Does Ethnicity Matters in Capital Structure Decision in Family Firms? Overview of Agency Theory

Drawing on the evidence indicating that prominent features of Asian companies are notably the concentrated ownership with extensive family ownership and dominance of controlling shareholders controlled by two main ethnic groups in Malaysia, namely the Chinese and the Malays, this study attempts to investigate the effect of ownership and ethnicity on the financing decisions of Malaysian family firms.

Warren Lewis: The Soldier Sailor

In the years immediately after his retirement from the Royal Army Service Corps on 21 December 1932, Captain Warren ‘Warnie’ Lewis expended most of his energy compiling the Lewis Papers, an extensive family archive that, by almost any measure, is an exceptional accomplishment. Shortly after finishing this massive yet pleasurable undertaking, Warnie turned to an even more delightful activity: sailing the waterways in and around Oxford and Cambridge on the Bosphorus, a small cabin cruiser he had specially built, therein realizing a life-long passion for ships and boats and reaching back to the childhood worlds of Animal Land and Boxen (shared with his younger brother), upon whose waters the first Bosphorus sailed. From 1936 until the outbreak of World War II, Warnie spent many days on his second Bosphorus, enjoying countless hours of relative freedom and personal satisfaction. This essay explores Warnie's days aboard his ‘ditchcrawler’, primarily through the lens of the eight essays he published in The Motor Boat and Yachting magazine in the late 1930s.

Uranyl Ion Complexes of Polycarboxylates: Steps towards Isolated Photoactive Cavities

Consideration of the extensive family of known uranyl ion complexes of polycarboxylate ligands shows that there are quite numerous examples of crystalline solids containing capsular, closed oligomeric species with the potential for use as selective heterogeneous photo-oxidation catalysts. None of them have yet been assessed for this purpose, and some have obvious deficiencies, although related framework species have been shown to have the necessary luminescence, porosity and, to some degree, selectivity. Aspects of ligand design and complex composition necessary for the synthesis of uranyl ion cages with appropriate luminescence and chemical properties for use in selective photo-oxidation catalysis have been analysed in relation to the characteristics of known capsules.

Detection of compound heterozygous variants in LPIN1 does not necessarily imply pathogenicity in a patient with rhabdomyolysis

In a recent article by Yim et al., a 15-month-old male is described who experienced severe rhabdomyolysis with a creatine-kinase value (CKV) of 127494 U/l one day after intramuscular injection of an unidentified drug by the general practitioner. Rhabdomyolysis was not attributed to this injected drug but to compound heterozygous variants in LPIN1. The study has a number of shortcomings. Triggers of rhabdomyolysis should be unequivocally identified, a more extensive family history should be taken, and previous CKVs should be provided. Functional and biochemical tests should be carried out to confirm or exclude pathogenicity of the LPIN1 variants.

Dmitry Filosofov’s letter to Tatyana Gippius

The publication introduces into scientific circulation an unknown letter from Dmitry Filosofov to Tatyana Nikolaevna Gippius (1877–1957) from the Merezhkovskys collection in the Amherst Russian Center (Massachusetts, USA). The document refers to the period of the Merezhkovskys and Filosofov’s Paris emigration in 1906–1908, being a fragment of the extensive family correspondence of the period, in which Filosofov participated as a family member. The larger part of correspondence consists of the so-called “diaries” of T.N. Gippius (her almost daily letters-reports to Paris), in which a chronicle of the inner life of the Merezhkovskys’ neo-Christian commune is traced. Response letters have been lost, with a few exceptions. Filosofov’s letter to T. Gippius captures a remarkable fact of the epistolary dialogue and relations of correspondents, contains a real commentary on a number of plots of “diary” letters, and introduces new additional touches to the picture of the Merezhkovskys and Filosofov’s Parisian life in 1906–1908.

What Comes after Caring? The Impact of Family Care on Women’s Employment

Previous research has shown that women providing family care tend to decrease paid work. We take the opposite perspective and examine how current and previous family care tasks influence women’s likelihood to (re-)enter employment or to increase working hours. Family care is defined as caring for an ill, disabled or frail elderly partner, parent, or other family member. Using German Socio-Economic Panel data, we apply Cox shared frailty regression modeling to analyze transitions (1) into paid work and (2) from part-time to full-time work among women aged 25–59. The results indicate that in the German policy context, part-time working women providing extensive family care have a lower propensity to increase working hours. When family care ends, the likelihood that part-time working women change to full-time does not increase. Homemaking women’s likelihood of entering the workforce is not influenced by either current or previous family care tasks.

Cytochrome P450 (version 2019.4) in the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology Database

The cytochrome P450 enzyme family (CYP450), E.C. 1.14.-.-, were originally defined by their strong absorbance at 450 nm due to the reduced carbon monoxide-complexed haem component of the cytochromes. They are an extensive family of haem-containing monooxygenases with a huge range of both endogenous and exogenous substrates. These include sterols, fat-soluble vitamins, pesticides and carcinogens as well as drugs. The substrates of some orphan CYP are not known. Listed below are the human enzymes; their relationship with rodent CYP450 enzyme activities is obscure in that the species orthologue may not catalyse the metabolism of the same substrates. Although the majority of CYP450 enzyme activities are concentrated in the liver, the extrahepatic enzyme activities also contribute to patho/physiological processes. Genetic variation of CYP450 isoforms is widespread and likely underlies a significant proportion of the individual variation to drug administration.

Peaceful Families

This book chronicles and examines the efforts, stories, arguments, and strategies of individuals and organizations doing Muslim anti-domestic violence work in the United States. Looking at connections among ethical practices, gender norms, and religious interpretation, the book demonstrates how Muslim advocates mobilize a rich religious tradition in community efforts against domestic violence, and identify religion and culture as resources or roadblocks to prevent harm and to restore family peace. The book paints a vivid picture of the challenges such advocacy work encounters. The insecurities of American Muslim communities facing intolerance and Islamophobia lead to additional challenges in acknowledging and confronting problems of spousal abuse, and the book reveals how Muslim anti-domestic violence workers combine the methods of the mainstream secular anti-domestic violence movement with Muslim perspectives and interpretations. Identifying a range of Muslim anti-domestic violence approaches, the book argues that at certain times and in certain situations it may be imperative to combat domestic abuse by endorsing notions of “protective patriarchy”—even though service providers may hold feminist views critical of patriarchal assumptions. It links Muslim advocacy efforts to the larger domestic violence crisis in the United States, and shows how, through extensive family and community networks, advocates participate in and further debates about family, gender, and marriage in global Muslim communities. Highlighting the place of Islam as an American religion, the book delves into the efforts made by Muslim Americans against domestic violence and the ways this refashions the society at large.

Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset

The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a large structural and functional MRI dataset with a rich array of behavioral measures and extensive family structure. This makes it a valuable resource for investigating questions about individual differences, including questions about heritability. While its MRI data have been analyzed extensively in this regard, to our knowledge a comprehensive estimation of the heritability of the behavioral dataset has never been conducted. Using a set of behavioral measures of personality, emotion and cognition, we show that it is possible to re-identify the same individual across two testing times, and identify identical twins. Using machine-learning (univariate linear model, Ridge classifier and Random Forest model) we estimated the heritability of 37 behavioral measures and compared the results to those derived from twin correlations. Correlations between the standard heritability metric and each set of model weights ranged from 0.42 to 0.67, and questionnaire-based and task-based measures did not differ significantly in their heritability. We further derived nine latent factors from the 37 measures and repeated the heritability estimation; in this case, the correlations between the standard heritability and each set of model weights were lower, ranging from 0.15 to 0.38. One specific discrepancy arose for the general intelligence factor, which all models assigned high importance, but the standard heritability calculation did not. We present an alternative method for qualitatively estimating the heritability of the behavioral measures in the HCP as a resource for other investigators, and recommend the use of machine-learning models for estimating heritability.