cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Distributed Computation of Equilibria in Misspecified Convex Stochastic Nash Games

The distributed computation of Nash equilibria is assuming growing relevance in engineering where such problems emerge in the context of distributed control. Accordingly, we present schemes for computing equilibria of two classes of static stochastic convex games complicated by a parametric misspecification, a natural concern in the control of large-scale networked engineered system. In both schemes, players learn the equilibrium strategy while resolving the misspecification : 1) Monotone stochastic Nash games: We present a set of coupled stochastic approximation schemes distributed across agents in which the first scheme updates each agent's strategy via a projected (stochastic) gradient step, whereas the second scheme updates every agent's belief regarding its misspecified parameter using an independently specified learning problem. We proceed to show that the produced sequences converge in an almost sure sense to the true equilibrium strategy and the true parameter, respectively. Surprisingly, convergence in the equilibrium strategy achieves the optimal rate of convergence in a mean-squared sense with a quantifiable degradation in the rate constant; 2) Stochastic Nash–Cournot games with unobservable aggregate output: We refine 1) to a Cournot setting where we assume that the tuple of strategies is unobservable while payoff functions and strategy sets are public knowledge through a common knowledge assumption. By utilizing observations of noise-corrupted prices, iterative fixed-point schemes are developed, allowing for simultaneously learning the equilibrium strategies and the misspecified parameter in an almost sure sense.
Reproducibility of relaxation times and spin density calculated from routine MR imaging sequences: Clinical study of the CNS

This study was undertaken to determine if routine clinical magnetic resonance imaging sequences using only two different repetition times (TRs) and with only two sequential spin echoes (SEs) can be used to calculate reproducible relaxation time and spin density values for normal central nervous system tissue using a 0.35 T production-model instrument. In 43 patients 650 regions of interest of 11 different anatomic sites were measured. T1 and T2 relaxation times and spin density were measured. For each anatomic location, the mean and standard deviation of these values were determined. In most solid regions of brain, the standard deviation of both T1 and T2 was 4%–8%. Relaxation times of cortical gray matter varied more, with a standard deviation of 10%, probably because of volume-averaging with adjacent cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). CSF and ocular vitreous humor were neither reproducibly nor accurately measured because of the short TR and TE settings of the imaging sequences relative to the long T1 and T2 relaxation times of these substances. Significant and reproducible differences were found between the spin densities of gray matter and white matter, as well as between different regions of white matter. These differences are of major importance in contrast discrimination of gray and white matter on the long TR images. Knowing that relaxation values and spin densities calculated from routine imaging sequences are in fact reproducible, these normal ranges can now be used to investigate changes occurring in disease states.
Does Biot’s theory have predictive power?

Biot’s theory of elastic waves in fluid-saturated porous solids has two free parameters: the tortuosity α, characterizing the dynamic coupling between the solid and the fluid, and the structural factor δ, representing the geometric properties of the porous space. The meaning and significance of these parameters have not been sufficiently understood. The tortuosity has the physical meaning of the normalized mean square of the velocity of the pore fluid relative to the solid wall; it has a low-frequency but no high-frequency limits. The analytical calculation of the tortuosity for Biot’s slit-like pore provides its range of variability from approximately 1–100 in the frequency range of practical interest. The tortuosity has a significant effect on the properties of the Biot waves of the second kind in the high-frequency range. On the other hand, in realistically complex pore geometries, the values of the tortuosity are virtually unpredictable. This limits the usefulness of the Biot theory in predicting the wave propagation at high frequencies. At all frequencies, the effect of the structural factor is insignificant relative to the effect of the tortuosity. The conventional compressional wave (the wave of the first kind) is insensitive to both parameters at all frequencies. The frequencies of interest to seismic exploration are also free of the uncertainty imposed by the lack of constraints on the tortuosity as the only free parameter in Biot’s theory.
Soft-gluon resummations and NNNLO expansions

I discuss the effectiveness of soft-gluon resummations in describing higher-order corrections. I present a comparison of recent resummation approaches and their relative successes in approximating complete NNLO corrections. I also discuss fixed-orde r expansions through NNNLO and present some recent applications to QCD hard-scattering processes, including top-antitop pair production, single-top production, and W production at large transverse momentum.
On the Bayesian interpretation of Black–Litterman

Abstract We present the most general model of the type considered by Black and Litterman (1991) after fully clarifying the duality between Black–Litterman optimization and Bayesian regression. Our generalization is itself a special case of a Bayesian network or graphical model. As an example, we work out in full detail the treatment of views on factor risk premia in the context of APT. We also consider a more speculative example in which the portfolio manager specifies a view on realized volatility by trading a variance swap.
Comparative Performance Analysis of Domain Name based Location Management

Mobility management in an IP network requires a Location Manager to identify the location of mobile host. Four mobility management schemes (SIGMA, Migrate, HIP and TCPR) in the literature have proposed Domain Name Service as a location manager, with performance results available only for SIGMA. In this paper, we introduce a generic analytical model to compare the performance of DNS as location manager for all the four schemes. Our results shows that DNS is a feasible solution as location manager for all the four mobility management schemes; the performance, however, is better with SIGMA.
A simple finite element method for the Stokes equations

The goal of this paper is to introduce a simple finite element method to solve the Stokes equations. This method is in primal velocity-pressure formulation and is so simple such that both velocity and pressure are approximated by piecewise constant functions. Implementation issues as well as error analysis are investigated. A basis for a divergence free subspace of the velocity field is constructed so that the original saddle point problem can be reduced to a symmetric and positive definite system with much fewer unknowns. The numerical experiments indicate that the method is accurate.
Communication over the Gaussian channel with rate-limited feedback

We consider communication over an AWGN discrete time memoryless channel with noiseless delay-less rate-limited feedback. For the case where the feedback rate is lower than the data rate transmitted over the forward channel, we show that the decay of the probability of error is at most linearly exponential in block-length and obtain an upper bound for the error exponent. For the case where the feedback rate exceeds the forward rate, we propose a simple iterative scheme that achieves an error probability decaying L-fold exponentially (i.e. in general form of exp(-exp ( … ( exp over L ( O(n))) …)) as a function of the block-length when the feedback rate is at least L times the forward rate, for some positive integer L. Our results show that the error exponent as a function of the feedback rate has a discontinuity at the point where the feedback rate is equal to the forward rate.
DUAL MOBILITY IN PRIMARY THA: YET TO BE JUSTIFIED – OPPOSES

Dislocation is a particular problem after total hip replacement in femoral neck fractures and elderly especially female patients. The increased rate of dislocation in this population is probably due to significant ligamentous laxity in these patients and poor coordination and proprioception. Another population of patients with increased propensity for dislocation is the revision hip replacement patient. Current dislocation rates in these patients can approach 10% with conventional implant systems. The Dual Mobility total hip system is composed of a cobalt chrome acetabular shell with a grit blasted, beaded and/or hydroxyapatite coating to improve bone ingrowth. The polyethylene liner is highly cross-linked polyethylene and fits congruently into the cobalt chrome shell and acts like a large femoral head (usually >40mm). The femoral head attached to the trunnion is usually 28mm or 32mm. The femoral head snaps into the polyethylene liner to acts as a second protection against dislocation. Indications for the Dual Mobility socket are in the high risk for dislocation patient and particularly in elderly female patients. One hundred fifty-six patients with an average age of 79 have been performed to date with a maximum follow up to 4.2 years. To date there have been no mechanical or septic failures and no dislocations. Pain relief has been no different than conventional hip replacement and range of motion is unchanged as well. There have been reported cases of intraprosthetic dislocation but these have not occurred to date.
Differentially private publication of location entropy

Location entropy (LE) is a popular metric for measuring the popularity of various locations (e.g., points-of-interest). Unlike other metrics computed from only the number of (unique) visits to a location, namely frequency, LE also captures the diversity of the users' visits, and is thus more accurate than other metrics. Current solutions for computing LE require full access to the past visits of users to locations, which poses privacy threats. This paper discusses, for the first time, the problem of perturbing location entropy for a set of locations according to differential privacy. The problem is challenging because removing a single user from the dataset will impact multiple records of the database; i.e., all the visits made by that user to various locations. Towards this end, we first derive non-trivial, tight bounds for both local and global sensitivity of LE, and show that to satisfy e-differential privacy, a large amount of noise must be introduced, rendering the published results useless. Hence, we propose a thresholding technique to limit the number of users' visits, which significantly reduces the perturbation error but introduces an approximation error. To achieve better utility, we extend the technique by adopting two weaker notions of privacy: smooth sensitivity (slightly weaker) and crowd-blending (strictly weaker). Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets show that our proposed techniques preserve original data distribution without compromising location privacy.
Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of hydrogen diffusion in tungsten

Abstract This research developed a Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) method for simulating hydrogen diffusion in tungsten bulk. The KMC inputs such as diffusion paths and energy barriers are based on the first principle calculations in the literatures. In this simulation model, stable hydrogen interstitial sites in tungsten are the tetrahedral sites on each surface of the bcc lattice, and each site has four tetrahedral neighboring sites. A numerical program has been developed to perform the diffusion simulation for any hydrogen concentration and tungsten temperature combination. The KMC calculated diffusion coefficients fitted to the Arrhenius equation is D [m 2 /s] = 8.45 × 10 −7 exp(−0.440/ k B T ), which match the experiment data very well. The pre-exponential factor D 0 is found to be proportional to the hydrogen concentration, and a more general diffusion coefficient equation is derived for other concentrations. At last, the neighbor condition as a function of the concentration is analyzed.
Topological phase transformations and intrinsic size effects in ferroelectric nanoparticles

Composite materials comprised of ferroelectric nanoparticles in a dielectric matrix are being actively investigated for a variety of functional properties attractive for a wide range of novel electronic and energy harvesting devices. However, the dependence of these functionalities on shapes, sizes, orientation and mutual arrangement of ferroelectric particles is currently not fully understood. In this study, we utilize a time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau approach combined with coupled-physics finite-element-method based simulations to elucidate the behavior of polarization in isolated spherical PbTiO3 or BaTiO3 nanoparticles embedded in a dielectric medium, including air. The equilibrium polarization topology is strongly affected by particle diameter, as well as the choice of inclusion and matrix materials, with monodomain, vortex-like and multidomain patterns emerging for various combinations of size and materials parameters. This leads to radically different polarization vs. electric field responses, resulting in highly tunable size-dependent dielectric properties that should be possible to observe experimentally. Our calculations show that there is a critical particle size below which ferroelectricity vanishes. For the PbTiO3 particle, this size is 2 and 3.4 nm, respectively, for high- and low-permittivity media. For the BaTiO3 particle, it is ∼3.6 nm regardless of the medium dielectric strength.
Reconfiguration of a vehicle formation with ring communication structure

In multiple vehicle formations, there is often a need to reconfigure communication graphs to accommodate (1) for addition or removal of vehicles or (2) for change in positions of the vehicles within a given formation. This problem is commonly referred to as the topology or graph reconfiguration problem. In this paper, we will study the reconfiguration problem from the point of view of increasing the size of the formation. We first discuss the suitability of the ring structure to add vehicles into the formation followed by ways to reconfigure the communication structure when adding vehicles. We will show that the directed ring graph is well suited for adding vehicles from the point of view of scalability of the existing controller and the ease with which the existing ring structure will be able to handle the increase in the formation size. The algorithm for obtaining the ring structure is formulated as a specific instance of the Traveling Salesman Problem, where constraints may be included to model the communication sensing range; in addition, we use the nearest neighbor search to include new vehicles into the perimeter of the formation.
Deep Model Based Transfer and Multi-Task Learning for Biological Image Analysis

A central theme in learning from image data is to develop appropriate representations for the specific task at hand. Thus, a practical challenge is to determine what features are appropriate for specific tasks. For example, in the study of gene expression patterns in Drosophila , texture features were particularly effective for determining the developmental stages from in situ hybridization images. Such image representation is however not suitable for controlled vocabulary term annotation. Here, we developed feature extraction methods to generate hierarchical representations for ISH images. Our approach is based on the deep convolutional neural networks that can act on image pixels directly. To make the extracted features generic, the models were trained using a natural image set with millions of labeled examples. These models were transferred to the ISH image domain. To account for the differences between the source and target domains, we proposed a partial transfer learning scheme in which only part of the source model is transferred. We employed multi-task learning method to fine-tune the pre-trained models with labeled ISH images. Results showed that feature representations computed by deep models based on transfer and multi-task learning significantly outperformed other methods for annotating gene expression patterns at different stage ranges.
MINIMISING PERI-OPERATIVE BLOOD LOSS: AN ACID TRIP IN 2014

Perioperative blood conservation remains an important topic today in order to reduce complications, improve function, and facilitate recovery after a total knee replacement (TKR). Studies have shown that the degree of postoperative anemia is related to an increase in complications. A greater blood loss and need for transfusion is associated with a higher risk of infection, a slower recovery process, increased morbidity to patients, as well as an increased cost to the healthcare system. Typical blood loss estimates range from 800cc to over 1700cc, when accounting not only for intraoperative but postoperative blood loss. Several strategies have been developed to help mitigate the risk of perioperative blood loss and need for subsequent transfusion. Firstly, preoperative measures such as vitamin and mineral supplementation can ensure the starting hemoglobin and red cell count are maximised. Additionally, erythropoietin can be helpful in refractory cases of preoperative anemia. Preoperative autologous blood donation was used extensively in the past, but has fallen out of favor due to its inefficiency and cost. Intraoperatively, measures such as the use of a tourniquet, meticulous technique, and expeditious surgery can help reduce blood loss. The most effective method, however, has been the use of tranexamic acid (TXA). TXA, an antifibrinolytic compound, has been extremely effective at reducing perioperative blood loss without increasing the risk of thromboembolic events. TXA can be used topically or intravenously. Other methods that can reduce intraoperative blood loss include the use of fibrin sealants, applied to the soft tissues and bony surfaces around the knee. Postoperatively, the avoidance of wound drains is associated with a higher blood count and reduced transfusion risk. Alternatively, drainage reinfusion systems can be used to raise the postoperative blood count, particularly in cases of bilateral TKR.
Putting Distribution First

It is common for normative legal theorists, economists and other policy analysts to conduct and communicate their work mainly in maximizing terms. They take the maximization of welfare, for example, or of wealth or utility, to be primary objectives of legislation and public policy. Few if any of these theorists seem to notice, however, that any time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing other things and of equalizing yet other things. Fewer still seem to recognize that we effectively define ourselves by reference to that which we distribute and equalize. For it is in virtue of that which we distribute and equalize that our policy formulations treat us as politically “counting” or “mattering” for purposes of social aggregation and maximization. To attend systematically to this form of inter-translatability, with a view in particular to that which maximization formulations latently prescribe that we distribute and equalize, might be called “putting distribution first.” It is explicitly to recognize the fact that all law and policy are implicitly as equalizing and citizen-defining as they are aggregative and maximizing, and to trace the many salient consequences that stem from this fact. It is likewise to recognize that all law and policy treat us as equals in some respects and as non-equals in other respects. Putting distribution first by attending explicitly to these “respects” yields greater transparency about how well or poorly our laws and policies manage to identify, count, and treat us as equals in the right respects. This Article works to lay out with care how to put distribution first in normative legal and policy analysis. The payoffs include both a workable method by which to test proposed maximization norms systematically for their normative propriety, and an attractive distributive ethic that can serve as a workable normative touchstone for legal and policy analysis. Indeed, the Article concludes, much — though not yet quite all — of our law can illuminatingly be interpreted as giving inchoate expression to just such an ethic.
Towards Loop-Free Forwarding of Anonymous Internet Datagrams That Enforce Provenance

The way in which addressing and forwarding are implemented in the Internet constitutes one of its biggest privacy and security challenges. The fact that source addresses in Internet datagrams cannot be trusted makes the IP Internet inherently vulnerable to DoS and DDoS attacks. The Internet forwarding plane is open to attacks to the privacy of datagram sources, because source addresses in Internet datagrams have global scope. The fact an Internet datagrams are forwarded based solely on the destination addresses stated in datagram headers and the next hops stored in the forwarding information bases (FIB) of relaying routers allows Internet datagrams to traverse loops, which wastes resources and leaves the Internet open to further attacks. We introduce PEAR (Provenance Enforcement through Addressing and Routing), a new approach for addressing and forwarding of Internet datagrams that enables anonymous forwarding of Internet datagrams, eliminates many of the existing DDoS attacks on the IP Internet, and prevents Internet datagrams from looping, even in the presence of routing- table loops.
The dual Minkowski problem for negative indices

Recently, the duals of Federer’s curvature measures, called dual curvature measures, were discovered by Huang et al. (Acta Math 216:325–388, 2016). In the same paper, they posed the dual Minkowski problem, the characterization problem for dual curvature measures, and proved existence results when the index, q, is in (0, n). The dual Minkowski problem includes the Aleksandrov problem ( $$q=0$$ ) and the logarithmic Minkowski problem ( $$q=n$$ ) as special cases. In the current work, a complete solution to the dual Minkowski problem whenever $$q<0$$ , including both existence and uniqueness, is presented.
Selecting electrode configurations for image-guided cochlear implant programming using template matching

Cochlear implants (CIs) are used to treat patients with severe-to-profound hearing loss. In surgery, an electrode array is implanted in the cochlea. After implantation, the CI processor is programmed by an audiologist. One factor that negatively impacts outcomes and can be addressed by programming is cross-electrode neural stimulation overlap (NSO). In the recent past, we have proposed a system to assist the audiologist in programming the CI that we call Image-Guided CI Programming (IGCIP). IGCIP permits using CT images to detect NSO and recommend which subset of electrodes should be active to avoid NSO. In an ongoing clinical study, we have shown that IGCIP leads to significant improvement in hearing outcomes. Most of the IGCIP steps are robustly automated but electrode configuration selection still sometimes requires expert intervention. With expertise, Distance-Vs-Frequency (DVF) curves, which are a way to visualize the spatial relationship learned from CT between the electrodes and the nerves they stimulate, can be used to select the electrode configuration. In this work, we propose an automated technique for electrode configuration selection. It relies on matching new patients’ DVF curves to a library of DVF curves for which electrode configurations are known. We compare this approach to one we have previously proposed. We show that, generally, our new method produces results that are as good as those obtained with our previous one while being generic and requiring fewer parameters.
Orthogonalized ALS: a theoretically principled tensor decomposition algorithm for practical use

The popular Alternating Least Squares (ALS) algorithm for tensor decomposition is efficient and easy to implement, but often converges to poor local optima—particularly when the weights of the factors are non-uniform. We propose a modification of the ALS approach that is as efficient as standard ALS, but provably recovers the true factors with random initialization under standard incoherence assumptions on the factors of the tensor. We demonstrate the significant practical superiority of our approach over traditional ALS for a variety of tasks on synthetic data—including tensor factorization on exact, noisy and over-complete tensors, as well as tensor completion—and for computing word embeddings from a third-order word tri-occurrence tensor.
Transport Equations in Axisymmetric Toroidal Coordinates

A derivation is presented of the conservation law form of the single energy group transport equation in an axisymmetric toroidal coordinate system formed by rotating a nest of smooth, simply closed, plane curves of arbitrary parametric description about an axis which does not intersect the nest. This general equation may be used for generating equations specific to particular cross section geometries, or as the basis of a finite difference equation for the general case. The effect of both the toroidal and poloidal curvatures of the system are investigated, and criteria for the validity of cylindrical and planar approximations are established. The diffusion equation for this geometry is derived, and it is shown to be formally homologous to the ''r-theta'' cylindrical diffusion equation if the coordinate system is orthogonal and if the azimuthal coordinate, phi, is ignorable. (auth)
Small molecules inhibit STAT3 activation, autophagy, and cancer cell anchorage-independent growth.

Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) lack the signature targets of other breast tumors, such as HER2, estrogen receptor, and progesterone receptor. These aggressive basal-like tumors are driven by a complex array of signaling pathways that are activated by multiple driver mutations. Here we report the discovery of 6 (KIN-281), a small molecule that inhibits multiple kinases including maternal leucine zipper kinase (MELK) and the non-receptor tyrosine kinase bone marrow X-linked (BMX) with single-digit micromolar IC50s. Several derivatives of 6 were synthesized to gain insight into the binding mode of the compound to the ATP binding pocket. Compound 6 was tested for its effect on anchorage-dependent and independent growth of MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468 breast cancer cells. The effect of 6 on BMX prompted us to evaluate its effect on STAT3 phosphorylation and DNA binding. The compound’s inhibition of cell growth led to measurements of survivin, Bcl-XL, p21WAF1/CIP1, and cyclin A2 levels. Finally, LC3B-II levels were quantified following treatment of cells with 6 to determine whether the compound affected autophagy, a process that is known to be activated by STAT3. Compound 6 provides a starting point for the development of small molecules with polypharmacology that can suppress TNBC growth and metastasis.
PARTICIPATION IN WORK AND SPORT FOLLOWING SHOULDER ARTHROPLASTY: A COMPARISON OF REVERSE AND ANATOMIC

Background Both anatomic (TSA) and reverse shoulder arthroplasty (RSA) are routinely performed for patients whom desire to continue to work or participate in sports. The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare the ability of patients to work and participate in sports based on responses to clinical outcome surveys. Methods A retrospective review of 335 patients treated with TSA (179 patients) and RSA (156 patients) who completed questions 9 and 10 on the activity patient self-evaluation portion of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) Assessment Form was performed at average 30 months follow-up. Comparisons were made between TSA and RSA for the specific ASES score (rated 0–3) reported for usual work and sport, as well as ASES total score. Sports were subdivided based on those that predominantly use shoulder function. Results Patients treated with TSA had a 32% greater ability to participate in sports (average specific ASES score 2.5 vs 1.9, p=0.001), with significantly higher scores for aquatic and sedentary sports (Figure 1). TSA patients demonstrated greater ability to participate in sports requiring shoulder function without difficulty, as 62% reported maximal scores (p=0.001) (Figure 2). TSA patients also demonstrated a 21% greater ability to perform work (average specific ASES score 2.6 vs. 2.1, p=0.001), with significantly higher scores for housework and gardening (Figure 3). Conclusion Both TSA and RSA allow for participation in work and sport, with TSA patients reporting better overall ability to participate. For sports involving shoulder function, TSA patients more commonly report maximal ability to participate than RSA patients.
Growing Interpretable Part Graphs on ConvNets via Multi-Shot Learning

This paper proposes a learning strategy that embeds object-part concepts into a pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN), in an attempt to 1) explore explicit semantics hidden in CNN units and 2) gradually transform the pre-trained CNN into a semantically interpretable graphical model for hierarchical object understanding. Given part annotations on very few (e.g., 3-12) objects, our method mines certain latent patterns from the pre-trained CNN and associates them with different semantic parts. We use a four-layer And-Or graph to organize the CNN units, so as to clarify their internal semantic hierarchy. Our method is guided by a small number of part annotations, and it achieves superior part-localization performance (about 13%-107% improvement in part center prediction on the PASCAL VOC and ImageNet datasets)
Optimization of vehicle connections in V2V-based cooperative localization

Cooperative map matching (CMM) uses the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning of a group of vehicles to improve the standalone localization accuracy. It has been shown to reduce GNSS error from several meters to sub-meter level by matching the biased GNSS positioning of four vehicles to a digital map with road constraints in our previous work. While further error reduction is expected by increasing the number of participating vehicles, fundamental questions on how the vehicle membership of the CMM affects the performance of the GNSS-based localization results need to be addressed to provide guidelines for design and optimization of the vehicle network. The quantitative relationship between the estimation error and the road constraints has to be systematically investigated to provide insights. In this work, a theoretical study is presented that aims at developing a framework for quantitatively evaluating effects of the road constraints on the CMM accuracy and for eventual optimization of the CMM network. More specifically, a closed-form expression of the CMM error in terms of the road angles and GNSS error is first derived based on a simple CMM rule. Then a Branch and Bound algorithm and a Cross Entropy method are developed to minimize this error by selecting the optimal group of vehicles under two different assumptions about the GNSS error variance.
An Online Learning Approach to Improving the Quality of Crowd-Sourcing

We consider a crowd-sourcing problem where in the process of labeling massive data sets, multiple labelers with unknown annotation quality must be selected to perform the labeling task for each incoming data sample or task, with the results aggregated using for example simple or weighted majority voting rule. In this paper, we approach this labeler selection problem in an online learning framework, whereby the quality of the labeling outcome by a specific set of labelers is estimated so that the learning algorithm over time learns to use the most effective combinations of labelers. This type of online learning in some sense falls under the family of multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems, but with a distinct feature not commonly seen: since the data is unlabeled to begin with and the labelers’ quality is unknown, their labeling outcome (or reward in the MAB context) cannot be readily verified; it can only be estimated against the crowd and be known probabilistically. We design an efficient online algorithm LS_OL using a simple majority voting rule that can differentiate high and low quality labelers over time, and is shown to have a regret (with respect to always using the optimal set of labelers) of $O(\log ^{2} T)$ uniformly in time under mild assumptions on the collective quality of the crowd, thus regret free in the average sense. We discuss further performance improvement by using a more sophisticated majority voting rule, and show how to detect and filter out “bad” (dishonest, malicious or very incompetent) labelers to further enhance the quality of crowd-sourcing. Extension to the case when a labeler’s quality is task-type dependent is also discussed using techniques from the literature on continuous arms. We establish a lower bound on the order of $O(\log T D_{2}(T))$ , where $D_{2}(T)$ is an arbitrary function such that $D_{2}(T) > O(1)$ . We further provide a matching upper bound through a minor modification of the algorithm we proposed and studied earlier on. We present numerical results using both simulation and set of images labeled by amazon mechanic turks.
1,3-Butadiene-Induced Adenine DNA Adducts Are Genotoxic but Only Weakly Mutagenic When Replicated in Escherichia coli of Various Repair and Replication Backgrounds.

The adverse effects of the human carcinogen 1,3-butadiene (BD) are believed to be mediated by its DNA-reactive metabolites such as 3,4-epoxybut-1-ene (EB) and 1,2,3,4-diepoxybutane (DEB). The specific DNA adducts responsible for toxic and mutagenic effects of BD, however, have yet to be identified. Recent in vitro polymerase bypass studies of BD-induced adenine (BD-dA) adducts show that DEB-induced N6,N6-DHB-dA (DHB = 2,3-dihydroxybutan-1,4-diyl) and 1,N6-γ-HMHP-dA (HMHP = 2-hydroxy-3-hydroxymethylpropan-1,3-diyl) adducts block replicative DNA polymerases but are bypassed by human polymerases η and κ, leading to point mutations and deletions. In contrast, EB-induced N6-HB-dA (HB = 2-hydroxy-3-buten-1-yl) does not block DNA synthesis and is nonmutagenic. In the present study, we employed a newly established in vivo lesion-induced mutagenesis/genotoxicity assay via next-generation sequencing to evaluate the in vivo biological consequences of S-N6-HB-dA, R,R-N6,N6-DHB-dA, S,S-N6,N6-DHB-dA, and R,S-1,N6-γ-HMH...
Light-Cones, Almost Light-Cones and Almost-Complex Light-Cones

We point out (and then apply to a general situation) an unusual relationship among a variety of null geodesic congruences; (a) the generators of ordinary light-cones and (b) certain (related) shear-free but twisting congruences in Minkowski space–time as well as (c) asymptotically shear-free null geodesic congruences that exist in the neighborhood of Penrose’s $$I^{ +}$$ in Einstein or Einstein–Maxwell asymptotically flat-space–times. We refer to these geodesic congruences respectively as: Lignt-Cones (LCs), as “Almost-Complex”-Light-Cones (ACLCs), [though they are real they resemble complex light-cones in complex Minkowski space] and finally to a family of congruences in asymptotically flat-spaces as ‘Almost Light-Cones’ (ALC). The two essential points of resemblance among the three families are: (1) they are all either shear-free or asymptotically shear-free and (2) in each family the individual members of the family can be labeled by the points in a real or complex four-dimensional manifold. As an example, the Minkowski space LCs are labeled by the (real) coordinate value of their apex. In the case of (ACLCs) (complex coordinate values), the congruences will have non-vanishing twist whose magnitude is determined by the imaginary part of the complex coordinate values. In studies of gravitational radiation, Bondi-type of null surfaces and their associated Bondi coordinates have been almost exclusively used for calculations. It turns out that some surprising relations arise if, instead of the Bondi coordinates, one uses ALCs and their associated coordinate systems in the analysis of the Einstein–Maxwell equations in the neighborhood of $$I^{+}$$ . More explicitly and surprisingly, the asymptotic Bianchi Identities (arising directly from the Einstein equations), expressed in the coordinates of the ALCs, turn directly into many of the standard definitions and equations and relations of classical mechanics coupled with Maxwell’s equations. These results extend and generalize the beautiful results of Bondi and Sachs with their expressions for, and loss of, mass and linear momentum.
Heterogeneity in 14-year Dementia Incidence Between Asian American Subgroups.

Background Asian Americans are a rapidly growing and diverse population. Prior research on dementia among Asian Americans focused on Japanese Americans or Asian Americans overall, although marked differences in cardiometabolic conditions between subgroups have been documented. Materials and methods We compared dementia incidence among 4 Asian American subgroups (n=8384 Chinese; n=4478 Japanese; n=6210 Filipino; n=197 South Asian) and whites (n=206,490) who were Kaiser Permanente Northern California members aged 64 years and above with no dementia diagnoses as of January 1, 2000. Dementia diagnoses were collected from medical records January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2013. Baseline medical utilization and comorbidities (diabetes, depression, hypertension, stroke, cardiovascular disease) were abstracted from medical records January 1, 1996 to December 31, 1999. We calculated age-standardized dementia incidence rates and Cox models adjusted for age, sex, medical utilization, and comorbidities. Results Mean baseline age was 71.7 years; mean follow-up was 9.6 years. Age-standardized dementia incidence rates were higher among whites than "All Asian-Americans" or any subgroup. Compared with Chinese (13.7/1000 person-years), dementia incidence was slightly higher among Japanese [14.8/1000 person-years; covariate-adjusted hazard ratio (adjusted-HR)=1.08; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.99-1.18] and Filipinos (17.3/1000 person-years; adjusted-HR=1.20; 95% CI, 1.11-1.31), and lower among South Asians (12.1/1000 person-years; adjusted-HR=0.81; 95% CI, 0.53-1.25). Conclusions Future studies are needed to understand how immigration history, social, environmental, and genetic factors contribute to dementia risk in the growing and diverse Asian American population.
3D reconstruction of the magnetic vector potential using model based iterative reconstruction.

Abstract Lorentz transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations of magnetic nanoparticles contain information on the magnetic and electrostatic potentials. Vector field electron tomography (VFET) can be used to reconstruct electromagnetic potentials of the nanoparticles from their corresponding LTEM images. The VFET approach is based on the conventional filtered back projection approach to tomographic reconstructions and the availability of an incomplete set of measurements due to experimental limitations means that the reconstructed vector fields exhibit significant artifacts. In this paper, we outline a model-based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) algorithm to reconstruct the magnetic vector potential of magnetic nanoparticles. We combine a forward model for image formation in TEM experiments with a prior model to formulate the tomographic problem as a maximum a-posteriori probability estimation problem (MAP). The MAP cost function is minimized iteratively to determine the vector potential. A comparative reconstruction study of simulated as well as experimental data sets show that the MBIR approach yields quantifiably better reconstructions than the VFET approach.
Thermoluminescence kinetics of pyrite (FeS2)

Abstract Thermoluminescence (TL) of pyrite (FeS 2 ) has been investigated to study the kinetics of single peak glow curves. The material used normally exhibits one large and four small peaks. However, a glow curve can be obtained with only the large single peak that is suitable for testing TL kinetics. Glow curves from aliquots of a single natural pyrite crystal studied in detail contain two low intensity TL peaks at ≈=90 and ≈=165°C that are easily “drained” by careful pre-heating, a single high intensity TL peak at ≈=250°C, and two chemiluminescence (CL) peaks at ≈=350 and ≈=430°C. The CL peaks are largely removable by initially heating the sample chamber under vacuum, pumping through liquid nitrogen traps, and recording glow curves immediately after helium is introduced, procedures which reduce system contaminants that react with pyrite. The shape, the variation of the temperature of the peak maximum ( T max ) with dose, and the re-trapping to recombination cross-section ratio (σ) of the large 250°C peak are better described by the general one trap (GOT) kinetic equation, the basic equation from which the first and second order kinetic equations are obtained as special cases (see text), than by the first or second order equations.
Incomplete Information and Adverse Impacts of Environmental Cleanup

We use the hedonic method to examine the external effects of Rhode Island’s voluntary brownfield program. We hypothesize that housing price impacts are a combination of valuation of environmental improvement and response to information disclosure initiated by remediation. The results indicate that housing prices decline after nearby remediation, suggesting incomplete information about the presence of risk. Further, we find empirical evidence that price impacts and the degree of incomplete information are different across neighborhoods. Specifically, low-housing-value neighborhoods experience price declines following remediation, while high-value neighborhoods experience price increases, leading to an overall regressive impact.
Change of pace: accelerations and advances during the Millennium Development Goal era.

Abstract This paper presents a quantitative investigation of trends before and after the establishment of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to determine which trajectories changed where, and to what scale of human consequence. We perform three empirical assessments: a count of countries that accelerated their rate of progress post-2000; statistical t-tests for differences in mean country rates of progress; and a determination of the incremental lives saved or improved (or not) due to accelerated progress above pre-MDG trends. We find that low-income countries and sub-Saharan African countries had positive acceleration on a majority of indicators and accounted for much of the world’s post-2000 accelerations. Middle-income countries typically registered larger cumulative gains but less acceleration over the period. The greatest advances were in matters of life and death. At least 20.9 million and as many as 30.3 million additional lives were saved due to accelerated rates of progress, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for approximately two-thirds of the total. Primary school completion also showed considerable overall acceleration, leading to at least 74 million more children having finished primary school. Other measures of basic needs – including undernourishment, access to water and access to sanitation – showed mixed patterns of acceleration. Headcount rates of extreme income poverty declined at an accelerated rate in most regions. Environmental indicators showed no systematic evidence of faster progress.
Mind the Gap: Accounting for Measurement Error and Misclassification in Variables Generated via Data Mining

The application of predictive data mining techniques in information systems research has grown in recent years, likely because of their effectiveness and scalability in extracting information from large amounts of data. A number of scholars have sought to combine data mining with traditional econometric analyses. Typically, data mining methods are first used to generate new variables (e.g., text sentiment), which are added into subsequent econometric models as independent regressors. However, because prediction is almost always imperfect, variables generated from the first-stage data mining models inevitably contain measurement error or misclassification. These errors, if ignored, can introduce systematic biases into the second-stage econometric estimations and threaten the validity of statistical inference. In this commentary, we examine the nature of this bias, both analytically and empirically, and show that it can be severe even when data mining models exhibit relatively high performance. We then show...
Can ridge-furrow plastic mulching replace irrigation in dryland wheat and maize cropping systems?

Abstract Dryland crop production requires significant water investments, but problems associated with irrigation have been observed in many dryland regions (e.g., China, Australia and the Mediterranean basin). A key strategy for maintaining crop yields without over-exploiting the scarce water resource is by increasing water use efficiency (WUE). Plastic mulching technology for wheat and maize has been commonly used in China, but their effect on yield, soil water content, evapotranspiration (ET), and WUE has not been compared with traditional irrigation. Using a meta-analysis approach, we quantitatively examined the efficacy of plastic mulching in comparison with traditional irrigation in the same region. By covering the ridges with plastic and channeling rainwater into a very narrow planting zone (furrow), our results showed that plastic mulching resulted in a yield increase comparable to irrigated crops but used 24% less water in comparison with irrigation due primarily to a much greater WUE and better retention of soil water. The higher WUE in plastic-mulched croplands was likely a result of a greater proportion of available water being used for transpiration (T) than evaporation (E). Currently production costs and residual plastic pollution hinder worldwide adoption of the technique, despite being a promising strategy for dryland cropping systems.
Firearm Legislation and Fatal Police Shootings in the United States

Objectives. To examine whether stricter firearm legislation is associated with rates of fatal police shootings.Methods. We used a cross-sectional, state-level design to evaluate the effect of state-level firearm legislation on rates of fatal police shootings from January 1, 2015, through October 31, 2016. We measured state-level variation in firearm laws with legislative scorecards from the Brady Center, and for fatal police shootings we used The Counted, an online database maintained by The Guardian.Results. State-level firearm legislation was significantly associated with lower rates of fatal police shootings (incidence rate ratio = 0.961; 95% confidence interval = 0.939, 0.984). When we controlled for sociodemographic factors, states in the top quartile of legislative strength had a 51% lower incidence rate than did states in the lowest quartile. Laws aimed at strengthening background checks, promoting safe storage, and reducing gun trafficking were associated with fewer fatal police shootings.Conclusi...
Topological features of a gene co-expression network predict patterns of natural diversity in environmental response.

Molecular interactions affect the evolution of complex traits. For instance, adaptation may be constrained by pleiotropic or epistatic effects, both of which can be reflected in the structure of mo...
GRAVITY PROBE-B, A GYRO TEST OF GENERAL RELATIVITY IN A SATELLITE

Abstract Gravity Probe-B is the relativity gyroscope experiment being developed by NASA and Stanford University to test two extraordinary, unverified predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. The experiment will check, very precisely, tiny changes in the directions of spin of four gyroscopes contained in an Earth satellite orbiting at 400-mile altitude directly over the poles. So free are the gyroscopes from disturbance that they will provide an almost perfect space-time reference system. They will measure how space and time are warped by the presence of the Earth, and, more profoundly, how the Earth's rotation drags space-time around with it. These effects, though small for the Earth, have far-reaching implications for the nature of matter and the structure of the Universe.