Deferred Compensation under the Tax Reform Act of 1969

Executive compensation covers a broad range of benefits, including current cash payments, stock bonuses and options in their various forms, qualified pension plans, life insurance and even such fringe benefits as use of company provided automobiles and aircraft. A significant portion of the compensation picture encompasses contracts and plans which defer the receipt of income until a taxable period later than the period to which the services giving rise to the compensation are related. Although only one of many compensation devices, deferred compensation is of considerable importance to American industry as a form of executive pay. A recent study of executive remuneration of the Fortune Top 100 industrial companies showed that fifty-nine of the companies offered their executives some form of deferred compensation contract or plan

Ecological studies on the Silver Flowe Nature Reserve

[Introduction:]This thesis is concerned with the development of surface patterns on an area of blanket bog in south-west Scotland. The area concerned formspart of a series of blanket bogs, collectively known as the Silver Flowe, all of which have conspicuous patterns of deep pools or hollows alternating with firmer areas of the bog surface. Such patterns are commonly found on blanket bogs in northern and western districts of Britain, and are particularly well developed on the extensive 'flows' in Sutherland and Caithness. Similar surface patterns have been described from many peat land areas elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, many of which occur on a scale far greater than those of the British peatlands .The cause of such patterns has long excited speculation. A review of the literature was written by Auer as long ago as 1920 and a recent appraisal is given by Sjors (1961). In Britain bogs exhibiting these features have been curiously neglected by ecologists until quite recently. In 1956 Pearsall briefly described two such bogs in Sutherland and in 1958 Ratcliffe and Walker described the bogs forming the Silver Flowe. Verydifferent interpretations were offered to account for essentially similar features and neither of these contributions provides a completely satisfactory explanation of pattern development. Indeed Pearsall's contribution is largely speculation. More recently Boatman and Armstrong (1968) have described an area of blanket bog in west Sutherland, in which numerous deep elongated pools occur. They suggest a possible mechanism to account for pool alignment parallel to the contours of the bog surface.My aim, in carrying out the investigations which form the basis of this thesis, has been to investigate in detail one area of patterned blanket bog with a view to understanding some of the processes involved in pattern formation. The Silver Flowe in Galloway was an obvious choice for a study area since, not only was it the nearest area of undamaged patterned bog, but it also had the safeguard of being a National Nature Reserve.Early in planning the work it was decided that several lines of investigation would be adopted within the one study area. This policy arose from a consideration of the various suggestions which have been made, largely by Scandinavian and North American workers, to account for the development of patterned surfaces. In general terms there are two 'schools of thought'. Many workers have suggested that patterns are produced by physical processes by which peat already formed is subject to displacement, at least in the surface layers. Several distinct and unrelated phenomena have been relied upon to account for the development of essentially similar patterns. These include the lateral movement of peat owing to slope of the underlying mineral ground (Troll 1944, Pearsall 1956, Heinselman 1965); desiccation and subsequent shrinkage of peat, resulting in convolutions of the peat surface (Newbould 1958, Pearsall 1956) ; also frost-heaving and other phenomena related to periodic freezing and thawing whereby surface irregularities might be produced (Auer 1920, Drury 1956, Drew and Shanks 1965 and Sigafoos, 1952).Others suggest that patterns are the result of a specialised form of bog growth, the ridges and hollows forming distinct ecological environments which, once initiated, become accentuated by differential rates of peat accumulation (Sjors 1963 1965, Granlund 1932, Lundqvist 1951, Boatman and Armstrong 1968).In reviewing the subject of pattern development Ratcliffe (in Burnett 1964) suggests that three main problems require explanation. The first is the underlying cause of hummock and hollow development, in whatever situation. The second is the cause of aligned hollows on sloping bogs and the third is the development of extensive pool networks which he considers are due to erosion. These are still the basic problems. It is worth emphasising that many of the ideas advanced from both 'schools of thought' are in fact no more than speculation based on an examination of surface features. It is surprising, in view of the extent of patterned peatland in the Boreal Zone, and the number of areas which have been described in detail, that very few detailed investigations aimed at understanding the process of pattern formation have been carried out (e.g. Granlund 1932, Boatman and Armstrong 1968 and Ratcliffe and Walker 1958).If patterns result from a physical process involving some lateral movement of peat then it is reasonable to expect that the distribution of patterns will show a relationship with the form of the underlying mineral ground. Accordingly it was decided that this relationship should be investigated in detail in the area selected for study. In addition analysis of peat stratigraphy was chosen as a second line of investigation in view of the fact that it would provide a most direct means of ascertaining the course of 'pool and ridge' formation .Detailed examination of water level fluctuation in different types of situation within an area of patterned bog was adopted as the third major line of investigation. In considering the possibility that patterns result from a specialised form of bog growth the most obvious relationship is that of plant communities and microtopography to water table. In the case of the Silver Flowe, Ratcliffe and Walker demonstrated clearly the range of tolerance of different plant species in this respect and many other workers notably Sjors (1948) and Drury (1956) have emphasised the different ecological conditions prevailing in hummock and hollow. The behaviour of the water table in these different conditions had not however been investigated in detail at the time when this work was planned and it appeared that this would be a logical first step in understanding the process of pattern formation as it is occurring at present.During the course of the work two particular features of the present bog surface posed additional problems which were considered to merit attention. One of these was the accumulation of wind-blown litter of molinia caerulea in pools and wet hollows, a feature which I considered might have an important influence on the present development of the bog surface. The other was the scarcity of aquatic species of Sphagnum in the deeper pools. The small amounts of Sphagnum growing naturally in such situations was observed to disintegrate in the late summer of two successive years and for this reason I decided to investigate the performance of Sphagnum introduced to such conditions.These various lines of approach to the problem are presented in turn. Each forms the basis of a separate section but throughout the work, wherever it is relevant, the bearing of one line of research on another is discussed. The main points arising from the various sections are drawn together in the final discussion

A requirement for STAG2 in replication fork progression creates a targetable synthetic lethality in cohesin-mutant cancers.

Cohesin is a multiprotein ring that is responsible for cohesion of sister chromatids and formation of DNA loops to regulate gene expression. Genomic analyses have identified that the cohesin subunit STAG2 is frequently inactivated by mutations in cancer. However, the reason STAG2 mutations are selected during tumorigenesis and strategies for therapeutically targeting mutant cancer cells are largely unknown. Here we show that STAG2 is essential for DNA replication fork progression, whereby STAG2 inactivation in non-transformed cells leads to replication fork stalling and collapse with disruption of interaction between the cohesin ring and the replication machinery as well as failure to establish SMC3 acetylation. As a consequence, STAG2 mutation confers synthetic lethality with DNA double-strand break repair genes and increased sensitivity to select cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents and PARP or ATR inhibitors. These studies identify a critical role for STAG2 in replication fork procession and elucidate a potential therapeutic strategy for cohesin-mutant cancers

Chemical and mechanical analysis of high temperature SiC/SiC CMC materials

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Quality control procedures for GNSS precise point positioning in the presence of time correlated residuals

PhD ThesisPrecise point positioning (PPP) is a technique for processing Global Navi- gation Satellite Systems (GNSS) data, often using recursive estimation methods e.g. a Kalman Filter, that can achieve centimetric accuracies using a single receiver. PPP is now the dominant real-time application in o shore marine positioning industry. For high precision real-time applications it is necessary to use high rate orbit and clock corrections in addition to high rate observations. As Kalman filters require input of process and measurement noise statistics, not precisely known in practice, the filter is non-optimal. Geodetic quality control procedures as developed by Baarda in the 1960s are well established and their extension to GNSS is mature. This methodology, largely unchanged since the 1990s, is now being applied to processing techniques that estimate more parameters and utilise many more observations at higher rates. \Detection, Identification and Adaption" (DIA), developed from an optimal filter perspective and utilising Baarda's methodology, is a widely adopted GNSS quality control procedure. DIA utilises various test statistics, which require observation residuals and their variances. Correct derivation of the local test statistic requires residuals at a given epoch to be uncorrelated with those from previous epochs. It is shown that for a non-optimal filter the autocorrelations between observations at successive epochs are non-zero which has implications for proper application of DIA. Whilst less problematic for longer data sampling periods, high rate data using real-time PPP results in significant time correlations between residuals over short periods. It is possible to model time correlations in the residuals as an autoregressive process. Using the autoregressive parameters, the effect of time correlation in the residuals can be removed, creating so-called whitened residuals and their variances. Thus a whitened test statistic can be formed, that satisfies the preferred assumption of uncorrelated residuals over time. The effectiveness of this whitened test statistic and its impact on quality control is evaluated.Fugro Intersite B.V.: The Natural Environment Research Council

FIELD TRIALS AS AN EXTENSION TECHNIQUE: THE CASE OF SWAZILAND

One potentially serious problem in evaluating the effectiveness of extension programs is that participants are not picked at random. Self-selection can be a problem, and it can be compounded if extension officials concentrate on the most progressive farms. This study explores the relationships between adoption of maize high-yielding varieties (HYVs) and participation in field trials intended to foster HYV usage, drawing on data from Swaziland. Results indicate that it is impossible to say if field trials had any effect on adoption. Participating farms used more HYVs, but this could have been due to self-selection or the government's selection process.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Exploring Interpersonal Relationships in Security Information Sharing

Information fraud is a significant problem for modern firms. Firms may share information about vulnerabilities, but prior research into sharing has delivered mixed results. Most prior research work has examined sharing at the organizational level and we know little of the role of interpersonal relationships in security information sharing. This paper uses a case study of a large Asia-Pacific telecommunications provider to develop theory about interpersonal security information sharing. The results suggest that sharing is promoted by trust, risk and uncertainty, knowledge management and relationship factors. Investigators shared information partly to overcome tensions with other business areas and to ameliorate operational risk perceptions. Interpersonal relationships allowed sharers to benefit from complementary and specialist knowledge in other firms, thereby translating the meaning of fraud information between business environments

The Impact of Information Systems Investment Announcements on the Market Value of the Firm: Evidence from Australian Markets

As commercial technology use becomes more widespread, firms are becoming more interested in announcing their new information systems developments to the market. In extant studies, market reaction to information systems investment has been mixed. This paper conducts an initial test to examine whether the Australian market abnormally rewards information systems investment

Paleobot.org: establishing open-access online reference collections for archaeobotanical research

Difficulty in accessing high quality reference materials has been a limiting factor in the advancement of archaeobotanical research. However, new developments in online open source content management technology and faster downloading capabilities make high quality and low cost dynamic online curation of archaeobotanical reference images increasingly feasible. We describe the establishment of Paleobot.org, an open access online reference collection database for macrobotanical, microbotanical and isotopic data to help standardize and improve the identification of archaeobotanical remain

"It's about just staying focused" : how African American gay and bisexual men persist at a predominately white institution

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on September 13, 2010).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Glenn E. Good.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2009.African American males graduate from college at lower rates than their African American female and White male classmates. This qualitative study explored the strategies that a subset of that population, African American gay and bisexual men, used to successfully persist at a predominately White educational institution (PWI) in the face of racism, heterosexism and homophobia. The results suggest that the reasons these students initially chose to attend the PWI were important to their decision to remain enrolled until their graduation. The environmental characteristics of the institution were also important since the PWI served as the backdrop for many of these students to develop their identity as gay or bisexual men. The data also suggest that discrimination and other factors made persistence more difficult for the men. Despite those challenges, these students possessed a number of attitudinal characteristics such as an approach orientation to coping, self-efficacy, being goal orientated, and perceiving few challenges that were key to their persistence. These students were able to obtain social and instrumental support from peers and sources on and off-campus that helped them navigate the PWI and subsequently persist until graduation. Implications for mental health and student affairs professionals are discussed.Includes bibliographical reference