Dunlap-Stone University

The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax in 2017 was a historic event for India’s tax structure, as it sought to unify the diverse and multi-layered system of indirect taxes, associated with the slogan ‘One Nation One Tax’. While GST has created an integrated approach to taxation, it has also triggered a distortion in India’s fiscal federalism equilibrium by concentrating power in the hands of the central government. In the past, the Indian Constitution permitted a federal model of finance where the Centre and states had broad legislative powers for taxation as outlined in the Seventh Schedule. The introduction of the GST, enabled by the 101st Constitutional Amendment Act, consolidated numerous state taxes into a single GST collection, stripping the states of their autonomous tax-raising capacity. For operational reasons, the Union government has adopted strategies typically reserved for the states; now, authorities wield significant power due to the weighted voting system within the GST Council, where the Union government predominantly influences policy decisions. This paper analyses how the current GST regime has increased the dependence of states on the central government and restructured the depiction of India’s federal system, as well as its centralisation. The most urgent of these issues has been the GST compensation cess, particularly the delay from the Centre in transferring funds to states that was distinctly prevalent during the fiscal tremors accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic. This reduced autonomy of states due to the dependence on the Centre for revenue flows has drastically reduced the financial flexibility of the states, preventing them from providing adequate financing to meet their welfare expenditures and development activities that are regionally distinct. This paper recommends restructuring the fiscal federalism of India in the context of GST to provide a more even distribution of authority.

In this paper, the authors investigate compound action potentials formed when the underlying tract's axons have current-mediated coupling amongst themselves, and no field-mediated coupling. The key finding of the paper is that, for the case of biophysically inhomogeneous axon tracts, the compound action potential is governed by a Hodgkin-Huxley like equation itself in certain cases. The paper extends an earlier result for the identical axon case.

The genus Phyllachora contains numerous obligate fungal parasites that produce raised, melanized structures called stromata on their plant hosts referred to as tar spot. Members of this genus are known to infect many grass species but generally do not cause significant damage or defoliation, with the exception of P. maydis which has emerged as an important pathogen of maize throughout the Americas, but the origin of this pathogen remains unknown. To date, species designations for Phyllachora have been based on host associations and morphology, and most species are assumed to be host specific. We assessed the sequence diversity of 186 single stroma isolates collected from 16 hosts representing 15 countries. Samples included both herbarium and contemporary strains that covered a temporal range from 1905 to 2019. These 186 isolates were grouped into five distinct species with strong bootstrap support. We found three closely related, but genetically distinct groups of Phyllachora are capable of infecting maize in the United States, we refer to these as the P. maydis species complex. Based on herbarium specimens, we hypothesize that these three groups in the P. maydis species complex originated from Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Although two of these groups were only found on maize, the third and largest group contained contemporary strains found on maize and other grass hosts, as well as herbarium specimens from maize and other grasses that include 10 species of Phyllachora. The herbarium specimens were previously identified based on morphology and host association. This work represents the first attempt at molecular characterization of Phyllachora species infecting grass hosts and indicates some Phyllachora species can infect a broad range of host species and there may be significant synonymy in the Phyllachora genus.

We examine the dynamical behavior of accretion flow around XTE J1859+226 during the 1999 outburst by analyzing the entire outburst data ($\sim$ 166 days) from RXTE Satellite. Towards this, we study the hysteresis behavior in the hardness intensity diagram (HID) based on the broadband ($3 - 150$ keV) spectral modeling, spectral signature of jet ejection and the evolution of Quasi-periodic Oscillation (QPO) frequencies using the two-component advective flow model around a black hole. We compute the flow parameters, namely Keplerian accretion rate (${\dot m}_d$), sub-Keplerian accretion rate (${\dot m}_h$), shock location ($r_s$) and black hole mass ($M_{bh}$) from the spectral modeling and study their evolution along the q-diagram. Subsequently, the kinetic jet power is computed as $L^{\rm obs}_{\rm jet}\sim 3 - 6 \times 10^{37}$ erg~s$^{-1}$ during one of the observed radio flares which indicates that jet power corresponds to $8-16\%$ mass outflow rate from the disc. This estimate of mass outflow rate is in close agreement with the change in total accretion rate ($\sim 14\%$) required for spectral modeling before and during the flare. Finally, we provide a mass estimate of the source XTE J1859+226 based on the spectral modeling that lies in the range of $5.2 - 7.9 M_{\odot}$ with 90\% confidence.

In recent Hollywood movies such as , etc, animal-shaped CG creatures are being realistically presented. Materialization of fur serves as an important factor to give each character distinctive features as well as particularly describes CG creatures more realistically. In case of major studios, the fur effect is materialized by using in-house tool or through their own R&D. In most studios, however, the effect incurs technical and financial difficulties. This study, therefore, is to suggest an effective fur making technique using five plugins through experimental research. For this research purpose, this study first draws existing technical limitations and problems through literature review on fur making using CG and case studies of movies. Second, this study establishes optimized work process based on the limitations and problems by utilizing features of general plugins on three steps of ①Fur shape modeling, ②Fur dynamics or animation and ③Fur rendering as a technical method for realistic expression of fur and analyzes its technical utility. Through this procedure, it is to present an effective way of working and it is considered as a useful research that can be applied to projects of studios in general.