Company dividends and taxes in the UK

The tax treatment of company dividend payments is an area where corporate taxation interacts with the personal income tax. This interaction raises some awkward issues, such as whether shareholders who are exempt from personal income tax should also be exempt from corporation tax, and if so, then how this can be achieved. The solutions adopted are often complex and certainly diverse, as witnessed by the range of different approaches used in the OECD countries, described in OECD (1991).

Molecular logic behind the three-way stochastic choices that expand butterfly colour vision.

Butterflies rely extensively on colour vision to adapt to the natural world. Most species express a broad range of colour-sensitive Rhodopsin proteins in three types of ommatidia (unit eyes), which are distributed stochastically across the retina. The retinas of Drosophila melanogaster use just two main types, in which fate is controlled by the binary stochastic decision to express the transcription factor Spineless in R7 photoreceptors. We investigated how butterflies instead generate three stochastically distributed ommatidial types, resulting in a more diverse retinal mosaic that provides the basis for additional colour comparisons and an expanded range of colour vision. We show that the Japanese yellow swallowtail (Papilio xuthus, Papilionidae) and the painted lady (Vanessa cardui, Nymphalidae) butterflies have a second R7-like photoreceptor in each ommatidium. Independent stochastic expression of Spineless in each R7-like cell results in expression of a blue-sensitive (Spineless(ON)) or an ultraviolet (UV)-sensitive (Spineless(OFF)) Rhodopsin. In P. xuthus these choices of blue/blue, blue/UV or UV/UV sensitivity in the two R7 cells are coordinated with expression of additional Rhodopsin proteins in the remaining photoreceptors, and together define the three types of ommatidia. Knocking out spineless using CRISPR/Cas9 (refs 5, 6) leads to the loss of the blue-sensitive fate in R7-like cells and transforms retinas into homogeneous fields of UV/UV-type ommatidia, with corresponding changes in other coordinated features of ommatidial type. Hence, the three possible outcomes of Spineless expression define the three ommatidial types in butterflies. This developmental strategy allowed the deployment of an additional red-sensitive Rhodopsin in P. xuthus, allowing for the evolution of expanded colour vision with a greater variety of receptors. This surprisingly simple mechanism that makes use of two binary stochastic decisions coupled with local coordination may prove to be a general means of generating an increased diversity of developmental outcomes

Review of Felix Holt, the Radical

Felix Holt, with its large cast of characters, and above all with its notoriously complicated legal plot, presents a real challenge when adapting and reducing it for a three hour, serialized radio dramatization. Michael Eaton is to be congratulated on neatly simplifying the plot, by omitting Thomas Trounsem\u27s sale of his rights to Durfey and the exchange of names between Bycliffe and Scaddon. Admittedly this left a few loose ends, and listeners might have been puzzled by the name Scaddon, mentioned without explanation, but on the whole the necessary simplification was skillfully done and the main plot threads made clear. Inevitably the slow character and plot development characteristic of George Eliot have to be sacrificed. Such subtleties as the gradual development of Harold\u27s character from assertive bullying to growing human sympathy through his love for Esther, ending in the total collapse of his confidence when he discovers who he is, had to be sacrificed entirely. Listeners familiar with the book will miss this subtlety, but the adaptor makes some decisions that are helpful in guiding first-timers, and/or in making contrasts sharp. An example of this is the wish expressed (in Part 2 of the radio version) to Mrs. Transome by Jermyn (Jack Shepherd) that Harold Transome would \u27find a place for me in his heart\u27. This is emotionally more direct, and cruder, than Jermyn\u27s portrayal in the novel, cautious and slippery, but it is helpful in suggesting the past liaison of Jermyn and Mrs. Transome. Another example concerns the personalities of Esther (played by Hayley Atwell) and Felix (Elliot Cowan). In the novel, at their first meeting, Felix finds Esther\u27s Byron, and vehemently expresses his disapproval. The radio dramatization adds a later exchange in which Esther\u27s answer to Felix\u27s question as to what she\u27s reading is: \u27Rousseau\u27s Confessions - did you think it would be Pilgrim S Progress?\u27 It may seem unlikely that a Minister\u27s daughter would be reading Rousseau\u27s Confessions in the 1830s, particularly a girl portrayed (until later in the book) as rather frivolous, but it expands on the contrast between the two, and is perhaps prepared for by the fact that we are told, only in the radio dramatization, that Esther (whose mother was French and who teaches French), has recently returned from Paris