Venture capital contracting in theory and practice: Implications for entrepreneurship research

This article provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical literature review of venture capital contracts. This outlines the differences between theoretical and practical uses of contract designs; that is, (1) how does the choice of securities give rise to different adverse selection problems in terms of attracting different types of entrepreneurial companies; how does the choice of securities in conjunction with cash flow and control rights provisions affect (2) the effort levels by the entrepreneur and the investor; and (3) ultimately affect entrepreneurial outcomes. This article highlights the major discrepancies between theory and practice and points out potential avenues for further research

The emergence of risk-based regulation in higher education:Relevance for entrepreneurial risk taking by business schools

PurposeBusiness schools are increasingly positioning themselves as entrepreneurial risk‐takers. In doing so, they are front‐runners of a marketization trend affecting the entire higher education sector. In response, governments have begun to subject higher education sectors to systems of risk‐based regulation. The purpose of this paper is to study the likely impact of regulatory change on business school behaviour.Design/methodology/approachThe article focuses on the financial dimension of institutional performance and draws on the corporate risk management literature to derive general design principles for managing risk‐taking in business schools. These are matched with a review of the regulation literature to evaluate regulatory effectiveness.FindingsBusiness schools are facing a double‐hurdle test when managing their risk position. They need to protect their financial solvency with the maintenance of properly functioning risk management systems. At the same time, they will increasingly be subjected to regulatory scrutiny with regulatory shortcomings likely to be mapped into binding but sub‐optimal behavioural constraints. The article offers initial reflections as to how business schools can cope with this double‐hurdle.Originality/valueRisk management in higher education, here with a specific reference to business schools, has so far been under‐theorized from a financial perspective and, as a consequence, the debate on risk‐based regulation lacks a proper foundation. The article addresses this shortcoming.</jats:sec

"Unfocus" on foc.us: Commercial tDCS headset impairs working memory

In this study, we tested whether the commercial transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) headset foc.us improves cognitive performance, as advertised in the media. A single-blind, sham-controlled, within-subject design was used to assess the effect of online and off-line foc.us tDCS—applied over the prefrontal cortex in healthy young volunteers (n = 24) on working memory (WM) updating and monitoring. WM updating and monitoring, as assessed by means of the N-back task, is a cognitive-control process that has been shown to benefit from interventions with CE-certified tDCS devices. For both online and off-line stimulation protocols, results showed that active stimulation with foc.us, compared to sham stimulation, significantly decreased accuracy performance in a well-established task tapping WM updating and monitoring. These results provide evidence for the important role of the scientific community in validating and testing far-reaching claims made by the brain training industry

No Evidence for Shared Representations of Task Sets in Joint Task Switching

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Looking at Localized Excitons in Quantum Structures: A Theoretical Description

We present a theory of scanning local optical spectroscopy in quantum structures taking into account structural disorder. The calculated spatially resolved spectra show the individual spectral lines from the exciton states localized by the disordered potential as well as the quasicontinua spectra at positions close to the potential barriers in agreement with the experimental findings

Pharmacological therapies in post stroke recovery: Recommendations for future clinical trials

Stroke is a leading cause of serious long-term disability in adults and is the second leading cause of death worldwide. Early reperfusion and neuroprotection techniques have been the focus of much effort with the aim of very acute treatment of the stroke. Targeting different mechanisms, pharmacological therapies have the potential to reduce disability in a large fraction of patients who survive the acute stroke. The brain's capacity to reorganize after stroke through plasticity mechanisms can be modulated by pharmacological agents. A number of therapeutic interventions are under study, including small molecules, growth factors, and monoclonal antibodies. Recently it has been shown that the SSRI fluoxetine improved motor deficit in patients with ischaemic stroke and hemiplegia which appeared to be independent of the presence of depression. In this context, it is of major importance to support innovative research in order to promote the emergence of new pharmacological treatments targeting neurological recovery after stroke, as opposed to acute de-occlusion and neuroprotection. This paper is the work of a group of 14 scientists with aim of (1) addressing key areas of the basic and clinical aspects of human brain plasticity after stroke and potential pharmacological targets for recovery, (2) asking questions about the most appropriate characteristics of clinical trials testing drugs in post stroke recovery and (3) proposing recommendations for future clinical trials. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

What we observe is biased by what other people tell us: beliefs about the reliability of gaze behavior modulate attentional orienting to gaze cues

For effective social interactions with other people, information about the physical environment must be integrated with information about the interaction partner. In order to achieve this, processing of social information is guided by two components: a bottom-up mechanism reflexively triggered by stimulus-related information in the social scene and a top-down mechanism activated by task-related context information. In the present study, we investigated whether these components interact during attentional orienting to gaze direction. In particular, we examined whether the spatial specificity of gaze cueing is modulated by expectations about the reliability of gaze behavior. Expectations were either induced by instruction or could be derived from experience with displayed gaze behavior. Spatially specific cueing effects were observed with highly predictive gaze cues, but also when participants merely believed that actually non-predictive cues were highly predictive. Conversely, cueing effects for the whole gazed-at hemifield were observed with non-predictive gaze cues, and spatially specific cueing effects were attenuated when actually predictive gaze cues were believed to be non-predictive. This pattern indicates that (i) information about cue predictivity gained from sampling gaze behavior across social episodes can be incorporated in the attentional orienting to social cues, and that (ii) beliefs about gaze behavior modulate attentional orienting to gaze direction even when they contradict information available from social episodes