cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Winning on the Merits: The Joint Effects of Content and Style on Debate Outcomes

Debate and deliberation play essential roles in politics and government, but most models presume that debates are won mainly via superior style or agenda control. Ideally, however, debates would be won on the merits, as a function of which side has the stronger arguments. We propose a predictive model of debate that estimates the effects of linguistic features and the latent persuasive strengths of different topics, as well as the interactions between the two. Using a dataset of 118 Oxford-style debates, our model's combination of content (as latent topics) and style (as linguistic features) allows us to predict audience-adjudicated winners with 74% accuracy, significantly outperforming linguistic features alone (66%). Our model finds that winning sides employ stronger arguments, and allows us to identify the linguistic features associated with strong or weak arguments.
The structure of terrestrial bodies: Impact heating, corotation limits, and synestias

During accretion, terrestrial bodies attain a wide range of thermal and rotational states, which are accompanied by significant changes in physical structure (size, shape, pressure and temperature profile, etc.). However, variations in structure have been neglected in most studies of rocky planet formation and evolution. Here we present a new code, the Highly Eccentric Rotating Concentric U (potential) Layers Equilibrium Structure (HERCULES) code, that solves for the equilibrium structure of planets as a series of overlapping constant-density spheroids. Using HERCULES and a smoothed particle hydrodynamics code, we show that Earth-like bodies display a dramatic range of morphologies. For any rotating planetary body, there is a thermal limit beyond which the rotational velocity at the equator intersects the Keplerian orbital velocity. Beyond this corotation limit (CoRoL), a hot planetary body forms a structure, which we name a synestia, with a corotating inner region connected to a disk-like outer region. By analyzing calculations of giant impacts and models of planet formation, we show that typical rocky planets are substantially vaporized multiple times during accretion. For the expected angular momentum of growing planets, a large fraction of post-impact bodies will exceed the CoRoL and form synestias. The common occurrence of hot, rotating states during accretion has major implications for planet formation and the properties of the final planets. In particular, the structure of post-impact bodies influences the physical processes that control accretion, core formation, and internal evolution. Synestias also lead to new mechanisms for satellite formation. Finally, the wide variety of possible structures for terrestrial bodies also expands the mass-radius range for rocky exoplanets.
Detecting Malicious Activities Using Backward Propagation of Trustworthiness over Heterogeneous Social Graph.

We present an extended trust model for detecting malicious activities in online social networks. The major idea is to perform a trust propagation process over a heterogeneous social graph in which different social activities are well modeled. We develop two trustworthiness measures and evaluate their performance of detecting malicious activities using a real Twitter data set.
On the Modeling and Analysis of a National Economy

Abstract The author’s decomposition method for the solution of complex dynamical systems is applied to a national economy. The mathematical description may involve coupled nonlinear stochastic multidimensional (discrete or continuous) operator equations. The theory is very general and will apply if the model is changed to use different nonlinear forms, e.g., for taxes as a function of income, or different statistics for fluctuations (which need not be stationary or Gaussian or small), or, to include retarded effects. The model offers a significant potential for realistic solutions of very complex models and may point the way to new economic understandings from solutions of more realistic models.
Automatic Synonym Discovery with Knowledge Bases

Recognizing entity synonyms from text has become a crucial task in many entity-leveraging applications. However, discovering entity synonyms from domain-specific text corpora (e.g., news articles, scientific papers) is rather challenging. Current systems take an entity name string as input to find out other names that are synonymous, ignoring the fact that often times a name string can refer to multiple entities (e.g., "apple" could refer to both Apple Inc. and the fruit apple). Moreover, most existing methods require training data manually created by domain experts to construct supervised-learning systems. In this paper, we study the problem of automatic synonym discovery with knowledge bases, that is, identifying synonyms for knowledge base entities in a given domain-specific corpus. The manually-curated synonyms for each entity stored in a knowledge base not only form a set of name strings to disambiguate the meaning for each other, but also can serve as "distant" supervision to help determine important features for the task. We propose a novel framework, called DPE, to integrate two kinds of mutually-complementing signals for synonym discovery, i.e., distributional features based on corpus-level statistics and textual patterns based on local contexts. In particular, DPE jointly optimizes the two kinds of signals in conjunction with distant supervision, so that they can mutually enhance each other in the training stage. At the inference stage, both signals will be utilized to discover synonyms for the given entities. Experimental results prove the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
Hemangioma of the Urinary Bladder

A hemangioma of the urinary bladder occurring in a 66-year-old man is described. Although hemangioma is a common lesion in many parts of the body, it remains a very rare primary tumor in the bladder. Clinically the patient usually presents with recurrent hematuria, control of which may necessitate a segmental cystectomy.
Traumatic Renal Artery Thrombosis

Traumatic bilateral renal artery thrombosis is a rare injury that may be under-diagnosed. The clinical hallmarks include epigastric or flank pain and proteinuria, or hematuria following blunt trauma to the back or abdomen. Traditional practice suggests that revascularization should not be attempted more than 20 hours after injury. A patient is described in whom the retroperitoneum was explored 48 hours after injury and was found to have bilateral renal artery thrombosis. Although no repair was attempted, renal function spontaneously improved over several weeks. The clinical course of this patient suggests that revascularization should be considered even if the diagnosis is made more than 20 hours after injury.
Polynomial recursion formula for linear Hodge integrals

Author(s): Mulase, Motohico; Zhang, Naizhen | Abstract: We establish a polynomial recursion formula for linear Hodge integrals. It is obtained as the Laplace transform of the cut-and-join equation for the simple Hurwitz numbers. We show that the recursion recovers the Witten-Kontsevich theorem when restricted to the top degree terms, and also the combinatorial factor of the lambda_g formula as the lowest degree terms.
Static potentials and area minimizing hypersurfaces

We show that if an asymptotically flat manifold with horizon boundary admits a global static potential, then the static potential must be zero on the boundary. We also show that if an asymptotically flat manifold with horizon boundary admits an unbounded static potential in the exterior region, then the manifold must contain a complete non-compact area minimizing hypersurface. Some results related to the Riemannian positive mass theorem and Bartnik's quasi-local mass are obtained.
Mechanical principles of dynamic terrestrial self-righting using wings

Terrestrial animals and robots are susceptible to flipping-over during rapid locomotion in complex terrains. However, small robots are less capable of self-righting from an upside-down orientation ...
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: José Agustín Arrieta’s Images of Women, Food, and Beverage

There is a custom among the Chatino Indians of Juquila, in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, that at birth, newborn boys are given a machete by their fathers, and girls receive a metate and malacate from their mothers. This tradition not only establishes the future economic and social role of the male and female, but confirms the gendered separation of the masculine world of the outdoors, public, and active life and the feminine arena of indoors, private, and passive existence. It reinforces the concept of man as the provider and embodiment of culture and woman as nurturer and symbol of nature. The emphasis on the maternal role of woman is traditionally anchored further to her home, a place of enclosed, safe space. As the public workplace outside the home became the domain for men, women found themselves consistently relegated to the private, domestic sphere. Certainly the virtuous, good wife and mother further contributed to the moral integrity of not only the woman, but her family, village, state, and nation. The kitchen was most notably the quintessential internal space that defined the culminating qualities of woman. The locale of nourishment and nurture, the kitchen, as well as the related spaces of taverns, banquet tables, and market, could be interpreted as the spatial manifestation of the fecundity of the female.
Double vision: Insights about the origin and interpretation of multiple IRRs

ABSTRACTThe ability of a project's internal rate of return (IRR) to quantify its economic return has been questioned by many scholars over the past 60 years, most recently by Magni (2010, 2013). Although IRR is a plausible—albeit imperfect—measure of a project's economic return when the cash flow stream is conventional, IRR can be an untenable measure of an unconventional project's economic return. The goal of this article is to identify a simple, intuitive explanation of IRR, one that can be applied to any cash flow pattern. To do this, the article shows how a project's IRR systematically changes when it first crosses from the conventional into the unconventional realm (i.e., a small cash outflow is appended to a conventional cash flow stream) and then as it becomes progressively more unconventional. This process reveals that the most robust economic interpretation of IRR—for both conventional and unconventional projects—is that a project's IRRs are external benchmarks that divide the set of all plausibl...
A Large Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) Project

The University of Arizona and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory are jointly undertaking the development of the concept of a multiple-mirror telescope for astronomical uses. The system consists of six 1.8-m-aperture cassegrainian telescopes combined to produce a common focal surface in the center of the telescope. The early form of the telescope will provide for automatic alignment of the six independent systems. The telescope will be constructed to facilitate later extension of the alignment subsystem to include aperture synthesis (phasing) by methods proposed by Meinel and Shannon. The light-gathering power of the combination is equal to a standard telescope of 180-in. aperture, but the construction will cost very much less. The mounting will be of the alt-azimuth type. The telescope will be located at an elevation of 8,600 ft at the SAO's Mt. Hopkins Observing Station near Tucson.
Intervention Mapping to develop a Social Cognitive Theory-based intervention for chronic pain tailored to individuals with HIV

Chronic pain is an important comorbidity among individuals with HIV. Behavioral interventions are widely regarded as evidence-based, efficacious non-pharmacologic interventions for chronic pain in the general population. An accepted principle in behavioral science is that theory-based, systematically-developed behavioral interventions tailored to the unique needs of a target population are most likely to be efficacious. Our aim was to use Intervention Mapping to systematically develop a Social Cognitive Theory (SCT)-based intervention for chronic pain tailored to individuals with HIV that will improve pain intensity and pain-related functional impairment. Our Intervention Mapping process was informed by qualitative inquiry of 24 patients and seven providers in an HIV primary care clinic. The resulting intervention includes group and one-on-one sessions and peer and staff interventionists. We also developed a conceptual framework that integrates our qualitative findings with SCT-based theoretical constructs. Using this conceptual framework as a guide, our future work will investigate the intervention's impact on chronic pain outcomes, as well as our hypothesized proximal mediators of the intervention's effect.
Channel Characteristics for Terahertz Wireless Communications

We investigate channel performances for indoor terahertz (THz) wireless links with carrier frequencies at 100, 200, 300 and 400 GHz. We demonstrate error-free data links using both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight configurations.
Observations of Local Positive Low Cloud Feedback Patterns and Their Role in Internal Variability and Climate Sensitivity.

Modeling studies have shown that cloud feedbacks are sensitive to the spatial pattern of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, while cloud feedbacks themselves strongly influence the magnitude of SST anomalies. Observational counterparts to such patterned interactions are still needed. Here we show that distinct large-scale patterns of SST and low-cloud cover (LCC) emerge naturally from objective analyses of observations and demonstrate their close coupling in a positive local SST-LCC feedback loop that may be important for both internal variability and climate change. The two patterns that explain the maximum amount of covariance between SST and LCC correspond to the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), leading modes of multidecadal internal variability. Spatial patterns and time series of SST and LCC anomalies associated with both modes point to a strong positive local SST-LCC feedback. In many current climate models, our analyses suggest that SST-LCC feedback strength is too weak compared to observations. Modeled local SST-LCC feedback strength affects simulated internal variability so that stronger feedback produces more intense and more realistic patterns of internal variability. To the extent that the physics of the local positive SST-LCC feedback inferred from observed climate variability applies to future greenhouse warming, we anticipate significant amount of delayed warming because of SST-LCC feedback when anthropogenic SST warming eventually overwhelm the effects of internal variability that may mute anthropogenic warming over parts of the ocean. We postulate that many climate models may be underestimating both future warming and the magnitude of modeled internal variability because of their weak SST-LCC feedback.
Do Firms Strategically Internalize Disclosure Spillovers? Evidence from Cash-Financed M&As

We investigate whether managers internalize the spillover effects of their disclosure on the stock price of related firms and strategically alter their disclosure decisions when doing so is beneficial. Using data on firm‐initiated disclosures during all‐cash acquisitions, we find evidence consistent with acquirers strategically generating news that they expect will depress the target's stock price. Our results suggest the disclosure strategy leads to lower target returns during the negotiation period when the takeover price is being determined and results in a lower target premium. These findings are robust to a battery of specifications and falsification tests. Our results are consistent with expected spillovers influencing the timing and content of firms’ disclosures in M&A transactions.
Near-Optimal Policies for Dynamic Multinomial Logit Assortment Selection Models

In this paper we consider the dynamic assortment selection problem under an uncapacitated multinomial-logit (MNL) model. By carefully analyzing a revenue potential function, we show that a trisection based algorithm achieves an item-independent regret bound of O(sqrt(T log log T), which matches information theoretical lower bounds up to iterated logarithmic terms. Our proof technique draws tools from the unimodal/convex bandit literature as well as adaptive confidence parameters in minimax multi-armed bandit problems.
Truck appointment systems considering impact to drayage truck tours

Abstract This paper proposes a novel approach for designing a Truck Appointment System (TAS) intended to serve both the maritime container terminal operator and drayage operators. The aim of the proposed TAS is to minimize the impact to both terminal and drayage operations. In regard to terminal operations, the TAS seeks to distribute the truck arrivals evenly throughout the day to avoid gate and yard congestion. In regard to drayage operations, the TAS explicitly considers the drayage truck tours and seeks to provide appointment times such that trucks do not have to deviate greatly from their original schedule. The proposed TAS is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program (MINLP) and the model is solved using the Lingo commercial software. Experimental results indicate that the proposed TAS reduces the drayage operation cost by 11.5% compared to a TAS where its aim is only to minimize gate queuing time by making truck arrivals uniform throughout the day.
Detecting and summarizing GUI changes in evolving mobile apps

Mobile applications have become a popular software development domain in recent years due in part to a large user base, capable hardware, and accessible platforms. However, mobile developers also face unique challenges, including pressure for frequent releases to keep pace with rapid platform evolution, hardware iteration, and user feedback. Due to this rapid pace of evolution, developers need automated support for documenting the changes made to their apps in order to aid in program comprehension. One of the more challenging types of changes to document in mobile apps are those made to the graphical user interface (GUI) due to its abstract, pixel-based representation. In this paper, we present a fully automated approach, called Gcat, for detecting and summarizing GUI changes during the evolution of mobile apps. Gcat leverages computer vision techniques and natural language generation to accurately and concisely summarize changes made to the GUI of a mobile app between successive commits or releases. We evaluate the performance of our approach in terms of its precision and recall in detecting GUI changes compared to developer specified changes, and investigate the utility of the generated change reports in a controlled user study. Our results indicate that Gcat is capable of accurately detecting and classifying GUI changes - outperforming developers - while providing useful documentation.
Physics-Based Learned Design: Optimized Coded-Illumination for Quantitative Phase Imaging

Coded illumination can enable quantitative phase microscopy of transparent samples with minimal hardware requirements. Intensity images are captured with different source patterns, then a nonlinear phase retrieval optimization reconstructs the image. The nonlinear nature of the processing makes optimizing the illumination pattern designs complicated. The traditional techniques for the experimental design (e.g., condition number optimization, and spectral analysis) consider only linear measurement formation models and linear reconstructions. Deep neural networks (DNNs) can efficiently represent the nonlinear process and can be optimized over via training in an end-to-end framework. However, DNNs typically require a large amount of training examples and parameters to properly learn the phase retrieval process, without making use of the known physical models. In this paper, we aim to use both our knowledge of the physics and the power of machine learning together. We propose a new data-driven approach for optimizing coded-illumination patterns for an LED array microscope for a given phase reconstruction algorithm. Our method incorporates both the physics of the measurement scheme and the nonlinearity of the reconstruction algorithm into the design problem. This enables efficient parameterization, which allows us to use only a small number of training examples to learn designs that generalize well in the experimental setting without retraining. We show experimental results for both a well-characterized phase target and mouse fibroblast cells, using coded-illumination patterns optimized for a sparsity-based phase reconstruction algorithm. Our learned design results using two measurements demonstrate similar accuracy to Fourier ptychography with 69 measurements.
The Warm Liberalism of Erik Gustaf Geijer

The name Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847) is little known outside of Sweden, but the volume Freedom in Sweden: Selected Works of Erik Gustaf Geijer (Geijer 2017) translates choice works and presents Geijer to modern readers. In this essay we provide an introduction to Geijer (pronounced yay-yer). We raise the question of whether his declaring, in 1838, in dramatic fashion, for liberalism was an ideological migration or a coming out of the closet. We discuss the scope and flavor of his discourse, and suggest that he belongs in the company of moral philosophers and historians of civilization such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Alexis de Tocqueville. We highlight his essay “An Economic Dream,” which prefigured Hayek’s likening of the price system to an allegory of society-spanning communication and intelligence.
Integrated planning for design and production in two-stage recycling operations

Abstract Recycling is a key strategy to reduce the environmental impact associated with industrial resource use. Recent improvements in materials recovery technologies offer the possibility for recouping additional value from recycling. However, incorporation of secondary raw materials into production may be constrained by operational complexity in two-stage blending processes. In this paper, we derive an analytical solution to demonstrate the importance of integrated planning (IP) approaches for two-stage blending operations in recycling. Our results suggest that the quality of materials obtained from the first stage strongly influences performance in the second stage. Current disjointed planning (DP) approaches in the recycling industry, where individual stages are independently planned without decision-making about intermediate blend design, overlook this interaction and, therefore, make conservative use of lower quality materials. We develop an IP model using a formulation of the pooling problem and apply it to an industrial-scale aluminum recycling facility located in Europe. The results suggest that the IP model can reduce material costs by more than 5%, for the case examined, and can enable increased use of undervalued raw materials. This study also investigates the impact of variations in operational conditions on the benefits of IP.
Genetic and Neuroanatomical Support for Functional Brain Network Dynamics in Epilepsy

Focal epilepsy is a devastating neurological disorder that affects an overwhelming number of patients worldwide, many of whom prove resistant to medication. The efficacy of current innovative technologies for the treatment of these patients has been stalled by the lack of accurate and effective methods to fuse multimodal neuroimaging data to map anatomical targets driving seizure dynamics. Here we propose a parsimonious model that explains how large-scale anatomical networks and shared genetic constraints shape inter-regional communication in focal epilepsy. In extensive ECoG recordings acquired from a group of patients with medically refractory focal-onset epilepsy, we find that ictal and preictal functional brain network dynamics can be accurately predicted from features of brain anatomy and geometry, patterns of white matter connectivity, and constraints complicit in patterns of gene coexpression, all of which are conserved across healthy adult populations. Moreover, we uncover evidence that markers of non-conserved architecture, potentially driven by idiosyncratic pathology of single subjects, are most prevalent in high frequency ictal dynamics and low frequency preictal dynamics. Finally, we find that ictal dynamics are better predicted by white matter features and more poorly predicted by geometry and genetic constraints than preictal dynamics, suggesting that the functional brain network dynamics manifest in seizures rely on - and may directly propagate along - underlying white matter structure that is largely conserved across humans. Broadly, our work offers insights into the generic architectural principles of the human brain that impact seizure dynamics, and could be extended to further our understanding, models, and predictions of subject-level pathology and response to intervention.
Zeroth-order (Non)-convex stochastic optimization via conditional gradient and gradient updates

In this paper, we propose and analyze zeroth-order stochastic approximation algorithms for nonconvex and convex optimization. Specifically, we propose generalizations of the conditional gradient algorithm achieving rates similar to the standard stochastic gradient algorithm using only zeroth-order information. Furthermore, under a structural sparsity assumption, we first illustrate an implicit regularization phenomenon where the standard stochastic gradient algorithm with zeroth-order information adapts to the sparsity of the problem at hand by just varying the stepsize. Next, we propose a truncated stochastic gradient algorithm with zeroth-order information, whose rate depends only poly-logarithmically on the dimensionality.
The accuracy of LD Score regression as an estimator of confounding and genetic correlations in genome‐wide association studies

To infer that a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) either affects a phenotype or is linkage disequilibrium with a causal site, we must have some assurance that any SNP-phenotype correlation is not the result of confounding with environmental variables that also affect the trait. In this study, we study the properties of linkage disequilibrium (LD) Score regression, a recently developed method for using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies to ensure that confounding does not inflate the number of false positives. We do not treat the effects of genetic variation as a random variable and thus are able to obtain results about the unbiasedness of this method. We demonstrate that LD Score regression can produce estimates of confounding at null SNPs that are unbiased or conservative under fairly general conditions. This robustness holds in the case of the parent genotype affecting the offspring phenotype through some environmental mechanism, despite the resulting correlation over SNPs between LD Scores and the degree of confounding. Additionally, we demonstrate that LD Score regression can produce reasonably robust estimates of the genetic correlation, even when its estimates of the genetic covariance and the two univariate heritabilities are substantially biased.
Impacts of State-Specific Policy and Legislation on Safety Advancement by Departments of Transportation:

The overall goal of this research was to identify proven successful safety programs used in other states and assess the potential for safety improvement if similar programs were implemented in Sout...
O -Aminoalkyl- O -Trimethyl-2,3-Dehydrosilybins: Synthesis and In Vitro Effects Towards Prostate Cancer Cells.

As part of our ongoing silybin project, this study aims to introduce a basic nitrogen-containing group to 7-OH of 3,5,20-O-trimethyl-2,3-dehydrosilybin or 3-OH of 5,7,20-O-trimethyl-2,3-dehydrosilybin via an appropriate linker for in vitro evaluation as potential anti-prostate cancer agents. The synthetic approaches to 7-O-substituted-3,5,20-O-trimethyl-2,3-dehydrosilybins through a five-step procedure and to 3-O-substituted-5,7,20-O-trimethyl-2,3- dehydrosilybins via a four-step transformation have been developed. Thirty-two nitrogen-containing derivatives of silybin have been achieved through these synthetic methods for the evaluation of their antiproliferative activities towards both androgen-sensitive (LNCaP) and androgen-insensitive prostate cancer cell lines (PC-3 and DU145) using the WST-1 cell proliferation assay. These derivatives exhibited greater in vitro antiproliferative potency than silibinin. Among them, 11, 29, 31, 37, and 40 were identified as five optimal derivatives with IC50 values in the range of 1.40⁻3.06 µM, representing a 17- to 52-fold improvement in potency compared to silibinin. All these five optimal derivatives can arrest the PC-3 cell cycle in the G₀/G₁ phase and promote PC-3 cell apoptosis. Derivatives 11, 37, and 40 are more effective than 29 and 31 in activating PC-3 cell apoptosis.
Correlation over time of toenail metals among participants in the VA normative aging study from 1992 to 2014.

Scientists use biomarkers to evaluate metal exposures. One biomarker, toenails, is easily obtained and minimally invasive, but less commonly used as a biomarker of exposure. Their utility will depend on understanding characteristics of their variation in a population over time. The objective of our study is to describe the correlation of toenail metal levels many years apart among participants in the VA Normative Aging Study (NAS). Toenail clippings from 825 participants of the NAS from year 1992 to 2014 were analyzed for lead (Pb), Arsenic (As), Cadmium (Cd), Manganese (Mn), and Mercury (Hg). We utilized linear mixed models to assess correlation between toenail metal concentrations in multiple toenail samples from the same subject collected years apart and identified the optimal covariance pattern by likelihood ratio tests and Akaike’s information criterion (AIC). Correlations among different metals were described using Spearman correlations. The average number of times toenail samples were collected from each subject ranged from 1.63 (Hg) to 2.04 (As). The average number of years between toenails collected per subject ranged from 4.73 (SD = 2.44) (Mn) to 5.35 (SD = 2.69) (Hg). Metal concentrations had slightly different correlation patterns over time, although for all metals correlations decreased with increasing time between samples. Estimated correlations over a 3-year span were highest for toenail Pb (0.68) and Hg (0.67), while As, Cd, and Mn had lower correlations of 0.49, 0.44, and 0.47, respectively. Even across a 6-year span, the lowest correlation was 0.35 (Cd). Our results suggest that Pb, As, Cd, Mn, and Hg levels from toenail clippings can reasonably reflect exposures over several years in elderly men in the NAS. Even across 6 years, toenail metal levels were generally well correlated among NAS participants. As such, they may be useful as biomarkers of exposure in epidemiological studies of similar populations.
Anticipation and Reaction to Going Concern Modified Audit Opinions by Sophisticated Investors

Institutional investors are an integral part of the financial markets and prior research finds that they often react to price-relevant information before its public release. We examine the trading behavior of institutional investors surrounding first-time going concern modified audit reports and find that institutional investors are net sellers of these firms beginning six months before the release of the report and remain net sellers through the subsequent three months. We also find that institutional investors are net sellers of firms that subsequently file for bankruptcy beginning three months prior to their receipt of a first-time going concern report and that the severity of the reasons auditor’s modify their reports is associated with trading activity, but only after the reports are publically available. Our study supports the premise that institutional investors are able to anticipate price-relevant information and that they react to this anticipation through their trading behavior.
MIT Cheetah 3: Design and Control of a Robust, Dynamic Quadruped Robot

This paper introduces a new robust, dynamic quadruped, the MIT Cheetah 3. Like its predecessor, the Cheetah 3 exploits tailored mechanical design to enable simple control strategies for dynamic locomotion and features high-bandwidth proprioceptive actuators to manage physical interaction with the environment. A new leg design is presented that includes proprioceptive actuation on the abduction/adduction degrees of freedom in addition to an expanded range of motion on the hips and knees. To make full use of these new capabilities, general balance and locomotion controllers for Cheetah 3 are presented. These controllers are embedded into a modular control architecture that allows the robot to handle unexpected terrain disturbances through reactive gait modification and without the need for external sensors or prior environment knowledge. The efficiency of the robot is demonstrated by a low Cost of Transport (CoT) over multiple gaits at moderate speeds, with the lowest CoT of 0.45 found during trotting. Experiments showcase the ability to blindly climb up stairs as a result of the full system integration. These results collectively represent a promising step toward a platform capable of generalized dynamic legged locomotion.
Predictive analytics of insurance claims using multivariate decision trees

Because of its many advantages, the use of decision trees has become an increasingly popular alternative predictive tool for building classification and regression models. Its origins date back for about five decades where the algorithm can be broadly described by repeatedly partitioning the regions of the explanatory variables and thereby creating a tree-based model for predicting the response. Innovations to the original methods, such as random forests and gradient boosting, have further improved the capabilities of using decision trees as a predictive model. In addition, the extension of using decision trees with multivariate response variables started to develop and it is the purpose of this paper to apply multivariate tree models to insurance claims data with correlated responses. This extension to multivariate response variables inherits several advantages of the univariate decision tree models such as distribution-free feature, ability to rank essential explanatory variables, and high predictive accuracy, to name a few. To illustrate the approach, we analyze a dataset drawn from the Wisconsin Local Government Property Insurance Fund (LGPIF)which offers multi-line insurance coverage of property, motor vehicle, and contractors’ equipments.With multivariate tree models, we are able to capture the inherent relationship among the response variables and we find that the marginal predictive model based on multivariate trees is an improvement in prediction accuracy from that based on simply the univariate trees.
Comparative analysis

Comparative analysis answers questions about how and why a system will react to perturbations of its parameters. For example, comparative analysis can explain why the period of a spring/block system would increase if the mass of the block were larger. This paper formalizes the problem of comparative analysis and describes a solution technique, differential qualitative analysis; the technique only works if the system can dynamically change perspectives when it compares the values of parameters over intervals. This paper shows how perspectives can be used for comparative analysis, summarizes a soundness proof for the technique, demonstrates incompleteness, describes a working implementation, and presents experimental results.
Pruning by isomorphism in branch-and-cut

The paper presents a branch-and-cut for solving (0, 1) integer linear programs having a large symmetry group. The group is used for pruning the enumeration tree and for generating cuts. The cuts are non-standard, cutting integer feasible solutions but leaving the optimal value of the problem unchanged. Pruning and cut generation are performed by backtracking procedures using a Schreier-Sims table for representing the group. Applications to hard set covering problems and to the generation of covering designs and error correcting codes are presented.
Detecting macroscopic indefiniteness of cat states in bosonic interferometers

The paradigm of Schr quot;{o}dinger's cat illustrates how quantum states preclude the assignment of definite properties to a macroscopic object (realism). In this work we develop a method to investigate the indefiniteness of cat states using currently available cold atom technology. The method we propose uses the observation of a statistical distribution to demonstrate the macroscopic distinction between dead and alive states, and uses the determination of the interferometric sensitivity (Fisher information) to detect the indefiniteness of the cat's vital status. We show how combining the two observations can provide information about the structure of the quantum state without the need for full quantum state tomography, and propose a measure of the indefiniteness based on this structure. We test this method using a cat state proposed by Gordon and Savage [Phys. Rev. A 59, 4623 (1999)] which is dynamically produced from a coherent state. As a control, we consider a set of states produced using the same dynamical procedure acting on an initial thermal distribution. Numerically simulating our proposed method, we show that as the temperature of this initial state is increased, the produced state undergoes a quantum to classical crossover where the indefiniteness of the cat's vital status is lost, while the macroscopic distinction between dead and alive states of the cat is maintained.
Topology discovery using path interference

We consider the problem of inferring the topology of a network using the measurements available at the end nodes, without cooperation from the internal nodes. To this end, we provide a simple method to obtain path interference which identifies whether two paths in the network intersect with each other. Using this information, we formulate the topology inference problem as an integer program and develop polynomial time algorithms to solve it optimally for networks with tree and ring topologies. Finally, we use the insight developed from these algorithms to develop a heuristic for identifying general topologies. Simulation results show that our heuristic outperforms a recently proposed algorithm that uses distance measurements for topology discovery.
Space allowance influences individually housed Holstein male calves' age at feed consumption, standing behaviors, and measures of immune resilience before and after step-down weaning

Many dairy calves in the southwestern regions of the United States are raised in wooden hutches with 1.23 m2 of free space that house 3 calves individually. Producers claim that calves in hutch systems are not ready to wean and be placed in groups at the country-average age of 6 wk. Calves may remain in this individual housing system until as late as 10 wk of age. The objective of this study was to modify space allowance of hutches and evaluate weaning readiness using age at solid feed consumption, standing behaviors, and measures of immunity. Calves were randomly assigned at 4 d of age to conventional (CONV; 1.23 m2 of space; n = 18), moderate (MOD; 1.85 m2 of space; n = 17), or maximized (MAX; 3.71 m2 of space; n = 19) space allowance in hutches. These modifications also changed the number of calves housed per hutch from 3 (CONV) to 2 (MOD) and 1 (MAX). Calves were fed milk replacer via bottle twice daily until weaning and offered ad libitum feed throughout the experiment. Step-down weaning was initiated (Wi) at age 53 or 54 d by withdrawal of the p.m. bottle and was completed (Wc) 11 d later by removal of the a.m. milk replacer. Accelerometer data for standing behaviors were collected relative to Wi (3 consecutive days to represent -4 wk, -3 d, 3 d, and 3 and 5 wk). Blood samples were collected in the a.m. just before Wi (d 0) and at d 3, 11, 14, and 18 after Wi. Calves provided with more space (MOD and MAX) compared with CONV calves consumed feed at an earlier age and had slightly healthier erythrocytes, greater circulating glucose, and fewer circulating eosinophils. The CONV calves had haptoglobin (Hp) responses to the stressors of both Wi and Wc and had more IFN-γ from whole blood stimulated with phytohemagglutinin-P. The MAX calves had the least active neutrophils (phagocytosis and oxidative burst), but MOD calves' leukocytes secreted the most TNF-α from whole blood stimulated with lipopolysaccharide. Just before and after weaning, MAX calves spent more time per day in the standing position than CONV and MOD calves and had an Hp response to Wc, but MOD calves did not have an Hp response to Wi or Wc. Based on these results, MOD calves were the most ready for weaning; therefore, they potentially can be moved to group housing at an earlier age than CONV calves, thus improving animal welfare concerns over space allowance and individual housing.
Neuronal firing rates diverge during REM and homogenize during non-REM

Neurons fire at highly variable intrinsic rates and recent evidence suggests that low- and high-firing rate neurons display different plasticity and dynamics. Furthermore, recent publications imply possibly differing rate-dependent effects in hippocampus versus neocortex, but those analyses were carried out separately and with potentially important differences. To more effectively synthesize these questions, we analyzed the firing rate dynamics of populations of neurons in both hippocampal CA1 and frontal cortex under one framework that avoids the pitfalls of previous analyses and accounts for regression to the mean (RTM). We observed several consistent effects across these regions. While rapid eye movement (REM) sleep was marked by decreased hippocampal firing and increased neocortical firing, in both regions firing rate distributions widened during REM due to differential changes in high- versus low-firing rate cells in parallel with increased interneuron activity. In contrast, upon non-REM (NREM) sleep, firing rate distributions narrowed while interneuron firing decreased. Interestingly, hippocampal interneuron activity closely followed the patterns observed in neocortical principal cells rather than the hippocampal principal cells, suggestive of long-range interactions. Following these undulations in variance, the net effect of sleep was a decrease in firing rates. These decreases were greater in lower-firing hippocampal neurons but also higher-firing frontal cortical neurons, suggestive of greater plasticity in these cell groups. Our results across two different regions, and with statistical corrections, indicate that the hippocampus and neocortex show a mixture of differences and similarities as they cycle between sleep states with a unifying characteristic of homogenization of firing during NREM and diversification during REM.
Evaluating Loan Loss Provisioning for Non-Performing Loans and Its Impact on the Profitability of Commercial Banks in Bangladesh

Through the collection and disbursement of money, banks often face the risk of default of the loan. These Non-Performing loans (NPLs) should be identified and cared for avoiding vulnerability to other risk. Banks may mitigate this risk using loan loss provisioning (LLP). Using the aggregate data of 56 commercial banks in the last 9 years (2009-2017), this study attempts to evaluate the Impacts of LLP maintained for NPLs on profitability, as it may help to take the level of the LLP, and NPLs in the optimum level of business success. The dependent variables used in this study are Non-Interest Income to Total Assets and Net-Interest Income to Total Assets as a representative of the profitability of a bank. The dependent variables are analyzed using Least Square Multiple Regression on three independent variables, which were Gross NPL to Total Loans Outstanding, Loan Loss Provision Maintained, and Surplus/ (Shortfall) resulted from the required loan provisioning. The result showed that the profitability is very significantly influenced by the independent variables. NPLs and LLPs maintained by the commercial banks negatively related with the profitability of the business, especially LLPs shown statistical significance to impact on profitability negatively. it is better to take the LLPs and NPLs in the minimum level for maximum profitability of banks.
Double Counting of Investment

The national-income accounts double-count investment, which enters once when it occurs and again in present value as rental income on added capital. The double counting implies that GDP and national income overstate sustainable consumption. An alternative measure, ‘permanent income’, equals consumption in the steady state but deviates from consumption outside of the steady state because expensing of gross investment applies to the long-run flow, not the current value. The permanent-income perspective substantially affects measured factor-income shares. When computed in relation to permanent income, the US labour-income share has been reasonably stable, in contrast to the declining share based on GDP.
Morphodynamics of Barrier-inlet Systems in the Context of Regional Sediment Management, with Case Studies from West-central Florida, USA

Abstract The temporal and spatial scales controlling the morphodynamics of barrier-inlet systems are critical components of regional sediment management practice. This paper discusses regional sediment management methods employed at multiple barrier-inlet systems, with case studies from West-Central Florida. A decision-support tool is proposed for regional sediment management with discussion of its application to barrier-inlet systems. Connecting multiple barrier islands and inlets at appropriate spatio-temporal scales is critical in developing an appropriately scoped sediment management plan for a barrier-inlet system. Evaluating sediment bypassing capacity and overall inlet morphodynamics can better inform regional sand sharing along barrier-inlet coastlines; particularly where sediment resources are scarce and a close coupling between inlet dredging and beach placement is vital to long-term sustainable management. Continued sea-level rise and anthropogenic activities may intensify the need for investigating longer-term processes and expanding regional planning at a centennial timescale, and are acknowledged as challenging tasks for RSM studies. Specifically, we suggested that a regionally focused, multi-inlet study were necessary for management plan of individual inlet for the west-central Florida case studies. Key recommendations based on the case studies include: 1) allow the natural sediment bypassing to be re-established at Blind Pass inlet through reduced ebb-tidal delta mining, 2) reduce the interruption to sediment bypassing at John's Pass and Pass-a-Grille inlets through an improved design of the dredged mining areas located along sediment bypassing pathways, 3) allow for continued natural sediment bypassing at Bunces Pass, and, 4) incorporate the cyclic swash-bar attachment sediment bypassing into the management plan at Bunces Pass and adjacent barrier-islands.
Synthesis, Structure, and Magnetism of Np2O5

The binary oxide Np2O5 has been synthesized by mild hydrothermal reaction and its crystal structure has been determined. It is monoclinic, P2/c, Z = 4, a = 8.168(2), b = 6.584(1), c = 9.313(1) A, β = 116.09(1)°, V = 449.8(2) A3. The structure contains neptunyl square and pentagonal bipyramids that are linked into sheets by edge-sharing. Cation−cation interactions occur within the sheet of polyhedra and provide linkages of the sheets into a three-dimensional structure. Np2O5 undergoes antiferromagnetic ordering at 22(3) K, the highest magnetic ordering temperature observed for any neptunyl compound, and is only the second neptunyl compound found to order antiferromagnetically.