cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Website Access: The Case for Consent

This paper presents a Coasean defense of the use of the trespass to chattels tort to regulate access to websites and private networks connected to the Internet. Consent to use should be presumed from the owner's choice to connect a site or network to the Internet. In most cases, however, owners should be able to stop unwanted uses by notifying a user that the owner objects to particular uses. The trespass to chattels tort provides courts a doctrinal basis to enjoin uses to which an owner does not consent. Injunctions facilitate bargaining. Because transaction costs are low in such cases, bargaining will better approximate the optimal social equilibrium of uses than would alternative regimes, such as judicial management of access through the doctrine of nuisance. There may be cases where utilitarian analysis suggests deviating from this approach, but they would be the exception, not the default. This paper also takes issue with the prevailing critique of the trespass tort. The basic premise of the prevailing critique is that chattel are different from real property because the law recognizes an interest in holding real property free from harmless intermeddling but does not recognize such an interest for chattel. The Restatement of torts says just the opposite, however, a point the prevailing critique does not acknowledge. The difference between real property and chattel is that the law provides a cause of action for harmless intermeddling with the former, and provides only a privilege to use self-help to protect the latter. When the interest in being free from even harmless intermeddling is taken into account, the prevailing critique reduces to the proposition that courts should not recognize new torts even when legally recognized interests are violated and the means the law expects to protect those interests fail to do so. That proposition is excessively formal and provides no normative basis for criticizing the doctrine.
The Relation between Momentum and Drift: Industry-Level Evidence from Equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)

We examine the industry-level relation between the two dominant asset pricing anomalies: the continuation of past price movements (momentum) and the incomplete reaction to earnings news (post-earni...
Banking Crises in Latin America in the 1990s: Lessons from Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela

This chapter analyses the banking crises in three Latin American countries — Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela — in the mid-1990s, presenting an overview of the crisis in each country, with some lessons and consequences.
Wolves at the Door: A Closer Look at Hedge Fund Activism

Most investor coordination remains undisclosed. I provide empirical evidence on the extent and consequences of investor coordination in the context of hedge fund activism, in which potential benefi...
The Rise and Fall of Unionised Labour Markets: A Political Economy Approach*

Studying a model where trade unions interact with endogenously formed partisan political parties, we explain changing political preferences for and against the unionised labour market regime. We focus on the changes in coalition formation between unskilled and moderately skilled workers, which in turn depend on inequality among workers. When inequality is either very low or very high, moderately skilled workers form a political coalition with unskilled workers to support a unionised labour market regime. In other cases, the economic interest of the moderately skilled workers is more in line with that of highly skilled workers and capital owners to support a competitive labour market regime. Different societies have different labour market regimes or wage determination mechanisms. Some, such as the US, have relatively unregulated labour markets, while others, such as the Northern European countries, have strong trade unions, where wages are set by a collective bargaining procedure mediated through the unions. As Table 1 shows, union density in 1990 ranged over almost the entire spectrum, from 93.7% in Sweden to 9.3% in France. Union coverage, defined as the proportion of wage and salary workers covered by terms of a collective bargaining agreement, also ranged from 95% in Finland to 18% in the US.
Is the Full Faith and Credit Clause Still "Irrelevant" to Same-Sex Marriage?: Toward a Reconsideration of the Conventional Wisdom

For more than a century, and continuing through this summer’s landmark samesex marriage decision in United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court has characterized marriage as something “sacred,” “the most important relation in life,” “one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival,” a “status of immense import,” and something essential to an individual’s “personhood and dignity.” If marriage is indeed as special, even unique, in our legal tradition as the Supreme Court says it is, then it would seem reasonable to assume that once a state has created a marriage, other states should be bound to recognize and respect it. Fifteen states (as of this writing) plus the District of Columbia now authorize samesex marriages. But thirty-three other states maintain so-called mini defense of marriage acts (or “mini-DOMAs”), which are generally understood not only to prohibit the creation of same-sex marriages, but also to prohibit recognition of such marriages from other jurisdictions. To the extent these mini-DOMAs effectively
Our Welfare: Doing Good and Being Happy

These three wonderful talks fit together beautifully. They also fit so well with Peter Cicchino as we knew him and as we know him still. My talk centers on the "presence of absence." Peter urged the need for what he called "a faith story" and for community. I now want to look a little bit at the unusual faith story for which Peter stood and the communities he continues to inspire.
Patent Publication and the Market for Ideas

In this paper, we study the effect of invention disclosure through patent publication on the market for ideas. We do so by analyzing the effects of the American Inventor’s Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA)—which required U.S. patent applications to be published 18 months after their filing date rather than at patent grant—on the timing of licensing deals in the biomedical industry. We find that post-AIPA U.S. patent applications are significantly more likely to be licensed before patent grant and shortly after 18-month publication. Licensing delays are reduced by about 10 months, on average, after AIPA’s enactment. These findings suggest a hitherto unexplored benefit of the patent system: by requiring inventions to be published through a credible, standardized, and centralized repository, it mitigates information costs for buyers and sellers, and thus facilitates transactions in the market for ideas. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2622. This paper was accepted by Bruno C...
Managing the narrative: Investor relations officers and corporate disclosure✰

Abstract Investor relations officers (IROs) play a central role in corporate communications with Wall Street. We survey 610 IROs at U.S. public companies and conduct 14 follow-up interviews to deepen our understanding of the role of IROs in corporate disclosure events. Three important themes emerge from our results: (i) the value, nature, and timing of private communication between IROs, analysts, and investors; (ii) the significant influence IROs have on corporate disclosures; and (iii) the degree of “theater” involved in public earnings conference calls, even the Q&A portion. We provide insights into the investor relations, analyst, institutional investor, and disclosure literatures.
Online Auction and List Price Revenue Management

We analyze a revenue management problem in which a seller facing a Poisson arrival stream of consumers operates an online multiunit auction. Consumers can get the product from an alternative list price channel. We consider two variants of this problem: In the first variant, the list price is an external channel run by another firm. In the second one, the seller manages both the auction and the list price channels. Each consumer, trying to maximize his own surplus, must decide either to buy at the posted price and get the item at no risk, or to join the auction and wait until its end, when the winners are revealed and the auction price is disclosed. Our approach consists of two parts. First, we study structural properties of the problem, and show that the equilibrium strategy for both versions of this game is of the threshold type, meaning that a consumer will join the auction only if his arrival time is above a function of his own valuation. This consumer's strategy can be computed using an iterative algorithm in a function space, provably convergent under some conditions. Unfortunately, this procedure is computationally intensive. Second, and to overcome this limitation, we formulate an asymptotic version of the problem, in which the demand rate and the initial number of units grow proportionally large. We obtain a simple closed-form expression for the equilibrium strategy in this regime, which is then used as an approximate solution to the original problem. Numerical computations show that this heuristic is very accurate. The asymptotic solution culminates in simple and precise recipes of how bidders should behave, as well as how the seller should structure the auction, and price the product in the dual-channel case.
The moderating effects of home region orientation on R&D investment and international SME performance: Lessons from Korea

Summary Drawing from the resource-based view, we investigate how firm and country combinations affect international SME performance. Using a sample of 2676 international Korean SMEs, we explore the relationships among SME R&D investment, home region orientation and financial performance. Results show that R&D investment has a horizontally inverted S-shaped relationship with performance reflecting cost leadership, stuck in the middle, and differentiation strategies. We also find that a home region orientation moderates the relationship between R&D investment and performance. Home region orientation positively moderates the relationship when R&D investment reflects cost leadership or differentiation but negatively moderates a stuck in the middle strategy.
Broadband Semiparametric Estimation of the Memory Parameter of a Long‐Memory Time Series Using Fractional Exponential Models

We consider a fractional exponential, or FEXP estimator of the memory parameter of a stationary Gaussian long-memory time series. The estimator is constructed by fitting a FEXP model of slowly increasing dimension to the log periodogram at all Fourier frequencies by ordinary least squares, and retaining the corresponding estimated memory parameter. We do not assume that the data were necessarily generated by a FEXP model, or by any other finite-parameter model. We do, however, impose a global differentiability assumption on the spectral density except at the origin. Because of this, and its use of all Fourier frequencies, we refer to the FEXP estimator as a broadband semiparametric estimator. We demonstrate the consistency of the FEXP estimator, and obtain expressions for its asymptotic bias and variance. If the true spectral density is sufficiently smooth, the FEXP estimator can strongly outperform existing semiparametric estimators, such as the Geweke–Porter-Hudak (GPH) and Gaussian semiparametric estimators (GSE), attaining an asymptotic mean squared error proportional to (log n)/n, where n is the sample size. In a simulation study, we demonstrate the merits of using a finite-sample correction to the asymptotic variance, and we also explore the possibility of automatically selecting the dimension of the exponential model using Mallows’CL criterion.
"Forfeiture by Wrongdoing" after Crawford v. Washington: Maryland's Approach Best Preserves the Right to Confrontation

This 52-page 2008 law review article is titled “‘Forfeiture by Wrongdoing’ after Crawford v. Washington: Maryland’s Approach Best Preserves the Right to Confrontation.” It was published in the University of Baltimore Law Review. The article analyzes the doctrine of “forfeiture by wrongdoing,” under the Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, following the 2004 Supreme Court decision in Crawford v. Washington. What happens when the Defendant demands live confrontation and objects to hearsay, and the prosecution believes that its witness is unavailable to testify live because the Defendant intimidated or killed the witness? “Forfeiture by wrongdoing” topics include (1) whether it is necessary to conduct an evidentiary hearing; (2) if it is necessary, how strict must the rules of evidence be; and (3) if it is necessary, what level of burden of persuasion is required?
Four out of Four Panelists Agree: U.S. Fiscal Policy Does Not Cheat Future Generations

As part of The George Washington Law Review’s symposium What Does Our Legal System Owe Future Generations? New Analyses of Intergenerational Justice for a New Century, participants discussed the nature of intergenerational obligations as they relate to fiscal policy. The panelists reached consensus that intergenerational justice is not an appropriate lens through which to analyze fiscal issues because there is no obvious starting point from which to build a moral consensus about whether current generations owe anything at all to future generations, much less how to quantify any such obligation. In addition, even pessimistic forecasts indicate that future generations will be much better off than current generations, meaning that we are already being quite generous to our grandchildren. The discussion then turned to possible changes in current fiscal policy. While panelists disagreed about how policies should be changed, there was at least apparent consensus that Social Security is either not a problem or at least not a major part of any long-term fiscal worries. Moreover, the biggest cause of any long-term distress
Money, output and income velocity

This paper attempts to assess empirically the contribution of three structural shocks – monetary, institutional (financial and fiscal), and technological – to output and velocity fluctuations in the national bank era and the post-1973 period. To identify these shocks we impose only long–run restrictions, derived from a monetary growth model. We find that higher money growth increases (decreases) velocity in the first (second) period, depending crucially on the resulting changes in the transactions frequency. Credit–enhancing financial or expansionary fiscal shocks have a permanent positive effect on velocity and a himp–shaped effect on output, whereas technological shocks cause velocity to decrease in the short run and output to move to a permanently higher level.
The Value of Consumer Choice in Products Liability

Tort law has always recognized the principle expressed by the Latin maxim volenti non fit injuria, or “a person is not wronged by that to which he or she consents.” The absence of consent is part of the prima facie case for tort liability, distinguishing tortious behavior from socially acceptable behavior. “For example, consent turns trespass into a dinner party; a battery into a handshake; [or] a theft into a gift.” By removing informed choices from the ambit of liability, tort law allows individuals to structure their relationships in the manner that promotes their welfare as per the requirements of allocative efficiency. More fundamentally, “[t]o have the ability to create and dispel rights and duties [as a matter of informed, voluntary consent] is what it means to be an autonomous moral agent.” The role of consent within tort law derives from the value of individual autonomy or self-determination.
The Limits of Group Rights: Religious Institutions and Religious Minorities in International Law

Scholars and advocates of religious liberty within the United States are beginning to suggest that our constitutional discourse has focused too intently on individual rights and that our attention should now turn to the interests of religious institutions and the notion of church autonomy. The reoriented jurisprudence encouraged by such proposals is not without parallel in other national contexts, including those of Europe. Heeding calls to attend to church autonomy could thus bring the United States into closer harmony with its European counterparts. Placing priority on church autonomy might, however, generate unforeseen obstacles to the exercise of religious liberty. In particular, emphasizing religious institutions may lead to the unequal treatment of individuals and entities of minority religious persuasions. As this Symposium Article's analysis of pertinent cases from the jurisprudence of international tribunals demonstrates, the monolithic conception of religious associations that has emerged from an institutionally oriented approach to religious liberty has resulted in the neglect of the equality of free exercise on the individual level and, concomitantly, disregard for the freedom of religious dissent and sub-group formation. The piece concludes with a suggestion about how to avoid the pitfalls of both the individually and institutionally based approaches.
Influence without Confidence: Upper Chambers and Government Formation

In most parliamentary democracies, governments must maintain the confidence of a single legislative chamber only. But in bicameral parliaments, upper chambers can affect the fortunes of government policy proposals. Recent work shows that parliamentary governments that lack control over the upper house also tend to collapse sooner than those with upper-house majorities. In this article, we show that coalition builders anticipate the importance of upper-chamber status (majority or minority) in making their formation decisions. After controlling for a host of �usual suspect� variables concerning the institutional, ideological, and partisan context of coalition building, and examining 15,590 potential governments in 129 bargaining situations, we found that potential coalitions that control upper-house majorities are significantly more likely to form than are those with upper-house minorities. Our findings are important for students of bicameralism, government formation, institutions, and, perhaps most significantly, for those who study policymaking in parliamentary democracies.
Testing for Selection Bias

This paper uses the control function to develop a framework for testing for selection bias. The idea behind our framework is if the usual assumptions hold for matching or IV estimators, the control function identifies the presence and magnitude of potential selection bias. Averaging this correction term with respect to appropriate weights yields the degree of selection bias for alternative treatment effects of interest. One advantage of our framework is that it motivates when is appropriate to use more efficient estimators of treatment effects, such as those based on least squares or matching. Another advantage of our approach is that it provides an estimate of the magnitude of the selection bias. We also show how this estimate can help when trying to infer program impacts for program participants not covered by LATE estimates.
Layers of Law: The Case of E-Cigarettes

This paper, written for a symposium on "Layers of Law and Social Order," connects the current debate over the regulation of electronic cigarettes with socio-legal scholarship on law, norms, and social control. Although almost every aspect of modern life that is subject to regulation can be seen through the framework ‘layers of law,’ e-cigarettes are distinguished by the rapid emergence of an unusually dense legal and regulatory web. In part, the dense fabric of e-cigarette law and regulation, both within and beyond the US, results from the lack of robust scientific and epidemiological data on the behavioral and health consequences of e-cigarettes, without which regulators can justify a wide range of legal interventions. In the absence of compelling science that supports particular types of policies, regulators in different jurisdictions can, with equal justification, pursue either permissive or prohibitionary regulations. The result is a broad spectrum of policy interventions, a number of which are discussed in the paper.
Threshold-Based Medicare Incentives and Aggressive Patient Reporting in U.S. Hospitals

ABSTRACT: This paper examines regulatory reporting by large urban hospitals in response to financial incentives designed to increase the provision of health care services to certain underserved individuals. We find strong evidence that hospitals have used aggressive reporting to extract substantial unwarranted funding from Medicare's Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) program—a program designed to ease the burden on hospitals treating low income populations. Our evidence suggests that the accuracy of basic performance metrics (in this case, the number of low income patients served) can be unreliable when threshold-driven incentives based on such metrics benefit the reporting party (in this case, large urban hospitals). Similarities between the DSH program and current payment reforms, along with policy implications, are discussed. JEL Classifications: H51; I18.
The New Global Human Community

Abstract Under the impact of globalization, the international community is in the process of evolving into a new community made up of new members, inspired by new principles, and based on new ideas. The first part of this Article aims to justify the existence of this emerging community using four arguments that can be summarized by the Latin terms dignitas, usus, necessitas, and bonum commune. The second part argues that the new global human community has four features: that it comprises persons, not nation-states; that it is universal in nature; that membership in it is compulsory; and that it is incomplete but complementary to other forms of community. These features of the new global human community will determine both the structure of its legal system and its legal authority. Table of Contents I Introduction...... ..564 II. Four Arguments for the Existence of the New Global Human Community.... .568 A. Dignitas 568 B. Usus 571 C. Necessitas. .... .575 D. Bonum Commune 578 III. Main Features of the Global Human Community 580 A. A Political Community 581 B. A Community of Persons, Not of Nation-States 582 C. A Universal Community 583 D. A Community of Compulsory Membership 584 E. An Incomplete Community 585 F. A Complementary Community 586 IV. Conclusion. 587 I. INTRODUCTION For centuries, the ideal of a universal human community living in perpetual peace and happiness was a dream of many philosophers, jurists, and poets. The Stoic cosmopolitan vision,1 the Roman aspiration toward an empire without end (imperium sine aie),2 the Christian ideal of a world united by charity,3 the Dantian longing for a universal monarchy,4 and the Kantian project of world peace,5 among other ideas, have contributed over time to the growing sense that all human beings are members of a single universal community. Ever since the discovery of the New World at the end of the fifteenth century, jurists and theologians alike, most notably members of the School of Salamanca,6 have been interested in the legal and moral implications of the potential development of such a global commonwealth. The collapse of international society after the tragic elimination of nearly sixty million people during the Second World War revealed the weaknesses of the international legal system born at Westphalia in 1648 and confirmed at Utrecht in 1713. The Westphalian international order was based on both the concept of the sovereign nation-state as the only recognized subject of international law and on the idea of war as a legal remedy to resolve conflicts between and among states once diplomatic efforts had been exhausted. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in 1948, was a turning point from Westphalian thought and gave prominence to the goal of establishing a community forged not only by national self-interest but in a "spirit of brotherhood. …
Quantitative measures of operational risk: an application to funds management

Basel II defines operational risk as the risk of direct or indirect loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people or systems or from external events. In the past decade, there have appeared a number of quantitative approaches to measuring this risk, approaches that abstract from market risk and reputational risk. The challenge is to develop operational risk measures in an asset management context where there is only limited information available about the incidence and severity of operational loss events. We survey different approaches to this problem and argue that managing this risk through operational due diligence is a source of alpha in this funds management context.
The Public-Private Security Partnership: Counterterrorism Considerations for Employers in a Post-9/11 World

This Article examines the range of issues employers confront as a result of the federal government's reliance on private sector efforts as part of the war on terror. These include statutes protecting employees' positions while they serve on active duty, private activities by employees related to security concerns (e.g., the Arizona Minutemen, employees carrying concealed weapons), and employee involvement with charities and other organizations labeled as terror-connected. The Article also discusses the role of private security forces hired by employers and policy issues surrounding their cooperation with public security forces.
Mechanistic transmission modeling of COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship demonstrates the importance of aerosol transmission.

Several lines of existing evidence support the possibility of airborne transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, quantitative information on the relative importance of transmission pathways of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains limited. To evaluate the relative importance of multiple transmission routes for SARS-CoV-2, we developed a modeling framework and leveraged detailed information available from the Diamond Princess cruise ship outbreak that occurred in early 2020. We modeled 21,600 scenarios to generate a matrix of solutions across a full range of assumptions for eight unknown or uncertain epidemic and mechanistic transmission factors. A total of 132 model iterations met acceptability criteria (R 2 > 0.95 for modeled vs. reported cumulative daily cases and R 2 > 0 for daily cases). Analyzing only these successful model iterations quantifies the likely contributions of each defined mode of transmission. Mean estimates of the contributions of short-range, long-range, and fomite transmission modes to infected cases across the entire simulation period were 35%, 35%, and 30%, respectively. Mean estimates of the contributions of larger respiratory droplets and smaller respiratory aerosols were 41% and 59%, respectively. Our results demonstrate that aerosol inhalation was likely the dominant contributor to COVID-19 transmission among the passengers, even considering a conservative assumption of high ventilation rates and no air recirculation conditions for the cruise ship. Moreover, close-range and long-range transmission likely contributed similarly to disease progression aboard the ship, with fomite transmission playing a smaller role. The passenger quarantine also affected the importance of each mode, demonstrating the impacts of the interventions.
Descents on quasi-Stirling permutations

Abstract Stirling permutations were introduced by Gessel and Stanley in 1978, who enumerated them by the number of descents to give a combinatorial interpretation of certain polynomials related to Stirling numbers. A natural extension of these permutations are quasi-Stirling permutations, which can be viewed as labeled noncrossing matchings. They were recently introduced by Archer et al., motivated by the fact that the Koganov–Janson correspondence between Stirling permutations and labeled increasing plane trees extends to a bijection between quasi-Stirling permutations and the same set of trees without the increasing restriction. In this paper we prove a conjecture of Archer et al. stating that there are ( n + 1 ) n − 1 quasi-Stirling permutations of size n having n descents. More generally, we give the generating function for quasi-Stirling permutations by the number of descents, expressed as a compositional inverse of the generating function of Eulerian polynomials. We also find the analogue for quasi-Stirling permutations of the main result from Gessel and Stanley's paper. We prove that the distribution of descents on these permutations is asymptotically normal, and that the roots of the corresponding quasi-Stirling polynomials are all real, in analogy to Bona's results for Stirling permutations. Finally, we generalize our results to a one-parameter family of permutations that extends k-Stirling permutations, and we refine them by also keeping track of the number of ascents and the number of plateaus.
Randomized double auctions: gains from trade, trader roles, and price discovery

Experimental double-auction commodity markets are known to exhibit robust convergence to competitive equilibria under stable or cyclical supply and demand conditions, but little is known about their performance in truly random environments. We provide a comprehensive study of double auctions in a stochastic setting where the equilibrium prices, trading volumes and gains from trade are highly variable across periods, and with commodity traders who may buy or sell their goods depending on market conditions and their individual outcomes. We find that performance in this stochastic environment is sensitive to underlying market conditions. Efficiency is higher and convergence to the competitive equilibrium stronger when the potential gains from trade are high and when the equilibrium spans a wide range of quantities, implying a large number of marginal trades. Speculative re-trading is prevalent, especially among those who have little to gain under equilibrium pricing. Those with the largest expected gains typically earn far less than predicted, while those with little or no predicted earnings gain modestly from speculation, leading to some redistribution of gains from high to low expected earners. Excessive trading volumes are associated with negative efficiencies in markets with low gains from trade, but not in the high-gains markets, where zero-sum trading and re-trading appear to enforce efficiency and near-equilibrium pricing. Buyers earn more relative to their competitive equilibrium benchmark than sellers do. Introducing trader specialization leads to fewer trading errors and higher market efficiency, but it does not eliminate zero-sum trading and re-trading.
One Institution's evaluation of family medicine residency applicant data for academic predictors of success.

Family Medicine residencies are navigating recruitment in a changing environment. The consolidation of accreditation for allopathic and osteopathic programs, the high volume of applicants, and the forthcoming transition of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 1 to pass/fail reporting all contribute. This retrospective cohort study evaluated which components of a student’s academic history best predict readiness for residency. In 2020, we analyzed applicant data and initial residency data for program graduates at a single residency program between 2013 and 2020. This included undergraduate education characteristics, medical school academic performance, medical school academic problems (including professionalism), STEP exams, location of medical school, and assessments during the first 6 months of residency. Of 110 matriculating residents, assessment data was available for 97 (88%). Pre-matriculation USMLE data had a positive correlation with initial American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) in-training exams. Pre-matriculation exam data did not have a positive correlation with resident assessment across any of the six Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competency domains. A defined cohort of residents with a history of academic struggles during medical school or failure on a USMLE exam performed statistically similarly to residents with no such history on assessments across the six ACGME competency domains. Applicants with a history of academic problems perform similarly in the clinical environment to those without. While a positive correlation between pre-matriculation exams and the ABFM in-training exam was found, this did not extend to clinical assessments across the ACGME competency domains.
Coupling between fast and slow oscillator circuits in Cancer borealis is temperature-compensated

Coupled oscillatory circuits are ubiquitous in nervous systems. Given that most biological processes are temperature-sensitive, it is remarkable that the neuronal circuits of poikilothermic animals can maintain coupling across a wide range of temperatures. Within the stomatogastric ganglion (STG) of the crab, Cancer borealis, the fast pyloric rhythm (~1 Hz) and the slow gastric mill rhythm (~0.1 Hz) are precisely coordinated at ~11°C such that there is an integer number of pyloric cycles per gastric mill cycle (integer coupling). Upon increasing temperature from 7°C to 23°C, both oscillators showed similar temperature-dependent increases in cycle frequency, and integer coupling between the circuits was conserved. Thus, although both rhythms show temperature-dependent changes in rhythm frequency, the processes that couple these circuits maintain their coordination over a wide range of temperatures. Such robustness to temperature changes could be part of a toolbox of processes that enables neural circuits to maintain function despite global perturbations.
Online Proximal-ADMM for Time-Varying Constrained Convex Optimization

This paper considers a convex optimization problem with cost and constraints that evolve over time. The function to be minimized is strongly convex and possibly non-differentiable, and variables are coupled through linear constraints. In this setting, the paper proposes an online algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), to track the optimal solution trajectory of the time-varying problem; in particular, the proposed algorithm consists of a primal proximal gradient descent step and an appropriately perturbed dual ascent step. The paper derives tracking results, asymptotic bounds, and linear convergence results.The proposed algorithm is then specialized to a multi-area power grid optimization problem, and our numerical results verify the desired properties.
Activities of daily living with bionic arm improved by combination training and latching filter in prosthesis control comparison.

Advanced prostheses can restore function and improve quality of life for individuals with amputations. Unfortunately, most commercial control strategies do not fully utilize the rich control information from residual nerves and musculature. Continuous decoders can provide more intuitive prosthesis control using multi-channel neural or electromyographic recordings. Three components influence continuous decoder performance: the data used to train the algorithm, the algorithm, and smoothing filters on the algorithm’s output. Individual groups often focus on a single decoder, so very few studies compare different decoders using otherwise similar experimental conditions. We completed a two-phase, head-to-head comparison of 12 continuous decoders using activities of daily living. In phase one, we compared two training types and a smoothing filter with three algorithms (modified Kalman filter, multi-layer perceptron, and convolutional neural network) in a clothespin relocation task. We compared training types that included only individual digit and wrist movements vs. combination movements (e.g., simultaneous grasp and wrist flexion). We also compared raw vs. nonlinearly smoothed algorithm outputs. In phase two, we compared the three algorithms in fragile egg, zipping, pouring, and folding tasks using the combination training and smoothing found beneficial in phase one. In both phases, we collected objective, performance-based (e.g., success rate), and subjective, user-focused (e.g., preference) measures. Phase one showed that combination training improved prosthesis control accuracy and speed, and that the nonlinear smoothing improved accuracy but generally reduced speed. Phase one importantly showed simultaneous movements were used in the task, and that the modified Kalman filter and multi-layer perceptron predicted more simultaneous movements than the convolutional neural network. In phase two, user-focused metrics favored the convolutional neural network and modified Kalman filter, whereas performance-based metrics were generally similar among all algorithms. These results confirm that state-of-the-art algorithms, whether linear or nonlinear in nature, functionally benefit from training on more complex data and from output smoothing. These studies will be used to select a decoder for a long-term take-home trial with implanted neuromyoelectric devices. Overall, clinical considerations may favor the mKF as it is similar in performance, faster to train, and computationally less expensive than neural networks.
Self-interaction correction in water–ion clusters

We study the importance of self-interaction errors in density functional approximations for various water–ion clusters. We have employed the Fermi–Lowdin orbital self-interaction correction (FLOSIC) method in conjunction with the local spin-density approximation, Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE) generalized gradient approximation (GGA), and strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) meta-GGA to describe binding energies of hydrogen-bonded water–ion clusters, i.e., water–hydronium, water–hydroxide, water–halide, and non-hydrogen-bonded water–alkali clusters. In the hydrogen-bonded water–ion clusters, the building blocks are linked by hydrogen atoms, although the links are much stronger and longer-ranged than the normal hydrogen bonds between water molecules because the monopole on the ion interacts with both permanent and induced dipoles on the water molecules. We find that self-interaction errors overbind the hydrogen-bonded water–ion clusters and that FLOSIC reduces the error and brings the binding energies into closer agreement with higher-level calculations. The non-hydrogen-bonded water–alkali clusters are not significantly affected by self-interaction errors. Self-interaction corrected PBE predicts the lowest mean unsigned error in binding energies (≤50 meV/H2O) for hydrogen-bonded water–ion clusters. Self-interaction errors are also largely dependent on the cluster size, and FLOSIC does not accurately capture the subtle variation in all clusters, indicating the need for further refinement.
Studying galaxy cluster morphological metrics with mock-X

Dynamically relaxed galaxy clusters have long played a role in galaxy cluster studies because it is thought their properties can be reconstructed more precisely and with less systematics. As relaxed clusters are desirable, there exist a plethora of criteria for classifying a galaxy cluster as relaxed. In this work, we examine $9$ commonly used observational and theoretical morphological metrics extracted from $54,000$ Mock-X synthetic X-ray images of galaxy clusters taken from the IllustrisTNG, BAHAMAS and MACSIS simulation suites. We find that the simulated criteria distributions are in reasonable agreement with the observed distributions. Many criteria distributions evolve as a function of redshift, cluster mass, numerical resolution and subgrid physics, limiting the effectiveness of a single relaxation threshold value. All criteria are positively correlated with each other, however, the strength of the correlation is sensitive to redshift, mass and numerical choices. Driven by the intrinsic scatter inherent to all morphological metrics and the arbitrary nature of relaxation threshold values, we find the consistency of relaxed subsets defined by the different metrics to be relatively poor. Therefore, the use of relaxed cluster subsets introduces significant selection effects that are non-trivial to resolve.
Heterogeneous expectations, indeterminacy, and postwar US business cycles

Abstract This paper estimates a New Keynesian model extended to include heterogeneous expectations: consumers and firms form either rational or boundedly-rational expectations. The inclusion of heterogeneous expectations alters the determinacy properties of the model, with the details of expectations potentially becoming more influential than the Taylor principle for equilibrium stability. The model is estimated with Bayesian techniques, using rolling windows and allowing the parameters to fall both in the determinacy and indeterminacy regions. The estimates reveal large shares of agents who depart from rational expectations. Heterogeneous expectations are decisively preferred by the data everywhere in the sample. Finally, the paper revisits the narrative that sees postwar US macroeconomic data as consistent with indeterminacy in the pre-1979 sample, with a switch to determinacy starting in the early 1980s, and it shows that it is overall robust to inclusion of heterogeneous expectations.
Cascade Submodular Maximization: Question Selection and Sequencing in Online Personality Quiz

Personality quiz is a powerful tool that enables costumer segmentation by actively asking them questions, and marketers are using it as an effective method of generating leads and increasing e‐commerce sales. We study the problem of how to select and sequence a group of quiz questions so as to optimize the quality of customer segmentation. We assume that the customer will sequentially scan the list of questions. After reading a question, the customer makes two, possibly correlated, random decisions: (i) she first decides whether to answer this question or not, and then (ii) decides whether to continue reading the next question or not. We further assume that the utility of questions that have been answered can be captured by a monotone and submodular function. In general, our problem falls into the category of non‐adaptive active learning‐based customer profiling. Note that under our model, the probability of a question being answered depends on the location of that question, as well as the set of other questions placed ahead of that question, this makes our problem fundamentally different from existing studies on submodular optimization. We develop a series of question selection and sequencing strategies with provable performance bound. Although we focus on the application of quiz design in this study, our results apply to a broad range of applications, including assortment optimization with position bias effect.
An electrical method of measuring non-electrolyte permeability

A rapid procedure based on that of Smyth & Wright (1966) is described for obtaining a measure of the permeability of rabbit gall-bladder epithelium to non-electrolytes. The underlying principles are that concentration gradients of permeant molecules produce lower rates of osmotic flow across a membrane than does the same gradient of an impermeant molecule, and that streaming potentials in the gall-bladder are directly proportional to the flow rate. Hence reflexion coefficients (σ’s) were calculated as the ratio of the streaming potential produced by a 0T m gradient of the test solute, to the streaming potential produced by a 0.1 m gradient of an impermeant reference solute, sucrose. The method yields results in agreement with those obtained in the gall-bladder by a zero-flow procedure. In general, the patterns of permeation derived are similar to those obtained in other tissues by the same procedure, by other osmotic procedures, or by direct chemical or tracer methods. The advantages of the method are that (a) large numbers of σ’s can be determined in one experiment with an average standard deviation of ± 8 %; and (b) the minimum elapsed time between the preparation of a solution and the determination of σ is about 90 s, so that σ’s may be obtained for some non-electrolytes subject to gradual chemical transformation in aqueous solution, such as aldehydes. The principles underlying osmotic methods of measuring permeability, and the effects of unstirred layers, are discussed.
Probabilistic error estimation for non-intrusive reduced models learned from data of systems governed by linear parabolic partial differential equations

This work derives a residual-based a posteriori error estimator for reduced models learned with non-intrusive model reduction from data of high-dimensional systems governed by linear parabolic partial differential equations with control inputs. It is shown that quantities that are necessary for the error estimator can be either obtained exactly as the solutions of least-squares problems in a non-intrusive way from data such as initial conditions, control inputs, and high-dimensional solution trajectories or bounded in a probabilistic sense. The computational procedure follows an offline/online decomposition. In the offline (training) phase, the high-dimensional system is judiciously solved in a black-box fashion to generate data and to set up the error estimator. In the online phase, the estimator is used to bound the error of the reduced-model predictions for new initial conditions and new control inputs without recourse to the high-dimensional system. Numerical results demonstrate the workflow of the proposed approach from data to reduced models to certified predictions.
Maximum Coverage in the Data Stream Model: Parameterized and Generalized.

We present algorithms for the Max Coverage and Max Unique Coverage problems in the data stream model. The input to both problems are m subsets of a universe of size n and a value k ∈ [m]. In Max Coverage, the problem is to find a collection of at most k sets such that the number of elements covered by at least one set is maximized. In Max Unique Coverage, the problem is to find a collection of at most k sets such that the number of elements covered by exactly one set is maximized. These problems are closely related to a range of graph problems including matching, partial vertex cover, and capacitated maximum cut. In the data stream model, we assume k is given and the sets are revealed online. Our goal is to design single-pass algorithms that use space that is sublinear in the input size. Our main algorithmic results are: - If the sets have size at most d, there exist single-pass algorithms using O(d^{d+1} k^d) space that solve both problems exactly. This is optimal up to polylogarithmic factors for constant d. - If each element appears in at most r sets, we present single pass algorithms using O(k² r/e³) space that return a 1+e approximation in the case of Max Coverage. We also present a single-pass algorithm using slightly more memory, i.e., O(k³ r/e⁴) space, that 1+e approximates Max Unique Coverage. In contrast to the above results, when d and r are arbitrary, any constant pass 1+e approximation algorithm for either problem requires Ω(e^{-2}m) space but a single pass O(e^{-2}mk) space algorithm exists. In fact any constant-pass algorithm with an approximation better than e/(e-1) and e^{1-1/k} for Max Coverage and Max Unique Coverage respectively requires Ω(m/k²) space when d and r are unrestricted. En route, we also obtain an algorithm for a parameterized version of the streaming Set Cover problem.