Sacrifice and Efficiency of the Income Tax Schedule

We investigate the efficiency of equal sacrifice tax schedules in an economywhich primitives are exactly those in Mirrlees (1971): a continuum of individualswith identical preferences defined over consumption and leisure who differ withrespect to their labor market productivity. Using a separable specification forpreferences we derive the minimum equal sacrifice allocation and recover thetax schedule that implements it. The separable specification allows us to usethe methodology developed by Werning (2007b) to check whether the scheduleis efficient, that is, whether there is no alternative tax schedule that raises morerevenue while delivering less utility to no one. We find that inefficiency does notarise for most parametrizations we use to approximate the US economy. For thefew cases for which inefficiency does arise, it does so only for very high levels ofincome and marginal tax rates.

Impact assessment of interregional government transfers in Brazil: an input-output approach

Redistributive policies carried out by the central government through interregional government transfers is a relevant feature of the Brazilian federal fiscal system. Regional shares of the central government revenues in the poorer regions have been recurrently smaller than the shares of central government expenditures in those regions. Appeal to core-periphery outcomes could be made, as São Paulo, the wealthiest state in the country, concentrated, in 2005, over 40% of total Federal tax revenue, receiving less than 35% of Federal expenditures. These figures suggest a redistribution of public funds from the spatial economic core of the economy to the peripheral areas. This paper investigates the role interregional transfers play in the redistribution of activities in the country, using an interregional input-output approach. Counterfactual simulations allow us to estimate some costs and benefits, for the core and periphery respectively, from such fiscal mechanisms.Interregional government transfers, input-output analysis, impact analysis, Brazilian economy

A machine learning based framework to identify and classify long terminal repeat retrotransposons

Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive nucleotide sequences that make up a large portion of eukaryotic genomes. They can move and duplicate within a genome, increasing genome size and contributing to genetic diversity within and across species. Accurate identification and classification of TEs present in a genome is an important step towards understanding their effects on genes and their role in genome evolution. We introduce TE-LEARNER, a framework based on machine learning that automatically identifies TEs in a given genome and assigns a classification to them. We present an implementation of our framework towards LTR retrotransposons, a particular type of TEs characterized by having long terminal repeats (LTRs) at their boundaries. We evaluate the predictive performance of our framework on the well-annotated genomes of Drosophila melanogaster and Arabidopsis thaliana and we compare our results for three LTR retrotransposon superfamilies with the results of three widely used methods for TE identification or classification: REPEATMASKER, CENSOR and LTRDIGEST. In contrast to these methods, TE-LEARNER is the first to incorporate machine learning techniques, outperforming these methods in terms of predictive performance , while able to learn models and make predictions efficiently. Moreover, we show that our method was able to identify TEs that none of the above method could find, and we investigated TE-LEARNER'S predictions which did not correspond to an official annotation. It turns out that many of these predictions are in fact strongly homologous to a known TE

Modeling Rheology In The Hot-Pressing Of MDF: Comparison Of Mechanical Models

The hot-pressing operation is the final stage in the MDF manufacture where the mattress of fibers is compressed and heated to promote the cure of the resin. The press cycle has a major effect on the balance of properties of the resulting panel, so rigorous control of all processing variables is necessary to improve product quality and to reduce pressing time. The rheological behavior of the mattress during pressing involves complex phenomena that are dependent on temperature, moisture content, gas pressure, and density distributions. Following a three-dimensional model of heat and mass transfer already built, mechanical models were developed to describe the viscoelastic behavior of the material. The elastic and viscous properties for the wood-resin composite were estimated based upon several kinds of "rules of mixtures," taking into account the relationship with the simulations already undertaken for temperature, moisture content, and gas pressure profiles, as well as the adhesive polymerization. These dynamic models were used to predict the evolution of compression stress, strain, modulus of elasticity, and density with time at a given position in the mattress, as well as the density profiles. The models were compared in relation to the influential factors affecting the composite compressibility. The simulation results are useful to identify the controlling factors of a hot-pressing operation and to understand better the complex mechanisms involved in panel formation

Stakeholder analysis in the portuguese artificial reef context: winners and losers

Nesta análise de intervenientes relativa ao programa de recifes artificiais (RAs) localizado na costa do Algarve (Sul de Portugal continental) foram identificados 21 grupos de atores distintos. Os intervenientes foram classificados em 3 grupos: primários, secundários e externos. Verificou-se que o interesse dos intervenientes face às estruturas recifais (interação) pode ser do tipo privado, público ou cooperativo. Na análise foram identificados os impactos do projeto sobre os intervenientes e o poder destes para influenciar os resultados do programa recifal. Foram definidas quais as interações e possíveis atitudes e comportamento dos intervenientes em relação aos RAs. Finalmente, todos os grupos de intervenientes foram classificados de acordo com o grau de envolvimento esperado ao longo das diferentes fases do programa recifal. O propósito desta análise de intervenientes foi identificar ganhadores e perdedores relacionados com a criação dos recifes artificiais. Verificou-se que a maioria dos grupos de intervenientes pode ser afetado positivamente, mas existem quatro grupos supostamente afetados negativamente. Contudo, acredita-se que estes últimos não constituem um risco sério ao desenvolvimento do programa recifal no decurso do seu tempo de vida.In this stakeholder analysis related to the artificial reef (AR) program located in the Algarve (Southern Portugal mainland) 21 different stakeholder clusters were identified. Stakeholders were classified as primary, secondary and external. It was found that stakeholder interaction with the structures can be of private, public or cooperative interest. In the analysis there were also identified and mapped the impact of the program on stakeholders and their power to influence the ARs' outcomes. Stakeholders' interactions with the ARs were studied, along with their likely attitudes and behavior towards the man-made structures. Finally, all stakeholder clusters were classified according to their expected degree of involvement throughout the different AR stages. The purpose of this stakeholder analysis was to find out winners and losers connected with the reef deployment. It was found that most stakeholder clusters were affected positively, but also four clusters affected negatively. However, it is believed that those that may be affected negatively do not pose a serious threat to the expected AR development along its lifetime

Field effect and light-assisted a-Si:H sensors for detection of ions in solution

In this paper we present an amorphous silicon device that can be used in two operation modes to measure the concentration of ions in solution. While crystalline devices present a higher sensitivity, their amorphous counterpart present a much lower fabrication cost, thus enabling the production of cheap disposable sensors for use, for example, in the food industry. The devices were fabricated on glass substrates by the PECVD technique in the top gate configuration, where the metallic gate is replaced by an electrolytic solution with an immersed Ag/AgCl reference electrode. Silicon nitride is used as gate dielectric enhancing the sensitivity and passivation layer used to avoid leakage and electrochemical reactions. In this article we report on the semiconductor unit, showing that the device can be operated in a light-assisted mode, where changes in the pH produce changes on the measured ac photocurrent. In alternative the device can be operated as a conventional ion selective field effect device where changes in the pH induce changes in the transistor's threshold voltage

BIOMECHANICAL APPROACH TO BALLET MOVEMENTS: A STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF BALLET SHOE AND MUSICAL BEAT ON THE VERTICAL REACTION FORCES

Ballet movements can be the focus of biomechanical studies in order to better understand the characteristic mechanical loads of the locomotor apparatus related to classic dance. "Pointe shoes" have been associated to high incidence of morphological and physiological alterations of ballet dancer's feet, however its contribution to injury mechanisms must still be precisely known. On the other hand, movements like jumps and leaps are frequently repeated in a standard ballet training, where the musical beat also plays a role on the motor behavior and its mechanical aspects. Therefore the purpose of the present study was to describe ground reaction forces during the "saute -1st position" under the influence of footwear (slippers and pointe shoes) and musical beat in order to identify the relative contribution of these factors on the external loads measured. It was observed that the musical beat played a greater role on the ground reaction force magnitudes than the footwear

Ensemble of convolutional neural networks to improve animal audio classification

Abstract In this work, we present an ensemble for automated audio classification that fuses different types of features extracted from audio files. These features are evaluated, compared, and fused with the goal of producing better classification accuracy than other state-of-the-art approaches without ad hoc parameter optimization. We present an ensemble of classifiers that performs competitively on different types of animal audio datasets using the same set of classifiers and parameter settings. To produce this general-purpose ensemble, we ran a large number of experiments that fine-tuned pretrained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for different audio classification tasks (bird, bat, and whale audio datasets). Six different CNNs were tested, compared, and combined. Moreover, a further CNN, trained from scratch, was tested and combined with the fine-tuned CNNs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study on CNNs in animal audio classification. Our results show that several CNNs can be fine-tuned and fused for robust and generalizable audio classification. Finally, the ensemble of CNNs is combined with handcrafted texture descriptors obtained from spectrograms for further improvement of performance. The MATLAB code used in our experiments will be provided to other researchers for future comparisons at https://github.com/LorisNanni