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

Rewriting Our Nation\u27s Deadly Traffic Manual

Every day, Americans entrust their lives to a road system that is governed by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (the Manual). On its face, this Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) publication is a straightforward technical document. It contains over eight hundred pages of engineering guidance on everything from traffic-light placement to the font of highway signs. It also establishes acceptable methods for officials to modify speed limits. While such provisions may sound inconsequential, some of the Manual’s provisions have far-reaching, even deadly, consequences. They prioritize vehicular speed over public safety, mobility over other uses of public space, and driving over other modes of mobility. With these car-centric priorities, the Manual has helped generate a nearly constant and fast- moving stream of vehicle traffic that renders road users like pedestrians, wheelchair users, and cyclists vulnerable. Moreover, by giving preference to driving over other modes of transportation, the Manual has indirectly facilitated a rise in transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions that are the single largest contributor to climate change. Despite the evidence stacked against some of its most important provisions, the Manual has stubbornly endured — perhaps because it has been virtually unknown outside of transportation engineering and urban planning. But over the past year, the Manual has finally started to receive the scrutiny it deserves. In 2020, the FHWA proposed a new draft of the Manual that would maintain the current version’s most outdated and discredited features. During a recently closed notice-and-comment process, the agency received over 26,500 comments. Even in the unlikely event that the agency rips up the proposed revisions and starts fresh, the core of the Manual will probably remain intact for years to come. This Essay explains how the Manual biases transportation behavior in dangerous and inequitable ways. It urges the FHWA to use its emergency powers to rescind its most damaging provision — the so-called 85th Percentile Rule, which legalizes dangerously high speeds of traffic — and to undertake a complete rewrite that follows a scientifically sound, evidence-based approach; prioritizes safety, access, equity, climate action, and prosperity; and incorporates feedback from diverse stakeholders

Ductility Enhancement of Sustainable Fibrous-Reinforced High-Strength Lightweight Concrete

To limit the cross-sectional size of concrete structures, high-strength, lightweight concrete is preferred for the design and construction of structural elements. However, the main drawback of high-strength, lightweight concrete is its brittleness over normal-weight concrete. The ductility of concrete is a crucial factor, which plays an important role when the concrete structures are subjected to extreme situations, such as earthquakes and wind. This study aims to improve the ductility of high-strength, lightweight concrete by incorporating steel fibers. The palm oil clinker (POC)-based, high-strength, lightweight concrete specimens reinforced with steel fibers were prepared and their ductility was systematically examined. POC was used as aggregates and supplementary cementitious materials. Steel fibers from 0–1.50% (by volume), with an increment of 0.5%, were used in the concrete mix. Compression ductility, displacement ductility and energy ductility were used as indicators to evaluate the enhancement of ductility. Moreover, the compressive strength, flexural strength, strain–strain behavior, modulus of elasticity, load-displacement characteristics, energy absorption capacity and deformability of the concrete samples were investigated. The compression ductility, displacement ductility and energy ductility indexes were found to be increased by up to 472%, 140% and 568% compared to the control specimens (concrete with 0% steel fibers), respectively. Moreover, the deformability and energy absorption capacity of the concrete were increased by up to 566% and 125%, respectively. Therefore, POC-based, high-strength, fibrous, lightweight concrete could perform better than conventional concrete under extreme loading conditions as it showed significantly higher ductility

Bangla handwritten numeral recognition using convolutional neural network

Recognition of handwritten numerals has gained much interest in recent years due to its various application potentials. Although Bangla is a major language in Indian subcontinent and is the first language of Bangladesh study regarding Bangla handwritten numeral recognition (BHNR) is very few with respect to other major languages such Roman. The existing BHNR methods uses distinct feature extraction techniques and various classification tools in their recognition schemes. Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN) is found efficient for image classification with its distinct features. It also automatically provides some degree of translation invariance. In this paper, a CNN based BHNR is investigated. The proposed BHNR-CNN normalizes the written numeral images and then employ CNN to classify individual numerals. It does not employ any feature extraction method like other related works. 17000 hand written numerals with different shapes, sizes and variations are used in this study. The proposed method is shown satisfactory recognition accuracy and outperformed other prominent exiting methods

Adaptive interval type-2 fuzzy logic controller for autonomous mobile robot

A Type-2 Fuzzy logic controller adapted with genetic algorithm, called type-2 genetic fuzzy logic controller (T2GFLC), is presented in this paper to handle uncertainty with dynamic optimal learning. Genetic algorithm is employed to simultaneous design of type-2 membership functions and rule sets for type-2 fuzzy logic controllers. Traditional fuzzy logic controllers (FLCs), often termed as type-1 fuzzy logic systems using type-1 fuzzy sets, cannot handle large amount of uncertainties present in many real environments. Therefore, recently type-2 FLC has been proposed. The type-2 FLC can be considered as a collection of different embedded type-1 FLCs. However, the current design process of type-2 FLC is not automatic and relies on human experts. The purpose of our study is to make the design process automatic. Moreover, to reduce the computation time of T2GFLC an efficient type-reduction strategy for interval type-2 fuzzy set is also introduced. The evolved type-2 FLCs can deal with large amount of uncertainties and exhibit better performance for the mobile robot. Furthermore, it has outperformed their type-1 counterparts as well as the adaptive type-1 FLCs

A PSO based transportation network design optimization of the mega city Dhaka

Transportation network is a key issue for urban areas and is require to update to fulfill the growing demand modifying existing road(s) and/or constructing new road(s) considering various constraints. In general, transportation network design problem (TNDP) concerns optimal selection of several projects from various alternative proposed projects (with estimated costs) maintaining associated constraints to ensure benefit versus cost. Various approaches have been investigated to solve TNDP in last several decades. Recently, particle swarm optimization (PSO) based method is shown to outperform other methods. However, the most of the existing methods, including PSO, tested on the small scale TNDP. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify the effectiveness of the PSO based method for a mega city heaving large number nodes and arcs. The mega city considered in this study is Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The experiment has been conducted on the roughly estimated data for exiting network as well as proposed projects. Experimental results for revealed that the method able to select projects for optimal (or near optimal) utilization of a given budget amount. The selected projects are seem to be effective to increase traffic flow while observe on the schematic diagram of the road network

Glycemia and the Quality of Well-Being in Patients with Diabetes

Objectives : To investigate the cross-sectional relationships among self-reported frequencies of symptomatic hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, HbA1c, and symptoms in the Quality of Well-Being Self-Administered (QWB-SA), and to examine the associations among these measures of glycemia and health utility scores. Research design and methods : The study group included 1522 patients with diabetes who attended University of Michigan Health System clinics. Published studies were reviewed to identify symptoms in the QWB-SA that might be associated with measures of glycemia. Linear regression analyses were performed to evaluate the strength of the associations among the frequency of self-reported measures of glycemia, QWB-SA symptoms, and QWB-SA-derived health utility scores. Results : Frequency of hyperglycemic symptoms was associated with 3% of the variance in the QWB-SA-derived health utility score in type 1 diabetes and with 5% of the variance in type 2 diabetes. Frequency of hypoglycemic symptoms was not associated with the QWB-SA-derived health utility score in type 1 diabetes but was associated with 1% of the variance in type 2 diabetes. HbA1c levels were not significantly associated with QWB-SA-derived health utility scores. After controlling for age, gender, and complications, frequency of hyperglycemic symptoms was significantly associated with QWB-SA-derived health utility scores in type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Conclusions : Reported frequency of hyperglycemic symptoms is associated with symptoms included in the QWB-SA and with QWB-SA-derived health utility scores. The QWB-SA may be an appropriate measure to assess the health burden of hyperglycemia.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43567/1/11136_2004_Article_5147235.pd

Neighbourhood, Route and Workplace-Related Environmental Characteristics Predict Adults' Mode of Travel to Work

Commuting provides opportunities for regular physical activity which can reduce the risk of chronic disease. Commuters' mode of travel may be shaped by their environment, but understanding of which specific environmental characteristics are most important and might form targets for intervention is limited. This study investigated associations between mode choice and a range of objectively assessed environmental characteristics.Participants in the Commuting and Health in Cambridge study reported where they lived and worked, their usual mode of travel to work and a variety of socio-demographic characteristics. Using geographic information system (GIS) software, 30 exposure variables were produced capturing characteristics of areas around participants' homes and workplaces and their shortest modelled routes to work. Associations between usual mode of travel to work and personal and environmental characteristics were investigated using multinomial logistic regression.Of the 1124 respondents, 50% reported cycling or walking as their usual mode of travel to work. In adjusted analyses, home-work distance was strongly associated with mode choice, particularly for walking. Lower odds of walking or cycling rather than driving were associated with a less frequent bus service (highest versus lowest tertile: walking OR 0.61 [95% CI 0.20–1.85]; cycling OR 0.43 [95% CI 0.23–0.83]), low street connectivity (OR 0.22, [0.07–0.67]; OR 0.48 [0.26–0.90]) and free car parking at work (OR 0.24 [0.10–0.59]; OR 0.55 [0.32–0.95]). Participants were less likely to cycle if they had access to fewer destinations (leisure facilities, shops and schools) close to work (OR 0.36 [0.21–0.62]) and a railway station further from home (OR 0.53 [0.30–0.93]). Covariates strongly predicted travel mode (pseudo r-squared 0.74).Potentially modifiable environmental characteristics, including workplace car parking, street connectivity and access to public transport, are associated with travel mode choice, and could be addressed as part of transport policy and infrastructural interventions to promote active commuting

The GLY2019SER Mutation in LRRK2 is Not Fully Penetrant in Familial Parkinson\u27s Disease: the GenePD Study

Background: We report age-dependent penetrance estimates for leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2)-related Parkinson\u27s disease (PD) in a large sample of familial PD. The most frequently seen LRRK2 mutation, Gly2019Ser (G2019S), is associated with approximately 5 to 6% of familial PD cases and 1 to 2% of idiopathic cases, making it the most common known genetic cause of PD. Studies of the penetrance of LRRK2 mutations have produced a wide range of estimates, possibly due to differences in study design and recruitment, including in particular differences between samples of familial PD versus sporadic PD. Methods: A sample, including 903 affected and 58 unaffected members from 509 families ascertained for having two or more PD-affected members, 126 randomly ascertained PD patients and 197 controls, was screened for five different LRRK2 mutations. Penetrance was estimated in families of LRRK2 carriers with consideration of the inherent bias towards increased penetrance in a familial sample. Results: Thirty-one out of 509 families with multiple cases of PD (6.1%) were found to have 58 LRRK2 mutation carriers (6.4%). Twenty-nine of the 31 families had G2019S mutations while two had R1441C mutations. No mutations were identified among controls or unaffected relatives of PD cases. Nine PD-affected relatives of G2019S carriers did not carry the LRRK2 mutation themselves. At the maximum observed age range of 90 to 94 years, the unbiased estimated penetrance was 67% for G2019S families, compared with a baseline PD risk of 17% seen in the non-LRRK2-related PD families. Conclusion: Lifetime penetrance of LRRK2 estimated in the unascertained relatives of multiplex PD families is greater than that reported in studies of sporadically ascertained LRRK2 cases, suggesting that inherited susceptibility factors may modify the penetrance of LRRK2 mutations. In addition, the presence of nine PD phenocopies in the LRRK2 families suggests that these susceptibility factors may also increase the risk of non-LRRK2-related PD. No differences in penetrance were found between men and women, suggesting that the factors that influence penetrance for LRRK2 carriers are independent of the factors which increase PD prevalence in men