MOVER [a Multimodal Open-Source Variorum eBook Reader]

The New York Public Library (NYPL) requests a Level II Start Up grant with which it proposes to develop MOVER [a Multimodal Open-Source Variorum eBook Reader], a mobile "app" that patrons will use to read and study media-enhanced editions of texts and musical scores that exist in multiple versions using the newly released ePub 3.0 ebook format and the Android mobile operating system. Project staff will test this software by creating a variorum (multiple version) edition of the libretto and score of the once enormously popular but now largely forgotten 1866 melodrama, The Black Crook. Using the software developed for this project, readers will be able to read the libretto and sheet music in multiple versions, while concurrently hearing the music associated with any particular line of the text or score

Electronic Broadway Project

The Electronic Broadway Project, based at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), seeks to create an interface for electronic editions of musical theater texts and, as a prototype, develop an electronic edition of the new Broadway musical Glory Days. We will also explore, in this project, the problem of editing a text that was mostly composed electronically. Like so many new literary works, Glory Days was written using digital tools (Word processors, digital music recorders, etc) and so the primary sources are, in many cases, preserved as bits on magnetic media rather than as ink on paper

Can fiscal incentives stimulate regional investment in the Philippines? An update of empirical results

This study updates earlier estimates of the sensitivity of regional investment flows in the Philippines to fiscal incentives - income tax holidays and other fiscal inducements provided by government. All other factors held constant, the strength and significance of the investment-inducing effect of a given set of incentives can be gleaned from the size and significance of proxies used for incentives in investment regression equations. Using regional data, the regressions confirm that proxy variables for incentives are not good predictors for regional investment in the Philippines. The results reinforce previous empirical findings that, consistent with international evidence on the power of incentives, the power of incentives to influence patterns of regional investment within the Philippines is also weak. This reinforces the policy implications of Reside's (2006) paper - rather than waste resources providing ineffective investment subsidies, each region in the country would be better off if the Philippine government streamlined fiscal incentives, raised a sufficient amount of taxes and then procured the productivity-enhancing public goods (access to good .education and infrastructure) that really mattered more for investment and investors

Determinants of outcomes of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in infrastructure in Asia

This study analyzes cross-country data extracted from a large global database to identify the major risks affecting Asian PPP into six major factors: (1) macroeconomic environment; openness of economy; (2) incentive issues during planning, design and contracting phases; (3) political risk; (4) fiscal capacity of government; (5) firm-embodied traits: level of technical efficiency and capacity of proponents in construction and operations; and (6) other reasons - regulation, credit risk of buyers of output, etc. Policy recommendations are made

Comprehensive tax reform in the Philippines: Principles, history and recommendations

The new Duterte administration is planning to undertake a reform of the country's tax system. This paper provides a background to options available to the government moving forward, starting with basic principles of taxation, criteria for evaluation, tax instruments and mix of instruments. The background is complemented by a review of the history of past tax reforms in the Philippines, from the end of the Marcos regime to the Aquino administration. The historical and episodic assessment ends with a list of lessons learned from the past. Finally, recommendations are made for both tax policy and tax administration

Examining current or future trade-offs for biodiversity conservation in north-eastern Australia

With the high rate of ecosystem change already occurring and predicted to occur in the coming decades, long-term conservation has to account not only for current biodiversity but also for the biodiversity patterns anticipated for the future. The trade-offs between prioritising future biodiversity at the expense of current priorities must be understood to guide current conservation planning, but have been largely unexplored. To fill this gap, we compared the performance of four conservation planning solutions involving 662 vertebrate species in the Wet Tropics Natural Resource Management Cluster Region in north-eastern Australia. Input species data for the four planning solutions were: 1) current distributions; 2) projected distributions for 2055; 3) projected distributions for 2085; and 4) current, 2055 and 2085 projected distributions, and the connectivity between each of the three time periods for each species. The four planning solutions were remarkably similar (up to 85% overlap), suggesting that modelling for either current or future scenarios is sufficient for conversation planning for this region, with little obvious trade-off. Our analyses also revealed that overall, species with small ranges occurring across steep elevation gradients and at higher elevations were more likely to be better represented in all solutions. Given that species with these characteristics are of high conservation significance, our results provide confidence that conservation planning focused on either current, near-or distant-future biodiversity will account for these species.Peer reviewe

THE ELECTRONIC EDITION AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE

For many, contemporary theatre is represented by the musical. The form remains, however, virtually unstudied by literary scholars. In part, this may be a result of the difficulty of accessing the texts. Reading a musical from a traditional codex is no easy matter. The integration of text and music in a musical make it inappropriate to separate the two. One can try to follow along with a cast recording. In most cases, though, this is awkward. Many cast albums record a significantly modified version of the score and lyrics and few include the entire work. Further, musical theatre texts often exist in many different versions. This work begins with a summary of the problems one encounters when editing a multi-authored text (musicals often have a lyricist, librettist, and composer) which may be revised for practical (rather than aesthetic) reasons. The merits of restoring the material changed during the production process are debated. In this discussion some attempt is made to identify who should be considered the dominating collaborator (or auteur) of a musical. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the notion of trying to restore an authorial Ur-Text makes little sense given the multitude of collaborators involved in the process of making musicals. Instead, an electronic variorum edition is presented as an alternative means of studying and teaching musical theatre texts. The study concludes with a narrative of the authors own work on an electronic edition of the 1998 Broadway musical Parade and ends with a critical introduction to this text

Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use

Digital Humanities Initiative Level 1 Start Up funding is requested to support a series of site visits and planning meetings among personnel working with the born-digital components of three significant collections of literary material: the Salman Rushdie papers at Emory University's Woodruff Library, the Michael Joyce Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Deena Larsen Collection at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland. The meetings and site visits will facilitate the preparation of a larger collaborative grant proposal among the three institutions aimed at developing archival tools and best practices for preserving and curating the born-digital documents and records of contemporary authorship. Initial findings will be made available through a jointly authored and publicly distributed online white paper, as well as conference presentations at relevant venues

The economy on a cusp: The proposed VAT amendments and their larger significande

Debates on the revision of the value-added tax (VAT) are about to reach the penultimate stage. Once house and senate have passed their respective versions of the bill, congress - through a bicameral conference committee sometimes referred to as the 'third chamber' - must then agree on the final form of the law. After all the media-posturing, the politicking, and horse-trading have subsided, politicians of both chambers are still left to confront the nation's true interests - and their own consciences. It is vital that they finally pass a law that is right in form and adequate to the economy's needs