Admiral Mark L. Bristol and American Naval Involvement in Turkey, 1919-1923

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An Appraisal of the Use of Soil Survey Information as the Basis for Valuing Land for Tax Purposes in Spink County, South Dakota

Since about 1900, prominent writers in the field of public finance have found justifiable reason for condemning the general property tax. Many of its deficiencies are inherent in its basic nature while others arise from problems of administration. It is even doubtful that land should be deleted from the property tax base because of the windfall gains that would screw to present landowners. There is, however, strong justification for enacting modifications in the structure of the property tax and seeking means of strengthening its administration. In the case of tax, fiscal trends and tax-income relationships are also useful from the standpoint of analyzing current problems and in policy formulation. Historical trends are of special interest when studying the property tax because it has survived with few modifications during a period of changing economic conditions. Since its adoption in colonial times, the nation’s economy has passed from the agricultural to the present industrial stage. These aspects of the property tax are also related to the main topic of this thesis equity in the assessment of farm land

An Appraisal of the Use of Soil Survey Information as the Basis for Valuing Land for Tax Purposes in Spink County, South Dakota

There is, however, strong justification for enacting modifications in the structure of the property tax and seeking means of strengthening its administration. Historical trends are of special interest when studying the property tax because it has survived with few modifications during a period of changing economic conditions. Since its adoption in Colonial times, the nation\u27s economy has passed from the agricultural to the present industrial stage. Many of today\u27s property tax problems are related to those gradual changes in the economy of the country and in the needs of its citizens. These aspects of the property tax are also related to the main topic of this thesis—equity in the assessment of farm land

Xylem: An Energy-efficient, Globally Redistributive, Financial Infrastructure Using Proof-by-Location

The Proof-of-Work algorithm that underlies Bitcoin, Ethereum w , 1 and many other cryptocurrencies is well known for its energy-intensive requirements. The Proof-of-Stake algorithm that underlies Ethereum and various other cryptocurrencies is less impactful environmentally, but it has a second, looming issue: the problem of wealth inequality. We have developed an alternative to Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake, called Proof-by-Location, that has the potential to address both of these issues. This article describes Proof-by-Location and a financial platform called Xylem that is based on it. This platform seeks to distribute transaction fees to billions of cryptocurrency “Notaries” around the world (essentially, anyone with a smartphone), who work together to establish a distributed consensus about financial transactions. In this article, we demonstrate that this platform can scale to more than 3.9 trillion transactions per year (more than triple the number of digital payments per year currently occurring). We show a reduction of electricity usage per transaction of 99.9999914% compared to Bitcoin, 99.999905% compared to Ethereum w , 99.83% compared to Ethereum, and 95.9% compared to the Visa financial services company. We demonstrate that this platform would have a redistributive rather than consolidatory effect on wealth compared to any of these platforms, leading to a source of income for more than 1 billion people around the world, including more than 110 million in the bottom 10th to 20th percentile by income, with income for that group equivalent to 8.8 million full-time jobs. Finally, this currency provides a positive, non-compulsory mechanism for shaping human habitation patterns in ways that can slow global biodiversity loss and enable ecological restoration. Using Xylem as a global financial infrastructure could lead to significantly better social and environmental outcomes than existing financial platforms.

Etiology of Patent Ductus Arteriosus in Dogs

Patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) is the most common congenital heart disease in dogs and usually causes heart failure and death unless corrected at a young age. Previous histologic studies in a line of dogs derived from Miniature Poodles with hereditary PDA identified varying degrees of hypoplasia and asymmetry of ductus-specific smooth muscle and the presence of aortalike elastic tissue in the ductus wall sufficient to cause patency. To determine if similar structural abnormalities cause PDA in other dogs, serial-section, 3-dimensional histology of ductal architecture was studied in 8 non-Poodle purebred dogs with PDA with no immediate family history of PDA. Morphologic abnormalities were observed in 7 of 8 dogs with PDA and essentially were the same as those in dogs known to have a hereditary form of PDA. These findings suggest that apparently sporadic PDA in these breeds is caused by a genetic defect in the structure of the ductus arteriosus that is similar or identical to that in the Poodle. The relatives of dogs with PDA, particularly parents, offspring, and siblings, should be screened for evidence of PDA. Dogs with PDA should not be used for breeding, regardless of breed

Intrabodies Binding the Proline-Rich Domains of Mutant Huntingtin Increase Its Turnover and Reduce Neurotoxicity

Although expanded polyglutamine (polyQ) repeats are inherently toxic, causing at least nine neurodegenerative diseases, the protein context determines which neurons are affected. The polyQ expansion that causes Huntington's disease (HD) is in the first exon (HDx-1) of huntingtin (Htt). However, other parts of the protein, including the 17 N-terminal amino acids and two proline (polyP) repeat domains, regulate the toxicity of mutant Htt. The role of the P-rich domain that is flanked by the polyP domains has not been explored. Using highly specific intracellular antibodies (intrabodies), we tested various epitopes for their roles in HDx-1 toxicity, aggregation, localization, and turnover. Three domains in the P-rich region (PRR) of HDx-1 are defined by intrabodies: MW7 binds the two polyP domains, and Happ1 and Happ3, two new intrabodies, bind the unique, P-rich epitope located between the two polyP epitopes. We find that the PRR-binding intrabodies, as well as VL12.3, which binds the N-terminal 17 aa, decrease the toxicity and aggregation of HDx-1, but they do so by different mechanisms. The PRR-binding intrabodies have no effect on Htt localization, but they cause a significant increase in the turnover rate of mutant Htt, which VL12.3 does not change. In contrast, expression of VL12.3 increases nuclear Htt. We propose that the PRR of mutant Htt regulates its stability, and that compromising this pathogenic epitope by intrabody binding represents a novel therapeutic strategy for treating HD. We also note that intrabody binding represents a powerful tool for determining the function of protein epitopes in living cells

One step closer to a cook book method for dioxin analysis part 1: The procedure

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Association between 5-Year clinical outcome in patients with nonmedically evacuated mild blast traumatic brain injury and clinical measures collected within 7 days postinjury in combat

Importance: Although previous work has examined clinical outcomes in combat-deployed veterans, questions remain regarding how symptoms evolve or resolve following mild blast traumatic brain injury (TBI) treated in theater and their association with long-term outcomes. Objective: To characterize 5-year outcome in patients with nonmedically evacuated blast concussion compared with combat-deployed controls and understand what clinical measures collected acutely in theater are associated with 5-year outcome. Design, Setting, and Participants: A prospective, longitudinal cohort study including 45 service members with mild blast TBI within 7 days of injury (mean 4 days) and 45 combat deployed nonconcussed controls was carried out. Enrollment occurred in Afghanistan at the point of injury with evaluation of 5-year outcome in the United States. The enrollment occurred from March to September 2012 with 5-year follow up completed from April 2017 to May 2018. Data analysis was completed from June to July 2018. Exposures: Concussive blast TBI. All patients were treated in theater, and none required medical evacuation. Main Outcomes and Measures: Clinical measures collected in theater included measures for concussion symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depression symptoms, balance performance, combat exposure intensity, cognitive performance, and demographics. Five-year outcome evaluation included measures for global disability, neurobehavioral impairment, PTSD symptoms, depression symptoms, and 10 domains of cognitive function. Forward selection multivariate regression was used to determine predictors of 5-year outcome for global disability, neurobehavior impairment, PTSD, and cognitive function. Results: Nonmedically evacuated patients with concussive blast injury (n = 45; 44 men, mean [SD] age, 31 [5] years) fared poorly at 5-year follow-up compared with combat-deployed controls (n = 45; 35 men; mean [SD] age, 34 [7] years) on global disability, neurobehavioral impairment, and psychiatric symptoms, whereas cognitive changes were unremarkable. Acute predictors of 5-year outcome consistently identified TBI diagnosis with contribution from acute concussion and mental health symptoms and select measures of cognitive performance depending on the model for 5-year global disability (area under the curve following bootstrap validation [AUCBV] = 0.79), neurobehavioral impairment (correlation following bootstrap validation [RBV] = 0.60), PTSD severity (RBV = 0.36), or cognitive performance (RBV = 0.34). Conclusions and Relevance: Service members with concussive blast injuries fared poorly at 5-year outcome. The results support a more focused acute screening of mental health following TBI diagnosis as strong indicators of poor long-term outcome. This extends prior work examining outcome in patients with concussive blast injury to the larger nonmedically evacuated population

Turning Fake Data into Fake News: AI Training Set as a Trojan Horse of Misinformation

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers tremendous benefits to society. However, these benefits must be carefully weighed against the societal damage AI can also cause. Dangers posed by inaccurate training sets have been raised by many authors. These include racial discrimination, sexual bias, and other pernicious forms of misinformation. One remedy to such problems is to ensure that training sets used to teach AI models are correct and that the data upon which they rely are accurate. An assumption behind this correction is that data inaccuracies are inadvertent mistakes. However, a darker possibility exists: the deliberate seeding of training sets with inaccurate information for the purpose of skewing the output of AI models toward misinformation. As United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., suggested, laws are not written for the “good man,” because good people will tend to obey moral and legal principles in manners consistent with a well-functioning society even in the absence of formal laws. Rather, Justice Holmes proposed, that laws should be written with the “bad man” in mind, because bad people will push the limits of acceptable behavior, engaging in cheating, dishonesty, crime, and other societally- damaging practices, unless constrained by carefully-designed laws and their accompanying penalties. This Article raises the spectre of the deliberate sabotage of training sets used to train AI models, with the purpose of perverting the outputs of such models. Examples include fostering revisionist histories, unjustly harming or rehabilitating the reputations of people, companies, or institutions, or even promoting as true ideas that are not. Strategic and clever efforts to introduce ideas into training sets that later manifest themselves as facts could aid and abet fraud, libel, slander, or the creation of “truth,” the belief in which promote the interests of particular individuals or groups. Imagine, for example, a first investor who buys grapefruit futures, who then seeds training sets with the idea that grapefruits will become the new gold, with the result that later prospective investors who consult AI models for investment advice are informed that they should invest in grapefruit, enriching the first investor. Or, consider a malevolent political movement that hopes to rehabilitate the reputation of an abhorrent leader; if done effectively, this movement could seed training sets with sympathetic information about this leader, resulting in positive portrayals of this leader in the future outputs of trained AI models. This Article adopts the cautious attitude necessitated by Justice Holmes’ bad man, applying it to proactively stopping, or retroactively punishing and correcting, deliberate attempts to subvert the training sets of AI models. It offers legal approaches drawn from doctrines ranging from fraud, nuisance, libel, and slander, to misappropriation, privacy, and right of publicity. It balances these with protections for speech afforded by the First Amendment and other doctrines of free speech. The result is the first comprehensive attempt to prevent, respond to, and correct deliberate attempts to subvert training sets of AI models for malicious purposes