778 research outputs found
State Defiance of Bankruptcy Law
Bankruptcy is the principal device by which failing businesses and financially-troubled families get one last chance to reorganize their affairs back to financial health. It is also the graveyard for business failures, the place where we bury dead corporations and divide their remaining assets among their surviving creditors.
In the last decade, the bankruptcy system has given seven million middle-class families a way to start over-an opportunity to save their homes from foreclosure, rid themselves of overwhelming debts, and reintegrate themselves into the workforce as productive citizens. It has also been the way that 10,000 corporations have restructured their way from failure to health, avoiding the disruptive costs of dissolution and liquidation and instead preserving jobs, stabilizing community tax bases, and fueling the longest period of economic expansion in United States history. Another 100,000 less fortunate corporations have had their funerals in bankruptcy, as their creditors have divided their assets and facilitated the redistribution of capital and labor resources that must accompany liquidation.
Bankruptcy is the safety valve in America\u27s capitalist system: technical and arcane, but so important. For the last 100 years, bankruptcy has functioned efficiently, providing a vital lubricant at the rough edges of the American economy. We do not expect individuals to live life without hope and force them into the underground economy to avoid a mountain of debt. Nor do we discourage entrepreneurs from starting new ventures by holding them personally liable if that corporate venture fails. Instead, we give each individual and business person a fair chance to start over. This second chance breeds innovation and risk taking that puts the United States at the cutting edge of technological and scientific development.
When our corporations experience liquidity problems, we do not allow lenders to shut them down and break them up. Rather, we permit sick businesses to file under chapter 11 to provide a breathing spell to rehabilitate themselves; if rehabilitation cannot be accomplished, we provide a forum for liquidation of the businesses for the collective good of all creditors
Combinatorial simplex algorithms can solve mean payoff games
A combinatorial simplex algorithm is an instance of the simplex method in
which the pivoting depends on combinatorial data only. We show that any
algorithm of this kind admits a tropical analogue which can be used to solve
mean payoff games. Moreover, any combinatorial simplex algorithm with a
strongly polynomial complexity (the existence of such an algorithm is open)
would provide in this way a strongly polynomial algorithm solving mean payoff
games. Mean payoff games are known to be in NP and co-NP; whether they can be
solved in polynomial time is an open problem. Our algorithm relies on a
tropical implementation of the simplex method over a real closed field of Hahn
series. One of the key ingredients is a new scheme for symbolic perturbation
which allows us to lift an arbitrary mean payoff game instance into a
non-degenerate linear program over Hahn series.Comment: v1: 15 pages, 3 figures; v2: improved presentation, introduction
expanded, 18 pages, 3 figure
Varenicline for smoking cessation: efficacy, safety, and treatment recommendations
Smoking is the leading preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in the US, and decreasing smoking prevalence is a public health priority. Patients achieve the greatest success when quit attempts involve behavioral therapy combined with pharmacotherapy. Varenicline is the most recent addition to the pharmacotherapeutic armamentarium for the treatment of tobacco dependence. Varenicline is efficacious and cost-effective. Smoking relapse and adverse treatment-related side effects may decrease medication adherence and patient satisfaction with varenicline. In the clinical setting, varenicline treatment can be optimized by reducing doses in patients who experience intolerable side effects, increasing the dose in partial responders, and providing long-term maintenance therapy for relapse prevention
In situ stress database of the greater Ruhr region (Germany) derived from hydrofracturing tests and borehole logs
Between 1986 and 1995, 429 hydrofracturing tests have been carried out in six now-abandoned coal mines and two coal bed methane boreholes at depths between 600 and 1950âm within the greater Ruhr region in western Germany. From these tests, stress magnitudes and orientations of the stress tensor are derived. The majority of hydrofracturing tests were carried out from mine galleries away from mine workings in a relatively undisturbed rock mass. These data along with detailed information have been disclosed recently. In combination with already published material, we provide the first comprehensive stress database of the greater Ruhr region. Our study summarises the results of the extensive in situ stress test campaign and assigns quality to each data record using the established quality ranking schemes of the World Stress Map project. The stress magnitudes suggest predominantly strike-slip stress regime, where the magnitude of the minimum horizontal stress, Shmin, is half of the magnitude of the maximum horizontal stress, SHmax, implying that the horizontal differential stress is high. We observe no particular change in the stress gradient at depth throughout the Carboniferous layers and no significant difference between tests carried out in coal mines and deep boreholes. The mean SHmax orientation varies between 133âÂąâ13â in the westernmost located Friedrich Heinrich coal mine and 168âÂąâ23â in the easternmost located Westphalia coal mine. The mean SHmax orientation, based on 87 data records from this and already published studies, of 161âÂąâ43â is in good agreement with the regional stress orientation observed in northwestern Europe. The presented public database provides in situ stress magnitude and stress orientation data records that are essential for the calibration of geomechanical numerical models on regional and/or reservoir scales for, among others, assessing stability issues of borehole trajectories, caverns, and georeservoirs in general. For an application example of this database, we estimate slip and dilation tendencies of major geological discontinuities, discovered during the 700-year-long coal mining activities in the region. The result, although burdened by high uncertainties, shows that the discontinuities striking in the NâS and NWâSE directions have a higher slip tendency compared to the ones striking ENEâWSW and NNWâSSE, whereas a high dilation tendency is observed for discontinuities striking NNWâSSE and a low dilation tendency for the ones striking ENEâWSW. The stress orientation database is available under https://doi.org/10.24406/fordatis/200 (Kruszewski et al., 2022a), the stress magnitude database is available under https://doi.org/10.24406/fordatis/201 (Kruszewski et al., 2022b), whereas the hydrofracturing test reports are available under https://doi.org/10.24406/fordatis/222 (Kruszewski et al., 2022c).</p
Energy levels in polarization superlattices: a comparison of continuum strain models
A theoretical model for the energy levels in polarization superlattices is
presented. The model includes the effect of strain on the local
polarization-induced electric fields and the subsequent effect on the energy
levels. Two continuum strain models are contrasted. One is the standard strain
model derived from Hooke's law that is typically used to calculate energy
levels in polarization superlattices and quantum wells. The other is a
fully-coupled strain model derived from the thermodynamic equation of state for
piezoelectric materials. The latter is more complete and applicable to strongly
piezoelectric materials where corrections to the standard model are
significant. The underlying theory has been applied to AlGaN/GaN superlattices
and quantum wells. It is found that the fully-coupled strain model yields very
different electric fields from the standard model. The calculated intersubband
transition energies are shifted by approximately 5 -- 19 meV, depending on the
structure. Thus from a device standpoint, the effect of applying the
fully-coupled model produces a very measurable shift in the peak wavelength.
This result has implications for the design of AlGaN/GaN optical switches.Comment: Revtex
Static stretching of the hamstring muscle for injury prevention in football codes: a systematic review
Purpose: Hamstring injuries are common among football players. There is still disagreement regarding prevention. The aim of this review is to determine whether static stretching reduces hamstring injuries in football codes.
Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted on the online databases PubMed, PEDro, Cochrane, Web of Science, Bisp and Clinical Trial register. Study results were presented descriptively and the quality of the studies assessed were based on Cochraneâs ârisk of biasâ tool.
Results: The review identified 35 studies, including four analysis studies. These studies show deficiencies in the quality of study designs.
Conclusion: The study protocols are varied in terms of the length of intervention and follow-up. No RCT studies are available, however, RCT studies should be conducted in the near future
Magnetic Domains and Stripes in the Spin-Fermion Model for Cuprates
Monte Carlo simulations applied to the Spin-Fermion model for cuprates show
the existence of antiferromagnetic spin domains and charge stripes upon doping.
The stripes are partially filled, with a filling of approximately 1/2 hole per
site, and they separate spin domains with a phase shift among them. The
stripes observed run either along the x or y axes and they are separated by a
large energy barrier. No special boundary conditions or external fields are
needed to stabilize these structures at low temperatures. When magnetic
incommensurate peaks are observed at momentum and symmetrical
points, charge incommensurate peaks appear at and symmetrical
points, as experimentally observed. The strong charge fluctuations responsible
for the formation of the stripes also induce a pseudogap in the density of
states.Comment: Four pages with four figures embedded in tex
Functor of continuation in Hilbert cube and Hilbert space
A -set in a metric space is a closed subset of such that each
map of the Hilbert cube into can uniformly be approximated by maps of
into . The aim of the paper is to show that there exists a
functor of extension of maps between -sets of [or ] to maps acting
on the whole space [resp. ]. Special properties of the functor are
proved.Comment: 9 page
The cost of promiscuity: sexual transmission of Nosema microsporidian parasites in polyandrous honey bees
Multiple mating (and insemination) by females with different males, polyandry, is widespread across animals, due to material and/or genetic benefits for females. It reaches particularly high levels in some social insects, in which queens can produce significantly fitter colonies by being polyandrous. It is therefore a paradox that two thirds of eusocial hymenopteran insects appear to be exclusively monandrous, in spite of the fitness benefits that polyandry could provide. One possible cost of polyandry could be sexually transmitted parasites, but evidence for these in social insects is extremely limited. Here we show that two different species of Nosema microsporidian parasites can transmit sexually in the honey bee Apis mellifera. Honey bee males that are infected by the parasite have Nosema spores in their semen, and queens artificially inseminated with either Nosema spores or the semen of Nosema-infected males became infected by the parasite. The emergent and more virulent N. ceranae achieved much higher rates of infection following insemination than did N. apis. The results provide the first quantitative evidence of a sexually transmitted disease (STD) in social insects, indicating that STDs may represent a potential cost of polyandry in social insects
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