cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
The Fine Balance: Adapting Clinical Research Into COVID-19 Response.

Quality clinical research remains a high priority during the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic response, however, the logistical barriers of conducting research across institutions with differing departmental policy responses and varying resources is a documented problem.
Anodic electrocatalytic conversion of carboxylic acids on thin films of RuO2, IrO2, and Pt

Abstract The electrocatalytic upgrading of carboxylic acids, abundant biomass-derived molecules, remains a challenging task. Herein, we report an electrocatalytic decarboxylation (ECDX) approach for the conversion of carboxylic acids into paraffins, olefins, and alcohols via (non-)Kolbe electrolysis on thin films (TFs). The ECDX rate, product selectivity, and current efficiency were potential and electrode dependent. For example, the ECDX activity of RuO2-TF was similar to that of Pt foil, but the selectivity to Kolbe products was lower on the former. RuO2-TF showed about five times higher rates for the oxygen evolution reaction than Pt foil, which resulted in lower current efficiency. The ECDX and O2 evolution activities of IrO2-TF were potential dependent, but this electrode was selective to non-Kolbe products with low current efficiency (
USE OF FLUMETHRIN-IMPREGNATED COLLARS TO MANAGE AN EPIDEMIC OF SARCOPTIC MANGE IN AN URBAN POPULATION OF ENDANGERED SAN JOAQUIN KIT FOXES (VULPES MACROTIS MUTICA)

Sarcoptic mange epidemics can have long-lasting impacts on susceptible wildlife populations, potentially contributing to local population declines and extirpation. Since 2013, there have been 460 reported cases of sarcoptic mange in an urban population of endangered San Joaquin kit foxes (Vulpes macrotis mutica) in Bakersfield, CA, with many of them resulting in fatality. As part of a multifaceted response to mitigate mange-caused mortalities and reduce this conservation threat, a 2-yr randomized field trial was conducted to assess the efficacy of long-acting flumethrin collars against sarcoptic mange in kit foxes. Thirty-five kit foxes living in a high-density population on a college campus were captured, examined, administered selamectin, and each fox randomly assigned to either receive a flumethrin collar placed within a VHF radio collar or a VHF radio collar without flumethrin. The survival and mange-infestation status of study animals was monitored via radio telemetry, remote cameras, and periodic recapture examinations and compared among treated and control kit foxes using a Cox proportional hazards model. The average time to onset of mange for treated kit foxes (176 days) was similar to controls (171 days) and treatment with flumethrin did not significantly reduce mange risk for all kit foxes. Kit foxes that had a mild mange infestation at the beginning of the study were four times more likely to develop mange again, regardless of flumethrin treatment, compared with kit foxes that had no signs at initial recruitment. This study demonstrates an approach to evaluating population-level protection and contributes to the limited literature on efficacy, safety, and practicality of acaricides in free-ranging wildlife.
Development of a novel engine power model to estimate heavy-duty truck fuel consumption

An accurate heavy-duty truck (HDT) fuel consumption model is essential for estimating the truck energy consumption and evaluating energy-saving strategies. However, based on recent truck field test...
Lost and Found: Researching the Second Amendment

This Article proceeds, first, with a brief explication of the meaning of the Second Amendment. It then examines the manner in which the debate over this Amendment has been depicted in recent news accounts and proceeds to the two chief emergent critiques of Second Amendment analysis: the individualist view and the so-called right of revolution. Following that, four collateral claims arising from and connected with the individualist and revolutionist perspectives are examined in light of an assessment of the provenance of Second Amendment writings in law journals, as is the reputed role of the Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, three explanations are offered for the emergence of this new body of writing on the Second Amendment.
Evaluating Seasonal Food Security Programs in East Indonesia

Food programs are large and expensive components of social safety nets in developing countries. For agricultural households, hunger is more acute in annual lean seasons, but food policies typically do not adapt to seasonality. There is limited research on this because of a paucity of panel data that tracks households across seasons. In this paper, we analyze consumption and income seasonality in East Indonesia. We design a unique seasonal household panel, develop a model to explain how credit and saving constraints generate seasonality, and present results from a randomized experiment of food storage and food credit. In both programs, economic well-being increased substantially (a one standard deviation increase). Under credit, participants report a reduction in both seasonal consumption gaps and food shortage, health improvements when credit is disbursed but deterioration when repayments are due. Under storage, households with a high propensity to save report a strong reduction in food shortages.
Choice Architecture and Smartphone Privacy: There’s a Price for That

Under certain circumstances, consumers are willing to pay a premium for privacy. We explore how choice architecture affects smartphone users’ stated willingness to install applications that request varying permissions. We performed two experiments to gauge smartphone users’ stated willingness to pay premiums to limit their personal information exposure when installing applications. When participants were comparison shopping between multiple applications that performed similar functionality, a quarter of our sample indicated a willingness to pay a $1.50 premium for the application that requested the fewest permissions—though only when viewing the requested permissions of each application side-by-side. In a second experiment, we more closely simulated the user experience by asking them to valuate a single application that featured multiple sets of permissions based on five between-subjects conditions. In this scenario, the requested permissions had a much smaller impact. Our results suggest that many smartphone users are concerned with their privacy and are willing to pay premiums for applications that are less likely to request access to personal information, but that the current choice architectures do not support this. We propose improvements for smartphone application markets that could result in decreased satisficing and increased rational behavior.
Model Checking Reconfigurable Processor Configurations for Safety Properties

Reconfigurable processors pose unique problems for program safety because of their use of computational approaches that are difficult to integrate into traditional program analyses. The combination of proof-carrying code for verification of standard processor machine code and model-checking for array configurations is explored. This approach is shown to be useful in verifying safety properties including the synchronization of memory accesses by the reconfigurable array and memory access bounds checking.
The Impact of Untreated Obstructive Sleep Apnea on Cardiopulmonary Complications in General and Vascular Surgery: A Cohort Study.

Study objective To determine whether preoperatively untreated obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) affects postoperative outcomes. Design Cohort study of patients undergoing surgery between July 2012 and September 2013, utilizing prospectively collected data from the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative. Multivariable regression models were used to compare complication rates between treated and untreated OSA, while adjusting for important patient covariates and clustering within hospitals. Setting Fifty-two community and academic hospitals in Michigan. Patients Adult patients undergoing various general or vascular operations were categorized as: (1) no diagnosis or low risk of OSA; (2) documented OSA without therapy or suspicion of OSA; and (3) diagnosis of OSA with treatment (e.g., positive airway pressure). Exposures OSA, preoperatively treated or untreated, was the exposure variable. Postoperative 30-day cardiopulmonary complications including arrhythmias, cardiac arrest, myocardial infarction, unplanned reintubation, pulmonary embolism, and pneumonia were the outcomes of interest. Measurements and results Of 26,842 patients, 2,646 (9.9%) had a diagnosis or suspicion of OSA. Of those, 1,465 (55.4%) were untreated. Patient and procedural risk factors were evenly balanced between treated and untreated groups. Compared with treated OSA, untreated OSA was independently associated with more cardiopulmonary complications (risk-adjusted rates 6.7% versus 4.0%; adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 1.8, P = 0.001), particularly unplanned reintubations (aOR = 2.5, P = 0.003) and myocardial infarction (aOR = 2.6, P = 0.031). Conclusions Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) who are not treated with positive airway pressure preoperatively are at increased risks for cardiopulmonary complications after general and vascular surgery. Improving the recognition of OSA and ensuring adequate treatment may be a strategy to reduce risk for surgical patients with OSA.
Mind, heart, and soul in the fight against poverty

The world of religion has been unacknowledged and often unseen by many development practitioners. The areas of common concern and activity, though, are numerous and have great importance in the global effort to fight poverty. This book explores the diversity of collaboration between faith institutions and development agencies. ranging from community level interventions in support of excluded populations, work on education, health, and HIV/AIDS, restoring communities after conflicts, and global efforts to bring greater clarity and meaning to challenges such as poor country debt, labor and the struggle against poverty. What is emerging is a set of new partnerships that are founded on common concerns for the welfare of poor communities and the global cause of social justice. The need for broader and clearer insight, and for creative efforts to see and understand the whole, emerge as fundamental lessons of recent decades of development experience. This report seeks to delve more deeply into these lessons, stressing the centrality of faith in the human experience.
Effects of Age of Pups and Removal of Existing Litter on Pup Survival during Cross-Fostering between Multiparous Outbred Mice

Periparturient manipulation of mice is a valuable tool for modern research facilities. Although fostering and Caesarian section frequently are used to eradicate pathogens, an often overlooked use is to rescue poorly breeding strains of mice. Here we characterized the weaning success rates after fostering outbred pups of variable ages (younger than 24 h; 5 to 7 d; 10 to 12 d) with full or partial replacement of litters and multiparous dams. There were no significant differences between most groups when analyzed by full or partial replacement or age of donor pups as compared with control groups, in which pups were manipulated but returned to the birth dam or the birth dam was not disturbed. However, significant differences were associated with fostering of 10- to 12-d-old pups in combination with younger pups. Overall, these findings suggest that limiting fostering to pups that are within 48 h of age and age-matching litters when fostering are unnecessary.
Information and Control in Computerized Manufacturing Systems

Abstract Specifications are provided for a sufficient set of information which can be the basis for the design of a wide class of coordination and control policies for Computerized Manufacturing Systems.
Sensory Receptors; Overview

The brain relies on inputs from various specialized sensory receptors to interpret the internal and external environment. Different structures are designed to convert specific types of energy into nerve impulses that may then travel through dedicated sensory pathways. Types of stimuli include mechanical, thermal, stretch, injurious, chemical, and others. Not all reach conscious perception. Overlap of different modalities permits fine discrimination of objects touched, perception of potentially harmful or damaging forces, and sensation of body position and movement.
Trade Patterns, Income Differences and Gains from Trade

Quantifying the gains from international trade is an area of research that has been widely studied using a variety of trade models. At the same time, it has been shown that non-homotheticities are useful for matching the systematic patterns of trade present in disaggregated trade data. We bring these two literatures together to ask how non-homotheticities affect our predictions for gains from trade. To do so, we develop a N-country trade model that exactly matches bilateral trade, population, GDP per capita and within country income inequality for many countries. We include non-homotheticities to match patterns of trade between rich and poor countries that we observe in highly disaggregated trade data. We then make use of the results from Arkolakis, Costinot, and Rodriguez-Clare (2012), which gives a simple formula for gains from trade in a large class of homothetic models, including a version of our model with the non-homotheticity removed. Our main finding is that homothetic models underestimate gains from trade in countries with small populations and low productivities, and overestimate gains in countries with large populations and high productivities. The homothetic model overestimates the gains from being open to trade in the U.S. and Japan by 14% and 22%, and underestimates them in Spain and Italy by 24% and 14%.
How do governments respond after catastrophes ? natural-disaster shocks and the fiscal stance

Natural disasters could constitute a major shock to public finances and debt sustainability because of their impact on output and the need for reconstruction and relief expenses. This paper uses a panel vector autoregressive model to systematically estimate the impact of geological, climatic, and other types of natural disasters on government expenditures and revenues using annual data for high and middle-income countries over 1975-2008. The authors find that, on average budget, deficits increase only after climatic disasters, but for lower-middle-income countries, the increase in deficits is widespread across all events. Disasters do not lead to larger deficit increases or larger output declines in countries with higher initial government debt. Countries with higher financial development suffer smaller real consequences from disasters, but deficits expand further in these countries. Disasters in countries with high insurance penetration also have smaller real consequences but do not result in deficit expansions. From an ex-post perspective, the availability of insurance offers the best mitigation approach against real and fiscal consequences of disasters.
The Impact of Broadband on U.S. Agriculture: An Evaluation of the USDA Broadband Loan Program

We evaluate the impact that the USDA’s low-cost broadband loan programs have on the U.S. agricultural sector. The broadband loan programs increase access to high-speed Internet in recipient communities, which can raise farm sales by increasing both farm output and prices received by producers. Further, high-speed Internet may drive down costs by providing information on cheaper inputs and better management practices, leading to an overall improvement in farm profits. Using U.S. county-level data on farm sales and expenditures in 2000 and 2007, we employ an inverse probability weighting technique to control for endogenous selection in an econometric model that also accounts for spatial dependence. We find that the two USDA broadband loan programs have had positive causal impacts on farm sales, expenditures, and profits in a subset of rural counties—those adjacent to metropolitan counties—but not in other types of counties.
Molecular surface electrostatic potentials in the analysis of non-hydrogen-bonding noncovalent interactions

Electrostatic potentials computed on molecular surfaces are used to analyse some noncovalent interactions that are not in the category of hydrogen bonding, e.g. “halogen bonding”. The systems examined include halogenated methanes, substituted benzenes,s-tetrazine and l,3-bisphenylurea. The data were obtained byab initio SCF calculations.
Discrete Morse Theory for Computing Cellular Sheaf Cohomology

Sheaves and sheaf cohomology are powerful tools in computational topology, greatly generalizing persistent homology. We develop an algorithm for simplifying the computation of cellular sheaf cohomology via (discrete) Morse theoretic techniques. As a consequence, we derive efficient techniques for distributed computation of (ordinary) cohomology of a cell complex.
RAGOBOT: a new platform for wireless mobile sensor networks

We present Ragobot, a fully-featured validated platform for use in mobile sensor networks. Ragobot is a robot of small dimensions with features that surpass those provided by many other robots in this category. Ragobot hardware and software are implemented with modularity as one of the main considerations; therefore, these are easy to upgrade and customize according to the needs of each specific application. Moreover, we present Ragoworld, a controlled physical space for the development and evaluation of mobile sensor network algorithms.
Stress map for Alaska from earthquake focal mechanisms

This paper introduces a stress map for Alaska based on inversion of earthquake focal mechanisms. A composite catalog of earthquake focal mechanisms was compiled, for both crustal and slab events. This catalog includes mechanisms obtained with the regional and global seismic data and data available in the published literature. The resulting stress field varies greatly across the region. The subducting slab is characterized by normal and strike-slip faulting in the shallower depth range (<100 km) and by reverse and strike-slip faulting at greater depths. The maximum compressive axes are generally aligned in the strike direction, while the minimum compressive stress is aligned in the down-dip direction. The largest deviation from this pattern is within the Kenai block, which is restricted by slab bends on both sides. The crustal earthquakes exhibit a variety of faulting types and stress axis orientations in the region. The general pattern is consistent with the maximum compression radiating from the plate interface in southern Alaska. The highest complexity is observed within the Wrangell crustal block indicative of its internal deformation.
Distribution of Ability and Earnings in a Hierarchical Job Assignment Model

We examine the mapping of the distribution of ability onto earnings in a hierarchical job assignment model. Workers are assigned to a continuum of jobs in fixed proportions, ordered by sensitivity to ability. The model implies a novel marginal productivity interpretation of wages. We derive comparative statics for changes in technology and in the distribution of ability. We find conditions under which a more unequal distribution of ability maps onto a more/less unequal distribution of earnings. We also analyze an assignment model with variable proportions and find that in the Cobb‐Douglas case, a rise in the inequality of ability always narrows the range of earnings.
Parsimony is Hard to Beat

The estimation of evolutionary history from biomolecular sequences is a major intellectual project in systematic biology and many methods are used to reconstruct phylogenetic (i.e. evolutionary) trees from sequence data. In this paper, we report on an extensive performance analysis of parsimony and two distance-based methods, a popular method called neighbor joining, and a new method developed by Agarwala et al. which approximates the L∞-nearest tree, on more than 260,000 sequence data sets simulated on approximately 500 model trees. Our experiments indicate a decrease in statistical power of the two distance methods as the diameter grows, but also show that parsimony is not as badly affected by the diameter as the distance methods. More generally, the experiments indicate that parsimony is almost always more accurate than the other two methods on reasonable length sequences even under adverse conditions, such as having sites that evolve quickly within the tree, pairs of taxa with large evolutionary distances between them, or large ratios between the highest and the lowest substitution rates on the edges.
Socrates Back on the Street: Wikipedia's Citing of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The study examines how Wikipedians are citing the open access and peer-reviewed Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) to strengthen and enrich English language Wikipedia articles both within and outside of traditional philosophy topics. A high proportion of SEP’s entries are being cited by Wikipedians, both in writing and discussing articles–with some of them providing pivotal points in the learning that goes into the articles–and the majority of those citations were used by Wikipedia readers over a two-week period. Finally, as a further indication of how Wikipedians are responding to questions of verification and reliability, the SEP links in Wikipedia are compared to the links from a range of other academic resources, both open and closed, indicating how SEP represents part of the larger public and educational benefit of open access to research and scholarship.
Oblivious symmetric alternation

We introduce a new class $\rm {O}^p_2$ as a subclass of the symmetric alternation class $\rm {S}^p_2$. An $\rm {O}^p_2$ proof system has the flavor of an $\rm {S}^p_2$ proof system, but it is more restrictive in nature. In an $\rm {S}^p_2$ proof system, we have two competing provers and a verifier such that for any input, the honest prover has an irrefutable certificate. In an $\rm {O}^p_2$ proof system, we require that the irrefutable certificates depend only on the length of the input, not on the input itself. In other words, the irrefutable proofs are oblivious of the input. For this reason, we call the new class oblivious symmetric alternation. While this might seem slightly contrived, it turns out that this class helps us improve some existing results. For instance, we show that if NP⊂P/poly then $\rm PH = {O}^p_2$, whereas the best known collapse under the same hypothesis was $\rm PH = {S}^p_2$. We also define classes $\rm Y{O}^p_2$ and $\rm N{O}^p_2$, bearing relations to $\rm {O}^p_2$ as NP and coNP are to P, and show that these along with $\rm {O}^p_2$ form a hierarchy, similar to the polynomial hierarchy. We investigate other inclusions involving these classes and strengthen some known results. For example, we show that $\rm MA \subseteq N{O}^p_2$ which sharpens the known result $\rm MA \subseteq {S}^p_2$ [16]. Another example is our result that $\rm AM \subseteq O_2 \cdot NP \subseteq {\prod}^p_2$, which is an improved upper bound on AM. Finally, we also prove better collapses for the 2-queries problem as discussed by [12,1,7]. We prove that $\rm P^{NP[1]} = P^{NP[2]} \Longrightarrow PH = {NO}^p_2 \cap Y{O}^p_2$.
An Optimal Incentive System For Real Estate Agents

This article presents an alternative system for selling real estate. It overcomes the well-known deficiencies of the percentage commission system. In our system, the agent purchases the property from the seller and simultaneously receives a put option. The put option gives the agent the right to put the property back to the original owner. It is shown that this system has many of the desirable properties of a dealer system, while avoiding some of the problems that are inherent in that system.
Bayesian active distance metric learning

Distance metric learning is an important component for many tasks, such as statistical classification and content-based image retrieval. Existing approaches for learning distance metrics from pairwise constraints typically suffer from two major problems. First, most algorithms only offer point estimation of the distance metric and can therefore be unreliable when the number of training examples is small. Second, since these algorithms generally select their training examples at random, they can be inefficient if labeling effort is limited. This paper presents a Bayesian framework for distance metric learning that estimates a posterior distribution for the distance metric from labeled pair-wise constraints. We describe an efficient algorithm based on the variational method for the proposed Bayesian approach. Furthermore, we apply the proposed Bayesian framework to active distance metric learning by selecting those unlabeled example pairs with the greatest uncertainty in relative distance. Experiments in classification demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves higher classification accuracy and identifies more informative training examples than the non-Bayesian approach and state-of-the-art distance metric learning algorithms.
Database Structure for the Indonesian Food Crop Monitoring System

The development of the Indonesian Food Crop Monitoring System (FCMS) database required the compilation of general information on the principal food crops, as well as supportive data on climate, land use, prices, trade, and various macroeconomic conditions. The purpose for the collection and management of these data was twofold: (1) to support several specific food-crop policy analyses to be conducted by the FCMS project team, and (2) to provide a simple capability for monitoring and describing for the food crop sector over time.
High power synchronously pumped femtosecond Raman fiber laser

We report a synchronously pumped femtosecond Raman fiber laser operating in normal dispersion regime. The laser produces chirped pulses with up to 18nJ energy, 0.76W average power, 88% efficiency, and pulse duration ∼133fs after external compression.
Confidence Intervals and Sets

A confidence interval for a fixed parameter, or a confidence set for a multidimensional parameter, provides a plausible range of values for the parameter(s) consistent with the observed data. It is so constructed that there is a predetermined probability (the confidence level or coefficient, or the coverage probability) that the random interval or set contains the fixed parameter. Keywords: coverage; parameter; estimation; one-sided; Neyman; Bayesian
Trampolines revisited: a review of 114 pediatric recreational trampoline injuries

A search of the medical literature failed to reveal any articles that discuss pediatric injuries acquired on privately owned recreational trampolines. This study was undertaken to quantify and qualify pediatric injuries from recreational trampoline use. A group of 114 patients who presented to the Emergency Department at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, with injuries directly related to use of a trampoline are discussed. There was a 1.2:1 male-female ratio. The average age was 8.0 years. Forty-eight percent of the patients were injured on their family's trampoline, with the remainder injured on a friend's, neighbor's, relative's, or gymnasium's equipment. The majority of injuries involved group use of the trampoline and the youngest person in a group was most often the injured participant. Extremity injuries were seen in 55% of the patient and head or neck injuries in 37%. Seventy-five percent of the patients required radiographs, 23% hospitalization, and 17% operative intervention. The history of the trampoline and medical literature discussions concerning injuries and safety are reviewed. Language: en
Using Writing to Enhance Student Learning in Undergraduate Economics

Traditionally, Principles of Economics has been taught as a lecture class. Recent literature on pedagogy suggests that students learn more from an ‘active learning’ approach, which engages students in ways that lectures often do not. One method of promoting active learning is to incorporate student writing in the Principles course. To test this hypothesis, I taught two sections of macroeconomic principles, which were identical except that one included a series of writing assignments, while the other did not. The examinations for both sections were the same. I assessed the experiment using several measures and concluded that the writing-augmented section showed greater learning.
Sampling strategies for epidemic-style information dissemination

We consider epidemic-style information dissemination strategies that leverage the nonuniformity of host distribution over subnets (e.g., IP subnets) to optimize the information spread. Such epidemic-style strategies are based on random sampling of target hosts according to a sampling rule. In this paper, we consider the metric of total number of samplings (equivalently probes) to reach a given target fraction of the host population. We first identify the minimum number of samplings needed to reach a target fraction of hosts, assuming global information about the host distribution over subnets is available. We show that this optimum can be achieved either by a dynamic strategy, for which the sampling probabilities over subnets are allowed to vary over time, or, surprisingly, even by a static strategy, for which the sampling probabilities over subnets are fixed. These results provide insights about the best achievable performance and how different system parameters affect the number of sampling needed. We then consider simple online sampling strategies that do not require any prior knowledge of the distribution of hosts over subnets, but where each host biases sampling based on its observed sampling outcomes while keeping only O(1) state at any point in time. Using real data-sets from several large-scale Internet measurements, we evaluate significance of the system parameters that determine the sampling requirements and compare the performance of our proposed distribution-oblivious sampling strategies to the theoretical bound. Our results provide insights for the design of efficient information dissemination systems, as well as for the design of countermeasures against worms that use subnet-preferential scanning.
Cases Relating to Chapter 10 – Privileges

Publisher Summary This chapter presents several case studies related to privileges. These cases include the case of St. Clair versus Commonwealth, State versus Bergmann, and New York City Health versus Morgenthau. In the first case, the appellant, Michael D. St. Clair, waived his right to jury sentencing on the non-capital charges, and agreed to a sentence of twenty years for attempted murder, twenty years for second-degree arson, and five years on each count of receiving stolen property over $ 100, for a total of fifty years. In the second case, Bergmann was convicted of prescribed drug overdose. He appeals, arguing the district court erred by: (1) finding that his medical records were admissible and issuing a subpoena; and (2) overruling his motion to quash. The third case discusses the extent to which grand juries may, compatibly with CPLR 4504 (a), acquire medical records for the purpose of identifying criminal assailants.
The Joint Effect of Firing Costs on Employment and Productivity in Search and Matching Models

In the textbook search and matching model the effect of firing costs on employment is generally ambiguous as both accessions and separations are reduced. Similarly, the effect on average productivity of matches is ambiguous as less productive matches survive while hiring becomes more selective. Thus it would seem that the theory does not generate predictions with respect to the effect of firing costs on employment and productivity. In this paper I show that the theory does generate predictions about the joint response of employment and productivity: while employment may increase or average productivity may rise, it is not possible that both occurs together. That is, firing costs must have a negative effect on at least one of the two outcomes employment and average productivity.
Finding a Connection Chain for Tracing Intruders

Intruders usually log in through a chain of multiple computer systems to hide their origins before breaking into their targets, which makes tracing difficult. In this paper we present a method to find the connection chain of an intruder for tracing back to the origin. We focus on telnet and rlogin as interactive applications intruders use to log in through hosts.
Monetary policy with heterogeneous households and financial frictions

This paper presents and estimates a sticky-price model with heterogenous households and …nancial frictions. Frictions in state-contingent asset markets lead to imperfect risksharing among households with idiosyncratic labor incomes. I study the impacts of the introduced …nancial frictions on optimal monetary policy by documenting implications for the central bank’s objective function, the equation that characterizes in‡ation-output
For Whom the Counter Tolls Signaling in the Economy Daily Deals

To evaluate the impact of the daily deals model on buying behavior, we exploit the randomized display of a purchase counter that aggregates real time purchases on a daily deals site. In particular, we look at heterogeneous effects of the purchase counter by gender, given that 60 of our users are female, and 80% of our active user base is female. Compared to females who do not see the counter, females who do see the counter are 50% more likely to make a daily deals purchase controlling for the category, price, and user's tenure on the site, while the effects of the counter on male's purchasing behavior are not statistically significant.
Policy-based autonomic storage allocation

The goal of autonomic storage allocation is to achieve management of storage resources, including allocation, performance monitoring, and hotspot elimination, by specifying comparatively high-level goals, rather than by means of low-level manual steps. The process of automation should allow specification of policies as administrator specified constraints under which the resources are managed. This paper describes the system design and implementation experiences from a prototype autonomic storage manager being developed in IBM Research. The prototype is being developed for a storage network that includes a SAN switch, an IBM Enterprise Storage Subsystem, and AIX servers. Our early experience from this prototype implementation is that there are a large number of mundane manual steps in storage management and it is feasible to automate them such that the automation is driven by higher-level goals under policy control. However, to manage heterogeneous storage a standard ontology is needed for specification of goals and how to achieve them.
Uniform solution sampling using a constraint solver as an oracle

We consider the problem of sampling from solutions defined by a set of hard constraints on a combinatorial space. We propose a new sampling technique that, while enforcing a uniform exploration of the search space, leverages the reasoning power of a systematic constraint solver in a black-box scheme. We present a series of challenging domains, such as energy barriers and highly asymmetric spaces, that reveal the difficulties introduced by hard constraints. We demonstrate that standard approaches such as Simulated Annealing and Gibbs Sampling are greatly affected, while our new technique can overcome many of these difficulties. Finally, we show that our sampling scheme naturally defines a new approximate model counting technique, which we empirically show to be very accurate on a range of benchmark problems.
COMMUNITY-BUSINESS MATCHING: A NEW MODEL FOR RURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Identifying target industry sectors for community economic development is a complex problem. The Community-Business Matching (CBM) Model is a tool that assists in identifying desirable industry sectors for sustainable economic development. The framework of the model is based on two measures, "Desirability" and "Compatibility", between a community and industry sectors. A case study of two Vermont communities will be presented.
On distribution free Skorokhod–Malliavin calculus

The starting point of the current paper is a sequence of uncorrelated random variables. The distribution functions of these variables are assumed to be given but no assumptions on the types or the structure of these distributions are made. The above setting constitute the so called “distribution free” paradigm. Under these assumptions, a version of Skorokhod–Malliavin calculus is developed and applications to stochastic PDES are discussed.
The Effects of Research & Development Funding on Scientific Productivity: Academic Chemistry, 1990-2009

This article examines the relationship between Research & Development (R&D) funding and the production of knowledge by academic chemists. Using articles published, either raw counts or adjusted for quality, we find a strong, positive causal effect of funding on knowledge production. This effect is similar across subsets of universities, suggesting a relatively efficient allocation of R&D funds. Finally, we document a rapid acceleration in the rate at which chemical knowledge was produced in the late 1990s and early 2000s relative to the financial and human resources devoted to its production.
Formation of Globular Clusters in Hierarchical Cosmology: ART and Science

We test the hypothesis that globular clusters form in supergiant molecular clouds within high-redshift galaxies. Numerical simulations demonstrate that such large, dense, and cold gas clouds assemble naturally in current hierarchical models of galaxy formation. These clouds are enriched with heavy elements from earlier stars and could produce star clusters in a similar way to nearby molecular clouds. The masses and sizes of the model clusters are in excellent agreement with the observations of young massive clusters. Do these model clusters evolve into globular clusters that we see in our and external galaxies? In order to study their dynamical evolution, we calculate the orbits of model clusters using the outputs of the cosmological simulation of a Milky Way-sized galaxy. We find that at present the orbits are isotropic in the inner 50 kpc of the Galaxy and preferentially radial at larger distances. All clusters located outside 10 kpc from the center formed in the now-disrupted satellite galaxies. The spatial distribution of model clusters is spheroidal, with a power-law density profile consistent with observations. The combination of two-body scattering, tidal shocks, and stellar evolution results in the evolution of the cluster mass function from an initial power law to the observed log-normal distribution. However, not all initial conditions and not all evolution scenarios are consistent with the observed mass function.
The Future of Japanese Aid to South and Southeast Asia : A Comparative Analysis

Japan emerged as a leading foreign aid donor in the 1980s. Since aid diplomacy has received so much attention in Japan, it needs to be asked how effective the use of aid has been both politically and economically. Furthermore, has Japanese aid been qualitatively different from the aid by the other donors? Is there scope for changing the policy and institutional framework so that Japanese aid can become more effective? Not much in the way of rigorous economic analysis was done to understand the mode of aid allocation and its economic impact until recently. Based on some of this recent work, this paper addresses the issues related to the economic effectiveness of Japanese aid in South and Southeast Asia. Starting with the basic economics of aid allocation, some estimates of the impact of aid on development and non-development expenditures are presented. The effect on domestic revenue-raising efforts of the recipients can also be estimated with the help of a decision making model with boundedly rational policymakers. However, the mode of aid management and its changing objectives also need further consideration in order for aid to optimally raise the economic well-being of the people in the recipient countries. I conclude by asking some questions about the future course of Japanese aid in this context and outlining a broader agenda for assessing the objectives and management of Japanese aid.
Comparing the impact of food and energy price shocks on consumers : a social accounting matrix analysis for Ghana

Many countries have been affected by food and oil price shocks. Rising energy costs have manifested themselves through higher prices of gas at the pump and through price increases for many other goods such as kerosene and transport. But in some countries there has also been some degree of protection for consumers for example when authorities have chosen to try to keep electricity tariffs affordable through implicit subsidies (which are unfortunately often poorly targeted). For food prices, the effect on consumers has often been more rapid than for oil-related products, as the increase in import prices have been typically fully passed on to consumers and has often been accompanied by increases in the prices of domestically produced foods. Recent attention has therefore rightly been focused on food prices, but the issue of oil prices is important as well. While food prices tend to have a larger direct impact on consumers due to the larger share of food in total household consumption, oil prices may have larger multiplier effects than food prices because oil-related products are used as intermediary products in many productive sectors. It therefore remains an open question as to whether the medium-term impact of food or oil prices is likely to be larger in any given country. It also remains open to question as to whether urban as opposed to rural households are most likely to be affected. While urban households are likely to rely on consumption of imported goods more than rural households, the weight of food and possibly oil-related products may well be larger in the consumption patterns of rural than urban households. Answering these questions may be useful to guide discussions on compensatory measures that governments can take to respond to the twin crisis of higher food and oil prices. In this context the objective of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of the multiplier impact of both types of price shocks using a recent Social Accounting Matrix for Ghana. The paper finds that both the direct impacts of food prices and the indirect impacts of oil prices are potentially large, so that both should be dealt with by authorities when considering compensatory measures to protect households from higher consumer prices.
What is the Value of Milk

Should milk be priced at $2.00 or $6.00 per gallon, or for that matter at any other price? What determines the value of milk? Recently at least one observer has stated opposition to the proposed price collar “compact plus” policy because it doesn’t reflect the “full value” of milk. Well, when is milk undervalued? Economics has another name. It is often appropriately called the theory of value. Over the past 200 years different economists have advanced different general economic or value theories. David Ricardo, in the early 19th century, proffered what is now called the Ricardian or Classical Theory of Value. In a classical economy prices are determined by the costs of production. Ricardo talked of three: rent for land, wages for labor, and profits for capital. Marx unsuccessfully tried to convince the world that there is one input, labor, and that all value comes from it: the labor theory of value.
Hierarchical decentralized network reconfiguration for smart distribution systems-Part II: Applications to test systems

A hierarchical decentralized network reconfiguration approach to minimize power losses for smart distribution systems is presented in Part I. In this paper, the proposed approach is applied to four test distribution systems to examine its performance. A demonstration system consisting of the test system and distributed intelligent agents is built using Matlab/Simulink to illustrate how the decentralized approach is implemented. Simulation results of the proposed approach are then compared with results of a centralized implementation and the harmony search method. It is shown that the decentralized approach can achieve similar results as other methods with significantly reduced computation time. The impacts of time-varying loads and faults are also studied through dynamic network reconfiguration on the 118-bus test system. Simulation results illustrate that dynamic network reconfiguration with time-ahead planning can determine the optimal configuration for each operating period to significantly reduce system energy losses. The enhanced performance of the hierarchical decentralized approach is clearly established.
DISTRIBUTION OF HYPERBOLIC COSMIC DUST IN THE VICINITY OF EARTH

ABSTRACT More than eight years of impact data from the Pioneer 8 and Pioneer 9 cosmic dust experiments indicate that the distribution of cosmic dust particles of mass 10-17 kg and larger is an increasing function of heliocentric distance between 0.94 AU and 1.1 AU. The minimum flux occurred at a heliocentric distance of 0.94 AU and the maximum flux at 1.04 AU. It is concluded that the rate of production of hyperbolic cosmic dust (Beta Meteoroids) appears to increase in this heliocentric distance range.
Recent Developments in Magnetic Dynamo Theory

Two spectral regimes of magnetic field amplification in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows can be distinguished by the scale on which fields are amplified relative to the primary forcing scale of the turbulence. For field amplification at or below the forcing scale, the amplification can be called a “small-scale dynamo.” For amplification at and above the forcing scale the process can be called a “large-scale dynamo.” Non - local (in wave number) effects play a key role in both the growth of the small-scale field in non-helical turbulence and the growth of large and smallscale fields in helical turbulence. Mean field dynamo (MFD) theory represents a simple semi-analytic way to get a handle on large-scale field amplification in MHD turbulence. Helicity has long been known to be important for large scale, flux generating, externally forced MFDs. The extent to which such MFDs operate “slow” or “fast” (dependent or independent on magnetic Reynolds number) has been controversial, but there has been recent progress. Simulations of α2 dynamos in a periodic box dynamo and their quenching can now be largely understood within a simplified dynamical non-linear paradigm in which the MFD growth equation is supplemented by the total magnetic helicity evolution equation. For α2 dynamos, the large-scale field growth is directly related to the large-scale magnetic helicity growth. Magnetic helicity conservation then implies that growth of the large-scale magnetic helicity induces growth of small-scale magnetic (and current) helicity of the opposite sign, which eventually suppresses the α effect driving the MFD growth. Although the α2 MFD then becomes slow in the long time limit, substantial large-scale field growth proceeds in a kinematic, “fast” phase before non-linear asymptotic quenching of the “slow” phase applies. Ultimately, the MFD emerges as a process that transfers magnetic helicity between small and large scales. How these concepts apply to more general dynamos with shear, and open boundary dynamos is a topic of ongoing research. Some unresolved issues are identified. Overall, the following summarizes the most recent progress in mean-field dynamo theory: For a closed turbulent flow, the non-linear mean field dynamo, is first fast and kinematic, then slow and dynamic, and magnetic helicity transfer makes it so.
DIFFUSION DUE TO A SINGLE WAVE IN A MAGNETIZED PLASMA

The nature of charged-particle motion in the presence of a spectrum of waves usually depends on the width of the spectrum. In a narrow spectrum (modeled as a single wave), particles may be trapped in the potential wells of the wave and thereby have a limited acceleration. In a broad spectrum, resonant particles diffuse in velocity space, and thereby undergo a more extensive (stochastic) acceleration. In contrast to these well-known results we find1 that a single wave in a magnetized plasma may cause particle diffusion.