Are small rural banks vulnerable to local economic downturns?

A potentially troubling characteristic of the U.S. banking industry is the geographic concentration of many banks’ offices and operations. Historically, banking laws have prevented U.S. banks from branching into other counties and states. A potential adverse consequence of these regulations was to leave banks—especially small rural banks—vulnerable to local economic downturns. If geographic concentration of bank offices leaves banks vulnerable to local economic downturns, we should observe a significant correlation between bank performance and the local economy. Looking at Eighth District banks, however, we find little connection between the dispersion of a bank’s offices and its ability to insulate itself from localized economic shocks. County-level economic data are weakly correlated with bank performance. Two policy implications follow from this finding. First, a priori, little justification exists for imposing more stringent regulatory requirements on banks with geographically concentrated operations than on other banks. Second, county-level labor and income data do not appear to be systematically useful in the bank supervision process.Rural areas ; Banks and banking ; Economic conditions - United States

POPULATION ECOLOGY OF THE NORTHERN SLIMY SALAMANDER (PLETHODON GLUTINOSUS) IN EAST-CENTRAL ILLINOIS

The importance of plethodontid salamanders in forested habitats has been recognized for decades and more recently plethodontids have been touted as a model taxon for monitoring ecosystem integrity and recovery. However, basic demographic data that are crucial to conservation and management plans are currently lacking for many species and regions. The objectives of our study were to characterize the population density, biomass, and capture success of a peripheral population of Plethodon glutinosus to provide a comparison for eastern populations and set a baseline for future monitoring of Midwestern populations. We estimated the population density of P. glutinosus at our site to be 0.41 salamanders/m2, with an estimated biomass of 0.70 g/m2. We did not find any evidence for temperature or precipitation affecting capture success. Our results showed that our density estimate falls within the range of other population ecology studies of Plethodon and sets a baseline for other peripheral Midwestern populations

Insider Trading Under Sarbanes-Oxley: Bypassing the Personal Benefit Test

Insider trading is broadly defined as the use of material nonpublic information in connection with the trade of stock or other securities. To the average person, the classic case of insider trading is a corporate executive reaping handsome personal profits by trading stock using insider information that he obtained through his position within the corporation. The reality, however, can be much more complicate

Strengthening the Internal Affairs Doctrine Juul Labs, Inc. v. Grove, 238 A.3d 904 (Del. Ch. 2020).

The state of Delaware plays a significant role in shaping corporate law around the country. Delaware is home to a substantial number of corporations – more than half of publicly held corporations and over sixty percent of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in the state. Furthermore, it contains the most out-of-state incorporations – a situation where a business incorporates in Delaware but has a principal place of business in another state. For instance, the State of Missouri has ten Fortune 500 corporations with their principal place of business in the state, two of which are incorporated in Delaware. Delaware maintains that the large number of incorporations is due to the predictability and stability provided by the Delaware General Corporation Law (“DGCL”), the corporate law-focused Delaware Court of Chancery (“Chancery Court”), and the prompt and efficient service provided to corporations through the state’s tailored legal system. Regardless of the accuracy of these claims, commentators and experts generally agree on Delaware’s importance in corporate law

Muscle Synergies Facilitate Computational Prediction of Subject-Specific Walking Motions.

Researchers have explored a variety of neurorehabilitation approaches to restore normal walking function following a stroke. However, there is currently no objective means for prescribing and implementing treatments that are likely to maximize recovery of walking function for any particular patient. As a first step toward optimizing neurorehabilitation effectiveness, this study develops and evaluates a patient-specific synergy-controlled neuromusculoskeletal simulation framework that can predict walking motions for an individual post-stroke. The main question we addressed was whether driving a subject-specific neuromusculoskeletal model with muscle synergy controls (5 per leg) facilitates generation of accurate walking predictions compared to a model driven by muscle activation controls (35 per leg) or joint torque controls (5 per leg). To explore this question, we developed a subject-specific neuromusculoskeletal model of a single high-functioning hemiparetic subject using instrumented treadmill walking data collected at the subject's self-selected speed of 0.5 m/s. The model included subject-specific representations of lower-body kinematic structure, foot-ground contact behavior, electromyography-driven muscle force generation, and neural control limitations and remaining capabilities. Using direct collocation optimal control and the subject-specific model, we evaluated the ability of the three control approaches to predict the subject's walking kinematics and kinetics at two speeds (0.5 and 0.8 m/s) for which experimental data were available from the subject. We also evaluated whether synergy controls could predict a physically realistic gait period at one speed (1.1 m/s) for which no experimental data were available. All three control approaches predicted the subject's walking kinematics and kinetics (including ground reaction forces) well for the model calibration speed of 0.5 m/s. However, only activation and synergy controls could predict the subject's walking kinematics and kinetics well for the faster non-calibration speed of 0.8 m/s, with synergy controls predicting the new gait period the most accurately. When used to predict how the subject would walk at 1.1 m/s, synergy controls predicted a gait period close to that estimated from the linear relationship between gait speed and stride length. These findings suggest that our neuromusculoskeletal simulation framework may be able to bridge the gap between patient-specific muscle synergy information and resulting functional capabilities and limitations

Unsupervised Reward Shaping for a Robotic Sequential Picking Task from Visual Observations in a Logistics Scenario

We focus on an unloading problem, typical of the logistics sector, modeled as a sequential pick-and-place task. In this type of task, modern machine learning techniques have shown to work better than classic systems since they are more adaptable to stochasticity and better able to cope with large uncertainties. More specifically, supervised and imitation learning have achieved outstanding results in this regard, with the shortcoming of requiring some form of supervision which is not always obtainable for all settings. On the other hand, reinforcement learning (RL) requires much milder form of supervision but still remains impracticable due to its inefficiency. In this paper, we propose and theoretically motivate a novel Unsupervised Reward Shaping algorithm from expert's observations which relaxes the level of supervision required by the agent and works on improving RL performance in our task

Convection in a mushy-layer along a heated wall

Motivated by the mushy zones of sea ice, volcanoes, and icy moons of the outer solar system, we perform a theoretical and numerical study of boundary-layer convection along a vertical heated wall in a bounded ideal mushy region. The mush is comprised of a porous and reactive binary alloy with a mixture of saline liquid in a solid matrix, and is studied in the near-eutectic approximation. Here we demonstrate the existence of four regions and study their behavior asymptotically. Starting from the bottom of the wall, the four regions are (i) an isotropic corner region; (ii) a buoyancy dominated vertical boundary layer; (iii) an isotropic connection region; and (iv) a horizontal boundary layer at the top boundary with strong gradients of pressure and buoyancy. Scalings from numerical simulations are consistent with the theoretical predictions. Close to the heated wall, the convection in the mushy layer is similar to a rising buoyant plume abruptly stopped at the top, leading to increased pressure and temperature in the upper region, whose impact is discussed as an efficient melting mechanism