ERISA Retirement Plans in Individual Bankruptcy

When an employee covered by an ERISA retirement plan files a petition in bankruptcy, the court is presented with a number of complex issues regarding the relationship among ERISA, the Bankruptcy Code (Code), and the state law of creditors\u27 rights. Three issues have emerged in these cases, and the courts have divided on the proper resolution of each of these issues. First, is the debtor\u27s interest in an ERISA retirement plan property of the estate, and thus available for distribution to creditors? Second, if the debtor\u27s interest is property of the estate, and the debtor uses the state exemption scheme, is his interest nevertheless exempt in bankruptcy because it is exempt under Federal [nonbankruptcy] law? Third, if the debtor chooses the federal bankruptcy exemption scheme, is his interest in the retirement plan exempt under the section exempting his right to receive a payment under a retirement plan, to the extent reasonably necessary for the support of the debtor? Although this Article explores each of these issues in turn, it is not possible to develop a logical and consistent approach to the treatment of ERISA retirement plan benefits in bankruptcy without considering each issue in light of the other two, and in light of the rights of creditors in the nonbankruptcy context

An analysis of commitment strategies in planning: The details

We compare the utility of different commitment strategies in planning. Under a 'least commitment strategy', plans are represented as partial orders and operators are ordered only when interactions are detected. We investigate claims of the inherent advantages of planning with partial orders, as compared to planning with total orders. By focusing our analysis on the issue of operator ordering commitment, we are able to carry out a rigorous comparative analysis of two planners. We show that partial-order planning can be more efficient than total-order planning, but we also show that this is not necessarily so

Virtual Flexibility: A Reexamination of the Concept of Organizational Slack

This article reviews changes taking place in the business environment and in the field of strategic management, contrasting the traditional industrial organizational economics paradigm with the new hypercompetitive or Austrian paradigm. It then demonstrates the implications of this paradigm shift in a detailed examination of the concept of organizational slack, highlighting new forms, applications and value for slack in the new hypercompetitive environment

Mathematical modelling of asymmetrical metal rolling processes

This thesis explores opportunities in the mathematical modelling of metal rolling processes, specifically asymmetrical sheet rolling. With the application of control systems in mind, desired mathematical models must make adequate predictions with short computational times. This renders generic numerical approaches inappropriate. Previous analytical models of symmetrical sheet rolling have relied on ad hoc assumptions about the form of the solution. The work within this thesis begins by generalising symmetric asymptotic rolling models: models that make systematic assumptions about the rolling configuration. Using assumptions that apply to cold rolling, these models are generalised to include asymmetries in roll size, roll speed and roll-workpiece friction conditions. The systematic procedure of asymptotic analysis makes this approach flexible to incorporating alternative friction and material models. A further generalisation of a clad-sheet workpiece is presented to illustrate this. Whilst this model was formulated and solved successfully, deterioration of the results for any workpiece inhomogeneity demonstrates the limitations of some of the assumptions used in these two models. Attention is then turned to curvature prediction. A review of workpiece curvature studies shows that contradictions exist in the literature; and complex non-linear relationships are seen to exist between asymmetries, roll geometry and induced curvature. The collated data from the studies reviewed were insufficient to determine these relationships empirically; and neither analytical models, including those developed thus far, nor linear regressions are able to predict these data. Another asymmetric rolling model is developed with alternative asymptotic assumptions, which shows non-linear behaviour over ranges of asymmetries and geometric parameters. While quantitative curvature predictions are not achieved, metrics of mechanisms hypothesised to drive curvature indicate these non-linear curvature trends may be captured with further refinement. Finally, coupling a curved beam model with a curvature predicting rolling model is proposed to model the ring rolling process. Both of these parts are implemented but convergence between them is not yet achieved. By analogy this could be extended with shell theory and a three-dimensional rolling model to model the wheeling process.Royal Society of New Zealand and the Cambridge Trust through the Rutherford Foundation PhD Scholarshi

UA3/5/4/1 John Minton Swearing In

Transcription and recording of John Minton\u27s swearing in ceremony which includes remarks by J. David Cole, Judge Charles Reynolds and Dero Downing

Upscaling diffusion through first-order volumetric sinks: a homogenization of bacterial nutrient uptake

In mathematical models that include nutrient delivery to bacteria, it is prohibitively expensive to include a pointwise nutrient uptake within small bacterial regions over bioreactor length-scales, and so such models often impose an effective uptake instead. In this paper, we systematically investigate how the effective uptake should scale with bacterial size and other microscale properties under first-order uptake kinetics. We homogenize the unsteady problem of nutrient diffusing through a locally periodic array of spherical bacteria, within which it is absorbed. We introduce a general model that could also be applied to other single-cell microorganisms, such as cyanobacteria, microalgae, protozoa, and yeast and we consider generalizations to arbitrary bacterial shapes, including some analytic results for ellipsoidal bacteria. We explore in detail the three distinguished limits of the system on the timescale of diffusion over the macroscale. When the bacterial size is of the same order as the distance between them, the effective uptake has two limiting behaviours, scaling with the bacterial volume for weak uptake and with the bacterial surface area for strong uptake. We derive the function that smoothly transitions between these two behaviours as the system parameters vary. Additionally, we explore the distinguished limit in which bacteria are much smaller than the distance between them and have a very strong uptake. In this limit, we find that the effective uptake is bounded above as the uptake rate grows without bound; we are able to quantify this and characterise the transition to the other limits we consider

Brief Note Elemental Analysis of Biological Material in the Fresh-Frozen State

Author Institution: Department of Zoology and Department of Surgery, The Ohio State Universit

Applying asymptotic methods to synthetic biology: modelling the reaction kinetics of the mevalonate pathway

The mevalonate pathway is normally found in eukaryotes, and allows for the production of isoprenoids, a useful class of organic compounds. This pathway has been successfully introduced to Escherichia coli, enabling a biosynthetic production route for many isoprenoids. In this paper, we develop and solve a mathematical model for the concentration of metabolites in the mevalonate pathway over time, accounting for the loss of acetyl-CoA to other metabolic pathways. Additionally, we successfully test our theoretical predictions experimentally by introducing part of the pathway into Cupriavidus necator. In our model, we exploit the natural separation of time scales as well as of metabolite concentrations to make significant asymptotic progress in understanding the system. We confirm that our asymptotic results agree well with numerical simulations, the former enabling us to predict the most important reactions to increase isopentenyl diphosphate production whilst minimizing the levels of HMG-CoA, which inhibits cell growth. Thus, our mathematical model allows us to recommend the upregulation of certain combinations of enzymes to improve production through the mevalonate pathway

Macromolecular crowding modulates folding mechanism of alpha/beta protein apoflavodoxin

Protein dynamics in cells may be different from that in dilute solutions in vitro since the environment in cells is highly concentrated with other macromolecules. This volume exclusion due to macromolecular crowding is predicted to affect both equilibrium and kinetic processes involving protein conformational changes. To quantify macromolecular crowding effects on protein folding mechanisms, here we have investigated the folding energy landscape of an alpha/beta protein, apoflavodoxin, in the presence of inert macromolecular crowding agents using in silico and in vitro approaches. By coarse-grained molecular simulations and topology-based potential interactions, we probed the effects of increased volume fraction of crowding agents (phi_c) as well as of crowding agent geometry (sphere or spherocylinder) at high phi_c. Parallel kinetic folding experiments with purified Desulfovibro desulfuricans apoflavodoxin in vitro were performed in the presence of Ficoll (sphere) and Dextran (spherocylinder) synthetic crowding agents. In conclusion, we have identified in silico crowding conditions that best enhance protein stability and discovered that upon manipulation of the crowding conditions, folding routes experiencing topological frustrations can be either enhanced or relieved. The test-tube experiments confirmed that apoflavodoxin's time-resolved folding path is modulated by crowding agent geometry. We propose that macromolecular crowding effects may be a tool for manipulation of protein folding and function in living cells.Comment: to appear in Biophysical Journal (2009). to appear in Biophysical Journal (2009