Not So Secure: Should Social Security Benefits Be Considered in the Good Faith Analysis Under 11 U.S.C. § 1325(A)(3)?

Part II of this Comment provides background information about Chapter 13 bankruptcy. This section is important because it provides a foundation for the remainder of this Comment. Part III of this Comment explores the source of this split and how the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (“BAPCPA”) has affected this issue. Within Part III, this Comment will discuss why Congress enacted BAPCPA, the largest overhaul of bankruptcy law since its origin, and why BAPCPA did not affect the good faith requirement under § 1325(a)(3) even though BAPCPA drastically altered bankruptcy law. In addition, this section also discusses how BAPCPA significantly altered Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which affects Chapter 13 bankruptcy when a debtor abuses the requirements of 11 U.S.C. § 707(b)(3)(B) and must either convert to a Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing or have his/her case dismissed. Part IV provides a detailed examination of the good faith analysis under 11 U.S.C. § 1325(a). This examination of § 1325(a) outlines the varying definitions of good faith and provides a detailed look at the totality of circumstances test by discussing the varying factors courts have adopted. Part V addresses the split among courts on this issue. This section provides an in-depth look at cases that have ruled specifically on this issue and why the courts held the way they did. Part VI will provide an analysis on why courts should adopt the stance that a debtor’s decision not to commit available Social Security benefits to unsecured creditors should be included in the good faith analysis under § 1325(a). This analysis starts by addressing the arguments made by proponents who oppose including a debtor’s decision to exclude Social Security benefits as a factor courts may consider. This Comment analyzes why these views are misguided and concludes with why the prevailing view should be to include the debtor’s decision as a factor under the good faith analysis. In advocating for this view, this Comment is not proposing a per se rule. Instead, this Comment is advocating that the inclusion of Social Security benefits only be a factor that courts may consider. To advocate for a per se rule in either direction destroys the very purpose of the good faith test. Part VII offers a brief summary and conclusion of the Comment

An Inquiry into the Number of Traffic Tickets Issued and Implications for African Americans Motorists

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of race and gender disparities in police traffic stops as they relate to the number of tickets issued, number of consent searches, and number of arrests of traffic violators in the southern region of Texas, Harris County. The research will further shed light on how implicit bias affects police discretion and provide implications for police officers. This research will bring attention to the sanction disparity and examine the relationship between race and gender in motorist outcomes at the conclusion of traffic stops. The data for this research was conducted from secondary data obtained from Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) annual reporting and the Houston Police Department. The sample consisted of 21 Texas Law Enforcement Agencies in the Houston metropolis area of the state of Texas, Harris County. This included Law Enforcement Agencies from college/university police departments, Houston Police Department, Harris County Constables Offices, Harris County Sheriff’s Office, and Independent School District Police Officers. To specifically focus on implicit bias and Police discretion, an exhausted review of the literature was conducted. Further analysis examined implicit bias specified in the study as it relates to the use of discretion by police officers when contacting African American men and women in the southern region of Texas Harris County. The Standard Multiple Regression procedures including the multiple correlation procedure were used to test the aforementioned hypotheses. All hypotheses were tested at the .05 level or better. One of the most surprising findings of the current study was the significantly predictable relationship between racial variables (number of African Americans, number of Asians, number of Hispanics and other racial group violators) and the number of arrests given by officers associated with Texas Law Enforcement Agencies. The five racial variables were found to be significant linearly related to the number of tickets issued by officers of Texas Law Enforcement agencie

U.S. Construction Management Students\u27 Comfort Level with and Knowledge of Mobile Technologies

Mobile technologies are becoming increasingly common on U.S. construction sites as companies become aware of how they can simplify and automate the capturing of information in the field, and communicate that information back to company management systems. Field personnel are now being equipped with smart phones or tablets to check email, look at blueprints, take progress photos, or create punchlists, all with one device. These technologies are being used to make work efforts more efficient, raise productivity, reduce costs, and positively impact project profitability. As the U.S. construction industry moves to these mobile technologies, so too should university construction management programs move to mobile education and learning applications to ensure that students are prepared for a mobile construction industry. This study uses university provided iPads in construction management classes to expose students to mobile technologies before they enter the workforce. Pre- and post-test surveys collected data about first-year and upper-level construction management students comfort with mobile technologies, their knowledge about mobile technologies in construction, and their views on whether they think they will use mobile technologies in the workplace and for what tasks. While some students entered with a very low comfort level with mobile devices, there were gains in comfort level by nearly all students. Most, even first-year students, were able to envision how a mobile device could be used within the construction industry to perform various tasks, and their visions increased from the beginning of the semester to the end, even though no formal instruction was done in this area. The gains were primarily due to exposure to the device and general usage. By gaining a greater understanding of student comfort with and knowledge of emerging technologies, more effective educational and training methodologies can be developed to facilitate instruction and improve the effectiveness of students upon graduation

Determination of Equilibrium Constants for the Reaction between Acetone and HO_2 Using Infrared Kinetic Spectroscopy

The reaction between the hydroperoxy radical, HO_2, and acetone may play an important role in acetone removal and the budget of HO_x radicals in the upper troposphere. We measured the equilibrium constants of this reaction over the temperature range of 215–272 K at an overall pressure of 100 Torr using a flow tube apparatus and laser flash photolysis to produce HO_2. The HO_2 concentration was monitored as a function of time by near-IR diode laser wavelength modulation spectroscopy. The resulting [HO_2] decay curves in the presence of acetone are characterized by an immediate decrease in initial [HO_2] followed by subsequent decay. These curves are interpreted as a rapid (<100 μs) equilibrium reaction between acetone and the HO_2 radical that occurs on time scales faster than the time resolution of the apparatus, followed by subsequent reactions. This separation of time scales between the initial equilibrium and ensuing reactions enabled the determination of the equilibrium constant with values ranging from 4.0 × 10^(–16) to 7.7 × 10^(–1)8 cm^3 molecule^(–1) for T = 215–272 K. Thermodynamic parameters for the reaction determined from a second-law fit of our van’t Hoff plot were Δ_(r)H°_(245) = −35.4 ± 2.0 kJ mol^(–1) and Δ_(r)S°_(245) = −88.2 ± 8.5 J mol^(–1) K^(–1). Recent ab initio calculations predict that the reaction proceeds through a prereactive hydrogen-bonded molecular complex (HO_2–acetone) with subsequent isomerization to a hydroxy–peroxy radical, 2-hydroxyisopropylperoxy (2-HIPP). The calculations differ greatly in the energetics of the complex and the peroxy radical, as well as the transition state for isomerization, leading to significant differences in their predictions of the extent of this reaction at tropospheric temperatures. The current results are consistent with equilibrium formation of the hydrogen-bonded molecular complex on a short time scale (100 μs). Formation of the hydrogen-bonded complex will have a negligible impact on the atmosphere. However, the complex could subsequently isomerize to form the 2-HIPP radical on longer time scales. Further experimental studies are needed to assess the ultimate impact of the reaction of HO_2 and acetone on the atmosphere

Building a Culture of Evidence for Community College Student Success: Early Progress in the Achieving the Dream Initiative

Achieving the Dream is a multiyear, national initiative, launched by Lumina Foundation for Education, to help community college students stay in school and succeed. The 82 participating colleges commit to collecting and analyzing data to improve student outcomes, particularly for low-income students and students of color. This baseline report describes the early progress that the first 27 colleges have made after just one year of implementation

Correction To: Better Beware: Comparing Metacognition for Phishing and Legitimate Emails (Metacognition and Learning, (2019), 14, 3, (343-362), 10.1007/S11409-019-09197-5)

The article Better beware: comparing metacognition for phishing and legitimate emails , written by Casey Inez Canfield, Baruch Fischhoff and Alex Davis, was originally published electronically on the publisher\u27s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 20 July 2019 without open access

Oral Interviews for Testing in the High-School Spanish Classroom

Our project offers strategies and materials for the beginning Spanish classroom to increase oral proficiency of students through an emphasis on individual and small-group interviews with the teacher, which will be an integral part to every classroom test. These interviews will be referred to also as “One-On-One orals,” “OOOs,” or simply “encounters,” inspired by the oral proficiency interviews (OPIs) first developed in the 1980s to measure speaker competence in a second language--as per the proficiency guidelines of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). (Our project’s classroom materials begin on page 5.) As we know today, the speaking competencies that the OPIs strive for and measure have shaped much of the evolution of our classroom teaching. Now, with this project, the goal is to use test-day interviews that parallel the OPI as a way to further develop speaking abilities and consolidate grammatical concepts and vocabulary. The interviews can be as simple as having students communicate prepared/practiced material in Spanish to the instructor face to face--while the rest of the class is completing written portions of the exam. Our project will details sample interviews to help teachers imagine what they themselves might try (see page 5). We also provide some suggestions for technology use and share an activity that is outside the scope of the testing interview but can be a fun way to encourage classroom speaking (pages 12-15)

Better Beware: Comparing Metacognition for Phishing and Legitimate Emails

Every electronic message poses some threat of being a phishing attack. If recipients underestimate that threat, they expose themselves, and those connected to them, to identity theft, ransom, malware, or worse. If recipients overestimate that threat, then they incur needless costs, perhaps reducing their willingness and ability to respond over time. In two experiments, we examined the appropriateness of individuals\u27 confidence in their judgments of whether email messages were legitimate or phishing, using calibration and resolution as metacognition metrics. Both experiments found that participants had reasonable calibration but poor resolution, reflecting a weak correlation between their confidence and knowledge. These patterns differed for legitimate and phishing emails, with participants being better calibrated for legitimate emails, except when expressing complete confidence in their judgments, but consistently overconfident for phishing emails. The second experiment compared performance on the laboratory task with individuals\u27 actual vulnerability, and found that participants with better resolution were less likely to have malicious files on their home computers. That comparison raised general questions about the design of anti-phishing training and of providing feedback essential to self-regulated learning

Spirality: A Novel Way to Measure Spiral Arm Pitch Angle

We present the MATLAB code Spirality, a novel method for measuring spiral arm pitch angles by fitting galaxy images to spiral templates of known pitch. Computation time is typically on the order of 2 minutes per galaxy, assuming at least 8 GB of working memory. We tested the code using 117 synthetic spiral images with known pitches, varying both the spiral properties and the input parameters. The code yielded correct results for all synthetic spirals with galaxy-like properties. We also compared the code's results to two-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform (2DFFT) measurements for the sample of nearby galaxies defined by DMS PPak. Spirality's error bars overlapped 2DFFT's error bars for 26 of the 30 galaxies. The two methods' agreement correlates strongly with galaxy radius in pixels and also with i-band magnitude, but not with redshift, a result that is consistent with at least some galaxies' spiral structure being fully formed by z=1.2, beyond which there are few galaxies in our sample. The Spirality code package also includes GenSpiral, which produces FITS images of synthetic spirals, and SpiralArmCount, which uses a one-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform to count the spiral arms of a galaxy after its pitch is determined. The code package is freely available online; see Comments for URL.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables. The code package is available at http://dafix.uark.edu/~doug/SpiralityCode