Ten Truths about Tax Havens: Inclusion and the Liberia Problem

There has been a decades-long effort to repair an increasingly fragile international tax system. One reason it has foundered has been what we identify as the “Liberia problem.” In 2000, the powerful Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development identified Liberia—but not Switzerland—as a tax haven and targeted it for sanctions. It did not go well. During the two decades since, everything has changed; yet seemingly from this lens of inclusion, nothing has changed at all. Awkwardly similar “blacklists” still target “Black” and “Brown” jurisdictions despite the fact that experts mean something quite different when they speak of the “scourge of tax havens” and secrecy jurisdictions. We think differently in important respects but believe that those real disagreements demonstrate the need for a less insular global tax policymaking apparatus. And we share a conviction that a more inclusive and more level playing field in the international tax arena would benefit all states. To show why, we offer a series of “truths” designed to prompt a long-overdue conversation about perceptions of bias and privilege in international taxation

Teachers’ Intention to Use Digital Resources in Classroom Teaching: The Role of Teacher Competence, Peer Influence, and Perceived Image

Objectives: Rapid advancements in information processing and technology are causing transformations in education at an unprecedented pace. The use of digital resources is becoming essential for educators to ensure the effectiveness of their teaching. There is thus a need to transform ways and means of educating teachers to meet the new challenges. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that determine teacher intention to use digital resources in classroom teaching. Method: The study adopted a single cross-sectional design, in which questionnaires with pre-established scales were completed by 276 university teachers from three major public universities in the Kashmir region of India. The collected data were subjected to descriptive, correlation, and regression analysis. Results: Findings suggest that intention to use digital resources in the classroom is significantly influenced by teachers’ perceptions of their own competence, perceived usefulness and ease of use of technology and digital resources, and peer influence. Among these factors, perceived competence exerts the strongest influence. Results indicate that perceived social image has no significant impact on intention to use digital resources. Conclusions: The study supports the view that teacher competence and peer influence are two key determining factors for the use of digital resources. Additionally, it demonstrates that digital resources must be perceived to offer potential benefits and ease of use in order to gain widespread acceptance among teachers. Implications: This research advances the understanding of digital resource adoption in classroom teaching, particularly in developing countries like India. The findings provide critical direction to policymakers and digital resource developers to enhance use of digital resources in classroom teaching by prioritizing the development of useful and user-friendly resources. Moreover, universities should organize training programs to enhance teachers’ proficiency in utilizing digital resources for effective teaching

Fisheye Consistency: Keeping Data in Synch in a Georeplicated World

Over the last thirty years, numerous consistency conditions for replicated data have been proposed and implemented. Popular examples of such conditions include linearizability (or atomicity), sequential consistency, causal consistency, and eventual consistency. These consistency conditions are usually defined independently from the computing entities (nodes) that manipulate the replicated data; i.e., they do not take into account how computing entities might be linked to one another, or geographically distributed. To address this lack, as a first contribution, this paper introduces the notion of proximity graph between computing nodes. If two nodes are connected in this graph, their operations must satisfy a strong consistency condition, while the operations invoked by other nodes are allowed to satisfy a weaker condition. The second contribution is the use of such a graph to provide a generic approach to the hybridization of data consistency conditions into the same system. We illustrate this approach on sequential consistency and causal consistency, and present a model in which all data operations are causally consistent, while operations by neighboring processes in the proximity graph are sequentially consistent. The third contribution of the paper is the design and the proof of a distributed algorithm based on this proximity graph, which combines sequential consistency and causal consistency (the resulting condition is called fisheye consistency). In doing so the paper not only extends the domain of consistency conditions, but provides a generic provably correct solution of direct relevance to modern georeplicated systems

Multicast Network Design Game on a Ring

In this paper we study quality measures of different solution concepts for the multicast network design game on a ring topology. We recall from the literature a lower bound of 4/3 and prove a matching upper bound for the price of stability, which is the ratio of the social costs of a best Nash equilibrium and of a general optimum. Therefore, we answer an open question posed by Fanelli et al. in [12]. We prove an upper bound of 2 for the ratio of the costs of a potential optimizer and of an optimum, provide a construction of a lower bound, and give a computer-assisted argument that it reaches $2$ for any precision. We then turn our attention to players arriving one by one and playing myopically their best response. We provide matching lower and upper bounds of 2 for the myopic sequential price of anarchy (achieved for a worst-case order of the arrival of the players). We then initiate the study of myopic sequential price of stability and for the multicast game on the ring we construct a lower bound of 4/3, and provide an upper bound of 26/19. To the end, we conjecture and argue that the right answer is 4/3.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Two-Bit Messages are Sufficient to Implement Atomic Read/Write Registers in Crash-prone Systems

Atomic registers are certainly the most basic objects of computing science. Their implementation on top of an n-process asynchronous message-passing system has received a lot of attention. It has been shown that t \textless{} n/2 (where t is the maximal number of processes that may crash) is a necessary and sufficient requirement to build an atomic register on top of a crash-prone asynchronous message-passing system. Considering such a context, this paper presents an algorithm which implements a single-writer multi-reader atomic register with four message types only, and where no message needs to carry control information in addition to its type. Hence, two bits are sufficient to capture all the control information carried by all the implementation messages. Moreover, the messages of two types need to carry a data value while the messages of the two other types carry no value at all. As far as we know, this algorithm is the first with such an optimality property on the size of control information carried by messages. It is also particularly efficient from a time complexity point of view

Effect of Clark’s twin-block appliance (CTB) and non-extraction fixed mechano-therapy on the pharyngeal dimensions of growing children

Abstract INTRODUCTION: Narrow airway dimensions due to mandibular deficiency can predispose an individual to severe respiratory distress. Hence, treatment with mandibular advancement devices at an early age might help improving the pharyngeal passage and reduce the risk of respiratory difficulties. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to evaluate the mean changes in the pharyngeal dimensions of children with mandibular deficiency treated with Clark\u27s twin-block appliance (CTB) followed by fixed orthodontic treatment. METHODS: Orthodontic records of 42 children with mandibular deficiency were selected. Records comprised three lateral cephalograms taken at the start of CTB treatment, after CTB removal and at the end of fixed appliance treatment, and were compared with 32 controls from the Bolton-Brush study. Friedman test was used to compare pre-treatment, mid-treatment and post-treatment pharyngeal dimensions. Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to compare the airway between pre-treatment and post follow-up controls. Mann-Whitney U test was applied to compare the mean changes in pharyngeal dimensions between treatment group and controls from T2 to T0. Post-hoc Dunnet T3 test was used for multiple comparisons of treatment outcomes after CTB and fixed appliances, taking a p-value of ≤ 0.05 as statistically significant. RESULTS: Superior pharyngeal space (p \u3c 0.001) and upper airway thickness (p = 0.035) were significantly increased after CTB, and the change in superior pharyngeal space remained stable after fixed mechano-therapy. CONCLUSION: CTB can have a positive effect in improving pharyngeal space and the resultant increase in airway remains stable on an average of two and a half years

Sikap Mahasiswa Program Studi Pendidikan Dokter Angkatan 2013 Fakultas Kedokteran Dan Ilmu Kesehatan Universitas Jambi Terhadap Pelajaran Matematika Dan Sains

Background : Attitude that's performed by someone can predict behaviors of the future. It shows what person will do in coming activities. Human's attitude towards certain subject represents an important predictor that brings to academic achievement. Students who mayor in the medical faculty are the ones who naturally are interested in the subjects of mathematics and Natural science in their school. These subjects represent the main lessons that the medical students learn, even those subjects become parts of tested component selection in the entrance examination of new students. Positive attitude owned by students who have a great interest in those subjects make someone pleased in learning activities, and will cause good learning achievment. In fact, what are learnt in their interests of mathematics and science represent a condition of the lecture activities in the medical faculty. The purpose of this research is to show descriptions of Medical Students' attitudes towards Mathematics and Science subjects. It consists of general and component descriptions about Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Methods : This is a descriptive research. Subjects of the researh are taken from population of the Medical Students of Jambi University the year 2013. The population of the research consists of 142 students, 45 males and 97 females. The research instrument uses attitude scale towards Mathematics and Natural Science. It has face, logic and construct validity. It has 0,92 parallel test reliability that consists of 12 items. Result : Medical students have positive attitudes towards Biology. They have neutral attitude towards Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. There are greater positive attitude towards Biology. Very small numbers of students have negative attitude towards this subject. On Mathematics, there are more students who have positive attitude rather than negative ones. On Physics, there are twice numbers of students who have negative attitudes than positive ones. On chemistry, there are many students have positive attitudes. Conclusion: Medical students feel that learning Biology is easy and simple subject. They evaluate it positively. They think that Biology is an important and useful subject. They are always ready waiting for learning this subject in class. They feel very comfortable with this subject