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ABSTRACT Purpose: We analyzed the impact of board directors with foreign experience on the accounting and market performance of companies listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange (B3). Originality/value: We show unpublished empirical evidence about the relationship between the foreign experience of board directors and the performance of Brazilian firms. Knowing this relationship better contributes to the formulation of internal policies for the qualification of senior management, in addition to being valuable to shareholders, especially in a context of weak legal protection, as it is in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach: We collected data from 230 companies between 2010 and 2016, submitted it to unbalanced panel data regressions using the Systemic Generalized Method of Moments (GMM-Sys). Findings: The results suggest that the higher the proportion of board members with academic and professional foreign experience, the lower their accounting and market performance. This finding can be justified by institutional isomorphism, in which having an experience abroad would be a myth, a status institutionalized by the Brazilian society. In addition, foreign owners and directors face cultural barriers and would have less knowledge of the local environment, which would increase information asymmetries, impacting negatively in firms' performance. On the other hand, an increase in the number of foreigners on the board positively influences the market value of companies, since, by having weaker local power networks and, consequently, less possibility to obtain private benefits, the investors could value companies with this characteristic.

The three-part article of which this one is Part III is predicated on the principle that creativity is a universal activity, essential in an evolutionary perspective, to adaptation and sustainability. This work on the sociology of creativity has three purposes: (1) to develop the argument that key factors in creative activity are socially based and developed; hence, sociology can contribute significantly to understanding and explaining human creativity; (2) to present a systems approach which enables us to link in a systematic and coherent way the disparate social factors and mechanisms that are involved in creative activity and to describe and explain creativity; (3) to illustrate a sociological systems theory's (Actor-Systems-Dynamics) conceptualization of multiple interrelated institutional, cultural, and interaction factors and mechanisms and their role in creativity and innovative development with respect to diverse empirical cases. Part I of this article introduced and applied a general model of innovation and creative development stressing the socio-cultural and political embeddedness of agents, either as individuals or groups, in their creative activities and innovative productions. Part II investigated the "context of innovation and discovery" considering a wide range of applications and illustrations. This 3rd segment, Part III, specifies and analyzes the "context of acceptance and institutionalization" where innovations and creative developments are socially accepted , legitimized, and institutionalized or rejected, suppressed. A number of cases and illustrations are considered. Power considerations are part and parcel of these analyses, for instance the role of the state as well as powerful private interests and social movements in facilitating and/or constraining innovations and creative developments in society. In the perspective presented here, generally speaking, creativity can be consistently and systematically considered to a great extent as social, cultural, institutional and material as much as psychological or biological. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This is Part II of a three-part article. The article is predicated on the principle that creativity is a universal activity, essential in an evolutionary perspective, to adaptation and sustainability. This manuscript on the sociology of creativity has three purposes: (1) to develop the argument that key factors in creative activity are socially based and developed; hence, sociology can contribute significantly to understanding and explaining human creativity; (2) to present a systems approach which enables us to link in a systematic and coherent way the disparate social factors and mechanisms that are involved in creative activity and to describe and explain creativity; (3) to illustrate sociological systems theory's (Actor-Systems-Dynamics) conceptualization of multiple interrelated institutional, cultural, and interaction factors and mechanisms and their role in creativity and innovative developments in diverse empirical instances. The preceding segment of this article, Part I, introduced a general model of innovation and creative development stressing the socio-cultural and political embeddedness of agents, either as individuals or groups, in their creative activities and innovative productions. This second part, Part II, investigates the "context of innovation and discovery" considering applications and illustrations ranging from, for instance: (i) "the independent innovator or entrepreneur" who exercises creativity based on absorbing a field of knowledge, concepts, challenges, problems, solution strategies, creativity production functions or programs (and who is likely to be in contact with libraries, relevant journals and may be directly or indirectly in contact with a network of others); (ii) groups in their particular fields operating greenhouse types of organization driving problem-solving and creative activities – both self-organizing groups as well as groups established by external powers (whether a private company, a government, or a non-government organization or movement); (iii) entire societies undergoing transformations and radical development as in the industrial and later revolutions. Part III of this article investigates and analyzes "the context of receptivity, selection, and institutionalization" of novelty. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Journal of High Energy Physics 2015.7 (2015): 045 reproduced by permission of Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) ; The idea that dark matter forms part of a larger dark sector is very intriguing, given the high degree of complexity of the visible sector. In this paper, we discuss lepton jets as a promising signature of an extended dark sector. As a simple toy model, we consider an O(GeV) DM fermion coupled to a new U(1)´ gauge boson (dark photon) with a mass of order GeV and kinetically mixed with the Standard Model photon. Dark matter production at the LHC in this model is typically accompanied by collinear radiation of dark photons whose decay products can form lepton jets. We analyze the dynamics of collinear dark photon emission both analytically and numerically. In particular, we derive the dark photon energy spectrum using recursive analytic expressions, using Monte Carlo simulations in Pythia, and using an inverse Mellin transform to obtain the spectrum from its moments. In the second part of the paper, we simulate the expected lepton jet signatures from radiating dark matter at the LHC, carefully taking into account the various dark photon decay modes and allowing for both prompt and displaced decays. Using these simulations, we recast two existing ATLAS lepton jet searches to significantly restrict the parameter space of extended dark sector models, and we compute the expected sensitivity of future LHC searches ; JK and JL are supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under Grant No. KO 4820/1–1. PANM acknowledges partial support from the European Union FP7 ITN INVISIBLES (Marie Curie Actions, PITN-GA-2011-289442) and from the Spanish MINECO's "Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa" Programme under grant SEV-2012-0249

Fermi Research Alliance, LLC ; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics ; U.S. Department of Energy ; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) ; Fermilab theory group ; Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) ; Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ; European Union's Horizon Research and Innovation Programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant ; National Science Foundation ; Fermi Research Alliance, LLC: DE-AC02-07CH11359 ; U.S. Department of Energy: DE-FG02-13ER41958 ; U.S. Department of Energy: DE-AC02-06CH11357 ; Processo FAPESP: 2012/21627-9 ; European Union's Horizon Research and Innovation Programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant: 674896 ; European Union's Horizon Research and Innovation Programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant: 690575 ; National Science Foundation: PHY-1607611 ; We show that, in the presence of bulk masses, sterile neutrinos propagating in large extra dimensions (LED) can induce electron-neutrino appearance effects. This is in contrast to what happens in the standard LED scenario, and hence LED models with explicit bulk masses have the potential to address the MiniBooNE and LSND appearance results as well as the reactor and Gallium anomalies. A special feature in our scenario is that the mixing of the first Kaluza-Klein modes to active neutrinos can be suppressed, making the contribution of heavier sterile neutrinos to oscillations relatively more important. We study the implications of this neutrino mass generation mechanism for current and future neutrino oscillation experiments and show that the Short Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab will be able to efficiently probe such a scenario. In addition, this framework leads to massive Dirac neutrinos and thus precludes any signal in neutrinoless double beta decay experiments.

Background: Surgery is the main modality of cure for solid cancers and was prioritised to continue during COVID-19 outbreaks. This study aimed to identify immediate areas for system strengthening by comparing the delivery of elective cancer surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic in periods of lockdown versus light restriction. Methods: This international, prospective, cohort study enrolled 20 006 adult (≥18 years) patients from 466 hospitals in 61 countries with 15 cancer types, who had a decision for curative surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic and were followed up until the point of surgery or cessation of follow-up (Aug 31, 2020). Average national Oxford COVID-19 Stringency Index scores were calculated to define the government response to COVID-19 for each patient for the period they awaited surgery, and classified into light restrictions (index 60). The primary outcome was the non-operation rate (defined as the proportion of patients who did not undergo planned surgery). Cox proportional-hazards regression models were used to explore the associations between lockdowns and non-operation. Intervals from diagnosis to surgery were compared across COVID-19 government response index groups. This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04384926. Findings: Of eligible patients awaiting surgery, 2003 (10·0%) of 20 006 did not receive surgery after a median follow-up of 23 weeks (IQR 16-30), all of whom had a COVID-19-related reason given for non-operation. Light restrictions were associated with a 0·6% non-operation rate (26 of 4521), moderate lockdowns with a 5·5% rate (201 of 3646; adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0·81, 95% CI 0·77-0·84; p<0·0001), and full lockdowns with a 15·0% rate (1775 of 11 827; HR 0·51, 0·50-0·53; p<0·0001). In sensitivity analyses, including adjustment for SARS-CoV-2 case notification rates, moderate lockdowns (HR 0·84, 95% CI 0·80-0·88; p<0·001), and full lockdowns (0·57, 0·54-0·60; p<0·001), remained independently associated with non-operation. Surgery beyond 12 weeks from diagnosis in patients without neoadjuvant therapy increased during lockdowns (374 [9·1%] of 4521 in light restrictions, 317 [10·4%] of 3646 in moderate lockdowns, 2001 [23·8%] of 11 827 in full lockdowns), although there were no differences in resectability rates observed with longer delays. Interpretation: Cancer surgery systems worldwide were fragile to lockdowns, with one in seven patients who were in regions with full lockdowns not undergoing planned surgery and experiencing longer preoperative delays. Although short-term oncological outcomes were not compromised in those selected for surgery, delays and non-operations might lead to long-term reductions in survival. During current and future periods of societal restriction, the resilience of elective surgery systems requires strengthening, which might include protected elective surgical pathways and long-term investment in surge capacity for acute care during public health emergencies to protect elective staff and services.