cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Lower Bounding the AND-OR Tree via Symmetrization

We prove a simple, nearly tight lower bound on the approximate degree of the two-level AND-OR tree using symmetrization arguments. Specifically, we show that ˜deg(ANDm ˆ ORn) = ˜Ω(√mn). We prove this lower bound via reduction to the OR function through a series of symmetrization steps, in contrast to most other proofs that involve formulating approximate degree as a linear program [6, 10, 21]. Our proof also demonstrates the power of a symmetrization technique involving Laurent polynomials (polynomials with negative exponents) that was previously introduced by Aaronson et al. [2].
Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers

Several studies have examined how the ISO 9001 quality management systems standard predicts changes in organizational outcomes such as profits. This is the first large-scale study to explore how employee outcomes such as employment, earnings, and health and safety change when employers adopt ISO 9001. We analyzed a matched sample of nearly 1,000 companies in California. ISO 9001 adopters subsequently had far lower organizational death rates than a matched control group of nonadopters. Among surviving employers, ISO adopters had higher growth rates for sales, employment, payroll, and average annual earnings. Injury rates declined slightly for ISO 9001 adopters, although total injury costs did not. These results have implications for organizational theory, managers, and public policy.
Easing the Guidance Document Dilemma Agency by Agency: Immigration Law and Not Really Binding Rules

Immigration law relies on rules that bind effectively, but not legally, to adjudicate millions of applications for immigration benefits every year. This article provides a blueprint for immigration law to improve its use of these practically binding rules, often called guidance documents. The agency that adjudicates immigration benefit applications, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), should develop and adopt its own Good Guidance Practices to govern how it uses guidance documents. This article recommends both a mechanism for reform, the Good Guidance Practices, and tackles many complex issues that USCIS will need to address in creating its practices. The recommended reforms promote increased accessibility, transparency and fairness for immigration law stakeholders, including unrepresented parties.This article also contributes to the larger administrative law debate about guidance documents. Guidance documents present a conundrum for administrative law because they have powerful positive and negative features. Because the Administrative Procedure Act does not require agencies to consider public input in the crafting of these rules, agencies may respond more quickly and flexibly than notice and comment rulemaking would allow. On the other hand, an agency policy statement (a type of guidance document that explains an agency’s current thinking on a particular issue) is effectively binding even though it is not legally binding. Applicants are free to argue in an adjudication that a different approach should apply. But stakeholders tend to follow the rule announced in the policy statement; they follow the rule as if it were legally binding. Thus, there is a practically binding effect without the opportunity for notice and comment.In developing a prescription for USCIS, this article concludes that the best approach to reforming agency use of guidance documents is an agency-by-agency approach. It rejects a one-size-fits-all approach in favor of the opportunity for each agency to formalize its own practices. Such tailored reform recognizes that every agency is different, with its own guidance culture and communities of stakeholders. This approach is designed to ease the negative effects of guidance documents while maximizing their positive features.
Idiosyncratic Kurtosis and Expected Returns

This study tests whether or not investors are compensated for holding stocks with excess kurtosis. Contrary to the risk-based idea, the authors find a significant negative return premium associated with idiosyncratic kurtosis. These results hold in a number of Fama–MacBeth [1973] regressions that include various controls. The notion that kurtosis is negatively associated with expected returns is consistent with a growing body of research that reports negative returns when examining the relation between expected returns and other measures of risk.
State Interests and the Duration of Abortion Rights

III. JUSTICE KENNEDY AND THE VIABILITY RULE 42 A. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services 42 B. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey 44 C. Stenberg v. Carhart 48 D. Gonzales v. Carhart 52 E. Justice Kennedy and the Future of the Viability Rule 54 1. New State Interests and the Duration of Abortion Rights 54 2. Stare Decisis and the Duration of Abortion Rights 56
Undermined Norms: The Corrosive Effect of Information Processing Technology on Informational Privacy

INTRODUCTION 1048 I. INFORMATIONAL NORMS 1052 A. Norms Defined 1053 1. Informational Norms 1054 2. Value-Justified Norms 1057 B. Why is Norm-Consistent Information Processing Acceptable? ........ 1059 II. WHY WILL BUSINESSES CONFORM TO NORMS? 1060 A. Detecting Norm Violations 1061 B. Norm-Violation Detectors Versus Norm-Inconsistent Sellers 1061 C. Sellers’ Inability to Discriminate 1062 D. The Profit-Maximizing Strategy 1062 III. FREE AND INFORMED CONSENT 1063 IV. THE CORROSIVE EFFECT 1067 A. Lack of Norms 1067 B. Direct Marketing: Retailers as Information Brokers 1071 1. Direct Marketing 1072 2. The “Retailers as Information Brokers” Norm 1074 3. The Norm is Not Value-Justified 1075 C. Information Aggregators 1078 D. The Health Insurance Industry 1080 E. Further Examples 1082 V. A CONSENT REQUIREMENT IS NOT A SOLUTION 1084 A. Consumers Do Not Read Privacy Notices 1084 B. Informed Consent as a Practical Matter is Impossible 1085 C. The Overall Pattern of Free and Informed Consent Would Yield Undesirable Tradeoffs 1085 VI. COLLABORATE OR RESIST? 1086
The effects of sample selection bias on racial differences in child abuse reporting

Abstract Objective: The aim was to examine whether design features of Wave 1, 1980 National Incidence Study (NIS) data resulted in sample selection bias when certain victims of maltreatment were excluded. Method: Logistic regression models for the probability of child abuse reports to the child protective services (CPS) were estimated using maximum likelihood methods for Black (n = 511) and White (n = 2499) child abuse cases. The models were estimated with and without correction for selection bias using a two-step procedure proposed by Heckman. Results: Substantial differences were found in the characteristics of Black and White victims by source of report and by type of maltreatment. Also found were sizeable differences within each racial group between sampled agencies and nonsampled agencies. Sample selection bias affected the estimation of both White and Black child abuse reporting rates. In the Black sample, however, the effect of sample selection bias was to reduce the statistical significance of the impacts of reporting agency and physical and sexual abuse on report rates. In the White sample, most significant factors in the basic model remained statistically significant with correction for selection bias. Conclusions: Selection bias was found to be caused by the exclusion of family, friends, and neighbors in the NIS sample design. Such exclusion has the effect of altering the interpretation of the determinants of child abuse reporting among Blacks, but not among Whites. Thus, conclusions about racial differences in child maltreatment must be reached cautiously, given the NIS study design.
Definition of cylindrical contact homology in dimension three

In this paper we give a rigorous definition of cylindrical contact homology for contact $3$-manifolds that admit nondegenerate contact forms with no contractible Reeb orbits, and show that the cylindrical contact homology is an invariant of the contact structure.
Inventors and pirates: creative activity and intellectual property rights

Abstract This paper focuses on the choices that link the security of intellectual property rights to the environment for pirating ideas, which includes the legal system, and to the interpersonal distribution of talent. These choices include the decisions made by potentially creative people either to engage in creative activity or to be pirates of the ideas created by others and the decisions made by people who are engaged in creative activity to allocate time and effort to guarding the ideas that they create from pirating. Among other results, the analysis shows that, holding fixed the average level of talent, the existence of geniuses, who are much more talented than ordinary potentially creative people, can cause a larger fraction of potentially creative people to choose to be pirates, thereby making intellectual property rights less secure, but also can result in a larger value of ideas being created. The analysis also shows that intellectual property rights probably are too secure, in that the amount of time and effort allocated to guarding ideas from pirating probably is larger than the amount that would maximize the value of ideas created.
Brokers, bureaucrats and the emergence of financial markets

When managers wish to raise external capital, investors must be able to trust that brokers and managers will not cheat them out of their money. To what extent is government regulation necessary for the existence of advanced financial transactions and, for that matter, the well functioning of markets in general? A growing literature argues that strong state enforcement is needed to foster financial markets (La Porta et al, 1997, Glaeser et al, 2001). The problem of contractual performance and, more generally, the problem of social order are some of the most enduring questions in the social sciences. German sociologist Georg Simmel may have put it most eloquently in his 1910 essay when he asked, “How is Society Possible?” but the question is rooted in a discourse dating back at least to Thomas Hobbes’s (1651) Leviathan. Hobbes contended that social order was impossible without external enforcement, and in a similar manner many modern commentators in law and finance maintain that the state must play an active role for markets to function. In his study of emerging financial markets in post‐Soviet Russia, Timothy Frye (2000:2) argues that, “politics underpins social order”.
Cyber Mobs, Disinformation, and Death Videos: The Internet As It Is (and As It Should Be)

Fiction and visual representations can alter our understanding of human experiences and struggles. They help us understand human frailties and suffering in a visceral way. Nick Drnaso’s graphic novel Sabrina does that in spades. In Sabrina, a woman is murdered by a misogynist, and a video of her execution is leaked. Conspiracy theorists deem her murder a hoax. A cyber mob smears the woman’s loved ones as crisis actors, posts death threats, and spreads their personal information. The attacks continue until a shooting massacre redirects the cyber mob’s wrath to other mourners. Sabrina captures the breathtaking velocity of disinformation online and the rapid escalation to terroristic threats. Every day, people are radicalized online to wreak havoc and violence. On August 3, 2019, in El Paso, Texas, a twenty-one-year old man posted a racist manifesto on 8chan and then walked into a Wal Mart with a powerful rifle, killing 20 people and injuring many others. The killer trafficked in and engaged with others in hateful conspiracy theories. Drnaso invites a conversation about cyber mobs, conspiracy theories, and death videos and the norms, attitudes, and laws enabling them. Right now, it is cheap and easy to wreak havoc online and for that havoc to go viral. Platforms act rationally — some might say responsibly to their shareholders — when they tolerate abuse that earns them advertising revenue and costs them nothing in legal liability. Combatting cyber-mob attacks must be a priority. Law should raise the cost of cyber-mob attacks. It is time for tech companies to redress some of the negative externalities of their business model. Platforms should not enjoy immunity from liability for user-generated content unless they have earned that immunity with reasonable content moderation practices. Education should play a role as well. As digital citizens, we need to do better.
Earnings, dividend policy, and present value relations: Building blocks of dividend policy invariant cash flows

In a Modigliani-Miller world, dividend policy is irrelevant for asset pricing. This article searches for cash flows with two characteristics: like dividends, asset prices can be calculated from their present values and, unlike dividends, they are invariant with respect to changes in dividend policy. Segmented and aggregate residual income measures with these features are identified under two assumptions: dividend policy does not alter risk premiums and income earned from investments associated with dividend policy includes unrealized capital gains and losses. The results hold for otherwise arbitrary risk premiums in the general no-arbitrage approach to the valuation of uncertain income streams.
Land Distribution and International Agricultural Productivity

The unequal distribution of agricultural land is often cited as a source of inefficiency in agriculture. Previous cross-country studies of agricultural productivity differences, though, have not considered land inequality. This article addresses this issue by using cross-country data on inequality in operational holdings of agricultural land from Deininger and Squire (1998). In an estimation of an agricultural production function, the Gini coefficient for land holdings is found to have a significant negative relationship with productivity. This is consistent with the existence of heterogeneity in productivity by farm size within countries. A one standard deviation drop in the Gini coefficient implies an increase in productivity of 8.5%.
Application of Law to the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Childhood obesity is in important respects a result of legal policies that influence both dietary intake and physical activity. The law must shift focus away from individual risk factors alone and seek instead to promote situational and environmental influences that create an atmosphere conducive to health. To attain this goal, advocates should embrace a population-wide model of public health, and policymakers must critically examine the fashionable rhetoric of consumer choice.
Separated at Birth: The North American Agreements on Labor and the Environment

The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation are similar in many ways, from the concerns that led to their creation to the criticisms leveled against them. They are usually seen as bookends to the North American Free Trade Agreement, addressing parallel problems through virtually identical institutions, the Commission for Labor Cooperation (CLC) and the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). But the agreements are less similar than they first appear. Despite their common origins, they reflect fundamentally different approaches to international organization. On the surface, both reflect the traditional Westphalian view of international law, which assigns states, represented by their national governments, responsibility for creating and implementing law on the international plane. Both modify the Westphalian model slightly by focusing on issues of domestic governance that were traditionally considered outside international purview. But only the environmental agreement goes decisively beyond Westphalia by providing roles for nongovernmental actors in the enforcement and further elaboration of its obligations. This Article locates the agreements along the path international law is taking away from Westphalia. It then compares the records of the agreements' compliance mechanisms, which represent three milestones along that path, ranging from pure state-to-state dispute resolution to a post-Westphalian citizen submissions procedure. The experience of the first ten years with these mechanisms provides empirical support for the idea that traditional compliance procedures are less effective than post-Westphalian procedures at promoting compliance with environmental and labor norms. The Article concludes by urging labor and environmental advocates to recognize this lesson. In particular, it suggests that they should stop pursuing the chimera of government-triggered sanctions as a way to obtain labor and environmental goals in trade agreements. Instead, they would do better to work to incorporate opportunities for non-governmental actors to participate at the international level in the creation, implementation, and enforcement of labor and environmental standards.
Fixed versus Flexible Exchange Rates: Which Provides More Fiscal Discipline?

Abstract Conventional wisdom holds that fixed rates provide more fiscal discipline than do flexible rates. In this paper we show that this wisdom need not hold in a standard model in which fiscal policy is endogenously determined by a maximizing fiscal authority. The claim that fixed rates induce more discipline stresses that sustained adoption of lax fiscal policies must eventually lead to an exhaustion of reserves and thus to a politically costly collapse of the peg. Hence, under fixed rates bad behavior today leads to punishment tomorrow. Under flexible rates bad behavior has costs as well. The difference is in the intertemporal distribution of these costs: flexible rates allow the effects of unsound fiscal policies to manifest themselves immediately through movements in the exchange rate. Hence, bad behavior today leads to punishment today. If fiscal authorities are impatient, flexible rates — by forcing the costs to be paid up-front — provide more fiscal discipline and higher welfare for the representative private agent. The recent experience of sub-Saharan countries supplies evidence that matches the predictions of the model.
The Real Effects of Financial Markets

A large amount of activity in the financial sector occurs in secondary financial markets, where securities are traded among investors without capital flowing to firms. The stock market is the archetypal example, which in most developed economies captures a lot of attention and resources. Is the stock market just a sideshow or does it affect real economic activity? In this review, we discuss the potential real effects of financial markets that stem from the informational role of market prices. We review the theoretical literature and show that accounting for the feedback effect from market prices to the real economy significantly changes our understanding of the price formation process, the informativeness of the price, and speculators’ trading behavior. We make two main points. First, we argue that a new definition of price efficiency is needed to account for the extent to which prices reflect information that is useful for the efficiency of real decisions (rather than the extent to which they forecast future cash flows). Second, incorporating the feedback effect into models of financial markets can explain various market phenomena that otherwise seem puzzling. Finally, we review empirical evidence on the real effects of secondary financial markets.
A Discreet Wearable IoT Sensor for Continuous Transdermal Alcohol Monitoring—Challenges and Opportunities

Non-invasive continuous alcohol (ethanol) monitoring has potential applications in both population research and in clinical management of acute alcohol intoxication or chronic alcoholism. Current wearable monitors based on transdermal alcohol content (TAC) sensing have limited accessibility and blood alcohol content (BAC) quantification accuracy. Here we describe the development of a self-contained discreet wearable transdermal alcohol (TAC) sensor in the form of a wristband or armband. This sensor can detect vapor-phase alcohol in perspiration from 0.09 ppm (equivalent to 0.09 mg/dL sweat alcohol concentration at 25 °C under Henry’s Law equilibrium) to over 500 ppm at one-minute time resolution. Additionally, a digital sensor was employed to monitor the temperature and humidity levels inside the sensing chamber. Two male human subjects were recruited to conduct studies with alcohol consumption using calibrated prototype TAC sensors to validate the performance. Our preliminary data demonstrated that, under well-controlled conditions, this sensor can acquire TAC curves at low doses (1–2 standard drinks). Moreover, TAC data for different doses can be easily distinguished. However, substantial interpersonal and intrapersonal variabilities in measurement data were also observed in experiments with less controlled conditions. Our observations suggest that perspiration rate might be an important contributing factor to these variabilities. Further studies with sufficient sample sizes are required to validate and characterize the impact of different perspiration rates on TAC sensors, which may inform more reproducible and accurate sensor designs in the future.
An integrated systems biology approach identifies the proteasome as a critical host machinery for ZIKV and DENV replication

The zika virus (ZIKV) and dengue virus (DENV) flaviviruses exhibit similar replicative processes but have distinct clinical outcomes. A systematic understanding of virus-host protein-protein interaction networks can reveal cellular pathways critical to viral replication and disease pathogenesis. Here we employed three independent systems biology approaches toward this goal. First, protein array analysis of direct interactions between individual ZIKV/DENV viral proteins and 20,240 human proteins revealed multiple conserved cellular pathways and protein complexes, including proteasome complexes. Second, an RNAi screen of 10,415 druggable genes identified the host proteins required for ZIKV infection and uncovered that proteasome proteins were crucial in this process. Third, high-throughput screening of 6016 bioactive compounds for ZIKV inhibition yielded 134 effective compounds, including six proteasome inhibitors that suppress both ZIKV and DENV replication. Integrative analyses of these orthogonal datasets pinpoint proteasomes as critical host machinery for ZIKV/DENV replication. Our study provides multi-omics datasets for further studies of flavivirus-host interactions, disease pathogenesis, and new drug targets.
Majorization Minimization Methods for Distributed Pose Graph Optimization with Convergence Guarantees

In this paper, we consider the problem of distributed pose graph optimization (PGO) that has extensive applications in multi-robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). We propose majorization minimization methods for distributed PGO and show that our methods are guaranteed to converge to first-order critical points under mild conditions. Furthermore, since our methods rely a proximal operator of distributed PGO, the convergence rate can be significantly accelerated with Nesterov's method, and more importantly, the acceleration induces no compromise of convergence guarantees. In addition, we also present accelerated majorization minimization methods for the distributed chordal initialization that have a quadratic convergence, which can be used to compute an initial guess for distributed PGO. The efficacy of this work is validated through applications on a number of 2D and 3D SLAM datasets and comparisons with existing state-of-the- art methods, which indicates that our methods have faster convergence and result in better solutions to distributed PGO.
Operation Varsity Blues and the NCAA’s Special Admission Exception

“Operation Varsity Blues,” the university admissions scandal and ensuing federal investigation, made national news and captivated the public. Fascination with the scandal could have stemmed from the involvement of celebrities such as Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman and/or the sheer ridiculousness of the scheme, in which wealthy and prominent families paid exorbitant amounts of money to secure their childrens’ admission to elite universities. Others may have closely followed the resulting legal proceedings that included federal criminal charges like racketeering against 50 individuals and civil lawsuits against elite universities and celebrities with one suit seeking $500 billion in damages. Lawmakers’ attempts at preventing future university admissions scandals legislatively may have also caused curiosity. This article, though, explores the scandal’s intricate ties to college athletics and seeks to determine the most effective and practical means to mitigate the likelihood of a future similar admissions scandal. More specifically, the article explores how head coaches and an athletics administrator used their positions at academically elite universities to exploit a little-known NCAA rule permitting universities to use more lenient admissions standards for incoming student-athletes. Scheme participants falsely indicated dozens of applicants were incoming student-athletes in order to trigger the less rigorous standards and secure admission to elite universities. The criminal proceedings resulting from the scandal have yielded relatively light sentences for involved coaches, and civil suits against universities have been unsuccessful. California attempted to address the scandal legislatively, but, as this article explains, its reform package contains holes that fail to address many of the scheme’s key components. The article concludes that the NCAA, as opposed to lawmakers, the legal system, or individual universities, is in the best position to prevent, or mitigate the likelihood of, a future university admissions scheme like Operation Varsity Blues. Doing so would require only eliminating a single NCAA rule that is inconsistent with myriad other NCAA rules and principles and has resulted in decades of poor academic results.
Infinite-step stationarity of rotor walk and the wired spanning forest

We study rotor walk, a deterministic counterpart of the simple random walk, on infinite transient graphs. We show that the final rotor configuration of the rotor walk follows the law of the wired uniform spanning forest oriented toward infinity (OWUSF) measure when the initial rotor configuration is sampled from OWUSF. This result holds for all graphs for which each tree in the wired spanning forest has one single end almost surely. This answers a question posed in a previous work of the author (Chan 2018).
Determinants of work productivity among selected tertiary education employees: A PreCOVID-19 pandemic analysis

The work productivity of an individual is an organizational asset that can be equated to progress and success. It provides satisfaction to the employees, the organization, and other stakeholders. This study assessed the work productivity among selected employees from a tertiary education institution before COVID-19 pandemic. To accomplish this task, a total of 70 individuals participated in the survey with the use of the convenience sampling technique. This descriptive research study used an adapted and modified questionnaire from Buuri (2015) as a research instrument. For the statistical analysis, the study used SPSS 20 to compute and analyze the data. Results showed that the respondents came from both the administrative and faculty offices which belong to the age bracket of 21-30 years old; dominated by males and were single with 1-5 years in service. Based on their response, the respondents “agree” that they were productive in their work before the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, there were significant differences found in the work productivity when grouped according to demographic profiles. Furthermore, all the demographic profiles yielded direct and indirect relationship with work productivity. Regression analysis provided evidence that the department and sex were significant determinants of work productivity among employees. Based on the results, the researcher provided implications pertinent to the institution.
Index-Modulated Circularly-Shifted Chirps for Dual-Function Radar & Communication Systems

In this study, we analyze index modulation (IM) based on circularly-shifted chirps (CSCs) for dual-function radar & communication (DFRC) systems. We develop a maximum likelihood (ML) range estimator that considers multiple scatters. To improve the correlation properties of the transmitted waveform and estimation accuracy, we propose index separation (IS) which separates the CSCs apart in time. We theoretically show that the separation can be large under certain conditions without losing the spectral efficiency (SE). Our numerical results show that the IS combined ML and linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE)-based estimators can provide approximately 3 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain in some cases while improving estimation accuracy substantially without causing any bit-error ratio (BER) degradation at the communication receiver.
Bargaining and Strategic Voting on Appellate Courts

Many appellate courts and regulatory commissions simultaneously produce case dispositions and rules rationalizing the dispositions. We explore the properties of the American practice for doing this. We show that the median judge is pivotal over case dispositions, although she and others may not vote sincerely. Strategic dispositional voting is more likely when the case location is extreme, resulting in majority coalitions that give the appearance of less polarization on the court than is the case. The equilibrium policy created in the majority opinion generically does not coincide with the ideal policy of the median judge in either the dispositional majority or the bench as a whole. Rather, opinions approach a weighted center of the dispositional majority but often reflect the preferences of the opinion author. We discuss some empirical implications of the American practice for jointly producing case dispositions and rules.
Diminished Cortical Excitation and Elevated Inhibition During Perceptual Impairments in a Mouse Model of Autism

Sensory impairments are a core feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These impairments affect visual perception and have been hypothesized to arise from imbalances in cortical excitatory and inhibitory activity. There is conflicting evidence for this hypothesis from several recent studies of transgenic mouse models of ASD; crucially, none have measured activity from identified excitatory and inhibitory neurons during simultaneous impairments of sensory perception. Here, we directly recorded putative excitatory and inhibitory population spiking in primary visual cortex (V1) while simultaneously measuring visual perceptual behavior in CNTNAP2-/- knockout (KO) mice. We observed quantitative impairments in the speed, accuracy, and contrast sensitivity of visual perception in KO mice. During these perceptual impairments, stimuli evoked more firing of inhibitory neurons and less firing of excitatory neurons, with reduced neural sensitivity to contrast. In addition, pervasive 3-10 Hz oscillations in superficial cortical layers 2/3 (L2/3) of KO mice degraded predictions of behavioral performance from neural activity. Our findings show that perceptual deficits relevant to ASD may be associated with elevated cortical inhibitory activity along with diminished and aberrant excitatory population activity in L2/3, a major source of feedforward projections to higher cortical regions.
Dual path integral: a non-perturbative approach to strong coupling

We develop a non-perturbative method for calculating partition functions of strongly coupled quantum mechanical systems with interactions between subsystems described by a path integral of a dual system. The dual path integral is derived starting from non-interacting subsystems at zeroth order and then by introducing couplings of increasing complexity at each order of an iterative procedure. These orders of interactions play the role of a dual time and the full quantum partition function is expressed as a transition amplitude in the dual system. More precisely, it is expressed as a path integral from a deformation-operators dependent initial state at zero time/order to the inverse-temperature dependent final state at later time/order. We provide examples of strongly coupled systems with up to first-order interactions (e.g. Ising model) and arbitrary high-order interactions (e.g. $$1+1\hbox {D}$$ QFT). We also discuss a possible emergence of space-time, quantum field theories and general relativity in context of the dual path integral.
Beyond property or beyond Piketty

Capital and Ideology represents a significant further statement from Thomas Piketty. The arguments made by the "New Piketty" are largely compatible with those of his previous Capital in the Twenty-First Century, but reflect broadening of scope and deepening of causal analysis, most markedly through the adoption of a world historical perspective. The result is a fuller offering for understanding inequality's pattern in the world, why it exists and how we can best respond to it. The book presents a wide range of arguments, which do not on first glance appear unified. This review essay distills these into six propositions, describes and evaluates each in turn, and identifies some threads that link them. In the process, it provides a critical assessment of Capital and Ideology.
Line Transversals of Balls and Smallest Enclosing Cylinders in Three Dimensions

We establish a near-cubic upper bound on the complexity of the space of line transversals of a collection of n balls in three dimensions, and show that the bound is almost tight, in the worst case. We apply this bound to obtain a near-cubic algorithm for computing a smallest infinite cylinder enclosing a given set of points or balls in 3-space. We also present an approximation algorithm for computing a smallest enclosing cylinder.
Three lenses on the multinational enterprise: politics, corruption, and corporate social responsibility

Scholars who analyze multinational enterprises (MNEs) recognize the complex relationship between international business (IB) and society. However, compared with other IB topics, research on politics, corruption and corporate social responsibility – ‘three lenses’ on the MNE – remains somewhat embryonic, with unresolved issues regarding frameworks, measurement, methods, and theory. This presents unique opportunities for integration and extension of disciplinary perspectives, which we explore in this article. We provide an introduction to potential linkages across these three lenses, an agenda for additional theoretical and empirical research, and a review of the papers in the JIBS Focused Issue.
Effects of Emerging Market Asset Purchase Program Announcements on Financial Markets During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic led many emerging market central banks to adopt, for the first time, unconventional policies in the form of asset purchase programs. In this study, we analyze the effects of these announcements on domestic financial markets using both event studies and local projections methodology. We find that these asset purchase announcements lowered bond yields, did not lead to a depreciation of domestic currencies, and did not have much effect on equities. While the immediate effect of asset purchases appears positive, further consideration of the risks and longer-term effects of unconventional monetary policies is needed. We highlight the trade-offs involved with the implementation of these measures, and discuss their risks. This working paper adds to the debate on how asset purchase programs should be a regular part of the emerging market policy toolkit.
Mitophagy Antagonism by Zika Virus Reveals Ajuba as a Regulator of PINK1-Parkin Signaling, PKR-Dependent Inflammation, and Viral Invasion of Tissues

Dysregulated inflammation dominated by chemokine expression is a key feature of disease following infection with the globally important human pathogens, Zika virus (ZIKV) and dengue virus, but a mechanistic understanding of how pro-inflammatory responses are initiated is lacking. Mitophagy is a quality control mechanism that regulates innate immune signaling and cytokine production through selective degradation of damaged mitochondria. Here, we demonstrate that ZIKV NS5 antagonizes mitophagy by binding to the host protein Ajuba and preventing its translocation to depolarized mitochondria where it is required for PINK1 activation and downstream signaling. Consequent mitophagy suppression amplified the production of pro-inflammatory chemokines through PKR sensing of mitochondrial RNA. In Ajuba -/- mice, ZIKV induced early expression of pro-inflammatory chemokines associated with significantly enhanced dissemination to tissues. This work identifies Ajuba as a critical regulator of mitophagy, and demonstrates a role for mitophagy in limiting systemic inflammation following infection by globally important human viruses.
Effectiveness of isolation policies in schools: evidence from a mathematical model of influenza and COVID-19.

Background Non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, school closures and travel restrictions are often implemented to control outbreaks of infectious diseases. For influenza in schools, the Center of Disease Control (CDC) recommends that febrile students remain isolated at home until they have been fever-free for at least one day and a related policy is recommended for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Other authors proposed using a school week of four or fewer days of in-person instruction for all students to reduce transmission. However, there is limited evidence supporting the effectiveness of these interventions. Methods We introduced a mathematical model of school outbreaks that considers both intervention methods. Our model accounts for the school structure and schedule, as well as the time-progression of fever symptoms and viral shedding. The model was validated on outbreaks of seasonal and pandemic influenza and COVID-19 in schools. It was then used to estimate the outbreak curves and the proportion of the population infected (attack rate) under the proposed interventions. Results For influenza, the CDC-recommended one day of post-fever isolation can reduce the attack rate by a median (interquartile range) of 29 (13–59)%. With 2 days of post-fever isolation the attack rate could be reduced by 70 (55–85)%. Alternatively, shortening the school week to 4 and 3 days reduces the attack rate by 73 (64–88)% and 93 (91–97)%, respectively. For COVID-19, application of post-fever isolation policy was found to be less effective and reduced the attack rate by 10 (5–17)% for a 2-day isolation policy and by 14 (5–26)% for 14 days. A 4-day school week would reduce the median attack rate in a COVID-19 outbreak by 57 (52–64)%, while a 3-day school week would reduce it by 81 (79–83)%. In both infections, shortening the school week significantly reduced the duration of outbreaks. Conclusions Shortening the school week could be an important tool for controlling influenza and COVID-19 in schools and similar settings. Additionally, the CDC-recommended post-fever isolation policy for influenza could be enhanced by requiring two days of isolation instead of one
Computer-Mediated Consent to Sex: The Context of Tinder

This paper reports an interview study about how consent to sexual activity is computer-mediated. The study's context of online dating is chosen due to the prevalence of sexual violence, or nonconsensual sexual activity, that is associated with dating app-use. Participants (n=19) represent a range of gender identities and sexual orientations, and predominantly used the dating app Tinder. Findings reveal two computer-mediated consent processes: consent signaling and affirmative consent. With consent signaling, users employed Tinder's interface to infer and imply agreement to sex without any explicit confirmation before making sexual advances in-person. With affirmative consent, users employed the interface to establish patterns of overt discourse around sex and consent across online and offline modalities. The paper elucidates shortcomings of both computer-mediated consent processes that leave users susceptible to sexual violence and envisions dating apps as potential sexual violence prevention solutions if deliberately designed to mediate consent exchange.
Manifolds with cylindrical ends having a finite and positive number of embedded eigenvalues

We construct a surface with a cylindrical end which has a finite number of Laplace eigenvalues embedded in its continuous spectrum. The surface is obtained by attaching a cylindrical end to a hyperbolic torus with a hole. To our knowledge, this is the first example of a manifold with a cylindrical end whose number of eigenvalues is known to be finite and nonzero. The construction can be varied to give examples with arbitrary genus and with an arbitrarily large finite number of eigenvalues. The constructed surfaces also have resonance-free regions near the continuous spectrum and long-time asymptotic expansions of solutions to the wave equation.
Ice-coated Pebble Drift as a Possible Explanation for Peculiar Cometary CO/H2O Ratios

To date, at least three comets -- 2I/Borisov, C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), and C/2009 P1 (Garradd) -- have been observed to have unusually high CO concentrations compared to water. We attempt to explain these observations by modeling the effect of drifting solid (ice and dust) material on the ice compositions in protoplanetary disks. We find that, independent of the exact disk model parameters, we always obtain a region of enhanced ice-phase CO/H2O that spreads out in radius over time. The inner edge of this feature coincides with the CO snowline. Almost every model achieves at least CO/H2O of unity, and one model reaches a CO/H2O ratio > 10. After running our simulations for 1 Myr, an average of 40% of the disk ice mass contains more CO than H2O ice. In light of this, a population of CO ice enhanced planetesimals are likely to generally form in the outer regions of disks, and we speculate that the aforementioned CO-rich comets may be more common, both in our own Solar System and in extrasolar systems, than previously expected.
Unexpected Role of Sterol Synthesis in RNA Stability and Translation in Leishmania

Leishmania parasites are trypanosomatid protozoans that cause leishmaniasis affecting millions of people worldwide. Sterols are important components of the plasma and organellar membranes. They also serve as precursors for the synthesis of signaling molecules. Unlike animals, Leishmania does not synthesize cholesterol but makes ergostane-based sterols instead. C-14-demethylase is a key enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of sterols and an important drug target. In Leishmania parasites, the inactivation of C-14-demethylase leads to multiple defects, including increased plasma membrane fluidity, mitochondrion dysfunction, hypersensitivity to stress and reduced virulence. In this study, we revealed a novel role for sterol synthesis in the maintenance of RNA stability and translation. Sterol alteration in C-14-demethylase knockout mutant leads to increased RNA degradation, reduced translation and impaired heat shock response. Thus, sterol biosynthesis in Leishmania plays an unexpected role in global gene regulation.
Capital, aggregate risk, insurance prices and regulation

Abstract We develop a general equilibrium model of competitive insurance and equity capital markets to show how aggregate asset and insurance liability risks affect insurance prices and regulation. In the unique equilibrium of the benchmark unregulated economy, insurers raise external capital solely by selling insurance and no outside equity. We derive the Pareto efficient allocation and implement it via multiple regulatory policies that combine risk-based capital requirements, asset risk constraints, reinsurance and bailouts. An efficient regulatory policy with a lower capital requirement must be accompanied by a more stringent asset risk constraint, and one with a capital requirement that is more sensitive to insurer assets should be less sensitive to insurer liabilities. When the aggregate asset and liability risks are below respective thresholds, insurees are fully insured in the optimally regulated economy, and the set of efficient regulatory policies does not vary with aggregate risk. Outside this region, however, insurees must bear aggregate risk with capital and asset risk constraints becoming tighter as either the aggregate asset or liability risk increases. The aggregate asset and liability risks could have opposing effects on the insurance price and insurer size in the regulated economy. Our results highlight the importance of tailoring regulatory policies to aggregate risk levels, and disentangling the impacts of aggregate asset and liability risks in analyses of how regulation influences insurance prices and insurer capitalization.
Mexico Needs a Fiscal Twist: Response to COVID-19 and Beyond

Mexico's fiscal response to the pandemic has been modest compared to its peers, reflecting the authorities' desire to not issue new debt for spending. This approach, however, risks a more severe recession and a weaker economic recovery, with further costs in the future. Balancing the need for stronger near-term fiscal support for the people and the recovery against medium-term discipline, this paper lays out an alternative strategy. We show that credibly announcing a pro-growth and inclusive medium-term fiscal reform upfront-including increased tax capacity, higher public investment and strengthened social safety nets-would open space for larger short-term support and close medium-term fiscal gaps. Model simulations suggest that this package would boost output, limit lasting economic damage from the pandemic, and put debt trajectory on a declining path in the medium term as tax reforms pay off and risk premia decline.
The Effect of Price on Firm Reputation

Although a business’s reputation can affect its pricing, prices can also affect its reputation. To explore the effect of prices on reputation, we investigate daily data on menu prices and online ra...
Objective-Dependent Uncertainty Driven Retinal Vessel Segmentation

From diagnosing neovascular diseases to detecting white matter lesions, accurate tiny vessel segmentation in fundus images is critical. Promising results for accurate vessel segmentation have been known. However, their effectiveness in segmenting tiny vessels is still limited. In this paper, we study retinal vessel segmentation by incorporating tiny vessel segmentation into our framework for the overall accurate vessel segmentation. To achieve this, we propose a new deep convolutional neural network (CNN) which divides vessel segmentation into two separate objectives. Specifically, we consider the overall accurate vessel segmentation and tiny vessel segmentation as two individual objectives. Then, by exploiting the objective-dependent (homoscedastic) uncertainty, we enable the network to learn both objectives simultaneously. Further, to improve the individual objectives, we propose: (a) a vessel weight map based auxiliary loss for enhancing tiny vessel connectivity (i.e., improving tiny vessel segmentation), and (b) an enhanced encoder-decoder architecture for improved localization (i.e., for accurate vessel segmentation). Using 3 public retinal vessel segmentation datasets (CHASE DB1, DRIVE, and STARE), we verify the superiority of our proposed framework in segmenting tiny vessels (8.3% average improvement in sensitivity) while achieving better area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) compared to state-of-the-art methods.