Professional and Home-Made Face Masks Reduce Exposure to Respiratory Infections among the General Population

Governments are preparing for a potential influenza pandemic. Therefore they need data to assess the possible impact of interventions. Face-masks worn by the general population could be an accessible and affordable intervention, if effective when worn under routine circumstances.We assessed transmission reduction potential provided by personal respirators, surgical masks and home-made masks when worn during a variety of activities by healthy volunteers and a simulated patient.All types of masks reduced aerosol exposure, relatively stable over time, unaffected by duration of wear or type of activity, but with a high degree of individual variation. Personal respirators were more efficient than surgical masks, which were more efficient than home-made masks. Regardless of mask type, children were less well protected. Outward protection (mask wearing by a mechanical head) was less effective than inward protection (mask wearing by healthy volunteers).Any type of general mask use is likely to decrease viral exposure and infection risk on a population level, in spite of imperfect fit and imperfect adherence, personal respirators providing most protection. Masks worn by patients may not offer as great a degree of protection against aerosol transmission

Outward protection factors at a range of breathing flows for a mechanical head with different types of masks, with two meaurements per mask at each breathing flow.

<p>PFs for teacloth did not differ during the repeated measurement at each breathing flow, so light blue triangles overlap in figure.</p

Median (IQR) protection factor by mask, by activity, by age category.

<p>IQR = interquartile range</p

Protection factor of home-made mask being measured by Portacount in volunteer.

<p>Volunteer with home-made mask made of tea cloth. Note the candles in the foreground and the other mask types in the background.</p

Median (IQR) protection factors at start and end of long term-experiment, by mask, by activity.

<p>IQR = interquartile range</p

Protection factors over time per volunteer by type of mask worn.

<p>Please note different scale on Y-axis!</p

Corporate Governance, Capital Market Regulation and the Challenge of Disembedded Markets

Long before the current financial and economic crisis, corporate governance and securities regulation had become part of one of the most interesting and dynamic regulatory areas in law and policy making today. Both areas had been undergoing dramatic transformations over the past 30-40 years, which saw a global expansion of capital markets and a deep-running ‘financialisation’ of the corporation. Around the world governments saw themselves challenged to adapt their regulatory apparatus to the whims and hues of nervous investors with global sensitivities. Meanwhile, scholars in law, economics, but also political science and sociology fiercely debated whether what was unfolding constituted a worldwide convergence around a corporate governance philosophy that placed the shareholder at the centre or whether we would continue to have different, divergent corporate governance systems around the world. Today’s crisis-responses appear to be primarily designed to ‘fix the excesses’ of the past decades, rather than driven by an interest to connect the present efforts at regulation with the earlier convergence vs. divergence debates, which themselves built on much older critiques of the embeddedness of the firm and the political economy context of corporate activity. The paper contends that the sustainability of future corporate governance and securities regulation depends on the effort to critically examine both areas in the context of a larger inquiry into the goals and challenges of market regulation