Corporate Income Tax Rate Database - Canada and the Provinces, 1960-2005

This database includes rates for several elements of the corporate income tax set by the federal government (the basic rate, the corporate surtax, federal tax abatement and the manufacturing and processing profits tax credit) as well as corporate income tax rates by province for the years 1960-2005.database, corporate tax, corporate income tax, provincial, province, Canada, time series, Agribusiness, Demand and Price Analysis, Industrial Organization,

Net Farm Income, Market Prices and Agricultural Productivity Growth in the United States

If the claimants of net farm income are operators and unpaid family members, net farm income can be expressed as a real implicit wage per hour of work. Bennet indicators are used to decompose changes in the real implicit wage into input and output price change components and partial factor productivity growth (PFPG). PFPG is the difference between output growth and the growth of all inputs but operator and unpaid family labor. Data from the ERS production account for U.S. agriculture for 1948-2002 are used. The results show that, on average, positive PFPG was either partially or fully offset by the output and input price components. These results suggest that the accepted wisdom namely that agricultural productivity growth is key to the sectors prosperity has not taken into account the effect of output and input market price changes that happen at the same time.Productivity Analysis,

Synthetic Quantum Systems

So far proposed quantum computers use fragile and environmentally sensitive natural quantum systems. Here we explore the new notion that synthetic quantum systems suitable for quantum computation may be fabricated from smart nanostructures using topological excitations of a stochastic neural-type network that can mimic natural quantum systems. These developments are a technological application of process physics which is an information theory of reality in which space and quantum phenomena are emergent, and so indicates the deep origins of quantum phenomena. Analogous complex stochastic dynamical systems have recently been proposed within neurobiology to deal with the emergent complexity of biosystems, particularly the biodynamics of higher brain function. The reasons for analogous discoveries in fundamental physics and neurobiology are discussed.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, 1 eps figure fil

Investigation of Metal and Organic Contaminant Distributions and Sedimentation Rates in Backwater Lakes along the Illinois River

Systematic sub-sampling of sediment cores in sections of uniform thickness is necessary in order to evaluate historic changes in sediment quality, to determine the vertical extent of contamination, and to measure sedimentation rates. With these objectives in mind, fourteen sediment cores were collected during March 2002 using the Illinois State Water Survey vibracorer. Concentrations of metals and total organic carbon were measured using standard techniques. Concentrations of chlorinated pesticides, phenolic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were measured by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The concentrations of chlorinated pesticides, phenolic compounds and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were below the method detection limit in all sediment samples analyzed. However, there was a wide range in concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which were detected in all sediment samples. Also, a wide range of metal concentrations was noted in the sediments evaluated. Lower concentrations of metals were found in the upper 0.5 m of sediment but concentrations were elevated at depths ranging from 1.0 m to 1.5 m. Sedimentation rates were estimated using cesium-137 radiometric dating on 14 vibracores. Sedimentation rates range from < 0.1 to 1.9 cm/yr, with an average of 0.9 cm/yr. These rates are comparable to those reported in previous studies.Illinois Sustainable Technology Centerpublished or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Lessons and Prospects from the pMSSM after LHC Run I: Neutralino LSP

We study SUSY signatures at the 7, 8 and 14 TeV LHC employing the 19-parameter, R-Parity conserving p(henomenological)MSSM, in the scenario with a neutralino LSP. Our results were obtained via a fast Monte Carlo simulation of the ATLAS SUSY analysis suite. The flexibility of this framework allows us to study a wide variety of SUSY phenomena simultaneously and to probe for weak spots in existing SUSY search analyses. We determine the ranges of the sparticle masses that are either disfavored or allowed after the searches with the 7 and 8 TeV data sets are combined. We find that natural SUSY models with light squarks and gluinos remain viable. We extrapolate to 14 TeV with both 300 fb$^{-1}$ and 3 ab$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity and determine the expected sensitivity of the jets + MET and stop searches to the pMSSM parameter space. We find that the high-luminosity LHC will be powerful in probing SUSY with neutralino LSPs and can provide a more definitive statement on the existence of natural Supersymmetry.Comment: 41 pages, 27 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1307.844

Saving phase: Injectivity and stability for phase retrieval

Recent advances in convex optimization have led to new strides in the phase retrieval problem over finite-dimensional vector spaces. However, certain fundamental questions remain: What sorts of measurement vectors uniquely determine every signal up to a global phase factor, and how many are needed to do so? Furthermore, which measurement ensembles lend stability? This paper presents several results that address each of these questions. We begin by characterizing injectivity, and we identify that the complement property is indeed a necessary condition in the complex case. We then pose a conjecture that 4M-4 generic measurement vectors are both necessary and sufficient for injectivity in M dimensions, and we prove this conjecture in the special cases where M=2,3. Next, we shift our attention to stability, both in the worst and average cases. Here, we characterize worst-case stability in the real case by introducing a numerical version of the complement property. This new property bears some resemblance to the restricted isometry property of compressed sensing and can be used to derive a sharp lower Lipschitz bound on the intensity measurement mapping. Localized frames are shown to lack this property (suggesting instability), whereas Gaussian random measurements are shown to satisfy this property with high probability. We conclude by presenting results that use a stochastic noise model in both the real and complex cases, and we leverage Cramer-Rao lower bounds to identify stability with stronger versions of the injectivity characterizations.Comment: 22 page

An Investigation of The Effect of Hypoxic Culture on Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Immunomodulation and Biodistribution in-vivo

The overarching aim of this work was to investigate the effects of hypoxic culture on mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) immunomodulation and biodistribution in-vitro and in-vivo. Thus far, MSC have proved therapeutically beneficial for a number of inflammatory diseases such as acute Graft versus Host Disease (aGvHD). However, despite extensive in-vitro characterisations of MSC mechansims of immunomodulation, the exact modes of action in-vivo are not well understood. Importantly, large numbers of MSC are required in pre-clinical and clinical studies to further explore their utility in medicine. Despite the availability of MSC from almost all adult tissues, their ex-vivo life span is not finite and thus limits their in-vitro culture yield. Interestingly, physiological hypoxia can be employed in the laboratory to increase MSC numbers while mirroring a natural micro-environmental niche encountered in-vivo and therefore more biologically relevant. However, the effect hypoxia has on MSC immunomodulation has not been fully delineated. Therefore, the key goals of this thesis were to: (1) Determine what effect, if any, hypoxia exerts on MSC immunomodulatory abilities in-vitro and in a humanised mouse model of aGvHD. (2) Examine the short term homing capacity of hypoxic and normoxic culture expanded MSC in aGvHD. This study demonstrated that hypoxic culture increases MSC numbers in comparison to normoxic culture. In-vitro analysis of the effects of hypoxic MSC on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) revealed less potent suppressor capacity than their normoxic counterparts. However, when harnessed in a humanised mouse model of aGvHD, it was revealed that hypoxic MSC prolonged the survival of aGvHD mice in line with normoxic MSC therapeutic efficacy. Of note, both hypoxic and normoxic MSC displayed similar biodistribution profiles, capable of migrating to aGvHD target organs as assessed by novel 3D Cryo-imaging. These findings contribute to a wider understanding of the effect of hypoxic culture on MSC immune regulation both in-vitro and in-vivo. In conclusion, this research provides a clinically and physiologically relevant method of culture expanding MSC for the treatment of inflammatory disease with the aim of reaching more patients in the clinic