How does Brady-type commercial debt restructuring work?

The Brady Plan is a pragmatic approach to debt restructuring that combines the relatively recent feature of debt and debt service reduction and the support of official creditors. The underlying premise of those adopting the Brady Plan is that the existing stock of debt can never be fully serviced, even through the country has embarked on a far-reaching adjustment program. To date, only a handful of countries (Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela) have successfully concluded their debt reduction negotiations through a Brady Plan with commercial creditors. Others, such as the Philippines, have engaged in Brady-type debt reduction for part of their outstanding commercial debt. The author explains what happens when, in response to a country's request, the creditors agree to negotiate to reduce the burden of outstanding commercial debt.Strategic Debt Management,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Housing Finance

Libbie & Grove Urban Design Plan

This plan was created for the City of Richmond Department of Planning and Development Review to serve as a recommendation for urban design improvements and suggested changes to zoning ordinances for the Libbie and Grove commercial area located in the Westhampton neighborhood. To begin, an in-depth demographic analysis was conducted for the Westhampton neighborhood. Special attention was paid to socioeconomic factors and trends in census tracts directly surrounding the Libbie and Grove commercial corridor. Based on these analyses and new development occurring in the Libbie and Grove commercial corridor, we were able to allocate six sites or “study areas” as candidates for redevelopment. All of these sites represent valuable areas within the Libbie and Grove commercial corridor. The sites were selected and designed with different intentions, but aim to create a complete streetscape for the commercial area. Based on this analysis and study, it is our recommendation that a new zoning code be implemented for the Libbie and Grove commercial area in order to codify form based design requirements in order to preserve and enhance a village feel at Grove and Libbie and promote compatible future development

Zoning New York City to Provide Low and Moderate Income Housing - Can Commercial Developers Be Made to Help?

Lower income New York City residents are faced with a housing emergency. Concurrently, commercial and luxury residential development is expanding. New York is considering adopting an approach to the housing shortage which has been taken in several other cities. The plan advocates amendment of the City\u27s zoning ordinance to require developers of commercial and luxury residential projects to provide the City with lower income housing units. This Note examines the proposed requirement that commercial developers provide lower income housing units. It addresses the question of the validity of such a requirement in the context of New York City\u27s statutory authority to use zoning ordinances to place conditions upon proposed development projects. By analogy to the limitations on this authority, this Note recommends a shift in emphasis to bring such a program into compliance with New York law

Maintaining technical excellence requires a national plan

To meet the challenge of technical excellence, AIA established a rocket propulsion committee to develop the National Rocket Propulsion Strategic Plan. Developing such a plan required a broad spectrum of experience and disciplines. The Strategic Plan team needed the participation of industry, government, and academia. The plan provides, if followed, a means for the U.S. to maintain technical excellence and world leadership in rocket propulsion. To implement the National Rocket Propulsion Strategic Plan is to invest in the social, economic, and technological futures of America. The plan lays the basis for upgrading existing propulsion systems and a firm base for future full scale development, production, and operation of rocket propulsion systems for space, defense, and commercial applications

Zoning New York City to Provide Low and Moderate Income Housing - Can Commercial Developers Be Made to Help?

Lower income New York City residents are faced with a housing emergency. Concurrently, commercial and luxury residential development is expanding. New York is considering adopting an approach to the housing shortage which has been taken in several other cities. The plan advocates amendment of the City\u27s zoning ordinance to require developers of commercial and luxury residential projects to provide the City with lower income housing units. This Note examines the proposed requirement that commercial developers provide lower income housing units. It addresses the question of the validity of such a requirement in the context of New York City\u27s statutory authority to use zoning ordinances to place conditions upon proposed development projects. By analogy to the limitations on this authority, this Note recommends a shift in emphasis to bring such a program into compliance with New York law

Protecting New England's Marine Ecosystem: Habitat at Risk

All animals need safe places to grow, reproduce, and find food. Marine animals are no different. In the ocean, their habitats can be the sandy bottom, a seamount rising from the ocean floor, or a deep canyon carved into the continental shelf. These places are affected by pollution and other human activities such as oil and gas drilling and commercial fishing, which research shows can have negative consequences. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is tasked with regulating ocean fishing and protecting our nation's ocean resources. Some areas of New England's waters have been closed to various types of fishing gear for decades in order to encourage the return of healthy populations of important groundfish (such as cod, haddock, and flounder), but the region does not have a plan for habitat management, as required by federal law. A plan for protecting essential fish habitat has been under development for 10 years. A variety of alternatives will be presented to the public later this year, many of which propose a reduction in the size of the area currently protected. Some of these proposals ignore established science and place the short-term interests of the commercial fishing industry above the need to protect habitat for the long-term benefit of the ecosystem, its fish populations, and the coastal communities they support

Multicriteria VMAT optimization

Purpose: To make the planning of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) faster and to explore the tradeoffs between planning objectives and delivery efficiency. Methods: A convex multicriteria dose optimization problem is solved for an angular grid of 180 equi-spaced beams. This allows the planner to navigate the ideal dose distribution Pareto surface and select a plan of desired target coverage versus organ at risk sparing. The selected plan is then made VMAT deliverable by a fluence map merging and sequencing algorithm, which combines neighboring fluence maps based on a similarity score and then delivers the merged maps together, simplifying delivery. Successive merges are made as long as the dose distribution quality is maintained. The complete algorithm is called VMERGE. Results: VMERGE is applied to three cases: a prostate, a pancreas, and a brain. In each case, the selected Pareto-optimal plan is matched almost exactly with the VMAT merging routine, resulting in a high quality plan delivered with a single arc in less than five minutes on average. VMERGE offers significant improvements over existing VMAT algorithms. The first is the multicriteria planning aspect, which greatly speeds up planning time and allows the user to select the plan which represents the most desirable compromise between target coverage and organ at risk sparing. The second is the user-chosen epsilon-optimality guarantee of the final VMAT plan. Finally, the user can explore the tradeoff between delivery time and plan quality, which is a fundamental aspect of VMAT that cannot be easily investigated with current commercial planning systems

Assessment of the Distribution and Abundance of Coastal Sharks in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Seaboard, 1995 and 1996

During 1995 and 1996, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), conducted pilot studies to develop survey methodology and a sampling strategy for assessment of coastal shark populations in the Gulf of Mexico and western North Atlantic. Longline gear similar to that used in the commercial shark fishery was deployed at randomly selected stations within three depth strata per 60 nautical mile gridf rom Brownsville, Tex. to Cape Ann, Mass. The survey methodology and gear design used in these surveys proved effective for capturing many of the small and large coastal sharks regulated under the auspices of the 1993 Fisheries Management Plan (FMP) for Sharks oft he Atlantic Ocean. Shark catch rates, species composition, and relative abundance documented in these pilot surveys were similar to those reported from observer programs monitoring commercial activities. During 78 survey days, 269 bottom longline sets were completed with 879 sharks captured

Canadian development and commercialization of a North American mobile satellite service

Canada recognized early the value of mobile satellite communications, originally through the planning of a military system and subsequently through the development of the Canadian Mobile Satellite (MSAT) systems. Acting on behalf of the government, the Department of Communications (DOC) defined and carried out a complete plan for the implementation of Mobile Satellite Services (MSS). Based on an extensive dialogue between government, industry, and users and encompassing all technical, economic regulatory, and institutional aspects, this plan resulted in the completion by 1986 of a comprehensive business plan and a decision for commercial MSS delivery. The Canadian lead for a commercial system was quickly followed by others, and in particular the U.S., giving rise to the concept of North American MSS