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This article examines concern for fairness in the way in which loss is distributed when a company or financial institution facing financial difficulties is restructured. It shows how this concern is often grounded in loose notions of fairness, or generalisations from one situation to another, rather than in detailed analysis. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, it builds an analytical frame for the fairness debate in debt restructuring. It shows why rigour is important in identifying fairness concerns, in weighing them against other considerations, and in applying concerns which arise in one scenario to another, and illustrates the types of policy mistake or policy incoherence which can arise if this is not done.

Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) in infants enables important studies of functional brain organization early in human development. However, rs-fMRI in infants has universally been obtained during sleep to reduce participant motion artifact, raising the question of whether differences in functional organization between awake adults and sleeping infants that are commonly attributed to development may instead derive, at least in part, from sleep. This question is especially important as rs-fMRI differences in adult wake vs. sleep are well documented. To investigate this question, we compared functional connectivity and BOLD signal propagation patterns in 6, 12, and 24 month old sleeping infants with patterns in adult wakefulness and non-REM sleep. We find that important functional connectivity features seen during infant sleep closely resemble those seen during adult sleep, including reduced default mode network functional connectivity. However, we also find differences between infant and adult sleep, especially in thalamic BOLD signal propagation patterns. These findings highlight the importance of considering sleep state when drawing developmental inferences in infant rs-fMRI.

Alterations in the human microbiome have been observed in a variety of conditions such as asthma, gingivitis, dermatitis and cancer, and much remains to be learned about the links between the microbiome and human health. The fusion of artificial intelligence with rich microbiome datasets can offer an improved understanding of the microbiome’s role in human health. To gain actionable insights it is essential to consider both the predictive power and the transparency of the models by providing explanations for the predictions. We combine the collection of leg skin microbiome samples from two healthy cohorts of women with the application of an explainable artificial intelligence (EAI) approach that provides accurate predictions of phenotypes with explanations. The explanations are expressed in terms of variations in the relative abundance of key microbes that drive the predictions. We predict skin hydration, subject's age, pre/post-menopausal status and smoking status from the leg skin microbiome. The changes in microbial composition linked to skin hydration can accelerate the development of personalized treatments for healthy skin, while those associated with age may offer insights into the skin aging process. The leg microbiome signatures associated with smoking and menopausal status are consistent with previous findings from oral/respiratory tract microbiomes and vaginal/gut microbiomes respectively. This suggests that easily accessible microbiome samples could be used to investigate health-related phenotypes, offering potential for non-invasive diagnosis and condition monitoring. Our EAI approach sets the stage for new work focused on understanding the complex relationships between microbial communities and phenotypes. Our approach can be applied to predict any condition from microbiome samples and has the potential to accelerate the development of microbiome-based personalized therapeutics and non-invasive diagnostics.

Xerosis, commonly referred to as dry skin, is a common dermatological condition affecting almost a third of the population. Successful treatment of the condition traditionally involves the application of cosmetic products facilitating the moisturisation of the skin with a range of ingredients including glycerol and fatty acids. While the effectiveness of these treatments is not in question, limited information exists on the impact on the skin microbiome following use of these products and the improvement in skin hydration. Here, we describe improvements in skin barrier properties together with increased levels of cholesterol, ceramides and long-chain fatty acids following application of Body Lotion. Concomitant alterations in the skin microbiome are also seen via 16S rRNA metataxonomics, in combination with both traditional and novel informatics analysis. Following 5 weeks of lotion use, beneficial skin bacteria are increased, with improvements in microbiome functional potential, and increases in pathways associated with biosynthesis of multiple long chain fatty acids.

The present study investigated the relationship between infant temperament characteristics and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) risk status. Temperament was examined at 6, 12, and 24 months in 282 infants at high familial risk for ASD and 114 low-risk controls using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised and Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire. Infants were divided into three groups at 24 months: High-Risk Positive—classified as ASD (HR Pos), High-Risk Negative (HR Neg), and Low-Risk Negative (LR Neg). At 6 and 12 months HR Pos infants exhibited lower Surgency and Regulatory Capacity than LR Neg infants. By 12 months they also demonstrated increased Negative Affect. Group differences remained, when early signs of ASD were controlled for, suggesting that temperament differences could be useful targets for understanding the development of ASD.

Abstract This article explores the problem that both modern private equity (PE) firms, and collateralised loan obligation (CLO) lenders to PE portfolio companies, have incentives to avoid a formal restructuring of PE portfolio companies in financial distress. The author is concerned that this may lead to negative social costs for suppliers, employees, customers and even government agencies. She explores how and why the problem arises, and the ways in which corporate and corporate insolvency law might be able to respond to it. Some suggestions are made, but it is accepted that any solution involves a sensitive balance that needs to be approached with considerable care.

Adopting a comparative UK/US approach, this article argues for the need to rethink corporate bankruptcy theory in the light of developments in the finance market. It argues that these developments have produced an effective mechanism, in large cases, for selecting between companies which will be worth more if they continue to trade and companies which ought to be allowed to fail, so that corporate bankruptcy law need no longer concern itself with steering creditor choice away from a sale of the business and assets and towards a restructuring. Moreover, it suggests that whilst the automatic stay remains a central tenet of corporate bankruptcy law where the market decides that the business and assets should be sold, in cases where the market sees more value if a company continues to trade, corporate bankruptcy law may operate very well without a stay as a resolution procedure for deadlocked negotiations. The article identifies that in many large restructuring cases the only liabilities that are implicated are financial liabilities, and queries the extent to which the distributional concerns of the progressive movement, and US federal bankruptcy law, apply where losses are shared amongst sophisticated financial institutions. It ends with an explanation of why the analysis is limited to large cases, an indication of areas for further research and a note of caution for the future.

This article is, so far as the author is aware, the first to examine in detail the implications of the explosion of covenant-lite loans for English corporate insolvency law. Covenant-lite loans lack certain early warning mechanisms that have traditionally been found in loans to heavily indebted borrowers. Concerns about the implications of covenant-lite loans have been raised in the broadcast and print media, and by economists and central banks in England and the United States. This is an issue that matters to us all. This article argues that covenant-lite lending means that lenders and borrowers may start restructuring negotiations when the scale of the distress is acute, implicating operational and financial liabilities. It provides a detailed analysis of the additional corporate insolvency law tools which may be needed as a result, and explains why this analysis is relevant for the detailed working out of current corporate insolvency law reform proposals.

This article examines the increasing access by UK issuers of high yield bonds to US investors notwithstanding substantive differences in the approach to valuation of the issuer in financial distress in US and UK restructuring law and, therefore, in anticipated return on default. It examines the development of the market in the context of existing theories on the relationship between law and finance and suggests that previous accounts have overlooked the adaptive capacity of the finance market to legal environment and the implications of such structural adaptation for the prospects of convergence in law. Three states are identified: where the market is poorly adapted to the legal environment and reinforces other pressure for change, where the market is adapted to the legal environment and is a neutral influence on, or even dampens, other pressure for change and where both legacy and adapted structures exist, potentially pulling in different directions at the same time.

Traditional agency theory predicts that when a large company is trading solvently, shareholders will align their interests with those of the directors, but that this may also mean that when the company is financially distressed, directors will prefer shareholder interests to those of the creditors (even if there is no residual value for the shareholders in the company). Both the law and the market respond to this problem, and to date the situation has been held in some sort of approximate balance. However, this article examines the consequences of alignment of shareholder and director interests when a large private equity company is in financial distress, in light of the debt restructuring which is likely to be in contemplation and the type of director who is often retained. It argues that in these cases directors may have an incentive to support creditors' debt restructuring plans, and, paradoxically, the closer the alignment of their interests and those of the shareholders when the company is trading solvently, the greater this incentive to prefer creditors may be (even if there is still a residual interest for the shareholders in the company). The implications of this for the law and for the market are explored.