cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Implications of Incorporating the Eighth Amendment Prohibition on Excessive Bail

The Eighth Amendment prohibition on “excessive bail” 1 is perhaps the least developed of the criminal clauses in the Bill of Rights. 2 The reasons have nothing to do with a scarcity of complaints about excessive bail in the trial courts. 3 At any given time, about 500,000 criminally accused persons languish in jail in the United States, 4 and not only defense lawyers in individual cases, but legal scholars who have studied the broader spectrum of cases regularly contend that many of these detentions are unnecessary. 5 Yet, claims of excessive bail virtually never receive an airing in the Supreme Court, 6 unlike claims, for example, about unreasonable police invasions of privacy, 7 improper police interrogations, 8 or cruel and unusual punishments. 9 The Court has not
Approximately normal tests for equal predictive accuracy in nested models

Abstract Forecast evaluation often compares a parsimonious null model to a larger model that nests the null model. Under the null that the parsimonious model generates the data, the larger model introduces noise into its forecasts by estimating parameters whose population values are zero. We observe that the mean squared prediction error (MSPE) from the parsimonious model is therefore expected to be smaller than that of the larger model. We describe how to adjust MSPEs to account for this noise. We propose applying standard methods [West, K.D., 1996. Asymptotic inference about predictive ability. Econometrica 64, 1067–1084] to test whether the adjusted mean squared error difference is zero. We refer to nonstandard limiting distributions derived in Clark and McCracken [2001. Tests of equal forecast accuracy and encompassing for nested models. Journal of Econometrics 105, 85–110; 2005a. Evaluating direct multistep forecasts. Econometric Reviews 24, 369–404] to argue that use of standard normal critical values will yield actual sizes close to, but a little less than, nominal size. Simulation evidence supports our recommended procedure.
Neither Transgressive nor Contained: Boundary-Spanning Contention in China

In studies of popular politics a split exists. Some scholars focus on rather tame forms of participation while others become interested mainly when political action spills out onto the streets. This article considers acts located near the boundary between official, prescribed politics and politics by other means. It explores popular pressure that is arguably legal, permissible in some eyes but not in others. The episodes of boundary-spanning contention examined center on implementing elections in rural China. What is to be gained by investigating this form of contention? First, it promises a better understanding of causal processes insofar as it draws attention to state and movement trajectories. Second, it can help close the gap between analysts who study the dynamics of contention and those who are concerned with the consequences of contention. Third, it promises to bring the relationship between states and contentious politics into clearer focus. Finally, studying boundary-spanning acts can help locate a regime across a number of dimensions: what is institutionalized and what is not, what is participation and what is resistance, who is a challenger and who is a polity member, what citizenship entails and who enjoys it.
Technology and the Evolution of the Regulatory State

Modern states increasingly rely on two means of regulating markets: public regulation (by the government) and private self-regulation (by the firms themselves). This study assesses the evolution of the state toward co-regulation by examining, across countries, the incidence of a prominent type of self-regulation: the environmental protection standard ISO 14001. It focuses on technological capabilities as a precursor to the widespread adoption of ISO 14001. Just as technological progress helps to explain differences in economic growth, markets with greater technological attainment (specifically, general purpose technologies) arguably have greater firm-level adoption of self-regulation practices. According to panel data, ISO 14001 is more widespread in countries with greater technological capabilities, but there are diminishing returns to the impact of technology. As such, limited technological attainment remains a key factor that constrains economic growth and limits not only the capacity of the market to ...
Status conferral in intergroup social dilemmas: behavioral antecedents and consequences of prestige and dominance.

Bridging the literatures on social dilemmas, intergroup conflict, and social hierarchy, the authors systematically varied the intergroup context in which social dilemmas were embedded to investigate how costly contributions to public goods influence status conferral. They predicted that contribution behavior would have opposite effects on 2 forms of status—prestige and dominance—depending on its consequences for the self, in-group and out-group members. When the only way to benefit in-group members was by harming out-group members (Study 1), contributions increased prestige and decreased dominance, compared with free-riding. Adding the option of benefitting in-group members without harming out-group members (Study 2) decreased the prestige and increased the dominance of those who chose to benefit in-group members via intergroup competition. Finally, sharing resources with both in-group and out-group members decreased perceptions of both prestige and dominance, compared with sharing them with in-group members only (Study 3). Prestige and dominance differentially mediated the effects of contribution behavior on leader election, exclusion from the group, and choices of a group representative for an intergroup competition. Taken together, these findings show that the well-established relationship between contribution and status is moderated by both the intergroup context and the conceptualization of status.
Who Gains from Trade Reform? Some Remaining Puzzles

Abstract This paper focuses on three unresolved issues with regard to the impact of trade reform. First, many studies linking trade reform to long run growth are surprisingly fragile. To illustrate the problems with this literature, we examine a popular measure of openness recently introduced by Sachs and Warner [Sachs, J., Warner, A., 1995. Economic reform and the process of global integration. Brookings Papers on Economics Activity 1, pp. 1–117]. We show that their measure fails to establish a robust link between more open trade policies and long run growth. The second puzzle we identify is the small impact of trade reform on employment in developing countries. Finally, we analyze evidence on the relationship between trade reform and rising wage inequality, focusing on the 1985 Mexican trade reform. Wage inequality in Mexico rose after the reform, which is puzzling in a Heckscher–Ohlin context if Mexico has a comparative advantage in producing low skill-intensive goods.
The Supreme Court's Impact on Securities Class Actions: An Empirical Assessment of Tellabs

How does Supreme Court precedent affect lower court decisions when there is asymmetric probability of appellate review? We study the impact of Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd., which clarified the law of securities fraud on pleading scienter. Tellabs reversed a lenient "reasonableness" standard for pleading scienter but replaced it with a standard that is nonetheless relatively generous to plaintiffs. Would the Supreme Court's directive cause the dismissal rates in the lower courts to converge? We find that Tellabs correlates with a significantly lower dismissal rate on scienter grounds in circuits previously applying a higher preponderance standard for scienter. In contrast, we find no significant shift in the courts previously applying the lower reasonableness standard in our basic model. Overall, we conclude that Tellabs led to increased uniformity in how lower courts apply pleading standards, but its effect is muted by the asymmetry of the right to appeal. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.
Forecasting stock price with the residual income model

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a method to forecast stock price using analyst earnings forecasts as essential signals of firm valuation. The demonstrated method is based on the residual income model (RIM), with adjustment for autocorrelation. Over the past decade, the RIM has been widely accepted as a theoretical framework for equity valuation based on fundamental information from financial reports. This paper shows how to implement the RIM for forecasting and how to address autocorrelation to improve forecast accuracy. Overall, this paper provides a method to forecast stock price that blends fundamental data with mechanical analyses of past time series.
Court-packing and compromise

The controversy precipitated by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Court-packing Plan is among the most famous and frequently discussed episodes in American constitutional history. During his first term as President, Roosevelt had watched with mounting discontent as the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a series of measures central to his New Deal. Aging justices whom Roosevelt considered reactionary and out of touch had struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act (“NIRA”), the Agricultural Adjustment Act (“AAA”), federal railway pension legislation, federal farm debt relief legislation, critical portions of the Administration’s energy policy, and state minimum wage legislation for women. In the spring of 1937 the Court would be ruling on the constitutionality of such major statutes as the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) and the Social Security Act (“SSA”), and a number of Roosevelt advisors doubted that the Court as then comprised would uphold those measures. The odds might have improved had FDR had an opportunity during his first term to appoint one or more justices to the Court, but no vacancies had occurred. In November of 1936, Roosevelt enjoyed a spectacular reelection victory, winning the electoral college vote by a margin of 523-8. In the wake of this remarkable demonstration of public support, the President decided to move against the Court. On February 5, 1937, he sent to Congress a proposal to “reorganize” the federal judiciary. The bill contained a provision that would have empowered the president to nominate to the Supreme Court one additional justice for each sitting justice who had not retired within six months following his seventieth birthday. At
The Pricing of Short-Lived Options When Price Uncertainty Is Log-Symmetric Stable

The well-known option pricing formula of Black and Scholes depends upon the assumption that price fluctuations are log-normal. However, this formula greatly underestimates the value of options with a low probability of being exercised if, as appears to be more nearly the case in most markets, price fluctuations are in fact symmetrics table or log-symmetric stable. This paper derives a general formula for the value of a put or call option in a general equilibrium, expected utility maximization context. This general formula is found to yield the Black-Scholes formula for a wide variety of underlying processes generating log-normal price uncertainty. It is then used to derive the value of a short-lived option for certain processes that generate log-symmetric stable price uncertainty. Our analysis is restricted to short-lived options for reasons of mathematical tractability. Nevertheless, the formula is useful for evaluating many types of risk.
Corporate Jets and Private Meetings with Investors

Abstract We use corporate jet flight patterns to identify private meetings with investors that are ex ante unobservable to non-participants. Using approximately 400,000 flights, we proxy for private meetings with “roadshows,” defined as three-day windows that include flights to money centers and to non-money centers in which the firm has high institutional ownership. Roadshows exhibit greater abnormal stock reactions, analyst forecast activity, and absolute changes in local institutional ownership than other flight activity. We also find positive trading gains in firms with more complex information and infrequent private meetings, suggesting that roadshows provide participating investors an advantage over non-participating investors.
Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test

Standard sufficient conditions for identification in the regression discontinuity design are continuity of the conditional expectation of counterfactual outcomes in the running variable. These continuity assumptions may not be plausible if agents are able to manipulate the running variable. This paper develops a test of manipulation related to continuity of the running variable density function. The methodology is applied to popular elections to the House of Representatives, where sorting is neither expected nor found, and to roll call voting in the House, where sorting is both expected and found.
The troubling persistence of race in pharmacogenomics.

This article is concerned about what may be happening to race and medicine in the “meantime” between today's clinical realities and the promised land of pharmacogenomics where the need for using race in medicine is supposed to fade away. It argues that previous debates over the use of race in medicine are being side-stepped as race is being reconfigured from a “crude surrogate” for genetic variation into a purportedly viable placeholder for variable drug response — to be used here and now until the specific genetic underpinnings of drug response are more fully understood. Embracing the trope of “promise” in pharmacogenomics alongside the idea of using race as a useful interim proxy for genetic variation raises concerns that new diagnostic and therapeutic interventions may reflect or be mapped upon existing social categories of race, class, gender, and ethnicity in a harmful or dangerous manner. At the most basic level, the politics of the meantime in pharmacogenomics may be promoting the scientifically unjustified and socially dangerous recasting of race as a social and historical construct into a reified genetic category.
A Comparison of the Tax‐Motivated Income Shifting of Multinationals in Territorial and Worldwide Countries

This paper tests for differences in the tax-motivated income-shifting behaviors of multinationals subject to different systems of taxing foreign earnings. I find that, on average, multinationals subject to territorial tax regimes shift more income than those subject to worldwide tax regimes. The difference in shifting, however, is driven by a difference in the subset of shifting that involves the parent country; multinationals in the two groups appear to shift equally among their foreign affiliates. In additional tests, I find that the shifting of worldwide firms is sensitive to reinvestment in the recipient countries, while that of territorial firms is not.
Melody-Conditioned Lyrics Generation with SeqGANs

Automatic lyrics generation has received attention from both music and AI communities for years. Early rule-based approaches have -due to increases in computational power and evolution in data-driven modelsmostly been replaced with deep-learning-based systems. Many existing approaches, however, either rely heavily on prior knowledge in music and lyrics writing or oversimplify the task by largely discarding melodic information and its relationship with the text. We propose an end-to-end melody-conditioned lyrics generation system based on Sequence Generative Adversarial Networks (SeqGAN), which generates a line of lyrics given the corresponding melody as the input. Furthermore, we investigate the performance of the generator with an additional input condition: the theme or overarching topic of the lyrics to be generated. We show that the input conditions have no negative impact on the evaluation metrics while enabling the network to produce more meaningful results.
Measuring Reporting Conservatism

The paper examines the power and reliability of the differential timeliness (DT) measure developed by Basu (1997) to gauge reporting conservatism. We identify certain characteristics of the information environment unrelated to conservatism that affect the DT measure and find that it is sensitive to the degree of uniformity in the content of the news during the examined period, the types of events occurring in the period, and firms' disclosure policies. Our tests, based on both actual and simulated data, indicate that assessing the extent of reporting conservatism using this measure requires the recognition of, and control for, these characteristics. We also find that the difference in the timeliness of reporting bad versus good news is likely to be more pronounced than previously reported. Further, we provide additional evidence on the negative association between the DT measure and alternative aspects of conservatism, suggesting that the exclusive reliance on any single measure to assess the overall cons...
Intellectual Property and the Incentive Fallacy

The enterprise of intellectual property law has long been based on the premise that external incentives—such as copyrights and patents—are necessary to get people to produce artistic works and technological innovations. This Article argues that this foundational belief is wrong. Using recent advances in behavioral economics, psychology, and businessmanagement studies, along with empirical investigations of industry, it is now possible to construct a compelling case that the incentive theory, as a general matter, is mistaken, and that natural and intrinsic motivations will cause technology and the arts to flourish even in the absence of externally supplied rewards. It follows that intellectual property law itself needs a fundamental rethinking.
Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being

This paper investigates whether individuals feel worse off when others around them earn more. In other words, do people care about relative position, and does “lagging behind the Joneses” diminish well-being? To answer this question, I match individual-level data containing various indicators of well-being to information about local average earnings. I find that, controlling for an individual’s own income, higher earnings of neighbors are associated with lower levels of self-reported happiness. The data’s panel nature and rich set of measures of well-being and behavior indicate that this association is not driven by selection or by changes in the way people define happiness. There is suggestive evidence that the negative effect of increases in neighbors’ earnings on own well-being is most likely caused by interpersonal preferences, that is, people having utility functions that depend on relative consumption in addition to absolute consumption.
The effect of multiple language product descriptions on product evaluations

This study investigates the influence of bilingual product packaging descriptions on product evaluation. In an experimental study, the evaluation of a product with an English-only package is compared to the evaluation of the same product in a bilingual package. The evaluation of the product in the bilingual package is found to be significantly lower. Ethnocentrism and prejudice are investigated as possible explanations for this differential. The effect of the method of information processing used to evaluate the product (peripheral vs. central) is also explored. Both ethnocentrism and prejudice affect evaluations of a product in a bilingual package in a peripheral processing situation, but not in a central processing situation. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A NOTE ON DEMAND AND SUPPLY FACTORS IN MANUFACTURING OUTPUT ASYMMETRIES

We study the dynamics of the manufacturing component of GDP. We first document that the output growth rate for the majority of sectors and their aggregates is different (asymmetric) in recessions and expansions. Compared to expansions, recessions are deeper deviations from trend and have shorter expected duration. This finding raises a basic question that we address in this paper. Which factors of production may be responsible for the sectoral asymmetry? We characterize asymmetry using aggregate quarterly data on sectoral output from 1967 to 1997. We estimate a sector-level Markov switching model in which transition probabilities between recession and expansion may differ. We find that unlike aggregate GDP, the majority of durable goods manufacturing sectors exhibit deep recessions.
Causal effect of analyst following on corporate social responsibility

Abstract I examine the influence of sell-side financial analysts on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and find that firms with greater analyst coverage tend to be less socially responsible. To establish causality, I employ a difference-in-differences (DiD) technique, using brokerage closures and mergers as exogenous shocks to analyst coverage, as well as an instrumental variables approach. Both identification strategies suggest that analyst coverage has a negative causal effect on CSR. Analyst coverage seems to influence CSR activities via analysts' influence on the value of managerial ownership and discretionary spending. My findings are consistent with the view that spending on CSR is a manifestation of an agency problem and that financial analysts curb such discretionary spending by disciplining managers.
Measuring Intelligence and Growth Rate: Variations on Hibbard’s Intelligence Measure

In 2011, Hibbard suggested an intelligence measure for agents who compete in an adversarial sequence prediction game. We argue that Hibbard's idea should actually be considered as two separate ideas: first, that the intelligence of such agents can be measured based on the growth rates of the runtimes of the competitors that they defeat; and second, one specific (somewhat arbitrary) method for measuring said growth rates. Whereas Hibbard's intelligence measure is based on the latter growth-rate-measuring method, we survey other methods for measuring function growth rates, and exhibit the resulting Hibbard-like intelligence measures and taxonomies. Of particular interest, we obtain intelligence taxonomies based on Big-O and Big-Theta notation systems, which taxonomies are novel in that they challenge conventional notions of what an intelligence measure should look like. We discuss how intelligence measurement of sequence predictors can indirectly serve as intelligence measurement for agents with Artificial General Intelligence (AGIs).
On Learning From Others

Some people think that the practices of many courts in many countries, or in many relevant countries, offer helpful guidance to courts in other countries, when those courts are approaching hard or novel questions.1 In their view, the practices of many courts create a body of law in which other courts should be highly interested. The obvious question is: Why? In The Law of Other States? we attempt to make progress on this question. Our focus was not principally on the use of foreign precedents in the constitutional rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. We meant to take that controversial and specialized problem as part of a much more general one, which involves courts in one jurisdiction using the decisions of courts in other jurisdictions. Within the United States, state courts frequently refer to the decisions of other state courts, even when construing state constitutions.3 The high courts of many nations refer to the decisions of high courts of other nations.4 The problem is that it is not self-evident that the practices of courts AY should be taken as valuable or informative for court Z. Exploration of that problem might also illuminate the question of whether and when a legislator or administrator in one state should attend to the decisions of legislators or administrators in other states.
Scaling Commercial Law in Indian Country

How do you drive economic enterprise in a financial desert? Indian tribes, academics, economists, and policy makers have considered the means and methods for energizing economic growth for forty years. Efforts such as the creation and promotion of the Model Tribal Secured Transactions Act (“MTSTA”) promise much towards creating conditions that would gather financial opportunity to tribal regions that experience poverty at the strikingly higher rate than any other place in the U.S. And yet, while the law has been available for more than ten years, tribes have been reticent to adopt it. This article fills the vacuum in the literature around the promise of uniform laws in Indian Country by describing the inherent tension that exists between down-scaling uniform laws into tribal contexts and the local-ism that seeks to preserve localized values. This Article argues that tribal choices to accept uniformity or reject uniformity in these areas are built around a combination of formal associations and organic relationships designed to create “institutional thickness” in the face of other scarce resources.
Did Legal Education Fail Health Reform? And How Health Law Can Help

Arguments over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act illustrate the pervasiveness of health law issues in society. In court, arguments on both sides also demonstrated insufficient knowledge of the health care system and health insurance to identify and present useful arguments. Too many lawyers remained wedded to theories of constitutional law that have become disconnected from twenty-first century realities. Legal education may have something to answer for in this respect. This essay examines how legal education in health law may offer some valuable responses to ongoing critiques of legal education in general. The more law moves away from strict principles into nuanced adjustments to new circumstances, the more lawyers will need to understand the circumstances.
What Explains Changes in Retirement Plans during the Great Recession

We examine changes in subjective probabilities regarding retirement between the 2006 and 2008 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. Using a first-difference approach to eliminate individual heterogeneity, we find that the steep drop in asset prices in 2008 increased the reported probability of working at age 62 during the Great Recession. Increasing unemployment at least partly attenuated this effect, but subjective probabilities of working did not respond to changes in housing markets. Older workers' probabilities of working were more sensitive to fluctuations in the stock market, but less responsive to changes in labor market conditions.
Income inequality, financial development, and macroeconomic fluctuations*

We examine the relationship between income inequality and variability in aggregate consumption growth. In high-income countries, greater income inequality appears to be associated with more volatility in consumption growth, whereas in lower-income countries, higher levels of income inequality tend to be associated with less volatility. We present evidence that variability in real GDP growth is also related to income inequality in the same way. Our results suggest that the level of financial development may help to explain why the distribution of income affects the short-run variability of consumption and output differently in high-income countries than in low-income countries.
Reservation Wages and Unemployment Insurance

This paper argues that a risk-averse worker’s after-tax reservation wage encodes all the relevant information about her welfare. This insight leads to a novel test for the optimality of unemployment insurance based on the responsiveness of reservation wages to unemployment benefits. Some existing estimates imply significant gains to raising the current level of unemployment benefits in the United States, but highlight the need for more research on the determinants of reservation wages. Our approach complements those based on Baily’s (1978) test.
Sectoral shocks and aggregate fluctuations

Abstract This paper presents a multisector dynamic general equilibrium model of business cycles with a distinctive feature: aggregate fluctuations are driven by independent sectoral shocks. The model hypothesizes that trade among sectors provides a strong synchronization mechanism for these shocks due to the limited, but locally intense, interaction that is characteristic of such input trade flows. Limited interaction, characterized by a sparse intermediate input-use matrix, reduces substitution possibilities among intermediate inputs which strengthens comovement in sectoral value-added and leads to a postponement of the law of large numbers in the variance of aggregate value-added. The chief virtue of this model is that reliance on implausible aggregate shocks is not necessary to capture the qualitative features of macroeconomic fluctuations. Building on Horvath, 1998, Review of Economic Dynamics 1, 781–808, which establishes the theoretical foundation for the relevance of limited interaction in the context of a stylized multisector model, this paper specifies a more general multisector model calibrated to the US 2-digit Standard Industrial Code economy. Simulations prove the model is able to match empirical reality as closely as standard one-sector business cycle models without relying on aggregate shocks.
The Role of Executive Stock Options in REIT Repurchases

This paper examines the relationship between managerial stock option holdings and the decision to announce a repurchase of the firm’s common stock. Managerial stock option holdings should reinforce...
Entrepreneurial experience and firm exit over the business cycle

In this paper, I explore business cycle-related dynamics in differences in exit decisions between serial and novice entrepreneurs. Using time-series geographic variation in eco- nomic conditions, I examine how businesses founded by serial and novice entrepreneurs differentially respond to changes in average state personal income, alternative employ- ment options, and home values. Weibull survival model estimates indicate that serial entrepreneurs are more likely to endure declines in aggregate income and credit avail- ability, but are relatively more likely to go out of business as slack increases in the labor market (increases in unemployment rate). In the second part of the paper, I provide evidence that these dynamics are driven by differences in business strategies and the use of financial resources.
Molecular Transfer Model for pH Effects on Intrinsically Disordered Proteins: Theory and Applications

We present a theoretical method to study how changes in pH shape the heterogeneous conformational ensemble explored by intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). The theory is developed in the context of coarse-grained models, which enable a fast, accurate, and extensive exploration of conformational space at a given protonation state. In order to account for pH effects, we generalize the molecular transfer model (MTM), in which conformations are re-weighted using the transfer free energy, which is the free energy necessary for bringing to equilibrium in a new environment a "frozen" conformation of the system. Using the semi-grand ensemble, we derive an exact expression of the transfer free energy, which amounts to the appropriate summation over all the protonation states. Because the exact result is computationally too demanding to be useful for large polyelectrolytes or IDPs, we introduce a mean-field (MF) approximation of the transfer free energy. Using a lattice model, we compare the exact and MF results for the transfer free energy and a variety of observables associated with the model IDP. We find that the precise location of the charged groups (the sequence), and not merely the net charge, determines the structural properties. We demonstrate that some of the limitations previously noted for MF theory in the context of globular proteins are mitigated when disordered polymers are studied. The excellent agreement between the exact and MF results poises us to use the method presented here as a computational tool to study the properties of IDPs and other biological systems as a function of pH.
Parallel velocity mixing yielding enhanced electron heating during magnetic pumping

Magnetic wave perturbations are observed in the solar wind and in the vicinity of Earth's bow shock. For such environments, recent work on magnetic pumping with electrons trapped in the magnetic perturbations has demonstrated the possibility of efficient energization of superthermal electrons. Here we also analyse the energization of such energetic electrons for which the transit time through the system is short compared with time scales associated with the magnetic field evolution. In particular, considering an idealized magnetic configuration we show how trapping/detrapping of energetic magnetized electrons can cause effective parallel velocity (-) diffusion. This parallel diffusion, combined with naturally occurring mechanisms known to cause pitch angle scattering, such as whistler waves, produces enhanced heating rates for magnetic pumping. We find that at low pitch angle scattering rates, the combined mechanism enhances the heating beyond the predictions of the recent theory for magnetic pumping with trapped electrons.
Sobering Up After the Seventh Inning: Alcohol and Crime Around the Ballpark

This study examines the impact of alcohol consumption in a Major League Baseball (MLB) stadium on area level counts of crime. The modal practice at MLB stadiums is to stop selling alcoholic beverages after the seventh inning. Baseball is not a timed game, so the duration between the last call for alcohol at the end of the seventh inning and the end of the game varies considerably, providing a unique natural experiment to estimate the relationship between alcohol consumption and crime near a stadium on game days. Crime data were obtained from Philadelphia for the period 2006–2015 and geocoded to the area around the MLB stadium as well as popular sports bars. We rely on difference-in-differences regression models to estimate the change in crime on home game days around the stadium as the game time extends into extra innings to other areas of the city and around sports bars in Philadelphia relative to days when the baseball team plays away from home. When there are extra innings and more game-time after the seventh inning alcohol sales stoppage crime declines significantly around the stadium. The crime reduction benefit of the last call alcohol policy is undone when a complex of sports bars opens in the stadium parking lot in 2012. The results suggest that alcohol consumption during baseball games is a contributor to crime. The findings provide further support for environmental theories of crime that note the congregation of people in places with excessive alcohol consumption is a generator of violent crime in cities. The consumption of alcohol in MLB stadiums appears to increase crime.
Inhibition of HIF-1α accumulation in prostate cancer cells is initiated during early stages of mammalian orthoreovirus infection.

Abstract Mammalian orthoreovirus (MRV) is a safe and effective cancer killing virus that has completed Phase I-III clinical trials against numerous cancer types. While many patients experience benefit from MRV therapy, pre-defined set points necessary for FDA approval have not been reached. Therefore, additional research into MRV biology and the effect of viral therapy on different tumor genetic subtypes and microenvironments is necessary to identify tumors most amenable to MRV virotherapy. In this work we analyzed the stage of viral infection necessary to inhibit HIF-1α, an aggressive cancer activator induced by hypoxia. We demonstrated that two viral capsid proteins were not necessary and that a step parallel with virus core movement across the endosomal membrane was required for this inhibition. Altogether, this work clarifies the mechanisms of MRV-induced HIF-1α inhibition and provides biological relevance for using MRV to inhibit the devastating effects of tumor hypoxia.
Daily rewiring of a neural circuit generates a predictive model of environmental light

Behavioral responsiveness to external stimulation is shaped by context. We studied how sensory information can be contextualized, by examining light-evoked locomotor responsiveness of Drosophila relative to time of day. We found that light elicits an acute increase in locomotion (startle) that is modulated in a time-of-day-dependent manner: Startle is potentiated during the nighttime, when light is unexpected, but is suppressed during the daytime. The internal daytime-nighttime context is generated by two interconnected and functionally opposing populations of circadian neurons-LNvs generating the daytime state and DN1as generating the nighttime state. Switching between the two states requires daily remodeling of LNv and DN1a axons such that the maximum presynaptic area in one population coincides with the minimum in the other. We propose that a dynamic model of environmental light resides in the shifting connectivities of the LNv-DN1a circuit, which helps animals evaluate ongoing conditions and choose a behavioral response.
Flexible Drug Approval Policies

Problem definition: To approve a novel drug therapy, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires clinical trial evidence demonstrating efficacy with 2.5% statistical significance, although...
The Unintended Consequences of Corporate Bond ETFs: Evidence from the Taper Tantrum

This paper examines whether ETFs are a unique source of corporate bond fragility. Relative to mutual funds, ETFs cater to high-liquidity-demand investors, facilitate positive feedback strategies, and transmit outflows to corporate bonds via near proportional trading. Comparing yield spread changes of bonds from the same issuer, we show that ETFs create flow-induced pressure during the Taper Tantrum, a period of market turmoil. Redemptions used to maintain the relative price efficiency of the largest and most liquid ETFs lead to significantly higher yield spreads for 4 months before reverting. The pattern indicates ETFs amplify the effects of negative fundamental shocks.
A variety that cannot be dominated by one that lifts

We prove a strong version of a theorem of Siu and Beauville on morphisms to higher genus curves, and we use it to show that if a variety X in characteristic p lifts to characteristic 0, then any morphism X→C to a curve of genus g≥2 can be lifted along. We use this to construct, for every prime p, a smooth projective surface X over F¯p that cannot be rationally dominated by a smooth proper variety Y that lifts to characteristic 0.
Hugo Grotius in the Contemporary Memory of International Law: Secularism, Liberalism, and the Politics of Restatement and Denial

The specter of Hugo Grotius remains an important reference point within the conceptual vocabulary of international law. In this paper, I provide a brief analysis of how Grotius’ legacy functions within the rhetoric of international legal texts via lessons from the ‘New Approaches to International Law’ tradition (e.g., David Kennedy, TWAIL), as well as other heterodoxical sources that found a place within international legal scholarship through advances by the ‘critical studies’ movement more generally (e.g., Alain Badiou, Judith Bulter). In particular, the paper critically takes up the rhetoric of Grotius in relation to two mainstream claims: first, that modern international law is ‘secular’, and second, that international law, in relation to this turn to a secular orientation, is committed to some cosmopolitan ethic of ‘tolerance’. Offering alternative readings of Grotius in light of these claims, I conclude the paper with some brief suggestions about how we might participate in a new tradition of remembering Hugo Grotius.
Understanding the Role of Rare Earths in Zeolite Y on the Removal of Sulfur from Hydrocarbon Fuels

Adsorptive desulfurization is a promising alternative to hydrodesulfurization for minimizing harmful sulfur emissions from hydrocarbon fuels. Cu in Y zeolite (CuY) has shown effective sulfur adsorp...
Identification of the shrek family of proteins as broad-spectrum host antiviral factors

Mucins and mucin-like molecules are highly glycosylated, high-molecular-weight cell surface proteins that possess a semi-rigid and highly extended extracellular domain. P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (PSGL-1), a mucin-like glycoprotein, has recently been found to restrict HIV-1 infectivity through virion incorporation that sterically hinders virus particle attachment to target cells. Here, we report the identification of a family of antiviral cellular proteins, named the Surface-Hinged, Rigidly-Extended Killer (SHREK) family of virion inactivators (PSGL-1, CD43, TIM-1, CD34, PODXL1, PODXL2, CD164, MUC1, MUC4, and TMEM123) that share similar structural characteristics with PSGL-1. We demonstrate that SHREK proteins block HIV-1 infectivity by inhibiting virus particle attachment to target cells. In addition, we demonstrate that SHREK proteins are broad-spectrum host antiviral factors that block the infection of diverse viruses such as influenza A. Furthermore, we demonstrate that a subset of SHREKs also blocks the infectivity of a hybrid alphavirus-SARS-CoV-2 (Ha-CoV-2) pseudovirus. These results suggest that SHREK proteins may be a part of host innate immunity against enveloped viruses.
A transitivity result for ad-nilpotent ideals in type A

Abstract The paper considers subspaces of the strictly upper triangular matrices, which are stable under Lie bracket with any upper triangular matrix. These subspaces are called ad-nilpotent ideals and there are Catalan number of such subspaces. Each ad-nilpotent ideal I meets a unique largest nilpotent orbit O I in the Lie algebra of all matrices. The main result of the paper is that under an equivalence relation on ad-nilpotent ideals studied by Mizuno and others, the equivalence classes are the ad-nilpotent ideals I such that O I = O for a fixed nilpotent orbit O . We include two applications of the result, one to the higher vanishing of cohomology groups of vector bundles on the flag variety and another to the Kazhdan–Lusztig cells in the affine Weyl group of the symmetric group. Finally, some combinatorial results are discussed.
Spacecraft Compartment Venting

At various time concerns have been expressed that rapid decompressions of compartments of gas pockets and thermal blankets during spacecraft launches may have caused pressure differentials across their walls sufficient to cause minor structural failures, separations of adhesively-joined parts, ballooning, and flapping of blankets. This paper presents a close form equation expressing the expected pressure differentials across the walls of a compartment as a function of the external to the volume pressure drops, the pressure at which the rates occur and the vent capability of the compartment. The pressure profiles measured inside the shrouds of several spacecraft propelled by several vehicles and some profiles obtained from ground vacuum systems have been included. The equation can be used to design the appropriate vent, which will preclude excessive pressure differentials. Precautions and needed approaches for the evaluations of the expected pressures have been indicated. Methods to make a rapid assessment of the response of the compartment to rapid external pressure drops have been discussed. These are based on the evaluation of the compartment vent flow conductance, the volume and the length of time during which the rapid pressure drop occurs.
Structure of LetB Reveals a Tunnel for Lipid Transport Across the Bacterial Envelope

Gram-negative bacteria are surrounded by an outer membrane composed of phospholipids and lipopolysaccharide, which acts as a barrier and contributes to antibiotic resistance. The transport mechanisms of phospholipid translocation across the periplasm, such as the MCE (Mammalian Cell Entry) systems, have not been well characterized. Our ~3.5A cryo-EM structure of the E. coli MCE protein LetB reveals a ~0.6 megadalton complex in the periplasm that consists of seven stacked rings, with a central hydrophobic tunnel sufficiently long to span the periplasm. Lipids bind inside the tunnel, suggesting that it functions as a pathway for lipid transport. Cryo-EM structures in the open and closed states reveal a dynamic tunnel lining, with implications for gating or substrate translocation. Our results support a model in which LetB establishes a physical link between the two membranes, and creates a hydrophobic pathway for the translocation of lipids across the periplasm.
Session-Aware Query Auto-completion using Extreme Multi-Label Ranking

Query auto-completion (QAC) is a fundamental feature in search engines where the task is to suggest plausible completions of a prefix typed in the search bar. Previous queries in the user session can provide useful context for the user's intent and can be leveraged to suggest auto-completions that are more relevant while adhering to the user's prefix. Such session-aware QACs can be generated by recent sequence-to-sequence deep learning models; however, these generative approaches often do not meet the stringent latency requirements of responding to each user keystroke. Moreover, these generative approaches pose the risk of showing nonsensical queries. One can pre-compute a relatively small subset of relevant queries for common prefixes and rank them based on the context. However, such an approach fails when no relevant queries for the current context are present in the pre-computed set. In this paper, we provide a solution to this problem: we take the novel approach of modeling session-aware QAC as an eXtreme Multi-Label Ranking (XMR) problem where the input is the previous query in the session and the user's current prefix, while the output space is the set of tens of millions of queries entered by users in the recent past. We adapt a popular XMR algorithm for this purpose by proposing several modifications to the key steps in the algorithm. The proposed modifications yield a 10x improvement in terms of Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR) over the baseline XMR approach on a public search logs dataset. We are able to maintain an inference latency of less than 10 ms while still using session context. When compared against baseline models of acceptable latency, we observed a 33% improvement in MRR for short prefixes of up to 3 characters. Moreover, our model yielded a statistically significant improvement of 2.81% over a production QAC system in terms of suggestion acceptance rate, when deployed on the search bar of an online shopping store as part of an A/B test.
Approximation Algorithms for Socially Fair Clustering

We present an (e^{O(p)} (log \ell) / (log log \ell))-approximation algorithm for socially fair clustering with the l_p-objective. In this problem, we are given a set of points in a metric space. Each point belongs to one (or several) of \ell groups. The goal is to find a k-medians, k-means, or, more generally, l_p-clustering that is simultaneously good for all of the groups. More precisely, we need to find a set of k centers C so as to minimize the maximum over all groups j of \sum_{u in group j} d(u, C)^p. The socially fair clustering problem was independently proposed by Abbasi, Bhaskara, and Venkatasubramanian (2021) and Ghadiri, Samadi, and Vempala (2021). Our algorithm improves and generalizes their O(\ell)-approximation algorithms for the problem. The natural LP relaxation for the problem has an integrality gap of \Omega(\ell). In order to obtain our result, we introduce a strengthened LP relaxation and show that it has an integrality gap of \Theta((log \ell) / (log log \ell)) for a fixed p. Additionally, we present a bicriteria approximation algorithm, which generalizes the bicriteria approximation of Abbasi et al. (2021).