cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Characterizing input methods for human-to-robot demonstrations

Human demonstrations are important in a range of robotics applications, and are created with a variety of input methods. However, the design space for these input methods has not been extensively studied. In this paper, focusing on demonstrations of hand-scale object manipulation tasks to robot arms with two-finger grippers, we identify distinct usage paradigms in robotics that utilize human-to-robot demonstrations, extract abstract features that form a design space for input methods, and characterize existing input methods as well as a novel input method that we introduce, the instrumented tongs. We detail the design specifications for our method and present a user study that compares it against three common input methods: free-hand manipulation, kinesthetic guidance, and teleoperation. Study results show that instrumented tongs provide high quality demonstrations and a positive experience for the demonstrator while offering good correspondence to the target robot.
Safety and Efficacy of a Propofol and Ketamine Based Procedural Sedation Protocol in Children with Cerebral Palsy Undergoing Botulinum Toxin A Injections.

Background Pediatric patients with cerebral palsy often undergo intramuscular botulinum toxin (BoNT-A) injections. These injections can be painful and may require procedural sedation. An ideal sedation protocol has yet to be elucidated. Objective To investigate the safety and efficacy of a propofol and ketamine based sedation protocol in pediatric patients with cerebral palsy requiring BoNT-A injections. Design Retrospective chart review. Setting The sedations took place in a procedural sedation suite at a tertiary children's hospital from February 2013 through September 2017. Patients 164 patients with diagnoses of cerebral palsy undergoing propofol and ketamine based sedation for injections with botulinum toxin A. Methods An initial bolus of 0.5 mg/kg ketamine followed by a 2 mg/kg bolus of propofol was administered with supplemental boluses of propofol as needed to achieve deep sedation during the intramuscular BoNT-A injections. Main outcome measurements Propofol dosages, adverse events, serious adverse events, and sedation time parameters were reviewed. Results 345 sedations were successfully performed on 164 patients. The median total dose of propofol was 4.7 mg/kg (interquartile range [IQR]: 3.5, 6.3). Adverse events were encountered in 10.1% of procedures including hypoxemia responsive to supplemental oxygen (9.6%) and transient apnea (1.4%). The mean procedure time, recovery time, and total sedation time were 10, 11 and 33 minutes, respectively. With regard to patient variables, including age, weight, dose of propofol, sedation time, and Gross Motor Function Classification System classification, there was no association with increased incidence of adverse events. Conclusion Our sedation protocol of propofol and ketamine is safe and effective in children with cerebral palsy undergoing procedural sedation for intramuscular injections with BoNT-A. The adverse events encountered appeared to be related to airway and respiratory complications secondary to musculoskeletal deformities, emphasizing the importance of airway monitoring and management in these patients. Level IV.
Discovery of High-Affinity Noncovalent Allosteric KRAS Inhibitors That Disrupt Effector Binding.

Approximately 15% of all human tumors harbor mutant KRAS, a membrane-associated small GTPase and notorious oncogene. Mutations that render KRAS constitutively active will lead to uncontrolled cell growth and cancer. However, despite aggressive efforts in recent years, there are no drugs on the market that directly target KRAS and inhibit its aberrant functions. In the current work, we combined structure-based design with a battery of cell and biophysical assays to discover a novel pyrazolopyrimidine-based allosteric KRAS inhibitor that binds to activated KRAS with sub-micromolar affinity and disrupts effector binding, thereby inhibiting KRAS signaling and cancer cell growth. These results show that pyrazolopyrimidine-based compounds may represent a first-in-class allosteric noncovalent inhibitors of KRAS. Moreover, by studying two of its analogues, we identified key chemical features of the compound that interact with a set of specific residues at the switch regions of KRAS and play critical roles for its...
Entropies on Bounded Lattices.

We introduce the notion of entropy on arbitrary lattices and we study several of its properties. Explicit forms for entropy are obtained for entropies on graded lattices that satisfy certain regularity conditions. The relationships between entropies and metrics defined on lattices are also explored.
Application of Pareto-efficient combustion modeling framework to large eddy simulations of turbulent reacting flows

In the application of the combustion models based on low-dimensional manifolds (for instance flamelet models) to large-eddy simulation (LES) of reactive turbulent flows, the modeling simplifications of the combustion process is a critical source of uncertainty in addition to those due to the turbulent closure model and numerical discretization. The ability to quantitatively assess this uncertainty in absence of the reference result is vital to the reliable and predictive simulations of practical combustion this http URL the present study, the Pareto-efficient combustion (PEC) framework is extended to adaptive LES combustion simulations of turbulent flames. The key component of the PEC framework is the so-called manifold drift term. Its extension LES is proposed to make such assessment by examining the compliance of a particular combustion model in describing a quantity of interest with respect to the underlying flow field representation. With the focus on improving predictions of CO emissions of flamelet-based combustion models, this work employs PEC to augment the flamelet/progress variable (FPV) model through local sub-model assignment of the finite-rate chemistry (FRC) model. To this end, a series of LES-PEC calculations are performed on a piloted partially-premixed dimethyl ether flame (DME-D), using a combination of FPV and FRC models. The drift term is utilized in the PEC framework to the estimate the model related error for quantities of interest. The PEC approach is demonstrated to be capable of significantly improving the prediction of CO emissions compared with the monolithic FPV simulation. The improved accuracy is achieved by enriching the FPV model with FRC in regions where the lower-order model is determined insufficient through the evaluation of drift terms.
Trends in pediatric-adjusted shock index predict morbidity in children with moderate blunt injuries.

Trending the pediatric-adjusted shock index (SIPA) after admission has been described for children suffering severe blunt injuries (i.e., injury severity score (ISS) ≥ 15). We propose that following SIPA in children with moderate blunt injuries, as defined by ISS 10–14, has similar utility. The trauma registry at a single institution was queried over a 7 year period. Patients were included if they were between 4 and 16 years old at the time of admission, sustained a blunt injury with an ISS 10–14, and were admitted less than 12 h after their injury (n = 501). Each patient’s SIPA was then calculated at 0, 12, 24, 36, and 48 h (h) after admission and then categorized as elevated or normal at each time frame based on previously reported values. Trends in outcome variables as a function of time from admission for patients with an abnormal SIPA to normalize as well as patients with a normal admission SIPA to abnormal were analyzed. In patients with a normal SIPA at arrival, elevation within the first 24 h of admission correlated with increased length of stay (LOS). Increased transfusion requirement, incidence of infectious complications, and need for in-patient rehabilitation were also seen in analyzed sub-groups. An elevated SIPA at arrival with increased length of time to normalize SIPA correlated with increased length of stay LOS in the entire cohort and in those without head injury, but not in patients with a head injury. No deaths occurred within the study cohort. Patients with an ISS 10–14 and a normal SIPA at time of arrival who then have an elevated SIPA in the first 24 h of admission are at increased risk for morbidity including longer LOS and infectious complications. Similarly, time to normalize an elevated admission SIPA appears to directly correlate with LOS in patients without head injuries. No correlations with markers for morbidity could be identified in patients with a head injury and an elevated SIPA at arrival. This may be due to small sample size, as there were no relations to severity of head injury as measured by head abbreviated injury scale (head AIS) and the outcome variables reported. This is an area of ongoing analysis. This study extends the previously reported utility of following SIPA after admission into milder blunt injuries.
Extract and Edit: An Alternative to Back-Translation for Unsupervised Neural Machine Translation

The overreliance on large parallel corpora significantly limits the applicability of machine translation systems to the majority of language pairs. Back-translation has been dominantly used in previous approaches for unsupervised neural machine translation, where pseudo sentence pairs are generated to train the models with a reconstruction loss. However, the pseudo sentences are usually of low quality as translation errors accumulate during training. To avoid this fundamental issue, we propose an alternative but more effective approach, extract-edit, to extract and then edit real sentences from the target monolingual corpora. Furthermore, we introduce a comparative translation loss to evaluate the translated target sentences and thus train the unsupervised translation systems. Experiments show that the proposed approach consistently outperforms the previous state-of-the-art unsupervised machine translation systems across two benchmarks (English-French and English-German) and two low-resource language pairs (English-Romanian and English-Russian) by more than 2 (up to 3.63) BLEU points.
Fabrication and Characterization of GaN Junctionfield Effect Transistors

Junction field effect transistors (JFET) were fabricated on a GaN epitaxial structure grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition. The DC and microwave characteristics, as well as the high temperature performance of the devices were studied. These devices exhibited excellent pinch-off and a breakdown voltage that agreed with theoretical predictions. An extrinsic transconductance (gm) of 48 mS/mm was obtained with a maximum drain current (ID) of 270 mA/mm. The microwave measurement showed an fT of 6 GHz and an fmax of 12 GHz. Both the ID and the gm were found to decrease with increasing temperature, possibly due to lower electron mobility at elevated temperatures. These JFETs exhibited a significant current reduction after a high drain bias was applied, which was attributed to a partially depleted channel caused by trapped electrons in the semi-insulating GaN buffer layer.
Data Analytics in Operations Management: A Review

Research in operations management has traditionally focused on models for understanding, mostly at a strategic level, how firms should operate. Spurred by the growing availability of data and recen...
The next steps forward in determining “What Works”

In this issue, Papalia, Spivak, Daffern, and Ogloff (2019) report on their meta‐analysis that examined whether psychological treatments with adult violent offenders in correctional and forensic mental health settings are effective in preventing community recidivism and institutional misconduct. The meta‐analysis was methodologically rigorous, involving 27 independent studies, over 7,000 offenders, and adherence to the PRISMA guidelines. They found that although treatment significantly reduced violent and general/nonviolent community recidivism, the average effect for violent and general/nonviolent institutional misconduct was not statistically significant. Further, a series of moderator analyses revealed some statistical trends, but most of the effects were not statistically significant after an alpha‐level correction. Taken together, they concluded that psychological treatments, particularly if multi‐modal, have a small but positive effect on community recidivism. Recidivism and institutional misconduct have attracted attention from researchers for many years, yet meta‐analytic evidence regarding the effects of psychological treatment in reducing these outcomes has been lacking. Despite high numbers of justice‐involved individuals and near‐universal recognition of the importance of reducing recidivism and institutional misconduct, our understanding of “what works” is incomplete. Although the extant research base is limited by very few well‐controlled outcome studies and variable reporting of results, Papalia et al.’s (2019) meta‐analysis fills an important empirical gap. Based on their meta‐analysis, this commentary highlights several points that may be of interest to researchers and practitioners.
Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics

William D. Nordhaus delivered his Prize Lecture on 8 December 2018 at the Aula Magna, Stockholm University.
Layer-transferred MoS2/GaN PN diodes

Electrical and optical characterization of two-dimensional/three-dimensional (2D/3D) p-molybdenum disulfide/n-gallium nitride (p-MoS2/n-GaN) heterojunction diodes are reported. Devices were fabricated on high-quality, large-area p-MoS2 grown by chemical vapor deposition on sapphire substrates. The processed devices were transferred onto GaN/sapphire substrates, and the transferred films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). On-axis XRD spectra and surface topology obtained from AFM scans were consistent with previously grown high-quality, continuous MoS2 films. Current-voltage measurements of these diodes exhibited excellent rectification, and capacitance-voltage measurements were used to extract a conduction band offset of 0.23 eV for the transferred MoS2/GaN heterojunction. This conduction band offset was confirmed by internal photoemission measurements. The energy band lineup of the MoS2/GaN heterojunction is proposed here. This work demonstrates the potential...
A BRIEF REVIEW OF MINOS NEUTRINO OSCILLATION RESULTS

The MINOS long-baseline experiment is using the NuMI neutrino beam to make precise measurements of neutrino flavor oscillations in the "atmospheric" neutrino sector. MINOS observes the νμ disappearance oscillations seen in atmospheric neutrinos, tests possible disappearance to sterile ν by measuring the neutral current flux, and extends our reach towards the so far unseen θ13 by looking for νe appearance in this νμ beam. The magnetized MINOS detectors also allow tests of CPT conservation by discriminating between neutrinos and anti-neutrinos on an event-by-event basis. The intense, well-understood NuMI neutrino beam created at Fermilab is observed 735 km away at the Soudan Mine in Northeast Minnesota. High-statistics studies of the neutrino interactions themselves and the cosmic rays seen by the MINOS detectors have also been made. MINOS started taking beam data in May 2005 and is now nearing the end of its five-year run. This paper reviews results published based on the first several years of data.
Playing the Quantum Chemical Slot Machine: An Exploration of ABX2 Compounds

The structures and electronic properties of a number of real and hypothetical ABX2 compounds sharing (or evolving from) a single P4/mmm structural type are examined. These include the known CaCuO2 and SrFeO2 phases. A number of variations of this P4/mmm ABX2 framework, some obvious, some exotic, all with a chemical motivation, were investigated: A = alkali metal, alkaline earth metal or La, B = Ti, Fe, Cu, or Pt, and X = C, O, S, C2, H2, or F. Careful attention was given to the d-orbital splitting patterns and magnetic states (ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic) of these compounds, as well as their stability gauged by phonon dispersions and energetics. The most interesting as yet unmade compounds that emerged were (a) a carbide SrFe(C2)2, containing C2 units with a C−C distance of 1.267 A, (b) an AeTiO2 series, with Ti−Ti bonding, part σ, part π, tuned by the Ae2+ cation size, and (c) NaPtF2, for which a second structure was found, containing a hexagonal layering of (PtF2)− molecules.
Flowing with eight supersymmetries in M-theory and F-theory

We consider holographic RG flow solutions with eight supersymmetries and study the geometry transverse to the brane. For both M2-branes and for D3-branes in F-theory this leads to an eight-manifold with only a four-form flux. In both settings there is a natural four-dimensional hyper-K?hler slice that appears on the Coulomb branch. In the IIB theory this hyper-K?hler manifold encodes the Seiberg-Witten coupling over the Coulomb branch of a U(1) probe theory. We focus primarily upon a new flow solution in M-theory. This solution is first obtained using gauged supergravity and then lifted to eleven dimensions. In this new solution, the brane probes have an Eguchi-Hanson moduli space with the M2-branes spread over the non-trivial 2-sphere. It is also shown that the new solution is valid for a class of orbifold theories. We discuss how the hyper-K?hler structure on the slice extends to some form of G-structure in the eight-manifold, and describe how this can be computed.
A Unique HMG-Box Domain of Mouse Maelstrom Binds Structured RNA but Not Double Stranded DNA

Piwi-interacting piRNAs are a major and essential class of small RNAs in the animal germ cells with a prominent role in transposon control. Efficient piRNA biogenesis and function require a cohort of proteins conserved throughout the animal kingdom. Here we studied Maelstrom (MAEL), which is essential for piRNA biogenesis and germ cell differentiation in flies and mice. MAEL contains a high mobility group (HMG)-box domain and a Maelstrom-specific domain with a presumptive RNase H-fold. We employed a combination of sequence analyses, structural and biochemical approaches to evaluate and compare nucleic acid binding of mouse MAEL HMG-box to that of canonical HMG-box domain proteins (SRY and HMGB1a). MAEL HMG-box failed to bind double-stranded (ds)DNA but bound to structured RNA. We also identified important roles of a novel cluster of arginine residues in MAEL HMG-box in these interactions. Cumulatively, our results suggest that the MAEL HMG-box domain may contribute to MAEL function in selective processing of retrotransposon RNA into piRNAs. In this regard, a cellular role of MAEL HMG-box domain is reminiscent of that of HMGB1 as a sentinel of immunogenic nucleic acids in the innate immune response.
Are Passive Funds Really Superior Investments? An Investor Perspective

A number of papers have demonstrated that over historical periods, a specified set of factors has outperformed actively managed funds. In almost all cases, however, the factors used or the procedur...
An exploration of Prevotella -rich microbiomes in HIV and men who have sex with men

Gut microbiome characteristics associated with HIV infection are of intense research interest but a deep understanding has been challenged by confounding factors across studied populations. Notably, a Prevotella-rich microbiome described in HIV-infected populations is now understood to be common in men who have sex with men (MSM) regardless of HIV status, but driving factors and potential health implications are unknown. Here, we further define the MSM-associated gut microbiome and describe compositional differences between the fecal microbiomes of Prevotella-rich MSM and non-MSM that may underlie observed pro-inflammatory properties. Furthermore, we show relatively subtle gut microbiome changes in HIV infection in MSM and women that include an increase in potential pathogens that is ameliorated with antiretroviral therapy (ART). Lastly, using a longitudinal cohort, we describe microbiome changes that happen after ART initiation. This study provides an in-depth characterization of microbiome differences that occur in a US population infected with HIV and demonstrates the degree to which these differences may be driven by lifestyle factors, ART, and HIV infection itself. Understanding microbiome compositions that occur with sexual behaviors that are high risk for acquiring HIV and untreated and ART-treated HIV infection will guide the investigation of immune and metabolic functional implications to ultimately target the microbiome therapeutically.
Divergent Roles for cAMP-PKA Signaling in the Regulation of Filamentous Growth in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces bayanus.

The cyclic AMP – Protein Kinase A (cAMP–PKA) pathway is an evolutionarily conserved eukaryotic signaling network that is essential for growth and development. In the fungi, cAMP–PKA signaling plays a critical role in regulating cellular physiology and morphological switches in response to nutrient availability. We undertook a comparative investigation of the role that cAMP-PKA signaling plays in the regulation of filamentous growth in two closely related budding yeast species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces bayanus. Using chemical and genetic perturbations of this pathway and its downstream targets we discovered divergent roles for cAMP-PKA signaling in the regulation of filamentous growth. While cAMP-PKA signaling is required for the filamentous growth response in both species, increasing or decreasing the activity of this pathway leads to drastically different phenotypic outcomes. In S. cerevisiae, cAMP-PKA inhibition ameliorates the filamentous growth response while hyper-activation of the pathway leads to increased filamentous growth; the same perturbations in S. bayanus result in the obverse. Divergence in the regulation of filamentous growth between S. cerevisiae and S. bayanus extends to downstream targets of PKA, including several kinases, transcription factors, and effector proteins. Our findings highlight the potential for significant evolutionary divergence in gene network function, even when the constituent parts of such networks are well conserved.
Classic annulenes, nonclassical applications.

This Account details the application of [n]annulenes as functional building blocks for electromechanical actuators, double-helical ladder polymers, and protecting groups for supramolecular interactions. Specifically, redox-induced conformational changes occurring in [8]annulenes are utilized as the transducing element in polymeric electromechanical actuators. Conversely, rigid [8]annulenes are utilized as double-helical fragments for the synthesis of double-helical octaaryl macromolecules. Last, Dewar benzenes are prepared from [4 + 2] cycloadditions (where the 4π component is a [4]annulene). The potential of using Dewar benzenes as protecting groups for [6]annulne−[6]annulene supramolecular interactions is exemplified by demonstration of photolithographic crystallization (amorphous [4]annulene → crystalline [6]annulene) on a surface, followed by subsequent X-ray analysis of the resulting [6]annulene crystals.
Arene 1,4-Diradical Formation from o-Dialkynylarenes

Abstract A series of five arene and quinone derivatives with dialkynyl substituents in the ortho positions and fixed in a 10-membered ring were prepared and tested with respect to thermal rearrangement to the corresponding arene 1,4 diradicals.
Why Unions Survive: Understanding How Unions Overcome The Free-Rider Problem

This paper provides evidence for why individuals join unions instead of free riding. I model membership as legal insurance. To test the model, I use the incidence of news stories concerning allegat...
Coupling of alkynylTMS derivatives with vinylic iodides. An efficient route to 1,3-enynes and dienes.

CuCl-promoted coupling of alkynylTMS derivatives with vinyl iodides leads to 1,3-enynes in high yield. Enynes prepared from homopropargylic alcohols undergo intramolecular hydrosilylation and subsequent silyl cleavage with TBAF to afford 1,3-dienes.
Natural Bond Orbital Analysis of Carbon-13 Chemical Shieldings in Acetylenes

Ab initio calculations of NMR chemical shieldings of alkyne carbon atoms in nine acetylene compounds computed by the gauge-including atomic orbital (GIAO) method are reported. The unusually low che...
Stereocontrolled synthesis of N-vinyl-N-(1'-propenyl)-, and N-unsubstituted-β-lactams from 2-aza-1,3-butadienes via the Staudinger reaction

2-Aza-1,3-butadienes 2 and 5 were synthesized in good yields and on a large scale. Reaction of 2 and 5 with acid chlorides in the presence of triethylamine (Staudinger reaction) resulted in the high-yielding formation of N-vinyl- and N-(1'-propenyl)-β-lactams. Excellent cis-stereoselectivity was observed in the reaction of 2-aza-1,3-butadienes 2 and 5 with Bose-Evans ketenes and Sheehan ketenes, whereas reaction with a Moore ketene gave, as expected, a trans β-lactam. N-Formyl, N-vinyl, and N-(1'-propenyl) groups at the β-lactam nitrogen could be cleaved oxidatively in one step and in good yields by treatment with potassium permanganate. It was also found that the N-vinyl group can be removed successfully under hydrolytic conditions to yield N-unsubstituted-β-lactams
Gallium Imide, {Ga(NH)3/2}n, a New Polymeric Precursor for Gallium Nitride Powders

The efficient preparation of the new polymeric gallium imide {Ga(NH)3/2}n from the reaction between [Ga(NMe2)3]2 and NH3 at ambient temperatures is described. The gallium imide precursor is shown by TEM and XRD studies to yield upon pyrolysis a rare cubic/hexagonal variety of gallium nitride, GaN. Some control over the average particle size of GaN in the nanosized region is achieved by application of various pyrolysis schemes.
Enantioselective synthesis of 2,2-difluoro-3-hydroxycarboxylates by rhodium-catalyzed hydrogenation

Abstract The highly enantioselective synthesis of 2,2-difluoro-3-hydroxycarboxylates has been achieved by hydrogenating 2,2-difluoro-3-oxocarboxylates in the presence of chiral rhodium-(amidephosphine-phosphinite) complexes. Ethyl 4,4,4-trifluoroacetoacetate can be successfully transformed into the enantiomerically enriched 4,4,4-trifluoro-3-hydroxybutanoate in the same manner.
ALTERNATE SYNTHESES OF PRODAN AND ACRYLODAN

(2005). ALTERNATE SYNTHESES OF PRODAN AND ACRYLODAN. Organic Preparations and Procedures International: Vol. 37, No. 6, pp. 589-594.
HARES: an efficient method for first-principles electronic structure calculations of complex systems

Abstract We discuss our new implementation of the Real-space Electronic Structure method for studying the atomic and electronic structure of infinite periodic as well as finite systems, based on density functional theory . This improved version which we call HARES (for High-performance-Fortran Adaptive grid Real-space Electronic Structure) aims at making the method widely applicable and efficient, using high performance Fortran on parallel architectures. The scaling of various parts of a HARES calculation is analyzed and compared to that of plane-wave based methods. The new developments that lead to enhanced performance, and their parallel implementation, are presented in detail. We illustrate the application of HARES to the study of elemental crystalline solids, molecules and complex crystalline materials , such as blue bronze and zeolites.
Synthesis and biological evaluation of a new class of bryostatin analogues: the role of the C20 substituent in protein kinase C binding

Abstract The synthesis and biological assay of a new series of designed bryostatin analogues modified at the C20 position are described. These compounds are found to bind to protein kinase C with affinities of up to 1.5 nM, demonstrating that variations at C20 can indeed be used to tune affinity and potentially function.
Regiocontrolled synthesis of the trimeric quinone framework of conocurvone.

The trimeric quinone framework of conocurvone is crucial for its potent anti-HIV activity. A new synthesis of trimeric quinones based on stepwise substitution of the halogens in 2,3-dihaloquinones ...
Recovering the Principle of Relativity from the Cosmic Fabric Model of Space

We extend the descriptive power of the Cosmic Fabric model of space developed by Tenev and Horstemeyer [Int. J. Mod. Phys. D 27 (2018) 1850083] to include moving observers by demonstrating that all...
In Pursuit of the PO2+ Cation. The Reaction of KPO2F2 and SbF5 Leads to an Eight-Membered, Antimony-Oxygen-Phosphorus-Bridged Ring

Abstract : The reaction of KPO2F2 with the strong Lewis acid SbF3 was studied as a potential pathway to the unknown PO2(+) cation. The resulting product has the desired PO2SbF6 composition but consists of an eight-membered, oxygen-bridged ring that was characterized by vibrational and NMR spectroscopy, ab initio methods, and a single crystal x-ray diffraction study. The formation of the oxygen-bridged ring and its mechanism are discussed.
One-pot synthesis of highly substituted indolines

A general and convenient one-pot synthesis of highly substituted indolines from arylhydrazines and aldehydes is reported. This synthesis allows introduction of substitution at essentially all positions of the indoline nucleus to achieve significant diversity in this biologically important template.
Zoledronate and Raloxifene combination therapy enhances material and mechanical properties of diseased mouse bone

Abstract Current interventions to reduce skeletal fragility are insufficient at enhancing both the quantity and quality of bone when attempting to improve overall mechanical integrity. Bisphosphonates, such as Zoledronate (ZOL), are used to treat a variety of bone disorders by increasing bone mass to decrease fracture risk, but long-term use has been shown in some settings to compromise bone quality. Alternatively, Raloxifene (RAL) has recently been demonstrated to improve tissue quality and overall mechanical properties in a cell-independent manner by binding to collagen and increasing tissue hydration. We hypothesized that a combination of RAL and ZOL would improve mechanical and material properties of bone more than either monotherapy alone by enhancing both quantity and quality. In this study, wildtype (WT) and heterozygous (OIM+/−) male mice from the Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) murine model were treated with either RAL, ZOL, or both from 8 weeks to 16 weeks of age. Using the OIM model allows for investigation of therapeutic effects on a quality-based bone disease. Combination treatment resulted in higher trabecular architecture, cortical mechanical properties, and cortical fracture toughness in diseased mouse bone. Two fracture toughness properties, which are direct measures of the tissue's ability to resist the initiation and propagation of a crack, were significantly improved with combination treatment in OIM+/− compared to control. There was no significant effect on fracture toughness with either monotherapy alone in either genotype. Following the mass-based effects of ZOL, trabecular bone volume fraction was significantly higher with combination treatment in both genotypes. Combination treatment resulted in higher ultimate stress in both genotypes. RAL and combination treatment in OIM+/− also increased resilience compared to the control. In conclusion, this study demonstrates the beneficial effects of using combination drug treatments to increase bone mass while simultaneously improving tissue quality, especially to enhance the mechanical integrity of diseased bone. Combination therapies could be a potential method to improve bone health and combat skeletal fragility on both the microscopic and macroscopic levels.
Synthesis of Anthracene and Azaanthracene Fluorophores via [2+2+2] Cyclotrimerization Reactions

A highly convergent [2+2+2] cyclotrimerization approach to anthracenes and 2-azaanthracenes has been developed. It allows for the facile introduction of the anthracene moiety on alkyne and nitrile bearing molecules and the rapid construction of compound arrays. This is showcased in the assembly of a collection of fluorophores and their photochemical evaluation.
Metal–Carborane Multidecker Sandwich Complexes as Building Blocks for New Materials

Transition-metal sandwich complexes incorporating bifacially coordinated C 2 B 3 planar carborane rings form a large and varied family of generally air-stable, highly robust compounds that feature multidecker stacking. As a group, these complexes offer a number of advantages that are potentially of interest in the development of new electronic, magnetic and/or optical materials. They are remarkably versatile, accommodating a wide range of metals and organic substituents ; they are soluble in organic solvents and are typically resistant to air and moisture ; they can be reversibly oxidized and reduced ; in many cases they are paramagnetic, exhibiting substantial electron delocalization of the unpaired electrons between metal centers. Moreover, the small carborane starting materials can now be prepared in large (ca 100 g) quantities, making the complexes readily accessible. A brief overview of this area is presented with emphasis on the systematic utilization of metallacarborane sandwich complexes in the construction of large multimetallic systems and studies of their electronic and molecular structures.
Diastereoselectivity in the Reduction of α-Oxy- and α-Amino-Substituted Acyclic Ketones by Polymethylhydrosiloxane

Diastereoselectivity in the reduction of α-alkoxy-, α-acyloxy-, and α-alkylamino-substituted ketones with polymethylhydrosiloxane (PMHS) in the presence of fluoride ion catalysis was investigated. ...
Unequivocal structural assignment of the product of methylation of 4-nitro-5-styrylimidazole

The structure of one of the two regioisomeric products of methylation of 4-nitro-5-styrylimidazole has been assigned by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analyses.
Activation of the ketone of 5-cyclodecenones towards thermal transannular cyclization to give trans-hydroazulenols

Abstract The cyclization of 5-cyclodecenones substituted at C2 with an alkoxy group was examined. The alkoxy group sufficiently activates the ketone to allow for transannular cyclization upon heating, leading to trans fused hydroazulenols. In the cyclization of the 6-(trimethysilyl)methyl substituted 5-cyclodecenone, the TMS of the allylsilane is retained in the product, leading to a vinylsilane product. Both the thermal and acid-induced cyclizations lead to products with a trans relationship between the oxygen substituents.
Trading with China: Productivity gains, job losses

We analyze the impact on sector-level productivity in advanced economies of trade with China between the mid-1990s and late-2000s, separately identifying the export and import channels. Our findings point to large productivity gains from growing trade with China.
Regulatory Landscape of International Direct-to-Participant (DTP) Genomic Research: Time to Untie the Gordian Knot?

Genomic research, especially on rare disorders, has been facilitated by the online recruitment of potential participants. Through cooperative arrangements with disease-specific patient organizations and internet postings, it has become a more efficient way to attract interested patients and their caregivers than traditional recruitment through physicians and hospitals. Eligible participants from remote locations can participate in genomic research by supplying a sample for genome sequencing along with their electronic health records. International direct-to-participant research promises to greatly increase the number and diversity of participants for research on rare diseases, but recruitment across borders is often thwarted by laws prohibiting research participation without ethics review in each country. Such a process, an essential part of traditional research, becomes burdensome and infeasible to enroll only a few participants in many countries. Thus, although global recruitment is a promising strategy, much work remains to be done on devising methods that are legally compliant and ethically acceptable for this novel research.
Stability and complexity of mixed discriminants

We show that the mixed discriminant of $n$ positive semidefinite $n \times n$ real symmetric matrices can be approximated within a relative error $\epsilon >0$ in quasi-polynomial $n^{O(\ln n -\ln \epsilon)}$ time, provided the distance of each matrix to the identity matrix in the operator norm does not exceed some absolute constant $\gamma_0 >0$. We deduce a similar result for the mixed discriminant of doubly stochastic $n$-tuples of matrices from the Marcus - Spielman - Srivastava bound on the roots of the mixed characteristic polynomial. Finally, we construct a quasi-polynomial algorithm for approximating the sum of $m$-th powers of principal minors of a matrix, provided the operator norm of the matrix is strictly less than 1. As is shown by Gurvits, for $m=2$ the problem is $\#P$-hard and covers the problem of computing the mixed discriminant of positive semidefinite matrices of rank 2.
On the Order Derivatives of Bessel Functions

The derivatives with respect to order for the Bessel functions $$J_{\nu }(x)$$ and $$Y_{\nu }(x)$$ , where $$\nu >0$$ and $$x\ne 0$$ (real or complex), are studied. Representations are derived in terms of integrals that involve the products pairs of Bessel functions, and in turn series expansions are obtained for these integrals. From the new integral representations for $$\partial J_{\nu }(x)/\partial \nu $$ and $$\partial Y_{\nu }(x)/\partial \nu $$ , asymptotic approximations involving Airy functions are constructed for the case $$\nu $$ large, which are uniformly valid for $$0<x<\infty $$ .
Distributed matrix completion and robust factorization

If learning methods are to scale to the massive sizes of modern data sets, it is essential for the field of machine learning to embrace parallel and distributed computing. Inspired by the recent development of matrix factorization methods with rich theory but poor computational complexity and by the relative ease of mapping matrices onto distributed architectures, we introduce a scalable divide-and-conquer framework for noisy matrix factorization. We present a thorough theoretical analysis of this framework in which we characterize the statistical errors introduced by the "divide" step and control their magnitude in the "conquer" step, so that the overall algorithm enjoys high-probability estimation guarantees comparable to those of its base algorithm. We also present experiments in collaborative filtering and video background modeling that demonstrate the near-linear to superlinear speed-ups attainable with this approach.
Scalable Unbalanced Optimal Transport using Generative Adversarial Networks

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are an expressive class of neural generative models with tremendous success in modeling high-dimensional continuous measures. In this paper, we present a scalable method for unbalanced optimal transport (OT) based on the generative-adversarial framework. We formulate unbalanced OT as a problem of simultaneously learning a transport map and a scaling factor that push a source measure to a target measure in a cost-optimal manner. In addition, we propose an algorithm for solving this problem based on stochastic alternating gradient updates, similar in practice to GANs. We also provide theoretical justification for this formulation, showing that it is closely related to an existing static formulation by Liero et al. (2018), and perform numerical experiments demonstrating how this methodology can be applied to population modeling.
Reverse mathematics and colorings of hypergraphs

Working in subsystems of second order arithmetic, we formulate several representations for hypergraphs. We then prove the equivalence of various vertex coloring theorems to $${\textsf {WKL}}_0$$ , $${\textsf {ACA}}_0$$ , and $${\varPi ^1_1 \text {-}}{\textsf {CA}}_0$$ .
Cosmic divergence, weak cosmic convergence, and fixed points at infinity

To characterize the asymptotic behavior of fixed-point iterations of non-expansive operators with no fixed points, Bauschke et al. (J Fixed Point Theory Appl 18(2):297–307, 2016) recently studied cosmic convergence and conjectured that cosmic convergence always holds. This paper presents a cosmically divergent counterexample, which disproves this conjecture. This paper also demonstrates, with a counterexample, that cosmic convergence can be weak in infinite dimensions. Finally, this paper shows positive results relating to cosmic convergence that provide an interpretation of cosmic accumulation points as fixed points at infinity.
Beyond Worst-case: A Probabilistic Analysis of Affine Policies in Dynamic Optimization

Affine policies (or control) are widely used as a solution approach in dynamic optimization where computing an optimal adjustable solution is usually intractable. While the worst case performance of affine policies can be significantly bad, the empirical performance is observed to be near-optimal for a large class of problem instances. For instance, in the two-stage dynamic robust optimization problem with linear covering constraints and uncertain right hand side, the worst-case approximation bound for affine policies is $O(\sqrt m)$ that is also tight (see Bertsimas and Goyal (2012)), whereas observed empirical performance is near-optimal. In this paper, we aim to address this stark-contrast between the worst-case and the empirical performance of affine policies. In particular, we show that affine policies give a good approximation for the two-stage adjustable robust optimization problem with high probability on random instances where the constraint coefficients are generated i.i.d. from a large class of distributions; thereby, providing a theoretical justification of the observed empirical performance. On the other hand, we also present a distribution such that the performance bound for affine policies on instances generated according to that distribution is $\Omega(\sqrt m)$ with high probability; however, the constraint coefficients are not i.i.d.. This demonstrates that the empirical performance of affine policies can depend on the generative model for instances.
An analysis of unsupervised pre-training in light of recent advances

Convolutional neural networks perform well on object recognition because of a number of recent advances: rectified linear units (ReLUs), data augmentation, dropout, and large labelled datasets. Unsupervised data has been proposed as another way to improve performance. Unfortunately, unsupervised pre-training is not used by state-of-the-art methods leading to the following question: Is unsupervised pre-training still useful given recent advances? If so, when? We answer this in three parts: we 1) develop an unsupervised method that incorporates ReLUs and recent unsupervised regularization techniques, 2) analyze the benefits of unsupervised pre-training compared to data augmentation and dropout on CIFAR-10 while varying the ratio of unsupervised to supervised samples, 3) verify our findings on STL-10. We discover unsupervised pre-training, as expected, helps when the ratio of unsupervised to supervised samples is high, and surprisingly, hurts when the ratio is low. We also use unsupervised pre-training with additional color augmentation to achieve near state-of-the-art performance on STL-10.
Optimal robust mean-variance hedging in incomplete financial markets

An optimal B-robust estimate is constructed for the multidimensional parameter in the drift coefficient of a diffusion-type process with a small noise. The optimal mean-variance robust (optimal V-robust) trading strategy is to hedge (in the mean-variance sense) the contingent claim in an incomplete financial market with an arbitrary information structure and a misspecified volatility of the asset price, which is modelled by a multidimensional continuous semimartingale. The obtained results are applied to the stochastic volatility model, where the model of the latent volatility process contains the unknown multidimensional parameter in the drift coefficient and a small parameter in the diffusion term.
Learning Approximate Inference Networks for Structured Prediction

Structured prediction energy networks (SPENs; Belanger & McCallum 2016) use neural network architectures to define energy functions that can capture arbitrary dependencies among parts of structured outputs. Prior work used gradient descent for inference, relaxing the structured output to a set of continuous variables and then optimizing the energy with respect to them. We replace this use of gradient descent with a neural network trained to approximate structured argmax inference. This "inference network" outputs continuous values that we treat as the output structure. We develop large-margin training criteria for joint training of the structured energy function and inference network. On multi-label classification we report speed-ups of 10-60x compared to (Belanger et al, 2017) while also improving accuracy. For sequence labeling with simple structured energies, our approach performs comparably to exact inference while being much faster at test time. We then demonstrate improved accuracy by augmenting the energy with a "label language model" that scores entire output label sequences, showing it can improve handling of long-distance dependencies in part-of-speech tagging. Finally, we show how inference networks can replace dynamic programming for test-time inference in conditional random fields, suggestive for their general use for fast inference in structured settings.
Instantaneous frequency and wave shape functions (I)

Abstract Although one can formulate an intuitive notion of instantaneous frequency, generalizing “frequency” as we understand it in e.g. the Fourier transform, a rigorous mathematical definition is lacking. In this paper, we consider a class of functions composed of waveforms that repeat nearly periodically, and for which the instantaneous frequency can be given a rigorous meaning. We show that Synchrosqueezing can be used to determine the instantaneous frequency of functions in this class, even if the waveform is not harmonic, thus generalizing earlier results for cosine wave functions. We also provide real-life examples and discuss the advantages, for these examples, of considering such non-harmonic waveforms.
Self-Correcting Models for Model-Based Reinforcement Learning.

When an agent cannot represent a perfectly accurate model of its environment's dynamics, model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) can fail catastrophically. Planning involves composing the predictions of the model; when flawed predictions are composed, even minor errors can compound and render the model useless for planning. Hallucinated Replay (Talvitie 2014) trains the model to "correct" itself when it produces errors, substantially improving MBRL with flawed models. This paper theoretically analyzes this approach, illuminates settings in which it is likely to be effective or ineffective, and presents a novel error bound, showing that a model's ability to self-correct is more tightly related to MBRL performance than one-step prediction error. These results inspire an MBRL algorithm for deterministic MDPs with performance guarantees that are robust to model class limitations.