The Still-Dwindled \u3cem\u3eRevlon\u3c/em\u3e

This is a brief Response to Professor Mohsen Manesh’s extensive response to our original article, The Dwindling of Revlon. Our thesis is that today the iconic Revlon doctrine is, remedially, quite substantially diminished. Although Professor Manesh sets out to establish what he calls “the limits of Johnson’s and Ricca’s thesis,” we here maintain, as before, that there is little remedial clout to Revlon unless directors or others very significantly misbehave. We also criticize Delaware’s continuing use of the standard-of-conduct/standard-of-review construct in the fiduciary duty area. This rubric is unhelpful generally and strikingly so in the Revlon setting, as we note

(Not) Advising Corporate Officers about Fiduciary Duties

This Article explores the intersection of an important, unresolved corporate law issue and an overlooked professional responsibility issue persistently arising in the corporate milieu. The corporate law question currently unaddressed in Delaware law is whether the fiduciary duties of corporate officers, as agents, are the same as, or different from, the fiduciary duties of corporate directors. A related question is whether, in reviewing officer conduct, courts will apply the business judgment rule in the same broad (and protective) manner in which it is applied to assessing director behavior. The professional responsibility issue concerns whether, and how well, lawyers are advising corporate officers about their fiduciary duties. In recent years, much attention has been given to the professional obligations of a corporate lawyer upon learning, ex post, of corporate wrongdoing, including director and officer breaches of fiduciary duty. Virtually no attention has been paid to whether, ex ante, lawyers are adequately helping to prevent such misconduct by fully and properly advising corporate officers as to the scope and thrust of their fiduciary duties. Fiduciary duties, as an element for shaping officer conduct to promote healthy corporate governance, are of little preventive value if not properly transmitted to officers, given that officers are unlikely on their own to understand those duties. As is the case with directors, lawyers are the obvious means by which such communications to officers would be expected to occur. How well are they fulfilling this vital role? We obtained information on this subject in two ways. First, as a pilot project we sent a survey questionnaire to corporate lawyers serving primarily as outside legal counsel in major U.S. metropolitan areas. We intend to later survey in-house counsel by means of a separate questionnaire. Second, we examined the websites of fifteen major law firms to learn what they say about themselves on the topic of advising corporate officers as to fiduciary duties. Overall, the results from our initial survey and website research suggest that many lawyers do not provide full-bodied fiduciary duty advice to officers in their capacity as officers at all, much less advising them as to the possibility that their duties might be stricter than those of directors or cautioning that the business judgment rule may not apply to officer conduct in the same way it applies to directors. The paper also offers several reasons why lawyers should advise corporate officers as to their fiduciary duties. Doing so serves to highlight the key governance role played by officers, thereby partially re-directing corporate law\u27s customary and inappropriately exclusive focus on directors. The paper closes by describing a proposed procedure for assuring directors that legal counsel is regularly providing fiduciary duty advice to senior officers

Similarity-based Web Element Localization for Robust Test Automation

Non-robust (fragile) test execution is a commonly reported challenge in GUI-based test automation, despite much research and several proposed solutions. A test script needs to be resilient to (minor) changes in the tested application but, at the same time, fail when detecting potential issues that require investigation. Test script fragility is a multi-faceted problem. However, one crucial challenge is how to reliably identify and locate the correct target web elements when the website evolves between releases or otherwise fail and report an issue. This article proposes and evaluates a novel approach called similarity-based web element localization (Similo), which leverages information from multiple web element locator parameters to identify a target element using a weighted similarity score. This experimental study compares Similo to a baseline approach for web element localization. To get an extensive empirical basis, we target 48 of the most popular websites on the Internet in our evaluation. Robustness is considered by counting the number of web elements found in a recent website version compared to how many of these existed in an older version. Results of the experiment show that Similo outperforms the baseline; it failed to locate the correct target web element in 91 out of 801 considered cases (i.e., 11%) compared to 214 failed cases (i.e., 27%) for the baseline approach. The time efficiency of Similo was also considered, where the average time to locate a web element was determined to be 4 milliseconds. However, since the cost of web interactions (e.g., a click) is typically on the order of hundreds of milliseconds, the additional computational demands of Similo can be considered negligible. This study presents evidence that quantifying the similarity between multiple attributes of web elements when trying to locate them, as in our proposed Similo approach, is beneficial. With acceptable efficiency, Similo gives significantly higher effectiveness (i.e., robustness) than the baseline web element localization approach

The menstrual distress questionnaire (MEDI-Q) : reliability and validity of the English version

Background: Menstrual cycle has a significant impact on women’s health from different perspectives, both physically and psychologically. The assessment of menstrual-related distress is of pivotal clinical interest, especially in women with chronic exposure to abnormal bleeding or pain. The Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MEDI-Q) is a new tool originally developed in Italian that comprehensively evaluates menstrual-related distress. Objective: To validate the English version of the MEDI-Q in an English-speaking population. Methods: The study consisted of two phases: an initial translation phase of the original Italian version of the MEDI-Q, and a data collection phase to validate the new English version among 288 native English-speaking women. Results: The English version of MEDI-Q showed excellent psychometric properties, with high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.84) and test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.95). Construct validity was supported by significant correlations between MEDI-Q scores and scores on measures of psychological distress and premenstrual symptoms. Conclusions: The English version of the MEDI-Q is a valid and reliable instrument for the assessment of menstrual distress and its impact on psychological well-being. This tool can be utilized in research and clinical settings to comprehensively investigate the impact of menstruation on various populations, identify and monitor menstruation-related disorders promptly and effectively, and to evaluate the effectiveness of targeted treatments for menstrual distress

Energy Resolution Performance of the CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter

The energy resolution performance of the CMS lead tungstate crystal electromagnetic calorimeter is presented. Measurements were made with an electron beam using a fully equipped supermodule of the calorimeter barrel. Results are given both for electrons incident on the centre of crystals and for electrons distributed uniformly over the calorimeter surface. The electron energy is reconstructed in matrices of 3 times 3 or 5 times 5 crystals centred on the crystal containing the maximum energy. Corrections for variations in the shower containment are applied in the case of uniform incidence. The resolution measured is consistent with the design goals

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI