The Corporate Mortgage Under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and the New York Solution

A corporate mortgage has been defined as an indenture intended to convey property, real and personal, tangible and intangible, to a trustee for bondholders, as security for the bonds issued and to be issued thereunder by a corporation. This financing device, utilized by many large corporate organizations, has grown to be of paramount importance in the field of corporate financing, and the lack of attention given by the Code to the long-term debts of corporations has raised serious questions of filing procedures. Discussion of the novel treatment accorded by New York to the problem of perfecting security interests in corporate mortgages will constitute the main part of this comment. That state\u27s treatment deserves scrutiny both because of the magnitude of effort expended by New York on the study of the Code before its adoption and because of its traditional role as a commercial and financial leader. The New York statutory provisions relevant to the problems of perfecting the indenture will be reviewed and an attempt will be made to explain their practical effect on mortgages executed subsequent to the Code. The problems associated with the transition to the Code from the conglomerate pre-Code New York lien law for indentures existing at the effective date of the Code will be discussed, and methods concerning the alleviation of these difficulties suggested. However, before dealing with the various ramifications of the New York version, it may prove helpful to explore the broad background of the relationship generally between Article 9 and the corporate mortgage

UNION DENSITY EFFECTS IN THE SUPERMARKET INDUSTRY

Higher union density (the percentage of employees in an area who belong to unions) is known to raise the wages of union members. We find that in the supermarket industry, higher density locally also leads to higher wages for non-union members. Despite this, workers who are not in unions lose ground relative to union members. For a 10% increase in local union densities in the supermarket industry it is estimated that the wages of union employees in that labor market will increase by 5.3% and by 1.2% for nonunion. Hence, the union wage premium will increase in regions with higher union densities. At the time of the last national examination of the retail industry in 1977, union influence in the retail food industry was near its peak. Subsequently union membership and influence have declined. In 1993 a reported 25.7% of supermarket employees listed themselves as union members, a decline from 29.4% in 1984 (NBER, 1995). After conducting an extensive review of wage estimation literature, we focus on the structure of wages in the supermarket industry between 1984 and 1993. The effect of union penetration in local markets on nonunion wages or the "spill-over" effect, is an important focus of this study. While it is widely accepted that the higher the union percentage in local labor markets the higher the wages for those in the union, the corresponding effect has not been closely examined for the nonunion sector. To investigate this phenomenon we first replicate as closely as possible the results of a previous supermarket wage study (Belman and Voos, 1993). Following a baseline comparison of this initial estimation, we enlarge the data set to include individuals in rural areas and from additional years. By using a more sophisticated estimation technique we find that increasing union densities positively affect union and nonunion wages. The significant results for the nonunion sector is of particular importance, as this is the first confirmation of this effect to the best of our knowledge.Agribusiness, Labor and Human Capital, Marketing,

Reading on the Ropes: A Pilot Study of an Accelerated Remediation Program with Alternative High School Students

High school students must read to learn curriculum, yet few interventions are proven to substantially help close literacy gaps for older students with reading deficits. Students with large literacy deficits particularly benefit from explicit, systematic instruction of interventions emphasizing the structure of language (i.e., phonology, orthography, syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics), aspects of cognition (i.e., problem solving, attention, reasoning, and inferencing), and organization of spoken and written language. A 14-week pilot study of Readable English, a reading intervention using these structured literacy elements, provided embedded interactive orthography to scaffold online grade level content for students at two alternative high schools (N = 25). Students in the treatment group showed significant and meaningful increases in standardized tests of reading accuracy, fluency, and reading comprehension compared to minimal or no gains in the control group. Transfer effects from students using the Readable English markup to reading in standard English were demonstrated. Implications for use as accelerated remediation intervention for older adolescents are discussed

The cultural capitalists: notes on the ongoing reconfiguration of trafficking culture in Asia

Most analysis of the international flows of the illicit art market has described a global situation in which a postcolonial legacy of acquisition and collection exploits cultural heritage by pulling it westwards towards major international trade nodes in the USA and Europe. As the locus of consumptive global economic power shifts, however, these traditional flows are pulled in other directions: notably for the present commentary, towards and within Asia

A complex systems approach to obesity: A transdisciplinary framework for action

Member led symposium at UK Congress on Obesity 202

Selective prebiotic synthesis ofphosphoroaminonitriles and aminothioamides inneutral water

The central and conserved role of peptides in extant biology suggests that they played animportant role during the origins of life. Strecker amino acid synthesis appears to be prebiotic,but the high pKaHof ammonia (pKaH=9.2) necessitates high pH reaction conditions torealise efficient synthesis, which places difficult environmental constraints on prebiotic aminoacid synthesis. Here we demonstrate that diamidophosphate reacts efficiently with simplealdehydes and hydrogen cyanide in water at neutral pH to affordN-phosphoro-aminonitriles.N-Phosphoro-aminonitrile synthesis is highly selective for aldehydes; ketones give poorconversion.N-Phosphoro-aminonitriles react with hydrogen sulfide at neutral pH to furnishaminothioamides. The high yield (73%–Quant.) of N-phosphoro-aminonitriles at neutral pH, and their selective transformations, may provide new insights into prebiotic amino acid synthesis and activation

Envelope Determinants of Equine Lentiviral Vaccine Protection

Lentiviral envelope (Env) antigenic variation and associated immune evasion present major obstacles to vaccine development. The concept that Env is a critical determinant for vaccine efficacy is well accepted, however defined correlates of protection associated with Env variation have yet to be determined. We reported an attenuated equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) vaccine study that directly examined the effect of lentiviral Env sequence variation on vaccine efficacy. The study identified a significant, inverse, linear correlation between vaccine efficacy and increasing divergence of the challenge virus Env gp90 protein compared to the vaccine virus gp90. The report demonstrated approximately 100% protection of immunized ponies from disease after challenge by virus with a homologous gp90 (EV0), and roughly 40% protection against challenge by virus (EV13) with a gp90 13% divergent from the vaccine strain. In the current study we examine whether the protection observed when challenging with the EV0 strain could be conferred to animals via chimeric challenge viruses between the EV0 and EV13 strains, allowing for mapping of protection to specific Env sequences. Viruses containing the EV13 proviral backbone and selected domains of the EV0 gp90 were constructed and in vitro and in vivo infectivity examined. Vaccine efficacy studies indicated that homology between the vaccine strain gp90 and the N-terminus of the challenge strain gp90 was capable of inducing immunity that resulted in significantly lower levels of post-challenge virus and significantly delayed the onset of disease. However, a homologous N-terminal region alone inserted in the EV13 backbone could not impart the 100% protection observed with the EV0 strain. Data presented here denote the complicated and potentially contradictory relationship between in vitro virulence and in vivo pathogenicity. The study highlights the importance of structural conformation for immunogens and emphasizes the need for antibody binding, not neutralizing, assays that correlate with vaccine protection. © 2013 Craigo et al

Water dispersible microbicidal cellulose acetate phthalate film

BACKGROUND: Cellulose acetate phthalate (CAP) has been used for several decades in the pharmaceutical industry for enteric film coating of oral tablets and capsules. Micronized CAP, available commercially as "Aquateric" and containing additional ingredients required for micronization, used for tablet coating from water dispersions, was shown to adsorb and inactivate the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1), herpesviruses (HSV) and other sexually transmitted disease (STD) pathogens. Earlier studies indicate that a gel formulation of micronized CAP has a potential as a topical microbicide for prevention of STDs including the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The objective of endeavors described here was to develop a water dispersible CAP film amenable to inexpensive industrial mass production. METHODS: CAP and hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) were dissolved in different organic solvent mixtures, poured into dishes, and the solvents evaporated. Graded quantities of a resulting selected film were mixed for 5 min at 37°C with HIV-1, HSV and other STD pathogens, respectively. Residual infectivity of the treated viruses and bacteria was determined. RESULTS: The prerequisites for producing CAP films which are soft, flexible and dispersible in water, resulting in smooth gels, are combining CAP with HPC (other cellulose derivatives are unsuitable), and casting from organic solvent mixtures containing ≈50 to ≈65% ethanol (EtOH). The films are ≈100 µ thick and have a textured surface with alternating protrusions and depressions revealed by scanning electron microscopy. The films, before complete conversion into a gel, rapidly inactivated HIV-1 and HSV and reduced the infectivity of non-viral STD pathogens >1,000-fold. CONCLUSIONS: Soft pliable CAP-HPC composite films can be generated by casting from organic solvent mixtures containing EtOH. The films rapidly reduce the infectivity of several STD pathogens, including HIV-1. They are converted into gels and thus do not have to be removed following application and use. In addition to their potential as topical microbicides, the films have promise for mucosal delivery of pharmaceuticals other than CAP