The ALICE Inner Tracking System Upgrade

A central component of the ALICE Upgrade will be a completely new Inner Tracking System (ITS). The performance of the new ITS will be a significant improvement over that of the present ITS, in particular in the areas of material budget, granularity, a reduced radial distance from the first layer to the beam and rate capability. This will enable many key measurements of the properties of the quark-gluon plasma to be performed, in particular with rare probes such as low momentum charm and beauty mesons and baryons.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, Proceedings of Quark Matter 2012, The XXIII International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, August 13-18, 2012, Washington D.C., US

Ownership Structure, Corporate Governance, And Firm Value: Evidence from the East Asian Financial Crisis

We study the effect of ownership structure on firm value during the East Asian financial crisis that began in July 1997. The crisis represents a negative shock to the investment opportunities of firms in these markets that raises the incentives of controlling shareholders to expropriate minority shareholders. Moreover, the large separation between cash flow and control rights that often arise from the use of pyramidal ownership structures and cross-holdings in these markets suggests that insiders have both the incentive and the ability to engage in expropriation. Using data from over 800 firms in eight East Asian countries, we find evidence consistent with this view. Tobin's Q ratios of those firms in which minority shareholders are potentially most subject to expropriation decline twelve percent more than Q ratios in other firms during the crisis period. A similar result holds for stock returns - firms in which minority shareholders are most likely to experience expropriation underperform other firms by about nine percent per year during the crisis period. Further, during the pre-crisis period we find no evidence that firms with a separation between cash flow rights and control rights exhibit performance changes different from firms with no such separation. All of these results are robust to controls for country and industry effects, as well as proxies for differences in risk across firms and the strength of the country's legal institutions. The evidence indicates that corporate ownership structure plays an important role in determining the incentives of insiders to expropriate minority shareholders during the times of declining investment opportunities. Our results add to the literature that examines the link between ownership structure and firm performance and provide additional guidance to policymakers engaged in the ongoing debate about the proper role and design of corporate governance features and legal institutions in developing economies.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39777/3/wp393.pd

Engineering properties of potassium tenth quarterly report, jan. 1 - mar. 31, 1963

Thermodynamic and transport properties of potassium in temperature range 900 to 2100 deg

Engineering properties of potassium and cesium thirteenth quarterly report, 1 oct. - 31 dec. 1963

Thermal conductivity of potassium vapo

Engineering properties of potassium and cesium twelfth quarterly report, 1 jul. - 30 sep. 1963

Physical and chemical properties of cesium and potassiu

Ownership Structure, Corporate Governance, And Firm Value: Evidence from the East Asian Financial Crisis

We study the effect of ownership structure on firm value during the East Asian financial crisis that began in July 1997. The crisis represents a negative shock to the investment opportunities of firms in these markets that raises the incentives of controlling shareholders to expropriate minority shareholders. Moreover, the large separation between cash flow and control rights that often arise from the use of pyramidal ownership structures and cross-holdings in these markets suggests that insiders have both the incentive and the ability to engage in expropriation. Using data from over 800 firms in eight East Asian countries, we find evidence consistent with this view. Tobin's Q ratios of those firms in which minority shareholders are potentially most subject to expropriation decline twelve percent more than Q ratios in other firms during the crisis period. A similar result holds for stock returns - firms in which minority shareholders are most likely to experience expropriation underperform other firms by about nine percent per year during the crisis period. Further, during the pre-crisis period we find no evidence that firms with a separation between cash flow rights and control rights exhibit performance changes different from firms with no such separation. All of these results are robust to controls for country and industry effects, as well as proxies for differences in risk across firms and the strength of the country's legal institutions. The evidence indicates that corporate ownership structure plays an important role in determining the incentives of insiders to expropriate minority shareholders during the times of declining investment opportunities. Our results add to the literature that examines the link between ownership structure and firm performance and provide additional guidance to policymakers engaged in the ongoing debate about the proper role and design of corporate governance features and legal institutions in developing economies.

The Induction of EMT and Activation of Adipose Stem Cells in Correlation with the Secretion of LTBP-1 in Mammary Cells

This work is part of an ongoing study that investigates the upregulation of LTBP-1 in mammary epithelial cells as well as the differentiation of breast adipose stem cells (BASCs) in the presence of TGF-β1. Through immunofluorescence imaging, LTBP-1 is shown to co-localize with fibronectin fibrils in adipose stem cells. Previous work from our lab has shown that blocking fibronectin fibril formation can inhibit Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition. Thus, targeting of fibronectin assembly could be a potent new therapeutic in cancer treatment. In the current work, we focus on the pharmacodynamics of a FN assembly inhibitor derived from the protein Adhesin F1 (refered to as FUD). FN Fibril area was quantified in samples with different FUD dosages to determine the optimal concentration. The optimal dosage for this inhibitor was obtained for both mammary epithelial cells and breast adipose stem cells through image processing. Additionally, toxicity studies were performed using MTT assays. Results suggest that in both the mammary epithelial cells and the breast adipose stem cells, there is a range of dosing for which FN fibril formation is blocked but toxicity is low

Structural Models and Endogeneity in Corporate Finance: the Link Between Managerial Ownership and Corporate Performance

This paper presents a parsimonious, structural model that captures primary economic determinants of the relation between firm value and managerial ownership. Supposing that observed firm size and managerial pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) maximize value, we invert our model to panel data on size and PPS to obtain estimates of the productivity of physical assets and managerial input. Variation of these productivity parameters, optimizing firm size and compensation contract, and the way the parameters and choices interact in the model, all combine to deliver the well-known hump-shaped relation between Tobin’s Q and managerial ownership (e.g., McConnell and Servaes (1990)). Our structural approach illustrates how a quantitative model of the firm can isolate important aspects of organization structure, quantify the economic significance of incentive mechanisms, and minimize the endogeneity and causation problems that so commonly plague empirical corporate finance. Doing so appears to be essential because, by simulating panel data from the model and applying standard statistical tools, we confirm that the customary econometric remedies for endogeneity and causation can be ineffective in application.