The Deregulation of the Private Equity Markets and the Decline in IPOs

The deregulation of securities laws—in particular the National Securities Markets Improvement Act (NSMIA) of 1996—has increased the supply of private capital to late-stage private startups, which are now able to grow to a size that few private firms used to reach. NSMIA is one of a number of factors that have changed the going-public versus staying-private trade-off, helping bring about a new equilibrium where fewer startups go public, and those that do are older. This new equilibrium does not reflect an initial public offering (IPO) market failure. Rather, founders are using their increased bargaining power vis-à-vis investors to stay private longer

Computing the distribution of the maximum in balls-and-boxes problems, with application to clusters of disease cases

We present a rapid method for the exact calculation of the cumulative distribution function of the maximum of multinomially distributed random variables. The method runs in time $O(mn)$, where $m$ is the desired maximum and $n$ is the number of variables. We apply the method to the analysis of two situations where an apparent clustering of cases of a disease in some locality has raised the possibility that the disease might be communicable, and this possibility has been discussed in the recent literature. We conclude that one of these clusters may be explained on purely random grounds, whereas the other may not

Health and safety and adult learners in the learning and skills sector

"This booklet underlines the Learning and Skills Council’s commitment to the very highest standards of health and safety. It can be used as a guide and basis for staff training and development by managers, and directly by practitioners to improve their health and safety, and general, practice. The approach is focused on practitioners rather than management processes and systems. The booklet has relevance to managers and practitioners working with younger learners and apprentices as well as adult learners in learning providers throughout the learning and skills sector. It may be useful for people studying for teaching qualifications" -- inside front cover

Seed Wars: Biotechnology, Intellectual Property, and the Quest for High Yield Seeds

Presently, intellectual property law is the mechanism that determines international protection and control over biotech innovations in plant varieties and the genetic resources that form the basis for those innovations. The intellectual property paradigm that is utilized employs western definitions of property in order to provide a framework in which to allocate rights. This has resulted in serious distributive problems: western-specific ideas about property, authorship, and individual creative inventors do not translate well to areas where cultural knowledge or generational innovation form the basis of important societal achievements. The default solution in the international agricultural context has been to almost entirely forego any sort of property protection for cultural and indigenous knowledge and innovation. Until international intellectual property law increases awareness of the importance of the public domain in preserving genetic diversity, protecting the global food supply, and safe-guarding genetic resources, intellectual property law will under-value and under-compensate the contributions and agricultural concerns of the developing countries that safeguard the vast majority of the world\u27s plant genetic resources

Natural selection maximizes Fisher information

In biology, information flows from the environment to the genome by the process of natural selection. But it has not been clear precisely what sort of information metric properly describes natural selection. Here, I show that Fisher information arises as the intrinsic metric of natural selection and evolutionary dynamics. Maximizing the amount of Fisher information about the environment captured by the population leads to Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, the most profound statement about how natural selection influences evolutionary dynamics. I also show a relation between Fisher information and Shannon information (entropy) that may help to unify the correspondence between information and dynamics. Finally, I discuss possible connections between the fundamental role of Fisher information in statistics, biology, and other fields of science.Comment: Published version freely available at DOI listed her

Living after confronting death; story telling during the recovery trajectory of intensive care unit survivors: An interpretive biographical approach

Aim: To create new meaning of the experiences of intensive care survivors during early recovery and the meaning of “self” during this time. To add to the understanding of how support should be focussed for survivors during recovery. Background: Survival from a critical event/illness and intensive care unit experience is increasing, as is associated physical and psychological complications. Complications are due to the severity of illness, the intensive care experience itself and the nature of the treatments which promote survival. If complications remain untreated increased health care service uptake and reduced quality of life can ensue. Despite the potential impact upon individuals and beleaguered health care systems, inadequate support service provision in Australia and across the world persists. Design and participants: An interpretive biographical exploration of intensive care survivors experiences of recovery following hospital discharge. Nine participants were recruited from a single centre in metropolitan Perth, Western Australia. All participants had been ventilated for a minimum period of twenty four hours following a critical event/illness. Methods: Data were collected from diaries, face to face interviews, memos and field notes. Participants diarised for three months commencing two months after hospital discharge. At five months following discharge participants were interviewed about the content of their diaries and the symbols and signifiers within them to create a shared meaning of their experiences. Analysis of diaries and interviews were undertaken using two frameworks. This process enabled the identification of themes throughout participants’ stories and offers a unique portrait of recovery through their individual lens. Findings: All of the participants considered their lives had irreparably changed as a result of their experience. The biographical methods provided a safe and creative way to reveal inner thoughts and feelings which may not have been revealed using other methods. This unique view through the lens of the survivor identified how unsupported by health care professionals they felt following discharge. Turmoil existed between survivors’ surface and inner worlds as they struggled to conform to the constraints of what recovery should be; imposed by the biomedical model. The process of constructing their stories enabled participants to reflect upon their experiences of recovery and bring a sense of coherence to their experiences. Conclusion: The use of the biographical method gave the participants a voice through which they could be heard and a way to bring clarity to their experiences. The process of constructing their stories was considered important to their recovery process, and in particular in enabling reflection on how far they had traversed. Often survivors are unable to articulate their inner most thoughts and experiences for fear of being misinterpreted. The methods reported here gave them an opportunity to do so through non-verbal techniques. Analysis of diary entries may also identify maladaptation in survivors and enable interventions to be individually targeted before chronicity is established. The findings from this study may lead to a greater awareness among health care providers of the problems survivors face, and improved support services more broadly, based on frameworks more appropriate for this population

An Analysis of the Influence of Charles Horton Cooley\u27s Concept of the Primary Group Upon American Sociology

In the history of civilisation, few men have, as the result of their own thoughts, raised themselves head and shoulders above their fellows. Most have had to be content merely to adopt their ideas and beliefs from others. Few are they, indeed, who have penetrated the depths of the unknown and then have successfully returned with new ideas expressed in conventional language so that we of lesser ability might also understand. Charles Horton Cooley was one of these. He did not invent a new silver cleaner or make an improvement on a mousetrap. He merely contemplated his own soul and saw the world reflected there . Aided by the power of introspectionand inspired primarily by the great masters of literature, he took many of the vague tendencies and impressions of his age and returned them through his writings as clear, definite, and workable ideas