cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Inter-firm cooperation and innovation: The role of strategic alliances

The relationship between inter-firm cooperation and downscaling, outsourcing and multiple firm strategic alliances is explored conceptually and with data from innovative firms. Downscaling is related to cooperative outsourcing as a significant influence shaping inter- firm relations. Embedding cooperative outsourcing in interfirm strategic alliances is advantageous, particularly for small and medium-size firms. Network structures within alliances are important to consider, however, since they hold the key not only to the division of labour within an alliance, but also to the longevity of the alliance, cooperation, and the relations of trust that pervade transactions.
The Economic Impact of Banking the Unbanked : Evidence from Mexico

This paper examines the effects of providing financial services to low-income individuals on entrepreneurial activity, employment, and income. The analysis exploits cross-time and cross-municipality variation in the opening of Banco Azteca in Mexico to measure these effects with a difference-in-difference strategy. Banco Azteca opened more than 800 branches simultaneously in 2002, focusing on low-income clients. The results show that the opening of Banco Azteca led to an increase in the number of informal business owners by 7.6 percent. Total employment also increased, by 1.4 percent, and average income went up by about 7 percent.
A Survey of Surveys

A new era for the field of Galactic structure is about to be opened with the advent of wide-area digital sky surveys. In this article, I will review the status and prospects for research for 3 new ground-based surveys: the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Deep Near-Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky (DENIS) and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). These surveys will permit detailed studies of Galactic structure and stellar populations in the Galaxy with unprecedented detail. Extracting the information, however, will be challenging.
Ciphers with Arbitrary Finite Domains

We explore the problem of enciphering members of a finite set M where k = |M| is arbitrary (in particular, it need not be a power of two). We want to achieve this goal starting from a block cipher (which requires a message space of size N = 2n, for some n). We look at a few solutions to this problem, focusing on the case when M= [O, k - 1]. We see ciphers with arbitrary domains as a worthwhile primitive in its own right, and as a potentially useful one for making higher-level protocols.
Analytic continuation of multiple polylogarithms

The analytical continuation of generalized polylogarithms of several variables is studied in this paper. The theory of Chen’s iterated path integrals is used. The monodromy of the multiple logarithms is computed.
A 16-issue multiple-program-counter microprocessor with point-to-point scalar operand network

This microprocessor explores an architectural solution to scalability problems in scalar operand networks. The 0.15/spl mu/m 6M process, 331 mm/sup 2/ research prototype issues 16 unique instructions per cycle and uses an on-chip point-to-point scalar operand network to transfer operands among distributed functional units.
In-reactor measurement of neutron absorber performance

An instrumented absorber experiment in the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II and reported in this paper, yielded data on the helium release of boron carbide at exposures up to 53 *10/sup 20/ neutron captures/cm/sup 3/ and temperatures from 766 to 952/degree/C. Helium release results demonstrated a high rate of helium release initially, and a much lower rate at higher burnup levels. In addition, the experiment demonstrated the effectiveness of vents in releasing gas from a plenum during irradiation. 9 refs.
Partisan conflict and private investment

Abstract American politics have been characterized by a high degree of partisan conflict in recent years. Combined with a divided government, this has led not only to significant Congressional gridlock, but also to spells of high fiscal policy uncertainty. The unusually slow recovery from the Great Recession during the same period suggests the possibility that the two phenomena may be related. In this paper, I investigate the hypothesis that political discord depresses private investment. To this end, I construct a novel high-frequency indicator of partisan conflict. The partisan conflict index (PCI) uses a semantic search methodology to measure the frequency of newspaper articles reporting lawmakers’ disagreement about policy. I find a negative relationship between the PCI and aggregate investment in the US. Moreover, the decline is persistent, which may help explain the slow recovery observed since the 2007 recession ended. Partisan conflict is also associated with lower capital investment rates at the firm level, even when economic policy uncertainty and macroeconomic conditions are controlled for. I estimate that about 27% of the decline in corporate investment between 2007–2009 can be attributed to a rise in partisan conflict.
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: Moving the Policy Agenda Forward in the Post-2015 Asia

Despite rapid economic growth in Asia, serious health, nutrition and development gaps persist, including inadequate services and inequitable access in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector. We show that the WASH sector has ample justification for increased focus and investment to increase health and nutrition impact, but appropriate prioritisation and quality implementation of interventions are required to address these gaps. The Sustainable Development Goals present opportunities for an increased focus. We argue that the key components required to accelerate change include strengthened data availability, quality and use, institutional and policy reform for greater cross-sectoral integration and clear accountabilities at national and local level if countries are to achieve universal access with equity, sustainability and quality.
Pulsating Hydrodynamic Instability and Thermal Coupling in an Extended Landau/Levich Model of Liquid-Propellant Combustion

Hydrodynamic (Landau) instability in combustion is typically associated with the onset of wrinkling of a flame surface, corresponding to the formation of steady cellular structures as the stability threshold is crossed. In the context of liquid-propellant combustion, such instability has recently been shown to occur for critical values of the pressure sensitivity of the burning rate and the disturbance wavenumber, significantly generalizing previous classical results for this problem that assumed a constant normal burning rate. Additionally, however, a pulsating form of hydrodynamic instability has been shown to occur as well, corresponding to the onset of temporal oscillations in the location of the liquid/gas interface. In the present work, we consider the realistic influence of a non-zero temperature sensitivity in the local burning rate on both types of stability thresholds. It is found that for sufficiently small values of this parameter, there exists a stable range of pressure sensitivities for steady, planar burning such that the classical cellular form of hydrodynamic instability and the more recent pulsating form of hydrodynamic instability can each occur as the corresponding stability threshold is crossed. For larger thermal sensitivities, however, the pulsating stability boundary evolves into a C-shaped curve in the (disturbance-wavenumber, pressure-sensitivity) plane, indicating loss of stability to pulsating perturbations for all sufficiently large disturbance wavelengths. It is thus concluded, based on characteristic parameter values, that an equally likely form of hydrodynamic instability in liquid-propellant combustion is of a non-steady, long-wave nature, distinct from the steady, cellular form originally predicted by Landau.
The Second Stars

The ejecta of the first probably very massive stars polluted the Big Bang primordial element mix with the first heavier elements. The resulting ultra metal-poor abundance distribution provided the initial conditions for the second stars of a wide range of initial masses reaching down to intermediate and low masses. The importance of these second stars for understanding the origin of the elements in the early universe are manifold. While the massive first stars have long vanished the second stars are still around and currently observed. They are the carriers of the information about the first stars, but they are also capable of nuclear production themselves. For example, in order to use ultra or extremely metal-poor stars as a probe for the r process in the early universe a reliable model of the s process in the second stars is needed. Eventually, the second stars may provide us with important clues on questions ranging from structure formation to how the stars actually make the elements, not only in the early but also in the present universe. In particular the C-rich extremely metal-poor stars, most of which show the s-process signature, are thought to be associated with chemical yields from the evolved giant phase of intermediate mass stars. Models of such AGB stars at extremely low metallicity now exist, and comparison with observation show important discrepancies, for example with regard to the synthesis of nitrogen. This may hint at burning and mixing aspects of extremely metal-poor evolved stars that are not yet included in the standard picture of evolution, as for example the hydrogen-ingestion flash. The second stars of intermediate mass may have also played an important role in the formation of heavy elements that form through slow neutron capture reaction chains (s process). Comparison of models with observations reveal which aspects of the physics input and assumptions need to be improved. The s process is a particularly useful diagnostic tool for probing the physical processes that are responsible for the creation of elements in stars, like for example rotation. As new observational techniques and strategies continue to penetrate the field, for example the multi-object spectroscopy, or the future spectroscopic surveys, the extremely metal-poor stars will play an increasingly important role to address some of the most fundamental and challenging, current questions of astronomy.
Discrete and global symmetries in particle physics

I begin these lectures by examining the transformation properties of quantum fields under the discrete symmetries of Parity, P, Charge Conjugation, C, and Time Reversal, T. With these results in hand, I then show how the structure of the Standard Model helps explain the conservation/violation of these symmetries in various sectors of the theory. This discussion is also used to give a qualitative proof of the CPT Theorem, and some of the stringent tests of this theorem in the neutral Kaon sector are reviewed. In the second part of these lectures, global symmetries are examined. Here, after the distinction between Wigner-Weyl and Nambu-Goldstone realizations of these symmetries is explained, a discussion is given of the various, approximate or real, global symmetries of the Standard Model. Particular attention is paid to the role that chiral anomalies play in altering the classical symmetry patterns of the Standard Model. To understand the differences between anomaly effects in QCD and those in the electroweak theory, a discussion of the nature of the vacuum structure of gauge theories is presented. This naturally raises the issue of the strong CP problem, and I present a brief discussion of the chiral solution to this problem and of its ramifications for astrophysics and cosmology. I also touch briefly on possible constraints on, and prospects for, having real Nambu-Goldstone bosons in nature, concentrating specifically on the simplest example of Majorons. I end these lectures by discussing the compatibility of having global symmetry in the presence of gravitational interactions. Although these interactions, in general, produces small corrections, they can alter significantly the Nambu-Goldstone sector of theories.
"Lawyers" not "Liars": A Modified Traditionalist approach to Teaching Legal Ethics

As attorneys, we undeniably should be faithful confidantes to, and staunch allies for, our clients, but we must also never lose sight of the fact that we are not simply client representatives; we are concurrently officers of the court and keepers of the public trust. Though I strive diligently to make my students aware of the specific ethical duties owed to clients, I always stress even more intently the importance of these latter two components of their professional obligation. They are what set the practice of law apart from other occupations, and they are what should serve to inspire us to conduct ourselves in a manner befitting this grand calling. The problem, of course, is how does one go about teaching this beyond merely stating it as a lofty truism? Sophisticated law students will quickly be turned off by Pollyanna-toned lectures about some seemingly unachievable legal Utopia. As a result, I think that many legal ethics professors deploy innovative teaching techniques in an effort to place the subject matter in a context that can be taken seriously and perceived as real by students. For me, the most effective pedagogical approach for attaining these objectives has been to teach professional responsibility in a manner comparable to most mainstream substantive law school courses, with a few calculated deviations. I endeavor to convey the critical nuts and bolts of the subject (the rules and the law) to students by way of the familiar case method, combined with Socratic dialogue. Though this is anything but pioneering, I suspect that I am likely among a minority of legal ethics professors who make extensive use of this teaching style. Part I of this Article explains the reasons for my choice, certain aspects of my specific case method, and the perceived benefits that flow from this manner of instruction. While I fully believe that my traditional law school modus operandi is an efficient and effective way for me to communicate the substance of professional responsibility, the calculated deviations that I employ are what I consider most essential in enabling me to reach my students and memorably impress upon them the difficulties and virtues of being a lawyer. Part II reveals and elaborates upon the special nuances that I inject into the course as a change of pace and a complement to my rather straightforward study of ethics rules and cases. "Lawyers" and "liars" may sound alike, but it is my hope that no one who encounters my former students will ever confuse the two.
Optimal factory scheduling using stochastic dominance A

We examine a standard factory scheduling problem with stochastic processing and setup times, minimizing the expectation of the weighted number of tardy jobs. Because the costs of operators in the schedule are stochastic and sequence dependent, standard dynamic programming algorithms such as A* may fail to find the optimal schedule. The SDA* (Stochastic Dominance A*) algorithm remedies this difficulty by relaxing the pruning condition. We present an improved state-space search formulation for these problems and discuss the conditions under which stochastic scheduling problems can be solved optimally using SDA*. In empirical testing on randomly generated problems, we found that in 70%, the expected cost of the optimal stochastic solution is lower than that of the solution derived using a deterministic approximation, with comparable search effort.
Community Food Store Types Availability is Associated with Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in North Carolina

Despite the nutritional guidelines promoting consumption of fruits and vegetables, the level of fruits and vegetable consumption is drastically below the recommended levels nationally, as well as at the state levels. Among factors that may influence consumption of fruits and vegetables, it is held that factors within the food environment such as the availability of retail types that are conducive for easy access to fruits and vegetables within communities may be presenting barriers to purchase. We employ multilevel modeling approaches to investigate the determinants of fruit and vegetable intake in North Carolina, accounting for food environment factors. Results of the study indicate that availability of supermarkets and full service restaurants is associated positively with fruits and vegetable consumption while fast food outlets are associated negatively. Other smaller store types were not statistically significant. Individual factors including age, being female, employed, income and education all were positively associated with fruits and vegetable consumption. The significant positive association of area level food environmental factors with the consumption of fruits and vegetables indicates a complementary role for intervention directed at improving the availability of supermarket type stores so as to impact healthy food purchases and consumption.
Hyperbolic Cauchy problem and Leray's residue formula

We give an algebraic description of wave fronts that appear in strictly hyperbolic Cauchy problem. Concrete form of definig function of wave front issued from initial algebraic variety is obtained by the aid of the Gauss-Manin systems satisfied by Gel'fand -Leray integrals.
Economic Pressures and the Ethical Attitudes of Farmers

We consider the effect of economic pressures on the ethical attitudes of farmers. We present a model to derive the hypothesis that an increase in the economic pressures a farmer faces will result in that farmer being more willing to justify or rationalize unethical conduct or to express attitudes more accommodating of unethical conduct than farmers not experiencing economic pressures. We use data from a survey of 3,000 Missouri farmers with farm sales in excess of $10,000 in 2005. In the survey farmers were asked how acceptable they considered various unethical farming practices. The survey also contained questions designed to measure economic pressures. We find small but statistically significant evidence that economic pressures result in a greater willingness to tolerate unethical conduct, particular in the case of actions that have the potential of causing harm or that are influenced by law or contract. Interestingly, these results are reversed for actions that are ethically questionable but are not harmful or unlawful.
Tritiated Dust Levitation by Beta-Induced Static Charge

Tritiated particles have been observed to spontaneously levitate under the influence of a static electric field. Tritium-containing codeposits were mechanically scraped from tiles that had been used in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) inner limiter during the deuterium-tritium campaign and were placed in a glass vial. On rubbing the plastic cap of the vial, a remarkable 'fountain' of particles was seen inside the vial. Particles from an unused tile or from a TFTR codeposit that formed during deuterium discharges did not exhibit this phenomenon. It appears that tritiated particles are more mobile than other particles, and this should be considered in assessing tokamak accident scenarios and in occupational safety.
The Subprime Virus: Reckless Credit, Regulatory Failure, and Next Steps

The subprime crisis shook the American economy to its core. How did it happen? Where was the government? Did anyone see the crisis coming? Will the new financial reforms avoid a repeat performance? In this lively new book, Kathleen C. Engel and Patricia A. McCoy answer these questions as they tell the story behind the subprime crisis. The authors, experts in the law and the economics of financial regulation and consumer lending, offer a sharply reasoned, but accessible account of the actions that produced the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression. The Subprime Virus reveals how consumer abuses in a once obscure corner of the home mortgage market led to the near meltdown of the world's financial system. The authors also delve into the roles of federal banking and securities regulators, who knew of lenders' hazardous mortgages and of Wall Street's addiction to high stakes financing, but did nothing until the crisis erupted. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive description of the government’s failure to act and to analyze the financial reform legislation of 2010. Blending expert analysis, vivid examples, and clear prose, Engel and McCoy offer an informed portrait of the political and financial failures that led to the crisis. Equally important, they show how we can draw lessons from the crisis to inform the building of a new, more stable, prosperous, and just financial order.
Tipping points and ambiguity in the economics of climate change

We model optimal policy when the probability of a tipping point, the welfare change due to a tipping point, and knowledge about a tipping point's trigger all depend on the policy path. Analytic results demonstrate how optimal policy depends on the ability to affect both the probability of a tipping point and also welfare in a post-threshold world. Simulations with a numerical climate-economy model show that possible tipping points in the climate system increase the optimal near-term carbon tax by up to 45% in base case speciffcations. The resulting policy paths lower peak warming by up to 0.5 C compared to a model without possible tipping points. Different types of tipping points have qualitatively different effects on policy, demonstrating the importance of explicitly modeling tipping points' effects on system dynamics. Aversion to ambiguity in the threshold's distribution can amplify or dampen the effect of tipping points on optimal policy, but in our numerical model, ambiguity aversionincreases the optimal carbon tax.
Height, Skills, and Labor Market Outcomes in Mexico

Abstract Taller workers are paid higher wages. A prominent explanation for this pattern is that physical growth and cognitive development share childhood inputs, inducing a correlation between adult height and two productive skills: strength and intelligence. This paper explores the relative roles of strength and intelligence in explaining the labor market height premium among Mexican men. While cognitive test scores account for a limited share of the height premium, roughly half of the premium can be attributed to the educational and occupational choices of taller workers. Taller workers obtain more education and sort into occupations with greater intelligence requirements and lower strength requirements, suggesting a possible role for cognitive skill.
Compact Diffusers for Centrifugal Compressors

The smaller centrifugal compressor diameter of many advanced turbofan engines renders unattractive the use of conventional conical or channel diffusing systems to deliver low Mach number, low swirl flow to the combustor. A method has been developed for designing a set of low-diameter, radially-emanating, controlledcontour passage diffusers. Using this method, several such passages were designed and tested. Static pressure rise coefficients of 0.79-0.82 were obtained at throat blockages of 2-3% for an inlet Mach number of 0.7-0.8 and an exit Mach number of 0.10 with 5-10 deg of residual swirl within an outer diameter 20% smaller than conventional engines.
Global convergence of online limited memory BFGS

Global convergence of an online (stochastic) limited memory version of the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) quasi-Newton method for solving optimization problems with stochastic objectives that arise in large scale machine learning is established. Lower and upper bounds on the Hessian eigenvalues of the sample functions are shown to suffice to guarantee that the curvature approximation matrices have bounded determinants and traces, which, in turn, permits establishing convergence to optimal arguments with probability 1. Experimental evaluation on a search engine advertising problem showcase reductions in convergence time relative to stochastic gradient descent algorithms.
A Model of Endogenous Fiscal Deficits and Delayed Fiscal Reforms

This paper develops a political-economic model of fiscal policy one in which" government resources are a common property' out of which interest groups can finance" expenditures on their preferred items. This setup has striking macroeconomic implications. " First, fiscal deficits and debt accumulation occur even when there are no reasons for intertemporal smoothing. Second deficits can be eliminated through a fiscal reform, but such a reform may only take place after a" delay during which government debt is built up.
An economic valuation of pollination services in Georgia

The production of many crops depends on biotic pollination. As pollinator populations decline, assessments of the potential consequential loss of economic value are critical. We estimate the economic value of pollination services ($608 million), crop vulnerability ratio (21 percent), and pollination’s contribution to agricultural production value (5 percent) for Georgia.
Federated search of text-based digital libraries in hierarchical peer-to-peer networks

Peer-to-peer architectures are a potentially powerful model for developing large-scale networks of text-based digital libraries, but peer-to-peer networks have so far provided very limited support for text-based federated search of digital libraries using relevance-based ranking. This paper addresses the problems of resource representation, resource ranking and selection, and result merging for federated search of text-based digital libraries in hierarchical peer-to-peer networks. Existing approaches to text-based federated search are adapted and new methods are developed for resource representation and resource selection according to the unique characteristics of hierarchical peer-to-peer networks. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approaches offer a better combination of accuracy and efficiency than more common alternatives for federated search in peer-to-peer networks.
Comparison and Generalization of R410A and R134a Distribution in the Microchannel Heat Exchanger with the Vertical Header

This article presents the experimental results of R410A and R134a distribution in the vertical header of a reversible outdoor microchannel heat exchanger. Two-phase refrigerant enters into the test...
Stock Exchange Development and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)

Several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) embraced the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) suggested by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1980s. SAPs entail three main transitions: (1) from state control to market-led development; (2) from authoritarianism to rule of law, and (3) from central control to constitutionalism (Cass, 1991). The transitions are interrelated and form the main pillars of a market economy to promote growth in SSA. As a part of SAPs, many African countries began to reform their financial sectors and some countries established stock exchanges or expanded existing one. The existing literature suggests possible correlation between development of financial markets and overall economic growth. An understanding of the causal links would promote better policy decision-making, especially in sequencing policies to promote economic growth driven by a developed financial sector. Since the history of financial systems of African countries is relatively short, the studies to explore the relationship between financial market development and economic growth rely on a panel with small number of cross-section units or time periods. We note, however, most existing work studying correlation between developments of financial markets and overall economic growth in SSA fails to take into account the panel nature of the data used in the analysis. This oversight leads to inconsistent estimation results owing to the so called incidental parameter problem (Lancaster, 2000). This paper investigates the causal relationship between stock exchange development, institutional and macroeconomic variables, and economic growth using data from SSA countries, using an approach for panels with small number of cross-sectional units or time periods, tackling the incidental parameter problem.
Periodization and Its Discontents: The Social Construction of Crime and Criminality in Modern Mexico

Author(s): Buffington, Robert | Abstract: This paper gives an overview of four phases in the social construction of crime and criminality in Mexico since the Independence era. It argues that these phases follow a pattern in which a criminal justice paradigm is gradually consolidated and eventually superseded. It then examines some of the problems with a paradigm-driven periodization.
Solving the Procyclical News Shock Problem

vintage capital magnifi es the boom signi cantly. By vintage capital, we mean that the pre-existing capital stock's efficiency grows by relatively less than does future capitalinvestment in response to the shock.
Petrologic and geophysical study of the source of long wavelength crustal magnetic anomalies.

The magnetic mineralogy and magnetic signature of banded ion formations, diagenetic (unmetamorphosed) and low grade banded iron formations, high-grade mineralogy, and phase equilibria of magnetite inorogenic magmers are discussed.
Spin-scattering rates in metallic thin films measured by ferromagnetic resonance damping enhanced by spin-pumping

We determined the spin-transport properties of Pd and Pt thin films by measuring the increase in ferromagnetic resonance damping due to spin-pumping in ferromagnetic (FM)-nonferromagnetic metal (NM) multilayers with varying NM thicknesses. The increase in damping with NM thickness depends strongly on both the spin- and charge-transport properties of the NM, as modeled by diffusion equations that include both momentum- and spin-scattering parameters. We use the analytical solution to the spin-diffusion equations to obtain spin-diffusion lengths for Pt and Pd. By measuring the dependence of conductivity on NM thickness, we correlate the charge- and spin-transport parameters, and validate the applicability of various models for momentum-scattering and spin-scattering rates in these systems: constant, inverse-proportional (Dyakanov-Perel), and linear-proportional (Elliot-Yafet). We confirm previous reports that the spin-scattering time appears to be shorter than the momentum scattering time in Pt, and the Dyakanov-Perel-like model is the best fit to the data.
A Gross Secular Expansion of the Primary in RW Persei

On the basis of several old light curves and two new photoelectric light curves, it appears that the A5 star in RW Per has more than doubled in size since 1900. The most striking manifestation of this is the steady decrease in the duration of totality and the fact that the eclipse was partial in 1967. The U-B and B-V indices imply an ultraviolet excess in both stars, which can be accounted for by assuming an L3 of about 5% in U. For the A5 star M v is shown to be 0m± 1m. On the basis of this the approximate absolute dimensions are 2.1 M ⊙ and 3.6 M ⊙ for the hot star, 0.4 M ⊙ and 5.6 M ⊙ for the cool star. The period changed abruptly around 1925. Consideration is given to the well-known gas stream as a possible cause for the secular expansion and the ultraviolet excess.
Wolf-Rayet Stars as IMF Probes

Wolf-Rayet stars are the evolved descendents of massive stars. Their extraordinary properties make them useful tracers of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in a young stellar population. I discuss how the interpretation of spectral diagnostics are complicated by the interplay of stellar, nebular, and dust properties. There is mounting observational evidence for spatial inhomogeneities in the gas and dust distribution. The interplay of these inhomogeneities can significantly alter frequently used star-formation and IMF indicators. Specific examples presented in this contribution are the starburst galaxies NGC 1614, NGC 2798, and NGC 3125.
Syntactic Topic Models

We develop the syntactic topic model (STM), a nonparametric Bayesian model of parsed documents. The STM generates words that are both thematically and syntactically constrained, which combines the semantic insights of topic models with the syntactic information available from parse trees. Each word of a sentence is generated by a distribution that combines document-specific topic weights and parse-tree-specific syntactic transitions. Words are assumed to be generated in an order that respects the parse tree. We derive an approximate posterior inference method based on variational methods for hierarchical Dirichlet processes, and we report qualitative and quantitative results on both synthetic data and hand-parsed documents.
Fiscal Decentralization and Government Size: An International Test for Leviathan Accounting for Unmeasured Economic Activity

Tests for the presence of Leviathan, evidenced by a positive relationship between the size of government measured as a percentage of GDP, and the degree of fiscal centralization, have provided mixed results. We derive alternative measures of the size of government taking into account household and informal market activity. Traditional Leviathan models are then re-estimated for an international sample of forty-five countries. Controlling for income, population, intergovernmental grants, and urbanization we test whether fiscal centralization is responsible for the relative size of government. We find no evidence of a relationship between fiscal centralization and government size.
Decentralized sensor fusion with distributed particle filters

This paper presents a scalable Bayesian technique for decentralized state estimation from multiple platforms in dynamic environments. As has long been recognized, centralized architectures impose severe scaling limitations for distributed systems due to the enormous communication overheads. We propose a strictly decentralized approach in which only nearby platforms exchange information. They do so through an interactive communication protocol aimed at maximizing information flow. Our approach is evaluated in the context of a distributed surveillance scenario that arises in a robotic system for playing the game of laser tag. Our results, both from simulation and using physical robots, illustrate an unprecedented scaling capability to large teams of vehicles.
Nonlinear and additive white noise perturbations of linear delay differential equations at the verge of instability: An averaging approach

The characteristic equation for a linear delay differential equation (DDE) has countably infinite roots on the complex plane. We deal with linear DDEs that are on the verge of instability, i.e. a pair of roots of the characteristic equation (eigenvalues) lie on the imaginary axis of the complex plane, and all other roots have negative real parts. We show that, when the system is perturbed by small noise, under an appropriate change of time scale, the law of the amplitude of projection onto the critical eigenspace is close to the law of a certain one-dimensional stochastic differential equation (SDE) without delay. Further, we show that the projection onto the stable eigenspace is small. These results allow us to give an approximate description of the delay-system using an SDE (without delay) of just one dimension. The proof is based on the martingale problem technique.
When Power Makes Others Speechless: The Negative Impact of Leader Power on Team Performance

We examine the impact of the subjective experience of power on leadership dynamics and team performance and find that the psychological effect of power on formal leaders spills over to affect team performance. We argue that a formal leader's experience of heightened power produces verbal dominance, which reduces team communication and consequently diminishes performance. Importantly, because these dynamics rely on the acquiescence of other team members to the leader's dominant behavior, the effects only emerge when the leader holds a formal leadership position. Three studies offer consistent support for this argument. The implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Stable three-axis nuclear-spin gyroscope in diamond

Gyroscopes find wide applications in everyday life from navigation and inertial sensing to rotation sensors in hand-held devices and automobiles. Current devices, based on either atomic or solid-state systems, impose a choice between long-time stability and high sensitivity in a miniaturized system. Here, we introduce a quantum sensor that overcomes these limitations by providing a sensitive and stable three-axis gyroscope in the solid state. We achieve high sensitivity by exploiting the long coherence time of the ${}^{14}$N nuclear spin associated with the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond, combined with the efficient polarization and measurement of its electronic spin. Although the gyroscope is based on a simple Ramsey interferometry scheme, we use coherent control of the quantum sensor to improve its coherence time and robustness against long-time drifts. Such a sensor can achieve a sensitivity of $\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\sim}0.5\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}(\mathrm{mdeg}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}1})/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{mm}}^{3}}$ while offering enhanced stability in a small footprint. In addition, we exploit the four axes of delocalization of the nitrogen-vacancy center to measure not only the rate of rotation, but also its direction, thus obtaining a compact three-axis gyroscope.
Non-Tariff Barriers and Political Solutions to Trade Disputes: A Case Study of U.S. Poultry Exports to Russia

This article examines the recent trade conflict over poultry meat exports between the United States and Russia, the U.S. 's largest customer. A shipment of questionable poultry meat in late 1995 triggered the trade dispute. Russia embargoed U.S. poultry on 16 February 1996, alleging that the U.S. inspection system could not guarantee that imported poultry meat would meet Russian standards. An agreement signed on 25 March 1996 reconfirmed existing inspection criteria for exports to Russia and established a testing protocol for Salmonella and residues such as antibiotics, pesticides, and heavy metals, and resolved the trade dispute.
A Dynamic General Equilibrium Analysis of Japanese & Korean Immigration

This paper constructs a multi-sector dynamic general equilibrium model for a trading economy. We incorporate three major factors of production: capital, skilled labor & unskilled labor. We solve and calibrate the model using data from Japan and Korea. We then consider changes to immigration policy in both countries. We are able to examine the effects on output, consumption, wages, and utility. We do this for both the new steady state and for the time-path leading to that steady state. In addition, we are able, if we so wish, to impose a series of unrelated macroeconomic shock to the model. This has the advantage of allowing us to calculate confidence bands around our policy impulse response functions. We find that allowing skilled labor to immigrate leads to greater welfare gains in the steady state. We also show that there is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the exact time path to a new steady state in the presence of the typical fluctuations associated with business cycles. We find a great deal of inertia in the transition to a new steady state.
Walk, not wait: faster sampling over online social networks

In this paper, we introduce a novel, general purpose, technique for faster sampling of nodes over an online social network. Specifically, unlike traditional random walks which wait for the convergence of sampling distribution to a predetermined target distribution - a waiting process that incurs a high query cost - we develop WALK-ESTIMATE, which starts with a much shorter random walk, and then proactively estimate the sampling probability for the node taken before using acceptance-rejection sampling to adjust the sampling probability to the predetermined target distribution. We present a novel backward random walk technique which provides provably unbiased estimations for the sampling probability, and demonstrate the superiority of WALK-ESTIMATE over traditional random walks through theoretical analysis and extensive experiments over real world online social networks.
Charter Schools: A Survey of Research on Their Characteristics and Effectiveness

Abstract The charter school movement is nearing its 25th anniversary, making this an opportune time to take stock of the movement by addressing the following questions: Where do charter schools locate? Who do they serve? Who manages them? Who teaches in them? Most importantly, what are the effects of charter schools on the academic performance of students who enroll in charters and on students who remain in traditional public schools? We review research findings that shed light on these questions.
The Composition of Public Expenditure and Growth : A Small-Scale Intertemporal Model for Low-Income Countries

This paper presents a small-scale intertemporal model of endogenous growth that accounts for the composition of public expenditure and externalities associated with public capital. Government spending is disaggregated into various components, including maintenance, security, and investment in education, health, and core infrastructure. After studying its long-run properties, the model is calibrated for Haiti, using country-specific information as well as parameter estimates from the literature. A variety of policy experiments are then reported, including a reallocation of spending aimed at creating fiscal space to promote public investment; an improvement in fiscal management that leads to a reduction in tax collection costs; higher spending on security; and a composite fiscal package.
Factors Affecting the Location of Payday Lending and Traditional Banking Services in North Carolina

Payday lending is a relatively new and fast growing segment of the “fringe banking” industry. This paper offers a comparative, descriptive analysis of the location patterns of traditional banks and payday lenders. Utilizing a dataset at the Zip Code Tabulation Area level in North Carolina, we perform negative binomial regressions and find evidence supporting some, but not all, common assertions about the location patterns of both types of institutions. A key finding is that after controlling for many covariates, race is still a powerful predictor of the locations of both banks and payday lenders.
Packed Ciphertexts in LWE-Based Homomorphic Encryption

In this short note we observe that the Peikert-Vaikuntanathan-Waters (PVW) method of packing many plaintext elements in a single Regev-type ciphertext, can be used for performing SIMD homomorphic operations on packed ciphertext. This provides an alternative to the Smart-Vercauteren (SV) ciphertext-packing technique that relies on polynomial-CRT. While the SV technique is only applicable to schemes that rely on ring-LWE (or other hardness assumptions in ideal lattices), the PVW method can be used also for cryptosystems whose security is based on standard LWE (or more broadly on the hardness of “General-LWE”).
Organic Matter Loading Modifies the Microbial Community Responsible for Nitrogen Loss in Estuarine Sediments

Coastal marine sediments, as locations of substantial fixed nitrogen loss, are very important to the nitrogen budget and to the primary productivity of the oceans. Coastal sediment systems are also highly dynamic and subject to periodic natural and anthropogenic organic substrate additions. The response to organic matter by the microbial community involved in nitrogen loss processes was evaluated using mesocosms of Chesapeake Bay sediments. Over the course of a 50-day incubation, rates of anammox and denitrification were measured weekly using (15)N tracer incubations, and samples were collected for genetic analysis. Rates of both nitrogen loss processes and gene abundances associated with them corresponded loosely, probably because heterogeneities in sediments obscured a clear relationship. The rates of denitrification were stimulated more, and the fraction of nitrogen loss attributed to anammox slightly reduced, by the higher organic matter addition. Furthermore, the large organic matter pulse drove a significant and rapid shift in the denitrifier community composition as determined using a nirS microarray, indicating that the diversity of these organisms plays an essential role in responding to anthropogenic inputs. We also suggest that the proportion of nitrogen loss due to anammox in these coastal estuarine sediments may be underestimated due to temporal dynamics as well as from methodological artifacts related to conventional sediment slurry incubation approaches.
Some Simple Analytics of Trade and Labor Mobility

We study a simple, tractable model of labor adjustment in a trade model that allows us to analyze the economy's dynamic response to trade liberalization. Since it is a neoclassical market-clearing model, we can use duality techniques to study the equilibrium, and despite its simplicity a rich variety of properties emerge. The model generates gross flows of labor across industries, even in the steady state; persistent wage differentials across industries; gradual adjustment to a liberalization; and anticipatory adjustment to a pre-announced liberalization. Pre-announcement makes liberalization less attractive to export-sector workers and more attractive to import-sector workers, eventually making workers unanimous either in favor of or in opposition to liberalization. Based on these results, we identify many pitfalls to conventional methods of empirical study of trade liberalization that are based on static models.
On the size of k-fold sum and product sets of integers

We prove the following theorem: for all positive integers $b$ there exists a positive integer $k$, such that for every finite set $A$ of integers with cardinality $|A| > 1$, we have either $$ |A + ... + A| \geq |A|^b$$ or $$ |A \cdot ... \cdot A| \geq |A|^b$$ where $A + ... + A$ and $A \cdot ... \cdot A$ are the collections of $k$-fold sums and products of elements of $A$ respectively. This is progress towards a conjecture of Erdos and Szemeredi on sum and product sets.
Regularity of Einstein manifolds and the codimension 4 conjecture

In this paper, we are concerned with the regularity of noncollapsed Riemannian manifolds (M n ;g) with bounded Ricci curvature, as well as their Gromov-Hausdor limit spaces ( M n ;dj) dGH ! (X;d), where dj denotes the Riemannian distance. Our main result is a solution to the codimension 4 conjecture, namely thatX is smooth away from a closed subset of codimension 4. We combine this result with the ideas of quantitative stratication to prove a priori L q estimates on the full curvaturejRmj for all q v > 0, and diam(M) D contains at most a nite number of dieomorphism classes. A local version is used to show that noncollapsed 4-manifolds with bounded Ricci curvature have a priori L 2 Riemannian curvature estimates.
Structural controllability and observability in influence diagrams

Influence diagram is a graphical representation of belief networks with uncertainty. This article studies the structural properties of a probabilistic model in an influence diagram. In particular, structural controllability theorems and structural observability theorems are developed and algorithms are formulated. Controllability and observability are fundamental concepts in dynamic systems (Luenberger 1979). Controllability corresponds to the ability to control a system while observability analyzes the inferability of its variables. Both properties can be determined by the ranks of the system matrices. Structural controllability and observability, on the other hand, analyze the property of a system with its structure only, without the specific knowledge of the values of its elements (Lin 1974, Shields and Pearson 1976). The structural analysis explores the connection between the structure of a model and the functional dependence among its elements. It is useful in comprehending problem and formulating solution by challenging the underlying intuitions and detecting inconsistency in a model. This type of qualitative reasoning can sometimes provide insight even when there is insufficient numerical information in a model.