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Attention has been increasingly devoted to the development of methods for assessing the quality of care in long‐term care (LTC) facilities, especially for government surveillance. A study is described which used the tracer method to provide data on the quality of care in Israeli LTC institutions. Advantages of the tracer method include its incorporation of structural, process and outcome measures and its focus on a number of representative tracer conditions. The study tested the ability of the tracer method to provide data on the quality of care, and facilitated adoption of this methodology by the government for their annual inspections.

The aim of the paper is to explain the joint final rules adopted on April 18, 2012 by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) further defining the major categories of swap and security‐based swap market participants, “swap dealer“, “security‐based swap dealer”, “major swap participant”, “major security‐based swap participant” and “eligible contract participant” and to explain the process of evaluating a party's status under the rules.

The paper provides the statutory definition of a dealer, and explains the CFTC's and the SEC's interpretive guidance, including four tests and a discussion of the CFTC and SEC dealer trader distinctions, swaps not considered in determining dealer status, and a de minimis exception. It provides the statutory definition of a major participant, along with the four major categories of swaps and an explanation of the “substantial position”, “substantial counterparty exposure” and “highly leveraged” criteria, along with the exclusion of positions held for hedging or mitigating commercial risk from the substantial position analysis. A Dodd‐Frank amended definition of an eligible contract participant (ECP) along with the final ECP rules is provided.

All swap market participants will need to know whether they qualify as one of these entities because each type of entity figures prominently in the new swap market requirements imposed by the Dodd‐Frank Act.

The paper provides practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of recent Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) final rules prohibiting manipulation of commodity markets. The paper provides the specific prohibitions contained in new rules prompted by new authorities granted to the CFTC by the Dodd‐Frank Act.

The paper includes a discussion of relevant Dodd‐Frank Act provisions, the two new final CFTC rules and the scope of the new rules as explained by the CFTC in its rulemaking release. Included in these discussions are some specific applications of the new rules.

The final CFTC rules are similar to the rules proposed last fall. How the final rules and the release respond to public comments received in response to the proposed rulemaking are described in the paper.

The new final CFTC rules became effective August 15, 2011. The rules have wide application, so all commodity market participants should be made aware of the new rules and their prohibitions.

The paper provides expert advice from experienced energy and commodity regulatory attorneys.

Although the term interpersonal leadership has been well established within the literature, there remains a dearth of theoretically derived models that specifically address the comprehensive nature of the underlying leader behaviors and activities. The intent of the present article is to attempt to synthesize the existent leadership models, behaviors, and factors to arrive at a coherent conceptual model of interpersonal leadership that can inform efficient and effective leadership education programs. The resulting model included 13 primary factors integrated within a hierarchical framework. Leadership educators are recommended to adopt or adapt the proposed model while developing educational curriculum and interventions.

As an unprecedented level of merger and acquisition activity continues to sweep across the global business landscape, public relations firms certainly have not watched from the sidelines. PR agencies are pursuing mergers as fast as other industries. And this despite the sobering fact that the majority of mergers and acquisitions fail within the first three years. For any PR consultancy in search of a merger partner, avoiding that fate requires a constant awareness of one simple fact: PR is truly a people business. PR assets are exclusively people and their intellectual property, so making a PR agency merger work involves much more than getting the numbers right.

This article was written to encourage scholars to not forget to include the power of hierarchy in their studies of leadership in public sector organizations. Contemporary theories of leadership too often assume that hierarchy will wither away once the leader imposes his or her will on the organization, an assumption that does not seem to work in reality given the bureaucratic nature of public organizations. Instead it is argued that we can learn about public sector leadership needs by remembering the power of hierarchy and what it demands in terms of leadership from different levels in the organization. The article concludes with speculation as to how future research on leadership might be directed with hierarchy in mind.