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May A Foreign Company Liquidate Under The U.S. Bankruptcy Code?, Micaela D. Manley

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

This article discusses the ability of a foreign debtor to liquidate or reorganize under title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”). Foreign companies can address their debt in a bankruptcy case under the Bankruptcy Code if it satisfies the eligibility requirements set forth in section 109 of the Bankruptcy Code. A court may dismiss a foreign company’s bankruptcy case under section 3052 or section 1112 of the Bankruptcy Code. Part I of this article discusses the eligibility requirements under section 109 of the Bankruptcy Code. Part II analyzes the possibility of dismissal for “cause” under section …

Healthcare Utilization And Expenditure Patterns Among Older Adults With Functional And Medical Decline, Ashley Shields Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose. As the aged population of this country grows, the U.S. healthcare system will face increased pressure to provide long-term care services and supports to increasing numbers of elderly Medicare beneficiaries. Studies have indicated that unmet long-term care need can lead to increased, unnecessary utilization of the healthcare system, thus further taxing the Medicare system. Little is known about how type of long-term care, as well as how long-term care policies—specifically payment policies—affect health care utilization. The objective of this original dissertation research was to examine the effects of place of residence (community versus residential long-term care facility) and …

Biodegradation Of Highly Weathered Deepwater Horizon Oil, Joel T. Bostic

Theses and Dissertations

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon (DwH) spill continues to be found on beaches five years post-spill. Understanding the role of microbes in removing DwH oil from sandy beaches is necessary to elucidate the fate of DwH oil in the coastal zone. Oiled sand patties and non-oiled sand were collected from affected beaches five years post- DwH. Biomarkers in oiled sand indicated that sand patties originated from the DwH spill, however the oil was heavily weathered and dominated by oxygenated hydrocarbons. Microbial communities, as measured by phospholipid fatty acids (PLFA), were present on oiled sand patties and distinct from microbes on …

Examing Supine-To-Stand As A Measure Of Functional Motor Competence And Health Across The Lifespan, Danielle Rene Nesbitt

Theses and Dissertations

A person’s ability to rise from the floor to a standing position is seen as a precursor for establishing and maintaining physical independence. It also is an important primer for the development of other fundamental movement skills (FMS) and is associated with functional capacity in later life. Thus, the potential importance of developing this movement capability early in life and understanding how it may relate to global function (i.e., motor competence-MC and health-related fitness-HRF) across the lifespan may be underestimated. Limited research has examined components or performance (i.e., time) of supine-to-stand (STS) in children to young adults. Further, no previous …

The Impact Of The Choice Of The Item Response Theory Model Used In The Analysis Of Student Response Data From Statewide Educational Assessments, Maureen O’Gorman Petkewich

Theses and Dissertations

The practical significance of the item response theory model (IRT) choice on the results of a statewide assessment was investigated at multiple decision making levels: the examinee level, school and district summary levels, and in terms of impact to subgroups. Data for the study included the student response matrix for South Carolina’s 2014 Palmetto Assessment of State Standards (PASS). The Rasch model, used with PASS and in nearly half of PASS-like multiple-choice statewide assessments in other states, was compared to another popular IRT model used in similar statewide assessments: the 3PL model.

Model fit checks indicated that the 3PL had …

Essays On Retirement, Labor Supply, And Living Arrangements, Anudeep Gill

Theses and Dissertations

Three changes in the U.S. Social Security program affected recent cohorts of older individuals: repeal of the earnings test, increases in the normal retirement age, and increases in the delayed retirement credit. All three policy changes were expected to affect work decisions for those eligible for social security benefits. The first two chapters of my dissertation assess the impact of these policy changes. In the first chapter, using data from the Survey of Income Program and Participation (SIPP) for the years 1996-2013, I study the influence of the three policy changes on the retirement and benefit-claiming decisions of older men …

Help-Seeking And Intimate Partner Violence Re-Victimization Of Sexual Minority And Heterosexual College Students, Andrew T. Schramm

Theses and Dissertations

Recent estimates indicate that 18.5% of heterosexual college students and 30.3% of sexual minority college students are victims of physical intimate partner violence (IPV; Edwards, Sylaska, Barry, et al., 2015). Research among adult women in oppositesex relationships has shown that once an individual is victimized by IPV she is subsequently at high risk for future IPV victimization. Re-victimization is associated with more severe physical and mental health consequences of IPV. No prior study has assessed the rate of re-victimization among sexual minority adults. Help-seeking behavior, which refers to accessing a range of sources of support (e.g., family and friends, law …

National Register Nomination For The Waikiki Village Motel, Jane W. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

The Waikiki Village Motel, built in 1963, embodies the Modern style of architecture that was prolific throughout the mid-century period in America. This building type constituted the majority of the development of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina during this era, but much of it has been lost to more modern development. The L-shape design and Hawaiian-style hut demonstrate the Modern form as an affordable destination for middle-class fun. The motel characterizes the boom in resort style development prevalent in the Palmetto State’s Grand Strand after the destruction by Hurricane Hazel in 1954. It also represents the idea of “Populuxe” – forward …

Dosimetry, Activation, And Robotic Instrumentation Damage Modeling Of The Holtec Hi-Storm 100 Spent Nuclear Fuel System, C. Ryan Priest

Theses and Dissertations

The Holtec HI-STORM 100 spent fuel storage system is an intermediate storage mechanism for SNF assemblies. Long term licensing and storage requires consideration of material degradation of the stainless steel multi-purpose canister holding the spent fuel. This material degradation is predicted to take the form of environmentally assisted cracking on weld interfaces of the stainless steel cylinder. Several of these spent fuel storage arrays are located in coastal environments. These sites include both the Hope Creek and Diablo Canyon nuclear power stations. A multi-sensory robotic package is being designed for non-destructive assay of the cask annular environment. It will be …

Measurements Of Electrostatic Double Layer Potentials With Atomic Force Microscopy, Jason Giamberardino

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to provide a thorough description of the development of theory and experiment pertaining to the electrostatic double layer (EDL) in aqueous electrolytic systems. The EDL is an important physical element of many systems and its behavior has been of interest to scientists for many decades. Because many areas of science and engineering move to test, build, and understand systems at smaller and smaller scales, this work focuses on nanoscopic experimental investigations of the EDL. In that vein, atomic force microscopy (AFM) will be introduced and discussed as a tool for making high spatial resolution …

Development Of Reactions And Methods For Labeling Biomolecules In Cells, Enoch Agbesi Adogla

Theses and Dissertations

The complexity of cellular environments presents a challenge to efforts at studying and elucidating biomolecules in cells. Covalent ligation of biomolecules with fluorescent molecules that have a reactive functional group that can react with a complementary functional group on biomolecules is one way that has been utilized to study biomolecules. It enables visualization and tracking of ligation and transportation of molecules within the cell. However, the myriad of functional groups within the cell makes achieving selectivity difficult. To circumvent this problem, reactions that do not interfere with biology have been developed. These reactions, referred to as bioorthogonal reactions must be …

Investigating The Function Of Aintegumenta-Like6 (Ail6) In Arabidopsis Flower Development, Han Han

Theses and Dissertations

AINTEGUMENTA (ANT) and AINTEGUMENTA-LIKE6 (AIL6) encode related transcription factors with partially overlapping roles in floral organ development in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. ANT and AIL6 do not make equivalent contributions to these processes. Loss of ANT function by itself results in smaller flowers, demonstrating that the role of ANT in organ size control cannot be provided by AIL6. Loss of AIL6 function on its own has no phenotypic consequences indicating that all of its roles in flower development can be provided by ANT or some other genes. To further probe the function of AIL6 in flower development, we investigated …

More Than One Voice: Utilizing Students’ Home Languages And Cultural Experiences In Reading Recovery, Sarah Catto

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the experiences of three Latino emergent bilingual children and their Reading Recovery teacher as they engaged in Reading Recovery lessons offered in English with the support of Spanish. The negative impact of cultural bias and expectations of assimilation into English has implications for needed innovations in classroom literacy practices,as well as ways to address teachers' inexperience in teaching culturally and linguistically different students. This case study sought to gain a better understanding of the impact of students’ native languages and aspects of cultural diversity that influenced reading and writing instruction, as well as the instructional methods and …

Physics Based Modeling Of Guided Waves For Detection And Characterization Of Structural Damage In Nde And Shm, Banibrata Poddar

Theses and Dissertations

Guided waves based damage detection techniques are popular for their ease of generation and detection along with their ability to travel long distances. Accurate and efficient modeling is a key for successful implementation of guided waves for NDE/SHM. However, efficient prediction of scattering from various damage is challenging due to the complex nature of these guided waves.

This dissertation presents as physics based efficient and accurate modeling techniques to predict ultrasonic wave propagation and their interaction with various damage. Detection and characterization of damage in structures can typically be divided into two categories, active and passive. This research is aimed …

Positioning Commuters And Shoppers Through Sensing And Correlation, Rufeng Meng

Theses and Dissertations

Positioning is a basic and important need in many scenarios of human daily activities. With position information, multifarious services could be vitalized to benefit all kinds of users, from individuals to organizations. Through positioning, people are able to obtain not only geo-location but also time related information. By aggregating position information from individuals, organizations could derive statistical knowledge about group behaviors, such as traffic, business, event, etc.

Although enormous effort has been invested in positioning related academic and industrial work, there are still many holes to be filled. This dissertation proposes solutions to address the need of positioning in people’s …

Investigation Of Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Devices For Radiation Detection Applications, Rahmi Orhon Pak

Theses and Dissertations

Radioactive materials, as they decay, generate different high-frequency electromagnetic radiation such as alpha particles, beta particles, x-rays, gamma-rays, and neutrons. Nuclear detectors could stop these high-energy ionizing radiations, collect and transport the charges generated to an external circuit, and produce an electrical signal which is amplified by readout electronics to measure the energy of nuclear interaction. Thus, nuclear detectors are important tools for accounting of radioactive materials and have widespread applications in nuclear power plants, nuclear waste management, in national security, in medical imaging such as x-ray mammography, digital chest radiography, CT scan, and in high energy astronomy for NASA …

Nursing Attitudes Towards Suicidal Patients In The Emergency Department: Assessment Interview Training, Belinda Beaver

Theses and Dissertations

This project sought evidence for the effectiveness of pedagogy in professional nursing continuing education and its effect on emergency department nurse attitudes towards patients seeking crisis intervention for suicide. Approximately 12 million emergency department (ED) visits annually were for patients suffering with mental illness and/or suicidal ideation. Emergency department staffs were often not adequately prepared to manage these problems. The purpose of this project was to examine the impact of an educational initiative on nurses’ attitudes about patients expressing suicidal ideation in the emergency departments 2 rural southeastern towns.

The project question was; in two different rural community emergency departments …

The Development Of A Miniature Spatial Heterodyne Raman Spectrometer For Applications In Planetary Exploration And Other Extreme Environments, Patrick Doyle Barnett

Theses and Dissertations

Space exploration is arguably one of the most important endeavors our species has ever undertaken. Rapid advances in rocketry and robotics in recent years has allowed for positioning of complex scientific instruments on other planets with a precision that was previously thought impossible. This, along with the need for more sophisticated chemical measurements to achieve the goals of new, more ambitious missions and recent advances in in-situ and remote spectroscopic techniques, has led to a boom in the use of spectroscopic instruments for space exploration. However, future missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, along with other planetary bodies …

High-Throughput Sequencing-Based Approaches For The Identification And Development Of Molecular Targets For Cancer Therapy, David Joel Oliver

Theses and Dissertations

Effective cancer treatment depends on the development of therapeutics that efficiently eliminate the disease without significant reduction to quality of life. Targeted therapeutics achieve these goals, but their long-term efficacy is limited by the ability of cancers to become resistant to these therapies over time. The identification of new therapeutic targets is crucial for the future of cancer treatment. In this work we present functional identification and characterization of novel targets for cancer therapy.

Loss-of-function screens are a well-founded approach for the functional identification of new therapeutic targets, and, in combination with high-throughput sequencing technology, can now be performed at …

A Culture Of Commodification: Hemispheric And Intercolonial Migrations In The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 1660-1807, Neal D. Polhemus

Theses and Dissertations

Beginning in the sixteenth century, as large quantities of produce were unloaded at ports throughout Northern Europe, consumer consumption of West Indies commodities drove demand for captive African labor. As a result, from 1556 to 1867, Europeans transported some 12 million West Africans to the Americas. Based on primary sources from over three countries and more than thirty archives, this study explores the structure and organization of the transatlantic slave trade to analyze the transformation of relationships and the commercial operation of the trade in West Africa, the circum-Caribbean, and more broadly the Atlantic world. This study of the transatlantic …

An Investigation Of Mannequins’ Effect On Consumer Attitude And Intention, Hannah Shealy

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effect of mannequin type on consumers’ purchase decisions. Data was collected from a convenience sample of 165 respondents through an online survey to measure the variables of envisioning, consumer attitude toward the display, and purchase intention in their relationship to mannequin type. Hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 were confirmed, confirming the conceptual model and the overall investigation into whether mannequin type effects consumer purchase decisions. Mannequin type was found to have a significant effect on envisioning, and the relationships between envisioning and consumer attitude toward the display and between attitude and purchase intention were found to …

Relationships Of Chronotype, Social Jetlag, Sleep, Physical Activity And Diet With Mood, Perceived Stress, Obesity, Blood Pressure And Prostate Cancer, Daria M. Mcmahon

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Chronotype, social jetlag, poor sleep, proinflammatory diet, and low physical activity have been associated with increased risk of chronic diseases: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression and cancer. Yet the relationships between these factors have not been extensively investigated in prospective studies.

Methods: Two studies were conducted. The first study followed 390 healthy men and women ages 21-35 for two years. Social jetlag [SJL] and sleep measures (total sleep time [TST], sleep onset latency [SOL], wake after sleep onset [WASO]), sleep efficiency [SE]), were derived from physical activity personal (armband) monitoring. The participants wore the armband for 4-10 …

Ndt And Shm Methods Of Damage Detection In Welded Structures, Saad Mohammed

Theses and Dissertations

There has been an increasing demand for Nondestructive Testing (NDT) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques to continuously monitor during all processes of a structure to prevent catastrophic failure and reduce maintenance costs. NDT and SHM are inspection processes which form part of the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) scheme. Among NDT and SHM methods, ultrasonic and guided wave techniques are the most commonly and widely used in industry. Ultrasonic methods provide the advantage of accurately locating and dimensioning defects within structures. Most of these structures consist of welded joints because welding is an economical and efficient method for obtaining a …

3d Seismic Depth Imaging And Velocity Model Building In Anisotropic Media: Serri Oil And Gas Field, Saudi Arabia, Ali Jomaah Alsalem

Theses and Dissertations

Seismic imaging is a significant element in hydrocarbon exploration to locate drilling prospects and it relies mainly on an accurate velocity model. Prestack depth migration (PreSDM) versus traditional post-stack time migration has become a common method for seismic velocity model building and imaging. This methodology accounts for seismic velocity anisotropy of the propagating waves in the subsurface with a higher level of accuracy in positioning the seismic events in their true positions in the subsurface.

In this thesis, we examine a 303 km2 of 3D seismic data acquired by Saudi Aramco in the Serri field of North-West Saudi Arabia. The …

Implementation Of Agile Project Management In The Classroom, Michael Jerrod Myers

Theses and Dissertations

The world of engineering and engineering practices is advancing rapidly. In response to this rapid change, engineering education practices have to advance to ensure students are properly trained for the workforce. The purpose of this report is to address and substantiate the hypothesis that if engineering instruction incorporated Agile project management methods, then students will be challenged by professors to accomplish course objectives with a systematic and timely approach that will improve assessment performance metrics and present the framework of how agile methods of project management can be integrated into the classroom. The agile methods incorporated will also encourage the …

Hadronic Lorentz Violation In Chiral Perturbation Theory, Rasha Kamand

Theses and Dissertations

The leading-order Lorentz-violating hadronic Lagrange densities are constructed using chiral perturbation theory. This is done for both pions and nucleons starting from a two-flavor quark-level Lagrangian that consists of dimension-four Lorentzviolation operators. The effective Lagrangians are first constructed in the absence of external fields. The formalism is then extended to include interactions with external fields. The presence of Lorentz violation modifies the transformation behavior of external fields under the chiral group SU(2)L × SU(2)R. This in turn leads to modified pion and nucleon covariant derivatives. By expanding parts of both mesonic and baryonic Lagragians in terms of physical pion and …

Using Synthetic Lectins To Investigate Metastatic Potential In Colon Cancer, Erin E. Gatrone

Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is a disease that affects millions of people each year and it is well established that early diagnosis is a key factor towards improving survival rate, with that in mind there is a great need for better diagnostics. From the earliest onset of cancer, changes can be detected in the type and amount of carbohydrates expressed by the cancer cells, i.e., aberrant glycosylation. This process results in differing glycosylation patterns that can be used to detect cancer. Aberrant glycosylation can also greatly affect the potential of cancer cells to metastasize and can be used to stage the disease as …

Exploration Of Appropriate And Inappropriate E-Disclosure: A Qualitative Investigation Of The Decision-Making Process Of Counselors In Training, Katherine H. Dewitt

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored how counseling students in CACREP accredited counselor education program made meaning of and categorize appropriate and inappropriate self-disclosure in the digital age. In particular, how do future counselors consider and apply ethical codes to personal behavior on social media? Utilizing a qualitative design, the researcher explored student decision making and understanding of ethical considerations in the personal use of social media. A vital component to the professionalism of counseling is the constancy of the presentation-of-self in all identities (public, private, in-person, or online) of the counselor. The researcher asserts that there is an ethical obligation of all …

The Relationship Between Peer-Self Concept And Academic Self-Concept In Elementary Students: A Person-Oriented Perspective, Catherine Jorgensen Snyder

Theses and Dissertations

Self-concept is one of the most researched constructs in educational psychology (Marsh, Xu, & Martin, 2012). It has been established that there are different domains of self-concept which fall into two main categories, academic and non-academic (Shavelson, Hubner, & Stanton, 1976). Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on the non-academic areas of self-concept and little is known about how social self-concept interrelates with academic self-concept. The focus of this study was to contribute to the research base by investigating the relationship between a facet of nonacademic self-concept, namely peer self-concept, and achievement self-concept among elementary students.

The current research utilized …

The Effect Of Arsenic On Type 2 Diabetes And Inflammation, Kayla Penta

Theses and Dissertations

Arsenic, a ubiquitous environmental contaminant, has been shown to cause a number of health effects. At high concentrations the inorganic form is a well-known toxin, but at lower concentrations the effects range from various cancers, to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. At higher concentrations of arsenic (500- 1000μg/L) there have been epidemiological studies conducted demonstrating an increased risk in the development of type 2 diabetes with this exposure. At lower levels of arsenic exposure (<500 μg/L) the epidemiological results are inconclusive. Arsenic is also an immunotoxicant, meaning that it will cause changes in the immune response. The changes in the immune response will vary depending on a number of variables, including amount of arsenic exposure, forms of exposure and route of exposure. We wanted to determine if arsenic could modulate the immune system, and if this change could lead to an increase in susceptibility to type 2 diabetes development. We chose to examine this in C57BL/6 and db/+ mice – two non-susceptible strains. After 8 weeks (4 weeks old to 12 weeks old) of low dose inorganic arsenic exposure (50 μg/kg or 500 μg/kg) we evaluated changes in body composition, glucose tolerance and immune response. We saw that there were differences based on sex, genotype and treatment group present after the 8-week treatment period in body composition, while there were minimal changes in glucose tolerance. Finally, the immune response showed great variability depending on sex, genotype and treatment group. This project has demonstrated that while we are trying to compare differences in in vivo and epidemiological studies to find a link between arsenic and type 2 diabetes, there may be deeper levels of complications based on individual variability to arsenic exposure.