cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Housing Price Dynamics in Time and Space: Predictability, Liquidity and Investor Returns

It is widely accepted that aggregate housing prices are predictable, but that excess returns to investors are precluded by the transactions costs of buying and selling property. We examine this issue using a unique data set—all private condominium transactions in Singapore during an eleven-year period. We model directly the price discovery process for individual dwellings. Our empirical results clearly reject a random walk in prices, supporting mean reversion in housing prices and diffusion of innovations over space. We find that, when house prices and aggregate returns are computed from models that erroneously assume a random walk and spatial independence, they are strongly autocorrelated. However, when they are calculated from the appropriate model, predictability in prices and in investment returns is completely absent. We show that this is due to the illiquid nature of housing transactions. We also conduct extensive simulations, over different time horizons and with different investment rules, testing whether better information on housing price dynamics leads to superior investment performance.
Conceptual model based semantic web services

To achieve the dream of the semantic web, it must be possible for ordinary users to invoke services. Exactly how to turn this dream into reality is a challenging opportunity and an interesting research problem. It is clear that users need simple-to-invoke-and-use services. This paper shows that an approach strongly based on conceptual modeling can meet this challenge for a particular type of service—those that involve establishing an agreed-upon relationship, such as making an appointment, setting up a meeting, selling and purchasing products, or establishing employee job assignments. For these services, users can specify their requests as free-form text and then interact with the system in a simple way to complete the specification of a service request, if necessary, and invoke the service. Our system uses a conceptual-model-based information extraction ontology to (1) recognize the request and match it with an appropriate ontology, (2) discover and obtain missing information, and (3) establish agreed-upon, conceptual-model-constrained relationships with respect to the desired service. The paper lays out our vision for this type of semantic web service, gives the status of our prototype implementation, and explains how and why it works.
High-Level Student Modeling with Machine Learning

We have constructed a learning agent that models student behavior at a high level of granularity for a mathematics tutor. Rather than focusing on whether the student knows a particular piece of knowledge, the learning agent determines how likely the student is to answer a problem correctly and how long he will take to generate this response. To construct this model, we used traces from previous users of the tutor to train the machine learning agent. This agent used information about the student, the current topic, the problem, and the student's efforts to solve this problem to make its predictions. This model was very accurate at predicting the time students required to generate a response, and was somewhat accurate at predicting the likelihood the student's response was correct. We present two methods for integrating such an agent into an intelligent tutor.
Effects of Demographics and Attitudes on WTP for Fuel Import Reductions through Ethanol Purchases

This study examined willingness-to-pay for reductions in the percentage of a gasoline/ethanol fuel blend imported from foreign countries. Results showed factors increasing the discount on imported fuel were Midsouth location, concerns about fuel security, and concerns about protecting the environment. Being a resident of a Southern Oil state decreased the discount on fuel from imported sources.
Ethnicity, Endogeneity, and Housing Tenure Choice

Home ownership rates for New Zealanders of European descent aged twenty five to fifty four are 16 percentage points higher than for Maori in the same age group. This article explores the relative attainment of home ownership of the two ethnic groups by estimating a series of tenure choice models and decomposing the difference in rates into “endowment” and “residual” effects. Particular attention is given to the endogeneity of current income and wealth relative to the tenure choice decision and to the methods for decomposing group mean differences. The article also applies more appropriate methods for estimating incomes and wealth than have been used in most previous studies of tenure choice. The study concludes that only a small proportion of differences in home ownership rates is explained by household endowments. It is shown that controlling for the endogeneity of income and wealth has a substantial impact on the tenure choice and decomposition results.
High resolution WFPC2 imaging of IRAS 09104+4109

With an infrared luminosity of L_(IR) = 6 x 10^(12) L_☉, IRAS 09104+4109 is one of the most luminous objects detected in the IRAS survey. First identified with a faint, R ~ 18 mag, galaxy at z = 0.442 by Kleinmann et al.(1988), IRAS 09104+4109 emits more than 99% of its bolometric luminosity longward of ⋋ ~ 1µm. Like most Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs), IRAS 09104+4109 has very strong emission lines. The nucleus exhibits a Seyfert type 2 spectrum, with strong, narrow lines over a wide range of ionization (Kleinmann et al.,1988; Soifer et al.,1996). Two-dimensional, ground-based spectrophotometry shows a "plume" of [OIII] emission-line gas extending almost 500 from the nucleus, along with a strong, blueshifted (ΔV ~ 1200 km s^(−1)) nuclear component (Crawford & Vanderriest, 1996). Although the dominant energy source in most ULIRGs is still a matter of some debate, the highly polarized spectrum (~ 18%), broad (10^4 km s^(−1)), (presumably reflected) MgII emission line, and double-lobed, core-jet radio structure, indicate a quasar at the heart of IRAS 09104+4109 (Hines & Wills, 1993). Recent calculations by Hines et al. (1999) suggest that the buried quasar in IRAS 09104+4109 can account for all of the bolometric luminosity of the system.
An incentive driven lookup protocol for chord-based peer-to-peer (p2p) networks

In this paper we describe a novel strategy for carrying out lookups in Chord-based peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, wherein nodes are assumed to behave selfishly This is in contrast to the traditional lookup schemes, which assume that nodes cooperate with each other and truthfully follow a given protocol in carrying out resource lookups The proposed scheme also provides efficient and natural means for preventing free-riding problem in Chord without requiring prior trust relationships among nodes In addition, we evaluate the performance of Chord for providing routing service in a network of selfish nodes and prove that it has good structural properties to be used in uncooperative P2P networks.
Dense and Switched Modular Primitives for Bond Graph Model Design

This paper suggests dense and switched modular primitives for a bond-graph-based GP design framework that automatically synthesizes designs for multi-domain, lumped parameter dynamic systems. A set of primitives is sought that will avoid redundant junctions and elements, based on preassembling useful functional blocks of bond graph elements and (optionally) using a switched choice mechanism for inclusion of some elements. Motivation for using these primitives is to improve performance through greater search efficiency and thereby to reduce computational effort. As a proof of concept for this approach, an eigenvalue assignment problem, which is to find bond graph models exhibiting minimal distance errors from target sets of eigenvalues, was tested and showed improved performance for various sets of eigenvalues.
History-Driven View Synchronization

Views over distributed information sources rely on the stability of the schemas of these underlying sources. In the event of meta data changes in the sources, such as the deletion of a table or column, such views may become undefined. Using meta data about information redundancy and user preferences, views can be evolved as necessary to be defined on a modified information space after a source meta data change, while assuring the best possible compliance to preferences that users may have. Previous work in view synchronization focused only on deletions of schema elements. We now offer the first approach that makes use of additions also. The algorithm is based partly on returning view definitions to previous versions by "backtracking" in the history of views and meta data. This technology enables us to adapt views to temporary meta data changes by cancelling out opposite changes and allows undo/redo-operations on meta data without deteriorating the quality of the view. The mechanism described in this paper will therefore improve the quality of evolved views.
Towards Understanding the Advertiser's Perspective of Smartphone User Privacy

Many smartphone apps routinely gather various private user data and send them to advertisers. Despite recent study on protection mechanisms and analysis on apps' behavior, the understanding about the consequences of such privacy losses remains limited. In this paper we investigate how much an advertiser can infer about users' social and community relationships by combining data from multiple applications and across many users. After one month's user study involving about 200 most popular Android apps, we find that an advertiser can infer 90% of the social relationships. We further propose a privacy leakage inference framework and use real mobility traces and Foursquare data to quantify the consequences of privacy leakage. We find that achieving 90% inference accuracy of the social and community relationships requires merely 3 weeks' user data. The discoveries underscore the importance of early adoption of privacy protection mechanisms.
Online vertex-weighted bipartite matching and single-bid budgeted allocations

We study the following vertex-weighted online bipartite matching problem: G(U, V, E) is a bipartite graph. The vertices in U have weights and are known ahead of time, while the vertices in V arrive online in an arbitrary order and have to be matched upon arrival. The goal is to maximize the sum of weights of the matched vertices in U. When all the weights are equal, this reduces to the classic online bipartite matching problem for which Karp, Vazirani and Vazirani gave an optimal (1−1/e)-competitive algorithm in their seminal work [10].Our main result is an optimal (1−1/e)-competitive randomized algorithm for general vertex weights. We use random perturbations of weights by appropriately chosen multiplicative factors. Our solution constitutes the first known generalization of the algorithm in [10] in this model and provides new insights into the role of randomization in online allocation problems. It also effectively solves the problem of online budgeted allocations [14] in the case when an agent makes the same bid for any desired item, even if the bid is comparable to his budget - complementing the results of [14, 3] which apply when the bids are much smaller than the budgets.
The Formol Titration of Bacteriological Media.

The formol titration devised by Malfatti1 (1908), Sorensen (19072, 19083, and by Henriques and Sorensen4 (1909) for the titration of the ammonia and amino acids of urine has been more or less modified by bacteriologists for the titration of media and cultures. Ammonium chloride reacts with formaldehyde to produce hexamethylentetramine and hydrochloric acid. Amino acids and polypeptides react with formaldehyde to produce acid methylene derivatives which are stronger acids than the amino acids from which they are derived. The increase in acidity may be titrated against a standard alkali solution and serve as a measure of the amino acids and ammonia present in the sample.Sorensen (1907, 1908) pointed out that the reaction of amino acids with formaldehyde is a reversible one. A considerable excess of formaldehyde is required to effect complete conversion of the amino acids into their methylene derivatives, and, since water is a product of the reaction, the presence of too much water serves to throw the reacti...
Land Use Modification in an Urban Setting

Conflicting land uses are an integral aspect of planning and development in an urban environment. This paper examines the methodology used in evaluating the economic impact associated with changing the zoning designation of land from industrial to commercial use. The case study is a 20-acre parcel within the City of San Diego, California. Originally zoned as industrial property, at the time of the study, the site housed a small warehouse operation that employed some six to eight employees with an annual payroll of $280,000. Some political and community activists were hoping for the development of the parcel into a manufacturing operation with a large number of high wage jobs. The non-profit Jacobs Foundation bought the site with the intention of developing the property into commercial and office space. One of the conditions imposed by the City of San Diego in considering the request for rezoning the space was a comprehensive economic impact analysis. This paper identifies the methodology employed in the impact analysis and provides some of the highlights of the study. There were several reasons to conclude that the development of the site into an industrial development with a large number of jobs was unlikely. The property is located near a flood zone and within a residential neighborhood with limited transportation avenues. Furthermore, the site is only 20 acres, and isolated from other manufacturing hubs. Finally, the overall number of jobs is trending downward for both the United States as a whole as well as in San Diego. In evaluating the benefits from the rezoning, the author estimates that in addition to the infusion of jobs and expenditures resulting from the construction aspect of the project (360 jobs and $50 million), the development of the site as commercial/office space will eventually support an estimated 1790 jobs with an annual payroll of almost $50 million. Sales revenue in the proposed development is forecast to exceed $25 million annually. In both the construction and operation of Market Creek Plaza, the Jacobs Foundation worked to assure local access to jobs and training opportunities. These benefits are more difficult to quantify, but are probably of even greater importance to the community. In addition, the study demonstrates that the study area was under-served in terms of food stores and other retail shops. It is estimated that at least $60 million of spending on retail sales by study area residents was occurring outside of the study area. A significant portion of this spending, and the subsequent tax dollars, were benefiting municipalities other than the City of San Diego. The proposed development will serve to fill this void. The City of San Diego accepted the economic impact analysis along with other detailed analyses, and approved the change in zoning. The development is complete and has been cited throughout the United States for it success.
Trajectories of cognitive decline by driving mobility: evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

OBJECTIVE: The recent emphasis of the importance of "aging in place" has highlighted the role of transportation in health promotion over the life course. Driving cessation in later life is associated with numerous poor health outcomes including limitations in social and physical functioning and increased risk of mortality. However, little is known about the relationship between driving cessation and change in cognitive functioning in late life. This study examined the association between driving mobility and trajectories of cognitive functioning among older adults. METHODS: Using data from six waves [1998-2008] of the Health and Retirement Study, trajectories of cognitive functioning were estimated over a 10-year period using longitudinal mixed effects models [N = 9,135]. Cognitive function was assessed with a modified version of the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status. Driving status and health characteristics were assessed by self-report. RESULTS: Older adults who did not drive (former and never drivers) at baseline had lower average cognitive scores compared with active drivers. Former drivers had accelerated cognitive decline over the subsequent 10 years compared with active drivers (β = -0.35, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] = -0.43 to -0.26) even after controlling for baseline cognitive functioning and health status. The transition to non-driving was associated with a faster cognitive decline among those who were driving at baseline (β = -0.31, 95% CI = -0.40 to -0.22). CONCLUSIONS: Older adults without driving mobility had poorer cognitive functioning at baseline and experienced accelerated cognitive decline relative to active drivers over follow-up. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Language: en
Effect of KRAS Mutation on Long-Term Outcomes of Patients Undergoing Hepatic Resection for Colorectal Liver Metastases

To investigate the prognostic value of KRAS in a large cohort of patients undergoing liver resection for colorectal liver metastases (CRLM). Between 2003 and 2013, 334 patients underwent hepatic resection for CRLM at Johns Hopkins Hospital and met the inclusion criteria. Clinicopathologic characteristics, perioperative details, and outcomes were stratified by KRAS status—mutant KRAS (mtKRAS) versus wild-type KRAS (wtKRAS)—and analyzed. mtKRAS was identified in 115 (34.4 %) patients. At a median follow-up of 28.2 months, recurrence was observed in 59 (51.3 %) patients with mtKRAS and 117 (53.4 %) patients with wtKRAS (P = 0.79); there was no difference in the pattern of recurrence (liver: mtKRAS 39.0 % vs. wtKRAS 52.1 %; lung: mtKRAS 55.6 % vs. wtKRAS 64.3 %; both P > 0.05). Although 5-year log-rank overall survival (OS) was comparable among mtKRAS (41.6 %) vs. wtKRAS (48.5 %), on multivariable Cox survival analysis and after adjusting for known predictors of OS mtKRAS was associated with worse OS (hazard ratio 1.65; 95 % confidence interval 1.07–2.54; P = 0.02). Among patients who experienced a recurrence, 5-year OS was worse among those patients who had mtKRAS (mtKRAS 28.1 % vs. wtKRAS 44.5 %; P = 0.004). After controlling for tumor factors and receipt of chemotherapy, mtKRAS status remained independently associated with a worse outcome among patients who experienced recurrence (hazard ratio 2.07; 95 % confidence interval 1.31–3.27; P = 0.002). mtKRAS was noted in one-third of patients with CRLM. Although KRAS status did not affect the pattern of recurrence and recurrence-free survival, mtKRAS was an independent predictor of worse OS. The effect was more pronounced among patients who experienced a recurrence after resection of CRLM.
Recombination in nuclear collisions

Recombination is a hadronization process that converts partons to hadrons at late time, but the description has no quantitative significance without some meaningful input on the parton distributions at earlier time. Thus observations of particle spectra and correlations have definitive implications on the partonic processes at all transverse momenta. After presenting a general review of the subject at the Workshop, I selected two topics in nuclear collisions for more detailed discussion, which are summarized here. One is on the azimuthal anisotropy at low pT due to hard or semihard scattering of partons that create ridges with or without triggers. The ridge particles are the products of recombination of thermal partons enhanced by the energy loss of hard or semihard partons. Their f dependence at midrapidity can be determined essentially from geometry. The other topic is on the scaling behavior in f and centrality at high pT , where the hadronization process is dominated by TS and SS recombination. The relevant RHIC data are found to have the same scaling behavior. But at LHC such scaling is badly broken at pT 10 GeV/c if two-jet recombination is important. At the end of this article some comments are made to relate our study of the effects of semihard partons to the observation of minijets in the analyses of STAR data.
Practical high-dimensional quantum key distribution with decoy states

We propose a high-dimensional quantum key distribution protocol secure against photon-number splitting attack by employing only one or two decoy states. Decoy states dramatically increase the protocol's secure distance.
Recent Progress in Carbonylphosphonate Chemistry

Carbonylphosphonates are defined for the purposes of this Review as phosphonates containing a proximal C=O function. In this review we focus on α-keto and β-ketophosphonates, including two classes of trifunctional carbonyl phosphonates, α-ketophosphonoglyoxylates and carbonylbisphosphonates. These compounds (and analogous derivatives) exhibit distinctive, multiple chemical properties reflecting in part the mutual intereaction of their neighboring carbonyl and phosphonate groups. In some cases, they present special problems in synthesis, and they have useful applications ranging from metal chelation to medicinal chemistry. Here they are considered from the points of view of synthesis, reactivity, value as synthons, and actual or potential bioactivity. Recent (>1995) advances are emphasized.
Present-day solid-state power switches

New static components and devices, many of which are characterized by decreasing cost with time, are being developed at a rapid rate. A review of their properties and applications, at this time, is in order Although the SCR is only seven years old,1 many of the original types are either obsolescent or already obsolete in view of the apparent ability of present-day power semiconductor technology to develop “ultimate” devices (see Fig. 1).
First in the Class? Age and the Education Production Function

AbstractWe estimate the effects of relative age in kindergarten using data from an experiment where children of the same age were randomly assigned to different kindergarten classmates. We exploit the resulting experimental variation in relative age in conjunction with variation in expected kindergarten entry age based on birthdate to account for negative selection of some of the older school entrants. We find that, holding constant own age, having older classmates on average improves educational outcomes, increasing test scores up to eight years after kindergarten, and raising the probability of taking a college-entry exam. These findings suggest that delaying kindergarten entry, or so-called academic “redshirting,” does not harm other children—and may in fact benefit them—consistent with positive spillovers from higher-scoring or better-behaved peers.
Catholic Grade Schools and Academic Achievement

There is substantial controversy regarding private school effects on academic achievement. A number of studies, mostly by researchers in education and sociology, claim to show that Catholic schools and other private schools have a positive effect on academic achievement (e.g., Bryk, Lee, and Holland, 1993; Chubb and Moe, 1990; Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore, 1982; Greeley, 1982; and Hoffer, Greeley, and Coleman, 1985). Critics claim that seemingly positive private school effects could be the result of selection rather than causation (e.g., Goldberg and Cain, 1982; Murnane, 1984; Murnane, Newstead, and Olsen, 1985; and Noell, 1982).
Marriage Patterns in the United States

This study used 3 independent data sets--the 1976 National Survey of Family Growth (Cycle II) the 1982 Current Population Survey and the 1978 National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women--to investigate the marriage patterns of US women. The purpose of the investigation was to determine whether declining rates of 1st marriage are due to changes in the timing of marriage the incidence of marriage or both factors. A parametric model was used to analyze survey data on age at 1st marriage for successive birth cohorts. Surprisingly the mean age at 1st marriage was found to have remained quite stable across cohorts increasing no more than 1 year over cohorts born 20 years apart. However a monotonic downward trend across cohorts in the proportion of women who will eventually marry was noted. The proportion of women never marrying will be 3 times as high for women 26-30 years of age in 1982 than for those 46-50 years of age in 1982. Further analysis indicated that educational attainment has a strong positive association with age at marriage and higher education is increasingly negatively associated with the probability of ever marrying. Race is also an increasingly important correlate of the propensity to marry. Only 66% of black women aged 26-30 in 1982 who have not graduated from high school can be expected to marry compared with 91% of their white counterparts. Finally the gap between proportions never marrying and proportions never bearing children increased from 6% to 15% across the cohorts analyzed in this study suggesting that childbearing is declining in importance as a motive for marriage. These analyses confirm the utility of cohort-based data in periods of potentially unstable nuptiality patterns.
Future Probes of the Neutron Star Equation of State Using X-ray Bursts

Observations with NASA s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have resulted in the discovery of fast (200 - 600 Hz), coherent X-ray intensity oscillations (hereafter, %urstoscillations ) during thermonuclear X-ray bursts from 12 low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). Although many of their detailed properties remain to be fully understood, it is now beyond doubt that these oscillations result from spin modulation of the thermonuclear burst flux from the neutron star surface. Among the new timing phenomena revealed by RXTE the burst oscillations are perhaps the best understood, in the sense that many of their properties can be explained in the framework of this relatively simple model. Because of this, detailed modelling of burst oscillations can be an extremely powerful probe of neutron star structure, and thus the equation of state (EOS) of supra-nuclear density matter. Both the compactness parameter beta = GM/c(sup 2)R, and the surface velocity, nu(sub rot) = Omega(sub spin)R, are encoded in the energy-dependent amplitude and shape of the modulation pulses. The new discoveries have spurred much new theoretical work on thermonuclear burning and propagation on neutron stars, so that in the near future it is not unreasonable to think that detailed physical models of the time dependent flux from burning neutron stars will be available for comparison with the observed pulse profiles from a future, large collecting area X-ray timing observatory. In addition, recent high resolution burst spectroscopy with XMM/Newton suggests the presence of redshifted absorption lines from the neutron star surface during bursts. This leads to the possibility of using large area, high spectral resolution measurements of X-ray bursts as a precise probe of neutron star structure. In this work I will explore the precision with which constraints on neutron star structure, and hence the dense matter EOS, can be made with the implementation of such programs.
Secure set membership using 3SAT

A wide variety of powerful cryptographic tools have been built using RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and other similar assumptions as their basis. Computational security has been achieved relative to complexity assumptions about the computational difficulty of a variety of number theoretic problems. However, these problems are closely related, and it is likely that if any one of them turns out to be efficiently solvable with new mathematical advances or new kinds of computational devices, then similar techniques could be applicable to all of them. To provide greater diversity of security assumptions so that a break of one of them is less likely to yield a break of many or all of them, it is important to expand the body of computational problems on which security systems are based. Specifically, we suggest the use of hardness assumptions based on the complexity of logic problems, and in particular, we consider the well known Boolean 3Sat problem. In this paper, we consider the use of the 3Sat problem to provide a cryptographic primitive, secure set membership. Secure set membership is a general problem for participants holding set elements to generate a representation of their set that can then be used to prove knowledge of set elements to others. Set membership protocols can be used, for example, for authentication problems such as digital credentials and some signature problems such as timestamping.
Salience: Agenda choices by competing candidates

Which issues are discussed by candidates in an election campaign? Why are some issues never discussed? Model tractability is lost quickly when dealing with these questions, partly because of the multidimensional voting inherent in models of multiple issues. Our model features two candidates for office who can talk about any subset of issues, allowing uncertainty both on the part of voters and candidates, and taking candidates to be office motivated. Candidates move first and simultaneously, announcing any positions they choose on any issues. To us, salience is simply the discussion of an issue in a campaign. If both candidates and voters are expected utility maximizers, we find salience results, in that candidates typically want to talk about everything (or they are indifferent between talking and nonsalience). Leaving the expected utility framework, we present an example using “Knightian uncertainty” or “maxmin expected utility with multiple priors” of Gilboa–Schmeidler to illustrate how robust nonsalience and salience of issues might be generated.
On the Validity of the Conjugate Pairing Rule for Lyapunov Exponents

For Hamiltonian systems subject to an external potential which in the presence of a thermostat will reach a nonequilibrium stationary state Dettmann and Morriss proved a strong conjugate pairing rule (SCPR) for pairs of Lyapunov exponents in the case of isokinetic (IK) stationary states which have a given kinetic energy. This SCPR holds for all initial phases of the system, all times t, and all numbers of particles N. This proof was generalized by Wojtkowski and Liverani to include hard interparticle potentials. A geometrical reformulation of those results is presented. The present paper proves numerically, using periodic orbits for the Lorentz gas, that SCPR cannot hold for isoenergetic (IE) stationary states which have a given total internal energy. In that case strong evidence is obtained for CPR to hold for large N and t, where it can be conjectured that the larger N, the smaller t will be. This suffices for statistical mechanics.
Russell on Gorman's Engel curves: A correction

Abstract Russel [Economics Letters, 1983, 11, 223–224] claims to show that the main theorem in Gorman's ‘Some Engel curves’ [in A.S. Deaton, ed., Essays in the theory and measurement of consumer behavior, 1981 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)] follows from Lie's (1988) theory of transformation groups [Theorie der Transformationsgruppen (B.F. Teubner, Leipzig)]. That claim is incorrect, but Russell's argument can be used to prove a special case of Gorman's theorem.
Two Problems in Health Education

(1985). Two Problems in Health Education. Health Education: Vol. 16, AAHPERD-AAHE Centennial 1885-1985, pp. 50-53.
Generalized Hermite Polynomials and the Bose-Like Oscillator Calculus

This paper studies a suitably normalized set of generalized Hermite polynomials and sets down a relevant Mehler formula, Rodrigues formula, and generalized translation operator. Weighted generalized Hermite polynomials are the eigenfunctions of a generalized Fourier transform which satisfies an F. and M. Riesz theorem on the absolute continuity of analytic measures. The Bose-like oscillator calculus, which generalizes the calculus associated with the quantum mechanical simple harmonic oscillator, is studied in terms of these polynomials.
Barriers to mental health service use among distressed family caregivers of lung cancer patients

Although family caregivers of patients with lung and other cancers show high rates of psychological distress, they underuse mental health services. This qualitative study aimed to identify barriers to mental health service use among 21 distressed family caregivers of lung cancer patients. Caregivers had not received mental health services during the patient's initial months of care at a comprehensive cancer centre in New York City. Thematic analysis of interview data was framed by Andersen's model of health service use and Corrigan's stigma theory. Results of our analysis expand Andersen's model by providing a description of need variables (e.g. psychiatric symptoms), enabling factors (e.g. finances), and psychosocial factors associated with caregivers' non-use of mental health services. Regarding psychosocial factors, caregivers expressed negative perceptions of mental health professionals and a desire for independent management of emotional concerns. Additionally, caregivers perceived a conflict between mental health service use and the caregiving role (e.g. prioritising the patient's needs). Although caregivers denied stigma associated with service use, their anticipated negative self-perceptions if they were to use services suggest that stigma may have influenced their decision to not seek services. Findings suggest that interventions to improve caregivers' uptake of mental health services should address perceived barriers.
Oblivious medians via online bidding

Following Mettu and Plaxton [22, 21], we study oblivious algorithms for the k-medians problem. Such an algorithm produces an incremental sequence of facility sets. We give improved algorithms, including a (24+e)-competitive deterministic polynomial algorithm and a 2e ≈ 5.44-competitive randomized non-polynomial algorithm. Our approach is similar to that of [18], which was done independently. We then consider the competitive ratio with respect to size. An algorithm is s-size-competitive if, for each k, the cost of Fk is at most the minimum cost of any set of k facilities, while the size of Fk is at most sk. We present optimally competitive algorithms for this problem. Our proofs reduce oblivious medians to the following online bidding problem: faced with some unknown threshold $ T \in {\mathbb R}^{+}$, an algorithm must submit “bids” b$\in {\mathbb R}^{+}$ until it submits a bid b ≥ T, paying the sum of its bids. We describe optimally competitive algorithms for online bidding. Some of these results extend to approximately metric distance functions, oblivious fractional medians, and oblivious bicriteria approximation. When the number of medians takes only two possible values k or l, for k < l, we show that the optimal cost-competitive ratio is 2 – 1/l.
Archipelago of Gear: The Political Economy of Fisheries Management and Private Sustainable Fisheries Initiatives in Indonesia

Indonesia is a vast archipelago, stretching over 3,000 miles and including the heart of the Coral Triangle. Fisheries and marine conservation is fundamentally important to Indonesia's large population, but to date the political, legal, economic and institutional socio-cultural settings for fisheries management and marine conservation have been plagued by institutional and legal uncertainty. Even in cases where laws are clear, monitoring and enforcement are often unpredictable, or simply lacking. This has caused problems, but it has also created opportunities for innovative experiments at the local level, across the diverse cultural and political landscape of this nation of islands. This article describes the most notable examples of these experiments and how they may shape future marine conservation policy in Indonesia.
Introduction to parton-shower event generators

This lecture discusses the physics implemented by Monte Carlo event generators for hadron colliders. It details the construction of parton showers and the matching of parton showers to fixed-order calculations at higher orders in perturbative QCD. It also discusses approaches to merge calculations for a varying number of jets, the interface to the underlying event and hadronization.
Internet of Things-Based Temperature Tracking System

The work described in this paper consists of a temperature tracking system that follows a Client-Server architecture. A Raspberry Pi, a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) device, is responsible for sensing the temperature and streaming it to a server, the readings then are displayed in a mobile android application. For this system, a python application was developed to sense and stream the temperature, a servlet was developed to read and store the temperature in a SQLite database, and a mobile Android application was developed to read and display the temperature readings from the server. The initial versions of the project used the SoC device as a server (storing temperature readings into a local SQLite database), and both the SoC device and the mobile device needed to be connected in a local area network. However, the project was further developed to separate the server responsibilities from the SoC device. The system now supports user authentication, and both devices are connected through the Internet. This implementation allows the temperature readings to be viewed and displayed anytime from anywhere in the world since the database is hosted on a server which can be accessed over the internet. Also, this solution allows multiple SoC devices to stream temperatures to the server, to different mobile clients using the same database. The Android client application was also implemented to graphically show the temperature readings recorded by Raspberry Pi using Restful architecture. Moreover, an alert message notification was implemented in Android application so that a user is notified whenever the temperature reading reaches the preset threshold. On the other hand, the smart chair system has brilliant commercial prospects, which can be helpful to build health care products with the help of wearable sensors, intelligent refrigerator/oven temperature tracking system and etc.
Possible Initial Evidence of Extragalactic Cosmic-Ray Protons and the Age of Extragalactic Cosmic-Ray Sources

We have compared the recent cosmic background γ-ray observations with spectra predicted by various possible cosmic interactions. We find that the observed isotropic γ-rays with energies > 1 MeV can best be explained as being due to the decay of π°-mesons produced in extragalactic cosmic-ray collisions. This interpretation indicates that extragalactic cosmic-ray sources were more active (or prevalent) in the past and started to form at a redshift of ~ 100 corresponding to 107–108 years after the ‘big-bang’.
Audit Report Restrictions in Debt Covenants

While the debt-contracting literature has extensively examined financial covenants, there has been little attention paid to audit-related covenants. We focus on a covenant that restricts the borrower from receiving a going-concern audit report (GCAR covenant). We hypothesize that a debt agreement is more likely to include a GCAR covenant as the borrower's credit quality decreases and the length of the loan period increases, and that it is more likely to impose a covenant restricting the choice of auditor when the debt includes a GCAR covenant. Also, we expect that an audit client with a GCAR covenant will be charged a higher audit fee and is more likely to receive a going-concern audit report. We test these hypotheses on a sample of firms that issue private debt. Our results generally support our hypotheses. Our study suggests that lenders rely on the auditor's assessment in contracting, and audit-related covenants influence auditor behavior.
CALCULATIONS OF THE THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF METALLURGICAL SOLUTIONS

ABSTRACT Predictive theories for metallurgical solutions are important precursors for computer software in chemical and extractive metallurgy. A limited selection of concepts useful for slags and other ionic systems will be discussed and include the quasichemical theory, the conformal ionic solution theory, and polymer theory. We emphasize theories which usefully predict solution properties of multicomponent ionic systems, such as silicates and molten salts, to illustrate the range of possible uses.
Error in unsaturated stochastic models parameterized with field data

[1] We use Monte Carlo error analysis to illustrate the impact of measurement errors in field-estimated hydraulic properties on predictions made with 1D and 3D unconditional stochastic models of unsaturated flow and transport. Monte Carlo simulations are conducted across a series of simplified artificial realities completely described by the Gardner–Russo parametric model. The mean values of properties are varied between simulations to elucidate the relationship between true properties and prediction errors. Hydraulic properties are reestimated by simulating tension infiltrometer measurements in the presence of small simple errors. Two types of observation error are considered, along with one inversion-model error resulting from poor contact between the instrument and the medium. Errors in the spatial statistics of hydraulic properties cause critical stochastic model assumptions to be violated, limiting the usable parameter space for model predictions. Even where critical assumptions are valid, stochastic model predictions show significant error, and the magnitude and pattern of error changes with the true property means, the flow conditions, and the type of measurement error. Mean velocities may show errors up to an order of magnitude. The velocity variance is overestimated by up to three orders of magnitude during 3D flow and eight orders of magnitude during 1D flow. The 1D velocity integral scale is underestimated by as much as five orders of magnitude. The estimates for 1D longitudinal macrodispersivity are surprisingly robust and show relatively small error across most of the parameter space.
Hyperplane arrangement cohomology and monomials in the exterior algebra

We show that if X is the complement of a complex hyperplane arrangement, then the homology of X has linear free resolution as a module over the exterior algebra on the first cohomology of X. We study invariants of X that can be deduced from this resolution. A key ingredient is a result of Aramova, Avramov, and Herzog (2000) on resolutions of monomial ideals in the exterior algebra. We give a new conceptual proof of this result.
On the information flow required for tracking control in networks of mobile sensing agents

We design controllers that permit a network of mobile agents with distributed sensing capabilities to track (follow) desired trajectories, and identify what trajectory information must be distributed to each agent for tracking.
Radio and optical emission: Spectral shapes and breaks in GRB

Relativistic blast wave models of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) predict the spectrum of the emitted synchrotron radiation. The electrons in the shocked region are heated to a Wien distribution whose 'temperature' is 1/3 of the mean electron energy. This energy determines a characteristic (break) frequency of synchrotron radiation. At much lower frequencies, a spectrum F(sub nu) varies as nu(sup 1/3) is predicted independently of the details of the emitting region. This is consistent with the observed soft x ray emission of GRB. It implies low visible and radio intensities, unless there are collective emission processes.
Geometric nonlinear PID control of a quadrotor UAV on SE(3)

Nonlinear PID control systems for a quadrotor UAV are proposed to follow an attitude tracking command and a position tracking command. The control systems are developed directly on the special Euclidean group to avoid singularities of minimal attitude representations or ambiguity of quaternions. A new form of integral control terms is proposed to guarantee almost global asymptotic stability when there exist uncertainties in the quadrotor dynamics. A rigorous mathematical proof is given. Numerical example illustrating a complex maneuver, and a preliminary experimental result are provided.
New analysis and algorithm for learning with drifting distributions

We present a new analysis of the problem of learning with drifting distributions in the batch setting using the notion of discrepancy. We prove learning bounds based on the Rademacher complexity of the hypothesis set and the discrepancy of distributions both for a drifting PAC scenario and a tracking scenario. Our bounds are always tighter and in some cases substantially improve upon previous ones based on the L1 distance. We also present a generalization of the standard on-line to batch conversion to the drifting scenario in terms of the discrepancy and arbitrary convex combinations of hypotheses. We introduce a new algorithm exploiting these learning guarantees, which we show can be formulated as a simple QP. Finally, we report the results of preliminary experiments demonstrating the benefits of this algorithm.
Mitigating dictionary attacks on password-protected local storage

We address the issue of encrypting data in local storage using a key that is derived from the user's password. The typical solution in use today is to derive the key from the password using a cryptographic hash function. This solution provides relatively weak protection, since an attacker that gets hold of the encrypted data can mount an off-line dictionary attack on the user's password, thereby recovering the key and decrypting the stored data. We propose an approach for limiting off-line dictionary attacks in this setting without relying on secret storage or secure hardware. In our proposal, the process of deriving a key from the password requires the user to solve a puzzle that is presumed to be solvable only by humans (e.g, a CAPTCHA). We describe a simple protocol using this approach: many different puzzles are stored on the disk, the user's password is used to specify which of them need to be solved, and the encryption key is derived from the password and the solutions of the specified puzzles. Completely specifying and analyzing this simple protocol, however, raises a host of modeling and technical issues, such as new properties of human-solvable puzzles and some seemingly hard combinatorial problems. Here we analyze this protocol in some interesting special cases.
On Inherited Duality in N = 1 d = 4 Supersymmetric Gauge Theories

Four-dimensional = 1 supersymmetric gauge theories with two adjoints and a quartic superpotential are believed, from AdS/CFT duality, to have SL(2,) invariance. In this note we review an old, unpublished argument for this property, based solely on field theory. The technique involves a complexified flavor rotation which deforms an = 2 supersymmetric gauge theory with matter to an = 1 theory, leaving all holomorphic invariants unchanged. We apply this to the = 1 gauge theory with two massless adjoints and show that it has the same auxiliary torus as that of = 4 gauge theory, from which SL(2,) invariance follows. In the appendix, we check that our arguments are consistent with earlier work on the SU(2) case. Our technique is general and applies to many other = 1 theories.
From Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After: Tracking Emotions in Novels and Fairy Tales

Today we have access to unprecedented amounts of literary texts. However, search still relies heavily on key words. In this paper, we show how sentiment analysis can be used in tandem with effective visualizations to quantify and track emotions in both individual books and across very large collections. We introduce the concept of emotion word density, and using the Brothers Grimm fairy tales as example, we show how collections of text can be organized for better search. Using the Google Books Corpus we show how to determine an entity's emotion associations from co-occurring words. Finally, we compare emotion words in fairy tales and novels, to show that fairy tales have a much wider range of emotion word densities than novels.