New York City's transportation infrastructure plays a critical role in shaping economic growth, housing accessibility, and community development. Challenges like congestion, inequitable transit access, and inefficient zoning regulations hinder sustainable urban growth as the city evolves. Last serving passengers in 1924, the LIRR Bay Ridge Branch remains one of New York City's few freigh

Across Europe, post-industrial cities are under increasing pressure to grow sustainably while repairing the spatial and ecological damage of past industrialization. Disused railway yards, brownfields, and fragmented urban voids offer potential for densification-but also pose deep challenges in connectivity, identity, and livability. This project explores how these in-between spaces can be reactiva

While an exit tax regime satisfies principles like fiscal sovereignty, fiscal territoriality, source and benefit as well as it can find justification in them at a national level, other conflicting issues arise. For instance, from the perspective of an individual, this can lead to double taxation when the Host State does not accept a step-up or deduction for the value on which taxes have already be

CERN operates complex underground facilities, with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) posing unique fire detection challenges due to ionising radiation, long tunnel spans, and variable ventilation. To address the limitations of aspirating smoke detectors in both current and future CERN facilities, Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) systems using radiation-resistant optical fibers are being exp

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, introduced by Regulation (EU) 2023/956 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 establishing a carbon border adjustment mechanism (hereinafter ‘CBAM’), represents one of the major steps of the European Union (hereinafter ‘EU’) to combat carbon leakage. Since CBAM is currently in its transitional phase till December 31, 2025, the implicati

Recognizing the existential threat posed by climate change, the EU has pledged itself to ambitious GHG emissions targets. The adopted environmental measures such as the ETS, the ETD and domestic carbon taxes have been extensively criticised for their regressivity and resulting impact on less wealthy taxpayers. One aspect which is less often criticized, is that these measures impose significant mon

This thesis analyses the tax treatment of foreign investment funds in the Netherlands. Investment funds subject to a special tax scheme are entitled to the reimbursement of withholding tax on the dividends they receive. In order to qualify for the special tax scheme, investment funds have to meet two requirements. The analysis in this thesis is twofold. Both the compatibility of the special tax

This thesis investigates and reflect on the interplay between the EU’s Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD) and the OECD’s Pillar Two framework in neutralizing hybrid mismatch arrangements. The research goal is to determine the extent to which these regimes complement or overlap in mitigating hybrid mismatch outcomes. Final findings reveal that ATAD applies a direct, transaction-level approach, by

The rule of law is a cornerstone of modern constitutional democracies, not merely as a safeguard against tyranny and arbitrariness, but as a principle inherently connected to human rights, legal certainty, and democratic accountability. Within the European Union, recent years have witnessed growing tensions between the expansion of regulatory frameworks and the preservation of individual guarantee

This thesis examines the boundaries of Legal Professional Privilege (LPP), protected under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR), in tax law and the conflict between primary and secondary law through an analysis of recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decisions on the sixth amendment to the Directive on Administrative Cooperation (DAC6). The research establ

In tax law, taxpayer’s rights are founded on three distinct levels. The International level includes provisions found in multilateral or bilateral agreements as well as human rights instruments, such as the ECHR. The European level includes the fundamental freedoms provisions enshrined in the Treaty, the provisions set out in the EU Charter, and the general principles of EU law. At the nationa

Iran has gone through a very rapid urbanization in the last six decades. The fast pace of urbanization of the country calls for an integrated planning to move towards sustainable urban development and resilient and livable cities. Despite five decades of history in preparation of urban plans and two decades of history since the introduction of urban management in Iran, the urban policymaking, in pIran has gone through a very rapid urbanization in the last six decades. The fast pace of urbanization of the country calls for an integrated planning to move towards sustainable urban development and resilient and livable cities. Despite five decades of history in preparation of urban plans and two decades of history since the introduction of urban management in Iran, the urban policymaking, in p

This is the third of three chapters on diffusion MRI acquisition for tractography. Tractography is performed extensively in the in vivo adult brain, and sequences used for the in vivo adult brain have been covered in detail in Chapter 7. However, tractography is also performed in ex vivo human brain, in both the in vivo and ex vivo animal brain of various nonhuman species, in the human brain durin

Becoming couture is the first book to examine the history of the Italian fashion industry during the global transition brought about by the Second World War. It draws on a wide range of primary sources, some of them newly unearthed, to demonstrate that the Italian fashion industry in the Republican era continued to rely on business practices and professionals established during Fascism. Analysing

As gene therapy for haemophilia is now licensed in Europe, and the hub and spoke approach is widely promoted for its delivery and follow-up, it is essential that people with haemophilia (PwH) who are eligible and opt to have this treatment are enabled to obtain the maximum benefit. Ensuring the pathway that makes up the patient gene therapy journey is effective is key to achieving this. EAHAD and

This review deals with the production of oxygen by photo-oxidation of water, which is a topic fitting a journal devoted to oxygen. Most of the present biosphere, including mankind, depends on oxygen. Elucidating the mechanism is of importance for solving the present energy crisis. Photosynthesis evolved in bacteria, first in a form that did not produce oxygen. The oxygen-producing version arose wi

In this paper, we consider real-time modelling of an underwater acoustic channel impulse response (CIR), exploiting the inherent structure and sparsity of such channels. Building on the recent development to model acoustic channels using a Kronecker structure, we propose a sparse block updating conjugate gradient algorithm. The method initially compensate for the drift common in underwater measure

Despite the affluence of modern societies, socioeconomic gradients in health and lifespan are widespread across the developed world. A mortality gradient by socioeconomic status (SES) is evident even in the most egalitarian welfare societies, where basic needs like food, safe housing, and health care are universally provided. However, it remains unclear whether such a gradient also existed in hist

We study a class of Gaussian processes for which the posterior mean, for a particular choice of data, replicates a truncated Taylor expansion of any order. The data consist of derivative evaluations at the expansion point and the prior covariance kernel belongs to the class of Taylor kernels, which can be written in a certain power series form. We discuss and prove some results on maximum likeliho