Projected Changes to Spring and Summer Precipitation in the Midwestern United States

Spring and summer precipitation are both important factors for agricultural productivity in the Midwest region of the United States. Adequate summer precipitation, particularly in the reproductive and grain fill stages in July and August, is critical to corn and soybean success. Meanwhile, excessive spring precipitation can cause significant planting delays and introduces challenges with weed and pest management, and soil erosion and compaction. However, uncertainty especially in future summer precipitation changes, translates to uncertainties in how the joint distributions of spring and summer precipitation are expected to change by mid- and late-century across the Midwest. This study examines historical and projected changes in the characteristics of spring and summer precipitation in the Midwest using 12 dynamically downscaled simulations under the high-emission representative concentration pathway (RCP 8.5) from the NA-CORDEX project. Historical increases in spring precipitation and precipitation intensity are projected to continue into the mid- and late-century across the region, with strong model agreement. By comparison, projected changes in Midwest summer precipitation are more modest than for spring and have much less model agreement. Despite a projected three- to four-fold increase in the frequency of wet springs by late-century, relative to the model ensemble historical average, the lack of substantial and robust projected change in summer precipitation results in only a small increase in the risk of dry summers following wet springs in the Midwest by mid- and late-century.

Discovering Dominant Users’ Opinions in Reddit

Reddit is a social news aggregation and discussion website. Users submit content to the site such as links to news, which are then voted up or down by other members who in turn, can comment on others’ posts to continue the conversation. In this work, we are interested in modeling how users interact with each other in Reddit debates, to discover the most dominant opinions in a debate. To this end, we introduce a user-based model for analysis of Reddit debates. In this model, comments by users are grouped per user, describing their opinion in relation to the root comment of the debate, and users are represented with a single node in a weighted graph, where node’s weights represent relevance of user’s opinions and edges represent agreement or disagreement relationships between users throughout the debate. In this model, agreement or disagreement between the opinions of two users is defined by aggregating the set of single interactions that have occurred between them during the debate. In this work we present a skeptical aggregation model for this task. For measuring the relevance of user’s opinions, we consider two models: one based on the score of all the user’s comments and other based on the user’s karma, as computed by the Reddit platform. We characterize the set of most dominant opinions with an argumentative-based model, using the information of disagreement between opinions and relevance of opinions.

Inter-Device Agreement between Fitbit Flex 1 and 2 for Assessing Sedentary Behavior and Physical Activity

This study examined the inter-model agreement between the Fitbit Flex (FF) and FF2 in estimating sedentary behavior (SED) and physical activity (PA) during a free-living condition. 33 healthy adults wore the FF and FF2 on non-dominant wrist for 14 consecutive days. After excluding sleep and non-wear time, data from the FF and FF2 was converted to the time spent (min/day) in SED and PA using a proprietary algorithm. Pearson’s correlation was used to evaluate the association between the estimates from FF and FF2. Mean absolute percent errors (MAPE) were used to examine differences and measurement agreement in SED and PA estimates between FF and FF2. Bland-Altman (BA) plots were used to examine systematic bias between two devices. Equivalence testing was conducted to examine the equivalence between the FF and FF2. The FF2 had strong correlations with the FF in estimating SED and PA times. Compared to the FF, the FF2 yielded similar SED and PA estimates along with relatively low measurement discords and did not have significant systematic biases for SED and Moderate-to-vigorous PA estimates. Our findings suggest that researchers may choose FF2 as a measurement of SED and PA when FF is not available in the market during the longitudinal PA research.

International development of the concept of taxation of a permanent representation of a foreign company as an “independent taxpayer” and the experience of its application in the Russian Federation

The subject of this research is the development of the concept of taxation of permanent representations of foreign companies on the international level and its application in the Russian Federation. The object of this research is the permanent representations of foreign companies. The author examines such aspects of the topic, as the use of agreements on avoidance of double taxation, countering the tax base erosion, and the international approach towards taxation of the permanent representation of a foreign company as an independent participant of the market relations. Analysis is conducted on the need for amending the Model Agreement of the Russian Federation of 02.24.2010 No. 84 “On conclusion of intergovernmental agreements on avoidance of double taxation and on prevention of tax evasion on the income and property”. The author traces the transformation of attitude of international tax organizations towards the concept of permanent representation and substantiation of their choice of the concept of taxation of a permanent representation as an independent taxpayer. The scientific novelty is proven by the facts of application of this concept of taxation of permanent representation in the national legislation of multiple countries, international agreements on avoidance of double taxation, Russian national tax legislation and arbitration practice. The main conclusion consists in the response to the selected by the international tax organizations concept of taxation of a permanent representation. The author offers to amend the Model Agreement of the Russian Federation of 02.24.2010 No. 84 “On conclusion of intergovernmental agreements on avoidance of double taxation and on prevention of tax evasion on the income and property”.

Directions of legislative regulation of the intellectual property rights distribution in R&D contracts, financed from the state budget, in the newly independent states (NIS)

The article analyzes the legislative regulation of the distribution of intellectual property rights in contracts for research and development, which are funded in whole or in part from the state budget, in the newly independent states: Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia,Areas of legislative regulation in the newly independent states (Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia) the distribution of intellectual property rights in R&D contracts, funded in whole or in part from the state budget. Settlement of distribution of intellectual property rights in R&D contracts, financed from the state budget, in the NIS countries is carried out through general regulation, covering all subjects of legal relations, and the adoption of special acts — to finance R & D from the budget. At the level of special legislation, there are differences between countries both in the system of legislation and in the presence of model agreements for the implementation of R & D. Also, principle of the Bai-Dole Act and EU regulations on the research Framework Programs, that ownership of IPR rights belongs to the contractor, is fully implemented only in Ukraine. It is important for the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine to develop a special model agreement for case, when research and development are being funded in whole or in part from the state budget. This Model agreement should contain options for the distribution of intellectual property rights and shall bring the provisions of model agreements on conducting research and development in accordance with the Art.11 of the Law of Ukraine «On state regulation of activities in the field of technology transfer» and Art. 64 of the Law of Ukraine «On scientific and scientific-technical activities». Key words: contracts for research and developments, intellectual property, rights to results of research developments.

British Legal Strategies and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Chapter 2 connects abolitionist efforts to induce the British government to reinvigorate its efforts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade from the 1840s onwards as the catalyst for the creation of new legal tactics. First, within the confines of the Foreign Office, a model standard agreement was devised that was to be concluded with African rulers, which furthered an agenda based on the idea of replacing the slave trade with ‘legitimate commerce’. The model agreement built on an existing tradition of including abolition clauses in treaties since the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Second, the implementation of the model agreement ran parallel to the increase in commercial power and the use of force to suppress the slave trade through the use of naval blockades and the bombardment of the coastline of West Africa.

Inter-model agreement on projected shifts in California hydroclimate characteristics critical to water management

Shifts away from the historical hydroclimate in populated regions can have dire consequences for water management. Regions like the state of California—where highly engineered, geographically interconnected, and inflexible water management systems are predicated on particular spatiotemporal patterns of water availability—are particularly vulnerable to hydroclimate shifts. However, much of the analysis of hydroclimate sensitivity to anthropogenic climate change has focused on gross metrics like annual mean precipitation, which is highly uncertain at the regional scale. This perceived uncertainty has deterred adaptation investments and quantitative integration of climate projection data into regional water management. Here, we assess projected future shifts in the state of California in a range of hydroclimate metrics critical to water management, using data from 10 statistically downscaled global climate model and two emissions scenarios currently used by the state. We find substantial inter-model agreement under both emissions scenarios—and > 80% inter-model agreement under the more severe climate change scenario—across metrics that collectively point toward an increasingly volatile, temporally concentrated, and extreme precipitation future for the state. We show, via hydrologic and operations modeling, that accounting for shifts in these more nuanced metrics reduces the projected reliability and sustainability of current water management practices to a greater degree than would be inferred from changes in total annual precipitation alone. These results highlight both the viability and critical importance of incorporating climate change projections quantitatively into water management decisions in California and other regions vulnerable to hydroclimate shifts, and underscore the need to develop integrated climate-hydrologic-operations models and decision-making protocols capable of accounting for all projected hydroclimate shifts.