State tax revenue growth and volatility

Macroeconomic conditions and tax structures jointly determine the growth and volatility of state tax revenues. Since a variety of economic conditions exist among states, government policymakers should carefully anticipate and consider the possible impacts of proposed tax reform and revenue enhancements on the long-term growth and volatility of their unique tax revenue portfolios. In the short run, states generally cannot alter the volatility and growth rates of their economies. They can, however, change the composition of their tax portfolios to minimize the effects of the business cycle on their fiscal health. For this reason, state officials need to consider the natural tendencies of their economies when formulating tax policy. For example, states with volatile economies might want tax portfolios that minimize the impact of national macroeconomic trends; those with stable economies might consider adopting more aggressive tax portfolios that optimize their tax revenue growth/volatility combinations.Taxation ; State finance ; Revenue

Dispersity-Driven Melting Transition in Two Dimensional Solids

We perform extensive simulations of $10^4$ Lennard-Jones particles to study the effect of particle size dispersity on the thermodynamic stability of two-dimensional solids. We find a novel phase diagram in the dispersity-density parameter space. We observe that for large values of the density there is a threshold value of the size dispersity above which the solid melts to a liquid along a line of first order phase transitions. For smaller values of density, our results are consistent with the presence of an intermediate hexatic phase. Further, these findings support the possibility of a multicritical point in the dispersity-density parameter space.Comment: In revtex format, 4 pages, 6 postscript figures. Submitted to PR

Achievement of Low Emissions by Engine Modification to Utilize Gas-to-Liquid Fuel and Advanced Emission Controls on a Class 8 Truck

A 2002 Cummins ISM engine was modified to be optimized for operation on gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel and advanced emission control devices. The engine modifications included increased exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), decreased compression ratio, and reshaped piston and bowl configuration

Dynamical completions of generalized O'Raifeartaigh models

We present gauge theory completions of Wess-Zumino models admitting supersymmetry breaking vacua with spontaneously broken R-symmetry. Our models are simple deformations of generalized ITIY models, a supersymmetric theory with gauge group Sp(N), N+1 flavors plus singlets, with a modified tree level superpotential which explicitly breaks (part of) the global symmetry. Depending on the nature of the deformation, we obtain effective O'Raifeartaigh-like models whose pseudomoduli space is locally stable in a neighborhood of the origin of field space, or in a region not including it. Hence, once embedded in direct gauge mediation scenarios, our models can give low energy spectra with either suppressed or unsuppressed gaugino mass.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure; v3: reference adde

Exome sequencing of Finnish isolates enhances rare-variant association power.

Exome-sequencing studies have generally been underpowered to identify deleterious alleles with a large effect on complex traits as such alleles are mostly rare. Because the population of northern and eastern Finland has expanded considerably and in isolation following a series of bottlenecks, individuals of these populations have numerous deleterious alleles at a relatively high frequency. Here, using exome sequencing of nearly 20,000 individuals from these regions, we investigate the role of rare coding variants in clinically relevant quantitative cardiometabolic traits. Exome-wide association studies for 64 quantitative traits identified 26 newly associated deleterious alleles. Of these 26 alleles, 19 are either unique to or more than 20 times more frequent in Finnish individuals than in other Europeans and show geographical clustering comparable to Mendelian disease mutations that are characteristic of the Finnish population. We estimate that sequencing studies of populations without this unique history would require hundreds of thousands to millions of participants to achieve comparable association power

Radiative B-decay as a test of CKM unitarity

We point out that $R \equiv Br(b\rightarrow d \gamma)/Br(b\rightarrow s \gamma)$ is a sensitive probe of possible violation of CKM unitarity. We compute $R$ in a minimal extension of the Standard Model containing an additional isosinglet charge ($-1/3$) quark, which leads to a deviation from CKM unitarity.Comment: 11 pages (Latex) + 4 postscript figures (compressed, tared, uuencoded) included at the end of the paper - [please check before printing that the uncompressed fig2.ps and fig3.ps files do not contain blank lines in the beginning], CERN-TH.7294/94, MPI-PhT/94-3

Magnetic Flux Cancellation in Ellerman Bombs

Ellerman Bombs (EBs) are often found to be co-spatial with bipolar photospheric magnetic fields. We use Hα imaging spectroscopy along with Fe I 6302.5 Å spectropolarimetry from the Swedish 1 m Solar Telescope (SST), combined with data from the Solar Dynamic Observatory, to study EBs and the evolution of the local magnetic fields at EB locations. EBs are found via an EB detection and tracking algorithm. Using NICOLE inversions of the spectropolarimetric data, we find that, on average, (3.43 ± 0.49) × 1024 erg of stored magnetic energy disappears from the bipolar region during EB burning. The inversions also show flux cancellation rates of 1014–1015 Mx s−1 and temperature enhancements of 200 K at the detection footpoints. We investigate the near-simultaneous flaring of EBs due to co-temporal flux emergence from a sunspot, which shows a decrease in transverse velocity when interacting with an existing, stationary area of opposite polarity magnetic flux, resulting in the formation of the EBs. We also show that these EBs can be fueled further by additional, faster moving, negative magnetic flux regions

A Search for Electron Antineutrino Appearance at the Δm2∼\Delta m^2 \sim 1 eV2\mathrm{eV}^{2} Scale

The MiniBooNE Collaboration reports initial results from a search for $\bar{\nu}_{\mu}\to\bar{\nu}_e$ oscillations. A signal-blind analysis was performed using a data sample corresponding to $3.39 \times 10^{20}$ protons on target. The data are consistent with background prediction across the full range of neutrino energy reconstructed assuming quasielastic scattering, $200 < E_{\nu}^{QE} < 3000$ MeV: 144 electron-like events have been observed in this energy range, compared to an expectation of $139.2 \pm 17.6$ events. No significant excess of events has been observed, both at low energy, 200-475 MeV, and at high energy, 475-1250 MeV. The data are inconclusive with respect to antineutrino oscillations suggested by data from the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Quantitative, Architectural Analysis of Immune Cell Subsets in Tumor-Draining Lymph Nodes from Breast Cancer Patients and Healthy Lymph Nodes

Background: To date, pathological examination of specimens remains largely qualitative. Quantitative measures of tissue spatial features are generally not captured. To gain additional mechanistic and prognostic insights, a need for quantitative architectural analysis arises in studying immune cell-cancer interactions within the tumor microenvironment and tumor-draining lymph nodes (TDLNs). Methodology/Principal Findings: We present a novel, quantitative image analysis approach incorporating 1) multi-color tissue staining, 2) high-resolution, automated whole-section imaging, 3) custom image analysis software that identifies cell types and locations, and 4) spatial statistical analysis. As a proof of concept, we applied this approach to study the architectural patterns of T and B cells within tumor-draining lymph nodes from breast cancer patients versus healthy lymph nodes. We found that the spatial grouping patterns of T and B cells differed between healthy and breast cancer lymph nodes, and this could be attributed to the lack of B cell localization in the extrafollicular region of the TDLNs. Conclusions/Significance: Our integrative approach has made quantitative analysis of complex visual data possible. Our results highlight spatial alterations of immune cells within lymph nodes from breast cancer patients as an independent variable from numerical changes. This opens up new areas of investigations in research and medicine. Future application of this approach will lead to a better understanding of immune changes in the tumor microenvironment and TDLNs, and how they affect clinical outcome

Measurement of the neutrino component of an anti-neutrino beam observed by a non-magnetized detector

Two independent methods are employed to measure the neutrino flux of the anti-neutrino-mode beam observed by the MiniBooNE detector. The first method compares data to simulated event rates in a high purity \numu induced charged-current single \pip (CC1\pip) sample while the second exploits the difference between the angular distributions of muons created in \numu and \numub charged-current quasi-elastic (CCQE) interactions. The results from both analyses indicate the prediction of the neutrino flux component of the pre-dominately anti-neutrino beam is over-estimated - the CC1\pip analysis indicates the predicted \numu flux should be scaled by $0.76 \pm 0.11$, while the CCQE angular fit yields $0.65 \pm 0.23$. The energy spectrum of the flux prediction is checked by repeating the analyses in bins of reconstructed neutrino energy, and the results show that the spectral shape is well modeled. These analyses are a demonstration of techniques for measuring the neutrino contamination of anti-neutrino beams observed by future non-magnetized detectors.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, published in Physical Review D, latest version reflects changes from referee comment