cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Quantitative approach to numbers and sizes: Generation of primary neurospheres from the dorsal lateral ganglionic eminence of late embryonic mice

Background: The neurosphere assay is a powerful in vitro tool to investigate neural stem cells in the dorsal lateral ventricle (dLGE). In the dLGE, metrics of sizes and numbers of neurospheres generated using this assay has not been completely characterized. The objective of this protocol is to provide a stepwise method from a single isolation that predicts the average number of neurospheres generated and to estimate an approximation of its sizes after several days in vitro. The advantage of this protocol is that no expensive and specialized equipment is needed for tissue isolation. Estimates about the numbers and sizes of neurospheres will provide investigators with quantitative data to advise on how much starting dLGE tissue is required to generate the appropriate number of spheres for the implementation of downstream applications, including immunocytochemistry, self-renewal and differentiation assays. Methods: Our method is based on a simple dissection technique, where tissue surrounding the dorsal lateral ventricle from a single mouse embryo is trimmed away to enrich for neural stem cell and progenitor populations. Following this dissection, tissue is mechanically dissociated by trituration. Cells are then cultured in media containing epidermal growth factor and other supplements to generate healthy primary neurospheres. Results: Using this approach, we found reproducible number of primary neurospheres after 7 days in vitro (DIV). Furthermore, we observed that this method yields an average range of neurospheres sizes greater than 50 μm, but less than 100 μm after 7 DIV. Lastly, using an anti-GFAP antibody, we show that these neurospheres can be stained, confirming their use in future immunocytochemistry studies. Conclusions: Future use of this protocol provides metrics on the generation of primary neurospheres that will be useful for further advances in the area of stem cell biology.
The Back Burner: A Teacher’s Dilemmas When Working With English Learners in a School With Few English Learners:

Demographic and policy shifts in U.S. schools have contributed to English learners enrolling in schools with historically few English learners. This phenomenological study used interview data to id...
Chaucer’s Treatment of Outlawry in Wife of Bath’s Tale and Knight’s Tale

The medieval outlaw appears in historical, religious, and legal texts of late Medieval England and is imagined in fiction as well, specifically in the romance narratives of Geoffrey Chaucer. Outlawry was a legal state that could be imposed. Chaucer found himself occasionally outside the law at different points of his life, an item to consider when examining Chaucer’s representation of knights acting outside the chivalric code. He populates his romances with outlawry, illustrating the ethical, legal, and social assumptions of their own times. In Chaucer, knights can sometimes be outlaws, and when they are, they are often portrayed as running amok or going mad, leading them to a quest or to an act that must be completed before they can be reintroduced into society. Early critics Maurice Keen and Eric Hobsbawm narrowly defined what they saw as outlawry in medieval literature, but the more recent work of Timothy S. Jones renews the possibility of better examining outlawry’s intersection with medieval romance. Outlawry has traditionally been associated with the narratives of Robin Hood. Yet broadening the definitions of what constitutes an outlaw narrative can lead to fresh readings of Chaucer’s work. To be outlawed, in medieval fiction, carries with it an additional displacement of a character’s connection to others. In this project, I examine fictional knights tarrying in outlawed space while grounding my argument in historical narratives. In doing so, I illuminate how outlawry intersects with medieval romance, unveiling chivalry’s ideological blemishes.
Tn-Seq Analysis Identifies Genes Important for Yersinia pestis Adherence during Primary Pneumonic Plague.

ABSTRACT Following inhalation, Yersinia pestis rapidly colonizes the lung to establish infection during primary pneumonic plague. Although several adhesins have been identified in Yersinia spp., the factors mediating early Y. pestis adherence in the lung remain unknown. To identify genes important for Y. pestis adherence during primary pneumonic plague, we used transposon insertion sequencing (Tn-seq). Wild-type and capsule mutant (Δcaf1) Y. pestis transposon mutant libraries were serially passaged in vivo to enrich for nonadherent mutants in the lung using a mouse model of primary pneumonic plague. Sequencing of the passaged libraries revealed six mutants that were significantly enriched in both the wild-type and Δcaf1Y. pestis backgrounds. The enriched mutants had insertions in genes that encode transcriptional regulators, chaperones, an endoribonuclease, and YPO3903, a hypothetical protein. Using single-strain infections and a transcriptional analysis, we identified a significant role for YPO3903 in Y. pestis adherence in the lung and showed that YPO3903 regulated transcript levels of psaA, which encodes a fimbria previously implicated in Y. pestis adherence in vitro. Deletion of psaA had a minor effect on Y. pestis adherence in the lung, suggesting that YPO3903 regulates other adhesins in addition to psaA. By enriching for mutations in genes that regulate the expression or assembly of multiple genes or proteins, we obtained screen results indicating that there may be not just one dominant adhesin but rather several factors that contribute to early Y. pestis adherence during primary pneumonic plague. IMPORTANCE Colonization of the lung by Yersinia pestis is a critical first step in establishing infection during primary pneumonic plague, a disease characterized by high lethality. However, the mechanisms by which Y. pestis adheres in the lung after inhalation remain elusive. Here, we used Tn-seq to identify Y. pestis genes important for adherence early during primary pneumonic plague. Our mutant enrichment strategy resulted in the identification of genes important for regulation and assembly of genes and proteins rather than adhesin genes themselves. These results reveal that there may be multiple Y. pestis adhesins or redundancy among adhesins. Identifying the adhesins regulated by the genes identified in our enrichment screen may reveal novel therapeutic targets for preventing Y. pestis adherence and the subsequent development of pneumonic plague.
The intergenerational impact of war on mental health and psychosocial wellbeing: lessons from the longitudinal study of war-affected youth in Sierra Leone.

Globally, one in four children lives in a country affected by armed conflict or disaster often accompanied by exposure to a range of adversities including violent trauma and loss. Children involved with armed groups (often referred to as “child soldiers”) typically exhibit high levels of mental health needs linked to their experiences. The Longitudinal Study of War-Affected Youth (LSWAY) in Sierra Leone is a seventeen-year prospective longitudinal study of the long-term effects of children’s experiences in the country’s eleven-year (1991–2002) civil war on their adult mental health and functioning in addition to exploring the potential mechanisms by which intergenerational transmission of emotional and behavioral disruptions due to war trauma may operate. LSWAY illuminates how war-related and post-conflict experiences shape long-term adult functioning, family dynamics, and developmental outcomes in offspring. The LSWAY study utilizes mixed methodologies that incorporate qualitative and quantitative data to unpack risk and protective factors involved in social reintegration, psychosocial adjustment, parenting, and interpersonal relationships. To date, study findings demonstrate striking levels of persistent mental health problems among former child soldiers as adults with consequences for their families, but also risk and protective patterns that involve family- and community-level factors. This case study examines the course of LSWAY from inception through implementation and dissemination, including building on the study results to design and evaluate several intervention models. The case study offers a unique perspective on challenges and field realities of health research in a fragile, post-conflict setting common in the context of humanitarian emergencies. LSWAY findings along with lessons learned from the field can inform future research as well as intervention research and implementation science to address the mental health and development of war-affected young people. With four waves of data collection and a planned fifth wave, LSWAY also provides rare insights into the intergenerational effects of humanitarian crises on children, youth, and families across generations.
The Implementation and Evaluation of Comprehensive School Guidance Programs in the United States: Progress and Prospects

The evolution of guidance in the schools of the United States from a position to a service to a program is described. Then the prevailing structure for guidance, the comprehensive guidance program is presented. This section of the article provides a brief overview of the basic elements of the program. Finally, the article closes with discussion of guidance program evaluation as well as presents the results of several studies that offer evidence of the impact of guidance programs.
Age and Staphylococcus aureus Inoculation Route Differentially Alter Metabolic Potential and Immune Cell Populations in Laying Hens

In 2018 and 2019, Staphylococcus aureus was isolated from multiple post-molt commercial laying hens with unusually high mortality. A challenge study was conducted to elucidate the role of S. aureus in this disease outbreak and the work herein represents the assessment of immunological responses in laying hens experimentally infected with S. aureus isolates from these cases. A total of 200 laying hens at 22 or 96 weeks of age (100/ age group) were assigned to 1 of 4 experimental inoculation groups (negative control, oral gavage, subcutaneous injection, or intravenous injection) after a 72 h acclimation period. Blood samples were taken prior to inoculation (baseline), 6 h post-inoculation (pi), 24 hpi, 3 dpi, and 7 dpi. Additional spleen samples to further assess systemic immunity were taken at baseline, 3 and 8 dpi. Metabolic phenotypes of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were isolated and assessed by Seahorse metabolic assay. Immune cell profiles in the spleen and PBMC were assessed by multicolor flow cytometry. At baseline, 96-week-old laying hens had 26.7% fewer PBMC-derived T cells compared to 22-week-old birds. Older hens had 28.9% increased helper T cell (TH) populations and 60.5% reduced γδ T cells (P = 0.03 and < 0.0001) which may contribute to variable clinical responses between age groups; however, no age-related differences in metabolic potential were observed. Metabolic outcomes showed that birds remained stressed from transport and re-housing past a 72 h acclimation period and through 24 h- 3 days post-inoculation. Inoculation with S. aureus generally reduced oxidative and glycolytic potentials compared to the control, with the greatest reductions observed in birds inoculated by intravenous injection (P < 0.05). Overall CD3+ T cell populations showed significant reductions in the intravenous group compared to other inoculation routes from 24 hpi to 7 dpi (23.6-39.0%; P ≤ 0.0001). These results suggest that age-related baseline differences in T cell populations and changes to T cell subpopulations and other immune cells due to inoculation route may have an additive effect on S. aureus- induced reductions in metabolic potential; however, further research linking metabolic potential and immune cell profiles is needed.
CCR2 Signaling Promotes Brain Infiltration of Inflammatory Monocytes and Contributes to Neuropathology during Cryptococcal Meningoencephalitis

Cryptococcal meningoencephalitis (CM) is a leading cause of central nervous system (CNS) infection-related mortality worldwide, with surviving patients often developing neurological deficiencies. While CNS inflammation has been implicated in the pathogenesis of CM, little is known about the relative contribution of the specific inflammatory/immune pathways to CNS pathology versus fungal clearance. Increased cerebrospinal fluid level of C-C chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) ligand CCL2 is associated with disease deterioration in patients with CM. Using a murine model, we investigated the role of the CCR2 pathway in the development of CNS inflammation and pathology during CM. We found that CCR2-deficient mice exhibited improved 28-day survival and alleviated neurological disease scores despite a brain fungal burden higher than that of the WT mice. Reduced CM pathology in CCR2-deficient mice was accompanied by markedly decreased neuronal cell death around cryptococcal microcysts and restored expression of genes involved in neurotransmission, connectivity, and neuronal cell structure in the brains. Results show that CCR2 axis is the major pathway recruiting CD45hiCD11b+Ly6C+ inflammatory monocyte to the brain and indirectly modulates the accumulation of CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells. In particular, CCR2 axis promotes recruitment of interferon gamma (IFN-γ)-producing CD4+ T cells and classical activation of myeloid cells. In this context, CCR2 deletion limits the immune network dysregulation we see in CM and attenuates neuropathology. Thus, the CCR2 axis is a potential target for interventions aimed to limit inflammatory CNS pathology in CM patients. IMPORTANCE Cryptococcal meningoencephalitis (CM) causes nearly 200,000 deaths worldwide each year, and survivors frequently develop long-lasting neurological sequelae. The high rate of mortality and neurologic sequelae in CM patients indicate that antifungal therapies alone are often insufficient to control disease progression. Here, we reveal that CM disease progression in mice is accompanied by inflammatory monocytes infiltration at the periphery of the infected foci that overlap locally perturbed neuronal function and death. Importantly, we identified that CCR2 signaling is a critical pathway driving neuroinflammation, especially inflammatory monocyte recruitment, as well as CNS pathology and mortality in CM mice. Our results imply that targeting the CCR2 pathway may be beneficial as a therapy complementary to antifungal drug treatment, helping to reduce CNS damage and mortality in CM patients.
Throttling Equilibria in Auction Markets.

Throttling is a popular method of budget management for online ad auctions in which the platform modulates the participation probability of an advertiser in order to smoothly spend her budget across many auctions. In this work, we investigate the setting in which all of the advertisers simultaneously employ throttling to manage their budgets, and we do so for both first-price and second-price auctions. We analyze the structural and computational properties of the resulting equilibria. For first-price auctions, we show that a unique equilibrium always exists, is well-behaved and can be computed efficiently via tatonnement-style decentralized dynamics. In contrast, for second-price auctions, we prove that even though an equilibrium always exists, the problem of finding an equilibrium is PPAD-complete, there can be multiple equilibria, and it is NP-hard to find the revenue maximizing one. Finally, we compare the equilibrium outcomes of throttling to those of multiplicative pacing, which is the other most popular and well-studied method of budget management.
Acceptance: A Research Overview and Application of This Core ACT Process in ABA

Acceptance describes mediating behaviors in which an individual reduces escape and avoidance behaviors in response to unwanted private events while also encouraging increased appetitive control. Given the recent resurgence of interest in acceptance and commitment therapy/training (ACT) in applied behavior analysis (ABA), a review of this core treatment process is warranted. Acceptance has strong empirical support within the psychological and contextual behavioral science literatures, with treatment outcome studies, self-report measures research, and behavioral laboratory tasks all supporting the process. A review of select publications in behavior-analytic journals found that acceptance also has preliminary evidence of effectiveness across a variety of populations and problem behaviors in ABA. An application of acceptance in an ABA context is discussed, and recommendations for a more functional approach to acceptance and other ACT processes are offered. Acceptance interventions fall within the scope of practice of ABA in several contexts and are of relevance to mainstream ABA practitioners.
Implementing Gentry's fully-homomorphic encryption scheme

We describe a working implementation of a variant of Gentry's fully homomorphic encryption scheme (STOC 2009), similar to the variant used in an earlier implementation effort by Smart and Vercauteren (PKC 2010). Smart and Vercauteren implemented the underlying "somewhat homomorphic" scheme, but were not able to implement the bootstrapping functionality that is needed to get the complete scheme to work. We show a number of optimizations that allow us to implement all aspects of the scheme, including the bootstrapping functionality. Our main optimization is a key-generation method for the underlying somewhat homomorphic encryption, that does not require full polynomial inversion. This reduces the asymptotic complexity from O(n2.5) to O(n1.5) when working with dimension-n lattices (and practically reducing the time from many hours/days to a few seconds/minutes). Other optimizations include a batching technique for encryption, a careful analysis of the degree of the decryption polynomial, and some space/time trade-offs for the fully-homomorphic scheme. We tested our implementation with lattices of several dimensions, corresponding to several security levels. From a "toy" setting in dimension 512, to "small," "medium," and "large" settings in dimensions 2048, 8192, and 32768, respectively. The public-key size ranges in size from 70 Megabytes for the "small" setting to 2.3 Gigabytes for the "large" setting. The time to run one bootstrapping operation (on a 1-CPU 64- bit machine with large memory) ranges from 30 seconds for the "small" setting to 30 minutes for the "large" setting.
Credit Access and College Enrollment

Does access to credit explain the gap in schooling attainment between children from richer and poorer families? I present new evidence on this important question based on the causal effects of two ...
Urbanization and Growth

Abstract This chapter on urbanization and growth focuses on modeling and empirical evidence that pertain to a number of inter-related questions. Why do cities form in an economy, with so much of economic activity in countries geographically concentrated in cities? Second, how do different types of cities interact with each other in terms of trade and migration? Given the answers to these questions the chapter turns to growth issues. How does a system of cities evolve under economic and population growth; and how does urban growth intersect with, or even define national economic growth? In growth theory, endogenous growth is based on knowledge spillovers and sharing, and evidence suggests that much of that interaction must occur at the level of individual cities. In the early stages of growth, economic development is characterized by urbanization – a spatial transformation of the economy, where the population moves through migration from an agricultural, rural based existence to one where production occurs in cities of endogenous numbers and size. How do we model that transformation process and what are the key aspects of the transformation? In any static, growth, or development–urbanization context, how do governance, institutions, and public policy affect city formation and sizes, which then in turn affect economic efficiency. Cities require enormous public infrastructure investments which affect urban quality of life, in particular health and safety and commuting and congestion costs. Institutions governing land markets, property rights, local government autonomy, and local financing affect the city formation process and city sizes. And national government policies concerning trade, labor policies and national investment in communications and transport infrastructure affect the shape of the urban system. A final set of questions has to do with where cities locate. What is the effect of history, of climate and of natural resource locations, including rivers and natural harbors, on the location of current urban agglomerations?
Social Identity and Group Lending

The success of joint liability programs depends on nature and composition of borrowing groups. Group formation is a costly process and in our model these costs vary with the social identity of group partners. We show that risk heterogeneity in a borrowing group may arise due to the social identity of the agents. The presence of caste and gender bias may not resolve the adverse selection and moral hazard problems created by information asymmetry between the borrowers and the lender. We also find that with costly group formation and state verification, individual liability lending may be better than joint liability lending. Thus ignoring social identity and group formation costs can lead to the failure of a joint liability program. Finally, the paper also suggests that targeting different social groups requires the use of a menu of joint liability costs.
Control and Metrology Issues in Long-Baseline Stellar Interferometers

Abstract The field of optical stellar interferometry has seen tremendous growth in the past few years, as technology catches up with the requirements established by the science goals and the operating environment. Presently, several ground-based interferometers are in operation, and a number are in the development or planning stages. In addition, serious studies of space-based interferometers are in progress. The control challenges in optical interferometry on the ground pertain mostly to off setting the deleterious effects of the Earth's atmosphere—the fundamental limitation to ground-based astronomy—and to compensating for Earth rotation. In space, away from the atmosphere, in addition to the control challenges associated with large space structures, there are metrology challenges to enable high-accuracy astrome-try and imaging. The required level of metrology, ~10-100 picometers, pushes the current state of the art.
Shock Wave Structure in Particulate Composites

An experimental study of shock wave profiles in particulate composites of various compositions is undertaken to determine how shock width and rise times depend on the mean particulate size. The composites under examination serve as a model for concrete or polymer bonded explosives, based upon the impedance mismatch between the relatively stiff particulates and compliant matrix. Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) and glass spheres ranging in size from 100 μm to 1000 μm are used in concentrations of 30% and 40% glass by volume for experiments with a single bead size, and up to 50% glass by volume for multi-mode particle size distributions. A linear change in shock wave rise time is observed as a function of mean particulate diameter.
DYNASTIC INEQUALITY, MOBILITY AND EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

One often heard counter to the concern about rising income and wealth inequality is that it is wrong to focus on inequality of outcomes in a “snapshot”. Intergenerational mobility and “equality of opportunity”, so the argument goes, is what matters for normative evaluation. In response to this counter, we ask what pattern of intergenerational mobility leads to lower inequality not between individuals but between the dynasties to which they belong? And how does this pattern in turn relate to commonly held views on what constitutes equality of opportunity? We revive and revisit here our earlier contributions which were in the form of working papers (Kanbur and Stiglitz 1982, 1986) in order to engage with the current debate. Focusing on bistochastic transition matrices in order to hold constant the steady state snapshot income distribution, we develop an explicit partial ordering which ranks matrices on the criterion of inequality between infinitely lived dynasties. A general interpretation of our result is that when comparing two transition matrices, if one matrix is “further away” from the identity matrix then it will lead to lower dynastic inequality. More specifically, the result presents a computational procedure to check if one matrix dominates another on dynastic inequality. We can also assess “equality of opportunity”, defined as identical prospects irrespective of starting position. We find that this is not necessarily the mobility pattern which minimizes dynastic inequality.
Preference Completion: Large-scale Collaborative Ranking from Pairwise Comparisons

In this paper we consider the collaborative ranking setting: a pool of users each provides a small number of pairwise preferences between d possible items; from these we need to predict each users preferences for items they have not yet seen. We do so by fitting a rank r score matrix to the pairwise data, and provide two main contributions: (a) we show that an algorithm based on convex optimization provides good generalization guarantees once each user provides as few as O(r log2 d) pairwise comparisons - essentially matching the sample complexity required in the related matrix completion setting (which uses actual numerical as opposed to pairwise information), and (b) we develop a large-scale non-convex implementation, which we call AltSVM, that trains a factored form of the matrix via alternating minimization (which we show reduces to alternating SVM problems), and scales and parallelizes very well to large problem settings. It also outperforms common baselines on many moderately large popular collaborative filtering datasets in both NDCG and in other measures of ranking performance.
Parametric Bäcklund transformations I: Phenomenology

We begin an exploration of parametric Backlund transformations for hyperbolic Monge-Ampere systems. (The appearance of an arbitrary parameter in the transformation is a feature of several well-known completely integrable PDEs.) We compute invariants for such transformations and explore the behavior of four examples, two of which are new, in terms of their invariants, symmetries, and conservation laws. We prove some preliminary results and indicate directions for further research.
A morphological approach to text string extraction from regular periodic overlapping text/background images

Abstract A digitized image that consists of text strings and uniformly distributed background symbols must be segmented if the characters in the text string are to be recognized. This paper describes the development and implementation of a morphological approach to character string extraction from overlapping text/background images that minimizes the shape distortion of characters. The effectiveness of this algorithm is demonstrated on several test images.
Precise Constraint-Based Type Inference for Java

Precise type information is invaluable for analysis and optimization of object-oriented programs. Some forms of polymorphism found in object-oriented languages pose significant difficulty for type inference, in particular data polymorphism. Agesen's Cartesian Product Algorithm (CPA) can analyze programs with parametric polymorphism in a reasonably precise and efficient manner, but CPAl oses precision for programs with data polymorphism. This paper presents a precise constraintbased type inference system for Java. It uses Data-Polymorphic CPA (DCPA), a novel constraint-based type inference algorithm which extends CPAwit h the ability to accurately and efficiently analyze data polymorphic programs. The system is implemented for the full Java language, and is used to statically verify the correctness of Java downcasts. Benchmark results are given which show that DCPAi s significantly more accurate than CPAan d the efficiency of DCPAis close to CPA.
Electric propulsion - A far reaching technology

It is shown that a starprobe could be built to perform a flyby mission to Proxima Centauri in approximately 400 years. This vehicle would use familiar fission nuclear reactor and ion propulsion system technologies to achieve a burn-out velocity of 0.0122c. Fine engineering and progressive technology refinements are shown to be the key to operating, and further improving, the capability of this long burn time propulsion system.
Gender equality poverty and economic growth.

This paper reviews empirical findings from economic analyses of the role of gender equality and women's empowerment in reducing poverty and stimulating growth. Going beyond the large literature documenting the impact of female education on a range of development outcomes, the paper presents evidence on the impact of women's access to markets (labor, land, and credit) and women's decision-making power within households on poverty reduction and productivity at the individual and household level. The paper also summarizes evidence from studies examining the relationship between gender equality and poverty reduction and growth at the macro level. Although micro level effects of gender equality on individual productivity and human development outcomes have been well documented and have important ramifications for aggregate economic performance, establishing an empirical relationship between gender equality and poverty reduction and growth at the macro level has proven to be more challenging. The paper concludes by identifying priority areas for future research.
Are Men Benefiting from the New Economy : Male Economic Marginalization in Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica

The economies of Latin America have undergone extensive reforms, raising concerns about how these changes have affected the labor market. But there is also increasing concern that the reforms may have deeper social ramifications as the new economies strain the ability of certain groups of men to work and to earn good wages, fulfilling their traditional role as providers. Using household surveys broadly covering the period 1988-97 in urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica, Arias examines the patterns of unemployment and real wage growth for distinct groups of male workers to see whether there is evidence of a deterioration in men's ability to be economically self-sufficient. He finds no general trend of male economic marginalization. The incidence and duration of unemployment have increased the most for the typically vulnerable group-young, less educated, informal sector workers-but the increased duration of unemployment has also affected older and more educated men. With respect to wages, density and quantile regression analysis indicates that the usual stories of wage marginalization of vulnerable workers can hardly explain the observed variety of wage growth patterns in the three countries. The positive wage performance has been concentrated mainly in the higher quantiles of the conditional wage distribution. This suggests that differences in unobservable worker characteristics, such as industriousness, labor market connections, and quality of schooling, have been key determinants of the ability of male workers in the region to adapt to economic restructuring. These results suggest that assistance should be targeted to some groups so that frustrations in asserting an economic identity do not lead to aggressive behavior. But they also show that we must look elsewhere for the roots of the increase in socially dysfunctional behavior.
Expert Elicitation for Risk Assessment

Expert elicitation—the use of structured, calibrated questions to gather qualitative risk information—is a key risk assessment tool. Particularly when there does not exist sufficient observed data to estimate the nature of a risk process, or in cases when a system risk is generated by the interactions of a complex set of component interactions, qualitative information gathered from subject matter experts may be the best, if not the only, source of relevant information. Ensuring that information gathered from subject matter experts is relatively free from bias and probability logic inconsistency is a key interest of elicitation research. Keywords: expert elicitation; risk estimation; subject matter expert opinion; expert knowledge; uncertainty; risk management
Real-time network-based anomaly intrusion detection

The global internet has made computer systems world-wide vulnerable to an ever-changing array of attacks. A new approach to perform real-time network-based anomaly intrusion detection is presented in this paper. Real-time Tcptrace generates data streams which are analysed to detect network-based attacks. Real-time Tcptrace periodically reports statistics on all the open TCP/IP connections in the network. Then, using the Abnormality Factor method, statistical profiles are built for the normal behavior of the network services. Abnormal activity is then flagged as an intrusion. This approach has the advantage of being able to monitor any service without the prior knowledge of modelling its behavior. The paper presents interesting results and evaluation of the approach by conducting experiments using the MIT Lincoln lab evaluation data.
Social Networks, Reputation, and Commitment: Evidence From a Savings Monitors Experiment

We study whether individuals save more when information about their savings is shared with another village member (a "monitor"). We focus on whether the monitor's eectiveness depends on her network position. Central monitors may be better able to disseminate information, and more proximate monitors may pass information to individ- uals who interact with the saver frequently. In 30 villages, we randomly assign monitors. Average monitors increase savings by 35%. A one-standard deviation more central monitor increases savings by 14%; increasing proximity from social distance three to two increases savings by 16%. The increased savings persist over a year after the intervention's end, and monitored savers better respond to shocks. In 30 other villages, savers choose their monitors. Proximate and central monitors are chosen. Information flows. 63% of monitors tell others about the saver's progress. 15 months later, others know more about the saver's progress and believe she is responsible if the saver was assigned a more central monitor.
Implementing survey propagation on graphics processing units

We show how to exploit the raw power of current graphics processing units (GPUs) to obtain implementations of SAT solving algorithms that surpass the performance of CPU-based algorithms. We have developed a GPU-based version of the survey propagation algorithm, an incomplete method capable of solving hard instances of random k-CNF problems close to the critical threshold with millions of propositional variables. Our experimental results show that our GPU-based algorithm attains about a nine-fold improvement over the fastest known CPU-based algorithms running on high-end processors.
Stable computational semantics of conflict-free rewrite systems (partial orders with duplication)

We study orderings ⊴S on reductions in the style of Levy reflecting the growth of information w.r.t. (super)stable sets S of 'values' (such as head-normal forms or Bohm-trees). We show that sets of co-initial reductions ordered by ⊴S form finitary ω-algebraic complete lattices, and hence form computation and Scott domains. As a consequence, we obtain a relativized version of the computational semantics proposed by Boudol for term rewriting systems. Furthermore, we give a pure domain-theoretic characterization of the orderings ⊴S in the spirit of Kahn and Plotkin's concrete domains. These constructions are carried out in the framework of Stable Deterministic Residual Structures, which are abstract reduction systems with an axiomatized residual relations on redexes, that model all orthogonal (or conflict-free) reduction systems as well as many other interesting computation structures.
A Comparison of Price Imputation Methods under Large Samples and Different Levels of Censoring.

Several imputation approaches under a large sample and different levels of censoring are compared and contrasted by using a multiple imputation methodology. The study not only discusses imputation approaches, but also quantifies differences in price variability before and after price imputation, evaluates the performance of each method, and estimates and compares parameters from a complete demand system. The study’s findings reveal that even when there is small variability among different price imputation approaches, there may be large variability among the underlying parameter estimates of interest and the ultimately desired measures. This suggests that a multiple imputation approach may be preferred over a comparison of mean prices among various imputation approaches.
Routing explicit side information for data compression in wireless sensor networks

Two difficulties in designing data-centric routes [2,3,4,5] in wireless sensor networks are the lack of reasonably practical data aggregation models and the high computational complexity resulting from the coupling of routing and in-network data fusion. In this paper, we study combined routing and source coding with explicit side information in wireless sensor networks. Our data aggregation model is built upon the observation that in many physical situations the side information that provides the most coding gain comes from a small number of nearby sensors. Based on this model, we propose a routing strategy that separately routes the explicit side information to achieve data compression and cost minimization. The overall optimization problem is NP hard since it has the minimum Steiner tree as a subproblem. We propose a suboptimal algorithm based on maximum weight branching and the shortest path heuristic for the Steiner tree problem. The worst case and average performances of the algorithm are studied through analysis and simulation.
Chaos and Chaotic Phase Mixing in Galaxy Evolution and Charged Particle Beams

This paper discusses three new issues that necessarily arise in realistic attempts to apply nonlinear dynamics to galaxy evolution, namely: (i) the meaning of chaos in many-body systems, (ii) the time-dependence of the bulk potential, which can trigger intervals of transient chaos, and (iii) the self-consistent nature of any bulk chaos, which is generated by the bodies themselves, rather than imposed externally. Simulations and theory both suggest strongly that the physical processes associated with galactic evolution should also act in nonneutral plasmas and charged particle beams. This in turn suggests the possibility of testing this physics in real laboratory experiments, an undertaking currently underway.
Dynamic memory management in the loci framework

Resource management is a critical concern in high-performance computing software. While management of processing resources to increase performance is the most critical, efficient management of memory resources plays an important role in solving large problems. This paper presents a dynamic memory management scheme for a declarative high-performance data-parallel programming system — the Loci framework. In such systems, some sort of automatic resource management is a requirement. We present an automatic memory management scheme that provides good compromise between memory utilization and speed. In addition to basic memory management, we also develop methods that take advantages of the cache memory subsystem and explore balances between memory utilization and parallel communication costs.
A Scientific Revolution: The Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes

Astronomy is going through a scientific revolution, responding to a flood of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, other space missions, and large telescopes on the ground. In this talk, I will discuss some of the most important astronomical discoveries of the last 10 years, and the role that space telescopes have played in those discoveries. The next decade looks equally bright with the newly refurbished Hubble and the promise of its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. I will describe how Hubble was upgraded and how and why we are building Webb.
Fractal Spacetime as Tentative Solution for the Cosmological and Coincidence Problems

Recent years have hinted that the concept of fractal spacetime may play a role in both the “would-be” physics beyond the Standard Model and the large-scale structure of the Universe. Here we explore a scenario where classical spacetime equipped with minimal fractality appears to provide a natural solution for two major challenges of relativistic cosmology, the cosmological constant and coincidence problems.
The quality of budget execution and its correlates

What determines the quality of budget execution around the world, measured in terms of a government's ability to accurately hit its own revenue and expenditure targets? The answers could be relevant to the topics of macroeconomic stability, national development, public service delivery, and political reputation. This paper takes a step toward finding answers through the exploration of a new database of budgets and budget outcomes and potential cross-country correlates of budget execution in levels and in composition. Few countries within the data sample execute their budgets well, in levels or in composition. Expenditure deviations are positively but rather loosely correlated with revenue deviations. Within this broad tendency, there is considerable variation in behavior not only across countries, but also across time within countries. In explaining the cross-country variations, the data confirm traditional drivers for common pool behavior while also supporting constructive roles for political institutions and the technical capacity for public financial management. This is good news for reform minded governments.
Recognizing interspersed sketches quickly

Sketch recognition is the automated recognition of hand-drawn diagrams. When allowing users to sketch as they would naturally, users may draw shapes in an interspersed manner, starting a second shape before finishing the first. In order to provide freedom to draw interspersed shapes, an exponential combination of subshapes must be considered. Because of this, most sketch recognition systems either choose not to handle interspersing, or handle only a limited pre-defined amount of interspersing. Our goal is to eliminate such interspersing drawing constraints from the sketcher. This paper presents a high-level recognition algorithm that, while still exponential, allows for complete interspersing freedom, running in near real-time through early effective sub-tree pruning. At the core of the algorithm is an indexing technique that takes advantage of geometric sketch recognition techniques to index each shape for efficient access and fast pruning during recognition. We have stresstested our algorithm to show that the system recognizes shapes in less than a second even with over a hundred candidate subshapes on screen.
Parameterizations for narrowband and broadband albedo of pure snow and snow containing mineral dust and black carbon

The reduction of snow spectral albedo by black carbon (BC) and mineral dust, both alone and in combination, is computed using radiative transfer modeling. Broadband albedo is shown for mass fractions covering the full range from pure snow to pure BC and pure dust, and for snow grain radii from 5 µm to 2500 µm, to cover the range of possible grain sizes on planetary surfaces. Parameterizations are developed for opaque homogeneous snowpacks for three broad bands used in general circulation models and several narrower bands. They are functions of snow grain radius and the mass fraction of BC and/or dust and are valid up to BC content of 10 ppm, needed for highly polluted snow. A change of solar zenith angle can be mimicked by changing grain radius. A given mass fraction of BC causes greater albedo reduction in coarse-grained snow; BC and grain radius can be combined into a single variable to compute the reduction of albedo relative to pure snow. The albedo reduction by BC is less if the snow contains dust, a common situation on mountain glaciers and in agricultural and grazing lands. Measured absorption spectra of mineral dust are critically reviewed as a basis for specifying dust properties for modeling. The effect of dust on snow albedo at visible wavelengths can be represented by an “equivalent BC” amount, scaled down by a factor of about 200. Dust has little effect on the near-IR albedo because the near-IR albedo of pure dust is similar to that of pure snow.
Mesoanalysis of the interactions of precipitating convection and the boundary layer

[1] The Oklahoma Mesonet surface wind data and the Arkansas Basin River Forecast Center (ABRFC) gridded hourly precipitation data from May to August, 1997, were used to demonstrate and evaluate a new method for the area-averaged near-cloud-base updraft and downdraft mass fluxes from statistics of the surface divergence field. When precipitation is used as a proxy for near-cloud-base mass fluxes, the preliminary results indicate that surface divergence is fairly well correlated with the precipitation and that the surface divergence lags the precipitation. These results suggest that it is possible to use the proposed method to infer the near-cloud-base mass fluxes. Two CRM simulations of convective systems were also used to evaluate the method. The results show there is a good correlation between the inferred and true near-cloud-base mass fluxes except for some differences in timing and at peak values. An alternative to the original near-cloud-base mass flux method using the surface divergence statistics is to use the surface precipitation.
Some computational issues in membrane computing

Membrane computing is a branch of molecular computing that aims to develop models and paradigms that are biologically motivated. It identifies an unconventional computing model, namely a P system, from natural phenomena of cell evolutions and chemical reactions. Because of the nature of maximal parallelism inherent in the model, P systems have a great potential for implementing massively concurrent systems in an efficient way that would allow us to solve currently intractable problems (in much the same way as the promise of quantum and DNA computing) once future bio-technology (or silicon-technology) gives way to a practical bio-realization (or chip realization). Here we report on recent results that answer some interesting and fundamental open questions in the field. These concern computational issues such as determinism versus nondeterminism, membrane and alphabet-size hierarchies, and various notions of parallelism.
Seeking votes - the political economy of expenditures by the Peruvian Social Fund (FONCODES), 1991-95

President Alberto Fujimori created the Peruvian social Fund (FONCODES) in 1991 with the stated objectives of generating employment, helping to alleviate poverty, and improving access to social services. The author uses province-level data on monthly expenditures, socio-economic indicators, and electoral outcomes to analyze political influences on the timing and geographic distribution of FONCODES expenditures between 1991 and 1995. He finds that: 1) FONCODES expenditures increased significantly before elections. 2) FONCODES projects were directed at poor provinces, as well as provinces in which the marginal political impact of expenditures was likely to be greatest. The results are robust to many specifications and controls. The Peruvian data thus support predictions made in the literature on political business cycle as well the literature on political influences on the allocation of discretionary funds.