cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Viscous effects on the Rayleigh-Taylor instability with background temperature gradient

The growth rate of the compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability is studied in the presence of a background temperature gradient, Θ, using a normal mode analysis. The effect of Θ variation is examined for three interface types corresponding to the combinations of the viscous properties of the fluids (inviscid-inviscid, viscous-viscous, and viscous-inviscid) at different Atwood numbers, At, and when at least one of the fluids' viscosity is non-zero, as a function of the Grashof number. For the general case, the resulting ordinary differential equations are solved numerically; however, dispersion relations for the growth rate are presented for several limiting cases. An analytical solution is found for the inviscid-inviscid interface and the corresponding dispersion equation for the growth rate is obtained in the limit of large Θ. For the viscous-inviscid case, a dispersion relation is derived in the incompressible limit and Θ = 0. Compared to Θ = 0 case, the role of Θ < 0 (hotter light fluid) is destabilizi...
The Patient-Physician Relationship in an Era of Scarce Resources: Is There a Duty to Treat?

This Article examines the three major areas of common law that govern the patient-physician relationship: contract law, tort law, and fiduciary law. It explores the definition of the patient-physician relationship within each doctrine and the extent to which physicians must furnish care to patients regardless of resource constraints. After concluding that the common law cannot ensure that individual patients receive access to needed health care services, the Article explores how the law might be changed to achieve this result.
Compact mathematical programs For DEC-MDPs With structured agent interactions

To deal with the prohibitive complexity of calculating policies in Decentralized MDPs, researchers have proposed models that exploit structured agent interactions. Settings where most agent actions are independent except for few actions that affect the transitions and/or rewards of other agents can be modeled using Event-Driven Interactions with Complex Rewards (EDI-CR). Finding the optimal joint policy can be formulated as an optimization problem. However, existing formulations are too verbose and/or lack optimality guarantees. We propose a compact Mixed Integer Linear Program formulation of EDI-CR instances. The key insight is that most action sequences of a group of agents have the same effect on a given agent. This allows us to treat these sequences similarly and use fewer variables. Experiments show that our formulation is more compact and leads to faster solution times and better solutions than existing formulations.
The Making and Unmaking of Patent Ownership: Technicalities, Materialities, and Subjectivities

Feminist sociolegal studies have recently taken up the technicalities of doctrines, documents, and regulations to better understand the law. In an affiliated move, feminist science studies turned to the materialities of theories, practices, and nonhuman organisms to make critical sense of science. These methodological turns focus not on gender, per se, but on precise mechanisms of law and science that structure, reinforce, and reconfigure power and inequality. Drawing on these methodological approaches, this article attends to the technicalities and materialities of patent ownership and benefit sharing in South Africa in regards to San peoples’ struggles over the patenting of the Hoodia gordonii plant. An examination of patent documents, benefit-sharing agreements, legislative appendixes, and the biology of plants generates an understanding of how patent ownership, rather than being natural or value-neutral, is a historical and sociocultural process shaping, refashioning, and being inscribed across multiple scales of nation-state jurisdictions, divergent ways of knowing, and biochemical orderings of plants.
Multilevel Diversity Coding With Regeneration

Digital contents distributed storage systems may have different reliability and access delay requirements, and erasure codes with different strengths can provide the best storage efficiency in these systems. At the same time, in such large-scale distributed storage systems, nodes fail on a regular basis, and the contents stored on them need to be regenerated from the data downloaded from the remaining nodes. The efficiency of this repair process is an important factor that affects the overall quality of service. In this paper, we formulate the problem of multilevel diversity coding with regeneration to address these considerations, for which the storage versus repair-bandwidth tradeoff is investigated. We show that the extreme point on the optimal tradeoff curve that corresponds to the minimum possible storage can be achieved by a simple coding scheme, in which contents with different reliability requirements are encoded separately with individual regenerating codes without any mixing. On the other hand, we establish the complete storage-repair-bandwidth tradeoff for the case of four storage nodes, which reveals that codes mixing different contents can, in general, strictly improve the optimal tradeoff over the separate-coding solution.
On resolvable Steiner 2-designs and maximal arcs in projective planes

A combinatorial characterization of resolvable Steiner 2-(v, k, 1) designs embeddable as maximal arcs in a projective plane of order $$(v-k)/(k-1)$$(v-k)/(k-1) is proved, and a generalization of a conjecture by Andries Brouwer (Geometries and groups, Springer, Heidelberg, 1981) is formulated.
A dividing policy: making rules about embryo research.

The 1979 birth of Louise Brown through in vitro fertilization (IVF) opened up a new world of previously unencountered complexities in ethics, law, and policy. IVF technology and the cryopreservation of embryos have introduced ethical quandaries with legal implications that physicians and reproductive biologists have been forced to face on a case by case basis as they arise. At the same time, judges, federal and state legislators, and policymakers who are not trained in reproductive sciences are scrutinizing their actions.
Textbook non-malleable commitments

We present a new non-malleable commitment protocol. Our protocol has the following features: itemize The protocol has only three rounds of interaction. Pass (TCC 2013) showed an impossibility result for a two-round non-malleable commitment scheme w.r.t. a black-box reduction to any ``standard" intractability reduction. Thus, this resolves the round complexity of non-malleable commitment at least w.r.t. black-box security reductions. Our construction is secure as per the standard notion of non-malleability w.r.t. commitment. Our protocol is truly efficient. In our basic protocol, the entire computation of the committer is dominated by just three invocations of a non-interactive statically binding commitment scheme, while, the receiver computation (in the commitment stage) is limited to just sampling a random string. Unlike many previous works, we directly construct a protocol for large tags and hence avoid any non-malleability amplification steps. Our protocol is based on a black-box use of any non-interactive statistically binding commitment scheme. Such schemes, in turn, can be based on any one-to-one one-way function (or any one-way function at the cost of an extra initialization round). Previously, the best known black-box construction of non-malleable commitments required a larger (constant) number of rounds. Our construction is public-coin and makes use of only black-box simulation. Prior to our work, no public-coin constant round non-malleable commitment schemes were known based on black-box simulation. itemize Our techniques depart significantly from the techniques used previously to construct non-malleable commitment schemes. As a main technical tool, we rely on non-malleable codes in the split state model. Our proofs of security are purely combinatorial in nature. In addition, we also present a simple construction of constant round non-malleable commitments from any one-way function. While this result is not new, the main feature is its simplicity compared to any previous construction of non-malleable commitments (in any number of rounds). We believe the construction is simple enough to be covered in a graduate level course on cryptography. The construction uses non-malleable codes in the split state model in a black-box way.
Grade Prediction with Course and Student Specific Models

The accurate estimation of students’ grades in future courses is important as it can inform the selection of next term’s courses and create personalized degree pathways to facilitate successful and timely graduation. This paper presents future-course grade predictions methods based on sparse linear models and low-rank matrix factorizations that are specific to each course or student-course tuple. These methods identify the predictive subsets of prior courses on a course-by-course basis and better address problems associated with the not-missing-at-random nature of the student-course historical grade data. The methods were evaluated on a dataset obtained from the University of Minnesota. This evaluation showed that the course specific models outperformed various competing schemes with the best performing scheme achieving a RMSE across the different courses of 0.632 vs 0.661 for the best competing method.
Infections in HIV-Infected Patients With Malignancy.

The 15th year of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic is upon us. During this time we have seen the onslaught of secondary infections that has made HIV the number one killer of persons 25 to 44 years of age in the United States? Within the United States alone there are an estimated 1 million HIV-positive patients, and a quarter of these have acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).4, With the increasing prevalence of HIV, better combination treatment regimens, and preventive therapy for opportunistic infections, physicians will be caring for an ever increasing number of survivors with an ever dwindling immune function. Increasing this burden is the unfortunate patient who also develops cancer concurrent with HIV infection. The combined risk factors of these diseases make a “worst case scenario” in evaluation and treatment of infections.
Cyclic Prefix Adaptation with Constant Overall Symbol Time for DFT-Spread-OFDM and OFDM

For DFT-spread-OFDM or OFDM, if the delay spread varies in a wide range and the symbol duration is relatively short, adapting the cyclic prefix (CP) duration rather than using a fixed one may significantly improve the spectral efficiency while preventing inter-symbol interference (ISI). In practice, it may be beneficial to have a constant overall DFT-spread-OFDM/OFDM symbol time, which is the sum of the duration of a CP and the duration of a data portion. We propose to adapt the CP duration to the delay spread without changing the overall symbol time for DFT-spread-OFDM or OFDM, and address implementation challenges. In particular, we propose changing the clocking rate of ADC and DAC or using a Farrow filter to reduce the computational complexity of arbitrary-size DFT/IDFT resulting from the adaptation.
Looking Beyond FDA Warning Letters to Explore Unforeseen Trouble Spots in eDTCA: A Response to Recent Commentaries.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who responded to my study entitled: “Trouble Spots in Online Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Promotion: A Content Analysis of FDA Warning Letters.”1 Scholars from several different fields, including medical science, pharmacy, business, and communication have all participated in the discussion of current issues and the future of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA), bringing multifaceted viewpoints to bear on prescription drug marketing based on their own disciplines. It was a high honor and a truly gratifying experience to receive such valuable comments from colleagues in my own field, as well as scholars who have dedicated their research in DTCA of prescription drugs in other fields. I appreciate their insights into the research on online DTCA of prescription drugs, which enabled me to broaden my perspective on an area of prescription drug promotions that could not only influence consumers, but also other stakeholders, such as policy-makers, clinicians, and marketers. These commentaries expand on ideas of current regulatory issues regarding online promotions, and discuss further unforeseen concerns that might arise due to emerging media options consumers will have in the future—all of which warrant more research and close scholarly attention.
Marketing Plan Template

THERE IS NO ONE SINGLE FORMAT for a marketing plan. Some marketing plans are written documents and some are presentations. Some plans are lengthy and detailed, while others are short and concise. Some marketing plans are never formally written down; they are scribbled on a napkin in a restaurant.
OptMark: A Toolkit for Benchmarking Query Optimizers

Query optimizers have long been considered as among the most complex components of a database engine, while the assessment of an optimizer's quality remains a challenging task. Indeed, existing performance benchmarks for database engines (like TPC benchmarks) produce a performance assessment of the query runtime system rather than its query optimizer. To address this challenge, this paper introduces OptMark, a toolkit for evaluating the quality of a query optimizer. OptMark is designed to offer a number of desirable properties. First, it decouples the quality of an optimizer from the quality of its underlying execution engine. Second it evaluates independently both the effectiveness of an optimizer (i.e., quality of the chosen plans) and its efficiency (i.e., optimization time). OptMark includes also a generic benchmarking toolkit that is minimum invasive to the DBMS that wishes to use it. Any DBMS can provide a system-specific implementation of a simple API that allows OptMark to run and generate benchmark scores for the specific system. This paper discusses the metrics we propose for evaluating an optimizer's quality, the benchmark's design and the toolkit's API and functionality. We have implemented OptMark on the open-source MySQL engine as well as two commercial database systems. Using these implementations we are able to assess the quality of the optimizers on these three systems based on the TPC-DS benchmark queries.
Network-complement transitions, symmetries, and cluster synchronization

Synchronization in networks of coupled oscillators is known to be largely determined by the spectral and symmetry properties of the interaction network. Here, we leverage this relation to study a class of networks for which the threshold coupling strength for global synchronization is the lowest among all networks with the same number of nodes and links. These networks, defined as being uniform, complete, and multi-partite (UCM), appear at each of an infinite sequence of network-complement transitions in a larger class of networks characterized by having near-optimal thresholds for global synchronization. We show that the distinct symmetry structure of the UCM networks, which by design are optimized for global synchronizability, often leads to formation of clusters of synchronous oscillators, and that such states can coexist with the state of global synchronization.
Liquidity vs. Efficiency in Liberalized International Financial Markets: A Warning to Developing Economies

Until 1973 the postwar international payments system was, in large measure, shaped by Keynes’s thesis that flexible exchange rates and free international capital mobility are incompatible with global full employment and rapid economic growth in an era of multilateral free trade (Felix, 1997–8). This resulted in a stable international monetary system that permitted the global economy to experience unparalleled economic growth and prosperity despite widespread capital controls and international financial market regulations. Since 1973, the financial system has grown progressively more fragile with recurrent and increasingly stressful international debt and currency liquidity crises threatening the stability of the global economy.
Avionics system integration for the MH-53J helicopter

The functions developed for the MH-53J helicopter are described, following a brief introduction of the Pave Low III system. In addition, other functions typically found in mission computers, but not in the MH-53J, are discussed. Future concepts for mission computer application are discussed. It is pointed out that the mission computer of a typical airborne platform transforms a group of independent avionic equipment into an integrated system. A centralized display system provides a common operator interface for all equipment, easing operation of the system and decluttering the instrument panel. Customized functions may be installed as required for a particular aircraft, allowing standardization of the other avionic equipment. As research progresses, the capabilities provided by the mission computer will continue to ease pilot workload and enhance the effectiveness of the avionic suite. >
Prediction Accuracy Measures for a Nonlinear Model and for Right-Censored Time-to-Event Data.

This article develops a pair of new prediction summary measures for a nonlinear prediction function with right-censored time-to-event data. The first measure, defined as the proportion of explained...
Sost, independent of the non-coding enhancer ECR5, is required for bone mechanoadaptation

Sclerostin (Sost) is a negative regulator of bone formation that acts upon the Wnt signaling pathway. Sost is mechanically regulated at both mRNA and protein level such that loading represses and unloading enhances Sost expression, in osteocytes and in circulation. The non-coding evolutionarily conserved enhancer ECR5 has been previously reported as a transcriptional regulatory element required for modulating Sost expression in osteocytes. Here we explored the mechanisms by which ECR5, or several other putative transcriptional enhancers regulate Sost expression, in response to mechanical stimulation. We found that in vivo ulna loading is equally osteoanabolic in wildtype and Sost-/- mice, although Sost is required for proper distribution of load-induced bone formation to regions of high strain. Using Luciferase reporters carrying the ECR5 non-coding enhancer and heterologous or homologous hSOST promoters, we found that ECR5 is mechanosensitive in vitro and that ECR5-driven Luciferase activity decreases in osteoblasts exposed to oscillatory fluid flow. Yet, ECR5-/- mice showed similar magnitude of load-induced bone formation and similar periosteal distribution of bone formation to high-strain regions compared to wildtype mice. Further, we found that in contrast to Sost-/- mice, which are resistant to disuse-induced bone loss, ECR5-/- mice lose bone upon unloading to a degree similar to wildtype control mice. ECR5 deletion did not abrogate positive effects of unloading on Sost, suggesting that additional transcriptional regulators and regulatory elements contribute to load-induced regulation of Sost.
Tungsten Nanowire Metamaterials as Selective Solar Thermal Absorbers by Excitation of Magnetic Polaritons

The present study focuses on nanowire based metamaterials with excitation of magnetic polariton (MP) as selective solar absorbers. Finite-difference time-domain simulation is employed for numerically designing a broadband solar absorber made of lossy tungsten nanowires which exhibit spectral selectivity due to the excitation of MP. An inductor-capacitor circuit model of the nanowire array is developed in order to predict the resonance wavelengths of the MP harmonic modes. The effects of geometric parameters such as nanowire diameter, height, and array period are investigated and understood on tuning the magnetic polariton resonance and the resulting optical and radiative properties. In addition, the independence of incidence angles is demonstrated, which illustrates the potential applicability of the nanowire-based metamaterial as a high-efficiency wide-angle selective solar absorber. The results will facilitate the design of novel low-cost and high-efficiency materials for enhancing solar thermal energy harvesting and conversion.Copyright © 2016 by ASME
Partners, Not Debtors: The External Liabilities of Emerging Market Economies

Abstract This paper investigates the change in the composition of the liabilities of emerging market countries from primarily debt (bonds, bank loans) to equity (foreign direct investment, portfolio) in the decades preceding the global financial crisis. We examine the determinants of equity and debt liabilities on external balance sheets in a sample of 21 emerging market economies and 20 advanced economies over the period of 1981–2013. We include a new measure of domestic financial development that allows us to distinguish between financial institutions and financial markets. Our results show that countries with higher economic growth rates have larger amounts of equity liabilities. The development of domestic financial markets is also linked to an increase in equity liabilities, and in particular, portfolio equity. In addition, larger foreign exchange reserves are associated with larger amounts of portfolio equity. FDI liabilities are more common when domestic financial institutions are not well developed
Organizations coupled with communities: the strategic effects on firms engaged in community-coupled open innovation

The study of open innovation has primarily focused on the benefits and consequences of inbound or outbound innovation exchange between firms; however, increasingly firms may be engaged in simultaneous inbound and outbound exchange forming a “coupled” approach. Furthermore, firms increasingly collaborate with communities as sources of innovation, but how does such “community-coupled open innovation” affect a firm? Through an in-depth study of 250 firms collaborating with a leading open source software community, we show how this approach incorporates not only the exchange of intellectual property but also the provision of help. We find that while community-coupled open innovation does not affect productivity, it can expand a firm’s social ties, lead to a more conservative strategic posture, and shift its innovation focus. Implications for our theories of open innovation in the context of communities are discussed.
Psychological conditions in adults with diabetes

Type 1 (T1D) and Type 2 diabetes (T2D) represent a demanding set of biopsychosocial challenges for patients and their families, whether the age of disease onset occurs in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. Psychological conditions, defined as syndromes, disorders, and diabetes-specific psychological issues affect a larger proportion of individuals with T1D and T2D compared to the general population. In this review, we summarize the prevalence, impact and psychological treatments associated with the primary categories of psychological conditions that affect adults with T1D and T2D: depressive symptoms and syndromes, anxiety disorders, eating behaviors and disorders and serious mental illness. The implications of the literature for psychologists are discussed, and priorities for future research to advance the science of psychological conditions for adults with T1D and T2D are identified. (PsycINFO Database Record
Observed Periodicity Related to the Four-Strand Burau Representation

A long-standing open problem is to determine for which values of n the Burau representation Ψn of the braid group Bn is faithful. Following the work of Moody, Long–Paton, and Bigelow, the remaining open case is n = 4. One criterion states that Ψn is unfaithful if and only if there exists a pair of arcs in the n-punctured disk Dn such that a certain associated polynomial is zero. In this article, we use a computer search to show that there is no such arc-pair in D4 with 2000 or fewer intersections, thus certifying the faithfulness of Ψ4 up to this point. We also investigate the structure of the set of arc-pair polynomials, observing a striking periodicity that holds between those that are, in some sense, “closest” to zero. This is the first instance known to the authors of a deeper analysis of this polynomial set.
Modeling and Control of Liquid Crystal Imager

In this paper, we present some ideas regarding the modeling and the control aspects of liquid crystal-based imaging systems. We address the challenges of building and deploying a liquid crystal imager by: a) considering the dynamics and control aspects, such as pointing and wavefront error control of large lightweight apertures synthesized by liquid crystal elements, and b) conducting experimental characterization of a prototype electrically-switchable liquid crystal lens.
Identifying Contextual and Emotional Factors to Explore Weight Disparities between Obese Black and White Women.

Background: Obese black women enrolled in weight loss interventions experience 50% less weight reduction than obese white women. This suggests that current weight loss strategies may increase health disparities. Objective: We evaluated the feasibility of identifying daily contextual factors that may influence obesity. Methods: In-home interviews with 16 obese (body mass index ≥ 30) black and white urban poor women were performed. For 14 days, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) was used to capture emotion and social interactions every other day, and day reconstruction method surveys were used the following day to reconstruct the context of the prior day’s EMA. Results: Factors included percentage of participants without weight scales (43.8%) or fitness equipment (68.8%) in the home and exposed to food at work (55.6%). The most frequently reported location, activity, and emotion were home (19.4 ± 8.53), working (7.1 ± 8.80), and happy (6.9 ± 10.03), respectively. Conclusion: Identifying individual contexts may lead to valuable insights about obesogenic behaviors and new interventions to improve weight management.
Browsix: Bridging the Gap Between Unix and the Browser

Applications written to run on conventional operating systems typically depend on OS abstractions like processes, pipes, signals, sockets, and a shared file system. Porting these applications to the web currently requires extensive rewriting or hosting significant portions of code server-side because browsers present a nontraditional runtime environment that lacks OS functionality.This paper presents Browsix, a framework that bridges the considerable gap between conventional operating systems and the browser, enabling unmodified programs expecting a Unix-like environment to run directly in the browser. Browsix comprises two core parts: (1) a JavaScript-only system that makes core Unix features (including pipes, concurrent processes, signals, sockets, and a shared file system) available to web applications; and (2) extended JavaScript runtimes for C, C++, Go, and Node.js that support running programs written in these languages as processes in the browser. Browsix supports running a POSIX shell, making it straightforward to connect applications together via pipes.We illustrate Browsix's capabilities via case studies that demonstrate how it eases porting legacy applications to the browser and enables new functionality. We demonstrate a Browsix-enabled LaTeX editor that operates by executing unmodified versions of pdfLaTeX and BibTeX. This browser-only LaTeX editor can render documents in seconds, making it fast enough to be practical. We further demonstrate how Browsix lets us port a client-server application to run entirely in the browser for disconnected operation. Creating these applications required less than 50 lines of glue code and no code modifications, demonstrating how easily Browsix can be used to build sophisticated web applications from existing parts without modification.
Insulated Neighborhoods: Structural and Functional Units of Mammalian Gene Control

Understanding how transcriptional enhancers control over 20,000 protein-coding genes to maintain cell-type-specific gene expression programs in all human cells is a fundamental challenge in regulatory biology. Recent studies suggest that gene regulatory elements and their target genes generally occur within insulated neighborhoods, which are chromosomal loop structures formed by the interaction of two DNA sites bound by the CTCF protein and occupied by the cohesin complex. Here, we review evidence that insulated neighborhoods provide for specific enhancer-gene interactions, are essential for both normal gene activation and repression, form a chromosome scaffold that is largely preserved throughout development, and are perturbed by genetic and epigenetic factors in disease. Insulated neighborhoods are a powerful paradigm for gene control that provides new insights into development and disease.
Optics Goes to the Movies

The Museum of Optics at the University of Arizona has acquired a number of movies that provide interesting windows into the history of optical design and fabrication. Portions of several of these movies will be shown.
Turbulence as a Problem in Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics

The transitional and well-developed regimes of turbulent shear flows exhibit a variety of remarkable scaling laws that are only now beginning to be systematically studied and understood. In the first part of this article, we summarize recent progress in understanding the friction factor of turbulent flows in rough pipes and quasi-two-dimensional soap films, showing how the data obey a two-parameter scaling law known as roughness-induced criticality, and exhibit power-law scaling of friction factor with Reynolds number that depends on the precise form of the nature of the turbulent cascade. These results hint at a non-equilibrium fluctuation-dissipation relation that applies to turbulent flows. The second part of this article concerns the lifetime statistics in smooth pipes around the transition, showing how the remarkable super-exponential scaling with Reynolds number reflects deep connections between large deviation theory, extreme value statistics, directed percolation and the onset of coexistence in predator-prey ecosystems. Both these phenomena reflect the way in which turbulence can be fruitfully approached as a problem in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.
Integral-moment analysis of the BATSE gamma-ray burst intensity distribution

We have applied the technique of integral-moment analysis to the intensity distribution of the first 260 gamma-ray bursts observed by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. This technique provides direct measurement of properties such as the mean, variance, and skewness of the convolved luminosity-number density distribution, as well as associated uncertainties. Using this method, one obtains insight into the nature of the source distributions unavailable through computation of traditional single parameters such as V/V(sub max)). If the luminosity function of the gamma-ray bursts is strongly peaked, giving bursts only a narrow range of luminosities, these results are then direct probes of the radial distribution of sources, regardless of whether the bursts are a local phenomenon, are distributed in a galactic halo, or are at cosmological distances. Accordingly, an integral-moment analysis of the intensity distribution of the gamma-ray bursts provides for the most complete analytic description of the source distribution available from the data, and offers the most comprehensive test of the compatibility of a given hypothesized distribution with observation.
On Likely Solutions of the Stable Matching Problem with Unequal Numbers of Men and Women

Following up a recent work by Ashlagi, Kanoria, and Leshno, we study a stable matching problem with unequal side sizes, n “men” and N > n “women,” whose preferences for a partner are uniformly rand...
Efficiently Promoting Product Online Outcome: An Iterative Rating Attack Utilizing Product and Market Property

The prosperity of online rating system makes it a popular place for malicious vendors to mislead public’s online decisions, whereas the security related studies are lagging behind. In this paper, we develop a quantile regression model to investigate influential factors on online user choices and reveal that the promotion effect on products’ market outcomes is determined by not only the attacker’s manipulation power but also the specific property of the target product and the market self-exciting power. Inspired by these findings, we propose a novel iterative rating attack and validate its effectiveness through experiments.
Bilateral Multi-Perspective Matching for Natural Language Sentences

Natural language sentence matching is a fundamental technology for a variety of tasks. Previous approaches either match sentences from a single direction or only apply single granular (word-by-word or sentence-by-sentence) matching. In this work, we propose a bilateral multi-perspective matching (BiMPM) model under the "matching-aggregation" framework. Given two sentences $P$ and $Q$, our model first encodes them with a BiLSTM encoder. Next, we match the two encoded sentences in two directions $P \rightarrow Q$ and $P \leftarrow Q$. In each matching direction, each time step of one sentence is matched against all time-steps of the other sentence from multiple perspectives. Then, another BiLSTM layer is utilized to aggregate the matching results into a fix-length matching vector. Finally, based on the matching vector, the decision is made through a fully connected layer. We evaluate our model on three tasks: paraphrase identification, natural language inference and answer sentence selection. Experimental results on standard benchmark datasets show that our model achieves the state-of-the-art performance on all tasks.
Postoperative Radiation Therapy Is Associated With Improved Overall Survival in Incompletely Resected Stage II and III Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Purpose To review trends in the use of postoperative radiotherapy (PORT) for stage II and III incompletely resected non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and evaluate the association between PORT and survival in such patients. Patients and Methods We identified patients with pathologic stage N0-2, overall American Joint Committee on Cancer stage II or III NSCLC within the National Cancer Data Base who had undergone a lobectomy or pneumonectomy with positive surgical margins. Only patients coded as receiving external-beam PORT at 50 to 74 Gy or observation were included. To account for perioperative mortality, we excluded patients who survived less than 4 months after diagnosis. Multivariable logistic regression was used to determine factors associated with PORT receipt. Cox proportional hazards regression was performed for multivariable analyses of overall survival. Results Among 3,395 included patients, 1,207 (35.6%) received PORT. Predictors for the use of PORT among this patient population included age le...
JOINT LAXITY DOES NOT CORRELATE TO IMPLANT DAMAGE SCORES IN NECROPSY TKA RETRIEVALS

Introduction Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a successful procedure for end stage arthritis of the knee that is being performed on an exponential basis year after year. Most surgeons agree that soft tissue balancing of the TKA is a paramount to provide a successful TKA. We utilized a set of retrieved lower extremities with an existing TKA to measure the laxity of the knee in all three planes to see if wear scores of the implants correlated to the laxity measured. This data has never been reported in the literature. Methods IRB approval was obtained for the local retrieval program. Each specimen was retrieved after removing the skin, subcutaneous tissue and muscle from mid thigh to mid tibia. The femur, tibia and fibula were then transversely cut to remove the specimen for testing. Each specimen was then imaged using a flouroscopic imaging unit (OEC, Inc) in the AP, Lateral and sunrise views. These images were used to analyze whether there were any signs of osteolysis. Each specimen was mounted into a custom knee testing machine (Little Rock AR). Each specimen then was tested at full extension, 30, 60, and 90 degrees of flexion. At each flexion angle the specimen was subjected to a 10Nm varus and valgus torque, a 1.5Nm internal and external rotational torque and a 35N anterior and posterior directed force. Each specimen's implants were removed to record manufacturer and lot numbers. Polyethylene damage scores (Hood et al. JBMR 1983) were then calculated in the medial, lateral and backside of the polyethylene insert as well as on the medial and lateral femoral condyle. (Figure 1) Correlation coefficients were then calculated to show any relationship with soft tissue balancing in all three planes and wear scores. Results No correlation > 0.4 existed for any surface damage on the polyethylene or femoral condyle to laxity in any plane (Figure 2). The highest correlations were found with backside wear (0.5) to internal and external rotational laxity. Two thirds of the specimens had more varus than valgus laxity in the coronal plane (p=0.03). Discussion/Conclusion This is the first report of necropsy obtained retrievals where the soft tissue laxity of the knee was recorded. Although small numbers with different implant types the data shows that limited correlation exists between implant surface damage and increased laxity. The strongest correlation we found was backside wear to transverse plane laxity in flexion and extension, but this most likely is related to locking mechanism design. It seems in this set of implants that the soft tissue laxity did not affect implant bone interfaces as all were over 10 years from surgery. For figures/tables, please contact authors directly.
Effective Evaluation Using Logged Bandit Feedback from Multiple Loggers

Accurately evaluating new policies (e.g. ad-placement models, ranking functions, recommendation functions) is one of the key prerequisites for improving interactive systems. While the conventional approach to evaluation relies on online A/B tests, recent work has shown that counterfactual estimators can provide an inexpensive and fast alternative, since they can be applied offline using log data that was collected from a different policy fielded in the past. In this paper, we address the question of how to estimate the performance of a new target policy when we have log data from multiple historic policies. This question is of great relevance in practice, since policies get updated frequently in most online systems. We show that naively combining data from multiple logging policies can be highly suboptimal. In particular, we find that the standard Inverse Propensity Score (IPS) estimator suffers especially when logging and target policies diverge -- to a point where throwing away data improves the variance of the estimator. We therefore propose two alternative estimators which we characterize theoretically and compare experimentally. We find that the new estimators can provide substantially improved estimation accuracy.
Prolonged effect of the stratospheric pathway in linking Barents–Kara Sea sea ice variability to the midlatitude circulation in a simplified model

To better understand the dynamical mechanism that accounts for the observed lead-lag correlation between the early winter Barents–Kara Sea (BKS) sea ice variability and the later winter midlatitude circulation response, a series of experiments are conducted using a simplified atmospheric general circulation model with a prescribed idealized near-surface heating over the BKS. A prolonged effect is found in the idealized experiments following the near-surface heating and can be explicitly attributed to the stratospheric pathway and the long time scale in the stratosphere. The analysis of the Eliassen-Palm flux shows that, as a result of the imposed heating and linear constructive interference, anomalous upward propagating planetary-scale waves are excited and weaken the stratospheric polar vortex. This stratospheric response persists for approximately 1–2 months accompanied by downward migration to the troposphere and the surface. This downward migration largely amplifies and extends the low-level jet deceleration in the midlatitudes and cold air advection over central Asia. The idealized model experiments also suggest that the BKS region is the most effective in affecting the midlatitude circulation than other regions over the Arctic.
Effect of geometric and material discontinuities on the reeling of pipelines

Abstract The winding and unwinding of a pipeline onto a large diameter reel as practiced in the reeling installation method, induces bending strains of 1–3% followed by straightening, and reverse bending. The operator must ensure that such plastic deformations are sustained free of local buckling or rupture in the line. Such failures are for example precipitated by pipeline discontinuities in wall thickness and yield stress as they act as stress risers, lead to localized deformations severe enough to result in local buckling. The effect of such discontinuities is studied using a large-scale nonlinear finite element model that simulates the reeling/unreeling of a pipeline. Nonlinear kinematic hardening is used to capture the elasto-plastic behavior of the material imposed by the bending/reverse bending history. Discontinuities in wall thickness and yield stress are shown to result in sharp local changes in curvature that extend over 3–4 pipe diameters accompanied by severe local straining and ovalization. The extent of the disturbance is governed by the bending strain imposed by the ratio of pipe to reel diameter. It can be reduced by an increase in the applied tension but at the expense of additional ovalization of the pipeline. It can also be reduced by increasing the pipe wall thickness but with the consequent increase in costs. A parametric study of the effect of such discontinuities demonstrates that for some combinations of process parameters, the disturbance can lead to local buckling either during winding or unwinding. It is concluded that a modeling framework such as the one presented should be used to generate a design protocol for reel-installed pipelines.
Modification of UV surface plasmon resonances in aluminum hole-arrays with graphene

In this work we study the UV transmission through monolayer graphene films transferred on top of aluminum hole-arrays. Interaction of graphene pi-plasmons with surface plasmon resonances leads to strong wavelength shifts.
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS: THE CASE OF STATE OWNED ENTERPRISES

This article examines the reception of Western corporate governance models and standards into the Chinese system of corporate governance. It investigates how China has adapted these models to fit in with its political, economic, and cultural norms in relation to its state owned enterprises (SOEs), a large number of which are now listed in onthe Fortune Global 500 list. Overall, the study highlights that firstly, the importance of culture in the shaping and functioning of human behavior as well as that of institutions, and in their subsequent path dependence; and secondly the limited impact of property rights, minority shareholder rights, and financial markets as arbiters of the destination of investment funds.
Diverse Neural Network Learns True Target Functions

Neural networks are a powerful class of functions that can be trained with simple gradient descent to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a variety of applications. Despite their practical success, there is a paucity of results that provide theoretical guarantees on why they are so effective. Lying in the center of the problem is the difficulty of analyzing the non-convex loss function with potentially numerous local minima and saddle points. Can neural networks corresponding to the stationary points of the loss function learn the true target function? If yes, what are the key factors contributing to such nice optimization properties? In this paper, we answer these questions by analyzing one-hidden-layer neural networks with ReLU activation, and show that despite the non-convexity, neural networks with diverse units have no spurious local minima. We bypass the non-convexity issue by directly analyzing the first order optimality condition, and show that the loss can be made arbitrarily small if the minimum singular value of the "extended feature matrix" is large enough. We make novel use of techniques from kernel methods and geometric discrepancy, and identify a new relation linking the smallest singular value to the spectrum of a kernel function associated with the activation function and to the diversity of the units. Our results also suggest a novel regularization function to promote unit diversity for potentially better generalization.
Asymmetry of Caddo ceramics from the Washington Square Mound site: An exploratory analysis

Abstract While pursuing a study of 3D geometric morphometrics for ceramic burial vessels that often articulate with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) from the ancestral Caddo region, there have been no shortage of potentially meaningful observations, one of which–rotational asymmetry in coil-built vessels–is discussed here. Using Geomagic Design X (reverse-engineering software) and Geomagic Control X (inspection software), metrics associated with rotational asymmetry were generated then analyzed. Results indicate variable asymmetry among the different vessel shapes (i.e., bottles, jars, etc.), which may augment and strengthen studies and discussion of vessel form. Future directions include the incorporation of directional and–possibly–fluctuating asymmetry measures for the widest vessel profiles. Preliminary results point toward substantive analytical gains that can be used to augment more traditional ceramic analyses as well as geometric morphometric studies of ceramic vessel shape.
Surface area, geometrical and configurational effects on permittivity of porous media

Abstract Dielectric permittivity measurements in high surface area porous media are subject to a number of influences, including water binding effects which often lead to erroneous water content estimates. Errors are primarily due to the large disparity between the permittivity of bound (5) and free water (80). Water bound to solid surfaces exhibits a `thermodielectric' effect involving temperature-dependent volume exchange between these two water phases. Particle shape and phase configuration may also reduce permittivities of porous mixtures in addition to the influence of bound water. Modeled predictions of these effects are presented and discussed and are based on a three-phase dielectric mixing model.
Hybrid organizations and the logics of entrepreneurial ecosystems

Growing evidence suggests entrepreneurial ecosystems are a potent engine for economic and community development. Prior research has identified an ecosystem’s culture as serving a critical role in its creation and functioning. However, it is not clear how the cultural forces in entrepreneurial ecosystems develop and are shaped by individuals, organizational actors, and ecosystem-level institutions. Drawing from institutional theory and theories of multiple logic organizations (i.e., hybrids), this paper combines entrepreneurship and management research to argue that entrepreneurial ecosystems are influenced by two dominant institutional logics: entrepreneurial-market and community. By combining both logics, hybrid support organizations, such as incubators, accelerators, and small business development centers, play a unique role in entrepreneurial ecosystems by exposing participants to the two guiding logics. Furthermore, it is argued that intra-ecosystem variation among hybrid support organizations in the dominance of entrepreneurial-market and community logics, will result in a diversity of entrepreneurship within an ecosystem. This theorizing contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems by shedding light on the role institutional logics and hybrid support organizations play in ecosystem formation, structuring, and function and by explaining the genesis of the cultural values that guide ecosystem participants.