The IRS\u27 Classification Settlement Program: Is it an Adequate Tool to Relieve Taxpayer Burden for Small Businesses that have Misclassified Workers as Independent Contractors

This Note argues that the timely filing of informational tax forms should not be a condition of an IRS Classification Settlement Program (CSP) settlement offer; the CSP should incorporate more settlement options; and the CSP should make settlement offers mandatory. Part II of this Note will discuss the legal history behind worker classification. Part III will demonstrate the unique situation of the small business owner in classifying workers. Part IV will explain § 530, a safe harbor provision for small business owners who have incorrectly classified workers. Part V will introduce the CSP in detail and explain its applications. Part VI will highlight the shortcomings of the CSP. Part VII will discuss possible solutions to CSP shortcomings. Part VII will conclude

The IRS\u27 Classification Settlement Program: Is it an Adequate Tool to Relieve Taxpayer Burden for Small Businesses that have Misclassified Workers as Independent Contractors

This Note argues that the timely filing of informational tax forms should not be a condition of an IRS Classification Settlement Program (CSP) settlement offer; the CSP should incorporate more settlement options; and the CSP should make settlement offers mandatory. Part II of this Note will discuss the legal history behind worker classification. Part III will demonstrate the unique situation of the small business owner in classifying workers. Part IV will explain § 530, a safe harbor provision for small business owners who have incorrectly classified workers. Part V will introduce the CSP in detail and explain its applications. Part VI will highlight the shortcomings of the CSP. Part VII will discuss possible solutions to CSP shortcomings. Part VII will conclude

Monte Carlo Calculations of Electron Emission at Surface Edges

A Monte Carlo method using Mott cross-sections for elastic scattering and a modification of the Bethe continuous-slowing-down by inelastic scattering at inner- shell electrons has been used to calculate linescans across surface edges and steps using a two-detector system for SE and BSE with exit momenta to the right (detector A) and to the left (detector B). The step height h=10R, R, R/2, R/5 and R/10 (R = electron range) and the inclination angles =30°- 80° of edges and steps have been varied to get information about the influence of these quantities on the linescans. The signals contain contributions by surface tilt contrast, electron diffusion contrast, self-shadowing of the specimen and \u27mutual illumination\u27 caused by backscattered electrons re-entering the specimen. The latter results in a larger increase of the signal for an extended step relative to a surface edge with the same angle The difference signals A-B contain information about the surface profile. The SE A-B signal is in first order proportional to tan and the BSE A-B signal is proportional to sin where denotes the local surface tilt angle. Reconstructions of the surface profile using the calculated signals show the errors caused by signal contributions different to pure surface tilt contrast

Reorganize your blogs: Supporting blog re-visitation with natural language processing and visualization

Temporally-connected personal blogs contain voluminous textual content, presenting challenges in re-visiting and reflecting on experiences. Other data repositories have benefited from natural language processing (NLP) and interactive visualizations (VIS) to support exploration, but little is known about how these techniques could be used with blogs to present experiences and support multimodal interaction with blogs, particularly for authors. This paper presents the effect of reorganization—reorganizing the large blog set with NLP and presenting abstract topics with VIS—to support novel re-visitation experiences to blogs. The BlogCloud tool, a blog re-visitation tool that reorganizes blog paragraphs around user-searched keywords, implements reorganization and similarity-based content grouping. Through a public use session with bloggers who wrote about extended hikes, we observed the effect of NLP-based reorganization in delivering novel re-visitation experiences. Findings suggest that the re-presented topics provide new reflection materials and re-visitation paths, enabling interaction with symbolic items in memory

Effect of workplace- versus home-based physical exercise on pain in healthcare workers:study protocol for a single blinded cluster randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: The prevalence and consequences of musculoskeletal pain is considerable among healthcare workers, allegedly due to high physical work demands of healthcare work. Previous investigations have shown promising results of physical exercise for relieving pain among different occupational groups, but the question remains whether such physical exercise should be performed at the workplace or conducted as home-based exercise. Performing physical exercise at the workplace together with colleagues may be more motivating for some employees and thus increase adherence. On the other hand, physical exercise performed during working hours at the workplace may be costly for the employers in terms of time spend. Thus, it seems relevant to compare the efficacy of workplace- versus home-based training on musculoskeletal pain. This study is intended to investigate the effect of workplace-based versus home-based physical exercise on musculoskeletal pain among healthcare workers. METHODS/DESIGN: This study was designed as a cluster randomized controlled trial performed at 3 hospitals in Copenhagen, Denmark. Clusters are hospital departments and hospital units. Cluster randomization was chosen to increase adherence and avoid contamination between interventions. Two hundred healthcare workers from 18 departments located at three different hospitals is allocated to 10 weeks of 1) workplace based physical exercise performed during working hours (using kettlebells, elastic bands and exercise balls) for 5 × 10 minutes per week and up to 5 group-based coaching sessions, or 2) home based physical exercise performed during leisure time (using elastic bands and body weight exercises) for 5 × 10 minutes per week. Both intervention groups will also receive ergonomic instructions on patient handling and use of lifting aides etc. Inclusion criteria are female healthcare workers working at a hospital. Average pain intensity (VAS scale 0-10) of the back, neck and shoulder (primary outcome) and physical exertion during work, social capital and work ability (secondary outcomes) is assessed at baseline and 10-week follow-up. Further, postural balance and mechanical muscle function is assessed during clinical examination at baseline and follow-up. DISCUSSION: This cluster randomized trial will investigate the change in self-rated average pain intensity in the back, neck and shoulder after either 10 weeks of physical exercise at the workplace or at home. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01921764)

Towards freeform curved blazed gratings using diamond machining.

Concave blazed gratings greatly simplify the architecture of spectrographs by reducing the number of optical components. The production of these gratings using diamond-machining offers practically no limits in the design of the grating substrate shape, with the possibility of making large sag freeform surfaces unlike the alternative and traditional method of holography and ion etching. In this paper, we report on the technological challenges and progress in the making of these curved blazed gratings using an ultra-high precision 5 axes Moore-Nanotech machine. We describe their implementation in an integral field unit prototype called IGIS (Integrated Grating Imaging Spectrograph) where freeform curved gratings are used as pupil mirrors. The goal is to develop the technologies for the production of the next generation of low-cost, compact, high performance integral field unit spectrometers

Directly Imaging Rocky Planets from the Ground

Over the past three decades instruments on the ground and in space have discovered thousands of planets outside the solar system. These observations have given rise to an astonishingly detailed picture of the demographics of short-period planets, but are incomplete at longer periods where both the sensitivity of transit surveys and radial velocity signals plummet. Even more glaring is that the spectra of planets discovered with these indirect methods are either inaccessible (radial velocity detections) or only available for a small subclass of transiting planets with thick, clear atmospheres. Direct detection can be used to discover and characterize the atmospheres of planets at intermediate and wide separations, including non-transiting exoplanets. Today, a small number of exoplanets have been directly imaged, but they represent only a rare class of young, self-luminous super-Jovian-mass objects orbiting tens to hundreds of AU from their host stars. Atmospheric characterization of planets in the <5 AU regime, where radial velocity (RV) surveys have revealed an abundance of other worlds, is technically feasible with 30-m class apertures in combination with an advanced AO system, coronagraph, and suite of spectrometers and imagers. There is a vast range of unexplored science accessible through astrometry, photometry, and spectroscopy of rocky planets, ice giants, and gas giants. In this whitepaper we will focus on one of the most ambitious science goals --- detecting for the first time habitable-zone rocky (<1.6 R_Earth) exoplanets in reflected light around nearby M-dwarfsComment: 8 pages, 1 figure, Astro2020 Science White Pape