cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Scientific manpower problems

There has been a great deal of discussion during recent years of the problems arising from the shortage of scientists and engineers. This is a serious problem but unfortunately it is also a complex one. Hence there is confusion, both as to the facts and as to the remedies. It is desirable, therefore, to be clear about what factors are affecting the demand for scientists and engineers; what factors are influencing the supply; which of these various factors are long- and which are short-term in nature and finally which remedies should be considered for the short-term or the long-term problem.
En-squared power-based optical design for page-based holographic storage systems

The Fourier transform lens consisting of an aspherical element is analyzed in terms of the supportable number of pixels by formalizing an en-squared-power ratio as a function of the Nyquist aperture ratio and aberrations.
QUANTUM NATURE OF BLACK HOLES

I reconsider Hawking's analysis of the effects of gravitational collapse on quantum fields, taking into account interactions between the fields. The ultra-high energy vacuum fluctuations, which had been considered to be an awkward peripheral feature of the analysis, are shown to play a key role. By interactions, they can scatter particles to, or create pairs of particle at, ultra-high energies. The energies rapidly become so great that quantum gravity must play a dominant role. Thus the vicinities of black holes are essentially quantum-gravitational regimes.
Organized business and regional integration in Africa

ABSTRACTAlthough the role of organized business in regional economic integration is well documented, extant scholarship portrays them as mere legitimizers and partners of regional policy. This neat categorization fails to capture the complicated, ‘multiscalarity’ of business and overall civil society's role in regional governance. Drawing insights from social constructivism and empirical evidence from fieldwork conducted in 2012 and 2013 on the interactions between the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and region-wide business associations and advocacy networks since the early 1990s, this article shows that although African business groups are relatively new actors at the regional stage, their impact on regional governance is substantial. This is not only in terms of getting governments to adopt particular policies or the ability to hold the state accountable, as functional institutionalists might argue, but also in terms of the regional socialization effects, namely the willingness and a...
Determining the coupling of a Higgs boson to ZZ at linear colliders

Abstract We demonstrate that, at a 500 GeV e + e − collider, inclusion of the ZZ -fusion process for production of a light standard-model-like Higgs boson can substantially increase the precision with which the ZZh coupling can be determined (using the model-independent recoil mass technique) as compared to employing only Zh associated production.
DUMB ACCESS MANAGEMENT TRICKS, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

Access management (AM) is the process that provides for and manages access to land development while preserving the flow of traffic on the surrounding roads. AM involves the design and placement of driveways, medians/median openings, and provisions for turning movements and pedestrians, and enhances safety, smoother operations, and roadway capacity. This paper provides some lessons learned about AM techniques, and gives strategies that can help avoid some of the common mistakes made in AM.
Application of spherical and other polymers in capillary zone electrophoresis: separation of antiviral drugs and deoxyribonucleoside phosphates by different principles

Abstract Soluble polymers of linear chains with limited branching and spherical polymers (limit dextrins and sucrose, such as Dextran and Ficoll (Pharmacia Chemicals), yielding lower viscosities, are examined here for the separation of different nucleotides and several anti-AIDS drugs by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). The linear polymer forms a network, but spherical polymers appear to create a second pseudo-phase. In general, they tend to enhance the solute mobility and reduce peak width; thus, they improve the column efficiency. We observed that the beads of a spherical polymer produce a pseudo-phase even in a very low polymer concentration. The proposed method involving a spherical polymer yields the best separation for twelve deoxyribonucleoside mono-, di- and triphosphates in ca. 10 min. Common anti-AIDS drugs (ddA, ddC, ddl, d4T, AZT) and an AZT metabolite (AZT-glucoronate) are resolved by using conventional micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MEKC). These results not only offer fast and highly sensitive detection techniques for the pharmacokinetics of nucleotides, drugs, and their metabolites, but they also demonstrate an application of the proposed second pseudo-phase involving spherical polymer beads in CZE separations.
Nonlinear analysis of the separate contributions of autonomic nervous systems to heart rate variability using principal dynamic modes

This paper introduces a modified principal dynamic modes (PDM) method, which is able to separate the dynamics of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous activities. The PDM is based on the principle that among all possible choices of expansion bases, there are some that require the minimum number of basis functions to achieve a given mean-square approximation of the system output. Such a minimum set of basis functions is termed PDMs of the nonlinear system. We found that the first two dominant PDMs have similar frequency characteristics for parasympathetic and sympathetic activities, as reported in the literature. These results are consistent for all nine of our healthy human subjects using our modified PDM approach. Validation of the purported separation of parasympathetic and sympathetic activities was performed by the application of the autonomic nervous system blocking drugs atropine and propranolol. With separate applications of the respective drugs, we found a significant decrease in the amplitude of the waveforms that correspond to each nervous activity. Furthermore, we observed near complete elimination of these dynamics when both drugs were given to the subjects. Comparison of our method to the conventional low-frequency/high-frequency ratio shows that our proposed approach provides more accurate assessment of the autonomic nervous balance. Our nonlinear PDM approach allows a clear separation of the two autonomic nervous activities, the lack of which has been the main reason why heart rate variability analysis has not had wide clinical acceptance.
KMnO4 revisited: Oxidation of aldehydes to carboxylic acids in the tert-butyl alcohol - aqueous NaH2PO4 system

Abstract Aldehydic compounds with one or more protected hydroxyl groups are effectively oxidized with KMnO4 to the corresponding carboxylic acids using a mixture of t -BuOH and aqueous NaH2PO4 as a reaction medium.
The meaning of a militia: Understanding the civil defence forces of Sierra Leone

This article is an adapted, narrative version of an expert witness report the author wrote for the Defence of one of the accused before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The case against the Civil Defence Forces militia was predicated in part on the argument that the CDF was a military organization with military-style command and control. Based on a close reading of the Prosecution's military expert witness report and the author's ethnographic research with the militia, the article outlines a case for understanding the CDF as the militarization of a social network rather than as a military organization. This framing has implications not only for post-conflict adjudication, but for how we think about and intervene in violent contexts throughout contemporary West Africa.
A class of airfoils having finite trailing edge pressure gradients

Some new developments relevant to the design of single-element airfoils using potential flow methods are presented. In particular, the ramifications of the unbounded trailing edge pressure gradients generally present in the potential flow solution for the flow over an airfoil are examined, and the conditions necessary to obtain a class of airfoils having finite trailing edge pressure gradients developed. The incorporation of these conditions into the inverse method of Eppler for the design of low-speed airfoils is discussed, and designs generated using the modified scheme are presented for consideration. A detailed viscous analysis of one of these airfoils demonstrates a significant reduction in the strong inviscid-viscid interactions generally present near the trailing edge. These reductions offer the possibility of improved airfoil performance, as well as the possibility of improved accuracy in the methods of airfoil design and analysis.
Assessment and implications of linkage disequilibrium in genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism and microsatellite panels.

Linkage disequilibrium (LD) between markers is more likely to exist in dense genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panels than in microsatellite panels. As part of Genetic Analysis Workshop 14 (GAW14), the extent of LD in the Illumina linkage panel III and the Affymetrix Genechip® 10 K mapping array was assessed, using data from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA). The impact of LD on linkage results was examined in COGA and simulated data, and characteristics of SNPs were assessed for their ability to detect population substructure and predict haplotypes. The authors of the papers summarized here observed greater LD in the Affymetrix than in the Illumina panel, possibly due to increased marker density in the Affymetrix panel, and found greater LD on chromosome X than on the autosomes. Simulation analyses suggest that intermarker LD can cause an upward bias in linkage statistics; however, the impact of LD on linkage analysis depends on the proportion of ungenotyped founders and the extent of LD. No large effect of LD on linkage peaks was observed in COGA analyses. In addition, the papers summarized here found that SNPs with high minor allele frequencies were the most informative compared with microsatellites for the detection of population substructure, and that SNPs in higher LD, and small numbers of SNPs, were the most reliable for haplotype prediction. As ease of genotyping continues to increase, study design and SNP selection for linkage and association studies (including genome-wide association studies) will be improved with consideration of LD in the particular populations studied. Genet. Epidemiol. 29(Suppl. 1):S72–S76, 2005. © 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Lower bounds for constant-depth circuits in the presence of help bits

Abstract We consider the problem of how many extra bits of “help” a constant-depth Boolean circuit needs in order to compute m functions of the same input. Each help bit can be an arbitrary Boolean function of the input. We prove an exponential lower bound on the size of the circuit computing m parity functions in the presence of m - 1 help bits. The proof is carried out using the algebraic machinery of Razborov and Smolensky. A by-product of the proof is that the same bound holds for circuits with Modp gates for a fixed prime p > 2. The lower bound implies a random oracle separation for PH and PSPACE, which is optimal in a technical sense.
Regionalism and Multilateralism: A Political Economy Approach

Preferential trading arrangements are analyzed from the viewpoint of the "new political economy" that views trade policy as being determined by lobbying of concentrated interest groups. Two conclusions are reached: first, that trade-diverting preferential arrangements are more likely to be supported politically; and second, that such preferential arrangements could critically change domestic incentives so multilateral liberalization that is initially politically feasible could be rendered infeasible by a preferential arrangement. The larger the trade diversion resulting from the preferential arrangement, the more likely this will be the case.
Robustness optimization of structural and controller parameters

In this paper, several novel ideas in the definition and optimization of robustness for structures and structural controllers are presented. A robustness bound attributable to Patel and Toda is developed using eigenvalue conditioning analysis. Homotopy and sequential linear programming algorithms are used in lieu of conventional nonlinear programming to implement these ideas for an illustrative example. The numerical results confirm the conservatism of the stability robustness bound but nevertheless support the hypothesis that maximizing the robustness measure does significantly increase the true robustness of a closed-loop system. The results also indicate that maximizing the stability robustness measure produces more robust designs than minimizing eigenvalue sensitivity directly.
Error Estimates for a Semidiscrete Finite Element Method for Fractional Order Parabolic Equations

We consider the initial boundary value problem for a homogeneous time-fractional diffusion equation with an initial condition $v(x)$ and a homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition in a bounded convex polygonal domain $\Omega$. We study two semidiscrete approximation schemes, i.e., the Galerkin finite element method (FEM) and lumped mass Galerkin FEM, using piecewise linear functions. We establish almost optimal with respect to the data regularity error estimates, including the cases of smooth and nonsmooth initial data, i.e., $v \in H^2(\Omega)\cap H^1_0(\Omega)$ and $v \in L_2(\Omega)$. For the lumped mass method, the optimal $L_2$-norm error estimate is valid only under an additional assumption on the mesh, which in two dimensions is known to be satisfied for symmetric meshes. Finally, we present some numerical results that give insight into the reliability of the theoretical study.
Fracture Testing with Surface Crack Specimens

This paper is a report of ASTM Task Group E24.01.05 on Part-Through Crack Testing. It includes recommendations for the design, preparation, and static fracture testing of surface crack specimens based on the current state of the art. The recommendations are preceded by background information including discussions of stress intensity factors, crack opening displacements, and fracture toughness values associated with surface crack specimens. Cyclic-load and sustained-load tests are discussed briefly. Recommendations for further research are included.
Cosmic Metal Production and the Contribution of QSO Absorption Systems to the Ionizing Background

The recent discovery by Cowie et al. (1995) and Tytler et al. (1995) of metals in the Ly alpha clouds shows that the intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshift is contaminated by the products of stars and suggests that ionizing photons from massive star formation may be a significant contributor to the UV background radiation at early epochs. We assess the validity of the stellar photoionization hypothesis. Based on recent computations of metal yields and 0-star Lyman continuum (Lyc) fluxes, we find that 0.2 percent of the rest-mass energy of the metals produced is radiated as Lyc. By modeling the transfer of ionizing radiation through the IGM and the rate of chemical enrichment, we demonstrate that the background intensity of photons at 1 ryd that accompanies the production of metals in the Ly alpha forest clouds may be significant, approaching 0.5 x 10(exp -21) ergs cm squared s(-1) Hz(-1) sr(-1) at z approximately equals 3 if the Lyc escape fraction is greater than of equal to 0.25. Together with quasars, massive stars could then, in principle, provide the hydrogen and helium Lyc photons required to ionize the universe at high redshifts. We propose that observations of the He2 Gunn-Peterson effect and of the metal ionization states of the Ly alpha forest and Lyman-limit absorbers should show the signature of a stellar spectrum. We also note that the stellar photoionization model fails if a large fraction of the UV radiation emitted from stars cannot escape into the IGM, as suggested by the recent Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope observations by Leitherer et al. (1995) of low-redshift starburst galaxies, or if most of the metals observed at z is approximately 3 were produced at much earlier epochs.
Economic Distress, Financial Distress, and Dynamic Liquidation

Many firms emerging from a debt restructuring remain highly leveraged, continue to invest little, perform poorly, and often reenter financial distress. The existing literature interprets these findings as inefficiencies arising from coordination problems among many creditors or an inefficient design of bankruptcy law. In contrast, this paper emphasizes that creditors lack the information that is needed to make quick and correct liquidation decisions. It can explain the long-term nature of financial distress solely as the result of dynamic learning strategies of creditors and suggests that it may be an unavoidable byproduct of an efficient resolution of financial distress. FINANCIAL DISTRESS IS OFTEN a long-term process and has an impact on the capital structure, investment policies, and performance of many firms even after they emerge from debt restructurings. James (1995) finds that many firms increase their investment expenditures only by very little in the first two years after a debt restructuring. Hotchkiss (1995) shows that in each of the first five years after emerging from bankruptcy, between 35 percent and 41 percent of all firms have negative operating income. According to Gilson (1997), more than 75 percent of firms that complete debt restructurings emerge with a leverage ratio that is higher than industry median and most are still significantly more highly leveraged than before the onset of financial distress. Furthermore, between one quarter and one third of all distressed firms
A Formal Enantioselective Acetate Mannich Reaction: The Nitro Functional Group as a Traceless Agent for Activation and Enantiocontrol in the Synthesis of β-Amino Acids

A two-step procedure involving the enantioselective addition of alpha-nitro esters to imines, followed by reductive denitration, provides a convenient new enantioselective synthesis of beta-amino acids. Specifically, beta-phenyl alanine derivatives with up to 98% ee are formed in good yield (64-88%) over two steps. The utility of the approach is demonstrated through the first enantioselective synthesis of the key beta-amino acid of (+)-chaenorhine.
The value of life in legal contexts: survey and critique

Value of life issues traditionally pertain to insurance of the losses of accident victims, for which replacement of the economic loss is often an appropriate concept. Deterrence measures of the value of life focus on risk-money tradeoffs involving small changes in risk. Using market data for risky jobs and product risk contexts often yields substantial estimates of the value of life in the range of $3 million to $9 million. These estimates are useful in providing guidance for regulatory policy and assessments of liability. However, use of these values to determine compensation, known as hedonic damages, leads to excessive insurance.
Improving an existing product family based on commonality/diversity, modularity, and cost

As product life cycles become shorter and shorter, stakes are higher in terms of sales and profits, making it an imperative for companies to enhance existing product families as much as possible. In this paper, a methodology using the Design Structure Matrix flow, Value Analysis, and the Commonality versus Diversity Index is proposed to improve an existing family of products. These tools assess and improve commonality/diversity trade-off within the family, feature satisfaction through design, and definition of new modules/components and their interfaces. A case study based on a family of refrigerators is detailed in this paper to demonstrate the methodology.
Solution-phase combinatorial synthesis: Convergent multiplication of diversity via the olefin metathesis reaction

Abstract The solution-phase synthesis of iminodiacetic acid diamides functionalized with ω-alkenes and their dimerization via the olefin metathesis reaction in the preparation of mixture libraries are detailed. Libraries containing as many as 113,232 compounds prepared from only N-BOC-iminodiacetic acid anhydride (1), 15 amines, and 4 ω-alkene carboxylic acids illustrate the diversity that may be achieved by a convergent versus divergent combination of a small number of monomer building blocks that provides the multiplication of diversity typically associated with linear library syntheses including peptides, oligonucleotides and sequential template functionalizations. Unlike the divergent synthesis of such libraries which is amenable to solid-phase synthesis techniques, the convergent synthesis is especially well suited for solution-phase synthesis and is precluded by solid-phase techniques since the combining components typically would be on mutually exclusive phases.
Sequential read-out architecture for multi-channel SQUID systems

We describe a novel multi-channel sequential SQUID read-out technique that requires fewer wires than conventional units and also simplifies the electronics significantly. We designed and experimentally tested the sequential read-out electronics with up to 8 channels using LTS 8/spl times/8 mm/sup 2/ magnetometers with better than 3 fT//spl radic/Hz field resolution. We have investigated noise performance, amplitude-frequency characteristics, and cross-talk of the sequential read-out electronics for 2, 4, and 8 channels. We observed field resolution better than 4 fT//spl radic/Hz, 6 fT//spl radic/Hz, and 9 fT//spl radic/Hz for 2-, 4-, and 8-channel versions, respectively. We observed 10 kHz frequency bandwidth for the 8-channel version using 200 kHz modulation frequency. Cross-talk better than -90 dB was measured for this system. A single-channel simulation was used to estimate the field resolution for systems with up to 128 channels. We found that the expected field resolution can be better than 15 fT//spl radic/Hz, 20 fT//spl radic/Hz, and 30 fT//spl radic/Hz for 32-, 64-, and 128-channel systems, respectively, with the sequential read-out technique.
Software process maturity: measuring its impact on productivity and quality

With the current worldwide focus on improvement in the software process, there is clearly a need for an understanding of its impact on software engineering productivity and quality. The author documents an attempt to provide an empirical metrics view of such initiatives based on data collected in a worldwide benchmarking effort conducted between March 1991 and December 1991. Of the more than 300 organizations that participated, fewer than one in five had any quantifiable performance data available prior to the start of this study. However, those that had embarked on significant process improvement efforts and were actively using metrics were able to demonstrate substantial gains in productivity and quality. In addition, insights derived from this large-scale data analysis provide a framework for determining which metrics should be included in a standard software engineering measurement dashboard. >
Imaging coherent transport in graphene. Part II: probing weak localization.

Graphene has opened new avenues of research in quantum transport, with potential applications for coherent electronics. Coherent transport depends sensitively on scattering from microscopic disorder present in graphene samples: electron waves traveling along different paths interfere, changing the total conductance. Weak localization is produced by the coherent backscattering of waves, while universal conductance fluctuations are created by summing over all paths. In this work, we obtain conductance images of weak localization with a liquid-He-cooled scanning probe microscope, by using the tip to create a movable scatterer in a graphene device. This technique allows us to investigate coherent transport with a probe of size comparable to the electron wavelength. Images of magnetoconductance versus tip position map the effects of disorder by moving a single scatterer, revealing how electron interference is modified by the tip perturbation. The weak localization dip in conductivity at B = 0 is obtained by averaging magnetoconductance traces at different positions of the tip-created scatterer. The width ΔBWL of the dip yields an estimate of the electron coherence length L at fixed charge density. This 'scanning scatterer' method provides a new way of investigating coherent transport in graphene by directly perturbing the disorder configuration that creates these interferometric effects.
Twitter reciprocal reply networks exhibit assortativity with respect to happiness

Abstract The advent of social media has provided an extraordinary, if imperfect, ‘big data’ window into the form and evolution of social networks. Based on nearly 40 million message pairs posted to Twitter between September 2008 and February 2009, we construct and examine the revealed social network structure and dynamics over the time scales of days, weeks, and months. At the level of user behavior, we employ our recently developed hedonometric analysis methods to investigate patterns of sentiment expression. We find users’ average happiness scores to be positively and significantly correlated with those of users one, two, and three links away. We strengthen our analysis by proposing and using a null model to test the effect of network topology on the assortativity of happiness. We also find evidence that more well connected users write happier status updates, with a transition occurring around Dunbar's number. More generally, our work provides evidence of a social sub-network structure within Twitter and raises several methodological points of interest with regard to social network reconstructions.
On breaching enterprise data privacy through adversarial information fusion

Data privacy is one of the key challenges faced by enterprises today. Anonymization techniques address this problem by sanitizing sensitive data such that individual privacy is preserved while allowing enterprises to maintain and share sensitive data. However, existing work on this problem make inherent assumptions about the data that are impractical in day-to-day enterprise data management scenarios. Further, application of existing anonymization schemes on enterprise data could lead to adversarial attacks in which an intruder could use information fusion techniques to inflict a privacy breach. In this paper, we shed light on the shortcomings of current anonymization schemes in the context of enterprise data. We define and experimentally demonstrate Web-based Information-Fusion Attack on anonymized enterprise data. We formulate the problem of finding a fusion resilient enterprise data anonymization and propose a prototype solution to address this problem.
The changing shape of networks: Lessons for the auto industry

The global financial crisis has hit carmakers relatively hard as the auto industry around the world is experiencing a sharp decrease in sales. Today, carmakers must consider their strategic positioning in the market, relative to the competition. One way to deepen understanding of corporate positioning from this perspective is to investigate this area using a laboratory experiment. This study examines a business simulation game and evaluates several network characteristics. Our analysis reveals the impact those characteristics have on company performance. The findings also show the applicability of network theory in analyzing the auto industry.
Computer simulation of displacement damage in silicon carbide

We have performed molecular dynamics simulation of displacement events on silicon and carbon sublattices in silicon carbide for displacement doses ranging from 0.005 to 0.5 displacements per atom. Our results indicate that the displacement threshold energy is about 21 eV for C and 35 eV for Si, and amorphization can occur by accumulation of displacement damage regardless of whether Si or C is displaced. In addition, we have simulated defect production in high-energy cascades as a function of the primary knock-on atom energy and observed features that are different from the case of damage accumulation in Si. These systematic studies shed light on the phenomenon of non-ionizing energy loss that is relevant to understanding space radiation effects in semiconductor devices.
Algebraic constructions of quasi-cyclic LDPC codes – part I: for AWGN and binary random erasure channels

This paper is the first part of a sequence of two papers that present algebraic constructions of quasi-cyclic LDPC codes for AWGN, binary random and burst erasure channels. In this paper, a class of quasi-cyclic LDPC codes for both AWGN and binary random erasure channels is constructed based on finite fields and special vector representations of finite field elements.
The Structure of High Strehl Ratio Point-Spread Functions

We describe the symmetries present in the point-spread function (PSF) of an optical system either located in space or corrected by an adaptive optics (AO) system to Strehl ratios of about 70% and higher. We present a formalism for expanding the PSF to arbitrary order in terms of powers of the Fourier transform of the residual phase error over an arbitrarily shaped and apodized entrance aperture. For traditional unapodized apertures at high Strehl ratios, bright speckles pinned to the bright Airy rings are part of an antisymmetric perturbation of the perfect PSF, arising from the term that is first order in the residual phase error. There are two symmetric second-degree terms. One is negative at the center and, like the first-order term, is modulated
Instruments, randomization, and learning about development

There is currently much debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid and about what kind of projects can engender economic development. There is skepticism about the ability of econometric analysis to resolve these issues or of development agencies to learn from their own experience. In response, there is increasing use in development economics of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to accumulate credible knowledge of what works, without overreliance on questionable theory or statistical methods. When RCTs are not possible, the proponents of these methods advocate quasirandomization through instrumental variable (IV) techniques or natural experiments. I argue that many of these applications are unlikely to recover quantities that are useful for policy or understanding: two key issues are the misunderstanding of exogeneity and the handling of heterogeneity. I illustrate from the literature on aid and growth. Actual randomization faces similar problems as does quasi-randomization, notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary. I argue that experiments have no special ability to produce more credible knowledge than other methods, and that actual experiments are frequently subject to practical problems that undermine any claims to statistical or epistemic superiority. I illustrate using prominent experiments in development and elsewhere. As with IV methods, RCT-based evaluation of projects, without guidance from an understanding of underlying mechanisms, is unlikely to lead to scientific progress in the understanding of economic development. I welcome recent trends in development experimentation away from the evaluation of projects and toward the evaluation of theoretical mechanisms. (JEL C21, F35, O19)
HDF5-FastQuery: Accelerating Complex Queries on HDF Datasets using Fast Bitmap Indices

Large scale scientific data is often stored in scientific data formats such as FITS, netCDF and HDF. These storage formats are of particular interest to the scientific user community since they provide multi-dimensional storage and retrieval. However, one of the drawbacks of these storage formats is that they do not support semantic indexing which is important for interactive data analysis where scientists look for features of interests such as "Find all supernova explosions where energy > 10^5 and temperature > 10^6". In this paper we present a novel approach called HDF5- FastQuery to accelerate the data access of large HDF5 files by introducing multi-dimensional semantic indexing. Our implementation leverages an efficient indexing technology called bitmap indexing that has been widely used in the database community. Bitmap indices are especially well suited for interactive exploration of large-scale readonly data. Storing the bitmap indices into the HDF5 file has the following advantages: a) Significant performance speedup of accessing subsets of multi-dimensional data and b) portability of the indices across multiple computer platforms. We will present an API that simplifies the execution of queries on HDF5 files for general scientific applications and data analysis. The design is flexible enough to accommodate the use of arbitrary indexing technology for semantic range queries. We will also provide a detailed performance analysis of HDF5-FastQuery for both synthetic and scientific data. The results demonstrate that our proposed approach for multi-dimensional queries is up to a factor of 2 faster than HDF5.
Mixing on a class of rank-one transformations

We prove that a rank-one transformation satisfying a condition called restricted growth is a mixing transformation if and only if the spacer sequence for the transformation is uniformly ergodic. Uniform ergodicity is a generalization of the notion of ergodicity for sequences, in the sense that the mean ergodic theorem holds for a family of what we call dynamical sequences. The application of our theorem shows that the class of polynomial rank-one transformations, rank-one transformations where the spacers are chosen to be the values of a polynomial with some mild conditions on the polynomials, that have restricted growth are mixing transformations, implying, in particular, Adams' result on staircase transformations. Another application yields a new proof that Ornstein's class of rank-one transformations constructed using ‘random spacers’ are almost surely mixing transformations.
Longitudinal Analysis of the Association Between Vasomotor Symptoms and Race/Ethnicity Across the Menopausal Transition: Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation

Objectives. We investigated whether vasomotor symptom reporting or patterns of change in symptom reporting over the perimenopausal transition among women enrolled in a national study differed according to race/ethnicity. We also sought to determine whether racial/ethnic differences were explained by sociodemographic, health, or lifestyle factors.Methods. We followed 3198 women enrolled in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation during 1996 through 2002. We analyzed frequency of vasomotor symptom reporting using longitudinal multiple logistic regressions.Results. Rates of vasomotor symptom reporting were highest among African Americans (adjusted odds ratio [OR]=1.63; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.21, 2.20). The transition to late perimenopause exhibited the strongest association with vasomotor symptoms (adjusted OR = 6.64; 95% CI = 4.80, 9.20). Other risk factors were age (adjusted OR=1.17; 95% CI=1.13, 1.21), having less than a college education (adjusted OR = 1.91; 95% CI = 1.40, 2.61), increasing...
Health Care Financing

The methods used to finance personal health care service play a major role in shaping a country's health care system. Personal health care services are those services such as hospital care, physician care, dental services, and drugs that are provided directly to individuals. The financing methods influence the terms under which people access the health care delivery system, the types of health care provided, and the mechanisms used to allocate health care services. They also influence how the costs of health care services are distributed over the population by income and by health status. Two aspects of health care financing are the focus of this article: the sources of funds for health care services and the mechanisms used to pay individuals and institutions who provide health care services. Keywords: health care services; finance; payment; insurance; premium; Medicare; Medicaid; copayment; MEPS
HIV-1 protease: mechanism and drug discovery

It has now been two decades since acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first reported by the US Center for Diseases Control (CDC). A few years later, it was found that a retrovirus called human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the causative agent in AIDS. In a short time, AIDS increased to epidemic proportions throughout the world, affecting more than 40 million people today and killing so far more than 22 million (UNAIDS, 2001). Since the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, tremendous efforts have been directed towards development of antiretroviral therapies that target HIV type 1 in particular (HIV-1). The identification of the HIV retrovirus and the accumulated knowledge about the role of the different elements in its life cycle led researchers around the world to develop inhibitors that target different steps in the life cycle of the virus. One of these targets is HIV-1 protease (HIV PR), an essential enzyme needed in the proper assembly and maturation of infectious virions. Understanding the chemical mechanism of this enzyme has been a basic requirement in the development of efficient inhibitors. In this review, we summarize studies conducted in the last two decades on the mechanism of HIV PR and the impact of their conclusions on the drug discovery processes.
Planarized copper gate hydrogenated amorphous-silicon thin-film transistors for AM-LCDs

We report the first fabrication of inverted-staggered back-channel-etch hydrogenated amorphous-silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film transistors (TFTs) with a planarized Cu gate electrode. The Cu gate-planarized (GP) a-Si:H TFTs, incorporating benzocyclobutene and a-SiN/sub x/:H as a double-layer gate insulator, had a field-effect mobility of 0.75 cm/sup 2//V-s, a threshold voltage of 4.92 V, and a subthreshold swing (S) of 0.48 V/dec. These results demonstrate that the GP-TFTs can have an electrical performance comparable with the conventional TFTs without gate planarization. Thus, the gate planarization technology is suitable for application in large-area and high-resolution active-matrix liquid-crystal displays.
Gallager B LDPC Decoder with Transient and Permanent Errors

This paper studies the performance of a noisy Gallager B decoder for regular LDPC codes. We assume that the noisy decoder is subject to both transient processor errors and permanent memory errors. We permit different error rates at different functional components. In addition, for the sake of generality, we allow asymmetry in the permanent error rates of component outputs, and thus we model error propagation in the decoder via a suitable asymmetric channel. We then develop a density evolution-type analysis on this asymmetric channel. The recursive expression for the bit error probability is derived as a function of the code parameters (node degrees), codeword weight, transmission error rate, and the error rates of the permanent and the transient errors. Based on this analysis, we then derive the residual error of the Gallager B decoder for the regime where the transmission error rate and the processing error rates are small. In this regime, we further observe that the residual error rate can be well approximated by a suitable combination of the transient error rate and the permanent error rate at variable nodes, provided that the check node degree is large enough. Based on this insight, we then propose and analyze a scheme for detecting permanent errors and correcting detected residual errors. The scheme exploits the parity check equations of the code and reuses the existing hardware to locate permanent errors in memory blocks. Performance analysis and simulation results show that, with high probability, the detection scheme discovers correct locations of permanent memory errors, while, with low probability, it mislabels the functional memory as being defective. The proposed error detection-and-correction scheme can be implemented in-circuit and is useful in combating failures arising from aging.
Is openness inflationary? Policy commitment and imperfect competition

Abstract This paper proposes a channel through which increased openness to international trade can increase a country’s long-run incentive to create inflation. The theoretical justification for this channel is the well known “beggar thy neighbor” incentive, and its dominance relies on a monetary authority’s ability to commit to policy as well as the asymmetric effects of the underlying frictions in the model across domestic and foreign households. Consistent with previous work, the model predicts that the inflationary bias of openness is dampened by the degree of imperfect competition within a country.
A model for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack degradation

Solid electrolytes are increasingly being used in active electrochemical devices such as fuel cells and batteries. Several fuel cells or batteries are connected in series to form a stack or a battery pack. The present manuscript examines the phenomenon of degradation in such devices, whose origin lies in the very basics of local thermodynamic equilibrium and transport. The specific example of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) is addressed here. If a single cell (or a few cells) in a stack exhibits higher resistance than the rest of the cells, stack failure often initiates at such a cell. The cell is then driven by, and exhibits lower voltage than the rest of the cells, and often even a negative voltage. The objective of this paper is to present a model for stack degradation when one of the cells exhibits a negative voltage. The existence of low level electronic conduction through the electrolyte plays central role in degradation. It is shown that if a cell exhibits a negative voltage, the oxygen chemical potential within the electrolyte can exceed that in the oxidant, and/or can drop below that in the fuel. This can lead to high internal oxygen partial pressure resulting in electrode cracking and delamination, and/or very low oxygen partial pressure leading to local electrolyte decomposition. Both situations can lead to cell and stack degradation.
Aeroelastic Topology Optimization of Blade-Stiffened Panels

Metallic blade-stiffened panels are optimized for various eigenvalue metrics of interest to the aerospace community. This is done via solid isotropic material with penalization-based topology optimization: the stiffeners are discretized into finite elements, and each element is assigned a design variable, which may vary from 0 (void) to 1 (solid). A known issue with eigenvalue-based optimization is discontinuities due to mode switching, which may be avoided through a series of eigenvalue separation constraints, or (more challenging, but less restrictive) a bound method with mode tracking. Both methods are demonstrated to obtain optimal stiffener topologies for panel buckling, but only the former is used for aeroelastic panel-flutter problems. Satisfactory flutter optimal results are obtained, but the work concludes with a discussion of the challenges associated with the use of a bound method for aeroelastic problems, with specific complications posed by the advent of hump modes.
Chaperones as thermodynamic sensors of drug-target interactions reveal kinase inhibitor specificities in living cells.

The sensitivity of chaperones to the stability of client proteins is used for kinome-wide profiling of kinase inhibitors.
Pedagogical Catalysts of Civic Competence: The Development of a Critical Epistemological Model for Community-Based Learning

Democratic problem-solving necessitates an active and informed citizenry, but existing research on service-learning has shed little light on the relationship between pedagogical practices and civic competence outcomes. This study developed and tested a model to represent that relationship and identified pedagogical catalysts of civic competence using five years of survey data from over 10,000 students in approximately 700 courses. The results strongly substantiate the proposed model, with knowledge, skills, attitudes, and actions as epistemological components of civic competence. Most importantly for the social justice aims of service-learning, the study found that diversity significantly enhances all civic competence outcomes. Finally, the results demonstrated that service must be thoroughly integrated into a course through the syllabus and community partnership to maximize civic competence. These findings and the new Critical Pedagogy Model of Civic Competence through Service-Learning provide direction for faculty development and future research related to cultivating competent citizens through service-learning.
The Arecibo H II Region Discovery Survey

We report the detection of radio recombination line (RRL) emission using the Arecibo Observatory at X band (9 GHz, 3 cm) from 37 previously unknown H II regions in the Galactic zone 66° ≥ l ≥ 31° and | b | ≤ 1°. This Arecibo H II Region Discovery Survey (Arecibo HRDS) is a continuation of the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) HRDS. The targets for the Arecibo HRDS have spatially coincident 24 μm and 20 cm emission of a similar angular morphology and extent. To take advantage of Arecibo's sensitivity and small beam size, sources in this sample are fainter, smaller in angle, or in more crowded fields compared to those of the GBT HRDS. These Arecibo nebulae are some of the faintest H II regions ever detected in RRL emission. Our detection rate is 58%, which is low compared to the 95% detection rate for GBT HRDS targets. We derive kinematic distances to 23 of the Arecibo HRDS detections. Four nebulae have negative local standard of rest velocities and are thus unambiguously in the outer Galaxy. The remaining sources are at the tangent-point distance or farther. We identify a large, diffuse H II region complex that has an associated H I and 13CO shell. The ~90 pc diameter of the G52L nebula in this complex may be the largest Galactic H II region known, and yet it has escaped previous detection.
Defuzzification Filters and Applications to Power System Stabilization Problems

Defuzzification is a very important step in fuzzy systems applications. There are a number of different defuzzification methods reported in the literature. In this paper, the concept of defuzzification filters in a control system setting is first discussed and a methodology for designing such filters considered. As will be seen, the design of such filters requires the knowledge of the plant model and its inverse. A reference control signal is computed and then is used to generate the actual defuzzified control signal which will be applied to control the plant. The application of the defuzzification filter is made by introducing the filter into a power system in which a neuro-fuzzy self-learning controller was applied to stabilize the system but success could not always be guaranteed. With the defuzzification filter, however, the system is always stabilized. Simulation results are presented.
Comparing notions of full derandomization

Most of the hypotheses of full derandomization fall into two sets of equivalent statements: those equivalent to the existence of efficient pseudorandom generators and those equivalent to approximating the accepting probability of a circuit. We give the first relativized world where these sets of equivalent statements are not equivalent to each other.
Affine buildings for dihedral groups

We construct 2-dimensonal thick nondiscrete affine buildings associated with an arbitrary finite dihedral group.
Moments of Markov switching models

This paper derives the moments for a range of Markov switching models. We characterize in detail the patterns of volatility, skewness and kurtosis that these models can produce as a function of the transition probabilities and parameters of the underlying state densities entering the switching process. The autocovariance of the level and squares of time series generated by Markov switching processes is also derived and we use these results to shed light on the relationship between volatility clustering, regime switches and structural breaks in time-series models.