cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
TERRORISM AND THE RETURNS TO OIL

The effect of terrorism on global oil prices has been largely explained through demand-side effects. We estimate an empirical model to re-examine the effect of terrorism on the price of global oil stocks across oil market regimes that reflect different supply constraints. We believe that terrorism will have larger impacts when global capacity is tight (i.e. when global demand is close to global supply). This means that any shock to capacity (say by conflict) should have the largest impact on profits before the first OPEC shock in the early 1970s. Since then, conflict shocks would not allow firms to exploit production in the same way, thus reducing the available profits that could be garnered by such production manipulation. If capacity constraints are binding when a conflict occurs, then we predict that a positive stock price reaction can be expected for oil firms from such a shock. We exploit a new panel dataset to investigate the relationship between oil profitability and conflict, using conflict data from the top 20 oil producing and exporting countries in the world. We show that in the later part of our sample, 1974-2005, as cartel behavior of OPEC member countries has diminished and as conflict has become more regular and thus the information surrounding it noisier, oil stock prices do not increase in response to conflict. However, in earlier capacity constrained eras, we find that oil stocks can in fact increase in response to conflict. In some cases, the impact of conflict may cause the return of oil stocks to increase by as much as 10 percentage points.
Managerial reporting, overoptimism, and litigation risk

Abstract We examine how the threat of litigation affects an entrepreneur's reporting behavior when the entrepreneur (i) can misrepresent his privately observed information, (ii) pays legal damages out of his own pocket, and (iii) is optimistic about the firm's prospects relative to investors. We find higher expected legal penalties imposed on the culpable entrepreneur do not always cause the entrepreneur to be more cautious but instead can increase misreporting. We highlight how this relation depends crucially on the extent of entrepreneurial overoptimism, legal frictions, and the internal control environment.
Private Actions for Public Nuisance: Common Law Citizen Suits for Relief From Environmental Harm

This Article reviews the evolution of public nuisance law since the 1972 article by Bryson and Macbeth and focuses on two issues: 1) the evolution of the traditional special injury rule into a two-pronged doctrine of standing (injury-in-fact) and proximate cause, and 2) the viability of public nuisance actions in light of existing environmental statutes. The first section of Part I analyzes the reasons why the traditional policies supporting the special injury rule are no longer valid. The second section reviews a number of cases involving actions for damages where the courts, at least implicitly, have not applied the special injury rule to limit standing, then it analyzes how courts have dealt with the rule in equitable and class actions. Part II discusses the relationship between the public nuisance doctrine and state and federal environmental statutes.The Article concludes that, in litigation concerning serious environmental or toxic issues, some courts have accepted public nuisance claims, even though they have not explicitly rejected the special injury rule. It advocates that courts take the final step and reject the special injury rule outright, because private plaintiffs must not be barred at the courthouse door by an outdated special injury rule if public nuisance claims are to fill statutory gaps and help establish standards of reasonable conduct.
United States current account deficits: A stochastic optimal control analysis

Abstract The “Pessimists” and the “Optimists” disagree whether the US external deficits and the associated buildup of US net foreign liabilities are problems that require urgent attention. A warning signal should be that the debt ratio deviates significantly from the optimal ratio. The optimal debt ratio or debt burden should take into account the vulnerability of consumption to shocks from the productivity of capital, the interest rate and exchange rate. The optimal debt ratio is derived from inter-temporal optimization using Dynamic Programming, because the shocks are unpredictable, and it is essential to have a feedback control mechanism. The optimal ratio depends upon the risk adjusted net return and risk aversion both at home and abroad. On the basis of alternative estimates, we conclude that the Pessimists’ fears are justified on the basis of trends. The trend of the actual debt ratio is higher than that of the optimal ratio. The Optimists are correct that the current debt ratio is not a menace, because the current level of the debt ratio is not above the corresponding level of the optimum ratio.
How mindless is standard economics really

Contrary to claims by Gul and Pesendorfer (2008), I show that standard economics makes use of non-choice evidence in a meaningful way. This is because standard economics solely grounded in the theory of choice is "incomplete". That is, it has content that can not be revealed with any general choice procedure.
Baghdad Booksellers, Basra Carpet Merchants, and the Law of God and Man: Legal Pluralism and the Contemporary Muslim Experience

There is a crisis in our law schools in the study of Islamic law and the law of the Muslim polities. The current approaches either focus exclusively on national codes to the derogation of other vitally important influences on the legal order, most importantly the body of norms and rules derived from Islamic foundational texts known as the shari'a, or they regard as secondary, and at times irrelevant, the actual legal order of the societies in favor of an academic construction of the theories of medieval Muslim jurists. Neither of these approaches reflects with a necessary degree of accuracy the actual form of legal order in any Muslim society. Adopting a legal pluralist model, this Article relays the actual workings of commercial order in two industries in Shi'i Iraq in order to demonstrate that in understanding the operation of law, and in particular commercial law, in at least parts of the modern Muslim world, both the ever present reality of the national law and contemporary manifestations of the shari'a need to be taken into account.
Functionally Suspect: Reconceptualizing "Race" as a Suspect Classification

In the context of equal protection doctrine, race has become untethered from the criteria underlying its demarcation as a classification warranting heightened scrutiny. As a result, it is no longer an effective vehicle for challenging the existing social and political order; instead, its primary purpose under current doctrine is to signal the presence of an impermissible basis for differential treatment. This Symposium Article suggests that, to more effectively serve its underlying normative goals, equal protection should prohibit not discrimination based on race per se, but government actions that implicate the concerns leading to race’s designation as a suspect classification. For example, a possible equal protection violation would no longer be triggered by the mere act of racial categorization, but by classifications targeting groups characterized by a history of past discrimination, political powerlessness, or a trait that has no bearing on its members’ ability to participate in or contribute to society. By directly integrating the values underlying suspect classification into equal protection analysis, this Article attempts to replace the categorical use of race with a substantive approach that is less vulnerable to arguments grounded in colorblindness or postracialism and more focused on deconstructing existing racial hierarchies.
Austrian journals: A critique of rosen, yeager, laband and tollison, and vedder and gallaway

There is no secret concerning the reasons Murray N. Rothbard inaugurated the Review of Austrian Economics (RAE). It was to promote the Austrian research agenda, and to enhance two-way communication between economists guided by praxeological considerations and their counterparts in the positivist mainstream tradition. Crucial for communication, of course, is publication. But praxeologists were all but frozen out of neoclassical publications.
Rethinking Cost-Benefit Analysis

This paper analyzes cost-benefit analysis from legal, economic, and philosophical perspectives. The traditional defense of cost-benefit analysis is that it maximizes a social welfare function that aggregates unweighted and unrestricted preferences. We follow many economists and philosophers who conclude that this defense is not persuasive. Cost-benefit analysis unavoidably depends on controversial distributive judgments; and the view that the government should maximize the satisfaction of unrestricted preferences is not plausible. However, we disagree with critics who argue that cost-benefit analysis produces morally irrelevant evaluations of projects and should be abandoned. On the contrary, cost-benefit analysis, suitably constrained, is consistent with a broad array of appealing normative commitments, and it is superior to alterative methods of project evaluation. It is a reasonable means to the end of maximizing overall welfare when preferences are undistorted or can be reconstructed. And it both exploits the benefits of agency specialization and constrains agencies that might otherwise evaluate projects improperly.
Text or Consequences

The magnetic pull of taxonomy is a well-worn feature of scholarship in the realm of statutory interpretation and beyond. Casting competing theories in bold relief and in terms of what separates them produces sharp and lively exchanges. And so it has been with textualism in statutory interpretation. The approach was once dubbed the “new textualism,” though presumably the moniker of novelty can be dropped now that twenty years have passed since textualism first appeared, close on the heels of its avatar, Justice Antonin Scalia, taking his seat on the Supreme Court. In those two decades, textualism has been set against intentionalism, purposivism, dynamic interpretation, pragmatism, and other worthy competitors in a vigorous normative debate. As part of this contest over interpretive first principles, Justices Scalia and Stephen Breyer have engaged one another repeatedly, and they show no sign of fatigue as they continue a long-running interpretive road show that has brought this debate to various venues and to C-SPAN viewers. The lines of
Space-time modeling of natural disaster impacts

James P. LeSagea,∗, R. Kelley Paceb, Nina Lamc and Richard Campanellad aDepartment of Finance and Economics, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, TX, USA bLREC Endowed Chair of Real Estate, Department of Finance, E.J. Ourso College of Business Administration, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA cDepartment of Environmental Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA dCenter for Bioenvironmental Research, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA
Aftermarketfailure: Windows XP's End of Support

After 12 years, support for Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014. Microsoft Windows XP’s end of support, combined with a collective action failure stemming from individual users’ failure to realize or internalize the costs of failing to migrate or upgrade their operating systems, could be catastrophic. The attached essay briefly sketches out the argument for why software monopolists should be legally required to help other companies provide ongoing support for their products. First, it describes the conceptual and economic theories that would support such a requirement. Second, it describes the conflicting law governing the intersection between intellectual property and antitrust. Third, it exhorts Microsoft to extend the support clock, release its sourcecode, or make clear to the world that should anyone else wish to take on the task of providing future security support for Windows XP, Microsoft will help them to do so.
A panel data analysis of code-sharing, antitrust immunity, and open skies treaties in international aviation markets.

This paper estimates the effects of code-sharing, antitrust immunity, and Open Skies treaties on prices, output, and capacity using an eleven-year panel of U.S.-Europe data. Code-sharing and immunized alliances are found to have significantly lower prices than does traditional interline (multi-carrier) service, but the effects are smaller in magnitude than those found in previous results that rely on cross-sectional data. Statistical tests that prices for immunized alliance service are equal to online (single carrier) service often cannot be rejected, providing additional evidence that immunity grants allow immunized carriers to internalize a double marginalization problem. Estimated output effects, consistent with the price effects, show that alliances are associated with large increases in passenger volumes. Lastly, estimates suggest that capacity expansions associated with “Open Skies” treaties are due entirely to expansion by immunized carriers on routes between their hubs.
Capital Taxation and Ownership When Markets Are Incomplete

This paper is a normative investigation of the properties of optimal capital taxation in the neoclassical growth model with aggregate shocks and incomplete markets. The model features a representative-agent economy with linear taxes on labor and capital. I first allow the government to trade only a real risk-free bond. Optimal policy has the following features: labor taxes fluctuate very little, capital taxes are volatile and feature a positive (negative) spike after a negative (positive) shock to the government budget, and capital taxes average to roughly zero across periods. I then consider the implications of allowing the government to trade capital.
A Requiem for Sam's Bank

Wal-Mart’s application to form a bank ignited controversy among disparate groups, ranging from union backers to realtor’s groups to charitable organizations.1 The dominant voice, though, was that of independent bankers complaining that the big-box retailer would drive them out of business. Wal-Mart denied any interest in competing with local banks by opening branches,2 claiming that it was interested only in payments processing. Distrusting Wal-Mart, the independent bankers urged the FDIC to deny Wal-Mart’s request and lobbied state and federal lawmakers to block Wal-Mart’s plans through legislation. Ultimately, WalMart withdrew its application, concluding that it stood little chance of overcoming the opposition. The controversy dovetails with a banking regulatory concern about the existing system for supervising commercial firms that own non-traditional banks. Wal-Mart sought to form an industrial loan company (“ILC”) under Utah law,3 which it could do only if the FDIC approved its application for deposit insurance.4 Under what many regard as a loophole in the existing
The Rewards to Meeting or Beating Earnings Expectations

Abstract This paper finds that firms that meet or beat current analysts’ earnings expectations (MBE) enjoy a higher return over the quarter than firms with similar quarterly earnings forecast errors that fail to meet these expectations. Further, such a premium to MBE, although somewhat smaller, exists in the cases where MBE is likely to have been achieved through earnings or expectations management. The findings also indicate that the premium to MBE is a leading indicator of future performance. This premium and its predictive ability are only marginally affected by whether the MBE is genuine or the result of earnings or expectations management.
The contracting benefits of accounting conservatism to lenders and borrowers

Abstract This paper examines the ex post and ex ante benefits of accounting conservatism to lenders and borrowers in the debt contracting process. I expect conservatism to benefit lenders ex post through the timely signaling of default risk, as manifested by accelerated covenant violations, and to benefit borrowers ex ante through lower initial interest rates. Consistent with these predictions, I find that more conservative borrowers are more likely to violate debt covenants following a negative price shock, and that lenders offer lower interest rates to more conservative borrowers.
The More Things Change, the More They are the Same: Continuing Concerns with the Special Olympics

The Special Olympics has been a controversial program for persons with severe disabilities. There have been numerous discussion articles in the literature concerning pros and cons of the Special Ol...
Can herding improve investment decisions

Existing models show that herding in decisions can cause significant information loss, inferior information aggregation, and impaired decision making. However, we show that in a multistage decision setting with endogenous information production, herding on the initial decision can actually result in superior aggregate information and improved decisions. This is because the possibility of herding by a follower incentivizes the leader to increase its ex ante information production to an extent that it can dominate the information loss from herding. Examples include decisions to enter new markets, fund R&D, and provide early-stage venture capital.
Why Should We Care About International Law

In "The Trump Administration and International Law," Harold Hongju Koh advances two descriptive claims about the efficacy of international law in the age of President Trump. First, international law has been effective in curtailing U.S. disobedience, despite Trump's antics. Second, it could also empower President Trump; the president would be more effective at achieving concrete policy goals if instead of dismissing international law, he harnessed it to get things done. The book's upshot is that international law can have real operational value, including, perhaps especially, for the United States. Yet Koh did not write the book just to reiterate that point. He clearly is worried that Trump is doing damage both to the enterprise of international law and to the U.S. relationship with it. Thus, he intends for the book to be a "call to action," imploring people to uphold international law and contest the Trump administration's antagonistic policies. This is where the book falls short. It does not give readers compelling reasons to fight not just against the Trump administration but for international law. What about international law is both worthwhile and at serious risk under President Trump? I argue in this Review Essay that, because the book focuses so intently on the material outcomes that international law might produce, it misses what's uniquely at stake in the current moment. A lot of law's value, both domestically and at the international level, lies in fostering a particular kind of argumentative practice. International law's argumentative practice is not, as some suggest, just cheap talk, a means for achieving concrete ends, or a smokescreen for reinforcing positions of dominance. It is worthwhile for reasons that are independent of its material outcomes. And it is deteriorating under President Trump.
Service Efforts and Accomplishments Standards: Fundamental Questions of an Emerging Concept

In 1994, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) adopted and published Concepts Statement No. 2, Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting} Although service efforts and accomplishments (SEA) is not a common term, this statement establishes the foundation for the subsequent adoption of reporting requirements that may expand the boundaries of reporting to significantly increase the amount of non-financial information that states and municipalities will report, as well as the cost of external reporting Budget analysts are among prospective users of SEA information. A study of comment letters filed in response to the exposure draft, which preceded Concepts Statement No. 2, shows two divergent views of SEA reporting requirements.2 Support for SEA reporting requirements is grounded in a vision of the potential benefits of SEA reporting;3 opposition to SEA standards is grounded in concerns about potential consequences of instituting reporting requirements.4 The strength of opposition to SEA reporting requirements suggests that consideration of the rationale for standards setting is appropriate. In this article, commonly expressed concerns about reporting requirements are incorporated into five questions. Analysis of these questions evidences the weakness of the rationale for SEA standards as distinguished from the rationale for voluntary SEA reporting. Two proposals are advanced to address concerns about SEA reporting requirements. First, adoption of models of information use from the disciplines of public administration and political science is encouraged. Second, modification of the standard setting process to reflect the non-financial domain of SEA is advocated. Thus, it is proposed that standard setters adopt approaches that emphasize cross-disciplinary research, cooperation with other organizations, and active extension of due process to new stakeholders.
Intergenerational Politics, Fiscal Policy and Productivity

Abstract A political–economic theory of fiscal policy is presented in which tax policy preferences are derived from a conflict of interest between individuals of different ages. Policy formation is fully rational in that an individual's beliefs regarding future policies are consistent with state-contingent policy outcomes. The overlapping generations friction that prevents the young from transacting with future members of society implies that young policymakers strategically manipulate the policy preferences of the yet unborn to lower their own expected old-age tax burden. A comparison of the original equilibrium to one induced by the “constitutional commitment” of fiscal policy isolates the strategic component of tax rates and demonstrates that aggregate labor productivity is biased as a result of the conflict. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E62, H30, O40.
Fear of Floating

In recent years, many countries have suffered severe financial crises, producing a staggering toll on their economies, particularly in emerging markets. One view blames fixed exchange rates“soft pegs”--for these meltdowns. Adherents to that view advise countries to allow their currency to float. We analyze the behavior of exchange rates, reserves, the monetary aggregates, interest rates, and commodity prices across 154 exchange rate arrangements to assess whether “official labels” provide an adequate representation of actual country practice. We find that, countries that say they allow their exchange rate to float mostly do not--there seems to be an epidemic case of “fear of floating.” Since countries that are classified as having a free or a managed float mostly resemble noncredible pegs--the so-called “demise of fixed exchange rates” is a myth--the fear of floating is pervasive, even among some of the developed countries. We present an analytical framework that helps to understand why there is fear of floating.
From Coercion to Contract: Reframing the Debate on Mandated Community Treatment for People with Mental Disorders

Approximately half the people receiving treatment in the public sector for mental disorder have experienced some form of “leverage” in which deprivations such as jail or hospitalization have been avoided, or rewards such as money or housing have been obtained, contingent on treatment adherence. We argue in this essay that framing the legal debate on mandated community treatment primarily in terms of “coercion” has become counterproductive and that the debate should be re-framed in terms of “contract.” Language derived from the law of contract often yields a more accurate account of the current state of the law governing mandated community treatment, is more likely to be translated into a useful descriptive vocabulary for empirical research, and is more likely to clarify the policy issues at stake than the currently stalemated form of argumentation based on putative rights. Our hope is that adopting the language of contract may help to identify those types and features of mandated community treatment that are genuinely problematic, rather than perpetuating the unhelpful and misleading assumption that all types of leverage amount to “coercion.”
Oil price movements and globalisation: is there a connection?

There has been considerable speculation over the years concerning the cost of large oil price movements (“shocks”) to consuming countries. For the advanced industrial countries, the conventional wisdom appears to be that, because these economies are becoming more service-oriented, less energy is needed per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) and hence a lessening of the economic costs associated with increased oil prices. On the other hand, because many newly industrialised or catching-up countries are entering a phase of energy-intensive industrialisation, the same oil shocks are placing an increasing burden on these economies. One can easily argue, however, that industrialisation is only one facet of economic change taking place in the world economy. Conceivably, the rapid pace of increased globalisation may significantly modify these patterns. To test this proposition, an operational definition of globalisation is developed and shown to be positively associated with the strength of oil price shocks. The main finding of the study is that increased globalisation appears to be strengthening the impact of oil price shocks in the advanced industrial countries, but to a much lesser extent in the newly industrialising countries.
Falling On Deaf Ears: Is the "Fail-Safe" Triennial Exemption Provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Effective in Protecting Fair Use?

This Article examines whether the "fail-safe" triennial exemption provision of the DMCA is effective for its intended purpose: to serve as a countermeasure to the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions by protecting the ability of the public to engage in noninfringing uses of copyrighted works. Ultimately, this Article concludes that there are too many faults in both the structure and the execution of the rulemaking provision to meaningfully counteract the adverse effects of the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA. Specifically, the rulemaking procedure explicitly prohibits exemptions to a class based on the use of the work. This amounts to a rejection of fair use principles - one of the very doctrines the exemption provision was designed to protect.
eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL): A Review and Implications for Future Research

This study seeks to advance research related to eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). XBRL is an open standard for reporting structured financial information which enables the efficient gathering of data and automated comparison of financial information. To encourage research using XBRL we describe the richness of XBRL data and sources from which it can be obtained. We also present a review of relevant XBRL literature, beginning with studies examining the consequences of XBRL adoption and data quality concerns that arose during this timeframe. We next discuss the use of extended XBRL tags and implications of this decision for users of financial reports. The following related literature stream includes studies that leverage XBRL tags to identify unique numerical, or textual data that is otherwise unavailable or requires manual data collection. We conclude the review with a discussion of auditors’ potential use and assurance of XBRL data. Based on the review of the literature, we identify topics with the greatest potential for future research. Data Availability: Data are available from http://www.xbrlresearch.com.
Building a navigable fine texture design space.

Friction modulation technology enables the creation of textural effects on flat haptic displays. However, an intuitive and manageably small design space for construction of such haptic textures remains an unfulfilled goal for user interface designers. In this paper, we explore perceptually relevant features of fine texture for use in texture construction and modification. Beginning with simple sinusoidal patterns of friction force that vary in frequency and amplitude, we define irregularity, essentially a variable amount of introduced noise, as a third building block of a texture pattern. We demonstrate using multidimensional scaling that all three parameters are scalable features perceptually distinct from each other. Additionally, participants' verbal descriptions of this 3-dimensional design space provide insight into their intuitive interpretation of the physical parameter changes.
Broadband optical absorption enhancement in hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite metasurfaces

The hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite (HOIP) becomes a promising candidate for ultra-thin photoelectric batteries and skin-like sensors. However, homogeneous thin films of the material usually provide low absorption efficiency. In this work, by engineering the nanohole arrays on a HOIP ultrathin film, we successfully design an all-dielectric HOIP metasurface with broadband optical absorption enhancement through the finite-difference time-domain technique. The absorption enhancement arises from the Mie resonance, which can be tuned by varying the geometrical parameters and the spatial periodicity of the nanoholes. Compared with a uniform HOIP film, the HOIP metasurface significantly enhances the absorption over the entire visible regime, and the maximum absorption rate reaches 90%. Moreover, our design with multiple nanohole sizes provides consistently high absorption efficiency up to 51%–87% in a broad wavelength range of 400 nm–770 nm. Furthermore, the external quantum efficiency of a solar cell with our HOIP metasurface is 44% higher than that of a uniform HOIP film by assuming the ideal process with infinite carrier lifetime and negligible recombination. Our findings may provide a route for effective light trapping and efficient photoelectric conversion with ultrathin HOIP metasurfaces.
Gauge Invariance for Classical Massless Particles with Spin

Wigner’s quantum-mechanical classification of particle-types in terms of irreducible representations of the Poincare group has a classical analogue, which we extend in this paper. We study the compactness properties of the resulting phase spaces at fixed energy, and show that in order for a classical massless particle to be physically sensible, its phase space must feature a classical-particle counterpart of electromagnetic gauge invariance. By examining the connection between massless and massive particles in the massless limit, we also derive a classical-particle version of the Higgs mechanism.
Lattice implementation of the instrumental variable method: shift and delta operator formulations

The lattice forms of the Instrumental Variable (IV) method is derived, for the standard shift operator. The extension to the delta operator formulation, for cases where high sampling rates cause numerical difficulties, is also discussed. For the sake of brevity, however, some of the routine technical details are omitted. The derivation yields the complete multi-channel and vector-channel (or multi-experiment) lattice algorithms. The overall approach is based on the non-orthogonal projections, and employs some of the techniques used in the lattice derivation of the least-square problem, where the projections are orthogonal. Complete algorithms, with appropriate end conditions, are presented, as well as an example to compare the estimates obtained from the basic least square methods to those from the instrumental variable method.
Robust, Perception Based Control with Quadrotors

Traditionally, controllers and state estimators in robotic systems are designed independently. Controllers are often designed assuming perfect state estimation. However, state estimation methods such as Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) drift over time and can cause the system to misbehave. While state estimation error can be corrected with the aid of GPS or motion capture, these complementary sensors are not always available or reliable. Recent work has shown that this issue can be dealt with by synthesizing robust controllers using a data-driven characterization of the perception error, and can bound the system’s response to state estimation error using a robustness constraint. We investigate the application of this robust perception-based approach to a quadrotor model using VIO for state estimation and demonstrate the benefits and drawbacks of using this technique in simulation and hardware. Additionally, to make tuning easier, we introduce a new cost function to use in the control synthesis which allows one to take an existing controller and "robustify" it. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first robust perception-based controller implemented in real hardware, as well as one utilizing a datadriven perception model. We believe this as an important step towards safe, robust robots that explicitly account for the inherent dependence between perception and control.
Stressmigration studies on dual damascene Cu/oxide and Cu/low k interconnects

Stress-induced void formation (SIV) was studied in dual damascene Cu/oxide and Cu/low k interconnects over a temperature range of 140 ~ 350 °C. Two modes of stressmigration were observed depending on the baking temperature and sample geometry. At lower temperatures (T 290 °C), voids were found in via bottoms which were connected to wide lines. The rate of high temperature stressmigration increased exponentially with temperature up to 350 °C and did not show a peak at a certain temperature. The activation energy was 1.0 eV for Cu/oxide, 0.86 eV for Cu/OSG, and ~1.0 eV for Cu/FSG interconnects. The dependence of stressmigration on linewidth, sample geometry, and ILD material is presented in this paper.
Color and credit: Race, regulation, and the quality of financial services

Abstract The incidence of misselling, fraud, and poor customer service by retail banks is significantly higher in areas with higher proportions of poor and minority borrowers and in areas where government regulation promotes an increased quantity of lending. Specifically, low-to-moderate-income (LMI) areas targeted by the Community Reinvestment Act have significantly worse outcomes, and this effect is larger for LMI areas with a high-minority population share. The results highlight an unintended adverse consequence of such quantity-focused regulations on the quality of credit to lower-income and minority customers.
Machine Learning for Mechanical Ventilation Control

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWWe consider the problem of controlling an invasive mechanical ventilator for pressure-controlled ventilation: a controller must let air in and out of a sedated patients lungs according to a trajectory of airway pressures specified by a clinician. Hand-tuned PID controllers and similar variants have comprised the industry standard for decades, yet can behave poorly by over- or under-shooting their target or oscillating rapidly. We consider a data-driven machine learning approach: First, we train a simulator based on data we collect from an artificial lung. Then, we train deep neural network controllers on these simulators. We show that our controllers are able to track target pressure waveforms significantly better than PID controllers. We further show that a learned controller generalizes across lungs with varying characteristics much more readily than PID controllers do.
Stationary Solutions to the Stochastic Burgers Equation on the Line

We consider invariant measures for the stochastic Burgers equation on $${\mathbb {R}}$$ , forced by the derivative of a spacetime-homogeneous Gaussian noise that is white in time and smooth in space. An invariant measure is indecomposable, or extremal, if it cannot be represented as a convex combination of other invariant measures. We show that for each $$a\in {\mathbb {R}}$$ , there is a unique indecomposable law of a spacetime-stationary solution with mean a, in a suitable function space. We also show that solutions starting from spatially-decaying perturbations of mean-a periodic functions converge in law to the extremal space-time stationary solution with mean a as time goes to infinity.
Cost-Performance Trade-off in thermoelectric air conditioning system with graded and constant material properties

Abstract Thermoelectric (TE) air cooling is a solid-state technology that has the potential to replace conventional vapor compression-based air conditioning. In this paper, we present a detailed system-level modeling for thermoelectric air conditioning system with position-dependent (graded) and constant material properties. Strategies for design optimization of the system are provided in terms of cost-performance trade-off. Realistic convection heat transfer at both sides of the system are taken into account in our modeling. Effects of convection heat transfer coefficients, air flowrate, and thermoelectric material properties are investigated with varying key parameters such as TE leg thickness, module fill factor, and input current. Both constant material properties and graded properties are considered for the TE materials, and they are compared in terms of the degree of cooling, coefficient of performance (COP), and power consumption. For graded materials, we employ one-dimensional finite element methods to solve the coupled electrical and thermal current equations with arbitrary profile of material properties varying with position along the TE legs. We find that graded materials can enhance the degree of cooling, but only at the expense of COP, compared to the case of constant property materials. With constant material properties of ZT = 1 and relatively low electric current, the power consumption of TE coolers can be lower than those of conventional air conditioners at an equivalent cooling capacity. Considering additional advantages such as demand-flexible operation, low noise, and high scalability, thermoelectric cooling could be a competitive technology for future air conditioning applications..
Bott–Thom isomorphism, Hopf bundles and Morse theory

Based on Morse theory for the energy functional on path spaces we develop a deformation theory for mapping spaces of spheres into orthogonal groups. This is used to show that these mapping spaces are weakly homotopy equivalent, in a stable range, to mapping spaces associated to orthogonal Clifford representations. Given an oriented Euclidean bundle $$V \rightarrow X$$ of rank divisible by four over a finite complex X we derive a stable decomposition result for vector bundles over the sphere bundle $$\mathord {{\mathbb {S}}}( \mathord {{\mathbb {R}}}\oplus V)$$ in terms of vector bundles and Clifford module bundles over X. After passing to topological K-theory these results imply classical Bott–Thom isomorphism theorems.
Structure-Performance Linkages in the Korean Banking Sector and Policy Implications

Two competing hypotheses, the market structure hypothesis and the efficient structure hypothesis, have been proposed in regard to the relationship between structure and performance in the banking sector. The purpose of this paper is to identify the major determinants of profitability in the Korean banking sector for the period of 1992~2002 by testing the two competing hypotheses in an integrated model which incorporates the variables representing both hypotheses. The results indicate that bank efficiency has a significant effect on bank profitability and support the efficient structure hypothesis. The unique feature of this paper is the estimation of allocative inefficiency by the directional technology distance function and the use of this estimate in explaining bank performance. Another contribution of this paper is a finding that the major determinants of bank profitability in Korea have changed between pre-and post-crisis periods. Before the currency crisis, all three variables- market concentration, market share and efficiency-were significant explanatory variables. However, after the crisis, the measures of efficiency stand out as the most significant variable, and the importance of equity ratio was also noted. This paper also provides several policy implications for bank regulatory reform.
AI Tax: The Hidden Cost of AI Data Center Applications

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are experiencing widespread adoption in industry and academia. This has been driven by rapid advances in the applications and accuracy of AI through increasingly complex algorithms and models; this, in turn, has spurred research into specialized hardware AI accelerators. Given the rapid pace of advances, it is easy to forget that they are often developed and evaluated in a vacuum without considering the full application environment. This article emphasizes the need for a holistic, end-to-end analysis of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads and reveals the “AI tax.” We deploy and characterize Face Recognition in an edge data center. The application is an AI-centric edge video analytics application built using popular open source infrastructure and machine learning (ML) tools. Despite using state-of-the-art AI and ML algorithms, the application relies heavily on pre- and post-processing code. As AI-centric applications benefit from the acceleration promised by accelerators, we find they impose stresses on the hardware and software infrastructure: storage and network bandwidth become major bottlenecks with increasing AI acceleration. By specializing for AI applications, we show that a purpose-built edge data center can be designed for the stresses of accelerated AI at 15% lower TCO than one derived from homogeneous servers and infrastructure.
Controllable Reset Behavior in Domain Wall–Magnetic Tunnel Junction Artificial Neurons for Task-Adaptable Computation

Neuromorphic computing with spintronic devices has been of interest due to the limitations of CMOS-driven von Neumann computing. Domain wall–magnetic tunnel junction (DW-MTJ) devices have been shown to be able to intrinsically capture biological neuron behavior. Edgy-relaxed behavior, where a frequently firing neuron experiences a lower action potential threshold, may provide additional artificial neuronal functionality when executing repeated tasks. In this letter, we demonstrate that this behavior can be implemented in DW-MTJ artificial neurons via three alternative mechanisms: shape anisotropy, magnetic field, and current-driven soft reset. Using micromagnetics and analytical device modeling to classify the Optdigits handwritten digit dataset, we show that edgy-relaxed behavior improves both classification accuracy and classification rate for ordered datasets while sacrificing little to no accuracy for a randomized dataset. This letter establishes methods by which artificial spintronic neurons can be flexibly adapted to datasets.
Direct Primary Care: Family Physician Perceptions of a Growing Model

INTRODUCTION Direct Primary Care (DPC) is a relatively new primary care practice model in which patients receive unlimited access to a defined set of primary care services in exchange for a monthly practice-specific membership fee. DPC is a bottom-up physician-driven approach in contrast to typical top-down insurer-centric healthcare delivery reform efforts. The degree to which physicians are aware of this practice model and whether they believe it addresses two key challenges facing primary care, access and administrative burden, are unclear. METHODS An online survey was distributed in July 2017 to 672 members of a research marketing sample of the American Academy of Family Physicians (n=225; response rate 33%). Based on AAFP definitions, the survey consisted of both open- and close-ended questions that gauged family physicians' awareness of DPC, as well as their perceptions about the model. RESULTS Most respondents (85%) had heard of DPC and 8% practised in a DPC model at the time of the survey. In general, respondents reported that DPC can offer positive outcomes through lower administrative burden for physicians, improved doctor-patient relationships, and better access. Respondents also suggested DPC may result in improved patient health outcomes and lower overall healthcare spending. Respondents' concerns included inappropriateness of the model for vulnerable populations and physician shortages. Survey responses differed depending on whether the respondent practised in a DPC model. DPC physicians had a more favorable view of the model and were focused on benefits to patients rather than benefits to physicians. CONCLUSIONS Any changes to practice models will require a better understanding of clear definitions of practice models. Further education is required about the specific benefits to vulnerable patients and practice standards. As the perceptions of DPC vary by practice experience, DPC physicians appear to be strong potential advocates of the model.
Distributions of historic market data: relaxation and correlations

We investigate relaxation and correlations in a class of mean-reverting models for stochastic variances. We derive closed-form expressions for the correlation functions and leverage for a general form of the stochastic term. We also discuss correlation functions and leverage for three specific models— multiplicative, Heston (Cox-Ingersoll-Ross) and combined multiplicative-Heston—whose steady-state probability density functions are Gamma, Inverse Gamma and Beta Prime respectively, the latter two exhibiting “fat” tails. For the Heston model, we apply the eigenvalue analysis of the Fokker-Planck equation to derive the correlation function—in agreement with the general analysis— and to identify a series of time scales, which are observable in relaxation of cumulants on approach to the steady state. We test our findings on a very large set of historic financial markets data.
Computing Zigzag Persistence on Graphs in Near-Linear Time

Graphs model real-world circumstances in many applications where they may constantly change to capture the dynamic behavior of the phenomena. Topological persistence which provides a set of birth and death pairs for the topological features is one instrument for analyzing such changing graph data. However, standard persistent homology defined over a growing space cannot always capture such a dynamic process unless shrinking with deletions is also allowed. Hence, zigzag persistence which incorporates both insertions and deletions of simplices is more appropriate in such a setting. Unlike standard persistence which admits nearly linear-time algorithms for graphs, such results for the zigzag version improving the general O(m^ω) time complexity are not known, where ω < 2.37286 is the matrix multiplication exponent. In this paper, we propose algorithms for zigzag persistence on graphs which run in near-linear time. Specifically, given a filtration with m additions and deletions on a graph with n vertices and edges, the algorithm for 0-dimension runs in O(mlog² n+mlog m) time and the algorithm for 1-dimension runs in O(mlog⁴ n) time. The algorithm for 0-dimension draws upon another algorithm designed originally for pairing critical points of Morse functions on 2-manifolds. The algorithm for 1-dimension pairs a negative edge with the earliest positive edge so that a 1-cycle containing both edges resides in all intermediate graphs. Both algorithms achieve the claimed time complexity via dynamic graph data structures proposed by Holm et al. In the end, using Alexander duality, we extend the algorithm for 0-dimension to compute the (p-1)-dimensional zigzag persistence for ℝ^p-embedded complexes in O(mlog² n+mlog m+nlog n) time.
Do Authoritarian Elections Help the Poor? Evidence from Russian Cities

Do local elections under autocracy help the poor? We argue that local appointees in electoral authoritarian regimes have political incentives that undermine public service provision; regime leaders...