cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Markets, trust and cultural biases evidence from eBay ☆

Abstract A body of research argues that cultural biases in trust may be responsible for economic backwardness. This paper studies the role of cultural biases in a real-world market, eBay, with well-designed features intended to facilitate cooperation. We analyze the buyer’s decision to leave negative feedback as an act of mistrust towards the seller. To identify the effects of buyer characteristics on feedback choices, we exploit an identification strategy that leverages high-volume data from millions of transactions. We find that negative feedback decreases as buyers gain experience on the market. Also, we show that measures of pro-social beliefs and behavior do not explain feedback choices. Our favorite interpretation is that cultural biases in trust may have limited importance in markets with effective reputation-building mechanisms.
Model of a bilateral Brown-type central pattern generator for symmetric and asymmetric locomotion.

Using a simple process of leaky integration, we developed an analytical solution to a robust model of spinal pattern generation. We analyzed the ability of this neural element to exert locomotor co...
External Auditor Responses to Tax Risk

Both practitioners and academics are increasingly focusing their attention on the riskiness of firms’ tax planning activities. In this study, we examine how external auditors respond to tax risk, m...
Specification test on mixed logit models

Abstract This paper proposes a specification test of the mixed logit models, by generalizing Hausman and McFadden (1984) test. We generalize the test even further by considering a model developed by Berry et al. (1995).
International Investment Law through the Lens of Global Justice

The last decade has witnessed a series of criticisms from states, NGOs, and scholars of international investment law’s rules and procedures. Running in parallel, and for a longer period, political philosophers have developed theories about what would constitute a just international economic order. Yet international law and philosophy have not directly engaged with one another regarding the justice of international investment law. This article attempts to breach that gap by analyzing the key critiques of investment law from the perspective of theories of global justice. Philosophical approaches are useful for appraising investment law because they offer a rigorous framework for thinking carefully about where investment law should be going; because rules that align with our sense of justice are more likely to be respected; and because these inquiries force lawyers to be more honest about the moral assumptions they already make in defending or attacking international investment law. Two of the main critiques of investment law—a systemic critique and a policy-space critique—are analyzed from the perspective of distributive justice. A third, institutional, critique is examined from perspectives within legal philosophy concerning procedural justice and the rule of law. The piece concludes with a series of suggestions for integrating the legal and philosophical discussions regarding investment law.
Power Series with Inverse Binomial Coefficients and Harmonic Numbers

We construct the generating function for products of inverse central binomial coefficients with harmonic numbers.
Mechanisms of Intrinsic Tumor Resistance to Immunotherapy.

An increased understanding of the interactions between the immune system and tumors has opened the door to immunotherapy for cancer patients. Despite some success with checkpoint inhibitors including ipilimumab, pembrolizumab, and nivolumab, most cancer patients remain unresponsive to such immunotherapy, likely due to intrinsic tumor resistance. The mechanisms most likely involve reducing the quantity and/or quality of antitumor lymphocytes, which ultimately are driven by any number of developments: tumor mutations and adaptations, reduced neoantigen generation or expression, indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) overexpression, loss of phosphatase and tensin homologue (PTEN) expression, and overexpression of the Wnt–β-catenin pathway. Current work in immunotherapy continues to identify various tumor resistance mechanisms; future work is needed to develop adjuvant treatments that target those mechanisms, in order to improve the efficacy of immunotherapy and to expand its scope.
EU Financial Services Policy since 2007: Crisis, Responses, and Prospects

This paper presents a holistic description and assessment of the European Union's financial services policy since the start of financial crisis in midâ€ 2007. The decadeâ€ long sequence is divided into four themes, in broadly chronological order: the initial reaction to the 2007â€“08 financial shock; subsequent initiatives framed by political developments at the EU and G20 level; the banking union from midâ€ 2012; and more recent events centered on the UK vote to exit the EU (Brexit). The analysis identifies banking union as the watershed moment, and correspondingly assesses the EU policy response as mostly inadequate in the first half and mostly effective in the second half of the period covered. Recommendations for future reforms are made in the conclusion.
Videos as Space-Time Region Graphs

How do humans recognize the action “opening a book”? We argue that there are two important cues: modeling temporal shape dynamics and modeling functional relationships between humans and objects. In this paper, we propose to represent videos as space-time region graphs which capture these two important cues. Our graph nodes are defined by the object region proposals from different frames in a long range video. These nodes are connected by two types of relations: (i) similarity relations capturing the long range dependencies between correlated objects and (ii) spatial-temporal relations capturing the interactions between nearby objects. We perform reasoning on this graph representation via Graph Convolutional Networks. We achieve state-of-the-art results on the Charades and Something-Something datasets. Especially for Charades with complex environments, we obtain a huge \(4.4\%\) gain when our model is applied in complex environments.
Sonic Hedgehog Is a Member of the Hh/DD-Peptidase Family That Spans the Eukaryotic and Bacterial Domains of Life

Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) coordinates Zn2+ in a manner that resembles that of peptidases. The ability of Shh to undergo autoproteolytic processing is impaired in mutants that affect the Zn2+ coordination, while mutating residues essential for catalytic activity results in more stable forms of Shh. The residues involved in Zn2+ coordination in Shh are found to be mutated in some individuals with the congenital birth defect holoprosencephaly, demonstrating their importance in development. Highly conserved Shh domains are found in parts of some bacterial proteins that are members of the larger family of DD-peptidases, supporting the notion that Shh acts as a peptidase. Whereas this Hh/DD-peptidase motif is present in Hedgehog (Hh) proteins of nearly all animals, it is not present in Drosophila Hh, indicating that Hh signaling in fruit flies is derived, and perhaps not a good model for vertebrate Shh signaling. A sequence analysis of Hh proteins and their possible evolutionary precursors suggests that the evolution of modern Hh might have involved horizontal transfer of a bacterial gene coding of a Hh/DD-peptidase into a Cnidarian ancestor, recombining to give rise to modern Hh.
On the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. We review all the models proposed for the progenitor systems of Type Ia supernovae and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each scenario when confronted with observations. We show that all scenarios encounter at least a few serious difficulties, if taken to represent a comprehensive model for the progenitors of all Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). Consequently, we tentatively conclude that there is probably more than one channel leading SNe Ia. While the single-degenerate scenario (in which a single white dwarf accretes mass from a normal stellar companion) has been studied in some detail, the other scenarios will need a similar level of scrutiny before any firm conclusions can be drawn.
Factors associated with a prolonged hospital stay during induction chemotherapy in newly diagnosed high risk pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Abstract Background High Risk (HR) or Very High Risk (VHR) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treated with 4 drug induction chemotherapy is often associated with adverse events. The aim of this study was to identify risk factors associated with a prolonged inpatient length of stay LOS during induction chemotherapy. Procedure Data from patients (N = 73) (age Results Of the 73 patients, 42 (57%) patients were discharged on day 4 of induction (short LOS, group A), while 31 (43%) patients (group B) experienced a prolonged LOS or an ICU stay (16 ± 27.7 days, median hospital stay = 8 days vs 4 days (group A), p = 0.02) due to organ dysfunction, infectious or metabolic complications. Group B patients were more likely to have a lower platelet count, serum bicarbonate, and a higher blood urea nitrogen (BUN) on day 4 of treatment (OR = 4.52, 8.21, and 3.02, respectively, p Conclusions A significant proportion of newly diagnosed HR or VHR pediatric ALL patients experience a prolonged LOS and unplanned re-admissions. Aggressive discharge planning and close follow up is indicated in this cohort of patients.
ALES: Overview and upgrades

The Arizona Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy (ALES) is the world’s first AO-fed thermal infrared integral field spectrograph, mounted inside the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) on the LBT. An initial mode of ALES allows 3-4 μm spectra at R 20 with 0.026” spaxels over a 1”x1” field-of-view. We are in the process of upgrading ALES with additional wavelength ranges, spectral resolutions, and plate scales allowing a broad suite of science that takes advantage of ALES’s unique ability to work at wavelengths >2 microns, and at the diffraction limit of the LBT’s full 23.8 meter aperture.
Two-Step Estimation and Inference with Possibly Many Included Covariates

We study the implications of including many covariates in a first-step estimate entering a two-step estimation procedure. We find that a first-order bias emerges when the number of included covariates is “large” relative to the square-root of sample size, rendering standard inference procedures invalid. We show that the jackknife is able to estimate this “many covariates” bias consistently, thereby delivering a new automatic bias-corrected two-step point estimator. The jackknife also consistently estimates the standard error of the original two-step point estimator. For inference, we develop a valid post-bias-correction bootstrap approximation that accounts for the additional variability introduced by the jackknife bias-correction. We find that the jackknife bias-corrected point estimator and the bootstrap post-bias-correction inference perform excellent in simulations, offering important improvements over conventional two-step point estimators and inference procedures, which are not robust to including many covariates. We apply our results to an array of distinct treatment effect, policy evaluation, and other applied microeconomics settings. In particular, we discuss production function and marginal treatment effect estimation in detail.
Principal Preparation Programs and Principal Outcomes

Purpose: Concerns about variation in the quality of preservice preparation provided by many university-based principal preparation programs (PPPs) has led to calls to use outcomes of program gradua...
An Examination of the Interactive Effect of Feedback Source and Sign in the Offshoring Environment: A Social Identity Perspective

ABSTRACT Public accounting firms regularly rely on offshore professionals to assist with client work. However, differences in interpersonal dynamics between offshore staff members and the superviso...
Worker Activity Recognition in Smart Manufacturing Using IMU and sEMG Signals with Convolutional Neural Networks

Abstract In a smart manufacturing system involving workers, recognition of the worker’s activity can be used for quantification and evaluation of the worker’s performance, as well as to provide onsite instructions with augmented reality. In this paper, we propose a method for activity recognition using Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and surface electromyography (sEMG) signals obtained from a Myo armband. The raw 10-channel IMU signals are stacked to form a signal image. This image is transformed into an activity image by applying Discrete Fourier Transformation (DFT) and then fed into a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for feature extraction, resulting in a high-level feature vector. Another feature vector representing the level of muscle activation is evaluated with the raw 8-channel sEMG signals. Then these two vectors are concatenated and used for work activity classification. A worker activity dataset is established, which at present contains 6 common activities in assembly tasks, i.e., grab tool/part, hammer nail, use power-screwdriver, rest arm, turn screwdriver, and use wrench. The developed CNN model is evaluated on this dataset and achieves 98% and 87% recognition accuracy in the half-half and leave-one-out experiments, respectively.
In Situ and GRACE‐Based Groundwater Observations: Similarities, Discrepancies, and Evaluation in the High Plains Aquifer in Kansas

Relating Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)‐derived terrestrial water storage anomaly (aTWS) variations to in situ groundwater data is important to understanding GRACE data utility. Here GRACE‐derived annual changes in aTWS (ΔTWS) from National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center are compared to annual changes in saturated groundwater volumes (ΔGW) in the High Plains aquifer (HPA) and overlying alluvial aquifers in Kansas. Regression analysis suggests that trends in ΔTWS are strongly related to trends in ΔGWalluvial and weakly related to trends in ΔGWHPA, although the magnitude of ΔTWS is much larger than ΔGWalluvial and is similar to ΔGWHPA. Unlike alluvial aquifers, a thick vadose zone overlies the HPA. Estimates of changes in vadose zone water content (ΔVZ) using GRACE products are similar in magnitude to annual variations in North American Land Data Assimilation soil moisture data, suggesting an unexpected dominance of ΔVZ in ΔTWS despite significant groundwater depletion. Results demonstrate that water storage changes in shallow alluvial aquifers, the root zone, the deep vadose zone, and the HPA itself are all significant in the HPA region of Kansas. Consequently, GRACE observations cannot, alone, be taken to reflect variations in saturated zone groundwater storage in the HPA, or other large, heavily used aquifers subject to substantial groundwater depletion, when deep unsaturated zones exist. GRACE can best provide guidance on regional aquifer storage changes where water storage changes in the vadose zone and perched or adjacent aquifers are well constrained.
Comparative Sensitivity of Different Methods to Detect and Quantify Circulating Fibrinogen/Fibrin Split Products

This study compared the sensitivity of three methods: staphyloccocal clumping test, SCT (Sigma and Calbiochem-Behring, CBC, reagents); Thrombo-Wellcotest (TWT); and Dade fibrinogen degradation products detection set, to quantify fibrinogen/fibrin split products (FSP) in blood samples from 696 patients and 124 normal donors using fibrinogen as the reference value. The Dade method gave quantitative results closely approaching the stated amount of fibrinogen. The SCT using Sigma reagents gave higher "fibrinogen" values, while the CBC reagents gave markedly lower "fibrinogen" values. The TWT detected only 25% of the fibrinogen standard. Detection of FSP following plasmin digestion of fibrinogen varied considerably for each test. The TWT, insensitive to most of the native fibrinogen, detected most of the FSP following only 15 minutes of plasmin digestion. In contrast, both assays relying on the SCT were completely negative after 24 hours of plasmin digestion. All four methods yielded FSP titers of less than 10 micrograms/mL in 97 (78.2%) of 124 blood samples from normal donors. The SCT Sigma reagents consistently gave results of less than 10 micrograms/mL in all normal donors. No instance of an FSP value greater than 40 micrograms/mL was noted for the 124 normal donors. Of the 696 patient blood samples tested, the Dade assay gave the highest or equally highest (with respect to another FSP method) value in 604 (87%) cases; the Sigma SCT did so in 360 (52%); the TWT in 316 (45%); and the CBC assay in 184 (26%) cases. The Dade test classified the largest number of blood samples, 328 (47.1%), in the greater than 10 less than 40 micrograms/mL titer category; however, the proportion of cases (32.2%) in which this test yielded values greater than 40 micrograms/mL was about the same as those produced by the Sigma SCT (29.9%) and TWT products (25.8%). Thus, with the exception of the normal (less than 10 micrograms/mL) and the suspicious (10-40 micrograms/mL) range, all three methods (Dade, Sigma, and TWT) are comparable in their abilities to detect abnormal levels of FSP. In the normal range, the Dade method will yield results that are frequently in the suspicious range. The CBC was noticeably inferior in detecting both suspicious and frankly abnormal values of FSP. Eight patients with acute leukemia were monitored sequentially with FSP and fibrinopeptide A (FpA) assays during their first course of chemotherapy. In all instances, elevated FpA levels correlated with elevated FSP values, as determined by the Dade, Sigma, or TWT assays.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Structural Target Controllability of Undirected Networks

In this paper, we study the target controllability problem of networked dynamical systems, in which we are tasked to steer a subset of network states towards a desired objective. More specifically, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the structural target controllability problem of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems with symmetric state matrices, such as undirected dynamical networks with unknown link weights. To achieve our goal, we first characterize the generic rank of symmetrically structured matrices, as well as the modes of any numerical realization. Subsequently, we provide a graph-theoretic necessary and sufficient condition for the structural controllability of undirected networks with multiple control nodes. Finally, we derive a graph-theoretic necessary and sufficient condition for structural target controllability of undirected networks. Remarkably, apart from the standard reachability condition, only local topological information is needed for the verification of structural target controllability.
Solving Large Sequential Games with the Excessive Gap Technique

There has been tremendous recent progress on equilibrium-finding algorithms for zero-sum imperfect-information extensive-form games, but there has been a puzzling gap between theory and practice. First-order methods have significantly better theoretical convergence rates than any counterfactual-regret minimization (CFR) variant. Despite this, CFR variants have been favored in practice. Experiments with first-order methods have only been conducted on small- and medium-sized games because those methods are complicated to implement in this setting, and because CFR variants have been enhanced extensively for over a decade they perform well in practice. In this paper we show that a particular first-order method, a state-of-the-art variant of the excessive gap technique---instantiated with the dilated entropy distance function---can efficiently solve large real-world problems competitively with CFR and its variants. We show this on large endgames encountered by the Libratus poker AI, which recently beat top human poker specialist professionals at no-limit Texas hold'em. We show experimental results on our variant of the excessive gap technique as well as a prior version. We introduce a numerically friendly implementation of the smoothed best response computation associated with first-order methods for extensive-form game solving. We present, to our knowledge, the first GPU implementation of a first-order method for extensive-form games. We present comparisons of several excessive gap technique and CFR variants.
Experiencing Research Through OurCS: Opportunities for Undergraduate Research in Computer Science

We describe a novel research-focused conference for undergraduate women in Computer Science. Pioneered at Carnegie Mellon University in 2007 and refined over four subsequent iterations (in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017), OurCS (Opportunities for Undergraduate Research in Computer Science) organizes participants into small teams, led by field experts, to explore open-ended research topics. Sessions devoted to hands-on research total more than 12 hours over the course of three days. Demand for the conference has increased steadily, and the model is ready for export. Regional versions geared towards local academic communities and other underrepresented groups will appear on the scene this year. We describe the model and the expansion plans, and provide evidence of success in strengthening and sustaining the research interests of the participants.
Perceptions of the Rule of Law: Evidence on the Impact of Judicial Insulation*

Objectives The purpose of this article is to determine whether judicial insulation influences how individuals assess the rule of law. Methods We employ panel data models using data collected by the World Bank and other sources to differentiate the influence of two kinds of judicial insulation—designed (de jure) and implemented (de facto)—on individuals’ perceptions of the viability of the rule of law in their country. Results We find that while insulation (as designed) has no bearing on how individuals score rule of law strength, insulation (as implemented) increases individual assessments. Notably, we find that disappointment from unmet expectations—where institutional implementation falls short of design—negatively influences rule of law strength scores. Conclusions We conclude that the degree to which expectations regarding the insulation and independence of the judiciary are met (or not met) can have important implications for how the viability of the rule of law is perceived.
Comparison of Model Predictive and Reinforcement Learning Methods for Fault Tolerant Control

Abstract A desirable property in fault-tolerant controllers is adaptability to system changes as they evolve during systems operations. An adaptive controller does not require optimal control policies to be enumerated for possible faults. Instead it can approximate one in real-time. We present two adaptive fault-tolerant control schemes for a discrete time system based on hierarchical reinforcement learning. We compare their performance against a model predictive controller in presence of sensor noise and persistent faults. The controllers are tested on a fuel tank model of a C-130 plane. Our experiments demonstrate that reinforcement learning-based controllers perform more robustly than model predictive controllers under faults, partially observable system models, and varying sensor noise levels.
The dynamic and structural properties of axonemal tubulins support the high length stability of cilia

Cilia and flagella play essential roles in cell motility, sensing and development. These organelles have tightly controlled lengths, and the axoneme, which forms the core structure, has exceptionally high stability. This is despite being composed of microtubules that are often characterized as highly dynamic. To understand how ciliary tubulin contribute to stability, we develop a procedure to differentially extract tubulins from different components of axonemes purified from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and characterize their properties. We find that the microtubules support length stability by two distinct mechanisms: low dynamicity, and unusual stability of the protofilaments. The high stability of the protofilaments manifests itself in the formation of curved tip structures, up to a few microns long. These structures likely reflect intrinsic curvature of GTP or GDP·Pi tubulin and provide structural insights into the GTP-cap. Together, our study provides insights into growth, stability and the role of post-translational modifications of axonemal microtubules. The axoneme in cilia and flagella has exceptionally high stability despite being composed of microtubules that are known to be highly dynamic. Here authors extract tubulin from different components of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii axonemes and characterize their properties.
Deterministic parallel analysis: An improved method for selecting factors and principal components

Factor analysis and principal component analysis are used in many application areas. The first step, choosing the number of components, remains a serious challenge. Our work proposes improved methods for this important problem. One of the most popular state of the art methods is parallel analysis (PA), which compares the observed factor strengths with simulated strengths under a noise‐only model. The paper proposes improvements to PA. We first derandomize it, proposing deterministic PA, which is faster and more reproducible than PA. Both PA and deterministic PA are prone to a shadowing phenomenon in which a strong factor makes it difficult to detect smaller but more interesting factors. We propose deflation to counter shadowing. We also propose to raise the decision threshold to improve estimation accuracy. We prove several consistency results for our methods, and test them in simulations. We also illustrate our methods on data from the human genome diversity project, where they significantly improve the accuracy.
Tried and True: Fair Use Tales for the Telling

On Thursday, March 1, 2018, the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication hosted “Tried and True: Fair Use Tales for the Telling,” a one-day program celebrating Harvard’s Fifth Anniversary of Fair Use Week. Leading fair use scholars and practitioners shared their stories and engaged in lively discussion about the powerful and flexible fair use provision of the Copyright Act and its applications. Topics included treatment of the fair use doctrine in recent jurisprudence, conflicts over the use of visual works in remixes and mash-ups, academic work and social commentary, filmmaking, controlled digital lending practices in libraries, software preservation, and more. This article discusses the examples and ideas presented during the program and offers resources for further study in the application of fair use.
Space charge saturation in multipactor discharges with parallel magnetic field

Numerical and theoretical models were developed to investigate space-charge effects in a multipactor discharge with an applied magnetic field. The magnetic field was assumed to be parallel to the RF electric field, and only the space-charge effects in the direction perpendicular to the fields were studied. Inclusion of space-charge effects allowed investigation of a saturation mechanism driven by electron diffusion. Numerical simulations showed that saturation of the multipactor discharge could be reached as diffusion balanced the electron production due to secondary emission. It was found that the steady state density reaches a limit as RF voltage was increased. Fluid equations for the electron motion were used to describe electron diffusion and derive an expression for the steady-state electron density in a typical multipactor discharge. It was found that in the presence of a magnetic field, electrons may be trapped by executing a slow rigid-rotor rotation, as described by the Brillouin condition. The electron behavior was found to be dynamic, satisfying the electron trapping condition while the electrons were moving between electrodes and violating the Brillouin condition near the electrodes leading to larger diffusion losses. Numerical simulations show that Brillouin trapping due to an applied parallel magnetic field can significantly increase saturation density by up to two orders of magnitude.
Stepfamily Structure and Transfers Between Generations in U.S. Families

Unstable couple relationships and high rates of repartnering have increased the share of U.S. families with stepkin. Yet data on stepfamily structure are from earlier periods, include only coresident stepkin, or cover only older adults. In this study, we use new data on family structure and transfers in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to describe the prevalence and numbers of stepparents and stepchildren for adults of all ages and to characterize the relationship between having stepkin and transfers of time and money between generations, regardless of whether the kin live together. We find that having stepparents and stepchildren is very common among U.S. households, especially younger households. Furthermore, stepkin substantially increase the typical household’s family size; stepparents and stepchildren increase a household’s number of parents and adult children by nearly 40 % for married/cohabiting couples with living parents and children. However, having stepkin is associated with fewer transfers, particularly time transfers between married women and their stepparents and stepchildren. The increase in the number of family members due to stepkin is insufficient to compensate for the lower likelihood of transfers in stepfamilies. Our findings suggest that recent cohorts with more stepkin may give less time assistance to adult children and receive less time assistance from children in old age than prior generations.
Regenerative Failure Following Rat Neonatal Chorda Tympani Transection is Associated with Geniculate Ganglion Cell Loss and Terminal Field Plasticity in the Nucleus of the Solitary Tract.

Abstract Neural insult during development results in recovery outcomes that vary dependent upon the system under investigation. Nerve regeneration does not occur if the rat gustatory chorda tympani nerve is sectioned (CTX) during neonatal (≤P10) development. It is unclear how chorda tympani soma and terminal fields are affected after neonatal CTX. The current study determined the impact of neonatal CTX on chorda tympani neurons and brainstem gustatory terminal fields. To assess terminal field volume in the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS), rats received CTX at P5 or P10 followed by chorda tympani label, or glossopharyngeal (GL) and greater superficial petrosal (GSP) label as adults. In another group of animals, terminal field volumes and numbers of chorda tympani neurons in the geniculate ganglion (GG) were determined by labeling the chorda tympani with DiI at the time of CTX in neonatal (P5) and adult (P50) rats. There was a greater loss of chorda tympani neurons following P5 CTX compared to adult denervation. Chorda tympani terminal field volume was dramatically reduced 50 days after P5 or P10 CTX. Lack of nerve regeneration after neonatal CTX is not caused by ganglion cell death alone, as approximately 30% of chorda tympani neurons survived into adulthood. Although the total field volume of intact gustatory nerves was not altered, the GSP volume and GSP-GL overlap increased in the dorsal NTS after CTX at P5, but not P10, demonstrating age-dependent plasticity. Our findings indicate that the developing gustatory system is highly plastic and simultaneously vulnerable to injury.
Prognostic significance of residual disease in advanced stage malignant ovarian germ cell tumors.

Objective To investigate the prognostic significance of complete gross resection following cytoreductive surgery for patients with advanced stage malignant ovarian germ cell tumors. Methods The National Cancer Data Base was accessed and patients diagnosed with an advanced stage (II-IV) malignant ovarian germ cell tumor who underwent primary cytoreductive surgery between 2011 and 2014 were selected for further analysis. For analysis purposes two groups were formed: patients with complete gross resection and those with macroscopic residual disease. Demographic and clinico-pathological characteristics were compared with the chi-square and Mann–Whitney U test. Univariate survival analysis was performed with the log-rank test after generation of Kaplan–Meier curves, while a Cox proportional hazard model was constructed to evaluate mortality after controlling for confounders. Results A total of 343 patients who met the inclusion criteria were identified. Residual disease status was available for 276 patients: the rate of complete gross resection was 69.2 %. By univariate analysis there was no difference in overall survival between patients in the complete gross resection and macroscopic residual disease groups, P= 0.26; 3-year overall survival rates: 86.4 % and 82.8 %, respectively. No difference in overall survival was noted following stratification by histology; P = 0.64 and P = 0.24 for dysgerminoma and non-dysgerminoma tumor groups. After controlling for stage IV disease, histology and the administration of chemotherapy, macroscopic residual disease was not associated with a worse mortality (HR: 1.22, 95% CI: 0.61 to 2.46). Conclusions Macroscopic residual disease following primary cancer-directed surgery was not associated with a worse prognosis in a cohort of patients with advanced stage malignant ovarian germ cell tumors.
Flexible Load Balancing with Multi-dimensional State-space Collapse: Throughput and Heavy-traffic Delay Optimality

Heavy traffic delay analysis for load balancing policies has relied heavily on a condition called state-space collapse onto a single-dimensional line. In this paper, via Lyapunov driftbased method, we rigorously prove that even under a multidimensional state-space collapse, steady-state heavy-traffic delay optimality can still be achieved for a general load balancing system. This result directly implies that achieving steady-state heavy-traffic delay optimality simply requires that no server is kept idling while others are busy at heavy loads, thus complementing and extending the result obtained by diffusion approximations. Further, we explore the greater flexibility provided by allowing a multidimensional state-space collapse in designing new load balancing policies that are both throughput optimal and heavytraffic delay optimal in steady state.
Complexity of Linear Regions in Deep Networks.

It is well-known that the expressivity of a neural network depends on its architecture, with deeper networks expressing more complex functions. In the case of networks that compute piecewise linear functions, such as those with ReLU activation, the number of distinct linear regions is a natural measure of expressivity. It is possible to construct networks with merely a single region, or for which the number of linear regions grows exponentially with depth; it is not clear where within this range most networks fall in practice, either before or after training. In this paper, we provide a mathematical framework to count the number of linear regions of a piecewise linear network and measure the volume of the boundaries between these regions. In particular, we prove that for networks at initialization, the average number of regions along any one-dimensional subspace grows linearly in the total number of neurons, far below the exponential upper bound. We also find that the average distance to the nearest region boundary at initialization scales like the inverse of the number of neurons. Our theory suggests that, even after training, the number of linear regions is far below exponential, an intuition that matches our empirical observations. We conclude that the practical expressivity of neural networks is likely far below that of the theoretical maximum, and that this gap can be quantified.
Chapter 2 – Ethical Principles in Clinical Research

Clinical research has resulted in significant benefits for society, yet continues to pose profound ethical questions. This chapter briefly describes: five overlapping but distinct eras reflecting the history of clinical research ethics; codes of research ethics; and seven ethical principles that guide clinical research ethics and particular ethical challenges in randomized controlled trials.
Pyridine-2-propanoic acids: Discovery of dual PPARα/γ agonists as antidiabetic agents

A series of novel pyridine-2-propanoic acids was synthesized. A structure-activity relationship study of these compounds led to the identification of potent dual PPARalpha/gamma agonists with varied isoform selectivity. Based on the results of efficacy studies in diabetic (db/db) mice, and the desired pharmacokinetic parameters, compound (S)-13 was selected for further profiling.
International Mergers and Acquisitions Laws, the Market for Corporate Control, and Accounting Conservatism

Exploiting the staggered enactment of country‐level mergers and acquisitions (M&A) law as an exogenous increase in corporate takeover threat, this paper examines how a disciplinary market for corporate control affects accounting conservatism. Following M&A law adoption, we find increased accounting conservatism, with more pronounced effects in countries with weak shareholder protection and in those experiencing larger growth in takeover activity. Further analysis reveals that elevated takeover threats increase conservatism through changes in capital structure and investment decisions as well as improvements in board monitoring. Our findings highlight the importance of the market for corporate control in shaping financial‐reporting outcome.
Proteotoxicity from aberrant ribosome biogenesis compromises cell fitness

To achieve maximal growth, cells must manage a massive economy of ribosomal proteins (r-proteins) and RNAs (rRNAs) to produce thousands of ribosomes every minute. Although ribosomes are essential in all cells, natural disruptions to ribosome biogenesis lead to heterogeneous phenotypes. Here, we model these perturbations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and show that challenges to ribosome biogenesis result in acute loss of proteostasis. Imbalances in the synthesis of r-proteins and rRNAs lead to the rapid aggregation of newly synthesized orphan r-proteins and compromise essential cellular processes, which cells alleviate by activating proteostasis genes. Exogenously bolstering the proteostasis network increases cellular fitness in the face of challenges to ribosome assembly, demonstrating the direct contribution of orphan r-proteins to cellular phenotypes. We propose that ribosome assembly is a key vulnerability of proteostasis maintenance in proliferating cells that may be compromised by diverse genetic, environmental, and xenobiotic perturbations that generate orphan r-proteins.
In situ calibration to account for transmission losses in backscatter coefficient estimation

The backscatter coefficient (BSC) has demonstrated the ability to classify disease state and identify the response of cancer to therapy. However, estimating the BSC in vivo using a reference phantom technique does not account for transmission losses due to intervening layers, leading to increase in bias and variance of BSC-based estimates from one sample to the next. To account for transmission losses, an in situ calibration approach is proposed using a titanium sphere that is well-characterized ultrasonically, biocompatible, and embedded inside the sample. Ultrasound scattered from the sphere encounters the same transmission loss and attenuation as the investigated sample and can be used as a reference spectrum. To test the calibration procedures, phantoms were scanned with and without lossy layers on top, and BSCs were estimated using the in situ calibration approach and the reference phantom approach and compared. The differences of the BSCs, using the BSC from the reference phantom without a layer as baseline, were 0.16 ± 2.29 dB, -1.95 ± 2.99 dB and -10.90 ± 3.64 dB using the in situ calibration approach without the layer, with the layer, and using the reference phantom approach with the layer, respectively. The results indicate that an in situ calibration target can account for overlaying tissue losses thereby improving the robustness of BSC-based estimates.The backscatter coefficient (BSC) has demonstrated the ability to classify disease state and identify the response of cancer to therapy. However, estimating the BSC in vivo using a reference phantom technique does not account for transmission losses due to intervening layers, leading to increase in bias and variance of BSC-based estimates from one sample to the next. To account for transmission losses, an in situ calibration approach is proposed using a titanium sphere that is well-characterized ultrasonically, biocompatible, and embedded inside the sample. Ultrasound scattered from the sphere encounters the same transmission loss and attenuation as the investigated sample and can be used as a reference spectrum. To test the calibration procedures, phantoms were scanned with and without lossy layers on top, and BSCs were estimated using the in situ calibration approach and the reference phantom approach and compared. The differences of the BSCs, using the BSC from the reference phantom without a layer as ...
An overview of advances in global maternal health: From broad to specific improvements

After the declaration of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 by the United Nations, many stakeholders allocated financial resources to "global maternal health." Research to expand care and improve delivery of maternal health services has exponentially increased. The present article highlights an overview, namely 10 of the health system, clinical, and technology-based advancements that have occurred in the past three decades in the field of global maternal health. The list of topics has been selected through the cumulative clinical and public health expertise of the authors and is certainly not exhaustive. Rather, the list is intended to provide a mapping of key topics arranged from broad to specific that span from the global policy level to the level of individual care. The list of health system, clinical, and technology-based advancements include: (10) Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals; (9) Development of clinical training programs, including the potential for subspecialty development; (8) Prenatal care expansion and potential; (7) Decentralized health systems, including the use of skilled birth attendants; (6) Antiretroviral therapy for HIV; (5) Essential medicines; (4) Vaccines; (3) mHealth/eHealth; (2) Ultrasonography; and (1) Obstetric hemorrhage management. With the Sustainable Development Goals now underway, the field must build upon past successes to sustain maternal and neonatal well-being in the future global health agenda.
Human vs. Muppet: A conservative estimate of human performance on the GLUE benchmark

The GLUE benchmark (Wang et al., 2019b) is a suite of language understanding tasks which has seen dramatic progress in the past year, with average performance moving from 70.0 at launch to 83.9, state of the art at the time of writing (May 24, 2019). Here, we measure human performance on the benchmark, in order to learn whether significant headroom remains for further progress. We provide a conservative estimate of human performance on the benchmark through crowdsourcing: Our annotators are non-experts who must learn each task from a brief set of instructions and 20 examples. In spite of limited training, these annotators robustly outperform the state of the art on six of the nine GLUE tasks and achieve an average score of 87.1. Given the fast pace of progress however, the headroom we observe is quite limited. To reproduce the data-poor setting that our annotators must learn in, we also train the BERT model (Devlin et al., 2019) in limited-data regimes, and conclude that low-resource sentence classification remains a challenge for modern neural network approaches to text understanding.
Nucleus accumbens shell small conductance potassium channels underlie adolescent ethanol exposure-induced anxiety.

Alcohol use typically begins in adolescence, increasing the likelihood of adult mental disorders such as anxiety. However, the cellular mechanisms underlying the consequences of adolescent alcohol exposure as well as the behavioral consequences remain poorly understood. We examined the effects of adolescent or adult chronic intermittent ethanol (CIE) exposure on intrinsic excitability of striatal medium-sized spiny neurons (MSNs) and anxiety levels. Rats underwent one of the following procedures: (1) light–dark transition (LDT) and open-field (OF) tests to evaluate anxiety levels and general locomotion; (2) whole-cell patch clamp recordings and biocytin labeling to assess excitability of striatal MSNs, as well as morphological properties; and (3) western blot immunostaining to determine small conductance (SK) calcium-activated potassium channel protein levels. Three weeks, but not 2 days, after CIE treatment, adolescent CIE-treated rats showed shorter crossover latency from the light to dark side in the LDT test and higher MSN excitability in the nucleus accumbens shell (NAcS). Furthermore, the amplitude of the medium afterhyperpolarization (mAHP), mediated by SK channels, and SK3 protein levels in the NAcS decreased concomitantly. Finally, increased anxiety levels, increased excitability, and decreased amplitude of mAHP of NAcS MSNs were reversed by SK channel activator 1-EBIO and mimicked by the SK channel blocker apamin. Thus, adolescent ethanol exposure increases adult anxiety-like behavior by downregulating SK channel function and protein expression, which leads to an increase of intrinsic excitability in NAcS MSNs. SK channels in the NAcS may serve as a target to treat adolescent alcohol binge exposure-induced mental disorders, such as anxiety in adulthood.
Binding of an X-Specific Condensin Correlates with a Reduction in Active Histone Modifications at Gene Regulatory Elements

Condensins are evolutionarily conserved protein complexes that are required for chromosome segregation during cell division and genome organization during interphase. In Caenorhabditis elegans, a specialized condensin, which forms the core of the dosage compensation complex (DCC), binds to and represses X chromosome transcription. Here, we analyzed DCC localization and the effect of DCC depletion on histone modifications, transcription factor binding, and gene expression using chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing and mRNA sequencing. Across the X, the DCC accumulates at accessible gene regulatory sites in active chromatin and not heterochromatin. The DCC is required for reducing the levels of activating histone modifications, including H3K4me3 and H3K27ac, but not repressive modification H3K9me3. In X-to-autosome fusion chromosomes, DCC spreading into the autosomal sequences locally reduces gene expression, thus establishing a direct link between DCC binding and repression. Together, our results indicate that DCC-mediated transcription repression is associated with a reduction in the activity of X chromosomal gene regulatory elements.