cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Not Just Key Numbers and Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research

Legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. Yet law school graduates are frequently admitted to the bar without adequate competence in this area. Applying both information-foraging theory and current standards for optimal web design, Ms. Jones considers, through a heuristic analysis, whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and LexisNexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills.
On the question whether language has a social nature: Some aspects of winch and others on Wittgenstein

That language is social has become something of a commonplace among philosophers and others. Doubtless there are many possible ways of explicating the claim that language is social. Some of these will make it obviously true, or probably true as an empirical matter: clearly an important function that a shared language can fulfill is interpersonal communication; probably individual members of the biological species homo sapiens will not come to use language unless they grow up among language speakers and so on. Meanwhile, it has been held that there are philosophical arguments which lead to the more general conclusion that language as such has a social nature. Such arguments are presumed to hold for any language used by whomsoever, for whatever purpose. Many believe that Wittgenstein has put forward effective arguments of this sort in the Philosophical Investigations.1 Clearly, what precisely is at issue when it is claimed that language as such has a social nature remains in need of further explication. In this paper I focus on two claims which occur in much expository writing on Wittgenstein. They do not occur without reason, but are clearly based on remarks of Wittgenstein's. However, both of these claims must be handled with care. If they are not, the route to a thesis about the social nature of language may seem easier than it is, and almost certainly easier than Wittgenstein thought that it was. I should note at the outset that my sense of Wittgenstein's own position has been influenced by Saul Kripke's interpretation of the central line of thought about language in the Investigations.2 My most general aim in this paper is not so much to discuss the details of Wittgenstein's difficult text, or those of particular commentators, but rather to make clear the problematic nature of the two central claims found in much existing argumentation regarding the social nature of language. The first claim I discuss is what I shall call the intelligibility claim'. This may itself be regarded as a possible explication of the claim that language as such is social, and has been regarded by many as the central thesis about language to be found in Wittgenstein. Here are various
Regulation of “Religion” and the “Religious”: The Politics of Judicialization and Bureaucratization in India and Indonesia

This article compares the strategies through which Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Indonesia have regulated religion and addressed questions of what constitutes “the religious” in the post-independence period. We show that the dominant approach pursued by the Indian state has been one of judicialization—the delegation of religious questions to the high courts—while in Indonesia it has predominantly been one of bureaucratization—the regulation of religious issues by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Contrary to the expectation that judicialization devitalizes normative conflicts while bureaucratization, more frequently associated with authoritarian politics, “locks” these conflicts “in,” we show that these expectations have not materialized, and at times, the effects have been reverse. Engaging the literatures on judicialization and on bureaucratization, we argue that what determines the consequences of the policy toward religion is less the choice of the implementing institution (i.e., the judiciary or bureaucracy) than the mode of delegation (vertical versus horizontal) which shapes the relationship between the policy-maker and the institution implementing it. Bureaucrats, judges, and elected politicians in multicultural societies around the world encounter questions of religious nature very similar to those that authorities in India and Indonesia have faced. How they address the challenge of religious heterogeneity has a profound impact on prospects of nation-building and democratization. It is therefore imperative that the consequences of the policy toward religion, and even more so the consequences of political delegation, be studied more systematically.
An Ethical Manifesto for Public Defenders

In "An Ethical Manifesto for Public Defenders," Freedman calls upon public defenders to "cease to be an essential part of a fraudulent cover-up of the denial of fundamental rights to countless poor people who are caught up in a criminal justice system that is unethical, unconstitutional, and intolerably cruel." Citing universally accepted ethical rules and professional standards for criminal defense lawyers, Freedman argues that every time a public defender accepts an assignment of one too many clients, "she is involved in a conflict of interest, because total loyalty cannot be given to each client in each case." In addition, he charges that a public defender who is overloaded with clients because of under-funding and under-staffing of her office is violating ethical rules relating to competent representation as well as the constitutional guarantee of effective assistance of counsel. Freedman calls upon public defenders to decline overloads; to report to the appropriate disciplinary body any supervisor who orders a defender to undertake an overload; to seek permission of the court to decline an overload; to report to the appropriate judicial disciplinary authority any judge who orders a defender to assume an overload; to put on the record that the defender is not able to give competent, conflict-free representation to the new client; to advise the client that the defender does not know enough about the case to advise the client regarding a plea; and, if the client elects to plead guilty, to put on the record that the defender has not been able to competently represent the client regarding the plea. While noting pragmatic justifications for taking these actions, Freedman argues that public defenders who did so would be doing nothing more or less than complying with their ethical obligations to their clients and to the administration of justice.
Redistribution Policy: A European Model

Abstract Following the rationale for regional redistribution programs described in the official documents of the European Union, this paper studies a simple multicountry model built around two regions: a core and a periphery. Technological spillovers link firms' productivity within each of the two regions, and each country's territory falls partly in the core and partly in the periphery, but the exact shares vary across countries. In line with the official view of the European Union, we find that the efficient regional allocation requires both national and international transfers. If migration is fully free across all borders, the optimal redistribution policy results from countries' uncoordinated policies. However, if countries have the option of setting even imperfect border barriers, then efficiency is likely to require coordination on both barriers and international transfers (both of which will be set at positive levels). The need for coordination increases as the Union increases in size.
Strategic Manipulation of Empirical Tests

Theories can be produced by experts seeking a reputation for having knowledge. Hence, a tester could anticipate that theories may have been strategically produced by uninformed experts who want to pass an empirical test. We show that, with no restriction on the domain of permissible theories, strategic experts cannot be discredited for an arbitrary but given number of periods, no matter which test is used (provided that the test does not reject the actual data-generating process). Natural ways around this impossibility result include (1) assuming that unbounded data sets are available and (2) restricting the domain of permissible theories (opening the possibility that the actual data-generating process is rejected out-of-hand). In both cases, it is possible to dismiss strategic experts but only to a limited extent. These results show significant limits on what data can accomplish when experts produce theories strategically.
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns

Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise coagglomeration indices for US manufacturing industries from the Economic Census. We then relate coagglomeration levels to the degree to which industry pairs share goods, labor, or ideas. To reduce reverse causality, where collocation drives input-output linkages or hiring patterns, we use data from UK industries and from US areas where the two industries are not collocated. All three of Marshall's theories of agglomeration are supported, with input-output linkages particularly important. (JEL L14, L60, O33, R23, R32)
Breaking The Spell of Tax Budget Magic

To date, tax scholars have responded to the proliferation of so-called temporary or sunset tax expenditure legislation by staking claims either for or against it, focusing on its relative merits and shortcomings. In this Article, I argue that these positions are analytically incomplete. Rather than address the underlying deficiencies in the budget process that have led to the preference for temporary tax provisions, the advocacy of the use (or non-use) of temporary provisions simply asks which type of provision will yield the least problematic results. This Article seeks to help fill a gap in the literature by focusing on remedies meant to address the source of many issues related to both temporary and permanent tax expenditure legislation. In particular, I propose the adoption of a bundle of new budget rules that will work as precommitment devices to restrain lawmakers from exploiting weaknesses in the existing process. I argue that these proposed rules would still give lawmakers the flexibility to adopt either temporary or permanent tax legislation as appropriate. However, the proposed rules would help to decrease opportunities for budget manipulations, impose more fiscal restraint on lawmakers, achieve greater legislative transparency, help loosen the hold of special interest groups on lawmakers, and enhance legislative stability.  Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law. The author would like to thank the participants of the Robert A. Levy Fellows Workshop in Law & Liberty for their helpful feedback. Research assistance from Kelli Cacciotti is gratefully acknowledged. 2 COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF TAX LAW [Vol.6:1
On the choice of the optimal temporal control in renewable resource management

This paper addresses the following hitherto unstudied question in renewable resource management: How should a resource manager set the temporal control optimally for renewable resources such as rangelands and fisheries that are managed with spatial and temporal controls? We use a dynamic and stochastic framework to first derive the resource manager's long run average net cost function. We then demonstrate how the temporal control can be chosen to minimize this objective function.
Parametric and non-parametric approaches to price and tax reform

Abstract In many public policy problems, we need to estimate the way in which policy changes affect people's behavior. In the analysis of tax and subsidy reform—the topic of this article—we need to know how tax-induced price changes affect the amounts that people buy of the taxed goods. We present various economic and statistical approaches to obtaining the required estimates. We consider the standard structural methods in economics, where the behavior and welfare of individual agents are captured simultaneously by the specification of utility functions whose parameters are to be estimated. We argue that these methods are less useful than alternatives that directly consider the derivatives of the regression function of average behavior. We consider both parametric and nonparametric estimators of these derivatives in the context of price reform for foods in Pakistan, focussing on the advantages and disadvantages of “average derivative estimation” (ADE). ADE is attractive in principle, because it directly e...
Challenging parental decisions to overtreat children.

Concerns about undertreatment have dominated the discussions about parents’ medical decisions on behalf of their children. For example, a parent’s refusal to consent to lifesaving treatment for a severely handicapped newborn has been characterized as child abuse or neglect. A very different question, raised more recently, is whether parental decisions demanding overtreatment for children should also be classified as child abuse and, therefore, constitute a basis to displace parental authority over those decisions. This article explores some of the issues raised by cases of overtreatment and the implications of superseding parental control.
The effect of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act on the insurance industry

Abstract We discuss the evolution of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and examine its effect on the insurance industry. We observe an increase in shareholder wealth for the industry as a whole and for industry segments. Additionally, we document a decrease in risk across the insurance industry following events associated with the Act. We also identify the types of firms that benefit most from the Act, finding that property-casualty insurers are the primary beneficiaries. Despite concerns about consolidation in the financial services industry as a result of the Act, we do not find that there is any change in concentration in the insurance industry.
Will the Birds Stay South? The Rise of Class Actions and Other Forms of Group Litigation Across Latin America

* Associate Professor, Florida International University College of Law. The author wishes to thank Deborah R. Hensler, Christopher Hodges, and his other colleagues at the interdisciplinary research network on global class actions, and participants in the International Conferences on Global Class Actions held at Oxford in 2007 and 2008, and Miami in 2010, for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. He would also like to thank Masayuki Murayama, Luigi Comminelli, Bert Kritzer and other participants at the 2010 Workshop on Dispute Resolution from a Comparative Perspective held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Onati, Spain. Diana Rodriguez Franco and Beatriz Londono Toro offered invaluable insight and sources on Colombia. Silvia Kim, Diego Gandolfo, Rosangela Delgado and Vitor Lorenco Simâo Castro helped the author learn more about class actions in Brazil. Eugenio Cardenas and Julio Gutierrez Morales helped locate materials on the status of collective litigation in Mexico, and Agustin Barroilhet helped with class actions in Chile. Marisol Floren-Romero offered excellent library support, and FIU College of Law provided financial assistance throughout. This article builds upon previous work published as Manuel A. Gomez, Collective Redress in Latin America: The regulation of class actions and other forms of aggregate and group litigation for the protection of consumer rights, in L'Art. 140 Bis del Codice del Consumo L'Azione di Classe 265-82(Lorenzo Mezzasoma & Francesco Rizzo, eds. 2011). 1. See Wolfgang Wurmnest, Foreign Private Plaintiffs, Global Conspiracies, and the Extraterritorial Application of U.S. Antitrust Law, 28 Hastings Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 205, 206 (2004-2005). 2. See, e.g., Manuel A. Gomez, Like Migratory Birds: Latin American Claimants in U.S. Courts and the Ford-Firestone Rollover Litigation, 11 Sw. J. L. & Trade Am. 281, 295-97 (2005) (discussing the incentives perceived by South American plaintiffs for litigating in U.S. courts); Smith Kline & French Lab. Ltd. v. Bloch, [1982] 1 W.L.R. 730, 733 (C.A. 1983) ("As a moth is drawn to the light, so is a litigant drawn to the United States."); David W. Robertson & Paula K. Speck, Access to State Courts in Transnational Personal Injury Cases: Forum Non Conveniens and Antisuit Injunctions, 68 Tex. L. Rev. 937, 938 (1989-1990) ("Personal injury victims are virtually always better off suing in the United States. . . .") 3. See supra note 2.
Improving transparency in observational social science research: A pre-analysis plan approach

Abstract Social science research has undergone a credibility revolution, but these gains are at risk due to problematic research practices. Existing research on transparency has centered around randomized controlled trials, which constitute only a small fraction of research in economics. In this paper, I highlight three scenarios in which study preregistration can be credibly applied in non-experimental settings: cases where researchers collect their own data; prospective studies; and research using restricted-access data.
GOD, WAR, AND CONSCIENCE

Many military officers believe that they morally ought to obey legal orders to fight even in unjust wars: they have a moral obligation to exercise indiscriminate obedience to legal orders to fight. I argue that officers should not be required to exercise indiscriminate obedience: certain theistic commitments to which many citizens and officers adhere prohibit indiscriminate obedience to legal orders to fight. This theistic argument constitutes adequate reason not to require officers to exercise indiscriminate obedience. However, this raises a further question: namely, whether it is appropriate to rely on such a theistic argument when shaping the moral requirements of military officership. I argue that citizens and officers have good reason to make public decisions solely on religious grounds and so are free to follow my theistic argument when shaping the requirements of military officership.
A Protectionist Bias in Majoritarian Politics

We develop a novel model of campaigns, elections, and policy-making in which the ex ante objectives of national party leaders differ from the ex post objectives of elected legislators. This generates a distinction between “policy rhetoric” and “policy reality” and introduces an important role for “party discipline” in the policy-making process. We identify a protectionist bias in majoritarian politics. When trade policy is chosen by the majority delegation and legislators in the minority have limited means to influence choices, the parties announce trade policies that favor specific factors, and the expected tariff or export subsidy is positive. Positions and expected outcomes monotonically approach free trade as party discipline strengthens. I. INTRODUCTION In a democracy, the majority rules. Often, this means that the policies enacted by elected governments reflect the preferences of some citizens more than those of others. This feature of democracy— commonly known as “tyranny of the majority”— arises in institutional settings in which elected officials represent disproportionately the interests of their own constituents and electees who represent the minority have limited means to influence policy. In this paper we argue that tyranny of the majority imparts a protectionist bias to democratic politics. This is so even when the average citizen covets free trade and when every citizen has an equal probability of being represented in the policy-making process. By “protection” we mean policies that favor quasi-fixed factors of production. Thus, protection in our parlance refers both to tariffs that shield import-competing industries from foreign competition and subsidies that promote exports. The bias refers to the average or expected policy outcome. We focus on majoritarian systems in which elected legislators represent geographic regions. The existence of a protectionist bias requires only that (i) national party leaders cannot fully commit their candidates to adopt particular policies if elected, (ii) mem
Accident law for egalitarians

This paper questions the fairness of our current tort-law regime and the philosophical underpinnings advanced in its defense, a theory known as corrective justice. Fairness requires that the moral equality and responsibility of persons be respected in social interactions and institutions. The concept of luck has been used by many egalitarians as a way of giving content to fairness by differentiating between those benefits and burdens that result from informed choice and those that result from fate or fortune. We argue that the theory of corrective justice, along with its institutional embodiment of tort law, is at odds with an egalitarian commitment to fairness because it allows luck an unjustifiable role in determining dissimilar liability for similar wrongs and dissimilar compensation for similar losses to bodily integrity. Many egalitarian political theorists have also recognized, if not defended, the notion of distinct forms of justice, namely corrective, retributive, and distributive. Although theorists of these different forms of justice have been concerned with negating unfair luck inside the operations of each form of justice, there has been little attention to the way in which luck operates to sort cases into each form of justice. We claim that there is a significant way in which luck operates to subject different people to principles of corrective, retributive, and distributive justice—thereby assessing dissimilar liability for similar wrongs and disparate compensation for similar losses—which flies in the face of the egalitarian value of fairness. After surveying the arguments put forward by theorists defending a categorical distinction between corrective justice and retributive and distributive principles, we argue that although analytical distinctions can be made between different forms of justice (although, we also suggest that the distinctions are not as sharp as some commentators suggest), there is no good reason to defend an acoustic separation between these forms of justice when doing so creates unfair outcomes.
Canadian Blasphemy Law in Context: Press, Legislative, and Public Reactions

The article focuses on the legislation of handling blasphemous libel in Canada. It provides an in-depth look at the blasphemy prosecution of Eugene Sterry, which is essential to determine the reaction of the press and the public to the trial. An overview is given on the two public movements that were against the perceived social evil of blasphemy in Quebec.
The Impact of Economics on Environmental Policy

Abstract Environmental economists have seen their ideas translated into the rough-and-tumble policy world for over two decades. They have witnessed the application of economic instruments to several environmental issues, including preserving wetlands, lowering lead levels, and curbing acid rain. This essay examines the impact of the rise of economics in the policy world on the making of environmental policy. I focus on two related, but distinct phenomena—the increasing interest in the use of incentive-based mechanisms, such as tradable permits, to achieve environmental goals; and the increasing interest in the use of analytical tools such as benefit–cost analysis in regulatory decision making. I argue that economists and economic instruments have had a modest impact on shaping environmental, health, and safety regulation, but that economists will play an increasingly important role in the future. Although the role of economics is becoming more prominent, it does not follow that environmental policy will become more efficient. This apparent inconsistency can be explained by the political economy of environmental policy.
High school experiences, the gender wage gap, and the selection of occupation

ABSTRACTUsing within-high-school variation and controlling for a measure of cognitive ability, this article finds that high-school leadership experiences explain a significant portion of the residual gender wage gap and selection into management occupations. Our results imply that high-school leadership could build non-cognitive, productive skills that are rewarded years later in the labour market and that explain a portion of the systematic difference in pay between men and women. Alternatively, high-school leadership could be a proxy variable for personality characteristics that differ between men and women and that drive higher pay and becoming a manager. Because high-school leadership experiences are exogenous to direct labour market experiences, our results leave less room for direct labour market discrimination as a driver of the gender wage gap and occupation selection.
Two Economic Applications of Sympathy

The notion of sympathy is analyzed in the setting of coordination between duopolists and in the setting of the sale of a used car of possibly low quality. In both cases, the analysis suggests a number of empirical regularities concerning the effects of social interaction, physical distance, and psychological affinity. These regularities are confirmed by various historical accounts of collusion and by national survey results on used car purchases. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.
Expert Evidence, the Adversary System, and the Jury

Many assertions have been made about the competence of juries in dealing with expert evidence. I review the types of expert evidence that jurors hear and the impact of adversary legal procedure on the form and manner in which evidence is presented. Empirical research indicates that jurors understand the adversary process, that they do not automatically defer to the opinions of experts, and that their verdicts appear to be generally consistent with external criteria of performance. Conflicts between the American adversary system and changes in trial procedures that might assist the jury in its task are also considered here.
Short selling and market mispricing

We provide evidence on short sellers’ exploitation of temporary mispricing in the equity market. Using a mispricing indicator that measures deviations from a stock’s fundamental value, we find higher levels of short selling for temporarily overvalued stocks. The result is robust to controlling for short sale constraints and illiquidity, and it is more pronounced when short sale constraints do not bind and stocks are illiquid. We also find that informed short sellers are able to distinguish temporary overpricing from upward return momentum. However, when fundamental news is released, short sellers focus on exploiting negative fundamental changes rather than temporary overpricing. Short sellers contribute to market quality by correcting overpricing quickly over time, but they do not destabilize the market.
Smoothing with liquid and illiquid assets

Abstract A quantitative examination of the demand for liquid assets arising from consumption smoothing motives reveals that such demand is very low. Consumers faced with income streams calibrated to match income and unemployment data and returns and transactions costs calibrated to match US Treasury Bill data almost exclusively buy and hold illiquid long term assets even though the return premium on long term assets is quite small. This is because, with standard preferences, savings are highly persistent even when risky income is not. In the calibrated model, the first order autocorrelation of savings is an order of magnitude larger than that of income.
Investment under uncertainty and time-inconsistent preferences

Abstract While standard real options models assume that agents possess a constant rate of time preference, there is substantial evidence that agents are impatient about choices in the short term but are patient when choosing between long-term alternatives. We extend the real options framework to model the investment-timing decisions of entrepreneurs with time-inconsistent preferences. The impact on investment-timing depends on such factors as whether entrepreneurs are sophisticated or naive in their expectations regarding their future time-inconsistent behavior, and whether the payoff from investment occurs all at once or over time. The model is extended to the case of a competitive equilibrium.
Shared Sovereign Immunity as an Alternative to Federal Preemption: An Essay on the Attribution of Responsibility for Harm to Others

In 1992, the Supreme Court handed down a plurality decision in Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc. That decision, together with a series of subsequent cases dealing with the federal preemption of state tort law, served to reverse a long-standing judicial approach to federal preemption under which claims of express preemption had been summarily rejected. These more recent decisions have been criticized by many and, in fact, have been characterized by myself and others as examples of pro-business judicial activism seeking to impose tort reform from the bench. Yet, for all that is objectionable about the Court’s approach in these cases, often there is also something intuitively appealing about the results attained. This Article will argue that, notwithstanding numerous judicial assertions to the contrary, the results reached in many of these cases have little, if anything, to do with congressional intent. Instead, the decisions are better understood in terms of implied immunity or shared sovereign immunity and represent a strikingly clear application of a long-standing principle of tort law—a principle that insists that responsibility for harm will not be attributed to an individual where the
The Weight of Scientific Evidence in Policy and Law

The term "weight of evidence" (WOE) appears in regulatory rules and decisions. However, there has been little discussion about the meaning, variations of use, and epistemic significance of WOE for setting health and safety standards. This article gives an overview of the role of WOE in regulatory science, discusses alternative views about the methodology underlying the concept, and places WOE in the context of the Supreme Court's decision in Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc (1993). I argue that whereas the WOE approach to evaluating scientific evidence is gaining favor among regulators, its applications in judicial processes may be in conflict with some interpretations of how the Daubert criteria for judging reliable evidence should be applied.
Sourcing for Supplier Effort and Competition: Design of the Supply Base and Pricing Mechanism

We study a buyer's sourcing strategy along two dimensions: the supply base design and the pricing mechanism, considering supplier competition and cost-reduction effort. The supply base design concerns the number of suppliers (one or two) included in the supply base and the capacity to be invested in each supplier. The pricing mechanism determines the timing of the price decisions, with the buyer making price commitments before suppliers exert cost-reduction efforts that may be renegotiated afterward. We find that symmetric capacity investment in suppliers and low price commitments (more likely to be renegotiated) are effective at fostering supplier competition, whereas asymmetric investment and high price commitments (less likely to be renegotiated) are better at motivating supplier effort. A complementary relationship exists between the supply base design and pricing mechanism: A more symmetric supply base should be combined with lower price commitments, leading to more renegotiation opportunities. This ...
Effective response theory for Floquet topological systems

The authors introduce an effective field theory framework to classify phases of topological Floquet systems.
Harmonizing child mortality data at disparate geographic levels.

There is an increasing focus on reducing inequalities in health outcomes in developing countries. Subnational variation is of particular interest, with geographically-indexed data being used to und...
Sociodemographic Predictors of Outcomes in COVID-19: Examining the Impact of Ethnic Disparities in Northern Nevada

Background On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) a pandemic. Nearly five million individuals have since been diagnosed with this increasingly common and potentially lethal viral infection. Emerging evidence suggests a disproportionate burden of illness and death among minority communities. We aimed to evaluate the effect of ethnicity on outcomes among patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in Northern Nevada. Methods The electronic health records of 172 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 were obtained from a 946-bed tertiary referral center serving Northern Nevada. Demographic and clinical characteristics were compared by ethnic group (Hispanic versus non-Hispanic). Logistic regression was used to determine predictors of mortality. Results Among 172 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 12 and May 8, 2020, 87 (50.6%) identified as Hispanic and 81 (47.1%) as non-Hispanic. Hispanic individuals were significantly more likely to be uninsured and to live in low-income communities as compared to their non-Hispanic counterparts (27.6% versus 8.2% and 52.9% versus 30.6%, respectively). Hispanic patients were also less likely than non-Hispanics to have a primary care provider (42.5% versus 61.2%). However, mortality was significantly higher among the non-Hispanic population (15.3% versus 5.8%). Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected Hispanic individuals in Northern Nevada, who account for only 25.7% of the population but over half of the confirmed cases. The underlying causes of ethnic disparities in COVID-19 incidence remain to be established, but further investigation may lead to more effective community- and systems-based interventions.
Kuznetsov, Petersson and Weyl on GL(3), II: The generalized principal series forms

This paper develops the study by analytic methods of the generalized principal series Maass forms on GL(3). These forms occur as an infinite sequence of one-parameter families in the two-parameter spectrum of GL(3) Maass forms, analogous to the relationship between the holomorphic modular forms and the spherical Maass cusp forms on GL(2). We develop a Kuznetsov trace formula attached to these forms at each weight and use it to prove an arithmetically-weighted Weyl law, demonstrating the existence of forms which are not self-dual. Previously, the only full level, generalized principal series forms that were known to exist on GL(3) were the self-dual forms arising from symmetric-squares of GL(2) forms. The Kuznetsov formula developed here should take the place of the GL(2) Petersson trace formula for theorems “in the weight aspect”. As before, the construction involves evaluating the Archimedian local zeta integral for the Rankin–Selberg convolution and proving a form of Kontorovich–Lebedev inversion.
Correlation of Future Vehicle and Highway Design

Study of vehicle characteristics including performance, fuel economy, brake deceleration, and dimensions as relevant to highway design problems.
Fruitless decommissions regulatory elements to implement cell-type-specific neuronal masculinization

In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, male-specific splicing and translation of the Fruitless transcription factor (FruM) alters the presence, anatomy, and/or connectivity of >60 types of central brain neurons that interconnect to generate male-typical behaviors. While the indispensable function of FruM in sex-specific behavior has been understood for decades, the molecular mechanisms underlying its activity remain unknown. Here, we take a genome-wide, brain-wide approach to identifying regulatory elements whose activity depends on the presence of FruM. We identify 436 high-confidence genomic regions differentially accessible in male fruitless neurons, validate candidate regions as bona fide, differentially regulated enhancers, and describe the particular cell types in which these enhancers are active. We find that individual enhancers are not activated universally but are dedicated to specific fru+ cell types. Aside from fru itself, genes are not dedicated to or common across the fru circuit; rather, FruM appears to masculinize each cell type differently, by tweaking expression of the same effector genes used in other circuits. Finally, we find FruM motifs enriched among regulatory elements that are open in the female but closed in the male. Together, these results suggest that FruM acts cell-type-specifically to decommission regulatory elements in male fruitless neurons.
Machine Learning Applications to DNA Subsequence and Restriction Site Analysis

Based on the BioBricks™ standard, restriction synthesis is a novel catabolic iterative DNA synthesis method that utilizes endonucleases to synthesize a query sequence from a reference sequence. In this work, the reference sequence is built from shorter subsequences by classifying them as applicable or inapplicable for the synthesis method using three different machine learning methods: Support Vector Machine (SVM), random forest, and Convolution Neural Network (CNN). Before applying these methods to the data, a series of feature selection, curation, and reduction steps are applied to create an accurate and representative feature space. Following these preprocessing steps, three different pipelines are proposed to classify subsequences based on their nucleotide sequence and other relevant features corresponding to the restriction sites of over 200 endonucleases. The sensitivity using SVM, random forest, and CNN are 94.9%, 92.7%, 91.4%, respectively. Moreover, each method scores lower in specificity with SVM, random forest, and CNN resulting in 77.4%, 85.7%, and 82.4%, respectively. In addition to analyzing these results, the misclassifications in SVM and CNN are investigated. Across these two models, different features with a derived nucleotide specificity visually contribute more to classification compared to other features. This observation is an important factor when considering new nucleotide sensitivity features for future studies.
Accounting for trade deficits

Abstract This paper proposes a decomposition for the total trade deficit of a country by using implications of a dynamic trade model. It is shown that the total trade deficit of a country can be decomposed into changes due to its effective terms of trade, its relative trade costs, and its macroeconomic developments with respect to its export partners. The implications for bilateral trade are estimated using both imports and exports data for 188 countries, and the decomposition of total trade deficit is achieved for each country. Empirical results show evidence for heterogeneity across countries regarding the decomposition of trade deficits, suggesting alternative policy tools to rebalance trade at the country level. A cross-country investigation further suggests that relative trade costs, followed by relative macroeconomic developments, have contributed the most to the heterogeneity of trade imbalances.
Net-Metered Distributed Renewable Energy: A Peril for Utilities?

Electricity end-users have been increasingly generating their own electricity via rooftop solar panels. We study the impact of such distributed renewable energy (DRE) on utility profits and social ...
Optimizing Coherence Suppression in a Laser Broadened by Phase Modulation With Noise

Phase noise can be modulated onto the output of a laser with an electro-optic phase modulator (EOM) to create a highly incoherent broadened source with low intensity noise. This technique leaves a small but finite fraction of the coherent carrier power that can be highly detrimental in applications requiring incoherent light. This article shows that the carrier suppression in a laser broadened by this technique can be calculated for an arbitrary noise probability density function. The carrier suppression can be varied experimentally by adjusting the noise voltage standard deviation Gvσ and saturation voltage Vsat of the amplifier that amplifies the noise source that drives the EOM. Simulations show that suppressions better than -30 dB are attainable for reasonable tolerances in Gvσ , for example an EOM with a Vπ of 4.7 V, a Vsat of 6.3 V, and Gvσ / Vπ = 0.73 ± 0.03. Even greater tolerances can be achieved with a higher Vsat (21 V), lower Vπ (3.5 V), and Gvσ / Vπ a 3.2 ± 2.3. This model aids in selecting these parameters such that the carrier suppression is resilient to fluctuations in these voltages due to temperature variations and aging of the components. The model predictions are validated by testing a fiber optic gyroscope interrogated with a broadened laser for various Gvσ and Vsat and inferring the carrier suppression from its measured noise. A -44-dB carrier suppression was observed for a nonlinear amplifier with Gvσ = 3.43 V, Vsat = 6.3 V, and an EOM with Vπ = 4.7 V, in agreement with predictions.
X-Ray-to-Radio Offset Inference from Low-Count X-Ray Jets

Observations of positional offsets between the location of X-ray and radio features in many resolved, extragalactic jets indicates that the emitting regions are not co-spatial, an important piece of evidence in the debate over the origin of the X-ray emission on kpc scales. The existing literature is nearly exclusively focused on jets with sufficiently deep \emph{Chandra} observations to yield accurate positions for X-ray features, but most of the known X-ray jets are detected with tens of counts or fewer, making detailed morphological comparisons difficult. Here we report the detection of X-ray-to-radio positional offsets in 15 extragalactic jets from an analysis of 22 sources with low-count \textit{Chandra} observations, where we utilized the Low-count Image Reconstruction Algorithm (LIRA). This algorithm has allowed us to account for effects such as Poisson background fluctuations and nearby point sources which have previously made the detection of offsets difficult in shallow observations. Using this method, we find that in 55 \% of knots with detectable offsets, the X-rays peak upstream of the radio, questioning the applicability of one-zone models, including the IC/CMB model for explaining the X-ray emission. We also report the non-detection of two previously claimed X-ray jets. Many, but not all, of our sources, follow a loose trend of increasing offset between the X-ray and radio emission, as well as a decreasing X-ray to radio flux ratio along the jet.
Black Hole Glimmer Signatures of Mass, Spin, and Inclination

Gravitational lensing near a black hole is strong enough that light rays can circle the event horizon multiple times. Photons emitted in multiple directions at a single event, perhaps because of localized, impulsive heating of accreting plasma, take multiple paths to a distant observer. In the Kerr geometry, each path is associated with a distinct light travel time and a distinct arrival location in the image plane, producing black hole glimmer. This sequence of arrival times and locations uniquely encodes the mass and spin of the black hole and can be understood in terms of properties of bound photon orbits. We provide a geometrically motivated treatment of Kerr glimmer and evaluate it numerically for simple hotspot models to show that glimmer can be measured in a finite-resolution observation. We discuss potential measurement methods and implications for tests of the Kerr hypothesis.
Disturbance Triggers Non-Linear Microbe-Environment Feedbacks

Abstract. Conceptual frameworks linking microbial community membership, properties, and processes with the environment and emergent function have been proposed but remain untested. Here we refine and test a recent conceptual framework using hyporheic zone sediments exposed to wetting–drying transitions. Our refined framework includes relationships between cumulative properties of a microbial community (e.g., microbial membership, community assembly properties, and biogeochemical rates), environmental features (e.g., organic matter thermodynamics), and emergent ecosystem function. Our primary aim was to evaluate the hypothesized relationships that comprise the conceptual framework and contrast outcomes from the whole and putatively active bacterial and archaeal communities. Throughout the system we found threshold-like responses to the duration of desiccation. Membership of the putatively active community – but not the whole bacterial and archaeal community – responded due to enhanced deterministic selection (an emergent community property). Concurrently, the thermodynamic properties of organic matter (OM) became less favorable for oxidation (an environmental component), and respiration decreased (a microbial process). While these responses were step functions of desiccation, we found that in deterministically assembled active communities, respiration was lower and thermodynamic properties of OM were less favorable. Placing the results in context of our conceptual framework points to previously unrecognized internal feedbacks that are initiated by disturbance and mediated by thermodynamics and that cause the impacts of disturbance to be dependent on the history of disturbance.
Feynman rules for any spin. II. Massless particles

The Feynman rules are derived for massless particles of arbitrary spin $j$. The rules are the same as those presented in an earlier article for $mg0$, provided that we let $m\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ in propagators and wave functions, and provided that we keep to the ($2j+1$)-component formalism [with fields of the ($j$, 0) or (0, $j$) type] or the $2(2j+1)$-component formalism [with $(j, 0)\ensuremath{\bigoplus}(0, j)$ fields]. But there are other field types which cannot be constructed for $m=0$; these include the ($\frac{j}{2}, \frac{j}{2}$) tensor fields, and in particular the vector potential for $j=1$. This restriction arises from the non-semi-simple structure of the little group for $m=0$. Some other subjects discussed include: T, C, and P for massless particles and fields; the extent to which chirality conservation implies zero physical mass; and the Feynman rules for massive particles in the helicity formalism. Our approach is based on the assumption that the $S$ matrix is Lorentz invariant, and makes no use of Lagrangians or the canonical formalism.