Other Issues for the Future

This chapter addresses another continuing controversy, the Internal Revenue Code’s restrictions on the political activity of churches. In this context also, there are contestable trade-offs among legitimate and competing values. Among the most important of these is minimizing church-state entanglement. To advance this value, this chapter proposes a statutory safe harbor protecting churches’ internal communications. While the first part of this chapter proposes to loosen an existing tax-related constraint on churches, the second part identifies an area where additional taxation of churches is sensible: Sales taxes should apply more broadly to churches’ purchases and sales since cash transactions carry less danger of church-state entanglement.

Optimization Inversion of the Micro-Properties of Bonded Particle Model in PFC Based on the Asynchronous Particle Swarm Algorithm

The calibration of micro-properties of bonded particle model (BPM) is usually artificially accomplished by the means of trial and error which has some intrinsic drawbacks such as high time consumption, arbitrariness, uncontrolled accuracy, etc. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the optimization inversion method based on the asynchronous particle swarm algorithm is proposed to estimate the micro-properties of BPM in PFC. The optimization model is firstly established by formulating the objective function and related constraint conditions, and then the procedure of optimization inversion is presented. Furthermore, a FORTRAN program called PIBPM is developed for the realization of the proposed method. The feasibility of the proposed method and the correctness of PIBPM are verified through an application example.

A study on constraints in adoption of scientific aquaculture practices

A study was undertaken to ascertain constraints faced by fish farmers in adoption of scientific aquaculture practices in East Champaran and West Champaran districts of Bihar. Information from 144 respondents was collected and analysed by calculating the Rank Based Quotient (RBQ) values. RBQ value for constraint faced by farmers were extreme climatic conditions (84.03), less extension programs and technical support (78.47), lack of contact with extension personnel’s (71.33), lack of awareness about scientific culture practices (65.28), inadequate credit facility (60.42), labour scarcity (57.64) and higher cost of material input (52.08).These constraints could be categorised under five heads namely extension constraints, financial constraints, production constraints, marketing constraints and social constraints. Average RBQ value for constraints related to extension was found to be 71.76 and ranked first. This was followed by financial constraint with RBQ value of 52.78. Production related constraint ranked third with an average RBQ value of 49.3 followed by marketing (32.87) and social constraints(27.08). Hypothesis that there is no significant difference with reference to rankings of constraints was tested by single factor ANOVA. Null hypothesis was rejected as Ftab=3.48>FNcal=2.61 with df=4 at 5% level of significance. There was a significant difference with reference to rankings of constraints. As the extension related constraints had the highest average RBQ value, it is clear that there is an urgent need of making effective strategy, engaging more fisheries extension professionals in this field along with capacity development of the existing extension professionals.

STRING CORRECTIONS TO THE RIEMANN CURVATURE TENSOR AND THE THIRD-ORDER SOLUTION

The string corrections to the Riemann curvature tensor are found to first-order in the string slope parameter. This is done for D = 10, N = 1 supergravity, the presumed low energy limit of string theory. We then use a related constraint and proceed to find a third-order solution.