cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Taking stock of research methods and analysis on oppositional political terrorism

A variety of techniques are used by journalists, practitioners, experts, consultants, and scholars in conducting research on terrorism.2 This information appears in the context of journal articles, chapters in scholarly books, academic monographs, newspaper and magazine articles, and books for popular audiences. In general, this work can be divided into qualitative and quantitative approaches. A subtle but necessary distinction should also be made between research produced for popular audiences and that which is done for the academic or scholarly community. There is an understanding that work for this latter audience is more rigorous but may lack the excitement and sensational appeal to sustain a wider interest. Nevertheless, a symbiotic relationship exists between popular and academic writers; at various times they depend upon or use research from each other. Periodically, researchers conduct comprehensive reviews of the research on terrorism and the methods used by investigators. Since the examples from which they draw are illustrative, these writings are not meant to be comprehensive, but rather illustrative. Building on similar work by Schmid (1983) and Gurr (1988), I review salient contributions in both qualitative and quantitative approaches to terrorism studies.
Enslaving the Image: The Origins of the Tort of Appropriation of Identity Reconsidered

There is no escaping the fact that law shapes identity. Laws tells us who we are and where we stand in society. While sometimes benign, such classification can also be a devastatingly powerful instrument of ostracism and subjugation. Legally enforced racial segregation sent a cold and harsh message about what the dominant society thought it meant to be black. The recent backlash against affirmative action resurrects degrading stereotypes and sends old messages wrapped in new code words about racial identity. “English-only” laws and attempts to restrict public support for immigrants define targeted groups as “outsiders,” people who do not belong in America. The acceptance of anti-sodomy laws brands homosexuals as deviant And the slow, grudging history of legal recognition of sexual harassment, the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, and the persistence of the “reasonable man” standard effaces the distinctive experiences of women in society while subjecting all to measurement against a male norm.
The volatility trap: Precautionary saving, investment, and aggregate risk

We study the effects of permanent and temporary income shocks on precautionary saving and investment in a â€œstoreâ€ orâ€ sowâ€ model of growth. High volatility of permanent shocks results in high precautionary saving in the safe asset and low investment or a â€œvolatility trap,â€ namely, big savers invest relatively little. In contrast, low volatility of permanent shocks leads to low precautionary saving and high or low investment, depending on the volatility of temporary shocks. Empirical evidence shows a nonlinear relationship between investment and saving and that investment is a humpâ€ shaped function of the volatility of permanent shocks, as predicted by the model.
Biopolitics at the bedside. Proxy wars and feeding tubes.

In the introductory essay to the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Jeffrey P. Bishop and Fabrice Jotterand note: “Bioethics has always been a biopolitics and the political ...
Hate Crime Law and the Limits of Inculpation

Critics sometimes maintain that hate crime law punishes an offender for her motive and character and is therefore doctrinally and morally illegitimate. This manuscript explores the concept of culpability to examine this challenge, and argues that critics inaccurately assume that our criminal law conditions culpability on a robust understanding of choice. This inaccuracy significantly undermines the doctrinal critique against hate crime law, which in fact appears to be consistent with many other laws that consider motive and character as relevant factors in determining degree of guilt and proportionate punishment. Notwithstanding the apparent doctrinal validity of hate crime law, the author questions whether enhanced punishment for racially motivated crimes is morally (and politically) defensible in light of our current theoretical and psychological understanding of race and racism.
Exploring the relationship between money attitudes and Maslow's hierarchy of needs

This study explores the relationship between basic human needs and money attitudes in a university-age cohort utilizing Maslow's theory of hierarchical needs. Results confirmed relationships between needs and money attitudes. Specifically, all of Maslow's needs appear to be strongly related to the money attitudes of evaluation and anxiety. In addition, men's and women's needs are highly correlated with obsession, budget, anxiety and particularly evaluation. Findings support existing literature and point to the importance of understanding money attitudes and level of need satisfaction among individuals and families, particularly from a counselling and educational standpoint. Implications and possible areas for future research are discussed.
Credit Ratings and Stock Liquidity

We analyze contemporaneous and predictive relations between credit ratings and measures of equity market liquidity and find that common measures of adverse selection, which reflect a portion of the uncertainty about future firm value, are larger when credit ratings are poorer. We also show that future rating changes can be predicted using current levels of adverse selection. Collectively, our results validate widely used microstructure measures of adverse selection and offer new insights into the value of credit ratings and the specific nature of the information they contain. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.
On the Quasi-linear Elliptic PDE \({-\nabla \cdot ( \nabla{u}/ \sqrt{1-| \nabla{u} |^2}) = 4 \pi \sum_k a_k \delta_{s_k}}\) in Physics and Geometry

It is shown that for each finite number N of Dirac measures \({\delta_{s_n}}\) supported at points \({s_n \in {\mathbb R}^3}\) with given amplitudes \({a_n \in {\mathbb R} \backslash\{0\}}\) there exists a unique real-valued function \({u \in C^{0, 1}({\mathbb R}^3)}\), vanishing at infinity, which distributionally solves the quasi-linear elliptic partial differential equation of divergence form \({-\nabla \cdot ( \nabla{u}/ \sqrt{1-| \nabla{u} |^2}) = 4 \pi \sum_{n=1}^N a_n \delta_{s_n}}\). Moreover, \({u \in C^{\omega}({\mathbb R}^3\backslash \{s_n\}_{n=1}^N)}\). The result can be interpreted in at least two ways: (a) for any number N of point charges of arbitrary magnitude and sign at prescribed locations sn in three-dimensional Euclidean space there exists a unique electrostatic field which satisfies the Maxwell-Born-Infeld field equations smoothly away from the point charges and vanishes as |s| → ∞; (b) for any number N of integral mean curvatures assigned to locations \({s_n \in {\mathbb R}^3 \subset{\mathbb R}^{1, 3}}\) there exists a unique asymptotically flat, almost everywhere space-like maximal slice with point defects of Minkowski spacetime \({{\mathbb R}^{1, 3}}\), having lightcone singularities over the sn but being smooth otherwise, and whose height function vanishes as |s| → ∞. No struts between the point singularities ever occur.
A machine-learning approach to human footprint index estimation with applications to sustainable development

Abstract The human footprint index is an extensively used tool for interpreting the accelerating pressure of humanity on Earth. Up to now, the process of creating the human footprint index has required significant data and modeling, and updated versions of the index often lag the present day by many years. Here we introduce a near-present, global-scale machine learning-based human footprint index (ml-HFI) which is capable of routine update using satellite imagery alone. We present the most up-to-date map of the human footprint index, and document changes in human pressure during the past 20 years (2000 to 2019). Moreover, we demonstrate its utility as a monitoring tool for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 15 (SDG15), “Life on Land”, which aims to foster sustainable development while conserving biodiversity. We identify countries that are making progress toward SDG15 while also experiencing increases in their ml-HFI. We briefly examine a subset of these in the context of conservation policies that may or may not enable continued progress toward SDG15. This has immediate policy relevance, since the majority of countries globally are not on track to achieve Goal 15 by the declared deadline of 2030. Moving forward, the ml-HFI may be used for ongoing monitoring and evaluation support toward the twin goals of fostering a thriving society and global Earth system.
The Use of Word Lists in Textual Analysis

A commonly used platform to assess the tone of business documents in the extant accounting and finance literature is Diction. We argue that Diction is inappropriate for gauging the tone of financial disclosures. About 83% of the Diction optimistic words and 70% of the Diction pessimistic words appearing in a large 10-K sample are likely misclassified. Frequently occurring Diction optimistic words like respect, security, power, and authority will not be considered positive by readers of business documents. Similarly, over 45% of the Diction pessimistic 10-K word-counts are not and no. The Loughran-McDonald [2011] dictionary appears better at capturing tone in business text than Diction.
The impact of leader personality on new product development teamwork and performance: The moderating role of uncertainty

Abstract We examined the affect of leader personality on new product development (NPD) project performance under differing conditions of uncertainty. Our model posits teamwork as a mediating variable between leader personality and NPD performance. We hypothesized that the personality variable of openness would have a stronger influence on teamwork and NPD performance when uncertainty was high, and that the personality variables of extraversion, conscientiousness and stability would have a stronger indirect influence on NPD performance through teamwork when uncertainty was low. We used structural equation modeling to test two models of the influence of personality. In our study of 143 development projects, we support the importance of teamwork as a process variable linking leader personality to NPD performance and confirm that the effects of leader personality on these criteria depend on the level of uncertainty operating in NPD projects, thus substantiating all our hypotheses. Recommendations to re-consider hiring criteria and training for NPD project leaders are provided.
Unit root tests with smooth breaks: an application to the Nelson–Plosser data set

This article reconsiders the nature of the trends (i.e. deterministic or stochastic) of the Nelson-Plosser macroeconomic time series. For this purpose, the article employs two new tests that display robustness to structural breaks of unknown forms, irrespective of the date and/or location of the breaks. These tests approximate structural changes as smooth processes via flexible Fourier transforms. In general, it appears that real variables are stationary while nominal ones have a unit root.
Sentencing Adjudication: Lessons from Child Pornography Policy Nullification

Federal sentencing is in disarray with a raging debate pitting Congress, the United States Sentencing Commission, and the federal judiciary against each other. Ever since the Supreme Court rendered the federal guidelines as merely advisory in United States v. Booker, the rate of variances from guidelines’ recommendations has increased. After the Supreme Court in Kimbrough v. United States ruled that a sentencing judge could reject the crack cocaine guideline for a policy dispute with a Commission guideline, the variance rate has risen further still. While Booker/Kimbrough permits the judiciary some discretionary authority, it is threatening to the Commission and the legitimacy of its guidelines.The downward variance rate is at its most extreme with a very controversial crime: child pornography offending. The courts are in disagreement as to whether, as a matter of law, a sentencing judge has the authority to use a Kimbrough-type categorical rejection of the child pornography guideline. Through a comprehensive review of federal sentencing opinions, common policy objections to the child pornography guideline are identified. The guideline is viewed as not representing empirical study, being influenced by Congressional directives, recommending overly severe sentences, and resulting in both unwarranted similarities and unwarranted disparities. The issue has resulted in a circuit split. This article posits a three-way split with four circuit courts of appeal expressly approving a policy rejection to the child pornography guideline, four circuits explicitly repudiating a policy rejection, and three circuits opting for a more neutral position. A comprehensive review of case law indicates that the circuit split is related to unwarranted disparities in sentencing child pornography offenders nationwide. This assessment was then corroborated by empirical study.The Sentencing Commission’s dataset of fiscal year 2011 child pornography sentences were analyzed to explore what impacts policy rejections and the circuit split may have on actual sentences issued. Bivariate measures showed statistically significant correlations among relevant measures. The average mean sentence in pro-policy rejection circuits, for example, was significantly lower than in anti-policy rejection circuits. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was employed using downward variances as the dependent variable. Results showed that that several circuit differences existed after controlling for other relevant factors, and they were relatively consistent with the direction the circuit split might suggest.The article concludes that the child pornography guideline suffers from a multitude of substantial flaws and deserves no deference. It also concludes that there are no constitutional impediments to preventing a district judge from categorically rejecting the child pornography guideline. Booker and its progeny stand for the proposition that there are no mandatory guidelines, even if a guideline is the result of Congressional directive.
Do we need a distinct monetary constitution

Abstract Elements of the Chicago and Virginia traditions of political economy have rejected both competitive money production and money's politicization via post-constitutional bargaining, opting instead for constitutionalization. This paper argues that competitive money production is not subject to the pro-cyclicality that concerns constitutional political economy. It also meets the standard of predictability that motivates constitutional perspectives, although at the level of individual prices rather than the price level. An effective monetary constitution is implicit in any constitution that protects rights to property, contract, and exchange and sets limits on the democratic process.
The Riddle of Shareholder Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility

This piece elucidates the conflict between the historic profit maximizing goal of corporations and the current movement urging that they undertake other objectives as well such as community betterment and environmental sustainability. It first describes the dominant role corporations play in the American social and economic system. It then builds on that to explain the trend during the last several decades that corporations serve a triple bottom line: profit, community, and environment. Given the pressing needs of society and the resources and expertise of corporations it makes good sense, the article argues, that corporations embrace these broader purposes.
A Liberal Theory of Social Welfare: Fairness, Utility, and the Pareto Principle

Amartya Sen has shown how liberal rights can produce outcomes that everyone would prefer to avoid, thereby violating the Pareto principle. Similarly, Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell identify potential conflicts between the Pareto principle and notions of "fairness" which give weight to considerations other than the overall utility level of each individual. Whereas Sen claims that the conflict he identifies shows the unacceptability of the Pareto principle as a universal rule, Kaplow and Shavell claim that the conflict they identify suggests a critique of all fairness notions (including liberal rights). I will argue in this paper that both claims are based on questionable premises. This paper proposes a middle course that I will argue resolves the supposed conflicts while remaining faithful to both liberal fairness principles and the Pareto principle. This paper will present an example of a social welfare function that can incorporate fairness principles and still comply with the Pareto principle.
Stocks or Options? Moral Hazard, Firm Viability, and the Design of Compensation Contracts

We consider the choice between stocks and options to provide effort incentives to a risk-averse manager. We show that stocks can dominate options as a means of motivation only if nonviability risk is substantial, as in financially distressed firms or start-ups. Options dominate stocks for other firms. These results hold regardless of the existing portfolio of the manager. We provide empirical evidence that higher bankruptcy risk is indeed correlated with more use of stock.
The SO2 Allowance Trading System: The Ironic History of a Grand Policy Experiment

) reacting in the atmosphere to form sulfuric and nitric acids —was damaging forests and aquatic ecosystems, to form sulfuric and nitric acids —was damaging forests and aquatic ecosystems, particularly in the US Northeast and southern Canada. In the United States, fl ue particularly in the US Northeast and southern Canada. In the United States, fl ue gas emissions from coal-fi red, electric generating plants were the primary source of gas emissions from coal-fi red, electric generating plants were the primary source of SO SO2 emissions and a major source of NO
Regulation and state ownership: conflicts and complementarities in eu telecommunications

Abstract**: In many countries infrastructure liberalization proceeded faster than the privatization of former state monopolies. Regulatory agencies, established to oversee the transition and safeguard the preconditions for competition, therefore monitor state-owned firms in addition to privately owned firms. The research on public-private firms has generated heterogeneous findings, with some pointing to the advantages and other to the disadvantages of this arrangement. Government regulation of mixed public-private firms raises additional complicated issues, of which the paper studies two using the example of European telecommunications between 2000 and 2004. It examines, first, whether the dual role of the state as owner and regulator could be abused to disadvantage private competitors. Second, it probes whether, conversely, the combination of government ownership and regulation might help overcome some of the shortcomings of the regulation of private firms. We find weak evidence that public and mixed regulated firms were subject to more favourable regulation of interconnection prices. However, this effect weakened as more independent regulation was established. In the area of universal service provision, there is no clear evidence that public and mixed telecommunication service providers were more likely than private ones to be utilized in pursuit of social output goals without explicit compensation. Overall, it seems that the presence of independent regulation, appeals processes, and competition review is a safeguard against capture of the regulator, by public and mixed firms.
The Impact of Gartner’s Maturity Curve, Adoption Curve, Strategic Technologies on Information Systems Research, with Applications to Artificial Intelligence, ERP, BPM, and RFID

ABSTRACT: How does technology maturity and adoption affect samples, research issues, and use of methodologies in information systems? What is a source of some research issues in strategic and emerging technologies? This paper addresses these questions and others using some frameworks generated by a well-known corporate research group. Gartner Group has been an icon to its corporate clients. However, Gartner has received only limited attention by academics. This paper examines three related frameworks used by Gartner for analyzing information systems (IS) and accounting information systems (AIS) research. Although researchers have previously examined the adoption curve, they generally have ignored the impact of the technology maturity curve and the interaction of the two curves. The paper generates a number of findings, including the finding that where a technology is on the maturity curve limits and facilitates the type of research questions that can be addressed regarding that technology. In addition, Ga...
Philosophy, Ethics, and Capitalism: An Interview With BB&T Chairman John Allison

For 20 years John Allison served as CEO of Branch Banking & Trust Corporation (BB&T), the tenth largest bank in the United States. He retired as CEO at the end of 2008, but has remained with the firm as chairman of the board of directors. Allison attributes BB&T's success to operating by a set of principles that are embodied in the firm's statement of 10 key values. The BB&T Value Statement is a genuine source of guidance for decisions throughout the firm. For example, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a municipality's right to seize property by eminent domain for the purpose of economic development, BB&T issued a statement that it would not provide loans for any projects in which the land for the project had been taken in this manner. When making negative amortization loans became popular, BB&T also refused to participate. In this interview Allison addresses philosophy, ethics, values, and how BB&T harnesses them to guide its business decisions. Characterized as a defender of capitalism and a “philosoph...
Conditional estimation of diffusion processes

Abstract There are a number of circumstances in finance in which it is useful to estimate diffusion processes conditional on some event. In this paper, we develop the theoretical and numerical tools necessary to perform conditional estimation of diffusion processes within a generalized method of moments framework. We illustrate our method by estimating a univariate diffusion process for a standard time-series of interest rate data conditioned to remain between lower and upper boundaries. A test statistic fails to reject by a wide margin the linearity of the conditionally estimated drift coefficient.
Corruption, Corporations, and the New Human Right

We should no longer expect the Alien Tort Statute to be the principal federal statute that deters overseas corporate rights violations. That distinction rightly belongs to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an antibribery statute that rests on undisputed principles of corporate liability, contains a clear congressional statement of extraterritorial application, and routinely collects penalties from multinational corporate defendants. Scholars have not associated the FCPA with human rights, owing principally to a thin understanding of rights theory. But freedom from corruption can and should be understood as a human right, one that is as old as social contract theory but new to federal and international law. With specific reforms—one modeled after environmental law and the other after intellectual property—the FCPA can become a more powerful statutory tool for deterring overseas corporate rights violations than the ATS ever was or will be.  Assistant Professor, University of Richmond School of Law. I would like to thank the following law schools for opportunities to present prior iterations of this paper: Northwestern University Law School, William & Mary School of Law, Cardozo School of Law, Southern Methodist University School of Law, and Brigham Young University Law School. The American Society of International Law graciously allowed me to present this paper at its Mid-Year Research Forum and its Annual Conference. I also wish to thank the Glothro Workshop on the Direct Human Rights Violations in International Law and the African International Economic Law for their valuable workshop opportunities. I would particularly like to thank Larry Solum, John McGinnis, Jide Nzelibe, Sungjoon Cho, Larry Ribstein, David Zaring, Gordon Smith, Bruce Bean, and Donald Langevoort for their comments on this project. Finally, I would like to thank my extraordinary research assistant, Tim Archer. Washington University Open Scholarship 1366 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [VOL. 91:1365
The Measurement of Intellectual Influence

This paper examines the problem of measuring intellectual influence based on data on citations between scholarly publications. We follow an axiomatic approach and find that the properties of invariance to reference intensity, weak homogeneity, weak consistency, and invariance to splitting of journals characterize a unique ranking method. This method is different from those regularly used in economics and other social sciences.
Student Quality as Measured by LSAT Scores: Migration Patterns in the U.S. News Rankings Era

This study examines the change in entering class median LSAT, a key input into the U.S. News & World Report rankings, between 1993 and 2004. Using multivariate regression analysis, the authors model several factors that can influence the direction and magnitude of this change. The study presents six specific findings: (1) the market for high LSAT students is divided into two segments that operate under different rules; (2) initial starting position is a strong predictor of the future gain or loss in LSAT scores; (3) the allure of the high-end corporate law firms appears to cause a significant portion of students to discount the importance of rankings in favor of locational advantages related to the regional job market; (4) students will pay a tuition premium to attend elite law schools but, when deciding among non-elite schools, are willing to forgo a higher ranked school for lower tuition, thus producing a measurable gain in median LSAT scores for lower priced, non-prestigious law schools; (5) there is little or no association between change in lawyer/judge and academic reputation and median LSAT scores, and (6) two well-known gaming strategies for driving up median LSAT scores appear to work. Drawing upon these results, the authors suggest that the current rankings competition among law schools has all the hallmarks of a positional arms race that undermines social welfare. The authors outline the emerging equilibrium in which non-elite schools engage in costly strategies to boost their reputations while elite law schools are able to further leverage their positional advantage. Because this dynamic spawns rapidly escalating costs in the form of higher tuition, continuation of the ranking tournament threatens the long-term viability of the current model of legal education. The authors conclude with four specific recommendations to law school deans and the editors of U.S. News & World Report.
High-Frequency Quoting: Short-Term Volatility in Bids and Offers

At subsecond horizons, bids and offers in U.S. equity markets are more volatile than what would be implied by long-term fundamentals. To assess costs and consequences, this paper suggests that traders’ random delays (latencies) interact with quote volatility to generate execution price risk and relative latency costs. Analysis of the behavior of quote setters suggests that this volatility is more likely to arise from recurrent cycles of undercutting similar to the Edgeworth cycles found in product markets rather than mixed strategies of limit-order placement.
Relating the Knowledge Production Function to Total Factor Productivity: An Endogenous Growth Puzzle

The knowledge production function is central to research and development-based growth models. This paper empirically investigates the knowledge production function and intertemporal spillover effects using cointegration techniques. Timeseries evidence suggests there are two long-run cointegrating relationships. The first captures a long-run knowledge production function; the second captures a long-run positive relationship between total factor productivity (TFP) and the knowledge stock. The results indicate that strong intertemporal knowledge spillovers are present and that the long-run impact of the knowledge stock on TFP is small. This evidence is interpreted in light of existing theoretical and empirical evidence on endogenous growth. Copyright 2006, International Monetary Fund
Partisan Portfolio Allocation in African Democracies

What determines partisan portfolio allocation in African democracies? Despite the vast literature on government formation in Europe and Latin America, there have been no studies of partisan portfol...
Cartelizing Taxes: Understanding the OECD’s Campaign against “Harmful Tax Competition”

Formed in 1961 to promote global economic and social well-being, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has become the collective voice of rich countries on international tax issues. After an initial focus on improving commerce through addressing double taxation issues, the organization shifted to a focus on restricting tax competition and increasing automatic exchanges of tax information. In this paper we analyze the reasons for this shift in policy focus. After describing the history of the OECD’s work on taxation, we examine the OECD’s project against “harmful tax competition” as it has played out since its launch in the 1990s. We analyze the mechanisms behind the project from a public choice perspective. While typical economic models portray tax competition as a prisoner’s dilemma between governments, a more powerful perspective is of the incentives of politicians and bureaucrats. We conclude that the project against tax competition is an example of the interplay between the interests of politicians and international bureaucrats. The OECD project illustrates the role that international organizations play in competition among interest groups.
Explaining the Recent Homicide Spikes in U.S. Cities: The 'Minneapolis Effect' and the Decline in Proactive Policing

Recently major cities across the country have suffered dramatic spikes in homicides. These spikes are remarkably large, suddenly appearing, and widespread. At this rate, 2020 will easily be the deadliest year in America for gun-related homicides since at least 1999, while most other major crime categories are trending stable or slightly downward. This article attempts to explain why so many cities have seen extraordinary increases in murder during the summer of 2020. A close analysis of the emerging crime patterns suggests that American cities may be witnessing significant declines in some forms of policing, which in turn is producing the homicide spikes. Crime rates are increasing only for a few specific categories—namely homicides and shootings. These crime categories are particularly responsive to reductions in proactive policing. The data also pinpoint the timing of the spikes to late May 2020, which corresponds with the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis and subsequent anti-police protests—protests that likely led to declines in law enforcement. The thesis of this article is that the recent spikes in homicides have been caused by a “Minneapolis Effect,” similar to the earlier “Ferguson Effect.” Specifically, law enforcement agencies have been forced to divert resources from normal policing to patrolling demonstrations. And even as the anti-police protests have abated, police officers have scaled back on proactive or officer-initiated law enforcement, such as street stops and other forms of policing designed to prevent firearms crimes. If this thesis is correct, it is reasonable to estimate that, as a result of de-policing during June and July 2020, approximately 710 additional victims were murdered and more than 2,800 victims were shot. Of course, this estimate relies on various assumptions, and further research on the issues surrounding the homicide spikes should be an urgent priority. If this article’s thesis about a Minneapolis Effect is correct, an important implication is that policymakers in major cities should proceed cautiously before taking step to “defund” the police in ways that might reduce proactive policing that is important in preventing gun violence.
Developing a Reputation for Reticence

A sender who has disclosable information with probability less than one may partially conceal bad news by choosing to withhold information and pooling with uninformed types. The success of this strategy depends on receivers' beliefs about the probability that the sender has disclosable news. In a dynamic context, informed senders try to cultivate a reputation for reticence either by concealing good news along with the bad, or by concealing some good news and disclosing some bad news. A reputation for reticence is valuable because it makes receivers less skeptical of past or future nondisclosures. The model provides insight into the choice by firms such as Google not to disclose quarterly earnings guidance to analysts, as well as Tony Blair's reticence over his son's vaccine record during the measles–mumps–rubella scare in the United Kingdom.
Suppressing evolution through environmental switching

Ecology and evolution under changing environments are important in many subfields of biology with implications for medicine. Here, we explore an example: the consequences of fluctuating environments on the emergence of antibiotic resistance, which is an immense and growing problem. Typically, high doses of antibiotics are employed to eliminate the infection quickly and minimize the time under which resistance may emerge. However, this strategy may not be optimal. Since resistance typically has a reproductive cost to the microbes, there can be trade-offs between resistance and competitiveness depending on the environment. Here we show conditions under which such trade-offs can be exploited to prevent the emergence of resistance. We develop a stochastic Lotka-Volterra model of a microbial system with competing phenotypes: a wild strain susceptible to the antibiotic, and a mutant strain that is resistant. We investigate the impact of various pulsed applications of antibiotics on population suppression. Leveraging the trade-offs between susceptibility and resistance when the antibiotic is applied or is not, we show how a strategy of environmental switching can suppress the infection while avoiding resistant mutants. We discuss limitations of the procedure depending on the microbe and pharmacodynamics and methods to ameliorate them.
BiTraP: Bi-Directional Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction With Multi-Modal Goal Estimation

Pedestrian trajectory prediction is an essential task in robotic applications such as autonomous driving and robot navigation. State-of-the-art trajectory predictors use a conditional variational autoencoder (CVAE) with recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to encode observed trajectories and decode multi-modal future trajectories. This process can suffer from accumulated errors over long prediction horizons ( $\geq\! 2$ seconds). This letter presents BiTraP , a goal-conditioned bi-directional multi-modal trajectory prediction method based on the CVAE. BiTraP estimates the goal (end-point) of trajectories and introduces a novel bi-directional decoder to improve longer-term trajectory prediction accuracy. Extensive experiments show that BiTraP generalizes to both first-person view (FPV) and bird's-eye view (BEV) scenarios and outperforms state-of-the-art results by $\sim\! 10\text{--}50\%$ . We also show that different choices of non-parametric versus parametric target models in the CVAE directly influence the predicted multi-modal trajectory distributions. These results provide guidance on trajectory predictor design for robotic applications such as collision avoidance and navigation systems. Our code is available at: https://github.com/umautobots/bidireaction-trajectory-prediction .
Critical group structure from the parameters of a strongly regular graph

Abstract We give simple arithmetic conditions that force the Sylow p-subgroup of the critical group of a strongly regular graph to take a specific form. These conditions depend only on the parameters ( v , k , λ , μ ) of the strongly regular graph under consideration. We give many examples, including how the theory can be used to compute the critical group of Conway's 99-graph and to give an elementary argument that no s r g ( 28 , 9 , 0 , 4 ) exists.
Determining the stages of cellular differentiation using Deep Ultraviolet Resonance Raman Spectroscopy

Cellular differentiation is a fundamental process in which one cell type changes into one or more specialized cell types. Cellular differentiation starts at the beginning of embryonic development when a simple zygote begins to transform into a complex multicellular organism composed of various cell and tissue types. This process continues into adulthood when adult stem cells differentiate into more specialized cells for normal growth, regeneration, repair, and cellular turnover. Any abnormalities associated with this fundamental process of cellular differentiation are linked to life-threatening conditions, including degenerative diseases and cancers. Detection of undifferentiated and different stages of differentiated cells can be used for disease diagnosis but is often challenging due to the laborious procedures, expensive tools, and specialized technical skills which are required. Here, a novel approach, called deep ultraviolet resonance Raman spectroscopy, is used to study various stages of cellular differentiation using a well-known myoblast cell line as a model system. These cells proliferate in the growth medium and spontaneously differentiate in differentiation medium into myocytes and later into myotubes. The cellular and molecular characteristics of these cells mimic very well actual muscle tissue in vivo. We have found that undifferentiated myoblast cells and myoblast cells differentiated at three different stages are able to be easily separated using deep ultraviolet resonance Raman spectroscopy in combination with chemometric techniques. Our study has a great potential to study cellular differentiation during normal development as well as to detect abnormal cellular differentiation in human pathological conditions in future studies.
Typable Fragments of Polynomial Automatic Amortized Resource Analysis

Being a fully automated technique for resource analysis, automatic amortized resource analysis (AARA) can fail in returning worst-case cost bounds of programs, fundamentally due to the undecidability of resource analysis. For programmers who are unfamiliar with the technical details of AARA, it is difficult to predict whether a program can be successfully analyzed in AARA. Motivated by this problem, this article identifies classes of programs that can be analyzed in type-based polynomial AARA. Firstly, it is shown that the set of functions that are typable in univariate polynomial AARA coincides with the complexity class PTime. Secondly, the article presents a sufficient condition for typability that axiomatically requires every sub-expression of a given program to be polynomial-time. It is proved that this condition implies typability in multivariate polynomial AARA under some syntactic restrictions.
DrNAS: Dirichlet Neural Architecture Search

This paper proposes a novel differentiable architecture search method by formulating it into a distribution learning problem. We treat the continuously relaxed architecture mixing weight as random variables, modeled by Dirichlet distribution. With recently developed pathwise derivatives, the Dirichlet parameters can be easily optimized with gradient-based optimizer in an end-to-end manner. This formulation improves the generalization ability and induces stochasticity that naturally encourages exploration in the search space. Furthermore, to alleviate the large memory consumption of differentiable NAS, we propose a simple yet effective progressive learning scheme that enables searching directly on large-scale tasks, eliminating the gap between search and evaluation phases. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. Specifically, we obtain a test error of 2.46% for CIFAR-10, 23.7% for ImageNet under the mobile setting. On NAS-Bench-201, we also achieve state-of-the-art results on all three datasets and provide insights for the effective design of neural architecture search algorithms.
Insights into the Thermal Response of a Poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide)-poly(ethylene oxide) Triblock Polymer in Water.

A thermal responsive block copolymer made up of ethylene oxide (EO) and propylene oxide (PO) blocks was simulated with optimized atomistic potentials and enhanced sampling methods over a range of t...
The Pediatric Obesity Microbiome and Metabolism Study (POMMS): Methods, Baseline Data, and Early Insights

Objective The purpose of this study was to establish a biorepository of clinical, metabolomic, and microbiome samples from adolescents with obesity as they undergo lifestyle modification. Methods A total of 223 adolescents aged 10 to 18 years with BMI ≥95th percentile were enrolled, along with 71 healthy weight participants. Clinical data, fasting serum, and fecal samples were collected at repeated intervals over 6 months. Herein, the study design, data collection methods, and interim analysis-including targeted serum metabolite measurements and fecal 16S ribosomal RNA gene amplicon sequencing among adolescents with obesity (n = 27) and healthy weight controls (n = 27)-are presented. Results Adolescents with obesity have higher serum alanine aminotransferase, C-reactive protein, and glycated hemoglobin, and they have lower high-density lipoprotein cholesterol when compared with healthy weight controls. Metabolomics revealed differences in branched-chain amino acid-related metabolites. Also observed was a differential abundance of specific microbial taxa and lower species diversity among adolescents with obesity when compared with the healthy weight group. Conclusions The Pediatric Metabolism and Microbiome Study (POMMS) biorepository is available as a shared resource. Early findings suggest evidence of a metabolic signature of obesity unique to adolescents, along with confirmation of previously reported findings that describe metabolic and microbiome markers of obesity.
Death and taxes: Does taxation matter for firm survival?

This paper investigates the impact of taxation on firm survival, using hazard models and a large-scale panel dataset on over 4 million nonfinancial firms from 21 countries over the period 1995-2015. We find ample evidence that a lower level of effective marginal tax rate improves firms' survival chances. This result is not only statistically but also economically important and remains robust when we partition the sample into country subgroups. The effect of taxation on firms' survival probability is found to exhibit a non-linear pattern and be stronger in developing countries than advanced economies. These findings have important policy implications for the design of corporate tax systems. The challenge is not simply reducing the statutory tax rate, but to level the playing field for all firms by rationalizing differentiated tax treatments across sectors, asset types and sources of financing.
Arctic Curves Phenomena for Bounded Lecture Hall Tableaux

Recently the first author and Jang Soo Kim introduced lecture hall tableaux in their study of multivariate little q-Jacobi polynomials. They then enumerated bounded lecture hall tableaux and showed that their enumeration is closely related to standard and semistandard Young tableaux. In this paper we study the asymptotic behavior of these bounded tableaux thanks to two other combinatorial models: non-intersecting paths on a graph whose faces are squares and pentagons and dimer models on a lattice whose faces are hexagons and octagons. We use the tangent method to investigate the arctic curve in the model of non-intersecting lattice paths with fixed starting points and ending points distributed according to some arbitrary piecewise differentiable function. We then study the dimer model and use an ansatz to guess the asymptotics of the inverse of the Kasteleyn, which confirm the arctic curve computed with the tangent method for two examples.
Floquet conformal field theories with generally deformed Hamiltonians

In this work, we study non-equilibrium dynamics in Floquet conformal field theories (CFTs) in 1+1D, in which the driving Hamiltonian involves the energy-momentum density spatially modulated by an arbitrary smooth function. This generalizes earlier work which was restricted to the sine-square deformed type of Floquet Hamiltonians, operating within a $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ sub-algebra. Here we show remarkably that the problem remains soluble in this generalized case which involves the full Virasoro algebra, based on a geometrical approach. It is found that the phase diagram is determined by the stroboscopic trajectories of operator evolution. The presence/absence of spatial fixed points in the operator evolution indicates that the driven CFT is in a heating/non-heating phase, in which the entanglement entropy grows/oscillates in time. Additionally, the heating regime is further subdivided into a multitude of phases, with different entanglement patterns and spatial distribution of energy-momentum density, which are characterized by the number of spatial fixed points. Phase transitions between these different heating phases can be achieved simply by changing the duration of application of the driving Hamiltonian. We demonstrate the general features with concrete CFT examples and compare the results to lattice calculations and find remarkable agreement.
SFQ Bias for SFQ Digital Circuits

Superconductor electronics fabrication technology developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory enables the development of VLSI digital circuits with millions of Josephson junctions per square centimeter. However, conventional DC and multi-phase AC biasing techniques already encounter serious challenges for scaling circuits above several hundred thousand junctions. In this work, we propose a novel AC-based biasing scheme for RSFQ-type logic families requiring DC bias. The major step toward this scheme is a superconducting AC/DC rectifier which we introduced at ASC 2014. We proposed to connect the rectifiers to “payload cells” via superconducting inductors with large inductance in order to reduce parasitic effects of flux quantization. Recently, we discovered that this powering scheme works even better at a much lower value of the inductance, when it is just sufficient to hold only one or two flux quanta in the inductive loop between the converter and the payload. In this case, flux quantization in the loop becomes beneficial because the value of current fed into the payload is defined by the value of the coupling inductance. Therefore, our AC/SFQ converter powers the payload cell by single flux quanta rather than by DC current. Such mode of operation is extremely energy efficient because energy is used only to recover the flux quantum consumed by the cell during the logic operation. We present designs of AC/SFQ converters comprising an AC/DC rectifier and a current conditioning circuit which we termed an SFQ filter. We also present test results and demonstrate AC/SFQ powering a payload circuit using circuits fabricated in a new, 150-nm node of Lincoln Laboratory fabrication technology using self-shunted Nb/AlOx-Al/Nb Josephson junctions with 600 µA/µm2 critical current density and 200 nm minimum linewidth of inductors.