Book Review: The Indian Christiad

A review of The Indian Christiad by Anand Amaladass and Richard Fox Young

Cross-border group-taxation and loss-offset in the EU: An analysis for CCCTB (Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base) and ETAS (European Tax Allocation System)

The European Commission proposed to replace the currently existing Separate Accounting by an EU-wide tax system based on a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). Besides the CCCTB, there is an alternative tax reform proposal, the European Tax Allocation System (ETAS). In a dynamic capital budgeting model we analyze the impacts of selected loss-offset limitations currently existing in the EU under both concepts on corporate crossborder real investments of MNE. The analyses show that replacing Separate Accounting by either concept can lead to increasing profitability due to cross-border loss compensation. However, if the profitability increases, the study indicates that the main criteria of decisions on location are the tax rate divergences within the EU Member States. High tax rate differentials in the Member States imply significant redistribution of tax payments under CCCTB and ETAS. The results clarify that in both reform proposals tax payment reallocations occur in favor of the holding. National loss-offset limitations and minimum taxation concepts in tendency lose their impact on the profitability under both proposals. However, we found scenarios in which national minimum taxation can encroach upon the group level, although in our model the minimum taxation's impacts seem to be slight. Moreover, we identify harmful paradoxes in ETAS due to the tax credit mechanism. Our results can contribute to the current discussion on corporate group tax harmonization within the EU and other economic zones, e.g. the US, and help to anticipate the tax effects of lossoffset restrictions under the respective tax systems. --Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base,corporate taxation,European Tax Allocation System,Formula Apportionment,group taxation,investment,loss carry-forward,loss-offset,minimum taxation

Validation of an automated assay for measurement of bovine plasma ceruloplasmin

Ceruloplasmin (Cp) plays an important role in copper transport and iron metabolism, as well as Cp is also an indicator for the health status of dairy cows. The present study reports the validation of an automated assay to assess the plasma Cp in dairy cows. Plasma Cp levels were determined in 40 Holstein cows and intra- and inter-assay precision, accuracy, detection limit, and clinical validation of the assay were determined. Intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variation were < 2% and < 7%, respectively. The results were linear when serial sample dilutions were tested (r = 0.999, P < 0.001). The detection limit was lower than what could be measured in plasma from healthy cows. Increased plasma Cp levels were found in cows with inflammatory diseases. The method validated in this study is precise, simple, and fast and can be easily adapted to biochemical automated analysers. Furthermore, the promising results obtained with this protein will contribute to a wider use of Cp determination in bovine practice

Viewpoints: Levels of Dialogue

As in any human relationship, the relationship between religions is also taking place at many levels: There is the merely external physical or social meeting, which can take the form of a neutral coexistence or aggressive confrontation. Then there is the human level of living together which can produce a certain mutual understanding and acceptance. This happens naturally in any pluri-religious society, among neighbours, colleagues at work, or even within the same family as in the case of interreligious marriages. Another type of conscious dialogue takes place on the academic or intellectual level. In fact, most of what is talked and written about \u27dialogue\u27, and most of the organized dialogue-meetings belong to this intellectual level. Another kind of dialogue or meeting between Hindus and Christians is at the devotional level, liek sharing of festivals, prayers and rituals. It is often assumed that this is the best and easiest contact between the two religions, because bhakti touches the heart and not only the head level. However, there is an even deeper spritual level on which a Hindu and a Christian can meet

Reports and Interviews: Abhishiktananda Society: Retreat--Seminar: Mysticism -- Saiva and Christian: Rajpur, India November 1-6, 1990

It was Swami Abhishiktananda\u27s dream to realize a spiritual dialogue between Hinduism and Christianity. During his lifetime most of the dialogue meetings in which he took an active part were in fact ecumenical meetings of Christians encountering Hinduism. Together we had planned a Hindu-Christian meeting in Varanasi which did not come about. In fact, Swamiji\u27s was a personal dialogue, first within himself, and with his Hindu gurus, friends, fellow sannyasis and disciples. The results he passed on to his Christian friends and disciples

Temporal and spatial distortions in adult amblyopia

Amblyopia is a developmental disorder of the visual system that leads to reduced vision in one or both eyes. People suffering from amblyopia show different perceptual deficits like reduced contrast sensitivity, reduced or no stereopsis, spatial uncertainty, and spatial and temporal distortions when viewing with the amblyopic eye. In the following thesis, different psychophysical methods are used to investigate anomalous perception of amblyopic participants in detail with the main focus on the perception of temporal instability. In the qualitative experimental paradigms it is shown that temporal instability is mainly perceived by strabismic and strabismic-anisometropic amblyopes. The temporal deficits occur only at spatial frequencies higher than 1.6 c/deg, and are perceived in addition to the spatial distortions. Illusory colours sometimes accompany the temporal distortions. There seems to be a relationship between crossed hand and eye dominance and the perception of temporal instability. In the quantitative experiments it is shown that temporal instability in amblyopic perception has a negative impact on the performance in psychophysical tasks. Amblyopes perceiving temporal instability show enhanced spatial uncertainty and spatial distortions for different types of stimulus presentation (auditive vs. visual) when compared to amblyopes without temporal instability. This might be due to deficits in auditive-visual mapping. These deficits in auditory-to-visual mapping suggest an impairment of the dorsal “where” pathway. Thus, it might be that amblyopes with temporal distortions have deficits in the dorsal pathway that come up in addition to the known deficits of the ventral “what” pathway and are related to the perception of temporal instability. The different results of the experiments found in this thesis seem to confirm this hypothesis. Studies using functional imaging techniques might be appropriate for a further investigation of amblyopic deficits involving the dorsal pathway

Imperfect Thermalizations Allow for Optimal Thermodynamic Processes

Optimal (reversible) processes in thermodynamics can be modelled as step-by-step processes, where the system is successively thermalized with respect to different Hamiltonians by an external thermal bath. However, in practice interactions between system and thermal bath will take finite time, and precise control of their interaction is usually out of reach. Motivated by this observation, we consider finite-time and uncontrolled operations between system and bath, which result in thermalizations that are only partial in each step. We show that optimal processes can still be achieved for any non-trivial partial thermalizations at the price of increasing the number of operations, and characterise the corresponding tradeoff. We focus on work extraction protocols and show our results in two different frameworks: A collision model and a model where the Hamiltonian of the working system is controlled over time and the system can be brought into contact with a heat bath. Our results show that optimal processes are robust to noise and imperfections in small quantum systems, and can be achieved by a large set of interactions between system and bath.Comment: 12 pages + appendix; extended results; accepted in Quantu