Starbucks: Social Responsiblity and Tax Avoidance

This instructional case is designed to explore how accounting choices, and specifically tax minimization practices, should consider a company\u27s overall strategy and positioning within multiple stakeholder groups. Starbucks had been successful in growing its stores and presence in the United Kingdom (UK), and described the profitable growth to investors as something it wanted to build on in other international markets. However, in its 15 years of operations in the UK, the company had paid UK corporate income taxes only once. Using a combination of legal tax avoidance practices (e.g., transfer prices, royalty payments, interest expense), Starbucks UK had effectively shifted taxable income to other Starbucks subsidiaries where it would be taxed at lower rates. In 2012, Starbucks in the UK faced a public relations furor over its failure to pay British corporate income taxes. While the tax avoidance practices Starbucks used were common among multinational companies, Starbucks had been very public in its commitment to being socially responsible and a good citizen of the communities in which it operated. This included, among other aspects, paying fair wages to employees and paying fair prices to coffee growers in developing countries. Thus, its critics found it easy to point out that not paying its fair share of taxes was inconsistent with the image Starbucks was portraying to consumers. Case questions are designed to help you think about the strategic, legal, ethical, and public relations implications of tax minimization strategies, especially when companies portray themselves as responsible “citizens” of the communities in which they operate. The questions also probe whether other characteristics of firms, including their “home” country and the nature of the business, have implications for public perceptions about corporate tax minimization strategies

Lockout At American Crystal Sugar

As a June 23, 2012, vote neared, union workers at American Crystal Sugar were deciding whether the time had come for them to approve the contract offer by the company. Workers continued to staff picket lines at factory entrances, although enthusiasm for consistently staffing the picket line was waning (Lee 2012(1)). Replacement workers had operated the factories for nine months, successfully processing the 2011 sugar beet harvest. The company reported that although there had been some minor problems, all plants were running at nearly full capacity without the union workers. Company leaders indicated they were “attempting to adjust what they consider an archaic labor contract with newer standards that are competitive with other union rates” (Porter, 2012). The union had consistently been voting down the company’s contract offers for almost a year. Workers stated they were standing firm to protect their jobs, salaries, benefits, and promotion opportunities, and were not willing to give away “rights” they had been fighting for the past 50 years (Kolpack, 2011). Yet, many union workers knew that their bargaining power had been significantly eroded by the company’s ability to operate with non-union replacement workers

Acoustic emphasis in four year olds

Acoustic emphasis may convey a range of subtle discourse distinctions, yet little is known about how this complex ability develops in children. This paper presents a first investigation of the factors which influence the production of acoustic prominence in young children’s spontaneous speech. In a production experiment, SVO sentences were elicited from 4 year olds who were asked to describe events in a video. Children were found to place more acoustic prominence both on ‘new’ words and on words that were ‘given’ but had shifted to a more accessible position within the discourse. This effect of accessibility concurs with recent studies of adult speech. We conclude that, by age four, children show appropriate, adult-like use of acoustic prominence, suggesting sensitivity to a variety of discourse distinctions

Aging and Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS): A Critical Need for Geriatric Psychiatry

Due to the aging of the intensive care unit (ICU) population and an improvement in survival rates after ICU hospitalization, an increasing number of older adults are suffering from long-term impairments due to critical illness, known as post-intensive care syndrome (PICS). This paper focuses on PICS-related cognitive, psychological, and physical impairments, and the impact of ICU hospitalization on families and caregivers. The authors also describe innovative models of care for PICS, and what roles geriatric psychiatrists could play in the future of this rapidly growing population

Scaling net ecosystem production and net biome production over a heterogeneous region in the western United States

Bottom-up scaling of net ecosystem production (NEP) and net biome production (NBP) was used to generate a carbon budget for a large heterogeneous region (the state of Oregon, 2.5×10<sup>5</sup> km<sup>2</sup>) in the western United States. Landsat resolution (30 m) remote sensing provided the basis for mapping land cover and disturbance history, thus allowing us to account for all major fire and logging events over the last 30 years. For NEP, a 23-year record (1980–2002) of distributed meteorology (1 km resolution) at the daily time step was used to drive a process-based carbon cycle model (Biome-BGC). For NBP, fire emissions were computed from remote sensing based estimates of area burned and our mapped biomass estimates. Our estimates for the contribution of logging and crop harvest removals to NBP were from the model simulations and were checked against public records of forest and crop harvesting. The predominately forested ecoregions within our study region had the highest NEP sinks, with ecoregion averages up to 197 gC m<sup>−2</sup> yr<sup>−1</sup>. Agricultural ecoregions were also NEP sinks, reflecting the imbalance of NPP and decomposition of crop residues. For the period 1996–2000, mean NEP for the study area was 17.0 TgC yr<sup>−1</sup>, with strong interannual variation (SD of 10.6). The sum of forest harvest removals, crop removals, and direct fire emissions amounted to 63% of NEP, leaving a mean NBP of 6.1 TgC yr<sup>−1</sup>. Carbon sequestration was predominantly on public forestland, where the harvest rate has fallen dramatically in the recent years. Comparison of simulation results with estimates of carbon stocks, and changes in carbon stocks, based on forest inventory data showed generally good agreement. The carbon sequestered as NBP, plus accumulation of forest products in slow turnover pools, offset 51% of the annual emissions of fossil fuel CO<sub>2</sub> for the state. State-level NBP dropped below zero in 2002 because of the combination of a dry climate year and a large (200 000 ha) fire. These results highlight the strong influence of land management and interannual variation in climate on the terrestrial carbon flux in the temperate zone

West Nile Virus Detection in Urine

We report West Nile virus (WNV) RNA in urine collected from a patient with encephalitis 8 days after symptom onset. Viral RNA was detected by reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Sequence and phylogenetic analysis confirmed the PCR product to have ≥99% similarity to the WNV strain NY 2000-crow3356

Serologic Evidence of West Nile Virus Infection in Horses, Coahuila State, Mexico

Serum samples were obtained from 24 horses in the State of Coahuila, Mexico, in December 2002. Antibodies to West Nile virus were detected by epitope-blocking enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and confirmed by plaque reduction neutralization test in 15 (62.5%) horses. We report the first West Nile virus activity in northern Mexico

Morphological Alternations at the Intonational Phrase Edge

This article develops an analysis of a pair of morphological alternations in K\u27ichee\u27 (Mayan) that are conditioned at the right edge of intonational phrase boundaries. I propose a syntax-prosody mapping algorithm that derives intonational phrase boundaries from the surface syntax, and then argue that each alternation can be understood in terms of output optimization. The important fact is that a prominence peak is always rightmost in the intonational phrase, and so the morphological alternations occur in order to ensure an optimal host for this prominence peak. Finally, I consider the wider implications of the analysis for the architecture of the syntax-phonology interface, especially as it concerns late-insertion theories of morphology

The local response of El Niño events and changing disease distribution in Tanzania

Climate is a key determinant of a number of disease pathogen lifecycles and disease transmission processes, particularly within tropical climates such as that experienced in Tanzania. Over recent decades, climate-related diseases such as malaria, chikungunya and bacterial meningitis have shown notable changes in their spatial distribution, with instances of both re-emergence and expansion beyond previously known boundaries being recorded. The unpredicted change in disease distribution already experienced in Tanzania has placed a significant burden on health systems and available resources, and whilst a number of factors are involved, climate remains the least understood aspect within epidemiological changes. Here we examine how climate extremes – particularly El Niño events – influence key environmental and climatic elements which promote epidemiological expansion. This study investigates the baseline climatology in five of Tanzania’s varying climatological regions using the Met Office MIDAS dataset for the period 1985–1995. Its aim is to characterise the average climate and investigate the impacts of El Niño on the climatology of these regions, and to explore associated changes in disease distribution to allow identification, in the present, of changes which are anticipated to occur in the future to be put into context. The years 1997 and 2015 are used to examine the climate extremes imposed by El Niño events through statistical comparison methods. The results demonstrate that average climate conditions vary beyond previously documented observations, with each region of Tanzania responding differently to the onset of El Niño, thus potentially promoting a spatially variable disease response. These results are particularly marked for areas of greater climatic and environmental sensitivity within Tanzania. Once further understood, knowledge of this relationship could be applied to more local analysis and aid in predicting future outbreaks within Tanzania