cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Reproductive tissue selective actions of progesterone receptors

The steroid hormone, progesterone, plays a central coordinate role in diverse events associated with female reproduction. In humans and other vertebrates, the biological activity of progesterone is mediated by modulation of the transcriptional activity of two progesterone receptors, PR-A and PR-B. These receptors arise from the same gene and exhibit both overlapping and distinct transcriptional activities in vitro. To delineate the individual roles of PR-A and PR-B in vivo, we have generated mouse models in which expression of a single PR isoform has been ablated. Analysis of the reproductive phenotypes of these mice has indicated that PR-A and PR-B mediate mostly distinct but partially overlapping reproductive responses to progesterone. While selective ablation of the PR-A protein (PR-A knockout mice, PRAKO mice) shows normal mammary gland response to progesterone but severe uterine hyperplasia and ovarian abnormalities, ablation of PR-B protein (PRBKO mice) does not affect biological responses of the ovary or uterus to progesterone but results in reduced pregnancy-associated mammary gland morphogenesis. The distinct tissue-specific reproductive responses to progesterone exhibited by these isoforms are due to regulation of distinct subsets of progesterone-dependent target genes by the individual PR isoforms. This review will summarize our current understanding of the selective contribution of PR isoforms to the cellular and molecular actions of progesterone in reproductive tissues.
How Achieving the Dual Goal of Customer Satisfaction and Efficiency in Mergers Affects a Firm’s Long-Term Financial Performance

This article investigates how engaging in a merger moderates the joint impact of a firm’s achievement of dual goals of customer satisfaction and firm efficiency on a firm’s long-term financial performance. Many prominent firms grow through mergers. Recent examples in the services context include the merger between Toronto-Dominion Bank and Canada Trust, and the merger between Continental and United Airlines. Our results show that joint achievement of customer satisfaction and efficiency is beneficial in merger contexts, but not in nonmerger contexts. We investigate the moderating role of mergers using a longitudinal panel of 429 observations across multiple firms and industries. These results suggest that merging firms should not take a myopic perspective of only wresting efficiencies (as the finance literature suggests). Rather, merging firms should focus on simultaneously improving customer satisfaction and improving efficiency to maximize long-term firm value.
Labor supply and the optimality of Social Security

Abstract Traditional economic theory predicts that an unfunded public pension system can be justified on the basis of its ability to provide intergenerational transfers, and also for its ability to provide partial insurance against mortality and labor income risks. In this paper, I demonstrate that the quantitative importance of these traditional roles depends on how the pension system distorts households' labor supply decisions. Using a general-equilibrium life-cycle consumption model calibrated to the U.S. economy, I show that these distortions can be large enough to erase much of the traditional welfare gains from Social Security. I also find that this fact is robust within the range of labor supply elasticities usually encountered in the macroeconomic literature.
High-performance LWIR superlattice detectors and FPA based on CBIRD design

We report our recent efforts on advancing of antimonide superlattice based infrared photodetectors and demonstration of focal plane arrays based on a complementary barrier infrared detector (CBIRD) design. By optimizing design and growth condition we succeeded to reduce the operational bias of CBIRD single pixel detector without increase of dark current or degradation of quantum efficiency. We demonstrated a 1024x1024 pixel long-waveleng thinfrared focal plane array utilizing CBIRD design. An 11.5 micrometer cutoff focal plane without anti-reflection coating has yielded noise equivalent differential temperature of 53 mK at operating temperature of 80 K, with 300 K background and cold-stop. Imaging results from a recent 10 micrometer cutoff focal plane array are also presented. These results advance state-of-the art of superlattice detectors and demonstrated advantages of CBIRD architecture for realization of FPA.
Manifestations of String Theory in Astrophysical Data and at the LHC

With the advent of the LHC and the continuing influx of cosmological data, phenomenological aspects of string theory have received renewed attention in recent years and many problems have been properly incorporated in this framework. For instance, recent theoretical considerations in string theory have applied a statistical approach to the enormous landscape of metastable vacua. The large number of vacua may shed some light on the cosmological constant problem. In addition, in string theory, attempts have been made to address the hierarchy problem within the context of the existence of large or warped internal dimensions transverse to a braneworld where we are confined, which lowers the effective scale of gravity to the TeV region. If this were the case, unseen dimensions of the space-time can be at the border of the energy domain within reach of the next generation of particle accelerators. Although the picture of the landscape may be the key to the cosmological constant problem, it is well-known that the compactification of a string background to a four dimensional solution undergoing accelerating expansion is difficult, which is described by the no-go theorem of Maldacena-Nunez. In the first part of this paper, we investigate the cosmological content of the Salam-Sezgin supergravity which circumvents one of the hypotheses of the no-go theorem of Maldacena-Nunez and consequently can support a de Sitter phase when lifted to string theory. We find a solution to the field equations in qualitative agreement with the observed dark energy density. The carrier of the acceleration in the present de Sitter epoch is a quintessence field slowly rolling down its exponential potential. Intrinsic to this model, there is a second modulus, which is automatically stabilized and acts as a source of cold dark matter with a mass proportional to an exponential function of the quintessence field. In the second part, we explore a “new physics” signal at LHC, in the processes pp →γ + jet and pp→γ γ. In D-brane quivers, there are one or more additional U(1) gauge symmetries, beyond the U(1)Y of the standard model, which follows from the property that the gauge group for open strings terminating on a stack of N identical D-branes is U(N) rather than SU(N) for N > 2. (For N = 2 the gauge group can be Sp(1) rather than U(2).) With this property, the photon will participate with the SU(N) gauge boson in string tree level scattering processes which in the standard model occur only at one-loop level. In order to evaluate this stringy correction, we considered the processes gg → g γ and gg →γγ, and found that cross section measurements of the process pp →γ + jet at the LHC will attain 5 σ discovery reach on low scale string models for Mstring as large as 4 TeV.
GATT/WTO Promotes Trade Strongly: Sample Selection and Model Specification *

Some recent research papers challenge the conventional view on the impact of the GATT/WTO on trade. This paper investigates the sample selection bias and the gravity model specification issues in the existing studies and provides strong evidence that the GATT/WTO has been very effective in trade creation. First, the GATT/WTO not only makes existing trading partners trade more (intensive margin), but also creates new trading relationships (extensive margin). Some existing studies exclude zero trade observations from their analyses and hence ignore the extensive margin. Secondly, the violation of some maintained assumptions in the traditional log-linear gravity regression accounts for the failure to uncover the role of the GATT/WTO even at the intensive margin. Using a large bilateral panel dataset including zero trade flows and a more appropriate econometric method, this paper finds that the GATT/WTO has been very effective in promoting the world trade at both the intensive and the extensive margins.
Strength in Muscle and Beauty in Integrity: Building a Body for Her

Although female bodybuilding has great potential as a liberating archetype for female beauty, judging standards within the sport reflect a masculinist aesthetic of female human beauty that subverts this potential. The organizational rules and the aesthetic of competitive bodybuilding are in need of reform. This article briefly describes the structure and judging standards of competitive women’s bodybuilding, explores the possible objectives of women’s bodybuilding as competitors currently pursue it, addresses feminist concerns about the objectification of women’s bodies that occurs in bodybuilding, and considers whether bodybuilding is an irremediably androcentric pursuit. Practical reforms that feminists within the bodybuilding community might pursue to advance a new aesthetic of bodybuilding are suggested. This article concludes by sketching a feminist aesthetic of bodybuilding based on a Kantian account of beauty, reaching beneath surface appearances.
On the reconfigurability of single-hub WDM ring networks

We study the benefit of reconfigurability for wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) ring networks with dynamic single-hubbed traffic. We show that the ability to reconfigure wavelength add-drop multiplexers helps to reduce the number of expensive line terminating equipment (LTEs) by a factor of W, where W is the number of wavelengths in the network. In addition, we show that for a general class of traffic, optical networks using reconfigurable wavelength add-drop multiplexers guarantee to be almost as bandwidth efficient as full wavelength add-drop networks, that is, opaque networks. For such traffic, we introduce several fast algorithms that achieve or approximate the optimal performance guarantees. The comparison between reconfigurable networks and opaque networks is quantified using a performance metric called capacity ratio, which captures the relative throughput performance of a reconfigurable network compared to the opaque network.
THE ECLIPSING BINARY V1061 CYGNI: CONFRONTING STELLAR EVOLUTION MODELS FOR ACTIVE AND INACTIVE SOLAR-TYPE STARS

We present spectroscopic and photometric observations of the eclipsing system V1061 Cyg (P = 2.35 days). A third star is visible in the spectrum, and the system is a hierarchical triple. We combine the radial velocities for the three stars, times of eclipse, and intermediate astrometric data from the Hipparcos mission (abscissa residuals) to establish the elements of the outer orbit, which is eccentric and has a period of 15.8 yr. We determine accurate values for the masses, radii, and effective temperatures of the binary components: MAa = 1.282 ± 0.015 M☉, RAa = 1.615 ± 0.017 R☉, and T = 6180 ± 100 K for the primary (star Aa), and MAb = 0.9315 ± 0.0068 M☉, RAb = 0.974 ± 0.020 R☉, and T = 5300 ± 150 K for the secondary (Ab). The mass of the tertiary is determined to be MB = 0.925 ± 0.036 M☉ and its effective temperature is T = 5670 ± 150 K. Current stellar evolution models agree well with the properties of the primary but show a very large discrepancy in the radius of the secondary, in the sense that the predicted values are ~10% smaller than observed (a ~5 σ effect). In addition, the temperature is cooler than predicted, by some 200 K. These discrepancies are quite remarkable given that the star is only 7% less massive than the Sun, the calibration point of all stellar models. We identify the chromospheric activity as the likely cause of the effect. Inactive stars agree very well with the models, while active ones such as V1061 Cyg Ab appear systematically too large and too cool.
On the quantum graph spectra of graphyne nanotubes

We describe explicitly the dispersion relations and spectra of periodic Schrodinger operators on a graphyne nanotube structure.
Role of exchange in density-functional theory for weakly interacting systems: Quantum Monte Carlo analysis of electron density and interaction energy

We analyze the density-functional theory (DFT) description of weak interactions by employing diffusion and reptation quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations, for a set of benzene-molecule complexes. While the binding energies depend significantly on the exchange-correlation approximation employed for DFT calculations, QMC calculations show that the electron density is accurately described within DFT, including the quantitative features in the reduced density gradient. We elucidate how the enhancement of the exchange-energy density at a large reduced density gradient plays a critical role in obtaining accurate DFT description of weakly interacting systems.
Subdiffusion and the cage effect studied near the colloidal glass transition

Abstract The dynamics of a glass-forming material slow greatly near the glass transition, and molecular motion becomes inhibited. We use confocal microscopy to investigate the motion of colloidal particles near the colloidal glass transition. As the concentration in a dense colloidal suspension is increased, particles become confined in transient cages formed by their neighbors. This prevents them from diffusing freely throughout the sample. We quantify the properties of these cages by measuring temporal anticorrelations of the particles’ displacements. The local cage properties are related to the subdiffusive rise of the mean square displacement: over a broad range of time scales, the mean square displacement grows slower than linearly in time.
Gun Carrying Among Drug Market Participants: Evidence from Incarcerated Drug Offenders

Objectives The decision to carry a gun by drug market participants involves consideration of the potential for conflict with other market actors, the need for self-protection, and the desire for reputation and status, among other factors. The objective of this study is to investigate the motives, contingencies, and situational factors that influence criminal gun possession among drug market participants.
Phosphoramidite-Rhodium Complexes as Catalysts for the Asymmetric [2+2+2] Cycloaddition of Alkenyl Isocyanates and Alkynes

The discovery and development of the asymmetric rhodium-catalyzed [2+2+2] cycloaddition of alkenyl isocyanates and exogenous alkynes to form indolizinone and quinolizinone scaffolds is described. This methodology has been expanded to include substituted alkenes and dienes, a variety of sterically and electronically diverse alkynes, and carbodiimides in place of the isocyanate. Through X-ray analysis of Rh(cod)/phosphoramidite complexes, additives that modify the enantio-determining step, and other experimental data, a mechanism has been proposed that explains lactam, vinylogous amide, and pyridone products and the factors governing their formation. Finally, we have applied this methodology to the synthesis of (+)-lasubine-II and (-)-209D.
Does Information Technology Lead to Smaller Firms

Many changes in the organization of work in the United States since 1975 have been attributed to the increased capabilities and use of information technology IT in business. However, few studies have attempted to empirically examine these relationships. The primary goal of this paper is to assess the hypothesis that investments in information technology are at least partially responsible for the important organizational change, the shift of economic activity to smaller firms. We examine this hypothesis using industry-level data on IT capital and four measures of firm size, including employees and sales per firm. We find broad evidence that investment in IT is significantly associated with subsequent decreases in the average size of firms. We also find that these decreases in firm size are most pronounced two to three years after the IT investment is made.
Constitutive modeling of lead-free solders

Solders are used extensively as electrical interconnects in microelectronics packaging. Because of environmental concerns, lead-based solders are being replaced by Sn/Ag and Sn/Ag/Cu based solder materials. Since the thermomechanical reliability of modern electronic devices depends on, to a large extent, the fatigue and creep behavior of the solder joints, it is imperative to understand the deformation behavior of these new lead-free solders. This study conducted extensive thermomechanical testing on several commercial lead-free solder alloys. Anand viscoplastic model was used to describe the behavior of these materials with new curve fitting techniques. A modified Anand models was proposed that can yield a more accurate description of lead-free solders.
Beyond “Genetic Discrimination”: Toward the Broader Harm of Geneticism

The current explosion of genetic knowledge and the rapid proliferation of genetic tests has rightly provoked concern that we are approaching a future in which people will be labeled and disadvantaged based on genetic information. Indeed, some have already suffered harm, including denial of health insurance. This concern has prompted an outpouring of analysis. Yet almost all of it approaches the problem of genetic disadvantage under the rubric of “genetic discrimination.” This rubric is woefully inadequate to the task at hand. It ignores years of commentary on race and gender demonstrating the limits of antidiscrimination analysis as an analytic framework and corrective tool. Too much discussion of genetic disadvantage proceeds as if scholars of race and gender had not spent decades critiquing and developing antidiscrimination theory. Indeed, there are multiple links among race, gender, and genetics. Dorothy Roberts has discussed the historical links between racism and genetics, while she and others have begun to map connections between gender and genetics.
Responding to threats of climate change mega-catastrophes

There is a low but uncertain probability that climate change could trigger “mega-catastrophes,” severe and at least partly irreversible adverse effects across broad regions. This paper first discusses the state of current knowledge and the defining characteristics of potential climate change mega-catastrophes. While some of these characteristics present difficulties for using standard rational choice methods to evaluate response options, there is still a need to balance the benefits and costs of different possible responses with appropriate attention to the uncertainties. To that end, we present a qualitative analysis of three options for mitigating the risk of climate mega-catastrophes - drastic abatement of greenhouse gas emissions, development and implementation of geoengineering, and large-scale ex ante adaptation - against the criteria of efficacy, cost, robustness, and flexibility. We discuss the composition of a sound portfolio of initial investments in reducing the risk of climate change mega-catastrophes.
Time-consistent optimal fiscal policy over the business cycle

This paper examines a dynamic stochastic economy with a benevolent government that cannot commit to its future policies. I consider equilibria that are timeconsistent and allow for history-dependent strategies. A new numerical algorithm is developed to solve for the set of equilibrium payoffs. For a baseline economy calibrated to the U.S. economy, the capital income tax with the highest social welfare is slightly procyclical, while the labor income tax is countercyclical. Compared with the data, this equilibrium provides a better account of the cyclical properties of U.S. tax policy than other solutions that abstract from history dependence. The welfare cost of no commitment is about 022% of aggregate consumption as compared to the Ramsey allocation with full commitment.
The Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Hidden semi-Markov model

There is much interest in the Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Hidden Markov Model (HDP-HMM) as a natural Bayesian nonparametric extension of the traditional HMM. However, in many settings the HDP-HMM's strict Markovian constraints are undesirable, particularly if we wish to learn or encode non-geometric state durations. We can extend the HDP-HMM to capture such structure by drawing upon explicit-duration semi-Markovianity, which has been developed in the parametric setting to allow construction of highly interpretable models that admit natural prior information on state durations. In this paper we introduce the explicit-duration HDP-HSMM and develop posterior sampling algorithms for efficient inference in both the direct-assignment and weak-limit approximation settings. We demonstrate the utility of the model and our inference methods on synthetic data as well as experiments on a speaker diarization problem and an example of learning the patterns in Morse code.
Recovering non-negative and combined sparse representations

The non-negative solution to an underdetermined linear system can be uniquely recovered sometimes, even without imposing any additional sparsity constraints. In this paper, we derive conditions under which a unique non-negative solution for such a system can exist, based on the theory of polytopes. Furthermore, we develop the paradigm of combined sparse representations, where only a part of the coefficient vector is constrained to be non-negative, and the rest is unconstrained (general). We analyze the recovery of the unique, sparsest solution, for combined representations, under three different cases of coefficient support knowledge: (a) the non-zero supports of non-negative and general coefficients are known, (b) the non-zero support of general coefficients alone is known, and (c) both the non-zero supports are unknown. For case (c), we propose the combined orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm for coefficient recovery and derive the deterministic sparsity threshold under which recovery of the unique, sparsest coefficient vector is possible. We quantify the order complexity of the algorithms, and examine their performance in exact and approximate recovery of coefficients under various conditions of noise. Furthermore, we also obtain their empirical phase transition characteristics. We show that the basis pursuit algorithm, with partial non-negative constraints, and the proposed greedy algorithm perform better in recovering the unique sparse representation when compared to their unconstrained counterparts. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of the proposed methods in recovering images corrupted by saturation noise.
Combined Edge and Anisotropy Effects on Fickian Mass Diffusion in Polymer Composites

The common methods used to determine the diffusion coefficients of polymer composites are based on the solution of Fickian diffusion equation in one-dimensional (ID) rectangular domain. However, these diffusivities usually involve errors primarily due to finite sample dimensions and anisotropy introduced by fiber reinforcements. In this study, the solution of transient, three-dimensional (3D) anisotropic Fickian diffusion equation is nondimensionalized using six parameters. The solution is then used to analyze the combined contribution of finite sample dimensions and anisotropy to the errors involved in diffusion constants calculated by ID methods. The small time solution of the Fickian diffusion equation in 3D domain is used to analyze the slope used in diffusivity calculations. It is shown that the diffusion coefficient calculated by the ID approach is exact only if the correct slope of percent mass gain versus root square time curve at t=0 is used. However, it has also been shown that depending on the part geometry and degree of anisotropy, there might be considerable differences between the measured slope from the experimental data and the actual slope at t =0. The mismatch between the slopes results in as much as 50% errors in estimates of diffusion coefficients. Using the 3D solution in nondimensional form, the magnitudes of these errors are studied. A least-square curve-fit method, which yields accurate anisotropic diffusion coefficients, is proposed. The method is demonstrated on artificially generated experimental data for a polymer composite containing 50% unidirectional reinforcement. The anisotropic diffusion coefficients used to generate the data are recovered with less than 1% error.
The consequences of information technology control weaknesses on management information systems: the case of Sarbanes-Oxley internal control reports

In this article, the association between the strength of information technology controls over management information systems and the subsequent forecasting ability of the information produced by those systems is investigated. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 highlights the importance of information system controls by requiring management and auditors to report on the effectiveness of internal controls over the financial reporting component of the firm's management information systems. We hypothesize and find evidence that management forecasts are less accurate for firms with information technology material weaknesses in their financial reporting system than the forecasts for firms that do not have information technology material weaknesses. In addition, we examine three dimensions of information technology material weaknesses: data processing integrity, system access and security, and system structure and usage. We find that the association with forecast accuracy appears to be strongest for IT control weaknesses most directly related to data processing integrity. Our results support the contention that information technology controls, as a part of the management information system, affect the quality of the information produced by the system. We discuss the complementary nature of our findings to the information and systems quality literature.
Inflationary Expectations, Variable Output, and Exchange‐Rate Dynamics

This paper develops a model of exchange-rate dynamics characterized by inflationary expectations held with perfect foresight, sticky wages, and sluggish output adjustment. In this framework monetary expansion initially lowers interest rates because of sluggish output and price adjustment but quite surprisingly produces exchange-rate overshooting or undershooting. Moreover, after its initial depreciation in the overshooting case, the domestic currency temporarily appreciates beyond its new long-run equilibrium level. In the undershooting case, the home currency temporarily appreciates away from its new long-run equilibrium level. Finally, the dynamic real exchange rate-real interest rate relationship at times becomes inverse.
Efficient Synthesis of Tosyl-aziridine-2-t-butyl Carboxylate

Abstract Tosyl-aziridine-2-t-butyl carboxylate is easily synthesized from Tos-Ser-O-tBu by use of Mitsunobu conditions. Aziridine-2-carboxylates are valuable precursors to both α- and β-amino acids, as well as other useful synthetic targets,1 and various approaches to these compounds have been reported.2–18 Usually, aziridine-2-carboxylates are formed by cyclization of trityl protected mesylates or tosylates of serine and threonine, as originally described by Okawa et. al.,13 or by closely related procedures.14–16 Recently we developed a versatile synthesis of α, β- diaminopropionic acid analogs from tosyl aziridine-2-t-butyl-carboxylate 1 and needed an efficient method to prepare this precursor.19
Sorting and Long-Run Inequality

Many social commentators have raised concerns over the possibility that increased sorting in society may lead to greater inequality. To investigate this, we construct a dynamic model of intergenerational education acquisition, fertility, and marital sorting and parameterize the steady state to match several basic empirical endings. We end that increased sorting will signiecantly increase income inequality. Four factors are important to our endings: a negative correlation between fertility and education, a decreasing marginal effect of parental education on children’s years of education, wages that are sensitive to the relative supply of skilled workers, and borrowing constraints that affect educational attainment for some low-income households.
A class of relaxation algorithms for finding the periodic steady-state solution in nonlinear systems

An improvement in the author's previous algorithm for computing periodic steady-state solutions in nonautonomous systems is proposed that enables efficient computation of the solutions in autonomous systems. In addition, the derivations more clearly demonstrate the impact that the s- to z-plane mapping has on the equation formulation, specifically in the computation of the "A" and "B" matrices. A class of relaxation algorithms is proposed for the efficient solution of both nonautonomous and autonomous systems. Finally, simulation results on a van der Pol oscillator are presented that demonstrate the potential of the proposed algorithms. In addition, these simulations show how the use of different mappings from the s- to z-plane effect the solution estimates, and how the use of different mappings may be exploited to improve the efficiency of finding solutions.
TLP analysis of 0.125 μm CMOS ESD input protection circuit

Abstract In this investigation, TLP ESD analysis shows that if a large input resistor is used in combination with a secondary ggNMOS clamp in the input protection circuitry, then the trigger voltage, V t1 , of the ggNMOS clamp is not a constant. The value is influenced by the size and properties of the input resistor, by current injection problems due to parallel resistive networks formed between the primary and secondary ESD circuits, by reverse bias diode leakage currents effects, and by source elevation effects due to voltage rises along the ESD ground bus.
Barrett's esophagus: clinical characteristics

Barrett's metaplasia develops in 6% to 14% of individuals with gastroesophageal reflux. Barrett's adenocarcinomas are increasing in epidemic proportions, for as-yet unknown reasons: approximately 0.5 to 1% of patients with Barrett's will develop adenocarcinoma. Heartburn duration and frequency (but not severity), male gender, and Caucasian race are major risk factors for developing cancer. Obesity and smoking are weak risk factors. Survival is determined by depth of tumor invasion (stage). Once invasion of the muscularis propia occurs, the vast majority of patients will have developed widespread metastasis, even when clinical staging studies are negative. No currently available therapy results in prolonged survival once metastases develop. Thus, the more widespread use of effective surveillance strategies is the only currently available means for reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with Barrett's adenocarcinoma.
Socio-economic distance and spatial patterns in unemployment

This paper examines the spatial patterns of unemployment in Chicago between 1980 and 1990. We study unemployment clustering with respect to different social and economic distance metrics that reflect the structure of agents' social networks. Specifically, we use physical distance, travel time, and differences in ethnic and occupational distribution between locations. Our goal is to determine whether our estimates of spatial dependence are consistent with models in which agents' employment status is affected by information exchanged locally within their social networks. We present non-parametric estimates of correlation across Census tracts as a function of each distance metric as well as pairs of metrics, both for unemployment rate itself and after conditioning on a set of tract characteristics. Our results indicate that there is a strong positive and statistically significant degree of spatial dependence in the distribution of raw unemployment rates, for all our metrics. However, once we condition on a set of covariates, most of the spatial autocorrelation is eliminated, with the exception of physical and occupational distance. Racial and ethnic composition variables are the single most important factor in explaining the observed correlation patterns. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Announcement Effect of an Airport Expansion on Housing Prices

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the announcement of a new airport hub on housing prices near the airport. While numerous studies of airport noise have found that high noise levels reduce property values, few have been able to measure the announcement effect on values. The results indicate that after controlling to extraneous influences, housing property prices in a 2.5 mile band from the Greensboro/High Point/Winston Salem metropolitan airport declined approximately 9.2% in the post-announcement period. In the next 1.5-mile band, house prices declined approximately 5.7% in the post-announcement period.
Development of the suzuki-miyaura cross-coupling reaction: use of air-stable potassium alkynyltrifluoroborates in aryl alkynylations.

The palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of potassium alkynyltrifluoroborates with aryl halides or triflates proceeds readily with moderate to excellent yields. The potassium alkynyltrifluoroborates are air- and moisture-stable crystalline solids that can be stored indefinitely, which will provide an advantage in applications to combinatorial chemistry. The alkynyl cross-coupling reaction can be effected using 9 mol % of PdCl2(dppf)·CH2Cl2 as catalyst in THF or THF−H2O in the presence of Cs2CO3 as the inorganic base. A variety of functional groups are tolerated in both partners.
Robust control design of power system stabilizers using multivariable frequency domain techniques

H∞ and structured singular value optimization techniques are used to design robust power system stabilizers (PSS) for a single-machine and a two-machine system with varying operating conditions. Realistic uncertainty models to represent the possible operating conditions as perturbations from a nominal operating condition are developed. System experience is used to select weighting functions to provide adequate damping and shape the controller frequency response. Computer simulations show that the PSS designed using the proposed technique provides improved damping compared to a conventional PSS.
Mucohalic acid in Lewis acid catalyzed Mukaiyama aldol reaction: a concise method for highly functionalized γ-substituted γ-butenolides

Abstract The first Mukaiyama aldol reaction on mucohalic acid ( 1a / b ) has been achieved. Reaction of 1 with various ketene silyl acetals or silyl enol ethers in the presence of a Lewis acid provides the γ-substituted γ-butenolides in good to excellent yield.
Design and Analysis of a Two-Stage Poppet Valve for Flow Control

AbstractThis paper explores dynamic modelling and design of a typical two stage metering poppet valve system. In particular, nonlinear and linear models of a spring force feedback configuration are developed and parameters tuned through the use of root locus techniques. Typical steady state conditions as well as extreme high and low pressure drops are simulated in attempts to uncover instabilities and other possible undesirable performance characteristics of the valve. Finally the nonlinear model is used to produce Bode magnitude plots at various pressure drops in order to estimate the system bandwidth. Results indicate that increasing the size of the orifice at the inlet of the pilot stage of the valve increases performance in terms of rise time at the cost of a more oscillatory response. High pressure differences between the inlet and outlet of the valve were found to cause performance to increase significantly as well as move poles into a region indicated less damping. A scheme for controlling the inle...
Urban building energy modeling – A review of a nascent field

Abstract Over the past decades, detailed individual building energy models (BEM) on the one side and regional and country-level building stock models on the other side have become established modes of analysis for building designers and energy policy makers, respectively. More recently, these two toolsets have begun to merge into hybrid methods that are meant to analyze the energy performance of neighborhoods, i.e. several dozens to thousands of buildings. This paper reviews emerging simulation methods and implementation workflows for such bottom-up urban building energy models (UBEM). Simulation input organization, thermal model generation and execution, as well as result validation, are discussed successively and an outlook for future developments is presented.
Employment gains from minimum‐wage hikes under perfect competition: A simple general‐equilibrium analysis

Contrary to conventional wisdom, higher minimum wages may lead to greater levels of employment under perfect competition. We demonstrate this possibility in a simple generalâ€ equilibrium model of involuntary unemployment, with two goods produced by two factors and consumed by two representative households. Within our model, hiking a minimum wage redistributes income between heterogeneous consumers. This redistribution may create an excess demand for the laborâ€ intensive good, and hence increase total employment to restore equilibrium, despite the fact that every firm becomes less labor intensive.
Spatial Semantic Regularisation for Large Scale Object Detection

Large scale object detection with thousands of classes introduces the problem of many contradicting false positive detections, which have to be suppressed. Class-independent non-maximum suppression has traditionally been used for this step, but it does not scale well as the number of classes grows. Traditional non-maximum suppression does not consider label-and instance-level relationships nor does it allow an exploitation of the spatial layout of detection proposals. We propose a new multi-class spatial semantic regularisation method based on affinity propagation clustering, which simultaneously optimises across all categories and all proposed locations in the image, to improve both the localisation and categorisation of selected detection proposals. Constraints are shared across the labels through the semantic WordNet hierarchy. Our approach proves to be especially useful in large scale settings with thousands of classes, where spatial and semantic interactions are very frequent and only weakly supervised detectors can be built due to a lack of bounding box annotations. Detection experiments are conducted on the ImageNet and COCO dataset, and in settings with thousands of detected categories. Our method provides a significant precision improvement by reducing false positives, while simultaneously improving the recall.
Variational Inference: A Review for Statisticians

ABSTRACTOne of the core problems of modern statistics is to approximate difficult-to-compute probability densities. This problem is especially important in Bayesian statistics, which frames all inference about unknown quantities as a calculation involving the posterior density. In this article, we review variational inference (VI), a method from machine learning that approximates probability densities through optimization. VI has been used in many applications and tends to be faster than classical methods, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. The idea behind VI is to first posit a family of densities and then to find a member of that family which is close to the target density. Closeness is measured by Kullback–Leibler divergence. We review the ideas behind mean-field variational inference, discuss the special case of VI applied to exponential family models, present a full example with a Bayesian mixture of Gaussians, and derive a variant that uses stochastic optimization to scale up to massive data...
An Effective Bifunctional Aldehyde Linchpin for Type II Anion Relay Chemistry: Development and Application to the Synthesis of a C16–C29 Fragment of Rhizopodin

The design, synthesis, and validation of a new bifunctional aldehyde linchpin for Type II anion relay chemistry have been achieved. For this linchpin, the initial nucleophilic addition proceeds under Felkin–Anh control to generate the syn-alkoxide, which undergoes a 1,4-Brook rearrangement to relay the negative charge, thus leading to the formation of a dithiane-stabilized carbanion. Subsequent trapping with an electrophile furnishes a tricomponent adduct with an embedded propionate subunit, a ubiquitous structural motif found in polyketides. The utility of this new linchpin is demonstrated with the construction of a potential C16–C29 fragment for the synthesis of rhizopodin, an actin-binding macrolide.
Maximizing the hyperpolarizability poorly determines the potential

The dimensionless zero-frequency electronic first hyperpolarizability 3−1/4βE107/2m3/2(eℏ)−3 of an electron in one dimension was maximized by adjusting the shape of a piecewise linear potential. Careful maximizations converged quickly to 0.708951 with increasing numbers of parameters. The Hessian shows that β is strongly sensitive to only two parameters in the potential: sensitivity to additional parameters decreases rapidly. With more than two parameters, a wide range of potentials and an apparently narrower range of wavefunctions have nearly optimal hyperpolarizability. Modulations of the potential to which the unique maximum is insensitive were characterized. Prospects for concise description of the two important constraints on near-optimum potentials are discussed.
Real Exchange Rate Adjustment, Wage-Setting Institutions, and Fiscal Stabilization Policy: Lessons of the Eurozone’s First Decade

In terms of macroeconomic performance, the Eurozone's first decade is a story of successful inflation-targeting by the ECB for the common currency area as a whole combined with the persistence of real exchange rate and current account disequilibria at member country level. According to the standard New Keynesian (NK) model of a small member of a currency union, policy intervention at country level is not necessary to ensure adjustment to country-specific shocks. Self-stabilization of shocks takes place through the adjustment of prices and wages to ensure that the real exchange rate returns to equilibrium. That this did not happen in the Eurozone appears to be related to the presence of non-rational wage setters in a number of member countries. A related second departure from the NK model was the transmission of non-rational inflation expectations to the real interest rate, propagating easy credit conditions in countries with inflation above target. Problems of real exchange rate misalignment among members were exacerbated by the ability of Germany's wage-setting institutions to deliver self-stabilization. The implications for policy focus on using fiscal policy to target the real exchange rate and/or on reforms to labour markets that deliver real exchange rate oriented wage setting. (JEL codes: E61, E62, E65, F41, O52) Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Ifo Institute, Munich. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.
Monetary Policy According to HANK

We revisit the transmission mechanism from monetary policy to household consumption in a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model. The model yields empirically realistic distributions of wealth and marginal propensities to consume because of two features: uninsurable income shocks and multiple assets with different degrees of liquidity and different returns. In this environment, the indirect effects of an unexpected cut in interest rates, which operate through a general equilibrium increase in labor demand, far outweigh direct effects such as intertemporal substitution. This finding is in stark contrast to small- and medium-scale Representative Agent New Keynesian (RANK) economies, where the substitution channel drives virtually all of the transmission from interest rates to consumption. Failure of Ricardian equivalence implies that, in HANK models, the fiscal reaction to the monetary expansion is a key determinant of the overall size of the macroeconomic response.
On computation rates for arithmetic sum

For zero-error function computation over directed acyclic networks, existing upper and lower bounds on the computation capacity are known to be loose. In this work we consider the problem of computing the arithmetic sum over a specific directed acyclic network that is not a tree. We assume the sources to be i.i.d. Bernoulli with parameter 1/2. Even in this simple setting, we demonstrate that upper bounding the computation rate is quite nontrivial. In particular, it requires us to consider variable length network codes and relate the upper bound to equivalently lower bounding the entropy of descriptions observed by the terminal conditioned on the function value. This lower bound is obtained by further lower bounding the entropy of a so-called clumpy distribution. We also demonstrate an achievable scheme that uses variable length network codes and in-network compression.
Involutory quandles of (2,2,r)-Montesinos links

In this paper, we show that Montesinos links of the form L(1/2, 1/2,p/q; e), which we call (2, 2,r)-Montesinos links, have finite involutory quandles. This generalizes an observation of Winker regarding the (2, 2,q)-pretzel links. We also describe some properties of these quandles.
Advances in Synthetic Applications of Hypervalent Iodine Compounds

The preparation, structure, and chemistry of hypervalent iodine compounds are reviewed with emphasis on their synthetic application. Compounds of iodine possess reactivity similar to that of transition metals, but have the advantage of environmental sustainability and efficient utilization of natural resources. These compounds are widely used in organic synthesis as selective oxidants and environmentally friendly reagents. Synthetic uses of hypervalent iodine reagents in halogenation reactions, various oxidations, rearrangements, aminations, C–C bond-forming reactions, and transition metal-catalyzed reactions are summarized and discussed. Recent discovery of hypervalent catalytic systems and recyclable reagents, and the development of new enantioselective reactions using chiral hypervalent iodine compounds represent a particularly important achievement in the field of hypervalent iodine chemistry. One of the goals of this Review is to attract the attention of the scientific community as to the benefits of...
Feedback stabilization of a fluttering panel in an inviscid subsonic potential flow

Asymptotic-in-time feedback control of a panel interacting with an inviscid, subsonic flow is considered. The classical model [E. Dowell, AIAA, 5 (1967), pp. 1857--1862] is given by a clamped nonlinear plate strongly coupled to a convected wave equation on the half space. In the absence of imposed energy dissipation the plate dynamics converge to a compact and finite dimensional set [I. Chueshov, I. Lasiecka, and J. T. Webster, Comm. Partial Differential Equations, 39 (2014), pp. 1965--1997]. With a sufficiently large velocity feedback control on the structure we show that the full flow-plate system exhibits strong convergence to the stationary set in the natural energy topology. To accomplish this task, a novel decomposition of the nonlinear plate dynamics is utilized: a smooth component (globally bounded in a higher topology) and a uniformly exponentially decaying component. Our result implies that flutter (a periodic or chaotic end behavior) can be eliminated (in subsonic flows) with sufficient frictio...
Reversal of Diastereoselection in the Conjugate Addition of Cuprates to Unsaturated Lactams

We report that the stereochemical outcome of the conjugate addition of organocopper reagents to bicyclic α,β-unsaturated lactams derived from pyroglutaminol is determined by the nature of the aminal group. Bicyclic α,β-unsaturated lactams in which the aminal is derived from a ketone have been found to afford products of syn conjugate addition. By contrast, bicyclic α,β-unsaturated lactams in which the aminal is derived from an aldehyde afford products of anti conjugate addition. These remarkably different results obtained from very similar starting materials are unexpected.