The 2017 Tax Act and Settlement Trusts

By any measure, the enactment of the Alaska Native provisions of the 2017 Tax Act was an extraordinary achievement by the Alaska congressional delegation. Although the ANCSA Amendments Act of 1987 first permitted Alaska Native Corporations to establish “settlement trusts” to benefit their shareholders, relatively few settlement trusts have been established to date due to various obstacles posed by the Internal Revenue Code. The 2017 Tax Act removed a significant hurdle by permitting Alaska Native Corporations to claim a tax deduction for transfers to a settlement trust, thereby allowing such transfers to occur on a pre-tax basis rather than on the after-tax basis as was the rule prior to the new legislation. The 2017 Tax Act also provides tax certainty with regard to assignments to a settlement trust of certain payments required by ANCSA such as those under section 7(j), which should encourage Alaska Native Corporations to use such assignments to fund settlement trusts in convenient annual installments. To the extent that ambiguities exist as to the Alaska Native provisions of the Act, those provisions should be interpreted in favor of the Alaska Native entities and individuals that seek to utilize those provisions in accordance with canons of statutory construction for Indian Law and ANCSA

Single Mother Work and Poverty under Welfare Reform: Are Policy Impacts Different in Rural Areas?

During the 1990s, employment increased and poverty declined for single mothers in rural and urban areas. Our results suggest that, holding demographics constant, changes in welfare and social policy during this decade contributed to employment increases--but not to poverty reduction--for both rural and urban single mothers. If rural and urban demographics had been the same, the policy changes would have increased employment and reduced poverty more in rural areas. Without demographic controls, however, estimated policy impacts were no better in rural places. This suggests that rural demographic changes limited the policy impact on rural single-mother work and poverty.Demographics; Mothers; Policy; Single Mother; Welfare

Implementation and Development of Vehicle Tracking and Immobilization Technologies

Since the mid-1980s, limited use has been made of vehicle tracking using satellite communications to mitigate the security and safety risks created by the highway transportation of certain types of hazardous materials. However, vehicle-tracking technology applied to safety and security is increasingly being researched and piloted, and it has been the subject of several government reports and legislative mandates. At the same time, the motor carrier industry has been investing in and implementing vehicle tracking, for a number of reasons, particularly the increase in efficiency achieved through better management of both personnel (drivers) and assets (trucks or, as they are known, tractors; cargo loads; and trailers). While vehicle tracking and immobilization technologies can play a significant role in preventing truck-borne hazardous materials from being used as weapons against key targets, they are not a & ”silver bullet.” However, the experience of DTTS and the FMCSA and TSA pilot projects indicates that when these technologies are combined with other security measures, and when the information they provide is used in conjunction with information supplied outside of the tracking system, they can provide defensive value to any effort to protect assets from attacks using hazmat as a weapon. This report is a sister publication to MTI Report 09-03, Potential Terrorist Uses of Highway-Borne Hazardous Materials. That publication was created in response to the Department of Homeland Security´s request that the Mineta Transportation Institute´s National Transportation Security Center of Excellence provide research and insights regarding the security risks created by the highway transportation of hazardous materials

Developing a Research Culture and Scholarship Plan in Information Studies

Information research may take many forms. When the researchers are situated within an information technology faculty, there is a natural orientation towards the technology and the systems that make possible the use of the technology. Despite this, a focus on information itself and its effective utilisation can be achieved in an environment that may otherwise be more concerned with the technology than the information that the technology carries. This focus can contribute to research that has a systems orientation, as well as both foster and be fostered by interdisciplinary work in areas such as education, management and psychology. Here we explain the development of a research program in ‘information use’ within the Socio-technical systems theme of the School of Information Systems at QUT. Our emphasis is on the processes – research supervision, industry linkage, consultancy, grant development, conference contribution and publication - that have advanced the development of the research group. We also provide a summary of research projects in the form of models that are being developed to help illuminate the research frameworks

Review of A Year With Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia

Review of C. S. Lewis, A Year With Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia, ed. by Julia L. Roller (San Francisco, 2010). 480 pages. $22.99. ISBN 9780061985515

Monte Carlo modeling of atomic oxygen attack of polymers with protective coatings on LDEF

Characterization of the behavior of atomic oxygen interaction with materials on the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) assists in understanding of the mechanisms involved. Thus the reliability of predicting in-space durability of materials based on ground laboratory testing should be improved. A computational model which simulates atomic oxygen interaction with protected polymers was developed using Monte Carlo techniques. Through the use of an assumed mechanistic behavior of atomic oxygen interaction based on in-space atomic oxygen erosion of unprotected polymers and ground laboratory atomic oxygen interaction with protected polymers, prediction of atomic oxygen interaction with protected polymers on LDEF was accomplished. However, the results of these predictions are not consistent with the observed LDEF results at defect sites in protected polymers. Improved agreement between observed LDEF results and predicted Monte Carlo modeling can be achieved by modifying of the atomic oxygen interactive assumptions used in the model. LDEF atomic oxygen undercutting results, modeling assumptions, and implications are presented