cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Degree 3 Cohomology: Sheaves of Groupoids

We develop the theory of Dixmier-Douady sheaves of groupoids and relate it to degree 3 cohomology with integer coefficients. In §1 we explain the theory of descent for sheaves, based on local homeomorphisms. In §2, we introduce sheaves of groupoids (also called stacks) and gerbes. We relate gerbes on X with band a sheaf of abelian groups A with the cohomology group H 2(X, A). A gerbe with band ℂ X* is called a Dixmier-Douady sheaf of groupoids. In §3 we introduce the notion of connective structure and curving for such sheaves of groupoids; we obtain the 3-curvature Ω, which is a closed 3-form such that the cohomology class of \(\frac{\Omega }{{2\pi \sqrt { - 1} }}\) is integral. We prove that any 3-form with these properties is the 3-curvature of some sheaf of groupoids, and relate this to the constructions of Chapter 4. In §4 we use the path-fibration to define a canonical sheaf of groupoids over a compact Lie group. In §5 we give other examples of sheaves of groupoids connected with Lie group actions on a smooth manifold and with sheaves of twisted differential operators.
New Shoes and Trimmed Feet: The Formation of the Modern Canon of Tang Dynasty Prose

AbstractThis article examines the changing significance of Tang prose as represented within literary histories of China authored across the first four decades of the twentieth-century. It argues that broader shifts in the content, methodological approach, and pedagogical objectives of literary study during the formation of the modern discipline of Chinese literature led to the increasing marginalization of Tang prose within the canon. It suggests that due consideration of the underlying polemics that shaped modern study of Tang literature during its formation can help contextualize and support emerging critiques of inherited categories, priorities, and critical commonplaces in the field today.
Duration of feeding conjugated linoleic acid influences growth performance, carcass traits, and meat quality of finishing barrows

Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) was fed to growing-finishing barrows (n = 92) at 0.75% of the diet. A commercial CLA preparation (CLA 60) containing 60% CLA isomers was included at 1.25% to provide 0.75% CLA in the diet. The inclusion of CLA in diets was initiated at various BW and fed until slaughter. Growth, carcass, meat quality, physical, chemical, and sensory data were collected and analyzed. Treatments T1, T2, T3, and T4 included the last 0, 29, 56 and 87 kg, respectively, of weight gain before slaughter. Average daily gain and feed intake were not affected (P > or = 0.06) by CLA, but gain:feed responded quadratically (P = 0.05), over the entire BW gain (28 to 115 kg) with pigs of T2 and T3 having the greatest gain:feed. Loin muscle area increased (P = 0.01) linearly with increasing weight gain while fed CLA, and 10th rib, first rib, and last rib fat depth decreased (P 0.05) by feeding CLA. Increased gain:feed, increased loin muscle area, decreased fat depth, and improvements in marbling and firmness with CLA feeding could result in improved profitability of pork production systems.
Factor structure of cognition and functional capacity in two studies of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder: Implications for genomic studies.

Objective Impairments in cognition and everyday functioning are common in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BPD). In this article, we present factor analyses of cognitive and functional capacity (FC) measures based on 2 studies of schizophrenia (SCZ) and bipolar I disorder (BPI) using similar methods. The overall goal of these analyses was to determine whether performance-based assessments should be examined individually, or aggregated on the basis of the correlational structure of the tests, as well as to evaluate the similarity of factor structures of SCZ and BPI. Method Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Study #572 (Harvey et al., 2014) evaluated cognitive and FC measures among 5,414 BPI and 3,942 SCZ patients. A 2nd study evaluated similar neuropsychological (NP) and FC measures among 368 BPI and 436 SCZ patients. Principal components analysis, as well as exploratory and CFAs, were used to examine the data. Results Analyses in both datasets suggested that NP and FC measures were explained by a single underlying factor in BPI and SCZ patients, both when analyzed separately or as in a combined sample. The factor structure in both studies was similar, with or without inclusion of FC measures; homogeneous loadings were observed for that single factor across cognitive and FC domains across the samples. Conclusion The empirically derived factor model suggests that NP performance and FC are best explained as a single latent trait applicable to people with SCZ and BPD. This single measure may enhance the robustness of the analyses relating genomic data to performance-based phenotypes.
Evaluation and Comparison of Sustainability Performance and Visual Preference of Residential Landscape Elements

A study was conducted to compare sustainability performance (SP) and visual preference of landscape elements in six professionally designed landscapes. The sites chosen for study provided a range of low to high emphasis on sustainable landscape design. Landscape elements in each site were evaluated for two attributes: SP and visual preference. Sustainability performance was evaluated using the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SSI) scoring system. Visual preferences for landscape elements were assembled by surveying three populations of volunteers: landscape design professionals, landscape design students, and nondesigners (potential residential clients). Few significant differences were observed among the visual preference responses of participant groups. In the few differences noted, we found that the more knowledgeable participants were about landscape element’s ability to improve the environment, the more likely they were to rate them as visually preferred. Average values for SP and visual preference were negatively correlated. However, many individual landscape elements were rated highly in both SP and visual preference. These results suggest it is possible to design landscapes with both highly sustainable elements that are also highly visually preferred.
Parametric methods for confidence interval estimation of overlap coefficients

Overlap coefficient ( O V L ), the proportion of overlap area between two probability distributions, is a direct measure of similarity between two distributions. It is useful in microarray analysis for the purpose of identifying differentially expressed biomarkers, especially when data follow multimodal distribution which cannot be transformed to normal. However, the inference methods about O V L are quite sparse. This article proposes two methods, a generalized inference ( G I ) approach and a parametric bootstrapping ( P B ) method, to construct confidence intervals of O V L under the assumption of normality. In conjunction with the E M algorithms, these methods are extended to mixture Gaussian ( M G ) distributions. The performances of these methods are evaluated empirically under a variety of distributions including normal, gamma and mixture Gaussian. At last, the proposed approaches are applied to a published microarray dataset from a gene expression study of three most prevalent adult lymphoid malignancies.
The Sin of Prediction: When Mentally Simulated Alternatives Compete With Reality.

Experiential and associative learning are essential to optimal decision making. However, research shows that, even when exposed to repeated trials, people often fail to learn probabilities and cause/effect covariations. Consistent with the counterfactual inflation hypothesis, it is proposed that counterfactuals can interfere with memory of repeated exposures and therefore inhibit learning. Five experimental studies tested counterfactual thinking as a potential mechanism underlying this learning deficit using a simple, biased coin flipping paradigm. Participants were instructed to either simply observe or to predict and observe outcomes of a biased coin being flipped in multiple trials (Experiments 1-4). In all four experiments, counterfactual thought frequency mediated the relationship between task instructions and the extent of bias detection (i.e., learning). Experiment 5 showed that mental simulations of alternative outcomes were especially deleterious to learning and decision making. Findings are disc...
Bending, Pushing, and Ratcheting It Up: Memories of a Modeling Effort

In 1993, I was a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, doing research with Leah Edelstein-Keshet, the eminent mathematical biologist. We were very interested in the general problem of alignment of elongated objects in biology—for example, alignment of fish swimming in groups—but really, we were thinking more about angular order in the dynamic cytoskeleton. Electron micrographs of actin filaments (1) in the “comet tail” of actin propelling Listeria pathogens inside host cells fascinated us, and we started to develop a rather abstract mathematical model for the actin filament alignment.
An Update on Fluoroquinolones: The Emergence of a Multisystem Toxicity Syndrome

AbstractIntroduction: The FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) recently revised the boxed warning on fluoroquinolones to address serious safety concerns. This action was prompted by a growing number of reports involving patients with a constellation of symptoms now called fluoroquinolone associated disability.Methods: Internet and literature searches were performed to identify previous reports of quinolone induced multisystem toxicity syndromes. The 3 terms fluoroquinolone toxicity, quinolone toxicity syndrome and fluoroquinolone associated disability were used to query PubMed® and Google’s search engine for available information.Results: Four primary sources emerged, including a recent FDA review, 2 case series and robust social media platforms. The FDA identified 1,122 fluoroquinolone disability reports from November 1, 1997 to May 30, 2015. A total of 178 cases qualified as fluoroquinolone associated disability after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. Some estimate that there are as many as ...
Source motion compensated coded aperture imaging using thick 3D-position-sensitive CdZnTe detectors

The 18 - detector array system consists of eighteen 20mm × 20mm × 15mm CdZnTe detectors. In addition to spectroscopic capabilities, it has the ability to image gamma-ray sources with energies above 200keV in 4-pi space via Compton imaging. To extend the imaging capabilities to lower energies, two coded aperture masks have been applied to the system. In a practical scenario, the source could be moving in relation to the detector system. The resultant coded aperture images formed will be blurred and distorted unless this source movement is considered in the system model. This motion can be used to our advantage in the case of an imperfect detector and mask configuration with image artifacts. By averaging the images from multiple positions, the image intensity in the source direction will be unaffected, while the artifacts will be reduced significantly. In theory, this motion compensated image will not only reduce the fluctuations due to non-uniformity of the detector material properties, but will also flatten the image side-lobes caused by the random mask design, thus improving the signal-to-noise ratio of the source peak to background in the reconstructed image. The focus of this research is to validate this claim through measurement and simulation, and to ultimately automate this process given the coordinates and direction of the source.
"It becomes scientific...:" carbon accounting for REDD+ in Malawi.

I present a case study of project planning meetings during which meticulous accounting procedures are used to convert social and ecological life into marketable carbon credits. This focus on the micro-processes of carbon credit production nuances the understanding of: (1) the politics involved in these calculations in small-scale interactions; (2) the particular mechanisms through which social and ecological life is made equivalent to carbon units, social actions, and other places across the globe; (3) how these equivalencies and quantifications co-constitute one another; and (4) how this process (re)imbues these objective numbers with a particular context that is generated from the nexus of local and cosmopolitan expertise. This process lends legitimacy to an otherwise imprecise set of accounting practices and translates social and ecological data into forms legible to transnational commodity markets and investors.
Community Policing: Least Effective Where Need Is Greatest:

Little is known about the level or impact of community policing in suburban and rural communities. We surveyed more than 1,300 cities and counties and asked city managers about social cohesion, collective efficacy, and community policing variables. We find no effect of community policing on perception of safety and a positive effect on community participation only in the metro core. For suburbs and rural areas, community policing is only related to youth services. Collective efficacy is positively associated with safety perceptions across all communities but only related to community participation in suburbs and low crime communities. These results raise questions on how to better link collective efficacy and community policing in high crime communities, especially in suburbs and rural areas.
Integrating starchy substrate into cellulosic ethanol production to boost ethanol titers and yields

Abstract Starchy grains as current major feedstocks for bioethanol production are competing with food supply; therefore, lignocellulosic biomass was pursued as an alternative feedstock for bioethanol production due to its high availability and low price. Commercial production of second-generation bioethanol from lignocellulosic biomass is still under development as significant challenges of low fermentation efficiency, low ethanol titers, high enzyme cost, and high water usage remain to be addressed. In this research, sugar-rich substrates such as starchy grains were integrated into cellulosic ethanol production, which could boost ethanol titers and ethanol yields. The substrates with various ratios of corn flour and hydrothermal treated corn stover (4:12; 8:8; 12:4; 12:12) were evaluated on the ethanol concentration and ethanol yield via simultaneous saccharification and fermentation. Ethanol concentration and ethanol yield decreased with increasing amounts of treated corn stover in the mixtures. The maximum ethanol concentration (68.7 g/L) was achieved at the corn flour and corn stover ratio of 12:12 using raw starch granular enzyme with the ethanol yield of 86.0%, whereas the maximum ethanol yield was obtained at the corn flour and corn stover ratio of 12:4 as it contained higher amounts of corn flour. All the ethanol concentrations from various mixtures of corn flour and corn stover were higher than 37.9 g/L from the control with 100% of treated corn stover (16%, w/v). Saccharification and fermentation processes were optimized to reduce energy cost and the optimized process was able to complete ethanol fermentation within 48 h.
Why Teaching Ethics to AI Practitioners is Important

We argue that it is crucial to the future of AI that our students be trained in multiple complementary modes of ethical reasoning, so that they may make ethical design and implementation choices, ethical career decisions, and that their software will be programmed to take into account the complexities of acting ethically in the world.
Elevated phosphorus: dynamics during four years of green roof development

Green roofs are emerging engineered ecosystems that provide multiple benefits, but many are constructed with nutrient-rich substrate and have been found to leach out high levels of phosphorus (P) in runoff. It is unclear, however, how long green roofs act as sources of P or what mechanisms are responsible for these net losses. We measured P concentrations in runoff water over 4 years from a 1–5 year old extensive green roof in Cincinnati, OH, USA, produced a model to predict runoff P levels into the future, and validated predictions using runoff from 2 nearby extensive green roofs. P concentrations in runoff from the focal green roof were on par with heavily fertilized agroecosystems and displayed strong seasonal dynamics and a rapid decline over the 4-year study. Runoff measurements and changes in substrate P content over a 2-year period were used to estimate a mass balance for green roof P. P loss from the substrate was substantial (4.55 ± 2.3 g P/m2/yr), but only a small portion of the loss was attributable to leaching of P in runoff (0.19–0.65 g P/m2/yr). Missing P may be attributed to a combination of plant uptake and altered P form and binding strength, but further research is needed to precisely identify the mechanisms of P depletion. Our results also suggest that these and similar extensive green roofs are likely to act as environmentally significant sources of P for 10 or more years following roof installation, highlighting the need for reductions in initial substrate P content.
Rapid, evolutionary, reliable, scalable system and software development: the resilient agile process

The increasing pace of change in competition, technology, and complexity of software-intensive systems has increased the demand for rapid, reliable, scalable, and evolvable processes. Agile methods have made significant contributions to speeding up software development, but often encounter problems with reliability, scalability, and evolvability. Over the past 3 years, we have been experimenting with an approach called Resilient Agile (RA), which addresses these problems while also speeding up development by finding enablers for parallel systems engineering, development, and test. This paper summarizes our experience in defining and evolving RA by applying it to three representative emergent-technology applications: Location-Based Advertising, Picture Sharing, and Bad Driver Reporting. In comparison with the mainstream Architected Agile process that we had been using on similar systems, the RA process achieved fewer defects and significant speedups in system development and evolution. The paper summarizes the overall challenge of software schedule compression; identifies managed parallel development as generally the most powerful but least-practiced strategy for schedule compression; summarizes the key elements required to support parallelism, including specific model-driven system development techniques, automatic generation of key elements and realistic schedule and effort estimation. It then summarizes the three successful Resilient Agile projects to date, provides criteria for selecting a Resilient Agile process, and summarizes the key techniques for scaling up Resilient Agile, using a previous million-line command and control project as an example.
Abstract WMP82: Exosomes Derived From Cerebral Endothelial Cells of Young Adult Rats Reduced Cognitive Deficits in Aged Diabetic Rats

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is associated with cognitive decline and dementia in the elderly. The glymphatic system mediates clearance of the interstitial solutes in the brain by exchange of cerebrospinal and interstitial fluid (CSF and ISF). We recently demonstrated that DM in aged rat induces impairment of the glymphatic system and cognitive decline. Exosomes, membrane vesicles, mediate intercellular communication by transferring their cargo into recipient cells. The present study investigated whether cerebral endothelial exosomes (CEE) ameliorate glymphatic system impairment and improve cognitive function in aged DM rats. Methods and Results: DM was induced in male Wistar rats (13 months, n=48) by injection of nicotinamide and streptozotocin. Two months after DM, rats were treated with CEE (1x10 11 exosomes/rat, IV) twice a week for 4 weeks. Age matched DM and non-DM rats were used as controls. CEE were harvested from the cultured cerebral endothelial cells of health young adult rats. Exchanges of CSF and ISF were measured by intracisternal injection of fluorescent tracer, Texas Red-dextran (TR, 3kD). Confocal microscopic analysis of brain slices revealed a progressive slowdown of ISF clearance in the hippocampi, assessed by retention of TR starting at 2.5 fold at 2M (13±5 vs 5±3% of area) and increasing to 4 fold at 4M (21±4 vs 5±2%) of DM. Paravascular amyloid β (Aβ) accumulation was only detected at 4M of DM. The CEE treatment significantly (p 2 ) and parenchymal fibrin deposition (9±5 vs 23±5/mm 2 ) compared to untreated DM rats. Moreover, the CEE treatment significantly improved hippocampal related learning and memory measured by the Morris Water Maze and odor-based novelty recognition for olfactory memory, without altering the glucose level. In vitro, cerebral endothelial cells isolated from 2M DM rats exhibited substantial dysfunction as measured by capillary-like tube formation and cell migration, whereas incubation with the CEE substantially reversed endothelial dysfunction. Conclusions: The CEE treatment reduces DM-induced glymphatic and cerebral endothelial dysfunctions, leading to improvement of cognitive function in aged DM rats.
Definitive airway management after prehospital supraglottic rescue airway in pediatric trauma.

Abstract Introduction Supraglottic airway (SGA) use and outcomes in pediatric trauma are poorly understood. We compared outcomes between patients receiving prehospital SGA versus bag mask ventilation (BVM). Methods We reviewed pediatric multisystem trauma patients (2005–2016), comparing SGA and BVM. Primary outcome was adequacy of oxygenation and ventilation. Additional measures included tracheostomy, mortality and abbreviated injury scores (AIS). Results Ninety patients were included (SGA, n = 17 and BVM, n = 73). SGA patients displayed increased median head AIS (5 [4–5] vs 2 [0–4], p = 0.001) and facial AIS (1 [0–2] vs 0 [0–0], p = 0.03). SGA indications were multiple failed intubation attempts (n = 12) and multiple failed attempts with poor visualization (n = 5). Median intubation attempts were 2 [1–3] whereas BVM patients had none. Compared to BVM, SGA patients demonstrated inadequate oxygenation/ventilation (75% vs 41%), increased tracheostomy rates (31% vs 8.1%), and increased 24-h (38% vs 10.8%) and overall mortality (75% vs 14%) (all p Conclusions Escalating intubation attempts and severe facial AIS were associated with tracheostomy. Inadequacy of oxygenation/ventilation was more frequent in SGA compared to BVM patients. SGA patients demonstrate poor clinical outcomes; however, SGAs may be necessary in increased craniofacial injury patterns. These factors may be incorporated into a management algorithm to improve definitive airway management after SGA.
Strategic Coordination of Human Patrollers and Mobile Sensors With Signaling for Security Games.

Traditional security games concern the optimal randomized allocation of human patrollers, who can directly catch attackers or interdict attacks. Motivated by the emerging application of utilizing mobile sensors (e.g., UAVs) for patrolling, in this paper we propose the novel Sensor-Empowered security Game (SEG) model which captures the joint allocation of human patrollers and mobile sensors. Sensors differ from patrollers in that they cannot directly interdict attacks, but they can notify nearby patrollers (if any). Moreover, SEGs incorporate mobile sensors' natural functionality of strategic signaling. On the technical side, we first prove that solving SEGs is NP-hard even in zero-sum cases. We then develop a scalable algorithm SEGer based on the branch-and-price framework with two key novelties: (1) a novel MILP formulation for the slave; (2) an efficient relaxation of the problem for pruning. To further accelerate SEGer, we design a faster combinatorial algorithm for the slave problem, which is provably a constant-approximation to the slave problem in zero-sum cases and serves as a useful heuristic for general-sum SEGs. Our experiments demonstrate the significant benefit of utilizing mobile sensors.
JSReX: an efficient JavaScript-based middleware for multi-platform mobile peer-to-peer networks

Code offloading on mobile platforms has received much attention as a way of relieving heavy workload by utilizing power of the other devices or cloud servers. The offloading mechanisms rely on multiple platforms to be enabled on variety of mobile devices. To support platform heterogeneity, the execution code should be implemented in JavaScript and executed on the designate devices by correspondingly compatible JavaScript engine. In this paper, we present a novel distribution mechanism with a built-in JavaScript execution package, annotation processor and an engine to enable code offloading among the devices and servers in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. This approach includes a set of constraints for code implementation so developers can easily integrate to their project. Our evaluation, based on a testbed with Android and Windows Phone devices, demonstrates the efficiency of offloading JavaScript-based packages on multiple devices, as well as compares the performance between JavaScript and native versions.
A tractable class of abduction problems

The problem of finding a set of assumptions which explain a given proposition is in general NP-hard, even when the background theory is an acyclic Horn theory. In this paper it is shown that when the background theory is acyclic Horn and its pseudo-completion is unit refutable, there is a polynomial time algorithm for finding minimal explanations. A test for unit-refutability of clausal theories is presented, based on the topology of the connection graph of the theory.
Pacing for Unilateral Diaphragm Paralysis

Symptoms of unilateral diaphragmatic paralysis can range from sleep-related symptoms to exert ional dyspnea or orthopnea. At times unilateral diaphragm paralysis is found on routine chest radiograph alone when an elevated hemidiaphragm is seen. Ventilatory failure will usually only result if there is bilateral diaphragmatic involvement. When diaphragmatic paralysis is suspected, confirmatory testing is done by inspiratory fluoroscopy (sniff test) and electromyography of the phrenic nerve. To determine if the conduction path of the phrenic nerve is intact from the cervical region to the diaphragm, the key test is fluoroscopic visualization of the diaphragm with transcutaneous stimulation of the phrenic nerve in the neck. If the diaphragm moves during stimulation then the phrenic nerve is intact, but there is a disruption of the signal pathway from the respiratory center in the brain to the phrenic nerve causing the diaphragm not to function.
Numerical Representations of Fuzzy Relational Systems

This chapter focuses on the numerical representations of fuzzy relational systems. A fuzzy relational system is a pair ( X , R ) where X is a set and R is a fuzzy binary relation on X . It is assumed that X is a topological space and the membership function R(x, y) of R is a continuous function on X Χ X . (Finite sets are assumed to be endowed with the discrete topology.) In the case when X = R , the set of real numbers, ( R, R ) is said to be a numerical fuzzy relational system. In this chapter, all fuzzy relations R on a given space X are assumed to be fuzzy quasi orders, that is, fuzzy binary relations satisfying conditions of reflexivity and max-product transitivity. Given two fuzzy relational systems ( X , P ) and ( Y , Q ), a homomorphism from ( X , P ) to ( y , Q ) is a continuous mapping f: X → Y . The continuous fuzzy quasi-order must have a positive membership function R ( x , y ).
SOME CONSIDERATIONS IN THE NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF A SEMI-CONDUCTOR DEVICE

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on a few considerations in the numerical simulation of a semiconductor device. The steady-state equations for normalized electron and hole concentrations (n, p) and field E in a one-dimensional semiconductor with Shockley–Read–Hall recombination. Typically, the quantities involved have sharp transitional behavior—changing by several orders of magnitude in a narrow interval—near the junctions. Some consideration was given to automatic mesh-spacing in the discretization used. The Gummel–deMari iteration computes U, E from n, p and then new n, p from these by Shockley–Read–Hall recombination. U has smoother behavior near the junctions than do n, p. A new discretization was derived, therefore, with local truncation error determined by derivatives of U rather than of n and p.
Attitudes and Social Norms Are Related to Attendance at Childhood Obesity Prevention Classes in a Rural Mexican-Heritage Community.

Abstract Objective To examine factors related to attendance of Mexican-heritage parents at community-based nutrition classes to prevent childhood obesity. Methods Starting in 2011, interviewers collected baseline data from Ninos Sanos Familia Sana (Healthy Children, Healthy Families) participants in rural California. Educators maintained attendance logs from 2012 to 2014. Informed by the Theory of Planned Behavior, interviewers administered an exit survey in 2015 to collect data on attitudes, subjective norms, health motivations, and perceived control related to attendance. Multivariable ordinal logistic regression analysis examined the correlates of attendance (n = 194, intervention group only). Results Controlling for mother's age, marital status, acculturation, and employment, attitudes and subjective norms were significantly related to attendance (odds ratio = 1.27; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.18–1.37; P Conclusions and Implications In these Mexican-heritage participants, attitudes and subjective norms were significant correlates of attendance. The Theory of Planned Behavior may shed light on attendance of high-risk groups but further testing of instruments is needed.
Architectural patents beyond Bucky Fuller’s Quadrant

This draft of a chapter in a compilation addressing architectural appropriation examines patents on architectural designs issued over the last century and a half to flesh out the surprisingly expansive legal standard for what constitutes a patentable design at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Architectural patents are not limited to innovative construction technologies. Innovative dispositions of space – that is, novel arrangements of the programmatic spaces as represented in floor plans, sections, or their three-dimensional equivalents – can also be patented. They are functional technologies that “do” something, not simply copyrightable artistic works, because they have programmatic affordances: they allow some human behaviors and patterns of human activity to occur more easily than others.
Association of Cumulative Socioeconomic and Health-Related Disadvantage With Disparities in Smoking Prevalence in the United States, 2008 to 2017.

Importance Understanding emerging patterns of smoking disparities among disadvantaged populations can guide tobacco control policy. Objective To estimate disparities in smoking prevalence associated with the number of socioeconomic and health-related disadvantages faced by a population among US adults from 2008 to 2017. Design, Setting, and Participants Nationally representative cross-sectional annual household-based probability sample of US noninstitutionalized residents. Polytomous regression estimated associations of disadvantage variables, survey year, and their interaction with the following 3 pairwise contrasts: current vs never smoking (estimate of overall disparities), current vs former smoking (unique contribution of disparities in smoking cessation), and former vs never smoking (unique contribution of disparities in smoking initiation). The setting was in-home face-to-face interviews. Participants were respondents in 2008 to 2017 survey years who were aged 25 years or older (N = 279 559). Exposures Self-reported past-year unemployment, income below the federal poverty line, absence of high school diploma, disability/limitation interfering with daily functions, serious psychological distress on the Kessler 6-item screen, and at least 60 past-year heavy drinking days, each coded yes or no. These indicators were summed in a cumulative disadvantage index (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 or 6). Main Outcomes and Measures Self-reported current, former (ever smoked ≥100 cigarettes, had since quit, and not currently smoking), and never (<100 cigarettes) smoking. Results Among 278 048 respondents (mean [SD] age, 51.9 [16.8] years; 55.7% female) with data on smoking history (99.5% of the sample), the mean current smoking prevalence across 2008 to 2017 compared with populations without disadvantages was successively higher among populations with 1 disadvantage (21.4% vs 13.8%; current vs never smoking adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.34; 95% CI, 2.27-2.43), 2 disadvantages (26.6% vs 13.8%; OR, 3.55; 95% CI, 3.39-3.72), 3 disadvantages (35.1% vs 13.8%; OR, 5.35; 95% CI, 5.05-5.66), 4 disadvantages (45.7% vs 13.8%; OR, 8.59; 95% CI, 7.91-9.34), or 5 or 6 disadvantages (58.2% vs 13.8%; OR, 14.70; 95% CI, 12.30-17.50). In current vs former and former vs never smoking status contrasts, ORs were lower but also showed successively greater associations with increasing cumulative disadvantage. Current (vs never) smoking odds significantly declined each year among populations with 0 (OR, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.94-0.96), 1 (OR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.95-0.97), or 2 (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.97-0.99) disadvantages but did not change across 2008 to 2017 among those with 3 or more disadvantages. Conclusions and Relevance Results of this study demonstrate that US disparities in smoking prevalence from 2008 to 2017 were successively larger with each additional disadvantage faced, were expressed in higher smoking initiation odds and lower smoking cessation odds, and widened over time.
‘Such a pleasant little sketch […] of this irritable artist’: Julia Cartwright and the Reception of Andrea Mantegna in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain

Recent scholarship on the nineteenth-century serialized artists’ monograph has argued for a reassessment of this particular genre of art writing and its role in the development of art history as a discipline. Women art writers number prominently among the authors within such series, which proliferated in the English art press at the turn of the century. Significantly, many of their contributions form the first separate English-language study of several important quattrocento Italian old masters. Yet these artists, such as Luca Signorelli, Antonio Pollaiuolo, and Andrea Mantegna, were for the most part considered unpopular and ‘difficult’ for the general public to appreciate. This may explain why, despite substantial foreign-language scholarship and Mantegna’s never-waning reputation as a ‘great’ artist, it was not until 1881 that he became the subject of a dedicated study in British art historical scholarship for the first time, with Julia Cartwright’s dual monograph Mantegna and Francia. Taking Mantegna as a case study, this article traces the various forms in which the artist became increasingly visible to the British public from the mid-century onwards via the practices of acquisition, display, reproduction, and travel, and how this visibility translated into Julia Cartwright’s monograph, in which she set out to reinvigorate the reputation of an artist well represented in British collections, but deemed distasteful to the Victorian eye. As earlier women writers such as Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake, and Maria Callcott had successfully promoted the much-maligned Italian ‘Primitives’ to a wider British public, a later generation of women took advantage of gaps in English-language art criticism as they worked to establish themselves professionally in the face of an over-saturated British art press during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
You’ve Got It All Backwards: Canada’s National Defence Strategy

Does Canada have a defence strategy? Taking an outsider’s perspective, this chapter argues that successive Canadian governments have kept defence strategy ambiguous on the basis of two commonplace assumptions: that domestic politics impose major constraints on the federal government in this area and that Canadians lack global agency by default. Objectively speaking, however, Canada’s ability to make strategic choices is not nearly as limited as typically depicted in policy discourse.
A survey of optimization models and methods for cyberinfrastructure security

Critical infrastructure from a cross-section of sectors has become increasingly reliant on cyber systems and cyberinfrastructure. Increasing risks to these cyber components, including cyber-physica...
Do Entry Barriers to the Public Company Audit Market Deter Low Quality Audit Firms

Many legal jurisdictions, including the U.S. and U.K., have passed regulations to address the potential negative impacts of a lack of competition and high concentration in public company audit markets. One consequence of increased regulations, desired or not, is that they have presumably increased barriers to enter the public company audit market. An alternative view is that high barriers prevent the entry of low-quality entrants (von Weizsacker, 1980; Grossman and Horn, 1988). This study investigates the supply of, and demand for, first time public company audit firms in the U.S., firms that presumably overcame these barriers to enter the market. We document that since 2004, 275 unique audit firms have entered the U.S. public company audit market. We find evidence that these first time auditors provide lower quality audits as measured by a higher likelihood of client restatements, PCAOB-identified audit deficiencies, PCAOB enforcement actions, and lower auditor effort as measured by audit engagement hours. We also find evidence that these firms receive lower fees and that clients are significantly more likely to subsequently switch away from first time audit firms. Collectively, our results suggest that existing barriers to entry to the public company audit market do not prevent the entry of low-quality auditors, and clients do not fully infer quality based on first timers’ pre-entry quality signals.
The Cultural (Re)Turn: The Case for Teaching Culturally Responsive Lawyering

Recent changes to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) accreditation standards require law schools to adopt learning outcomes that demonstrate competencies for legal practice and to measure progress toward this goal. Absent from the new requirements, however, is any mention of “culture.” Instead, “cultural competence” is included as an optional skill, which law schools may choose to identify and measure (or not). But culture is anything but optional. In light of contributions from psychology and cognitive science, and calls from the bench and bar, law schools can no longer avoid including culture in meaningful, sustained, and integrated instruction throughout the curriculum. Building on critical legal scholarship and the movement to foster cross-cultural lawyering competencies in clinical education, this article proposes culturally responsive lawyering as a new orienting framework for legal education and for law practice. Culturally responsive lawyering specifically rejects the notion that cultural competence is an optional skill, divorced from other core competencies. Rather, culturally responsive lawyering is grounded in a deliberative process, which extends deeper than outward-facing performative skills. Culturally responsive lawyering acknowledges that culture and law exist in a mutually constitutive relationship and employs both transformative legal analysis and intercultural sensibility to meet the ethical requirements of competent lawyering. In addition to sketching a theoretical framework, this article proposes learning outcomes and curricular strategies for culturally responsive lawyering that can be interwoven into any law school course.
To Feel an Equation: Physiological Aesthetics, Modern Physics, and the Poetry of Jay Wright

Over the past century much-bruited developments in the physical sciences (and a concomitant physicization of biology, perhaps most prominent in molecular biology) have overshadowed a long-term tendency of the biologization of physics—clearly enunciated already in Alfred North Whitehead’s generalized “science of organisms.” Because such biologization occurs in a context in which science is understood to operate within a broader poetic canvas—a poetic universe, as it were—we should look to the poets for instruction in how to proceed in this tangled state of affairs. In the present essay, I turn to the MacArthur Fellow and Bollingen Prize winner Jay Wright, and the distinctive role modern physics has played in the formulation of his poetics. Ongoing conversations with the philosopher Susanne K. Langer and physicist Niels Bohr (and with Whitehead) inform Wright’s methodological multiculturalism, manifestly including literary and scientific cultures, as well as his robust analysis of “the poet’s primary province, feeling.”
Characterization of a headspace sampling method with a five-component diesel fuel surrogate

Abstract PLOT-cryoadsorption concentrates headspace vapors by sweeping them through porous layer open tubular (PLOT) capillaries chilled to 0 °C to promote adsorption onto an alumina layer. Compared to passive headspace concentration employing activated charcoal strips (ACSs) as adsorbents, PLOT-cryoadsorption has several potential advantages for extracting ignitable liquid (IL) residue from fire debris evidence. Capillary vapor traps can be monitored for breakthrough to avoid problematic displacement that occurs when an adsorbent becomes saturated. Capillaries can also be eluted with acetone to avoid highly toxic carbon disulfide. Future adoption of PLOT-cryoadsorption for fire debris analysis requires investigation of sampling parameters including collection volume, flow rate, and temperature. Here we employ a simple five-component surrogate for diesel fuel (that is, a simulated or artificial diesel fuel) to study the effect of flow rate and sample temperature on the composition and spatial distribution of the collected headspace. Flow rates at or below 1.5 scc (standard cubic centimeters)/min yielded the most repeatable results. Across the range 60 °C to 120 °C, we found that high sample temperatures allowed for the collection of more total sample and shifted its composition towards lower-volatility components. Consistent with chromatographic theory, higher-volatility components traveled furthest along the length of the capillary and were more prone to breakthrough. We conclude that the surrogate mixture allowed for effective, quantitative comparisons between sampling conditions that could be translated to real diesel fuel.
Safe Control in the Presence of Stochastic Uncertainties

Accurate quantification of safety is essential for the design of autonomous systems. In this paper, we present a methodology to characterize the exact probabilities associated with invariance and recovery in safe control. We consider a stochastic control system where control barrier functions, gradient-based methods, and barrier certificates are used to constrain control actions and validate safety. We derive the probability distributions of the minimum and maximum barrier function values during any time interval and the first entry and exit times to and from any super level sets of the barrier function. These distributions are characterized by deterministic convection-diffusion equations, and the approach used is generalizable to other safe control methods based on barrier functions. These distributions can be used to characterize various quantities associated with invariance and recovery, such as the safety margin, the probability of entering and recovering from safe and unsafe regions, and the mean and tail distributions of failure and recovery times.
Kuokkanen, Rauna. (2019). Restructuring Relations. Indigenous Self- Determination, Governance, and Gender . New York: Oxford University Press. Hardcover: $74.00

Rauna Kuokkanen is an Indigenous – Sami – feminist scholar and activist whose book Restructuring Relations offers a radically liberating vision of indigenous self-determination that “seeks to restructure all relations of domination.” Such restructuring needs to respond to external oppression, in particular in the form of settler colonialism and extractivist global capitalism, but also to oppression internal to indigenous communities, especially patriarchal gender hierarchies and gender-based violence against women and people who do not conform with heteropatriarchal norms.
Subaltern Cyber Stability: An African Case Study

Cyber stability for African countries looks different from cyber stability at the global level. Many of the ways that the dominant literature defines cyber stability do not apply to African states. Dominant views of cyber stability tend to center technological and regulatory openness, interoperability, and internationality. For dominant states, these aspects of global integration cultivate stability. For African countries, global integration can bring instability through dependence, and attaining cyber stability can require, at least initially, actions that the global community might view as destabilizing. This chapter challenges dominant conceptions of cyber stability from a subaltern perspective, drawing on my research of African Union member states.
Trans* Vulnerability and Digital Research Ethics: A Qubit Ethical Analysis of Transparency Activism

Trans* communities across the United States are under assault. Researchers seeking to work with trans* people and other multiply marginalized and underrepresented communities must attend to ethical research practices within the communities in which they participate. Digital research ethics is particularly murky with issues of embodiment, vulnerability, and unclear IRB guidance. Comparing two transparency activist organizations—Wikileaks and DDoSecrets—we introduce “qubit ethics,” a trans*material, trans-corporeal ethics of care as praxis within vulnerable online communities. We then demonstrate how this unique approach to research design allows for the complex entanglements that is trans* life, particularly digital life. Finally, we present clear take-aways for qubit-ethics informed social justice research.
Tidal modulation and back-propagating fronts in slow slip events simulated with a velocity-weakening to velocity-strengthening friction law

We examine tidal modulation and back-propagating fronts in simulated slow slip events using a rate and state friction law that is steady state velocity weakening at low slip rates and velocity strengthening at high slip rates. Tidal forcing causes a quasi-sinusoidal modulation of the slip rate during the events, with the maximum moment rate occurring close to or slightly after the maximum applied stress. The amplitude of modulation scales linearly with the tidal load and increases as the tidal period increases relative to the timescale for state evolution. If we choose parameters so that the model matches the observed tidal modulation of slip in Cascadia, it can reproduce only a subset of the stress drops inferred from observations and only in a limited portion of parameter space. The tidal forcing also causes back-propagating fronts to form and move back through the region that has already ruptured. The stress drop that drives these back-propagating fronts sometimes comes from the tidal load and sometimes from a stress recovery that occurs behind the front in tidal and non-tidal simulations. We investigate the slip and propagation rates in the back-propagating fronts and compare them with observations. The modeled fronts propagate too slowly to be good representations of the fronts inferred from tremor observations. For the simulated fronts to propagate at the observed speeds, the stress drops driving them would have to be more than 70 % of the stress drop driving the forward-propagating front.