cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Vitamin and Micronutrient Deficiencies After Bariatric Surgery

Preoperative evaluation of micronutrient and vitamin levels prior to and following bariatric surgery is of paramount importance. A thorough history and physical examination can provide the necessary information required to narrow one’s differential diagnosis regarding a possible micronutrient and vitamin deficiency. Laboratory evaluation is utilized to confirm suspicions regarding a specific micronutrient and vitamin deficiency.
Digital Presence of a Research Center as a Research Dissemination Platform: Reach and Resources.

Background: Web-based platforms can be powerful tools for research dissemination. By leveraging the advantages of mass media and interpersonal channels of communication, Web-based dissemination platforms may improve awareness about, and subsequent adoption of, evidence-based practices (EBPs). Digital dissemination strategies can augment traditional dissemination models, improving stakeholder access to digestible and actionable information and promoting translation of EBPs. Objective: This study aimed to describe the reach and content of the Web presence of a National Institute on Drug Abuse Center of Excellence and how it is used to disseminate research related to digital behavioral health approaches. Methods: The Center for Technology and Behavioral Health (CTBH) has a website and regularly updated Facebook and Twitter accounts. The website features include summaries of digital behavioral health approaches and related empirical literature, a blog feed focused on the state of the science and technology concerning digital health care approaches, and a newsletter about Center activities. We extracted website usage metrics from Google Analytics and follower counts from social media accounts for the period from March 1, 2013, to July 17, 2018. Results: Since the implementation of analytic tracking, 70,331 users have initiated 96,995 sessions on the CTBH website. The website includes summaries of 86 digital therapeutic programs, encompassing 447 empirical articles. There are 1160 posts in the CTBH blog feed, including 180 summaries of scholarly articles. The Twitter and Facebook accounts have 577 and 1500 followers, respectively. The newsletter has reached a growing subscriber network and has a high open rate relative to industry standards. Conclusions: The CTBH Web presence serves as a model for how to leverage accessible and easily updatable digital platforms as research dissemination channels. Digital dissemination tools can augment traditional dissemination strategies to promote awareness about evidence-based digital therapeutic approaches for behavioral health and health care more broadly.
Small Business Marketing Strategies for Physical Therapy Practice Owners

Introduction: The United States economy depends on small businesses, yet 50% of small businesses cease operations in the first 5 years. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the ma...
Treatment of exfoliative cutaneous lupus erythematosus in a German shorthaired pointer dog with mycophenolate mofetil.

Background Immune-modulating drugs show limited therapeutic efficacy in canine exfoliative cutaneous lupus erythematosus (ECLE); over half of ECLE dogs are eventually euthanized for their lack of response to therapy. Objective To describe a case of generalized ECLE in a dog in which mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) treatment achieved complete remission. Animal A 3-year-old, male castrated German shorthaired pointer was presented with a three months history of generalized scaling, erythematous macules and plaques, follicular casts and hypotrichosis affecting the head, trunk, ventrum and medial aspects of all limbs. The dog exhibited lameness and stiff gait. Methods and materials Complete blood count, serum chemistry profile, urinalysis, serum antinuclear antibody test, histopathological examination and RT-qPCR of skin biopsies. Results Histologically, skin biopsy specimens revealed lymphocyte-rich interface dermatitis, infundibular interface mural folliculitis and periglandular lymphocytic infiltrate. The absence of systemic signs and unremarkable laboratory tests excluded concurrent systemic lupus erythematosus. Treatment of ECLE was initiated with oral MMF (22 mg/kg, twice daily). Within three weeks of starting MMF therapy, a marked improvement in lameness and a moderate decrease in erythema and scaling was observed. After four months, erythema, scaling and follicular casts had completely resolved, and at the time of writing the dog's ECLE remains in complete remission with twice daily MMF (10 mg/kg). The lesional skin transcriptome revealed predominant T helper 1 (Th1) lymphocytic inflammatory response with strong upregulation of interferon pathway. Conclusions and clinical importance To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first reported case of successful treatment of ECLE with MMF as a single-agent therapy.
Hypospadias Repair without a Bladder Drainage Catheter

We report on 44 consecutive patients who underwent 1-stage hypospadias repair based on a urethral splent (silicone pleated stent). The severity of hypospadias ranged from subcoronal in 12 cases and distal in 23 to midshaft in 4 and penoscrotal in 5. In the first 15 patients of this series the splent was used with a suprapubic tube. All patients were able to void within the first 36 hours postoperatively. The next 29 patients underwent repairs without the use of a bladder catheter, including 15 who had outpatient procedures. None of the 44 patients has required subsequent catheterization or hospitalization. There have been 2 fistulas in this series. The urethral splent permits normal voiding through and drainage of the neourethra in a variety of hypospadias repairs. The splent expands and contracts with the degree of edema and permits catheterization should this be necessary. The advantages of hypospadias repair without bladder drainage, such as short hospital stay, total ambulation, and decreased potential for infection and bladder spasm, can be realized with the use of a urethral splent.
Governing India in Cybertime: Biometric IDs, Start-Ups and the Temporalised State

AbstractBuilding on anthropological attention that has been devoted, appropriately, to the question of how states are spatialised, this article analyses how the swirl of discourse and everyday prac...
Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Update on Upfront Therapy in Elderly Patients.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) disproportionately impacts elderly patients. Treating elderly patients with AML has been a challenge due to the increased prevalence of medical comorbidities and decreased performance status in this population, as well as the different biology of AML in elderly patients. The care of elderly patients with AML has advanced significantly over the past few years. Our greater understanding of the biology of AML in elderly patients has led to the development of novel, lower-intensity treatment options. We present here a review of the most recent literature regarding therapeutic options available to older patients, as well as tools to help identify the right treatment for the right patient. As targeted and lower-intensity treatment options become available, developing an approach to “right size” therapy for individual elderly patients is paramount.
Mitigating the risk of atrazine exposure: Identifying hot spots and hot times in surface waters across Nebraska, USA

Atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, threatens human health along with terrestrial and aquatic biota. Recent reports have found atrazine in drinking water to be associated with increased birth defects and incidences of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, with higher levels of significance from exposure to both atrazine and nitrate-N. The Midwest region of the United States, which includes Nebraska, is one of the leading regions for high nitrate-N concentrations and agrochemicals, including atrazine, in surface waters. Therefore, the objective of this study was to provide a case study for completing an environmental risk analysis for the potential exposure of atrazine and nitrate-N to ecosystems and humans through interaction with surface waters using two approaches: (1) Identify watersheds across Nebraska that were at risk for exceeding atrazine and nitrate-N maximum contaminant limits (MCLs) in surface water; and (2) Determine the specific times of year where risks were greatest. Factors were then analyzed using Geographic Information System (GIS) software to identify areas of high risk. Impairments for both nitrate-N and atrazine in the surface water were found predominately during the early growing season in the southeastern region of Nebraska, in watershed areas with the highest amount of corn production and annual precipitation. Further, the methodology developed in this study has the potential for application in regions with higher dependency on surface water to determine multiple agrochemical load influxes from upstream regions and evaluate other surface water contaminants during the same time periods.
IL-5Rα marks nasal polyp IgG4- and IgE-expressing cells in aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease.

Background The cause of severe nasal polyposis in aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease (AERD) is unknown. Elevated antibody levels have been associated with disease severity in nasal polyps, but upstream drivers of local antibody production in nasal polyps are undetermined. Objective We sought to identify upstream drivers and phenotypic properties of local antibody-expressing cells in nasal polyps from subjects with AERD. Methods Sinus tissue was obtained from subjects with AERD, chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) with nasal polyps (CRSwNP), CRS without nasal polyps, and controls without CRS. Tissue antibody levels were quantified via ELISA and immunohistochemistry and were correlated with disease severity. Antibody-expressing cells were profiled with single-cell RNA sequencing, flow cytometry, and immunofluorescence, with IL-5Rα function determined through IL-5 stimulation and subsequent RNA sequencing and quantitative PCR. Results Tissue IgE and IgG4 levels were elevated in AERD compared with in controls (P Conclusions Our study identifies an increase in antibody-expressing cells in AERD defined by transcript enrichment of IL5RA and IGHG4 or IGHE, with confirmed surface expression of IL-5Rα and functional IL-5 signaling. Tissue IgE and IgG4 levels are elevated in AERD, and higher IgE levels are associated with faster nasal polyp regrowth. Our findings suggest a role for IL-5Rα+ antibody-expressing cells in facilitating local antibody production and severe nasal polyps in AERD.
Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing for Glucose-Nonfermenting Gram-Negative Bacteria: the Tip of the Iceberg.

Ed. Note: The authors of the published article did not feel that a response was necessary. We read with great pleasure the recently published manuscript by Caverly and colleagues who studied the in vitro activities of four β-lactam–β-lactamase inhibitors (BL-BLIs), including ceftazidime-
Thinking Regionally in Early Medieval Studies: A Manifesto

In a recent leading article in the Journal of Asian Studies, Hugh Clark critiques the teleological construct of a unified China, arguing that, at least up through the tenth century, the unified reg...
A Tensor Decomposition Method for Unsupervised Feature Learning on Satellite Imagery

We introduce a tensor factorization approach to unsupervised feature learning of hyper-spectral imagery, and demonstrate its effectiveness on land type classification of publicly available datasets. The results show that this approach can produce state of the art accuracy, compared to other methods for feature learning in the classification task.
How Are Emerging Data Translated Into Clinical Practice? A Mixed Methods Investigation of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Institutional Treatment Protocols

Background: Early in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there was minimal data to guide treatment, and we lacked understanding of how clinicians translated this limited evidence base for potential therapeutics to bedside care Our objective was to systematically determine how emerging data about COVID-19 treatments was implemented by analyzing institutional treatment protocols Methods: Treatment protocols from North American healthcare facilities and recommendations from guideline-issuing bodies were collected Qualitative data on treatment regimens and their applications were extracted using an adapted National Institutes of Health/US Food and Drug Administration experimental therapeutics framework Structured data on risk factor and severity of illness scoring systems were extracted and analyzed using descriptive statistics Results: We extracted data from 105 independent protocols Guideline-issuing organizations published recommendations after the initial peak of the pandemic in many regions and generally recommended clinical trial referral, with limited additional guidance Facility-specific protocols favored offering some treatment (96 8%, N = 92 of 95), most commonly, hydroxychloroquine (90 5%), followed by remdesivir and interleukin-6 inhibitors Recommendation for clinical trial enrollment was limited largely to academic medical centers (19 of 52 vs 9 of 43 community/Veterans Affairs [VA]), which were more likely to have access to research studies Other themes identified included urgent protocol development, plans for rapid updates, contradictory statements, and entirely missing sections, with section headings but no content other than "in process " Conclusions: In the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging information was rapidly implemented by institutions into clinical practice and, unlike recommendations from guideline-issuing bodies, heavily favored administering some form of therapy Understanding how and why evidence is translated into clinical care is critical to improve processes for other emerging diseases
Cognitive Communications for NASA Space Systems

The growing complexity of spacecraft constellations, communication relay offerings, and mission architectures drives the need for the development of autonomous communication systems. NASA has traditionally launched single spacecraft missions that are served by the Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program. Operations on SCaN networks are typically scheduled weeks in advance, and often each asset serves a single user spacecraft at a time. Recent movement towards swarm missions could make the current approach unsustainable. Additionally, the integration of commercial communication service providers will substantially increase the data transfer options available to new missions. NASA science missions have found benefit in launching swarms of spacecraft, allowing coordinated simultaneous observations from different perspectives. Inter-spacecraft communication (mesh networking) is an enabler for this architecture, as are CubeSats that allow cost-effective provisioning of distributed mission assets. As more complex swarm missions launch, one challenge is coordinating communication within the swarm and choosing the appropriate mechanism for telemetry, tracking, control, and data services to and from Earth. Cognitive communications research conducted by SCaN aims to mitigate the increasing communication complexity for mission users by increasing the autonomy of links, networks, and service scheduling. By considering automation techniques including recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, cognitive algorithms and related approaches enable increased mission science return, improved resource utilization for service provider networks, and resiliency in unpredictable or unplanned environments. The Cognitive Communications Project at the NASA Glenn Research Center develops applications of data-driven, non-deterministic methods to improve the autonomy of space communication. The project emphasizes development of decentralized space networks with artificial intelligence agents optimizing communication link throughput, data routing, and system-wide asset management. This paper discusses the objectives, approaches, and opportunities of the research to address growing needs of the space communications community.
Using Automated Indices of Cohesion to Evaluate an Intelligent Tutoring System and an Automated Writing Evaluation System

We present an evaluation of the Writing Pal (W-Pal) intelligent tutoring system (ITS) and the W-Pal automated writing evaluation (AWE) system through the use ofcomputational indices related to text cohesion. Sixty-four students participated in this study. Each student was assigned to either the W-Pal ITS condition or the W-Pal AWE condition. The W-Pal ITS includes strategy instruction, game-based practice, and essay-based practice with automated feedback. In the ITS condition, students received strategy training and wrote and revised one essay in each of the 8 training sessions. In the AWE condition, students only interacted with the essay writing and feedback tools. These students wrote and revised two essays in each of the 8 sessions. Indices of local and global cohesion reported by the computational tools Coh-Metrix and the Writing Assessment Tool (WAT) were used to investigate pretest and posttest writing gains. For both the ITS and the AWE systems, training led to the increased use of global cohesion features in essay writing. This study demonstrates that automated indices of text cohesion can be used to evaluate the effects of ITSs and AWE systems and further demonstrates how text cohesion develops as a result of instruction, writing, and automated feedback.
Control charts for short runs: nonconstant process and measurement error

When the usual assumption of constant variances does not hold, the recommended substitute for a deviations from nominal (DNOM) chart is to chart standardized deviations. This has the added difficulty of estimating different standard deviations for each ..
The Role of Foreclosures in Determining Housing Capital Expenditures

This paper uses a novel dataset of capital expenditures on housing, to study how foreclosures affect capital expenditure investments in residential properties. Empirical analysis discovers that foreclosures negatively affect capital expenditure investment through the following channels: (1) individual homeowners reduce their capital expenditures when home prices fall and the likelihood of foreclosure increases; (2) lenders pursue a strategy of low investment in real estate owned (REO) inventories; (3) the reductions in capital expenditures generate a negative externality by creating a disincentive for other homeowners to spend on home improvements; and (4) a cluster of foreclosures further worsens the reduced investment situation. Purchasers of REO properties spend more on capital expenditures than those of non-REO properties in 1 year after sales.
Why Tax the Rich? Efficiency, Equity, and Progressive Taxation

In Greek mythology, Atlas was a giant who carried the world on his shoulders. In Ayn Rand's 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Atlas represents the "prime movers" -the talented few who bear the weight of the world's economy.' In the novel, the prime movers go on strike against the oppressive burden of excessive regulation and taxation, leaving the world in disarray and demonstrating how indispensable they are to the rest of us (the " second handers" ). Rand wrote in a world in which the top marginal federal income tax rate in the United States was 91 % (beginning at taxable income of $400,000).2 This is an unimaginably high rate by today's standards, when the dominant view in Washington is that a marginal rate of 39.6% (the top
Entrepreneurial Entry into Foreign Markets: A Transaction Cost Perspective

The best opportunity for growth is often overseas, even for smaller entrepreneurial firms. However, resource-constrained smaller firms do not have as many available entry strategies as do larger mu...
Buying Our Way Out of Corruption: Performance-Based Incentive Bonuses for Developing Country Politicians and Bureaucrats

This article argues for the establishment of performance-based financial incentive programs in developing countries that would pay politicians and high-level bureaucrats substantial bonuses (ten to twenty times or more of their official yearly salaries) to reduce corruption within their countries. These incentive programs would turn the weapon of greed back on itself by aligning the motivations of politicians and bureaucrats with the stated goals of government and the desires and will of citizens. Paying corrupt public officials to stop stealing may seem distasteful, but the problems that developing countries face and yet cannot overcome because of systemic corruption are staggering and have been largely resistant to other anticorruption strategies. By simply altering the source of funds to public servants, performance-based incentive programs for developing country politicians and high-level bureaucrats can, over the long run, create a culture of clean governance conducive to sustained economic growth and can make all aspects of development, such as improving infrastructure, education, and health care, more manageable.
Shoot to Kill: A Critical Look at Stand Your Ground Laws

This article takes a critical look at expanded self-defense laws, known as "Castle" or "Stand Your Ground" laws. It focuses on Florida because it passed the statute that has served as a model for other states. First, this article discusses the history and mechanics of Florida's Stand Your Ground law. Because special interest groups like the National Rifle Association were instrumental in passing the law, the next part contemplates whether Stand Your Ground would have been chosen by citizens operating behind the "veil of ignorance" in the hypothetical "original position" as formulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. Finally, the essay harnesses empirical data in considering whether states should continue to support Stand Your Ground laws.
Implementation of Childhood Obesity Identification and Prevention Strategies in Primary Care: A Quality Improvement Project

The high incidence and prevalence of childhood obesity, coupled with significant morbidity and financial burden, clearly suggest the need for identification and implementation of effective pediatric obesity prevention strategies in primary care. A solution to this problem includes evidence based clinical guidelines that provide concise, culturally appropriate information on the identification and prevention of childhood obesity in primary care settings. The objective of this quality improvement project was to implement childhood obesity identification and prevention guidelines from evidence-based recommendations into practice. Guidelines were implemented during preventative care visits through the use of a tracking form. The development of the tracking form included input from practice staff resulting in increased fidelity. The tracking form included directions for clear and concise guideline implementation and provided opportunities to record patient BMI, nutritional intake, physical activity, familial obesity prevention education and motivational interviewing and facilitated a practice increase in childhood obesity identification and education. Presence of chart indicators, including nutrition and exercise history, were analyzed to determine the fidelity of the practice change in obesity identification and prevention education. Key outcomes included a significant (p < .0001) practice increase in childhood obesity identification as well as a significant increase (p < .05) in documentation of obesity prevention education through motivational interviewing. Practice change incorporating childhood obesity identification and familial prevention guidelines had positive effects in a pediatric population. Implementation of evidence-based guidelines can result in increased identification of children at risk for childhood obesity and enhanced familial obesity prevention education; leading to the long-term goal of creating healthier lifestyles and decreasing risk factors in a vulnerable population.
Overlapping and Underlapping Jurisdiction in Administrative Law

Congress regularly enacts statutes that share government authority among many political institutions. This paper analyzes how administrative law does and should treat agency statutory interpretation in these overlapping and underlapping jurisdictional schemes. Shared jurisdiction statutes alter the incentives of administrative agencies, and can sometimes be effective tools for managing the principal-agent problems inherent in delegation. Unfortunately, judges regularly employ interpretive practices that undermine, rather than support these regimes. Particularly, in the context of Chevron doctrine - where problems of this sort arise most often - current judicial practices are in tension with the most sensible reconstruction of congressional intent.
Algorithmic adventures at the interface of computer science, statistical physics, and combinatorics (Extended abstract)

The challenge to solve worst-case intractable computational problems lies at the core of much of the work in the constraint programming community. The traditional approach in computer science towards hard computational tasks is to identify subclasses of problems with interesting, tractable structure. Linear programming and network flow problems are notable examples of such well structured classes. Propositional Horn theories are also a good example from the domain of logical inference. However, it has become clear that many real-world problem domains cannot be modeled adequately in such well-defined tractable formalisms. Instead richer, worst-case intractable formalisms are required. For example, planning problems can be captured in general propositional theories and related constraint formalisms and many hardware and software verification problems can similarly be reduced to Boolean satisfiability problems. Despite the use of such inherently worst-case intractable representations, ever larger real-world problem instances are now being solved quite effectively. Recent state-of-the-art satisfiability (SAT) and constraint solvers can handle hand-crafted instances with hundreds of thousands of variables and constraints. This strongly suggests that worst-case complexity is only part of the story. I will discuss how notions of typical case and average case complexity can lead to more refined insights into the study and design of algorithms for handling real-world computationally hard problems. We will see that such insights result from a cross-fertilization of ideas from different communities, in particular, statistical physics, computer science, and combinatorics. Work supported in part by the Intelligent Information Systems Institute at Cornell University sponsored by AFOSR (F49620-01-1-0076) and an NSF ITR grant (IIS-0312910).
Iterative techniques in optimization¿I. Dynamic programming and quasilinearization

The quasilinearization technique is used to overcome the dimensionality difficulties of dynamic programming. The approach is based on the fact that if the difference or differential equations are linear, their closed forms ofsolution can be obtained. This solution permits us to separate the effects due to the initial state from the effectsdue to the control variables. By using this separation combined with quasilinearization, the dimensionality of the functional equation of dynamic programming can be reduced to one in most cases. First, the optimization problem in cross-current extraction with discontinuous objectionfunction is used to illustrate the technique. Then the technique is generalized to systems of difference and differential equations with fairly general objective functions.
Earth And Moon Encounters By The Galileo Jupiter Orbiter

The Galileo Venus-Earth-Earth-Gravity-Assist trajectory to Jupiter is discussed. It includes two encounters from deep space with the Earth and the Earth-Moon system. Fortuitous and unique opportunities therefore exist to observe and study the Earth and Earth's moon during both of these encounters. Given the Galileo science payload, a candidate set of Earth and Moon science objectives is presented. The conditions and constraints of the Earth and Moon encounters, which define the observing opportunity, and which bound the objectives, are reviewed.
Risk and Return in Village Economies

This paper provides a theory-based empirical framework for understanding the risk and return on productive capital assets and their allocation across activities in an economy characterized by idiosyncratic and aggregate risk and thin formal markets for real and financial assets. We apply our framework to households running business enterprises in Thai villages with extensive networks, taking advantage of panel data: income, assets, consumption, gifts, and loans. We decompose risk and estimate the risk premia faced by households, distinguishing aggregate risk from idiosyncratic, potentially diversifiable risk. This distinction matters for estimating measures of underlying productivity and has important policy implications.
How Does Family Health Care Use Respond to Economic Shocks? Realized and Anticipated Effects

Using two-year panel data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) for 2004 to 2012, we examine how the intra-family allocation of health care spending responds to realized and anticipated changes in family economic status. We focus on the share of total family health care spending allocated to children, and measure realized economic shocks based on changes in the family’s income, employment, and health insurance status. We account for anticipated economic shocks through changes in macroeconomic indicators and time periods associated with the Great Recession. Using families as the unit of observation, we apply fractional response models with correlated random effects and two-part health expenditure models to assess how over a two-year period, family health care spending responds to economic shocks. Our findings indicate that income shocks to single-mother families result in an increase in the share of family health care spending consumed by children, while in two-parent families, economic shocks have little impact on the allocation of health spending between parents and children. Our findings for single-mother families are consistent with altruistic behavior by parents toward children.
The Causality of Foreign Direct Investment and Its Effects on Economic Growth: Re-estimated by a Directed Graph Approach

This paper uses the directed acyclic graph approach to analyze the causal patterns among foreign direct investment and other economic, social, and political variables, including GDP per capita as a proxy for economic growth. We find that economic growth causes FDI inflows for developing countries, while FDI induces economic growth for developed countries. Also, stock market is found to be an intermediary that amplifies the influence on FDI from many causal variables of FDI.
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometry

This chapter introduces some main definitions and the general aspects in NMR spectrometry, formulates the theoretical basis of NMR and physical principles for the observation of NMR signals, and illustrates the application of NMR for different studies in solutions and the solid state. The following topics are discussed: detection of NMR signals by the continuous-wave and Fourier transformation (FT) techniques, NMR equipments (magnets and probes), NMR spectral parameters (chemical shift, spin-spin coupling) and their physical origins, and nuclear relaxation and relaxation mechanisms in liquids and solids. The second part of the chapter concerns various spectroscopic NMR experiments in liquids and solids, including some specific aspects such as zero-field NMR spectroscopy, experiments with dynamic nuclear polarization and imaging NMR. Finally this chapter provides the literature for further reading. Keywords: spin-spin coupling; dynamic nuclear polarization; external magnetic field; ν0 irradiation; population difference
Color fields on the light-shell

We study the classical color radiation from very high energy collisions that produce colored particles. In the extreme high energy limit, the classical color fields are confined to a light-shell expanding at c and are associated with a non-linear σ-model on the 2D light-shell with specific symmetry breaking terms. We argue that the quantum version of this picture exhibits asymptotic freedom and may be a useful starting point for an effective light-shell theory of the structure between the jets at a very high energy collider.
Alternative Schools for Minority Students: The Constitution, The Civil Rights Act and The Berkeley Experiment

This law-student piece describes and analyzes an experimental educational program in the early 1970s in Berkeley, California, allowing Black and Hispanic students the option to attend separate public schools open only to members of each of these demographic groups. Despite the legal obstacles faced by such identity-based schooling, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and evolving constitutional arguments about education and race, the Comment identifies several justifications that support the experiment as a valuable but exceptional case.
A New Forward-Secure Digital Signature Scheme

We improve the Bellare-Miner (Crypto '99) construction of signature schemes with forward security in the random oracle model. Our scheme has significantly shorter keys and is, therefore, more practical. By using a direct proof technique not used for forward-secure schemes before, we are able to provide better security bounds for the original construction as well as for our scheme. Bellare and Miner also presented a method for constructing such schemes without the use of the random oracle. We conclude by proposing an improvement to their method and an additional, new method for accomplishing this.
Optimization over Zonotopes and Training Support Vector Machines

We make a connection between classical polytopes called zonotopes and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers. We combine this connection with the ellipsoid method to give some new theoretical results on training SVMs. We also describe some special properties of C-SVMs for C → ∞.
Cost effective software engineering for security

In this talk I will discuss our experience with one particular development methodology for security related software. I will describe the general principles it follows, the tools used, and the resources needed. Then I will offer some opinions on why this approach is effective and practical for achieving even moderate levels of security. When the goal is a very high level security, I will explain why I believe that at least the general principles, if not the specific details, are probably essential.
Federal Student Loan Repayment Assistance for Public Interest Lawyers and other Employees of Governments and Nonprofit Organizations

The problem of high monthly repayment obligations for educational debt has long plagued students, particularly graduate and professional students who desired lower-paying public interest careers. Congress has recently responded very positively. In the College Cost Reduction and Access Act (“CCRAA”), Congress has made it possible for high-debt, lower-income graduates to manage debt repayment through an “income-based repayment” plan. In addition, Congress has created a new program through which public servants—including all government workers and all employees of all nonprofit organizations that are taxexempt under § 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code—are entitled to have a substantial portion of their educational debt forgiven after
Discovering context: classifying tweets through a semantic transform based on wikipedia

By mapping messages into a large context, we can compute the distances between them, and then classify them. We test this conjecture on Twitter messages: Messages are mapped onto their most similar Wikipedia pages, and the distances between pages are used as a proxy for the distances between messages. This technique yields more accurate classification of a set of Twitter messages than alternative techniques using string edit distance and latent semantic analysis.
Assessing the Potential Benefit of Trade Facilitation: A Global Perspective

The relationships between trade facilitation, trade flows, and capacity building are complex and challenging to assess, both empirically and in implementation. The authors measure and estimate the relationship between trade facilitation and trade flows across 75 countries in global trade, considering four important categories: port efficiency, customs environment, regulatory environment, and service sector infrastructure. A gravity model is employed that accounts for bilateral trade flows in manufactured goods in 2000-01 between the 75 countries, using traditional factors such as GDP, distance, language, and trade areas, and is augmented by the trade facilitation measures in the four categories for each country. The results suggest that both imports and exports for a country and for the world will increase with improvements in these trade facilitation measures. Potential gains from trade facilitation reforms are predicted by using the estimated parameters. The gains from trade facilitation are presented by comparing the gains across geographical regions and trade facilitation categories, and by domestic and partner improvements. The total gain in trade flow in manufacturing goods from trade facilitation improvements in all the four areas is estimated to be $377 billion. All regions gain in imports and exports. Most regions gain more in terms of exports than imports, in large part through increasing exports to the OECD market. The most important ingredient in getting these gains, particularly to the OECD market, is the country's own trade facilitation efforts. The detailed presentation of the results of the analysis may help inform policy decisions and capacity building choices.
Formal JVM Code Analysis in JavaFAN

JavaFAN uses a Maude rewriting logic specification of the JVM semantics as the basis of a software analysis tool with competitive performance. It supports formal analysis of concurrent JVM programs by means of symbolic simulation, breadth-first search, and LTL model checking. We discuss JavaFAN’s executable formal specification of the JVM, illustrate its formal analysis capabilities using several case studies, and compare its performance with similar Java analysis tools.
Small-Group, Multi-Level Democracy: Implications of Austrian Public Choice for Governance Structure.

This paper examines the process of mass democracy as the fundamental cause of transfer seeking and the centralization of governance, using Austrian-school theory and methodology such as decentralized knowledge, disaggregated phenomena, and the structure of capital goods. The alternative of decentralized, small-group gov- ernance reduces the demand for campaign financing and makes more effective use of decentralized knowledge. In addition, when public revenues originate in the local districts and are passed on to higher levels of governance, it provides incentives for revenue sources which do not have an excess burden on production. The governance struc- ture of cellular, bottom-up, multi-level voting, with public revenue flowing up from the lower to the upper levels, provides a contrast for a comparative systems analysis that can yield insight into the transfer seeking endemic in mass democracy.
Dwyer's filtration and topology of 4-manifolds

Topological 4-dimensional surgery is conjectured to fail, in general, for free fundamental groups. M. Freedman and P. Teichner have shown that surgery problems with an arbitrary fundamental group have a solution, provided they satisfy a certain condition on Dwyer's filtration on second homology. We give a new geometric proof of this result, and analyze its relation to the canonical surgery problems.
Identity-Based Appeals: Explaining Changing Strategies of the Indigenous Movement in Bolivia

Current social movement literature does not adequately analyze how a movement’s strategies may change once a member or even leader of that movement assumes the country’s highest office. Movements, especially those in which identity plays a key role, gain the tool of identity-based appeals once their leader takes office, that is, claiming that the new leader should act favorably to the movement because of their common characteristics. Analysis of the Bolivian indigenous movement shows that since indigenous leader Evo Morales has assumed the presidency, the movement has used this tactic toward various audiences in response to Morales’ incomplete meeting of their policy demands. The movement first appealed directly to Morales, but has since shifted its focus to the public, attempting to increase agitation by emphasizing the contrast between Morales’ discourse and actions. This case shows that contrary to assumptions made in the ethnic parties literature, an ethnic leader will not necessarily favor his base uniformly once he takes office. Rather, the movement continues, but now with a different type of “target” - one which had previously been an ally.
H/sub /spl infin// filtering of two-time-scale systems

The singular perturbation approach to the analysis and design of two-time-scale systems is applied to the H/sub /spl infin// filtering problem. A sequential procedure is described to decompose the problem into slow and fast subproblems. In this procedure, a fast filter is designed first using the fast model; then a slow filter is designed under a condition on the value of the filter at infinity. A composite filter is formed as the parallel connection of the fast with the strictly proper part of the slow filter. The asymptotic validity of the composite filter is established.
Connectionist theory refinement: genetically searching the space of network topologies

An algorithm that learns from a set of examples should ideally be able to exploit the available resources of (a) abundant computing power and (b) domain-specific knowledge to improve its ability to generalize. Connectionist theory-refinement systems, which use background knowledge to select a neural network's topology and initial weights, have proven to be effective at exploiting domain-specific knowledge; however, most do not exploit available computing power. This weakness occurs because they lack the ability to refine the topology of the neural networks they produce, thereby limiting generalization, especially when given impoverished domain theories. We present the Regent algorithm which uses (a) domain-specific knowledge to help create an initial population of knowledge-based neural networks and (b) genetic operators of crossover and mutation (specifically designed for knowledge-based networks) to continually search for better network topologies. Experiments on three real-world domains indicate that our new algorithm is able to significantly increase generalization compared to a standard connectionist theory-refinement system, as well as our previous algorithm for growing knowledge-based networks.
Cases Relating to Chapter 3 – Burden of Proof

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the several case studies related to the burden of proof. The first case deals with “In re Winship.” The requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt has a vital role the criminal procedure for cogent reasons. The accused during a criminal prosecution has at stake interests of immense importance, both because of the possibility that he may lose his liberty upon conviction and because of the certainty that he would be stigmatized by the conviction. The other case presented in the chapter is of Victor versus Nebraska and State versus Eichelberger. The Victor case discusses several aspects of “reasonable doubt”. The Eichelberger versus State (Ohio) case discusses the evidence of an affirmative defense and preponderance of the evidence. The Ohio Code provides that every person accused of an offense is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and the burden of proof for all elements of the offense is upon the prosecution.
A process study of the biothermal conversion of water hyacinths to methane

A hybrid process employing both biological and thermochemical conversion of biomass to methane was studied. A unique high-moisture catalytic gasifier concept was used to gasify the effluent from an anaerobic digester. An ASPEN-PLUS/sup tm/ simulation of the process concept was based upon experimental data obtained from individual process components. An overall process efficiency of 78.1 to 94.1% was determined, depending upon the process configuration. Extensive use of heat and power recovery is required to achieve the high efficiencies reported for the process. 6 refs., 3 figs., 9 tabs.
Geppetto: Versatile Verifiable Computation

Cloud computing sparked interest in Verifiable Computation protocols, which allow a weak client to securely outsource computations to remote parties. Recent work has dramatically reduced the client's cost to verify the correctness of their results, but the overhead to produce proofs remains largely impractical. Geppetto introduces complementary techniques for reducing prover overhead and increasing prover flexibility. With Multi QAPs, Geppetto reduces the cost of sharing state between computations (e.g., For MapReduce) or within a single computation by up to two orders of magnitude. Via a careful choice of cryptographic primitives, Geppetto's instantiation of bounded proof bootstrapping improves on prior bootstrapped systems by up to five orders of magnitude, albeit at some cost in universality. Geppetto also efficiently verifies the correct execution of proprietary (i.e., Secret) algorithms. Finally, Geppetto's use of energy-saving circuits brings the prover's costs more in line with the program's actual (rather than worst-case) execution time. Geppetto is implemented in a full-fledged, scalable compiler and runtime that consume LLVM code generated from a variety of source C programs and cryptographic libraries.
Quantum Theory of Elementary Processes

In modern physics, one of the greatest divides is that between space–time and quantum fields, as the fiber bundle of the Standard Model indicates. However, on operational grounds the fields and space–time are not very different. To describe a field in an experimental region we have to assign coordinates to the points of that region in order to speak of “when” and “where” of the field itself. But to operationally study the topology and to coordinatize the region of space–time, the use of radars (to send and receive electromagnetic signals) is required. Thus the description of fields (or, rather, processes) and the description of space–time are indistinguishable at the fundamental level. Moreover, classical general relativity already says—albeit preserving the fiber bundle structure—that space–time and matter are intimately related. All this indicates that a new theory of elementary processes (out of which all the usual processes of creation, annihilation, and propagation, and consequently the topology of space–time itself would be constructed) has to be devised. In this review the foundations of such a finite, discrete, algebraic, quantum theory are summarized. The theory is then applied to the description of spin-1/2 quanta of the Standard Model.
Cross-Species Extrapolation†

The practice of cross-species extrapolation (CSE) in toxicology is a special case of comparative physiology in which experimental data collected in nonhumans are used to estimate or predict effects of toxicants in humans. Conceptually, data from nonhumans are adjusted to account for physiological differences between species and applied to humans. The components of the process are as follows: (a) adjust for differences in internal doses that result from differences in physiology due to body size and pharmacokinetic differences, (b) account for differences in the sensitivity of species due to physiological processes, and (c) make the adjustments in numerical terms with confidence limits. Steps (a) and (b) are usually done by applications of mathematical/mechanistic physiological models to the extent possible. Step (c) is sometimes done using mechanistic models and sometimes empirically. The state of practice and limitations are discussed. The practice is in early stages of development. Keywords: species extrapolation; comparative physiology/biology; quantitative extrapolation; mechanistic methods; empirical methods