Are there spurious temperature trends in the United States Climate Division database

The United States (U.S.) Climate Division data set is commonly used in applied climatic studies in the United States. The divisional averages are calculated by including all available stations within a division at any given time. The averages are therefore vulnerable to shifts in average station location or elevation over time, which may introduce spurious trends within these data. This paper examines temperature trends within the 15 climate divisions of New England, comparing the NCDC\u27s U.S. Divisional Data to the U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) data. Correlation and multiple regression revealed that shifts in latitude, longitude, and elevation have affected the quality of the NCDC divisional data with respect to the USHCN. As a result, there may be issues with regard to their use in decadal- to century-scale climate change studies

Taxes, Efficiency and Economic Growth

In the third paper on taxation, Jack M. Mintz and Thomas A. Wilson consider the best way to allocate the “fiscal dividend”. This is the amount available to the government that can be used for tax cuts or expenditure increases within the framework of a balanced budget. In their view, although the current growth recession will reduce the potential surplus somewhat, the medium-term outlook is still for increasing surpluses. Concerned about lagging economic growth and emphasizing the importance of efficiency and productivity growth, they argue that priority should be given to debt reduction and tax cuts designed to stimulate investment and potential growth. Mintz and Wilson make the case that a large part of the remaining fiscal dividend should be allocated towards reducing the relatively large personal income tax burden faced by many Canadian families and individuals. But they also stress that it is important to steadily reduce payroll and business taxes as well. This case is supported by extensive international comparisons of taxes in Canada with other countries that show that the burden of taxation is higher in Canada than in many other industrialized countries. It is also bolstered by the results of simulations, using the FOCUS macroeconometric model, of a fiscal package containing significant debt reduction, modest spending increases and cuts in personal, business and payroll taxes. These simulations show such a fiscal package should have favourable supply-side effects on output, employment and productivity over the medium term. In addition, since their analysis reveals that there are still important issues of tax structure that need to be addressed, they recommend that the government establish a task force to review personal income taxes and to consider the need for additional tax cuts. Finally, Mintz and Wilson also remind us that while planned debt reduction is an important component of a growth-oriented fiscal policy, in the short run the size of the surplus should be allowed to vary with the level of economic activity. Otherwise fiscal policy will exacerbate the slowdown that is currently underway.FOCUS, Taxation, Simulation, Forecast, Efficiency, Growth, Debt Reduction

Ecological and evolutionary processes at expanding range margins

Many animals are regarded as relatively sedentary and specialized in marginal parts of their geographical distributions. They are expected to be slow at colonizing new habitats. Despite this, the cool margins of many species' distributions have expanded rapidly in association with recent climate warming. We examined four insect species that have expanded their geographical ranges in Britain over the past 20 years. Here we report that two butterfly species have increased the variety of habitat types that they can colonize, and that two bush cricket species show increased fractions of longer-winged (dispersive) individuals in recently founded populations. Both ecological and evolutionary processes are probably responsible for these changes. Increased habitat breadth and dispersal tendencies have resulted in about 3- to 15-fold increases in expansion rates, allowing these insects to cross habitat disjunctions that would have represented major or complete barriers to dispersal before the expansions started. The emergence of dispersive phenotypes will increase the speed at which species invade new environments, and probably underlies the responses of many species to both past and future climate change

Gift Tax Consequences of Interest-Free Loans between Family Members

The recently decided case of Crown v. Commissioner reinforced the tax court\u27s position that imputed interest on an interest-free loan is not a taxable gift. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) continues to take the contrary position that interest-free loans do constitute gifts of an amount equal to the interest charge that it usually made for the use of that amount of money. The IRS position on the taxation of interest-free loans is consistent with both economic reality and gift tax principles. An examination of the economic substance of interest-free loans highlights the court\u27s reliance on the form of the transaction. The right to the use of money and other property is a valuable property interest, and when no charge is made for the transfer of this property interest there is a transfer for less than adequate consideration. This constitutes a gift. Because courts are reluctant to interfere in intrafamily loans, the decisions emphasize the formal and procedural difficulties involved in the treatment of interest-free loans as gifts. The absence of a contractual obligation to pay interest is not always a bar to finding a gift under the tax laws, and even a demand note can be valued consistently with gift tax principles. Because some courts will not independently relinquish their form over substance reasoning, this Comment proposes that legislative direction is needed to assure that interest-free loans are consistently treated as gift taxable events

Nuclear fragmentation studies for microelectronic application

A formalism for target fragment transport is presented with application to energy loss spectra in thin silicon devices. Predicted results are compared to experiments with the surface barrier detectors of McNulty et al. The intranuclear cascade nuclear reaction model does not predict the McNulty experimental data for the highest energy events. A semiempirical nuclear cross section gives an adequate explanation of McNulty's experiments. Application of the formalism to specific electronic devices is discussed

Inhibitory control as a mediator of bidirectional effects between early oppositional behavior and maternal depression.

Maternal depression is an established risk factor for child conduct problems, but relatively few studies have tested whether children's behavioral problems exacerbate mothers' depression or whether other child behavioral characteristics (e.g., self-regulation) may mediate bidirectional effects between maternal depression and child disruptive behavior. This longitudinal study examined the parallel growth of maternal depressive symptoms and child oppositional behavior from ages 2 to 5; the magnitude and timing of their bidirectional effects; and whether child inhibitory control, a temperament-based self-regulatory mechanism, mediated effects between maternal depression and child oppositionality. A randomized control trial of 731 at-risk families assessed children annually from ages 2 to 5. Transactional models demonstrated positive and bidirectional associations between mothers' depressive symptoms and children's oppositional behavior from ages 2 to 3, with a less consistent pattern of reciprocal relations up to age 5. Mediation of indirect mother-child effects and child evocative effects depended on the rater of children's inhibitory control. Findings are discussed in regard to how child evocative effects and self-regulatory mechanisms may clarify the transmission of psychopathology within families

Antibodies to glycans dominate the host response to schistosome larvae and eggs: Is their role protective or subversive?

Multiple exposures of chimpanzees to the radiation-attenuated schistosome vaccine provoked a strong parasite-specific cellular and humoral immune response. Specific IgM and IgG were directed mainly against glycans on antigens released by cercariae; these were also cross-reactive with soluble antigens from larvae, adult worms, and eggs. Egg deposition was the major antigenic stimulus after challenge of vaccinated and control chimpanzees with normal parasites, eliciting strong antiglycan responses to egg secretions. Glycan epitopes recognized included LacdiNAc, fucosylated LacdiNAc, LewisX (weakly), and those on keyhole limpet hemocyanin. Antibodies to peptide epitopes became prominent only during the chronic phase of infection, as glycan-specific IgM and IgG decreased. Because of their intensity and cross-reactivity, the antiglycan responses resulting from infection could be a smoke screen to subvert the immune system away from more vulnerable larval peptide epitopes. Their occurrence in humans might explain the long time required for antischistosome immunity to build up after infection