Liening on DHR Construction, LLC

This case describes the attempts of a small residential construction company to close on a home that they have built. The problem for the characters in question is how to proceed in this situation given the fact that a third party lien has been put against their properties because the developer they bought the properties from had not paid his landscaper. The case has a difficulty level appropriate for a freshmen and/or sophomore level course. The case is designed to be taught in one to two class periods based upon the authors’ prior experiences in teaching this case. Instructional time may vary from 50 to 100 minutes depending upon the instructional approach employed while it is expected that between three to six hours of outside preparation by students will be required (depending upon the instructor’s choice of class preparation and debriefing methods)

Liening on DHR Construction, LLC

This case describes the attempts of a small residential construction company to close on a home that they have built. The problem for the characters in question is how to proceed in this situation given the fact that a third party lien has been put against their properties because the developer they bought the properties from had not paid his landscaper. The case has a difficulty level appropriate for a freshmen and/or sophomore level course. The case is designed to be taught in one to two class periods based upon the authors’ prior experiences in teaching this case. Instructional time may vary from 50 to 100 minutes depending upon the instructional approach employed while it is expected that between three to six hours of outside preparation by students will be required (depending upon the instructor’s choice of class preparation and debriefing methods)

DHR Construction, LLC : Parts A and B

Stephen Hodgetts read the e-mail over and over again and still could hardly believe what he had read. He had just come back from his vacation, well rested and refreshed, and this e-mail had dampened his high enthusiasm. It took time to absorb such bad news and for Hodgetts to get over his incredulity. Yet in the end Hodgetts accepted the truth—a deep, dark terrible truth that would not go away. Robert Davis, his business partner’s son, had confirmed in an e-mail his worst fears about their newest business partner, David Russ. Many thoughts were running through his mind simultaneously yet each screamed to be heard. “How could he and his partner Richard Davis have been so blind, so trusting?” “How could Russ not have heeded the advice of his business partner, Richard Davis, Russ’s former English professor?” And most important, “What was now going to happen to their new business?” Yet the one thought that continued to echo among them all was surprisingly a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved character, Sherlock Holmes: “But there are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

No Exit? Trying to Salvage D&H Management LLC: Parts A and B

In this two-part case, Richard Davis and Stephen Hodgetts, co-owners of D&H Management LLC, are trying to come to terms with changes in the real estate market—changes that have made their rental homes worth less than their mortgages and at best yielding at most a break-even cash flow. In Part A Davis and Hodgetts are weighing the following options: (1) sell all of the properties, assume a loss (walk away with nothing), and avoid the negative cash flow; (2) walk away from all of the properties, assume a loss (walk away with nothing), and avoid the negative cash flow; (3) delay paying the mortgage on some of the homes, allow these properties, if necessary, to go into foreclosure, and in the interim use the positive cash flow to shore up some of the more positive cash flow homes; (4) contact all of the lenders and try to renegotiate the mortgages so as to have lower monthly rates. In Part B Davis proposes that he and Hodgetts go their separate ways. Davis walks away with the two properties that have mortgages in his name, while Hodgetts obtains the four properties that have mortgages in his. From Hodgetts’ perspective this is a losing proposition since (1) he would have to take over the management of four “loser” properties rather than Davis’s two, an ‘unfair’ split of the liabilities; (2) he had no interest in managing properties; and (3) he and Davis would be splitting up a long-standing team

Dark Matter in the Coming Decade: Complementary Paths to Discovery and Beyond

In this report we summarize the many dark matter searches currently being pursued through four complementary approaches: direct detection, indirect detection, collider experiments, and astrophysical probes. The essential features of broad classes of experiments are described, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The complementarity of the different dark matter searches is discussed qualitatively and illustrated quantitatively in two simple theoretical frameworks. Our primary conclusion is that the diversity of possible dark matter candidates requires a balanced program drawing from all four approaches.Comment: Report prepared for the Community Summer Study (Snowmass) 2013, on behalf of Cosmic Frontier Working Groups 1-4 (CF1: WIMP Dark Matter Direct Detection, CF2: WIMP Dark Matter Indirect Detection, CF3: Non-WIMP Dark Matter, and CF4: Dark Matter Complementarity); published versio

HER2-HER3 heterodimer quantification by FRET-FILM and patient subclass analysis of the COIN colorectal trial

BACKGROUND: The phase 3 MRC COIN trial showed no statistically significant benefit from adding the EGFR-target cetuximab to oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy in first-line treatment of advanced colorectal cancer. This study exploits additional information on HER2-HER3 dimerization to achieve patient stratification and reveal previously hidden subgroups of patients who had differing disease progression and treatment response. METHODS: HER2-HER3 dimerization was quantified by 'FLIM Histology' in primary tumor samples from 550 COIN trial patients receiving oxaliplatin and fluoropyrimidine chemotherapy +/-cetuximab. Bayesian latent class analysis (LCA) and covariate reduction was performed to analyze the effects of HER2-HER3 dimer, RAS mutation and cetuximab on progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS: LCA on a cohort of 398 patients revealed two patient subclasses with differing prognoses (median OS: 1624 days [95%CI=1466-1816] vs 461 [95%CI=431-504]): Class 1 (15.6%) showed a benefit from cetuximab in OS (HR = 0.43 [95%CI=0.25-0.76]; p = 0.004). Class 2 showed an association of increased HER2-HER3 with better OS (HR = 0.64 [95%CI=0.44-0.94]; p = 0.02). A class prediction signature was formed and tested on an independent validation cohort (N = 152) validating the prognostic utility of the dimer assay. Similar subclasses were also discovered in full trial dataset (N = 1,630) based on 10 baseline clinicopathological and genetic covariates. CONCLUSIONS: Our work suggests that the combined use of HER dimer imaging and conventional mutation analyses will be able to identify a small subclass of patients (>10%) who will have better prognosis following chemotherapy. A larger prospective cohort will be required to confirm its utility in predicting the outcome of anti-EGFR treatment

Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law

Gindis, David, Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law (October 27, 2017). Journal of Institutional Economics, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2905547, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2905547The rise of large business corporations in the late 19th century compelled many American observers to admit that the nature of the corporation had yet to be understood. Published in this context, Ernst Freund's little-known The Legal Nature of Corporations (1897) was an original attempt to come to terms with a new legal and economic reality. But it can also be described, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, as the earliest example of the rational study of corporate law. The paper shows that Freund had the intuitions of an institutional economist, and engaged in what today would be called comparative institutional analysis. Remarkably, his argument that the corporate form secures property against insider defection and against outsiders anticipated recent work on entity shielding and capital lock-in, and can be read as an early contribution to what today would be called the theory of the firm.Peer reviewe

‘I was there from the start’: The identity maintenance strategies used by fans to combat the threat of losing

On-field performances are a key, yet uncontrollable, determinant of team identification. In this research, we explore how fans of a new team, with an overwhelming loss to win ratio, maintain a positive social identity. Qualitative data gathered from 20 semi-structured interviews were used to address this research objective. Our findings indicated fans use social creativity and social mobility strategies to help preserve a positive and distinctive group identity. In the absence of success, fans evaluated the group on dimensions that reflected positively on, and emphasised the distinctiveness of, group membership. Fans also sought to increase their status in the group to increase the positivity of this association. We use these findings to extend understanding of social identity theory and provide recommendations for sport organisations with unfavourable performance records. Recommendations are themed around highlighting the unique nature of the group and and favourable status comparisons between members of the in-group

Measuring personal networks and their relationship with scientific production

The analysis of social networks has remained a crucial and yet understudied aspect of the efforts to measure Triple Helix linkages. The Triple Helix model aims to explain, among other aspects of knowledge-based societies, ¿the current research system in its social context. This paper develops a novel approach to study the research system from the perspective of the individual, through the analysis of the relationships among researchers, and between them and other social actors. We develop a new set of techniques and show how they can be applied to the study of a specific case (a group of academics within a university department). We analyse their informal social networks and show how a relationship exists between the characteristics of an individual¿s network of social links and his or her research output