cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Reflection positivity and invertible topological phases

We implement an extended version of reflection positivity (Wick-rotated unitarity) for invertible topological quantum field theories and compute the abelian group of deformation classes using stable homotopy theory. We apply these field theory considerations to lattice systems, assuming the existence and validity of low-energy effective field theory approximations, and thereby produce a general formula for the group of symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases in terms of Thom’s bordism spectra; the only input is the dimension and symmetry type. We provide computations for fermionic systems in physically relevant dimensions. Other topics include symmetry in quantum field theories, a relativistic 10–fold way, the homotopy theory of relativistic free fermions, and a topological spin-statistics theorem.
Cell-Edge Detection via Selective Cooperation and Generalized Canonical Correlation

Improving the uplink quality of service for users located around the boundaries between cells is a key challenge in cellular systems. Existing approaches relying on power control throttle the rates of cell-center users, while multi-user detection requires accurate channel estimates for the cell-edge users, which is another challenge due to their low received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Utilizing the fact that cell-edge user signals are weak but common (received at roughly equal power) at different base stations (BSs), this paper establishes a connection between cell-edge user detection and generalized canonical correlation analysis (GCCA). It puts forth a GCCA-based method that leverages selective BS cooperation to recover the cell-edge user signal subspace even at low SNR. The cell-edge user signals can then be extracted from the resulting mixture via algebraic signal processing techniques. The paper includes theoretical analysis showing why GCCA recovers the correct subspace containing the cell-edge user signals under mild conditions. The proposed method can also identify the number of cell-edge users in the system, i.e., the common subspace dimension. Simulations reveal significant performance improvement relative to various multiuser detection techniques. Cell-edge detection performance is further studied as a function of how many / which BSs are selected, and it is shown that using the closest three BS is always the best choice.
Ultrafast x-ray imaging of pulsed plasmas in water

The authors present ultrafast phase-contrast X-ray imaging of nanosecond-pulsed plasma phenomena in water.
Identification of Linear Dynamical Systems and Machine Learning

The topic of identification of dynamic systems, has been at the core of modern control , following the fundamental works of Kalman. Realization Theory has been one of the major outcomes in this domain, with the possibility of identifying a dynamic system from an input-output relationship. The recent development of machine learning concepts has rejuvanated interest for identification. In this paper, we review briefly the results of realization theory, and develop some methods inspired by Machine Learning concepts.
Cause and Cure-Deterioration in Accuracy of CFD Simulations with Use of High-Aspect-Ratio Triangular/Tetrahedral Grids

In the multi-dimensional space-time conservation element and solution element16 (CESE) method, triangles and tetrahedral mesh elements turn out to be the most natural building blocks for 2D and 3D spatial grids, respectively. As such, the CESE method is naturally compatible with the simplest 2D and 3D unstructured grids and thus can be easily applied to solve problems with complex geometries. However, because (a) accurate solution of a high-Reynolds number flow field near a solid wall requires that the grid intervals along the direction normal to the wall be much finer than those in a direction parallel to the wall and, as such, the use of grid cells with extremely high aspect ratio (103 to 106) may become mandatory, and (b) unlike quadrilateral hexahedral grids, it is well-known that accuracy of gradient computations involving triangular tetrahedral grids tends to deteriorate rapidly as cell aspect ratio increases. As a result, the use of triangular tetrahedral grid cells near a solid wall has long been deemed impractical by CFD researchers. In view of (a) the critical role played by triangular tetrahedral grids in the CESE development, and (b) the importance of accurate resolution of high-Reynolds number flow field near a solid wall, as will be presented in the main paper, a comprehensive and rigorous mathematical framework that clearly identifies the reasons behind the accuracy deterioration as described above has been developed for the 2D case involving triangular cells. By avoiding the pitfalls identified by the 2D framework, and its 3D extension, it has been shown numerically.
Do real estate values boost corporate borrowing? Evidence from contract-level data

Abstract Ample literature builds on the notion that real estate values boost corporate secured borrowing (“collateral channel”). A comprehensive contract-level database allows us to observe the value, location, and end-use of firms’ real estate holdings in the US and all debts raised against those assets over the 2000–2017 period. Firms raise new debt following an increase in the value of their real estate but use unsecured rather than secured borrowing. We rationalize these findings with a model where firms’ choices between secured and unsecured debt reflect the systematic risk exposures of the assets on their balance sheets. While secured debt may be seen as a safer claim than unsecured debt contractually, we demonstrate that it can be riskier from an economic perspective. Our analysis adds new insight into how firms set their debt structure.
Hybrid Ant Swarm-Based Data Clustering

Biologically inspired computing techniques are very effective and useful in many areas of research including data clustering. Ant clustering algorithm is a nature-inspired clustering technique which is extensively studied for over two decades. In this study, we extend the ant clustering algorithm (ACA) to a hybrid ant clustering algorithm (hACA). Specifically, we include a genetic algorithm in standard ACA to extend the hybrid algorithm for better performance. We also introduced novel pick up and drop off rules to speed up the clustering performance. We study the performance of the hACA algorithm and compare with standard ACA as a benchmark.
Are auditors rewarded for low audit quality? The case of auditor lenience in the insurance industry

Abstract Using unique disclosures from the insurance industry, we identify instances where auditors plausibly allow clients to opportunistically utilize discretion in accounting estimates to manipulate losses to reported profits (i.e., auditor lenience). Auditing standards and SEC guidance state that auditors should consider whether a misstatement shifts a loss to a profit as a qualitative factor when evaluating the materiality of misstatements. We find that audit office lenience is positively associated with subsequent market share changes. The effect is driven by increases in the likelihood of keeping existing, non-manipulating clients. In generalizability tests, we find similar inferences in the banking industry when using bank-specific disclosures and across all industries when measuring auditor lenience using likelihood of issuing going-concern opinions. These results highlight settings where auditors may be rewarded for lenience, specifically when management values financial reporting discretion and auditors can avoid publicized audit failures.
Surface Engineering of FLT4-Targeted Nanocarriers Enhances Cell-Softening Glaucoma Therapy.

Primary open-angle glaucoma is associated with elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) that damages the optic nerve and leads to gradual vision loss. Several agents that reduce the stiffness of pressure-regulating Schlemm's canal (SC) endothelial cells, in the conventional outflow pathway of the eye, lower IOP in glaucoma patients and are approved for clinical use. However, poor drug penetration and uncontrolled biodistribution limit their efficacy and produce local adverse effects. Compared to other ocular endothelia, FLT4/VEGFR3 is expressed at elevated levels by SC endothelial cells and can be exploited for targeted drug delivery. Here, we validate FLT4 receptors as clinically relevant targets on SC cells from glaucomatous human donors and engineer polymeric self-assembled nanocarriers displaying lipid-anchored targeting ligands that optimally engage this receptor. Targeting constructs were synthesized as lipid-PEGx-peptide, differing in the number of PEG spacer units (x), and were embedded in micelles. We present a novel proteolysis assay for quantifying ligand accessibility that we employ to design and optimize our FLT4-targeting strategy for glaucoma nanotherapy. Peptide accessibility to proteases correlated with receptor-mediated targeting enhancements. Increasing the accessibility of FLT4-binding peptides enhanced nanocarrier uptake by SC cells while simultaneously decreasing the uptake by off-target vascular endothelial cells. Using a paired longitudinal IOP study in vivo, we show that this enhanced targeting of SC cells translates to IOP reductions that are sustained for a significantly longer time as compared to controls. Confocal microscopy of murine anterior segment tissue confirmed nanocarrier localization to SC within 1 h after intracameral administration. This work demonstrates that steric effects between surface-displayed ligands and PEG coronas significantly impact the targeting performance of synthetic nanocarriers across multiple biological scales. Minimizing the obstruction of modular targeting ligands by PEG measurably improved the efficacy of glaucoma nanotherapy and is an important consideration for engineering PEGylated nanocarriers for targeted drug delivery.
Boundary Conditions and Polymeric Drag Reduction for the Navier–Stokes Equations

Reducing wall drag in turbulent pipe and channel flows is an issue of great practical importance. In engineering applications, end-functionalized polymer chains are often employed as agents to reduce drag. These are polymers which are floating in the solvent and attach (either by adsorption or through irreversible chemical binding) at one of their chain ends to the substrate (wall). We propose a PDE model to study this setup in the simple setting where the solvent is a viscous incompressible Navier–Stokes fluid occupying the bulk of a smooth domain $$\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^d$$ , and the wall-grafted polymer is in the so-called mushroom regime (inter-polymer spacing on the order of the typical polymer length). The microscopic description of the polymer enters into the macroscopic description of the fluid motion through a dynamical boundary condition on the wall-tangential stress of the fluid, something akin to (but distinct from) a history-dependent slip-length. We establish the global well-posedness of strong solutions in two-spatial dimensions and prove that the inviscid limit to the strong Euler solution holds with a rate. Moreover, the wall-friction factor $$\langle f\rangle $$ and the global energy dissipation $$\langle \varepsilon \rangle $$ vanish inversely proportional to the Reynolds number $$\mathbf{Re } $$ . This scaling corresponds to Poiseuille’s law for the friction factor $$\langle f\rangle \sim 1/\mathbf{Re } $$ for laminar flow and thereby quantifies drag reduction in our setting. These results are in stark contrast to those available for physical boundaries without polymer additives modeled by, for example, no-slip conditions, where no such results are generally known even in two-dimensions.
What Might (Finally) Kill the Jus ad Bellum

There is a long tradition of international relations and legal scholars warning of the demise of the jus ad bellum—the body of international law that governs when states may use force across national borders. I argue in this Lecture, presented at The University College London Faculty of Laws in October 2020, that these warnings have mostly been wrong. The reason they have been wrong is that they have misdiagnosed the main threat to the jus ad bellum, or at least, they have myopically focused on and grossly overstated the seriousness of a particular kind of threat. And in doing so, they have diverted attention away from other challenges that might actually push the contemporary jus ad bellum to the breaking point—and that we might now confront.
In-Flight Subsonic Lift and Drag Characteristics Unique to Blunt-Based Lifting Reentry Vehicles

Lift and drag measurements have been analyzed for subsonic flight conditions for seven blunt-based reentry-type vehicles. Five of the vehicles are lifting bodies (M2-F1, M2-F2, HL-10, X-24A, and X-24B) and two are wing-body configurations (the X-15 and the Space Shuttle Enterprise). Base pressure measurements indicate that the base drag for full-scale vehicles is approximately three times greater than predicted by Hoerner's equation for three-dimensional bodies. Base drag and forebody drag combine to provide an optimal overall minimum drag (a drag "bucket") for a given configuration. The magnitude of this optimal drag, as well as the associated forebody drag, is dependent on the ratio of base area to vehicle wetted area. Counter-intuitively, the flight-determined optimal minimum drag does not occur at the point of minimum forebody drag, but at a higher forebody drag value. It was also found that the chosen definition for reference area for lift parameters should include the projection of planform area ahead of the wing trailing edge (i.e., forebody plus wing). Results are assembled collectively to provide a greater understanding of this class of vehicles than would occur by considering them individually.
Business strategy and systematic risk: Evidence from China

Guided by their business strategies, firms develop their competitive advantages and overcome systematic risks by allocating their limited resources. This study explores how advertising, labor, R&D, cost, and capital intensities are correlated with the systematic risks of 10 industries in the Chinese market. The results show that these correlations vary between industries. To easily adapt to market variations and reduce systematic risks, decision-makers are advised to design their business strategies according to the characteristics of their respective industries.
Real-time gravitational replicas: low dimensional examples

We continue the study of real-time replica wormholes initiated in [1]. Previously, we had discussed the general principles and had outlined a variational principle for obtaining stationary points of the real-time gravitational path integral. In the current work we present several explicit examples in low-dimensional gravitational theories where the dynamics is amenable to analytic computation. We demonstrate the computation of Renyi entropies in the cases of JT gravity and for holographic two-dimensional CFTs (using the dual gravitational dynamics). In particular, we explain how to obtain the large central charge result for subregions comprising of disjoint intervals directly from the real-time path integral.
Has Anheuser-Busch Let the Steam Out of Craft Beer? The Economics of Acquiring Craft Brewers

Macrobrewers initially responded to the rapid growth of the craft beer segment by product differentiation: offering versions of their own “craft beer.” When this proved unsuccessful, they began acquiring independent craft brewers. We examine the consequences of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s acquisition of Goose Island. We find large gains in sales for craft brewers post-acquisition, which suggests that marketing spillovers attracted new consumers to craft beer. We also find large negative effects on product variety, which suggests greater difficulty for craft brewers gaining shelf space in off-premise accounts. These variety effects are particularly pronounced in Goose Island’s regional “birthplace”: Illinois.
Some noncommutative subsequential weighted individual ergodic theorems

This paper is devoted to studying individual ergodic theorems for subsequential weighted ergodic averages on the noncommutative Lp-spaces associated to a semifinite von Neumann algebra ℳ. In partic...
Dynamics of tethered membranes in inviscid flow

Abstract We investigate the dynamics of membranes that are held by freely-rotating rigid tethers in fluid flows. The tethered boundary condition allows periodic and chaotic oscillatory motions for certain parameter values. We characterize the oscillations in terms of deflection amplitudes, dominant periods, and numbers of local extrema of deflection along the membranes across the parameter space of membrane mass density, stretching modulus, pretension, and tether length. We determine the region of instability and the small-amplitude behavior by solving a nonlinear eigenvalue problem. We also consider an infinite periodic membrane model, which yields a regular eigenvalue problem, analytical results, and asymptotic scaling laws. We find qualitative similarities among all three models in terms of the oscillation frequencies and membrane shapes at small and large values of membrane mass, pretension, and tether length/stiffness.
Adjuvant tamoxifen adherence in men with early-stage breast cancer.

Background Most breast cancers (BCs) in men are hormone receptor-positive. Adjuvant tamoxifen is part of the standard treatment of these patients. Small, single-institution studies have suggested that men have high rates of discontinuing adjuvant endocrine treatment. The authors examined rates of tamoxifen discontinuation and medication adherence in a large population-based cohort of male patients with BC. Methods In the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare database, male patients with invasive nonmetastatic BC, diagnosed between 2007 and 2013, who were ≥65 years old, had Part D coverage, and had tamoxifen prescriptions within 1 year of diagnosis were identified. Adherence was defined as a medication possession ratio of ≥80% among those patients who were filling tamoxifen prescriptions. Logistic regression model was used to assess predictors of tamoxifen adherence. Results A total of 451 patients met eligibility criteria. The median age at diagnosis was 75 years. The median follow-up was 32.5 months. The rates of tamoxifen discontinuation were 15.8%, 24.3%, 31.3%, 36.9%, and 48.3% at 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years after diagnosis, respectively. Among the men who were still taking tamoxifen, the corresponding adherence rates were 76.9%, 73.6%, 68.7%, 64.8%, and 60.2%. In the adjusted model, significant predictors of lower adherence included residing in a high poverty area (odds ratio [OR], 0.77; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.28-2.12) and a Charlson comorbidity score of ≥2 (OR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.22-0.97). Conclusion Older men with breast cancer have high rates of tamoxifen discontinuation, with 48% of all patients discontinuing tamoxifen before the end of year 5. Additionally, even among those patients continuing tamoxifen, a substantial number of patients are nonadherent. Further research should evaluate potentially modifiable reasons for treatment discontinuation and lack of adherence to tamoxifen.
Deformations of surface defect moduli spaces

Given a 4d $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 superconformal theory with an $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = (2, 2) superconformal surface defect, a marginal perturbation of the bulk theory induces a complex structure deformation of the defect moduli space. We describe a concrete way of computing this deformation using the bulk-defect OPE.
A modified Villain formulation of fractons and other exotic theories

We reformulate known exotic theories (including theories of fractons) on a Euclidean spacetime lattice. We write them using the Villain approach, and then we modify them to a convenient range of parameters. The new lattice models are closer to the continuum limit than the original lattice versions. In particular, they exhibit many of the recently found properties of the continuum theories, including emergent global symmetries and surprising dualities. In addition, these new models provide a clear and rigorous formulation to the continuum models and their singularities. In Appendixes A–C, we use this approach to review the well-studied lattice models and their continuum limits. These include the XY-model, the ZN clock-model, and various gauge theories in diverse dimensions. This paper clarifies the relation between the condensed-matter and the high-energy views of these systems. It emphasizes the role of symmetries associated with the topology of field space, duality, and various anomalies.
Living-Off-The-Land Command Detection Using Active Learning

In recent years, enterprises have been targeted by advanced adversaries who leverage creative ways to infiltrate their systems and move laterally to gain access to critical data. One increasingly common evasive method is to hide the malicious activity behind a benign program by using tools that are already installed on user computers. These programs are usually part of the operating system distribution or another user-installed binary, therefore this type of attack is called “Living-Off-The-Land”. Detecting these attacks is challenging, as adversaries may not create malicious files on the victim computers and anti-virus scans fail to detect them. We propose the design of an Active Learning framework called LOLAL for detecting Living-Off-the-Land attacks that iteratively selects a set of uncertain and anomalous samples for labeling by a human analyst. LOLAL is specifically designed to work well when a limited number of labeled samples are available for training machine learning models to detect attacks. We investigate methods to represent command-line text using word-embedding techniques, and design ensemble boosting classifiers to distinguish malicious and benign samples based on the embedding representation. We leverage a large, anonymized dataset collected by an endpoint security product and demonstrate that our ensemble classifiers achieve an average F1 score of 96% at classifying different attack classes. We show that our active learning method consistently improves the classifier performance, as more training data is labeled, and converges in less than 30 iterations when starting with a small number of labeled instances.
Effects of sequence motifs in the yeast 3' untranslated region determined from massively parallel assays of random sequences.

The 3′ untranslated region (UTR) plays critical roles in determining the level of gene expression through effects on activities such as mRNA stability and translation. Functional elements within this region have largely been identified through analyses of native genes, which contain multiple co-evolved sequence features. To explore the effects of 3′ UTR sequence elements outside of native sequence contexts, we analyze hundreds of thousands of random 50-mers inserted into the 3′ UTR of a reporter gene in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We determine relative protein expression levels from the fitness of transformants in a growth selection. We find that the consensus 3′ UTR efficiency element significantly boosts expression, independent of sequence context; on the other hand, the consensus positioning element has only a small effect on expression. Some sequence motifs that are binding sites for Puf proteins substantially increase expression in the library, despite these proteins generally being associated with post-transcriptional downregulation of native mRNAs. Our measurements also allow a systematic examination of the effects of point mutations within efficiency element motifs across diverse sequence backgrounds. These mutational scans reveal the relative in vivo importance of individual bases in the efficiency element, which likely reflects their roles in binding the Hrp1 protein involved in cleavage and polyadenylation. The regulatory effects of some 3′ UTR sequence features, like the efficiency element, are consistent regardless of sequence context. In contrast, the consequences of other 3′ UTR features appear to be strongly dependent on their evolved context within native genes.
Fast Near-Optimal Heterogeneous Task Allocation via Flow Decomposition

Multi-robot systems are uniquely well-suited to performing complex tasks such as patrolling and tracking, information gathering, and pick-up and delivery problems, offering significantly higher performance than single-robot systems. A fundamental building block in most multi-robot systems is task allocation: assigning robots to tasks (e.g., patrolling an area, or servicing a transportation request) as they appear based on the robots’ states to maximize reward. In many practical situations, the allocation must account for heterogeneous capabilities (e.g., availability of appropriate sensors or actuators) to ensure the feasibility of execution, and to promote a higher reward, over a long time horizon. To this end, we present the FlowDec algorithm for efficient heterogeneous task-allocation, and show that it achieves an approximation factor of at least 1/2 of the optimal reward. Our approach decomposes the heterogeneous problem into several homogeneous subproblems that can be solved efficiently using min-cost flow. Through simulation experiments, we show that our algorithm is faster by several orders of magnitude than a MILP approach.
Fast Intra-kernel Isolation and Security with IskiOS

The kernels of operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and MacOS are vulnerable to control-flow hijacking. Defenses exist, but many require efficient intra-address-space isolation. Execute-only memory, for example, requires read protection on code segments, and shadow stacks require protection from buffer overwrites. Intel’s Protection Keys for Userspace (PKU) could, in principle, provide the intra-kernel isolation needed by such defenses, but, when used as designed, it applies only to user-mode application code. This paper presents an unconventional approach to memory protection, allowing PKU to be used within the operating system kernel on existing Intel hardware, replacing the traditional user/supervisor isolation mechanism and, simultaneously, enabling efficient intra-kernel isolation. We call the resulting mechanism Protection Keys for Kernelspace (PKK). To demonstrate its utility and efficiency, we present a system we call IskiOS: a Linux variant featuring execute-only memory (XOM) and the first-ever race-free shadow stacks for x86-64. Experiments with the LMBench kernel microbenchmarks display a geometric mean overhead of about 11% for PKK and no additional overhead for XOM. IskiOS’s shadow stacks bring the total to 22%. For full applications, experiments with the system benchmarks of the Phoronix test suite display negligible overhead for PKK and XOM, and less than 5% geometric mean overhead for shadow stacks.
Cryo-EM structures of CTP synthase filaments reveal mechanism of pH-sensitive assembly during budding yeast starvation

Many metabolic enzymes self-assemble into micron-scale filaments to organize and regulate metabolism. The appearance of these assemblies often coincides with large metabolic changes as in development, cancer, and stress. Yeast undergo cytoplasmic acidification upon starvation, triggering the assembly of many metabolic enzymes into filaments. However, it is unclear how these filaments assemble at the molecular level and what their role is in the yeast starvation response. CTP Synthase (CTPS) assembles into metabolic filaments across many species. Here, we characterize in vitro polymerization and investigate in vivo consequences of CTPS assembly in yeast. Cryo-EM structures reveal a pH-sensitive assembly mechanism and highly ordered filament bundles that stabilize an inactive state of the enzyme, features unique to yeast CTPS. Disruption of filaments in cells with non-assembly or pH-insensitive mutations decreases growth rate, reflecting the importance of regulated CTPS filament assembly in homeotstasis.
Quark core stars, quark stars and strange stars

A recent one flavor (zero temperature) quark matter equation of state is generalized to several flavors. It is shown that quarks undergo a first order phase transition. In addition, this equation of state depends on few parameters, one in the two flavor case, two in the three flavor case, and these parameters can be constrained by phenomenology. This equation of state is then applied to 1) the hadronquark transition in neutron stars and the determination of quark star stability, 2) the investigation of strange matter stability and possible strange star existence.
Shipment Policies for Products with Fixed Shelf Lives: Impact on Profits and Waste

Problem definition: Our research is motivated by the product expiration problem in consumer packaged goods retailing, which creates substantial landfill waste and drains firm profits. We analyze sh...
Patterns of foreign exchange intervention under inflation targeting

Abstract The paper documents the use of foreign exchange intervention (FXI) across countries and monetary regimes, with special attention to its use under inflation targeting (IT). We find significant differences between advanced (AEs) and emerging market economies (EMEs). The former group conduct FXI limitedly and broadly symmetrically, while the use of this policy instrument in EMEs is pervasive and mostly asymmetric, with a bias toward purchasing foreign currency, even after taking precautionary motives into account. Within emerging markets, the use of FXI is common under both IT and non-IT regimes. We find no evidence of FXI being used in response to inflation developments, while strong evidence exists that FXI responds to exchange rate movements, indicating that IT central banks in EMEs have dual inflation/exchange-rate objectives. We also find a higher propensity to overshoot inflation targets in emerging market economies in which FXI is more pervasive.
End-to-end Neural Information Status Classification

Most previous studies on information status (IS) classification and bridging anaphora recognition assume that the gold mention or syntactic tree information is given (Hou et al., 2013; Roesiger et al., 2018; Hou, 2020; Yu and Poesio, 2020). In this paper, we propose an end-to-end neural approach for information status classification. Our approach consists of a mention extraction component and an information status assignment component. During the inference time, our system takes a raw text as the input and generates mentions together with their information status. On the ISNotes corpus (Markert et al., 2012), we show that our information status assignment component achieves new state-of-the-art results on fine-grained IS classification based on gold mentions. Furthermore, our system performs significantly better than other baselines for both mention extraction and fine-grained IS classification in the end-to-end setting. Finally, we apply our system on BASHI (Roesiger, 2018) and SciCorp (Roesiger, 2016) to recognize referential bridging anaphora. We find that our end-to-end system trained on ISNotes achieves competitive results on bridging anaphora recognition compared to the previous state-of-the-art system that relies on syntactic information and is trained on the in-domain datasets (Yu and Poesio, 2020).
On the Importance of Gradients for Detecting Distributional Shifts in the Wild

Detecting out-of-distribution (OOD) data has become a critical component in ensuring the safe deployment of machine learning models in the real world. Existing OOD detection approaches primarily rely on the output or feature space for deriving OOD scores, while largely overlooking information from the gradient space. In this paper, we present GradNorm, a simple and effective approach for detecting OOD inputs by utilizing information extracted from the gradient space. GradNorm directly employs the vector norm of gradients, backpropagated from the KL divergence between the softmax output and a uniform probability distribution. Our key idea is that the magnitude of gradients is higher for in-distribution (ID) data than that for OOD data, making it informative for OOD detection. GradNorm demonstrates superior performance, reducing the average FPR95 by up to 16.33% compared to the previous best method.
Approximate Maximum Halfspace Discrepancy.

Consider the geometric range space $(X, \mathcal{H}_d)$ where $X \subset \mathbb{R}^d$ and $\mathcal{H}_d$ is the set of ranges defined by $d$-dimensional halfspaces. In this setting we consider that $X$ is the disjoint union of a red and blue set. For each halfspace $h \in \mathcal{H}_d$ define a function $\Phi(h)$ that measures the "difference" between the fraction of red and fraction of blue points which fall in the range $h$. In this context the maximum discrepancy problem is to find the $h^* = \arg \max_{h \in (X, \mathcal{H}_d)} \Phi(h)$. We aim to instead find an $\hat{h}$ such that $\Phi(h^*) - \Phi(\hat{h}) \le \varepsilon$. This is the central problem in linear classification for machine learning, in spatial scan statistics for spatial anomaly detection, and shows up in many other areas. We provide a solution for this problem in $O(|X| + (1/\varepsilon^d) \log^4 (1/\varepsilon))$ time, which improves polynomially over the previous best solutions. For $d=2$ we show that this is nearly tight through conditional lower bounds. For different classes of $\Phi$ we can either provide a $\Omega(|X|^{3/2 - o(1)})$ time lower bound for the exact solution with a reduction to APSP, or an $\Omega(|X| + 1/\varepsilon^{2-o(1)})$ lower bound for the approximate solution with a reduction to 3SUM. A key technical result is a $\varepsilon$-approximate halfspace range counting data structure of size $O(1/\varepsilon^d)$ with $O(\log (1/\varepsilon))$ query time, which we can build in $O(|X| + (1/\varepsilon^d) \log^4 (1/\varepsilon))$ time.
Transferability of Geometric Patterns from Protein Self-Interactions to Protein-Ligand Interactions

There is significant interest in developing machine learning methods to model protein-ligand interactions but a scarcity of experimentally resolved protein-ligand structures to learn from. Protein self-contacts are a much larger source of structural data that could be leveraged, but currently it is not well understood how this data source differs from the target domain. Here, we characterize the 3D geometric patterns of protein self-contacts as probability distributions. We then present a flexible statistical framework to assess the transferability of these patterns to protein-ligand contacts. We observe that the level of transferability from protein self-contacts to protein-ligand contacts depends on contact type, with many contact types exhibiting high transferability. We then demonstrate the potential of leveraging information from these geometric patterns to aid in ligand pose-selection problems in protein-ligand docking. We publicly release our extracted data on geometric interaction patterns to enable further exploration of this problem.
Nickel-Catalyzed Cross-Coupling of Aryl Halides with Alkyl Halides: Ethyl 4-(4-(4-methylphenylsulfonamido)-phenyl)butanoate.

4-Bromoaniline p-Toluenesulfonyl chloride Pyridine Dichloromethane N-(4-bromophenyl)-4-methylbenzenesulfonamide Zn powder 4,4'-Dimethoxy-2,2'-bipyridine Sodium iodide 1,3-Dimethylpropyleneurea Nickel (II) iodide hydrate Ethyl 4-bromobutyrate Ethyl 4-(4-(4-methylphenylsulfonamido)phenyl)butanoate Keywords: Nickel-catalyzed cross coupling; Aryl halides; Alkyl halides; Ethyl 4-(4-(4-methylphenylsulfonamido)-phenyl)butanoate; Hazardous chemical disposals; Nucleophile free cross coupling
Developmental Implications of Clinically Applied Vestibular Stimulation

Recent research has promoted the development of several techniques that use various forms of sensory stimulation to improve the neuromotor development of high-risk infants and developmentally delayed children. One of the newest and most popular adjuncts to therapy for developmentally delayed children is vestibular stimulation. The applied clinical research using vestibular stimulation activities with healthy human infants, infants at risk, and young children with developmental delay disorders is reviewed. The literature discussed indicates that controlled vestibular stimulation has had positive effects on arousal level, visual exploratory behavior, motor development, and reflex integration. Also discussed is the need for continued applied clinical research to further substantiate the most effective type of vestibular stimulation and the population for which such stimulation is most beneficial.
The Great Migration and the Economic Status of African-Americans Since the Great Depression: Puzzles and Paradoxes

In my comments for this session, I wish to focus on what economists and economic historians have learned in recent years about the impact of the great northward migration on the economic status of African-Americans since the period of the Great Depression. At first glance, the answer seems obvious. For much of this century, the earnings and economic opportunities of black workers residing in the South were dismal. Although opportunities were also constrained in the northern cities that received the black migrants, there can be little doubt that the migration had a direct and positive effect on the economic status of most. The regional income differential for black workers both served as an economic incentive that helped spur the migration and, once the migration was underway, played a significant role in the overall narrowing of the earnings gap between blacks and whites that occurred between 1940 and the mid-1970s.
Ultimate control and security over data localization in the cloud

Cloud Computing has attracted much attention recently with all its benefits in providing data availability anytime, anywhere, on any device. The end of this decade is marked by a paradigm shift of the industrial information technology towards a pay-per-use service business model known as cloud computing. Cloud data storage redefines the security issues targeted on customers' out-sourced data (data that is not stored/retrieved from the costumers' own servers). In this work we observed that, from a customer's point of view, it is important to ensure that the customer is still in control of his data even while it is in the cloud, therefore in this paper we propose a secure localization scheme to ensure that the user is still in control of his/her data while ensuring the highest level of security in place.
Photocurrent and electroreflectance measurements of MOVPE grown InGaP/InAlGaP multiple quantum wells for optoelectronic applications in the visible wavelength range

Recently, great advances have been achieved in visible-light emitting lasers utilizing GaInP/AlGaInP multiple quantum wells (MQWs), however other optoelectronic devices, such as modulators, have not received as much attention. To design and fabricate such structures, a better understanding of this material system is needed. In this paper we characterize nominally unstrained InGaP/InAlGaP MQWs grown in a horizontal quartz metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxial (MOVPE) reaction chamber. >
The Use of Split-Thickness Skin as an Autogenous Arterial Conduit

Eight mongrel dogs were anesthetized using general anesthesia, and graft consisting of split-thickness skin obtained from their abdomen was devised and inserted in each of their infrarenal aortas. Six of the grafts were reinforced with meshed polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) as an outer layer to prevent potential aneurysmal dilatation of the skin graft. None of the dogs received aspirin at any time. The dogs were sacrificed at one, four, and six weeks. The grafts were examined with light microscopy and three of them were analyzed with scanning electron microscope. All grafts remained patent and none formed aneurysmal dilatations. None of the dogs developed infections or aortoenteric fistulas. Of the three grafts that showed thrombus-free areas, all were oriented with the epidermis facing the lumen. The three grafts where the epidermis formed the external surface did not degenerate in any area. Endothelium-like cells continuous with the host vessel were present on all grafts at 4 and 6 weeks by light or scanning electron microscopy. Preliminary data from this study indicated that split-thickness skin may be a suitable arterial conduit. Even if it does not prove to have long-term patency rates, it may be a suitable temporary conduit until infections resolve and synthetic prostheses can be reinserted.
Detection of Endogenous Malondialdehyde-Deoxyguanosine Adducts in Human Liver

Endogenous DNA adducts may contribute to the etiology of human genetic disease and cancer. One potential source of endogenous DNA adducts is lipid peroxidation, which generates mutagenic carbonyl compounds such as malondialdehyde. A sensitive mass spectrometric method permitted detection and quantitation of the major malondialdehyde-DNA adduct, a pyrimidopurinone derived from deoxyguanosine. DNA from disease-free human liver was found to contain 5400 adducts per cell, a frequency comparable to that of adducts formed by exogenous carcinogens.
The response of non-linear single-degree-of-freedom systems to multifrequency excitations

The method of multiple scales is used to analyze the response of single-degree-of-freedom systems with cubic non-linearities to excitations that involve multiple frequencies. Two first-order ordinary differential equations are derived for the evolution of the amplitude and phase with damping, non-linearity, and all possible resonances. Conditions for the existence and stability of steady-state solutions are determined. These results are used to suggest simple means of controlling or minimizing the large oscillations. These means may take the form of adding non-resonant loads that shift the natural frequency of the system or adding another resonant load having the proper frequencies, amplitudes and phases.
Self‐service technology and online financial service choice

Purpose – The application of self‐service technology in transaction‐based e‐service (e.g. online financial services) creates a challenge for firms: what combination of features should they offer to satisfy needs from different customer segments? This paper seeks to address the above question by highlighting similarities and differences of consumer preferences among self‐service, hybrid service and professional service segments for online financial services.Design/methodology/approach – This study employs a web‐based discrete choice experiment, in which 1,319 consumers were offered different account alternatives, which include features for self‐service and professional assistance, price per transaction, and promotion offers.Findings – The results demonstrate that overall, consumer preferences for features of online financial services differ across segments. Moreover, with the variation in the strength of self‐reliance, interesting trends regarding the relative importance of features are observed. With the ...
Statistical methods for investigating quiescence and other temporal seismicity patterns

We propose a statistical model and a technique for objective recognition of one of the most commonly cited seismicity patterns:microearthquake quiescence. We use a Poisson process model for seismicity and define a process with quiescence as one with a particular type of piece-wise constant intensity function. From this model, we derive a statistic for testing stationarity against a ‘quiescence’ alternative. The large-sample null distribution of this statistic is approximated from simulated distributions of appropriate functionals applied to Brownian bridge processes. We point out the restrictiveness of the particular model we propose and of the quiescence idea in general. The fact that there are many point processes which have neither constant nor quiescent rate functions underscores the need to test for and describe nonuniformity thoroughly. We advocate the use of the quiescence test in conjunction with various other tests for nonuniformity and with graphical methods such as density estimation. ideally these methods may promote accurate description of temporal seismicity distributions and useful characterizations of interesting patterns.
Effect of platelet activating factor on reticulo-endothelial system function

Abstract The effect of platelet activating factor (PAF) injections on the uptake of 99m Tc-SC (99m Tc-SC (99mTc-sulphur colloid) was determined in vivo. PAF (2μg) injected intravenously into unanaesthetized, unrestrained rats was associated with the development of lesions in the small intestine and alteration of 99m Tc-SC uptake in vivo. 99mTc-SC uptake into the lung was increased while spleen uptake was decreased. Pretreatment of the animals with a PAF antagonist, SRI-64-441, prevented the intestinal lesions and alterations of 99mTc-SC uptake. Macrophages, isolated from lung lavage of the PAF-treated rats, demonstrated a decreased generation of hydrogen peroxide in vitro. The present results suggest that, in addition to its other effects on the immune system, PAF can also alter the in vivo phagocytic activity of the reticuloendothelial system in the rat.
Patterning Abilities of First Grade Children: Effects of Dimension and Type

In the United States children receive instruction on recognizing patterns beginning most often in kindergarten and continuing on through early elementary school years. Although widely accepted and included in curricula, patterning instruction has not been based on empirical research. The current study is the first attempt to determine how the dimension, e.g. color or shape, in which a pattern is displayed impacts children’s ability to understand the pattern. This study is also an initial exploration of whether the overall “rule” of the pattern impacted a child’s ability to recognize a pattern. Five types of patterns displayed in five different dimensions were presented to 204 first grade children in a completely counterbanced order. Results indicated that the dimension in which a pattern was displayed made no difference to the children. Patterns with alternating elements were significantly easier than any others, and those with increasing numbers of elements were significantly more difficult. Implications for instruction in patterning were discussed.
A bi-objective berth allocation formulation to account for vessel handling time uncertainty

In this article we formulate the berth allocation problem as a bi-objective mixed-integer programming problem with the objective to maximize berth throughput and reliability of the schedule under the assumption that vessel handling times are stochastic parameters, being a function of other stochastic parameters (that is, quay crane breakdowns, quay-to-yard transport vehicle productivity, yard congestion, and so on). A combination of an exact algorithm, a Genetic Algorithms-based heuristic and a Monte Carlo simulation are proposed as the solution approach for the resulting problem. Based on a number of simulation experiments, it is shown that the proposed modeling approach is effective and outperforms berth allocation solutions where reliability is not considered.