Tax Compliance and Firms' Strategic Interdependence

We focus on a relatively neglected area of the tax-compliance literature in economics, the behaviour of firms. We examine the impact of alternative audit rules on receipts from a tax on profits in the context of strategic interdependence of firms. In the market firms may compete in terms of either output or price. The enforcement policy can have an effect on firms' behaviour in two dimensions - their market decisions as well as their compliance behaviour. An appropriate design of the enforcement policy can thus have a "double dividend" by manipulating firms in both dimensions.tax compliance, evasion, oligopoly

Intercropping legumes and non-legumes in Saskatchewan

Non-Peer Reviewe

Penicillium bilaji (PB50) and phosphorus fertilizer responses of yield of wheat and barley grown on stubble and summerfallow

Non-Peer Reviewe

Specimen-agnostic guided wave inspection using recursive feedback

Lamb waves, a configuration of guided waves are often applied to the inspection of plate like structures. Their complex, multi-modal nature makes them well suited to the inspection of different defects. Control over their propagation direction allows the engineer to increase inspection distance and prospectively locate the defect. Schemes already exist, but they require knowledge of material and its dispersion curves. If the material composition is not known, or external factors are effecting its speed of sound then these schemes may not be appropriate. The recursive feedback algorithm can be used to enhance guided waves in a single direction without a-priori knowledge. In recursive feedback, a guided wave is generated using the first element of an array transducer. Over several subsequent iterations, this guided wave is reinforced by re-transmitting recorded out of plane displacements. In this work, recursive feedback has been applied to two inspection problems; a contaminated kissing bond and a plate with a defect. With the kissing bond, it is shown that the the contamination can be identified as the A0 mode of generated waves are absorbed. In the defective plate, the defect direction is identified by a 10 dB increase in reflected energy when the guided waves are enhanced in one direction

High-sensitivity troponin I concentrations are a marker of an advanced hypertrophic response and adverse outcomes in patients with aortic stenosis

Aims: High-sensitivity cardiac troponin I (cTnI) assays hold promise in detecting the transition from hypertrophy to heart failure in aortic stenosis. We sought to investigate the mechanism for troponin release in patients with aortic stenosis and whether plasma cTnI concentrations are associated with long-term outcome. Methods and results: Plasma cTnI concentrations were measured in two patient cohorts using a high-sensitivity assay. First, in the Mechanism Cohort, 122 patients with aortic stenosis (median age 71, 67% male, aortic valve area 1.0 ± 0.4 cm2) underwent cardiovascular magnetic resonance and echocardiography to assess left ventricular (LV) myocardial mass, function, and fibrosis. The indexed LV mass and measures of replacement fibrosis (late gadolinium enhancement) were associated with cTnI concentrations independent of age, sex, coronary artery disease, aortic stenosis severity, and diastolic function. In the separate Outcome Cohort, 131 patients originally recruited into the Scottish Aortic Stenosis and Lipid Lowering Trial, Impact of REgression (SALTIRE) study, had long-term follow-up for the occurrence of aortic valve replacement (AVR) and cardiovascular deaths. Over a median follow-up of 10.6 years (1178 patient-years), 24 patients died from a cardiovascular cause and 60 patients had an AVR. Plasma cTnI concentrations were associated with AVR or cardiovascular death HR 1.77 (95% CI, 1.22 to 2.55) independent of age, sex, systolic ejection fraction, and aortic stenosis severity. Conclusions: In patients with aortic stenosis, plasma cTnI concentration is associated with advanced hypertrophy and replacement myocardial fibrosis as well as AVR or cardiovascular death

From Old Labour to New Labour: a comment on Rubinstein

In a critique of our book New Labour, David Rubinstein has argued that we exaggerate the degree of difference between Old and New Labour and underplay the similarities. In this article we agree with many of the continuities that Rubinstein outlines. However, we argue that he himself gives plenty of evidence in favour of our thesis that change has been marked in many policy areas. We argue that we give a good account of the wider social factors that he says accounts for such change. In this article we offer a restatement of the view that New Labour offers a `post-Thatcherite politics. New Labour breaks both with post-war social democracy and with Thatcherism

A miniature HIFU excitation scheme to eliminate switching-induced grating lobes and nullify hard tissue attenuation

Phased array transducers are increasingly prevalent in a therapeutic contex as they facilitate precise control of the beam intensity and focus. To produce enough acoustic energy for ablation, large and costly amplifiers are required. Miniaturised switched circuits provide an alternative that is both more cost effective and more efficient. However, the high Q factor and curved geometry of a therapeutic transducer lends itself to grating lobes that deposit energy in undesirable areas when driven with switched circuitry. In this work, harmonic reduction pulse with modulation (HRPWM) is applied to a simulation of a therapeutic array. An array was simulated along with a skull that varied in attenuation. A number of switching schemes were tested and where possible, their amplitude was adjusted to reduce pressure variation in the acoustic field after propagation through the skull. Of the switched schemes tested, HRPWM performed best; reducing harmonically induced grating lobes by 12 dB and limiting pressure field variance to 0.1 dB which increases intensity at the focal point and makes therapy more efficient

Performance of Switched Mode Arbitrary Excitation using Harmonic Reduction Pulse Width Modulation (HRPWM) in Array Imaging Applications

Switched excitation allows the miniaturisation of excitation circuitry for transducer integrated front ends, high channel count and portable ultrasound systems. Harmonic Reduction Pulse Width Modulation (HRPWM) provides a method to design five level switched mode excitation signals with control of instantaneous amplitude, frequency and phase plus minimised third harmonics for advanced ultrasound applications. This paper details the application of HRPWM using commercial transmit front end integrated circuits and linear array transducers. The ability of HRPWM to control the pressure of the ultrasound wave is investigated. A full scale error between desired and measured pressure of 3.5% at 4.1 MHz is demonstrated. The temporal windowing of linear frequency modulated excitation signals using HRPWM is demonstrated. Pulse compression linear imaging of a tissue phantom is demonstrated where an improvement in the -20 dB axial resolution of a nylon mono-filament target from 2.14 mm using bipolar excitation to 1.88 mm using HRPWM is shown

An Adaptive Array Excitation Scheme for the Unidirectional Enhancement of Guided Waves

Control over the direction of wave propagation allows an engineer to spatially locate defects. When imaging with longitudinal waves, time delays can be applied to each element of a phased array transducer to steer a beam. Because of the highly dispersive nature of guided waves, this beamsteering approach is sub-optimal. More appropriate time delays can be chosen to direct a guided wave if the dispersion relation of the material is known. Existing techniques however need a priori knowledge of material thickness and acoustic velocity, which changes as a function of temperature and strain. The scheme presented here does not require prior knowledge of the dispersion relation or properties of the specimen to direct a guided wave. Initially, a guided wave is generated using a single element of an array transducer. The acquired waveforms from the remaining elements are then processed and re-transmitted; constructively interfering with the wave as it travels across the spatial influence of the transducer. The scheme intrinsically compensates for the dispersion of the waves and thus can adapt to changes in material thickness and acoustic velocity. The proposed technique is demonstrated in simulation and experimentally. Dispersion curves from either side of the array are acquired to demonstrate the schemes ability to direct a guided wave in an aluminium plate. Results show that uni-directional enhancement is possible without a priori knowledge of the specimen using an arbitrary pitch array transducer. Experimental results show a 34 dB enhancement in one direction compared with the other