cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
SMALL FEMALE UPPER EXTREMITY INTERACTION WITH A DEPLOYING SIDE AIR BAG

This study characterizes the interaction between a small female upper extremity and a deploying side air bag. Results are based on 12 tests with small female cadavers, and 15 tests with the instrumented SAE 5th percentile female upper extremity attached to the 5th percentile Hybrid III dummy. The upper extremity was loaded by a deploying seat mounted thoracic side air bag in a static test environment. Three types of inflators were used varying in peak pressure and pressure onset rate. Three upper extremity positions were chosen that maximized loading to the humerus and elbow joint. Upper extremity instrumentation for the tests included accelerometers and angular rate sensors. Strain gage rosettes were also used on the cadaver anterior and posterior humerus. The SAE 5th percentile female instrumented upper extremity included 6 axis load cells in both the forearm and humerus. Peak humerus moments were calculated for the cadaver tests and compared to the peak humerus moments recorded by the dummy in similar positions. The moments recorded in the cadaver and dummy were similar, despite kinematic differences. Chondral and osteochondral fractures in the elbow joint were recorded for 7 of 12 cadaver tests, while a simple fracture of the distal humerus head was observed in 1 test. Linear regression was performed to correlate occurrence of recorded injury and test parameters. Injury risk functions were constructed for age, forearm acceleration, elbow moment, and air bag inflator level. The dynamic injury tolerance for the 5th percentile female humerus of 128 Nm was recommended for use with the dummy.
General Equilibrium with Customer Relationships: A Dynamic Analysis of Rent-Seeking

U.S. businesses spend almost $300 billion a year on advertising. The goal of the spending is to attract loyal customers. The relationship capital associated with the resulting loyalty earns substantial rents for businesses and also some rents for customers. Businesses and households pursue those rents. I build a model of the development and valuation of customer relationships and of the resulting eects on the allocation of time within households. Shopping occupies about six hours per week for the average American adult. A small part of that time is search for new relationships with merchants and the bulk is buying goods and services and bringing them home. Inuences on the prot margins of sellers|such as variations in productivity|have profound effects on the tightness of retail markets and on the allocation of time in the household. The model tracks data in the American Time Use Survey during the expansion from 2003 to 2006. The model implies that spending on advertising and spending on recruiting workers move in parallel over the business cycle. This implication is strikingly conrmed in data on advertising and the labor market. This paper is part of the Economic Fluctuations and Growth program of the National Bureau of Economic Research. I am grateful to members of the program’s RSW group and to Alan Kackmeister for comments. Data, programs, and an extended version of this paper with derivations are available at my website.
COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE, GEOGRAPHIC ADVANTAGE AND THE VOLUME OF TRADE

A functional relationship between the degree of a country's comparative advantage and the volume of its net exports of any good to its trading partner is established using a model with per-unit-distance transportation costs between countries' coasts and their interiors. The greater a country's comparative advantage, the deeper its exports penetrate geographically into its trading partner. The internal spatial structure of a country consists of cities on a river. It is shown that population sizes, wage rates, and residential rental rates are greatest in the port city and decline monotonically as one moves inland. Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society.
Ronald Dworkin, Inside-Out

That is not a terribly precise vocabulary, but it seems to be capturing some of the anti-intellectual spirit in Sunstein's case against abstraction, and no good interpreter should deny that Americans can be anti-intellectual. "Political philosophy cannot coerce our consideredion, and no good interpreter should deny that Americans can be anti-intellectual. "Political philosophy cannot coerce our considered convictions any more than the principles of logic can.... It is a mistake to think of abstract conceptions and general principles as always overriding our more particular judgments," Rawls writes." In other words, pre-reflective intuitions sometimes trump our reflective abstractions, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with this. But this is not a frontal assault on Dworkin. We ought not to damn him to neverions, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with this. But this is not a frontal assault on Dworkin. We ought not to damn him to never being believed, like some modem Cassandra, on account of his being too smart. It is, rather, a decision on the merits of a particular case, from within the method. Dworkin simply loses the round, perhaps because he is too clever by a half, at least for us mortals. He still ought to be invited to participate in the next round of discussions. None of this is an outside critique of Dworkin's method. We may subscribe to a perfectly sensible meta-principle of acting publicly and politically only on the basis of advice that we can understand, and then we would look for simpler arguments to follow. But these simpler arguments still must reasonably fit our past, and must be subject to the tests of whatever political theory we can understand. We might have to tell Dworkin that he will have to wait until we can catch up to him. But rather than, as Sunstein would have us, ascending to the "lowest necessary level of abstraction," we are reaching to the highest level of abstraction that we can follow. We'll listen, that is, to anyone we can understand. Why wouldn't we? I do not, in fact, think that this reading of Dworkin as a real life Hercules is compelling. Dworkin is a very able legal philosopher to be sure, but he is also a clear and coherent one, and many of us at least think that we are able to follow him quite well. The charge also insults judges and other legal theorists. Many of Dworkin's arguments are based or build incrementally on the work of other lawyers. If, in the end, he is tricking us, he is doubly skilled, for he hides the deception so well. It would also be an extraordinarily odd claim to accuse Dworkin of malicious sophistry-as if an evil genius were out to deceive us, 98. Id. [Vol. 85:1043 1084
Dynamics of Trends and Attention in Chinese Social Media

There has been a tremendous rise in the growth of online social networks all over the world in recent years. It has facilitated users to generate a large amount of real-time content at an incessant rate, all competing with each other to attract enough attention and become popular trends. While Western online social networks such as Twitter have been well studied, the popular Chinese microblogging network Sina Weibo has had relatively lower exposure. In this paper, we analyze in detail the temporal aspect of trends and trend-setters in Sina Weibo, contrasting it with earlier observations in Twitter. We find that there is a vast difference in the content shared in China when compared to a global social network such as Twitter. In China, the trends are created almost entirely due to the retweets of media content such as jokes, images and videos, unlike Twitter where it has been shown that the trends tend to have more to do with current global events and news stories. We take a detailed look at the formation, persistence and decay of trends and examine the key topics that trend in Sina Weibo. One of our key findings is that retweets are much more common in Sina Weibo and contribute a lot to creating trends. When we look closer, we observe that most trends in Sina Weibo are due to the continuous retweets of a small percentage of fraudulent accounts. These fake accounts are set up to artificially inflate certain posts, causing them to shoot up into Sina Weibo's trending list, which are in turn displayed as the most popular topics to users.
Multiperiodic semiregular variable stars in the ASAS data base: A pilot study

Based on a search for multi-periodic variability among the semi-regular red variable stars in the database of the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS), a sample of 72 typical examples is presented. Their period analysis was performed using the Discrete Fourier Transform. In 41 stars we identified two significant periods each, simultaneously present, while the remaining 31 cases revealed even three such periods per star. They occur in a range roughly between 50 and 3000 days. Inter-relationships between these periods were analyzed using the “double period diagram” which compares adjacent periods, and the so-called “Petersen diagram”, the period ratio vs. the shorter period. In both diagrams we could identify six sequences of accumulation of the period values. For five of these sequences (containing 97 % of all data points) we found an almost perfect coincidence with those of previous studies which were based on very different samples of semiregular red variables. Therefore, existence and locations of these sequences in the diagrams seem to be universal features, which appear in any data set of semi-regularly variable red giants of the AGB; we conclude that they are caused by different pulsation modes as the typical and consistent properties of similar stellar AGB configurations. Stellar pulsations can be considered as the principal cause of the observed periodic variability of these stars, and not binary, rotation of a spotted surface or other possible reasons suggested in the literature. (© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Corticosteroids and pregnancy

Abstract This is a study of 6 cases of pregnancy associated with corticosteroid therapy for various conditions. One case of pregnancy and delivery 6 years after total bilateral adrenalectomy is presented. Supportive therapy during labor has been outlined. No catastrophes due to previous cortisone therapy have been identified in the maternity department of our local hospitals. In prescribing a drug which has so many virtues, every physician should be aware of the relative and the absolute contraindications to its use.
Data distortion for privacy protection in a terrorist analysis system

Data distortion is a critical component to preserve privacy in security-related data mining applications, such as in data mining-based terrorist analysis systems. We propose a sparsified Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method for data distortion. We also put forth a few metrics to measure the difference between the distorted dataset and the original dataset. Our experimental results using synthetic and real world datasets show that the sparsified SVD method works well in preserving privacy as well as maintaining utility of the datasets.
Accurate extraction of reciprocal space information from transmission electron microscopy images

As the study of complex systems has become dominant in physics the link between computational and physical science has become ever more important. In particular, with the rising popularity of imaging techniques in physis, the development and application of cutting edge computer vision techniques has become vital. Here we present novel image analysis methods which can be used to extract the position of features in diffraction patterns (reciprocal space) with unprecedented accuracy. The first contribution we have developed is a method for calculating the nonlinear response of photographic film by using the noise in the image enabling the extraction of accurate intensity information. This allows high-resolution (but non-linear) film to be used in place of low-resolution (but linear) CCD cameras. The second contribution is a method for accurately localising very faint features in diffraction patterns by modelling the features and using the expectation maximization algorithm directly on the image to fit them. The accuracy of this technique has been verified by testing it on synthetic data. These methods have been applied to transmission electron microscopy data, and have already enabled discoveries which would have been impossible using previously available techniques.
A perturbation theorem for sensitivity analysis of SVD based algorithms

A perturbation theorem on perturbations in the singular-value-decomposition (SVD) truncated matrices and SVD truncated pseudoinverses is presented. The theorem can be applied for sensitivity analysis of any SVD-based algorithm that can be formulated in terms of SVD truncated matrices or/and SVD truncated pseudoinverses. The theorem is applied to an SVD-based polynomial method and an SVD-based direct matrix pencil method for estimating parameters of complex exponential signals in noise. With the theorem, it is simple to show that TLS-ESPRIT, Pro-ESPRIT, and the state space method are equivalent to the direct matrix pencil method to the first-order approximation. >
Topological field theory of time-reversal invariant insulators

We show that the fundamental time-reversal invariant (TRI) insulator exists in $4+1$ dimensions, where the effective-field theory is described by the $(4+1)$-dimensional Chern-Simons theory and the topological properties of the electronic structure are classified by the second Chern number. These topological properties are the natural generalizations of the time reversal-breaking quantum Hall insulator in $2+1$ dimensions. The TRI quantum spin Hall insulator in $2+1$ dimensions and the topological insulator in $3+1$ dimensions can be obtained as descendants from the fundamental TRI insulator in $4+1$ dimensions through a dimensional reduction procedure. The effective topological field theory and the ${Z}_{2}$ topological classification for the TRI insulators in $2+1$ and $3+1$ dimensions are naturally obtained from this procedure. All physically measurable topological response functions of the TRI insulators are completely described by the effective topological field theory. Our effective topological field theory predicts a number of measurable phenomena, the most striking of which is the topological magnetoelectric effect, where an electric field generates a topological contribution to the magnetization in the same direction, with a universal constant of proportionality quantized in odd multiples of the fine-structure constant $\ensuremath{\alpha}={e}^{2}∕\ensuremath{\hbar}c$. Finally, we present a general classification of all topological insulators in various dimensions and describe them in terms of a unified topological Chern-Simons field theory in phase space.
Embedded minimal disks with prescribed curvature blowup

We construct a sequence of compact embedded minimal disks in a ball in R 3 , whose boundaries lie in the boundary of the ball, such that the curvature blows up only at a prescribed discrete (and hence, finite) set of points on the x 3 -axis. This extends a result of Colding and Minicozzi, who constructed a sequence for which the curvature blows up only at the center of the ball, and is a partial affirmative answer to the larger question of the existence of a sequence for which the curvature blows up precisely on a prescribed closed set on the x 3 -axis.
R&D Expenditures for the U.S.: A Frascati to System of National Accounts Application to U.S. Data

This paper translates research and development expenditure data organized based on the Frascati Manual for the U.S. to a measure of gross output consistent with The System of National Accounts 1993. A set of detailed tables translates U.S. survey data on the performance of R&D from the National Science Foundation for 2001.
Minimum Latency Tours and the k-Traveling Repairmen Problem

Given an undirected graph G=(V,E) and a source vertex s ∈ V, the k-traveling repairman (KTR) problem, also known as the minimum latency problem, asks for k tours, each starting at s and covering all the vertices (customers) such that the sum of the latencies experienced by the customers is minimum. Latency of a customer p is defined to be the distance (time) traveled before visiting p for the first time. Previous literature on the KTR problem has considered the version of the problem in which the repairtime of a customer is assumed to be zero for latency calculations. We consider a generalization of the problem in which each customer has an associated repairtime. In this paper, we present constant factor approximation algorithms for this problem and its variants.
Deriving latent social impulses to determine longevous videos

Online video websites receive huge amount of videos daily from users all around the world. How to provide valuable recommendation of videos to viewers is important for video websites. Previous studies focus on analyzing the view count of a video, which measures the video's value in terms of popularity. However, the long-lasting value of an online video, namely longevity, is hidden behind the history that a video accumulates its "popularity" through time. Generally speaking, a longevous video tends to constantly draw society's attention. With a focus on Youtube, this paper proposes a scoring mechanism to quantify the longevity of videos. We introduce the concept of latent social impulses and use them to assess a video's longevity. In order to derive latent social impulses, we view the video website as a digital signal filter and formulate the task as a convex minimization problem. The proposed longevity computation is based on the derived social impulses. Unfortunately, the required information to derive social impulses is not always public, which disallows a third party to directly evaluate the longevity of all videos. Thus, we formulate a semi-supervised learning task by using videos of which the longevity scores are known to predict the unknown ones. We develop a Gaussian Random Markov Field model with Loopy Belief Propagation to solve it. The experiments on Youtube demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves the prediction results comparing to two baseline models.
ORFEUS-SPAS II Observations of Algol-type Interacting Binaries

The first results from ORFEUS-SPAS II observations of five Algol-type binary systems obtained during the shuttle mission STS-80 in 1996 November/December are reported. Single spectra covering 900-1220 A of AU Mon, Z Vul, U CrB, and TX UMa were acquired with the Berkeley spectrograph. TT Hya was observed at three phases (0.19, 0.63, and 0.95) to study mass flow and to investigate asymmetry in the circumstellar material in the system. O VI was not detected in any of the binaries, which allows us to place an upper limit on Tion in the high-temperature plasma seen in Algol-type binaries. Circumstellar material, presumably associated with the accretion disk, was detected in Fe III (UV1) in AU Mon. We estimate a particle density in the range 108-109 cm-3 for the region of the disk sampled during the observations. Evidence for mass infall was found in the phase 0.95 spectrum of TT Hya. From the additional (redshifted) absorption in N II (1085 A) and N I (1135 A), we find evidence for superionization in this plasma and estimate a lower limit of 10-12 M☉ yr-1 for the current infall rate.
Efficient gradient estimation for motor control learning

The task of estimating the gradient of a function in the presence of noise is central to several forms of reinforcement learning, including policy search methods. We present two techniques for reducing gradient estimation errors in the presence of observable input noise applied to the control signal. The first method extends the idea of a reinforcement baseline by fitting a local model to the response function whose gradient is being estimated; we show how to find the response surface model that minimizes the variance of the gradient estimate, and how to estimate the model from data. The second method improves this further by discounting components of the gradient vector that have high variance. These methods are applied to the problem of motor control learning, where actuator noise has a significant influence on behavior. In particular, we apply the techniques to learn locally optimal controllers for a dart-throwing task using a simulated three-link arm; we demonstrate that the proposed methods significantly improve the response function gradient estimate and, consequently, the learning curve, over existing methods.
Bounded Isometries and Homogeneous Quotients

In this paper we give an explicit description of the bounded displacement isometries of a class of spaces that includes the Riemannian nilmanifolds. The class of spaces consists of metric spaces (and thus includes Finsler manifolds) on which an exponential solvable Lie group acts transitively by isometries. The bounded isometries are proved to be of constant displacement. Their characterization gives further evidence for the author’s 1962 conjecture on homogeneous Riemannian quotient manifolds. That conjecture suggests that if \(\Gamma \backslash M\) is a Riemannian quotient of a connected simply connected homogeneous Riemannian manifold M, then \(\Gamma \backslash M\) is homogeneous if and only if each isometry \(\gamma \in \Gamma \) is of constant displacement. The description of bounded isometries in this paper gives an alternative proof of an old result of J. Tits on bounded automorphisms of semisimple Lie groups. The topic of constant displacement isometries has an interesting history, starting with Clifford’s use of quaternions in non-Euclidean geometry, and we sketch that in a historical note.
MEASURING THE IMPACT OF FOOD SAFETY REGULATION-AN OUTPUT DIRECTIONAL DISTANCE FUNCTION APPROACH

This paper provides a novel methodology to measure the impact of food safety regulation. An output directional distance function approach is applied to estimate the opportunity cost of food safety regulation. Such a measure should be included as part of the overall cost for a more precise benefit-cost analysis of food safety regulation. Using US Census and food safety recall data, the value of potential output loss due to food safety regulation is suggested $2.5 billion.
Risk and efficiency in East Asian banks

The author uses a linear programming technique (data envelopment analysis) to estimate the inefficiencies of banks in Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and, Thailand. He applies this technique to the pre-crisis period 1992-96. Assessing a Bank's overall performance requires assessing both efficiency and risk factors, so the author also introduces a measure of risk taking. This risk measure helps predict which banks were restructured after the crisis of 1997. The author finds that foreign-owned banks took little risk relative to other banks in East Asia, and that family-owned and company-owned banks were among the highest-risk takers. Banks restructured after the 1997 crisis had excessive credit growth, were mostly family-owned or company-owned, and were almost never foreign-owned.
Cytogenetics of polyploids.

Following Winge’s classic paper on Polyploidy (1), there have been a large number of publications dealing with various aspects of the subject. However, this symposium is probably the first to bring together at one place and at one time so many different viewpoints and disciplines dealing with this subject.
Minimal Fractal Manifold as Asymptotic Regime of Non-Commutative Field Theory

The minimal fractal manifold (MFM) defines a space-time continuum endowed with arbitrarily small deviations from four-dimensions ( e = 4 – D , e << ). It was recently shown that MFM is a natural consequence of the Renormalization Group and that it brings up a series of unforeseen solutions to the challenges raised by the Standard Model. In this brief report we argue that MFM may be treated as asymptotic manifestation of Non-Commutative (NC) Field Theory near the electroweak scale. Our provisional findings may be further expanded to bridge the gap between MFM and NC Field Theory.
Identification of income–leisure preferences and evaluation of income tax policy

The merits of alternative income tax policies depend on the population distribution of preferences for income and leisure. Standard theory, which supposes that persons want more income and more leisure, does not predict how they resolve the tension between these desires. Empirical studies of labor supply have imposed strong preference assumptions that lack foundation. This paper examines anew the problem of inference on incomeleisure preferences and considers the implications for evaluation of tax policy. I first perform a basic revealed-preference analysis assuming only that persons prefer more income and leisure. This shows that observation of a person's time allocation under a status quo tax policy may bound his allocation under a proposed policy or may have no implications, depending on the tax schedules and the person's status quo time allocation. I next explore the identifying power of two classes of assumptions that restrict the distribution of incomeleisure preferences. One assumes that groups of persons who face different choice sets have the same preference distribution. The second restricts the shape of this distribution. The generic finding is partial identification of preferences. This implies partial prediction of tax revenue under proposed policies and partial knowledge of the welfare function for utilitarian policy evaluation. Keywords. Revealed preference analysis, partial identification, labor supply. JEL classification. C14, C25, H21, H24, J22.
Evaluating local contributions to global performance in wireless sensor and actuator networks

Wireless sensor networks are often studied with the goal of removing information from the network as efficiently as possible. However, when the application also includes an actuator network, it is advantageous to determine actions in-network. In such settings, optimizing the sensor node behavior with respect to sensor information fidelity does not necessarily translate into optimum behavior in terms of action fidelity. Inspired by neural systems, we present a model of a sensor and actuator network based on the vector space tools of frame theory that applies to applications analogous to reflex behaviors in biological systems. Our analysis yields bounds on both absolute and average actuation error that point directly to strategies for limiting sensor communication based not only on local measurements but also on a measure of how important each sensor-actuator link is to the fidelity of the total actuation output.
The distributional consequences of monetary policy : evidence from Malaysia

Policymakers in Malaysia should weigh the distributional consequences of policy actions. They should also consider measures to alleviate the disproportionate impact that market imperfections have on small and medium-size industries. Domac provides a descriptive analysis of credit and monetary policies in Malaysia and investigates the distributional consequences of monetary policy there by focusing on small and medium-size industries and large manufacturing firms. Domac suggests that payoff or default risk - as captured by the spread between safe and risky debt - is still well above its pre-crisis level, underscoring the increased agency costs of external finance. The decline in lending activity in the first half of 1998 can be attributed to the reduced supply of bank credit relative to demand. Empirical results from vector auto-regression analysis demonstrate that monetary tightening disproportionately affects small and medium-size enterprises. Moreover, monetary shocks contribute substantially more to small and medium-size firms` variance of production (71 percent) than to that of large manufacturing firms (30 percent). These findings corroborate the notion that small and medium-size industries face greater market imperfections, which in turn magnify the effects of a given policy shift. Policymakers should weigh the distributional consequences of policy actions and should consider measures to alleviate the disproportionate impact that market imperfections have on small and medium-size industries. Measures to alleviate information asymmetry in credit markets - including the promotion of cooperative or mutual guarantee schemes for small and medium-size enterprises - are one useful option. Groups of firms in Southern Europe have made wide use of mutual guarantee schemes - usually within a specific industry - to provide a privately organized insurance system for lending banks that allows the banks to rely less on the assets of individual companies within the group in making loan decisions. The pooling effects of such a system would reduce the risk to the bank of default and would give members of the society an incentive to reveal information to the society that they might hesitate to give to the bank. This paper - a product of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, East Asia and Pacific Region - is part of a larger effort in the region to analyze the patterns and consequences of the East Asian crisis, with particular reference to the links between the real and financial sectors. The author may be contacted at idomac@worldbank.org.
On deciding deep holes of Reed-Solomon codes

For generalized Reed-Solomon codes, it has been proved [7] that the problem of determining if a received word is a deep hole is co-NP-complete. The reduction relies on the fact that the evaluation set of the code can be exponential in the length of the code - a property that practical codes do not usually possess. In this paper, we first present a much simpler proof of the same result. We then consider the problem for standard Reed-Solomon codes, i.e. the evaluation set consists of all the nonzero elements in the field. We reduce the problem of identifying deep holes to deciding whether an absolutely irreducible hypersurface over a finite field contains a rational point whose coordinates are pairwise distinct and nonzero. By applying Cafure-Matera estimation of rational points on algebraic varieties, we prove that the received vector (f(α))α∈Fpfor the Reed-Solomon [p - 1, k]p, k < p1/4-Ɛ, cannot be a deep hole, whenever f(x) is a polynomial of degree k + d for 1 ≤ d ≤ p3/13-Ɛ.
Maximizing Heterozygosity in Autopolyploids

Polyploidy appears dependent on heterozygosity! The largest group of polyploids, the allopolyploids (disomic polyploids), have fixed heterozygosity in the two or more divergent genomes they possess (e.g., wheat, oats, cotton, tobacco, etc.). Hexaploid wheat, for example, although self-pollinated and basically homozygous at loci in each of its three genomes, has internal hybridity among loci with similar function in its three genomes. Disomic polyploids thus are able to capitalize on the merits of both the self- and cross-fertilizing systems (1).
An Economic Assessment of Competing Technologies for Coastal Restoration

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) was established to integrate programs for habitat restoration and infrastructure protection. The Authority has begun aligning the state’s coastal spending to reflect increasing public interest in the restoration of surface acreage. Concurrent with these changes, programmatic emphasis has been placed on rapid land building (RLB) techniques that rely on mechanical dredges and sediment conveyance pipelines to build new land. The apparent costs and benefits of this approach are increasingly compared in the scientific community to more traditional and natural methods of restoration, such as freshwater diversions (DIV). Given limited state and federal budgets for coastal restoration, advocates of these competing approaches have disagreed on a number of levels related to project efficacy. Petrolia et al. (2009) explored measures of cost-efficacy for RLB technologies and focused on sediment dredging costs associated with varying project scales. This research extends that analysis by developing a series of detailed generic models that incorporate time and risk considerations within a benefit-cost construct.
Toward a social policy for Argentina's infrastructure sectors - evaluating the past and exploring the future

Argentina was a pioneer of infrastructure reform in the early 1990s. The social dimension of infrastructure services was typically overlooked in the reform process. However, social sensitivities often resurfaced in the years that followed, leading to a series of ad hoc social policy measures that cumulatively amount to US$200 million a year. Foster quantifies and prioritizes the social challenges faced by the Argentine infrastructure sectors, evaluates how well existing social policies are functioning, and provides illustrative simulations of how certain changes in the design of social policy could improve the performance of current social policies. The author's findings are that current social policies do not prove to be very effective in targeting resources to the poor. They have no real impact on the distribution of income across customers. An important reason for this targeting failure is the tendency to allocate resources to all households resident in a particular geographical area, irrespective of socioeconomic status. A series of simulations that limit subsidies to households reaching a minimum score on a multidimensional poverty index show that individual targeting of this kind potentially leads to a more progressive distribution of subsidies. However, the greatest improvements in targeting performance would be achieved if efforts switched from subsidizing the use of infrastructure services to subsidizing connections to those services.
Performance Parameters for Fusion-Fission Power Systems

A fusion--fission power system is considered in which fissile-producing hybrid (or fusion--fission) reactors supply the makeup fuel needs for fissile-consuming, or converter, reactors. As a result of the diverse nature of the hybrid reactor, a number of general performance parameters are proposed that will permit comparison of various hybrid reactor configurations. In addition, the relationships developed are used to show that scientific feasibility or breakeven for the hybrid reactor is near at hand in the fusion program and that attractive commercial reactors can be based on near-term plasma physics.
Fidelity-Commensurability Tradeoff in Joint Embedding of Disparate Dissimilarities

In various data settings, it is necessary to compare observations from disparate data sources. We assume the data is in the dissimilarity representation (Pekalska and Duin, 2005) and investigate a joint embedding method (Priebe et al., 2013) that results in a commensurate representation of disparate dissimilarities. We further assume that there are “matched” observations from different conditions which can be considered to be highly similar, for the sake of inference. The joint embedding results in the joint optimization of fidelity (preservation of within-condition dissimilarities) and commensurability (preservation of between-condition dissimilarities between matched observations). We show that the tradeoff between these two criteria can be made explicit using weighted raw stress as the objective function for multidimensional scaling. In our investigations, we use a weight parameter, w, to control the tradeoff, and choose match detection as the inference task. Our results show weights that are optimal (with respect to the inference task) are different than equal weights for commensurability and fidelity and the proposed weighted embedding scheme provides significant improvements in statistical power.
Delivering Services with Integrity Guarantees in Survivable Database Systems

Current database survivability technologies focus on maintaining data integrity and availability in the face of attacks. They are very limited in satisfying differentiated information assurance requirements of various database services under sustained attacks. This paper takes the first steps towards delivering database services with information assurance guarantees. In particular, (a) we introduce the concept of Quality of Integrity Assurance(QoIA) services; (b) we present a data integrity model which allows customers or applications to quantitatively specify their integrity requirements on the services that they want the database system to deliver; and (c) we present an algorithm that can enable a database system to deliver a set of QoIA services without violating the integrity requirements specified by the customers on the set of services. Our approach can deliver integrity guarantees to database services, though sometimes some availability loss could be caused. Our approach can be easily integrated into our Intrusion Tolerant Database System(ITDB).
Potassium trifluoroborate salts as convenient, stable reagents for difficult alkyl transfers

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of potassium organotrifluoroborates as a new class of nucleophilic boron reagents for Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling and Rh-catalyzed addition reactions. Potassium organotrifluoroborates are easily prepared, and most are indefinitely stable to air and moisture. Recent advances have focused on the utility of alkyltrifluoroborates in appending alkyl groups selectively and conveniently onto appropriate molecular substructures. This review describes strategies employing these reagents as nucleophilic substrates.
Status of nucleon structure calculations with 2+1 flavors of domain wall fermions

We report the status of our nucleon structure calculations with 2+1 flavors of domain wall fermions on the RBC-UKQCD 32 3 64 gauge ensembles with the Iwasaki+DSDR action. These ensembles have a fixed lattice scale of 1/a = 1.37 GeV, and two pion masses of about 170 and 250 MeV. Preliminary results for the isovector electromagnectic form factors and their corresponding root-mean-squared (r.m.s.) radii will be presented.
Analyzing the Intel Itanium Memory Ordering Rules Using Logic Programming and SAT

We present a non-operational approach to specifying and analyzing shared memory consistency models. The method uses higher order logic to capture a complete set of ordering constraints on execution traces, in an axiomatic style. A direct encoding of the semantics with a constraint logic programming language provides an interactive and incremental framework for exercising and verifying finite test programs. The framework has also been adapted to generate equivalent boolean satisfiability (SAT) problems. These techniques make a memory model specification executable, a powerful feature lacked in most non-operational methods. As an example, we provide a concise formalization of the Intel Itanium memory model and show how constraint solving and SAT solving can be effectively applied for computer aided analysis. Encouraging initial results demonstrate the scalability for complex industrial designs.
Hedging with Futures and Options under a Truncated Cash Price Distribution

Many agricultural producers face cash price distributions that are effectively truncated at a lower limit through participation in farm programs designed to support farm prices and incomes. For example, the 1996 Federal Agricultural Improvement Act (FAIR) makes many producers eligible to obtain marketing loans which truncate their cash price realization at the loan rate, while allowing market prices to freely equilibrate supply and demand. This paper studies the effects of truncated cash price distributions on the optimal use of futures and options. The results show that truncation in the cash price distribution facing an individual producer provides incentives to trade options as well as futures. We derive optimal futures and options trading rules under a range of different truncation scenarios. Empirical results highlight the impacts of basis risk and yield risk on the optimal futures and options portfolio.
The alloy systems uranium-aluminum and uranium-iron

The phase diagrams for the systems uranium-aluminum and uranium-iron have been determined. For each system several intermetallic compounds occur. The solid solubility in the terminal phases is very limited in all cases.
Effects of Licensing Reform on Firm Innovation : Evidence from India

The regulatory environment in a country can affect firm performance. This study investigates the impact of a particular regulation, namely license requirements for certain firm activities, on the innovation performance of Indian firms. First it presents a model of firm and industry evolution that explains the dynamics of multi-product firms. Then, using a firm level panel data set, it shows that removal of license requirements led to roughly 5 percentage points faster innovation rates where innovation is measured as introduction of new product varieties that had not existed in the market. The results are robust to inclusion of controls for the other policy reforms that occurred during the period of licensing reform.
Electronic Transport in La-Ca Manganites

We revisit the transport properties of La-Ca manganites in detail, since they have been confirmed in a number of CMR-exhibiting materials. We also discuss new data considered the hallmark of an unusually high electron-phonon coupling responsible for charge localization and small polaron transport.
Pulsed-Neutron-Source Models for the Astrophysical S-Process

The astrophysical s-process is a sequence of neutron-capture and beta-decay reactions on a slow time scale compared to beta-decay lifetimes near the line of stability. We systematically study this detailed sequence of neutron capture, continuum and bound-state beta decay, positron decay, and electron-capture reactions that comprise the s-process for a broad range of astrophysical environments. Our results are then compared with the solar-system abundances of heavy elements to determine the range of physical conditions responsible for their nucleosynthesis.
G-parking functions and tree inversions

A depth-first search version of Dhar's burning algorithm is used to give a bijection between the parking functions of a graph and labeled spanning trees, relating the degree of the parking function with the number of inversions of the spanning tree. Specializing to the complete graph solves a problem posed by R. Stanley.
How a Randall‐Sundrum Brane‐World Effective Potential Influences Inflation Physics

In string theory, even when there are ten to the thousand power vacuum states, does inflation produce overwhelmingly one preferred type of vacuum state? We respond affirmatively to questions whether existence of graviton production is confirmable using present detector methodology. We use an explicit Randall‐Sundrum brane‐world effective potential as congruent with an inflationary quadratic potential start. This occurs after Bogomolnyi inequality eliminates need for ad hoc assumption of axion wall mass high temperature related disappearing. Graviton production has explicit links with a five‐dimensional brane‐world negative cosmological constant and a four‐dimensional positive valued cosmological constant, whose temperature dependence permits an early universe graviton production activity burst. We show how di quarks, wave functions, and various forms tie into the Wheeler‐De Witt equation. This permits investigating a discretized quantum bounce and a possible link to the initial phases of present universe’s evolution with a prior universe’s collapse to the bounce point—the initial starting point to inflationary expansion. This opens a possibility of realistically investigating gravitons as part of a space propulsion system and dealing with problems from a beam of gravity waves, which would create a g‐force because the geodestic structure is near field. It can be applied to existing and to new space propulsion concepts.
Anarchy Is Free in Network Creation

The Internet has emerged as perhaps the most important network in modern computing, but rather miraculously, it was created through the individual actions of a multitude of agents rather than by a central planning authority. This motivates the game-theoretic study of network formation, and our article considers one of the most well-studied models, originally proposed by Fabrikant et al. In the model, each of n agents corresponds to a vertex, which can create edges to other vertices at a cost of α each, for some parameter α. Every edge can be freely used by every vertex, regardless of who paid the creation cost. To reflect the desire to be close to other vertices, each agent’s cost function is further augmented by the sum total of all (graph-theoretic) distances to all other vertices.Previous research proved that for many regimes of the (α, n) parameter space, the total social cost (sum of all agents’ costs) of every Nash equilibrium is bounded by at most a constant multiple of the optimal social cost. In algorithmic game-theoretic nomenclature, this approximation ratio is called the price of anarchy. In our article, we significantly sharpen some of those results, proving that for all constant nonintegral α > 2, the price of anarchy is in fact 1 + o(1); that is, not only is it bounded by a constant, but also it tends to 1 as n → ∞. For constant integral α g 2, we show that the price of anarchy is bounded away from 1. We provide quantitative estimates on the rates of convergence for both results.
The economic impact of surgical care for morbidly obese endometrial cancer patients: a nationwide study.

Background Obesity significantly impacts the cost of cancer treatment, yet the impact of morbid obesity on inpatient hospital charges related to endometrial cancer treatment is not well-defined. Objectives The purpose of this study was to determine the charges that are associated with inpatient surgery, hospitalization, and postoperative care of morbidly obese patients with endometrial cancer. Study Design Data were obtained from the National Inpatient Sample from 2010. Chi-square test, t -test, and linear regression were used for statistical analyses. Results Six thousand five hundred sixty patients who underwent hysterectomy for endometrial cancer were identified. Mean age was 62 years (range, 22-99 years). The majority were white (78%), and the remainder were black (10%), Hispanic, (8%), Asian (3%), and Native American (1%). Insurance types were private (45%), Medicare (45%), Medicaid (5%), and uninsured (7%). One thousand eighty-eight of these patients (17%) were coded as morbidly obese. The mean postoperative stay for the morbidly obese was 4.0 days (range, 0-46 days) compared with 3.5 days (range, 0-81 days) for the non–morbidly obese patients ( P P P P Conclusion In this economic analysis, the health care charges that were associated with inpatient endometrial cancer treatment in the morbidly obese patient was significantly higher compared the non–morbidly obese patient. Resources are needed to support the needs of this population, and programs to encourage weight loss and optimize general health should be encouraged.
Entanglement purification with two-way classical communication

We present an entanglement purification protocol for Bell-diagonal mixed states and show that this protocol has improved yields over the recurrence methods and the method proposed by Maneva-Smolin. We then generalize this protocol to a family, and show that this family is also a generalization of the recurrence method, the modified recurrence method and the method proposed by Maneva-Smolin. We show that the yields of these protocols on the Werner state ρF are higher than those of universal hashing for F less than 0.99999 and as F goes to 1.