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

Climate Change Impacts on Investment in Crop Sowing Machinery

Down-scaled global circulation modelling is combined with wheat growth simulation modelling to generate yield responses to times of sowing under current and projected climatic conditions for several locations in the grainbelt of Western Australia. A model for investment in crop sowing machinery draws on these simulated yield relationships at each location and is used to determine a farmer’s optimal investment in crop sowing work rate capacity under current and projected climate regimes. The key finding is that at most locations the projected change in climate has marked impacts on profit distributions from grain production, yet mostly modest changes in the farmer’s investment in machinery work rate form part of the profit-maximising response to climate change at each location. There is also a divergence in machinery investment response between high versus low rainfall locations, with increases and decreases in work rates respectively being forecast. However, as illustrated for a few locations, the changes in investment in work rate within a broadly similar rainfall region are not uniform; principally due to climate change differently affecting the pattern of yield response to time of sowing at each location.climate change, farm machinery, farm management, machinery investment, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,

Immigration, Family Responsibilities and the Labor Supply of Skilled Native Women

This paper investigates the effects of Spain's large recent immigration wave on the labor supply of highly skilled native women. We hypothesize that female immigration led to an increase in the supply of affordable household services, such as housekeeping and child or elderly care. As a result, i) native females with high earnings potential were able to increase their labor supply, and ii) the effects were larger on skilled women whose labor supply was heavily constrained by family responsibilities. Our evidence indicates that over the last decade immigration led to an important expansion in the size of the household services sector and to an increase in the labor supply of women in high-earning occupations (of about 2 hours per week). We also find that immigration allowed skilled native women to return to work sooner after childbirth, to stay in the workforce longer when having elderly dependents in the household, and to postpone retirement. Methodologically, we show that the availability of even limited Registry data makes it feasible to conduct the analysis using quarterly household survey data, as opposed to having to rely on the decennial Census.Immigration, Labor supply, Fertility, Retirement, Household services

Outstanding intraindividual genetic diversity in fissiparous planarians (Dugesia, Platyhelminthes) with facultative sex.

Predicted genetic consequences of asexuality include high intraindividual genetic diversity (i.e., the Meselson effect) and accumulation of deleterious mutations (i.e., Muller’s Ratchet), among others. These consequences have been largely studied in parthenogenetic organisms, but studies on fissiparous species are scarce. Differing from parthenogens, fissiparous organisms inherit part of the soma of the progenitor, including somatic mutations. Thus, in the long term, fissiparous reproduction may also result in genetic mosaicism, besides the presence of the Meselson effect and Muller’s Ratchet. Dugesiidae planarians show outstanding regeneration capabilities, allowing them to naturally reproduce by fission, either strictly or combined with sex (facultative). Therefore, they are an ideal model to analyze the genetic footprint of fissiparous reproduction, both when it is alternated with sex and when it is the only mode of reproduction

SPENDING WHERE IT MATTERS: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INSTITUTIONAL EXPENDITURES AND STUDENT RETENTION RATES AT THE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY

It is anticipated that there will be a shortage of 1.1 million college-educated workers in California by 2030 (Johnson, Bohn, & Cuellar Mejia, 2016). Within this context, the California State University (CSU) is the principal source of skilled workers in the state, producing more career-ready candidates than any other single institution (“California State University 2018 Fact Book“, n.d.). This study examined the relationship between student retention rates and institutional expenditures across the different functional categories of instruction, student services, academic support, and instructional support at the CSU. With the exception of student grants and scholarships, these selected expenditures represent the system’s four largest individual expense categories. This study also sought to reveal the existence of similarities between institutions across the CSU based on institutional characteristics that emerged from the literature as predictors of student success including faculty composition, socioeconomic status of student population, and institutional selectivity (Bailey, Calcagno, Jenkins, Kienzl, & Leinbach, 2005; Ehrenberg & Zhang, 2005a, 2005b; Gansemer-Topf & Schuh (2006); Terenzini, Cabrera, & Bernal, 2001; Titus, 2006b). The sample utilized in this study is the entire population of the CSU, which is comprised of 23 campuses. Data for this study were drawn from the IPEDS database, managed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This quantitative, non-experimental, correlational study used panel data analysis to determine if the selected institutional expenditures influence retention rates and also to examine the extent to which institutional expenditures contribute to the prediction of retention rate. Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) cluster analysis was performed for exploratory purposes and to reveal groups with similar institutional characteristics. This study found that instructional, academic support, and institutional support expenditures were positively correlated with student retention rates. This finding suggests that increases in both dollar amounts and proportion of expenditures allocated to each functional category would result in higher retention rates. However, there was an exception: student services expenditures were found to be negatively correlated with student retentions rates, implying that allocating funds to student services activities would not result in higher student retention. This study also found that the CSU institutions can be grouped in six different clusters based on similarities of institutional characteristics, suggesting that the criteria to allocate funds from the CSU system to individual campuses should account for these differences to effectively support student success

Deciding what to eat

A signaling pathway directs cells to degrade peroxisomes while leaving other organelles untouched

Hamiltonian flows for pseudo-Anosov mapping classes

For a given pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism $\phi$ of a closed surface $S$, the action of $\phi$ on the Teichm\"uller space $\mathcal T(S)$ is an automorphism of the complex structure preserving the Weil-Petersson-Goldman symplectic form. We give explicit formulae for two invariant functions $\mathcal T(S)\to \mathbb R$ whose symplectic gradients generate autonomous Hamiltonian flows that coincide with the action of $\phi$ at time one. We compute the Poisson bracket of these two functions, which essentially amounts to computing the variation of length of a H\"older cocyle on one lamination along the shear vector field defined by another. For a measurably generic set of laminations, we prove that the variation of length is expressed as the cosine of the angle between the two laminations integrated against the product H\"older distribution, generalizing a result of Kerckhoff. We also obtain rates of convergence for the supports of germs of differentiable paths of measured laminations in the Hausdorff metric on a hyperbolic surface, which may be of independent interest.Comment: 31 page

Deixis personal e identificación del emisor en la documentación clínica de los profesionales de enfermería

This paper presents an analysis of the discursive practices that nursing professionals use in clinical documentation. The research applies personal deixis concepts and identification of the issuer in the professional writings in order to identify the care provided and the client’s evolution. The nursing records are means of inter and intraprofessional communication which present their own elements of theoric communication. In the research, the different issuer and recipient participation frameworks are identified and the way the professional is identified in the writing communication is analyzed. By doing this analysis we would be able to assess the responsibility assumption, the people who take part in the communicative event and the informative and communicative quality of these writings.Este trabajo presenta un análisis de las prácticas discursivas que los profesionales de enfermería utilizan en la documentación clínica. Se aplican conceptos de la deixis personal y de identificación del emisor en los escritos que los profesionales realizan para reflejar la atención prestada y la evolución del usuario. Los registros de enfermería son un medio de comunicación inter e intraprofesional en los cuales se presentan elementos propios de la teoría de la comunicación. Se identifican las diferentes categorías participativas de emisor y destinatario y se analiza cómo el profesional se identifica en la comunicación escrita profesional. Estos aspectos permiten valorar la asunción de responsabilidad, las personas que participan en el evento comunicativo y la calidad informativa y comunicativa de estos textos