Fiduciary Duties and Equity-Debtholder Conflicts

We use an important legal event as a natural experiment to examine the effect of management fiduciary duties on equity-debt conflicts. A 1991 Delaware bankruptcy ruling changed the nature of corporate directors' fiduciary duties in firms incorporated in that state. This change limited managers' incentives to take actions favoring equity over debt for firms in the vicinity of financial distress. We show that this ruling increased the likelihood of equity issues, increased investment, and reduced firm risk, consistent with a decrease in debt-equity conflicts of interest. The changes are isolated to firms relatively closer to default. The ruling was also followed by an increase in average leverage and a reduction in covenant use. Finally, we estimate the welfare implications of this change and find that firm values increased when the rules were introduced. We conclude that managerial fiduciary duties affect equity-bond holder conflicts in a way that is economically important, has impact on ex ante capital structure choices, and affects welfare.

Prenatal Characteristics of Infants with a Neuronal Migration Disorder: A National-Based Study

The development of the central nervous system is complex and includes dorsal and ventral induction, neuronal proliferation, and neuronal migration, organization, and myelination. Migration occurs in humans in early fetal life. Pathogenesis of malformations of the central nervous system includes both genetic and environmental factors. Few epidemiological studies have addressed the impact of prenatal exposures. All infants born alive and included in the Swedish Medical Birth Register 1980–1999 were included in the study. By linkage to the Patient Register, 820 children with a diagnosis related to a neuronal migration abnormality were identified. Through copies of referrals for computer tomography or magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, the diagnosis was confirmed in 17 children. Median age of the mothers was 29 years. At the start of pregnancy, four out of 17 women smoked. Almost half of the women had a body mass index that is low or in the lower range of average. All infants were born at term with normal birth weights. Thirteen infants had one or more concomitant diseases or malformations. Two infants were born with rubella syndrome. The impact of low maternal body mass index and congenital infections on neuronal migration disorders in infants should be addressed in future studies

Arkeologiska undersökningar av järnhanteringsplatser i Tvååkersområdet

The archaeological investigations at Tvååker in Halland By Strömberg The first archaeological investigations at Tvååker were undertaken in the 1920s by Carl Sahlin and John Nihlén. They were focusing on the small rapids at Järnmölle farm, but did not find any remains of iron production on the site. Nihlén discovered, however, some furnaces at Högsryd nearby and a slag heap at Järnvirke. Another archaeological survey was not undertaken until 1987, when yet another seven sites of iron production sites were registrated and described, among them the site at Ugglehult/Dövared. When the project started in 1993 one of the important issues was to investigate whether any slag could be found at Järnmölle, in order to determine if this could be the site of the iron mill mentioned in the medieval documents. However, no slag was found in situ, which led to the conclusion that the iron mill had been situated elsewhere. Södra Järnvirke and Järnvirke were other sites of interest At Södra Järnvirke a slag heap measuring 9×4 meters and 0,8 meter height had been discovered in 1987, When excavated, a pair of bloomery furnaces were found along its south east side. Constructed with slag tapping, they were similar to the bloomery furnaces that have been found in Västergötland dating from the 11th and 12th centuries and coherent with the radiocarbon dating at Södra Järnvirke, The largest slag heap, measuring 22×9 meters and 1 meter in height, was situated in the vicinity of Järnvirke. The analysis of the slag and the burned clay from the furnace inclining showed that the furnaces there had been of the same type. The largest archaeological excavation was undertaken at the Ugglehult/Dövared site. Between a narrow road on the west side and a low stone wall on the east side the site is situated by the rapids of the Sanda stream. The stone wall is indicated on a map from 1727. Here a large slag heap, a pond and a pond wall, the remains of a mill as well as a smithy with three hearths and the foundations of a water wheel in the rapids were found. The radiocarbon analysis dated the iron production to the 11th to the 12th century. In the beginning of the 14th century a (flour) mill was founded in the same place and the pond wall was rebuilt into a higher construction. A 7×6 meter building with its contents on the shore of the rapids together with the majority of the slags proved that hearths had been used for bloomery iron production and that bellows had been powered with a water wheel. A lot of smithing slag and hammer scale that was spread over the site, showed that a forge also had been part of the production unit. This water powered smithy is, as far as wee know, the oldest known and exavated site of its kind in Europe. Probably far from being the only one of its kind at the time, we can only hope that water powered iron production sites would be found in for instance Germany, France or Italy. This would make a better understanding possible of one of the most important innovations in the history of metallurgy, the water wheel technology, A technology that opened up iron production for a world wide industrialisation

Multi-scale magnetic nanoparticle based optomagnetic bioassay for sensitive DNA and bacteria detection

Benefiting from their rapid readout, highly flexible devices and low-cost portable systems, optomagnetic biosensors have drawn increased attention in recent years as bioassay technologies for small molecules, biomarkers, DNA, and bacteria. Herein, an optomagnetic bioassay strategy suitable for point-of-care diagnostics, utilizing functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (100 nm) with Brownian relaxation behavior is optimized in order to obtain higher detection sensitivity for DNA molecules and bacteria. Presence of target DNA sequences or bacteria changes the dynamic behavior of the magnetic nanoparticles (binding to the target) and thus the optomagnetic response of the sample, which is measured by an optomagnetic setup including a 405 nm laser and a photodetector. The limit of detection is mainly set by the lowest measurable concentration of magnetic nanoparticles. Herein, as new results compared to previous work, we systematically optimize the concentration of 100 nm magnetic nanoparticles to increase the assay sensitivity and lower the limit of detection. To enable biplex detection, we perform this optimization in the presence of larger 250 nm magnetic nanoparticles that do not interact with the target. We show that the optimization and lowering of the 100 nm magnetic nanoparticle concentration result in a limit of detection of 780 fM of DNA coils formed by rolling circle amplification (size of about 1 mu m) and 10(5) CFU per mL Salmonella (for immunoassay). These values are 15 times lower than those reported previously for this readout principle. Finally, we show that the 250 nm magnetic nanoparticles can serve as a second detection label for qualitative biplex detection of DNA coils formed by rolling circle amplification from V. cholerae and E. coli DNA coils using 100 nm and 250 nm magnetic detection nanoparticles, respectively

Deglaciation of Fennoscandia

To provide a new reconstruction of the deglaciation of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet, in the form of calendar-year time-slices, which are particularly useful for ice sheet modelling, we have compiled and synthesized published geomorphological data for eskers, ice-marginal formations, lineations, marginal meltwater channels, striae, ice-dammed lakes, and geochronological data from radiocarbon, varve, optically-stimulated luminescence, and cosmogenic nuclide dating. This 25 is summarized as a deglaciation map of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet with isochrons marking every 1000 years between 22 and 13 cal kyr BP and every hundred years between 11.6 and final ice decay after 9.7 cal kyr BP. Deglaciation patterns vary across the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet domain, reflecting differences in climatic and geomorphic settings as well as ice sheet basal thermal conditions and terrestrial versus marine margins. For example, the ice sheet margin in the high-precipitation coastal setting of the western sector responded sensitively to climatic variations leaving a detailed record of prominent moraines and ice-marginal deposits in many fjords and coastal valleys. Retreat rates across the southern sector differed between slow retreat of the terrestrial margin in western and southern Sweden and rapid retreat of the calving ice margin in the Baltic Basin. Our reconstruction is consistent with much of the published research. However, the synthesis of a large amount of existing and new data support refined reconstructions in some areas. For example, we locate the LGM extent of the ice sheet in northwestern Russia further east than previously suggested and conclude that it occurred at a later time than the rest of the ice sheet, at around 17-15 cal kyr BP, and propose a slightly different chronology of moraine formation over southern Sweden based on improved correlations of moraine segments using new LiDAR data and tying the timing of moraine formation to Greenland ice core cold stages. Retreat rates vary by as much as an order of magnitude in different sectors of the ice sheet, with the lowest rates on the high-elevation and maritime Norwegian margin. Retreat rates compared to the climatic information provided by the Greenland ice core record show a general correspondence between retreat rate and climatic forcing, although a close match between retreat rate and climate is unlikely because of other controls, such as topography and marine versus terrestrial margins. Overall, the time slice reconstructions of Fennoscandian Ice Sheet deglaciation from 22 to 9.7 cal kyr BP provide an important dataset for understanding the contexts that underpin spatial and temporal patterns in retreat of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet, and are an important resource for testing and refining ice sheet models

On-Particle Rolling Circle Amplification-Based Core-Satellite Magnetic Superstructures for MicroRNA Detection

Benefiting from the specially tailored properties of the building blocks as well as of the scaffolds, DNA-assembled core-satellite superstructures have gained increasing interest in drug delivery, imaging, and biosensing. The load of satellites plays a vital role in core-satellite superstructures, and it determines the signal intensity in response to a biological/physical stimulation/actuation. Herein, for the first time, we utilize on-particle rolling circle amplification (RCA) to prepare rapidly responsive core-satellite magnetic superstructures with a high load of magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) satellites. Combined with duplex-specific nuclease-assisted target recycling, the proposed magnetic superstructures hold great promise in sensitive and rapid microRNA detection. The long single-stranded DNA produced by RCA serving as the scaffold of the core-satellite superstructure can be hydrolyzed by duplex-specific nuclease in the presence of target microRNA, resulting in a release of MNPs that can be quantified in an optomagnetic sensor. The proposed biosensor has a simple mix-separate-measure strategy. For let-7b detection, the proposed biosensor offers a wide linear detection range of approximately 5 orders of magnitude with a detection sensitivity of 1 fM. Moreover, it has the capability to discriminate single-nucleotide mismatches and to detect let-7b in cell extracts and serum, thus showing considerable potential for clinical applications