Congressional Securities Trading

The trading of stocks and bonds by Members of Congress presents several risks that warrant public concern. One is the potential for policy distortion: lawmakers\u27 personal investments may influence their official acts. Another is a special case of a general problem: that of insiders exploiting access to confidential information for personal gain. In each case, the current framework which is based on common law fiduciary principles is a poor fit. Surprisingly, rules from a related context have been overlooked. Like lawmakers, public company insiders such as CEOs frequently trade securities while in possession of confidential information. Those insiders\u27 trades are governed by federal securities regulations. Borrowing from these regulations, this Essay proposes a taxonomy of congressional securities trading (CST) and develops a comprehensive prescription to manage it. Specifically, Rule 10b5-1 plans (which disclose trades ex ante) and the section 16(b) short-swing profits rule of the Exchange Act (which disgorges illicit profits ex post) should be adapted to the congressional context. To further minimize conflicts of interest, lawmakers should also be restricted from owning any securities other than Treasuries and passive U.S. index funds. The Essay uses recent high-profile trading scandals to illustrate why the new bright-line rules proposed here are better suited to this problem than both the current system of regulating CST, which relies on common law standards, and prominent alternative reform proposals

Stochastic and Semi-Classical Approaches to the Quantum Virial Expansion

Many-body quantum systems provide an interesting playground for experimentalists and theorists alike. In particular, ultracold atomic gases provide not only a realm of study for which experiments have a high degree of control but also provides theorists with intriguing, yet challenging systems that may be accessed computationally. It is for these reasons that it is here where the majority of our work will focus. We discuss the necessary physics, thermodynamics, and computational methods for carrying out this work, and present several methods for computing coefficients of the quantum virial expansion across dimensions for Fermi gases with zero-range interactions. The techniques discussed are non-perturbative and involve stochastic methods as well as a semi-classical lattice approximation. Through these algorithms, we have computed the interaction dependence (both attractive and repulsive where applicable) of the virial coefficients to a relatively high order as compared to current literature in one, two, and three spatial dimensions. Through one of said methods, we are able to provide a prediction for the radius of convergence of the virial expansion in one spatial dimension.Doctor of Philosoph

Optimal Fuzzy Model Construction with Statistical Information using Genetic Algorithm

Fuzzy rule based models have a capability to approximate any continuous function to any degree of accuracy on a compact domain. The majority of FLC design process relies on heuristic knowledge of experience operators. In order to make the design process automatic we present a genetic approach to learn fuzzy rules as well as membership function parameters. Moreover, several statistical information criteria such as the Akaike information criterion (AIC), the Bhansali-Downham information criterion (BDIC), and the Schwarz-Rissanen information criterion (SRIC) are used to construct optimal fuzzy models by reducing fuzzy rules. A genetic scheme is used to design Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) model for identification of the antecedent rule parameters and the identification of the consequent parameters. Computer simulations are presented confirming the performance of the constructed fuzzy logic controller

Factors Associated with Marital Adjustment of Young Mormon Married College Students

The study compared the marital adjustment scores of young college student Mormon temple and nontemple couples. Marital adjustment scores of temple couples were significantly higher than they were for nontemple couples. Responses of 20 temple and 20 nontemple couples were analyzed controlling for age, length of marriage, income, number of children, and education. The mean marital adjustment scores did not vary significantly when each control variable was analyzed in terms of its effect on marital adjustment for temple and nontemple couples. Nontemple husbands and wives were affected differently by the various control variables. Male and female nontemple marital adjustment scores generally increased or decreased in opposite directions, while male and female temple adjustment scores generally increased or decreased in the same direction. This difference, while not statistically significant, affects overall marital adjustment when the multiple effect of all control variables is analyzed. Analyzing a few selected questions from the marital adjustment teat indicated temple couples agreed more often on conventionality, philosophy of life, and friends than did nontemple couples. Nontemple couples agreed more often on finances than did temple couples. Temple and nontemple couples who perceived disagreements as being solved by a mate giving in rather than by mutual give and take had marital adjustment scores below the mean for their group. When respondents were asked to state the percentage of time the responses of them and their mates would be in agreement, temple couples perceived their responses to the marital adjustment test being in agreement more often than did nontemple couples. The positive correlation between religiosity and marital adjustment scores was significant for temple couples but not for nontemple couples

Site-Directed Mutagenesis of the Nitrogenase Fe-Protein from Azotobacter vinelandii

Nitrogen fixation is the chemical reaction of dinitrogen (N2) being reduced to ammonia (NH3). This reaction occurs naturally by nitrogen fixing microorganisms which contain the enzyme nitrogenase. The overall reaction is written below

The Independent Board as Shield

The fiduciary duty of loyalty bars CEOs and other executives from managing companies for personal gain. In the modern public corporation, this restriction is reinforced by a pair of institutions: the independent board of directors and the business judgment rule. In isolation, each structure arguably promotes manager fidelity to shareholder interests—but together, they enable manager prioritization. This marks a particularly striking turn for the independent board. Its origin story and raison d’être lie in protecting shareholders from opportunism by managers, but it functions as a shield for managers instead. Numerous defects in the design and practice of the independent board inhibit its ability to curb managerial excess. Nowhere is this more evident than in the context of transactions that enrich the CEO. When executive compensation and similar matters are approved by independent directors, they take on a new quality: they become insulated by the business judgment rule. This rule is commonly justified as giving legal effect to the comparative advantage of businesspeople in their domain—in determining the price of a product, for example—and it immunizes such decisions from court challenge. But independent directors can opt to extend the rule’s protection beyond this narrow class of duty of care cases to domains that squarely implicate the duty of loyalty. The result is a shield for conflicts of interest that defeats the major objective of the independent board and important goals of corporate law more generally. This Article proposes to eliminate the independent board’s paradoxical shield quality by ending business judgment protection for claims implicating the duty of loyalty. Judges would apply the familiar entire fairness standard instead. The clearest rationale for this reform comes from the logic of the rule itself: comparative advantage. Judges, not businesspeople, are best situated to adjudicate conflicts of interest. More broadly, the Article’s analysis suggests that the pro-shareholder reputation of the independent board is overstated and may have inadvertently fostered a sense of complacency around board power