A regime-dependent parametrization of subgrid-scale cloud water content variability

The subgrid-scale spatial variability in cloud water content can be described by a parameter f called the fractional standard deviation. This is equal to the standard deviation of the cloud water content divided by the mean. This parameter is an input to schemes that calculate the impact of subgrid-scale cloud inhomogeneity on gridbox-mean radiative fluxes and microphysical process rates. A new regime-dependent parametrization of the spatial variability of cloud water content is derived from CloudSat observations of ice clouds. In addition to the dependencies on horizontal and vertical resolution and cloud fraction included in previous parametrizations, the new parametrization includes an explicit dependence on cloud type. The new parametrization is then implemented in the Global Atmosphere 6 (GA6) configuration of the Met Office Unified Model and used to model the effects of subgrid variability of both ice and liquid water content on radiative fluxes and autoconversion and accretion rates in three 20-year atmosphere-only climate simulations. These simulations show the impact of the new regime-dependent parametrization on diagnostic radiation calculations, interactive radiation calculations and both interactive radiation calculations and in a new warm microphysics scheme. The control simulation uses a globally constant f value of 0.75 to model the effect of cloud water content variability on radiative fluxes. The use of the new regime-dependent parametrization in the model results in a global mean which is higher than the control's fixed value and a global distribution of f which is closer to CloudSat observations. When the new regime-dependent parametrization is used in radiative transfer calculations only, the magnitudes of short-wave and long-wave top of atmosphere cloud radiative forcing are reduced, increasing the existing global mean biases in the control. When also applied in a new warm microphysics scheme, the short-wave global mean bias is reduced.

La monarquia francesa y los financieros en el Antiguo Régimen. El ejemplo de los traitants durante la Guerra de los Nueve Años, 1689-1697 = The French Monarchy and the financiers during the Old Regime. The case of the traitants during the Nine Years War, 1689-1697

This article explores the relationship between the Crown, the French society and the king's financiers. It starts with a brief review of the discourses on the financiers and a survey of the work done by historians. Further to a description of the various groups of financiers, it analyses the nature of the contracts passed between the king and the traitants to pay for the Nine Years War, as well as the latter’s activities and profits. The article argues that the government supervised effectively the traitants and that, given the constraints of the Old Regime, these financiers provided essential services, but too costly to be sustainable.

Influence of individual ethical orientation on tax compliance: evidence among Ghanaian taxpayers

Even though Africa has constantly emphasized the need to reduce deficit financing through mobilization of more internal revenues, this has not been achieved. Perhaps encouraging voluntary tax compliance can improve internal revenue mobilization. This study explores the relationship between ethical orientation and tax compliance and finds that ethical persons are generally more tax compliant than unethical persons but are more influenced by considerations of tax rate and withholding positions compared to unethical persons. The findings of this study differ from Reckers et al. in a number of ways and contribute to the literature by providing a possible explanation of the cause(s) of tax non- compliance.

Profits, malversations, restitutions. Les bénéfices des financiers durant la guerre de la Ligue d’Augsbourg et la taxe de Chamillart

Profit, embezzlement, restitution. The role of the traitants in the Nine Years War and Chamillart’s tax on financial benefits The aim of this article is to revisit the question of the financiers in Old Regime France. It starts with an analysis of the discourses about the financiers under the Absolute monarchy that underlines the complexity of their relationship with the government and the public. It then reviews the secondary literature and highlights the existence of competing historical interpretations (functional, political, utilitarian), which raise the question of their overall capacity to account for the role and impact of the financiers at different times. On this ground, the article focuses on a specific group of financiers, the so-called traitants d’affaires extraordinaires, during the Nine Years War. Further to a description of the specific role and scope of the activities of the various financiers responsible for helping the monarchy to raise the funds it needed to pay for its peace and wartime expenditure, the article examines the conditions and profits granted by the king in his contracts with the traitants whose services were hired for the purpose of selling royal offices in the public and advancing the revenue to the Treasury. It also explores the contractual arrangements of the companies established by the financiers to manage their operations as well as the rights and the responsibilities of their various stakeholders. These bases being laid, the article relies on the administrative correspondence relating to the traités during the Nine Years War to address a range of issues, in particular the extent to which these contracts, and other control procedures, were robust enough to deter fraud. The accounts of two traitants’ companies offer an opportunity to analyse and compare the structure of their income and expenditure (including the volume and cost of the promissory notes sold in the public to finance their payments to the Treasury), to explore the strategies of the contractors, to calculate their net profits and further discuss the problem of embezzlement. The article ends with the study of the context and debates which led to the introduction by finance minister Michel Chamillart, in 1700, of a shortfall tax on the financial profits of the gens d’affaires or traitants, the method used to determine its rate (50 % of the net benefits), its distribution among the various stakeholders (including the bailleurs de fonds or backers), and the related procedures. In total, the article argues that the relationship between the monarchy, society and the financiers under the Ancien Regime was not static and, therefore, suggests that the broad question of control and fraud must be examined against changing circumstances. With regard specifically to the Nine Years War, the article concludes that within the constraints of the Absolute monarchy, contractors offered valuable services by raising capital for the benefit of a king who ruled over a country which, at the time, was by far the wealthiest in Europe, and where ministers failed to foresee long wars of attrition and whose financial strategy was limited by the very existence of privilege. Overall, the traités were too costly to be a viable system of war financing. In these conditions, the substantial fortunes made by a handful of very successful traitants suffice to explain that the government easily gave in to public criticism against the wealth of the financiers and felt compelled, when peace resumed, to cancel the advantageous conditions offered in the treaties by taxing financial profits.

Do investors care about corporate tax?

This paper conducts a comprehensive examination of the link between corporation tax payment and financial performance in the UK. We find no discernible link between tax rates and stock returns for the UK, no matter how tax payment is measured. This is true throughout the sample period and for both customer-facing and non-customer-facing companies. However, allowing for industry norms and a host of firm characteristics, companies with lower effective tax rates have significantly higher levels of stock market risk. Firms that are reported in the newspapers in a negative way in relation to their level of corporation tax payment experience small negative stock returns, which are partially reversed within a month. However, the initial negative effects and subsequent rebound are both more pronounced for smaller companies. News announcements of the potential involvement of a firm in a corporate inversion (expatriation) result in steeper and much longer-lasting falls in share prices, whereas news stories of a more general nature relating to a firm's tax avoidance or tax payments have little noticeable effect.

Simulating the impact on health of internalising the cost of carbon in food prices combined with a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages

Rising greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) have implications for health and up to 30 % of emissions globally are thought to arise from agriculture. Synergies exist between diets low in GHGEs and health however some foods have the opposite relationship, such as sugar production being a relatively low source of GHGEs. In order to address this and to further characterise a healthy sustainable diet, we model the effect on UK non-communicable disease mortality and GHGEs of internalising the social cost of carbon into the price of food alongside a 20 % tax on sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs). Developing previously published work, we simulate four tax scenarios: (A) a GHGEs tax of £2.86/tonne of CO2 equivalents (tCO2e)/100 g product on all products with emissions greater than the mean across all food groups (0.36 kgCO2e/100 g); (B) scenario A but with subsidies on foods with emissions lower than 0.36 kgCO2e/100 g such that the effect is revenue neutral; (C) scenario A but with a 20 % sales tax on SSBs; (D) scenario B but with a 20 % sales tax on SSBs. An almost ideal demand system is used to estimate price elasticities and a comparative risk assessment model is used to estimate changes to non-communicable disease mortality. We estimate that scenario A would lead to 300 deaths delayed or averted, 18,900 ktCO2e fewer GHGEs, and £3.0 billion tax revenue; scenario B, 90 deaths delayed or averted and 17,100 ktCO2e fewer GHGEs; scenario C, 1,200 deaths delayed or averted, 18,500 ktCO2e fewer GHGEs, and £3.4 billion revenue; and scenario D, 2,000 deaths delayed or averted and 16,500 ktCO2e fewer GHGEs. Deaths averted are mainly due to increased fibre and reduced fat consumption; a SSB tax reduces SSB and sugar consumption. Incorporating the social cost of carbon into the price of food has the potential to improve health, reduce GHGEs, and raise revenue. The simple addition of a tax on SSBs can mitigate negative health consequences arising from sugar being low in GHGEs. Further conflicts remain, including increased consumption of unhealthy foods such as cakes and nutrients such as salt.

A new regime of carbon counting: the practices and politics of accounting for everyday carbon through C02e

Inspired by the commercial desires of global brands and retailers to access the lucrative green consumer market, carbon is increasingly being counted and made knowable at the mundane sites of everyday production and consumption, from the carbon footprint of a plastic kitchen fork to that of an online bank account. Despite the challenges of counting and making commensurable the global warming impact of a myriad of biophysical and societal activities, this desire to communicate a product or service's carbon footprint has sparked complicated carbon calculative practices and enrolled actors at literally every node of multi-scaled and vastly complex global supply chains. Against this landscape, this paper critically analyzes the counting practices that create the ‘e’ in ‘CO2e’. It is shown that, central to these practices are a series of tools, models and databases which, in building upon previous work (Eden, 2012 and Star and Griesemer, 1989) we conceptualize here as ‘boundary objects’. By enrolling everyday actors from farmers to consumers, these objects abstract and stabilize greenhouse gas emissions from their messy material and social contexts into units of CO2e which can then be translated along a product's supply chain, thereby establishing a new currency of ‘everyday supply chain carbon’. However, in making all greenhouse gas-related practices commensurable and in enrolling and stabilizing the transfer of information between multiple actors these objects oversee a process of simplification reliant upon, and subject to, a multiplicity of approximations, assumptions, errors, discrepancies and/or omissions. Further the outcomes of these tools are subject to the politicized and commercial agendas of the worlds they attempt to link, with each boundary actor inscribing different meanings to a product's carbon footprint in accordance with their specific subjectivities, commercial desires and epistemic framings. It is therefore shown that how a boundary object transforms greenhouse gas emissions into units of CO2e, is the outcome of distinct ideologies regarding ‘what’ a product's carbon footprint is and how it should be made legible. These politicized decisions, in turn, inform specific reduction activities and ultimately advance distinct, specific and increasingly durable transition pathways to a low carbon society.

Climate justice and the international regime: before, during and after Paris

With a focus on key themes and debates, this article aims to illustrate and assess how the interaction between justice and politics has shaped the international regime and defined the nature of the international agreement that was signed in COP21 Paris. The work demonstrates that despite the rise of neo-conservatism and self-interested power politics, questions of global distributive justice remain a central aspect of the international politics of climate change. However, while it is relatively easy to demonstrate that international climate politics is not beyond the reach of moral contestations, the assessment of exactly how much impact justice has on climate policies and the broader normative structures of the climate governance regime remains a very difficult task. As the world digests the Paris Agreement, it is vital that the current state of justice issues within the international climate change regime is comprehensively understood by scholars of climate justice and by academics and practitioners, not least because how these intractable issues of justice are dealt with (or not) will be a crucial factor in determining the effectiveness of the emerging climate regime.

Melting Regime of the Anionic Phospholipid DMPG: New Lamellar Phase and Porous Bilayer Model

Aqueous dispersions of the anionic phospholipid dimyristoyl phosphatidylglycerol (DMPG) at pH above the apparent pK of DMPG and concentrations in the interval 70-300 mM have been investigated by small (SAXS) and wide-angle X-ray scattering, differential scanning calorimetry, and polarized optical microscopy. The order. disorder transition of the hydrocarbon chains occurs along an interval of about 10 degrees C (between T(m)(on) similar to 20 degrees C and T(m)(off) similar to 30 degrees C). Such melting regime was previously characterized at lower concentrations, up to 70 mM DMPG, when sample transparency was correlated with the presence of pores across the bilayer. At higher concentrations considered here, the melting regime persists but is not transparent. Defined SAXS peaks appear and a new lamellar phase L(p) with pores is proposed to exist above 70 mM DMPG, starting at similar to 23 degrees C (similar to 3 degrees C above T(m)(on)) and losing correlation after T(m)(off). A new model for describing the X-ray scattering of bilayers with pores, presented here, is able to explain the broad band attributed to in-plane correlation between pores. The majority of cell membranes have a net negative charge, and the opening of pores across the membrane tuned by ionic strength, temperature, and lipid composition is likely to have biological relevance.

PL spectroscopy of Fermi electrons in regime of the quantum Hall effect

The influence of the interlayer coupling on formation of the quantized Hall phase at the filling factor v = 2 was studied in the multilayer GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures The disorder broaden Gaussian photoluminescence line due to the localized electrons was found in the quantized Hall phase of the isolated multi-quantum well structure On the other hand. the quantized Hall phase of the weakly-coupled multilayers emitted an asymmetrical line similar to that one observed in the metallic electron systems. We demonstrated that the observed asymmetry indicates a formation of the Fermi Surface in the quantized Hall phase of the multilayer electron system due to the interlayer peicolation. A sharp decrease of the single-particle scattering time associated with the extended states oil the Fermi surface was observed at the filling factor v = 2. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved

The mass media destabilizes the cultural homogenous regime in Axelrod`s model

An important feature of Axelrod`s model for culture dissemination or social influence is the emergence of many multicultural absorbing states, despite the fact that the local rules that specify the agents interactions are explicitly designed to decrease the cultural differences between agents. Here we re-examine the problem of introducing an external, global interaction-the mass media-in the rules of Axelrod`s model: in addition to their nearest neighbors, each agent has a certain probability p to interact with a virtual neighbor whose cultural features are fixed from the outset. Most surprisingly, this apparently homogenizing effect actually increases the cultural diversity of the population. We show that, contrary to previous claims in the literature, even a vanishingly small value of p is sufficient to destabilize the homogeneous regime for very large lattice sizes.

The Evolution of a Responsibility to Protect in Africa : The African Unions Emerging Peace and Security Regime

The thesis focuses on, and tries to evaluate, the role that the African Union (AU) plays in protecting the peace and security on the African continent. The thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach to the topic by both utilizing international relations and international law theories. The two disciplines are combined in an attempt to understand the evolution of the AU’s commitment to the pragmatist doctrine: responsibility to protect (R2P). The AU charter is considered to be the first international law document to cover R2P as it allows the AU to interfere in the internal affairs of its member states. The R2P doctrine was evolved around the notion of a need to arrive at a consensus in regard to the right to intervene in the face of humanitarian emergencies. A part of the post-Cold War shift in UN behaviour has been to support local solutions to local problems. Hereby the UN acts in collaboration with regional organizations, such as the AU, to achieve the shared aspirations to maintain international peace and security without getting directly involved on the ground. The R2P takes a more holistic and long-term approach to interventions by including an awareness of the need to address the root causes of the crisis in order to prevent future resurrections of conflicts. The doctrine also acknowledges the responsibility of the international community and the intervening parties to actively participate in the rebuilding of the post-conflict state. This requires sustained and well planned support to ensure the development of a stable society.While the AU is committed to implementing R2P, many of the AU’s members are struggling, both ideologically and practically, to uphold the foundations on which legitimate intervention rests, such as the protection of human rights and good governance. The fact that many members are also among the poorest countries in the world adds to the challenges facing the AU. A lack of human and material resources leads to a situation where few countries are willing, or able, to support a long-term commitment to humanitarian interventions. Bad planning and unclear mandates also limit the effectiveness of the interventions. This leaves the AU strongly dependent on regional powerbrokers such as Nigeria and South Africa, which in itself creates new problems in regard to the motivations behind interventions. The current AU charter does not provide sufficient checks and balances to ensure that national interests are not furthered through humanitarian interventions. The lack of resources within the AU also generates worries over what pressure foreign nations and other international actors apply through donor funding. It is impossible for the principle of “local solutions for local problems? to gain ground while this donor conditionality exists.The future of the AU peace and security regime is not established since it still is a work in progress. The direction that these developments will take depends on a wide verity of factors, many of which are beyond the immediate control of the AU.

Towards Presidential Rule in Ukraine : Hybrid Regime Dynamics under Semi-Presidentialism

This article sets out to analyse recent regime developments in Ukraine in relation to semi-presidentialism. The article asks: to what extent and in what ways theoretical arguments against semi-presidentialism (premier-presidential and president-parliamentary systems) are relevant for understanding the changing directions of the Ukrainian regime since the 1990s? The article also reviews the by now overwhelming evidence suggesting that President Yanukovych is turning Ukraine into a more authoritarian hybrid regime and raises the question to what extent the president-parliamentary system might serve this end. The article argues that both kinds of semi-presidentialism have, in different ways, exacerbated rather than mitigated institutional conflict and political stalemate. The return to the president-parliamentary system in 2010 – the constitutional arrangement with the most dismal record of democratisation – was a step in the wrong direction. The premier-presidential regime was by no means ideal, but it had at least two advantages. It weakened the presidential dominance and it explicitly anchored the survival of the government in parliament. The return to the 1996 constitution ties in well with the notion that President Viktor Yanukovych has embarked on an outright authoritarian path.