cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Pay for Percentile

We propose an incentive scheme for educators that links compensation to the ranks of their students within comparison sets. Under certain conditions, this scheme induces teachers to allocate socially optimal levels of effort. Moreover, because this scheme employs only ordinal information, it allows education authorities to employ completely new assessments at each testing date without ever having to equate various assessments. This removes incentives for teachers to teach to a particular assessment form and eliminates opportunities to influence reward pay by corrupting assessment scales. Education authorities can employ separate no-stakes assessment systems to track trends in scaled measures of student achievement. (JEL I21, I28, J33, J45)
Knowledge, compensation, and firm value: An empirical analysis of firm communication

Abstract Knowledge is central to managing an organization, but its presence in employees is difficult to measure directly. We hypothesize that external communication patterns reveal the location of knowledge within the management team. Using a large database of firm conference call transcripts, we find that CEOs speak less in settings where they are likely to be relatively less knowledgeable. CEOs who speak more are also paid more, and firms whose CEO pay is not commensurate with CEO speaking have a lower industry-adjusted Tobin׳s Q. Communication thus appears to reveal knowledge.
Who needs special needs? On the constitutionality of collecting DNA and other biometric data from arrestees.

For years, the collection of DNA samples from individuals arrested for criminal misconduct has been advocated by police officials and endorsed by politicians. Louisiana, Virginia, California, and South Dakota have adopted laws to add DNA profiles derived from these samples to their DNA databases. Texas provides for DNA to be taken after indictment but before conviction. Although the U.S. Department of Justice initially shied away from the issue, the DNA Fingerprint Act of 20055 authorizes the collection of DNA from individuals arrested for violations of certain federal criminal laws, and the inclusion in the national DNA database of all profiles from states that type DNA prior to conviction. But are these laws constitutional? In an article in a previous issue of this journal, and reprinted in this issue, Professor Tracey Maclin concludes that fidelity to precedent should lead the Supreme Court to strike down the Louisiana and Virginia laws as violations of the Fourth Amendment.
Medicare's coverage with study participation policy: clinical trials or tribulations?

Under a new coverage policy recently announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) called Coverage with Study Participation (CSP), CMS has conditioned coverage of certain new items or services upon beneficiary enrollment in a prospective clinical trial. According to CMS, the new policy is directed at interventions for which the available scientific evidence is insufficient to merit a national coverage decision, even though the new intervention is FDA approved, and the existing evidence is promising.The CSP policy substantially alters the manner in which CMS has historically made its national coverage decisions, and raises significant legal and ethical questions.While CMS has the legal authority to determine whether an intervention is "reasonable and necessary" for coverage purposes, it may have neither the statutory nor the administrative authority to restrict coverage to beneficiaries who agree to participate in post-marketing clinical trials, and doing so may violate federal regulations designed for the protection of human subjects participating in medical research.Although CMS insists that the goal of CSP is to enhance access to new medical technology that improves health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries, CSP appears, in the larger context, to be a thinly-veiled effort to control the high cost of new technology by limiting present coverage, and delaying, perhaps for years, full and equal access to the technology. This Article posits that if CMS deems an item or service to be sufficiently reasonable and necessary for the Medicare population to be approved for CSP, then it ought to be covered for all Medicare patients who need the intervention, without coerced participation in clinical trials. Ultimately, Congress, and not CMS, must make the hard decisions to control costs and ration care.
Preferences and Compliance with International Law

International law lacks many of the standard features of domestic law. There are few legislative or judicial bodies with exclusive authority over particular jurisdictions or subject matters, the subjects regulated by international law typically must affirmatively consent to be bound by it, and supranational authorities with the power to coerce states to comply with international obligations are rare. How can a legal system with these features generate changes in state behavior? For many theories, the ability of international law to inform and change individual preferences provides the answer. When voters care that treaty commitments be kept, or that international norms be honored, the theory goes, leaders are more likely to be able to make choices consistent with international obligations. Over the last decade, a literature has emerged testing these theories using surveys and experiments embedded in surveys. Multiple U.S. studies find that international law and international norm arguments shift public opinion in the direction of greater compliance by 4 to 20 percentage points. However, studies in foreign contexts are more mixed, with some backlash reported in countries in which international law is highly politicized. This Article describes the state of current knowledge about whether international law actually does change preferences, explains the limitations with existing research, and proposes avenues for future study.
Justice Kennedy's Sixth Amendment Pragmatism

This essay, written as part of a symposium on the evolution of Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, surveys three areas of criminal procedure under the Sixth Amendment: sentence enhancements, the admissibility of hearsay, and the regulation of defense counsel’s responsibilities. In each area, Justice Kennedy has been a notable voice of pragmatism, focusing not on bygone analogies to the eighteenth century but on a hard-headed appreciation of the twenty-first. He has shown sensitivity to modern criminal practice, prevailing professional norms, and practical constraints, as befits a Justice who came to the bench with many years of private-practice experience. His touchstone is not a bright-line rule derived from history, but a flexible approach that is workable today. Notwithstanding the press’s assumptions about him as a swing Justice, his approach is remarkably consistent and principled. The essay explores four important themes in his Sixth Amendment jurisprudence. First is the use of history. Justice Kennedy is a moderate originalist, looking to history where it works but adapting it to modern realities, especially to new circumstances and new problems. Second is his common-law incrementalism and flexibility, in contrast to some other Justices’ rigid formalism. Third is Justice Kennedy’s structural approach to the Constitution as fostering dialogue among branches and levels of government. He emphasizes federalism and checks and balances, not a strict separation of powers. Fourth is his use of practicality and common sense to leaven theoretical abstractions. He looks closely at the purposes of laws, their effects, the lessons of expertise, and the existence of alternative solutions. In interpreting the Sixth Amendment, then, Justice Kennedy is fundamentally a practical lawyer, applying the humble wisdom born of experience rather than the rigid extremes that flow from a quest for theoretical purity.
Enemy at the Gates: Variation in Economic Growth from Civil Conflict

There has been much disagreement about the relationship between civil wars and state economic performance. While civil war is often associated with poor economic performance, some states have manag...
Trade, Firms, and Wages: Theory and Evidence

How does trade liberalization affect wages? This is the first paper to consider in theory and data how the impact of final and intermediate input tariff cuts on workers' wages varies with the global engagement of their firm. Our model predicts that a fall in output tariffs lowers wages at import-competing firms but boosts wages at exporting firms. Similarly, a fall in input tariffs raises wages at import-using firms relative to those at firms that only source inputs locally. Using highly detailed Indonesian manufacturing census data for the period 1991--2000, we find considerable support for the model's predictions. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.
Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition

Based on survey responses from a national random sample of nearly 4,000 high school and college students, we uncover a dramatic gender gap in political ambition. This finding serves as striking evidence that the gap is present well before women and men enter the professions from which most candidates emerge. We then use political socialization—which we gauge through a myriad of socializing agents and early life experiences—as a lens through which to explain the individual-level differences we uncover. Our analysis reveals that parental encouragement, politicized educational and peer experiences, participation in competitive activities, and a sense of self-confidence propel young people's interest in running for office. But on each of these dimensions, women, particularly once they are in college, are at a disadvantage. By identifying when and why gender differences in interest in running for office materialize, we begin to uncover the origins of the gender gap in political ambition. Taken together, our results suggest that concerns about substantive and symbolic representation will likely persist.
Earnings Quality and International IPO Underpricing

ABSTRACT: This study examines the impact of country-level earnings quality on IPO underpricing. Examining 10,783 IPOs from 37 countries, we find that IPOs are underpriced less in countries where public firms produce higher quality earnings information. This finding persists after controlling for other deal- and country-specific factors that affect IPO underpricing, and it is driven neither by the large and relatively transparent markets in the U.S. and U.K. nor by the relatively opaque Japanese market. The impact of low earnings quality on underpricing is partially offset by the use of a top-tier underwriter.
Diffusing wave spectroscopy: A unified treatment on temporal sampling and speckle ensemble methods

Diffusing wave spectroscopy (DWS) is a well-known set of methods to measure the temporal dynamics of dynamic samples. In DWS, dynamic samples scatter the incident coherent light, and the information of the temporal dynamics is encoded in the scattered light. To record and analyze the light signal, there exist two types of methods—temporal sampling methods and speckle ensemble methods. Temporal sampling methods, including diffuse correlation spectroscopy, use one or multiple large bandwidth detectors to sample well and analyze the temporal light signal to infer the sample temporal dynamics. Speckle ensemble methods, including speckle visibility spectroscopy, use a high-pixel-count camera sensor to capture a speckle pattern and use the speckle contrast to infer sample temporal dynamics. In this paper, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate that the decorrelation time (τ) measurement accuracy or signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the two types of methods has a unified and similar fundamental expression based on the number of independent observables (NIO) and the photon flux. Given a time measurement duration, the NIO in temporal sampling methods is constrained by the measurement duration, while speckle ensemble methods can outperform by using simultaneous sampling channels to scale up the NIO significantly. In the case of optical brain monitoring, the interplay of these factors favors speckle ensemble methods. We illustrate that this important engineering consideration is consistent with the previous research on blood pulsatile flow measurements, where a speckle ensemble method operating at 100-fold lower photon flux than a conventional temporal sampling system can achieve a comparable SNR.
Brown and the Colorblind Constitution

This Essay offers the first in-depth examination of the role of colorblind constitutionalism in the history of Brown v. Board of Education. In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 (2007), such an examination is needed today more than ever. In this case, Chief Justice John Roberts drew on the history of Brown to support his conclusion that racial classifications in school assignment policies are unconstitutional. Particularly controversial was the Chief Justice's use of the words of the NAACP lawyers who argued Brown as evidence for his colorblind reading of the landmark school desegregation decision. I argue that while the historical record shows widespread faith in the claims of colorblind constitutionalism at the time of Brown, including among the lawyers for the NAACP and their allies, these claims were just one of many ways in which civil rights advocates challenged the constitutionality of school segregation. And, more importantly, any effort to claim Brown as a foundation stone for colorblind constitutionalism must confront the fact that the Supreme Court clearly rejected a sweeping anticlassification justification for its decision in Brown.
The maturity of debt issues and predictable variation in bond returns

Abstract The maturity of new debt issues predicts excess bond returns. When the share of long-term debt issues in total debt issues is high, future excess bond returns are low. This predictive power comes in two parts. First, inflation, the real short-term rate, and the term spread predict excess bond returns. Second, these same variables explain the long-term share, and together account for much of its own ability to predict excess bond returns. The results are consistent with survey evidence that firms use debt market conditions in an effort to determine the lowest-cost maturity at which to borrow.
Foreign Affairs Federalism and the Separation of Powers

This essay argues that Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council may not portend a more aggressive intervention by the federal courts in enforcing a federal common law of foreign relations. A significant concern that underlies foreign affairs preemption is concern that 50 states might undermine the sole voice of the federal government in representing the nation. This concern, however, applies equally to the federal courts, which are not structurally suited due to their slowness and decentralization for involvement in foreign affairs. Enhancing the effectiveness of foreign policy calls for a reduced role for the judiciary in favor of the concentration of authority in the political branches.
A Process Model of Public Police Violence

The author proposes and outlines a three stage process model to explain the reactions to public police violence. He argues that this model provides a better explanation of the effects of police violence than "natural history" and "public arenas" models can. The model consists of three stages: arousal, reactions, and outcomes, and four categories of actors: victims, police, public, and government.
None to Be Trusted: Israel's Use of Cluster Munitions in the Second Lebanon War and the Case for the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Israel's extensive use of the Cluster Munitions in the 2006 Lebanon War provided a major impetus for drafting the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). Israel, blamed for severe humanitarian post-conflict harm to civilians in South Lebanon, simultaneously faced an extensive diplomatic entanglement with the U.S. based on suspicions that Israel had violated U.S. legislation as well as a classified bilateral end-use agreement specifying the conditions of use of U.S.-made CMs. Relying on numerous sources, especially the recent declassified (June 2008) IDF's Military Advocate General's legal opinion into whether Israel's CM use complied with International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and the 2008 Israel's Inquiry Commission into the 2006 War final report, this Article lists seven intriguing lessons learned from that War regarding the legality of CM under IHL. These lessons also highlight the fundamental differences in the approaches taken by CCM supporters vis-a-vis the U.S. and other major CM stockpilers, which hold that restricting and regulating the use of CMs (through adopting a new Protocol to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons) is sufficient to avoid future harm to civilians from these weapons. Beyond the legality issue, this Article draws conclusions to the Protocol's fragility and, importantly, to the CCM's necessity
The Inevitability of Federal Sovereign Immunity

Our nation was founded more than two hundred years ago through a popular revolution against a sovereign monarch. In the past half-century, avenues for litigation have expanded, along with more frequent invocation of rights as claims in court - constitutional, statutory, and common-law. For better or worse, in the present day, individual sovereignty appears to be the cultural byword, celebrating unconstrained personal autonomy. Thus, the proposition that the government may be excused from having to answer to individuals in court may seem antithetical to most Americans. And yet few doctrines are more solidly anchored in Supreme Court precedent than that the United States government may not be sued without its consent. Before the Supreme Court and in the Congress, the debate rages on about whether the states should be regarded as retaining immunity from suit even when litigation is authorized by federal legislation. But the premise that the federal government is not subject to suit without its consent occasions little meaningful dissent in public life today. Properly understood, and given the longstanding acceptance of judicial restraint of ongoing government conduct that truly contravenes constitutional directives, federal sovereign immunity fits comfortably with popular sovereignty, divided and diminished government power, and political accountability for public officers. Sovereign immunity - or something like it - may have been an inevitable legal development, because open-ended and unconstrained access to the courts by those who object to governmental policies or actions could undermine effective governance by the people through an electoral majority. At the same time, when the federal government has been made amenable to litigation by the democratically-elected Congress, the courts should not reconstruct a broader immunity through a jaundiced and hostile interpretation of the statute. If a statutory waiver of federal sovereign immunity is construed too strictly and narrowly, so that every statutory term is slanted against the claimant, the legislative promise of meaningful judicial relief may be frustrated.
Operational risk and equity prices

Abstract We use an empirical model to categorize firms into portfolios based on operational risk. Using these portfolios, we show that a strategy of buying firms in the highest decile of operational risk and shorting firms in the lowest decile of operational risk earned a positive but insignificant risk-adjusted average return of 0.72% per month from 1990 to 2000. However, from 2001 to 2010, the same strategy earned a significantly negative risk-adjusted average return of −1.50% per month. This change occurred during a time characterized by an increasing number of high profile operational losses and regulatory changes surrounding operational risk.
IPO Pricing in the Dot‐com Bubble

IPO underpricingreached astronomical levels during1999 and 2000.We show that the regime shift in initial returns and other elements of pricing behavior can be at least partially accounted for by marked changes in pre-IPO ownership structure and insider sellingbehavior over the period, which reduced key decision makers’ incentives to control underpricing. After controlling for these changes, the diierence in underpricing between 1999 and 2000 and the precedingthree years is much reduced. Our results sug g est that it was ¢rm characteristics that were unique duringthe ‘‘dot-com bubble’’and that pricing behavior followed from incentives created by these characteristics. IN 1996, FIRST-DAY RETURNS on initial public oierings (IPOs) averaged about 17 percent (median: 10 percent). In 1999, ¢rst-day returns averaged 73 percent (median: 40 percent) before taperingoi to 58 percent (median: 30 percent) in 2000. Internet IPOs averaged a stunning 89 percent (median: 57 percent) during 1999 and 2000. These average returns dwarf those from earlier periods and are the most widely recognized feature of what is now commonly referred to as the ‘‘dot-com bubble’’. 1 Existingexplanations for the initial return behavior of IPOs focus in larg e part on informational frictions that arise amongthe various parties to the transaction. 2 Although it is conceivable that informational frictions became more severe duringthe dot-com bubble, it strains belief that even collectively this body of theory can account for the profound change in market behavior. With this in mind, Loughran and Ritter (2001) conjecture that issuers grew complacent
Monitor and Manage: MiFID and Power in the Regulation of EU Financial Markets

MiFID, the Market in Financial Instruments Directive, in force 1st November 2007, is hailed as the next great step toward market integration within the European Union. It is grounded in two key traditional policies of market regulation: surveillance and management. MiFID will exact a greater degree of transparency - paralleling American principles of market regulation. It will also require adherence to a best execution standard for all clients. Most analyses have focused on the costs and implementation of these requirements. Transparency is viewed as either a burden (or opportunity) because of the need to produce, keep and manage more data. Markets in information will surely grow. The "best execution" standards provide a greater means of standardizing industry practices - with the potential benefit to regulators to which power over market behavior should flow. This article will focus on the potential ramifications of the surveillance and regulatory aspects of MiFID in terms of nature of the character of the regulatory power in the financial products sector. Specifically the article examines the effects of the creation of the markets for information elaborated or augmented through MiFID in terms of the regulation of the behavior of participants in financial markets and the entities they serve. Particular attention will be paid to the effects of MiFID on public and private anti-corruption campaigns, the use of these regulations to influence the behavior of issuers and market middlemen, and the potential utility of these regulations to elements of civil society and the media in their campaigns for corporate and capital social responsibility.
A Meta-Analysis of Newsvendor Experiments: Revisiting the Pull-to-Center Asymmetry

The field of behavioral operations has produced a rich tradition of experiments in newsvendor decision‐making. Our study provides a meta‐analysis of 24 papers in this research area; we confirm that the pull‐to‐center (PtC) effect, where average order quantities in a sample lie in between average demand and optimal order quantities, is a very stable observable phenomenon across studies. However, we also show that the asymmetry in the PtC effect between high‐margin and low‐margin conditions varies significantly from study to study; factors that allow predicting the extent and direction of the PtC asymmetry include the likelihood of obtaining losses, the way underage costs are presented to subjects, and the existence of a decision support system. We validate these factors using a controlled experiment. In conclusion, the PtC asymmetry appears less as a fundamental attribute of human behavior, but rather as a function of the design aspects of the experiment.
Restraining the Heartless: Racist Speech and Minority Rights

Racially offensive slogans like those directed at the English soccer players in the anecdote above—slurs, epithets, and symbols—are all forms of racist speech. In the United States, racist speech, along with anti-gay and anti-religious speech, falls into the category called “hate speech.” Though there is no commonly agreed upon definition of hate speech, the international advocacy organization Human Rights Watch defines
Unemployment and worker participation in the gig economy: Evidence from an online labor market

The gig economy comprises a large portion of the workforce in today’s economy. The gig economy has low barriers to entry, enabling flexible work arrangements and allowing workers to engage in conti...
Monopsony and Competition: The Impact of Rival Leagues on Player Salaries during the Early Days of Baseball

Abstract During the early days of professional baseball, the dominant major leagues imposed a “reserve clause” designed to limit player wages by restricting competition for labor. Entry into the market by rival leagues challenged the incumbent monopsony cartel's ability to restrict compensation. Using a sample of player salaries from the first 40 years of the reserve clause (1880–1919), this study examines the impact of inter-league competition on player wages. This study finds a positive salary effect associated with rival league entry that is consistent with monopsony wage suppression, but the effect is stronger during the 20th century than the 19th century. Changes in levels of market saturation and minor-league competition may explain differences in the effects between the two eras.
From Choice to Reproductive Justice: De-Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights

The Essay argues that the right to abortion constitutionalized in Roe v. Wade is by some measure at odds with a capacious understanding of the demands of reproductive justice. No matter its rationale, the constitutional right to abortion is fundamentally a negative right that rhetorically keeps the state out of the domain of family life. As such, the decision privatizes not only the abortion decision, but also parenting, by rendering the decision to carry a pregnancy to term a choice. It thereby legitimates a minimalist state response to the problems of pregnant women who carry their pregnancies to term and for poor parents who might need greater public support. These marginalized groups need greater community and state assistance with the demands of parenting, and the equation of reproductive justice with a right to terminate a pregnancy is in tension with a political or legal agenda for meeting those needs. The Essay then explores the possibility of creating a right to legal abortion through ordinary political means, rather than through constitutional adjudication, in such a way as not to carry these costs. author. Frederick Haas Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Research and Academic Programs, Georgetown University Law Center. The participants at the Yale Law School Conference, “The Future of Sexual and Reproductive Rights,” the Columbia Law School Faculty Workshop, and the Georgetown University Faculty Workshop all contributed helpful comments and criticisms. Thanks also to Robert Adeiha, Randy Barnett, Neal Devins, Vicki Jackson, Judith Lichtenberg, David Luban, Noya Rimalt, Mike Seidman, Marc Spindelman, and David Vladeck for detailed suggestions at varying stages of this Essay’s development, and to Gabriel Pacyniak and David Young for research assistance. OP 5/27/2009 6:01:48 PM from choice to reproductive justice 1395 feature contents
A Taxonomy of Obesity Litigation

I come to the topic of obesity litigation from the unique perspective of an obese litigator. In my case, the causes of my obesity are genetics, spending too much time litigating and not enough time exercising, and, probably, my grandmother’s recipes. This analysis may seem flippant, but the individualized circumstances of my obesity highlight a fundamental problem with the use of class action litigation to address obesity. Class action litigation is a procedural device to aggregate claims where common issues predominate. The causes of any one person’s obesity, however, will be highly individualized—different genetics, different exercise patterns, different eating patterns, and different choices. Only through abuse of the class action mechanism can litigation be feasibly used by plaintiffs’ attorneys. The risk of that abuse, however, is very real. In 2000, the very idea of lawsuits over obesity was the subject of parody in The Onion in a piece satirizing recent tobacco litigation successes. Less than two years later, a concerted entrepreneurial effort emerged to duplicate the fruits of the tobacco litigation, namely, the billions of dollars extracted by attorneys from the tobacco industry and tobacco users.
Centering the Teenage "Siren": Adolescent Workers, Sexual Harassment, and the Legal Construction of Race and Gender

Recent scholarship and media attention has focused on the prevalence of sexually harassing behavior directed at working teenagers, and the emergence of sexual harassment lawsuits by these minors against their employers. Although many of the legal issues concerning workplace sexual harassment and adult workers (and the various state and federal jurisprudence prohibiting it) have been widely discussed, there is surprisingly little discourse, research, and precedent addressing the problem of workplace sexual harassment and teen workers. Currently, most sexual harassment cases brought by adolescent workers are litigated using the doctrinal framework for adult workers. Only the Seventh Circuit has developed an adolescent-specific framework, and it produces the same result as the law governing adult workers—it functions to maintain historically subordinating racial and gender hierarchies embedded in sexual harassment law. This Article uses legal construction to evaluate the developing law of sexual harassment claims brought by adolescent workers. Absent a deconstruction framework, adolescent-specific sexual harassment law will continue to perpetuate the very racial and gender subordination Title VII was passed to remediate. * Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas, Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law; J.D. Columbia Law School, B.A. Stanford University. I am grateful to God and my loving family. I want to express special gratitude to my amazing husband Edward C. Boles. Thank you as well to Professors Adjoa Aiyetoro, Theresa Beiner, Susan Bisom-Rapp, Sarah Jenkins, Natasha Martin and the powerful women of the Lutie A. Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Writing Workshop for their comments and encouragement, along with the faculty members of the William H. Bowen School of Law and Thomas Jefferson School of Law. I also thank the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow for the gift of quiet and inspirational writing space and time.
Adversaries or Partners? Science and the Precautionary Principle in International Wildlife Treaty Regimes

In 1992, the precautionary principle emerged from the sidelines to make a splash at Rio and make its debut on the international environmental law stage. Since then, the principle has been adopted in numerous international agreements and has become an important principle of international environmental law. It has also, however, experienced something of a backlash. Among other things, commentators have argued that it is incoherent and paralyzing or anti-scientific. This article identifies and analyzes four themes that emerge from the way in which the principle has been addressed by four major international conventions for the conservation of wildlife - the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention on Biological Diversity ("CBD"), the Convention on Migratory Species ("CMS"), and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species ("CITES"). These themes shed light on how the parties to these conventions perceive the precautionary principle, its role in decision-making, and its relationship to science. The principle's use suggests that the principle is primarily perceived as a stop-gap measure to be applied at the operational level when information is clearly absent. Where, however, information is available, the principle is frequently treated as irrelevant. This in turn leads to arguments that those who see a role for the principle in these circumstances are acting contrary to the science. This article argues that this approach misconceives the nature and level of uncertainty in conservation. It proposes that decision-makers recognize the pervasiveness of uncertainty. As such, they should develop a distinct role for the precautionary principle that is complementary to science and that will allow the inevitable value judgments implicated in conservation activities to be made openly and with a background principle of ensuring conservation. To the extent this role takes the principle beyond its beginnings in Rio, this article argues that the role is necessary as part of the principle's maturing process.
Some Reflections on the Diversity of Corporate Boards: Women, People of Color, and the Unique Issues Associated with Women of Color

As one might expect, there are many similarities between the circumstances of women directors and directors of color, which include African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans.1 Indeed, both groups began appearing on corporate boards in significant numbers during the same period—right after the Civil Rights Movement—pursuant to which the push for racial equality throughout society precipitated efforts to achieve greater representation of people of color, as well as women, on corporate boards.2 Moreover, while women and people of color have experienced some increase in board representation over the last few decades, both groups also have encountered significant barriers to their success on corporate boards.3 However, people of color appear to have experienced more significant barriers than women, while women of color appear to be experiencing the most formidable of such barriers.4 By analyzing the empirical
The Expansion of “Charitable Choice” and “Faith-Based Initiatives”: Human Resource Management Implications for Nonprofit Organizations

The purpose of this article is to analyze the implications of the expansion of “charitable choice” legislation and the introduction of “faith-based initiatives” on human resource management issues in nonprofit organizations, particularly those organizations that are affiliated with religious congregations. Experience with state-level equivalent programs and some limited experience with federal programs have generated a number of court cases that demonstrate both the nature of the concerns opponents of such programs have and the limits still faced by those taking advantage of public contracting opportunities under various faith-based initiatives.
The Determinants of Asymmetric Volatility

Volatility in equity markets is asymmetric: contemporaneous return and conditional return volatility are negatively correlated. In this article I develop an asymmetric volatility model where dividend growth and dividend volatility are the two state variables of the economy. The model allows both the leverage effect and the volatility feedback effect, the two popular explanations of asymmetry. The model is estimated by the simulated method of moments. I find that both the leverage effect and volatility feedback are important determinants of asymmetric volatility, and volatility feedback is significant both statistically and economically. The relationship between stock price and its volatility has long interested financial researchers. Empirically, returns and conditional variance of next period’s returns are negatively correlated. That is, negative (positive) returns are generally associated with upward (downward) revisions of the conditional volatility. This empirical phenomenon is often referred to as asymmetric volatility in the literature [see Engle and Ng (1993), Zakoian (1994), and Wu and Xiao (1999)]. The presence of asymmetric volatility is most apparent during stock market crashes when a large decline in stock price is associated with a significant increase in market volatility. Formal econometric models have been developed by researchers to capture asymmetric volatility. For example, asymmetric ARCH models of Nelson (1991) and Glosten, Jagannathan, and Runkle (1993) have been found to significantly outperform their counterparts that do not accommodate the asymmetry. Moreover, continuous-time stochastic volatility models generally produce estimates of a negative correlation between return and return volatility [Bakshi, Cao, and Chen (1997) and Bates (1997); for a review of the literature on asymmetric volatility, see Bekaert
Why firms issue callable bonds: Hedging investment uncertainty

Abstract This paper analyzes a firm's dynamic decisions: i) whether to issue a callable or non-callable bond; ii) when to call the callable bond; and iii) whether to refund it when it is called. We argue that a firm uses a callable bond to reduce the risk-shifting problem in case its investment opportunities become poor. Our empirical findings support this argument. We find that a firm facing poorer future investment opportunities is more likely to issue a callable bond than a firm facing better investment opportunities. In addition, a firm with a higher leverage ratio and higher investment risk is more likely to issue a callable bond. Finally, after a callable bond is issued, a firm with a poor performance and a low investment activity tends to call back a bond without refunding; a firm with the best performance and highest investment activity tends to call back a bond and refund its call; and a firm with mediocre performance and investment activity tends to not call its bonds.
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Use of Ethics-Related Terms in 10-K Reports

We examine the occurrence of ethics- related terms in 10-K annual reports over 1994–2006 and offer empirical observations on the conceptual framework of Erhard et al. (Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics, and Legality (Harvard Business School, Harvard) 2007). We use a pre-Sarbanes-Oxley sample subset to compare the occurrence of ethics-related terms in our 10-K data with samples from other studies that consider virtue-related phenomena. We find that firms using ethics-related terms are more likely to be “sin” stocks, are more likely to be the object of class action lawsuits, and are more likely to score poorly on measures of corporate governance. The consistency of our results across these alternative measures of ethical behavior suggests that managers who portray their firm as “ethical” in 10-K reports are more likely to be systematically misleading the public. These results are consistent with the integrity-performance paradox.
Optimal Streaming Approximations for all Boolean Max-2CSPs and Max-ksat

We prove tight upper and lower bounds on approximation ratios of all Boolean Max-2CSP problems in the streaming model. Specifically, for every type of Max-2CSP problem, we give an explicit constant $\alpha$ , s.t. for any $\epsilon > 0$ (i) there is an ( $\alpha-\epsilon$ )-streaming approximation using space $O(\log n)$ ; and (ii) any ( $\alpha+\epsilon$ )-streaming approximation requires space $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ . This generalizes the celebrated work of [Kapralov, Khanna, Sudan SODA 2015; Kapralov, Krachun STOC 2019], who showed that the optimal approximation ratio for Max-CUT was 1/2. Prior to this work, the problem of determining this ratio was open for all other Max-2CSPs. Our results are quite surprising for some specific Max-2CSPs. For the Max-DICUT problem, there was a gap between an upper bound of 1/2 and a lower bound of 2/5 [Guruswami, Velingker, Velusamy APPROX 2017]. We show that neither of these bounds is tight, and the optimal ratio for Max-DICUT is 4/9. We also establish that the tight approximation for Max-2SAT is $\sqrt{2}/2$ , and for Exact Max-2SAT it is 3/4. As a byproduct, our result gives a separation between space-efficient approximations for Max-2SAT and Exact Max-2SAT. This is in sharp contrast to the setting of polynomial-time algorithms with polynomial space, where the two problems are known to be equally hard to approximate. Finally, we prove that the tight streaming approximation for $\text{Max}-k\text{SAT}$ is $\sqrt{2}/2$ for every $k\geq 2$ .
Retrograde Suppression of Post-Tetanic Potentiation at the Mossy Fiber-CA3 Pyramidal Cell Synapse

Abstract In the hippocampus, the excitatory synapse between dentate granule cell (GC) axons, or mossy fibers (MFs), and CA3 pyramidal cells (MF-CA3) expresses robust forms of short-term plasticity, such as frequency facilitation and post-tetanic potentiation (PTP). These forms of plasticity are due to increases in presynaptic neurotransmitter release, and can be engaged when dentate GCs fire in bursts (e.g., during exploratory behaviors) and bring CA3 pyramidal neurons above threshold. While frequency facilitation at this synapse is limited by endogenous activation of presynaptic metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs), whether MF-PTP can be regulated in an activity-dependent manner is unknown. Here, using physiologically relevant patterns of MF stimulation in acute mouse hippocampal slices, we found that disrupting postsynaptic Ca2+ dynamics increases MF-PTP, strongly suggesting a form of Ca2+-dependent retrograde suppression of this form of plasticity. PTP suppression requires a few seconds of MF bursting activity and Ca2+ release from internal stores. Our findings raise the possibility that the powerful MF-CA3 synapse can negatively regulate its own strength not only during PTP-inducing activity typical of normal exploratory behaviors, but also during epileptic activity.
Diophantine approximation with smooth numbers

Let $$\theta $$ be an irrational number and $$\varphi $$ a real number. Let $$C > 2$$ and $$\varepsilon > 0$$ . There are infinitely many positive integers n free of prime factors $$> (\log n )^C$$ , such that $$\Vert \theta n + \varphi \Vert < n^{-\left( \frac{1}{3} - \frac{2}{3C}\right) + \varepsilon }$$ . Here $$\Vert y\Vert $$ is the distance from y to $$\mathbb Z$$ .
NeMo: Neural Mesh Models of Contrastive Features for Robust 3D Pose Estimation

3D pose estimation is a challenging but important task in computer vision. In this work, we show that standard deep learning approaches to 3D pose estimation are not robust to partial occlusion. Inspired by the robustness of generative vision models to partial occlusion, we propose to integrate deep neural networks with 3D generative representations of objects into a unified neural architecture that we term NeMo. In particular, NeMo learns a generative model of neural feature activations at each vertex on a dense 3D mesh. Using differentiable rendering we estimate the 3D object pose by minimizing the reconstruction error between NeMo and the feature representation of the target image. To avoid local optima in the reconstruction loss, we train the feature extractor to maximize the distance between the individual feature representations on the mesh using contrastive learning. Our extensive experiments on PASCAL3D+, occluded-PASCAL3D+ and ObjectNet3D show that NeMo is much more robust to partial occlusion compared to standard deep networks, while retaining competitive performance on non-occluded data. Interestingly, our experiments also show that NeMo performs reasonably well even when the mesh representation only crudely approximates the true object geometry with a cuboid, hence revealing that the detailed 3D geometry is not needed for accurate 3D pose estimation.
Evidence for a 5d F-theorem

Renormalization group flows are studied between 5d SCFTs engineered by (p, q) 5-brane webs with large numbers of external 5-branes. A general expression for the free energy on S5 in terms of single-valued trilogarithm functions is derived from their supergravity duals, which are characterized by the 5-brane charges and additional geometric parameters. The additional geometric parameters are fixed by regularity conditions, and we show that the solutions to the regularity conditions extremize a trial free energy. These results are used to survey a large sample of $$ \mathcal{O} $$ (105) renormalization group flows between different 5d SCFTs, including Higgs branch flows and flows that preserve the SU(2) R- symmetry. In all cases the free energy changes monotonically towards the infrared, in line with a 5d F -theorem.
Normalization of single-cell RNA-seq counts by log(x + 1)* or log(1 + x).

Single-cell RNA-seq technologies have been successfully employed over the past decade to generate many high resolution cell atlases. These have proved invaluable in recent efforts aimed at understanding the cell type specificity of host genes involved in SARS-CoV-2 infections. While single-cell atlases are based on well-sampled highly-expressed genes, many of the genes of interest for understanding SARS-CoV-2 can be expressed at very low levels. Common assumptions underlying standard single-cell analyses don't hold when examining low-expressed genes, with the result that standard workflows can produce misleading results. Supplementary information Supplementary data and all of the code to reproduce Figure 1 are available here: https://github.com/pachterlab/BP_2020_2/.
Analyzing Web Search Behavior for Software Engineering Tasks

Web search plays an integral role in software engineering (SE) to help with various tasks such as finding documentation, debugging, installation, etc. In this work, we present the first large-scale analysis of web search behavior for SE tasks using the search query logs from Bing, a commercial web search engine. First, we use distant supervision to build a machine learning classifier to extract the SE search queries with an F1 score of 93%. We then perform an analysis on one million search sessions to understand how software engineering related queries and sessions differ from other queries and sessions. Subsequently, we propose a taxonomy of intents to identify the various contexts in which web search is used in software engineering. Lastly, we analyze millions of SE queries to understand the distribution, search metrics and trends across these SE search intents. Our analysis shows that SE related queries form a significant portion of the overall web search traffic. Additionally, we found that there are six major intent categories for which web search is used in software engineering. The techniques and insights can not only help improve existing tools but can also inspire the development of new tools that aid in finding information for SE related tasks.
Single-cell transcriptomics of the Drosophila wing disc reveals instructive epithelium-to-myoblast interactions

In both vertebrates and invertebrates, generating a functional appendage requires interactions between ectoderm-derived epithelia and mesoderm-derived cells. To investigate such interactions, we used single-cell transcriptomics to generate a temporal cell atlas of the Drosophila wing disc from two developmental time points. Using these data, we visualized gene expression using a multilayered model of the wing disc and cataloged ligand-receptor pairs that could mediate signaling between epithelial cells and adult muscle precursors (AMPs). We found that localized expression of the fibroblast growth factor ligands, Thisbe and Pyramus, in the disc epithelium regulates the number and location of the AMPs. In addition, Hedgehog ligand from the epithelium activates a specific transcriptional program within adjacent AMP cells, defined by AMP-specific targets Neurotactin and midline, that is critical for proper formation of direct flight muscles. More generally, our annotated temporal cell atlas provides an organ-wide view of potential cell-cell interactions between epithelial and myogenic cells.