cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Machine translation of cortical activity to text with an encoder–decoder framework

A decade after speech was first decoded from human brain signals, accuracy and speed remain far below that of natural speech. Here we show how to decode the electrocorticogram with high accuracy and at natural-speech rates. Taking a cue from recent advances in machine translation, we train a recurrent neural network to encode each sentence-length sequence of neural activity into an abstract representation, and then to decode this representation, word by word, into an English sentence. For each participant, data consist of several spoken repeats of a set of 30–50 sentences, along with the contemporaneous signals from ~250 electrodes distributed over peri-Sylvian cortices. Average word error rates across a held-out repeat set are as low as 3%. Finally, we show how decoding with limited data can be improved with transfer learning, by training certain layers of the network under multiple participants’ data. Makin and colleagues decode speech from neural signals recorded during a preoperative procedure, using an algorithm inspired by machine translation. For one participant reading from a closed set of 50 sentences, decoding accuracy is nearly perfect.
HERMITE NUMERICAL METHOD TO ESTIMATE THE RADON AND RADIUM EFFECTS OF THE SOIL IN BARTELLA REGION

The Hermite numerical interpolation method used to estimate and predict the radon and radium concentrations, from some of the experimental measurements made on the soil samples of the Bartella region in Iraq. The results obtained from deductible mathematical method were close to real experimental results. Predicted results are in the range of 80.04 –4051.59 Bq/m 3 radon concentrations and 0.322–17.276 Bq/Kg radium concentrations corresponding to 200-10000 tracks of alpha particles . T he maximum errors were less than 0.289 and 1.172 percent for radon and radium concentrations, respectively. The effects of radium and radon radiations estimated of soil in the studied area depend on its concentrations, a higher number of alpha particle tracks mean high radiation concentration, the high radiation will cause human health damage. The values are below 370 Bq/Kg the recommended radium concentration permissible values, by the Organization ащк Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the studied area is safe from hazards on health of radium and radon exposure from the soil
A Phenomenological Study on Chinese College Students’ Experiences in Developing Intercultural Competence

This research will be a phenomenological study about Chinese private university students’ domestic learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) experiences and overseas study abroad experiences in developing intercultural competence (IC). The study will be conducted for two phases, i.e. the first phase in China and the second phase in the United Sates. This paper consists of two parts. The first part introduces the research topic and purpose, research significance, and research questions. The second part discusses the research methodology and methods at the proposal stage.
Real Analytic Local Well‐Posedness for the Triple Deck

The Triple Deck model is a classical high order boundary layer model that has been proposed to describe flow regimes where the Prandtl theory is expected to fail. At first sight the model appears to lose two derivatives through the pressure-displacement relation which links pressure to the tangential slip. In order to overcome this, we split the Triple Deck system into two coupled equations: a Prandtl type system on $\mathbb{H}$ and a Benjamin-Ono type equation on $\mathbb{R}$. This splitting enables us to extract a crucial leading order cancellation at the top of the lower deck. We develop a functional framework to subsequently extend this cancellation into the interior of the lower deck, which enables us to prove the local well-posedness of the model in tangentially real analytic spaces.
Formality and Lusztig’s Generalized Springer Correspondence

We prove a derived equivalence between each block of the derived category of sheaves on the nilpotent cone and the category of differential graded modules over a degeneration of Lusztig’s graded Hecke algebra. Along the way, we construct and study a mixed version of the geometric category. This work can be viewed as giving a derived version of the generalized Springer correspondence.
CHAPTER 6 – Spatial Transforms

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on spatial transforms, which can be combined with spectral transforms for certain applications such as image fusion and feature extraction for classification. Spatial transforms provide tools to extract or modify the spatial information in remote-sensing images. Some transforms such as convolution use only local image information, that is, within relatively small neighborhoods of a given pixel. Others, for example, the Fourier transform, use global spatial content. Between these two extremes, the increasingly important category of scale-space filters, including Gaussian and Laplacian pyramids and the wavelet transform provide data representations that allow access to spatial information over a wide range of scales, from local to global. The chapter concludes the following points: convolution and Fourier transform filtering are equivalent global processing techniques, except in the border region; a wide range of processing can be performed with small neighborhood windows, including noise removal and edge detection; scale-space filters allow access to image features according to their size, which is not possible with linear convolution or Fourier filters; and the resolution pyramid provides a unified description of scale-space filters, for example, Gaussian, Laplacian, and wavelet pyramids.
The messenger under attack - Intimidation of researchers by special- interest groups

Attacks on health researchers are not new. Pierre Louis, for example, was vilified nearly two centuries ago for suggesting that bloodletting was an ineffectual therapy.1 In an open society such as ...
Replications and Extensions in Marketing: Rarely Published but Quite Contrary

Replication is rare in marketing. Of 1,120 papers sampled from three major marketing journals, none were replications. Only 1.8% of the papers were extensions, and they consumed 1.1% of the journal space. On average, these extensions appeared seven years after the original study. The publication rate for such works has been decreasing since the 1970s. Published extensions typically produced results that conflicted with the original studies; of the 20 extensions published, 12 conflicted with the earlier results, and only 3 provided full confirmation. Published replications do not attract as many citations after publication as do the original studies, even when the results fail to support the original studies.
Chapter 7 – Turbomachinery

A general thermodynamic analysis of a compressor and a turbine is carried out and the details of the energy transfer between a fluid and the rotor through which it passes are derived. The operation and performance of a centrifugal compressor is developed. The application of centrifugal compressors and radial turbines to jet engines is covered. The operation of the axial flow compressor, which is the most widely used for aerospace propulsion, is analyzed in detail. The velocity diagram for, and pressure rise in, an axial flow compressor stage is derived and the benefits of using multiple stages are detailed. The axial flow turbine is treated in equivalent detail. The characteristic axial flow compressor and turbine performance maps are developed in depth and three-dimensional considerations in axial flow turbomachines are discussed.
Choice as Regulatory Reform: The Case of Japanese Corporate Governance

Choice as Regulatory Reform: The Case of Japanese Corporate Governance Ronald J. Gilson * and Curtis J. Milhaupt ** Corporate governance reform is everywhere these days, and it has a common focus. In many markets, including the United States, governments and stock exchanges have entered the board room, enacting mandatory rules on board composition, director independence, and other aspects of firm organization previously left to private ordering between shareholders and managers. 1 As we will explore in this Article, extensive corporate governance reforms on board structure and composition are taking place in Japan as well, but the reforms have taken a highly distinctive turn. Japanese corporate governance in the postwar period has been both insular and conservative. It is insular in that Japanese corporate governance has a unique structure – what economist Masahiko Aoki calls J-Form – that is said to reflect the special characteristics of Japan, whether cultural or industrial. 2 It is conservative in thatin the familiar account, Japanese corporate governance largely walls off company management Charles J. Meyers Professor of Law & Business, Stanford Law School and Marc & Eva Stern Professor of Law & Business, Columbia Law School. Email: rgilson@law.columbia.edu Fuyo Professor and Director, Center for Japanese Legal Studies, Columbia Law School. Email: milhaupt@law.columbia.edu Helpful comments on an earlier draft were provided by Marc Goldstein, Hideki Kanda, Hugh Patrick and Mark West, as well as participants at the University of Tokyo Center of Excellence Workshop, the University of Toronto Law School, the Vanderbilt Law and Business Workshop, and the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry. Keiji Hatano, Columbia LLM 2004, provided excellent research assistance. This is the essence of the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms and New York Stock Exchange Listing standards enacted in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. In Asia, the 1997-98 financial crisis had a similar effect: Korea and Taiwan enacted mandatory board reforms, featuring independent directors, for publicly traded firms in response to problems exposed in that episode. For the original formulation, see Masahiko Aoki, Toward an Economic Model of the Japanese Firm, 28 J. Econ. Lit. 1 (1990).
Government control, governance and spatial distribution: what we have learned from the Research Infrastructure of Chinese Foundations

Foundations have become a significant form of nongovernmental organisation in China since 2004. Large-sample research about Chinese foundations, however, did not appear until the middle 2010s. The ...
An Adaptive Algorithm Employing Continuous Linear Functionals

Automatic algorithms attempt to provide approximate solutions that differ from exact solutions by no more than a user-specified error tolerance. This paper describes an automatic, adaptive algorithm for approximating the solution to a general linear problem defined on Hilbert spaces. The algorithm employs continuous linear functionals of the input function, specifically Fourier coefficients. We assume that the Fourier coefficients of the solution decay sufficiently fast, but we do not require the decay rate to be known a priori. We also assume that the Fourier coefficients decay steadily, although not necessarily monotonically. Under these assumptions, our adaptive algorithm is shown to produce an approximate solution satisfying the desired error tolerance, without prior knowledge of the norm of the input function. Moreover, the computational cost of our algorithm is shown to be essentially no worse than that of the optimal algorithm. We provide a numerical experiment to illustrate our algorithm.
Chapter 5 – Behavioral Systems

Behavior can be most simply defined as what living organisms do. Behavioral physiology examines how they do it and the physiological reasons why a particular behavior may be expressed at a particular time. Behavior, like morphological structures, is a phenotype whose development and expression are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Although usually simple to observe and requiring little in the way of instrumentation to measure, behavior represents the end result of a very complex series of nervous impulses and muscular contractions which are initiated in a specific order and ultimately result in the expression of what we see as a spatial displacement of the insect. What may be observed as a single behavior may actually consist of a chain of individual behaviors that constitute it.
Do we Lead Together? Leadership Behavioral Integration and Coordination in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are the systems of inter-related forces that encourage and sustain entrepreneurship in a geographic area. Vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems exhibit coordination – participants engage in explicit attempts to develop, organize, and promote the ecosystem. Studies have begun to explore how leadership influences ecosystem coordination. However, there is not a holistic theory explaining the antecedents and effects of entrepreneurial ecosystem leadership. To develop such a theory, this paper proposes a model of entrepreneurial ecosystem behavioral integration. It is theorized that entrepreneurial ecosystem behavioral integration is influenced by leader and leadership-group characteristics and, in turn, influences ecosystem coordination. The model contributes to research at the intersection of entrepreneurship and leadership by delineating a precise and theoretically-driven conception of entrepreneurial ecosystem leadership. In examining the linkages between ecosystem leadership and coordination, a more nuanced understanding of coordination is provided by identifying its mechanisms and sub-dimensions. The proposed theory charts a path for interdisciplinary research on entrepreneurial ecosystems and leadership.
Chapter 10 – Retail Pharmacy

This chapter looks at some of the non-NHS legislation which affects community pharmacies, particularly the rules on ownership and management.
Low-Resolution Limited-Feedback NOMA for mmWave Communications

The spectrum-efficient millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications has recently attracted much attention as a viable solution to spectrum crunch problem. In this work, we propose a novel non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) framework, which makes use of the directional propagation characteristics of mmWave communications so as to improve the spectral efficiency through non-orthogonal signaling. In particular, we consider one-bit quantized angle information as a limited yet effective feedback scheme describing the channel quality of user equipment (UE) in mmWave bands. The UE pairs for NOMA transmission are then established using not only the one-bit distance feedback as a classical approach, but also the one-bit angle feedback. The proposed strategy is therefore referred to as two-bit NOMA. We also propose a novel hybrid strategy, called combined NOMA, for the circumstances with no UE pair through two-bit NOMA. Whenever no UE pair is available through any NOMA strategy, we resort to single user transmission (SUT) with proper UE selection schemes. The hybrid outage sum-rate performance is also analyzed thoroughly with the respective outage and rate expressions. The numerical results verify that the proposed strategy outperforms one-bit NOMA schemes with either angle- or distance-only feedback, and has a very close outage sum-rate performance to that for the optimal full-resolution feedback.
Arhgap25 Deficiency Leads to Decreased Numbers of Peripheral Blood B Cells and Defective Germinal Center Reactions.

Rho family GTPases are critical for normal B cell development and function, and their activity is regulated by a large and complex network of guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) and GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs). However, the role of GAPs in B cell development is poorly understood. In this study, we show that the novel Rac-GAP ARHGAP25 is important for B cell development in mice in a CXCR4-dependent manner. We show that Arhgap25 deficiency in mice leads to a significant decrease in peripheral blood B cell numbers as well as defects in mature B cell differentiation. Arhgap25-/- B cells respond to Ag stimulation in vitro and in vivo but have impaired germinal center formation and decreased IgG1 class switching. Additionally, Arhgap25-/- B cells show evidence of increased baseline motility and augmented chemotaxis to CXCL12. Taken together, these studies demonstrate an important role for Arhgap25 in peripheral B cell development and Ag response.
Sensor Selection With Cost Constraints for Dynamically Relevant Bases

We consider cost-constrained sparse sensor selection for full-state reconstruction, applying a well-known greedy algorithm to dynamical systems for which the usual singular value decomposition (SVD) basis may not be available or preferred. We apply the cost-modified, column-pivoted QR decomposition to a physically relevant basis—the pivots correspond to sensor locations, and these locations are penalized with a heterogeneous cost function. In considering different bases, we are able to account for the dynamics of the particular system, yielding sensor arrays that are nearly Pareto optimal in sensor cost and performance in the chosen basis. This flexibility extends our framework to include actuation and dynamic estimation, and to select sensors without training data. We provide three examples from the physical and engineering sciences and evaluate sensor selection in three dynamically relevant bases: truncated balanced modes for control systems, dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) modes, and a basis of analytic modes. We find that these bases all yield effective sensor arrays and reconstructions for their respective systems. When possible, we compare to results using an SVD basis and evaluate tradeoffs between methods.
The real effects of financial reporting on pay and incentives

This paper discusses two real effects of financial reporting on pay and incentives: (1) Better earnings leads to better incentives, and (2) If pay is mismeasured, pay can be misused. The first real...
Microtubule nucleation promoters Mto1 and Mto2 regulate cytokinesis in fission yeast

Dundon and Pollard show that compromising the Mto1 or Mto2 regulators of the fission yeast γ-tubulin complex reduces or eliminates astral microtubules, exaggerates the effects of a D277N substituti...
The Cost-free Nature of Optimally Tuning Tikhonov Regularizers and Other Ordered Smoothers

We consider the problem of selecting the best estimator among a family of Tikhonov regularized estimators, or, alternatively, to select a linear combination of these regularizers that is as good as the best regularizer in the family. Our theory reveals that if the Tikhonov regularizers share the same penalty matrix with different tuning parameters, a convex procedure based on $Q$-aggregation achieves the mean square error of the best estimator, up to a small error term no larger than $C\sigma^2$, where $\sigma^2$ is the noise level and $C>0$ is an absolute constant. Remarkably, the error term does not depend on the penalty matrix or the number of estimators as long as they share the same penalty matrix, i.e., it applies to any grid of tuning parameters, no matter how large the cardinality of the grid is. This reveals the surprising "cost-free" nature of optimally tuning Tikhonov regularizers, in striking contrast with the existing literature on aggregation of estimators where one typically has to pay a cost of $\sigma^2\log(M)$ where $M$ is the number of estimators in the family. The result holds, more generally, for any family of ordered linear smoothers. This encompasses Ridge regression as well as Principal Component Regression. The result is extended to the problem of tuning Tikhonov regularizers with different penalty matrices.
Unsupervised Morphological Paradigm Completion.

We propose the task of unsupervised morphological paradigm completion. Given only raw text and a lemma list, the task consists of generating the morphological paradigms, i.e., all inflected forms, of the lemmas. From a natural language processing (NLP) perspective, this is a challenging unsupervised task, and high-performing systems have the potential to improve tools for low-resource languages or to assist linguistic annotators. From a cognitive science perspective, this can shed light on how children acquire morphological knowledge. We further introduce a system for the task, which generates morphological paradigms via the following steps: (i) EDIT TREE retrieval, (ii) additional lemma retrieval, (iii) paradigm size discovery, and (iv) inflection generation. We perform an evaluation on 14 typologically diverse languages. Our system outperforms trivial baselines with ease and, for some languages, even obtains a higher accuracy than minimally supervised systems.
Allometric scaling law and ergodicity breaking in the vascular system

Allometry or the quantitative study of the relationship of body size to living organism physiology is an important area of biophysical scaling research. The West-Brown-Enquist (WBE) model of fractal branching in a vascular network explains the empirical allometric Kleiber law (the ¾ scaling exponent for metabolic rates as a function of animal’s mass). The WBE model raises a number of new questions, such as how to account for capillary phenomena more accurately and what are more realistic dependencies for blood flow velocity on the size of a capillary. We suggest a generalized formulation of the branching model and investigate the ergodicity in the fractal vascular system. In general, the fluid flow in such a system is not ergodic, and ergodicity breaking is attributed to the fractal structure of the network. Consequently, the fractal branching may be viewed as a source of ergodicity breaking in biophysical systems, in addition to such mechanisms as aging and macromolecular crowding. Accounting for non-ergodicity is important for a wide range of biomedical applications where long observations of time series are impractical. The relevance to microfluidics applications is also discussed.
Descent of Hilbert C*-modules

Let F be a right Hilbert C*-module over a C*-algebra B, and suppose that F is equipped with a left action, by compact operators, of a second C*-algebra A. Tensor product with F gives a functor from Hilbert C*-modules over A to Hilbert C*-modules over B. We prove that under certain conditions (which are always satisfied if, for instance, A is nuclear), the image of this functor can be described in terms of coactions of a certain coalgebra canonically associated to F. We then discuss several examples that fit into this framework: parabolic induction of tempered group representations; Hermitian connections on Hilbert C*-modules; Fourier (co)algebras of compact groups; and the maximal C*-dilation of operator modules over non-self-adjoint operator algebras.
jiant: A Software Toolkit for Research on General-Purpose Text Understanding Models

We introduce jiant, an open source toolkit for conducting multitask and transfer learning experiments on English NLU tasks. jiant enables modular and configuration driven experimentation with state-of-the-art models and a broad set of tasks for probing, transfer learning, and multitask training experiments. jiant implements over 50 NLU tasks, including all GLUE and SuperGLUE benchmark tasks. We demonstrate that jiant reproduces published performance on a variety of tasks and models, e.g., RoBERTa and BERT.
Spatial-Temporal Moving Target Defense: A Markov Stackelberg Game Model

Moving target defense has emerged as a critical paradigm of protecting a vulnerable system against persistent and stealthy attacks. To protect a system, a defender proactively changes the system configurations to limit the exposure of security vulnerabilities to potential attackers. In doing so, the defender creates asymmetric uncertainty and complexity for the attackers, making it much harder for them to compromise the system. In practice, the defender incurs a switching cost for each migration of the system configurations. The switching cost usually depends on both the current configuration and the following configuration. Besides, different system configurations typically require a different amount of time for an attacker to exploit and attack. Therefore, a defender must simultaneously decide both the optimal sequence of system configurations and the optimal timing for switching. In this paper, we propose a Markov Stackelberg Game framework to precisely characterize the defender's spatial and temporal decision-making in the face of advanced attackers. We introduce a value iteration algorithm that computes the defender's optimal moving target defense strategies. Empirical evaluation on real-world problems demonstrates the advantages of the Markov Stackelberg game model for spatial-temporal moving target defense.
Social Security Disability Benefits: Characteristics of the Approved and Denied Populations:

Using new data from the 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation, I estimate that about 24 million individuals between the ages of 18 and 66 years have applied for Social Security disability...
Collusive Investments in Technological Compatibility: Lessons from U.S. Railroads in the Late 19th Century

Collusion is widely condemned for its negative effects on consumer welfare and market efficiency. In this paper, I show that collusion may also in some cases facilitate the creation of unexpected n...
A time-dependent diffusion MRI signature of axon caliber variations and beading.

MRI provides a unique non-invasive window into the brain, yet is limited to millimeter resolution, orders of magnitude coarser than cell dimensions. Here, we show that diffusion MRI is sensitive to the micrometer-scale variations in axon caliber or pathological beading, by identifying a signature power-law diffusion time-dependence of the along-fiber diffusion coefficient. We observe this signature in human brain white matter and identify its origins by Monte Carlo simulations in realistic substrates from 3-dimensional electron microscopy of mouse corpus callosum. Simulations reveal that the time-dependence originates from axon caliber variation, rather than from mitochondria or axonal undulations. We report a decreased amplitude of time-dependence in multiple sclerosis lesions, illustrating the potential sensitivity of our method to axonal beading in a plethora of neurodegenerative disorders. This specificity to microstructure offers an exciting possibility of bridging across scales to image cellular-level pathology with a clinically feasible MRI technique. Hong-Hsi Lee et al. identify a characteristic power-law scaling in the time-dependent diffusion MRI signal that can detect micrometer-scale variations in axon caliber or pathological beading. They validate this signature trait using Monte Carlo simulations in axonal microstructure based on electron microscopy of mouse corpus callosum and illustrate the sensitivity of this method by detecting axon beading in a neurodegenerative disorder.
Theory and Application of Motion Compensation for LFM-CW SAR

-Small low-cost high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems are made possible by using a linear frequency-modulated continuous-wave (LFM-CW) signal. SAR processing assumes that the sensor is moving in a straight line at a constant speed, but in actuality, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or airplane will often significantly deviate from this ideal. This nonideal motion can seriously degrade the SAR image quality. In a continuous-wave system, this motion happens during the radar pulse, which means that existing motion compensation techniques that approximate the position as constant over a pulse are limited for LFM-CW SAR. Small aircraft and UAVs are particularly susceptible to atmospheric turbulence, making the need for motion compensation even greater for SARs operating on these platforms. In this paper, the LFM-CW SAR signal model is presented, and processing algorithms are discussed. The effects of nonideal motion on the SAR signal are derived, and new methods for motion correction are developed, which correct for motion during the pulse. These new motion correction algorithms are verified with simulated data and with actual data collected using the Brigham Young University μSAR system.
Overcoming the curse of dimensionality for some Hamilton–Jacobi partial differential equations via neural network architectures

We propose new and original mathematical connections between Hamilton–Jacobi (HJ) partial differential equations (PDEs) with initial data and neural network architectures. Specifically, we prove that some classes of neural networks correspond to representation formulas of HJ PDE solutions whose Hamiltonians and initial data are obtained from the parameters of the neural networks. These results do not rely on universal approximation properties of neural networks; rather, our results show that some classes of neural network architectures naturally encode the physics contained in some HJ PDEs. Our results naturally yield efficient neural network-based methods for evaluating solutions of some HJ PDEs in high dimension without using grids or numerical approximations. We also present some numerical results for solving some inverse problems involving HJ PDEs using our proposed architectures.
Accuracy Prevents Robustness in Perception-based Control

In this paper we prove the existence of a fundamental trade-off between accuracy and robustness in perception-based control, where control decisions rely solely on data-driven, and often incompletely trained, perception maps. In particular, we consider a control problem where the state of the system is estimated from measurements extracted from a high-dimensional sensor, such as a camera. We assume that a map between the camera's readings and the state of the system has been learned from a set of training data of finite size, from which the noise statistics are also estimated. We show that algorithms that maximize the estimation accuracy (as measured by the mean squared error) using the learned perception map tend to perform poorly in practice, where the sensor's statistics often differ from the learned ones. Conversely, increasing the variability and size of the training data leads to robust performance, however limiting the estimation accuracy, and thus the control performance, in nominal conditions. Ultimately, our work proves the existence and the implications of a fundamental trade-off between accuracy and robustness in perception-based control, which, more generally, affects a large class of machine learning and data-driven algorithms [1]-[4].
Gallai-Ramsey Number of An 8-Cycle

Given graphs G and H and a positive integer k, the Gallai-Ramsey number grk(G:H) is the minimum integer N such that for any integer n≥N, every k-edge-coloring of Kn contains either a rainbow copy o...
An Experimental Study on Microservices based Edge Computing Platforms

The rapid technological advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) allows the blueprint of Smart Cities to become feasible by integrating heterogeneous cloud/fog/edge computing paradigms to collaboratively provide variant smart services in our cities and communities. Thanks to attractive features like fine granularity and loose coupling, the microservices architecture has been proposed to provide scalable and extensible services in large scale distributed IoT systems. Recent studies have evaluated and analyzed the performance interference between microservices based on scenarios on the cloud computing environment. However, they are not holistic for IoT applications given the restriction of the edge device like computation consumption and network capacity. This paper investigates multiple microservice deployment policies on edge computing platform. The microservices are developed as docker containers, and comprehensive experimental results demonstrate the performance and interference of microservices running on benchmark scenarios.
Representing interpolated free group factors as group factors

We construct a one parameter family of ICC groups $\{G_t\}_{t>1}$, with the property that the group factor $L(G_t)$ is isomorphic to the interpolated free group factor $L(\mathbb F_t):=L(\mathbb{F}_2)^{1/\sqrt{t-1}}$, $\forall t$. Moreover, the groups $G_t$ have fixed cost $t$, are strongly treeable and freely generate any treeable ergodic equivalence relation of same cost.
Smoothing theorems for Radon transforms over hypersurfaces and related operators

We extend the theorems of [G1] on $L^p$ to $L^p_s$ Sobolev improvement for translation invariant Radon and fractional singular Radon transforms over hypersurfaces, proving $L^p$ to $L^q_s$ boundedness results for such operators. Here $q \geq p$ but $s$ can be positive, negative, or zero. For many such operators we will have a triangle $Z \subset (0,1) \times (0,1) \times {\mathbb R} $ such that one has $L^p$ to $L^q_{s}$ boundedness for $({1 \over p}, {1 \over q}, s)$ beneath $Z$, and in the case of Radon transforms one does not have $L^p$ to $L^q_{s}$ boundedness for $({1 \over p}, {1 \over q}, s)$ above the plane containing $Z$, thereby providing a Sobolev space improvement result which is sharp up to endpoints for $({1 \over p}, {1 \over q})$ below $Z$. This triangle $Z$ intersects the plane $\{(x_1,x_2,x_3): x_3 = 0\}$, and therefore we also have an $L^p$ to $L^q$ improvement result that is also sharp up to endpoints for certain ranges of $p$ and $q$.
Secure Decentralized Pliable Index Coding

This paper studies a variant of the Pliable Index CODing (PICOD) problem, i.e., an index coding problem where a user can be satisfied by decoding any message that is not in its side information set, where communication is decentralized, i.e., it occurs among users rather than by the central server, and secure, i.e., each user is allowed to decode only one message outside its side information set and must not be able to collect any information about any other message that is not its decoded one. Given the difficulty of the general version of this problem, this paper focuses on the case where the side information sets are ‘s circular shifts’, namely, user u’s side information set is the set of messages indexed by {u, u +1,…,u + s − 1} for some fixed s and where the indices are intended modulo the cardinality of the message set. This particular setting has been studied in the ‘decentralized non-secure’ and in the ‘centralized secure’ settings, thus allows one to quantify the cost of decentralized communication under security constraints on the number of transmissions. Interestingly, the decentralized vs the centralized secure setting incurs a multiplicative gap of approximately three. This is in contrast to the cases without security constraint, where the multiplicative gap is known to be at most two.
Particles, fields, and the measurement of electron spin

This article compares treatments of the Stern–Gerlach experiment across different physical theories, building up to a novel analysis of electron spin measurement in the context of classical Dirac field theory. Modeling the electron as a classical rigid body or point particle, we can explain why the entire electron is always found at just one location on the detector (uniqueness) but we cannot explain why there are only two locations where the electron is ever found (discreteness). Using non-relativistic or relativistic quantum mechanics, we can explain both uniqueness and discreteness. Moving to more fundamental physics, both features can be explained within a quantum theory of the Dirac field. In a classical theory of the Dirac field, the rotating charge of the electron can split into two pieces that each hit the detector at a different location. In this classical context, we can explain a feature of electron spin that is often described as distinctively quantum (discreteness) but we cannot explain another feature that could be explained within any of the other theories (uniqueness).
Bayesian Semiparametric Longitudinal Drift-Diffusion Mixed Models for Tone Learning in Adults.

Understanding how adult humans learn nonnative speech categories such as tone information has shed novel insights into the mechanisms underlying experience-dependent brain plasticity. Scientists ha...
Students' Perceived Self-Efficacy, Expectations, Barriers, and Support in Enrolling in a Master's Degree Program in Respiratory Care

Background: There is an ever-present demand for increasing student enrollment in higher education institutions. Not surprisingly, respiratory care (RC) programs are under pressure to recruit and retain students in both undergraduate and graduate programs. The decision for an undergraduate student to continue their education into an advanced degree program is not fully appreciated. The purpose of this study is to determine students’ perceived self-efficacy, outcome expectations, barriers, and support to attend a Master of Science in Respiratory Care (MSRC) degree program. Methods: The survey developed by Crede and Borrego was modified to use in this study and included questions on undergraduate student self-efficacy, outcome expectations, perceived barriers, and support to attend the MSRC. The perceived impact of the MSRC on career goals was also explored. After receiving IRB approval and informed consent from all participants, 89 undergraduate students in the bachelor’s degree program at Texas State University were surveyed on campus. Results: A total of 87 surveys were collected (42 juniors and 45 seniors) with a response rate of 97%. Participant demographic results demonstrate 90% are female and the average age is 22.54±3.50 years. Self-efficacy results indicate 88.5% believe they would be successful if enrolled in the MSRC program. Only 58.6% have an interest in pursuing the MSRC possibly because 51.7% do not think the MSRC is required for the job they want. However, 98.8% believe the MSRC will create more opportunities for them. Cost (34%), tired of schoolwork (20%), and marriage (10%) are the three main reasons not to attend the MSRC. Also, 71.3% of participants do not know if they can receive financial support for tuition and living expenses in graduate school. Most participants (71%) do not know who to ask about attending graduate school, and 89% of participants think it will be hard to make friends in graduate school. Conclusions: RC students have self-efficacy to attend an MSRC program and believe it will provide more opportunities for them. However, the cost is the main barrier to enrolling in the graduate program and students do not know about resources available to them due to lack of support. This study highlights students’ perceived barriers and challenges in advancing their knowledge and continuing their education with an MSRC degree.
XBRL Tag Extensions and Tax Accrual Quality

The adoption of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) requires management to label all information in their firm's financial statements and corresponding notes with either standardor custom extended tags. While prior literature has found that the rate of customization is associated with increased financial reporting complexity, there could be an unintended, beneficial consequence to tax reporting. We examine how the relative use of tax-related XBRL tag extensions could highlight unique tax activity characteristics, in turn increasing tax accrual quality and improving tax reporting transparency. We find that having a higher relative rate of extended tax tags is associated with higher tax accrual quality. That is, utilizing more tax tag extensions can assist in providing useful tax information, especially when a high number of total XBRL tags are used. Our results also suggest the need to reexamine the standard taxonomy to include more tax-oriented terms to improve financial reporting comparability.
Opacity: Insurance and fragility

Abstract What are the effects of banks holding opaque, complex assets? Should regulators require bank assets to be more transparent? I study these questions in a model of financial intermediation where opacity determines how long the realized value of an asset remains unknown. By allowing a bank to sell assets before the realization is known, opacity provides insurance to the bank's depositors. However, higher opacity also increases depositors' incentives to join a bank run. In choosing the level of opacity, therefore, a bank faces a trade-off between providing insurance and increasing fragility. If depositors can accurately observe the level of opacity, banks will choose the socially-efficient level. If depositors are unable to observe this choice, however, banks will have an incentive to become overly opaque and regulation to limit opacity can improve welfare.
Equilibrium Allocations Under Alternative Waitlist Designs: Evidence From Deceased Donor Kidneys

Waitlists are often used to ration scarce resources, but the trade-offs in designing these mechanisms depend on agents' preferences. We study equilibrium allocations under alternative designs for the deceased donor kidney waitlist. We model the decision to accept an organ or wait for a preferable one as an optimal stopping problem and estimate preferences using administrative data from the New York City area. Our estimates show that while some kidney types are desirable for all patients, there is substantial match-specific heterogeneity in values. We then develop methods to evaluate alternative mechanisms, comparing their effects on patient welfare to an equivalent change in donor supply. Past reforms to the kidney waitlist primarily resulted in redistribution, with similar welfare and organ discard rates to the benchmark first come first served mechanism. These mechanisms and other commonly studied theoretical benchmarks remain far from optimal. We design a mechanism that increases patient welfare by the equivalent of an 18.2 percent increase in donor supply.
Securing Mobile IoT with Unmanned Aerial Systems

The Internet of Things (IoT) will soon be omnipresent and billions of sensors and actuators will support our industries and well-being. IoT devices are embedded systems that are connected using wireless technology for most of the cases. The availability of the wireless network serving the IoT, the privacy, integrity and trustworthiness of the data are of critical importance, since IoT will drive businesses and personal decisions. This paper proposes a new approach in the wireless security domain that leverages advanced wireless technology and the emergence of the unmanned aerial system or vehicle (UAS or UAV). We consider the problem of eavesdropping and analyze how UAVs can aid in reducing, or overcoming this threat in the mobile IoT context. The results show that huge improvements in terms of channel secrecy rate can be achieved when UAVs assist base stations for relaying the information to the desired IoT nodes. Our approach is technology agnostic and can be expanded to address other communications security aspects.
Perceived Costs versus Actual Benefits of Demographic Self-Disclosure in Online Support Groups

Author(s): Pechmann, C; Yoon, KE; Trapido, D; Prochaska, JJ | Abstract: Millions of U.S. adults join online support groups to attain health goals, but the social ties they form are often too weak to provide the support they need. What impedes the strengthening of ties in such groups? We explore the role of demographic differences in causing the impediment and demographic self-disclosure in removing it. Using a field study of online quit-smoking groups complemented by three laboratory experiments, we find that members tend to hide demographic differences, concerned about poor social integration that will weaken their ties. However, the self-disclosures of demographic differences that naturally occur during group member discussions actually strengthen their ties, which in turn facilitates attainment of members’ health goals. In other words, social ties in online groups are weak not because members are demographically different, but because they are reluctant to self-disclose their differences. If they do self-disclose, this breeds interpersonal connection, trumping any demographic differences among them. Data from both laboratory and field about two types of demographic difference—dyad-level dissimilarity and group-level minority status—provide convergent support for our findings.
Serialized Output Training for End-to-End Overlapped Speech Recognition.

This paper proposes serialized output training (SOT), a novel framework for multi-speaker overlapped speech recognition based on an attention-based encoder-decoder approach. Instead of having multiple output layers as with the permutation invariant training (PIT), SOT uses a model with only one output layer that generates the transcriptions of multiple speakers one after another. The attention and decoder modules take care of producing multiple transcriptions from overlapped speech. SOT has two advantages over PIT: (1) no limitation in the maximum number of speakers, and (2) an ability to model the dependencies among outputs for different speakers. We also propose a simple trick that allows SOT to be executed in O(S), where S is the number of the speakers in the training sample, by using the start times of the constituent source utterances. Experimental results on LibriSpeech corpus show that the SOT models can transcribe overlapped speech with variable numbers of speakers significantly better than PIT-based models. We also show that the SOT models can accurately count the number of speakers in the input audio.
Mechanical and signaling mechanisms that guide pre-implantation embryo movement.

How a mammalian embryo determines and arrives at its attachment site has been studied for decades but our understanding of this process is far from complete. Using confocal imaging and image analysis, we evaluate embryo location along the longitudinal oviductal-cervical axis of murine uteri. Our analysis reveals three distinct pre-implantation phases: a) Embryo entry; b) Unidirectional movement of embryo clusters; and c) Bidirectional scattering and spacing of embryos. We show that unidirectional clustered movement is facilitated by a mechanical stimulus of the embryo and is regulated by adrenergic uterine smooth muscle contractions. Embryo scattering, on the other hand, depends on embryo-uterine communication reliant on the LPAR3 signaling pathway and is independent of adrenergic muscle contractions. Finally, we demonstrate that uterine implantation sites in mice are neither random nor predetermined but are guided by the number of embryos entering the uterine lumen. These studies have implications for understanding how embryo-uterine communication is key to determining an optimal implantation site necessary for the success of a pregnancy.
Poincaré–Birkhoff–Witt deformations of smash product algebras from Hopf actions on Koszul algebras

Let H be a Hopf algebra and let B be a Koszul H-module algebra. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a filtered algebra to be a Poincare–Birkhoff–Witt (PBW) deformation of the smash product algebra B#H. Many examples of these deformations are given.
Almost-toric Hypersurfaces

An almost-toric hypersurface is parameterized by monomials multiplied by polynomials in one extra variable. We determine the Newton polytope of such a hypersurface, and apply this to give an algorithm for computing the implicit polynomial equation.
Global fixed points for centralizers and Morita's Theorem

We prove a global fixed point theorem for the centralizer of a homeomorphism of the two-dimensional disk D that has attractor–repeller dynamics on the boundary with at least two attractors and two repellers. As one application we give an elementary proof of Morita’s Theorem, that the mapping class group of a closed surface S of genus g does not lift to the group of C 2 diffeomorphisms of S and we improve the lower bound for g from 5 to 3 .