cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Lightweight Call-Graph Construction for Multilingual Software Analysis

Analysis of multilingual codebases is a topic of increasing importance. In prior work, we have proposed the MLSA (MultiLingual Software Analysis) architecture, an approach to the lightweight analysis of multilingual codebases, and have shown how it can be used to address the challenge of constructing a single call graph from multilingual software with mutual calls. This paper addresses the challenge of constructing monolingual call graphs in a lightweight manner (consistent with the objective of MLSA) which nonetheless yields sufficient information for resolving language interoperability calls. A novel approach is proposed which leverages information from a compiler-generated AST to provide the quality of call graph necessary, while the program itself is written using an Island Grammar that parses the AST providing the lightweight aspect necessary. Performance results are presented for a C/C++ implementation of the approach, PAIGE (Parsing AST using Island Grammar Call Graph Emitter) showing that despite its lightweight nature, it outperforms Doxgen, is robust to changes in the (Clang) AST, and is not restricted to C/C++.
Learning Mixtures of Sparse Linear Regressions Using Sparse Graph Codes

In this paper, we consider the mixture of sparse linear regressions model. Let $\boldsymbol {\beta }^{(1)},\ldots, \boldsymbol {\beta }^{(L)}\in \mathbb {C} ^{n}$ be $L $ unknown sparse parameter vectors with a total of $K $ non-zero elements. Noisy linear measurements are obtained in the form $y_{i} = \boldsymbol {x}_{i} ^{\mathrm{ H}} \boldsymbol {\beta }^{(\ell _{i})} + w_{i}$ , each of which is generated randomly from one of the sparse vectors with the label $\ell _{i} $ unknown. The goal is to estimate the parameter vectors efficiently with low sample and computational costs. This problem presents significant challenges as one needs to simultaneously solve the demixing problem of recovering the labels $\ell _{i} $ as well as the estimation problem of recovering the sparse vectors $\boldsymbol {\beta }^{(\ell)} $ . Our solution to the problem leverages the connection between modern coding theory and statistical inference. We introduce a new algorithm, Mixed-Coloring , which samples the mixture strategically using query vectors $\boldsymbol {x}_{i} $ constructed based on ideas from sparse graph codes. Our novel code design allows for both efficient demixing and parameter estimation. To find $K$ non-zero elements, it is clear that we need at least $\Theta (K)$ measurements, and thus the time complexity is at least $\Theta (K)$ . In the noiseless setting, for a constant number of sparse parameter vectors, our algorithm achieves the order-optimal sample and time complexities of $\Theta (K)$ . In the presence of Gaussian noise, 1 for the problem with two parameter vectors (i.e., $L = 2$ ), we show that the Robust Mixed-Coloring algorithm achieves near-optimal $\Theta (K \mathop {\mathrm {polylog}}\nolimits (n))$ sample and time complexities. When $K = \mathcal {O}(n^{\alpha })$ for some constant $\alpha \in (0,1)$ (i.e., $K$ is sublinear in $n$ ), we can achieve sample and time complexities both sublinear in the ambient dimension. In one of our experiments, to recover a mixture of two regressions with dimension $n = 500$ and sparsity $K = 50$ , our algorithm is more than 300 times faster than EM algorithm, with about one third of its sample cost. 1 The proposed algorithm works even when the noise is non-Gaussian in nature, but the guarantees on sample and time complexities are difficult to obtain.
Customer Learning in Call Centers from Previous Waiting Experiences

Designing modern call centers requires an understanding of callers’ patience and abandonment behavior. Using a Cox regression analysis, we show that callers’ abandonment behavior may differ based o...
A Simulation Study on Max Pressure Control of Signalized Intersections

In this paper, a decentralized traffic signal control strategy named max pressure control is reviewed and examined. This control strategy aims at optimizing overall network throughputs, but applies...
Pseudorandom Generators for Read-Once Branching Programs, in Any Order

A central question in derandomization is whether randomized logspace (RL) equals deterministic logspace (L). To show that RL = L, it suffices to construct explicit pseudorandom generators (PRGs) that fool polynomial-size readonce (oblivious) branching programs (roBPs). Starting with the work of Nisan [Nis92], pseudorandom generators with seedlength O(log^2 n) were constructed (see also [INW94], [GR14]). Unfortunately, improving on this seed-length in general has proven challenging and seems to require new ideas. A recent line of inquiry (e.g., [BV10], [GMR+12], [IMZ12], [RSV13], [SVW14], [HLV17], [LV17], [CHRT17]) has suggested focusing on a particular limitation of the existing PRGs ([Nis92], [INW94], [GR14]), which is that they only fool roBPs when the variables are read in a particular known order, such as x1 < ... < x_n. In comparison, existentially one can obtain logarithmic seed-length for fooling the set of polynomialsize roBPs that read the variables under any fixed unknown permutation x_π(1) < ... < x_π(n). While recent works have established novel PRGs in this setting for subclasses of roBPs, there were no known no(1) seed-length explicit PRGs for general polynomial-size roBPs in this setting. In this work, we follow the "bounded independence plus noise" paradigm of Haramaty, Lee and Viola [HLV17], [LV17], and give an improved analysis in the general roBP unknownorder setting. With this analysis we obtain an explicit PRG with seed-length O(log^3 n) for polynomial-size roBPs reading their bits in an unknown order. Plugging in a recent Fourier tail bound of Chattopadhyay, Hatami, Reingold, and Tal [CHRT17], we can obtain a O(log^2 n) seed-length when the roBP is of constant width.
Urban residents’ place-based perceptions and attitudes toward tourism development: a comparison between the United States and China

This study aims to examine whether any cultural difference exists on the influence of residents’ place-based perceptions on perceived tourism impacts and support for tourism. A survey was distributed to urban residents in China and the United States. Structural equation modeling results show that self-esteem and self-efficacy were two important factors that influence residents’ attitude to tourism impacts in both contexts. Distinctiveness was only observed as influential in the China study, while continuity was not evident in either culture. Results imply the need for destination marketers to use various strategies to reach the target market.
Campaign Finance Transparency Affects Legislators’ Election Outcomes and Behavior

Do audits by executive agencies impact the behavior of those audited? Does revealing negative information about legislators affect electoral results and behavior? Institutions that encourage transparency, such as campaign finance disclosure, influence mass and elite behavior. Campaign finance transparency provides information to voters during legislative campaigns about the character of candidates, and this information affects voter and legislator behavior. The U.S. Federal Election Commission conducted random audits of 10 percent of U.S. House members in the 1970s. This FEC program is the only randomized experiment a U.S. agency has conducted on federal legislators and their electorates. We find that audited legislators were more likely to retire and faced more competitive re-elections relative to the control group, an effect that is amplified among incumbents whose audits revealed campaign finance violations. Further, campaign finance scandals are associated with lower incumbent vote shares and approval; and more negative advertisements in the 2000s.
Does Premature Deindustrialization Matter? The Role of Manufacturing versus Services in Development

The shares of manufacturing in value added and employment across a range of developing economies peaked at lower levels of per capita income compared with their high-income, early-industrializer precursors. Based on the statistical analysis of input-output tables and firm-level data, the paper contributes to the discussion on whether this "premature deindustrialization" matters by showing that: a) the premature declining share of the manufacturing sector is largely not driven by a statistical artifice whereby what was earlier subsumed in manufacturing value added is now accounted for as service sector contributions; b) Some features of manufacturing that were thought of as uniquely special for development, such as scale economies, exports, and innovation, are increasingly shared by services sector firms. Yet, a given service subsector is unlikely to provide opportunities for productivity growth and job creation for unskilled labor simultaneously; c) Some high-productivity services serve final demand or derive demand from several sectors, while others are more closely linked to a manufacturing base.
Autoconj: Recognizing and Exploiting Conjugacy Without a Domain-Specific Language

Deriving conditional and marginal distributions using conjugacy relationships can be time consuming and error prone. In this paper, we propose a strategy for automating such derivations. Unlike previous systems which focus on relationships between pairs of random variables, our system (which we call Autoconj) operates directly on Python functions that compute log-joint distribution functions. Autoconj provides support for conjugacy-exploiting algorithms in any Python-embedded PPL. This paves the way for accelerating development of novel inference algorithms and structure-exploiting modeling strategies. The package can be downloaded at https://github.com/google-research/autoconj.
Strongly Correlated Photon Transport in One-Dimensional Systems

We show that two-photon transport is strongly correlated in one-dimensional waveguide coupled to a two-level system. Moreover, we show that the two-level system can induce effective attractive or repulsive interactions in space for photons.
Crystal structure of a Thermus aquaticus diversity-generating retroelement variable protein.

Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) are widely distributed in bacteria, archaea, and microbial viruses, and bring about unparalleled levels of sequence variation in target proteins. While DGR variable proteins share low sequence identity, the structures of several such proteins have revealed the C-type lectin (CLec)-fold as a conserved scaffold for accommodating massive sequence variation. This conservation has led to the suggestion that the CLec-fold may be useful in molecular surface display applications. Thermostability is an attractive feature in such applications, and thus we studied the variable protein of a DGR encoded by a prophage of the thermophile Thermus aquaticus. We report here the 2.8 A resolution crystal structure of the variable protein from the T. aquaticus DGR, called TaqVP, and confirm that it has a CLec-fold. Remarkably, its variable region is nearly identical in structure to those of several other CLec-fold DGR variable proteins despite low sequence identity among these. TaqVP was found to be thermostable, which appears to be a property shared by several CLec-fold DGR variable proteins. These results provide impetus for the pursuit of the DGR variable protein CLec-fold in molecular display applications.
Tunable structure and dynamics of active liquid crystals

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to notable dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying nonequilibrium physics would provide a route toward control of their dynamic behavior and pave the way for potential applications. The active system considered here consists of a quasi-two-dimensional sheet of short (≈1 μm) actin filaments driven by myosin II motors. By adopting a concerted theoretical and experimental strategy, new insights are gained into the nonequilibrium properties of active nematics over a wide range of internal activity levels. In particular, it is shown that topological defect interactions can be led to transition from attractive to repulsive as a function of initial defect separation and relative orientation. Furthermore, by examining the +1/2 defect morphology as a function of activity, we found that the apparent elastic properties of the system (the ratio of bend-to-splay elastic moduli) are altered considerably by increased activity, leading to an effectively lower bend elasticity. At high levels of activity, the topological defects that decorate the material exhibit a liquid-like structure and adopt preferred orientations depending on their topological charge. Together, these results suggest that it should be possible to tune internal stresses in active nematic systems with the goal of designing out-of-equilibrium structures with engineered dynamic responses.
Induction of Lrp5 HBM-causing mutations in Cathepsin-K expressing cells alters bone metabolism

High-bone-mass (HBM)-causing missense mutations in the low density lipoprotein receptor-related protein-5 (Lrp5) are associated with increased osteoanabolic action and protection from disuse- and ovariectomy-induced osteopenia. These mutations (e.g., A214V and G171V) confer resistance to endogenous secreted Lrp5/6 inhibitors, such as sclerostin (SOST) and Dickkopf homolog-1 (DKK1). Cells in the osteoblast lineage are responsive to canonical Wnt stimulation, but recent work has indicated that osteoclasts exhibit both indirect and direct responsiveness to canonical Wnt. Whether Lrp5-HBM receptors, expressed in osteoclasts, might alter osteoclast differentiation, activity, and consequent net bone balance in the skeleton, is not known. To address this, we bred mice harboring heterozygous Lrp5 HBM-causing conditional knock-in alleles to Ctsk-Cre transgenic mice and studied the phenotype using DXA, μCT, histomorphometry, serum assays, and primary cell culture. Mice with HBM alleles induced in Ctsk-expressing cells (TG) exhibited higher bone mass and architectural properties compared to non-transgenic (NTG) counterparts. In vivo and in vitro measurements of osteoclast activity, population density, and differentiation yielded significant reductions in osteoclast-related parameters in female but not male TG mice. Droplet digital PCR performed on osteocyte enriched cortical bone tubes from TG and NTG mice revealed that ~8-17% of the osteocyte population (depending on sex) underwent recombination of the conditional Lrp5 allele in the presence of Ctsk-Cre. Further, bone formation parameters in the midshaft femur cortex show a small but significant increase in anabolic action on the endocortical but not periosteal surface. These findings suggest that Wnt/Lrp5 signaling in osteoclasts affects osteoclastogenesis and activity in female mice, but also that some of the changes in bone mass in TG mice might be due to Cre expression in the osteocyte population.
Female Sex Development and Reproductive Duct Formation Depend on Wnt4a in Zebrafish.

In laboratory strains of zebrafish, sex determination occurs in the absence of a typical sex chromosome and it is not known what regulates the proportion of animals that develop as males or females. Many sex determination and gonad differentiation genes that act downstream of a sex chromosome are well conserved among vertebrates, but studies that test their contribution to this process have mostly been limited to mammalian models. In mammals, WNT4 is a signaling ligand that is essential for ovary and Mullerian duct development, where it antagonizes the male-promoting FGF9 signal. Wnt4 is well conserved across all vertebrates, but it is not known if Wnt4 plays a role in sex determination and/or the differentiation of sex organs in nonmammalian vertebrates. This question is especially interesting in teleosts, such as zebrafish, because they lack an Fgf9 ortholog. Here we show that wnt4a is the ortholog of mammalian Wnt4, and that wnt4b was present in the last common ancestor of humans and zebrafish, but was lost in mammals. We show that wnt4a loss-of-function mutants develop predominantly as males and conclude that wnt4a activity promotes female sex determination and/or differentiation in zebrafish. Additionally, both male and female wnt4a mutants are sterile due to defects in reproductive duct development. Together these results strongly argue that Wnt4a is a conserved regulator of female sex determination and reproductive duct development in mammalian and nonmammalian vertebrates.
On the hysteresis in fireball formation and extinction

A model is proposed to explain hysteresis observed in fireball formation and extinction as electrode bias is varied in partially ionized plasmas. Formation is predicted after a sufficiently deep potential well for electrons is established in the electron sheath of the electrode. Under the experimental conditions considered, once the fireball forms, the plasma potential rapidly increases, resulting in electrons being only lost to the electrode. Previous predictions suggest that once formed, the fireball double layer must maintain a potential close to the ionization potential of the neutral gas to remain in a steady state. In this paper, it is predicted that changes in electrode bias after formation result in a corresponding change in the fireball size and plasma potential. This change in plasma potential allows the double layer potential to be maintained at biases both above and below the electrode bias at onset. The fireball extinguishes when the required double layer potential can no longer be maintained with the balance of current loss of the bulk plasma. These predictions are tested experimentally and are found to be in good agreement with the measurements.
Changes in arm tissue composition with slowly-progressive weight-lifting among women with breast cancer-related lymphedema.

114Background: We evaluated baseline differences in arm tissue composition (fat mass, lean mass, bone mineral content [BMC] and bone mineral density [BMD]) between the affected and unaffected arms in women with breast cancer-related lymphedema (BRCL). We compared changes in arm tissue composition and self-reported lymphedema symptoms after one-year of weight-lifting vs. usual-care. Methods: We utilized data from the PAL trial that included 141 women with BRCL. Arm tissue composition was quantified using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. The severity of lymphedema was quantified using self-report survey. Weight-lifting was performed at community fitness facilities. Results: At baseline, the affected arm had more fat (D= 89.7±21.0g; P < 0.001) and lean mass (D= 149.1±25.3g; P < 0.001), but less BMC (D= -3.2±0.9g; P < 0.001) than the unaffected arm. No difference was observed in BMD. After 12-months of weight-lifting, composition of the affected arm was improved: lean mass (71.2±27.9g; P = 0.01) and BMD (0.0...
Proteins, transcripts, and genetic architecture of seminal fluid and sperm in the mosquito aedes aegypti

The yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti,, transmits several viruses causative of serious diseases, including dengue, Zika, and chikungunya. Some proposed efforts to control this vector involve manipulating reproduction to suppress wild populations or to replace them with disease-resistant mosquitoes. The design of such strategies requires an intimate knowledge of reproductive processes, yet our basic understanding of reproductive genetics in this vector remains largely incomplete. To accelerate future investigations, we have comprehensively catalogued sperm and seminal fluid proteins (SFPs) transferred to females in the ejaculate using tandem mass spectrometry. By excluding female-derived proteins using an isotopic labeling approach, we identified 870 sperm proteins and 280 SFPs. Functional composition analysis revealed parallels with known aspects of sperm biology and SFP function in other insects. To corroborate our proteome characterization, we also generated transcriptomes for testes and the male accessory glands-the primary contributors to Ae. aegypti, sperm and seminal fluid, respectively. Differential gene expression of accessory glands from virgin and mated males suggests that transcripts encoding proteins involved in protein translation are upregulated post-mating. Several SFP transcripts were also modulated after mating, but >90% remained unchanged. Finally, a significant enrichment of SFPs was observed on chromosome 1, which harbors the male sex determining locus in this species. Our study provides a comprehensive proteomic and transcriptomic characterization of ejaculate production and composition and thus provides a foundation for future investigations of Ae. aegypti, reproductive biology, from functional analysis of individual proteins to broader examination of reproductive processes.
Visual Depth Mapping from Monocular Images using Recurrent Convolutional Neural Networks

A reliable sense-and-avoid system is critical to enabling safe autonomous operation of unmanned aircraft. Existing sense-and-avoid methods often require specialized sensors that are too large or power intensive for use on small unmanned vehicles. This paper presents a method to estimate object distances based on visual image sequences, allowing for the use of low-cost, on-board monocular cameras as simple collision avoidance sensors. We present a deep recurrent convolutional neural network and training method to generate depth maps from video sequences. Our network is trained using simulated camera and depth data generated with Microsoft's AirSim simulator. Empirically, we show that our model achieves superior performance compared to models generated using prior methods.We further demonstrate that the method can be used for sense-and-avoid of obstacles in simulation.
Connectionist recommendation in the wild: on the utility and scrutability of neural networks for personalized course guidance

The aggregate behaviors of users can collectively encode deep semantic information about the objects with which they interact. In this paper, we demonstrate novel ways in which the synthesis of these data can illuminate the terrain of users’ environment and support them in their decision making and wayfinding. A novel application of recurrent neural networks and skip-gram models, approaches popularized by their application to modeling language, are brought to bear on student university enrollment sequences to create vector representations of courses and map out traversals across them. We present demonstrations of how scrutability from these neural networks can be gained and how the combination of these techniques can be seen as an evolution of content tagging and a means for a recommender to balance user preferences inferred from data with those explicitly specified. From validation of the models to the development of a UI, we discuss additional requisite functionality informed by the results of a usability study leading to the ultimate deployment of the system at a university.
What Can Machine Learning Teach Us about Communications

Rapid improvements in machine learning over the past decade are beginning to have far-reaching effects. For communications, engineers with limited domain expertise can now use off-the-shelf learning packages to design high-performance systems based on simulations. Prior to the current revolution in machine learning, the majority of communication engineers were quite aware that system parameters (such as filter coefficients) could be learned using stochastic gradient descent. It was not at all clear, however, that more complicated parts of the system architecture could be learned as well. In this paper, we discuss the application of machine-learning techniques to two communications problems and focus on what can be learned from the resulting systems. We were pleasantly surprised that the observed gains in one example have a simple explanation that only became clear in hindsight. In essence, deep learning discovered a simple and effective strategy that had not been considered earlier.
Distributed Mechanism Design for Multicast Transmission

In the standard Mechanism Design framework (Hurwicz-Reiter[1]), there is a central authority that gathers agents' messages and subsequently determines the allocation and tax for each agent. We consider a scenario where, due to communication overhead and other constraints, such broadcasting of messages to a central authority cannot take place. Instead, only local message exchange is allowed between agents. As a result, each agent should be able to determine her own allocation and tax based on the messages in the local neighborhood, as defined by a given message graph describing the communication constraints. This scenario gives rise to a novel research direction that we call “Distributed Mechanism Design”. In this paper, we propose such a distributed mechanism for the problem of rate allocation in a multicast transmission network. The proposed mechanism fully implements the optimal allocation in Nash equilibria and its message space dimension is linear with respect to the number of agents in the network.
Atypical CD4+/CD8+ Lymphocytosis and Prolonged Pancytopenia Associated With Human Herpesvirus 6 Reactivation After Autologous Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation.

Introduction Reactivation of latent human herpesvirus-6 (HHV6) is often seen after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). As HHV6 reactivation occurs in pancytopenia, it is not associated with acute alterations in peripheral leukocytes. Although prolonged pancytopenia and graft failure have been associated with HHV6 after allogeneic HCT, they have not been reported after autologous HCT. We describe atypical lymphocytosis with CD4+/CD8+ cells followed by prolonged bone marrow hypoplasia in a patient who developed HHV6 reactivation after autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) for multiple myeloma (MM). Case Report A 63-year-old man with IgA kappa MM in first complete response (CR) underwent autologous PBSCT after a preparative regimen of melphalan (200 mg/m2 i.v.); CD34+ cell dose was 10.94 × 106/kg. Pre-transplant evaluation included positive IgG antibodies against HSV and HHV6 (titer 1:320), negative titers against CMV, VZV and HIV. He received prophylactic acyclovir and fluconazole. On day +1, he developed neutropenic fever, resolving with empiric antibiotics. On day +7, he was pancytopenic with recurrent fever and diffuse erythematous macular and papular rash. Blood and urine cultures were negative. On day +11, total white blood cell count abruptly increased to 11.2 × 109/L, with approximately 60% atypical lymphocytes; the absolute neutrophil count (ANC) was zero. By day +14, fever and rash had resolved; the atypical lymphocytosis was then followed by prolonged pancytopenia (Figure 1). On day +34, persistent pancytopenia and concerns for graft failure led to a second autologous PBSC infusion. The patient was discharged on day +54. Results Flow cytometry of peripheral blood on day +11 showed atypical lymphocytes positive for CD4 and CD8 (Figure 2). Quantitative PCR was positive for HHV6 with 250 copies/mL and negative for CMV and EBV. Bone marrow aspirate and biopsy on day +31 showed marked erythroid hyperplasia (M:E ratio 0.18) and a small population (1.7%) of T-cells coexpressing CD4 and CD8. On day +38, the ANC was 0.99 × 106/L. Conclusion This instructive case demonstrates that HHV6 reactivation after autologous PBSCT can be associated with atypical lymphocytosis of characteristic CD4+/CD8+ cells and subsequent prolonged pancytopenia. HHV6 is known to induce expression of CD4 in CD8+ lymphocytes, and that viral reactivation likely led to the observed CD4+/CD8+ lymphocytosis, an immunophenotype otherwise confined to intrathymic lymphocytes during T-cell maturation. As autologous HCT remains a component of MM comprehensive therapy, transplant infectious diseases specialists and HCT physicians are encouraged to have a low index of suspicion for HHV6 reactivation when assessing MM patients who develop persistent fevers, rashes, atypical lymphocytosis or prolonged marrow hypoplasia after autologous HCT.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Re-optimization

Cost-based query optimizers remain one of the most important components of database management systems for analytic workloads. Though modern optimizers select plans close to optimal performance in the common case, a small number of queries are an order of magnitude slower than they could be. In this paper we investigate why this is still the case, despite decades of improvements to cost models, plan enumeration, and cardinality estimation. We demonstrate why we believe that a re-optimization mechanism is likely the most cost-effective way to improve end-to-end query performance. We find that even a simple re-optimization scheme can improve the latency of many poorly performing queries. We demonstrate that re-optimization improves the end-to-end latency of the top 20 longest running queries in the Join Order Benchmark by 27%, realizing most of the benefit of perfect cardinality estimation.
Scalable Gas Sensing, Mapping, and Path Planning via Decentralized Hilbert Maps

This paper develops a decentralized approach to gas distribution mapping (GDM) and information-driven path planning for large-scale distributed sensing systems. Gas mapping is performed using a probabilistic representation known as a Hilbert map, which formulates the mapping problem as a multi-class classification task and uses kernel logistic regression to train a discriminative classifier online. A novel Hilbert map information fusion method is presented for rapidly merging the information from individual robot maps using limited data communication. A communication strategy that implements data fusion among many robots is also presented for the decentralized computation of GDMs. New entropy-based information-driven path-planning methods are developed and compared to existing approaches, such as particle swarm optimization (PSO) and random walks (RW). Numerical experiments conducted in simulated indoor and outdoor environments show that the information-driven approaches proposed in this paper far outperform other approaches, and avoid mutual collisions in real time.
Mechanistic modeling of carbonated waterflooding

Abstract CO2 enhanced oil recovery is usually affected by poor sweep efficiency due to unfavorable mobility contrast between the injected CO2 and oil. To alleviate this problem, CO2 is added to the injected brine and transported in the reservoir by flood water. Therefore, Carbonated Water Injection (CWI) takes advantage of both CO2 and water flooding processes. Furthermore, geochemical reactions between the injected carbonated brine and rock can alter petrophysical properties of the reservoir and affect final oil recovery. While there are several CWI coreflood experiments reported in the literature, simulation studies for this process are scarce. Accurate modeling of CWI performance requires a simulator with the ability to capture true physics of the CWI process. In this study, a compositional reservoir simulator developed at The University of Texas at Austin, UTCOMP, coupled with a state-of-the-art geochemical package developed by United States Geological Survey, IPhreeqc, is used to model CWI process. We considered the impact of CO2 mass transfer between brine and hydrocarbon phases based on thermodynamic constrains at the reservoir condition. In order to validate our simulation approach, the results of our CWI simulations were compared with a recently published coreflood experiment. Moreover, we investigated the fluid-rock interactions in CWI. The results of the simulations, indicated that prior to water breakthrough the main drive mechanism is displacement. But as more carbonated water is injected, CO2 diffuses more into the trapped oil left behind, which results in oil swelling and subsequent oil viscosity reduction. Moreover, reaction of carbonate minerals such as calcite with carbonated brine results in dissolution of the main rock matrix which consequently creates wormholes similar to carbonates acidizing. In this study we propose a novel approach for accurate modeling of carbonated waterflooding process. The results of this study highlight the importance of geochemical reactions in modeling CWI process. Our approach has been validated based on history matching at the backdrop of a recently published coreflood experiment.
PoMo: Generating Entity-Specific Post-Modifiers in Context

We introduce entity post-modifier generation as an instance of a collaborative writing task. Given a sentence about a target entity, the task is to automatically generate a post-modifier phrase that provides contextually relevant information about the entity. For example, for the sentence, “Barack Obama, _______, supported the #MeToo movement.”, the phrase “a father of two girls” is a contextually relevant post-modifier. To this end, we build PoMo, a post-modifier dataset created automatically from news articles reflecting a journalistic need for incorporating entity information that is relevant to a particular news event. PoMo consists of more than 231K sentences with post-modifiers and associated facts extracted from Wikidata for around 57K unique entities. We use crowdsourcing to show that modeling contextual relevance is necessary for accurate post-modifier generation. We adapt a number of existing generation approaches as baselines for this dataset. Our results show there is large room for improvement in terms of both identifying relevant facts to include (knowing which claims are relevant gives a >20% improvement in BLEU score), and generating appropriate post-modifier text for the context (providing relevant claims is not sufficient for accurate generation). We conduct an error analysis that suggests promising directions for future research.
Demographics and the Natural Rate of Interest in Japan

Japan’s aging and shrinking population could lower the natural rate of interest and, together with low inflation expectations, challenge the Bank of Japan’s efforts to reflate the economy. This paper uses a semi-structural model to estimate the impact of demographics on the natural rate in Japan. We find that demographic change has a significantly negative impact on the natural rate by lowering trend potential growth. We also find that the negative impact has been increasing over time amid stronger demographic headwinds. These findings highlight the importance of boosting potential growth to offset the negative demographic impact and lift the natural rate in Japan.
A testbed for a smart building: design and implementation

This paper addresses the design and implementation of a smart building prototype. The implementation utilizes Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to collect, analyze, and manage data from building systems in a smart city environment. The developed smart building prototype is capable of realtime interactions with the residents. The main objective is to adapt the building settings to the residents' needs and provide the maximum comfort level with minimum operational costs. For this purpose, building parameters are collected via a set of sensors and transferred to a database in real-time, which can be accessed, analyzed and visualized. Environment properties such as temperature, light, humidity, audio, video, surveillance, and access status are managed through a model-based controller. The developed testbed and control scheme are generic and modular. The prototype can also be utilized for testing cyber-physical systems' monitoring and management technologies.
Securing Distributed Gradient Descent in High Dimensional Statistical Learning

We consider unreliable distributed learning systems wherein the training data is kept confidential by external workers, and the learner has to interact closely with those workers to train a model. In particular, we assume that there exists a system adversary that can adaptively compromise some workers; the compromised workers deviate from their local designed specifications by sending out arbitrarily malicious messages. We assume in each communication round, up to q out of the m workers suffer Byzantine faults. Each worker keeps a local sample of size n and the total sample size is $N=nm$. We propose a secured variant of the gradient descent method that can tolerate up to a constant fraction of Byzantine workers, i.e., $q/m = O(1)$. Moreover, we show the statistical estimation error of the iterates converges in $O(log N)$ rounds to $O(\sqrtq/N + \sqrtd/N )$, where d is the model dimension. As long as $q=O(d)$, our proposed algorithm achieves the optimal error rate $O(\sqrtd/N )$. Our results are obtained under some technical assumptions. Specifically, we assume strongly-convex population risk. Nevertheless, the empirical risk (sample version) is allowed to be non-convex. The core of our method is to robustly aggregate the gradients computed by the workers based on the filtering procedure proposed by Steinhardt et al. \citeSteinhardt18. On the technical front, deviating from the existing literature on robustly estimating a finite-dimensional mean vector, we establish a \em uniform concentration of the sample covariance matrix of gradients, and show that the aggregated gradient, as a function of model parameter, converges uniformly to the true gradient function. To get a near-optimal uniform concentration bound, we develop a new matrix concentration inequality, which might be of independent interest.
The discovery and legacy of Kepler’s multi-transiting planetary systems

Abstract We revisit the discovery and implications of the first candidate systems to contain multiple transiting exoplanets. These systems were discovered using data from the Kepler space telescope. The initial paper, presenting five systems (Steffen et al., 2010a), was posted online at the time the project released the first catalog of Kepler planet candidates. The first extensive analysis of the observed population of multis was presented in a follow-up paper published the following year (Lissauer et al., 2011b). Multiply-transiting systems allow us to answer a variety of important questions related to the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems. These two papers addressed a wide array of topics including: the distribution of orbital period ratios, planet size ratios, system architectures, mean-motion resonance, orbital eccentricities, planet validation and confirmation, and the identification of different planet populations. They set the stage for many subsequent, detailed studies by other groups. Intensive studies of individual multiplanet systems provided some of Kepler’s most important exoplanet discoveries. As we examine the scientific impact of the first of these systems, we also present some history of the people and circumstances surrounding their discoveries.
Child Protective Service Referrals Involving Exposure to Domestic Violence: Prevalence, Associated Maltreatment Types, and Likelihood of Formal Case Openings:

Childhood exposure to domestic violence (CEDV) is widely understood as potentially harmful to children. Accordingly, many child welfare systems in the United States construe CEDV as maltreatment when the exposure results in harm or threatened harm to the child. The purpose of the current study was to investigate substantiated child welfare referrals directly related to CEDV to better understand the prevalence and patterns of CEDV-related maltreatment and how child welfare workers respond under the "harm or threatened harm" standard. Data were drawn from 23,704 substantiated referrals between 2009 and 2013 in a large Midwestern child welfare system. Approximately 20% of substantiated referrals were CEDV related. A plurality of CEDV-related referrals included both a male caregiver and female caregiver who were co-substantiated for maltreatment. The most common maltreatment types substantiated for these referrals were neglect based rather than abuse based, and just under a quarter (23%) of CEDV-related referrals were formally opened for services. Referrals involving co-occurring substance abuse were most likely to be opened for services based on predicted probabilities derived from multilevel modeling. Implications for policy and practice are considered.
Using Latent Variable Models to Observe Academic Pathways

Understanding large-scale patterns in student course enrollment is a problem of great interest to university administrators and educational researchers. Yet important decisions are often made without a good quantitative framework of the process underlying student choices. We propose a probabilistic approach to modelling course enrollment decisions,drawing inspiration from multi label classification and mixture models. We use ten years of anonymized student transcripts from a large university to construct a Gaussian latent variable model that learns the joint distribution over course enrollments. The models allow for a diverse set of inference queries and robustness to data sparsity. We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach in comparison to others, including deep learning architectures, and demonstrate its ability to infer the underlying student interests that guide enrollment decisions.
Adult Medicaid benefit generosity and receipt of recommended health services among low-income children: The spillover effects of Medicaid adult dental coverage expansions

Low-income children are less likely to receive recommended health services than their high-income counterparts. This paper examines whether the design of parental Medicaid benefit packages could serve as a mechanism for reducing income-based disparities in unmet health care needs, considering dental benefits as a case study. Leveraging state-level changes to adult dental benefits over time, I find that coverage is associated with increases of 14 and 5 percentage points, respectively, in the likelihood of a recent dental visit among parents and children directly exposed to the policy. Child effects appear to be concentrated among younger children under age 12.
TNER: a novel background error suppression method for mutation detection in circulating tumor DNA

Ultra-deep next-generation sequencing of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) holds great promise as a tool for the early detection of cancer and for monitoring disease progression and therapeutic responses. However, the low abundance of ctDNA in the bloodstream coupled with technical errors introduced during library construction and sequencing complicates mutation detection. To achieve high accuracy of variant calling via better distinguishing low-frequency ctDNA mutations from background errors, we introduce TNER (Tri-Nucleotide Error Reducer), a novel background error suppression method that provides a robust estimation of background noise to reduce sequencing errors. The results on both simulated data and real data from healthy subjects demonstrate that the proposed algorithm consistently outperforms a current, state-of-the-art, position-specific error polishing model, particularly when the sample size of healthy subjects is small. TNER significantly enhances the specificity of downstream ctDNA mutation detection without sacrificing sensitivity. The tool is publicly available at https://github.com/ctDNA/TNER .
Double allylation reactions of (2-azaallyl)stannanes: synthesis of N,N-bis(3-butenyl)amines and their conversion to 2,3,6,7-tetrahydroazepines via ring-closing metathesis.

Treatment of (2-azaallyl)stannanes (i) with 2.2 equiv of allylmagnesium bromide afforded good yields of N,N-bis(3-butenyl)amines derivatives (ii), which were subjected to ring-closing metathesis to afford 2,3,6,7-tetrahydroazepines (iii). Thus, (2-azaallyl)stannanes are the synthetic equivalents of amine α,α‘-dications.
A NOVEL APPROACH TO OLIGOCYCLOPROPANE STRUCTURAL UNITS

Abstract A fundamentally novel approach to the synthesis of oligocyclopropane structural units based on the iterative formation and trapping of homo-allyl cationic intermediates has been accomplished. This methodology provides practical access to the diastereomically related trans- syn -trans and trans- anti -trans bis-cyclopropanes and higher homologues.
Parallel Evolution of Two Clades of an Atlantic-Endemic Pathogenic Lineage of Vibrio parahaemolyticus by Independent Acquisition of Related Pathogenicity Islands.

Shellfish-transmitted Vibrio parahaemolyticus infections have recently increased from locations with historically low disease incidence, such as the Northeast United States (US). This change coincided with a bacterial population shift towards human pathogenic variants occurring in part through the introduction of several Pacific native lineages (ST36, ST43 and ST636) to near-shore areas off the Atlantic coast of the Northeast US. Concomitantly, ST631 emerged as a major endemic pathogen. Phylogenetic trees of clinical and environmental isolates indicated that two clades diverged from a common ST631 ancestor, and in each of these clades, a human pathogenic variant evolved independently through acquisition of distinct Vibrio pathogenicity islands (VPaI). These VPaI differ from each other and bear little resemblance to hemolysin-containing VPaI from isolates of the pandemic clonal complex. Clade I ST631 isolates either harbored no hemolysins, or contained a chromosome I-inserted island we call VPaIβ that encodes a type three secretion system (T3SS2β) typical of Trh hemolysin-producers. The more clinically prevalent and clonal ST631 clade II had an island we call VPaIγ that encodes both tdh and trh and that was inserted in chromosome II. VPaIγ was derived from VPaIβ but with some additional acquired elements in common with VPaI carried by pandemic isolates, exemplifying the mosaic nature of pathogenicity islands. Genomics comparisons and amplicon assays identified VPaIγ-type islands containing tdh inserted adjacent to the ure cluster in the three introduced Pacific and most other emergent lineages. that collectively cause 67% of Northeast US infections as of 2016. IMPORTANCE The availability of three different hemolysin genotypes in the ST631 lineage provided a unique opportunity to employ genome comparisons to further our understanding of the processes underlying pathogen evolution. The fact that two different pathogenic clades arose in parallel from the same potentially benign lineage by independent VPaI acquisition is surprising considering the historically low prevalence of community members harboring VPaI in waters along the Northeast US coast that could serve as the source of this material. This illustrates a possible predisposition of some lineages to not only acquire foreign DNA but also to become human pathogens. Whereas the underlying cause for the expansion of V. parahaemolyticus lineages harboring VPaIγ along the US Atlantic coast and spread of this element to multiple lineages that underlies disease emergence is not known, this work underscores the need to define the environment factors that favor bacteria harboring VPaI in locations of emergent disease.
Solution-Phase Synthesis of Well-Defined Indium Sulfide Nanorods

Cubic β-In2S3 nanorods were synthesized with reaction conditions that favor anisotropic growth. The TEM image illustrates the uniform diameter of the nanorods (11.5 nm), which is well below the Boh...
A versatile route to benzocanthinones

Abstract Benzocanthinone ( 1 ) and five analogs ( 10 , 12 – 15 ) were prepared by radical-induced cyclizations of halo N -aroyl derivatives of β-carboline and carbazole.
Termination of carbopalladation of alkynes via carbonylative amidation producing lactams

Abstract Trapping of acylpalladium derivatives can be achieved using internal carboxamides and sulfonamides, in addition to simple amines and applied to termination of carbopalladation to produce lactams.