Modern Trend of the Law of Contribution among Joint Tortfeasors

Modern Trend of the Law of Contribution Among Joint Tortfeasor

AmeriCorps: Changing Lives, Changing America

AmeriCorps is designed to help strengthen and rebuild communities affected by poverty, impacted by disasters, and marked by crime. From the initial members who served during the "Summer of Safety" in 1994 to the soon-to-be 500,000th member in 2007, AmeriCorps members have been on the front lines of service every day, recruiting and managing volunteers of all ages and backgrounds -- 1.4 million in 2006 alone. Together, AmeriCorps members and the volunteers they mobilize tackle some of our nation's toughest problems: crime, illiteracy, homelessness, gang violence, and drug abuse. They teach and tutor to help students improve academically, mentor children and youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, run after-school programs, reconnect prisoners with mainstream society, care for seniors, and protect the environment. This report examines the results from a longitudinal study of AmeriCorps members and surveys of members, alumni, and the organizations where members served to examine the impacts of national service on members' civic engagement, education, employment, and life skills. Findings reveal that AmeriCorps alumni are more connected to their communities, continue to participate in community activities, and choose public service careers after their service with AmeriCorps

The Implementation of Neighborhood Conservation Projects in Portsmouth, Virginia, 1960-1990

The study describes and analyzes the implementation of federally-funded neighborhood conservation programs in two of Portsmouth, Virginia\u27s oldest urban neighborhoods by addressing four research questions: (1) To what extent is there variation in the implementation of neighborhood conservation projects in differing neighborhood settings? What are the factors that account for such differences? (2) To what extent are the neighborhood conservation projects distributive or regulatory programs, and what forms of conflict and/or cooperation result from this? (3) What is the intergovernmental context of neighborhood conservation projects, and how does this affect the nature of bargaining and negotiation among governmental units? and (4) To what extent has implementation of these projects been successful? Comparing the experiences in the two projects, the study found that the level of technical difficulties and the range of behaviors to be regulated were factors which consistently facilitated implementation. The inability to recruit implementing officials consistently impeded it. Differences in implementation was primarily due to six factors: the initial allocation of financial resources, the extent of behavioral change required, the degree of public support, the attitudes and resources of constituents\u27 groups, the innovative leadership of implementing officials, and socioeconomic conditions. Although the federal rehabilitation loan program was reduced and the housing inspection program was terminated, implementers were partly successful in providing alternative local resources. As implementation procedures became routinized over a long period of time, no differences in implementation could be discerned between the two projects. The projects were successful as measured by the improvement in measures of neighborhood conditions, especially in median housing value

Occupational Learning, Financial Knowledge, and the Accumulation of Retirement Wealth

This study explores the relationship between general human capital investment, financial knowledge, occupational spillovers, and the accumulation of wealth in a primarily descriptive manner. Drawing upon human capital theory and following previous related work by Delavande, Rohwedder and Willis (2008), we hypothesized that individuals with daily exposure to financial knowledge through their occupation would benefit by having greater financial knowledge that would translate into greater wealth accumulation than individuals who do not enjoy such spillovers from their occupation. Using data from the Cognitive Economics Study and the Health and Retirement Study, we find strong evidence that individuals in financial occupations tend to have greater financial knowledge and moderate evidence that they also have greater wealth accumulation.

Measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree

We study various measures of irrationality for hypersurfaces of large degree in projective space and other varieties. These include the least degree of a rational covering of projective space, and the minimal gonality of a covering family of curves. The theme is that positivity properties of canonical bundles lead to lower bounds on these invariants. In particular, we prove that if X is a very general smooth hypersurface of dimension n and degree d \ge 2n+1, then any dominant rational mapping from X to projective n-space must have degree at least d-1. We also propose a number of open problems, and we show how our methods lead to simple new proofs of results of Ran and Beheshti-Eisenbud.Comment: Major revision of first version, combining it with previously separate appendix of Bastianelli and De Poi. Extended section of open problems added, as well as new proofs of results of Ran and Beheshti-Eisenbud. Dedicated to J\'anos Koll\'ar on the occasion of his sixtieth birthda

Effects of shear on eggs and larvae of striped bass, morone saxatilis, and white perch, M. americana

Shear stress, generated by water movement, can kill fish eggs and larvae by causing rotation or deformation. Through the use of an experimental apparatus, a series of shear (as dynes/cm2)-mortality equations for fixed time exposures were generated for striped bass and white perch eggs and larvae. Exposure of striped bass eggs to a shear level of 350 dynes/cm2 kills 36% of the eggs in 1 min; 69% in 2 min, and 88% in 4 min; exposure of larvae to 350 dynes/cm2 kills 9.3% in 1 min, 30.0% in 2 min, and 68.1% in 4 min. A shear level of 350 dynes/cm2 kills 38% of the white perch eggs in 1 min, 41% in 2 min, 89% in 5 min, 96% in 10 min, and 98% in 20 min. A shear level of 350 dynes/cm2 applied to white perch larvae destroys 38% of the larvae in 1 min, 52% in 2 min, and 75% in 4 min. Results are experimentally used in conjunction with the determination of shear levels in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and ship movement for the estimation of fish egg and larval mortalities in the field