cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Combination Therapy with Cyclosporin in Rheumatoid Arthritis

The role of combination therapy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is increasing with the development of new treatment modalities. Past combinations of slow-acting anti-rheumatic drugs resulted in either excessive side-effects or lack of efficacy over single-agent therapy. However, refined methodology and a better understanding of the mechanism of action of newer agents have led to improved combinations, which appear more promising. In particular, in a 6 month, randomized, double-blind trial, the combination of cyclosporin (CyA) with methotrexate was found to be more efficacious than methotrexate alone, providing enhanced clinical benefit, without evidence of increased adverse events. The mean final dose of 2.97 mg/kg per day CyA in combination was lower than that required for CyA monotherapy. Further, a new formulation of CyA, with improved bioavailability, should provide enhanced efficacy and an acceptable safety profile, not only as monotherapy but also in combination with agents such as methotrexate. These developments offer new hope to patients with progressive RA, which is unresponsive to conventional therapy.
From steroids to aqueous supramolecular chemistry: an autobiographical career review.

The focus of my group’s research is aqueous supramolecular chemistry; we try to understand how chemical entities interact with water and consequently how they interact with each other. This personal history recounts my career experiences that led to his involvement with this fascinating area of science.
General Relativity as Multifractal Analogue of the Standard Model

We have recently shown that the Standard Model of particle physics (SM) may be configured as a multifractal set, with all field components acting as primary generators of this set. The goal of this brief note is to point out that a multifractal description of General Relativity (GR) is also possible, starting from the definition of the metric tensor and relativistic interval. This finding paves the way to an unforeseen homeomorphism between the structure of SM and classical gravity.
Gravity on-shell diagrams

We study on-shell diagrams for gravity theories with any number of super-symmetries and find a compact Grassmannian formula in terms of edge variables of the graphs. Unlike in gauge theory where the analogous form involves only d log-factors, in gravity there is a non-trivial numerator as well as higher degree poles in the edge variables. Based on the structure of the Grassmannian formula for =8N=8 supergravity we conjecture that gravity loop amplitudes also possess similar properties. In particular, we find that there are only logarithmic singularities on cuts with finite loop momentum and that poles at infinity are present, in complete agreement with the conjecture presented in [1].
Technology Standards and Standard Setting Organizations: Introduction to the Searle Center Database

This article describes the Searle Center Database on Technology Standards and Standard Setting Organizations (SSO). This is the rst large scale database with information on technology standards, SSO membership and SSO characteristics that is designed for economic research. In particular, the database includes data on quantiable characteristics of 629,438 standard documents issued by 598 SSOs, institutional membership in a sample of 195 SSOs, and the rules of 36 SSOs on standard-essential patents (SEPs), openness, participation and standard adoption procedures. Using the Internet Archives, the database tracks both institutional membership and the SSO rules and procedures over time since the inception of the Archives in 1996. We identify more than 62,368 rms and other organizations participating in at least one SSO. The paper describes how to combine this data with other new databases and sketches avenues for empirical research.
Experimental realization of the “lock-and-key” mechanism in liquid crystals

The ability to control the movement and assembly of particles in liquid crystals is not only an important route to design functional materials, but also sheds light on the mechanisms of colloidal interactions. In this study we place micron-sized particles with “Saturn ring” defects near a wall with hills and dales that impose perpendicular (homeotropic) molecular anchoring. The strong splay distortion at the wall interacts with the distortion around the particles in the near field and favors their migration towards the dales via the so-called “lock-and-key” mechanism. We demonstrate experimentally that the lock-and-key mechanism can robustly localize a particle at specific topographical features. We observe the complex trajectories traced by the particles as they dock on the dales, estimate the binding energy, and explore a range of parameters that favor or disfavor the docking event, thus exploiting the capabilities of our experimental system. We extend the study to colloids with homeotropic anchoring but with an associated point defect instead of a Saturn ring and show that they find a different preferred location, i.e. we can place otherwise identical particles at well defined sites according to their topological defect structure. Finally, for deep enough wells, confinement drives topological transitions of Saturn rings to dipoles. This ability to tailor wall geometry to guide colloids to well defined sites within nematic liquid crystals represents an important new tool in directed assembly.
Intravenous DSA of Extracranial Carotid Lesions: Comparison with Other Techniques and Specimens

Intravenous digital subtraction arteriography (DSA) was performed in 306 patients with suspected ischemic cerebrovascular disease. Forty-eight carotid endarterectomies were performed in 43 of these patients. The percentage stenosis as determined on the intravenous DSA examination concurred (±10%) with the surgical findings in 83.3%. There were 12.5% undercalls (false-negatives) and 4.3% overcalls (false-positives). Of the false-negative and false-positive examinations only three would have affected the clinical management of the patient, yielding an overall sensitivity of 93.7%. Nine surgical lesions had both intravenous DSA and conventional arteriography. Intravenous DSA was correct in six and arteriography in seven of these lesions. There were four surgically confirmed ulcerations. Two were evaluated by intravenous DSA alone. Two had intravenous DSA and arteriography. The latter showed both ulcers; the former, only one. Thirty-seven surgical lesions had both intravenous DSA and high-resolution real-time sonographic imaging. Sonography agreed in 67.5% and intravenous DSA in 83.7% of these lesions. When an abnormal supraorbital Doppler or an abnormal oculopneumoplethysmography/Gee examination is added to the sonographic examination, an overall sensitivity of 93% was obtained in detecting a surgical lesion (stenosis greater than 50%).
Digital-Based Interleaving Control for GaN-Based MHz CRM Totem-Pole PFC

This paper presents a comparison between the performances of different interleaving control methods for gallium nitride devices-based MHz critical conduction mode (CRM) totem-pole power factor correction (PFC) circuit. Both closed-loop interleaving and open-loop interleaving are good for the 70-kHz CRM PFC; but for a MHz frequency CRM PFC with microcontroller (MCU) implementation, the open-loop interleaving outperforms the closed-loop interleaving with only a small and nonamplified phase error. After software optimization, the phase error of the open-loop interleaving is smaller than 3° at 1 MHz, when the control is implemented by a 60-MHz low-cost MCU. Significant ripple cancellation effect and differential-mode (DM) filter size reduction are achieved with good interleaving. For a 1.2-kW MHz totem-pole PFC, the DM filter size is reduced to one quarter when compared with the counterpart of a 100-kHz PFC. Last but not least, the stability of the open-loop interleaving is also analyzed indicating that the MHz CRM totem-pole PFC with voltage-mode control, open-loop interleaving, and turn-on instant synchronization can maintain critical mode operation with better stability compared with the 70-kHz CRM PFC.
A network that learns strassen multiplication

We study neural networks whose only non-linear components are multipliers, to test a new training rule in a context where the precise representation of data is paramount. These networks are challenged to discover the rules of matrix multiplication, given many examples. By limiting the number of multipliers, the network is forced to discover the Strassen multiplication rules. This is the mathematical equivalent of finding low rank decompositions of the n × n matrix multiplication tensor, Mn. We train these networks with the conservative learning rule, which makes minimal changes to the weights so as to give the correct output for each input at the time the input-output pair is received. Conservative learning needs a few thousand examples to find the rank 7 decomposition of M2, and 105 for the rank 23 decomposition of M3 (the lowest known). High precision is critical, especially for M3, to discriminate between true decompositions and "border approximations".
Voyagers and Voyeurs: Supporting Social Data Analysis.

In recent years, researchers and entrepreneurs have introduced new online services for data collection and analysis, often relying on interactive visualizations to enable mass interaction with data. These sites represent the first step in what looks to be a growing online phenomenon: social data analysis, that is, collective analysis of data supported by social interaction. Engaging crowds of both experts and non-experts in the process of data exploration has applications ranging from political transparency to business intelligence to citizen science. Achieving this vision, however, will require further innovation in the design of systems for collaborative data management. In this talk, I will highlight recent efforts to use the web as a platform for collectively creating, managing, and analyzing data. I will share how web citizens are collaborating with data, and discuss how we might design systems to catalyze social forms of data management and exploration.
Nutrition and immunity.

Nutrition is a critical determinant of immunocompetence and risk of illness. The critical role of nutrition in modulation of immune responses is based on physiological considerations. In humans, isolated vitamin A deficiency seldom occurs, and it is usually associated with protein energy malnutrition. Excessive intake of nutrients and vitamins impairs immune response and may be considered a type of malnutrition. The extent of immunological impairment depends not only on the severity of nutritional deficiency but also on the presence of infection. The immune system is an important link in the chain of host defense mechanisms and protects the host from the microbial invasion. An incompetent immune system is one of the factors that add to the vulnerability of the deficient individual to infection. Most research concerning the role of iron in immunity has been concentrated in the area of cell-mediated immune response, and several approaches have been used to study cell-mediated immunity in iron deficiency.
Formation, relaxation, and quenching of Br2 excited states in CCl4

The photoexcitation, relaxation, and quenching of bound electronic excited states of BT 2 in CCl 4 are studied by time-resolved photothermal grating and near-IR fluorescence spectroscopies. A long-lived component is observed having a lifetime of 18 ns that depends on BT 2 and oxygen concentrations in the sample. This long-lived component is assigned to the decay of the lowest excited state, A'( 3 Π 2u ). From the amplitudes of photothermal diffraction, the quantum yield of the A' state formation is estimated to be 0.50±0.08
Explicit Instructional Interactions Exploring the Black Box of a Tier 2 Mathematics Intervention

A critical aspect of intervention research is investigating the active ingredients that underlie intensive interventions and their theories of change. This study explored the rate of instructional interactions within treatment groups to determine whether they offered explanatory power of an empirically validated Tier 2 kindergarten mathematics intervention. Direct observations were conducted in 46 interventions groups, involving approximately 228 students. Multilevel structural equation models revealed that fall mathematics achievement significantly and negatively predicted the rate of academic feedback. Specifically, intervention groups with lower student mathematics achievement at the start of the kindergarten year received higher rates of academic feedback. Analyses also suggested that latent rates of instructional interactions were not significantly correlated with gains on student mathematics outcomes. Implications are discussed in relation to specifying the underlying mechanisms to intensify mathema...
Consensus of multi-agent systems with control-affine nonlinear dynamics

This paper studies the consensus problem for a class of multi-agent systems, where each agent is a nonlinear system affine in control. Distributed control laws are proposed for multi-agent systems with and without communication delays respectively. It is shown that under undirected and connected communication network our control laws ensures the state consensus of multi-agent systems in both cases. The effectiveness of the proposed control laws is verified in numerical examples.
Scaling of the superfluid density in high-temperature superconductors

A scaling relation Nc4.4dcTc has been observed in the copper-oxide superconductors, where Nc is the spectral weight associated with the formation of the superconducting condensate s=8Nc, Tc is the critical temperature, and dc is the normal-state dc conductivity close to Tc. This scaling relation is examined within the context of a clean and dirty-limit BCS superconductor. These limits are well established for an isotropic BCS gap 2 and a normal-state scattering rate 1/; in the clean limit 1/2, and in the dirty limit 1/ 2. The dirty limit may also be defined operationally as the regime where s varies with 1/. It is shown that the scaling relation Nc or sdcTc, which follows directly from the Ferell-Glover-Tinkham sum rule, is the hallmark of a BCS system in the dirty-limit. While the gap in the copper-oxide superconductors is considered to be d wave with nodes and a gap maximum 0 ,i f 1/20 then the dirty-limit case is preserved. The scaling relation implies that the copper-oxide superconductors are likely to be in the dirty limit and, as a result, that the energy scale associated with the formation of the condensate scales linearly with Tc. The a-b planes and the c axis also follow the same scaling relation. It is observed that the scaling behavior for the dirty limit and the Josephson effect assuming a BCS formalism are essentially identical, suggesting that in some regime these two pictures may be viewed as equivalent.
Alpha-synuclein (SNCA) polymorphisms exert protective effects on memory after mild traumatic brain injury

Abstract Problems with attention and short-term learning and memory are commonly reported after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Due to the known relationships between α-synuclein (SNCA), dopaminergic transmission, and neurologic deficits, we hypothesized that SNCA polymorphisms might be associated with cognitive outcome after mTBI. A cohort of 91 mTBI patients one month after injury and 86 healthy controls completed a series of cognitive tests assessing baseline intellectual function, attentional function, and memory, and was genotyped at 13 common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the SNCA gene. Significant differences in two memory measures (p = 0.001 and 0.002), but not baseline intellectual function or attentional function tasks, were found between the mTBI group and controls. A highly significant protective association between memory performance and SNCA promoter SNP rs1372525 was observed in the mTBI patients (p = 0.006 and 0.029 for the long and short delay conditions of the California Verbal Learning Tests, respectively), where the presence of at least one copy of the A (minor) allele was protective after mTBI. These results may help elucidate the pathophysiology of cognitive alterations after mTBI, and thus warrant further investigation.
In situ observations of earthquake-driven fluid pulses within the Japan Trench plate boundary fault zone

Transient fluid flow within faults is suspected to be an important component of the earthquake cycle and subduction zone evolution. However, an understanding of the mechanisms and time scales involved has been limited due to a paucity of direct measurements. Here we report on in situ observations that appear to capture the thermal signature of earthquake-driven fluid pulses within the damage zone of the Japan Trench plate boundary fault. The data are from a sub-seafloor temperature observatory installed through the fault following the March 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku-oki earthquake as part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project (JFAST). High-resolution temperature time series data reveal spatially correlated transients in response to earthquakes that are indicative of advection by transient fluid flow. We interpret the observed phenomenon as reflecting pressure redistribution in a fault zone and a potential mechanism for earthquake triggering and episodic heat and chemical transport.
Nitrogen application decision-making under climate risk in the U.S. Corn Belt

Abstract Nitrogen fertilizer is one of the most important inputs to corn production and farmers manage their crop by deciding how much to apply, when to apply it and how to apply it to maximize their yields and resulting profit. There is risk inherent in crop fertility management because once nitrogen is applied to the soil it is no longer immobile and cropland is subject to loss of this costly input under different weather conditions. Days suitable for field work, a farm’s machinery set, and weather conditions determine when field preparation and planting activities are completed each year. This paper documents the methods and data used to evaluate the economic costs and benefits of the agronomic practice of “splitting” nitrogen fertilizer—applying some at or just before planting and a second application after the plant has already emerged and is in greatest need of nutrients. An example of how to use the free online decision support tool Corn Split NDST (splitn.agclimate4u.org) to evaluate the climate risk and economics of post-planting N applications is developed to illustrate the application of methods described.
How Client Capabilities, Vendor Configuration, and Location Impact BPO Outcomes

ABSTRACTDespite the increasing use of onshore and offshore business process outsourcing (BPO), a comprehensive literature review [38] finds that there has been limited empirical research on BPO outcomes. This article responds to the call for research by developing and testing a conceptual model for BPO outcomes using data from 50 firms publicly traded in the U.S., including 38 firms in the Forbes Global 2000. We find that client firm capabilities, vendor configuration, and country location lead to interesting tradeoffs in the BPO quality, cost, and time outcomes. For example, while multi-sourcing offers advantages such as risk mitigation, client firms encounter reduced BPO time benefits when they use multiple vendors. While onshore BPO can lead to an improved quality, higher onshore labor costs result in lower BPO cost savings. And while offshore destinations such as India offer lower labor costs, time zone differences lead to reduced BPO time benefits.
The significance of encapsulation of visual perception for philosophy of mind and aesthetic analysis

This Opinion Article highlights three sets of important implications of the very recent work by C. Firestone and B. Scholl on the encapsulation of visual perception: (a) methodological implications, especially with regard to experimental areas of cognitive science, such as cognitive social psychology; (b) implications of interest to philosophers of mind, some of whose more extravagant recent claims have been based on the assumption of “topdown” cognitive effects on perception; and (c) implications that challenge some recent work in philosophical and psychological aesthetics regarding art expertise, as well as defend the logic of A. Danto’s theorizing from attacks that are based on the assumption of “top-down” cognitive effects.
Tight Approximation Bounds for the Seminar Assignment Problem

The seminar assignment problem is a variant of the generalized assignment problem in which items have unit size and the amount of space allowed in each bin is restricted to an arbitrary set of values. The problem has been shown to be NP-complete and to not admit a PTAS. However, the only constant factor approximation algorithm known to date is randomized and it is not guaranteed to always produce a feasible solution.
Compensation design and political risk: the case of city managers

Although theory suggests its importance, empirical evidence on the relation between exogenous termination risk and contracted compensation packages is limited. This study takes a different approach by exploring determinants of contracted annual compensation and severance packages for city managers. Results indicate that managers exposed to greater exogenous political risk— i.e., those employed by municipalities where voters are more likely to recall elected officials—are 6 %–11 % more likely to receive severance, and receive, on average, 12 %–24 % more severance pay, but do not receive more annual compensation. Additional analyses suggest that the relation between contracted municipal severance and political risk primarily exists in states without restrictions on voters’ ability to file recalls and in municipalities with strong public sector unions. Findings also suggest that municipalities with greater expected agency problems between managers and citizens offer significantly more contracted annual compensation and severance pay.
Growth recovery in southern Europe : a dozen lessons, old and new

Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain entered a period of severe economic and financial stress in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Their collective experience confirmed the primacy of total debt, private or public, in affecting the onset of, depth of, and recovery from economic crises. The year 2010 and the years following have demonstrated the ways in which policy responses to crisis-related downturns must be adapted when major international partners experience simultaneous growth slowdowns and markets exhibit increased risk aversion. This paper compares the recovery experience of these countries in light of recent policy debates and research on the impact of macroeconomic and structural reforms. It highlights that (a) the quality of the policies adopted to stabilize economies in the short run affects growth recovery in the long run; and (b) macroeconomic policies (fiscal and monetary) are most effective in supporting growth when they take into account structural differences between countries and when policies complement each other. The country experiences indicate that a holistic view of factors affecting investment, exports, and employment is needed to understand the impact of macroeconomic and structural reforms on output. In the absence of such a holistic view, policy may neglect to influence the binding constraints to growth.
Partition of unity finite element method for quantum mechanical materials calculations

Abstract The current state of the art for large-scale quantum-mechanical simulations is the planewave (PW) pseudopotential method, as implemented in codes such as VASP, ABINIT, and many others. However, since the PW method uses a global Fourier basis, with strictly uniform resolution at all points in space, it suffers from substantial inefficiencies in calculations involving atoms with localized states, such as first-row and transition-metal atoms, and requires significant nonlocal communications, which limit parallel efficiency. Real-space methods such as finite-differences (FD) and finite-elements (FE) have partially addressed both resolution and parallel-communications issues but have been plagued by one key disadvantage relative to PW: excessive number of degrees of freedom (basis functions) needed to achieve the required accuracies. In this paper, we present a real-space partition of unity finite element (PUFE) method to solve the Kohn–Sham equations of density functional theory. In the PUFE method, we build the known atomic physics into the solution process using partition-of-unity enrichment techniques in finite element analysis. The method developed herein is completely general, applicable to metals and insulators alike, and particularly efficient for deep, localized potentials, as occur in calculations at extreme conditions of pressure and temperature. Full self-consistent Kohn–Sham calculations are presented for LiH, involving light atoms, and CeAl, involving heavy atoms with large numbers of atomic-orbital enrichments. We find that the new PUFE approach attains the required accuracies with substantially fewer degrees of freedom, typically by an order of magnitude or more, than the PW method. We compute the equation of state of LiH and show that the computed lattice constant and bulk modulus are in excellent agreement with reference PW results, while requiring an order of magnitude fewer degrees of freedom to obtain.
Formal Requirement Debugging for Testing and Verification of Cyber-Physical Systems

A framework for the elicitation and debugging of formal specifications for Cyber-Physical Systems is presented. The elicitation of specifications is handled through a graphical interface. Two debugging algorithms are presented. The first checks for erroneous or incomplete temporal logic specifications without considering the system. The second can be utilized for the analysis of reactive requirements with respect to system test traces. The specification debugging framework is applied on a number of formal specifications collected through a user study. The user study establishes that requirement errors are common and that the debugging framework can resolve many insidious specification errors.
The 2016 Visualization Technical Achievement Award

The 2016 Visualization Technical Achievement Award goes to David Ebert in recognition of foundational work in visual analytics, both through development of fundamental predictive techniques and as Director of the Purdue/DHS Visual Analytics Center of Excellence.
Human Decisions and Machine Predictions

Presented on October 24, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. in the Klaus Advanced Computing Building, room 1116
Synthetic nanoscale electrostatic particles as growth factor carriers for cartilage repair.

The efficient transport of biological therapeutic materials to target tissues within the body is critical to their efficacy. In cartilage tissue, the lack of blood vessels prevents the entry of systemically administered drugs at therapeutic levels. Within the articulating joint complex, the dense and highly charged extracellular matrix (ECM) hinders the transport of locally administered therapeutic molecules. Consequently, cartilage injury is difficult to treat and frequently results in debilitating osteoarthritis. Here we show a generalizable approach in which the electrostatic assembly of synthetic polypeptides and a protein, insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), can be used as an early interventional therapy to treat injury to the cartilage. We demonstrated that poly(glutamic acid) and poly(arginine) associated with the IGF-1 via electrostatic interactions, forming a net charged nanoscale polyelectrolyte complex (nanoplex). We observed that the nanoplex diffused into cartilage plugs in vitro and stimulated ECM production. In vivo, we monitored the transport, retention and therapeutic efficacy of the nanoplex in an established rat model of cartilage injury. A single therapeutic dose, when administered within 48 hr of the injury, conferred protection against cartilage degradation and controlled interleukin-1 mediated inflammation. IGF-1 contained in the nanoplex was detected in the joint space for up to 4 weeks following administration and retained bioactivity. The results indicate the potential of this approach as an early intervention therapy following joint injury to delay or even entirely prevent the onset of osteoarthritis.
Volatiles and the tempo of flood basalt magmatism

Abstract Individual flood basalt lavas often exceed 10 3 km 3 in volume, and many such lavas erupt during emplacement of flood basalt provinces. The large volume of individual flood basalt lavas implies correspondingly large magma reservoirs within or at the base of the crust. To erupt, some fraction of this magma must become buoyant and overpressure must be sufficient to encourage failure and dike propagation. The overpressure associated with a new injection of magma is inversely proportional to the total reservoir volume, and as a large magma body heats the surrounding rocks thermally activated creep will relax isotropic overpressure more rapidly. Here, we examine the viability of buoyancy overpressure as a trigger for continental flood basalt eruptions. We employ a new one-dimensional model that combines volatile exsolution, bubble growth and rise, assimilation, and permeable fluid escape from Moho-depth and crustal chambers. We investigate the temporal evolution of degassing and the eruptibility of magmas using the Siberian Traps flood basalts as a test case. We suggest that the volatile inventory set during mantle melting and redistributed via bubble motion controls ascent of magma into and through the crust, thereby regulating the tempo of flood basalt magmatism. Volatile-rich melts from low degrees of partial melting of the mantle are buoyant and erupt to the surface with little staging or crustal interaction. Melts with moderate volatile budgets accumulate in large, mostly molten magma chambers at the Moho or in the lower crust. These large magma bodies may remain buoyant and poised to erupt—triggered by volatile-rich recharge or external stresses—for ∼ 10 6 yr . If and when such chambers fail, enormous volumes of magma can ascend into the upper crust, staging at shallow levels and initiating substantial assimilation that contributes to pulses of large-volume flood basalt eruption. Our model further predicts that the Siberian Traps may have released 10 19 – 10 20 g of CO2 during a number of brief ( ∼ 10 4 yr ) pulses, providing a plausible trigger for warming and ocean acidification during the end-Permian mass extinction. The assimilation of carbon-rich crustal rocks strongly enhances both flood basalt eruptibility and CO2 release, and the tempo of eruptions influences the environmental effects of CO2, SO2, and halogen degassing. The eruptive dynamics of flood basalts are thus inextricably linked with their environmental consequences.
The Effects of Computers on Children’s Social Development and School Participation: Evidence from a Randomized Control Experiment

Concerns over the perceived negative impacts of computers on social development among children are prevalent but largely uninformed by plausibly causal evidence. We provide the first test of this hypothesis using a large-scale randomized control experiment in which more than one thousand children attending grades 6–10 across 15 different schools and 5 school districts in California were randomly given computers to use at home. Children in the treatment group are more likely to report having a social networking site, but also report spending more time communicating with their friends and interacting with their friends in person. There is no evidence that computer ownership displaces participation in after-school activities such as sports teams or clubs or reduces school participation and engagement.
BEHAVIORAL WELFARE ECONOMICS

U radu se raspravlja o nekoliko predloga za opsti normativni okvir koji bi obuhvatio nestandardne modele izbora. Vecina postojecih predloga izjednacava blagostanje sa dobrobiti. Neki pretpostavljaju da dobrobit proizilazi iz dobro definisanih ciljeva, i da ti ciljevi takođe dovode do izbora; trik je u tome da se formulise okvir u kom obrasci nepotpuno koherentnih izbora otkrivaju ciljeve koji nisu posmatrani. Drugi ostaju pri stavu da se dobrobit, a samim tim i blagostanje, mogu direktno meriti. Oba pristupa nailaze na ozbiljne konceptualne poteskoce. Jedan moguci pristup, koji su razvili Bernheim i Rangel (2009), definise blagostanje direktno u smislu izbora. On podrazumeva opste kriterijume blagostanja koji se direktno odnose na izbor, bez potrebe za bilo kakvom racionalizacijom koja potencijalno ukljucuje pretpostavke u vezi sa ciljevima i njihov odnos prema izboru. Kako korisne bihevioristicke teorije uopsteno predviđaju visok stepen koherentnosti u ponasanju, takav kriterijum dovodi do iscrpnog i upotrebljivog normativnog okvira. (Izvorno, rad je objavljen pod naslovom Behavioral Welfare Economics u Journal of the European Economic Association, 7:2-3 (April-May, 2009), pp. 267-319. © 2009 by the European Economic Association. Zahvaljujemo se profesoru B. Douglas Bernheim i MIT Press Journals na dozvoli za prevod i objavljivanje u nasem casopisu. Prvi deo prevoda je objavljen broju 1/2010 Panoeconomicusa. (Prim. ur.)).
Endangered academia: preserving the pediatric surgeon scientist.

Abstract Background Pediatric surgery is one of the most difficult surgical fellowships to obtain. It requires stellar academic credentials and, often, dedicated time pursuing research. It is unknown, however, if pediatric surgeons maintain high academic output as faculty members. We hypothesized that the majority of pediatric surgeons do not pursue robust research activities as faculty, and therefore, over time, their academic productivity decreases. Methods Numbers of publications, citations, H-index, and NIH funding rates were determined for 4354 surgical faculty at the top-55 NIH based departments of surgery using websites, Scopus, NIH RePORTER, and Grantome. Continuous variables were compared with ANOVA and post-hoc Bonferroni; categorical variables by χ 2 test. p Results In this dataset, 321 pediatric surgery (PS) faculty represented 7.4% of the cohort. Among PS faculty, 31% were assistant professors, 24% associate professors, 31% full professors and 13% had no academic rank. PS faculty had significantly more publications, a higher H index, and more high level NIH funding early in their careers at the assistant professor level compared to general surgeons. PS faculty at the associate professor level had equivalent high level NIH funding, but lower recentness and academic power compared to general surgeons. Professors of PS rebounded slightly, with only observed deficiencies in number of citations compared to general surgeons. Conclusions PS faculty in assistant professor ranks has higher scholarly productivity compared to equivalently ranked general surgeons. Despite some mild academic setbacks in midcareer, pediatric surgeons are able to maintain similar academic productivity to their general surgery colleagues by the time they are full professors. Level of evidence 2.
Joule-Thomson cooling due to CO2 injection into natural gas reservoirs

Depleted natural gas reservoirs are a promising target for Carbon Sequestration with Enhanced Gas Recovery (CSEGR). The focus of this study is on evaluating the importance of Joule-Thomson cooling during CO2 injection into depleted natural gas reservoirs. Joule-Thomson cooling is the adiabatic cooling that accompanies the expansion of a real gas. If Joule-Thomson cooling were extreme, injectivity and formation permeability could be altered by the freezing of residual water, formation of hydrates, and fracturing due to thermal stresses. The TOUGH2/EOS7C module for CO2-CH4-H2O mixtures is used as the simulation analysis tool. For verification of EOS7C, the classic Joule-Thomson expansion experiment is modeled for pure CO2 resulting
The nature of juridical proof: Probability as a tool in plausible reasoning

The different contexts of forensic science and juridical decision making are explored to identify the nature of juridical proof, the role of formalized probability theory in it, and how factual inquiry proceeds in the differing domains.
COMMENT ON "NONCOMMUTATIVITY AS A POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE ULTRAHIGH-ENERGY COSMIC RAY AND THE TEV PHOTON PARADOXES"

A Lorentz-noninvariant modification of the kinematic dispersion law was proposed in Ref. 1, claimed to be derivable from q-deformed noncommutative theory, and argued to evade ultrahigh energy threshold anomalies (trans-GKZ-cutoff cosmic rays and TeV-photons) by raising the respective thresholds. It is pointed out that such dispersion laws do not follow from deformed oscillator systems, and the proposed dispersion law is invalidated by tachyonic propagation, as well as photon instability, in addition to the process considered.
Food Security, Structural Transformation, Markets and Government Policy

Food prices are a key signal about what is happening to food security, and two dimensions are important: their average level (and whether this is rising or falling in the long run) and their volatility. Food price instability slows down economic growth and the structural transformation that is the pathway out of rural poverty. The best approaches to improving food security depend on which global food price regime is likely to drive policy formation between now and 2050. The historical path of structural transformation with falling food prices, leading to a ‘world without agriculture’, is an obvious possibility. But continued financial instability, coupled with the impact of climate change, could lead to a new and uncertain path of rising real costs for food, with a reversal of structural transformation. Management of food policy, and the outlook for sustained poverty reduction, will be radically different depending on which of these global price regimes plays out.
Visible narrow-band dc electroluminescence

The need of low-voltage de electroluminescent devices that emit in the visible portion of the spectrum is well-recognized. Devices composed of p-n junctions of binary or ternary III-V semiconductors exhibit high injection-efficiency but have poor internal quantum-efficiency, particularly in the green where the eye-response is the greatest. Furthermore, the all-important consideration of contrast as a criterion for display-effectiveness makes luminescence in a narrow visible band all the more useful. Such narrow-bandedness is not present in a nonlasing mode of a III-V device.
Temptation and forward-guidance

Abstract Motivated by the extensive experimental and empirical evidence on preference reversal in consumption choices, we introduce temptation with self-control preferences into a New Keynesian model to study the effects of forward guidance in monetary policy, and the related forward guidance puzzle. In our set-up, the representative agent faces a trade off between the temptation for immediate satisfaction (liquidate wealth) with his long-run best (smooth consumption), which he manages by exerting cognitive effort (or self-control). For higher risk aversion in temptation than in commitment utility, there is discounting in the linearized Euler equation. The latter makes the response of current real activity to the announcement of a future policy change declining in the forward guidance horizon, which then helps solving the puzzle. Our framework delivers testable aggregate and policy implications that distinguish it from alternative microfoundations for discounting in the Euler equation previously used to solve the puzzle.
Statically checking web API requests in JavaScript

Many JavaScript applications perform HTTP requests to web APIs, relying on the request URL, HTTP method, and request data to be constructed correctly by string operations. Traditional compile-time error checking, such as calling a non-existent method in Java, are not available for checking whether such requests comply with the requirements of a web API. In this paper, we propose an approach to statically check web API requests in JavaScript. Our approach first extracts a request's URL string, HTTP method, and the corresponding request data using an inter-procedural string analysis, and then checks whether the request conforms to given web API specifications. We evaluated our approach by checking whether web API requests in JavaScript files mined from GitHub are consistent or inconsistent with publicly available API specifications. From the 6575 requests in scope, our approach determined whether the request's URL and HTTP method was consistent or inconsistent with web API specifications with a precision of 96.0%. Our approach also correctly determined whether extracted request data was consistent or inconsistent with the data requirements with a precision of 87.9% for payload data and 99.9% for query data. In a systematic analysis of the inconsistent cases, we found that many of them were due to errors in the client code. The here proposed checker can be integrated with code editors or with continuous integration tools to warn programmers about code containing potentially erroneous requests.
Some Experiments with Integral Apollonian Circle Packings

Bounded Apollonian circle packings (ACPs) are constructed by repeatedly inscribing circles into the triangular interstices of a Descartes configuration of four mutually tangent circles, one of which is internally tangent to the other three. If the original four circles have integer curvature, all of the circles in the packing will have integer curvature as well. In [Sarnak 07], Sarnak proves that there are infinitely many circles of prime curvature and infinitely many pairs of tangent circles of prime curvature in a primitive integral ACP. (A primitive integral ACP is one in which no integer greater than 1 divides the curvatures of all of the circles in the packing.) In this paper, we give a heuristic backed up by numerical data for the number of circles of prime curvature less than x and the number of “kissing primes,” or pairs of circles of prime curvature less than x, in a primitive integral ACP. We also provide experimental evidence toward a local-to-global principle for the curvatures in a primitive ...
Anticipating loss from proxy contests

Abstract In this paper, we examine corporate policy decisions made in anticipation of and subsequent to a proxy contest. Our results suggest that managers increase dividend payouts and leverage and decrease acquisition spending in the year prior to the proxy contest when they anticipate that dissidents may prevail in the contest. Furthermore, these policy concessions to dissidents are not reversed in the year after the proxy contest. On the other hand, managers do not change corporate policies prior to the contest when they expect to prevail over dissidents. Furthermore, they take advantage of winning the contest to pursue policies that reduce the extent of discipline imposed on them. Overall, our results suggest that proxy contests play a disciplinary role only when incumbents anticipate a loss in the contest and are therefore forced to pursue policy choices preferred by dissidents.
Multi-objective cooperative search of spatially diverse routes in uncertain environments

This paper focuses on developing new navigation and reconnaissance capabilities for cooperative unmanned systems in uncertain environments. The goal is to design a cooperative multi-vehicle system that can survey an unknown environment and find the most valuable route for personnel to travel. To accomplish the goal, the multi-vehicle system first explores spatially diverse routes and then selects the safest route. In particular, the proposed cooperative path planner sequentially generates a set of spatially diverse routes according to a number of factors, including travel distance, ease of travel, and uncertainty associated with the ease of travel. The planner's dependence on each of these factors is altered by a weighted score. Varying the weights changes the criteria for determining an optimum route. To penalize the selection of same paths by different vehicles, a control gain is used to increase the cost of paths that lie near the route(s) assigned to other vehicles. By varying the control gain, the spatial diversity among routes can be accomplished. By repeatedly searching for different paths cooperatively, an optimal path can be selected that yields the most valuable route.
Noise Background Levels and Noise Event Tracking/Characterization Under the Arctic Ice Pack: Experiment, Data Analysis, and Modeling

In March 2014, an Arctic Line Arrays System (ALAS) was deployed as part of an experiment in the Beaufort Sea (approximate location 72.323 N, 146.490 W). The water depth was greater than 3500 m. The background noise levels in the frequency range from 1 Hz to 25 kHz were measured. The goal was to have a three-dimensional sparse array that would allow determination of the direction of sound sources out to hundreds of kilometers and both direction and range of sound sources out to 1–2 km from the center of the array. ALAS started recording data at 02:12 on March 10, 2014 (UTC). It recorded data nearly continuously at a sample rate of 50 kHz until 11:04 on March 24, 2014. Background noise spectral levels are presented for low and high floe-drift conditions. Tracking/characterization results for ice-cracking events (with signatures typically in the 10–2000-Hz band), including the initiation of an open lead within about 400 m of the array, and one seismic event (with a signature in the 1–40-Hz band) are presented. Results from simple modeling indicate that the signature of a lead formation may be a combination of both previously hypothesized physics and enhanced emissions near the ice plate critical frequency (where the flexural wave speed equals that of the water sound speed). For the seismic event, the T-wave arrival time results indicate that a significant amount of energy coupled to T-wave energy somewhere along the path between the earthquake and ALAS.
Safety impacts of signalized lane merge control at highway work zones

Lane closures due to highway work zones present many challenges to the goal of ensuring smooth traffic operations and a safe environment for both drivers and workers. Late merge behavior at a work ...
Bone Quality in Chronic Kidney Disease: Definitions and Diagnostics.

Purpose of Review In this paper, we review the epidemiology, diagnosis, and pathogenesis of fractures and renal osteodystrophy.
OPTIMAL TARIFF COALITIONS, AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract This paper analyzes protectionism in a game theoretic context. Non-cooperative equilibrium solutions are calculated for three players, the E.E.C., the U.S. and the Pacific Basin on the basis of the Project LINK model. These are confronted with cooperative scenarios based on bargaining theory. Coalitions of two players against the third are examined in a Nash and Stackelberg equilibrium framework. The numerical results are summarized in qualitative propositions.
Customizing IETF RFC 6280 Geopriv for Compliance of Wi-Fi Positioning System APIs with Privacy Laws.

This paper proposes a customization of the IETF RFC 6280 Geopriv to facilitate compliance of Wi-Fi positioning systems with existing privacy regulations. It is shown that APIs of existing Wi-Fi positioning systems, based on the distribution phase of the IETF RFC 6280 Geopriv, do not fully protect location privacy of a user of an IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) enabled device. The existing controls of the WiPS are compared with requirements of privacy regulations. To address gaps identified in these controls, the RFC 6280 architecture is modified to include design rules into the rule maker component. We also show that existing WiPS privacy protecting controls should be enhanced to be in compliant with this modified Geopriv which significantly enhances users control over location privacy.
Tax-Related Corporate Political Activity Research: A Literature Review

ABSTRACT Academic researchers and the public have long shared an interest in whether and how corporate political activity (CPA) relates to taxes and tax policy. This paper reviews the literature on...