cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Election predictions as martingales: an arbitrage approach

We consider the estimation of binary election outcomes as martingales and propose an arbitrage pricing when one continuously updates estimates. We argue that the estimator needs to be priced as a binary option as the arbitrage valuation minimizes the conventionally used Brier score for tracking the accuracy of probability assessors. We create a dual martingale process $Y$, in $[L,H]$ from the standard arithmetic Brownian motion, $X$ in $(-\infty, \infty)$ and price elections accordingly. The dual process $Y$ can represent the numerical votes needed for success. We show the relationship between the volatility of the estimator in relation to that of the underlying variable. When there is a high uncertainty about the final outcome, 1) the arbitrage value of the binary gets closer to 50\%, 2) the estimate should not undergo large changes even if polls or other bases show significant variations. There are arbitrage relationships between 1) the binary value, 2) the estimation of $Y$, 3) the volatility of the estimation of $Y$ over the remaining time to expiration. We note that these arbitrage relationships were often violated by the various forecasting groups in the U.S. presidential elections of 2016, as well as the notion that all intermediate assessments of the success of a candidate need to be considered, not just the final one.
Critical role of quantum dynamical effects in the Raman spectroscopy of liquid water

ABSTRACTUnderstanding the Raman spectroscopy at the atomistic level is important for the elucidation of dynamical processes in liquid water. Because the polarisability (or its time derivative) is o...
The Progenitor Age and Mass of the Black Hole Formation Candidate N6946-BH1

The failed supernova N6946-BH1 likely formed a black hole (BH); we age-date the surrounding population and infer an age and initial mass for the progenitor of this BH formation candidate. First, we use archival Hubble Space Telescope imaging to extract broadband photometry of the resolved stellar populations surrounding this event. Using this photometry, we fit stellar evolution models to the color-magnitude diagrams to measure the recent star formation history (SFH). Modeling the photometry requires an accurate distance; therefore, we measure the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) and infer a distance modulus of $29.47 \pm 0.079$ to NGC~6946, or a metric distance of $7.83 \pm 0.29$ Mpc. To estimate the stellar population's age, we convert the SFH and uncertainties into a probabilistic distribution for the progenitor's age. The region in the immediate vicinity of N6946-BH1 exhibits the youngest and most vigorous star formation for several hundred pc. This suggests that the progenitor is not a runaway star. From these measurements, we infer an age for the BH progenitor of $10.6^{+14.5}_{-5.9}$ Myr. Assuming that the progenitor evolved effectively as a single star, this corresponds to an initial mass of $17.9^{+29.9}_{-7.6}$ $M_{\odot}$. Previous spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling of the progenitor suggests a mass of $\sim$27 $M_{\odot}$. Formally, the SED-derived mass falls within our narrowest 68\% confidence interval; however, $91\%$ of the probability distribtuion function we measure lies below that mass, putting some tension between the age and the direct-imaging results.
GAUGINO DETERMINANT IN SUPERSYMMETRIC YANG–MILLS THEORY

We resolve an ambiguity in the sign of the determinant of a single Weyl fermion, such as the gaugino in supersymmetric models. Positivity of this determinant is necessary for the application of QCD inequalities and lattice Monte–Carlo methods to supersymmetric Yang–Mills models.
Tree- versus graph-level quasilocal Poincaré duality on $$S^{1}$$

Among its many corollaries, Poincare duality implies that the de Rham cohomology of a compact oriented manifold is a commutative Frobenius algebra. Focusing on the case of \(S^1\), this paper studies the question of whether this commutative Frobenius algebra structure lifts to a “homotopy” commutative Frobenius algebra structure at the cochain level, under a mild locality-type condition called “quasilocality”. The answer turns out to depend on the choice of context in which to do homotopy algebra—there are two reasonable worlds in which to study structures (like Frobenius algebras) that involve many-to-many operations. If one works at “tree level”, we prove that there is a homotopically-unique quasilocal cochain-level homotopy Frobenius algebra structure lifting the Frobenius algebra structure on cohomology. However, if one works instead at “graph level”, we prove that a quasilocal lift does not exist.
The Ooguri-Vafa metric, holomorphic discs and wall-crossing

Recently, Gaiotto, Moore and Neitzke \cite{GMN08} proposed a new construction of hyperk\"{a}hler metrics. In particular, they gave a new construction of the Ooguri-Vafa metric, in which they came across certain formulas. We interpret those formulas as wall-crossing formulas that appear in the SYZ construction of instanton-corrected mirror manifolds. This reveals the close relation between the Ooguri-Vafa metric and nontrivial holomorphic discs with boundary in special Lagrangian torus fibers.
The Cumulative Mass Profile of the Milky Way as Determined by Globular Cluster Kinematics from Gaia DR2

We present new mass estimates and cumulative mass profiles (CMPs) with Bayesian credible regions for the Milky Way (MW) Galaxy, given the kinematic data of globular clusters as provided by (1) the $\textit{Gaia}$ DR2 collaboration and the HSTPROMO team, and (2) the new catalog in Vasiliev (2019). We use globular clusters beyond 15kpc to estimate the CMP of the MW, assuming a total gravitational potential model $\Phi(r) = \Phi_{\circ}r^{-\gamma}$, which approximates an NFW-type potential at large distances when $\gamma=0.5$. We compare the resulting CMPs given data sets (1) and (2), and find the results to be nearly identical. The median estimate for the total mass is $M_{200}= 0.70 \times 10^{12} M_{\odot}$ and the $50\%$ Bayesian credible interval is $(0.62, 0.81)\times10^{12}M_{\odot}$. However, because the Vasiliev catalog contains more complete data at large $r$, the MW total mass is slightly more constrained by these data. In this work, we also supply instructions for how to create a CMP for the MW with Bayesian credible regions, given a model for $M(<r)$ and samples drawn from a posterior distribution. With the CMP, we can report median estimates and $50\%$ Bayesian credible regions for the MW mass within any distance (e.g., $M(r=25\text{kpc})= 0.26~(0.20, 0.36)\times10^{12}M_{\odot}$, $M(r=50\text{kpc})= 0.37~(0.29, 0.51) \times10^{12}M_{\odot}$, $M(r=100\text{kpc}) = 0.53~(0.41, 0.74) \times10^{12}M_{\odot}$, etc.), making it easy to compare our results directly to other studies.
The Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos: Recent Insights from High Resolution Simulations

We review results from recent high resolution cosmological structure formation simulations, namely the Via Lactea I & II and GHALO projects. These simulations study the formation of Milky Way sized objects within a cosmological framework. We discuss the general properties of cold dark matter halos at redshift z = 0 and focus on new insights into the structure of halos we got due to the unprecedented high resolution in these simulations.
Collisions with black holes and deconfined plasmas

We use AdS/CFT to investigate i) high energy collisions with balls of deconfined plasma surrounded by a confining phase and ii) the rapid localized heating of a deconfined plasma. Both of these processes are dual to collisions with black holes, where they result in the nucleation of a new ``arm'' of the horizon reaching out in the direction of the incident object. We study the resulting non-equilibrium dynamics in a universal limit of the gravitational physics which may indicate universal behavior of deconfined plasmas at large Nc. Process (i) produces ``virtual'' arms of the plasma ball, while process (ii) can nucleate surprisingly large bubbles of a higher temperature phase.
Towards More Practical Adversarial Attacks on Graph Neural Networks

We study the black-box attacks on graph neural networks (GNNs) under a novel and realistic constraint: attackers have access to only a subset of nodes in the network, and they can only attack a small number of them. A node selection step is essential under this setup. We demonstrate that the structural inductive biases of GNN models can be an effective source for this type of attacks. Specifically, by exploiting the connection between the backward propagation of GNNs and random walks, we show that the common gradient-based white-box attacks can be generalized to the black-box setting via the connection between the gradient and an importance score similar to PageRank. In practice, we find attacks based on this importance score indeed increase the classification loss by a large margin, but they fail to significantly increase the mis-classification rate. Our theoretical and empirical analyses suggest that there is a discrepancy between the loss and mis-classification rate, as the latter presents a diminishing-return pattern when the number of attacked nodes increases. Therefore, we propose a greedy procedure to correct the importance score that takes into account of the diminishing-return pattern. Experimental results show that the proposed procedure can significantly increase the mis-classification rate of common GNNs on real-world data without access to model parameters nor predictions.
POLARIZATION SIGNATURE OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS FROM FRAGMENTED FIREBALLS

We study the polarization properties of the prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) produced by fragmented fireballs. Such fireballs, known in the literature under various names, are made by the superposition of many individual blobs, each of which produces a spike in the light curve. The differences between pulses are due both to the intrinsic diversity in the blobs' properties and to their orientation with respect to the line of sight. We show that the peak flux and the polarization of each pulse are connected through the orientation of the blob that produces the pulse, while the position angle fluctuates randomly from one pulse to the next and is constant within an individual pulse. The most polarized pulses are those with approximately one-tenth the peak flux of the brightest pulse. These conclusions do not depend on the assumed radiation mechanism nor on the energy and Lorentz factor of the blobs. We compare the prediction of this model to a simulated set of observations, showing that a limited sample of GRBs with time-resolved polarization measurements would provide a crucial test for this model. We finally show that a hint of the predicted correlation may have been already observed.
On the Couplings of Vector Mesons in AdS/QCD

We address, in the AdS/CFT context, the issue of the universality of the couplings of the ρ meson to other hadrons. Exploring some models, we find that generically the ρ-dominance prediction fρgρHH = mρ2 does not hold, and that gρHH is not independent of the hadron H. However, we prove that, in any model within the AdS/QCD context, there are two limiting regimes where the gρHH, along with the couplings of all excited vector mesons as well, become H-independent: (1) when H is created by an operator of large dimension, and (2) when H is a highly-excited hadron. We also find a sector of a particular model where universality for the ρ coupling is exact. Still, in none of these cases need it be true that fρgρ = mρ2, although we find empirically that the relation does hold approximately (up to a factor of order two) within the models we have studied.
Leveraging the mathematics of shape for solar magnetic eruption prediction

Current operational forecasts of solar eruptions are made by human experts using a combination of qualitative shape-based classification systems and historical data about flaring frequencies. In the past decade, there has been a great deal of interest in crafting machine-learning (ML) flare-prediction methods to extract underlying patterns from a training set – e.g. a set of solar magnetogram images, each characterized by features derived from the magnetic field and labeled as to whether it was an eruption precursor. These patterns, captured by various methods (neural nets, support vector machines, etc.), can then be used to classify new images. A major challenge with any ML method is the featurization of the data: pre-processing the raw images to extract higher-level properties, such as characteristics of the magnetic field, that can streamline the training and use of these methods. It is key to choose features that are informative, from the standpoint of the task at hand. To date, the majority of ML-based solar eruption methods have used physics-based magnetic and electric field features such as the total unsigned magnetic flux, the gradients of the fields, the vertical current density, etc. In this paper, we extend the relevant feature set to include characteristics of the magnetic field that are based purely on the geometry and topology of 2D magnetogram images and show that this improves the prediction accuracy of a neural-net based flare-prediction method.
Relations among different privacy notions

We present a comprehensive view of the relations among several privacy notions: differential privacy (DP) [1], Bayesian differential privacy (BDP) [2], semantic privacy (SP) [3], and membership privacy (MP) [4]. The results are organized into two parts. In part one, we extend the notion of semantic privacy (SP) to Bayesian semantic privacy (BSP) and show its essential equivalence with Bayesian differential privacy (BDP) in the quantitative sense. We prove the relations between BDP, BSP, and SP as follows: ∊-BDP ⇐ (1/2 − 1/e∊ + 1)-BSP, and ∊-BDP ⇒ (e∊ − 1)-BSP ⇒ (e∊ − 1)-SP. In addition, we obtain a minor result ∊-DP ⇐ (1/2 − 1/e∊ + 1)-SP, which improves the result of Kasiviswanathan and Smith [3] stating ∊-DP ⇐ ∊/6-SP for ∊ ≤ 1.35. In part two, we establish the relations between BDP and MP. First, ∊-BDP ⇒ ∊-MP. Second, for a family of distributions that are downward scalable in the sense of Li et al. [4], it is shown that ∊-BDP ⇐ ∊-MP.
Fe II and Mg II in Luminous, Intermediate-Redshift, Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We present results from analysis of spectra from a sample of ~900 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. These objects were selected for their intermediate redshift (1.2 < z < 1.8), placing Mg II and UV Fe II in the optical bandpass, relatively narrow Mg II lines, and moderately good signal-to-noise ratio spectra. Using a maximum likelihood analysis, we discovered that there is a significant dispersion in the Fe II/Mg II ratios in the sample. Using simulations, we demonstrate that this range and the corresponding correlation between Fe II equivalent width and Fe II/Mg II ratio are primarily a consequence of a larger dispersion of Fe II equivalent width (EW) relative to Mg II EW. This larger dispersion in Fe II EW could be a consequence of a range in iron abundance or a range of Fe II excitation. The latter possibility is supported by evidence that objects with weak (zero) C II] λ2325 equivalent width are likely to have large Fe II/Mg II ratios. We discuss physical effects that could produce a range of Fe II/Mg II ratios.
Unraveling the Planar-Globular Transition in Gold Nanoclusters through Evolutionary Search

Au nanoclusters are of technological relevance for catalysis, photonics, sensors, and of fundamental scientific interest owing to planar to globular structural transformation at an anomalously high number of atoms i.e. in the range 12–14. The nature and causes of this transition remain a mystery. In order to unravel this conundrum, high throughput density functional theory (DFT) calculations, coupled with a global structural optimization scheme based on a modified genetic algorithm (GA) are conducted. More than 20,000 Au12, Au13, and Au14 nanoclusters are evaluated. With any DFT functional, globular and planar structures coexist across the size range of interest. The planar-globular transition is gradual at room temperature rather than a sharp transition as previously believed. The effects of anionicity, s-d band hybridization and long range interactions on the dimensional transition are quantified by using the structures adjacent to the minima. Anionicity marginally changes the relative stability of the clusters. The degree of s-d hybridization is varied via changing the Hubbard U value which corroborate that s-d hybridization alone does not stabilize planar structures. van der Waals interactions, on the other hand, stabilize globular structures. These results elucidate the balance between the different reasons of the dimensional transition in gold nanoclusters.
Classical Logic and Neutrosophic Logic. Answers to K. Georgiev

Abstract. In this paper, we make distinctions between Classical Logic (where the propositions are 100% true, or 100 false) and the Neutrosophic Logic (where one deals with partially true, partially indeterminate and partially false propositions) in order to respond to K. Georgiev’s criticism [1]. We recall that if an axiom is true in a classical logic system, it is not necessarily that the axiom be valid in a modern (fuzzy, intuitionistic fuzzy, neutrosophic etc.) logic system.
An Ethnographic Case Study of Affordances in an Architecture Design Studio

Background/ContextStudio-based courses—the primary approach in design education— have been viewed as effective environments for learning. This study uses an ecological approach to explore how the s...
On the initiation and sustenance of flow-induced vibration of cylinders: insights from force partitioning

The focus of this work is to dissect the physical mechanisms that drive and sustain flow-induced, transverse vibrations of cylinders. The influence of different mechanisms is quantified by using a method to partition the fluid dynamic force on the cylinder into distinct, physically relevant components. In conjunction with this force partitioning, calculations of the energy extracted by the oscillating body from the flow are used to make a direct connection between the phenomena responsible for force generation and their effect on driving flow-induced oscillations. These tools are demonstrated in a study of the effect of cylinder shape on flow-induced vibrations. Relatively small increases in cylinder aspect ratio are found to have a significant influence on the amplitude of oscillation, resulting in a large drop in oscillation amplitude at reduced velocities that correspond to the upper range of the synchronization regime. By mapping out the energy transfer between the fluid and structure as a function of aspect ratio, we identify the existence of a low-amplitude stationary state as the cause of the drop in amplitude. Partitioning the fluid dynamic forces on cylinders of varying aspect ratio then allows us to uncover the physical mechanisms behind the appearance of the underlying bifurcation. The analysis also suggests that while vortex shedding in the wake is necessary to initiate oscillations, it is the vorticity associated with the boundary layer over the cylinder that is responsible for the sustenance of flow-induced vibrations.
IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE RESPONSES TO WELFARE REFORM

We investigate the effect of welfare reform in the US on the employment and hours of work of low-educated foreign-born and native-born women. For foreign-born women, we investigate whether the effect of welfare reform differed by year of immigration. We also examine whether the immigrant provisions of welfare reform had a “chilling” effect on those who remained eligible for benefits. Results suggest that welfare reform induced low-educated women to increase their labor market attachment; reform had larger effects on the least educated native-born women and among foreign-born, larger effects on more recent arrivals. The “chilling” hypothesis is not supported.
Optimal and Resilient Coordination of Virtual Batteries in Distribution Feeders

This paper presents a novel hierarchical framework for real-time, network-admissible coordination of responsive grid resources aggregated into virtual batteries (VBs). In this context, a VB represents a local aggregation of directly controlled loads, such as smart inverters, electric water heaters, and air-conditioners. The coordination is achieved by solving an optimization problem to disaggregate a feeder's desired reference trajectory into constraint-aware set-points for the VBs. Specifically, a novel, provably-tight, convex relaxation of the AC optimal power flow (OPF) problem is presented to optimally dispatch the VBs to track the feeder's desired power trajectory. In additionto the optimal VB dispatch scheme, a real-time, corrective control scheme is designed, whichis based on optimal proportional-integral (PI) control with anti-windup, to reject intra-feeder and inter-feeder disturbances that arise during operation of the power system. Simulation results conducted on a modified IEEE test system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed multi-layer VB coordination framework.
Unbiased Measurement of Feature Importance in Tree-Based Methods

We propose a modification that corrects for split-improvement variable importance measures in Random Forests and other tree-based methods. These methods have been shown to be biased towards increasing the importance of features with more potential splits. We show that by appropriately incorporating split-improvement as measured on out of sample data, this bias can be corrected yielding better summaries and screening tools.
A theorem of Joseph-Alfred Serret and its relation to perfect quantum state transfer

Abstract In this paper we recast the Serret theorem about a characterization of palindromic continued fractions in the context of polynomial continued fractions. Then, using the relation between symmetric tridiagonal matrices and polynomial continued fractions we give a quick exposition of the mathematical aspect of the perfect quantum state transfer problem.
Machine learning for metal additive manufacturing: predicting temperature and melt pool fluid dynamics using physics-informed neural networks

The recent explosion of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) shows great potential in the breakthrough of metal additive manufacturing (AM) process modeling, which is an indispensable step to derive the process-structure-property relationship. However, the success of conventional machine learning tools in data science is primarily attributed to the unprecedented large amount of labeled data-sets (big data), which can be either obtained by experiments or first-principle simulations. Unfortunately, these labeled data-sets are expensive to obtain in AM due to the high expense of the AM experiments and prohibitive computational cost of high-fidelity simulations, hindering the direct applications of big-data based ML tools to metal AM problems. To fully exploit the power of machine learning for metal AM while alleviating the dependence on “big data”, we put forth a physics-informed neural network (PINN) framework that fuses both data and first physical principles, including conservation laws of momentum, mass, and energy, into the neural network to inform the learning processes. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first application of physics-informed deep learning to three dimensional AM processes modeling. Besides, we propose a hard-type approach for Dirichlet boundary conditions (BCs) based on a Heaviside function, which can not only exactly enforce the BCs but also accelerate the learning process. The PINN framework is applied to two representative metal manufacturing problems, including the 2018 NIST AM-Benchmark test series. We carefully assess the performance of the PINN model by comparing the predictions with available experimental data and high-fidelity simulation results, using finite element based variational multi-scale formulation method. The investigations show that the PINN, owed to the additional physical knowledge, can accurately predict the temperature and melt pool dynamics during metal AM processes with only a moderate amount of labeled data-sets. The foray of PINN to metal AM shows the great potential of physics-informed deep learning for broader applications to advanced manufacturing. All the data-sets and the PINN code will be made open-sourced in https://yan.cee.illinois.edu/ once the paper is published.
EEG signatures of contextual influences on visual search with real scenes

The use of scene context is a powerful way by which biological organisms guide and facilitate visual search. Although many studies have shown enhancements of target-related electroencephalographic activity (EEG) with synthetic cues, there have been fewer studies demonstrating such enhancements during search with scene context and objects in real world scenes. Here, observers covertly searched for a target in images of real scenes while we used EEG to measure the steady state visual evoked response to objects flickering at different frequencies. The target appeared in its typical contextual location or out of context while we controlled for low-level properties of the image including target saliency against the background and retinal eccentricity. A pattern classifier using EEG activity at the relevant modulated frequencies showed target detection accuracy increased when the target was in a contextually appropriate location. A control condition for which observers searched the same images for a different target orthogonal to the contextual manipulation, resulted in no effects of scene context on classifier performance, confirming that image properties cannot explain the contextual modulations of neural activity. Pattern classifier decisions for individual images were also related to the aggregated observer behavioral decisions for individual images. Together, these findings demonstrate target-related neural responses are modulated by scene context during visual search with real world scenes and can be related to behavioral search decisions.
The Cyber Civil War

Suppose that someone hacked into your email account, stole the content of your emails, and posted them online. All of your email correspondence is now searchable in every search engine. Whomever you mentioned in any of your emails can easily find those emails by a quick search of his or her name. Most of us are terrified by such a scenario. We might not only lose and alienate our family, friends, and colleagues, but there could also be various other economic, social, and legal implications resulting from such information disclosure. This scenario has recently become non-fictional. On November 24, 2014, a group of hackers identified as the “Guardians of Peace” launched a cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment (“Sony”), obtaining and releasing personally identifiable information of the company’s employees and their dependents—emails between employees, information about executive salaries, copies of unreleased Sony films, and other information—commonly referred to as “the Sony Hack”. The motivation behind the Sony Hack was linked to a new, pre-released Sony movie entitled “The Interview,” which satirically presented North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Many U.S. government authorities attributed the Sony Hack to North Korea, but it is still unclear whether it was a geopolitical act of retaliation.
Dying and social policy in the new millennium.

(2000). Dying and Social Policy in the New Millennium. Journal of Aging & Social Policy: Vol. 11, No. 2-3, pp. 145-155.
The Safeguards Mess : a Critique of WTO Jurisprudence

The creation of the WTO revived the use of ‘safeguard’ measures to protect troubled industries against surges in import competition. Many of these measures have now been challenged in the WTO dispute resolution process, and in each case the process has found the challenged measure to be a violation of WTO law. This paper examines the WTO rules on safeguards from an economic perspective. Among other things, it argues that the textual preconditions for the use of safeguards in the treaty text are incoherent, and that the Appellate Body has compounded the problem through a series of dubious and unhelpful rulings. The result is a situation in which nations cannot use safeguards without facing a near certainty that they will be found invalid. Those who believe that safeguard measures are wasteful protectionism may welcome these developments, but it is by no means clear that the trading system will benefit in the long run.
Anti-circumvention misuse

Content owners in the United States received an anticircumvention entitlement in the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, and recent language in a European Union directive promises the equivalent to European content holders. In the United States, the statute was touted as legislation necessary to fulfill international treaty. However, such protection would already have been provided under the doctrine of contributory infringement, which attributes copyright liability to providers of technical devices that lack a substantial non-infringing use. This provision of U.S. law could have been employed against provision of so-called "black box" devices intended to circumvent technological protections. Instead, lobbying by content industries resulted in the enactment of so-called "implementing" legislation containing anti-circumvention provisions that far exceed anything contemplated by the treaty Starkly put, the DMCA creates a new and unprecedented right to control access to copyrighted works.
Speculative attacks: A laboratory study in continuous time

Abstract We examine speculative attacks in a controlled laboratory environment featuring continuous time, size asymmetries, and varying amounts of public information. Attacks succeeded in 233 of 344 possible cases. When speculators have symmetric size and access to information: (a) weaker fundamentals increase the likelihood of successful speculative attacks and hasten their onset, and (b) contrary to some theory, success is enhanced by public access to information about either the net speculative position or the fundamentals. The presence of a larger speculator further enhances success, and experience with large speculators increases small speculators' response to the public information. However, giving the large speculator increased size or better information does not significantly strengthen his impact.
‘I have big things planned for my future’: the limits and possibilities of transformative agency in Zambian schools

This article explores the extent to which participation in alternative human values education affects students' conceptions of agency amidst the economic and HIV/AIDS crises in Ndola, Zambia. Drawing on the concept of transformative agency as developed by critical research in education, this study examines conceptions of agency based on data produced through interviews, focus groups and diaries given to pairs of siblings from lower to middle income families one of whom attended a government secondary school in Ndola and the other an alternative school run by a non‐governmental organization. This study found that transformative agency was enabled by alternative schooling that attempted to disrupt the reproductive tendencies of state schooling. After graduation, however, students were forced to renegotiate their sense of agency vis‐a‐vis the larger structural constraints of Zambian society. As such, the limits and possibilities of alternative pedagogy and school structure towards educational equity are anal...
Compensation for Regulatory Takings with a Redistributive Government

Richard Epstein has argued that governments should pay compensation for regulatory actions that impose costs on a subset of society. I develop a model in which there are two groups, one of whom benefits from a regulation, and one of whom bears the costs. A potentially biased government sets the level of the regulation and also redistributes income across the two social groups via the tax system. When taxes are nondistortionary, the government chooses the efficient level of the regulation to maximize wealth and then uses the tax system to distribute this wealth according to its preferences. If the government is forced to pay compensation for the costs of the regulation, it simply undoes this via the tax and transfer system. When taxes are distortionary, societal wealth is monotonically decreasing in the degree of compensation to be paid, so that the optimal level of compensation is zero.
Mainstreaming Gender in the European Union: Getting the Incentives Right

The European Union (EU) committed itself during the 1990s to the 'mainstreaming' of gender issues across all policy areas. Nonetheless, more than a decade after the Union's initial engagement, this commitment has not led to consistent and effective implementation in EU institutions. The problem, we argue, lies in the failure to 'get the incentives right,' mobilizing sufficient interest among crucial actors, beginning within the bureaucracy. Organizations like the European Commission are more successful in achieving their objectives when they provide 'hard' incentives for bureaucrats to implement reforms, and are less successful when they depend exclusively on 'soft' incentives such as persuasion and socialization. This has been the case within the Commission, which has relied exclusively on soft incentives in its implementation of gender mainstreaming, with highly variable results after over a decade. By contrast, the Commission has utilized hard incentives in the adoption of another cross-cutting mandate, on equal oppor- tunities for men and women officials within the Commission, resulting in rapid, quantifiable progress. Comparative European Politics (2009) 7, 114-138. doi:10.1057/cep.2008.37
Against a Theory of Meaning

A language is not something about which one can have a theory. Nor is a language itself a theory. Quantum mechanics and historical materialism are theories. Each is formulated in a language in terms of laws and explanatory principles. Thus, to construct a theory, one must already have mastered a language. A fortiori, it is implausible to speak -- as Chomsky does -- of children learning their native language by constructing theories of grammar.
Negligence, causation, and incentives for care

Abstract We present a new model of negligence and causation and examine the influence of the negligence test, in the presence of intervening causation, on the level of care. In this model, the injurer's decision to take care reduces the likelihood of an accident only in the event that some nondeterministic intervention occurs. The effects of the negligence test depend on the information available to the court, and the manner in which the test is implemented. The key effect of the negligence test, in the presence of intervening causation, is to induce actors to take into account the distribution of the intervention probability as well as its expected value. In the most plausible scenario – where courts have limited information – the test generally leads to socially excessive care.
Geoscience education in the United States

Dr Julie Libarkin is a US-based researcher at the department of geological science and division of science and mathematics education, Michigan State University, USA who focuses on the evolving and potentially important discipline of geoscience education research aimed at better understanding of the processes involved in geoscience learning for both teachers and students. In the first of two articles she presents the US context, which is probably reflected in most Western Europe higher education institutions schools, concluding that geocognition or geological cognition better encapsulate the thinking needed to bring about improvements in geoscience education.
The Cross Attributes Flexible Substitution Logit: Uncovering Category Expansion and Share Impacts of Marketing Instruments

Different objectives such as category demand expansion or market share stealing warrant the use of different marketing instruments. To help brand managers make informed decisions, it is essential that marketing mix models appropriately measure their effects. Random Utility Models that have been applied to this problem might not be adequate because they do not allow the effects of marketing instruments of one brand to spillover to preference for competing alternatives. Additionally, they have the Invariant Proportion of Substitution IPS property, which in some situations imposes counter-intuitive restrictions on individual choice behavior. Recognizing that effects of marketing instruments can spill across brands in a category, we propose an alternative choice model that relaxes the IPS property: the cross attributes flexible substitution logit model. We apply the model in two very different empirical settings, i.e., consumer choices of brands of refrigerated yogurt, and prescription-writing choices of physicians in the hyperlipidemia category. In both settings the proposed model provides consistent evidence that certain marketing instruments produce sales gains primarily from growing the category pie, while others produce gains from stealing share. By contrast, the random coefficient logit and generalized nested logit models both predict that gains from all marketing instruments would have similar sources.
Media Policy and Free Speech: The First Amendment at War with Itself

A symposium on “reclaiming” the First Amendment for media policy begs the question from what and whom the First Amendment must be reclaimed. Who has it and what are they doing with it? Since we also gather to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Jerome Barron’s watershed article, Access to the Press, I consider these questions as they relate to his aspirations for a more pluralistic system of communication. Media policy, as I define it, consists of regulatory interventions specifically designed to promote communicative opportunities. Communications and copyright law are the federal government’s two principal tools in this project. Such an expansive definition of media policy is not uniformly accepted today and certainly would not have been in 1967 when Access to the Press was published. Then, media policy was virtually coextensive with broadcast regulation. The comprehensive system of subsidies at the federal level for noncommercial media had only just begun with the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act that same year. The regulation of mere
A Correction for an Underdispersed Event Count Probability Distribution

We demonstrate that the expected value and variance commonly given for a well-known probability distribution are incorrect. We also provide corrected versions and report changes in a computer program to account for the known practical uses of this distribution. The probability distribution in question, named the continuous parameter binomial (CPB) by King (1989a), has been known for at least six decades. The publications that reported the moments incorrectly, or were at least un clear about them, include a dated article (Guldberg 1931), a dissertation and several resulting published articles (Katz 1945, 1965), a popular reference book (Johnson and Kotz 1969),1 work in political science on event count regression models (King 1989a), and extensions of these event count models in econometrics (Winkelmann and Zimmermann 1991). Event count regres sion models have become increasingly common in empirical political science research; some recent examples include Wang et al. (1993) and Krause (1994). We first prove that the commonly given expressions for the expectation and variance of the CPB are incorrect. Then, we derive the correct expres sions. Finally, we evaluate the impact on the existing empirical applications of event count regression models (in political science and elsewhere), which rely in part on the CPB but the wrong expectation or variance. We show that the
Cross-sectional jury representation or systematic jury representation? Simple random and cluster sampling strategies in jury selection

This article presents a technical comparison of two methods of selecting juries. The research site was the Long Beach Superior Court in California. USREL and computer-generated graphics were the analytic methods used. The analysis demonstraies that, if a representative list of prospective jurors is to be obtained, court officials must recognize the effects of racial arid socioeconomic factors on res­ idential segregation, and the selection procedure must take these factors into account. Minority and ethnic groups are unequally distributed within the jurisdiction studied. Traditional methods of jury selection, which are based on simple random sampling, are inadequate because they generate unre­ presentative juror pools. In contrast, a cluster sampling method with the probability proportionate to size (PPS) incorporates residential segregation and generates a pool of jurors that reflects the cross­ section of the community. Two test statistics, chi-square and Z, substantiated that cluster sampling is clearly superior to the currently employed simple random-selection method. Assurance of a cross­ sectional representation of potential jurors is congruent with the requirement established by the Federal Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968. At the state level, as in California, the basic notion of this cross-sectionality is also congruent with the California Code of Civil Procedure of i981.
Pricing errors and the geography of trade in the foreign exchange market

Pricing errors in exchange rates are largest during Asian trading hours and decrease until European–New York overlapping trading hours at which point the cycle begins again. Substantial heterogeneity exists in this pattern across exchange rates. Currencies have smaller pricing errors during their home trading hours, which can be explained by traders facing both lower information-unrelated costs and lower information-related costs during a currency׳s home trading hours. Using methods that are able to unambiguously identify the relative importance of information-related and information-unrelated costs for pricing errors, information-unrelated costs are of first-order importance while information-related costs are of second-order importance.
The Effects of Procedural Justice Climate on Work Group Performance

The authors examined the effect of procedural justice climate, defined as a distinct group-level cognition about how the work group as a whole is treated, on work group performance in a sample of 34 work groups from two organizations. They hypothesized that the relationship between procedural justice climate and performance is indirect, operating through helping behavior. Group-level helping behavior fully mediated the relationship between procedural justice climate and perceived performance. However, the same results were not found when financial performance data were used as a measure of work group performance. Implications for the study’s findings are discussed.
TRANSFORMING THE ROLE OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

National retirement policy fails to provide individuals access to high-quality, unbiased information concerning how to save and invest for retirement. This article argues that employers and the Department of Labor are ill-suited to fill this informational void. The article proposes that the Social Security Administration should transform its role to become the preeminent governmental education source for workers who want to learn how to plan, save, and invest for retirement.
Passive Investment Strategies and Efficient Markets

This paper presents the case for and the evidence in favour of passive investment strategies and examines the major criticisms of the technique. I conclude that the evidence strongly supports passive investment management in all markets— smallcapitalisation stocks as well as large-capitalisation equities, US markets as well as international markets, and bonds as well as stocks. Recent attacks on the efficient market hypothesis do not weaken the case for indexing.
Capital Controls, Liberalizations, and Foreign Direct Investment

This article evaluates the impact of capital controls and their liberalization on the activities of US multinational firms. These firms attempt to circumvent capital controls by reducing reported local profitability and increasing the frequency of dividend repatriations. As a result, the reported profit impact of local capital controls is comparable with the effect of 27% higher corporate tax rates, and affiliates located in countries imposing capital controls are 9.8% more likely than other affiliates to remit dividends to parent companies. Multinational affiliates located in countries with capital controls face 5.25% higher interest rates on local borrowing than do affiliates of the same parent borrowing locally in countries without capital controls. Capital control liberalizations are associated with significant increases in multinational activity--property, plant, and equipment grow at 6.9% faster annual rates following liberalizations. The combination of the costliness of avoidance and higher interest rates discourages investment in countries with capital controls, and this effect is reversed upon liberalization of controls. (JEL F21, F23, F36, F42, G15, G32, G34) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.
Capitalizing on Capitol Hill: Informed trading by hedge fund managers

Abstract This paper examines the hypothesis that hedge fund managers gain an informational advantage in securities trading through their connections with lobbyists. Using data sets on the long-equity holdings and lobbyist connections of hedge funds from 1999 through 2012, we show that hedge funds outperform passive benchmarks by 56–93 basis points per month on their political holdings when they are connected to lobbyists. Furthermore, the political outperformance of connected funds decreased significantly after the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act became effective. Our study provides evidence on the transmission of political information in financial markets and on the value of such information to financial market participants.
Regulatory Competition in Making Corporate Law in the United States—and its Limits

American corporate-law scholars have focused on jurisdictional competition as an engine--usually as the engine--making American corporate law. Recent decisions in the European Court of Justice open up the possibility of similar competition in the EU. That has led analysts to wonder whether a European race would mimic the American, which depending on one's view is a race to the top--promoting capital markets efficiency--or one to the bottom--demeaning it by giving managers too much authority in the American corporation. But the academic race literature underestimates Washington's role in making American corporate law. Federal authorities are regularly involved, regularly make law governing the American corporation--from shareholder voting rules, to boardroom composition, to dual class stock--and they could do even more. In structure, the United States has two corporate lawmaking powers--the states (primarily Delaware) and Washington. We are only beginning to understand how they interact, as complements and substitutes, but the foundational fact of American corporate lawmaking during the twentieth century is that whenever there is a big issue--the kind of corporate policy decision that could strongly affect capital costs--Washington acted or considered acting. We cannot understand the structure of American corporate lawmaking by examining state-to-state jurisdictional competition alone. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.