cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Evaluating transition metal oxides within DFT-SCAN and SCAN+U frameworks for solar thermochemical applications

Using the strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) and SCAN+$U$ approximations for describing electron exchange correlation (XC) within density functional theory, we investigate the oxidation energetics, lattice constants, and electronic structure of binary Ce, Mn, and Fe oxides, which are crucial ingredients for generating renewable fuels using two-step, oxide-based, solar thermochemical reactors. Unlike other common XC functionals, we find that SCAN does not overbind the ${\mathrm{O}}_{2}$ molecule, based on direct calculations of its bond energy and robust agreement between calculated formation enthalpies of main group oxides versus experiments. However, in the case of transition-metal oxides, SCAN systematically overestimates (i.e., yields too negative) oxidation enthalpies due to remaining self-interaction errors in the description of their ground-state electronic structure. Adding a Hubbard $U$ term to the transition-metal centers, where the magnitude of $U$ is determined from experimental oxidation enthalpies, significantly improves the qualitative agreement and marginally improves the quantitative agreement of SCAN+$U$-calculated electronic structure and lattice parameters, respectively, with experiments. Importantly, SCAN predicts the wrong ground-state structure for a few oxides, namely, $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{e}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}, \mathrm{M}{\mathrm{n}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$, and $\mathrm{F}{\mathrm{e}}_{3}{\mathrm{O}}_{4}$, while SCAN+$U$ predicts the right polymorph for all systems considered in this paper. Hence, the SCAN+$U$ framework, with an appropriately determined $U$, will be required to accurately describe ground-state properties and yield qualitatively consistent electronic properties for most transition-metal and rare-earth oxides.
Construction of two-bubble solutions for the energy-critical NLS

We construct pure two-bubbles for the energy-critical focusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation in space dimension N ≥ 7. The constructed solution is global in (at least) one time direction and approaches a superposition of two stationary states both centered at the origin, with the ratio of their length scales converging to 0. One of the bubbles develops at scale 1, whereas the length scale of the other converges to 0 at rate |t|− 2 N−6 . The phases of the two bubbles form the right angle.
Limit and Morse Sets for Deterministic Hybrid Systems

The term “hybrid system” refers to a continuous time dynamical system that undergoes Markovian perturbations at discrete time intervals. In this paper, we find that under the right formulation, a hybrid system can be treated as a dynamical system on a compact space. This allows us to study its limit sets. We examine the Morse decompositions of hybrid systems, find a sufficient condition for the existence of a non-trivial Morse decomposition, and study the Morse sets of such a decomposition. Finally, we consider the case in which the Markovian perturbations are small, showing that trajectories in a hybrid system with small perturbations behave similarly to those of the unperturbed dynamical system.
Black holes in massive gravity: Quasinormal modes of Dirac field perturbations

We have studied quasinormal modes (QNMs) of spinor-1 2, massless Dirac field perturbations of a black hole in massive gravity. The parameters of the theory, such as the mass of the black hole, the scalar charge of the black hole, mode number and the multipole number are varied to observe how the corresponding quasinormal frequencies change. We have also used the Poschl–Teller approximation to reach analytical values for the frequencies of quasinormal modes for comparison with the numerically obtained values. Comparisons are done with the frequencies of the Schwarzschild black hole.
Threshold State and a Conjecture of Poghosyan, Poghosyan, Priezzhev and Ruelle

We prove a precise relationship between the threshold state of the fixed-energy sandpile and the stationary state of Dhar’s abelian sandpile: in the limit as the initial condition s0 tends to \({-\infty}\) , the former is obtained by size-biasing the latter according to burst size, an avalanche statistic. The question of whether and how these two states are related has been a subject of some controversy since 2000.
Evaluating Shock-Tube Informed Biases for Shock-Layer Radiative Heating Simulations

A methodology for directly informing flight vehicle radiative heating simulations based on shock-tube measurements is developed. The differences between these shock-tube informed (STI) radiative he...
Moduli of morphisms of logarithmic schemes

We show that there is a logarithmic algebraic space parameterizing logarithmic morphisms between fixed logarithmic schemes when those logarithmic schemes satisfy natural hypotheses. As a corollary, we obtain the representability of the stack of stable logarithmic maps from logarithmic curves to a fixed target without restriction on the logarithmic structure of the target. An intermediate step requires a left adjoint to pullback of etale sheaves, whose construction appears to be new in the generality considered here, and which may be of independent interest.
What we write about when we write about causality: features of causal statements across large-scale social discourse

Identifying and communicating relationships between causes and effects is important for understanding our world, but is affected by language structure, cognitive and emotional biases, and the properties of the communication medium. Despite the increasing importance of social media, much remains unknown about causal statements made online. To study real-world causal attribution, we extract a large-scale corpus of causal statements made on the Twitter social network platform as well as a comparable random control corpus. We compare causal and control statements using statistical language and sentiment analysis tools. We find that causal statements have a number of significant lexical and grammatical differences compared with controls and tend to be more negative in sentiment than controls. Causal statements made online tend to focus on news and current events, medicine and health, or interpersonal relationships, as shown by topic models. By quantifying the features and potential biases of causality communication, this study improves our understanding of the accuracy of information and opinions found online.
Crosscut-Simplicial Lattices

We call a finite lattice crosscut-simplicial if the crosscut complex of every nuclear interval is equal to the boundary of a simplex. Every interval of such a lattice is either contractible or homotopy equivalent to a sphere. Recently, Hersh and Meszaros introduced SB-labelings and proved that if a lattice has an SB-labeling then it is crosscut-simplicial. Some known examples of lattices with a natural SB-labeling include the join-distributive lattices, the weak order of a Coxeter group, and the Tamari lattice. Generalizing these three examples, we prove that every meet-semidistributive lattice is crosscut-simplicial, though we do not know whether all such lattices admit an SB-labeling. While not every crosscut-simplicial lattice is meet-semidistributive, we prove that these properties are equivalent for chamber posets of real hyperplane arrangements.
Tachyon dynamics — for neutrinos?

Author(s): Schwartz, Charles | Abstract: Following earlier studies that provided a consistent theory of kinematics for tachyons (faster-than-light particles), we here embark on a study of tachyon dynamics, both in classical physics and in the quantum theory. Examining a general scattering process, we come to recognize that the labels given to “in” and “out” states are not Lorentz invariant for tachyons; and this lets us find a sensible interpretation of negative energy states. For statistical mechanics, as well as for scattering problems, we study what should be the proper expression for density of states for tachyons. We review the previous work on quantization of a Dirac field for tachyons and go on to expand earlier considerations of neutrinos as tachyons in the context of cosmology. We stumble into the realization that tachyon neutrinos would contribute to gravitation with the opposite sign compared to tachyon antineutrinos. This leads to the gobsmacking prediction that the Cosmic Neutrino Background, if they are indeed tachyons, might explain both phenomena of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. This theoretical study also makes contact with the anticipated results from the experiments KATRIN and PTOLEMY, which focus on beta decay and neutrino absorption by Tritium.
Relay-Assisted User Scheduling in Wireless Networks With Hybrid ARQ

This paper studies the problem of relay-assisted user scheduling for downlink wireless transmission. The base station or access point employs hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) with the assistance of a set of fixed relays to serve a set of mobile users. By minimizing a cost function of the queue lengths at the base station and the number of retransmissions of the head-of-line packet for each user, the base station can schedule an appropriate user in each time slot and an appropriate transmitter to serve it. It is shown that a priority-index policy is optimal for a linear cost function with packets arriving according to a Poisson process and for an increasing convex cost function where packets must be drained from the queues at the base station.
A new 2.5D representation for lymph node detection using random sets of deep convolutional neural network observations.

Automated Lymph Node (LN) detection is an important clinical diagnostic task but very challenging due to the low contrast of surrounding structures in Computed Tomography (CT) and to their varying sizes, poses, shapes and sparsely distributed locations. State-of-the-art studies show the performance range of 52.9% sensitivity at 3.1 false-positives per volume (FP/vol.), or 60.9% at 6.1 FP/vol. for mediastinal LN, by one-shot boosting on 3D HAAR features. In this paper, we first operate a preliminary candidate generation stage, towards ~100% sensitivity at the cost of high FP levels (~40 per patient), to harvest volumes of interest (VOI). Our 2.5D approach consequently decomposes any 3D VOI by resampling 2D reformatted orthogonal views N times, via scale, random translations, and rotations with respect to the VOI centroid coordinates. These random views are then used to train a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifier. In testing, the CNN is employed to assign LN probabilities for all N random views that can be simply averaged (as a set) to compute the final classification probability per VOI. We validate the approach on two datasets: 90 CT volumes with 388 mediastinal LNs and 86 patients with 595 abdominal LNs. We achieve sensitivities of 70%/83% at 3 FP/vol. and 84%/90% at 6 FP/vol. in mediastinum and abdomen respectively, which drastically improves over the previous state-of-the-art work.
Characterizing the influence of continuous integration: empirical results from 250+ open source and proprietary projects

Continuous integration (CI) tools integrate code changes by automatically compiling, building, and executing test cases upon submission of code changes. Use of CI tools is getting increasingly popular, yet how proprietary projects reap the benefits of CI remains unknown. To investigate the influence of CI on software development, we analyze 150 open source software (OSS) projects, and 123 proprietary projects. For OSS projects, we observe the expected benefits after CI adoption, e.g., improvements in bug and issue resolution. However, for the proprietary projects, we cannot make similar observations. Our findings indicate that only adoption of CI might not be enough to the improve software development process. CI can be effective for software development if practitioners use CI's feedback mechanism efficiently, by applying the practice of making frequent commits. For our set of proprietary projects we observe practitioners commit less frequently, and hence not use CI effectively for obtaining feedback on the submitted code changes. Based on our findings we recommend industry practitioners to adopt the best practices of CI to reap the benefits of CI tools for example, making frequent commits.
Global Weak Solutions for Kolmogorov–Vicsek Type Equations with Orientational Interactions

We study the global existence and uniqueness of weak solutions to kinetic Kolmogorov–Vicsek models that can be considered as non-local, non-linear, Fokker–Planck type equations describing the dynamics of individuals with orientational interactions. This model is derived from the discrete Couzin–Vicsek algorithm as mean-field limit (Bolley et al., Appl Math Lett, 25:339–343, 2012; Degond et al., Math Models Methods Appl Sci 18:1193–1215, 2008), which governs the interactions of stochastic agents moving with a velocity of constant magnitude, that is, the corresponding velocity space for these types of Kolmogorov–Vicsek models is the unit sphere. Our analysis for Lp estimates and compactness properties take advantage of the orientational interaction property, meaning that the velocity space is a compact manifold.
Nonlinear biochemical signal processing via noise propagation.

Single-cell studies often show significant phenotypic variability due to the stochastic nature of intra-cellular biochemical reactions. When the numbers of molecules, e.g., transcription factors and regulatory enzymes, are in low abundance, fluctuations in biochemical activities become significant and such “noise” can propagate through regulatory cascades in terms of biochemical reaction networks. Here we develop an intuitive, yet fully quantitative method for analyzing how noise affects cellular phenotypes based on identifying a system's nonlinearities and noise propagations. We observe that such noise can simultaneously enhance sensitivities in one behavioral region while reducing sensitivities in another. Employing this novel phenomenon we designed three biochemical signal processing modules: (a) A gene regulatory network that acts as a concentration detector with both enhanced amplitude and sensitivity. (b) A non-cooperative positive feedback system, with a graded dose-response in the deterministic case, that serves as a bistable switch due to noise-induced ultra-sensitivity. (c) A noise-induced linear amplifier for gene regulation that requires no feedback. The methods developed in the present work allow one to understand and engineer nonlinear biochemical signal processors based on fluctuation-induced phenotypes.
Dynamics of repulsion processes

We study dynamical behaviors of one-dimensional stochastic lattice gases with repulsive interactions whose span can be arbitrarily large. We endow the system with a zero-temperature dynamics, so that hops to empty sites which would have led to an increase of energy are forbidden. We assume that the strength of interactions decreases sufficiently quickly with the separation between the particles, so that interactions can be treated in a lexicographic order. For such repulsion processes with symmetric nearest-neighbor hopping we analytically determine the density-dependent diffusion coefficient. We also compute the variance of the displacement of a tagged particle.
Comparison of AC Power Referenced to Either PJVS or JAWS

The results of a comparison on active power meter calibrations at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) using a source of ac power referenced to either a programmable Josephson voltage standard (PJVS) or a Josephson arbitrary waveform synthesizer (JAWS) is presented. The measurements were made at 60 V rms, 5 A rms, and 50 Hz at a power factor of 1.0. The estimated uncertainty of the active power applied to a meter under test (MUT) of the two system configurations is within $2~\mu \text{W}$ /VA ( $k = 1$ ), and the comparison results demonstrate that the two system configurations agree to within 1 part in $10^{6}$ for applied voltage, current, and phase. A discussion of the measurement techniques and major sources of error is given for applied power signals over the 50-Hz–6-kHz frequency range.
Seagull: an infrastructure for load prediction and optimized resource allocation

Microsoft Azure is dedicated to guarantee high quality of service to its customers, in particular, during periods of high customer activity, while controlling cost. We employ a Data Science (DS) driven solution to predict user load and leverage these predictions to optimize resource allocation. To this end, we built the Seagull infrastructure that processes per-server telemetry, validates the data, trains and deploys ML models. The models are used to predict customer load per server (24h into the future), and optimize service operations. Seagull continually re-evaluates accuracy of predictions, fallback to previously known good models and triggers alerts as appropriate. We deployed this infrastructure in production for PostgreSQL and MySQL servers across all Azure regions, and applied it to the problem of scheduling server backups during low-load time. This minimizes interference with user-induced load and improves customer experience.
Efficient Non-Line-of-Sight Imaging from Transient Sinograms

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging techniques use light that diffusely reflects off of visible surfaces (e.g., walls) to see around corners. One approach involves using pulsed lasers and ultrafast sensors to measure the travel time of multiply scattered light. Unlike existing NLOS techniques that generally require densely raster scanning points across the entirety of a relay wall, we explore a more efficient form of NLOS scanning that reduces both acquisition times and computational requirements. We propose a circular and confocal non-line-of-sight (\(\text {C}^2\text {NLOS}\)) scan that involves illuminating and imaging a common point, and scanning this point in a circular path along a wall. We observe that (1) these \(\text {C}^2\text {NLOS}\) measurements consist of a superposition of sinusoids, which we refer to as a transient sinogram, (2) there exists computationally efficient reconstruction procedures that transform these sinusoidal measurements into 3D positions of hidden scatterers or NLOS images of hidden objects, and (3) despite operating on an order of magnitude fewer measurements than previous approaches, these \(\text {C}^2\text {NLOS}\) scans provide sufficient information about the hidden scene to solve these different NLOS imaging tasks. We show results from both simulated and real \(\text {C}^2\text {NLOS}\) scans (Project page: https://marikoisogawa.github.io/project/c2nlos).
Higher-Rank Tensor Field Theory of Non-Abelian Fracton and Embeddon

Abstract We formulate a new class of tensor gauge field theories in any dimension that is a hybrid class between symmetric higher-rank tensor gauge theory (i.e., higher-spin gauge theory) and anti-symmetric tensor topological field theory. Our theory describes a mixed unitary phase interplaying between gapless and gapped topological order phases (which can live with or without Euclidean, Poincare, or anisotropic symmetry, at least in ultraviolet high or intermediate energy field theory, but not yet to a lattice cutoff scale). The “gauge structure” can be compact, continuous, abelian or non-abelian. Our theory sits outside the paradigm of Maxwell electromagnetic theory in 1865 and Yang–Mills isospin/color theory in 1954. We discuss its local gauge transformation in terms of the ungauged vector-like or tensor-like higher-moment global symmetry. The non-abelian gauge structure is caused by gauging the non-commutative symmetries: a higher-moment symmetry and a charge conjugation (particle–hole) symmetry. Vector global symmetries along time direction may exhibit time crystals. We explore the relation of these long-range entangled matters to a non-abelian generalization of Fracton order in condensed matter, a field theory formulation of foliation, the spacetime embedding and Embeddon that we newly introduce, and possible fundamental physics applications to dark matter or dark energy.
A Data-Taking System for Planetary Radar Applications

Most planetary radar applications require recording of complex voltages at sampling rates of up to 20MHz. I describe the design and implementation of a sampling system that has been installed at th...
Differential effects of propofol and ketamine on critical brain dynamics.

Whether the brain operates at a critical "tipping" point is a long standing scientific question, with evidence from both cellular and systems-scale studies suggesting that the brain does sit in, or near, a critical regime. Neuroimaging studies of humans in altered states of consciousness have prompted the suggestion that maintenance of critical dynamics is necessary for the emergence of consciousness and complex cognition, and that reduced or disorganized consciousness may be associated with deviations from criticality. Unfortunately, many of the cellular-level studies reporting signs of criticality were performed in non-conscious systems (in vitro neuronal cultures) or unconscious animals (e.g. anaesthetized rats). Here we attempted to address this knowledge gap by exploring critical brain dynamics in invasive ECoG recordings from multiple sessions with a single macaque as the animal transitioned from consciousness to unconsciousness under different anaesthetics (ketamine and propofol). We use a previously-validated test of criticality: avalanche dynamics to assess the differences in brain dynamics between normal consciousness and both drug-states. Propofol and ketamine were selected due to their differential effects on consciousness (ketamine, but not propofol, is known to induce an unusual state known as "dissociative anaesthesia"). Our analyses indicate that propofol dramatically restricted the size and duration of avalanches, while ketamine allowed for more awake-like dynamics to persist. In addition, propofol, but not ketamine, triggered a large reduction in the complexity of brain dynamics. All states, however, showed some signs of persistent criticality when testing for exponent relations and universal shape-collapse. Further, maintenance of critical brain dynamics may be important for regulation and control of conscious awareness.
Matrix Completion Using Alternating Minimization for Distribution System State Estimation

This paper examines the problem of state estimation in power distribution systems under low-observability conditions. The recently proposed constrained matrix completion method which combines the standard matrix completion method and power flow constraints has been shown to be effective in estimating voltage phasors under low-observability conditions using single-snapshot information. However, the method requires solving a semidefinite programming (SDP) problem, which becomes computationally infeasible for large systems and if multiple-snapshot (time-series) information is used. This paper proposes an efficient algorithm to solve the constrained matrix completion problem with time-series data. This algorithm is based on reformulating the matrix completion problem as a bilinear (non-convex) optimization problem, and applying the alternating minimization algorithm to solve this problem. This paper proves the summable convergence of the proposed algorithm, and demonstrates its efficacy and scalability via IEEE 123-bus system and a real utility feeder system. This paper also explores the value of adding more data from the history in terms of computation time and estimation accuracy.
A Refined Laser Method and Faster Matrix Multiplication

The complexity of matrix multiplication is measured in terms of $\omega$, the smallest real number such that two $n\times n$ matrices can be multiplied using $O(n^{\omega+\epsilon})$ field operations for all $\epsilon>0$; the best bound until now is $\omega<2.37287$ [Le Gall'14]. All bounds on $\omega$ since 1986 have been obtained using the so-called laser method, a way to lower-bound the `value' of a tensor in designing matrix multiplication algorithms. The main result of this paper is a refinement of the laser method that improves the resulting value bound for most sufficiently large tensors. Thus, even before computing any specific values, it is clear that we achieve an improved bound on $\omega$, and we indeed obtain the best bound on $\omega$ to date: $$\omega < 2.37286.$$ The improvement is of the same magnitude as the improvement that [Le Gall'14] obtained over the previous bound [Vassilevska W.'12]. Our improvement to the laser method is quite general, and we believe it will have further applications in arithmetic complexity.
Distributed Networked Learning with Correlated Data

This paper considers a learning problem with heteroscedastic and correlated data that is distributed across nodes. We propose a distributed learning scheme where each node asynchronously implements stochastic gradient descent updates and exchanges their current models with neighbors. We ensure the similarity among the local models and the ensemble average by having a network regularization penalty to the least squares problem. This penalty is associated with weights that are proportional to the relative accuracy of local models. We further provide finite time characterization of the disparity between local models and the ensemble average model based on the penalty constants and network connectivity. We compare the proposed method with generalized least squares and logistic regression in the prediction of activities of individuals based on head movement data.
Online control of the familywise error rate.

Biological research often involves testing a growing number of null hypotheses as new data are accumulated over time. We study the problem of online control of the familywise error rate, that is te...
Not all lymphoid aggregates in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients are due to CLL

Infection is a common cause of morbidity and mortality in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and should be considered when examining bone marrow specimens to identify a potentially treatable pathogen.
Path Properties of a Generalized Fractional Brownian Motion

The generalized fractional Brownian motion is a Gaussian self-similar process whose increments are not necessarily stationary. It appears in applications as the scaling limit of a shot noise process with a power-law shape function and non-stationary noises with a power-law variance function. In this paper, we study sample path properties of the generalized fractional Brownian motion, including Holder continuity, path differentiability/non-differentiability, and functional and local law of the iterated logarithms.
Organizational Form as Status and Signal

In this Article, the author analyzes the reactions of 147 New York City law firms to the 1994 enactment of the New York Limited Liability Partnership statute, which provided New York law firm partners with the first convenient mechanism to limit their personal liability for partnership debts. Using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, she evaluates whether the behavior of New York law firms supports the signaling theory of organizational form—that is, the theory that firms use the partnership form to signal to the marketplace that they provide high quality legal services, due to either superior monitoring or to profit sharing. She concludes that the quantitative data do not strongly support either signaling theory of partnership. In addition, both theories face substantial theoretical hurdles.
Applicant Reactions to Different Selection Technology: Face-to-Face, Interactive Voice Response, and Computer-Assisted Telephone Screening Interviews

This research contributes to the understanding of reactions to different selection screening methods. A sample of students (n=153) experienced one of three types of screening techniques, face-to-face interview screenings, telephone interview screenings, and interactive voice response (IVR) screenings, with identical content in a pre- to post-screening longitudinal study. We further examined the role of two important individual differences, cognitive ability and conscientiousness, in attitudes toward the screenings. IVR is a “non-interpersonal” screening method so it was not surprising that it was rated lower in terms of procedural justice factors such as interpersonal treatment, two–way communication, and openness but what is encouraging is that there were no differences between other labor intensive and costly technologies and IVR on the other procedural justice factors. Therefore, there do not appear to be any major negatives in terms of structural fairness among alternative screening devices implying that organizations can make choices between screening methods based on other factors such as recruitment strategy or cost.
Latin American Growth-Inequality Trade-Offs: The Impact of Insurgence and Independence

Did independence push Latin America down a growth-inequality trade-off? During the late colonial decades, the region completed two centuries of growth unmatched anywhere and inequality reached spectacular heights. During the half century after insurgency and independence, inequality fell steeply and growth was so modest that the period is called the lost decades. With the appearance of the belle epoque in the 1870s, growth rose to impressive levels, again even by world standards, and inequality surged to the highest levels ever, where they have remained for a century. This paper explores the connection. KW: violence
Piracy, Inc.—on the bearing of the firm analogy to pirate organization

Peter T. Leeson’s The Invisible Hook provides an illuminating economic analysis of how pirates established governance structures regulating their organization. Leeson is successful in showing economic rationales for piratical institutions and adopts the view of the piratical enterprise as a for-profit business firm to further illustrate the point. This essay argues, however, that modern theories of the firm are not fully compatible with the nature of piratical organization. Rather, pirates seem to have suffered from problems much like those in traditional cooperatives, arising from organizing collective action and joint ownership of the means of production.
Profitability of Momentum Strategies: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations

This paper evaluates various explanations for the profitability of momentum strategies documented in Jegadeesh and Titman ~1993!. The evidence indicates that momentum profits have continued in the 1990s, suggesting that the original results were not a product of data snooping bias. The paper also examines the predictions of recent behavioral models that propose that momentum profits are due to delayed overreactions that are eventually reversed. Our evidence provides support for the behavioral models, but this support should be tempered with caution. Many portfolio managers and stock analysts subscribe to the view that momentum strategies yield significant profits. Jegadeesh and Titman ~1993! examine a variety of momentum strategies and document that strategies that buy stocks with high returns over the previous 3 to 12 months and sell stocks with poor returns over the same time period earn profits of about one percent per month for the following year. 1 Although these results have been well accepted, the source of the profits and the interpretation of the evidence are widely debated. Although some have argued that the results provide strong evidence of “market inefficiency,” others have argued that the returns from these strategies are either compensation for risk, or alternatively, the product of data mining. The criticism that observed empirical regularities arise because of data mining is typically the hardest to address because empirical research in nonexperimental settings is limited by data availability. Fortunately, with
The Investment Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds

Sovereign wealth funds have emerged as major investors in corporate and real resources worldwide. After an overview of their magnitude, we consider the institutional arrangements under which many of the sovereign wealth funds operate. We focus on a specific set of agency problems that is of first-order importance for these funds: that is, the direct involvement of political leaders in the management process. We show that sovereign wealth funds with greater involvement of political leaders in fund management are associated with investment strategies that seem to favor short-term economic policy goals in their respective countries at the expense of longer-term maximization of returns. Sovereign wealth funds face several other issues, like how best to cope with demands for transparency, which can allow others to copy their investment strategies, and how to address the problems that arise with sheer size, like the difficulties of scaling up investment strategies that only work with a smaller value of assets under investment. In the conclusion, we discuss how various approaches cultivated by effective institutional investors worldwide -- from investing in the best people to pioneering new asset classes to compartmentalizing investment activities -- may provide clues as to how sovereign wealth funds might address these issues.
Managing Resources: Linking Unique Resources, Management, and Wealth Creation in Family Firms

The appropriate resources are necessary but insufficient to achieve a competitive advantage. Resources must also be managed effectively. Herein, we develop a resource management process model composed of three components that can lead to a competitive advantage. These components include the resource inventory (evaluating, adding, and shedding), resource bundling, and resource leveraging. We examine resource management in family firms and thus explore the unique characteristics of five resources and attributes of family firms that provide potential advantages over nonfamily firms. The resources are human capital, social capital, patient capital, survivability capital, along with the governance structure attribute.
The effect of training for internet use among local trade union leaders

Internet use is increasing among all segments of society, including labour unions. In this article, the authors examine the role that training plays in internet use among union leaders. A survey was conducted among union leaders in a large Midwestern state with an economy widely spread among agricultural, manufacturing, mining, transportation and public sectors. Applying theories of technology acceptance and social learning, the researchers proposed that formal training leads to internet use and that formal training reduces problems encountered by internet users. Formal training was found to have a significant relationship with both the use and reduction of many of the problems associated with internet use.
Trust and Financial Advice

We explore the relationships between financial trust and behaviors, attitudes, knowledge, and preferences related to utilizing professional financial advice. Using survey data from the RAND American Life Panel, we find that financial trust is correlated with advice usage and likelihood of seeking advisory services. Leveraging an experiment that randomized provision of and access to advice, we find that trust is an important predictor of who chooses to receive advice, even after controlling for demographic characteristics and financial literacy. However, providing unsolicited advice has little impact on behavior, even for individuals with high levels of trust.
Lying or Believing? Measuring Preference Falsification From a Political Purge in China

Despite its wide usage in explaining political dynamics of non-democracies, preference falsification remains an empirical myth for students of authoritarian politics due to the challenge of measure...
The minimum dropout age and student victimization

Abstract Over the years, the minimum dropout age has been raised to 18 in 21 states. Although these policy changes are promoted for their educational benefits, they have been shown to reduce crimes committed by youths in the affected age groups. However, an unintended consequence of increasing the minimum dropout age could be the displacement of crime from the streets to schools. We use data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys to estimate the relationship between minimum dropout age laws and student victimization. Our results suggest that higher minimum dropout ages increase the likelihood that females and younger students report missing school for fear of their safety and younger students are more likely to report being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Our results also yield some evidence that students are more likely to report being victims of in-school theft when the minimum dropout age is higher.
Isotone Equilibrium in Games of Incomplete Information

An isotone pure strategy equilibrium exists in any game of incomplete information in which each player's action set is a finite sublattice of multidimensional Euclidean space, types are multidimensional and atomless, and each player's interim expected payoff function satisfies two “nonprimitive conditions” whenever others adopt isotone pure strategies: (i) single-crossing in own action and type and (ii) quasi-supermodularity in own action. Conditions (i), (ii) are satisfied in supermodular and log-supermodular games given affiliated types,and in games with independent types in which each player's ex post payoff satisfies supermodularity in own action and nondecreasing differences in own action and type. This result is applied to provide the first proof of pure strategy equilibrium existence in the uniform price auction when bidders have multi-unit demand, nonprivate values, and independent types.
Spatial productivity spillovers from public infrastructure: Evidence from state highways

Is public-sector infrastructure a key determinant of productivity? Traditional, project-based analyses of benefits and costs typically do not find large rates of return. Proponents of infrastructure spending instead point to regressionbased analyses of the links between private productivity and public infrastructure that imply large productivity effects from public spending. The disparity in estimated returns is often attributed to geographic spillovers in productivity benefits that are not captured by disaggregated analyses. We examine the degree to which state highways provide productivity benefits beyond the narrow confines of each state's borders. Despite the fact that state highways-especially the interstate highway system-are designed at least in part with interstate linkages in mind, we find no evidence of quantitatively important productivity spillovers.
The L dwarf/T dwarf transition: Multiplicity, magnetic activity and mineral meteorology across the hydrogen burning limit

The transition between the L dwarf and T dwarf spectral classes is one of the most remarkable along the stellar/brown dwarf main sequence, separating sources with photospheres containing mineral condensate clouds from those containing methane and ammonia gases. Unusual characteristics of this transition include a 1 µm brightening between late Land early T dwarfs observed in both parallax samples and coeval binaries; a spike in the multiplicity fraction; evidence of increased photometric variability, possibly arising from patchy cloud structures; and a delayed transition for young, planetary-mass objects. All of these features can be explained if this transition is governed by the “rapid” (nonequlibrium) rainout of clouds from the photosphere, triggered by temperature, surface gravity, metallicity and (perhaps) rotational effects. While the underlying mechanism of this rainout remains under debate, the transition is now being exploited to discover and precisely characterize tight (<1 AU) very low-mass binaries that can be used to test brown dwarf evolutionary and atmospheric theories, and resolved binaries that further constrain the properties of this remarkable transition. (© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
How Sovereign is Sovereign Credit Risk

We study the nature of sovereign credit risk using an extensive set of sovereign CDS data. We find that the majority of sovereign credit risk can be linked to global factors. A single principal component accounts for 64 percent of the variation in sovereign credit spreads. Furthermore, sovereign credit spreads are more related to the US stock and high-yield markets than they are to local economic measures. We decompose credit spreads into their risk premium and default risk components. On average, the risk premium represents about a third of the credit spread. (JEL F34, G15, O16, O19, P34)
Drone Attacks under the Jus ad Bellum And Jus in Bello: Clearing the 'Fog of Law'

This article explores the legal issues raised by the use of drones (unmanned aircraft systems) in armed conflicts. In particular it assesses such use from the perspective of the jus ad bellum, that component of international law governing the resort to force by States, and the jus in bello (or international humanitarian law), the international law governing how such force may be applied. It concludes that the law of self-defence provides a clear basis for the extraterritorial use of drones under the jus ad bellum, albeit with certain key limitations. As to the use of drones on the battlefield, the article finds no significant basis for treating drones differently than other weapon systems under the jus in bello. Rather, the key is strict fidelity to the extant norms of international humanitarian law.
Comparing British and French Colonial Legacies: A Discontinuity Analysis of Cameroon

Colonial institutions are thought to be an important determinates of post-independence levels of political stability, economic growth, and public goods provision. In particular, many scholars have suggested that British institutional and cultural legacies are more conducive to growth than those of France or other colonizers. Systematic tests of this hypothesis are complicated by unobserved heterogeneity among nations due to variable pre- and post-colonial histories. We focus on the West African nation of Cameroon, which includes regions colonized by both Britain and France, and use the artificial former colonial boundary as a discontinuity within a national demographic survey. We show that rural areas on the British side of discontinuity have higher levels of wealth and local public provision of piped water. Results for urban areas and centrally-provided public goods show no such effect, suggesting that post-independence policies also play a role in shaping outcomes. Though our ability to identify causal mechanisms is limited, the evidence suggests that communities on the British side benefited from a policy of indirect rule and lack of forced labor, which produced more vigorous local institutions.
EARNINGS SURPRISES AND THE COST OF EQUITY CAPITAL

Controlling for other determinants of the cost of capital, we find that firms with repeated large earnings surprises experience a higher cost of equity capital. This finding holds regardless of the sign of the earnings surprises, but firms that consistently report negative surprises have relatively higher cost of equity capital. Although firms that frequently surprise the market experience a decrease in analyst following relative to no surprise firms, this reduction in monitoring cannot account for the higher cost of equity capital. Overall, these findings document that repeated earnings surprises are costly, and provide evidence that managers have incentives to avoid missing earnings targets.
1/N Corrections to Anomalies and the AdS/CFT Correspondence for Orientifolded N = 2 Orbifold and N=1 Conifold Models

We show that for a large class of conformal field theories the 1/N correction to the chiral anomaly of the U(1) R-current can be shown to arise from the D7-branes present in the dual orientifolded orbifold string theories, generalizing a result in the literature for the simplest case. We also study the U(1)R anomaly for conformal field theories that arise from orientifolds of the conifold. We find agreement between the field- and string-theoretic calculations, confirming a prediction of the AdS/CFT correspondence at order 1/N for string theories on AdS5 × T11/ℤ2.
Passive-Aggressive Executive Power

This contribution to the 2013 Constitutional Law Schmooze poses a question about the downside of executive power, at least in the enforcement context: if executive power to enforce the law presupposes the duty to use it, what happens when the executive branch would rather not? The answer is passive-aggressive executive power, and in this essay I use five factual contexts to illustrate five variations of what I mean. Here are the five responses: (1) do nothing and hope nobody notices, (2) do something silly, and make a mockery of the entire enterprise, (3) say that you would do something, but you are too busy, (4) say that you would do something, but you are not competent, and (5) say in a moment of rare self-awareness, “fine, I’ll do it, but let’s be clear — I don’t want to.” I first flush out these responses with five examples — the death penalty, driving violations, drugs, deportation, and DOMA — then I offer a few thoughts as to how these passive-aggressive responses compare.
Deception and reception: The behavior of information providers and users

We investigate the behavior of information providers (underwriters) and users (investors) in a controlled laboratory experiment where underwriters have incentives to deceive and investors have incentives to avoid deception. Participants play simultaneously as underwriters and investors in one-shot information transmission games. The results of our experiment show a significant proportion of both deceptive and non-deceptive underwriters. Despite the presence of deceptive underwriters, investors are receptive to underwriters’ reports, gleaning information content, albeit overly optimistic. Within our sample, deception by underwriters and reception by investors are the most profitable strategies. Moreover, participants who send deceptive reports to investors, but at the same time are receptive to reports of underwriters, earn the highest payoffs. These results call into question the characterization of duped investors being irrational.
CEOs in Family Firms: Does Junior Know What He's Doing?

Abstract We model the evolution of CEO quality in family firms. When heirs work toward a common goal alongside an older generation, Bayesian updating attributes success mostly to the older (proven) agent. Thus, heirs learn little about their own skill. This effect is strongest after the founder, implying that family firms tend to either die immediately or be relatively long-lived. More generally, we obtain an even/odd fluctuation in generational quality. Because uncertainty breeds caution, our analysis points to a conservative managerial style in family firms and emphasizes the importance of external screening mechanisms, especially for heirs following a very successful generation.
Entry Denied: COVID-19, Race, Migration, and Global Health

This essay uses the novel coronavirus pandemic as an entry point to explore the intersections between race, migration, and global health. The pandemic is simultaneously reviving stereotypical colonial imaginations about disease directionality, but also challenging racialized hierarchies of diseases. This essay illuminates how the racialization of diseases is reflected in historic and ongoing United States’ migration law and policy as well as the global health law regime. By demonstrating the close relationship between often separately treated areas, the essay clarifies underlying currents in global health and migration law and policy that stem from fears of the racialized other. Rendering these intersections visible creates avenues for rethinking and reshaping both theory and praxis toward anti-subordination efforts.