Development of taxation in the Bible: Improvements in counting, measurement, and computation in the ancient Middle East

This paper traces the development of five taxation types in the Bible : income taxes, property taxes, special assessment taxes, poll taxes (all direct taxes), and indirect taxes. The development of these taxes is discussed within the context of Israel\u27s historical development. The impact of counting, measurement, and computation on the development of taxation is also considered

Form 990: Useful in Analyzing Not-For-Profit Ministries?

The major purpose of this article is to analyze the Forms 990 filed with the IRS by some religious organizations including television evangelists. Specifically, this article (1) examines the financial operations of religious organizations, such as revenue generation, spending, investment and borrowing; (2) investigates their accounting practices and conformance to generally accepted accounting principles; and (3) discusses the usefulness of Form 990 in monitoring tax-exempt religious organizations. The results of this study will provide evidence on whether the Form 990 filed by religious organizations conforms to generally accepted accounting principles and fairly represents their financial operations. The results will also be useful to the IRS and other governmental agencies in determining the informational value and usefulness of the current Form 990

Transfer or Redemption for a Withdrawing Partner: An Indifference Econometric Decision Model Built on the Position Improvement Equilibrium ( PIE ) Concept

The preferred way for a withdrawing partner to leave a partnership is normally thought to be by way of redemption under Internal Revenue Code Section 736 rather than as a transfer under Section 741 The advantage to the continuing partnership lies in the deductability of the payment to the withdrawing partner for goodwill. The withdrawing partner benefits from a higher exchange price, increased by the tax benefits of redemption treatment. However, the following three factors tilt the preference back toward a 741 transfer for both parties: individual obligation of portions of the exchange price, with additional basis, goodwill negotiations and safeguarding of the optional basis adjustment. To allow for proper consideration of these factors, indifference equations are proposed which produce an exchange price that makes 741 as advantageous to the dominant party as 736. These equations constitute a dynamic interactive econometric model for finding a position improvement equilibrium ( PIE ) indifference model that provides an incisive decision tool. This model takes graduated tax brackets into consideration, heightening its value as a decision tool

Radiative and Collisional Jet Energy Loss in the Quark-Gluon Plasma at RHIC

We calculate and compare bremsstrahlung and collisional energy loss of hard partons traversing a quark-gluon plasma. Our treatment of both processes is complete at leading order in the coupling and accounts for the probabilistic nature of the jet energy loss. We find that the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ for neutral $\pi^0$ production in heavy ion collisions is sensitive to the inclusion of collisional and radiative energy loss contributions while the averaged energy loss only slightly increases if collisional energy loss is included for parent parton energies $E\gg T$. These results are important for the understanding of jet quenching in Au+Au collisions at $200 {\rm AGeV}$ at RHIC. Comparison with data is performed applying the energy loss calculation to a relativistic ideal (3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic description of the thermalized medium formed at RHIC.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

An Analysis of the Attitudes of College Students Concerning the War in Vietnam

Attitudes of a sampling of students at Morningside College was compared with results from a poll conducted by church magazines. A locally developed Hawk-Dove scale was designed and administered to the college sample and the results compared with certain personal and personality attributes. It was found that college seniors were much more critical of the war than college freshmen. The former were similar to attitudes of clergy while the latter were more similar to the attitudes of laymen. However, aggression scores on the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) were almost identical for freshmen and seniors. For dominance on the EPPS, seniors and veterans had almost identical scores. Veterans were more optimistic about the war than non-veterans. Students majoring in the humanities were less favorable to war than those majoring in the natural sciences. These are preliminary observations of small portions of a large mass of data

Multisensor navigation systems: a remedy for GNSS vulnerabilities?

Space-based positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies, such as the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) provide position, velocity, and timing information to an unlimited number of users around the world. In recent years, PNT information has become increasingly critical to the security, safety, and prosperity of the World's population, and is now widely recognized as an essential element of the global information infrastructure. Due to its vulnerabilities and line-of-sight requirements, GNSS alone is unable to provide PNT with the required levels of integrity, accuracy, continuity, and reliability. A multisensor navigation approach offers an effective augmentation in GNSS-challenged environments that holds a promise of delivering robust and resilient PNT. Traditionally, sensors such as inertial measurement units (IMUs), barometers, magnetometers, odometers, and digital compasses, have been used. However, recent trends have largely focused on image-based, terrain-based and collaborative navigation to recover the user location. This paper offers a review of the technological advances that have taken place in PNT over the last two decades, and discusses various hybridizations of multisensory systems, building upon the fundamental GNSS/IMU integration. The most important conclusion of this study is that in order to meet the challenging goals of delivering continuous, accurate and robust PNT to the ever-growing numbers of users, the hybridization of a suite of different PNT solutions is required

Sixteen years of Collaborative Learning through Active Sense-making in Physics (CLASP) at UC Davis

This paper describes our large reformed introductory physics course at UC Davis, which bioscience students have been taking since 1996. The central feature of this course is a focus on sense-making by the students during the five hours per week discussion/labs in which the students take part in activities emphasizing peer-peer discussions, argumentation, and presentations of ideas. The course differs in many fundamental ways from traditionally taught introductory physics courses. After discussing the unique features of CLASP and its implementation at UC Davis, various student outcome measures are presented showing increased performance by students who took the CLASP course compared to students who took a traditionally taught introductory physics course. Measures we use include upper-division GPAs, MCAT scores, FCI gains, and MPEX-II scores.Comment: Also submitted to American Journal of Physic

Complementary grazing systems for beef cattle production

Pasture productivity in Iowa often is limited by the low yield of cool-season grasses in the summer. This project considers whether uneven seasonal distribution in pastures could be improved by including species that perform better under higher temperatures

Sclerosponges May Hold New Keys to Marine Paleoclimate

The potential for using sclerosponges, marine organisms that secrete a hard calcerous skeleton, as paleoclimatic indicators has attracted the interest of a number of scientists. Sclerosponges are composed mainly of calcium carbonate and they are very long lived. Variations in their skeletal chemistry contain proxy information regarding their environment and that information has the potential to augment, if not supplant, data from scleractinian corals in interpreting past water temperature, salinity, and productivity over periods of 100s to 1000s of years. Sclerosponges, or calcified demosponges, contain aragonite or calcite and a small amount of siliceous material. Lang et al. [1975] report that these sponges grow within a reef framework, under coral talus in the shallower parts of a reef less than 55 m deep and on steep surfaces of the fore-reef between 55 and 145 m deep. The largest and most conspicuous of the sclerosponges described by those authors is Ceratoporella nicholsoni (Figure 1), which is reported to attain a diameter in excess of 1 m. These sponges are similar in growth habit to many massive vanities of scleractinian corals, the live sponge inhabiting the upper portion of the skeleton, while the lower portion of the skeleton is essentially dead