cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Google Docs in Undergraduate online Composition Class: Investigating Learning Styles’ Impact on Writing Corrective Feedback

Google Docs, as a collaborative online writing tool in Higher Education, facilitates and enhances the Composition pedagogical practices in face-to-face and virtual classes. The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate the students’ learning styles’ impact on their Peer Assessment using Google Docs. Participants included 149 Composition students in a Public Health College of a private university in New York City. The statistical findings of this study revealed that students’ learning skills in online writing classes could drive their perceptions of using Google Docs as a Peer Assessment Writing tool. These findings highlight the high correlation between students’ desire to interact after writing in English and their perceptions of using Google Docs as a collaborative writing tool. The findings also revealed statistically significant relationships between students’ perceptions of using Google Docs and their preferences of receiving feedback in different language areas. An increase in students’ perception of receiving feedback on their grammar, the flow of ideas, mechanics, quality of ideas, and Vocabulary, in that order, strongly led to an increase in their perceptions of using Google Docs. However, the findings indicate that there was no statistically significant linear relationship between students’ perceptions of their technical skills and their perceptions of using Google Docs in their online writing classes. Median Google Docs’s perceptions of males and females were not statistically different. There were no statistically significant differences in students’ Perceptions of Using Google Docs across the various age groups.
Resonant control of photoelectron directionality by interfering one- and two-photon pathways

Coherent control of interfering one- and two-photon processes has for decades been the subject of research to achieve the redirection of photocurrent. The present study develops two-pathway coherent control of ground-state helium atom above-threshold photoionization for energies up to the $N=2$ threshold, based on a multichannel quantum defect and R-matrix calculation. Three parameters are controlled in our treatment: the optical interference phase $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Phi}}$, the reduced electric field strength $\ensuremath{\chi}={\mathcal{E}}_{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{2}/{\mathcal{E}}_{2\ensuremath{\omega}}$, and the final state energy $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$. A small energy change near a resonance is shown to flip the emission direction of photoelectrons with high efficiency, through an example where $90%$ of photoelectrons whose energy is near the $2{p}^{2}{\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}}^{1}{S}^{e}$ resonance flip their emission direction. However, the large fraction of photoelectrons ionized at the intermediate state energy, which are not influenced by the optical control, make this control scheme challenging to realize experimentally.
Age at and indication for diagnosis of Turner syndrome in the pediatric population.

Early diagnosis of Turner syndrome (TS) enables timely intervention and may improve outcomes, but many are still diagnosed late. The objectives of our study were to describe the age and clinical features leading to diagnosis of TS in a large referral center. We hypothesize that newer testing modalities, such as noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), may lead to a decline in the age of diagnosis. Medical records of TS patients followed at The Cincinnati Center for Pediatric and Adult TS Care between 1997 and 2016 were reviewed for age at diagnosis, karyotype, and clinical indication(s). Patients (<18 years) were included (n = 239). Thirty-seven percent of patients were diagnosed prenatally or neonatally (≤1 month). The median age of diagnosis was 1.5 (IQR 0.0-10.0) years. If not made during those periods, the median age was 9.3 (IQR 3.2-12.5) years. The most common indications for diagnosis were before birth, unspecified prenatal testing (57%); in neonates/infants, lymphedema (21%); in childhood, short stature (72%); and in adolescence, short stature (45%) followed by pubertal delay with short stature (22%). The age of TS diagnosis in our cohort is young. However, when the diagnosis is not made before 1 year, the median age of diagnosis has not changed in recent years. The age at diagnosis could decrease with prenatal testing, although our study may not have assessed a long enough period of increased use of NIPT. Together with an increase in provider clinical awareness, this may result in more age-appropriate screening of comorbidities and earlier therapeutic intervention.
Media Ethics and Marginalized Journalists

Ethical decision-making in newsrooms is ideally done collaboratively and with the news organization’s mission at its center. The lived experience of journalists shows that this is not always the case. Ethical quandaries that involve bias and discrimination can force reporters and producers from diverse backgrounds to choose between trying to educate their bosses or allowing institutionalized biases to influence news decisions. In this chapter minoritized journalists—reporters, editors, producers, and managers who are people of color, are LGBTQ, or who practice a marginalized religion—discuss the ethical decisions that have shaped their careers in the United States. The dilemmas and decisions in these ethnographies make a clear case for continuous review and update of ethical policies and, in many cases, for equitable adherence to policies that aim to hold journalism to its own rules.
Combining noise correction with feature selection

Polishing is a noise correction mechanism which makes use of the inter-relationship between attribute and class values in the data set to identify and selectively correct components that are noisy. We applied polishing to a data set of amino acid sequences and associated information of point mutations of the gene COLIA1 for the classification of the phenotypes of the genetic collagenous disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). OI is associated with mutations in one or both of the genes COLIA1 and COLIA2. There are at least four known phenotypes of OI, of which type II is the severest and often lethal. Preliminary results of polishing suggest that it can lead to a higher classification accuracy. We further investigated the use of polishing as a scoring mechanism for feature selection, and the effect of the features so derived on the resulting classifier. Our experiments on the OI data set suggest that combining polishing and feature selection is a viable mechanism for improving data quality.
La sacralización de la historia natural en La novena maravilla de Juan de Espinosa Medrano

Bien qu'il n'ait probablement preche que dans la region andine du Perou, J. de Espinosa Medrano (dit Le Lunarejo) fut l'un des predicateurs les plus connus d'Amerique au cours du Siecle d'Or espagnol. Dans ses sermons religieux, il introduisait toutes sortes de themes humains, ainsi que de nombreux themes d'histoire naturelle. L'A. passe en revue les differents animaux, plantes et insectes mentionnes par Espinosa Medrano dans «La novena meravilla», qui ressemble les trente sermons panegyriques qui restent a l'heure actuelle du Lunarejo
Exploitation Aversion: When Financial Incentives Fail to Motivate Agents

Abstract Studies of the principal-agent relationship find that monetary incentives work in many instances but that they can also backfire. Various mechanisms for this failure have been examined (e.g., intrinsic motivation, image concerns). We posit that an aversion to being exploited, i.e., being used instrumentally for another’s benefit, can also cause incentives to fail. Using an experiment we find that compliance is lower for exploitative principals compared to neutral ones despite using the same contracts. To corroborate our results we show that surveyed “exploitation aversion” mediates this effect. Our results have implications for the design and implementation of incentives within organizations.
Entity-Relationship Modeling Re-revisited

Since its introduction, the Entity-Relationship (ER) model has been the vehicle of choice in communicating the structure of a database schema in an implementation-independent fashion. Part of its popularity has no doubt been due to the clarity and simplicity of the associated pictorial Entity-Relationship Diagrams (“ERD’s”S) and to the dependable mapping it affords to a relational database schema. Although the model has been extended in different ways over the years, its basic properties have been remarkably stable. Even though the ER model has been seen as pretty well “settled,” some recent papers, notably [4] and [2 (from whose paper our title is derived)], have enumerated what their authors consider serious shortcomings of the ER model. They illustrate these by some interesting examples. We believe, however, that those examples are themselves questionable. In fact, while not claiming that the ER model is perfect, we do believe that the overhauls hinted at are probably not necessary and possibly counterproductive.
Juniperus of Canada and the United States: Taxonomy, Key and Distribution

The taxonomy of Juniperus of Canada and the United States is reviewed and keys to the 18 species, 5 varieties and 3 formas are presented as well as distribution maps.
A Controllability Test for Linear Systems Using a Graphical Technique

Abstract The concept of control!ability is central to the design of control systems. For a linear, time-invariant dynamic system the criteria for complete controllability are well-known. One form is that the rank of a particular matrix must equal the dimension of the system state. This rank test is applied after the system equations have been reduced to state-space form. In this paper the question of complete controllability for linear, time-invariant dynamic systems is investigated in a novel manner. The techniques are taken from the theory of bond graphs. In this investigation the concept of causality is particularly useful. In certain cases one is able to determine that a system is not completely controllable from the graph model before system or state equations are written. This is a particularly valuable feature for systems of large dimension. If a system is found to be not completely controllable, the particular causes can be identified. Again, the identification is done on the graph model before equations are written. This is far more efficient than using combinatorial techniques to determine why a matrix has less than full rank. Part of the controllability-test results described in this paper exist in automated form; i.e., there is a computer program that tests bond graph models using causality methods.
Efficient Round Optimal Blind Signatures

Known constructions of blind signature schemes suffer from at least one of the following limitations: (1) rely on parties having access to a common reference string or a random oracle, (2) are not round-optimal, or (3) are prohibitively expensive.
Planar antennas on thick dielectric substrates

Two types of frequency independent planar antennas on thick dielectrics, the log-spiral and log-periodic, have been designed, fabricated and characterized at millimeter wave frequencies. Measured beam patterns displayed beam widths and side lobe angles comparable to theory, and increasing the number of terminals produced similar patterns.
Strategic Planning for Poverty Reduction in Vietnam : Progress and Challenges for Meeting the Localized Millennium Development Goals

This paper discusses the progress that Vietnam has made toward meeting a core set of development goals that the government recently adopted as part of its Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS). These goals are strongly related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but are adapted and expanded to reflect Vietnam's national challenges and the government's ambitious development plans. For each Vietnam Development Goal, the authors describe recent trends in relation to the trajectories implied by the MDGs, outline the intermediate targets identified by the government, and discuss the challenges involved in meeting these. Relative to other countries of similar per capita expenditures, Vietnam has made rapid progress in a number of key areas. Poverty has halved over the 1990s, enrollment rates in primary education have risen to 91 percent (although there is a quality problem), indicators of gender equity have been strengthened, child mortality has been reduced, maternal health has improved, and real progress has been made in combating malaria and other communicable diseases. In contrast, Vietnam scores worse than other comparable countries in the areas of child malnutrition, access to clean water, and combating HIV/AIDS. A number of important crosscutting issues emerge from this analysis that need to be addressed. One such challenge is improving equity, both in terms of ensuring that the benefits of growth are distributed evenly across the population and in terms of access to public services. This will involve addressing the affordability of education and curative health care for poor households. Improvements in public expenditure planning are needed to align resources better to stated desired outcomes and to link nationally-defined targets to subnational planning and budgeting processes. There is also a need to address capacity and data gaps which will be crucial for effective monitoring.
Methods for linking EHR notes to education materials

It has been shown that accessing the patients' own electronic health records (EHR) can enhance their medical understanding and provide clinically relevant benefits. However, languages that are difficult for non-medical professionals to comprehend are prevalent in the EHR notes. The valuable and authoritative information contained in the EHR is thus less accessible to the patients, who ultimately stand to benefit the most from the information. To address this challenge, we are developing a system to retrieve EHR note-specific online consumer-oriented health education materials. We explored several query generation methods to convert long EHR notes to effective queries, including topic models and key concept identification. Our experiments show that queries using key concepts identified by a learning based model with pseudo-relevance feedback significantly outperform the baseline system of using the full text note.
Towards a scalable kNN CF algorithm: exploring effective applications of clustering

Collaborative Filtering (CF)-based recommender systems bring mutual benefits to both users and the operators of the sites with too much information. Users benefit as they are able to find items of interest from an unmanageable number of available items. On the other hand, e-commerce sites that employ recommender systems can increase sales revenue in at least two ways: a) by drawing customers' attention to items that they are likely to buy, and b) by cross-selling items. However, the sheer number of customers and items typical in e-commerce systems demand specially designed CF algorithms that can gracefully cope with the vast size of the data. Many algorithms proposed thus far, where the principal concern is recommendation quality, may be too expensive to operate in a large-scale system. We propose CLUSTKNN, a simple and intuitive algorithm that is well suited for large data sets. The method first compresses data tremendously by building a straightforward but efficient clustering model. Recommendations are then generated quickly by using a simple NEAREST NEIGHBOR-based approach. We demonstrate the feasibility of CLUSTKNN both analytically and empirically. We also show, by comparing with a number of other popular CF algorithms that, apart from being highly scalable and intuitive, CLUSTKNN provides very good recommendation accuracy as well.
Bone graft translation of four upper cervical spine fixation techniques in a cadaveric model

The goal of spinal fixation is to promote bony fusion by restricting motion at the site of the bone graft. In order to evaluate the efficiency of various cervical fixation techniques, the authors determined the translations at the posterior arch of C1 for four C1 -C2 posterior techniques: Gallie, Brooks, Mageri, and Halifax. The authors assumed that translational laxity is the critical motion parameter and evaluated this parameter, quantified herein as the neutral zone, at seven points at the graft site. The authors found that there was no significant difference with the fixation techniques in the average axial translation. In shear, the Mageri averaged 1 mm which was significantly less than the Gallie (2.1 mm). The authors propose that evaluation by translational laxity (neutral zone) at the graft site is a noteworthy concept in biomechanical analysis. >
Ferromagnetism in Mn-doped Sb2Te

We report that Sb2Te, a natural superlattice phase consisting of two elemental Sb2 layers interleaved with single Sb2Te3 layers, becomes ferromagnetic at low temperatures on doping with small percentages of Mn. Ferromagnetism appears for Mn concentrations as low as Sb1.98Mn0.02Te, where a ferromagnetic Tc of ~8.6 K is observed. Tc decreases with increasing Mn content in the stoichiometric materials but increases with increasing Te excess in materials of the type Sb1.93−yMn0.07Te1+y, starting at ~3 K at y = 0 and reaching a Tc of ~8.9 K at y = 0.06.
A novel mechanism of action of methyl-2-cyano-3,12 dioxoolean-1,9 diene-28-oate (CDDO-Me): Direct permeabilization of the inner mitochondrial membrane to inhibit electron transport and induce apoptosis

4693 CDDO-Me is a synthetic oleanolic acid derivative that displays antitumorigenic and anti-inflammatory activities, and we have previously reported that this agent potently activates the intrinsic apoptotic pathway in leukemia cells. Here we demonstrate that mitochondrial dysfunction induced by CDDO-Me in leukemia cells is mediated by direct permeabilization of the inner mitochondrial membrane that results in the rapid depletion of mitochondrial glutathione (GSXm), loss of cardiolipin, and inhibition of mitochondrial respiration. More importantly, we demonstrate that in addition to activating the intrinsic apoptotic pathway, the mitochondrial effects of CDDO-Me may mediate its anti-inflammatory activity by modulating the generation of superoxide anion (O 2 - ). Interestingly, CDDO-Me did not increase the generation of O 2 - , and in fact pretreatment of leukemia cells with CDDO-Me prevented the increase of this reactive oxygen species elicited by inhibition of complex I or III in the absence of de novo protein synthesis. CDDO-Me, but not other inhibitors of respiration, induced a time- and dose-dependent, cyclosporin A-independent permeability transition (mPT) of isolated mitochondria that was sensitive to sulfhydryl antioxidants but not to EDTA. PT induced by CDDO-Me and Ca 2+ was accompanied by loss of GSXm suggesting that the increased permeability of the inner mitochondrial membrane facilitates the loss of this antioxidant. Finally, transmission electron microscopy revealed that CDDO-Me rapidly induced caspase-independent mitochondrial swelling and loss of inner membrane structure prior to the release of cytochrome c . Taken together, our results indicate that CDDO-Me is a novel antileukemic agent that induces apoptosis and inhibits mitochondrial electron transport via perturbations in inner mitochondrial membrane integrity.
PRODUCTION TERMINATION AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO MITIGATE NUTRIENT POLLUTION

Nutrient runoff from agricultural land can be reduced through production termination to mitigate water pollution. The willingness to accept value to terminate the broiler production is evaluated using sample selection model. The result showed a positive relationship between the decision to participation and stated WTA value indicating the producers are willing to terminate the production but at high cost. The farmer’s perception about government role on water pollution, farm income, information and awareness about other pollution reduction alternatives play a major role on stated WTA amount as well as on participation decision.
Performing Colour-Based Similarity Searches in Multimedia Database Management Systems Augmented with Derived Images

In order to improve the robustness of systems that perform similarity searching, it may be necessary to augment a collection of images in a Multimedia DataBase Management System (MMDBMS) with an additional set of edited images. Previous research has demonstrated that space can be saved in such a system by storing the edited images as sequences of editing operations instead of as large binary objects. The existing approaches for performing similarity searching in an MMDBMS, however, typically assume that the data objects are stored as binary objects. This paper proposes algorithms for performing colour-based similarity searches of images stored as editing operations and provides a performance evaluation illustrating their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Magnesium Fluoride (MgF2)

Publisher Summary Magnesium fluoride (MgF2) is a tetragonal material with TiO2 (rutile) structure. The unit cell contains two formula units. Magnesium ions occupy octahedral sites with D2h point symmetry. Fluorine-ion positions in the unit cell are known from X-ray diffraction measurements. A wide transparency range from 0.12 to 8 μm, good mechanical properties, and low optical index of refraction makes magnesium fluoride a desirable material for coatings and interference filters. MgF2 is a positive uniaxial material, with its highest birefringence in the ultraviolet. It occurs naturally as the mineral selliate. Single-crystal MgF2 is widely used for windows, lenses, polarizers, and other optical components. Optical-quality, hot-pressed polycrystalline MgF2 is also used for optical components, particularly in the infrared. MgF2 is used as a divalent-ion host material for solid-state lasers. Vanadium, nickel, and cobalt are used as dopants to produce tunable solid-state lasers in the infrared. The ultraviolet and Infrared transparency of MgF2 lends itself to many applications.
Preference for Diversification with Similarity Considerations

The paper studies the connection between the form of the similarity function of a decision-maker and his willingness to diversify. It is shown that preference for diversification obtain for both high and low aspiration levels if the similarity function is convex in the Euclidean distance. However, a decision-maker with a concave similarity function and relatively high aspiration level will fail to choose diversified acts, even if his utility function is concave.
QCD at Finite Temperature and Baryon Number Density

We discuss the status of Monte Carlo simulations for the thermodynamics of QCD. Recent results for pure SU(N) gauge theories at finite temperature and the influence of dynamical fermions on the phase structure at finite temperature as well as problems related to the introduction of non-zero chemical potentials are analyzed.
Quasi-inertial Coordinates

We discuss the close conceptual connections between Geodetic Precession of a gyroscope, and Lense–Thirring precession (usually called Frame-Dragging). The origin of a quasi-inertial coordinate system may be allowed to fall freely or to be accelerated with non-gravitational forces, but the directions of the coordinate axes are maintained fixed with respect to the background metric, which may consist of contributions from several moving or rotating masses. Transformation of the space–time metric into quasi-inertial coordinates provides an instructive way of viewing the precession of a gyroscope placed at the origin. We shall show that in quasi-inertial coordinates Geodetic precession and Frame-Dragging can be viewed equivalently as arising from either orbital or spin angular momentum of the mass sources. The Geodetic and Frame-Dragging precessions, and Thomas precession as well, are gravitomagnetic effects that are related to spatial curvature only when adopting a particular point of view. We also illustrate the application of quasi-inertial coordinates by considering gyroscopic precession in the Godel universe.
Mechanism of Reovirus Double-Stranded Ribonucleic Acid Synthesis In Vivo and In Vitro

The complementary strands of reovirus double-stranded ribonucleic acid (ds RNA) are synthesized sequentially in vivo and in vitro. In both cases, preformed plus strands serve as templates for the synthesis of the complementary minus strands. The in vitro synthesis of dsRNA is catalyzed by a large particulate fraction from reovirus-infected cells. Treatment of this fraction with chymotrypsin or with detergents which solubilize cellular membranes does not alter its capacity to synthesize dsRNA. The enzyme or enzymes responsible for dsRNA synthesis remain sedimentable at 10,000 × g after these enzyme or detergent treatments, indicating their particulate nature. Pretreatment of this fraction with ribonuclease, however, abolishes its ability to catalyze dsRNA synthesis, emphasizing the single-stranded nature of the template and its location in a structure permeable to ribonuclease. In contrast, the newly formed dsRNA is resistant to ribonuclease digestion at low salt concentrations and hence is thought to reside within a ribonuclease-impermeable structure.
Minority student as a scholar program: a research grant program for minority students at Penn State Altoona

This paper describes an innovative research grant program for undergraduate minority students at Penn State Altoona. The program allows teams of faculty members and qualified minority students to develop proposals for research projects in various academic disciplines including engineering. These proposals are reviewed by a committee of faculty members and based on their recommendations, research grants are awarded by the program coordinator to selected teams. The minority student(s) and the faculty member work closely on the research project during the time frame of 6-8 months. At the end of the research project, each faculty-minority student team submits a written report to the program coordinator. Later, the team is expected to draft a paper describing the results of research and submit it to a scholarly journal for publication. Several examples of engineering research projects that have been completed by faculty-minority student teams are listed.
Does the fourth entrant make any difference?: Entry and competition in the early U.S. broadband market

Abstract We study the importance of sunk costs in determining entry conditions and inferences about firm conduct in an adapted Bresnahan and Reiss (1991, 1994) framework. In our framework, entrants incur sunk costs to enter, while incumbents disregard these costs in deciding on continuation or exit. We apply this framework to study entry and competition in the local U.S. broadband markets from 1999 to 2003. Ignoring sunk costs generates unreasonable variation in firms' competitive conduct over time. This variation disappears when entry costs are allowed. Once the market has one to three incumbent firms, the fourth entrant has little effect on competitive conduct.
Optimal thermostat programming and optimal electricity rates for customers with demand charges

We consider the coupled problems of optimal thermostat programming and optimal pricing of electricity. Our framework consists of a single user and a single provider (a regulated utility). The provider sets prices for the user, who pays for both total energy consumed ($/kWh, including peak and off-peak rates) and the peak rate of consumption in a month (a demand charge) ($/kW). The cost of electricity for the provider is based on a combination of capacity costs ($/kW) and fuel costs ($/kWh). In the optimal thermostat programming problem, the user minimizes the amount paid for electricity while staying within a pre-defined temperature range. The user has access to energy storage in the form of thermal capacitance of the interior structure of the building. The provider sets prices designed to minimize the total cost of producing electricity while meeting the needs of the user. To solve the user-problem, we use a variant of dynamic programming. To solve the provider-problem, we use a descent algorithm coupled with our dynamic programming code - yielding optimal on-peak, off-peak and demand prices. We show that thermal storage and optimal thermostat programming can reduce electricity bills using current utility prices from utilities Arizona Public Service (APS) and Salt River Project (SRP). Moreover, we obtain optimal utility prices which lead to significant reductions in the cost of generating electricity and electricity bills.
Does Culture Matter

Abstract This paper reviews the literature on culture and economics, focusing primarily on the epidemiological approach. The epidemiological approach studies the variation in outcomes across different immigrant groups residing in the same country. Immigrants presumably differ in their cultures but share a common institutional and economic environment. This allows one to separate the effect of culture from the original economic and institutional environment. This approach has been used to study a variety of issues, including female labor force participaiton, fertility, labor market regulation, redistribution, growth, and financial development among others. JEL Nos: O10, Z1, D01, D1
Semantic Modeling in Accounting Education, Practice, and Research: Some Progress and Impediments

In late 1979, the first Entity-Relationship (E-R) Conference was held at UCLA in December, and the first semantic modeling paper in the financial systems domain was published in The Accounting Review in October. Those two papers by McCarthy (1979; 1980) were actually based on his doctoral dissertation work completed in 1977 at the University of Massachusetts where a computer science professor -- David Stemple -- had introduced him to the groundbreaking E-R paper of Peter Chen (1976) that was published the prior year in the initial issue of ACM Transactions on Database Systems. An important additional component of that same thesis work was the development of a normative accounting data modeling framework, something which needed more theoretical development at the time of the first E-R Conference. By 1982 however, McCarthy had completed that additional work, and he followed the first E-R paper and conference presentation with a more general semantic theory of economic phenomena in business organizations — the REA accounting model (McCarthy, 1982).
Performance Evaluation of SQL-OR Variants for Association Rule Mining

In this paper, we focus on the SQL-OR approaches. We study several additional optimizations for the SQL-OR approaches (Vertical Tid, Gather-join, and Gather count) and evaluate them using DB2 and Oracle RDBMSs. We evaluate the approaches analytically and compare their performance on large data sets. Finally, we summarize the results and indicate the conditions for which the individual optimizations are useful.
Tax Administration and the Small Taxpayer

This Policy Discussion Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Policy Discussion Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Policy Discussion Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. Small taxpayers should pay their appropriate revenue share while their compliance costs should be reduced. This assumes importance as restructuring in emerging markets has meant rapid growth in services through self-employed small entrepreneurs, who have good revenue potential. Administrative facilitators such as a single tax covering income tax, VAT, and social security tax, at a reduced rate, do not lower tax evasion. They increase vertical and horizontal inequity, and lead to adverse resource allocation. A strategy is needed, extending modernization achieved in large taxpayer units (LTUs) to small taxpayers, including rationalization of collection and reporting of revenue data for policy formulation. JEL Classification Numbers: H20, H21, H22, H26, H29, H31, H32
H2O- and OH-bearing minerals in the Martian regolith: Analysis of 1997 observations from HST/NICMOS

Abstract We have analyzed observations of the Acidalia hemisphere of Mars taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera Multi-Object Spectrograph (HST/NICMOS) during July of 1997 ( L s =152°, northern martian summer). The data consist of images at ∼60 km/pixel resolution, using both narrow- and medium-band filters specifically selected to allow us to study the hydration state of the martian surface. Calibration was performed by comparison to Phobos-2 ISM observations of overlapping regions, and atmospheric gas correction was performed by modeling the atmosphere for each pixel using a line-by-line radiative transfer code coupled with the MOLA altimetry data. Our results indicate the presence of at least three spectrally different large-scale (>1000 km diameter) terrains corresponding to the dark regions of northern Acidalia, the southern hemisphere classical dark terrain, and the classical intermediate terrain adjacent to southern Acidalia. We also identified two other spectrally unique terrains, corresponding to the northern polar ice cap, and to the southern winter polar hood. Comparisons with mineral spectra indicate the possibility of different H 2 O- or OH-bearing (i.e., hydroxides and/or hydrates) minerals existing both in northern Acidalia and in the nearby intermediate albedo terrain. Hydrated minerals do not appear to be spectrally important components of the southern hemisphere dark terrains imaged by HST in 1997.
Latitudinal Variations in the Solar Wind

There are two classes of latitudinal solar wind variations - those which are an imprint of coronal processes, and those which are internally generated within the solar wind. An axisymmetric description of the latitudinal variations is presented. As an example, a large polar coronal hole is discussed, with attention to directed meridional flow in the corona out to five solar radii, temperature and density characteristics in a coronal hole and beyond, temperature effects in the interplanetary medium, internally generated meridional flow in the interplanetary medium, and the detection of polar hole material in the ecliptic at 1 AU.
From data fusion to knowledge fusion

The task of data fusion is to identify the true values of data items (e.g., the true date of birth for Tom Cruise) among multiple observed values drawn from different sources (e.g., Web sites) of varying (and unknown) reliability. A recent survey [20] has provided a detailed comparison of various fusion methods on Deep Web data. In this paper, we study the applicability and limitations of different fusion techniques on a more challenging problem: knowledge fusion. Knowledge fusion identifies true subject-predicate-object triples extracted by multiple information extractors from multiple information sources. These extractors perform the tasks of entity linkage and schema alignment, thus introducing an additional source of noise that is quite different from that traditionally considered in the data fusion literature, which only focuses on factual errors in the original sources. We adapt state-of-the-art data fusion techniques and apply them to a knowledge base with 1.6B unique knowledge triples extracted by 12 extractors from over 1B Web pages, which is three orders of magnitude larger than the data sets used in previous data fusion papers. We show great promise of the data fusion approaches in solving the knowledge fusion problem, and suggest interesting research directions through a detailed error analysis of the methods.
The Bayesian structural EM algorithm

In recent years there has been a flurry of works on learning Bayesian networks from data. One of the hard problems in this area is how to effectively learn the structure of a belief network from incomplete data--that is, in the presence of missing values or hidden variables. In a recent paper, I introduced an algorithm called Structural EM that combines the standard Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, which optimizes parameters, with structure search for model selection. That algorithm learns networks based on penalized likelihood scores, which include the BIC/MDL score and various approximations to the Bayesian score. In this paper, I extend Structural EM to deal directly with Bayesian model selection. I prove the convergence of the resulting algorithm and show how to apply it for learning a large class of probabilistic models, including Bayesian networks and some variants thereof.
Star-forming galaxies in the infrared

The infrared properties from IRAS of galaxy samples previously observed in the optical and ultraviolet are summarized in order to predict quantitatively the infrared fluxes corresponding to galaxies of given fluxes in other wavebands. An infrared luminosity function of galaxies is presented and used to predict galaxy counts and redshift ranges at the flux limits expected for SIRTF. Depending on the precise limit and whether or not galaxies evolve, SIRTF will see as many as 2200 galaxies/sq deg at 30 microns.
The present and future of the American Society of Hypertension-2012.

The American Society of Hypertension (ASH) is entering its 28th year as I commence my term (2012–2014) as president, and it is a characteristic time to review our present status and accomplishments, as well as our future initiatives and goals for continued success as the leading US professional organization in hypertension and its related complications. After spending 27 years as a member and now fellow of the Society, several years as a member of the board of directors of ASH, and 2 years as program chair of our annual Scientific Meeting and Exposition, I feel that it is important to (1) evaluate our unique, premier scientific meeting that showcases state-of-the-art lectures and discussions in our field, (2) assess our relevance to clinical medicine through our members and our specialists’ program, (3) review our role in education of physicians and other health care providers, and (4) forecast our potential to support new investigators and clinical and translational research in hypertension and related disorders.
A Technical Word- and Term-Translation Aid Using Noisy Parallel Corpora across Language Groups

Technical-term translation represents one of the most difficult tasks for human translators since (1) most translators are not familiar with terms and domain-specific terminology and (2) such terms are not adequately covered by printed dictionaries. This paper describes an algorithm for translating technical words and terms from noisy parallel corpora across language groups. Given any word which is part of a technical term in the source language, the algorithm produces a ranked candidate match for it in the target language. Potential translations for the term are compiled from the matched words and are also ranked. We show how this ranked list helps translators in technical-term translation. Most algorithms for lexical and term translation focus on Indo-European language pairs, and most use a sentence-aligned clean parallel corpus without insertion, deletion or OCR noise. Our algorithm is language- and character-set-independent, and is robust to noise in the corpus. We show how our algorithm requires minimum preprocessing and is able to obtain technical-word translations without sentence-boundary identification or sentence alignment, from the English–Japanese awk manual corpus with noise arising from text insertions or deletions and on the English–Chinese HKUST bilingual corpus. We obtain a precision of 55.35% from the awk corpus for word translation including rare words, counting only the best candidate and direct translations. Translation precision of the best-candidate translation is 89.93% from the HKUST corpus. Potential term translations produced by the program help bilingual speakers to get a 47% improvement in translating technical terms.
What does Monetary Policy do to Long‐term Interest Rates at the Zero Lower Bound?

This article uses a structural VAR with daily data to identify the effects of monetary policy shocks on various longer term interest rates since the federal funds rate has been stuck at the zero lower bound. The VAR is identified using the assumption that monetary policy shocks are heteroskedastic: monetary policy shocks have especially high variance on days of FOMC meetings and certain speeches, while there is otherwise nothing unusual about these days. A complementary high-frequency event-study approach is also used. I find that stimulative monetary policy shocks lower Treasury and corporate bond yields but the effects die off fairly fast.
Precision Timing and Spatial Allocation of Economic Fertilizer Application

Recent increases in fertilizer, particularly nitrogen, and fuel price have resulted in increased production cost for farmers. In this paper a farm level production model that compare uniform and variable rate fertilizer (NPK) application is developed that permits an analysis of the economic performance of fertilizer management regarding profitability. Results show that farmer's exposure to fertilizer and fuel prices risk have substantial impact both on the expected net returns and production practices for producers both uniform and variable rate technology.
Reionization and the cosmic microwave background

If the COBE detection of CMB fluctuations is used to normalize the power spectrum of primordial density fluctuations in a cold dark matter-dominated universe, early reionization is likely to result in a substantial diminution of primordial temperature fluctuations on degree scales. I argue that the reionization may be non-Gaussian because of feedback effects. Secondary fluctuations on arc-minute scales provide an important probe of the efficiency of rescattering.
Robust classification with context-sensitive features

This paper addresses the problem of classifying observations when features are context-sensitive, especially when the testing set involves a context that is different from the training set. The paper begins with a precise definition of the problem, then general strategies are presented for enhancing the performance of classification algorithms on this type of problem. These strategies are tested on three domains. The first domain is the diagnosis of gas turbine engines. The problem is to diagnose a faulty engine in one context, such as warm weather, when the fault has previously been seen only in another context, such as cold weather. The second domain is speech recognition. The context is given by the identity of the speaker. The problem is to recognize words spoken by a new speaker, not represented in the training set. The third domain is medical prognosis. The problem is to predict whether a patient with hepatitis will live or die. The context is the age of the patient. For all three domains, exploiting context results in substantially more accurate classification.
The design and performance of 150-MW S-band klystrons

As part of an international collaboration, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) klystron group has designed, fabricated and tested a 60 Hz, 3 /spl mu/s, 150 MW klystron built for Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY). A test diode with a 535 kV, 700 A electron beam was constructed to verify the gun operation. The first klystron was built and successfully met design specifications. This paper discusses design issues and experimental results of the diode and klystron including the suppression of gun oscillations. >
The dynamics of poverty and its determinants - the case of the Northeast of Brazil and its states

In the northeast region of Brazil, the poverty picture of the past two decades reveals large fluctuations in the poverty level, and poverty depth. Findings based on the Brazilian annual household survey (Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra Domiciliar, PNAD) datasets from 1981-99 reveal that individual characteristics such as education, experience, and labor market association of the household head are important correlates of poverty. Taking these into account, data reveal that a Nordestino (northeasterner) is 24 percentage points more likely to fall below the indigent poverty line than other Brazilians. Analyses also reveal large differences in poverty levels by education, and these differences have increased over time. The authors observe that the probability of being poor is decreasing with increasing educational attainment. The gender of the household head does not matter for poverty, according to the poverty profile. But when the authors control for education and other individual characteristics, female-headed households have a much larger likelihood of being poor than male-headed households. Household size also matters for poverty. Larger households are more likely to experience poverty than smaller households, and the effect is concave. Moreover, households with children under age 5 appear more likely to fall below the poverty line, than families with no children below age 5. The presence of old-aged people (above 65 years) in the household is an important factor contributing to poverty reduction.
Boundary Value Problems for Elliptic Wedge Operators: The First-Order Case

This chapter is a description of some of the results obtained by the authors in connection with the problem in the title. These, discussed following a summary of background material concerning wedge differential operators, consist of the notion of trace bundle, an extension of the Douglis–Nirenberg calculus to handle spaces of anisotropic varying regularity and associated pseudodifferential operators, and boundary value problems proper, the latter in the first-order case. The concepts concerning the main results are illustrated with simple examples.
Interactive Submodular Set Cover

We introduce a natural generalization of sub-modular set cover and exact active learning with a finite hypothesis class (query learning). We call this new problem interactive submodular set cover. Applications include advertising in social networks with hidden information. We give an approximation guarantee for a novel greedy algorithm and give a hardness of approximation result which matches up to constant factors. We also discuss negative results for simpler approaches and present encouraging early experimental results.
Lévy Flight of Photoexcited Minority Carriers in Moderately Doped Semiconductors: Theory and Observation

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Anomalous Diffusion of the Minority Carriers Single Step Probability Distribution Distribution Along a Band: Boundary Effects Experimental Luminescence Spectra and Observation of the L��vy Flight Distribution of the Minority Carriers A Single Big Jump Approximation for the Truncated L��vy Flight Conclusions ]]>
Testimony before the US-China Economic Security Review Commission: China's Agriculture Policy and US Access to China's Market

Testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on April 25, 2013, by Dermot Hayes, professor of Economics and Finance, Iowa State University. Testimony covers impacts on food demand from China's rising incomes and urbanization; the viability of China's attempt to remain self-sufficient in meat and key staple crop production under inherent supply constraints, and the possible technological- and policy-based measures they may pursue in regard of such constraints; and, the main challenges to US-China agricultural trade in the short, medium, and long term.