TAXATION - COMPENSATING USE TAX - THEORY - BURDEN ON INTERSTATE COMMERCE

The California Use Tax Act of 1935 imposes an excise tax on the storage or use of personal property purchased in other states and brought into California. Plaintiff railroad bought materials and supplies in other states and stored them in California before installation on its interstate railroad system, and the tax was assessed on them. Held, the tax is unconstitutional as applied to such property as a direct burden on interstate commerce. Where the property was purchased for the sole purpose of being reserve equipment in an interstate commerce plant it is employed in interstate commerce from the time of its purchase. Southern Pacific Co. v. Corbett, (D. C. Cal. 1937) 20 F. Supp. 940

TAXATION - INCOME TAX - SURTAX ON INCOME OF CORPORATION WHERE PROFITS ARE ACCUMULATED TO AVOID SURTAX ON INCOME OF ITS SHAREHOLDERS - CONSTRUCTION

Section 104 of the Revenue Act of 1928 imposed a surtax on the net income of any corporation formed or availed of for the purpose of preventing the imposition of the surtax on its shareholders through the medium of permitting its gains and profits to accumulate instead of being divided and distributed, and provided that the fact that the gains or profits are permitted to accumulate beyond the reasonable needs of the business shall be prima facie evidence of a purpose to escape the surtax. Defendant corporation was formed in 1911 with $200,000 capital stock all owned by Kohl. In 1931 the net profits of the corporation were more than$682,000 and it had a surplus of nearly $8,000,000. Its excess of cash on hand over accounts payable was$1,136,820. It had declared no dividends since 1919 when the high personal surtaxes went into effect. If it had declared dividends of profits in each of those years the additional surtax paid by Kohl would have been $1,240,852 and if it had declared all of its 1931 profits in dividends Kohl\u27s additional surtax for the year would have been more than$115,000. During the past seven years Kohl had borrowed $610,000 from the corporation. Held, the corporation was liable for the surtax imposed by section 104. The tax is constitutional, and is applicable to a legitimate business corporation availed of for the forbidden purpose. There was ample evidence that the surplus accumulated was in excess of the reasonable needs of the business; and, even without the aid of the presumption, there was sufficient evidence to show that the corporation was availed of to withhold dividends to defeat the surtax on the stockholder. Helvering v. National Grocery Co., 304 U. S. 282, 58 S. Ct. 932 (1938), rehearing denied 59 S. Ct. 56

NEGLIGENCE - OVERCROWDING OF AUTOMOBILE AS CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE PREVENTING RECOVERY BY GUEST

Plaintiff, an eighteen-year-old girl, was riding in the front seat of a Ford coupe with three young men on a clear night. The car, driven by defendant, was going sixty to sixty-five miles per hour and in rounding a curve struck another car. Plaintiff was thrown out and injured. The driver of the second car was joined as codefendant. Held, when more than three persons occupy the front seat of a car, overcrowding it and hampering the driver, those overcrowding it are guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law; and where the accident was caused by lack of due care by the driver it is not necessary to show that the overcrowding was a proximate cause, as it is common knowledge that overcrowding interferes with reasonable control of the car. McIntyre v. Pope, 326 Pa. 172, 191 A. 607 (1937)

PUBLIC UTILITY HOLDING COMPANY ACT - CORPORATE SIMPLIFICATION AND GEOGRAPHIC INTEGRATION UNDER SECTION II

Section II of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, the so-called death sentence clause, carries the specifications for achieving two of the government\u27s main objectives in passing the act: corporate simplification and geographical integration of the large utility holding company systems

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW - INVESTIGATING POWERS OF FEDERAL COMMISSIONERS - SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

A recent decision in the Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the constitutionality of the powers of search granted to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Securities Act of 1933 brings to the fore again the question of the extent to which the Federal Government may validly investigate and demand the production of the books and records of private businesses

The Dynamics of Supply and Demand in mRNA Translation

We study the elongation stage of mRNA translation in eukaryotes and find that, in contrast to the assumptions of previous models, both the supply and the demand for tRNA resources are important for determining elongation rates. We find that increasing the initiation rate of translation can lead to the depletion of some species of aa-tRNA, which in turn can lead to slow codons and queueing. Particularly striking “competition” effects are observed in simulations of multiple species of mRNA which are reliant on the same pool of tRNA resources. These simulations are based on a recent model of elongation which we use to study the translation of mRNA sequences from the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome. This model includes the dynamics of the use and recharging of amino acid tRNA complexes, and we show via Monte Carlo simulation that this has a dramatic effect on the protein production behaviour of the system

Protein/DNA interactions in complex DNA topologies: expect the unexpected

DNA supercoiling results in compacted DNA structures that can bring distal sites into close proximity. It also changes the local structure of the DNA, which can in turn influence the way it is recognised by drugs, other nucleic acids and proteins. Here, we discuss how DNA supercoiling and the formation of complex DNA topologies can affect the thermodynamics of DNA recognition. We then speculate on the implications for transcriptional control and the three-dimensional organisation of the genetic material, using examples from our own simulations and from the literature. We introduce and discuss the concept of coupling between the multiple length-scales associated with hierarchical nuclear structural organisation through DNA supercoiling and topology

TAXATION - INCOME TAX - SURTAX ON INCOME OF CORPORATION WHERE PROFITS ARE ACCUMULATED TO AVOID SURTAX ON INCOME OF ITS SHAREHOLDERS - CONSTRUCTION

Section 104 of the Revenue Act of 1928 imposed a surtax on the net income of any corporation formed or availed of for the purpose of preventing the imposition of the surtax on its shareholders through the medium of permitting its gains and profits to accumulate instead of being divided and distributed, and provided that the fact that the gains or profits are permitted to accumulate beyond the reasonable needs of the business shall be prima facie evidence of a purpose to escape the surtax. Defendant corporation was formed in 1911 with $200,000 capital stock all owned by Kohl. In 1931 the net profits of the corporation were more than$682,000 and it had a surplus of nearly $8,000,000. Its excess of cash on hand over accounts payable was$1,136,820. It had declared no dividends since 1919 when the high personal surtaxes went into effect. If it had declared dividends of profits in each of those years the additional surtax paid by Kohl would have been $1,240,852 and if it had declared all of its 1931 profits in dividends Kohl\u27s additional surtax for the year would have been more than$115,000. During the past seven years Kohl had borrowed $610,000 from the corporation. Held, the corporation was liable for the surtax imposed by section 104. The tax is constitutional, and is applicable to a legitimate business corporation availed of for the forbidden purpose. There was ample evidence that the surplus accumulated was in excess of the reasonable needs of the business; and, even without the aid of the presumption, there was sufficient evidence to show that the corporation was availed of to withhold dividends to defeat the surtax on the stockholder. Helvering v. National Grocery Co., 304 U. S. 282, 58 S. Ct. 932 (1938), rehearing denied 59 S. Ct. 56