cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Restitutionary Disgorgement for Opportunistic Breach of Contract and Mitigation of Damages

This article examines whether a restitutionary disgorgement remedy for certain breaches of contract is compatible with the traditional contract principle of mitigation, which requires nonbreaching parties to take reasonable steps to minimize damages. The relationship between disgorgement and mitigation is complex, in part because disgorgement seems to undermine classic contract notions such as Justice Holmes's choice theory. Nevertheless, disgorgement actually allows for certain value choices. Section 39 of the forthcoming Restatement (Third) of Restitution seeks to deter conscious wrongdoers from retaining profits from breach of contract. This article addresses one objection to disgorgement: that disgorgement will subvert plaintiff's duty to mitigate, or lessen, defendant's damages after a breach of contract. This objection depends on many unstable assumptions about both mitigation and disgorgement. In this article, I tease out those assumptions and explain why and how disgorgement ultimately could foster an environment in which actors operate conscientiously to mitigate avoidable consequences. On a theoretical axis, tensions exist between the foundations of restitutionary disgorgement and mitigation. Yet a practical avenue may exist in which efforts to mitigate could serve as a prerequisite for restitutionary disgorgement for breach of contract. The value of this path depends upon our commitment to providing only narrow access to disgorgement for certain breaches of contract coupled with our continued interest in encouraging self-help and avoiding unnecessary consequences.
Estimating individual-level plant traits at scale.

Functional ecology has increasingly focused on describing ecological communities based on their traits (measurable features affecting individuals' fitness and performance). Analyzing trait distributions within and among forests could significantly improve understanding of community composition and ecosystem function. Historically, data on trait distributions are generated by (1) collecting a small number of leaves from a small number of trees, which suffers from limited sampling but produces information at the fundamental ecological unit (the individual), or (2) using remote-sensing images to infer traits, producing information continuously across large regions, but as plots (containing multiple trees of different species) or pixels, not individuals. Remote-sensing methods that identify individual trees and estimate their traits would provide the benefits of both approaches, producing continuous large-scale data linked to biological individuals. We used data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to develop a method to scale up functional traits from 160 trees to the millions of trees within the spatial extent of two NEON sites. The pipeline consists of three stages: (1) image segmentation, to identify individual trees and estimate structural traits; (2) an ensemble of models to infer leaf mass area (LMA), nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus content using hyperspectral signatures, and DBH from allometry; and (3) predictions for segmented crowns for the full remote-sensing footprint at the NEON sites. The R2 values on held-out test data ranged from 0.41 to 0.75 on held-out test data. The ensemble approach performed better than single partial least-squares models. Carbon performed poorly compared to other traits (R2 of 0.41). The crown segmentation step contributed the most uncertainty in the pipeline, due to over-segmentation. The pipeline produced good estimates of DBH (R2 of 0.62 on held-out data). Trait predictions for crowns performed significantly better than comparable predictions on pixels, resulting in improvement of R2 on test data of between 0.07 and 0.26. We used the pipeline to produce individual-level trait data for ~5 million individual crowns, covering a total extent of ~360 km2 . This large data set allows testing ecological questions on landscape scales, revealing that foliar traits are correlated with structural traits and environmental conditions.
Selling ART: An Empirical Assessment of Advertising on Fertility Clinics' Websites

Scholarship on assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has emphasized the commercial nature of the interaction between fertility patients and their physicians, but little attention has been paid to precisely how clinics persuade patients to choose their clinics over their competitors’. This Article offers evidence about how clinics sell ART based on clinics’ advertising on their websites. To assess clinics’ marketing efforts, I coded advertising information on 372 fertility clinics’ websites. The results from the study confirm some suspicions of prior ART scholarship while contradicting others. For instance, in line with scholars who are concerned that racial minorities face barriers to accessing ART, I found that 97.28% of the websites that contain pictures of babies have pictures of white babies, and 62.93% have pictures of only white babies. Similarly, in agreement with prior work that challenges the effectiveness of self-regulation, I found low levels of compliance with industry-sponsored advertising regulations. Contrary to the assumption held almost universally in the literature on ART, however, I found that clinics do not prioritize advertising their success rates. Clinics’ websites are more likely to emphasize several other attributes of care instead of their success rates. In light of the new data uncovered by this study, I conclude by offering new regulatory directions for policymakers to consider as they try to keep up with changes in the fertility business.
The Mortgage Market Meltdown and House Prices

This paper argues that the U.S. mortgage debacle must be analyzed in the broader setting of global real estate markets. Recent U.S. home price growth closely tracked increases in other developed economies. The analysis distinguishes among market regions in terms of supply elasticity and localized transactions-costs. A series of user-cost models are presented which imply that interest rate fluctuations must figure prominently in any explanation of movements in price/rent ratios. National factors such as the expansion of subprime credit must also be accounted for. The paper concludes with policy prescriptions addressing rapid price declines and elevated interest-rate spreads. We argue that the federal government should play a leading role in helping to reduce interest rates on new mortgages and cushion against underwriting losses on the existing balance sheets of lenders.
Direct versus indirect regression estimates of foreign exchange cash flow exposure

Abstract To estimate foreign exchange (FX) cash flow exposure, one may choose between direct and indirect regression approaches, where the direct approach uses accounting-based cash flow data and the indirect approach uses equity returns as a cash flow proxy. The indirect approach typically includes one or more additional independent variables to control for the impact of FX changes on the required rate of return. Frequently, the control variable is an equity index. We propose that using a bond return control variable instead of equity returns addresses several theoretical problems inherent in the indirect estimation approach. In our empirical analysis we find that using the bond-based control variable results in FX cash flow exposure estimates that are more highly correlated with direct measures than using an equity index as a control variable.
Linear Approximations and Tests of Conditional Pricing Models

We construct a simple reduced-form example of a conditional pricing model with modest intrinsic nonlinearity. The theoretical magnitude of the pricing errors (alphas) induced by the application of standard linear conditioning are derived as a direct consequence of an omitted variables bias. When the model is calibrated to either characteristics sorted or industry portfolios, we flnd that the alphas generated by approximation-induced speciflcation error are economically large. A Monte Carlo analysis shows that flnite-sample alphas are even larger. It also shows that the power to detect omitted nonlinear factors through tests based on estimated risk premiums can sometimes be quite low, even when the efiect of misspeciflcation on alphas is large.
The Effects of the Financial Crisis on the Well-Being of Older Americans: Evidence from the Cognitive Economics Study

This paper uses the Cognitive Economics Study (CogEcon) to assess the effect of the financial crisis on the well-being of older Americans. Financial wealth fell by about 15 percent for the median household. These financial losses were concentrated among households with high levels of wealth and high cognitive capacities, who tend to have higher exposure to the stock market. Nonetheless, households with little financial wealth suffered declines in well-being-measured by declines in consumption-as large on average as households with substantial exposure to the stock market. Tight credit market conditions and adverse labor market outcomes account for much of the effect of the financial crisis on the consumption of these low-wealth households.
Infrared-Transparent Visible-Opaque Fabrics for Wearable Personal Thermal Management

Personal cooling technologies locally control the temperature of an individual rather than a large space, thus, providing personal thermal comfort while supplementing cooling loads in thermally regulated environments. This can lead to significant energy and cost savings. In this study, a new approach to personal cooling was developed using an infrared-transparent visible-opaque fabric (ITVOF) that provides passive cooling via the transmission of thermal radiation emitted by the human body directly to the environment. Here, we present a conceptual framework to thermally and optically design an ITVOF. Using a heat transfer model, the fabric was found to require a minimum infrared (IR) transmittance of 0.644 and a maximum IR reflectance of 0.2 to ensure thermal comfort at ambient temperatures as high as 26.1 °C (79 °F). To meet these requirements, an ITVOF design was developed using synthetic polymer fibers with an intrinsically low IR absorptance. These fibers were then structured to minimize IR reflection ...
THE LOCKEAN RIGHTS OF BEQUEST AND INHERITANCE

Lawyers and philosophers have misunderstood the rights of bequest and inheritance within Locke's theory of property. While lawyers assume these are unqualified natural rights, philosophers find Locke's account of them so inadequate as to cast their existence into serious doubt. But on Locke's theory, the rights of bequest and inheritance are neither absolute nor incoherent. Locke treats inheritance as a form of imputed bequest, whereby natural law imputes to the intestate an intention to leave his goods to his closest family members. Both bequest and inheritance find their justification in the prerogatives of owners to dispose of their property. These prerogatives are not without limit, however. The needs of a decedent's dependents trump specific bequests, and both bequest and inheritance are subject to the duty of charity. Bequest and inheritance thus order the relative claims of owners and others so that they are consistent with Locke's more general theory of property.
Shifting the Paradigm in E-Commerce: Move Over Inherently Distinctive Trademarks - The E-Brand, I-Brand and Generic Domain Names Ascending to Power?

Introduction 938 I. The Trademark Paradigm Before E-Commerce 940 II. The E-I-G Movement in E-Commerce 948 A. Brief Overview of E-Commerce 948 B. “Branding” the E-Commerce Way: Here Comes E-I-G ....952 III. Protection for the New E-I-G Kids on the Block 958 A. Trademark Protection for E-I-G Domain Names? 958 1. Do E-I-G domain names function as trademarks? ......959 2. Are E-I-G domain names valid trademarks? 962 3. Secondary meaning in E-I-G domain names? 967 4. E-I-G domain name trademark registrations: cancellation 969 B. Generic Domain Names Protection Under Unfair Competition Law? 972 Conclusion 978
The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same: Why Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin Will Not Fundamentally Alter the Affirmative Action Landscape

In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (“Fisher II”), the United States Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of the University of Texas’s (“University”) affirmative action policy, and the potential impact of the Court’s decision on affirmative action programs nationwide is being widely debated. Some commentators fear that the Court is poised to end affirmative action altogether, thus causing a drastic reduction in the number of minorities who are admitted to universities across the country. Others believe that the Court should use Fisher II to invalidate all race-conscious admissions policies and endorse a color-blind process. Such concerns, along with the expectations of those who would like to see affirmative action eliminated, miss the mark. A careful analysis of the issues in Fisher II, including the Justices’ comments during oral argument, the Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence, and the unique aspects of the University’s race-conscious admissions policy, suggest that although the University’s policy will likely meet its constitutional demise, the impact on affirmative action policies nationwide will not be substantial.
A Challenge to Sustainable Governments

Sustainability is finding its way into the vocabularies of governmental administration. This essay explores the strengths of governmental sustainability by looking at a recent challenge to a 'green cement' procurement strategy adopted in the City of Dallas, Texas. This essay argues that sustainable choices add substantial value to the debate on environmental quality by converging economics with environment, despite the unavoidable consequence of changes in procurement strategies - that there will be some losers in the marketplace.
Programming Errors: Understanding the Constitutionality of Stop-and-Frisk as a Program, Not an Incident

This essay takes seriously the relevance of law enforcement effectiveness and the role of empiricism to understanding the constitutionality of the police practices at issue in the Floyd case and urban police practices more generally and also recasts the debate a bit. A critical, but obscured, issue is the mismatch between the level of analysis at which the Supreme Court articulated the relevant test for constitutional justification of a stop and frisk in Terry v. Ohio , and the scale at which police today (and historically) engage in stop and frisk as a practice. To put this more succinctly, while the Court in Terry authorized police intervention in an individual incident when the police officer possesses probable cause to believe that an armed individual is involved in a crime, in reality stop and frisk typically is carried out by a police force en masse as a program. Although the constitutional framework is based upon a one-off investigative incident, many of those who are stopped, the majority of them young men of color, do not experience the stops as one-off incidents. They experience them as a program to police them as a group, which is, of course, the reality. That is exactly what police agencies are doing. Fourth Amendment reasonableness must take this fact into account. I make an argument here about how we should approach this issue.
Predictable Behavior, Profits, and Attention

Stocks in the Shanghai market that hit upper price limits typically exhibit three characteristics: high returns, high volumes, and news coverage. We show that these price limit events attract investors' attention. Attention-grabbing events lead active individual investors to buy stocks they have not previously owned. Consistent with lowering investor search costs, events that affect a few (many) stocks lead to increased (decreased) buying. Upper price limit events coincide with initial price increases followed by statistically significant price mean reversion over the following week. Rational traders (statistical arbitrageurs) profit in response to attention-based buying. Smart traders accumulate shares on date t, sell shares on date t+1, and earn a daily average profit of 1.16%. We show the amount they invest predicts the degree of attention-based buying by individual investors. We end by decomposing individual investor trades in order to estimate losses attributable to behavioral biases. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
What Do Corporate Default Rules and Menus Do? An Empirical Examination

Much of corporate law consists of nonmandatory statutes. Although scholars have examined the effect of nonbinding corporate law from a theoretical perspective, only inconclusive event studies explore the real-world impact of these laws. This article empirically examines the impact of nonmandatory state anti-takeover statutes. Several conclusions emerge. Despite its nonbinding nature, corporate law makes an enormous difference in outcomes, contradicting those who claim that corporate law is trivial. Two types of nonmandatory corporate laws have particularly important effects. Corporate default laws that favor management are considerably less likely to be changed by companies than default laws favoring investors, supporting those who believe that corporate default laws can ameliorate asymmetries in incentives or bargaining power between managers and investors. Corporate “menu” laws—opt-in laws that are drafted by the state but do not apply as default rules—also facilitate the use of some provisions, supporting those who believe that nonmandatory corporate law reduces transaction costs, such as the cost of updating corporate charters to reflect developments in the economy.
The ICTR’s “Media” Judgment and the Reinvention of Direct and Public Incitement to Commit Genocide

In December 2003 the Tanzania-based United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted three Rwandan radio and newspaper executives, Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, and Hassan Ngeze, of direct and public incitement to commit genocide in 1994, sentencing them to life imprisonment. The ICTR's ''Media'' judgment marks a low point in international criminal justice, where the quality of decisions has fluctuated considerably.
Probability of information-based trading and the January effect

Abstract We investigate the seasonality in the probability of information-based trading (PIN)–return relationship, the ‘January PIN effect’. We find that on average stock returns decrease with PIN in January, in contrast to other calendar months. This pattern is more apparent for small stocks. We argue that this seasonality is related to the January effect. According to the analysis, the December selling pressure associated with the January effect decreases in PIN, especially for small stocks. This suggests that when the price bounces back in January, low-PIN stocks will exhibit a larger return within a small stock group, leading to the negative PIN–return pattern. Furthermore, this seasonality is not the same as other January anomalies associated with momentum and idiosyncratic risk.
A welfare criterion with endogenous welfare weights for belief disagreement models

Abstract Belief disagreement generates a fundamental tension between two desirable features of a resource allocation: Pareto optimality and risk sharing. While Pareto optimality generally opposes restrictions to trade, a growing literature rejects it in the presence of heterogeneous beliefs and proposes welfare criteria that instead assume risk sharing as fundamentally desirable. We propose a welfare criterion that balances out these two desirable features by endogenously determining admissible welfare weights based on competitive equilibrium allocation as a benchmark. Applying our method to several belief disagreement models, we show how the welfare-optimal degree of risk sharing is between those suggested by Pareto optimality (which implies less) and by other existing approaches (which imply more).
Understanding mid-life and older age mortality declines: evidence from Union Army veterans

Abstract Infectious disease earlier in life had a scarring effect on older age mortality among those reaching middle age around 1900, with the strongest negative effect on survival of having grown up in a large city. The effect of reduced early life and young adult infectious disease rates accounts for 13% of the 21 percentage point increase in survival rates among 50–64 year old males in the 20th century. Reductions in mortality from infectious and other acute disease account for another 13% of the increase.
Regionalizing International Criminal Law

Th is article examines the initially cooperative but increasingly tense relationship between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Africa. It assesses the various legal and political reasons for the mounting criticisms of the ICC by African governments, especially within the African Union (AU), following the indictment of incumbent Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir. Th e author situates the ICC within broader African eff orts to establish more peaceful societies through the continent-wide AU. He submits that the ICC, by prosecuting architects of serious international crimes in Africa’s numerous confl icts, could contribute signifi cantly to the continent’s fl edgling peace and security architecture which aims to prevent, manage and resolve confl icts and to anticipate and avert crimes against humanity. On the other hand, the author suggests that the ICC also has much to gain from Africa, especially in these early years when it is seeking to become a functional court of law with global legitimacy. By undertaking independent, fair and credible prosecutions without alienating States Parties, the world criminal court is more likely to fulfi ll its mandate and to win over powerful hold outs, such as the United States, China, and India. Th is will help it co-opt the support necessary for its universal reach and future success. However, he cautions that given Africa’s sensitive historical experience with foreign interventions, including the slave trade and colonialism, the international criminal justice regime anchored on the ICC may be undermined, or perhaps even falter, if it is perceived as having a biased, politicized or insensitive application to a single region of the world.
Controlled Openness and Foreign Direct Investment

The paper investigates why a developing country may adopt a partial reform. A country is considered where the ruling elite (referred to as state capital) prevents the entry of foreign capital, and taxes the private sector before reform. A higher productivity of foreign capital always increases the attractiveness of a partial reform under which state capital can control the inflow of foreign capital, but can reduce the attractiveness of a full reform under which the entry of foreign capital is unregulated. Hence, state capital’s control over foreign capital may be a necessary condition for the reform to take place at all.
Little Higgs models and T parity

Little Higgs models are an interesting extension of the Standard Model at the TeV scale. They provide a simple and attractive mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. We review one of the simplest models of this class, the Littlest Higgs model, and its extension with T parity. The model with T parity satisfies precision electroweak constraints without fine-tuning, contains an attractive dark matter candidate, and leads to interesting phenomenology at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Forecasting in the presence of level shifts

This article addresses the problem of forecasting time series that are subject to level shifts. Processes with level shifts possess a nonlinear dependence structure. Using the stochastic permanent breaks (STOPBREAK) model, I model this nonlinearity in a direct and flexible way that avoids imposing a discrete regime structure. I apply this model to the rate of price inflation in the United States, which I show is subject to level shifts. These shifts significantly affect the accuracy of out-of-sample forecasts, causing models that assume covariance stationarity to be substantially biased. Models that do not assume covariance stationarity, such as the random walk, are unbiased but lack precision in periods without shifts. I show that the STOPBREAK model outperforms several alternative models in an out-of-sample inflation forecasting experiment. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Paradigm Shift : Federal Securities Regulation in the New Millennium

In May 2007, Oaktree Capital Management LLC, a U.S.-based hedge fund adviser with over $40 billion in assets under management, sold approximately 14% of its equity for more than $800 million in a widespread underwritten offering to a number of prospective purchasers. If the offering had been a public one it would have been the year’s sixth-largest initial public offering by a domestic issuer. But Oaktree deliberately chose not to raise this capital on the public market, thereby forgoing a listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or Nasdaq. Instead, Oaktree made its initial offering on the U.S. private market. The company thereafter listed its equity securities on Goldman Sachs & Co.’s non-public market, the “GS Tradable Unregistered Equity OTC Market” (GSTrUE). On the heels of this offering, Apollo Management L.P., a private equity fund adviser, conducted a similarly structured equity offering, privately raising $828 million and immediately thereafter listing the equity securities on GSTrUE. These two offerings were historically extraordinary. They were the first two substantial underwritten offerings and listings of domestic equity securities on a U.S. private rather than public market. The two offerings
An Examination of Topical Coverage for the First Accounting Information Systems Course

This study examines topics currently addressed in the introductory Accounting Information Systems (AIS) course and makes comparisons to past studies. The study includes an examination of 12 current AIS textbooks, syllabi from current AIS instructors, and the results of a survey of AIS faculty and professionals. The divisions of topics in the books and on the syllabi suggest that introduction to systems, internal control, and transaction processing are the most important topics to be covered. After these topics, the rankings diverge. The results of this study suggest that the emphasis historically placed on system analysis and design, while still important, is somewhat less than in the past. This was also apparent from the results of the authors' surveys of AIS faculty and professionals who use technology in their jobs. Both faculty and professionals agree that greater importance should be placed on teaching internal control and transactions processing, while moderate importance should be placed on softwar...
Sour Chocolate: The U.K. Takeover Panel's Improper Reaction to Kraft's Acquisition of Cadbury

This article critiques the U.K. Takeover Panel Code Committee’s proposals to amend the U.K. Takeover Code in response to Kraft’s acquisition of Cadbury, on the premise that well-founded takeover law and regulation should focus on fair process and leave socioeconomic factors and foreign investment regulation to other areas of the law. After outlining the United Kingdom’s takeover regime and the Takeover Panel’s review of the Takeover Code, this article offers a critique of two specific proposed reforms contained in the Takeover Panel Report. This article then questions the effectiveness of the regime under the Takeover Panel Report’s proposals and introduces an alternative approach to fulfilling the Takeover Panel’s goals that the Panel missed. This article concludes by calling for additional research to determine the proper course and proposals the Panel should take. * J.D. 2011, Harvard Law School. I would like to thank Professor John C. Coates for his invaluable supervision and support and my colleagues Josh Podoll and Joseph Vardner for their help and insights. WINTER 2011 Sour Chocolate
The Contribution of the Harvard Business School to Management Control, 1908–1980

ABSTRACT: This paper documents and discusses the evolution of management control, which includes management and financial accounting, in the Harvard Business School (HBS) from 1908 to 1980. Primary emphasis is placed on the roles of the key movers, Ross G. Walker and Robert N. Anthony. The successive alterations in the configuration and content of the MBA courses in the Business School, based on a reading of the course catalogues, faculty papers and other documents on file in Baker Library, and interviews and correspondence with many of the principals, together with an examination of the series of text‐ and casebooks published by HBS accounting faculty, are the factual basis for this historical study. Concomitant developments at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago are also brought into the analysis. An appendix contains a complete list of the HBS accounting faculty during the time span under study.
The macroeconomic costs of conflict

Abstract Macroeconomic costs of conflict are generally very large, with GDP per capita about 28 percent lower ten years after conflict onset. This is overwhelmingly driven by private consumption, which falls by almost 25 percent ten years after conflict onset. Conflict is also associated with dramatic declines in official trade, with exports (imports) estimated to be 58 (34) percent lower ten years after conflict onset. The onset of conflict often also induces significant refugee outflows to neighboring non-advanced countries in the short run, and relatively small but very persistent refugee outflows to advanced countries over the long run. To alleviate reverse causality concerns between GDP and conflict onset, we control for pre-conflict GDP forecasts from the IMF World Economic Outlook and show that similar results are obtained with and without pre-conflict GDP forecasts.
Facilitating Exploration with Interaction Snapshots under High Latency

Latency is, unfortunately, a reality when working with large data sets. Guaranteeing imperceptible latency for interactivity is often prohibitively expensive: the application developer may be forced to migrate data processing engines or deal with complex error bounds on samples, and to limit the application to users with high network bandwidth. Instead of relying on the backend, we propose a simple UX design—interaction snapshots. Responses of requests from the interactions are asynchronously loaded in "snapshots". With interaction snapshots, users can interact concurrently while the snapshots load. Our user study participants found it useful not to have to wait for each result and easily navigate to prior snapshots. For latency up to 5 seconds, participants were able to complete extrema, threshold, and trend identification tasks with little negative impact.
Coded Elastic Computing on Machines With Heterogeneous Storage and Computation Speed

We study the optimal design of heterogeneous Coded Elastic Computing (CEC) where machines have varying computation speeds and storage. CEC introduced by Yang et al. in 2018 is a framework that mitigates the impact of elastic events, where machines can join and leave at arbitrary times. In CEC, data is distributed among machines using a Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) code such that subsets of machines can perform the desired computations. However, state-of-the-art CEC designs only operate on homogeneous networks where machines have the same speeds and storage. This may not be practical. In this work, based on an MDS storage assignment, we develop a novel computation assignment approach for heterogeneous CEC networks to minimize the overall computation time. We first consider the scenario where machines have heterogeneous computing speeds but same storage and then the scenario where both heterogeneities are present. We propose a novel combinatorial optimization formulation and solve it exactly by decomposing it into a convex optimization problem to find the optimal computation load and a filling problem to find the exact computation assignment. A low-complexity filling algorithm is adapted and can be completed within a number of iterations equal to at most the number of available machines.
Outcomes in patients implanted with a Watchman device in relation to choice of anticoagulation and indication for implant.

Patients with atrial fibrillation are increasingly prescribed a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) over warfarin and seek to avoid anticoagulation even without a history of major bleeding. This study explores the outcomes of patients implanted with a Watchman device in relation to anticoagulation choice (warfarin versus DOAC) in the post-procedure period and a history of bleeding. Patients implanted with a Watchman device at a single center were retrospectively analyzed. Characteristics including anticoagulation in the first 45 days and history of major bleed were assessed and efficacy (thromboembolism) and safety (bleeding) outcomes compared by Kaplan-Meier analysis. Two hundred nine patients were implanted (57% male, age 74.6 ± 7.8 years) and followed for 23.5 ± 7.1 months. In the first half of patients, 98% were prescribed warfarin, which dropped to 51% in the second half (p < 0.0001). A history of major bleed was present in 80.8% of the first half of patients and decreased to 60% in the second half (p = 0.001). There were 16 safety and 4 efficacy events. There was no difference in safety outcomes according to history of major bleeding or anticoagulant choice in the first 45 days. There was no difference in efficacy outcomes over the duration of follow-up according to anticoagulation choice in the first 45 days. Patients implanted with a Watchman device were increasingly over time prescribed a DOAC and implanted without a history of major bleeding. Bleeding and thromboembolic events were infrequent and related neither to choice of anticoagulant nor to prior major bleeding.
Thermodynamics of fractional-order nonlocal continua and its application to the thermoelastic response of beams

Abstract This study presents a comprehensive framework for constitutive modeling of a frame-invariant fractional-order approach to nonlocal thermoelasticity in solids. For this purpose, thermodynamic and mechanical balance laws are derived for nonlocal solids modeled using the fractional-order continuum theory. This includes revisiting the Cauchy’s hypothesis for surface traction vector in order to account for long-range interactions across the domain of nonlocal solid. Remarkably, it is shown that the fractional-order model allows the rigorous localized application of thermodynamic balance principles unlike existing integral approaches to nonlocal elasticity. Further, the mechanical governing equations of motion for the fractional-order solids obtained here are consistent with existing results from variational principles. These fractional-order governing equations involve self-adjoint operators and admit unique solutions, in contrast to analogous studies following the local Cauchy’s hypothesis. To illustrate the efficacy of this framework, case-studies for the linear and the geometrically nonlinear responses of nonlocal beams subject to combined thermomechanical loads are considered here. Comparisons with existing integer-order integral nonlocal approaches highlight a consistent softening response of nonlocal structures predicted by the fractional-order framework, irrespective of the boundary and thermomechanical loading conditions. This latter aspect addresses an important incongruence often observed following the strain-based integral approaches to nonlocal elasticity.
Exploring non-linear correlators on AGP.

Single-reference methods such as Hartree–Fock-based coupled cluster theory are well known for their accuracy and efficiency for weakly correlated systems. For strongly correlated systems, more sophisticated methods are needed. Recent studies have revealed the potential of the antisymmetrized geminal power (AGP) as an excellent initial reference for the strong correlation problem. While these studies improved on AGP by linear correlators, we explore some non-linear exponential Ansatze in this paper. We investigate two approaches in particular. Similar to Wahlen-Strothman et al. [Phys. Rev. B 91, 041114(R) (2015)], we show that the similarity transformed Hamiltonian with a Hilbert-space Jastrow operator is summable to all orders and can be solved over AGP by projecting the Schrodinger equation. The second approach is based on approximating the unitary pair-hopper Ansatz recently proposed for application on a quantum computer. We report benchmark numerical calculations against the ground state of the pairing Hamiltonian for both of these approaches.
The influence of relationship partners on client managers’ negotiation positions

Abstract To foster positive relationships with clients, audit firms often assign “relationship partners” (hereafter RPs) to engagements. Yet, little is known about RPs’ influence on disagreements that arise during fieldwork. We conduct an experiment with financial executives to examine the influence of RP intervention during auditor-client negotiations, and whether such influence depends on the extent to which the engagement partner and client have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to resolve the issue (i.e., negotiation “ripeness”). We find that, without an RP, clients concede less during a more ripe negotiation stage (i.e., mutually hurting stalemate) than a less ripe stage. Yet, it is at this more ripe stage that certain RP intervention approaches can maintain clients’ trust in the audit firm and move them toward the auditor’s position (compared to no RP intervention). RPs can help end stalemates and minimize relationship impairment. We discuss implications for audit firms, regulators, and researchers.
A model‐free approach for testing association

The question of association between outcome and feature is generally framed in the context of a model on functional and distributional forms. Our motivating application is that of identifying serum biomarkers of angiogenesis, energy metabolism, apoptosis, and inflammation, predictive of recurrence after lung resection in node-negative non-small cell lung cancer patients with tumor stage T2a or less. We propose an omnibus approach for testing association that is free of assumptions on functional forms and distributions and can be used as a black box method. This proposed maximal permutation test is based on the idea of thresholding, is readily implementable and is computationally efficient. We illustrate that the proposed omnibus tests maintain their levels and have strong power as black box tests for detecting linear, nonlinear and quantile-based associations, even with outlier-prone and heavy-tailed error distributions and under nonparametric setting. We additionally illustrate the use of this approach in model-free feature screening and further examine the level and power of these tests for binary outcome. We compare the performance of the proposed omnibus tests with comparator methods in our motivating application to identify preoperative serum biomarkers associated with non-small cell lung cancer recurrence in early stage patients.
piRNAs Coordinate Poly(UG) Tailing to Prevent Aberrant and Permanent Gene Silencing

Noncoding RNAs have emerged as mediators of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI) in a number of organisms. A robust example of RNA-directed TEI is the inheritance of gene silencing states following RNA interference (RNAi) in the metazoan C. elegans. During RNAi inheritance, gene silencing is transmitted by a self-perpetuating cascade of siRNA-directed poly(UG) tailing of mRNA fragments (pUGylation), followed by siRNA synthesis from poly(UG)-tailed mRNA templates (termed pUG RNA/siRNA cycling). Despite the self-perpetuating nature of pUG RNA/siRNA cycling, RNAi inheritance is finite, suggesting that systems likely exist to prevent permanent RNAi-triggered gene silencing. Here we show that, in the absence of Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), an animal-specific class of small noncoding RNA, RNAi-based gene silencing can become essentially permanent, lasting at near 100% penetrance for more than five years and hundreds of generations. This permanent gene silencing is mediated by perpetual activation of the pUG RNA/siRNA TEI pathway. Further, we find that piRNAs coordinate endogenous RNAi pathways to prevent germline-expressed genes, which are not normally subjected to TEI, from entering a state of permanent and irreversible epigenetic silencing also mediated by perpetual activation of pUG RNA/siRNA cycling. Together, our results show that one function of C. elegans piRNAs is to insulate germline-expressed genes from aberrant and runaway inactivation by the pUG RNA/siRNA epigenetic inheritance system.
Cancer, Mortality, and Acute Kidney Injury among Hospitalized Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infection.

Background To evaluate Coronavirus Disease 2019-(COVID19) patients treated within our academic medical system to determine if history of malignancy, both in general and specifically in genitourinary oncology patients, is associated with adverse clinical outcomes, including acute kidney injury (AKI) and mortality. Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study among patients with confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in a multi-hospital, academic medical institution in New York City. Outcomes included mortality, intensive care unit (ICU) admission and AKI among hospitalized patients. We also evaluated risk of hospitalization among all patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Multilevel logistic regression models were used for analysis. Results We identified 6,893 patients who met inclusion criteria, of which 4,018 were hospitalized. Among hospitalized patients 374 (9%) had a history of cancer, 281 (7%) experienced AKI, and 1,045 (26%) died. In adjusted analyses, patients with a history of cancer had 1.33 (95% CI = 1.05, 1.69) times the odds of death compared to those without cancer and this appeared to be driven by lung cancer (odds ratio (OR) = 2.44, 95% CI= 1.05, 4.39). Patients with a history of genitourinary cancer were not at higher risk of mortality compared to those without cancer (OR=0.99, 95% CI= 0.61, 1.62). History of cancer was not associated with ICU admission or AKI in overall and subgroup analyses. Conclusions Patients with a history of cancer who are hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 infection are not at greater risk for AKI, though they are at higher risk for mortality as compared to patients without a history of cancer. The increased risk in mortality appears driven by patients with pulmonary neoplasms. Patients with a history of genitourinary malignancies do not appear to be at higher risk for AKI or for mortality compared to the general population.
Shocks and Molecules in Diffuse Interstellar Cloud Pairs

The diffuse interstellar medium is dynamic, and its chemistry and evolution is determined by shock fronts as well as photodissociation. Shocks are implied by the supersonic motions and velocity dispersion often statistically called "turbulence". We compare models of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) shocks, with speeds typical of cloud motions through the ISM (3-25 km/s) and densities typical of cold neutral gas (~ 100 cm-3), to archival observations of the atomic hydrogen 21-cm line for gas kinematics, far-infrared emission for dust mass, and mid-infrared emission for high-resolution morphology, to identify shock fronts in three high-latitude clouds pairs with masses of order 50 suns. The clouds have `heads' with extended `tails', and high-resolution images show arcs on the leading edges of the "heads" that could be individual shocks. The HI shows higher-velocity gas at the leading edges due to shock-accelerated material. For two cloud pairs, one cloud has an active shock indicated by broad and offset HI, while the other cloud has already been shocked and is predominantly `CO-dark' molecular hydrogen. Two-dimensional MHD simulations for shocks parallel to the magnetic field for pairs of clouds show a remarkable similarity to observed cloud features, including merged "tails" due to aligned flow and magnetic field, which leads to lateral confinement downstream. A parallel alignment between magnetic field and gas flow may lead to formation of small molecular clouds.
The Strongish Planted Clique Hypothesis and Its Consequences

We formulate a new hardness assumption, the Strongish Planted Clique Hypothesis (SPCH), which postulates that any algorithm for planted clique must run in time n^Ω(log n) (so that the state-of-the-art running time of n^O(log n) is optimal up to a constant in the exponent). We provide two sets of applications of the new hypothesis. First, we show that SPCH implies (nearly) tight inapproximability results for the following well-studied problems in terms of the parameter k: Densest k-Subgraph, Smallest k-Edge Subgraph, Densest k-Subhypergraph, Steiner k-Forest, and Directed Steiner Network with k terminal pairs. For example, we show, under SPCH, that no polynomial time algorithm achieves o(k)-approximation for Densest k-Subgraph. This inapproximability ratio improves upon the previous best k^o(1) factor from (Chalermsook et al., FOCS 2017). Furthermore, our lower bounds hold even against fixed-parameter tractable algorithms with parameter k. Our second application focuses on the complexity of graph pattern detection. For both induced and non-induced graph pattern detection, we prove hardness results under SPCH, improving the running time lower bounds obtained by (Dalirrooyfard et al., STOC 2019) under the Exponential Time Hypothesis.
Automated Coding of Under-Studied Medical Concept Domains: Linking Physical Activity Reports to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health

Linking clinical narratives to standardized vocabularies and coding systems is a key component of unlocking the information in medical text for analysis. However, many domains of medical concepts, such as functional outcomes and social determinants of health, lack well-developed terminologies that can support effective coding of medical text. We present a framework for developing natural language processing (NLP) technologies for automated coding of medical information in under-studied domains, and demonstrate its applicability through a case study on physical mobility function. Mobility function is a component of many health measures, from post-acute care and surgical outcomes to chronic frailty and disability, and is represented as one domain of human activity in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF). However, mobility and other types of functional activity remain under-studied in the medical informatics literature, and neither the ICF nor commonly-used medical terminologies capture functional status terminology in practice. We investigated two data-driven paradigms, classification and candidate selection, to link narrative observations of mobility status to standardized ICF codes, using a dataset of clinical narratives from physical therapy encounters. Recent advances in language modeling and word embedding were used as features for established machine learning models and a novel deep learning approach, achieving a macro-averaged F-1 score of 84% on linking mobility activity reports to ICF codes. Both classification and candidate selection approaches present distinct strengths for automated coding in under-studied domains, and we highlight that the combination of (i) a small annotated data set; (ii) expert definitions of codes of interest; and (iii) a representative text corpus is sufficient to produce high-performing automated coding systems. This research has implications for continued development of language technologies to analyze functional status information, and the ongoing growth of NLP tools for a variety of specialized applications in clinical care and research.