cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Do Corporations Have Religious Beliefs

Despite two hundred years of jurisprudence on the topic of corporate personhood, the Supreme Court has failed to endorse a philosophically defensible theory of the corporation. In this Article, I attempt to fill that void. Drawing upon the extensive philosophical literature on personhood and group agency, I argue that corporations qualify as persons in their own right. This leads me to answer the titular question with an emphatic yes. Contrary to how it first seems, that conclusion does not warrant granting expansive constitutional rights to corporations. It actually suggests the opposite. Using the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate as a case study, I develop this theory of corporate personhood and explore some of its constitutional implications.
Coolies, James Yen, and Rebellious Advocacy

Those of us who engage in progressive legal work need to be constantly reminded that we do not know everything - that we are not knights in shining armor swooping in to save subordinated communities. We should be collaborating: working with rather than simply on behalf of clients and allies from whom we have much to learn. Though lawyering for social change is arduous work, there is much to gain in these battles against subordination, not simply from the potential outcome but from the collaborative process itself: as our clients gain strength and confidence, we too are renewed. Thus invigorated by the talent, spirit, and innovation that our clients and allies bring to the table, we aspire to bring that same sense of renewal to those with whom we work. As a legal services attorney, a law school clinical instructor, and a volunteer with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), I am constantly amazed by the talented clients and non-lawyer allies I have encountered. From my contact with such allies I have drawn the invaluable lesson that the fight against discrimination - in essence, the fight against subordination - is one that community lawyers wage most effectively with allies and clients. In their work, these allies demonstrate that the struggle requires skills, techniques, and approaches that, unfortunately, conventional law school classrooms neglect. If we seek to become more effective collaborative lawyers, then we should keep our eyes open for individuals from whom we can learn. Long before I became a lawyer, I met such a person named Y.C. James Yen. Though perhaps little-known among contemporary community lawyers, Yen's work has merited accolades all over the world, as well as broadened and enriched my own perspective of progressive lawyering. Indeed, Yen's approach fits well within the theoretical lawyering framework advanced by Jerry Lopez, Lucie White, and Ascanio Pomelli. These scholars, who are grounded in ongoing community work, have challenged us to re-imagine our roles as community lawyers. They advocate a collaborative approach that respects clients' decision-making capacities, seeks allies in the pursuit of social justice, and is open to learning from clients and community partners. In this article, I first provide some background on Yen and describe his incredible work in Europe, China, and the Philippines. I then revisit the scholarship of Lopez, White, and Piomelli as their theories and experiences pertain to community lawyering in the rebellious or collaborative style, and I relate Yen's historic work to the philosophy and concepts they advance. My hope is thus to remind contemporary rebellious advocates of collaborative possibilities.
Business cycles with a common trend in neutral and investment-specific productivity☆

This paper identifies a new source of business-cycle fluctuations. Namely, a common stochastic trend in neutral and investment-specific productivity. We document that in U.S. postwar quarterly data total factor productivity (TFP) and the relative price of investment are cointegrated. We show theoretically that TFP and the relative price of investment are cointegrated if and only if neutral and investment-specific productivity share a common stochastic trend. We econometrically estimate an RBC model augmented with a number of real rigidities and driven by a multitude of shocks. We find that in the context of our estimated model, innovations in the common stochastic trend explain a sizable fraction of the unconditional variances of output, consumption, investment, and hours.
Accommodation at work: lessons from the Americans with Disabilities Act and possibilities for alleviating the American worker time crunch.

This article addresses issues of accommodation and time with respect to the American worker time crunch problem. On the former issue, I concur in Professor Arnow-Richman's observation that an accommodation approach to addressing the competing pressures of work and family is prone to resistance from the courts. Experience under the ADA illustrates a judicial reluctance to go beyond a traditional equal treatment view of discrimination to embrace a more affirmative different treatment model of discrimination. But this does not mean that the ADA's reasonable accommodation framework has been a failure. To the contrary, while the reasonable accommodation requirement may have fallen somewhat short of expectations on the substantive law front, it has launched a procedural revolution in fostering an interactive process by which employers and employees cooperatively work to identify suitable workplace accommodations. The impact of this procedural device is not as readily noticeable as the courts' substantive law limitations, but it may serve as the ADA's most significant contribution to this point. Turning to the second issue, American workers, quite simply, do not have enough time to tend to caregiving and other non-work needs. While this is a particularly acute problem for caregivers, the American worker time crunch is a problem of pandemic proportions. American workers of all stripes are required or pressured to spend ever-increasing amounts of time at work. The ADA model represents one possible format for accommodating non-work time demands. The first decade of experience under the ADA suggests that judicial and employer resistance would temper the substantive law advances of such an approach without necessarily conferring the procedural advantages of the ADA's interactive process. A more specific legislative approach is preferable. Given the pervasive nature of the American worker time crunch problem, a broad legislative solution is in order. This article suggests one possible approach in the form of a proposed amendment to the FMLA that would enable employees to take paid leave for two of FMLA's twelve-week leave period financed in a manner similar to that used for unemployment compensation purposes. The proposal also would permit employers to opt out of the new mandate by providing a minimum of four weeks of leave per year that may be taken by employees for care, sickness, or personal leave/vacation purposes.
Inter-Observer Risk-Tolerance Agreement Between Husbands And Wives

The purpose of this research was to test the extent to which variability in husbands’ and wives’ self-assessed financial risk can be attributed to variation in risk tolerance or observer bias resulting from measurement error. Using a sample of 188 well-educated married couples, scores from the Survey of Consumer Finances single risk-assessment item were used to evaluate the following null hypothesis: Husbands and wives do not agree on their level of financial risk tolerance. The hypothesis was tested using a percentage agreement test, a Kappa coefficient test, and a chi-square analysis. Findings led to a rejection of the null hypothesis. That is, couples exhibited general agreement in their assessment of financial risk tolerance, although the level of agreement was rather modest.
The Coin Problem with Applications to Data Streams

Consider the problem of computing the majority of a stream of $n$ i.i.d. uniformly random bits. This problem, known as the coin problem, is central to a number of counting problems in different data stream models. We show that any streaming algorithm for solving this problem with large constant advantage must use $\Omega(\log n)$ bits of space. We extend our lower bound to proving tight lower bounds for solving multiple, randomly interleaved copies of the coin problem, as well as for solving the OR of multiple copies of a variant of the coin problem. Our proofs involve new measures of information complexity that are well-suited for data streams. We use these lower bounds to obtain a number of new results for data streams. In each case there is an underlying $d$ dimensional vector $x$ with additive updates to its coordinates given in a stream of length $m$ . The input streams arising from our coin lower bound have nice distributional properties, and consequently for many problems for which we only had lower bounds in general turnstile streams, we now obtain the same lower bounds in more natural models, such as the bounded deletion model, in which $\Vert x\Vert_{2}$ never drops by a constant fraction of what it was earlier, or in the random order model, in which the updates are ordered randomly. In particular, in the bounded deletion model, we obtain nearly tight lower bounds for approximating $\Vert x\Vert_{\infty}$ up to additive error $\frac{1}{\sqrt{k}}\Vert x\Vert_{2}$ , approximating $\Vert x\Vert_{2}$ up to a multiplicative ( $1+\epsilon$ ) factor (resolving a question of Jayaram and Woodruff in PODS 2018), and solving the Point Query and $\ell_{2}$ -Heavy Hitters Problems. In the random order model, we also obtain new lower bounds for the Point Query and $\ell_{2}$ -Heavy Hitters Problems. We also give new algorithms complementing our lower bounds and illustrating the tightness of the models we consider, including an algorithm for approximating $\Vert x\Vert_{\infty}$ up to additive error $\frac{1}{\sqrt{k}}\Vert x\Vert_{2}$ in turnstile streams (resolving a question of Cormode in a 2006 IITK Workshop), and an algorithm for finding $\ell_{2}$ -heavy hitters in randomly ordered insertion streams (which for random order streams, resolves a question of Nelson in a 2018 Warwick Workshop).
Structure of geometrically non-reduced varieties

We prove a structural result for geometrically non-reduced varieties and give applications to Fano varieties. For example, we show that if $X$ is the generic fibre of a Mori fibre space of relative dimension $n$, and the characteristic is $p>2n+1$, then any geometric non-reducedness of $X$ comes from the base of some fibration.
A quantum enhanced search for dark matter axions

The manipulation of quantum states of light1 holds the potential to enhance searches for fundamental physics. Only recently has the maturation of quantum squeezing technology coincided with the emergence of fundamental physics searches that are limited by quantum uncertainty2,3. In particular, the quantum chromodynamics axion provides a possible solution to two of the greatest outstanding problems in fundamental physics: the strong-CP (charge-parity) problem of quantum chromodynamics4 and the unknown nature of dark matter5-7. In dark matter axion searches, quantum uncertainty manifests as a fundamental noise source, limiting the measurement of the quadrature observables used for detection. Few dark matter searches have approached this limit3,8, and until now none has exceeded it. Here we use vacuum squeezing to circumvent the quantum limit in a search for dark matter. By preparing a microwave-frequency electromagnetic field in a squeezed state and near-noiselessly reading out only the squeezed quadrature9, we double the search rate for axions over a mass range favoured by some recent theoretical projections10,11. We find no evidence of dark matter within the axion rest energy windows of 16.96-17.12 and 17.14-17.28 microelectronvolts. Breaking through the quantum limit invites an era of fundamental physics searches in which noise reduction techniques yield unbounded benefit compared with the diminishing returns of approaching the quantum limit.
Finding Core Members of Cooperative Games Using Agent-Based Modeling

Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a powerful paradigm to gain insight into social phenomena. One area that ABM has rarely been applied is coalition formation. Traditionally, coalition formation is modeled using cooperative game theory. In this paper, a heuristic algorithm is developed that can be embedded into an ABM to allow the agents to find coalition. The resultant coalition structures are comparable to those found by cooperative game theory solution approaches, specifically, the core. A heuristic approach is required due to the computational complexity of finding a cooperative game theory solution which limits its application to about only a score of agents. The ABM paradigm provides a platform in which simple rules and interactions between agents can produce a macro-level effect without the large computational requirements. As such, it can be an effective means for approximating cooperative game solutions for large numbers of agents. Our heuristic algorithm combines agent-based modeling and cooperative game theory to help find agent partitions that are members of a games' core solution. The accuracy of our heuristic algorithm can be determined by comparing its outcomes to the actual core solutions. This comparison achieved by developing an experiment that uses a specific example of a cooperative game called the glove game. The glove game is a type of exchange economy game. Finding the traditional cooperative game theory solutions is computationally intensive for large numbers of players because each possible partition must be compared to each possible coalition to determine the core set; hence our experiment only considers games of up to nine players. The results indicate that our heuristic approach achieves a core solution over 90% of the time for the games considered in our experiment.
Randomized algorithms for generalized singular value decomposition with application to sensitivity analysis

The generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) is a valuable tool that has many applications in computational science. However, computing the GSVD for large-scale problems is challenging. Motivated by applications in hyper-differential sensitivity analysis (HDSA), we propose new randomized algorithms for computing the GSVD which use randomized subspace iteration and weighted QR factorization. Detailed error analysis is given which provides insight into the accuracy of the algorithms and the choice of the algorithmic parameters. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithms on test matrices and a large-scale model problem where HDSA is used to study subsurface flow.
Doxorubicin cardiotoxicity: response of left ventricular ejection fraction to exercise and incidence of regional wall motion abnormalities.

Gated radionuclide ventriculograms were performed to evaluate cardiac function in 53 patients who received doxorubicin treatment for various malignancies (mean dose: 449±128 mg/m2 BSA). In fourteen patients (Group I) function was evaluated before and after treatment; there was a significant decrease of resting left ventricular ejection fraction after therapy (p<0.001). Twenty-two patients (Group II) had serial studies during treatment which also showed a significant fall of resting left ventricular ejection fraction (p<0.001). Eighteen patients in Groups I and II had supine exercise studies. A normal exercise response was maintained in the majority of patients. Exercise testing added little to the diagnostic performance when compared to serial resting studies. We found regional wall motion abnormalities (mild apical hypokinesis) at rest by visual inspection in 33 of 36 Group I and Group II patients who had received doxorubicin. In the baseline or initial study, only 4 of these patients demonstrated WMA. In 18 Group I and II patients who were exercised, 3 had wall motion abnormalities during the initial study. All of these patients demonstrated wall motion abnormalities at rest after the second study, however only 7 of 18 demonstrated abnormalities during the exercise study. The results indicate that resting left ventricular ejection fraction declines after doxorubicin treatment. Exercise radionuclide angiography may not increase diagnostic accuracy for the detection of doxorubicin related cardiotoxicity. Regional wall motion abnormalities occur with a relatively high incidence following doxorubicin therapy, more readily detectable at rest. However, the exercise study can distinguish doxorubicin related wall motion abnormalities from those due to coronary artery disease.
Singularities generated by the triple interaction of semilinear conormal waves

We study the local propagation of conormal singularities for solutions of semilinear wave equations □ u = P ( y , u ) , where P ( y , u ) is a polynomial of degree N ≥ 3 in u with C ∞ ( ℝ y 3 ) coefficients. We know from the work of Melrose and Ritter and Bony that if u is conormal to three waves which intersect transversally at point q , then after the triple interaction u ( y ) is a conormal distribution with respect to the three waves and the characteristic cone &#119980; with vertex at q . We compute the principal symbol of u at the cone and away from the hypersurfaces. We show that if ∂ u 3 P ( q , u ( q ) ) ≠ 0 , then u is an elliptic conormal distribution.
Combinatorial iterated integrals and the harmonic volume of graphs

Abstract Let Γ be a connected bridgeless metric graph, and fix a point v of Γ. We define combinatorial iterated integrals on Γ along closed paths at v, a unipotent generalization of the usual cycle pairing and the combinatorial analogue of Chen's iterated integrals on Riemann surfaces. These descend to a bilinear pairing between the group algebra of the fundamental group of Γ at v and the tensor algebra on the first homology of Γ, ∫ : Z π 1 ( Γ , v ) × T H 1 ( Γ , R ) → R . We show that this pairing on the two-step unipotent quotient of the group algebra allows one to recover the base-point v up to well-understood finite ambiguity. We encode the data of this structure as the combinatorial harmonic volume which is valued in the tropical intermediate Jacobian. We also give a potential-theoretic characterization for hyperellipticity for graphs.
Modeling the electrical double layer at solid-state electrochemical interfaces

Models of the electrical double layer (EDL) at electrode/liquid-electrolyte interfaces no longer hold for all-solid-state electrochemistry. Here we show a more general model for the EDL at a solid-state electrochemical interface based on the Poisson–Fermi–Dirac equation. By combining this model with density functional theory predictions, the interconnected electronic and ionic degrees of freedom in all-solid-state batteries, including the electronic band bending and defect concentration variation in the space-charge layer, are captured self-consistently. Along with a general mathematical solution, the EDL structure is presented in various materials that are thermodynamically stable in contact with a lithium metal anode: the solid electrolyte Li7La3Zr2O12 (LLZO) and the solid interlayer materials LiF, Li2O and Li2CO3. The model further allows design of the optimum interlayer thicknesses to minimize the electrostatic barrier for lithium ion transport at relevant solid-state battery interfaces. A self-consistent model that bridges electrochemistry and solid-state physics is developed to fully describe the ion and electron distribution at solid electrode/electrolyte interfaces and applied to lower interfacial resistance in batteries.
Distinct tooth regeneration systems deploy a conserved battery of genes.

Vertebrate teeth exhibit a wide range of regenerative systems. Many species, including most mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, form replacement teeth at a histologically distinct location called the successional dental lamina, while other species do not employ such a system. Notably, a ‘lamina-less’ tooth replacement condition is found in a paraphyletic array of ray-finned fishes, such as stickleback, trout, cod, medaka, and bichir. Furthermore, the position, renewal potential, and latency times appear to vary drastically across different vertebrate tooth regeneration systems. The progenitor cells underlying tooth regeneration thus present highly divergent arrangements and potentials. Given the spectrum of regeneration systems present in vertebrates, it is unclear if morphologically divergent tooth regeneration systems deploy an overlapping battery of genes in their naive dental tissues. In the present work, we aimed to determine whether or not tooth progenitor epithelia could be composed of a conserved cell type between vertebrate dentitions with divergent regeneration systems. To address this question, we compared the pharyngeal tooth regeneration processes in two ray-finned fishes: zebrafish (Danio rerio) and threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus). These two teleost species diverged approximately 250 million years ago and demonstrate some stark differences in dental morphology and regeneration. Here, we find that the naive successional dental lamina in zebrafish expresses a battery of nine genes (bmpr1aa, bmp6, cd34, gli1, igfbp5a, lgr4, lgr6, nfatc1, and pitx2), while active Wnt signaling and Lef1 expression occur during early morphogenesis stages of tooth development. We also find that, despite the absence of a histologically distinct successional dental lamina in stickleback tooth fields, the same battery of nine genes (Bmpr1a, Bmp6, CD34, Gli1, Igfbp5a, Lgr4, Lgr6, Nfatc1, and Pitx2) are expressed in the basalmost endodermal cell layer, which is the region most closely associated with replacement tooth germs. Like zebrafish, stickleback replacement tooth germs additionally express Lef1 and exhibit active Wnt signaling. Thus, two fish systems that either have an organized successional dental lamina (zebrafish) or lack a morphologically distinct successional dental lamina (sticklebacks) deploy similar genetic programs during tooth regeneration. We propose that the expression domains described here delineate a highly conserved “successional dental epithelium” (SDE). Furthermore, a set of orthologous genes is known to mark hair follicle epithelial stem cells in mice, suggesting that regenerative systems in other epithelial appendages may utilize a related epithelial progenitor cell type, despite the highly derived nature of the resulting functional organs.
Ride solo or pool: Designing price-service menus for a ride-sharing platform

Abstract A ride-sharing platform (RSP), such as Uber or Lyft, can sometimes offer passengers an option to share (pool) the ride with fellow passengers. On the one hand, a passenger who pools benefits from paying a lower fare and the RSP benefits from increasing occupancy per car, thereby serving more passengers. On the other hand, a passenger who pools takes more time, on average, to reach her destination and may have to share the ride with a stranger, and the RSP gets a lower profit margin per passenger than from solo rides. We develop a queueing model to find the RSP’s optimal revenue in equilibrium when passengers are strategic and drivers are independent agents, and design the RSP’s revenue-maximizing price-service menu. We find that offering both solo and pooled rides is optimal when the distribution of passenger-type is not skewed and congestion is not high. Counter intuitively, when congestion is high, the RSP benefits from offering only one ride choice. Simulation-based results extend these findings when more than one route exists. We provide a numerical example based on real-life data. When the number of drivers is endogenous, equilibrium revenue per driver can decrease when the passenger arrival rate increases.
Direct air capture of CO2 with aqueous peptides and crystalline guanidines

Summary Negative emission technologies, including direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide, are now considered essential for mitigating climate change, but existing DAC processes tend to have excessively high energy requirements, mostly associated with sorbent regeneration. Here, we demonstrate a promising approach to DAC that combines atmospheric CO2 absorption by an aqueous oligopeptide (e.g., glycylglycine) with bicarbonate crystallization by a simple guanidine compound (e.g., glyoxal-bis-iminoguanidine). In this phase-changing system, the peptide and the guanidine compounds work in synergy, and the cyclic CO2 capacity can be maximized by matching the pKa values of the two components. Compared with glycine, the simpler amino acid congener, the cyclic CO2 capacity of the glycylglycine peptide combined with glyoxal-bis-iminoguanidine is twice as high (0.16 mol/mol). The resulting DAC process has a significantly lower regeneration energy compared with state-of-the-art solvent-based DAC technologies.
Deficient topological measures on locally compact spaces

Topological measures and quasi-linear functionals generalize measures and linear functionals. We define and study deficient topological measures on locally compact spaces. A deficient topological measure on a locally compact space is a set function on open and closed subsets which is finitely additive on compact sets, inner regular on open sets, and outer regular on closed sets. Deficient topological measures generalize measures and topological measures. First we investigate positive, negative, and total variation of a signed set function that is only assumed to be finitely additive on compact sets. These positive, negative, and total variations turn out to be deficient topological measures. Then we examine finite additivity, superadditivity, smoothness, and other properties of deficient topological measures. We obtain methods for generating new deficient topological measures. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a deficient topological measure to be a topological measure and to be a measure. The results presented are necessary for further study of topological measures, deficient topological measures, and corresponding non-linear functionals on locally compact spaces.
Efficient calculation of carrier scattering rates from first principles

The electronic transport behaviour of materials determines their suitability for technological applications. We develop a computationally efficient method for calculating carrier scattering rates of solid-state semiconductors and insulators from first principles inputs. The present method extends existing polar and non-polar electron-phonon coupling, ionized impurity, and piezoelectric scattering mechanisms formulated for isotropic band structures to support highly anisotropic materials. We test the formalism by calculating the electronic transport properties of 23 semiconductors, including the large 48 atom CH3NH3PbI3 hybrid perovskite, and comparing the results against experimental measurements and more detailed scattering simulations. The Spearman rank coefficient of mobility against experiment (rs = 0.93) improves significantly on results obtained using a constant relaxation time approximation (rs = 0.52). We find our approach offers similar accuracy to state-of-the art methods at approximately 1/500th the computational cost, thus enabling its use in high-throughput computational workflows for the accurate screening of carrier mobilities, lifetimes, and thermoelectric power.
Macrofinancial Linkages and Growth at Risk in the Dominican Republic

This paper uses the Growth-at-Risk (GaR) methodology to examine how macrofinancial conditions affect the growth outlook and its probability distribution. Using this approach, we evaluate risks to GDP growth in the Dominican Republic using quarterly data for 1996-2018. We group macrofinancial conditions in five principal determinants, based on 32 indicators. The Dominican Republic's growth distribution appears most vulnerable to negative shocks to domestic financial conditions, domestic leverage, domestic demand, and external demand, with additional repercussions from the external cost of borrowing in the longer run. Our findings show that domestic monetary policy plays a particularly important role in reducing growth vulnerabilities when the economy is weak.
Minority student and teaching assistant interactions in STEM

Abstract Graduate student teaching assistants from underrepresented groups may provide salient role models and enhanced instruction to minority students in STEM fields. We explore minority student-TA interactions in an important course in the sciences and STEM – introductory chemistry labs – at a large public university. The uncommon assignment method of students to TA instructors in these chemistry labs overcomes selection problems, and the small and active learning classroom setting with required attendance provides frequent interactions with the TA. We find evidence that underrepresented minority students are less likely to drop courses and are more likely to pass courses when assigned to minority TAs, but we do not find evidence of effects for grades and medium-term outcomes. The effects for the first-order outcomes are large with a decrease in the drop rate by 5.5 percentage points on a base of 6 percent, and an increase in the pass rate of 4.8 percentage points on a base of 93.6 percent. The findings are similar when we focus on Latinx student - Latinx TA interactions. The findings are robust to first-time vs. multiple enrollments in labs, specifications with different levels of fixed effects, limited choice of TA race, limited information of TAs, and low registration priority students. The findings have implications for debates over increasing diversity among PhD students in STEM fields because of spillovers to minority undergraduates.
Augmenting Sequential Recommendation with Pseudo-Prior Items via Reversely Pre-training Transformer

Sequential Recommendation characterizes the evolving patterns by modeling item sequences chronologically. The essential target of it is to capture the item transition correlations. The recent developments of transformer inspire the community to design effective sequence encoders,e.g., SASRec and BERT4Rec. However, we observe that these transformer-based models suffer from the cold-start issue,i.e., performing poorly for short sequences. Therefore, we propose to augment short sequences while still preserving original sequential correlations. We introduce a new framework for Augmenting Sequential Recommendation with Pseudo-prior items (ASReP). We firstly pre-train a transformer with sequences in a reverse direction to predict prior items. Then, we use this transformer to generate fabricated historical items at the beginning of short sequences. Finally, we fine-tune the transformer using these augmented sequences from the time order to predict the next item. Experiments on two real-world datasets verify the effectiveness of ASReP. The code is available on https://github.com/DyGRec/ASReP.
Quantum Embedded Superstates

Optical supercavity modes (superstates), i.e., hybrid modes emerging from the strong coupling of two nonorthogonal modes of an open cavity, can support ultranarrow lines in scattering spectra associated with quasi bound states in the continuum (quasi-BIC). These modes are of great interest for sensing applications as they enable compact systems with unprecedented sensitivity. However, these quasi-BIC sensors obey the shot-noise limit, which may be overcome only in quantum sensors. Here, we unveil that a three-level quantum system (e.g., atom, quantum dot, superconducting qubit) can be tailored to support the quantum analog of an embedded superstate with an unboundedly narrow emission line in the strong coupling regime. Remarkably, we demonstrate that the coupling of such a system with a cavity (e.g., plasmonic or dielectric nanoparticle, microcavity, microwave resonator) enables sensing properties with significantly reduced noise. Our results can be applied to a plethora of quantum platforms from microwave superconductors to cold atoms and quantum dots, opening interesting opportunities for quantum sensing and computing.
Achievement Gaps in the Wake of COVID-19

A survey targeting education researchers conducted in November 2020 provides forecasts of how much achievement gaps between low- and high-income students in U.S elementary schools will change as a ...
High Levels of Common Cold Coronavirus Antibodies in Convalescent Plasma Are Associated With Improved Survival in COVID-19 Patients.

Background: COVID-19 Convalescent plasma (CCP) is safe and effective, particularly if given at an early stage of the disease. Our study aimed to identify an association between survival and specific antibodies found in CCP. Patients and Methods: Patients ≥18 years of age who were hospitalized with moderate to severe COVID-19 infection and received CCP at the MD Anderson Cancer Center between 4/30/2020 and 8/20/2020 were included in the study. We quantified the levels of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, as well as antibodies against antigens of other coronavirus strains, in the CCP units and compared antibody levels with patient outcomes. For each antibody, a Bayesian exponential survival time regression model including prognostic variables was fit, and the posterior probability of a beneficial effect (PBE) of higher antibody level on survival time was computed. Results: CCP was administered to 44 cancer patients. The median age was 60 years (range 37-84) and 19 (43%) were female. Twelve patients (27%) died of COVID-19-related complications. Higher levels of two non-SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies, anti-HCoV-OC43 spike IgG and anti-HCoV-HKU1 spike IgG, had PBE = 1.00, and 4 SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies had PBEs between 0.90 and 0.95. Other factors associated with better survival were shorter time to CCP administration, younger age, and female sex. Conclusions: Common cold coronavirus spike IgG antibodies anti-HCoV-OC43 and anti-HCoV-HKU1 may target a common domain for SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses. They provide a promising therapeutic target for monoclonal antibody production.
Long-ranged velocity correlations in dense systems of self-propelled particles

Model systems of self-propelled particles reproduce many phenomena observed in laboratory active matter systems that defy our thermal equilibrium-based intuition. In particular, in stationary states of self-propelled systems, it is recognized that velocities of different particles exhibit non-trivial equal-time correlations. Such correlations are absent in equivalent equilibrium systems. Recently, researchers found that the range of the velocity correlations increases with increasing persistence time of the self-propulsion and can extend over many particle diameters. Here we review the initial studies of long-ranged velocity correlations in solid-like systems of self-propelled particles. Then, we demonstrate that the long-ranged velocity correlations are also present in dense fluid-like systems. We show that the range of velocity correlations in dense systems of self-propelled particles is determined by the combination of the self-propulsion and the virial bulk modulus that originates from repulsive interparticle interactions.
LPWAN in the TV White Spaces: A Practical Implementation and Deployment Experiences

Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) is an enabling Internet-of-Things technology that supports long-range, low-power, and low-cost connectivity to numerous devices. To avoid the crowd in the limited ISM band (where most LPWANs operate) and cost of licensed band, the recently proposed Sensor Network over White Spaces (SNOW) is a promising LPWAN platform that operates over the TV white spaces. As it is a very recent technology and is still in its infancy, the current SNOW implementation uses the Universal Software Radio Peripheral devices as LPWAN nodes, which has high costs (≈$750 USD per device) and large form-factors, hindering its applicability in practical deployment. In this article, we implement SNOW using low-cost, low form-factor, low-power, and widely available commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices to enable its practical and large-scale deployment. Our choice of the COTS device (TI CC13x0: CC1310 or CC1350) consequently brings down the cost and form-factor of a SNOW node by 25× and 10×, respectively. Such implementation of SNOW on the CC13x0 devices, however, faces a number of challenges to enable link reliability and communication range. Our implementation addresses these challenges by handling peak-to-average power ratio problem, channel state information estimation, carrier frequency offset estimation, and near-far power problem. Our deployment in the city of Detroit, Michigan, demonstrates that CC13x0-based SNOW can achieve uplink and downlink throughputs of 11.2 and 4.8 kbps per node, respectively, over a distance of 1 km. Also, the overall throughput in the uplink increases linearly with the increase in the number of SNOW nodes.
Materials for Solid State Lighting

Dramatic improvement in the efficiency of inorganic and organic light emitting diodes (LEDs and OLEDs) within the last decade has made these devices viable future energy efficient replacements for current light sources. However, both technologies must overcome major technical barriers, requiring significant advances in material science, before this goal can be achieved. Attention will be given to each technology associated with the following major areas of material research: 1) material synthesis, 2) process development, 3) device and defect physics, and 4) packaging. The discussion on material synthesis will emphasize the need for further development of component materials, including substrates and electrodes, necessary for improving device performance. The process technology associated with the LEDs and OLEDs is very different, but in both cases it is one factor limiting device performance. Improvements in process control and methodology are expected to lead to additional benefits of higher yield, greater reliability and lower costs. Since reliability and performance are critical to these devices, an understanding of the basic physics of the devices and device failure mechanisms is necessary to effectively improve the product. The discussion will highlight some of the more basic material science problems remaining to be solved. In addition, consideration will be given to packaging technology and the need for the development of novel materials and geometries to increase the efficiencies and reliability of the devices. The discussion will emphasize the performance criteria necessary to meet lighting applications, in order to illustrate the gap between current status and market expectations for future product.
How does atmospheric circulation affect the diffusion of Covid-19 in polluted cities?

Abstract. This paper endeavors to explain how wind speed can affect the diffusion of COVID-19. The statistical analysis, based on data from Italy, suggests that high wind speed can reduce air pollution commingled with viral agents and as a consequence reduce infected individuals of COVID-19; moreover, results reveal that polluted cities with low wind speed have a greater number of infected individuals and total deaths also because of bad air quality. This study suggests the important role of atmospheric pollution and atmospheric circulation in the transmission dynamics of the novel Coronavirus to support appropriate environmental policy to reduce concentration of pollutants in the atmosphere, improving air quality and human health. Keywords. COVID-19, Air pollution, Environmental pollution, Wind speed, Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, Public health, Air quality, Environmental science. JEL. D81, D91, E71, G01, G41, H11, I18, Z18.
Tantala Kerr nonlinear integrated photonics

Integrated photonics plays a central role in modern science and technology, enabling experiments from nonlinear science to quantum information, ultraprecise measurements and sensing, and advanced applications such as data communication and signal processing. Optical materials with favorable properties are essential for nanofabrication of integrated photonics devices. Here we describe a material for integrated nonlinear photonics, tantalum pentoxide (${{\rm Ta}_2}{{\rm O}_5}$, hereafter tantala), which offers low intrinsic material stress, low optical loss, and efficient access to Kerr nonlinear processes. We utilize ${\gt}{800}\;{\rm nm}$ thick tantala films deposited via ion beam sputtering on oxidized silicon wafers. The tantala films contain a low residual tensile stress of 38 MPa, and they offer a Kerr index of ${n_2} = 6.2 \pm 2.3 \times {10^{- 19}}\;{{\rm m}^2}/{\rm W}$, which is approximately a factor of 3 higher than silicon nitride. We fabricate integrated nonlinear resonators and waveguides without the cracking challenges that are prevalent in stoichiometric silicon nitride. The tantala resonators feature an optical quality factor up to $3.8 \times {10^6}$, which enables us to generate ultrabroad bandwidth Kerr soliton frequency combs with low threshold power. Moreover, we characterize tantala waveguides by supercontinuum generation from low-energy, ultrafast seed pulses. These demonstrations characterize future application directions with tantala integrated nonlinear photonics.
Reducing the Paging Overhead in Highly Directional Systems

New Radio (NR) supports operations at high-frequency bands (e.g., millimeter-wave frequencies) by using narrow beam based directional transmissions to compensate high propagation losses at such frequencies. Due to the limited spatial coverage with each beam, the broadcast transmission of paging in NR is performed using beam sweeping, which takes multiple time slots. Thus, the paging procedure used in NR would substantially increase the downlink resource overhead of the network with directional transmissions. Such overhead would further increase as we move higher in the frequency bands, such as terahertz bands, which is being viewed as one of the potential candidates for future generation networks. Therefore, the NR based paging solution is infeasible for supporting highly directional systems. In this paper, we propose a novel minimal feedback enabled paging mechanism, which instead of using all the beams for paging transmissions, only activates sub-set of beams having one or more UEs under the coverage. UE presence indications are implemented to identify the correct set of beams to be activated. Our analytical analysis and simulations show that the proposed solution significantly reduces the downlink paging overhead compared to the NR based solution (e.g., more than 80% gain for a system supporting 64 number of beams at a UE density of 200 UEs per paging occasion) while incurring minimal energy cost at the UE side.
Career Advancement for Women in Diabetes-Related Research: Developing and Retaining Female Talent.

To change the future you need a firm grip on history. Successful implementation of strategies to catalyze evolution of gender parity requires a coherent plan with clear deliverables. The article by Dunne et al. (1,2), simultaneously published in Diabetes and Diabetes Care , provides a much-needed foundation that defines the scope of the problem within the field of diabetes, documents stagnated progress over recent years, and offers suggestions for intervention. We applaud the authors and are encouraged that the American Diabetes Association (ADA) leadership is fully invested in being part of an effective solution. As nationally funded and internationally recognized women leaders in diabetes research, we are compelled to initiate the process of addressing the inequities brought to light by Dunne et al. to enhance the development and retention of female talent in our field. To intiate that process, here we discuss the observations by Dunne et al. and propose a set of concrete measures for achieving gender equity within diabetes-related professions. Dunne et al. observe that almost half (43%) of the attendees of the annual ADA Scientific Sessions national conference are women, demonstrating strong active participation of women. Women are also well represented in education-focused leadership positions comprising 83% of the then Vice Presidents and now Presidents of Health Care and Education over the last five decades and 89% and 49% of the editorial boards for Diabetes Spectrum and Clinical Diabetes , respectively. In striking contrast, in the last 20 years, only 9% of ADA Presidents of Medicine and Science have been women (1,2), and since the inception of the ADA, only 5 of 81 ADA Presidents of Medicine and Science have been women. Further, women represent one-third or fewer of editorial board members for the highest-impact diabetes journals ( Diabetes Care, Diabetes , and Diabetologia …
Sample-efficient proper PAC learning with approximate differential privacy

In this paper we prove that the sample complexity of properly learning a class of Littlestone dimension d with approximate differential privacy is O(d6), ignoring privacy and accuracy parameters. This result answers a question of Bun et al. (FOCS 2020) by improving upon their upper bound of 2O(d) on the sample complexity. Prior to our work, finiteness of the sample complexity for privately learning a class of finite Littlestone dimension was only known for improper private learners, and the fact that our learner is proper answers another question of Bun et al., which was also asked by Bousquet et al. (NeurIPS 2020). Using machinery developed by Bousquet et al., we then show that the sample complexity of sanitizing a binary hypothesis class is at most polynomial in its Littlestone dimension and dual Littlestone dimension. This implies that a class is sanitizable if and only if it has finite Littlestone dimension. An important ingredient of our proofs is a new property of binary hypothesis classes that we call irreducibility, which may be of independent interest.
Inward-Turning Streamline-Traced Inlet Design Method for Low-Boom, Low-Drag Applications

A new design method for inward-turning streamline-traced inlets is presented. Resulting designs are intended for low-supersonic low-drag low-boom applications such as that required for NASA’s proposed low-boom flight demonstration aircraft. A critical feature of these designs is the internal cowl lip angle that allows for little or no flow turning on the outer nacelle. Present methods using conical-flow “Busemann” parent flowfields have simply truncated, or otherwise modified, the stream-traced contours to include this internal cowl angle. Such modifications disrupt the parent flowfield, reducing inlet performance and flow uniformity. The method presented herein merges a conical flowfield that includes a leading shock with a truncated Busemann flowfield in a manner that minimizes unwanted interactions. A leading internal cowl angle is now inherent in the parent flowfield, and inlet contours traced from this flowfield retain its high performance and good flow uniformity. Computational fluid dynamics analys...
The Case for an Integrated Systems Approach to Extravehicular Activity

In this paper, we make the case for an integrated systems approach to the design and implementation of Extravehicular Activity (EVA). We define the EVA system as the set of hardware that enables EVA including the spacesuit, airlock, tools and mobility aids, as well as personnel and intangibles such as training, procedures, and software. In the context of planetary EVA, the system expands to include a rover, dust mitigation devices, and scientific instruments. The EVA system is in fact a complex, system-of-systems. The traditional approach to EVA system design optimizes each individual component, and may introduce inefficiencies into the system, generate logistics and supply management problems, and create hardware legacies that are hard to change and upgrade. We propose an integrated systems approach for advanced EVA system design that seeks to optimize the overall system, rather than just the individual pieces of hardware. The integrated systems approach also designs for uncertainty by anticipating change. By considering the complete system and allowing for change, the integrated systems approach incorporates both systems-of-systems thinking and spiral development. We examine the development of the Shuttle spacesuit and illustrate the challenges designers faced in adapting the suit to changing requirements. We conclude that due to the uncertain nature of exploration-class EVA, a system designed with the integrated systems approach offers significant advantages over the traditional design approach.