Transnational Corporate Regulation through Sustainability Reporting: A Case Study of the Canadian Extractive Sector

Despite the benefits transnational corporations (TNCs) offer, they remain largely unregulated entities, enabling environmental, social, and human rights violations to be overlooked. Canadian extractive sector TNCs operating internationally are frequently cited as major perpetrators of such violations. Literature on new governance and self-regulation as well as global corporate social responsibility (CSR) increasingly offers disclosure and reporting as a solution for TNC regulation. This study examines disclosure in international CSR frameworks, and the reflexive law and new governance theories explaining the role of such disclosure and reporting. Mirroring international CSR initiatives, Canadian jurisdictions are increasingly recommending disclosure for its extractive sector TNCs, including through its securities laws. Securities law provides a promising foundation for sustainability reporting because of its existing disclosure framework and its ability to compel disclosure. This potential of Canadian securities law also provides a basis for comparison with the Global Reporting Initiative, the leading sustainability reporting standard

Hedge Fund Performance with the Treynor-Black Model

This paper seeks to analyze the information ratio differences between long/short hedge funds over the past two decades using the Treynor-Black model. The Treynor-Black model is a method to derive an optimal portfolio allocation across safe and risky assets, based off of expected alphas of active investments and the unsystematic volatility that can be attributed to each given security. We first developed and implemented a model to forecast information ratios on a database of long/short hedge funds. With the predicted information ratios, we calculated out-of-sample allocation weights from a Treynor-Black active portfolio model. These weights were then tested in a long/short format against a Naive model that invests equally in all hedge funds. By subtracting the Naive weights from the Treynor-Black weight recommendations, we were able to test the efficacy of the Treynor-Black model under performance-neutral circumstances. We found that the Treynor-Black model outperforms in a market that is trending upwards, such as 2017. In a market with a correction, as seen in December 2018, the Treynor-Black model performs in-line with the Naive, generating minimum excess return but taking on no additional risk. Following a market correction into another upwards market (seen in 2019), the Treynor-Black model is not nearly as effective. Due to the importance of the previous year\u27s information ratio, the recommended allocations expected a continuation of market risk and overcorrected. We conclude that information ratio predictions combined with the Treynor-Black model can help generate alpha in a bull market, while taking on average downside risk in a turbulent market, instead of undue downside exposure as seen in some funds

India Needs Smart Frontiers: An Assessment

In the era of Fourth Industrial Revolution, technology has transformed the ways of doing any business, including warfare. The human element is slowly giving way to machines who would perform major functions including substituting and supplementing rank and file in the Military. Over 22,500 km of India’s frontiers are guarded by various Border Guarding Forces including the Coast Guards to prevent surprise incursions by the adversaries’ State, State-sponsored or Non- State Actors. The Border Guarding Forces act as eyes and ears of the frontiers and can take on basic defensive actions for which colossal manpower is used. For a Military threat, Regular Forces take over the responsibility for the Defense of the Nation. There is a case for optimizing manpower and increasing efficiency by bringing smart systems in delivering constant situational awareness and response solutions. This would also ensure that all stakeholders are networked in real-time. A combination of sensors, electronic and digital platforms, Data and Communication centers, using Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial means, would build a ‘system of systems for Common Operational Picture at Strategic, Operational and Tactical levels. Data/intelligence analysis and automation would be possible if such systems are ubiquitous and part of the overall National security apparatus. The smart frontiers would soon be an inescapable necessity for the Defense of the nation

India Needs Smart Frontiers: An Assessment

In the era of Fourth Industrial Revolution, technology has transformed the ways of doing any business, including warfare. Thehuman element is slowly giving way to machines who would perform major functions including substituting and supplementing rankand file in the Military. Over 22,500 km of India’s frontiers are guarded by various Border Guarding Forces including the CoastGuards to prevent surprise incursions by the adversaries’ State, State-sponsored or Non- State Actors. The Border Guarding Forces act as eyes and ears of the frontiers and can take on basic defensive actions for which colossal manpower is used. For a Military threat, Regular Forces take over the responsibility for the Defense of the Nation. There is a case for optimizing manpower and increasing efficiency by bringing smart systems in delivering constant situational awareness and response solutions. This would also ensure that all stakeholders are networked in real-time. A combination of sensors, electronic and digital platforms, Data and Communication centers, using Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial means, would build a ‘system of systems for Common Operational Picture at Strategic, Operational and Tactical levels. Data/intelligence analysis and automation would be possible if such systems are ubiquitous and part of the overall National security apparatus. The smart frontiers would soon be an inescapable necessity for the Defense of the nation

India Needs Smart Frontiers: An Assessment

In the era of Fourth Industrial Revolution, technology has transformed the ways of doing any business, including warfare. Thehuman element is slowly giving way to machines who would perform major functions including substituting and supplementing rankand file in the Military. Over 22,500 km of India’s frontiers are guarded by various Border Guarding Forces including the CoastGuards to prevent surprise incursions by the adversaries’ State, State-sponsored or Non- State Actors. The Border Guarding Forces act as eyes and ears of the frontiers and can take on basic defensive actions for which colossal manpower is used. For a Military threat, Regular Forces take over the responsibility for the Defense of the Nation. There is a case for optimizing manpower and increasing efficiency by bringing smart systems in delivering constant situational awareness and response solutions. This would also ensure that all stakeholders are networked in real-time. A combination of sensors, electronic and digital platforms, Data and Communication centers, using Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial means, would build a ‘system of systems for Common Operational Picture at Strategic, Operational and Tactical levels. Data/intelligence analysis and automation would be possible if such systems are ubiquitous and part of the overall National security apparatus. The smart frontiers would soon be an inescapable necessity for the Defense of the nation

Development of screening technique for artificial creation of false smut in rice

False smut (Ustilaginoidea virens (Cooke) Takahashi) of rice is an emerging disease and a potential threat to rice growers in different countries due to reduction in yield, quality and production of mycotoxins. Development and cultivation of resistant varieties is desirable approach for its management. Different inoculation techniques viz. spray inoculation, syringe inoculation and dusting method were evaluated for creating artificial epiphytotic conditions in susceptible variety PR116 under natural as well as artificially provided humidity conditions. Spray inoculation method produced more number of smut balls per plant (3.21) and per cent infected panicles (33.44%) followed by syringe inoculation (2.00 and 26.57%, respectively) and dusting method (0.33 and 6.67%, respectively). However, syringe inoculation method produced more spikelet sterility (14.82%) in rice panicles. More disease occurrence was reported in plants provided with artificial humidity after inoculations (51.12% infected panicles) than the plants grown under natural conditions (13.33% infected panicles). Late transplanted crop developed higher disease severity (18.17% infected panicles and 3.34 smut balls/plant) which might be attributed by slight decrease in temperature and increase in relative humidity conditions (up to 88% RH) at time of infection from boot to early flowering stage of the rice crop

Correlation of Atrial Fibrillation with Left Atrial Volume in Patients with Mitral Stenosis. a Single Centre Study From Pakistan

Background: Rheumatic heart disease has a strong association with mitral valve stenosis. Atrial fibrillation is one of the most common complications of this condition and is a poor prognostic factor. Early detection and prompt management of atrial fibrillation can help to improve the quality of life and increase the life expectancy of the patients. We carried out this study to investigate the significance of left atrial volumetric changes in mitral stenosis and its correlation with atrial fibrillation. Methodology: We audited the data of 60 patients of rheumatic heart disease who had mitral valve stenosis. The patients were randomized into atrial fibrillation (Group A) and normal sinus rhythm (Group B). We conducted this cross-sectional analytical study at Cardiology Department, Mayo Hospital, Lahore, from 1st February 2017 to 31st January 2018. We only included those patients who consented to be a part of this study and fulfilled our predefined inclusion criteria. Left atrial volume was measured by prolate ellipse method and biplane methods on echocardiography. The Data was analyzed on SPSS v20. Results: Sixty patients were included in the study. Among the subjects, thirty-six (60%) were males, and twenty-four (40%) were females. Atrial fibrillation was noted in 43.33% of the patients of mitral valve stenosis. There was a marked difference in the mean volume of the left atrium among the two groups. We observed that the mean area of the mitral valve for Group A patients was larger than that of patients in Group B. Our study showed an inverse correlation between left atrial volume and mitral valve area among Group A patients. Conclusion: Patients of mitral stenosis are at an increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation if the left atrial volume is increasing. All patients with mitral stenosis should have routine echocardiography & measurement of left atrial volumes, so that proper treatment can be started if the left atrial volume is increasing, to prevent atrial fibrillation

Reduction of density-modification bias by β correction

A cross-validation-based method for bias reduction in ‘classical’ iterative density modification of experimental X-ray crystallography maps provides significantly more accurate phase-quality estimates and leads to improved automated model building

Single Photon Quantum Ranging: When Sequential Decoding Meets High Dimensional Entanglement

We consider the quantum ranging problem in the low noise level per mode and low reflectivity (high loss) regime. We focus on single photon transmission strategies and propose a novel approach that combines high dimensional time-bin entanglement at the transmitter with a carefully constructed sequential decision rule at the detector. Our analytical results establish the significant performance gains that can be leveraged from this approach in a range of operating parameters, as compared to the single photon classical approach, the two-mode squeezed vacuum ranging scheme proposed earlier, and even the block-based classical scheme. One can attribute this performance gain to 1) the ability of the high dimensional time-bin entangled signaling to offer a very fine range resolution with a single transmitted photon and 2) the ability of the sequential decision rule to minimize the average number of transmitted photon subject to a constraint on the probability of error. While our analysis is limited to the low energy/low noise regime, we conjecture that the proposed approach's superior performance extends to a wider range of scenarios which should motivate further analytical and experimental investigations.Comment: Submitted to NPJ Quantum information for peer revie