Restoring Bankruptcy’s Fresh Start

The discharge injunction, which allows former debtors to be free from any efforts to collect former debt, is a primary feature of bankruptcy law in the United States. When creditors have systemically violated debtors’ discharge injunctions, some debtors have attempted to challenge those creditors through a class action lawsuit in bankruptcy court. However, the pervasiveness of class-waiving arbitration clauses likely prevents those debtors from disputing discharge injunction violations outside of binding, individual arbitration. This Note first discusses areas of disagreement regarding how former debtors may enforce their discharge injunctions. Then, it examines the types of disputes that allow debtors to collectivize in bankruptcy court. Without seeking to resolve either disagreement, this Note assumes debtors may collectivize in this context and employs an “inherent conflict” test that looks to whether disputes over discharge injunction violations are arbitrable. Because the “inherent conflict” test likely leads to the conclusion that courts must enforce class-waiving arbitration clauses, this Note argues that Congress should amend the Bankruptcy Code not only to provide debtors an express right of action under § 524 and the ability to collectivize, but also to prohibit the arbitration of these claims. Doing so will give full effect to the discharge injunction and fulfill the promise to debtors that they can truly begin anew after bankruptcy

Theory of Alkali Induced Reconstruction of the Cu(100) Surface

LEED experiments show that Li adsorbed at Cu(100) surfaces at room temperature induces a (2x1) missing row substrate reconstruction while adsorption at lower temperatures, T=180 K, results in an unreconstructed Cu(100)+c(2x2)--Li overlayer structure. Substrate reconstruction has not been observed for Na nor for K adsorption. In order to study the specific reconstruction behavior of the Li adsorbate ab initio DFT calculations have been performed on Cu(100)+Ad, Ad = Li, Na, K systems at coverages Theta_Ad=0.25-0.5 with and without reconstruction. The calculations show that the (2x1) MR reconstructed surface lies energetically above the ideal (1x1) surface by 0.2 eV per unit cell. However, alkali binding is stronger in the MR geometry as compared to that of the ideal surface where the increase in bond strength becomes smaller in going from Li to Na to K. As a result, the MR reconstructed and the overlayer adsorbate systems are energetically very close for Cu(100)+Li while for Na and K the overlayer geometry is always favored.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Surf. Rev. Let

Nitrous oxide in coastal waters

We determined atmospheric and dissolved nitrous oxide (N2O) in the surface waters of the central North Sea, the German Bight, and the Gironde estuary. The mean saturations were 104 ± 1% (central North Sea, September 1991), 101 ± 2% (German Bight, September 1991), 99 ± 1% (German Bight September 1992), and 132% (Gironde estuary, November 1991). To evaluate the contribution of coastal areas and estuaries to the oceanic emissions we assembled a compilation of literature data. We conclude that the mean saturations in coastal regions (with the exception of estuaries and regions with upwelling phenomena) are only slightly higher than in the open ocean. However, when estuarine and coastal upwelling regions are included, a computation of the global oceanic N2O flux indicates that a considerable portion (approximately 60%) of this flux is from coastal regions, mainly due to high emissions from estuaries. We estimate, using two different parameterizations of the air-sea exchange process, an annual global sea-to-air flux of 11–17 Tg N2O. Our results suggest a serious underestimation of the flux from coastal regions in widely used previous estimates

Coexistence of ΘII\Theta_{II}-loop-current order with checkerboard d-wave CDW/PDW order in a hot-spot model for cuprate superconductors

We investigate the strong influence of the $\Theta_{II}$-loop-current order on both unidirectional and bidirectional d-wave charge-density-wave/pair-density-wave (CDW/PDW) composite orders along axial momenta $(\pm Q_0,0)$ and $(0,\pm Q_0)$ that emerge in an effective hot spot model departing from the three-band Emery model relevant to the phenomenology of the cuprate superconductors. This study is motivated by the compelling evidence that the $\Theta_{II}$-loop-current order described by this model may explain groundbreaking experiments such as spin-polarized neutron scattering performed in these materials. Here, we demonstrate, within a saddle-point approximation, that the $\Theta_{II}$-loop-current order clearly coexists with bidirectional (i.e. checkerboard) d-wave CDW and PDW orders along axial momenta, but is visibly detrimental to the unidirectional (i.e. stripe) case. This result has potentially far-reaching implications for the physics of the cuprates and agrees well with very recent x-ray experiments on YBCO that indicate that at higher dopings the CDW order has indeed a tendency to be bidirectional.Comment: Published in Physical Review

On the mixed Cauchy problem with data on singular conics

We consider a problem of mixed Cauchy type for certain holomorphic partial differential operators whose principal part $Q_{2p}(D)$ essentially is the (complex) Laplace operator to a power, $\Delta^p$. We pose inital data on a singular conic divisor given by P=0, where $P$ is a homogeneous polynomial of degree $2p$. We show that this problem is uniquely solvable if the polynomial $P$ is elliptic, in a certain sense, with respect to the principal part $Q_{2p}(D)$