cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Inter-American System of Human Rights: Challenges for the Future

The Inter-American system is a combination of human rights norms and supervisory institutions within the Americas. The institutions involved are the organs responsible for supervising compliance with the established rules: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the Commission) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the Court). The Commission and Court's case law have been significant in advancing the protection of fundamental rights and contributing to such protections throughout the different phases of the system's development. This article describes and analyzes three cases that illustrate the three phases of the Inter-American system's development, provide elements to better understand that system, and assist in analyzing and evaluating its future. More specifically, this article examines the cases of Velasquez Rodriguez v. Honduras (1988), analyzing mass and gross violations of human rights involving forced disappearances in the context of authoritarianism and dictatorships; Barrios Altos v. Peru (2001), addressing the legacy of dictatorships, particularly with regard to impunity; and Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni Community v. Nicaragua (2001), examining the rights of indigenous peoples, and in a broader sense, the status of vulnerable groups and the need to expand and strengthen democracy through their inclusion. The overall purpose of this article is to analyze the Inter-American system of human rights and identify key challenges for the future.
Optimal Mortgage Design

This article studies optimal mortgage design in a continuous-time setting with volatile and privately observable income, costly foreclosure, and a stochastic market interest rate. We show that the features of the optimal mortgage are consistent with an option adjustable-rate mortgage (option ARM). Under the optimal contract, the borrower is given discretion of how much to repay until his balance reaches a certain limit. The default rates and interest rate payment on the mortgage correlate positively with the market interest rate. Gains from using the optimal contract relative to simpler mortgages are the biggest for those who face more income variability, buy pricey houses given their income level, or make little or no down payment. Our model thus may help to explain a high concentration of option ARMs among riskier borrowers. (JEL G20, G21, G33)
Smoothness and the Value Relevance of Taxable Income

ABSTRACT: This study investigates whether the smoothness of estimated taxable income influences its value relevance. Contrary to research that finds that smoothness enhances the value relevance of book income, we find that smoothness reduces the value relevance of taxable income. We decompose the smoothness of taxable income into its innate and discretionary components and find that innate smoothness is not associated with the value relevance of taxable income. However, we find that discretionary smoothness is associated with a reduction in taxable income's value relevance, suggesting that discretionary smoothness either eliminates or reduces the information contained in taxable income. In additional analysis, we find that discretionary smoothness is also associated with higher levels of future tax avoidance, consistent with managers smoothing taxable income as part of their tax avoidance strategy. In combination, our results suggest that the reduced value relevance of estimated taxable income is a byprod...
The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success

Summary. — The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set targets that are implausible for a large number of countries. Many aid recipients will miss the goals, notwithstanding rapid progress by historical standards. Available estimates of the ‘‘cost’’ of the MDGs constitute necessary expenditures if the goals were to somehow be met, not expenditures that are sufficient for them to be met. Aid is on the rise; but when other necessary conditions fail to materialize, aid advocates who have claimed that more aid is sufficient may find aid blamed for false ‘‘failures,’’ undermining the constituency for sustained engagement with poor countries. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
How Many Times Do I Have to Tell You?! EPA's Ongoing Struggle with Data from Third-Party Pesticide Toxicity Studies Using Human Subjects

This article addresses EPA's current and historic policy struggle regarding the position the Agency should take with respect to pesticide toxicity studies done by third parties in their attempts to register pesticides. Chemical companies often conduct these studies, or seek third-parties to do so, and submit the results to EPA in support of applications for pesticide registration. Although EPA had a high level joint Science Advisory Board/FIFRA Science Advisory Panel make recommendations to it on this subject in 1999, last year EPA asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct additional, almost certainly duplicative review. Specifically, EPA has asked the NAS to review the complex scientific and ethical issues posed by EPA's possible use of third-party studies which intentionally dose human subjects with toxicants to identify or quantify their effects, essentially the same charge the EPA issued to the 1999 panel.
The political economy of “currency manipulation” bashing

Abstract In recent years, one of the most frequently debated issues in Congress has been the value of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) relative to the U.S. dollar. Many members of Congress often accuse China of being a “currency manipulator.” This paper has two objectives. First, it investigates the extent to which PAC contributions from key interest groups as well as constituent interests influence the frequency with which members of Congress criticize China's exchange rate policy, controlling for other factors. The results indicate that the odds that a congressman will call China a “currency manipulator” are 1.35 times higher for every $5000 in PAC contributions from groups that favor legislation against China. In addition, the results show that a one percentage point increase in the share of the congressional district labor force in manufacturing is associated with a 19.6% increase in the likelihood that the district's legislator will label China a “currency manipulator.” Second, this paper investigates the consequences that “currency manipulation” bashing may have on the rate at which the RMB appreciates against the U.S. dollar. The results for a VAR model indicate that an increase in the incidence of “currency manipulation” bashing appears to temporarily slow down, rather than accelerate, the rate at which the renminbi appreciates against the dollar. This result suggests that bashing China may actually be counterproductive.
First principles, fallibilism, and economics

In the eyes of its practitioners, economics is both a deductive science and an empirical science. The starting point of its deductions might be thought of as first principles. But what is the status of such principles? The tension between foundationalism, the idea that there are necessary and secure first principles for economic inquiry, and fallibilism, the idea that no belief can be certified as true beyond the possibility of doubt, is explored. Empirical disciplines require some sort of falsifiability. Yet, empirical inquiries also require a starting place—if not a necessarily true one, at least an indubitable one, that is, one that is not actually doubted. Indubitability appears to have necessary consequences, undercutting fallibilism, while fallibilism threatens confidence in the de facto first principles that begin inquiry. This tension is examined in three well-known attempts to define economics and its method: John Stuart Mill’s economics as the science of wealth, Lionel Robbins’s economics as constrained optimization; and George Stigler and Becker’s attempt to reformulate neoclassical economics to square empiricism with Robbins’ deductivism.
How Do Analyst Recommendations Respond to Major News

We examine how analysts respond to public information when setting stock recommendations. We model the determinants of analysts’ recommendation changes following large stock price movements. We find evidence of an asymmetry following large positive and negative returns. Following large stock price increases, analysts are equally likely to upgrade or downgrade. Following large stock price declines, analysts are more likely to downgrade. This asymmetry exists after accounting for investment banking relationships and herding behavior. This result suggests recommendation changes are “sticky” in one direction, with analysts reluctant to downgrade. Moreover, this result implies that analysts’ optimistic bias may vary through time.
Indexing a Bond's Call Price: An Analysis of Make-Whole Call Provisions

Abstract We analyze a new form of call provision known as a “make-whole” call, which utilizes a floating call price based on the level of current interest rates. As rates drop (rise), the call price increases (decreases.) Usually, a floor at par sets a minimum call price. This provision effectively eliminates the reinvestment rate risk associated with bonds with fixed-price call provisions. Survey results indicate a majority of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) believe make-whole call provisions are “costless.” Analysis of 318 recent, make-whole call bonds indicates that this provision is indeed priced. On average, the at-issue yield-to-maturity of a make-whole call bond is 11.2 basis points higher than the yield of a comparable straight bond.
American Indian Tribal Governance and Management: Public Administration Promise or Pretense?

Research on tribal governance in the United States is scarce within modern public administration scholarship. Nonetheless, tribal governance is a pre-Columbian practice that predates the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Drawing from several disciplines, John C. Ronquillo of the University of Georgia demonstrates that interdisciplinary sources offer rich information for present-day public administration research about Native American tribes. Tribal governance literature is definitely not “missing,” but instead is moderately “unassembled” as a subfield of public administration. Building on what is available, the author suggests several key issues within tribal governance in need of urgent academic attention.
Beyond Reasonable Accommodation: The Availability and Structure of a Cause of Action for Workplace Harassment under the Americans with Disabilities Act

This Article addresses the basis for a cause of action under the ADA arising from workplace harassment, and sets forth a structure for ADA harassment claims. The structure suggested is a modified form of the "hostile work environment" cause of action. Significantly, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued Proposed Guidelines defining when harassment against several pro-tected classes, including disabled individuals, violates federal discrimination laws; those Guidelines also utilize the concept of hostile work environment. Thus, the existence of a cause of action for hostile work environment under the ADA has been acknowledged.
Is Default Risk Negatively Related to Stock Returns

We find a positive cross-sectional relationship between expected stock returns and default risk, contrary to the negative relationship estimated by prior studies. Whereas prior studies use noisy ex post realized returns to estimate expected returns, we use ex ante estimates based on the implied cost of capital. The results suggest that investors expected higher returns for bearing default risk, but they were negatively surprised by lower-than-expected returns on high default risk stocks in the 1980s. We also extend the sample compared with prior studies and find that the evidence based on realized returns is considerably weaker in the 1952--1980 period. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.
Classification, Koszulity and Artin–Schelter regularity of certain graded twisted tensor products

Let $\mathbb{k}$ be an algebraically closed field. We classify all of the quadratic twisted tensor products $A \otimes_{\tau} B$ in the cases where $(A, B) = (\mathbb{k}[x], \mathbb{k}[y])$ and $(A, B) = (\mathbb{k}[x, y], \mathbb{k}[z])$. We determine when a quadratic twisted tensor product of this form is Koszul, and when it is Artin-Schelter regular.
Cultural Diversity of Audit Committees and Firms' Financial Reporting Quality

We examine the effect of audit committees’ cultural diversity, as measured through ancestral cultural diversity of audit committee members, on firms’ financial reporting quality. We find that audit committee cultural diversity is associated with a lower likelihood of financial accounting restatements. Our results are driven by firms operating in more complex environments, which suggests that audit committee cultural diversity may be particularly important when the firm is inherently complex. We also find that cultural diversity is associated with a lower likelihood of restatements for companies with more powerful CEOs, suggesting that more culturally diverse audit committees are more effective in restraining CEO accounting opportunism. Additionally, we document that audit committee cultural diversity is associated with an array of other measures of higher reporting quality. Our study thus highlights the importance of cultural diversity in audit committee effectiveness.
MALCOM: Generating Malicious Comments to Attack Neural Fake News Detection Models

In recent years, the proliferation of so-called “fake news” has caused much disruptions in society and weakened the news ecosystem. Therefore, to mitigate such problems, researchers have developed state-of-the-art (SOTA) models to autodetect fake news on social media using sophisticated data science and machine learning techniques. In this work, then, we ask “what if adversaries attempt to attack such detection models?” and investigate related issues by (i) proposing a novel attack scenario against fake news detectors, in which adversaries can post malicious comments toward news articles to mislead SOTA fake news detectors, and (ii) developing Malcom, an end-to-end adversarial comment generation framework to achieve such an attack. Through a comprehensive evaluation, we demonstrate that about 94% and 93.5% of the time on average Malcom can successfully mislead five of the latest neural detection models to always output targeted real and fake news labels. Furthermore, Malcom can also fool black box fake news detectors to always output real news labels 90% of the time on average. We also compare our attack model with four baselines across two real-world datasets, not only on attack performance but also on generated quality, coherency, transferability, and robustness. We release the source code of Malcom at https://github.com/lethaiq/MALCOM1.
A Census of Blue Stragglers in Gaia DR2 Open Clusters as a Test of Population Synthesis and Mass Transfer Physics

We use photometry and proper motions from Gaia DR2 to determine the blue straggler star (BSS) populations of 16 old (1-10 Gyr), nearby ($d< 3500$ pc) open clusters. We find that the fractional number of BSS compared to RGB stars increases with age, starting near zero at 1 Gyr and flattening to $\sim 0.35$ by 4 Gyr. Fitting stellar evolutionary tracks to these BSS, we find that their mass distribution peaks at a few tenths of a solar mass above the main-sequence turnoff. BSS more than 0.5 $M_\odot$ above the turnoff make up only $\sim25$\% of the sample, and BSS more than 1.0 $M_\odot$ above the turnoff are rare. We compare this to population synthesis models of BSS formed via mass transfer using the Compact Object Synthesis and Monte Carlo Investigation Code (COSMIC). We find that standard population synthesis assumptions dramatically under-produce the number of BSS in old open clusters. We also find that these models overproduce high mass BSS relative to lower mass BSS. Expected numbers of BSS formed through dynamics do not fully account for this discrepancy. We conclude that in order to explain the observed BSS populations from Roche lobe overflow, mass-transfer from giant donors must be more stable than assumed in canonical mass-transfer prescriptions, and including non-conservative mass transfer is important in producing realistic BSS masses. Even with these modifications, it is difficult to achieve the large number of BSS observed in the oldest open clusters. We discuss some additional physics that may explain the large number of observed blue stragglers among old stellar populations.
FedAR: Activity and Resource-Aware Federated Learning Model for Distributed Mobile Robots

Smartphones, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet-of-things (IoT) devices are considered the primary data source for a distributed network. Due to a revolutionary breakthrough in internet availability and continuous improvement of the IoT devices capabilities, it is desirable to store data locally and perform computation at the edge, as opposed to share all local information with a centralized computation agent. A recently proposed Machine Learning (ML) algorithm called Federated Learning (FL) paves the path towards preserving data privacy, performing distributed learning, and reducing communication overhead in large-scale machine learning (ML) problems. This paper proposes an FL model by monitoring client activities and leveraging available local computing resources, particularly for resource-constrained IoT devices (e.g., mobile robots), to accelerate the learning process. We assign a trust score to each FL client, which is updated based on the client’s activities. We consider a distributed mobile robot as an FL client with resource limitations either in memory, bandwidth, processor, or battery life. We consider such mobile robots as FL clients to understand their resource-constrained behavior in a real-world setting. We consider an FL client to be untrustworthy if the client infuses incorrect models or repeatedly gives slow responses during the FL process. After disregarding the ineffective and unreliable client, we perform local training on the selected FL clients. To further reduce the straggler issue, we enable an asynchronous FL mechanism by performing aggregation on the FL server without waiting for a long period to receive a particular client’s response.
Using Loan Loss Indicators by Loan Type to Sharpen the Evaluation of Banks' Loan Loss Accruals

We provide evidence that the determinants of the primary loan loss indicators reported in financial reports — non-performing loans, the allowance and provision for loan losses, and net loan charge-offs — vary dramatically across real estate, commercial, and consumer loans, because these loan types differ in their homogeneity and collateralization and thus in the measurement of incurred losses under GAAP. Extending Wahlen (1994), we develop and estimate models of the non-discretionary and discretionary determinants of these loan loss indicators by loan type. The estimations indicate that banks’ exercise of discretion over provisions for loan losses is largely limited to heterogeneous commercial loans, a small slice of banks’ loan portfolios, and they provide many insights into the bank-specific and macroeconomic drivers of banks’ loan loss accruals. To demonstrate the increased statistical power and construct validity that results from conducting research on banks’ loan loss accruals by loan type, we show that this approach significantly improves the accuracy of out-of-sample predictions of future net loan charge-offs, more so for samples of banks whose loan portfolio composition varies more from that of the average bank. Our results illustrate the usefulness of disaggregated disclosures of loan loss indicators by loan type for future accounting research.
GPU Parallelization of Policy Iteration RRT

Sampling-based planning has become a de facto standard for complex robots given its superior ability to rapidly explore high-dimensional configuration spaces. Most existing optimal sampling-based planning algorithms are sequential in nature and cannot take advantage of wide parallelism available on modern computer hardware. Further, tight synchronization of exploration and exploitation phases in these algorithms limits sample throughput and planner performance. Policy Iteration RRT# (PI-RRT#) exposes fine-grained parallelism during the exploitation phase, but this parallelism has not yet been evaluated using a concrete implementation. We first present a novel GPU implementation of PI-RRT#’s exploitation phase and discuss data structure considerations to maximize parallel performance. Our implementation achieves 3–4× speedup over a serial PI-RRT# implementation for a 77.9% decrease in overall planning time on average. As a second contribution, we introduce the Batched-Extension RRT# algorithm, which loosens the synchronization present in PI-RRT# to realize independent 12.97× and 12.54× speedups under serial and parallel exploitation, respectively.
Video-Based Hierarchical Species Classification for Longline Fishing Monitoring

The goal of electronic monitoring (EM) of longline fishing is to monitor the fish catching activities on fishing vessels, either for the regulatory compliance or catch counting. Hierarchical classification based on videos allows for inexpensive and efficient fish species identification of catches from longline fishing, where fishes are under severe deformation and self-occlusion during the catching process. More importantly, the flexibility of hierarchical classification mitigates the laborious efforts of human reviews by providing confidence scores in different hierarchical levels. Some related works either use cascaded models for hierarchical classification or make predictions per image or predict one overlapping hierarchical data structure of the dataset in advance. However, with a known non-overlapping hierarchical data structure provided by fisheries scientists, our method enforces the hierarchical data structure and introduces an efficient training and inference strategy for video-based fisheries data. Our experiments show that the proposed method outperforms the classic flat classification system significantly and our ablation study justifies our contributions in CNN model design, training strategy, and the video-based inference schemes for the hierarchical fish species classification task.
An intriguing characteristic of enhancer-promoter interactions

It is still challenging to predict interacting enhancer-promoter pairs (IEPs), partially because of our limited understanding of their characteristics. To understand IEPs better, here we studied the IEPs in nine cell lines and nine primary cell types. By measuring the bipartite clustering coefficient of the graphs constructed from these experimentally supported IEPs, we observed that one enhancer is likely to interact with either none or all of the target genes of another enhancer. This observation implies that enhancers form clusters, and every enhancer in the same cluster synchronously interact with almost every member of a set of genes and only this set of genes. We perceived that an enhancer can be up to two megabase pairs away from other enhancers in the same cluster. We also noticed that although a fraction of these clusters of enhancers do overlap with super-enhancers, the majority of the enhancer clusters are different from the known super-enhancers. Our study showed a new characteristic of IEPs, which may shed new light on distal gene regulation and the identification of IEPs.
Protein sequence optimization with a pairwise decomposable penalty for buried unsatisfied hydrogen bonds.

In aqueous solution, polar groups make hydrogen bonds with water, and hence burial of such groups in the interior of a protein is unfavorable unless the loss of hydrogen bonds with water is compensated by formation of new ones with other protein groups. For this reason, buried “unsatisfied” polar groups making no hydrogen bonds are very rare in proteins. Efficiently representing the energetic cost of unsatisfied hydrogen bonds with a pairwise-decomposable energy term during protein design is challenging since whether or not a group is satisfied depends on all of its neighbors. Here we describe a method for assigning a pairwise-decomposable energy to sidechain rotamers such that following combinatorial sidechain packing, buried unsaturated polar atoms are penalized. The penalty can be any quadratic function of the number of unsatisfied polar groups, and can be computed very rapidly. We show that inclusion of this term in Rosetta sidechain packing calculations substantially reduces the number of buried unsatisfied polar groups.
Thinking out of the box: management of valproic acid toxicity with carbapenems.

Valproic acid (VPA) is commonly used medication to treat seizure disorder and as prophylaxis for bipolar disorder. Acute VPA toxicity can cause varied symptoms ranging from mild drowsiness to severe cerebral oedema and coma. The therapeutic level of VPA is around 50–100 µg/mL and most of it is protein bound. It is mainly metabolised by liver and is eliminated via bile. The metabolites of VPA interfere with urea cycle and cause deficiency in carnitine leading to increase in ammonia levels. The use of carnitine to treat VPA toxicity is well known but it is still unclear if it lowers VPA levels. We report a case of VPA toxicity that did not respond to use of carnitine at 6000 mg orally but was successfully treated using meropenem leading to lowering of VPA levels and also clinical improvement of patient.
Packing anchored rectangles

Let S be a set of n points in the unit square [0,1]2, one of which is the origin. We construct n pairwise interior-disjoint axis-aligned empty rectangles such that the lower left corner of each rectangle is a point in S, and the rectangles jointly cover at least a positive constant area (about 0.09). This is a first step towards the solution of a longstanding conjecture that the rectangles in such a packing can jointly cover an area of at least 1/2.
On Algorithm Design for Metrical Task Systems

We extend the definition of Metrical Task Systems, introduced by Borodin et al. in [4]. In the extended definition, a system is described by the underlying metric space of states ${\cal M}$ as well as a set of allowable tasks ${\cal T}$ . Any request to an algorithm must be a member of ${\cal T}$ . The extension makes the model powerful enough to characterize completely many important on-line problems. We consider methods of designing competitive algorithms given the description of a system $\langle {\cal M}, {\cal T} \rangle$ . In particular, we show that it is PSPACE-hard to determine the behavior of a $c({\cal M},{\cal T})$ -competitive algorithm, where $c({\cal M},{\cal T})$ is the best possible competitive ratio on $\langle {\cal M},{\cal T} \rangle$ . In addition, we show a simple, polynomial-time algorithm for task systems $\langle {\cal U}_n,{\cal T} \rangle$ (where ${\cal U}_n$ is the uniform metric space on n nodes) that achieves a competitive ratio of $O( \log n \cdot c({\cal M},{\cal T}))$ .
Two-player pebbling on diameter 2 graphs

A pebbling move refers to the act of removing two pebbles from one vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. The goal of graph pebbling is: Given an initial distribution of pebbles, use pebbling moves to reach a specified goal vertex called the root. The pebbling number of a graph $$\pi (G)$$ is the minimum number of pebbles needed so every distribution of $$\pi (G)$$ pebbles can reach every choice of the root. We introduce a new variant of graph pebbling, a game between two players. One player aims to move a pebble to the root and the other player aims to prevent this. We show configurations of various classes of graphs for which each player has a winning strategy. We will characterize the winning player for a specific class of diameter two graphs.
Breaking the Cycle: Women's Perceptions of the Causes of Violence and Crime in Informal Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, and Their Strategies for Response and Prevention.

Crime and violence are serious issues in informal settlements around the world. To date, there is a dearth of evidence about the causes of and effective strategies for reducing and preventing viole...
ResNeXt and Res2Net Structures for Speaker Verification

The ResNet-based architecture has been widely adopted to extract speaker embeddings for text-independent speaker verification systems. By introducing the residual connections to the CNN and standardizing the residual blocks, the ResNet structure is capable of training deep networks to achieve highly competitive recognition performance. However, when the input feature space becomes more complicated, simply increasing the depth and width 1 of the ResNet network may not fully realize its performance potential. In this paper, we present two extensions of the ResNet architecture, ResNeXt and Res2Net, for speaker verification. Originally proposed for image recognition, the ResNeXt and Res2Net introduce two more dimensions, cardinality and scale, in addition to depth and width, to improve the model’s representation capacity. By increasing the scale dimension, the Res2Net model can represent multi-scale features with various granularities, which particularly facilitates speaker verification for short utterances. We evaluate our proposed systems on three speaker verification tasks. Experiments on the VoxCeleb test set demonstrated that the ResNeXt and Res2Net can significantly outperform the conventional ResNet model. The Res2Net model achieved superior performance by reducing the EER by 18.5% relative. Experiments on the other two internal test sets of mismatched conditions further confirmed the generalization of the ResNeXt and Res2Net architectures against noisy environment and segment length variations.
Panel Discussion on the Classification and Terminology of Stellar Populations

It was the feeling of the Scientific Organizing Committee that 50 years after the introduction of the concept of stellar populations it might be desirable to attempt to rationalize their classification and terminology/Toward this end a panel discussion was organized, which was followed by a period of audience participation. Although not all those who contributed to the latter section turned in a written version of their remarks, that section is reported as well as possible here.
A New Philosophy For Financial Stability Regulation

The financial crisis of 2007–2008 revealed many inadequacies in the pre-crisis approach to financial stability regulation. In the United States, Congress responded by enacting the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Act calls for government agencies to make numerous rules regulating activities that have the potential to harm financial stability, but there has been no real effort to rethink how these rules should be assessed. The cost-benefit analysis standard used to evaluate financial stability regulation prior to the crisis persists today, and both the courts and Congress have sought to further entrench that standard. However, cost-benefit analysis gives too much primacy to the short-term interests of the financial industry and too little to financial stability. This Article therefore rejects strict costbenefit analysis and develops a substitute precautionary standard for assessing financial stability regulation, drawing analogies from the literature on the use of the precautionary principle in regulating complex environmental systems. A precautionary approach is more responsive than strict cost-benefit analysis to the complexity and fragility of the financial system, directing financial regulators to err on the side of caution and to prioritize the stability of the financial system over the short-term profitability of the financial sector. This Article also considers a practical framework for precautionary review of innovative financial products as a concrete illustration of how the precautionary approach might be operationalized. The key practical implication of such an approach is that it will shift the regulatory burden to the financial industry to demonstrate why regulation of a new product is unnecessary. As this Article demonstrates, this burden-shifting entails many benefits, including
Reactions with a 10Be beam to study the one-neutron halo nucleus 11Be

Halo nuclei are excellent examples of few-body systems consisting of a core and weakly-bound halo nucleons. Where there is only one nucleon in the halo, as in 11 Be, the many-body problem can be reduced to a two-body problem. The contribution of the 1s 1/2 orbital to the ground state configuration in 11 Be, characterized by the spectroscopic factor, S , has been extracted from direct reaction data by many groups over the past five decades with discrepant results. An experiment was performed at the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility using a 10 Be primary beam at four different energies with the goal of resolving the discrepancy through a consistent analysis of elastic, inelastic, and transfer channels. Faddeev-type calculations, released after the publication of the experimental results, show that dynamic core excitation in the transfer process can lead to reduced differential cross sections at higher beam energies. This reduction would lead to the extraction of decreasing values of S with increasing beam energy. A 10 Be(d,p) measurement at E d greater than 25 MeV is necessary to investigate the effects of core excitation in the reaction.
Guest Worker Programs Are No Fix For Our Broken Immigration System: Evidence from the Northern Mariana Islands

The creation of a large-scale unskilled guest worker program has been a prominent element of comprehensive immigration reform proposals in recent years. This year it was featured as one of the “four pillars” of a reform framework endorsed by the Obama Administration. The principal ills that are cited as justifying immigration reform include the deterioration of border security, the violence associated with human smuggling, and the widespread mistreatment of unauthorized immigrants. Many believe that a large-scale guest worker program will help to resolve these problems by providing a lawful channel to divert the flow of unauthorized workers. This article argues that such faith defies the evidence. Namely, a guest worker program will not quell the flow of unauthorized workers or secure the border, and will inevitably be accompanied by exploitation and abuse of guest workers, among other problems, even if it includes greater worker protections than existing programs. This article reaches these conclusions by examining past and present federal unskilled guest worker programs, as well as the guest worker program run by the Northern Mariana Islands, a Commonwealth of the United States. The Northern Marianas’ guest worker program had in place many of the worker safeguards proposed by recent reform bills, and yet it, like all federal programs to date, contributed to widespread worker exploitation, depressed wages, predatory employment practices, a tremendous backlog of labor cases, and a high incidence of human trafficking. The Northern Marianas’ example illustrates that even a “worker friendly” guest worker program will not solve the ills associated with unauthorized immigration, but, rather, will serve to perpetuate them with the aid of state apparatus.
Rationality of equivariant Hilbert series and asymptotic properties

An FI- or an OI-module $\mathbf{M}$ over a corresponding noetherian polynomial algebra $\mathbf{P}$ may be thought of as a sequence of compatible modules $\mathbf{M}_n$ over a polynomial ring $\mathbf{P}_n$ whose number of variables depends linearly on $n$. In order to study invariants of the modules $\mathbf{M}_n$ in dependence of $n$, an equivariant Hilbert series is introduced if $\mathbf{M}$ is graded. If $\mathbf{M}$ is also finitely generated, it is shown that this series is a rational function. Moreover, if this function is written in reduced form rather precise information about the irreducible factors of the denominator is obtained. This is key for applications. It follows that the Krull dimension of the modules $\mathbf{M}_n$ grows eventually linearly in $n$, whereas the multiplicity of $\mathbf{M}_n$ grows eventually exponentially in $n$. Moreover, for any fixed degree $j$, the vector space dimensions of the degree $j$ components of $\mathbf{M}_n$ grow eventually polynomially in $n$. As a consequence, any graded Betti number of $\mathbf{M}_n$ in a fixed homological degree and a fixed internal degree grows eventually polynomially in $n$. Furthermore, evidence is obtained to support a conjecture that the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity and the projective dimension of $\mathbf{M}_n$ both grow eventually linearly in $n$. It is also shown that modules $\mathbf{M}$ whose width $n$ components $\mathbf{M}_n$ are eventually Artinian can be characterized by their equivariant Hilbert series. Using regular languages and finite automata, an algorithm for computing equivariant Hilbert series is presented.
Nonstationarity Analysis of Materials Microstructures via Fisher Score Vectors

Abstract Microstructures are critical to the physical properties of materials. Stochastic microstructures are commonly observed in many kinds of materials (e.g., composite polymers, multiphase alloys, ceramics, etc.) and traditional descriptor-based image analysis of them can be challenging. In this paper, we introduce a powerful and versatile score-based framework for analyzing nonstationarity in stochastic materials microstructures. The framework involves training a parametric supervised learning model to predict a pixel value using neighboring pixels in images of microstructures (as known as micrographs), and this predictive model provides an implicit characterization of the stochastic nature of the microstructure. The basis for our approach is the Fisher score vector, defined as the gradient of the log-likelihood with respect to the parameters of the predictive model, at each micrograph pixel. A fundamental property of the score vector is that it is zero-mean if the predictive relationship in the vicinity of that pixel remains unchanged, which we equate with the local stochastic nature of the microstructure remaining unchanged. Conversely, if the local stochastic nature changes, then the mean of the score vector generally differs from zero. In light of this, our framework analyzes how the local mean of the score vector varies across one or more image samples to: (1) monitor for nonstationarity by indicating whether new samples are statistically different than reference samples and where they may differ and (2) diagnose nonstationarity by identifying the distinct types of stochastic microstructures that are present over a set of samples and labeling accordingly the corresponding regions of the samples. Unlike feature-based methods, our approach is almost completely general and requires no prior knowledge of the nature of the nonstationarities or the microstructure itself. Using a number of real and simulated micrographs, including polymer composites and multiphase alloys, we demonstrate the power and versatility of the approach.
What Matters In On-Policy Reinforcement Learning? A Large-Scale Empirical Study

In recent years, on-policy reinforcement learning (RL) has been successfully applied to many different continuous control tasks. While RL algorithms are often conceptually simple, their state-of-the-art implementations take numerous low- and high-level design decisions that strongly affect the performance of the resulting agents. Those choices are usually not extensively discussed in the literature, leading to discrepancy between published descriptions of algorithms and their implementations. This makes it hard to attribute progress in RL and slows down overall progress [Engstrom'20]. As a step towards filling that gap, we implement >50 such ``choices'' in a unified on-policy RL framework, allowing us to investigate their impact in a large-scale empirical study. We train over 250'000 agents in five continuous control environments of different complexity and provide insights and practical recommendations for on-policy training of RL agents.
3D Placement and Orientation of mmWave-Based UAVs for Guaranteed LoS Coverage

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as aerial base stations, are a promising solution for providing wireless communications, thanks to their high flexibility and autonomy. Moreover, emerging services, such as extended reality, require high-capacity communications. To achieve this, millimeter wave (mmWave), and recently, terahertz bands have been considered for UAV communications. However, communication at these high frequencies requires a line-of-sight (LoS) to the terminals, which may be located in 3D space and may have extremely limited direct-line-of-view (LoV) due to blocking objects, like buildings and trees. In this letter, we investigate the problem of determining 3D placement and orientation of UAVs such that users have guaranteed LoS coverage by at least one UAV and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) between the UAV-user pairs are maximized. We formulate the problem as an integer linear programming(ILP) problem and prove its NP-hardness. Next, we propose a low-complexity geometry-based greedy algorithm to solve the problem efficiently. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm (almost) always guarantees LoS coverage to all users in all considered simulation settings.
Complexity, Exactness, and Rationality in Polynomial Optimization

We focus on rational solutions or nearly-feasible rational solutions that serve as certificates of feasibility for polynomial optimization problems. We show that, under some separability conditions, certain cubic polynomially constrained sets admit rational solutions. However, we show in other cases that it is NP Hard to detect if rational solutions exist or if they exist of any reasonable size. Lastly, we show that in fixed dimension, the feasibility problem over a set defined by polynomial inequalities is in NP.
A Cosmological Basis for E = mc 2

The Universe has a gravitational horizon with a radius R_h=c/H coincident with that of the Hubble sphere. This surface separates null geodesics approaching us from those receding, and as free-falling observers within the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker spacetime, we see it retreating at proper speed c, giving rise to the eponymously named cosmological model R_h=ct. As of today, this cosmology has passed over 20 observational tests, often better than LCDM. The gravitational radius R_h therefore appears to be highly relevant to cosmological theory, and in this paper we begin to explore its impact on fundamental physics. We calculate the binding energy of a mass m within the horizon and demonstrate that it is equal to mc2. This energy is stored when the particle is at rest near the observer, transitioning to a purely kinetic form equal to the particle's escape energy when it approaches R_h. In other words, a particle's gravitational coupling to that portion of the Universe with which it is causally connected appears to be the origin of rest-mass energy.
Bisognano–Wichmann Property for Rigid Categorical Extensions and Non-local Extensions of Conformal Nets

Given an (irreducible) Mobius covariant net $${\mathcal {A}}$$ , we prove a Bisognano–Wichmann theorem for its categorical extension $${\mathscr {E}}^{\mathrm d}$$ associated with the braided $$C^*$$ -tensor category $$\mathrm {Rep}^{\mathrm d}({\mathcal {A}})$$ of dualizable (more precisely, “dualized”) Mobius covariant $${\mathcal {A}}$$ -modules. As a closely related result, we prove a (modified) Bisognano–Wichmann theorem for any (possibly) non-local extension of $${\mathcal {A}}$$ obtained by a $$C^*$$ -Frobenius algebra Q in $$\mathrm {Rep}^{\mathrm d}({\mathcal {A}})$$ . As an application, we discuss the relation between the domains of modular operators and the preclosedness of certain unbounded operators in $${\mathscr {E}}^{\mathrm d}$$ .
Exploratory flutter test in a cryogenic wind tunnel

A model consisting of a rigid wing with an integral, flexible beam support that was cantilever mounted from the wall in the NASA LaRC 0.3-m transonic cryogenic tunnel was used in a flutter analysis study. The wing had a rectangular planform of aspect ratio 1.5 and a 64A010 airfoil. Various considerations and procedures for conducting flutter tests in a cryogenic wind tunnel were evaluated. Flutter onset conditions were established from extrapolated subcritical response measurements. A flutter boundary was determined at cryogenic temperatures over a Mach number M range from 0.5 to 0.9. Flutter was obtained at two different Reynolds numbers R at M = 0.5 (R = 4.4 and 18.4 x 10 to the 6th power) and at M = 0.8 (R = 5.0 and 10.4 x 10 to the 6th power). Flutter analyses using subsonic lifting surface (kernel function) aerodynamics were made over the range of test conditions. To evaluate the Reynolds number effects at M = 0.5 and 0.8, the experimental results were adjusted using analytical trends to account for differences in the model test temperatures and mass ratios. The adjusted experimental results indicate that increasing Reynolds number from 5.0 to 20.0 x 10 to the 6th power decreased the dynamic pressure by 4.0 to 6.5 percent at M = 0.5 and 0.8.
KIM-1-mediated anti-inflammatory activity is preserved by MUC1 induction in the proximal tubule during ischemia-reperfusion injury

Cell-associated kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1) exerts an anti-inflammatory role following kidney injury by mediating efferocytosis and downregulating the NF-κB pathway. KIM-1 cleavage blunts its anti-inflammatory activities. We reported that mucin 1 (MUC1) is protective in a mouse model of ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI). As both KIM-1 and MUC1 are induced in the proximal tubule (PT) during IRI and are a disintegrin and metalloprotease 17 (ADAM17) substrates, we tested the hypothesis that MUC1 protects KIM-1 activity. Muc1 knockout (KO) mice and wild-type (WT) littermates were subjected to IRI. KIM-1, MUC1, and ADAM17 levels (and signaling pathways) were assessed by immunoblot analysis. PT localization was assessed by confocal microscopy and an in situ proximity ligation assay. Findings were extended using human kidneys and urine as well as KIM-1-mediated efferocytosis assays in mouse PT cultures. In response to tubular injury in mouse and human kidneys, we observed induction and coexpression of KIM-1 and MUC1 in the PT. Compared with WT mice, Muc1 KO mice had higher urinary KIM-1 and lower kidney KIM-1. KIM-1 was apical in the PT of WT kidneys but predominately with luminal debris in Muc1 KO mice. Efferocytosis was reduced in Muc1 KO PT cultures compared with WT cultures, whereas inflammation was increased in Muc1 KO kidneys compared with WT kidneys. MUC1 was cleaved by ADAM17 in PT cultures and blocked KIM-1 shedding in Madin-Darby canine kidney cells. We conclude that KIM-1-mediated efferocytosis and thus anti-inflammatory activity during IRI is preserved in the injured kidney by MUC1 inhibition of KIM-1 shedding.NEW & NOTEWORTHY KIM-1 plays a key role in the recovery of the tubule epithelium during renal IRI by mediating efferocytosis and associated signaling that suppresses inflammation. Excessive cleavage of KIM-1 by ADAM17 provides a decoy receptor that aggravates efferocytosis and subsequent signaling. Our data from experiments in mice, patients, and cultured cells show that MUC1 is also induced during IRI and competes with KIM-1 for cleavage by ADAM17. Consequently, MUC1 protects KIM-1 anti-inflammatory activity in the damaged kidney.