Exceptions to Discharge: The Supreme Court Adopts A Preponderance of the Evidence Standard of Proof in Section 523 Proceedings

Section 523 of the Bankruptcy Reform Act\u27 lists ten categories of debts which are excepted from discharge.2 The standard of proof necessary to establish the nondischargeability3 of debts under this section was until recently unclear

Integrated environmental modeling : the new DREAM for Geological Surveys

This paper summarises the British Geological Survey (BGS) plans for the development of integrated environmental models to address the grand challenges that face society. It describes a vision for an Environmental Modelling Platform (BGS 2009), that will allow integrated models to be built and describes case studies of emerging models in the United Kingdom. After an initial scoping phase (Giles et al. 2010), this activity is now being carried out under the DREAM (Data and Research for Environmental Applications and Modelling) cross-cutting project

Looking forward to making predictions

As described in the preceding pages, since the BGS was established in 1835, the British population has coped with many challenges. These have ranged from finding resources to fuel the Industrial Revolution, understanding and combating water-borne diseases such as typhoid, the threat of invasion and aerial bombardment, through to modern-day environmental problems and climate change. To help deal with these problems, decisionmakers from governments and other organisations have required our help and advice

Introduction to integrated environmental modelling to solve real world problems: methods, vision and challenges

Across the world, stakeholders are asking questions of their governments and decision makers to quantify the risks of environmental threats to their well-being. These questions manifest themselves as ‘deceptively simple questions’, which are easy to articulate but difficult to solve. An example of which is: ‘how much will the eruption of an Icelandic volcano cost the UK economy’. Answering these questions requires predictions of the interaction of multiple environmental processes, this requires the development and maintenance of systems that allow these processes to be simulated, and that is the nascent science of integrated environmental modelling (IEM). Such processes may be long-term (e.g. those that are impacted by climate change) or short-term threats, such as the impact of drought on UK agriculture or the impact of space weather on energy supply systems

HydrologicTrends inthe Sacred Valley of the Incas

Through 2018-2019, the University of Louisville International Service Learning Program sent teams of students & faculty to the Vilcanota-Urubamba basin of Peru (the Incan “Sacred Valley”), to assist with water resource management and mapping flow losses from decaying irrigation infrastructure. Additional issues with water availability were noted. Farmers in the region had reported insufficient rains towards the end of the wet season. Some also reported shifting climate with more rain than usual during planting season at colder times preventing germination in some cases, as well as traditional freeze-drying practices. In 2019 the government of Peru (Autoridad Nacional del Agua) was provided several multi million dollar loans from the World Bank to mitigate water issues, including water resource management and establishing a monitoring system to allow data driven changes in management to prevent crop loss. The World Bank estimated the investment to avoid 281,000 tons of agricultural produce loss from the Vilcanota-Urubamba watershed in Cusco- however this estimate was likely based on wider scale data than the local level where loss would be experienced. Many steps to procure needed data to inform solutions remain unclear. Particularly, differences in trends at regional scale vs local scale in the area are in need of investigation. Regional trends within the Urubamba may prioritize study of certain watershed over others, however, management decisions are only possible at the local scale since most farms are small plots of land fed by rainfall high in the valley

Shape of ammonium chloride dendrite tips at small supersaturation

We report detailed shape measurements of the tips of three-dimensional ammonium chloride dendrites grown from supersaturated aqueous solution. For growth at small supersaturation, we compare two different models: parabolic with a fourth-order correction, and power law. Neither is ideal, but the fourth-order fit appears to provide the most robust description of both the tip shape and position for this material. For that fit, the magnitude of the fourth-order coefficient is about half of the theoretically expected value.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, LaTeX; updated references; minor edits from v

Impacts of Invasive Plants on Sandhill Crane (\u3ci\u3eGrus canadensis\u3c/i\u3e) Roosting Habitat

Invasive plants continue to spread in riparian ecosystems, causing both ecological and economic damage. This research investigated the impacts of common reed, purple loosestrife, riparian shrubland, and riparian woodlands on the quality and quantity of sandhill crane roosting habitat in the central Platte River, Nebraska, using a discrete choice model. A more detailed investigation of the impacts of common reed on sandhill crane roosting habitat was performed by forecasting a spread or contraction of this invasive plant. The discrete choice model indicates that riparian woodlands had the largest negative impact on sandhill crane roosting habitat. The forecasting results predict that a contraction of common reed could increase sandhill crane habitat availability by 50%, whereas an expansion could reduce the availability by as much as 250%. This suggests that if the distribution of common reed continues to expand in the central Platte River the availability of sandhill crane roosting habitat would likely be greatly reduced

Low Latency Previews for Links Embedded in Documents

This disclosure describes surfacing metadata within link bubbles in documents to enable reduction in user context switching and improve reading efficiency. Per techniques of this disclosure, when a user links to another file or external link from within a document, a link bubble is provided that includes metadata such as the title of the linked document or folder. The link bubble includes a thumbnail image and preview text and provides the user a quick preview of the linked document. Forward caching is utilized to improve response time for retrieval of the linked document. Cached link metadata information can be displayed in the link bubble when a request for the metadata information is made within a threshold time of a previous request for link metadata information. This reduces latency on duplicate requests and faster response and avoids link metadata staleness