Führt die Unternehmenssteuerreform aus dem Jahre 2001 zu mehr Rechtsformneutralität?

Ziel der Arbeit ist es, die durch die Unternehmenssteuerreform 2001 veränderte Rechtslage im Hinblick auf das vom Gesetzgeber angestrebte Ziel der Rechtsformneutralität zu untersuchen. Ausgehend von einer Betrachtung des Gebots einer rechtsformneutralen Unternehmensbesteuerung in ökonomischer und verfassungsrechtlicher Hinsicht fasst die Untersuchung verschiedene rechtsformneutrale Regelungsvorschläge zusammen, die die Reformdiskussion seit 1924 geprägt haben. Es folgt eine Darstellung der Änderungen der Unternehmenssteuerreform, die sich maßgeblich durch den Wechsel vom sog. Vollanrechnungs- auf das sog. Halbeinkünfteverfahren auszeichnet. Den Hauptteil der Arbeit bildet ein Vergleich der Steuerbelastungsdifferenzen zwischen Kapitalgesellschaften und Personenunternehmen nach der Unternehmenssteuerreform 2001. Er untergliedert sich in eine Analyse der periodischen Steuerbelastungen (Voll-/Teilthesaurierung, mehrperiodiger Belastungsvergleich, Berücksichtigung von Leistungsvergütungen an Gesellschafter, von Finanzierungskosten, von anfallenden Verlusten sowie von rechtsformspezifischen Risiken) und der aperiodischen Steuerbelastungen (Flexibilität, Unternehmenskauf/-verkauf, Unternehmensnachfolge). Zahlreiche Beispielrechnungen tragen zur Veranschaulichung bei. Es zeigt sich im Ergebnis, dass die Unternehmenssteuerreform die Rechtsformabhängigkeit der Unternehmensbesteuerung deutlich verschärft hat

Validierung neuer Funktionen eines mechanischen Antriebsstrangs für mobile Arbeitsmaschinen mit radindividueller Steuerung

The drive train of mobile machines is subject to high demands. In order to implement these in the best possible way, the institute Mobile Machines at KIT is researching a torque splitter drive for mobile machines together with company partners. After successful validation of the component in the context of possible machine types, the validation of new mechatronic functions for the drive train now takes place. MOBiL, an XiL method adapted to mobile machines, is used for this purpose

Pain in dementia

The ageing revolution is changing the composition of our society with more people becoming very old with higher risks for developing both pain and dementia. Pain is normally signaled by verbal communication, which becomes more and more deteriorated in people with dementia. Thus, these individuals unnecessarily suffer from manageable but unrecognized pain. Pain assessment in patients with dementia is a challenging endeavor, with scientific advancements quickly developing. Pain assessment tools and protocols (mainly observational scales) have been incorporated into national and international guidelines of pain assessment in aged individuals. To effectively assess pain, interdisciplinary collaboration (nurses, physicians, psychologists, computer scientists, and engineers) is essential. Pain management in this vulnerable population is also preferably done in an interdisciplinary setting. Nonpharmacological management programs have been predominantly tested in younger populations without dementia. However, many of them are relatively safe, have proven their efficacy, and therefore deserve a first place in pain management programs. Paracetamol is a relatively safe and effective first-choice analgesic. There are many safety issues regarding nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, opioids, and adjuvant analgesics in dementia patients. It is therefore recommended to monitor both pain and potential side effects regularly. More research is necessary to provide better guidance for pain management in dementia.publishedVersio

Broadband near-infrared astronomical spectrometer calibration and on-sky validation with an electro-optic laser frequency comb

The quest for extrasolar planets and their characterisation as well as studies of fundamental physics on cosmological scales rely on capabilities of high-resolution astronomical spectroscopy. A central requirement is a precise wavelength calibration of astronomical spectrographs allowing for extraction of subtle wavelength shifts from the spectra of stars and quasars. Here, we present an all-fibre, 400 nm wide near-infrared frequency comb based on electro-optic modulation with 14.5 GHz comb line spacing. Tests on the high-resolution, near-infrared spectrometer GIANO-B show a photon-noise limited calibration precision of <10 cm/s as required for Earth-like planet detection. Moreover, the presented comb provides detailed insight into particularities of the spectrograph such as detector inhomogeneities and differential spectrograph drifts. The system is validated in on-sky observations of a radial velocity standard star (HD221354) and telluric atmospheric absorption features. The advantages of the system include simplicity, robustness and turn-key operation, features that are valuable at the observation sites

Auflösung von geländeseitig verursachten Antriebsverspannungen bei hochmobilen Arbeitsmaschinen

Bei schweren Arbeitsmaschinen, treten regelmäßig Antriebsverspannungen auf. Diese resultieren insbesondere daraus, dass herkömmliche Antriebsstränge mit Längs- und Querdifferenzialen systembedingt die auftretenden Drehzahlunterschiede im Gelände nicht ausgleichen können. Aktuell werden diesen Gegebenheiten durch Überdimensionierung der mechanischen Antriebsstränge kompensiert. Ziel des Projektes war, die straßen- und geländeseitig verursachten Antriebsverspannungen aktiv an den angetriebenen Rädern zu kompensieren, bevor sie in das Gesamtsystem eintreten können. Zentrales Element ist hierbei ein Planetengetriebe, dessen Hohlrad über eine hydraulische Einheit mit dem Fahrzeugrahmen verbunden ist. Über eine Ventilsteuerung der hydraulischen Einheit, lässt sich ein gezielter Freiheitsgrad in das Gesamtsystem einbringen. Durch die Entwicklung einer realen Antriebseinheit und Integration in eine Simulation eines schweren 8 × 8 Geländefahrzeugs konnte nachgewiesen werden, dass es möglich ist, diese Antriebsverspannungen im besten Fall komplett zu verhindern. Extern eingeprägte Drehmomentspitzen werden direkt am Rad gestoppt bevor Verspannungen entstehen können

Use of healthcare services and assistive devices among centenarians: results of the cross-sectional, international5-COOP study.

To measure the use of healthcare services and assistive devices by centenarians in five countries. Cross-sectional study using a survey questionnaire. Community-dwelling and institutionalised centenarians living in Japan, France, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark. 1253 participants aged 100 or in their 100th year of life, of whom 1004 (80.1%) were female and 596 (47.6%) lived in institutions. Recent use of medical visits, nursing care at home, home-delivered meals, acute care hospital stays overnight, professional assessments such as sight tests, mobility aids and other assistive devices. A set of national healthcare system indicators was collected to help interpret differences between countries. There was considerable variability in the healthcare services and assistive devices used by centenarians depending on their country and whether they were community-dwelling or institutionalised. In contrast to the relatively homogeneous rates of hospitalisation in the past year (around 20%), community-dwelling centenarians reported widely ranging rates of medical visits in the past 3 months (at least one visit, from 32.2% in Japan to 86.6% in France). The proportion of community-dwellers using a mobility device to get around indoors (either a walking aid or a wheelchair) ranged from 48.3% in Japan to 79.2% in Sweden. Participants living in institutions and reporting the use of a mobility device ranged from 78.6% in Japan to 98.2% in Denmark. Our findings suggest major differences in care received by centenarians across countries. Some may result from the characteristics of national healthcare systems, especially types of healthcare insurance coverage and the amounts of specific resources available. However, unexplored factors also seem to be at stake and may be partly related to personal health and cultural differences

I-BEAT: New ultrasonic method for single bunch measurement of ion energy distribution

The shape of a wave carries all information about the spatial and temporal structure of its source, given that the medium and its properties are known. Most modern imaging methods seek to utilize this nature of waves originating from Huygens' principle. We discuss the retrieval of the complete kinetic energy distribution from the acoustic trace that is recorded when a short ion bunch deposits its energy in water. This novel method, which we refer to as Ion-Bunch Energy Acoustic Tracing (I-BEAT), is a generalization of the ionoacoustic approach. Featuring compactness, simple operation, indestructibility and high dynamic ranges in energy and intensity, I-BEAT is a promising approach to meet the needs of petawatt-class laser-based ion accelerators. With its capability of completely monitoring a single, focused proton bunch with prompt readout it, is expected to have particular impact for experiments and applications using ultrashort ion bunches in high flux regimes. We demonstrate its functionality using it with two laser-driven ion sources for quantitative determination of the kinetic energy distribution of single, focused proton bunches.Comment: Paper: 17 Pages, 3 figures Supplementary Material 16 pages, 7 figure

Tokenizer Choice For LLM Training: Negligible or Crucial?

The recent success of LLMs has been predominantly driven by curating the training dataset composition, scaling of model architectures and dataset sizes and advancements in pretraining objectives, leaving tokenizer influence as a blind spot. Shedding light on this underexplored area, we conduct a comprehensive study on the influence of tokenizer choice on LLM downstream performance by training 24 mono- and multilingual LLMs at a 2.6B parameter scale, ablating different tokenizer algorithms and parameterizations. Our studies highlight that the tokenizer choice can significantly impact the model's downstream performance, training and inference costs. In particular, we find that the common tokenizer evaluation metrics fertility and parity are not always predictive of model downstream performance, rendering these metrics a questionable proxy for the model's downstream performance. Furthermore, we show that multilingual tokenizers trained on the five most frequent European languages require vocabulary size increases of factor three in comparison to English. While English-only tokenizers have been applied to the training of multi-lingual LLMs, we find that this approach results in a severe downstream performance degradation and additional training costs of up to 68%, due to an inefficient tokenization vocabulary