cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Using the DNA Testing of Arrestees to Reevaluate Fourth Amendment Doctrine

With the advent of DNA testing, numerous issues have arisen with regard to obtaining and using evidence developed from such testing. As courts have come to regard DNA testing as a reliable method for linking some people to crimes and for exonerating others, these issues are especially significant. The federal government and most states have enacted statutes that permit or direct the testing of those convicted of at least certain crimes. Courts have almost universally approved such testing, rejecting arguments that obtaining and using such evidence violates the Fourth Amendment.More recently governments have enacted laws permitting or directing the taking of DNA samples from those arrested, but not yet convicted, for certain serious crimes. Courts had been far more divided about the constitutionality of DNA testing for arrestees than they were for the comparable testing of those already convicted of crimes. Given the division in the holdings among both state and federal courts and the increasing importance of DNA evidence in criminal investigations, it was hardly surprising that the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case regarding the constitutionality of a Maryland statute allowing for such testing.Section II of this article will provide a brief description of the science of DNA testing as it is used in the criminal justice system. Section III will discuss the Supreme Court's decision in Maryland v. King. Section IV will address the argument of the opponents of the DNA testing of arrestees - that it violates the presumption of innocence. The chief focus of the article will appear in Sections V and VI, which will respond to the arguments posed by those who claim such testing violates the Fourth Amendment. Section V will address the balancing test for such searches and seizures long employed by the Supreme Court. Section VI describes and critiques the use of the primary purpose test as an important factor in determining whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated. This test looks to whether the primary purpose of the government's search or seizure was something other than to ferret out ordinary criminal wrongdoing, and only in such situations excuses the absence of individualized suspicion.
The Marginal Cost Controversy in Intellectual Property

In 1938, Harold Hotelling formally advanced the position that "the optimum of the general welfare corresponds to the sale of everything at marginal cost."' To reach this optimum, Hotelling argued, general government revenues should "be applied to cover the fixed costs of electric power plants, waterworks, railroad, and other industries in which the fixed costs are large, so as to reduce to the level of marginal cost the prices charged for the services and products of these industries."2 Other major economists of the day subsequently endorsed Hotelling's view3 and, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, it "aroused considerable interest and [had] already found its way into some textbooks on public utility economics."4 In his 1946 article, The Marginal Cost Controversy, Ronald Coase set forth a detailed rejoinder to the Hotelling thesis, concluding that the social subsidies proposed by Hotelling "would bring about a maldistribution of the factors of production, a maldistribution of income and probably a loss similar to that which the scheme was designed to avoid."5 The article, which Richard Posner would later hail as Coase's "most important" contribution to the field of public utility pricing,6 was part of a wave of literature debating the merits of the Hotelling proposal.' Yet the very success of the critique by Coase and others has led to the entire contro-
Bound and Gagged: The Peculiar Predicament of Professional Jurors

Professionals are entering jury service as never before, thanks to a jury reform movement that swept the country in the 1990s and ended occupational exemptions for professionals. This beneficial development poses a new problem for courts: how to deal with an influx of professional jurors, whose own expertise will sometimes overlap with critical issues at trial. The current legal response to the entry of professional jurors is twofold: first, courts do not allow professionals to be challenged for cause based on their expertise alone, even if that expertise overlaps with issues in the case; and second, some courts--New York's being the most prominent--instruct professional jurors not to share their knowledge with fellow jurors. This article analyzes the law regarding professional jurors, presents the results of a survey of jury consultants, and recommends the law be changed so that challenges for cause based on expertise alone would be granted, and instructions that attempt to gag professional jurors would be eliminated. These changes would ensure that professional jurors are no longer "bound and gagged": bound to serve on juries in cases that implicate their areas of expertise, but prevented from serving fully and openly when they do take their seats as jurors.
Modern Day Inquisitions

Like the Inquisitions in the 1600s, the modern day inquisitions are attempts to secure the supremacy of religious hierarchies in matters of gender, sexuality, and reproduction. The modern day inquisitions jeopardize academic freedoms, particularly of scholars who focus on reproductive health law and ethics, and use hostile stereotypes and social condemnation, among other mechanisms, to control sexuality and reproduction, and to privilege male dominance. In this sense, the overarching barriers to achieving gender justice in this hemisphere are the modern day inquisitions. This article based on a keynote speech of the Conference on Gender Justice in the Americas, graciously hosted by the University of Miami School of Law, February 23-25, 2011, attempts: to take stock of some of the past achievements in applying human rights and constitutional provisions to protect the dignity of different sexualities, reduce violence, and promote reproductive and sexual health, to explore some of the lessons learned in applying human rights and constitutional provisions to these issues, and finally, to think about how best to face challenges ahead and to strengthen networks to create better synergies in our research, teaching, and advocacy to improve gender justice in the Americas.
Addressing the Patent Gold Rush: The Role of Deference to PTO Patent Denials

In the past few years, we have witnessed a proliferation of patents in the two industries that are central to our information economy - computer software and biotechnology. Many commentators fear that the rush to patent in these economically vital industries will lead to restricted information flow and retarded innovation and development. The proliferation of high-technology patents directly implicates the two institutions that are primarily responsible for administering the patent system - the Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO"), which grants patents, and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ("CAFC"), which hears all patent appeals. Moreover, given that the CAFC's reversal of PTO decisions denying patent protection to certain biotechnology and computer program inventions has been a major reason for the recent proliferation of patents, it is important to reassess the relationship between the CAFC and the PTO. This paper argues that, from the standpoint of institutional competence, the CAFC should not independently review the PTO's decisions denying patentability. Rather, it should apply traditional administrative principles of deference to the PTO's patentability denials.
Strengthening the Governance and Performance of State-Owned Financial Institutions

Corporate governance arrangements define the responsibilities, authorities and accountabilities of owners, boards of directors, and executive managers of a company. Good corporate governance is as important for state financial institutions as for private sector companies. Many of the problems that commonly afflict state financial institutions can be associated with, if not attributed directly to, weaknesses in corporate governance. This note draws on guidelines recently published by the OECD and the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision to compile a comprehensive corporate governance evaluation framework relevant to state-owned commercial and development finance institutions. It highlights aspects of this framework that are considered to be of particular importance to state financial institutions by citing innovative practices in a number of countries. Finally, it presents a detailed case study of the governance arrangements in place at the Development Bank of Southern Africa.
A Business Ethics Perspective on Sarbanes-Oxley and the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines

This Article assesses the ability of Sarbanes-Oxley and other recent changes in the law and stock exchange listing requirements to reduce the incidence of fraud and to increase the reporting of financial misconduct. It begins by examining the individual decision-makers within a corporation and analyzing their intentions and behaviors under the Theory of Planned Behavior. It then examines the ability of the organization to influence the employees* intentions and behaviors through codes of ethics and compliance programs, and finds growing support for the usefulness of integritybased compliance programs. Finally, the Article considers how the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and Organizational Sentencing Guidelines modifications influence corporations to adopt compliance programs and to proactively manage their organizational cultures in a way that improves the ethical behavior of their employees. It also provides additional reform proposals related to the structure and processes of the firm, and discusses the role of the law in incorporating intermediary groups into the process of assisting and encouraging firms to develop ethical corporate cultures.
Resource Management In Dyadic Competitive Rivalry: The Effects of Resource Bundling and Deployment

Although resources are instrumental to a competitive advantage, management must effectively bundle and deploy an organization's resources for an advantage to be realized. Despite their importance, ...
What is an Oil Shock

Abstract This paper uses a flexible approach to characterize the nonlinear relation between oil price changes and GDP growth. The paper reports clear evidence of nonlinearity, consistent with earlier claims in the literature—oil price increases are much more important than oil price decreases, and increases have significantly less predictive content if they simply correct earlier decreases. An alternative interpretation is suggested based on estimation of a linear functional form using exogenous disruptions in petroleum supplies as instruments.
Empirical Evidence on the Evolution of International Earnings

We examine whether cross‐country differences in earnings‐to‐price multiples have changed between 1987–1992 and 1994–1999. Our results suggest that earnings multiples became more similar over this time period for the jurisdictions we analyze, although systematic differences remain. Economic determinants of earnings multiples (e.g., growth rates, interest rates, and returns) do not exhibit similar convergence and do not appear to explain the changes. The convergence is robust to controls for cash flow multiples and is apparent in the valuation of accruals. Accrual/cash flow correlations have also become more similar and generally less negative, suggesting a reduction in earnings smoothing. Overall, our evidence suggests convergence in accounting practice.
The Effect of Conceptual and Perceptual Fluency on Brand Evaluation

Abstract According to the processing fluency model, advertising exposures enhance the ease with which consumers recognize and process a brand. In turn, this increased perceptual fluency leads to consumers having more favorable attitudes toward the brand. The authors extend the processing fluency model to examine the effect of conceptual fluency on attitudes. In three experiments, the authors show that when a target comes to mind more readily and becomes conceptually fluent, as when it is presented in a predictive context (e.g., a bottle of beer featured in an advertisement that shows a man entering a bar) or when it is primed by a related construct (e.g., an image of ketchup following an advertisement of mayonnaise), participants develop more favorable attitudes toward the target. It is believed that positive valence of fluent processing underlies these processing-fluency effects. When conceptual fluency is associated with negative valence (e.g., hair conditioner primed by a lice-killing shampoo), the aut...
Tying off All Loose Ends: Protecting American Citizens from Torture beyond America's Borders

In the United States, the law prohibits the government from torturing its citizens. U.S. law also prohibits the government from sending its citizens to another country where they would likely be tortured. These two scenarios seemingly covered all possible ways that the U.S. government could bring about the torture of its own citizens — until Munaf v. Geren, 553 U.S. 674 (2008). In Munaf, the Supreme Court posed an intriguing question: Does the law also forbid the U.S. government from transferring custody of an American citizen to a country that will likely torture him, when the U.S. government was maintaining custody of that citizen within, and at the permission of, the country that engages in torture? This article seeks to definitively close this possible loophole through two points of attack. First, it looks to emerging theories on the extraterritorial application of the Constitution and concludes that Fifth Amendment Substantive Due Process extends beyond America’s borders to protect her citizens from any government action that would lead to their torture. Second, this article explores the federal law that ostensibly leaves open the possibility for torture and, after analyzing its drafters’ intent as well the international conflicts that a pro-torture interpretation would cause, concludes that any loophole found is false.
Death of a Claim: The Impact of Loss Reactions on Bargaining

We have come to recognize that negotiation is not a fully rational process. People in conflict feel intense emotions, and many of these emotions are negative. As they bargain towards settlement, disputants must compromise, often accepting terms much less favorable than those they had expected to obtain at the outset of the process. The experience of giving up goals and settling below expectations is very painful (Birke and Fox 1999), and the predominant feeling of many disputants as they bargain toward resolution appears to be one of loss. (Folberg and Taylor 1984) Although feelings of loss appear in almost every negotiation, they sometimes take on unusual intensity. Consider the following example:
Equal Rites and Equal Rights

On May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court handed down its much anticipated decision in In re Marriage Cases.' In a 4-3 decision authored by Chief Justice Ronald George, the Court struck down California's existing laws 2 limiting civil marriage to opposite-sex couples. In so doing, California became the second state in the nation to expand marriage to include same-sex couples.3 In the days and weeks following the Court's announcement, there has been considerable discussion of the decision and its ramifications in the state and national press.4 Most commentators have focused on the Court's conclusion that a "separate but equal" comprehensive domestic partnership scheme denied same-sex couples the due process and equal protection rights guaranteed by California's Constitution. Others have examined the Court's unprecedented decision to recognize gays and lesbians as a suspect class, entitled to the most rigorous constitutional review. All agree that in expanding the scope of marriage and emphasizing the equal protection rights to which gays and lesbians are entitled, the Court's decision is a monumental
Does Quality Matter? Challengers in State Supreme Court Elections

We assess whether quality challengers in state supreme court elections have a significant impact on the electoral successes of incumbents and whether the electorate seemingly makes candidate-based evaluations in these races. To address these questions, we examine 208 elections to the states’ highest courts from 1990 through 2000 in the 21 states using partisan or nonpartisan elections to staff their benches. From a Heckman two-stage estimation procedure that takes into account factors influencing challengers’ decisions to run as well as factors affecting the electorate’s choices among candidates, we find that quality does matter. Experienced challengers significantly lessen the electoral security of incumbents, and the electorate appears to evaluate challengers’ qualifications. These findings stand in stark relief to traditional notions that the electorate is incapable of responding to candidate stimuli beyond incumbency and that judicial elections inherently are an ineffective means for securing popular control over the bench. I n this article, we examine the strategies of challengers and the choices of voters to answer a vitally important question about elections to the states’ highest courts: does the quality of challengers have a significant impact on the electoral success of incumbents. In other words, do challengers with current or previous experience on the bench, and thus the ability to represent qualified alternatives to incumbents, reduce incumbents’ vote shares, other things being equal. From a different perspective, we evaluate whether the electorate seemingly has the ability to make candidate-based evaluations by distinguishing qualified from unqualified challengers. These intriguing though straightforward issues about the importance of candidate quality and the propensities of the electorate have significant theoretical import for illuminating the complex relationship between democratic processes and political institutions. As studies of elections to various types of offices have established, electoral competition forges observable linkages between citizens and government, enhancing the representative function. Among other things, incumbents chosen in relatively competitive races are more likely to defer to their
Why the Oberholzer-Gee/Strumpf article on file sharing is not credible

This article examines the data, results, and methods underlying an influential 2007 article on music piracy published in the Journal of Political Economy. The article concluded that piracy had no impact on record sales, even though the birth of file sharing coincided with what in hindsight can be described as a financial near-collapse of the sound recording industry. The authors of that article had access to music download data from actual pirate servers—data that the authors have never made public—providing much of the article’s novelty and lending it an aura of authenticity. They also relied upon an esoteric instrument, the number of German kids on school vacations, which they claimed had a powerful effect on American piracy. My examination identifies several important concerns and problems. First, the measured aggregate piracy data contain extremely large weekly variations that are inconsistent with other, comparable data. Then, the first-stage instrumented regression results imply, counterfactually, that American piracy is dominated by whether German children are in school or not. Further, their reported values erroneously indicate that German students spend most of their time on holiday, indicating an error in the construction of that variable. In addition, the weekly aggregate relationship between American piracy and German school vacations is the opposite of the hypothesized relationship underlying the use of the instrument. Most importantly, a careful investigation reveals that the extra files available to Americans because of German school holidays made up less than two-tenths of one percent of all files available to Americans, which is a much smaller share than the article authors suggest and far too small to have had a measurable impact on American piracy.
Competition and the Quality of Standard Form Contracts: The Case of Software License Agreements

Standard form contracts are pervasive. Many legal academics believe that they are unfair. Some scholars and some courts have argued that sellers with market power or facing little competitive pressure may impose one-sided standard form terms that limit their obligation to consumers. This article uses a sample of 647 software license agreements drawn from many distinct segments of the software industry to empirically investigate the relationship between competitive conditions and the quality of standard form contracts. I find little evidence for the concern that firms with market power, as measured by market concentration or firm market share, require consumers to accept particularly one-sided terms; that is, firms in both concentrated and unconcentrated software market segments, and firms with high and low market share, offer similar terms to consumers. The results have implications for the judicial analysis of standard form contract enforceability.
Evidence production in adversarial vs. inquisitorial regimes

Abstract The advantage of the adversarial regime of judicial decision-making is the superior information of the parties, while the advantage of an idealized inquisitorial regime is its neutrality. We model the tradeoff by characterizing the properties of costly estimators used by each regime. The adversarial regime uses an ‘extremal’ estimator that is based on the difference between the most favorable pieces of evidence produced by each party. The inquisitorial regime uses the sample mean. We find that neither regime dominates the other.
The effect of unionism on worker attachment to firms

This study examines these important questions using newly available data files on individuals, which contain information on their job tenure and union status, among other things. Section one examines the theoretical reasons for expecting unionism to increase job tenure. Section two develops the "waiting time" statistics and econometrics needed to analyze tenure and its converse, separations. Section three describes the data sets under study and presents the basic econometric analysis of the effect of unionism on tenure and separations. Section four analyzes the routes by which unionism influences the variables. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the analysis for understanding the economic effects of unionism.
Dissecting Damages: An Empirical Exploration of Sexual Harassment Awards

My empirical study first replicates and then extends a prior preliminary empirical study by Cass Sunstein and Judy Shih of sexual harassment damages awards. It covers a comprehensive set of 232 cases in which plaintiffs won some positive amount of compensatory damages from state and federal, trial and appellate court decisions from 1982–2004 (published either in official reporters or solely on Westlaw). Contrary to Sunstein and Shih's finding, my analysis of these data reveals a consistent, and statistically significant, positive relationship between punitive and compensatory damages (at least in cases where punitive damages are awarded). My new empirical study then employs dependent variables that, in my view, are more theoretically and statistically sound than those employed by Sunstein and Shih and others who have focused exclusively on the relationship between punitive and compensatory damages: total combined damages (i.e., all compensatory and punitive damages), and what I term “outrage” damages, or combined noneconomic compensatory and punitive damages. My empirical results, using these new dependent variables, essentially confirm Sunstein and Shih's conclusions regarding the irrelevance of variables pertaining to the nature and severity of harassment. What my study reveals as crucial predictive factors, by contrast, are factors pertaining to damages limitations. My study highlights that these factors—including the effect of the 1991 Civil Rights Act, and whether plaintiffs append state civil rights and tort claims to their Title VII claims—are critical to a fuller understanding of damages determinations in sexual harassment cases.
Online user reviews, product variety, and the long tail: An empirical investigation on online software downloads

Our study examines the impact of both a demand side factor (online user reviews) and a supply side factor (product variety) on the long tail and superstar phenomena in the context of online software downloading. The descriptive analysis suggests a significant superstar download pattern and also the emergence of the long tail. Using the quantile regression technique, we find the significant interaction effect between online user reviews and product variety on software download. We find that the impacts of both positive and negative user reviews are weakened as product variety goes up. In addition, the increase in product variety reduces the impact of user reviews on popular products more than it does on niche products. After taking the interaction effect into account, we find that the overall impact of the increased product variety helps niche products to get more downloads. These results highlight the importance of considering the intricate interplay between demand side and supply side factors in the long tail and online word-of-mouth research.
The Mens Rea of The Crime of Aggression

The starting point for this exploration of the mens rea of the crime of aggression is its elements. The elements are an official ICC document clarifying the culpable mental state that applies to each aspect of the conduct, consequences, and circumstances constituting the crime. They are meant to “assist the Court in the interpretation and application” of the Rome Statute. The first and still the most intrepid scholar to brave the elements was Professor Roger Clark. As a diplomatic representative for Samoa, he played a leading role in the drafting of the elements. Clark later wrote a paper in 2001 about this exercise — he called it anthropology of treaty-making — which also amounted to an elaboration on the work of the Preparatory Commission. His 2008 article, published in the New Zealand Yearbook of International Law, examines the way the elements of crimes were employed by the judges in the early jurisprudence of the ICC. In an article published just before the ICC Review Conference, Clark writes about negotiating the elements of the fledgling crime of aggression. This 2009 paper includes a revealing, if brief, discussion of the mens rea of the crime. Two other sources are foundational to this analysis of the mens rea of the crime of aggression. In April 2009, as the work of the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression (“SWGCA”) was wrapping up, a small cadre of legal experts and diplomats was invited to an informal retreat in Montreux by the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs to draft the elements of the crime of aggression. Frances Angaddi, Greg French, and James Potter, legal experts and diplomatic representatives from Australia, contributed a chapter to the Crime of Aggression Library about this meeting. SWGCA Chair Christian Wenaweser and his team then based their 2009 Chairman’s Non-paper on the Elements of Crimes, the other foundational source, on the work of the Montreux group. With only minor changes, the elements of the crime of aggression conceptualized in Montreux became the official elements adopted alongside the definition and jurisdictional conditions of the crime at the 2010 Review Conference in Kampala. The work of Clark, Anggadi et al., and Chairman Wenaweser are, therefore, the starting points analyzing the elements of the crime of aggression and its defenses.
The Prevalence of the Disposition Effect in Mutual Funds’ Trades

U.S. equity mutual funds, on average, prefer realization of capital losses to capital gains. Nevertheless, a substantial fraction exhibits the disposition effect of realizing gains more readily than losses. My analysis suggests that learning effects have reduced the manifestation of the disposition effect over time, implying that academic research has influenced industry practices. When funds experience outflows and are managed by teams of portfolio managers, they are more susceptible to selling disproportionately more winners than losers. Disposition-driven behavior affects investment style, causing lower market betas and characteristics of value-oriented and contrarian styles, but has no observable effect on fund performance.
Firm-Value Effects of Carbon Emissions and Carbon Disclosures

ABSTRACT: Using hand-collected carbon emissions data for 2006 to 2008 that were voluntarily disclosed to the Carbon Disclosure Project by S&P 500 firms, we examine the effects on firm value of carbon emissions and of the act of voluntarily disclosing carbon emissions. Correcting for self-selection bias from managers' decisions to disclose carbon emissions, we find that, on average, for every additional thousand metric tons of carbon emissions, firm value decreases by $212,000, where the median emissions for the disclosing firms in our sample are 1.07 million metric tons. We also examine the firm-value effects of managers' decisions to disclose carbon emissions. We find that the median value of firms that disclose their carbon emissions is about $2.3 billion higher than that of comparable non-disclosing firms. Our results indicate that the markets penalize all firms for their carbon emissions, but a further penalty is imposed on firms that do not disclose emissions information. The results are consistent w...
The Conspiracy of Law and the State in Anatole France's "Crainquebille"; or Law and Literature Comes of Age

This work by James Redwood briefly introduces the maturation of the “Law and Literature” movement, and the novelty of written works designed as “profitable tales” for the edification of lawyers and legal thinking. Redwood explores the plot of Anatole France’s “Crainquebille” as one such profitable article, making note of four elements worthy of note for legal analysis. First Redwood identifies and discusses a similar historical account, upon which the plot of “Crainquebille” is loosely based. Following next is discussion of the apparent “legal conspiracy” among accused, advocate and judge (which appears designed to culminate in the “inevitable conviction” of the accused for purposes of affirming state legitimacy and power). This in turn leads to discussion of France’s perception of the justice system as an infernal machine designed to “literally manufacture and churn out convictions of carefully selected victims in order to maintain social order and established injustice.” Finally, the piece approaches France’s suggestion, that a judge – capable and willing to inject humanity and compassion into the bar – who “lives and breathes the ‘true spirit of the law’ rather than blindly follow its letter, may be the solution to such a vexatious problem.
Dissing disclosure: just what the doctor ordered.

This article traces the development of a patient's right to medical self-determination. It demonstrates that although this right has been boldly proclaimed in court rhetoric, it has been carefully constrained in court decisionmaking. In delineating the duty on physicians to disclose information essential for their patients to make their own decisions, courts have responded more to physician resistance than to patient need. To date, the tort doctrine of informed consent has proven inadequate to achieve true patient autonomy. The article explains why managed care constraints on insurance-covered treatment options and on physician disclosure of noncovered options warrants a reconsideration and expansion of the disclosure duty. Guiding principles are proposed to assure that patients are informed of medically appropriate treatment options even if their insurance will not pay for them.
An Argument Against the Social Fact Thesis (and Some Additional Preliminary Steps Towards a New Conception of Legal Positivism)

According to the view almost universally accepted by legal philosophers, what distinguishes legal positivism from other legal theories is its commitment to the so-called social fact thesis. According to that thesis, the existence of a law, or the legal validity of a norm, is ultimately a matter of some facts about the psychology and/or behavior of a group of people. I argue in this paper that once we take seriously the normative nature of internal legal judgments, we come to realize that the social fact thesis (at least as commonly formulated) is incorrect. In making internal legal judgments, we commit to act according to some norms or principles. It follows that the existence of a law or the legal validity of a norm is ultimately a normative, rather than a factual, matter. Instead of concluding that legal positivism should be rejected in favor of some alternative legal theory, I conclude that the standard way of conceiving legal positivism should be rejected in favor of a more plausible conception.
When Value Trumps Health in a Supersized World

Abstract Marketers often offer consumers the option to “supersize” a food purchase intended for immediate consumption. Supersized products may be attractive to consumers from the standpoint of the unit pricing because ordering a larger size of the same product results in a per-unit savings and offers consumers the opportunity to meet their value-based financial goals. In this article, the authors show that such pricing strategies not only lead to greater purchase and consumption but do so by affecting important consumer goals in unrelated domains—namely, by decreasing the importance placed on health goals. Although supersized pricing can have a powerful effect on purchase behavior, providing health cues can prevent the decreased focus on health. In addition, supersized pricing can be used to increase size choice of healthy foods. The authors discuss the study's contributions to theory, particularly for understanding decisions regarding the pursuit of multiple goals and, more specifically, those that lie a...
What are Data Insights to Professional Visualization Users

While many visualization researchers have attempted to define data insights, little is known about how visualization users perceive them. We interviewed 23 professional users of end-user visualization platforms (e.g., Tableau and Power BI) about their experiences with data insights. We report on seven characteristics of data insights based on interviewees’ descriptions. Grounded in these characteristics, we propose practical implications for creating tools that aim to automatically communicate data insights to users.
Asymptotic analysis of extended two-dimensional narrow capture problems

In this paper, we extend our recent work on two-dimensional diffusive search-and-capture processes with multiple small targets (narrow capture problems) by considering an asymptotic expansion of th...
Sharp constants of approximation theory. V. An asymptotic equality related to polynomials with given Newton polyhedra

Abstract Let V ⊂ R m be a convex body, symmetric about all coordinate hyperplanes, and let P a V , a ≥ 0 , be a set of all algebraic polynomials whose Newton polyhedra are subsets of aV. We prove a limit equality as a → ∞ between the sharp constant in the multivariate Markov-Bernstein-Nikolskii type inequalities for polynomials from P a V and the corresponding constant for entire functions of exponential type with the spectrum in V.
Robust control of nonlinear systems: compensating for uncertainty

We propose a new approach to robust control of nonlinear systems. The approach is indirect in the sense that we will translate a robust control problem into an optimal control problem and apply optimal control methods to solve the robust control problem. We show that the method can be applied to nonlinear systems that satisfy the matching condition.
Component analysis of bio-asphalt binder using crumb rubber modifier and guayule resin as an innovative asphalt replacer

Abstract This research seeks to interpret the component analysis of an innovative bio-asphalt binder using guayule resin at high concentrations and crumb rubber modifier (CRM). Such asphalt modification aims to minimize the dependency on base asphalt and provide new solutions concerning sustainable, flexible pavement industry. Guayule resin is a promising bioresource for asphalt replacement. The provided interpretation could help in understanding the asphalt-rubber-guayule interaction mechanism. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), supported by thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), was used to investigate the component analyses of guayule resin composition, asphalt-guayule interaction, and asphalt-rubber-guayule interaction, followed by oxidative aging behavior. Additionally, the rheological properties at high and intermediate temperatures were provided to link the microscale properties with the final product performance. The study clarified the distinct carbon and hydrogen compositional elements of guayule resin. Asphalt and guayule resin had similarities in component composition and rheological behavior with temperature susceptibility. Asphalt-guayule interaction yielded a physical blending, with no chemical reaction. Rubber seems to dissolve in both asphalt-rubber and asphalt-rubber-guayule interactions evenly. Devulcanization occurred, resulting in a partial migration of CRM polymeric components to the liquid binder. This was reflected in the enhanced performance of asphalt-rubber-guayule blends at high temperatures. However, due to the strong oxidation bonding chains attributed to guayule resin, the oxidative aging negatively affected the guayule-based binder performance reflected on the intermediate temperature performance. The mix performance was initiated with the guayule-based binder's successful performance against rutting susceptibility, comparative to the base asphalt.
Robust and efficient swarm communication topologies for hostile environments

Abstract Swarm Intelligence-based optimization techniques rely strongly on information communicated among agents during the search. These algorithms are generally used for solving challenging problems where the search function landscape, typically highly nonlinear, is not adequately known a priori and there are multiple local optima that could result in premature convergence for many algorithms. Furthermore, in certain applications, the search environment is hostile in the sense that the agents, and/or their communication channels, could get disrupted during the search, thereby adversely impacting the search performance. Such disruptions change the communication topology of the agents and hence the information available to them, ultimately influencing the performance of the algorithm. Here, we present a study of the impact of loss of agents on performance as a function of the initial network configuration. We use particle swarm optimization to optimize an objective function with multiple sub-optimal regions in a hostile environment and study its performance for a range of network topologies with loss of agents. The results reveal interesting trade-offs between efficiency, robustness, and overall performance for different topologies that are analyzed to discover general features of networks that maximize performance. We observe that small-world networks perform well under hostile conditions.
In a nutshell, a reciprocal transplant experiment reveals local adaptation and fitness trade-offs in response to urban evolution in an acorn-dwelling ant.

Urban-driven evolution is widely evident, but whether these changes confer fitness benefits and thus represent adaptive urban evolution is less clear. We performed a multi-year field reciprocal transplant experiment of acorn-dwelling ants across urban and rural environments. Fitness responses were consistent with local adaptation: we found a survival advantage of the 'home' and 'local' treatments compared to 'away' and 'foreign' treatments. Seasonal bias in survival was consistent with evolutionary patterns of gains and losses in thermal tolerance traits across the urbanization gradient. Rural ants in the urban environment were more vulnerable in the summer, putatively due to low heat tolerance, and urban ants in the rural environment were more vulnerable in winter, putatively due to an evolved loss of cold tolerance. The results for fitness via fecundity were also generally consistent with local adaptation, if somewhat more complex. Urban-origin ants produced more alates in their home versus away environment, and rural-origin ants had a local advantage in the rural environment. Overall, the magnitude of local adaptation was lower for urban ants in the novel urban environment compared with rural ants adapted to the ancestral rural environment, adding further evidence that species might not keep pace with anthropogenic change. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Cryptocurrency Solutions to Enable Micro-payments in Consumer IoT

Blockchain based cryptocurrencies have received great attention but long confirmation times of transactions hinder its adoption for micro-payments. Payment network is one of the solutions proposed to address the scalability issue. It transforms the problem into a routing problem by leveraging Hash Time Locked Contracts (HTLC). Payment networks possess unique characteristics to be considered when routing protocol is designed. Channels must stay balanced to have a sustainable network. In this paper, we present a payment network design that aims to keep the channels balanced by using a common weight policy across the network. We additionally utilize multi-point connection for unbalanced payment scenarios. The results show that we can keep the channels in the network more equally balanced compared to minimal fee approach and multiple connections from customers to stores increases the success ratio.
On-Demand Spatiotemporal Programming of Collective Cell Migration Via Bioelectric Stimulation

Directed cell migration is critical across biological processes spanning healing to cancer invasion, yet no tools allow such migration to be interactively guided. We present a new bioreactor that harnesses electrotaxis — directed cell migration along electric field gradients — by integrating multiple independent electrodes under computer control to dynamically program electric field patterns, and hence steer cell migration. Using this platform, we programmed and characterized multiple precise, two-dimensional collective migration maneuvers in renal epithelia and primary skin keratinocyte ensembles. First, we demonstrated on-demand, 90-degree collective turning. Next, we developed a universal electrical stimulation scheme capable of programming arbitrary 2D migration maneuvers such as precise angular turns and directing cells to migrate in a complete circle. Our stimulation scheme proves that cells effectively time-average electric field cues, helping to elucidate the transduction time scales in electrotaxis. Together, this work represents a fundamentally different platform for controlling cell migration with broad utility across fields.
Two-Component Mixture Model in the Presence of Covariates

In this article, we study a generalization of the two-groups model in the presence of covariates—a problem that has recently received much attention in the statistical literature due to its applica...
The QUICK scheme is a third‐order finite‐volume scheme with point‐valued numerical solutions

In this paper, we resolve the ever-present confusion over the QUICK scheme: it is a second-order scheme or a third-order scheme. The QUICK scheme, as proposed in the original reference [B. P. Leonard, Comput. Methods. Appl. Mech. Eng., 19, (1979), 59-98], is a third-order (not second-order) finite-volume scheme for the integral form of a general nonlinear conservation law with point-valued solutions stored at cell centers as numerical solutions. Third-order accuracy is proved by a careful and detailed truncation error analysis and demonstrated by a series of thorough numerical tests. The QUICK scheme requires a careful spatial discretization of a time derivative to preserve third-order accuracy for unsteady problems. Two techniques are discussed, including the QUICKEST scheme of Leonard. Discussions are given on how the QUICK scheme is mistakenly found to be second-order accurate. This paper is intended to serve as a reference to clarify any confusion about third-order accuracy of the QUICK scheme and also as the basis for clarifying third-order unstructured-grid schemes as we will discuss in a subsequent paper.
Payments to Pediatricians in the Sunshine Act

Background and objectives Under the Sunshine Act of the Affordable Care Act, pharmaceutical and product industry payments to physicians are reported in a large public database containing 11.37 million records totaling $6.45 billion of payments. Patients have access to this database through cms.gov/openpayments. Whether or not digital publication of these data affect patient care or provider and patient perceptions is unknown. The goal of our study was to characterize payments received by Pediatricians in the first full year of disclosures …
Dual dynamic programming for multi-scale mixed-integer MPC

Abstract We propose a dual dynamic integer programming (DDIP) framework for solving multi-scale mixed-integer model predictive control (MPC) problems. Such problems arise in applications that involve long horizons and/or fine temporal discretizations as well as mixed-integer states and controls (e.g., scheduling logic and discrete actuators). The approach uses a nested cutting-plane scheme that performs forward and backward sweeps along the time horizon to adaptively approximate cost-to-go functions. The DDIP scheme proposed can handle general MPC formulations with mixed-integer controls and states and can perform forward-backward sweeps over block time partitions. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed scheme by solving mixed-integer MPC problems that arise in the scheduling of central heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) plants. We show that the proposed scheme is scalable and dramatically outperforms state-of-the-art mixed-integer solvers.
Comparative Genomics and Environmental Distribution of Large dsDNA Viruses in the Family Asfarviridae

The family Asfarviridae is a group of nucleo-cytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) of which African swine fever virus (ASFV) is well-characterized. Recently the discovery of several Asfarviridae members other than ASFV has suggested that this family represents a diverse and cosmopolitan group of viruses, but the genomics and distribution of this family have not been studied in detail. To this end we analyzed five complete genomes and 35 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) of viruses from this family to shed light on their evolutionary relationships and environmental distribution. The Asfarvirus MAGs derive from diverse marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats, underscoring the broad environmental distribution of this family. We present phylogenetic analyses using conserved marker genes and whole-genome comparison of pairwise average amino acid identity (AAI) values, revealing a high level of genomic divergence across disparate Asfarviruses. Further, we found that Asfarviridae genomes encode genes with diverse predicted metabolic roles and detectable sequence homology to proteins in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, highlighting the genomic chimerism that is a salient feature of NCLDV. Our read mapping from Tara oceans metagenomic data also revealed that three Asfarviridae MAGs were present in multiple marine samples, indicating that they are widespread in the ocean. In one of these MAGs we identified four marker genes with > 95% AAI to genes sequenced from a virus that infects the dinoflagellate Heterocapsa circularisquama (HcDNAV). This suggests a potential host for this MAG, which would thereby represent a reference genome of a dinoflagellate-infecting giant virus. Together, these results show that Asfarviridae are ubiquitous, comprise similar sequence divergence as other NCLDV families, and include several members that are widespread in the ocean and potentially infect ecologically important protists.