New York’s Decanting Statute: Helping an Old Vintage Come to Life or Spoiling the Settlor’s Fine Wine?

The Comment examines trust decanting in four parts. Part I reviews the historical evolution of decanting statutes, first from common law roots, and later focusing on the legislative history of New York’s decanting statute. Part II briefly explains the functionality of section 10-6.6 of the NY EPTL; the “how does it work” explanation of the statute that authorizes decanting. Part III will discuss the many practical uses of the decanting statute. Finally, Part IV will transition into a discussion on how the trustee’s use of this statute not only leaves him in limbo regarding the tax treatment of his actions, but places him in a head on clash with New York’s longstanding commitment to honoring settlor intent

Kinematic identification of parallel mechanisms by a divide and conquer strategy

This paper presents a Divide and Conquer strategy to estimate the kinematic parameters of parallel symmetrical mechanisms -- The Divide and Conquer kinematic identification is designed and performed independently for each leg of the mechanism -- The estimation of the kinematic parameters is performed using the inverse calibration method -- The identification poses are selected optimizing the observability of the kinematic parameters from a Jacobian identification matrix -- With respect to traditional identification methods the main advantages of the proposed Divide and Conquer kinematic identification strategy are: (i) reduction of the kinematic identification computational costs, (ii) improvement of the numerical efficiency of the kinematic identification algorithm and, (iii) improvement of the kinematic identification results -- The contributions of the paper are: (i) The formalization of the inverse calibration method as the Divide and Conquer strategy for the kinematic identification of parallel symmetrical mechanisms and, (ii) a new kinematic identification protocol based on the Divide and Conquer strategy -- As an application of the proposed kinematic identification protocol the identification of a planar 5R symmetrical mechanism is simulated -- The performance of the calibrated mechanism is evaluated by updating the kinematic model with the estimated parameters and developing simulationsInstitute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication, International Federation of Automatic Contro

Construcción de un banco de pruebas para ensayos de fotoelasticidad

La fotoelasticidad es una técnica experimental, con la cual podemos analizar esfuerzos y observar la distribución de tensiones en una pieza o un elemento que tengamos sometido a algún tipo de carga, en donde los métodos analíticos serian engorrosos a la hora de emplearlos. En 1816, el científico escoces David Brewster realizó investigaciones en el campo de la óptica, descubrió el principio básico de la fotoelasticidad, utilizando una pieza de vidrio cargada y haciendo pasar por el vidrio luz polarizada, David observó el contorno de colores en una pieza, causado por la distribución de tensiones presentes en la pieza de vidrio. La fotoelasticidad, permite el estudio de los esfuerzos y deformaciones en piezas o elementos de interés, por medio de rayos luminosos y técnicas ópticas, con las que podemos determinar los lugares críticos de una pieza o elemento, concentradores de esfuerzos y así poder conocer más a fondo, mejorar y elaborar alternativas de diseño para los elementos que en los diferentes campos de la ingeniería van a ser utilizados, evitando con ello desde una pronta finalización de la vida útil de un material o elemento que está bajo cargas, hasta la prevención de una falla catastrófica que pueda llevar a la colisión de una estructura que sea esencial en una industria, por ello es que el estudio de esta distribución de esfuerzos se hace indispensable tanto para el factor económico que puede representar para una industria, como para la vida misma del personal

Ranking for Good?: A Comparative Assessment of the Performance of French Corporations in Human Rights Rankings

In recent years, greater attention has been given to developing metrics that measure more than a country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Similarly, greater consideration has been given to more than just the financial performance of commercial enterprises; corporations are now expected to conduct business in ways that are responsible and sustainable, giving attention to a triple bottom line where the planet and people are prioritized along with profits. Taking French government policy and the performance of French multinational corporations as a case in point, this article explores the ways in which emerging indicators and instruments on business and human rights are relevant to the impact of business on well-being. This article examines which reporting frameworks and ranking systems best capture human rights and sustainability risks that could compromise well-being. Specifically, the article analyzes the frameworks and indicators used to measure human rights performance and the impact of rights rankings on business management. It also reviews responses by corporations to rights rankings as indicia of how measurements might be perceived as likely to result in changes in investor and consumer behavior or place brand reputation at risk

Guía de implementación de MDM (Master Data Management)- para empresas con más de un sistema de información.

La proliferación de las aplicaciones empresariales, las cuales describen, modelan y comparten información del negocio, como también la diversidad de procesos que comparten información entre sí, hace cada vez más difícil administrar y compartir los datos de referencia de la empresa (sobre clientes, productos y proveedores entre otros), por cuanto ocasionan que éstos se encuentren no solo dispersos a lo largo de la Organización, sino también con discrepancias. Esta situación ha llevado a que las empresas se enfoquen en la gestión de sus activos de información y busquen homogeneizar los datos maestros de forma tal que los empleados, dependencias y procesos de negocio “hablen el mismo idioma”. Surge entonces MDM con miras a ofrecer la gestión continua de este conjunto de datos en sus distintos dominios y la garantía de que estos estarán a disposición tanto de los sistemas transaccionales, como de los responsables de la toma de las decisiones. Las soluciones MDM hacen posible que las empresas homogeneícen los activos de datos maestros (información sobre productos, clientes y proveedores) de varios sistemas y departamentos, y de sus socios comerciales. Además, permiten que las organizaciones dispongan de los procesos, políticas y procedimientos necesarios para garantizar que la información precisa y adecuada se transmite a los sistemas transaccionales y a los responsables de la toma de decisiones que dependen de ella para llevar a cabo sus tareas de cada día

La reparación directa en el caso del riesgo excepcional

Este artículo de reflexión analiza, interpreta y critica la acción de reparación directa en el caso del riesgo excepcional. Contiene una reflexión bibliográfica exhaustiva de autores nacionales y extranjeros y se fundamenta en fuentes doctrinarias, jurisprudenciales y revisiones de publicaciones de carácter científico, sobre la mencionada acción de reparación directa en el caso del riesgo excepcional. Los resultados y conclusiones suscitadas en virtud de este fundamento de imputación permitirán establecer las variables y características de la misma, dando claridad en su concepto y ampliando su comprensió

Phase transforming cellular materials

A phase transition is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase to another. This transformation occurs in a wide range of structure and systems by the deformation of the crystal into a new structure changing the packing arrangement of the atoms in the unit cell. The different phases exhibit distinct properties and this change in the properties is exploited by technological innovations. Shape memory alloys are materials that present phase transformation alloys where martensitic phase transformation occurs by the deformation of the crystal into a new structure. A characteristic feature of the phase transformation in memory alloys is a periodic saw tooth pattern in the stress plateau of the stress–strain curve. Many biological components present behaviors that resemble the phase transformation of shape memory alloys; e.g., certain structural proteins exhibits saw tooth patterns when switching from a folded to unfolded configuration. In addition, researchers have shown that nacre achieves its remarkable toughness, without sacrificing its strength and stiffness, from its wavy brick-and-mortar-like microstructure. The wavy bricks, in conjunction with the mineral bridges and the organic glue, activate a very unique -compression-tension behavior that leads to irreversible bistable mechanisms resulting in an efficient process of energy dissipation and spreading of damage. In this article, we propose to extend this notion of diffusionless solid-state phase transformations to cellular solids, where we define a phase transformation to represent a change in the geometry of the unit cell. This is achieved by utilizing either bistable or metastable mechanisms as base for the unit cells of the cellular material. The phase transformation is due to a progressive change of configurations from cell to cell leading to a serrated force displacement behavior. The cells are design in such way that the deformations remain in the elastic regime making the process reversible. Analytical and computational micromechanics based models will be presented and used to estimate the effective properties of the phase transforming cellular material in each of its phases. In addition, initial studies on the characterization of the material moduli, energy absorption, volume change, self-excited dynamic response associated with the phase transformation and effect of phase change on the wave guiding properties of the material among other properties will be presented