Exceptions to the Rule: When Non-Debtor Entities are Protected by the Automatic Stay

(Excerpt) In most cases, the automatic stay, under section 362 of title 11 of the United States Code (the Bankruptcy Code ), stays all creditors from pursuing litigation against debtors. Nonetheless, non-debtor entities can obtain the protection afforded to debtors by the automatic stay in limited circumstances. There are two primary ways of staying litigation against a non-debtor. First, through demonstrating that there are exceptional circumstances to extend section 362 to a non-debtor. Second, through satisfying the standard for an injunction pursuant to section 105 of the Bankruptcy Code. This Article considers the circumstances by which a non-debtor entity may receive the protection of the automatic stay under section 362. Part I discusses the general standard under section 362 — that the automatic stay only extends to debtors. Part II analyzes the main exceptions to the general rule, whereby the automatic stay may be extended to non-debtors. Part III sets forth the injunction standard under section 105, which may be utilized to enjoin actions against a non-debtor

Assaf Benchetrit, Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance, COLA travel to Israel

Professor Benchetrit was invited to perform as a guest artist and to choreograph an original work for the Jerusalem Ballet Company, the largest professional ballet company in the capital of Israel

Towards crossing the borders in foreign language teacher training: A report on a pilot phase of the Tandem Learning for Teacher Training project

The aim of the paper is to present the results of a pilot project for foreign language (FL) teacher education, in which trainee teachers’ knowledge and awareness of intercultural and cross-educational similarities and differences between two cooperating institutions from socio-culturally and linguistically distant countries – Israel and Poland – are elicited. The data collected serves as a springboard for designing an international project for FL trainee teachers to be implemented as a part of a teacher training course. In the project the trainee teachers coming from geographically, culturally and linguistically detached backgrounds, Israeli and Polish, are to participate in tandem learning understood as paired sessions of knowledge and experience exchange between FL trainee teachers via online communicators. The pilot phase, therefore, is an initial but indispensable stage evaluating the extent to which trainee teachers are ready to confront and share their educational background, cultural and linguistic knowledge with their peers from a geographically and socio-culturally distant country. A group of fourteen trainee teachers of Opole University participated in the pilot project measuring the participants’ readiness to engage in crossing the aforementioned borders with the help of a closed and open-item questionnaire focusing on the degrees of awareness of a number of aspects, for instance, culture and L1-based differences in approaching FL teaching. The application of the instrument generated quantitative and qualitative data, whose analysis supported the design of the final Tandem Learning Teacher Training (TLTT) program.Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie pilotażowej fazy projektu skierowanego do przyszłych nauczycieli języka angielskiego, jako obcego, w której dokonują oni ewaluacji swojej wiedzy, podejścia i świadomości międzykulturowej oraz znajomości różnic i podobieństw pomiędzy współpracującymi ze sobą, a odległymi społecznie, kulturowo i językowo instytucjami kształcącymi przyszłych nauczycieli w Izraelu i Polsce. Zebrane dane stanowią podstawę do stworzenia innowacyjnego międzynarodowego projektu, wykraczającego poza ramy dotychczasowych kursów szkoleniowych dla przyszłych nauczycieli języka angielskiego w obu krajach. Projekt docelowy zakłada wykorzystanie uczenia się na odległość w tandemie, polegającym na regularnej wymianie myśli i doświadczeń na temat nauczania języka angielskiego jako obcego w obu krajach w celu uwrażliwienia uczestników szkolenia na tematy wynikające z różnorodności społeczno-kulturowej i językowej uczniów. Projekt pilotażowy stanowi więc początkową, niezwykle istotną fazę, oceniającą stopień, w jakim przyszli nauczycieli są gotowi przekraczać bariery społeczno-kulturowe, językowe i psychologiczne, niezbędne do współpracy w tandemie. Grupa czternastu przyszłych nauczycieli języka angielskiego z Uniwersytetu Opolskiego wzięła udział w projekcie pilotażowym, mierzącym gotowość do przekraczania ww. granic. Narzędziem pomiarowym był kwestionariusz, składający się z pytań zamkniętych i otwartych, dotyczących, między innymi, świadomości różnic w podejściu do nauczania języka angielskiego jako obcego w kraju partnerskim. Analiza pozyskanych danych ilościowych i jakościowych posłużyła do nakreślenia obszaru tematycznego w przyszłym projekcie Kształcenia Nauczycieli Języka Obcego na Odległość w Tandemie (Tandem Learning Teacher Training project – TLTT)

Caractérisation des mouvements de l'anguille d'Amérique (Anguilla rostrata) dans le Saint-Laurent à partir de profils microchimiques des otolithes

Plusieurs recherches menées au cours des quinze dernières années ont permis de changer le modèle classique du cycle vital des anguillidés. En effet, il semblerait bien que la catadromie soit un mode de vie facultatif étant donnée l’existence d’individus qui complètent l’exclusivité de leur phase de croissance en milieu saumâtre ou marin, ou qui effectuent des mouvements entre les habitats d’eau salée et d’eau douce. Dans le cadre de la présente étude, nous avons réalisé des tracés multi-éléments à l’aide de la spectrométrie de masse à plasma induite couplée à l’ablation par laser (LA ICP-MS) sur des otolithes d’anguilles d’Amérique (Anguilla rostrata) échantillonnées à travers le système hydrographique du Saint-Laurent – Lac Ontario, dans le but de reconstruire le patron d’utilisation de l’habitat durant la phase de croissance. Les profils de strontium (88Sr), baryum (138Ba), manganèse (55Mn) et magnésium (24Mg) nous ont permis de distinguer parmi trois signatures chimiques qui pourraient représenter trois habitats distincts. Deux de ces signatures correspondent à des habitats dulcicoles tandis qu’une autre représente un habitat estuarien. Environ 10% des anguilles échantillonnées ont utilisé cet habitat estuarien après avoir recruté dans le système. L’interprétation des deux habitats dulcicoles est moins évidente mais ceux-ci pourraient correspondre à des zones humides côtières et des zones d’eaux ouvertes. La majorité (78%) des changements d’habitats ont eu lieu durant les quatre premières années en eaux continentales. Nos résultats suggèrent que les anguilles en phase de croissance dans le Saint-Laurent sont capables d’effectuer des mouvements de l’ordre d’au moins 200 km. Ces premières informations sur les mouvements d’anguilles jaunes dans le Saint-Laurent ont d’importantes implications pour la gestion et la conservation de l’espèce.A number of papers published during the last 15 years have reshaped our long-held understanding of the lifecycle of anguillid eels. Catadromy among anguillids appears to be facultative with some individuals carrying out their growth stage exclusively in brackish or coastal marine waters, or even making movements between these and freshwater. For the present study, multi-element line scans were obtained, using LA ICP-MS, from the otoliths of 110 eels sampled at various locations throughout the Saint Lawrence River Lake Ontario (SLRLO) system in an attempt to retrace habitat use during their growth stage. Elemental profiles for strontium (88Sr), barium (138Ba), manganese (55Mn) and magnesium (24Mg) enabled us to distinguish three chemical signatures that might represent distinct habitats within the SLRLO. One of these was shown to likely correspond to the brackish estuary. Approximately 10% of eels were observed to make use of this estuarine habitat after recruiting to the system as elvers. These individuals were sampled at the three most downstream sites suggesting that individuals recruiting to the upper reaches of the system tend to remain in fresh water. Interpretation of the other two freshwater habitats was much less straightforward but these might correspond to marshland and open water areas. Most (78%) of the habitat switches occurred within the first 4 years after recruiting as elvers suggesting an increasing likelihood for eels to settle in one habitat as they grow older. The fact that our results indicate that yellow eels can undertake within-river movements on the order of at least 200 km has important implications for the management and conservation of this species

Brain decoding: toward real-time reconstruction of visual perception

In the past five years, the use of generative and foundational AI systems has greatly improved the decoding of brain activity. Visual perception, in particular, can now be decoded from functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) with remarkable fidelity. This neuroimaging technique, however, suffers from a limited temporal resolution ($\approx$0.5 Hz) and thus fundamentally constrains its real-time usage. Here, we propose an alternative approach based on magnetoencephalography (MEG), a neuroimaging device capable of measuring brain activity with high temporal resolution ($\approx$5,000 Hz). For this, we develop an MEG decoding model trained with both contrastive and regression objectives and consisting of three modules: i) pretrained embeddings obtained from the image, ii) an MEG module trained end-to-end and iii) a pretrained image generator. Our results are threefold: Firstly, our MEG decoder shows a 7X improvement of image-retrieval over classic linear decoders. Second, late brain responses to images are best decoded with DINOv2, a recent foundational image model. Third, image retrievals and generations both suggest that MEG signals primarily contain high-level visual features, whereas the same approach applied to 7T fMRI also recovers low-level features. Overall, these results provide an important step towards the decoding - in real time - of the visual processes continuously unfolding within the human brain.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, preprin