cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
All the News That's Fit to Reprint: Do Investors React to Stale Information?

This article tests whether stock market investors appropriately distinguish between new and old information about firms. I define the staleness of a news story as its textual similarity to the previous ten stories about the same firm. I find that firms' stock returns respond less to stale news. Even so, a firm's return on the day of stale news negatively predicts its return in the following week. Individual investors trade more aggressively on news when news is stale. The subsequent return reversal is significantly larger in stocks with above-average individual investor trading activity. These results are consistent with the idea that individual investors overreact to stale information, leading to temporary movements in firms' stock prices. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com., Oxford University Press.
Sectoral Changes and the Increase in Women's Labor Force Participation

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, women in the United States decided to move increasingly into the labor market. This paper investigates the growth of the service sector as an explanation for the increase in women's employment. It develops an economic model that can account for the increase in women's employment and the growth of the service sector at the same time. A growth model with two sectors and a home production technology is constructed in order to quantitatively assess the contribution of sectoral productivity differences to the change in women's employment decision. The sectoral productivities are taken from the data. This model demonstrates that a higher rate of productivity growth in market services compared to home services can account for a large fraction of the observed increase in women's labor supply from 1950 to 2005.
Sorry, No Remedy: Intersectionality and the Grand Irony of ERISA

Congress enacted the Employee Retiree Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to protect employees' retirement and welfare benefits. Nevertheless, the Act has been interpreted by the U.S Supreme Court over the years to be in essence an Employers' Security Act, with employers using ERISA to shield themselves against employee benefit-related claims. The flaw in the current ERISA scheme lies at the intersection of ERISA's preemption and remedial provisions. Courts broadly interpret the preemption provisions of ERISA to invalidate employee benefits-related state laws and then force employees to depend on an inadequate, "comprehensive and reticulated" remedial scheme. This “intersectionality” problem leads to a state of affairs that is contrary to ERISA's purpose of protecting the interests of participants and beneficiaries by "providing for appropriate remedies, sanctions, and ready access to the Federal courts." To cure what currently ails ERISA, this article proposes three alternative reforms - one judicial and two legislative. The judicial approach would call for the Court to adopt a remedialist approach, which would be in line both with Congress's intent to incorporate most of the common law of trusts into ERISA, and also consistent with a modern interpretation of a remedial statute. Additionally, Congress should re-examine and reject the far-fetched analogy between ERISA, enacted in 1974, and the "days of the divided bench" analysis and provide an express and expansive definition for "appropriate equitable relief" under proposed Section 3(43). Finally, Congress should pass an ERISA Civil Rights Act under proposed Section 502(a)(11), which, like the Civil Rights Act of 1991 in the Title VII context, would permit capped, compensatory and punitive damage awards in appropriate cases.
The Effect of Financial Development on the Investment-Cash Flow Relationship: Cross-Country Evidence from Europe

We investigate if financial development eases firm level financing constraints in a cross-country data set covering much of the European economy. The cash flow sensitivity of investment is lower in countries with better-developed financial markets. To deal with potentially serious biases, we employ a difference-in-difference methodology. Subsidiaries of other firms have access to internal capital markets and hence depend less on the external financial environment. As predicted, the benefit of financial development is smaller in subsidiary firms. This shows that financial development can mitigate financial constraints, and sheds light on the link between financial and economic development.
Connecting Optimal Capital Investment and Equity Returns

Economic theory predicts a contemporaneous correlation between equity returns and investment growth that is only weakly present in the data. By modifying the firm's production function to include a lag between investment decisions and expenditures, and after correcting for the temporal aggregation of investment, I find the predicted correlation to be present in the data. I estimate the model for 31 industries and find that investment returns are highly correlated with the industry portfolio equity returns. Further, the portion of investment returns orthogonal to equity returns is associated positively with changes in profitability and negatively with lagged differences between equity and investment returns.
Private Contracting and Business Models of Electronic Commerce

Business models of electronic commerce often have three stages of dispute-resolution where contracting parties try to achieve an optimal balance between formal and informal norms. Contracting parties adjust themselves to a risk verifiable situation via bilateral incentive mechanisms in the business models. They are cleverly designed to reflect such demand for efficient incentive mechanisms. The total mechanism of efficient allocation between formal and informal norms in electronic commerce may justify courts' formalistic interpretation of a website's displayed legal terms. Courts must be more concerned that intervening in online contracts may destroy the optimal balance between the formal and informal norms and ultimately hinder the sound development of transactions. Courts should also be sensitive to the background mechanism of business models. As the contract formation process in electronic commerce is automated, with no human intervention, an electronic commerce operator often expresses its intent for online transactions through incentive mechanisms within its business model. Thus, in deciding whether there has been exploitation, courts must consider whether legal terms are well designed under the overall system of incentives embedded in the adopted business model.
Legal and Ethical Issues in the Prediction of Recidivism

Use of predictions of recidivism is ubiquitous in American criminal justice systems from pretrial detention to parole release and proceeds largely oblivious to fundamental ethical problems that were widely recognized and examined in the 1970s. They include the false positive problem that most people predicted to commit acts of serious violence would not, and their confinement for that reason is unjustified, that common use of fixed characteristics such as age and gender punish people for matters over which they have no control is per se unjust, that commonly used socioeconomic factors such as marital status, employment, education, and living discrimination, because they are heavily correlated with race and ethnicity, effectively discriminate against members of minority groups, and that use of some of the same socioeconomic factors punishes people for making lifestyle choices that are neither the state’s nor the law’s business.
On the Theory of Implicit Deep Learning: Global Convergence with Implicit Layers

A deep equilibrium model uses implicit layers, which are implicitly defined through an equilibrium point of an infinite sequence of computation. It avoids any explicit computation of the infinite sequence by finding an equilibrium point directly via root-finding and by computing gradients via implicit differentiation. In this paper, we analyze the gradient dynamics of deep equilibrium models with nonlinearity only on weight matrices and non-convex objective functions of weights for regression and classification. Despite non-convexity, convergence to global optimum at a linear rate is guaranteed without any assumption on the width of the models, allowing the width to be smaller than the output dimension and the number of data points. Moreover, we prove a relation between the gradient dynamics of the deep implicit layer and the dynamics of trust region Newton method of a shallow explicit layer. This mathematically proven relation along with our numerical observation suggests the importance of understanding implicit bias of implicit layers and an open problem on the topic. Our proofs deal with implicit layers, weight tying and nonlinearity on weights, and differ from those in the related literature.
The Relational Infrastructure of Law Firm Culture and Regulation: The Exaggerated Death of Big Law

The Article debunks the highly publicized claim, within the academy and the legal profession, that the demise of Big Law is imminent. Critics have argued that large law firms face a near perfect storm that imperils their future. They argue that increasing sophistication and influence of in-house legal departments, and the exponential leap in legal technology, undermine large law firms’ claims to expertise, market power, and profitability. At the same time, they argue, the internal weakness of large firms makes them less likely to perform the very tasks essential to sustaining large law firms' reputational capital because the traditional partnership tournament has collapsed in the face “eat-what-you-kill” compensation, significant lateral partnership movement, and the creation of non-equity positions. These developments arguably reduce the incentives of partners to serve their firms loyally and build them as institutions through organizational tasks that do not translate into immediate financial reward, including mentoring young lawyers, controlling quality, and promoting diversity. By focusing on big firm lawyers as autonomous individuals, and not on big firm lawyers as participants in relationships as members of organizations and networks, the critics make significant analytic mistakes. The actual empirical evidence supports the view that the elite market for legal services is dynamic and that while it is evolving, as it always has, many large firms have made changes that enable them to continue to prosper. For example, the significant power shift from outside counsel to their clients has often resulted in healthy, long-term, and mutually beneficial business relationships similar to those corporate clients have with other long-term suppliers. Similarly, Big Law has been proactive in replacing its dependency on high volume paperwork with highly specialized legal services as it embraces cutting edge technological changes, as well as by offering new and competitive fee arrangements. And changes in the partnership tournament have not reduced Big Law’s reputational capital and its leadership in providing outstanding legal services to clients. Even where critics properly identify weaknesses, such as in management, training and diversity, they call for reforms, such as ethics rules to restrict lateral movement, that mistakenly rely on the false conception that big firm lawyers are atomistic individuals. Rather, as we suggest, law firms would better address these weaknesses by embracing the understanding that lawyers work with each other and clients through relationships that firms could strengthen and thereby improve both their economic health and their commitment to professional values. The Article offers a blueprint for relational infrastructure that includes policies applicable to training and mentoring, diversity and professionalism.
Malleable Law: The (Mis)Use Of Legal Tools In The Pursuit Of A Political Agenda

This paper explores the manipulative use of the law for political gain. It describes instances in which law is distorted and camouflaged under an apparent goal of pursuing justice, social change or development, but its real function is to facilitate the attainment of self-interested political gains or other ends. The malleability of law is illustrated in this article with a description of the social programs known as “Misiones Bolivarianas” implemented in Venezuela since 2004. The Misiones were ostensibly portrayed as effective government measures launched to reduce poverty and fight inequality in areas where traditional state institutions had failed.As part of the implementation strategy of its policies geared towards fighting poverty and inequality, the Venezuelan government deployed certain legal tools, namely the enactment of special legislation and the transformation of legal institutions. However, instead of promoting transparency and enhancing accountability, these tools have been used to insulate the Misiones from any form of external oversight, thus leaving them at the mercy of political manipulation and other perverse goals. By looking at the legal tools enacted to assist in the implementation of Venezuela’s social policies, this article contributes to the discussion about the instrumentality of law and the impact of the social, political, economic, cultural, and historical factors.
Federalism and Polarization

Some commentators believe that American society and politics have become unusually - and dangerously - polarized. The Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade has been one of the most prominent and persisting causes of that polarization. President Bush's recent appointments of two new Supreme Court Justices have renewed speculation whether the Court might again consider overruling Roe. If Roe were overruled, it might seem that the question of abortion could be returned to the States, and that different legal regimes regulating abortion, reflecting the values of the electorates in different states and regions, would then emerge. Such a checker-board solution to the problem of abortion, while unsatisfactory to both pro-life and pro-abortion forces, might at least ease much of the polarization that Roe has occasioned. Moreover, that approach would accord well with the original design and structure of our federalist system, which has historically referred decisions over polarizing moral differences to the state rather than the national level. This article argues that a checker-board outcome is unlikely to emerge if Roe is overruled. De-constitutionalizing the abortion issue will not de-nationalize it. The Supreme Court's past and recent decisions concerning Congress' powers to regulate interstate commerce, to appropriate funds, and even to exercise a purported national police power, would vest Congress with the authority, in a post-Roe world, to legislate a national abortion policy. Overruling Roe would thus be likely to trigger a continuing winner take all struggle over abortion at the national political level, rather than leading to a federalism-based resolution of the problem of polarization.
Mode, size, and location of foreign direct investments and industry markups

Abstract Several studies find that inward foreign direct investment (FDI) raises host industries’ competition and productivity using aggregate FDI measures: the monetary flows or the change in the industries’ foreign production share. Yet FDI flows are composed of many individual, heterogeneous investments. Reflecting this heterogeneity, I ask how the average traits of the individual investments that constitute the FDI flow further affect the host. While the results show that inward FDI does heighten competition for US manufacturing industries in 1987–1991, price–cost markups fall even more when foreign investments locate further away from incumbent industry, which is consistent with endogenous location choice.
Unravelling in two-sided matching markets and similarity of preferences

Abstract This paper investigates the causes and welfare consequences of unravelling in two-sided matching markets. It shows that similarity of preferences is an important factor driving unravelling. In particular, it shows that under the ex-post stable mechanism (the mechanism that the literature focuses on), unravelling is more likely to occur when participants have more similar preferences. It also shows that any Pareto-optimal mechanism must prevent unravelling, and that the ex-post stable mechanism is Pareto-optimal if and only if it prevents unravelling.
What does certification tell us about teacher effectiveness?: evidence from New York City

Abstract We use six years of panel data on students and teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of recently hired teachers in the New York City public schools. On average, the initial certification status of a teacher has small impacts on student test performance. However, among those with the same experience and certification status, there are large and persistent differences in teacher effectiveness. Such evidence suggests that classroom performance during the first two years is a more reliable indicator of a teacher's future effectiveness. We also evaluate turnover among teachers by initial certification status, and the implied impact on student achievement of hiring teachers with predictably high turnover. Given modest estimates of the payoff to experience, even high turnover groups (such as Teach for America participants) would have to be only slightly more effective in each year to offset the negative effects of their high exit rates (I2, J24).
Long-Term Orientation and Educational Performance

We use remarkable population-level administrative education and birth records from Florida to study the role of Long-Term Orientation on the educational attainment of immigrant students living in the US. Controlling for the quality of schools and individual characteristics, students from countries with long term oriented attitudes perform better than students from cultures that do not emphasize the importance of delayed gratification. These students perform better in third grade reading and math tests, have larger test score gains over time, have fewer absences and disciplinary incidents, are less likely to repeat grades, and are more likely to graduate from high school in four years. Also, they are more likely to enroll in advanced high school courses, especially in scientific subjects. Parents from long term oriented cultures are more likely to secure better educational opportunities for their children. A larger fraction of immigrants speaking the same language in the school amplifies the effect of Long-Term Orientation on educational performance. We validate these results using a sample of immigrant students living in 37 different countries.
Regulating Risks after ATA

Whitman v. American Trucking Association was one of the most eagerly awaited regulatory decisions in many years. But the Court’s understated, steady, lawyerly opinion was a bit of an anticlimax, representing a return to normalcy and leaving many open questions. The Court was correct to say that the relevant provision of the Clean Air Act forbids consideration of cost; it was also correct to refuse to invoke the nondelegation doctrine. Importantly, the Court left in place a set of important lower court decisions, allowing agencies to consider costs unless Congress expressly concludes otherwise. The Court also raised some new questions about the constitutional status of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Perhaps most important, the Court has not ruled out nonconstitutional challenges to the particulates and ozone standards, or to ambient air quality standards generally. In suggesting that some of those challenges should succeed, especially against the new ozone regulation, this essay urges that Justice Breyer’s concurring opinion in the case may well be the most influential in the future, because it fits most comfortably with other trends in the law of risk regulation, signaling the emergence of a kind of “cost-benefit state.” The last two decades have seen recurring conflicts between two strands in the law of risk regulation. The first strand, captured in what we might call “1970s environmentalism,” places a high premium on immediate responses to evident hazards; rejects claims for quantification of likely benefits; and avoids or downplays consideration of cost. These tendencies play a role in prominent legislation 1 and also in the courts. 2 The second strand, captured in what we
Credit and Punishment: Are Corporate Bankers Disciplined for Risk-Taking?

We examine whether bankers face disciplining consequences for structuring poorly performing corporate loans. We construct a novel data set containing the employment histories and loan portfolios of a large sample of corporate bankers and find that corporate credit events (i.e., downgrades, defaults, bankruptcies) increase banker turnover. The effect is pronounced when bankers issue loans with loose terms or experience severe losses. Credit events prompt bankers to adopt stricter future risk management practices, such as offering restrictive covenant packages. Overall, our findings are consistent with banks disciplining employees as a means to manage their own risk exposure.
Is the Clean Air Act Unconstitutional

When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issues national ambient air quality regulations, it should meet two requirements. First, the EPA should specify, to the extent possible in quantitative terms, the range of benefits that it believes will follow from each new rule it seeks to promulgate. It should specify as well the range of benefits that it believes would follow from at least two alternate approaches, one stricter and one more lenient than the chosen regulation. In the process the agency should describe the level of "residual risk" under all three options. Second, the EPA should explain why it believes the chosen rule to be preferable to the alternatives - that is, why the benefits to flow from the selected rule justify that rule and why the benefits that would follow from the alternative rules, more and less stringent, fail to justify it. If necessary, the courts should require the EPA to carry out the proposed tasks. But when the EPA does perform these tasks, and does so reasonably, the courts should uphold the underlying regulations. The introduction of these changes would eliminate the need for any resurgence of interest in the nondelegation doctrine, which should be reserved only for the most egregious cases. The Clean Air Act is constitutional.
From privatized to government-administered tax collection: tax farming in eighteenth-century France

The establishment of a government bureaucracy to collect taxes is regarded as one of the essential features of a modern economy. While Britain is considered a pioneer, France has been treated as a laggard because of continued reliance on tax farming. Focusing on the largest tax farm, France's late transition from private to government tax collection is explained in a principal-agent context by the difficulties of monitoring employees and borrowing at low cost in the capital market. Tax farmers continued to earn high returns, absorbing the risk of fluctuating collections, leaving the Crown with lower revenue.
Privacy, Anonymity, and Cyber Security

U.S. President Barack Obama, in his annual ‘State of the Union’ address to the American public on the 12 of February 2013, pleaded specifically for legislation that would address the grave security threats to vital national infrastructure posed by relentless cyber-attacks, while simultaneously protecting the privacy of individual U.S. citizens. His very public plea in this respect was the most recent voice in a rising chorus of concern from political and military leaders in Europe, include the U.K., and elsewhere, lamenting the explosion of cyber espionage (military and industrial), the theft of state secrets and technological innovations, and the increasing vulnerability of the world’s energy, financial, and transportation sectors to potentially devastating cyber-attacks.
Running Out of Numbers: Scarcity of IP Addresses and What to Do about It

The Internet’s current numbering system is nearing exhaustion: Existing protocols allow only a finite set of computer numbers (“IP addresses”), and central authorities will soon deplete their supply. I evaluate a series of possible responses to this shortage: Sharing addresses impedes new Internet applications and does not seem to be scalable. A new numbering system (“IPv6”) offers greater capacity, but network incentives impede transition. Paid transfers of IP addresses would better allocate resources to those who need them most, but unrestricted transfers might threaten the Internet’s routing system. I suggest policies to facilitate an IP address “market” while avoiding major negative externalities – mitigating the worst effects of v4 scarcity, while obtaining price discovery and allocative efficiency benefits of market transactions.
Old Age and the Decline in Financial Literacy

Households age 60 and older bear increasing responsibility for managing retirement portfolios, and they hold the majority of financial assets in the United States. Cognitive aging studies find evidence of a decline in fluid and crystallized intelligence in old age that may impact the ability to manage money effectively. Using a large sample of older respondents, we test whether knowledge of basic concepts essential to effective financial choice declines after age 60. We find a consistent linear decline in financial literacy score after age 60. A nearly identical rate of decline among men, stockowners, older, and college-educated respondents indicates that cohort effects are not driving the results. Confidence in financial decision-making abilities does not decline with age. A separate analysis using data that include measures of cognitive ability suggests that a natural decline in both fluid and crystallized intelligence in old age contributes to falling financial literacy scores. This paper was accepted ...
PROPORTIONATE TAXATION AS A FAIR DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SURPLUS: THE STRANGE CAREER OF AN IDEA

The article considers a surprisingly resilient argument, going back to Adam Smith, for the fairness of proportionate taxation: that proportionate taxation represents the fair way to divide the surplus value produced by social cooperation among all of society's members. The article considers two recent variants on that argument, one by Richard Epstein in Takings and one by David Gauthier in Morals by Agreement. It concludes that the normative and empirical assumptions that underlie these, and all other variants, of the argument are so implausible as to suggest the argument cannot be taken seriously as a defense of proportionate taxation. The article concludes by considering other possible explanations for the enduring attraction of proportionate taxation for political philosophers, particularly those with libertarian and quasi-libertarian leanings.
Do Colleges and Universities "Manage" Their Financial Reporting?

As universities come under increasing scrutiny for their high costs, this author finds that they may be manipulating their finances as well. They want it to seem as if they are putting more money into academic activities than they actually do. Is this due to the culture of deceit that produced so many accounting irregularities in corporate America? It may well be.
The Evolution and Future of Substantial Nexus in State Taxation of Corporate Income

The proper nexus standard for state taxation of out-of-state corporations has been a contentious issue since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Quill Corp. v. North Dakota in 1992. In that case, the Court upheld a physical presence standard, but numerous state courts have since affirmed economic presence standards, holding that the state can tax corporations with no physical presence within its borders. This Note examines the evolution of state taxation of out-of-state corporations, including some of the most recent state tax court decisions on the topic, and analyzes whether there are any overarching principles that may be gleaned from the various decisions. The Note then considers possible consequences of the proliferation of the economic presence standard and whether there is any limit to its application.
On Being 'Bound Thereby'

Part of Symposium: The United States Constitution (rev. ed.) How would you rewrite the United States Constitution?
Structural and Genetic Determinants of Convergence in the Drosophila tRNA Structure–Function Map

The evolution of tRNA multigene families remains poorly understood, exhibiting unusual phenomena such as functional conversions of tRNA genes through anticodon shift substitutions. We improved FlyBase tRNA gene annotations from twelve Drosophila species, incorporating previously identified ortholog sets to compare substitution rates across tRNA bodies at single-site and base-pair resolution. All rapidly evolving sites fell within the same metal ion-binding pocket that lies at the interface of the two major stacked helical domains. We applied our tRNA Structure-Function Mapper (tSFM) method independently to each Drosophila species and one outgroup species Musca domestica and found that, although predicted tRNA structure-function maps are generally highly conserved in flies, one tRNA Class-Informative Feature (CIF) within the rapidly evolving ion-binding pocket-Cytosine 17 (C17), ancestrally informative for lysylation identity-independently gained asparaginylation identity and substituted in parallel across tRNAAsn paralogs at least once, possibly multiple times, during evolution of the genus. In D. melanogaster, most tRNALys and tRNAAsn genes are co-arrayed in one large heterologous gene cluster, suggesting that heterologous gene conversion as well as structural similarities of tRNA-binding interfaces in the closely related asparaginyl-tRNA synthetase (AsnRS) and lysyl-tRNA synthetase (LysRS) proteins may have played a role in these changes. A previously identified Asn-to-Lys anticodon shift substitution in D. ananassae may have arisen to compensate for the convergent and parallel gains of C17 in tRNAAsn paralogs in that lineage. Our results underscore the functional and evolutionary relevance of our tRNA structure-function map predictions and illuminate multiple genomic and structural factors contributing to rapid, parallel and compensatory evolution of tRNA multigene families.
A crystal plasticity investigation of grain size-texture interaction in magnesium alloys

Abstract This work investigates the microstructure-property linkages in magnesium (Mg) with an emphasis on understanding interaction effects between the grain size, texture, and loading orientation. A single crystal plasticity framework endowed with experimentally informed micro Hall-Petch type relations for the activation thresholds for slip and twinning is adopted to resolve polycrystalline microstructures over a broad texture-grain size space. The macroscopic trends from the simulations corroborate with experiments. The synergistic effects of microstructural engineering on the micromechanical characteristics are mapped, which reveal their role in the emergent macroscopic behaviors. The simulations predict reduced extension twinning with grain size refinement even though the micro Hall-Petch coefficient for twinning is smaller than that for the non-basal slip modes. While grain refinement and textural weakening generally reduce the net plastic anisotropy and tension-compression asymmetry, the degree to which these macroscopic behaviors are tempered depends on the loading orientation. The results offer preliminary insight into the roles that texture and grain size may play in the damage behavior of engineered Mg microstructures.
On the H-type transition to turbulence—Laboratory experiments and reduced-order modeling

A series of experiments were conducted to understand the sources of local, high-amplitude velocity fluctuations produced at the late stages of boundary-layer flow transition to turbulence. The laboratory experiments considered the controlled injection of Tollmien–Schlichting (TS) waves into a nearly zero pressure gradient, laminar boundary layer, resulting in H-type transition to turbulence. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) was used to extract the energetic coherent structures within the transitional flow field obtained with particle image velocimetry. The first three modes were observed to feature spatial mode shapes consistent with a cross-section of a canonical hairpin vortex structure and were associated with time-dependent amplitudes having consistent peak frequencies with the fundamental TS wave frequency. Higher-order modes exhibited a combination of sub- and super-harmonics of the TS wave frequency and were attributed to flow interactions produced by a hairpin packet. A conditional averaging method was used to establish a reduced-order model for the overshoot phenomena in Reynolds shear stress and turbulence kinetic energy observed at the late transition stage. The lower portion of the large-scale hairpin vortex structure was observed to be primarily responsible for the overshoot mechanisms, which was well captured in a reduced-order model of the velocity field. The first four POD modes were used to create this reduced-order model, which, while only consisting of ≈15% of the total turbulence kinetic energy of the original velocity field, was able to capture ≈85% of the peak Reynolds stress amplitude across the overshoot region.
Weapons of the Strong: Elite Resistance and the Neo-Apartheid City

Transitions to democracy promise equal political power. But political ruptures carry no guarantee that democracy can overcome the accumulated inequalities of history. In South Africa, the transitio...
Guyana: Housing Market and Implications for Macroprudential Policies

Guyana's residential real estate prices have been rising, particularly in the capital city Georgetown, following the discovery of oil in 2015. In line with the growing demand for housing, commercial banks' housing loans have increased, prompting higher household debt. This paper presents two analyses which suggest that housing prices in Georgetown and banks' lending to the housing sector appear to be in their early stages of growth. However, given the data limitations and caveats that underpin the analyses, the findings could also indicate early signals of possible risks. Further data collection would support surveillance and deeper studies. At the same time, enhancing prudential measures would help safeguard financial and macroeconomic stability. These include strengthening the monitoring of the housing market, bank lending practices and household debt, as well as fortifying the macroprudential framework, including with more effective toolkits for early intervention.
Automatically Characterizing Targeted Information Operations Through Biases Present in Discourse on Twitter

This paper considers the problem of automatically characterizing biases that may be associated with emerging information operations via artificial intelligence. Accurate analysis of these emerging topics usually requires laborious, manual analysis by experts to annotate millions of tweets to identify biases in new topics. We introduce adaptations of the Word Embedding Association Test [1] to a new domain: information operations. We validate our method using known information operation-related tweets from Twitter's Transparency Reports, and we perform a case study on the COVID-19 pandemic to evaluate our method's performance on non-labeled Twitter data, demonstrating its usability in emerging domains.
A Flexible Proof Format for SAT Solver-Elaborator Communication

We introduce FRAT, a new proof format for unsatisfiable SAT problems, and its associated toolchain. Compared to DRAT, the FRAT format allows solvers to include more information in proofs to reduce the computational cost of subsequent elaboration to LRAT. The format is easy to parse forward and backward, and it is extensible to future proof methods. The provision of optional proof steps allows SAT solver developers to balance implementation effort against elaboration time, with little to no overhead on solver time. We benchmark our FRAT toolchain against a comparable DRAT toolchain and confirm >84% median reduction in elaboration time and >94% median decrease in peak memory usage.
Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) survival: A quaternary center analysis

BACKGROUND Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) has emerged as a rescue strategy for nonresponders to conventional CPR (CCPR) in cardiac arrest. Definitive guidelines for ECPR deployment do not exist. Prior studies suggest that arrest rhythm and cardiac origin of arrest may be variables used to assess candidacy for ECPR. AIM To describe a single-center experience with ECPR and to assess associations between survival and physician-adjudicated origin of arrest and arrest rhythm. METHODS A retrospective review of all patients who underwent ECPR at a quaternary care center over a 7-year period was performed. Demographic and clinical characteristics were extracted from the medical record and used to adjudicate the origin of cardiac arrest, etiology, rhythm, survival, and outcomes. Univariate analysis was performed to determine the association of patient and arrest characteristics with survival. RESULTS Between 2010 and 2017, 47 cardiac arrest patients were initiated on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) at the time of active CPR. ECPR patient survival to hospital discharge was 25.5% (n = 12). Twenty-six patients died on ECMO (55.3%) while nine patients (19.1%) survived decannulation but died before discharge. Neither physician-adjudicated arrest rhythm nor underlying origin were significantly associated with survival to discharge, either alone or in combination. Younger age was significantly associated with survival. Nearly all survivors experienced myocardial recovery and left the hospital with a good neurological status. CONCLUSIONS Arrest rhythm and etiology may be insufficient predictors of survival in ECPR utilization. Further multiinstitutional studies are needed to determine evidenced-based criteria for ECPR deployment.
Time-lens photon Doppler velocimetry (TL-PDV).

We describe a time lens (TL) to expand the dynamic range of photon Doppler velocimetry (PDV) systems. The principle and preliminary design of a TL-PDV system are explained and shown to be feasible through simulations. In a PDV system, an interferometer is used for measuring frequency shifts due to the Doppler effect from the target motion. However, the sampling rate of the electronics could limit the velocity range of a PDV system. A four-wave-mixing (FWM) TL applies a quadratic temporal phase to an optical signal within a nonlinear FWM medium (such as an integrated photonic waveguide or a highly nonlinear optical fiber). By spectrally isolating the mixing product, termed the idler, and with appropriate lengths of dispersion prior to and after this FWM TL, a temporally magnified version of the input signal is generated. Therefore, the frequency shifts of PDV can be “slowed down” with the magnification factor M of the TL. M = 1 corresponds to a regular PDV system without a TL. M = 10 has been shown to be feasible for a TL-PDV system. The use of this effect for PDV can expand the velocity measurement range and allow for the use of lower bandwidth electronics. TL-PDV will open up new avenues for various dynamic material experiments.
Endocannabinoid Response in Acute Ischemic Stroke: Elevated 2-Arachidonoylglycerol.

ABSTRACT Background and purpose Endocannabinoids are hypothesized to have anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties and hold therapeutic potential in the acute phase response mechanisms during acute cerebral ischemia and closed head injury. We set to describe the plasma levels of endocannabinoids and related ethanolamides during acute and subacute phases of cerebral ischemia. Methods We conducted a prospective observational study of plasma endocannabinoid levels in patients with acute ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack. Two blood samples were collected: T1 ( 24 hours from symptom onset). N-arachidonoylethanolamine (AEA), 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG), palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) and oleoylethanolamide (OEA) were quantified by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry. Results Twenty-three patients met inclusion criteria. Median (interquartile range): Age – 76 years (60-81); body mass index - 25.6 (23.6-30.4); National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score-5(3-13); infarct volume - 1.4 cm3 (0.5-8.6). Higher 2-AG levels at T1 were correlated with smaller infarct volumes (Spearman ƿ=-0.48, p=0.0206). Levels of 2-AG were elevated at T2 compared to T1 in 48% of patients (median difference - 310.3nM, 95% CI 194.1-497.3; p=0.001); AEA, PEA and OEA did not differ between T1 and T2, p>0.05. Patients with elevated 2-AG at T2 had larger infarct volumes, p=0.0178, lower frequency of embolectomy performed, p=0.0373, but no difference in neurological disability 90 days after the ischemic event compared to patients without 2-AG elevation. Conclusion 2-AG increases significantly in early phases of ischemic stroke. The final mechanistic role of 2-AG in acute ischemic stroke is to be determined in further studies.
A domain specific language for incremental and modular design of large-scale verifiably-safe flow networks (preliminary report)

We define a domain-specific language (DSL) to inductively assemble flow networks from small networks or modules to produce arbitrarily large ones, with interchangeable functionally-equivalent parts. Our small networks or modules are “small” only as the building blocks in this inductive definition (there is no limit on their size). Associated with our DSL is a type theory, a system of formal annotations to express desirable properties of flow networks together with rules that enforce them as invariants across their interfaces, i.e., the rules guarantee the properties are preserved as we build larger networks from smaller ones. A prerequisite for a type theory is a formal semantics, i.e., a rigorous definition of the entities that qualify as feasible flows through the networks, possibly restricted to satisfy additional efficiency or safety requirements. This can be carried out in one of two ways, as a denotational semantics or as an operational (or reduction) semantics; we choose the first in preference to the second, partly to avoid exponential-growth rewriting in the operational approach. We set up a typing system and prove its soundness for our DSL.
Landau Damping with Electron Lenses in Space-Charge Dominated Beams

Progress on the Intensity Frontier of high energy physics critically depends on record high intensity charged particles accelerators. Beams in such machines become operationally limited by coherent beam instabilities, particularly enhanced in the regime of strong space charge (SC). Usual methods to control the instabilities, such as octupole magnets, beam feedback dampers and employment of chromatic effects, become less effective and insufficient. In [1] it was proposed to employ electron lenses for introduction of sufficient spread in particle oscillation frequencies needed for beam stabilization and in [2] it was shown that electron lenses are uniquely effective for Landau damping of transverse beam instabilities in high energy particle accelerators and their employment does not compromise incoherent (single particle) stability, dynamic aperture and the beam lifetime. Here we consider an important issue of effectiveness of the Landau damping with electron lenses in space-charge dominated beams and demonstrate that the desired stability can be assured with proper choice of the electron beam parameters and current distributions.
Non-Fermi Liquids as Ersatz Fermi Liquids: General Constraints on Compressible Metals

By identifying how fractional electron filling manifests in effective field theory, a new analysis offers a more general way to understand certain collective behaviors of electrons in a solid.
Prior Audit Experience and CFO Financial Reporting Aggressiveness

In this study, we investigate the financial reporting behavior of chief financial officers (CFOs) with significant prior audit experience. Our tests indicate that, on average, CFOs who were former audit managers or partners report less aggressively than CFOs without prior audit experience. Thus, the mindset that auditors develop during their time in public accounting – which should value objective, transparent, and conservative financial reporting – appears to persist when auditors take high-level positions in industry. However, we also find that the reporting behavior of prior-auditor CFOs becomes more aggressive over time as the salience of their audit experience decays. Further, we find that audit fees are lower for clients with prior-auditor CFOs but increase as the CFOs’ time away from auditing increases. Overall, our study offers important insights regarding how audit experience is associated with the financial reporting behavior of CFOs.
Mechanical design and fabrication of a kinetic sculpture with application to bioinspired drone design

Biologically-inspired robots are a very interesting and difficult branch of robotics dues to its very rich dynamical and morphological complexities. Among them, flying animals, such as bats, have been among the most difficult to take inspiration from as they exhibit complex wing articulation. We attempt to capture several of the key degrees-of- freedom that are present in the natural flapping gait of a bat. In this work, we present the mechanical design and analysis of our flapping wing robot, the Aerobat, where we capture the plunging and flexion-extension in the bat's flapping modes. This robot utilizes gears, cranks, and four-bar linkage mechanisms to actuate the arm-wing structure composed of rigid and exible components monolithically fabricated using PolyJet 3D printing. The resulting robot exhibits wing expansion and retraction during the downstroke and upstroke respectively which minimizes the negative lift and results in a more efficient flapping gait.
A Single-Index Model With a Surface-Link for Optimizing Individualized Dose Rules

This paper focuses on the problem of modeling and estimating interaction effects between covariates and a continuous treatment variable on an outcome, using a single-index regression approach. The primary motivation is to estimate an optimal individualized dose rule in an observational study. To model possibly nonlinear interaction effects between patients' covariates and a continuous treatment variable, we employ a two-dimensional penalized spline regression on an index-treatment domain, where the index is defined as a linear projection of the covariates. The method is illustrated using two applications as well as simulation experiments. A unique contribution of this work is in the parsimonious (single-index) parametrization specifically defined for the interaction effect term.
Efficient Power Allocation Using Graph Neural Networks and Deep Algorithm Unfolding

We study the problem of optimal power allocation in a single-hop ad hoc wireless network. In solving this problem, we propose a hybrid neural architecture inspired by the algorithmic unfolding of the iterative weighted minimum mean squared error (WMMSE) method, that we denote as unfolded WMMSE (UWMMSE). The learnable weights within UWMMSE are parameterized using graph neural networks (GNNs), where the time-varying underlying graphs are given by the fading interference coefficients in the wireless network. These GNNs are trained through a gradient descent approach based on multiple instances of the power allocation problem. Once trained, UWMMSE achieves performance comparable to that of WMMSE while significantly reducing the computational complexity. This phenomenon is illustrated through numerical experiments along with the robustness and generalization to wireless networks of different densities and sizes.