cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Accessing Documents via Audio: An Extensible Transcoder for HTML to VoiceXML Conversion

Increasing proliferation of hand-held devices as well as the need for delivering information to visually impaired persons have caused the need for transcoding web information into documents that can be delivered as audio. Web information is typically represented as HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) documents. Audio delivery of web documents is done using VoiceXML. Due to this difference in mark-up notation, much of the web is inaccessible via audio. One way to solve this accessibility problem is to automatically transcode HTML documents to VoiceXML. In this paper, we describe such an automatic transcoder that converts HTML into VoiceXML. The transcoder is compositional and is realized in two phases: The parsing phase where the input HTML file is converted to HTML node tree, and the semantic mapping phase where each node in the HTML tree is compositionally mapped to its equivalent VoiceXML node. Our transcoder is extensible in the sense that: (i) it can be upgraded easily by users to accommodate modifications to and extensions of HTML; (ii) it provides means for the user to modify the translation logic while dealing with certain HTML tags. The translator is being publicly distributed.
The Returns to Schooling and Ability During the Early Career: Evidence on Employer Learning and Post-School Investment

The empirical employer learning literature …nds support for statistical discrimination using schooling. How economically relevant statistical discrimination (and consequently job market signaling) is depends on how fast …rms learn about workers’productive types. I show that …rms learn quickly: on average expectations errors about productivity decline by 50 percent within three years. Based on this I …nd that signaling contributes at most 25 percent to the gains from schooling. Moreover, the standard human capital model has similar implications for earnings as the model of employer learning and is consistent with variation in on-the-job training by schooling and ability.
A New Type of Massive Spin-One Boson: and its Relation with Maxwell Equations

The text book understanding of quantum field theory states that a fermion and its associated antifermion have opposite relative intrinsic parity; and that a boson and its associated antiboson carry same relative intrinsic parity. No particles that do not fall within this understanding, coupled with the fact that no quantum field theory was known to exist that contradicted this canonical wisdom, has led to almost complete neglect of the fact that long ago Wigner [1] 1 argued that space-time symmetries, and that these manifest in quantum constructs as projective representations, do allow for theories where a fermion and its associated antifermion have same relative intrinsic parity; and that a boson and its associated antiboson carry opposite relative intrinsic parity. The only scholarly footnote to the canonical wisdom in the widely read literature, see for example Refs. [7], that refers to Winger’s observations is Appendix C of Weinberg’s latest monograph on the quantum theory of fields [8].
Deionization shocks in microstructures.

Salt transport in bulk electrolytes is limited by diffusion and advection, but in microstructures with charged surfaces (e.g., microfluidic devices, porous media, soils, or biological tissues) surface conduction and electro-osmotic flow also contribute to ionic fluxes. For small applied voltages, these effects lead to well known linear electrokinetic phenomena. In this paper, we predict some surprising nonlinear dynamics that can result from the competition between bulk and interfacial transport at higher voltages. When counterions are selectively removed by a membrane or electrode, a ``deionization shock'' can propagate through the microstructure, leaving in its wake an ultrapure solution, nearly devoid of coions and colloidal impurities. We elucidate the basic physics of deionization shocks and develop a mathematical theory of their existence, structure, and stability, allowing for slow variations in surface charge or channel geometry. Via asymptotic approximations and similarity solutions, we show that deionization shocks accelerate and sharpen in narrowing channels, while they decelerate and weaken, and sometimes disappear, in widening channels. These phenomena may find applications in separations (deionization, decontamination, biological assays) and energy storage (batteries, supercapacitors) involving electrolytes in microstructures.
Modified valence force field approach for phonon dispersion: from zinc-blende bulk to nanowires

The correct estimation of the thermal properties of ultra-scaled CMOS and thermoelectric semiconductor devices demands for accurate phonon modeling in such structures. This work provides a detailed description of the modified valence force field (MVFF) method to obtain the phonon dispersion in zinc-blende semiconductors. The model is extended from bulk to nanowires after incorporating proper boundary conditions. The computational demands by the phonon calculation increase rapidly as the wire cross-section size increases. It is shown that nanowire phonon spectra differ considerably from the bulk dispersions. This manifests itself in the form of different physical and thermal properties in these wires. We believe that this model and approach will prove beneficial in the understanding of the lattice dynamics in the next generation ultra-scaled semiconductor devices.
Multi-scale Orderless Pooling of Deep Convolutional Activation Features

Deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) have shown their promise as a universal representation for recognition. However, global CNN activations lack geometric invariance, which limits their robustness for classification and matching of highly variable scenes. To improve the invariance of CNN activations without degrading their discriminative power, this paper presents a simple but effective scheme called multi-scale orderless pooling (MOP-CNN). This scheme extracts CNN activations for local patches at multiple scale levels, performs orderless VLAD pooling of these activations at each level separately, and concatenates the result. The resulting MOP-CNN representation can be used as a generic feature for either supervised or unsupervised recognition tasks, from image classification to instance-level retrieval; it consistently outperforms global CNN activations without requiring any joint training of prediction layers for a particular target dataset. In absolute terms, it achieves state-of-the-art results on the challenging SUN397 and MIT Indoor Scenes classification datasets, and competitive results on ILSVRC2012/2013 classification and INRIA Holidays retrieval datasets.
MHD Turbulence in Star-Forming Regions and the Interstellar Medium

MHD turbulence plays a central role in the physics of star-forming molecular clouds and the interstellar medium. MHD turbulence in molecular clouds must be driven to account for the observed supersonic motions in the clouds, as even strongly magnetized turbulence decays quickly. Driven MHD turbulence can globally support gravitationally unstable regions, but local collapse inevitably occurs. Differences in the strength of driving and the gas density may explain the very different rates of star formation observed in different galaxies. Two types of comparisons to observations are reviewed. First, the use of wavelet transform methods suggests that the driving comes from scales larger than observed molecular clouds. Second, comparison of simulated spectral cubes from models to real observations suggests that Larson’s mass-size relationship is an observational artifact. The driving mechanism for the turbulence is likely a combination of field supernovae in star-forming sections of galactic disks, and magnetorotational instabilities in outer disks and lowsurface brightness galaxies. Supernova-driven turbulence has a broad range of pressures with a roughly log-normal distribution. High-pressure, cold regions can be formed even in the absence of selfgravity.
How many standards in a laptop? (And other empirical questions)

An empirical study which identifies 251 technical interoperability standards implemented in a modern laptop computer, and estimates that the total number of standards relevant to such a device is much higher. Of the identified standards, the authors find that 44% were developed by consortia, 36% by formal standards development organizations, and 20% by single companies. The intellectual property rights policies associated with 197 of the standards are assessed: 75% were developed under “RAND” terms, 22% under “royalty free” terms, and 3% utilize a patent pool. The authors make certain observations based on their findings, and identify promising areas for future research.
A line-profile based double partial fusion method for acquiring planning CT of oversized patients in radiation treatment.

True 3D CT dataset for treatment planning of an oversized patient is difficult to acquire due to the bore size and field of view (FOV) reconstruction. This project aims to provide a simple approach to reconstruct true CT data for oversize patients using CT scanner with limited FOV by acquiring double partial CT (left and right side) images. An efficient line profile-based method has been developed to minimize the difference of the CT numbers in the overlapping region between the right and left images and to generate a complete true 3D CT dataset in the natural state. New image processing modules have been developed and integrated to the Insight Segmentation & Registration Toolkit (ITK 3.6) package. For example, different modules for image cropping, line profile generation, line profile matching, and optimized partial image fusion have been developed. The algorithm has been implemented for images containing the bony structure of the spine and tested on 3D CT planning datasets from both phantom and real patients with satisfactory results in both cases. The proposed optimized line profile-based partial registration method provides a simple and accurate method for acquiring a complete true 3D CT dataset for an oversized patient using CT scanning with small bore size, that can be used for accurate treatment planning.
Free-Agency and the Competitiveness of Major League Baseball

I investigate whether the removal of the reserve clause in professional baseball affected the competitive nature of the industry in the context of whether the distribution of team wins has been affected by free-agency. Unlike previous studies which use the standard deviation of winning percentage, I use a more sensitive measure of parity. I calculate the deviations of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index of team wins from the competitive ideal during 1920 to 1996 and relate them to player-talent distribution and structural changes in the industry. I isolate the structural effect of free-agency and find that it has adversely affected the parity of the American League but that it has had no statistical influence on the parity of the National League.
The Impact of Central American Free Trade Area (CAFTA) on the United States sugar market

This paper tries to estimate the impact of establishment of CAFTA on the United States sugar market. We use the United States sugar demand elasticity and the amount of increase in the U.S. sugar import quota under CAFTA agreement to estimate the magnitude of this effect. This study shows that these increased imports will result in a decrease in the U.S. domestic sugar price of about 1.7 cents, or approximately 8.6 percent. Although it amounts to only pennies per pound, this decrease in the domestic price could result in the incursion of significant U.S. government expenditures given the current structure of the U.S. non-recourse loan program.
Theil Slope Estimate

A nonparametric hypothesis test for the slope in simple linear regression proposed by Theil (1950) also provides the basis for a distribution-free estimate of that parameter. Keywords: regression; slope; intercept; rank correlation
Kinematic analysis of spiral waves in a discrete element model of neuromuscular tissue

The authors performed a kinematical analysis of a spiral wave in a discrete cellular automata (CA) model approximating poorly excitable neuromuscular tissue. The CA parameter values for the medium were obtained via matching specific features of the CA traveling wave solutions to those of a particular reaction-diffusion (RD) model. In kinematical theory, the spiral wave is treated as a curve obeying certain equations of motion determined by the dependence of wave speed c on wave front curvature /spl kappa/ in the medium. The authors computed C(/spl kappa/) in their model directly from the CA excitation rules. Treating the core radius as a phenomenological parameter, they then solved for the (kinematic) theoretical value of the spiral period. The good agreement between the predicted value and the measured CA value demonstrates the quantitative reliability of the authors' CA modeling approach. Their computationally efficient CA model thus provides a powerful tool for the study of arrhythmogenesis in the heart.
India's journey toward an effective patent

The decade following India's accession to the World Trade Organization's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property ushered in numerous changes to the country's patent system, culminating in a series of amendments in 2005. But a functioning patent system is more than a statute. This paper discusses the steps that India must still take to develop an effective, functioning patent system capable of attracting foreign direct investment, motivating domestic innovation and education, and filtering its benefits to all elements of Indian society, including the poor and the possessors of traditional knowledge. The analysis combines data studies of historical and recent patenting activity in India and by Indians, interviews with Indian government officials, intellectual property attorneys, industrialists, and researchers, and lessons gleaned from patent systems abroad. It identifies critical needs and concrete steps to meet them. Improving public awareness of the revenue-generating potential of patents will enhance incentives for the participation of individuals and small and medium enterprises in the patent system. Formalizing guidelines for patents derived through government research funds-coupled with needed changes in institutional governance-will enhance prospects for technology transfer from laboratories to commercial markets. Compensation schemes for traditional knowledge will extend the benefits of intellectual property rights to the poorest members of society. This paper's recommendations would help India achieve both a fully functioning patent system and a mechanism for ensuring that poor people living traditional lifestyles receive their share of the social gains that a working innovation system can confer.
Exact distance oracles for planar graphs

We present new and improved data structures that answer exact node-to-node distance queries in planar graphs. Such data structures are also known as distance oracles. For any directed planar graph on n nodes with non-negative lengths we obtain the following:• Given a desired space allocation S e [n lg lg n, n2], we show how to construct in O(S) time a data structure of size O(S) that answers distance queries in O(n/√ S) time per query. The best distance oracles for planar graphs until the current work are due to Cabello (SODA 2006), Chen and Xu (STOC 2000), Djidjev (WG 1996), and Fakcharoenphol and Rao (FOCS 2001). For σ e (1, 4/3) and space S = nσ, we essentially improve the query time from n2/S to √n2/S.• As a consequence, we obtain an improvement over the fastest algorithm for k-many distances in planar graphs whenever k e [√n, n).• We provide a linear-space exact distance oracle for planar graphs with query time O(n1/2+e) for any constant e > 0. This is the first such data structure with provable sublinear query time.• For edge lengths ≥ 1, we provide an exact distance oracle of space O(n) such that for any pair of nodes at distance l the query time is O(min{l, √ n}). Comparable query performance had been observed experimentally but could not be explained theoretically.Our data structures with superlinear space are based on the following new tool: given a non-self-crossing cycle C with c = O(√n) nodes, we can preprocess G in O(n) time to produce a data structure of size O(n lg lg c) that can answer the following queries in O(c) time: for a query node u, output the distance from u to all the nodes of C. This data structure builds on and provides an alternative for a related data structure of Klein (SODA 2005), which reports distances to the boundary of a face, rather than a cycle.
Altruism and efficiency: A welfare analysis of the Walrasian mechanism with transfers

Abstract When altruistic agents engage in voluntary transfers as well as in Walrasian trading, a competitive equilibrium exists. However, neither the first nor the second classical welfare theorem holds. Thus, an equilibrium need not be Pareto efficient and an efficient outcome need not be supported as an equilibrium.
Presence of Gc (Vitamin D‐Binding Protein) and Interactions With Actin in Human Placental Tissue

: The distribution of Gc protein and actin and their interactions were studied in normal full-term human placentae. Both Gc and actin were detected by physicochemical analysis of isolated trophoblast membranes. Immunofluorescence of native placental sections showed fluorescence for both proteins on smooth muscle cells lining the fetal stem vessels, intervillous fibrin, villous fibrinoid, trophoblast membrane, and cytoplasm of villous stromal cells. Binding of Gc was demonstrated by prior incubation of sections with purified Gc which led to a striking increase in intensity of Gc fluorescence, but actin fluorescence was unaffected by this procedure and by preincubation with actin. Endogenous Gc and actin could also be removed by washing of tissue sections with chaotrope—3 M KCl or 3 M NH4SCN, denaturant-6 M urea, or glycine-HCl pH 3.8, as judged by fluorescence and SDS-PAGE of the wash supernatant. Phenotypic analysis of Gc eluted from trophoblast membranes and of corresponding matched maternal and fetal cord sera by isoelectric focusing indicated that trophoblast Gc was of predominantly maternal origin. Although the roles of Gc and actin in the placenta are unknown, these results indicate that Gc may be another maternal protein for which specific binding sites are expressed on the membrane of placental trophoblast.
Do extreme climate events require extreme forcings

[1] The question whether extreme climate events require extreme forcings is assessed for the severe Great Plains drought during May–July 2012. This drought event had a rapid onset, and little indications or early warnings for its sudden emergence existed. The analysis of its origins is based on a dynamical seasonal climate forecast system where states of the ocean, atmosphere, land, sea ice, and atmospheric trace gases were initialized in late April 2012, and an ensemble of forecasts was made. Based on the diagnosis of a spectrum of possible outcomes for precipitation over the Great Plains from this system, it is concluded that the extreme Great Plains drought did not require extreme external forcings and could plausibly have arisen from atmospheric noise alone. Implications for developing early warning system for extreme events in general are also discussed.
Computational experience with an interior point algorithm on the satisfiability problem

We apply the zero-one integer programming algorithm described in Karmarkar [12] and Karmarkar, Resende and Ramakrishnan [13] to solve randomly generated instances of the satisfiability problem (SAT). The interior point algorithm is briefly reviewed and shown to be easily adapted to solve large instances of SAT. Hundreds of instances of SAT (having from 100 to 1000 variables and 100 to 32,000 clauses) are randomly generated and solved. For comparison, we attempt to solve the problems via linear programming relaxation with MINOS.
Results readiness in social protection and labor operations : technical guidance notes for social safety nets task teams

Social Safety Nets (SSN) are defined as non?contributory transfer programs targeted to the poor or those vulnerable to poverty and shocks. About half of World Bank social protection projects in the reviewed cohort are SSN. They are mostly non?emergency investment operations with a higher presence in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa regions. Projects aimed at strengthening country's safety nets system, including their targeting, administration and service quality, are the most common type of SSN interventions (25 percent). These are closely followed by conditional cash transfers (20 percent), and health, nutrition and education projects (15 percent). The remaining projects are a mixture of public works; food crisis mitigation measures and other types of safety nets (social inclusion, housing, and technical assistance).
Equality for prolog

The language Prolog has been extended by allowing the inclusion of assertions about equality. When a unification of two terms that do not unify syntactically is attempted, an equality theorem may be used to prove the two terms equal. If it is possible to prove that the two terms are equal the unification succeeds with the variable bindings introduced by the equality proof. It is shown that this mechanism significantly improves the power of Prolog. Sophisticated data abstraction with all the advantages of object-oriented programming is available. Techniques for passing partially instantiated data are described that extends the "multiuse" capabilities of the language, improve the efficiency of some programs, and allow the implementation of arithmetic relations that are both general and efficient. The modifications to standard Prolog are simple and straightforward and in addition the computational overhead for the extra linguistic power is not significant. Equality theorems will probably play an important role in future logic programming systems.
Estate Planning and Farm Transfer in a Changing Legislative Environment: North Carolina, U.S.A. an Example

Since the enactment of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, owners and operators of farms and ranches have opportunities to evaluate new estate planning strategies for the transfer of farm businesses to subsequent generations. However, with provisions of the Act to be phased in over several years, consideration must be given to having a "staged" estate plan. Under provisions of the current law, estate tax is repealed in the year 2010, but if Congress does not act, the legislation sunsets and returns to prior law January 1, 2011. This fact provides planning challenges for owners and operators of farms and ranches as the phase-in of provisions, the repeal in 2010, and the return to prior law relative to estate planning and business inter-generational transfer of property. This paper investigates the planning process and options available as they relate to a family-owned property in North Carolina, USA. Plans made must take into consideration the dynamics of a changing legislative environment, special-use valuation of land, opportunity cost of alternative uses for land, and off-farm heirs.
On the construction of a domain language for a class of reactive systems

A key step in the construction of high consequence software is its specification in a formal framework. In order to minimize the difficulty and potential for error, a specification should be expressed in a domain language supporting operators and structures that are intrinsic to the class of algorithms one wishes to specify. In this paper we describe a language that is suitable for the algorithmic specification of software controllers for a class of reactive systems of which the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system is an instance. We then specify an abstract controller for a subset of BART using this language.
A model of adjustment and growth: An empirical analysis

the simplicity that makes a model more tractable from an operational standpoint may have several drawbacks as a result of the necessarily restrictive assumptions it employs. This paper assesses the empirically the trade-off between its simplifying assumptions and its ability to fit reality. This trade-off can be assessed by applying the model to a variety of countries. For each country, the following questions are asked: (1) Are the key parameters of the model stable? (2) How sensitive are the policy multipliers to these parameter estimates-that is, how robust are the policy implications? and (3) Are some target variables more vulnerable to forecast errors than others? This paper examines these three questions for a diverse sample of seven capital importing developing countries and attempts to reach some conclusions about the usefulness of the model to help in designing policy.
Performance Characteristics of Metal‐Ceramic Composites Made by the Squeeze Casting Process

Squeeze casting is the term designating solidification of liquid metal under pressure. Pressure during solidification helps achieve defect-free castings with improved metallurgical properties. Through the work described here, this process has been adapted to manufacture composite materials at affordable costs. A preheated, porous ceramic preform is placed in a die cavity, which is later filled with the liquid melt, and pressure is applied. The pressure, in this case, helps infiltrate the liquid metal into the pores of the ceramic preform, giving a sound metal-ceramic composite. 18 references.
Labor Leverage, Firms Heterogeneous Sensitivities to the Business Cycle, and the Cross-Section of Returns

Corporate profits are volatile and highly procyclical in the aggregate, but there is substantial heterogeneity across firms in the extent of this procyclicality: I document that firms with lower productivity or higher book-to-market have more procyclical profits. A simple static profit maximization problem can rationalize this. Firms which have more procyclical profits should also have higher betas and expected returns. Estimating an asset pricing model with aggregate productivity and aggregate real wage as factors validates this prediction. This economic story helps account for the size and value premia, and yields rich empirical implications by linking firms' real and financial characteristics.
URBS enforcement mechanisms for object-oriented systems

Our past efforts have investigated user-role based security (URBS) for discretionary ac- cess control to provide customizable access to the public interface of object types/classes, allowing different individuals specialized access at different times based on their needs and responsibilities within the application. This is supported by the ADAM environment (Active Design and Analyses Modeling) which automatically generates code (C++, Ada83, Ada95) from language-independent object-oriented designs that have been supplied via text and form-based input. ADAM provides a means to define and analyze user-role based security and authorization, but does not provide an automatic transition from these definitions to “code” that realizes the required security. The work presented in this paper details three approaches for enforcement mechanisms for object-oriented systems, and evaluates them in the context of a set of goals. We believe that the approaches and results presented herein are relevant to object-oriented systems.
From the Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins Era to the New Millennium: 130 Years of Family Law

This essay, based on a 2000 lecture, traces the trajectory of family law as a subject in the law school curriculum and a field of legal scholarship. It begins in 1869, when the first women students entered law school. The essay focuses on three “snapshots,” each with a distinctive approach to families and family law: 1869, when family law centered on gender differences; 1975, when family law started to embrace principles of equality; and 2000, when the values of diversity and multiplicity came to the fore in family law. This evolution underscores the ongoing importance of rethinking and reevaluation in family law.
Cosmology from Large Scale Structure

We report on the linear matter power spectrum reconstructed from the Ly α forest, on baryonic wiggles in the galaxy power spectrum, and on how to measure real space (as opposed to redshift space) power.
Could Behavioral Economics Help Improve Diet Quality for Nutrition Assistance Program Participants

Findings from behavioral and psychological studies indicate that people regularly and predictably behave in ways that contradict some standard assumptions of economic analysis. Recognizing that consumption choices are determined by factors other than prices, income, and information illuminates a broad array of strategies to influence consumers' food choices. These strategies expand the list of possible ideas for improving the diet quality and health of participants in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Stamp Program; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs.
F & H monopoles

Supersymmetric monopoles of the heterotic string theory associated with an arbitrary non-negative number of the left-moving modes of the string states are presented. They include H-monopoles and their T-dual partners F-monopoles (ALE instantons). Massive F = H monopoles are T-self-dual. Solutions include also an infinite tower of generic T-duality covariant non-singular in stringy frame F & H monopoles with the bottomless throat geometry. The massless F = −H monopoles are invariant under combined T-duality and charge conjugation converting a monopole into antimonopole. All F & H monopoles can be promoted to the exact supersymmetric solutions of the heterotic string theory since the holonomy group is the compact SO(9). The sigma models for M8 monopoles, which admit constant complex structures, have enhanced world-sheet supersymmetry: (4,1) in general and (4,4) for the left-right symmetric monopoles. The space-time supersymmetric GS light-cone action in monopole background is directly convertible into the world-sheet supersymmetric NSR action.
Quantifier elimination for statistical problems

Recent improvements on Tarski's procedure for quantifier elimination in the first order theory of real numbers makes it feasible to solve small instances of the following problems completely automatically: 1. listing all equality and inequality constraints implied by a graphical model with hidden variables. 2. Comparing graphical models with hidden variables (i.e., model equivalence, inclusion, and overlap). 3. Answering questions about the identification of a model or portion of a model, and about bounds on quantities derived from a model. 4. Determining whether an independence assertion is implied from a given set of independence assertions. We discuss the foundations of quantifier elimination and demonstrate its application to these problems.
Collaborative workflow management for interagency crime analysis

To strengthen homeland security, there is a critical need for new tools that can facilitate real time collaboration among various law enforcement agencies. Through a field study, we find that law enforcement work is knowledge intensive and involves complex collaborative processes interrelating a large number of disparate units in a loosely defined virtual organization. To support knowledge intensive collaboration, we propose a new workflow centric framework to seamlessly integrate previously separate techniques from the fields of information retrieval and workflow management. Specifically, we develop a collaborative workflow management framework for interagency crime analysis. The key contribution of our research is that by integrating various state-of-the-art techniques innovatively, the proposed system can support real time collaboration processes in a virtual organization that evolves dynamically.
Preference elicitation in prioritized skyline queries

Preference queries incorporate the notion of binary preference relation into relational database querying. Instead of returning all the answers, such queries return only the best answers, according to a given preference relation. Preference queries are a fast growing area of database research. Skyline queries constitute one of the most thoroughly studied classes of preference queries. A well-known limitation of skyline queries is that skyline preference relations assign the same importance to all attributes. In this work, we study p-skyline queries that generalize skyline queries by allowing varying attribute importance in preference relations. We perform an in-depth study of the properties of p-skyline preference relations. In particular, we study the problems of containment and minimal extension. We apply the obtained results to the central problem of the paper: eliciting relative importance of attributes. Relative importance is implicit in the constructed p-skyline preference relation. The elicitation is based on user-selected sets of superior (positive) and inferior (negative) examples. We show that the computational complexity of elicitation depends on whether inferior examples are involved. If they are not, elicitation can be achieved in polynomial time. Otherwise, it is NP complete. Our experiments show that the proposed elicitation algorithm has high accuracy and good scalability.
Structure Theorem for U5-free Tournaments

Let U5 be the tournament with vertices v1, ', v5 such that v2i¾?v1, and vii¾?vj if j-ii¾?1, 2mod5 and {i,j}i¾?{1,2}. In this article, we describe the tournaments that do not have U5 as a subtournament. Specifically, we show that if a tournament G is "prime"-that is, if there is no subset Xi¾?VG, 1<|X|<|VG|, such that for all v∈VGi¾?X, either vi¾?x for all x∈X or xi¾?v for all x∈X-then G is U5-free if and only if either G is a specific tournament Tn or VG can be partitioned into sets X, Y, Z such that Xi¾?Y, Yi¾?Z, and Zi¾?X are transitive. From the prime U5-free tournaments we can construct all the U5-free tournaments. We use the theorem to show that every U5-free tournament with n vertices has a transitive subtournament with at least nlog32 vertices, and that this bound is tight.
Global Food Price Inflation : Implications for South Asia, Policy Reactions, and Future Challenges

The surge in global commodity prices of the past few years has presented a tremendous development challenge for South Asian countries. The large loss of income from the terms of trade shock has worsened macroeconomic balances, fueled rapid inflation, and hurt growth. Although commodity prices have come down recently, the benefits are being clouded by the emergence of a severe global financial crisis. The adverse consequences of the food price hike for the poor are large; the global financial crisis could further worsen the situation due to falling economic opportunities and government revenues. South Asian countries need to accelerate reforms to avoid facing a serious downturn in economic activity, investment, exports, and income. Governments in South Asia have responded by stabilizing domestic food prices through a number of short-term measures, tightened monetary policy to reduce inflation, and increased spending on a range of safety net programs for the poor. Some of the policies employed, such as export bans, are not consistent with the long-term welfare of the country or the region. Safety net interventions need to be made consistent with a longer-term poverty reduction strategy and fiscal sustainability. Most importantly, policy attention now needs to shift toward efforts to increase farm productivity, improve rural infrastructure, and lower the vulnerability of the poor.
Starquake-Induced Glitches in Pulsars

The neutron star crust is rigid material floating on a neutron-proton liquid core. As the star’s spin rate slows, the changing stellar shape stresses the crust and causes fractures. Thesestarquakes,may trigger pulsar glitches as well as the jumps in spin-down rate that are observed to persist after some glitches. Earlier studies found that starquakes in spinning-down neutron stars push matter toward the magnetic poles, causing temporary misalignment of the star’s spin and angular momentum. After the star relaxes to a new equilibrium orientation, the magnetic poles are closer to the equator, and the magnetic braking torque is increased. The magnitude and sign of the predicted torque changes are in agreement with the observed persistent spin-down offsets. Here we examine the relaxation processes by which the new equilibrium orientation is reached. We find that the neutron superfluid in the inner crust slows as the star’s spin realigns with the angular momentum, causing the crust to spin more rapidly. For plausible parameters the time scale and the magnitude of the crust’s spin up agree with the giant glitches in the Vela and other pulsars.
Training for Better Management: Avante Zambézia, PEPFAR and Improving the Quality of Administrative Services; Comment on “Implementation of a Health Management Mentoring Program: Year-1 Evaluation of Its Impact on Health System Strengthening in Zambézia Province, Mozambique”

The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) emphasizes health systems strengthening as a cornerstone of programmatic success. Health systems strengthening, among other things, includes effective capacity building for clinical care, administrative management and public health practice. Avante Zambezia is a district-level in-service training program for administrative staff. It is associated with improved accounting practices and human resources and transportation management but not monitoring and evaluation. We discuss other examples of successful administrative training programs that vary in the proportion of time that is spent learning on the job and the proportion of time spent in classrooms. We suggest that these programs be more rigorously evaluated so that lessons learned can be generalized to other countries and regions.
Braid pictures for artin groups

We define the braid groups of a two-dimensional orbifold and introduce conventions for drawing braid pictures. We use these to realize the Artin groups associated to the spherical Coxeter diagrams A n , B n = C n and D n and the affine diagrams A n , B n , C n and D n as subgroups of the braid groups of various simple orbifolds. The cases D n , B n , C n and D n are new. In each case the Artin group is a normal subgroup with abelian quotient; in all cases except A n the quotient is finite. We also illustrate the value of our braid calculus by giving a picture-proof of the basic properties of the Garside element of an Artin group of type D n .
Sharp probability estimates for Shor's order-finding algorithm

Let N be a (large) positive integer, let b be an integer satisfying 1 < b < N that is relatively prime to N, and let r be the order of b modulo N. Finally, let QC be a quantum computer whose input register has the size specified in Shor's original description of his order-finding algorithm. In this paper, we analyze the probability that a single run of the quantum component of the algorithm yields useful information--a nontrivial divisor of the order sought. We prove that when Shor's algorithm is implemented on QC, then the probability P of obtaining a (nontrivial) divisor of r exceeds.7 whenever N ≥ 211 and r ≥ 40, and we establish that.7736 is an asymptotic lower bound for P. When N is not a power of an odd prime, Gerjuoy has shown that P exceeds 90 percent for N and r sufficiently large. We give easily checked conditions on N and r for this 90 percent threshold to hold, and we establish an asymptotic lower bound for P of 2Si(4π)/π ≈.9499 in this situation. More generally, for any nonnegative integer q, we show that when QC(q) is a quantum computer whose input register has q more qubits than does QC, and Shor's algorithm is run on QC(q), then an asymptotic lower bound on P is 2Si(2q+2π)/π (if N is not a power of an odd prime). Our arguments are elementary and our lower bounds on P are carefully justified.
On the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis of a spherical Hecke algebra

Let H be an (extended) affine Hecke algebra. It contains the Hecke algebra Hf of the finite Weyl group Wf as a subalgebra. The set of elements of H which are “invariant” under left and right multiplication by Hf is called the spherical Hecke algebra H . The Satake isomorphism identifies H with Z[v][X]f where X is the coweight lattice. In [KL], Kazhdan and Lusztig constructed a canonical basis of H. This basis is compatible with H and Lusztig has shown, [Lu1], that the Kazhdan-Lusztig elements inside H correspond, under the Satake isomorphism, to the Weyl characters of the Langlands dual group G. The aim of this note is to give a new proof of this result and extend it to Hecke algebras with unequal parameters. This works as stated, if the parameters depend only on the root length. If the root system is of type Cn the situation is more subtle. The main difference of our approach is that we use Demazure’s character formula while Lusztig used the formula of Weyl. Demazure’s formula is less elementary than Weyl’s but apart from that our proof appears to be simpler. Moreover, Lusztig’s proof does not work in the unequal parameter case since he uses a q-analog of Weyl’s formula, the celebrated Kato-Lusztig formula, which does not seem to generalize.
Impact of the Volkswagen emissions control defeat device on US public health

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has alleged that Volkswagen Group of America (VW) violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) by developing and installing emissions control system 'defeat devices' (software) in model year 2009–2015 vehicles with 2.0 litre diesel engines. VW has admitted the inclusion of defeat devices. On-road emissions testing suggests that in-use NOx emissions for these vehicles are a factor of 10 to 40 above the EPA standard. In this paper we quantify the human health impacts and associated costs of the excess emissions. We propagate uncertainties throughout the analysis. A distribution function for excess emissions is estimated based on available in-use NOx emissions measurements. We then use vehicle sales data and the STEP vehicle fleet model to estimate vehicle distance traveled per year for the fleet. The excess NOx emissions are allocated on a 50 km grid using an EPA estimate of the light duty diesel vehicle NOx emissions distribution. We apply a GEOS-Chem adjoint-based rapid air pollution exposure model to produce estimates of particulate matter and ozone exposure due to the spatially resolved excess NOx emissions. A set of concentration-response functions is applied to estimate mortality and morbidity outcomes. Integrated over the sales period (2008–2015) we estimate that the excess emissions will cause 59 (95% CI: 10 to 150) early deaths in the US. When monetizing premature mortality using EPA-recommended data, we find a social cost of ~$450m over the sales period. For the current fleet, we estimate that a return to compliance for all affected vehicles by the end of 2016 will avert ~130 early deaths and avoid ~$840m in social costs compared to a counterfactual case without recall.
Towards an effective field theory on the light-shell

We discuss our work toward the construction of a light-shell effective theory (LSET), an effective field theory for describing the matter emerging from high-energy collisions and the accompanying radiation. We work in the highly simplified venue of 0-flavor scalar quantum electrodynamics, with a gauge invariant product of scalar fields at the origin of space-time as the source of high-energy charged particles. Working in this simple gauge theory allows us to focus on the essential features of LSET. We describe how the effective theory is constructed and argue that it can reproduce the full theory tree-level amplitude. We study the 1-loop radiative corrections in the LSET and suggest how the leading double-logs in the full theory at 1-loop order can be reproduced by a purely angular integral in the LSET.
Escape fraction of ionizing photons from high-redshift galaxies in cosmological SPH simulations

Combing the three-dimensional radiative transfer (RT) calculation and cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations, we study the escape fraction of ionizing photons (f esc ) of high-redshift galaxies at z = 3-6. Our simulations cover the halo mass range of M h = 10 9 -10 12 M ⊙ . We post-process several hundred simulated galaxies with the Authentic Radiative Transfer (ART) code to study the halo mass dependence of f esc . In this paper, we restrict ourselves to the transfer of stellar radiation from local stellar population in each dark matter halo. We find that the average f esc steeply decreases as the halo mass increases, with a large scatter for the lower-mass haloes. The low-mass haloes with M h ∼ 10 9 M ⊙ have large values of f esc (with an average of ∼0.4), whereas the massive haloes with M h ∼ 10 11 M ⊙ show small values of f esc (with an average of ∼0.07). This is because in our simulations, the massive haloes show more clumpy structure in gas distribution, and the star-forming regions are embedded inside these clumps, making it more difficult for the ionizing photons to escape. On the other hand, in low-mass haloes, there are often conical regions of highly ionized gas due to the shifted location of young star clusters from the centre of dark matter halo, which allows the ionizing photons to escape more easily than in the high-mass haloes. By counting the number of escaped ionizing photons, we show that the star-forming galaxies can ionize the intergalactic medium at z = 3-6. The main contributor to the ionizing photons is the haloes with M h ≲ 10 10 M ⊙ owing to their high f esc . The large dispersion in f esc suggests that there may be various sizes of H II bubbles around the haloes even with the same mass in the early stages of reionization. We also examine the effect of UV background radiation field on f esc using simple, four different treatments of UV background.
Why are Trade Agreements Regional

This paper shows how distance may be used to coordinate on a unique equilibrium in which trade agreements are regional. Trade agreement formation is modeled as coalition formation. In a standard trade model with no distance between countries a familiar problem of coordination failure occurs, giving rise to multiple equilibria; any one of many possible trade agreements can form. With distance between countries, regional trade agreements generate larger rent-shifting effects than nonregional agreements. Countries use these effects to coordinate on a unique equilibrium.
Designing deep networks for surface normal estimation

In the past few years, convolutional neural nets (CNN) have shown incredible promise for learning visual representations. In this paper, we use CNNs for the task of predicting surface normals from a single image. But what is the right architecture? We propose to build upon the decades of hard work in 3D scene understanding to design a new CNN architecture for the task of surface normal estimation. We show that incorporating several constraints (man-made, Manhattan world) and meaningful intermediate representations (room layout, edge labels) in the architecture leads to state of the art performance on surface normal estimation. We also show that our network is quite robust and show state of the art results on other datasets as well without any fine-tuning.