Defense of In Pari Delicto Does Not Affect Trustee Standing

(Excerpt) Rejecting the Second Circuit’s Wagoner rule and agreeing with the First, Third, Fifth, and Eleventh Circuits, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that the collusion of corporate insiders with third parties to injure the corporation does not deprive the corporation’s trustee of standing to sue third parties, resulting in a greater rift between Second Circuit and the other Courts of Appeal on this issue. Moratzka v. Morris, 482 F.3d 997, 1004 (8th Cir. 2007). Nevertheless, the court affirmed that such a situation may give rise to the defense of in pari delicto barring the trustee’s action. Id. In Moratzka, the plaintiff-trustee brought suit against a third party-defendant alleging that it committed malpractice, aided and abetted a breach of fiduciary duty by the Chief Manager of the debtor corporation, and assisted the Chief Manager in looting the assets of the debtor corporation. Id. at 999. The Bankruptcy Court first dismissed the plaintiff-trustee’s complaint on the grounds that the trustee alleged only an injury to the creditors, not an injury to the corporation. The court then denied a motion to amend the complaint, reasoning that doing so would be futile because the defense of in pari delicto would bar the complaint anyway. Id. On appeal the district court affirmed on different theory, finding that the trustee lacked standing to bring such a claim, because it belonged to the creditors of the debtor corporation. Id. at 1000. The Eight Circuit disagreed with the holdings of both lower courts. Id. at 1007. Throughout its analysis, the court stated that there were two distinct issues that had to be addressed: the issue of standing and the issue of defenses, and that the lower courts failed to deal with these issues correctly. Id. at 1004. The court then concluded that the plaintiff-trustee was the proper party to bring the claims against the third party-defendant for malpractice, and for aiding and abetting the Chief Manager’s breach of fiduciary duty. Id. at 1006. As to the issue of in pari delicto, the court held that it did not have to determine the merits of the defense, because defendants had not asserted it. Id. at 1005. Although the decision of the Eight Circuit affirms the idea that trustee standing and the in pari delicto defense are two issues that should be dealt with separately, the implications of the case may be less substantial than expected. Although the circuits disagreed about whether issues of standing and in pari delicto should be separated, the Eight Circuit affirms the rule that in pari delicto may be asserted as a defense against a plaintiff-trustee defeating his recovery. Id. at 1005. The following discussion focuses on two issues: first it will examine why the constitutional issue of standing requires a separate and distinct analysis from affirmative defenses, like in pari delicto; and second the article will examine the impact of the Eight Circuit’s decision

Bridging the Gap Between Researchers and Wider Audiences: Navigating A Community Literacy Collaboration in Real-Time

While campus-community partnerships are common, such engaged scholarship efforts often lead university researchers to community-centered presentations and publications; however, this type of scholarship and especially the venues in which it is often disseminated are of questionable value within the academy’s tenure and promotion process. Three literacy scholars who were invited to study the impact of community-wide Imagination Library implementation share challenges they encountered related to collaboration, communication, and dissemination of findings during the first two years of a five-year early literacy community partnership. Selected outcomes and implications for other community-engaged scholars include (a) investing in true multi-directional consistent collaboration and communication and (b) leveraging user-friendly technology tools and platforms to archive and share project work. The authors call for continued efforts to communicate beyond the academy with the audiences targeted for ultimate impact and continued advocacy for valuing non-traditional publications within the academy

Discriminant Analysis with Spatial Weights for Urban Land Cover Classification

Classifying urban area images is challenging because of the heterogeneous nature of the urban landscape resulting in mixed pixels and classes with highly variable spectral ranges. Approaches using ancillary data, such as knowledge based or expert systems, have shown to improve the classification accuracy in urban areas. Appropriate ancillary data, however, may not always be available. The goal of this study is to compare the results of the discriminant analysis statistical technique with discriminant analysis with spatial weights to classify urban land cover. Discriminant analysis is a statistical technique used to predict group membership for a target based on the linear combination of independent variables. Strict per pixel statistical analysis however does not consider the spatial dependencies among neighbouring pixels. Our study shows that approaches using ancillary data continue to outperform strict spectral classifiers but that using a spatial weight improved the results. Furthermore, results show that when the discriminant analysis technique works well then the spatially weighted approach performs better. However, when the discriminant analysis performs poorly, those poor results are magnified in the spatially weighted approach in the same study area. The study shows that for dominant classes, adding spatial weights improves the classification accuracy.

Resonance in Human Walking Economy: How Natural Is It?

Locomotion and movement economy are cornerstone topics in movement science. Modeling the leg as a hybrid mass-spring pendulum shows walking economy should be optimized when stride frequency matches the resonant frequency of the limb. Human walking is described as self-optimizing because mean preferred (PSF) and modeled resonant (RSF) stride frequencies usually are statistically equivalent, but this depiction may not be fully justified. Purpose: To more thoroughly examine the self-optimization characterization and the consequences of obligating use of the RSF. Methods: Forty-seven individuals of diverse statures completed 3 consecutive days of preferred walking trials on a treadmill where stride rate, stride length, walking speed, heart rate and walking economy measures were made under steady state heart rate conditions. Anthropometric measures were taken to build a hybrid model of the leg and model the RSF. Reliability across days was evaluated via repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and intra-class correlation (á=.05) and correlations were calculated for PSF and RSF. A separate sample of 20 participants walked under 3 conditions, (1) completely preferred; (2) at the original preferred speed using the RSF; and (3) with the option to establish a new preferred speed while using the RSF. Results: Gait characteristics were fundamentally reliable across days and the correlation between PSF and RSF was weak (8% explained variance). Walking economy improved 14% when using the RSF and allowed to self-select the speed / stride length used at that cadence. Conclusions: The results raised slight questions about current self-optimization presumptions and further emphasized the role of resonance in walking economyFaculty Sponsor: Dr. Philip K. Scho

Integrated Administrative Data for Early Childhood Iowa: A Governance Model to inform Policy and Program Collaboration

In response to demands on public systems to do more, do better, and cost less, the value of integrated administrative data systems (IDS) for social policy is increasing (Fantuzzo & Culhane, 2016). This is particularly relevant in programming for young children where services are historically fragmented, disconnected from systems serving school-aged children, and siloed among health, human services, and education agencies. Guided by the vision that Iowa’s early childhood system will be effectively and efficiently coordinated to support healthy families, we are developing an early childhood IDS to address this disconnection and facilitate relevant and actionable social policy research. Iowa’s IDS is a state-university partnership that acknowledges the need for agencies to retain control of their data while enabling it to be integrated across systems for social policy research. The innovative governance model deliberately incorporates procedures for stakeholder engagement at critical tension points between executive leaders, program managers, researchers, and practitioners. Standing committees (Governance Board, Data Stewardship, and Core team) authorize and implement the work of the IDS, while ad-hoc committees are solicited for specific projects to advise and translate research into practice. This paper will articulate the Iowa IDS governance model that was informed by means tested principles articulated by the Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy Network. It will include our collaborative development process; articulated mission and principles that guided discussions about legal authorization, governance, and use cases; and the establishment of governance committees to implement our vision for ethical and efficient use of administrative data for social policy

Bayesian Estimation of the Timing and Severity of a Population Bottleneck from Ancient DNA

In this first application of the approximate Bayesian computation approach using the serial coalescent, we demonstrated the estimation of historical demographic parameters from ancient DNA. We estimated the timing and severity of a population bottleneck in an endemic subterranean rodent, Ctenomys sociabilis, over the last 10,000 y from two cave sites in northern Patagonia, Argentina. Understanding population bottlenecks is important in both conservation and evolutionary biology. Conservation implications include the maintenance of genetic variation, inbreeding, fixation of mildly deleterious alleles, and loss of adaptive potential. Evolutionary processes are impacted because of the influence of small populations in founder effects and speciation. We found a decrease from a female effective population size of 95,231 to less than 300 females at 2,890 y before present: a 99.7% decline. Our study demonstrates the persistence of a species depauperate in genetic diversity for at least 2,000 y and has implications for modes of speciation in the incredibly diverse rodent genus Ctenomys. Our approach shows promise for determining demographic parameters for other species with ancient and historic samples and demonstrates the power of such an approach using ancient DNA

Is overconfidence a social liability? The effect of verbal versus nonverbal expressions of confidence.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 116(3) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2019-08943-002). In the article "Is Overconfidence a Social Liability? The Effect of Verbal Versus Nonverbal Expressions of Confidence" by Elizabeth R. Tenney, Nathan L. Meikle, David Hunsaker, Don A. Moore, and Cameron Anderson (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. October 11, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000150), the Editor' Note acknowledging David Dunning as the action editor for this article was omitted. All versions of this article have been corrected.] What are the reputational consequences of being overconfident? We propose that the channel of confidence expression is one key moderator-that is, whether confidence is expressed verbally or nonverbally. In a series of experiments, participants assessed target individuals (potential collaborators or advisors) who were either overconfident or cautious. Targets expressed confidence, or a lack thereof, verbally or nonverbally. Participants then learned targets' actual performance. Across studies, overconfidence was advantageous initially-regardless of whether targets expressed confidence verbally or nonverbally. After performance was revealed, overconfident targets who had expressed confidence verbally were viewed more negatively than cautious targets; however, overconfident targets who had expressed confidence nonverbally were still viewed more positively than cautious ones. The one condition wherein nonverbal overconfidence was detrimental was when confidence was clearly tied to a falsifiable claim. Results suggest that, compared with verbal statements, nonverbal overconfidence reaps reputational benefits because of its plausible deniability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Barriers and Facilitators to Implementing Healthy Food Retail Programs: Extension Agents’ Perceptions

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to understand the perceptions Extension professionals have about healthy food retail programs (HFRPs). Family and Consumer Science (FCS) agents from one state in the southeastern United States were interviewed about their definitions of HFRPs, what challenges and benefits existed, and strategies for successful HFRP implementation. Participants reported that HFRPs would bring immense benefits to their communities, including expanding the recognition of Extension. However, one specific suggestion that was identified was hands-on training needed before initiating HFRPs, particularly on strategies for relationship development with retail store owners