cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Repeated ethanol intoxications of Drosophila melanogaster adults increases the resistance to ethanol of their progeny.

BACKGROUND For decades, Drosophila melanogaster has been used as a model organism to understand the genetics and neurobiology of ethanol intoxication and tolerance. Previous research has shown that acute and chronic pre-exposures to ethanol can trigger the development of functional ethanol tolerance in flies and has unveiled some of the genetic pathways involved in the process. To our knowledge, however, no previous work has systematically explored whether repeated intoxications of adult flies can affect the ethanol tolerance of their progeny. METHODS Adult flies were intoxicated several times (once daily, over several days), and their F1 and F2 progeny were subjected to a functional tolerance test in which flies are exposed to ethanol and video recorded twice within 5 hr. Their behavior was subsequently analyzed to determine how long it took them to become sedated during the first and second exposures. One- and 2-way ANOVAs were used to determine whether parental treatment had an effect on their progeny's baseline resistance and/or acquired functional tolerance to ethanol. RESULTS Parental flies that were intoxicated several times produced F1 and F2 progeny with a significantly higher resistance to ethanol than progeny from unexposed controls. Further, parental intoxications inconsistently increased the progeny's capacity to develop rapid functional tolerance upon re-exposure to ethanol. The transmission of increased ethanol resistance to progeny lasted several days after the last parental intoxication. CONCLUSION To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that repeated parental daily intoxications affect the progeny's response to ethanol in fruit flies. Our findings support the use of D. melanogaster to explore conserved pathways underlying the transmission of ethanol tolerance and can help in the identificaton of novel strategies for managing alcohol use disorder.
Median splits, Type II errors, and false–positive consumer psychology: Don't fight the power

Considerable prior statistical work has criticized replacing a continuously measured variable in a general linear model with a dichotomy based on a median split of that variable. Iacobucci, Posovac, Kardes, Schneider, and Popovich (2015-in this issue) defend the practice of “median splits” using both conceptual arguments and simulations. We dispute their conceptual arguments, and we have identified technical errors in their simulations that dramatically change the conclusions that follow from those simulations. We show that there are no real benefits to median splits, and there are real costs in increases in Type II errors through loss of power and increases in Type I errors through false–positive consumer psychology. We conclude that median splits remain a bad idea.
Identification of GYRO Drift Coefficients Via Frequency Domain Data Reduction

Abstract This paper presents a method of two-axis tumble test for the identification of gyro drift parameters. The method uses the concept of frequency domain data reduction which helps to lessen requirements on test procedure and the needed test equipment. The adopted analytic model of the gyro drift has nine drift terms, requiring the identification of nine drift parameters. The test method consists of two parts. First, the gyro is tumbled along two orthogonal axes, to let it experience the Earth’s gravitation, for data taking. Then, a software is used to perform a frequency analysis of the data and to extract the values of drift coefficients. Both the test procedure and data processing algorithm are presented in detail. The result of a simulated testing is included to demonstrate the proposed concept.
Elections, Coalitions, and Legislative Outcomes

Predictions of electoral behavior in a multiparty setting should be a function of the voters' beliefs about how parties will perform following an election. Similarly, party behavior in a legislature should be a function of electoral promises and rewards. We develop a multistage game-theoretic model of three-party competition under proportional representation. The final policy outcome of the game is generated by a noncooperative bargaining game between the parties in the elected legislature. This game is essentially defined by the vote shares each party receives in the general election, and the parties' electoral policy positions. At the electoral stage parties and voters are strategic in that they take account of the legislative implications of any electoral outcome. We solve for equilibrium electoral positions by the parties and final policy outcomes.
Studies on Small Colony Variants of Staphylococcus aureus.

Small colony variants of bacteria are regarded by some investigators as a filterable stage in a life cycle of the organisms. Other workers do not feel that there is sufficient evidence in support of this theory. Hadley1 has been one of the chief exponents of the idea that bacterial variation represents a cyclical development of the organisms and in this connection he described a small colony filterable form of the Shiga dysentery bacillus and other bacteria.In the present investigation small colony variants of Staphylococcus aureus were studied with respect to their occurrence, morphology, physiological and antigenic properties and filterability. The variants were obtained by plating ageing broth or agar cultures and from cultures in lithium chloride broth. Their occurrence was irregular and rare and no means were found by which this type of variation could be induced. Tiny colonies were not observed at any time in very young cultures except occasionally in broth containing lithium chloride. They appeared...
Bridge graphs and Deodhar parametrizations for positroid varieties

A parametrization of a positroid variety ? of dimension d is a regular map ( C × ) d ? ? which is birational onto a dense subset of ?. There are several remarkable combinatorial constructions which yield parametrizations of positroid varieties. We investigate the relationship between two families of such parametrizations, and prove they are essentially the same. Our first family is defined in terms of Postnikov's boundary measurement map, and the domain of each parametrization is the space of edge weights of a planar network. We focus on a special class of planar networks called bridge graphs, which have applications to particle physics. Our second family arises from Marsh and Rietsch's parametrizations of Deodhar components of the flag variety, which are indexed by certain subexpressions of reduced words. Projecting to the Grassmannian gives a family of parametrizations for each positroid variety. We show that each Deodhar parametrization for a positroid variety corresponds to a bridge graph, while each parametrization arising from a bridge graph agrees with some projected Deodhar parametrization.
Bounding blocking probabilities and throughput in queueing networks with buffer capacity constraints

We propose a new technique for upper and lower bounding of the throughput and blocking probabilities in queueing networks with buffer capacity constraints, i.e., some buffers in the network have finite capacity. By studying the evolution of multinomials of the state of the system in its assumed steady state, we obtain constraints on the possible behavior of the system. Using these constraints, we obtain linear programs whose values upper and lower bound the performance measures of interest, namely throughputs or blocking probabilities. The main advantages of this new technique are that the computational complexity does not increase with the size of the finite buffers and that the technique is applicable to systems in which some buffers have infinite capacity. The technique is demonstrated on examples taken from both manufacturing systems and communication networks. As a special case, for the M/M/s/s queue, we establish the asymptotic exactness of the bounds, i.e., that the bounds on the blocking probability asymptotically approach the exact value as the degree of the multinomials considered is increased to infinity.
Indistinguishability Obfuscation from Semantically-Secure Multilinear Encodings

We define a notion of semantic security of multilinear (a.k.a. graded) encoding schemes, which stipulates security of a class of algebraic “decisional” assumptions: roughly speaking, we require that for every nuPPT distribution D over two constant-length sequences m0,m1 and auxiliary elements z such that all arithmetic circuits (respecting the multilinear restrictions and ending with a zero-test) are constant with overwhelming probability over (m b , z), b ∈ {0,1}, we have that encodings of m0, z are computationally indistinguishable from encodings of m1, z. Assuming the existence of semantically secure multilinear encodings and the LWE assumption, we demonstrate the existence of indistinguishability obfuscators for all polynomial-size circuits.
Rodent models and mechanisms of voluntary binge-like ethanol consumption: Examples, opportunities, and strategies for preclinical research

Binge ethanol consumption has widespread negative consequences for global public health. Rodent models offer exceptional power to explore the neurobiology underlying and affected by binge-like drinking as well as target potential prevention, intervention, and treatment strategies. An important characteristic of these models is their ability to consistently produce pharmacologically-relevant blood ethanol concentration. This review examines the current available rodent models of voluntary, pre-dependent binge-like ethanol consumption and their utility in various research strategies. Studies have demonstrated that a diverse array of neurotransmitters regulate binge-like drinking, resembling some findings from other drinking models. Furthermore, repeated binge-like drinking recruits neuroadaptive mechanisms in mesolimbocortical reward circuitry. New opportunities that these models offer in the current context of mechanistic research are also discussed.
Heteroscedasticity and Estimation of Agricultural Debt

Between 2008 and 2012, agriculture in the United States has experienced a period of prosperity similar to that identified as the Golden Age of Agriculture between 1910 and 1914. This period has seen high agricultural prices and significant appreciations in farmland prices. As a result, the Farm Financial Crisis of the mid 1980s has been largely blotted out of the corporate memory. However, it is important to remember that the Farm Financial Crisis of the 1980s followed a boom period for agriculture in the 1970s. During the 1970s, the increased profitability and farmland values provided incentives for farmers to increase their leverage in an attempt to expand production. Hence, the time may be ripe to reexamine our basic models of optimal debt. In the agricultural debt model, whether risks change over time affects the optimal level of agricultural debt, though this fact is usually ignored in the past risk balancing model. In this paper, we will estimate the optimal debt with the focus on risks. Specifically, there are two purposes for this research: test for heteroscedasticity (i.e., is there any evidence that this risk changes over time) and examine the effect of increases in risks on agricultural debt.
TFAP2C expression in breast cancer: correlation with overall survival beyond 10 years of initial diagnosis

Recurrence and death in a significant number of patients with ERα-positive breast cancer occurs 10–20 years after diagnosis. Prognostic markers for late events have been more elusive. TFAP2C (AP2γ) regulates the expression of ERα, the ERα pioneer factors FOXA1 and GATA3, and controls ERα-dependent transcription. The purpose of this investigation is to determine the long-term prognostic value of TFAP2C. A tissue microarray (TMA) consisting of breast tumors from 451 patients with median follow-up time of 10.3 years was created and tested for the expression of TFAP2C by immunohistochemistry. Wilcoxon Rank-Sum and Kruskal–Wallis tests were used to determine if TFAP2C H-scores correlate with other tumor markers. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to determine whether TFAP2C H-scores and other tumor markers were related to overall and disease-free survival in univariate and multivariable models. TFPAC2 overexpression did not impact overall survival during the first 10 years after diagnosis, but was associated with a shorter survival after 10 years (HR 3.40, 95 % CI 1.58, 7.30; p value = 0.002). This late divergence persisted in ER-positive (HR 2.86, 95 % CI 1.29, 6.36; p value = 0.01) and endocrine therapy-positive subgroups (HR 4.19, 95 % CI 1.72, 10.23; p value = 0.002). For the ER+ and endocrine therapy subgroup, the HR was 3.82 (95 % CI 1.53, 9.50; p value = 0.004). TFAP2C H-scores were not correlated with other tumor markers or related to disease-free survival. In this hypothesis-generating study, we show that higher TFAP2C scores correlate with poor overall survival after 10 years of diagnosis in ERα-positive and endocrine therapy-treated subgroups.
Figure Eight Geodesics on 2-Orbifolds

It is known that the shortest non-simple closed geodesic on an orientable hyperbolic 2-orbifold passes through an orbifold point of the orbifold (Nakanishi in Tohoku Math J (2) 41:527–541, 1989). This raises questions about minimal length non-simple closed geodesics disjoint from the orbifold points. Here, we explore once self-intersecting closed geodesics disjoint from the orbifold points of the orbifold, called figure eight geodesics. Using fundamental domains and basic hyperbolic trigonometry, we identify and classify all figure eight geodesics on triangle group orbifolds. This classification allows us to find the shortest figure eight geodesic on a triangle group orbifold, namely the unique one on the (3,3,4)-triangle group orbifold. We then show that this same curve is the shortest figure eight geodesic on a hyperbolic 2-orbifold without orbifold points of order two.
Regulatory controversies of private pension funds

Although controversial, investment and other draconian regulations for private pension funds are suitable for countries with weak capital markets and little tradition of private pension provision. But regulations should be relaxed as private pension funds gain in maturity. Like other financial institutions, private pension funds require a panoply of prudential and protective regulations to ensure their soundness and safeguard the interests of affiliated workers. These regulations include authorization criteria (such as minimum capital, fit and proper, and business plan requirements), asset segregation and external custody, professional asset management, external audits and actuarial reviews, extensive information disclosure, and effective supervision. These regulations resemble those applied to banks and insurance companies and are not particularly controversial. But private pension funds in developing countries are often subject to structural and operational controls that are more controversial. Such controls include special authorizations and market segmentation, one account per worker and one fund per company rules, nondiscrimination provisions, regulations on fees and commissions, investment limits, minimum profitability rules, and state guarantees. Vittas discusses the use of such regulations in developing countries that have implemented systemic pension reforms. He draws a distinction between this approach and the more relaxed regulatory regime that relies on the prudent person rule found in more advanced countries. He argues that the draconian regulatory approach can be justified on several grounds, but especially by the compulsory nature of the pension system, the absence of strong and transparent capital markets, and the lack of a long tradition of private pension funds. But the regulations should be progressively relaxed as private pension funds and their affiliated workers gain in experience, sophistication, and maturity. This paper - a product of the Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study pension funds and institutional investors.
Food Stamps and Obesity: What Do We Know?

Results from reviewed studies indicate that for most participants in the Food Stamp Program - children, nonelderly men, and the elderly-use of food stamp benefits does not result in an increase in either Body Mass Index (BMI) or the likelihood of being overweight or obese. However, for nonelderly women, who account for 28 percent of the food stamp caseload, some evidence suggests that participation in the Food Stamp Program may increase BMI and the probability of obesity. Different results for age and sex subgroups remain unexplained. Further, because food stamp benefits are issued to households, not individuals, mixed results across age and sex subgroups make it difficult to target policy alternatives to address potential weight gain among some participants while not affecting others in the household.
Ehrhart series, unimodality, and integrally closed reflexive polytopes

An interesting open problem in Ehrhart theory is to classify those lattice polytopes having a unimodal h*-vector. Although various sufficient conditions have been found, necessary conditions remain a challenge. In this paper, we consider integrally closed reflexive simplices and discuss an operation that preserves reflexivity, integral closure, and unimodality of the h*-vector, providing one explanation for why unimodality occurs in this setting. We also discuss the failure of proving unimodality in this setting using weak Lefschetz elements.
Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs)

For major security breaches, many corporations activate computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs). CSIRTs pull together the skills of IT security personnel, IT personnel, functional line managers, other corporate employees, external business partners, and law enforcement agencies, in order to analyze the attack, contain it, repair damage, (possibly) punish the wrongdoer, and harden the attacked system to prevent a repeat of the security incident. Keywords: CERT (computer emergency response team); IT security staff; postmortem analysis; security breach; security incident
The Production of and Market for New Physicians’ Skill

Our understanding of the determinants of physician skill and the extent to which skill is valued in the marketplace is superficial. Using a large, detailed panel of new obstetricians, we find that, even though physicians’ maternal complication rates improve steadily with experience, initial skill (as measured by performance in a physician's first year of practice) explains more of the variation in physician performance over time than experience does. At the same time, we find that the trajectories of new physicians’ delivery volume develop in a way consistent with Bayesian learning about physician quality. As physicians gain experience, their volume becomes increasingly sensitive to the information in their accumulated prior belief, while responses to information on recent performance are detectable in only selected settings (e.g., vaginal delivery, commercially insured patients).
Scattering from rough surfaces

Electromagnetic wave scattering from rough surfaces, discussing radar return differences for different polarizations
The Effectiveness of Public and Private Sector Summary Risk Measures in Predicting Insurer Insolvencies

This article investigates the abilities of four key summary risk measures to predict property-liability insurer insolvencies. The four summary risk measures studied are the NAIC's risk-based capital ratios, the NAIC's financial analysis solvency tools (FAST) scores, A.M. Best's Capital Adequacy Relativity ratios, and A.M. Best's ratings. The empirical tests find that the risk measures produced by the private sector are superior in predictive ability to the measures produced by regulators, perhaps because of the qualitative adjustments made by private sector analysts. The results also demonstrate that overall measures of risk are substantially better than risk-based capital measures in predicting insolvencies. Another finding is that the predictive ability of the NAIC's RBC ratios can be improved substantially if ranks are used rather than the ratios themselves.
Competition, imitation, and technical change : quality vs. variety

Some researchers have documented that the path of development is remarkably related to the pattern of sectoral diversification. Others have highlighted the relation between productive specialization and economic progress. This paper explores the role of product market competition and intellectual property rights protection in the pattern of sectoral diversification. The paper confirms the insight of the innovation literature, that competition induces firms to specialize and upgrade the quality of existing goods. However, it reveals a new force, called the imitation effect, through which competition biases technical change toward product diversification. The paper shows that if knowledge spillovers increase with imitation, or the degree of product substitution is high, weak protection of property rights encourages firms to create low-quality goods, thereby directing technical change toward diversification. The predictions are tested with data on Italian firms' innovation activity. They are found to be consistent with observed behavior.
How adverse selection affects the health insurance market

There may be a price to pay (in terms of inefficient coverage) if competition among health insurers is encouraged as a way to give patients greater choice and to achieve better control over insurance providers. Adverse selection can be defined as strategic behavior by the more informed partner in a contract against the interest of the less informed partner(s). In the health insurance field, this manifests itself through healthy people choosing managed care and less healthy people choosing more generous plans. Drawing on theoretical literature on the problem of adverse selection in the health insurance market, Belli synthesizes concepts developed piecemeal over more than 20 years, using two examples and revisiting the classical contributions of Rothschild and Stiglitz. He highlights key insights, especially from the literature on "equilibrium refinements" and on the theory of "second best." The government can correct spontaneous market dynamics in the health insurance market by directly subsidizing insurance or through regulation; the two forms of intervention provide different results. Providing partial public insurance, even supplemented by the possibility of opting out, can lead to second-best equilibria. The same result holds as long as the government can subsidize contracts with higher-than-average premium-benefit ratios and can tax contracts with lower-than-average premium-benefit ratios. Belli analyzes the following policy options relating to the public provision of insurance: - Full public insurance. - Partial public insurance with or without the possibility of acquiring supplementary insurance and with or without the possibility of opting out. In recent plans implemented in Germany and the Netherlands, where competition among several health funds and insurance companies was promoted, a public fund was created to discourage risk screening practices by providing the necessary compensation across risk groups. But only "objective" risk adjusters (such as age, gender, and region) were used to decide which contracts to subsidize. Those criteria alone cannot correct the effects of adverse selection. Regulation can exacerbate the problem of adverse selection and lead to chronic market instability, so certain steps must be taken to prevent risk screening and preserve competition for the market. Belli considers the following three policy options for regulating the private insurance market: - A standard contract with full coverage. - Imposition of a minimum insurance requirement. - Imposition of premium rate restrictions. This paper - a product of Public Economics, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to improve social service delivery in developing countries. The author may be contacted at pbelli@hsph.harvard.edu or pbelli1@worldbank.org.
The Verifying Compiler: A Grand Challenge for Computing Research

I propose a set of criteria which distinguish a grand challenge in science or engineering from the many other kinds of short-term or long-term research problems that engage the interest of scientists and engineers. As an example drawn from Computer Science, I revive an old challenge: the construction and application of a verifying compiler that guarantees correctness of a program before running it.
3-Way Composition of Weighted Finite-State Transducers

Composition of weighted transducers is a fundamental algorithm used in many applications, including for computing complex edit-distances between automata, or string kernels in machine learning, or to combine different components of a speech recognition, speech synthesis, or information extraction system. We present a generalization of the composition of weighted transducers, 3-way composition, which is dramatically faster in practice than the standard composition algorithm when combining more than two transducers. The worst-case complexity of our algorithm for composing three transducers T 1 , T 2 , and T 3 resulting in T, is O(|T| Q min (d(T 1 ) d(T 3 ), d(T 2 )) + |T| E ), where |·| Q denotes the number of states, |·| E the number of transitions, and d(·) the maximum out-degree. As in regular composition, the use of perfect hashing requires a pre-processing step with linear-time expected complexity in the size of the input transducers. In many cases, this approach significantly improves on the complexity of standard composition. Our algorithm also leads to a dramatically faster composition in practice. Furthermore, standard composition can be obtained as a special case of our algorithm. We report the results of several experiments demonstrating this improvement. These theoretical and empirical improvements significantly enhance performance in the applications already mentioned.
Characterizing optimal sampling of binary contingency tables via the configuration model

A binary contingency table is an m × n array of binary entries with row sums r = r1, ', rm and column sums c = c1, ', cn. The configuration model generates a contingency table by considering ri tokens of type 1 for each row i and cj tokens of type 2 for each column j, and then taking a uniformly random pairing between type-1 and type-2 tokens. We give a necessary and sufficient condition so that the probability that the configuration model outputs a binary contingency table remains bounded away from 0 as\documentclass{article} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \begin{align*}N=\sum_{i=1}^m r_i=\sum_{j=1}^n c_j\end{align*} \end{document}goes to ∞. Our finding shows surprising differences from recent results for binary symmetric contingency tables. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2012
Optimal containment control for a class of stochastic systems perturbed by Poisson and Wiener processes

We consider a class of nonlinear stochastic systems driven by Wiener and Poisson processes. The Wiener process input enters into the equations additively to the dynamics while the Poisson process input enters into the equations multiplicatively to the control input. Examples of applied problems that may lead to system models of this kind are discussed. The optimal containment control problem is then formulated for these systems. It involves either maximizing the time of stay within an admissible set or a closely related performance measure. The optimal control and the optimal value function are characterized on the basis of Bellman's dynamic programming principle in the general case so that the optimal value function is a solution of a boundary value problem for a PDE. For a special case defined by more restrictive assumptions the method of successive approximations is used to show the existence of a solution to this boundary value problem and to set up an iterative solution procedure. An example is reported that illustrates the results.
Test Dimensionality: Assessment of

The ability to properly assess the dimensionality of a set of item responses is essential in psychometrics. Many popular psychometric methods using item response theory (IRT) such as item calibration and test equating assume that there is a single latent trait underlying the responses. As well, the popularity of multidimensional models has increased. Furthermore, test dimensionality is directly linked to the structural aspect of the construct validity of a test. History has shown some confusion in the definition of dimensionality and in the methods to assess it. Recent literature relates both the definition of dimensionality and its methods of assessment to the concepts of local independence and essential independence. This entry provides an overview of these definitions and of the more current methods of dimensionality assessment. Keywords: test dimensionality; local independence; unidimensionality
Person identification based on multichannel and multimodality fusion

Person ID is a very useful information for high level video analysis and retrieval. In some scenario, the recording is not only multimodality and also multichannel (microphone array, camera array). In this paper, we describe a Multimodal person ID system base on multichannel and multimodal fusion. The audio only system is combining 7 channel microphone recording at decision output individual audio-only system. The modeling technique of audio system is Universal Background Model (UBM) and Maximum a Posterior adaptation framework which is very popular in speaker recognition literature. The visual only system works directly on the appearance space via l1 norm and nearest neighbor classifier. The linear fusion is then combining the two modalities to improve the ID performance. The experiments indicate the effectiviness of micropohone array fusion and audio/visual fusion.
Single crystal electrochemistry of rhodium: Anion effects and order/disorder transitions of clean and silver coated Rh (111) surfaces

Abstract Studies by cyclic voltammetry of an ordered Rh (111) electrode in various aqueous electrolytes are reported. These include solutions containing components which interact weakly with the rhodium surface, such as perchloric and sulfuric acid, and those containing strongly interacting reagents: halide anions and silver cations (to form underpotentially deposited silver adatoms). Qualitative similarities between the (111) surfaces of platinum and rhodium are emphasized. Such similarities are particularly well exposed by analyzing the effects of the electrochemical treatment on the voltammetric profiles in various systems. The nature and extent of these effects provide evidence that order/disorder transitions of the Rh (111) surface are as important in the surface electrochemistry of this metal as they are in studies of well-defined platinum electrodes. We also observed that halides are more strongly bonded to rhodium than to platinum. Likewise, three underpotential deposited monolayers of silver were observed on Rh (111) vs. two on Pt (111). This shows that the surface activity of rhodium towards the solution reagents is higher than that of a Pt (111) electrode.
The complex nature of superconductivity in MgB2 as revealed by the reduced total isotope effect.

Magnesium diboride, MgB2, was recently observed to become superconducting1 at 39 K, which is the highest known transition temperature for a non-copper-oxide bulk material. Isotope-effect measurements, in which atoms are substituted by isotopes of different mass to systematically change the phonon frequencies, are one of the fundamental tests of the nature of the superconducting mechanism in a material. In a conventional Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) superconductor, where the mechanism is mediated by electron–phonon coupling, the total isotope-effect coefficient (in this case, the sum of both the Mg and B coefficients) should be about 0.5. The boron isotope effect was previously shown to be large2 and that was sufficient to establish that MgB2 is a conventional superconductor, but the Mg effect has not hitherto been measured. Here we report the determination of the Mg isotope effect, which is small but measurable. The total reduced isotope-effect coefficient is 0.32, which is much lower than the value expected for a typical BCS superconductor. The low value could be due to complex materials properties, and would seem to require both a large electron–phonon coupling constant and a value of μ* (the repulsive electron–electron interaction) larger than found for most simple metals.
Post-Conflict Property Restitution: Flawed Legal and Theoretical Foundations

The international community has recently hailed the restoration of property rights for people uprooted by armed conflict as a means of remedying forced displacement. Proponents of property restitution assert that this remedy can enhance the rule of law in a post-conflict society by promoting reconciliation and bolstering economic and social stability. A United Nations (U.N.) subcommission has endorsed a set of legal and technical guidelines for constructing a property restitution scheme. While other authors have written in support of this plan and a general right to property restitution, this Article represents a critical analysis of the remedy, pointing to weaknesses in its legal and theoretical foundations. The current emphasis on property restitution is similar to past efforts of the United States and other Western nations to promote the rule of law and economic development through exporting an instrumentalist model of law. Just as these well-intentioned "law and development" efforts were plagued by unforeseen, deleterious consequences, so too might the export of property restitution laws and processes suffer from ill side effects. This Article identifies some of the possible unintentional outcomes of property restitution, including, ironically, that the U.N.'s property restitution scheme may ultimately undermine development of the rule of law. The Article seeks to spur further debate on the merits of property restitution so that unintended consequences might be avoided and the remedies to forced displacement can be strengthened to meet the needs of refugees and internally displaced people.
The complexity of finite functions

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the complexity of finite functions. A deterministic Turing machine consists of a finite control and a finite collection of tapes each with a head for reading and writing. The finite control is a finite collection of states. A tape is an infinite list of cells each containing a symbol. Initially, all tapes have blanks except for the first, which contains the input string. Once started, the machine goes from state to state, reading the symbols under the heads, writing new ones, and moving the heads. The exact action taken is governed by the current state, the symbols read, and the next-move function of the machine. This continues until a designated halt state is entered. The machine indicates its output by the halting condition of the tapes. In a nondeterministic Turing machine, the next-move function is multivalued. There can be several computations on a given input and several output values.
Antenatal phenobarbital therapy and neonatal outcome. II: Neurodevelopmental outcome at 36 months

Objective To evaluate the effect of antenatal phenobarbital (PB) therapy on neurodevelopmental outcome at 36 months. Design Prospective, randomized, controlled trial. Setting Single-institution study. SUBJECT AND INTERVENTIONS: Children born to women who participated in the study evaluating the effect of antenatal phenobarbital (PB) on neonatal intracranial hemorrhage were prospectively followed to 3 years of age. Outcome measures Physical growth, neurologic examinations, and developmental testing (McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities). Comparisons between groups were made on all children and those born to multiple gestations. Results Forty-one children born to women who received 10 mg/kg PB before delivery and 55 children in the control group were evaluated. Three children, all in the control group, had growth parameters (height, weight, and head circumference) below the fifth percentile. The McCarthy General Cognitive Index (standard, 100 +/- 16) was 93 +/- 20 in the PB group and 85 +/- 18 in the control group. The subscores tended to be higher in the PB group than in the control group, with higher quantitative scores in the PB group (44 +/- 11 vs 39 +/- 8). Neurologic deficits were noted in 2 of 41 in the PB group and in 6 of 55 in the control group. Conclusions Infants born to women who received antenatal PB therapy had similar neurodevelopmental outcomes as infants born to women who did not receive PB. No adverse effects of PB exposure were detected.
Using performance incentives to improve health outcomes

This study examines the effect of performance incentives for health care providers to provide more and higher quality care in Rwanda on child health outcomes. The authors find that the incentives had a large and significant effect on the weight-for-age of children 0-11 months and on the height-for-age of children 24-49 months. They attribute this improvement to increases in the use and quality of prenatal and postnatal care. Consistent with theory, They find larger effects of incentives on services where monetary rewards and the marginal return to effort are higher. The also find that incentives reduced the gap between provider knowledge and practice of appropriate clinical procedures by 20 percent, implying a large gain in efficiency. Finally, they find evidence of a strong complementarity between performance incentives and provider skill.
Capacity building in economics : education and research in transition economies

The development of the institutional capacity to create and evaluate economic policies remains a critical need-and constraint-in most transition economies if they are to complete the successful passage to fully functioning market economies. To take an active role in the transition process, economic policymakers, business leaders, government officials, and others need a thorough grounding in market-based economics. This requires strengthening economics education and providing support for qualified economists to teach economics at all levels and to carry out high-quality research and policy analysis. Although the education systems in a handful of countries have already risen to the challenge, in many other transition countries, the structure of educational and research institutes remains grounded in the Communist model. This paper presents findings from a comprehensive study assessing the state of economics education and research in 24 countries in East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. While 20 countries were initially included because preliminary assessments showed that they lacked the capability to offer high-quality economics education, four additional countries-the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine-were included to highlight five centers of excellence that they already host. Based on the experience of these successful centers, the study's findings, and information gathered from a series of donor meetings in Berlin, New York, and Washington, D.C., this paper presents an approach to building new indigenous capacity for teaching and research on market-based economics in regions where the need is particularly critical-the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Southeast Europe.
Scale-invariant boundary Harnack principle on inner uniform domains in fractal-type spaces

We prove a scale-invariant boundary Harnack principle for inner uniform domains in metric measure Dirichlet spaces. We assume that the Dirichlet form is symmetric, strongly local, regular, and that the volume doubling property and two-sided sub-Gaussian heat kernel bounds are satisfied. We make no assumptions on the pseudo-metric induced by the Dirichlet form, hence the underlying space can be a fractal space.
Constrained approximate maximum entropy learning of Markov random fields

Parameter estimation in Markov random fields (MRFs) is a difficult task, in which inference over the network is run in the inner loop of a gradient descent procedure. Replacing exact inference with approximate methods such as loopy belief propagation (LBP) can suffer from poor convergence. In this paper, we provide a different approach for combining MRF learning and Bethe approximation. We consider the dual of maximum likelihood Markov network learning — maximizing entropy with moment matching constraints — and then approximate both the objective and the constraints in the resulting optimization problem. Unlike previous work along these lines (Teh & Welling, 2003), our formulation allows parameter sharing between features in a general log-linear model, parameter regularization and conditional training. We show that piecewise training (Sutton & McCallum, 2005) is a very restricted special case of this formulation. We study two optimization strategies: one based on a single convex approximation and one that uses repeated convex approximations. We show results on several real-world networks that demonstrate that these algorithms can significantly outperform learning with loopy and piece-wise. Our results also provide a framework for analyzing the trade-offs of different relaxations of the entropy objective and of the constraints.
Coxeter arrangements in three dimensions

Let $$\mathcal {A}$$ be a finite real linear hyperplane arrangement in three dimensions. Suppose further that all the regions of $$\mathcal {A}$$ are isometric. We prove that $$\mathcal {A}$$ is necessarily a Coxeter arrangement. As it is well known that the regions of a Coxeter arrangement are isometric, this characterizes three-dimensional Coxeter arrangements precisely as those arrangements with isometric regions. It is an open question whether this suffices to characterize Coxeter arrangements in higher dimensions. We also present the three families of affine arrangements in the plane which are not reflection arrangements, but in which all the regions are isometric.
Algorithms Meet Art, Puzzles, and Magic

Two years before WADS began, my father Martin Demaine and my six-year-old self designed and made puzzles as the Erik and Dad Puzzle Company , which distributed to toy stores across Canada. So began our journey into the interactions between algorithms and the arts. More and more, we find that our mathematical research and artistic projects converge, with the artistic side inspiring the mathematical side and vice versa. Mathematics itself is an art form, and through other media such as sculpture, puzzles, and magic, the beauty of mathematics can be brought to a wider audience. These artistic endeavors also provide us with deeper insights into the underlying mathematics, by providing physical realizations of objects under consideration, by pointing to interesting special cases and directions to explore, and by suggesting new problems to solve (such as the metapuzzle of how to solve a puzzle). This talk will give several examples in each category, from how our first font design led to a universality result in hinged dissections, to how studying curved creases in origami led to sculptures at MoMA. The audience will be expected to participate in some live magic demonstrations.
Eigensolution analysis of the discontinuous Galerkin method with non-uniform grids

We present a detailed study of spatially propagating waves in a discontinuous Galerkin scheme applied to a system of linear hyperbolic equations. We start with an eigensolution analysis of the semidiscrete system in one space dimension with uniform grids. It is found that for any given order of the basis functions, there are at most two spatially propagating numerical wave modes for each physical wave of the partial differential equations (PDE). One of the modes can accurately represent the physical wave of the PDE and the other is spurious. The directions of propagation of these two numerical modes are opposite, and, in most practical cases, the spurious mode has a large damping rate. Furthermore, when an exact characteristics split flux formula is used, the spurious mode becomes nonexistent. For the physically accurate mode, it is shown analytically that the numerical dispersion relation is accurate to order 2p + 2, where p is the highest order of the basis polynomials. The results of eigensolution analysis are then utilized to study the effects of a grid discontinuity, caused by an abrupt change in grid size, on the numerical solutions at either side of the interface. It is shown that due to "mode decoupling," numerical reflections at grid discontinuity, when they occur, are always in the form of the spurious nonphysical mode. Closed-form numerical reflection and transmission coefficients are given and analyzed. Numerical examples that illustrate the analytical findings of the paper are also presented.
Interplanetary Radio Bursts

Nonthermal radio bursts in the interplanetary medium indicate the far-reaching effect of solar eruptions that inject energetic particles, plasmas and shock waves into the inner heliosphere. More than half a century of ground-based observations and subsequent space-based observations exist on this phenomena. In this paper, I summarize the understanding we have gained on the type III and type II radio bursts, which are indicative of electron beams and shocks, respectively. Observations in the new radio window (1–14 MHz) from Wind/WAVES have not only confirmed previous results, but also led to a number of new discoveries. Availability of simultaneous white light (SOHO) and radio (Wind) observations from the same spatial domain in the near-Sun IP medium is largely responsible for these discoveries on the IP propagation of CMEs, so this paper discusses radio bursts in the context of white light observations. After exploring the origin of normal, complex and storm type III bursts, I discuss the type II bursts and their relation to coronal mass ejections. Finally I discuss some of the recent developments on IP radio emission.
Universal T-matrix for Twisted Quantum gl(N)

The Universal T-matrix is the capstone of the structure that consists of a quantum group and its dual, and the central object from which spring the T-matrices (monodromies) of all the associated integrable models. A closed expression is obtained for the case of multiparameter (twisted) quantum gl(N). The factorized nature of standard quantum groups, that allows the explicit expression for UT to be obtained with relative ease, extends to some nonstandard quantum groups, such as those based on A n (2), and perhaps to all. The paper is mostly concerned with parameters in general position, but the extension to roots of unity is also explored, in the case of gl(N). The structure of the dual is now radically different, and an interesting generalization of the q-exponential appears in the formulas for the Universal T-and R-matrices. The projection to quantum sl(N) is simple and direct; this allows, in particular, to apply recent results concerning deformations of twisted gl(N) to the semisimple quotient.
Total (Bio)Synthesis: Strategies of Nature and of Chemists

The biosynthetic pathways to a number of natural products have been reconstituted in vitro using purified enzymes. Many of these molecules have also been synthesized by organic chemists. Here we compare the strategies used by nature and by chemists to reveal the underlying logic and success of each total synthetic approach for some exemplary molecules with diverse biosynthetic origins.