Twenty years after overcoming Apartheid, South Africa still suffers from poverty and inequality. Recent data (Income and Expenditure Survey 2011) indicates that one third of the population lives on less than USD 0.70 per day while the upper tercile has USD 28 available. The country also faces other complex challenges, including high levels of unemployment, a resource-biased economy and low levels of education, and structural reforms are much needed to put the economy on a path of sustained growth. However, structural reforms require a broad consent within society, and inequality, clearly, is a major hindrance to this. By choosing how to collect revenue and how to spend it, South Africa's government has two instruments at their disposal in order to alleviate inequality and facilitate reform. Like most modern economies, South Africa is increasingly relying on indirect taxation. The combined revenue generated by VAT, excise taxes, and the fuel and gas levy, make up 35% of total revenue. In the light of growing income inequality, this development is remarkable as wealthy individuals tend to spend a smaller proportion of their income on consumption. Indirect taxation thus potentially places a relatively higher burden on the poor. To counteract an aggravation of income inequality, a range of commodities, held to be important for the poor, are currently zero-rated under South Africa's VAT system. And some studies find that this policy measure is partly effective in reducing the regressive effect (Fourie and Owen, 1993; Jansen et al., 2012). However, while studies on the regressive effect of VAT are potentially valuable, they are certainly non-conclusive in appraising the welfare consequences of zero-ratings. Increasing the rates on such commodities would not only entail an increased burden on the poor, but also an increase in governmental revenues. Depending on the redistribution of such additional revenues, the poor could either benefit or not from this reform and the conclusion would be fairly independent from the overall regressiveness of the system. In this paper, we re-evaluate the effectiveness of zero-rating as a measure to alleviate poverty in South Africa and extend earlier work by incorporating both sides of fiscal action in our analysis. We clarify the interlink between welfare effects and consumption taxation by retracing a simple model developed by Keen (2013), in Section 2, which we then apply to the South African case. In doing so, we employ data from the most recent Income and Expenditure survey to derive distributions of household spending and governmental spending in Section 3. We conclude in Section 4. (authors' abstract) / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-12-12T16:06:35Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) denise - Tese.pdf: 1309461 bytes, checksum: 4cb0f468668b92f538b5e25daa61e0c3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-12T16:06:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) denise - Tese.pdf: 1309461 bytes, checksum: 4cb0f468668b92f538b5e25daa61e0c3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-10-02 / Este estudo compreende a análise do julgamento da Ação Penal 470 e busca explorar o aporte discursivo contemplado no respectivo Acórdão. A finalidade é demonstrar que o STF inaugurou uma nova concepção jurídico-pragmática, tanto na perspectiva teórica como metodológica, sinalizando um novo marco referencial no processo de interpretação, argumentação e decisão em crimes contra a administração pública no Brasil. Objetivou-se identificar nos votos dos Ministros em que medida as aproximações teóricas e os métodos utilizados encontraram apoio no pragmatismo jurídico. As complexidades envolvidas no discurso adotado no Acórdão permitem examinar em que limite e sob quais condições existe um liame entre as construções retórico-argumentativas e eventuais inclinações sociais e ético-políticas, relacionando-as aos postulados do pragmatismo jurídico. À luz dessa abordagem, pretende-se desvelar uma nova arquitetura teórico-argumentativa forjada pelo STF no aludido julgamento. A análise lógico-formal não foi de todo abandonada; entretanto, a percepção dos fenômenos jurídicos passa a aflorar nos discursos dos Ministros sob a tônica do pragmatismo jurídico. Ao longo de todo esse julgamento, portanto, encontramos evidências sinalizadoras da presença de uma concepção jurídico-pragmática. A corrupção é um dos principais fenômenos desestabilizadores de um Estado Constitucional de Direito. O STF parece estar cioso do papel que lhe incumbe nesta situação problemática, sobretudo no que tange ao rompimento com o tradicional convencionalismo doutrinário jurídico-penal ainda vigente, fazendo com isso emergir um novo método de investigação de fenômenos dessa natureza. Em síntese, estes novos vetores indicam a construção de um aporte teórico-argumentativo consequencialista, contextualista, enfim, com uma forte tônica jurídico-pragmática, a caracterizar o julgamento da Ação Penal 470. / This study comprises the analysis of the criminal trial about corruption in Brazil (Acão Penal 470) and seeks to explore the discursive contribution contemplated in it. The purpose is to demonstrate that the Supreme Court started a new legal and pragmatic conception, both in a methodological and theoretical perspective, signaling a new framework in the process of interpretation, reasoning and decision on crimes against the public administration in Brazil. It also aimed to identify, in the votes of the Judges, how the theoretical approaches and methods used have found support in legal pragmatism. The complexities involved in the judicial discourse allows examine where and under what conditions is there a connection between the rhetorical-augmentative constructions and eventual social and ethical-political leanings, relating them to the postulates of legal pragmatism. In light of this approach, it is intended to unveil a new theoretical-argumentative architecture forged by the Supreme Court in the trial. The logical-formal analysis was not abandoned; however, the perception of legal phenomena happens to touch on in the speeches of Judges under the core of pragmatism. Throughout this trial, therefore, we have found great evidence of the presence of a legal and pragmatic conception. Nowadays, corruption is one of the main destabilizing factors of the rule of law. The Supreme Court judges seem to be aware of it and of their roles on this problematic situation, especially with regard to the traditional thought on criminal knowledge which is present in current legal academic writing. In short, these new vectors indicate the construction of a new theoretical and argumentative framework: consequentialist, contextualist and, finally, with a strong influence of legal pragmatism.

Ziel der Arbeit war es, im Vergleich zu anderen literarischen Stadtbildern und dem materiellen Rom der mittleren Kaiserzeit das spezifisch taciteische Rombild herauszuarbeiten, das im Kontext der trajanischen Zeit im Zuge einer spezifischen Vergangenheits- und somit Erinnerungskonstruktion ein subjektives Romerlebnis widerspiegelt, welches exemplarisch ein wichtiges Zeugnis des damaligen Werte- und Normensystems darstellt. Dabei wurde konkret der Frage nachgegangen, wie die Stadt Rom, ihre urbanen Räume und Einzeltopographien in den beiden historiographischen Texten des Tacitus wahrgenommen, dargestellt, semantisiert und schließlich funktionalisiert werden. In beiden historiographischen Werken des Tacitus erscheint die Stadt Rom kaum als monumentaler physischer Raum („Anschauungsraum“). In diesem Sinne erscheint das Bild der Stadt sehr selektiv. In zentralen Passagen der Historien nimmt die Stadt Rom und ihre zentralen Räume, darunter vor allem das Forum Romanum, das Kapitol und der Palatin, einen zentralen Stellenwert mit memoralisierender Funktion ein. Besonders auffallend an diesen Passagen ist zudem der Umgang mit früheren Narrativen (v. a. Livius), indem alte Raumsemantiken zu etwas Neuem transformiert werden. Hierdurch entstehen neue literarische monumenta, die den Leser nicht nur an die schreckenerregenden Ereignisse des Bürgerkriegs aus dem Jahr 69 n. Chr. erinnern, sondern zugleich eine mahnende und somit didaktische Funktion aufweisen. In den Annalen erscheinen die Stadt Rom und ihre urbanen Räume weniger explizit. Erst in den Claudius- und Nerobüchern nehmen die topographischen Bezüge zu, wobei verstärkt das urbs-capta-Motiv zum Vorschein kommt. Die Stadt erscheint als „Aktionsraum“, in dem der moralische Niedergang seinen Höhepunkt erreicht. Die Stadt der Kaiserzeit wird zu einer „Heterotopie“ transformiert, die Tacitus dem Rom der Frühzeit entgegensetzt. / The aim of this project was to elucidate the specific Tacitean representation of the urbs Roma in comparison to other literary representations and the material Rome of the Tacitean age which as part of a specific construction of past and memory reflects a subjective “Romerlebnis” that exemplifies important aspects of former values and norms. In particular, the investigation focused on how Tacitus perceives, presents, connotes and functionalizes the city, its urban spaces and topographies. In both historiographical works of Tacitus, the city of Rome appears hardly as a monumental and physical space (“Anschauungsraum”). The image of the urbs appears therefore extremely selective. In pivotal passages of the Histories, Rome and its central urban spaces, most notably the Forum Romanum, the Capitol and the Palatine, form a central part in the narrative with a highly memorializing function. In these passages it is especially striking, how Tacitus reacts to former narratives (esp. Livy) by transforming their semantics of space into something new. In doing so, he creates new literary monumenta that do not only remind the reader of the horrible events of Civil war from 69 AD, likewise they act as reminder since they also imply didactic and moralizing effects. In the extant texts of the Annals, the city of Rome and its urban spaces appear less explicitly, and less dramatically than in the extant texts of the Histories. Whereas in the Tiberian narrative, the city – as the emperor – does not seem to be present at all, topographical references increase in the Claudian and especially in the Neronian narrative in which the urbs-capta motive becomes particularly obvious. The city appears as an “Aktionsraum“, a space of action, in which moral decline reaches its peak. Rome is transformed into a “Heterotopie“, that Tacitus contrasts with the idealized Rome from the early period.

The vast majority of work on question formation examines interrogatives from the perspective of just one single component of grammar, usually the syntax or the prosody. The present dissertation offers a comprehensive account of question formation addressing both the syntax and the prosody of interrogatives and the interaction between these two components of grammar in signalling the question meaning of an utterance. The present work examines question formation on the basis of four genealogically related and geographically closely located Romance varieties spoken in northern Italy: Gherdëina, Badiot, Fascian and Nònes. Given that these varieties differ only with respect to certain microparametric values whereas others remain constant, they constitute an ideal research area to study the interaction between the syntax and the prosody in question formation. The syntactic and prosodic analyses proposed are based on new empirical data. The syntactic analysis is couched within the cartographic approach and the prosodic analysis is based on Autosegmental-Metrical Phonology. This dissertation is motivated by five main research goals: <ol type=i><li>to provide a detailed description of the syntactic variation found in interrogatives in the four varieties Gherdëina, Badiot, Fascian and Nònes based on data collected by the author;</li> <li>to propose a unified syntactic analysis of the interrogatives;</li> <li>to offer a prosodic analysis of statements and questions providing new data from varieties not studied up to now in the literature;</li> <li>to establish the relation between the syntax and the prosody in question formation;</li> <li>to determine how the syntax and the prosody interact in providing clues to interrogative force for the listener as well as the speaker.</li></ol> The main conclusions are as follows: The syntactic structure and the intonational tune are autonomous in question formation. Three aspects matter for interrogative clause typing: (i) syntactic marking, (ii) prosodic marking and (iii) tune-text-alignment.

Also issued as a Ph.D. thesis in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, 1968. / Bibliography: p.91-93.

The phenomenon called multi drug resistance (MDR) is the resistance of cancer cells to anticancer drugs before or during chemotherapy. One of the mechanisms causing MDR is the upregulation of efflux pumps. The overexpression of MDR1 and MRP1 results in increased efflux of anticancer agents. The aim of this study was to reverse MDR1-mediated paclitaxel resistance in MCF7 breast cancer cell line by a chemical MDR modulator elacridar. In this study, cytotoxicity and the reversal effect of elacridar on sensitive and paclitaxel resistant cells were investigated. The effect of elacridar on MDR1 and MRP1 gene expressions were also determined. Results indicated MDR1 gene was highly overexpressed (208 fold) in MCF7/Pac cells compared to MCF7/S cells. Elacridar was not found to be cytotoxic in MCF7/Pac cells up to 30&micro / M. XTT results demonstrated 0.5&micro / M elacridar concentration was able to restore the antiproliferative effect of paclitaxel by 94% in MCF7/Pac cells. Complete MDR reversal was achieved at 5&micro / M elacridar concentration. qPCR results revealed dose dependent upregulations in MDR1 and MRP1 gene expression levels after elacridar treatment which did not prevent reversal of MDR by elacridar. Elacridar was shown to be very effective against paclitaxel resistance in MCF7/Pac cells at low concentrations. Therefore, it can be a suitable candidate for therapeutic applications in patients who developed paclitaxel resistance. Nevertheless, dose dependent upregulations in MDR1 and MRP1 gene expressions should be taken into consideration and overdose elacridar administration should be avoided.

Railroad bridges are the most important connection parts of railroad networks. These bridges are exposed to heavier train loads compared to highway bridges as well as various detrimental ambient conditions during their life span. The railroad bridges in Turkey are mostly constructed during the late Ottoman and first periods of the Turkish Republic / therefore, they are generally close to about 100 years of age / their inspection and maintenance works are essential. Structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques are widely used around the world in order to increase the effectiveness of the inspection and maintenance works and also evaluate structural reliability. Application of SHM methods on railway bridges by static and dynamic measurements over short and long durations give important structural information about bridge members&rsquo / load level and overall bridge structure in terms of vibration frequencies, deflections, etc. Structural Reliability analysis provides further information about the safety of a structural system and becomes even more efficient when combined with the SHM studies. In this study, computer modeling and SHM techniques are used for identifying structural condition of a steel truss railroad bridge in Usak, Turkey, which is composed of six spans with 30 m length each. The first two spans of the bridge were rebuilt about 50 years ago, which had construction plans and are selected as pilot case for SHM and evaluation studies in this thesis. Natural frequencies are obtained by using 4 accelerometers and a dynamic data acquisition system (DAS). Furthermore, mid span vertical deflection member strains and bridge accelerations are obtained using a DAS permanently left on site and then compared with the computer model analyses results. SHM system is programmed for triggering by the rail load sensors developed at METU and an LVDT to collect mid span deflection high speed data from all sensors during train passage. The DAS is also programmed to collect slow speed data (once at every 15 minutes) for determination of average ambient conditions such as temperature and humidity and all bridge sensors during long term monitoring. Structural capacity and reliability indices for stress levels of bridge members are determined for the measured and simulated train loads to determine structural condition of bridge members and connections. Earthquake analyses and design checks for bridge members are also conducted within the scope of this study.

The genetic diversity and phylogeography of brown bear maternal lineages have been studied extensively over the last two decades. In this study the genetic diversity and maternal phylogeography of non-invasively sampled 35 brown bears, including 5 captive individuals were reported from Turkey. In addition to the optimization of DNA extraction from hair, faeces and old skin samples and their PCRs, Bayesian phylogenetic analyses based on a 269 bp long piece of bear mitochondrial DNA were conducted and 14 novel haplotypes belonging to three major lineages were revealed. The most widespread lineage was found to be the &ldquo / Eastern&rdquo / clade 3a, while geographically more restricted &ldquo / Western&rdquo / and &ldquo / Middle Eastern&rdquo / lineages were reported for the country for the first time. A specimen from the Taurus range (southern Turkey) was shown to be closely related to the presumably extinct bears in Lebanon. Moreover, a unique novel lineage that appears to have split early within the Middle Eastern clade was defined. Despite limited sampling, this study demonstrates a high level of mitochondrial diversity in Turkish brown bears, extends the ranges of both European and Middle Eastern clades into Turkey, and identifies a new divergent lineage of possibly wider historical occurrence while demonstrating the significance of non-invasive genetic sampling for such analysis.

Cancer is the collective term used to describe a diverse group of diseases that share certain hallmarks, which in turn enables the affected cells to sustain an uncontrolled cell growth. Despite the increasing efforts and advances in cancer therapies, cancers are still responsible for approximately 10% of all the deaths worldwide. Furthermore, the increase in the average human lifespan will further contribute to the cancer incidences. This brings the necessity to focus our efforts on early detection and effective diagnosis methods. With the advances in high-throughput genomics technologies, gene expression signatures have gained attention as a novel method in cancer diagnostics. These signatures are identified by simply comparing the expression levels of genes in tumor and control samples. Here, we propose an alternative method based on the probe expression level measurement of 3&rsquo / UTR of candidate genes. We chose breast cancer as a model and performed an in silico analysis on publicly available gene expression datasets of Affymetrix chips to analyse 3&rsquo / UTR shortening during breast cancer situation. Overall, our analysis suggests that shortening of 3&rsquo / UTR is a significant mechanism observed in breast cancer .

Schizophrenia is a complex mental disorder that is commonly characterized as deterioration of intellectual process and emotional responses and affects 1% of any given population. SNPs are single nucleotide changes that take place in DNA sequences and establish the major percentage of genomic variations. In this study, our goal was to identify SNPs as genomic markers that are related with schizophrenia and investigate the genes and pathways that are identified through the analysis of SNPs. Genome wide association studies (GWAS) analyse the whole genome of case and control groups to identify genetic variations and search for related markers, like SNPs. GWASs are the most common method to investigate genetic causes of a complex disease such as v schizophrenia because regular linkage studies are not sufficient. Out of 909,622 SNPs analysis of the dbGAP Schizophrenia genotyping data identified 25,555 SNPs with a p-value 5x10-5. Next, combined p-value approach to identify associated genes and pathways and AHP based prioritization to select biologically relevant SNPs with high statistical association are used through METU-SNP software. 6,000 SNPs had an AHP score above 0.4, which mapped to 2,500 genes suggested to be associated with schizophrenia and related conditions. In addition to previously described neurological pathways, pathway and network analysis showed enrichment of two pathways. Melanogenesis and vascular smooth muscle contraction pathways were found to be highly associated with schizophrenia. We have also shown that these pathways can be organized in one biological network, which might have a role in the molecular etiology of schizophrenia. Overall analysis results revealed two novel candidate genes SOS1 and GUCY1B3 that have a possible relation with schizophrenia.