Board Changes and the Director Labor Market: The Case of Mergers

We provide benchmarks for board changes over time and in response to the evolution of firm structure. Boards are more stable in the modern era. At the same time, shifts made around mergers are substantial and significantly different than those at non-merging firms. Changes to acquiring boards reflect firm needs, increased demand for executive and merger experience and bargaining between targets and acquirers, rather than agency motives. Conversely, director selection at non-merging firms is driven by general skills and diversity. Our analyses provide insight into the dynamic nature of board structure and characteristics demanded in the director labor market

On the relation between corporate social responsibility and financial performance

Research Summary This study reexamines the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance by benchmarking firms against industry peers in a given year to identify best-in-class and worst-in-class firms. We also address distributional issues when using CSR ratings (clustering of CSR scores around the median and material differences across industries and time) and financial performance ratios (the possible influence of extreme values). We find that the best-in-class firms outperform their industry peers in terms of operating performance and have higher relative market valuations (Tobin's Q). When we control for endogeneity, we find that the significant relation between operating performance and CSR categories disappears, calling into question whether this relation is causal. However, we continue to find that best-in-class firms receive higher relative market valuations than industry peers. Managerial Summary The conflicting evidence on the relation between CSR and firm performance may influence a manager's decision to invest in CSR activities and an investor's decision to invest in a firm. Our research provides managers and investors with important implications regarding the value of relative benchmarking. Managers should understand that expectations of CSR performance evolve over time and that investors place higher valuations on the best-in-class CSR firms within an industry

Vertical dust mixing and the interannual variations in the Mars thermosphere

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94815/1/jgre2303.pd

Global population and conservation status of the Great Black-backed Gull Larus marinus

The Great Black-backed Gull Larus marinus is a generalist species that inhabits temperate and arctic coasts of the north Atlantic Ocean. In recent years, there has been growing concern about population declines at local and regional scales; however, there has been no attempt to robustly assess Great Black-backed Gull population trends across its global range. We obtained the most recent population counts across the species’ range and analysed population trends at a global, continental, and national scale over the most recent three-generation period (1985–2021) following IUCN Red List criteria. We found that, globally, the species has declined by 43%–48% over this period (1.2–1.3% per annum, respectively), from an estimated 291,000 breeding pairs to 152,000–165,000 breeding pairs under two different scenarios. North American populations declined more steeply than European ones (68% and 28%, respectively). We recommend that Great Black-backed Gull should be uplisted from ‘Least Concern’ to ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species under criterion A2 (an estimated reduction in population size >30% over three generations). Larus gulls; gull populations; population assessment; population ecology; bird conservationpublishedVersio

Multicohort analysis of the maternal age effect on recombination

Several studies have reported that the number of crossovers increases with maternal age in humans, but others have found the opposite. Resolving the true effect has implications for understanding the maternal age effect on aneuploidies. Here, we revisit this question in the largest sample to date using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-chip data, comprising over 6,000 meioses from nine cohorts. We develop and fit a hierarchical model to allow for differences between cohorts and between mothers. We estimate that over 10 years, the expected number of maternal crossovers increases by 2.1% (95% credible interval (0.98%, 3.3%)). Our results are not consistent with the larger positive and negative effects previously reported in smaller cohorts. We see heterogeneity between cohorts that is likely due to chance effects in smaller samples, or possibly to confounders, emphasizing that care should be taken when interpreting results from any specific cohort about the effect of maternal age on recombination

Demonstration of an ultracold micro-optomechanical oscillator in a cryogenic cavity

Preparing and manipulating quantum states of mechanical resonators is a highly interdisciplinary undertaking that now receives enormous interest for its far-reaching potential in fundamental and applied science. Up to now, only nanoscale mechanical devices achieved operation close to the quantum regime. We report a new micro-optomechanical resonator that is laser cooled to a level of 30 thermal quanta. This is equivalent to the best nanomechanical devices, however, with a mass more than four orders of magnitude larger (43 ng versus 1 pg) and at more than two orders of magnitude higher environment temperature (5 K versus 30 mK). Despite the large laser-added cooling factor of 4,000 and the cryogenic environment, our cooling performance is not limited by residual absorption effects. These results pave the way for the preparation of 100-um scale objects in the quantum regime. Possible applications range from quantum-limited optomechanical sensing devices to macroscopic tests of quantum physics.Comment: Published versio

Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson