therefore, the aim of this work is to present a new wearable prototype for monitoring multi-segment and multi- frequency BIS unobtrusively over long periods. Our prototype guarantees low weight, small size and low power consumption. An analog board with current- injecting and voltage-sensing electrodes across three body segments interfaces a digital board that generates square-wave current stimuli and computes impedance at 10 frequencies from 1 to 796 kHz. To evaluate the information derivable from our device, we monitored the BIS of three body segments in a volunteer before, during and after physical exercise and postural shift. We show that it can describe the dynamics of exercise-induced changes and the effect of a sit-to-stand maneuver in active and inactive muscular districts separately and simultaneously

Effects of age and gender on neural correlates of emotion imagery

Mental imagery is part of people's own internal processing and plays an important role in everyday life, cognition and pathology. The neural network supporting mental imagery is bottom-up modulated by the imagery content. Here, we examined the complex associations of gender and age with the neural mechanisms underlying emotion imagery. We assessed the brain circuits involved in emotion mental imagery (vs. action imagery), controlled by a letter detection task on the same stimuli, chosen to ensure attention to the stimuli and to discourage imagery, in 91 men and women aged 14-65 years using fMRI. In women, compared with men, emotion imagery significantly increased activation within the right putamen, which is involved in emotional processing. Increasing age, significantly decreased mental imagery-related activation in the left insula and cingulate cortex, areas involved in awareness of ones' internal states, and it significantly decreased emotion verbs-related activation in the left putamen, which is part of the limbic system. This finding suggests a top-down mechanism by which gender and age, in interaction with bottom-up effect of type of stimulus, or directly, can modulate the brain mechanisms underlying mental imagery

Default mode network activity in bipolar disorder

Since its discovery in 1997, the default mode network (DMN) and its components have been extensively studied in both healthy individuals and psychiatric patients. Several studies have investigated possible DMN alterations in specific mental conditions such as bipolar disorder (BD). In this review, we describe current evidence from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging studies with the aim to understand possible changes in the functioning of the DMN in BD. Overall, several types of analyses including seed-based and independent component have been conducted on heterogeneous groups of patients highlighting different results. Despite the differences, findings seem to indicate that BD is associated with alterations in both frontal and posterior DMN structures, mainly in the prefrontal, posterior cingulate and inferior parietal cortices. We conclude this review by suggesting possible future research directions