cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Using situation calculus for e-business agents

Abstract As the Internet grows, it is becoming less feasible for customers and merchants to manually visit each web site, analyze the information there, and make sound business decisions regarding the trading of goods or services. To cope with this evolution, software agents can be designed that are capable of automating the more routine, tedious, and time-consuming tasks involved in current trading processes. At a higher level agents may also be able to negotiate and make autonomous decisions and commitments on behalf of their owners. This paper describes an agent implementation using the situation calculus, which offers a possibly unifying paradigm for dynamic agents. Interesting applications are currently being developed. Our contribution is a situation calculus agent system developed for e-business. Ongoing work is focused on implementing this system in an open marketplace environment.
Minimally Democratic Administrative Law

A persistent challenge for the American administrative state is reconciling the vast powers of unelected agencies with our commitment to government by the people. Many features of contemporary administrative law — from the right to participate in agency processes, to the reason-giving requirements on agencies, to the presidential review of rulemaking — have been justified, at least in part, as means to square the realities of agency power with our democratic commitments. At the root of any such effort there lies a theory of democracy, whether fully articulated or only implicit: some conception of what democracy is about, and what democracy requires. While several conceptions of democracy have influenced administrative law over the years, administrative law has never come to terms with a strand of democratic thought that I term democratic minimalism. Democratic minimalists argue that conventional theories of democracy set unrealistic benchmarks to evaluate government practices, because they expect more than is reasonable of citizens, leaders, and institutions. Accordingly, minimalists seek to offer a less ambitious, more attainable account of democratic governance that nonetheless captures core normative commitments. This Article presents the first account of minimally democratic administrative law. The Article identifies the conceptions of democracy that have dominated thinking about administrative law to this point and highlights challenges to them before outlining a competing, minimalist conception of democracy. It then revisits contemporary debates over how courts should review agency action from a minimalist standpoint.
THE IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH ON RACE AND POLICING: MAKING RACE SALIENT TO INDIVIDUALS AND INSTITUTIONS WITHIN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

For years, criminologists have directed research efforts at questions at the intersection of race and law enforcement. This has not always been welcomed by practitioners, to put it mildly; rather, many police officers view research focused on race and policing as nothing short of an attempt to paint the policing profession and police officers as racist. This commentary argues that, to the contrary, research into race and policing can still impart to everyone in our society, including police officers and their law enforcement institutions, much that they do not know about how race plays a role in both routine and non-routine police activity. For everything that police believe that they know about race and law enforcement based on their own experience, social science research has taught them much that they do not know - and has addressed many long-held misconceptions of which most officers were not aware. Several examples are discussed.
Leadership for Quality and Innovation: Challenges, Theories, and a Framework for Future Research

Quality management researchers need to further examine the leadership issues of quality management.
Evaluating an Innovative Redundancy-Retraining Project: The Austrian Steel Foundation

This Paper evaluates an Austrian manpower training programme, which is highly innovative in its content and financing - and could therefore serve as a role model for other programmes. In the late 1980s privatization and downsizing of nationalized steel firms have led to large-scale redundancies. A special Steel Foundation was created as part of a social plan. This Foundation acted like an independent training centre, where displaced workers would spend relatively long training periods (sometimes several years), obtaining personality and orientation training, as well as formal education. The last step of the integrative program was placement assistance as well as assistance for creating one’s own business. The Foundation was financed by (higher) contributions from unemployment insurance funds, by the previous firms themselves, as well as by a collectively-bargained special tax on the remaining workers in the Steel Firms. Moreover the trainees themselves would have to support the Foundation by depositing their redundancy payments. In evaluating post-foundation economic performance I use days worked and wage growth. As a control group I take all other displaced workers from the firms who formed the Foundation, using Instrumental Variables to solve the selection problem. The results show considerable wage gains - even for a period of five years after leaving the Foundation - as well as improved employment prospects. Finally, a cost-benefit analysis is performed to assess the long-term success of the Foundation.
Debt overhang, credit rationing and investment

Abstract This paper evaluates the effect of foreign debt on investment in a heavily-indebted country, using numerical simulations of a simple rational expectations growth model. Two particular effects are distinguished. First, the effect due to ‘debt overhang’ of past accumulated debts; and second, the effect of ‘credit rationing’ or inability to obtain new financing. The results from the simulations indicate that credit rationing may be a powerful disincentive to investment. This suggests that in order to maximize the impact on productive investment, debt reduction plans need to be accompanied by additional foreign lending.
Privacy in Public

As government and private companies rapidly expand the infrastructure of surveillance from cameras on every street corner to facial recognition for photographs on social media sites, privacy doctrines built on seclusion are at odds with technological advances. This essay addresses a key conceptual problem in U.S. privacy law identified by Justice Sotomayor in United States v. Jones and by Justice Scalia in Kyllo v. United States; namely that technological capabilities undermine the meaning of the third-party doctrine and the Fourth Amendment’s ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ standard. The essay argues that the conceptual problem derives from the evolution of three stages of development in the public nature of personal information, culminating in the ubiquitous transparency of citizens. This ubiquitous transparency destroys any “reasonable expectation of privacy.” The essay then argues that transparency without privacy protection challenges the democratic values of public safety and fair governance. To restore the balance and relocate privacy away from the no longer workable “reasonable expectation” standard, the essay argues for a new normative approach to privacy that would protect observable activity where such activity is not “governance-related,” but rather “private-regarding.” The essay concludes by showing that this distinction is consistent with the First Amendment and draws on established doctrines in tort law and First Amendment jurisprudence.
The interaction among disclosures, competition, and an internal control problem

Abstract This paper studies the effect of an internal control problem on a firm's disclosure policy where firms compete in non-cooperative investment game, with each firm deciding to invest in its current technology or to invest in a non-proprietary innovation. By adopting the innovation, a firm earns higher revenues at the expense of its non-adopting rival. Each principal decides on a disclosure policy for its firm that entails releasing an agent's internal cost report of the firm's current technology to the rival firm. The agent has private information about the current technology's cost and an incentive to overstate the cost. An effect of disclosures is to increase coordination between the firms, which, without a control problem, increases firm profits. However, under the same conditions that disclosures were beneficial without the control problem, disclosures may be harmful to the principal with the control problem because increased coordination between the firms allows the agent to earn higher rents. Competition substitutes for commitment to an investment policy that limits the agent's rents and this disciplining role of competition is diminished with disclosures.
The Kennedy Experiment Revisited

Many of the critical issues and conflicts in international relations today bear a significant resemblance to the geopolitical circumstances that led to the development of a theorem the author publi...
Is Leaving Home a Hardship

The transition of young adults from their parents' homes to other living arrangements is a major life-course milestone. Although the causes of nest-leaving have been extensively researched, only a few studies have examined changes in young adults' well-being that immediately precede and follow these transitions. This study uses the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey to document trajectories of financial hardships, nutrition, and other outcomes among Australians who left their parents' homes between the ages of 18 and 25 years. The study estimates multivariate fixed-effects models that compare outcomes before and after nest-leaving transitions to mitigate the effects of confounding characteristics. Men and women report increased financial hardships in the years that they leave home and in the first few years that follow, including going without meals and needing to ask friends and family for financial help. Women additionally report missing utility and housing payments.
Beyond food and evil.

The mass marketing of foods derived from organisms modified through recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology (genetically modified, or GM foods) has put extreme pressure on the interpretation and implementation of the United States' basic food safety law, the venerable Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act (FD&CA).1 In its classic form, the FD&CA reflects its Progressive and New Deal roots. It vests enormous trust in a specialized agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is presumed to have nonpareil expertise over food safety. The political reality of GM foods, however, has placed the FD&CA and its implementation by the FDA in severe tension with the Organic Foods Production Act2 and with commercial speech doctrine. Although proponents of rDNA-based food technology tout dream products such as Golden Rice,3 most commercially viable GM crops are aimed at modifying the characteristics of plants with respect to agricultural production rather than retail consumption. GM crops tend to fall into two categories, either herbicide resistant (as in Roundup Ready soybeans) or pesticidal in their own right (as in Btenhanced corn). These crops raise at least five distinct concerns: 1. These crops may be unsafe for human consumption. 2. Herbicide resistant GM crops may confer this trait on wild relatives and create "weedy" strains.
U.S. Auditors' Perceptions of the PCAOB Inspection Process: A Behavioral Examination

This study examines U.S. auditors’ observations of the PCAOB inspection process, and its impact on their work, in order to understand the current U.S. regulatory audit climate. Using 20 interviews with experienced auditors, we consider behavioral factors (e.g., perceived power of and trust in the PCAOB) that can impact the level and form of auditor compliance according to theory from the slippery slope framework on audit regulation (Kirchler et al. 2008; Dowling et al. 2018). Our participants described an audit climate with a powerful regulator. They reported that their desire to receive “clean” inspection reports has had a substantial impact on audit procedures and quality control. However, our participants do not appear to have high trust in the PCAOB, as they questioned aspects of the inspection process and its expectations. Accordingly, we conclude that U.S. public company auditors operate in an antagonistic environment where auditors perceive the PCAOB has high coercive power. In other words, they comply due to fear of enforcement rather than agreement with the PCAOB’s views on audit quality. Some auditors also indicated that they consider both the costs and benefits of compliance. Theoretical intuition implies that any future increases to perceived costs relative to perceived benefits of compliance could ultimately decrease the PCAOB’s coercive power and reduce U.S. auditor compliance. Our findings have implications for regulators and researchers interested in understanding behavioral factors that may influence regulatory compliance.
Regulatory Protectionism and the Law of International Trade

A wide array of policy instruments can protect domestic firms against foreign competition. Regulatory measures that raise the costs of foreign firms relative to domestic firms are exceptionally wasteful protectionist devices, however, with deadweight costs that can greatly exceed those of traditional protectionist instruments such as tariffs and quotas. This article develops the welfare economics of regulatory protectionism and a related political economy analysis of the national and international legal systems that must confront it, including the WTO, the NAFTA, the European Union, and the United States federal system. It explains why regulatory measures that serve no purpose other than to protect domestic firms against foreign competition will generally be prohibited in politically sophisticated trade agreements, even when other instruments of protection are to a degree permissible. It further suggests why regulatory measures that serve honest, non protectionist objectives will be permissible in sophisticated trade agreements even though their regulatory benefits may be small and their adverse effect on trade may be great -- that is, it explains why trade agreements generally do not authorize "balancing analysis" akin to that undertaken in certain dormant commerce clause cases under U.S. law.
The Constitution at the threshold of life and death: a suggested approach to accommodate an interest in life and a right to die.

In the past fifteen years, the United States Supreme Court has decided three cases in which it tentatively began to explore what the United States Constitution has to say about issues that are popularly described as the "right to die." In this article, I suggest that the current state of constitutional analysis does not provide for an effective mechanism for securing an individual's "right to die," at least not without undervaluing a state's interest in the preservation of human life should a state choose to take such a position. In the article, I suggest that it is possible to adopt a means of balancing the competing interests of the individual and of the state in such a way as to do service to both of them. I propose that the Court adopt a balancing standard modeled generally on, but by no means identical to, the current constitutional mechanism under which infringements on a woman's right to have an abortion during the period prior to fetal viability are judged. In other words, I propose the adoption of an undue bruden standard similar to that articulated in Casey. In the article I explain why the current state of affairs is deficient. Thereafter, I explore the undue burden standard I propose, explaining how it would address the deficiencies in current law as well as cure many of the problems identified with the Casey standard itself. Finally, I apply the standard to several scenarios. I ultimately conclude that adopting the standard I propose is justified despite the risks associated with it. I also conclude, however, that those risks do not warrant the maintenance of the standard in other areas, including with respect to abortion.
Are arbitrators biased in ICSID arbitration? A dynamic perspective

Abstract Concerns over arbitrator impartiality and independence in ICSID arbitration have led to reform proposals geared towards a multilateral investment court. Due to the ad hoc nature of appointments, it has been suggested that arbitrators may strategically render decisions in biased ways with the goal of encouraging reappointments. Although criticism against arbitrator bias has attracted significant attention, so far limited empirical evidence has been provided to support such concerns. This paper introduces a dynamic perspective to examine concerns of bias arising from ad hoc appointment. I find that contrary to conventional views held by critics of investor-state arbitration, on average, arbitrators tend to decide against their reputation from prior decisions in ICSID arbitration, which implies an effort to establish a reputation for being neutral and unbiased. This finding challenges one of the premises of proposals to replace arbitration with an investment court.
Recurrent evolution of vertebrate transcription factors by transposase capture.

Genes with novel cellular functions may evolve through exon shuffling, which can assemble novel protein architectures. Here, we show that DNA transposons provide a recurrent supply of materials to assemble protein-coding genes through exon shuffling. We find that transposase domains have been captured-primarily via alternative splicing-to form fusion proteins at least 94 times independently over the course of ~350 million years of tetrapod evolution. We find an excess of transposase DNA binding domains fused to host regulatory domains, especially the Kruppel-associated box (KRAB) domain, and identify four independently evolved KRAB-transposase fusion proteins repressing gene expression in a sequence-specific fashion. The bat-specific KRABINER fusion protein binds its cognate transposons genome-wide and controls a network of genes and cis-regulatory elements. These results illustrate how a transcription factor and its binding sites can emerge.
A Doubly Enhanced EM Algorithm for Model-Based Tensor Clustering

Modern scientific studies often collect datasets in the form of tensors. These datasets call for innovative statistical analysis methods. In particular, there is a pressing need for tensor clusteri...
On the Mean Convexity of a Space-and-Time Neighborhood of Generic Singularities Formed by Mean Curvature flow

We consider a nondegenerate case of generic singularity when the limit cylinder of the rescaled mean curvature flow is $${\mathbb {R}}^3 \times {\mathbb {S}}^1$$ . We obtain a detailed description of a possibly small, but fixed, neighborhood of the singularity, up to (and including) the blowup time, and find that it is mean convex and the singularity is isolated. In the considered nondegenerate cases, we confirm the conjectures of mean convexity and isolation of singularities.
Short Stop is a Gatekeeper at the Ring Canals of Drosophila Ovary

Microtubules and actin filaments are two major cytoskeletal components essential for a variety of cellular functions. Spectraplakins are a family of large cytoskeletal proteins cross-linking microtubules and actin filaments among other components. In this study, we aim to understand how Short stop (Shot), the single Drosophila spectraplakin, coordinates microtubules and actin filaments for oocyte growth. The oocyte growth completely relies on the acquisition of cytoplasmic materials from the interconnected sister cells (nurse cells), through ring canals, cytoplasmic bridges that remained open after incomplete germ cell division. Given the open nature of the ring canals, it is unclear how the direction of transport through the ring canal is controlled. Here we show that Shot controls the directionality of flow of material from the nurse cells towards the oocyte. Knockdown of shot changes the direction of transport of many types of cargo through the ring canals from unidirectional (toward the oocyte) to bidirectional, resulting in small oocytes that fail to grow over time. In agreement with this flow-directing function of Shot, we find that it is localized at the asymmetric actin fibers adjacent to the ring canals at the nurse cell side, and controls the uniform polarity of microtubules located in the ring canals connecting the nurse cells and the oocyte. Together, we propose that Shot functions as a gatekeeper directing the material flow from the nurse cells to the oocyte, via organization of microtubule tracks.
Convexity and freezing sets in digital topology

We continue the study of freezing sets in digital topology, introduced in [4]. We show how to find a minimal freezing set for a "thick" convex disk X in the digital plane Z^2. We give examples showing the significance of the assumption that X is convex.
Deionization shocks in crossflow

Shock electrodialysis is a recently developed electrochemical water treatment method which shows promise for water deionization and ionic separations. Although simple models and scaling laws have been proposed, a predictive theory has not yet emerged to fit experimental data and enable system design. Here, we extend and analyze existing "leaky membrane" models for the canonical case of a steady shock in cross flow, as in recent experimental prototypes. Two-dimensional numerical solutions are compared with analytical boundary-layer approximations and experimental data. The boundary-layer theory accurately reproduces the simulation results for desalination, and both models predict the data collapse of the desalination factor with dimensionless current, scaled to the incoming convective flux of cations. The numerical simulation also predicts the water recovery increase with current. Nevertheless, both approaches cannot quantitatively fit the transition from normal to over-limiting current, which suggests gaps in our understanding of extreme electrokinetic phenomena in porous media.
Higher Order Finite Element Analysis of Finite-by-Infinite Arrays

This paper describes a finite element analysis of finite-by-infinite arrays with arbitrary composition. The analysis employs higher order tetrahedral elements for discretization and imposes appropriate boundary conditions on the unit cell boundaries. The radiation boundary condition imposed on the array aperture is derived through a spectral- and a mixed-domain formulation. The two formulations are found to produce consistent numerical results. In addition to a general code using tetrahedral elements, a special code is also developed based on brick element discretization, which utilizes the conjugate gradient fast Fourier transform (CG-FFT) method. Both computer codes are applied to the analysis of several finite-by-infinite arrays and numerical examples are presented to demonstrate their accuracy and capability.
Preview Reference Governors: A constraint management technique for systems with preview information

Abstract This paper presents a constraint management strategy based on Scalar Reference Governors (SRG) to enforce output, state, and control constraints while taking into account the preview information of the reference signal. The strategy, referred to as the Preview Reference Governor (PRG), can outperform SRG while maintaining the highly-attractive computational benefits of SRG. However, as it is shown, the performance of PRG may suffer if large preview horizons are used. An extension of PRG, referred to as Multi-horizon PRG, is proposed to remedy this issue. Quantitative comparisons between SRG, PRG, and Multi-horizon PRG on a one-link robot arm example are presented to illustrate their performance and computation time. Finally, novel extensions of PRG are presented to handle systems with uncertain preview information, systems with disturbance preview, and systems with multiple reference signals.
To Reuse or Not To Reuse?: A Framework and System for Evaluating Summarized Knowledge

As the amount of information online continues to grow, a correspondingly important opportunity is for individuals to reuse knowledge which has been summarized by others rather than starting from scratch. However, appropriate reuse requires judging the relevance, trustworthiness, and thoroughness of others' knowledge in relation to an individual's goals and context. In this work, we explore augmenting judgements of the appropriateness of reusing knowledge in the domain of programming, specifically of reusing artifacts that result from other developers' searching and decision making. Through an analysis of prior research on sensemaking and trust, along with new interviews with developers, we synthesized a framework for reuse judgements. The interviews also validated that developers express a desire for help with judging whether to reuse an existing decision. From this framework, we developed a set of techniques for capturing the initial decision maker's behavior and visualizing signals calculated based on the behavior, to facilitate subsequent consumers' reuse decisions, instantiated in a prototype system called Strata. Results of a user study suggest that the system significantly improves the accuracy, depth, and speed of reusing decisions. These results have implications for systems involving user-generated content in which other users need to evaluate the relevance and trustworthiness of that content.
Some Polycubes Have No Edge Zipper Unfolding.

It is unknown whether every polycube (polyhedron constructed by gluing cubes face-to-face) has an edge unfolding, that is, cuts along edges of the cubes that unfolds the polycube to a single nonoverlapping polygon in the plane. Here we construct polycubes that have no *edge zipper unfolding* where the cut edges are further restricted to form a path.
Euler’s reflection formula, infinite product formulas, and the correspondence principle of quantum mechanics

We generalize the derivation of the Wallis formula for π from a variational computation of the spectrum of the hydrogen atom. We obtain infinite product formulas for certain combinations of gamma functions, which include irrational numbers such as 2 as well as some nested radicals. We also derive Euler’s reflection formula for reciprocals of positive even integers. We show that Bohr’s correspondence principle allows us to derive our product formulas and the reflection formula without the need for the limit definition of the gamma function.
Aeroheating Characteristics for a Two-Stage-To-Orbit Concept During Separation at Mach 6

An experimental study was conducted to determine the proximity aeroheating characteristics for a two-stage-to-orbit concept in close proximity in the NASA Langley 20-Inch Mach 6 Air Tunnel. A new hybrid discrete thin-film resistance gauge technique was evaluated in this study and used to measure experimental interference heating levels between the booster and the orbiter at a constant freestream Reynolds number of 8.25 x 10(exp 6)/m and a variety of separation and axial offset distances. It was found that, as the orbiter separates from the booster and the booster falls away, the windward centerline heating increased on the orbiter by as much as 13-times over the baseline, single model heating distribution, and on the booster by as much as 6-times. The aeroheating database developed can be used for computational fluid dynamic code validation.
3D-aCortex: an ultra-compact energy-efficient neurocomputing platform based on commercial 3D-NAND flash memories

The first contribution of this paper is the development of extremely dense, energy-efficient mixed-signal vector-by-matrix-multiplication (VMM) circuits based on the existing 3D-NAND flash memory blocks, without any need for their modification. Such compatibility is achieved using time-domain-encoded VMM design. Our detailed simulations have shown that, for example, the 5-bit VMM of 200-element vectors, using the commercially available 64-layer gate-all-around macaroni-type 3D-NAND memory blocks designed in the 55-nm technology node, may provide an unprecedented area efficiency of 0.14 um2/byte and energy efficiency of ~10 fJ/Op, including the input/output and other peripheral circuitry overheads. Our second major contribution is the development of 3D-aCortex, a multi-purpose neuromorphic inference processor that utilizes the proposed 3D-VMM blocks as its core processing units. We have performed rigorous performance simulations of such a processor on both circuit and system levels, taking into account non-idealities such as drain-induced barrier lowering, capacitive coupling, charge injection, parasitics, process variations, and noise. Our modeling of the 3D-aCortex performing several state-of-the-art neuromorphic-network benchmarks has shown that it may provide the record-breaking storage efficiency of 4.34 MB/mm2, the peak energy efficiency of 70.43 TOps/J, and the computational throughput up to 10.66 TOps/s. The storage efficiency can be further improved seven-fold by aggressively sharing VMM peripheral circuits at the cost of slight decrease in energy efficiency and throughput.
The energy content of restaurant foods without stated calorie information

Importance National recommendations for the prevention and treatment of obesity emphasize reducing energy intake through self-monitoring food consumption. However, little information is available on the energy content of foods offered by nonchain restaurants, which account for approximately 50% of restaurant locations in the United States. Objective To measure the energy content of foods from independent and small-chain restaurants that do not provide stated information on energy content. Design We used bomb calorimetry to determine the dietary energy content of the 42 most frequently purchased meals from the 9 most common restaurant categories. Independent and small-chain restaurants were randomly selected, and 157 individual meals were analyzed. Setting Area within 15 miles of downtown Boston. Participants A random sample of independent and small-chain restaurants. Main Outcomes and Measures Dietary energy. Results All meal categories provided excessive dietary energy. The mean energy content of individual meals was 1327 (95% CI, 1248-1406) kcal, equivalent to 66% of typical daily energy requirements. We found a significant effect of food category on meal energy ( P ≤ .05), and 7.6% of meals provided more than 100% of typical daily energy requirements. Within-meal variability was large (average SD, 271 kcal), and we found no significant effect of restaurant establishment or size. In addition, meal energy content averaged 49% greater than those of popular meals from the largest national chain restaurants ( P P Conclusions and Relevance National chain restaurants have been criticized for offering meals with excess dietary energy. This study finds that independent and small-chain restaurants, which provide no nutrition information, also provide excessive dietary energy in amounts apparently greater than popular meals from chain restaurants or information in national food databases. A national requirement for accurate calorie labeling in all restaurants may discourage menus offering unhealthy portions and would allow consumers to make informed choices about ordering meals that promote weight gain and obesity.
Euler Transformation of Polyhedral Complexes

We propose an Euler transformation that transforms a given d-dimensional cell complex K for d = 2, 3 into a new d-complex K in which every vertex is part of the same even number of edges. Hence ev...
Photon Structure and the Production of Jets, Hadrons, and Prompt Photons

We give a pedagogical introduction to hard photoproduction processes at HERA, including the production of jets, hadrons, and prompt photons. Recent theoretical developments in the three areas are reviewed.
Launch vehicle performance using metallized propellants

Metallized propellant propulsion systems are considered as replacements for the solid rocket boosters and liquid sustainer stages on the current launch vehicles: both the Space Transportation System (STS) and the Titan 4. Liquid rocket boosters for the STS were analyzed as replacements for current solid rocket boosters. These boosters can provide a liquid propulsion system within the volume constraints of a solid rocket booster. A replacement for the Space Shuttle Main Engines using metallized O2/H2/Al was studied. The liquid stages of the Titan 4 were also investigated; the Aerozine-50 (A-50) fuel was replaced with metallized storable A-50/Al. A metallized propellant is similar to a traditional liquid propellant. However, it has metal particles, such as aluminum, that are suspended in a gelled fuel, such as hydrogen, RP-1, A-50 or monomethyl hydrazine (MMH). The fuels then undergo combustion with liquid oxygen or nitrogen tetroxide (NTO). These propellants provide options for increasing the performance of existing launch vehicle chemical propulsion systems by increasing fuel density or specific impulse or both. These increases in density and specific impulse can significantly reduce the propulsion system liftoff weight and allow a liquid rocket booster to fit into the same volume as an existing solid rocket booster. Also, because gelled fuels are akin to liquid propellants, metallized systems can provide enhanced controllability over solid propulsion systems. Gelling of the propellant also reduces the sensitivity to impacts and consequently reduces the propellant explosion hazard.
Learning Interpretable Models for Coupled Networks Under Domain Constraints

Modeling the behavior of coupled networks is challenging due to their intricate dynamics. For example in neuroscience, it is of critical importance to understand the relationship between the functional neural processes and the anatomical connectivities. Modern neuroimaging techniques allow us to separately measure functional connectivities through fMRI imaging and measure underlying white matter wirings through diffusion imaging. Previous studies have shown that structural edges in brain networks improve the inference of functional edges and vice versa. In this paper, we investigate the idea of coupled networks through an optimization framework by focusing on interactions between structural edges and functional edges of brain networks. We consider both types of edges as observed instances of random variables that represent different underlying network processes. The proposed framework does not depend on the Gaussian functional form and achieves a more robust selection on non-Gaussian data compared with existing approaches. To incorporate existing domain knowledge into such studies, we propose a novel formulation to place hard network constraints on the noise term while estimating interactions. This not only leads to a cleaner way of applying network constraints but also brings a more scalable solution when the network connectivity is sparse. We validate our method on multishell diffusion and task-evoked fMRI datasets from Human Connectome Project, leading to both important insights on structural backbones that support various types of task activities performed during the scanning sessions as well as general solutions to the study of coupled networks.
Spatial Epitope Barcoding Reveals Subclonal Tumor Patch Behaviors

Intratumoral variability is a seminal feature of human tumors contributing to tumor progression and response to treatment. Current technologies are unsuitable to accurately track phenotypes and subclonal evolution within tumors, especially in response to genetic manipulations. Here, we developed epitope combinatorial tags (EpicTags), which we coupled to multiplex ion beam imaging (EpicMIBI) for in situ tracking of barcodes within tissue microenvironments. Using this platform, we dissected the spatial components of cell lineages and phenotypes in a xenograft model of small-cell lung cancer. We observed emergent properties from mixed clones leading to the preferential expansion of subclonal patches for both neuroendocrine and non-neuroendocrine cancer cell states in this model. In tumors harboring a fraction of PTEN-deficient cancer cells, we uncovered a non-autonomous increase of subclonal patch size in PTEN wild-type cancer cells. EpicMIBI can facilitate in situ interrogation of cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic processes involved in intratumoral heterogeneity.
NASA Advanced Computing Environment for Science and Engineering

An overview regarding NASA Ames Advanced Computing Systems. This presentation will discuss the modeling, simulation, analysis, and decision-making in relation to the Advanced Computing Systems.
Synthesizing Adversarial Negative Responses for Robust Response Ranking and Evaluation

Open-domain neural dialogue models have achieved high performance in response ranking and evaluation tasks. These tasks are formulated as a binary classification of responses given in a dialogue context, and models generally learn to make predictions based on context-response content similarity. However, over-reliance on content similarity makes the models less sensitive to the presence of inconsistencies, incorrect time expressions and other factors important for response appropriateness and coherence. We propose approaches for automatically creating adversarial negative training data to help ranking and evaluation models learn features beyond content similarity. We propose mask-and-fill and keyword-guided approaches that generate negative examples for training more robust dialogue systems. These generated adversarial responses have high content similarity with the contexts but are either incoherent, inappropriate or not fluent. Our approaches are fully data-driven and can be easily incorporated in existing models and datasets. Experiments on classification, ranking and evaluation tasks across multiple datasets demonstrate that our approaches outperform strong baselines in providing informative negative examples for training dialogue systems.
Dynamic Pricing and Learning under the Bass Model

Most of the dynamic pricing and learning literature has focused on a relatively simple setting where given current pricing decision, demand is independent of past actions and demand values. With the evolution of online platforms and marketplaces, the focus on such homogeneous modeling environments is becoming increasingly less realistic. For example, platforms now rely more and more on online reviews and ratings to inform and guide consumers. Product quality information is also increasingly available on online blogs, discussion forums, and social networks, that create further word-of-mouth effects. One clear implication on the dynamic pricing and learning problem is that the demand environment can no longer be assumed to be static; for example, in the context of online reviews, sales of the product trigger reviews/ratings, and these in turn influence subsequent demand behavior etc. To that end, product diffusion models, such as the popular Bass model [1, 2], are known to be extremely robust and parsimonious, capturing aforementioned word-of-mouth and imitation effects on the growth in sales of a new product. The Bass model describes the process by which new products get adopted as an interaction between existing users and potential new users. It creates a state-dependent evolution of market response which is well aligned with the impact of recent technological developments, such as online review platforms, on the customer purchase behavior.
Labor Demand Shocks, Unemployment, and Suicide: Evidence from Provinces across Iran

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the unemployment rate and suicide rate using data from all provinces of Iran and over the years 2009-2015. We exploit the variations in national industry-specific labor demand changes and province-level industry-composition as plausibly exogenous shocks to the province-level employment growth. Using a 2SLS-IV approach, we find that a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate is associated with 0.9 and 0.4 higher incidences of suicide attempt and death per 100,000 population, respectively. Although both OLS and 2SLS-IV approach reveals consistent and statistically significant results, the marginal effects of the 2SLS-IV approach are larger, implying that Endogeneity issues underbias the OLS results of the relationship between unemployment rates and suicide rates.
Massively parallel characterization of CYP2C9 variant enzyme activity and abundance

CYP2C9 encodes a cytochrome P450 enzyme responsible for metabolizing up to 15% of small molecule drugs, and CYP2C9 variants can alter the safety and efficacy of these therapeutics. In particular, the anti-coagulant warfarin is prescribed to over 15 million people annually and polymorphisms in CYP2C9 can affect individual drug response and lead to an increased risk of hemorrhage. We developed click-seq, a pooled yeast-based activity assay, to test thousands of variants. Using click-seq, we measured the activity of 6,142 missense variants in yeast. We also measured the steady-state cellular abundance of 6,370 missense variants in a human cell line by using variant abundance by massively parallel sequencing (VAMP-seq). These data revealed that almost two-thirds of CYP2C9 variants showed decreased activity and that protein abundance accounted for half of the variation in CYP2C9 function. We also measured activity scores for 319 previously unannotated human variants, many of which may have clinical relevance.
Fair Bayesian Optimization

Given the increasing importance of machine learning (ML) in our lives, several algorithmic fairness techniques have been proposed to mitigate biases in the outcomes of the ML models. However, most of these techniques are specialized to cater to a single family of ML models and a specific definition of fairness, limiting their adaptibility in practice. We introduce a general constrained Bayesian optimization (BO) framework to optimize the performance of any ML model while enforcing one or multiple fairness constraints. BO is a model-agnostic optimization method that has been successfully applied to automatically tune the hyperparameters of ML models. We apply BO with fairness constraints to a range of popular models, including random forests, gradient boosting, and neural networks, showing that we can obtain accurate and fair solutions by acting solely on the hyperparameters. We also show empirically that our approach is competitive with specialized techniques that enforce model-specific fairness constraints, and outperforms preprocessing methods that learn fair representations of the input data. Moreover, our method can be used in synergy with such specialized fairness techniques to tune their hyperparameters. Finally, we study the relationship between fairness and the hyperparameters selected by BO. We observe a correlation between regularization and unbiased models, explaining why acting on the hyperparameters leads to ML models that generalize well and are fair.
Laminar and turbulent plasmoid ejection in a laboratory Parker Spiral current sheet

Quasi-periodic plasmoid formation at the tip of magnetic streamer structures is observed to occur in experiments on the Big Red Ball as well as in simulations of these experiments performed with the extended magnetohydrodynamics code, NIMROD. This plasmoid formation is found to occur on a characteristic time scale dependent on pressure gradients and magnetic curvature in both experiment and simulation. Single mode, or laminar, plasmoids exist when the pressure gradient is modest, but give way to turbulent plasmoid ejection when the system drive is higher, which produces plasmoids of many sizes. However, a critical pressure gradient is also observed, below which plasmoids are never formed. A simple heuristic model of this plasmoid formation process is presented and suggested to be a consequence of a dynamic loss of equilibrium in the high-. This is consistent with the location and frequency at which periodic plasma blobs have been observed to form by Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronograph and Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation instruments.
Macroscopic turbulent flow via hard sphere potential

In recent works, we proposed a hypothesis that the turbulence in gases could be produced by particles interacting via a potential and examined the proposed mechanics of turbulence formation in a simple model of two particles for a variety of different potentials. In this work, we use the same hypothesis to develop new fluid mechanics equations that model turbulent gas flow on a macroscopic scale. The main difference between our approach and the conventional formalism is that we avoid replacing the potential interaction between particles with the Boltzmann collision integral. Due to this difference, the velocity moment closure, which we implement for the shear stress and heat flux, relies upon the high Reynolds number condition rather than the Newton law of viscosity and the Fourier law of heat conduction. The resulting system of equations of fluid mechanics differs considerably from the standard Euler and Navier–Stokes equations. A numerical simulation of our system shows that a laminar Bernoulli jet of an argon-like hard sphere gas in a straight pipe rapidly becomes a turbulent flow. The time-averaged Fourier spectra of the kinetic energy of this flow exhibit Kolmogorov’s negative five-thirds power decay rate.
A Low Discrepancy Sequence on Graphs

Many applications such as election forecasting, environmental monitoring, health policy, and graph based machine learning require taking expectation of functions defined on the vertices of a graph. We describe a construction of a sampling scheme analogous to the so called Leja points in complex potential theory that can be proved to give low discrepancy estimates for the approximation of the expected value by the impirical expected value based on these points. In contrast to classical potential theory where the kernel is fixed and the equilibrium distribution depends upon the kernel, we fix a probability distribution and construct a kernel (which represents the graph structure) for which the equilibrium distribution is the given probability distribution. Our estimates do not depend upon the size of the graph.
From binary Hermitian forms to parabolic cocycles of Euclidean Bianchi groups

Abstract We study a family of functions defined in a very simple way as sums of powers of binary Hermitian forms with coefficients in the ring of integers of an Euclidean imaginary quadratic field K with discriminant d K . Using these functions we construct a nontrivial cocycle belonging to the space of parabolic cocycles on Euclidean Bianchi groups. We also show that the average value of these functions is related to the special values of L ( χ d K , s ) . Using the properties of these functions we give new and computationally efficient formulas for computing some special values of L ( χ d K , s ) .
Advanced Load Shedding for Integrated Power and Energy Systems

This paper introduces an advanced load shedding algorithm to improve the operability performance of a medium voltage direct current (MVDC) integrated shipboard power and energy system. Outcomes are compared to a baseline algorithm while considering power generation contingency scenarios. The case study is conducted with a real-time, embedded algorithm implementation using a control hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) setup.
Quantitative single molecule RNA-FISH and RNase-free cell wall digestion in Neurospora crassa.

Abstract Single molecule RNA-FISH (smFISH) is a valuable tool for analysis of mRNA spatial patterning in fixed cells that is underutilized in filamentous fungi. A primary complication for fixed-cell imaging in filamentous fungi is the need for enzymatic cell wall permeabilization, which is compounded by considerable variability in cell wall composition between species. smFISH adds another layer of complexity due to a requirement for RNase free conditions. Here, we describe the cloning, expression, and purification of a chitinase suitable for supplementation of a commercially available RNase-free enzyme preparation for efficient permeabilization of the Neurospora cell wall. We further provide a method for smFISH in Neurospora which includes a tool for generating numerical data from images that can be used in downstream customized analysis protocols.