legislation, companies will be able to choose between the current system and one that bases state taxes only on the corporation's operations within the U.S. Deukmejian has praised the legislation and is expected to sign it into law. According to a state analysis, the bill would cost California about $83 million beginning in 1988. However, it also would remove a long-standing bone of contention between the state and domestic and foreign businesses. Under the state's unitary method of apportioning taxable income, multinational corporations are taxed on the percentage of their worldwide sales, property, and payroll The atomic arrangement on the surface that are in California. For example, of a silicon crystal is revealed, magni- if a company has 5% of its operafied about 30 million times, in a computer-generated picture from data tions in California, it must pay taxes obtained using the scanning tunneling on that percentage of its worldwide microscope. The diamond shape out- earnings regardless of whether its lines the basic unit cell of silicon, which is repeated to form the face of the crystal. The largest balls represent atoms in the uppermost layer. Successively smaller balls represent atoms Lake Nios, a volcanic crater lake in more deeply embedded in the crystal mountainous northwestern Cameroon, hard by the Nigerian border plains, determine the electronic and 250 miles from the capital city properties of a semiconductor. If of Yaounde, is normally a clear deep these orbitals or bond energies can blue. Now it is a muddy rust color. be correlated with the material's On the night of Aug. 21, the lake's electronic behavior, he adds, "it bottom sediments overturned, reshould enable us to build better leasing a mixture of poisonous gases. Once airborne, the toxic gas cloud semiconductor devices." Hamers says the STM technique wafted through four lakeside vilalso can be used to identify differ- lages killing at least 1500 people ent atoms on a surface, based on and injuring hundreds more. the energies of the various atomic What triggered the disturbance orbitals. In addition, his group hopes of the lake bottom, and which gasto use the STM to probe chemical es caused the deaths are not yet reactions that occur at semiconduc- known—and may never be known tor and catalyst surfaces. • with certainty. Two U.S. teams—one scientific, the other medical—are now in Cameroon to tease out some of the answers to these questions. Several other western countries also are offering assistance. M. Peter McPherson, administrator California seems likely to join a of the Agency for International Degrowing list of states that have velopment, termed the Lake Nios bowed to business pressure and eruption "an extremely rare natural modified or repealed what is known event." as unitary taxation. Yet it is not an unheard-of event The state legislature last week sent in Cameroon. Just two years ago, a Gov. George Deukmejian a bill that similar gaseous geyser from anothwould give multinational corpora- er volcanic crater lake in the same tions an alternative method of cal- region as Lake Nios killed 37 peoculating their state taxes. Under the ple. Seven months after that event,
California operations made any money. Unitary taxation was adopted in the 1930s to prevent firms from shifting California profits to other states with lower tax rates. Businesses claim that unitary taxation creates an accounting nightmare and, in some cases, amounts to unconstitutional double taxation. However, in 1983 the Supreme Court ruled California's unitary method of computing tax liability constitutional. Mainly, businesses object to the method because it often results in higher taxes. The state estimates that one third of the multinational corporations operating in California will choose to continue paying taxes under the unitary method. Those typically would be firms—for instance oil companies—with extensive foreign operations and much smaller operations in California. •
Nature deals chemical deaths in Cameroon
California likely to alter unitary tax
U.S. scientists conducted studies on the lake, Lake Mounoun. They concluded that a landslide disturbed the lake's sediments, explosively releasing carbon dioxide of volcanic origin. Autopsies were not performed then, so the precise cause of death is not known. Surviving villagers, however, also reported a sulfur smell and skin burns. The burns are difficult to explain. Some U.S. Geological Survey scientists speculate that volcanic gases sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide may have oxidized to acidic sulfates if the proper conditions were present. Some survivors of the Lake Nios eruption also have reported burns and described the odor as that of rotten eggs. Initial reports out of Cameroon attributed the deaths and injuries to poisoning by hydrogen sulfide, thereby accounting for the rotten egg smell. But Susan RussellRobinson, a USGS spokeswoman, says, "The speculation is that carbon dioxide most likely caused death" by asphyxiation. Perhaps, she says, there were small quantities of hydrogen sulfide, which can be detected by smell "in as little as 1 ppm." According to Paul Krumpe, technical adviser to AID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, northSeptember 1, 1986 C&EN
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