Davis v. Department of Revenue of Kentucky: A Preliminary Impact Assessment

States with income taxes frequently exempt municipal bond interest from state taxation. Such exemptions, referred to as double exempts, are tax expenditures that reduce state revenues, but are viewed as a subsidy to the cost of capital for the state and its localities. All but a few states provide the income tax exemption for state based issues while taxing interest from municipal bonds issued by muni issuers in other states. A recent court case, Davis vs. Department of Revenue of Kentucky, declared state statutes limiting the state income tax exemptions to ”in-state” issues unconstitutional. This paper provides some legal background and context for the current case and addresses two key fiscal implications of this case. First, the paper presents a basic model that suggests that bonds issued by states with higher marginal tax rates would see the yields increase on their obligations while states with lower than average marginal tax rates would see their yields decline. The yields would converge at new market equilibrium due to the elimination of tax preferences across the states. Second, the preliminary estimates suggest a good deal of variance in how much tax revenue each state will lose if the case is upheld by the Supreme Court.

Mating Behavior and Male Territoriality in Enallagma vesperum (Odonata: Coenagrionidae) on Ponds in Ohio and Northern Michigan

Author Institution: Biology Department, The University of FindlayThe crepuscular damselfly Enallagma vesperum Calvert, was studied to document and clarify mating behavior. This paper is a descriptive synthesis of observations which answer basic questions regarding mating behavior of E. vesperum. Beginning in July 2004 and continuing in the summers through September 2009, approximately 140 hours of direct observation on a lake in Northern Michigan and a lake and two ponds in Ohio were logged to support the results and conclusions. The literature regarding mating behavior in E. vesperum provides little information about male territoriality. The results from this six-year study offer strong evidence of male territory selection and territory defense. Copulatory behavior and ovipositional behavior were also recorded. In most coenagrionid species, males remain in tandem with ovipositing females unless the females submerge. In this study, however, females were observed ovipositing in tandem or individually into surface vegetation

Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Communities from the Portage River Watershed Headwater Streams (Wood County, Ohio)

Author Institution: University of FindlayMacroinvertebrate communities in a transect of the Portage River watershed were quantitatively and qualitatively assessed. The emphasis was on identification and community structure of the macroinvertebrate biota resident in its smallest order streams and ditches. Hester-Dendy multi-plate samplers were used to assess the macroinvertebrate communities at 10 sites across the watershed in the summer of 2001. Dominant macroinvertebrates collected at greater than 70% of the sites were: Caenis sp., Stenonema femoratum, Lirceus lineatus, Physella integra 54 species from 11 major taxa were collected overall, with highest diversity in the smallest order tributaries. The central area of the transect yielded lower numbers of species and densities than the eastern or western drainage areas, and Shannon-Wiener Diversity Indices (SDI) illustrate this depressed community structure. Of the study sites, Rader Creek and the South Branch of the Portage were the most diverse, while Bull Creek was the least diverse. As was predicted from the physical appearance of the majority of the sites, the Portage River watershed macroinvertebrate communities were both depauperate and trophically simplistic. The Invertebrate Community Index (ICI is the principal assessment tool used by the Ohio EPA to monitor all free-flowing waters in Ohio) of the macroinvertebrate communities’ resident suggest only poor to fair water quality at all locations throughout the summer. The impoverished state of the communities present in what is the most active time of the year suggests that steps to increase the health and complexity of the habitat would offer greater natural services to the watershed and drainage

Somatochlora Walshii (Odonata: Corduliidae), a New State Record for Ohio

Author Institution: Ohio Historical Society ; University of FindlayThe authors report the discovery of the Brush-tipped Emerald, Somatochlora walshii (Odonata: Corduliidae)—a species previously unknown from Ohio. During the summer of 2000 this species was documented in apparent breeding populations at State Nature Preserves in Ashtabula and Portage counties. While no larvae were found, reproductive behavior was observed and the numerous adults suggest a stable breeding population. Habitat descriptions from other localities match that of these 2 sites, and a long-known population exists in Pennsylvania only about 21 km from the Ashtabula County site. This brings the total number of reported Odonata for Ohio to 162 species and subspecies

The Vector Vortex Coronagraph: sensitivity to central obscuration, low-order aberrations, chromaticism, and polarization

The Vector Vortex Coronagraph is a phase-based coronagraph, one of the most efficient in terms of inner working angle, throughput, discovery space, contrast, and simplicity. Using liquid-crystal polymer technology, this new coronagraph has recently been the subject of lab demonstrations in the near-infrared, visible and was also used on sky at the Palomar observatory in the H and K bands (1.65 and 2.2 μm, respectively) to image the brown dwarf companion to HR 7672, and the three extra-solar planets around HR 8799. However, despite these recent successes, the Vector Vortex Coronagraph is, as are most coronagraphs, sensitive to the central obscuration and secondary support structures, low-order aberrations (tip-tilt, focus, etc), bandwidth (chromaticism), and polarization when image-plane wavefront sensing is performed. Here, we consider in detail these sensitivities as a function of the topological charge of the vortex and design features inherent to the manufacturing technology, and show that in practice all of them can be mitigated to meet specific needs

Complex apodization Lyot coronagraphy for the direct imaging of exoplanet systems: design, fabrication, and laboratory demonstration

We review the design, fabrication, performance, and future prospects for a complex apodized Lyot coronagraph for highcontrast exoplanet imaging and spectroscopy. We present a newly designed circular focal plane mask with an inner working angle of 2.5 λ/D. Thickness-profiled metallic and dielectric films superimposed on a glass substrate provide control over both the real and imaginary parts of the coronagraph wavefront. Together with a deformable mirror for control of wavefront phase, the complex Lyot coronagraph potentially exceeds billion-to-one contrast over dark fields extending to within angular separations of 2.5 λ/D from the central star, over spectral bandwidths of 20% or more, and with throughput efficiencies better than 50%. Our approach is demonstrated with a linear occulting mask, for which we report our best laboratory imaging contrast achieved to date. Raw image contrasts of 3×10^(-10) over 2% bandwidths, 6×10^(-10) over 10% bandwidths, and 2×10^(-9) over 20% bandwidths are consistently achieved across high contrast fields extending from an inner working angle of 3 λ/D to a radius of 15 λ/D. Occulter performance is analyzed in light of experiments and optical models, and prospects for further progress are summarized. The science capability of the hybrid Lyot coronagraph is compared with requirements for ACCESS, a representative space coronagraph concept for the direct imaging and spectroscopy of exoplanet systems. This work has been supported by NASA’s Strategic Astrophysics Technology / Technology Demonstrations for Exoplanet Missions (SAT/TDEM) program