The Incidence of a U.S. Carbon Tax: A Lifetime and Regional Analysis

This paper measures the direct and indirect incidence of a carbon tax using current income and two measures of lifetime income to rank households. OUr results suggest that carbon taxes are more regressive when annual income is used as a measure of economic welfare that when proxies for lifetime income are used. Further, the direct component of the tax, in any given year, is significantly more regressive than the indirect component. In fact, for 1987, the indirect component of the tax is mildly progressive. We observe a modest shift over time with the direct component of carbon taxes becoming less regressive and the indirect component becoming more regressive. These effects mostly offset each other and the distribution of the total tax burden has not changed much over time. In addition we find that regional variation has fluctuated over the years of our analysis. By 2003 there is little systematic variation in carbon tax burdens across regions of the country.

Distributional Impacts in a Comprehensive Climate Policy Package

This paper provides a simple analytic approach for measuring the burden of carbon pricing that does not require sophisticated and numerically intensive economic models but which is not limited to restrictive assumptions of forward shifting of carbon prices. We also show how to adjust for the capital income bias contained in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, a bias towards regressivity in carbon pricing due to underreporting of capital income in higher income deciles in the Survey. Many distributional analyses of carbon pricing focus on the uses-side incidence of carbon pricing. This is the differential burden resulting from heterogeneity in consumption across households. Once one allows for sources-side incidence (i.e. differential impacts of changes in real factor prices), carbon policies look more progressive. Perhaps more important than the findings from any one scenario, our results on the progressivity of the leading cap and trade proposals are robust to the assumptions made on the relative importance of uses and sources side heterogeneity.

Displaced dynamics of binary mixtures in linear and nonlinear optical lattices

The dynamical behavior of matter wave solitons of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in combined linear and nonlinear optical lattices (OLs) is investigated. In particular, the dependence of the frequency of the oscillating dynamics resulting from initially slightly displaced components is investigated both analytically, by means of a variational effective potential approach for the reduced collective coordinate dynamics of the soliton, and numerically, by direct integrations of the mean field equations of the BEC mixture. We show that for small initial displacements binary solitons can be viewed as point masses connected by elastic springs of strengths related to the amplitude of the OL and to the intra and inter-species interactions. Analytical expressions of symmetric and anti-symmetric mode frequencies, are derived and occurrence of beatings phenomena in the displaced dynamics is predicted. These expressions are shown to give a very good estimation of the oscillation frequencies for different values of the intra-species interatomic scattering length, as confirmed by direct numerical integrations of the mean field Gross-Pitaevskii equations (GPE) of the mixture. The possibility to use displaced dynamics for indirect measurements of BEC mixture characteristics such as number of atoms and interatomic interactions is also suggested.Comment: 8 pages, 21 figure

The Incidence of a U.S. Carbon Tax: A Lifetime and Regional Analysis

This paper measures the direct and indirect incidence of a carbon tax using current income and two measures of lifetime income to rank households. Our results suggest that carbon taxes are more regressive when annual income is used as a measure of economic welfare than when proxies for lifetime income are used. Further, the direct component of the tax, in any given year, is significantly more regressive than the indirect component. In fact, for 1987, the indirect component of the tax is mildly progressive. We observe a modest shift over time with the direct component of carbon taxes becoming less regressive and the indirect component becoming more regressive. These effects mostly offset each other and the distribution of the total tax burden has not changed much over time. In addition we find that regional variation has fluctuated over the years of our anlaysis. By 2003 there is little systematic variation in carbon tax burdens across regions of the country.

DESIGN OF HIGH PERFORMANCE MULTIPLIERLESS LINEAR PHASE FINITE IMPULSE RESPONSE FILTERS

This research work proposes the finite impulse response (FIR) filters design using distributed arithmetic architecture optimized for field programmable gate array. To implement computationally efficient, low power, high-speed FIR filter a two-dimensional fully pipelined structure is used. The FIR filter is dynamically reconfigured to realize low pass and high pass filter by changing the filter coefficients. The FIR filter is most fundamental components in digital signal processing for high-speed application. The aim of this research work is to design multiplier-less FIR filter for the requirements of low power and high speed various embedded applications.Â

Perspectives on the Indigenous Worldviews in Informal Science Education Conference

The chronic underrepresentation of Native and indigenous peoples in STEM fields (Fig. 1) has been a longstanding issue in the United States, despite concentrated efforts by many local and national groups, including the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) to address it. Here we report on the conference on Indigenous Worldviews in Informal Science Education (I-WISE), convened in Albuquerque, NM, on Sept. 2-5, 2015. We share what we learned on the commonalities and differences in perspectives between indigenous knowledge (IK) and Western science; summarize the role that IK is already playing in scientific fields, ranging from astrophysics to medicine to climate change; and describe how IK can help science education and research be more sustainable, inclusive, and respectful to all peoples

Inhibition of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus-induced cytokines mRNA production in human bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells by 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3

Background Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the predominant cause of bone infection. Toll like receptors (TLRs) are an important segments of host response to infection and are expressed by a variety of cells including human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). The active form of Vitamin D, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3) has potent immunoregulatory properties, but the mechanism remains poorly understood. The genomic action of 1,25(OH)2D3 is mediated by vitamin D receptor (VDR), hormone-regulated transcription factor. VDR interacts with co-activators and co-repressors are associated with chromatin histone modifications and transcriptional regulation. The aim of our study is to explore MRSA-induced TLRs-mediated pro-inflammatory cytokines expression in hMSCs. Further, we hypothesized that 1,25(OH)2D3 inhibits MRSA-induced cytokines synthesis in hMSCs via inhibition of NF-кB transcription factor. Finally, we explored the regulatory role of 1,25(OH)2D3 in MRSA-mediated global epigenetic histone H3 mark, such as, trimethylated histone H3 lysine 9 (H3K9me3), which is linked to gene silencing. Results Quantitative PCR data revealed that MRSA-infection predominantly induced expression of TLRs 1, 2, 6, NR4A2, and inflammatory cytokines IL-8, IL-6, TNFα in hMSCs. MRSA-mediated TLR ligands reduced osteoblast differentiation and increased hMSCs proliferation, indicating the disrupted multipotency function of hMSCs. Pretreatment of 1,25(OH)2D3 followed by MRSA co-culture inhibited nuclear translocation of NF-кB-p65, reduced expression of NR4A2 and pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-8, IL-6, and TNFα in hMSCs. Further, NF-κB-p65, VDR, and NR4A2 were present in the same nuclear protein complex, indicating that VDR is an active part of the nuclear protein complexes for transcriptional regulation. Finally, 1,25(OH)2D3 activated VDR, restores the global level of H3K9me3, to repress MRSA-stimulated inflammatory cytokine IL-8 expression. Pretreatment of 5-dAZA, DNA methylatransferases (Dnmts) inhibitor, dramatically re-expresses 1,25(OH)2D3-MRSA-mediated silenced IL-8 gene. Conclusions This data indicates that TLR 1, 2, and 6 can be used as markers for localized S. aureus bone infection. 1,25(OH)2D3-VDR may exhibits its anti-inflammatory properties in MRSA-stimulated infection by inhibiting nuclear translocation of NF-kB-p65 and transcripts of IL-8, IL-6, TNFα, and NR4A2 in hMSCs. Finally, 1,25(OH)2D3-activated VDR, acting as an epigenetic regulator, inhibits synthesis of cytokines in MRSA-stimulated infection by restoring the global level of H3K9me3, a histone H3 mark for gene silencing