Public disclosure and tax compliance: evidence from Uganda

Public disclosure policies have potential to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. We study the effects of reporting delinquents and recognizing compliers and provide evidence on the social determinants of tax compliance. Our results are consistent with a model in which being publicly known as tax-eligible is costly but social sanctions for delinquency are limited. Further, disseminating information on tax behavior reduces the compliance of recipients by causing their beliefs to be updated down toward the true compliance rate. Overall, these policies are limited at raising revenue and less effective than simple enforcement reminder nudges

An examination of the acceptance of construction and demolition waste reduction measures by residential building contractors in Windsor and Essex County (Ontario).

Within the field of urban planning there is a growing recognition that the discipline must incorporate within its existing framework an environmental component that is sensitive to environmental concerns and which takes a proactive role. It is no longer possible to consider development in isolation without first looking at the consequences development has upon the natural and physical environment. The residential construction industry is seen as an industry where opportunity exists to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover material wasted during the construction process. The purpose of this study was to survey new residential building contractors in the Windsor/Essex County area and determine how they had been affected by waste reduction and minimization measures. After surveying 43 residential building contractors, analysis was conducted to determine the impact that waste reduction and minimization practices have had in the Windsor/Essex County area. The results suggest that the contractors surveyed do minimize waste on site for economic rather than environmental reasons. However, waste reduction and minimization literature designed specifically for contractors is not reaching them and the composition of new construction waste is quite different to previous studies done in other municipalities. This study should prove useful to other researchers investigating the issue of construction and demolition waste reduction in Windsor and Essex County area and else where.Dept. of Geography. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1995 .T36. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 34-02, page: 0622. Adviser: M. Matthew. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1995

HST and Spitzer Observations of the HD 207129 Debris Ring

A debris ring around the star HD 207129 (G0V; d = 16.0 pc) has been imaged in scattered visible light with the ACS coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope and in thermal emission using MIPS on the Spitzer Space Telescope at 70 microns (resolved) and 160 microns (unresolved). Spitzer IRS (7-35 microns) and MIPS (55-90 microns) spectrographs measured disk emission at >28 microns. In the HST image the disk appears as a ~30 AU wide ring with a mean radius of ~163 AU and is inclined by 60 degrees from pole-on. At 70 microns it appears partially resolved and is elongated in the same direction and with nearly the same size as seen with HST in scattered light. At 0.6 microns the ring shows no significant brightness asymmetry, implying little or no forward scattering by its constituent dust. With a mean surface brightness of V=23.7 mag per square arcsec, it is the faintest disk imaged to date in scattered light.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figure

Did the ancient egyptians record the period of the eclipsing binary Algol - the Raging one?

The eclipses in binary stars give precise information of orbital period changes. Goodricke discovered the 2.867 days period in the eclipses of Algol in the year 1783. The irregular orbital period changes of this longest known eclipsing binary continue to puzzle astronomers. The mass transfer between the two members of this binary should cause a long-term increase of the orbital period, but observations over two centuries have not confirmed this effect. Here, we present evidence indicating that the period of Algol was 2.850 days three millenia ago. For religious reasons, the ancient Egyptians have recorded this period into the Cairo Calendar, which describes the repetitive changes of the Raging one. Cairo Calendar may be the oldest preserved historical document of the discovery of a variable star.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, 11 table

Age estimation [editorial].

yesAssessing and interpreting dental and skeletal age-related changes in both the living and the dead is of interest to a wide range of disciplines (e.g. see Bittles and Collins 1986) including human biology, paediatrics, public health, palaeodemography, archaeology, palaeontology, human evolution, forensic anthropology and legal medicine. ... This special issue of Annals of Human Biology arises from the 55th annual symposium of the Society for the Study of Human Biology in association with the British Association for Biological Anthropological and Osteoarchaeology held in Oxford, UK, from 9–11 December 2014. Only a selection of the presentations are included here which encompass some of the major recent advances in age estimation from the dentition and skeleton

Design of a novel continuous flow reactor for low pH viral inactivation

Currently the Biopharamaceutical industry is moving from operating in batch mode to continuous manufacturing. Low pH viral inactivation is a highly effective and a common method used in monoclonal antibody purification processes. During this unit operation the product is pooled and held, presenting a major bottle neck to end-to-end continuous downstream processing. Moving from a holding tank to a tubular reactor would provide for a means of processing materials continuously. The major challenges with tubular reactors for this application include limiting and characterizing the axial dispersion to ensure sufficient incubation time. The main objective of this work was to design and characterization of the residence time distribution (RTD), exit age of fluid elements leaving the reactor, of a continuous tubular reactor (CTR) for low pH viral inactivation. The following CTR design criteria were generated to streamline integration into the downstream purification process: (1) a ≤ 5 psi pressure drop along the length of the tube, (2) radial mixing within the reactor without moving parts to minimize axial dispersion, (3) a minimum residence time (MRT) approach was used to ensure that the desired product holding time was met, (4) operating at the laminar flow regime to limit shear on the product and minimize the pressure drop along the tube length while operating at flow rates sufficient for a 100 L bioreactor continuous process. Curved pipes offer improved radial mixing due to the formation of Dean Vortices via centrifugal forces. Thus, to reduce axial dispersion, the reactor as designed to include curvature in flow path via alternating 270 turns which also induced changes in the flow direction with each turn or flow inversions. A modular design with incubation chambers that can be connected in series was generated and evaluated using computation fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation before a final design was 3D printed and experimentally evaluated. Comprehensive computational fluid dynamics modeling in ANSYS Fluent of the CTR via velocity profile and secondary flow streamlines show enhanced radial mixing due to secondary flows and changes in flow direction. CFD simulation results were validated by pulsed tracer experiments and were in sufficient agreement, RTD variance values within 6.7%, with the computational model. Scaling the CTR with length to ~115.1 m at 50 ml/min, resulted in a MRT of 70.4 ± 0.46 mins with a pressure drop of ~0.7 psi. With increased length the dimensionless RTD profiles become more symmetrical and tighter about the mean residence time, indicating a smaller deviation from plug flow with increased length. Further scalability of the design is currently under investigation via generation and CFD analysis of a geometrical scale-down model for viral clearance studies

Genetic diversity of Brazilian isolates of feline immunodeficiency virus

We isolated Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) from three adult domestic cats, originating from two open shelters in Brazil. Viruses were isolated from PBMC following co-cultivation with the feline T-lymphoblastoid cell line MYA-1. All amplified env gene products were cloned directly into pGL8MYA. The nucleic acid sequences of seven clones were determined and then compared with those of previously described isolates. The sequences of all of the Brazilian virus clones were distinct and phylogenetic analysis revealed that all belong to subtype B. Three variants isolated from one cat and two variants were isolated from each of the two other cats, indicating that intrahost diversity has the potential to pose problems for the treatment and diagnosis of FIV infection

Silver-based surface plasmon waveguide for terahertz quantum cascade lasers

Terahertz-frequency quantum cascade lasers (THz QCLs) based on ridge waveguides incorporating silver waveguide layers have been investigated theoretically and experimentally, and compared with traditional gold-based devices. The threshold gain associated with silver-, gold- and copper-based devices, and the effects of titanium adhesion layers and top contact layers, in both surface-plasmon and double-metal waveguide geometries, have been analysed. Our simulations show that silver-based waveguides yield lower losses for THz QCLs across all practical operating temperatures and frequencies. Experimentally, QCLs with silver-based surface-plasmon waveguides were found to exhibit higher operating temperatures and higher output powers compared to those with identical but gold-based waveguides. Specifically, for a three-well resonant phonon active region with a scaled oscillator strength of 0.43 and doping density of 6.83 × 10¹⁵ cm‾³, an increase of 5 K in the maximum operating temperature and 40% increase in the output power were demonstrated. These effects were found to be dependent on the active region design, and greater improvements were observed for QCLs with a larger radiative diagonality. Our results indicate that silver-based waveguide structures could potentially enable THz QCLs to operate at high temperatures

Establishing storm thresholds for the spanish gulf of Cádiz coast

In this study critical thresholds are defined for storm impacts along the Spanish coast of the Gulf of Cádiz. The thresholds correspond to the minimum wave and tide conditions necessary to produce significant morphological changes on beaches and dunes and/or damage on coastal infrastructure or human occupation. Threshold definition was performed by computing theoretical sea-level variations during storms and comparing them with the topography of the study area and the location of infrastructure at a local level. Specifically, the elevations of the berm, the dune foot and the entrance of existing washovers were selected as threshold parameters. The total sea-level variation generated by a storm event was estimated as the sum of the tidal level, the wind-induced setup, the barometric setup and the wave-associated sea-level variation (wave setup and runup), assuming a minimum interaction between the different processes. These components were calculated on the basis of parameterisations for significant wave height (Hs) obtained for the oceanographic and environmental conditions of the Gulf of Cadiz. For this purpose real data and reanalysis time-series (HIPOCAS project) were used. Validation of the obtained results was performed for a range of coastal settings over the study area. The obtained thresholds for beach morphological changes in spring tide conditions range between a significant wave height of 1.5 m and 3.7 m depending on beach characteristics, while for dune foot erosion are around 3.3 to 3.7 m and for damage to infrastructure around 7.2 m. In case of neap tide conditions these values are increased on average by 50% over the areas with large tidal range. Furthermore, records of real damage in coastal infrastructure caused by storms were collected at a regional level from newspapers and other bibliographic sources and compared with the hydrodynamic conditions that caused the damage. These were extracted from the hindcast database of the HIPOCAS project, including parameters such as storm duration, mean and maximum wave height and wave direction. Results show that the duration of the storm is not critical in determining the occurrence of coastal damage in the regional study area. This way, the threshold would be defined as a duration ≥30 hours, with moderate average wave height (≥3.3 m) and high maximum wave height (≥4.1 m) approaching from the 3rd and 4th quadrants, during mean or spring tide situation. The calculated thresholds constitute snapshots of risk conditions within a certain time framework. Beach and nearshore zones are extremely dynamic, and also the characteristics of occupation on the coast change over time, so critical storm thresholds will change accordingly and therefore will need to be updated