cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Controlling One-Electron vs Two-Electron Pathways in the Multi-Electron Redox Cycle of Nickel Diethyldithiocarbamate

The unique redox cycle of NiII(dtc)2, where dtc- is N,N-diethyldithiocarbamate, in acetonitrile displays 2e- redox chemistry upon oxidation from NiII(dtc)2 → [NiIV(dtc)3]+ but 1e- redox chemistry upon reduction from [NiIV(dtc)3]+ → NiIII(dtc)3 → NiII(dtc)2. The underlying reasons for this cycle lie in the structural changes that occur between four-coordinate NiII(dtc)2 and six-coordinate [NiIV(dtc)3]+. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) experiments show that these 1e- and 2e- pathways can be controlled by the addition of pyridine-based ligands (L) to the electrolyte solution. Specifically, the addition of these ligands resulted in a 1e- ligand-coupled electron transfer (LCET) redox wave, which produced a mixture of pyridine-bound Ni(III) complexes, [NiIII(dtc)2(L)]+, and [NiIII(dtc)2(L)2]+. Although the complexes could not be isolated, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) measurements using a chemical oxidant in the presence of 4-methoxypyridine confirmed the formation of trans-[NiIII(dtc)2(L)2]+. Density functional theory calculations were also used to support the formation of pyridine coordinated Ni(III) complexes through structural optimization and calculation of EPR parameters. The reversibility of the LCET process was found to be dependent on both the basicity of the pyridine ligand and the scan rate of the CV experiment. For strongly basic pyridines (e.g., 4-methoxypyridine) and/or fast scan rates, high reversibility was achieved, allowing [NiIII(dtc)2(L)x]+ to be reduced directly back to NiII(dtc)2 + xL. For weakly basic pyridines (e.g., 3-bromopyridine) and/or slow scan rates, [NiIII(dtc)2(L)x]+ decayed irreversibly to form [NiIV(dtc)3]+. Detailed kinetics studies using CV reveal that [NiIII(dtc)2(L)]+ and [NiIII(dtc)2(L)2]+ decay by parallel pathways due to a small equilibrium between the two species. The rate constants for ligand dissociation ([NiIII(dtc)2(L)2]+ → [NiIII(dtc)2(L)]+ + L) along with decomposition of [NiIII(dtc)2(L)]+ and [NiIII(dtc)2(L)2]+ species were found to increase with the electron-withdrawing character of the pyridine ligand, indicating pyridine dissociation is likely the rate-limiting step for decomposition of these complexes. These studies establish a general trend for kinetically trapping 1e- intermediates along a 2e- oxidation path.
Structure-Aware Abstractive Conversation Summarization via Discourse and Action Graphs

Abstractive conversation summarization has received much attention recently. However, these generated summaries often suffer from insufficient, redundant, or incorrect content, largely due to the unstructured and complex characteristics of human-human interactions. To this end, we propose to explicitly model the rich structures in conversations for more precise and accurate conversation summarization, by first incorporating discourse relations between utterances and action triples (“who-doing-what”) in utterances through structured graphs to better encode conversations, and then designing a multi-granularity decoder to generate summaries by combining all levels of information. Experiments show that our proposed models outperform state-of-the-art methods and generalize well in other domains in terms of both automatic evaluations and human judgments. We have publicly released our code at https://github.com/GT-SALT/Structure-Aware-BART.
Isomorphism of the cubical and categorical cohomology groups of a higher-rank graph

We use category-theoretic techniques to provide two proofs showing that for a higher-rank graph $\Lambda$, its cubical (co-)homology and categorical (co-)homology groups are isomorphic in all degrees, thus answering a question of Kumjian, Pask and Sims in the positive. Our first proof uses the topological realization of a higher-rank graph, which was introduced by Kaliszewski, Kumjian, Quigg, and Sims. In our more combinatorial second proof, we construct, explicitly and in both directions, maps on the level of (co-)chain complexes that implement said isomorphism. Along the way, we extend the definition of cubical (co-)homology to allow arbitrary coefficient modules.
Eigenspaces of symmetric graphs are not typically irreducible

We construct rich families of Schrodinger operators on symmetric graphs, both quantum and combinatorial, whose spectral degeneracies are persistently larger than the maximal dimension of an irreducible representation of the symmetry group.
On the Hausdorff dimension of Riemann’s non-differentiable function

Recent findings show that the classical Riemann's non-differentiable function has a physical and geometric nature as the irregular trajectory of a polygonal vortex filament driven by the binormal flow. In this article, we give an upper estimate of its Hausdorff dimension. We also adapt this result to the multifractal setting. To prove these results, we recalculate the asymptotic behavior of Riemann's function around rationals from a novel perspective, underlining its connections with the Talbot effect and Gauss sums, with the hope that it is useful to give a lower bound of its dimension and to answer further geometric questions.
Efficient Civil Helicopters: The Payoff of Directed Research

Studies have been performed to identify the key areas and cost of research that will reduce the cost of operation of helicopters through reduction of energy consumption, increased performance, and reduction of maintenance. The basic analyses were made for a large passenger helicopter, with subsequent studies considering applicability to all sizes. These study results were then applied to the existing and projected U.S./Canada helicopter fleet to compare the cost of research to the dollars saved as a result of that research. These comparisons show that research costs to reduce energy and lower maintenance have payback periods of less than one year, either as higher return to the operator or as lower rental price to the customer.
Challenges in Information-Seeking QA: Unanswerable Questions and Paragraph Retrieval

Recent pretrained language models “solved” many reading comprehension benchmarks, where questions are written with access to the evidence document. However, datasets containing information-seeking queries where evidence documents are provided after the queries are written independently remain challenging. We analyze why answering information-seeking queries is more challenging and where their prevalent unanswerabilities arise, on Natural Questions and TyDi QA. Our controlled experiments suggest two headrooms – paragraph selection and answerability prediction, i.e. whether the paired evidence document contains the answer to the query or not. When provided with a gold paragraph and knowing when to abstain from answering, existing models easily outperform a human annotator. However, predicting answerability itself remains challenging. We manually annotate 800 unanswerable examples across six languages on what makes them challenging to answer. With this new data, we conduct per-category answerability prediction, revealing issues in the current dataset collection as well as task formulation. Together, our study points to avenues for future research in information-seeking question answering, both for dataset creation and model development. Our code and annotated data is publicly available at https://github.com/AkariAsai/unanswerable_qa.
Relation-aware Graph Attention Model with Adaptive Self-adversarial Training.

This paper describes an end-to-end solution for the relationship prediction task in heterogeneous, multi-relational graphs. We particularly address two building blocks in the pipeline, namely heterogeneous graph representation learning and negative sampling. Existing message passing-based graph neural networks use edges either for graph traversal and/or selection of message encoding functions. Ignoring the edge semantics could have severe repercussions on the quality of embeddings, especially when dealing with two nodes having multiple relations. Furthermore, the expressivity of the learned representation depends on the quality of negative samples used during training. Although existing hard negative sampling techniques can identify challenging negative relationships for optimization, new techniques are required to control false negatives during training as false negatives could corrupt the learning process. To address these issues, first, we propose RelGNN -- a message passing-based heterogeneous graph attention model. In particular, RelGNN generates the states of different relations and leverages them along with the node states to weigh the messages. RelGNN also adopts a self-attention mechanism to balance the importance of attribute features and topological features for generating the final entity embeddings. Second, we introduce a parameter free negative sampling technique -- adaptive self-adversarial (ASA) negative sampling. ASA reduces the false negative rate by leveraging positive relationships to effectively guide the identification of true negative samples. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates that RelGNN optimized by ASA for relationship prediction improves state-of-the-art performance across established benchmarks as well as on a real industrial dataset.
How Large and Persistent is the Response of Inflation to Changes in Retail Energy Prices

We estimate the dynamic effects of changes in retail energy prices on inflation using a novel monthly database, covering 110 countries over 2000:M1 to 2016:M6. We find that (i) inflation responds positively to retail energy price shocks, with effects being, on average, modest and transitory. However, our results suggest significant heterogeneity in the response of inflation to these shocks owing to differences in factors related to labor market flexibility, energy intensity, and monetary policy credibility. We also find compelling evidence of asymmetric effects-under sufficiently large shocks-in the case of high-income and low-income countries, with increases in retail fuel prices inducing larger effects on inflation than decreases in fuel prices.
Effects of early life adversity on maternal effort and glucocorticoids in wild olive baboons

Adverse experiences during early life exert important effects on development, health, reproduction, and social bonds, with consequences often persisting across generations. A mother’s early life experiences can impact her offspring’s development through a number of pathways, such as maternal care, physiological signaling through glucocorticoids, or even intergenerational effects like epigenetic inheritance. Early life adversity in female yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus) predicts elevated glucocorticoids, reduced sociality, shortened lifespan, and higher offspring mortality. If baboon mothers with more early life adversity, experience poorer condition and struggle to provide for their offspring, this could contribute to the persisting transgenerational effects of adversity. Here, we examined the effects of mothers’ early life adversity on their maternal effort, physiology, and offspring survivability in a population of olive baboons, Papio anubis. Mothers who experienced more adversity in their own early development exerted greater maternal effort (i.e., spent more time nursing and carrying) and had higher levels of glucocorticoid metabolites than mothers with less early life adversity. Offspring of mothers with more early life adversity had reduced survivability compared to offspring of mothers with less early life adversity. There was no evidence that high maternal social rank buffered the effects of early life adversity. Our data suggest early life experiences can have lasting consequences on maternal effort and physiology, which may function as proximate mechanisms for intergenerational effects of maternal experience. Animals exposed to early life adversity experience both immediate and lasting consequences. If early life adversity exerts developmental constraints that affect a mother’s ability to provide for her offspring, this could explain the transgenerational effects of early life adversity. In our study of wild olive baboons, we examined how a mother’s own early life adversity predicts her maternal effort (i.e., nursing and carrying time), maternal fecal glucocorticoid levels, and offspring outcomes. We found that female baboons who experienced more early life adversity had higher glucocorticoid levels during pregnancy and lactation, exerted more maternal effort, and produced offspring with higher mortality risk than females with less early life adversity. Our results suggest that female baboons with more early life adversity experience developmental constraints and struggle to invest in offspring, which likely contributes to persisting effects of early life adversity across generations.
Precarity: Modeling the Long Term Effects of Compounded Decisions on Individual Instability

When it comes to studying the impacts of decision making, the research has been largely focused on examining the fairness of the decisions, the long-term effects of the decision pipelines, and utility-based perspectives considering both the decision-maker and the individuals. However, there has hardly been any focus on precarity which is the term that encapsulates the instability in people's lives. That is, a negative outcome can overspread to other decisions and measures of well-being. Studying precarity necessitates a shift in focus -- from the point of view of the decision-maker to the perspective of the decision subject. This centering of the subject is an important direction that unlocks the importance of parting with aggregate measures to examine the long-term effects of decision making. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a modeling framework that simulates the effects of compounded decision-making on precarity over time. Through our simulations, we are able to show the heterogeneity of precarity by the non-uniform ruinous aftereffects of negative decisions on different income classes of the underlying population and how policy interventions can help mitigate such effects.
Genetic underpinnings of regional adiposity distribution in African Americans: Assessments from the Jackson Heart Study.

Background African ancestry individuals with comparable overall anthropometric measures to Europeans have lower abdominal adiposity. To explore the genetic underpinning of different adiposity patterns, we investigated whether genetic risk scores for well-studied adiposity phenotypes like body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) also predict other, less commonly measured adiposity measures in 2420 African American individuals from the Jackson Heart Study. Methods Polygenic risk scores (PRS) were calculated using GWAS-significant variants extracted from published studies mostly representing European ancestry populations for BMI, waist-hip ratio (WHR) adjusted for BMI (WHRBMIadj), waist circumference adjusted for BMI (WCBMIadj), and body fat percentage (BF%). Associations between each PRS and adiposity measures including BF%, subcutaneous adiposity tissue (SAT), visceral adiposity tissue (VAT) and VAT:SAT ratio (VSR) were examined using multivariable linear regression, with or without BMI adjustment. Results In non-BMI adjusted models, all phenotype-PRS were found to be positive predictors of BF%, SAT and VAT. WHR-PRS was a positive predictor of VSR, but BF% and BMI-PRS were negative predictors of VSR. After adjusting for BMI, WHR-PRS remained a positive predictor of BF%, VAT and VSR but not SAT. WC-PRS was a positive predictor of SAT and VAT; BF%-PRS was a positive predictor of BF% and SAT only. Conclusion These analyses suggest that genetically driven increases in BF% strongly associate with subcutaneous rather than visceral adiposity and BF% is strongly associated with BMI but not central adiposity-associated genetic variants. How common genetic variants may contribute to observed differences in adiposity patterns between African and European ancestry individuals requires further study.
Efficient Inverse Design of 2D Elastic Metamaterial Systems using Invertible Neural Networks

Locally resonant elastic metamaterials (LREM) can be designed, by optimizing the geometry of the constituent self-repeating unit cells, to potentially damp out vibration in selected frequency ranges, thus yielding desired bandgaps. However, it remains challenging to quickly arrive at unit cell designs that satisfy any requested bandgap specifications within a given global frequency range. This paper develops a computationally efficient framework for (fast) inverse design of LREM, by integrating a new type of machine learning models called invertible neural networks or INN. An INN can be trained to predict the bandgap bounds as a function of the unit cell design, and interestingly at the same time it learns to predict the unit cell design given a bandgap, when executed in reverse. In our case the unit cells are represented in terms of the width's of the outer matrix and middle soft filler layer of the unit cell. Training data on the frequency response of the unit cell is provided by Bloch dispersion analyses. The trained INN is used to instantaneously retrieve feasible (or near feasible) inverse designs given a specified bandgap constraint, which is then used to initialize a forward constrained optimization (based on sequential quadratic programming) to find the bandgap satisfying unit cell with minimum mass. Case studies show favorable performance of this approach, in terms of the bandgap characteristics and minimized mass, when compared to the median scenario over ten randomly initialized optimizations for the same specified bandgaps. Further analysis using FEA verify the bandgap performance of a finite structure comprised of $8\times 8$ arrangement of the unit cells obtained with INN-accelerated inverse design.
Speaker-conversation factorial designs for diarization error analysis

Speaker diarization accuracy can be affected by both acoustics and conversation characteristics. Determining the cause of diarization errors is difficult because speaker voice acoustics and conversation structure co-vary, and the interactions between acoustics, conversational structure, and diarization accuracy are complex. This paper proposes a methodology that can distinguish independent marginal effects of acoustic and conversation characteristics on diarization accuracy by remixing conversations in a factorial design. As an illustration, this approach is used to investigate gender-related and language-related accuracy differences with three diarization systems: a baseline system using subsegment x-vector clustering, a variant of it with shorter subsegments, and a third system based on a Bayesian hidden Markov model. Our analysis shows large accuracy disparities for the baseline system primarily due to conversational structure, which are partially mitigated in the other two systems. The illustration thus demonstrates how the methodology can be used to identify and guide diarization model improvements.
On-chip optical levitation with a metalens in vacuum

Optical levitation of dielectric particles in vacuum is a powerful technique for precision measurements, testing fundamental physics, and quantum information science. Conventional optical tweezers require bulky optical components for trapping and detection. Here, we design and fabricate an ultrathin dielectric metalens with a high numerical aperture of 0.88 at 1064 nm in vacuum. It consists of 500-nm-thick silicon nano-antennas, which are compatible with an ultrahigh vacuum. We demonstrate optical levitation of nanoparticles in vacuum with a single metalens. The trapping frequency can be tuned by changing the laser power and polarization. We also transfer a levitated nanoparticle between two separated optical tweezers. Optical levitation with an ultrathin metalens in vacuum provides opportunities for a wide range of applications including on-chip sensing. Such metalenses will also be useful for trapping ultracold atoms and molecules.
LogBERT: Log Anomaly Detection via BERT

Detecting anomalous events in online computer systems is crucial to protect the systems from malicious attacks or malfunctions. System logs, which record detailed information of computational events, are widely used for system status analysis. In this paper, we propose LogBERT, a self-supervised framework for log anomaly detection based on Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT). LogBERT learns the patterns of normal log sequences by two novel self-supervised training tasks, masked log message prediction and volume of hypersphere minimization. After training, LogBERT is able to capture the patterns of normal log sequences and further detect anomalies where the underlying patterns deviate from expected patterns. The experimental results on three log datasets show that LogBERT outperforms state-of-the-art approaches for anomaly detection.
A Matter of Appearances: How Does Auditing Expertise Benefit Audit Committees When Selecting Auditors?†

Literature to date reveals relatively little about the role of expertise in auditor selection beyond basic preferences for Big 4 and industry specialist auditors. We hypothesize that audit committees whose members have no Big 4 auditing experience are likely to struggle when interviewing prospective Big 4 partners, leading such committees to draw on superficial, heuristic cues in lieu of conducting more substantive evaluations. To test this prediction, we obtain independent ratings of the facial attractiveness of audit partners identified from Form AP filings recently mandated by the US PCAOB. Our primary finding is that audit committees with no Big 4–experienced members are more likely to favor partners whose photographs raters view to be highly attractive. We characterize attractiveness as a superficial attribute for auditor selection because we detect no relation between attractiveness and accruals- or restatement-based measures of financial reporting quality for audit committees with one or more Big 4–experienced members. We do find an inverse association between attractiveness and financial reporting quality for committees without this experience, likely reflecting the statistical implication of a selection bias. We conclude that auditing expertise mitigates the influence of superficial considerations in auditor selection enabling audit committees to fulfill their stewardship role more effectively.
A Stochastic Covariance Shrinkage Approach to Particle Rejuvenation in the Ensemble Transform Particle Filter.

Abstract. Rejuvenation in particle filters is necessary to prevent the collapse of the weights when the number of particles is insufficient to sample the high probability regions of the state space. Rejuvenation is often implemented in a heuristic manner by the addition of stochastic samples that widen the support of the ensemble. This work aims at improving canonical rejuvenation methodology by the introduction of additional prior information obtained from climatological samples; the dynamical particles used for importance sampling are augmented with samples obtained from stochastic covariance shrinkage. The ensemble transport particle filter, and its second order variant, are extended with the proposed rejuvenation approach. Numerical experiments show that modified filters significantly improve the analyses for low dynamical ensemble sizes.
Absorption of relativistic multi-picosecond laser pulses in wire arrays

We study the interaction of intense multi-picosecond laser pulses with arrays of carbon wires attached to solid substrates. We find that laser absorption in wire arrays resembles that in flat targets with very large uniform plasma density gradients. Performing two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we optimize target parameters like wire thickness and distance for energy absorption of a 2 ps laser pulse with a large focal spot; this has implications for x-ray and charged particle source development.
BDDC algorithms for advection-diffusion problems with HDG discretizations

Abstract In this paper, a preconditioned GMRES method is developed and analyzed for solving the linear system from advection-diffusion equations with the hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) discretization. The preconditioner is the balancing domain decomposition methods (BDDC), one of the most popular nonoverlapping domain decomposition methods. For large viscosity, if the subdomain size is small enough, the number of iterations is independent of the number of subdomains and depends only slightly on the subdomain problem size. The convergence deteriorates when the viscosity decreases. These results are similar to those with the standard finite element discretizations. Numerical results of two examples in two dimensions are provided to confirm the theory.
Agile multi-scale decompositions for automatic image registration

In recent works, the first and third authors developed an automatic image registration algorithm based on a multiscale hybrid image decomposition with anisotropic shearlets and isotropic wavelets. This prototype showed strong performance, improving robustness over registration with wavelets alone. However, this method imposed a strict hierarchy on the order in which shearlet and wavelet features were used in the registration process, and also involved an unintegrated mixture of MATLAB and C code. In this paper, we introduce a more agile model for generating features, in which a flexible and user-guided mix of shearlet and wavelet features are computed. Compared to the previous prototype, this method introduces a flexibility to the order in which shearlet and wavelet features are used in the registration process. Moreover, the present algorithm is now fully coded in C, making it more efficient and portable than the mixed MATLAB and C prototype. We demonstrate the versatility and computational efficiency of this approach by performing registration experiments with the fully-integrated C algorithm. In particular, meaningful timing studies can now be performed, to give a concrete analysis of the computational costs of the flexible feature extraction. Examples of synthetically warped and real multi-modal images are analyzed.
Simultaneous pure T2 and varying T2'-weighted BOLD fMRI using Echo Planar Time-resolved Imaging for mapping cortical-depth dependent responses.

Abstract Spin-echo (SE) BOLD fMRI has high microvascular specificity, and thus provides a more reliable means to localize neural activity compared to conventional gradient-echo BOLD fMRI. However, the most common SE BOLD acquisition method, SE-EPI, is known to suffer from T2′ contrast contamination with undesirable draining vein bias. To address this, in this study, we extended a recently developed distortion/blurring-free multi-shot EPI technique, Echo-Planar Time-resolved Imaging (EPTI), to cortical-depth dependent SE-fMRI at 7T to test whether it could provide purer SE BOLD contrast with minimal T2′ contamination for improved neuronal specificity. From the same acquisition, the time-resolved feature of EPTI also provides a series of asymmetric SE (ASE) images with varying T2′ weightings, and enables extraction of data equivalent to conventional SE EPI with different echo train lengths (ETLs). This allows us to systematically examine how T2′-contribution affects different SE acquisition strategies using a single dataset. A low-rank spatiotemporal subspace reconstruction was implemented for the SE-EPTI acquisition, which incorporates corrections for both shot-to-shot phase variations and dynamic B0 drifts. SE-EPTI was used in a visual task fMRI experiment to demonstrate that i) the pure SE image provided by EPTI results in the highest microvascular specificity; ii) the ASE EPTI series, with a graded introduction of T2′ weightings at time points farther away from the pure SE, show a gradual sensitivity increase along with increasing draining vein bias; iii) the longer ETL seen in conventional SE EPI acquisitions will induce more draining vein bias. Consistent results were observed across multiple subjects, demonstrating the robustness of the proposed technique for SE-BOLD fMRI with high specificity.
Cross-Domain Data Integration for Named Entity Disambiguation in Biomedical Text

Named entity disambiguation (NED), which involves mapping textual mentions to structured entities, is particularly challenging in the medical domain due to the presence of rare entities. Existing approaches are limited by the presence of coarse-grained structural resources in biomedical knowledge bases as well as the use of training datasets that provide low coverage over uncommon resources. In this work, we address these issues by proposing a cross-domain data integration method that transfers structural knowledge from a general text knowledge base to the medical domain. We utilize our integration scheme to augment structural resources and generate a large biomedical NED dataset for pretraining. Our pretrained model with injected structural knowledge achieves state-of-the-art performance on two benchmark medical NED datasets: MedMentions and BC5CDR. Furthermore, we improve disambiguation of rare entities by up to 57 accuracy points.
Collective Motion Planning for a Group of Robots Using Intermittent Diffusion

In this work we establish a simple yet effective strategy, based on intermittent diffusion, for enabling a group of robots to accomplish complex tasks, shape formation and assembly. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach and rigorously prove collision avoidance and convergence properties of the proposed algorithms.
A Visual Analytics System for Water Distribution System Optimization

The optimization of water distribution systems (WDSs) is vital to minimize energy costs required for their operations. A principal approach taken by researchers is identifying an optimal scheme for water pump controls through examining computational simulations of WDSs. However, due to a large number of possible control combinations and the complexity of WDS simulations, it remains non-trivial to identify the best pump controls by reviewing the simulation results. To address this problem, we design a visual analytics system that helps understand relationships between simulation inputs and outputs towards better optimization. Our system incorporates interpretable machine learning as well as multiple linked visualizations to capture essential input-output relationships from complex WDS simulations. We demonstrate our system's effectiveness through a practical case study and evaluate its usability through expert reviews. Our results show that our system can lessen the burden of analysis and assist in determining optimal operating schemes.
Quantitative Determination of Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol in Cadaver Blood

A long-term program involving the quantitative identification of cannabinoids in biological fluids made it clear that there was a significant need for the development of an accurate and reliable assay procedure for the determination of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) in blood samples obtained from autopsy. It is frequently of considerable concern to know whether a subject was under the influence of marijuana at the time of death, and since Δ9-THC is the major psychoactive agent present in marijuana, a definitive identification of Δ9-THC in blood from an autopsy sample presents direct and unquestionable evidence of the subject's use of this drug.
BETTER COVER-UPS

Designing the final cover for a solid waste landfill or remediation site is often trickier than designing its lining because a cover will undergo more unpredictable stress and distress during its life span. Engineers must pay special attention to the barrier component, as compacted clay does not necessarily make the best or cost effective barrier. Covers must perform one or several functions in addition to keeping water out of the contaminated material. Most covers are composed of five layers: the surface layer (soil, cobbles or paving), the protective layer (generally local soil), a drainage layer that reduces water pressure on the barrier layer, and a gas collection layer which must have a high in-plane gas flow rate. Of these, the barrier layer is the most critical and even though compacted clay is most often used, it is subject to freeze/thaw damage, penetration by roots and burrowing animals, and cracks due to desiccation and differential settlement. Combining compacted clay with a geomembrane, however, provides a barrier layer that will outperform other types, especially compacted clay used alone.
Corporations and the Law

Law influences corporations in many ways. Corporations are distinct legal persons and law grants them broad powers. This has facilitated the corporation's role in fostering economic growth. Law also specifies the internal governance and decision-making structure of corporations, and extensively regulates corporate conduct through many civil and criminal statutes. Corporate influence, and various scandals and business failures, have spurred heightened interest in business ethics and social responsibility Keywords: corporations; law; corporate responsibility; corporate regulation; governance
Robust small signal stability for microgrids under uncertainty

We describe an adapted robust control technique for analyzing microgrid stability under the uncertainty of renewable sources and loads. Two realistic case studies are presented to demonstrate the method's effectiveness as a tool for system design and analysis. Results show that the method is able to provide a non-trivial lower bound for the minimum damping ratio of the system, and can find the unstable instances missed by Monte Carlo approaches.
Computer Engineering: Hardware Design

PART I. 1. Binary Numbers and Codes. 2. Digital Circuits. 3. Combinational Systems. 4. Sequential Logic. PART II. 5. Registers and Counters. 6. Memory and Programmable Logic. 7. Register Transfer and Computer Operations. 8. Control Logic Design. PART III. 9. Computer Instructions and Addressing Modes. 10. Design of a Central Processing Unit (CPU). 11. Input-Output and Communication. 12. Memory Management. Index.
Party System Institutionalization and the Institutionalization of Legislatures

This paper seeks to understand the relationship between party system and legislative institutionalization. Much of the existing research on legislative organization suggests that parties create legislative rule sand institutions as means to capture the gains from legislative trades (e.g., Aldrich, 1995; Cox and McCubbins, 2005; Cox and McCubbins, 1993). If parties create rules to benefit their interests, this raises two questions. First, is legislative institutionalization the result of partisan decisions? And, if so, how does the institutionalization of the party system impact legislative institutionalization? This paper seeks to begin answering these questions by examining the relationship between party system and legislative institutionalization in the U.S. The results show strong correlation between the two.
Financial Cryptography and Data Security: 13th International Conference, FC 2009, Accra Beach, Barbados, February 23-26, 2009. Revised Selected Papers

Economics of Information Security I.- Mitigating Inadvertent Insider Threats with Incentives.- Deterring Online Advertising Fraud through Optimal Payment in Arrears.- Anonymity and Privacy I.- Privacy-Preserving Information Markets for Computing Statistical Data.- Achieving Privacy in a Federated Identity Management System.- Data Hemorrhages in the Health-Care Sector.- Private Computation.- Solving Linear Programs Using Multiparty Computation.- Private Intersection of Certified Sets.- Privacy-Preserving Classifier Learning.- Economics of Information Security II.- Investments and Trade-offs in the Economics of Information Security.- Blue versus Red: Towards a Model of Distributed Security Attacks.- Authentication and Identification.- Optimised to Fail: Card Readers for Online Banking.- Expecting the Unexpected: Towards Robust Credential Infrastructure.- Optical DNA.- Panel.- Passwords: If We're So Smart, Why Are We Still Using Them?.- Fraud Detection.- Defeating Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks with Browser-Enforced Authenticity Protection.- Evil Searching: Compromise and Recompromise of Internet Hosts for Phishing.- Detecting Denial of Service Attacks in Tor.- Auctions.- Cryptographic Combinatorial Securities Exchanges.- Cryptographic Combinatorial Clock-Proxy Auctions.- Secure Multiparty Computation Goes Live.- Anonymity and Privacy II.- Coercion Resistant End-to-end Voting.- Relations Among Privacy Notions.
Hypofibrinogenemia and intrauterine fetal death

Abstract The fibrinolytic system has been studied in 69 pregnancies involving intrauterine fetal death. In 29 of these fibrinogen levels were below the normal 200 mg. per cent. Among the group with hypofibrinogenemia 60 per cent had Rh-positive blood. Therefore, hypofibrinogenemia and severe bleeding can occur in the absence of Rh incompatibility and regardless of the cause of fetal death. In 4 cases the gestational age was 16 weeks or less and in 5 cases the retention of the dead fetus was 5 weeks or less. Therefore, in spite of the fact that in the majority of cases of hypofibrinogenemia the fetus had reached an age of more than 16 weeks and had been retained for longer than 5 weeks following death, these exceptions suggest that the fibrinogen level in all women with intrauterine fetal death should be determined. Fibrinogen was not administered prophylactically in any of the cases reported here and was used therapeutically to control excessive hemorrhage in only 4 cases.
Laura Martin: Real Options and the Cable Industry TN

SUBJECT AREAS: Real option theory, Valuation, Equity Analyst Research CASE SETTING: May 1999, U.S. Cable/Broadband CSFB equity research analyst, Laura Martin, publishes a report on valuing Cox Communications that introduces an innovative approach to valuation. She contends that EBITDA multiple analysis, typical for the cable industry, is flawed because it overlooks the value of the "stealth tier" (unused capacity on cable companies' fiber optic network). Martin proposes using real options valuation to impute value to the stealth tier, and she thereby arrives at a higher valuation for Cox stock. This provides the context for contrasting several valuation methodologies traditional DCF analysis, regression-based ROIC and multiple analysis, and real option theory and assessing how selected assumptions impact the various valuation techniques. In particular, Martin reviews ways in which the industry is evolving and students can think about how these changes impact what valuation method is most appropriate. More generally, this case provides a context for discussing the role of equity research analysts, highlighting all the constituencies they serve and how this can create conflicts of interest. Martin's application of real options theory provides an opportunity to evaluate where it works, where it doesn't, and why.
Spectral and photocarrier dynamics in thin films of pristine and alkali-doped C60

Abstract This article summarizes our contribution to three distinct areas of research on thin films of fullerenes. In the first part we present results of an in-situ optical absorption study on K-doped thin films of C60 from which an unambiguous assignment of certain low energy electronic transitions in C60 and KxC60 was deduced. The second part of the article concerns transient and steady-state photoconductivity (PC) of pristine and oxygen-exposed thin films of C60 examined as a function of temperature and photon energy. We find that the presence of oxygen is responsible for the creation of deep traps which reduce the steady-state and transient PC by several orders of magnitude, particularly in the 1.6–2.3 eV excitation region. The thermally activated transport in an oxygen-free C60 sample is quenched upon exposure to oxygen so that both steady-state and transient PC become nearly temperature independent. In the last part we present two examples of utilizing C60 thin films for application in opto-electronics. The mechanism of light-induced charge transfer at the conducting polymer-C60 interface is described and the current versus voltage rectifying characteristics (> 104) of the MEH-PPV C 60 thin film heterojunction is presented. In addition, a non-linear transient photovoltaic response in a AlC 60 Au sandwich-type device featuring control of polarity with optical bias is described.
On the Relationship between the Cosserat and Kirchhoff-Love Theories of Elastic Shells:

An attempt is made to clarify the interpretation of Kirchhoff-Love shells as constrained one-director Cosserat surfaces.
Superconducting tunneling circuits for computer applications

Memory and logic circuits constructed with superconducting switching devices based on electron tunneling between superconductors (1) and Josephson effects (2) can potentially surpass semiconductors in very high performance operation. The devices can readily be switched in less than 100 psec while dissipating as little as 1µW power per device. These characteristics, along with the possibility of using virtually lossless superconducting striplines for interconnection should permit high circuit densities, small dimensions and short intercircuit connections, which are pre-requisites for high performance operation of logic and memory networks.
Layer fluctuations and hexatic order in liquid crystals

In the smectic-A and hexatic-B phases, the layers are not planar but undergo large fluctuations. In order to find the effect of these fluctuations on the smectic-A-hexatic-B transition, we construct a Ginzburg-Landau Hamiltonian in terms of the hexatic order parameter ψ and the layer fluctuations u. The fields ψ and u are coupled because of the geometrical frustration introduced by the curvature of the layers. We integrate out the u field to obtain an effective Hamiltonian in terms of ψ alone. This integration leads to a finite renormalization of the coefficients in the effective Hamiltonian. By this mechanism, layer fluctuations may drive the smectic-A-hexatic-B transition to be first-order if the hexatic stiffness constants are sufficiently large. This effect may be related to observed anomalies in the specific heat at that transition Dans les phases smectique A et hexatique B, les couches ne sont pas planes mais presentent des fluctuations de grande amplitude. Afin de determiner l'effet de ces fluctuations sur la transition smectique A-hexatique B, construction d'un hamiltonien de Ginzburg-Landau qui depend du parametre d'ordre hexatique ψ et des fluctuations u. Le couplage des champs ψ et u est du a la frustration d'origine geometrique introduite par la courbure des couches
Albedo variations of an oak forest in Pennsylvania

Abstract The albedo of an oak forest was measured on 16 days throughout the year. Growing-season albedo ranged from 16 to 18% with variations due to cloud conditions. Autumn albedos did not increase with leaf color changes and until leaf fall was nearly complete remained similar to growing season values. Dormant season albedo was 12 to 14% without snow and 25 to 30% with snow on the ground. The effects of zenith angle on albedo were noticeable during a day, but these albedo changes were much more pronounced during the growing than in the dormant season. The measurements also suggested that the forest was a diffuse reflector.
College Students' Study Strategies as a Function of Testing: An Investigation into Metacognitive Self-Regulation

We conducted the present study to investigate whether college students adjust their study strategies to meet the cognitive demands of testing, a metacognitive self-regulatory skill. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two testing conditions. In one condition we told participants to study for a test that required deep-level cognitive processing and in the other to study for a test that required surface-level cognitive processing. Results suggested that college students adjust their study strategies so that they are in line with the cognitive processing demands of tests and that performance is mediated by the study strategies that are used.
John Calvin's Portrayal of Francis I as a Minister

The 1536 dedication of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion to Francis I describes the work as both a “confession” and an “apology” of Christian faith. Calvin strives to negotiate between old and new regimes of Church and state, but the language of reform betrays any semblance of respect for the established order. This study will examine how Calvin redefines in a subtle way princely identity when he calls Francis a minister in the dedicatory letter.
PENETRATING NECK TRAUMA: MANDATORY VERSUS SELECTIVE EXPLORATION

The management of penetrating neck wounds has been the subject of great interest and controversy over the years. The policy of mandatory exploration of all wounds penetrating the platysma originates from experience with military injuries. Current figures show little change since the Vietman War. Currently one half of all deaths are attributed to spinal cord injuries or thrombosis of the common or internal carotid arteries leading to CNS infarction
Isomorphisms into section spaces of Banach bundles

Click on the link to view the abstract. Keywords: Banach bundle, sections space, continuous bundle, separable bundle, isomorphism Quaestiones Mathematicae 30 (2007), 97–113
Tenure and Community in Academe

he secretary ushers me into the office for my final interview of the day-an upper-level medical school administrator. He is running late. I await him in his quiet office that is resplendent with comfortable furniture and the trappings of what we have come to think of as the richest profession-medicine. The plush carpet, the rich wooden hues of the matching tables and chairs, the fleet of secretaries for one individual are impossible to find when I interview colleagues in other professions such as education or social work. Even medicine, however, has hit on hard times. This administrator's medical school is running a deficit in the millions. Threats of faculty layoffs are imminent; a lawsuit by faculty who feel that their contracts and rights of tenure have been abrogated is soon to be filed in court. I am here to interview the individual about his views on the problems of the medical school in general and, in particular, what changes, if any, need to be made to tenure codes. Over the last two years, I have interviewed close to 90 individuals on public and private campuses in the United States. In an age of rapid technological change that reorients not only how we work with our students, but also how we collect data, I also have received over 500 e-mail messages from colleagues in colleges and universities about what they see happening on their own campuses. Tenure is under attack. The medical school administrator, although speaking about issues germane to a medical school, echoes conversations I have had on other campuses and in other schools.
The dependence of heterotrophic consumption and C accumulation on autotrophic nutrient content in ecosystems

Primary producers with high nutrient contents typically exhibit high herbivory rates and fast decomposition rates. These tendencies, however, have not been generalized across ecosystems with contrasting herbivore characteristics and abiotic properties. Here we demonstrate that ecosystem types dominated by richer autotrophs (i.e. higher nutrient contents) are subject to higher rates of herbivory and decomposition in spite of differences in herbivore characteristics and environmental conditions. We further show that, as a result of these tendencies, ecosystems with richer autotrophs accumulate less carbon. These results identify autotrophic nutrient content as a main control of heterotrophic consumption and carbon accumulation in ecosystems. They also provide a basis to evaluate changes in these ecosystem properties following anthropogenic eutrophication.
The Cubalogues: Beat writers in revolutionary Havana

by Todd F. Tietchen, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2010, xiii + 194 pp., $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8130-3520-8 Havana’s cultural scene circa 1960, a vibrant mingling of Cuban and forei...