31 research outputs found
Tax lotteries: The crowding-out of tax morale and long-run welfare effects
This paper examines tax lottery policies as a method to reward consumers who request business receipts for goods and services they have paid for. We argue that the evaluation of the welfare effects of tax lotteries based solely on short-run tax revenue variations overlooks important long- term sources of inefficiency. Tax lotteries may crowd out the willingness of individuals with leading roles in shaping social norms to engage in voluntary third-party tax enforcement, and thus cause long-term welfare losses. We sought support for our argument analyzing the case of the Portuguese tax lottery and conducting an empirical study with a sample of Portuguese nationals. Findings show that tax morale is a key determinant of voluntary third-party tax enforcement, and that the level of education is positively associated with the crowding out of the intrinsic motivation to engage in voluntary third-party tax enforcement
Search for resonances in the mass distribution of jet pairs with one or two jets identified as b-jets in protonâproton collisions at âs=13TeV with the ATLAS detector
Searches for high-mass resonances in the dijet invariant mass spectrum with one or two jets identi-fied as b-jets are performed using an integrated luminosity of 3.2fbâ1of protonâproton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of âs=13TeVrecorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Noevidence of anomalous phenomena is observed in the data, which are used to exclude, at 95%credibility level, excited bâquarks with masses from 1.1TeVto 2.1TeVand leptophobic Z bosons with masses from 1.1TeVto 1.5TeV. Contributions of a Gaussian signal shape with effective cross sections ranging from approximately 0.4 to 0.001pb are also excluded in the mass range 1.5â5.0TeV
Defining the risk of SARS-CoV-2 variants on immune protection
The global emergence of many severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants jeopardizes the protective antiviral immunity induced after infection or vaccination. To address the public health threat caused by the increasing SARS-CoV-2 genomic diversity, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases within the National Institutes of Health established the SARS-CoV-2 Assessment of Viral Evolution (SAVE) programme. This effort was designed to provide a real-time risk assessment of SARS-CoV-2 variants that could potentially affect the transmission, virulence, and resistance to infection- and vaccine-induced immunity. The SAVE programme is a critical data-generating component of the US Government SARS-CoV-2 Interagency Group to assess implications of SARS-CoV-2 variants on diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics, and for communicating public health risk. Here we describe the coordinated approach used to identify and curate data about emerging variants, their impact on immunity and effects on vaccine protection using animal models. We report the development of reagents, methodologies, models and notable findings facilitated by this collaborative approach and identify future challenges. This programme is a template for the response to rapidly evolving pathogens with pandemic potential by monitoring viral evolution in the human population to identify variants that could reduce the effectiveness of countermeasures
Observation of and search for decays
The first observation of the decay is reported
using proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of
recorded by the LHCb experiment at centre-of-mass energies
of 7 and 8 TeV. The resonance is produced in the decay . The product of branching fractions normalised to that for
the intermediate state, , is measured to be
\begin{align*} {\cal R}_{\eta_{c}(2S)}\equiv\frac{{\mathcal B}(B^{+} \to
\eta_{c}(2S) K^{+}) \times {\mathcal B}(\eta_{c}(2S) \to p \bar p)}{{\mathcal
B}(B^{+} \to J/\psi K^{+}) \times {\mathcal B}(J/\psi\to p \bar p)} =~& (1.58
\pm 0.33 \pm 0.09)\times 10^{-2}, \end{align*} where the first uncertainty is
statistical and the second systematic. No signals for the decays and
are seen, and the 95\% confidence level upper limits on their relative
branching ratios are % found to be and
. In addition, the mass differences between the
and the states, between the and the
states, and the natural width of the are measured as
\begin{align*} M_{J/\psi} - M_{\eta_{c}(1S)} =~& 110.2 \pm 0.5 \pm 0.9 \rm \,
MeV, M_{\psi(2S)} -M_{\eta_{c}(2S)} =~ & 52.5 \pm 1.7 \pm 0.6 \rm \, MeV,
\Gamma_{\eta_{c}(1S)} =~& 34.0 \pm 1.9 \pm 1.3 \rm \, MeV. \end{align*}Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures All figures and tables, along with any
supplementary material and additional information, are available at
https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2016-016.htm
First observation of forward production in collisions at TeV
The decay ZâbbÂŻ is reconstructed in pp collision data, corresponding to 2 fb â1 of integrated luminosity, collected by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of s=8 TeV. The product of the Z production cross-section and the ZâbbÂŻ branching fraction is measured for candidates in the fiducial region defined by two particle-level b -quark jets with pseudorapidities in the range 2.220 GeV and dijet invariant mass in the range 452045 < m_{jj} < 1655462 \pm 763Z \rightarrow b \bar{b}332 \pm 46 \pm 59Z \rightarrow b \bar{b}pp$ collisions
Study of the rare B-s(0) and B-0 decays into the pi(+) pi(-) mu(+) mu(-) final state
A search for the rare decays and is performed in a data set corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of 3.0 fb collected by the LHCb detector in proton-proton
collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. Decay candidates with
pion pairs that have invariant mass in the range 0.5-1.3 GeV/ and with
muon pairs that do not originate from a resonance are considered. The first
observation of the decay and the first
evidence of the decay are obtained and the
branching fractions, restricted to the dipion-mass range considered, are
measured to be and
, where the third
uncertainty is due to the branching fraction of the decay , used as a normalisation.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, 2 Table
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Saturation and kinetic issues for optical-field-ionized plasma x-ray lasers
Lasing between excited states and the ground state following optical-field ionization is studied. Saturation of an x-ray laser when the lower lasing level is a ground state of a H-like or Li-like ion is discussed. Efficiencies of 10{sup {minus}5} to 10{sup {minus}4} are calculated for the 3d{sub 5/2}--2p{sub 3/2} transition at 98 {Angstrom} in Li-like Ne. The assumption that the fine-structure levels are populated according to their statistical weights is shown to be justified through comparisons with calculations using a detailed atomic model. The effect of saturation by a given fine-structure transition on the populations of the fine-structure levels is analyzed. 4 refs., 2 figs
Bone mass and geometry of the tibia and the radius of master sprinters, middle and long distance runners, race-walkers and sedentary control participants: a pQCT
AbstractMechanical loading is thought to be a determinant of bone mass and geometry. Both ground reaction forces and tibial strains increase with running speed. This study investigates the hypothesis that surrogates of bone strength in male and female master sprinters, middle and long distance runners and race-walkers vary according to discipline-specific mechanical loading from sedentary controls.Bone scans were obtained by peripheral Quantitative Computed Tomography (pQCT) from the tibia and from the radius in 106 sprinters, 52 middle distance runners, 93 long distance runners and 49 race-walkers who were competing at master championships, and who were aged between 35 and 94Â years. Seventy-five age-matched, sedentary people served as control group.Most athletes of this study had started to practice their athletic discipline after the age of 20, but the current training regime had typically been maintained for more than a decade. As hypothesised, tibia diaphyseal bone mineral content (vBMC), cortical area and polar moment of resistance were largest in sprinters, followed in descending order by middle and long distance runners, race-walkers and controls. When compared to control people, the differences in these measures were always >13% in male and >23% in female sprinters (p<0.001). Similarly, the periosteal circumference in the tibia shaft was larger in male and female sprinters by 4% and 8%, respectively, compared to controls (p<0.001). Epiphyseal group differences were predominantly found for trabecular vBMC in both male and female sprinters, who had 15% and 18% larger values, respectively, than controls (p<0.001). In contrast, a reverse pattern was found for cortical vBMD in the tibia, and only few group differences of lower magnitude were found between athletes and control people for the radius.In conclusion, tibial bone strength indicators seemed to be related to exercise-specific peak forces, whilst cortical density was inversely related to running distance. These results may be explained in two, non-exclusive ways. Firstly, greater skeletal size may allow larger muscle forces and power to be exerted, and thus bias towards engagement in athletics. Secondly, musculoskeletal forces related to running can induce skeletal adaptation and thus enhance bone strength