Debt Deception: How Debt Buyers Abuse the Legal System to Prey on Lower-Income New Yorkers

In this report, we examine lawsuits filed by debt buyers and their profound impact on low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, lower-income communities, and communities of color. We begin, in Part I, with background on the debt buying industry, including an analysis of the debt buyer business model and collection methods. Part II focuses on debt buyer lawsuits, particularly the systemic problems at the root of these lawsuits. In Part III, we highlight specific findings from a study of debt buyer lawsuits in New York City. We draw results from two data sets: (1) a 365-case sample of lawsuits brought by the 26 debt buyers who filed the greatest number of cases in New York City between January 2006 and July 2008 ("Court Sample"); and (2) a 451-case sample of callers to NEDAP's legal hotline who were sued by a creditor or debt buyer in 2008 ("Client Sample"). Finally, in Part IV, we recommend policy and legislative reforms to address the problems documented in this repor

Disorder and dephasing effect on electron transport through conjugated molecular wires in molecular junctions

Understanding electron transport processes in molecular wires connected between contacts is a central focus in the field of molecular electronics. Especially, the dephasing effect causing tunneling-to-hopping transition has great importance from both applicational and fundamental points of view. We analyzed coherent and incoherent electron transmission through conjugated molecular wires by means of density-functional tight-binding theory within the D'Amato-Pastawski model. Our approach can study explicitly the structure/transport relationship in molecular junctions in a dephasing environmental condition using only single dephasing parameter. We investigated the length dependence and the influence of thermal fluctuations on transport and reproduced the well-known tunneling-to-hopping transition. This approach will be a powerful tool for the interpretation of recent conductance measurements of molecular wires.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

A cultural assessment of employee motivation in the Brazilian hotel industry: A comparison between the northeast and the southeast

This study used Hofstede\u27s (1980) Value Survey Module to compare culture and Hackman and Oldham\u27s (1980) intrinsic motivation six-item measure to compare motivation to work between hotel employees in Northeast and Southeast Brazil. The results of this study showed there are significant cultural differences between the two regions. These differences are correlated to motivation; Sub cultural differences found between Northeast and Southeast Brazil require that training contents and organizational culture differ between the regions since employees\u27 values and needs and values are not the same. The correlation between culture and motivation suggests that cultural differences may be used by managers as a tool to motivate their employees. If employees value different things they are therefore motivated by different things as well, for values are the driving forces of action

EVALUATION OF THE POSITIONAL QUALITY THROUGH THE POSTPROCESSING OF RAW GNSS DATA FROM A SMARTPHONE VIA DIFFERENT SATELLITE POSITIONING METHODS

Since the introduction of the Android 7 in August 2016, it has become possible to use raw data collected by GNSS sensors present in some Android smartphones and tablets. Therefore, it became possible, for the first time, to perform the post-processing of the data, which means to obtain coordinates that are more accurate than usual, from meters to decimeters. In addition, among the technological innovations in the context of positioning via smartphones, it is mentioned the use of modern GNSS sensors, like the one used by Xiaomi Mi 8, which was the first smartphone to integrate a dual-frequency GNSS sensor. In this research, data collection campaigns were carried out in static mode to evaluate the quality of geodetic coordinates obtained from Mi 8. Using freely available applications that store raw data in files in RINEX format, the data was post-processed with different positioning methods and with different software, including the freely available IBGE-PPP online service in Brazil. The results of this research show that it is possible to obtain geodetic coordinates with an accuracy at decimeter order, which indicates that the methodology can be used in some engineering applications

Faciliter la transition des soins des personnes âgées victimes d'AVC: de la réadaptation hospitalière au domicile : revue de littérature

Cette revue de littérature a pour but de mettre en évidence les stratégies infirmières facilitatrices dans un contexte de transition des soins entre la réadaptation en milieu hospitalier et le domicile du patient âgé victime d’AVC