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Ozone - An Overview
The Ozone Hole. The Ozone Hoax. Pollution. Skin Cancer. The topic of ozone makes headlines on a regular basis, but why does a single molecule merit such media coverage? How important is the ozone in our atmosphere and why are scientists so concerned about its increase near the surface of the Earth and its disappearance higher up in the atmosphere?
First things first - what is ozone? Ozone is made of three oxygen atoms (O3). The oxygen in our atmosphere that we breathe is made up of two oxygen atoms (O2). Because of its chemical formulation, a single atom of oxygen (O) is unstable. That is, it wants to combine with something else. That is why oxygen is almost always found in pairs, in its (diatomic) form, where it is more stable. (O3) is less stable than (O2), because it wants to return to the diatomic state by giving up an oxygen atom.
When enough ozone molecules are present, it forms a pale blue gas. Ozone has the same chemical structure whether it is found in the stratosphere or the troposphere. Where we find ozone in the atmosphere determines whether we consider it to be Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.
In the troposphere, the ground-level or "bad" ozone is an air pollutant that damages human health, vegetation, and many common materials. It is a key ingredient of urban smog. In the stratosphere, we find the "good" ozone that protects life on Earth from the harmful effects of the Sun's ultraviolet rays. We have good reason to be concerned about the thinning of the ozone layer in the stratosphere. We also have good reason to be concerned about the buildup of ozone in the troposphere. Although simplistic, the saying "Good up high and bad near by," sums up ozone in the atmosphere.

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The standard weak formulation of the Neumann problem for the Poisson equation is to find $u \in H^1 ( \Omega)$ such that for every $v \in H^1 ( \Omega)$:
$$ \int_{\Omega} \nabla u \nabla v d x = \int_{\Omega} fv d x + \int_{\partial \Omega} gv d s $$
for given $f \in L^2 ( \Omega)$ and $g \in H^{- 1 / 2} ( \Omega)$.
My goal is to introduce an arbitrary coordinate change and arrive at an analogous weak formulation.
I start with the classical formulation $- \Delta u ( x) = f ( x)$ and $\partial_n u ( x) = g (x)$ with everything fine and smooth. Let now $\phi : \Omega \rightarrow \tilde{\Omega} : x \mapsto \phi ( x) = : \tilde{x}$ be $C^{\infty}$ and bijective and define $\tilde{u} \circ \phi = u$. Applying the chain rule to $ \Delta_x ( \tilde{u} \circ \phi)$ we find the differential operator $L$:
$$ L \tilde{u} ( \tilde{x}) = a_{i j} ( x) \partial_{i j} \tilde{u} ( \tilde{x}) + b_i ( x) \tilde{u} ( \tilde{x}), $$
where $a_{i j} ( x) = \partial_k \phi_i ( x) \partial_k \phi_j ( x)$, $b_i ( x) = \Delta \phi_i ( x)$ and we used the usual summation convention over repeated indices. Yes the coordinates are all mixed up: I left out a composition with $\phi^{- 1}$ because it's messy.
It now holds that $\Delta_x u ( x) = L \tilde{u} (\phi ( x))$ for all $x \in \Omega$.
Question 1: My operator is not in divergence form, so deriving the weak formulation is going to be a real mess. What would be a better approach?
Question 2: How do I transform the boundary conditions? I'd like something like
$$ \partial_{\nu} \tilde{u} ( \tilde{x}) = \tilde{g}( \tilde{x}) . $$
The chain rule applied to $\partial_n ( \tilde{u} \circ \phi)$ results in $\partial_{\nu} \tilde{u} ( x) = \nabla \tilde{u} ( x) \nu ( x) = \nabla \tilde{u} ( x) D \phi ( x) n ( x)$, which is partly natural since the normal vector field is transformed with the differential, but is far from what I'd need during the partial integration deriving the weak formulation, which would rather be (assuming $L$ were in divergence form)
$$ \partial_{\nu} \tilde{u} = a_{i j} \partial_i \tilde{u} \nu_j .$$
This must be pretty basic, but I'm a bit confused here...


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- Home
- Government
- History of West Fargo
History of West Fargo
The story of West Fargo began with a "Whistle Stop" called Haggart. The stop was at the intersection of the Northern Pacific Railway and the Sheyenne River on land owned by John E. Haggart. Haggart came to North Dakota from New York state and laid claim along the Sheyenne River in 1871. He would become the first Cass County Sheriff in 1874 and serve on the first North Dakota state senate from 1889 to 1898. More settlers began arriving in the area and a community grew at this intersection. In 1876 the first school was built and opened in School District No. 6. As the railroad expanded they added a section house for railroad workers (1889), feed lots for livestock (1905) and a watering station for steam engines (1913).
In 1916 a group of enterprising famers founded Equity Cooperative Packing Company. In 1919 the company finished building twenty-four houses for its workers and began operating Equity Meat Packing Plant. Equity operated for just four years before declaring bankruptcy in 1922. During Equity's years of operation, the area got its first hotel which also housed a general store, cafeteria and post office. Three years after Equity shut its doors Armour and Company (a leader in the meat packing industry) purchased the Equity plant and resumed operation. The also bought up the equity houses and hotel.
The residents on the north side of what is now Main Avenue requested an election to incorporate as the Village of West Fargo. With a 60 to 1 margin, the Village of West Fargo was officially incorporated in November 1930 and held elections for a board of trustees on February 17, 1931. The first board of trustees was headed by Joseph Jameson with Charles Hanson and Peter Zwack also serving as trustees. However, the area to the south of Highway 10 was not included in the incorporation of the Village of West Fargo. By 1937 the residents to the south wanted to be recognized and after a 128 to 58 vote on February 15, 1937 the Village of Southwest Fargo was incorporated. Ole Anderson served as the first mayor of Southwest Fargo from 1937-1941.
As West Fargo and Southwest Fargo grew so did the need for infrastructure and services. A brick school building was built on Main Avenue in 1922 and added onto in 1934. The school began offering high school years in 1935 and West Fargo graduated its first class of ten in 1939. Construction began on a high school building in 1939 and was dedicated in 1942. The first park was built along the Sheyenne River in 1931 on land donated by the Haggart family. Today this park is known as Armour Park. In 1935 West Fargo appointed Clifford Berlin as the first police officer (to deal with speeding on Hwy 10). In 1940 a volunteer fire department was organized and headed by Eddie Boise. In 1948 Southwest Fargo was incorporated as a city rather than a village. Because Southwest Fargo was a city the post office was moved there from West Fargo. Early in the 1940s there was an attempt to build a sewer and water system but this was delayed by World War II. A polio outbreak in 1946 showcased the need for a cleaner city and in 1949 sewer and water installation began in Southwest Fargo.
In 1959 Armour and Company closed the plant forcing many residents of West Fargo to seek new employment or relocate. However, a year later Siouxland Dressed Beef Company opened a plant which operated under multiple names until the 1970s. The West Fargo Union Stockyards had been operated since 1935 and by the 1970s was the 10th largest livestock market in the United States. As the decades passed meatpacking fell to the wayside of industry in West Fargo and in 1999 the packing plant closed its doors.
Southwest Fargo continued to grow rapidly and on June 7, 1967 they took on the name City of West Fargo, and the village of West Fargo became West Fargo Industrial Park. This name did not sit well with the residents of West Fargo Industrial Park and in September of 1974 they became residents of the City of Riverside. By the 1970s even more changes were happening. The West Fargo Public Library opened its doors on Sheyenne Street for the first time on June 10, 1971. In 1972 the Cass County Fairgrounds were moved to West Fargo and Bonanzaville was constructed. A new City Hall was built in 1975 and next to it was a brand new Public Library.
The Sheyenne River may have been key to the success of this area, but it also proved to be a hazard with many floods over the years. The worst of the floods came in the summer of 1975 when after days of torrential rains, the Sheyenne began rising. West Fargo was flooded, businesses were forced to close and the Red River Valley Fair was canceled. The citizens of West Fargo came together to sandbag and build dikes to keep back the waters. The river crested on July 8th at a record 22.23 feet. This flood served as a catalyst for the Sheyenne River Flood Control Project which was authorized in 1986 and operational by 1993.
West Fargo as you know it today came into being in 1989 when the cities of Riverside and West Fargo merged. Nearly 100 years of separate entities and shared identities became one unified West Fargo. The merging of the cities was celebrated with a consolidation ceremony at the West Fargo Public Library on July 1, 1989.
The building of the Sheyenne River Diversion gave way to a population and building boom. Since 1993 West Fargo Public School District has grown by at least 3,770 students and with this growth came a need for new schools. A new larger high school was built in 1986 and by 2007 Sheyenne High School was built to accommodate the growing number of students. The West Fargo Public Library also needed more space to serve the growing population and moved to its current location at the Lodoen Center in 2005.
In recent years many changes have been made in the City of West Fargo with new amenities added every year. Here are just a few of the many…
On October 1, 2009 the I-94 and 9th street interchange opened to traffic.
- In 2010, the City of West Fargo's official population was 25,830. This was a 61.7% increase from 2000.
- In 2011 The new Southside Fire and Police Substation became operational.
- In July of 2013 Veterans Memorial Pool (built in 1959) began remodeling. The grand opening of the pool, complete with waterslides, was held on June 11, 2015.
- In April of 2015 the City of West Fargo contracted with Waste Management and became the first in the tri-city area to offer no-sort recycling.
- Also in 2015 West Fargo signed an agreement with the City of Fargo to buy water from them.
- In 2016 Rustad Recreation Center opened. The final phases of a large roadway reconstruction project began on Main Avenue. A new City Hall opened housing both city offices and the police department.
- In 2020, the City of Wet Fargo's official population was 38,626. This was a 49.5% increase from 2010.
Today West Fargo is one of the fastest-growing cities in the state of North Dakota. From a population of 707 in 1940 to over 38,000 in 2020 West Fargo has long been a "City on the Grow."


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Growing up sucks. Jungle gyms are replaced by cubicles and healthy almonds replace gobs of Gushers. Or something like that. One of the worst things about growing up is that you never seem to have any time left over for yourself. For anything. Including video games, which are sometimes the first thing to go when it's time to make compromises.
One of the saddest things I hear is, "Well I used to play a lot of games but I just don't have time for them anymore." In the list of priorities, video games didn't make the cut. Sure, you may still watch a bunch of television shows and go to concerts all the time, but video games? Video games could be kicked to the curb.
I keep trying to tell my oldest brother that, yes, even though you're busy launching your new company and, yes, even though you just got a brand new puppy, there's still time in your life for video games. Please make time for video games.
I pick out titles I know he'll love---the last game I got him to play was Saints Row: The Third---but even then he'll rampage around a city for a while before letting his devotion to the game taper off.
I maintain that it's possible to squeeze a bit of (healthy) video-game time into a well-rounded adult lifestyle. If you can sit down to read a book for a few hours on a lazy Sunday, surely you can spare time for games. After all, video games are worth the time investment. For so many reasons. They're therapeutic. They're educational. They're plain ol' fun.
In an attempt to convince more people to at least try to make gaming more a part of their life, here are some tips for time management that will help them do so.
1. Limit Your Consumption; Avoid The Really Time-Consuming Games
This ain't college anymore. We don't have the luxury of spending a weekend shut in our dorm rooms playing rounds of GoldenEye and Halo with roommates and floormates and friends and, wait, is that my English professor? It's more important than ever to prioritize which games we play.
Personally, I've gone so far as to cut entire games out of the picture. I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft. I used to be in a guild. Socializing for me meant hopping in to chat with guildmates and playing with friends online. It got to the point where I'd even multitask, raiding some dungeon while watching something else on TV.
But nowadays, it's important to not let an entire day go to waste, so I don't play never-ending MMOs anymore. There are still games I will play from morning until night, though (and not just when I'm reviewing them). I enjoy games enough to still feel productive when spending the day burning through a lengthy game like Ni no Kuni. It's probably somewhat different for me than it will be for you, since playing games is also a part of my job. But that's not the case for everyone. If you have a family and other responsibilities, you might not want your entire day dedicated to a game. You might feel guilty for neglecting laundry duties and procrastinating building that bike for your kid. And everything else parents do.
I spoke with one parent, Shawn---who balances being an avid gamer with his role as both a husband and new father---to gauge how he manages his time. He shared a similar feeling towards MMOs:
"Social MMO's are pretty much impossible for me. My gaming schedule is too unpredictable and irregular, I cannot make any commitments to any guild/corp/outfit buddies. And I certainly don't have the time to spend plowing through the grind that most MMO's require in order to obtain experience/gear/currency/etc. I spent a couple years pretty involved in EvE Online back around 2006-2007, but keeping up with that game would be impossible for me now."
I've noticed similar difficulties as an FPS player. Those games are dangerous for me, because what starts off as, "Oh I'll just play a few rounds," turns into, "God dammit that bastard has it coming. I'm targeting XXsnipedyomamaXX next game." I tend to have an addictive, one-more-round-please, attitude when it comes to first-person shooters. I'll still hop on when I need some stress-relief or when I'm looking for a game to play with a friend some weekend, but I try to limit how often I return to them. Because I just know I'll lay an entire day to waste, rubbing my bloodshot eyes at 4am trying to remember if I even ate anything all day.
I might decide to skip on an RPG if it's the kind that will ask me to aimlessly grind before I'm powerful enough to progress. You know the ones. I'm still pushing through Etrian Odyssey IV even though I'm at a point where I'm all but required to grind. It's a handheld game so I give it a pass. I can play it on the train or during a road trip or while waiting for a friend. It's easier to integrate a mobile game into the tiny crevices of free time that I'd otherwise spend on my phone reading Kotaku or Twitter.
Limiting your daily game-time can be as strict as keeping to 30-minute intervals. Speaking with friend-of-Kirk and father of a 6-month-old, Dan, he told me that it can be difficult to limit yourself to such short bursts, but it's a necessity. "Having responsibilities means developing a relationship with the pause button," he elaborated to me. "Games without a 'Save and Quit' option are the enemy."
"Having responsibilities means developing a relationship with the pause button."
Picking a less time-consuming game can also mean picking a game with natural pauses that make it appropriate to constantly start and stop as needed, especially for the 30-minute interval rule. Dan reminded me of one fitting title: "I polished off nearly all of Super Meat Boy in the first few months after our daughter was born, in large part because the start/stop pacing of the game fit so well into my nightly childcare routine."
Another married friend I spoke with, Doug (who also keeps busy with a job that requires a ton of hours and travel), echoed a similar sentiment: "Weekends and late nights are all I've got --- and some nights I know I can't play for more than 30 minutes, so I make sure it's something that doesn't get too involved --- indie games, platformers.. stuff that I can put in some time, save it, and I don't have to remember anything about where I was when I come back."
Shawn landed on a similar point about the troubles of remembering storylines in lengthier games. He told me that they typically need to be spaced out over what ends up becoming a couple of months worth of tiny intervals of gaming at a time. It's why he has yet to play L.A. Noire even as it sits unplayed in his Steam library. He opts for Minecraft:
"Minecraft has been an absolute godsend in this regard. I can jump onto a server and fart around building something random or digging holes or whatever for 10 minutes and then leave, or if I know I'm going to have an hour to play, I can build something more involved. There's no real goal, the rules are pretty simple and don't really ever change, and there aren't really any important skills that I have to worry about forgetting if I don't get to play for a while. MC is pretty interesting in that it can consume an almost endless amount of time if you let it, but it also works pretty well in short and sporadic sessions."
The game you choose to play can be specific to your needs and your play style, but the point remains the same: finding a game that doesn't will you to completely zone out for hours is key.
2. Skip The Extra Stuff; Just Plow Through
It can be hard to let go of an entire genre like RPGs just because they take out huge chunks of time to complete. If you rather find a way around that harsh decision, skipping side quests and hidden items could be wise, especially if you intend to finish one of these games.
Dan uses a similar tactic, denying his inner completionist the satisfaction of turning over every stone: "Spending less time exploring corners of the map (or, better yet, opting out of tedious inventory/character management) means more time for gameplay."
Father of one adorable little girl (and a personal friend), Randy, notes that trophies and achievements can get in the way of finishing games, too. "Some are set up specifically to pad gameplay or take you out of your way from completing the game on a more natural playthrough."
3. Keep Your Priorities Straight
If your baby is screaming wildly in need of a diaper change, this is not the time to try that new DLC that just came out for your favorite game. Go change poopy butt over there first.
If you promised your spouse you'd make them a romantic dinner that evening, go pick up the groceries for it first.
If you have a 9am deadline on that TPS report, make sure to get it done first so you can play with ease afterwards.
"If my wife needs me to put down the controller to go help her with something, doing so is the proper response."
Speaking with Shawn, he explained that this is the most important part of his balancing act. While his wife is understanding of his need to fit gaming into his life, he has to reciprocate. In an email with me recently Shawn explained: "That obviously has to be balanced by an understanding on my part that the games are just games, they are not a priority, and I accept that at anytime when I'm playing, if my wife needs me to put down the controller to go help her with something, doing so is the proper response."
If you prioritize and cross your chores off your list first, you won't feel any guilt about playing games afterward. If you miss deadlines or anger your husband/wife, you might begin to think that video games are getting in the way of your happiness. They're not! You just need to prioritize.
4. Diversify Your Media Intake; Make A Trade
If you've been going to a lot of shows recently, or are really caught up in a comic series, try switching things up and replacing that current hobby with a video game you've been meaning to try out. You're not taking time away from any of your responsibilities, just trading one pleasurable hobby for another. Plus, it'll keep the experience of reading that comic or meeting up with your music aficionado friends (or whatever else) fresh and less monotonous. Everyone wins.
5. Be Selective; Keep Your Library Tight
I like to keep all my games. I like libraries of things in general. It feels like a good show of my interests, memories, tastes. But it can feel daunting to look at a shelf and realize you haven't played more than half the games there. Maybe even to see one or two still in their shrink-wrap. But hey, you're an adult now. You don't have time to play every game that comes out.
Talk to friends, read some of your favorite gaming websites (ahem), and gauge what games you feel like you just have to play. My mom gives me similar advice when we go clothing-shopping. If you're hesitating, she tells me, you know you're never going to end up wearing it. She's so right. The same goes for games. If you're not really excited about a game you pick up, you'll probably toss it aside in favor of some old favorite, or whatever other new game comes along. So you might as well be selective about what games you do pick up.
6. Play On Easy Difficulty
This one was a really difficult transition for me. I still typically opt to play on at least a Normal difficulty level, but occasionally---if I know a game is a particularly long one---I'll hover over the Easy option for an unreasonable amount of time before finally deciding to try it out. I still get to experience the game but it doesn't take as much time, and hey, I might even like the game more for it.
7. Try Methods Of Integrating Games Into Other Parts Of Your Life
It can be hard to manage home-life with game-life when you have children. I chatted with both Evan Narcisse and Mike Fahey---resident Kotaku daddies---about how they manage their time. Evan jokingly suggested staying up late, but you may not want to sacrifice delicious, delicious sleep. Although Dan had a similar suggestion, noting that while a big chunk of the day is devoted to family time, he'll budget time throughout the workweek to fit some gaming in accordingly. That sometimes results in early mornings for him or, more often, late nights. How that plays out week to week will likely depend on your personal schedule.
Dan also explained that making a multiplayer date with your significant other is a reasonable way to both find time to game as well as spend time with your spouse. "Pitching multiplayer sessions to your significant other as a 'night out' really helps carve out a dedicated block of time for gaming (as long as you're open to giving your partner a night off in return!)," he told me in an email.
"Pitching multiplayer sessions to your significant other as a 'night out' really helps carve out a dedicated block of time for gaming."
Fahey had an interesting and similar idea, too: get used to playing games that your children can grow up to enjoy. That way, when you want to sit down to play Skylanders, you'll be hitting two birds with one stone. Just like that, you're playing games and bonding with your kid.
This works for those of us who don't have children, too. I brought up playing handheld games earlier in this article. If you're on the train with not much else to do, whipping out a 3DS or Vita or what have you is a good way to get in game-time without it getting in the way of your daily schedule.
Doug noted to me that some games can even fit with specific activities, like exercising. "I did just pick up an interesting game on my phone --- Zombies, Run --- that fits gaming into my regular exercise schedule," he told me. "It's an app that plays your music and puts in dialogue to make it sound like zombies are chasing you every now and then.. you pick up weapons and food and stuff along the way to upgrade your town.. it's got the right aspects of gaming.. rewards and accomplishments --- and it's entertaining. So finding ways to game and do something else at the same time helps to get a gaming fix in."
There are plenty of ways to fit gaming into your regular routines.
These are just a few tips that have come to mind. Many of them are guidelines I've adapted to as my free time slowly closes in around me. Others came with the help of some crowdsourcing from parents and otherwise busy gamers who have even tougher struggles with the limits of time. If you've got other tips, chime in below.


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Anaheim, CA – Jered Weaver returned from the disabled list and threw six shutout innings to help the Angels beat the Giants, 6-0, to grab the rubber match of a three-game series.
Weaver (7-1) who had been out with a lower-back strain he suffered in the first inning of the Angels' May 28 contest against the New York Yankees, allowed two hits, walked a pair and fanned three, but was removed after throwing 78 pitches.
"Weav does what he usually does, he located his fastball early," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. "I really liked his fastball command. He changed speeds, a great effort."
Weaver moved to 5-0 at home this year, where his ERA stands at 0.70 in six starts. He also has won seven straight interleague starts and has an all-time such mark of 12-3.
"It felt great, it was nice to get back out there," Weaver said. "I wanted to establish my fastball command and keep them off-balance."
Kendrys Morales homered on his 29th birthday and Mark Trumbo made it back-to- back shots in the eighth inning. Alberto Callaspo also went deep in Los Angeles' ninth win in 12 games.
Ryan Vogelsong (6-3), who had six wins without a loss in an eight-start span, had that streak broken despite yielding seven hits and three runs while fanning six over seven innings.
"Weaver comes off the DL and he didn't miss a beat," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "We didn't put any pressure on him. A good outing by Vogy, he pitched well, we just couldn't do anything offensively."
The Giants, who didn't record an extra-base hit, lost to the Angels for the sixth time in the last seven meetings.
Callaspo homered to right in the second and it became 2-0 in the fifth on RBI singles from Erick Aybar and Mike Trout. Aybar's hit, which plated Howie Kendrick, glanced off the tip of the glove of a diving Brandon Crawford at shortstop. Buster Posey couldn't handle the one-hop throw to the plate from Melky Cabrera.
Morales, who came into Wednesday mired in a 1-for-19 slump, got hold of a Shane Loux pitch and homered to right-center leading off the eighth. Trumbo then cranked his 17th homer, a blast to left-center. Bobby Wilson doubled to the gap in right-center to score Kendrick later in the frame.
Game Notes
The Angels also placed pitcher Jerome Williams on the 15-day DL due to breathing problems...Vogelsong suffered his first road loss since Aug. 19, 2011 at Houston...Before Wednesday, the Giants had won each of Vogelsong's last eight starts...Trumbo had seven RBI in the series...It was the Angels' 10th shutout of the year, which tops the majors.


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Research Shows Periodontal Treatment Doesn't Reduce Preterm Birth Risk
Despite an apparent link between gum disease and preterm births, standard periodontal treatment does not decrease the risk of preterm birth. Nor is the treatment enough to halt periodontal disease progression in pregnant women, according to new research.
The study, involving researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University Medical Center, is one of the largest randomized trials to date to look at the link between the two conditions.
Previous research had suggested that gum disease was associated with very preterm deliveries (defined as less than 32 weeks gestation). That led insurance policies and health-care providers to recommend scaling and root planing, sometimes referred to as "deep cleaning," in pregnant women. It was thought that such care had the potential to reduce preterm delivery risk.
These new findings, based on a randomized trial of 1,800 pregnant women with periodontal disease, indicate that routine gum treatments do not reduce the risk of early delivery.
"I'm always asked whether we should mandate dental treatment for all pregnant women," said Dr. Amy Murtha, director of obstetrics research at Duke University Medical Center, who presented the findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in San Diego on Jan. 29, 2009. "The biggest implication of this study is that this level of standard periodontal care will not affect the birth outcome."
That's not to say pregnant women should not get dental exams and treatment as needed; they should, Murtha added. "Our study emphasizes that treating periodontal disease during pregnancy is safe, but that standard periodontal care is not enough."
Progression, or worsening of periodontal disease occurs in about 25 percent of pregnancies, said Dr. Steven Offenbacher, the study's lead investigator and director of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry-based Center for Oral and Systemic Diseases. The disease is a bacterial infection that attacks the teeth-supporting tissues below the gum line. Left untreated, it can lead to tooth loss, as well as a host of other problems.
This study, conducted at Duke, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Texas at San Antonio, was overseen by the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry. Approximately 1,800 pregnant women with periodontal disease were randomly assigned to two groups: one received periodontal treatment before 23 weeks gestation; the other did not. Overall, no significant differences were reported regarding obstetric or neonatal outcomes when the two groups were compared.
Despite the findings, Murtha said much remains unknown about the relationship between the two conditions. "Periodontal disease and poor pregnancy outcomes travel together, but we don't know why."
Nor do researchers understand how or why pregnancy appears to jumpstart the onset and progression of the disease. Murtha said it may be that preterm birth and periodontal disease share a common underlying trait, such as an exaggerated inflammatory response, but more studies are needed to fully explain the connection.
Additional research is also needed to determine whether more intensive periodontal care during pregnancy might make a difference. "Although we did not reduce the risk of preterm births, the level of periodontal care provided in this study was not as effective as compared to earlier studies," Offenbacher said. It may be that a more aggressive approach to periodontal disease management could have a different outcome, he added.
The study was funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Dr. James D. Beck, associate dean for research and a Kenan professor within the School of Dentistry, is the study's co-principal investigator. Other School of Dentistry researchers include Dr. Luisito Mendoza and Dr. Sally Mauriello. UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health researchers include Dr. David Couper and Dawn Stewart. Researchers Dr. David Cochran and Dr. Donald Dudley are with the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Researchers Dr. Michael Reddy, Dr. Nicolaas Geurs and Dr. John Hauth are with the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Heather Jared, formerly with the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry, also contributed to this research.


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BURNS, NELSON, teacher, Methodist minister, holiness preacher, author, and editor; b. 22 March 1834 in Niagara (Niagara-on-the-Lake), Upper Canada, son of John Burns and Deborah Huff; m. c. 1866 Eleanor Tyler in Erin, Upper Canada, and they had four children; d. 14 June 1904 in Toronto.
An outstanding student, Nelson Burns was educated at Niagara High School and University College in Toronto, where he held a scholarship in natural sciences and received a ba in 1857. He then taught school in Welland and later became principal of the high school in St Thomas. In 1863, having been drawn to the ministry, he was received on trial by the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada. He was subsequently posted to Holland Landing, Cookstown, and Erin. Ordained in 1866, he was obliged by ill health to become a supernumerary shortly thereafter. He returned to teaching, first at Port Dover and then at Milton. While in Milton he owned and edited the Georgetown Herald. After his school was closed, he took up a position at the high school in Thorold.
As a ministerial probationer Burns had been preoccupied with the need to bring others to the experience of holiness that he himself had undergone at age 14 as a result of reading Phoebe Palmer's Faith and its effects. After his ordination, this aim virtually supplanted all other emphases in his ministry. He had made a systematic attempt to discover how a Christian can know the will of God and live by it daily. Each crisis in his life was handled in such a way as to achieve a sense of responding to the direct guidance of God. He developed the doctrine of "Divine guidance" as the means of conducting his life. "In accepting it," he would later write, "I must also take the attitude to God of giving up myself absolutely to His personal control for the rest of my life, be the consequences what they may. . . . Should my obedience lead to any or all forms of erratic conduct, or even make shipwreck of my moral or religious character, still I must carry out all Divine instructions." His theology was increasingly outside the mainstream of his church, and in 1878, after he had returned to preaching, he was forced to resign his post at Camlachie. For the next three years he ran "a private religious academy" at Georgetown. He was never again on the list of active Methodist ministers in Canada.
Burns elaborated on his doctrine in Divine guidance, or the holy guest (1889), defining it there as "some intimation to our consciousness by the Holy Spirit whereby we know that we are taking that course in all things . . . which is the best possible under the circumstances, and which is therefore pleasing to God, and satisfactory to ourselves." The "manner" of such guidance, he explained, could be dreams, visions, voices, impressions, reasoning processes; intuitions, human helps, or Scripture passages. He also addressed the main objections of his critics, who held that his doctrine taught human infallibility. To Burns the concept of divine guidance was simply a "regulatory device for the true believer"; he admitted, however, that there were problems when persons who only thought they were so guided misused their assumed infallibility. Another complaint was that the doctrine depreciated the Bible and allowed for antinomianism. Burns argued that true believers do not need rules since they are always in tune with the divine guide. The Bible, he maintained, is only a testimony of God but the Holy Spirit is the individual's guide. His concept did not destroy biblical authority but rather regulated it.
In 1879 Burns had been elected president of the Canada Holiness Association, formed that October at a convention held in Brussels, Ont. He would hold the position until his death. Although the organization was officially independent and interdenominational, it seems that most of its leaders were Methodists. The CHA's public activity was twofold: the publication from 1882 of the monthly Expositor of Holiness (Toronto), of which Burns was editor, and the holding of annual conventions and camp-meetings. The Expositor was extremely important in promoting holiness sentiments, especially for the CHA's adherents, and in publicizing the association's official positions. In 1892 Burns published a special issue in which he attempted to summarize the association's theological stance. "We believe," he wrote, "that Jesus taught that when the Holy Ghost came on the day of Pentecost, He, although a Spirit, was to take the place of a personal Christ to every believer." Members of the CHA, having put this teaching into practice, "do know and do the perfect will of God."
The claim that CHA members had achieved a state of absolute perfection, the ultimate goal of all Christians, was most controversial. In 1893 Burns was charged by his church with heresy, for impugning Holy Scripture, holding Arian views, teaching divine guidance as the essential of the Gospel, and disregarding the leading Methodist doctrines. He declined to attend the trial, the charges were sustained, and in 1894 he was deposed from the ministry by the Guelph Conference. At two trials in 1893 similar charges had been sustained against his close associate the Reverend Albert Truax. For the Methodist Church of Canada the break with the holiness association was not a break with the emphasis on holiness but rather, as a contemporary noted, a result of "unholy contentions about holiness."
There are virtually no sources for Burns's subsequent life. His posthumous Autobiography indicates that the Expositor continued until 1901. By 1898 the CHA had apparently dissolved itself into the Christian Association and in that year Burns was serving as pastor of its church in Toronto. In 1905 the association was to erect its own church building, the First Church of the Christian Association; it would close for lack of membership in the early 1970s.
Burns died in 1904 at his home in Toronto. In an appendix to his Autobiography Truax reveals that, although the cause of death was angina, Burns had invoked the principle of divine guidance to claim the right to end his own life quickly and painlessly.
Nelson Burns's Divine guidance, or the holy guest . . . was published at Brantford, Ont., in 1889. The Autobiography of the late Rev. Nelson Burns, b.a. was issued at [Toronto] sometime after his death.
UCC-C, 13/5, files 52–53; 40/2, box 11, file 2; 3022, files 21c, 24a, 132. Univ. of Toronto Arch., P78-0158 (Univ. of Toronto, class and prize lists), 1853–57. Christian Guardian, 1879–95. Globe, 6 June 1893, 16 June 1904. G. F. Atter, "The third force": a Pentecostal answer to the question so often asked by both our own young people and by members of other churches, "Who are the Pentecostals?" (Peterborough, Ont., 1962). S. D. Clark, Church and sect in Canada (Toronto, 1948). Cornish, Cyclopædia of Methodism. Expositor of Holiness (Toronto), 1 (1882–83)–12 (1893–94). J. W. Grant, The church in the Canadian era: the first century of confederation (Toronto, 1972; [rev, ed.], Burlington, Ont., 1988). A guide to the study of the holiness movement, comp. C. E. Jones (Metuchen, N.J., 1974). C. E. Jones, Perfectionist persuasion: the holiness movement and American Methodism, 1867–1936 (Metuchen, 1974). [J. C. McLennan], "The Literary and Scientific Society – a fiftieth anniversary," Univ. of Toronto Monthly, 4 (1903–4: 135–38. H. W. Pointen, "The Holiness Movement Church in Canada" (bd thesis, Univ. of Toronto, 1950). B. R. Ross, "Ralph Cecil Horner: a Methodist sectarian deposed, 1887–1895," Canadian Church Hist. Soc., Journal (Sudbury, Ont.), 19 (1977)/UCC, Committee on Arch., Bull. (Toronto), no.26 (1977): 94–103. The so-called heresy case at Galt: containing the judicial record and history of the case before the courts of the Presbyterian Church in Canada . . . ([Toronto?], 1889).
© 1994–2024 University of Toronto/Université Laval
Cite This Article
Ron Sawatsky, "BURNS, NELSON," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 27, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/burns_nelson_13E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
Permalink: | http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/burns_nelson_13E.html |
Author of Article: | Ron Sawatsky |
Title of Article: | BURNS, NELSON |
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Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
Year of publication: | 1994 |
Year of revision: | 1994 |
Access Date: | February 27, 2024 |


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Thank you very much for that very kind introduction. It's an honor to be a part of this program and to be asked to join the distinguished jurists who have previously spoken here. It's frankly humbling to have my name added to the list.
There's one formality I have to get out of the way right at the outset. I'm required by our rules at the SEC to remind you that the views I express today are my own and not necessarily those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, its Chairman, its Commissioners or any of my colleagues on the staff.
Those of us who work at the SEC are all required to recite that disclaimer whenever we speak publicly. Sometimes, of course, SEC speakers simply can't avoid communicating perspectives relevant to the current work of the agency. In this academic setting today, however, I have no such intent in mind. So I'm sorry to disappoint you if you've come in the hope of learning some useful intelligence about possible Commission policies or actions in the coming year. You won't be getting that today. Instead, we'll be taking a much longer-term view, looking back at trends that have been developing for decades in a effort to infer what may be ahead.
My topic is: "The Future of Securities Regulation." That topic easily could fill — to overflowing — an academic year of five lectures a week. So of course I'm going to have to be highly selective. In all candor, as you'll see, I'm going to be idiosyncratically selective as well.
I understand that not everyone here is expert in the field of securities regulation. So I'm going to try to avoid technicalities, even though we all understand the force of the old cliché that "the devil is in the details."
Even with these limitations, I'm hoping we can have a good deal of fun considering some interesting issues together during the next hour.
Oh, and there's one more thing. Anyone thinking about the future of securities regulation can't help but focus on the advance of technology and its close cousin, globalization. Technology and globalization are each a fascinating and rich source of countless topics worthy of inquiry and discussion in any consideration of the future of securities regulation. Technology and globalization would take up many months of that year-long series of lectures I just envisioned. But, perhaps perversely, I'm going to ignore the obvious and direct our attention elsewhere.
But let's not tarry any longer. Let's plunge in.
I'd like to start with the group of closely interrelated trends I call "deretailization."
Deretailization? I'm sure many of you — if not most of you — are thinking: "Deretailization? If that were a word — which it isn't — it would be a very ugly word."
Well, you're quite right, of course — on both counts. While preparing this lecture, I Googled "deretailization" and, as I half-expected, I got zero hits. That doesn't happen all that often with Google. If you Google "deretailization" tomorrow, though, you'll get at least one hit, because by then this lecture will have been posted on the SEC's website. Sorry about that!
Despite its somewhat awkward coinage, I believe the term "deretailization" nonetheless captures — and succinctly describes — trends that are no less important because they have been developing for some decades and are lying out in plain sight.
So what do I mean by "deretailization"? I mean to refer not only to the dwindling percentage of retail investors in some of our key existing markets, but also to the exclusion of retail investors entirely from some of the most important and dynamic new trading markets and new asset classes.1
Deretailization has many aspects. Let me illustrate by pointing out some of the more important.
First, let's consider the direct ownership of shares of stock in public corporations. In the United States, retail investors own a much smaller percentage of publicly traded stock than they used to. Estimates vary, but widely cited sources put retail stock ownership in 1950 at more than 90%, while I've seen some estimates that put current retail ownership as low as a little over 30%. Other estimates aren't quite as low.
But for our purposes, the exact numbers don't matter. The point is simply that over the last half century direct stock ownership by U.S. retail investors has been in an on-going decline relative to ownership by institutions. Institutional ownership used to be almost irrelevant. Now, retail ownership seems to be headed in that direction.
This is a long-term trend, and it shows no sign of abating. If it continues, sooner or later the very roughly 90-10 relative importance of retail investors and institutions in the stock market of 1950 could even be reversed. But even if that doesn't happen — and I'm not here today to predict it will — deretailization of our stock market nonetheless will have, and already is having, profound consequences.
Retail investors of course remain indirect owners of stock. It's just that their ownership now is increasingly intermediated by mutual funds and other collective vehicles.
As recently as 1980, the SEC felt it necessary to adopt Rule 12b-1 to aid a mutual fund industry that was still struggling to get off the ground, despite its origins many decades earlier. But in the last quarter century, these financial intermediaries have taken off. Mutual fund AUM — assets under management — now exceeds $10 trillion and continues to grow, and retail investors own the overwhelming majority of mutual fund shares: almost 90%. So retail investors continue to invest very large dollar amounts indirectly in stock and other public securities — but only indirectly.
This means that, increasingly, retail investors are not the ones deciding whether to buy, sell or hold individual stocks, or — and this is very important — how to vote them. When retail investors make investment decisions, those decisions now more often concern which intermediary to employ, not which stock to buy. And this has important consequences, some of which we'll talk about a bit later today.
The second form of deretailization I want to discuss is the development and growth over the last several decades of important new trading markets that are entirely closed to retail investors. The "dark pools" of liquidity that have garnered some press of late are one example, but perhaps the most familiar is the 144A debt market.
Promulgated by the SEC in 1990, Rule 144A removed most of the regulatory impediments to secondary market transactions between large institutions that qualify as "QIBs." "QIB" or "Q-I-B" is the acronym for "qualified institutional buyer," a term defined in Rule 144A generally to mean institutions that have at least $100 million invested in securities.
Rule 144A created an efficient QIB-only secondary market. After Rule 144A was promulgated, investment bankers quickly discovered the advantages of selling only to QIBs in debt offerings. The liquidity of the new 144A trading market turned out to be sufficiently high that the initial buyers did not exact an illiquidity "haircut" in price relative to what they would have been willing to pay had the securities been registered with the SEC first so that retail investors could be included in the pool of potential buyers.
From the point of view of the company issuing the debt, this meant there no longer was any incentive to pay the cost and, perhaps more important, risk the delay, of the SEC registration process, which can take many uncertain months to complete. So the 144A market became a very big market. The amount of debt issued in the 144A market today very much varies with market conditions, but typically amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars annually. What's important for us in our discussion today is that, by definition, this is an institutions-only market, without retail participation.2
Until now, the 144A market has been restricted mostly to debt and not much used for equity. When equity is being sold, the incremental advantage of the capital and liquidity provided by retail investors has outweighed the additional costs and burdens of their presence — at least so far.
But this may be changing. Within only the last year or so, at least five platforms that would provide institutions-only trading markets for common stock — markets that would in effect compete for IPOs directly with the public stock markets — have been announced or deployed. As has been reported in the press, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan Chase and Nasdaq each now have such an offering of their own, and eight other major financial institutions (Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Bank of New York Mellon, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS) have joined together in a consortium to form another platform in this space.
It is still far too early to know whether these efforts will capture only a niche market or have broader appeal, but these major financial institutions evidently believe it's worth exploring the possibilities. This could be a development to watch. And, if the additional capital and liquidity contributed by retail investors in the public markets continues to dwindle in the coming years, it's natural to expect that institutions-only trading markets could become increasingly prominent, even dominant, given the added compliance costs and litigation risks retail investors bring with them — costs and risks that don't end when the securities are issued, but are on-going as long as the securities held by retail investors remain outstanding.
So far we've talked about two forms of deretailization: the shrinking percentage of direct retail investors in the stock market and the development of institutions-only trading markets that exclude retail investors entirely.
Yet a third form of deretailization is the development of new and dynamic asset classes that also exclude retail investors entirely. This form of deretailization also represents a decades-long trend.
Let's start with venture capital. Venture capital funds came into their own in the 1960s after the seminal funding of Fairchild Semiconductor by Venrock Associates in 1959. With few exceptions, such as the occasional "friends and family" or employee investor, retail investors are excluded from investing in venture capital funds. Venture capital funds, however, have become indispensable as one of the most important drivers of innovation and growth in our economy and as an important — and high return — asset class for institutional investors.
Similarly, private equity funds, which came into their own in the late 1970s and 1980s, also generally have been closed to retail investors. Private equity funds represent another important — and high return — asset class for institutional investors. Retail participation, however, has been unwelcome — some very recent, and perhaps isolated, exceptions to the contrary notwithstanding.
Private equity funds in fact triply compound deretailization, in that — one — not only can retail investors generally not invest in them, but — two — the very purpose of private equity funds is to buy out the retail investors in previously public companies, and — three — those buy-outs typically are financed in institutions-only 144A and syndicated secured debt markets.
It's been 18 years since Michael Jensen published "The Eclipse of the Public Corporation" in the Harvard Business Review, arguing that private equity funds offer better management than public ownership does. Nonetheless, so far at least, many, if not most, companies taken private in LBOs have eventually returned to the public company universe by way of a public IPO. This cycle is not a law of nature, however, and could be altered by the trends we already have identified: deretailization in the public stock market and the development of competing institutions-only trading markets.
The list of asset classes highly prized by institutional investors but from which retail investors are excluded doesn't end with venture capital and private equity. Hedge funds, now much in the news, also exclude direct retail investors.
As everybody knows by now, the term "hedge fund" is not really descriptive, but just refers to a private pool of institutional capital. Many hedge funds, in fact, invest in the same universe of securities as do mutual funds, albeit with a potentially broader range of strategies and techniques. So hedge funds can be thought of as actively managed mutual funds for institutional investors.
And hedge funds have proved to be a magnet for institutional investors. Assets under management by hedge funds have been growing dramatically and now are estimated to exceed $2 trillion. So hedge funds are yet another important — and high return — asset class just for institutional investors.
In sum, viewed from different perspectives, we see the relative role of the direct retail investor shrinking in some of our key domestic markets. Accounting for more than 90% of stock ownership in 1950, the retail investor now represents maybe as little as something like a third of that, and the percentage is falling. New markets for secondary trading, such as the 144A market, are springing up that are designed to exclude the retail investor and the burdens that come with him or her. And, over the last few decades, new intermediary vehicles — venture capital funds, private equity funds and hedge funds — have been developed and are prospering. These new asset classes occupy an increasingly important part of the investment landscape and represent much of its dynamism, but they all exclude retail investors.
We're here today at a university. University endowments provide a telling example of the impact of deretailization. In the 1950s, the securities portfolios of these endowments comprised almost exclusively publicly traded debt and equity securities also available to retail investors. Now, however, these endowments are devoting an ever-increasing share of their securities portfolios to so-called "alternative investments," which almost always are asset classes open only to institutions.
The best managed of these endowments provide annual returns most retail investors could only dream of. Exceptional professional management undoubtedly is part of the reason for these returns. But part of the reason also is access to the more attractive new asset classes and vehicles, from which retail investors are excluded. Not only are these asset classes high-return, but their risks often are sufficiently uncorrelated with each other or with other asset classes so their presence substantially increases the expected portfolio return without unduly increasing overall portfolio risk.
Most retail investors, however, simply cannot assemble a portfolio with the desirable diversification and return characteristics available to institutional investors.
So it's important to ask: what's causing deretailization? There are two key drivers.
First, back in 1950, when retail investors represented 90+% of the direct investment in our stock markets, investing was a much simpler proposition. Apart from the opportunity to devote greater time and attention to the effort, professional money managers did not have obvious advantages over the do-it-yourselfer. That's no longer the case, and individual investors intuit the difference. Our understanding of markets has become far more sophisticated and mathematical over the ensuing decades. The amateur plays at a disadvantage. So retail investors have simply acted rationally in choosing to turn their portfolios over to professionals, typically by employing intermediary vehicles such as mutual funds. This is only sensible, and certainly not a trend one should wish to reverse.
That's what's driving deretailization from the retail investor's side of the equation. Now let's consider the other side of the equation and see what's driving the development of new markets and new asset classes that exclude retail investors.
We, and most other jurisdictions, have two principal modes of securities regulation that live side-by-side and, in effect, compete with one another. We have a mode that one might call "antifraud only" for those markets that exclude retail investors. And we have a mode that one might call "retail protective" for those markets that permit retail investors.
In the antifraud-only mode, the authorities generally are not involved unless and until a fraud occurs. In antifraud-only regimes, market participants generally are not required to register their personnel, their entities or their transactions with the government, they are not required to file statements or reports with the government, they are not subject to examination or inspection by the government, and government rules do not specify how they should conduct their operations, what they cannot do or how they can be compensated. Only if there has been fraud, do the authorities step in after the fact.
In addition, as a practical matter, the risk of private litigation is low, in part because institutional investors often agree by contract to hold their managers liable only for willful misconduct or gross negligence, and in part because any institution perceived in the marketplace to be too quick to bring a legal action could find itself excluded from future attractive investment opportunities.
In the retail-protective mode, by contrast, market participants are subject to pervasive regulation. For example, contrast hedge funds — the vehicle of choice for many institutional investors — with mutual funds — the vehicle available to retail investors. Mutual funds are subject to the full panoply of retail-protective regulation. The company that manages a mutual fund, the company that distributes the mutual fund shares and the mutual fund itself all must register with the government. All three are subject to extensive examinations and inspections by the government. Mutual funds must file extensive registration statements and reports with the government. And rules and regulations tell mutual funds how they can, and cannot, conduct their operations. Among other things, these regulations impede or render impossible a variety of investment strategies and compensation arrangements.
Hedge funds, by contrast, suffer none of these burdens. Nor do venture capital funds or private equity funds.
Imagine you are a talented money manager with the ability to outperform the competition by investing in the public markets, by investing in start-up companies or by buying mature companies. Imagine further that the highly sophisticated professionals who manage money for institutional investors recognize your ability, so they are prepared to permit you to manage their money. Why wouldn't you choose to form an institutions-only investment vehicle subject to the antifraud-only regulatory regime?
Well, you might not if the incremental advantage of the capital and liquidity provided by retail investors outweighed the additional costs and burdens their presence imposes. Evidently, however, that generally must not be the case for venture capital, private equity, hedge funds, the 144A market and others.
Quite obviously, this does not mean that we should dismantle or cut back on the retail-protective regimes. Institutional investors have economies of scale retail investors lack. If you're contemplating an investment of tens of millions, you can afford rigorous professional analysis and due diligence. If you're investing tens of thousands, you can't. So retail investors require a regulatory regime that can serve as a substitute. And that's not going to change.
Nor would it make sense to foist the costs and burdens of retail-protective regimes on institutional investors who neither want nor need them.
But now that the defined benefit plan is an endangered species, retail investors increasingly are managing their own pensions. Their inability to obtain the same desirable diversification and return characteristics that institutional portfolios can is a challenge that demands our attention. Some university endowments now seek to attract high net worth donors by offering them side-by-side participation in the endowment's investments. We may need to start considering whether there are better solutions — and more broadly available solutions — than that.
Now that we've examined the deretailization phenomenon, I'd like to use the balance of this lecture to discuss some of its consequences. Let's start with institutionalization.
Institutionalization of course is the flip side of deretailization. If direct investment by retail investors is declining, the role of institutional investors is correspondingly growing. As it seems likely this trend will continue, we need to focus on who these institutions are and what new issues their increasing dominance presents.
Institutionalization presents at least two principal challenges. The first results from the increased concentration of ownership in the hands of fewer and fewer institutions, some of which may not have purely economic motivations. The second results from the need to provide retail investors who increasingly invest only through intermediaries with the necessary tools and protections to do so more wisely.
Let's consider these in turn. We start with concentration.
With deretailization comes increasing concentration of ownership. We typically imagine our major markets as comprising innumerable atomic participants, each too small to have meaningful individual influence. We imagine ownership to be widely dispersed, and the action of the market to be the product of the wisdom of almost countless anonymous decision makers. But even today, that's no longer entirely so. And if current trends continue, it will be even less so in the future.
Reflecting deretailization, I've seen estimates that America's 100 largest money managers together now hold something like 60% of all stocks. Once again, the precise numbers are unimportant: only the general order of magnitude matters.
But, think about what that means: Suppose you could get a decision maker with authority from each of those money managers to attend a meeting. You would not need a very big room — you could book the smallest seminar room at the hotel. Ten rows of ten seats each would suffice. And with their 60% stake in the entire public company universe, those 100 decision makers could, especially if they chose to act together, wield remarkable influence over all our lives.
We need to begin focusing on who those 100 decision makers are, especially if they might act in concert or in conscious parallelism. If essentially all our public corporations, the engines of our economy, may be influenced or controlled by a small roomful of people, it's time to take a close look at who they are and what motivates them.
Increasingly, we need to ask questions like:
In short, we may need to start worrying not only about the governance of the companies in the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000, but increasingly about the governance and collaboration of the largest 100 institutional owners who increasingly will influence and control the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000. This will be especially true if the governance or other characteristics of any significant number of those 100 top institutional owners suggest they may have motivations beyond wealth maximization alone.
As just one example, I'd like to focus on a class of institutional investors we should suspect might have non-economic motivations: sovereign wealth funds.
Sovereign wealth funds are just beginning to attract public attention. And well they should. What is a sovereign wealth fund? A sovereign wealth fund is a pool of capital controlled by a government. Governments obtain these funds in a variety of ways. In many cases, the funds are petrodollars accumulated from the sale of oil. In some cases, they are simply central bank reserve holdings.
Current estimates vary but suggest that sovereign wealth funds today probably total somewhere around $2 to $3 trillion. That's about the same — or actually a little more — than currently is held in the aggregate by hedge funds. And sovereign wealth fund holdings are increasing rapidly. Knowledgeable observers have estimated that by 2015 sovereign wealth funds will have grown to about $12 trillion in assets.
That's serious money. And that's before including their close cousins, the state-controlled enterprises.
Think of sovereign wealth funds this way.
Perhaps there are a few in the crowd who would cheer. But my guess is most of you would have some reservations. And, I think, rightly so.
In fact, of course, through sovereign wealth funds and state-controlled enterprises foreign governments are doing everything I just mentioned. The trouble, of course, is that governments can be counted upon to act out of more than just economic motivations. It's in their DNA. And that's a potential problem.
It's a potential problem, even if it's your own government. It's a much bigger potential problem, I think, if it's somebody else's government, because then you have to compound already serious concerns about diminished economic efficiency and suboptimal allocation of resources with foreign policy and national security concerns.
The danger is that it's too easy to conflate investment by foreign private interests with investment by foreign governmental interests. The two are very different, just as investment by a U.S. private enterprise is very different from an investment by an entity controlled by the U.S. federal government or a state government. One can cheer foreign direct private investment, while at the same time having real concerns about foreign direct governmental investment.
At the present time, the G7 nations and the President's Working Group on Capital Markets, among others, are considering some of these issues. And Chairman Cox is delivering a lecture just today at another university focused on this same topic. His remarks will be on our website, and I commend them to you.
Sovereign wealth funds and their cousins, the state-controlled enterprises, are one example of a class of institutional owners whose behavior can be expected to reflect, in part, non-economic motivations. Any other class of institutional investors that has objectives beyond maximizing financial returns would pose similar issues.
Before deretailization took hold with a vengeance, we could rely on the workings of a market comprising countless atomic actors to shield us from the distorting effects of non-economic motivations. With the trend toward deretailization and institutionalization, we will need to shift our attention to this new level, to ensure that our economy, and the individual citizens who participate in it, continue to benefit from the dynamism we have enjoyed for so long.
Now let's change gears again and consider the consequences of deretailization from yet another perspective. If the investment choice most important to retail investors increasingly is not which stock or bond to buy, but which fund (or other intermediary) to choose, then we should be seeking to ensure that retail investors have the right tools to make that choice wisely.
This should be the new frontier in regulatory policy.
Why do I use a term like "new frontier"? Because this is an area in which I believe the most recent developments in the theory of finance, including behavioral finance, have yet to be applied.
Advances in the theory of finance have affected securities markets and securities regulation over the last several decades just as much as have computers, the internet and globalization. Take, for example, the publication in 1973 of "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities" by Fischer Black and Myron Scholes. Without Black-Scholes, it's hard to imagine there would be derivatives with literally hundreds of trillions of dollars of notional value outstanding today.
Or consider just one more example: the publication in 1965 of "The Behavior of Stock Market Prices" by Eugene Fama. That publication and others like it brought us such developments as the index fund, the shelf registration system, the fraud-on-the-market theory — and much more.
Given the practical applications of theoretical finance, it's not surprising that today hedge fund managers regularly turn up at academic conferences and eagerly scour the academic literature for the next big thing.
Regulators should too. If the investment choice most important for retail investors these days is not which stock or bond to buy, but which fund (or other intermediary) to choose, we need to find ways to apply the insights recent finance theory has given us in the service of retail investors.
Let me illustrate with just a few examples: the first from behavioral finance, and then from the mathematical theory of active management — but don't worry, I'm not going to go mathematical on you. Obviously, in this lecture I have time to do justice to none of these examples, but merely to suggest the potential waiting to be exploited.
The burgeoning discipline of behavioral finance is predicated on the empirical observation that we're prone to certain categories of mental errors. Judge Posner, in his lecture here last year, noted this and referred to one failing in particular: the tendency to see patterns where they don't exist.
Undoubtedly, there once was survival value in this tendency. It's better to have an overly sensitive pattern recognition system in your brain that occasionally gives false positives when considering whether there's a tiger hiding behind the bush ahead. A false positive might lead to an unnecessary adrenaline dump into the bloodstream, but one may not get more than one chance to miss the tiger if there's one actually there.
When evaluating a manager's past performance, however, this tendency to see patterns where none exist leads to the irrational expectation that streaks will persist. As Judge Posner pointed out, people are very poor at intuiting probabilities.
We don't really need sturdy academic studies to tell us this; we know it from our own experience. But sturdy academic studies there are. And they inform us that, just as many gamblers erroneously believe in "hot streaks" and "cold dice," many investors believe a mutual fund that shows past performance better than an appropriate benchmark index is much more likely to continue to outperform in the future.
Countless academic studies, however, have shown that very often such outperformance fails to persist. Determining whether there's a statistically sound basis for concluding that a fund's past outperformance resulted from skill and not just luck, however, requires not only sophisticated statistical techniques but also access to information — detailed and complete trade and position records — that are not required to be made public. So, in most situations, it's actually impossible even for an investor with sophisticated statistical tools to tell from the publicly available past performance data whether a fund manager's past results more likely reflect skill or just luck.
Nonetheless, investors understandably want past performance information — what else is there to consider that's as interesting? — so we at the SEC require funds to disclose their 1-, 3-, 5- and 10-year historical return data. We then also require funds to tell investors that past performance doesn't necessarily predict future results — which, of course, is the only reason past performance would be of any interest at all to a new investor.
How does this work in practice? Outperformance is an asset magnet: the dollars flow to the funds that show records of outperformance.
Given that we know that people routinely give undue credence to the predictive power of streaks, and given that we know that fund outperformance often fails to persist, shouldn't we be encouraging mutual fund managers to explore how statistical tools might be used in appropriate cases to give investors more reliable indications whether there's any sound reason to believe a fund manager is skillful and not just lucky?
If we did, in many cases a fund's past performance might not differ from that of a relevant benchmark sufficiently to demonstrate skill. In some cases, there would be solid evidence of skill. Shouldn't investors know that? If you invest in mutual funds, wouldn't you like to know that?
Before we wrap all this up and take stock of where we stand, I have one final set of examples from an area in which our current approach doesn't seem to be keeping up with advances in finance theory, and that's with respect to the performance of actively managed mutual funds.
Let's perform a thought experiment that I think you'll find illuminating. Let's imagine that you have a nice balance in your 401(k) account and have allocated a portion of your 401(k) portfolio to stock. Let's further imagine that you're been persuaded that the stock market is pretty efficient, so you have decided to put the majority of those funds in an index fund that tracks the S&P 500. Finally, let's imagine that you nonetheless also believe you may have identified a hedge fund manager who just might be able to outperform the index, so you'd like to put a modest fraction of your portfolio with that manager. Of course, in the real world, assuming you're a retail investor like me, you probably couldn't get into the hedge fund. But this is a thought experiment, so we can just wave our magic wand and — presto! — you're in. In short, in your portfolio you've got most of your money in an S&P 500 index fund and a lesser amount in a hedge fund that takes long positions in some S&P 500 stocks and short positions in others.
So, as a result of these two investments, what's your total net position when you consider both of them together?
Well, if the hedge fund is long in a given stock, that position is added to the indexed position. But if the hedge fund is short that stock, it's instead subtracted. So your total net position is just a portfolio that, relative to the S&P 500, is overweighted in the stocks the hedge fund is long in and underweighted in the stocks the hedge fund is short in.
Which means your total net position looks a lot like most actively managed large-cap mutual funds: overweighted in some stocks, and underweighted in others, relative to the S&P 500.
In fact, let's now imagine you didn't go to the bother of buying a separate index fund and a separate hedge fund. Let's assume instead that you just decided to buy a single, actively managed, large-cap mutual fund. If you knew the over- and underweightings of the S&P 500 stocks held by your new actively managed mutual fund, you could then simply mentally reverse the process I just described and deduce the portfolio of the virtual hedge fund concealed within your actively managed fund. At any one moment in time, all that is required to do that is subtraction. Conceptually, the mutual fund portfolio minus an S&P 500 portfolio of the same size equals the virtual hedge fund portfolio.
So, an actively managed, large-cap mutual fund can be viewed as just a combination of a virtual index fund and a virtual hedge fund.
You with me so far?
The presence of the virtual hedge fund is, of course, why you chose active management. If there were zero holdings in the virtual hedge fund — no overweightings or underweightings — then you would have only an index fund.
Unfortunately, in real life this decomposition of a mutual fund into the sum of a virtual index fund and a virtual hedge fund can be accomplished only by someone in possession of all the detailed and complete trade and position information for the fund — information that funds are now required to make public only in snapshot form once a quarter. Analysts with access only to publicly available data must struggle along with statistical techniques to try to estimate what really happened. That's very limiting and really doesn't work very well. Nonetheless, as you may know, academics have attempted such analyses. And, if they chose to do so, funds could disclose the results of analyses of this kind without disclosing their proprietary trade and position information.
It's quite useful to think of an actively managed fund this way.
First, for example, this way of looking at things focuses a bright light on the fees and expenses attributable to the virtual hedge fund. The fees and expenses of the virtual index fund should be consistent with the very small fees and expenses one would expect to pay for a real index fund of the same size. The balance of the fees and expenses incurred by the over-all fund are then attributable to the virtual hedge fund. When this analysis is done, the magnitude of those fees and expenses relative to the size of the virtual hedge fund sometimes is truly eye-popping. Which makes you think maybe this sort of analysis should be done, so investors can see what the results are.
Second, this way of looking at things also focuses a bright light on the performance of the virtual hedge fund. Unfortunately, indications from the academic literature suggest this performance can be less than satisfactory in some cases. In one academic study, for example, the absolute magnitude of the mean return in excess of the benchmark — the "alpha" — deduced by the author from published data covering over 150 large-cap funds was roughly 9%. That would have been respectable, had the sign been positive. Unfortunately, it wasn't. An average of minus 9% is not so good.
Of course, once you dilute the signal by slopping in the performance of a considerably larger virtual index fund — the way performance in fact is reported — the performance of the virtual hedge fund is masked, and things don't look anywhere nearly so bad.
Third, this way of looking at things also focuses a bright light on the relative size of the virtual hedge fund and the virtual index fund. Indications from the academic literature suggest in many cases the virtual hedge fund is far smaller than the virtual index fund.
Which means, using the Wall Street jargon, investors in some of these funds may be paying for alpha, but getting beta. They are paying the costs of active management, but getting instead something that looks a lot like an over-priced index fund.
So don't we need to be asking how to provide investors who choose active management with the information they need, in a form they can use, to determine whether or not they're getting the desired bang for their buck — and at what level of statistical reliability?
Well: there you have it.
The on-going deretailization of the last few decades shows no signs of abating. The compelling advantages that mutual funds and other intermediaries offer by way of professional management, diversification and economies of scale will continue to attract ever-growing numbers of retail investors.
The costs of retail-protective regulatory regimes will continue to encourage the development of both institutions-only trading markets and institutions-only asset classes, but reducing the protections afforded retail investors in response to this trend is rightly unthinkable. So we may need to start thinking about whether we can develop new approaches that efficiently afford retail investors indirect exposure to these new markets and asset classes without undue risk.
Also, we increasingly will need to focus on the consequences of the concentration of the ownership of our public companies in ever-fewer institutional hands. This means looking carefully at the non-economic motivations some of those institutions may have and considering difficult questions about what to do in response.
In addition, as the choice that matters for retail investors increasingly is which mutual fund or other intermediary to buy, not which stock to buy, we will need to bring all the latest tools from behavioral finance and finance theory to bear in the service of those investors.
And all of this will take place in a world in which globalization and the onrush of developing technology will be a constant backdrop. Much is uncertain, but one thing is clear: the future of securities regulation is guaranteed to be both challenging and intensely interesting. I, for one, look forward to it.
Thank you for your patience and attention.
1 For the sake of tidiness, I should explain what I mean by a "retail investor." For our purposes, precision is unnecessary. By "retail investor" I just mean those investors who lack the sophistication or net worth to gain access to institutional markets; in other words, most individual investors. With this definition, however, some high net worth families and individuals don't qualify as retail investors.
2 For the sake of completeness, I note that securities issued in 144A offerings often are later registered with the SEC in a somewhat technical process called an "Exxon Capital exchange," not to attract capital and liquidity from retail investors, but rather to help satisfy regulatory requirements that apply to some classes of investors, such as insurance companies. In the wake of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, however, these offerings are increasingly structured as "144A for life deals," without any follow-on registration.


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A few weeks back, I wrote about my Windows Secrets co-author Rafael Rivera and his attempts to find out what's behind the widely-reported claims made in a recent lawsuit against Microsoft for its supposed tracking of user locations via Windows Phone. At the time, Rafael found the claim to be lacking with no real proof that Microsoft was tracking phone locations. But he said he'd look into this issue more closely once BUILD came and went.
Well, BUILD came and went. And Rafael has indeed done more testing to determine whether Microsoft is tracking the location of Windows Phone handsets without users' consent. And somewhat surprisingly, he has found that the claims are at least partially correct. That is, Windows Phone does transmit location data to Microsoft servers before the user gives consent for that activity.
"[Data is sent from Windows Phone to] agps.location.live.net and to Microsoft's Location Inference (codenamed Orion) service hosted at inference.location.live.net," he writes. "Items transmitted include (but aren't limited to) OS version, device information, [nearby] wireless access points, and various GUID-based identifiers ... This behavior appears to contradict Microsoft's earlier statements to the U.S. House of Representatives."
Now, I'd point out to conspiracy theorists that sending data does not equate to storing data. Indeed, Rafael notes as much in his post. "The question is whether the Microsoft servers in question are in fact collecting data about the phone or simply returning this information with no storage abilities," he adds. "Only Microsoft can tell us what they're doing with this information."
And why they're doing it, especially given the strenuous denials they've provided so far.
Regardless, I think the lack of proof around the storing of data gives Microsoft an out. Assuming of course they're not as evil as some believe. As always, a little transparency would go a long way here.


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Jury trials are generally held on Thursdays. You will need to call the Court each Wednesday after 5:30 p.m. during the month you are to serve. The number to call is 253-922-6635. There will be a recorded message that will either direct you to report for jury duty or will indicate that the jury trial has been cancelled.
You may be excused from jury service due to a medical exemption. Attach a letter from your physician to the juror questionnaire and return it to the Court.
A job related exemption requires a letter from your employer. Since jury service is for a very limited amount of time, your employer must show that your presence is vital and that your absence would create an undue hardship.
You are eligible for jury duty, even if you do not live in Fife, as long as you live in Pierce County. However, if you are now living a great distance away and travel is a hardship, you may request in writing to be excused.You can request a postponement of jury service by writing to:
Fife Municipal Court3737 Pacific Highway EFife, WA 98424
Yes, jurors are compensated at a rate of $10 per day plus mileage. Checks for jury services are mailed within 30 days of jury service.
Municipal Court jurors hear testimony and view evidence regarding misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor cases such as driving under the influence (DUI), driving while license suspended, theft, and assault. More serious felony cases such as robbery and homicide are handled in Superior Court. Jurors will not be hearing civil cases.
Potential jurors are randomly selected and mailed a questionnaire to determine their eligibility. To be eligible for jury service a person must be a citizen of the United States, at least 18 years of age, a resident of Pierce County and able to communicate in English.
Eligible jurors are placed in a jury pool for six months. Each month, Fife Municipal Court calls a number of jurors from the pool to serve. Jurors receive a Jury Summons from the Court. Jury service is for a period of one month. Jurors are required to serve on only one trial during this time. The average trial is one day in duration.
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Salam all,
I have deleted my opening sentence a few times hehehez cos I am having a mental block....dunno what to write here today. Sometimes, I just couldnt be bothered to open up this little space of mine but sometimes I just want to update and update and update and blog walk every minute while at times I just feel bllleaargghh!! It does feel great isnt it when u have friends saying how they enjoy reading your blog and enjoy looking at the photos too. I really appreciate the kind compliments cos I know I am not a good writer nor a good photographer, am just an average person but these kind words makes me want to update my blog again ;)
So, here I am with my talam pisang entry. First time ever in my life that I ever attempted to make talam pisang and I am really happy with the result....it really was a successful attempt. Since I know that no one will like these talam except me, myself and I, I only made half of the recipe and got 26 pieces of these little beauties. I had 6 pieces during iftar just now...yum yum. Have already packed some away for them to be shared tomorrow. As much as I luv them, I dont think I can finish all of them myself hehehez.
Might be away again maybe until after Eid cos I too have orders to fulfil....ehem ehem I have been a small time seasonal entrepreneur for the past 5 yrs here :ppp but will definitely update when I get sick of looking at the cookies that I will be making. Got to start my production latest by this Thursday otherwise, I will not get them ready on time. Wish me luck peeps ;)
Source : Kak Ummi @ Home Sweet Home
Recipe Adapted From: Chef Hanieliza @ Buku Aneka Talam dan Kuih Lapis
Bottom Layer:
3 Cups Thin Coconut Milk
1 Cup Mashed Banana
1 Cup Rice Flour
1/2 Cup Sugar
2 Tblsp Custard Powder
A Pinch Of Salt
Yellow Food Colouring (I Added)
Top Layer :
3 Cups Thick Coconut Milk
1 Cup Rice Flour
1/2 Tsp Salt
Method :
Lightly oil the moulds.
Mix well all the ingredients for the bottom layer and pour into the moulds 3/4 full.
Steam the mixture for abt 10-15mins.
Mix well all the ingredients for the bottom layer.
Sieve the mixture into a pot.
By using low heat, heat the mixture until it produces a light steam and has thicken a little.
Turn off heat.
Once the bottom layer is cooked, use a fork and scrape the top.
Pour the bottom mixture into the moulds and steam it for another 10-15mins.


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We took to the track last weekend. The automotive circus came to town, in the form of a 24 Hours of LeMons endurance race at Infinion Raceway just north of San Francisco. LeMons (Pro Tip: It's pronounced "lemons") is the nationwide auto racing series for crappy race cars that cost $500 or less. It's car racing for hackers, basically, in a spectacle of self-parody that's equal parts Burning Man, NASCAR, and Click and Clack.
Telstar Logistics participated as part of Bernal Dads Racing, a LeMons team from the neighborhood where our Global Headquarters is located. The Bernal Dads foolishly put us in a driving suit, then strapped us in the driver's seat of "The Whale," No. 245, the team's battle-scarred1984 Volvo 240 station wagon.
Don't let the appearance fool you though. The Whale is kind of like the Millennium Falcon; It may not look like much, but its got it where it counts. Sure, the body has taken a lot of hits during its impossibly long LeMons career. But after so many races and so much tinkering, "the car is properly sorted," as one Bernal Dad put it.
I drove The Whale during a driving rain that soaked the racetrack so thoroughly that many of the 170 cars on the track took turns spinning off helplessly into the grass while trying to navigate the curves. But The Whale was in its element. It tracked firmly in the wet, revved-up enthusiastically on the straights, and braked reliably when diving into corners. The fun began after we spent a few laps getting to know the feel of the car. After that, there was rubbin', and there was racin', and it was a blast.
The next day, when the checkered flag fell the end of the weekend, The Whale had finished fourth in B Class, and 19th overall. Not too shabby!
The winner in A Class (least-crappy) was Team Cerveza, driving a Dos Equis-themed BMW that they dubbed "The Most Interesting Car in the World." The car was emblazoned with fake quotes written in the voice of the brand's Most Interesting Man in the World advertisements. (eg. "If it ran you off the road, you would thank it.")
But the really interesting part appears on the car's backside. "FREE BEER, my friends," it says, with a beer tap mounted on the trunk lid. After Saturday night's race, Team Cerveza pushed their car around the paddock, dispensing free beer via the tap from a keg they installed in the trunk. Interesting!
When Telstar Logistics wasn't driving, we were taking pictures. Here are a lot more:
PHOTOS: Telstar Logtistics