cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
How to Feel Like a Woman, or Why Punishment Is a Drag

If a man in prison says that he was made -to feel like a woman," this is commonly understood to mean that he was degraded, dehumanized, and sexualized. This association of femininity with punishment has significant implications for the way our society understands not only the sexual abuse of men in prison but also sexual abuse generally These important implications are usually overlooked, however, because law and society typically regard prison feminization as a problem of gender transposition: that is, as a problem of men being treated like women. In contrast, this Article argues that feminization is punitive for both men and women. It is as unnatural and wrong for women to be degraded, dehumanized, and sexualized under coercive circumstances as it is for men to be. This Article suggests that examining the sexual abuse of men in prisons can help disrupt the persistent and uncritical linking of feminization and women. By reading the sexualized abuse of men in prison as a form of forced feminized performance-a coerced drag-this Article hopes to expose the artificiality and violence of compelled feminization. The proper approach to assessing forced feminization is to focus on its oppressive structure, not on the gender of its victims. When we do so, we can see what all victims along the spectrum of sexual and domestic abuse have in common, and we can form social and legal responses accordingly. The phenomenon of male sexual abuse in prison thus provides a potentially illuminating opportunity to think about the structure and consequences of sexual abuse in general. This is significant not least because social and legal responses to sexual abuse outside of the prison settingwhere sexual abuse is generally perpetrated by men against women-are constrained by pernicious gender stereotypes and a massive failure of empathy. Understanding the phenomenon of male prison sexual abuse is thus essential not only for addressing a specific problem in carceral institutions,but also for forcing law and society to consider sexual abuse in a productively counterintuitive way
Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud

Consumer reviews are now part of everyday decision making. Yet the credibility of these reviews is fundamentally undermined when businesses commit review fraud, creating fake reviews for themselves...
Fear of floating and domestic liability dollarization

Abstract Previous attempts to analyze the effect of liability dollarization on “fear of floating” have focused exclusively on the role played by foreign liabilities. Liability dollarization of the domestic banking system, however, poses a similar risk as dollar-denominated deposits and credit impose a source of currency risk on domestic banks and firms, respectively. Findings from a large cross-country sample indicate that domestic liability dollarization plays a central role in producing a “fear of floating” among emerging market countries and developing nations. This is an important result because domestic liability dollarization is more reversible than the dollarization of foreign liabilities, providing a reason for optimism that these countries can regain flexibility in the choice of exchange rate regime and overcome their “fear of floating”.
THE WAGE–WAGE‐ . . . ‐WAGE–PROFIT RELATION IN A MULTISECTOR BARGAINING ECONOMY

The equalization of profit rates across industries subject to firm-level bargaining over wages generates an interindustry wage structure with higher wages in capital-intensive sectors. The familiar inverse wage–profit relation gives way to a wage–wage- . . . -wage–profit surface on which the profit rate can vary directly with the wage paid in an individual industry. Institutional changes that decrease workers' bargaining power and increase the incomes of the unemployed tend to compress the wage distribution; these changes draw political support from cross-class coalitions of low-wage workers and capital-intensive firms. Some capital-using, labor-saving technical changes that raise capitalists' profits in current prices lower the equilibrium profit rate.
Fundamental Determinants of National Equity Market Returns: A Perspective on Conditional Asset Pricing

This paper provides a global asset pricing perspective on the debate over the relation between predetermined attributes of common stocks, such as ratios of price-to-bookvalue, cash-flow, earnings, and other variables to the future returns. Some argue that such variables may be used to find securities that are systematically undervalued by the market, while others argue that the measures are proxies for exposure to underlying economic risk factors. It is not possible to distinguish between these views without explicitly modelling the relation between such attributes and risk factors. We present an empirical framework for attacking the problem at a global level, assuming integrated markets. Our perspective pulls together the traditional academic and practitioner viewpoints on lagged attributes. We present new evidence on the relative importance of risk and mispricing eAects, using monthly data for 21 national equity markets. We find that the cross-sectional explanatory power of the lagged attributes is related to both risk and mispricing in the two-factor model, but the risk eAects explain more of the variance than mispricing. ” 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Private Order under Dysfunctional Public Order

Businesspeople need contractual assurance. Most transactions are less straightforward than a cash sale of an easily identifiable item. Buyers need assurance of the quality of what they are purchasing, and sellers need assurance that bills will be paid. The legal system may not always be available to provide contractual assurance and when the law is dysfunctional, private order might arise in its place. Many developing and transition economies have dysfunctional legal systems, either because the laws do not exist or because the machinery for enforcing them is inadequate. In such countries, bilateral relationships, communal norms, trade associations, or market intermediaries may work in place of the legal system.2 In this Article, we use data obtained from surveys of firms in five transition economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as Vietnam to show that, at least in these economies, social networks and informal gossip substitute for the formal legal system, while business networks
The Theory and Practice of Taxing Difference

Edward McCaffery's important new book, Taxing Women, explores the convergence between economic and feminist theory in the tax context. McCaffery argues that feminist and economic theorists who carefully consider the existing tax structure will object to precisely the same policies and programs (although on different grounds), and will seek identical tax reform. This is no small claim given the longstanding tension and disagreement that has existed between these two groups, as well as among various individuals within each group separately. Although McCaffery's claim might be slightly overstated, if he is correct, it certainly suggests that the current tax laws contain serious flaws if scrutinized under a framework either of economic efficiency or gender fairness. McCaffery begins the book with an exploration of a variety of tax code provisions and tax reform proposals. He not only argues that a number of the provisions and proposals have harmed women, but he also uncovers compelling evidence suggesting that tax theorists and policymakers have purposefully sought to promote a gendered division of labor that pushes men into the market and women into the home. McCaffery claims that this ap-
An Inconsistency in SEC Disclosure Requirements? The Case of the 'Insignificant' Private Target

Abstract Although the SEC's main charge is to ensure the disclosure of material information, it has not always consistently defined materiality. We show that acquisitions of privately-held targets classified as “insignificant” by the SEC appreciably affect market prices, and therefore are material by the SEC's definition. We find significant returns in transactions with targets as small as 2% – compared with the SEC's disclosure threshold of 20% – of the acquirer. Further, an average of 19 undisclosed private acquisitions per year exceed the median IPO value in the same year for our sample period. However, because the SEC deems these transactions insignificant, information like target financial statements remains undisclosed to the market. Disclosure rules regarding target financial statements thus create a regulatory disconnect, in which information that is material is nevertheless deemed “insignificant” and therefore not disclosed.
Population and Health Policies

Abstract The program evaluation literature for population and health policies is in flux, with many disciplines documenting biological and behavioral linkages from fetal development to late life mortality, chronic disease, and disability, though their implications for policy remain uncertain. Both macro- and microeconomics seek to understand and incorporate connections between economic development and the demographic transition. The focus here is on research methods, findings, and questions that economists can clarify regarding the causal relationships between economic development, health outcomes, and reproductive behavior, which operate in many directions, posing problems for identifying causal pathways. The connection between conditions under which people live and their expected life span and health status refers to “health production functions.” The relationships between an individual's stock of health and productivity, well-being, and duration of life encompasses the “returns to health human capital.” The control of reproduction improves directly the well-being of women, and the economic opportunities of her offspring. The choice of population policies may be country specific and conditional on institutional setting, even though many advances in biomedical and public health knowledge, including modern methods of birth control, are now widely available. Evaluation of a policy intervention in terms of cost effectiveness is typically more than a question of technological efficiency, but also the motivation for adoption, and the behavioral responsiveness to the intervention of individuals, families, networks, and communities. Well-specified research strategies are required to address (1) the economic production of health capacities from conception to old age; (2) the wage returns to increasing health status attributable to policy interventions; (3) the conditions affecting fertility, family time allocation, and human capital investments; and (4) the consequences for women and their families of policies which change the timing as well as number of births.
Abnormal Accruals and Managerial Intent: Evidence from the Timing of Merger Announcements and Completions

We examine acquiring managers' opportunistic reporting behavior around stock-for-stock acquisitions. Using the timing of merger announcements and completions to infer managerial intent, we show that acquirers with the most inflated earnings tend to announce mergers on Fridays, and that they manage earnings several quarters before the merger announcement date. Friday announcers exhibit a stronger negative association between pre-merger announcement abnormal accruals and post-merger announcement market performance than non-Friday announcers. This effect is driven mainly by mergers that are completed relatively quickly after they are announced. Overall, the evidence supports the notion that some acquiring managers inflate earnings prior to announcing the mergers, and time the merger announcements to exploit investor inattention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Limited Arbitrage in Equity Markets

We examine 82 situations where the market value of a company is less than its subsidiary. These situations imply arbitrage opportunities, providing an ideal setting to study the risks and market frictions that prevent arbitrageurs from immediately forcing prices to fundamental values. For 30 percent of the sample, the link between the parent and its subsidiary is severed before the relative value discrepancy is corrected. Furthermore, returns to a specialized arbitrageur would be 50 percent larger if the path to convergence was smooth rather than as observed. Uncertainty about the distribution of returns and characteristics of the risks limits arbitrage. THIS PAPER EXAMINES IMPEDIMENTS to arbitrage in equity markets using a sample of 82 situations between 1985 and 2000, where the market value of a company is less than that of its ownership stake in a publicly traded subsidiary. These situations suggest clear arbitrage opportunities, yet, they often persist, and therefore provide an interesting setting in which to study the risks and market frictions that prevent arbitrageurs from quickly forcing prices to fundamental values. Arbitrage is one of the central tenets of financial economics, enforcing the law of one price and keeping markets efficient. In its purest form, arbitrage requires no capital and is risk free ~see Dybvig and Ross ~1992!!. By simultaneously selling and purchasing identical securities at favorably different prices, the arbitrageur captures an immediate payoff with no up-front capital. Of course, pure arbitrage exists only in perfect capital markets. In the real world, imperfect information and market frictions make what is referred to as “arbitrage” both capital intensive and risky. Imperfect information and market frictions can impede arbitrage in two different ways. First, when there is uncertainty over the economic nature of an apparent mispricing and it is at least somewhat costly to learn about it, arbitrageurs may be reluctant to incur the potentially large fixed costs of entering the business of exploiting the arbitrage opportunity ~Merton ~1987!!. * Mitchell and Stafford are at Harvard University, and Pulvino is at Northwestern University. We thank Brad Cornell, Kent Daniel, Mihir Desai, Rick Green, Ravi Jagannathan, Owen Lamont, Andre Perold, Mitch Petersen, Julio Rotemberg, Rick Ruback, Tuomo Vuolteenaho, an anonymous referee, and seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard Business School, Ohio State University, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the 2001 Spring NBER Asset Pricing Program Meetings for helpful comments. We also thank Asma Qureshi for research assistance, Ameritrade Holding Corporation for short-rebate data, and especially Ken French for insightful comments and discussions. Harvard Business School’s Division of Research provided research support.
War Time Hysteria, 1917: Senator Miles Poindexter, ‘American-ness’ and the Strange Case of Colonel Carl Reichmann*

When, on 6 April 1917, the United States entered into the First World War, a wave of anti-German sentiment captured the nation. The Army was not immune from accusations of subversion. In 1917 Senat...
Are options redundant? Further evidence from currency futures markets

Abstract This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of options on the underlying asset's price formation process, using Geweke feedback measures. We derive the feedback measures from the Deutsche Mark, British Pound, Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen and Canadian Dollar futures and spot prices, before and after the introduction of options for these currency futures. While each currency market maintains some distinct characteristics in the post-option period, a common theme is found: after the option introduction, the instantaneous feedback between spot and futures markets improves drastically. The feedback from the spot to the futures market tends to decrease and remains small. The feedback from the futures market to the spot market tends to decrease as well. These results confirm the dominance of options markets, probably due to their smaller transaction costs. When made available, options assume a leading role for information transmission in currency markets.
Regulation as Delegation: Private Firms, Decisionmaking, and Accountability in the Administrative State

Administrative agencies increasingly enlist the judgment of private firms they regulate to achieve public ends. Regulation concerning the identification and reduction of risk-from financial, data and homeland security risk to the risk of conflicts of interest-increasingly mandates broad policy outcomes and accords regulated parties wide discretion in deciding how to interpret and achieve them. Yet the dominant paradigm of administrative enforcement, monitoring and threats of punishment, is ill suited to oversee the sound exercise of judgment and discretion. This Article argues that this kind of regulation should be viewed, instead, as regulatory "delegation" of the type Congress makes to Copyright © 2006 by Kenneth A. Bamberger. t Assistant Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law. J.D., Harvard Law School, 1998. My appreciation to Dean Alex Aleinikoff, Donald Langevoort and the Georgetown University Law Center for the resources and generous guidance accorded me as a Spring 2004 Visiting Researcher. My thanks as well to Margaret Blair, Jim Cox, Lauren Edelman, Dan Farber, Noah Feldman, Jody Freeman, Mort Horwitz, Vicki Jackson, Anne Joseph, Bob Kagan, Martha Minow, Erin Murphy, Roy Schotland, Paul Schwartz, Garrick Sevilla, Susan Sturm, Molly Van Houweling, Phil Weiser, David Wilkins, John Yoo, and members of the University of California Working Group on Public Administration and Organizational Theory for their generosity in comments and discussions.
Predicting Hedge Fund Failure: A Comparison of Risk Measures

This paper compares downside risk measures that incorporate higher return moments with traditional risk measures such as standard deviation in predicting hedge fund failure. When controlling for investment strategies, performance, fund age, size, lockup, high-water mark, and leverage, we find that funds with larger downside risk have a higher hazard rate. How ever, standard deviation loses the explanatory power once the other explanatory variables are included in the hazard model. Further, we find that liquidation does not necessarily mean failure in the hedge fund industry. By reexamining the attrition rate, we show that the real failure rate of 3.1% is lower than the attrition rate of 8.7% on an annual basis during the period of 1995-2004.
Managing moral distress: A strategy for resolving ethical dilemmas

Abstract Conflicts of interest. The boundaries of confidentiality. Right v. right dilemmas. Matters of duty, responsibility, character, and consequence. Ethical issues pervade professional life, and the moral distress they can create requires thoughtful reflection that moves beyond gut intuitions and knee-jerk reactions. This article presents a practical framework for assessing and resolving ethical dilemmas in a sophisticated manner, guided by a circumspect and reflective analysis able to withstand the scrutiny of others and minimize the potential for personal regrets. Central to the analysis set forth in this article's strategy are ‘interrogation questions’—a series of inquiries that draw from the richness of moral philosophy and ethical traditions, while reflecting the practical concerns of contemporary business practices—which guide the decision maker through a comprehensive review of primary considerations. Additionally, the article highlights myriad obstacles that may challenge one's awareness of a moral dilemma, a necessary precondition to employing the strategies of careful analysis and reflective judgment that this article outlines.
A Liquidity-Based Theory of Closed-End Funds

This paper develops a rational, liquidity-based model of closed-end funds (CEFs) that provides an economic motivation for the existence of this organizational form: they oer a means for investors to buy illiquid securities, without facing the potential costs associated with direct trading and without the externalities imposed by an open-end fund structure. Our theory predicts both the patterns observed in CEF IPO behavior, and the observed behavior of the CEF discount, which results from a tradeo between the liquidity benefits of investing in the CEF and the fees charged by the fund’s managers. In particular, the model predicts that IPOs will occur in waves in certain sectors at a time, that funds will be issued at a premium to net asset value (NAV), and that they will later usually trade at a discount. We also conduct an empirical investigation. Overall, we find qualitative and quantitative support for both the liquidity motive for issuing CEFs and the model’s predicted patterns in the premium/discount. In addition, we find evidence that the speed of reversion from premium to discount after a fund’s IPO is less rapid than suggested by prior research. However, we document one feature of the data that our model cannot explain: the return of newly issued funds under-performs that of seasoned CEFs. This overpricing at the IPO suggests that a full explanation of the discount may also require behavioral considerations.
Multiple markets, algorithmic trading, and market liquidity

Abstract Using a sample of NYSE firms from the first quarter of 2012, we show that the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) depth is negatively affected by quote competition between exchanges and by excess algorithmic trading (AT) activity, but positively impacted by volume fragmentation. Trade execution quality also decreases with higher quote competition and AT activity but is better with higher volume fragmentation. In addition, we find that the U-shaped pattern of spreads is an S-shape, with higher spreads at the open and lower spreads at the close. NBBO depth has an inverse pattern to that of spreads.
Hope The Power of Wish and Possibility

This work proposes an analysis of the cognitive and motivational components of hope, its basic properties, and the affective dispositions and behaviors it is likely to induce. In our view current t...
The Removability of Non-Citizen Parents and the Best Interests of Citizen Children: How to Balance Competing Imperatives in the Context of Removal Proceedings?

The massive influx of illegal immigrants over the preceding decades has combined with the United States’ jus soli citizenship regime to produce a growing class of removable aliens: non-citizen parents of United States citizen children. The removability of parents obviously places the citizen children in the unfortunate position of having to leave their country of citizenship behind to accompany the parents, or arrange for living situations within the United States, perhaps with a relative, but be separated from their parents. The compelling interests raised by the removability of parents in such circumstances have given rise to distinct forms of relief under domestic legal systems. The United Kingdom, in a recent decision by its Supreme Court, has held that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in determining whether the removal of the parent would be proportionate. Likewise, the United States provides for certain types of relief from removal for the parents of United States citizen children. Yet neither regime is entirely satisfactory. The United Kingdom’s approach is unduly biased towards non-removability, whereas the standards for establishing relief from removal in the United States are onerous and will be rarely met in practice. The purpose of this article is to propose a balancing of the interests that takes a realistic look both at the compelling interest citizen children have to remain in their country as part of a family unit and the competing interests of the state in a fully and fairly functioning immigration system. Such balancing is liable to make all parties unhappy - not every non-citizen parent should be permitted to remain simply on the fact of that parentage, and, conversely, not every removable parent should be removed simply because they are present illegally - yet it is the only feasible option to a problem that is only likely to grow in the coming decades.
The Relative Cost Efficiency of Stock versus Mutual Thrifts: A Bayesian Approach

The relative cost efficiency of the mutual versus stock forms of ownership for thrifts has been a relevant issue in an era of deregulation and competition in the financial services industry. In this study, Bayesian-based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) resampling methods are used to solve a stochastic cost frontier model and effectively determine cost efficiencies for the stock and mutual thrift groups. We find a statistically significant difference between both the cost frontiers and the cost efficiencies of the two groups, with the stock group operating at the lower-cost point. Agency problems explain a significant portion of the cost efficiency difference. Capital structure differences, though not helping to explain differences in cost efficiency, do help to explain differences in cost structure and managerial attitudes toward risk.
Constitutional Authority and Subversion: Egypt's New Presidential Election System

This article examines the 2005 amendments to the Egyptian constitution that were intended to change the presidential selection system from a single-nominee referendum to a multi-candidate election. Through a careful study of the amendments and the related laws, it shows that while on the surface this amendment looks as though it opens the presidential elections to multiple candidates, its actual goal is to perpetuate the rule of President Mubarak and his National Democratic Party. Further, by entrenching the new election system through a detailed constitutional amendment, the Egyptian regime has subverted the powers of the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) to score a significant victory for the executive and legislative branches in their ongoing cold war with the SCC.
Anthropology, History and the "More Economic Approach" in European Competition Law - A Review Essay

In several works over the last decade, Wolfgang Fikentscher has reminded us that there are ways of viewing competition law that need not begin and end with economics — its concepts, its language, and its science-based normative stance. Discussions of competition law in the United States and increasingly in Europe generally dismiss or marginalize views of competition law that are not circumscribed by economic science. In the works reviewed here, Fikentscher takes issue with the so-called "more economic approach" to law, particularly, competition law. As he has said on other occasions, he favors "a less economic approach" to competition law. Many in Europe and elsewhere may find value in some of his perspectives and insights, regardless of whether they accept his conclusions. Moreover, although his views clash with current orthodoxy in the US and have diminishing resonance in Europe, they represent concerns that are far more frequently found in other parts of the world, but that are there often less fully elaborated.
Voluntary Disclosure and Investment

This paper examines the determinants and economic efficiency of corporate voluntary disclosure. The focus is on the trade-off for an individual firm when the costs and benefits of voluntary disclosure stem from the consequences of its investment decisions and the impact on its share price. Investment and voluntary disclosure decisions are intertwined. First, voluntary disclosure leads to more accurate pricing, which induces more efficient investment decisions. Second, the firm may affect the market pricing in its favor by strategically disclosing or withholding its private information. This opportunistic use of disclosure may cause the real investment to be distorted at the margin. My analysis shows that the efficiency of voluntary disclosure is influenced by both effects. Further, this paper investigates how the investment efficiency and the propensity for providing voluntary disclosure respond to various environmental variables. Two such key variables are the general economic outlook of the investment opportunity and the quality of firm private information.
Vicarious Criminal Liability and the Constitutional Dimensions of Pinkerton

Introduction 585 I. The Strange Rise of “Pinkerton Liability” 592 II. Pinkerton as Constitutional Law 598 III. Pinkerton and Personal Guilt 605 IV. Vicarious Liability and Personal Guilt in Other Areas of Criminal Law 616 A. Scope 616 B. Felony Murder 627 C. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act .........634 Conclusion 638
The Cognitively Illiberal State

Ought implies can. This Article investigates whether the central moral directives of liberalism are ones citizens can as a matter of human cognition be expected to honor. Liberalism obliges the state to disclaim a moral orthodoxy and instead premise legal obligation on secular grounds accessible to persons of diverse cultural persuasions. Studies of the phenomenon of cultural cognition, however, suggest that individuals naturally impute socially harmful consequences to behavior that defies their moral norms. As a result, they are impelled to repress morally deviant behavior even when they honestly perceive themselves to be motivated only by the secular good of harm prevention. This Article identifies how this dynamic transforms seemingly instrumental debates over environmental regulation, public health, economic policy, and crime control into polarizing forms of illiberal status competition. It also proposes a counterintuitive remedy: rather than attempt to cleanse the law of culturally partisan meanings the discourse strategy associated with the liberal norm of public reason lawmakers should endeavor to infuse it with a surfeit of meanings capable of simultaneously affirming a wide range of competing worldviews.
Loss Aversion in Professional Golf

We examine loss aversion in the context of professional golf at US Open tournaments. In particular, we analyze data from two courses, Pebble Beach Golf Links and Oakmont Country Club, where they ha...
Evolution, finance, and the population genetics of relative wealth

Attempts to use evolutionary ideas in finance have often neglected mathematical population genetics. Population genetics provides a natural approach to certain problems in finance that involve the relative wealth that accrues to competing investment strategies. In our model, competing investment strategies differ only in their allocation to a risky asset versus a riskless asset. Here we use results from the population genetics of natural selection to find the investment strategy that maximizes the expected increase in relative wealth. Though we focus on single-period analysis, some of our key findings are reminiscent of those from the growth optimal portfolio literature, e.g., the Kelly criterion.
Market Definition and the Merger Guidelines

The recently issued revision of the US Horizontal Merger Guidelines, like its predecessors and mirrored by similar guidelines throughout the world, devotes substantial attention to the market definition process and the implications of market shares in the market that is selected. Nevertheless, some controversy concerning the revised Guidelines questions their increased openness toward more direct, economically based methods of predicting the competitive effects of mergers. By contrast, this article suggests that, as a matter of economic logic, the Guidelines revision can only be criticized for its timidity. Indeed, economic principles unambiguously favor elimination of the market definition process altogether.
A New Day: Prime Time to Advance Afghan Clinical Education

In a previous issue of the journal, Richard Grimes discussed the role that legal clinics can play in facilitating access to justice in a post-conflict society, such as Afghanistan’s, wracked by dec...
Inducement grants, hiring announcements, and adverse selection for new CEOs

We examine how adverse selection problems when hiring new external CEOs affect contractual features of inducement grants. Focusing on the sensitivity of inducement grants to the new CEO announcement return ($Sensitivity), we find that firms provide inducement grants that are more sensitive to the new CEO announcement return when information asymmetry about the new CEO is more severe and the costs of adverse selection problems are higher. We also find a positive relation between the market reaction to the appointment and $Sensitivity. We consider factors that reduce information asymmetry (e.g., engaging a search firm or appointing internal CEOs) and find they are associated with lower sensitivity of the inducement grant to the announcement.
Write and Read Channel Models for 1S1R Crossbar Resistive Memory with High Line Resistance

Crossbar resistive memory with 1 Selector 1 Resistor (181R) structure is attractive for low-cost and highdensity nonvolatile memory applications. As technology scales down to the single-nm regime, the increasing resistivity of wordline/bitline becomes a limiting factor to device reliability. This paper presents write/read communication channels while considering the line resistance and device variabilities by statistically relating the degraded write/read margins and the channel parameters. Binary asymmetric channel (BAC) models are proposed for the write/read operations. Simulations based on these models suggest that the bit-error rate of devices are highly non-uniform across the memory array. These models provide quantitative tools for evaluating the trade-offs between memory reliability and design parameters, such as array size, technology nodes, and aspect ratio, and also for designing coding-theoretic solutions that would be most effective for crossbar memory.
Analysis of the Structure and Evolution of an Open-Source Community

Open-source processes are based on the paradigm of self-organized communities as opposed to the traditional hierarchical teams. These processes have not only been successful in the software development domain but are also increasingly being used in the development of physical products. In order to successfully adapt open-source processes to product realization, there is a need to understand how open-source communities self-organize and how this impacts the development of products. Toward the direction of fulfilling this need, we present an analysis of an existing open-source community involved in developing a web-based content-management platform, Drupal. The approach is based on the analysis of networks using techniques such as social network analysis, degree distribution, and hierarchical clustering. Openly available information on the Drupal website is utilized to perform the analysis of the community. The data are transformed into two weighted undirected networks: networks of people and networks of Drupal modules. Both the structures of these networks and their evolution during the past 6 years are studied. Based on the analysis, it is observed that the structure of the Drupal community has the characteristics of a scale-free network, which is similar to many other complex networks in diverse domains. Key trends in the evolution of the networks are identified. Finally, a predictive model is presented to provide potential explanations for the observed structures and evolutionary trends.
DECENTRALIZED ATTRIBUTION OF GENERATIVE MODELS

Growing applications of generative models have led to new threats such as malicious personation and digital copyright infringement. One solution to these threats is model attribution, i.e., the identification of user-end models where the contents under question are generated. Existing studies showed empirical feasibility of attribution through a centralized classifier trained on all existing user-end models. However, this approach is not scalable in a reality where the number of models ever grows. Neither does it provide an attributability guarantee. To this end, this paper studies decentralized attribution, which relies on binary classifiers associated with each user-end model. Each binary classifier is parameterized by a user-specific key and distinguishes its associated model distribution from the authentic data distribution. We develop sufficient conditions of the keys that guarantee an attributability lower bound. Our method is validated on MNIST, CelebA, and FFHQ datasets. We also examine the trade-off between generation quality and robustness of attribution against adversarial post-processes.
From Ferroelectric to Quantum Paraelectric: KTa1-xNbxO3 (KTN), a Model System

The ABO3 perovskite oxides constitute an important family of technologically important ferroelectrics whose relatively simple chemical and crystallographic structures have contributed significantly to our understanding of ferroelectricity. They readily undergo structural phase transitions involving both polar and non-polar distortions from the ideal cubic lattice. This paper focuses on the mixed perovskite system KTa1-xNbxO3, or KTN, which has turned out to be a model system. While the end members KTaO3 and KNbO3 might be expected to be similar, in reality they exhibit very different properties. Their mixed crystals, which can be grown over the whole composition range, exhibit a rich set of phenomena whose study has added greatly to our current understanding of the phase transitions and dielectric properties of these materials. Included among these phenomena are soft mode response, ferroelectric (FE)-to-relaxor (R) crossover, quantum mechanical suppression of the transition, the appearance of a quantum paraelectric state and relaxational effects associated with dipolar impurities. Each of these phenomena is discussed briefly and illustrated. Some emphasis is on the unique role of pressure in elucidating the physics involved.
se(3)-TrackNet: Data-driven 6D Pose Tracking by Calibrating Image Residuals in Synthetic Domains

Tracking the 6D pose of objects in video sequences is important for robot manipulation. This task, however, introduces multiple challenges: (i) robot manipulation involves significant occlusions; (ii) data and annotations are troublesome and difficult to collect for 6D poses, which complicates machine learning solutions, and (iii) incremental error drift often accumulates in long term tracking to necessitate re-initialization of the object’s pose. This work proposes a data-driven optimization approach for long-term, 6D pose tracking. It aims to identify the optimal relative pose given the current RGB-D observation and a synthetic image conditioned on the previous best estimate and the object’s model. The key contribution in this context is a novel neural network architecture, which appropriately disentangles the feature encoding to help reduce domain shift, and an effective 3D orientation representation via Lie Algebra. Consequently, even when the network is trained only with synthetic data can work effectively over real images. Comprehensive experiments over benchmarks - existing ones as well as a new dataset with significant occlusions related to object manipulation - show that the proposed approach achieves consistently robust estimates and outperforms alternatives, even though they have been trained with real images. The approach is also the most computationally efficient among the alternatives and achieves a tracking frequency of 90.9Hz. 1
High throughput screening for expanded CTG repeats in myotonic dystrophy type 1 using melt curve analysis.

BACKGROUND Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is caused by CTG repeat expansions in the DMPK gene and is the most common form of muscular dystrophy. Patients can have long delays from onset to diagnosis, since clinical signs and symptoms are often nonspecific and overlapping with other disorders. Clinical genetic testing by Southern blot or triplet-primed PCR (TP-PCR) is technically challenging and cost prohibitive for population surveys. METHODS Here, we present a high throughput, low-cost screening tool for CTG repeat expansions using TP-PCR followed by high resolution melt curve analysis with saturating concentrations of SYBR GreenER dye. RESULTS We determined that multimodal melt profiles from the TP-PCR assay are a proxy for amplicon length stoichiometry. In a screen of 10,097 newborn blood spots, melt profile analysis accurately reflected the tri-modal distribution of common alleles from 5 to 35 CTG repeats, and identified the premutation and full expansion alleles. CONCLUSION We demonstrate that robust detection of expanded CTG repeats in a single tube can be achieved from samples derived from specimens with minimal template DNA such as dried blood spots (DBS). This technique is readily adaptable to large-scale testing programs such as population studies and newborn screening programs.
Enumerative gadget phenomena for (4, 1)-adinkras

Adinkras are combinatorial objects developed to study supersymmetry representations. Gates et al. introduced the "gadget" as a function of pairs of adinkras, obtaining some mysterious results for $(n=4, k=1)$ adinkras with computer-aided computation. Specifically, very few values of the gadget actually appear, suggesting a great deal of symmetry in these objects. In this paper, we compute gadgets symbolically and explain some of these observed phenomena with group theory and combinatorics. Guided by this work, we give some suggestions for generalizations of the gadget to other values of the $n$ and $k$ parameters.
Generative Autoregressive Ensembles for Satellite Imagery Manipulation Detection

Satellite imagery is becoming increasingly accessible due to the growing number of orbiting commercial satellites. Many applications make use of such images: agricultural management, meteorological prediction, damage assessment from natural disasters, or cartography are some of the examples. Unfortunately, these images can be easily tampered and modified with image manipulation tools damaging downstream applications. Because the nature of the manipulation applied to the image is typically unknown, unsupervised methods that don’t require prior knowledge of the tampering techniques used are preferred. In this paper, we use ensembles of generative autoregressive models to model the distribution of the pixels of the image in order to detect potential manipulations. We evaluate the performance of the presented approach obtaining accurate localization results compared to previously presented approaches.
Multiway Cluster Robust Double/Debiased Machine Learning

This paper investigates double/debiased machine learning (DML) under multiway clustered sampling environments. We propose a novel multiway cross fitting algorithm and a multiway DML estimator based...
Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms have been successfully applied to a range of challenging control tasks. However, these methods typically suffer from three core difficulties: temporal credit assignment with sparse rewards, lack of effective exploration, and brittle convergence properties that are extremely sensitive to hyperparameters. Collectively, these challenges severely limit the applicability of these approaches to real world problems. Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), a class of black box optimization techniques inspired by natural evolution, are well suited to address each of these three challenges. However, EAs typically suffer with high sample complexity and struggle to solve problems that require optimization of a large number of parameters. In this paper, we introduce Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning (ERL), a hybrid algorithm that leverages the population of an EA to provide diversified data to train an RL agent, and reinserts the RL agent into the EA population periodically to inject gradient information into the EA. ERL inherits EA's ability of temporal credit assignment with a fitness metric, effective exploration with a diverse set of policies, and stability of a population-based approach and complements it with off-policy DRL's ability to leverage gradients for higher sample efficiency and faster learning. Experiments in a range of challenging continuous control benchmark tasks demonstrate that ERL significantly outperforms prior DRL and EA methods, achieving state-of-the-art performances.
KPZ equation correlations in time

We consider the narrow wedge solution to the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang stochastic PDE under the characteristic 3:2:1 scaling of time, space and fluctuations. We study the correlation of fluctuations at two different times. We show that, when the times are close to each other, the correlation approaches one at a power-law rate with exponent 2/3, while, when the two times are remote from each other, the correlation tends to zero at a power-law rate with exponent −1/3. We also prove exponential-type tail bounds for differences of the solution at two space-time points. Three main tools are pivotal to proving these results: (1) a representation for the two-time distribution in terms of two independent narrow wedge solutions, (2) the Brownian Gibbs property of the KPZ line ensemble and (3) recently proved one-point tail bounds on the narrow wedge solution.
Limit Shape of Perfect Matchings on Contracting Bipartite Graphs

We consider random perfect matchings on a general class of contracting bipartite graphs by letting certain edge weights be 0 on the contracting square-hexagon lattice in a periodic way. We obtain a deterministic limit shape in the scaling limit. The results can also be applied to prove the existence of multiple disconnected liquid regions for all the contracting square-hexagon lattices with certain edge weights, extending the results proved in [13] for contracting square-hexagon lattices where the number of square rows in each period is either 0 or 1.
Kinetic sequencing (k-Seq) as a massively parallel assay for ribozyme kinetics: utility and critical parameters.

Characterizing genotype-phenotype relationships of biomolecules (e.g. ribozymes) requires accurate ways to measure activity for a large set of molecules. Kinetic measurement using high-throughput sequencing (e.g. k-Seq) is an emerging assay applicable in various domains that potentially scales up measurement throughput to over 106 unique nucleic acid sequences. However, maximizing the return of such assays requires understanding the technical challenges introduced by sequence heterogeneity and DNA sequencing. We characterized the k-Seq method in terms of model identifiability, effects of sequencing error, accuracy and precision using simulated datasets and experimental data from a variant pool constructed from previously identified ribozymes. Relative abundance, kinetic coefficients, and measurement noise were found to affect the measurement of each sequence. We introduced bootstrapping to robustly quantify the uncertainty in estimating model parameters and proposed interpretable metrics to quantify model identifiability. These efforts enabled the rigorous reporting of data quality for individual sequences in k-Seq experiments. Here we present detailed protocols, define critical experimental factors, and identify general guidelines to maximize the number of sequences and their measurement accuracy from k-Seq data. Analogous practices could be applied to improve the rigor of other sequencing-based assays.