Redistributive effects in a dual income tax system

Equity issues of the dual income tax have been left aside in the field of economics. Since a dual income tax needs different modelling than a comprehensive one this paper offers firstly a quantitative framework to measure redistributive effects; it turns out that this involves both direct and indirect effects. The effects of horizontal inequity and re-ranking are also incorporated into the decomposition analysis. The approach is applicable using available income and tax statistics. Secondly, partial effects of changes in tax parameters are presented; they are channelled through the direct and indirect effects; and are not always straightforward.redistributive effect, progressivity, dual income tax.

Serial dependence in a simulated clinical visual search task.

In everyday life, we continuously search for and classify objects in the environment around us. This kind of visual search is extremely important when performed by radiologists in cancer image interpretation and officers in airport security screening. During these tasks, observers often examine large numbers of uncorrelated images (tumor x-rays, checkpoint x-rays, etc.) one after another. An underlying assumption of such tasks is that search and recognition are independent of our past experience. Here, we simulated a visual search task reminiscent of medical image search and found that shape classification performance was strongly impaired by recent visual experience, biasing classification errors 7% more towards the previous image content. This perceptual attraction exhibited the three main tuning characteristics of Continuity Fields: serial dependence extended over 12 seconds back in time (temporal tuning), it occurred only between similar tumor-like shapes (feature tuning), and only within a limited spatial region (spatial tuning). Taken together, these results demonstrate that serial dependence influences shape perception and occurs in visual search tasks. They also raise the possibility of a detrimental impact of serial dependence in clinical and practically relevant settings, such as medical image perception

Ten myths about character, virtue and virtue education – plus three well-founded misgivings

Initiatives to cultivate character and virtue in moral education at school continue to provoke sceptical responses. Most of those echo familiar misgivings about the notions of character, virtue and education in virtue – as unclear, redundant, old-fashioned, religious, paternalistic, anti-democratic, conservative, individualistic, relative and situation dependent. I expose those misgivings as ‘myths’, while at the same time acknowledging three better-founded historical, methodological and practical concerns about the notions in question

Teaching character - but what sort of character?

The issue of teaching character, which until now has mainly been debated within the ivory towers of academia, is suddenly all the rage in policy circles in the UK, in the wake of the report by the All-party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on social mobility, and Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt’s latest speech (http://www.governmentworld.com/schooling-for-the-future-speech-by-tristram-hunt/). The report suggests that teaching ‘character and resilience’ should be an essential part of every school’s ambition, and Hunt argues, in a similar vein, that character and resilience are vital components of a rounded education, a good preparation for a career – and that instilling them in young people ‘should not be left to chance’

Neural correlates of priming in vision: evidence from neuropsychology and neuroimaging

Hægt er að lesa greinina í heild sinni með því að smella á hlekkinn View/OpenWhen we look around us, we are overall more likely to notice objects that we have recently looked at; an effect known as priming. For example, when the color or shape of a visual search target is repeated, observers find the target faster than otherwise. Here I summarize recent research undertaken to uncover the temporary changes in brain activity that accompany these priming effects. In light of the fact that priming seems to have a large effect on how attention is allocated, we investigated priming effects in a visual search task on patients suffering from the neurological disorder "hemispatial neglect" in which patients typically fail to notice display items in one of their visual hemifields. Priming of target color was relatively normal for these patients, while priming of target location seemed to require awareness of the briefly presented visual search target. An experiment with functional magnetic resonance imaging of normal observers revealed that both color and location priming had a strong modulatory influence on attentional mechanisms of the frontal and parietal cortex. Color priming was also correlated with changes in activity in visual cortex as well as color processing areas in the temporal lobe. Location priming was correlated with changes in activity near the temporo- parietal junction and lateral inferior frontal cortex, areas that have been connected with attentional capture; which ties well with our finding of deficits of location priming for the neglect patients who indeed have lesions in the temporo-parietal junction. Overall, the results confirm the tight coupling of visual attention and priming in vision, and also that the visual areas of the brain show some modulation of activity as priming develops.Þegar við horfum í kringum okkur erum við að jafnaði líklegri til þess að taka eftir hlutum sem hafa svipaða eiginleika og þeir hlutir sem við höfum nýverið horft á. Dæmi um ýfingu (priming) af þessu tagi er að þegar litur eða lögun mark­áreitis í sjónleitarverkefni er endurtekinn eru þátttakendur að jafnaði fljótari að finna áreitið en annars. Rannsakað var hvaða tímabundnar breytingar verða á heilastarfi mannsins þegar þessi ýfingaráhrif eiga sér stað. Ýfingaráhrifin virðast hafa áhrif á það hverju við veitum athygli hverju sinni og því voru birtingarmyndir ýfingaráhrifa í sjónleitarverkefni athugaðar í sjúklingum með taugabilunina gaumstol (hemispatial neglect) sem má rekja til heilaskemmda í hvirfilblaði heila, og einkennist af truflunum á því að veita áreitum í öðru hvoru sjónsviði athygli. Ýfingaráhrif vegna litar markáreitis voru óbreytt hjá þessum sjúklingum en rannsókn þar sem áreiti voru einungis birt í 200 millisekúndur sýndi að ýfing vegna endurtekinnar staðsetningar markáreitis var háð því að sjúklingarnir tækju eftir markáreitinu. Starfræn segulómmyndunarrannsókn (fMRI) á heilbrigðum þátttakendum leiddi í ljós að taugakerfi í hvirfil- og ennisblaði sem tengjast verkan eftirtektar tengdust ýfingaráhrifum, en jafnframt tengdust litaýfingaráhrif virkni í sjónsvæðum hnakkablaðs og á litasvæðum í gagnaugablaði. Ýfingaráhrif tengd endurtekningu staðsetningar markáreitisins tengdist jafnframt virkni á svæðum á mótum hnakka- og gagnaugablaðs og á hliðlægum hluta ennisblaðs sem hafa verið talin tengd því þegar eitthvað fangar athygli okkar, og eru þessi svæði í gagnauga- og hvirfilblaði einmitt þau svæði sem eru oftast skemmd í gaumstoli. Í heild staðfesta niðurstöðurnar tengsl ýfingaráhrifa í sjónskynjun og eftirtekt, en bera því jafnframt vott að breytingar á virkni í sjónsvæðum heilans tengist ýfingaráhrifum