cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Born Under a Lucky Star: Financial Aid, College Completion, Labor Supply, and Credit Constraints

Financial aid can affect both college enrollment and graduation. The effects on graduation can be driven by students being induced to enroll by financial aid, students who would have enrolled anyway graduating as a result of the financial aid, or both. This study isolates the effect of financial aid on the second group by examining a change in aid that did not change enrollment. I study a discontinuous change in the amount of aid available to students who meet the age cutoff for financial independence. I find that additional aid causes some university seniors to graduate one year earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Hilbert bases and lecture hall partitions

In the interest of finding the minimum additive generating set for the set of $${\varvec{s}}$$ -lecture hall partitions, we compute the Hilbert bases for the $${\varvec{s}}$$ -lecture hall cones in certain cases. In particular, we determine the Hilbert bases for two well-studied families of sequences, namely the $$1\mod k$$ sequences and the $$\ell $$ -sequences. Additionally, we provide a characterization of the Hilbert bases for $${\varvec{u}}$$ -generated Gorenstein $${\varvec{s}}$$ -lecture hall cones in low dimensions.
Coverings by convex bodies and inscribed balls

Let H be a Hilbert space. For a closed convex body A denote by r(A) the supremum of the radiuses of balls contained in A. We prove that Σ∞ n=1 r(A n ) > r(A) for every covering of a convex closed body A C H by a sequence of convex closed bodies An, n ∈ N. It looks like this fact is new even for triangles in a 2-dimensional space.
The impact of jumps on carry trade returns

Abstract This paper investigates how jump risks are priced in currency markets. We find that currencies whose changes are more sensitive to negative market jumps provide significantly higher expected returns. The positive risk premium constitutes compensation for the extreme losses during periods of market turmoil. Using the empirical findings, we propose a jump modified carry trade strategy, which has approximately two-percentage-point (per annum) higher returns than the regular carry trade strategy. These findings result from the fact that negative jump betas are significantly related to the riskiness of currencies and business conditions.
Newtonian Program Analysis via Tensor Product

Recently, Esparza et al. generalized Newton’s method—a numerical-analysis algorithm for finding roots of real-valued functions—to a method for finding fixed-points of systems of equations over semirings. Their method provides a new way to solve interprocedural dataflow-analysis problems. As in its real-valued counterpart, each iteration of their method solves a simpler “linearized” problem.One of the reasons this advance is exciting is that some numerical analysts have claimed that “‘all’ effective and fast iterative [numerical] methods are forms (perhaps very disguised) of Newton’s method.” However, there is an important difference between the dataflow-analysis and numerical-analysis contexts: When Newton’s method is used in numerical-analysis problems, commutativity of multiplication is relied on to rearrange an expression of the form “a a X a b + c a X a d” into “(aab + cad)aX.” Equations with such expressions correspond to path problems described by regular languages. In contrast, when Newton’s method is used for interprocedural dataflow analysis, the “multiplication” operation involves function composition and hence is non-commutative: “aaXab + caXad” cannot be rearranged into “(aab + cad)aX.” Equations with such expressions correspond to path problems described by linear context-free languages (LCFLs).In this article, we present an improved technique for solving the LCFL sub-problems produced during successive rounds of Newton’s method. Our method applies to predicate abstraction, on which most of today’s software model checkers rely.
Photon echo in exciton-plasmon nanomaterials: A time-dependent signature of strong coupling

We investigate the dynamics of the photon echo exhibited by exciton-plasmon systems under strong coupling conditions. Using a self-consistent model based on coupled Maxwell-Bloch equations, we investigate the femtosecond time dynamics of ensembles of interacting molecules optically coupled to surface plasmon supporting materials. It is shown that observed photon echoes under a two pulse pump-probe sequence are highly dependent on various material parameters such as molecular concentration and periodicity. Simulations of photon echoes in exciton-plasmon materials reveal a unique signature of the strong exciton-plasmon coupling, namely, a double-peak structure in spectra of recorded echo signals. This phenomenon is shown to be related to hybrid states (upper and lower polaritons) in exciton-plasmon systems under strong coupling conditions. It is also demonstrated that the double-peak echo is highly sensitive to mild deviations of the coupling from resonant conditions making it a great tool for ultrafast probes.
Recent trends in the management of localized prostate cancer: Results from the National Cancer Data Base.

5066 Background: The management of localized prostate cancer (PC) is evolving. Using a large national database, we sought to analyze recent trends in practice patterns for this common disease in th...
Estimating the effects of second-line therapy for type 2 diabetes mellitus: retrospective cohort study

Objective Metformin is the recommended initial drug treatment in type 2 diabetes mellitus, but there is no clearly preferred choice for an additional drug when indicated. We compare the counterfactual drug effectiveness in lowering glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels and effect on body mass index (BMI) of four diabetes second-line drug classes using electronic health records. Study design and setting Retrospective analysis of electronic health records of US-based patients in the Explorys database using causal inference methodology to adjust for patient censoring and confounders. Participants and exposures Our cohort consisted of more than 40 000 patients with type 2 diabetes, prescribed metformin along with a drug out of four second-line drug classes—sulfonylureas, thiazolidinediones, dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists—during the years 2000–2015. Roughly, 17 000 of these patients were followed for 12 months after being prescribed a second-line drug. Main outcome measures HbA1c and BMI of these patients after 6 and 12 months following treatment. Results We demonstrate that all four drug classes reduce HbA1c levels, but the effect of sulfonylureas after 6 and 12 months of treatment is less pronounced compared with other classes. We also estimate that DPP-4 inhibitors decrease body weight significantly more than sulfonylureas and thiazolidinediones. Conclusion Our results are in line with current knowledge on second-line drug effectiveness and effect on BMI. They demonstrate that causal inference from electronic health records is an effective way for conducting multitreatment causal inference studies.
Documenting Myanmar's social transformation : insights from six rounds of research on livelihoods and social change in rural communities

This paper presents the initial findings from six rounds of research conducted between 2012 and 2016 on livelihoods and social change in rural Myanmar, undertaken as part of the Qualitative Social and Economic Monitoring initiative. These data provide unique insights into the ways in which broad processes of democratization and globalization -- put into effect following Myanmar's historic reforms beginning in 2011 -- are experienced at the village level. The analysis focuses on three key aspects of the "social contract": local governance mechanisms, shifting expectations of the state, and changes in the types of networks connecting villagers to regional and global markets. Remarkable social progress has been made in Myanmar since 2012, yet there are no grounds for complacency. Managing ongoing transformations in these three domains, in ways perceived to be locally legitimate and effective, will be crucial if the initial gains are to be consolidated and expanded.
Subsidizing Health Insurance for Low-Income Adults: Evidence from Massachusetts

How much are low- income individuals willing to pay for health insurance, and what are the implications for insurance markets? Using administrative data from Massachusetts’ subsidized insurance exchange, we exploit discontinuities in the subsidy schedule to estimate willingness to pay and costs of insurance among low- income adults. As subsidies decline, insurance take- up falls rapidly, dropping about 25 percent for each $40 increase in monthly enrollee premiums. Marginal enrollees tend to be lower- cost, indicating adverse selection into insurance. But across the entire distribution we can observe (approximately the bottom 70 percent of the willingness to pay distribution) enrollees’ willingness to pay is always less than half of their own expected costs that they impose on the insurer. As a result, we estimate that take- up will be highly incomplete even with generous subsidies. If enrollee premiums were 25 percent of insurers’ average costs, at most half of potential enrollees would buy insurance; even premiums subsidized to 10 percent of average costs would still leave at least 20 percent uninsured. We briefly consider potential explanations for these findings and their normative implications.
Contractility in an extensile system

Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, compute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors, is a canonical example of biological active matter, which is responsible for cargo transport, cell motility, division, and morphology. Prior work on cytoskeletal active matter systems showed either extensile or contractile dynamics. Here, we demonstrate a cytoskeletal system that can control the direction of the network dynamics to be either extensile, contractile, or static depending on the concentration of filaments or weak, transient crosslinkers through systematic variation of the crosslinker or microtubule concentrations. Based on these new observations and our previously published results, we created a simple one-dimensional model of the interaction of filaments within a bundle. Despite its simplicity, our model recapitulates the observed activities of our experimental system, implying that the dynamics of our finite networks of bundles are driven by the local filament–filament interactions within the bundle. Finally, we show that contractile phases can result in autonomously motile networks that resemble cells. Our results reveal a fundamentally important aspect of cellular self-organization: weak, transient interacting species can tune their interaction strength directly by tuning the local concentration to act like a rheostat. In this case, when the weak, transient proteins crosslink microtubules, they can tune the dynamics of the network to change from extensile to contractile to static. Our experiments and model allow us to gain a deeper understanding of cytoskeletal dynamics and provide an new understanding of the importance of weak, transient interactions to soft and biological systems.
Coexistence of Outdoor Wi-Fi and Radar at 3.5 GHz

Coexistence between radar and outdoor wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) needs thorough study since the IEEE 802.11 working group (WG) opposed the latest rules in 3550–3700 MHz (the 3.5 GHz band) that require “exclusion zones.” This letter proposes a method that suppresses Wi-Fi-to-radar (WtR) interference, in which a Wi-Fi transmitter (TX) is selected to avoid beam angles toward the victim radar. It is distinguished from prior schemes since it ensures that the Wi-Fi remains operable while suppressing the WtR interference.
Public policy and the initiative and referendum: a survey with some new evidence

This paper surveys the extensive literature that seeks to estimate the effect of the initiative and referendum on public policy. The evidence on the referendum uniformly finds that requiring voter approval for new spending (or new debt) results in lower spending (or lower debt). The initiative process is associated with lower spending and taxes in American states and Swiss cantons, but with higher spending in cities. The initiative is consistently associated with more conservative social policies. Policies are more likely to be congruent with majority opinion in states with the initiative process than states without the initiative, suggesting that direct democracy allows the majority to counteract the power of special interests in policy making.
Triangulation and embedding using small sets of beacons

Concurrent with recent theoretical interest in the problem of metric embedding, a growing body of research in the networking community has studied the distance matrix defined by node-to-node latencies in the Internet, resulting in a number of recent approaches that approximately embed this distance matrix into low-dimensional Euclidean space. There is a fundamental distinction, however, between the theoretical approaches to the embedding problem and this recent Internet-related work: in addition to computational limitations, Internet measurement algorithms operate under the constraint that it is only feasible to measure distances for a linear (or near-linear) number of node pairs, and typically in a highly structured way. Indeed, the most common framework for Internet measurements of this type is a beacon-based approach one chooses uniformly at random a constant number of nodes (“beacons”) in the network, each node measures its distance to all beacons, and one then has access to only these measurements for the remainder of the algorithm. Moreover, beacon-based algorithms are often designed not for embedding but for the more basic problem of triangulation, in which one uses the triangle inequality to infer the distances that have not been measured.Here we give algorithms with provable performance guarantees for beacon-based triangulation and embedding. We show that in addition to multiplicative error in the distances, performance guarantees for beacon-based algorithms typically must include a notion of slack—a certain fraction of all distances may be arbitrarily distorted. For metric spaces of bounded doubling dimension (which have been proposed as a reasonable abstraction of Internet latencies), we show that triangulation-based distance reconstruction with a constant number of beacons can achieve multiplicative error 1 + δ on a 1 − e fraction of distances, for arbitrarily small constants δ and e. For this same class of metric spaces, we give a beacon-based embedding algorithm that achieves constant distortion on a 1 − e fraction of distances; this provides some theoretical justification for the success of the recent Global Network Positioning algorithm of Ng and Zhang [2002], and it forms an interesting contrast with lower bounds showing that it is not possible to embed all distances in a doubling metric space with constant distortion. We also give results for other classes of metric spaces, as well as distributed algorithms that require only a sparse set of distances but do not place too much measurement load on any one node.
Dynamic inductive tuning of Fano-resonant meta-surfaces using plasmonic response of graphene in mid-infrared

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that electrically gated single-layer graphene can be used to inductively tune the infrared optical response of Fano-resonant meta-surfaces. Several implementations will be introduced: graphene of the meta-surface, graphene directly under the meta-surface, and graphene separated by a thin spacer from the meta-surface. Both electrostatic and chemical doping of graphene will be discussed and supporting experimental results presented. Finally, we will demonstrate how the spectral shifts of metamaterials resonances introduced by the graphene can be utilized to extract graphene's electronic properties such as the complex-valued resistivity.
Subwavelength optical elements (SOEs) and nanofabrications - a path to integrate optical communication components on a chip

Summary form only given. Subwavelength optical elements (SOEs) are a special class of optical elements, where the feature size is less than the wavelength of light, so that there is no non-zero order diffraction. SOEs behave fundamentally differently from bulk (i.e. ray) optics or diffraction optics. First, SOEs can create new optical functions that are unavailable in bulk or diffractive optics. Second, SOEs can perform an optical function with a size that is orders of magnitude smaller than that of a bulk optical element. And third, SOEs perform different optical functions by using different geometries (shape and size) of features but the same materials, rather than different materials as in bulk optics. The second and the third properties of SOEs make them particularly suited for integrated optical communication elements on a chip and can be manufactured at the wafer scale.
Recognizing whether sensors are on the same body

In an open mobile health (mHealth) sensing system, users will be able to seamlessly pair sensors with their cellphone and expect the system to just work. This ubiquity of sensors, however, creates the potential for users to accidentally wear sensors that are not paired with their own cellphone. Our method probabilistically detects this situation by finding correlations between embedded accelerometers in the cellphone and sensor. We evaluate our method over a dataset of seven individuals with sensors in various positions on their body and experimentally show that our method is capable of achieving an accuracy of 85%.
Two-dimensional arrays for medical ultrasound

The design, fabrication and evaluation of two-dimensional transducer arrays are described for medical ultrasound imaging. A 4 x 32, 2.8 MHz array was developed to use new signal processing techniques for improved B-scan imaging including elevation focusing, phase correction and synthetic aperture imaging. Laboratory measurements from typical array elements showed 50 omega insertion loss of -56 dB, -6 dB fractional bandwidth of 43%, interelement crosstalk of -19 dB, and -6 dB pulse-echo angular response of 62 degrees. Simulations of pulse-echo beam plots have shown grating lobes 20 dB below the main lobe at +/- 7 degrees in the elevation direction. The complete 2-D array has been used for measurements of phase aberrations in breast, and the individual 32 element linear arrays have been used to obtain conventional B-scans. Several 16 x 16 arrays have also been developed for high speed volumetric imaging. These include 96 transmit elements and 32 receive channels. With a lambda/4 matching layer, laboratory measurements show 50 omega insertion loss of -72 dB, -6 dB fractional bandwidth of 63%, interelement crosstalk of -29 dB and -6 dB angular response of 25 degrees. Pulse-echo sensitivity was improved by 21 dB through the use of integrated circuit preamplifiers of high impedance mounted in the transducer handle. In vivo cardiac, abdominal, and obstetric B-scans with elevation focusing, as well as high speed C-scans, have been obtained with these 2-D arrays.
Use of the Appendix to Replace a Ureter. Case Report

The vermiform appendix was utilized as a conduit from the right renal pelvis to the left ureter with satisfactory function after 3.5 yr.
Optic Atrophy Induced by Vincristine

Bilateral optic atrophy developed in a 15-year-old patient receiving concomitant neuraxis radiation therapy and weekly vincristine sulfate for medulloblastoma. Other neurologic manifestations that have been associated with vincristine therapy, including inappropriate secretion of antidiuretic hormone, hypertension, confusion, and a severe peripheral neuropathy, were also observed. Neither increased intracranial pressure nor active tumor was identified. Recovery of visual function followed discontinuation of vincristine. Other neurotoxicities also reversed with drug withdrawal. Visual loss occurring in a patient receiving vincristine should alert the physician to the possibility that the process is drug related. This complication may be more likely in patients receiving concomitant or previous cranial radiation therapy. Other central neurotoxicities of vincristine may also be accentuated by neuraxis radiation. It is recommended that vincristine be discontinued in this situation if an aggressive search for a structural anatomic lesion in the optic mechanism is unrevealing, as the prognosis for recovery of visual function appears excellent.
Second Malignancies Diagnosed in Patients Receiving Chemotherapy at the Pennsylvania Hospital

During the past 15 years, the records of 2,020 patients who received chemotherapy on the surgical oncology, chemotherapy service at the Pennsylvania Hospital were reviewed. Thirty-five patients had pathologically confirmed second independent malignant tumors (not recurrences). The second cancers that developed were varied. The patients who developed these second malignancies ranged in age from 35 to 77 years (24 females, 11 males). The time interval involved was two to 102 months. Nine patients in this group of second malignancies received prior radiation therapy. The following is a list of the second cancers. There were 8 colons, 5 ovaries, 5 lungs, 6 acute myelogenous leukemias, 1 esophagus, 2 bladders, 2 epidermoid carcinomas of the skin, 2 melanomas, 1 chronic lymphatic leukemia, 1 breast cancer, 1 non-Hodgkin's malignant lymphoma, and 1 stomach cancer. The majority of second malignant tumors were amenable to some form of therapy, ie, surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. However, all of the acute myelogenous leukemias were totally refractory to any therapeutic modalities and rapidly expired. The majority of second cancers developed in patients receiving adjuvant chemotherapy. This is a patient population with a much longer expected survival time, particularly when compared to patients receiving chemotherapy for advanced disease. Twenty-five of the 34 second cancers developed in patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy for breast (14) or colorectal (11) cancers. The etiology of the second malignancies is very difficult to determine. However, alkylating agents appeared to be the possible etiologic agent involved in the development of acute myelogenous leukemia.
Congestion Management of Freeway Traffic Using Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract In today's freeway traffic there is very little control that can effectively influence traffic flow and manage congestion. To alleviate congestion, roadway neural controllers that generate the speed commands to be followed by vehicles in each section of the lane in order to achieve a desired density distribution, are designed and simulated in an automated highway environment. Simulations are used to demonstrate that feedback control on the macroscopic level could bring dramatic improvements on the characteristics of traffic flow during incidents.
Dynamic Matching in School Choice: Efficient Seat Reassignment After Late Cancellations

In the school choice market, where scarce public school seats are assigned to students, a key operational issue is how to reassign seats that are vacated after an initial round of centralized assig...
Determinants of Cross-Border Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement: The Role of Trade Sanctions

With growing trade in a global economy, the desire for trade protection becomes increasingly important. One aspect of trade protection that has risen to the forefront is the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) across national borders. This article analyzes the determinants of U.S.-filed investigations for alleged IPR cross-border violations using the complete set of Section 337 investigations conducted by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC). By analyzing political, institutional, and economic variables in an industry-level model, we find evidence that investigations are more frequent in industries that face intense import competition among IPR-protected goods. In addition, greater technology access to U.S. patents by respondent firms is found to increase filings, especially in countries where corruption levels are higher.
Predictive Linguistic Features of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is one of the most disabling and difficult to treat of all human medical/health conditions, ranking in the top ten causes of disability worldwide. It has been a puzzle in part due to difficulty in identifying its basic, fundamental components. Several studies have shown that some manifestations of schizophrenia (e.g., the negative symptoms that include blunting of speech prosody, as well as the disorganization symptoms that lead to disordered language) can be understood from the perspective of linguistics. However, schizophrenia research has not kept pace with technologies in computational linguistics, especially in semantics and pragmatics. As such, we examine the writings of schizophrenia patients analyzing their syntax, semantics and pragmatics. In addition, we analyze tweets of (self proclaimed) schizophrenia patients who publicly discuss their diagnoses. For writing samples dataset, syntactic features are found to be the most successful in classification whereas for the less structured Twitter dataset, a combination of features performed the best.
Instantaneous Linkages between Clouds and Large-Scale Meteorology over the Southern Ocean in Observations and a Climate Model

AbstractInstantaneous, coincident, footprint-level satellite observations of cloud properties and radiation taken during austral summer over the Southern Ocean are used to study relationships between clouds and large-scale meteorology. Cloud properties are very sensitive to the strength of vertical motion in the midtroposphere, and low-cloud properties are sensitive to estimated inversion strength, low-level temperature advection, and sea surface temperature. These relationships are quantified. An index for the meteorological anomalies associated with midlatitude cyclones is presented, and it is used to reveal the sensitivity of clouds to the meteorology within the warm and cold sectors of cyclones.The observed relationships between clouds and meteorology are compared to those in the Community Atmosphere Model, version 5 (CAM5), using satellite simulators. Low clouds simulated by CAM5 are too few, are too bright, and contain too much ice. In the cold sector of cyclones, the low clouds are also too sensiti...
Moving out and up: panel data evidence on migration and poverty in Uganda.

This paper examines the relationship between spatial and economic mobility in Uganda using longitudinal data from 2005 through 2012. The study relies on a detailed panel tracking survey and exploits exogenous variation in the spatial intensity of violent conflict, rainfall shocks, distance from the regional capital, and ethnic networks in urban areas. The analysis finds significant welfare gains of 58 percentage points due to migration. However, the returns to migration vary with the direction of the move. Moving to a rural destination yields welfare returns of 56 percentage points; the returns to urban moves, at 65 percentage points, are markedly higher. Policies to capture the welfare gains from migration to cities should focus on further urbanization, the development of road infrastructure, and investments in education for men and women in rural areas.
Mitigating Evasion Attacks to Deep Neural Networks via Region-based Classification

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have transformed several artificial intelligence research areas including computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing. However, recent studies demonstrated that DNNs are vulnerable to adversarial manipulations at testing time. Specifically, suppose we have a testing example, whose label can be correctly predicted by a DNN classifier. An attacker can add a small carefully crafted noise to the testing example such that the DNN classifier predicts an incorrect label, where the crafted testing example is called adversarial example. Such attacks are called evasion attacks. Evasion attacks are one of the biggest challenges for deploying DNNs in safety and security critical applications such as self-driving cars. In this work, we develop new DNNs that are robust to state-of-the-art evasion attacks. Our key observation is that adversarial examples are close to the classification boundary. Therefore, we propose region-based classification to be robust to adversarial examples. Specifically, for a benign/adversarial testing example, we ensemble information in a hypercube centered at the example to predict its label. In contrast, traditional classifiers are point-based classification, i.e., given a testing example, the classifier predicts its label based on the testing example alone. Our evaluation results on MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets demonstrate that our region-based classification can significantly mitigate evasion attacks without sacrificing classification accuracy on benign examples. Specifically, our region-based classification achieves the same classification accuracy on testing benign examples as point-based classification, but our region-based classification is significantly more robust than point-based classification to state-of-the-art evasion attacks.
Deferred Action and the Discretionary State: Migration, Precarity and Resistance

In the United States, the lives of undocumented people have become increasingly precarious due to increased surveillance, enforcement, criminalization, and detention. In this context, deferred acti...
Female executives and corporate cash holdings

ABSTRACTI find that firms led by female top executives hold more cash, partly due to precautionary motives. To overcome endogeneity concerns, I employ several econometric techniques, including an instrumental variable analysis based on a historical event that resulted in a plausibly exogenous variation in the female workforce participation. Overall, my results are consistent with the view that greater risk-aversion leads female executives to hold more cash.
Elliptic Regularization of the Isometric Immersion Problem

We introduce an elliptic regularization of the PDE system representing the isometric immersion of a surface in $$\mathbb {R}^{3}$$ . The regularization is geometric and has a natural variational interpretation.
A Culture that is Hard to Defend: Extralegal Factors in Federal Death Penalty Cases

Empirical research has exposed a troubling pattern of capital punishment in the United States, with extralegal factors such as race, class, and gender strongly correlated with the probability of a death sentence. Capital sentencing also shows significant geographic disparities, although existing research tends to be more descriptive than explanatory. This study offers an alternative conception of local legal culture to explain place-based variation in the outcomes of federal capital trials, accounting for the level of attorney time and expert resources granted by the federal courts to defend against a death sentence. Using frequentist and Bayesian methods—supplemented with expert interviews—we empirically assess the processes determining the total allocation of defense resources in federal death penalty trials at the peak of the federal death penalty—between 1998 and 2004. Our findings strongly connect extralegal factors to the lowest levels of defense resources, which in turn correlate with a higher risk of a death sentence. Far from being idiosyncratic discrepancies, these are systemic and systematic extralegal factors that stand between a defendant and his opportunity to defend against a death sentence. Ultimately, we argue for a reconceptualization of extralegal influences and the relationship between local legal culture and capital case outcomes.
Management bias across multiple accounting estimates

We examine whether managers appear to aggregate bias in multiple subjective accrual estimates to meet or just beat analyst expectations. We also consider whether the updated language in recent PCAOB auditing standards, focusing auditors on the potential for bias across multiple estimates, impacted this method of managing earnings. Using hand-collected data from a sample of manufacturers, we find that meeting or just beating the most recent consensus analyst earnings forecast is positively associated with income-increasing bias aggregated from multiple accounting estimates. We also find that this relation attenuates in the years following the issuance of PCAOB auditing standards. Further analyses reveal that, after these standards were released, firms increased the use of income-increasing, unexpected non-GAAP exclusions to meet or just beat expectations, an alternative technique subject to less auditor scrutiny.
The Capacity of Robust Private Information Retrieval With Colluding Databases

Private information retrieval (PIR) is the problem of retrieving as efficiently as possible, one out of $K$ messages from $N$ non-communicating replicated databases (each holds all $K$ messages) while keeping the identity of the desired message index a secret from each individual database. The information theoretic capacity of PIR (equivalently, the reciprocal of minimum download cost) is the maximum number of bits of desired information that can be privately retrieved per bit of downloaded information. $T$ -private PIR is a generalization of PIR to include the requirement that even if any $T$ of the $N$ databases collude, the identity of the retrieved message remains completely unknown to them. Robust PIR is another generalization that refers to the scenario where we have $M \geq N$ databases, out of which any $M - N$ may fail to respond. For $K$ messages and $M\geq N$ databases out of which at least some $N$ must respond, we show that the capacity of $T$ -private and Robust PIR is $(1+T/N+T^{2}/N^{2}+\cdots +T^{K-1}/N^{K-1})^{-1}$ . The result includes as special cases the capacity of PIR without robustness ( $M=N$ ) or $T$ -privacy constraints ( $T=1$ ).
Programming by Examples: PL Meets ML

Programming by Examples (PBE) involves synthesizing intended programs in an underlying domain-specific language from example-based specifications. PBE systems are already revolutionizing the application domain of data wrangling and are set to significantly impact several other domains including code refactoring.
Validation of QUALAS-T, a health-related quality of life instrument for teenagers with spina bifida

Introduction We aimed to develop and validate a self-reported QUAlity of Life Assessment in Spina bifida for Teenagers (QUALAS-T). Material and methods We drafted a 46-question pilot instrument using a patient-centered comprehensive item generation/refinement process. A group of 13-17 years olds with spina bifida (SB) was recruited online via social media and in person at SB clinics (2013-2015). Healthy controls were recruited during routine pediatrician visits. Final questions were identified based on clinical relevance, factor analysis and domain psychometrics. Teenagers with SB completed the validated generic Kidscreen-27 instrument. Results Median age of 159 participants was 15.2 years (42.0% male, 77.4% Caucasian), similar to 58 controls (p ≥ 0.06). There were 102 online and 57 clinic participants (82.8% of eligible). Patients, parents and an expert panel established face and content validity of the 2-domain, 10-question QUALAS-T. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were high for the Family and Independence and Bladder and Bowel domains (Cronbach's alpha: 0.76-0.78, ICC: 0.72-0.75). The Bladder and Bowel domain is the same for QUALAS-T , QUALAS-A for adults and QUALAS-C for children. Correlations between QUALAS-T domains were low (r = 0.34), indicating QUALAS-T can differentiate between distinct HRQOL components. Correlations between QUALAS-T and Kidscreen-27 were also low (r ≤0.41). QUALAS-T scores were lower in teenagers with SB than without (p <0.0001). Conclusions QUALAS-T is a short, valid HRQOL tool for adolescents with SB, applicable in clinical and research settings. Since the Bladder & Bowel domains for all QUALAS versions are the same, Bladder and Bowel HRQOL can be measured on the same scale from age 8 through adulthood.
Parallel compression/decompression-based datapath architecture for multibeam mask writers

Multibeam electron beam systems will be used in the future for mask writing and for complementary lithography. The major challenges of the multibeam systems are in meeting throughput requirements and in handling the large data volumes associated with writing grayscale data on the wafer. In terms of future communications and computational requirements, Amdahl’s law suggests that a simple increase of computation power and parallelism may not be a sustainable solution. We propose a parallel data compression algorithm to exploit the sparsity of mask data and a grayscale video-like representation of data. To improve the communication and computational efficiency of these systems at the write time, we propose an alternate datapath architecture partly motivated by multibeam direct-write lithography and partly motivated by the circuit testing literature, where parallel decompression reduces clock cycles. We explain a deflection plate architecture inspired by NuFlare Technology’s multibeam mask writing system and how our datapath architecture can be easily added to it to improve performance.
Spatiotemporal organization of exocytosis emerges during neuronal shape change

Neurite elongation and branching in developing neurons requires plasmalemma expansion, hypothesized to occur primarily via exocytosis. We posited that exocytosis in developing neurons and nonneuronal cells would exhibit distinct spatiotemporal organization. We exploited total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy to image vesicle-associated membrane protein (VAMP)–pHluorin—mediated exocytosis in mouse embryonic cortical neurons and interphase melanoma cells, and developed computer-vision software and statistical tools to uncover spatiotemporal aspects of exocytosis. Vesicle fusion behavior differed between vesicle types, cell types, developmental stages, and extracellular environments. Experiment-based mathematical calculations indicated that VAMP2-mediated vesicle fusion supplied excess material for the plasma membrane expansion that occurred early in neuronal morphogenesis, which was balanced by clathrin-mediated endocytosis. Spatial statistics uncovered distinct spatiotemporal regulation of exocytosis in the soma and neurites of developing neurons that was modulated by developmental stage, exposure to the guidance cue netrin-1, and the brain-enriched ubiquitin ligase tripartite motif 9. In melanoma cells, exocytosis occurred less frequently, with distinct spatial clustering patterns.
The Impacts of Climate Change on the Poor in Disadvantaged Regions

AbstractPopulations in developing countries that are located in less-favored agricultural areas (LFAAs)— agricultural lands constrained by difficult terrain, poor soil quality, limited rainfall, et...
Reducing Informational Disadvantages to Improve Cyber Risk Management

Effective cyber risk management should include the use of insurance not only to transfer cyber risk but also to provide incentives for insured enterprises to invest in cyber self-protection. Research indicates that asymmetric information, correlated loss, and interdependent security issues make this difficult if insurers cannot monitor the cybersecurity efforts of the insured enterprises. To address this problem, this paper proposes the Cyber Risk Scoring and Mitigation (CRISM) tool, which estimates cyberattack probabilities by directly monitoring and scoring cyber risk based on assets at risk and continuously updated software vulnerabilities. CRISM also produces risk scores that allow organisations to optimally choose mitigation policies that can potentially reduce insurance premiums.
Correction of Persistent Errors in Arabidopsis Reference Mitochondrial Genomes.

Arabidopsis thaliana remains the foremost model system for plant genetics and genomics, and researchers rely on the accuracy of its genomic resources. The first completely sequenced angiosperm mitochondrial genome was obtained from Arabidopsis C24 ([Unseld et al., 1997][1]), and more recent efforts
The Social Psychology of Property: Looking Beyond Market Exchange

Our social norms and moral values shape our beliefs about the propriety of different types of market exchanges. This review considers social and moral influences on beliefs about property and the c...
Mucinous intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: a distinct variant.

Summary Mucinous variant of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCC) is rare, and its clinicopathological features and prognosis are far less clear. Six patients who had iCCs with more than 50% of mucinous component and 79 conventional iCCs were included in the study. The mean size of mucinous and conventional iCCs was 6.2cm and 6.0cm, respectively. The majority of patients (83%) with mucinous iCC presented at T3 stage or above, compared to 28% of the conventional group (p KRAS G12C mutation and no BRAF or IDH1/2 mutations. Mucinous iCC is a unique variant that constitutes 7.2% of iCCs. It is more immunoreactive for MUC1, MUC2, MUC5AC and MUC6. Unlike adenocarcinomas of colorectal primary, mucinous iCCs are often CK7+/CK20-/CDX2- and microsatellite stable. Patients with mucinous iCC likely present at advanced stage upon diagnosis with shorter survival time compared to the conventional counterparts.
Aminoacyl tRNA synthetase complex interacting multifunctional protein 1 simultaneously binds Glutamyl-Prolyl-tRNA synthetase and scaffold protein aminoacyl tRNA synthetase complex interacting multifunctional protein 3 of the multi-tRNA synthetase complex

Abstract Higher eukaryotes have developed extensive compartmentalization of amino acid (aa) - tRNA coupling through the formation of a multi-synthetase complex (MSC) that is composed of eight aa-tRNA synthetases (ARS) and three scaffold proteins: aminoacyl tRNA synthetase complex interacting multifunctional proteins (AIMP1, 2 and 3). Lower eukaryotes have a much smaller complex while yeast MSC consists of only two ARS (MetRS and GluRS) and one ARS cofactor 1 protein, Arc1p ( Simos et al., 1996 ), the homolog of the mammalian AIMP1. Arc1p is reported to form a tripartite complex with GluRS and MetRS through association of the N-terminus GST-like domains (GST-L) of the three proteins ( Koehler et al., 2013 ). Mammalian AIMP1 has no GST-L domain corresponding to Arc1p N-terminus. Instead, AIMP3, another scaffold protein of 18 kDa composed entirely of a GST-L domain, interacts with Methionyl-tRNA synthetase (MARS) ( Quevillon et al., 1999 ) and Glutamyl-Prolyl-tRNA Synthetase (EPRS) ( Cho et al., 2015 ). Here we report two new interactions between MSC members: AIMP1 binds to EPRS and AIMP1 binds to AIMP3. Interestingly, the interaction between AIMP1 and AIMP3 complex makes it the functional equivalent of a single Arc1p polypeptide in yeast. This interaction is not mapped to AIMP1 N-terminal coiled-coil domain, but rather requires an intact tertiary structure of the entire protein. Since AIMP1 also interacts with AIMP2, all three proteins appear to compose a core docking structure for the eight ARS in the MSC complex.
Learning a Multi-Concept Video Retrieval Model with Multiple Latent Variables

Effective and efficient video retrieval has become a pressing need in the “big video” era. The objective of this work is to provide a principled model for computing the ranking scores of a video in response to one or more concepts, where the concepts could be directly supplied by users or inferred by the system from the user queries. Indeed, how to deal with multi-concept queries has become a central component in modern video retrieval systems that accept text queries. However, it has been long overlooked and simply implemented by weighted averaging of the corresponding concept detectors’ scores. Our approach, which can be considered as a latent ranking SVM, integrates the advantages of various recent works in text and image retrieval, such as choosing ranking over structured prediction, modeling inter-dependencies between querying concepts, and so on. Videos consist of shots, and we use latent variables to account for the mutually complementary cues within and across shots. Concept labels of shots are scarce and noisy. We introduce a simple and effective technique to make our model robust to outliers. Our approach gives superior performance when it is tested on not only the queries seen at training but also novel queries, some of which consist of more concepts than the queries used for training.
Curricular Alienation: Multiculturalism, Tolerance, and Immigrants in Dutch Primary School History Textbooks

The stories found in history textbooks are profound statements about how nations see themselves. Textbooks that exclude certain groups alienate these children, leading to educational disengagement....
The Role of Graphlets in Viral Processes on Networks

Predicting the evolution of viral processes on networks is an important problem with applications arising in biology, the social sciences, and the study of the Internet. In existing works, mean-field analysis based upon degree distribution is used for the prediction of viral spreading across networks of different types. However, it has been shown that degree distribution alone fails to predict the behavior of viruses on some real-world networks and recent attempts have been made to use assortativity to address this shortcoming. In this paper, we show that adding assortativity does not fully explain the variance in the spread of viruses for a number of real-world networks. We propose using the graphlet frequency distribution in combination with assortativity to explain variations in the evolution of viral processes across networks with identical degree distribution. Using a data-driven approach by coupling predictive modeling with viral process simulation on real-world networks, we show that simple regression models based on graphlet frequency distribution can explain over 95% of the variance in virality on networks with the same degree distribution but different network topologies. Our results not only highlight the importance of graphlets but also identify a small collection of graphlets which may have the highest influence over the viral processes on a network.
Dandelion++: Lightweight Cryptocurrency Networking with Formal Anonymity Guarantees

Recent work has demonstrated significant anonymity vulnerabilities in Bitcoin's networking stack. In particular, the current mechanism for broadcasting Bitcoin transactions allows third-party observers to link transactions to the IP addresses that originated them. This lays the groundwork for low-cost, large-scale deanonymization attacks. In this work, we present Dandelion++, a first-principles defense against large-scale deanonymization attacks with near-optimal information-theoretic guarantees. Dandelion++ builds upon a recent proposal called Dandelion that exhibited similar goals. However, in this paper, we highlight some simplifying assumptions made in Dandelion, and show how they can lead to serious deanonymization attacks when violated. In contrast, Dandelion++ defends against stronger adversaries that are allowed to disobey protocol. Dandleion++ is lightweight, scalable, and completely interoperable with the existing Bitcoin network.We evaluate it through experiments on Bitcoin's mainnet (i.e., the live Bitcoin network) to demonstrate its interoperability and low broadcast latency overhead.