Freedom to Defraud: Stoneridge, Primary Liability, and the Need to Properly Define Section 10(b)

In Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc., the Supreme Court determined that primary liability under section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act does not extend to third-party actors engaged in sham transactions, even when such transactions have the purpose and effect of deceiving investors. The Court reasoned that there is no liability when an actor\u27s deceptive conduct is not communicated directly to investors. This Note argues that the Supreme Court misinterpreted section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 and that policy considerations weigh in favor of using securities fraud litigation to deter culpable actors. It argues both for the substantial participation standard and the revitalization of scheme liability in order to best comply with the language and policies of section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5

The development of a scale of the Guttman Type for the assessment of mobility disability in multiple sclerosis

Objective: The aim of the study was to develop a valid and reliable unidimensional scale of the Guttman type for the assessment of mobility disability in multiple sclerosis (MS). Subjects: Sixty-eight subjects with a definite diagnosis of MS participated.They were attending as outpatients at a MS unit at a District General Hospital. Thirty had the primary progressive pattern of disease, and 38 had the relapsing-remitting pattern. Methods: Formal assessments used for neurological disability were inspected, and 14 test items of gross motor function were extracted and ordered according to two criteria. These were that actions progressed from lying, to sitting, to standing and walking tasks, and that they progressed from broader to narrower bases of support. All subjects carried out all test items which were scored as ‘pass’ or ‘fail’. Analysis: Data were tested for internal consistency, reliability, inter item correlation, reproducibility and scalability. On the basis of the results, the items were re-ordered in rank, and reduced to eleven tests. The eleven item scale was re-analysed. Results: Results showed that the scale had an internal consistency of 0.88 (alpha coefficient) and a coefficient of reproducibility (CR) of 0.95 and above for both MS subject groups. The coefficient of scalability (CS) for items was 0.78 for primary progressive subjects and 0.74 for the relapsing-remitting group. Reliability ranged from good (kappa = 0.49) for one item, to perfect for six items. Conclusion: The scale was demonstrated to be a hierarchical scale of the Guttman type exhibiting homogeneous unidimensionality and good reliability. The high CR indicated that scores may be summed, and the very acceptable levels of CS indicated that the cumulative scores are meaningful within the defined concept of hierarchy used in this study

Open teaching practice: reflections on the use of OER educational activities

This article presents results from a study carried out with Brazilian and Portuguese professors whose objective was to understand the dynamic of using and sharing online resources in their pedagogical practices. With a qualitative foundation, the instruments for data collection were online surveys and interviews recorded with professors. After reflecting on the main challenges faced, the presentation of recommendations could collaborate towards encouraging producing and sharing Open Educational Resources (OER) and, consequently, broadening the democratization of knowledge.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Valley Hall effect in disordered monolayer MoS2 from first principles

Electrons in certain two-dimensional crystals possess a pseudospin degree of freedom associated with the existence of two inequivalent valleys in the Brillouin zone. If, as in monolayer MoS2, inversion symmetry is broken and time-reversal symmetry is present, equal and opposite amounts of k-space Berry curvature accumulate in each of the two valleys. This is conveniently quantified by the integral of the Berry curvature over a single valley - the valley Hall conductivity. We generalize this definition to include contributions from disorder described with the supercell approach, by mapping ("unfolding") the Berry curvature from the folded Brillouin zone of the disordered supercell onto the normal Brillouin zone of the pristine crystal, and then averaging over several realizations of disorder. We use this scheme to study from first-principles the effect of sulfur vacancies on the valley Hall conductivity of monolayer MoS2. In dirty samples the intrinsic valley Hall conductivity receives gating-dependent corrections that are only weakly dependent on the impurity concentration, consistent with side-jump scattering and the unfolded Berry curvature can be interpreted as a k-space resolved side-jump. At low impurity concentrations skew scattering dominates, leading to a divergent valley Hall conductivity in the clean limit. The implications for the recently-observed photoinduced anomalous Hall effect are discussed.Comment: 13 page