cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
THE IMPACT OF LOW-PRIORITY LAWS ON CRIMINAL ACTIVITY: EVIDENCE FROM CALIFORNIA

We examine the impact of low-priority initiatives on criminal activity. Low-priority initiatives mandate that minor marijuana possession offenses be the lowest enforcement priority for police. Localities pass these laws because they believe if officers devote fewer resources toward minor marijuana crimes, more resources will be available to deter more serious crimes. Using data from California, we find that jurisdictions that adopted low-priority laws experienced a reduction in arrests for misdemeanor marijuana offenses. However, we do not find evidence of a consistent effect of enacting a low-priority initiative on the crime or clearance rate of other felonies. (JEL H1, H4, K4)
Peacock: A Non-Haptic 3D Performance Interface.

Peacock is a newly designed interface for improvisational performances. The interface is equipped with thirty-five proximity sensors arranged in five rows and seven columns. The sensors detect the movements of a performer's hands and arms in a three-dimensional space above them. The interface digitizes the output of the sensors into sets of high precision digital packets, and sends them to a patch running in Pdextended with a sufficiently high bandwidth for performances with almost no computational resource consumption in Pd. The precision, speed, and efficiency of the system enable the sonification of hand gestures in realtime without the need to attach any physical devices to the performer's body. This paper traces the interface’s evolution, discussing relevant technologies, hardware construction, system design, and input monitoring.
Sharing Indigenous Knowledge: To Share or Not to Share? That is the Question

The Internet and digital technology create new possibilities for the development of cultures, communities and knowledge. Over the last twenty years there has been a great increase in interest in indigenous knowledge from a variety of groups, including academia, development agencies and the corporate world. Within this diverse range of interests, there have been initiatives to facilitate. . .
A structured approach to predicting image enhancement parameters

Social networking on mobile devices has become a commonplace of everyday life. In addition, photo capturing process has become trivial due to the advances in mobile imaging. Hence people capture a lot of photos everyday and they want them to be visually-attractive. This has given rise to automated, one-touch enhancement tools. However, the inability of those tools to provide personalized and content-adaptive enhancement has paved way for machine-learned methods to do the same. The existing typical machine-learned methods heuristically (e.g. kNN-search) predict the enhancement parameters for a new image by relating the image to a set of similar training images. These heuristic methods need constant interaction with the training images which makes the parameter prediction sub-optimal and computationally expensive at test time which is undesired. This paper presents a novel approach to predicting the enhancement parameters given a new image using only its features, without using any training images. We propose to model the interaction between the image features and its corresponding enhancement parameters using the matrix factorization (MF) principles. We also propose a way to integrate the image features in the MF formulation. We show that our approach outperforms heuristic approaches as well as recent approaches in MF and structured prediction on synthetic as well as real-world data of image enhancement.
Acute aortic syndrome

Acute aortic syndrome (AAS) is a term used to describe a constellation of life-threatening aortic diseases that have similar presentation, but appear to have distinct demographic, clinical, pathological and survival characteristics. Many believe that the three major entities that comprise AAS: aortic dissection (AD), intramural hematoma (IMH) and penetrating aortic ulcer (PAU), make up a spectrum of aortic disease in which one entity may evolve into or coexist with another. Much of the confusion in accurately classifying an AAS is that they present with similar symptoms: typically acute onset of severe chest or back pain, and may have similar radiographic features, since the disease entities all involve injury or disruption of the medial layer of the aortic wall. The accurate diagnosis of an AAS is often made at operation. This manuscript will attempt to clarify the similarities and differences between AD, IMH and PAU of the ascending aorta and describe the challenges in distinguishing them from one another.
Chiral cyclopentadienylruthenium sulfoxide catalysts for asymmetric redox bicycloisomerization

A full account of our efforts toward an asymmetric redox bicycloisomerization reaction is presented in this article. Cyclopentadienylruthenium (CpRu) complexes containing tethered chiral sulfoxides were synthesized via an oxidative [3 + 2] cycloaddition reaction between an alkyne and an allylruthenium complex. Sulfoxide complex 1 containing a p-anisole moiety on its sulfoxide proved to be the most efficient and selective catalyst for the asymmetric redox bicycloisomerization of 1,6- and 1,7-enynes. This complex was used to synthesize a broad array of [3.1.0] and [4.1.0] bicycles. Sulfonamide- and phosphoramidate-containing products could be deprotected under reducing conditions. Catalysis performed with enantiomerically enriched propargyl alcohols revealed a matched/mismatched effect that was strongly dependent on the nature of the solvent.
Gallium Arsenate Dihydrate under Pressure: Elastic Properties, Compression Mechanism, and Hydrogen Bonding

Gallium arsenate dihydrate is a member of a class of isostructural compounds, with the general formula M3+AsO4·2H2O (M3+ = Fe, Al, In, or Ga), which are being considered as potential solid-state storage media for the sequestration of toxic arsenic cations. We report the first high-pressure structural analysis of a metal arsenate dihydrate, namely, GaAsO4·2H2O. This compound crystallizes in the orthorhombic space group Pbca with Z = 8. Accurate unit cell parameters as a function of pressure were obtained by high-pressure single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and a bulk modulus of 51.1(3) GPa for GaAsO4·2H2O was determined from a third-order Birch–Murnaghan equation of state fit to the P–V data. Assessment of the pressure dependencies of the unit cell lengths showed that the compressibility of the structure along the axial directions increases in the order of [010] < [100] < [001]. This order was found to correlate well with the proposed compression mechanism for GaAsO4·2H2O, which involves deformation of the i...
A simple and accurate algorithm for path integral molecular dynamics with the Langevin thermostat

We introduce a novel simple algorithm for thermostatting path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) with the Langevin equation. The staging transformation of path integral beads is employed for demonstration. The optimum friction coefficients for the staging modes in the free particle limit are used for all systems. In comparison to the path integral Langevin equation thermostat, the new algorithm exploits a different order of splitting for the phase space propagator associated to the Langevin equation. While the error analysis is made for both algorithms, they are also employed in the PIMD simulations of three realistic systems (the H2O molecule, liquid para-hydrogen, and liquid water) for comparison. It is shown that the new thermostat increases the time interval of PIMD by a factor of 4-6 or more for achieving the same accuracy. In addition, the supplementary material shows the error analysis made for the algorithms when the normal-mode transformation of path integral beads is used.
The virtual pediatric airways workbench

The Virtual Pediatric Airways Workbench (VPAW) is a patient-centered surgical planning software system targeted to pediatric patients with airway obstruction. VPAW provides an intuitive surgical planning interface for clinicians and supports quantitative analysis regarding prospective surgeries to aid clinicians deciding on potential surgical intervention. VPAW enables a full surgical planning pipeline, including importing DICOM images, segmenting the airway, interactive 3D editing of airway geometries to express potential surgical treatment planning options, and creating input files for offline geometric analysis and computational fluid dynamics simulations for evaluation of surgical outcomes. In this paper, we describe the VPAW system and its use in one case study with a clinician to successfully describe an intended surgery outcome.
The Effects of Aggregate and Gender-Specific Labor Demand Shocks on Child Health

We estimate the relationship between local labor market opportunities and child health using state unemployment rates and demand-induced changes in mothers' and fathers' employment opportunities. In contrast with studies of adult health, we find little evidence that aggregate economic conditions are correlated contemporaneously with children's health. However, we find important patterns by gender. In particular, improvements in women's employment opportunities are consistently associated with worse child health, while better labor market conditions for men have positive effects. These patterns suggest that both family income and maternal time are important inputs to child health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Asymptotic bounds for special values of shifted convolution Dirichlet series

Hoffstein and Hulse defined the shifted convolution series of two cusp forms by "shifting" the usual Rankin-Selberg convolution L-series by a parameter h. We use the theory of harmonic Maass forms to study the behavior in h-aspect of certain values of these series and prove a polynomial bound as h approaches infinity. Our method relies on a result of Mertens and Ono, who showed that these values are Fourier coefficients of mixed mock modular forms.
Manganese-Catalyzed Carboacylations of Alkenes with Alkyl Iodides

A manganese-catalyzed carboacylation of alkenes with alkyl iodides and carbon monoxide is described. This carbonylative difunctionalization uses both primary and secondary alkyl iodides in reactions with a diverse array of cyclic and acyclic substrates. Examples of successful applications to the synthesis of five-, six-, and seven-membered rings are provided. The inexpensive, first-row catalytic system and mild reaction conditions are expected to facilitate applications in complex synthesis.
Voice Based User-Device Physical Unclonable Functions for Mobile Device Authentication

In this paper, a novel voice based User-Device (UD-) physical unclonable function (PUF) is demonstrated. In traditional PUFs, variability of challenge-response pairs (CRPs) only comes from physical randomness of silicon. Recently, a new type of PUF, touch screen based UD-PUF is proposed, which entangles human user biometric variability with the silicon biometric. Any silicon based mobile device sensor which is a UI element can potentially seed such a UD-PUF. Multiple UD-PUFs based on different, orthogonal sensors enhance robustness. If one UD-PUF behaves poorly in certain environmental conditions, another one might behave well. In the voice UD-PUF, the challenge is a single word chosen by the user. The user speaks the challenge word into the microphone of the mobile device. The speech has natural human biometric variability. The raw microphone output data of the analog to digital converter (ADC) also reflects the silicon variability. This voice microphone data sequence can be quantized into a binary sequence leading to a PUF - a physical randomness derived, unclonable function. To ensure reproducibility, a background noise reduction algorithm is applied on raw voice data sequence. Both variability and reproducibility of this voice UD-PUF are evaluated. We achieve 4.74% false positive rate and 15.56% false negative rate in reproducibility by using Pixel-matching recognition algorithm. For variability, we show 60+ bits Hamming distance, on average, between 128 bits binary responses of different (user, device, challenge) combinations. We also assess the pseudorandom number generation properties of the voice UD-PUF by putting its binary responses through UMontreal TESTU01 suite of tests. The best voice UD-PUF algorithms passed all but 3-6 of the 26 randomness tests.
Does Conditionality Mitigate the Potential Negative Effect of Aid on Revenues

This paper assesses whether conditionality in IMF-supported programmes has helped offset the potential negative effect of foreign aid on tax revenues. The analysis – carried out on panel data cover...
Why Do Countries Matter so Much in Corporate Social Performance

Abstract Why do levels of corporate social performance (CSP) differ so much across countries? We answer this question in an examination of CSP ratings of more than 2600 companies from 36 countries. We find that firm characteristics explain very little of the variations in CSP ratings. In contrast, variations in country factors such as stages of economic development, culture, and institutions account for a significant proportion of variations in CSP ratings across countries. In particular, we find that CSP ratings are high in countries with high income-per-capita, strong civil liberties and political rights, and cultures oriented toward harmony and autonomy. Furthermore, we find that home country factors explain a smaller portion of the overall variations in CSP for multinationals and cross-listed firms than for non-multinationals and pure domestic firms, respectively.
Inferring species interactions from co-occurrence data with Markov networks.

Inferring species interactions from co-occurrence data is one of the most controversial tasks in community ecology. One difficulty is that a single pairwise Interaction can ripple through an ecological network and produce surprising indirect consequences. For example, the negative correlation between two competing species can be reversed in the presence of a third species that outcompetes both of them. Here, I apply models from statistical physics, called Markov networks or Markov random fields, that can predict the direct and indirect consequences of any possible species interaction matrix. Interactions in these models can be estimated from observed co-occurrence rates via maximum likelihood, controlling for indirect effects. Using simulated landscapes with known interactions, I evaluated Markov networks and six existing approaches. Markov networks consistently outperformed the other methods, correctly isolating direct interactions between species pairs even when indirect interactions or abiotic factors largely overpowered them. Two computationally efficient approximations, which controlled for indirect effects with partial correlations or generalized linear models, also performed well. Null models showed no evidence of being able to control for indirect effects, and reliably yielded incorrect inferences when such effects were present. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Hybrid Approximate Message Passing

Gaussian and quadratic approximations of message passing algorithms on graphs have attracted considerable recent attention due to their computational simplicity, analytic tractability, and wide applicability in optimization and statistical inference problems. This paper presents a systematic framework for incorporating such approximate message passing (AMP) methods in general graphical models. The key concept is a partition of dependencies of a general graphical model into strong and weak edges, with the weak edges representing small, linearizable couplings of variables. AMP approximations based on the central limit theorem can be readily applied to aggregates of many weak edges and integrated with standard message passing updates on the strong edges. The resulting algorithm, which we call hybrid generalized approximate message passing (HyGAMP), can yield significantly simpler implementations of sum-product and max-sum loopy belief propagation. By varying the partition of strong and weak edges, a performance-complexity tradeoff can be achieved. Group sparsity and multinomial logistic regression problems are studied as examples of the proposed methodology.
Inverting OII 83.4 nm dayglow profiles using Markov chain radiative transfer

Emission profiles of the resonantly scattered OII 83.4 nm triplet can in principle be used to estimate O+ density profiles in the F2 region of the ionosphere. Given the emission source profile, solution of this inverse problem is possible, but requires significant computation. The traditional Feautrier solution to the radiative transfer problem requires many iterations to converge, making it time-consuming to compute. A Markov chain approach to the problem produces similar results by directly constructing a matrix that maps the source emission rate to an effective emission rate which includes scattering to all orders. The Markov chain approach presented here yields faster results and therefore can be used to perform the O+ density retrieval with higher resolution than would otherwise be possible.
Cross-Lingual Syntactic Transfer with Limited Resources

We describe a simple but effective method for cross-lingual syntactic transfer of dependency parsers, in the scenario where a large amount of translation data is not available. The method makes use of three steps: 1) a method for deriving cross-lingual word clusters, which can then be used in a multilingual parser; 2) a method for transferring lexical information from a target language to source language treebanks; 3) a method for integrating these steps with the density-driven annotation projection method of Rasooli and Collins (2015). Experiments show improvements over the state-of-the-art in several languages used in previous work, in a setting where the only source of translation data is the Bible, a considerably smaller corpus than the Europarl corpus used in previous work. Results using the Europarl corpus as a source of translation data show additional improvements over the results of Rasooli and Collins (2015). We conclude with results on 38 datasets from the Universal Dependencies corpora.
Explaining Kazakhstani identity: supraethnic identity, ethnicity, language, and citizenship

The demographic composition of Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union presented a dilemma to the new Kazakhstani government: Should it advance a Kazakh identity as paramount, possibly alienating the large non-Kazakh population? Or should it advocate for a non-ethnicized national identity? How would those decisions be made in light of global norms of liberal multiculturalism? And, critically, would citizens respond to new frames of identity? This paper provides an empirical look at supraethnic identity-building in Kazakhstan – that is, at the development of a national identity that individuals place above or alongside their ethnic identification. We closely examine the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan to describe how Kazakhstani policies intersect with theories of nationalism and nation-building. We then use ordered probit models to analyze data from a 2014 survey to examine how citizens of Kazakhstan associate with a “Kazakhstani” supraethnic identity. Our findings suggest that despite the Assembly...
THE MULTIPLY REVISED HIP: ISSUES THAT MATTER

The moderator will lead a structured panel discussion that explores how to manage challenges commonly found in the multiply revised hip. Topics covered will include: (1) Preferred exposure in multiply operated hip (when to use ETO, when not to use ETO, which type of ETO to use); (2) Implant removal: technical tips for cup removal; (3) Bone loss: favored acetabular reconstruction in severe bone loss (when to use cancellous graft, bulk graft, metal augments); favored acetabular reconstruction methods for different categories of bone loss; favored femoral reconstruction methods for multiply operated hip; (4) Favored methods of preventing/managing hip instability (large head, dual mobility, constrained implants) in multiply operated hip; (5) When to accept resection arthroplasty as definitive procedure.
Using partial identification methods to estimate the effect of violence against women on their children’s health outcomes

ABSTRACTA growing literature in economics seeks to estimate the costs of violence against women by examining, for example, its impact on the health outcomes of their children. However, it is difficult to assign a causal interpretation to these nonexperimental studies due to the presence of unobservable characteristics affecting violence and health outcomes simultaneously. The lack of credible instrumental variables applicable in several countries further limits our knowledge. I address this gap by using new partial identification methods to estimate the relative size of the unobservables needed to eliminate the estimated effects in nonexperimental studies. I also expand the external validity of the analysis by using data from five standardized nationally representative household surveys in Latin America. Consistent with previous studies, cross-sectional estimates show large negative associations between violence against women and an array of child health outcomes. However, when accounting for omitted vari...
Degrees of freedom of two-hop wireless networks: “Everyone gets the entire cake”

We show that fully connected two-hop wireless networks with K sources, K relays and K destinations have K degrees of freedom for almost all values of constant channel coefficients. Our main contribution is a new interference-alignment-based achievability scheme which we call aligned network diagonalization. This scheme allows the data streams transmitted by the sources to undergo a diagonal linear transformation from the sources to the destinations, thus being received free of interference by their intended destination.
An initial study on load forecasting considering economic factors

This paper proposes a new objective function and quantile regression (QR) algorithm for load forecasting (LF). In LF, the positive forecasting errors often have different economic impact from the negative forecasting errors. Considering this difference, a new objective function is proposed to put different prices on the positive and negative forecasting errors. QR is used to find the optimal solution of the proposed objective function. Using normalized net energy load of New England network, the proposed method is compared with a time series method, the artificial neural network method, and the support vector machine method. The simulation results show that the proposed method is more effective in reducing the economic cost of the LF errors than the other three methods.
Asymptotic Expansions for the Solutions of Certain Nonlinear Parabolic Problems. I

(1980). Asymptotic expansions for the solutions of certain nonlinear parabolic problems II. Communications in Partial Differential Equations: Vol. 5, No. 12, pp. 1251-1271.
Macroeconomic effects of secondary market trading

Starting around 1990, financial intermediaries in the United States increasingly began to sell, rather than hold to maturity, many of the loans that they provided to households and firms. This paper presents a theory in which the endogenous growth of such secondary market trading generates a macroeconomic credit cycle. Growing secondary markets initially boost credit volumes but gradually lead credit to flow to excessively risky investments. Aggregate risk exposure builds as asset quality falls. Ultimately, a negative shock leads to a simultaneous collapse of secondary markets and credit volumes ‐ as in the financial crisis of 2008. Booms are triggered by periods of low interest rates, and longer booms lead to sharper crises. Saving gluts and expansionary monetary policy thus lead to financial fragility over time. Pro-cyclical regulation of secondary market traders, such as asset managers or hedge funds, can improve welfare even when such traders are not levered.
Perturbation of zero surfaces

It is proved that if a smooth function \(u(x), x\in R^3\), such that \(\inf_{s\in S}|u_N(s)|>0\), where \(u_N\) is the normal derivative of \(u\) on \(S\), has a closed smooth surface \(S\) of zeros, then the function \(u(x)+\epsilon v(x)\) has also a closed smooth surface \(S_\epsilon\) of zeros. Here \(v\) is a smooth function and \(\epsilon>0\) is a sufficiently small number.
“Gap hunting” to characterize clustered probe signals in Illumina methylation array data

The Illumina 450k array has been widely used in epigenetic association studies. Current quality-control (QC) pipelines typically remove certain sets of probes, such as those containing a SNP or with multiple mapping locations. An additional set of potentially problematic probes are those with DNA methylation distributions characterized by two or more distinct clusters separated by gaps. Data-driven identification of such probes may offer additional insights for downstream analyses. We developed a procedure, termed “gap hunting,” to identify probes showing clustered distributions. Among 590 peripheral blood samples from the Study to Explore Early Development, we identified 11,007 “gap probes.” The vast majority (9199) are likely attributed to an underlying SNP(s) or other variant in the probe, although SNP-affected probes exist that do not produce a gap signals. Specific factors predict which SNPs lead to gap signals, including type of nucleotide change, probe type, DNA strand, and overall methylation state. These expected effects are demonstrated in paired genotype and 450k data on the same samples. Gap probes can also serve as a surrogate for the local genetic sequence on a haplotype scale and can be used to adjust for population stratification. The characteristics of gap probes reflect potentially informative biology. QC pipelines may benefit from an efficient data-driven approach that “flags” gap probes, rather than filtering such probes, followed by careful interpretation of downstream association analyses. Our results should translate directly to the recently released Illumina EPIC array given the similar chemistry and content design.
The Promise and Problems of Universal, General Theories of Contract Law

There is a growing literature offering (competing) theories of particular doctrinal areas – theories of contract law, tort law, property law, criminal law, restitution law, etc. As theories of doctrinal areas – and, not limited in title or description to the doctrinal area of a particular jurisdiction or time period – they purport to describe, explain, or (and) justify all past, present, and possible versions of that doctrinal area. The audacious ambition of such claims has done little to slow the supply of these theories, though it may explain why so few among these projects pause to consider explicitly their methodology and grounds. In this paper, I explore what may justify these sorts of theories, and what problems they need to overcome. I use examples primarily from contract law, as it is the area I know best, but I suspect that the promise and problems of general theories of other areas of law will be similar. Part I examines what is meant by general and universal theories. Part II considers the practice of rational reconstruction, a practice that is both often at the core of what theorists of doctrinal areas do, and central to how they justify their project. Part III reflects more generally on the factors that might cause caution about the project of general theory. Part IV comes from the other direction, looking at the considerations that motivate or ground general theories. And Part V adds a few comments on prescriptive theories.
Institutional investment in IPOs and post-IPO M&A activity

Abstract Secondary market stock returns of newly public firms with high levels of institutional investment exceed returns of firms with low institutional investment (Field and Lowry, 2009). We find that a material portion of this performance differential is attributable to institutional investment in firms that participate in mergers and acquisitions after their initial public offerings (IPOs). Specifically, institutions not only tend to avoid underperforming firms, on average, but also invest heavily in IPO firms that subsequently become M&A participants, especially well-performing bidders and targets. Superior returns among firms with high institutional ownership suggests the ability of institutional investors to identify and actively monitor newly public M&A participants.
FHF2 isoforms differentially regulate Nav1.6-mediated resurgent sodium currents in dorsal root ganglion neurons

Nav1.6 and Nav1.6-mediated resurgent currents have been implicated in several pain pathologies. However, our knowledge of how fast resurgent currents are modulated in neurons is limited. Our study explored the potential regulation of Nav1.6-mediated resurgent currents by isoforms of fibroblast growth factor homologous factor 2 (FHF2) in an effort to address the gap in our knowledge. FHF2 isoforms colocalize with Nav1.6 in peripheral sensory neurons. Cell line studies suggest that these proteins differentially regulate inactivation. In particular, FHF2A mediates long-term inactivation, a mechanism proposed to compete with the open-channel blocker mechanism that mediates resurgent currents. On the other hand, FHF2B lacks the ability to mediate long-term inactivation and may delay inactivation favoring open-channel block. Based on these observations, we hypothesized that FHF2A limits resurgent currents, whereas FHF2B enhances resurgent currents. Overall, our results suggest that FHF2A negatively regulates fast resurgent current by enhancing long-term inactivation and delaying recovery. In contrast, FHF2B positively regulated resurgent current and did not alter long-term inactivation. Chimeric constructs of FHF2A and Navβ4 (likely the endogenous open channel blocker in sensory neurons) exhibited differential effects on resurgent currents, suggesting that specific regions within FHF2A and Navβ4 have important regulatory functions. Our data also indicate that FHFAs and FHF2B isoform expression are differentially regulated in a radicular pain model and that associated neuronal hyperexcitability is substantially attenuated by a FHFA peptide. As such, these findings suggest that FHF2A and FHF2B regulate resurgent current in sensory neurons and may contribute to hyperexcitability associated with some pain pathologies.
The evolution of employee empowerment

The authors present the evolution of employee involvement programs into empowered self-directed work teams (SDWTs) to drive continuous improvement methodologies. With the primary goal of increased manufacturing performance and customer satisfaction, SDWTs are responsible for the day-to-day operations and directions of existing wafer fabs at Harris Semiconductor in Palm Bay, Florida. The SDWTs were formed to improve key fab performance indices such as throughput yield (TPY), cycle time, performance-to-schedule and reduction of costs. >
Eliminative Killing and the Targeting of Noncombatants Comments on Seth Lazar’s Sparing Civilians

At the heart of Seth Lazar’s arguments in support of what he calls Moral Distinction – ‘In war, with rare exceptions, killing noncombatants is worse than killing combatants’ – is his treatment of eliminative and opportunistic killing. He adopts the standard line, that eliminative killing is easier to justify than opportunistic killing. And he acknowledges that there are various circumstances in which one might be able to justify killing noncombatants on eliminative grounds. Nonetheless, he relies on the notion of a mixed kind of agency to argue that intentionally killing civilians is normally ‘more opportunistic than intentionally killing soldiers’, and is therefore normally more wrongful. I argue that his argument in favor of this claim fails. If we distinguish objectively available reasons from subjectively motivating ones, and pay attention to the limited relevance of subjectively motivating reasons, then it becomes clear that mixed agency cannot do the sort of work for just war theory that Lazar wants it to do. This failure need not impugn other parts of his defense of Moral Distinction. But it takes the heart out of his defense of it, putting a greater burden on the other parts of his argument.
Complex Event Recognition from Images with Few Training Examples

We propose to leverage concept-level representations for complex event recognition in photographs given limited training examples. We introduce a novel framework to discover event concept attributes from the web and use that to extract semantic features from images and classify them into social event categories with few training examples. Discovered concepts include a variety of objects, scenes, actions and event sub-types, leading to a discriminative and compact representation for event images. Web images are obtained for each discovered event concept and we use (pretrained) CNN features to train concept classifiers. Extensive experiments on challenging event datasets demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms several baselines using deep CNN features directly in classifying images into events with limited training examples. We also demonstrate that our method achieves the best overall accuracy on a dataset with unseen event categories using a single training example.
The Internet and Democracy: Global Catalyst or Democratic Dud?.

In this study, we explore the global effect of the Internet on democracy over the period of 1992 to 2002 by observing the relationships between measures related to democracy and Internet prevalence. Our findings suggest that while Internet usage was not a very powerful predictor of democracy when examining full panel data from 1992 to 2002, it was a stronger predictor when we study data from just the years 2001 to 2002. We hypothesize that the jump in the ability of Internet penetration indicators to explain variation in democratization that occurred in 2000 suggests that the Internet may have only recently come into its own as a positive force for democratization. However, these results are not globally consistent, and we show that some regions do not enjoy a positive Internet/democracy correlation suggesting that the Internet can be used both as a tool for democratization as well as an instrument for authoritarianism.
Structural Properties of GaN Films Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy on Singular and Vicinal 6H-SiC(0001)

Gallium nitride films are grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on 6H-SiC(0001) substrates with no miscut and with 3.5° miscuts in both the % MathType!MTEF!2!1!+- % feaagKart1ev2aaatCvAUfeBSjuyZL2yd9gzLbvyNv2CaerbuLwBLn % hiov2DGi1BTfMBaeXatLxBI9gBaerbd9wDYLwzYbItLDharqqtubsr % 4rNCHbGeaGqiVu0Je9sqqrpepC0xbbL8F4rqqrFfpeea0xe9Lq-Jc9 % vqaqpepm0xbba9pwe9Q8fs0-yqaqpepae9pg0FirpepeKkFr0xfr-x % fr-xb9adbaqaaeGaciGaaiaabeqaamaabaabaaGcbaGaai4waiaaig % dacaaMc8UaaGPaVlqaigdagaqeaiaaykW7caaMc8UaaGimaiaaykW7 % caaMc8UaaGimaiaac2faaaa!43FA! $$[1\,\,\bar 1\,\,0\,\,0]$$ and % MathType!MTEF!2!1!+- % feaagKart1ev2aaatCvAUfeBSjuyZL2yd9gzLbvyNv2CaerbuLwBLn % hiov2DGi1BTfMBaeXatLxBI9gBaerbd9wDYLwzYbItLDharqqtubsr % 4rNCHbGeaGqiVu0Je9sqqrpepC0xbbL8F4rqqrFfpeea0xe9Lq-Jc9 % vqaqpepm0xbba9pwe9Q8fs0-yqaqpepae9pg0FirpepeKkFr0xfr-x % fr-xb9adbaqaaeGaciGaaiaabeqaamaabaabaaGcbaGaai4waiaaig % dacaaMc8UaaGPaVlaaigdacaaMc8UaaGPaVlqaikdagaqeaiaaykW7 % caaMc8UaaGimaiaac2faaaa!43FC! $$[1\,\,1\,\,\bar 2\,\,0]$$ directions. The hydrogen-etched substrates display straight or chevron shaped steps, respectively, and the same morphology is observed on the GaN films. X-ray rocking curves display substantially reduced width for films on the vicinal substrates compared to singular substrates, for the same Ga/N flux ratio used during growth.
A critical comment on the ‘multiple variance Brownian motion’ model of Smaers et al. (2016)

Smaers, Mongle & Kandler (2016) (Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 118: 78-94) introduced a new phylogenetic comparative method, multiple variance Brownian motion (mvBM), for reconstructing ancestral states given a phylogenetic tree and continuous trait data. The authors conducted a simulation study and argued that mvBM outperforms constant variance Brownian motion (BM) when rates of evolution vary across the phylogeny. In this comment, we argue that mvBM is not a viable statistical method because it is fundamentally a circular analysis that overfits phylogenetic branch lengths to the data. We further argue that the comparison of mvBM to BM under conditions where the assumptions of BM are clearly violated is not an informative performance analysis, and that the simulation study of Smaers et al. (2016) exaggerates the performance of mvBM by focusing on a narrow range of simulation conditions and reporting aggregated accuracy metrics that obscure severe inaccuracy and bias in its ancestral state estimates. Our arguments are supported by simulation results. We conclude that mvBM is not a viable phylogenetic comparative method.
Flipping a graduate-level software engineering foundations course

Creating a graduate-level software engineering breadth course is challenging. The scope is wide. Students prefer hands-on work over theory. Industry increasingly values soft skills. Changing software technology requires the syllabus to be technology-agnostic, yet abstracting away technology compromises realism. Instructors must balance scope with depth of learning. At Carnegie Mellon University, we designed a flipped-classroom course that tackles these tradeoffs. The course has been offered since Fall 2014 in the Silicon Valley campus. In this paper, we describe the course's key features and summarize our experiences and lessons learned while designing, teaching, and maintaining it. We found that the pure flipped-classroom format was not optimal in ensuring sufficient transfer of knowledge, especially in remote settings. We initially underestimated teaching assistantship resources. We gradually complemented video lectures and hands-on live sessions with additional live components: easily replaceable recitations that focus on current technology and mini lectures that address application of theory and common wisdom. We also provided the students with more opportunities to share their successes and experiments with their peers. We achieved scalability by increasing the number of teaching assistants, paying attention to teaching assistant recruitment, and fostering a culture of mentoring among the teaching team.
Janus-Faced Sestrin2 Controls ROS and MTOR Signalling Through Two Separate Functional Domains

Sestrins are stress-inducible metabolic regulators with two seemingly unrelated but physiologically important functions: reduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and inhibition of the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1). How Sestrins fulfil this dual role has remained elusive so far. Here we report the crystal structure of human Sestrin2 (hSesn2), and show that hSesn2 is a twofold pseudo-symmetric with two globular subdomains, which are structurally similar but functionally distinct from each other. While the N-terminal domain (Sesn-A) reduces alkylhydroperoxide radicals through its helix-turn-helix oxidoreductase motif, the C-terminal domain (Sesn-C) modified this motif to accommodate physical interaction with GATOR2 and subsequent inhibition of mTORC1. These findings clarify the molecular mechanism of how Sestrins can attenuate degenerative processes such as aging and diabetes by acting as a simultaneous inhibitor of ROS accumulation and mTORC1 activation.
Macroeconomic Uncertainty Prices when Beliefs are Tenuous

Abstract Investors face uncertainty over models when they do not know which member of a set of well-defined “structured models” is best. They face uncertainty about models when they suspect that all of the structured models might be misspecified. We refer to worries about the first type of ignorance as ambiguity concerns and worries about the second type as misspecification concerns. These two types of ignorance about probability distributions of risks add what we call uncertainty components to equilibrium prices of those risks. A quantitative example highlights a representative investor’s uncertainties about the size and persistence of macroeconomic growth rates. Our model of preferences under concerns about model ambiguity and misspecification puts nonlinearities into marginal valuations that induce time variations in market prices of uncertainty. These reflect the representative investor’s fears of high persistence of low growth rate states and low persistence of high growth rate states.
The Cedar Mountain, Nevada, earthquake of December 20, 1932

Summary The Cedar Mountain, Nevada, earthquake took place at about 10 h 10 m 04 s p.m., December 20, 1932. It was preceded by a foreshock noted locally and followed by thousands of aftershocks, which were reported as still continuing in January 1934. No lives were lost and there was very little damage. The earthquake originated in southwest central Nevada, east of Mina. A belt of rifts or faults in echelon lies in the valley between Gabbs Valley Range and Pilot Mountains on the west and Cedar Mountain and Paradise Range on the east. The length of this belt is thirty-eight miles in a northwesterly direction, and the width ranges from four to nine miles. The rifts consist of zones of fissures which commonly reveal vertical displacement and in a number of places show horizontal displacement. The length of the rifts ranges from a few hundred feet to nearly four miles, and the width may be as much as 400 feet. The actual as well as indicated horizontal displacement is represented by a relative southward movement of the east side of each rift. The echelon pattern of the rifts within the rift area indicates that the relative movement of the adjoining mountain masses is the same. The direction of relative horizontal movement corresponds to that along the east front of the Sierra Nevada at Owens Valley and on the San Andreas rift.
Verification by abstract interpretation, Soundness and abstract induction

Automatic program verification tools have to cope with programming language and machine semantics, undecidability, and mathematical induction, and so are all complex and imperfect. The ins and outs of automatic program verification will be discussed in light of the theory and practice of abstract interpretation [18, 19, 22].
Evolution of Assessments of the Economics of Global Warming: Changes in the DICE model, 1992 – 2017

Many areas of the natural and social sciences involve complex systems that link together multiple sectors. Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are approaches that integrate knowledge from two or more domains into a single framework, and these are particularly important for climate change. One of the earliest IAMs for climate change was the DICE/RICE family of models, first published in Nordhaus (Science 258:1315–1319, 1992a), with the latest version in Nordhaus (2017, 2018). A difficulty in assessing IAMs is the inability to use standard statistical tests because of the lack of a probabilistic structure. In the absence of statistical tests, the present study examines the extent of revisions of the DICE model over its quarter-century history. The study finds that the major revisions have come primarily from the economic aspects of the model, whereas the environmental changes have been much smaller. Particularly, sharp revisions have occurred for global output, damages, and the social cost of carbon. These results indicate that the economic projections are the least precise parts of IAMs and deserve much greater study than has been the case up to now, especially careful studies of long-run economic growth (to 2100 and beyond). Additionally, the approach developed here can serve as a useful template for IAMs to describe their salient characteristics and revisions for the broader community of analysts.
Linear Convergence of Stochastic Frank Wolfe Variants

In this paper, we show that the Away-step Stochastic Frank-Wolfe Algorithm (ASFW) and Pairwise Stochastic Frank-Wolfe algorithm (PSFW) converge linearly in expectation. We also show that if an algorithm convergences linearly in expectation then it converges linearly almost surely. In order to prove these results, we develop a novel proof technique based on concepts of empirical processes and concentration inequalities. Such a technique has rarely been used to derive the convergence rates of stochastic optimization algorithms. In large-scale numerical experiments, ASFW and PSFW perform as well as or better than their stochastic competitors in actual CPU time.
Global drainage patterns and the origins of topographic relief on Earth, Mars, and Titan

Rivers have eroded the topography of Mars, Titan, and Earth, creating diverse landscapes. However, the dominant processes that generated topography on Titan (and to some extent on early Mars) are not well known. We analyzed drainage patterns on all three bodies and found that large drainages, which record interactions between deformation and erosional modification, conform much better to long-wavelength topography on Titan and Mars than on Earth. We use a numerical landscape evolution model to demonstrate that short-wavelength deformation causes drainage directions to diverge from long-wavelength topography, as observed on Earth. We attribute the observed differences to ancient long-wavelength topography on Mars, recent or ongoing generation of long-wavelength relief on Titan, and the creation of short-wavelength relief by plate tectonics on Earth.
Component-Based Geometry Manipulation for Aerodynamic Shape Optimization with Overset Meshes

Mesh generation for high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics simulations and aerodynamic shape optimization is a time-consuming task. Complex geometries can be accurately modeled using overset me...
Modeling the Effects of Magnetic Saturation on Electrical Machine Control Systems

Abstract A new induction machine model including the effects of magnetic saturation is developed through magnetic circuit modeling. The new model has advantages for use in designing control systems, and is applied to the design of field-oriented control schemes for saturated machines. The control methods are extensions of standard field- oriented methods for linear-magnetics machines, but remove cross coupling between rotor flux control and torque control that are produced by magnetic saturation. Observers for estimating rotor flux are also discussed.
VISDYCON: Visual Dynamics and Control

Abstract VISDYCON is a collection of courseware modules for teaching system dynamics and controls. The modules include sysresp for linear dynamic system response, rlocus for root locus design, and lgraph for modelling by the linear graph method. The software is written in C and makes extensive use of X Windows graphics. The modules are available on MIT’s Project Athena and are used by graduate and undergraduate controls students.
Long short-term memory for speaker generalization in supervised speech separation

Speech separation can be formulated as learning to estimate a time-frequency mask from acoustic features extracted from noisy speech. For supervised speech separation, generalization to unseen noises and unseen speakers is a critical issue. Although deep neural networks (DNNs) have been successful in noise-independent speech separation, DNNs are limited in modeling a large number of speakers. To improve speaker generalization, a separation model based on long short-term memory (LSTM) is proposed, which naturally accounts for temporal dynamics of speech. Systematic evaluation shows that the proposed model substantially outperforms a DNN-based model on unseen speakers and unseen noises in terms of objective speech intelligibility. Analyzing LSTM internal representations reveals that LSTM captures long-term speech contexts. It is also found that the LSTM model is more advantageous for low-latency speech separation and it, without future frames, performs better than the DNN model with future frames. The proposed model represents an effective approach for speaker- and noise-independent speech separation.