cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Statistical learning procedures for monitoring regulatory compliance: an application to fisheries data

Summary. As a special case of statistical learning, ensemble methods are well suited for the analysis of opportunistically collected data that involve many weak and sometimes specialized predictors, especially when subject-matter knowledge favours inductive approaches. We analyse data on the incidental mortality of dolphins in the purse-seine fishery for tuna in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The goal is to identify those rare purse-seine sets for which incidental mortality would be expected but none was reported. The ensemble method random forests is used to classify sets according to whether mortality was (response 1) or was not (response 0) reported. To identify questionable reporting practice, we construct ‘residuals’ as the difference between the categorical response (0,1) and the proportion of trees in the forest that classify a given set as having mortality. Two uses of these residuals to identify suspicious data are illustrated. This approach shows promise as a means of identifying suspect data gathered for environmental monitoring.
Cosmology, the science of the universe

Cosmology: The Science of the Universe is an introduction to past and present cosmological theory. For much of the world's history, cosmological thought was formulated in religious or philosophical language and was thus theological or metaphysical in nature. However, cosmological speculation and theory has now become a science in which the empirical discoveries of the astronomer, theoretical physicist, and biologist are woven into intricate models that attempt to account for the universe as a whole. Professor Harrison draws on the discoveries and speculations of these scientists to provide a comprehensive survey of man's current understanding of the universe and its history. Tracing the rise of the scientific method, the major aim of this book is to provide an elementary understanding of the physical universe of modern times. Thoroughly revised and updated, this second edition extends the much acclaimed first edition taking into account the many developments that have occurred.
Business regulation and taxation: effects on cross-country corruption

This paper adds to the literature on the government-corruption nexus by examining the effects of taxation and various business regulations on cross-country corruption. Regulations considered include the number of procedures and related costs for business startup, licensing and property registrations. Results show that regulation, not taxation, generally positively impacts corruption and the effects of non-monetary regulatory costs are more significant than monetary costs. Findings are generally robust to an alternate corruption measure and to simultaneity between corruption and regulation. Results for ‘standard’ determinants of corruption largely support the literature. Policy implications are discussed.
The changing reality of urothelial bladder cancer: should non-squamous variant histology be managed as a distinct clinical entity?

Objectives To assess the effect of non-squamous differentiation (non-SQD) variant histology on survival in muscle-invasive bladder urothelial cancer (UC). Patients and Methods A cohort of 411 radical cystectomy (RC) cases performed with curative intent for muscle-invasive primary UC was identified between 2008 and June 2013. Survival analysis was evaluated using Kaplan–Meier methodology comparing non-variant (NV) + SQD histology to non-SQD variant histology (non-SQD variants). Multivariable cox proportional hazards regression assessed all-cause and disease-specific mortality. Results Of the 411 RC cases, 77 (19%) had non-SQD variant histology. The median overall survival (OS) for non-SQD variant histology was 28 months, whereas the NV+SQD group had not reached the median OS at 74 months (log-rank test P < 0.001). After adjusting for sex, age, pathological stage, and any systemic chemotherapy, patients with non-SQD variant histology at RC had a 1.57-times increased adjusted risk of all-cause mortality (P = 0.027) and 1.69-times increased risk of disease-specific mortality (P = 0.030) compared with NV+SQD patients. Conclusions While SQD behaves similarly to NV, non-SQD variant histology portends worse OS and disease-specific survival regardless of neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy and pathological stage. Non-SQD variants of UC could perhaps be considered a distinct clinical entity in UC with goals for developing new treatment algorithms through novel clinical trials.
A new catalytic mode of the modularly designed organocatalysts (MDOs): enantioselective synthesis of dihydropyrano[2,3-c]pyrazoles

Abstract The enantioselective tandem Michael addition–cyclization reaction between 3-methyl-2-pyrazolin-5-one and benzylidenemalononitriles was studied with modularly designed organocatalysts (MDOs) to yield 6-amino-5-cyanodihydropyrano[2,3- c ]pyrazoles in high yields and moderate to good enantioselectivities. Most importantly, a new catalytic mode of the MDOs was established. Instead of being used as a nucleophile to form an enamine intermediate, the reaction center modules (amino acids) of the MDOs are now used as a Lewis base in this base-catalyzed reaction. Since there are more reactions catalyzed by Lewis bases than by the enamine mechanism, this finding greatly expands the scope of the MDOs in organic reactions. On the other hand, because the stereocontrolling modules (cinchona alkaloid derivatives) themselves may be used as Lewis base catalysts, this new method may also be viewed as an expeditious way for the modification of the reaction center of the cinchona alkaloid catalysts.
N1,N10-Ethylene-bridged high-potential flavins: synthesis, characterization, and reactivity

N1,N10-Ethyleneisoalloxazinium chloride and its 8-Cl-, 7-CF3-, and 3-CH3-7-CF3-substituted analogs were synthesized for the purpose of exhibiting thermal reactivity with organic substrates. The new flavins were characterized spectroscopically and electrochemically, and were found to react with amines, thiols, and phenylhydrazine, the latter case exhibiting catalytic aerobic recycling. Reactions of aliphatic benzylic and cyclopropyl amines with the 7-CF3 analog were also compared to their oxidations by tris(phenanthroline)iron(III). All reactions of the flavinium salts appear to occur through heterolytic rather than homolytic mechanisms.
Metrication for color imaging devices

Color devices have become commonplace to many users including those at home. The color revolution began about 1990 with the ready availability of color displays and affordable color printers.© (1998) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
The role of ideas in political economy

The Austrian School of economics has gradually developed a coherent and unitary theory of social-political change melding together four elements: (1) praxeology as a universal and culture-invariant account of how a given structure of incentives generates outcomes, (2) ideas as a distinct realm from incentives and subjected to cultural evolution, (3) social and political entrepreneurs as self-interested drivers of institutional change constrained by knowledge problems, and (4) institutions understood as a complex mesh of formal rules and private governance mechanisms. The paper discusses the key elements of this theory and highlights the connections to public choice (especially the Virginia School) and new institutional economics (especially the Bloomington School). Two practical applications are explored: understanding the relative importance of intellectuals, public opinion, and rent-seeking in determining policies in advanced democracies; and the role of social entrepreneurship in development economics.
How to Sign Digital Streams

We present a new efficient paradigm for signing digital streams. The problem of signing digital streams to prove their authenticity is substantially different from the problem of signing regular messages. Traditional signature schemes are message oriented and require the receiver to process the entire message before being able to authenticate its signature. However, a stream is a potentially very long (or infinite) sequence of bits that the sender sends to the receiver and the receiver is required to consume the received bits at more or less the input rate and without excessive delay. Therefore it is infeasible for the receiver to obtain the entire stream before authenticating and consuming it. Examples of streams include digitized video and audio files, data feeds, and applets. We present two solutions to the problem of authenticating digital streams. The first one is for the case of a finite stream which is entirely known to the sender (say a movie). We use this constraint to devise an extremely efficient solution. The second case is for a (potentially infinite) stream which is not known in advance to the sender (for example a live broadcast). We present proofs of security of our constructions. Our techniques also have applications in other areas, for example, efficient authentication of long files when communication is at a cost and signature-based filtering at a proxy server.
Hot-streak clocking effects in a 1-1/2 stage turbine

Experimental data has shown that combustor hot streaks can lead to pressure side “hot spots” on first-stage turbine rotor blades. Previous numerical studies have confirmed that unsteady Navier-Stokes procedures can be used to predict the rotor pressure surface temperature increase associated with these combustor hot streaks, and suggest that second-stage turbine stators can also be subjected to increased surface temperatures. In the current investigation, two-dimensional unsteady Navier-Stokes simulations have been performed to study the effects of combustor hot streak position (or clocking) on the temperature distributions along first-stage rotor and second-stage stator airfoils. The predicted results indicate that if the hot streak is positioned such that it impinges upon the first-stage stator, then the suction surfaces of the rotor and second-stage stator attain higher time-averaged temperatures than the pressure surfaces. If the hot streak is positioned such that it does not impinge upon the first-stage stator, then the pressure surfaces of the downstream blades reach higher time-averaged temperatures than the corresponding suction surfaces.Copyright © 1995 by ASME
Polynomial-time quantum algorithms for Pell's equation and the principal ideal problem

We give polynomial-time quantum algorithms for three problems from computational algebraic number theory. The first is Pell's equation. Given a positive nonsquare integer d, Pell's equation is x2 − dy2 = 1 and the goal is to find its integer solutions. Factoring integers reduces to finding integer solutions of Pell's equation, but a reduction in the other direction is not known and appears more difficult. The second problem we solve is the principal ideal problem in real quadratic number fields. This problem, which is at least as hard as solving Pell's equation, is the one-way function underlying the Buchmann--Williams key exchange system, which is therefore broken by our quantum algorithm. Finally, assuming the generalized Riemann hypothesis, this algorithm can be used to compute the class group of a real quadratic number field.
A technique to improve the performance of serial, matched-filter acquisition in direct-sequence spread-spectrum packet radio communications

In this paper, we examine a simple method to improve the performance of serial, matched-filter acquisition in direct-sequence spread-spectrum packet radio communications. Each packet transmission includes an acquisition preamble, and the preamble sequence is changed at the boundaries of predefined time epochs based on a pseudorandom sequence generator. It is shown in previous work that the presence of an intermediate-frequency filter and the characteristics of the automatic gain-control subsystem lead to a probability of not acquiring that is a nonmonotonic function of the signal-to-noise ratio if the acquisition algorithm uses a threshold-crossing detector with a fixed threshold. The acquisition algorithm presented in this paper employs an estimator to adaptively select the acquisition threshold for each test statistic. It is shown that this technique reduces the severity of the nonmonotonicity and substantially improves the acquisition performance.
Use of External Casing Packers for Zonal Segregation in the Wilmington Oil Field

External casing packers have been run in over 500 development and injection wells in the Wilmington oil field for zonal segregation and/or intermediate water exclusion with a success ratio of over 92%. The use of these packers and their success ratio have saved the Long Beach Unit (E. Wilmington oil field) considerable cost by reducing the number of wells required for total development of the field.
Asymmetric catalytic hydrogenation reactions in supercritical carbon dioxide.

We demonstrate that asymmetric catalytic hydrogenation reactions can be conducted in supercritical CO{sub 2} and that, in some cases, higher enantioselectivities can be achieved in this solvent relative to conventional solvents. These preliminary studies effectively demonstrate the feasibility of conducting highly enantioselective hydrogenation reactions in supercritical CO{sub 2}. Importantly, we have shown that higher enantioselectivities may be achieved in supercritical CO{sub 2} relative to conventional solvents. 16 refs., 2 tabs.
Logistic regression with random coefficients

Abstract An approximation to the likelihood for the generalized linear models with random coefficients is derived and is the basis for an approximate Fisher scoring algorithm. The method is illustrated on the logistic regression with one-way classification, but it has an extension to the class of generalized linear models and to more complex data structures, such as nested two-way classification. Both full and restricted maximum likelihood versions of this algorithm are defined. The estimators of the regression parameters coincide with the generalized estimating equations of Zeger and Liang (Biometrics, 42, 1986, p 121–130) but an essentially different class of estimators for the covariance structure parameters is obtained.
Oxoammonium Salt Oxidations of Alcohols in the Presence of Pyridine Bases

Oxoammonium salt oxidations (using 4-acetylamino-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxoammonium tetrafluoroborate) of alcohols containing a β-oxygen atom in the presence of pyridine yield dimeric esters, while in the presence of 2,6-lutidine the product is a simple aldehyde. The formation of a betaine between pyridine and an aldehyde is presented to explain this disparity in reactivity. The betaine is oxidized by the oxoammonium salt to give an N-acylpyridinium ion that serves as an acylating agent for ester formation. Steric effects deter the formation of such a betaine with 2,6-disubstituted pyridines. A series of alcohols containing a β-oxygen substituent were oxidized to aldehydes in the presence of 2,6-lutidine, and a short study of the relative reactivity of various alcohols is given. An overall mechanism for oxoammonium cation oxidations is suggested, premised on nucleophilic additions to the oxygen atom of the positively charged nitrogen-oxygen double bond. Possible mechanisms for both dimeric oxidations and simple oxidations are given.
Comparative Evaluation of Ultrafiltration Membranes for Purification of Synthetic Peptides

Abstract Published information on the use of ultrafiltration to separate natural and synthetic peptides from each other, and from low-molecular-weight impurities, is reviewed. The suitability of commercial membranes of low nominal molecular weight cut-off (500-8000 daltons) for fractionation of synthetic peptides was evaluated with a model mixture of a hexapeptide (MW 844), insulin (MW 5730), and cytochrome c (MW 12,384) in 5% acetic acid. Diafiltration in a cross-flow thin-channel device allowed graphical determination of the retention coefficient for each solute on each membrane; fouling and cleanability were also assessed. Regenerated cellulose and cellulose acetate membranes did not foul, were chemically resistant, and fractionated efficiently. Other membrane types, including polysulfone and Teflon, fouled and were difficult to clean. Cellulosic membranes can be successfully integrated into the purification of synthetic peptides.
Fold Points and Singularities in Hall MHD Differential–Algebraic Equations

We consider the singularity crossing phenomenon in differential-algebraic equations (DAEs) of Hall MHD systems in one spatial dimension. The Hall MHD DAEs have singularities with impasse points, pseudoequilibrium points, or singularity-induced bifurcation (SIB) points. The pseudoequilibrium and SIB points allow for smooth transitions between the plus (supersonic) and minus (subsonic) Riemann sheets. Within the singular pseudoequilibrium points, there may exist only one analytic trajectory crossing the sonic curve (as in the case of SIB point), two analytic and two other trajectories of lower degree of smoothness in the case of pseudosaddle points, or two analytic and an uncountable number of trajectories of lower smoothness in the case of singular pseudonodes. In this paper, we show examples of singular points in Hall MHD systems described by DAEs and explain the singularity (also called the sonic or forbidden curve) crossing phenomenon by using the recent developments in the qualitative analysis of DAEs.
TiCl4-Promoted Multicomponent Reaction: A New Entry to Functionalized α-Amino Acids

TiCl4-promoted multicomponent reactions involving N-tosyl imino ester, cyclic enol ether, and silane reagents in a single one-pot operation provide functionalized α-amino acids with multiple stereogenic centers in good to excellent yields. Cis/trans selectivities with optically active substituted dihydrofurans have been investigated.
The 13th International Symposium on Relations Between Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis—An Introduction

Over 40 years, there have been major efforts to aim at understanding the properties of surfaces, structure, composition, dynamics on the molecular level and at developing the surface science of heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis. Since most catalysts (heterogeneous, enzyme and homogeneous) are nanoparticles, colloid synthesis methods were developed to produce monodispersed metal nanoparticles in the 1–10 nm range and controlled shapes to use them as new model catalyst systems in two-dimensional thin film form or deposited in mezoporous three-dimensional oxides. Studies of reaction selectivity in multipath reactions (hydrogenation of benzene, cyclohexene and crotonaldehyde) showed that reaction selectivity depends on both nanoparticle size and shape. The oxide-metal nanoparticle interface was found to be an important catalytic site because of the hot electron flow induced by exothermic reactions like carbon monoxide oxidation.
A note on open-chain transfer matrices from q-deformed su(2|2)S-matrices

In this note, we perform Sklyanin's construction of commuting open-chain/boundary transfer matrices to the q-deformed SU(2|2) bulk S-matrix of Beisert and Koroteev and a corresponding boundary S-matrix. This also includes a corresponding commuting transfer matrix using the graded version of the q-deformed bulk S-matrix. Utilizing the crossing property for the bulk S-matrix, we argue that the transfer matrix for both graded and non-graded versions contains a crucial factor which is essential for commutativity.
Addressing Health and Well-Being of U.S. Chinese Older Adults Through Community-Based Participatory Research: Introduction to the PINE Study

The PINE Study--the Population Study of ChINese Elderly in Chicago is a population-based epidemiological study of U.S. Chinese older adults in the greater Chicago area with primary aims to examine their health status and well-being. This special issue is designed to expand our current understanding on the health status, medical conditions, and well-being of U.S. Chinese older adults using findings from the PINE Study. In this article, we present research design, study findings, and important implications for researchers, community gatekeepers, and health care professionals. Through the information reported in this special issue, we call for increased family and community care, improved delivery of care, practice changes, and policy reform, to prepare for the growing numbers of minority older adults in dire need of culturally and linguistically appropriate health and social services.
Corporate Bond Pricing and Ownership Heterogeneity

We examine how heterogeneity in institutional equity ownership affects bondholders. Firms with larger short-term (long-term) institutional ownership are associated with higher (lower) future bond yield spreads. The adverse effect of short-term ownership on bond pricing is driven by issuing firms that have larger financial distress risk and larger equity volatility. The favorable effect of long-term ownership appears to be more systematic. Further, this bond pricing effect is stronger in cases where shareholder rights are relatively weak. Finally, the effect of short (long) horizons is driven by concentrated (diffused) institutional holdings.
Do Donors Matter for Institutional Reform in Africa

The last twenty years has seen an extensive and exhausting debate on how to improve the institutions of African states. But progress has been patchy at best. Many of the problems arise from a ‘partial-reform equilibrium’; initial reforms are undertaken, but then strong resistance is encountered, and reform is not completed. Consequently, although donors may be heartened to find governments speaking the rhetoric of private-sector development, governments may not in fact buy into many second-generation reforms. Public management and public expenditure reform, security-sector reform, and revenue reform are all unfinished agendas. Donor assistance to countries that are stuck in a partial-reform equilibrium is most effective when internal political dynamics succeed in changing national leaderships, as in Ghana.
Storability on Modeling Commodity Futures Prices

Econometric models of commodity prices have been estimated for more than 80 years, but both structural and time series models require ad hoc assumptions to capture all the features of commodity price series. Commodities can be broadly divided into two categories: storable and non-storable. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of storability on commodity futures pricing, especially whether meats can be reasonably approximated by storable commodity term structure models. From the empirical analysis of seven commodity futures prices, the two-factor Schwartz model is found to perform well for less storable commodities.
Galaxy Modeling with Compound Elliptical Shapelets

Gauss-Hermite and Gauss-Laguerre (shapelet) decompositions of images have become important tools in galaxy modeling, particularly for the purpose of extracting ellipticity and morphological information from astronomical data. However, the standard shapelet basis functions cannot compactly represent galaxies with high ellipticity or large Sersic index, and the resulting underfitting bias has been shown to present a serious challenge for weak-lensing methods based on shapelets. We present here a new convolution relation and a compound multiscale shapelet basis to address these problems and provide a proof-of-concept demonstration using a small sample of nearby galaxies.
A comparative experimental study of media access protocols for wireless radio networks

We conduct a comparative experimental analysis of three well known media access protocols: IEEE 802.11, CSMA, and MACA for wireless radio networks. Only static ad-hoc networks are considered. The experimental analysis was carried out using GloMoSim: a tool for simulating wireless networks. The main focus of experiments was to study how: (i) the size of the network, (ii) number of open connections, (iii) the spatial location of individual connections, (iv) speed with which individual nodes move, and (v) protocols higher up in the protocol stack (e.g. routing layer) affect the performance of the media access sublayer protocols. The performance of the protocols was measured w.r.t. four important parameters: (i) number of received packets, (ii) average latency of each packet, (iii) long term fairness, and (iv) throughput. The following general qualitative conclusions were obtained; some of the conclusions reinforce the earlier claims by other researchers. (1) Typically, all protocols degrade significantly at higher packet injection rate. Moreover, the degradation often happens rather sharply. (2) In general while the performance of 802.11 was better than CSMA at lower injection rates, the performance of 802.11 is worse than that of CSMA at higher injection rate - on the other hand, CSMA assigns inequitable amount of resources; in this regard 802.11 performs quite well. (3) MACA typically was dominated either by CSMA or by 802.11 w.r.t. any of the performance measures. (4) Protocols in the higher level of the protocol stack affect the MAC layer performance. The main general implications of our work is that no single protocol dominated the other protocols across various measures of efficiency. In other words the performance of protocols depends on all of the parameters mentioned above.
Epigenetic memory in induced pluripotent stem cells

Somatic cell nuclear transfer and transcription-factor-based reprogramming revert adult cells to an embryonic state, and yield pluripotent stem cells that can generate all tissues. Through different mechanisms and kinetics, these two reprogramming methods reset genomic methylation, an epigenetic modification of DNA that influences gene expression, leading us to hypothesize that the resulting pluripotent stem cells might have different properties. Here we observe that low-passage induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived by factor-based reprogramming of adult murine tissues harbour residual DNA methylation signatures characteristic of their somatic tissue of origin, which favours their differentiation along lineages related to the donor cell, while restricting alternative cell fates. Such an 'epigenetic memory' of the donor tissue could be reset by differentiation and serial reprogramming, or by treatment of iPSCs with chromatin-modifying drugs. In contrast, the differentiation and methylation of nuclear-transfer-derived pluripotent stem cells were more similar to classical embryonic stem cells than were iPSCs. Our data indicate that nuclear transfer is more effective at establishing the ground state of pluripotency than factor-based reprogramming, which can leave an epigenetic memory of the tissue of origin that may influence efforts at directed differentiation for applications in disease modelling or treatment.
'Obnoxious To Their Very Nature': Asian Americans and Constitutional Citizenship

This essay examines the curious juxtaposition of the terms Asian American and American citizenship. While the latter might be thought to easily embrace the former, historically this has not been the case. Recent events suggest that there still exists a contradictory relationship between Asian American racialization and the idea of citizenship. The essay examines four different discourses of citizenship: citizenship as legal status, citizenship as rights, citizenship as political activity, and citizenship as identity/solidarity, and investigates how race fractures the promise of each of these discourses. The racialization of Asian Americans seems especially at odds with two of these discourses. The racialization of Asian Americans as disloyal and politically corrupt contradicts the idea of citizenship as produced through political activity, which might cast skepticism on recent calls for a renaissance of civic republicanism. And Asian Americans are not thought to represent the United States citizenry as a matter of identity. This suggests that citizenship as identity is ontologically separate from citizenship as a legal matter, in other words,access to citizenship in the form of formal legal status or in the form of rights, does not guarantee full citizenship.
Foreign Direct Investment and Technology Spillover: Evidence from China

Abstract We investigate empirically whether foreign direct investment generates externalities in the form of technology transfer. Using data on 29 manufacturing industries over the period from 1993 to 1998 in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone of China, we find that foreign direct investment has large and significant spillover effects in that it raises both the level and growth rate of productivity of manufacturing industries, and domestic sectors are the main beneficiaries. We also find that some domestic sectors benefit more than others from the external effects of foreign direct investment. The results are robust to a number of alternative model specifications. J. Comp. Econ. , September 2002 30 (3), pp. 579–602. State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260-1520. © 2002 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: F2, O1, O3.
Perceptual-cognitive universals as reflections of the world

The universality, invariance, and elegance of principles governing the universe may be reflected in principles of the minds that have evolved in that universe - provided that the mental principles are formulated with respect to the abstract spaces appropriate for the representation of biologically significant objects and their properties. (1) Positions and motions of objects conserve their shapes in the geometrically fullest and simplest way when represented as points and connecting geodesic paths in the six-dimensional manifold jointly determined by the Euclidean group of three-dimensional space and the symmetry group of each object. (2) Colors of objects attain constancy when represented as points in a three-dimensional vector space in which each variation in natural illumination is can- celed by application of its inverse from the three-dimensional linear group of terrestrial transformations of the invariant solar source. (3) Kinds of objects support optimal generalization and categorization when represented, in an evolutionarily-shaped space of possible ob- jects, as connected regions with associated weights determined by Bayesian revision of maximum-entropy priors.
A mixed frequency-time approach for finding the steady-state solution of clocked analog circuits

Performing detailed simulation of clocked analog circuits (e.g. switched-capacitor filters and switching power supplies) with circuit simulation programs like SPICE is computationally very expensive. The authors present a more efficient method for computing the detailed steady-state solution of clocked analog circuits. The method exploits the property of such circuits that the waveforms in each clock cycle are similar but not exact duplicates of the proceeding or following cycles. Therefore, by computing accurately a few selected cycles, the entire steady-state solution can be constructed efficiently. >
Characterizing the Security Implications of Third-Party Emergency Alert Systems over Cellular Text Messaging Services

Cellular text messaging services are increasingly being relied upon to disseminate critical information during emergencies. Accordingly, a wide range of organizations including colleges and universities now partner with third-party providers that promise to improve physical security by rapidly delivering such messages. Unfortunately, these products do not work as advertised due to limitations of cellular infrastructure and therefore provide a false sense of security to their users. In this paper, we perform the first extensive investigation and characterization of the limitations of an Emergency Alert System (EAS) using text messages as a security incident response mechanism. We show emergency alert systems built on text messaging not only can meet the 10 minute delivery requirement mandated by the WARN Act, but also potentially cause other voice and SMS traffic to be blocked at rates upward of 80 percent. We then show that our results are representative of reality by comparing them to a number of documented but not previously understood failures. Finally, we analyze a targeted messaging mechanism as a means of efficiently using currently deployed infrastructure and third-party EAS. In so doing, we demonstrate that this increasingly deployed security infrastructure does not achieve its stated requirements for large populations.
Decomposing World Health Inequality

This study explores global inequality in health status and decomposes it into within- and between-country inequality. We rely on standardized height as our health indicator since it avoids the measurement pitfalls of more traditional measures of health such as morbidity, mortality, and life expectancy. It also avoids measurement problems associated with using monetary variables such as income or expenditure across time or place to compare welfare. Our calculation of world height inequality indicates that, in contrast with similar research on income inequality, within-country variation is the source of most inequality, rather than the differences between countries.
Out of the Wallet and into the Purse Using Micro Data to Test Income Pooling

This paper uses an exogenous change in the intrahousehold distribution of income, provided by a change in United Kingdom Family Allowance policy to test the income-pooling hypothesis implied by unitary household models. Expenditure shares are estimated for a wide range of goods using household-level data. Shifts in expenditure shares suggest that children and mothers benefited at the expense of fathers when this policy change shifted income within households from men to women. Similar shifts are not found among married-couple households with no children. This paper refutes income pooling, and confirms and extends results in Lundberg, Pollak, and Wales (1997).
Assignment to Treatment Group on the Basis of a Covariate

When assignment to treatment group is made solely on the basis of the value of a covariate, X, effort should be concentrated on estimating the conditional expectations of the dependent variable Y g...
Experimental evidence on coverage choices and contract prices in the market for corporate insurance

In this paper, we present experimental evidence on the effect adverse selection has on coverage choices and pricing in corporate insurance markets. Two sets of experimental data, each generated by experiments utilizing a specific parameterization of a corporate insurance decision, are presented to gauge these effects. In the first, subject behavior conforms to a unique equilibrium in which high risk firms choose higher coverage and contracts are priced accordingly. Insurers act competitively and convergence to equilibrium behavior is marked. In the second set, there is little evidence that subject behavior is consistent with either of the two equilibrium outcomes supported by the experimental setting—pooling by fully insuring losses and pooling by self insuring.
Trade Policy and Antitrust: Do Consumers Matter to Legislators?

We provide one of the first efforts to measure the importance of consumer preferences in legislators' trade policy decisions by estimating the degree to which the level of antitrust enforcement in the legislator's state impacts his or her vote on free trade agreements. To the extent that antitrust and trade liberalization are both viewed as pro-consumer in nature, we would expect to see a positive relationship between antitrust enforcement in their legislative district and Congressional votes in support of trade liberalization. We find evidence suggesting that consumer preferences do play a role in legislative decisions on trade policy.
Post's Problem for Ordinal Register Machines

We study Post's Problem for the ordinal register machines defined in [6], showing that its general solution is positive, but that any set of ordinals solving it must be unbounded in the writable ordinals. This mirrors the results in [3] for infinite-time Turing machines, and also provides insight into the different methods required for register machines and Turing machines in infinite time.
Benzoporphyrins via an olefin ring-closure metathesis methodology

A new route to benzoporphyrins is reported in which readily available vicinal dibromoporphyrins are bis-allylated using the Suzuki reaction, cyclized by way of olefin metathesis and finally oxidized to give mono-, di-, or tri-benzoporphyrins.
Genetic variation and willingness to participate in epidemiologic research: Data from three studies

Purpose To examine differences in common genetic polymorphism frequencies by willingness to participate in epidemiologic studies. This issue remains unexplored even though the same threats to internal validity operate as for studies with nongenetic information. Methods We analyzed single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes, haplotypes, and short tandem repeats (STRs) among control groups from three studies with different recruitment designs that included early, late and never questionnaire responders, one or more participation incentives, and blood or buccal DNA collection. Among 2955 individuals, we compared 108 genotypes, 8 haplotypes, and 9 to 15 STRs by respondent type. Results Among our main comparisons, three SNP genotype frequencies differed significantly (p Conclusion We observed little evidence to suggest genotype differences underlie response characteristics in molecular epidemiologic studies, but a greater variety of genes should be examined, including those related to behavioral traits potentially associated with willingness to participate. To the extent possible, investigators should evaluate their own genetic data for bias in response categories.
Implementation of the periodic boundary condition in the finite-difference time-domain algorithm for FSS structures

Periodic structures, e.g., frequency selective surfaces (FSSs), are used in applications such as the design of bandpass radomes for missiles, subreflectors for dual frequency reflector antenna systems and filters for optics and infrared. In this work, complex periodic structures are analyzed using the finite difference time-domain algorithm (FDTD) in combination with the Floquet boundary condition. The Floquet type of phase shift boundary condition is incorporated in the time-domain analysis by illuminating the structure with a combination of sine and cosine excitations to generate a phasor representation of the solution at each time step. With this approach, the FDTD method can be applied to a frequency selective surface (FSS) geometry of arbitrary shape illuminated by a plane wave at an arbitrary angle of incidence, without the need to store large amounts of data to model the time advance or delay between the periodic cells. The application of the technique will be demonstrated on a thick, doubly-concentric square loop FSS.
Dynamic Response Optimization of Complex Multibody Systems in a Penalty Formulation Using Adjoint Sensitivity

Multibody dynamics simulations are currently widely accepted as valuable means for dynamic performance analysis of mechanical systems. The evolution of theoretical and computational aspects of the multibody dynamics discipline make it conducive these days for other types of applications, in addition to pure simulations. One very important such application is design optimization. A very important first step towards design optimization is sensitivity analysis of multibody system dynamics. Dynamic sensitivities are often calculated by means of finite differences. Depending of the number of parameters involved, this procedure can be computationally expensive. Moreover, in many cases, the results suffer from low accuracy when real perturbations are used. The main contribution to the state-of-the-art brought by this study is the development of the adjoint sensitivity approach of multibody systems in the context of the penalty formulation. The theory developed is demonstrated on one academic case study, a five-bar mechanism, and on one real-life system, a 14-DOF vehicle model. The five-bar mechanism is used to illustrate the sensitivity approach derived in this paper. The full vehicle model is used to demonstrate the capability of the new approach developed to perform sensitivity analysis and gradient-based optimization for large and complex multibody systems with respect to multiple design parameters.
WHY CAN'T VIDALIA ONIONS BE GROWN IN IOWA? DEVELOPING A BRANDED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT

Declining grain prices, cyclical livestock prices, changing consumer preferences, and intense international competition for agricultural commodity markets have created a need for alternative production and marketing strategies. Iowa producers striving to break away from commodity production and to develop more lucrative value-added and niche markets must figure out how to increase both the consumer appeal and economic value of their products. Even if mild, sweet spring onions were a major cash crop in Iowa, producers could not market them as Vidalia onions. A legislated geographical limitation on supply is part of the success of Vidalia onions as an internationally recognized, branded product that can command a price premium in supermarkets across the United States. Vidalia onions are an example of how responding to consumer demand with a succession of marketing, legislative, and research events has protected a niche market from becoming oversupplied by producers. And, by protecting the name, quality, and image of an agricultural product through state ownership of the trademark, higher values are realized throughout the marketing chain.
First-principles molecular dynamics simulations of condensed-phase V-type nerve agent reaction pathways and energy barriers.

Computational studies of condensed-phase chemical reactions are challenging in part because of complexities in understanding the effects of the solvent environment on the reacting chemical species. Such studies are further complicated due to the demanding computational resources required to implement high-level ab initio quantum chemical methods when considering the solvent explicitly. Here, we use first-principles molecular dynamics simulations to examine condensed-phase decontamination reactions of V-type nerve agents in an explicit aqueous solvent. Our results include a detailed study of hydrolysis, base-hydrolysis, and nucleophilic oxidation of both VX and R-VX, as well as their protonated counterparts (i.e., VXH+ and R-VXH+). The decontamination mechanisms and chemical reaction energy barriers, as determined from our simulations, are found to be in good agreement with experiment. The results demonstrate the applicability of using such simulations to assist in understanding new decontamination technologies or other applications that require computational screening of condensed-phase chemical reaction mechanisms.
Submodular Maximization over Multiple Matroids via Generalized Exchange Properties

Submodular function maximization is a central problem in combinatorial optimization, generalizing many important NP-hard problems including max cut in digraphs, graphs, and hypergraphs; certain constraint satisfaction problems; maximum entropy sampling; and maximum facility location problems. Our main result is that for any k ≥ 2 and any e > 0, there is a natural local search algorithm that has approximation guarantee of 1/(k + e) for the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to k matroid constraints. This improves upon the 1/(k + 1)-approximation of Fisher, Nemhauser, and Wolsey obtained in 1978 [Fisher, M., G. Nemhauser, L. Wolsey. 1978. An analysis of approximations for maximizing submodular set functions---II. Math. Programming Stud.8 73--87]. Also, our analysis can be applied to the problem of maximizing a linear objective function and even a general nonmonotone submodular function subject to k matroid constraints. We show that, in these cases, the approximation guarantees of our algorithms are 1/(k-1 + e) and 1/(k + 1 + 1/(k-1) + e), respectively. Our analyses are based on two new exchange properties for matroids. One is a generalization of the classical Rota exchange property for matroid bases, and another is an exchange property for two matroids based on the structure of matroid intersection.
Recessions, healthy no more?

Abstract Over the 1976–2010 period, total mortality shifted from strongly procyclical to being weakly or unrelated to macroeconomic conditions. The association is likely to be poorly measured when using short (less than 15 year) analysis periods. Deaths from cardiovascular disease and transport accidents continue to be procyclical; however, countercyclical patterns have emerged for fatalities from cancer mortality and external causes. Among the latter, non-transport accidents, particularly accidental poisonings, play an important role.
Cobalt(II)-Catalyzed Asymmetric Olefin Cyclopropanation with α-Ketodiazoacetates

Cyclopropanes are a unique class of structure elements found in a number of biologically important compounds and have been demonstrated for a wide range of fundamental and practical applications.[1] One particularly attractive strategy for enantioselective synthesis of chiral cyclopropanes is based on transition metal-catalyzed asymmetric olefin cyclopropanation with diazo reagents.[2] In principle, chiral cyclopropane derivatives with all substitution patterns may be accessible in enantioenriched form by asymmetric cyclopropanation due to the diverse availability of both alkenes and diazo reagents. Among different classes of diazo reagents with various combinations of α-substituents, many acceptor- and donor/acceptor-substituted diazo reagents have been successfully employed as effective carbene sources for metal-catalyzed asymmetric cyclopropanation.[2] In contrast, the capacity of catalytic asymmetric cyclopropanation has not been fully explored with acceptor/acceptor-substituted diazo reagents, which would afford synthetically useful cyclopropane compounds bearing geminal electron-withdrawing functionalities.[3,4] Although there have been some recent successes in this area,[5–9] several important types of acceptor/acceptor-substituted diazo reagents remain challenging for asymmetric olefin cyclopropanation.
Redprint: integrating API specific "instant example" and "instant documentation" display interface in IDEs

Software libraries for most of the modern programming languages are numerous, large and complex. Remembering the syntax and usage of APIs is a difficult task for not just novices but also expert programmers. IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) provide capabilities like autocomplete and intellisense to assist programmers; however, programmers still need to visit search engines like Google to find API (Application Program Interface) documentation and samples. This paper evaluates Redprint - a browser based development environment for PHP that integrates API specific "Instant Example" and "Instant Documentation" display interfaces. A comparative laboratory study shows that integrating API specific "Instant Example" and "Instant Documentation" display interfaces into a development environment significantly reduces the cost of searching and thus significantly reduces the time to develop software.
Moonlighting: public service and private practice

We study job incentives in moonlighting, when public-service physicians may refer patients to their private practices. Some doctors in the public system are dedicated, and behave sincerely, but others—the moonlighters—are utility maximizers. Allowing moonlighting always enhances aggregate consumer welfare, but equilibrium public-care quality may increase or decrease; if quality increases, moonlighting improves each consumer’s expected utility. Unregulated moonlighting may reduce consumer welfare as a result of adverse behavioral reactions, such as moonlighters shirking more and dedicated doctors abandoning their sincere behavior. Price regulation in the private market limits such adverse behaviors in the public system and improves consumer welfare.