cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
SlowFuzz: Automated Domain-Independent Detection of Algorithmic Complexity Vulnerabilities

Algorithmic complexity vulnerabilities occur when the worst-case time/space complexity of an application is significantly higher than the respective average case for particular user-controlled inputs. When such conditions are met, an attacker can launch Denial-of-Service attacks against a vulnerable application by providing inputs that trigger the worst-case behavior. Such attacks have been known to have serious effects on production systems, take down entire websites, or lead to bypasses of Web Application Firewalls. Unfortunately, existing detection mechanisms for algorithmic complexity vulnerabilities are domain-specific and often require significant manual effort. In this paper, we design, implement, and evaluate SlowFuzz, a domain-independent framework for automatically finding algorithmic complexity vulnerabilities. SlowFuzz automatically finds inputs that trigger worst-case algorithmic behavior in the tested binary. SlowFuzz uses resource-usage-guided evolutionary search techniques to automatically find inputs that maximize computational resource utilization for a given application. We demonstrate that SlowFuzz successfully generates inputs that match the theoretical worst-case performance for several well-known algorithms. SlowFuzz was also able to generate a large number of inputs that trigger different algorithmic complexity vulnerabilities in real-world applications, including various zip parsers used in antivirus software, regular expression libraries used in Web Application Firewalls, as well as hash table implementations used in Web applications. In particular, SlowFuzz generated inputs that achieve 300-times slowdown in the decompression routine of the bzip utility, discovered regular expressions that exhibit matching times exponential in the input size, and also managed to automatically produce inputs that trigger a high number of collisions in PHP's default hashtable implementation.
The quantum entropy cone of hypergraphs

In this work, we generalize the graph-theoretic techniques used for the holographic entropy cone to study hypergraphs and their analogously-defined entropy cone. This allows us to develop a framework to efficiently compute entropies and prove inequalities satisfied by hypergraphs. In doing so, we discover a class of quantum entropy vectors which reach beyond those of holographic states and obey constraints intimately related to the ones obeyed by stabilizer states and linear ranks. We show that, at least up to 4 parties, the hypergraph cone is identical to the stabilizer entropy cone, thus demonstrating that the hypergraph framework is broadly applicable to the study of entanglement entropy. We conjecture that this equality continues to hold for higher party numbers and report on partial progress on this direction. To physically motivate this conjectured equivalence, we also propose a plausible method inspired by tensor networks to construct a quantum state from a given hypergraph such that their entropy vectors match.
WIYN open cluster study. LX. Spectroscopic binary orbits in NGC 6819

We present the current state of the WOCS radial-velocity (RV) survey for the rich open cluster NGC 6819 (2.5 Gyr) including 93 spectroscopic binary orbits with periods ranging from 1.5 to 8000 days. These results are the product of our ongoing RV survey of NGC 6819 using the Hydra Multi-Object Spectrograph on the WIYN 3.5 m telescope. We also include a detailed analysis of multiple prior sets of optical photometry for NGC 6819. Within a 1° field of view, our stellar sample includes the giant branch, the red clump, and blue straggler candidates, and extends to almost 2 mag below the main sequence (MS) turnoff. For each star observed in our survey we present all RV measurements, the average RV, and velocity variability information. Additionally, we discuss notable binaries from our sample, including eclipsing binaries (WOCS 23009, WOCS 24009, and WOCS 40007), stars noted in Kepler asteroseismology studies (WOCS 4008, WOCS 7009, and WOCS 8007), and potential descendants of past blue stragglers (WOCS 1006 and WOCS 6002). We find the incompleteness-corrected binary fraction for all MS binaries with periods less than 104 days to be 22% ± 3% and a tidal circularization period of days for NGC 6819.
A Canonical Model for Constant Domain Basic First-Order Logic

I build a canonical model for constant domain basic first-order logic ( $$\textsf {BQL}_{\textsf {CD}}$$ ), the constant domain first-order extension of Visser’s basic propositional logic, and use the canonical model to verify that $$\textsf {BQL}_{\textsf {CD}}$$ satisfies the disjunction and existence properties.
Atomically Controlled Tunable Doping in High-Performance WSe2 Devices

Two-dimensional transitional metal dichalcogenide (TMD) field-effect transistors (FETs) are promising candidates for future electronic applications, owing to their excellent transport properties and potential for ultimate device scaling. However, it is widely acknowledged that substantial contact resistance associated with the contact-TMD interface has impeded device performance to a large extent. It has been discovered that O2 plasma treatment can convert WSe2 into WO3-x and substantially improve contact resistances of p-type WSe2 devices by strong doping induced thinner depletion width. In this paper, we carefully study the temperature dependence of this conversion, demonstrating an oxidation process with a precise monolayer control at room temperature and multilayer conversion at elevated temperatures. Furthermore, the lateral oxidation of WSe2 under the contact revealed by HR-STEM leads to potential unpinning of the metal Fermi level and Schottky barrier lowering, resulting in lower contact resistances. The p-doping effect is attributed to the high electron affinity of the formed WO3-x layer on top of the remaining WSe2 channel, and the doping level is found to be dependent on the WO3-x thickness that is controlled by the temperature. Comprehensive materials and electrical characterizations are presented, with a low contact resistance of ~528 ohm-um and record high on-state current of 320 uA/um at -1V bias being reported.
Surjectivity of Galois Representations in Rational Families of Abelian Varieties

In this article, we show that for any nonisotrivial family of abelian varieties over a rational base with big monodromy, those members that have adelic Galois representation with image as large as possible form a density-1 subset. Our results can be applied to a number of interesting families of abelian varieties, such as rational families dominating the moduli of Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves, trigonal curves, or plane curves. As a consequence, we prove that for any dimension g≥3, there are infinitely many abelian varieties over ℚ with adelic Galois representation having image equal to all of GSp2g(ℤ ).
Sparse Channel Separation using Random Probes

This paper considers the problem of estimating the channel response (or the Green's function) between multiple source–receiver pairs. Typically, the channel responses are estimated one-at-a-time: a single source sends out a known probe signal, the receiver measures the probe signal convolved with the channel response and the responses are recovered using deconvolution. In this paper, we show that if the channel responses are sparse and the probe signals are random, then we can significantly reduce the total amount of time required to probe the channels by activating all of the sources simultaneously. With all sources activated simultaneously, the receiver measures a superposition of all the channel responses convolved with the respective probe signals. Separating this cumulative response into individual channel responses can be posed as a linear inverse problem. We show that channel response separation is possible (and stable) even when the probing signals are relatively short in spite of the corresponding linear system of equations becoming severely underdetermined. We derive a theoretical lower bound on the length of the source signals that guarantees that this separation is possible with high probability. The bound is derived by putting the problem in the context of finding a sparse solution to an underdetermined system of equations, and then using mathematical tools from the theory of compressive sensing. Finally, we discuss some practical applications of these results, which include forward modeling for seismic imaging, channel equalization in multiple-input multiple-output communication and increasing the field-of-view in an imaging system by using coded apertures.
On the Kronheimer–Mrowka concordance invariant

Kronheimer and Mrowka introduced a new knot invariant, called $s^\sharp$, which is a gauge theoretic analogue of Rasmussen's $s$ invariant. In this article, we compute Kronheimer and Mrowka's invariant for some classes of knots, including algebraic knots and the connected sums of quasi-positive knots with non-trivial right handed torus knots. These computations reveal some unexpected phenomena: we show that $s^\sharp$ does not have to agree with $s$, and that $s^\sharp$ is not additive under connected sums of knots. Inspired by our computations, we separate the invariant $s^\sharp$ into two new invariants for a knot $K$, $s^\sharp_+(K)$ and $s^\sharp_-(K)$, whose sum is $s^\sharp(K)$. We show that their difference satisfies $0 \leq s^\sharp_+(K) - s^\sharp_-(K) \leq 2$. This difference may be of independent interest. We also construct two link concordance invariants that generalize $s^\sharp_\pm$, one of which we continue to call $s^\sharp_\pm$, and the other of which we call $s^\sharp_I$. To construct these generalizations, we give a new characterization of $s^\sharp$ using immersed cobordisms rather than embedded cobordisms. We prove some inequalities relating the genus of a cobordism between two links and the invariant $s^\sharp$ of the links. Finally, we compute $s^\sharp_\pm$ and $s^\sharp_I$ for torus links.
Neural Image Compression and Explanation

Explaining the prediction of deep neural networks (DNNs) and semantic image compression are two active research areas of deep learning with a numerous of applications in decision-critical systems, such as surveillance cameras, drones and self-driving cars, where interpretable decision is critical and storage/network bandwidth is limited. In this article, we propose a novel end-to-end Neural Image Compression and Explanation (NICE) framework that learns to (1) explain the predictions of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and (2) subsequently compress the input images for efficient storage or transmission. Specifically, NICE generates a sparse mask over an input image by attaching a stochastic binary gate to each pixel of the image, whose parameters are learned through the interaction with the CNN classifier to be explained. The generated mask is able to capture the saliency of each pixel measured by its influence to the final prediction of CNN; it can also be used to produce a mixed-resolution image, where important pixels maintain their original high resolution and insignificant background pixels are subsampled to a low resolution. The produced images achieve a high compression rate (e.g., about $0.6\times $ of original image file size), while retaining a similar classification accuracy. Extensive experiments across multiple image classification benchmarks demonstrate the superior performance of NICE compared to the state-of-the-art methods in terms of explanation quality and semantic image compression rate. Our code is available at: https://github.com/lxuniverse/NICE .
Proteasome-Mediated Regulation of Cdhr1a by Siah1 Modulates Photoreceptor Development and Survival in Zebrafish

Congenital retinal dystrophies are a major cause of unpreventable and incurable blindness worldwide. Mutations in CDHR1, a retina specific cadherin, are associated with cone-rod dystrophy. The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) is responsible for mediating orderly and precise targeting of protein degradation to maintain biological homeostasis and coordinate proper development, including retinal development. Recently, our lab uncovered that the seven in absentia (Siah) family of E3 ubiquitin ligases play a role in optic fissure fusion and identified Cdhr1a as a potential target of Siah. Using two-color whole mount in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry, we detected siah1 and cdhr1a co-expression as well as protein localization in the retinal outer nuclear layer (ONL), and more precisely in the connecting cilium of rods and cones between 3-5 days post fertilization (dpf). We confirmed that Siah1 targets Cdhr1a for proteasomal degradation by co-transfection and co-immunoprecipitation in cell culture. To analyze the functional importance of this interaction, we created two transgenic zebrafish lines that express siah1 or an inactive siah1 (siah1ΔRING) under the control of the heat shock promoter to modulate Siah activity during photoreceptor development. Overexpression of siah1, but not siah1ΔRING, resulted in a decrease in the number of rods and cones at 72 h post fertilization (hpf). The number of retinal ganglion cells, amacrine and bipolar cells was not affected by Siah1 overexpression, and there was no significant reduction of proliferating cells in the Siah1 overexpressing retina. We did, however, detect increased cell death, confirmed by an increase in the number of TUNEL + cells in the ONL, which was proteasome-dependent, as proteasome inhibition rescued the cell death phenotype. Furthermore, reduction in rods and cones resulting from increased Siah1 expression was rescued by injection of cdhr1a mRNA, and to an even greater extent by injection of a Siah1-insensitive cdhr1a variant mRNA. Lastly, CRISPR induced loss of Cdhr1a function phenocopied Siah1 overexpression resulting in a significant reduction of rods and cones. Taken together, our work provides the first evidence that Cdhr1a plays a role during early photoreceptor development and that Cdhr1a is regulated by Siah1 via the UPS.
Defensin-driven viral evolution

Enteric alpha-defensins are potent effectors of innate immunity that are abundantly expressed in the small intestine. Certain enteric bacteria and viruses are resistant to defensins and even appropriate them to enhance infection despite neutralization of closely related microbes. We therefore hypothesized that defensins impose selective pressure during fecal-oral transmission. Upon passaging a defensin-sensitive serotype of adenovirus in the presence of a human defensin, mutations in the major capsid protein hexon accumulated. In contrast, prior studies identified the vertex proteins as important determinants of defensin antiviral activity. Infection and biochemical assays suggest that a balance between increased cell binding and a downstream block in intracellular trafficking mediated by defensin interactions with all of the major capsid proteins dictates the outcome of infection. These results extensively revise our understanding of the interplay between defensins and non-enveloped viruses. Furthermore, they provide a feasible rationale for defensins shaping viral evolution, resulting in differences in infection phenotypes of closely related viruses.
Constraints on Brouwer's Laplacian spectrum conjecture

Abstract Brouwer's Conjecture states that, for any graph G, the sum of the k largest (combinatorial) Laplacian eigenvalues of G is at most | E ( G ) | + ( k + 1 2 ) , 1 ≤ k ≤ n . We present several interrelated results establishing Brouwer's conjecture for a wide range of graphs G and parameters k. In particular, we show that (1) is true for low-arboricity graphs, and in particular for planar G when k ≥ 11 ; (2) is true whenever the variance of the degree sequence is not very high, generalizing previous results for G regular or random; (3) is true if G belongs to a hereditarily spectrally-bounded class and k is sufficiently large as a function of k, in particular k ≥ 32 n for bipartite graphs; (4) holds unless G has edge-edit distance k 2 n = O ( n 3 / 2 ) from a split graph; (5) no G violates the conjectured upper bound by more than O ( n 5 / 4 ) , and bipartite G by no more than O ( n ) ; and (6) holds for all k outside an interval of length O ( n 3 / 4 ) . Furthermore, we show that a natural generalization of Brouwer's conjecture surprisingly is quite false: asymptotically almost surely, a uniform random signed complete graph violates the conjectured bound by Ω ( n ) .
A Human Evaluation of AMR-to-English Generation Systems.

Most current state-of-the art systems for generating English text from Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR) have been evaluated only using automated metrics, such as BLEU, which are known to be problematic for natural language generation. In this work, we present the results of a new human evaluation which collects fluency and adequacy scores, as well as categorization of error types, for several recent AMR generation systems. We discuss the relative quality of these systems and how our results compare to those of automatic metrics, finding that while the metrics are mostly successful in ranking systems overall, collecting human judgments allows for more nuanced comparisons. We also analyze common errors made by these systems.
Finding wombling boundaries in LHC data with Voronoi and Delaunay tessellations

We address the problem of finding a wombling boundary in point data generated by a general Poisson point process, a specific example of which is an LHC event sample distributed in the phase space of a final state signature, with the wombling boundary created by some new physics. We discuss the use of Voronoi and Delaunay tessellations of the point data for estimating the local gradients and investigate methods for sharpening the boundaries by reducing the statistical noise. The outcome from traditional wombling algorithms is a set of boundary cell candidates with relatively large gradients, whose spatial properties must then be scrutinized in order to construct the boundary and evaluate its significance. Here we propose an alternative approach where we simultaneously form and evaluate the significance of all possible boundaries in terms of the total gradient flux. We illustrate our method with several toy examples of both straight and curved boundaries with varying amounts of signal present in the data.
Joint Pricing and Rebalancing of Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand Systems

This paper studies optimal pricing and rebalancing policies for Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD) systems. We adopt a macroscopic planning perspective to tackle a profit maximization problem while ensuring that the system is load-balanced. We describe the system using a dynamic fluid model to show the existence and stability of an equilibrium (i.e., load balance) through pricing policies. We then develop an optimization framework that allows us to find optimal policies in terms of both pricing and rebalancing. We first maximize profit by only using pricing policies, then incorporate rebalancing, and finally we consider whether the solution is found sequentially or jointly. We apply each approach to a data-driven case study using real taxi data from New York City. Depending on which benchmarking solution we use, the joint problem (i.e., pricing and rebalancing) increases profits by 7% to 40%.
Cigarette Smoke Activates NOTCH3 to Promote Goblet Cell Differentiation in Human Airway Epithelial Cells.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death in the United States and is primarily caused by cigarette smoking. Increased numbers of mucus-producing secretory (“...
The Budgetary Repercussions Of Capital Convictions

Understanding how transient fiscal distress affects the stability and distribution of local budgets is increasingly important as control of public spending and revenues becomes more decentralized. This paper exploits the large and unexpected shock to county budgets imposed by capital crime trials, first to understand the incidence of the cost of capital convictions, and second to uncover the effects of local fiscal distress on the level and distribution of public spending and revenues. I show that these trials are quite costly relative to county budgets (with each trial causing an increase in county spending of more than $2 million), and that the costs are borne primarily by increasing taxes (although perhaps partially by decreases in police and capital spending). Using these trials as a source of exogenous variation, I also find significant inter-jurisdictional spillovers of both spending and revenues.
Relationship-Specific Investments and Earnings Management: Evidence on Corporate Suppliers and Customers

ABSTRACT: We examine the determinants and consequences of earnings management by firms in the context of their relationships with suppliers and customers. We find that industry-level proxies for relationship-specific investments by suppliers/customers are positively associated with the magnitude of discretionary accruals, volatility of earnings, and the frequency of large earnings increases. We also find that firm-level proxies for the intensity of relationship-specific investments by actual suppliers are positively related to the magnitude of discretionary accruals. In addition, earnings management by the firm in one period is positively related to the magnitude of R&D investments by suppliers and customers in the next period. However, we find that earnings management adversely affects the duration of customer-supplier relationships. Overall, our findings suggest that earnings management is used opportunistically to influence the perception of suppliers/customers about the firm’s prospects.
The Family and the Market at Wal-Mart

The Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes received much attention for what it means for collective litigation. Far less attention has been paid to what the case reveals about sex discrimination law. This symposium contribution uses an overlooked aspect of the Dukes case — the challenge to Wal-Mart’s relocation policy — as a lens to explore employment discrimination law’s failure to adequately take account of employees’ families in a way that further entrenches the family-market divide and seriously hinders the promise of sex discrimination law. The challenge to the relocation policy exposes how employment discrimination law simultaneously pays too little and too much attention to the family. Under the disparate treatment theory, the law ignores systematic sex-based harm to the employee’s family that arises from the intersection of an employer policy with gendered family structures. But under the disparate impact theory, the law risks presupposing these family phenomena in a way that reinforces the very sex stereotypes that the law is meant to eradicate. By simultaneously ignoring the family and assuming its contradiction with the market, Title VII continues to uphold the theoretical divide between family priorities and market demands. This Article explores these shortcomings of employment discrimination law and proposes how the law might overcome the family – market divide by acknowledging the family’s role in limiting employment opportunities without entrenching harmful sex stereotypes.
Short- and long-run price level uncertainty under different monetary policy regimes: an international comparison†

"The course of events during the nineteenth century favored such ideas [as price stability] ... the remarkable feature of this long period was the relative 'stability' of the price level. Approximately the 'same' level of price ruled in or about the years 1826, 1841, 1855, 1862, 1867, 1871 and 1915. Prices were also level in the years 1844, 1881 and 1914 ... No wonder that we came to believe in the stability of money contracts over a long period." J.M. Keynes, 'Essays in Persuasion' (1923 [1932], pp. 88-89)
Autonomy suspended: using female patients to teach intimate exams without their knowledge or consent.

Recent reports of medical students performing pelvic exams for training purposes on anesthetized women without their consent have produced a firestorm of controversy. Peter Ubel and colleagues found that 90% of medical students performed such exams during their obstetrics/gynecology rotations. A series of 2003 reports focused a white-hot spotlight on this teaching practice and resulted in Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice hearings and action by the American Association of Medical Colleges and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In this article, Professor Wilson examines the merits of the defenses and justifications for using female patients for pelvic exams without obtaining their explicit consent. Part I explores the scope and extent of the use of patients as "live cadavers" to train the next generation of healthcare providers. Not only are anesthetized patients used to teach exams; recently-deceased patients are often used to teach medical procedures. Part II documents how these practices have a disproportionate impact on the poor and uninsured, despite the fact that the benefits - proficient physicians - are distributed across society. Finally, Part III tests the justifications based on implied consent, actual consent, and necessity for dispensing with the simple step of asking patients for permission before conducting educational exams. Where these justifications rest on factual assumptions, this Part evaluates how well those assumptions stack with what is known about patient behavior and knowledge. The use of patients, both anesthetized and recently-deceased are important in providing medical students with the opportunity to learn necessary skills, but medical educators are misinformed about patient awareness regarding the usefulness of practice procedures. Wilson concludes that greater respect for patients in medical teaching is achievable but will result only when teaching faculty acknowledge the weaknesses of justifications routinely offered for using female patients as teaching tools without their knowledge or permission.
Student Religious Expression in School: Is It Religion or Speech, and Does It Matter

This Article does not advocate the constitutionality or permissibility of all student religious expression. Instead, this Article suggests that identifying the contexts in which students express their religious beliefs – curricular, ceremonial-functional, and extracurricular – and distinguishing between students' private religious expression and their programmatic religious expression may be a preferable way to determine when student religious expression is constitutionally permissible in public schools. Part II of the Article discusses the development of students' constitutional rights generally and religious rights specifically in the public schools. Part III will define student religious expression and discuss the treatment of it as speech and as religion in the various contexts of public school. Part IV discusses the constitutionality of programmatic and private student religious expression. Part V applies the thesis of the Article to relevant cases.
In good company. The effect of an eating companion's appearance on food intake

The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not the presence of an overweight eating companion influences healthy and unhealthy eating behavior, and to determine if the effect is moderated by how the companion serves herself. A professional actress either wore an overweight prosthesis (i.e., “fatsuit”) or did not wear one, and served herself either healthily (i.e., a small amount of pasta and a large amount of salad) or unhealthily (i.e., a large amount of pasta and a small amount of salad) for lunch. After observing her, male and female participants were asked to serve themselves pasta and salad to eat. Results demonstrated that regardless of how the confederate served, participants served and ate a larger amount of pasta when she was wearing the prosthesis than when she was not. In addition, when the confederate served herself healthily, participants served and ate a smaller amount of salad when she was wearing the prosthesis than when she was not. Consistent with the “lower health commitment” hypothesis, these results demonstrated that people may eat larger portions of unhealthy food and smaller portions of healthy food when eating with an overweight person, probably because the health commitment goal is less activated. More generally, this study provides evidence that the body type of an eating companion, as well as whether she serves herself healthily or unhealthily, influences the quantity of food intake.
The Deposits Channel of Monetary Policy

We propose and test a new channel for the transmission of monetary policy. We show that when the Fed funds rate increases, banks widen the interest spreads they charge on deposits, and deposits ow out of the banking system. We present a model in which imperfect competition among banks gives rise to these relationships. An increase in the nominal interest rate increases banks’ market power, inducing them to increase deposit spreads and hence restrict deposit supply. Households respond to the increase in deposit prices by substituting from deposits into less liquid, but higheryielding assets. Consequently, changes in the nominal interest rate aect banks’ cost of capital and lending. Using branch-level data on the universe of U.S. banks, we show that following an increase in the Fed funds rate, deposit spreads increase by more, and supply falls more, in areas with less deposit competition. We control for changes in banks’ lending opportunities by comparing branches of the same bank. We control for changes in macroeconomic conditions by showing that deposit spreads widen immediately after a rate change and even if this change is fully anticipated. Our results imply that monetary policy has a signicant impact on how the nancial system is funded, on the quantity of safe and liquid assets it produces, and on its provision of loans to the real economy.
Pandemic Influenza: Ethics, Law, and the Public's Health

Highly pathogenic Influenza (HPAI) has captured the close attention of policy makers who regard pandemic influenza as a national security threat. Although the prevalence is currently very low, recent evidence that the 1918 pandemic was caused by an avian influenza virus lends credence to the theory that current outbreaks could have pandemic potential. If the threat becomes a reality, massive loss of life and economic disruption would ensue. Therapeutic countermeasures (e.g., vaccines and antiviral medications) and public health interventions (e.g., infection control, social separation, and quarantine) form the two principal strategies for prevention and response, both of which present formidable legal and ethical challenges that have yet to receive sufficient attention. In part II, we examine the major medical countermeasures being considered as an intervention for an influenza pandemic. In this section, we will evaluate the known effectiveness of these interventions and analyze the ethical claims relating to distributive justice in the allocation of scarce resources. In part III, we will discuss public health interventions, exploring the hard tradeoffs between population health on the one hand and personal (e.g., autonomy, privacy, and liberty) and economic (e.g., trade, tourism, and business) interests on the other. This section will focus on the ethical and human rights issues inherent in population-based interventions. Pandemics can be deeply socially divisive, and the political response to these issues not only impacts public health preparedness, but also reflects profoundly on the kind of society we aspire to be.
The Impacts of Living Wage Policies: Introduction to the Special Issue*

Since 1994, living wage laws have been passed and implemented in over 100 cities or other local governmental entities in the United States. 1 The typical local living wage law imposes a relatively high mandated wage standard—currently averaging more than $9 an hour—upon a relatively small number of employers—usually those working on service contracts with the city and (in about a fourth of the cities) those receiving financial assistance from the city. Major cities in the United States that have living wage laws include Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Oakland, Portland, Rochester, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Louis and Tucson. In all, the cities that have passed living wage laws comprise about two-fifths of the population of large U.S. cities. Campaigns for local or statewide living wage laws are also in varying stages of development in nearly 100 localities and in a dozen or more states. These community-based developments are often cited as the most striking progressive achievement in labor and employment policy in the past 25 years—a period of declining real wages for the bottom two-fifths of the earnings distribution. The successful attempts to set living wage standards contrast with attempts to increase the national minimum wage, the real level of which eroded in the 1980s and recovered only partly in the late 1990s. The term “living wage,” which is much more evocative than the term “minimum wage,” now appears commonly in public discourse. Living wage campaigns gained momentum throughout the 1990s, supported by improvements
Private Litigants and the New International Courts

Scholars expect International Courts (ICs) with private access and compulsory jurisdiction to be more independent and effective. This article shows a trend of creating and using ICs with compulsory jurisdiction and private access, using as evidence the founding statutes and usage rates of 20 ICs created since 1945. Analyzing where and for what private actors are granted access to ICs, the author finds that what is driving the expansion of private access and compulsory jurisdiction is an attempt to extend the types of juridical checks found at the domestic level to the international governance level. Although this trend will likely lead to more rights claiming by private actors, limitations on the types of cases that can be raised combined with a lack of usage suggests that outside of Europe, private right claiming potentials have yet to be exploited.
Notice and the New Deal

The New Deal Supreme Court revised a well-known set of constitutional doctrines. Legal scholarship has principally focused on the changes that occurred in three areas—federalism, delegation, and economic liberty. This Article identifies a new and important fourth element of New Deal constitutionalism: a change in the constitutional doctrine of due process notice, the doctrine that specifies the minimum standards for constitutionally adequate notice of the law. The law of due process notice—which includes the doctrines of vagueness, retroactivity, and the rule of lenity—evolved dramatically over the course of the New Deal to permit lesser clarity and to tolerate more retroactivity. The upshot has been the near-total elimination of successful notice-based challenges other than in the limited context of First Amendment vagueness attacks. Unlike the more famous doctrinal changes of this period, changes to due process notice doctrine were not obviously necessary to accommodate the New Deal legislative agenda, either as a matter of jurisprudence or as a matter of politics. Due process notice doctrine nonetheless underwent a radical transformation in this era, as the Court came to regard its broader shift toward deferring to legislative and executive policy decisions as requiring the relaxation of due process notice doctrine. The link forged between deference and notice had significant functional effects on the most important audience for the Court’s notice jurisprudence—Congress. By loosening the strictures of due process notice doctrine, the Court lowered sharply the enactment costs of federal legislation and thereby facilitated its proliferation. This is a distinct, and hitherto unacknowledged, mechanism by which the Court in this period enhanced national Copyright © 2013 by Mila Sohoni. † Acting Assistant Professor, New York University School of Law. Many thanks to Chris Egleson, Daniel Ernst, Richard Fallon, Barry Friedman, Heather Gerken, Jamal Greene, Sam Issacharoff, John Leubsdorf, Ron Levin, Daryl Levinson, Anton Metlitsky, Rick Pildes, David L. Shapiro, Edward White, and Adam Zimmerman for reading and commenting on earlier drafts. I also thank the editors of the Duke Law Journal for their exceptional editorial assistance. SOHONI IN PRINTER PROOF (DO NOT DELETE) 2/25/2013 12:13 PM 1170 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:1169 power and encouraged the flourishing of the emerging administrative state. Like much of the New Deal “settlement,” the New Deal reformulation of due process notice doctrine is today the subject of ferment in the courts. Recognizing the New Deal roots of due process notice doctrine is critical for understanding these ongoing judicial debates—and for beginning the conceptual work of mapping the future shape of this vital cluster of doctrines.
Re-Imagining Justice

What do we mean by legal justice, as opposed to distributive, or social, or political justice; what is the justice, that is, we hope law promotes? What is the justice that lawyers and judges, peculiarly, are professionally committed to pursue? What is the virtue around which, arguably, this profession, and the individuals within it, have defined their public lives?Justice – and more particularly legal justice – is a badly under-theorized topic in jurisprudence; perhaps surprisingly, there is little written on it. The paucity of writing of course has a history. It can be traced to the turn of the last century – formative years of legal pedagogy and legal curriculum – when legal formalists and legal realists, who disagreed on virtually everything else regarding law, oddly enough agreed on the need to sever law from moral philosophy and more generally from high culture. Formalists, so as to render law autonomous, deductively pure, "scientific," and resting on its own bottom, so to speak, and realists, so as to tie law to the prestige, aspirations, and methods of the then nascent but ascending social sciences. Both realists and formalists, albeit for different reasons, sought to disassociate law from the demands of religion, morals, or culture, generally from the Toquevillian aristocratic norms within which law had been nested in the pre-Classical era. Justice, the great formalist Christopher Langdell thought, was not a fit subject of thought for a rigorous and professional and scientific law school curriculum. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the father of legal realism, quite famously, was even harsher. "I hate justice," Holmes wrote. "I know that if a man begins to talk about that, for one reason or another he is shirking thinking in legal terms." At least in the legal academy, we have indeed taken the Holmesian admonition to heart. Fearful of appearing sentimental, childish, or, worst of all, ignorant of the law, twentieth century lawyers and legal scholars, with only a few exceptions, have forsook the work of elucidating the concept of legal justice.Holmes and Langdellian skepticism notwithstanding, one can quite easily discern a conventional, and largely uncriticized, turn-of-the-century understanding of legal justice, inside the academy and the profession. It finds oratorical expression in law day and graduation day speeches, in the major unspoken premises of countless conventional legal arguments, and in some, although again not much, jurisprudential scholarship. That conception – call it the dominant or conventional conception-I will argue below, is seriously flawed. More specifically, I want to suggest that it is seriously flawed in a way that directly and negatively affects feminist and progressive efforts at achieving political reform. Feminists and progressives need to take up the task of criticizing our conventional understanding of legal justice. More importantly, we need to take up the task of crafting alternatives.
Life After Act 10?: Is There a Future for Collective Representation of Wisconsin Public Employees?

In 2011, Wisconsin largely gutted the collective bargaining rights of most public employees in the state. Wisconsin Act 10 largely replaced collective employee voice with unilateral employer control over employees’ wage, hours and terms and conditions of employment. This article addresses the future of collective employee representation in Wisconsin in the wake of Act 10. It urges employers to continue to engage with their employees through the employees’ unions, demonstrating why such an approach better provides for the public interest than unilateral employer control. It looks to examples from other jurisdictions and presents a range of alternatives for Wisconsin public employers and unions to provide for meaningful employee voice.
Growing (un)equal: fiscal policy and income inequality in China and BRIC+

This article investigates the empirical characteristics of income inequality in China and other large emerging market economies over the period 1980–2013, with a focus on the redistributive contrib...
One Path for ‘Post-Racial’ Employment Discrimination Cases—The Implicit Association Test Research as Social Framework Evidence

Today’s legal civil rights struggle is in large measure the effort to retain the foundational premise that racial discrimination is still a pervasive and problematic dynamic that law should be engaged in addressing. Within the employment discrimination context the attempt to salvage anti-discrimination law doctrine has been lodged on several fronts. Of particular note has been the effort to incorporate “social framework” evidence. Yet, given the powerful societal conviction in a “post-racial” American narrative of discrimination as an exceptionally rare event caused by aberrant malicious individuals, general social framework evidence alone will be unlikely to assist most plaintiffs present a persuasive case of discrimination. What is needed is a legal tool that can directly speak to the larger societal narrative in ways that assist fact-finders better understand contemporary manifestations of discrimination. This Article proposes that the use of general social framework evidence specifically incorporate the burgeoning social psychology literature regarding “implicit bias.” When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted there was no particular need for litigants to import social framework evidence let alone implicit bias data. Newspapers and the televised evening news were replete with concrete images of the reality of the violence of racial segregation and the relevance of race in how society was structured. The social context of the time provided every discrimination case an immediate social framework for processing claims and understanding that circumstantial evidence of discrimination was sufficient in the absence of a defendant’s legal justification for differential treatment, status or access. The social context of the reality of racism was the metaphorical glue that connected differential status and the absence of a nondiscriminatory employer justification into a structure identified as “discrimination.” But with the dismantlement of visible Jim Crow segregation and the cessation in television film coverage of massive physical brutality against scores of African Americans, the reality of racism became more attenuated for those not directly affected by it. What is needed is a new form of metaphorical glue. This Article concludes that social framework evidence as informed by the social psychology data about implicit bias and the Implicit Association Test may be the new metaphorical glue that is needed for properly assessing claims of discrimination.
The impact of new drug launches on longevity: evidence from longitudinal, disease-level data from 52 countries, 1982-2001.

We perform an econometric analysis of the effect of new drug launches on longevity, using data from the IMS Health Drug Launches database and the WHO Mortality Database. Under conservative assumptions, our estimates imply that the average annual increase in life expectancy of the entire population resulting from new drug launches is about one week, and that the incremental cost effectiveness ratio (new drug expenditure per person per year divided by the increase in life-years per person per year attributable to new drug launches) is about $6750—far lower than most estimates of the value of a statistical life-year.
THE IMPACT OF INTERNET SUBSIDIES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Abstract In an effort to alleviate the perceived growth of a digital divide, the U.S. government enacted a major subsidy for Internet and communications investment in schools starting in 1998. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of the subsidy—known as the E-Rate—on Internet investment in California public schools. The program subsidized spending by 20%–90%, depending on school characteristics. Using new data on school technology usage in every school in California from 1996 to 2000 as well as application data from the E-Rate program, the results indicate that the subsidy did succeed in significantly increasing Internet investment. The implied first-dollar price elasticity of demand for Internet investment is between −0.4 and −1.1 and the greatest sensitivity is seen among urban schools and schools with large black and Hispanic student populations. Rural and predominantly white and Asian schools show much less sensitivity. Overall, by the final year of the sample, there were approximately 68% more Inter...
Taxation as a Quasi–Market Process: Explanation, Exhortation, and the Choice of Analytical Windows

This paper identifies two broad strands of fiscal theorizing which date back to the late 19th century in the persons of Knut Wicksell (1896) and Francis Edgeworth (1897). From Edgeworth descends the treatment of public finance as a branch of applied statecraft, as conveyed these days largely through notions of optimal taxation. From Wicksell descends the treatment of public finance as offering explanations for observed patterns of collective activity. These two branches are not so much antagonistic as they are non-commensurable. The explanatory branch, moreover, is underdeveloped in comparison with the hortatory branch, and this paper seeks to sketch some contours for an explanatory theory of collective activity, paying particular attention to the American fiscal context.