cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Sustainability of Public Debt

In recent decades, governments have built up substantial public debt, which is often accompanied by a growing public sector and fiscal policies that neglect long-term considerations. The contributors to this CESifo volume consider whether the development of public debt in the United States and six EU countries is sustainable--that is, whether fiscal policies in these countries can be continued without creating the potential for government bankruptcy. The sustainability of public debt presents a challenge not only to public policy design but also to economic theory. This collection is the first book-length analysis of the theoretical foundations of public debt sustainability concepts and their application to the empirical study of actual budgetary policies. Conditions for public debt sustainability are derived and applied to various institutional environments. Country studies cover the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, with special emphasis in the EU chapters on the fiscal criteria for entrance into the European Monetary Union and the Stability and Growth Pact. The contributors find that in most countries, fiscal policy turns out to be sustainable in the long run and that all countries (with the possible exception of Italy) were able to return to a sustainable path after a period of unsustainability.ContributorsTorben M. Andersen, Roel M. W. J. Beetsma, Henning Bohn, Marco Buti, Sylvester Eijffinger, Lars P. Feld, Daniele Franco, Emma Galli, Olaf de Groot, Gottfried Haber, Jakob de Haan, Andrew Hughes Hallett, Svend E. Hougaard Jensen, Gebhard Kirchgssner, Reinhard Neck, Fabio Padovano, Lars Haagen Pedersen, Jan-Egbert Sturm, Koen Vermeylen Reinhard Neck is Professor of Economics at Klagenfurt University, Austria. Jan-Egbert Sturm is Professor of Applied Microeconomics and Director of KOF Swiss Economic Institute at the ETH Zurich.
Visualizing nonlinear electrodynamics

Visualizing phenomena in high dimensions requires a combination of equivariant mathematics and computer graphics. This paper applies the method of equivariant geometry, which involves Lie Groups and PDE’s, to the study of nonlinear electrodynamics. For the difficult calculations and for the graphics we used Maple.
Lockheed Martin and California's Limits on Class Treatment for Medical Monitoring Claims

In Lockheed Martin Corp. v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court rejected certification for a proposed medical monitoring class, but declined to set a per se bar against class treatment of such claims. The court held that individual issues predominated because the class members had not provided substantial evidence that they could resolve dosage issues with common proof. In rejecting certification, the court improperly focused on the substantive merits of the case and raised a manageability concern for future classes of medical monitoring claimants. Although the decision expressly allows for class treatment of medical monitoring claims under certain circumstances, it limits class-wide adjudication of environmental pollution and chemical exposure claims because it requires excessive scrutiny of the merits for certification.
Implicit Knowledge: New Perspectives on Unconscious Processes*

This chapter provides an overview of research that has documented and explored dissociations between explicit and implicit knowledge, focuses primarily on explicit/implicit dissociations in patients with memory disorders and perceptual disorders, and discusses the analogous dissociations that were produced in the cognitive studies of normal, non-brain-damaged subjects. Although experience-induced changes in perceptual representation systems can provide a basis for facilitated identification of degraded words and objects, they do not provide access to the kind of contextual and associative information that is important for conscious recollection and that appears to depend on the hippocampus and related structures. Thus, priming and explicit remembering depend on different underlying memory systems. Whatever the ultimate theoretical account of implicit/explicit dissociations might be, the fact that these phenomena can be observed in normal subjects as well as neurological populations indicates that they are not exotic or unusual symptoms that represent pathological consequences of brain damage.
Reinscribing Tradition in a Transnational Art World

Despite the increased border-crossings and hybridities that characterize contemporary art in a globalizing world, there is a pronounced trend among contemporary Asian artists and the art professionals who promote them to deploy and reinscribe selected notions of "tradition" in an effort to carve out a distinct and marketable identity for their work in the transnational art market. While many contemporary Asian artists live and work between two, sometimes three, continents, often residing outside the country of their birth, they often still draw from a distinct repertoire of iconic cultural symbols from their "native" culture as a means of self-definition. Even the decidedly futuristic and technologized world of pop art fusions such as Takashi Murakami’s iconoclastic Superflat and Mariko Mori’s technicolor new-age spiritualism rest on a bedrock of these cultural forms. Such traditions, drawn from language, religion, aesthetics, and even sexual mores and erotica, are invoked to imbue contemporary practice with an aura of authenticity, while the traditions themselves are reconstructed within the transhistorical imagination of the contemporary. How does this complicate the age-old binary of tradition and modernity (or post-modernity) in our discussions of art in the 21st century? What does it reveal about the contemporary moment and the enduring power of what Bert Winther-Tamaki has called "artistic nationalism"? This paper will explore these questions and the various implications of the definition and deployment of so-called traditional cultural practices in contemporary Asian art.
The Yamabe flow on incomplete manifolds

This article is concerned with developing an analytic theory for second-order nonlinear parabolic equations on singular manifolds. Existence and uniqueness of solutions in an $$L_p$$ -framework are established by maximal regularity tools. These techniques are applied to the Yamabe flow. It is proven that the Yamabe flow admits a unique local solution within a class of incomplete initial metrics.
Cultural embeddedness in supply networks

Abstract Recent studies on structural and relational embeddedness suggest that favorable position and connections in supply networks benefit a firm. While fruitful, this focus misses the motivations that prompt firms to take economic action in the first place. Understanding cultural embeddedness provides insight into why individuals and firms behave as they do and how their behavior can influence network structure. Contrary to the belief that firms act solely for profit and growth, we note that cultural contents such as values, social issues and political ideologies explain firms’ motives and guide their economic activities. We explore the role of cultural embeddedness through a grounded study of Country Natural Beef, a sustainability-oriented agricultural cooperative in the western United States. This supply network demonstrates strongly competing cultural claims among its members as well as a unique institutionalized culture. Cultural interactions at the node and network levels explain the functioning of and changes to the network. Through interviews, analysis of archival information and direct observation of pivotal events over a period of 5 years, we unpack cultural embeddedness and take an incremental step toward a theory of cultural embeddedness in cooperative supply networks.
The promise of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering for modern Kondo physics

Abstract Developments in synchrotron accelerator and end station capabilities have brought new techniques to bear on complex matter. The recently enabled technique of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) has emerged as a serious contender of inelastic neutron scattering as a probe of magnetic structure in correlated electronic materials, but can also reveal perspectives on electronic structural not attainable by optical conductivity or angle-resolved photoemission. Here we introduce the basics of this powerful technique and discuss the prospects to turn this probe onto the charge excitations in Kondo lattice systems.
The ratio index for budgeted learning, with applications

In the budgeted learning problem, we are allowed to experiment on a set of alternatives (given a fixed experimentation budget) with the goal of picking a single alternative with the largest possible expected payoff. Constant factor approximation algorithms for this problem were developed by Guha and Munagala by rounding a linear program that couples the various alternatives together. In this paper we present an index for this problem, which we call the ratio index, which also guarantees a constant factor approximation. Index-based policies have the advantage that a single number (i.e. the index) can be computed for each alternative irrespective of all other alternatives, and the alternative with the highest index is experimented upon. This is analogous to the famous Gittins index for the discounted multi-armed bandit problem.The ratio index has several interesting structural properties. First, we show that it can be computed in strongly polynomial time. Second, we show that with the appropriate discount factor, the Gittins index and our ratio index are constant factor approximations of each other, and hence the Gittins index also gives a constant factor approximation to the budgeted learning problem. Finally, we show that the ratio index can be used to create an index-based policy that achieves an O(1)-approximation for the finite horizon version of the multi-armed bandit problem. Moreover, the policy does not require any knowledge of the horizon (whereas we compare its performance against an optimal strategy that is aware of the horizon). This yields the following surprising result: there is an index-based policy that achieves an O(1)-approximation for the multi-armed bandit problem, oblivious to the underlying discount factor.
A Dynamic Model of Labor Supply, Consumption/Saving, and Annuity Decisions under Uncertainty

This paper presents a dynamic model of labor/leisure, consumption/saving and annuity decisions over the life cycle. Such a dynamic model provides a framework for considering important policy experiments related to the reforms in Social Security. We address the role of labor supply in a life cyle utility maximization model, extending the classical optimal lifetime consumption problem under uncertainty first formalized in Phelps (1962) and later in Hakansson (1970). We introduce the labor decision in the finite horizon consumption/saving problem and solve numerically the stochastic dynamic programming utility maximization problem of the individual. Analytical solutions are infeasible when the individual is maximizing utility over consumption and leisure, given non-linear marginal utility. We illustrate how such a model captures changes in labor supply over the life cycle and show that simulated consumption and wealth accumulation paths are consistent with empirical evidence. We also present a model of endogenously determined annuities for the consumption/saving and labor/leisure framework with capital uncertainty in the presence of bequest motives and Social Security. This provides new insights into the ``annuity puzzle'' and the effects of Social Security on labor supply and welfare.
Fiscal Effects of Block Grants for the Needy: An Interpretation of the Evidence

In 1996 the United States revamped its welfare system by eliminating the entitlement to cash benefits under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and replacing it by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Federal financing was converted from open-ended matching grants to fixed block grants. This paper reviews the evidence on the likely impact of block grants for the needy on average benefit levels, total redistributional outlays, and on differentials across states. The econometric evidence on state responses to federal incentives for spending on the needy varies enormously. An evaluation of this evidence, together with an examination of state responses to the federalization of aid to the elderly, blind, and disabled through the Supplementary Security Income program, suggests that in the long run the federal changes will substantially decrease the amount of direct cash redistribution in the United States. A reasonable guess is that average benefits to the needy will be 15 to 30 percent smaller than under current law, while total spending on cash grants could decline by as much as 35 percent. While interstate competition will act to reduce benefit differentials across states, this tendency will be offset by differential matching rate effects. An extreme ‘race to the bottom,’ with a total withering of the transfer state, is unlikely to occur.
Comparison of the Enzymatic and Functional Properties of Three Cytosolic Carboxypeptidase Family Members

Nna1 (a.k.a. CCP1) defines a subfamily of M14 metallocarboxypeptidases (CCP1-6) and is mutated in Purkinje cell degeneration (pcd) mice. Nna1, CCP4 and CCP6 are involved in the posttranslational pr...
LSD exposure in utero.

In spite of the many recent reports on the damaging effects of LSD on human chromosome in vitro1,2 and in vivo3-6 and its ability to produce congenital malformations in rodents7, the teratogenic potential of this drug in humans is still uncertain. Two infants with limb malformations who had been exposed to LSD in utero have thus far been reported8,9. On the other hand, Cohen, et al.5, reported nine children and Hulten, et al.6, one child, all of whom had been exposed to LSD in utero and had no obvious birth defects although chromosome damage was apparent. Hecht and his co-workers9 have pointed out the need for additional data on infants who had in utero exposure to LSD, regardless of the presence or absence of congenital malformations, so that the teratogenic properties of the drug could be evaluated.
Utility Max-Min Fair Resource Allocation for Diversified Applications in EPON

In EPONs, differentiated services enable higher quality of service (QoS) for some queues over others. However, owing to the coarse granularity of DiffServ, DiffServ in EPONs can hardly facilitate any particular QoS profile. This paper investigates an application-oriented bandwidth allocation scheme to ensure fairness among queues with diversified QoS requirements. We first define application utilities to quantify users’ quality of experience (QoE) as a function of network layer QoS metrics. We then formulate the fair resource allocation issue into a max-min utility problem, which is quasi-concave over queues’ delayed traffic and dropped traffic. We further employ the bisection method to obtain the optimal solution of the quasi-concave maximization problem. The optimal value can be achieved by proper bandwidth allocation and queue management schemes in EPONs.
Collision Analysis Of Vehicle Following Operations By Two-dimensional Simulation Model: Part II- Vehicle Trajectories With Follow-up Maneuvers

This paper discusses the effects of collisions in vehicle-following operations, especially for short-spacing scenarios. The collision analysis is conducted with a two-dimensional simulation program by which the translational and rotational movements of vehicles can be fully represented. Also presented are simulation scenarios where control actions are taken in post-impact conditions. The potential implications and the effects of these maneuvers on the vehicle trajectories are investigated. The studies of these post-impact maneuvers offer a perspective on the possible actions for vehicles in automated modes. The current and future work of this study should provide insights for the evaluation of the safety hazards and control strategies in Automated Highway Systems.
Dairy Markets in Asia: An Overview of Recent Findings and Implications

This paper is an overview of important findings regarding the ongoing evolution of Asian dairy markets based on a series of new economic investigations. These investigations provide systematic empirical foundations for assessing Asian dairy markets with their new consumption patterns, changing industries, and trade prospects under different domestic and trade policy regimes. The findings are drawn from four case studies (China, India, Japan, and Korea), as well as a prospective analysis of future regional patterns of consumption and a policy analysis of trade liberalization of Asian dairy markets. The overview distills the findings of these new investigations and integrates them in the earlier economic literature; it draws policy implications and identifies lessons for countries outside of Asia, especially for emerging exporters in Latin America.
Environmental Policy, Technology Substitution and Cross-Media Transfers. Livestock Series Report 6

This paper provides a framework to analyze environmental policy when the transfer of pollutants from one medium to another is deemed important. The authors characterize the conditions under which such cross-media transfers are socially beneficial, and provide criteria for the choice of technologies as functions of the society's preferences for different environmental media. Society's solution is shown to lead to the least level of damage, output, and waste treatment costs.
Research advances in geriatric depression

Technical advances have facilitated the exploration of factors related to geriatric depression and have helped generate novel biological and psychosocial treatment approaches. This review summarizes the main advancements in epidemiology, clinical presentation and course, genetics, and other areas of biological research. Treatment interventions outlined in this paper include electroconvulsive therapy, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, magnetic seizure therapy, vagus nerve stimulation, deep brain stimulatn, depression prophylaxis, multidisciplinary approaches to depression treatment, and psychotherapy. Forms of psychotherapy for geriatric depression summarized include interpersonal psychotherapy, supportive psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, problem-solving therapy, and ecosystem-focused therapy. Neuroimaging techniques based on magnetic resonance imaging are discussed briefly, including volumetric brain studies, diffusion tensor imaging, fractional anisotropy, fiber tractography, magnetization transfer imaging, and blood-oxygenation-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Finally, treatment effectiveness is addressed in a discussion of new models to improve access to and quality of care offered in the community.
Develop Precision Docking Function for Bus Operation

This report describes a project dealing with the implementation of a bus precision docking system and the demonstration of its accurate docking abilities. It presents an analysis and the experimental results of the development of an integrated lateral control system based on magnetic markers for both precision docking and lane-assist functions. It describes the design of a single steering controller that achieves all performance objectives. Data collected during demonstrations of precision docking and lane-assist control using a test vehicle are also presented.
Beauty and the beast: the theory and practice of information integration

Information integration is becoming a critical problem for businesses and individuals alike. Data volumes are sky-rocketing, and new sources and types of information are proliferating. This paper briefly reviews some of the key research accomplishments in information integration (theory and systems), then describes the current state-of-the-art in commercial practice, and the challenges (still) faced by CIOs and application developers. One critical challenge is choosing the right combination of tools and technologies to do the integration. Although each has been studied separately, we lack a unified (and certainly, a unifying) understanding of these various approaches to integration. Experience with a variety of integration projects suggests that we need a broader framework, perhaps even a theory, which explicitly takes into account requirements on the result of the integration, and considers the entire end-to-end integration process.
Natural resources, physical capital and institutions : evidence from Eurasia

Natural resource abundance can lead to strong economic growth if resource rents are well invested in physical assets and other forms of productive capital. This paper focuses on the case of the resource-abundant economies in Eurasia, which has been less documented in the literature on natural resource-led development than other parts of the world. The analysis shows that the stock of productive physical assets is relatively low, contrary to common perceptions about the Soviet system. The infrastructure that was inherited from the Soviet system primarily serves to meet basic human needs; few assets support the development of competitive and sustainable economies. At a deeper level, the paper documents that low accumulation of physical capital over the past two decades has been driven by weak institutions and economic policies associated with the presence of resource rents, along with a poor public investment management process. This paper complements existing empirical studies by presenting evidence on the mechanisms through which natural resources and physical capital have interacted in setting Eurasian economies on a fragile development path.
A Robust Optimization Approach to Supply Chain Management

We propose a general methodology based on robust optimization to address the problem of optimally controlling a supply chain subject to stochastic demand in discrete time. The attractive features of the proposed approach are: (a) It incorporates a wide variety of phenomena, including demands that are not identically distributed over time and capacity on the echelons and links; (b) it uses very little information on the demand distributions; (c) it leads to qualitatively similar optimal policies (basestock policies) as in dynamic programming; (d) it is numerically tractable for large scale supply chain problems even in networks, where dynamic programming methods face serious dimensionality problems; (e) in preliminary computational experiments, it often outperforms dynamic programming based solutions for a wide range of parameters.
Strategic Sisterhood or Sisters in Solidarity? Questions of Communitarianism and Citizenship in Asia

The Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995) has spawned a triumphant sense among Western/Northern feminists that they are forging a strategic sisterhood with less privileged women in the South. Feminists from metropolitan countries seek a new North-South alliance whereby they make strategic interventions on behalf of third world women by putting pressure on their governments. Professor Ong critiques strategic sisterhood on the following grounds: First, strategic sisterhood is based on individualistic notions of transnational feminine citizenship, ignoring the historical and cultural differences between women from the first and third worlds. In particular, the concept ignores geopolitical inequalities whereby postcolonial countries are sensitive to what they view as new forms of cultural imperialism. For many Asian leaders and subjects, women 's emancipation is seldom just a question about individual rights, but fundamentally about culture, community, and the nation. Second, strategic sisterhood brushes aside other forms of morality? whether expressed in nationalist ideology, or embedded in religious and communal practices?that shape local notions and relations of gender, hierarchy, loyalty, and social security. These webs of power relations are the everyday contexts within which third world women must struggle for their rights. To illustrate both points, Professor Ong draws on cases from China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where popular struggles for human rights are usually couched in terms of community?class, religion, or nation?not gender. The silence regarding women 's problems is especially striking in resurgent labor movements where a significant proportion of workers are young women working in abysmal conditions. Foreign feminists must first understand the
Requirement for commissureless2 function during dipteran insect nerve cord development.

Background: In Drosophila melanogaster, commissureless (comm) function is required for proper nerve cord development. Although comm orthologs have not been identified outside of Drosophila species, some insects possess orthologs of Drosophila comm2, which may also regulate embryonic nerve cord development. Here, this hypothesis is explored through characterization of comm2 genes in two disease vector mosquitoes. Results: Culex quinquefasciatus (West Nile and lymphatic filiariasis vector) has three comm2 genes that are expressed in the developing nerve cord. Aedes aegypti (dengue and yellow fever vector) has a single comm2 gene that is expressed in commissural neurons projecting axons toward the midline. Loss of comm2 function in both A. aegypti and D. melanogaster was found to result in loss of commissure defects that phenocopy the frazzled (fra) loss of function phenotypes observed in both species. Loss of fra function in either insect was found to result in decreased comm2 transcript levels during nerve cord development. Conclusions: The results of this investigation suggest that Fra down-regulates repulsion in precrossing commissural axons by regulating comm2 levels in both A. aegypti and D. melanogaster, both of which require Comm2 function for proper nerve cord development. Developmental Dynamics 242:1466–1477, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
On some class number relations for Galois extensions

Let k be an algebraic number field of finite degree over Q, the field of rationals, and K be an extension of finite degree over k. By the use of the class number of algebraic tori, we can introduce an arithmetical invariant E(K/k) for the extension K/k. When k = Q and K is quadratic over Q, the formula of Gauss on the genera of binary quadratic forms, i.e. the formula where = the class number of K in the narrow sense, the number of classes is a genus of the norm form of K/Q and tK = the number of distinct prime factors of the discriminant of K, may be considered as an equality between E(K/Q) and other arithmetical invariants of K.
Kelips: Building an efficient and stable P2P DHT through increased memory and background overhead

A peer-to-peer (p2p) distributed hash table (DHT) system allows hosts to join and fail silently (or leave), as well as to insert and retrieve files (objects). This paper explores a new point in design space in which increased memory usage and constant background communication overheads are tolerated to reduce file lookup times and increase stability to failures and churn. Our system, called Kelips, uses peer-to-peer gossip to partially replicate file index information. In Kelips, (a) under normal conditions, file lookups are resolved within 1 RPC, independent of system size, and (b) membership changes (e.g., even when a large number of nodes fail) are detected and disseminated to the system quickly. Per-node memory requirements are small in medium-sized systems. When there are failures, lookup success is ensured through query rerouting. Kelips achieves load balancing comparable to existing systems. Locality is supported by using topologically aware gossip mechanisms. Initial results of an ongoing experimental study are also discussed.
The Dynamics of Transition to Turbulence in Plane Couette Flow

In plane Couette flow, the incompressible fluid between two plane parallel walls is driven by the motion of those walls. The laminar solution, in which the streamwise velocity varies linearly in the wall-normal direction, is known to be linearly stable at all Reynolds numbers (Re). Yet, in both experiments and computations, turbulence is observed for Re ≳ 360.
Assessing the Distortions of Mandatory Pensions on Labor Supply Decisions and Human Capital Accumulation : How to Bridge the Gap between Economic Theory and Policy Analysis

Mandatory pension systems play a major role in individual savings and labor supply decisions. In particular, it is well known that defined benefit pension schemes, which are not actuarially fair, can create incentives for early retirement and therefore reduce labor supply and the stock of human capital in a given country. This is an important policy issue in middle-income countries, with still low participation rates in the labor force, where the window opened by the demographic transition is already closed or will close in the near future. In these countries, policies to stimulate private sector growth, competitiveness, and employment creation should be accompanied by policies that increase labor force participation, raising the ratio of active to inactive population and therefore the potential for higher income per capita growth. Unfortunately, the analytical tools developed to assess pension reform options tend to focus on the financial sustainability of the schemes and the adequacy of benefits. Little attention is given in practice to the social costs imposed by distortions on the supply of labor. In part, this is given by the lack of analytical tools that, in the context of limited information regarding individual preferences and behavior, can be used to assess the magnitude of these distortions. This paper develops methodologies that can bridge the gap between economic theory and the practices of pension policy personnel under conditions of deep uncertainty regarding the variables driving individual behavioral responses to policy changes. First, the paper develops an indicator to predict the age-specific retirement probabilities induced by a particular pension system, given heterogeneous individual preferences over risk, consumption, and leisure. The paper then describes how this indicator can be used to project the size of the labor force by gender, age and skill level and therefore the dynamics of human capital accumulation. The integration of these two analytical tools allow us to show the impact of a particular pension reform proposals on the dynamics of labor supply, human capital and, given the dynamics of capital and total factor productivity, economic growth. Furthermore, the paper develops a set of life-cycle income measures for typical individual paths that allow us to measure the contribution of segmented pension schemes to the segmentation of the labor market. The methods are applied to the case of Morocco.
Constant-complexity stochastic simulation algorithm with optimal binning

At the molecular level, biochemical processes are governed by random interactions between reactant molecules, and the dynamics of such systems are inherently stochastic. When the copy numbers of reactants are large, a deterministic description is adequate, but when they are small, such systems are often modeled as continuous-time Markov jump processes that can be described by the chemical master equation. Gillespie’s Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) generates exact trajectories of these systems, but the amount of computational work required for each step of the original SSA is proportional to the number of reaction channels, leading to computational complexity that scales linearly with the problem size. The original SSA is therefore inefficient for large problems, which has prompted the development of several alternative formulations with improved scaling properties. We describe an exact SSA that uses a table data structure with event time binning to achieve constant computational complexity with respect to the number of reaction channels for weakly coupled reaction networks. We present a novel adaptive binning strategy and discuss optimal algorithm parameters. We compare the computational efficiency of the algorithm to existing methods and demonstrate excellent scaling for large problems. This method is well suited for generating exact trajectories of large weakly coupled models, including those that can be described by the reaction-diffusion master equation that arises from spatially discretized reaction-diffusion processes.
Tunnel-diode digital circuitry

This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, the basic tunnel diode logic circuits are discussed. These include the monostable and the bistable analog-threshold gates and the ``Goto-pair,'' which uses the principle of majority decision. These circuits are studied to determine the requirement on tunnel diodes and other component tolerances. Relations between the ``fan-in'' and the ``fan-out'' numbers and the component tolerances are derived. The results indicate that the ``Goto-pair'' is somewhat superior to the analog-threshold gates with respect to circuit reliability. In the second part, a tunnel diode flip-flop stage which has advantages with respect to speed, ease, of operation and component tolerances is described. Combination of these flip-flops in counter and shift-register configurations have been successfully operated. Several potential advantages over conventional transistor circuits are discussed.
Review of Expansive Soils

Numerous man-made structures around the world have been subjected to considerable damage due to differential heave from moisture absorbed by expansive clay foundation soils. It has been estimated that the annual cost of damage from expansive soils in the United States alone is $2.3 billion. The actual heave is a function of many factors, e.g., climatic conditions, moisture content of the soil immediately prior to placement of the structure, the amount and type of foundation soils, and the overburden load at the foundation level. Of the three most prominent clay minerals—illite, kaolinite, montmorillonite—the latter constitutes the most expansive type of clay soil. The current design practice for construction in expansive clay subsoil starts with a study of the site to determine the soil's characteristics. The appropriate correction action may include stabilization by chemical means, presaturation, compaction, and the design of engineered-type foundations, such as pier and grade-beam, and reinforced slabs. The relative cost of alternative designs should be evaluated in terms of the risks involved.
Photo-identification of humpback and gray whales using affine moment invariants

This paper discusses the identification of humpback and gray whales based on images of their flukes. White patches appearing on a fluke constitute unique identifying features which are used here to match a query fluke image against a database of fluke images. The fluke area is first extracted from a fluke image via the live-wire edge detection algorithm. Optimal thresholding is then applied to the fluke area to obtain the patches on the fluke automatically. Next, the affine moment invariants of patches are computed and stored in a feature database. Finally, the database images are ranked depending on the degree of similarity between the query and database invariants. The results obtained are presented in the form of a performance box plot showing the reduction in the amount of manual search for various percentages of test images.
Measurement in Biological Systems from the Self-organisation Point of View

Measurement in biological systems became a subject of concern as a consequence of numerous reports on limited reproducibility of experimental results. To reveal origins of this inconsistency, we have examined general features of biological systems as dynamical systems far from not only their chemical equilibrium, but, in most cases, also of their Lyapunov stable states. Thus, in biological experiments, we do not observe states, but distinct trajectories followed by the examined organism. If one of the possible sequences is selected, a minute sub-section of the whole problem is obtained – sometimes in a seemingly highly reproducible manner. But the state of the organism is known only if a complete set of possible trajectories is known. And this is often practically impossible. Therefore, we propose a different framework for reporting and analysis of biological experiments, reflecting the view of non-linear mathematics. This view should be used to avoid overoptimistic results, which have to be consequently retracted or largely complemented. An increase of specification of experimental procedures is the way for better understanding of the scope of paths, which the biological system may be evolving. And it is hidden in the evolution of experimental protocols. Our system bioWes is a tool for objectivization of this knowledge.
Studies on the permeability of living cells

The penetration of the dye, dahlia, into the sap ofNitella has been determined in the presence of NaCl, KCl, MgCl2 and CaCl2 at various concentrations.
3D Interest Point Detection via Discriminative Learning

The task of detecting the interest points in 3D meshes has typically been handled by geometric methods. These methods, while designed according to human preference, can be ill-equipped for handling the variety and subjectivity in human responses. Different tasks have different requirements for interest point detection; some tasks may necessitate high precision while other tasks may require high recall. Sometimes points with high curvature may be desirable, while in other cases high curvature may be an indication of noise. Geometric methods lack the required flexibility to adapt to such changes. As a consequence, interest point detection seems to be well suited for machine learning methods that can be trained to match the criteria applied on the annotated training data. In this paper, we formulate interest point detection as a supervised binary classification problem using a random forest as our classifier. We validate the accuracy of our method and compare our results to those of five state of the art methods on a new, standard benchmark.
Consumption, production, inflation and interest rates: A synthesis

This paper uses discrete-time and continuous-time models to derive equilibrium relations among real and nominal interest rates and the expected growth, variance and covariance parameters of optimally chosen paths for aggregate real consumption and aggregate production. Simple, intuitive and fairly general relations are obtained which apply to most of the models of financial economics of the past 20 years. The single-good analysis generalizes and provides a synthesis of many prior works, whereas the multi-good analysis provides more original results. Consistent business cycle movements are examined for interest rates, inflation and consumption and production aggregates.
Forms of genocidal destruction: a response to commentators

The focus of the 1948 Genocide Convention on the destruction of groups, in part, encourages consideration of extermination through mass killing and elimination through forced migration and displacement.Yet genocide scholars and the public have given much more attention to extermination than elimination. We seek to remedy this imbalance by giving further attention to the intentional Sudanese state-led attacks on food and water that massively dislodged Black Africans with racially targeted assaults on their homes and villages in Darfur from February 2003 to August 2004. This forced displacement is an important aspect of continuing genocide in Darfur. Much of the response to our paper is concerned with the definition of genocide and with the wisdom of applying this definition of Genocide in Darfur.
Efficient Computation Modulo a Shared Secret with Application to the Generation of Shared Safe-Prime Products

We present a new protocol for efficient distributed computation modulo a shared secret. We further present a protocol to distributively generate a random shared prime or safe prime that is much more efficient than previously known methods. This allows one to distributively compute shared RSA keys, where the modulus is the product of two safe primes, much more efficiently than was previously known.
Techniques for multi-channel real-time spatial distribution using frequency-domain processing

The authors have developed several methods for spatially distributing spectral material in real-time using frequency-domain processing. Applying spectral spatialization techniques to more than two channels introduces a few obstacles, particularly with controllers, visualization and the manipulation of large amounts of control data. Various interfaces are presented which address these issues. We also discuss 3D "cube" controllers and visualizations, which go a long way in aiding usability. A range of implementations were realized, each with its own interface, automation, and output characteristics. We also explore a number of novel techniques. For example, a sound's spectral components can be mapped in space based on its own components' energy, or the energy of another signal's components (a kind of spatial cross-synthesis). Finally, we address aesthetic concerns, such as perceptual and sonic coherency, which arise when sounds have been spectrally dissected and scattered across a multi-channel spatial field in 64, 128 or more spectral bands.
Radial evolution of the three‐dimensional structure in CIRs between Earth and Ulysses

[1] The radial alignment of ACE and Ulysses in February 2004 and August 2007 provided us with unprecedented opportunities to study the radial evolution of planar magnetic structures (PMSs) in three corotating interaction regions (CIRs). The in situ observations are compared with results from an analytical and a numerical model of CIRs. We find that (1) all three CIRs' meridional tilt retained its North/South orientation at ACE and Ulysses, but the evolution was not systematic. Further, the model results of CIR meridional tilt do not agree with observations. (2) All three CIRs rotated azimuthally with the Parker spiral as expected; however, model results only describe this behavior quantitatively for one CIR. (3) For all three CIRs, the solar wind deflection angles were predicted by the coupled solar corona-solar wind models, Wang-Sheely-Arge (WSA)-Enlil and MHD Around a Sphere (MAS)-Enlil, but neither model reproduced the observed planar magnetic structures. (4) The WSA-Enlil results of azimuthal magnetic field orientation are in better agreement with observations than those based on the MAS-Enlil. We suggest that the evolution of meridional tilt from ACE to Ulysses does not agree with projections because the parent coronal holes were highly structured. We also suggest that observations of azimuthal tilt do not agree with the model results because the models may underestimate transverse flows, whereas in reality, these flows could affect the observed azimuthal tilt of the CIR. The local orientation of PMSs within CIRs may also be distorted by transients, but their effect is unclear.
Particle Production and Dynamics in the Early Universe

The big bang is perhaps the most interesting system to which we can hope to apply quantum gravity. Nowhere else do we find a region of spacetime which is causally connected to us with so strong a curvature on so large a scale. Even the most elementary calculations show that quantum processes have an important effect on the dynamics of the early universe. For example, if one uses the test field approximation to calculate the probability of producing a pair of conformally invariant scalar particles in a given homogeneous buit slightly anistropic universe, one finds, following the pioneering work of Zel’dovich and Starobinsky1
Automorphisms of Finite Abelian Groups

(2007). Automorphisms of Finite Abelian Groups. The American Mathematical Monthly: Vol. 114, No. 10, pp. 917-923.
Architectural framework for large-scale multicast in mobile ad hoc networks

Emerging ad hoc networks are infrastructure-less networks consisting of wireless devices with various power constraints, capabilities and mobility characteristics. An essential capability in future ad hoc networks is the ability to provide scalable multicast services. This paper presents a novel adaptive architecture to support multicast services in large-scale wide-area ad hoc networks. Existing works on multicast in ad hoc networks address only small size networks. Our main design goals are scalability, robustness and efficiency. We propose a self-configuring hierarchy extending zone-based routing with the notion of contacts based on the small world graphs phenomenon and metrics of stability and mobility. We introduce a new geographic-based multicast address allocation scheme coupled with adaptive anycast based on group popularity. Our scheme promises efficient and robust operation in the common case. Also, based on the new concept of rendezvous regions, we provide a bootstrap mechanism for the multicast service; a challenge generally ignored in previous work.
Stable Models and an Alternative Logic Programming Paradigm

In this paper we reexamine the place and role of stable model semantics in logic programming and contrast it with a least Herbrand model approach to Horn programs. We demonstrate that inherent features of stable model semantics naturally lead to a logic programming system that offers an interesting alternative to more traditional logic programming styles of Horn logic programming, stratified logic programming and logic programming with well-founded semantics. The proposed approach is based on the interpretation of program clauses as constraints. In this setting, a program does not describe a single intended model, but a family of its stable models. These stable models encode solutions to the constraint satisfaction problem described by the program. Our approach imposes restrictions on the syntax of logic programs. In particular, function symbols are eliminated from the language. We argue that the resulting logic programming system is well-attuned to problems in the class NP, has a well-defined domain of applications, and an emerging methodology of programming. We point out that what makes the whole approach viable is recent progress in implementations of algorithms to compute stable models of propositional logic programs.
Counting lattice points by means of the residue theorem

We use the residue theorem to derive an expression for the number of lattice points in a dilated n-dimensional tetrahedron with vertices at lattice points on each coordinate axis and the origin. This expression is known as the Ehrhart polynomial. We show that it is a polynomial in t, where t is the integral dilation parameter. We prove the Ehrhart-Macdonald reciprocity law for these tetrahedra, relating the Ehrhart polynomials of the interior and the closure of the tetrahedra. To illustrate our method, we compute the Ehrhart coefficient for codimension 2. Finally, we show how our ideas can be used to compute the Ehrhart polynomial for an arbitrary convex lattice polytope.
Efficient sketches for the set query problem

We develop an algorithm for estimating the values of a vector x e Rn over a support S of size k from a randomized sparse binary linear sketch Ax of size O(k). Given Ax and S, we can recover x' with ||x' -- xS||2 ≤ e || x -- xS||2 with probability at least 1 − k−Ω(1). The recovery takes O(k) time.While interesting in its own right, this primitive also has a number of applications. For example, we can:1. Improve the linear k-sparse recovery of heavy hitters in Zipfian distributions with O(k log n) space from a 1 + e approximation to a 1 + o(1) approximation, giving the first such approximation in O(k log n) space when k ≤ O(n1-e).2. Recover block-sparse vectors with O(k) space and a 1 +e approximation. Previous algorithms required either ω(k) space or ω(1) approximation.
Bubbles and Market Crashes

We present a dynamical theory of asset price bubbles that exhibits the appearance of bubbles and their subsequent crashes. We show that when speculative trends dominate over fundamental beliefs, bubbles form, leading to the growth of asset prices away from their fundamental value. This growth makes the system increasingly susceptible to any exogenous shock, thus eventually precipitating a crash. We also present computer experiments which in their aggregate behavior confirm the predictions of the theory.