Taxation of incomes of athletes from professional practice of sports under the Polish tax law

Purpose: Authors’ motivation to take up the subject of taxation of professional athletes comes from the Polish tax law which stipulates various manners of taxing incomes of professional athletes on their sports activity - depending on what source of income they are classified under. These sources may include an employment relationship, activity performed personally or being self-employed (conducting an economic activity). Professional practice of sports may entail high earnings, which is why taxation of these earnings may translate into significant differences between due tax resulting from the application of a specific method of taxation. The research problem emerging from the above-mentioned circumstance involves establishing which form of taxation will be optimal for athletes-taxpayers depending on their earnings. Design/Methodology/Approach: To resolve the issue, relevant Polish regulations have been analysed by means of interpretation of applicable laws. Findings: The research results allowed authors to formulate a thesis according to which the due tax will be lowest where the athlete obtains income from a sports activity as part of his or her economic activity. Practical Implications: Impact on decisions of professional athletes in terms of legal optimisation of their personality under the tax law. Originality/value: This matter has not been a subject of scholarly research to date. The research effects will allow such organization of athletes’ activity that will make it possible for them to legally lower their taxes.peer-reviewe

Structural and Functional Characterization of Ubiquitin Variants and Ubiquitin Binding Proteins

The ubiquitin (Ub) system is an essential post-translational modification pathway found throughout eukaryotic cells and consists of proteins responsible for adding Ub to substrates (E1, E2, and E3 enzymes), removing Ub from substrates (deubiquitinases), and reading the Ub encoded signal found on substrates. The Ub system regulates cellular functions such as DNA repair and cell-cycle progression and as such, its dysregulation can contribute to disease states. Due to its prevalent nature in regulating critical cellular functions therapeutic modulation of the Ub system has become a promising area for therapeutic development. The first step towards modulating any cellular system is target identification, which requires a detailed understanding of the system’s components and how they function. Towards this end, Dr. Sidhu and his lab have developed a set of protein-based tools termed Ub variants (UbV). These reagents are engineered variants of Ub that contain substitutions that allow them to selectively and tightly bind to specific Ub binding proteins in the cell, leading to the inhibition of and in some cases activation of the targeted protein’s function. Consequently, researchers can use UbVs to understand the role of the targeted proteins in vivo and their potential as therapeutic targets. In this thesis, I aid our understanding of the Ub system through the use of biochemical and structural biology approaches by: (i) helping further the development of UbVs tools by identifying how they bind with high specificity and affinity to their target proteins and (ii) furthering our understanding of how the deubiquitinase USP37 uses a unique insertion containing Ub interacting motifs to cleave ubiquitin chains.Ph.D

The use of a medium-voltage inverter for the modernization of winders in mining shafts

W artykule przedstawiono wnioski po przeprowadzonej modernizacji maszyny wyciągowej. Modernizację tę przeprowadzono z wykorzystaniem falowników średniego napięcia. Opisano i przedyskutowano sprawność maszyny, a także wpływ zastosowanego rozwiązania na jakość energii elektrycznej sieci zasilającej.The article feature conclusions drawn after the modernization of a winder. The modernization was conducted with the use of medium-voltage inverters. The efficiency of the winder was described and discussed along with the impact of this solution on the quality of energy in the power supply network

Obesity in the Workplace- An International Out-Look

Over 64% of America is overweight and the number is increasing every year by a staggering amount. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) 44 million Americans are obese. That is one in five people that are obese. The scariest part about that statistics is that the number of people who are obese skyrocketed at a rate of 7% every year since 1991. The amount of medical care costs for an obese person is around $ 620 compared to non-obese persons. According to CDC, cost of treating soared to around 150 billion in 2008 and the cost doubled over a decade. The cost was 74 billion in 1998. Obesity is a big problem because of injury claims, healthcare costs and absenteeism of obese workers. This can lead to discrimination of overweight workers. Obese people are stereotyped and often discriminated against in the workplace, although anti-discrimination laws for obese people are beginning to come into existence. Current research has shown that obese employees tend to result in higher costs for employers because of higher absenteeism rates, more medical claims and lower productivity rates. The United States has higher obesity rates than other countries, including the U.K. and France, although the prevalence of obesity worldwide is increasing. Some major cases involving overweight workers are cited: Cook Vs Rhode Island Department of Mental Health, Butterfield Vs New York State, Pan Am Flight Attendants Vs Delta Air Lines and European Program-EPODE etc. The obesity epidemic, as it is called, has resulted in companies such as Microsoft and UniLever implementing wellness programs that have shown positive returns on investment. GlaxoSmithKline is another case that successfully promotes health lifestyles for its employees. HR(Human Resource) Manager faces a major challenge of controlling costs, endorsing healthy life styles and working to counter the dysfunctional and harmful effects of stereotypes about weight and appearance and try to implement wellness programs that can ultimately benefit the company with improved productivity and decreased health costs.

Structural and functional characterization of a ubiquitin variant engineered for tight and specific binding to an alpha-helical ubiquitin interacting motif

Ubiquitin interacting motifs (UIMs) are short α-helices found in a number of eukaryotic proteins. UIMs interact weakly but specifically with ubiquitin conjugated to other proteins, and in so doing, mediate specific cellular signals. Here we used phage display to generate ubiquitin variants (UbVs) targeting the N-terminal UIM of the yeast Vps27 protein. Selections yielded UbV.v27.1, which recognized the cognate UIM with high specificity relative to other yeast UIMs and bound with an affinity more than two orders of magnitude higher than that of ubiquitin. Structural and mutational studies of the UbV.v27.1-UIM complex revealed the molecular details for the enhanced affinity and specificity of UbV.v27.1, and underscored the importance of changes at the binding interface as well as at positions that do not contact the UIM. Our study highlights the power of the phage display approach for selecting UbVs with unprecedented affinity and high selectivity for particular α-helical UIM domains within proteomes, and it establishes a general approach for the development of inhibitors targeting interactions of this type