By reviewing US state-level panel data on infrastructure spending and on per capita income inequality from 1950 to 2010, this paper sets out to test whether an empirical link exists between infrastructure and inequality. Panel regressions with fixed effects show that an increase in the growth rate of spending on highways and higher education in a given decade correlates negatively with Gini indices at the end of the decade, thus suggesting a causal effect from growth in infrastructure spending to a reduction in inequality through better access to education and opportunities for employment. More significantly, this relationship is more pronounced with inequality at the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. In addition, infrastructure expenditures on highways are shown to be more effective at reducing inequality. By carrying out a counterfactual experiment, the results show that those US states with a significantly higher bottom Gini coefficient in 2010 had underinvested in infrastructure during the previous decade. From a policy-making perspective, new innovations in finance for infrastructure investments are developed, for the US, other industrially advanced countries and also for developing economies.

BiVO₄ was hydrothermally synthesized under different preparing conditions and characterized by XRD, SEM, Raman spectrum and BET specific surface area. The influence of different pH value and annealing temperature and hydrothermal time on the morphologies and structures of the BiVO₄ samples was investigated systematically. It can be found that annealing would eliminate the effects caused by the pH of precursor, heating temperature and heating time, but preparing conditions still influenced the size and specific surface area of samples. Furthermore, the photocatalytic activities of the fabricated BiVO₄ were also evaluated by the degradation of methyl blue in aqueous solution under UV and visible light irradiation.

Exposure to high-frequency (HF) electromagnetic fields (EMF) has various effects on living tissues involved in biodiversity. Interactions between fields and exposed tissues are correlated with the characteristics of the exposure, tissue behavior, and field intensity and frequency. These interactions can produce mainly adverse thermal and possibly non-thermal effects. In fact, the most expected type of outcome is a thermal biological effect (BE), where tissues are materially heated by the dissipated electromagnetic energy due to HF-EMF exposure. In case of exposure at a disproportionate intensity and duration, HF-EMF can induce a potentially harmful non-thermal BE on living tissues contained within biodiversity. This paper aims to analyze the thermal BE on biodiversity living tissues and the associated EMF and bio-heat (BH) governing equations.