A responsabilidade da sociedade diretora com os credores da sociedade subordinada

The scope of the present study encompasses the liability of the directing company for the obligations of the subordinated company. Whereas the concept of directing company is comprised in the broader context of groups of companies and, consequently, in the comprehensive framework of the relationships established among such entities, this study starts by defining the notion of groups of companies, distinguishing it from related figures. It, then, moves on to analyse the legal regime applicable to groups of companies in some legal systems deemed significant, notably the American, European and German systems. Finally, this paper scrutinizes the provisions of article 501 of the Portuguese Companies Code (“Códigodas Sociedades Comerciais”), in particular its systematics and peculiarities, so as to ascertain which is the liability scheme 2 applicable to the directing or dominant company for the obligations of the subordinates or dominated company. Pursuant to no. 1 of article 501of the CSC, the directing company’s liability for such obligations exists provided these commitments are born before, during and until such time the subordination contract is terminated. The liability of the directing or dominant company for the debts of the subordinated or dominated company ceases as of the moment when the relationship between those two entities no longer exists, with immediate effect.

Uncertainty in olfactory decision-making

Relationships between accuracy and speed of decision-making, or speed-accuracy tradeoffs (SAT), have been extensively studied. However, the range of SAT observed varies widely across studies for reasons that are unclear. Several explanations have been proposed, including motivation or incentive for speed vs. accuracy, species and modality but none of these hypotheses has been directly tested. An alternative explanation is that the different degrees of SAT are related to the nature of the task being performed. Here, we addressed this problem by comparing SAT in two odor-guided decision tasks that were identical except for the nature of the task uncertainty: an odor mixture categorization task, where the distinguishing information is reduced by making the stimuli more similar to each other; and an odor identification task in which the information is reduced by lowering the intensity over a range of three log steps. (...)