title: Special drawing rights

text: Allocations are not made on a regular basis and have only occurred on rare occasions. The first round took place because of a situation that was soon reversed, the possibility of an insufficient amount of U.S. dollars because of U.S. reluctance to run the deficit necessary to supply future demand. Extraordinary circumstances have, likewise, led to the other XDR allocation events. For example, during the global financial crisis of 2009, XDR 182.6 billion was allocated to "provide liquidity to the global economic system and supplement member countries’ official reserves". The 2011 allocations were to low-income member countries.


title: Special drawing rights

text: An IMF member country that requires actual foreign currency may sell its SDRs to another member country in exchange for the currency. To sell a part or all its SDRs, the country must find a willing party to buy them. The IMF acts as an intermediary in this voluntary exchange.


title: Special drawing rights

text: The IMF also has the authority under the designation mechanism to ask member countries with strong foreign exchange reserves to purchase XDRs from those with weak reserves. The maximum obligation any country has under this mechanism is currently equal to twice the amount of its SDR allocation. As of 2015, XDRs may only be exchanged for euros, Japanese yen, UK pounds, or US dollars. The IMF says exchanging XDRs can take "several days."


title: Special drawing rights

text: It is not, however, the IMF that pays out foreign currency in exchange for XDRs: the claim to currency that XDRs represent is not a claim on the IMF.


title: Special drawing rights

text: The IMF calculates a weekly interest rate, which is based on "a weighted average of representative interest rates on short-term debt in the money markets of the XDR basket currencies". No interest is payable on the SDRs allocated to a country by the IMF. However, interest is payable by an IMF member country that has exchanged (sold) some or all of the SDRs it was allocated, and interest is paid to a member country that holds more SDRs than it was allocated (i.e., the country that bought SDRs from another member).


title: Special drawing rights

text: The XDR is used in international transactions, including export quotas in the IMF members and the number of official reserve assets which were in their own currencies. It is traded on the main foreign exchange market, including foreign exchange trading volume, whether there are forward exchange markets.


title: Special drawing rights

text: Some international organizations use the XDR as a unit of account. The IMF says using the XDR in this way "help[s] cope with exchange rate volatility." As of 2001, organizations that use the XDR as a unit of account, besides the IMF itself, include: Universal Postal Union, African Development Bank, Arab Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, Bank for International Settlements, Common Fund for Commodities, East African Development Bank, Economic Community of West African States, International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and Islamic Development Bank. It is not only international organizations that use the XDR in this way. JETRO uses XDRs to price foreign aid. In addition, charges, liabilities, and fees prescribed by some international treaties are denominated in XDRs. In 2003, the Bank for International Settlements ceased to use the gold franc as their currency, in favour of XDR.


title: Special drawing rights

text: In some international treaties and agreements, XDRs are used to value penalties, charges or prices. For example, the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims caps personal liability for damages to ships at XDR 330,000. The Montreal Convention and other treaties also use XDRs in this way, capping damages at XDR 128,821.


title: Special drawing rights

text: According to the IMF, "the SDR may not be any country’s optimal basket", but a few countries do peg their currencies to the XDR. One possible benefit to nations with XDR pegs is that they may be perceived to be more transparent. As of 2000, the number of countries that did so was four. This is a substantial decrease from 1983, when 14 countries had XDR pegs. As of 2010, Syria pegs its pound to the XDR.


title: Conflict of interest

text: A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations in which the personal interest of an individual or organization might adversely affect a duty owed to make decisions for the benefit of a third party.


title: Conflict of interest

text: An "interest" is a commitment, obligation, duty or goal associated with a particular social role or practice. By definition, a "conflict of interest" occurs if, within a particular decision-making context, an individual is subject to two coexisting interests that are in direct conflict with each other. Such a matter is of importance because under such circumstances the decision-making process can be disrupted or compromised in a manner that affects the integrity or the reliability of the outcomes.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Typically, a conflict of interest arises when an individual finds themselves occupying two social roles simultaneously which generate opposing benefits or loyalties. The interests involved can be pecuniary or non-pecuniary. The existence of such conflicts is an objective fact, not a state of mind, and does not in itself indicate any lapse or moral error. However, especially where a decision is being taken in a fiduciary context, it is important that the contending interests be clearly identified and the process for separating them is rigorously established. Typically, this will involve the conflicted individual either giving up one of the conflicting roles or else recusing himself or herself from the particular decision-making process that is in question.


title: Conflict of interest

text: The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of inappropriateness. Therefore, a conflict of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any corruption occurs. A conflict of interest exists if the circumstances are reasonably believed (on the basis of past experience and objective evidence) to create a risk that a decision "may" be unduly influenced by other, secondary interests, and not on whether a particular individual "is actually" influenced by a secondary interest.


title: Conflict of interest

text: A widely used definition is: "A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest." "Primary interest" refers to the principal goals of the profession or activity, such as the protection of clients, the health of patients, the integrity of research, and the duties of public officer. "Secondary interest" includes personal benefit and is not limited to only financial gain but also such motives as the desire for professional advancement, or the wish to do favours for family and friends. These secondary interests are not treated as wrong in and of themselves, but become objectionable when they are believed to have greater weight than the primary interests. Conflict of interest rules in the public sphere mainly focus on financial relationships since they are relatively more objective, fungible, and quantifiable, and usually involve the political, legal, and medical fields.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Conflict of interests have been described as the most pervasive issue facing modern lawyers. Legal conflicts rules are at their core corollaries to a lawyer's two basic fiduciary duties: (1) the duty of loyalty and (2) the duty to preserve client confidences. The lawyer's duty of loyalty is fundamental to the attorney-client relationship and has developed from the biblical maxim that no person can serve more than one master. Just as fundamental is the lawyer's duty to maintain client confidences, which protects clients' legitimate expectations that they can make full disclosure of all facts to their attorneys without fear of exposure.


title: Conflict of interest

text: The basic formulation of the conflicts of interest rule is that a conflict exists "if there is a substantial risk that the lawyer's representation of the client would be materially and adversely affected by the lawyer's own interests or by the lawyers' duties to another current client, a former client, or a third person." The duty of loyalty requires an attorney not to act directly adverse to an existing client, even on an unrelated matter where the lawyer has no client confidences. Such a loyalty conflict has been labeled a "concurrent" conflict of interest. The duty of confidentiality is protected in rules prohibiting so-called "successive" conflicts of interest, when a lawyer proposes to act adversely to the interests of a former client. A lawyer who has formerly represented a client in a matter is precluded from representing another person in the same or a substantially related matter that is materially adverse to the former client. These two basic formulations – that a lawyer may not act directly adverse to a current client or adverse to a former client on a substantially related matter – form the cornerstone of modern legal conflicts of interest rules.


title: Conflict of interest

text: An attorney owes the client undivided loyalty. The courts have described this principle as "integral to the nature of an attorney's duty." Without undivided loyalty, irreparable damage may be done "to the existing client's sense of trust and security – features essential to the effective functioning of the fiduciary relationship…" A key feature of the duty of loyalty is that an attorney may not act directly adverse to a current client or represent a litigation adversary of the client in an unrelated matter. The damage done is to the client's confidence that the lawyer is serving his or her interests faithfully. The most obvious example of a lawyer acting directly adverse to a client is when the lawyer sues the client. At the other end of the spectrum is when a lawyer represents business competitors of the client who are not adverse to it in a lawsuit or negotiation. Representing business competitors of a client in unrelated matters does not constitute direct adversity nor give rise to a loyalty conflict. As one state bar ethics committee has noted:


title: Conflict of interest

text: Direct adversity may arise in litigation when an attorney sues a client or defends an adversary in an action his or her client has brought. It may also arise in the context of business negotiations, when a lawyer negotiates on behalf of an adversary against a current client, even if the matter is unrelated to any matter the lawyer is handling for the client. However, merely advocating opposite sides of the same legal issue does not give rise to direct adversity. Even if a lawyer's advocacy in an unrelated matter may make unfavorable law for another client, such effects are only indirect and not subject to the conflicts rules. There is no conflict in advocating positions that may turn out to be unfavorable to another client so long as the lawyer is not directly litigating or negotiating against that client.


title: Conflict of interest

text: One of the most frequently arising questions in corporate practice is whether parent corporations and their subsidiaries are to be treated as the same or different entities for conflicts purposes. The first authority to rule on this question was the California State Bar Ethics Committee, which issued a formal opinion ruling that parent corporations and their subsidiaries are to be considered distinct entities for conflicts purposes. The California committee considered a situation where an attorney undertook a representation directly adverse to the wholly owned subsidiary of a client, when the lawyer did not represent the subsidiary. Relying on the entity as client framework in Model Rule 1.13, the California committee opined that there was no conflict as long as the parent and subsidiary did not have a "sufficient unity of interests." The committee announced the following standard for evaluating the separateness of parent and subsidiary:


title: Conflict of interest

text: As one commentator has noted, "For a state ethics opinion, California Opinion 1989-113 has been unusually influential, both with courts there, with ethics committees elsewhere, and through the latter set of ethics committee opinions, with… recent decisions in other jurisdictions." The California opinion has been followed by ethics committees in such jurisdictions as New York, Illinois and the District of Columbia, and served as the basis of ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 95-390. The law in most jurisdictions is that parent corporations and their subsidiaries are treated as distinct entities, except in limited circumstances noted by the California ethics committee where they have a unity of interests.


title: Conflict of interest

text: The Second Circuit has adopted a variation of the California standard. In "GSI Commerce Solutions, Inc. v. BabyCenter LLC," the court ruled that parent corporations and their subsidiaries should be treated as the same entity for conflicts purposes when both companies rely "on the same in-house legal department to handle their legal affairs." However, the court ruled that the lawyer and client can contract around this default standard. The court quoted with approval the opinion of the City of New York Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics, which stated, "corporate family conflicts may be averted by ... an engagement letter ... that delineates which affiliates, if any, of a corporate client the law firm represents..."


title: Conflict of interest

text: A concurrent conflict will also exist when "there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer's responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer." Comment 8 to Model Rule 1.7 states, by way of example, that an attorney representing multiple persons forming a joint venture may be materially limited in recommending the courses of action that any jointly represented client may take because of the lawyer's duty to the other participants in the joint venture.


title: Conflict of interest

text: The Supreme Court of Minnesota found a material limitation conflict in "In re Petition for Disciplinary Action Against Christopher Thomas Kalla." In "Kalla," an attorney was disciplined for representing a borrower bringing suit against her lender for charging a usurious interest rate while simultaneously representing the mortgage broker who arranged the loan as a third party defendant in the same lawsuit. Although neither client had brought an action against the other, the court found a material limitation conflict: "Advocating for Client A would potentially harm Client B, who was potentially liable for contribution. Kalla's ability to fully advocate for both was materially limited by Kalla's dual representation."


title: Conflict of interest

text: Informed consent requires that each affected client be fully advised about the material ways that the representation could adversely affect that client. In joint representations, the information provided should include the interests of the lawyer and other affected client, the courses of action that could be foreclosed due to the joint representation, the potential danger that the client's confidential information might be disclosed, and the potential consequences if the lawyer had to withdraw at a later stage in the proceedings. Merely telling the client that there are conflicts, without further explanation, is not adequate disclosure. The lawyer must fully disclose the potential impairment to the lawyer's loyalty and explain how another unconflicted attorney might better serve the client's interests.


title: Conflict of interest

text: It is not unusual in the current legal environment of large multinational and global law firms for the firms to seek advance or prospective waivers of future conflicts from their clients. A law firm is particularly likely to seek a prospective waiver when a large corporation seeks the specialized knowledge of the firm in a small matter, without a high likelihood of repeat business. As the ABA stated in its Ethics Opinion 93-372:


title: Conflict of interest

text: Prospective waivers are most likely to be upheld by the courts when they are given by sophisticated corporate clients represented by independent counsel in the negotiation of the waiver. However, in "Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, LLP v. J-M Manufacturing Co.," the California Supreme court held that a prospective waiver that did not make specific disclosure of an actual current conflict was not effective to waive that conflict. As the court said,


title: Conflict of interest

text: The "Sheppard Mullin" case does not invalidate prospective waivers in California. It only holds that waivers of current and actual conflicts must specifically disclose those conflicts, an unremarkable conclusion.


title: Conflict of interest

text: If a client will not consent to a conflict and allow a lawyer to take on another representation, the lawyer cannot then withdraw from the existing representation, thus turning the existing client into a former client and ending the duty of loyalty. As the courts have stated, the lawyer cannot "drop a client like a hot potato" to cure a conflict. This label has stuck, and the doctrine is now aptly called the "hot potato" doctrine. However, as one commentator has pointed out, the reasoning underlying this line of cases has been sparse, and few courts have attempted to justify this result through an analysis of the ethics rules. The unstated rationale behind the Hot Potato doctrine is that a withdrawal attempted without good cause under Model Rule 1.16(b) is an ineffective withdrawal, which does not successfully terminate the existing attorney-client relationship. When viewed in this light, a withdrawal accomplished with good cause should be an effective withdrawal that does permit a lawyer to take on a representation that would otherwise be conflicting, as long as there is no substantial relationship with the prior matter. The standard used to assess conflicts involving such former clients will be discussed in the next section.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Conflicts of interest rules involving former clients are primarily designed to enforce the attorney's duty to preserve a client's confidential information. Model Rule 1.9(a) sets forth this doctrine in a rule that has come to be known as the substantial relationship test. The rule states:


title: Conflict of interest

text: Without the substantial relationship test, a client attempting to prove that its former lawyer possesses its confidential information might have to disclose publicly the very confidential information it is trying to protect. The substantial relationship test was designed to protect against such disclosures. Under this test, the attorney's possession of the former client's confidential information is presumed if "confidential information material to the current dispute would normally have been imparted to the attorney by virtue of the nature of the former representation." The substantial relationship test reconstructs whether confidential information was likely to imparted by the former client to the lawyer by analyzing "the similarities between the two factual situations, the legal questions posed, and the nature and extent of the attorney's involvement with the cases."


title: Conflict of interest

text: The conflicts of an individual lawyer are imputed to all attorneys who "are associated with that lawyer in rendering legal services to others through a law partnership, professional corporation, sole proprietorship, or similar association." This imputation of conflicts can lead to difficulties when attorneys from one law firm leave and join another firm. The issue then arises whether the conflicts of the itinerant lawyer's former firm are imputed to his or her new firm.


title: Conflict of interest

text: In "Kirk v. First American Title Co.," the court ruled that an itinerant lawyer's conflicts are not imputed to his or her new law firm if that firm timely sets up an effective ethics screen preventing the lawyers from imparting any confidential information to the lawyers in the new firm. An effective ethics screen rebuts the presumption that the itinerant lawyers shared confidential information with the lawyers in the new firm. The components of an effective ethics screen, as described by the court in "Kirk," are:


title: Conflict of interest

text: Judicial disqualification, also referred to as "recusal", refers to the act of abstaining from participation in an official action such as a court case/legal proceeding due to a conflict of interest of the presiding court official or administrative officer. Applicable statutes or canons of ethics may provide standards for recusal in a given proceeding or matter. Providing that the judge or presiding officer must be free from disabling conflicts of interest makes the fairness of the proceedings less likely to be questioned.


title: Conflict of interest

text: In the practice of law, the duty of loyalty owed to a client prohibits an attorney (or a law firm) from representing any other party with interests adverse to those of a current client. The few exceptions to this rule require informed written consent from all affected clients, "i.e.", an "ethical wall". In some circumstances, a conflict of interest can never be waived by a client. In perhaps the most common example encountered by the general public, the same firm should not represent both parties in a divorce or child custody matter. Found conflict can lead to denial or disgorgement of legal fees, or in some cases (such as the failure to make mandatory disclosure), criminal proceedings. In 1998, a Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy partner was found guilty of failing to disclose a conflict of interest, disbarred, and sentenced to 15 months of imprisonment. In the United States, a law firm usually cannot represent a client if the client's interests conflict with those of another client, even if the two clients are represented by separate lawyers within the firm, unless (in some jurisdictions) the lawyer is segregated from the rest of the firm for the duration of the conflict. Law firms often employ software in conjunction with their case management and accounting systems in order to meet their duties to monitor their conflict of interest exposure and to assist in obtaining waivers.


title: Conflict of interest

text: More generally, conflicts of interest can be defined as any situation in which an individual or corporation (either private or governmental) is in a position to exploit a professional or official capacity in some way for their personal or corporate benefit.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Depending upon the law or rules related to a particular organization, the existence of a conflict of interest may not, in and of itself, be evidence of wrongdoing. In fact, for many professionals, it is virtually impossible to avoid having conflicts of interest from time to time. A conflict of interest can, however, become a legal matter, for example, when an individual tries (and/or succeeds in) influencing the outcome of a decision, for personal benefit. A director or executive of a corporation will be subject to legal liability if a conflict of interest breaches his/her duty of loyalty.


title: Conflict of interest

text: There often is confusion over these two situations. Someone accused of a conflict of interest may deny that a conflict exists because he/she did not act improperly. In fact, a conflict of interest can exist even if there are no improper acts as a result of it. (One way to understand this is to use the term "conflict of roles". A person with two roles—an individual who owns stock and is also a government official, for example—may experience situations where those two roles conflict. The conflict can be mitigated—see below—but it still exists. In and of itself, having two roles is not illegal, but the differing roles will certainly provide an incentive for improper acts in some circumstances.)


title: Conflict of interest

text: As an example, in the sphere of business and control, according to the Institute of Internal Auditors:


title: Conflict of interest

text: In the United Nations the permanent members of the UN Security Council have an interest in wanting to retain their veto power which conflicts with their obligation.


title: Conflict of interest

text: An organizational conflict of interest (OCI) may exist in the same way as described above, for instance where a corporation provides two types of service to the government and these services conflict (e.g.: manufacturing parts and then participating on a selection committee comparing parts manufacturers). Corporations may develop simple or complex systems to mitigate the risk or perceived risk of a conflict of interest. These risks can be evaluated by a government agency (for example, in a U.S. Government RFP) to determine whether the risks create a substantial advantage to the organization in question over its competition, or will decrease the overall competitiveness of the bidding process.


title: Conflict of interest

text: The influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medical research has been a major cause for concern. In 2009 a study found that "a number of academic institutions" do not have clear guidelines for relationships between Institutional Review Boards and industry. The medical-industrial complex describes the interaction between physician's conflict of interest with for-profit healthcare, continuing medical education, and patient's ethical considerations.


title: Conflict of interest

text: In contrast to this viewpoint, an article and associated editorial in the "New England Journal of Medicine" in May 2015 emphasized the importance of pharmaceutical industry-physician interactions for the development of novel treatments, and argued that moral outrage over industry malfeasance had unjustifiably led many to overemphasize the problems created by financial conflicts of interest. The article noted that major healthcare organizations such as National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the Food and Drug Administration had encouraged greater interactions between physicians and industry in order to bring greater benefits to patients.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Other improper acts that are sometimes classified as conflicts of interests may have better classification. For example, accepting bribes can be classified as corruption, use of government or corporate property or assets for personal use is fraud, and unauthorized distribution of confidential information is a security breach. For these improper acts, there is no inherent conflict.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Lessig noted that this does not mean that the funding source influenced the results. However, it does raise questions about the validity of the industry-funded studies specifically, because the researchers conducting those studies have a conflict of interest; they are subject at minimum to a natural human inclination to please the people who paid for their work. Lessig provided a similar summary of 326 studies of the potential harm from cell phone usage with results that were similar but not as stark.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Self-regulation of any group may also be a conflict of interest. If an entity, such as a corporation or government bureaucracy, is asked to eliminate unethical behavior within their own group, it may be in their interest in the short run to eliminate the appearance of unethical behavior, rather than the behavior itself, by keeping any ethical breaches hidden, instead of exposing and correcting them. An exception occurs when the ethical breach is already known by the public. In that case, it could be in the group's interest to end the ethical problem to which the public has knowledge, but keep remaining breaches hidden.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Insurance companies retain claims adjusters to represent their interest in adjusting claims. It is in the best interest of the insurance companies that the very smallest settlement is reached with its claimants. Based on the adjuster's experience and knowledge of the insurance policy it is very easy for the adjuster to convince an unknowing claimant to settle for less than what they may otherwise be entitled which could be a larger settlement. There is always a very good chance of a conflict of interest to exist when one adjuster tries to represent both sides of a financial transaction such as an insurance claim. This problem is exacerbated when the claimant is told, or believes, the insurance company's claims adjuster is fair and impartial enough to satisfy both theirs and the insurance company's interests. These types of conflicts could easily be avoided by the use of a third party platform that is independent of the insurers and is agreed to, and named in the policy.


title: Conflict of interest

text: A person working as the equipment purchaser for a company may get a bonus proportionate to the amount he's under budget by year end. However, this becomes an incentive for him to purchase inexpensive, substandard equipment. Therefore, this is counter to the interests of those in his company who must actually use the equipment. W. Edwards Deming listed "purchasing on price alone" as number 4 of his famous 14 points, and he often said things to the effect that "He who purchases on price alone deserves to get rooked."


title: Conflict of interest

text: Real estate brokers have an inherent conflict of interest with the sellers they represent, because the usual commission structures of brokers motivate them to sell quickly rather than to sell at a higher price. However, a broker representing a buyer has a distinct disincentive to negotiate a lower price on behalf of their client, because they will simultaneously be negotiating their own commission lower.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Regulating conflict of interest in government is one of the aims of political ethics. Public officials are expected to put service to the public and their constituents ahead of their personal interests. Conflict of interest rules are intended to prevent officials from making decisions in circumstances that could reasonably be perceived as violating this duty of office. Rules in the executive branch tend to be stricter and easier to enforce than in the legislative branch. This is visible through one study which highlights how Members of Congress who have specific stock investments may vote on regulatory and interventionist legislation. Two problems make legislative ethics of conflicts difficult and distinctive. First, as James Madison wrote, legislators should share a "communion of interests" with their constituents. Legislators cannot adequately represent the interests of constituents without also representing some of their own. As Senator Robert S. Kerr once said, "I represent the farmers of Oklahoma, although I have large farm interests. I represent the oil business in Oklahoma...and I am in the oil business...They don't want to send a man here who has no community of interest with them, because he wouldn't be worth a nickel to them." The problem is to distinguish special interests from the general interests of all constituents. Second, the "political interests" of legislatures include campaign contributions which they need to get elected, and which are generally not illegal and not the same as a bribe. But under many circumstances they can have the same effect. The problem here is how to keep the secondary interest in raising campaign funds from overwhelming what should be their primary interest—fulfilling the duties of office.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Politics in the United States is dominated in many ways by political campaign contributions. Candidates are often not considered "credible" unless they have a campaign budget far beyond what could reasonably be raised from citizens of ordinary means. The impact of this money can be found in many places, most notably in studies of how campaign contributions affect legislative behavior. For example, the price of sugar in the United States has been roughly double the international price for over half a century. In the 1980s, this added $3 billion to the annual budget of U.S. consumers, according to Stern, who provided the following summary of one part of how this happens:


title: Conflict of interest

text: This $3 billion translates into $41 per household per year. This is in essence a tax collected by a nongovernmental agency: It is a cost imposed on consumers by governmental decisions, but never considered in any of the standard data on tax collections.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Stern notes that sugar interests contributed $2.6 million to political campaigns, representing well over $1,000 return for each $1 contributed to political campaigns. This, however, does not include the cost of lobbying. Lessig cites six different studies that consider the cost of lobbying with campaign contributions on a variety of issues considered in Washington, D.C. These studies produced estimates of the anticipated return on each $1 invested in lobbying and political campaigns that ranged from $6 to $220. Lessig notes that clients who pay tens of millions of dollars to lobbyists typically receive billions.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Lessig insists that this does not mean that any legislator has sold his or her vote. One of several possible explanations Lessig gives for this phenomenon is that the money helped elect candidates more supportive of the issues pushed by the big money spent on lobbying and political campaigns. He notes that if any money perverts democracy, it is the large contributions beyond the budgets of citizens of ordinary means; small contributions from common citizens have long been considered supporting of democracy.


title: Conflict of interest

text: When such large sums become virtually essential to a politician's future, it generates a substantive conflict of interest contributing to a fairly well documented distortion on the nation's priorities and policies.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Beyond this, governmental officials, whether elected or not, often leave public service to work for companies affected by legislation they helped enact or companies they used to regulate or companies affected by legislation they helped enact. This practice is called the "revolving door". Former legislators and regulators are accused of (a) using inside information for their new employers or (b) compromising laws and regulations in hopes of securing lucrative employment in the private sector. This possibility creates a conflict of interest for all public officials whose future may depend on the revolving door.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Conflicts of interest among elected officials is part of the story behind the increase in the percent of US corporate domestic profits captured by the finance industry depicted in that accompanying figure.


title: Conflict of interest

text: From 1934 through 1985, the finance industry averaged 13.8% of U.S. domestic corporate profit. Between 1986 and 1999, it averaged 23.5%. From 2000 through 2010, it averaged 32.6%. Some of this increase is doubtless due to increased efficiency from banking consolidation and innovations in new financial products that benefit consumers. However, if most consumers had refused to accept financial products they did not understand, e.g., negative amortization loans, the finance industry would not have been as profitable as it has been, and the Late-2000s recession might have been avoided or postponed. Stiglitz argued that the Late-2000s recession was created in part because, "Bankers acted greedily because they had incentives and opportunities to do so". They did this in part by innovating to make consumer financial products like retail banking services and home mortgages as complicated as possible to make it easy for them to charge higher fees. Consumers who shop carefully for financial services typically find better options than the primary offerings of the major banks. However, few consumers think to do that. This explains part of this increase in financial industry profits. (Note, however, that Stiglitz has been accused of a conflict of interests and violation of Columbia University transparency policies for failing to disclose his status as a paid consultant to government of Argentina at the same time he was writing articles in defense of Argentina's planned default of over $1billion in bond debt during the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression, and for failing to disclose his paid consultancy to the government of Greece at the same time he was downplaying the risk of Greece defaulting on their debt during the Greek government-debt crisis of 2009.)


title: Conflict of interest

text: However, it is argued that a major portion of this increase and a driving force behind Late-2000s recession has been the corrosive effect of money in politics, giving legislators and the President of the U.S. a conflict of interest, because if they protect the public, they will offend the finance industry, which contributed $1.7 billion to political campaigns and spent $3.4 billion ($5.1 billion total) on lobbying from 1998 to 2008.


title: Conflict of interest

text: To be conservative, suppose we attribute only the increase from 23.5% of 1986 through 1999 to the recent 32.6% average to governmental actions subject to conflicts of interest created by the $1.7 billion in campaign contributions. That's 9% of the $3 trillion in profits claimed by the finance industry during that period or $270 billion. This represents a return of over $50 for each $1 invested in political campaigns and lobbying for that industry. (This $270 billion represents almost $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.) There is hardly any place outside politics with such a high return on investment in such a short time.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Economists (unlike other professions such as sociologists) do not formally subscribe to a professional ethical code. Close to 300 economists have signed a letter urging the American Economic Association (the discipline's foremost professional body), to adopt such a code. The signatories include George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate, and Christina Romer, who headed Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.


title: Conflict of interest

text: This call for a code of ethics was supported by the public attention the documentary Inside Job (winner of an Academy Award) drew to the consulting relationships of several influential economists. This documentary focused on conflicts that may arise when economists publish results or provide public recommendation on topics that affect industries or companies with which they have financial links. Critics of the profession argue, for example, that it is no coincidence that financial economists, many of whom were engaged as consultants by Wall Street firms, were opposed to regulating the financial sector.


title: Conflict of interest

text: In response to criticism that the profession not only failed to predict the financial crisis of 2007–2008 but may actually have helped create it, the American Economic Association has adopted new rules in 2012: economists will have to disclose financial ties and other potential conflicts of interest in papers published in academic journals. Backers argue such disclosures will help restore faith in the profession by increasing transparency which will help in assessing economists' advice.


title: Conflict of interest

text: A conflict of interest is a manifestation of moral hazard, particularly when a financial institution provides multiple services and the potentially competing interests of those services may lead to a concealment of information or dissemination of misleading information. A conflict of interest exists when a party to a transaction could potentially make a gain from taking actions that are detrimental to the other party in the transaction.


title: Conflict of interest

text: There are many types of conflicts of interest such as a pump and dump by stockbrokers. This is when a stockbroker who owns a security artificially inflates the price by upgrading it or spreading rumors, and then sells the security and adds short position. They will then downgrade the security or spread negative rumors to push the price back down. This is an example of stock fraud. It is a conflict of interest because the stockbrokers are concealing and manipulating information to make it misleading for the buyers. The broker may claim to have the "inside" information about impending news and will urge buyers to buy the stock quickly. Investors will buy the stock, which creates a high demand and raises the prices. This rise in prices can entice more people to believe the hype and then buy shares as well. The stockbrokers will then sell their shares and stop promoting, the price will drop, and other investors are left holding stock that is worth nothing compared to what they paid for it. In this way, brokers use their knowledge and position to gain personally at the expense of others.


title: Conflict of interest

text: The Enron scandal is a major example of pump and dump. Executives participated in an elaborate scheme, falsely reporting profits, thus inflating its stock prices, and covered up the real numbers with questionable accounting; 29 executives sold overvalued stock for more than a billion dollars before the company went bankrupt.


title: Conflict of interest

text: A financial institution with a conflict of interest may also be charged with market manipulation. Stockbrokers that act as market makers have a duty to establish bona fide. A conflict of interest serves against that regulation. Stockbrokers have to prove that their trading interests and transacting interests do not interfere with serving the interests of investors at brokerages


title: Conflict of interest

text: Any media organization has a conflict of interest in discussing anything that may impact its ability to communicate as it wants with its audience. Most media, when reporting a story which involves a parent company or a subsidiary, will explicitly report this fact as part of the story, in order to alert the audience that their reporting has the potential for bias due to the possibility of a conflict of interest.


title: Conflict of interest

text: The business model of commercial media organizations (i.e., any that accept advertising) is selling behavior change in their audience to advertisers. However, few in their audience are aware of the conflict of interest between the profit motive and the altruistic desire to serve the public and "give the audience what it wants".


title: Conflict of interest

text: Many major advertisers test their ads in various ways to measure the return on investment in advertising. Advertising rates are set as a function of the size and spending habits of the audience as measured by the Nielsen Ratings. Media action expressing this conflict of interest is evident in the reaction of Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corporation, owner of Fox, to changes in data collection methodology adopted in 2004 by the Nielsen Company to more accurately measure viewing habits. The results corrected a previous overestimate of the market share of Fox. Murdoch reacted by getting leading politicians to denounce the Nielsen Ratings as racists. Susan Whiting , president and CEO of Nielsen Media Research, responded by quietly sharing Nielsen's data with her leading critics. The criticism disappeared, and Fox paid Nielsen's fees. Murdoch had a conflict of interest between the reality of his market and his finances.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Commercial media organizations lose money if they provide content that offends either their audience or their advertisers. The substantial media consolidation that occurred since the 1980s has reduced the alternatives available to the audience, thereby making it easier for the ever-larger companies in this increasingly oligopolistic industry to hide news and entertainment potentially offensive to advertisers without losing audience. If the media provide too much information on how congress spends its time, a major advertiser could be offended and could reduce their advertising expenditures with the offending media company; indeed, this is one of the ways the market system has determined which companies won and which either went out of business or were purchased by others in this media consolidation. (Advertisers don't like to feed the mouth that bites them, and often don't. Similarly, commercial media organizations are not eager to bite the hand that feeds them.) Advertisers have been known to fund media organizations with editorial policies they find offensive if that media outlet provides access to a sufficiently attractive audience segment they cannot efficiently reach otherwise.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Election years are a major boon to commercial broadcasters, because virtually all political advertising is purchased with minimal advance planning, paying therefore the highest rates. The commercial media have a conflict of interest in anything that could make it easier for candidates to get elected with less money.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Accompanying this trend in media consolidation has been a substantial reduction in investigative journalism, reflecting this conflict of interest between the business objectives of the commercial media and the public's need to know what government is doing in their name. This change has been tied to substantial changes in law and culture in the United States. To cite only one example, researchers have tied this decline in investigative journalism to an increased coverage of the "police blotter". This has further been tied to the fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Beyond this, virtually all commercial media companies own substantial quantities of copyrighted material. This gives them an inherent conflict of interest in any public policy issue affecting copyrights. McChesney noted that the commercial media have lobbied successfully for changes in copyright law that have led "to higher prices and a shrinking of the marketplace of ideas", increasing the power and profits of the large media corporations at public expense. One result of this is that "the people cease to have a means of clarifying social priorities and organizing social reform". A free market has a mechanism for controlling abuses of power by media corporations: If their censorship becomes too egregious, they lose audience, which in turn reduces their advertising rates. However, the effectiveness of this mechanism has been substantially reduced over the past quarter century by "the changes in the concentration and integration of the media." Would the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement have advanced to the point of generating substantial protests without the secrecy behind which that agreement was negotiated—and would the government attempts to sustain that secrecy have been as successful if the commercial media had not been a primary beneficiary and had not had a conflict of interest in suppressing discussion thereof?


title: Conflict of interest

text: Sometimes, people who may be perceived to have a conflict of interest resign from a position or sell a shareholding in a venture, to eliminate the conflict of interest going forward. For example, Lord Evans of Weardale resigned as a non-executive director of the UK National Crime Agency after a tax-avoidance-related controversy about HSBC, where Lord Evans was also a non-executive director. This resignation was stated to have taken place in order to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Blind trusts can perhaps mitigate conflicts of interest scenarios by giving an independent trustee control of a beneficiary's assets. The independent trustee must have the power to sell or transfer interests without knowledge of the beneficiary. Thus, the beneficiary becomes "blind" to the impact of official actions on private interests held in trust.


title: Conflict of interest

text: As an example, a politician who owns shares in a company that may be affected by government policy may put those shares in a blind trust with themselves or their family as the beneficiary. It is disputed whether this really removes the conflict of interest, however.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Blind trusts may in fact obscure conflicts of interest, and for this reason it is illegal to fund political parties in the UK via a blind trust if the identity of the real donor is concealed.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Commonly, politicians and high-ranking government officials are required to disclose financial information—assets such as stock, debts such as loans, and/or corporate positions held, typically annually. To protect privacy (to some extent), financial figures are often disclosed in ranges such as "$100,000 to $500,000" and "over $2,000,000". Certain professionals are required either by rules related to their professional organization, or by statute, to disclose any actual or potential conflicts of interest. In some instances, the failure to provide full disclosure is a crime.


title: Conflict of interest

text: However, there is limited evidence regarding the effect of conflict of interest disclosure despite its widespread acceptance. A 2012 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that routine disclosure of conflicts of interest by American medical school educators to pre-clinical medical students were associated with an increased desire among students for limitations in some industry relationships. However, there were no changes in the perceptions of students about the value of disclosure, the influence of industry relationships on educational content, or the instruction by faculty with relevant conflicts of interest.


title: Conflict of interest

text: And, an increasing line of research suggests that disclosure can have "perverse effects" or, at least, is not the panacea regulators often take it to be.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Those with a conflict of interest are expected to recuse themselves from (i.e., abstain from) decisions where such a conflict exists. The imperative for recusal varies depending upon the circumstance and profession, either as common sense ethics, codified ethics, or by statute. For example, if the governing board of a government agency is considering hiring a consulting firm for some task, and one firm being considered has, as a partner, a close relative of one of the board's members, then that board member should not vote on which firm is to be selected. In fact, to minimize any conflict, the board member should not participate in any way in the decision, including discussions.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Judges are supposed to recuse themselves from cases when personal conflicts of interest may arise. For example, if a judge has participated in a case previously in some other judicial role he/she is not allowed to try that case. Recusal is also expected when one of the lawyers in a case might be a close personal friend, or when the outcome of the case might affect the judge directly, such as whether a car maker is obliged to recall a model that a judge drives. This is required by law under Continental civil law systems and by the Rome Statute, organic law of the International Criminal Court.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Consider a situation where the owner of a majority of a public companies decides to buy out the minority shareholders and take the corporation private. What is a fair price? Obviously it is improper (and, typically, illegal) for the majority owner to simply state a price and then have the (majority-controlled) board of directors approve that price. What is typically done is to hire an independent firm (a third party), well-qualified to evaluate such matters, to calculate a "fair price", which is then voted on by the minority shareholders.


title: Conflict of interest

text: Third-party evaluations may also be used as proof that transactions were, in fact, fair ("arm's-length"). For example, a corporation that leases an office building that is owned by the CEO might get an independent evaluation showing what the market rate is for such leases in the locale, to address the conflict of interest that exists between the fiduciary duty of the CEO (to the stockholders, by getting the lowest rent possible) and the personal interest of that CEO (to maximize the income that the CEO gets from owning that office building by getting the highest rent possible).


title: Conflict of interest

text: A January 2018 report by the Public Citizen non-profit describes dozens of foreign governments, special interest groups and GOP congressional campaign committees that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at President Donald Trump's properties during his first year in office. The study said that these groups clearly intended to win over the president by helping his commercial business empire profit while he held the office.


title: Clare Grant

text: Clare Camille Johnson (born August 23, 1979), known professionally as Clare Grant, is an American actress, model and producer. She co-founded Team Unicorn, which has produced several web series and music video parodies including "Geek and Gamer Girls" and "All About That Base".


title: Clare Grant

text: Grant grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. She is of Irish, English, Scandinavian, and Native American descent. To support herself through college, Grant modeled through Elite Model Management on several campaigns, for companies such as L'Oréal.


title: Clare Grant

text: She had a small role in "Walk the Line" and has appeared in several independent films. Craig Brewer cast her as the lead in two of his indie films before casting her in the film "Black Snake Moan" as Christina Ricci's best friend, and later as the lead in his MTV series "$5 Cover". She then played the lead role of Megan Graves in comic book writer Brian Pulido's first independent feature film "The Graves", followed by the role of Beverly in the film "Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean", directed by Matthew Mishory. In 2013, Grant played the lead role of Martha Collins in the film "The Insomniac", directed by Monty Miranda, and voiced Black Widow in the Marvel Animation movie ""."" In 2015, Clare played a supporting role in "Phantom Halo" and appeared in a holiday anthology movie called "Holidays", a featured selection of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. She will appear in "Changeland" alongside Seth Green who wrote, directed, and also starred in the film.


title: Clare Grant

text: Grant's first television role was in an episode of "Masters of Horror", followed by the series lead role on the MTV series "$5 Cover", about the trials and tribulations of the current Memphis music scene, created by Craig Brewer. Since then, Grant has appeared in guest starring roles on shows such as "Castle", "" and "Warren the Ape". She does voices on "Robot Chicken", "MAD", originated a bounty hunter named on , and voices Titania on "Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H." and "Avengers Assemble".


title: Clare Grant

text: In 2013, Adult Swim announced that Grant co-created and will be starring in and executive producing a pilot based on the webseries she co-created, Team Unicorn.


title: Clare Grant

text: In 2020, she appeared as herself in the DC Universe unscripted gaming series "DC Universe All Star Games".


title: Clare Grant

text: Under their company Danger Maiden Productions, Grant and partner Rileah Vanderbilt produced the viral online series "Saber". In 2010, the duo began working with Milynn Sarley & Michele Boyd to create the online series Team Unicorn. The team's first project, "G33k & G4m3r Girls" (a parody of Katy Perry's "California Gurls" video), paid tribute to their shared mutual passion of gaming, manga, and science fiction. It had over a million views in its first week, but met with some mixed responses to its portrayal of the women.


title: Clare Grant

text: This was followed by other viral videos, most notably "All About that Base", a parody of the hit song by Meghan Trainor with a Star Wars theme. Grant guest-starred in the second season of the Jane Espenson-scripted romantic comedy web series "Husbands", and has made appearances on webseries such as "The Guild", "Save the Supers", "Q.V.G.", and "Tabletop". In 2013, Grant starred as Mala in a "Wonder Woman" fan short film.


title: Clare Grant

text: In the 2019 Fortnite World Cup Grant and her partner Jacob won 1st place in the second round of the Pro-AM Tournament, and 4th place overall, winning $100,000 for charity.


title: Clare Grant

text: Grant first met actor Seth Green in 2006 at the Golden Apple Comics. They married on May 1, 2010 at Skywalker Ranch; the ceremony was officiated by Grant's long-time friend and director, Craig Brewer.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: The electric dipole moment is a measure of the separation of positive and negative electrical charges within a system, that is, a measure of the system's overall polarity. The SI unit for electric dipole moment is the coulomb-meter (C⋅m). The debye (D) is another unit of measurement used in atomic physics and chemistry.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Theoretically, an electric dipole is defined by the first-order term of the multipole expansion; it consists of two equal and opposite charges that are infinitesimally close together, although real dipoles have separated charge.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Often in physics the dimensions of a massive object can be ignored and can be treated as a pointlike object, i.e. a point particle. Point particles with electric charge are referred to as point charges. Two point charges, one with charge and the other one with charge separated by a distance , constitute an "electric dipole" (a simple case of an electric multipole). For this case, the electric dipole moment has a magnitude formula_1 and is directed from the negative charge to the positive one. Some authors may split in half and use since this quantity is the distance between either charge and the center of the dipole, leading to a factor of two in the definition.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: A stronger mathematical definition is to use vector algebra, since a quantity with magnitude and direction, like the dipole moment of two point charges, can be expressed in vector form formula_2 where is the displacement vector pointing from the negative charge to the positive charge. The electric dipole moment vector also points from the negative charge to the positive charge. With this definition the dipole direction tends to align itself with an external electric field (and note that the electric flux lines produced by the charges of the dipole itself, which point from positive charge to negative charge then tend to oppose the flux lines of the external field). Note that this sign convention is used in physics, while the opposite sign convention for the dipole, from the positive charge to the negative charge, is used in chemistry.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: An idealization of this two-charge system is the electrical point dipole consisting of two (infinite) charges only infinitesimally separated, but with a finite . This quantity is used in the definition of polarization density.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: An object with an electric dipole moment p is subject to a torque "τ" when placed in an external electric field E. The torque tends to align the dipole with the field. A dipole aligned parallel to an electric field has lower potential energy than a dipole making some angle with it. For a spatially uniform electric field across the small region occupied by the dipole, the energy "U" and the torque formula_3 are given by


title: Electric dipole moment

text: The scalar dot "" product and the negative sign shows the potential energy minimises when the dipole is parallel with field and is maximum when antiparallel while zero when perpendicular. The symbol "" refers to the vector cross product. The E-field vector and the dipole vector define a plane, and the torque is directed normal to that plane with the direction given by the right-hand rule. Note that a dipole in such a uniform field may twist and oscillate but receives no overall net force with no linear acceleration of the dipole. The dipole twists to align with the external field.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: However in a non-uniform electric field a dipole may indeed receive a net force since the force on one end of the dipole no longer balances that on the other end. It can be shown that this net force is generally parallel to the dipole moment.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: More generally, for a continuous distribution of charge confined to a volume "V", the corresponding expression for the dipole moment is:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where r locates the point of observation and "d"r′ denotes an elementary volume in "V". For an array of point charges, the charge density becomes a sum of Dirac delta functions:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where each r is a vector from some reference point to the charge "q". Substitution into the above integration formula provides:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: This expression is equivalent to the previous expression in the case of charge neutrality and "N" = 2. For two opposite charges, denoting the location of the positive charge of the pair as r and the location of the negative charge as r:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: showing that the dipole moment vector is directed from the negative charge to the positive charge because the position vector of a point is directed outward from the origin to that point.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: The dipole moment is particularly useful in the context of an overall neutral system of charges, for example a pair of opposite charges, or a neutral conductor in a uniform electric field.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: For such a system of charges, visualized as an array of paired opposite charges, the relation for electric dipole moment is:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where r is the point of observation, and d = r − r, r being the position of the negative charge in the dipole "i", and r the position of the positive charge.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: This is the vector sum of the individual dipole moments of the neutral charge pairs. (Because of overall charge neutrality, the dipole moment is independent of the observer's position r.) Thus, the value of p is independent of the choice of reference point, provided the overall charge of the system is zero.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: When discussing the dipole moment of a non-neutral system, such as the dipole moment of the proton, a dependence on the choice of reference point arises. In such cases it is conventional to choose the reference point to be the center of mass of the system, not some arbitrary origin. This choice is not only a matter of convention: the notion of dipole moment is essentially derived from the mechanical notion of torque, and as in mechanics, it is computationally and theoretically useful to choose the center of mass as the observation point. For a charged molecule the center of charge should be the reference point instead of the center of mass. For neutral systems the references point is not important. The dipole moment is an intrinsic property of the system.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: An ideal dipole consists of two opposite charges with infinitesimal separation. We compute the potential and field of such an ideal dipole starting with two opposite charges at separation "d >" 0, and taking the limit as "d →" 0.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Let R denote the position vector relative to the midpoint formula_13, and formula_14 the corresponding unit vector:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Taylor expansion in formula_16 (see multipole expansion and quadrupole) expresses this potential as a series.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where higher order terms in the series are vanishing at large distances, "R", compared to "d". Here, the electric dipole moment p is, as above:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: which relates the dipole potential to that of a point charge. A key point is that the potential of the dipole falls off faster with distance "R" than that of the point charge.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Thus, although two closely spaced opposite charges are "not quite" an ideal electric dipole (because their potential at short distances is not that of a dipole), at distances much larger than their separation, their dipole moment p appears directly in their potential and field.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: As the two charges are brought closer together ("d" is made smaller), the dipole term in the multipole expansion based on the ratio "d"/"R" becomes the only significant term at ever closer distances "R", and in the limit of infinitesimal separation the dipole term in this expansion is all that matters. As "d" is made infinitesimal, however, the dipole charge must be made to increase to hold p constant. This limiting process results in a "point dipole".


title: Electric dipole moment

text: determines the degree of polarity of the array, but for a neutral array it is simply a vector property of the array with no information about the array's absolute location. The dipole moment "density" of the array p(r) contains both the location of the array and its dipole moment. When it comes time to calculate the electric field in some region containing the array, Maxwell's equations are solved, and the information about the charge array is contained in the "polarization density" P(r) of Maxwell's equations. Depending upon how fine-grained an assessment of the electric field is required, more or less information about the charge array will have to be expressed by P(r). As explained below, sometimes it is sufficiently accurate to take P(r) = p(r). Sometimes a more detailed description is needed (for example, supplementing the dipole moment density with an additional quadrupole density) and sometimes even more elaborate versions of P(r) are necessary.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: It now is explored just in what way the polarization density P(r) that enters Maxwell's equations is related to the dipole moment p of an overall neutral array of charges, and also to the "dipole moment density" p(r) (which describes not only the dipole moment, but also the array location). Only static situations are considered in what follows, so P(r) has no time dependence, and there is no displacement current. First is some discussion of the polarization density P(r). That discussion is followed with several particular examples.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: A formulation of Maxwell's equations based upon division of charges and currents into "free" and "bound" charges and currents leads to introduction of the D- and P-fields:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where P is called the polarization density. In this formulation, the divergence of this equation yields:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: and as the divergence term in E is the "total" charge, and "ρ" is "free charge", we are left with the relation:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: with "ρ" as the bound charge, by which is meant the difference between the total and the free charge densities.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Satisfaction of the boundary conditions upon "φ" may be divided arbitrarily between "φ" and "φ" because only the sum "φ" must satisfy these conditions. It follows that P is simply proportional to the electric field due to the charges selected as bound, with boundary conditions that prove convenient. In particular, when "no" free charge is present, one possible choice is P = "ε" E.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Next is discussed how several different dipole moment descriptions of a medium relate to the polarization entering Maxwell's equations.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: restricted to the same model. For a smoothly varying dipole moment distribution p(r), the corresponding bound charge density is simply


title: Electric dipole moment

text: as we will establish shortly via integration by parts. However, if p(r) exhibits an abrupt step in dipole moment at a boundary between two regions, ∇·p(r) results in a surface charge component of bound charge. This surface charge can be treated through a surface integral, or by using discontinuity conditions at the boundary, as illustrated in the various examples below.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: As a first example relating dipole moment to polarization, consider a medium made up of a continuous charge density "ρ"(r) and a continuous dipole moment distribution p(r). The potential at a position r is:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where the vector identity formula_34 was used in the last steps. The first term can be transformed to an integral over the surface bounding the volume of integration, and contributes a surface charge density, discussed later. Putting this result back into the potential, and ignoring the surface charge for now:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where the volume integration extends only up to the bounding surface, and does not include this surface.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: In short, the dipole moment density p(r) plays the role of the polarization density P for this medium. Notice, p(r) has a non-zero divergence equal to the bound charge density (as modeled in this approximation).


title: Electric dipole moment

text: It may be noted that this approach can be extended to include all the multipoles: dipole, quadrupole, etc. Using the relation:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where the added terms are meant to indicate contributions from higher multipoles. Evidently, inclusion of higher multipoles signifies that the polarization density P no longer is determined by a dipole moment density p alone. For example, in considering scattering from a charge array, different multipoles scatter an electromagnetic wave differently and independently, requiring a representation of the charges that goes beyond the dipole approximation.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Above, discussion was deferred for the first term in the expression for the potential due to the dipoles. Integrating the divergence results in a surface charge. The figure at the right provides an intuitive idea of why a surface charge arises. The figure shows a uniform array of identical dipoles between two surfaces. Internally, the heads and tails of dipoles are adjacent and cancel. At the bounding surfaces, however, no cancellation occurs. Instead, on one surface the dipole heads create a positive surface charge, while at the opposite surface the dipole tails create a negative surface charge. These two opposite surface charges create a net electric field in a direction opposite to the direction of the dipoles.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: This idea is given mathematical form using the potential expression above. Ignoring the free charge, the potential is:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: with dA an element of surface area of the volume. In the event that p(r) is a constant, only the surface term survives:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: with dA an elementary area of the surface bounding the charges. In words, the potential due to a constant p inside the surface is equivalent to that of a "surface charge"


title: Electric dipole moment

text: which is positive for surface elements with a component in the direction of p and negative for surface elements pointed oppositely. (Usually the direction of a surface element is taken to be that of the outward normal to the surface at the location of the element.)


title: Electric dipole moment

text: If the bounding surface is a sphere, and the point of observation is at the center of this sphere, the integration over the surface of the sphere is zero: the positive and negative surface charge contributions to the potential cancel. If the point of observation is off-center, however, a net potential can result (depending upon the situation) because the positive and negative charges are at different distances from the point of observation. The field due to the surface charge is:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: which, at the center of a spherical bounding surface is not zero (the "fields" of negative and positive charges on opposite sides of the center add because both fields point the same way) but is instead:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: If we suppose the polarization of the dipoles was induced by an external field, the polarization field opposes the applied field and sometimes is called a "depolarization field". In the case when the polarization is "outside" a spherical cavity, the field in the cavity due to the surrounding dipoles is in the "same" direction as the polarization.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where , in this case and in the following, represent the "external field" which induces the polarization.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Whenever "χ"(r) is used to model a step discontinuity at the boundary between two regions, the step produces a surface charge layer. For example, integrating along a normal to the bounding surface from a point just interior to one surface to another point just exterior:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where "A", Ω indicate the area and volume of an elementary region straddling the boundary between the regions, and formula_49 a unit normal to the surface. The right side vanishes as the volume shrinks, inasmuch as ρ is finite, indicating a discontinuity in E, and therefore a surface charge. That is, where the modeled medium includes a step in permittivity, the polarization density corresponding to the dipole moment density


title: Electric dipole moment

text: A physically more realistic modeling of p(r) would have the dipole moment density drop off rapidly, but smoothly to zero at the boundary of the confining region, rather than making a sudden step to zero density. Then the surface charge will not concentrate in an infinitely thin surface, but instead, being the divergence of a smoothly varying dipole moment density, will distribute itself throughout a thin, but finite transition layer.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: The above general remarks about surface charge are made more concrete by considering the example of a dielectric sphere in a uniform electric field. The sphere is found to adopt a surface charge related to the dipole moment of its interior.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: A uniform external electric field is supposed to point in the "z"-direction, and spherical-polar coordinates are introduced so the potential created by this field is:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: and inside the sphere the potential satisfies Laplace's equation. Skipping a few details, the solution inside the sphere is:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: At large distances, φ → φ so "B" = −"E". Continuity of potential and of the radial component of displacement D = κεE determine the other two constants. Supposing the radius of the sphere is "R",


title: Electric dipole moment

text: which is the potential due to applied field and, in addition, a dipole in the direction of the applied field (the "z"-direction) of dipole moment:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: The factor ("κ" − 1)/("κ" + 2) is called the Clausius–Mossotti factor and shows that the induced polarization flips sign if "κ" < 1. Of course, this cannot happen in this example, but in an example with two different dielectrics "κ" is replaced by the ratio of the inner to outer region dielectric constants, which can be greater or smaller than one. The potential inside the sphere is:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: showing the depolarizing effect of the dipole. Notice that the field inside the sphere is "uniform" and parallel to the applied field. The dipole moment is uniform throughout the interior of the sphere. The surface charge density on the sphere is the difference between the radial field components:


title: Electric dipole moment

text: This linear dielectric example shows that the dielectric constant treatment is equivalent to the uniform dipole moment model and leads to zero charge everywhere except for the surface charge at the boundary of the sphere.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: If observation is confined to regions sufficiently remote from a system of charges, a multipole expansion of the exact polarization density can be made. By truncating this expansion (for example, retaining only the dipole terms, or only the dipole and quadrupole terms, or "etc."), the results of the previous section are regained. In particular, truncating the expansion at the dipole term, the result is indistinguishable from the polarization density generated by a uniform dipole moment confined to the charge region. To the accuracy of this dipole approximation, as shown in the previous section, the dipole moment "density" p(r) (which includes not only p but the location of p) serves as P(r).


title: Electric dipole moment

text: At locations "inside" the charge array, to connect an array of paired charges to an approximation involving only a dipole moment density p(r) requires additional considerations. The simplest approximation is to replace the charge array with a model of ideal (infinitesimally spaced) dipoles. In particular, as in the example above that uses a constant dipole moment density confined to a finite region, a surface charge and depolarization field results. A more general version of this model (which allows the polarization to vary with position) is the customary approach using electric susceptibility or electrical permittivity.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: A more complex model of the point charge array introduces an effective medium by averaging the microscopic charges; for example, the averaging can arrange that only dipole fields play a role. A related approach is to divide the charges into those nearby the point of observation, and those far enough away to allow a multipole expansion. The nearby charges then give rise to "local field effects". In a common model of this type, the distant charges are treated as a homogeneous medium using a dielectric constant, and the nearby charges are treated only in a dipole approximation. The approximation of a medium or an array of charges by only dipoles and their associated dipole moment density is sometimes called the "point dipole" approximation, the "discrete dipole approximation", or simply the "dipole approximation".


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Not to be confused with spin which refers to the magnetic dipole moments of particles, much experimental work is continuing on measuring the electric dipole moments (EDM; or anomalous electric dipole moment) of fundamental and composite particles, namely those of the electron and neutron, respectively. As EDMs violate both the parity (P) and time-reversal (T) symmetries, their values yield a mostly model-independent measure of CP-violation in nature (assuming CPT symmetry is valid). Therefore, values for these EDMs place strong constraints upon the scale of CP-violation that extensions to the standard model of particle physics may allow. Current generations of experiments are designed to be sensitive to the supersymmetry range of EDMs, providing complementary experiments to those done at the LHC.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Indeed, many theories are inconsistent with the current limits and have effectively been ruled out, and established theory permits a much larger value than these limits, leading to the strong CP problem and prompting searches for new particles such as the axion.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: We know at least in the Yukawa sector from neutral kaon oscillations that CP is broken. Experiments have been performed to measure the electric dipole moment of various particles like the electron and the neutron. Many models beyond the standard model with additional CP-violating terms generically predict a nonzero electric dipole moment and are hence sensitive to such new physics. Instanton corrections from a nonzero θ term in quantum chromodynamics predict a nonzero electric dipole moment for the neutron and proton, which have not been observed in experiments (where the best bounds come from analysing neutrons). This is the strong CP problem and is a prediction of chiral perturbation theory.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Dipole moments in molecules are responsible for the behavior of a substance in the presence of external electric fields. The dipoles tend to be aligned to the external field which can be constant or time-dependent. This effect forms the basis of a modern experimental technique called dielectric spectroscopy.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Dipole moments can be found in common molecules such as water and also in biomolecules such as proteins.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: By means of the total dipole moment of some material one can compute the dielectric constant which is related to the more intuitive concept of conductivity. If formula_62 is the total dipole moment of the sample, then the dielectric constant is given by,


title: Electric dipole moment

text: where "k" is a constant and formula_64 is the time correlation function of the total dipole moment. In general the total dipole moment have contributions coming


title: Electric dipole moment

text: Therefore, the dielectric constant (and the conductivity) has contributions from both terms. This approach can be generalized to compute the frequency dependent dielectric function.


title: Electric dipole moment

text: It is possible to calculate dipole moments from electronic structure theory, either as a response to constant electric fields or from the density matrix. Such values however are not directly comparable to experiment due to the potential presence of nuclear quantum effects, which can be substantial for even simple systems like the ammonia molecule. Coupled cluster theory (especially CCSD(T)) can give very accurate dipole moments, although it is possible to get reasonable estimates (within about 5%) from density functional theory, especially if hybrid or double hybrid functionals are employed. The dipole moment of a molecule can also be calculated based on the molecular structure using the concept of group contribution methods.


title: Melodic death metal

text: Melodic death metal (also referred to as melodeath) is a subgenre of death metal that employs highly melodic guitar riffs, often borrowing from traditional heavy metal (including New Wave of British Heavy Metal). The genre features the heaviness of death metal but with highly melodic or harmonized guitar riffs and solos, and often features high-pitched shrieked vocals (differing from traditional death metal) alongside the low-pitched growls commonly featured in traditional death metal. Pioneered by the English heavy metal band Carcass with their 1993 album "Heartwork", melodic death metal developed further in Sweden (developed by bands like At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, and In Flames) in the mid-1990s. The Swedish death metal scene did much to popularise the style, soon centering in the "Gothenburg metal" scene. At the Gates' "Slaughter of the Soul", Dark Tranquility's "The Gallery", and In Flames' "The Jester Race", all released in the mid-1990s, were highly influential albums in melodic death metal, with At the Gates and In Flames being the two most common influences on North American 2000s heavy metal bands. Many American heavy metal bands emulated At the Gates' sound, resulting in the usage of the phrase "At the Gates worship".


title: Melodic death metal

text: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many melodic death metal bands emerged, including Children of Bodom, Arch Enemy, Amon Amarth, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Soilwork. In the 2000s decade, melodic death metal achieved popularity among heavy metal fans, starting with the release of In Flames' 2002 album "Reroute to Remain", which showed a change to a more eclectic sound while retaining the band's melodic death metal sound. Many other melodic death metal bands quickly had chart success.


title: Melodic death metal

text: In the mid-2000s, melodic metalcore, a subgenre of metalcore that combines the genre with melodic death metal, achieved popularity with the chart success and sales success of bands like Killswitch Engage, All That Remains, and As I Lay Dying. Deathcore bands during this time period like Bring Me the Horizon and Through the Eyes of the Dead also were influenced by melodic death metal and achieved popularity.


title: Melodic death metal

text: Melodic death metal combines death metal with elements of traditional heavy metal ranging as far as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, especially melodic or harmonized guitar riffs, with the heavily distorted guitars, fast double-bass drum patterns and occasional blast beats of death metal. The vocal style typically features either high-pitched shrieks screaming (differing from traditional death metal) or low-pitched growling (similar to traditional death metal) and can feature clean sung vocals.


title: Melodic death metal

text: Much of the origin and popularity of melodic death metal can be attributed to the bands At the Gates, In Flames, and Dark Tranquillity, whose mid 1990s music releases (namely "Slaughter of the Soul", "The Jester Race", and "The Gallery", respectively) defined the genre and laid the foundation for the Gothenburg metal scene. Writer Gary Sharpe-Young considered the Gothenburg scene the commercial salvation of death metal: "Gothenburg became the new Tampa and the genre received a new lease on life." The titular melodic elements can be traced to traditional Scandinavian musical motifs. Another pioneer was the English band Carcass, which performed grindcore on its first two releases but morphed into death metal and an increasingly melodic style on the "Necroticism – Descanting the Insalubrious" (1991) and "Heartwork" (1993). Death's 1995 album "Symbolic" is also considered to be influential in the development of the genre. Ceremonial Oath and Eucharist also are early melodic death metal bands; however, they never gained much attention outside of their own scene.


title: Melodic death metal

text: In Flames' "The Jester Race" combined death metal with guitar riffs heavily influenced by bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. The album's sound heavily contrasted with traditional death metal, and made Swedish death metal more accessible to more people compared to other Swedish death metal albums that pioneered a new sound, including the death 'n' roll of Entombed's "Wolverine Blues". At the Gates' "Slaughter of the Soul" influenced many American metal bands, especially metalcore bands who used guitar riffs and vocals emulating At the Gates' music. The vocals also were noted by AllMusic for being more decipherable than other death metal vocals, resembling high-pitched shrieks that foreshadowed 2000s American screamo bands. The album brought At the Gates underground popularity, including rotation on MTV's "Headbanger's Ball", a nomination at the Swedish Grammys, and American tours with Morbid Angel and Napalm Death.


title: Melodic death metal

text: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, melodic death metal quickly expanded with many bands emerging, including Amon Amarth, The Black Dahlia Murder, Arch Enemy, Soilwork, and Children of Bodom. Additionally, other genres would begin using melodic death metal as an influence, including melodic metalcore and melodic black/death. Stewart Mason claims that melodic metalcore has become very popular in the United States, using the term "Swedecore" to describe Scandinavian-style metal as played by non-Nordic bands. Many melodic death metal and metalcore bands (especially after melodic metalcore band Killswitch Engage rose in popularity) were heavily influenced by "Slaughter of the Soul" by At the Gates and had an influence of them in their music. Many heavy metal bands in the mid-2000s, in turn, were labeled "At the Gates worship".


title: Melodic death metal

text: In the 2000s, melodic death metal became popular among heavy metal fans. In 2002, In Flames' album "Reroute to Remain" peaked at number 10 on the Top Heatseekers chart. The album, retaining the band's melodic death metal sound, showed a diverse mix of different musical genres, including occasional electronica and hip hop synthesizers and occasional clean singing. This helped gain the band a new amount of fans while alienating fans of In Flames' early work. In Flames' next two albums, "Soundtrack to Your Escape" (2004) and "Come Clarity" (2006), peaked at numbers 145 and 58 on the "Billboard" 200, respectively, with the latter album giving In Flames a Swedish Grammy Award. The Black Dahlia Murder, Arch Enemy, Children of Bodom, and Amon Amarth also enter the "Billboard" 200 during the 2000s decade. In the mid–late 2000s, melodic metalcore became one of the most popular heavy metal genres, with bands like Killswitch Engage, Unearth, Bullet for My Valentine, All That Remains, Shadows Fall and Atreyu achieving success, headlining major festivals and selling a lot of records. Melodic metalcore combined melodic death metal elements like melodic guitar riffs and screaming with elements of the original style of metalcore like breakdowns. At the Gates and In Flames were major influences on these bands. Killswitch Engage are often credited as the band that brought melodic metalcore into the mainstream among heavy metal fans. Some deathcore bands during this time, such as Through the Eyes of the Dead and Bring Me the Horizon, combined deathcore with melodic death metal.


title: Melodic death metal

text: Many melodic death metal bands began being inspired by black metal and European romanticism. This style has been referred to as blackened melodic death metal, melodic blackened death metal and However, unlike most other black metal, this take on the genre would incorporate an increased sense of melody and narrative.


title: Melodic death metal

text: Melodic metalcore is a fusion genre, incorporating elements of metalcore and melodic death metal, with a heavy emphasis on melodic instrumentation, blast beats, metalcore-stylized breakdowns and clean singing. These bands often take influence from the guitar riffs and writing styles of Swedish melodic death metal bands, especially At the Gates, In Flames, Arch Enemy and Soilwork.


title: Screw

text: A screw and a bolt (see "Differentiation between bolt and screw" below) are similar types of fastener typically made of metal and characterized by a helical ridge, called a "male thread" (external thread). Screws and bolts are used to fasten materials by the engagement of the screw thread with a similar "female thread" (internal thread) in a matching part.


title: Screw

text: Screws are often self-threading (also known as self-tapping) where the thread cuts into the material when the screw is turned, creating an internal thread that helps pull fastened materials together and prevents pull-out. There are many screws for a variety of materials; materials commonly fastened by screws include wood, sheet metal, and plastic.


title: Screw

text: A screw is a combination of simple machines: it is, in essence, an inclined plane wrapped around a central shaft, but the inclined plane (thread) also comes to a sharp edge around the outside, which acts as a wedge as it pushes into the fastened material, and the shaft and helix also form a wedge at the point. Some screw threads are designed to mate with a complementary thread, called a "female thread" (internal thread), often in the form of a nut object with an internal thread. Other screw threads are designed to cut a helical groove in a softer material as the screw is inserted. The most common uses of screws are to hold objects together and to position objects.


title: Screw

text: A screw will usually have a "head" on one end that allows it to be turned with a tool. Common tools for driving screws include screwdrivers and wrenches. The head is usually larger than the body of the screw, which keeps the screw from being driven deeper than the length of the screw and to provide a "bearing surface". There are exceptions. A carriage bolt has a domed head that is not designed to be driven. A set screw may have a head the same size or smaller than the outer diameter of the screws thread; a set screw without a head is sometimes called a "grub screw". A J-bolt has a J-shaped head that is sunk into concrete to serve as an anchor bolt.


title: Screw

text: The cylindrical portion of the screw from the underside of the head to the tip is called the "shank"; it may be fully or partially threaded. The distance between each thread is called the "pitch".


title: Screw

text: Most screws and bolts are tightened by clockwise rotation, which is called a "right-hand thread". Screws with a left-hand thread are used in exceptional cases, such as where the screw will be subject to counterclockwise torque, which would tend to loosen a right-hand screw. For this reason, the left-side pedal of a bicycle has a left-hand thread.


title: Screw

text: There is no universally accepted distinction between a screw and a bolt. A simple distinction that is often true, although not always, is that a bolt passes through a substrate and takes a nut on the other side, whereas a screw takes no nut because it threads directly into the substrate (a screw "screws into something", a bolt "bolts several things together"). So, as a general rule, when buying a packet of "screws", nuts would not be expected to be included, but bolts are often sold with matching nuts. Part of the confusion over this is likely due to regional or dialectical differences. "Machinery's Handbook" describes the distinction as follows:


title: Screw

text: This distinction is consistent with ASME B18.2.1 and some dictionary definitions for "screw" and "bolt".


title: Screw

text: The issue of what is a screw and what is a bolt is not completely resolved with "Machinery's Handbook" distinction, however, because of confounding terms, the ambiguous nature of some parts of the distinction, and usage variations. Some of these issues are discussed below:


title: Screw

text: Early wood screws were made by hand, with a series of files, chisels, and other cutting tools, and these can be spotted easily by noting the irregular spacing and shape of the threads, as well as file marks remaining on the head of the screw and in the area between threads. Many of these screws had a blunt end, completely lacking the sharp tapered point on nearly all modern wood screws. Some wood screws were made with cutting dies as early as the late 1700s (possibly even before 1678 when the book content was first published in parts). Eventually, lathes were used to manufacture wood screws, with the earliest patent being recorded in 1760 in England. During the 1850s, swaging tools were developed to provide a more uniform and consistent thread. Screws made with these tools have rounded valleys with sharp and rough threads.


title: Screw

text: Once screw turning machines were in common use, most commercially available wood screws were produced with this method. These cut wood screws are almost invariably tapered, and even when the tapered shank is not obvious, they can be discerned because the threads do not extend past the diameter of the shank. Such screws are best installed after drilling a pilot hole with a tapered drill bit. The majority of modern wood screws, except for those made of brass, are formed on thread rolling machines. These screws have a constant diameter, threads with a larger diameter than the shank, and are stronger because the rolling process does not cut the grain of the metal.


title: Screw

text: ASME standards specify a variety of machine screws in diameters ranging up to . In practice, they tend to be mostly available in smaller sizes and the smaller sizes are referred to as screws or less ambiguously as machine screws, although some kinds of machine screw can be referred to as stove bolts.


title: Screw

text: ASME standard B18.2.1-1996 specifies hex cap screws whose size range is in diameter. These fasteners are very similar to hex bolts. They differ mostly in that they are manufactured to tighter tolerances than the corresponding bolts. "Machinery's Handbook" refers parenthetically to these fasteners as "finished hex bolts". Reasonably, these fasteners might be referred to as bolts, but based on the US government document "Distinguishing Bolts from Screws", the US government might classify them as screws because of the tighter tolerance. In 1991 responding to an influx of counterfeit fasteners Congress passed PL 101-592 "Fastener Quality Act" This resulted in the rewriting of specifications by the ASME B18 committee. B18.2.1 was re-written and as a result they eliminated the "finished hex bolts" and renamed them the "hex cap screw"—a term that had existed in common usage long before, but was now also being codified as an official name for the ASME B18 standard.


title: Screw

text: These terms refer to fasteners that are designed to be threaded into a tapped hole that is in part of the assembly and so based on the "Machinery's Handbook" distinction they would be screws. Here common terms are at variance with "Machinery's Handbook" distinction.


title: Screw

text: Lag screws (US) or coach screws (UK, Australia, and New Zealand) (also referred to as lag bolts or coach bolts, although this is a misnomer) are large wood screws. The head is typically an external hex. Metric hex-headed lag screws are covered by DIN 571. Inch square-headed and hex-headed lag screws are covered by ASME B18.2.1. A typical lag screw can range in diameter from 4 to 20 mm or #10 to 1.25 in (4.83 to 31.75 mm), and lengths from 16 to 200 mm or or longer, with the coarse threads of a wood-screw or sheet-metal-screw threadform (but larger).