cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Additive belief-network models

The inherent intractability of probabilistic inference has hindered the application of belief networks to large domains. Noisy OR-gates [30] and probabilistic similarity networks [18, 17] escape the complexity of inference by restricting model expressiveness. Recent work in the application of belief-network models to time-series analysis and forecasting [9, 10] has given rise to the additive belief-network model (ABNM). We (1) discuss the nature and implications of the approximations made by an additive decomposition of a belief network, (2) show greater efficiency in the induction of additive models when available data are scarce, (3) generalize probabilistic inference algorithms to exploit the additive decomposition of ABNMs, (4) show greater efficiency of inference, and (5) compare results on inference with a simple additive belief network.
What to expect when you’re electing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze security-market returns relative to the political party of the president, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, the year of the president’s term, and the state of political gridlock. Contrary to prior studies, which evaluated the influences separately, the authors jointly evaluate these variables. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis supports the notion that security returns are significantly related to shifts in Fed monetary policy, political gridlock, and the year of the presidential term; however, returns are generally invariant to the president’s political party affiliation. Overall, the findings suggest that investors should focus less attention on the party of the president and instead more closely monitor Fed actions. Findings – It appears that political harmony should be welcomed by equity investors, but not debt investors. Finally, regardless of the political outcome, if the past serves as a guide, investors may have to wait until year thre...
Region-of-interest tomography using the wavelet transform and angular harmonics

Some authors have shown that wavelets can be used to localize the Radon transform, i.e., to reconstruct a small region of interest (ROI) from projections densely sampled in the ROI and sparsely sampled outside it. A different approach using Fourier expansions of the image and its projections shows that this localization is a property of the Radon transform itself, not just the wavelet representation of it, provided that a wavelet-reminiscent exponential sampling scheme is used. This suggests that the Radon transform naturally lends itself to a multiresolution representation. We present a new procedure for reconstructing the wavelet transforms of the angular harmonics of an image from the wavelet transforms of the angular harmonics of its projections. The relation is a convolution over scale, rather than translation, and preservation of compact support of the wavelet basis functions since a derivative-Hilbert-transform is not required. It generalizes a procedure using exponential radial sampling, and decouples over angular harmonics.
Results readiness in social protection and labor operations : technical guidance notes for labor markets task teams

Labor allocation to its most efficient use, promoting employment and human capital investment as well as functioning labor markets can contribute to long?term economic growth, poverty reduction and to help workers manage their risks. A labor market policy framework includes both regulations and programs. However, the optimal framework is not standard and universal but varies country by country depending on the level of economic and financial development, culture and other structural characteristics. Labor market projects are equally concentrated in Latin America and the Caribbean and Eastern Europe and Central Asia regions and one is China. Interestingly, the number of projects having 'improving labor market' as the primary component has increased over time. All project development objectives in the cohort of projects reviewed focus on promoting higher employment and increasing economic opportunities as the main objective especially via training programs. About half of the projects also seek to reach specific vulnerable groups by improving targeting mechanisms and to improve the quality of social assistance services by reducing the cost of job search through access to enhanced employment services and by improving employability.
Reserve driver scheduling

ABSTRACTTransit agencies use reserve drivers to cover open work that arises from planned and unplanned time off, equipment breakdowns, weather, and special events. Work assignment decisions must be made sequentially without information about future job requests, a driver’s earlier assignment may not be interrupted to accommodate a new job (no pre-emption), and the scheduler may need to select a particular driver when multiple drivers can perform a job. Motivated by this instance of the interval scheduling problem, we propose a randomized algorithm that carries a performance guarantee relative to the best offline solution and simultaneously performs better than any deterministic algorithm. A key objective of this article is to develop an algorithm that performs well in both average and worst-case scenarios. For this reason, our approach includes discretionary parameters that allow the user to achieve a balance between a myopic approach (accept all jobs that can be scheduled) and a strategic approach (consi...
Community Size and Network Closure

Large community size is often negatively correlated with prosocial behaviors such as formal volunteering, working on public projects, and informal help to friends and strangers (Robert D. Putnam 2000, 119, 206). This may be because people who reside in large communities simply spend less time socializing with each other. As a result, people living in large cities have on average fewer friends, and their social networks support less cooperation. A complementary channel, which has received less attention in the literature, is that community size may affect outcomes by changing other aspects of the network structure. Specifically, even holding fixed the number of friends, we expect social networks in small communities to exhibit greater network closure, i.e., be more interconnected. The intuition is straightforward. In small communities, the pool of potential friends is limited, which increases the extent to which the network neighborhoods of two friends are likely to overlap. James S. Coleman (1990) suggested that variation in network closure can affect outcomes. In particular, he argued that networks with higher closure generate high trust between friends, which facilitates cooperation and improves welfare. The logic is that networks with high closure allow for greater social sanctions between
Collaborative randomized beamforming for phased array radio interferometers

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will form the largest radio telescope ever built and such a huge instrument in the desert poses enormous engineering and logistic challenges. Algorithmic and architectural breakthroughs are needed.
Analysis of the Leaching Efficiency of Inhibited Water and Tank Simulant in Removing Residues on Thermowell Pipes

A cleaning protocol was determined and modeled, using the shrinking core model, for the removal of a solid residue coating thermo well pipes contained in the riser of a Savannah River Site (SRS) waste tank (Tank 48H). The solid residues on two sets of thermo well pipe samples removed from the D2 riser in SRS Tank 48H were characterized by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ion chromatography (IC) and gamma spectroscopy. The residue thickness was determined using the ASTM standard D 3483-05 and was found to be three orders of magnitudes below the 1 mm thickness estimated from an earlier video of the tank cooling coil inspection. The actual estimated thickness ranged from 4 to 20.4 microns. The mass per unit area ranged from 0.15 to 0.82 milligrams per square centimeter. The residues appear to consist primarily of potassium tetraphenylborate (39.8 wt% KTPB) and dried salt solution (33.5 wt% total of nitrates, nitrites, and oxalate salts), although ∼30% of the solid mass was not accounted for in ...
The affective response model: a theoretical framework of affective concepts and their relationships in the ICT context

Affect is a critical factor in human decisions and behaviors within many social contexts. In the information and communication technology (ICT) context, a growing number of studies consider the affective dimension of human interaction with ICTs. However, few of these studies take systematic approaches, resulting in inconsistent conclusions and contradictory advice for researchers and practitioners. Many of these issues stem from ambiguous conceptualizations of various affective concepts and their relationships. Before researchers can address questions such as "what causes affective responses in an ICT context" and "what impacts do affective responses have on human interaction with ICTs," a theoretical foundation for affective concepts and their relationships has to be established. This theory and review paper addresses three research questions: (1) What are pertinent affective concepts in the ICT context? (2) In what ways are these affective concepts similar to, or different from each other? (3) How do these affective concepts relate to or influence one another? Based on theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence, the affective response model (ARM) is developed. ARM is a theoretically bound conceptual framework that provides a systematic and holistic reference map for any ICT study that considers affect. It includes a taxonomy that classifies affective concepts along five dimensions: the residing, the temporal, the particular/general stimulus, the object/behavior stimulus, and the process/outcome dimensions. ARM also provides a nomological network to indicate the causal or co-occurring relationships among the various types of affective concepts in an ICT interaction episode. ARM has the power for explaining and predicting, as well as prescribing, potential future research directions.
Filtered Poisson Process for Random Vibration Problems

The problem considered is the probability of failure analysis of structures excited by randomly varying dynamic forces. A solution is given for the random filtered Poisson process model which has often been proposed to characterize dynamic forces associated with superposition of pulses including random wind, earthquake and highway vehicle loadings. A numerical procedure using the familiar Fourier series technique is used for inverting the characteristic functions of a Poisson process. This gave univariate and bivariate probability density distributions and crossing rates for the time-varying stress or deflection of a single degree-of-freedom system excited by forces described by the Poisson process. A new method for finding first-passage probabilities is also employed which is applicable to both Gaussian and Poisson processes and has been verified by simulation. A specific application is given for wind loaded structures. Results are presented in the form of reliability data showing the safety factor needed to achieve a specified overall failure probability.
The Salsa20 Family of Stream Ciphers

Salsa20 is a family of 256-bit stream ciphers designed in 2005 and submitted to eSTREAM, the ECRYPT Stream Cipher Project. Salsa20 has progressed to the third round of eSTREAM without any changes. The 20-round stream cipher Salsa20/20 is consistently faster than AES and is recommended by the designer for typical cryptographic applications. The reduced-round ciphers Salsa20/12 and Salsa20/8 are among the fastest 256-bit stream ciphers available and are recommended for applications where speed is more important than confidence. The fastest known attacks use ≈ 2153simple operations against Salsa20/7, ≈ 2249simple operations against Salsa20/8, and ≈ 2255simple operations against Salsa20/9, Salsa20/10, etc. In this paper, the Salsa20 designer presents Salsa20 and discusses the decisions made in the Salsa20 design.
The Environment, Trade and Innovation with Heterogeneous Firms: A Numerical Analysis

We employ a two-sector heterogeneous firms model in the presence of endogenous innovation and environmental constraints. We perform simple numerical simulations concerning the implication of a stringent environmental policy and trade cost differences between dirty and clean inputs. Our objective is to highlight the effects of these policy proposals on the process innovation, trade pattern, and productivity dynamics.
Display technology at Rockwell

The goal of avionics suppliers is to provide air crews timely and accurate information from various other aircraft systems in order to improve the likelihood of mission success and safety. This goal can be met by accurately defining the desires and requirements of the user. Rockwell uses a number of techniques to accomplish this goal. The final display system may well be defined by a number of these inputs combined through a series of trade-offs. Rockwell is a diversified company that addresses many different display markets. This provides a unique opportunity to compare various techniques for developing and meeting user requirements. >
Learning diagnostic policies from examples by systematic search

A diagnostic policy specifies what test to perform next, based on the results of previous tests, and when to stop and make a diagnosis. Cost-sensitive diagnostic policies perform tradeoffs between (a) the costs of tests and (b) the costs of misdiagnoses. An optimal diagnostic policy minimizes the expected total cost. We formalize this diagnosis process as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). We investigate two types of algorithms for solving this MDP: systematic search based on the AO* algorithm and greedy search (particularly the Value of Information method). We investigate the issue of learning the MDP probabilities from examples, but only as they are relevant to the search for good policies. We do not learn nor assume a Bayesian network for the diagnosis process. Regularizers are developed that control overfitting and speed up the search. This research is the first that integrates overfitting prevention into systematic search. The paper has two contributions: it discusses the factors that make systematic search feasible for diagnosis, and it shows experimentally, on benchmark data sets, that systematic search methods produce better diagnostic policies than greedy methods.
Private Antitrust Litigation: Procompetitive or Anticompetitive?

Abstract The antitrust laws are intended to permit procompetitive actions by firms and deter anticompetitive actions. We consider firms' incentives to use the antitrust lawsuits for strategic purposes, in particular to prevent procompetitive efficiency-improvement by rival firms. Our main result is that, ceteris paribus , smaller firms in more fragmented industries are more likely to use the antitrust laws strategically than larger firms in concentrated industries.
Modeling the interaction of the immune system with HIV

The interactions between the human immune system and HIV are potentially complex. In this paper I review some of these interactions and sketch the beginnings of a general model that can potentially account for many of the immunological consequences of HIV infection. This model involves a large number of ordinary differential equations and many parameters. To make progress, I simplify the general model and develop a four-equation model that involves free HIV and uninfected, latently infected and actively infected CD4+ T cells. Using reasonable guesses for parameter values, I show that this model can account for some of the puzzling features of AIDS: the long latent period, the almost complete absence of free virus particles, the low frequency of infected T4 cells and the slow T cell depletion seen during the course of the disease. Further, the model suggests why the latent period may be significantly shorter in children than in adults.
Reduced order mixed H/sub 2//H/sub /spl infin// optimization with a singular H/sub /spl infin// constraint

A general mixed H/sub 2//H/sub /spl infin// optimal control problem is considered. The system consists of a plant and stable weights on the H/sub 2/ and H/sub /spl infin// transfer functions, and is linear time-invariant. The controller order can be reduced to that of the plant augmented with the H/sub 2/ weights only. A solution allowing a feedforward term in the H/sub /spl infin// problem and a singular H/sub /spl infin// constraint is developed. An F-16 longitudinal controller is designed to demonstrate the new method.
Suicide and the Generation Gap

: To explore psychological parameters of suicide as perceived by young adults, the middle-aged, and old people, an area sample of 317 Detroit subjects, whose ages placed them in one of these three generations, was administered a questionnaire concerning their beliefs about the generations and suicide and their self-reported relationship to suicide. A 3-way fixed-effects analysis of variance (generation × sex × socioeconomic status) indicated that all generations believed that the old (a) have the greatest desire to die, (b) know the least about suicide, (c) make the fewest attempts, (d) are the least frequently successful, and (e) are the least socially condemned for committing suicide. Self-appraisals indicated that (a) lower socioeconomic status is associated with a greater “death wish,” (b) young adults and males claim a greater knowledge about suicide, and (c) the generations do not differ in desire to die, considerations of suicide, and suicide attempts.
Relations of meaning in life and sense of coherence to distress in cancer patients: a meta‐analysis

Objective Cancer patients report high rates of distress. The related constructs of meaning in life (MiL) and sense of coherence (SOC) have long been recognized as important factors in the psychological adjustment to cancer; however, both constructs' associations with distress have not been quantitatively reviewed or compared in this population. Informed by Park's integrated meaning-making model and Antonovsky's salutogenic model, the goals of this meta-analysis were the following: (1) to compare the strength of MiL-distress and SOC-distress associations in cancer patients; and (2) to examine potential moderators of both associations (i.e., age, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, disease stage, and time since diagnosis). Methods A literature search was conducted using electronic databases. Overall, 62 records met inclusion criteria. The average MiL-distress and SOC-distress associations were quantified as Pearson's r correlation coefficients and compared using a one-way ANOVA. Results Both MiL and SOC demonstrated significant, negative associations with distress (r = −0.41, 95% CI: −0.47 to −0.35, k = 44; and r = −0.59, 95% CI: −0.67 to −0.51, k = 18, respectively). Moreover, the MiL-distress association was significantly smaller than the SOC-distress association (Qb = 10.42, df = 1, p < 0.01). Neither association varied by the tested moderators. Conclusions Findings provide support for the clinical relevance of MiL and SOC across demographic and medical subgroups of cancer patients. The strength of the SOC-distress association suggests that incorporating aspects of SOC (e.g., the perceived manageability of life circumstances) into meaning-centered interventions may improve their effectiveness for distressed cancer patients. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Price support at any price? Costs and benefits of alternative agricultural policies for Poland

The author argues that Poland must choose an agricultural policy that promotes efficiency, structural change, and adjustment to the new market environment and eventual membership in the European Union. That policy must take into account both the needs of, and the financial constraints on, Polish agriculture. Results of simulation experiments performed with the use of the computable general equilibrium model of the Polish economy suggest that Common Agricultural Policy-type price supports are not the most efficient agricultural policy for Poland. The author discusses alternative policies and scenarios. Rather than discuss whether the relationship between farmers' incomes and average Polish wages is fair, the author analyzes whether medium- and long-term development trends in the Polish economy may cause this relationship to deteriorate, and what policies will counteract those trends. Rapid growth in the nonagricultural sectors combined with real appreciation of domestic currency (caused either through good current account performance or significant capital inflows) may jeopardize farmers' relative income position. And such developments are probable if positive projections for economic development and membership in the European Union are realized. The agricultural sector can defend its relative income only by becoming more efficient. Price supports improve farmers' relative income but at a high cost to taxpayers and consumers and to macroeconomic efficiency. To meet these costs, Poland must put in place firm quantity controls. But the author thinks that the best strategy would be to avoid price supports until the moment of joining the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy. In the interim, policies aimed at reducing farm employment seem most appropriate. The author discusses two such policies: encouraging older farmers to retire and promoting jobs in rural areas. He also proposes two feasible scenarios for integrating Polish agriculture with that of the European Union by 2005-10.
Order flow in the South: Anatomy of the Brazilian FX market☆

Abstract This paper analyses one of the main pillars of Brazil's newly found economic resilience: a maturing FX market providing support to its managed floating exchange rate regime. I develop a microstructure model suitable to describe the Brazilian FX market, an emerging economy frequently subjected to sudden stops in capital flows. The model introduces two major changes relative to previous microstructure models. First, dealers may decide to hold overnight positions in the FX market if they find it profitable to do so. Second, customers’ demand for foreign exchange is a function of macroeconomic fundamentals, including contemporaneous feedback from exchange rate movements. The main predictions of the model are supported by a unique data set, covering all transactions between dealers and customers from the official Brazilian FX market from July 1, 1999 to June 30, 2003 (a time period in which Brazil suffered two severe external liquidity shocks).
The Workplace Within: Psychodynamics of Organizational Life

In this revealing study, Larry Hirschhorn examines the rituals, or social defenses, organizations develop to cope with change. Using extended ease studies from offices, factories, and social services, he describes why these often irrational practices that fragment and injure individuals within the workplace exist, how they operate, and how they can be reshaped to enhance people's work experience.
Risky Behavior Among Youths: An Economic Analysis

Every day young people engage in risky behaviours that affect not only their immediate well-being but their long-term health and safety. These essays apply diverse economic analyses to a wide range of unsafe activities, including teen drinking, drug use, unprotected sex, and criminal activity.
Margin Requirements, Speculative Trading, and Stock Price Fluctuations: The Case of Japan

An increase in margin requirements in the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange is followed by a decline in margin borrowing, trading volume, the proportion of trading performed through margin accounts, the growth in stock prices, and the conditional volatility of daily returns. The nonmarginable Second Section stocks show a smaller change in volatility and only a delayed weak price response. The hypothesis that margin requirements restrict the behavior of destabilizing speculators can explain these correlations but cannot explain the observation that individuals, the most active users of margin funds, appear to be good market timers.
Peano high-impedance surfaces

[1] Following our previous work on metamaterial high-impedance surfaces made of Hilbert curve inclusions, here we theoretically explore the performance of the high-impedance surfaces made of another form of space-filling curve known as the Peano curve. This metamaterial surface, formed by a two-dimensional periodic arrangement of Peano curve inclusions, is located above a conducting ground plane and is shown to exhibit a high surface impedance at certain specific frequencies. Our numerical study reveals the effect of the iteration order of the Peano curve, the surface height above the conducting ground plane, and the separation distance between adjacent inclusions.
Family - controlled child labor in Sub-Saharan Africa - a survey of research

This is a review of research on child labor in Sub-Saharan Africa. It focuses on child labor taking place in the household, and controlled by relatives of the children, since this is the most extensive form of child labor in African countries. It is also the form of child labor that is the most difficult one to appraise from a normative point of view. Subtle trade-offs between schooling, leisure, and poverty across generations may be involved. Hence, the paper emphasizes welfare economics issues pertaining to child labor. Another feature of this study, is that it seeks to survey not only the economic research, but also research from other social sciences, particularly social anthropology. The social anthropological studies deal with an aspect of child labor, so far, less adequately dealt by economists - the relationship between their labor, and their socialization; how certain types of labor, and education may give rise to different preferences to the children as adults. A major, but tentative conclusion of this survey, is that the relationship between poverty, and child labor is less than normally assumed in the policy debate.
Simple, Fast and Deterministic Gossip and Rumor Spreading

We study gossip algorithms for the rumor spreading problem, which asks each node to deliver a rumor to all nodes in an unknown network. Gossip algorithms allow nodes only to call one neighbor per round and have recently attracted attention as message efficient, simple, and robust solutions to the rumor spreading problem.A long series of papers analyzed the performance of uniform random gossip in which nodes repeatedly call a random neighbor to exchange all rumors with. A main result of this investigation was that uniform gossip completes in O(log n/Φ) rounds where Φ is the conductance of the network. Nonuniform random gossip schemes were devised to allow efficient rumor spreading in networks with bottlenecks. In particular, [Censor-Hillel et al., STOC&12] gave an O(log3n) algorithm to solve the 1-local broadcast problem in which each node wants to exchange rumors locally with its 1-neighborhood. By repeatedly applying this protocol, one can solve the global rumor spreading quickly for all networks with small diameter, independently of the conductance.All these algorithms are inherently randomized in their design and analysis. A parallel research direction has been to reduce and determine the amount of randomness needed for efficient rumor spreading. This has been done via lower bounds for restricted models and by designing gossip algorithms with a reduced need for randomness, for instance, by using pseudorandom generators with short random seeds. The general intuition and consensus of these results has been that randomization plays a important role in effectively spreading rumors and that at least a polylogarithmic number of random bit are crucially needed.In this article improves over the state of the art in several ways by presenting a deterministic gossip algorithm that solves the the k-local broadcast problem in 2(k + log2n) log2n rounds. Besides being the first efficient deterministic solution to the rumor spreading problem this algorithm is interesting in many aspects: It is simpler, more natural, more robust, and faster than its randomized pendant and guarantees success with certainty instead of with high probability. Its analysis is furthermore simple, self-contained, and fundamentally different from prior works.
Instrumental Variables Regressions with Honestly Uncertain Exclusion Restrictions

The validity of instrumental variables (IV) regression models depends crucially on fundamentally untestable exclusion restrictions. Typically exclusion restrictions are assumed to hold exactly in the relevant population, yet in many empirical applications there are reasonable prior grounds to doubt their literal truth. In this paper I show how to incorporate prior uncertainty about the validity of the exclusion restriction into linear IV models, and explore the consequences for inference. In particular I provide a mapping from prior uncertainty about the exclusion restriction into increased uncertainty about parameters of interest. Moderate prior uncertainty about exclusion restrictions can lead to a substantial loss of precision in estimates of structural parameters. This loss of precision is relatively more important in situations where IV estimates appear to be more precise, for example in larger samples or with stronger instruments. The author illustrates these points using several prominent recent empirical papers that use linear IV models.
What motivates managers?: Evidence from organizational form changes

Abstract We formulate and test several hypotheses on managerial motivation using organizational form changes in the real estate industry. We find that firms that switch to a more restrictive structure have increases in stock value and managerial ownership. Firms moving to a less restrictive structure have larger wealth effects when higher monitoring exists. Higher degree of financial distress and forced CEO replacement at the time of organizational form change are taken to be proxies for higher degree of (creditor) monitoring. The wealth effects are decreasing in the firm's level of free cash flow at the time of organizational form change.
Functional equations for the Stieltjes constants

The Stieltjes constants $$\gamma _k(a)$$ appear as the coefficients in the regular part of the Laurent expansion of the Hurwitz zeta function $$\zeta (s,a)$$ about $$s=1$$ . We present the evaluation of $$\gamma _1(a)$$ and $$\gamma _2(a)$$ at rational arguments, this being of interest to theoretical and computational analytic number theory and elsewhere. We give multiplication formulas for $$\gamma _0(a)$$ , $$\gamma _1(a)$$ , and $$\gamma _2(a)$$ , and point out that these formulas are cases of an addition formula previously presented. We present certain integral evaluations generalizing Gauss’ formula for the digamma function at rational argument. In addition, we give the asymptotic form of $$\gamma _k(a)$$ as $$a \rightarrow 0$$ as well as a novel technique for evaluating integrals with integrands with $$\ln (-\ln x)$$ and rational factors.
Measuring the Anisotropy in the CMB: Current Status & Future Prospects

The CMB is perhaps the cleanest cosmological observable. Given a cosmology model, the angular spectrum of the CMB can be computed to percent accuracy. On the observational side, as far as we know, there is little that stands in the way between an accurate measurement and a rigorous confrontation with theory. In this article, we review the state of the data and indicate future directions.
Collective Learning Agreements as Democratic Practice and Joint Empowerment

When decision-making power about what happens in a classroom is rarely shared with students, hierarchies are reinforced, knowledge is static, and learning becomes passive. Learning agreements and learning contracts can undercut these dynamics, modeling democracy while promoting cooperation. Analyzing collective learning agreements in undergraduate conflict management courses, this article explores what students perceive to be productive learning methods and argues that collective learning agreements facilitate active learning, self and class governance, and shared responsibility for individual and collective success. Jointly constructing collective learning agreements disrupts traditional power relations while engendering creativity in students and professors alike.
How Has Environment Mattered? An Analysis of World Bank Resource Allocation

How has environment mattered for the World Bank? The aggregate figures suggest that it has mattered a great deal, since the Bank's total environmental lending has exceeded $US 9 billion over the past six years. In this paper the authors use newly available data to address a more precise version of the question: Across countries and themes, how well has the Bank's environmental lending and analytical and advisory activities (AAA) matched the incidence of environmental problems? For their assessment, the authors extend their previous work on local pollution and fragile lands (Buys and others 2003) to consideration of global emissions, biodiversity, water resources, and institutional development. They construct cross-country problem indicators for each environmental theme and combine them with country risk measures to estimate optimal thematic lending and AAA for each country. The authors then compare their estimates with actual lending and AAA to assess the match between environmental problems and the Bank's response. The authors begin by constructing an overall indicator of environmental problems from their thematic indicators. Using regression analysis, they find a strong relationship between countries' general indicator values and the scale of their environmental borrowing, but a relatively weak relationship for AAA. At the thematic level, the authors find that problem indicators have relatively weak relationships with both lending and AAA. Adding country risk to the analysis, they test an optimal allocation model and find that it is consistent with the Bank's actual lending and AAA since 1998. The authors conclude that their model's assignment of lending and AAA to countries reflects the Bank's actual experience with partner countries. The model's explanatory power is relatively low, however, and when they compare model assignments to actual allocations, the authors find many large discrepancies for countries and environmental themes. Some gaps may reflect activity by other donor institutions, but many others may represent problems with efficient implementation of the Bank's Environment Strategy. To promote further discussion of this issue, the authors use their optimal allocation model to develop measures of lending opportunity by environmental theme for the Bank's partner countries.
Frequency Entrainment of a Forced van der Pol Oscillator

Abstract : A van der Pol relaxation oscillator that is subjected to external sinusoidal forcing can exhibit stable and unstable periodic and almost periodic responses. For some forcing amplitudes it even happens that two stable subharmonics having different periods may coexist. The stable responses of such forced oscillators are investigated. By numerically computing the rotation number of stable oscillations for various values of the forcing amplitude and oscillator tuning, descriptions are obtained of regions of phase locking, successive bifurcation of stable subharmonic and almost periodic oscillations, and overlap regions where two distinct stable oscillations can coexist.
POLAR Observations of properties of H+ and O+ Conics in the Cusp Near ∼5300 km Altitude

Observations by the thermal ion dynamics experiment (TIDE) on POLAR are used to explore features of low-energy ionospheric ion conical distributions at approximately 5300 km altitude over the southern cusp under different interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) conditions with negative and positive B(sub z) components. The properties are summarized as follows: (1) At the edge upstream of the convection in the cusp, the energy of outflowing ion distributions abruptly increased from a few eV to approximately 100 eV; (2) The angular distributions also abruptly changed from rammed < approximately 5 eV polar wind distributions to approximately 10-100 eV conics; (3) These conic signatures gradually gave way again to polar wind components further downstream of the cusp; (4) The uppermost energy of the detected O+ was larger than that of H+, while the density and flux of O+ were lower than those of H+; (5) The cone angles for both light and heavy ion conics were largest for the upstream region of the convection; (6) Cone angles are wider for O+ than H+; (7) The cone angles as well as the conic energies gradually decreased in the convection direction; (8) The UFI beams and conics were sometimes observed alternately, particularly for H+, and (9) In some cases, the distinct ion conic bursts occurred multiple times during a single cusp crossing.
Phase Separation in the Neutral Falicov-Kimball Model

The Falicov–Kimball model consists of spinless electrons and classical particles (ions) on a lattice. The electrons hop between nearest neighbor sites, while the ions do not. We consider the model with equal numbers of ions and electrons and with a large on-site attractive force between ions and electrons. For densities 1/4 and 1/5, the ion configuration in the ground state had been proved to be periodic. We prove that for density 2/9 it is periodic as well. However, for densities between 1/4 and 1/5 other than 2/9 we prove that the ion configuration in the ground state is not periodic. Instead there is phase separation. For densities in (1/5, 2/9) the ground-state ion configuration is a mixture of the density 1/5 and 2/9 ground-state ion configurations. For the interval (2/9, 1/4) it is a mixture of the density 2/9 and 1/4 ground states.
Internal model-based current control of the RL filter-based voltage-sourced converter

Power system operates close to its operational limit to achieve a higher level of utilization of the grid infrastructure. As a result, its transient behavior is of great importance to prevent violation of the operation limits. This paper proposes an internal model control (IMC)-based approach for voltage-sourced converters (VSC) to improve their dynamic behavior. This IMC controller is designed based on a detailed model of the VSC. The proposed control approach has superior performance, i.e., faster step response and less overshoot, and higher axes decoupling than the conventional dq-current control method. The proposed IMC-based controller has a straightforward design procedure, and can be implemented using simple PI and PID controllers. Several case studies are presented to evaluate and compare the transient performance of the IMC-based controller with conventional dq current control subsequent to step changes in the set points of direct and quadrature axes current, single-phase fault, and three-phase fault.
Measuring strangeness in the nucleon

Evidence for strangeness matrix-elements in the proton are reviewed, and other measurements for specific strangeness matrix elements are presented.
Solar Abundances Using Gamma-Ray Line Spectroscopy of a Solar Flare

Elemental abundances of the ambient gas at the site of gamma-ray production in the solar atmosphere are deduced using gamma-ray line observations of a solar flare. The production site is most likely the chromosphere. The resultant abundances are different from local galactic abundances which are thought to be similar to photospheric abundances.
Internal-tin-processed Nb3Sn multifilamentary wires alloyed with Mg, Zn+Ni, and Ti through the Sn core

The influence on superconducting properties by alloying Nb3Sn with an alloyed Sn core in internal-tin-processed multifilamentary Nb3Sn wires was investigated for alloying elements, Mg, Ni+Zn, and Ti. The results indicate that the critical current densities, Jc of the Mg, Ni, and Ni+ Zn-alloyed wires were essentially identical to or less than those for the unalloyed control wires although small amounts of Mg, Ni and Zn were found in the Nb3Sn filaments. However, additions of Ti increased the Jc of the wire considerably at intermediate as well as very high-magnetic fields. Results of detailed characterization of these wires for superconducting and metallurgical properties will be reported.
Energetic Ions Produced by Laser Pulse

As a historical note, suggested by the Symposium organizers**, it appears that the first publication dealing with plasmas produced by laser bursts is an abstract in the Bulletin of the American Physical Society:1 “Microsecond bursts of laser energy, having peak power of the order of 30 KW, heated various solids to ionization temperature in a localized region (the focal spot of the lens employed). Descriptions are given of various geometries that have been explored. The emitted plasma was collected on biased grids, thus yielding an approximate value of the peak energy of the charged particles. Results are also given showing the effect of electric and magnetic fields of various configurations. The measurements were carried out in a pressure range of 10−6mm Hg to atmospheric pressure. Possible application of these techniques to controlled-fusion research is discussed. Pulsed-ion sources may also be practicable.”
Relative contributions of crustal temperature and composition to controlling the depth of earthquakes in Southern California

[1] Control of the ∼13 km range of the maximum depth of earthquakes in southern California has been attributed previously to lateral variations in either crustal temperature or crustal rock composition. Here I compare heat flow (a proxy for crustal temperature), local maximum depths of earthquakes (d95), and best-guess crustal rock compositions. Plotting heat flow versus d95 produces distinct trends for each rock composition, with each trend representing an isotherm marking the onset of plastic behavior. Offsets between the trends measure the differences in the plastic behavior temperatures of each rock composition; these offsets are comparable to the d95 variations with heat flow. Thus, crustal temperature and composition contribute about equally to the control of the maximum depths of earthquakes. The observed isotherm slopes imply vertical variations in crustal composition in addition to the lateral variations.
Machine Learning Approach for Homepage Finding Task

This paper describes new machine learning approaches to predict the correct homepage in response to a user's homepage finding query. This involves two phases. In the first phase, a decision tree is generated to predict whether a URL is a homepage URL or not. The decision tree then is used to filter out non-homepages from the web pages returned by a standard vector space information retrieval system. In the second phase, a logistic regression analysis is used to combine multiple sources of evidence based on the homepages remaining from the first step to predict which homepage is most relevant to a user's query. 100 queries are used to train the logistic regression model and another 145 testing queries are used to evaluate the model derived. Our results show that about 84% of the testing queries had the correct homepage returned within the top 10 pages. This shows that our machine learning approaches are effective since without any machine learning approaches, only 59% of the testing queries had their correct answers returned within the top 10 hits.
COHERENT FUNCTORS, WITH APPLICATION TO TORSION IN THE PICARD GROUP

Let A be a commutative noetherian ring. Call a functor > --> > coherent if it can be built up (via iterated finite limits) from functors of the form B \mapsto M tensor_A B, where M is a f.g. A-module. When such a functor F in fact takes its values in >, we show that there are only finitely many prime numbers p such that _p F(A) is infinite, and that none of these primes are invertible in A. This (and related statements) yield information about torsion in Pic(A). For example, if A is of finite type over Z, we prove that the torsion in Pic(A) is supported at a finite set of primes, and if _p Pic(A) is infinite, then the prime p is not invertible in A. These results use the (already known) fact that if such an A is normal, then Pic(A) is finitely generated. We obtain a parallel result for a reduced scheme X of finite type over Z. We show that the groups which can occur as the Picard group of a scheme of finite type over a finite field all have the form (finitely generated) + sum_{n=1}^infty F, where F is a finite p-group. Hard copy is available from the author. E-mail to jaffe@cpthree.this http URL.
Measurement of storage ring motion at the Advanced Light Source

The mechanical stability of the Advanced Light Source storage ring is examined over a period of 1.5 years from the point of view of floor motion. The storage ring beam position monitor stability is examined under various operating conditions.
FiST: a language for stackable file systems

Traditional file system development is difficult. Stackable file systems promise to ease the development of file systems by offering a mechanism for incremental development. Unfortunately, existing methods often require writing complex low-level kernel code that is specific to a single operating system platform and also difficult to port. We propose a new language, FiST, to describe stackable file systems. FiST uses operations common to file system interfaces. From a single description, FiST's compiler produces file system modules for multiple platforms. The generated code handles many kernel details, freeing developers to concentrate on the main issues of their file systems. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of FiST. We extended file system functionality in a portable way without changing existing kernels. We built several file systems using FiST on Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux. Our experiences with these examples shows the following benefits of FiST: average code size over other stackable file systems is reduced ten × average development time is reduced seven × performance overhead of stacking is 1-2%.
Complexity of commuting Hamiltonians on a square lattice of qubits

We consider the computational complexity of Hamiltonians which are sums of commuting terms acting on plaquettes in a square lattice of qubits, and we show that deciding whether the ground state minimizes the energy of each local term individually is in the complexity class NP. That is, if the ground states has this property, this can be proven using a classical certificate which can be efficiently verified on a classical computer. Different to previous results on commuting Hamiltonians, our certificate proves the existence of such a state without giving instructions on how to prepare it.
The geometry of the filamentary environment of galaxy clusters

We construct a filament catalogue using an extension of the halo-based filament finder of Zhang et al. (2009), in a 250 Mpc h−1 side N-body simulation, and study the properties of filaments ending upon or in the proximity of galaxy clusters (within 10 Mpc h−1). In this region, the majority of filamentary mass, halo mass and galaxy richness centred upon the cluster tends to lie in sheets, which are not always coincident. Fixing a sheet width of 3 Mpc h−1 for definiteness, we find the sheet orientations and (connected) filamentary mass, halo mass and richness fractions relative to the surrounding sphere. Filaments usually have one or more end points outside the sheet determined by filament or halo mass or richness, with at least one having a large probability to be aligned with the perpendicular of the plane. Scatter in mock cluster mass measurements, for several observables, is often correlated with the observational direction relative to these local sheets, most often for richness and weak lensing, somewhat less for Compton decrement and least often for velocity dispersions. The long axis of the cluster also tends to lie in the sheets and its orientation relative to the line of sight also correlates with mass scatter.