Considering the Relationship between Business Applications and State Tax Rank: Effect of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017

This research measures the relationship between state-level taxes and per capita business applications.  State-level taxes used in the analysis are based on tax rank of each state from 1 to 50, with lower number rank associated with lower tax burden for that category and higher number rank with higher tax burden for that category.  Tax categories used as independent variables in the model are the following: corporate tax rank, individual income tax rank, sales tax rank, property tax rank, and unemployment insurance tax rank. Five time periods were measured from 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2020. The research question for the model considers how the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) legislation affects business applications within each state as measured through state-level variables.  Sales taxes are found to inversely affect business applications two years before TCJA passage and during the year of passage, but to have a positive relationship one year after passage. Income tax is positively correlated in that immediate year following passage, while corporate tax inversely impacts two years following passage.

Celtic Tiger Ireland as a Case Study in the Practical Application of Neoliberal Economic Policy

The Celtic Tiger economic boom, which occurred in Ireland from approximately 1987 to 2009 has generally been considered one of the most remarkable economic turnarounds in any country in the modern era. My purpose in this project was to identify the primary causes and effects of such rapid and dramatic economic growth and development to determine whether it is sensible for other countries emerging from colonial rule to seek to emulate the Irish economic model. Through a review of the economic literature on the Irish economy in the last three decades, I identify Ireland’s implementation of a neoliberal economic policy regime as the catalyst for the Celtic Tiger and illustrate that the boom was simply a manifestation through foreign direct investment of growth in the U.S. high-tech sector. This neoliberal model created the appearance of unprecedented growth while having little effect on the overall economic health of the country. It also deepened existing weaknesses in the Irish economy as well as creating new vulnerabilities. As such, I conclude that a purely neoliberal economic model such as the one that underlay the Celtic Tiger is unsustainable in practice and inherently creates unnecessary economic vulnerabilities

Fentanyl Kills

An editorial piece addressing the epidemic of Fentanyl overdose in our country today. While often it can be caused by misuse from a medical standpoint. It is also being abused to lace or create counterfeit recreational drugs and drinks.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/illustrationstudents/1037/thumbnail.jp

Stockholder Votes Motivated by Adverse Interest: the Attack and the Defense

It is the purpose of this article to study stockholder votes motivated by adverse interest from the standpoint of the attack and the defense. First, the remedies available to the complaining minority are examined. Then follows a study of the indicia of adverse interest in specific shareholder actions. Knowledge of the nature and import of these indicia should enable the careful lawyer to avoid or defeat the charge that unconscionable adverse interest vitiated the result of a stockholder vote

TEACHER PERCEPTIONS OF CALMING CORNERS IN LANGUAGE ARTS MIDDLE SCHOOL CLASSROOMS

Student stress and anxiety are at an all-time high. Following the pandemic, more research is needed to better understand what types of interventions can be supportive in helping students manage their emotional wellbeing. To better support them, the researcher worked with various English Language Arts middle school teachers to implement Calming Corners, a social emotional based intervention. In this qualitative action research study, students in sixth-eighth grades were offered the use of Calming Corners in their English Language Arts classes. This research examined whether the Calming Corners was effective in reducing stress and anxiety for the students in their educational setting

HIV Tat Protein Activates Plasma Kallikrein-Kinin System in HIV-1 Tat Transgenic Mice

Human Immunodeficiency Viruses are a group of lentiviruses that have seen a lot of study ever since their discovery. HIV-1, the most common and virulent form of the virus, has proven to be quite deadly when untreated, so any research into the mechanisms of HIV pathogenesis and replication could have major medical applications all over the world. HIV-1 is a sexually transmitted virus that compromises the hosts immune system and eventually leads to the patient developing AIDS, a life-threatening condition that nearly half of people infected with HIV will develop within ten years. Our study sets out to determine exactly how HIV-1 is able to facilitate its own spread through the use of its viral proteins and genome. The protein we focus on in this study is the Tat protein. Tat is short for Trans-Activator of Transcription. It gets this name from the role that the protein plays in the facilitation of the transcription of the viral genome once it invades a host cell. It performs this role by binding to the RNA stem-loop structure known as TAR located at the 5’ end of HIV-1 transcripts. Once bound, Tat assists in recruiting additional transcriptional elements, increasing the transcription of viral RNA. We seek to determine whether the presence of tat also influences the mechanisms of blood coagulation in the body such as the contact activation pathway and the kallikrein-kinin system, due to the high amount of cardiovascular ailments that are often associated with HIV. ` We decided to conduct a time course using the plasma of HIV-1 transgenic mice to see if the presence of Tat protein in the plasma would affect the production of kallikrein and its other downstream products in the kallikrein kinin system. One of these byproducts, bradykinin, has also been implicated in altering endothelial structure and the compromise of vascular selectivity and permeability. This alteration in selectivity associated with bradykinin may play a role in allowing HIV virus particles to more easily spread to other cells and also to cross the blood brain barrier, compromising the brain to HIV infection. The results of the study showed that the presence of Tat is indeed associated with higher levels of kallikrein activity in the plasma compared to when Tat is absent. We also found that Tat+ plasma contains a higher level of kallikrein itself, indicating that the byproduct, bradykinin, is also being produced at a higher level. These higher levels of kallikrein activity and increase in kallikrein production, signal that the presence of Tat protein is leading to higher rates of reaction in the kallikrein-kinin system, indirectly resulting in the production of excess bradykinin and also the compromise of endothelial cells