cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary Stability in Games of Communication

Abstract This paper identifies evolutionarily stable outcomes in games in which one player has private information and the other takes a payoff-relevant action. The informed player can communicate at little cost. Outcomes satisfying a set-valued evolutionary stability condition must exist and be efficient in common-interest games. When there is a small cost associated with using each message the outcome preferred by the informed player is stable. The paper introduces a nonequilibrium, set-valued stability notion of entry resistant sets. For games with partial common interest, the no-communication outcome is never an element of an entry resistant set. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72,D82.
Using Experiments to Compare the Predictive Power of Models of Multilateral Negotiations

Abstract We conduct unstructured negotiations in a laboratory experiment designed to empirically assess the predictive power of models of the multilateral negotiations observed in diverse strategic settings. For concreteness we consider two sellers negotiating with a buyer who wants to make only one trade, and we categorize the models by whether introducing a second seller to bilateral negotiations always, never, or sometimes increases the buyer's payoff. Our experiment features two scenarios within which the three categories of models have observationally distinct predictions: a differentiated scenario with one high-surplus seller and one low-surplus seller, and a homogeneous scenario with identical high-surplus sellers. In both scenarios the buyer tends to trade with a high-surplus seller at terms indistinguishable from those in bilateral negotiations with a high-surplus seller, meaning that introducing a competing seller does not substantially affect the observed terms of trade. Our findings match the predictions from models in the never-matters category, supporting their use when modeling multilateral negotiations.
Partial Relay Selection for Hybrid RF/FSO Systems with Hardware Impairments

In this paper, we investigate the performance analysis of dual hop relaying system consisting of asymmetric Radio Frequency (RF)/Free Optical Space (FSO) links. The RF channels follow a Rayleigh distribution and the optical links are subject to Gamma-Gamma fading. We also introduce impairments to our model and we suggest Partial Relay Selection (PRS) protocol with Amplify-and-Forward (AF) fixed gain relaying. The benefits of employing optical communication with RF, is to increase the system transfer rate and thus improving the system bandwidth. Many previous research attempts assuming ideal hardware (source, relays, etc.) without impairments. In fact, this assumption is still valid for low-rate systems. However, these hardware impairments can no longer be neglected for high-rate systems in order to get consistent results. Novel analytical expressions of outage probability and ergodic capacity of our model are derived taking into account ideal and non- ideal hardware cases. Furthermore, we study the dependence of the outage probability and the system capacity considering, the effect of the correlation between the outdated CSI (Channel State Information) and the current source-relay link, the number of relays, the rank of the selected relay and the average optical Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) over weak and strong atmospheric turbulence. We also demonstrate that for a non- ideal case, the end-to-end Signal to Noise plus Distortion Ratio (SNDR) has a certain ceiling for high SNR range. However, the SNDR grows infinitely for the ideal case and the ceiling caused by impairments no longer exists. Finally, numerical and simulation results are presented.
The use of galvanometers as band-rejection filters in electromagnetic seismographs

ABSTRACT The large-amplitude intermediate-period, 4-9 seconds, microseisms are effectively removed from high-magnification long-period seismograms with maximum magnification near 50 seconds period. This has been accomplished by the use of a galvanometer of natural period in the microseism range as a band-rejection filter. Addition of the filter galvanometer greatly increases the usefulness of these instruments for studies of long-period microseisms and for clear detection and resolution of the long-period components of both body and surface waves from small shocks at very great distances. Magnification equations and theoretical magnification curves show that extremely high sensitivities for desired periods and low sensitivities for undesired periods can be obtained by combining one or more filter galvanometers in seismograph systems, varying the damping constants and natural periods of the components, and varying the coupling between the components. Also, by proper choice of instrument parameters, undesired periods can be rejected without appreciable modification of the seismograph magnification for periods outside the rejection band.
State and institutional policies on in-state resident tuition and financial aid for undocumented students: Examining constraints and opportunities

In this article, we examine policies related to in-state resident tuition and state financial aid policies aimed at undocumented students. To help frame the discussion and spark further debate and research in this area the article seeks to do three things. First, it provides a comprehensive review of state and institutional in-state tuition policies aimed at undocumented students as well as state college or university system responses. Second, it charts the policy landscape for state financial aid access for this population. Third, it examines the numerous implications that such policies engender and highlights the role of the federal government and the proposed Dream Act in mitigating some of these concerns. It closes by underscoring the important financial role played by the critical interaction of state, institutional, and federal policies in making college going a reality for these students while proposing avenues for future study around the issue.
A remark on boundary level admissible representations

Abstract We point out that it is immediate by our character formula that in the case of a boundary level the characters of admissible representations of affine Kac–Moody algebras and the corresponding W -algebras decompose in products in terms of the Jacobi form ϑ 11 ( τ , z ) .
Analysis and system optimization of high performance clocking for modern mobile platforms

Modern mobile platforms contain mainly active components in a small area with stringent power and cost targets. An integrated clock is needed for PLLs, component internal functions as well as transferring data among them. Due to the small mobile form factors, the noise coupling from power/ground and signals to the integrated clock circuitry becomes more evident impacting clock performance significantly. A method of signal and power integrity analysis and system optimization is proposed to design clocks in System-on-Chip (SoC), package and platform of mobile products such as wearables, phones and tablets. The measured results from high volume mobile systems show 30% clock jitter reduction from generation to generation using the frequency domain analysis and system optimization.
Combining globally rigid frameworks

It is shown how to combine two generically globally rigid bar frameworks in d-space to get another generically globally rigid framework. The construction is to identify d+ 1 vertices from each of the frameworks and erase one of the edges that they have in common.
Asymptotic exponentiality of the first exit time of the Shiryaev–Roberts diffusion with constant positive drift

ABSTRACTWe consider the first exit time of a Shiryaev–Roberts diffusion with constant positive drift from the interval [0,A] with A>0 fixed. We show that the moment generating function (Laplace transform) of a suitably standardized version of the first exit time converges to that of the unit-mean exponential distribution as A→+∞. The proof is explicit in that the moment generating function of the first exit time is first expressed analytically and in a closed form and then the desired limit as A→+∞ is evaluated directly. The result is of importance in the area of quickest change-point detection, and its discrete-time counterpart has been previously established—although in a different manner—by Pollak and Tartakovsky (2009a).
Terms-of-trade cycles and external adjustment

Abstract We study the process of external adjustment to large terms-of-trade level shifts—identified with a Markov-switching approach—for a large set of countries during the period 1960–2015. We find that adjustment to these shocks is relatively fast. Current accounts experience, on average, a contemporaneous variation of only about ½ of the magnitude of the price shock—indicating a significant volume offset—and a full adjustment within 3–4 years. Dynamics are largely symmetric for terms-of-trade booms and busts, as well as for advanced and emerging market economies. External adjustment is driven primarily by offsetting shifts in domestic demand, as opposed to variations in output (also reflected in the response of import rather than export volumes), indicating a strong income channel at play. Exchange rate flexibility played an important buffering role during booms, but less so during busts; while international reserve holdings were a key tool for smoothing the adjustment process.
Large natural Cherenkov detectors: Water and ice

Abstract In this review we first address 2 questions: • • why do we need kilometer-scale muon and neutrino detectors? • • what do we learn from the operating Baikal and AMANDA detectors about the construction of kilometer-scale detectors? I will subsequently discuss the challenges for building the next-generation detectors. The main message is that these are different, in fact less ominous, than for commissioning the present, relatively small, detectors which must reconstruct events far outside their instrumented volume in order to achieve large effective telescope area.
SMARTINT: using mined attribute dependencies to integrate fragmented web databases

Many web databases can be seen as providing partial and overlapping information about entities in the world. To answer queries effectively, we need to integrate the information about the individual entities that are fragmented over multiple sources. At first blush this is just the inverse of traditional database normalization problem--rather than go from a universal relation to normalized tables, we want to reconstruct the universal relation given the tables (sources). The standard way of reconstructing the entities will involve joining the tables. Unfortunately, because of the autonomous and decentralized way in which the sources are populated, they often do not have Primary Key---Foreign Key relations. While tables may share attributes, naive joins over these shared attributes can result in reconstruction of many spurious entities thus seriously compromising precision. Our system, SmartInt is aimed at addressing the problem of data integration in such scenarios. Given a query, our system uses the Approximate Functional Dependencies (AFDs) to piece together a tree of relevant tables to answer it. The result tuples produced by our system are able to strike a favorable balance between precision and recall.
Minimally Invasive versus Open Spine Surgery: What Does the Best Evidence Tell Us?

Background: Spine surgery has been transformed significantly by the growth of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) procedures. Easily marketable to patients as less invasive with smaller incisions, MIS is often perceived as superior to traditional open spine surgery. The highest quality evidence comparing MIS with open spine surgery was examined. Methods: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving MIS versus open spine surgery was performed using the Entrez gateway of the PubMed database for articles published in English up to December 28, 2015. RCTs and systematic reviews of RCTs of MIS versus open spine surgery were evaluated for three particular entities: Cervical disc herniation, lumbar disc herniation, and posterior lumbar fusion. Results: A total of 17 RCTs were identified, along with six systematic reviews. For cervical disc herniation, MIS provided no difference in overall function, arm pain relief, or long-term neck pain. In lumbar disc herniation, MIS was inferior in providing leg/low back pain relief, rehospitalization rates, quality of life improvement, and exposed the surgeon to >10 times more radiation in return for shorter hospital stay and less surgical site infection. In posterior lumbar fusion, MIS transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) had significantly reduced 2-year societal cost, fewer medical complications, reduced time to return to work, and improved short-term Oswestry Disability Index scores at the cost of higher revision rates, higher readmission rates, and more than twice the amount of intraoperative fluoroscopy. Conclusion: The highest levels of evidence do not support MIS over open surgery for cervical or lumbar disc herniation. However, MIS TLIF demonstrates advantages along with higher revision/readmission rates. Regardless of patient indication, MIS exposes the surgeon to significantly more radiation; it is unclear how this impacts patients. These results should optimize informed decision-making regarding MIS versus open spine surgery, particularly in the current advertising climate greatly favoring MIS.
Minimum Storage Regenerating Codes for All Parameters

Regenerating codes for distributed storage have attracted much research interest in the past decade. Such codes trade the bandwidth needed to repair a failed node with the overall amount of data stored in the network. Minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes are an important class of optimal regenerating codes that minimize (first) the amount of data stored per node and (then) the repair bandwidth. Specifically, an $[n,k,d]$ - $(\alpha )$ MSR code $ \mathbb {C}$ over $ \smash {\mathbb {F}_{\!q}}$ stores a file $ {\mathcal{ F}}$ consisting of $\alpha k$ symbols over $ \smash {\mathbb {F}_{\!q}}$ among $n$ nodes, each storing $\alpha $ symbols, in such a way that: 1) the file $ {\mathcal{ F}}$ can be recovered by downloading the content of any $k$ of the $n$ nodes and 2) the content of any failed node can be reconstructed by accessing any $d$ of the remaining $n-1$ nodes and downloading $\alpha /(d{-}k{+}1)$ symbols from each of these nodes. In practice, the file $ {\mathcal{ F}}$ is typically available in uncoded form on some $k$ of the $n$ nodes, known as systematic nodes , and the defining node-repair condition above can be relaxed to requiring the optimal repair bandwidth for systematic nodes only . Such codes are called systematic–repair MSR codes . Unfortunately, finite– $\alpha $ constructions of $[n,k,d]$ MSR codes are known only for certain special cases: either low rate, namely $k/n \leqslant 0.5$ , or high repair connectivity, namely $d = n-1$ . Our main result in this paper is a finite– $\alpha $ construction of systematic-repair $[n,k,d]$ MSR codes for all possible values of parameters $n,k,d$ . We also introduce a generalized construction for $[n,k]$ MSR codes to achieve the optimal repair bandwidth for all values of $d$ simultaneously.
Estimating patient's health state using latent structure inferred from clinical time series and text

Modern intensive care units (ICUs) collect large volumes of data in monitoring critically ill patients. Clinicians in the ICUs face the challenge of interpreting large volumes of high-dimensional data to diagnose and treat patients. In this work, we explore the use of Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes (HDP) as a Bayesian nonparametric framework to infer patients' states of health by combining multiple sources of data. In particular, we employ HDP to combine clinical time series and text from the nursing progress notes in a probabilistic topic modeling framework for patient risk stratification. Given a patient cohort, we use HDP to infer latent “topics” shared across multimodal patient data from the entire cohort. Each topic is modeled as a multinomial distribution over a vocabulary of codewords, defined over heterogeneous data sources. We evaluate the clinical utility of the learned topic structure using the first 24-hour ICU data from over 17,000 adult patients in the MIMIC-II database to estimate patients' risks of in-hospital mortality. Our results demonstrate that our approach provides a viable framework for combining different data modalities to model patient's states of health, and can potentially be used to generate alerts to identify patients at high risk of hospital mortality.
Reforming the Irish Public Service: A Multiple Streams Perspective

Following the Irish general election of 2011, a new ministry emerged which sought to combine public expenditure, industrial relations and public sector reform. The creation of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) represented a major departure in Irish administrative history, not least because it introduced a new actor at the heart of Irish government, but also for the range of tasks with which it was endowed. This article provides an administrative reform context for the creation of DPER before examining its work across three domains: industrial relations, financial management reform and administrative reform. Drawing on Kingdon’s ‘multiple streams’ model of policy change, the article argues that reform efforts across all three were made possible by the ‘window of opportunity’ presented by the department’s creation and the coming together of problems, policies and politics in respect of public service reform.
TransNets: Learning to Transform for Recommendation

Recently, deep learning methods have been shown to improve the performance of recommender systems over traditional methods, especially when review text is available. For example, a recent model, DeepCoNN, uses neural nets to learn one latent representation for the text of all reviews written by a target user, and a second latent representation for the text of all reviews for a target item, and then combines these latent representations to obtain state-of-the-art performance on recommendation tasks. We show that (unsurprisingly) much of the predictive value of review text comes from reviews of the target user for the target item. We then introduce a way in which this information can be used in recommendation, even when the target user's review for the target item is not available. Our model, called TransNets, extends the DeepCoNN model by introducing an additional latent layer representing the target user-target item pair. We then regularize this layer, at training time, to be similar to another latent representation of the target user's review of the target item. We show that TransNets and extensions of it improve substantially over the previous state-of-the-art.
Development and validation of two measures of emotional contrast avoidance: The contrast avoidance questionnaires

Abstract The Contrast Avoidance (CA) model (Newman & Llera, 2011) proposed that individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) fear sharp emotional shifts (or contrasts), such as the shift from a pleasant or neutral state to one of sudden distress following a negative event. Further, the model suggests that chronic worry is employed by those with GAD to sustain negative emotionality as a means to avoid sudden shifts into negativity. The model has received empirical support; however, no validated measure exists to assess CA tendencies. In this paper we developed and tested two measures of CA: one focusing on worry, and another examining broader mechanisms of CA that could be used test whether CA is applicable to other disorders. In Study 1, Part 1, we used 3 samples of participants (each N = 410) to perform item reduction, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. In Study 1, Part 2, we performed tests of construct validity. In Study 2, we used a new sample (N = 126) to determine test-retest reliability. All data point to the strong psychometric properties of the CA questionnaires and their relationship to GAD. Both measures distinguished between participants reporting clinical levels of GAD symptoms and nonanxious controls, demonstrating their utility as complementary measures of CA tendencies.
Rigorous diffraction interface theory

We present a formalism for analysis of optical properties of metasurfaces. Rigorous Diffraction Interface Theory provides a drastic speedup in computations and an analytical framework for understanding the transition between optically thin and thick structures.
Physical stress, mass, and energy for non-relativistic matter

For theories of relativistic matter fields there exist two possible definitions of the stress-energy tensor, one defined by a variation of the action with the coframes at fixed connection, and the other at fixed torsion. These two stress-energy tensors do not necessarily coincide and it is the latter that corresponds to the Cauchy stress measured in the lab. In this note we discuss the corresponding issue for non-relativistic matter theories. We point out that while the physical non-relativistic stress, momentum, and mass currents are defined by a variation of the action at fixed torsion, the energy current does not admit such a description and is naturally defined at fixed connection. Any attempt to define an energy current at fixed torsion results in an ambiguity which cannot be resolved from the background spacetime data or conservation laws. We also provide computations of these quantities for some simple non-relativistic actions.
Agent and Task Complexity in Multilateral Alliances: The Safeguarding Role of Equity Governance

Abstract Multilateral alliances are an inherently complex organizational form; managing these complexities is particularly difficult for alliance partners because alliances are plagued by both internal and external uncertainty. Using insights from transaction cost economics, our study identifies, articulates and tests different forms of alliance complexity and their impacts on alliance governance structure. Specifically, we investigate two forms of alliance complexity: agent and task. We decompose agent complexity into organizational and partner complexity, and decompose task complexity into geographic, transaction and technological complexity. Using a sample of 327 trilateral alliances, the most frequent form of multilateral alliances, we find that three forms of alliance complexity involving internal uncertainty (organizational, partner and technological complexity) favor equity-based governance, whereas external uncertainty in the form of geographic complexity discourages equity-based governance.
A framework for exploring and evaluating mechanics in human computation games

Human computation games (HCGs) are a crowdsourcing approach to solving computationally-intractable tasks using games. We outline a formal representation of the mechanics in HCGs, providing a structural breakdown to visualize, compare, and explore the space of HCG mechanics. We present a methodology based on small-scale design experiments using fixed tasks while varying game elements to observe effects on both the player experience and the human computation task completion. Ultimately, we wish enable easier exploration and development of HCGs, letting these games provide meaningful experiences to players while solving difficult problems.
Optical coherence tomography

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) performs resolution imaging in biological tissues and materials. Recent advances enable order of magnitude increases in imaging speed as well as resolutions, enabling a wide range of materials and medical applications.
Spectrum sharing under the asynchronous UPCS etiquette: the performance of collocated systems under heavy load

Recently the FCC opened three 10 MHz bands for unlicensed use. In order to operate in UPCS bands, devices must comply with rules known as the UPCS etiquette (United States Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47, Part 15(d)). In this paper we study channel sharing between two or more collocated systems under the asynchronous UPCS etiquette. In particular we show that under heavy load individual systems have a tendency to hold the channel for hundreds of milliseconds, thus blocking all traffic in other, competing systems. We have calculated the distribution of the blocking time for two versions (or interpretations) of the UPCS etiquette. The impact of the average blocking time on delay sensitive traffic is discussed and possible improvements achieved through a tradeoff between system capacity and average blocking time are investigated.
Atypical Lesions of the Anal Mucosa in Homosexual Men

Recent studies suggest that there is an increased incidence of squamous cell carcinoma of the anus in male homosexuals, but a precursor lesion has not been identified. We retrospectively analyzed in a blind fashion all anal tissue removed surgically during 1984. Twelve (6.7%) of the 180 specimens from men contained lesions with foci of epithelial atypia. Only one (0.85%) of 118 specimens from women harbored similar atypia. Of seven additional file cases exhibiting atypical anal mucosa, six were from men. Of 14 men with atypical anal lesions whose sexual orientation was known, 11 (79%) were homosexuals. In the 20 cases found to have atypical mucosal lesions, three patterns of atypia were identified, with more than one often occurring in the same specimen. Anal intraepithelial neoplasia (dysplasia) was identified in seven cases (35%) and occurred primarily at the anorectal junction and in anal ducts. Atypical condyloma was found in three cases ( 15%). A third lesion histologically indistinguishable from Bowen's disease or bowenoid papulosis was found in 12 cases (60%). In ten of these the lesion was adjacent to a condyloma. Although the natural history of these lesions of the anal mucosa is presently unknown, it may resemble that of similar lesions in other anatomic locations. (JAMA1986;256:873-876)
Hemostatic Effects of Hormonal Stimulation in Patients With Metastatic Prostate Cancer

Hemostatic abnormalities are common in patients with metastatic malignancy and are attributed, in part, to materials secreted by tumor cells. Tumor stimulation might therefore cause further perturbation of hemostasis. This article reports observations on the effects of androgen stimulation on multiple hemostatic parameters in patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Testosterone was given before chemotherapy in an experimental protocol designed to increase tumor sensitivity to cytotoxic agents. The following parameters were measured on day 0 (before) and days 2 and 4 of fluoxymesterone administration: PT, APTT, platelet count, plasma betathromboglobulin (BTG), platelet factor 4 (PF4), fibrinogen, fibrin(ogen) split products (FSP), factor VIII coagulant activity (VIII C), von Willebrand factor antigen (vWF Ag), fibrinopeptide A (FPA), antithrombin III (AT III), and protein C antigen (PC). Ten patients were studied during 17 cycles of hormonal stimulation. Baseline levels of BTG, PF4, fibrinogen, FSP, factor VIII C, vWF Ag, and FPA were significantly elevated compared with normal control. Although androgen stimulation resulted in elevation of BTG, FPA, and FSP levels by day 4 in many patients, the changes for the entire group were not statistically significant. Other parameters remained unchanged or were only slightly elevated. Two patients developed laboratory evidence of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) but were clinically unaffected. Our data suggest that most patients with metastatic prostate cancer show evidence of ongoing activation of platelets, coagulation, and fibrinolysis. In a few individual patients, androgen stimulation of this hormonally dependent tumor may cause further activation of platelets, coagulation, and fibrinolysis.
Pooled Analyses of Randomized Trials of Streptokinase and Heparin in Phlebographically Documented Acute Deep Venous Thrombosis

Abstract Although thrombolysis with streptokinase has been compared with heparin anticoagulation for treating acute proximal deep venous thrombosis in several randomized trials, no individual study has had a sample of sufficient size to determine with adequate power both efficacy and safety. Therefore, results were pooled from six randomized studies in which phlebography was used to confirm the diagnosis and to assess therapy. Thrombolysis was achieved 3.7 times more often among patients treated with streptokinase than among patients treated with heparin (95 percent confidence limits 2.5,5.7; p
Antigen-Coated Immunoadsorbents Utilized for In Vivo Depletion of Antibodies and Lymphocytes With Specificity for the Antigen

Hyperacute rejection of xenografts is thought to be triggered by humoral antibodies. It is known that natural antibodies against dog blood cells have been identified in sheep serum. Dog kidney antigen immunoadsorbent columns were placed in the extracorporeal lymph circuit of two sheep. In vivo studies have shown that these immunoadsorbent columns were effective in depleting the thoracic duct lymph of all antibodies with specificity for the dog kidney antigen. However, these columns were not effective in depleting the thoracic duct lymphocytes bearing surface receptors for the dog kidney antigen. When in vitro studies were carried out, the immunoadsorbent columns were effective in the depletion of both lymphocytes and antibody for the dog kidney antigen. Thus, since a humoral antibody response is thought to be responsible for the hyperacute rejection seen in xenografts, it is possible that these columns might be effective in prolonging xenograft survival.
Polynomial time algorithms for dual volume sampling

We study dual volume sampling, a method for selecting k columns from an n*m short and wide matrix (n <= k <= m) such that the probability of selection is proportional to the volume spanned by the rows of the induced submatrix. This method was proposed by Avron and Boutsidis (2013), who showed it to be a promising method for column subset selection and its multiple applications. However, its wider adoption has been hampered by the lack of polynomial time sampling algorithms. We remove this hindrance by developing an exact (randomized) polynomial time sampling algorithm as well as its derandomization. Thereafter, we study dual volume sampling via the theory of real stable polynomials and prove that its distribution satisfies the “Strong Rayleigh” property. This result has numerous consequences, including a provably fast-mixing Markov chain sampler that makes dual volume sampling much more attractive to practitioners. This sampler is closely related to classical algorithms for popular experimental design methods that are to date lacking theoretical analysis but are known to empirically work well.
Renal Cell Carcinoma: Surgical Management of Regional Lymph Nodes and Inferior Vena-Caval Tumor Thrombus

Aggressive surgical management is the primary effective treatment of renal cell carcinoma, even with regional spread to lymph nodes or the vena cava. The extent of regional lymphadenectomy with radical nephrectomy and excision of vena-caval tumor thrombi are defined. In the future, with increasingly effective adjuvant therapy, these adjuncts to radical nephrectomy will continue to be important in the treatment of renal cell carcinoma.
Trust and macroeconomic performance: A two-step approach

Abstract We reexamine the role of trust in macroeconomic performance using a new econometric method, a two-step approach adopted by Di Tella et al. (AER, 2001). In the first step, the measure of trust is constructed from the micro-regression of trust. This method allows us to extract the component of trust that is not influenced by individual-level socio-economic factors. In the second step, measures of macroeconomic performances are regressed on this improved measure of country-level trust. We find a strong positive relationship between the level of trust and real GDP per person stipulated by an increase in investment. Our results also indicate that the impact of trust on macroeconomic variables estimated by previous studies is biased upwards.
Mandatory disclosure, letter-grade systems, and corruption: The case of Los Angeles County restaurant inspections

Abstract During unannounced hygiene inspections, Los Angeles (LA) County restaurants receive numeric scores out of 100 points. In their windows, they must post letter grades revealing broad intervals to which their scores belong. Relative to numeric-score disclosure, this system creates strong incentives for score manipulation below letter-grade thresholds. Using LA County restaurant inspections spanning 2014–2016, I test for manipulation by exploiting a feature of the county’s scoring criteria. While most health code violations carry a single prescribed 1, 2, or 4-point deduction; there are eleven violations where, depending on severity, 2 or 4 points may be deducted. Even when compared with inspections exhibiting better hygiene quality, restaurants on the margins of higher letter grades are 28–40% more likely to receive the lesser deduction on these violations, and the effect is significant across all eleven violation types. Score manipulation likely improved letter grades in 27% of inspections where deduction decisions had letter-grade implications. In regulated industries—beyond distorting producer incentives—seemingly minor disclosure-policy design features can unintentionally promote regulatory capture.
Visual-Inertial Odometry on Chip: An Algorithm-and-Hardware Co-design Approach

United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Young Investigator Program (FA9550-16-1-0228)
Our Cutting Edge Isn’t Cutting It: Why Public Administration Should Be the First Discipline to Implement a Social Class–Based Affirmative Action Plan for Hiring Professors

During the past several years, various writers and commentators have argued that as part of their affirmative action efforts, universities should enroll more students of working-class origins because socioeconomic integration ensures greater social equity, democracy, and intellectual diversity. The present study shows that the justifications applied to student diversity pertain equally well to professors. This discussion proposes that if public administration were first to use socioeconomic status–based affirmative in faculty hiring, it would prove the discipline’s willingness to meet its self-imposed obligation to be cutting edge, a promise studies have shown it has yet to fulfill.
Student Learning of Complex Earth Systems: A Model to Guide Development of Student Expertise in Problem-Solving

ABSTRACT Engaging students in problem-solving concerning environmental issues in near-surface complex Earth systems involves developing student conceptualization of the Earth as a system and applying that scientific knowledge to the problems using practices that model those used by professionals. In this article, we review geoscience education research related to student learning and ill-structured problem-solving in the classroom. This article has two main goals: (1) to propose a model that applies the National Research Council (NRC, 2012) Science and Engineering Practices to students engaged with authentic, ill-structured problems centered on environmental issues and complex near-surface Earth systems (CNSES), and (2) analyze existing literature in the field of ill-structured problem-solving in CNSES to validate the proposed model. Eleven research studies met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Although none of the selected articles met every component of the model, many of the papers only lacked a fe...
Electron affinity of liquid water

Understanding redox and photochemical reactions in aqueous environments requires a precise knowledge of the ionization potential and electron affinity of liquid water. The former has been measured, but not the latter. We predict the electron affinity of liquid water and of its surface from first principles, coupling path-integral molecular dynamics with ab initio potentials, and many-body perturbation theory. Our results for the surface (0.8 eV) agree well with recent pump-probe spectroscopy measurements on amorphous ice. Those for the bulk (0.1-0.3 eV) differ from several estimates adopted in the literature, which we critically revisit. We show that the ionization potential of the bulk and surface are almost identical; instead their electron affinities differ substantially, with the conduction band edge of the surface much deeper in energy than that of the bulk. We also discuss the significant impact of nuclear quantum effects on the fundamental gap and band edges of the liquid.
The Diurnal Variability of Precipitating Cloud Populations during DYNAMO

AbstractThis study uses high-resolution rainfall estimates from the S-Polka radar during the DYNAMO field campaign to examine variability of the diurnal cycle of rainfall associated with MJO convec...
Alfred Bray Kempe's “Proof” of the Four-Color Theorem

(2002). Alfred Bray Kempe's “Proof” of the Four-Color Theorem. Math Horizons: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 21-26.
Information Dissemination, Competitive Pressure, and Politician Performance between Elections: A Field Experiment in Uganda

Politicians shirk when their performance is obscure to constituents. We theorize that when politician performance information is disseminated early in the electoral term, politicians will subsequently improve their performance in anticipation of changes in citizens’ evaluative criteria and possible challenger entry in the next election. However, politicians may only respond in constituencies where opposition has previously mounted. We test these predictions in partnership with a Ugandan civil society organization in a multiyear field experiment conducted in 20 district governments between the 2011 and 2016 elections. While the organization published yearly job duty performance scorecards for all incumbents, it disseminated the scorecards to constituents for randomly selected politicians. These dissemination efforts induced politicians to improve performance across a range of measures, but only in competitive constituencies. Service delivery was unaffected. We conclude that, conditional on electoral pressure, transparency can improve politicians’ performance between elections but not outcomes outside of their control.
Temporospatial Analysis and New Players in the Immunology of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive loss of lower and upper motor neurons (MN) leading to muscle weakness, paralysis and eventually death. Although a highly varied etiology results in ALS, it broadly manifests itself as sporadic and familial forms that have evident similarities in clinical symptoms and disease progression. There is a tremendous amount of knowledge on molecular mechanisms leading to loss of MNs and neuromuscular junctions (NMJ) as major determinants of disease onset, severity and progression in ALS. Specifically, two main opposing hypotheses, the dying forward and dying back phenomena, exist to account for NMJ denervation. The former hypothesis proposes that the earliest degeneration occurs at the central MNs and proceeds to the NMJ, whereas in the latter, the peripheral NMJ is the site of precipitating degeneration progressing backwards to the MN cell body. A large body of literature strongly indicates a role for the immune system in disease onset and progression via regulatory involvement at the level of both the central and peripheral nervous systems (CNS and PNS). In this review, we discuss the earliest reported immune responses with an emphasis on newly identified immune players in mutant superoxide dismutase 1 (mSOD1) transgenic mice, the gold standard mouse model for ALS.
Transcriptomic Analysis of Gonadal Adipose Tissue in Male Mice Exposed Perinatally to 2,2′,4,4′-Tetrabromodiphenyl Ether (BDE-47)

For the majority of lipophilic compounds, adipose tissue is traditionally considered as a storage depot and only rarely as a target organ. Meanwhile, abnormalities in adipose tissue physiology induced by chemical exposure may contribute to the current epidemic of obesity and metabolic diseases. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a group of lipophilic flame retardants found in the majority of human samples in North America. Their ability to alter the physiology of adipose tissue is unknown. We exposed pregnant mice to 0.2 mg/kg body weight/day of BDE-47 perinatally. Transcriptomic changes in gonadal adipose tissue were analyzed in male offspring using the RNA-seq approach with subsequent bioinformatic analysis. The expression of genes of coagulation and complement cascade, de novo lipogenesis, and xenobiotic metabolism was altered in response to BDE-47 exposure. The affected molecular network included the following hubs: PPARα, HNF1A, and HNF4. These findings suggest that adipose tissue should be considered a target tissue for BDE-47, in addition to its role as a storage depot. This study also builds a background for a targeted search of sensitive phenotypic endpoints of BDE-47 exposure, including lipid profile parameters and coagulation factors in circulation. Additional studies are needed to investigate the role of PBDEs as an obesogen.
Comparing Asset Pricing Models

A Bayesian asset-pricing test is developed that is easily computed in closed-form from the standard F-statistic. Given a set of candidate traded factors, we show how this test can be adapted to permit an analysis of Bayesian model comparison, i.e., the computation of model probabilities for the collection of all possible pricing models that are based on subsets of the given factors. We find that the recent q-factor model is superior to the Fama-French three-factor model augmented by profitability and net investment factors, but both models are dominated by five or six-factor models that include a momentum factor and value and profitability factors that are updated monthly. Thus, although the standard value factor is redundant, our tests show that a version that incorporates more timely price information is not.
Characterization of cover-collapse sinkhole morphology on a groundwater basin-wide scale using lidar elevation data: A new conceptual model for sinkhole evolution

Abstract In karst regions of the world, identifying areas that are inherently unsafe for certain types of land use is crucial. High-resolution lidar elevation data for the Illinois sinkhole plain have exposed previously unnoticed geomorphologic details. Analysis of these data has revealed a pattern of long-term evolution of cover-collapse sinkholes within the groundwater basins. The leading edge of a groundwater basin is known to be the site of progressively enlarging bedrock crevices and conduits that encroach into groundwater divides. In karst areas of the U.S. Midwest, runoff creates surface streams at groundwater divides that flow into groundwater basins and form disappearing streams. Using this pattern as a starting point, we developed a new conceptual model of cover-collapse sinkhole development and evolution within groundwater basins. As the boundaries of a groundwater basin migrate outward for tens of thousands of years, stream-valley-shaped sinkholes at the leading edge seemingly migrate deeper into the basin. The stream-valley sinkholes then form numerous drains, join other sinkholes through erosion and collapse along sinkhole boundaries, and eventually become areally extensive and irregularly shaped compound sinkholes. Continued erosion of fine-grained sediment overlying bedrock near the distal end of the groundwater basin reduces the elevation of land surface until nested sinkholes within the compound sinkholes become simple sinkholes with a single drain point. Near the discharge points of the groundwater basin, the individual drains associated with the simple sinkholes partition the remaining upland surface, forming a pattern of Thiessen or Voronoi polygons resulting from surface runoff among adjacent sinkholes.
On Perturbations of Highly Connected Dyadic Matroids

Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle [3] announced the following result: let $${q = p^k}$$ be a prime power, and let $${\mathcal{M}}$$ be a proper minor-closed class of GF(q)-representable matroids, which does not contain PG(r − 1, p) for sufficiently high r. There exist integers k, t such that every vertically k-connected matroid in $${\mathcal{M}}$$ is a rank- $${(\leq t)}$$ perturbation of a frame matroid or the dual of a frame matroid over GF(q). They further announced a characterization of the perturbations through the introduction of subfield templates and frame templates. We show a family of dyadic matroids that form a counterexample to this result. We offer several weaker conjectures to replace the ones in [3], discuss consequences for some published papers, and discuss the impact of these new conjectures on the structure of frame templates.
Finding Bugs in Cryptographic Hash Function Implementations

Cryptographic hash functions are security-critical algorithms with many practical applications, notably in digital signatures. Developing an approach to test them can be particularly difficult, and bugs can remain unnoticed for many years. We revisit the National Institute of Standards and Technology hash function competition, which was used to develop the SHA-3 standard, and apply a new testing strategy to all available reference implementations. Motivated by the cryptographic properties that a hash function should satisfy, we develop four tests. The Bit-Contribution Test checks if changes in the message affect the hash value, and the Bit-Exclusion Test checks that changes beyond the last message bit leave the hash value unchanged. We develop the Update Test to verify that messages are processed correctly in chunks, and then use combinatorial testing methods to reduce the test set size by several orders of magnitude while retaining the same fault-detection capability. Our tests detect bugs in 41 of the 86 reference implementations submitted to the SHA-3 competition, including the rediscovery of a bug in all submitted implementations of the SHA-3 finalist BLAKE. This bug remained undiscovered for seven years, and is particularly serious because it provides a simple strategy to modify the message without changing the hash value returned by the implementation. We detect these bugs using a fully automated testing approach.
Wearable Communications in 5G: Challenges and Enabling Technologies

As wearable devices become more ingrained in our daily lives, traditional communication networks primarily designed for human-being-oriented applications are facing tremendous challenges. The forthcoming fifth-generation (5G) wireless systems look to support unprecedented high capacity, low latency, and massive connectivity. In this article, we examine key challenges facing wearable communication devices. A cloud/edge communication architecture that integrates the cloud radio access network (CRAN), software-defined network (SDN), device-to-device (D2D) communications, and cloud/edge technologies is presented. Computation offloading enabled by this multilayer communications architecture can offload computation-excessive and latency-stringent applications to nearby devices through D2D communications or to nearby edge nodes through cellular or other wireless technologies. Critical issues faced by wearable communications, e.g., short battery life, limited computing capability, and stringent latency, can be greatly alleviated by this cloud/edge architecture. Together with the presented architecture, current transmission and networking technologies [including nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA), mobile edge computing (MCE), and energy harvesting] can greatly enhance the performance of wearable communications in terms of spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, latency, and connectivity.