Overcoming Hurdles in the Enforceability of Make-Whole Provisions

There have been recent conflicting decisions in U.S. district courts of New York, Delaware, and others states regarding to the enforceability of make-whole provisions in bankruptcy. The ambiguity created by the courts’ decisions has caused uncertainty for all parties involved in these kinds of loan documents. This comment is an analysis of the enforceability of make-whole provisions in the context of bankruptcy in light of the recent decisions. In order for a makewhole or a no-call provision to be upheld, a number of hurdles must be cleared. The provisions must be valid under both state law and bankruptcy law. Make-whole provisions are generally enforceable outside of bankruptcy under state law to the extent that they are not true penalties under a liquidated damages analysis. Once bankruptcy comes into play, the provisions must withstand a number of hurdles. In order to be enforceable in bankruptcy, a make-whole provision must be a valid liquidated damages claim under state law, it must be provided for and triggered under the contractual agreement, and it must not be tantamount to unmatured interest

Facies analysis of the Devonian Gordon Stray Sandstone in West Virginia

Since its discovery in 1895, West Virginia\u27s Jacksonburg-Stringtown field has had a primary production of 20 million barrels of oil. Based on 10 full-bore cores from Wetzel and Tyler Counties, the reservoir---the Gordon Stray Sandstone---is interpreted to be part of a barrier-island complex, comprising (from bottom to top) lower-shoreface, upper-shoreface, and foreshore sandstone. Tying core interpretations to 123 well logs across the field enables the various facies to be mapped. The major pay zone occurs stratigraphically within the middle of the shoreface facies, a medium-grained, well sorted sandstone. The barrier-island then prograded rapidly westward, laying down a thin sandstone. Mapping of these back-barrier facies identifies two washover lobes in the western part of the field, spilling eastward into the lagoon. This map pattern strongly suggests that another thick barrier-island complex exists at some close distance to the west of the Jacksonburg-Stringtown field, a previously unknown exploration target in the Upper Devonian Gordon Stray Sandstone

Overcoming Hurdles in the Enforceability of Make-Whole Provisions

There have been recent conflicting decisions in U.S. district courts of New York, Delaware, and others states regarding to the enforceability of make-whole provisions in bankruptcy. The ambiguity created by the courts’ decisions has caused uncertainty for all parties involved in these kinds of loan documents. This comment is an analysis of the enforceability of make-whole provisions in the context of bankruptcy in light of the recent decisions. In order for a makewhole or a no-call provision to be upheld, a number of hurdles must be cleared. The provisions must be valid under both state law and bankruptcy law. Make-whole provisions are generally enforceable outside of bankruptcy under state law to the extent that they are not true penalties under a liquidated damages analysis. Once bankruptcy comes into play, the provisions must withstand a number of hurdles. In order to be enforceable in bankruptcy, a make-whole provision must be a valid liquidated damages claim under state law, it must be provided for and triggered under the contractual agreement, and it must not be tantamount to unmatured interest

Increasing transfer of training from learning to human performance in the corporate management work environment

For corporate organizations to remain competitive in the global marketplace and to develop a highly skilled workforce, improving transfer of training must become corporate organizations\u27 top priority. This literature review will attempt to answer the questions, How does the transfer of training relate to human performance? Who are the major stakeholders, and what are their roles are in ensuring the transfer of training? What are the barriers? And how is human performance in the corporate work environment being measured

How Conservation Has Changed From 1975 to 2005

The aim of this thesis is to examine the nature of the changes that took place within paper conservation, a section of the practice/occupation of material conservation, in the United Kingdom during the period from 1975 to 2005. In the 1970s, conservation emerged as a distinct practice within the museum sector from two sources: semi-skilled cleaners and movers of art objects, and the traditional restorers of cultural objects. From then until the end of the century, it continued to grow and mature. The nature of this growth and the changes that took place within it will be modelled with the objective of enabling future changes within conservation to be evaluated. The evaluation of conservation in this manner will determine its definition as an industry. The changes will be assessed by highlighting their effect on one section of conservation practice, namely paper conservation. This practice concentrates on the conservation of cultural material created using paper, including such categories of artefacts as watercolours, fine art prints, drawings, ephemera, archival materials, books and all paper-based sculpture. During the period between 1970 and 2000, paper conservation developed from being a fledgling practice to becoming an accepted standard within the museum sector. In becoming so, it placed great emphasis on professionalism. This provided paper conservation with a template for change, a process through which it could develop and grow. Paper conservation embraced this process as a means of providing a set of standards to which it could adhere, but also as a means of garnering greater acceptability for its approach within the wider museum sector. Issues relating to the development of a profession and professionalism will be further explored as part of the literature review. Organisational change was also considered to have a relevance to the development of paper conservation, and this, too, will be explored within the literature review. Steps to professionalise conservation and subsequent changes in the wider museum sector were seen to have had the most impact on the structure of conservation. They may also have had relevance for the practice itself. Paper conservation was successful in having its occupational aims accepted throughout the museum sector, and this has further implications for those interested in researching by occupations of the professionalisation process. An understanding of the nature of this change, and how paper conservation reached its goal of acceptance for its values, is indispensable for those involved in decision-making within conservation today, and in the future. The thesis is based on an analysis of documents from the period directly relating to change within the field of conservation. It also includes interviews with personnel who were practising conservators, the providers of conservation education, and officers of the different agencies representing conservation. Research questions were formed from this analysis, and multiple case studies were undertaken to analyse these questions

Cloud shortwave spectral transmittance: applications in remote sensing and aerosol-cloud interactions

long record of cloud optical thickness and effective particle radius retrieved from cloud reflectance exists with no comparable dataset retrieved from cloud transmittance. This is due to a lack of sensitivity to the effective radius in cloud transmittance. A new algorithm that uses spectrally resolved cloud transmittance observations to retrieve optical thickness and effective radius is presented. The algorithm relies on the spectral slope of the normalized transmittance between 1565 nm and 1634 nm and on cloud transmittance at a visible wavelength. Using the spectral slope rather than the transmittance itself enhances the sensitivity of transmittance observations with respect to the effective radius. This is demonstrated by applying the algorithm to hyperspectral data from two field sites. The liquid water path is derived and compared to the simultaneous observations from a microwave radiometer and the optical thickness and effective radius are compared to MODIS retrievals. The algorithm was applied to ship-based observations in another field campaign, CalNex, which featured a day, 16 May 2010, of coordinated observations from a research ship and aircraft, providing the opportunity to compare retrievals from surface-based radiometers, an airborne radiometer, a satellite imager, and in-situ cloud probes. A statistical look at the cloud properties is presented and compared to previous studies. The retrievals and cloud transmittance are used to make observations of cloud transmittance susceptibility for the first time. Cloud transmittance susceptibility quantifies the change in cloud transmittance for a change in cloud droplet number concentration, thereby representing a possible change in cloud transmittance due to a change in aerosol burden. The results of the two initial case studies showed that, in general, the effective radius uncertainties were much larger for the standard retrieval than for the spectral retrieval, particularly for thin clouds. When defining 2 μm as upper limit for the tolerable uncertainty of the effective radius, the standard method returned only very few valid retrievals for clouds with an optical thickness below 25. At one field site (mean optical thickness 23), the spectral method provided valid retrievals for 84% of the data (24% for the standard method). At the other (mean optical thickness 44), both methods provided a high return of 90% for the spectral method and 78% for the standard method. The CalNex comparisons for 16 May 2010 showed that the agreement between the retrievals increased as the difference between the sampling volumes of the instruments decreased. The average in-situ reff (7.7 μm) fell between the average reff retrieved using the Atlantis-based SSFR radiance (5.7 μm) and irradiance (9.5 μm). The statistical study of all clouds during CalNex showed a diurnal pattern observed in previous studies of marine boundary layer clouds. The climatology of cloud optical thickness and liquid water path was shown to be represented by a gamma distribution, consistent with previous studies of high cloud fraction marine boundary layer clouds. Model calculations of transmittance susceptibility showed that clouds are more susceptible as effective radius increases and less susceptible as optical thickness increases. The observations of cloud transmittance susceptibility show that the clouds encountered during CalNex were not highly susceptible. Comparisons to previous studies of cloud reflectance susceptibility also show this. Comparisons of observations in northern California and southern California show that the least susceptible clouds were in the south, where aerosol concentrations were higher at the surface, effective radius was smaller, optical thickness was larger than the observations in the north

Recent Developments: The Uniform Arbitration Act

This Article is an overview of recent court decisions that interpret state versions of the Uniform Arbitration Act ( U.A.A. ). Arbitration statutes patterned after the U.A.A. have been adopted by thirty-four states and the District of Columbia. The goal of this project is to promote uniformity in the interpretation of the U.A.A. by analyzing the various underlying policies and rationales of recent court decisions interpreting the U.A.A

Update on Apollo Data Restoration by the NSSDC and the PDS Lunar Data Node

The Lunar Data Node (LDN) , under the auspices of the Geosciences Node of the Planetary Data System (PDS) and the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), is continuing its efforts to recover and restore Apollo science data. The data being restored are in large part archived with NSSDC on older media, but unarchived data are also being recovered from other sources. They are typically on 7- or 9-track magnetic tapes, often in obsolete formats, or held on microfilm, microfiche, or paper documents. The goal of the LDN is to restore these data from their current form, which is difficult for most researchers to access, into common digital formats with all necessary supporting data (metadata) and archive the data sets with PDS. Restoration involves reading the data from the original media, deciphering the data formats to produce readable digital data and converting the data into usable tabular formats. Each set of values in the table must then be understood in terms of the quantity measured and the units used. Information on instrument properties, operational history, and calibrations is gathered and added to the data set, along with pertinent references, contacts, and other ancillary documentation. The data set then undergoes a peer review and the final validated product is archived with PDS. Although much of this effort has concentrated on data archived at NSSDC in the 1970's, we have also recovered data and information that were never sent to NSSDC. These data, retrieved from various outside sources, include raw and reduced Gamma-Ray Spectrometer data from Apollos 15 and 16, information on the Apollo 17 Lunar Ejecta And Meteorites experiment, Dust Detector data from Apollos 11, 12, 14, and I5, raw telemetry tapes from the Apollo ALSEPs, and Weekly Status Reports for all the Apollo missions. These data are currently being read or organized, and supporting data is being gathered. We are still looking for the calibrated heat flow data from Apollos 15 and 17 for the period 1975-1977, any assistance or information on these data would be welcome. NSSDC has recently been tasked to release its hard-copy archive, comprising photography, microfilm, and microfiche. The details are still being discussed, but we are concentrating on recovering the valuable lunar data from these materials while they are still readily accessible. We have identified the most critical of these data and written a LASER proposal to fund their restoration. Included in this effort are data from the Apollo 15 and 16 Mass Spectrometers and the Apollo 17 Par-UV Spectrometer and ancillary information on the Apollo 17 Surface Electrical Properties Experiment

The Conservation Reserve Program: Economic Implications for Rural America

This report estimates the impact that high levels of enrollment in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) have had on economic trends in rural counties since the program's inception in 1985 until today. The results of a growth model and quasi-experimental control group analysis indicate no discernible impact by the CRP on aggregate county population trends. Aggregate employment growth may have slowed in some high-CRP counties, but only temporarily. High levels of CRP enrollment appear to have affected farm-related businesses over the long run, but growth in the number of other nonfarm businesses moderated CRP's impact on total employment. If CRP contracts had ended in 2001, simulation models suggest that roughly 51 percent of CRP land would have returned to crop production, and that spending on outdoor recreation would decrease by as much as $300 million per year in rural areas. The resulting impacts on employment and income vary widely among regions having similar CRP enrollments, depending upon local economic conditions.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Land Economics/Use,